" Strictures on the Plymouth Antinomians. By JOSEPH COTTLE. London. 1823. THERE is a most unpleasing, but a necessary, task to which we find ourselves occasionally called,-that of bearing our testimony against certain doctrines, more or less the misfortune of every age, and the fault of every man; but which assume their worst features when they actually turn the grace of God into licentiousness, and make Christ the minister of sin. Such are what are called the doctrines of Antinomianism; which, in the pamphlet before us, Mr. Cottle very roundly charges upon Dr. Hawker of Plymouth, his son, his curate, and other of his adherents in that populous neighbourhood. If they are fairly chargeable upon these several persons, which we for the present take upon the authority of Mr. Cottle, who has pledged his name for his veracity; we may at least congratulate ourselves, upon the same authority, that they are of no very wide circulation within the church: since he informs us, that to three pulpits only in the metropolis, and to one only in his road thither from the west, is Dr. Hawker admitted; whilst on his progress northward through Exeter, Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, Shrewsbury, Chester, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Newcastle, he would not find one pulpit open to his labours; and therefore, we presume, not one minister of the church inclined to espouse his doctrines. Speaking similarly in round numbers, the same, we apprehend, might be said of the various accredited classes of the Dissenting body; into whose pulpits we should imagine Dr. Hawker, were he even to offer himself, would find his access equally denied. Thus far, with Mr. Cottle, we must consider this clergyman and his friends as, at the least, being generally objects of great distrust;" although, on the other hand, we believe that among a few congreCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 263. gations of no verydefinite description, but exhibiting crowded audiences, the opinions hinted at are very far from being unpopular; and obtain, in fact, through various incidental. means, a most dangerous circulation through the country. It is this dangerous, and perhaps growing, circulation of doctrines, whether directly Antinomian or not, yet wearing a very questionable aspect, which induces us to take up the subject. Though very far, on the one hand, from wishing to wound the feelings of any individuals whose names are brought forward as obnoxious to the charge in question; and equally remote, on the other, from any undue leaning to the mere authority of a pamphlet (though we have certainly no reason to discredit the statements in the pamphlet before us); we yet think that the opinions here censured are such as deserve the most serious animadversion: and we are led to adopt the present publication for review, because we find it authenticated by a name; the name, whether or not of a first-rate poet, we will not judge by the three stanzas with which Mr. Cottle heads his pamphlet, but certainly the name of a man who fearlessly meets what he deems a great moral evil, having been an eye and an ear witness of the facts he avers, and in effect calling publicly on Dr. Hawker to disclaim or explain before the world the doctrines imputed to him. Till such explanation or disclaimer arrive, it is impossible we should not consider this well-known preacher, on the report of an avowed auditor, who stakes his name and reputation upon it, as one of those who so preach as to favour Antinomianism; that is, whose preaching tends to weaken in the minds of men the sense of obligation to keep the law of God, and to set them at rest and ease in the practice of sin. In any discussion respecting doctrines having this direful tendency, we by no means wish to imply that either the preacher or the hearer 5 A bidden tree your eyes shall be open, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." Then first began the sect of the Antinomians. The first sermon, as we know, was but too effectual; and we rue its effects to this day. And from that period it has been the object of the great enemy of God and man, to weaken in men's minds their sense of obligation to keep the law of God, and to make them easy in the practice of their sins. necessarily carries them out to the Still, doctrines having this tendency, though doubtless to be separated from the lives of those who preach them, as well as of some who hear them, are to be regarded as affording matter for anxious consideration: and we, for our own parts, feel it a solemn duty not only to notice them, but to express our decided disapprobation of them, and to warn the Christian public against their adoption. By the doctrines of Antinomianism, be it understood, as before expressed, we mean those doctrines which tend to weaken our sense of the obligation to perform the law of God, or which tend to make the sinner easy and satisfied in the practice of his sins. Now of these doctrines we hear frequently mentioned the rise, and the growth, and the extension, and the effects, in this or that age, or century, or class, or sect, or nation; and some historians, we believe, place their rise as far back as the fifteenth century of the Christian church, or even earlier. We know but of one date to which to refer their rise and prevalence, and that is, the same date at which commenced the fall of man. The first great Antinomian teacher and preacher in the world was he who, with the garb of a serpent, the tongue perhaps of an angel, but the heart of an evil spirit, approached our first parents and said, "Ye shall not surely die for God doth know that in the day ye eat of the for And this he has effected in various ways, and with various success, to the present hour. The first and simplest of all expedients, and one of the