The following etext was sent to Lettermen Associates as a contribution to the website. Apparently it is an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scan that has never been proofed.
Recently the book was published by Reformation Heritage Books.
The unproofed OCR etext is posted here so the reader might be introduced to the work.
The following citation is posted elsewhere in THE WEB EDITION OF BIBLICAL COUNSEL: RESOURCES FOR RENEWAL.
Marshall, Walter, 1628-1680, The Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification (London, England: Oliphants Press, 1956, 1692 and Grand Rapids [Reformation Heritage Books, 2919 Leonard NE 49505] MI: Reformation Heritage Books, Inc., 1999).
The Reformation Heritage Books edition is a reprint of the 1954 edition set by Oliphants and includes an introduction by Joel R. Beeke. Also includes the author's famous sermon on "The Doctrine of Justification Opened and Applied."
Also available from Trinity Book Service and . [10363]
"Here you will read the most closely reasoned defense of scriptural sanctification to be found anywhere. . . . Fourteen directions are given to the reader, all perfected with the aim of explaining to sincere souls what sanctification is, what it is not, and how to attain a holy walk before God. . . ." -- Jay P. Green, Sr.
The Secret of Sanctification: Union With Christ: Walter Marshall's Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, Joel R. Beeke
http://www.heritagebooks.org/browse.asp?searchMode=author&searchString=marshall&x=20&y=8
The Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification, Walter Marshall
http://members.aol.com/skettler/gmswm.html
Chapter One
That we may acceptably perform the duties of holiness and righteousness required in the law, our first work is to learn the powerful and effectual means by which we may attain to so great an end.
This direction may serve instead of a preface, to prepare the understanding and attention of the reader for those that follow.
First, it acquaints you with the great end for which all those means are designed, that are the principal subject to be here treated of. The scope of all is to teach you how you may attain to that practice and manner of life which we call holiness, righteousness, or godliness, obedience, true religion; and which God requires of us in the law, particularly in the moral law, summed up in the Ten Commandments, and more briefly in those two great commandments of love to God and our neighbor (Matt. 22:37, 39), and more largely explained throughout the Holy Scriptures. My work is to show how the duties of this law may be done when they are known: therefore do not expect that I should delay my intent to help you to the knowledge of them by any large exposition of them - which is a work already performed in several catechisms and commentaries. Yet, that you may not miss the mark for want of discerning it, take notice in few words that the holiness which I would bring you to is spiritual (Ram. 7:14). It consists not only in external works of piety and charity, but in the holy thoughts, imaginations and affections of the soul, and chiefly in love, from whence all other good works must flow, or else they are not acceptable to God; not only in refraining the execution of sinful lusts, but in longing and delighting to do the will of God and in a cheerful obedience to God, without repining, fretting, grudging at any duty, as if it were a grievous yoke and burden to you.
Take notice farther that the law, which is your mark, is exceeding broad (Ps. 119:96) and yet not the more easy to be hit, because you must aim to hit it, in every duty of it, with a performance of equal breadth, or else you cannot hit it at all (James 2:10). The Lord is not at all loved with that love that is due to Him as Lord of all, if He is not loved with all our heart, spirit and might. We are to love everything in Him, His justice, holiness, sovereign authority, all-seeing eye, and all His decrees, commands, judgements, and all His doings. We are to love Him, not only better than other things, but singly, as only good, the fountain of all goodness; and to reject all fleshly and worldly enjoyments, even our own lives, as if we hated them, when they stand in competition with our enjoyment of Him, or our duty towards Him. We must love Him as to yield ourselves wholly up to His constant service in all things, and to His disposal of us as our absolute Lord, whether it is for prosperity or adversity, life or death. And, for His sake, we are to love our neighbor - even all men, whether they are friends or foes to us; and so do to them in all things, that concern their honor, life, chastity, worldly wealth, credit and content, whatever we would that men should do to us in the like condition (Matt. 7:12). This spiritual universal obedience is the great end to the attainment of which I am directing you. And, that you may not reject my enterprise as impossible, observe that the most I promise is no more than an acceptable performance of these duties of the law such as our gracious merciful God will certainly delight in and be pleased with during our state of imperfection in this world, and such as will end in perfection of holiness and all 'happiness in the world to come.
Before I proceed farther, stay your thoughts a while in the contemplation of the great dignity and excellency of these duties of the law, that you may aim at the performance of them as your end with so high an esteem as may cast an amiable luster upon the ensuing discovery of the means. The principal duties of love to God above all, and to each other for His sake, from whence all the other duties flow, are so excellent that I cannot imagine any more noble work for the holy angels in their glorious sphere. They are the chief works for which we were at first framed in the image of God, engraven upon man in the first creation, and for which that beautiful image is renewed on us in our new creation and sanctification by Jesus Christ, and shall be perfected in our glorification. They are works which depend not merely on the sovereignty of the will of God, to be commanded or forbidden, or left indifferent, or changed, or abolished at His pleasure, as other works that belong either to the judicial or ceremonial law, or to the means of salvation prescribed by the gospel; but they are, in their own nature, holy, just and good (Rom. 7:12), and suitable for us to perform because of our natural relation to our Creator and fellow creatures; so that they have an inseparable dependence on the holiness of the will of God, and an indispensable establishment thereby. They are works sufficient to render the performers holy in all manner of conversation, by the fruits which they bring forth, if no other duties had ever been commanded; and by which the performance of all other duties is sufficiently established as soon as they are commanded; and without which, there can be no holiness of heart and life imagined; and to which, it was one great honor of Mosaical, and is now of evangelical ordinances, to be subservient for the performance of them, as means which shall cease when their end, this never-failing charity, is perfectly attained (1 Cor. 13). They are duties which we were naturally obliged to, by that reason and understanding which God gave to man at His first creation to discern what was just and suitable for him to do, and to which even heathens are still obliged by the light of nature, without any written law, or supernatural revelation (Rom. 2:14, 15). Therefore they are called natural religion, and the law that requires them is called the natural law and also the moral law; because the manners of all men, infidels as well as Christians, ought to be conformed to it and, if the had been fully conformable, they would not have come sort of eternal happiness (Matt. 5:19; Luke 10:27, 28), under the penalty of the wrath of God for the violation of it. This is the true morality which God approves of, consisting in a conformity of all our actions to the moral law. And, if those that, in these days, contend so highly for morality, do understand no other than this, I dare join with them in asserting that the best morally principal man is the greatest saint; and that morality is the principal part of true religion, and the test of all other parts, without which faith is dead and all other religious performances are a vain show and mere hypocrisy: for the faithful and true Witness has testified, concerning the two great moral commandments of love to God and our neighbor, that there is none other commandment greater than these, and that on them 'hang all the law and the prophets' (Matt. 22:36-40; Mark 12:31).
The second thing contained in this introductory direction is the necessity of learning the powerful and effectual means by which this great excellent end may be accomplished, and of making this the first work to be done, before we can expect success in any attempt for the attainment of it.
This is an advertisement very needful; because many are apt to skip over the lesson concerning the means (that will fill up this whole treatise) as superfluous and useless. When once they know the nature and excellency of the duties of the law, they account nothing wanting but diligent performances; and they rush blindly on immediate practice, making more haste than good speed. They are quick in promising, 'All that the Lord has spoken, we will do,' (Exod. 19:8), without sitting down and counting the cost. They look on holiness as only the means of an end, of eternal salvation: not as an end itself, requiring any great means for attaining the practice of it. The enquiry of most, when they begin to have a sense of religion, is 'What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?' (Matt. 19:16); not, 'How shall I be enabled to do anything that is good?' Yea, many that are accounted powerful preachers spend all their zeal in the earnest pressing the immediate practice of the law, without any discovery of the effectual means of performance - as if the works of righteousness were like those servile employments that need no skill and artifice at all, but industry and activity. That you may not stumble at the threshold of a religious life by this common oversight, I shall endeavor to make you sensible that it is not enough for you to know the matter and reason of your duty, but that you are also to learn the powerful and effectual means of performance before you can successfully apply yourselves to immediate practice. And, for this end, I shall lay before you the considerations following.
1. We are all, by nature, void of all strength and ability to perform acceptably that holiness and righteousness which the law requires, and are dead in trespasses and sins, and children of wrath, by the sin of our first father, Adam, as the Scripture witnesses (Rom. 5:12, 15, 18, 19; Eph. 2: 1-3; Rom. 8:7, 8). This doctrine of original sin, which Protestants generally profess, is a firm basis and groundwork to the assertion now to be proved, and to many other assertions in this whole discourse. If we believe it to be true, we cannot rationally encourage ourselves to attempt a holy practice, until we are acquainted with some powerful and effectual means to enable us to do it. While man continued upright, in the image of God, as he was at first created (Eccles. 7:29; Gen. 1:27), he could do the will of God sincerely, as soon as he knew it; but, when he was fallen, he was quickly afraid, because of his nakedness; but could not help it at all, until God discovered to him the means of restoration (Gen. 3:10, 15). Say to a strong healthy servant, 'Go', and he goes; 'Come', and he comes; 'Do this', and he does it; but a bedridden servant must know first how he may be enabled. No doubt the fallen angels knew the necessity of holiness, and trembled at the guilt of their sin; but they knew of no means for them to attain to holiness effectually, and so continue still in their wickedness. It was in vain for Samson to say, 'I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself,' when he had sinned away his strength (Judg. 16:20). Men show themselves strangely forgetful, or hypocritical, in professing original sin in their prayers, catechisms and confessions of faith, and yet urging on themselves and others the practice of the law, without the consideration of any strengthening, enlivening means - as if there were no want of ability, but only of activity.
2. Those that doubt of, or deny the doctrine of original sin may all of them know concerning themselves (if their consciences are not blind) that the exact justice of God is against them and they are under the curse of God and sentence of death for their actual sins, if God should enter into judgement with them (Rom. 1:32; 2:2; 3:9; Gal. 3:10). Is it possible for a man, that knows this to be his case and has not learned any means of getting out of it, to practice the law immediately, to love God and everything in Him, His justice, holiness and power, as well as His mercy, and to yield himself willingly to the disposal of God, though God should inflict sudden death on him? Is there no skill or artifice at all required in this case to encourage the fainting soul to the practice of universal obedience?
3. Though heathens might know much of the work of the law by the common light of natural reason and understanding (Rom. 2:14), yet the effectual means of performance cannot be discovered by that light, and therefore are wholly to be learned by the teaching of supernatural revelation. For what is our natural light, but some sparks and glimmerings of that which was in Adam before the Fall? And even then, in its brightest meridian, it was not sufficient to direct Adam how to recover ability to walk holily, if once he should lose it by sin, nor to assure him beforehand that God would vouchsafe to him any means of recovery. God has set nothing but death before his eyes in case of transgression (Gen. 2:17) and, therefore, he hid himself from God when the shame of his nakedness appeared, as expecting no favor from Him. We are like sheep gone astray, and know not which way to return, until we hear the Shepherd's voice. Can these dry bones live to God in holiness? O Lord, You know; and we cannot know it, except we learn it of You.
4. Sanctification, by which our hearts and lives are conformed to the law, is a grace of God communicated to us by means, as well as ,justification, and by means of teaching, and learning something that we cannot see without the Word (Acts 26:17, 18). There are several things pertaining to life and godliness that are given through knowledge (2 Peter 1:2, 3). There is a form of doctrine made use of by God to make people free from sin, and servants of righteousness (Rom. 6:17, 18). And there are several pieces of the whole armor of God necessary to be known and put on, that we may stand against sin and Satan in the evil day (Eph. 6:13). Shall we slight and overlook the way of sanctification, when the learning the way of justification has been accounted worth so many elaborate treatises?
5. God has given, in the Holy Scriptures by His inspiration, plentiful instruction in righteousness, 'that we may be thoroughly furnished for every good work' (2. Tim. 3:16, 17), especially since 'the dayspring from on high has visited us,' by the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, 'to guide our feet in the way of peace' (Luke 1:78, 79). If God condescend to us so very low, to teach us this way in the Scriptures and by Christ, it must needs be greatly necessary for us to sit down at His feet and learn it.
