My message respecting the equipoise of the Gospel axioms I have endeavoured to deliver with that plainness and earnestness which the importance of the subject calls for; if, in doing it, my aversion to unscriptural extremes, and my love of peaceful moderation have betrayed me into any unbecoming severity of thought, or asperity of expression, for give me this wrong, which I never designed, and for which I would make you all possible satisfaction, if I were conscious of guilt in this respect. Ye are sensible that I could not act as a reconciler, without doing first the office of an expostulator and reprover; an office this which is so much the more thankless, as our very friends are sometimes prone to suspect that we enter upon it, not so much to do them good, as to carry the mace of superiority, and indulge a restless, meddling, censorious, lordly disposition. If unfavourable appearances have represented me to you in these odious colours, give me leave to wipe them off, by cordial assurances of my esteem and respect for you. Yes, my dear, though mistaken brothers, I sincerely honour you both for the good which is in you; being persuaded that your mistakes spring from your religious prejudices, and not from a conscious enmity against any part of the truth. When I have been obliged to expose your partiality, I have comforted myself with the pleasing thought that it is a partiality to an important part of the Gospel. The meek and lowly Saviour, in whose steps I desire to tread, teaches me to honour you for the part of the truth which you embrace, and forbids me to despise you for that which you cannot yet see it your duty to espouse. Nay, so far as ye have defended free grace without annihilating free will, or contended for free will without undervaluing free grace, you have done the duty of evangelists in the midst of this Pharisaic and Antinomian generation. For this ye both deserve the thanks of every Bible Christian, and I publicly return you mine. Yes, so far as Zelotes has built the right wing of Christ's palace, without pulling down the left; and so far as Honestus has raised the left wing, without demolishing the right, I acknowledge that ye are both ingenious and laborious architects, and I shall think myself highly honoured, if, like an under labourer, I am permitted to wait upon you, and to bring you some rational and Scriptural materials, that you may build the temple of Gospel truth with more solidity, more evangelical symmetry, and more brotherly love, than you have yet done.

God only knows what contemptible thoughts I have of myself. It is better to spread them before him, than to do it. before you. This only I will venture to say; in a thousand respects I see myself vastly inferior to either of you. If I have presumed to uncover your theological sores, and to pour into them some tincture of myrrh and aloes, it is no proof that I prefer myself to you. A surgeon may open an imposthume in a royal breast, and believe that he understands the use of his scissors and probe better than the king, without entertaining the least idea of his being the king's superior. If I have made a pair of Scripture Scales, which weigh Gospel gold better than your single scales; it no more follows that I esteem myself your superior, than it follows that an artist who makes scales to weigh common gold esteems himself superior to the ministers of state, because he understands scale making better than they. Horace will help me to illustrate the consistency of my reproofs to you, with my professions of respect for you. I consider you, Zelotes, as VOL. II.

17

a one-edged sword, which cuts down the Pharisaic error; and you, Honestus, as a one-edged scymetar, which hews the Antinomian mistakes in pieces; but I want to see you both as the Lord's two-edged sword; and I have indulged my Alpine roughness, in hopes that (through the concurrence of your candour with the Divine blessing which I implore on these pages) you will be ground to the other edge you want. This, ye know, cannot be done without some close rubbing; and, therefore, while ye glitter in the field of action, let not your displeasure arise against a grinding stone cut from the neighbourhood of the Alps, and providentially brought into a corner of your Church, where it wears itself away in the thankless office of grinding you both, that each of you may be as dreadful to Antinomianism and to Pharisaism, as the cherub's "flaming sword, which turned, and cut every way," was terrible to the two first offenders. So shall ye keep the way to the tree of life in an evangelical manner; and instead of triumphing over you, as I go the dull round of my controversial labour, I shall adopt the poet's humble saying:

Fungor vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.
Not that I dare to flaming zeal pretend,
But only boast to be the Gospel's friend;"
To whet you both to act, and, like the hone,
Give others edge, though I myself have none.

