The Spirit of Love in the Creature
“HEAE THEOPHILUS, this gentleman is Eusebius, a very valuable and worthy curate in my neighbourhood; he would not let me wait any longer for your second letter on the Spirit of Love, nor be content till I consented to our making you this visit. And indeed we are both on the same errand, and in equal impatience to have your full answer to that part of my objection which you reserved for a second letter.
Theophilus. — My heart embraces you both with the greatest affection, and I am much pleased at the occasion of your coming, which calls me to the most delightful subject in the world, to help both you and myself to rejoice in that adorable Deity, whose infinite being is an infinity of mere love, an unbeginning, never-ceasing, and for ever overflowing ocean of meekness, sweetness, delight, blessing, goodness, patience, and mercy; and all this, as so many blessed streams breaking out of the abyss of universal love. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a triune infinity of love and goodness, for ever and ever, giving forth nothing but the same gifts of light and love, of blessing and joy, whether before or after the fall, either of angels or men.
2. Nature only Exists to manifest the
Goodness of God.
Look at all nature, through all its height and depth, in all its variety of working powers, it is what it is for this only end, that the hidden riches, the invisible powers, blessings, glory, and love of the unsearchable God may become visible, sensible, and manifest in it and by it.
Look at all the variety of creatures, they are what they are for this only end, that in their infinite variety, degrees, and capacities they may be as so many speaking figures, living forms of the manifold riches and powers of nature, as so many sounds and voices, preachers and trumpets, giving glory, and praise, and thanksgiving to that Deity of love, which gives life to all nature and creature.
For every creature of unf alien nature, call it by what name you will, has its form, and power, and state, and place in nature for no other end but to open and enjoy, to manifest and rejoice in some share of the love, and happiness, and goodness of the Deity, as springing forth in the boundless height and depth of nature.
Now this is the one will and work of God, in and through all nature and creature. From eternity to eternity He can will and intend nothing towards them, in them, or by them, but the communication of various degrees of His own love, goodness, and happiness to them, according to their state, and place, and capacity in nature. This is God’s unchangeable disposition towards the creature; He can be nothing else but all goodness towards it, because He can be nothing towards the creature but that which He is, and was, and ever shall be in Himself.
3. Goi is an Immutable Will to all
Goodness.
Theogenes. — Indeed, Theophilus, both Eusebius and myself find ourselves incapable of thinking any otherwise of God than as the one only good, or, as you express it, an eternal immutable will to all goodness, and which can will nothing else to all eternity, but to communicate good, and blessing, and happiness, and perfection to every life, according to its capacity to receive it.
Had I an hundred lives, I could with more ease part W’ith them all, by suffering an hundred deaths, than give up this lovely idea of God.
For to know that love alone was the beginning of nature and creature, that nothing but love encompasses the whole universe of things, that the governing hand that overrules all, the watchful eye that sees through all, is nothing but omnipotent and omniscient love, using an infinity of wisdom to raise all that is fallen in nature, to save every misguided creature from the miserable works of its own hands, and make happiness and glory the perpetual inheritance of all the creation, is a reflection that must be quite ravishing to every intelligent creature that is sensible of it. Thus to think of God, of providence, and eternity, while we are in this valley and shadow of death, is to have a real foretaste of the blessings of the world to come.
4. Of the Twofold Life of the Creature.
TheojyJiihis. — To inquire or search into the origin of wrath, is the same thing as to search into the origin of evil and sin: for wrath and evil are but two words for one and the same thing.
The creature can have no beginning or sensibility of wrath in itself, but by losing the living power, the living presence, and governing operation of the Spirit of God within it; or, in other words, by its losing that heavenly state of existence in God, and influence from Him, which it had at its creation.
Now no intelligent creature, whether angel or man, can be good and happy, but by partaking of, or having in itself, a twofold life. Hence so much is said in the Scripture of an inward and outward, an old and a new man. — For there could be no foundation for this distinction, but because every intelligent creature, created to be good and happy, must of all necessity have a twofold life in it, or it cannot possibly be capable of goodness and happiness, nor can it possibly lose its goodness and happiness, or feel the least want of them, but by its breaking the union of this twofold life in itself. Hence so much is said in the Scripture of the quickening, raising, and reviving the inward new man, of the new birth from above, of Christ being formed in us, as the one only redemption and salvation of the soul. Hence also the fall of Adam was said to be a death, that he died the day of his sin, though he lived
SO many hundred years after it; it was because his sin broke the union of his twofold life, and put an end to the heavenly part of it, and left only one life, the life of this bestial, earthly world in him.
Now there is, in the nature of the thing, an absolute necessity of this twofold life in every creature that is to be good and happy; and the twofold life is this, it must have the life of nature and the life of God in it. It cannot be a creature, and intelligent, but by having the life and properties of nature; that is, by finding itself to be a life of various sensibilities, that hath a power of understandmg, willing, and desiring: this is its creaturely life, which, by the creating power of God, it hath in and from nature.
Now this is all the life that is or can be creaturely, or be a creature’s natural, own life; and all this creaturely natural life, with all its various powers and sensibilities, is only a life of various appetites, hungers, and wants, and cannot possibly be anything else. God Himself cannot make a creature to be in itself, or as to its own nature, any thing else but a state of emptiness, of want, of appetite, etc. He cannot make it to be good and happy, in and from its natural state; this is as impossible, as for God to cease to be the one only good. The highest life, therefore, that is natural and creaturely, can go no higher than this; it can only be a bare capacity for goodness and happiness, and cannot possibly be a good and happy life, but by the life of God dwelling in and in union with it. And this is the twofold life, that of all necessity must be united in every good, and perfect, and happy creature.
See here the greatest of all demonstrations of the absolute necessity of the gospel redemption and salvation, and all proved from the nature of the thing. There can be no goodness and happiness for any intelligent creature, but in and by this twofold life; and therefore the union of the divine and human life, or the Son of God incarnate in man, to make man again a partaker of the divine nature, is the one only possible salvation for all the sons of fallen Adam; that is, of Adam dead to, or fallen from, his first union with the divine life.
5. Of the Polly of Deism.
Deism therefore, or a religion of nature, pretending to make man good and happy without Christ, or the Son of God entering into union with the human nature, is the greatest of all absurdities. It is as contrary to the nature and possibilities of things, as for mere emptiness to be its own fulness, mere hunger to be its own food, and mere want to be its possession of all things. For nature and creature, without the Christ of God or the divine life in union with it, is and can be nothing else but this mere emptiness, hunger, and want of all that which can alone make it good and happy. For God Himself, as I said, cannot make any creature to be good and happy by any thing that is in its own created nature; and however high or noble any creature is supposed to be created, its height and nobility can consist in nothing but its higher capacity and fitness to receive a higher union with the divine life, and also a higher and more wretched misery when left to itself, as is manifest by the hellish state of the fallen angels. Their high and exalted nature was only an enlarged capacity for the divine life; and therefore, when this life was lost, their whole created nature tiil: spmiT of love 29
was nothing else but the height of rage and hellish distraction.
A plain demonstration that there can be no happiness, blessing, and goodness for any creature in heaven or on earth, but by having, as the gospel saith, Jesus Christ made unto it wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and peace with God.
6. Of the Twofold Life of Man.
And the reason is this: it is because goodness and happiness are absolutely inseparable from God, and can be nowhere but in God. And, on the other hand, emptiness, want, insufficiency, etc., are absolutely inseparable from the creature, as such; its whole nature cannot possibly be any thing else, be it what or where it will, an angel in heaven, or a man on earth; it is and must be in- its whole creaturely nature and capacity a mere hunger and emptiness, etc. And therefore all that we know of God, and all that we know of the creature, fully proves that the life of God in union with the creaturely life (which is the gospel salvation) is the one only possibility of goodness and happiness in any creature, whether in heaven or on earth.
Hence also it is enough certain, that this twofold life must have been the original state of every intelligent creature, at its first coming forth from God. It could not be brought forth by God, to have only a creaturely life of nature, and be left to that; for that would be creating it under a necessity of being in misery, in want, in wrath, and all painful sensibilities. A thing more unworthy of God, and more impossible for Him to do, than to create numberless earthly animals under a necessity of being perpetually pained with hunger and thirst, without any possibility of finding any thing to eat or to drink.
For no creaturely life can, in itself, be any higher or better than a state of want, or a seeking for some thing that cannot be found in itself, and therefore, as sure as God is good, as sure as He would have intelligent beings live a life of goodness and happiness, so sure is it that such beings must of all necessity, in their first existence, have been blessed with a twofold life, viz. the life of God dwelling in, and united with, the life of nature or created life.
Eusebius. — What an important matter have you here proved in the necessity and certainty of this twofold life in every intelligent being that is to be good and happy. For this great truth opens and asserts the certain and substantial ground of the spiritual life, and shows that all salvation is and can be nothing else, but the manifestation of the life of God in the soul. How clearly does this give the solid distinction between inward holiness and all outward, creaturely practices. All that God has done for man by any particular dispensations, whether by the law, or the prophets, by the Scriptures, or ordinances of the Church, are only as helps to an holiness which they cannot give, but are only suited to the death and darkness of the earthly, creaturely life, to turn it from itself, from its own workings, and awaken in it a faith and hope, a hunger and thirst, after that first union with the life of the Deity, which was lost in the fall of the first father of mankind.
7. Of the Immediate Operation of the Deity
in the Life of the Creature.
Theophilus. — How unreasonable is it to call perpetual inspiration fanaticism and enthusiasm, when there cannot be the least degree of goodness or happiness in any intelligent being, but what is in its whole nature, merely and truly the breathing, the life, and the operation of God in the life of the creature? For if goodness can only be in God, if it cannot exist separate from Him, if He can only bless and sanctify, not by a creaturely gift, but by Himself becoming the blessing and sanctification of the creature, then it is the highest degree of blindness to look for any goodness and happiness from anything but the immediate indwelling, union, and operation of the Deity in the life of the creature. Perpetual inspiration, therefore, is in the nature of the thing as necessary to a life of goodness, holiness, and happiness, as the perpetual respiration of the air is necessary to animal life.
For the life of the creature, whilst only creaturely, and possessing nothing but itself, is hell; that is, it is all pain, and want, and distress. Now nothing in the nature of the thing can make the least alteration in this creaturely life, nothing can help it to be in light and love, in peace and goodness, but the union of God with it, and the life of God working in it, because nothing but God is light, and love, and heavenly goodness. And therefore, where the life of God is not become the life and goodness of the creature, there the creature cannot have the least degree of goodness in it.
8. Of the Need of the Perpetual Operation
of the Spirit of God within us.
What a mistake is it therefore to confine inspiration to particular times and occasions, to prophets and apostles, and extraordinary messengers of God! and to call it enthusiasm, when the common Christian looks and trusts to be continually led and inspired by the Spirit of God. For though all are not called to be prophets or apostles, yet all are called to be holy, as He who hath called them is holy, “to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect, to be like-minded with Christ,” to will only as God wills, to do all to His honour and glory, to renounce the spirit of this world, to have their conversation in heaven, to set their affections on things above, to love God with all their heart, soul, and spirit, and their neighbour as themselves.
Behold a work as great, as divine, and supernatural, as that of a prophet and an apostle. But to suppose that we ought, and may always be in this spirit of holiness, and yet are not, and ought not to be always moved and led by the breath and spirit of God within us, is to suppose that there is a holiness and goodness which comes not from God; which is no better than supposing that there may be true prophets and apostles who have not their truth from God.
Now the holiness of the common Christian is not an occasional thing, that begins and ends, or is only for such a time, or place, or action, but is the holiness of that which is always alive and stirring in us, namely, of our thoughts, wills, desires, and affections. If, therefore, these are always alive in us, always driving or governing our lives, if we can have no holiness or goodness but as this life of tliouglit, will, and affection works in us, if we are all called to this inward holiness and goodness, then a perpetual, always existing operation of the Spirit of God within us is absolutely necessary. For we cannot be inwardly led and governed by a spirit of goodness, but by being governed by the Spirit of God Himself. For the Spirit of God and the spirit of goodness are not two spirits, nor can we be said to have any more of the one than we have of the other.
Now if our thoughts, wills, and affections need only be now and then holy and good, then, indeed, the moving and breathing Spirit of God need only now and then govern us. But if our thoughts and affections are to be always holy and good, then the holy and good Spirit of God is to be always operating as a principle of life within us.