most general prevalency, was that suggested, we may believe, to the murderer Cain; the substitution of ceremonious offerings, of external rites and professions, for the homage of the heart, the affections, and the life. "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering." However uncasily this first attempt at Antinomianism may have sat upon that primeval criminal, the evil appears too clearly to have stolen in by insensible degrees upon the antediluvian race; till, in process of time, "The Sons of GOD," bearing his name, perhaps practising his worship, and, it may be, pleading many exclusive 'privileges, "saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all which they chose." The progeny of these licentious unions soon exhibited the principles in which they were founded; and, we speak it with fear and trembling, of the whole antediluvian world, there was but one man of whom it is recorded, that "he was a JUST man, and PERFECT in his generation, and that he WALKED with God." Then was the hour of judgment nigh. After the Flood, it would be impossible to trace the various methods by which the tempter contrived to elude the force and obligation of the Divine law in the hearts of his children, and to set them at ease in the practice of their sins. The awful description of the whole heathen world is summed up 7 by the Apostle to the Romans, when he declares, "they held the TRUTH in UNRIGHTEOUSNESS." "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." In short, their artifice was to make to themselves gods, sensual, and wicked, and degraded as their own hearts; and then to prop themselves up in all manner of evil in thought and deed, by the example of their vilest deities. God, in consequence, gave them over to "vile affections.... Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity." But how stood the case with the Jewish Antinomians? They had the LAW promulgated from Mount Sinai. Exceedingly fearful was the sight; and, considered in itself, it was calculated rather to terrify them from disobedience, than to constrain them to a willing submission. But they had also the milder glories of Him who was the Lord merciful, gracious, slow to anger, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. They had their own exclusive and elect privileges, as the beloved people of God. And how too generally did they use them? They sinned yet more against Him. He nourished and brought them up as children, and they rebelled against Him. We pass over the history of their early idolatries, and quote their later prophets: "Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods, whom ye know not; and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?" We quote from our Lord himself: "Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin; but ye have omitted the weightier matters of the LAW, judgment, and mercy, and faith. THESE, OUGHT YE TO HAVE DONE, and not to leave the other undone." They substituted, according to the first and most approved device of satan, the ceremonies of the Law for its moralities; the privileges of election, for essential holiness of character. St. But, keeping in sight the one great practical result of all these several delusions; namely, that of "making the commandment of God of none effect," and leading men to expect peace, though they walked in the imagination of their evil hearts, to add drunkenness to thirst;" how stood the case under the Christian dispensation? Paul, in promulgating the great, the essential, and ever-blessed doctrine of justification by faith only, faith in Him who justificth the ungodly, foresaw by one glance of prophetic sagacity what would then be likely to take place. He foresaw it: and, as if to guard against the possibility of what he too clearly foresaw; as if to leave a testimony behind too direct for even satanic subtlety to pervert; as if to shame and confound the enemies of morality; as if to prepare, against the abuse of God's mercies, a sentence which shall assuredly be uttered in the very loudest thunders of the Great Day, he dictated that ever-memorable address, contained in the 6th chapter to the Romans, of which the whole substance might be summed up in this one verse: "What shall we say, then? shall we CONTINUE IN SIN, that GRACE MAY ABOUND? GOD EORBID. How shall we, who are dead to sin, LIVE ANY LONGER THEREIN ?" What, however, with prophetic sagacity St. Paul foresaw, St. James lived to reprove and condemn. Many, does it too clearly appear from his second chapter, were the practical Antinomians of his day. He felt no fear of frustrating the grace of God, by plainly remonstrating in behalf of his broken law: and whether the deception practised was to keep the rest of the law, with the claim of exemption upon one particular point; whether it was to 1 yield a general outward conformity As the time approached for sealing up the vision and the prophecy, warnings and precepts on this head seem to have been multiplied, making perhaps the last books and chapters of the Sacred Record more directly practical than all before. "Little children, let no man deceive you: he that DOETH RIGHTEOUSNESS is righteous, even as He is righteous." "He that COMMITTETH SIN is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For THIS PURPOSE the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the WORKS of the devil." "Blessed are they that DO HIS COMMANDMENTS, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." With such a plain and undeniable account, from Scripture itself, of real Antinomianism on the one hand,, and the resistance made against it on the other, we ought surely to be ever upon our guard against its approaches in subsequent times; aware that it is entirely congenial to human nature, and but too ready to lurk under the most specious forms, and intrude into the most