Iii.
III.
1. I have hitherto spoken more immediately to those who profess themselves members of the Church of England. But inasmuch as I am a debtor also to those who do not, my design is now, to apply to them also; and briefly to show, wherein (I fear) they are severally inconsistent with their own principles.
I begin with those who are at the smallest distance from us, whether they are termed Presbyterians or Independents: Of whom in general I cannot but have a widely different opinion, from that I entertained some years ago; as having since then conversed with many among them, “in whom the root of the matter is” undeniably found; and who labor “to keep a conscience void of offense, both toward God and toward men.” I cannot, therefore, doubt, but every serious man, of either one or the other denomination, does utterly condemn all that inward as well as outward unholiness which has been above described.
But do you, as a people, avoid what you condemn? Are no whoremongers or adulterers found among you; no children disobedient to their parents; no servants that are slothful or careless, that answer again, that do not “honor their masters as is meet in the Lord?” Are there none among you that censure or “speak evil of the ruler of their people?” Are there no drunkards, no gluttons, no luxurious men, no regular epicures, none “whose belly is their God,” who, as their fortune permits, “fare sumptuously everyday?” Have you no dishonest dealers, no unfair traders, no usurers, or extortioners? Have you no liars, either for gain, or for good manners, so called? Are you clear of ceremony and compliment? Alas, you are sensible, in most (if not all) these respects, you have now small pre-eminence over us.
How much more sensible must you be of this, if you do not rest on the surface, but inquire into the bottom of religion, the religion of the heart! For, what inward unholiness, what evil tempers, are among us, which have not a place among you also? You likewise bewail that ignorance of God, that want of faith and of the love of God and man, that inward idolatry of various kinds, that pride, ambition, and vanity, which rule in the hearts even of those who still have “the form of godliness.” You lament before God the deep covetousness that “eats so many souls as doth a gangrene;” and perhaps are sometimes ready to cry out, “Help, Lord, for there is scarce one godly man left!” Lay to thine hand; “for the faithful are minished from the children of men!”
2. And yet you retain “the truth that is after godliness,” at least as to the substance of it. You own what is laid down in Scripture, both touching the nature and condition of justification and salvation. And with regard to the author of faith and salvation, you have always avowed, even in the face of your enemies, that “it is God which worketh in us, both to will and to do, of his good pleasure;” that it is his Spirit alone who “teacheth us all things,” all we know of “the deep things of God;” that every true believer has “an unction from the Holy One to lead him into all” necessary “truth;” that, “because we are sons, God sendeth forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father;” and that “this Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”
How is it then, my brethren; (so I can call you now, although I could not have done it heretofore;) how is it, that the generality of you also are fallen from your steadfastness? In the times of persecution ye stood as a rock, though “all the waves and storms went over you.” But who can bear ease and fulness of bread? How are you changed, since these came upon you! Do not many of you now (practically, I mean) put something else in the room of “faith that worketh by love?” Do not some of you suppose, that gravity and composedness of behavior are the main parts of Christianity? especially, provided you neither swear, nor take the name of God in vain. Do not others imagine, that to abstain from idle songs, and those fashionable diversions commonly used by persons of their fortune, is almost the whole of religion? To which, if they add family prayer, and a strict observation of the Sabbath, then doubtless all is well. Nay, my brethren, this is well so far as it goes; but how little a way does it go toward Christianity! All these things, you cannot but see, are merely external; whereas Christianity is an inward thing, without which the most beautiful outward form is lighter than vanity.
Do not others of you rest in convictions or good desires? Alas, what do these avail? A man may be convinced he is sick, yea, deeply convinced, and yet never recover. He may desire food, yea, with earnest desire; and nevertheless perish with hunger. And thus I may be convinced I am a sinner; but this will not justify me before God. And I may desire salvation, (perhaps by fits and starts, for many years,) and yet be lost for ever. Come close then to the point, and keep to your principles. Have you received the Holy Ghost; the Spirit which is of God, and is bestowed by him on all believers, “that we may know the things which are freely given to us of God?” The time is short. Do you experience now that “unction from the Holy One,” without which you confess outward religion, whether negative or positives is nothing? Nay, and inward conviction of our wants is nothing, unless those wants are in fact supplied. Good desires also are nothing, unless we actually attain what we are stirred up to desire. You still, “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ,” whatever he desires, “he is none of his.” O my brother, beware you stop not short! Beware are you never account yourself a Christian, no, not in the lowest degree, till God “hath sent forth the Spirit of Christ into your heart;” and that “Spirit bear witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God.”