The Scripture saith, “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think a good thought.” If so, then we cannot be chargeable with not thinking and willing ttiat which is good, but upon this supposition, that there is always a supernatural power within us, ready and able to help us to the good which we cannot have from ourselves.
The difference then of a good and a bad man does not lie in this, that the one wills that which is good, and the other does not; but solely in this, that the one concurs with the living, inspiring Spirit of God within him, and the other resists it, and is and can be only chargeable with evil because he resists it
Therefore whether you consider that which is good or bad in a man, they equally prove the perpetual indwelling and operation of the Spirit of God within us, since we can only be bad by resisting, as we are good by yielding to, the Spirit of God; both which equally suppose a perpetual operation of the Spirit of God within us.
9. The Teaching of the Established Church
on Perpetual Inspiration.
Eusebius. — How firmly our Established Church adheres to this doctrine of the necessity of the perpetual operation of the Holy Spirit, as the one only source and possibility of any degree of divine light, wisdom, virtue, and goodness in the soul of man, how earnestly she wills and requires all her members to live in the most open profession of it, and in the highest conformity to it, may be seen by many such prayers as these in her common, ordinary, public service.
0 God, forasmuch as without Thee we are not able to please Thee, grant that Thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.
Again, AVe pray Thee that Thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works.
Again, Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful, that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without Thee, may, by Thee, be enabled to live according to Thy will.
Again, Because the frailty of man, wichout Thee, cannot but fall, keep us ever, by Thy help, from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation, etc.
Again, 0 God, from whom all good things do come, grant to us Thy humble servants, that by Thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good., and by Thy merciful guiding may perform the same.
But now the true ground of all this doctrine of the necessity of the perpetual guidance and operation of the Holy Spirit lies in what has been said above, of the necessity of a twofold life in every intelligent creature that is to be good and happy. For if the creaturely life, whilst alone or left to itself, can only be want, misery, and distress, if it cannot possibly have any goodness or happiness in it, till the life of God is in union with it, as one life, then every thing that you read in the Scripture of the Spirit of God, as the only principle of goodness, opens itself to you, as a most certain and blessed truth, about which you can have no doubt.
10. Of the Seed of Heaven bred in
every Man.
Tlicophilus. — Let me only add, Eusebius, to what you have said, that from this absolute necessity of a twofold life in every creature that is to be good and’ happy, we may, in a still greater clearness, see the certainty of that which we have so often spoken of at other times, namely, that the inspoken word in Paradise, the bruiser of the serpent, the seed of the woman, the Immanuel, the holy Jesus (for they all mean the same thing), is and was the only possible ground of salvation for fallen man. For if the twofold life is necessary, and man could not be restored to goodness and happiness but by the restored union of this twofold life into its first state, then there was an absolute necessity, in the nature of the thing, that every son of Adam should have such a seed of heaven in the birth of his life, as could, by the mediation of Christ, be raised into a birth and growth of the first perfect man. This is the one original power of salvation, without which no external dispensation could have done any thing towards raising the fallen state of man. For nothing could be raised but what there was to be raised, nor life be given to any thing but to that which was capable of life. Unless, therefore, there had been a seed of life, or a smothered spark of heaven in the soul of man, which wanted to come to the birth, there had been no possibility for any dispensation of God to bring forth a birth of heaven in fallen man.
The faith of the first patriarchs could not have been in being, Moses and the prophets had come in vain, had not the Christ of God laid in a state of hiddennocs in every son of man. For faith, which is a will and hunger after God, could not have begun to be, or have any life in man, but because there was something of the divine nature existing and hid in man. For nothing can have any longing desire but after its own likeness, nor could any thing be made to desire God, but that which came from Him, and had the nature of Him.
The whole mediatorial ofllce of Christ, from His birth to His sitting down in power at the right hand of God, was only for this end, to help man to a life that was fallen into death and insensibility in him. And therefore His mediatorial power was to manifest itself by way of a new birth. In the nature of the thing nothing else was to be done, and Christ had no other way to proceed, and that for this plain reason.
because life was the thing that was lost, and life, wherever it is, must be raised by a birth, and every birth must and can only come from its own seed.
But if Christ was to raise a new life like His own in every man, then every man must have had, originally, in the inmost spirit of his life, a seed of Christ, or Christ, as a seed of heaven, lying there as in a state of insensibility or death, out of which it could not arise but by the mediatorial power of Christ, who, as a second Adam, was to regenerate that birth of His own life which was lost in all the natural sons of Adam the first.
But unless there was this seed of Christ or spark of heaven hidden in the soul, not the least beo-inning; of man’s salvation, or of Christ’s mediatorial office, could be made. For what could begin to deny self, if there was not something in man different from self? What could begin to have hope and faith and desire of an heavenly life, if there was not something of heaven hidden in his soul, and lying therein as in a state of inactivity and death, till raised by the mediation of Christ into its first perfection of life, and set again m its true dominion over flesh and blood.
11. The Mystery of the Inward Life.
Eusebius. — You have, TheophUus, sufficiently proved the certainty and necessity of this mxatter. But I should be glad if you knew how to help me to some more distinct idea and conception of it.
Theoiohilus. — An idea is not the thing to be here sought for, it would rather hinder than help your true knowledge of it. But perhaps the following similitude may be of some use to you.
The ten commandments, when written by God on tables of stone and given to man, did not then first begin to belong to man, they had their existence in man, were born with him, they lay as a seed and power of goodness, hidden in the form and make of his soul, and altogether inseparable from it, before they were shown to man on tables of stone. And when they were shown to man on tables of stone, they were only an outward imitation of that which was inwardly in man, though not legible, because of that impurity of flesh and blood in which they were drowned and swallowed up. For the earthly nature having overcome the divinity that was in man, it gave commandments of its own to man, and required obedience to all the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Hence it became necessary that God should give an outward knowledge of such commandments as were become inwardly unknown, unfelt, and, as it were, shut up in death in the soul.
But now, had not all that is in these commandments been really and antecedently in the soul, as its own birth and nature, had they not still lain therein, and, although totally suppressed, yet in such a seed or remains as could be called forth into their first living state, in vain had the tables of stone been given to man; and all outward writing or teaching of the commandments had been as useless as so many instructions given to beasts or stones. If, therefore, you can conceive how all that is good and holy in the commandments lay hid as an unfelt, inactive power or seed of goodness, till called into sensibility and stirring by laws written on tables of stone: this may help your manner of conceiving and believing how Christ, as a seed of life.
THE SPIlilT OF LOVE 39
or power of salvation, lies in the soul, as its unknown, hidden treasure, till awakened and called forth mto life by the mediatorial office and process of the holy Jesus.
Again, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Now these two precepts given by the written word of God are an absolute demonstration of the first original perfection of man, and also a full and invincible proof that the same original perfection is not quite annihilated, but lies in him, as an hidden, suppressed seed of goodness, capable of being raised up to its first perfection. For had not this divine unity, purity, and perfection of love towards God and man been man’s first natural state of life, it could have nothing to do with his present state. For had any other nature, or measure, or kind of love began in the first birth of his life, he could only have been called to that.
No creature has, or can have, a call to be above, or act above, its own nature.
Therefore, as sure as man is called to this unity, purity, and perfection of love, so sure is it that it was at first his natural, heavenly state, and still has its seed or remains within him, as his only power and possibihty of rising up to it again. And therefore, all that man is called to, every degree of a new and perfect life, every future exaltation and glory he is to have from the mediation of Christ, is a full proof that the same perfection was originally his natural state, and is still in him in such a seed or remains of existence, as to admit of a perfect renewal.
And thus it is that you are to conceive of the holy
Jesus, or the Word of God, as the hidden treasure of every human soul, born as a seed of the Word, in the bu’th of the soul immured under flesh and blood, till as a day-star it arises in our hearts, and changes the son of an earthly Adam into a son of God. And was not the Word and Spirit of God in us all, antecedent to any dispensation or written word of God, as a real seed of life in the birth of our own life, we could have no more fitness for the gospel redemption, than the annuals of this world, which have nothing of heaven in them. And to call us to love God with all our hearts, to put on Christ, to walk according to the Spirit, if these things had not thek real nature and root within us, would be as vain and useless as to make rules and orders how our eyes should smell and taste, or our ears should see.
12. The Witness of Nature to an Inward
Life.
Now this mystery of an inward life hidden in man, as his most precious treasure, as the ground of all that can be great or good in him, and hidden only since his fall, and which only can be opened and brought forth in its first glory by Him to whom all power in heaven and on earth is given, is a truth to which almost every thing in nature bears full witness. Look where you will, nothing appears or works outwardly in any creature, or in any effect of nature, but what is all done from its own inward invisible spirit, not a spirit brought into it, but its own inward spirit which is an inward invisible mystery, till made known, or brought forth by outward appearances.
The sun in the firmament gives growth to every thing that grows in the earth, and life to every thing that lives upon it, not by giving or imparting a life from without, but only by stirring up in every thhig its own growth and its own life, which lay as in a seed or state of death, till helped to come out of it by the sun, which, as an emblem of the Redeemer of the spiritual world, helps every earthly thing out of its own death, into its own highest state of life.
That which we call our sensations, as seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling, are not things brought into us from without, or given unto us by any external causes, but are only so many inborn, secret states of the soul, which lie in their state of hiddenness, till they are occasionally awakened and brought forth into sensibility by outward occurrences. And were they not antecedently in the soul, as states and forms of its own life, no outward objects could brmg the soul into a sensibility of them. For nothing can have or be in any state of sensation but that which it is, and hath from itself, as its own birth. This is as certain, as that a circle hath only its own roundness.
The stinkmg gum gives nothing to the soul, nor brings any thing into sensibility, but that which was before in the soul; it has only a fitness to awaken and stir up that state of the soul, which lay dormant before, and which, when brought into sensibility, is called the sensation of bad smelling. And the odoriferous gum hath likewise but the same power, viz. a fitness to stu’ up that state of sensation in the soul, which is called its delightful smelling. But both these sensations are only internal states of the soul, which appear, or disappear, are found, or not found, just as occasions bring them into sensibility.
Again, the greatest artist in music can add no sound to his instrument, nor make it give forth any other melody, but that which lieth silently hidden in it, as its own inward state.
13. The Outward reveals the Inward.
Look now at what you will, whether it be animate or inanimate, all that it is, or has, or can be, it is and has in and from itself, as its own inward state; and all outward things can do no more to it than the hand does to the instrument, make it show forth its own inward state, either of harmony or discord.
It is strictly thus with ourselves. Not a spark of joy, of wrath, of envy, of love, or grief, can possibly enter into us from without, or be caused to be in us by any outward thing. This is as impossible, as for the sound of metals to be put into a lump of clay. And as no metal can possibly give forth any other or higher sound than that which is enclosed within it, so we, however struck, can give forth no other or higher sound, either of loss, hatred, wrath, etc., than that very degree which lay before shut up within us.
The natural state of our tempers has variety of covers, under which they lie concealed at times, both from ourselves and others; but when this or that accident happens to displace such or such a cover, then that which lay hid under it breaks forth. And then we vainly think that this or that outward occasion has not shown us how we are within, but has only infused or put into us a wrath, or grief, or envy, which is not our natural state, or of our own growth, or has all that it has from our own inward state.
But this is mere blindness and self-deceit, for it ia as impossible for the mind to have any grief, or wrath, or joy, but what it has all from its own inward state, as for the instrument to give forth any other harmony or discord but that which is within and from itself.
Persons, things, and outward occurrences may strike our instrument improperly and variously, but as we are in ourselves, such is our outward sound, whatever strikes us.
If our inward state is the renewed life of Christ within us, then every thing and occasion, let it be what it will, only makes the same life to sound forth and shov7 itself; then if one cheek is smitten, we meekly turn the other also. But if nature is alive, and only under a religious cover, then every outward accident that shakes or disturbs this cover gives leave to that bad state, whether of grief, or wrath, or joy, that lay hid within us, to show forth itself.
But nothing at any time makes the least show or sound outwardly, but only that which lay ready within us for an outward biith, as occasion should offer.