6. The way of attaining to godliness is so far from being known without learning out of the Holy Scriptures that, when it is here plainly revealed, we cannot learn it so easily as the duties of the law, which was known in part by the light of nature, and therefore the more easily assented to. It is the way by which the dead are brought to live to God; and therefore doubtless it is far above all the thoughts and conjectures of human wisdom. It is the way of salvation, in which God will 'destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent,' by discovering things by His Spirit, that 'the natural man does not receive, for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned' (1 Cor. 1:19, 21; 2:14). 'Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness' (1 Tim. 3:16). The learning of it requires double work; because we must unlearn many of our former deeply-rooted notions and become fools, that we may be wise. We must pray earnestly to the Lord to teach us, as well as search the Scriptures, that we may get this knowledge. 'O that my ways were directed to keep Your statutes!' 'Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes; and I will keep it to the end' (Ps. 119: 5, 33). 'Teach me to do Your will' (Ps. 143:10). 'The Lord direct your hearts to the love of God' (2 Thess. 3:5). Surely these saints did not so much want teaching and directions concerning the duties of the law to be done, as concerning the way and means by which they might do them.
7. The certain knowledge of these powerful and effectual means is of the greatest importance and necessity for our establishment in the true faith and avoiding errors contrary to them, for we cannot rationally doubt that the moral duties of love to God and our neighbor are absolutely necessary to true religion, so that it cannot submit without them. And, from this principle, we may firmly conclude that nothing repugnant to the practice of these holy duties ought to be received as a point of faith, delivered to us by the most holy God; and that whatever is truly necessary, powerful and effectual to bring us to the practice of them ought to be believed, as proceeding from God, because it has the image of His holiness and righteousness engraven on it. This is a sure test and touchstone, which those that are seriously religious will use to try their spirits and their doctrines, whether they are of God or no; and they cannot rationally approve any doctrine as religious, that is not according to godliness (1 Tim. 6:3). By this touchstone Christ proves His doctrine to be of God, because in this He seeks the glory of God (John 7:17, 18). And He teaches us to know false prophets by their fruits (Matt. 7:15, 16), in which the fruits, which their doctrine tends to, are especially to be considered. Thus it appears that, until we know what are the effectual means of holiness, and what not, we want a necessary touchstone of divine truth, and may be easily deceived by false doctrine, or brought to live in mere suspense concerning the truth of any religion, like the seekers. And, if you mistake, and think those means to be effectual that are not, and those that are effectual to be weak, or of a contrary effect, your error in this will be a false touchstone to try other doctrines, by which you will readily approve of errors and refuse the truth, which has been a pernicious occasion of many errors in religion in late days. Get but a true touchstone, by learning this lesson, and you will be able to try the various doctrines of Protestants, Papists, Arminians, Socinians, Antinomians, Quakers; and to discover the truth and cleave to it, with much satisfaction to your judgement, among all the janglings and controversies of these times. In this way you may discover whether the Protestant religion established among us has in it any sinews of Antinomianism; whether it is guilty of any insufferable defect in practical principles, and deserves to be altered and turned almost upside down with new doctrines and methods, as some learned men in late times have judged by their touchstones.
8. It is also of great importance and necessity for our establishment in holy practice; for we cannot apply ourselves to the practice of holiness with hope of success, except we have some faith concerning the divine assistance, which we have no ground to expect, if we do not use such means as God has appointed to work by. 'God meets them that remember Him in His own ways' (Isa. 64:5); and 'makes a breach on them that do not seek Him after the due order' (1 Chron. 15:13). He has chosen and ordained such means of sanctification and salvation as are for His own glory, and those only He blesses to us; and He crowns no man that strives, unless he strives lawfully (2 Tim. 2:5).
Experience shows plentifully, both of heathens and Christians, how pernicious ignorance, or mistaking of those effectual means, is to a holy practice. The heathens generally fell short of an acceptable performance of those duties of the law which they knew, because of their ignorance in this point: (i) Many Christians content themselves with external performances, because they never knew how they might attain to spiritual service. i) And many reject the way of holiness as austere and unpleasant, because they did not know how to cut off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye, without intolerable pain; whereas they would find 'the ways of wisdom' (if they knew them) 'to be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths to be peace' (Prov. 3:17). This occasions the putting off repentance from time to time, as an uncouth thing. (iii) Many others set on the practice of holiness with a fervent zeal, and run very fast; but do not tread a step in the right way; and, finding themselves frequently disappointed and overcome by their lusts, they at last give over the work and turn to wallow again in the mire - which has occasioned several treatises, to show how far a reprobate may go in the way of religion, by which many weak saints are discouraged, accounting that these reprobates have gone farther than themselves; whereas most of them never knew the right way, nor trod one step right in it, for, 'there are few that find it' (Matt. 7:14). (iv) Some of the more ignorant zealots do inhumanly macerate their bodies with fasting and other austerities, to kill their lusts; and, when they see their lusts are still too hard for them, they fall into despair and are driven, by horror of conscience, to make away with themselves wickedly, to the scandal of religion.
Peradventure God may bless my discovery of the powerful means of holiness so far as to save some one or other from killing themselves. And such a fruit as this would countervail my labor; though I hope God will enlarge the hearts of many by it to run with great cheerfulness, joy and thanksgiving in the ways of His commandments.
Chapter Two
Several endowments and qualifications are necessary to enable us for the immediate practice of the law. Particularly we must have an inclination and propensity of our hearts thereunto; and therefore we must be well persuaded of our reconciliation with God, and of our future enjoyment of the everlasting heavenly happenings, and of sufficient strength both to will and perform all duties acceptably, until we come to the enjoyment of that happiness.
Those means that are next to the attainment of the grand end aimed at are first to be discovered, that we may learn how to get them by other means, expressed in the following directions. Therefore I have named here several qualifications and endowments that are necessary to make up that holy frame and state of the soul by which it is furnished and enabled to practice the law immediately; and that not only in the beginning, but in the continuation of that practice. And, therefore, note diligently that these endowments must continue in us during the present life, or else our ability for a holy life will be lost; and they must be before practice, not in any distance of time, but only as the cause is before the effect. I do not say that I have named particularly all such necessary qualifications; but this much I dare say, that he that gains these may, by the same means, gain any other that should be ranked with them; and this is a matter worthy of our serious consideration, for few understand that any special endowments are required to furnish us for a holy practice, more than for other voluntary actions. The first Adam had excellent endowments bestowed on him for a holy practice when he was first created according to the image of God; and the second Adam had endowments more excellent, to enable Him for a harder task of obedience. And, seeing obedience is grown more difficult, by reason of the opposition and temptations that it meets with since the fall of Adam, we, that are to be imitators of Christ, had need have very choice endowments, as Christ had - at least as good, or something better than Adam had at first, as our work is harder than his. What king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first, and consults whether he is able, with ten thousand, to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand? And shall we dare to rush into battle against all the powers of darkness, all worldly terrors and allurements, and our own inbred domineering corruptions, without considering whether we have sufficient spiritual furniture to stand in the evil day? Yet many content themselves with such an ability to will and do their duty, as they would have to be given to men universally; by which they are no better enabled for the spiritual battle than the generality of the world, that lie vanquished under the wicked one; and therefore their standing is not at all secured by it. It is a hard matter to find what this universal ability is, that so many contend so earnestly for, of what it consists, by what means it is conveyed to us and maintained.
Bodily agility has spirits, nerves, ligaments and bones to subsist by; but this spiritual universal ability seems to be some occult quality, that no sufficient account can be given how it is conveyed, or of what it is constituted. That none may deceive themselves, and miscarry in their enterprises for holiness, by depending on such a weak occult quality, I have here showed four endowments, of which a true ability for the practice of holiness must necessarily be constituted and by which it must subsist and be maintained. I intend to show afterwards by what means they are given to us, and whether the inclination or propensity here mentioned be perfect or imperfect. And they are of such a mysterious nature that some, who own the necessity of endowments to frame them for holiness, are prone to think that less than these will serve, and that some of these frame us rather for licentiousness than holiness, as they are here placed before any actual performance of the moral law; and that some things contrary to them would put us into a better frame for holiness. Against all such surmises, I shall endeavor such a demonstration of these endowments particularly as may gain the assent of right reason, insisting on them in the same order in which I have placed them in the direction.
In the first place, I assert that an inclination and propensity of heart to the duties of the law is necessary to frame and enable us for the immediate practice of them. And I mean not such a blind propensity as inanimate creatures and brutes have to their natural operations, but such a one as is fitting for intelligent creatures, by which they are, by the conduct of reason, prone and bent to approve and choose their duty, and averse to the practice of sin. And therefore I have intimated that the three other endowments mentioned in the direction are subservient to this as the chief of all, which are sufficient to make it a rational propensity. This is contrary to those that, out of zeal for obedience, but not according to knowledge, contend so earnestly for free will, as a necessary and sufficient endowment to enable us to perform our duty, when once we are convinced of it, and of our obligation to it; and that extol this endowment, as the greatest benefit that universal redemption has blessed all mankind with, though they consider this free will without any actual inclination to good. Yea, they cannot but acknowledge that, in most of mankind that have it, it is encumbered with an actual bent and propensity of the heart altogether to evil. Such a free will as this is can never free us from slavery to sin and Satan, and fit us for the practice of the law; and therefore is not worthy of the pains of those that contend so hotly for it. Neither is the will so free as is necessary for the any of holiness, until it is endued with an inclination and propensity thereunto; as may appear by the following arguments.
1. The duties of the law are of such a nature that they cannot possibly be performed while there is wholly an aversion or mere indifferency of the heart to the performance of them, and no good inclination and propensity towards the practice of them, because the chief of all the commandments is to love the Lord with our whole heart, might and soul; to love everything that is in Him; to love His will, and all His ways, and to like them as good. And all duties must be influenced in their performance by this love: we must delight to do the will of God; it must be sweeter to us than the honey or honeycomb (Ps. 40:8; Job 23:12; Ps. 63:1; 119:20; 19:10). And this love, liking, delight, longing, thirsting, sweet relishing must be continued to the end; and the first indeliberate motion of lust must be regulated by love to God and our neighbor; and sin must be lusted against (Gal. 5:17), and abhorred (Ps. 36:4). If it were true obedience (as some would have it) to love our duty only as a market man loves foul ways to the market, or as a sick man loves an unpleasant medicinal potion, or as a captive slave loves his hard work for fear of a greater evil - then it might be performed with averseness, or want of inclination; but we must love it, as the market man gain, as the sick man health, as pleasant meat and drink, as the captive liberty. Doubtless there can be no power in the will for this kind of service without an agreeableness of our inclination to the will of God, a heart according to His own heart, an aversion of our hearts from sin and a kind of antipathy against sin; for we know the proverb, 'Like loveth like.' There must be an agreeableness in the person or thing beloved to the disposition of the lover. Love to God must flow from a clean heart (1 Tim. 1:5), a heart cleaned from evil propensities and inclinations. And reason will tell us that the first motions of lust which fall not under our choice and deliberations cannot be avoided without a fixed propensity of the heart to holiness.
2. The image of God (in which God, according to His infinite wisdom, judged it suitable to frame the first Adam in righteousness, and true holiness, and uprightness) (Gen. 1:27; Eph. 4:24; Eccles. 7:29), consists in an actual bent and propensity of heart to the practice of holiness - not in a mere power of will to choose good or evil; for this; in itself, is neither holy nor unholy, but only a groundwork, on which either the image of God or of Satan may be drawn; nor in an indifference of propensity to the choice of sin or duty; for this is a wicked disposition in an intelligent creature that knows his duty, and fits us only to halt between God and Baal. God set Adam's soul at first wholly in a right bent and inclination, though Adam might act contrary to it if he would; as we may be prevailed on to do some things contrary to our natural inclinations, and it is easy to fail of our duty, though great preparation and furniture are required for the performance of it. The second Adam also, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born a holy thing (Luke 1:35), with a holy disposition of His soul, and propensity to goodness. And can we reasonably hope to rise to the life of holiness, from which the first Adam fell, or to be imitators of Christ, since duty is made so difficult by the Fall, if we are not renewed in a measure according to the same image of God, and enabled with such a propensity and inclination?
