gospel axioms stand unshaken upon the two fundamental, inseparable doctrines of faith and works,-of proper merit in Christ, and derived worthiness in his members. Penitent believers freely receive all from the God of grace and mercy, through Christ; and humble workers freely return all to the God of holiness and glory, through the same adorable Mediator. Thus God has all the honour of freely bestowing upon us a crown of righteousness, in a way of judicial mercy and distributive justice; while we, through grace, have all the honour* of freely receiving it, in a way of penitential faith and obedient gratitude. To him, therefore, one eternal Jehovah in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be ascribed all the merit, honour, praise, and dominion, worthy of a God, for ever and ever.] 46. OBJECTION.-"We have all the honour through grace!' says a friend of voluntary humility: what honour can you possibly ascribe to man, when you have already ascribed all honour to God? But one, who begins his sermon by pleading for merit, may well conclude it by taking from God part of his honour, dominion, and praise." ANSWER. I plead only for an interest in Christ's merits through faith and the works of faith. This interest I call "derived worthiness," which would be as dishonourable to Christ, as it is honourable to believers. I confess also, that I aspire at the honour of shouting in heaven, "Hallelujah to God and the Lamb!" In the mean time, I hope that I may pay an inferior honour to all men, ascribe derived dominion to the king, bestow deserved praise upon my pious opponents, and claim the honour of being their obedient servant in Christ, without robbing the Lamb of his peculiar worthiness, and God of his proper honour, dominion, and praise. APPENDIX. : I FLATTER myself that the preceding discourse shows, 1. That it is very possible to preach free grace, without directly or indirectly preaching Calvinism and free wrath and, 2. That those who charge Mr. Wesley and me with subverting the articles of our church, which guard the doctrine of grace, do us great wrong. Should God spare me, I shall also bear my testimony to the truth of the doctrine of conditional predestination and election, maintained in the seventeenth article, to which I have not had an opportunity of setting my seal in this work. As I have honestly laid my Helvetic bluntness and antinomian mistakes before the public in my notes, I am not conscious of having misrepresented my old sermon in my enlarged discourse. Should, however, the keener eyes of my opponents discover any real mistake in my additions, &c., upon information I shall be glad to acknowledge and rectify it. Two or three sentences I have left out, merely because they formed vain repetitions, without adding any thing to the sense. But, whenever I have, for conscience' sake, made any alteration, that affects, or seems to affect, the doctrine, I have informed the reader of it, and of my reason for it in a note; that he may judge whether I was right twelve years ago, or whether I am now; and where there is no such note at the bottom of the page, there is an addition in the context, directing to the fifth note, where the alteration is acknowledged, and accounted for according to the reasonable condition which I have made in the preface. I particularly recommend the perusal of that note, of the first, and of the twenty-first, to those who do not yet see their way through the straits of pharisaism and antinomianism, through which I have been obliged to steer my course in handling a text which, of all others, seems at first sight best calculated to countenance the mistakes of my opponents. Sharp-sighted readers will see by my sermon that nothing is more difficult than rightly to divide the word of God. The ways of truth and error lie close together, though they never coincide. When some preachers say, that "the road to heaven passes very near the mouth of hell," they do not mean, that the road to heaven and the road to hell are one and the same. If I assert that the way of truth runs parallel to the ditch of error, I by no means intend to confound them. Let error, therefore, come in some things ever so near to truth, yet it can no more be the truth, than a filthy ditch, that runs parallel to a good road, can be the road. You wonder at the athletic strength of Milo, that brawny man, who stands like an anvil under the bruising fist of his atagonist. Through the flowery paths of youth and childhood trace him back to his cradle; and, if you please, consider him unborn: he is Milo still. Nay, view him just conceived or quickened, and though your naked eye scarcely discovers the punctum saliens, by which he differs from a non-entity or a lifeless thing; yet even then the difference between him and a non-entity is not only real, but prodigious; for it is the vast difference between something and nothing, between life and no life. In like manner trace back truth to its first stamina; investigate it till you find its punctum saliens, its first difference from error; and even then, you will see an essential, a capital difference between them, though your short-sighted or inattentive neighbour can perceive none. It is often a thing little in appearance, that turns the scale of truth; nevertheless, the difference between a scale turned or not turned, is as real as the difference between a just and a false weight, between right and wrong. I make this observation, 1. To show that although my opponents come very near me in some things, and I go very near them in others, yet the difference between us is as essential as the difference between light and darkness, truth and error: and, 2. To remind to them and myself, that we ought so much the more to exercise Christian forbearance towards each other, as we find it difficult, whenever we do not stand upon our guard, to do justice to every part of the truth, without seeming dissent even from ourselves. However, our shortsightedness and twilight knowledge do not alter the nature of things. The truth of the anti-pharisaic and anti-Crispian gospel is as immutable as its eternal author; and whether I have marked out its boundaries with a tolerable degree of justness or not, I must say as the heathen poet:— Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines, * Truth is confined within her firm bounds; nay, there is a middle line equally distant from all extremes: on that line she stands; and to misa her, you need only step over it to the right hand or to the left. SCRIPTURAL ESSAY ON THE ASTONISHING REWARDABLENESS OF WORKS ACCORDING TO THE COVENANT OF GRACE; CONTAINING I. A VARIETY OF PLAIN SCRIPTURES, WHICH SHOW, THAT HEAVEN ITSELF IS THE GRACIOUS REWARD OF THE WORKS OF FAITH, AND THAT BELIEVERS MAY LOSE THAT REWARD BY BAD WORKS. 11. AN ANSWER ΤΟ THE MOST PLAUSIBLE OBJECTIONS OF THE SOLIFIDIANS AGAINST THIS DOCTRINE. THAT 111. SOME REFLECTIONS UPON THE UNREASONABLENESS OF THOSE WHO SCORN TO WORK WITH AN EYE TO THE REWARD GOD OFFERS, TO EXCITE US TO OBedience. "To the law and to the testimony.”—Isaiah viii. 20. |