A letter from the Reverend Mr. Whitefield to a friend in London, shewing the fundamental error of the book, entitled, The whole duty of man.

A letter from the Reverend Mr. Whitefield to a friend in London, shewing the fundamental error of the book, entitled, The whole duty of man.

Table of contents

Title page

A LETTER, &c.

[Page]

A LETTER, &c.

My Dear Friend,

SINCE it has pleased God to give me a true Knowledge of the Doctrines of Grace, I have frequently thought, that next to the Falling away of the Clergy from the Principles of the Reformation, the Books which are in our Church, founded on the Arminian Scheme, have been the chief Cause that so many of our own Communion in particular, have built their Hopes of Salvation on a false Bottom. The Authors not only led the People Captive in their own Life-time, but also after their Death, like Simon Magus, for a long Season have bewitched the People with their Sorceries, I mean their seemingly devout, but at the Bottom, Anti-Christian Compositions. — The only Way therefore, to open People's Eyes, I think is this, to shew them, that the Writings, which for some Years past have been so much admired, are directly contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; for this Reason [Page] I thought it my Duty to bear a publick Testimony against the Writings of Archbishop Tillotson: — And upon the same Account, think it my Duty, to point out the fundamental Error of an Author, as much admired and read by the more common, as the Archbishop by the more learned and polite Sort of People.

I know you are impatient to hear who this can be: If you will promise me not to be angry, I'll tell you. — It is that much admired Book called The whole Duty of Man. — Methinks I see you surprized at the very mentioning of it; but remember, I desired you not to be angry. — And if you will throw aside Prejudice, and are sincerely desirous to know and do the divine Will, I am perswaded we shall both be of one Mind concerning this Book, e'er you lay this Letter down out of your Hand.