3. Original corruption (by which we are dead to God and godliness from the birth, and made willing slaves to the performance of all actual sins until the Son of God makes us free) consists in a propensity and inclination of the heart to sin, and averseness to holiness. Without this propensity to sin, what can that 'law of sin in our members' be, 'that wars against the law of our mind, and leads us captive to the service of sin'? (Rom. 7:23.) What is that poison in us, for which men may be called serpents, vipers? What is that spirit of whoredoms in men, by reason of which they will not frame their doings to turn to God? (Hos. 5:4.) How is the tree first corrupt, and then its fruit corrupt? (Matt. 12: 33.) How can man be said to be abominable and filthy, that drinks iniquity like water? (Job 15:16.) How should the mind of the flesh be continual enmity to the law of God? (Rom. 8:7.) I know there is also a blindness of understanding and other things belonging to original corruption which conduce to this evil propensity of the will; but yet this propensity itself is the great evil, the indwelling sin, which produces all actual sins and must of necessity be removed or restrained, by restoring that contrary inclination, in which the image of God consists; or else we shall be backward and reprobate to every good work, and whatever freedom the will has, it shall be employed only in the service of sin.
4. God restores His people to holiness, by giving to them 'a new heart, and a new spirit, and taking away the heart of stone out of their flesh, and giving them a heart of flesh' (Ezek. 36:26, 27); and He circumcises their heart to love Him with their whole heart and soul. And He requires that we should be transformed 'in the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what is His acceptable will' (Rom. 12:2). And David prays, for the same end, 'that God would create in him a clean heart, and renew a right spirit in him' (Ps. 51:10). If anyone can judge that this new, clean, circumcised heart, this heart of flesh, this new right spirit, is such a one as has no actual inclination and propensity to good, but only a power to choose good or evil, undeservedly called free will, with a present inclination to evil, or an indifference of propensity to both contraries, it will not be worth my labor to convince such a judgement. Only let him consider whether David could account such a heart to be clean and right, when he prayed (Ps. 119:36), 'Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness.'
The second endowment necessary to enable us for the immediate practice of holiness, and concurring with the two other that follow to work in us a rational propensity to this practice, is that we be well persuaded of our reconciliation with God. We must reckon that the breach of amity, which sin has made between God and us, is made up by a firm reconciliation to His love and favor. And in this I include the great benefit of justification, as the means by which we are reconciled to God, which is described in Scripture, either by forgiving our sins, or by the imputation of righteousness to us (Rom. 4:5-7); because both are contained in one and the same justifying act - as one act of illumination comprehends expulsion of darkness and introduction of light; one act of repentance contains mortification of sin and vivification to righteousness; and every motion from anything to its contrary is but one and the same, though it may be expressed by divers names, with respect to either of the two contrary terms, the one of which is abolished, the other introduced by it. This is a great mystery (contrary to the apprehensions, not only of the vulgar, but of some learned divines) that we must be reconciled to God and justified by the remission of our sins and imputation of righteousness, before any sincere obedience to the law, that we may be enabled for the practice of it. They account that this doctrine tends to the subversion of a holy practice, and is a great pillar of Antinomianism, and that the only way to establish sincere obedience is to make it rather a condition to be performed before our actual justification and reconciliation with God. Therefore some late divines have thought fit to bring the doctrine of former Protestants concerning justification to their anvil, and to hammer it into another form, that it might be more free from Antinomianism and effectual to secure a holy practice. But their labor is vain and pernicious, tending to Antinomian profaneness, or painted hypocrisy at best; neither can the true practice or painted be secure, except the persuasion of our justification and reconciliation with God be first obtained without works of the law, that we may be enabled in this way to do them; as I shall now prove by several arguments, intending also to show in the following directions that such a persuasion of the love of God as God gives to His people tends only to holiness, though a mispersuasion of it is, in many, an occasion of licentiousness.
1. When the first Adam was framed for the practice of holiness at his creation, he was highly in the favor of God, and had no sin imputed to him, and he was accounted righteous in the sight of God, according to his present state, because he was made upright according to God's image. And there is no reason to doubt but that these qualifications were his advantage for a holy practice, and the wisdom of God judged them good for that end and, as soon as he lost them, he became dead in sin. The second Adam also, in our nature, was the beloved of the Father, accounted righteous in the sight of God, without the imputation of any sin to Him, except what His office was to bear on the behalf of others. And can we reasonably expect to be imitators of Christ, by performing more difficult obedience than the first Adam's was before the Fall, except the like advantages be given to us by reconciliation and remission of sins and imputation of a righteousness given by God to us, when we have none of our own?
2. Those that know their natural deadness under the power of sin and Satan are fully convinced that, if God leave them to their own hearts, they can do nothing but sin; and that they can do no good work, except it please God, of His great love and mercy, to work it in them (John 8:36; Phil. 2:13; Rom. 8:7, 8). Therefore, that they may be encouraged and rationally inclined to holiness, they must hope that God will work savingly in them. Now, I leave it to considerate men to judge whether such a hope can be well grounded, without a good persuasion of such a reconciliation and saving love of God to us as does not depend on any precedent goodness of our works, but is a cause sufficient to produce them effectually in us. Yea, we know further (if we know ourselves sufficiently) that our death in sin proceeded from the guilt of the first sin of Adam, and the sentence denounced against it (Gen. 2:17); and that it is still maintained in us by the guilt of sin and the curse of the law; and that spiritual life will never be given us, to free us from that dominion, except this guilt and curse be removed from us; which is done by actual justification (Gal. 3:13, 14; Rom. 6:14). And this is sufficient to make us despair of living to God in holiness while we apprehend ourselves to be under the curse and wrath of God, by reason of our transgressions and sins still lying on us (Ezek. 33:10).
3. The nature of the duties of the law is such as requires an apprehension of our reconciliation with God, and His hearty love and favor towards us for the doing of them. The great duty is love to God with our whole heart, and not such a contemplative love as philosophers may have to the object of sciences, which they are concerned in no further than to please their fancies in the knowledge of them; but a practical love, by which we are willing that God should be absolute Lord and Governor of us and all the world, to dispose of us and all others according to His will, as to our temporal and everlasting condition, and that He should be the only portion and happiness of all those that are happy; a love by which we like everything in Him as He is our Lord - His justice as well as any other attribute - without wishing or desiring that He were better than He is; and by which we desire that His will may be done on us and all others, whether prosperity or adversity, life or death; and by which we can heartily praise Him for all things, and delight in our obedience to Him, in doing His will, though we suffer that which is ever so grievous to us, even present death.
Consider these things well, and you may easily perceive that our spirits are not in a fit frame for the doing of them, while we apprehend ourselves under the curse and wrath of God, or while we are under prevailing suspicions that God will prove an enemy to us at last. Slavish fear may extort some slavish hypocritical performances from us, such as that of Pharaoh in letting the Israelites go, sore against his will. But the duty of love cannot be extorted and forced by fear, but it must be won, and sweetly allured by an apprehension of God's love and goodness towards us, as that eminent, loving and beloved disciple testifies. 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love thrusts out fear - because fear has torment, and he that fears has not been made perfect in love. We must love Him because He first loved us' (1 John 4: 18,19).
Observe here that we cannot be beforehand with God in loving Him, before we apprehend His love to us. And consult your own experience, if you have any true love to God, whether it were not wrought in you by a sense of God's love first towards you? All the goodness and excellency of God cannot render Him an amiable object to us, except we apprehend Him an agreeable good to us. I question not but the devils know the excellency of God's nature as well as our greatest metaphysical speculators, and this but fills them the more with tormenting horror and trembling, that is contrary to love (James 2:19). The greater God's excellency and perfection is, the greater evil He is to us, if He hates and curses us. And therefore the principle of self-preservation, deeply rooted in our natures, hinders us from loving that which we apprehend as our destruction. If a man is an enemy to us, we can love him for the sake of our loving reconciled God, because His love will make man's hatred to work for our good, but if God Himself is our enemy, for whose sake can we love Him? Who is there that can free us from the evil of His enmity and turn it to our advantage, until He is pleased to reconcile Himself to us?
4. Our conscience must of necessity be first purged from dead works, that we may serve the living God. And this is done by actual remission of sin, procured by the blood of Christ, and manifested to our consciences, as appeared by Christ's dying for this end (Heb. 9:14, 15; 10:1, 2, 4, 14, 17, 22). That conscience, by which we judge ourselves to be under the guilt of sin and the wrath of God, is accounted an evil conscience in Scripture, though it perform its office truly, because it is caused by the evil of sin, and will itself be a cause of our committing more sin, until it can judge us to be justified from all sin, and received in the favor of God. Love which is the end of the law must proceed from a good conscience, as well as from any other cleanness of heart (1 Tim. 1:5). David's mouth could not be opened to show forth the praise of God until he was delivered from bloodguiltiness (Ps. 51:14, 15). This evil guilty conscience, by which we judge that God is our enemy and that His justice is against us to our everlasting condemnation by reason of our sins, strongly maintains and increases the dominion of sin and Satan in us, and works most mischievous effects in the soul against godliness, even to bring the soul to hate God and to wish there were no God, no heaven, no hell, so we might escape the punishment due to us. It so disaffects people towards God, that they cannot endure to think, or speak, or hear of Him and His law, but strive rather to put Him out of their minds by fleshly pleasures and worldly employments. And thus they are alienated from all true religion, only binding it and stopping the mouth of it. It produces zeal in many outside religious performances, and also false religion, idolatry and the most inhuman superstitions in the world.
I have often considered by what manner of working any sin could effectually destroy the whole image of God in the first Adam, and I conclude it was by working first an evil guilty conscience in him, by which he judged that the just God was against him and cursed him for that one sin. And this was enough to work a shameful nakedness by disorderly lusts, a turning his love wholly from God to the creature, and a desire to be hidden from the presence of God (Gem. 3 8, 10) which was a total destruction of the image of God's holiness. And we have cause to judge that from the same cause proceeds the continual malice, rancor, rage and blasphemy of the devil and many notorious wicked men against God and godliness. Some may think job uncharitable in suspecting, not merely that his sons had sinned, but that they had been so abominably wicked as to curse God in their hearts (Job 1:5). But job well understood that if the guilt of any ordinary sin lies on the conscience it will make the soul to wish secretly that God was not, or that He were not so just a judge; which is a secret cursing of God that cannot be avoided until our consciences are purged from the guilt of sin, by the offering of Christ for us; which was then figured out by the burnt offerings of job for his sons.
4. God has abundantly discovered to us in His Word that His method in bringing men from sin to holiness of life is first, to make them know that He loves them and that their sins are blotted out. When He gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, He first discovered Himself to be their God, that had given them a sure pledge of His salvation by their delivery from Egypt, in the preface (Exod. 20:2). And during all the time of the Old Testament God was pleased to make the entrance into religion to be by circumcision, which was not only a sign, but also a seal of the righteousness of faith, by which God justifies people while they are considered as ungodly (Rom. 4:5, 11). And this seal was administered to children of eight days old, before they could perform any condition of sincere obedience, for their justification, that their furniture for a holy practice might be ready beforehand.
Furthermore, in the time of the Old Testament, God appointed divers washings, and the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, to prepare and sanctify them for other parts of His worship in His tabernacle and temple, to figure out His purging their consciences from dead works by the blood of Christ, that they might serve the living God (Heb. 9:10, 13, 14, 22). This, I say, was then figurative sanctification, as the word sanctification is taken in a large sense, comprehending all things that prepare us for the service of God, chiefly the remission of sin (Heb. 10:10, 14, 18). Though, if it is taken in a strict sense, respecting only our conformity to the law, it must necessarily be placed after justification, according to the usual method of Protestant divines. God also minded them of the necessity of purging away their guilt first, that their service might be acceptable, by commanding them to offer the sin offering before the burnt offering (Lev. 5:8; 16:3, 11). And lest the guilt of their sins should pollute the service of God, notwithstanding all their particular expiations, God was pleased to appoint a general atonement for all their sins one day every year, in which the scapegoat was 'to bear on him all their iniquities into an uninhabited land' (Lev. 16:22, 34).
