Part 2
It is to no purpose to object to all this, that these kingdoms are overrun with enthusiasts of all kinds, and that Moravians with their several divisions, and Methodists of various kinds, are everywhere
acting in the wildest manner, under the pretense of being called and led by the Spirit. Be it so, or not so, is a matter I meddle not with; nor is the doctrine I am upon in the least affected by it. For what an argument would this be; enthusiasts of the present and former ages have made a bad use of the doctrine of being led by the Spirit of God, ergo, "He is enthusiastic, or helps forward enthusiasm, who preaches up the doctrine of being led by the Spirit of God." Now absurd as this is, was any of my accusers as high in genius, as bulky in learning, as colossus was in stature, he would be at a loss to bring a stronger argument than this, to prove me an enthusiast, or an abettor of them.
But as I do not begin to doubt about the necessity, the truth, and perfection of gospel religion, when told that whole nations and churches have, under a pretence of regard to it, and for the sake of it, done all the bad things that can be charged upon this or that leading enthusiast, whether you call those bad things, schism, perjury, rebellion, worldly craft, and hypocrisy, &c. So I give not up the necessity, the truth, and perfection of looking wholly to the Spirit of God and Christ within me, as my promised inspirer, and only worker of all that can be good in me, I give not this up, because in this, or that age, both spiritual pride and fleshly lusts have prospered by it, or because satan has often led people into all the heights of self-glory, and self-seeking under a pretence of being inspired with gospel humility, and gospel self-denial.
Another charge upon me, equally false, and I may say, more senseless, is that I am a declared enemy to the use of reason in religion. And why? Because in all my writings, I teach that reason is to be denied, &c. I own, I have not only taught this, but have again and again proved the absolute necessity of it. And this, because Christ has made it absolutely necessary, by saying, "Whoever will come after me, let him deny himself," &c. For how can a man deny himself, without denying his reason, unless reason be no part of himself? Or how can a rational creature whose chief distinction from brutes is that of his reason, be called to deny himself any other way, than by denying what is peculiar to himself? Let the matter be thus expressed, man is not to deny his
reason. Well, how then? Why, he is only to deny himself. Can there be a greater folly of words? And yet it is their wisdom of words, who allow the denying of self to be good doctrine, but boggle, and cry out at the denying of reason, as quite bad. For how can a man deny himself, but by denying what is the life, and spirit, and power of self? What makes a man a sinner? Nothing but the power and working of his natural reason. And therefore, if our natural reason is not to be denied, we must keep up and follow what works every sin that ever was, or can be in us. For we can sin nowhere, or in anything, but where our natural reason or understanding has its power in us. What is meant in all scripture by the flesh and its works? Is it something distinct, and different from the workings of our rational and intelligent nature? No, it is our whole intelligent, rational nature, that constitutes the flesh or the carnal man, who could not be criminally so, any more than the beasts, but because his carnality has all its evil from his intelligent nature or reason, being the life and power of it. And everything which our Lord says of self, is so much said of our natural reason; and all that the scripture says of the flesh and its evil nature, is so much said of the evil state of our natural reason, which therefore is, ought, and must be denied, in the same manner and degree as self and flesh is, and must be denied.
I have elsewhere shown the gross darkness and ignorance which govern what is called metaphysics in the schools, "that it is so great, that if you were to say, that God first creates a soul out of nothing, and when that is done, then takes an understanding faculty and puts it into it, after that, adds a will, and then a memory, all as independently made, as when a tailor first makes the body of a coat, and then adds sleeves, and pockets to it; were you to say this, the schools of Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke, could have nothing to say against it."
And here truth obliges me to say, that scholastic divinity is in as great ignorance about the most fundamental truths of the gospel, as I have again and again shown, in regard to the nature of the fall of man, and all the scripture expressions concerning the new birth; and here also
concerning the doctrine, of a man's denying himself, which modern learning supposes to be possible without, or different from a man's denying his own natural reason; which is an absurdity of the greatest magnitude. For what is self, but what a man is, and has in his natural capacity? Or what is the fullness of his natural capacity, but the strength and power of his reason? How then can any man deny himself, but by denying what gives self its whole nature, name, and power? If man was not a rational creature, he could not be called to deny himself, he could not need, or receive the benefit and goodness of self-denial: no man therefore can obey the precept of denying himself, or have any benefit or goodness from it, but so far as he denies, or dies to his own natural reason, because the self of man, and the natural reason of man, are strictly the same thing. Again, our blessed Lord said in his agony, "Not my will, but thine be done." And had not this been the form of his whole life, he had not lived without sin. Now thus to deny our own will, that God's will may be done in us, is the height of our calling; and so far as we keep from our own natural will, so far we keep from sin. But now, if our own natural will, as having all sin and evil in it, is always to be denied, whatever it costs us, I would fain know, how our natural reason can ever escape, or how we can deny our own will, and not deny that rational or intelligent power, in and from which the will has its whole existence and continual direction? Or how there can be always a badness of our own will, which is not the badness of our own natural intellectual power? Therefore it is a truth of the utmost certainty, that as much as we are obliged to deny our own natural will that the will of God may be done in us, so much are we obliged to deny our own natural reason and understanding that our own will may not be done, or followed by us. For whoever lives to his own natural reason, he necessarily lives to his own natural will. For our natural will, in whatever state it is, is nothing else but our natural reason willing this, or that.
Now hard as this may seem to unregenerate nature, and yet harder to nature highly exalted, and big with the glory of all that, which wits, poets, orators, critics, sophists, and historians have enriched it with, yet true it is, and a truth as certain as the fall of man, that this full
denial of our own natural will, and our own natural reason, is the only possible way for divine knowledge, divine light, and divine goodness, to have any place or power of birth in us. All other religious knowledge, got any other way, let it be as great as it will, is only great in vanity, emptiness, and delusion. For nothing but what comes immediately from God, can have anything godly in it, and all that comes from self, and natural reason, however outwardly coloured, can have no better a nature within, that self-seeking, selfesteem, and fleshly wisdom, which are those very works of the devil in us, which Christ came into the world to destroy. For the efforts of natural reason, and self-abilities, to be great in religious knowledge from our own particular talents, are as satanic things as any we carry about us, and most of all fix us in the highest contrariety to that state, which our Lord affirms to be absolutely necessary.
