Revelation then fails you. Let us see now how reason and common sense, that common light of nature, will help you out.

You then reason thus: bare preaching, &c. will not prevail on men to hear and consider; and therefore some other means is necessary to make them do so. Pray what do you mean by men, or any other of those indefinite terms, you have always used in this case? Is it that bare preaching will prevail on no men? Does reason, (under which I comprehend experience too, and all the ways of knowledge, contradistinguished to revelation) discover any such thing to you? I imagine you will not say that; or pretend that nobody was ever brought, by preaching or persuasion, to hear and consider the truths of the Gospel, (mean by considering what you will) without other means used by those who applied themselves to the care of converting them. To such therefore as may be brought to hear and consider, without other means, you will not say that other means are necessary.

In the next place, therefore, When you say bare preaching will not prevail on men, do you mean that it will not prevail on all men, and therefore it is necessary that men should use other means? Neither, I think, will reason authorize you to draw such a consequence: because neither will preaching alone, nor preaching assisted with force, or any other means man can use, prevail on all men. And therefore no other means can be pretended to be necessary to be used by man, to do what men by those means never did, nor ever can do.

That some men shall be saved, and not all, is, I think, past question to all that are Christians: and those that shall be saved, it is plain, are the elect. If you think not this plain enough in Scripture, I desire you to turn to the seventeenth of the XXXIX articles of the church of England, where you will read these words: "Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he has chosen in Christ out of man

kind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore they which be indued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through grace obey the calling; they be justified freely; they be made sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ; they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity." Now pray tell me whether bare preaching will not prevail on all the elect to hear and consider without other means to be used by men. If you say it will, the necessity of your other means, I think, is out of doors. If you say it will not, I desire you to tell me how you do know it without revelation? And whether by your own reason you can tell us, whether any, and what means God has made necessary, besides what he has appointed in Scripture for the calling his elect? When you can do this, we shall think you no ordinary divine, nor a stranger to the secret counsels of the infinitely wise God. But till then, your mixing your opinion with the divine wisdom in the great work of salvation, and, from arguments of congruity, taking upon you to declare the necessity or usefulness of means, which God has not expressly directed, for the gathering in of his elect; will scarce authorize the magistrate to use his coactive power for the edifying and completing the body of Christ, which is his church. "Those whom God hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, before the foundations of the world, are called, according to God's purpose, by his Spirit, working in due season, and through grace obey the calling," say you in your article. The outward means that God has appointed for this, is preaching. Ay, but preaching is not enough; that is, is not sufficient means, say you. And I ask you how you know it; since the Scripture, which declares all that we can know in this matter, says nothing of the insufficiency of it, or of the necessity of any other? Nor can there be a necessity of any other means than what God expressly appoints, in a matter wherein no means can operate ef

fectually, without the assistance of his grace; and where the assistance of his grace can make any outward means he appoints effectual.

I must desire you here to take notice, that by preaching, which I use for shortness, I mean exhortation, instruction, entreaty, praying for; and, in fine, any outward means of persuasion in the power of man, separate from force.

You tell us here, "as to the first spreaders of the Gospel, God appointed other means, viz. miracles, for them to use to induce men to hear and consider." If by the first spreaders of the Gospel, you mean the twelve apostles and seventy disciples, whom Christ himself sent to preach the Gospel; they indeed were appointed, by his immediate command, to show miracles by the power which he had bestowed upon them. But will you say, all the ministers and preachers of the Gospel had such a commission, and such a power, all along from the apostles' time; and that they, every one, did actually show miracles, to induce men to hear and consider, quite down till Christianity was supported by the law of the empire? Unless you could show this, though you could produce some well-attested miracles, done by some men in every age till that time; yet it would not be sufficient to prove that miracles were appointed to be constantly used to induce men to hear and consider; and so, by your reasoning, to supply the want of force, till that necessary assistance could be had from the authority of the magistrate become Christian. For since it is what you build upon, that men will not hear and consider upon bare preaching; and I think you will forwardly enough agree, that till Christianity was made the religion of the empire, there were those every where that heard the preachers of it so little, or so little considered what they said, that they rejected the Gospel; and that therefore miracles or force are necessary means to make men hear and consider; you must own that those who preached without the power of miracles, or the coactive power of the magistrate accompanying them, were unfurnished of competent and sufficient means to make men hear and consider; and so to bring them to

the true religion. If you will say the miracles done by others were enough to accompany their preaching, to make it be heard and considered; the preaching of the ministers at this day is so accompanied, and so will need no assistance of force from the magistrate. If the report of miracles done by one minister of the Gospel some time before, and in another place, were sufficient to make the preaching of ten or a thousand others be heard and considered; why is it not so now? For the credibility and attestation of the report is all that is of moment, when miracles done by others, in other place are the argument that prevails. But this, I fear, will not serve your turn in the business of penalties; and, whatever might satisfy you in the case of miracles, doubt you would not think the salvation of souls sufficiently provided for, if the report of the force of penalties, used some time since on one side of the Tweed, were all that should assist the preachers of the true religion on the other, to make men hear and consider.

St. Paul, in his epistle to Titus, instructs him what he, and the presbyters he should ordain in the cities of Crete, were to do for the propagating of the Gospel, and bringing men heartily to embrace it. His directions are, that they should be "blameless, not rioters, not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine or filthy lucre, not strikers, not unruly; lovers of hospitality, and of good men; sober, just, holy, temperate; to be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convince gainsayers; in all things to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing uncorruptedness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil to say of you. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all authority. Avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions. A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject.". To repay you the favour of your greek, it is raparou; which, if I may take your liberty of receding from our translation, I would read "avoid."

The Cretans, by the account St. Paul gives of them,

were a people that would require all the means that were needful to prevail with any strangers to the Gospel to hear and consider. But yet we find nothing directed for the support and propagation of the Gospel in this island, but preaching, exhortation, reproof, &c. with the example of a good life. In all this epistle, writ on purpose to instruct the preachers of the Gospel, in the means they were to use among the Cretans, for their conversion, not a word about miracles, their power or use: which one would think strange, if they were the means appointed, and necessary to make men hear and consider, and without which they would not do it. Preaching, admonition, exhortation, entreaties, instruction, by the common right of reason, were known, and natural to be used, to persuade men. There needed not much be said to convince men of it. But, if miracles were a necessary means, it was a means wholly new, unexpected, and out of the power of other teachers. And therefore one would think, if they were appointed for the ends you propose, one should hear something of that appointment: since that they were to be used, or how, and when, was farther from common apprehension, and seems to need some particular direction.

If you say the same Spirit that gave them the power of miracles, would also give them the knowledge both that they had it, and how to use it; I am far enough from limiting the operations of that infinitely wise Spirit, who will not fail to bring all the elect of God into the obedience of truth, by those means, and in that manner, he shall think necessary. But yet our Saviour, when he sent abroad his disciples, with the power of miracles, not only put it in their commission, whereby they were informed that they had that extraordinary gift, but added instructions to them in the use of it: Freely you have received, freely give;" a caution as necessary to the Cretan elders, in the use of miracles, if they had that power; there being nothing more liable to be turned to the advantage of filthy lucre.

66

I do not question but the Spirit of God might give the power, and stir up the mind of the first spreaders of the Gospel to do miracles on some extraordinary occa