a very narrow circle. Whether the compliment you pay to your own great name, or your want of confidence in the truth of your own caufe, be the most prominent in this curious sentence, I fhall leave others to determine. Meanwhile I fhould be glad to know who this defcription of people is, that are fo ready to receive the doctrine; and on whose account you kept a prudent filence, till I " compelled you to pursue a different conduct." You add,

3d. "Your two letters appeared to me to contain fo many mifapprehenfions and fuch a quantity of perverfion of the plain meaning of Scripture, that I felt it a kind of hopeless undertaking to go about to correct them.”

These are your reafons for not anfwering my letters before. If, as you intimate in your fecond reason, the univerfal doctrine is dangerous to the morals of a certain description of men; and if I had fo perverted the meaning of Scripture, as you intimate in your third reafon, I fhould have thought that you would not have kept filence, no, not for an hour; but have borne an immediate teftimony against fo dangerous an error, which was fupported by so manifest a perversion of the word of God. But the hopeleffness of the undertaking prevented the exercise of your zeal! I do not fee, my dear Sir, that you have any occafion for despairing thoughts; you certainly have the popular fide of the queftion; you are fure of fuperiority of numbers; you have the prejudices of both profeffor and profane in your favour; add to this, that you have the free use of a publication of which I am the editor, fo that I am actually making known your objections against my own fentiments, and inviting mankind to read, judge, and determine. · Prudence might have dictated a very contrary conduct to me, and have whispered," it might be as well to let it alone," and if I had been confcious of any "weaknefs" of my cause, I probably fhould have hearkened to the voice of prudence TRUTH COURTS THE PUBLIC OBSERVATION of men.

but

I thank you for your civility in permitting me either to pay myself a compliment, or load myself with a cenfure, concerning what you said of my fpeculative disposition. I fully abfolve you from any intention of compliment to me in the use of that term; but I ftill think that you meant to convey a cenfure; for, to say that a man is of" a fpeculative difpofition," would be enough to ruin a minister's character, in most orthodox baptift churches in England.

I have neither more time or inclination for ". a wrangle about words" than yourself. I am willing to fubmit a com

parison

parison of my two letters with this of yours to all the world in this point. Hitherto you have been wrangling merely about words, and I have been under the difagreeable neceffity of following you, in hopes of coming to the subject, but as yet have been disappointed.

You fay I have not told you whether I claim an exemption from endless punishment as a right, but feem to wish you to think that this is not my ground. Really, Sir, I do not care a ftraw which way you think of it in the present state of the controverfy. It behoves you to prove that endless mifery is threatened in Scripture to any defcription of finners whatever. This is what you affirm and I deny. Prove your point, and every thing else follows of courfe; but till then I fhall efteem all this as mere quibble, raised only to hide the main question.

Having, by your own confeffion, infpected the first and le cond volumes of the Univerfalift's Mifcellany, you cannot be ignorant that I admit correfpondents of very different fentir ments to my own, your reference to other parts of the Micel lany, not written by me, and making me aufwerable for the fentiments, is as reasonable as though I fhould refer to the fentiments of a great number of Calvinifts, and make you an, fwerable for them all, however different they might be from your own. Surely you might content yourself with pointing out my own "many mifapprehenfions," and expofing my own "perverfions of the plain meaning of Scripture," fince you affirm I have fo much and fo many of them.

.

You remind me of a part of your fecond question, which you fay I have given no answer to. I apprehend that I did return a competent answer to this, from page 41 to 44 of the first volume of the Univerfalift's Mifcellany, to which the reader is referred; but for your fatisfaction, Sir, I will add to it. "What doctrine befides that of Univerfal Salvation," fay you, "will you find in the Bible which affords encouragement to a finner going on ftili in his trefpaffes, and which furnithes ground for hope and joy, even fuppofing him to persevere in fin till death?" You triumphantly add, "Was this queftion equally irrelative to the fubject as to the doctrine of election?" I answer, the fame question may be asked with the fame propriety concerning the Calviniftic doctrine of Election.. It only requires an affumption in the one cafe which you have made in the other. Let us try---What doctrine befides that of unconditional unfruftrable election do you find in the Bible which affords encouragement to a finner going on in his trefpaffes, and which furnishes ground for hope and joy, even fupe

pofing him to persevere in them till death? I have expretsly allowed that it will be always ill with the wicked--that a finner, as fuch; can have no enjoyment of God; but that God will purfue fin, in every ftate in which it is found, with his difpleasure. And this I have fuppofed to be perfectly confiftent with the reftitution of all things. You have, I think, without reafon, affumed, that this view of things" affords en couragement to a finner going on still in his trespasses, and furnishes ground for hope and joy, even fuppofing him to perfevere in fin till death." Let the world judge whether your queftion does not go on an unfounded affumption, which applies as much to the doctrine of election as to that of the reftoration of all things. When you have proved, or at least attempted to prove, that your question is founded on fact, I may then either confefs its truth, or expofe its falfehood more fully.

