Ib.p. 26.
Jesus answered him thus—Verily, I say unto you, unless a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.—The true sense of which is obviously this:—Except a man be initiated into my religion by Baptism, (whichat that timewas alwayspreceded by a confession of faith) and unless he manifest his sincere reception of it, by leading that upright andspirituallife which it enjoins,he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, or be a partaker of that happiness which it belongs to me to confer on those who believe in my name and keep my sayings.
Upon my faith as a Christian, if no more is meant by being born again than this, the speaker must have had the strongest taste in metaphors of any teacher in verse or prose on record, Jacob Behmen himself not excepted. The very Alchemists lag behind. Pity, however, that our Barrister has not shown us how this plain and obvious business of Baptism agrees with ver. 8. of the same chapter:
The wind bloweth where it listeth
, &c. Now if this does not express a visitation of the mind by a somewhat not in the own power or fore-thought of the mind itself, what are words meant for?
Ib.p. 29.
The true meaning of beingborn again, in the sense in which our Saviour uses the phrase, implies nothing more or less, in plain terms, than this:—to repent; to lead for the future a religious life instead of a life of disobedience; to believe the Holy Scriptures, and to pray for grace and assistance to persevere in our obedience to the end. All this any man of common sense might explain in a few words.
Pray, then, (for I will take the Barrister's own commentary,) what does the man of common sense mean by grace? If he will explain grace in any other way than as the circumstances
ab extra
(which would be mere mockery and in direct contradiction to a score of texts), and yet without mystery, I will undertake for Dr. Hawker and Co. to make the new birth itself as plain as a pikestaff, or a whale's foal, or Sarah Robarts's rabbits.
Ib.p. 30.
So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.
"So that they go on in their sin!"—Who would not suppose it notorious that every Methodist meeting-house was a cage of Newgate larks making up their minds to die game?
Ib.
The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for 1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, bysetting her at liberty, while employedin the necessary business ofwashingfor her family, &c.
N. B.
Not the famous rabbit-woman.—She was Robarts.
Ib.p. 31.
A washerwoman hasall her sins blotted outin the twinkling of an eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of all that is serious, &c.
And where pray is the absurdity of this? Has Christ declared any antipathy to washerwomen, or the Holy Ghost to warm suds? Why does not the Barrister try his hand at the "abominable profanation," in a story of a certain woman with an issue of blood who was made free by touching the hem of a garment, without the previous knowledge of the wearer?
Rode, caper, vitem: tamen hinc cum stabis ad aras, In tua quod fundi cornua possit, erit.
Ib.p. 32.
The leading design of John the Baptist * * was * this:—to prepare the minds of men for the reception of that pure system of moral truth which the Saviour, by divine authority, was speedily to inculcate, and of those sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future judgment, which, as powerful motives to the practice of holiness, he was soon to reveal.
What then? Did not John the Baptist himself teach a pure system of moral truth? Was John so much more ignorant than Paul before his conversion, and the whole Jewish nation, except a few rich freethinkers, as to be ignorant of the "sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future judgment?" This, I well know, is the strong-hold of Socinianism; but surely one single unprejudiced perusal of the New Testament,—not to suppose an acquaintance with Kidder or Lightfoot—would blow it down, like a house of cards!
Ib.p. 33.
—their faiths in the efficacy of their own rites, and creeds, and ceremonies, and their whole train ofsubstitutionsformoral duty, was so entire, and in their opinion was such asaving faith, that they could not at all interpret any language that seemed to dispute their value, or deny their importance.
Poor strange Jews! They had, doubtless, what Darwin would call a specific
paralysis
of the auditory nerves to the writings of their own Prophets, which yet were read Sabbath after Sabbath in their public Synagogues. For neither John nor Christ himself ever did, or indeed could, speak in language more contemptuous of the folly of considering rites as substitutions for moral duty, or in severer words denounce the blasphemy of such an opinion. Why need I refer to Isaiah or Micah?
Ib.p. 34.
Thus it was that this moral preacher explained and enforced the duty of repentance, and thus it was that he prepared the way for the greatest and best of teachers, &c.
Well then, if all this was but a preparation for the doctrines of Christ, those doctrines themselves must surely have been something different, and more difficult? Oh no! John's preparation consisted in a complete rehearsal of the
Drama didacticum
, which Christ and the Apostles were to exhibit to a full audience!—Nay, prithee, good Barrister! do not be too rash in charging the Methodists with a monstrous burlesque of the Gospel!
Ib.p. 37.
