“The Reformers,” says he, “protested three things in general:—1. That right reason has an important place in matters of faith. 2. That all matters of faith may and must be decided by Scripture, understood reasonably and consistently with the context. 3. That antiquity and fathers, traditions and councils, canons and the Church, lose their authority when they depart from sober reason and plain Scripture. These three general protests are the very ground of our religion when it is contradistinguished from Popery. They who stand to them deserve, in my humble opinion, the title of true Protestants.
“If the preceding account is just, true Protestants are all candid; Christian candour being nothing but a readiness to hear right reason and plain Scripture. Of all the tempers which true Protestants abhor, none seems to them more detestable than that of those gnostics, those pretenders to superior illumination, who, under the common pretence of orthodoxy or infallibility, shut their eyes against the light, think plain Scripture beneath their notice, enter their protest against reason, and steel their breasts against conviction. Alas! how many professors there are who, like St. Stephen’s opponents, judges, and executioners, are neither able to resist nor willing to admit the truth; who make their defence by stopping their ears, and crying out, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we!’ who thrust the supposed heretic out of their sanhedrim; who, from the press, the pulpit, or the doctor’s chair, send volleys of hard insinuations or soft assertions, in hope that they will pass for solid arguments; and who, when they have no more stones or snowballs to throw at the supposed Philistine, prudently avoid drawing ‘the sword of the Spirit,’ retire behind the walls of their fancied orthodoxy, raise a rampart of slanderous contempt against the truth that besieges them, and obstinately refuse either candidly to give up, or manfully contend for, the unscriptural tenets which they will impose upon others as pure Gospel.
“Whether some of my opponents, good men as they are, have not a little inclined to the error of those sons of prejudice, I leave the candid reader to decide. They have neither answered nor yielded to the arguments of my ‘Checks.’ They are shut up in their own city. Strong and high are thy walls, O mystical Jericho! Thy battlements reach into the clouds, but truth, the spiritual ark of God, is stronger, and shall prevail. The bearing of it patiently around thy ramparts, and the blowing of rams’ horns in the name of the Lord, will yet shake the very foundations of thy towers. Oh that I had the honour of successfully mixing my feeble voice with the blasts of the champions who encompass the devoted city! Oh that the irresistible shout, Reason and Scripture—Christ and the Truth—were universal! If this were the case, how soon would Jericho and Babylon—Antinomianism and Pharisaism—fall together.
“These two anti-Christian fortresses are equally attacked in the following pages.
“The controversy is one of the most important which was ever set on foot. The GRAND inquiry, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ is entirely suspended on this GREATER question, ‘Have I anything TO DO to be eternally saved?’ A question this which admits of three answers:—1. That of the mere Solifidian, who says, If we are elect, we have nothing to do in order to eternal salvation, unless it be to believe that Christ has done all for us, and then to sing finished salvation; and if we are not elect, whether we do nothing, little, or much, eternal ruin is our inevitable portion. 2. That of the mere moralist, who is as great a stranger to the doctrine of free grace as to that of free wrath; and tells you that there is no free, initial salvation for us, and that we must work ourselves into a state of initial salvation by dint of care, diligence, and faithfulness. And 3. That of their reconciler, whom I consider as a rational Bible Christian, and who asserts (1) that Christ has done the part of a Sacrificing Priest and teaching Prophet upon earth, and does still that of an Interceding and Royal Priest in heaven, whence He sends His Holy Spirit to act as an enlightener, sanctifier, comforter, and helper in our hearts; (2) that the free gift of initial salvation, and of one or more talents of saving grace, ‘is come upon all’ through the God-man Christ, who ‘is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe;’ and (3) that our free will, assisted by that saving grace imparted to us in the free gift, is enabled to work with God in a subordinate manner, so that we may freely (without necessity) do the part of penitent, obedient, and persevering believers, according to the Gospel dispensation we are under.
“This is the plan of this work, in which I equally fight for faith and works, for gratuitous mercy and impartial justice; reconciling all along Christ our Saviour with Christ our Judge, heated Augustin with heated Pelagius, free grace with free will, Divine goodness with human obedience, the faithfulness of God’s promises with the veracity of His threatenings, first with second causes, the original merits of Christ with the derived worthiness of His members, and God’s foreknowledge with our free agency.
“The plan, I think, is generous; standing at the utmost distance from the extremes of bigots. It is deep and extensive; taking in the most interesting subjects, such as the origin of evil, liberty, and necessity, the law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ, general and particular redemption, the apostacy and perseverance of the saints, and the election and reprobation maintained by St. Paul. I entirely rest the cause upon Protestant ground; that is, upon Reason and Scripture. Nevertheless, to show our antagonists that we are not afraid to meet them upon any ground, I prove, by sufficient testimonies from the fathers and the Reformers, that the most eminent divines in the primitive Church and our own, have passed the straits which I point out; especially when they weighed the heavy anchor of prejudice, had a good gale of Divine wisdom, and steered by the Christian mariner’s compass, ‘the Word of God,’ more than by the false lights hung out by party men.”
It is hoped that these quotations from the preface of Fletcher’s book will induce the reader to peruse and study the book itself. To analyse it here is impracticable; and if one extract were given, hundreds ought to follow. In this frothy age, the book to many will seem dry and tedious; but to a man sincerely and earnestly in search of sacred truth it will prove a mine full of invaluable treasures.
At the end of the first edition, the following was printed:—
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