N05401:386
Misrepresentations corrected, and truth vindicated. In a reply to the Rev. Mr. Solomon Williams's…
Misrepresentations corrected, and truth vindicated. In a reply to the Rev. Mr. Solomon Williams's book, entitled, The true state of the question concerning the qualifications necessary to lawful communion in the Christian sacraments. / By Jonathan Edwards, M.A. Minister of the Gospel at Stockbridge. ; [Five lines of Scripture texts]Misrepresentations corrected, and truth vindicated. In a reply to the Rev. Mr. Solomon Williams's book, intitled, The true state of the question concerning the qualifications necessary to lawful communion in the Christian sacraments. / By Jonathan Edwards, M.A. Minister of the Gospel at Stockbridge. ; [Five lines of Scripture texts]
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1752
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
(1.) If when they speak of commanding and forbidding at the same Time, they mean God's commanding and ⟨p. 164⟩forbidding the same Thing, at the same Time, no such Consequence follows from my Principles. For That Thing, and that only, which I suppose God requires of any, is to come to the Lord's Supper with a sanctified Heart; and that this God requires at all Times, and never forbids at any Time; And that to come without this Qualification, is what He always forbids, and requires at no Time. So that what He requires, at the same Time he forbids something, is not the same Thing that he forbids; but a very different and contrary one: And 'tis no Absurdity, to suppose, that God requires one Thing, and forbids a contrary Thing at the same Time.
To illustrate this by an Example: It was the Duty of the Jews at Jerusalem, openly to confess CHRIST, to own Him as the Messiah, at that Hour when he was led away to be crucified, and openly to testify their adoring Respect to him on that extraordinary Occasion. But yet they did not believe him to be the Messiah, and could not believe it (many of 'em at least) since they looked on his present abject Circumstances as a Demonstration, that he was not the Messiah. It was beyond their Power, at least at once, in that Instant, to give their Assent, with all their Hearts, to such a Supposition. Nor was it in their Power, to exercise an adoring Respect to Him: for, besides their strong Prejudices, most of them were judicially hardened, and given up to a Spirit of Unbelief and obstinate Rejection of Him; as appears by that Account (Joh xii.39, 40.) Therefore they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their Eyes, and hardened their Heart, that they should not see with their Eyes, &c. (See also Luk. xix.41, 42. & Matth. xiii.14, 15.) And yet it would have been unlawful for 'em to have made a lying Profession; to profess, that they believed him to be the Messiah, and that they received and loved him as such, when at the same Time they hated him, and did not believe he was the Messiah. But here is no requiring and forbidding the same Thing at the same Time: for the only Thing required of them was, to have Faith and Love, and to testify it; which was not at all forbidden.