are their directions! "Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these terrible things, and to stand rewardable before the Son of man," Luke xxi, 36. "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord: knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance," Col. iii, 24.

From these and a multitude of such scriptures it appears, that when the Calvinists overlook the impartial election and reprobation of distributive justice, they betray as much prejudice as the rigid Arminians do, when they deny the partial election and reprobation of distinguishing grace. There is, however, some difference between the extensiveness of their errors. If rigid Arminianism rejects the partial election and reprobation of distinguishing grace, it strenuously maintains the right eous election and reprobation of impartial justice; and, by this means, it preserves one half of the doctrines of the Bible in all their purity, namely, the doctrines of justice. But rigid, downright Calvinism equally spoils the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of justice: for it turns the holy doctrines of special grace into Solifidian doctrines of lawless grace: and, with respect to the doctrines of impartial justice, it totally demolishes them by allowing but of one eternal, absolute, partial, and personal election, which necessarily binds Christ's righteousness, and finished salvation, upon some men; and of one eternal, absolute, partial, and personal reprobation, which necessarily fastens Adam's unrighteous. ness, with finished damnation, upon all the rest of mankind. Now, according to these doctrines of partial grace and free wrath, it is evident that justice can no more be concerned in justifying or condemning, rewarding or punishing men under such circumstances, than you could be equitably concerned in crowning some men for swimming, and in burning others for sinking; supposing you had first bound the elected swimmers fast to an immense piece of cork, and tied a huge mill stone about the neck of the sinking reprobates. Hence it appears, that, although a Bible Christian may hold Pelagius' election and reprobation of justice, he can neither hold Calvin's one election of lawless grace, nor his one reprobation of free wrath.

But, while I bear my plain. testimony against rigid Calvinism, I beg the reader to make a difference between that system and the good men who have embraced it. With joy I acknowledge that many Calvinist ministers have done much good in their generation. But whatever good they have done, was not done by their errors, but by the Gospel truths which they inconsistently mixed with their errors, and by God's overruling their mistakes. The doctrines of distributive justice belong no more to rigid Calvinism, than to Nero's private system of policy: but as good magistrates, even under Nero's authority, steadily punished vice, and rewarded virtue; so good men, who have the misfortune to be involved in rigid Calvinism, inconsistently deter men from sin by preaching the terrors of a sin-revenging God, and by pointing out the rewards of grace and glory, which await the faithful. Add to this, that by still holding out the law of God to the unawakened, though that kind of preaching is absurd upon their system, yet they do good, because, so far, they preach the doctrines of justice. And by preaching a "rule of life" to believers, they now and then meet with professors ingenuous enough to follow that rule. For, as there are even in Billingsgate per

sons cleanly enough to wash their hands, although their neighbours should constantly assure them that they can never get one speck of dirt off; that the king must do it all away himself in the day of his power; that, in the meantime, his majesty sees no dirt upon their hands, because he looks at them only through the hands of the prince of Wales, which are as white as snow, and the cleanness of which his majesty is pleased to impute to their dirty hands; and beside, that dirt will work for their good; will display the strength of their constitution; will set off, by and by, the cleansing virtue of soap and water; and will make dirty people sing louder at court, when the king's irresistible power, and their own deadly sweats, shall have cleansed their hands; as there are cleanly persons, I say, who would wash their hands notwithstanding such dirty hints as these; so there are some sincere souls among every denomination of Christians, who hate sin, and depart from it, notwithstanding all that some mistaken theologists may say, to make them continue in sin, in order that the graces of humility and of faith in the atoning blood, may be abundantly exercised.

Again: the rigid Arminians are greatly deficient in exalting God's partial grace, and the rich election which flows to Christian believers from this grace. Now when the Calvinists preach to Christians a gra tuitous election of distinguishing grace, though they do not preach it aright, yet they say many things which border upon the truth, and by which God sometimes raises the gratitude and comforts of some of his people; overruling Calvin's mistakes to their consolation, as he overruled to our comfort the high priest's dreadful sentence: "Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people." Never did a prophet preach the atonement more clearly than Caiaphas does in these words. Just so do pious Calvinists preach the election of grace, and in the same manner is their preaching overruled to the comfort of some.