3. One step farther from us, are you who are called (though not by your own choice) Anabaptists. The smallness of your number, compared to that of either the Presbyterians, or those of the Church, makes it easier for you to have an exact knowledge of the behavior of all your members, and to put away from among you every one that “walketh not according to the doctrine you have received.”
But is this done? Do all your members adorn the gospel? Are they all “holy as He which hath called us is holy?” I fear not. I have known some instances to the contrary; and doubtless you know many more. There are unholy, outwardly unholy men in your congregations also; men that profane either the name or the day of the Lord; that do not honor their natural or civil parents; that know not how to possess their bodies in sanctification and honor; that are intemperate, either in meat or drink, gluttonous, sensual, luxurious; that variously offend against justice, mercy, or truth, in their intercourse with their neighbor, and do not walk by that royal law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
But how is this consistent with your leading principle, — “That no man ought to be admitted to baptism, till he has that repentance whereby we forsake sin, and living faith in God through Christ?”
For if no man ought to be admitted into a church or congregation, who has not actual faith and repentance; then neither ought any who has them not, to continue in any congregation: And, consequently, an open sinner cannot remain among you, unless you practically renounce your main principle.
4. I refer it to your own serious consideration, whether one reason why unholy men are still suffered to remain among you may not be this, — That many of you have unawares put opinion in the room of faith and repentance? But how fatal a mistake is this! Supposing your opinion to be true, yet a true opinion concerning repentance is wholly different from the thing itself; and you may have a true opinion concerning faith all your life, and yet die an unbeliever.
Supposing therefore the opinion of particular redemption true, yet how little does it avail toward salvation! Nay, were we to suppose that none can be saved who do not hold it, it does not follow that all will be saved who do: So that if the one proved a man to be in ever so bad a state, the other would not prove him to be in a good one; and, consequently, whosoever leans on this opinion, leans on the staff of a broken reed. Would to God that ye would mind this one thing, to “make your own calling and election sure!” that every one of you (leaving the rest of the world to Him that made it) would himself “repent and believe the gospel!” Not repent alone, (for then you know only the baptism of John,) but believe, and be “baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Are you still a stranger to that inward baptism wherewith all true believers are baptized? May the Lord constrain you to cry out, “How am I straitened till it be accomplished!” even till the love of God inflame your heart, and consume all your vile affections! Be not content with anything less than this! It is this loving faith alone which opens our way into “the general Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven!” which giveth us to “enter within the veil, where Jesus our fore-runner is gone before us!”
5. There is a still wider difference in some points between us and the people usually termed Quakers. But not in these points. You, as well as we, condemn “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men;” all those works of the devil which were recited above, and all those tempers from which they spring.
You agree, that we are all to be taught of God, and to be “led by his Spirit;” that the Spirit alone reveals all truth, and inspires all holiness; that by his inspiration men attain perfect love, the love which “purifies them as he is pure;” and that, through this knowledge and love of God, they have power to “do always such things as please him;” to worship God, a Spirit, according to his own will, that is, “in spirit and in truth.” Hence you infer, that formal worship is not acceptable to God, but that alone that springs from God in the heart. You infer also, that they who are led by him will use great “plainness of speech,” and great plainness of dress, seeking no “outward adorning,” but only “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.”
I will look no farther now, than simply to inquire whether you are consistent with these principles.
To begin with the latter: “He that is led by the Spirit will use great plainness of speech.”
You would have said, “will use the plain language.” But that term leads you into a grand mistake. That term, the plain language, naturally leads you to think of one particular way of speaking; as if “plainness of speech” implied no more than the use of that particular form.
Alas, my brethren! know ye not, that your ancestors designed this only as a specimen of plain language? And is it possible that you should mistake the sample for the whole bale of cloth?
Consult the light God has given you, and you must see that “plainness of speech” does not lie in a single point, but implies an open, undisguised sincerity, a child-like simplicity in all we speak.
I do not desire you to refrain from saying thou or thee. I would not spend ten words about it. But I desire you, whenever you speak at all, to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. I desire your words may always be the picture of your heart. This is truly plain language. Either do not pretend to plain speech at all, or be uniformly plain. Are you so? I pray, consider. Do you never compliment? I do not suppose you say, “Sir, your very humble servant;” but do you say no civil things? Do you never flatter? Do you not commend any man or woman to their face? Perhaps farther than you do behind their back. Is this plainness of speech? Do you never dissemble? Do you speak to all persons, high or low, rich or poor, just what you think, neither more nor less, and in the shortest and clearest manner you can? If not, what a mere jest is your plain language! You carry your condemnation in your own breast.
