IT IS A GREAT THING to begin the Christian life by
believing good solid doctrine. Some people have received twenty different
"gospels" in as many years; how many more they will accept before
they get to their journey's end, it would be difficult to predict. I thank God
that He early taught me the gospel, and I have been so perfectly
satisfied with it, that I do not want to know any other. Constant change of
creed is sure loss. If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you
will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When
people are always shifting their doctrinal principles, they are not likely to
bring forth much fruit to the glory of God. It is good for young believers to
begin with a firm hold upon those great fundamental doctrines which the Lord
has taught in His Word. Why, if I believed what some preach about the
temporary, trumpery salvation which only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be
at all grateful for it; but when I know that those whom God saves He saves with
an everlasting salvation, when I know that He gives to them an everlasting
righteousness, when I know that He settles them on an everlasting foundation of
everlasting love, and that He will bring them to His everlasting kingdom, oh,
then I do wonder, and I am astonished that such a blessing as this should ever
have been given to me!
"Pause, my soul! adore, and
wonder!
Ask, 'Oh, why such love to me?'
Grace hath put me in the number
Of the Saviour's family:
Hallelujah!
Thanks, eternal thanks, to
Thee!"
I suppose there are some persons whose minds
naturally incline towards the doctrine of free-will. I can only say that mine
inclines as naturally towards the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes, when
I see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel as if my heart must
burst forth in tears of gratitude that God has never let me act as they have
done! I have thought, if God had left me alone, and had not touched me by His
grace, what a great sinner I should have been! I should have run to the utmost
lengths of sin, dived into the very depths of evil, nor should I have stopped
at any vice or folly, if God had not restrained me. I feel that I should have
been a very king of sinners, if God had let me alone. I cannot understand the
reason why I am saved, except upon the ground that God would have it so. I
cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind of reason in myself why
I should be a partaker of Divine grace. If I am not at this moment without
Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have His will with me, and that
will was that I should be with Him where He is, and should share His glory. I
can put the crown nowhere but upon the head of Him whose mighty grace has saved
me from going down into the pit. Looking back on my past life, I can see that
the dawning of it all was of God; of God effectively. I took no torch with
which to light the sun, but the sun enlightened me. I did not commence my
spiritual life—no, I rather kicked, and struggled against the things of the
Spirit: when He drew me, for a time I did not run after Him: there was a
natural hatred in my soul of everything holy and good. Wooings were lost upon
me—warnings were cast to the wind—thunders were despised; and as for the
whispers of His love, they were rejected as being less than nothing and vanity.
But, sure I am, I can say now, speaking on behalf of myself, "He only is
my salvation." It was He who turned my heart, and brought me down on my
knees before Him. I can in very deed, say with Doddridge and Toplady—
"Grace taught my soul to
pray,
And made my eyes o'erflow;"
and coming to this moment, I can add—
"'Tis grace has kept
me to this day,
And will not let me go."
Well can I remember the manner in which I learned
the doctrines of grace in a single instant. Born, as all of us are by nature,
an Arminian, I still believed the old things I had heard continually from the
pulpit, and did not see the grace of God. When I was coming to Christ, I
thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I
had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at
first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I received
those truths in my own soul—when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my
heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a
sudden from a babe into a man—that I had made progress in Scriptural knowledge,
through having found, once for all, the clue to the truth of God. One
week-night, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much
about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, How
did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come
to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not
have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make
me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to
pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to
read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a
moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author
of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that
doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant
confession, "I ascribe my change wholly to God."
I once attended a service where the text happened
to be, "He shall choose our inheritance for us;" and the good
man who occupied the pulpit was more than a little of an Arminian. Therefore,
when he commenced, he said, "This passage refers entirely to our temporal
inheritance, it has nothing whatever to do with our everlasting destiny,
for," said he, "we do not want Christ to choose for us in the matter
of Heaven or hell. It is so plain and easy, that every man who has a grain of
common sense will choose Heaven, and any person would know better than to
choose hell. We have no need of any superior intelligence, or any greater
Being, to choose Heaven or hell for us. It is left to our own free-will, and we
have enough wisdom given us, sufficiently correct means to judge for
ourselves," and therefore, as he very logically inferred, there was no
necessity for Jesus Christ, or anyone, to make a choice for us. We could choose
the inheritance for ourselves without any assistance. "Ah!" I
thought, "but, my good brother, it may be very true that we could,
but I think we should want something more than common sense before we should
choose aright."
