as not abusing it;-nor can we look at the things of others, as well

as at our own.

66

XV. The same thing may be said of St. Paul's fine description of Christian perfection under the name of charity. Charity suffereth long; but at death all our sufferings are cut short. Charity is not provoked: it thinketh no evil: it covereth all things: it rejoiceth not in iniquity. It hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things," &c. The bare reading of this description shows, that it does not respect the article of death, when we cease to endure any thing; much less does it respect heaven, where we shall have absolutely nothing to endure.

XVI. If a perfect fulfilling of our relative duties is a most important part of Christian perfection, how ungenerous, how foolish is it to promise the simple, that they shall be perfect Christians at death, or in heaven! Does not this assertion include all the following absurdities: ye shall perfectly love your husbands and wives in the article of death, when you shall not be able to distinguish your husbands and wives from other men and women; or in heaven, where ye shall be like the angels of God, and have neither husbands nor wives: -Ye shall assist your parents and instruct your children with perfect tenderness, when ye shall be past assisting or instructing them at all: -when they shall be in heaven or in hell-past needing, or past admitting your assistance and instructions.-Ye shall inspect your servants with perfect love, or serve your masters with perfect faithfulness when the relations of master and servant will exist no more.-Ye shall perfectly bear with the infirmities of your weak brethren behind, and go where all your brethren will be free from every degree of trying weakness.-Ye shall entertain strangers, attend the sick, and visit the prisoners with perfect love, when he shall give up the ghost, or when ye shall be in paradise, where these duties have no more place than lazar-houses, sick bed, prisons, &c.

XVII. Death, far from introducing imperfect Christians into the state of Christian perfection, will take them out of the very possibility of ever attaining it. This will appear indubitable, if we remember that Christian perfection consists in perfect repentance, perfect faith, perfect hope, perfect love of an invisible God, perfect charity for visible enemies, perfect patience in pain, and perfect resignation under losses:-in a constant bridling of our bodily appetites, in an assiduous keeping of our senses, in a cheerful taking up of our cross, in a resolute following of Christ without the camp, and in a deliberate choice to suffer affliction with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Now, so certain as there can be no perfect repentance in the grave, no Christian faith where all is sight, no perfect hope where all is enjoyment, no perfect love of an invisible God or of visible enemies, where God is visible and enemies are invisible; no bearing pain with perfect patience, when pain is no more; and suffering affliction with the people of God, where no shadow of affliction lights upon the people of God, &c. So certain, I say, as death incapacitates us for all these Christian duties, it incapacitates us also for every branch of Christian perfection. Mr. Hill might then as well persuade the simple, that they shall become perfect surgeons and perfect midwives-perfect masons and perfect gardeners in the grave, or beyond it; as to persuade them that they shall become perfect penitents and perfect believers in the article of death, or in the New Jerusalem.

XVIII. From the preceding argument it follows, that the gracea of repentance, faith, hope, and Christian charity, or love for an invisible God, for trying friends, and for visible enemies, must be perfected here or never. If Mr. Hill grants that these graces are, or may be perfected here, he allows all that we conteud for. And if he asserts, that they shall never be perfected, because there is " no per fection here," and because the perfection of repentance, &c. can have no more place in heaven than sinning and mourning, I ask, What becomes then of the Scriptures, which Mr. Hill is so ready to produce, when he defends Calvinian perseverance? "As for God, his work is perfect. Being confident of this very thing, that he who hath begun a good work in you (who have always obeyed, Phil. i. 6,) will perform, or (d) will perfect it (if you continue to obey.) -The Lord will perfect what concerneth me.- Praying exceedingly that we (as workers together with God) might perfect that which is lacking in your faith.-Looking unto Jesus, the author, and (TET) the perfecter of our faith: for he is faithful that promised." How can the Lord be faithful, and yet never perfect the repentance and faith of his obedient people? Will he sow such a blessed seed as that of faith, hope, and love, to our enemies, and never let a grain of it either miscarry or bring forth fruit to perfection? Is not this a flat contradiction? How can a pregnant woman never miscarry, and yet never bring forth the fruit of her womb to any perfection! Such however is the inconsistency which Mr. Hill obtrudes upon us as gospel. If his doctrine of Calvinian perseverance is true, no believer can miscarry no grain of true faith can fail of producing fruit to perfection; and if his doctrine of Christian perfection is true, no believer can be perfect: no grain of faith, repentance, hope, and love for our husbands and wives, can possibly grow to perfection. How different is this doctrine from that of our Lord, who, in the parable of the sower, represents all those who do not bear fruit unto perfection, as miscarrying professors!

