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Liberal and Mystical 
 Writings of William 
 
 Law \ With an Introduction 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SCOTT PALMER 
 
 Al^D A TREFACE 
 
 BY 
 
 W. p. DuBOSE, M.A., S.T.D. 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
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 All rights reser-ved 
 
Las 
 
 EBAL 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACK. 
 
 Preface ____----- vii 
 
 Introduction _____--- i 
 
 The Spirit of Prayer - - - - - - -II 
 
 Appendix to the Spirit of Prayer - - - - 23 
 
 The Spirit of Love -------29 
 
 An Appeal TO All WHO Doubt the Truths OF THE Gospel - 41 
 Some Animadversions -------59 
 
 An Earnest and Serious Answer - - - - - 6^ 
 
 A Demonstration of the Errors of a late Book - - Jl 
 
 A Collection of Letters - - - - - -87 
 
 An Address to the Clergy - - - - - -103 
 
 The Way to Divine Knowledge - - - - -121 
 
 The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration - 151 
 
 A Short Confutation - - - - - - -161 
 
1>NIVER3ITY 
 
 OF 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The advance sheets of this book are sent to me without 
 explanation, comment, or suggestion — with a simple request 
 for what I may have to say about it. I am not in the secret 
 and know nothing of the reason of its appearance. I am free 
 therefore to use conjecture, to speculate at will upon what 
 may be, upon what I devoutly hope is, the meaning of it. 
 Does it indicate a want? Does it announce a movement? 
 There is no truth so needed, there is no way to it so plain and 
 direct, as the truth and the way which we do well to associate 
 with the name of William Law. 
 
 Before me, too, the real William Law stands here for the 
 first time. I have indeed from childhood owned A Serious 
 Call to a Devout and Holy Life, but I have never really known 
 it, and I have known nothing else of its author. Personally 
 he is not one of the influences that have entered into my mind 
 or my life. And I am grateful for it ; for I see now that to 
 have known him would have too much forestalled the blessed 
 labour of a lifetime. What of truth or of method identical 
 with his I may have attained, I would not forego having 
 wrought out with toil and pain of my own, or at the feet of 
 masters higher than he, even the Highest. I speak not 
 individually but representatively ; I trust I am only one of 
 more than seven thousand who know that, whether in 
 William Law or in themselves, the One Way will always 
 lead to the One Truth and the One Life. 
 
 The simple re-publication of William Law would have 
 much interest and profit for me personally, but I shall be 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 sorely disappointed if it is an end and not a new beginning. 
 We want, after all, not William Law, but what William Law 
 stands for, or stood for in his day. Essentially that is the 
 same thing then and now ; but it needs to be stood for now 
 as well as then. A living truth wants living, and not only 
 dead, witnesses. Is this the beginning of a movement to 
 raise up a more living testimony to the Reality of God — God 
 in His World, God in His Christ, God in His Church, God 
 in us all if we would but know it? Simply that is all that 
 Law stands for ; simply that is all we need to stand for — but 
 simply that is All. 
 
 As I am free to conjecture a movement in this matter, so 
 I shall be free to speculate a little upon a programme for the 
 movement ; but to avoid all appearance of speaking with either 
 knowledge or authority, I shall have to speak more than I 
 would like in the first person only. 
 
 If this is to be a revival of mysticism, we shall have to 
 consider a little what mysticism is, or at least what we are 
 going to mean by it — what our mysticism is going to be. 
 The ordinary sensational or rational conception is that all we 
 know of reality is by inference, deduction, or induction from 
 the known facts of sensible experience. Mysticism, on the 
 contrary, is supposed to involve a direct or immediate com- 
 munication to the receptive soul of a reality outside of and 
 above the possibility of mere sensible experience. As the 
 heavens are reflected and repeated in the answering depths 
 of a placid lake, so the Heaven of God is mirrored in the 
 responsive soul of man. For one, that is not my mysticism ; 
 that is not the way in which reality comes to me. It comes 
 to me all out of the fathomless depths of myself. There are 
 but two things that I know directly and immediately, and 
 therefore really know at all : myself and God — God and 
 myself. When I speak of knowing either myself or God I 
 assume a measureless distinction between knowing and 
 adequate or complete knowing. I shall only in eternity 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 adequately know myself ; but in my first sensation as an 
 infant there was an actual beginning of all that self-knowledge, 
 of the direct and immediate experience of myself to which 
 there is no temporal or finite limit. 
 
 Noverivi Te, Domine, noverim me! Noverim me, noverim 
 Te ! That is the only immediate and real knowledge. I have 
 the immediate experience, the direct knowledge of myself — 
 but what is myself? To say that I cannot know myself in 
 myself — because in fact I am not in myself — is only half a 
 truth ; the other half truth is that I am never only myself but 
 always immeasurably more than myself. What is that more, 
 the universal of which I am a particular, the whole of which 
 I am a part? I can think out myself only on the lines of 
 myself, and I cannot think out myself on the true lines of 
 myself, I cannot follow the true way that leads from initial 
 to adequate and complete knowledge of myself, without 
 coming straight to God. What is God but the infinite Me, 
 the infinite All of us, the infinite All in all? When I try to 
 think myself out to perfection, or to the limit, what concep- 
 tion can I come to but that of infinite intelligence or wisdom, 
 infinite feeling, affection, or love, infinite energy, activity, or 
 freedom, infinite order, beauty, or law — in a word, infinite 
 selfhood or personality ? And what is all that but God in 
 whom I am, and Who in my measure is in me? Is there any 
 other alternative to that than to think of myself as part in the 
 fortuitous play of eternal so-called matter? And can that 
 ever explain or express Me? 
 