What a miserable mistake is it, therefore, to place religious goodness in outward observances, in notions and opinions which good and bad men can equally receive and practise, and to treat the ready real power and operation of an inward life of God in the birth of our souls as fanaticism and enthusiasm; when not only the whole letter and spirit of Scripture, but every operation m nature and creature demonstrates that the kingdom of heaven must be all within us, or it never can possibly belong to us. Goodness, piety, and holiness can only be ours, as thinking, willing, and desiring are ours, by being in us, as a power of heaven in the birth and growth of our own life.
14. The Way of Salvation.
And now, Eusebius, how is the great controversy about religion and salvation shortened.
For since the one only work of Christ as your Redeemer is only this, to take from the earthly life of flesh and blood its usurped power, and to raise the smothered spark of heaven out of its state of death into a powerful governing life of the whole man, your one only work also, under your Redeemer, is fully known. And you have the utmost certainty what you are to do, where you are to seek, and in what you are to find your salvation.
15. What you are to do.
All that you have to do, or can do, is to oppose, resist, and as far as you can to renounce the evil tempers and workings of your own earthly natiuT. You are under the power of no other enemy, are held in no other captivity, and want no other deliverance, but from the power of your own earthly self. This is the one murderer of the divine life within you. It is your own Cain that murders your own Abel. Now every thing that your earthly nature does is under the influence oi self-vv411, self-love, and self-seeking, whether it carries you to laudable or blameable practices, all is done in the nature and spirit of Cain, and only helps you to such goodness, as when Cain slew his brother. For every action and motion of self has the spirit of Antichrist, and murders the divine life within you.
Judge not therefore of yourself by considering how many of those things you do which divines and moralists call virtue and goodness, nor how much you abstain from those things which they call sin and vice.
But daily and hourly, in every step that you take, see to the spirit that is within you, whether it be heaven or earth that guides you. And judge every thing to be sin and Satan, in which your earthly nature, own love, or self-seeking has any share of life in you; nor think that any goodness is brought to life in you, but so far as it is an actual death to the pride, the vanity, the wrath, and selfish tempers of your fallen, earthly life.
16. Where you are to seek your Salvation.
Again, here you see where and how you are to seek your salvation, not in taking up your travelling staff, or crossing the seas to find out a new Luther or a new Calvin, to clothe yourself with their opinions. No. The oracle is at home that always and only speaks the truth to you, because nothing is your truth but that good and that evil which is yours within you. For salvation or damnation is no outward thing, that is brought into you from without, but is only that which springs up within you as the birth and state of your own life. What you are in yourself, vrhat is doing in yourself, is all that can be either your salvation or damnation.
For all that is our good, and all that is our bad, has no place nor power but within us. Again, nothing that we do is bad, but for this reason, because it resists the power and working of God within us; and nothing that we do can be good but because it conforms to the Spirit of God within us. And therefore, as ail that can be good and all that can be evil in ns necessarily supposes a God working within us, you have the utmost certainty that God, salvation, and the kingdom of heaven are nowhere to be sought or found but within you, and that all outward religion, from the fall of man to this day, is not for itself, but merely for the sake of an inward and divine life, which was lost when Adam died his first death in Paradise. And therefore it may well be said that “circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,” because nothing is wanted, and therefore nothing can be available, but the new creature called out of its captivity, under the death and darkness of flesh and blood, into the lidit, life, and perfection of its first creation.
17. In what you are to find your
Salvation.
And thus also you have the fullest proof in what your salvation precisely consists. Not in any historic faith, or knowledge of any thing absent or distant from you; not in any variety of restraints, rules, and methods of practising virtues; not in any formality of opinion about faith and works, repentance, forgiveness of sins, or justification and sanctification; not in any truth or righteousness that you can have from yourself, from the best of men or books; but wholly and solely in the life of God, or Christ of God, quickened, and born again in you, or, in other words, in the restoration and perfect union of the first twofold life in the humanity.
18. The Kingdom of Heaven.
You know we have often spoken of eternal nature, that so sure as there is an eternal God, so sure is it that there is an eternal nature, as imiversal, as unlimited as God Himself, and everywhere working where God is, and therefore everywhere equally existent, as being His kingdom of heaven, or outward manifestation of the invisible riches, powers, and glories of the Deity.
And this is eternal nature, or the outbirth of the Deity, called the kingdom of heaven, viz. an mfinity, or boundless opening of the properties, powers, wonders, and glories of the hidden Deity, and this not once done, but ever doing, ever standing in the same birth, for ever and ever breaking forth and springing up in new forms and openings of the abyssal Deity, in the powers of nature. And out of this ocean of manifested powers of nature, the will of the Deity, created hosts of heavenly beings, full of the heavenly wonders introduced into a participation of the infinity of God, to live in an eternal succession of heavenly sensations, to see and feel, to taste and find new forms of delight in an inexhaustible source of ever-changing and never-ceasing wonders of the divine glory.
Oh, Theogenes! What an eternity is this, out of which and for which thy eternal soul was created! What little crawling things are all that an earthly ambition can set before thee! Bear with patience for a while the rags of thy earthly nature, the veil and darkness of flesh and blood, as the lot of thy inheritance from father Adam, but think nothing worth a thought but that which will bring thee back to thy first glory, and land thee safe in the region of eternity.
The Deity is an infinite plenitude, or fulness of riches and powers, in and from itself; and it is only want and desire that is excluded from it, and can have no existence in it. And here lies the true immutable distinction between God and nature, and shows why neither can ever be changed into the other; it is, because God is an universal all; and nature, or desire, is an univarsal want, viz. to be filled with God.
Now, as nature can be nothing but a desire, so nothing is in or done in any natural way, but as desire does it; because desire is the all of nature. And therefore there is no strength or substance, no power or motion, no cause or effect in nature, but what is in itself a desire, or the working and effect of it.
For if nature is mere want, and has nothing in it but a strength of want, generated from the three self-tormenting properties of a desire; if God is all love, joy, and happiness, an infinite plenitude of all blessings, then the limits and bounds of good and evil, of happiness and misery, are made as visibly distinct, and as certainly to be known, as the difference between a circle and a straight line.
To live to desire, that is, to nature, is unavoidably entering into the region of all evil and misery; because nature has nothing else in it; but, on the other hand, to die to desire, that is, to turn from nature to God, is to be united with the infinite source of all that is good, and blessed, and happy.
SECOND DIALOGUE.
19. Jesus Christ, in all His process, our
only Salvation.
TheojjJiilus.
TAKE this matter as it truly is in itself, viz. God is in Himself all love and goodness, therefore can be nothing else but all love and goodness towards fallen man, and that fallen man is subject to no pain or misery, either present or to come, but what is the natural, unavoidable, essential effect of his own evil and disordered nature, impossible to be altered by himself; and that the infinite, never-ceasing love of God has given Jesus Christ, in all His process, as the highest and only possible means that heaven and earth can afford to save man from himself, from his own evil, misery, and death, and restore to him his original divine life. V/hen you look at this matter in this true light, then a God, all love, and an atonement for sin by Christ, to brmg forth, fulfil, and restore righteousness in the creature that had lost it, has every thing in it that can make the providence of God adorable and the state of man comfortable.
The atonement of Christ is nothing else in itself but the highest, most natural, and efficacious means, through all the possibility of things, that the infinite love and wisdom of God coudd use to put an end to sin, and death, and hell; and restore to man his first divine state or life. I say, the most natural, efficacious means through all the possibilities of nature; for there is nothing that is supernatural, hoYvever mysteiious, in the whole system of our redemption; every part of it has its ground in the workings and powers of nature, and all our redemption is only nature set right, or made to be that which it ought to be.
There is nothing that is supernatural but God alone; every thing besides Him is from and subject to the state of nature: it can never rise out of it, or have any thing contrary to it. No creature can have either health or sickness, good or evil, or any state either from God or itself, but strictly according to the capacities, powers, and workings of nature.
The mystery of our redemption, though it comes from the supernatural God, has nothing in it but what is done, and to be done, within the sphere and according to the powers of nature. There is nothing supernatural in it, or belonging to it, but that supernatural love and wisdom which brought it forth, presides over it, and will direct it, till Christ, as a second Adam, has removed and extinguished all that evil which the first Adam brouQ-ht into the human nature.
And the whole process of Jesus Christ, from His being the inspoken word, or bruiser of the serpent, given to Adam, to his birth, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, has all its ground and reason in this, because nothing else in all the possibilities of nature, either in heaven or on earth, could begin, carry on, and totally effect man’s deliverance from the evil of his own fallen nature.
Thus is Christ the one full, sufficient atonement for the sin of the whole world, because He is the one only natural remedy and possible cure of all the evil that is broke forth in nature, the one only natural life and resurrection of all that holiness and happiness that died in Adam. And seeing all this process of Christ is given to the world, from the supernatural, antecedent, infinite love of God, therefore is it that the apostle saith, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” And Christ in God is nothing else in His whole nature Ijut that same certain and natural parent of a redemption to the whole human nature, as fallen Adam was the certain and natural parent of a miserable life to every man that is descended from him. With this only difference, that from fallen Adam we are born in sin, vvh ether we will or no, but we cannot have that new birth which Christ has all power to bring forth in us, unless the will of our heart closes with it. But as nothing came to us from Adam, but according to the powers of nature, and because he was that which he was, with relation to us; so it is with Christ, and our redemption by Him: all the work is grounded in and proceeds according to the powers of nature, or in a way of natural efficacy or fitness to produce its eiTecis; and every thing that is found in the person, character, and condition of Christ is only there as His true and natural qualification to do all that He came to do, in us, and for us. That is to say, Christ was made to be that wdiich He was; He was a seed of life in our first fallen father; He lived as a blesshig of promise in the patriarchs, prophets, and Israel of God; He was born as a man of a pure virgin; He did all that He did, whether as suffering, dying, conquering, rising, and ascending into heaven, only as so many things, which as naturally, and as truly, according to the nature of things, qualified Him to be the producer or quickener of a divine life in us, as the state and condition of Adam qualified him to make us the slavish children of earthly, bestial flesh and blood.
This is the comfortable doctrine of our redemption; nothing in God but an infinity of love and goodness towards our fallen condition; nothing in Christ but that which had its necessity in the nature of things, to make Him able to give and us to receive our full salvation from Him.
20. How Christ’s Suflcerings save us.
All that Christ was, and did, and suffered was infinitely prized, and highly acceptable to the love of God, because all that Christ was, and did, and suffered in His own person was that which gave Him full power to be a common Father of life to all that died in Adam.
Had Christ wanted any thing that He was, or did, or suffered in His own person, He could not have stood in that relation to all mankind as Adam had done. Had He not been given to the first fallen man as a sesd of the woman, as a light of life, ‘’ enlightening every man that comes into the world,” He could not have had His seed in every man, as Adam had, nor been as universal a Father of life, as Adam was of death. Had He not in the fitness or fulness of time become a man, born of a pure virgin, the first seed of life in every man must have lain only as a seed, and could not have come to the fulness of the birth of a new man in Christ Jesus. For the children can have no other state of life but that which their father first had. And therefore Christ, as the Father of a regenerated human race, must first stand in the fulness of that human state, which was to be derived from Him into all His children.
This is the absolute necessity of Christ’s being all that He was before He became man; a necessity arising from the nature of the thing. Because He could not possibly have had the relation of a Father to all mankind, nor any power to be a quickener of a life of heaven in them, but because He was both God in Himself, and a seed of God in all of them.
Now all that Christ was, and did, and suffered, after He became man, is from the same necessity founded in the nature of the thing. He suffered on no other account, but because that which He came to do in and for the human nature was, and could be, nothing else in itself but a work of sufferings and death.
A crooked line cannot become straight but by having all its crookedness given up, or taken from it. And there is but one way possible in nature for a crooked line to lose its crookedness.
Kow the sufferings and death of Christ stand in this kind of necessity. He was made man for our salvation, that is, He took upon Him our fallen nature, to bring it out of its evil, crooked state, and set it again in that rectitude in which it was created.
Now there was no m.ore two ways of doing this, than there are two ways of making a crooked line to become straight.
If the life of fallen nature, which Christ had taken upon Him, was to be overcome by Him, then every kind of suffering and dying that was a giving up or departing from the life of fallen nature, was just as necessary, in the nature of the thing, as that the line to be made straight must give up and part with every kind and degree of its own crookedness.
And therefore the sufferings and death of Christ were, in the nature of the thing, the only possible way of His acting contrary to and overcoming all the evil that was in the fallen state of man.
