Acerbion has left the communion of his father, and is become an ecclesiastic of high note in a more powerful and splendid church. He seldom puts a volume into the press without sourness and hard words in it, against the society which he has forsaken. His pen is dipt in gall daily, and he grows old in malice and censure. It is pity he should so far expose the church to which he now belongs, as to think that she will esteem him a more dutiful son, by how much the less charity he has for his dissenting brethren. And I am sorry also, that there should be a church in Great Britain, which has devoted Christians to the devil for little differences, and has exposed them to tedious and sharp sufferings for refusing to submit to particular gestures in worship and airy signs, for wearing a short garment in prayer in the place of a long one, or black instead of white; and some of her sons have delighted to execute these censures, when they have found much gain arising from this severe godliness. I could wish she had always exercised the same charity to weak consciences, that she does to slender purses; for she allows a christian liberty to "poor beneficed men and curates, not being able to provide themselves long gowns, that they may go in short ones." IX. A ninth spring of this uncharitable practice is, fixing upon some necessary and special point in Christianity, and setting it up in opposition to the rest, or at best in opposition to some one of the rest. "I have long observed," says an ingenious writer, "that christians of different parties have been eagerly laying hold on particular parts of the system of divine truths, and have been contending about them as if each had been all; or as if the separation of the members from each other, and from the head, were the preservation of the body, instead of its destruction. They have been zealous to espouse the defence, and to maintain the honour and usefulness of each apart; whereas their honour, as well as usefulness, seems to me to lie much in their connexion, And suspicions have often arisen betwixt the respective defenders of each, which have appeared as unreasonable and absurd, as if all the preparations for securing one part of a ship in a storm were to be censured, as a contrivance to sink the rest." Thus far Dr Doddridge in a late preface. And I think we may as well borrow the similitude expressly from the Scripture itself, 1 Cor. xii. 14. "The body is not one member but many. If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand, is it therefore not of the body?" And how ridiculous would it be if we should suppose the " ear shall say, because I am not the eye, I am not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? And if they were all one member, where were the body? The eye cannot say unto the head, I have no need of thee; nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." In the same manner, repentance, faith, and love are three necessary graces or virtues that go to make up a Christian; and I might cite several texts of Scripture, where each of these three are made necessary to Christianity. Is it not therefore a most unreasonable thing to set up either repentance, faith or love so high, as though the whole of Christianity was contained in it, when it is evident that nothing else can make a Christian but such a faith as brings with it repentance and good works, or holiness of life, or such a love as produces obedience and good works, which must be the effect of this faith? In Christianity "nothing avails but such a faith as works by love" unto all holiness, Gal. v. 6. "Repent and believe the Gospel," was the first preaching of Christ and his Apostles, Mark i. 15. And in other places, faith is indispensably coupled with repentance, Acts iii. 19. xx. 21. not be forgiven us. Without repentance our sins will have no interest in his salvation. True faith must be such as "purifies the heart," Acts xv. 9; and produces good works as the necessary evidences to prove our faith true, James ii. 17, 18. What a strange sort of monstrous Christian would this be, who pretended to much faith, but had no love nor repentance? And as monstrous would that pretender be, who had love or repentance without faith. As "God hath set the members of the body, every one of them as it hath pleased him," so has he appointed faith, repentance, and love to fulfil their several offices in the christian life. What a piece of madness therefore is it, and high inconsistency to separate those things, which God hath joined in his Gospel? Or to preach or paraphrase very long, and talk very much upon either one of these, so as to hinder that due respect that is to be paid to the other two? There is no man is or can be a true believer in Christ, if he has not repentance and love, producing good works, as well as that faith, which is necessary to make a Christian. Let us take heed therefore, lest we give occasion, by any of our discourses, to exalt one of these virtues or graces to the prejudice of the rest, for the utter loss of either of them will destroy all our pretences to Christianity. When Solfido has formed one of his Christians exactly agreeable to the shape and humour of his own imagination, and dressed him up in all the feathers of strict orthodoxy, that he can find in the severest writers, and by a motto written upon his forehead has called him the man of faith, I am at a loss to know what christian church would receive him into their communion, when he neither professes repentance, nor holiness, nor true love to God or man. It has indeed some of the appearances of a christian stature, but it is a man without feet or hands for walking or moving, a man without life or activity to run the christian race, or to do anything for God in the world. What glory can our Lord Jesus Christ receive from such a useless figure? What konour can such an imperfect image possibly bring to the Gospel; or what service can he be of in the world or in the church? X. The most common cause of uncharitableness, and the last I shall mention, is, that a great part of the professors of our holy religion, make their heads the chief seat of it, and scarce ever suffer it to descend and warm their hearts. Jesus the Saviour has been discovered to them in a good degree of outward light, but has never been revealed in them with power, nor their souls changed by divine grace into the image of the Gospel. While they boast of their orthodox faith they forget their christian love. Stellino has stuck his brain all over with notions, and fancies his higher sphere sufficiently illuminated for the conduct of mankind, that is round about him, and beneath him. But this set of notions is like a winter night overhung with stars; bright and shining, but very cold. Natural affections have no room in his soul; it is too much spiritualized with opinions and doctrines. His divinity lies all in his understanding, and the common duties of humanity scarce ever employ his tongue or his hands. If a man does but profess every tittle of his creed, and believe just as Stellino believes, he is declared fit for holy communion; and if he will but dispute warmly for the hard words that distinguish his scheme, and can pronounce Shibboleth well, he shall not be adjudged to death or damnation, but joined heartily to the fellowship of the saints, though his flaming immoralities proclaim him a son of Satan. Satan himself has perhaps a more accurate and nice skill of the controversies of divinity, |