What I say of St. Augustine may be said of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield. Before he had embraced St. Augustine's mistakes, which are known among us by the name of "Calvinism," he believed, as well as that father, that the disconsolate man who groans, Who shall deliver me? is not a possessor but a seeker of Christian liberty. To prove it, I need only transcribe the latter part of his sermon, entitled, The Marks of the New Birth :

"Thirdly," says he, "I address myself to those who are under the drawings of the Father, and are going through the Spirit of bondage; but, not finding the marks [of the new birth] before mentioned, are ever crying out, [as the carnal penitent, Rom. vii,] Who shall deliver us from the body of this death? Despair not: for, notwithstanding your present trouble, it may be the Divine pleasure to give you the kingdom." Hence it appears that Mr. Whitefield did not look upon such mourners as Christian believers; but only as persons who might become such if they earnestly sought. He therefore most judiciously exhorts them to seek till they find. "The grace of God, through Jesus Christ," adds he, "is able to deliver you, and give you what you want; even you may receive the Spirit of adoption, the promise of the Father. All things are possible with him; persevere, therefore, in seeking, and determine to find no rest in your spirit, till you know and feel that you are thus born again from above, and God's Spirit witnesses with your spirits that you are the children of God."

What immediately follows is a demonstration that, at that time, Mr. Whitefield was no enemy to Christian perfection, and thought that some had actually attained it; or else nothing would have been more trifling than his concluding address to perfect Christians. Take his own words, and remember that when he preached them, by the ardour of his zeal, and the devotedness of his heart, he showed himself a young man in Christ, able to trample under foot the most alluring baits of the flesh

and of the world.

"Fourthly and lastly," says he, "I address myself to those who have received the Holy Ghost in all its sanctifying graces, and are almost ripe for glory. Hail, happy saints! For your heaven is begun upon earth. You have already received the first fruits of the Spirit, and are patiently waiting till that blessed change come, when your harvest shall be complete. I see and admire you, though, alas, at* so great a distance from you. Your life, I know, is hid with Christ in God. You have comforts, you have meat to eat, which a sinful, carnal world knows nothing of. Christ's yoke is now become easy to you, and his burden light: you have passed through the pangs of the new birth, and now

* At that time Mr. Whitefield was in broers, and had "received the Spirit of adoption." As a proof of it, I appeal, (1.) To the account of his conversion at Oxford, before he was ordained; and, (2.) To these his own words: "I can say to the honour of rich, free, distinguishing grace, that I received the Spirit of adoption before I had conversed with one man, or read a single book on the doctrine of free justification by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ." That is, before he had any opportunity of being drawn from the simplicity of the Scrip ture Gospel, into the Calvinian refinements. (See his Works, vol. iv, page 45.)

Now, those Christians, who leave babes and young men in Christ "at so great a

"perfect Christians."

rejoice that Christ Jesus is formed in your hearts. You know what it is to dwell in Christ, and Christ in you. Like Jacob's ladder, although your bodies are on earth, yet your souls and hearts are in heaven; and by your faith and constant recollection, like the blessed angels, you do always behold the face of your Father, which is in heaven. I need not then exhort you to press forward, &c. Rather I will exhort you in patience to possess your souls: yet a little while, and Jesus Christ will deliver you from the burden of the flesh, and an abundant entrance shall be administered unto you into the eternal joy, &c, of his heavenly king. dom." I have met with few descriptions of the perfect Christian that please me better. I make but one objection to it: Mr. Whitefield thought that the believers who "by constant recollection, like the blessed angels, always behold the face of their Father," are so advanced in grace, that they "need not to be exhorted to press forward." This is carrying the doctrine of perfection higher than Mr. Wesley ever did. For my part, were I to preach to a congregation of such "happy saints," I would not scruple taking this text: "So run that ye may [eternally] obtain:" nor would I forget to set before them the example of the perfect apostle, who said, "This one thing I do, leaving the things that are behind, and reaching forth, I press toward the mark," &c. Had I been in Mr. Whitefield's case, I own I would either have refused to join the imperfectionists, or I would have recanted my address to perfect Christians.