 I know that Jesus Christ is the Truth, because as a matter 
 of fact only Jesus Christ perfectly expresses and reveals to 
 me the truth of God and myself, myself in God and God in 
 myself. That which is the truth of us is necessarily truth 
 to us, if we will let ourselves know the truth. Incarnation, 
 redemption, completion, at-one-ment, resurrection, eternal 
 life are self-evident facts in Christ. Not to know that truth 
 is not to see the light. Jesus Christ is the only and infallible 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 proof of Himself to every one who will let himself know; 
 because in Christ we are revealed to ourselves as the finite of 
 God, and God is revealed to us as the Universal or Infinite 
 of ourselves. 
 
 The faith of William Law is identical with that for which 
 we would stand now, and can hardly be repeated in better 
 terms than those used by him two centuries ago. His 
 mentality, too, to use a recent distinction, is in many respects 
 singularly modern. But considering the particular centuries 
 that separate us from him, it will be seen that he can speak 
 to us to-day only by awaking and raising successors to 
 himself in and of this Twentieth Century. Mysticism has 
 been regarded hitherto in the light of a retreat or refuge 
 from the world. It has been the part of the reflective or 
 contemplative life, beside and quite apart from what is 
 considered the actual life of men. Any mysticism that would 
 come forward now must be of another sort : it must be of the 
 practical, active kind, like St. Paul's, or better still the 
 living, searching, quickening sort of our Lord's. We want 
 a real God, the living Christ, not only in meditation but in 
 action, not in our retreats only but in our furthest advances, 
 in our most active enterprises and our most enterprising 
 activities. 
 
 It is the greatest of mistakes to suppose that all that is true 
 in mysticism is not applicable to action, and is not indeed 
 necessary to all truest and highest action. Mysticism means 
 God or Reality in all life, and there most where life is most 
 active and most urgent and most real. Our Lord was never 
 more a mystic than in the act, the moment of supreme action 
 as well as passion, in which He conquered and destroyed sin 
 and death and hell, and brought life and immortality to light. 
 
 It was said long ago that life is lived in the leisure that 
 follows labour : meaning by labour the natural and necessary 
 toil of our earthly life. And the saying has been interpreted 
 to make a clear separation between the making a living in 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 this world and living a quite other life in the imagination or 
 in the affections or in the spirit. But the interpretation 
 might be with more truth quite reversed by emphasizing not 
 the word follows, which divides, but the word labour, which 
 unites and identifies the two things spoken of. The life here, 
 and the toil and pain and earning of it, is the antecedent and 
 condition of any other life that can follow or go beyond it. 
 The leisure in which alone the latter is lived would have no 
 meaning, and could have no existence, out of vital connection 
 with the labour that preceded and prepared it. We cannot 
 live either a contemplative life apart from an active one, or a 
 heavenly one apart from the earthly one. The one is the 
 necessary condition, the only opportunity, instrument, or 
 means we have of working out or in any way attaining the 
 other. There is a natural and there is a spiritual. Howbeit, 
 that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, 
 and (only) afterward that which is spiritual. Life is lived 
 only in a leisure that follows labour. Only he who knows 
 how to live this will know how to live that. And the follo^vs 
 here is only logical and not necessarily chronological. The 
 meaning is, that it is only as we truly live all our natural 
 life that we can by means of it live our divine or heavenly 
 life. 
 
 What is the heavenly life, the life of God in us? It is not 
 defined for us in thought, it is expressed for us in action : it 
 is the life of Christ. And the expression of it in Him is as 
 simple and plain in meaning as it is thorough and complete 
 in fact. The Son of Man is come not to be served, but to 
 serve : to spend His life, to give Himself, in service : to be 
 not Lord of all, but servant of all — or Lord only as servant. 
 The point is, that in that simple statement we have the scien- 
 tifically exact and complete expression of the meaning of 
 human life — of all its truth, its beauty, or its blessedness. 
 The necessary Spirit of all real Service is Love, the universal 
 Form of it is Sacrifice. In these few words we have all the 
 
xH PREFACE 
 
 secret of the life of Christ : all the truth of God in Christ and 
 Christ in us, which is Christianity. We can realize this in 
 thought only as we realize it in life : we can know it only as 
 we do it, and in doing we cannot but know it. Christ comes to 
 us indeed at first as an idea or an ideal, as a sentiment and a 
 hope ; but the idea becomes knowledge, and the hope posses- 
 sion and fruition, only in the actual participation of the life. 
 