The apostle saith, “The Captain of om- salvation was to be made perfect through sufferings.” This was the ground and reason of His sufferings: had He been without them, He could not have been perfect in Himself, as a Son of man, nor the restorer of perfection in all mankind. But why so? Because His perfection as a Son of man, or the Captain of human salvation, could only consist in His acting in and with a spirit suitable to the first created state of perfect man; that is, He must in His spirit be as much above all the good and evil of this fallen world, as the first man was.
But now. He could not show that He was of this spirit, that He was above the world, that He was under no power of fallen nature, but lived in the perfection of the first created man; He could not do this but by showing that all the good of the earthly life was renounced by Him, and that all the evil which the world, the malice of men and devils, could bring upon Him, could not hinder His living wholly and solely to God, and doing His will on earth with the same fulness as angels do it in heaven.
But had there been any evil in all fallen nature, whether in life, death, or hell, that had not attacked Him with all its force. He could not have been said to have overcome it. And therefore so sure as Christ, as the Son of man, was to overcome the world, death, hell, and Satan, so sure is it that all the evils which they could possibly bring upon Him were to be felt and suffered by Him, as absolutely necessary, in the nature of the thing, to declare His perfection, and prove His superiority over them. Surely, my friend, it is now enough proved to you how a God all love towards fallen man must love, like, desire, and delight in all the sufferings of Christ, which alone could enable Him, as a Son of man, to undo and reverse all that evil which the first man had done to all his posterity.
E^cseUus. — Oh, sir, in what an adorable light is this mystery now placed. Christ suffering and dying, as His same victory over death and hell, as when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
Theophilus. — Now you plainly enough see wherein the infinite merits, or the avaihng efficacy and glorious power of the suff’erings and death of Christ consists; since they were that in and through which Christ Himself came out of the state of fallen nature and got power to give the same victory to all His brethren of the human race.
Wonder not, therefore, that the Scriptures so frequently ascribe all our salvation to the sufferings and death of Christ, that we are continually referred to them, as the wounds and stripes by which we are healed, as the blood by which we are washed from our sins, as the price (much above gold and precious stones) by which we are bought.
It is because Christ, as suffering and dying, was nothing else but Christ conquering and overcoming all the false good and the hellish evil of the fallen state of man. His resurrection from the grave and ascension into heaven, though great in themselves, and necessary parts of our deliverance, were yet but the consequences and genuine effects of His sufferings and death. These were, in themselves, the reality of His conquest; all His great work was done and effected in them and by them, and His resurrection and ascension was only His entering into the possession of that which His sufferings and death had gained for Him.
Wonder not, then, that all the true followers of Christ, the saints of every age, have so gloried in the cross of Christ, have imputed such great things to it, have desired nothing so much as to be partakers of it, to live in constant union with it. It is because His sufferings, His death, and cross were the fulness of His victory over all the works of the devil. Not an evil in flesh and blood, not a misery of life, not a chain of death, not a power of hell and darkness, but were all baffled, broken, and overcome by the process of a suffering and dying Christ. Well, therefore, may the cross of Christ be the glory of Christians.
21. Of Christ as the Second Adam.
Fiisehius. — This matter is so solidly and fully cleared up, that I am almost ashamed to ask you any thing further about it. Yet explahi a little more, if you please, how it is that the sufferings and death of Christ gave Him power to become a common Father of life to all that died in Adam? Or how it is that we, by virtue of them, have victory over all the evil of our fallen state?
Thcoijliilus. — I come now to answer your question, viz. How it is that the sufferings and death of Christ gave Him full power to become a common Father of life to all tlioso that died in Adam? Or how it is that we, by virtue of them, are delivered out of all the evils of our fallen state?
The fall of all mankind in Adam is no supernatural event or effect, but the natural and necessary consequence of our relation to him. Could Adam,
THE SriKIT OF LOVE 57
at his fall into this earthly life, have absolutely overcome every power of the world, the flesh, and the devil, in the same spirit as Christ did, he had been his own redeemer, had risen out of his fall, and ascended into Paradise, and been the father of a paradisiacal offspring, just as Christ, wdien He had overcome them all, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. But Adam did not do this, because it was as impossible, in the nature of the thing, as for a beast to raise itself into an angel. If, therefore, man is to come out of his fallen state, there must be something found out that, according to the nature of things, hath power to effect it. For it can no more be done supernaturally by any thing else, than it could by Adam.
Now the matter stood thus, the seed of all mankind was in the loins of fallen Adam. This was unalterable in the nature of the thing, and therefore all mankind must come forth in his fallen state.
Neither can they ever be in any state whatever, whether earthly or heavenly, but by having an earthly man or a heavenly man for their latlier. For mankind, as such, must of all necessity be born of, and have that nature which it hath, from a man. And this is the true ground and absolute necessity of the one Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus. For seeing mrdikind, as such, must have that birth and nature which they have from man, seeing they never could have had any relation to Paradise, or any possibility of partaking of it, but because they had a paradisiacal man for their father, never could have had any relation to this earthly world, or any possibility of being born earthly, but because they had an earthly man for their father; and seeing all this must be unalterably o for ever, it plainly follows that there was an utter impossibility for the seed of Adam ever to come out of its fallen state, or ever have another or better life than they had from Adam, unless such a son of man could be brought into existence, as had the same relation to all mankind as Adam had, was as much in them all as Adam was, and had as full power, according to the nature of things, to give a heavenly life to all the seed in Adam’s loins, as Adam had to bring them forth in earthly flesh and blood.
And now, sir, that Christ was this very Son of man, standing in the same fulness of relation to all mankind as Adam did, having His seed as really in them all as Adam had, and as truly and fully qualified, according to the nature of thincrs, to be a common and universal Father of life, as Adam was of death, to all the human race, shall, in a word or two, be made as plain and undeniable as that two and two are four.
The doctrine of our redemption absolutely asserts that the seed of Christ was sown into the first fallen father of mankind, called the seed of the woman, the bruiser of the serpent, the engrafted word of life, called again in the gospel “that light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Therefore Christ was in all men, in that same fulness of the relation of a Father to all mankind, as Adam the first was. Secondly, Christ was born of Adam’s flesh and blood, took the human nature upon Him, and therefore stood as an human creature in the same relation to mankind as Adam did. Nothing, therefore, was further wanting in Christ, to make Him as truly a natural Fatlicr of life to all mankind as Adam was at first, but God’s appointment of Him to that end.
THE SnriT OF LOVE f)9
For as Adam could not have been tlic natural father of mankind but because God created and appointed him for that end, so Christ could not have been the natural Eegenerator or Redeemer of an heavenly life, that was lost in all mankind, but because God had appointed and brought Him into the world for that end. Now that God did this, that Christ came into the world by divine appointment, to be the Saviour, the resurrection, and life of all mankind, is a truth as evident from Scripture, as that Adam was the first man.
And thus it appears, in the utmost degree of plainness and certainty, that Christ in His single person was, according to the nature of things, as fully qualified to be a common Redeemer as Adam was, m his single person, to be a common father of all mankind. He had His seed in all mankind, as Adam had; He had the human nature, as Adam had; and He had the same divine appointment, as Adam had. But Christ, however qualified to be our Redeemer, could not be actually such till He had gone through and done all that by which our redemption was to be effected.
Adam, however qualified, yet could not be the father of a paradisiacal offspring till he had stood out his trial, and fixed himself victorious over every thing that could make trial of him. In like manner, Christ, however qualified, could not be the Redeemer of all mankind till He had also stood out His trial, had overcome all that by which Adam was overcome, and had fixed Himself triumphantly in that Paradise which Adam had lost.
Now, as Adam’s trial was, whether he would keep himself in his paradisiacal state, above and free from all that was good and evil in this earthly world, so Christ’s trial was, whether as a Son of man, and loaded with the infirmities of fallen Adam, sacrificed to all that which the rage and malice of the world, hell, and devils could possibly do to Him, whether He in the midst of all these evils could live and die with His spirit as contrary to them, as much above them, as unhurt by them, as Adam should have lived in Paradise?
And then it was that every thing which had overcome Adam was overcome by Christ, and Christ’s victory did, in the nature of the thing, as certainly and fully open an entrance for Him and all His seed into Paradise, as Adam’s fall cast him and all his seed into the prison and captivity of this earthly, bestial world.
Thus is your question fully answered; viz. How and why the sufferings and death of Christ enabled Him to be the Author of life to all that died in Adam? Just as the fall of Adam into this world, under the power of sin, death, hell, and the devil, enabled him to be the common father of death, that is, was the natural, unavoidable cause of our being born under the same captivity; just so that life, and sufferings, and death of Christ, which declared His breaking out from them and superiority over them, must, in the nature of the thing, as much enable Him to be the common Author of life, that is, must as certainly be the full, natural, efficacious cause of our inheriting life from Him. Because, by what Christ was in Himself, by what He was in us, by His whole state, character, and the divine appointment, we all had that natural union with Plim, and dependence upon Him, as our
Head in the way of redemption, as vre had with Adam as our head in the way of our natural birth. So that as it must be said that, because Adam fell, we must of all necessity be heirs of his fallen state; so, with the same truth, and from the same necessity of the thing, it must be said that, because Christ our Head is risen victorious out of our fallen state, we, as His members, and having His seed within us, must be, and are made, heirs of all His glory. Because, in all respects, we are as strictly, as intimately connected with and related to Him as the one Eedoemer, as we are to Adam as the one father, of all mankind. So that Christ, by His sufferings and death, become in all of us our wisdom, our righteousness, our justification, and redemption, is the same sober and solid truth, as Adam, by his fall, become in all of us our foolishness, our impurity, our corruption, and death.
And now, my friends, look back upon all that has been said, and then tell me whether it is not sufficiently proved to you that the sufferings and death of Christ are not only consistent with the doctrine of a God all love, but are the fullest and most absolute proof of it?
Eusebius. — Indeed, Theophilus, you have so fully done for us all that we wanted to have done, that we are now ready to take leave of you. As for my part, I want to return home, to enjoy my Bible, and delight myself with reading it in this comfortable light in which you have set the whole ground and nature of our redemption. I am now in full possession of this glorious truth, that God is mere love, the most glorious truth that can possess and edify the heart of man. It drives every evil out of the soul, and gives life to every spark of goodness that can possibly be kindled in it. Every thing in religion is made amiable, by being a service of love to the God of love.
Therefore, dear Theophilus, adieu: God is love, and he that hath learnt to live in the spirit of love, hath learnt to live and dwell in God. Love was the beginner of all the works of God, and from eternity to eternity, nothing can come from God but a variety of wonders and works of love over all nature and creature.
Theophilus, — God prosper, Eusebius, this spark of heaven in your soul; may it, like the seraphim’s coal taken from the altar, purify your heart from all its uncleanness. But, before you leave me, I beg one more conversation, to be on the practical part of the spirit of love; that so doctrine and practice, hearing and doing, may go hand in hand.
THE THIED DIALOGUE.
22. The Great Difference between Knowing
and Having.
Eusebms.
YOU have shown great good will towards us, Theophilus, in desiring another meeting before we leave you. But yet I seem to myself to have no need of that which you have proposed by this day’s conversation. For this doctrine of the spirit of love cannot have more power over me, or be more deeply rooted in me, than it is already. It has so gained and got possession of my whole heart, that every tiling else must be under its dominion. I can do nothing else but love; it is my whole nature, I have no taste for any thing else. Can this matter be carried higher in practice?
Theo]jhilus. — No higher, Euscbius. And was this the true state of your heart, you would bid fair to leave the world as Elijah did; or, like Enoch, to have said of you, that you lived wholly to love, and was not. For was there nothing but this divine love alive in you, your fallen flesh and blood would be m danger of being quite burnt up by it. What you have said of yourself, you have spoken in great sincerity, but in a total ignorance of yourself, and the true nature of the spirit of divine love. You are as yet only charmed with the sight, or rather the sound, of it; its real birth is as yet unfelt and unfound in you. Your natural complexion has a great deal of the animal meekness and softness of the lamb and the dove, your blood and spirit are of this turn; and therefore a God all love, and a religion all love, quite transport you; and you are so delighted with it, that you fancy you have nothing in you but this God and religion of love. But, my friend, bear with me, if I tell you that all this is only the good part of the spirit of this bestial world in you, and may be in any unregenerate man that is of your complexion. It is so far from being a genuine fruit of divine love, that, if it be not well looked to, it may prove a real hindrance of it, as it oftentimes does, by its appearhig to be that vdiich it is not.
