According to the Methodists there is a condition,--that of faith in the
power and promise of Christ, and the virtue of the Cross. And were it
otherwise, the objection is scarcely appropriate except at the Old
Bailey, or in the Court of King's Bench. The Barrister might have framed
a second law-syllogism, as acute as his former. The laws of England
allow no binding covenant in a transfer of goods or chattels without
value received. But there can be no value received by God:--'Ergo',
there can be no covenant between God and man. And if Jehovah should be
as courteous as the House of Commons, and acknowledge the jurisdiction
of the Courts at Westminster, the pleading might hold perhaps, and the
Pentateuch be quashed after an argument before the judges. Besides, how
childish to puff up the empty bladder of an old metaphysical foot-ball
on the 'modus operandi interior' of Justification into a shew of
practical substance; as if it were no less solid than a cannon ball!
Why, drive it with all the vehemence that five toes can exert, it would
not kill a louse on the head of Methodism. Repentance, godly sorrow,
abhorrence of sin as sin, and not merely dread from forecast of the
consequences, these the Arminian would call means of obtaining
salvation, while the Methodist (more philosophically perhaps) names them
signs of the work of free grace commencing and the dawning of the sun of
redemption. And pray where is the practical difference?
Ib. p.
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