ye, therefore, and so do, as people that shall be judged by the law of liberty [the Mediator's law.] For he [the imperfect, uncharitable, fallen believer shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no [charity or] mercy," James ii, 8. We rest our doctrine of Jewish and Christian perfection on these consentaneous testimonies of St. James and St. Paul; of Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, and of Christ, the great Lawgiver of the Christians: the doctrine of perfection, or of perfectly cordial obedience, being inseparably connected with the mediatorial laws of Moses and of Christ. The moment you destroy these laws, by turning them into "rules of life," through the personal observance of which no believer shall ever be justified or condemned, you destroy the ground of Jewish and Christian perfection, and you impose upon us the lawless, unscriptural tenet of an obedience performed by proxy, and of an imputed perfection, which will do us as little good in life, death, and judgment, as imputed health, opposed to inherent health, will do to a poor, sickly, dying criminal. Thus, after leading my reader round a large circle of proofs, I return to the very point whence I started: (see the beginning of the preface :) and I conclude that a gospel without a mediatorial law, without an evangelical law, without the conditional promise of a crown of heavenly glory to the obedient, and without the conditional threatening of infernal stripes to the disobedient ;-I conclude, I say, that such a gospel will always lead us to the centre of Antinomianism; to the Diana and Hecate of the Calvinists; to lawless free grace and everlasting free wrath; or, if you please, finished salvation and finished damnation. On the other hand, the moment you admit what the Jewish and Christian Gospel covenants are so express about, I mean an evangelical law, or a practicable rule of judgment, as well as of conduct, eternal salvation and eternal damnation become conditional: they are suspended upon the evangelical perfection or imperfection of our obedience; and the Rev. Mr. Berridge hits on the head of the golden nail, on which "hang all the law and the prophets," all the four Gospels and the epistles, when he says, "Sincere obedience, as a condition, will lead you unavoidably up to a perfect obedience." And now, reader, choose which thou wilt follow, Mr. Hill's lawless Antinomian Gospel, or St. Paul's and St. James' Gospel, including the evangelical law of Christian liberty and perfection, by which law thou shalt be conditionally justified or condemned, “when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to the Gospel," Rom. ii, 16. If thou choose imputed righteousness and imputed perfection without any condition, it will "unavoidably" lead thee down into a death purgatory, through the chamber of indwelling sin, if thou art an elect person, in the Calvinian sense of the word; or to eternal damnation through the chambers of necessary sin, if thou art one of those whom our opponents call reprobates. But if thou cordially choose the sincere, voluntary, evangelical obedience of faith, which we preach both as a condition and as a privilege, it will (Mr. Hill's second being judge) "unavoidably lead thee up to perfect obedience." There is absolutely no medium between these two Gospels. Thou must either be a Crispian, lawless imperfectionist, or an evangelical, lawful perfectionist; unless thou choose to be a Gallio-one who cares for none of these things. Thou must wrap thyself up in unscriptural notions of imputed righteousness, imputed holiness, and imputed obedience, which make up the ideal garment of Calvinistically imputed perfection; or thou must perfectly "wash in the blood of the Lamb thy robes" of inherent, though derived righteousness, holiness, and obedience, which (when they are thus washed) are the rich wedding garment of evangelical perfection. SECTION XVI. The author shows that the distinction between sins, and (evangelically speaking) innocent infirmities, is truly Scriptural, and that judicious "Calvinists and the Church of England hold it-He draws the line between sins and innocent infirmities-A view of the extremes into which rigid, Pelagian perfectionists, and rigid, Calvinian imperfectionists, have run east and west, from the Gospel line of an evangelical perfection—An answer to Mr. Henry's grand argument for the continuance of indwelling sin-Conclusion of the argumentative part of this essay. We have proved, in the preceding section, that the doctrine of an evangelically sinless perfection is truly Scriptural, being inseparably connected with the greatest and most excellent precepts of the Old and New Testament, and with the most evangelical and awful sanctions of Moses and Jesus Christ. This might suffice to show that our doctrine of perfection cannot be called popish or Pelagian, with any more candour than the doctrine of the trinity can be branded with those epithets, because Pelagius and the pope embrace it. If, in order to be good Protestants, we were obliged to renounce all that the Jews, Turks, and infidels hold; we should renounce the Old Testament, because the Jews revere it; we should renounce the unity of God, because the Mohammedans contend for it; nay, we should renounce common humanity, because all infidels approve of it. I beg leave, however, to dwell a moment longer upon Mr. Hill's objection, that the pope holds our doctrine. When this gentleman was at Rome, he may remember that his Cicerone showed him, in the ancient Church of St. Paul without the gate, (if I remember the name,) the picture of all the popes from St. Peter, Linus, Cletus, and