First, let me ask, must we not all of us admit an
over-ruling Providence, and the appointment of Jehovah's hand, as to the means
whereby we came into this world? Those men who think that, afterwards, we are
left to our own free-will to choose this one or the other to direct our steps,
must admit that our entrance into the world was not of our own will, but that
God had then to choose for us. What circumstances were those in our power which
led us to elect certain persons to be our parents? Had we anything to do with
it? Did not God Himself appoint our parents, native place, and friends? Could
He not have caused me to be born with the skin of the Hottentot, brought forth
by a filthy mother who would nurse me in her "kraal," and teach me to
bow down to Pagan gods, quite as easily as to have given me a pious mother, who
would each morning and night bend her knee in prayer on my behalf? Or, might He
not, if He had pleased, have given me some profligate to have been my parent,
from whose lips I might have early heard fearful, filthy, and obscene language?
Might He not have placed me where I should have had a drunken father, who would
have immured me in a very dungeon of ignorance, and brought me up in the chains
of crime? Was it not God's Providence that I had so happy a lot, that both my
parents were His children, and endeavoured to train me up in the fear of the
Lord?
John Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and
laugh at it, too, of a good woman who said, in order to prove the doctrine of
election, "Ah! sir, the Lord must have loved me before I was born, or else
He would not have seen anything in me to love afterwards." I am sure it is
true in my case; I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain
that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure
He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me
afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never
could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special
love. So I am forced to accept that great Biblical doctrine. I recollect an
Arminian brother telling me that he had read the Scriptures through a score or
more times, and could never find the doctrine of election in them. He added
that he was sure he would have done so if it had been there, for he read the
Word on his knees. I said to him, "I think you read the Bible in a very
uncomfortable posture, and if you had read it in your easy chair, you would
have been more likely to understand it. Pray, by all means, and the more, the
better, but it is a piece of superstition to think there is anything in the
posture in which a man puts himself for reading: and as to reading through the
Bible twenty times without having found anything about the doctrine of
election, the wonder is that you found anything at all: you must have galloped
through it at such a rate that you were not likely to have any intelligible
idea of the meaning of the Scriptures."
If it would be marvelous to see one river leap up
from the earth full-grown, what would it be to gaze upon a vast spring from which
all the rivers of the earth should at once come bubbling up, a million of them
born at a birth? What a vision would it be! Who can conceive it. And yet the
love of God is that fountain, from which all the rivers of mercy, which have
ever gladdened our race—all the rivers of grace in time, and of glory
hereafter—take their rise. My soul, stand thou at that sacred fountain-head,
and adore and magnify, for ever and ever, God, even our Father, who hath loved
us! In the very beginning, when this great universe lay in the mind of God,
like unborn forests in the acorn cup; long ere the echoes awoke the solitudes;
before the mountains were brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through
the sky, God loved His chosen creatures. Before there was any created
being—when the ether was not fanned by an angel's wing, when space itself had
not an existence, when there was nothing save God alone—even then, in that
loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved
with love for His chosen. Their names were written on His heart, and then were
they dear to His soul. Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the
world—even from eternity! and when He called me by His grace, He said to me,
"I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with
lovingkindness have I drawn thee."
Then, in the fulness of time, He purchased me with
His blood; He let His heart run out in one deep gaping wound for me long ere I
loved Him. Yea, when He first came to me, did I not spurn Him? When He knocked
at the door, and asked for entrance, did I not drive Him away, and do despite
to His grace? Ah, I can remember that I full often did so until, at last, by
the power of His effectual grace, He said, "I must, I will come in;"
and then He turned my heart, and made me love Him. But even till now I should
have resisted Him, had it not been for His grace. Well, then since He purchased
me when I was dead in sins, does it not follow, as a consequence necessary and
logical, that He must have loved me first? Did my Saviour die for me because I
believed on Him? No; I was not then in existence; I had then no being. Could
the Saviour, therefore, have died because I had faith, when I myself was not
yet born? Could that have been possible? Could that have been the origin of the
Saviour's love towards me? Oh! no; my Saviour died for me long before I
believed. "But," says someone, "He foresaw that you would have
faith; and, therefore, He loved you." What did He foresee about my faith?
Did He foresee that I should get that faith myself, and that I should believe
on Him of myself? No; Christ could not foresee that, because no Christian man
will ever say that faith came of itself without the gift and without the
working of the Holy Spirit. I have met with a great many believers, and talked
with them about this matter; but I never knew one who could put his hand on his
heart, and say, "I believed in Jesus without the assistance of the Holy
Spirit."
I am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of the
human heart, because I find myself depraved in heart, and have daily proofs
that in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing. If God enters into covenant with
unfallen man, man is so insignificant a creature that it must be an act of
gracious condescension on the Lord's part; but if God enters into covenant with
sinful man, he is then so offensive a creature that it must be, on God's
part, an act of pure, free, rich, sovereign grace. When the Lord entered into
covenant with me, I am sure that it was all of grace, nothing else but grace.
