the word in its evangelical meaning, is not of God. 1 John iii. 311; ii. 29. If Mr. Hill cries out, Shocking! Who are those men that do not sin? I reply, All those whom St. John speaks of, a few verses below, Beloved, if our heart condemn us; [and it will condemn us if we sin, but God much more, for] God is greater than our heart, &c. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have confidence towards God, &c. because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight," I John iii. 20, &c.-Now we apprehend, all the sophistry in the world will never prove, that, evangelically speaking, keeping God's commandments, and doing what pleases him, is sinning. Therefore, when St. John professed to keep God's commandments, and to do what is pleasing in his sight; he professed what our opponents call sinless perfection, and what we call christian perfection. Mr. Hill is so very unhappy in his choice of St. John, to close the number of his apostolic witnesses for christian imperfection, that, were it not for a few clauses of his first epistle, the anti-solifidian severity of that apostle might drive all imperfect christians to despair. And what is most remarkable, those few encouraging clauses are all conditional: If any man sin [for there is no necessity that he should:] or rather [according to the most literal sense of the word auaşın, which being in the aorist has generally the force of a past tense]" If any man have sinned-if he have not sinned unto death: if we confess our sins:-if that which ye have heard shall remain in yon:-if we walk in the light;"-then do we evangelically enjoy the benefit of our Advocate's intercession. Add to this, that the first of those clauses is prefaced by these words, "My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not ;" and all together are guarded by these dreadful declarations; "He that says, I know him, aud keepeth not his commandments, is a liar.--If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.-If any man say, I love Godand loveth not his brother [note; he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law he is a liar -There is a sin unto death, I do not say that he shall pray for it. Let no man deceive yon, he that does righteousness is righteons. He that committeth sin [or transgresseth the law] is of the devil.” To represent St. John therefore, as an enemy to the doctrine of christian perfection, docs not appear to us less absurd, than to represent Satan as a friend to complete holiness. SECTION XI. Ir Mr. Hill had quoted Solomon, instead of St. John; and jewish, instead of christian saints: he might have attacked the glorious christian liberty of God's children with more success: for "the heir as long as he is a child [in jewish nonage] differeth nothing from a servant; but is under tutors [and school-masters] until the time appointed by the Father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage-but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son made of a woman, made under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons,-and stand in the [peculiar] liberty, wherewith Christ has made us [christians] free," Gal. iii. 1.-iv. I. But this very passage, which shews that Jews are [comparatively speaking] in bondage, shews also that the christian dispensation, and its high pri vileges, cannot be measured by the inferior privileges of the jewish 1 dispensation, under which Solomon lived: for the law made nothing perfect in the christian sense of the word: and what the law could not do, God sending his only Son, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us [christian believers] who walk after the spirit;" being endued with that large measure of it, which began to be poured out on believers in the day of Pentecost: for that measure of the spirit was not given before; because Jesus was not yet glorified, John vii. 39. But after he had ascended on high, and had obtained the gift of the indwelling Comforter for believers; they received, says St. Peter, the end of their faith, even the christian salvation of their souls: [a salvation this, which St. Paul justly calls so great salvation, when he compares it with jewish privileges, Heb. ii. 3.]" Of which [christian] salvation the [jewish prophets have enquired, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you [christians] searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them [according to their dispensation] did signify, when it testified before-hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory [the glorious dispensation] that should follow [his return to heaven, and accompany the out-pouring of his Spirit.] Unto whom [the jewish prophets] it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us [christians] they did minister the things, which are now preached unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," 1 Pet. i. 9, &c. And, among those things, the Scripture reckons the coming of the spiritual kingdom of Christ with power into the heart of believers, and the baptism of fire, or the perfect love, which burns up the chaff of sin, thoroughly purges God's floor, and makes the hearts of perfect believers a habitation of God through the Spirit, and not a nest for indwelling sin. As this doctrine may appear new to Mr. Hill, I beg leave to confirm it by the testimony of two as eminent divines as England has lately produced. The one is Mr. Baxter, who (in his comment upon these words, "A testament is of force after men are dead," Heb. ix. 17,) very justly observes, that "His [Christ's] covenant has the nature of a testament, which supposeth the death of the testator, and is not of efficacy till then, to give full right of what he bequeathed. Note, that the eminent, evangelical kingdom of the Mediator, in its last, full edition, called the kingdom of Christ, and of heaven, distinct from the obscure state of promise before Christ's incarnation, began at Christ's resurrection, ascension, and sending of the eminent gift of the Holy Ghost, and was but as an embryo before."