 What we need to remember is that the common sense of 
 humanity recognizes this truth, however little it realizes it. 
 There is no part of life which is not actual service, and which 
 is not perfect just in proportion as it is real service — that is, 
 as its spirit is love, and its form is sacrifice. The moment 
 human labour really begins, it begins to differentiate and 
 specialize : it enters upon that division of labour which is 
 co-operation and service. What occupation or business, 
 what trade, calling, or profession is there which does not call 
 itself, does not profess to be, a service of others : which does 
 not go upon the avowed principle that as a matter of fact we 
 serve ourselves only in serving others ? The merchant serves 
 his customers, the lawyer his clients, the physician his 
 patients, the legislator his constituents ; and all the world 
 knows perfectly well that the true principle and direction of 
 service is, not, He serves others best who most serves himself, 
 but. He only trulv serves himself who best serves others. 
 Self is most in the result, the reward, where it has been least 
 in the motive or the thought. We shall never get deeper in 
 either fact or terms than this, that only he who loses himself 
 shall find himself. Our life is not in ourself but in others, in 
 All, in God. Ourself is indeed everything to us ; but we must 
 find it where it is, we must seek that in which it is, or which 
 is it. 
 
 This is of course the mere commonplace of Christianity, 
 but the point to note is that it is eqiiall) the language and the 
 profession of commonsense. The world at every point wants 
 to serve us, it says. Does it? — or does it not? Is it we or 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 itself that it wants to serve? What a little question and 
 what an immeasurable distinction ! In that difference lies 
 all the reality of God, all the life of Christ, all the kingdom of 
 heaven. Now this distinction is to be made, this difference 
 is to be attained by us only in the natural conditions and 
 experiences of the every day earthly life. We shall not find 
 that kingdom of heaven in any escape from the world, in the 
 wilderness or the desert, in mystic contemplation or divine 
 abstraction and absorption. 
 
 Mysticism means for us the immediacy and reality of God 
 in us ; and this age wants God in us in all the complex 
 relations and activities of our intense social life, in our 
 homes, in our business, in our politics and our statesmanship. 
 How the trite truth that public office is a public trust has 
 been made to come home to us by timely and practical 
 emphasis in these late years ! But what part in the universal 
 division and co-operation of labour and of life falls to any 
 one of us that is not in its measure an office from and a trust 
 for a lesser or a larger public? All life, seen in the true 
 human light of Jesus Christ, is an office, a ministry, a divine 
 service, wherein we find ourselves in the only way and place 
 of giving ourselves to God and others. 
 
 We say this over and over again, and the world knows it 
 and feels it, and says it with us, — when it lets itself think and 
 feel and speak the truth. But where are we the nearer to 
 bridging the chasm between ideas or ideals and sentiments 
 on the one side, and God, Reality, the Life of Christ on the 
 other side? Seek ye first the kingdom and righteousness of 
 God, and all things else shall be yours. How true that is, 
 and how well we know it ! Who gainsays the fact that the 
 first condition of any real success in act or life, or of any 
 resultant real reward or blessedness, is that it shall be a right 
 act or the right life? How well we know it, how easily we 
 ignore it ! A man may gain the whole world and lose his 
 soul, his life, himself, — and that upon a construction which 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 the world itself will put upon what constitutes the man's life, 
 soul, self. On the other hand there is such a thing as losing-, 
 giving up the whole world, and thereby, not merely finding, 
 but in reality making or attaining oneself, the real and true 
 Self of God in us. 
 
 If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye will do them : 
 the blessedness of Christianity is inseparably connected, not 
 with the knowing, but with the doing it. It ceases to be 
 valued within or respected without because we have lost out 
 of it the element of the heroic, which is the mark of its 
 divinity. What does Christianity do for you? — they say ; or, 
 for us? — we ourselves say. Here is the answer : What does 
 Christ say to faith? Be it unto thee even as thou wilt : it will 
 be to thee all that thou wilt take it and make it ; it can be no 
 more. How can Christ be in us what we will not be in Him 
 — or more than we will be in Him? What we want to give 
 to our age is the mysticism not of thought or feeling only but 
 of power, the immediacy and reality of Christ and of God in 
 us, a present actuality of eternal divine life. We want our 
 new mystics among men in the world, not outside of it ; men 
 in business, in society, in politics, in public position. It is 
 absurd to say that when common sense and common consent 
 agree with divine revelation in asserting that the first law or 
 principle of human act or activity is the fundamental one of 
 right, rightness, or righteousness ; that the only actual or 
 conceivable possible principle of righteousness is the principle 
 of that service which is itself love and takes everywhere the 
 divine form of sacrifice ; that this is what we mean by God 
 and Christ, — or rather that this is what God and Christ them- 
 selves mean in the world ; — it is absurd, I say, to imagine 
 that the introduction of such a mysticism as that is a thing 
 not to be attempted and not to be accomplished, or that the 
 accomplishment or even the attempt will make us less men, or 
 the world less the world, or business less business, or life less 
 life. Nothing is ever lessened by the real and heroic attempt 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 to make it what every one knows it oufjht to be. We oug^ht 
 never to despair of heroism or surrender the hope of reahty. 
 What ought to be can be ; and as things are here, according 
 to their definite and determined constitution in this world, 
 what ought to be can be only through us : only we can make 
 it possible or actual. God works in ways and by agencies 
 which, because they are His, will remain what they are. 
 We are His agents in the world for making the world what 
 it ought to be and is to be : He will not make it unless we will 
 make it, or until we will make it. God is not going to do 
 any part of our work instead of us — that would be to unmake 
 us ; He waits, and will hasten, to do all our work in us and 
 with us, just so soon and just so far as we will do it in and 
 with Him. 
 