XIX. If impatience was that bodily disorder which is commonly called the heart-burn-if obstinancy was a crick in the neck—pride, an imposthume in the breast-raging anger, a fit of the tooth-achevanity, the dropsy-disobedience, a bodily lameness—uncharitableness, the rheumatism: and despair, a broken bone; there would be some sense in the doctrine of Christian imperfection, and reason could subscribe to Mr. Hill's creed for it is certain that Death effectually cures the heart-burn, a crick in the neck, the tooth-ache, &c. But what real affinity have moral disorders with bodily death? And why do our opponents think, we maintain a "shocking" doctrine, when we assert, that death has no more power to cure our pride, than old age to remove our covetousness? Nay, do we not see that the most decrepit old age does not cure men even from the grossest lusts of the carual mind? When old drunkards and fornicators are as unable to indulge their sensual appetites, as if they actually ranked among corpses, do they not betray the same inclinations which they showed, when the strong tide of their youthful blood joined with the rapid stream of their vicious habits? Is not this a demonstration, that no decay of the body, no not that complete decay, which we call Death, has any necessary tendency to alter our moral habits? And do not the ancients set their seal to this observation? Does not Solomon say, that "In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be?" And has Mr. Hill forgotten these remarkable lines of Virgill

Quæ cura nitentes

Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos !

"Disembodied souls have in the world of spirits the very same dispositions and propensities which they had, when they dwelt in the body."

XX. If God hath appointed Death to make an end of heartpollution, and to be our complete saviour from sin, our opponents might screen their doctrine of a Death-purgatory behind God's appointment; it being certain that God, who can command iron to swim, and fire to cool, could also command the filthy hands of death to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. But we do not read in our Bible either that God ever gave to indwelling sin a lease of any believer's heart for life; or that he ever appointed the king of terrors to deliver us from the deadly seeds of iniquity. And although the Old Testament contains an account of many carnal ordinances adapted to the carnal disposition of the Jews, we do not remember to have read there," Death shall circumcise thy heart, that thou mayest love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.-Death will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness Death will cleanse you. Death will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and (when you are dead) ye shall keep my judgments and do them." And if death was never so far honoured under the Mosaic dispensation, we ask, where he has been invested with higher privileges under the gospel of Christ? Is it where St. Paul says, that "Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel?" It appears to us, that it is a high degree of rashness in the Calvinists, and in the Romanists, to appoint the pangs of death, and the sorrows of hell, to do the most difficult, and of consequence, the most glorious work of Christ's spirit, which is powerfully to redeem us from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people (not full of all inbred unrighteousness, but dead to sin, free from sin, pure in heart, and) zealous of good works. And we should think ourselves far more guilty of impertinence, if we nominated either Death or Hell to do the office of the final purifier of our hearts; than if we ordered a sexton to do the office of the prime minister, or an executioner to act as the king's physician. With respect to salvation from the root, as well as from the branches of sin, we will therefore know nothing, as absolutely necessary, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified, risen again, and ascended on high, that he might send the Holy Ghost to perfect us in love, through a faith that purifies the heart, and through a hope, which if any man hath, he will purify himself even as God is pure.

XXI. To conclude: if christian perfection implies the perfect use of the whole armour of God, what can be more absurd than the thought, that we shall be made perfect christians in heaven or at death? How will Mr. Hill prove that we shall perfectly use the helmet of hope, perfectly wield the shield of faith, and perfectly quench the fiery darts of the devil in heaven, where faith, hope, and the devil's darts shall never enter?-Or, how will he demonstrate, that a soldier shall perfectly go through his exercise in the article of death, that is, in the very moment he leaves the army, and for ever puts off the harness?

Mr. Baxter wrote in the last century a vindication of holiness, which

he calls, A Saint, or a Brute; the title is bold; but all that can be said to defend iniquity cannot make me think it too strong: so many are the arguments by which the Scriptures recommend a holy life. And I own to thee, Reader, that when I consider all that can be said in defence of christian perfection, and all the absurdities which clog the doctrine of christian imperfection, I am inclined to imitate Mr. Baxter's positiveness, and to call this Essay, A Perfect Christian in this world, or a perfect Dupe in the next.

SECTION XIII.

1. THE Arguments of the preceding Section are produced to shew the absurdity of Mr. Hill's doctrine of christian imperfection: those which follow are intended to prove the mischievousness of that modish tenet.

