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THIRD LETTER.

Hon. and Rev. Sir,

F I mistake not the workings of my heart, a concern for St. James's pure and undefiled religion excites me to take the pen once more, and may account for the readiness with which I have met you in the dangerous field of controverfy. You may poffibly think mere partiality to Mr. W. has infpired me with that boldness; and others may be ready to fay as Eliab, We know the pride and naughtinefs of thy heart: Thou art come down that thou mighteft fee the battle: But may I not answer with David? Is there not a caufe?

Is it not highly meceffary to make a stand against Antinomianifm? Is not that gigantic Man of Sin a more dangerous enemy to king Jefus, than the champion of the Philistines was to king Saul? Has he not defied more than forty days the armies and arms, the people and truths of the living God? By audaciously daring the thousands in Ifrael, has he not made all the faint-hearted among them afhamed to ftand in the whole armour of God, afraid to defend the important poft of Duty? And have not many left it already, openly running away, flying into the dens and caves of earthly-mindednefs, putting their light under a bushel, and even burying themselves alive in the noisome grave of profaneness?

Multitudes indeed ftill keep the field, ftill make an open profeffion of godliness. But how few of thefe endure hardship as good foldiers of Jefus Chrift!

How

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How many have already caft away the field of gof." pel faith, the faith which works by love! What numbers dread the Cross, the heavenly standard they should steadily bear, or refolutely follow! Whilft in pompous fpeeches they extol that of Jefus, how do they upon the most frivolous pretence refufe to take up their own! Did the maffy ftaff of Goliah's fpear feem more terrible to the frighted Ifraelites, than the daily cross to thofe daftardly followers of the Crucified? What Boanerges can spirit them up, and lead them on from conquering to conquer? Who can even make them look the enemy in the face? Alas! in their heart they are already gone back to Egypt. Their faces are but half Sionward. They give way, they draw back; -Omay it not be to perdition! May not the King of terrors overtake them in their retreat, and make them as great monuments of God's vengeance against cowardly foldiers, as Lot's wife was of his indignation against halting racers!

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But fetting allegory afide, permit me, Sir, to pour my fears into your bofom, and tell you with the utmost plainnefs my diftreffing thoughts of the religious world.

For fome years I have fufpected there is more imaginary than unfeigned faith, in most of those who pafs for believers. With a mixture of indignation and grief have I feen them carelessly follow the ftream of corrupt nature, against which they should have manfully wrestled: And by the most prepofterous miftake, when they should have exclaimed against their + Antinomianifm, I have heard them cry out against "the Legality of their wicked hearts; which, they

The word Antinomianifm is derived from two Greek words anti and nomos, which fignify against the law; and the word Legal from the Latin legalis, which means agreeable to the law.

The legality contended for in thefe letters is not a ftumbling at Chrift, and a going about to establish our own righteousness by faithlefs works: This fin, which the fcripture calls anbelief, I

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would

they faid, ftill fuggefted they were to do something in order to falvation." Glad was I therefore, when I had attentively confidered Mr. W.'s Minutes, to find they were levelled at the very errors, which gave rife to an evil I had long lamented in fecret, but had wanted courage to refift and attack.

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This evil is + Antinomianism; that is, any kind of doctrinal or practical oppofition to God's law, which is the perfect rule of right, and the moral picture of the God of love, drawn in miniature by our Lord in these two exquifite precepts, Thou shalt love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.

As the law is good if a man ufe it lawfully, fo + legality is excellent if it is evangelical. The external respect fhewn by pharifees to the law, is but feigned and hypocritical legality. Pharifees are no more truly legal than Antinomians are truly evangelical. Had ye believed Mofes, fays Jefus to people of that ftamp, ye would have believed me : but in your heart you hate his law, as much as you do my gospel.

