graceless Creator to them all. Nor does this opinion less horribly impeach God's Justice than his Grace; for it represents him as judicially sentencing men to eternal torments, merely for the sin of a man whom most of them never heard of; or, which is all one, for the necessary, unavoidable, pre-ordained consequences of that sin.

7. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, takes particular care to clear God's justice with respect to the condemnation of the wicked, that every mouth may be stopped'-and (es To eva) that they may be without excuse.' But the scheme which I oppose, instead of leaving men avaroλoynres, without excuse, opens their mouths, and fills them with the best apology in the world, "Absolute necessity, and complete impossibility, caused by another before we were born:" An apology this, which no candid person can ever object to.

8. Agreeable to St. Paul's doctrine, our Lord observes, that the man, sentenced to be cast into outer darkness for not having on a wedding garment, was speechless.' But if the Crispian doctrines of grace be true, might not that man, with the greatest propriety, have said to the Master of the feast, while the executioners bound him hand and foot,' "To all eternity I shall impeach thy justice, O thou partial judge: Thon appointest me the hell of hypocrites, merely because I have not on a wedding garment,' which thou hast from all eternity purposely kept from me, under the strong lock and key of thy irreversible de crees! Is this the manner in which thou 'judgest the world in righteousness ?'"

9. The parable of the talents, and that of the pounds, decide the question. The wicked and slothful servants, whose destruction they inform us of, are not condemned, because their master was hard and austere ;' but because the one had buried his talent [of power] in the earth,' and the other had hid his pound [of grace] in a napkin' manufactured at Laodicea. 10. If salvation depends upon faith, and if God

never gives reprobates power to believe in the light that enlightens every man,' and a sufficiency of means so to do; it follows, that he never gives them any personal ability to escape damnation; but only to secure and increase their damnation; and thus he deals far more hardly with them than he did with devils. For Satan and his angels were all personally put in a state of initial salvation, and endued with a personal ability to do that, on which their eternal salvation depended. To suppose therefore, that a majority of the children of Adam, who are born sinful without any personal fault of their own, and who can say to the incarnate Son of God, Thou art flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood, and bone of our bone;-to suppose, I say, that a vast majority of these favoured creatures have far less favour shown them, than Beelzebub himself had, is so graceless, so unevangelical doctrine, that one might be tempted to think, it is ironically called the doctrine of grace; and to suspect, that its defenders are styled "evangelical ministers" by way of burles que.

From the preceding arguments I conclude, that, when it is said in the scriptures, people could not believe, this is to be understood, either of persons, whose day of grace was over, and who of course were justly given up to a reprobate mind, as the men mentioned in Rom. i. 21, 28: Or, of persons, who, by not using their one talent of power to believe the obvious truths belonging to a lower dispensation, absolutely incapacitated themselves to believe the deep truths belonging to Christianity.

II. Although I flatter myself that the preceding arguments guard the doctrine of free-grace against the attacks of those, who indirectly contend for freewrath; I dare not yet conclude this Appendix. Still fearful lest some difficulty unremoved should prejudice the candid reader against what appears to me to be the truth, I beg leave to intrude upon his patience, by answering three more plausible objections to the doctrine of this Essay.

OBJECTION VI. "If faith be the gift of the God of grace to us, as sight is the gift of the God of nature, according to your assertion, p. 157; does it not follow, that as we may see when we will, so we may believe in Christ-believe the forgiveness of our sins; and by that means, fill ourselves with peace and joy in the Holy Ghost' when we have a mind? But is not this. contrary to experience? Do not the best Christians remember a time, when they could no more believe than they could make a world, though they prayed for faith with all the ardour they were capable of ?”.

ANSWER.-1. You still seem to take it for granted, that there is no true faith, but an explicit faith in Christ; and no explicit faith in Christ, but the faith of full assurance. But I hope that I have already proved the contrary in my answer to the Vth Objection, p. 567. There are two extremes in the doctrine of faith, which should be carefully avoided by every Christian: The one is that of the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, who thinks, that an adulterous murderer may have true, saving faith in the height of his complicated crimes: And the other is that of those who assert, there is no saving faith but that which actually cleanses us from all inbred sin, and opens a present heaven in our breasts. The middle path of truth lies exactly between those opposite mistakes, and that path I endeavour to point out.

