Because it did not, in the least, agree
With the plain text (as it appear'd to me)
Nor with your comment, on what God had done
To save mankind, by his redeeming Son.
You did, if I remember right, admit
That other means, if he had so thought fit,
Might have obtain'd the salutary views,

As well as those which he was pleas'd to choose;
That it was too presumptuous to confine,
To those alone, th' Omnipotence divine;
As if a wisdom infinite could find
No other method, how to save mankind:
Tho' that, indeed, which had been fix'd upon,
Was, in effect, become the only one.

Now this, however well design'd, to raise
An awful sense, by its respectful phrase,
An adoration of the boundless pow'rs

Of the Almighty, when compar'd with ours;
To sink in humble rev'rence, and profound,
All human thoughts of fixing any bound
To an unerring wisdom, which extends
Beyond what finite reason comprehends;
Yet, if examin'd by severer test,
It is, at least, incautiously exprest;
And leaves the subtlest of the gospel's foes,
The Deists, this objection to propose,

To which they have, and will have, a recourse,
And still keep urging its unanswer'd force.

"If there was no necessity," they say,
"For saving men in this mysterious way,
What proof can the divines pretend to bring,
(While they confess the nature of the thing
Does not forbid) that the celestial scenes
Will not be open'd by some other means?
What else but book authority, at best,
Asserts this way, exclusive of the rest,
Of equal force, if the Almighty's will
Had but appointed them to save from ill?
This way, in which the Son of the most High
Is, by his Father's pleasure, doom'd to die,
For satisfaction of paternal ire;

Which (when they make religion to require)
Confounds all sense of justice, by a scheme
The most unworthy of the great supreme:
As other ways might have obtain❜d the end,
Nature and reason, force us to attend
To huge absurdities which follow this,
And, since it was not needful, to dismiss."
This is the bourdon of deistic song,
Which rising volumes labour to prolong;
Take this away, the rest would all remain
As flat and trifling, as it is profane;
But this remaining, hither they retreat,
And lie secure from any full defcat.

But when the need, most absolute, is shown
Of man's redemption, by the means alone,
The birth, and life, and death, and re-ascent,
Thro' which the one the-andric Saviour went,
To quench the wrath of nature in the race
Of men (not God, in whom it has no place)
Then scripture, sense, and reason coincide,
And all conspire to follow the one guide;
Of possibilities to wave the talk
In which it is impossible to walk;
And raise the soul to seek, and find the good,
By this one method, which no other could.
Then true religion, call it by the name
Christian, or natural, is still the same;
From Christ deriv'd, as healer of the soul,
Or nature, made by his re-entrance whole;

Who is, in ev'ry man, th' enlightning ray,
The faith, and hope, of Love's redeeming day;
The only name, or pow'r, that can assure
Nature's religion, that is, nature's cure:
But if salvation might have been bestow'd
By other means, than what the sacred code
Declares throughout, the Deists will soon say,
The means, that might be possible, still may;
And, led to think that scripture is at odds
With nature, take some other to be God's:
Thus may a no-necessity, allow'd,
Tend to increase the unbelieving crowd.

As Adam died, and in him all his race,
Not to the life of nature, but of grace;
There could be no new birth of it, or growth,
But from a parent union of them both;
Such as, in ev'ry possible respect,
Jesus incarnate only could effect;

From him alone, who had the life, could men
Have it restor❜d, renew'd, reviv'd again:
But I am trespassing too much I fear,
And preaching when my province is to hear-
Millions of ways could we suppose beside,
This, we are sure, which saving love has tried,
Must be the best, must be the straightest line
Of action, when consider'd as divine;
This way alone then must as sure be gone,
As that a line, if straight, can be but one.

ON THE SAME SUBJECT, WRITTEN UPON

ANOTHER OCCASION.

MANKIND'S redemption you are pleas'd to say,
By Jesus Christ, was not the only way
That could succeed; indefinitely more
Th' Almighty's wisdom had within its store;
By any chosen one of which, no doubt,
The same redemption had been brought about.

