From p. 57 to the end of his second section, p. 75, he giveth us a scheme of religion, which, in his scoffing language, he says, " men learn from an acquaintance with the person of Christ; and affirms,
304) A VINDICATION OF
" that there needs no more to expose it to scorn with considering men than his proposal of it;" which therein he owns to be his design. I know not any peculiar concernment of mine therein, until he comes towai'ds the close of it ; which I shall particularly consider. But the substance of the religion which he thus avowedly attempts to expose to scorn, is the doctrine of God's eternal election ; — of his infinite wis- dom in sending: his Son to declare his righteousness for the forgive- ness of sins, or in satisfying his justice, that sin might be pardoned, to the praise of the glory of his grace; — of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ unto them that do believe; — of a sense of sin, humiliation for it, looking unto Christ for life and salvation, as the Israelites looked up to the brazen serpent in the wilderness; — of going to Christ by faitli for healing our natures and cleansing our sins; with some other doctrines of the same importance. These are the principles which, according to his ability, he sarcastically traduceth and endeavoureth to reflect scorn upon, by the false representation of some of them, and debasing others with an intermixture of vile and profane expressions. It is not impossible but that some or other may judge it their duty to rebuke this horrible (and yet were it not for the ignorance and profaneness of some men's minds, every way contemptible) petulancy. For my part I have other things to do, and shall only add, that I know no other Christian state in the world wherein such discourses would be allowed to pass vmder the signa- ture of public authority. Only I wish the author more modesty and sobriety than to attempt, or suppose he shall succeed, in exposing to scorn the avowed doctrine in general of the church wherein he lives; and which hath in the jmrts of it been asserted and defended by the greatest and most learned prelates thereof in the foregoing ages, such as Jewell, Whitgift, Abbot, Morton, Usher, Hall, Davenant, Prideaux, etc., with the most learned persons of its communion, as Reynolds, Whitaker, Hooker, Sutcliffe, etc., and others innumerable ; — testified unto in the name of this church by the divines, sent by pul)lic authority to the synod of Dort; — taught by the principal prac- tical divines of this nation ; and maintained by the most learned of the dignified clergy at this day. He is no doubt at liberty to dissent from the doctrine of the church, and of all the learned men thereof; but for a young man to suppose that, with a few loose, idle words, he shall expose to scorn that doctrine which the persons mentioned, and others innumerable, have not only explained, confirmed, and defended, with pains indefotigable, all kind of learning and skill, ecclesiastical, philosopliical, and theological, in books and volumes, which the Chris- tian world as yet knoweth, peniseth, and prizeth, but also lived long in fervent prayers to God for the revelation of his mind and truth nuto them, and in the holy practice of obedience suited unto thi
THE PRECEDING DISCOURSE. 805
doctrines they professed, — is somewhat remote from that Christian hmnility which he ought not only to exercise in himself, but to give an example of unto othera But if this be the fruit of despising the knowledge of the person of Christ, — of the necessity of his satisfaction, — of the imputation of his righteousness, — of union unto his person as our head, — of a sense of the displeasure of God due to sin, — of the spirit of bondage and adoption, — of the connption of nature, and otir disability to do any thing that is spiritually good without the effectual aids of grace ; — if these, I say, and the like issues of appearing j^ride and elation of mind, be the fruit and consequent of rejecting these principles of the doctrine of the gospel, it manifests that there is, and will be, a proportion between the errors of men's minds and the depravation of their affections. It were a most easy task to go over all the particulars mentioned by him, and to manifest how foully he hath prevaricated in their representation, — how he hath cast contempt on some duties of religion indispensably necessary unto salvation; and brought in the very words of the Scripture, — and that in the true proper sense and intendment of them, according to the judgment of all Christians, ancient and modem (as that of looking to Christ, as the Israelites looked to the brazen serpent in the wilderness), — to bear a share and part in his scorn and contempt: as also, to defend and vindicate, not his odious, disingenuous expressions, but what he invidi- ously designeth to expose, beyond his ability to gainsay, or with any pretence of sober learning to reply unto. But I give it up into the hands of those who are more concerned in the chastisement of such imaginations. Only, I cannot but tell this author what I have learned by long observation, — namely, that those who, in opposing others, make it their design to [publish] and place their confidence in false representations, and invidious expressions of their judgments and opi- nions, waiving a true stating of the things in difference, and weighing of the arguments wherewith they ai'e confirmed, — whatever pretence they may make of confidence, and contempt of them with whom they have to do, yet this way of writing proceeds from a secret sense of their disability to maintain their own opinions, or to reply to the reasonings of their adversaries in a fair and lawful disputation; or from such depraved affections as are suflicient to deter any sober person from the least communication in those principles which are so pleaded for. And the same I must say of that kind of writing (which in some late authors fills up almost every page in their books) which, beyond a design to load the persons of men with reproaches and calumnies, consists only in the collecting of passages here and there, up and down, out of the writings of others; which, as cut off from the body of their discourses, and design of the places which they belong unto, may, with a little artifice, either of addition or detrac- VOL. II. 20