“Your aversion to all that looks like controversy can never make you think that an Equal Check to the two grand delusions, which have crept into the Church, is needless in our days. I flatter myself, therefore, that though you may blame my performance, you will approve of my design. And indeed what true Christian can be absolutely neuter in this controversy? If God has a controversy with all Pharisees and Antinomians, have not all God’s children a controversy with Pharisaism and Antinomianism? Have you not, for one, my lady? Do you not check in private what I attempt to check in public? Does not the religious world know that you abhor, attack, and pursue Pharisaism in its most artful disguises? And have I not frequently heard you express, in the strongest terms, your detestation of Antinomianism, and lament the number of sleeping professors, whom that Delilah robs of their strength? Nor would you, I am persuaded, my lady, have countenanced the opposition which was made against the ‘Minutes,’ if your commendable, though (as it appears to me) at that time, too precipitate zeal against Pharisaism had not prevented your seeing that they contain the Scripture truths, which are fittest to stop the rapid progress of Antinomianism.
“However, if you still think, my lady, that I mistake with respect to the importance of those propositions, you know I am not mistaken when I declare, before the world, that a powerful, practical, actually saving faith is the only faith I ever heard your ladyship recommend, as worthy to be contended for. And so long as you plead only for such a faith, so long as you abhor the winter-faith that saves the Solifidians, in their own conceit, while they commit adultery, murder, and incest, if they choose to carry Antinomianism to such a dreadful length; so long as you are afraid to maintain, either directly or indirectly, that the evidence and comfort of justifying faith may be suspended by sin, but that the righteousness of faith, and the justification which it instrumentally procures, can never be lost, no, not by the most enormous and complicated crimes,—whatever diversity there may be between your ladyship’s sentiments and mine, it can never be fundamental. I preach salvation by a faith that actually works by obedient love, and your ladyship witnesses salvation by an actually operative faith; nor can I, to this day, see any material difference between those phrases in the present controversy. I remain, with my former respect and devotedness, my lady, your ladyship’s most obliged and obedient servant in the Gospel,
“J. Fletcher.
“Madeley, March 12, 1774.”
Fletcher’s “Essay on Truth” is one of his ablest and most important works. It is full of his own peculiar genius, and—what cannot be said concerning all his writings—it is very readable. The following brief extracts from it may be acceptable and useful:—
Saving faith. “What is saving faith?[[308]] I dare not say that it is ‘believing heartily’ my sins are forgiven me for Christ’s sake; for, if I live in sin, that belief is a destructive conceit, and not saving faith. Neither dare I say, that ‘saving faith is only a sure trust and confidence that Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me;’[[309]] for, if I did, I should almost damn all mankind for four thousand years. Such definitions of saving faith are, I fear, too narrow to be just, and too unguarded to keep out Solifidianism.[[310]] To avoid such mistakes; to contradict no Scriptures; to put no black mark of damnation upon any man, that in any nation fears God and works of righteousness; to leave no room for Solifidianism, and to present the reader with a definition of faith adequate to the everlasting Gospel, I would choose to say, that justifying or saving faith is believing the saving truth with the heart unto internal, and (as we have opportunity) unto external righteousness, according to our light and dispensation. To St. Paul’s words, Rom. x. 10, I add the epithets internal and external, in order to exclude, according to 1 John iii. 7, 8, the filthy imputation, under which fallen believers may, if we credit the Antinomians, commit internal and external adultery, mental and bodily murder, without the least reasonable fear of endangering their faith, their interest in God’s favour, and their inamissable[inamissable] title to a throne of glory.”
Faith the gift of God, and the act of man. “How is faith the gift of God? Some persons think that faith is as much out of our power as the lightning that shoots from a distant cloud; they suppose that God drives sinners to the fountain of Christ’s blood, as irresistibly as the infernal legion drove the herd of swine into the sea of Galilee.”
After amply refuting this “absurd” idea, Fletcher proceeds:—
“Having thus exposed the erroneous sense in which some people suppose that faith is the gift of God, I beg leave to mention in what sense it appears to me to be so. Believing is the gift of the God of Grace, as breathing, moving, and eating are the gifts of the God of Nature. He gives me lungs and air, that I may breathe; He gives me life and muscles, that I may move; He bestows upon me food and a mouth, that I may eat; but He neither breathes, moves, nor eats for me. Nay, when I think proper, I can accelerate my breathing, motion, and eating: and, if I please, I may fast, lie down, or hang myself, and, by that means, put an end to my eating, moving, and breathing. Faith is the gift of God to believers, as sight is to you. The parent of good freely gives you the light of the sun, and organs proper to receive it. Everything around you bids you use your eyes and see; nevertheless, you may not only drop your curtains, but close your eyes also. This is exactly the case with regard to faith. Free grace removes, in part, the total blindness which Adam’s fall brought upon us; free grace gently sends us some beams of truth, which is the light of the sun of righteousness; it disposes the eye of our understanding to see those beams; it excites us, in various ways, to welcome them; it blesses us with many, perhaps with all the means of faith, such as opportunities to hear, read, enquire, and power to consider, assent, consent, resolve, and re-resolve to believe the truth. But, after all, believing is as much our own act as seeing. We may in general do, suspend, or omit the act of faith. Nay, we may do by the eye of our faith, what some report Democritus did by his bodily eyes. Being tired of seeing the follies of mankind, to rid himself of that disagreeable sight, he put his eyes out. We may be so averse from the light, which enlightens every man that comes into the world; we may so dread it because our works are evil, as to exemplify, like the Pharisees, such awful declarations as these: Their eyes have they closed, lest they should see: wherefore God gave them up to a reprobate mind, and, they were blinded.”
It need not be added, that Fletcher abundantly sustains these figurative arguments by scriptural quotations.