Or rather, considering what the prophet says of the impartial hand which weighed feasting Belshazzar, and wrote his awful doom upon the wall that faced him, I will pray : "O God, be merciful to me a sinner; and when I turn my face to the wall on my dying bed, let not my knees smite one against the other at the sight of the killing word, TEKEL: thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.' Let me not be found wanting' either the testimony of thy free grace, through faith, or the testimony of a good conscience through the works of faith. So shall the Spirit of thy free grace bear witness with my free-willing spirit, that I am a child of thine, that I have kept the faith, and that in the great day, when I shall be weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, I shall be found a justified sinner, according to the anti-Pharisaic weights, which fill the first Scripture Scale; and a justified believer, according to the anti-Solifidian weights, which fill the second."

THE DOCTRINES

OF

GRACE AND JUSTICE,

EQUALLY

ESSENTIAL TO THE PURE GOSPEL:

WITH

SOME REMARKS

ON THE MISCHIEVOUS DIVISIONS CAUSED AMONG CHRISTIANS BY PARTING THOSE DOCTRINES.

BEING

AN INTRODUCTION TO A PLAN OF RECONCILIATION

BETWEEN The defendeRS OF THE Doctrines of PARTIAL GRACE, COMMONLY CALLED CALVINISTS; AND THE DEFENDERS OF THE DOCTRINES OF IMPARTIAL JUSTICE, COMMONLY CALLED ARMINIANS.

THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE AND JUSTICE.

SECTION I.

A plain account of the Gospel in general, and of the various dispensations into which it branches itself—The Gospel holds forth the doctrines of justice, as well as the doctrines of grace-An opposition to this capital truth gave rise to the controversy about the Minutes-An answer to an objection of those who suppose that the Gospel consists only of doctrines of grace.

Ir a judicious mariner, who has sailed round the world, sees with pleasure and improvement a map, which exhibits, in one point of view, the shape and proportion of the wide seas, in crossing of which he has spent some years; a judicious Protestant may profitably look upon a doctrinal map, (if I may be allowed the expression,) which places before him in diminutive proportion, the windings of a controversy, which, like a noisy, impetuous torrent, has disturbed the Churches of Christ for fourteen hundred years, and carried religious desolation through the four parts of the globe; but more especially if this map exhibits, with some degree of accuracy, the boundaries of truth, the crooked shores of the sea of error, the haven of peace, and the rocks rendered famous-by the doctrinal wrecks of myriads of unwary evangelists. Without any apology, therefore, I shall lay before the reader a plain account of the primitive catholic Gospel, and its various dispensations.

THE GOSPEL, in general, is a Divine system of truth, which, with various degrees of evidence, points out to sinners the way of eternal salvation, agreeable to the mercy and justice of a holy God; and therefore the Gospel, in general, is an assemblage of holy doctrines of GRACE, and gracious doctrines of JUSTICE. This is the idea which our Lord himself gives us of it, Mark xvi, 16. For though he speaks there of the peculiar Gospel dispensation, which he opened, his words may, in some sense, be applied to every Gospel dispensation. "Preach the GOSPEL. He that believeth [in the light of his dispensation, supposing he does it with the heart unto righteousness'] shall be saved," according to the privileges of his dispensation: here you have a holy doctrine of grace. "But he that believeth not shall be damned:" here you have a gracious doctrine of justice. For, supposing man has a gracious capacity to believe in the light of his dispensation, there is no Antinomian grace in the promise, and no free wrath in the threatening, which compose what our Lord calls the Gospel; but the conditional promise exhibits a righteous doctrine of grace, and the conditional threatening displays a gracious doctrine of justice.

THE GOSPEL in general branches itself out into four capital dispensations, the last of which is most eminently called the Gospel, because it includes and perfects all the preceding displays of God's grace and justice toward mankind. Take we a view of these four dispensations, beginning at the lowest, viz. Gentilism.