The justice of God in the damnation of sinners. Illustrated in a sermon

Long before the sitting of the council, my people had sent to the Reverend Mr Clark of Salem village, desiring him to write in opposition to my principles. Which gave me occasion to write to Mr Clark, that might have true information what my principles were. And in the time of the sitting of the council, I did, for their information, make a public declaration of my principles before them and the church, in the meeting-house, of the same import with that in my letter to Mr Clark, and very much in the same words. And then, afterwards, sent in to the council in writing, an extract of that letter, containing the information I had given Mr Clark, in the very words of my letter to him, that the council might read and consider it at their leisure, and have a more certain and satisfactory knowledge what my principles were. The extract which I sent in to them was in the following words.

"I am often, and I do not know but pretty ⟨p. 85⟩generally, in the country, represented as of a new and odd opinion with respect to the terms of Christian communion, and as being for introducing a peculiar way of my own. Whereas, I do not perceive that I differ at all from the scheme of Dr Watts, in his book entitled, The rational Foundation of a Christian Church, and the Terms of Christian Communion; which, he says, is the common sentiment and practice of all reformed churches. I had not seen this book of Dr Watt's when I published what I have written on the subject. But yet, I think my sentiments, as I have expressed them, are as exactly agreeable to what he lays down, as if I had been his pupil. Nor do I at all go beyond what Dr Doddridge plainly shows to be his sentiments, in his Rise and Progress of Religion ▪ and his Sermons on Regeneration, and his Paraphrase and Notes on the New Testament. Nor indeed, Sir, when I consider the sentiments you have expressed in your letters to Major Pomroy and Mr Billing, can I perceive but that they come exactly to the same thing that I maintain. You suppose, the sacraments are not converting ordinances: But that, as seals of the covenant, they presuppose conversion, especially in the adult; and that it is visible saintship, or in other words, a credible profession of faith and repentance, a solemn consent to the gospel covenant, joined with a good conversation, and competent measure of Christian knowledge, is what gives a gospel right to all sacred ordinances: