upon Gospel terms to whom he pleases, and as soon or late as he pleases, being undoubtedly the privilege of his sovereign goodness or justice an awful privilege this, which is perfectly agreeable to the evangelical law of liberty, and with which the Calvinists have absurdly built their twin doctrines of finished salvation and finished damnation; not considering that such doctrines stain the first Gospel axiom, and totally destroy the second.

The nature of this concession may be illustrated by an example. Two unconverted soldiers march up to the enemy. Both have unavoidably transgressed the third commandment: the one by calling fifty times for his damnation; and the other five hundred times. Now, both have personally forfeited their initial salvation, and continuing impenitent, God, as a righteous avenger of profaneness, may justly suffer the fifty pence debtor to fall in the battle and to be instantly hurried to the damnation he had madly prayed for: and, as a longsuffering, merciful Creator, he may suffer the five hundred pence debtor, I mean the soldier who has sinned with a higher hand, to walk out of the field unhurt, and to be spared for years; following him still with new offers of mercy, which the wretch is so happy as to embrace at last. Here is evidently a higher degree of the distinguishing grace which was manifested toward Manasses, as it has also been to many other grievous sinners. But by this peculiar favour, God violates no promise, and he acts in perfect consistency with himself: for, when two people have personally forfeited their eternal salvation by one avoidable sin, of which they do not repent when they might he does no injustice to the fifty pence debtor, when he calls him first to an account; and he greatly magnifies his long suffering, when he continues to reprieve the five hundred pence debtor.

By this sparing use of astonishing mercy, God strongly guards the riches of his grace. This inferior degree of forbearance makes thoughtful sinners stand in awe as not knowing but the first sin they shall commit will actually fill up the measure of their iniquities, and provoke the Almighty to swear in his righteous anger that their day of grace is ended. To justify, therefore, God's conduct toward men in this respect, we need only observe, that if distinguishing grace did not make the difference which we grant to the Calvinists, perverse free will would draw amazing strength from the unwearied patience of free grace. Suppose, for instance, that God had insured to all men a day of grace of four-score years, would not all sinners think it time enough to repent at the age of three-score years and nineteen? Therefore, through the clouds of darkness which surrounds us, reason sees far into the propriety of the partiality with which distinguishing grace dispenses its superior blessings. But all the partiality which that grace ever displayed, never amounted to one single grain of Calvinian reprobation.

Because God, as a righteous judge, lets every man have a fair trial for his life. Nor will all the sophisms in the world reconcile the ideas, which the Scriptures and rectified reason give us of Divine justice, with a doctrine which represents God as condemning to eternal torments a majority of men, for the necessary, unavoidable consequences of Adam's sin: a sin this, which, upon the scheme of the absolute predestination of all events, was also made unavoidable and necessary. To return :

5. We grant, that although Christ died to purchase a day of [initial] salvation for all men, yet he never died to purchase ETERNAL salvation for any adults, but "them that believe, obey," and are "faithful unto death." And that of consequence the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ is general and unconditional with respect to INITIAL salvation; but particular and conditional with respect to ETERNAL salvation; except in the case of infants, who die before actual sin: these, and only these, are blessed with unconditional election and finished salvation in the Calvinistical sense of these phrases :-These are irresistibly saved, and eternally admitted into one of the many mansions of our heavenly Father's house free grace, to the honour of our Lord's meritorious infancy, absolutely saves them, without any concurrence of their free will. Nor is it surprising that God should do it unavoidably; for as they never were personally capable of working with free grace, i. e. of "working out their salvation;" so they never were in a capacity of working against free grace, or of beginning to work their damnation. Having never committed any act of sin, God can, consistently with the Gospel, save them eternally without any act of repentance. In a word, infants having no unrighteousness but that of the first Adam, reason, as well as Scripture, dictates that they need no righteousness. but that of the second Adam.

6. From the preceding concessions, it follows that obedient, persevering believers are God's elect in the particular and full sense of the word, being elected to the reward of eternal life in glory: a reward this, from which they who die in a state of apostasy or impenitency have cut themselves off, by not making their calling and conditional election sure.