sacred {ysanctuaries. In addition to its his C tory already related, it appeared in very early times in the Christian church, after the canon of revelation was closed; and it is remarkable that the same ancient father, St. Austin, who had to oppose the doctrinal errors of the Pelagians, had likewise to combat the practical errors of the Antinomians; both errors, indeed, tending to the same point, the former depressing the standard of holiness, the latter weakening its obligation. Afterwards it appeared, no longer lurking in disguise, but in its most open and palpable forms, in the many licentious codes of doctrine, and absolutions of Popery. It has appeared since in the doctrine of a mitigated law, a sincere, in the place of a perfect, obedience. The forgiving mercies of the new covenant have been brought in to eke out a defective virtue, a worthless morality, which has tended to make the commandments of God, and the holiness of His Gospel, of none effect. The same evil principle, though in a somewhat different form, we are very plainly given to understand, lurks in the sentiments frequently promulgated by Dr. Hawker and his Plymouth associates. With no actual intention to encourage the violation of God's law, or promote the practice of sin, which, we really believe, is not chargeable, either upon Dr. Hawker himself, or on the better principled of his associates in, doctrine; still, as we understand the charge against him, it is this: that the doctrine he holds, and the general language he employs, are such as tend to that evil result; are such as to afford an actual latitude in sin and disobedience to all persons who are disposed to avail themselves of the indulgence. f And now, before we come to this particular case, we shall wish to make a few brief observations, with respect to the difference which may exist between the intention of doctrinists on the one side, and the. tendency of their doctrines on the other. We are not aware, with respect to the various species of Antinomianism before mentioned, that it has ever been the avowed intention of their several patrons, to uphold the practice of sin and disobedience. The superstitions of Popery, though Antinomian in the extreme, had yet an original pretension to superior strictness and holiness, even to ascetic and monastic severity. The lax creed of the worldly Christian, though equally Antinomian in point of fact, yet professes a great regard for morality; and you are told, that, by its general statements of the mercy of God through Christ, it prevents you only from pursuing unattainable heights of fancied virtue; that it only relieves you from unnecessary alarms of conscience;-in short, from every yoke that is not easy, and every burden that is not light, as Dr. Butler of Shrewsbury so felicitously expresses it. Here, then, we deem it sufficient to observe, that we by no means consider every Papist as intentionally a rebel against God's commandments: nor do we suppose that the lowering statements respecting the Divine law are always meant as a plea for the love of sin, or for a licentious conduct. But we strongly hold, that such is the tendency of these systems; that Popery is a religion congenial to human nature, because it readily admits of abuse to purposes of sin; and that the worldly statements of. Christianity do, in fact, encourage a vast mass of our unhappy and mistaken fellow-creatures to live in daily habits of immorality and licentiousness of conduct. Now, to return to Dr. Hawker and his associates, the consideration, with respect to them, in like manner, is not whether their intention is to fill the world with anarchy and crime, to submerge tus under a deluge of deceit, licentiousness, and every evil passion; it is not, whether their profession be o to promete a superior holiness in the world, and to lead men by a safe and sure course to a true regeneration of heart and life;-but it is, whether the doctrines actually held and preached have the tendency they may profess; whether holiness is likely to grow under them, and the practice of sin to be abolished; and whether, as they are generally preached, they really do produce that effect. The question, in short, is not whether here and there a man or woman, of strict moral deportment, may not safely hold such and such doctrines; which might charitably be allowed even of Popery or of Pelagianism: but it is, whether such doctrines have not, like those of Popery or Pelagianism, a general tendency to mischief; and whether, in their more close application to the minds and circumstances of mankind, they may not be productive of effects greatly to be deplored by all wise and good men. And here it will be necessary to state what are the doctrines complained of by Mr. Cottle, as the doctrines of the "Plymouth Antinomians;" and which, of course, they will disclaim, if they consider themselves aggrieved by the representation. The summary creed of Antinomianism, the very denomination, be it remembered, they assume to themselves, he gives from our ordinary church histories: and the specific features of the doctrines he describes as proceeding from the pulpits in question seem to bear so near a resemblance to that original, as to testify that they are founded in the same principles, and are to be measured by the same rules. The summary is as follows : "Antinomians, in church history, mean certain heretics, who first appeared about the year 1535, and were so called, because they rejected the law, as of no use under the Gospel dispensation, and taught,that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder, salvation: that the child of God cannot sin: that murder, adultery, drunkenness, &c. are sins in the wicked, but not in them: that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, never doubteth afterward : that no man should |