 The type of mysticism we want is that of St. Paul ; the 
 immediacy and reality of God in Christ, and that, not instead 
 of, but in, and one with, himself too ; such a being of God in 
 him and himself in God as brooks no possibility of ultimate 
 opposition or defeat. If God is with me what can be against 
 me? In all these things, in all that can befall me, I am more 
 than conqueror ; I can do all and endure all and become and 
 be all, through Him that loved me and gave Himself for me 
 and dwells in me. It is only a true living, active, working 
 mysticism of the most actual and practical kind that can 
 understand or interpret St. Paul. We must not associate 
 with such a mysticism the conception of an impatient and 
 impracticable optimism. St. Paul's victory was often 
 enough matter not of sensible experience, but of invincible 
 and indestructible faith and hope. It had this foundation 
 which could never be removed : I know in Whom I have 
 trusted, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which 
 I have committed unto Him. 
 
 As the tendency of mysticism in general has been to detach 
 itself from the world, so has it been also to detach itself from 
 the Church. Its immediate contact and dealing with God 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 has made it more or less independent of the help of any inter- 
 mediary between God and itself. It is true that the primary 
 and essential truth of mysticism is prior to Sacrament or 
 Church or even to the historical event of the Incarnation 
 itself. It lies in the nature of God and of man and of their 
 natural relation and potential relationship. It is the nature 
 of things that man is in God and that God should be in man. 
 Man is necessarily in God, but only potentially is God in man 
 in the full sense in which He is destined to be so. The 
 actualization of that potentiality must of necessity wait and 
 depend upon man. We are sons of God ; but it is equally 
 true that we are not His sons until we become so. We are 
 so by nature potentid; we are so actu only by grace through 
 faith ; that is to say, only by the actual birth and nature and 
 life of God in us. It is not a natural relation only, but an 
 actualized living relationship, a personal participation of 
 common life, that makes us sons in all the meaning and 
 reality of sonship. 
 
 The Incarnation was an act in time only because it was a 
 truth in eternity. It was the predestined truth of the whole 
 and ultimate — not only relation but — relationship between 
 God and His world. Men become One in Christ because it 
 was their nature and therefore their destinature so to become 
 one. The necessary truth and the self-evidence of the Incar- 
 nation as an historical fact rest upon its entire connection 
 and identity with the prior truth of the related natures and 
 the predestined relationship of God and man. It has been 
 possible for mysticism to be so absorbed in the higher and 
 prior truth as to be neglectful of the lower and temporal act 
 and fact of the Incarnation. 
 
 As the truth of the Incarnation consisted in the perfection 
 of its connection with and its actualization of prior and 
 eternal processes, so the Church has no reason or meaning 
 other than the continuation and completion of the work of 
 the Incarnation, There is no other truth or justification of 
 
-^' PREFACE xvii 
 
 it than as part of the eternal process of the unification of God 
 and His world, God and man. But we must not, through 
 absorption in the prior and what we may consider the higher 
 significance of this process, forget or neglect the later and 
 what may seem to us the lower stages of it. We want not 
 only meanings but means, not only truth but application. 
 Although Christ in one sense is in us all, yet in an equally 
 important sense He will not come in us unless He comes to us. 
 All ourselves were eternally in Christ ; but we should never 
 have come to ourselves in Christ if Christ had not come to us 
 in Himself, and did not continue to come to us in His 
 Church. He must be an immediate and living reality to us, 
 as in His eternal truth, so no less in His temporal manifesta- 
 tion and in His continued presence and operation. We shall 
 never develop into God and ourselves immanently or by 
 natural process, except as we foresee God and ourselves 
 transcendently, without us and ever before us, to be sought, 
 overtaken, and attained in the eternity it will need, by the 
 spiritual and moral processes of grace, faith, and personal 
 self-realization. 
 
 As therefore our mysticism must be in the world, so must 
 it be in the Church. We may have yet to define what the 
 Church is ; but if we need to understand, or ev^en in a sense 
 to discover it, we can never by possibility dispense with or 
 discard it. I will go further and say that we can never 
 materially alter its own essential notes of itself : in its true 
 and ultimate nature it can never be other than One, Holy, 
 Catholic, and Apostolic. We may have to revise, we may 
 not yet have half comprehended, all or any of these terms. 
 But they are all truer than we know, and our further task 
 is to interpret and realize them, not to outgrow or discard. 
 
 I have suggested certain emphases, not as lacking in the 
 volume before us, but as seeming specially needful for the 
 times. I have forgotten William Law in the thought of the 
 Mystics of the 20th Century, who seem to me already to be 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 in existence, known to God and needing only, like the seven 
 thousand, to be known to themselves. May this reappear- 
 ance of William Law help to reveal and begin to combine 
 and unite them ! 
 
 I would say in conclusion that in the introduction to this 
 volume, and in other writings by the same author, now for 
 the first time before me, I see indications of leadership 
 which greatly encourage me, and a spirit, direction, and 
 method with which I thoroughly sympathize and concur. 
 And the great gratification and hope of it is, that this call 
 to us to come up higher and make our Christianity more real 
 comes to us out of the heart of the Laity of the Church. 
 