—the logic of the new Evangelists will convince him that it is a contradiction in terms even tosupposehimselfcapable of doing any thingto helpor bringing any thing to recommend himself to the Divine favour.
Now, suppose the wisdom of these endless attacks on an old abstruse metaphysical notion to be allowed, yet why in the name of common candour does not the Barrister ring the same
tocsin
against his friend Dr. Priestley's scheme of Necessity;—or against his idolized Paley, who explained the will as a sensation, produced by the action of the intellect on the muscles, and the intellect itself as a catenation of ideas, and ideas as configurations of the organized brain? Would not every syllable apply, yea, and more strongly, more indisputably? And would his fellow-sectaries thank him, or admit the consequences? Or has any late Socinian divine discovered, that
Do as ye would be done unto
, is an interpolated precept?
Ib.p. 39.
"Even repentance and faith," (says Dr. Hawker,) "those most essential qualifications of the mind, for the participation and enjoyment of the blessings of the Gospel, (and which all real disciples of the Lord Jesus cannot but possess,) arenever supposed as a condition which the sinner performs to entitle him to mercy, but merely as evidences that he is brought and has obtained mercy.They cannot be the conditionsof obtaining salvation."
Ought not this single quotation to have satisfied the Barrister, that no practical difference is deducible from these doctrines? "Essential qualifications," says the Methodist:—"terms and conditions," says the spiritual higgler. But if a man begins to reflect on his past life, is he to withstand the inclination? God forbid! exclaim both. If he feels a commencing shame and sorrow, is he to check the feeling? God forbid! cry both in one breath! But should not remembrancers be thrown in the way of sinners, and the voice of warning sound through every street and every wilderness? Doubtless, quoth the Rationalist. We do it, we do it, shout the Methodists. In every corner of every lane, in the high road, and in the waste, we send forth the voice—Come to Christ, and repent, and be cleansed! Aye, quoth the Rationalist, but I say Repent, and become clean, and go to Christ— Now is not Mr. Rationalist as great a bigot as the Methodists, as he is,
me judice
, a worse psychologist?
Part II. p. 40.
The former authorities on this subject I had quoted from the Gospel according to St. Luke: that Gospel most positively and most solemnly declares therepentanceof sinners to be theconditionon whichalonesalvation can be obtained. But the doctors of the new divinitydenythis: they tell us distinctlyit cannotbe. For the future, the Gospel according to Calvin must be received as the truth. Sinners will certainly prefer it as the more comfortable of the two beyond all comparison.
Mercy! but only to read Calvin's account of that repentance, without which there is no sign of election, and to call it "the more comfortable of the two?" The very term by which the German New-Birthites express it is enough to give one goose-flesh—
das Herzknirschen
—the very heart crashed between the teeth of a lock-jaw'd agony!
Ib.
What isfaith? Is it not a conviction produced in the mind by adequate testimony?
No! that is not the meaning of faith in the Gospel, nor indeed anywhere else. Were it so, the stronger the testimony, the more adequate the faith. Yet who says, I have faith in the existence of George II., as his present Majesty's antecessor and grandfather?—If testimony, then evidence too;—and who has faith that the two sides of all triangles are greater than the third? In truth, faith, even in common language, always implies some effort, something of evidence which is not universally adequate or communicable at will to others. "Well! to be sure he has behaved badly hitherto, but I have faith in him." If it were otherwise, how could it be imputed as righteousness? Can morality exist without choice;—nay, strengthen in proportion as it becomes more independent of the will? "A very meritorious man! he has faith in every proposition of Euclid, which he understands."
Ib.p. 41.
"I could as easily create a world (says Dr. Hawker) as create either faith or repentance in my own heart." Surely this is a most monstrous confession. What! is not the Christian religion arevealedreligion, and have we not the most miraculous attestation of its truth?
Just look at the answer of Christ himself to Nicodemus,
John
iii. 2, 3. Nicodemus professed a full belief in Christ's divine mission. Why? It was attested by his miracles. What answered Christ? "Well said, O believer?" No, not a word of this; but the proof of the folly of such a supposition.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee; except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God
,—that is, he cannot have faith in me.
Ib.p. 42.
How can this evangelical preacher declaim on the necessity of seriously searching into the truth of revelation, for the purpose either of producing or confirming our belief of it, when he has already pronounced it to be just as possible to arrive at conviction as to create a world?