6. You hold also, that “he which is led by the Spirit will use great plainness of dress, seeking no ‘outward adorning,’ but only the ‘ornament of a meek and quiet spirit;’” and that, in particular, “he will leave ‘gold and costly apparel’ to those who know not God.”
Now, I appeal to every serious, reasonable man among you, — Do your people act consistently with this principle? Do not many of your women wear gold upon their very feet; and many of your men use “ornaments of gold?” Are you a stranger to these things? Have you not seen with your eyes (such trifles as will scarce bear the naming) their canes and snuff-boxes glitter, even in your solemn assembly, while ye were waiting together upon God? Surely, they are not yet so lost to modesty, as to pretend that they do not use them by way of ornament.
If they do not, if it be only out of necessity, a plain oaken stick will supply the place of the one, and a piece of horn or tin will unexceptionably answer all the reasonable ends of the other. To speak freely, (and do not count me your enemy for this,) you cannot but observe, upon cool reflection, that you retain just so much of your ancient practice, as leaves your present without excuse; as makes the inconsistency, between the one and the other, glaring and undeniable. For instance: This woman is too strict a Quaker to lay out a shilling in a necklace. Very well; but she is not too strict to lay out fourscore guineas in a repeating watch. Another would not for the world wear any lace; no, not an edging round her cap: But she will wear point, and sees no harm in it at all, though it should be of twelve times the price. In one kind of apron or handkerchief she dares not lay out twenty shillings; but in another sort lays out twenty pounds. And what multitudes of you are very jealous, as to the color and form of your apparel, (the least important of all the circumstances that relate to it,) while in the most important, the expense, they are without any concern at all! They will not put on a scarlet or crimson stuff, but the richest velvet, so it be black or grave. They will not touch a colored riband; but will cover themselves with a stiff silk from head to foot. They cannot bear purple; but make no scruple at all of being clothed in fine linen; yea, to such a degree that the linen of the Quakers is grown almost into a proverb.
Surely you cannot be ignorant, that the sinfulness of fine apparel lies chiefly in the expensiveness: In that it is robbing God and the poor; it is defrauding the fatherless and widow; it is wasting the food of the hungry, and withholding his raiment from the naked to consume it on our own lusts.
7. Let it not be said that this affects only a few among you, and those of the younger and lighter sort. Yes, it does your whole body: For why do you, who are older and graver, suffer such things? Why do ye not vehemently reprove them; and if they repent not, in spite of all worldly considerations, expel them out of your society? In conniving at their sin, you make it your own; you, especially, who are Preachers. Do you say, “They cannot bear it; they will not hear?” Alas! into what state, then, are ye fallen! But whether they will bear it or not, what is that to thee? Thou art to “speak, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.” To say the very truth, I am afraid you rather strengthen their hands in their wickedness. For you not only do not testify against it in the congregation,f17 but even sit at their table and reprove them not. Why, then, thou also art one of “the dumb dogs that cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.”
I fix this charge upon every Preacher, in particular, who saw a young woman, daughter to one of the Quakers in London, going to be married in apparel suitable to her diamond buckle, which cost a hundred guineas. Could you see this, and not call heaven and earth to witness against it? Then I witness against thee, in the name of the Lord, thou art a blind leader of the blind; thou “strainest a gnat, and swallowest a camel!” Verily, the sin both of teachers and hearers is herein exceeding great. And the little attempts towards plainness of apparel, which are still observable among you, (I mean, in the color and form of your clothes, and the manner of putting them on,) only testify against you, that you were once what you know in your hearts you are not now.
8. I come now to your main principle: “We are all to be ‘taught of God,’ to be inspired and ‘led by his Spirit:’ And then we shall ‘worship him,’ not with dead form, but ‘in spirit and in truth.’”