 W. P. DuBosE. 
 
Liberal and Mystical Writings 
 of William Law 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 We are losers by the fact that William Law wrote A Serious 
 Call to a Devout and Holy Life. The book is a master- 
 piece m Its way; it has elements too of popularity it is 
 stirrmg and terrible, if one is of Law's mind when he 
 wrote It ; and it may be amusing if one is not. But o-reat 
 and even lastmg as are its merits, it conceals Law; it^'mis- 
 represents the man as he himself desired to be known by us • 
 and because it is so far and so justly renowned, it blots out 
 for us by sheer magnitude of appearance the wise, profound 
 and tender thmgs of the message he gave after his gift of 
 religious msight had developed. That he ever became a 
 great seer of truth is due to the influence of Jacob Behmen's 
 niystical and theosophical teaching, which turned him from 
 the mind in which he wrote A Serious Call, to the larger 
 mind in which he wrote those "golden books," The Spirit 
 of Prayer and The Spirit of Love, and The Way to Divine 
 Knoideclge. In this larger mind he interpreted Behmen as 
 no one else has interpreted him. And he not only did this 
 but m so doing he anticipated much of the religious 
 Liberalism which surrounds us to-day, and in which the 
 growing life of the Church is finding new expression True 
 Christian mysticism, in every place and time, is at one with 
 this movement; but the mysticism of Law is not onlv 
 peculiarly easy for men who are not mystics to lav hold 
 of intelligently; it illustrates and even illuminates both 
 the psychology and the philosophy that are now effectin<^ 
 momentous changes in our thought. Law uses in his owS 
 manner the language of that kind of pragmatism which 
 
2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 is being absorbed by Catholic thinkers ; he accepts and 
 apphes the principle and the method of immanence ; and his 
 philosophy is one of intuition and action as opposed to 
 a bare intellectualism, and to the abstract reason of 
 rationalists. By his continual appeal to the plain man's 
 experience he leads him to discover what these things should 
 mean to him ; and in these matters and this appeal he is a 
 modern of moderns. But I have found that in spite of his 
 plainness, and of the pertinence of his message in the present 
 day, it is almost impossible to induce people to read him. 
 They are discouraged by the occasional intrusion of Behmen's 
 repellent symbolism, and by the argumentative use he often 
 makes both of this, and of the symbolism and allegory of the 
 Old Testament. Of course, he was of his passing age, 
 although he was also of the perennial age of the prophets. 
 He knew nothing of the enlightening product of a co- 
 ordinated Biblical criticism which we enjoy ; and which has 
 shown us the manner and the means of the revelation of 
 God in man, with a force, clearness, and penetration that 
 cannot be resisted, and must go on to transform even our 
 own manner of speaking and thinking of religious truth. 
 The new scientific knowledge of man, also, as given to us 
 in the progress of psychology, and in the biological investi- 
 gation of origins, was out of his reach. He knew nothing of 
 racial evolution, or of the derivation of the nature of man 
 from his pre-human ancestors. And so, in his interpretation 
 of the obvious facts of universal actual sin, he had nothing 
 to oppose to a doctrine of the corruption of human nature, 
 and its inheritance by every descendant of an Adam who had 
 fallen from original righteousness in Paradise. This had 
 come to him in a curious form in the cosmological speculation 
 of Behmen, who, as a Lutheran, had been taught to hold a 
 view of natural corruption much more extreme and dis- 
 proportionate to facts than Catholic teaching permits. The 
 effect upon Law was in certain respects very serious. 
 Behmen's erroneous doctrine pervades his later writings, and 
 determines the form given to his arguments. But it is 
 exceedingly interesting to find that, in spite of the stress laid 
 by him upon original righteousness and transmitted cor- 
 ruption of nature, these speculative mistakes are quite 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 unessential to his teaching, and the whole force and meaning 
 of it is preserved if we translate them into the language of 
 our own thought, and in terms of a profounder knowledge 
 of the history and constitution of mankind. We can do this 
 without loss, because Law was fully aware that actual sin 
 is entirely an affair of the will ; and because he conceived 
 redemption as a process of the indwelling Christ, affecting 
 both the inherited nature and every operation of man, 
 volitional or otherwise. But we may reasonably think that 
 he would have welcomed such teaching as is given, for 
 instance, in Mr. Tennant's admirable Hulsean Lectures on 
 The Origin and Propagation of Sin; and would have found 
 it at least as congruous with his general body of thought as 
 were the speculative extravagancies of Behmen. If we 
 translate an occasional allusion here and there, the passages 
 given in this book will be found harmonious with the now 
 growing belief that, as Mr. Tennant says, " we find the 
 ground of the possibility and occasion for sin in our natural 
 constitution regarded as the perfectly normal result of a 
 process of development through which the race has passed 
 previously to the acquisition of full personality ; and . . . 
 we assign the rise of evil itself simply to the difficulty of 
 the task which has to be encountered by every individual 
 person alike, the task of enforcing his inherited organic 
 nature to obey a moral law which he has only gradually been 
 enabled to discern."* 
 
 In many passages, however, which I have omitted, 
 Behmen 's speculations obtrude themselves so much as to 
 become irritating to us who are seeking the mind of Law, 
 as well as the noble thoughts of Behmen himself, in which 
 he tries to embody his deep spiritual experience. All such 
 parts of Law's books I have omitted, but every omission is 
 marked by spaces. 
 