You have quite forgot all that was said in the letter to you on the spirit of love, that it is a birth in the soul, that can only come forth in its proper time
64 WHOLLY FOn GOD
and place, and from its proper causes. Now, nothing that is a birth can be taken in or brought into the £Oul by any notional conception or delightful apprehension of it. You may love it as much as you please, think it the most charming thing in the world, fancy every thing but dross and dung in comparison of it, and yet have no more of its birth in you, than the blind man has of that light of which he has got a most charming notion. His blindness still continues the same; he is at the same distance from the light, because light can only be had by a birth of itself in seeing eyes. It is thus with the spirit of love; it is nowhere but where it rises up as a birth.
Eusebius. — But if I am got no farther than this, what good have I from giving in so heartily to all that you have said of this doctrine? And to what end have you taken so much pains to assert and establish it?
Thcor)liilus. — Your error lies in this: you confound two things, which are entirely distinct from each other. You make no difference betwixt the doctrine that only sets forth the nature, excellency, and necessity of the spirit of love, and the spirit of love itself; which yet are two things so different, that you may be quite full of the former, and at the same time quite empty of the latter. I have said every thing that I could to show you the truth, excellency, and necessity of the spirit of love: it is of infinite importance to you to be well established in the belief of this doctrine. But all that I have said of it is only to induce and encourage you to buy it at its own price, and to give all that for it wliicli alone can purchase it. But if you think (as you plainly do) that you have got it.
because you are so highly pleased with that which you have heard of it, you only embrace the shadow, instead of the substance, of that which you ought to have.
Euscbms.- — YvHiat is the price that I must give for it?
Theophilus. — You must give up all that you are and all that you have from fallen Adam; for all that you are and have from him, is that life of flesh and blood which cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Euschius. — Proceed as you please to lay open all my defects, in the spirit of love; for I am earnestly desirous of being set right in so important a matter.
Theogcncs. — Let me first observe to Theophilus, that I am afraid the matter is much worse with me than it is mth you. For though this doctrine seems to have got all my heart, as it is a doctrine; yet I am continually thrown out of it in practice, and find myself as daily under the power of my old tempers and passions as I was before I was so full of this doctrine.
23. Two Stages in the Christian Life.
Theophilus. — You are to know, my friends, that every kind of virtue and goodness may be brought into us by two different ways. They may be taught us outwardly by men, by rules and precepts; and they may be inwardly born in us, as the genuine birth of our own renewed spirit. In the former way, as we learn them only from men, by rules and documents of instruction, they at best only change our outward behaviour, and leave our heart in its natural state, and only put our passions under a forced restraint, which will occasionally break forth in spite of the dead letter of precept and doctrine. Now this way of learning and attaining goodness, though thus imperfect, is yet absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, and must first have its time, and place, and work in us. Yet it is only for a time, as the law was a schoolmaster to the gospel. We must first be babes in doctrine, as well as in strength, before we can bo men. But of all this outward instruction, whetlicr from good men or the letter of Scripture, it must be said, as the apostle saith of the law, that “it maketh nothing perfect.” And yet is highly necessary in order to perfection.
The true perfection and profitableness of the holy written word of God is fully set forth by St. Paul to Timothy: “From a child (saith he) thou hast known the Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, which is by faith in Christ Jesus.” Now these Scriptures were the law and the prophets, for Timothy had known no other from his youth. And as they, so all other Scriptures since have no other good or benefit in them but as they lead and direct us to a salvation that is not to be had in themselves, but from faith in Christ Jesus. Their teaching is only to teach us where to seek and to find the fountain and source of all light and knowledge.
Of the law, saith the apostle, “it was a schoolmaster to Christ;” of the prophets, he saith the same. “Ye have (says he) a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto you do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star ariseth in your hearts.” The same thing is to be affirmed of the letter of the New Testament;
THE SPlltlT OF LOVE G7
it is but our schoolmaster unto Christ, a light hkc that of prophecy, to which we are to take great heed, until Christ, as the dawning of the day, or the day star, ariseth in our hearts. Nor can the thing possibly be otherwise; no instruction that conies under the form of words can do more for us than sounds and words can do; they can only direct us to something that is better than themselves, that can be the true light, life, spirit, and power of holiness in us.
Eusebius. — I cannot deny what you say, and yet it seems to me to derogate from Scripture.
Theophilus. — Would you then have me to say that the written word of God is that word of God which liveth and abideth for ever; that word which is the wisdom and power of God; that word which was with God, which was God, by whom all things were made; that word of God which was made flesh for the redemption of the world; that word of God, of which we must be born again; that word which “lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” that word which in Christ Jesus “is become wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification in us;” would you have me say that all this is to be understood of the written word of God? But if this cannot possibly be, then all that I have said is granted, namely, that Jesus is alone that Word of God that can be the light, life, and salvation of fallen man. Or how is it possible more to exalt the letter of Scripture, than by owning it to be a true, outward, verbal direction to the one only true light and salvation of man?
Suppose you had been a true disciple of John the Baptist, whose only office was to prepare the way to Christ, how could you have more magnified his office.
or declared your fidelity to him, than by going from his teaching to be taught by that Christ to whom he directed you? The Baptist was, indeed, a “burning and a shining light,” and so are the holy Scriptures; but “he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
What a folly would it be to say that you had undervalued the office and character of John the Baptist, because he was not allowed to be the light itself, but only a true witness of it, and guide to it! jSTow, if you can show that the written word in the Bible can have any other or higher office or power than such a ministerial one as the Baptist had, I am ready to hear you.
Eusebius. — There is no possibility of doing that.
Theophihis. — But if that is not possible to be done, then you are come to the full proof of this point, viz. that there are two ways of attaining knowledge, goodness, virtue, etc., the one by the ministry of outward, verbal instruction, either by men or books, and the other by an inward birth of divine light, goodness, and vu-tue in our own renewed spirit; and that the former is only in order to the latter, and of no benefit to us, but as it carries us farther than itself, to be united in heart and spirit with the light, and word, and Spirit of God. Just as the Baptist had been of no benefit to his disciples, unless he had been their guide from himself to Christ.
But to come now closer to our subject in hand.
From this twofold light or teaching there necessarily arises a twofold state of virtue and goodness. For such as the teacher or teaching is, such is the state and manner of the goodness that can be had from it. Every effect must be according to the cause that produces it. If you learn virtue and goodness only from outward means, from men or books, you may be virtuous and good according to time, and place, and outward forms; you may do works of humility, works of love and benevolence, use times and forms of prayer; all this virtue and goodness is suitable to this kind of teaching, and may very well be had from it. But the spirit of prayer, the spirit of love, and the spirit of humility, or of any other virtue, are only to be attained by the operation of the light and Spirit of God, not outwardly teaching, but inwardly bringing forth a new-born spirit within us.
24. A Personal Application.
And now, let me tell you both that it is much to be feared that you as yet stand only under this outward teaching; your good works are only done under obedience to such rules, precepts, and doctrines as your reason assents to, but are not the fruits of a new-born spirit within you. But till you are thus renewed in the spirit of your minds, your virtues are only taught practices, and grafted upon a corrupt bottom. Every thing you do will be a mixture of good and bad; your humility will help you to pride, your charity to others will give nourishment to your own self-love, and as your prayers increase, so will the opinion of your own sanctity. Because till the heart is purified to the bottom, and has felt the axe at the root of its evil (which cannot be done by outward instruction), every thing that proceeds from it partakes of its impurity and corruption.
Now, that Theogenes is only under the law, or outward instruction, is too plain from the complaint that he made of himself. For, notwithstanding his progress in the doctrine of love, he finds all the passions of his corrupt nature still alive m him, and himself only altered in doctrine and opinion.
The same may be well suspected of you, Eusebius, who are so mistaken in the spirit of love that you fancy yourself to be wholly possessed of it, from no other ground but because you embrace it, as it were, with open arms, and think of nothing but livmg under the power of it. Whereas, if the spirit of love was really born in you from its own seed, you would account for its birth and power in you in quite another manner than you have here done; you would have known the price that you had paid for it, and how many deaths you had suffered, before the spirit of love came to life in you.
Eusebius. — But surely, sir, imperfect as our virtues are, we may yet, I hope, be truly said to be in a state of grace; and if so, we are under something more than mere outward instruction. Besides, you very well know that it is a principle with both of us to expect all our goodness from the Spirit of God dwellmg and working in us. We live in faith and hope of the divine operation; and therefore I must needs say that your censure upon us seems to be more severe than just.
TheopJiilus. — Dear Eusebius, I censure neither of you, nor have I said one word by way of accusation. So far from it, that I love and approve the state you are both in. Ifc is good and happy for Theogenes, that he feels and confesses that his natural tempers are not yet subdued by doctrine and precept. It is good and happy for you also, that you are so highly dehghted with the doctrine of love, for by this means each of you have your true preparation for further advancement. And though your state has this difference, yet the same error was common to both of you. You both of you thought you had as much of the spirit of love as you could or ought to have; and therefore Theogenes wondered he had no more benefit from it; and you wondered that I should desire to lead you farther into it. And therefore, to deliver you from this error, I have desired this conference upon the practical ground of the spirit of love, that you may neither of you lose the benefit of that good state in which you stand.
Euscbius. — Pray therefore proceed as you please. For we have nothing so much at heait as to have the truth and purity of this divine love brought forth in us. For as it is the highest perfection that I adore in God, so I can neither wish nor desire any thing for myself, but to be totally governed by it. I could as willingly consent to lose all my being, as to find the power of love lost in my soul. Neither doctrine, nor mystery, nor precept has any delight for me, but as it calls forth the birth, and growth, and exercise of that Spirit, which doth all that it doth, towards God and man, under the one law of love. Whatever, therefore, you can say to me, either to increase the power, manifest the defects, or remove the impediments of divine love in my £oul, will be heartily welcome to me.
25. Of the Power of Divine Love.
Theophilus. — I apprehend that you do not yet know what divme love is in itself, nor what is its nature and power in the soul of man. For divine love is perfect peace and joy, it is a freedom from all disquiet, it is all content and mere happiness; and makes every thing to rejoice in itself. Love is the Christ of God; wherever it comes, it comes as the blessing and happiness of every natural life, as the restorer of every lost perfection, a redeemer from all evil, a fulfiller of all righteousness, and a peace of God which passeth all understanding. Through all the universe of things, nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but because it is not governed by love, or because its nature has not reached or attained the full birth of the spirit of love. For when that is done, every hunger is satisfied, and all complaining, murmuring, accusing, resenting, revenging, and striving, are as totally suppressed and overcome, as the coldness, thickness, and horror of darkness are suppressed and overcome, by the breaking forth of the light. If you ask why the spirit of love cannot be displeased, cannot be disappointed, cannot complain, accuse, resent, or murmur, it is because divine love desires nothing but itself; it is its own good, it has all when it has itself, because nothing is good but itself and its own working; for love is God; “and he that dwelleth in God, dwelleth in love:” tell me now, Eusebius, are you thus blessed in the spirit of love?
Eusehius. — Would you have me tell you that I am an angel, and without the infirmities of human flesh and blood?
Theophilus. — No; but I would have you judge of your state of love by these angelical tempers, and not by any fervour or heat that you find in yourself. For just so much and so far as you are freed from the folly of all earthly affections, from all disquiet, trouble, and complaint about this or that, just so much and so far is the spirit of love come to life in you. For divine love is a new life and new nature, and introduces you into a new world; it puts an end to all your former opinions, notions, and tempers; it opens new senses in you, and makes you see high to be low, and low to be high; wisdom to be foohshness, and foolishness wisdom; it makes prosperity and adversity, praise and dispraise, to be equally nothing. “When I was a child (saith the apostle), I thought as a child, I spake as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Whilst man is under the power of nature, governed only by worldly wisdom, his life (however old he may be) is quite childish; every thing about him only awakens childish thoughts and pursuits in him; all that he sees and hears, all that he desires or fears, likes, or dislikes; that which he gets, and that which he loses; that which he hath, and that which he hath not, serve only to carry him from this fiction of eldl to that fiction of good, from one vanity of peace to another vanity of trouble. But when divine love is born in the soul, all childish images of good and evil are done away, and all the sensibility of them is lost, as the stars lose their visibility when the sun is risen.