Under the New Testament, God uses the same method, in loving us first, and washing us from our sins by the blood of Christ, that He may make us priests, to offer the sacrifices of praise and all good works to God, even the Father. He entered us into His service by washing away our sins in baptism; he feeds and strengthens us for His service by remission of sins, given to us in the blood of Christ at the Lord's Supper; He exhorts us to obey Him, because He has already loved us, and our sins are already pardoned. 'Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, even as also God forgave you in Christ. Then be mimics of God, as loved children, and walk in love, even as also Christ loved us' (Eph. 4:32; 5:1, 2). '1 write to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake. Do not love the world or the things in the world' (1 John 2:12, 15). I might quote abundance of texts of the same nature. We may clearly see by all this that God has accounted it a matter of great importance and has condescended to take wonderful care in providing plentiful means, both under the Old and New Testament, that His people might be first cleansed from guilt and reconciled to Himself, to fit them for the acceptable practice of holiness. Away then with all the contrary methods of the new divinity!
The third endowment necessary to enable us for the practice of holiness, without which a persuasion of our reconciliation with God would be of little efficacy to work in us a rational propensity to it, is that we be persuaded of our future enjoyment of the everlasting heavenly happiness. This must precede our holy practice, as a cause disposing and alluring us to it. This assertion has several sorts of adversaries to oppose it. Some account that a persuasion of our own future happiness, before we have persevered in sincere obedience, tends to licentiousness; and that the way to do good works is rather to make them a condition necessary for the procuring of this persuasion. Others condemn all works, that we are allured or stirred up to by the future enjoyment of the heavenly happiness, as legal, mercenary, flowing from self-love, and not from any pure love to God; and they figure out sincere godliness by a man bearing fire in one hand, to burn up heaven, and water in the other to quench hell; intimating that the true service of God must not proceed at all from hope of reward, or fear of punishment, but only from love. To establish the truth asserted, against the errors that are so contrary to it and to each other, I shall propose the ensuing considerations.
1. The nature of the duties of the law is such that they cannot be sincerely and universally practiced without this endowment. That this endowment must be present in us is sufficiently proved already by all that I have said concerning the necessity of the persuasion of our firm reconciliation with God by our justification, to prepare us for this practice; because that includes a persuasion of this future happiness, or else it is of little worth. All that I have to add here is that sincere obedience cannot rationally subsist, except it is allured, encouraged and supported by this persuasion. Let me, therefore, suppose a Sadducee, believing no happiness after this life, and put the question: 'Can such a one love God with his whole heart, might and soul?' Will he not be reasonable, rather to lessen and moderate his love towards God, lest he should be overmuch troubled to part with Him by death? We account it most reasonable to sit loose in our affections from things that we must part with. Can such a one be satisfied with the enjoyment of God as his happiness? Will he not rather account that the enjoyment of God and all religious duties are vanities, as well as other things, because in a little time we shall have no more benefit by them than if they had never been? How can such a one be willing to lay down his life for the sake of God when, by his death, he must part with God, as well as with other things? How can he willingly choose afflictions rather than sin, when he shall be more miserable in this life for it, and not at all happy hereafter? I grant, if afflictions come unavoidably on such a person, he may reasonably judge that patience is better for him than impatience, but it will displease him that he is forced to the use of such a virtue, and he will be prone to fret and murmur at his Creator, and to wish he had never been, rather than to endure such miseries and to be comforted only with vain transitory enjoyments. I think I have said enough to show how unfurnished such a man is for holiness. And he that will burn up heaven, and quench hell, that he may serve God out of love, thereby leaves himself little better furnished than the Sadducee. The one denies them, the other will not have them at all to be considered in this case.
2. The sure hope of the glory of heaven is made use of ordinarily by God, since the fall of Adam, as an encouragement to the practice of holiness, as the Scripture abundantly shows. Christ, the great pattern of holiness, 'for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame' (Heb. 12:2). And, though I cannot say that the first Adam had such a sure hope, to preserve him in innocency, yet he had, instead of it, the present possession of an earthly paradise and a happy estate in it, which he knew would last, if he continued in holiness, or be changed into a better happiness. The apostles did not faint under affliction, because they knew that it brought for them 'a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory' (2 Cor. 4:16, 17). The believing Hebrews 'took joyfully the plundering of your goods - knowing in yourselves that you have better and more enduring riches in Heaven' (Heb. 10:34). The apostle Paul accounts all his sufferings unprofitable, were it not for a glorious resurrection, and that Christians would be of all men most miserable, and that the doctrine of the Epicures were rather to be chosen: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' And he exhorts the Corinthians to be 'abundant in the work of the Lord, knowing that their labor shall not be in vain in the Lord' (1 Cor. 15:58).
As worldly hope keeps the world at work in their various employments, so God gives His people the hope of His glory to keep them close to His service (Heb. 6:11, 12; 1 John 3:3). And it is such a sure hope as shall never make them ashamed (Rom. 5:5). Those that think it below the excellency of their love to work from a hope of the heavenly reward do in this way advance their love beyond the love of the apostles and primitive saints, and even of Christ Himself.
3. This persuasion of our future enjoyment of everlasting happiness cannot tend to licentiousness, if we understand well that perfect holiness is a necessary part of that happiness, and that though we have a title to that happiness by free justification an adoption, yet we must go to the possession of it in a way of holiness (1 John 3:1-3). Neither is it legal or mercenary to be moved by this persuasion, seeing the persuasion itself is not gotten by the works of the law, but by free grace through faith (Gal. 5:5). And, if it is a working from self-love, yet, for certain, it is not that carnal self-love which the Scripture condemns as the mother of sinfulness (2 Tim. 3:2), but a holy self-love, inclining us to prefer God above the flesh and the world, such as God directs us to when He exhorts us to save ourselves (Acts 2:40; 1 Tim. 4:16). And it is so far from being contrary to the pure love of God that it brings us to love God more purely and entirely. The more good and beneficial we apprehend God to us to all eternity , doubtless the more lovely God will be to us, and our affections will be the more inflamed towards Him. God will not be loved as a barren wilderness, a land of darkness to us, neither will He be served for nothing (Jer. 2: 31). He would think it a dishonor to Him to be owned by us as our God, if He had not prepared for us a city (Heb. 11: 16). And He draws us to love Him by the cords of a man, such cords as the love of man uses to be drawn by, even by His own love to us in laying His benefits before us (Hos. 11: 4). Therefore, the way for us to keep ourselves in the love of God is to look for His mercy to eternal life (Jude 21).
The last endowment, for the same end as the former, is that we will be persuaded of sufficient strength both to will and perform our duty acceptably, until we come to the enjoyment of the heavenly happiness. This is contrary to the error of those that account it sufficient if we have strength to practice holiness if we will, or to will it if we please; and this is the sufficient strength which they earnestly contend for as a great benefit bestowed on all mankind by universal redemption. It is also contrary to the error of those that think the practice of godliness and wickedness to be alike easy, excepting only some difficulty in the first alterations of vicious customs, and in bearing persecutions, which they account to be a rare case; since the kingdoms of the world have been brought to the profession of Christianity; or that think that God requires omen only to do their endeavor, that is, what they can do; and it is nonsense to say they cannot do what they can do. According to their judgement, it is needless to concern ourselves much about sufficient strength for holy practice. For the confirmation of the assertion against those errors take these arguments.
1. We are, by nature, dead in trespasses and sins, unable to will or do anything that is spiritually good, notwithstanding the redemption that is by Christ until we are actually quickened by Christ (Eph. 2:1; Rom. 8:7-9). Those that are sufficiently enlightened and humbled know themselves to be naturally in this case, and that they do not only want executive power to do good, but chiefly a heart to will it and to be pleased with it; and that, if God does not work in them both to will and to do, they shall neither will nor do anything pleasing to Him (Phil. 2:13); and that, if He leaves them to their own corruption, after He has begun the good work, they shall certainly prove vile apostates, and their latter end will be worse than their beginning. We may conclude from this that whoever can courageously attempt the practice of the law, without being well persuaded of a sufficient power by which he may be enabled to be heartily willing, as well as to perform when he is willing, until he has gone through the whole work of obedience acceptably, such a one was never yet truly humbled and brought to know the plague of his own heart; neither does he truly believe the doctrine of original sin, whatever formal profession he makes of it.
2. Those that think sincere conformity to the law, in ordinary cases, to be so very easy, show that they neither know it nor themselves. Is it an easy thing to wrestle, not against flesh only, but against principalities, powers and spiritual wickedness in high places? (Eph. 6:12.) Is it an easy thing not to lust or covet according to the tenth commandment? The apostle Paul found it so difficult to obey this commandment that his concupiscence prevailed the more by occasion of the commandment (Rom. 7: 7, 8). Our work is not only to alter vicious customs, but to mortify corrupt natural affections which bred these customs; and not only to deny the fulfilling of sinful lusts, but to be full of holy love and desires. Yet even the restraining the execution of corrupt lusts and crossing them by contrary actings is, in many cases, like 'the cutting off a right hand, and plucking out a right eye' (Matt. 5:29, 30). If obedience is so easy, how did it come to pass that the heathens generally did those things, for which their own consciences condemned them as worthy of death? (Rom. 1:32.) And that many among us seek to enter into this strait gate, and are not able (Luke 13:24), and break so many vows and purposes of obedience and fall back to the practice of their lusts, though, in the meantime, the fears of eternal damnation press hard on their consciences?
As for those that find persecution for religion to be so rare a thing in late days, they have cause to be suspected that they are of the world, and therefore the world loves its own; else they would find that national profession of religion will not secure those that are truly godly from several sorts of persecutions. And suppose men do not persecute us for religion, yet there is great difficulty in bearing great injuries from men on other accounts, and losses, poverty, bodily pains, long diseases and untimely deaths from the ordinary providence of God, with such hearty love to God and to injurious men, for His sake, and such a patient acquiescence in His will, as the law of God requires. I acknowledge that the work of God is easy and pleasant to those whom God rightly furnishes with endowments for it; but those who assert it to be easy to men in their common condition show their imprudence in contradicting the general experience of heathens and Christians. Though many duties do not require much labor of body or mind, and might be done with ease, if we were willing; yet it is easier to remove a mountain than to move and incline the heart to will and affect the doing of them. I need not concern myself with those that account that all have sufficient strength for a holy practice, because they can do their endeavor, that is, what they can do; for God requires actual fulfilling His commands. What, if by our endeavors we can do nothing in any measure according to the rule, shall the law be put off with no performance? And shall such endeavors be accounted sufficient holiness? And what if we cannot so much as endeavor in a right way? If a man's ability were the measure of acceptable duty, the commands of the law would signify very little.
3. The wisdom of God has ever furnished people with a good persuasion of a sufficient strength that they might be enabled both to will and do their duty. The first Adam was furnished with such a strength; and we have no cause to think that he was ignorant of it, or that he needed to fear that he should be left to his own corruptions, because he had no corruptions in him, until he had produced them in himself by sinning against strength. When he had lost that strength, he could not recover the practice of holiness, until he was acquainted with a better strength, by which the head of Satan should be bruised (Gen. 3:15). Our Lord Christ, doubtless, knew the infinite power of His deity to enable Him for all that He was to do and suffer in our nature. He knew the Lord God would help Him, therefore He should not be confounded (Isa. 50:7). The Scripture shows what plentiful assurance of strength God gave to Moses, Joshua, Gideon, when He called them to great employments, and to the Israelites, when He called them to subdue the land of Canaan. Christ would have the sons of Zebedee to consider whether they were able to drink of His cup, and to be baptized with the baptism that He was baptized with (Matt. 20:22). Paul encourages believers to the life of holiness by persuading them that sin shall not prevail to get the dominion over them, because they are not under the law, but under grace (Rom. 6:13, 14). And he exhorts them to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, that they might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (Eph. 6:10, 11). John exhorts believers not to love the world, nor the things of the world, because they were strong, and had overcome the wicked one (1 John 2:14, 15).
They that were called of God before this to work miracles were first acquainted with the gift of power to work them, and no wise man will attempt to do them without knowledge of the gift. Even so, when men that are dead in sin are called to do the works of a holy life, which are in them great miracles, God makes a discovery of the gift of power to them, that He may encourage them in a rational way to such a wonderful enterprise.
Chapter Three
The way to get holy endowments and qualifications necessary to frame and enable us for the immediate practice of the law, is to receive them out of the fullness of Christ, by fellowship with Him; and that we may have this fellowship, we must be in Christ, and have Christ Himself in us, by a mystical union with Him.