 Only two of the books which I have used are now in print 
 — The Spirit of Prayer and The Spirit of Love. This fact 
 alone justifies me, I think, in presenting a large part of The 
 Way to Divine Knowledge and other writings, in order that 
 we who know him, if we know him at all, as only the author 
 
 * Tennant : " The Origin and Propagation of Sin," p. 81. Cambridge 
 University Press. 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of a literary classic, or a religious book that is no longer 
 alive for us, may have a further opportunity to discover 
 him in his different manner. He has, indeed, much to 
 give and to teach. He is able to show us that the principle 
 and the method of that immanence, of which we hear every 
 day, do not, when rightly conceived and used, lead to the 
 doctrine of immanence justly said to share the perils of 
 Pantheism. It is true that he was accused during his 
 lifetime of being a follower of Spinoza ; but this was almost 
 inevitable for a mystic in the eighteenth century, and he 
 repudiated the charge in set terms and not only by the real 
 meaning of the whole body of his teaching. His sense of 
 moral distinctions, of holiness and of sin, is alone enough to 
 show him as no Pantheist ; and while he teaches that God is 
 immanent in the life of man, he recognises, fully and 
 practically, that in His personal relations with man He 
 is, and must be, transcendent. Law always pictures man as 
 sought by his Heavenly Father, meeting, freely co-operating 
 with, and being permeated by, Him ; and reconciled to 
 Him by the redeeming power of love. The Christian 
 principle and method of immanence should lead to a doctrine 
 of transcendence, and Law illustrates this connection. But 
 we have many preachers of the immanence of God and the 
 process of His revelation, who are either knowingly, or in 
 ignorance, drifting into some sort of Pantheism ; and these 
 men need the corrective that Law may help to give. He shows 
 that it is not necessary to go back to the errors of the Neo- 
 platonists, as well as to their truth, in order to escape Deistic 
 formalism, supernatural mechanics, and religious legalism. 
 Here, in these almost forgotten books, wherein he tried to 
 give Behmen's theosophy and religious psychology to the 
 English world, is a cure for much religious disease. He meant 
 it as a cure for the crude Deism of his century ; it will do well 
 for the more subtle kind prevalent in our own ; it will do at 
 least equally well for our new Pantheism. The common root of 
 both is abstract thinking, and the rejection or ignoring of 
 great tracts of living experience. Law is a prophet of full 
 reality, and of the wholeness of vital truth. He sees that man 
 — that is, the whole concrete marvel-working man — is at once 
 the theatre of real events, the field of the only happenings 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 that have significance for human life, and the owner of the 
 power by which their course is determined in himself, and for 
 the world. He is for ever insisting upon the fact from which 
 men are for ever trying to escape, the fact that in matters of 
 religion only those things which happen tn a man happen for 
 him. A Christ that is not in him cannot be for him. Trans- 
 actions, enactments, laws, commands, win living efficacy, 
 if they have it at all, from the individual man's interior 
 acceptance, and the consequent transformation of their 
 suggestive opportunity and outwardness, into his personal 
 action. They are nothing for him unless he uses them as 
 means to his own real ends. The teaching of authority, if 
 it is merely external, is nothing, because it has its only 
 efficacy in his life ; the reason of rationalism is a toy, unless 
 he makes it a tool, for his life. And even his own intellectual 
 operations are only mechanical operations, if and in so far as 
 they fail to become translated into inward and vital change 
 of his whole self. 
 
 Spiritual and religious truth which the individual man 
 does not find at work within him, he never finds at all; 
 it is not his, and it cannot be made to be his. God cannot 
 save, unless the man will be saved ; and salvation is the 
 new birth into the divine life of a son of God, who is destined 
 to live in organic personal harmony with God, and perishes 
 apart from Him. The righteousness that is essential to this 
 harmony must be a man's proper righteousness, however 
 embryonic and merely prophetic it seem to be ; or he never 
 will be righteous through time or in eternity. If the sinner 
 is forgiven and set in the way of salvation, it is b\' no decree, 
 convention, fiat, or even gift; it is because he has become 
 forgiveable. He can hold the love of God at arm's length 
 and never be forgiven, never become righteous, although the 
 whole power of God is at work to forgive him and to make 
 him righteous. Living reality, living effective truth, a living 
 effective Christ — the Son of God who is Truth, who is the only 
 Way, and the only divine-human Life — these are the great 
 affairs of Law's discourse. When he decries reason he has 
 in his mind's eye rationalism ; and he does not always stop to 
 remind us that there is a reason to which the divine Word 
 makes appeal, a reason that rationalism does not know, 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the reason that embraces reasons of the heart and of the 
 activity of man, as well as those of his discursive head. But 
 he knows this reason ; and indeed is fig-hting for it against 
 that other, which was the enemy in his day. He is making 
 his appeal to it for judgement against an abstract rationality 
 which usurps its place and name. So we must bear in mind 
 when we read his denunciations of the rationalist's reason and 
 its work, that he is not pleading for unreason, but for the 
 higher, true, reality-working reason of man, in his 
 " magical," mysterious life in God. 
 