7. We grant that none of these peculiar elect shall ever perish, though they would have perished had they not been faithful unto death: and we allow, that, with respect to God's foreknowledge and omniscience, their number is certain. But we steadily assert, that, with regard to the doctrines of general redemption, of God's covenanted mercy, of man's free agency, of Divine justice, and of a day in which the Lord will "judge the world in righteousness:" we steadily assert, say, with regard to these doctrines, the number of the peculiar elect might be greater or less, without the least exertion of forcible grace,

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or of forcible wrath. For it might be greater, if more wicked and slothful servants improved instead of burying their talents: and it might be less, if more good and faithful servants grew faint in their minds, and drew back to perdition," before they had "fought their good fight out, kept the faith, and finished their course."

8. And lastly, we grant, that, according to the election of distinguishing grace which is the basis of the various dispensations of Divine grace toward the children of men, Christ died to purchase more privileges for the Christian Church than for the Jews, more for the Jews than for the Gentiles, and more for some Gentiles than for others for it is indubitable that God, as a sovereign benefactor, may, without shadow of injustice, dispense his favours, spiritual and temporal, as he pleases: it being enough for the display of his goodness, and for the exciting of our gratitude, (1.) That the least of his heathen servants had received a talent, with means, capacities, and opportunities of improving it, even to everlasting happiness. (2.) That God never desires to reap where he does not sow, nor to reap a hundred measures of spiritual wheat where he only sows a handful of spiritual barley. And, (3.) That the least degree of his improvable goodness is a seed, which nothing but our avoidable unfaithfulness hinders from bringing forth fruit to eternal life in glory.

By making these guarded concessions, I conceive we rectify the mistakes of Arminius; we secure the doctrine of grace in all its branches, while Calvinism secures only the irresistible grace by which infants and complete idiots are eternally saved: we turn the edge, and break the point of all the arguments by which the Calvinian doctrines of grace are defended; and tear in pieces the cloak with which the Antinomians cover their dangerous error.

Had Arminius, and all the ancient and modern semi-Pelagians, granted to their opponents what we grant to ours, Calvinism would never have risen to its tremendous height. If you try to stop a great river, refusing it the liberty to flow in the deep channel which nature has assigned it, you only make it foam, rise, rage, overflow its banks, and carry devastation far and near. The only way to make judicious Calvinists allow us the impartial remunerative election, and the general redemption which the Gospel displays, is to allow them, with a good grace, the partial, gratuitous election, and the particular redemption which the Scriptures strongly maintain also. (See the Scales, sec. xi, xii, xiii.) For my part, I glory in going as near the Calvinists as I safely can. Zelotes is my brother as well as Honestus: and, so long as I do not lose firm footing upon Scripture ground, I gladly stretch my right hand to him, and my left hand to his antagonist; endeavouring to help them both out of the opposite ditches, which bound the narrow way, where truth frequently takes a solitary walk.

I conclude this introduction by thanking Mr. Hill for coming a little closer to the knot of the controversy in his Fictitious Creed, than he has done in his Finishing Stroke; for by this mean he has stirred me up to dig deeper into the Scriptures,-those inexhaustible mines of truth which God has set before us. I would not intimate that I have dug out new gold. No: the oracles of God are not new; but I hope that I have separated a little dross from some of the richest pieces of golden ore which the Arminians and the Calvinists have dug out of those mines and I flatter myself that the judicious and unprejudiced will confess that some of those pieces which Calvinian and Arminian bigots have thrown away as lumps of dross or of arsenic, contain, nevertheless, truths more precious than thousands of gold and silver. Should these sheets in any degree remove the prejudice of professors, and prepare them for a reconciliation upon the Scriptural plan of the doctrines of grace and justice, or of the two Gospel axioms, I shall humbly rejoice and thankfully give God the glory.

MADELEY, Dec. 14, 1774.

J. FLETCHER.

VOL. I.

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