Here, as much as anywhere, we have great cause to acknowledge with the apostle that, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness - even so great that it could not have entered into the heart of man to conceive it, if God had not made it known in the gospel by supernatural revelation. Yea, though it is revealed clearly in the Holy Scriptures, yet the natural man has no eyes to see it there, for it is foolishness to him. And, if God express it ever so plainly and properly, he will think that God is speaking riddles and parables. I do not doubt but it is still a riddle and parable, even to many truly godly that have received a holy nature in this way. For the apostles themselves had the saving benefit of it before the Comforter discovered it clearly to them (John 14:20). And they walked in Christ as the way to the Father before they clearly knew Him to be the way (John 14:5). And the best of us know it but in part, and must wait for the perfect knowledge of it in another world.
One great mystery is that the holy frame and disposition, by which our souls are furnished and enabled for immediate practice of the law, must be obtained by receiving it out of Christ's fullness, as a thing already prepared and brought to an existence for us in Christ and treasured up in Him; and that as we are justified by a righteousness wrought out in Christ and imputed to us, so we are sanctified by such a holy frame and qualifications as are first wrought out and completed in Christ for us, and then imparted to us. And, as our natural corruption was produced originally in the first Adam, and propagated from him to us, so our new nature and holiness is first produced in Christ, and derived from Him to us, or as it were propagated. So that we are not at all to work together with Christ, in making or producing that holy frame in us, but only to take it to ourselves, and use it in our holy practice, as made ready to our hands. Thus we have fellowship with Christ, in receiving that holy frame of spirit that was originally in Him. For fellowship is when several persons have the same thing in common (1 John 1: 1-3). This mystery is so great that notwithstanding all the light of the gospel, we commonly think that we must get a holy frame by producing it anew in ourselves and by forming and working it out of our own hearts. Therefore many that are seriously devout take a great deal of pains to mortify their corrupt nature and beget a holy frame of heart in themselves by striving earnestly to master their sinful lusts, and by pressing vehemently on their hearts many motives to godliness, laboring importunately to squeeze good qualifications out of them, as oil out of a flint. They account that, though they be justified by a righteousness wrought out by Christ, yet they must be sanctified by a holiness wrought out by themselves. And though, out of humility, they are willing to call it infused grace, yet they think they must get the infusion of it by the same manner of working, as if it were wholly acquired by their own endeavors. On this account they acknowledge the entrance into a godly life to be harsh and unpleasing, because it costs so much struggling with their own hearts and affections, to new frame them. If they knew that this way of entrance is not only harsh and unpleasant, but altogether impossible; and that the true way of mortifying sin and quickening themselves to holiness is by receiving a new nature, out of the fullness of Christ; and that we do no more to the production of a new nature than of original sin, though we do more to the reception of it - if they knew this, they might save themselves many a bitter agony, and a great deal of misspent burdensome labor, and employ their endeavors to enter in at the strait gate, in such a way as would be more pleasant and successful.
Another great mystery in the way of sanctification is the glorious manner of our fellowship with Christ in receiving a holy frame of heart from Him. It is by our being in Christ, and having Christ Himself in us - and that not merely by His universal preference as He is God, but by such a close union as that we are one spirit and one flesh with Him; which is a privilege peculiar to those that are truly sanctified. I may well call this a mystical union, because the apostle calls it a great mystery, in an Epistle full of mysteries (Eph. 5:32), intimating that it is eminently great above many other mysteries. It is one of the three mystical unions that are the chief mysteries in religion. The other two are the union of the Trinity of Persons in one Godhead, and the union of the divine and human natures in one Person, Jesus Christ, God and man. Though we cannot frame an exact idea of the manner of any of these three unions in our imaginations, because the depth of these mysteries is beyond our comprehension, yet we have cause to believe them all, because they are clearly revealed in Scripture, and are a necessary foundation for other points of Christian doctrine. Particularly, this union between Christ and believers is plain in several places of Scripture, affirming that Christ is, and dwells in believers, and they in Him (John 6:56; 14:20); and that they are so joined together as to become one Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17); and that believers are 'members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones' and they two, Christ and the church, are one flesh (Eph. 5:30, 31).
Furthermore, this union is illustrated in Scripture by various resemblances, which would be very much unlike the things which they are made use of to resemble, and would rather seem to beguile us by obscuring the truth than instruct us by illustrating it, if there were no true proper union between Christ and believers. It is resembled by the union between God the Father and Christ (John 14:20; 17:21-23); between the vine and its branches (John 15:4, 5); between the head and body (Eph. 1:22, 23); between bread and the eater (John 6:51, 53, 54). It is not only resembled, but sealed in the Lord's Supper, where neither the popish transubstantiation, nor the Lutherans' consubstantiation, nor the Protestants' spiritual preference of Christ's body and blood to the true receivers, can stand without it. And, if we can imagine that Christ's body and blood are not truly eaten and drunk by believers, either spiritually or corporally, we shall make the bread and wine gut with the words of institution not only naked signs, but such signs as are much more apt to breed false notions in us than to establish us in the truth. And there is nothing in this union so impossible, or repugnant to reason, as may force us to depart from the lain and familiar sense of those Scriptures that express and illustrate it. Though Christ is in heaven, and we on earth, yet He can join our souls and bodies to His at such a distance without any substantial change of either, by the same infinite Spirit dwelling in Him and us; and so our flesh will become His, when it is quickened by His Spirit; and His flesh ours, as truly as if we ate His flesh and drank His blood. And He will be in us Himself by His Spirit, who is one with Him, and who can unite more closely to Christ than any material substance can do, or who can make a more close and intimate union between Christ and us. And it will not follow from this that a believer is one person with Christ, any more than that Christ is one person with the Father, by that great mystical union. Neither will a believer be in this way made God, but only the temple of God, as Christ's body and soul is; and the Spirit's lively instrument, rather than the principal cause. Neither will a believer be necessarily perfect in holiness in this way, or Christ made a sinner. For Christ knows how to dwell in believers by certain measures and degrees, and to make them holy so far only as He dwells in them. And though this union seem too high a preferment for such unworthy creatures as we are, yet, considering the preciousness of the blood of God, by which we are redeemed, we should dishonor God, if we should not expect a miraculous advancement to the highest dignity that creatures are capable of through the merits of that blood. Neither is there anything in this union contrary to the judgement of sense, because the bond of the union, being spiritual, does not fall at all under the judgment of sense.
Several learned men of late acknowledge no other union between Christ and believers than such as persons or things wholly separated may have by their mutual relations to each other; and accordingly they interpret the places of Scripture that speak of this union. When Christ is called the Head of the church, they account that a political head or governor is the thing meant. When Christ is said to be in His people, and they in Him, they think that the proper meaning is that Christ's law, doctrine, grace, salvation, or that godliness is in them, and embraced by them, so that Christ here must not be taken for Christ Himself, but for some other thing wrought in them by Christ. When Christ and believers are said to be one Spirit, and one flesh, they understand it of the agreement of their minds and affections - as if the greatness of the mystery of this union mentioned (Eph. 5:32) consisted rather in a harsh trope, or a dark improper expression, than in the depth and abstruseness of the thing itself; and as if Christ and His apostles had affected obscure intricate expressions, when they speak to the church of things very plain, and easy to be understood. Thus that great mystery, the union of believers with Christ Himself - which is the glory of the church, and has been highly owned formerly, both by the ancient fathers, and many eminent Protestant divines, particularly writers concerning the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and by a very general consent of the church in many ages - is now exploded out of the new model of divinity. The reason of exploding it, as I judge in charity, is not because our learned refiners of divinity think themselves less able to defend it than the other two mysterious unions, and to silence the objections of those proud sophisters that will not believe what they cannot comprehend; but rather, because they account it to be one of the sinews of Antinomianism, that lay unobserved in the former usual doctrine; that it tends to puff up men with a persuasion that they are justified and have eternal life in them already, and that they do not need to depend any longer on their uncertain performances of the condition of sincere obedience for salvation; by which they account the very foundation of a holy practice to be subverted. But the wisdom of God has laid another manner of foundation for a holy practice than they imagine, of which this union (which the builders refuse) is a principal stone, next to the head of the corner. And in opposition to their corrupt glosses on the Scriptures that prove it, I assert that our union with Christ is the cause of our subjection to Christ as a political head in all things, and of the abiding of His law, doctrine, grace, salvation and all godliness in us, and of our agreement with Him in our minds and affections; and therefore it cannot be altogether the same thing with them. And this assertion is useful for a better understanding of the excellency of this union. It is not a privilege procured by our sincere obedience and holiness, as some may imagine, or a reward of good works, reserved for us in another world; but it is a privilege bestowed on believers in their very first entrance into a holy state, on which all ability to do good works depends, and all sincere obedience to the law follows after it, as fruit produced by it.
Having thus far explained this direction, I shall now show that though the truth contained in it is above the reach of natural reason, yet it is evidently discovered to those that have their understandings opened to discern that supernatural revelation of the mysterious way of sanctification which God has given to us in the Holy Scriptures.
1. There are several places in Scripture that plainly express it. Some texts show that all things pertaining to our salvation are treasured up for us in Christ, and comprehended in His fullness so that we must have them from that place, or not at all (Col. 1:19). It pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell in Him. And, in the same Epistle the apostle shows that the holy nature, by which we live to God, was first produced in us by His death and resurrection: 'And you were circumcised in Him with circumcision not done by hand, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh,... being buried with Him,...made alive together with Him being dead in your sins' (Col. 2:11-13). 'Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ' (Eph. 1:3). A holy frame of spirit, with all its necessary qualifications, must needs be comprehended in this, in all spiritual blessings. These are given us in Christ's person in heavenly places, as prepared and treasured up in Him for us while we are on earth. Therefore we must have our holy endowments out of Him, or not at all. In this text some choose rather to read heavenly things, as in the margin, because neither places nor things are expressed in the original; but the former textual reading is to be preferred before the marginal, as being the proper sense of the original Greek phrase, which is, and must necessarily be so rendered in two other places of the same Epistle (Eph. 3:10; 6:12). Another text is 1 Corinthians 1:30, which shows that 'Christ is of God made to us sanctification,' by which we are able to walk holily; as well as wisdom, by the knowledge of which we are savingly wise; and righteousness, by the imputation of which we are justified; and redemption, by which we are redeemed from all misery to the enjoyment of His glory, as our happiness in the heavenly kingdom. Other texts of Scripture show plainly that we receive our holiness out of His fullness by fellowship with Him (John 1:16, 17): 'And we have received of His fullness and grace on top of grace.' And it is understood of grace answerable to the law given by Moses, which must needs include the grace of sanctification: 'Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. God is light. If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another' (1 John 1:3, 5-7). Thus we may infer that our fellowship with God and Christ includes particularly our having light, and walking in it holily and righteously. There are other texts that teach the proof of the whole direction fully, showing, not only that our holy endowments are made ready first in Christ for us, and received from Christ, but that we receive them by union with Christ: 'You have put on the new man, which is renewed after the image of Him that created Him; where Christ is all and in all' (Col. 3:10, 11). 'He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit' (1 Cor. 6:17). 'I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me' (Gal. 2:20). 'This is the record, that God has given us eternal life; and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has life, and he that does not have the Son does not have life' (John 5:11, 12). Can we desire that God should more clearly teach us that all the fulness of the new man is in Christ, and all that spiritual nature and life by which we live to God in holiness, and that they are fixed in Him so inseparably, that we cannot have them except we be joined to Him, and have Him abiding in us? Take heed lest, through prejudice and hardness of heart, you are guilty of making God a liar, in not believing this eminent record that God has given us His Son.
2. God is leased to illustrate this mysterious manner of our sanctification by such a variety of similitudes and resemblances as may put us out of doubt that it is truth, and such a truth as we are highly concerned to know and believe. I shall endeavor to contract the chief of these resemblances and the force of them briefly into one sentence, leaving it to those that are spiritual to enlarge their meditation on them. We receive from Christ a new holy frame and nature, by which we are enabled for a holy practice, by union and fellowship with Him, in like manner (i) as Christ lived in our nature by the Father (John 6:57); (ii) as we receive original sin and death propagated to us from the first Adam (Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17); (iii) as the natural body receives sense, motion and nourishment from the head (Col. 2:19); (iv) as the branch receives its sap, juice and fructifying virtue from the vine (John 15:4, 5); (v) as the wife brings forth fruit by virtue of her conjugal union with her husband (Rom. 7:4); (vi) as stones become a holy temple by being built on the foundation, and joined with the chief corner-stone (1 Peter 2:4-6); (vii) as we receive the nourishing virtue of bread by eating it, and of wine by drinking it (John 6:51, 55, 57), which last resemblance is used to seal to us our communion with Christ in the Lord's Supper.
