of human entreaty, will leave the sinner just where it found him. It is God alone, who can persuade Japheth to dwell in the tents of Shem, Gen. x. 27. And whenever the Lord manifests this sovereign act of his grace, be the day of life what it may, this is, in the truest sense of the Apostle's words, the accepted time, and the day of sal vation. How very awful must it be then in man, to limit the Holy One of Israel! How solemn a delusion, to make a yea and nay Gospel, in leaving things at a peradventure, which the Lord hath not made so. Oh, the blessedness of all those promises in Christ Jesus, which are all yea and amen, unto the glory of God by us. 2 Cor. 1. • Reader ! let you and I, before we prosecute the subject further, pause for a moment and contemplate the awful features of the yea and nay gospel. Sure it hath not in it a single look that is lovely. How truly opposite to what the Apostle hath elsewhere proclaimed, concerning the freeness, and fulness, and the everlasting assurance of salvation in Christ. This is a faithful saying, said Paul, (and well might he say so, being himself a living monument at the time, both of the freedom and greatness of it,) and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, 1 Tim. 1. 15. And worthy indeed it is of all acceptation, for all need it; when it be received, as it is held forth, the free and unmerited gift of God in Christ. But if it be joined with the conditions of yea and nay; that it may be a salvation as my poor soul improves it, or a condemnation if my faith, and prayers, and tears, do not come up to such and such a standard; while any thing depends upon me and my attainments, it ceaseth to be a matter of joy and glad tidings to my heart; for very sure I am, I should come short of it. And if righteousness came by the law, then Christ is dead in vain, Gal. ii. 21. Reader! it is our mercy, that the yea and nay gospel was not the creed of the apostles. Paul was so offended at the very mention of it, that he speaks of it with abhorrence; nay he almost swears to it, that such was not the gospel which he, and his faithful companions preached to the church. But, as God is true, saith Paul, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea, for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen, unto the glory of God by us,' 2 Cor. i. 18-20. Tract, No. 2, pp. 3-5. In this same tract, Christ is styled the one and the only one ordinance of heaven for salvation to every one that believeth.' In No. 5, of the same series, styled 'My Birthday,' Dr. Hawker holds the following language. Let it for a moment be supposed, that when God chose the Church in Christ, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blame before him in love, he had prevented the whole evils of the fall, in the present time-state of the Church, by creating them, and taking them to glory in Christ at once; in this case, it is true, they would never have known sin. And some, for aught I know, may think that there would have been nothing to have regretted on this account. But I am free to confess, such thoughts are not mine. Paul was taught by the Holy Ghost, to thank God that the Church had been the servants of sin, Rom. vi. 17. And I find cause to bless God for the same. What happy creatures the Church of Jesus might have been in heaven, without passing through the Egypt state of sin in this earth, I know not. But one thing I know, that upon this ground, one sweet attribute of God would never have been known: and one most endearing name and office of Jesus would, to all eternity have been always wanting.' Tract, No. 5, p. 3. In No. 1, we have the following passage. The scriptures of God in every part, trace the history of the people, whom the Patriarch Jacob predicted, should be gathered unto Shiloh, up to the source in the everlasting love of God in his Trinity of Persons to the Church. The origin of the people, as they were, and are, in Christ before all worlds: and as they will be in Christ, when all worlds are done away; is always to be connected in one view, for the clear apprehension of the subject. Their designation as the people, implies as much. It is not a people, or any people at a peradventure, undefined, or unknown; but the very identical people, which the Father from everlasting gave to the Son; whom the Son betrothed to himself for ever; and undertook to redeem from the ruins of the fall, during the time-state of the Church upon earth; and whom the Holy Ghost engaged to regenerate, and make willing in the day of his power. So that when the Shiloh was to come, and the gathering of the people was to follow that coming: all this arose, because, they were his people; not to make them his people, for that they had from everlasting