So strong is the Scriptural tide in favour of our doctrine, that it sometimes carried away the Rev. Mr. Romaine himself. Nor can I confirm the wavering reader in his belief of the possibility of obtaining the glorious liberty which we contend for, better than by transcribing a fine exhortation of that great minister, to what we call Christian perfection, and what he calls the walk of faith :

"The new covenant runs thus :-I will put,' says God, 'my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,' &c. The Lord here engages to take away the stony heart, and to give a heart of flesh, upon which he will write the ten commandments, &c. The love of God will open the contracted heart, enlarge the selfish, warm the cold, and bring liberality out of the covetous. When the Holy Spirit teaches brotherly love, he overcomes all opposition to it, &c. He writes upon their hearts the two great commandments, on which hang all the law and the prophets. The love of God,' says the apostle to the Romans, 'is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost;' and to the Thessalonians, Ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.' Thus he engages the soul to the holy law, and inclines the inner man to love obedience. It ceases to be a yoke and a burden. How easy is it to do what one loves! If you dearly love any person, what a pleasure it is to serve him! What will not love put you upon doing or suffering to oblige him! Let love rule in the heart to God and to man, his law will then become delightful, and obedience to it will be pleasantness. The soul will run; yea, inspired by love, it will mount up with wings as eagles, in the way of God's commandments. Happy are the people that are in such a case." Now, such a case is what we call, the state of Christian perfection; to the obtaining of which, Mr. Romaine excites his own soul by the following excellent exhortation :

"This is the very tenor of the covenant of grace, which the almighty Spirit has undertaken to fulfil, [if we mix faith with the promises, as Mr. Romaine himself will soon intimate,] and he cannot fail in his office. It is his crown and glory to make good his covenant engagements. O trust him then, and put honour upon his faithfulness, [that is, if I mistake not, make good your own covenant engagements.] He has promised to guide thee with his counsel, and to strengthen thee with his might, &c. What is within thee, or without thee, to oppose thy walking in love with him, he will incline thee to resist, and he will enable thee to overcome. O what mayest thou not expect from such a Divine Friend, who is to abide with thee on purpose to keep thine heart right with God! [Query: when the heart is kept full of indwelling sin, is it kept right with God?] What cannot he do? What will he not do for thee? Such as is the love of the Father and of the Son, such is the love of the Holy Ghost the same free, perfect, everlasting love. Read his promises of it. Meditate on them. Pray to him for increasing faith to mix with them; that he [not sin] dwelling in the temple of thy heart, thou mayest have fellowship there with the Father and with the Son. Whatever in thee is pardoned through the Son's atonement, pray the Holy Spirit to subdue, that it may not interrupt communion with thy God. And whatever grace is to be received out of the fulness of Jesus, in order to keep up and promote that communion, entreat the Holy Spirit to give it thee with growing strength. But pray in faith, nothing wavering. So shall the love of God rule in thy heart. And then thou shalt be like the sun, when it goeth forth in its might, shining clearer and clearer to the perfect day. O may thy course be like his, as free, as regular, and as communicative of good, that thy daily petition may be answered, and that the will of thy Father may be done on earth, as it is in heaven.", (Walk of Faith, vol. i, page 227, &c.)

I do not produce this excellent quotation to insinuate that the Rev. Mr. Romaine is a perfectionist, but only to edify the reader, and to show that the good, mistaken men, who are most prejudiced against our doc. trine, see it sometimes so true, and so excellent, that, forgetting their pleas for indwelling sin, they intimate that our daily petition may be answered; and that the "will of our Father may be done on earth as it is in heaven;" an expression this, which includes the height and depth of all Christian perfection,

SECTION X.

St. John is for Christian perfection, and not for a death purgatory1 John i, 8, &c, is explained agreeably to St. John's design, the context, and the vein of holy doctrine which runs through the rest of the epistle.

THE Scriptures declare that "we are built upon the foundation of the apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone:" and St. Paul being deservedly considered as the chief of the apostles, and of consequence as the chief stone of the foundation on which, next to the corner stone, our holy religion is built, who can wonder at the

pains which our opponents take to represent this important part of our foundation as carnal, wretched, and sold under sin? Does not every body see that such a foundation becomes the Antinomian structure which is raised upon it? And is it not incumbent upon the opposers of Antinomianism to uncover that wretched foundation by removing the heaps of dirt in which St. Paul's spirituality is daily buried; and by this means to rescue the holy apostle, whom our adversaries endeavour to "sell under sin," as a carnal wretch? This rescue has been attempted in the four last sections. If I have succeeded in this charitable attempt, I may proceed to vindicate the holiness of St. John, who is the last apostle that Mr. Hill calls to the help of indwelling sin, Christian imperfection, and a death purgatory.

