obtain belief, restrain them within the banks of probability; malice, when too highly wrought, resembles a cannon too highly charged, which recoils on the engineer himself, instead of reaching its intended object of direction. I might, with the most justifiable propriety, have declined joining issue, in controversy, with a person of Mr. Sellon's cast, who is, by those that know him, deemed ignorant and unpolished even to a proverb: he is, indeed, to borrow the language of another, "a small body of pelagian divinity, bound in calf, neither gilt nor lettered." I once hoped, that his friends were too severe, in branding him with such a character; but he has been so weak as to publish; he has gibbeted himself in print. I am fully convinced, that his friends were in the right, and my charitable hope mistaken. Let none, however, suppose, that I harbour any degree of malevolence against either him or his master. Whatever I have already written, or may hereafter have occasion to write, in opposition to them, or to any others, on whom the toil of defending them may devolve, has been, and, I trust, ever will be, designed, not to throw odium on their persons, nor to wound their cause unfairly, but, simply, to strip error of its varnish; to open the eyes of delusion; to pluck the vizor from the face of hypocrisy; to bring Arminian Methodism to the test of fact and argument; to wipe off the aspersions thrown, by the despairing hand of defeated heterodoxy, on the purest church under heaven; and to confirm such as have believed through grace. A Indeed, the purity of my intention speaks for itself. At a time of such general defection from the doctrines of the church established, I cannot possibly have any sinister ends to answer, by asserting those doctrines. It cannot be to gain applause; for, was that my motive, I should studiously swim with the current, and adopt the fashionable system: neither can it be to acquire preferment; for the doctrines of grace are not the principles to rise by. In the reigns of Edward VI. Elizabeth, and the former part of James I. the Calvinistic points were necessary steps to advancement, and led directly to the top of the church: but the stairs have been long turned another way: what was, once, the causâ sine quâ non of ascending, is now a causa propter quam non; or, considered as a reason for keeping unfashionable divines as low on the ecclesiastical ladder as possible. I bless God, for enabling me to esteem the reproach of Christ greater treasure than all the applause of men, and all the preferments of the church. When I received orders, I obtained mercy to be faithful ; and, from that moment, gave up what is called the world, so far as I conceived it to interfere with faith and a good conscience. The opposition which I have met with, in the course of my ten years ministry, has been nothing, compared with what I expected would ensue, on an open, steady attachment to the truths of God: and what insults have been thrown in my way, came, for the most part, from a quarter equally abusive and contemptible; I mean from Mr. John Wesley, and a few of his unfledged disciples; whose efforts give me no greater apprehension, than would a fly that was to settle on my hat. Some readers may suppose, possibly, that, in the course of the annexed Treatise, I have handled my assailants too severely: I request, that such will suspend their judgment, until they have perused the performance which gave rise to the present. Their opinion, I am persuaded, will then be reversed; and they will wonder, either at my deigning to take any notice at all, of an invective so exceedingly low and frivolous; or, at my not chastising the authors of it, with a severity proportioned to their demerits : but, for abstaining from the latter, I had, among others, two reasons: 1. I should have sinned against meekness; and, 2. The poverty of Mr. Sellon's talents, in particular, is so extreme, as to render him an object rather of pity than of resentment. As the man cannot reason, nor even write grammatically, I often allow him to rail with impunity. If a malicious ignoramus comes against me with a straw, selfdefence does not oblige me, and Christian charity forbids me, to knock him down with a bludgeon. Moreover, the period may arrive, when this very person, as also his commander in chief, may see the justness, and experience the energy, of those heavenly truths, which they now unite to blaspheme: they may even preach the faith to which they have subscribed, and which they impotently labour to destroy. If having once been an Arminian, were incompatible with future conversion and salvation, we might indeed ask, who then can be saved? For every man is born an Arminian. Unrenewed nature spurns the idea of inheriting eternal life as the mere gift of divine sovereignty, and on the footing of absolute grace. I will not affirm, that all who heartily embrace the scripture system of Calvinism, are savingly renewed by the holy Spirit of God; for St. Stephen teaches us to