and now it is but just, you should suffer me to return it. If I am not mistaken, that article is repugnant to Calvinism in two respects. (1.) It says not one word about the imputation of the demerits of Adam's first transgression; but makes original sin to consist only in the "infection of our nature;" which saps the foundation of your imaginary inputation of Adam's personal sin, and consequently ruins its counterpart, namely, your imaginary imputation of Christ's personal good works, distinct from some actual participation of his holiness. (2.) It affirms that this infection, in every person born into the world, deserves God's wrath: A strong intimation this, that it did not actually deserve that wrath, before we were actually defiled by a sinful birth or conception. Now this, if I mistake not, implies, that of all the men now living upon the earth, not one actually deserved God's wrath and damnation two hundred years ago. So that if God absolutely reprobated one man now living, three hundred, much more six thousand years ago, much more from all eternity, he did it according to Calvin's doctrine of rich, free, unprovoked, gratuitous, undeserved wrath. O ye considerate Englishmen, stand to your Articles, and you will soon shake off Geneva impositions!

Sect. VII, p. 12. You say in your moral creed about faith and works :-"Faith when genuine will always manifest its reality by bringing forth good works, and all the fruits of an holy life." Now, Sir, if you stand to this, without secret reserves about "a winter state," in which a genuine believer (so called) may commit adultery, murder and incest, for many months, without losing the character of a man after God's own heart,' and his title to heaven; you make up the Antinomian gap, you set your seal to St. James's Epistle, you ratify the Checks; and consequently you give up your Fourth Letter, which contains the very marrow of Calvinism: Unless, by some salvo of Geneva logic, you can reconcile these two propositions, which, upon the rational and moral plan of the gospel, appear to me utterly irreconcileable: (1.) Faith, when genuine,

always brings forth all the fruits of au holy life.—(2.) A man's faith may be genuine, while he goes any length in sin, aud brings forth all the fruits of an unholy life; adultery and murder not excepted.

Sect. VIII. My quotation from Dr. Owen, which sets Calvinistic contradiction in a most glaring light, seems to embarrass you much. (P. 14, &c.) You produce passage upon passage out of his writings, to shew that he explodes "the distinction of a double justification." But you know, Sir, the Doctor had as much right to contradict himself in his writings, as you to militate against yourself in your Review: (See Fourth Check, Let. 1.) Besides, I have already observed, (Fourth Check, Let. X.) that "a volume of such passages, instead of invalidating the doctrine I maintain, (or the quotation I produce,) would only prove that the most judicious Calvinists cannot make their scheme hang tolerably together." However, you say,

P. 13, 14. "He [Dr. Owen] drops not the least intimation of any fresh act of justification, which is then to pass upon a believer's person."-What, Sir, has not the Doctor said, in his Treatise upon Justification?, (p222,) "Whenever this inquiry is made, not how a sin-. ner, &c., shall be justified, which is [as we are all agreed, by faith, or to use the Doctor's unscriptural phrase] by the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to him: But how a man that professes evangelical faith in Christ shall be tried and judged; and whereon as such, [that is, as a believer,] he shall be justified : We grant that it is and must be by his own personal obedience." Now, Sir, if the Doctor has said this, and you dare not deny it, has he not said the very thing, which I contend for?

When you affirm, that he makes no mention of a fresh act of justification, do you not betray your inattention ? Does he not declare, that a sinner is justified by imputed righteousness, and that a believer as such shall be tried and justified by his own personal obedience? Now if justification is the act of justifying, are you not greatly mistaken, when you represent the

justification of a sinner by Christ's imputed righteousness, and the justification of a believer or a saint, by his own personal obedience, as one and the same act? Permit me, Sir, to refer you to the argument contained in the Fourth Check, p. 545; on which, next to the words of our Lord, (Matt. xii. 37,) I chiefly rest our controversy about justification. An argument, the answering of which (if it can be answered) would have done your cause more honour and service, than what you are pleased to iusinuate next concerning Mr. Wesley's honesty and mine.

