ANSWER. If I were to point out one under the power of the devil, going hastily to hell, I would look no further for such a man than to him that would make such a use as this of the grace of God. What, because Christ is a Saviour, thou wilt be a sinner; because his grace abounds, therefore thou wilt abound in sin! O wicked wretch, let me tell thee before I leave thee, as God's covenant with Christ for his children stands sure, immutable, and unchangeable, so also hath God taken such a course with thee, that unless he deny himself, it is impossible that thou shouldst go to heaven, dying in that condition. They tempted God, proved him, and turned his grace into lasciviousness; so he sware in his wrath, They shall not enter into my rest. No, saith God, if Christ and heaven will not satisfy them, hell must devour them. God hath more places than one in which to put sinners: if they do not like heaven, hell must be their residence; if they do not love Christ, they must dwell for ever with devils.
PERVERSION OF THE TRUTH. Let those that name the name of Christ depart from the iniquity that cleaveth to opinions. This is a sad age for that: let opinions in themselves be never so good, never so necessary, never so innocent, yet there are spirits in the world that will entail iniquity to them, and will make the vanity so inseparable from the opinion, that it is almost impossible with some to take in the opinion and leave out the iniquity that by craft and subtlety of Satan is joined thereto. Nor is this a thing new and of yesterday; it has been thus almost in all ages of the church of God, and that not only in things small and indifferent, but in things fundamental and most substantial. I need instance in none other for proof hereof, but the doctrine of faith and holiness. If faith be preached as that which is absolutely necessary to justification, then faith fantastical, and looseness and remissness in life, with some, are joined therewith. If holiness of life be preached as necessary to salvation, then faith is undervalued and set below its place, and works, as to justification with God, set up and made copartners with Christ's merits in the remission of sins. Thus iniquity joineth itself with the greatest and most substantial truths of the gospel; and it is hard to receive any good opinion whatever, but iniquity will join itself thereto.
A LATITUDINARIAN.
What you say about doubtful opinions, alterable modes, rites, and circumstances in religion, I know none so wedded thereto as yourselves, For you thus argue: "Whatsoever of such are commended by the custom of the place we live in, or commanded by superiors, or made by any circumstance convenient to be done, our Christian liberty consists in this-that we have leave to do them."
So that, do but call them things indifferent, things that are the customs of the place we live in, or made by any circumstance convenient, and a man may not doubt but he hath leave to do them, let him live at Rome or Constantinople, or amidst the greatest corruption of worship and government. There are therefore, doubtless, a third sort of fundamentals, by which you can wrestle with conviction of conscience, and stifle it-by which you can suit yourself for every fashion, mode, and way of religion. Here you may hop from Presbyterianism to a prelatical mode; and if time and chance should serve you, backwards and forwards again: yea, here you can make use of several consciences, one for this way now, another for that anon; now putting out the light of this by a sophistical, delusive argument. then putting out the other by an argument that best suits the time. Yea, how oft is the candle of the wicked put out by such glorious learning as this. Nay, I doubt not but a man of your principles, were he put upon it, would not stick to count those you call gospel-positive precepts,
[Footnote: "Latitudinarian." This term is used of a "remarkable class of divines," who flourished in England about the middle and towards the close of the seventeenth century. Coleridge, in his Literary Remains, says that they were generally Platonists, and all of them admirers of Grotius. "They fell into the mistake of finding in the Greek philosophy many anticipations of the Christian faith, which in fact were but its echoes. The inference is as perilous as inevitable, namely, that even the mysteries of Christianity needed no revelation, having been previously discovered and set forth by unaided reason." They are thus characterized by Dr. Wm. R. Williams, ("Miscellanies," p. 196:) "Against infidelity and popery they did good service in the cause of truth. Their dread of enthusiasm made them frigid, and their mastery of the ancient philosophy made them profound. Their doctrines were generally Arrninian. Their notions of church power were less rigid than those of the rival party, and they were also more tolerant of difference in opinion. But in their preaching they laid the whole stress, well-nigh, of their efforts upon morals, to the neglect of doctrine; and in their theology, they attributed to human reason a strength and authority which gradually opened the way to the invasion of the gravest heresies. Of generally purer character than their opponents, they were also abler preachers. But while valuable as moral treatises, their sermons were most defective; for the peculiar doctrines and spirit of the gospel were evaporated." It cannot be doubted, that a class which included such men as Henry More, Cudworth, Tillotson, and Burnet, hardly deserves the wholesale reprobation hurled upon it by Bunyan. That some of them carried their LIBERALISM to a dangerous extreme, and that all of them allowed too great latitude of sentiment in theology, and, by their philosophical speculations, obscured the simple glory of the gospel, is indeed true; but some who bore this name were men of unquestionable piety, as well as of eminent genius and scholarship.]
It is interesting to contrast the mixture of divine truth and human speculation, and the almost melancholy doubts, exhibited in the writings of so excellent a man as Cudworth, with the strong and certain convictions, and the clear, well-defined views of Christian doctrine of John Bunyan, connected as they were in his case with the almost exclusive study of the word of God. We learn thereby not to despise learning and philosophy, but to beware of lowering the authority and of no value at all in the Christian religion; for now, even now, you do not stick to say that even the duty of going to God by Christ is one of these, and such a one as, if absolutely considered in itself, is neither good nor evil.
How, then, if God should cast you into Turkey, where Mahomet reigns as lord? it is but reckoning that it is the religion and custom of the country, and that which is authorized by the power that is there; wherefore, it is but sticking to your dictates of human nature, and remembering that coming to God by Christ is a thing of an indifferent nature in itself, and then for peace' sake and to sleep in a whole skin, you may comply and do as your superior commands. Why? because in Turkey are your first sort of fundamentals all found; there are men that have human nature and the law of morals written in their hearts; they have also the dictates thereof written within them, which teach them those you call the eternal laws of righteousness: wherefore you both would agree in your essential and immutable differences of good and evil, and differ only about these positive laws—indifferent things. Yea, and Mahomet also for the time, because by a custom it is made convenient, might be now accounted worshipful; and the circumstances that attend his worship, especially those of them that clash not with the dictates of your human nature, might also be swallowed down.
Behold you here then, good reader, a glorious Latitudinarian, that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the hook; or rather like the weathercock that stands on the steeple.