Chapter XV: Part II: p. 14

It behoved him (Dr. Hawker in his Letter to the Barrister) to show in
what manner a covenant can exist without terms or conditions.

According to the Methodists there is a condition,--that of faith in the power and promise of Christ, and the virtue of the Cross. And were it otherwise, the objection is scarcely appropriate except at the Old Bailey, or in the Court of King's Bench. The Barrister might have framed a second law-syllogism, as acute as his former. The laws of England allow no binding covenant in a transfer of goods or chattels without value received. But there can be no value received by God:--'Ergo', there can be no covenant between God and man. And if Jehovah should be as courteous as the House of Commons, and acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Courts at Westminster, the pleading might hold perhaps, and the Pentateuch be quashed after an argument before the judges. Besides, how childish to puff up the empty bladder of an old metaphysical foot-ball on the 'modus operandi interior' of Justification into a shew of practical substance; as if it were no less solid than a cannon ball! Why, drive it with all the vehemence that five toes can exert, it would not kill a louse on the head of Methodism. Repentance, godly sorrow, abhorrence of sin as sin, and not merely dread from forecast of the consequences, these the Arminian would call means of obtaining salvation, while the Methodist (more philosophically perhaps) names them signs of the work of free grace commencing and the dawning of the sun of redemption. And pray where is the practical difference?

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, (which 'at that time' was
always 'preceded by a confession of faith') and unless he manifest his
sincere reception of it, by leading that upright and 'spiritual' life
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 being 'born 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, by 'setting
her at liberty, while employed' in the necessary business of 'washing'
for her family, &c.

N. B. Not the famous rabbit-woman.--She was Robarts.

Ib. p. 31.

A washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in 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 of 'substitutions' for 'moral duty',
was so entire, and in their opinion was such a 'saving 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 to 'suppose' himself 'capable of doing any
thing' to help 'or 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,) are 'never 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
conditions' of 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?