Second Check: no apologies can excuse you for having concealed the matter so long." Mr. Hill, jun., adds in the postscript to his Friendly Remarks, (pp. 65, 66, 67,) “Your doctrine is a mysterious jumble. Your three publications contain a farrago. You are quite become unanswerable. In your first Check we hear but of one justification; in your Second you treat us with two: two more are lately invented, and shoved in among the rest. These four justifications may be doubled and doubled, till they amount to four-score. Your imagination is fertile, you can invent them by dozens."

1. Before I answer these witticisms, permit me to trouble you with a simile. I maintain that the age of man in general may properly, and at times necessarily must be considered, as made up of four different stages; infancy, youth, ripe years, and old age. Two masters of arts, who would make the world believe that youth and old age are the same, smile at the absurdity of this four-fold distinction." How inconsistent are you," say they: "some time ago you spoke of the age of man in general, and told us it was three-score years and ten. Yesterday, you treated us with a dissertation upon youth and old age. To-day, two more ages, infancy and ripe years, are invented, and shoved in among the rest. Your fertile imagination may double and double these four ages till they amount to four-score; nay, you can invent them by dozens." This humorous answer highly delights thousands, and in mystic Geneva such wit passes for argument; but some in England begin to ask, "Shall we be for ever the dupes of Geneva logic?"

2. It is a very great mistake, that, "In the First Check we hear but of one justification;" for though I there treat principally of justification by faith, because Mr. Wesley principally meant it in the Minutes, yet, p. 34, the justification of infants is thus described :-It is "that general benevolence of our merciful God toward sinful mankind, whereby, through the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, he casts a propitious look upon us, and freely makes us partakers of the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world.' This general loving kindness is certainly previous to any thing we can do to find it; for it always prevents us, saying to us in our very infancy, Live, and in consequence of it, our Lord says,Let little children come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." This is not all: pp. 34 and 35, I particularly describe "justification by faith" in the day of conversion, and expressly mention "justification by words (or works) in the day of judgment;" and common sense dictates that none can be justified by works in the day of judgment but those who, according to St. James' doctrine, have been justified by works in this life. How rash, then, is the assertion that I have invented any new justification since the First Check! How weak is that cause, which a master of arts cannot support but by witticism, founded upon as palpable a mistake as that "one and three do not make more than

one!"

And is the doctrine of a glorified saint's complete justification changed in the Second Check? No: for the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, in his answer to that book, (Review, p. 12,) upbraids me with saying therein, By faith a man is justified at his conversion, but by works he is

justified" on earth "in the hour of trial, as Abraham when he offered up Isaac," or "in a court of judicature, as St. Paul at the bar of Festus." And again: "By works he is justified before the judgment seat of Christ, as every one will be whose faith when he goes hence is found working by love." I grant, however, that I did not mention the justification of infants in the Second Check; but this does not prove that I "concealed a matter of such importance." For I had plainly mentioned it in the Vindication, and Mr. Shirley not having opposed it in his Narrative, as he had done justification by works in the great day, it would have been absurd to spend time in establishing it.

If you ask why I have distinguished between justification by works to-day, and justification by works in the day of judgment, I answer, For two reasons, (1.) St. James and Mr. Hill, jun., do so: "Rahab was justified by works, AT THE TIME WHEN she received the spies." (Friendly Remarks, p. 38.) (2.) The propriety and importance of this distinction appear from the following consideration :-Many may be justified by works to-day, who shall be condemned by works "in the day of judgment."

Take an instance: When St. Paul chose Demas to be his fellow labourer, Demas was undoubtedly justified by works, and not by faith only; for the apostle would not have been unequally yoked with an evil worker, any more than with an unbeliever. Nevertheless, in the day of judgment, if we may believe John Bunyan, Demas shall be condemned by his latter, instead of being justified by his former works. But I have said, Second Check, that "a man is justified by faith when his backslidings are healed," as well as at his first conversion. And as he may fall from, and return to God ten times, a facetious opponent is ready to charge me with holding ten, perhaps "three-score justifications" by faith. Witty, but groundless is the charge; for supposing I lose and find the same guinea ten times, am I not mistaken. if I fancy that I have found ten guineas? Or if you draw back sixty times from a bright sunshine into a dark cave, and sixty times come into the sunshine again, do I not offer violence to reason if I maintain that you have got into "three-score" sunshines? Here you say, "Illustrations are no pro fs at all.” I grant it nevertheless, when the proofs are gone before, just illustrations wonderfully help many readers to detect the fallacy of a plausible argument.