Before I show how the loving apostle is pressed into a service which is so contrary to his experience, and to his doctrine of perfect love, I shall make a preliminary remark. To take a passage of Scripture out from the context, and to make it speak a language contrary to the obvious design of the sacred writer, is the way to butcher the body of Scriptural divinity. This conduct injures truth, as much as the Galatians would have injured themselves, if they had literally "pulled their eyes out, and given them to St. Paul :" an edifying passage, thus displaced, may become as loathsome to a moral mind, as a good eye, torn out of its bleeding orb in a good face, is odious to a tender heart.

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Among the passages which have been thus treated, none has suffered more violence than this :-"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," 1 John i, 8. "That's enough for says a hasty imperfectionist: "St. John clearly pleads for the indwelling of sin in us during the term of life; and he is so set against those who profess deliverance from sin, and Christian perfection in this life, that he does not scruple to represent them as liars and self deceivers."

Our opponents suppose that this argument is unanswerable. But to convince them that they are mistaken, we need only prove that the sense which they so confidently give to the words of St. John is contrary, (1.) To his design. (2.) To the context. And, (3.) To the pure and strict doctrine which he enforces in the rest of the epistle.

I. With respect to St. John's design, it evidently was to confirm believers who were in danger of being deceived by Antinomian and antichristian seducers. When he wrote this epistle, the Church began to be corrupted by men, who, under pretence of knowing the mysteries of the Gospel better than the apostles, imposed upon the simple Jewish fables, heathenish dreams, or vain, philosophic speculations; insinuating that their doctrinal peculiarities were the very marrow of the Gospel. Many such arose at the time of the reformation, who introduced stoical .dreams into Protestantism, and whom Bishop Latimer and others steadily opposed under the name of "Gospellers."

The doctrines of all these Gospellers centred in making Christ, indirectly at least, the minister of sin; and in representing the preachers of practical, self-denying Christianity, as persons unacquainted with Chris. tian liberty. It does not indeed appear that the Gnostics, or knowing ones, (for so the ancient Gospellers were called,) carried matters so far as openly to say that believers might be God's dear children in the very

commission of adultery and murder, or while they worshipped Milcom and Ashtaroth: but it is certain that they could already reconcile the verbal denial of Christ, fornication and idolatrous feasting, with true faith; directly or indirectly" teaching and seducing Christ's servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols," Rev. ii, 20. At these Antinomians, St. Peter, St. James, and St. Jude, levelled their epistles. St. Paul strongly cautioned Timothy, Titus, and the Ephesians against them: see Eph. iv, 14; v, 6. And St. John wrote his first epistle to warn the believers who had not yet been seduced into their error: a dreadful, though pleasing error this, which, by degrees, led some to deny Christ's law, and then his very name; hence the triumph of the spirit of antichrist. Now, as these men insinuated that believers might be righteous without doing righteousness; and as they supposed that Christ's righteousness, or our own hnowledge and faith, would supply the want of internal sanctification and external obedience; St. John maintains against them the necessity of that practical godliness which consists in not "committing sin," and in "walking as Christ walked :" nay, he asserts that Christ's blood, through the faith which is our victory, purifies "from all sin, and cleanses from all unrighteousness." To make him, therefore, plead for the necessary continuance of indwelling sin, till we go into a death purgatory, is evidently to make him defeat his own design.

II. To be more convinced of it, we need only read the controverted text in connection with the CONTEXT; illustrating both by some notes in brackets. St. John opens his commission thus, First Epistle i, 5, 6, 7 :— "This is the message which we have received of him [Christ] and declare unto you, that God is light, [bright, transcendent purity,] and in him is no darkness [no impurity] at all. If we [believers] say that we have fellowship with him, [that we are united to him by an actually living faith,] and walk in darkness, [in impurity or sin,] we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, [if we live up to our Christian light and do righteousness,] we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. For let no man deceive you: he that does righteousness is righteous, even as he, Christ, is righteous; and in him is no sin," 1 John iii, 5, 7. So far we see no plea, either for sin, or for the Calvinian purgatory.

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Should Mr. Hill reply, that "when St. John says, 'The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin,' the apostle does not mean all indwelling sin; because this is a sin from which death alone can cleanse us:" we demand a proof, and in the meantime we answer, that St. John, in the above-quoted passages, says, that " he who does righteousness," in the full sense of the word, " is righteous, as Christ is righteous;" observing that "in him [Christ] is no sin." So certain, then, as there is no indwelling sin in Christ, there is no indwelling sin in a believer who does righteousness in the full sense of the word; for he is made "perfect in love," and is "cleansed from all sin." Nor was St. John himself ashamed to profess this glorious liberty; for he said, "Our love is made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he [Christ] is [perfect in love, and of consequence without sin,] so are we in this world," 1 John iv, 17, And the whole context shows that