been; and nothing could make them more so to all eternity. The Magna Charta of grace, had determined these things, in the antient settlements of eternity. For the fall did not, because in fact it could not, do away the relationship between Christ and his Church. The Church of Christ, was still the Church of Christ, amidst all her foul, and filthy, and debased state of sin. The people that are now gathered to Shiloh, or in the generations yet to come, will be gathered to Him; were, and are, as truly belonging to Him before they are gathered, as they are, after being gathered. Yea, the redeemed now in heaven, are not a jot more in the scale of relationship now they are there; than when below. For under all the leprous condition, to which sin hath reduced the Church; Christ was, and is, as truly her Head, and Husband; as when originally chosen by the Father, she came up in the view of the divine mind, holy, and without blame, before him in love, Ephes. i. 4. For as the sweet love song of Christ to his Church, expresseth it: many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it, Song viii. 7; so could not all the cataracts of sin, which deluged the Church at the fall, wash away the relationship, to Christ; or the love of Christ; who having loved his own which are in the world, he loveth them to the end, John xiii. 1.' Tract, No. 1, pp. 7, 8. Once more, in No. 8, the strayed sheep of Christ,' is comforted in the following style. And here to compress as much as possible, a subject of such magnitude, within a little compass; I shall beg to consider the whole and every case of the sheep, departed from the fold, under one and the same character. For however diversified, in their departure, by greater or less marks of obliquity; a longer, or shorter absence, yet one general feature belongs to the strayed, and the wanderer, and the backslider. Neither can either of himself return, until brought back by sovereign grace. Never will the sheep in nature come back to the sheepfold, from the mountain, whither he hath strayed; until the Shepherd hath found it out. And in like manner, the wanderers from Christ's fold will feel no grace in themselves to return, until grace from the Lord hath entered their heart. I stay not neither, to enter into all the particulars, that might be enumerated, respecting the aggravated cases which more, or less, are found in all. The numberless, nameless situations of evil, would fill a volume, were the awful departures, even in a single individual, brought forward to view. I will take for granted, what perhaps the major part of backsliders would be free to confess: namely, that they have fallen into deeper waters of sin, since they knew the Lord, than before. I have known such, in the calls to sick rooms during the many years exercise of my ministry. And I have read also of others in the sacred word of God, much to the same amount. But what is the upshot of the whole, when summed up? namely this, what is man, yea the best of men, in his highest attainments, if left to himself a moment? Oh! what a feather to the wind of temptation? what a prey to the lusts of his own corrupt nature? what a bubble to himself, when forming any thing in his own strength? let any child of God, yea let every child of God, who hath been brought acquainted with the plague of his own heart; but look into himself, and in the current of a single day, call to mind, if he can, what passeth, and repasseth, in the multitude of vain thoughts, and vain words, and vain actions; to say nothing of the great inlets, and outlets, to evil: and what must his conclusion be but this, if divinely taught, that they, and they only are safe, which are kept by the power of God, through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time, 1 Pet. i. 5. No. 8. pp. 10, 11. After reading these passages, one can feel no surprise that the Writer who could print them should exclaim, in one of his usual random discourses, "How dare any man get into the pulpit, and preach progressive sanctification? Whoever talks of progressive sanctification is guilty of high treason against the Majesty of Heaven. I will mention a text which shall tingle in the ears of such as hold this doctrine: If any man preach any other gospel, let him be accursed. It is a heresy little less than idolatry." Cottle's Strictures, p. 113. No doctrine is so zealously, constantly, and furiously opposed by Dr. Hawker, as that of progressive sanctification. Speaking of his former ignorance on this subject, he writes: Falling in with the too generally received notion in what are called gospel churches, that a life of grace in the creature is a life of progressive holiness,-like horses in a team, where ' each follows his leader, I trotted on in the beaten path with the many,' &c. 