Here are seven resemblances instanced, of which some illustrate the mystery spoken of more fully than others. All of them in some way intimate that our new life and holy nature are first in Christ, and then in us, by a true proper union and fellowship with Him. If any should urge that the similitude of Adam and his seed, and of married couples, rather make for a relative than a real union between Christ and us; let them consider that all nations are really made of one blood, which was first in Adam (Acts 17:26); and that the first woman was made out of the body of Adam, and was really bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And by this first married couple the mystical union of Christ and His church is eminently resembled (Gen. 2:22-24; Eph. 5: 30-32). And yet it supposes both these resemblances in the nearness and fullness of them, because those that are joined to the Lord are not only one flesh, but one spirit with Him.
3. The end of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection was to prepare and form a holy nature and frame for us in Himself, to be communicated to us by union and fellowship with Him; and not to enable us to produce in ourselves the first original of such a holy nature by our own endeavors.
1. By His incarnation, there was a man created in a new holy frame, after the holiness of the first Adam's frame had been marred and abolished by the first transgression. This new frame was far more excellent than ever the first Adam's was; because man was really joined to God by a close inseparable union of the divine and human nature in one Person, Christ; so that these natures had communion each with the other in their actings, and Christ was able to act in His human nature, by power proper to the divine nature, in which He was one God with the Father. The words that He spoke while He was on earth, He spoke not of Himself, by any mere human power, but the Father that dwelt in Him, He did the works (John 14:10). Why was it that Christ set up the fallen nature of man in such a wonderful frame of holiness, in bringing it to live and act by communion with God, living and acting in it? One great end was that He might communicate this excellent frame to His seed, that should be born of Him and in Him by His Spirit, as the last Adam, the quickening Spirit; that, as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so we might also bear the image of the heavenly (1 Cor. 15:45, 49), in holiness here, and in glory hereafter. Thus He was born Emmanuel, God with us; because the fullness of the Godhead, with all holiness, did first dwell in Him bodily , even in His human nature, that we might be filled up with that fullness in Him (Matt. 1:23; Col. 2:9, 10). Thus He came down from heaven as living bread that, as He lives by the Father, so those that eat Him may live in Him (John 6:51, 56), by the same life of God in them that was first in Him.
2. By His death, He freed Himself from the guilt of our sins imputed to Him, and from all that innocent weakness of His human nature which He had borne for a time for our sakes. And, by freeing Himself, He prepared a freedom for us, from our whole natural condition, which is both weak as He was, and also polluted without guilt and sinful corruption. Thus the corrupt natural estate, which is called in Scripture the old man, was crucified together with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. And it is destroyed in us, not by any wounds that we ourselves can give to it, but by our partaking of that freedom from it, and death to it, that is already wrought out for us by the death of Christ; as is signified by our baptism, in which we are buried with Christ by the application of His death to us (Rom. 6:2-4, 10, 11). 'God, in sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to be a sacrifice for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous demand of the law should be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit' (Rom. 8:3, 4). Observe here that, though Christ died that we might be justified by the righteousness of God and of faith, not by our own righteousness, which is of the law (Rom. 10:4-6; Phil. 3:9), yet He died also, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, and that by walking after His Spirit, as those that are in Christ (Rom. 8:4). He is resembled in His death to a corn of wheat dying in the earth, that it may propagate its own nature, by bringing forth much fruit (John 12:24); to the Passover that was slain, that a feast might be kept on it; and to bread broken, that it may be nourishment to those that eat it (1 Cor. 5:7, 8; 11:24); to the rock smitten, that water may gush out of it for us to drink (1 Cor. 10:4). He died that He might make of Jew and Gentile one new man in Himself (Eph. 2:15), and that He might see His seed, that is, such as derive their holy nature from Him (Isa. 53:10). Let these Scriptures be well observed, and they will sufficiently evidence that Christ died, not that we might be able to form a holy nature in ourselves, but that we might receive one ready prepared and formed in Christ for us, by union and fellowship with Him.
3. By His resurrection, He took possession of spiritual life for us, as now fully procured for us, and made to be our right and property by the merit of His death. Therefore we are said to be quickened together with Christ, even when we were dead in sins, and to be raised up together, yea, and to be made to sit together in heavenly aces in Christ Jesus, as our Head, while we continue on earth in our own persons (Eph. 2:5, 6). His resurrection was our resurrection to the life of holiness, as Adam's fall was our fall into spiritual death. And we are not ourselves the first makers and formers of our new holy nature, any more than of our original corruption; but both are formed ready for us to partake of them. And, by union with Christ, we partake of that spiritual life that He took possession of for us at His resurrection, and in this way we are enabled to bring forth the fruits of it; as the Scripture shows by the similitude of a marriage union (Rom. 7:4). We are married to Him that is risen from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit to God. Baptism signifies the application of Christ's resurrection to us as well as His death; we are raised up with Him, in it, to newness of life, as well as buried with Him; and we are taught in this way that, because He died to sin once and lives to God, we should likewise reckon ourselves to be dead indeed to sin and alive to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:4, 5, 10, 11).
4. Our sanctification is by the Holy Ghost, by whom we live and walk holily (Rom. 15:16; Gal. 5:25). Now, the Holy Ghost first rested on Christ in all fullness, that He might be communicated from Him to us; as was signified to John the Baptist by the similitude of the descending of a dove from the opened heavens, resting on Christ at His baptism (John 1:32, 33). And when He sanctifies us, He baptizes us to Christ, and joins us to Christ by Himself, as the great bond of union (1 Cor. 12:13). So that according to the scriptural phrase, it is all one, to have Christ Himself, and to have the Spirit of Christ in us (Rom. 8:9, 10). He glorifies Christ, for He receives those things that are Christ's and shows them to us (John 16:14, 15). He gives us an experimental knowledge of those spiritual blessings which He Himself prepared for us by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.
5. The effectual causes of those four principal endowments, which in the foregoing direction were asserted as necessary to furnish us for the immediate practice of holiness, are comprehended in the fullness of Christ, and treasured up for us in Him; and the endowments themselves, together with their causes, are attained richly by union and fellowship with Christ. If we are joined to Christ, our hearts will be no longer left under the power of sinful inclinations, or in a mere indifferency of inclination to good or evil; but they will be powerfully endowed with a power, bent and propensity to the practice of holiness,. By the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us, and inclining us to mind spiritual things and to lust against the flesh (Rom. 8:1, 4, 5 ; Gal. 5:17). And we have in Christ a full reconciliation with God, and an advancement into higher favor with Him than the first Adam had in the state of innocency, because the righteousness that Christ wrought out for us by His obedience to death is imputed to us for our justification, which is called the righteousness of God, because it is wrought by One that is God as well as man; and therefore it is of infinite value to satisfy the justice of God for all our sins, and to procure His pardon and highest favor for us (2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 5:19). And, that we may be persuaded of this reconciliation, we receive the spirit of adoption through Christ, by which we cry, 'Abba, Father' (Rom. 8: 15). In this way also we are persuaded of our future enjoyment of the everlasting happiness, and of sufficient strength both to will and to perform our duty acceptably, until we come to that enjoyment. For the spirit of adoption teaches us to conclude that, if we are the children of God, then we are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; and that the law of the spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death; and that nothing shall be against us, nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ; but in all opposition and difficulties that we meet with, we shall be at last 'more than conquerors through Him that loved us' (Rom. 8:17, 23, 35, 37, 39).
Furthermore, this comfortable persuasion of our justification and future happiness and all saving privileges cannot tend to licentiousness, as it is given only in this way of union with Christ, because it is joined inseparably with the gift of sanctification, by the Spirit of Christ, so that we cannot have justification, or any saving privilege in Christ, except we receive Christ Himself and His holiness, as well as any other benefit; as the Scripture testifies that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:1).
6. Whereas it may be doubted whether the saints that lived before the coming of Christ in the flesh could possibly be one flesh with Him, and receive a new nature by union and fellowship with Him, as prepared for them, in His fullness, we are to know that the same Christ that took our flesh was before Abraham (John 8:58), and was foreordained before the foundation of the world, to be sacrificed as a lamb without blemish, that He might redeem us from all iniquity by His precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-20). He had the same Spirit then, which filled His human nature with all its fullness afterwards, and raised it from the dead; and He gave that Spirit then to the church (1 Peter 1:11; 3:18, 19). Now, this Spirit was able and effectual to unite those saints to that flesh which Christ was to take to Himself in the fullness of time, because He was the same in both, and to give out to them that grace with which Christ would afterwards fill His flesh, for their salvation as well as ours. Therefore David accounts Christ's flesh to be his, and spoke of Christ's death and resurrection as his own, beforehand as well as any of us can do since their accomplishment: 'My flesh also shall rest in hope; for You will not leave my soul in hell; neither will You allow Your holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life' (Ps. 16:9-11). Yea, and saints before David's time did all eat of the same spiritual meat and drink of the same spiritual drink, even of the same Christ, as we do, and therefore were partakers of the same privilege of union and fellowship with Christ (1 Cor. 10:3, 4). And when Christ was manifested in the flesh, in the fullness of time, all things in heaven and on earth, all the saints departed, whose spirits were then made perfect in heaven, as well as the saints that then were, or should afterwards be on earth, were 'gathered together in one,' and comprehended in Christ as their Head (Eph. 1:10). And He was 'the chief corner-stone, in whom the building of the whole church on the foundation' of the prophets before, and the apostles after His coming, 'being fitly framed together, grows to a holy temple in the Lord' (Eph. 2:20, 21). Jesus Christ 'is the same yesterday, and today, and forever' (Heb. 13:8). His incarnation, death and resurrection were the cause of all the holiness that ever was, or shall be given to man, from the fall of Adam, to the end of the world - and that by the mighty power of His Spirit, by which all saints that ever were, or shall be, are joined together to be members of that one mystical body of which He is the Head.
Chapter Four
The means or instruments by which the Spirit of God accomplishes our union with Christ, and our fellowship with Him in all holiness, are the gospel, by which Christ enters into our hearts to work faith in us, and faith, by which we actually receive Christ Himself, with all His fullness, into our hearts. And this faith is a grace of the Spirit, by which we heartily believe the gospel and also believe on Christ as He is revealed and freely promised to us in this, for all His salvation.
That which I assented, in the foregoing direction, concerning the necessity of our being in Christ, and having Christ in us by a mystical union to enable us for a holy practice, might put us to a stand in our endeavors for holiness, because we cannot imagine how we should be able to raise ourselves above our natural sphere to this glorious union and fellowship, until God is pleased to make known to us by supernatural revelation the means by which His Spirit makes us partakers of so high a privilege. But God is pleased to help us, when at a stand to go on forward, by revealing two means or instruments by which His Spirit accomplishes the mystical union and fellowship between Christ and us, and which rational creatures are capable of attaining to, by His Spirit working in them.
One of these means is the gospel of the grace of God, in which God makes known to us the unsearchable riches of Christ and Christ in us, the hope of glory (Eph. 3:8; Col. 1: 27), and also invites us and commands us to believe on Christ for His salvation, and encourages us by a free promise of that salvation to all that believe on Him (Acts 16:31; Rom. 10:9, 11). This is God's own instrument of conveyance, in which He sends Christ to us to bless us with His salvation
(Acts 3:26). It is the ministration of the Spirit and of righteousness (2 Cor. 3:6, 8, 9). Faith comes by the hearing of it, and therefore it is a great instrument by which we are begotten in Christ and Christ is formed in us (Rom. 10:16, 17; 1 Cor. 4:15; Gal. 4:19). There is no need for us to say in our hearts, 'Who shall ascend into heaven, to bring Christ down from above?' or, 'Who shall descend into the deep, to bring Christ up from the dead, that we may be united and have fellowship with Him in His death and resurrection?' For the Word is near us, the gospel, the word of faith in which Christ Himself graciously condescends to be near us, so that we may come at Him there without going any further, if we desire to be joined with Him (Rom. 10:6-8).