D. Williams, out of whose book I copied my quotation from Dr. Owen, being a Calvinist, and as clear about a sinner's justification by faith as Dr. Owen hinself, for brevity's sake, left out what the Doctor says about it under the Calvinistic phrase of Christ's imputed righteousness. Here, as if D. Williams's wisdom were duplicity in me, (p. 14,) you triumph not only over me, but over Mr. Wesley, thus: "I never dare trust to Mr. Wesley or Mr. Fletcher in any quotations, &c.— More words expunged by Mr. Fletcher out of the short quotation he has taken from Dr. Owen."-But suppose I had knavishly expunged the words which D. Williams wisely left out as useless to his point, what need was there of reflecting upon Mr. Wesley on the occasion? O ye doctrines of free grace and free wrath, how long will ye mislead good men? How long will ye hurry them into that part of practical Antinomianism, which consists in rash accusations of their opponents, in a lordly contempt of their gracious attainments, and in repeated insinuations that they pay no regard to common honesty?

When a combatant is too warm, he frequently gives an unexpected advantage to his antagonist. You are an instance of it, Sir; your eagerness to reflect upon Mr. W. and me, has engaged you to present the world with a clause, which, though it was useless to the question debated by D. Williams, is of singular use to me in the present controversy, and in a decides the point. For in the passage left out by

manner

D. Williams, Doctor Owen speaks of the justification of a sinner, and says, as I have observed, that he is "justified by the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to him: And this justification he evidently opposes to that of a believer, which" says he, "is and must be by his own personal obedience." So that the world (thanks be to your controversial heat!)* sees now, that even your champion, in one of those happy moments, when the great Diana did not stand in his light, saw, and held forth the important distinction between St. Paul and St. James's justification, that is, between the justification of a sinner by Christ's proper merits, according to the first gospel-axiom; and the justification of a saint by his own personal obedience of faith, or by Christ's derived merits, according to the second gospel-axiom.

Nor is this a new distinction, you would say, a "novel chimera," among Protestants: For, looking lately in a treatise upon good works, written by La Placette, that famous Protestant champion and confessor abroad, who, after he had left his native country for righteousness'sake, was Minister of the French Church at Copenhagen, p. 272, Amst. edit. 1700, I fell upon this passage: "Les Protestants de leur cote distinguent une double justification, celle du pecheur, et celle du juste,” &c. That is, "Protestants on their part distinguish a twofold justification, that of the sinner and that of the righteous," &c. Then speaking of the latter, he adds, "The justification of the righteous, considered as an act of God, implies three things: (1.) That God acknowledges for righteous, him that is actually so: (2.) That he declares him such: And (3.) that he treats him as such." How different is this threefold act of God from that which constitutes a sinner's justification? For this justification, being also considered as the act of God, implies (1.) That he pardons the sinner: (2.) That he admits him to his favour: And (3.) That, under the Christian dispensatiou, he witnesses this double

The second instance of this heat, so favourable to my cause. may be seen in the Appendix (No. 10.)

mercy to the believing sinner's heart, by giving him a sense of the peace which passes all understanding,' and a taste of the glory which shall be revealed.' However, as if all this was a mere chimera," you say,

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P. 17. "Having fully vindicated Dr. Owen from the charge you have brought against him of holding two justifications," &c.-Nay, Sir, you have not vindicated him at all in this respect: All that you have proved, is, that he was no stranger to your logic, and that his love for the great Diana of the Calvinists, made him inconsistently deny at one time, what at another time his hatred of sin forced him to confess. Nor is this a new thing in mystic Geneva: You know, Sir, a pious gentleman, who, after militating in a book called the Review, against the declarative justification by works, which I contend for, drops these words, which deserve to be graven in brass, as an eternal monument of Calvinistic contradiction. "Neither Mr. Shirley, nor I, nor any Calvinist, that I ever heard of, denies that a sinner [should you not have said, a believer?] is declaratively justified by works, both here and at the day of judgment." (Review, p. 149.) Now, if uo Calvinist you ever heard of, denies, in his luminous intervals, the very justification which I contend for in the Checks, do you not give a Finishing Stroke to Calvinistic consistency, when you say, (p. 18,) "I am determined to prove my former assertion against you, viz. that you cannot find one Protestant divine among the Puritans, &c., till the reign of Charles II., who held your doctrines!" You mean those of a sinner's justification by faith, and of a saint's justification by works, according to Gal. ii. 16, and Matt. xii. 37. Is it not granted on all sides, that they all held the former justification? And do you not tell the world, No Calvinist that you ever heard of, denied the latter? However, while you thus candidly confess, that all Protestant divines held those capital doctrines of the Checks, I should not do you justice, if I did not acknowledge, that few, if any of them, held them uniformly and consis