YOUR ministry having stripped me of all my false joys and false confidence, and of all my false notions, and undeceived me, and brought me down to an acquaintance with the plague of my own heart, to a sense of guilt, and of the anger of God revealed in a broken law, and caused me to fly, trembling, from the wrath to come, has also been blessed to me in raising me to, and often encouraging my soul in hope; and many a word of support and encouragement, attended with light and information, has been sent by God to me, when ready to faint, from your mouth; and, I think, I may call your ministry the strength of my heart. My trouble, and these blessings communicated, have effectually taught me both to prove and highly to prize a pastor after God's own heart; having found you as such under God, and the best friend to me in all this sinful, miserable world. Numberless are the blessings which I have received in the course of three or four years' labour and travail. But under a sermon you preached the 30th of June last, from Isa. liv. 1, I almost thought my bonds would have bursted, but there was not sufficient strength to bring forth; and, although soon after I lost the sense of it, yet it was such an effectual blow to Satan and my unbelief, that they have not entirely recovered it since. Last Sunday mooring's discourse was strengthening, encouraging, and informing; and sent of God to me I believe it was. The two Sundays before being wet and dirty, and having some miles to drag a cumbersome carcass and a burdened heart, it made me fret; and Satan is neither backward nor awkward at helping forward such calamities; his advice was, to have no more of this. I thought if the next Sunday was so I would not come, but would go and hear_________, who is sound in the letter, and make myself as comfortable as I could. But in the course of the week I found some nearness to God, and a heart to pray; and prayed him to send fair weather for my journey, a blessing at his house, and to let it be a sign betwixt himself and me. The morning was fine, which encouraged me; and you preached from 2 Cor. i. 24. I will not trouble you with the particulars; but God furnished you with that subject for me, I believe, among the rest. It was the strengthening and encouraging voice of a good God to my troubled, fearing, and desponding heart, by the mouth of his servant, I do believe, and a word in due season it was. But before I got home I lost it all in company with the devil, and sunk in despondency up to my neck; and, although some secret power and good hand has hitherto held my head above, yet I fear that I shall, after all, be left to sink. I am pressed in spirit, and sensibly pursued by the avenger of blood. O that I may get into the city of refuge before overtaken! I know that Jesus Christ is near to fly unto, being near to all that call upon him. O that I was but safe there, that my soul may live! But fearing I shall fail and come short, fearing I shall die an incurable with the plague of leprosy, I am full of tossings to and fro. But excuse my intrusion, sir; to make one request, is the cause of these scribbled odds and ends appearing to you.
You know, sir, the world is stuffed with forgers of lies, soul-starvers, and physicians of no value; and how applicable the words of the Lord Jesus are to our state, that faithful labourers are few; that there are many in obscurity that cannot get to hear you, and, according to your late prophecies, we may say, "Wo unto us, for the day goeth away, &c." That you have often lately sounded an alarm about your own departure, and it seems there is to be no succeeding Elishas; may I therefore, dear sir, solicit to see the two sermons on True and False Faith in print, if it meet your approbation, and you have time; that you may preach once more to us in the country, as well as to your charge in town; and when it pleases God to take you, you may, being dead, yet speak, and have a voice in the world till it is burnt up. Much gospel, and many preachers of it, to be sure, there are, and it is in and all round our parish; but it is not that which is the power of God to salvation. Husks and dry breasts can afford no entertainment to the hungry and thirsty: this you well know, sir, and I have experienced the disappointment.
Sir,
YOUR unexpected tidings have afforded me some encouragement in the good work in which I have been long engaged. You have not been suffered to deal with me as too many have done who have been long suckled, dandled, swaddled, and adorned with all the external ornaments and embellishments that appertain to a form of godliness destitute of the power. I have long thought that the unclean spirit going out of a man, and the devil leaving that man under a minister of the letter, in order for him to sweep and garnish his house with reigned faith, false hopes, dissembled love, natural joys, head notions, blind zeal, speculative knowledge, false light, gifts of speech in prayer, in exhorting, or in preaching, is the very quintessence of infernal deception, or the masterpiece of devils; it is forestailing the Saviour's market, counterfeiting and at the same time counteracting, the work of the Holy Ghost. No small number of this sort (which I call the worst of all materials) have come under me; and wonderfully enamoured and ravished they have been with the novelty of the doctrine; but, alas! the new wine was put into the old bottle, the new cloth was put upon the old garment, and the precious seed was received into stony ground. The wine in such a vessel cannot keep; nor can such a robe of divers colours, a linsey-woolsey garment, be fit for the Lamb's wife; no more can the precious seed take root in such a soil. And this I have often seen; for when once the glee of novelty begins to wither, and poor honest conscience disturbs them with the return of his fits, then the old composing draughts become needful, and, as sure as ever one appears in public that walks in the light of his own fire and in the sparks that he hath kindled, off he goes to his own vomit again; and I believe that such return no more, nor do they take hold of the path of life.
But you inform me that the Lord hath stripped you. I know that he will take away the filthy garments of all those that he clothes with change of raiment; and I believe that stripping the sinner is the hardest work, and in the general a work of time; for, as sure as the Lord finds a tree to rend, so sure the sinner finds a time to sew, Eccl. iii. 7. "The Lord breaks down, and he builds up," Eccl. iii. But when this working arm is destroyed the work is as good as done; for "he giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength;" and it is the ungodly, not the self-righteous, that he will justify.
If thine account of stripping and undeceiving be genuine, I have no doubt of the glory being revealed, for that must follow. Besides, the door of hope hath been displayed already, and thou wast almost within it; and where the spirit of supplication knocks the door must open. We are not to labour in vain, nor to bring forth for trouble. If divine life causes the labour, divine love will effect the delivery. God will not cause to labour, and not cause to bring forth; nor will he bring to the birth, and then shut the womb. The Spirit shall open the promise, and bring forth the blessing, and he will open thine heart to receive it in the love of it. It is love that completes the new birth, and even this attends the Spirit of life when the soul is quickened. What ia God's rod, but the effect of his love? And what is the desire of a man, but his kindness? And what is smoking flax, but the fire of love in the ashes? And who love the Lord? only them that hate evil, and loathe themselves in their own sight on the account of it. When the Spirit enters into the heart all these attend him, whether we know it and feel it or not: take it all in one verse, "As soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children." I could not comply with your request fully, for want of time; besides, my times of exercise come on so fast, that I am obliged to drive old things out to make room for new: but I have put down the heads, which I think is sufficient; for, as you have been for some time instructed and brought forth to act the part of a hypocrite in Zion, you know more of false faith experimentally than I do, and are better qualified to enlarge upon it; and as for real faith, you will be brought to try the evidences of that as the Spirit leads you on; for the footsteps of the flock, which go up from the washing, or which follow the Lord in the regeneration, go from the experience of one truth to another, till they grow up into the covenant Head, who is truth itself, and the fountain of truth: this is the centre where we are all to meet in the unity of the faith. Wishing your presence in this solemn assembly, I subscribe myself,
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