Toplady Blasts Wesley & Arminianism

We are again indebted to Sharon M. Whitley for posting this at FB. One won't hear this from modern Anglicans.

A Letter to the Rev. John Wesley Relative to His Pretended Abridgment of Zanchius on Predestination - Part 2 of 2

continued from previous note...

When I advert to the unjust and indecent manner in which you attacked the late excellent Mr. Hervey; above all, when I consider how daringly free you have made with the Scriptures themselves, both in your commentaries, and in your alterations of the text itself; I cease to wonder at the audacious licentiousness of your pen respecting me. I should rather wonder if you treated any opponent with equity, or canvassed any subject impartially. Rise but once to this, and I shall both wonder and rejoice. You give me to understand that I am but "a young translator?" Granted. Better however to be a young translator than an old plagiary. Which of our ancient divines have you not evaporated and spoiled? And then made them speak a language, when dead, which they would have started from, with horror, when alive? Yet Brutus is an honourable man! How miserably have you pillaged even my publications? Books, when sent into the world, are no doubt in some sense public property. Zanchius, if you chose to buy him, was yours to read; and, if you thought yourself equal to the undertaking, was yours to answer: but he was not yours to mangle. Remember how narrowly you escaped a prosecution some years ago, for pirating the Poems of Dr. Young. I would wish you to keep your hands from literary picking and stealing. However, if you cannot refrain from this kind of stealth, you can abstain from murdering what you steal. You ought not, with Ahab, to kill as well as take possession: nor, giant-like, to strew the area of your den with the bones of such authors as you have seized and slain. On most occasions you are too prone to set up your own infallible judgment as the very lapis lydius of right and wrong. Hence the firebrands, arrows and death, which you hurl at those, who presume to vary from the oracles you dictate. Hence-particularly your illiberal and malevolent spleen against the Protestant dissenters; though yourself are, in many respects a dissenter of the worst kind. I would not however by this declaration be understood if I meant to dishonour that respectable body by classing you with them; for you stand alone, and are a dissenter of a cast peculiar to yourself. And yet, like Henry I., you are making the length of your own arm the standard-measure for every body else. No wonder therefore that you eminently inherit the fate of Ishmael; that your hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against you. Strange! that one who pleads so strenuously for universal love in the Deity should adopt so little of the love for which He pleads! that a person of principles so large should have a heart so narrow! bigots of every denomination are much the same: and of all vices, bigotry is one of the meanest and most mischievous. Its shrivelled, contracted breast leaves no room for the noble virtues to dilate and play. Candour, benevolence, and forbearance, become smothered and extinquished: partly from being cramped littleness of mind, partly from being overwhelmed with intellectual dust. Bigotry is a determined enemy to truth, inasmuch as it essentially interferes with freedom of enquiry, restrains the grand indefeasible right of private judgment, confines our reguards to a party, and, by limiting the extent of moderation and mutual good-will, tears up charity by the very roots. In short, bigotry is the very essence of Popery; and too often leads its votaries, before they are aware, into the bosom of that pretended Church, whose doctrines and maxims are the worst corruption of the best religion that ever was. And though this baneful vice is so uncomfortable in itself; so contrary to the genius of the gospel; and so extensively pernicious in its effects; yet is it not as common as it is detestable? May all God's children be enabled to cast it, with the rest of their idols, to the moles and to the bats! You have obliquely given me a sneering lecture upon "modesty, self-diffidence, and tenderness" to opponents: and it must be owned, that the lesson comes with a peculiar grace and quite in character from you. The words sound well: but, like many other prescribers, you say and do not. Else why do you represent me as telling my readers that they must, "upon pain of damnation believe, that only one person in twenty is elected"? Why do you introduce me as enjoining them to believe under the same penalty that "the elect shall be saved, do what they will; and the reprobates damned, do what they can"? This is a sample indeed of your own modesty, tenderness, and self-diffidence: but God forbid that I should give such dismal proof of mine. I believe and preach that the chosen and ransomed of the Lord are appointed to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth: and, with respect to the rest, that they will be condemned, not for doing what they can in a moral way, but for not doing what they can: for not believing the gospel report; and for not ordering their conversation according to it. Let me likewise ask you when or where I ever presumed to ascertain the number of God's elect? Point out the treatise and the page, wherein I assert that only "One in twenty of mankind are elected". The Book of Life is not in your keeping, nor in mine. The Lord, and the Lord only, knoweth them that are His. He alone who telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names, calleth also His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out, first from