but them that believe, obey,' and are faithful untò death.' And that of consequence, the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ is general and unconditional with respect to INITIAL salvation; but particular and conditional with respect to ETERNAL salvation; except in the case of infants, who die before actual sin : These, and only these, are blessed with unconditional election and finished salvation in the Calvinistical sense of these phrases:-These are irresistibly saved, and eternally admitted into one of the many mansions of our heavenly Father's house: Free grace, to the honour of our Lord's meritorious infancy, absolutely saves them, without any concurrence of their free will. Nor is it surprising, that God should do it unavoidably; for as they never were personally capable of working with free grace, i. e., of working out their salvation;' so they never were in a capacity of working against free grace, or of beginning to work their damnation. Hav ing never committed any act of sin, God can, consistently with the gospel, save them eternally without any act of repentance. In a word, infants having no unrighteousness but that of the first Adam, reason, as well as scripture, dictates that they need no righteousness but that of the second Adam.

6. From the preceding concessions it follows, that obedient persevering believers are God's elect in the particular and full sense of the word: Being elected to the reward of eternal life in glory :-A reward this, from which they who die in a state of apostacy or impenitency have cut themselves off, by not making their calling and conditional election sure.

7. We grant, that none of these peculiar elect shall ever perish, though they would have perished, had they not been faithful unto death: And we allow, that, with respect to God's foreknowledge and omniscience, their number is certain. But we steadily assert, that, with regard to the doctrines of general redemption, of God's covenanted mercy, of man's free agency, of divine justice, and of a day in which the Lord will

'judge the world in righteousness:' We steadily assert, I say, with regard to these doctrines, the number of the peculiar elect might be greater or less, without the least exertion of forcible grace, or of forcible wrath. For it might be greater, if more wicked and slothful servants improved instead of burying their talents: And it might be less, if more good and faithful servants grew faint in their minds, and drew back to perdition,' before they had fought their good fight out, kept the faith, and finished their course.'

6

8. And lastly, we grant, that, aecording to the election of distinguishing grace, which is the basis of the various dispensations of divine grace towards the children of men, Christ died to purchase more privileges for the Christian Church than for the Jews, more for the Jews than for the Gentiles, and more for some Gentiles than for others: For it is indubitable that God, as a sovereign Benefactor, may, without shadow of injustice, dispense his favours, spiritual and temporal, as he pleases: It being enough for the display of his goodness, and for the exciting of our gratitude, (1.) That the least of his Heathen servants had received a talent, with means, capacities, and opportunities of improving it, even to everlasting happiness : (2.) That God never desires to reap where he does not sow, nor to reap a hundred measures of spiritual wheat, where He only sows a handful of spiritual barley And (3.) That the least degree of his improveable goodness is a seed, which nothing but our avoidable unfaithfulness hinders from bringing forth fruit to eternal life in glory.

By making these guarded concessions, I conceive, we rectify the mistakes of Arminius; we secure the doctrine of grace in all its branches, whilst Calvinism secures only the irresistible grace, by which infants and complete idiots are eternally saved; we turn the edge, and break the point of all the arguments by which the Calvinian doctrines of grace are defended; and tear in pieces the cloak with which the Antinomians cover their dangerous error.

Had Arminius, and all the ancient and modern SemiPelagians, granted to their opponents what we grant to ours, Calvinism would never have risen to its tremendous height. If you try to stop a great river, refusing it the liberty to flow in the deep channel which nature has assigned it, you only make it foam, rise, rage, overflow its banks, and carry devastation far and near. The only way to make judicious Calvinists allow us the impartial remunerative election, and the general redemption, which the gospel displays, is to allow them, with a good grace, the partial, gratuitous election, and the particular redemption, which the scriptures strongly maintain also. See the Scales, Sect. XI. XII. XII.-For my part, I glory in going as near the Calvinists as I safely can. Zelotes is my brother as well as Honestus; and so long as I do not lose firm footing upon scripture ground, I gladly stretch my right hand to him, and my left hand to his antagonist; endeavouring to help them both out of the opposite ditches, which bound the narrow way, where Truth frequently takes a solitary walk.

I conclude this introduction by thanking Mr. Hill for coming a little closer to the knot of the controversy in his Fictitious Creed, than he has done in his Finishing Stroke; for by this mean he has stirred me up to dig deeper into the Scriptures, those inexhaustible mines of truth, which God has set before us. I would not iutimate, that I have dug out new gold: No; the oracles of God are not new; but I hope that I have separated a little dross from some of the richest pieces of golden ore, which the Arminians and the Calvinists have dug out of those mines: And I flatter myself that the judicious and unprejudiced will confess, that some of those pieces which Calvinian and Arminian bigots have thrown away as lumps of dross or of arsenic, contain, nevertheless, truths more precious than thousands of gold and silver. Should these sheets in any degree remove the prejudice of professors, and prepare them

for a reconciliation upon the Scriptural plan of the doctrines of Grace and Justice, or of the two gospelaxioms, I shall humbly rejoice and thankfully give God the glory.

JOHN FLETCHER.

MADELEY, Dec. 14, 1774.

THE

FICTITIOUS AND THE GENUINE

CREED.

THE FICTITIOUS CREED,

BEING A CREED FOR ARMINIANS.

Composed by RICHARD HILL, Esq. and published at 'the end of his "Three Letters written to the Rev. J. FLETCHER, Vicar of Madeley."

ARTICLE I.

66 I BELIEVE that Jesus Christ died for the whole human race, and that he had no more love towards those who now are, or hereafter shall be, in glory, than for those who now are, or hereafter shall be, lifting up their eyes in torments; and that the one are no more indebted to his grace than the other."

THE GENUINE CREED,

Being an Anti-Calvinian Confession of Faith, for those who believe that Christ tasted death for every man;'