Your thirteenth chapter is to show, 'That our Saviour's preferring the business of making men holy, before any other, witnesseth, that this is to do the best service to God.'
But still respecting the holiness, you have in your first chapter described, which still the reader must have his eye upon, it is false, and a slander of the Son of God. He never intended to promote or prefer your natural old covenant holiness, viz. that which we had lost in Adam, or that which yet from him, in the dregs thereof, remaineth in human nature; but that which is of the Holy Ghost, of faith, of the new covenant.
I shall not here again take notice of your 130th page, nor with the error contained therein, about justification by imputed righteousness.
But one thing I observe, that in all this chapter you have nothing fortified what you say, by any word of God; no, though you insinuate (p. 129 and p. 131) that some dissent from your opinion. But instead of the holy words of God, being as you feign, conscious to yourself, you cannot do it so well as by another method, viz. The words of Mr. John Smith; therefore you proceed with his, as he with Plato's, and so wrap you up the business.
[Christ gives a new and spiritual light.]
You come next to an improvement upon the whole, where you make a comparison between the heathens and the gospel; shewing how far the gospel helpeth the light the heathens had, in their pursuit after your holiness. But still the excellency of the gospel, as you have vainly dreamt, is to make improvement first of the heathen principles; such good principles, say you, 'as were by the light of nature dictated to them' (p. 133). As,
1. 'That there is but one God; that he is infinitely perfect,' &c.
2. 'That we owe our lives, and all the comforts of them to him.'
3. 'That he is our sovereign Lord.'
4. 'That he is to be loved above all things' (p. 136).