I. It strikes at the doctrine of salvation by faith. By grace ye are saved through faith, not only from the guilt and outward acts of sin, but also from its root and secret buds: Not of works,* says the Apostle, lest any man should [pharisaically] boast: and may we not add, Not of death, lest he that had the power of death, that is, the devil, should [absurdly] boast? Does not what strikes at the doctrine of faith, and abridges the salvation which we obtain by it, equally strike at Christ's power and glory? Is it not the business of faith to receive Christ's saving word, to apprehend the power of his sanctifying spirit, and to inherit all the great promises, by which he saves his penitent, believing people from their sins? Is it not evident, that, if no believers can be saved from indwelling sin through faith, we must correct the Apostle's doctrine, and say, By grace are ye saved from the remains of sin through death? And can unprejudiced Protestants admit so Christ-debasing, so Death-exalting a tenet without giving a dangerous blow to the genuine doctrines of the Reformation?

II. It dishonours Christ as a prophet, for as such he came to teach us to be now meek and lowly in heart: but the imperfect gospel of the day teaches, that we must necessarily continue passionate and proud in heart till death; for pride and immoderate unger are, I apprehend, two main branches of indwelling sin. Again: my motto demonstrates that he publicly taught the multitudes the doctrine of perfection, and Mr. Hill insinuates that this doctrine is “ shocking," not to say," blasphemous."

* Here, and in some other places, St. Paul by works, means only the deeds of a Christless, anti-mediatorial law, and the obedience paid to the jewish covenant which is frequently called the law, in opposition to the christian covenant, which is commonly called the gospel, i. e. the gospel of Christ, because Christ's gospel is the most excellent of all the gospel-dispensations. The Apostle therefore, by the expression not of works, does by no means exclude from final salvation the law of faith, and the works done in obedience to that law: for in the preceding verse he secures the obedience of faith when he says, Ye are saved, i. e. made partakers of the blessings of the christian dispensation by grace through faith. Here then the word by grace secures the first gospel-axiom, and the word through faith secures the second.

III. It disgraces Christ as the Captain of our salvation. For St. Paul says, that our Captain furnishes us with weapons mighty through God to the pulling down of Satan's strong holds, and to the bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. But our opponents represent the devil's strong holds as absolutely impregnable. No weapons of our warfare can pull down Apollyon's throne. Inbred sin shall maintain its place in man's heart till death strike the victorious blow. Christ may indeed fight against the Jericho within, as Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon: but then he must send for Death, as Joab sent for David, saying, "I have fought against Jericho, and have taken the city of waters: now therefore, gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city, and take it, lest I take the city, and it be called after my name, 2 Sam. xii. 26.

IV. It pours contempt upon him as the Surety of the new covenant, in which God has engaged himself to deliver obedient believers from their enemies, that they may serve him without (tormenting) fear all the days of their life; for how does he do his office in this respect, if he never sees, that such believers be delivered from their most oppressive and inveterate enemy, indwelling sin? Or if that deliverance takes place only at death, how can they, in consequence of their death-freedom serve God without fear all the days of their life?

V. It affronts Christ as a King when it represents the believer's heart, which is Christ's spiritual throne, as being necessarily full of indwelling sin,-a spiritual rebel, who, notwithstanding the joint efforts of Christ and the believer, maintains his ground against them both during the term of life.-Again: does not a good king deliver his loyal subjects from oppression, and avenge them of a tyrannical adversary, when they cry to him in their distress? But does our Lord show himself such a king, if he never avenges them, or turns the usurper, the murderer sin, out of their breast ?-Once more. If our deliverance from sin depends upon the stroke of death, and not upon a stroke of Christ's grace, might we not call upon the king of terrors, as well as upon the king of saints, for deliverance from the remains of sin? But where is the difference between saying, O Death, help ue, and crying, O Baal, save us?

VI. It injures Christ as a Restorer of pure, spiritual worship in God's spiritual temple-the heart of man. For it indirectly represents him as a pharisaic Saviour, who made much ado about driving with a whip harmless sheep and oxen out of his Father's material temple; but gives full leave to Satan, not only to bring sheep and doves into the believer's heart, but also to harbour and breed there, during the term of life, the swelling toad [pride] and the hissing viper [envy:] to say nothing of the greedy dog [avarice,] and the filthy swine [impurity;] under pretence of "exercising the patience and engaging the industry" of the worshippers, if we may believe the Calvin of the day. See Arg. I. Sect. XIV. against Christian Perfection at the end of this Section.

VII. It insults Christ as a Priest: for our Melchisedec shed his all-cleansing blood upon the cross, and now pours his all-availing prayer before the throne; asking, that upon evangelical terms we may now be cleansed from all unrighteousness and perfected in But if we assert that believers, let them be ever so faithful, can never be thus cleansed and perfected in one till Death come to

one.