 The liberal Christians of our own day are making the same 
 protest, bearing the same testimony. They and Law will be 
 mutual interpreters; through them, perhaps, he will at last 
 come into his own ; and where he is partial their larger range 
 will extend him. I am sure that they will enable us to under- 
 stand him as he has never before been understood, except 
 perhaps by a disciple here or there. He was in advance of his 
 time, like every seer ; and, like all the seers, he is now being 
 interpreted to us by the men of our new Christian and Catholic 
 thought, by Newman and Tyrrell and DuBose, by Laberthon- 
 niere and Loisy. He will be charged, as some of these are 
 charged, with individualism ; but the charge is as baseless as 
 that of unreason. Law's Christian Body of individual persons 
 is the Catholic Church. It is inspired by the one Spirit, 
 formed in the one Christ, filled with, and operating by, the 
 one including Love ; even the world is not for him indi- 
 vidualistic, although he recognizes more than most of us 
 the true significance of the fact that it is a world of indi- 
 viduals. He sees that his prophetic mission is to call men to 
 the recognition of the far-reaching vital fact, that truth held 
 in common among men, in the body to which they belong, 
 has mysterious and mystical, as well as rational, sources and 
 corroboration in individual men. He shows them that when 
 it is externalized and corruptly rationalized, and when its 
 sources are forgotten, it is in danger of being lost both to the 
 individual man and to the body of men. He shows them that 
 the operation of God among men is carried on within men ; 
 that there, and there alone, the natural is being penetrated 
 and permeated by the supernatural, the manhood being 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 uplifted into God and made to partake of its general inherit- 
 ance of truth, and light, and life in the free work of a common 
 Sonship and Communion in Christ. His time called for this 
 sublime teaching ; our time calls for it now. 
 
 The one meeting-place of God with men is in the life of men. 
 There, a wonderful process, which no man can wholly analyze 
 or adequately describe, goes on ; good and truth prevail, and 
 error and evil are expelled, by the power of God mysteriously 
 become power of man. There Christ is born ever anew, and 
 there He grows towards the fulness and completeness of 
 divine manhood — the measure of His own stature. And 
 because He is one, and because men are one in Him and God, 
 the common Holy Spirit of wisdom and truth and power 
 becomes manifest among men, and has authority, which takes 
 visible shape, in the Church of Christ. This authority, instru- 
 mental and more or less organized, bears witness among men 
 to the truth of the God-Man, the truth of both the individual 
 and the common life of men. It is valuable, it is necessary. 
 But its value issues with its truth from the inner life of the 
 sons of God, and as that life grows, embodied authority 
 must grow ; as the sons of God learn to embrace new aspects 
 of the truth, it also must embrace them. And when the 
 bearers of authority forget the sacred place from which it 
 springs, the sons of God must bring their individual witness, 
 and recall them to the working out of the proper function of 
 authority, dogmatic or ecclesiastical, in relation to the divine 
 humanity which it exists to serve. 
 
 This corrective witness is required of Christian men in our 
 own day ; but it is the same work that Law in his day was 
 called to perform, in face of the formalism and rationalism 
 which he knew as dominating powers. He too pointed to the 
 truth of the life of individual men, as we must point now. It 
 is the ever-needed and ever-recurring witness to the truth 
 of Christ. And for both Law and ourselves it has now 
 a new support. The rationalism, the intellectualism, of 
 the Church is with us still, the rationalism of opponents of 
 the Church is perhaps as active as it ever was. But new 
 forces have come to our aid. These forces are a developed 
 physical science, which has begun to learn the limitation 
 of its methods (although it has not yet taught them to the 
 
8 • INTRODUCTION 
 
 world at large) ; a developed historical and literary criticism, 
 which has removed many stationary landmarks, and has 
 made the position of theologizing rationalists in the Church 
 very difficult to maintain ; and a growing recognition, in the 
 highest intellectual ranks, of the mystery behind knowledge, 
 and of those mysterious powers and interpenetrations of 
 human life to which Law makes appeal, and which, for the 
 men of the eighteenth century, seemed mere superstitious 
 nonsense. These things have come since Law wrote, and 
 they are beginning to change the whole outlook of our 
 time. They are providing a fruitful soil for such seed- 
 ideas as those which he gave to the world, and they are 
 protecting us against the mystic's danger of individualism, 
 and against the opposite danger of an external absolutism 
 in authority. The Catholic ideal of a Body in which all men 
 are members, and all members are indwelt by God in Christ, 
 is the one ideal that can match the demands of religious men, 
 if they have learnt the lesson of modern thought, and feel 
 the pressure of the new forces of our day. That ideal has 
 no place for either absolutism or individualism ; and it is 
 likely to save us now from the excessive swing of the 
 pendulum to one side or the other, which has done so 
 much harm in past epochs of reformation in religion, and 
 which, to some extent, gives a one-sided appearance to the 
 teaching of William Law. That it is appearance only is due 
 to his own profound religious experience, and to his intel- 
 lectual hold on the oneness of our life in Christ. But for this 
 he would probably have fallen into the pit that awaits every 
 mystic who abstracts himself from the whole to which he 
 belongs ; and seeks God by excluding, instead of including, 
 the things of God and the common life of the sons of God. 
 
