The Works of John Fletcher (Volume 1) - Softcover

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1826. Excerpt: ... A THIRD CHECK TO ANT1N0MIAMSM. HONOURED AND DEAR SIR, Accept my sincere thanks for the Christian courtesy, with which you treat me hi your Five Letters. The title-page informs me, that a concern for " mourning backsliders, and such as hare been distressed by reading Mr. Wesley's Minutes, or the Vindication of them," has procured me the honour of being called to a public correspondence with yon. Permit me, dear Sir, to inform you, in my turn, that a fear, lest Dr. Crisp's Balm should be applied, instead of the Balm of Gilead to Laodicean loiterers, who may haply have been brought to penitential distress, obliges me to answer yon in the same public manner in which you have addressed me. Some of our friends will undoubtedly blame us for not yet dropping the contested point . But others will candidly consider, that controversy, though not desirable in itself, yet, properly managed, has a hundred times rescued truth, groaning under the lash of triumphant error. We are indebted to our Lord's controversies with the Pharisees and Scribes, for a considerable part of the four Gospels. And, to the end of the world, the church will bless God, for the spirited manner in which St. Panl, in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, defended the controverted point of a believer's present justification by faith; as well as for the steadiness with which St. James, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Jnde, carried on their important controversy with the Nicolaitans, who abused St. Panl's . doctrine to Antinomian purposes. Ha'l it not been for controversy, Romish priests would to this day have fed us with Latin masses and a wafer-pod. Some bold propositions, advanced by Luther against the doctrine of indulgences, unexpectedly brontht on the Reformation. They were so irrationally attacked by the infatuated Pap...