Is it not intolerable to take up three bulky pamphlets against a recent
Sect, denounced as most dangerous, and which we all know to be most
powerful and of rapid increase, and to find little more than a weak
declamatory abuse of certain metaphysical dogmas concerning free will,
or free will forfeited, 'de libero vel servo arbitrio'--of grace,
predestination, and the like;--dogmas on which, according to Milton, God
and the Logos conversed, as soon as man was in existence, they in
heaven, and Adam in paradise, and the devils in hell;--dogmas common to
all religions, and to all ages and sects of the Christian
religion;--concerning which Brahmin disputes with Brahmin, Mahometan
with Mahometan, and Priestley with Price;--and all this to be laid on
the shoulders of the Methodists collectively: though it is a notorious
fact, that a radical difference on this abstruse subject is the ground
of the schism between the Whitfieldite and Wesleyan Methodists; and that
the latter coincide in opinion with Erasmus and Arminius, by which
latter name they distinguish themselves; and the former with Luther,
Calvin, and their great guide, St. Augustine? This I say is
intolerable,--yea, a crime against sense, candour, and white paper.
Ib. p. 50.
"For so very peculiarly directed to the sinner, and to him only (says
the evangelical preacher) is the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus,
that unless you are a sinner, you are not interested in its saving
truths.
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