The other of these means is faith, that is wrought in us by the gospel. This is our instrument of reception, by which the union between Christ and us is accomplished on our part by our actual receiving Christ Himself with all His fullness in our heart, which is the principal subject of the present explanation.
The faith which philosophers commonly treat of is only a habit of the understanding, by which we assent to a testimony on the authority of the testifier. Accordingly, some would have faith in Christ to be no more than a believing the truth of things in religion, on the authority of Christ testifying them. But the apostle shows that the faith by which we are justified is faith in Christ's blood (Rom. 3:24, 25), not only in His authority as a testifier. And though a mere assent to a testimony were sufficient faith for knowledge of things, which the philosophers aimed at, yet we are to consider that the design of saving faith is not only to know the truth of Christ and His salvation, testified and promised in the gospel, but also to apprehend and receive Christ and His salvation, as given by and with the promise. Therefore, saving faith must necessarily contain two acts, believing the truth of the gospel, and believing on Christ, as promised freely to us in the gospel, for all salvation. By the one, it receives the means in which Christ is conveyed to us; by the other, it receives Christ Himself, and His salvation in the means, as it is one act to receive the breast or cup in which milk or wine are conveyed, and another act to suck the milk in the breast and to drink the wine in the cup. And both these acts must be performed heartily with an unfeigned love to the truth and a desire of Christ and His salvation above all things. This is our spiritual appetite, which is necessary for our eating and drinking Christ, the food of life, as a natural appetite is for bodily nourishment. Our assenting to, or believing the gospel, must not be forced by mere conviction of the truth, such as wicked men and devils may be brought to, when they had rather it were false. Neither must our believing in Christ be only constrained for fear of damnation, without any hearty love and desire towards the enjoyment of Him; but we must receive the love of the truth by relishing the goodness and excellency of it; and we must 'account all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, and count them but dung, that we may win Christ and be found in Him' (2 Thess. 1:10; Phil. 3:8, 9), esteeming Christ to be all our salvation and happiness (Col. 3: 11), 'in whom all fullness dwells' (Col. 1:19). And this love must be to every part of Christ's salvation - to holiness as well as forgiveness of sins. We must desire earnestly that God would create in us a clean heart and right spirit, as well as hide His face from our sins (Ps. 51:9, 10); not like many that care for nothing in Christ but only deliverance from hell. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled (Matt. 5:6). The former of these acts does immediately unite us to Christ, because it is terminated only on the means of conveyance, the gospel; yet it is a saving act, if it be rightly performed, because it inclines and disposes the soul to the latter act, whereby Christ Himself is immediately received into the heart. He that believes the gospel with hearty love and liking, as the most excellent truth, will certainly with the like heartiness believe on Christ for salvation. They that know the name of the Lord will certainly put their trust in Him (Ps. 9:10). Therefore in Scripture saving faith is sometimes described by the former of these acts, as if it were a mere believing the gospel; sometimes by the latter, as a believing on Christ, or in Christ: 'If you believe in your heart, that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved' (Rom. 10:9). 'The scripture says, that whoever believes on Him, shall not be ashamed' (v. 11). 'Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God' (1 John 5:1). 'These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God' (v. 13).
For the better understanding of the nature of faith, let it be further observed, that the second and principal act of it, believing on Christ, includes believing on God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, because they are one and the same infinite God, and they all concur in our salvation by Christ, as the only Mediator between God and us, 'in whom all the promises of God are yea and amen' (2 Cor. 1:20). By Him (as Mediator) we believe 'in God, who raised Him up from among the dead and gave glory to Him - so that your faith and hope might be in God' (1 Peter 1:21). And it is the same thing with trusting on God, or on the Lord, which is so highly commended in the whole Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, as may easily appear by considering that it has the same causes, effects, objects, adjuncts, opposites and all the same circumstances, excepting only that it had a respect to Christ as promised before His coming, and now it respects Him as already come in the flesh. Believing in the Lord and trusting on His salvation are equivalent terms that explain one another (Ps. 78:22). 1 confess that trusting on things seen or known by the mere light of reason, as on our own wisdom, power, riches, or princes, or any arm of flesh, may not so properly be called believing on them; but trusting on a Saviour, as discovered by a testimony, is properly believing on Him. It is also the same thing that is expressed by the terms of resting, relying, leaning, staying ourselves on the Lord, called hoping in the Lord, because it is the ground of that expectation which is the proper act of hope, though our believing and trusting is for the present as well as future benefit of this salvation. The reason why it is so commonly expressed in the Scriptures of the New Testament by the terms of believing on Christ might be probably because, when that part of Scripture was written, there was cause in a special manner to urge believing the testimony that was then newly revealed by the gospel.
Having thus explained the nature of faith, I come now to assert its proper use and office in our salvation: that it is the means and instrument by which we receive Christ and all His fullness actually into our hearts. This excellent use and office of faith is encountered by a multitude of errors. Men naturally esteem that it is too small and slight a thing to produce so great effects, as Naaman thought washing in Jordan too small a matter for the cure of his leprosy. They contemn the true means of entering in at the strait gate, because they seem too easy for such purpose, and in this way they make the entrance not only difficult, but impossible to themselves. Some will allow that faith is the sole condition of our justification and the instrument to receive it, according to the doctrine maintained formerly by the Protestants against the Papists; but they account that it is not sufficient or effectual to sanctification, but that it rather tends to licentiousness, if it is not joined with some other means that may be powerful and effectual to secure a holy practice. They commend this great doctrine of Protestants as a comfortable cordial for persons on their deathbeds, or in agonies under terrors of conscience; but they account that it is not good for ordinary food, and that it is wisdom in ministers to reach it seldom and sparingly, and not without some antidote or corrective to prevent the licentiousness to which it tends. Their common antidote or corrective is that sanctification is necessary to salvation, as well as justification; and though we are justified by faith, yet we are sanctified by our own performance of the law. So they set up salvation by works, and make the grace of justification to be of no effect, and not at all comfortable. If it had indeed such a malignant influence on practice, it could not be owned as a doctrine proceeding from the most holy God, and all the comfort that it affords must needs be ungrounded and deceitful. This consequence is well understood by some late refiners of the Protestant religion, and therefore they have thought fit to remodel this doctrine, and to make saving faith to be only a condition to procure a right and title to our justification by the righteousness of Christ, which must be performed before we can lay any good claim to the enjoyment of it, and before we have any right to use any instrument for the actual receiving of it; and this they call an accepting of, or receiving Christ. And, that they may the better secure the practice of holiness by their conditional faith, they will not have trusting in God or Christ for salvation to be accounted the principal saving act of it; because, as it seems to them, many loose wicked people trust on God and Christ for their salvation as much as others and are, by their confidence, hardened the more in their wickedness; but they had rather it should be obedience to all Christ's laws, at least in resolution, or a consent that Christ should be their Lord, accepting of His terms of salvation, and a resignation of themselves to His government in all things. It is a sign that the Scripture form of teaching is grown into disesteem with our great masters of reason when trusting in the Lord, so much commended in Scripture, is accounted a mean and ordinary thing. They endeavor to affright us from owning faith to be an instrument of justification by telling us that in this way we that use the instrument are made our own principal justifiers, to the dishonor of God; though it might be easily answered that we are made in this way only the principal receivers of our own justification from GOT, the giver of it, to whom all the glory belongs.
All these errors will fall if it can be proved that such a faith as I have described is an instrument by which we actually receive Christ Himself into our hearts, and holiness of heart and life, as well as justification, by union and fellowship with Him. For the proof of it, I shall offer the following arguments.
1. By faith we have the actual enjoyment and possession of Christ Himself, and not only of remission of sin, but of life, and so of holiness. Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17). We live to God; and yet not we, but Christ lives in us by the faith of the Son of God (Gal. 2:19, 20). He that believes on the Son of God has the Son and everlasting life that is in Him (1 John 5:12, 13; John 3:36). He that hears Christ's word, and believes on Him that sent Christ, has everlasting life and is passed from death to life (John 5:24). These texts express clearly such a faith as I have described. Therefore the efficiency or operation of faith, in order to the enjoyment of Christ and His fullness, cannot be the procurement of a bare right or title to this enjoyment; but rather it must be an entrance to it, and taking possession of it. We have our access and entrance by faith into that grace of Christ in which we stand (Rom. 5:2).
2. The Scripture plainly ascribes this effect to faith: that by it we receive Christ, put Him on, are rooted and grounded in Him; and also that we receive the Spirit, remission of sins and an inheritance among them which are sanctified (John 1:12; Gal. 3:26, 27; Col. 2:6, 7; Gal. 3:14; Acts 26:18). And the Scripture illustrates this receiving by the similitude of eating and drinking: He that believes on Christ drinks the living water of His Spirit (John 7:37-39). Christ is the bread of life; His flesh is meat indeed, and His blood is drink indeed. And the way to eat and drink it is to believe in Christ and, by so doing, we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us, and we have everlasting life (John 6:35, 47, 48, 54-56). How can it be taught more clearly that we receive Christ Himself properly into our souls by faith, as we receive food into our bodies by eating and drinking, and that Christ is as truly united to us in this way as our food when we eat or drink it? So that faith cannot be a condition to procure a mere right or title to Christ, no more than eating or drinking procures a mere right or title to our food; but it is rather an instrument to receive it, as the mouth that eats and drinks the food.
3. Christ, with all His salvation, is freely given by the grace of God to all that believe on Him, for we are saved by grace through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8, 9). We are justified freely by His grace, through faith in His blood (Rom. 3:24, 25). The Holy Ghost, who is the bond of union between Christ and us, is a gift (Acts 2:38). Now, that which is a gift of grace must not at all be earned, purchased or procured by any work, or works performed as a condition to get a right or title to it. Therefore faith itself must not be accounted such a conditional work. If it is by grace, it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace (Rom. 11:6). The condition of a free gift is only take, and have. And in this sense we will readily acknowledge faith to be a condition, allowing a liberty in terms where we agree in the thing. But if you give a peppercorn to purchase a title to it, then you spoil the freeness of the gift. The free offer of Christ to you is sufficient to confer on you a right, yea, to make it your duty to receive Christ and His salvation as yours. And because we receive Christ by faith as a free gift, therefore we may account faith to be the instrument and, as it were, the hand by which we receive Him.
4. It has been already proved that all spiritual life and holiness are treasured up in the fullness of Christ and communicated to us by union with Him. Therefore the accomplishing of union with Christ is the first work of saving grace in our hearts. And faith itself, being a holy grace and part of spiritual life, cannot be in us before the beginning of it; but rather it is given to us and wrought in the very working of the union. And the way in which it conduces to the union cannot be by procuring a mere title to Christ as a condition, because then it should be performed before the uniting work begins; but rather by being an instrument, by which we may actually receive and embrace Christ, who is already come into the soul to take possession of it as His own habitation.
5. True saving faith, such as I have described, has in its nature and manner of operation a peculiar aptitude or fitness to receive Christ and His salvation, and to unite our souls to Him, and to furnish the soul with a new holy nature, and to bring forth a holy practice by union and fellowship with Him. God has fitted natural instruments for their office, as the hands, feet, etc., so that we may know by their nature and natural manner of operation for what use they are designed.
In like manner, we may know that faith is an instrument formed on purpose for our union with Christ and sanctification, if we consider what a peculiar fitness it has for the work. The discovery of this is of great use for the understanding of the mysterious manner of our receiving and practicing all holiness by union and fellowship with Christ, by this precious grace of faith. And to make you, as it were, to see with your eyes that it is such an instrument as I have asserted it to be, I shall present it to your view in three particulars.
