An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

The method is Conviction, Compunction, ¹Humiliation, and Faith, but a Man is passive in all this: How passive? what is he to sit still, and do nothing at all? No surely, he may abstain from outward Acts of sin; he may do Acts of Sobriety, Justice, Charity; he may hear, pray, but internal Grace is Gods work. Some have taken those words, Let us make Man, as if God hath spoke to the four Elements, and said, Vos date Corpus, ego dabo Animam: Do you give the Body, I'll give the Soul. If I may allude to this Gloss, thus it is, Man ⟨p. 508⟩may frame a Body of outward Piety, but the [Greek or Hebrew], the inward life of Grace, is from God only; it is he, Who quickeneth the dead in trespasses and sins, Eph. 2.1. Believers are not born of the will of Man, but of God, Joh. 1.13. But, saith the Author, It is a vain thing to give such rules and directions, as no Man can follow. To which I answer, Rules are not therefore vain, because Man cannot follow them by his own power; God gave not the Moral Law in vain, yet the spotless sanctity of it was a [Greek or Hebrew], a mere impossible thing to any fallen Man in the World; God bid them not in vain, to make a new heart, Ezek. 18.31. and yet claims it as his prerogative, and as an act of special Grace to make such an heart, Ezek. 36.26. Christ did not in vain call Men to come to him; and yet withal tells them, That no Man could come to him, except the Father drew him, Joh. 6.44. Moses was but to lift up the Rod, but it was God only who could divide the Sea; we are to use the means, but it is God only who can work the great work of Grace: These Rules, though we cannot follow them of our selves, may yet show us our duty; and if we reflect upon our selves, they may ⟨p. 509⟩point out our impotency to us, and withal they minister under that Spirit, which in the use of means infuses the life of Grace into Men. Polychronius in the 6. Council of Constantinople, offered by a Paper, containing in it the Doctrine of the Monothelites, to raise a dead Man to life again. Mr. Shepherd never thought that his rules, though containing excellent truths in them, could raise the Spiritually dead; but this they do, they minister under that Divine Spirit, which breathes regenerating Graces into the Soul. St.