To Mr. Knox
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CCXVI. — To Mr. Knox.
DEAR SIR, SLIGO, May 30, 1765.
PROBABLY this will be the last trouble of the kind which you will receive from me. If you receive it in the same spirit wherein it is wrote, I shall be glad. If not, my regard is with the Most High. I did not choose it should be delivered till I was gone, lest you should think I wanted something from you. By the blessing of God, I want nothing, only that you should be happy in time and in eternity.
Still I cannot but remember the clear light you had with regard to the nature of real, scriptural Christianity. You saw what heart-religion meant, and the gate of it, justification. You had earnest desires to be a partaker of the whole Gospel blessing: And you discovered the sincerity of those desires, by the steps you took in your family. So that in everything you was hastening to be, not almost, but altogether, a Christian. Where is that light now? Do you now see that true religion is not a negative or an external thing; but the life of God in the soul of man; the image of God stamped upon the heart? Do you now see, that in order to this, we are justified freely, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus? Where are the desires after this, which you once felt? the hungering and thirsting after righteousness? And where are the outward marks of a soul groaning after God, and refusing to be comforted with anything less than his love?
Will you say, “But if I had gone on in that way, I should have lost my friends and my reputation?” This is partly true. You would have lost most of those friends who neither love nor fear God. Happy loss! These are the men who do you more hurt than all the world besides. These are the men whom, if ever you would be a real Christian, you must avoid as you would avoid hell fire. “But then they will censure me.” So they will. They will say you are a fool, a madman, and what not. But what are you the worse for this? Why, the Spirit of glory and of Christ shall rest upon you. “But it will hurt me in my business.” Suppose it should, the favor of God would make large amends. But very probably it would not. For the winds and the seas are in God’s hands, as well as the hearts of men. “But it is inconsistent with my duty to the Church.” Can a man of understanding talk so, and talk so in earnest? Is it not rather a copy of his countenance? Indeed, if you mean, “inconsistent with my pleasing this or that Clergyman,” I allow it. But let them be pleased, or displeased, please thou God. But are these Clergymen the Church? Unless they are holy men, earnestly loving and serving God, they are not even members of the Church; they are no part of it. And unless they preach the doctrines of the Church, contained in her Articles and Liturgy, they are no true Ministers of the Church, but are eating her bread and tearing out her bowels! “But you will not leave the Church.” You never will by my advice: I advise just the contrary: I advise you to lose no opportunity of attending the service of the Church, and receiving the Lord’s supper, and of showing