But alas! if this confused method of preaching election be indirectly helpful to a few, is it not directly pernicious to multitudes, whom it tempts to rise to the presumption of "Mr. Fulsome," or to sink to the despair of Francis Spira? Beside, would not doubting Christians be sufficiently cheered by the Scriptural doctrine of our election, as it is held forth in the Essay on Scripture Calvinism? Are those liquors best, which are made strong and heady by intoxicating and poisonous ingredients? Cannot the doctrine of our gratuitous election in Christ be comfortable, unless it be adulterated with Antinomianism, fatalism, Manicheism, and a reprobation, which necessarily drags most of our friends and neighbours into the bottomless pit? And might we not so preach our judicial election by Christ, and so point out the greatness of the helps, which the Gospel affords us to make our election sure, as to excite the careless to diligence without driving them upon the fatal rocks, with which the Solifidian Babel is surrounded?

From the preceding remarks it follows, that the error of rigid Calvinists centres in the denial of that evangelical liberty, whereby all men, under various dispensations of grace, may, without necessity, choose life in the day of their initial salvation. And the error of rigid Arminians consists in not paying a cheerful homage to redeeming grace, for all the liberty and power which we have to choose life, and to work righteous

ness since the fall. Did the followers of Calvin see the necessary connection there is between the freedom of our will, and the distributive justice of God our Judge, they would instantly renounce the errors of Calvinian necessity, and rigid bound will. And did the rigid followers of Arminius discover the inseparable union there is, since the fall, between our free agency to good, and the free redeeming grace of God our Saviour, they would readily give up the errors of Pharisaical self sufficiency and rigid free will.

To avoid equally these two extremes, we need only follow the Scrip. ture doctrine of free will restored and assisted by free grace. According to this doctrine, in order to repent, believe, or obey, we stand in need of a talent of power "to will and to do." God, of his good pleasure, gives us this talent for Christ's sake; and our liberty consists in not being necessitated to make a good or bad use of this talent, to the end of our life. But we must remember that, as this precious talent comes entirely from redeeming grace, so the right use of it is first of redeeming grace, and next of our own unnecessitated, though assisted free will; whereas the wrong use of it is of our own choice only; an unnecessitated choice, which constitutes us legally punishable, as our right, unnecessitated choice of offered life (through God's gracious appointment) constitutes us evangelically rewardable.

Hence it follows that our accepted time, or day of salvation begun, has but one cause, namely, the mercy of God in Christ: whereas our continued and eternal salvation has two causes. The first of which is a primary and proper cause, namely, "the mercy of God in Christ;" the second is a secondary or improper cause, or, if you please, a condition, namely, "the works of faith." Nor do some Calvinists scruple, any more than we, to call these works a cause, improperly speaking. Only, like physicians, who write their prescriptions in Latin, to keep their ignorant patients in the dark, they call it Causa sine qua non ; that is, in plain English, a cause, which, if it be absent, absolutely hinders an effect from taking place. Thus a mother is not the primary cause of her child's conception, but causa sine qua non; that is, such a cause as, if it had been wanting, would have absolutely prevented his being conceived.

If the Calvinists will speak the truth in Latin, I will speak it in plain English. And therefore, standing up still as a witness of the marriage between prevenient free grace, and obedient free will; (an evangelical marriage this, which I have proved in the Scripture Scales;) I assert, upon the arguments contained in these two Essays, that our eternal salvation depends, first, on God's free grace, and secondly, on our practical submission to the doctrines of grace and justice; or, if you please, on our making our election of grace and justice sure by faith and its works.

To be a little more explicit: our day of salvation begun is merely of free grace, and prevents all faith and works; since all saving faith, and all good works, flow from a beginning of free salvation. But this is not the case with our continued and eternal salvation: for this salvation depends upon the concurrence of two causes; the first of which is prevenient and assisting free grace, which I beg leave to call the father cause; and the second is submissive and obedient free will, which I take the liberty to call the mother cause. And I dare say that the Pe

3

lagians will as soon find on earth an adult man who came into the world without a father; and that the Calvinists will as soon find one who was born without a mother, as they will find an adult person in heaven, who came there without the concurrence of free grace and free will, which I beg leave to call the paternal and maternal causes of our eternal salvation. And therefore, while the rigid Arminians and the rigid Calvinists make two partial, solitary, barren gospels, by parting mercy and justice, free grace and free will, let Bible Christians stand up, in theory and practice, for the one entire Gospel of Christ. Let them marry preventing and assisting free grace with prevented and assisted free will; so shall they consistently hold the two Gospel axioms, and evangelically maintain the doctrines of grace and justice, which are all suspended on the partial election and reprobation of distinguishing grace, and on the impartial election and reprobation of remunerative justice.