"Unless you are converted, and become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Now as sure as this is necessary, so sure is it, that no one can be thus converted, or come under the good influence of this childlike nature, till natural reason, self, and own will, are all equally denied. For all the evil and corruption of our fallen nature consists in this, it is an awakened life of own reason, own will broken off from God, and so fallen into the selfish workings of its own earthly nature.
Now whether this self broken off from God, reasons, wills, and contends about the difference of scripture words and opinions, or reasons against them all, the same evil state of fallen nature, the same loss of life, the same separation from God, the same evil tempers of flesh and blood, will be equally strengthened and inflamed by the one as by the other. Hence it is, that papists and Protestants are hating, fighting, and killing one another for the sake of their different excellent opinions, and yet, as to the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, they are in the highest union and communion with one another. For if you expect a zealous Protestant to be therefore a new born creature alive to God, or a zealous papist to be therefore dead to all divine goodness, you may be said to have lived in
the world without either eyes or ears. And the reason why it must be so, is because bad syllogisms for transubstantiation, and better syllogisms against it, signify no more towards the casting satan out of our souls, than a bad or better taste for painting.
Hence also it is, that Christendom, full of the nicest decisions about faith, grace, works, merits, satisfactions, heresies, schisms, &c., is full of all those evil tempers which prevailed in the heathen world, when none of these things were ever thought of.
A scholar, pitying the blindness and folly of those who live to themselves in the cares and pleasures of this vain life, thinks himself divinely employed, and to have escaped the pollutions of the world, because he is, day after day, dividing, dissecting, and mending churchopinions, fixing heresies here, schisms there; forgetting all the while, that a carnal self and natural reason have the doing of all that is done by this learned zeal, and are as busy and active in him, as in the reasoning infidel, or projecting worldling. For where self is wholly denied, there nothing can be called heresy, schism, or wickedness, but the want of loving God with our whole heart, and our neighbour as ourselves; nor anything be called truth, life, or salvation, but the Spirit, nature, and power of Christ living and manifesting itself in us, as it did in him. But where self or the natural man is become great in religious learning, there the greater the scholar, the more firmly will he be fixed in their religion, whose God is their belly. I write not to reason, says the blessed Jacob Behmen; O enthusiasm! says the mouth of learning: and yet Jacob said as sober a truth, as if he had said, I write not to self and own will; for natural reason, self and own will, always did, and always must see through the same eyes, and hear through the same ears. Now let it only be supposed, that Behmen and myself, when we speak of natural reason, mean only the natural man (as is over and over declared by us) and then Behmen's saying, that he writes neither from reason, nor to the natural reason of others, is only saying that very same thing as St. Paul says, that "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
But that I may fully show the perverseness of my accusers, in charging me with denying the use of reason in religion, see here a word or two of what I have said at large, and in the plainest words, more than twenty-four years ago, which doctrine I have maintained in all that I have since wrote. My words are these.
"You shall see reason possessed of all that belongs to it. I will grant it to have as great a share in the good things of religion, as in the good things of this life; that it can assist the soul, just as it can assist the body, that it has the same power and virtue in the spiritual, that it has in the natural world; that it can communicate to us as much of the one, as of the other, and is of the same use and importance in the one as in the other. Can you ask more?" All which I thus make out in the following manner.
"Man, considered as a member of this world, who is to have his share of the good that is in it, is a sensible, and a rational creature, that is, he has a certain number of senses, as seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling, by which he is sensible of what the outward world, in which he is placed, can do for him, or communicate to him, and so is sensible of what kind and degree of happiness he can have from it.
"Now besides these organs of sense, he has a power or faculty of reasoning upon the ideas, which he has received from these senses.
"Now how is it, that the good things of this world are communicated to man? How is he put in possession of them? To what part of him are they proposed? Are his senses, or his reason, the means of his having so much as he has or can have from this world?
"Now here, you must degrade reason just as much as it is degraded by religion, and are obliged to set it as low with respect to the things of this world, as it is set with respect to the things of the spiritual world. It is no more the means of communicating the good things of the one, than of the other. And as St. Paul says, "The natural man cannot
receive the things of the Spirit of God," for this reason, because they are spiritually discerned; so you must of necessity say, the rational man cannot receive the things of this world, for this reason, because they are sensibly received, that is, by the organs of sense. Reason therefore has no higher office or power in the things of this world, than in the things of religion; and religion does no more violence to your reason, or rejects it any other way, than all the good things of this world reject it; it is not seeing, it is not hearing, tasting, or feeling the things of this life; it can supply the place of no one of these senses.
"Now it is only thus helpless and useless in religion; it is neither seeing, nor hearing, tasting, nor feeling of spiritual things; therefore in the things of religion, and in the things of this world, it has one and the same insignificance. It is the sensibility of the soul that must receive what this world can communicate to it; it is the sensibility of the soul that must receive what God can communicate: reason may follow after in either case, and view through its own glass what is done, but it can no do no more. Reason may be here of the same service to us, as when we want any of the enjoyments of this life; it may direct us how and where they are to be had; it may take away a cover from our eyes, or open our window shutters when we want the light; but it can do no more towards seeing, than to make way for the light to act upon our eyes. This is all its office and ability in the things of religion; it may remove what hinders the sensibility of the soul, or prevents the divine light's acting upon it, but the activity of the mind upon its own ideas or images, which the senses have caused it to form from what has been stirred up in them, but has nothing of the nature of what it speculates upon by ideas; it does not become dark, when it reasons upon the cause or nature of darkness, nor becomes light, when it reasons about it; neither is it religion, nor gets anything of the nature of religion, when it is wholly taken up in descriptions and definitions of religious doctrines and virtues.