When I remember what a den of unclean beasts and birds my heart was, and how
strong was my unrenewed will, how obstinate and rebellious against the
sovereignty of the Divine rule, I always feel inclined to take the very lowest
room in my Father's house, and when I enter Heaven, it will be to go among the
less than the least of all saints, and with the chief of sinners.
The late lamented Mr. Denham has put, at the foot
of his portrait, a most admirable text, "Salvation is of the Lord."
That is just an epitome of Calvinism; it is the sum and substance of it. If
anyone should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply, "He is
one who says, Salvation is of the Lord." I cannot find in Scripture
any other doctrine than this. It is the essence of the Bible. "He only
is my rock and my salvation." Tell me anything contrary to this truth, and
it will be a heresy; tell me a heresy, and I shall find its essence here, that
it has departed from this great, this fundamental, this rock-truth, "God
is my rock and my salvation." What is the heresy of Rome, but the addition
of something to the perfect merits of Jesus Christ—the bringing in of the works
of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is the heresy of
Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the Redeemer? Every
heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover itself here. I have my own
private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him
crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname
to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not
believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith,
without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation
of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable,
conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we
base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen
people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel
which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of
God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus.
Such a gospel I abhor.
"If ever it should come to
pass,
That sheep of Christ might fall
away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a
day."
If one dear saint of God had perished, so might
all; if one of the covenant ones be lost, so may all be; and then there is no
gospel promise true, but the Bible is a lie, and there is nothing in it worth
my acceptance. I will be an infidel at once when I can believe that a saint of
God can ever fall finally. If God hath loved me once, then He will love me for
ever. God has a master-mind; He arranged everything in His gigantic intellect
long before He did it; and once having settled it, He never alters it,
"This shall be done," saith He, and the iron hand of destiny marks it
down, and it is brought to pass. "This is My purpose," and it stands,
nor can earth or hell alter it. "This is My decree," saith He,
"promulgate it, ye holy angels; rend it down from the gate of Heaven, ye
devils, if ye can; but ye cannot alter the decree, it shall stand for
ever." God altereth not His plans; why should He? He is Almighty, and
therefore can perform His pleasure. Why should He? He is the All-wise, and
therefore cannot have planned wrongly. Why should He? He is the everlasting
God, and therefore cannot die before His plan is accomplished. Why should He
change? Ye worthless atoms of earth, ephemera of a day, ye creeping insects
upon this bay-leaf of existence, ye may change your plans, but He shall
never, never change His. Has He told me that His plan is to save me? If
so, I am for ever safe.
"My name from the palms of
His hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impress'd on His heart it
remains,
In marks of indelible
grace."
I do not know how some people, who believe that a
Christian can fall from grace, manage to be happy. It must be a very
commendable thing in them to be able to get through a day without despair. If I
did not believe the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, I think I
should be of all men the most miserable, because I should lack any ground of
comfort. I could not say, whatever state of heart I came into, that I should be
like a well-spring of water, whose stream fails not; I should rather have to
take the comparison of an intermittent spring, that might stop on a sudden, or
a reservoir, which I had no reason to expect would always be full. I believe
that the happiest of Christians and the truest of Christians are those who
never dare to doubt God, but who take His Word simply as it stands, and believe
it, and ask no questions, just feeling assured that if God has said it, it will
be so. I bear my willing testimony that I have no reason, nor even the shadow
of a reason, to doubt my Lord, and I challenge Heaven, and earth, and hell, to
bring any proof that God is untrue. From the depths of hell I call the fiends,
and from this earth I call the tried and afflicted believers, and to Heaven I
appeal, and challenge the long experience of the blood-washed host, and there
is not to be found in the three realms a single person who can bear witness to
one fact which can disprove the faithfulness of God, or weaken His claim to be
trusted by His servants. There are many things that may or may not happen, but
this I know shall happen—
"He shall present my
soul,
Unblemish'd and complete,
Before the glory of His face,
With joys divinely great."
All the purposes of man have been defeated, but not
the purposes of God. The promises of man may be broken—many of them are made to
be broken—but the promises of God shall all be fulfilled. He is a
promise-maker, but He never was a promise-breaker; He is a promise-keeping God,
and every one of His people shall prove it to be so. This is my grateful,
personal confidence, "The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me"—unworthy
me, lost and ruined me. He will yet save me; and—
"I, among the blood-wash'd
throng,
Shall wave the palm, and wear the
crown,
And shout loud victory."