For who shall dare, you argue, in this case,
To limit the omnipotence of Grace?
As if a finite understanding knew
What the Almighty could, or could not do:
Tho', since he chose this method, we must own,
That our dependence is on this aloue.

"I am the truth"-whence it appears anew, That no way else could possibly be true: "I am the life"-to which, as Adam died, Nothing could bring mankind again, beside.

[be,

Not from repenting Publicans be heard?
Will the devout amongst the Christian flock
Not be accepted, tho' the priest should mock?
If they do right in their appointed spheres,
His want of truth and spirit is not theirs.

Our Lord's apostles, with an inward view
To reconcile the Gentile and the Jew,
To faith in him, made ev'ry outward care

WHO

SECTARIST,

INVEIGHED IN BITTER TERMS AGAINST
THE CLERGY AND CHURCH INSTITUTIONS.

No, sir; I cannot see to what good end
Such bitter words against the clergy tend;
Pour'd from a zeal so sharp, so unallay'd,
That suffers no exception to be made;
While the most mild persuasions to repress
The bitter zeal still heighten its excess.

Its own relentless thought while it pursues,
What unrestrain'd expressions it can use!
Places of worship, which the people call
Churches, are synagogues of Satan all;
At all liturgic pray'r and praise it storms,
As man's inventions, spirit-quenching forms;
And, from baptismal down to burial rite,
Sets ev'ry service in an odious light:
All previous order, with regard to time,
Place, or behaviour, passes for a crime.

Of pharisaic pride it culls the marks,
To represent the bishop and his clarks ;
Who are, if offer'd any gentler plea,
The Devil's ministers, both he and they; [train
Blind guides, false prophets, and a lengthen'd
Of all hard words that chosen texts contain:
These are the forms which, when it would object
To those in use, it pleases to select;
Repeated by its devotees, at once,
As like to rote as any church response:
Nor is a treatment of this eager kind
To this, or that society confin'd,
Sect, or profession-no, no matter which,
Leaders, or led, all "fall into the ditch;"
None but its own severe adepts can claim
Of truth and spirit-worshippers the name.
In vain it seeks, by any sacred page,
To justify this unexampled rage:
Prophets of old, who spake against th' abuse
Of outward forms, were none of them so loose
As to condemn, abolish, or forbid

The things prescrib'd, but what the people did;
Who minded nothing but the mere outside,
Neglecting wholly what it signified;
At this neglect the prophets all exclaim'd;
No pious rites has any of them blam'd;
Their true intent was only to reduce
All outward practice to its inward use.

The World's Redeemer, coming to fulfil
All past predictions of prophetic quill,
Who more, amidst the Jewish priestly pride,
Than he, with all Mosaic rites compli'd?
Say that the Christian priests are, now, as bad
As those blind leaders which the Jews then had,
Was Zachariah's, Simeon's, Anna's mind,
Any good priest, or man, or woman blind,
To offer incense, or to bear a part
In temple service, with an upright heart?

Can then the faults of clergymen, or lay, Destroy heart-worship at this present day?

The greatest christian friend to freedom, Paul,
Intent to save, was ev'ry thing to all;

To keep whatever forms should rise, or cease,
Union of spirit in the bond of peace;
Th' effects of hasty, rash, condemning zeal
He saw, and mourn'd, and labour'd to repeal.
Succeeding saints, when priest, or magistrate
Became tyrannical in church, or state,
Reprov'd their evil practices, but then
Rever'd the office, tho' they blam'd the men:
They gave no instance of untemper'd heat,
That roots up all before it, tares or wheat;
As if, by humanly invented care

Of cultivation, wheat itself was tare:
'Tis true, all sects are grown corrupt enough,
But zeal so indiscriminately rough,
May well give others reason to suspect
Some want of knowledge in a novel sect,
(If such there be) that seems to take a pride
In satanizing all the world beside;
Without the least authority, yet known,
Or species of example, but its own,

One mischief is, that its unguarded terms
Hurt many sober truths which it affirms ;-
Worship in truth and spirit suffers too,
By being plac'd in such an hostile view:
"Oh! but all self-will worshipping is wrong".
True; but to whom does that defect belong?
Is the obedience to a rule, or guide,
For order's sake, fair proof of such a pride?
If it be none at all for men to broach
Rude, harsh, and undistinguishing reproach,
With resolution to repeat it still,
Pray by what marks are we to know self-will?