"For the good of religion is like the good of food and drink to the creature that wants it. And if instead of giving such an one bread and wine, you should teach him to seek for relief by attending to clear
ideas of the nature of bread, of different ways of making it, &c., he would be left to die in the want of sustenance, just as the religion of reasoning leaves the soul to perish in the want of that good which it was to have from religion. And yet as a man may have the benefit of food much assisted by the right use of his reason, though reason has not the good of food in it, so a man may have the good of religion much assisted and secured to him, by the right use of his reason, though reason has not the good of religion in it. And as it would be great folly and perverseness, to accuse a man as an enemy to the true use of reasoning about food, because he declares that reason is not food, nor can supply the place of it, so is it equally such, to accuse a man as an enemy to the use of reasoning in religion, because he declares that reasoning is not religion, nor can supply the place of it. We have no want of religion, but because we want to have more of the divine nature in us than we have in our fallen nature. But if this be the truth of the matter (and who can deny it?) then we are sure that nothing can be our good in religion, but what communicates to us something of God, or which alters our state of existence in God, and makes us partakers of the divine nature, in such a manner and degree as we wanted. What a folly is it then to put any trust in a religion of rational notions and opinions logically deduced from scripture words? Do we not see sinners of all sorts, and men under the power of every corrupt passion, equally zealous for such a religion? Proof enough, that it has not the good of religion in it, nor any contrariety to the vices of the heart; it neither kills them, nor is killed by them. For as pride, hypocrisy, envy or malice, do not take away from the mind its geometrical or critical abilities; so a man may be most logical in his religion of reason, words, doctrines, and opinions, when he has nothing of the true good of religion in him.
"But as soon as it is known and confessed, that all the happiness or misery of all creatures consists only in this, as they are more or less possessed of God, or as they differently partake of this divine nature, then it must be equally known, that nothing but God can do or be any religious good to us, and also that God cannot do, or be any religious good to us, but by the communication of himself, or the manifestation
of his own life within us."
Hence may be seen the great and like blindness both of infidels and Christians; the one in trusting to their own reason dwelling in its own logical conclusions; the other in trusting to their own reason dwelling in learned opinions about scripture words and phrases, and doctrines built upon them. "For as soon as it is known and confessed, that God is all in all, that in him we live and move and have our being, that we can have nothing separately, or out of him, but everything in him, that we have no being or degree of being but in him, that he can give us nothing as our good but himself, nor any degree of salvation from our fallen nature, but in such degree as he again communicates something more of himself to us, as soon as this is known, then it is known with the utmost evidence, that to put a religious trust in our own reason, whether confined to itself, or working in doctrines about scripture words, has the nature of that same idolatry that puts a religious trust in the sun, a departed saint, or a graven image." And as image-worship has often boasted of its divine power, because of the wonders of zeal and devotion that have been raised thereby in thousands, and ten thousands of its followers, so it is no marvel, if opinionworship should often have and boast of the same effects. But the truth of the whole matter lies here: as the WORD manifested in the flesh or become man, is the one mediator, or restorer of union between God and man, so to seeing eyes it must be evident, that nothing but this one mediatorial nature of Christ, essentially brought to life in our souls, can be our salvation through Christ Jesus. For what saved and exalted that humanity in which Christ dwelt, must be the salvation of every human creature in the world. But to return. What poor divinity knowledge comes from great scholars, and great readers, may be sufficiently seen from the two following judicious quotations in a late Dissertation on Enthusiasm; the one is taken from Dr. Warburton's sermons, the other from a pastoral letter of Mr. Stinstra, a preacher among the Mennonists of Friesland. That from Dr. Warburton stands thus: "By them (that is, by the writings of the New Testament) the prophetic promise of our saviour, that the comforter should abide for ever, was eminently fulfilled. For though his ordinary influence
occasionally assists the faithful, yet his constant abode and supreme illumination is in the sacred scriptures." Dr. Warburton's doctrine is this, that the inspired books of the New Testament is that comforter, or spirit of truth, and illuminator, which is meant by Christ's being always with his church. Let us therefore put the doctor's doctrine into the letter of the text, which will best show how true or false it is.
Our Lord says, "It is expedient for you that I go away, or the comforter will not come"; that is, it is expedient for you, that I leave off teaching you in words, that sound only into your outward ears, that you may have the same words in writing, for your outward eyes to look upon; for if I do not depart from this vocal way of teaching you, the comforter will not come, that is, you will not have the comfort of my words written on paper. But if I go away, I will send written books, which shall lead you into such a truth of words as you could not have, whilst they were only spoken from my mouth; but being written on paper, they will be my spiritual, heavenly, constant abode with you, and the most supreme illustration you can receive from me.
Christ says further: "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now: howbeit when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it to you"; that is, though you cannot be sufficiently instructed from my words at present, yet when they shall hereafter come to you in written books, they will give you a knowledge of all truth, for they shall not speak of themselves, but shall receive words from me, and show them to you. Again, Christ says, "These things have I spoken to you in proverbs; but the time comes, when I shall no more speak to you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father." That is, hitherto you have only had spoken proverbs from me, and therefore you have not plainly known the Father; but the time comes when these spoken proverbs shall be put into writing, and then you shall plainly know the Father. Again, Christ adds. "You now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man takes from you." That is, you are now troubled at my personal departure from you, but some
written books shall be my seeing you again, and in that visit you shall have such joy as cannot be taken from you.
Christ also says, "If any man loves me, my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him." That is, according to the doctor's theology, certain books of scripture will come to him, and make their abode with him; for he expressly confines the constant abode and supreme illumination of God to the holy scriptures. Therefore (horrible to say) God's inward presence, his operating power of life and light in our souls, his dwelling in us, and we in him, is something of a lower nature, that only may occasionally happen, and has less of God in it than the dead letter of scripture, which alone is his constant abode and supreme illumination. Miserable fruits of a paradoxical genius!
Christ from heaven says, "Behold I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hears my voice, and open to me, I will come into him and sup with him." This is his true eminent fulfilling of his prophetic promise of being a comforter, and spirit of truth to his church to the end of the world. But according to the doctor, we are to understand, that not the heavenly Christ, but the New Testament continually stands and knocks at the door, wanting to enter into the heart, and sup with it; which is no better than holding, that when Christ calls himself alpha and omega, he means not himself, but the New Testament. Again, "I am the vine, you are the branches; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, no more can you, unless you abide in me; for without me, you can do nothing." Now take the doctor's comment, and then the truth of all these words of Christ was only temporary, and could be true no longer, than till the books of the New Testament were written; for then all this, which Christ has affirmed of himself, of the certainty and necessity of his life and power in them, ended in Christ, and passed over to the written words of the New Testament, and they are the true vine, and we its branches, they are that without which we can do nothing. For thus it must be, if, as the doctor affirms, the writings of the New Testament are that, by which we are to understand the constant abode and supreme illumination of
God in man. Now absurd, and even blasphemous, as this interpretation of the foregoing text it, it must be evident to every reader, that it is all the doctor's own; for the letter of scripture is only made here to claim that divinity to itself, which the doctor has openly affirmed to be true of it.