These are deep and weighty words; but many hold fast the words, and are utterly ignorant of their meaning. Is not this an exceeding common case? Are you not conscious abundance of your friends have done so? With whom the being “taught of God” and “led by his Spirit” are mere words of course, that mean just nothing. And their crude and indigested accounts of the things they did not understand have raised that deep prejudice against these great truths which we find in the generality of men. Do some of you ask, “But dost thou acknowledge the inward principle?” I do, my friends: And I would to God every one of you acknowledged it as much. I say, all religion is either empty show, or perfection by inspiration; in other words, the obedient love of God, by the supernatural knowledge of God; yea, all that which “is not of faith is sin;” all which does not spring from this loving knowledge of God; which knowledge cannot begin or subsist one moment without immediate inspiration; not only all public worship, and all private prayer, but every thought in common life, and word, and work. What think you of this? Do you not stagger? Dare you carry the inward principle so far? Do you acknowledge it to be the very truth? But, alas! what is the acknowledging it? Dost thou experience this principle in thyself? What saith thy heart? Does God dwell therein? And doth it now echo to the voice of God? Hast thou the continual inspiration of his Spirit, filling thy heart with his love, as with a well of water, springing up into everlasting life?
9. Art thou acquainted with the “leading of his Spirit,” not by notion only, but by living experience? I fear very many of you talk of this, who do not so much as know what it means. How does the Spirit of God lead his children to this or that particular action? Do you imagine it is by blind impulse only? by moving you to do it, you know not why? Not so. He leads us by our eye, at least, as much as by the hand; and by light as well as by heat. He shows us the way wherein we should go, as well as incites us to walk therein. For example: Here is a man ready to perish with hunger. How am I “led by the Spirit” to relieve him? First, by His convincing me it is the will of God I should; and Secondly, by His filling my heart with love toward him. Both this light and this heat are the gift of God; are wrought in me by the same Spirit, who leads me, by this conviction as well as love, to go and feed that man. This is the plain, rational account of the ordinary leading of the Spirit; but how far from that which some have given!
Art thou thus led by the Spirit to every good word and work, till God hath thereby made thy faith perfect? Dost thou know what faith is? It is a loving, obedient sight of a present and reconciled God. Now, where this is, there is no dead form; neither can be, so long as it continues. But all that is said or done is full of God, full of spirit, and life, and power.
10. But perhaps, as much as you talk of them, you do not know the difference between form and spirit; or between worshipping God in a formal way, and worshipping him in spirit and in truth.” The Lord is that Spirit. The seeing and feeling and loving him is spiritual life. And whatever is said or done in the sight or love of God, that is full of spirit and life. All beside this is form, mere dead form; whether it be in our public addresses to God, or in our private; or in our worldly business, or in our daily conversation.
But if so, how poor and mean and narrow have your views and conceptions been! You was afraid of formality in public worship: And reason good. But was you afraid of it nowhere else? Did not you consider that formality in common life is also an abomination to the Lord; and that it can have no place in anything we say or do, but so far as we forget God? O watch against it in every place, every moment, that you may every moment see and love God; and, consequently, at all times and in all places, worship him “in spirit and in truth!”
My brethren, permit me to add a few words in tender love to your souls. Do not you lean too much on the spirit and power which you believe rested upon your forefathers? Suppose it did! Will that avail you, if you do not drink into the same spirit? And how evident is this, — that, whatever you once were, ye are now “shorn of your strength!” Ye are weak and become like other men. The Lord is well-nigh departed from you. Where is now the spirit, the life, the power? Be not offended with my plain dealing, when I beseech you who are able to weigh things calmly, to open your eyes, and see multitudes, even in the Church, pursuing, yea, and attaining, the substance of spiritual life, and leaving unto you the shadow. Nay, a still greater evil is before you: For, if ye find not some effectual means to prevent it, your rising generation will utterly cast off the shadow as well as the substance.
11. There is an abundantly greater difference still, according to your own account, between us who profess ourselves members of the Church of England, and you who are members of the Church of Rome. But notwithstanding this, do you not agree with us in condemning the vices above recited; profaneness, drunkenness, whoredom, adultery, theft, disobedience to parents, and such like? And how unhappily do you agree with us in practicing the very vices which you condemn!
And yet you acknowledge, (nay, and frequently contend for this with a peculiar earnestness,) that every Christian is called to be “zealous of good works,” as well as to “deny himself and take up his cross daily.” How, then, do you depart from your own principles, when you are gluttons, drunkards, or epicures? when you live at your ease, in all the elegance and voluptuousness of a plentiful fortune? How will you reconcile the being adorned with gold, arrayed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously everyday, with the “denying yourself and taking up your cross daily?” Surely, while you indulge the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life, the excellent rules of self-denial that abound in your own writers leave you of all men most inexcusable.