Till we do this, we shall spoil the Gospel, by confounding the dis. pensations of Divine grace; we shall grieve those whom God has not grieved, and comfort those whom God would not have comforted; we shall involve the truth in clouds of darkness; and availing ourselves of that darkness, we shall separate what God has joined, and join what he has separated; causing the most unnatural divisions and monstrous mixtures, and doing in the doctrinal world what the fallen Corinthian did in the moral, when he tore his mother from his father's bosom, and made her his own incestuous wife. In a word, we shall tear the impartial elec tion of justice from the partial election of grace; and according to our Pelagian or Augustinian taste, we shall espouse the one, and fight against the other. If we embrace only the election of impartial justice, we shall propagate proud, dull, and uncomfortable Pelagianism. And if we embrace only the election of partial grace, we shall propagate wanton Antinomianism, and wanton cruelty, or absolute election to, and absolute reprobation from eternal life. We shall generate the conceits of finished salvation and finished damnation, which are the upper and lower parts of the doctrinal syren, whom Dr. Crisp mistook for the Gospel; the head and the tail of the evangelical chimera, which Calvin supposed to have sprung from "the Lion of the tribe of Judah." But, if we equally receive the election of grace and that of justice, we shall have the whole truth, as it is in Jesus-the chaste woman, who stands "in heaven clothed with the sun, and having the moon [Pelagian changes and Calvinian innovations] under her feet." Nor will candid Christians be offended at her having two breasts, to give her children "the sincere milk of the word;" and two arms, to defend herself against Pelagianism and Calvinism, the obstinate errors which attack her on the right hand and on the left. She has put forth her two arms in these two Essays; and, if her adversaries do not resist her, as the Jews did Stephen by stopping their ears, it is to be hoped that some of them will impartially renounce the errors of heated Pelagius and heated Augustine, and will honour Christ both as their Saviour and their Judge, by equally embracing the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of justice.

SECTION V.

Inferences from the two Essays.

Ir the preceding Essays on Bible Calvinism and Bible Arminianism are agreeable to Scripture and reason, I may sum up their contents in some inferences, the justness of which will, I humbly hope, recommend itself to the reader's good understanding and candour:

I. The doctrine of a gratuitous, partial, and personal election and reprobation is truly Scriptural. So far Calvinism is nothing but the Gospel. On the other hand, the doctrine of a judicial, impartial, and conditional election and reprobation is perfectly Scriptural also: and so far Arminianism is nothing but the Gospel. For, as light flows from the sun, so Bible Calvinism does from the first Gospel axiom, (our salvation is of God,) and as a river flows from its source, so Bible Arminianism does from the second Gospel axiom, (our destruction is of ourselves.) Confounding these two axioms and elections, or denying one of them, has greatly injured the doctrines of grace and justice, darkened all the Gospel dispensations, and bred the misunderstandings which formerly subsisted between the followers of Augustine and those of Pelagius, and now subsist between the Calvinists and the Arminians.

II. It is absurd to ridicule the doctrine of a twofold election, under pretence that it flows from what some people are pleased to call “the flights of my romantic pen;" since the full tide of Scripture evidently flows in two channels; an election of partial grace, according to which God grants or denies his primary favours, as a SOVEREIGN BENEFACTOR ; and an election of impartial justice, according to which he bestows rewards or inflicts punishments, as a SUPREME JUDge.

III. Nor does this doctrine deserve to be called new, since it is so manifestly found in the oldest book in the world. An objection drawn from the seeming novelty of these observations, would be peculiarly unreasonable in the mouth of a member of the Church of England; because she indirectly points out the distinction which I contend for. That our reformers had some insight into the doctrine of a partial election of grace in Christ, and of an impartial election of justice through Christ, appears, I think, from the standard writings of our Church. The beginning of her seventeenth article evidently countenances our unconditional election of grace in Christ, while the latter part secures the doctrines of our conditional election of justice through Christ. Few Calvinists will be so prejudiced as to deny that our Church guards the doctrines, and consequently the election of justice in this important paragraph :-" Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise as they are generally set forth in Holy Scripture." Now the promises being generally set forth in a conditional manner in God's word, it is evident that our Church, in giving us this caution and charge, intends to secure the conditionality of the election of justice; the conditionality of this election being inseparably connected with the conditionality of God's promises; just as the conditionality of the reprobation of justice is inseparably connected with the conditionality of God's threatenings.

In conformity to this doctrine our Church assures us, in her homily on good works, "If he [the elected thief] had lived, and not regarded