26. Of Light and Darkness.
TheogeTies. — That this is the true power of the spirit of divine love, I am fully convinced from my own uneasiness at finding that my natural tempers are not overcome by it. For whence could I have this trouble, but because that little dawning that I have of the spirit of love in me maketh just demands to be the one light, breath, and power of my life, and to have all that is within me overcome and governed by it. And therefore, I find, I must either silence this small voice of new risen love within me, or have no rest from complaints and self-condemnation, till my whole nature is brought into subjection to it.
Theophilus. — Most rightly judged, Theogenes; and now we are fairly brought to the one great practical pomt, on which all our proficiency in the spirit of love entirely depends. Namely, that all that we are, and all that we have from Adam, as fallen, must be given up, absolutely denied and resisted, if the birth of divine love is to be brought forth in us. For all that we are by nature is in full contrariety to this divine love, nor can it be otherwise; a death to itself is its only cure, and nothing else can make it subservient to good; just as darkness cannot be altered, or made better in itself, or transmuted into light, it can only be subservient to the light by being lost in it, and swallowed up by it.
Now this was the first state of man; all the natural properties of his creaturely life were hid in God, united in God, and glorified by the life of God manifested in them; just as the nature and qualities of darkness are lost and hid, when enlightened and glorified by the light. But when man fell from or died to the divine life, all the natural properties of his creaturely life, having lost their union in and with God, broke forth in their own natural division, contrariety, and war against one another; just as the darkness, when it has lost the light, must show forth its own coldness, horror, and other uncomfortable qualities.
When God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” no change happened to eternal light itself, nor did any light then begin to be; but the darkness of this world then only began to receive a power or operation of the eternal light upon it, which it had not before; or eternity then began to open some resemblance of its own glory in the dark elements and shadows of time. And thus it is that I assert the priority and glory of light, and put all darkness under its feet, as impossible to be any thing else but its footstool.
The Scripture saith that “God dwelleth in the light, to which no man can approach;” therefore the Scripture teacheth that light in itself is and must be invisible to man; that it cannot be approached or made manifest to him but in and by something that is not light. And this is all that I said, and the very same thing that I said, when I affirmed that light cannot be manifested, or have any visibility to created eyes, but in, and through, and by the darkness.
Light as it is in itself is only in the supernatural Deity; and that is the reason why no man or any created being can approach to it, or have any sensibility of it, as it is in itself. And yet no light can come into this world but that in which God dwelt before any world was created. No light can be in time, but that which was the light of eternity. If therefore the supernatural light is to manifest something of its incomprehensible glory, and make itself, in some degree, sensible and visible to the creature, this supernatural light must enter into nature, it must put on materiality.
Eusebius. — What is it, then, that you understand by the materiality of light?
Theophilus. — No more than I understand by the materiality of the wisdom, mercy, and goodness of God, when they are made intelligible and credible to me by the materiality of paper and ink, etc. For light is as distinct from, and superior to, all that materiality in and by which it gives forth some visibility of itself; as the wisdom, mercy, and goodness of God are distinct from, and superior to, all that written materiality in and through which they are made, in some degree, intelligible and credible to human minds.
The incomprehensible Deity can make no outward revelation of His will, wisdom, and goodness, but by articulate sounds, voices, or letters written on tables of stone, or such -like materiality. Just so, the invisible, inaccessible, supernatural light can make no outward visibility of itself, but through such darkness of materiality as is capable of receiving its illumination. But as the divine will, wisdom, and goodness, when making outward revelation of themselves by the materiality of things, are not therefore material, so neither is the light material, when it outwardly reveals something of its invisible, incomprehensible splendour and glory by and through the materiality of darkness.
Sight and visibility is but one power of light, but light is all power; it is life, and every joyful sensibility of life is from it. “In Him (says the apostle) was light, and the light was the life of men.” Light is all things, and nothing. It is nothing, because it is supernatural; it is all things, because every good power and perfection of every thing is from it. No joy or rejoicing in any creature, but from the power and joy of light. No meekness, benevolence, or goodness, in angel, man, or any creature, but where light is the lord of its life. Life itself begins no sooner, rises no higher, has no other glory, than as the light begins it and leads it on. Sounds have no softness, flowers and gums have no sweetness, plants and fruits have no growth, but as the mystery of light opens itself in them.
Whatever is delightful and ravishing, sublime and glorious, in spirits, minds, or bodies, either in heaven or on earth, is from the power of the supernatural L’ght, opening its endless wonders in them. Hell has no misery, horror, or distraction, but because it has no communication with the supernatural light. And did not the supernatural light stream forth its blessings into this world, through the materiality of the sun, all outward nature would be full of the horror of hell.
And hence are all the mysteries and vronders of light, in this material system, so astonishingly great and unsearchable; it is because the natural light of this world is nothmg else but the power and mystery of the supernatural light, breaking forth and opening itself, according to its omnipotence, in all the various forms of elementary darkness which constitute this temporary world.
Theogenes. — I could willingly hear you, Theophilus, on this subject till midnight, though it seems to lead us away from our proposed subject.
Theophilus. — Not so far out of the way, Theogenes, as you may imagine; for darkness and light are the two natures that are in every man, and do all that is done in him.
The Scriptures, you know, make only this division,
78 WHOLLY FOIl GOD
the ^YOlks of darkness are sin, and they who walk in the light are the children of God. Therefore light and darkness do every thing, whether good or evil, that is done in man.
Ikeogencs. — What is this darkness in itself, or where is it?
TheopJiilus. — It is everywhere, where there is nature and creature. For all nature, and all that is natural in the creature, is in itself nothing else but darkness, whether it be in soul or body, in heaven or on earth. And therefore, when the angels (though in heaven) had lost the supernatural light, they became imprisoned in the chains of their own natural darkness. If you ask why nature must be darkness, it is because nature is not God, and therefore can have no light, as it is nature. For God and light are as inseparable, as God and unity are inseparable. Every thing, therefore, that is not God, is and can be nothing else in itself but darkness; and can do nothing but in, and under, and according to the nature and powers of darkness.
Theogencs. — What are the powers of darkness?
TheopJiihis. — The powers of darkness are the workings of nature or self: for nature, darkness, and self are but three dii’ierent expressions for one and the same thing.
Nov, every evil, wicked, wrathful, impure, unjust thought, temper, passion, or imagination, that ever stirred or moved in any creature; every misery, discontent, distress, rage, horror, and torment that ever plagued the life of fallen man or angel, are the very things that you are to understand by the powers or workings of dailinci;:., riaturo, or self. For nothing is evil, wicked, or tormenting but that which nature or self doth.
Theor/enes. — But if nature is thus the seat and source of all evil, if every thing that is bad is in it and from it, how can such a nature be brought forth by a God who is all goodness?
Theophihis. — Nature has all evil, and no evil, in itself. Nature, as it coujes forth from God, is darkness without any evil of darkness in it; for it is not darkness without or separate from light, nor could it ever have been known to have any quality of darkness in it, had it not lost that state of light in which it came forth from God, only as a manifestation of the goodness, virtues, and glories of light. Again, it is nature, viz. a strife and coutrariety of properties for this only end, that the supernatural good might thereby come into sensibility, be known, found, and felt, by its taking all the evil of strife and contrariety from them, and becoming the union, peace, and joy of them all. Nor could the evil of strife and contrariety of Vv’ill ever have had a name in all the universe of nature and creature, had it all continued in that state in which it came forth from God. Lastly, it is self, viz. an own life that so, through such an own life, the universal, incomprehensible goodness, happiness, and perfections of the Deity might be possessed as properties and qualities of an own life in creatarely finite beings.
And thus, all that is called nature, darkness, or self has not only no evil in it, but is the only true ground of all possible good.
But when the intelhgent creature turns from God to self, or nature, he acts unnaturally, he turns from all that which makes nature to be good; he finds nature only as it is in itself, and without God. And then it is that nature, or self, hath all evil in it. Nothing is to be had from it, or found in it, but the work and working of every kind of evil, baseness, misery, and torment, and the utmost contrarieiy to God and all goodness. And thus, also, you see the plainness and certainty of our assertion, that nature, or self, hath all evil, and no evil, in it.
27. Of the True Nature of Self.
Theogenes. — I plainly enough perceive that nature, or self, without God manifested in it, is all evil and misery. But I would, if I could, more perfectly understand the precise nature of self, or what it is that makes it to be so full of evil and misery.
Theophilus. — Covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath are the four elements of self, or nature, or hell, all of them inseparable from it. And the reason why it must be thus, and cannot be otherwise, is because the natural life of the creature is brought forth for the participation of some high, supernatural good in the Creator. But it could have no fitness or possible capacity to receive such good, unless it was in itself both an extremity of want and an extremity of desire of some high good. When, therefore, this natural life is deprived of or fallen from God, it can be nothing else in itself but an extremity of want continually desiring, and an extremity of desire continually wanting. And hence it is that its whole life can be nothing else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, all which is precisely nature, self, or hell.
Now covetousness, pride, and envy are not three different things, but only three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire, which, as it differently torments itself, takes these different names, for nothing is in any of them but the working of a restless desire; and all this because the natural life of the creature can do nothing else but work as a desire. And therefore, when fallen from God, its three first births, and which arc quite inseparable from it, are covetousness, envy, and X3ride; it must covet, because it is a desire proceeding from want; it must envy, because it is a desire turned to self; it must assume and arrogate, because it is a desire founded on a real want of exaltation, or a higher state.
Now wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence till some or all of these three are contradicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to their will; and then it is that WTath is necessarily born, and not till then.
And thus you see, in the highest degree of certainty, what nature or self is as to its essential constituent parts. It is the three forementioned, inseparable properties of a desire, thrown into a fourth of wrath that can never cease, because their will can never be gratified. For these four properties generate one another, and therefore generate their own torment. They have no outward cause nor any inward power of altering themselves. And, therefore, all self, or nature, must be in this state till some supernatural good comes into it, or gets a birth in it. And, therefore, every pain or disorder in the mind or body of any intelligent creature is an undeniable proof that it is in a fallen state, and has lost that supernatural good for which it was created. So certain a truth is the fallen state of all mankind. And here lies the absolute, indispensable necessity of the one Christian redemption. Till fallen man is born again from above, till such a supernatural birth is brought forth in him, by the eternal word and Spirit of God, he can have no possible escape or deliverance from these four elements of self or hell.
Whilst man indeed lives amongst the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath may be in a tolerable state, may help him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have at times their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural word and Spirit of God must find itself unavoidably devoured or shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath. Oh, Theogenes, that I had power from God to take those dreadful scales from the eyes of every deist, which hinder him from seeing and feeling the infinite importance of this most certain truth!
Theogenes. — God give a blessing, Theophilus, to your good prayer. And then let me tell you that you have quite satisfied my question about the nature of self. I shall never forget it, nor can I ever possibly have any doubt of the truth of it.
I now also see the full truth and certainty of what you said of the nature and power of divine love; viz. “that it is perfect peace and joy, a freedom from all disquiet, making every thing to rejoice in itself. That it is the Christ of God, and wherever it comes, it comes as the blessing and happiness of every natural life; as the restorer of every lost perfection; a redeemer from all evil; a fulfiller of all righteousness; and a peace of God which passes all understanding.” So that I am now a thousand times more than ever athirst after the spirit of love. I am willing to sell all, and buy it; its blessing is so great, and the want of it so dreadful a state, that I am even afraid of lying down in my bed, till every working power of my soul is given up to it, wholly possessed and governed by it.
Theophilus. — You have reason for all that you say, Theogenes, for were we truly affected with things as they are our real good, or real evil, we should be much more afraid of having the serpents of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath well nourished and kept alive within us, than of being shut up in a pest-house, or cast into a dungeon of venomous beasts. On the other hand, we should look upon the lofty eloquence and proud virtue of a Cicero but as the blessing of storm and tempest, when compared with the heavenly tranquillity of that meek and lowly heart to which our Redeemer has called us.
I said the serpents of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, because they are alone the real, dreadful, original serpents; and all earthly serpents are but transitory, partial, and weak out-births of them. All evil, earthly beasts are but short-lived images or creaturely eruptions of that hellish disorder that is broke out from the fallen spiritual world; and by their manifold variety, they show us that multiplicity of evil that lies in the womb of that abyss of dark rage which {N.B.) has no maker, but the three first properties of nature, fallen from God and working in their own darkness.