1. The grace of faith is as well fitted for the soul's receiving Christ and union with Him as any instrument of the body is for receiving and closing with things needful for it. By the very act of hearty trusting or believing on Christ for salvation and happiness, the soul casts and puts away from itself everything that keeps it at a distance from Christ as all confidence in our strength, endeavors, works, privileges; or in any worldly pleasures, profits, honors; or in any human helps and succors for our happiness and salvation, because such confidences are inconsistent with our confidence in Christ for all salvation. Paul, by his confidence in Christ, was taken off from all confidence in the flesh. He suffered the loss of glorying in his privileges and legal righteousness, and counted all other enjoyments in matters of the world, or of religion, to be but 'loss, that he might win Christ, and be found in Him' (Phil. 3:3, 5-9). The voice of faith is 'Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses. We shall not say any more to the work of our hands, you are our gods; for in You the fatherless find mercy' (Hos. 14:3). 'We have no might against this great company' of our spiritual enemies, 'we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You' (2 Chron. 20:12).
I might multiply places of Scripture, to show what a self-emptying grace faith is, and how it casts other confidences out of the soul by getting above them to Christ as the only happiness and salvation. The same act of trusting or believing on Christ, or on God, is the very manner of our souls coming to Christ (John 6:35); 'drawing near to the Lord' (Ps. 73:28); 'making our refuge in the shadow of His wings' (Ps. 57:1); 'staying ourselves and our minds on the Lord' (Isa. 50:10; 26:3); 'laying hold on eternal life' (1 Tim. 6:12); 'lifting up our souls to the Lord' (Ps. 25:1); 'committing our way , or casting our burden on the Lord' (Ps. 37:5; 55:22); and our eating and drinking Christ, as has already appeared. Let us consider that Christ and His salvation cannot be seen, or handled, or attained to, by any bodily motion; but are revealed and promised to us in the Word. Now, let any invent, if they can, any way for the soul to exercise any motion or activeness in the receiving of this unseen promised salvation, besides believing the Word and trusting on Christ for the benefit promised. If Christ were to be earned by works, or any other kind of conditional faith, yet a faith must be instrumental to receive Him. Some think love as fit to be the uniting grace, but I have showed that love to Christ's salvation is an ingredient to faith. And though love is an appetite to union, yet we have no other likely way to fill this appetite while we are in this world, besides trusting on Christ for all His benefits, as He is promised in the gospel.
2. There is in this saving faith a natural tendency to furnish the soul with a holy frame and nature, and all endowments necessary to it, out of the fullness of Christ. A hearty affectionate trusting on Christ for all His salvation, as freely promised to us, has naturally enough in it to work in our souls a rational bent and inclination to, and ability for, the practice of holiness; because it comprehends in it a trusting that, through Christ, we are dead to sin and alive to God; that our old man is crucified (Rom. 6:2-4); and that we live by the Spirit (Gal. 5:25); and that we have forgiveness of sin; and that God is our God (Ps. 48:14); and that we have in the Lord righteousness and strength, by which we are able to do all things (Isa. 45:24; Phil. 4:13); and that we shall be gloriously happy in the enjoyment of Christ to all eternity (Phil. 3:20, 21). When the saints in Scripture speak so highly of such glorious spiritual privileges as I have here named, they acquaint us with the familiar sense and language of their faith, trusting on God and Christ, and they give us but an explication of the nature and contents of it; and they speak of nothing more than what they receive out of the fullness of Christ. And how can we otherwise judge, but that those that have a hearty love to Christ and can, on a good ground, think and speak such high things concerning themselves, must needs be heartily disposed and mightily strengthened for the practice of holiness?
2. Because faith has such a natural tendency to dispose and strengthen the soul for the practice of holiness, we have cause to judge it a suitable instrument to accomplish every part of that practice in an acceptable manner. Those that with a due affection believed steadfastly on Christ for the free gift of all His salvation may find by experience that they are carried forth by that faith, according to the measure of its strength or weakness, to love God heartily, because God has loved them first (1 John 4:19); to praise Him, to pray to Him in the name of Christ (Eph. 5:20; John 16:26, 27); to be patient with cheerfulness, under all afflictions giving thanks to the Father that has called them to His heavenly inheritance (Col. 1:11, 12); to love all the children of God out of love to their heavenly Father (1 John 5:1); to walk as Christ walked (1 John 2:6); and to give themselves up to live to Christ in all things, as constrained by His love in dying for them (2 Cor. 5:14). We have a cloud of witnesses concerning the excellent works that were produced by faith (Heb. 11). And though trusting on God be accounted such a slight and contemptible thing, yet I know no work of obedience which it is not able to produce. And note the excellent manner of working by faith. By it we live and act in all good works, as people in Christ, as raised above ourselves, and in our natural state, by partaking of Him and His salvation; and we do all in His name and on His account. This is the practice of that mysterious manner of living to God in holiness which is peculiar to the Christian religion in which we live; and yet not we, but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). And who can imagine any other way but this for such a practice, while Christ and His salvation are known to us only by the gospel?
The explanation that I have made of the nature and office of true faith, and of its aptitude for its office, is sufficient to evidence that it is a most holy faith, as it is called (Jude 20), and that such a trusting on Christ as I have described in its own nature cannot have any tendency to licentiousness, but only to holiness; and that it roots and grounds us in holiness, more than the mere accepting of any terms of salvation and consenting to have Christ for our Lord can do; and is more powerful to secure a holy practice than any of those resolutions of obedience, or resignating acts, that some would have to be the great conditions of our salvation, which are indeed no better than hypocritical acts, if they are not produced by this faith. There is indeed a counterfeit dead faith, such as wicked men may have and, if that tend to licentiousness, let not true faith be blamed, but rather mark the description of it which I have given, that you may not be deceived with a counterfeit faith instead of it.
I shall add something concerning the efficient cause of this excellent grace and of our union with Christ by it; by which it may appear that it is not so slight and easy a way of salvation as some may imagine. The author and finisher of our faith, and of our union and fellowship with Christ by faith, is no less than the infinite Spirit of God, and God and Christ Himself by the Spirit, for by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body of Christ and are all made to drink into one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:12, 13). God grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with all might by the Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:16, 17). If we do but consider the great effect of faith, that by it we are raised to live above our natural condition by Christ and His Spirit living in us, we cannot rationally conceive that it should be within the power of nature to do anything that advances us so high.
If God had done no more for us in our sanctification than to restore us to our first natural holiness, yet this could not have been done without putting forth His own almighty power to quicken those that are dead in sin; how much more is this almighty power needful to advance us to this wonderful new kind of frame, in which we live and act, above all the power of nature, by a higher principle of life than was given to Adam in innocency, even by Christ and His Spirit living and acting in us? The natural man brings forth his offspring according to his image by that natural power of multiplying with which God blessed him at his first creation; but the second Adam brings forth His offspring new-born according to His image only by the Spirit (John 3:5). As many as received Him, even those that believe on His name, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12, 13). Christ took His own human nature into personal union with Himself, in the womb of the virgin Mary, by the Holy Ghost coming on her and the power of the Highest overshadowing her, the same power by which the world was created (Luke 1:35). So He takes us into mystical union and fellowship with Himself by no less than an infinite creating power, for we are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus to good works (Eph. 2:10), and, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (2 Cor. 5:17).
For the accomplishing this great work of our new creation in Christ, the Spirit of God works first on our hearts, by and with the gospel, to produce in us the grace of faith. For, if the gospel should come to us in word only, and not in power and in the Holy Ghost, Paul might labor to plant, and Apollos to water, without any success, because we cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God; yea, we shall account them foolishness until the Spirit of God enable us to discern them (1 Thess. 1:5; 1 Cor. 3:6; 2:14). We shall never come to Christ by any teaching of man, except we also hear and learn of the Father and be drawn to Christ by His Spirit (John 6:44, 45). And, when saving faith is wrought in us, the same Spirit gives us fast hold of Christ by it. As He opens the mouth of faith to receive Christ, so He fills it with Christ; or else the acting of faith would be like a dream of one that thinks he eats and drinks and, when he awakes, he finds himself empty. The same Spirit of God did both give that faith by which miracles were wrought, and also worked the miracles by it; so also the same Spirit of Christ works saving faith in us and answers the aim and end of that faith by giving us union and fellowship with Christ by it, so that none of the glory of this work belongs to faith, but only to Christ and His Spirit. And, indeed, faith is of such a humbling self-denying nature that it ascribes nothing that it receives to itself, but all to the grace of God; and therefore God saves us by faith, that all the glory may be ascribed to His free grace (Rom. 4:16). If Adam had strength enough in innocency to perform the duty of faith as well as we, yet it will not follow that he had strength enough to raise himself above his natural state into union with Christ; because faith does not unite us to Christ by its own virtue, but by the power of the Spirit working by it and with it. Thus are we first passive, and then active, in this great work of mystical union; we are first apprehended of Christ, and then we apprehend Christ. Christ entered first into the soul, to join Himself to it, by giving it the spirit of faith; and so the soul receives Christ and His Spirit by their own power; as the sun first enlightens our eyes, and then we can see it by its own light. We may further note, to the glory of the grace of God, that this union is fully accomplished by Christ giving the spirit of faith to us even before we act that faith in the reception of Him; because, by this grace or spirit of faith, the soul is inclined and disposed to an active receiving of Christ. And, no doubt, Christ is thus united to many infants who have the spirit of faith and yet cannot act faith, because they are not come to the use of their understandings; but those of riper years that are joined passively to Christ by the spirit of faith will also join themselves with Him actively, by the act of faith and, until they act this faith, they cannot know or enjoy their union with Christ and the comfort of it, or make use of it in acting any other duties of holiness acceptably in this life.
Chapter Five
We cannot attain to the practice of true holiness by any of our endeavors while we continue in our natural state and are not partakers of a new state by union and fellowship with Christ through faith.
It is evident all do not have that precious faith by which Christ dwells in our hearts; yea, the number of those that have it is small comparatively to the whole world that lies in wickedness (1 John 5:19, 20); and many of those that at length attain to it do continue without it for some considerable time (Eph. 2:12). And though some may have the spirit of faith given to them from their mother's womb (as John the Baptist, Luke 1:15, 44), yet even in them there is a natural being by generation before there can be a spiritual being by regeneration (1 Cor. 15:46). Thus arises the consideration of two states or conditions of the children of men in matters that appertain to God and godliness, the one of which is vastly different from the other. Those that have the happiness of a new birth and creation in Christ by faith are thereby placed in a very excellent state, consisting in the enjoyment of the righteousness of Christ for their justification, and the Spirit of Christ to live by in holiness here and glory for ever, as has already appeared. Those that are not in Christ by faith cannot be in a better state than that which they received together with their nature from the first Adam by being once born and created in him, or than they can attain to by the power of that nature, with any such help as God is pleased to afford to it. This latter I call a natural state, because it consists in such things as we have either received by natural generation or can attain to by natural power through divine assistance, as the Scripture calls man in this state the natural man (1 Cor. 2:14). The former I call a new state, because we enter into it by a new birth in Christ. I may call it a spiritual state, according to the Scripture, because it is received from Christ the quickening Spirit, and the natural and spiritual man are opposed (1 Cor. 2:14, 15); though some call both these states spiritual, because the everlasting weal or woe of the soul, or spirit, of man is chiefly concerned in them.
It is a common error of those that are in a corrupt natural state that they seek to reform their lives according to the law, without any thoughts that their state must be changed before their lives can be changed from sin to righteousness. The heathens, that knew nothing of a new state in Christ, were urged by their own consciences to practice several duties of the law, according to the knowledge they had by the light of nature (Rom. 2:14, 15). Israel according to the flesh had a zeal of God and godliness and endeavored to practice the written law, at least in external performances, while they were enemies to the faith of Christ. And Paul attained so far that he was blameless in these external performances of the righteousness of the law, while he persecuted the church of Christ (Phil. 3:6).
Some are so near the kingdom of God, while they continue in a natural state, that they are convinced of the spirituality of the law, that it binds us principally to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to perform universal obedience to God, in all our inward thoughts and affections, as well as in all our outward actions, and to do all the duties that we owe to our neighbor, out of this hearty love (Mark 12:33, 34). And they struggle and labor with great earnestness to subdue their inward thoughts and affections to the law of God, and to abstain, not only from some sins, but from all known sins, and to perform every known duty of the law with their whole heart and soul, as they think; and are active and intent in their devout practice, that they overwork their natural strength, and so fervent is their zeal, that they are ready even to kill their bodies with fastings and other macerations, that they may kill their sinful lusts. They are strongly convinced that holiness is absolutely necessary to salvation, and are deeply affected with the terrors of damnation; and yet they were never so much enlightened