his expression so happy, that the most abstracted subjects become, in his hands, easy and intelligible; and his ideas are conveyed to the minds of others, with the same clearness with which he conceived them in his own. These will render his name more lasting, than the greatest titles and preferments would have done: those he affected not, nor was solicitous to have them; if he had any ambition, it was to deserve them: and it is a greater honour to him, that our most excellent Primate, to whom merit is always the chief recommendation, thought him worthy of them; than it is to others to be, by the common methods, actually advanced to them. Nor was he less sensible of the great honour done him by the whole body of the Convocation, in choosing him their Prolocutor; though, for some reasons, he found it proper to decline it.

But his learning and abilities, though great and admirable, I look upon as the least part of his praise. He had, indeed, an excellent head; but he had too, what is infinitely more valuable, an honest mind. The character he himself hath described in one of his sermons is so exactly his own, that it seems to be a transcript only of his own heart: "He was a person of great simplicity and integrity, "remarkable for his honest and upright heart, his frank "and open conversation, and for his plainness and sin"cerity in all his dealings. He had no sinister or selfish "views, no deceit nor craftiness in him. His designs "were all just, fair, and honourable. His conduct equal, "clear, and uniform. In a word, his tongue, his hand, "and his heart, all went together."

He hath already approved himself to the learned world as a most able writer in critical and metaphysical discourses; and in these now published, he will be found to have acquitted himself with equal honour in practical ones. The following Sermons are truly such: and what the Author's opinion was of such kind of discourses, may be seen in his Preface to the second edition of Mr. Blair's Sermons, vol. vi. p. 329, &c. "When I say practical, let no one be so "weak as to take that for a diminutive expression; which " is indeed the highest and brightest commendation that a "work can have; whether we look at the intrinsic use "and value of it, or at the real difficulties of performing it "to a degree of exactness, or at the talents requisite for "it. A man bred up in the schools, or conversant only "with books, may be able to write systems, or to discuss points, in a clear and accurate manner: but that and

"more is required in an able guide, a complete practical "Divine, who undertakes to bring down the most import"ant truths to the level of a popular audience; to adapt "them properly to times, persons, and circumstances; to "guard them against latent prejudices and secret subter"fuges; and lastly, to enforce them with a becoming earnestness, and with all the prudent ways of insinua"tion and address. A person must have some knowledge "of men, besides that of books, to succeed well here; and "must have a kind of practical sagacity (which nothing "but the grace of God, joined with recollection and wise "observation, can bring) to be able to represent Christian "truths to the life, or to any considerable degree of ad"vantage." The Author hath here laid down the necessary qualifications of a practical Divine, and the reader of the following Sermons will find, that he hath given us, in himself, a complete example of one. If some may have looked upon him as a mere scholar, conversant only in the learning of the schools; they will here find they were mistaken, and that he understood men as well as he did books. It appears, from the following Discourses, that he had a thorough insight into human nature, understood the secret springs and movements of the passions, and the whole anatomy, if I may so speak, of the human mind. His way is always, first, to search out the seat of the disease, and in what passion the latent seeds of it are situated; and then to apply the remedy there with consummate skill, and a masterly hand: they will be found full of sound reasoning, just and proper observations, and excellent rules for the conduct of life. As his great design was the instructing his audience, he chose rather to inform the mind than amuse the imagination, and to be understood rather than admired.

The style is simple and unadorned, but clear and nervous; and such an unusual plainness runs through the whole, that perhaps it is a kind of style which never yet appeared; but which wants only to appear, in order to be admired and imitated.

But what gave a peculiar force and efficacy to his instructions, was a life answerable to them; while he stood forth a pattern of what he taught, and was himself the character he was recommending to others.

At the end of this volume there are two tracts; I. A Summary View of the Doctrine of Justification; II. An Inquiry concerning the Antiquity of Infant Communion.

I.

The subject of Justification was the occasion of great controversy in the last century. During twenty years confusion in Church and State, many books were published on this subject by the contending parties; all maintaining their several schemes and hypotheses with equal zeal, and perplexing the plain, natural sense of the inspired writers, with learned sophistry and metaphysical subtleties.

Upon this occasion, in order to restore and settle the peace of the Church in relation to a point of so great importance, the learned and judicious Mr. Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, composed, about the year 1660, being then about twenty-seven years of age, his most incomparable piece, entitled Harmonia Apostolica, &c. well known to the learned, which he published A. D. 1669. In which work, and his Examen Censuræ, &c. and Apologia pro Harmonia, &c. written against the several persons who appeared against him in the cause he had undertaken, he hath, in a manner, exhausted the subject, clearing and settling the true nature of the doctrine, to the satisfaction of every learned and impartial judge. But there hath of late years sprung up among us a sect of men, who are reviving the solifidian doctrine; contending that we are so justified by faith alone, as to exclude good works from being necessary conditions of justification; admitting them to be only necessary fruits and consequences of it and Bishop Bull's Works, now mentioned, being wrote in Latin, and so of no service to unlearned readers, from whom this sect of men gather their converts; there seemed to be wanting some treatise in English on this subject, which might set that important point of doctrine in a clear light to common Christians: and this seems to have been the occasion of Dr. Waterland's writing the treatise here published; wherein he hath reduced the subject to a very short compass, and, under five heads, which take in all that is necessary to be considered for clearing the subject, hath given us a Summary View of the Doctrine of Justification.