12. Neither can this self-indulgence be reconciled with the being “zealous of good works.” For by this needless and continual expense, you disable yourself from doing good. You bind your own hands. You make it impossible for you to do that good which otherwise you might. So that you injure the poor in the same proportion as you poison your own soul. You might have clothed the naked; but what was due to them was thrown away on your costly apparel. You might have fed the hungry, entertained the stranger, relieved them that were sick or in prison; but the superfluities of your own table swallowed up that whereby they should have been profited. And so this wasting of thy Lord’s goods is an instance of complicated wickedness; since hereby thy poor brother perisheth, for whom Christ died.
I will not recommend to you either the writings or examples of those whom you account heretics: (Although some of these, if you could view them with impartial eyes, might “provoke you to jealousy:”) But O that God would write in your hearts the rules of self-denial and love laid down by Thomas a’ Kempis! or that you would follow, both in this and in good works, that burning and shining light of your own Church, the Marquis de Renty! Then would all who knew and loved the Lord rejoice to acknowledge you as the “Church of the living God;” when ye were zealous to every good word and work, and abstained from all appearance of evil; when it was hereby shown that you were filled with the Holy Ghost, and delivered from all unholy tempers; when ye were all “unblamable and unrebukable, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, showing forth” to all Jews, infidels, and heretics, by your active, patient, spotless love of God and man, “the praises of Him who had called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”
13. “Men and brethren, children of the seed of Abraham,” suffer me to speak a few words to you also; you who do not allow that Messiah the Prince is already come and cut off. However, you so far hear Moses and the Prophets as to allow,
(1.) That “it is the inspiration of the Holy One which giveth man understanding,” and that all the true children of God “are taught of God.”
(2.) That the substance both of the Law and the Prophets is contained in that one word, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.” And,
(3.) That the sure fruit of love is obedience, “ceasing from evil, and doing good.”
And do you walk by this rule? Have you yourselves that “inspiration of the Holy One?” Are you taught of God? Hath he opened your understanding? Have you the inward knowledge of the Most High? I fear not. Perhaps you know little more, even of the meaning of the words, than a Mahometan.
Let us go a little farther. Do you “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength?” Can you say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee?” Do you desire God at all? Do you desire to have any thing to do with him, till you can keep the world no longer? Are you not content, so you enjoy the good things of earth, to let God stand afar off? only calling upon him now and then, when you cannot do without him. Why then you do not love God at all, though you will sometimes condescend to use him. You love the world. This possesses your heart. This, therefore, is your God. You renounce the God of your fathers, the God of Israel; you are still uncircumcised in heart. Your own conscience bears witness, you in this no more hear Moses and the Prophets, than you do Jesus of Nazareth.
14. From Moses and the Prophets it has been shown, that your forefathers were a “faithless and stubborn generation; a generation which set not their hearts aright, and whose spirit cleaved not steadfastly unto God.” And this you acknowledge yourselves. If you are asked, “How is it that the promise is not fulfilled? Seeing ‘the scepter is’ long since ‘departed from Judah,’ why is not Shiloh come?” your usual answer is, “Because of the sins of our fathers God hath delayed his coming.” Have you then reformed from the sins of your fathers? Are you turned unto the Lord your God? Nay, do ye not tread in the same steps? Bating that single point of outward idolatry, what abomination did they ever commit, which you have not committed also, which the generality of you do not commit still according to your power? If therefore the coming of the Messiah was hindered by the sins of your forefathers, then, by the same rule, your continuance therein will hinder his coming to the end of the world. “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God” is, that he would “gather the outcasts of Israel.” And I doubt not, but, when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, then “all Israel shall be saved.” But, mean time, is there not great cause that ye should say with Daniel, “O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of face, as at this day, to the men of Judah, and unto all Israel. O Lord, we have sinned, we have rebelled against thee, neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God. Yet, O our God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations; for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hearken and do! Defer not, for thine own sake; for thy city and thy people that are called by thy name.”
15. I cannot conclude without addressing myself to you also, who do not admit either the Jewish or Christian Revelation. But still you desire to be happy. You own the essential difference between vice and virtue; and acknowledge, (as did all the wiser Greeks and Romans,) that vice cannot consist with happiness. You allow likewise that gratitude and benevolence, self-knowledge and modesty, mildness, temperance, patience, and generosity, are justly numbered among virtues; and that ingratitude and malice, envy and ill-nature, pride, insolence, and vanity, gluttony and luxury, covetousness and discontent, are vices of the highest kind. Now, let us calmly inquire how far your life is consistent with your principles.