But, before I shew you its Error, to convince you of my Impartiality, I confess that the Devotions of that Book were once of Service to me. — And I believe have been useful to many others. — The Book in general is calculated to civilize, but I am perswaded, it never was a Means of Converting a single Soul. — I have just been looking over the Index and General Titles at the End of it, and cannot find the Word Regeneration so much as once mentioned. — And indeed, the whole Treatise is built on such a false Foundation, as not only proves the Author to be no real Christian at Heart, but also, that he had not so much as a Head Knowledge of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. To prove this, I need only refer you to Part of the Preface.— Of the Necessity of Caring for the Soul (Paragraph 17) wherein the Author, talking of the second Covenant, speaks thus. — ‘This second Covenant, says he, was made with Adam, and us in him, presently after his Fall, and is briefly contain'd [Page] in these Words, Gen. iii. 15. where God declares, that the Seed of the Woman shall break the Serpent's Head; And this was made up, as the first was, of some Mercies to be afforded by God, and some Duties to be performed by us.’ Who, that is any way enlightened, cannot but see the false Divinity and fundamental Errors of this Passage? For, how can it be proved, that the second Covenant was made with Adam, or that God ever entered into any Covenant at all with Man, after he had broken the First? It is true, God the Father, did enter into a Covenant (and that from all Eternity) with the Second Adam, the God-Man, Christ Jesus, in our stead. — But it cannot be proved, that he made any Second Covenant at all with Adam himself or any of his Posterity.— But says our Author, ‘He did make a second Covenant with Adam, and us in him, presently after his Fall, and it is briefly contained in these Words, where God declares, that the Seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent's Head.’ — But I would ask where any Covenant is contained in these Words, and how it is ‘made up, as the first was, of some Mercies to be afforded by God, and some Duties to be perform'd by us?’ Here is a free Gift and Promise of Salvation made to Adam, but no Covenant. Here is not a Word of any Condition mentioned. — No, it was the Free Gift of God in Christ.— Adam was now in a State of Condemnation: He was so far from being desirous of entering into Covenant with, that he fled from God, and was not so much as truly convicted of his Sin, as will evidently appear from the Context.— For both he and his Wife laid the Fault, not upon themselves, but on one another, and on the Serpent. The Woman which thou gavest me (therein tacitly reflecting upon God for giving him that Woman) she gave [Page]me, says Adam, and I did eat. The Serpent beguiled me, says the Woman, and I did eat. — Here appears no true Sense of Sin at all. — And to shew they had no Notion of a Saviour, we are told, they sewed Fig Leaves together, instead of applying to God, to cover their Nakedness,and afterwards fled from God, when they heard the Voice of the Lord God walking among the Trees of the Garden. — Here then opens that Mystery of Godliness, God manifested in the Flesh. Notwithstanding our first Parents had broken the Covenant and had their Hearts hardened, yet out of the Riches of his Free Grace, God had provided a Remedy from all Eternity, and now reveals it in Time. — The Seed of the Woman, i. e. Jesus Christ (who in all probability was spiritually conceived that Instant in the Heart of Eve) shall bruise the Serpent's Head, i.e. by his Obedience and Death, shall satisfy divine Justice, fulfil the moral Law in Man's Stead, and thereby deliver him from the Power of the Devil.— Here are no Terms mentioned on Man's Part at all: And supposing there had been a Covenant made with Man, ‘and it had been made up, as the First was, of some Mercies to be afforded by God, and some Duties to be performed by us,’ Alas, we are of all Creatures the most miserable; for then we are not under Grace but under the Law. — And if Adam could not keep the first Covenant, tho' in perfect Innocence, how can we, who hate God by Nature, and whose Thoughts are only Evil continually, keep a Second, like unto it? Is not this putting Man into a most unhappy Condition, and making his poor imperfect Obedience the Cause, why Jesus Christ is merciful unto him? And if so, how is Boasting excluded in the great Work of our Redemption, as the Scriptures every where affirm? And how can Eternal Life be the Free Gift of God thro' Jesus [Page] Christ our Lord? But this is agreeable enough to the Divinity of this Author, who in the 21st Paragraph of this Preface, says, — ‘The third Thing Christ was to do for us, was to enable us, or give us Strength, to do what he requires of us. This he doth, First, by taking off from the Hardness of the Law given to Adam, which was never to commit the least Sin, upon Pain of Damnation, and requiring of us only an holy and hearty Endeavour to do what we are able, and where we fail, accepting of sincere Repentance.’ Now I would fain know, where God has taken off from the Hardness of the Law given unto Adam, and required of us only an holy and hearty Endeavour to do what we are able, and where we fail, accepting of a sincere Repentance? This is all as false, as God is true. The whole Law is as much in force against us, as it was against Adam, before we believed in Christ. God has been so far from taking off from the Hardness of the Law, given to Adam, That Jesus Christ declares, That he came not to destroy, but to fulfil it. And until convinced of the Obligation we lie under, to obey the whole moral Law, in Thought, Word, and Deed, how can we see the Necessity of the Righteousness of Jesus Christ.—God's Law was honourable. Jesus Christ fulfilled it in our Stead; and upon Account of that Righteousness, imputed to us, and received by Faith, and not on our hearty Endeavour or Repentance, are we accepted by him. What is there, in our hearty Endeavour or Repentance, to recommend us to the Favour of God, or to render them worthy of being joined with the Righteousness of Christ? as tho' that was not sufficient of itself. — Our best Actions are but splendida peccata, Glittering Sins. — ‘I cannot pray, says the pious Bishop Beveridge, but I sin; I cannot hear, or preach a [Page] Sermon, but I sin; I cannot give an Alms, or receive the Sacrament, but I sin; nay, I cannot confess my Sins, but my very Confessions are still Aggravations of them; my Repentings need to be repented of, my Tears want washing, and the very Washing of my Tears needs still to be washed over again, with the Blood of my Redeemer.’