Did Dr. Hawker say that it was impossible to produce an assent to the historic credibility of the facts related in the Gospel? Did he say that it was impossible to become a Socinian by the weighing of outward evidences? No! but Dr. Hawker says,—and I say,—that this is not, cannot be, what Christ means by faith, which, to the misfortune of the Socinians, he always demands as the condition of a miracle, instead of looking forward to it as the natural effect of a miracle. How came it that Peter saw miracles countless, and yet was without faith till the Holy Ghost descended on him? Besides, miracles may or may not be adequate evidence for Socinianism; but how could miracles prove the doctrine of Redemption, or the divinity of Christ? But this is the creed of the Church of England.
It is wearisome to be under the necessity, or at least the constant temptation, of attacking Socinianism, in reviewing a work professedly written against Methodism. Surely such a work ought to treat of those points of doctrine and practice, which are peculiar to Methodism. But to publish a
diatribe
against the substance of the Articles and Catechism of the English Church, nay, of the whole Christian world, excepting the Socinians, and to call it "Hints concerning the dangerous and abominable absurdities of Methodism," is too bad.
Ib.p. 43.
But this Calvinistic Evangelist tells us, by way of accounting for the utter impossibility of producing in himself either faith or repentance, that both are of divine origin, and like the light, and the rain, and the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for man, neither waiteth for the sons of men, are from above, and come down from the Father of lights, from whom alone cometh every good and perfect gift!
Is the Barrister—are the Socinian divines—inspired, or infallibly sure that it is a crime for a Christian to understand the words of Christ in their plain and literal sense, when a Socinian chooses to give his paraphrase,—often, too, as strongly remote from the words, as the old spiritual paraphrases on the Song of Solomon?
Ib.p. 46.
According to that Gospel which hath hitherto been the pillar of the Christian world, we are taught that whosoever endeavours to the best of his ability to reform his manners, and amend his life, will have pardon and acceptance.
As interpreted by whom? By the Socini, or the Barrister?—Or by Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, the Gregories, Eusebius, Athanasius?—By Thomas Aquinas, Bernard, Thomas-a-Kempis?—By Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, Calvin?—By the Reformers and martyrs of the English Church?—By Cartwright and the learned Puritans?—By Knox?—By George Fox?—With regard to this point, that mere external evidence is inadequate to the production of a saving faith, and in the majority of other opinions, all these agree with Wesley. So they all understood the Gospel. But it is not so!
Ergo
, the Barrister is infallible.
Ib.p. 47.
When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness which he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.
In the name of patience, over and over again, who has ever denied this? The question is, by what power, his own, or by the free grace of God through Christ, the wicked man is enabled to turn from his wickedness. And again and again I ask:—Were not these "old moral divines" the authors and compilers of the Homilies? If the Barrister does not know this, he is an ignorant man; if knowing it, he has yet never examined the Homilies, he is an unjust man; but if he have, he is a slanderer and a sycophant.
Is it not intolerable to take up three bulky pamphlets against a recent Sect, denounced as most dangerous, and which we all know to be most powerful and of rapid increase, and to find little more than a weak declamatory abuse of certain metaphysical dogmas concerning free will, or free will forfeited, 'de libero vel servo arbitrio'—of grace, predestination, and the like;—dogmas on which, according to Milton, God and the Logos conversed, as soon as man was in existence, they in heaven, and Adam in paradise, and the devils in hell;—dogmas common to all religions, and to all ages and sects of the Christian religion;—concerning which Brahmin disputes with Brahmin, Mahometan with Mahometan, and Priestley with Price;—and all this to be laid on the shoulders of the Methodists collectively: though it is a notorious fact, that a radical difference on this abstruse subject is the ground of the schism between the Whitfieldite and Wesleyan Methodists; and that the latter coincide in opinion with Erasmus and Arminius, by which latter name they distinguish themselves; and the former with Luther, Calvin, and their great guide, St. Augustine? This I say is intolerable,—yea, a crime against sense, candour, and white paper.
Ib.p. 50.
"For so very peculiarly directed to the sinner, and to him only (says the evangelical preacher) is the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus, that unless you are a sinner, you are not interested in its saving truths."
Does not Christ himself say the same in the plainest and most unmistakable words?
I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick,
Can he, who has no share in the danger, be interested in the saving? Pleased from benevolence he may be; but interested he cannot be.
Estne aliquid inter salvum et salutem; inter liberum et libertatem? Salus est pereuntis, vel saltem periditantis: redemptio, quasi pons divinus, inter servum et libertatem,—amissam, ideoque optatam
.
Ib.p. 52.
It was reserved for these days ofnew discoveryto announce to mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the promised blessings of the Gospel.
Merely read
that unless they are sick they are precluded from the offered remedies of the Gospel
; and is not this the dictate of common sense, as well as of Methodism? But does not Methodism cry aloud that all men are sick—sick to the very heart?
