*8. Part of your ninth query is to the same effect:
“A few young heads set up their own schemes, as the great standard of Christianity: and indulge their own notions to such a degree, as to perplex, unhinge, terrify and distract the minds of multitudes of people, who have lived from their infancy under a gospel-ministry, and in the regular exercise of a gospel-worship. And all this, by persuading them, that they neither are, nor can be true Christians, but by adhering to their doctrines.”
What do you mean by their own schemes? Their own notions? Their doctrines? Are they not yours too? Are they not the schemes, the notions, the doctrines of Jesus Christ? The great, fundamental truths of his gospel? Can you deny one of them, without denying the bible?—It is hard for you to kick against the pricks!
“They persuade (you say) multitudes of people, that they cannot be true Christians, but by adhering to their doctrines.” Why, who says they can? Whosoever he be, I will prove him to be an infidel. Do you say, that any man can be a true Christian, without loving God and his neighbour? Surely you have not so learned Christ! It is your doctrine, as well as mine, and St. Paul’s, Though I speak with the tongue of men and angels, though I have all knowledge, and all faith; though I give all my goods to feed the poor, yea, my body to be burned, and have not love, I am nothing.
Whatever public worship, therefore, people may have attended, or whatever ministry they have lived under from their infancy, they must, at all hazards, be convinced of this, or they perish for ever: yea, though that conviction at first unhinge them ever so much; though it should in a manner, distract them for a season. For it is better they should be perplexed and terrified now, than that they should sleep on and awake in hell.
9. In the 10, 12, and 13th queries I am not concerned. But you include me also, when you say in the 11th, “They absolutely deny, that recreations of any kind, considered as such, are, or can be innocent.”
I cannot find any such assertion of mine, either in the place you refer to, or any other. But what kinds of recreation are innocent, it is easy to determine by that plain rule, Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
I am now to take my leave of you for the present. But first I would earnestly intreat you, to acquaint yourself what our doctrines are, before you make any farther observations upon them. Surely, touching the nature of salvation we agree, That pure religion and undefiled is this, to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction, to do all possible good, from a principle of love to God and man: and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, inwardly and outwardly to abstain from all evil.
*10. With regard to the condition of salvation, it may be remembered, that I allow, not only faith, but likewise holiness or universal obedience, to be the ordinary condition of final salvation: and that when I say, faith alone is the condition of present salvation, what I would assert is this; 1. That without faith no man can be saved from his sins, can be either inwardly or outwardly holy. And 2. That at what time soever faith is given, holiness commences in the soul. For that instant, the love of God, (which is the source of holiness) is shed abroad in the heart.
But it is objected by the author of “The Notions of the Methodists disproved,” “St. James says, Can faith save him?” I answer, such a faith as is without works cannot bring a man to heaven. But this is quite beside the present question.