must understand all the difficulties of Quantity and whether it consist of Divisibles or Indivisibles and must understand the differences of Matter and the reason why he can bite one sort of Matter with his Teeth but can make no impression upon another and how the parts of matter hang together and the like There is a more general indistinct apprehension of things which is sufficient to govern our Actions though we do not understand all the Niceties and Philosophy of them But if our Author can find such subtilties in those plain matters which are taught Children in the Church-Catechism which are objections that will indifferently lie against the plainest Instructions what does he think of those sublime matters of the Eternal Decrees and Counsels of God Election and Reprobation and such-like Mysteries which are so familiarly thrust into Catechisms What subtilty is required in Children to understand these deep Points and to comprehend the subtil and artificial Schemes of Orthodoxy This is much like another Cavil against the intelligibleness of our Union with Christ I am sure says our Author that our Union with Christ is an Union No doubt Sir and if it be so it cannot be very easie to be understood because the Metaphysical notion of Union is as difficult as any other transcendental term Why then let the Metaphysicians dispute it out but for all that I can easily understand and I believe any one else can what it is to be related to Christ as Subjects are to their Prince and Disciples to their Master and Wives to their Husbands c. This is enough to give the Reader a taste of our Authors Skill and should I add any more it might bring my own discretion into question for next to making foolish and cavilling Objections it is an argument of a very little Wit to answer them And therefore to proceed Dr. Owen observes that I have writ against his Book which was writ and published near twenty years since I confess I do not well understand the force of this Objection unless he imagine that his Book is now grown venerable for its antiquity but where-ever the force of it lies I am sure it answers another grand Objection against me which is so often repeated that I am a Young Man a defect which time will mend and which Industry will supply However I suppose the Doctor was not very old twenty years ago and it argu'd some Modesty in the young Man rather to attack a Book writ by the Doctor when he was a young Man too than rudely to assault his Writings of a later date which may be presumed to be the effects of a more mature Judgement and riper years and I hope this consideration will plead my excuse with him for not undertaking that task which he has so kindly allotted me right or wrong to answer all his late voluminous Treatises which I think I may as soon be perswaded to do as to read them that magnificent Title of Exercitations which used to be prefixed before some learned Discourses invited me to take a little taste of them till I found my self mistaken and deceived with some jejune or trite Observations which has so put me out of conceit with flattering Titles that I shall never again believe the Titles of Books or Chapters for his sake But this Book has had the approbation of as Learned and Holy Persons it may be as any the Doctor knows living in England or out of it who owning the Truth contained in it have highly avowed its Usefulness and are ready yet so to do I fear that either the Doctor 's Acquaintance with Learned and Holy Men is not very great or that this is not true for I cannot conceive how very holy men should so approve a Book which is so little a Friend to Holiness or that learned men should be pleased with such loose and inconsequent Reasonings but let that be as it will I am sure there are as learned and as holy men who do as little approve it unless the Doctor thinks that Learning and Holiness are confined to his own Party or that the approbation of his Writings is the only sure test of Mens Learning and Holiness But the great charge of all which runs thorow his whole Book is that I have mis-represented his words and perverted his sense which sometimes he attributes to ignorance sometimes to malice sometimes he calls it an impudent falshood sometimes flagitiously false and shows very great Skill at varying phrases which he is much better at than at writing Controversies Whether this Charge be true or not shall be examined particularly as far as I can reduce the several particulars of this Charge into any order But to abate the wonder a little I must inform my Reader that this is Dr. Owen's way of answering Books to deny those Doctrines which he dares not own or cannot vindicate I am not the first who have been charged with such falsifications Mr. Baxter was taxed with it long since in a whole Book written for that very purpose intitled Of the Death of Christ and of Iustification the Doctrine concerning them formerly deliverd vindicated from the Animadversions of Mr. R. B. where this grave man is corrected as magisterially as if he had been such another Stripling as my self Towards the conclusion of that Discourse I meet with a very excellent Prayer If I must engage again in the like kind I shall pray That He from whom are all my supplies would give me a real