THOUGHTS ON IMPUTED
RIGHTEOUSNESS,

OCCASIONED BY READING THE REV. MR. HER-
VEY'S DIALOGUES, BETWEEN THERON AND
ASPASIO.

A FRAGMENT.

IMPUTED righteousness!-beloved friend,
To what advantage can this doctrine tend?
If, at the same time, a believer's breast
Be not by real righteousness possest;
And if it be, why volumes on it made
With such a stress upon imputed laid?

Amongst the disputants of later days,
This, in its turn, became a fav'rite phrase,
When, much divided in religious schemes,
Contending parties ran into extremes;
And now it claims th' attention of the age,
In Hervey's elegant and lively page:
This his Aspasio labours to impress,
With ev'ry turn of language and address;
With all the flow of eloquence, that shines
Thro' all his (full enough) embellish'd lines.

Tho' now so much exerting to confirm
Its vast importance, and revive the term,
He was himself, he lets his Theron know,
Of diff'rent sentiments not long ago;

And friends of yours, it has been thought, I find,
Have brought Aspasio to his present mind.
Now having read, but unconvinc'd, I own,
What various reason for it he has shown,
Or rather rhetoric-if it be true,
In any sense that has appear'd to you,
I rest secure of giving no offence,

By asking-how you understand the sense?
By urging, in a manner frank and free,
What reasons, as I read, occur to me,
Why righteousness, for man to rest upon,
Must be a real, not imputed, one.

To shun much novel sentiment, and nice,
I take the thing from its apparent rise:
It should seem then, as if imputed sin
Had made imputed righteousness begin;
The one suppos'd, the other to be sure,
Would follow after-like disease and cure:
Let us examine then imputed guilt,
And see on what foundation it is built.

As our first parents lost an heavenly state,
All their descendents share their hapless fate;
Forewarn'd of God, when tempted, not to eat
Of the forbidden tree's pernicious meat;
Because incorporating mortal leaven
Would kill, of course, in them, the life of Heav'n:
They disobey'd, did Adam, and his wife,
And died of course to their true heav'nly life:
That life, thus lost the day they disobey'd,
Could not by them be possibly convey'd;
No other life could children have from them,
But what could rise from the parental stem:
That love of God, alone, which we adore,
The life so lost, could possibly restore:
Their children could not, being born to Earth,
Be born to Heaven, but by an heavenly birth:
God found a way, explain it how we will,
To save the human race from endless ill;
To save the very disobeying pair;
Aud made their whole posterity his care.

Has this great goodness any thing akin To God's imputing our first parents sin To their unborn posterity?-What sense In such a strange, and scriptureless pretence? For the men feel-so far we are agreed, The consequences of a sinful deed; Yet where ascrib'd, by any sacred pen, But to the doers, is the deed to men? Where to be found, in all the scripture thro', This imputation, thus advanc'd anew?

Adam and Eve, by Satan's wiles decoy'd, Did what the kind commandment said-avoidTo them, with justice therefore, you impute The sin of eating the forbidden fruit; And ev'ry imputation must in fact, If just, be built on some preceding act; Without the previous deed suppos'd, the word Becomes unjust, unnatural, absurd.

If, as you seem'd to think the other day, All Adam's race, in some mysterious way, Sinn'd when he sinn'd; consented to his fall; With justice then impute it to them all: But still it follows, that they all contract An imputation founded upon fact: And righteousness of Christ, in Christian heirs, Must be as deeply, and as truly theirs,

An heav'nly life in order to replace,
As was the sin that made a guilty race:
So that imputing either good, or ill,
Must presuppose a correspondent will;
Or else imputers certainly must make
Thro' ignorance, or other cause, mistake.

