I suppose that expression of “personal union” sprung out of design, and not out of ignorance; for, if I mistake not, he doth somewhere in his book take notice that it is disclaimed, and only a union of believers with or unto the person of Christ asserted; or, if it be his mistake, all comes to the same issue. Personal, or hypostatical union, is that of different natures in the same person, giving them the same singular subsistence. This none pretend unto with Jesus Christ. But it is the union of believers unto the person of Christ which is spiritual and mystical, whereby they are in him and he in them, and so are one with him, their head, as members of his mystical body, which is pleaded for herein, with the free communications of grace, righteousness, and salvation, in the several and distinct ways whereby we are capable to receive them from him, or be made partakers of them; [in this] we place all hopes of salvation. And we do judge, moreover, that he who is otherwise minded must betake himself unto another gospel; for he completely renounceth that in our Bibles. Is this our crime, — that which we are thus charged with, and traduced for? Is the contrary hereunto the doctrine that the present church of England approveth and instructs her children in? Or doth any man think that we will be scared from our faith and hope by such weak and frivolous attempts against them? Yea, but it may be it is not so much the thing itself, as the miserable proof which we produce from the Scripture in the confirmation of it; for we do it from that of the apostle, 1 John v. 12. If he think that we prove these things only by this testimony, he is mistaken at his wonted rate. Our faith herein is built upon innumerable express testimonies of the Scripture, — indeed the whole revelation of the will of God and the way of salvation by Jesus Christ in the gospel. Those who prove it, also, from this text, have sufficient ground and reason for what they plead. And, notwithstanding the pleasant scoffing humour of this author, we yet say that it is perverse folly for any one to say that the having of the Son or Christ expressed in the text, doth intend either the having an interest in him and union with him, or the obeying of his gospel, exclusively to the other, — these being inseparable, and included in the same expression. And as to what he adds about being in Christ, and abiding in him, — which are the greatest privileges of believers, and that as expressed in words taught by the Holy Ghost, — it is of the same strain of profaneness with much of what ensues; which I shall not farther inquire into.