a state of sin into a state of grace, and then into the state of glory. Yet, as the learned and devout Beza expresses himself, "I shall never blush to abide by that simplicity which the Holy Spirit, speaking in the Scriptures, hath been pleased to adopt": and it is but too certain that in the Scriptures ar such awful passages as these: Broad is the way and wide is the gate which leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat: while on the other hand, "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." - Many are called, but few chosen." - "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." - "There is a remnant, according to the election of grace." Declarations of this tremendous import, instead of furnishing you with fuel for contention, and setting you on a presumptuous and fruitless calculation of the number that shall be saved or lost, should rather bring you on your knees before God, with your hand upon your breast and his cry in your lips: "Search me, O Lord, and try me; prove me also and examine my thoughts. Shew me to which class I belong. Give me solid proof that my name is in the Lamb's Book of Life, by making it clear to me that I am in the faith." And ever remember that true faith utterly disclaims all ground of pretension to justification and eternal life, but on the sole footing of God's Celestine Ill. is said to have treated the emperor Hen. VI. It quite kicks off the crown from the head of Sovereign grace; and makes the will of God bend and truckle and shape itself to the caprice of man. Arminianism, somewhat more specious, but altogether as pernicious, cuts the crown in two, by dividing the praise of salvation between God and man, and fairly runs away with half. On the contrary, that faith which is of divine operation acts like the emperor Charles V, when he retired from the throne: it resigns the crown entirely and renounces it for ever, without reserving so much as a single jewel for itself. Should the Holy Spirit vouchsafe to lead you thus far you will then no longer be ready to object that "the elect shall be saved, do what they will": for you will know by heart-felt experience that the converted elect are, and cannot but be, ambitious to perform all those good works in which God hath ordained them to walk; and to act worthy of Him Who hath graciously and effectually called them to His Kingdom and glory. Your pretended fear of Antinomianism, like your real fear of the comet, which wa expected to have appeared a few years back, is perfectly idle and chimerical. You publicly testified your apprehensions that the latter would dry up our rivers, and burn up our vegetables, if not reduce the earth itself to a cinder. But your prophesies proved to be "the baseless fabrice of a vision"; and our rivers, trees, and earth remain as they were. ~ Nor will the doctrines of grace, experimentally received into the heart, destroy or weaken the obligation of moral virtue. On the contrary, they will operate on the practice, not like your scorching comet on our globe, but like the genial beams of the sun, which diffuse gladness, and occasion fruitfulness wherever they arise. Whoever wishes in earnest to lead a new life must first cordially embrace the good old doctrine of salvation by grace alone. ~ In short, your own tenet of sinless perfection leads directly to the grossest Antinomianism. I once knew a lady who you had inveigled into your pale, and who in a short space professed herself perfect. Being in her company some time after I pointed out a part of her conduct which to me seemed hardly compatible with a sinless state. He answer was to this effect: "You are no competent judge of my behaviour. You are not yourself perfectly sanctified; and therefore see my tempers and my actions through a false medium. I may to you seem angry: but my anger is only Christian zeal." ~ I could, moreover mention the names of some of your quondam followers who, from professing themselves sinless, have cast off all appearance of godliness, and are working all manner of iniquity with greediness. If you are in search of Antinomianism, truly and justly so called, you must look for them, not among those whom you term Calvinists, but among your own hair-brained perfectionists. Had not you yourself (to remind you of but one instance) a proof of it not very long ago? You formed a scheme of collecting as many perfect ones as you could, to live together under one roof. A number of these flowers were accordingly transplanted from some of your nursery-beds to the hot-house. And a hothouse it soon proved. For would we believe it? the sinless people quarrelled in a short time at so violent a rate that you found yourself forced to disband the select regiment. Had you kept them together much longer, that line would have been literally verified in these squabbling members of your Church Militant: "The males pulled noses, and the females caps. A very small house, I am persuaded, would hold the really perfect upon the earth. You might dirve them all into a nutshell." But to return I cannot dismiss your objection concerning the supposed fewness of God's truly elect people without observing that, how few soever they may appear, and really be in a single generation, and as balanced with the many unrighteouss among whom we live below, yet when the whole number of the Redeemer's jewels is made up - when the entire harvest of His saints is gathered in - when His complete mystic body is presented collectively before the Throne of His Father; they will amount to an exceeding great multitude which no man can number. On earth the company of the faithful may to us, who know but in part, resemble Elijah's cloud, which, at first, seemed