_Q._ 1. IS a sense of God’s pardoning love absolutely necessary to our being in his favour? Or may there be some exempt cases?
_A._ We dare not say, there are not.
_Q._ 2. Is it necessary to inward and outward holiness?
_A._ We incline to think it is.
_Q._ 3. Is it indispensably necessary to final salvation? Suppose in a _Papist_? Or, a _Quaker_? Or, in general, among those who never heard it preached?
_A._ Love hopeth all things. We know not how far any of these may fall under the case of invincible ignorance.
_Q._ 4. But what can we say of one of our own society, who dies without it, as _J. W._ at _London_?
_A._ It may be an exempt case (if the fact was really so.) But we determine nothing. We leave his soul in the hands of him that made it.
_Q._ 5. Does a man believe any longer than he sees a reconciled God?
_A._ We conceive not. But we allow there may be infinite degrees in seeing God: even as many as there are between him who sees the sun, when it shines on his eye-lids closed, and him who stands with his eyes wide open, in the full blaze of his beams.
_Q._ 6. Does a man believe any longer than he loves God?
_A._ In no wise. For neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails, without faith working by love.
_Q._ 7. Have we duly considered the case of _Cornelius_? Was not he in the favour of God, _when his prayers and alms came up for a memorial before God_? _i. e._ Before he believed in Christ?
_A._ It does seem that he was, in some degree. But we speak not of those who have not heard the gospel.
_Q._ 8. But were those works of his, _splendid sins_?
_A._ No; nor were they _done without the grace of_ Christ.
* _Q._ 9. How then can we maintain, that all works done before we have a sense of the pardoning love of God, are sin? And, as such, an abomination to him?
_A._ The works of him who has heard the gospel, and does not believe, are not done as God hath _willed and commanded them to be done_. And yet we know not how to say, that they are an abomination to the Lord in him who feareth God, and from that principle, does the best he can.
_Q._ 10. Seeing there is so much difficulty in this subject, can we deal too tenderly with them that oppose us?
_A._ We cannot; unless we were to give up any part of the truth of God.
_Q._ 11. Is a believer _constrained_ to obey God?
_A._ At first he often is. The love of Christ constraineth him. After this, he _may_ obey, or he may not; no constraint being laid upon him.
_Q._ 12. * Can faith be lost, but through disobedience?
_A._ It cannot. A believer first inwardly disobeys, inclines to sin with his heart: then his intercourse with God is cut off, _i. e._ His faith is lost. And after this, he may fall into outward sin, being now weak, and like another man.
_Q._ 13. How can such an one recover faith?
_A._ By repenting and doing the first works, _Revelation_ ii. 5.
_Q._ 14. Whence is it that so great a majority of those who believe fall more or less into doubt or fear?
_A._ Chiefly from their own ignorance or unfaithfulness: often from their not watching unto prayer: perhaps sometimes from some defect, or want of the power of God in the preaching they hear.
_Q._ 15. Is there not a defect in us? Do we preach as we did at first? Have we not changed our doctrines?
_A._ 1. At first we preached almost wholly to unbelievers. To those therefore we spake almost continually, of remission of sins through the death of Christ, and the nature of faith in his blood. And so we do still, among those who need to be taught the first elements of the gospel of Christ:
2. But those in whom the foundation is already laid, we exhort to go on to perfection: which we did not see so clearly at first; although we occasionally spoke of it from the beginning.
3. Yet we now preach, and that continually, faith in Christ, as the prophet, priest and king, at least, as clearly, as strongly, and as fully as we did six years ago.
_Q._ 16. Do we not discourage visions and dreams too much? As if we condemned them _toto genere_.
_A._ We do not intend to do this. We neither discourage nor encourage them. We learn from _Acts_ ii. 19, &c. to expect something of this kind _in the last days_. And we cannot deny, that saving faith is often given in dreams or visions of the night: which faith we account neither better nor worse, than if it came by any other means.
_Q._ 17. Do not some of our assistants preach too much of the wrath, and too little of the love of God?
_A._ We fear they have leaned to that extreme; and hence some of their hearers may have lost the joy of faith.
_Q._ 18. Need we ever preach the terrors of the Lord to those who know they are accepted of him?
_A._ No; it is folly so to do: for love is to them the strongest of all motives.
_Q._ 19. Do we ordinarily represent a justified state so great and happy as it is?
_A._ Perhaps not. A believer walking in the light, is inexpressibly great and happy.