If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
This shallow-pated Barrister makes me downright piggish, and without the stratagem of that famed philosopher in pig-nature almost drives me into the Charon's hoy of Methodism by his rude and stupid tail-hauling me back from it.
Ib.p. 53.
I can assure these gentlemen that I regard with a reverence as pure and awful as can enter into the human mind, that blood which was shed upon the Cross.
That is, in the Barrister's creed, that mysterious flint, which with the subordinate aids of mutton, barley, salt, turnips, and potherbs, makes most wonderful fine flint broth. Suppose Christ had never shed his blood, yet if he had worked his miracles, raised Lazarus, and taught the same doctrines, would not the result have been the same?—Or if Christ had never appeared on earth, yet did not Daniel work miracles as stupendous, which surely must give all the authority to his doctrines that miracles can give? And did he not announce by the Holy Spirit the resurrection to judgment, of glory or of punishment?
Ib.p. 54.
Let them not attempt to escape it by quoting a few disconnected phrases in the Epistles, but let them adhere solely and steadfastly to that Gospel of which they affect to be the exclusive preachers.
And whence has the Barrister learnt that the Epistles are not equally binding on Christians as the four Gospels? Surely, of St. Paul's at least, the authenticity is incomparably clearer than that of the first three Gospels; and if he give up, as doubtless he does, the plenary inspiration of the Gospels, the personal authority of the writers of all the Epistles is greater than two at least of the four Evangelists. Secondly, the Gospel of John and all the Epistles were purposely written to teach the Christian Faith; whereas the first three Gospels are as evidently intended only as
memorabilia
of the history of the Christian Revelation, as far as the process of Redemption was carried on in the life, death, and resurrection of the divine Founder. This is the blank, brazen, blushless, or only brass-blushing, impudence of an Old Bailey Barrister, attempting to browbeat out of Court the better and more authentic half of the witnesses against him. If I wished to understand the laws of England, shall I consult Hume or Blackstone—him who has written his volumes expressly as comments on those laws, or the historian who mentions them only as far as the laws were connected with the events and characters which he relates or describes? Nay, it is far worse than this; far Christ himself repeatedly defers the publication of his doctrines till after his death, and gives the reason too, that till he had sent the Holy Ghost, his disciples were not capable of comprehending them. Does he not attribute to an immediate influence of especial inspiration even Peter's acknowledgment of his Filiation to God, or Messiahship?—Was it from the Gospels that Paul learned to know Christ?— Was the Church sixty years without the awful truths taught exclusively in John's Gospel?
Part III. p. 5.
The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription of the regular practitioner. Why is this? Because there is something in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is overawed.
This is something; and true as far as it goes; that is, however, but a very little way. The great power of both spiritual and physical mountebanks rests on that irremovable property of human nature, in force of which indefinite instincts and sufferings find no echo, no resting-place, in the definite and comprehensible. Ignorance unnecessarily enlarges the sphere of these: but a sphere there is,—facts of mind and cravings of the soul there are,—in which the wisest man seeks help from the indefinite, because it is nearer and more like the infinite, of which he is made the image:—for even we are infinite, even in our finiteness infinite, as the Father in his infinity. In many caterpillars there is a large empty space in the head, the destined room for the pushing forth of the
antennæ
of its next state of being.
Ib.p. 12.
But the anti-moralists aver * * that they are quoted unfairly; —that although they disavow, it is true, the necessity, and deny the value, of practical morality and personal holiness, and declare them to be totally irrelevant to our future salvation, yet that * * I might have found occasional recommendations of moral duty which I have neglected to notice.
The same
crambe bis decies cocta
of one self-same charge grounded on one gross and stupid misconception and mis-statement: and to which there needs no other answer than this simple fact. Let the Barrister name any one gross offence against the moral law, for which he would shun a man's acquaintance, and for that same vice the Methodist would inevitably be excluded publicly from their society; and I am inclined to think that a fair list of the Barrister's friends and acquaintances would prove that the Calvinistic Methodists are the austerer and more watchful censors of the two. If this be the truth, as it notoriously is, what but the cataract of stupidity uncouched, or the thickest film of bigot-slime, can prevent a man from seeing that this tenet of justification by faith alone is exclusively a matter between the Calvinist's own heart and his Maker, who alone knows the true source of his words and actions; but that to his neighbours and fellow-creedsmen, his spotless life and good works are demanded, not, indeed, as the prime efficient causes of his salvation, but as the necessary and only possible signs of that faith, which is the means of that salvation of which Christ's free grace is the cause, and the sanctifying Spirit the perfecter. But I fall into the same fault I am arraigning, by so often exposing and confuting the same blunder, which has no claim even at its first enunciation to the compliment of a philosophical answer. But why, in the name of common sense, all this endless whoop and hubbub against the Calvinistic Methodists? I had understood that the Arminian Methodists, or Wesleyans, are the more numerous body by far. Has there been any union lately? Have the followers of Wesley abjured the doctrines of their founder on this head?
