through the blood of Jesus Christ. Delay not, I beseech you, to believe in your Jesus Christ; but so put him in mind of his promises to poor sinners, that he may not be able to refrain from doing for you what he hath done for so many others. O how great, how inexpressible, how unexhausted is his love! Surely he is now ready to help; and nothing can offend him but, our unbelief. "The Lord bless you! Abide in faith, love, teaching, the communion of saints; and briefly, in all which we have in the New Testament. I am, Sunday 14, I preached in the morning at St. Ann's, Aldersgate; and in the afternoon at the Savoy Chapel, free salvation by faith in the blood of Christ. I was quickly apprised, that at St. Ann's likewise, I am to preach no more. So true did I find the words of a friend, wrote to my brother about this time : "I have seen upon this occasion more than ever I could have imagined, how intolerable the doctrine of faith is to the mind of man; and how peculiarly intolerable to religious men. One may say the most unchristian things, even down to deism; the most enthusiastic things, so they proceed but upon mental raptures, lights and unions; the most severe things, even the whole rigour of ascetick mortification; and all this will be forgiven. But if you speak of faith in such a manner as makes Christ a Saviour to the utmost, a most universal help and refuge in such a manner as takes away glorying, but adds happiness to wretched man; as discovers a greater pollution in the best of us, than we could before acknowledge, but brings a greater deliverance from it than we could before expect: If any one offers to talk at this rate, he shall be heard with the same abhorrence as if he was going to rob mankind of their salvation, their Mediator, or their hopes of forgiveness. I am persuaded that a Montanist or a Novation, who, from the height of his purity should look down with contempt upon poor sinners, and exclude them from all mercy, would not be thought such an ovcrthrower of the Gospel, as he who should learn from the author of it, to be a friend of publicans and sinners, and to sit down upon the level with them as soon as they begin to repent.' "But this is not to be wondered at. For all religious people have such a quantity of righteousness, acquired by much painful exercise, and formed at last into current habits; which is their wealth, both for this world and the next. Now all other schemes of religion are either so complaisant, as to tell them, they are very rich and have enough to triumph in; or else only a little rough, but friendly in the main, by telling them their riches are not yet sufficient, but by such arts of self-denial, and mental refinement, they may enlarge their stock. But the doctrine of faith is a downright robber. It takes away all this wealth, and only tells us, it is deposited for us with some body else, upon whose bounty we must live like mere beggars. Indeed they that are truly beggars, vile and filthy sinners until very lately, may stoop to live in this dependent condition: It suits them well enough. But they who have long distinguished themselves from the herd of vicious wretches, or have even gone .beyond moral men; for them to be told, that they are either not so well, or but the same needy, impotent, insig nificant vessels of mercy with the others: This is more shocking to reason than transubstantiation. For reason had rather resign its pretensions to judge what is bread or flesh, than have this honour wrested from it, to be the architect of virtue and righteousness. But where am I running? My design was only to give you warning, that wherever you go, this foolishness of preaching will alienate hearts from you, and open mouths against you." Friday 19, My brother had a second return of his pleurisy. A few of us spent Saturday night in prayer. The next day, being Whitsunday, after hearing Dr. Heylin preach a truly Christian sermon, (on, "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost:" and so, said he, may all you 6 be, if it is not your own fault,) and assisting him at the Holy Communion (his curate being taken ill in the church) I received the surprising news that my brother had found rest to his soul. His bodily strength returned also from that hour. Who is so great a God as our God? I preached at St. John's, Wapping, at three; and at St. Bennet's, Paul's Wharf, in the evening. At these churches likewise I am to preach no more. At St. Antholin's I preached on the Thursday following. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I had continual sorrow and heaviness in my heart, something of which I described, in the broken manner I was able, in the following letter to a friend': "O why is it that so great, so wise, so holy a God, will use such an instrument as me! Lord, let the dead bury their dead! But wilt thou send the dead to raise the dead? Yea, thou sendest whom thou wilt send, and shewest mercy by whom thou wilt shew mercy! Amen! Be it then according to thy will! If thou speak the word, Judas shall cast out devils. "I feel what you say (though not enough ;) for I am under the same condemnation. I see that the whole law of God is holy, just, and good. I know every thought, every temper of my soul ought to bear God's image and superscription. But how am I fallen from the glory of God! I feel that I am sold under sin. I know that I too deserve nothing but wrath, being full of all abominations; and having no good thing in me to atone for them, or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, all my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement for themselves. So that my mouth is stopped. I have nothing to plead. I am unholy. God is a consuming fire. I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed. God is holy, "Yet I hear a voice (and is it not the voice of God?) saying, Believe and thou shalt be saved. He that believeth is passed from death unto life. God so loved the world VOL. I. Ꭲ that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. "O let no one deceive us by vain words, as if we had already attained this faith! By its fruits we shall know. Do we already feel peace with God and joy in the Holy Ghost? Does his Spirit bear witness with our spirits that we are the children of God? Alas! with mine he does not. Nor, I fear, with your's. O thou Saviour of men, save us from trusting in any thing but Thee! Draw us after thee! Let us be emptied of ourselves, and then fill us with all peace and joy in believing, and let nothing separate us from thy love, in time or in eternity! What occurred on Wednesday 24, I think best to relate at large, after premising what may make it the better understood. Let him that cannot receive it, ask of the Father of lights, that he would give more light to him and me. 1. I believe, till I was about ten years old, I had not sinned away that Washing of the Holy Ghost which was given me in baptism, having been strictly educated and carefully taught, that I could only be saved by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God; in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed. And those instructions, so far as they respected outward duties and sins, I gladly received, and often thought of. But all that was said to me of inward obedience, or holiness, I neither understood nor remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the true meaning of the law as I was of the Gospel of Christ. 2. The next six or seven years were spent at school; where outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent than before even of outward duties, and almost continually guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such, though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However I still read the Scriptures, and said my prayers, morning and evening. And what I now hoped to be saved by was, 1. Not being so bad as other people. 2. Having still a kindness for religion. And 3. Reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers. 3. Being removed to the university, for five years, I still said my prayers both in public and private, and read with the Scriptures several other books of religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually, and, for the most part, very contentedly, in some or other known sin: Indeed with some intermissions and short struggles, especially before and after the Holy Communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice a year, I cannot well tell what I hoped to be saved by now, when I was continually sinning against that little light I had; unless by those transient fits of what many divines taught me to call Repentance. 4. When I was about twenty-two, my father pressed me to enter into Holy Orders. At the same time the Providence of God directing me to Kempis's Christian Pattern, I began to see that true Religion was seated in the heart, and that God's law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was however very angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only in Dean Stanhope's translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. And meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a, New life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness. So that now, doing so much and living so good a life, I doubted not but I was a good Christian. 5. Removing soon after to another College, I executed a resolution, which I was before convinced was of the utmost importance, shaking off at once all my trifling acquaintance. I began to see more and more the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins: I advised others to be religious, according to that scheme of religion by which I modelled my own life. But meeting now with Mr. Law's Christian Perfection and |