You seek happiness. But you find it not. You come no nearer it with all your labors. You are not happier than you was a year ago. Nay, I doubt you are more unhappy. Why is this, but because you look for happiness there, where you own it cannot be found? Indeed, what is there on earth which can long satisfy a man of understanding? His soul is too large for the world he lives in. He wants more room.
AEstuat infelix angusto limite mundi,
Ut brevibus clausus Gyaris, parvaque Seripho. f18
He has already travelled through all which is called pleasure; diversions and entertainments of every kind. But among these he can find no enjoyment of any depth; they are empty, shallow, superficial things: They pleased for a while; but the gloss is gone, and now they are dull and tasteless. And what has he next? Only the same things again; for this world affords nothing more. It can supply him with no change. Go, feed again; but it is upon one dish still. Thus
Occidit miseros crambe repetita. f19
Yet what remedy under the sun?
16. The sounder judgment, the stronger understanding you have, the sooner are you sated with the world; and the more deeply convinced, all that cometh is vanity, foolish, insipid, nauseous. You see the foibles of men in so much clearer a light, and have the keener sense of the emptiness of life. Here you are, a poor, unsatisfied inhabitant of an unquiet world; turning your weary eyes on this side and on that side; seeking rest, but finding none. You seem to be out of your place: Neither the persons nor things that surround you are such as you want. You have a confused idea of something better than all this; but you know not where to find it. You are always gasping for something which you cannot attain, no, not if you range to the uttermost parts of the earth.
But this is not all. You are not only negatively unhappy, as finding nothing whereon to stay the weight of your soul; but positively so, because you are unholy: You are miserable, because you are vicious. Are you not vicious? Are you then full of gratitude to Him who giveth you life, and breath, and all things? Not so; you rather spurn his gifts, and murmur at Him that gave them. How often has your heart said, God did not use you well? How often have you questioned either his wisdom or goodness? Was this well done? What kind of gratitude is this? It is the best you are master of. Then take knowledge of yourself. Black ingratitude is rooted in your inmost frame. You can no more love God, than you can see him; or than you can be happy without that love.
Neither (how much soever you may pique yourself upon it) are you a lover of mankind. Can love and malice consist? benevolence and envy? O do not put out your own eyes! And are not these horrid tempers in you? Do not you envy one man, and bear malice or ill-will to another? I know you call these dispositions by softer names; but names change not the nature of things. You are pained that one should enjoy what you cannot enjoy yourself. Call this what you please, it is rank envy. You are grieved that a second enjoys even what you have yourself; you rejoice in seeing a third unhappy. Do not flatter yourself; this is malice, venomous malice, and nothing else. And how could you ever think of being happy, with malice and envy in your heart? Just as well might you expect to be at ease, while you holden burning coals in your bosom.
17. I entreat you to reflect, whether there are not other inhabitants in your breast, which leave no room for happiness there. May you not discover, through a thousand disguises, pride? too high an opinion of yourself? vanity, thirst of praise, even (who would believe it?) of the applause of knaves and fools? unevenness or sourness of temper? proneness to anger or revenge? peevishness, fretfulness, or pining discontent? Nay, perhaps even covetousness. — And did you ever think happiness could dwell with these? Awake out of that senseless dream. Think not of reconciling things incompatible. All these tempers are essential misery: So long as any of these are harboured in your breast, you must be a stranger to inward peace. What avails it you if there be no other hell? Whenever these fiends are let loose upon you, you will be constrained to own,
Hell is where’er I am: Myself am hell.
And can the Supreme Being love those tempers, which you yourself abhor in all but yourself? If not, they imply guilt as well as misery. Doubtless they do. Only inquire of your own heart. How often in the mid-career of your vice have you felt a secret reproof; which you knew not how to bear, and therefore stifled as soon as possible!