"Rabbi," says Nicodemus to Christ, "we know that you are a teacher come from God." Now what was here truly said of Christ in the flesh, is the very truth that must be said of the scripture teaching in ink and paper; it is a teacher come from God, and therefore fully to be believed, highly reverenced, and strictly followed. But as Christ's teaching in the flesh was only preparatory to his future vital teaching by the Spirit, so the teaching of scripture by words written with ink and paper is only preparatory, or introductory to all that inward essential teaching of God, which is by his Spirit and truth within us. Every other opinion of the holy scripture, but that of an outward teacher and guide to God's inward teaching and illumination in our souls, is but making an idol-god of it: I say an idol-god; for to those who rest in it as the constant abode and supreme illumination of God with them, it can be nothing else. For, if nothing of divine faith, love, hope, or goodness, can have the least birth, or place in us, but by divine inspiration, they who think these virtues may be sufficiently raised in us by the letter of scripture, do in truth and reality make the letter of scripture their inspiring god. The apostles preached and wrote to the people by divine inspiration. But what do they say of their inspired doctrine and teachings? What virtue and power was there in them? Do they say that their words and teachings were the very promised comforter, the spirit of truth, the true abode and supreme illumination of God in the souls of men? So far from such a blasphemous thought, that they affirm the direct contrary, and compare all their inspired teachings and instructions to the dead works of bare planting and watering, and which must continue dead, till life comes into them from another and much higher power. "I have planted," says St. Paul, "Apollos has watered, but God gave the increase." And then further to show that this planting and watering, which was the highest work that an inspired apostle could do, was yet
in itself to be considered as a lifeless, powerless thing, he adds, "So then, neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase." But now, if this must be said of all that the inspired apostles taught in outward words, that it was nothing in itself, was without power, without life, and only such a preparation towards life, as is that of planting and watering, must not that same be said of their inspired teachings, when left behind them in writing? For what else are the apostolical scriptures, but those very instructions and teachings put into writing, which they affirmed to be but bare planting and watering, quite powerless in themselves, till the living Spirit of God worked with them? Or will anyone say, that what Paul, Peter, John, &c., spoke by inspiration from their own mouths, was indeed bare planting and watering, in order to be capable of receiving life from God; but when these apostolical teachings and instructions were written on paper, they were raised out of their first inability, got the nature of God himself, became spirit and life, and might be called the great quickening power of God, or, as the doctor says, the constant abode and supreme illumination of his Spirit with us?
It would be great folly and perverseness, to charge me here with slighting, or lessening the true value, use, and importance of the inspired apostolical scriptures; for if the charge was just, it must lie against Paul, and not against me, since I say nothing of them, but what he says, and in his own express words, viz., that all their labour of preaching, instructing, and writing by divine inspiration, had in themselves no other nature, use, or power, than that of such planting and watering as could not fructify till a higher power than was in them gave life and growth to what they planted and watered.
I exceedingly love, and highly reverence the divine authority of the sacred writings of the apostles and evangelists, and would gladly persuade everyone, to be as deeply affected with them, and pay as profound a regard to them, as they would to an Elijah, a St. John Baptist, or a Paul whom they knew to be immediately sent from heaven with God's message to them. I reverence them as a literal truth of and from God, as much the greatest heavenly blessing that can be
outwardly bestowed upon us. I reverence them as doing, or fitted to do all that good amongst Christians now, which the apostles did in their day, and as of the same use and benefit to the church of every age, as their planting and watering was to the first.
But now, if this is not thought that fullness of regard that is due to the holy messengers of God; if anyone will still be so learnedly wise, as to affirm, that though Paul's preaching in his epistles, whilst he was alive, was indeed only bare planting and watering, but the same epistles, being published after his death, got another nature, became full of divine and living power, such a one has no right to laugh (as the doctor does) at the silly Mahometan, who believes the Koran to be uncreated. For wherever there is divine efficacy, there, there must be an uncreated power. And if, as the doctor says, the scriptures of the New Testament are the only constant abode and supreme illumination of the Spirit of God with us, all that is said of the eternal Spirit of God, of the uncreated light, might and ought to be said of them; that they are the WORD that was God, was with God, and are our true Immanuel, or God within us.
I shall now only add this friendly hint to the doctor, that he has a remedy at hand in his own sermon, how he may be delivered from thus grossly mistaking the spirit of the gospel, as well as the Law of Moses. St. Paul, (says the doctor) "had a quick and lively imagination, and an extensive and intimate acquaintance with those masters in moral painting, the classic writers, all which he proudly sacrificed to the glory of the everlasting gospel."
Now if the doctor did that, though it was only from humility, which he says the apostle did proudly, such humility might be as great a good to him, as that pride was to the apostle. And indeed, one would have thought, that as soon as the doctor had discovered these writers to be only great masters in moral painting, it should have had the same effect upon him, as if he had found them great masters in delusion. For where there is moral painting, there, there is moral delusion. And the spirit, the life, the purity, and divine simplicity of gospel truth, is more
eluded, lost, and destroyed by moral paintings, whether in books or pulpits, than by any material colourings put upon images of wood or clay, to excite spiritual devotion in churches. Again, if the everlasting gospel is now as glorious a thing, as it was in St. Paul's days; if the highest, most accomplished classic knowledge is so unsuitable to the light and Spirit of the gospel, that it is fit for nothing but to be cast away, or as the doctor says, "to be all sacrificed to the glory of the gospel," how wonderful is it, that this should never come into his head from the beginning to the end of his three long Legation-volumes, or that he should come piping hot with fresh and fresh classic beauties found out by himself in a Shakespeare, a Pope, &c., to preach from the pulpit the divine wisdom of a loss and dung, that by so doing he might win Christ, and be found in him!