-My other witness is the Rev. Mr. Whitfield, who proposes and answers the following question: "Why was not the Holy Ghost given till Jesus Christ was glorified? Because till then he was himself on the earth, and had not taken on him the kingly office, nor pleaded the merits of his death before his heavenly Father, by which he purchased that invaluable blessing for us." See his Works, Vol. IV. p. 362.-Hence I conclude, that, as the full measure of the spirit, which perfects christian believers, was not given before our Lord's ascension, it is as absurd to judge of Christian perfection by the experiences of those who died before that remarkable event, as to measure the powers of a sucking child by those of an embryo. This might suffice to unnerve all the arguments which our opponents produce from the Old Testament against Christian perfection. However, we are willing to consider a moment those passages by which they plead for the necessary indwelling of sin, in all Christian be levers, and defend the walls of the Jericho within, that accursed city of refuge for spiritual Canaanites and Diabolonians. I. 1 Kings viii. 46, &c. Solomon prays, and says, "If they, [the Jews] sin against thee, (for there is no man that* sinneth not) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captive,-yet, if they bethink themselves, and repent, and make supplication unto thee, and return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul; then, hear thou their prayer." No unprejudiced person, who, in reading this passage, takes the parenthesis (for there is no man that sinneth not) in the connexion with the context, can, I think, help seeing that the Rev. Mr. Toplady, who, if I remember right, quotes this text against us, mistakes Solomon as much as Mr. Hill does St. John. The meaning is evidently, that there is no man who is not liable to sin; and that a man actually sius, when he actually departs from God. Now peccability, or a liableness to sin, is not indwelling sin; for Angels, Adam and Eve, were all liable to sin in their sinless state. And, that there are some men who do not actually sin is indubitable: (1) From the hypothetical phrase in the context, if they sin, which shows that their inning is not unavoidable: (2) From God's anger against those that sin, which is immediately mentioned. Hence it appears, that so certain as God is not angry with all his people, some of them do not sin in the sense of the wise man:-and (3) from Solomon's intimating that these very men who have sinned, or have actually departed from God, may bethink themselves, repent and return to God with all their heart, and with all their soul, that is, may attain the perfection of their dispensation; the two poles not being more opposed to each other, than sinning is to repenting and departing from God, to returning to him with all our heart, and with all our soul. Take therefore the whole passage together, and you have a demonstration, that where sin hath abounded, there grace may much more abound. And what is this, but a demonstration that our doctrine is not chimerical? For if Jews [Solomon himself being judge] instead of sinning and departing from God, can repent, and return to him with all their hearts; how much more Christians, whose privileges are so much greater? : II." But Solomon says also, There is not a just man upon earth, that does good and sinneth not. Eccl. vii. 20.” (1) We are not sure that Solomon says it: for he may introduce here the very same man who, four verses before, says, Be not righteous overmuch, &c. and Mr. Toplady may mistake the interlocutor's meaning in one text, as Dr. Trap has done in the other. But (2) Supposing Solomon speaks? May not he in general assert what St. Paul does, Rom. iii. 23. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, the just not excepted? Is not this the very sense which Canne (Calvinist as he was,) gives to the wise man's words, when he refers the reader to this assertion of the Apostle? And did * If Mr. Hill consults the original, he will find that the word translated sinneth, is in the future tense, which is often used for an indefinite tense in the potential mood, because the Hebrews have no such mood or tense. Therefore our translators would only have done justice to the original, as well as to the context, if they had rendered the whole clause, There is no man that might not sin; instead of There is no men that sinneth not. we ever speak against this true doctrine? (3) If you take the orginal word to sin, in the lowest sense which it bears. If it means in Eccl. vii. 20, what it does in Jud. xx. 16, namely, to miss a mark, we shall not differ; for we maintain, that according to the standard of paradisiacal perfection, There is not a just man upon earth, that does good, and misses not the mark of that perfection, i. e. that does not lessen the good he does, by some involuntary, and therefore (evangelically speaking) sinless defect. (4) It is bold to pretend to overthrow the glorious liberty of God's children, which is asserted in a hundred plain passages of the New Testament, by producing so vague a text as Eccl. vii. 20. And to measure the spiritual attainments of all believers, in all ages, by this obscure standard, appears to us as ridiculous as to affirm, that of a thousand believing men, 999 are indubitably villains: and that of a thousand Christian women, there is not one but is a strumpet; because Solomon says a few lines below, "One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found." Eccl. vii. 28. III. If it be objected, that Solomon asks, “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?" Prov. xx. 9.