All
this any man of common sense might explain in a few words.
Pray, then, (for I will take the Barrister's own commentary,) what does
the man of common sense mean by grace? If he will explain grace in any
other way than as the circumstances 'ab extra' (which would be mere
mockery and in direct contradiction to a score of texts), and yet
without mystery, I will undertake for Dr. Hawker and Co. to make the new
birth itself as plain as a pikestaff, or a whale's foal, or Sarah
Robarts's rabbits.
Ib. p. 30.
So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.
"So that they go on in their sin!"--Who would not suppose it notorious
that every Methodist meeting-house was a cage of Newgate larks making up
their minds to die game?
Ib.
The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for
1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, by 'setting
her at liberty, while employed' in the necessary business of 'washing'
for her family, &c.
N. B. Not the famous rabbit-woman.--She was Robarts.
Ib. p. 31.
A washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in the twinkling of an
eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the
Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of
all that is serious, &c.
And where pray is the absurdity of this? Has Christ declared any
antipathy to washerwomen, or the Holy Ghost to warm suds? Why does not
the Barrister try his hand at the "abominable profanation," in a story
of a certain woman with an issue of blood who was made free by touching
the hem of a garment, without the previous knowledge of the wearer?
'Rode, caper, vitem: tamen hinc cum stabis ad aras, In tua quod fundi
cornua possit, erit'.
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