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

Not to stay any longer on the excellencies and great Concerns of Evangelical Truths, which no tongue of Men or Angels is able fully to express. I shall now speak a little touching Mr. Sherlock's Book. When I read it, I thought my self in a new Theological World; Believers appearing without their Head for want of a Mystical Union, stripped and naked for lack of imputed Righteousness; the full treasures of Grace in Christ, which have supplied all the vessels of faith, emptied out of sacred his person, ⟨image 4⟩& transfused into the doctrine of the Gospel; as if according to Pelagius all Grace were in doctrine only: The holy Spirit, the great Origen of Graces and Comforts, in its Illumination seems to be superfluous, in its Testimony to Believers an Enthusiastical Fancy, and in the work of Regeneration, if any, at most but a partial Co-cause, parting stakes with the Will of Man: Faith in Abel and Enoch lying as low as Natural Principles; in Noah and Abraham raised up a little to particular Revelations, but not so high as the Messiah: In Christians standing off and at a distance from Christ its dear Object, not daring to lay hold on, or so much as touch him, to draw any Virtue from thence. As if Socinus had hit it right, when he said, ⟨image 5⟩Christi apprehensio merum commentum & inanissimum somnium est. The immutable Love of God, the only Cement of the Church, seems to be turned off from Persons to Qualities, and towards Persons to be as variable as the fickle Will of Man is; and yet he is immutable still, he loves for the same Reason, or, as Socinus saith, Non sine causa mutat. The Pontifician Thesis touching Justification by inherent Righteousness, seems to be revived a fresh, and that in a way less tolerable than among the Romanists: They, though they would have inherent Righteousness come in for a share, yet allow the Imputation of Christs passive Obedience; but in the New Scheme, inherent Righteousness takes up all the room, and leaves none for imputed. The Drollery and sarcastical Reflections in the ⟨image 5⟩Book are but the Cover of it; within there is a dark Eclipse upon many excellent Truths which hitherto have been owned in the Churches of Christ, and particularly in our own. Among other Truths none have had a greater share of suffering than those two, touching our Mystical Union with Christ, and the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness to us;