18. And did not even this point at an hereafter; a future state of existence? The more reasonable among you have no doubt of this; you do not imagine the whole man dies together; although you hardly suppose the soul, once disengaged, will dwell again in a house of clay. But how will your soul subsist without it? How are you qualified for a separate state? Suppose this earthly covering, this vehicle of organized matter, whereby you hold commerce with the material world, were now to drop off! Now, what would you do in the regions of immortality? You cannot eat or drink there. You cannot indulge either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life. You love only worldly things; and they are gone, fled as smoke, driven away for ever. Here is no possibility of sensual enjoyments; and you have a relish for nothing else. O what a separation is this, from all that you hold dear! What breach is made, never to be healed! But beside this, you are unholy, full of evil tempers; for you did not put off these with the body; you did not leave pride, revenge, malice, envy, discontent, behind you, when you left the world. And now you are no longer cheered by the light of the sun, nor diverted by the flux of various objects; but those dogs of hell are let loose to prey upon your soul, with their whole unrebated strength. Nor is there any hope that your spirit will now ever be restored to its original purity; not even that poor hope of a purging fire, so elegantly described by the heathen poet, some ages before the notion was revived among the doctrines of the Romish Church. Aliae panduntur inanes
Suspensae ad ventos; aliis sub gurgite vasto
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni. —
Donec longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe,
Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit
AEthereum sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem. f20
19. What a great gulf then is fixed between you and happiness, both in this world and that which is to come! Well may you shudder at the thought! more especially when you are about to enter on that untried state of existence. For what a prospect is this, when you stand on the verge of life, ready to launch out into eternity! What can you then think? You see nothing before you. All is dark and dreary. On the very best supposition, how well may you address your parting soul in the words of dying Adrian: —
Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing,
Must we no longer live together?
And dost thou prune thy trembling wing.
To take thy flight thou know’st not whither?
Thy pleasing vein, thy humorous folly
Is all neglected, all forgot;
And pensive, wavering, melancholy,
Thou hop’st and fear’st thou know’st not what.
“Thou know’st not what!” Here is the sting, suppose there were no other. To be “thou know’st not what” not for a month, or a year, but through the countless ages of eternity! What a tormenting uncertainty must this be! What racking unwillingness must it occasion, to exchange even this known vale of tears for the unknown valley of the shadow of death! And is there no cure for this? Indeed there is an effectual cure; even the knowledge and love of God. There is a knowledge of God which unveils eternity, and a love of God which endears it. That knowledge makes the great abyss visible; and all uncertainty vanishes away. That love makes it amiable to the soul, so that fear has no more place! But the moment God says, by the welcome angel of death, “Come thou up hither!” she Claps the glad wing, and towers away,
And mingles with the blaze of day.
20. See ye not what advantage every way a Christian has over you? Probably the reason you saw it not before was, because you knew none but nominal Christians; men who professed to believe more, (in their way of believing,) but had no more of the knowledge or love of God than yourselves: So that with regard to real, inward religion, you stood upon even ground. And perhaps in many branches of outward religion the advantage was on your side.
May the Lord, the God of the Christians, either reform these wretches, or take them away from the earth, that lay this grand stumbling-block in the way of those who desire to know the will of God!
O ye who desire to know his will, regard them not! If it be possible, blot them out of your remembrance.
They neither can nor will do you any good. O, suffer them not to do you harm! Be not prejudiced against Christianity by those who know nothing at all of it: Nay, they condemn it, all real substantial Christianity; they speak evil of the thing they know not; they have a kind of cant word for the whole religion of the heart; they call it enthusiasm. I will briefly lay before you the ground of the matter, and appeal to you yourselves for the reasonableness of it.
21. What a miserable drudgery is the service of God, unless I love the God whom I serve! But I cannot love one whom I know not. How then can I love God till I know him? And how is it possible I should know God, unless he make himself known unto me? By analogy or proportion? Very good. But where is that proportion to be found? What proportion does a creature bear to its Creator? What is the proportion between finite and infinite?
I grant, the existence of the creatures demonstratively shows the existence of their Creator. The whole creation speaks that there is a God. But that is not the point in question. I know there is a God. Thus far is clear. But who will show me what that God is? The more I reflect the more convinced I am, that it is not possible for any or all the creatures to take off the veil which is on my heart, that I might discern this unknown God; to draw the curtain back which now hangs between, that I may see Him which is invisible.
This veil of flesh now hides him from my sight; and who is able to make it transparent? so that I may perceive, through this glass, God always before me, till I see him “face to face.”
I want to know this great God who filleth heaven and earth; who is above, beneath, and on every side, in all places of his dominion; who just now besets me behind and before, and lays his hand upon me; and yet I am no more acquainted with him, than with one of the inhabitants of Jupiter or Saturn.
O my friend, how will you get one step farther, unless God reveal himself to your soul?