humble frame of heart that I may have no need with many pretences and a multitude of good words to make a cloak for a Spirit breaking frequently thorow all with sad discoveries of Pride and Passion and to keep me from all magisterial insolence pharisaical supercilious self-conceitedness contempt of others and every thing that is contrary to the Rule whereby I ought to walk It is great pity that Forms of Prayer are not lawful for this is too good a Prayer to be used but once in a mans life which I doubt is one reason why we see no better effects of it in the Doctors Writings But there is a heavier Charge than all this behind which is frequently hinted by Doctor Owen and more expresly managed by Mr. Ferguson who in his Preface tells his Readers That I treat the sacred Writers with as much contempt as I do T. W. and Burlesque the Scripture no less than others have done Virgil's Poems This would be a terrible Adversary were he as good at his proofs as he is bold and daring in his Charge This is a crime of a very high nature to burlesque Scripture and the foulness of the imputation might justly have provoked a tamer man than my self did not his weak and ridiculous proofs more deserve contempt than any serious resentment He waves the proof of this in his Preface but in his second Chapter where he entertains his Readers with a tedious impertinent Discourse about Metaphors and
the Laws of earthly Marriages and Suretiship c. the only answer I can get from Dr. Owen and his Friends is That Christ is not such a Husband and Surety and Mediator as men are but is all this in an eminent manner that there is something peculiar in him which cannot be affirmed of any other Now this is the answer I desired but could not hope that they had so little wit as to give it for this is plainly to acknowledge that all their Arguments are fallacious for if there be such a vast difference between the Notion of a Husband and Surety and Mediator and the several Duties and Offices of these Relations as applied to men and as applied to Christ then we cannot argue from one to the other this is plainly to give away the best Arguments they have for the Imputation of Christs Personal Righteousness in their sense and with them to yield up the Cause For now before they argue from Christs being our Husband that therefore we have a title to his Personal Righteousness as a Wife has to her Husbands Estate they must prove from express Texts of Scripture that this is the Law of our spiritual Marriage before they argue from Christs being our Surety that therefore we are but one Person with him and that whatever he did as our Surety is accounted as much ours as if we had done it our selves they must prove that this is the Scripture-notion of Christs Suretiship and had they taken this course I dare say I might have looked long enough for an Answer before it had come And here as not finding a fitter place for it I shall briefly take notice of that Defence which Dr. Owen has made for his way of Reasoning from Christs being our Mediator to prove the Imputation of his Personal Righteousness to us Though I must recal that word Defence for indeed he has made none but appeals to the ingenuity of his Readers and leaves his Book to defend it self which it may be supposed to be very well able to do at the age of twenty years especially against a young Adversary And first he would willingly insinuate that I had not truly or fairly related his words but then on a sudden he takes courage and roundly asserts whatever I had charged him with That the Lord Christ fulfilled all Righteousness as Mediator and that what he did as Mediator he did it for them whose Mediator he was or in whose stead and for whose good he executed the Office of a Mediator before God And here he first very nicely distinguishes between these two Propositions Christ as Mediator fulfilled all Righteousness in our stead and Christ being Mediator in our stead fulfilled all Righteousness for us and very truly observes that I do not understand the difference between them and it would have been charitably done of him to have shown the difference for I am still so dull as not to perceive it If Christ as Mediator in our stead fulfilled all Righteousness for us then he must fulfil it in our stead for he is therefore supposed to fulfil Righteousness for us because he acted in our stead which can be no reason unless he acted in our stead in fulfilling Righteousness which I think is much the same with fulfilling Righteousness in our stead And indeed the Doctor himself does expresly assert this in so many words That this Obedience was performed by Christ not for himself but for us and in our stead So that it seems He himself did not understand the difference of these expressions then and I am sure can show no difference now Though I cannot blame the Doctor for being willing to shift off this expression That Christ fulfilled all Righteousness in our stead as fore-seeing the consequence of it that this must needs discharge us from the Obligations of a Personal Righteousness For if Christ have fulfilled the Righteousness of the Law in our stead the Law can no more exact Obedience from us than it can inflict Punishment on us a perfect Righteousness is all the Law