The whole design of what remains of this section, is to insinuate that there can be no necessity of holiness or obedience imto God, unless we are justified and saved thereby; which I knew not before to have been, nor indeed do yet know it to be, the doctrine of the church of England. But be it whose it will, I am sure it is not that of the Scripture, and I have so disproved it in other discourses, which this man may now see if ho please, as that I shall not here again reas- Bume tlie same argument ; and although I am weary of consulting this woful mixture of disingenuity and ignorance, yet I shall remark some-
THE PRECEDING DISCOURSE. . 323
what on one or two passages more, and leave him, if he please, unto a due apprehension, that what remains is unanswerable scoffing.
The first is that of p. 131. " But, however, holiness is necessary with respect to sanctification : ' We have in us a new creature, 2 Cor. V. 1 7. This new creature is fed, cherished, nourished, and kept alive, by the fruits of holiness. To what end hath God given us new hearts, and new natures ? Is it that we should kill them, stifle the creature that is found in us in the womb? that we should give him to the old man to be devoured?' The phrase of this is admhable, and the reasoning unanswerable; for if men be new creatures, they will cer- tainly live new lives, and this makes holiness absolutely necessary, by the same reason that every thing necessarily is what it is: but still we inquire after a necessary obligation to the practice of hoHness, and that we cannot yet discover."
The reader wdl see easily how this is picked out of the whole dis- course, as that which he imagined would yield some advantage to reflect upon; for, let him pretend what he please to the contrary, he hath laid this end too open to be denied ; and I am no way solicitous what will be his success therein. Had he aimed at the discovery of truth, he ought to have examined the whole of the discourse, and not thus have rent one piece of it from the other. As to the phrase of sj)eech which I use, it is, I acknowledge, metaphorical ; but yet, being used only in a popular way of instruction, is sufficiently warranted from the Scriptm'e, which administers occasion and gives countenance unto every expression in it, the whole being full well understood by those who are exercised in the life of God. And for the reasoning of it, it is such as I know this man cannot answer: for the new creature, however he may fancy, is not a new conversation, nor a living holily ; but it is the principle, and spiritual ability, produced in believers by the power and grace of the Holy Ghost, enabling them to walk ill newness of life and hohness of convei-sation.. And this principle bemg bestowed on us, wrought in us, for that very end, it is necessary for us, unless we Avill neglect and despise the grace which we have received, that we walk in hohness, and abound m the fruits of right- eousness, wliereunto it leads and tends. Let him answer this if he can, and when he hath done so, answer the apostle in Hke manner; or scoff not only at me, but at him also.
The last passage I shall remark upon in this section is what he gives us as the sum of the whole. P. 135, " The sum of all is, that to know Christ is not to be thus acquainted mth his person, but to understand his gospel in its full latitude and extent; it is not the person, but the gospel of Christ which is the way, the truth, and the life, which directs us in the way to life and happiness. And again, this acquaintance with Christ's person, Avhicli these men pretend to,
32-i . A VINDICATION OF
is only a work of fancy, and teaches men the arts of hypocrisy," etc.
I do not know that ever I met with any thing thus crudely asserted among the Quakers, in contempt of the person of Christ; for whereas he says of himself expressly, " I am the way, the truth, and the life," to say he is not so (for Jesus Christ is his j^erson, and nothing else), carries in it a bold contradiction, both parts of which cannot be true. When the subject of a proposition is owned, there may be great con- troversy about the sense of the predicate; as when Christ says he is the vine: there may be so also about the subject of a proposition, when the expression is of a third thing, and dubious ; as where Christ says, " This is my body : " but when the person speaking is the sub- ject, and speaks of himself, to deny what he says, is to give him the lie. " I am the way, the truth, and the life," saith Christ ; — " He is not," saith our author, " but the gospel is so." If he had allowed our Lord Jesus Christ to have spoken the truth, but only to have added, " Though he was so, yet he was so no otherwise but by the gospel," there had been somewhat of modesty in the expression; but tliis saying, that the " person of Christ is not, — the gospel is so," is intoler- able. It is so, however, that this young man, without consulting or despising the exposition of all divines, ancient or modem, and the common sense of all Christians, should dare to obtrude his crude and undigested conceptions upon so great a word of Christ himself, countenanced only by the corrupt and false glosses of some obscure Socinians: which some or other may possibly in due time mind him of; I have other work to do.