Let it be supposed, that our Lord was to come again for a while in the flesh, and that his coming was for this end, to do for the Christian world cumbered with much learning, what he did to poor Martha, only cumbered with much serving, who thereby neglected that good part which Mary had chosen; must we suppose that the doctor would hasten to meet him with his sacred alliances, his bundles of pagan trash, and hieroglyphic profundities, as his full proof that Mary's good part, which shall never be taken from her, had been chosen for himself and all his readers? As well might it be thought, that the pope would come richly laden with his blessed images, his heavenly decrees, his divine bulls, as infallible proofs of his being born again from above, and solely devoted to the one thing needful.
Let the doctor figure to himself the gaudy pageantry of a divine high mass in a Romish cathedral; let him wonder at that flagrant daring contrariety that it has to that first gospelchurch of Christ, viz., "where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them"; would he not be still fuller of wonder, if he should hear the pope declaring that all this heathenish show of invented fopperies was his projected defence of that first church of Christ? But if the doctor would see a Protestant wonder full as great, he need only look at his own theatrical parading show of heathen mysteries, and
heathenish learning, set forth in highest pomp. To what end? Why to bring forth, what he calls (as the pope above) his projected defence of Christianity.
O vainest of all vain projects! For what is Christianity, but what Christ was whilst on earth? What can it be, but what it is, and has from him? He is a king, who has all power in heaven and on earth, and his kingdom, like himself, is not of this world. Away then with the projects of popish pomp, and pagan literature to support it; they are as wise contrivances, as a high tower of Babel to defend it against the gates of hell.
I come now to the quotation from the pastoral letter of Mr. Stinstra. "A judicious writer," (says the Dissertation), "observes, that sound understanding and reason are that on which, and by which, God principally operates when he finds it proper to assist our weakness by his Spirit."
I cannot more illustrate the sense, or extol the judgement, both of the author, and quoter of this striking passage, than by the following words.
"A judicious naturalist observes, that sound and strong lungs are that on which, and by which, the air or spirit of this world principally operates, when he finds it proper to assist, the weakness of our lungs, by his breathing into them." Now if any right minded man should happen to find his heart edified, his understanding enlightened, by the above passage on divine inspiration, he will be much pleased at my assuring him, that the pastoral letter of Mr. Stinstra, and the Dissertation on Enthusiasm by Mr. Green, are from the beginning to the end full as good, in every respect, as that is.
These two instances are proof enough, that as soon as any man trusts to natural abilities, skill in languages, and commonplace learning, as the true means of entering into the kingdom of God, a kingdom, which is nothing else but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, he
gives himself up to certain delusion, and can escape no error that is popular, or that suits his state and situation in the learned, religious world. He has sold his birth-right in the gospel state of divine illumination, to make a figure and noise with the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals of the natural man.
Whence is it, that we see genius and natural abilities to be equally pleased with, and equally contending for the errors and absurdities of every system of religion, under which they are educated? It is because genius and natural abilities are just the same things, and must have the same nature now, as they had in the ancient schools of the peripatetic, academic, stoic, and atheistic philosophers. "The temptation of honour, which the academic exercise of wit" (as Dr. W. says) "was supposed to bring to its professor," has still its power among church disputants. Nor can it possibly ever be otherwise, till parts and genius, &c., do, as the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and lepers formerly did, go to be healed of their natural disorders by the inspiration of that oracle, who said, "I am the light of the world, he who follows me, walks not in darkness." "No man comes to the Father but by me." Well therefore might St. Paul say, "I have determined to know nothing among you, but Christ, and him crucified." And had it not been for this determination, he had never known, what he then knew, when he said, "The life I now live, is not mine, but Christ's that lives in me." Now did the apostle here overstretch the matter? Was it a spirit of enthusiasm, and not of Christ living in him, that made this declaration? Was he here making way for ignorance and darkness to extinguish the light that came down from heaven, and was the light of the world? Did he here undermine the true ground and rock on which the church of Christ was to stand, and prevail against the gates of hell? Did he by setting up this knowledge, as the best and only knowledge that an apostle need to have, break down the fences of Christ's vineyard, rob the church of all its strong holds, leave it defenceless, without a pale, and a ready prey to infidels? Who can say this, but that "spirit of anti-Christ, that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?" For, as Christ's intending nothing, knowing nothing, willing nothing, but purely and solely the whole course of his crucifying
process, was the whole truth of his being come in the flesh, was his doing the whole will of him who sent him, was his overcoming the world, death, and hell, so he who embraces this process, as Christ embraces it, who is wholly given up to it, as Christ was, he has the will of Christ, and the mind of Christ, and therefore may well desire to know nothing else. To this man alone, is the world, death, and hell, known to be overcome in him, as they were in Christ; to him alone is Christ become the resurrection and the life; and he who knows this, he knows with St. Paul that all other knowledge may, and will be cast away as dung. Now if St. Paul, having rejected all other knowledge but that of a crucified saviour, which to the Jew was a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness, if he had afterwards wrote three such Legation-volumes as the doctor has done, for the food and nourishment of Christ's sheep, who can have no life in them but by eating the true bread that came down from heaven, must they not have been called Paul's full recantation of all that he had taught of a Christ crucified?
The other instance of delusion from book learning, relates to Mr. Green, who wanting to write on divine inspiration, runs from book to book, from country to country, to pick up reports wherever he could find them, concerning divine inspiration, from this and that judicious author, that so he might be sure of compiling a judicious dissertation on the subject. All which he might have known to be mere delusion and lost labour, had he but remembered, or regarded any one single saying either of Christ or his apostles concerning the Holy Spirit and his operations. For not a word is said by them, but fully shows that all knowledge or perception of the Spirit is nothing else but the enjoyment of the Spirit, and that no man can know more of him than what the Spirit himself is, and does, and manifests of his power in man.
