Part 547

ll what he intends thereby. Whatever he has [Auto-modernized] fancied about Christ being the name of an office, Jesus Christ, of whom we speak, is a person, and not an office; and there are no such things in rerum natura as the actions of an office. And if by them he intends the actions of a person in the discharge of an office, whatever he calls them, I will call the habits in Christ, from where [Auto-modernized] all his actions in the performance of his office do proceed, "personal graces," and that whether he will or no. So he is a "merciful, faithful, and compassionate high priest," Hebrews 2:17, iv. 15, v. 2. And all his actions, in the discharge of his office of priesthood, being principled and regulated by those qualifications, I do call them his personal graces, and do hope that, for the future, I may obtain his leave so to do. The like may be said of his other offices.

The discourse which he thus raves against is didactical, and accommodated to [Auto-modernized] a popular way of instruction; and it has [Auto-modernized] been hitherto the common ingenuity of all learned men to give an allowance to [Auto-modernized] such discourses, so as not to exact from them an accuracy and propriety in expressions, such as is required in those that are scholastical or polemical. It is that which, by common consent, is allowed to the tractates of the ancients of that nature, -- especially where nothing is taught but what, for the substance of it, is consonant to [Auto-modernized] the truth. But this man attempts not only a severity in nibbling at all expressions which he fancies [Auto-modernized] liable to [Auto-modernized] his censures, but, with a disingenuous artifice, waiving the tenor and process of the discourse, which I presume he found not himself able to oppose, he takes out, sometimes here, sometimes there, up and down, backward and forward, at hi