can require of us and since we have perfectly obeyed the Law in Christ our Mediator it can make no farther Demands of us Which is to set up the personal Righteousness of Christ in opposition to his Laws and Religion Now as bad a consequence as this is if Dr. Owen would speak consistently with his own Principles he can never avoid it for the foundation of all his Arguments to prove that Christs Righteousness is made ours in a Law-sense is that Christ as our Surety and Mediator fulfilled all Righteousness in our stead for take away this and there is no more reason why the Righteousness of Christ should in his sense be reckoned ours than why the Righteousness of Abraham or Moses or St. Paul should be imputed to us And yet supposing this true That Christ fulfilled all Righteousness in our stead it necessarily overthrows their fundamental Notion of our Justification by the Imputation of Christs Righteousness to us for if he did it in our stead it becomes ours without an Imputation It would be necessary indeed that God should accept of Christ as our Surety and Mediator to act in our stead which may be reckoned an act of favour and accordingly that Christ should fulfil all Righteousness in our stead but when this is done there needs no imputation to make it ours Whatever is done in our stead by a Proxy or Substitute appointed and allowed to act for us becomes ours according to strict Law and Justice and needs not the acceptation of Grace and Mercy which is the Scripture-notion of Imputation to make it so Christs Righteousness would become ours by his acting in our stead without any consequent Imputation And yet to see how Absurdities multiply suppose we take it in Dr. Owen's sense that Christ is only a Mediator in our stead this is a manifest contradiction for it supposes that the Middle may stand in the place of either of the Extreams for a Mediator is a middle Person between two contending Parties and therefore his Office is to act between them both and not in the stead of either And to say that Christ is a Mediator in our stead supposes that we ought to have been Mediators that is middle Persons between God and our selves nay indeed that we are so in the Person of Christ for otherwise though he may be a Mediator on our behalf and for our good yet he cannot mediate in our stead In the next place I made it appear that we cannot argue from the general notion of a Mediator that his Personal Righteousness shall be imputed to those for whom he is Mediator for a Mediator is one who interposes between two differing Parties to accommodate the difference but it was never heard of yet that it was the Office of a Mediator to perform the terms and conditions himself which I shewed particularly in the example of Moses And here the
no where taught to draw from such Premises which makes an Acquaintance with the Person of Christ a new way of discovering Divine Truths distinct from the Revelations of the Gospel and if this be once acknowledged to be a good way of reasoning men may as well draw such Conclusions as are no where to be found in Scripture as those which are By the same Argument the Doctor proves what the desert of Sin is the demerit of Sin is such that it is altogether impossible that God should pass by any the least unpunished How does this appear Why from the Person who suffered for it who was the only Son of God and if God would have done it for any passed by sin unpunished he would have done it in reference to his only Son but he spared him not The sum of which Argument is this that because God would not spare his only Son after he had determined that he should die as a Sacrifice for sin therefore he could not spare him and therefore the demerit of Sin is such that it is impossible God should suffer it to go unpunished which is indeed a pretty Argument but whether it be true or false it is no Scripture Argument and therefore may serve for another instance of this new way of reasoning from the knowledge of Christ. This may suffice at present to make good my Charge that the Doctor sets up an acquaintance with the Person of Christ as a new medium of saving knowledge distinct from the Revelations of the Gospel from whence we may clearly and savingly learn those Divine Truths which though they are pretended to be contained in the Gospel yet are not clearly and savingly to be learnt thence without this knowledge of the Person of Christ the plain meaning of which is that men must first reason from what Christ hath done and suffered and thence form their Notions and Theories of Religion and then it is very hard if they cannot find some obscure ambiguous or metaphorical expressions in Scripture to countenance such conceits But this Book of Communion out of which I have transcribed these passages was writ near twenty years since and therefore to do the Doctor all the right we can let us consider whether in his later Writings he hath expressed himself more cautiously in this matter In his second Volume on the Hebrews a Book of a very late date p. 20. I find this observation A diligent attentive consideration of the Person Offices and Work of Iesus Christ is the most effectual means to free the Souls of men from all entanglements of errors and darkness and to keep them constant