"The things of God," says St. Paul, "knows no man, but the Spirit of God." Is not this decisive upon the matter? Is not this proof enough, that nothing in man but the Spirit of God in him, can know what the Spirit's work in man is and does? The fruits of the Spirit, so often
mentioned in scripture, are not things different, or separate from the Spirit; and if the Spirit is not always working in us, his fruits must be as absent from us as he is. St. John says, "Hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us." A demonstration, that the Spirit can no other way make himself known to us, but by his dwelling and working in us. St. James says, "Every good and perfect gift comes from ABOVE": but now does not he in reality deny this, who seeks for the highest gift of knowledge from BELOW, from the poor contrivance of a commonplace book? Again, "if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask it of God"; St. James does not say, let him go ask Peter, or Paul, or John, because he knew that divine wisdom was nothing else, but divine inspiration. But Mr. Green has got together his ingenious, his eminent writers, his excellent, learned, judicious authors, his cool, rationalmorality doctors (a set of men whose glorious names we read no more of in the gospel, than of the profound Aristotle, or the divine Cicero) and these are to do that for him, which the whole college of apostles could do for nobody. Now this doctrine, that nothing but the Spirit can know the things that are of God, and that the enjoyment of the Spirit, is all the knowledge that we can have of him, is a truth taught us, not only by all scripture, but by the whole nature of things. For everything that can be seen, known, heard, felt, &c., must be manifested by itself, and not by another. It is not possible for anything but light to manifest light, nor for anything but darkness to make darkness to be known. Yet this is more possible, than for anything but divine inspiration to make divine inspiration to be known. Hence there is a degree of delusion still higher, to be noted in such writers as Mr. Green; for his collection of ingenious, eminent, rational authors, of whom he asks counsel concerning the necessity or certainty of the immediate inspiration of the Spirit, are such as deny it, and write against it. Therefore the proceeding is just as wise, as if a man was to consult some ingenious and eminent atheists, about the truth and certainty of God's immediate continual providence; or ask a few selected Deists, how, or what he was to believe of the nature and power of gospel faith. Now there are the Holy Spirit's own operations, and there are reports about them. The only true reports, are those that are made by inspired persons; and if there were no such persons,
there could be no true reports of the matter. And therefore to consult uninspired persons, and such as deny and reproach the pretence to inspiration, to be rightly instructed about the truth of immediate continual divine inspiration, is a degree of blindness greater than can be charged upon the old Jewish scribes and Pharisees.
The reports that are to be acknowledged as true concerning the Holy Spirit and his operations, are those that are recorded in scripture; that is, the scriptures are an infallible history, or relation of what the Holy Spirit is, and does, and works in true believers; and also an infallible direction how we are to seek, and wait, and trust in his good power over us. But then the scriptures themselves, though thus true and infallible in these reports and instructions about the Holy Spirit, yet they can go no further than to be a true history; they cannot give to the reader of them the possession, the sensibility, and enjoyment of what they relate. This is plain, not only from the nature of a written history or instruction, but from the express words of our Lord, saying, "Unless a man is born again of the Spirit, he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore the new birth from above, or of the Spirit, is that alone which gives true knowledge and perception of what is the kingdom of God. The history may relate truths enough about it; but the kingdom of God, being nothing else but the power and presence of God, dwelling and ruling in our souls, this can only manifest itself, and can manifest itself to nothing in man but to the new birth. For everything else in man is deaf and dumb and blind to the kingdom of God; but when what died in Adam is made alive again by the quickening Spirit from above, this being the birth which came at first from God, and a partaker of the divine nature, this knows, and enjoys the kingdom of God.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Christ: this record of scripture is true; but what a delusion, for a man to think that he knows and finds this to be true, and that Christ is all this benefit and blessing to him, because he assents, consents, and contends, it may be, for the truth of those words. This is impossible. The new birth is here again the only power of entrance; everything else knocks at the door
in vain: I know you not says Christ to everything, but the new birth. "I am the way, the truth and the life"; this tells us neither more nor less, than if Christ had said, I am the kingdom of God, into which nothing can enter, but what is born of the Spirit.
Here again may be seen, in the highest degree of certainty, the absolute necessity of immediate divine inspiration through every part of the Christian life. For if a birth of the Spirit is the only thing that can enter into, or receive the kingdom of God come amongst men, the only thing which can find Christ to be the way, the truth and the life, then a continual life or breathing of the Spirit in us, must be as necessary as the first birth of the Spirit. For a birth of the Spirit is only to make a beginning of a life of the Spirit: birth is only in order to life; if therefore the life of the Spirit continues not, the birth is lost, and the cessation of its breathing in us is nothing else but death again to the kingdom of God, that is, to everything that is or can be godly. Therefore the immediate continual inspiration of the Spirit, as the only possible power and preservation of a godly life, stands upon the same ground, and is as absolutely necessary to salvation, as the new birth.
Take away this power and working life of the Spirit from being the one life of all that is done in the church, and then, though it be ever so outwardly glorious in its extent, or ever so full of learned members, it can be nothing else in the sight of God but the wise Greeks and the carnal Jews become a body of water-baptised Christians. For no one can be in a better state than this, the wisdom of the Greek, the carnality of the Jew, must have the whole government of him, till he is born of and led by the Spirit of God; this alone is the kingdom of God, and everything else is the kingdom of this world, in which satan is declared to be the prince. Poor, miserable man! who strives, with all the sophistry of human wit, to be delivered from the immediate continual operation and governance of the Spirit of God, not considering, that where God is not, there is the devil, and where the Spirit rules not, there all is the work of the flesh, though nothing be talked of but spiritual and Christian matters. I say talked of; for the
best ability of the natural man can go no further than talk, and notions, and opinions about scripture words and facts; in these, he may be a great critic, an acute logician, a powerful orator, and know everything of scripture, except the Spirit and the truth.
How much then is it to be lamented, as well as impossible to be denied, that though all scripture assures us, that the things of the Spirit of God are and must, to the end of the world, be foolishness to the natural man, yet from one end of learned Christendom to the other, nothing is thought of as the true and proper means of attaining divine knowledge, but what every natural, selfish, proud, envious, false, vain-glorious, worldly man can do. Where is that divinity student who thinks, or was ever taught to think, of partaking of the light of the gospel any other way, than by doing with the scriptures what he does with pagan writers, whether poets, orators, or comedians, viz., exercise his logic, rhetoric, and critical skill, in descanting upon them? This done, he is thought by himself, and often by others, to have a sufficiency of divine apostolical knowledge. What wonder therefore, if it should sometimes happen, that the very same vain, corrupt, puffing literature, that raises one man to be a poetlaureate, should set another in a divinity chair?
