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