in the profession of the truth This is the very same Doctrine we had before that we must learn Divine Truths which is much the same with being delivered from errors and darkness by a knowledge of the Person and Offices of Christ For the explaining of this he tells us there must be a diligent searching into the Word wherein Christ is revealed to us The Scriptures reveal him declare him testifie of him to this end are they to be searched that we may learn and know what they so declare and testifie Thus far it is very well and would men confine their knowledge of Christ and Divine Truths to the Revelation of the Gospel it would be an infallible preservative against all Error But I do not so well understand what he adds towards the conclusion of that Discourse Unto him Christ and the knowledge of him is all our study of the Scripture to be referred and the reason why some in the perusal of it have no more light profit or advantage is because they have no more respect unto Christ in their enquiry If he be once out of our eye in searching the Scripture we know not what we do nor whither we go no more than doth the Mariner at Sea without regard to the Pole-star Truths to be believed are like Believers themselves all their life power and order consist in their relation to Christ separated from him they are dead and useless This is very profound and Mysterious we must search the Scriptures to know Christ and the knowledge of Christ must direct us in expounding the Scripture as the Pole-star does the Mariner to steer a safe and direct Course We must consider all Truths in their relation to Christ which gives life and power and order to them I wish the Doctor had given us some examples of this for I confess I cannot understand it In p. 23. he tells us But here lies the root of mens failings in this matter They seek for truth of themselves and of other men but not of Christ what they can find out by their own endeavours what other men instruct them in or impose upon them that they receive few have that faith love and humility are given up to that diligent contemplation of the Lord Christ and his Excellencies which are required in those who diligently wait for his Law so as to learn the truth of him So that it seems by eying Jesus Christ in searching the Scriptures he means a diligent contemplation of the Lord Christ and his Excellencies which will be a safer guide to all true saving knowledge than all other enquiries whatsoever so that still we must learn all Sacred Truths from the knowledge of Christ's Person and Excellencies And indeed this he expresly tells us in the same Page All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in Christ and therefore from him alone to be received and in him alone to be learned In the due consideration of the Lord Christ are these Treasures opened unto us There is not the least line of truth how far soever it may be extended and how small soever it may at length appear but the springs of it lie in the Person of Christ and then we learn it aright when we learn it in the spring or as it is in him Eph. 4. 21. which when we have done we may safely trace it down and follow it to its utmost extent If there be any sense to be made of this Discourse it must be this that we must learn all Divine Truths from a consideration of the Lord Christ his Person and Excellencies c. because the Springs of all truth lie in the Person of Christ and without such a serious consideration of the Person of Christ to direct and steer our Course the study of the Gospel will avail us nothing That it is to no great purpose to understand Gospel Truths unless we can find out the springs and the Center of them in the Person of Christ He that looks upon Gospel truths as Sporades as scattered up and down independently one of another who sees not the Root Center and Knot of them in Iesus Christ it is most probable that when he goes about to gather them for his use he will also take up things quite of another nature But it may be we may understand the Doctor better if
perswade the world that it has been the great design of late days to cavil at his Writings and to load his Person with reproaches and accordingly that I principally intended my Book against himself and his Book because he was the Author of it which as he says will at last prove to be its only guilt and crime What a mighty conceit has the Doctor of himself to think that he is so considerable that so many men should make it their business to oppose him He might have been quiet for ought I know had he not been troublesome to others and set up for the Great Champion of the Cause and his former miscarriages might have been buried in silence had he not forc'd men to publish them But I assure him as for my own part that I did not principally design that Discourse against him nor any other man much less against any party but against those foolish and absurd Doctrines whoever were the first Inventers or Patrons of them which debauch the practise of Christianity and turn the plain Revelations of the Gospel into unintelligible Mysteries I envy no mans Reputation when it is consistent with the interest of Religion nor do I think that any mans Reputation ought to be so dear to us as to forego the most useful and