Clement, down to the pope who then filled what is called "St. Peter's chair.' According to this view of papacy, Mr. Hill is certainly in the right; for if he turn back to sec. v, he will see that Peter, the first pope, so called, was a complete perfectionist, and if Clemens, or St. Clement, Paul's fellow labourer, was really the fourth pope, it is certain that he also held our doctrine as well as Peter and Christ; for he wrote to the Corinthians, " By love were all the elect of God made perfect. Those who were made perfect in love are in the region of the just, and shall appear in glory. Happy then are we if we fulfil the commandments of God in the unity of love. Following the commandments of God they sin not." (St. Clem. Ep. to the Cor.) This glorious testimony, which St. Clement bears to the doctrine of perfection, might be supported by many correspondent quotations from the other fathers. But as this would too much swell this essay, I shall only pro duce one, which is so much the more remarkable, as it is taken from St, Jerome's third Dialogue against Pelagius, the rigid, overdoing perfect ist: Hoc et nos dicimus, posse hominem non peccare, si velit, pro tempore, pro loco, pro imbecillitate corporea, quamdiu intentus est animus, quamdiu chorda nullo vitio laxatur in cithara. That is, "We [who oppose Pela. gius' notion about Adamic perfection] maintain also that, considering our time, place, and bodily weakness, we can avoid sin if we will, as long as our mind is bent upon it, and the string of our harp [i. e, of our Christian resolution] is not slackened by any wilful fault. When I read these blessed testimonies in favour of the truth which we vindicate, my pleased mind flies to Rome, and I am ready to say, Hail! ye holy popes and fathers, ye perfect servants of my perfect Lord! I am ambitious to share with you the names of "Arminian, Pelagian, Papist, temporary monster, and Atheist in masquerade." I publish to the world my steady resolution to follow you, and any of your successors, who have done and taught Christ's commandments. And I enter my protest against the mistakes of the ministers who teach that Christ's law is impracticable, that sin must dwell in our hearts as long as we live, and that we must continue to break the Lord's precepts in our inward parts unto death. I shall close my answer to this argument of Mr. Hill by a quotation from Mr. Wesley's Remarks upon the Review:-" It [our doctrine of Christian perfection] has been condemned by the pope and his whole conclave, even in this present century. In the famous bull Unigenitus, they utterly condemn the uninterrupted act [of faith and love which some men talked of, of continually rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks] as dreadful heresy." If we have Peter and Clement on our side, we are willing to let Mr. Hill screen his doctrine behind the pope who issued out the bull Unigenitus, and, if he pleases, behind the present pope too. However, says Mr. Hill, The distinction between sins and innocent infirmities is derived from the Romish Church." Answer. 1. We rejoice if the Church of Rome was never so unreasonable and so deluded by Antinomian popes as to confound an involuntary, wandering thought, an undesigned mistake, and a lamented fit of drowsiness at prayer, with adultery, murder, and incest; in order to represent Christ's mediatorial law as absolutely impracticable, and to insinuate that fallen believers, who actually commit the above-mentioned crimes, are God's dear children, as well as the obedient believers, who labour under the above-described infirmities. 2. We apprehend that Mr. Hill and the divines who have espoused Dr. Crisp's errors, are some of the last persons in the world by whom we may with decency be charged to hold "licentious" doctrines. And we are truly sorry that any Protestants should make it their business to corrupt that part of the Gospel which, if we believe Mr. Hill, the pope himself has modestly spared. 3. Mr. Hill might, with much more propriety, have objected that our distinction is derived from the Jewish Church; for "the old rogue," as some Solifidians have rashly called Moses, evidently made a distinction between sin and infirmities; he punished a daring Sabbath breaker and an audacious rebel with death, with present death, with the most terrible kind of death. The language of his burning zeal seemed to be that of David, "Be not merciful to them that offend of malicious wickedness," Psa. lix, 5. But upon such as accidentally contracted some involuntary pollution, he inflicted no other punishment than that of a separation from the congregation till evening. If Mr. Hill consider the difference of these two punishments, he must either give place to perverseness, or confess that wilful sins and involuntary infirmities were not Calvinistically confounded by the mediator of the old covenant; and that Moses himself made a rational and evangelical distinction between "the spot of God's children," and that "of the perverse and crooked generation," Deut. xxxii, 4. 