How is it that the logical, critical, learned Deist comes by his infidelity? Why just by the same help of the same good powers of the natural man, as many a learned Christian comes to know, embrace, and contend for the faith of the gospel. For, drop the power and reality of divine inspiration, and then all is dropped that can set the believer above, or give him any godly difference from the infidel. For the Christian's faith has no goodness in it, but that it comes from above, is born of the Spirit; and the Deist's infidelity has no badness in it, but because it comes from below, is born of the will of the flesh and the will of men, and rejects the necessity of being born again out of the corruption of fallen nature. The Christian therefore who rejects, reproaches, and writes against the necessity of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole cause of infidelity; he confirms the ground, on which it stands; and has nothing to prove the goodness of
his own Christianity, but what equally proves to the Deist the goodness of his infidelity. For without the new birth, or which is the same thing, without immediate continual divine inspiration, the difference between the Christian and the infidel is quite lost; and whether the uninspired unregenerate son of Adam be in the church, or out of the church, he is still that child of this world, that fallen Adam, and mere natural man, to whom the things of the Spirit of God are and must be foolishness. For a full proof of this no more need be seen, than what you cannot help seeing, that the same shining virtues, and the same glaring vices are common to them both. For the Christian, not made such by the Spirit of God continually inspiring and working in him, has only a Christianity of his own making, and can have only such appearances of virtues, and will have such reality of vices, as natural self wants to have. Let him therefore renounce what is called natural religion as much as he will, yet unless he is a new born and divinely inspired Christian, he must live and die in all his natural corruption.
Through all scripture nothing else is aimed at or intended for man, as his Christianity, but the divine life, nor anything hinted at, as having the least power to raise or beget it, but the holy life-giving Spirit of God. How gross therefore is that blindness, which reading the gospel, and the history of gospel Christians, cannot see these two fundamental truths, (1) "That nothing is divine knowledge in man, but the divine life": (2) "That the divine life is nothing else but a birth of the divine nature within him"?
But this truth being lost or given up, vain learning and a worldly spirit, being in possession of the gospel-book, set up kingdoms of strife and division. For what end? Why, that the unity of the church may not be lost. Multiply systems of empty notions and opinions: for what? Why, that words and forms may do for the church now, what to the first church, of Christ's own forming, could only be done by being born of the Spirit.
Hence it is, that the scripture-scholar is looked upon as having divine
knowledge of its matters, when he is as ready at chapter and verse, as the critic is at every page of Cicero. And nothing is looked upon as defective in divinity knowledge, but such supposed mistakes of the genius of the Hebrew, or Greek letter, as the sublime students of the immortal words of a Milton, or a Shakespeare, charge as blunders upon one another.
Now to call such scripture skill divine knowledge, is just as solid and judicious, as if a man was said, or thought to know, what St. John knew, because he could say his whole gospel and epistles by heart, without missing a word of them. For a literal knowledge of scripture is but like having all scripture in the memory, and is so far from being a divine perception of the things spoken of, that the most vicious wicked scholar in the world may attain to the highest perfection in it. But divine knowledge and wickedness of life are so inconsistent, that they are mutual death and destruction to one another; where the one is alive, the other must be dead. Judas Iscariot knew Jesus Christ, and all that he said and did to his crucifixion; he knew what it was to be at the Lord's table, and to partake of his supper of bread and wine. But yet, with much more truth it may be said, that he knew nothing of all this, and had no better knowledge of it than Pontius Pilate had. Now all knowledge of Christ, but what is from divine inspiration, or the new birth, is but as poor and profitless, as Judas his knowledge was. It may say to Christ, as he did, Hail master; but no one can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. This empty letter-learned knowledge, which the natural man can as easily have of the sacred scripture and religious matters, as of any other books or human affairs, this being taken for divine knowledge, has spread such darkness and delusion all over Christendom, as may be reckoned no less than a general apostasy from the gospel state of divine illumination. For the gospel state is in its whole nature nothing else; it has but one light, and that is the Lamb of God; it has but one life, and that is by the Spirit of God. Whatever is not of and from this light, and governed by this Spirit, call it by what high name you will, is no more a part of the gospel state, nor will have a better end, than what enters into the mouth, and corrupts in the belly.
That one light and Spirit, which was only one from all eternity, before angels or any heavenly beings were created, must to all eternity be that one only light and Spirit, by which angels or men can ever have any union or communion with God. Every other light is but the light whence beasts have their sense and subtlety; every other spirit, is but what gives to flesh and blood all its lusts and appetites. Nothing else but the loss of the one light and Spirit of God turned an order of angels into devils. Nothing else but the loss of that same light and Spirit took from the divine Adam his first crown of paradisaical glory, stripped him more naked than the beasts, and left him a prey to devils, and in the jaws of eternal death. What therefore can have the least share of power towards man's redemption, but the light and Spirit of God making again a birth of themselves in him, as they did in his first glorious creation? Or what can possibly begin, or bring forth this return of his first lost birth, but solely what is done by this eternal light and Spirit. Hence it is, that the gospel state is by our Lord affirmed to be a kingdom of heaven at hand, or come among men, because it has the nature of no worldly thing or creaturely power, is to serve no worldly ends, can be helped by no worldly power, receives nothing from man but man's full denial of himself, stands upon nothing that is finite or transitory, has no existence but in that working power of God that created and upholds heaven and earth, and is a kingdom of God become man, and a kingdom of men united to God, through a continual immediate divine illumination. What scripture of the New Testament can you read, that does not prove this to be the gospel state, a kingdom of God, into which none can enter but by being born of the Spirit, none can continue to be alive in it but by being led by the Spirit, and in which not a thought, or desire, or action, can be allowed to have any part in it, but as it is a fruit of the Spirit?
"Thy kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." What is God's kingdom in heaven, but the manifestation of what God is, and what he does in his heavenly creatures? How is his will done there, but because his Holy Spirit is the life, the power, and mover of
all who live in it. We daily read this prayer, we extol it under the name of the Lord's Prayer, and yet (for the sake of orthodoxy) preach and write against all that is prayed for in it. For nothing but a continual, essential, immediate divine illumination can do what we pray may be done.
