simple dove; and the double-principled Deity, the sparingly electing and widely reprobating God, was still held forth to injudicious Protestants as the God of all grace, the God of love, the God in whom is no darkness at all. For, as I have already observed, a number of divines, after the heart of Calvin, assembled at Dort in Holland, and openly condemned there the efforts that Arminius had made to reconcile the doctrines of justice and the doctrines of grace: the clergy who had espoused his sentiments were deprived of their livings; he himself was represented as the author of a heresy almost as dangerous as that of Pelagius; and from that time the rigid Calvinists have considered all those who stand up for the two Gospel axioms with any degree of consistency, as semi-Pelagian, or Arminian heretics.

And if Mr. Bayle be not mistaken, the Calvinists did not complain of Arminius' doctrine altogether without reason; for although he went very far in his discovery of the passage between the Pelagian and the Augustinian rocks, yet he did not sail quite through. Election proved a rock on which his doctrinal bark stuck fast; nor could he ever get entirely clear of that difficulty.

Among our English divines several have greatly distinguished themselves by their improvements upon Arminius' discoveries, Bishop Overal, Bishop Stillingfleet, Bishop Bull, Chillingworth, Baxter, Whitby, and others. But if I am not mistaken, they have all stuck where Arminius did, or on the opposite rock. And thereabouts we stuck too, when Mr. Wesley got happily clear of a point of the Calvinian rock which had retarded our course, and (so far as he appeared by us to be governed by the Father of lights) we began to sail on with him through the straits of truth. When we left our moorings, the partial defenders of the doctrines of grace hung out a signal of distress, and cried to us that our doctrinal ark was going to be lost against the same cliff where Pelagius' bark went to pieces. Their shouts have made us wary. The Lord has, we humbly hope, blessed us with an anchor of patient hope, a gale of cheerful love of truth, and a shield of resignation to quench the fiery darts which some warm men, who defend the barren rock of absolute reprobation, have thrown at us in our passage. We have sounded our way as we went on; and looking steadily to our theological compass, the Scriptures, to the Sun of righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the stars which he holds in his right hand, the apostles and true evangelists, after sailing slowly six years through straits, where strong currents of error and hard gales of prejudice have often retarded our progress, we flatter ourselves that we have got quite out of those narrow and rocky seas, where most divines have been stopped for a long succession of ages. If we are not mistaken, the ancient haven of Gospel truth is in sight; and, while we enter in, I take a sketch of it, which the reader will see in a Plan of Reconciliation between the Calvinists and Arminians, which these sheets are designed to introduce.

THE RECONCILIATION:

OR

AN EASY METHOD

TO

UNITE THE PROFESSING PEOPLE OF GOD.

BY PLACING THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE AND JUSTICE IN SUCH A LIGHT AS TO MAKE THE CANDID ARMINIANS BIBLE CALVINISTS, AND THE CANDID CALVINISTS BIBLE ARMINIANS.

Vestra solum legitis: vestra amatis; cæteros, incognita causa, condemnatis.-CICERO. "Follow peace with all men. Look not every man on his own things [and favourite doctrines only; but every man also on the things [and favourite doctrines] of others." "The wisdom that is from above is peaceable, and without partiality," Heb. xii, 14; Phil. ii, 4; James iii, 17.

THE RECONCILIATION, &c.

SECTION I.

The sad consequences of the divisions of those who make a peculiar profession of faith in Christ-It is unscriptural and absurd to object that believers can never be of one mind and heart.

UNSPEAKABLE is the mischief done to the interests of religion by the divisions of Christians: and the greater their profession is, the greater is the offence given by their contests. When the men who seek occasion against the Gospel, see them contending for the truth, and never coming to an agreement, they ask, like Pilate, "What is truth?" and then turn away from Christianity, as that precipitate judge did from Christ.