'What is grace?" he exclaims in a sermon taken down by Mr. Cottle. Grace is the Lord himself. We cannot grow in the Lord. It is said, "Grow in grace." Ignorant preachers don't understand this, and misinterpret it. What says Paul? Paul had no experience of progressive holiness. Twenty-three years after his conversion, he said, "O wretched man that I am!" This is a tolerably fair sample of Dr. Hawker's intrepidity in disposing of Scripture. In like manner, in his Poor Man's Commentary, he gets rid of the Apostolic injunction, "Follow "after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord,"by expounding this holiness to be the imputed righteousness of Christ. On Gal. v. ver. 6-15. his whole comment is as follows: Great part of what is here said hath particular respect to the church of Galatia for the time then being. On these subjects I always use shortness. And the many passages here and there interspersed in this paragraph, are so plain as to need no comment.' Verse 24 in the same chapter: "They that are Christ's, have "crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts"-is passed over without any comment. But these are, after all, some of the more moderate and guarded specimens of the theology of Dr. Hawker and his school. The horrible and blasphemous language which Mr. Cottle cites from the lips of some of his votaries, we dare not transcribe. We regret the necessity that such expressions should be dragged to light; but it is necessary in order to expose the true character of this most pestilent heresy. Mr. Cottle pledges his honour, that the following sentences are absolutely verbatim from the lips of Dr. Hawker's officiating and approved curate, in 1822, a Mr. Babb.* 'People make a great noise about spreading Christianity, but it is no Christianity. Institutions and societies are all busy in spreading Mr. Babb's successor is still plainer, if possible: ' a Christian: it is a good thing; it keeps him down.' Sin is good for false religion, producing, according to the appointment of God, a strong delusion that they might believe a lie, and so be eternally damned. These societies are all hastening the reign of the Man of Sin, and the sooner this reign comes, the better, that the triumphs of Satan may be over, and the true Christianity universally prevail. 'Give yourselves no concern about your faith. Having once had it, you cannot lose it. It is not in your own keeping; God keeps it, and it is safe. • You will never be better, or more holy, to the day of your death, than you are at this moment. [Repeated.] There is not a devil in hell that is more sinful and depraved than is every one here present. From our first thought in the morning to our last at night, there is nothing in us but what is vile and devilish. It is the same in God's dear people, and thereby Christ is honoured in saving such sinks of iniquity. There is not a devil in hell who is more sinful.' &c. For many years past, Dr. Hawker has denounced missions to the heathen as a daring infringement on the sovereignty of God.' The Bible Society, he has termed the devil's society. The deaths of the Rev. Andrew Fuller and the Rev. Thomas Scott, he has declared to be awful deaths.' This is speaking out. Nor can it be said, to use the words of Howe on another occasion, that herein Satan is transformed into an angel of light: his transformation is at least in this very inartificial.' Mr. Vaughan is a man of a somewhat different stamp from the Plymouth school: he is a scholar, and, we understand, a gentleman; far less popular and winning as a declaimer than the voluble vicar of Charles, more sternly, and elaborately, and honestly erroneous. He seems to aspire to be the Antinomian Zeno, and he presents us the metaphysics and the impieties of Bayle mixed up with misty dogmas of his own. As a specimen of his peculiar phraseology, we may take the following sentence from the preface to the sermon before us. What in justice (was there) in God's ordaining to form such a substance as the mystical Christ-to be his chief and central • manifester?' In his familiar pulpit expositions, it is not uncommon to hear him say: Now you see, the typicality and the mysticality of the thing is this-do you take that?"-The Supreme Being is styled in this sermon, (p. 37,) the Restless Worker who doeth all things.' At p. 31, this question is propounded: But is God equally guiltless and sinless in having continued to do the creature's sin? At p. 29, occur these words: and how he (God) continues to stimulate them to the perpetration of sin.' At p. 4, Mr. Vaughan broadly affirms, that there is not one work, good or bad, suggested or 'performed, but what is according to his will, yea, in obe |