So that all evil, mischievous, ravenous, venomous beasts, though they have no life but what begins in and from this material world, and totally ends at the death of their bodies, yet have they no malignity in their earthly, temporary nature, but from those same wrathful properties of fallen nature, which live and work in our eternal fallen souls. And, therefore, though they are as different from us as time from eternity, yet, wherever we see them, we see so many infallible proofs of the fall of nature and the reality of hell. For, was there no hell broke out in spiritual nature, not only no evil beast, but no bestial life, could ever have come into existence.
But to return. I have, I hope, sufficiently opened unto you the malignant nature of that self which dwells in and makes up the working life of every creature that has lost its right state in God — viz. that all the evil that was in the first chaos of darkness, or that still is in hell and devils, all the evil that is in material nature and material creatures, whether animate or inanimate, is nothing else, works in and with nothing else, but those first properties of nature, which drive on the life of fallen man in covetousncss, envy, pride, and wrath.
28. Of Deliverance from the Power of Self.
Theogcnes. — I could almost say that you have shown me more than enough of this monster of self, though I would not be without this knowledge of it for half the world. But now, sir, what must I do to Idg saved from the mouth of this lion, for he is the depth of all subtlety, tlic satan, that dcceiveth the whole world? He can hide himself under all forms of goodness, hey
can watch and fast, write and instruct, pray much and preach long, give alms to the poor, ldsit the sick, and yet often gets more life and strength, and a more unmoveable abode, in these forms of vu’tue, than he has in publicans and sinners.
Enjoin me, therefore, whatever you please, all rules, methods, and practices will be welcome to me, if you judge them to be necessary in this matter.
ThcopMliLS. — There is no need of a number of practices or methods in this matter. For to die to self, or to come from under its power, is not, cannot be done by any active resistance we can malie to it by the powers of nature. For nature can no more overcome or suppress itself, than wrath can heal wrath. So long as nature acts, nothing but natural works are brought forth, and therefore the more labour of this kind, the more nature is fed and strengthened with its own food.
But the one true way of dying to self is miost simple and plain; it wants no arts or methods, no cells, monasteries, or pilgrimages; it is equally practicable by every body; it is always at hand; it meets you in every thing; it is free from all deceit; and is never Vv’ithout success.
If you ask what this one, true, simple, plain, immediate, and unerring way is; it is the way of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation lo God. This is the truth and perfection of dying to self; it is nowhere else, nor possible to be in any thing else, but in this st’ite of heart.
Theogcnes. — The excellency and perfection of these virtues I readily acknowledge; but alas, sir, how Vvill this prove the way of overcoming self to be so simple, plain, immediate, and unerring as you speak of? For is it not the doctrine of almost all men and all books, and confirmed by our own woeful experience, that much length of time, and exercise, and variety of practices and methods are necessary, and scarce sufficient to the attainment of any one of these four virtues?
29. Of Faith in Christ as the only way
of deliverance from Self.
Theophilus. — When Christ our Saviour was upon earth, was there anything more simple, plain, immediate, unerring than the way to Him? Did scribes, Pharisees, publicans, and sinners want any length of time or exercise of rules and methods before they could have admission to Him, or have the benefit of faith in Him?
Theogenes. — I don’t understand why you put this question, nor do I see how it can possibly relate to the matter before us.
Theophilus. — It not only relates to, but is the very heart and truth of the matter before us; it is not appealed to by way of illustration of our subject, but it is our subject itself, only set in a truer and stronger light. For when I refer you to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God as the one simple, plain, immediate, and unerring way of dying to self, or being saved from it; I call it so for no other reason but because you can as easily, and immediately, without art or method, by the mere turning and faith of your mind, have all the benefit of these virtues, as publicans and sinners, by their turning to Christ, could be helped and saved by Him.
Theogenes. — But, good sir, would you have me then believe that my turning and giving up myself to these virtues is as certain and immediate a way of my being directly possessed and blessed by their good power, as when sinners turned to Christ to be helped and saved by Him? Surely this is too short a way, and has too much of miracle in it, to be now expected.
Theopliiliis. — I would have you strictly to believe all this, in the fullest sense of the words. And also to believe that the reasons why you, or any one else, are for a long time vainly endeavouring after, and hardly ever attaining, these first-rate virtues, is because you seek them in the way they are not to be found, in a multiplicity of human rules, methods, and contrivances, and not in that simplicity of faith in which those who applied to Christ immediately obtained that which they asked of Him.
“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” How short, and simple, and certain a way to peace and comfort, from the misery and burden of sin! What becomes now of your length of time and exercise, your rules and methods and roundabout ways, to be deHvered from self, the power of sin, and find the redeeming power and virtue of Christ? Will you say that turning to Christ in faith was once indeed the way for Jews and heathens to enter into life, and be delivered from the power of their sins, but that all this happiness was at an end as soon as Pontius Pilate had nailed this good Redeemer to the cross, and so broke off all immediate union and communion between faith and Christ?
What a folly would it be to suppose that Christ, after His having finished His great work, overcome death, ascended into heaven, with all power in heaven and on earth, was become less a Saviour, and gave less certain and immediate helps to those that by faith turn to Him now, than when He was clothed with the infirmity of our flesh and blood upon earth? Has He less power, after He has conquered, than whilst He was only resisting and fighting with our enemies? Or has He less good will to assist His Church, His own body, now He is in heaven, than He had to assist publicans, sinners, and heathens, before He was glorified as the Redeemer of the world? And yet this must be the case, if our simply turning to Him in faith and hope is not as sure a way of obtaining imniediate assistance from Him now, as when he was upon earth.
Theogcncs. — You seem, sir, to me to have stepped aside from the point in question, which was not, whether my turning or giving myself up to Christ, in faith in Him, would not do me as much good as it did to them who turned to Hhn when He was upon earth? But whether my turning in faith and desire, to patience, meekness, humiUty, and resignation to God, would do all that as fully for me now as faith in Christ did for those who became His disciples?
Theophilus. — I have stuck closely, my friend, to the point before us. Let it be supposed that I had given you a form of prayer in these words: “0 Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world; or, 0 Thou bread that camest down from heaven; or. Thou that art the resurrection and the life, the light and peace of all holy souls, help me to a living faith in Thee.” Would you say that this was not a prayer of faith in and to Christ, because it did not call Him Jesus, or the Son of God? Answer me plainly.
Thcogencs. — What can I answer you, but that this is a most true and good prayer to Jesus, the Son of the living God? For who else but He was the Lamb of God, and the bread that came down?
30. What Faith in the Lamb of God
means.
TheopMlus. — Well answered, my friend. When, therefore, I exhort you to give up yourself in faith and hope, to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, what else do I do but turn you directly to so much faith and hope in the true Lamb of God? For if I ask you what the Lamb of God is and means must you not tell me that it is and means the perfection of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God? Can you say it is either more or less than this? Must you not therefore say that a faith of hunger, and thirst, and desire of these virtues is in S])irit and truth the one very same thing as a faith of hunger, and thirst, and desire of salvation through the Lamb of God? And, consequently, that every sincere wish and desire, every inward inclination of your heart, that presses after these virtues, and longs to be governed by them, is rai immediate, direct application to Christ, is worshipping and falling down before Him, is giving up yourself unto Him, and the very perfection of faith in Him.
If you distrust my words, hear the words of Christ Himself: “Learn of Me (says He), for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Here you have the plain truth of our two points fully asserted — firsts that to be given up to, or stand in a desire of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, is strictly the same thing as to learn of Christ, or to have faith in Him. Secondly, that this is the one simple, short, and infallible way to overcome or be delivered from all the malignity and burden of self expressed in these words, “and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”
And all this, because this simple tendency or inward inclination of your heart to sink down into patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, is truly giving up all that you are and all that you have from fallen Adam; it is perfectly leaving all that you have, to follow and be with Christ; it is your highest act of faith in Him, and love of Him, the most ardent and earnest declaration of your cleaving to Him with all your heart, and seeking for no salvation but in Him and from Him. And, therefore, all the good and blessing, pardon and deliverance from sin, that ever happened to any one from any kind or degree of faith and hope, and application to Christ, is sure to be had from this state of heart, which stands continually turned to Him in a hunger and desire of being led and governed by His spirit of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God. Oh, Theogenes, could I help you to perceive or feel what a good there is in this state of heart, you would desire it with more eagerness than the thirsty hart desireth the water-brooks, you would think of nothing, desire nothing, but constantly to live in it. It is a security from all evil and all delusion; no difficulty or trial, either of body or mind, no temptation, either within you or without you, but what has its full remedy in this state of heart. You have no questions to ask of any body, no new way that you need inquire after; no oracle that you need to consult, for whilst you shut up yourself, in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your whole heart is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you, as certainly as He lived in and governed that body and soul which He took from the Virgin Mary.
31. Christ is only to be found in the
Virtues of His Character.
Learn whatever else you will from men and books, or even from Christ Himself, besides or without these virtues, and you are only a poor wanderer in a barren wilderness, where no water of life is to be found. For Christ is nowhere hut in these virtues; and where they are, there is He in His own kingdom. From morning to night let this be the Christ that you follow, and then you will fully escape all the religious delusions that are in the world, and what is more, all the delusions of your own selfish heart.
For to seek to be saved by patience, meekness, humility of heart, and resignation to God, is truly coming to God through Christ; and when these tempers live and abide in you, as the spirit and aim of your life, then Christ is in you of a truth, and the life that you then lead is not yours, but Christ that liveth in you. For this is following Christ with all your power; you cannot possibly make more haste after Him, you have no other way of walking as He walked, no other way of being like Him, of truly believing in Him, of showing your trust in Him and dependence upon Him, but by wholly giving up yoursslf (0 that which He waS; viz. to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God.
Tell me now, have I enough proved to you the short, simple, and certain way of destroying that body of self which lives and works in the four elements of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath?
32. Of Covetousness.
Theogenes. — Enough of all reason. But as to covetousness, I thank God I cannot charge myself with it, it has no power over me — nay, I naturally abhor it. And I also now clearly see why I have been so long struggling in vain against other selfish tempers.
TheojyJiil’US. — Permit me, my friend, to remove your mistake. Had covetousness no power over you, you could have no other selfish tempers to struggle against. They are all dead as soon as covetousness has done working in you. You take covetousness to relate only to the wealth of this world. But this is but one single branch of it, its nature is as large as desire, and wherever selfish desire is, there is all the evil nature of covetousness.
Now envy, pride, hatred, or wrath can have no possibility of existence in you, but because there is some selfish desire alive in you that is not satisfied, not gratified, but resisted or disappointed. And therefore so long as selfish tempers, whether of envy, uneasiness, complaint, pride, or wrath, are alive in you, you have tEeuBest proof that all these tempers afebbrn and bred in and from your own covetousness; that is, from that same selfish bad desire which, when it is turned to the wealth of this world, is called covetousness. ¥ov all these four elements of self, or fallen nature, are tied together in one inseparable band; they mutually generate, and are generated from one another; they have but one common life, and must all of them live, or all die together. This may show you again the absolute necessity of our one simple and certain way of dying to self, and the absolute insufficiency of all human means whatever to eff’ect it.
S3. Of the total Despair of Self.
For, consider only this, that to be angry at our own anger, to be ashamed of our own pride, and strongly resolve not to be weak, is the upshot of all human endeavours; and yet all this is rather the life than the death of self. There is no help but from a total despair of all human help. When a man is brought to such an inward full conviction, as to have no more hope from all human means, than he hopes to see with his hands or hear with his feet, then it is that he is truly prepared to die to self; that is, to give up all thoughts of having or doing any thing that is good in any other way but that of a meek, humble, patient, total resignation of himself to God. All that we do before this conviction is in great ignorance of ourselves, and full of weakness and impurity. Let our zeal be ever so wonderful, yet if it begins sooner, or proceeds farther, or to any other matter, or in any other way than as it is led and guided by this conviction, it is full of delusion. No repentance, however long or laborious, is conversion to God till it falls into this state. God must do all, or all is nothing. But God cannot do all till all is expected from Him. And all is not expected from Him till, by a true and good despair of every human help, we have no hope, or trust, or longing after any thing but a patient, meek, humble, total resignation to God.