Jesus Christ, the Lord, is our whole Righteousness. We are to go to him as poor Sinners;—beg Salvation of him, as his Free Gift, and intreat him to give us a Living Faith, whereby that Righteousness may be applyed to our Hearts; and then that Faith, if true, will work by Love. But before this Faith, we cannot be said to have an actual Interest in the Benefits of Christ's Purchase. This the Author of the Whole Duty of Man, was wholly ignorant of, otherwise he would not have laid such a Foundation. And if the Foundation be so bad, judge you then, how wretchedly weak the Superstructure must be. It would take up more Time than I can at present spare, to point out all the Mistakes of the whole Book. — I will only refer you to what this Author says about Recreations, Sunday 9th. Sect. 7. wherein he seems not only to allow of Gaming, by saying, If we play at any Game, but directs us when we do, to let the End of our Doing it, be meerly to recreate our selves. — I thought the Glory of God, and not self-pleasing, had been the Scope to which all Christians ought to be directed. I suppose, from this Passage, a Man, whom I reproved lately on the Road, for Gaming in the Christmas Holy Days, grounded his Authority for so doing.—He told me, The whole Duty of Man said he might do so.—And, indeed, I believe he is not the First, by Thousands, who has been miserably deceived by this much applauded Book: And therefore, I thought myself [Page] obliged to write this Letter; you may make what Use you will of it. I care not if the Contents are published upon the House Top: Nay, I think it your Duty, if convinced yourself, to endeavour to convince others: For there's no Hopes of bringing People to a right Knowledge of the Gospel, till their favourite, tho' erroneous, Authors, are discountenanced and laid aside. — Before I see England, I hope I shall hear, that my Dear Friends in the Ministry, both in Preaching and Printing, have seconded my Testimony.—Future Ages, as well as the present, will be much beholden to them for it. —Their Declarations will stand as Records, that God did not leave himself without Witness, even in the worst of Times: Other Gospel Ministers will be encouraged thereby, and Thousands, nay, Ten Thousands preserved from Infection, which otherwise perhaps, they may not be able to avoid: —However, whether they second me or not, by the Help of my God, both abroad and at home (if it be the divine Will I should see England again) I will persevere in bearing a more explicite and particular Testimony, against the false Writings of our admired Rabbies. Do you and my other Friends watch over me. Reprove me sharply, whenever you perceive my Spirit any way imbittered.—Pray that I may be as meek as a Lamb, but as bold as a Lion; and then, whatever befalls me, for speaking as I ought to speak, thro' divine Grace, will be cheerfully submitted to, by

Your affectionate Friend and Servant in Christ, GEO. WHITEFIELD.

§

§

[Page]

[Page]

A LETTER From the Reverend Mr. WHITEFIELD TO A FRIEND IN LONDON, Shewing the Fundamental Error of the Book, Entitled, The Whole DUTY of MAN.

PHILADELPHIA: Printed and Sold by B. FRANKLIN, M, DCC, XL.

Information about this book

Title statement

A letter from the Reverend Mr. Whitefield to a friend in London, shewing the fundamental error of the book, entitled, The whole duty of man.

Whitefield, George, 1714-1770.

Publication

Publisher

Text Creation Partnership,

Place of publication

Ann Arbor, MI :

Date

2008-09.

ID [DLPS]

N03784

ID [TCP]

N03784

ID [STC]

Evans 4643

ID [NOTIS]

APW8040

ID [IMAGE-SET]

4643

ID [EVANS-CITATION]

99014210

Availability

This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal. The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

Series

Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 ; no. 4643.

Notes

(Evans-TCP ; no. N03784)

Transcribed from: (Readex Archive of Americana ; Early American Imprints, series I ; image set 4643)

Images scanned from Readex microprint and microform: (Early American imprints. First series ; no. 4643)

Source

— A letter from the Reverend Mr. Whitefield to a friend in London, shewing the fundamental error of the book, entitled, The whole duty of man., Whitefield, George, 1714-1770..

Extent

8 p. ; (8vo)

Printed and sold by B. Franklin,,. Philadelphia: :: M,DCC,XL. [1740].

Creation

Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.

Editorial practices

EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.

EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).

The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.

Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.

Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.

Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.

The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.

Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).

Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.