For where can God's kingdom be come, but where every other power but his is at an end, and driven out of it? How can his will only be done, but where the Spirit who wills in God wills in the creature?
What now have parts, and literature, and the natural abilities of man, that they can do here? Just as much as they can do at the resurrection of the dead; for all that is to be done here is nothing else but resurrection and life. Therefore, what gave eyes to the blind, cleansed the lepers, cast out devils, and raised the dead, that alone can and must do all that is to be done in this gospel kingdom of God. For every the smallest work or fruit of grace must be as solely done by God, as the greatest miracle in nature; and the reason is, because every work of grace is the same overcoming of nature, as when the dead are raised to life. Yet vain man would be thought to be something, to have great power and ability in this kingdom of grace, not because he has happened to be made a scholar, has run through all languages and histories, has been long exercised in conjectures and criticisms, and has his head as full of all notions, theological, poetical, and philosophical, as a dictionary is full of all sorts of words.
Now let this simple question decide the whole matter here: has this great scholar any more power of saying to this mountain, "Be you removed hence, and cast into the sea," than the illiterate Christian has? If not, he is just as weak, as powerless, and little in the kingdom of God as he is. But if the illiterate man's faith should happen to be nearer to the bulk of a grain of mustard seed, than that of the prodigious scholar, the illiterate Christian stands much above him in the kingdom of God.
Look now at the present state of Christendom, glorying in the light of
Greek and Roman learning (which an age or two ago broke forth) as a light that has helped the gospel to shine with a lustre, that it scarce ever had before. Look at this, and you will see the fall of the present church from its first gospel state, to have much likeness to the fall of the first divine man from the glory of paradisaical innocence and heavenly purity into an earthly state, and bestial life of worldly craft and serpentine subtlety.
In the first gospel church, heathen light had no other name than heathen darkness; and the wisdom of words was no more sought after, than that friendship of the world which is enmity with God. In that new born church, the tree of life, which grew in the midst of paradise, took root and grew up again. In the present church, the tree of life is hissed at, as the visionary food of deluded enthusiasts; and the tree of death, called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, has the eyes and hearts of priest and people, and is thought to do as much good to Christians, as it did evil to the first inhabitants of paradise. This tree, that brought death and corruption into human nature at first, is now called a tree of light, and is day and night well watered with every corrupt stream, however distant, or muddy with earth, that can be drawn to it.
The simplicity indeed, both of the gospel letter and doctrine, has the shine and polish of classic literature laid thick upon it. Cicero is in the pulpit, Aristotle writes Christian ethics, Euclid demonstrates infidelity and absurdity to be the same thing. Greece had but one Longinus, Rome had but one Quintilian; but in our present church, they are as common as patriots in the state.
But now, what follows from this new risen light? Why, Aristotle's atheism, Cicero's height of pride and depth of dissimulation, and every refined or gross species of Greek and Roman vices, are as glaring in this new enlightened Christian church, as ever they were in old pagan Greece or Rome. Would you find a gospelChristian in all this midday glory of learning, you may light a candle, as the philosopher did in the midday sun, to find an honest man.
And indeed, if we consider the nature of our salvation, either with respect to what alone can save us, or that from which we are to be saved, it will be plain, that the wit and elegance of classic literature, brought into a Christian church to make the doctrines of the cross have a better salvation-effect upon fallen man, is but like calling in the assistance of balls and masquerades, to make the lent-penitence go deeper into the heart, and more effectually drive all levity and impurity out of it. How poorly was the gospel at first preached, if the wisdom of words, and the gifts of natural wit and imagination had been its genuine helps? But alas, they stand in the same contrariety to one another, as self-denial and self-gratification. To know the truth of gospel salvation, is to know that man's natural wisdom is to be equally sacrificed with his natural folly; for they are but one and the same thing, only called sometimes by one name, and sometimes by the other.
His intellectual faculties are, by the fall, in a much worse state than his natural animal appetites, and want a much greater selfdenial. And when own will, own understanding, and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified, and are made seemingly rich and honourable with the treasures acquired from a study of the belles lettres, they will just as much help poor fallen man to be likeminded with Christ, as the art of cookery, well and daily studied, will help a professor of the gospel to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence. To know all this to be strictly the truth, no more need be known, than these two things: (1) that our salvation consists wholly in being saved from ourselves, or what we are by nature; (2) that in the whole nature of things, nothing could be this salvation, or saviour to us, but such an humility of God manifested in human nature, as is beyond all expression. Hence, the first unalterable term of this saviour to fallen man, is this, "Unless a man denies himself, forsakes all that he has, yea and his own life, he cannot be my disciple." And to show, that this is but the beginning, or ground of man's salvation, the saviour adds, "Learn of me, for I am meek, and lowly of heart." What a light is here, for those who can bear, or love the light! Self is the whole evil of
fallen nature; self-denial is our capacity of being saved; humility is our saviour. This is every man's short lesson of life; and he who has well learned it, is scholar enough, and has had all the benefit of a most finished education. Then old Adam with all his ignorance is cast out of him; and when Christ's humility is learned, then he has the very mind of Christ, and what brings him forth a son of God.
Who then can enough wonder at that bulk of libraries, which has taken place of this short lesson of the gospel, or at that number of champion disputants, who from age to age, have been all in arms to support and defend a set of opinions, doctrines, and practices, all which may be most cordially embraced, without the least degree of selfdenial, and most firmly held fast, without getting the least degree of humility by it?
What a grossness of ignorance, both of man and his saviour, to run to Greek and Roman schools to learn how to put off Adam, and to put on Christ? To drink at the fountains of pagan poets and orators, in order more divinely to drink of the cup that Christ drank of? What can come of all this, but what is already too much come, a Ciceroniangospeller, instead of a gospelpenitent? Instead of the depth, the truth and spirit of the humble publican, seeking to regain paradise, only by a broken heart, crying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner," the high-bred classic will live in daily transports at the enormous sublime of a Milton, flying thither on the unfeathered wings of high sounding words.