As, on the one hand, it never came into my mind, that an impenitent murderer can have even the saving faith of a Heathen: So, on the other hand, it never entered my thoughts, that a penitent can believe with the faith of full assurance when he will: For this faith depends not only upon our general belief of the truth revealed to us, but also upon a peculiar* opera

Mr. Wesley exactly describes this faith in his sermon on Scriptural Christianity, of which you have here an extract. "By this 'faith of the operation of God,' which was the very 'substance (or subsistence) of things hoped for,' the demonstrative evidence of invisible things,' he, [the penitent' pricked to the heart,' and expecting the promise of the Father,] instantly 'received the Spirit of adoption, whereby he[now] cried, Abba, Father! Now first it was that he could call Jesus Lord by the Holy Ghost, the Spirit itself bearing witness with his spirit, that he was a

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tion of God, or revelation of his powerful arm. always attended with a manifestation of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits, that we are the child of God.' Now it was that he could truly say, ' I live not, but Christ liveth in me,' &c.-' His soul magnified the Lord, and his spirit rejoiced in God his Saviour. He rejoiced in him with joy unspeakable, who had reconciled him to God, even the Father. In whom he had redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.' He rejoiced in that witness of God's Spirit with his spirit, that he was a child of God;' and more abundantly in hope of the glory of God,' &c. The love of God [was also] shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost, which was given to him. Because be was a son, God had sent forth the Spirit of his Son, crying, Abba, Father! And that filial love of God was continually increased by the witness he had in himself' of God's pardoning love to him, &c., so that God was the desire of his eyes, and the joy of his heart; his portion in time and eternity, &c. He that thus loved God, could not but love his brother also, &c. This lover of God embraced all mankind for his sake, &c., not excepting the evil, and unthankful, and least of all his enemies, &c. These had a peculiar place both in his heart and his prayers. He loved them even as Christ loved us,' &c. By the same almighty love was he saved, both from passion and pride, from lust and vanity, from ambition and covetousness, and from every temper which was not in Christ, &c. He spake evil of no man ; nor did an unkind word ever come out of his lips, &c. He daily grew in grace, increasing in strength, in the knowledge and love of God, &c. He visited and assisted them that were sick or in prison, &c. He gave all his goods to feed the poor.' He rejoiced to labour or to suffer for them; and whereinsoever he might profit another, there especially to deny himself. Such was Christianity in its rise, [i. e., Christianity contra-distinguished from the dispensation called the baptism of John.] Such was a Christian in ancient days, [i. e., a Christian contra-distinguished from a disciple of John or of Christ, before the dispensation of the Holy Ghost took place.] Such was every one of those, who when they heard [the threatenings] of the chief priests and elders, lift up their voice to God with one accord, and were all filled with the Holy Ghost.""

I here set my seal to this scriptural description of Scriptural Christianity: Being fully persuaded of two things: (1.) That till a man be thus born of the Spirit,' he cannot see the [Christian] kingdom of God:' He cannot be under that glorious dispensation of divine grace, which Christ and the Apostles spake of when they preached, 'Repent, and believe the gospel, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'-(2.) That whosoever has not in his breast the above described kingdom,

children of God:' And such a manifestation. God in general grants to none but them, that groan deeply under the spirit of bondage unto fear,' as Paul did while he remained blind at Damascus ;-or them that are peculiarly faithful to the grace of their inferior dispensation, and pray as earnestly for power from on high' as the apostles did after our Lord's ascension.

Therefore, from my asserting, (p. 483,) that "So long as the day of salvation continues, all sinners who have not yet finally hardened themselves, may day and night [through the help and power of the general light of Christ's grace mentioned John i. 9, and Tit. ii. 11,] receive some truth belonging to the everlasting gospel," which takes in the dispensation of the Heathens; from my asserting this, I say, you have no reason to infer that I maintain, any man may, day and night, believe the forgiveness of his sins, and the deep truths of the gospel of Christ; especially since I mention immediately what truth it is which all; may believe, if they improve their talent, namely this : "There is a God, who will call us to an account for our sins, and who spares us to break them off by repentance."

2. It would be absurd to suppose, that you can believe with the luminous faith of assurance, when God is casting your soul into the dark prison of your own guilt, to bring down your Pharisaic looks, and make you feel the chains of your sins. But even then may you not believe that God is just, holy, and patient? May you not acknowledge, that you deserve your spiritual imprisonment far more than Joseph's brethren deserved to be put all together into ward three days' by their loving, forgiving brother? May you not believe that, although heaviness may endure for a night,' yet 'joy cometh in the morning?' And i. e., righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; and does not bring forth its excellent fruits in his life, either never was a spiritual Christian, or is fallen back from the ministration of the Spirit' into the dispensation of the letter, or the base form of godliness, if not into open wickedness- See the next note.