But supposing I had not mentioned the different degrees of an adult saint's justification either in the First or Second Check, would you not, gentlemen, have exposed Geneva logic, as you have now done your inattention, if you had hoped to set plain Scripture aside by saying, "It comes too late. You placed it in the Third Check; it should have been produced in the First?" Does not such an argumeut hurt your cause more than a prudent silence would have done?

However, if you cannot put out the candle with which we search the streets of mystic Geneva, and examine the foundation of its towers, you both agree to amuse the Calvinists, by bringing Mr. Wesley* upon the stage of controversy. He said, above twenty years ago in one of

The prejudice of my opponents against Mr. Wesley makes them catch at every shadow of opportunity to place him in a contemptible light before the world. Witness their exclaiming against him for having suffered me to mako

his journals, “I cannot but maintain, at least till I have clearer light, that the justification which is spoken of by St. Paul to the Romans, and in our articles, is not two-fold; it is one and no more." Here Mr. Hill, jun., particularly triumphs; "By your four degrees of a glorified saint's justification, you have thrown your own friend in the dirt," says he, "help him out if you can."

To this I answer, That if Mr. Wesley, by the justification spoken of by St. Paul to the Romans, meant that which the apostle purposely maintains in that epistle, and which our Church explicitly asserts in her eleventh article, my vindicated friend speaks a great truth when he says that this justification is one and no more; for it is evidently justification by faith. But supposing he had not properly considered either the justification of infants without faith and works, or the justification of believers by works in the day of trial, and in the day of judgment; what would you infer from thence? That the Scriptures which speak of such justifications are false? The conclusion would be worthy of Geneva logic! Weigh your argument in the balance of English logic, and you will find it is wanting. Twenty-three, or, if you please, three years ago, Mr. Wesley wanted clearer light, to distinguish between the justification of a sinner by faith, and the justification of a believer by works: but two years ago God gave him this clearer light, and he immediately called his friends to review the whole affair," and help him to make a firm stand for St. James' pure religion, against Dr. Crisp's defiled Gospel. Therefore, say my opponents, St. James' and Jesus Christ's justification of a believer by works is a "dreadful heresy," and Mr. Wesley is "thrown in the dirt." Is the conclusion worthy of two masters of arts? May I not more reasonably draw just a contrary inference, and say, therefore, Mr. Wesley shakes the very dust, or, if you please, the very “dirt” of Geneva from off his feet, and exhorts his flocks to do the same through the three kingdoms?

an honourable mention of his labours in the Vindication, to counterbalance a little the loads of contempt poured upon him on all sides.

Those gentlemen do not consider that there are times when a grey-headed, useful, and yet slighted, insulted minister of Christ, may not only suffer another to speak honourably of his labours, but when he ought to magnify his own office in person.

St. Paul certainly did so, when he said, "In nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles. I have laboured more abundantly than they all. Are they ministers of Christ, I am more; in labours more abundant," &c. After the apostle's example, might not Mr. Wesley himself say, (giving, like him, all the glory to Divine grace,) "I am nothing behind the chief of Gospel ministers. I have laboured more abundantly than they all?" Nay, might he not add, “I have broken the ice, and stood in the gap for them all?" "Now if, instead of answering for himself, he has permitted me to vindicate his aspersed character, and despised ministry, where is the harm? If Timothy was to let no man despise his youth, is Mr. Wesley guilty of an unpardonable crime because he has permitted me to bear my testimony against the impropriety of despising his old age? And does not even young Mr. Hill say much more for himself than I have done for Mr. Wesley the aged? The whole of what I have advanced in his favour centres in this assertion, "He has done much for God." But my opponent addresses me thus before the public, "Friendly Remarks," (p. 69,) “You know my character, that I have suffered much, very much for God." And yet this very gentleman takes Mr. Wesley to task, and accuses him of self importance! O partiality, how long wilt thou blind and divide us? And how long wilt thou cause the astonished world to say, "See how these sheep bite and devour one another?"

II. As our controversy centres in the point of justification by works, both in the day of the trial of faith and in the day of judgment, whatever my opponents advance against this I shall endeavour to answer.

"The Scriptures, (says Mr. Hill, sen., Remarks, p. 5,) always speak of justification as perfect, full, and complete." For an answer to this bold, unscriptural assertion, I refer the reader to the preceding pages, where he will easily see that although God's work is always perfect so far as it goes; yet as final justification depends upon perseverance in the faith, and as perseverance in the faith is inseparably connected with "patient continuance in well doing," it is unscriptural and absurd to assert that final justification is complete, before we can say, with St. Paul, "I am ready to be offered up; I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith;" or rather, before. Christ himself says to us, "Well done, good and faithful servants, enter into the joy of your Lord."