—We answer: (1) Does not Solomon's father ask, Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? Does a question of that nature always imply an absurdity, or an impossibility? Might not Solomon's query be evangelically answered thus? "The man in whom thy father David's prayer is auswered, Create in me a clean heart, O God:-The man who has regarded St. James's direction to the primitive Solifidians, cleanse your hearts, ye double minded :—The man who has obeyed God's awful command, O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from iniquity, that thou mayest be saved. Or the man who is interested in the sixth beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God :That man, I say, can testify to the honour of the blood which cleanseth from all sin, that he has made his heart clean.” (2) However, if Solomon, as it is most probable, reproves in this passage the conceit of a perfect, boasting Pharisee, the answer is obvious: no man of that stamp can say with any truth, I have made my heart clean; for the law of faith excludes all proud boasting, and if we say with the temper of the Pharisee," that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," for we have pride, and pharisaic pride too, which, in the sight of God, is perhaps the greatest of all sins. If our opponents take the wise man's question in either of the preceding scriptural senses, they will find that it perfectly agrees with the doctrine of Jewish and Christian perfection. IV. Solomon's pretended testimony against Christian perfection is frequently backed by two of Isaiah's sayings, considered out of the context, one of which respects the filthiness of our righteousness ; and the other, the uncleanness of our lips. I have already proved [Check IV. Let. viii] that the righteousness which Isaiah compares to filthy rags, and St. Paul to dung, is only the anti-evangelical, pharisaic righteousness of unhumbled professors; a righteousness this, which may be called the righteousness of impenitcut pride, rather than the righteousness of humble faith: therefore the excellence of the righteousness of faith cannot, with any propriety, be struck at by that passage. V. But Isaiah, undoubtedly speaking of himself, says, "Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips." Isaiah vi. 5. True but give yourself the trouble to read the two following verses, and you will hear him declare that the power of God's Spirit applying the blood of sprinkling (which power was represented by a live coal taken from off the altar) touched his lips; so that his iniquity was taken away, and his sin purged. This passage therefore, when it is considered with the context, instead of disproving the doctrine of Christian perfection, strongly proves the doctrine of jewish perfection. If Isaiah is discharged from the service into which he is so unwarrantably pressed, from the land of Uz our opponents will bring Job, whom the Lord himself pronounces perfect according to his dispensation; nowithstanding the hard thoughts which his friends entertained of him. VI. Perfect Job is absurdly set upon demolishing Christian perfection, because he says, "If I justify myself mine own mouth shall condemn me; If I say (in a pharisaic, self-justifying spirit) I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse," Job ix. 20.-But (1) What does Job assert here, more than Solomon does in the words to which Canne on this text judiciously refers his readers, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth: a stranger, and not thine own lips." Though even this rule is not without exception; witness the circumstances which drove St. Paul to what he calls a confidence of boasting.-(2) That professing the perfection of our dispensation in a self-abasing and Christ-exalting spirit, is not a proof of perverseness, is evident from the profession which humble Paul made of his being one of the perfect Christians of his time, Phil. iii. 15, and from St. John's declaration, that his love was made perfect, Johu iv. 17. For when we have the witnessing spirit, whereby we know the things which are freely given to us of God, we may, nay, at proper times, we should acknowledge his gifts to his glory, though not to our own -(3) If God himself had pronounced Job perfect according to his dispensation, Job's modest fear of pronouncing himself so, does not at all overthrow the divine testimony: such a timorousness only shews, that the more we are advanced in grace, the more we are averse to whatever has the appearance of ostentation: and the more deeply we feel what Job felt when he said, "Behold, I am vile: what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth," Job xl. 4. VII. But Job himself, far from mentioning his perfection, says, "Now mine eye seeth thee, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes," Job xlii. 6."-And does this disprove our doctrine? Do we not assert that our perfection admits of a continual growth: and that perfect repentance, and perfect humility, are essential parts of it? These words of Job therefore, far from overthrowing our doctrine, prove that the patient man's perfection grew; and that from the top of the perfection of gentilism, he saw the day of Christian perfection, and had a taste of what Mr. Wesley prays for, when he sings, O let me gain perfection's height, &c. Confound, o'erpow'r me with thy grace; VIII. With respect to the words, "The stars are not pure-the heavens are not clean in his sight:-his angels he charged with folly," |