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. P. 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. P. 8. You refer me to your striking quotation of Luther, concerning the distinction between a be-liever and his actions." I answer, (1.) Luther's bare assertions go for nothing with us, when they stand in direct opposition to St. James's Epistle, which, in one of his Antinomian fits, he wanted to burn out of the way. (2.) This assertion contradicts common sense aud 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, ungracions, 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.'

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 temptaiton 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, whilst Clodius lay under it." And how can you prove it? "David," say you, was a believer." I reply, No, he was an impenitent adulterer, and a treacherous murderer; and these characters are as incompatible with that of a believer, as heaven is irreconcileable 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 Antinomiauism. 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 an 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 wo◄ man, 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 dispense with them, but do the most horrid works. Yea, "the wheel" of adultery, treachery, and

murder, may 66 run round and round again," for ten months, without interrupting the finished salvation of the elect; any more than praying, weeping, and reforming for ten years, will prevent the finished damnation of the reprobates.

dead,' that it is a putre

But lest you should say, I “blind the eyes of the readers with deceitful dust," I meet you on the solid ground where St. James stood, when he opposed the primitive Antinomiaus; and, taking that holy apostle's gospeltrump, I sound an alarm in Laodicea, and cry out to the drowsy world of Nicolaitan professors, whether they hear the word at the Lock-chapel, or at the Foundery, 'Awake, ye that sleep, and arise from the dead. Shew your faith by your works. Know ye not, O vain men, that faith without works is fying, ill-smelling corpse? Help, ye men of God, help us to bury it out of the way of good works. Let frighted Morality dig a grave; let indignant Piety cast the horrid nuisance into it. And, while we commit it to hell, whence it came, while the devils who believe, feed upon the noisome carcass, let Bishop Cowper himself, attended by the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, say over the grave, 'Justifying faith, whereby we are saved, cannot be without good works. Dead and damnable is the faith which is consistent with adultery and murder." Aud let all the church say "Amen," and contend for the faith of God's elect,' the faith maintained by St. Paul and St. James, the faith recommended in Mr. Wesley's Minutes, the living faith that works by obedient love.

VII. P. 10. In defence of your cause, you produce those words of our Lord to the proud Pharisees, Publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you.' Surely, Sir, you would not insinuate, that God takes extortioners and strumpets into heaven as such, and that adultery and whoredom are a ready way to glory! I know you start from the horrid insinuation. And, nevertheless, I fear this doctrine naturally flows from the manner in which the passage is quoted. I always thought those words of our Lord

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meant, that publicans and harlots could sooner be reclaimed from their execrable courses of life than selfhardened Pharisees from their diabolical pride; and that, while Christ would admit a penitent Magdalen into heaven, he would thrust an impenitent Pharisee into hell. But what is this to the purpose? Does this make the case of David, or any other sinner better, while they remain in a state of impenitency?

VIII. P. 9. You have answered this question: "David in Uriah's bed, (you say,) in a sense was not impenitent. The grace of repentance, &c. did lie like a spark covered with ashes." To this I reply:

1. If by a spark or seed of repentance, you understand a ray of that quickening light, which enlightens every man who comes into the world,' and endues him with a gracious capacity of repenting during the day of salvation, we are agreed; supposing you grant us, that while Clodius defiled his neighbour's bed in Rome, he was such a penitent as David when he committed the same crime in Jerusalem.

2. We deny, that a capacity of repentance is in a sense repentance, any more than a capacity of obeying is in a sense obedience. According to your idea of that sort of repentance, which David had when he committed murder, the most abandoned profligates, who have not yet filled up the measure of their iniquities, are all in a sort penitent; and Adam when he ate the forbidden fruit was in a sort obedient.

3. Your assertion is unscriptural. You cannot produce one passage to prove, that a murderer, or an adulterer, in flagrante delicto, is a penitent in any sense. If David was a penitent, because repentance lay in his heart as a spark buried under ashes; I may say, in direct opposition to the words of our Lord, that the wicked and slothful servant' was, in some sense, good and diligent, because his master's talent lay buried in his napkin.

4. You insinuate, that the ashes which covered the spark of David's repentance were "his sin." The com