no bigger than a man's hand; whereas, in the day of God, they will be found to everspread the whole heavens. They may appear now, to use Isaiah's phraise, but as two or three berries on top of a bough, or as four or five in the most fruitful branches thereof; but they shall then be like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar's vision, the height of which reached unto heaven, and the sight of it to the end of all the earth; the leaves thereof were fair and the fruit thereof much. The Kingdom of glory will both be more largely and more variously peopled than bigots of all denominations are either able to think or willing to allow. Go now, sir, and dazzle the credulous with your mock victory over the supposed reprobation of "nineteen in twenty". Go on the chalk hideous figures on your wainscot; and enjoy the glorious triumph of battering your knuckles in fighting them. But father no more of your hideous figures on me. Do not dress up scare-crows of your own, and then affect to run away from them as mine. I do not expect to be treated by Mr. John Wesley with the candour of a gentleman, or the meekness of a Christian; but I wish him, for his reputation's sake, to write and act with the honesty of a heathen. You affect to be deemed a minister of the national Church. Why then do you decry her doctrines, and, as far as in you lies, sap her discipline? That you decry her doctrines needs no proof: witness, for example, the wide discrepancy between her decisions and yours on the articles of freewill, justification, predestination, perseverance, and sinless perfection; and to say nothing concerned your new-fangled doctrine of the intermediate state of departed souls. That you likewise do not overflow with zeal for the discipline of the Church of England is manifest, not only from the numerous and intricate regulations, with which you fetter your societies, but from the measures you lately pursued, when a foreign mendicant was in England, who went by the name of Erasmus and stiled himself bishop of Arcadia. This old gentleman passed for a prelate of the Greek Church; though to me it seems not improbable that he might rather be a member of the Romish. Thus much, however, is certain; that the chaplains of the then Russian ambassador here knew nothing about him: and that to this day, the Greek Church in Amsterdam believed him to have been an imposter. With regard to this person, I take the liberty of putting one or two queries to you: 1. Did you or did you not get him to ordain several of your lay preachers according to the manner of what he called the Greek Ritual? 2. Did these lay preachers of yours, or did they not, both dress and officiate as clergymen of the Church of England, in consequence of that ordination? And under the sanction of your own avowed approbation notwithstanding, putting matters at the best they could only be ministers of the Greek Church, and which could give them legal right to act as ministers of the Church of England. Nay, did you not repeatedly declare that their ordination was, to all intents and purposes, as valid as your own, which you received forty years ago at Oxford? 3. Did you or did you not strongly press this supposed Greek bishop to consecrate you a bishop at large, that you might be invested with a power of ordaining what ministers you pleased to officiate in your societies as clergymen? And did he not refuse to consecrate you, alleging this for his reason, That according to the canons of the Greek Church, more than one bishop must be present to assist at the consecration of a new one?] 4. In all this, did you or did you not palpably violate a certain oath which you have repeatedly taken? I mean the oath of supremacy; part of which runs thus: And I do declare, that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm: so help me God. Now is not the conferring of orders an act of the highest ecclesiastical power and authority? And was this man a foreigner? And were not the steps you took a positive acknowledgment fo a foregin power and jurisdiction? And was not such acknowledgment a breach of your oath? It matters not whether Erasmus was in fact an imposter or a genuine Greek bishop. Unless you were very insincere, you took him to be what he passed for. If you did not, you were a party to a fraud. Either way, pretend no longer to love the Church of England! You who so lately endeavoured to set up imperium in imperio! If you are honest, you will either publicly confess your fault, or for ever throw aside your gown an cassock. You will either return to the service of the Church, or cease to wear her livery. You may think, perhaps, that I make too free in expostulating with you so plainly. And yet, on maturer thought, I question whether you may or not. How can Mr. Wesley, who on all occasions makes so very free with others, be angry with young translators for copying (though at humble distance) so venerable an example? Nor, indeed, ought a person who, beyond even what truth and decency permit, takes so great liberties with the rest of his contemporaries, to wonder if, so far as decency and truth allow, the rest of his contemporaries take as great liberties with him. You complain, I am told, that the evangelical clergy are leaving no stone unturned "to raise John Calvin's ghost, in all quarters of the land." If you think the doctrines of that eminent and blessed reformer to be formidable as a ghost, you are welcome to do all you can toward slaying them. Begin your incantations as soon as you please. The press is open, and you never had a fairer opportunity of trying your strength upon John Calvin than at present. Only take care that you do not, with all your skill in theological magic, get yourself into a circle, out of which you may find it difficult to retreat. And, a little to mitigate your wrath against the raisers of Calvin's ghost, remember that you yourself have been a great ghost-raiser in your time. Who raised the ghosts of John Goodwin, the Arminian regicide, and Thomas Grantham, the Arminian Baptist? Who raide the ghost of Monsieur DeRenty, the French Papist, and of many other Romish enthusiasts; by translating their lives into English, for the edification of Protestant readers? Should you take any notice of this letter, I have three requests to make; or rather, there are three particulars on which I have a right to insist: 1. Do not quote unfairly. 