Hawker says,--and I say,--that this is not,
cannot be, what Christ means by faith, which, to the misfortune of the
Socinians, he always demands as the condition of a miracle, instead of
looking forward to it as the natural effect of a miracle. How came it
that Peter saw miracles countless, and yet was without faith till the
Holy Ghost descended on him? Besides, miracles may or may not be
adequate evidence for Socinianism; but how could miracles prove the
doctrine of Redemption, or the divinity of Christ? But this is the creed
of the Church of England.
It is wearisome to be under the necessity, or at least the constant
temptation, of attacking Socinianism, in reviewing a work professedly
written against Methodism. Surely such a work ought to treat of those
points of doctrine and practice, which are peculiar to Methodism. But to
publish a 'diatribe' against the substance of the Articles and Catechism
of the English Church, nay, of the whole Christian world, excepting the
Socinians, and to call it "Hints concerning the dangerous and abominable
absurdities of Methodism," is too bad.
Ib. p. 43.
But this Calvinistic Evangelist tells us, by way of accounting for the
utter impossibility of producing in himself either faith or
repentance, that both are of divine origin, and like the light, and
the rain, and the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for man, neither
waiteth for the sons of men, are from above, and come down from the
Father of lights, from whom alone cometh every good and perfect gift!
Is the Barrister--are the Socinian divines--inspired, or infallibly sure
that it is a crime for a Christian to understand the words of Christ in
their plain and literal sense, when a Socinian chooses to give his
paraphrase,--often, too, as strongly remote from the words, as the old
spiritual paraphrases on the Song of Solomon?
Ib.
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