4. That Christ, the equitable and gracious Mediator of the new cove. nant, was not less merciful than stern Moses, with respect to the distinction we contend for, appears to us evident from his making a wide difference between the almost involuntary drowsiness of the eleven disciples in Gethsemane, and the malicious watchfulness of the traitor Judas. Concerning the offence of the former, he said, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak ;" and with respect to the crime of the latter, he declared, "It would be good for that man if he had never been born." 5. David and Paul exactly followed herein the doctrine of Moses and Christ. The psalmist says, "Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins: let them not have the dominion over me; then shall I be upright, [or rather, as the word literally means in the original, I shall be perfect,] and innocent from the great transgression," Psalm xix, 13. Hence it is evident that some transgressions are incompatible with the perfection which David prayed for; and that some errors, or some secret [unnoticed, involuntary] faults, are not. 6. This, we apprehend, is evident from his own words: "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile," though there may be some improprieties in his words and actions, Psalm xxxii, 2. David's meaning may be illustrated by the well-known case of Nathanael. Philip said unto him, "We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the law: [a clear proof this, by the by, that the law frequently means the Jewish Gospel, which testifies of Christ to come:] it is Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathanael said unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" Here was an involuntary fault, an improper quoting of a proverbial expression: and, nevertheless, as he quoted it with a good intention, and to make way for a commendable inquiry into the report which he heard, his error was consistent with that degree of perfection which implies innocence from the great [wilful] transgression." This I prove, (1.) By his conduct: "Philip saith unto him, Come and see;" and he instantly went, without betraying the least degree of the self-conceited stiffness, surly pride, and morose resistance, which always accompany the unloving prejudice by which the law of Christ is broken. And, (2.) By our Lord's testimony:"Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an ·Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!" Our Lord's word for guile, in the original, is doλos, the very word, which being also connected with a negative, forms the epithet adokos, whereby St. Peter denotes the unadulterated purity of God's word, which he compares to sincere or perfectly pure milk, 1 Pet. ii, 2. Hence I conclude that, Christ himself being witness, (evangelically speaking,) there was no more indwelling insincerity in Nathanael than there is in the pure word of God; and that this is the happy case of all those who fully deserve the glorious title of “Israelite indeed," which our Lord publicly bestowed upon Nathanael. To return: 7. If to make a distinction between sins and infirmities constitutes a man half a Papist, it is evident that St. Paul was not less tinctured with popery (so called) than David, Moses, and Jesus Christ: for he writes to Timothy, "Them that sin rebuke before all, that others may also fear," 1 Tim. v, 20. And yet he writes to the Romans, "We that are strong should bear with the infirmities of the weak," Rom. xv, 1. Here are two plain commands; the first, not to bear with sins; and the second to bear with infirmities: a demonstration this, that there is an essential difference between sins and infirmities, and that this difference is discoverable to others, and much more to ourselves. Nay, in most cases, it is so discernible to those who have their spiritual senses properly disposed, that they can as easily distinguish between sins (properly so called) and infirmities, as a wise judge can distinguish between accidental death and wilful murder; or between unknowingly passing a false guinea with a kind intention to relieve the poor, and treasonably coining it with a roguish design to defraud the public. The difference between the sun and the moon is not more striking in the natural world, than the difference between sins and infirmities in the moral world. Nevertheless, blind prejudice will probably confound them still, to darken counsel, and to raise a cloud of logical dust, that Antinomianism (the Diana of the imperfectionists) may make her escape, and save indwelling sin, which is the claw of the hellish lion, the tooth of the old dragon, the fishing hook of Satan, and the deadly sting of the king of terrors. 8. Judicious Calvinists have seen the propriety of the distinction, for which we are represented as unsound Protestants. Of many whom I could mention, I shall only quote one, who for his piety, wisdom, and moderation, is an honour to Calvinism,-I mean the Rev. Mr. Newton, minister of Olney. In his Letters on Religious Subjects, p. 199, he makes this ingenuous confession:" The experience of past years has taught me [and I hope that, some day or other, it will also teach our other opponents] to distinguish between ignorance and disobedience. The Lord is gracious to the weakness of his people; many involuntary mistakes will not interrupt their communion with him. He pities their infirmity, and teaches them to do better. But if they dispute his knonon will, and act against the dictates of conscience, they will surely suffer for it. Wilful sin sadly perplexes and retards our progress." Here is, if I mistake not, a clear distinction made, by a true Protestant, between disobedience, or wilful sin, and weakness, involuntary mistakes, or infirmity. 9. If Mr. Hill will not regard Mr. Newton's authority, I beg he would show some respect for the authority of our Church, and the import of his own prayers. If there be absolutely no difference between wilful sins, involuntary negligences, and unavoidable ignorances; why does our Church distinguish them, when she directs us to pray in the liturgy, "that it may please God to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances?" If these three words have but one meaning, should not |