2. Do not answer evasively. 3. Do not print clandestinely. Canvass the points of doctrine wherein we differ, as strictly as you can. They will stand the test. They scorn disguise. They disdain to sue for quarter. Truth, like our first parents in the state of innocence, can shew herself naked, without being either afraid or ashamed: and he that doth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. May you at last begin to act this principle, and no longer prostitute your time and talents to the wiredrawing of chicanery, and the circulation of error! No less than insensible of your parts: but alas! what is distinguished ability, if not wedded to integrity? No less just than ingenious is the remark of a learned and noble writer: "The riches of the mind, like those of fortune, may be employed so perversely as to become a nuisance and a pest, instead of an ornament and support to society." I am Yours, &c., AUGUSTUS TOPLADY Westminster, March 26, 1770 January 9, 1771

NINE months are now elapsed since the first publication of this letter; in all which time Mr. W has neither apologized for the misdemeanor which occasioned his hearing from me in this publice manner, nor attempted answer the charges entered against him. Judging, probably, that the former would be too condescending in one who has erected himself into the leader of a sect, and that the latter would prove rather too difficult a task, and involve him in a subsequent train of fresh detections, he has prudently omitted both. Some of his followers, however, have not been so tamely inactive, on this occasion, as their pastor. Anxious, at once, to paliate his offense and to screen his timidity, several penny and two-penny defences have successively appeared: wherein the anonymous scribblers wretchedly endeavoured to gather up, and put together, the fragments of a shattered reputation. The very printers, the mid-wives who handed these "insects of a day" into public existence, were ashamed to subjourn their names at the bottom of the title pages. Two lay-preachers, in particular, have feebly taken up the cudgels for their master. Of one I shall say very little, as he writes with some degree of decency. Of the other I shall not say much; for both his talents and his morals sink him far below the dignity of chastisement This illiterate "haberdabher of small wares" entitles his penny effusion, as well as I remember, "A Letter of thanks to the Reverend Mr. Toplady, in the Names of all the hardened Sinners in London and Westminster". The poor creature, it is plain from his title-page, aims at humour; and yet unhappily for such a design, he is in reality but too literally qualified to act as a secretary in chief to the sinners of London and Westminster. For he has given very numerous and ample proofs of his own sinnership, and that there can hardly exist, in those two cities, a more atrocious sinner than himself. I will not pollute this paper with a recital of his crimes. They who know the man are no strangers to his communications. Though a doctrinal Pharisee, his life has, long ago, evinced him a practical Sadducee. Surely, Arminianism is likely to flourich mainly under the auspices of such able and virtuous advocates! And so much for Mr. Wesley's redoubtable subalterns. What image of their fury can we form? Dulness and rage. A puddle in a storm. If my advice carries any weight with them, they will carefully peruse their spelling-books before they make another sally from the press. As to themselves and their refined productions, I mean to take no farther notice of either. I am quite of Mr. Gay's opinion: "To shoot at crows is powder thrown away. I had almost forgot the monthly reviewers. One word concerning them, and I have done. The two reverend gentlemen who are hired to dissect and characterize whatever comes within the divinity-department, a calendis ad calendas, would fain have it, in their superficial strictures on the first edition of this letter, that I am angry with Mr. Wesley. If, by anger, the ingenious animadverters mean a just and becoming disapprobation of Mr. Wesley's lying abridgment, and of the surreptious manner in which he smuggled it into the world, I acknowledge myself, in this respect, angry. I hope the reverend reviewers will not, in their turn, be angry too, at seeing themselves tacked to the list of Mr. Wesley's allies: since, in their mode (if representing my dispute (or, to adopt their own military term, my battle) with that gentleman, they seem to rank themselves in the number of his seconds. The reason is obvious. Mr. W is a red-hot Arminian: and the sagacious doctors can discern, with half an eye, that Arminianism lies within a bow-shot of Socinianism and Deism. Yet, notwithstanding the alliance is thus not altogether unnatural, why should these two divines, who are, certainly, possessed of abilities which might do honour to human nature, by a narrow, sordid attachment to party, render those abilities less respectable."

AUGUSTUS TOPLADY