Indeed you lamely add, _The solid and just comforts which a true martyr receives from above, are groundlesly applied to the counterfeit_. But this is not enough even to save appearances.
18. You subjoin a truly surprizing thought. ¹_It may moreover be observed, that both antient and modern enthusiasts always take care to secure some advantage by their sufferings._ O rare enthusiasts! So they are not such fools neither, as they are vulgarly supposed to be. This is just of a piece with the _cunning epileptic demoniacs_, in your other performance. And do not you think (if you would but speak all that is in your heart, and let us into the whole secret) that there was a _compact_, likewise between bishop _Hooper_ and his _executioner_, as well as between the _ventriloquist_ and the _exorcist_?
¹ Page 40.
But what _advantage_ do _they take care to secure_? A good salary? A handsome fortune? No; quite another matter: ¹_free communications with_ God, and _fuller manifestations of his goodness_. I dare say, you do not envy them: no more than you do those _self-interested enthusiasts_ of old, who _were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection_.
¹ Ibid.
19. You proceed to prove my enthusiasm from my notions of conversion. And here great allowances are to be made: because you are talking of things quite out of your sphere: you are got into an unknown world! Yet you still talk as magisterially, as if you was only running down the fathers of the primitive church.
And, first, you say, I ¹_represent conversion as sudden and instantaneous_. Soft and fair! Do you know what _conversion_ is? (A term indeed which I very rarely use, because it rarely occurs in the New Testament.) “Yes; it is, To ²_start up perfect men at once_.” (Indeed, Sir, it is not. A man is usually converted, long before he is a perfect man.) ’Tis probable, most of those _Ephesians_, to whom St. _Paul_ directed his epistle, were converted. Yet they were not _come_ (few, if any) _to a perfect man_, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
¹ Page 40.
² Page 41.
20. I do not, Sir, indeed, I do not undertake to make you understand these things. I am not so vain as to think it is in my power. ’Tis the utmost of my hope, to convince you, or at least, those who read your works, that you understand just nothing about them.
To put this out of dispute, you go on, ¹_Thus faith and being born of God, are said to be an instantaneous work, at once, and in a moment, as lightning. Justification, the same as regeneration, and having a lively faith, this always in a moment._ I know not which to admire most, the _English_ or the sense, which you here father upon me: but in truth ’tis all your own: I do not thus confound _faith_ and _being born of_ God. I always speak of them as different things: ’tis you that thus jumble them together. ’Tis you who discover _justification_ also to be the _same as regeneration, and having a lively faith_. I take them to be three different things; so different as not ever to come under one _genus_. And yet ’tis true, that each of these, “as far as I know,” is at first experienced suddenly: although two of them (I leave you to find out which) gradually increase from that hour.
¹ Page 42.
21. ¹_After these sudden conversions_, say you _they receive their assurances of salvation_. Sir, Mr. _Bedford_’s ignorance in charging this doctrine upon me, might be _involuntary_, and I am persuaded was _real_. But yours cannot be so. It must be _voluntary_; if it is not rather _affected_. For you had before you, while you wrote, the very tract, wherein I corrected Mr. _Bedford_’s mistake, and explicitly declared, “The assurance whereof I speak, is not an assurance of salvation.” And the very passages you cite from me, prove the same: every one of which (as you yourself know in your own conscience) relates wholly and solely to present pardon, not to future salvation.
¹ Page 43.
Of ¹_Christian perfection_ I shall not say any thing to _you_, till you have learned a little Heathen honesty.
¹ Page 45.
22. That this is a lesson you have not yet learned, appears also from your following section: wherein you roundly affirm, _Whatever they think, say, or do_, (i. e. the _Methodists_, according to their own account) _is from_ God. _And whatever opposeth, is from the devil._ I doubt not, but Mr. _Church_ believed this to be true when he asserted it. But this is no plea for _you_: who having read the answer to Mr. _Church_, still assert what you know to be false.
¹_Here we have_, say you, _the true spirit and very essence of enthusiasm, which sets men above carnal reasoning, and all conviction of plain scripture_. It may, or may not; that is nothing to me. I am not above either reason or scripture. To either of these I am ready to submit. But I cannot receive scurrilous invective, instead of scripture: nor pay the same regard to low buffoonery, as to clear and cogent reasons.
¹ Page 49.