Ib.p. 16.
We are told by our new spiritual teachers, that reason is not to be applied to the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of their doctrines; they are spiritually discerned, and carnal reason has no concern with them.
Even under this aversion to reason, as applied to religious grounds, a very important truth lurks: and the mistake (a very dangerous one I admit,) lies in the confounding two very different faculties of the mind under one and the same name;—the pure reason or
vis scientifica
; and the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the
phænomena
of sensuous experience. The greatest loss which modern philosophy has through wilful scorn sustained, is the grand distinction of the ancient philosophers between the
Greek: noúmena
and
Greek: phainómena
This gives the true sense of Pliny—
venerare Deos
(that is, their statues, and the like,)
et numina Deorum
, that is, those spiritual influences which are represented by the images and persons of Apollo, Minerva, and the rest.
Ib.p. 17.
Religion has for its object the moral care and the moral cultivation of man. Its beauty is not to be sought in the regions of mystery, or in the flights of abstraction.
What ignorance! Is there a single moral precept of the Gospels not to be found in the Old Testament? Not one. A new edition of White's
Diatessaron
, with a running comment the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman writers before Christ, and those after him who, it is morally certain, drew no aids from the New Testament, is a grand
desideratum
; and if anything could open the eyes of Socinians, this would do it.
Ib.p. 24.
The masculine strength and moral firmness which once distinguished the great mass of the British people is daily fading away. Methodism with all its cant, &c.
Well! but in God's name can Methodism be at once the effect and the cause of this loss of masculine strength and moral firmness?—Did Whitfield and Wesley blow them out at the first puff—these grand virtues of masculine strength and moral firmness? Admire, I pray you, the happy antithesis. Yet "feminine" would be an improvement, as then the sense too would be antithetic. However, the sound is sufficient, and modern rhetoric possesses the virtue of economy.
Ib.p. 27.
So with the Tinker; I would give him the care of kettles, but I would not give himthe cure of souls. So long as he attended to the management and mending of his pots and pans, I would wish success to his ministry: but when he came to declare 'himself' a "chosen vessel," and demand permission to take the souls of the people into his holy keeping, I should think that, instead of a 'licence', it would be more humane and more prudent to give him a passport to St. Luke's. Depend upon it, such men were never sent by Providence to rule or to regulate mankind.
Whoo! Bounteous Providence that always looks at the body clothes and the parents' equipage before it picks out the proper soul for the baby! Ho! the Duchess of Manchester is in labour:—quick, Raphael, or Uriel, bring a soul out of the Numa bin, a young Lycurgus. Or the Archbishop's lady:—ho! a soul from the Chrysostom or Athanasian locker.—But poor Moll Crispin is in the throes with twins: —well! there are plenty of cobblers' and tinkers' souls in the hold—John Bunyan!! Why, thou miserable Barrister, it would take an angel an eternity to tinker thee into a skull of half his capacity!
Ib.p. 30, 31.
"Atrulyawakened conscience," (these anti-moral editors of the Pilgrim's Progress assure us,) "can never find relief from the law: (that is, themoral law.) The more he looks for peacethis way, his guilt, like a heavy burden, becomes more intolerable; when he becomesdeadto thelaw,—as toany dependence upon it for salvation,—by the body of Christ, and married to him, who was raised from the dead, then, and not till then, his heart is set at liberty, to run the way of God's commandments."Here we are taught that theconsciencecan never find relief from obedience to the law of the Gospel.
False. We are told by Bunyan and his editors that the conscience can never find relief for its disobedience to the Law in the Law itself;—and this is as true of the moral as of the Mosaic Law. I am not defending Calvinism or Bunyan's theology; but if victory, not truth, were my object, I could desire no easier task than to defend it against our doughty Barrister. Well, but I repent—that is, regret it!—Yes! and so you doubtless regret the loss of an eye or arm:—will that make it grow again?—Think you this nonsense as applied to morality? Be it so! But yet nonsense most tremendously suited to human nature it is, as the Barrister may find in the arguments of the Pagan philosophers against Christianity, who attributed a large portion of its success to its holding out an expiation, which no other religion did.