Volume I. page 16. “Who vainly depend on their own righteousness, and not on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, imputed to, and inherent in them, as necessary for their eternal salvation.” To avoid all mistakes, I would express myself in this manner, “Who have neither Christ’s righteousness imputed to them, for their justification in the fight, nor holiness wrought in their souls as the consequence of that, in order to make them meet for the enjoyment of God.”
Volume I. page 7. For, “To qualify us for being savingly in Christ,” read, “To qualify us for living eternally with Christ.”
The seeming contradiction in my sermon, Volume II. page 128. compared with page 137. I think may be reconciled by that passage of the Apostle, “After you believed, you were sealed by the Spirit of promise.” Your arguing on this head, page 21. section vii. I think is not so clear. Might you not as reasonably have blamed Jesus Christ for saying to a dead man, “Lazarus, come forth?” However, instead of quickening Spirit, volume II. page 137. let it be read, “sanctifying Spirit.”
Volume II. page 33. “The man Christ Jesus is spiritually formed in your hearts.” I would alter it thus, “That Christ is formed within you.”
Volume I. page 53. “The many souls that are nourished weekly by the spiritual body and blood of Jesus Christ by your means.” Let it be altered for these words, “Nourished weekly at the Lord’s supper by your means.”
I see no reason to alter my explanation of the words, “Baptizing them into the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;” and, “Christ spiritually conceived in the heart of Eve:” I mean no more by these expressions than the Apostle, when he says, “Know ye not that Christ is in you, unless you be reprobates?” And again, “No one can call Christ, Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” And again, “We are made partakers of a divine nature.” Volume II. page 128. these words [in the Lord’s prayer] may be left out: though, if the word name signifies God’s attributes, according to your own confession, why may it not signify his essence? What are God’s attributes but God himself?
Volume I. page 14. After, “essential ones too,” insert, “if persons are capable of performing them.”
These, if I mistake not, are all the passages in my sermons, which you object against. And now to convince you, that I am not ashamed to own my faults, I can inform you of other passages as justly exceptionable. In my sermon on justification, I seem to assert universal redemption, which I now absolutely deny. In my almost christian, I talk of works procuring us so high a crown. In my sermon on the marks of the new-birth, I say, “We shall endure to the end, if we continue so”. These, and perhaps some other passages, though capable of a candid interpretation, I now dislike; and in the next edition of my sermons, God willing, I propose to alter them. In the mean while, I shall be thankful to any that will point out my errors; and I promise, by divine assistance, they shall have no reason to say, “That I am one who hates to be reformed.” “Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let him reprove me, and it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head: for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities.”
As for your insinuating, that I countenance Mr. Wesley in his errors, it is no such thing. I prefaced Halyburton’s Memoirs before I saw what Mr. Wesley had written; and since I have seen it, have more than once said, “If I had known what Mr. Wesley had written, I would not have prefaced Halyburton at all. I do not understand Mr. Wesley in his interpretation of these words, “He that is born again of God, sinneth not;” and therefore have torn off that part of his preface, out of several of those books which I have given away lately, and have acquainted him in what I think in this particular he errs, by sundry letters.
You wrong me, if you think I am an Antinomian. For when I say, “God made no second covenant with Adam,” I mean no more than this: “God made no second covenant with Adam in his own person in behalf of his posterity; nor did man’s acceptance in the sight of God, after the fall, depend, either wholly or in part, on his works, as before the fall.” Whoever reads the author of The Whole Duty of Man, will find he thinks otherwise; and I believe your friends in Scotland will not thank you for defending that book, as you seemingly have done in your late queries.