Of all the controversies which have given offence to the world, none has been kept up with more obstinacy than that which relates to Divine grace and the nature of the Gospel. It was set on foot in the fourth century by Augustine and Pelagius, and has since been warmly carried on by Godeschalchus, Calvin, Arminius, and others. And it has lately been revived by Mr. Whitefield, and Mr. Wesley, and by the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, and the orator of the university of Oxford. This unhappy controversy has brought more contempt upon the Gospel for above twelve hundred years, than can well be conceived. Preachers entangled therein, instead of agreeing to build the temple of God, think themselves obliged to pull down the scaffolds on which their brethren work. Shepherds, who should join their forces to oppose the common enemy, militate against their fellow shepherds: and their hungry followers are too frequently fed with controversial chaff, when they should be nourished with the pure milk of the word. After the example of their leaders, the sheep learn to butt, and wounds or lameness are the consequences of the general debate. The weak are offended, and the lame turned out of the way. The godly mourn, and the wicked triumph: bad tempers are fomented; the hellish flame of party zeal is blown up, and the souls of the contenders are pierced through with many sorrows. This is not all the Spirit of God is grieved, and the conversion of sinners prevented. How universally would the work of reformation have spread if it had not been hindered by this growing mischief! How many thousands of scoffers daily say, Can these devotees expect we should agree with them, when they cannot agree among themselves? And indeed how can we reasonably hope that they should give us the right hand of fellowship, if we cannot give it one another? "By this," saith our Lord, "shall all men know that you are my disciples, if ye love one another." Continual disputes are destructive of love; and the men of the world, seeing us cherish such disputes, naturally conclude that we are not the disciples of Christ, that there are none in the world, that the Gospel is only a pious fraud or a fine legend, and that faith is nothing but fancy, superstition, or enthusiasm.

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Nor will such men be prevailed upon cordially to believe in Christ,

till they see the generality of professors "made perfect in one," by agreeing in doctrine, and "walking in love." We may infer this from our Lord's prayer for his Church: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word: that they all may BE ONE, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE," John xvii, 20, 21. Christ intimates, in these words, the men of the world will never generally embrace the Gospel, till the union he prayed for take place among believers. To keep up divisions, therefore, is one of the most effectual methods to hinder the conversion of sinners, and strengthen the unbelief which hardens their hearts.

The destructive nature of this sin appears from the severity with which St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians and Galatians, who were divided among themselves. The former he could not acknowledge as "spiritual men," but called them "carnal," and affirmed that "to their shame, some of them had not the knowledge of God." And the latter he considered as persons almost "fallen from Christ;" intimating, that if they continued to "bite each other," (an expression which is beautifully descriptive of the malignity, with which most controvertists speak and write against their antagonists,) they would "be consumed one of another," Gal. v, 15.

In families and civil societies divisions are truly deplorable; but in the Churches of Christ they are peculiarly pernicious and scandalous: (1.) Pernicious: to be persuaded of it, we need only consider these awful words of St. James :-"If ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom is devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work," James iii, 14, &c. (2.) Scandalous: if Christ be the Prince of Peace, why should his subjects be sons of contention? If he came to reconcile Jews and Gentiles, "by breaking down the middle wall of partition between them;" if he "made in himself, of twain [of those two opposed bodies of men] one new man," that is, one new body of men, "all of one heart and of one soul;" if he has "slain the enmity, so making peace;" if it pleased the Father to reconcile all things unto himself by him;" and if " in the dispensation of the fulness of times [the Christian dispensation] he gathers together all things in him :" if this, I say, is the case, what can be more contrary to the Gospel plan than the obstinacy with which some Protestants refuse to be "gathered together" with their fellow Protestants, under the shadow of their Redeemer's wings? And what can be more scandalous than for Christ's followers, yea, for the strictest of them to spend their time in building "middle walls of partition" between themselves and their brethren, or in " daubing over with untempered mortar" the walls which mistaken men have built in former ages?

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Many Jews refused to be saved by Christ, because he came to save the Gentiles as well as themselves. And it is to be feared that some Christians, from a similar motive, refuse the Divine favour, or the eminent degrees of it, to which they are called in the Gospel. Christ says to these bigots, "How often would I have gathered you together, as a hen gathers her scattered brood under her wings! but ye would not:" ye were afraid of your Calvinian or Arminian brethren, and preferred