Harmoniam quidem scripseram circa annum ætatis vicesimum septimum. Apolog. pro Harm. sect. viii. §. 5. p. 60. edit. Grabe.

d Vid. Whitefield's Answer to the Bishop of London's Pastoral Letter, p. 24, 25.

There is a small Discourse of Saving or Justifying Faith, by Dr. Stebbing: but it is in a different method from our Author's; and both may be useful.

He considers, 1. what the name imports; 2. what the thing contains; 3. how it stands distinguished from renovation and regeneration; 4. what are the concurring causes on God's part, and on man's, to produce it and preserve it; 5. what are the common extremes which many have been apt to run into on this head, and how they may be avoided: and the sum is, that we are justified by God the Father, considered as principal; and by God the Son, as meritorious purchaser; and by God the Holy Ghost, as immediate efficient; and by Baptism, as the ordinary instrument of conveyance; and by faith of such a kind, as the ordinary instrument of reception; and lastly, by faith and holiness, as the necessary qualifications and conditions, in adults, both for the first receiving, and for the perpetual preserving it f.

These several particulars he hath inquired into, explained, cleared, and settled them with all that accuracy, closeness of reasoning, and perspicuity, which are the characteristics of all his writings.

As Baptism hath been too often omitted, or but slightly mentioned, in treatises on the subject of justification; our Author gives it a large and distinct consideration 8, Wherein he shows, that Baptism, considered as a federal rite, or transaction between God and man, is, in the New Testament, and the ancient Fathers, either declared or supposed to be the ordinary, necessary, outward mean or instrument, in God's hand, of man's justification, the immediate and proximate form and rite of conveyance on God's part, and consequently of reception on man's. This he f Vid. Summary View, &c. p. 461.

As our Author hath remarked, that Baptism "has been too often omit"ted, or but perfunctorily mentioned, in treatises written on the subject of "justification," Summary View, &c. p. 435; I think it just to Bishop Bull to observe, that that learned and judicious writer hath not omitted it in his Works; urging, that the necessity of Baptism for the remission of sins, so often spoken of in holy Scripture and the writings of the ancients, is an argument sufficient alone to overthrow the doctrine of Solifidianism, or justification by faith alone.

Necessitas Baptismi, eorumque quæ ad Baptismum disponunt, ad remissionem peccatorum consequendum, quæ passim in sacris Scripturis celebratur, atque in scriptis veterum fere utramque facit paginam, argumentum præbet, quod solum sufficiat funditus evertendo Solifidianismo isti, quem multi tum sacris Scripturis, tum Patrum testimoniis astruere conati sunt; uti egredie docuit doctissimus et pientissimus Thorndicius noster paxagirns in scriptis suis passim. Namque hinc apparet, fidem per se non sufficere ad justificationem obtinendum; sed requiri præterea externum Baptismum, ubi haberi potest: omnino vero necessario requiri sponsionem illam novæ vitæ, quæ per Baptismum fieri solet. Apologia pro Harmonia, &c. sect. iv. §. 9. p. 23. Conf. sect. vii. §. 4. p. 41.

proves from many clear texts of Scripture; confirming it from the concurring verdict of the ancients, down from the first age, about A. D. 70, to the end of the fourth century, or later; and from our Church's forms; concluding this head with noting, and accounting for a mistake in some eminent moderns, who have taught that the first justification in adults is antecedent to Baptism, and that Baptism rather seals and confirms it, than conveys it; for which doctrine he sees no sufficient ground, either in Scripture or antiquity, or in the public offices of our Church; but much the contrary.

Our learned Author observes, that the phrase of the instrumentality of faith, very eminent men, Hammond, Tillotson, Bull, and Truman (whom he there refers to) have disliked, and rejected the thing. He therefore distinguishes upon the question; rejecting it according to the false notion some had conceived of it, but contending for it in the true and proper sense of it. He distinguishes the instrumentality of faith to justification into an active and a passive sense; rejecting it in the former, and maintaining it in the latter. Faith cannot be the instrument of conveyance in the hand of the efficient cause; but may be very properly looked on as the instrument of reception on the part of the recipient. It is not the mean whereby the grace is effected or conferred; but may be, and is the mean whereby it is accepted or received.

Our Author hath here referred to Bishop Bull as rejecting the instrumentality of faith. But, upon considering, upon this occasion, with some care, what Bishop Bull hath said, he seems to me, as far as I am capable of judging, not to reject the instrumentality of faith absolutely, but only in the same sense in which our Author rejects it, and to admit it in the sense our Author admits it. He rejects faith from being an instrument, if instrument be understood strictly to signify an efficient cause of justification, or to have a physical efficiency: for, since justification is the free act of God alone, and produced extra nos; neither faith nor any action of ours can have a physical efficiency in producing the effect of justification h. But if, by faith

· Si instrumentum stricte et proprie sumatur pro causa efficiente minus principali, clarum est, fidem justificationis instrumentum nullo modo dici posse. Nam primo cum justificatio sit actio Dei solius, eaque tota extra nos producta, quomodo vel fides nostra, vel quævis nostra actio ad justificationis effectum producendum physicam ullam efficientiam habeat,