Old Eli thus, not knowing what to think,
Imputed Hannah's silent prayer to drink:
Little supposing that it would prepare
A successor to him, her silent pray'r.
There may be other meanings of the phrase,
To be accounted for in human ways;
But God's imputing to the future child
The sin, by which his parents were beguil'd,
Seems to establish an unrighteous blame,
That brings no honour to its Maker's name.

God's honour, glory, majesty, and grace,
I grant, is your intention in the case;
But wish revolv'd in your impartial thought,
How far the doctrine tends, when it is taught,
To such an honest purpose; and how far
Justice and truth may seem to be at war,
If God impute to guiltless children crimes,
Committed only in their parents times.

Pious Aspasio, I imagine, too,
Had God's resistless sovereignty in view;
The charge of Puritan, or other name,
He scorn'd aright, and making truth his aim,
Found it, he thought, in eminent divines;
Of whose opinion these are the outlines:
They think, at least they seem to represent,
That God, in honour, upon sin's event,
Could not forgive the sinuers that had stray'd,
Without a proper satisfaction made
To his offended justice; and because,
Upon their breach of the Almighty's laws,
None else was adequate to what was done,
The vengeance fell on his beloved Son;
Who gave himself to suffer in our stead,
And thus to life again restor'd the dead;
Because, consistently with justice, then
God could bestow his mercy upon men:
Man had contracted, in that fatal day,
Debt so immense, that man could never pay;
He who was God as well as Man, he could;
And made the satisfaction thro' his blood;
Paid all the just demand-imputed thus
Our sin to him, his righteousness to us-
This sets the doctrine, if I take aright
Their words and meaning, in the plainest light.
Now since accounting for the truth amiss
May give distaste, in such an age as this;
And be a stumbling-block to them who might
Receive an explanation, that was right;
Not as a captious foe, but hearty friend,
May one entreat such teachers to attend,
And reconcile their system, if they can,
To God's proceeding with his creature man;
To that paternal, tender love and grace,
Which at man's fall immediately took place;
That inward, holy thing, inbreathed then,
Which would re-kindle Heav'n in him again:
Does wrath, or vengeance, or a want appear
Of satisfaction, or of payment here,
In man's creator? For mankind bad he
A purchas'd grace, which contradicts a free?
Is it not plain, that an unalter'd love
Sent help to poor fall'n creatures from above.
Unbargain'd, unsolicited, unmov'd,
But by itself, as its exertion prov'd;

No foreign promise; no imputed ease; But remedy as real as disease;

That would, according to true nature's ground,
Bring on the cure, and make the patient sound.
That Christ, that God's becoming man was it,
Your friends, with highest gratitude, admit;
Whose utmost talents are employ'd to show
The obligations that to him we owe;

To press the object of our faith and trust,
Christ, all in all, the righteous, and the just;
The true, redeeming life-essential this
To ev'ry Christian who aspires to bliss;
Why not subjoin-I cite the hero Paul,
And make appeal to Christians-in you all?
Form'd in you, dwelling in you, and within
Regenerating life, dethroning sin;
Working, in more and more resigned wills,
The gradual conquest of all selfish ills;
Till the true Christian to true life revive,
Dead to the world, to God, thro' him alive.
What num'rous texts from Paul, from ev'ry
Might furnish out citations, did we want? [saint,
And could not see, that righteousness, or sin,
Arise not from without, but from within?
That imputation, where they are not found,
Can reach no farther than an empty sound;
No farther than imputed health can reach
The cure of sickness, tho' a man should preach
With all the eloquence of zeal, and teil
How health imputed makes a sick man well;
Indeed, if sickness be imputed too,
Imputed remedy, no doubt, may do;
Words may pour forth their entertaining store,
But things are just-as things were just before.
In so important a concern, as that
Which good Aspasio's care is pointed at,
A small mistake, which at the bottom lies,
May sap the building that shall thence arise:
Who would not wish that architect, so skill'd,
On great mistake might not persist to build;
But strictly search, and for sufficient while,
If the foundation could support the pile?