I go to a land which the plough of earth hath never
upturned, where it is greener than earth's best pastures, and richer than her
most abundant harvests ever saw. I go to a building of more gorgeous
architecture than man hath ever builded; it is not of mortal design; it is
"a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
Heavens." All I shall know and enjoy in Heaven, will be given to me by the
Lord, and I shall say, when at last I appear before Him—
"Grace all the work shall
crown
Through everlasting days;
It lays in Heaven the topmost
stone,
And well deserves the
praise."
I know there are some who think it necessary to
their system of theology to limit the merit of the blood of Jesus: if my
theological system needed such a limitation, I would cast it to the winds. I
cannot, I dare not allow the thought to find a lodging in my mind, it seems so
near akin to blasphemy. In Christ's finished work I see an ocean of merit; my
plummet finds no bottom, my eye discovers no shore. There must be sufficient
efficacy in the blood of Christ, if God had so willed it, to have saved not
only all in this world, but all in ten thousand worlds, had they transgressed
their Maker's law. Once admit infinity into the matter, and limit is out of the
question. Having a Divine Person for an offering, it is not consistent to
conceive of limited value; bound and measure are terms inapplicable to the
Divine sacrifice. The intent of the Divine purpose fixes the application
of the infinite offering, but does not change it into a finite work. Think of
the numbers upon whom God has bestowed His grace already. Think of the
countless hosts in Heaven: if thou wert introduced there to-day, thou wouldst
find it as easy to tell the stars, or the sands of the sea, as to count the
multitudes that are before the throne even now. They have come from the East,
and from the West, from the North, and from the South, and they are sitting
down with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob in the Kingdom of God; and
beside those in Heaven, think of the saved ones on earth. Blessed be God, His
elect on earth are to be counted by millions, I believe, and the days are
coming, brighter days than these, when there shall be multitudes upon
multitudes brought to know the Saviour, and to rejoice in Him. The Father's
love is not for a few only, but for an exceeding great company. "A great
multitude, which no man could number," will be found in Heaven. A man can
reckon up to very high figures; set to work your Newtons, your mightiest
calculators, and they can count great numbers, but God and God alone can tell
the multitude of His redeemed. I believe there will be more in Heaven than in
hell. If anyone asks me why I think so, I answer, because Christ, in everything,
is to "have the pre-eminence," and I cannot conceive how He could
have the pre-eminence if there are to be more in the dominions of Satan than in
Paradise. Moreover, I have never read that there is to be in hell a great
multitude, which no man could number. I rejoice to know that the souls of all
infants, as soon as they die, speed their way to Paradise. Think what a
multitude there is of them! Then there are already in Heaven unnumbered myriads
of the spirits of just men made perfect—the redeemed of all nations, and
kindreds, and people, and tongues up till now; and there are better times
coming, when the religion of Christ shall be universal; when—
"He shall reign from pole to
pole,
With illimitable sway;"
when whole kingdoms shall bow down before Him, and
nations shall be born in a day, and in the thousand years of the great
millennial state there will be enough saved to make up all the deficiencies of
the thousands of years that have gone before. Christ shall be Master
everywhere, and His praise shall be sounded in every land. Christ shall have
the pre-eminence at last; His train shall be far larger than that which shall
attend the chariot of the grim monarch of hell.
Some persons love the doctrine of universal
atonement because they say, "It is so beautiful. It is a lovely idea that
Christ should have died for all men; it commends itself," they say,
"to the instincts of humanity; there is something in it full of joy and
beauty." I admit there is, but beauty may be often associated with
falsehood. There is much which I might admire in the theory of universal
redemption, but I will just show what the supposition necessarily involves. If
Christ on His cross intended to save every man, then He intended to save those
who were lost before He died. If the doctrine be true, that He died for all
men, then He died for some who were in hell before He came into this world, for
doubtless there were even then myriads there who had been cast away because of
their sins. Once again, if it was Christ's intention to save all men, how
deplorably has He been disappointed, for we have His own testimony that there
is a lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have
been cast some of the very persons who, according to the theory of universal
redemption, were bought with His blood. That seems to me a conception a
thousand times more repulsive than any of those consequences which are said to
be associated with the Calvinistic and Christian doctrine of special and
particular redemption. To think that my Saviour died for men who were or are in
hell, seems a supposition too horrible for me to entertain. To imagine for a
moment that He was the Substitute for all the sons of men, and that God, having
first punished the Substitute, afterwards punished the sinners themselves,
seems to conflict with all my ideas of Divine justice. That Christ should offer
an atonement and satisfaction for the sins of all men, and that afterwards some
of those very men should be punished for the sins for which Christ had already
atoned, appears to me to be the most monstrous iniquity that could ever have
been imputed to Saturn, to Janus, to the goddess of the Thugs, or to the most
diabolical heathen deities. God forbid that we should ever think thus of
Jehovah, the just and wise and good!