22. And why should this seem a thing incredible to you; that God, a Spirit, and the Father of the spirits of all flesh, should discover himself to your spirit, which is itself “the breath of God,” divinae particula aurae; any more than that material things should discover themselves to your material eye? Is it any more repugnant to reason, that spirit should influence spirit, than that matter should influence matter? Nay, is not the former the more intelligible of the two? For there is the utmost difficulty in conceiving how matter should influence matter at all; how that which is totally passive should act. Neither can we rationally account either for gravitation, attraction, or any natural motion whatsoever, but by supposing in all the finger of God, who alone conquers that vis inertiae which is essential to every particle of matter, and worketh all in all.
Now, if God should ever open the eyes of your understanding, must not the love of God be the immediate consequence? Do you imagine you can see God without loving him? Is it possible in the nature of things? Si virtus conspiceretur oculis, (said the old Heathen,) mirabiles amores excitaret sui. f21 How much more if you see Him who is the original fountain, the great archetype of all virtue, will that sight raise in you a love that is wonderful, such as the gay and busy world know not of!
23. What benevolence also, what tender love to the whole of human kind, will you drink in, together with the love of God, from the unexhausted source of love! And how easy is it to conceive that more and more of his image will be then transfused into your soul; that from disinterested love, all other divine tempers will, as it were naturally, spring: Mildness, gentleness, patience, temperance, justice, sincerity, contempt of the world; yea, whatsoever things are venerable and lovely, whatsoever are justly of good report!
And when you thus love God and all mankind, and are transformed into his likeness, then the commandments of God will not be grievous; you will no more complain that they destroy the comforts of life: So far from it, that they will be the very joy of your heart; ways of pleasantness, paths of peace! You will experience here that solid happiness which you had elsewhere sought in vain. Without servile fear or anxious care, so long as you continue on earth, you will gladly do the will of God here as the angels do it in heaven; and when the time is come that you should depart hence, when God says, “Arise, and come away,” you will pass with joy unspeakable out of the body, into all the fulness of God. Now, does not your own heart condemn you if you call this religion enthusiasm? O leave that to those blind zealots who tack together a set of opinions and an outside worship, and call this poor, dull, lifeless thing by the sacred name of Christianity! Well might you account such Christianity as this a mere piece of empty pageantry, fit indeed to keep the vulgar in awe, but beneath the regard of a man of understanding.
But in how different a light does it now appear! If there be such a religion as I have sketched out, must not every reasonable man see there is nothing on earth to be desired in comparison of it? But if any man desire this, let him ask of God; he giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.
24. May you not ask, quite consistently with your principles, in some manner resembling this? —
“O thou Being of beings, thou cause of all, thou seest my heart; thou understandest all my thoughts: But how small a part of thy ways do I understand! I know not what is above, beneath, on every side; I know not my own soul. Only this I know, I am not what I ought to be. I see and approve the virtue which I have not. I do not love thee, neither am I thankful. I commend the love of mankind; but I feel it not. Thou hast seen hatred, malice, envy in my heart; thou hast seen anger, murmuring, discontent. These uneasy passions harrow up my soul. I cannot rest while I am under this yoke; nor am I able to shake it off; I am unhappy, and that thou knowest.
“Have compassion upon me, thou whose years do not fail! on me who have but a short time to live. I rise up, and am cut down as a flower. I flee as it were a shadow. Yet a little while and I return to dust, and have no more place under the sun.
“Yet I know thou hast made my soul to live for ever; but I know not where, and I am unwilling to try. I tremble, I am afraid to go thither, whence I shall not return. I stand quivering on the edge of the gulf; for clouds and darkness rest upon it. O God! must I go always ‘creeping with terrors, and plunge into eternity with a peradventure!’
“O thou Lover of men, is there no help in thee? I have heard (what indeed my heart cannot conceive) that thou revealest thyself to those that seek thee, and pourest thy love into their hearts; and that they who know and love thee, walk through the shadow of death and fear no evil. O that this were so! that there was such an unspeakable gift given to the children of me! for then might I hope for it. O God, if there be, give it unto me! Speak, that I may see thee! Make thyself known unto me also in the manner that thou knowest! In anywise, let me know thee, and love thee, that I may be formed after thy likeness! That I may be love, as thou art love; that I may now be happy in thee; and, when thou wilt, fall into the abyss of thy love, and enjoy thee through the ages of eternity.”