This imputation, which he builds upon,
Has been the source of more mistakes than one:
Hence rose, to pass the intermediate train
Of growing errours, and observe the main,
That worse than pagan principle of fate,
Predestination's partial love and hate;
By which, not ty'd, like fancy'd Jove, to look
In stronger Destiny's decreeing book,
The God of Christians is suppos'd to will
That some should come to good, and some to ill;
And for no reason, but to show, in fine,
Th' extent of goodness, and of wrath divine.

Whose doctrine this? I quote no less a man
Than the renowned Calvin for the plan;
Who baving labour'd, with distinctions vain,
Mere imputation, only, to maintain,
Maintains, when speaking on another head,
This horrid thought, to which the former led:
"Predestination here I call," (says he
Defining) "God's eternal, fix'd decree;
Which, having settl'd in his will, he past,
What ev'ry man should come to at the last ;"
And lest the terms should be conceiv'd to bear
A meaning less than he propos'd, severe,
"For all mankind" (he adds to definition)
"Are not created on the same condition:"
Pari-conditione-is the phrase;

If you can turn it any other ways;

"But life to some, eternal, is restrain'd, To some, damnation endless pre-ordain'd."

Calvin has push'd the principle, I guess, To what your friends would own to be excess; And probably Aspasio, less inclin'd To run directly into Calvin's mind, Would give imputing a more mod'rate sense, That no damnation might arise from thence: But how will mollifying terms confute The fam'd reformer's notion of impute? If it confer such arbitrary good, 'The dire reverse is quickly understood; So understood, that open eyes may see "Tis Calvin's fiction, and not God's decree: Not his, whose forming love, and ruling aid, Ceaseless extends to all that he hath made; Who gave the gift which he was pleas'd to give That none might perish, but that all might live, His only Son, in whom the light, that guides The born into the world to life, resides: A real life, that by a real birth Raises a life beyond the life of Earth, In all his children-But no more to you, Better than me, who know it to be true; And if Aspasio's really humbled soul Be by a touch of garment hem made whole, He might, as I should apprehend, be sure That imputation could not cause the cure: When the poor woman, in the gospel, found Touch of the Saviour's clothes to make her sound, We know the virtue did from him proceed, That, mix'd with faith, restor'd her, as we read: Gone out of him obliges to infer,

That 'twas by faith attracted into her.

ON THE NATURE OF FREE GRACE,

AND THE CLAIM TO MERIT FOR THE PERFORM-
ANCE OF GOOD WORKS.

GRACE to be sure is, in the last degree,
The gift of God, divinely pure and free;
Not bought, or paid for, merited, or claim'd,
By any works of ours that can be nam'd.

What claim, or merit, or withall to pay,
Could creatures have before creating day?
Gift of existence is the gracious one,
Which all the rest must needs depend upon.

All boasting then of merit, all pretence
Of claim from God, in a deserving sense,
Is in one word excluded by St. Paul-
"Whate'er thou hast, thou hast receiv'd it all.”

But sure the use of any gracious pow'rs,
Freely bestow'd, may properly be ours;
Right application being ours to choose,
Or, if we will be so absurd, refuse.

In this respect what need to controvert
The sober sense of merit, or desert?
Works, it is said, will have, and is it hard
To say deserve, or merit their reward?

Grace is the real saving gift; but then,
Good works are profitable unto men;
God wants them not; but, if our neighbours do,
Flowing from grace, they prove it to be true.

A SOLILOQUY,

ON READING A DISPUTE ABOUT FAITH AND
WORKS.

WHAT an excessive fondness for debate
Does this dividing faith from works create!
Some say, salvation is by faith alone-
Or else, the gospel will be overthrown:
Others, for that same reason, place the whole
In works, which bring salvation to a soul.

Gospel of Christ, consistently apply'd,
Unites together what they both divide:
It is itself, indeed, the very faith

That works by love, and saves a soul from wrath:
A new dispute should some third party pave,
Nor faith nor works, but love alone would save.