There is no soul living who holds more firmly to
the doctrines of grace than I do, and if any man asks me whether I am ashamed
to be called a Calvinist, I answer—I wish to be called nothing but a Christian;
but if you ask me, do I hold the doctrinal views which were held by John
Calvin, I reply, I do in the main hold them, and rejoice to avow it. But far be
it from me even to imagine that Zion contains none but Calvinistic Christians
within her walls, or that there are none saved who do not hold our views. Most
atrocious things have been spoken about the character and spiritual condition
of John Wesley, the modern prince of Arminians. I can only say concerning him
that, while I detest many of the doctrines which he preached, yet for the man
himself I have a reverence second to no Wesleyan; and if there were wanted two
apostles to be added to the number of the twelve, I do not believe that there
could be found two men more fit to be so added than George Whitefield and John
Wesley. The character of John Wesley stands beyond all imputation for
self-sacrifice, zeal, holiness, and communion with God; he lived far above the
ordinary level of common Christians, and was one "of whom the world was
not worthy." I believe there are multitudes of men who cannot see these
truths, or, at least, cannot see them in the way in which we put them, who
nevertheless have received Christ as their Saviour, and are as dear to the
heart of the God of grace as the soundest Calvinist in or out of Heaven.
I do not think I differ from any of my
Hyper-Calvinistic brethren in what I do believe, but I differ from them in what
they do not believe. I do not hold any less than they do, but I hold a little
more, and, I think, a little more of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. Not
only are there a few cardinal doctrines, by which we can steer our ship North,
South, East, or West, but as we study the Word, we shall begin to learn
something about the North-west and North-east, and all else that lies between
the four cardinal points. The system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not
simply one straight line, but two; and no man will ever get a right view of the
gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once. For instance, I
read in one Book of the Bible, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And
let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him take the water of life freely." Yet I am taught, in another
part of the same inspired Word, that "it is not of him that willeth, nor
of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." I see, in one place,
God in providence presiding over all, and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing,
that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions, in a great
measure, to his own free-will. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free
to act that there was no control of God over his actions, I should be driven
very near to atheism; and if, on the other hand, I should declare that God so
over-rules all things that man is not free enough to be responsible, I should
be driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and yet
that man is responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly. They are
believed to be inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then, I find
taught in one part of the Bible that everything is fore-ordained, that is
true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all
his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine
that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe they can
ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one
in eternity. They are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the human
mind which pursues them farthest will never discover that they converge, but
they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne
of God, whence all truth doth spring.
It is often said that the doctrines we believe have a tendency to lead
us to sin. I have heard it asserted most positively, that those high doctrines
which we love, and which we find in the Scriptures, are licentious ones. I do
not know who will have the hardihood to make that assertion, when they consider
that the holiest of men have been believers in them. I ask the man who dares to
say that Calvinism is a licentious religion, what he thinks of the character of
Augustine, or Calvin, or Whitefield, who in successive ages were the great
exponents of the system of grace; or what will he say of the Puritans, whose
works are full of them? Had a man been an Arminian in those days, he would have
been accounted the vilest heretic breathing, but now we are looked upon
as the heretics, and they as the orthodox. We have gone back to the old
school; we can trace our descent from the apostles. It is that vein of
free-grace, running through the sermonizing of Baptists, which has saved us as
a denomination. Were it not for that, we should not stand where we are today. We
can run a golden line up to Jesus Christ Himself, through a holy succession of
mighty fathers, who all held these glorious truths; and we can ask concerning
them, "Where will you find holier and better men in the world?" No
doctrine is so calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the
grace of God. Those who have called it "a licentious doctrine" did
not know anything at all about it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that
their own vile stuff was the most licentious doctrine under Heaven. If they
knew the grace of God in truth, they would soon see that there was no
preservative from lying like a knowledge that we are elect of God from the
foundation of the world. There is nothing like a belief in my eternal
perseverance, and the immutability of my Father's affection, which can keep me
near to Him from a motive of simple gratitude. Nothing makes a man so virtuous
as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A
man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life.
I believe the one thing naturally begets the other. Of all men, those have the
most disinterested piety, the sublimest reverence, the most ardent devotion,
who believe that they are saved by grace, without works, through faith, and
that not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Christians should take heed, and
see that it always is so, lest by any means Christ should be crucified afresh,
and put to an open shame.