necessary Truths rather than let the World know that such Men of Name and Renown have been in a mistake But it may be the Looking-Glass-Maker may see more than other men though there is some danger lest such persons should draw other mens faces by the reflection of their own however let us hear what he has to say And he very gravely proves that my design could not be good by several arguments For first if it had then before I had charged any Opinion I ought fairly to have stated and candidly represented that Opinion but may not the want of this sometimes be a defect in Skill not a failure in Honesty Or else what will become of many of his good Friends who are not much versed in Logick and never were acquainted with this knack of stating things fairly But he adds This I seldom find him to do and if I had said I never found him so to have done I should not lie though perhaps I might be mistaken Now I know not how to help him only would advise him the next time to use his Spectacles instead of a Looking-glass and then I hope he may see better and discover a great many things fairly stated Secondly He says That I ought never to charge any man with those consequences of an Opinion which I know to be disowned and disavowed by him Now how this comes in I cannot tell for he has not the confidence to charge me with doing so though he would willingly insinuate that I do But the third is a heavy charge That I draw a bad sense out of words which are capable of a good sense which is a great Sin against God and my Neighbour Now this I confess is a great crime if by capable he means when according to the common acceptation of the words and use of phrases and circumstances of the place and the avowed Doctrines and Principles of the Author it appears to be intended otherwise but when the phrase is doubtful and ambiguous and on purpose contrived so to conceal those Doctrines which cannot endure the clear and open light or when those expressions which may be capable of a good sense are by a traditionary exposition generally understood in a bad sense especially if the bad sense be most agreeable to the professed Principles of the Writer and such phrases be delivered without an express caution against the bad sense in these cases it is no fault to expound such expressions to the worst sense but a great charity to mens Souls to warn them against such easie and obvious mistakes But this is a great charge and therefore let us hear how he proves it He gives too instances of it one with respect to Doctor Owen's Doctrine concerning an Acquaintance with Christs Person this I shall let pass at present because I shall meet with it again in the Doctor but his other instance on which he insists is with reference to Mr. Shephard I show how impossible it is according to some mens Principles to discover our Union to Christ and Justification by him by the marks of Sanctification and among other things I observe That when they have a mind to take down the confidence of men who are apt to presume too soon that their condition is good they do so magnifie the attainments of Hypocrites who shall never go to Heaven that it is impossible for any sanctified man to do more than a Hypocrite may do This I make good by a large citation out of Mr. Shephard's Sincere Convert And here he first quarrels that I say some men do so and prove it only from Mr. Shephard These men I see will never be pleased sometimes they quarrel that I name any body and sometimes that I name no more but I can assure this Gentleman that this was not Mr. Shephard's private Opinion and shall make it good when I find more of his Mind to require a proof of it The wrong which he supposes I have done Mr. Shephard is this That I bring him in answering the Pleas of several Hypocrites for themselves and then suppose the same man to make all these Pleas for himself which is not fair or just As for instance the man accused of Hypocrisie or at least suspected pleads for himself that he has reformed those Vices he once lived in that he prays often that he fasts sometimes as well as prays that he hears the Word of God and likes the best Preachers that he reads the Scriptures often that he is grieved and sorrowful for his past sins that he loves good men and their company that he has more knowledge than others and keeps the Lords day strictly and has many very good desires and endeavours to get to heaven and performs all these Duties with Life and Zeal and is constant and perseveres in godly courses and is conscious to himself of his own Sincerity in all this that he does all this with a good heart for God That Mr. Shephard objects all this in the person of one man whom he designs after all to prove a Hypocrite is so evident that nothing could excuse our Author for supposing that he spoke this in the persons of several men that one pleaded one thing for himself and another another but only his confession that he had not read the Book and how far that will excuse him let others consider Mr. Shephard begins thus In what hast thou gone beyond them that think they are rich and want nothing who yet are poor and miserable and naked Thou wilt say haply first I have left my sins I once lived in c. So that this is but the first thing such a man objects or