The Solifudian takes a test from Paul,
And works are good for nothing, faith is all;
Doctrine, which his antagonist disclaims,
And shows how works must justify, from James;
A third, in either, soon might find a place,
Where love is plainly the exalted grace.

There is no end of jarring system found,
In thus contending not for sense, but sound;
For sound, by which th' inseparable three
Are so distinguish'd, as to disagree;
Altho' salvation, in its real spring,

Faith, work, or love, be one and the same thing.

One pow'r of God, or life of Christ within,

Or Holy Spirit washing away sin;

Not by repentance only; or belief
Only, that slights a penitential grief,
And its meet fruits, and justifies alone
A full conceiv'd assurance of its own;

Nor by works only; nor, tho' Paul above
Both faith and works have lifted it, can love
Have, or desire to have, th' exclusive claim,
In mens salvation, to this only fame;
By all together souls are sav'd from ill,
Whene'er they yield an unresisting will.

God has a never-ceasing will to save,
And men, by grace, may savingly behave:
This would produce less fondness for a sect,
And more concern about the main effect;
Then faith alone might save them from the fall,
As one good word, in use, that stood for all,

By native union, all the blessed pow'rs Of grace, that makes salvation to be ours, One in another, spring up in the breast, No soul is sav'd by one without the rest; Since then they all subsist in any one, Division ceases, and dispute is gone.

299

THOUGHTS ON PREDESTINATION AND

REPROBATION.

A FRAGMENT.

FLATTER me not with your predestination,
Nor sink my spirits with your reprobation:
From all your high disputes I stand aloof,
Your pre's and re's, your destin, and your proof,
And formal, Calvinistical pretence,
That contradicts all gospel, and good sense.
When God declares, so often, that he wills
All sort of blessings, and no sort of ills;
That his severest purpose never meant
A sinner's death, but that he should repent:
For the whole world, when his beloved Son
Is said to do whatever he has done,
To become man, to suffer and to die,
That all might live, as well as you and I;
Shall rigid Calvin, after this, or you,
Pretend to tell me that it is not true?
But that eternal, absolute decree
Has damn'd beforehand either you, or me,
Or any body else? That God design'd,
When he created, not to save mankind,
But only some? The rest, this man maintain'd,
Were to decreed damnation pre-ordain'd:
No, sir; not all your metaphysic skill
Can prove the doctrine, twist it as you will.

I cite the man for doctrine, so accurst,
In book the third, and chapter twenty-first,
Section the fifth-an horrid, impious lore,
That one would hope was never taught before;
How it came after to prevail away,

Let them, who mince the damning matter, say;
And others judge, if any Christian fruit
Be like to spring from such a pagan root.

Pagan-said I-I must retract the word,
For the poor pagans were not so absurd;
Their Jupiter, of gods and men the king,
Whenever he ordain'd an hurtful thing,
Did it because he was oblig'd to look,
And act, as Fate had bid him, in a book:
For gods and goddesses were subject, then,
To dire necessity, as well as men;
Compell'd to crush an hero, or a town,
As Destiny had set the matter down.

But in your scheme, 'tis God that orders ill,
With sov'reign pow'r, and with resistless will;
He, in whose blessed name is understood
The one eternal will to ev'ry good,

Is represented, tho' unty'd by Fate,
With a decree of damning, to create
Such, as you term the vessels of his wrath,
To show his pow'r, according to your faith:
Just as if God, like some tyrannic man,
Would plague the world, to show them that he can:
While others, (they, for instance, of your sect)
Are mercy's vessels, precious and elect;

Who think, God help them! to secure their bliss
By such a partial, fond conceit as this.

Talk not to me of popery and Rome, Nor yet foretel its Babylonish doom; Nor canonize reforming saints of old, Because they held the doctrine that you hold; For if they did, altho' of saint-like stem, In this plain point we must reform from them: While freed from Rome, we are not tied, I hope, To what is wrong in a Geneva pope; Nor what is right should surname supersede Of Luther, Calvin, Bellarmine, or Bede.