To Mr. P——
“Temptation as to the genuineness of faith — “Man-work” — Faith without works — “Workers together with God” — Queries about self-sanctification — Answers — Scriptural test — Exhortation.
Dear Sir, — =You seem to be afraid that there may be too much of your own works and doings in this way of receiving the blessing. Satan tempts you that your faith is a mere intellectual effort, and not that faith which is through the operation of the Spirit. If your faith produces such works as prove the leadings of the Holy Spirit, you need nothing more to settle your mind on this point. The effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance. Perhaps if the faith of believers in general were more intellectual, it might be more efficient in its operations. I do not desire to believe anything in such
A Bible Reason. Man-work and Spirit-work. Faith without Works.
a way that I may not give a reason for my hope from the Bible. I hope you may have come to about the point in your heavenward journeyings where “wisdom and knowledge shall be the stap bility of thy times and strength of salvation.”
“But is there not danger of being too much absorbed with man-work? I want to have the work of my salvation all Spirit- work, so that I may never in any degree walk by sparks of my own kindling.” This then makes it all important that you should have a purely Scriptural experience, and not one merely conformable to what you witness in those who are alike falhble with yourself. Man stands intimately connected as a worker together with God in the work of his salvation.
Is not the more general fault of professors that of seeking to be justified by faith, without such works as God hath ordained, as the necessary pre-requisites to an appropriating faith? I think by far the greater number of difficult cases that I meet with are of this description* “How can ye believe which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?” When Paul said, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service,” did he not mean that they, through the power of the Spirit, should bring the sacrifice, and lay it upon the altar? Would God
Abraham justified by Works, The Spirit’s Help.
have commanded this without giving power with the command for the performance of it? God will never do our part of the work, neither does he require that we should do his. It is God that worketh in us, but we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
“Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works, when he had offered Isaac, his son, upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect, and the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness: and he was called the friend of God.” “But does not this savor too much of sanctifying ourselves, instead of recognizing the Holy Spirit as the sanctifier? I want to know, most assuredly, that I am sanctified through the Spirit.”
Let me ask, brother, how were the first movings in your heart, prompting you to seek a state of holiness, induced? Was it not by the power of the Spirit that you were incited to take the first step toward the attainment of this grace? And now, that you have for weeks past been sustained in a state of progression toward it, have you been enabled to go forward in your own might, or have you been empowered by the might of the Spirit for every progressive step? And when you were gradually brought to submit to what you felt to
The Spirit’s Leadings and Testimony.
be an entire crucijQxion of the flesh, I need not ask how you were brought to this point, for I am sure you will acknowledge the direct agency of the Holy Spirit. What abundant cause have you, my dear brother, to thank God and take courage.
In your last you acknowledged that you had been testing yourself in order to ascertain whether you were in truth led by the Spirit, and the result was, that you were enabled to settle the point incontrovertibly by the Scriptures, that you were indeed thus led, and consequently a child of God, and if a son, then an heir of God, and joint heir with Jesus Christ. In order that you may be brought into the enjoyment of all those high and holy privileges, which are already yours by the right of inheritance, the Holy Spirit has undertaken to teach and instruct you in the way in which you should go. Through the operations of the Spirit you are now brought to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling. O that you may now yield implicit obedience to the voice of the Spirit, while he may not testify of himself, but take of the things of the Father and of the Son, and reveal them unto you. Jesus, through his merits, now waits to present you to the Father, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Do you doubt? Behold him, as he
“Points to his side, and lifts his hands, And shows that you are graven there.”
Patient Waiting. Danger of drawing back.
I must now close; but permit me first to say, that “we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brother, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” Adieu. Yours, &c.