We fee no lefs gofpel in the preface of the ten commandments, I am the Lord thy God, &c. than we do legality in the middle of our Lord's Sermon on the mount, I say whoever looketh on a woman to luft after her, bath already committed adultery in his heart. Nevertheless the latter has in all things the pre eminence over the former, for if the law thortly prefaced by the gofpel came by Mofes; Grace, the

would no more countenance than murder. The evangelical legality I want to fee all in love with, is a cleaving to Chrift by a faith which works righteousness a following him as he went about doing good; and a fhewing by St. James's works that we have St. Paul's faith.

See the note on this word in the preceding page.

gracious,

gracious, the fall difplay of the gofpel, and Truth, the true explanation and fulfilling of the law, came by Jefus Chrift.

This evangelical law fhould appear to us sweeter than the honey-comb and more precious than fine gold. We fhould continually fpread the tables of our hearts before our heavenly Lawgiver, befeeching him to write it there with his own finger, the powerful Spirit of life and love: But alas!, God's commandments are difregarded; they are reprefented as the needlefs or impracticable fanctions of that fuperannuated legalift, Moses; and if we exprefs our veneration for them, we are looked upon as people who were always ftrangers to the gospel, or are fallen into the Galatian ftate.

Not fo David: he was fo great an admirer of God's law, that he declares the godly man doth meditate therein day and night; he expreffes his tranfcendent value for it, under the fynonymous expreffions of Law, word, ftatutes, teftimonies, precepts and commandments in almost every verfe of the 119th Pfalm. And he fays of himself, O how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day.

St. Paul was as evangelically legal as David; for he knew the law is as much contained in the gofpel, as the tables of stone, on which the moral law was written, were contained in the ark. He therefore affured the Corinthians, that though he had all faith, even that which is most uncommon, and worked the greateft' wonders, it would profit him. nothing, unless it was accompanied by charity, unless it worked by love, which is the fulfilling of the law; the excellency of faith arifing, from the excellent. end it anfwers in producing and nourishing love..

Should it be objected, that St. Paul fays to the Galatians, I through the law am dead to the law that I might live to God, and to the Romans, re are: become dead to the law by the body of Chrift. I anfwer: In the Apostle's days that expreflion the Law frequently meant the whole Mofaic difpenfation; and in that fenfe every believer is dead to it, dead

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to all that Chrift has not adopted. For, (1.) he is dead to the Levitical Law, Chrift having abolished in himself the law of ordinances, Touch not, tafte not, handle not. (2.) He is dead to the ceremonial Law, which was only a fhadow of good things to come, a typical reprefentation of Chrift and the bleffing flowing from his facrifice. (3.) He is dead to the curfe attending his past violations of the moral law, for Chrift hath delivered us from the CURSE of the law, being made a curfe for us. And laftly, he is dead to the hopes of recommending himself to God, by the merit of his obedience of the moral law; for in point of merit, he is determined to know nothing but Chrift and him crucified.

To make St. Paul mean more than this, is (1.) to make him maintain that no believer can fin; for if fin is the tranfgreffion of the larv, and "the law is dead and buried," it is plain no believer can fin, as no body can tranfgrefs a law which is abolished; for where no law is, there is no tranfgreffion. (2.) It is to make him contradict St. James, who exhorts us to fulfil the royal LAW according to the fcripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyfelf. And (3.) It is to make him contradict himself: for he charges the Galatians by love to ferve one another, all the law being fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: And he affures the Hebrews that, under the new covenant, believers, far from being without God's Laws, have them written in their hearts: God himself places them in their minds. We cannot therefore with any fhadow of justice put Dr. Crifp's coat upon the Apoftle, and prefs him into the fervice of Antinomians.

And did our Lord fide with Antinomians? Juft the reverse. Far from repealing the two above mentioned royal precepts, he afferts, that on them hang all the Law and the Prophets; and had the four gofpels. been then written, he would no doubt have reprefented them as fubfervient to the establishing of the Law, as he did the book of Ifaiah, the evangelical Prophet. Such high thoughts had He of the Law,

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