But this Calvinistic Evangelist tells us, by way of accounting for the utter impossibility of producing in himself either faith or repentance, that both are of divine origin, and like the light, and the rain, and the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for man, neither waiteth for the sons of men, are from above, and come down from the Father of lights, from whom alone cometh every good and perfect gift!

Is the Barrister—­are the Socinian divines—­inspired, or infallibly sure that it is a crime for a Christian to understand the words of Christ in their plain and literal sense, when a Socinian chooses to give his paraphrase,—­often, too, as strongly remote from the words, as the old spiritual paraphrases on the Song of Solomon?

Ib. p. 46.

According to that Gospel which hath hitherto been the pillar of the Christian world, we are taught that whosoever endeavours to the best of his ability to reform his manners, and amend his life, will have pardon and acceptance.

As interpreted by whom?  By the Socini, or the Barrister?—­Or by Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, the Gregories, Eusebius, Athanasius?—­By Thomas Aquinas, Bernard, Thomas-a-Kempis?—­By Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, Calvin?—­By the Reformers and martyrs of the English Church?—­By Cartwright and the learned Puritans?—­By Knox?—­By George Fox?—­With regard to this point, that mere external evidence is inadequate to the production of a saving faith, and in the majority of other opinions, all these agree with Wesley.  So they all understood the Gospel.  But it is not so!  ‘Ergo’, the Barrister is infallible.

Ib. p. 47.

’When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness which he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive’.  This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.

In the name of patience, over and over again, who has ever denied this?  The question is, by what power, his own, or by the free grace of God through Christ, the wicked man is enabled to turn from his wickedness.  And again and again I ask:—­Were not these “old moral divines” the authors and compilers of the Homilies?  If the Barrister does not know this, he is an ignorant man; if knowing it, he has yet never examined the Homilies, he is an unjust man; but if he have, he is a slanderer and a sycophant.

Is it not intolerable to take up three bulky pamphlets against a recent Sect, denounced as most dangerous, and which we all know to be most powerful and of rapid increase, and to find little more than a weak declamatory abuse of certain metaphysical dogmas concerning free will, or free will forfeited, ’de libero vel servo arbitrio’—­of grace, predestination, and the like;—­dogmas on which, according to Milton, God and the Logos conversed, as soon as man was in existence, they in heaven, and Adam in