III. Page 4. "You do us great injustice in supposing that we believe, or assert, any souls may strive, reform, and pray without any possibility of escaping hell. When you made the above assertion, did you not know, in your own conscience, that you charged us wrongfully?" In the presence of God, I answer in the negative. If you maintain that Christ never died for a certain, fixed number of men, you must of consequence believe that those whom he never died for, can never flee from the wrath to come, though they should strive, reform, and pray ever so much.

If you are consistent, you must be persuaded that though Mr. Wesley, for example, has prayed, strove, and reformed for above forty years, yet if he is not one of what you call "the happy number," he shall inevitably be damned.

IV. Page 8. You refer me to your "striking quotation of Luther, concerning the distinction between a believer and his actions." I answer, (1.) Luther's bare assertions go for nothing with us, when they stand in direct opposition to St. James' Epistle, which, in one of his Antinomian fits, he wanted to burn out of the way. (2.) This assertion contradicts common sense and daily experience, which agree to depose that, excepting the case of lunatics and delirious persons, men are like their actions, when those actions are taken together with their principle and design.

V. You add in the same page, "It was happy for David that, when he fell so grossly, he had a merciful, gracious, promise-keeping God to deal with; and that he fell not into the hands of Arminians and Perfectionists." I retort, "It was happy for Clodius that, if he turned from his wicked way, he had not an unmerciful, ungracious, and promise-breaking God to deal with, and fell not into the hands of an inexorable Moloch, before whom poor reprobated heathens can find no place for repentance, though they should seek it carefully with tears." As for your insinuation, that Arminians and Perfectionists (as such) are merciless to backsliders, it is groundless; we are taught to " restore the fallen in the spirit of meekness," as well as you. And (to the praise of Divine wisdom I write it) we are enabled to do it without encouraging them to return to their wallowing in the mire of sin, by dangerous insinuations that relapses into it will " work for their good." VOL. I.

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VI. While we speak of David and Clodius, it may be proper to dwell a moment upon their case. Clodius, a young heathen, forsakes his one wife, and David, an elderly Jew, forsakes his seven wives and ten concubines to commit the crime of adultery with women whose husbands they have just murdered. I maintain that David is more guilty than Clodius, and that his crime is so much the more atrocious than that of the noble heathen, as he commits it against greater light and knowledge, against greater mercies and more solemn vows, perhaps with more deliberation, and certainly with less temptation from the ferments of youthful blood, and the want of variety.

But you still dissent from me, and persist to say (p. 9,) that "David remained absolved from the curse of the law, while Clodius lay under it." And how can you prove it? " David," say yo," was a believer." I reply, No: he was an impenitent adulterer, and a treacherous murderer; and these characters are as incompatible wh that of a believer, as heaven is irreconcilable with hell, and Christ with Belial. If a man can be a believer, i. e. a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, while he wallows in the filth of adultery, and imbrues his hands in innocent blood, farewell Christianity, farewell heathen morality, farewell common decency! We are come to the non plus ultra of Antinomianism. Truth and virtue, law and Gospel, natural and revealed religion, are buried in a common grave. Alas! my dear sir, what can the wildest Ranter, what can Satan himself desire more?

A Deistical gentleman lately observed, that all religion consisted in morality; and that nevertheless revelation was a useful contrivance of wise politicians to keep the vulgar in awe, and enforce the practice of moral duties among the populace. But, alas! the unhappy turn which you give to revelation does not even leave it the poor use which a Deist will allow it to have. Nay, your scheme, far from enforcing morality, sets it aside at a stroke. For, if a man that actually commits adultery, treachery, and murder is a pleasant child of God, why should not a drunkard, a swearer, a thief, or a traitor, be also accomplishing God's holy decrees? Why should he not prove his pleasant child, as well as a wanton adulterer and a perfidious murderer? Is not this stripping the woman, the Christian Church, of the glorious garment of holiness, in which she came down from heaven? Is it not exposing her to horrid derision, without so much as a scrap, I shall not say of exalted piety, but even of heathen morality, to keep herself decent before a world of mocking infidels? Hath not this doctrine driven Geneva headlong into Deism? And is it not likely to have the same effect upon all who can draw a just inference from your dangerous premises?

Hitherto Protestants in general have granted to the Papists, that, although good works are not meritorious, (if any higher idea than that of rewardable is fixed to that word,) yet they are necessary to salvation. But since the doctrine of finished salvation pours in upon us like a flood; since good men do not scruple to tell the world that the salvation of a bloody adulterer, in flagrante delicto, is finished, and that he is a pleasant child of God, fully accepted and completely justified, what have good works to do with salvation? We may not only