109SermonsbyJCRyle
eighteen, that he was probably reading hard, and storing his mind with knowledge, which he turned to good account in after-life. But there is an utter dearth of all information about our hero at this period of his life. We only know that he took upon himself the office of a minister, not only as scholar, and as an outward professor of religion—but as an honest man. He says himself, that "he subscribed the articles and liturgy from principle; and that he did not believe them merely because he subscribed them—but subscribed them because he believed them."
One would like, furthermore, to know exactly where he began his ministry, and in what parish he was first heard as a preacher of the gospel. But I can find out nothing about these points. One interesting fact about his early preaching, I gather from a curious letter which he wrote to Lady Huntingdon in 1774. In that letter he says: "As to the doctrines of special and discriminating grace, I have thus much to observe. For the first four years after I was ordained, I dwelt chiefly on the general outlines of the gospel in this remote corner of my public ministry. I preached of little else but of justification by faith alone, in the righteousness and atonement of Christ, and of that personal holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. My reasons for thus narrowing the truths of God were these two (I speak it with humiliation and repentance):
1. I thought these points were sufficient to convey as clear an idea as was absolutely necessary of salvation.
2. And secondly, I was partly afraid to go any further.
"God himself (for none but he could do it) gradually freed me from that fear. And as he never at any time permitted me to deliver, or even to insinuate anything contradictory to his truth, so has he been graciously pleased, for seven or eight years past, to open my mouth to make known the entire mystery of the gospel, as far as his Spirit has enlightened me into it. The consequence of my first plan of operations was, that the generality of my hearers were pleased—but