distinguish between the circumcision of the ears, and the circumcision of the heart. Thus much, however, I assert, without hesitation, that I know, comparatively, very few Calvinists, of whose saving renewal I have reason to doubt. I will even go a step farther: sincerely to admit and relish a system so diametrically opposite to the natural pride of the human heart, is, with me, an incontestible proof, that a man's judgment, at least, is brought into subjection to the obedience of Christ: and, to every such person, those words may be accommodated, "flesh and blood have not revealed this to thee, but my Father who is in heaven." I cannot give the two pelagian gentlemen stronger evidence of my concern for their welfare, than by wishing them to renounce those unhappy principles, which, under pretence of extending the grace of God, by representing it as a glove accommodated to every hand, and which lies at the option of freewill either to make use of, or to fling behind the fire, do, in fact, annihilate all grace whatever, by ultimately resolving its efficacy into the power, merits, and caprice of man. Mr. Wesley and Mr. Sellon may find, in Strype's Collections, a form of recantation, ready drawn to their hands. The historian introduces it thus: "Another letter there was, wrote (A. D. 1555) by one in prison (for the protestant faith, during the Marian persecution), who had lately been one of these free-willers (h), but now changed in his judgment, to certain of that persuasion, in prison also for the gospel." The persecution of protestants was so indiscriminate, that not only the bishops, clergy; and members of the church of England, felt its iron hand, but even some of the free-will men (as they were then called), who dissented from the church and had formed a separate conventicle of their own, came in for a taste of the common trouble: but, though a few of the few free-willers (for their whole number was then exceeding small) were imprisoned for a while, I cannot find that so much as one of them either died in confinement, or was brought to the stake. If Mr. Wesley and his friend can give authentic evidence, that so much as a single freewiller was burned by the papists, let them point (h) During the preceding reign of king Edward VI. there had been a congregation of free-willers, in some part of London, who were separatists from the church of England; and, indeed, all free-willers were then accounted dissenters, and openly professed themselves to be such. Certain salvoes for duplicity, which have since been adopted, were not then invented. The free-willers of that age were, with all their mistakes, too honest, either to subscribe to the articles and homilies of the church, or statedly to frequent her public worship.—I shall have occasion to mention the free-will congregation hereafter. him out by name; and, at the same time, remember to adduce their proofs. Such an instance, or instances, if producible, will reflect some honour on the pelagians of that æra, though unable to turn the scale in favour of pelagianism itself. I now return to the letter of the converted free-will man. In it, says the historian, he lamented "the loss of the gospel (i. e. the revival of popery by queen Mary); showing the reasons of it: whereof one he made to be, that they (viz. himself and his pelagian brethren) had professed the gospel (i. e. protestantism) with their tongues, and denied it in their (i) deeds: another, that they were not sound in the doctrine of predestination. In this letter he mentioned what a grief it was to him, that he had endeavoured so much to persuade others into his error of free-will; and that divers of that congregation of free-will men began to be better informed; as namely, Ladley and Cole, and others unnamed: the report of whom gave him and his prison fellows much rejoicing (adding); that he was convinced (i. e. converted from being a free-will man) by certain preachers in prison with him, who reconciled St. Paul and St. James together, to his great satisfaction (k).' A great part of this choice letter is published by Mr. Strype, at the close (7) of the volume referred to below. For Mr. Wesley's sake, and for the sake of those who are led captive by him at his will, I here transcribe the following passages, which may serve him (i) This is one proof, among a million, that the doctrines of free-will and of justification by works (both which were stiffly contended for by these pelagians, and to which most of them added the belief of sinless perfection) are not doctrines really calculated to promote holiness of life, whatever the assertors of those tenets may pretend. Observe, they " were not sound in the doctrine of predestination ;" and "their deeds" were so dishonourable to a gospel profession, as to amount even to a "denial" of it. As it was in the beginning, it is now, and ever will be; generally speaking.Unsoundness and unholiness seldom fail to walk arm in arm. (k) Strype's Eccles. Memorials, vol. iii. p. 247. edit. 1721. |