In your next fection (fee p. 231.) you go on in the fame unfounded manner, fuppofing me to raise the hopes of the ungodly part of my audience with respect to the duration of future punishment, &c. and then fuppofing me to be ashamed to look them in the face another day, and especially to look him in the face who hath charged me to be pure from the blood of all

men.

You blame me for not answering this, and afk again, "Was this equally irrelative to the subject as to the doctrine of election I answer it was, equally fo. I might fuppofe as many things upon the one fubject as you upon the other, and neither of us suppose any thing to the purpose. Pray, Sir, inform the world what argument there is in a firing of fuppofitions? and what blame is to be attached to that man who is charged with not answering them. I looked your question full in the face, and admitted the full latitude of God's threatenings towards finners, and the execution of them too; contending, at the fame time, that all punishment is limitted; for which I gave, not a ftring of fuppofitions, but a variety of reafons: among other things I obferved, that your third question was founded upon the idea that my views invalidate the threatenings of God towards finners (vol. i. p. 45). To all this you have wifely faid----nothing.

But you have reprefented me as faying that the whole of your third question proceeded upon the fuppofition of my denying all future punishment. I refer you to my letter again, Sir, for the correction of your judgment in this point. There you will find, that when I confidered your third queftion, namely, "Whe ther my ministrations on this principle (of the universal doc

trine will not favour of HIS, who taught our firft parents, Yet fhall not furely die?" I answered, If I thought that there fhould not be any future punishment, your infinuation would not be without reafon; but the ground of your question, with all its train of fuppofitions, I ftated to be as above. I do not charge you with wilful perverfion of truth; but I think if you had attended to the fubject in a direct and open manner, instead of raising duft to hide it, by mifrepresenting your opponent, you would not have furnished this proof to the public eye of talents for fair and plain reasoning being perverted by a fyftem."

Hitherto I have found nothing in your letter that is immediately to the point, but have been forced to fhape my course after you. If the reader fhould find it not fo profitable as might be wifhed, he will recollect that it is a course which I had not the chufing of.

As in your next fection you have the appearance of leaving fuppofition and infinuation, and ufing fome fort of argument, I wish to give your reasons their full weight; I will not, therefore enter upon them at this time, but give them a fair and cool difcuffion in fome fubfequent letters.

OCT. 9, 1799.

Yours, &c.

W. VIDLER.

THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH.

Continued from P. 282.

SECTION II.

T now remains to be confidered what we are to learn from the temper of mind that Jonah fhewed against the divine mercy, and from the inftructive fign which God condefcended to 'make use of to reprove and put him to filence.

Jonah being an Ifraelite, and knowing the difference which God had made from the beginning betwixt Ifrael and the reft of the nations, and knowing no former inftance of God's fending any prophet to preach repentance to the idolatrous nations, was very averfe to this new and ftrange commiffion, which he received, especially as he was fent to that city, whose kings were now, by the extent of their power, become formidable to the house of Ifrael.

This averfion of his to God's admitting the Ninevites to repentance, appears to have been exceeding obftinate; not only by his desperate flight from the prefence of the Lord, at

the

the first: but by his juftifying that flight after all that had befallen him, upon the appearance of God's mercy to Nineveh; and with great earnestness and discontent repeating before God the reafon he had given for it at the firft, faying, "For I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, flow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteft thee of the evil."

Where fhall we find a more lively picture of the envy and wrath fhewn by the self-righteous Jews against the falvation (or reftoration) of God fent unto the gentiles? If we confider Jonah, then, as a figure of the Jews, in their envy at the freedom and unbounded extent of the divine grace, we shall eafily fee the extenfive use and importance in God's condefcending, in the manner he does, to perfuade Jonah of the folly of his wrath, and no less the emptiness of that sneer against it, as “humouring the caprice of a foolish man."

Now this view of Jonah will not appear perplexed to those who confider the public use and importance which is intended by God's particular conduct with his fervant.Job, with the patriarchs of the Jewish nation, and many other of his prophets and fervants; or to thofe who confider the fins of the Jewish nation, as well as of particular perfons, to be recorded not only as facts, but also as parables. Jonah in this cafe very fitly represents his own nation in their prejudice against all other nations: and God, in rooting out a national prejudice which had taken its rife from its own inftitution, very properly uses his miraculous power in the fign by which he inftructs Jonah; even as he judged it meet to remove the prejudice of the apoftle Peter by like means. However odd and unaccountable Jonah's behaviour toward God may feem to inattentive people, yet Jonah well knew, that the people for whose benefit he wrote it down, were all filled with the fame temper; and the more fully he acted up to the temper, and the more obdurate he was against being perfuaded out of it, with so much the more weight and force it behoved the divine inftruction given him to be conveyed to them. —— And why was this particular account of God's treating the perverfe obftinacy of one Ifraelite with fuch patience, and fo tender, though powerful means of conviction, recorded by the direction of the spirit of God in the facred Scriptures, to be publicly read by the Jews, unless defigned as a foundation for future inftruction to that nation? For, from the time of Jonah to the time of Chrift, there was no fuch thing as God's calling any of the heathen to repentance, aside from the Jews, fo no proper opportunity of making full application to the inftruction conveyed in the ftory of Jonah.