And now, my dear friends, I have brought you to the very place for which I desired this day’s conversation; which was to set your feet upon sure ground with regard to the spirit of love. For all that variety of matters through which we have passed has been only a variety of proofs that the spirit of divine love can have no place or possibiHty of birth in any fallen creature till it wills and chooses to be dead to all self, in a patient, meek, humble resignation to the good power and mercy of God.
And from this state of heart also it is that the spirit of prayer is borne, which is the desire of the soul turned to God. Stand, therefore, steadfastly in this will, let nothing else enter into your mind, have no other contrivance, but every where, and in every thing, to nourish and keep up this state of heart, and then your house is built upon a rock; you are safe from all danger; the light of heaven and the love of God will begin their work in you, will bless and sanctify every power of your fallen soul. You will be in a readiness for every kind of virtue and good work, and will know what it is to be led by the Spirit of God.
34. Of True Resignation to God apart
from Feeling.
Theogenes. — But, dear Theophilus, though I am so delighted with what you say that I am loth to stop you, yet permit me to mention a fear that rises up in me. Suppose I should find myself so overcome with my own darkness and selfish tempers as not to be able to sink from them into a sensibility of this meek, humble, patient, full resignation to God; what must I then do, or how shall I have the benefit of what you have taught me?
Thcopliilus. — You are then at the very time and place of receiving the fullest benefit from it, and practising it with the greatest advantage to yourself. For though this patient, meek resignation is to be exercised with regard to all outward things and occurrences of life, yet it chiefly respects our own inward state, the troubles, perplexities, weaknesses, and disorders of our own fallen souls. And to stand turned to a patient, meek, humble resignation to God, when your own impatience, wrath, pride, and irresignation attacks yourself, is a higher and more beneficial performance of this duty, than when you stand turned to meekness and patience when attacked by the pride, or wrath, or disorderly passions of other people. I say, stand turned to this patient, humble resignation, for this is your true performance of this duty at that time; and though you may have no comfortable sensibility of your performing it, yet in this state you may always have one full proof of the truth and reality of it; and that is, when you seek for help no other way, nor in any thing else, neither from men nor books, but wholly leave and give up yourself to be helped by the mercy of God. And thus, be your state what it will, you may always have the full benefit of this short and sure way of resigning up yourself to God. And the greater the perplexity of your distress is, the nearer you are to the greatest and best relief, provided you have but patience to expect it all from God.
Nothing brings you so near to divine relief as the extremity of distress.
For the goodness of God hath no other name or nature, but the helper of all that wants to be helped; and nothing can possibly hinder your finding this goodness of God, and every other gift and grace that you stand in need of; nothing can hinder or delay it but your turning from the only fountain of life and living water, to some cracked cistern of your own making; to this or that method, opinion, division, or subdivision, amongst Christians, carnally expecting some mighty things, either from Samaria or Jerusalem, Paul or Apollos, which are only and solely to be had by worshipping the Father in spirit and truth; which is then only done when your whole heart, and soul, and spirit trusts wholly and solely to the operation of that God within you, in whom we live, move, and have our being. And be assured of this, as a most certain truth, that we have neither more nor less of the divine operation within us, because of this or that outward form or manner of our life, but just and strictly in that degree, as our faith, and hope, and trust, and dependence upon God is more or less in us.
What a folly, then, to be so often perplexed about the way to God! Nothing is the way to God, but our heart. God is nowhere else to be found, and the heart itself cannot find Him, or be helped by any thing else to find Him, but by its own love of Him, faith in Him, dependence upon Him, resignation to Him, and expectation of all from Him.
These are short, but full articles of true religion, which carry salvation along with them, which make a true and full offering and oblation of our whole nature to the divine operation, and also a true and full confession of the Holy Trinity in unity. For as they look wholly to the Father, as blessing us with the operation of His own word and Spirit, so they truly confess and worship the Holy Trinity of God. And as they ascribe all to, and expect all from, this Deity alone, so they make the truest and best of all confessions, that there is no God but one.
Your foundation standeth sure, whilst you look for all your salvation through the Father, working life in your soul by His own Word and Spirit, which dwell in Him, and are one life, both in Him and you.
35. The Blessedness of total Resignation
to Qod.
Thcogenes. — I can never enough thank you, Theophilus, for this good and comfortable answer to my scrupulous fear. It seems now as if I could always know how to find full relief in this humble, meek, patient, total resignation of myself to God. It is, as you said, a remedy that is always at hand, equally practicable at all times, and never in greater reality than when my own tempers are making war against it in my own heart.
You have quite carried your point with me; the God of patience, meekness, and love is the one God of my heart. It is now the whole bent and desire of my soul to seek for all my salvation in and through the merits and mediation of the meek, humble, patient, resigned, suffering Lamb of God, who alone hath power to brin forth the blessed birth of these heavenly virtues in my soul. He is the bread of God that came down from heaven, of which the soul mast eat, or perish and pine in everlasting hunger.
He is the eternal love and meekness, that left the bosom of His Father, to be Himself the resurrection of meekness and love in all the darkened, wrathful souls of fallen men.
What a comfort is it to think that this Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Light of the world, who is the glory of heaven and the joy of angels, is as near to us, as truly in the midst of us, as He is in the midst of heaven. And that not a thought, look, and desire of our heart, that presses towards Him, longing to catch, as it were, one small spark of His heavenly nature, but is in as sure a way of finding Him, touching Him, and drawing virtue from Him, as the woman who was healed by longing to touch the border of His garment.
This doctrine also makes me quite weary and ashamed of all my own natural tempers, as so many marks of the beast upon me; every whisper of my soul that stu-s up impatience, uneasiness, resentment, pride, and wrath within me, shall be rejected with a “Get thee behind me, Satan,” for it is his, and has its whole nature from him. To rejoice in a resentment gratified, appears now to me to be quite frightful. For what is it in reality but rejoicing that my own serpent of self has new life and strength given to it, and that the precious Lamb of God is denied entrance into my soul? For this is the strict truth of the matter. For to give in to resentment, and go willingly to gratify it, is calling up the courage of your own serpent, and truly helping it to be more stout and valiant, and successful in you. On the other hand, to give up all resentment of every kind, and on every occasion, however artfully, beautifully, outwardly coloured, and to sink down into the humility of meekness under all contrariety, contradiction, and injustice, always turning the other cheek to the sniiter, however haughty, is the best of all prayers, the surest of all means, to have nothing but Christ living and working in you, as the Lamb of God, that taketh away every sin that ever had power over your soul.
What a blindness was it in me to think that I had no covetousness, because the love of pelf was not felt by me! For to covet is to desii’e; and what can it signify whether I desire this or that? If I desire any thing but that which God would have me to be and do, I stick in the mire of covetousness, and must have all that evil and disquiet living and working in me which robs misers of their peace both with God and man.
Oh, sweet resignation of myself to God, happy death of every selfish desire, blessed unction of a holy life, the only driver of all evil out of my soul, be thou my guide and governor wdierever I go! Nothing but thee can take me from myself, nothing but thee can lead me to God; hell has no power where thou art; nor can heaven hide itself from thee. Oh, may I never indulge a thought, bring forth a word, or do any thing for myself or others, but under the influence of thy blessed inspii’ation.
Forgive, dear Theophilus, this transport of my soul! I could not stop it. The sight, though distant, of this heavenly Canaan, this Sabbath of the soul, freed from the miserable labour of self, to rest in meekness, humility, patience, and resignation under the Spirit cf God, is like the joyful voice of the Bridegroom to my soul, and leaves no wish in me but to be at the marriage feast of the Lamb.
36. The Absolute Necessity of the Death
of Self.
Theopldlus. — Thither, Theogenes, you must certainly come, if you keep to the path of meekness, humility, and patience, under a full resignation to God. But if you go aside from it, let the occasion seem ever so glorious, or the effects ever so wonderful to you, it is only preparing for yourself a harder death. For die you must, to all and every thing that you have worked or done under any other spirit but that of meekness, humility, and true resignation to God. Every thing else, be it what it will, hath its rise from the fire of nature, it belongs to nothing else, and must of all necessity be given up, lost, and taken from you again by fire, either here or hereafter.
For these virtues are the only wedding garment; they are the lamps and vessels well furnished with oil.
There is nothing that will do in the stead of them; they must have their own full and perfect work in you, if not before, yet certainly after the death of the body, or the soul can never be delivered from its fallen, wrathful state. And all this is no more than is implied in this Scripture doctrine, viz. that there is no possibility of salvation but in and by the birth of the meek, humble, patient, resigned Lamb of God in our souls. And when this Lamb of God has brought forth a real birth of His own meekness, humility, and full resignation to God in our souls, then are our lamps trimmed, and our virgin hearts made ready for the marriage feast.
This marriage feast signifies the entrance into the highest state of union that can be between God and the soul in this life. Or, in other words, it is the birthday of the spirit of love in our souls, which, whenever we attain, will feast our souls with such peace and joy in God as will blot out the remembrance of every thing that we called peace or joy before.
As sure as the light of God is absolutely necessary to make nature to be a heavenly kingdom of light and love, so sure and certain is it that the creaturely life, that is fallen from God, can have no deliverance, cannot have a birth of heavenly light and love, by any other possible way but that of dying to self, by meekness, humility, patience, and full resignation to God.
And the reason is this. It is because the will is the leader of the creaturely life, and it can have nothing but that to which its will is turned. And therefore it cannot be saved from, or raised out of, the wTath of nature, till its will turns from nature, and wills to be no longer driven by it. But it cannot turn from nature, or show a will to come from under its powder, any other way than by turning and giving up itself to that meekness, humility, patience, and resignation to God, which, so far as it goes, is a leaving, rejecting, and dying to all the guidance of nature.
37. The One Infallible Way to God.
And thus you see that this one simple way is, according to the immutable nature of things, the one only possible and absolutely necessary way to God. It is as possible to go two contrary ways at once, as to go to God any other way than this. But what is best of all, this way is absolutely infallible; nothing can defeat it. And all this infallibility is fully grounded in the twofold character of our Saviour — (1) As He is the Lamb of God, a principle and source of all meekness and humility in the soul. And (2) as He is the light of eternity, that blesses eternal nature, and turns it mto a kingdom of heaven.
For, in this twofold respect, He has a power of redeeming us, which nothing can hinder; but, sooner or later. He must see all His and our enemies under His feet, and all that is fallen in Adam into death must rise and return into a unity of an eternal life in God.
For as the Lamb of God He has all power to bring forth in us a sensibility and a weariness of our own wrathful state, and a willingness to fall from it into meekness, humility, patience, and resignation to that mercy of God which alone can help us. And when we are thus weary and heavy laden, and willing to get rest to our souls in meek, humble, patient resignation to God, then it is that He, as the light of God and heaven, joyfully breaks in upon us, turns our darkness into light, our sorrow into joy, and begins that kingdom of God and divine love within us, which will never have an end.
Need I say any more, Theogenes, to show you how to come out of the wrath of your evil, earthly nature, into the sweet peace and joy of the spirit of love? Neither notions, nor speculations, nor heat, nor fervour, nor rules, nor methods, can brincj it forth. It is the child of light, and cannot possibly have any birth in you but only and solely from the light of God rising in your own soul, as it rises in heavenly beings. But the light of God cannot arise, or be found in you, by any art or contrivance of your own, but only and solely in the way of that meekness, humility, and patience, which waits, trusts, resigns to, and expects all from the inward, living, life-giving operation of the triune God within you; creating, quickening, and reviving in your fallen soul that birth, and image, and likeness of the Holy Trinity, in which the first father of mankind was created.
Theogcncs. — You need say no more, Theophilus; you have not only removed that difficulty which brought us hither, but have, by a variety of things, fixed and confirmed us in a full belief of that great truth elsewhere asserted, namely, That there is but one salvation for all mankind, and that is the life of God in the soul. And also, that there is but one possible way for man to attain this life of God.
God is one, human nature is one, salvation is one, and the way to it is one, and that is the desire of the soul turned to God.
Therefore, dear Theophilus, adieu. If we seek you no more in this life, you have sufficiently taught us how to seek and find every kind of goodness, blessing, and happiness in
God Alo’e.
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER
OR,
THE SOUL RISING OUT OF THE VANITY OF TIME
INTO THE
RICHES OF ETERNITY
By WILLIAM LAW, M.A.