Philadelphia.
PASSAGE IN WHISTON.
(Vol. viii., pp. 244. 397.)
The book for which J.T. inquires is:
"The Important Doctrines of Original Sin, Justification by Faith and Regeneration, clearly stated from Scripture and Reason, and vindicated from the Doctrines of the Methodists; with Remarks on Mr. Law's late Tract on New Birth. By Thomas Whiston, A.B. Printed for John Whiston, at the Boyle's Head, Fleet Street. Pp. 70."
I do not know who the author was. Perhaps a son of the celebrated William Whiston, six of whose works are advertised on the back of the title-page; and whose Memoirs, Lond. 1749, are "sold by Mr. Whiston in Fleet Street." If the passage cited by J. T. is all that Taylor says of Thomas Whiston, it conveys an erroneous notion of his pamphlet, which from pp. 49. to 70. is occupied by the question of regeneration. I think his doctrine may be shortly stated thus: Regeneration accompanies the baptism of adults, and follows that of infants. In the latter case, the time is uncertain; but the fact is ascertainable by the recipients becoming spiritually minded.
Afterwards he says:
"I cannot dismiss this subject without observing another sense of regeneration in the Gospel. However, this makes no alteration in the doctrine I have before established; because, with us, regeneration and new birth are terms that bear the same exact meaning. What I before delivered of the spiritual new birth or regeneration is strictly true, though the word regeneration is sometimes used in another sense. It is not to be there understood of a spiritual or figurative birth, but of a literal and actual revival of the body from corruption. But this is not that new birth we have before inquired after, but only the assured and certain consequence of our preserving ourselves to the end in that spiritual state or birth we have entered into in this world. That I do not represent the sense of the word regeneration unfairly, may be gathered from Matt. xix. 28., rightly pointed and distinguished:
"'And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me (in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of his glory), ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.' Here regeneration is not to be understood in the same sense as the new birth or regeneration mentioned by our Saviour (John iii.), from whence the new birth is to be derived and stated; but, as I before observed, must be referred to a literal restoration to life, i. e. either to the general resurrection, or rather to the Millennium, when Christ is to reign upon earth over the Saints for a thousand years, after the dissolution of the present form of it. I make no doubt that this latter opinion is the genuine sense of the text I have quoted from St. Matthew; and consequently, that regeneration, in this passage, is to be applied to the first resurrection of the dead, or to the supposed Millennium."—Pp. 67, 68.
The above will show that Thomas Whiston did not "maintain that regeneration is a literal and physical being born again," in the sense which the passage quoted by J. T. conveys. I have not seen Taylor's work with the date 1746. As the name is common, and the pamphlets and sermons of that time on original sin are innumerable, many Taylors may have written besides the one mentioned by Ἁλιεύς. J. T.'s Taylor cannot be excused even on the ground of having read only a part of the book he misrepresented: for he refers to p. 68., from which he must have seen that Thomas Whiston there explained only an isolated passage.