 Looking broadly at Law's teaching, and at the admirable 
 and effective use that he made of Behmen's theosophy, it is 
 difficult to repress a wish that he had not been born, as he 
 was, out of due time ; but had lived in our own day. It is 
 surely permissible to regret that we cannot have his inter- 
 pretation of Monsieur Bergson's remarkable Evolution 
 Crdatrice, when we read what he derived from Aurora and 
 The Threefold Life of Man. He had a mind at one with 
 
INTRODUCTION g 
 
 our best thoughts, and with all our knowledge. And he 
 triumphed, as very few men have ever triumphed, over grave, 
 although of course only relative, disabilities ; therefore he 
 comes to us now to be recognized, as he has never before 
 been recognized, as a great teacher. We may put aside all 
 pride in the thought of those modern advantages, of which 
 most of us are making little use, while we read what he 
 says; and we may perhaps begin to learn from him, not 
 only to appropriate and incorporate in our lives something 
 of his wisdom and his truth, but to profit by the work of 
 our own great thinkers and seers as he profited by Jacob 
 Behmen. 
 
 Wm. Scott Palmer. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER. 
 
 We starve in the midst of plenty, grotin under infirmities, 
 with the remedy in our own hands ; live and die without know- 
 ing and feeling anything of the one only good, whilst we 
 have it in our power to know and enjoy it in as great a 
 reality as we know and feel the power of this world over us : 
 for heaven is as near to our souls as this earth is to our 
 bodies; and we are created, we are redeemed, to have our 
 conversation in it. God, the only good of all intelligent 
 natures, is not an absent or distant God, but is more present 
 in and to our souls than our own bodies ; and we are strangers 
 to heaven, and without God in the world, for this only reason 
 — because we are void of that Spirit of Prayer which alone 
 can and never fails to unite us with the one only good, and 
 to open Heaven and the Kingdom of God within us. A root 
 set in the finest soil, in the best climate, and blessed with all 
 that sun and air and rain can do for it, is not in so sure a way 
 of its growth to perfection as every man may be, whose spirit 
 aspires after all that which God is ready and infinitely desirous 
 to give him. For the sun meets not the springing bud that 
 stretches towards him, with half that certainty, as God, the 
 Source of all good, communicates Himself to the soul that 
 longs to partake of Him. 
 
 It is the language of Scripture that Christ in us is our 
 hope of glory ; that Christ formed in us — living, growing, 
 and raising His own Life and Spirit in us — is our only salva- 
 tion. And, indeed, all this is plain from the nature of the 
 thing; for, since the serpent, sin, death, and hell are all 
 essentially within us — the very growth of our nature — must 
 not our redemption be equally inward, an inward essential 
 death to this state of our souls, and an inward growth of 
 a contrary life within us? 
 
 But you will say. Do not all Christians desire to have Christ 
 to be their Saviour? Yes; but here is the deceit : all would 
 
12 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 have Christ to be their Saviour in the next world, and to 
 help them into heaven when they die, by His power and 
 merits with God. But this is not wiUing Christ to be thy 
 Saviour; for His salvation, if it is had, must be had in this 
 world ; if He saves thee, it must be done in this life, by 
 changing and altering all that is within thee, by helping thee 
 to a new heart, as He helped the blind to see, the lame to 
 walk, and the dumb to speak. For to have salvation from 
 Christ is nothing else but to be made like unto Him ; it is to 
 have His humility and meekness, His mortification and self- 
 denial, His renunciation of the spirit, wisdom, and honours of 
 this world, His love of God, His desire of doing God's will 
 and seeking only His honour. To have these tempers formed 
 and begotten in thy heart is to have salvation from Christ ; 
 but if thou wiliest not to have these tempers brought forth in 
 thee, if thy faith and desire does not seek and cry to Christ 
 for them in the same reality as the lame asked to walk, and 
 the blind to see, then thou must be said to be unwilling to have 
 Christ to be thy Saviour. 
 
 It is manifest that no one can fail of the benefit of Christ's 
 salvation but through an unwillingness to have it, and from 
 the same spirit and tempers which made the Jews unwilling to 
 receive it. But if thou wouldst still further know how this 
 great work, the birth of Christ, is to be effected in thee, then 
 let this joyful truth be told thee, that this great work is 
 already begun in every one of us. For this holy Jesus, that 
 is to be formed in thee, that is to be the Saviour and new Life 
 of thy soul, that is to raise thee out of the darkness of death 
 into the Light of Life, and give thee power to become a son 
 of God, is already within thee, living, stirring, calling, 
 knocking at the door of thy heart. 
 
 See here the beginning and glorious extent of the Catholic 
 Church of Christ: it takes in all the world; it is God's 
 unlimited, universal mercy to all mankind ; and every human 
 creature, as sure as he is born of Adam, has a birth of the 
 Bruiser of the serpent within him, and so is infallibly in 
 covenant with God through Jesus Christ. Hence also it is 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 13 
 
 that the holy Jesus is appointed to be Judge of all the world ; 
 it is because all mankind, all nations and languages, have in 
 Him, and through Him, been put into covenant with God, 
 and made capable of resisting the evil of their fallen nature. 
 
 When our blessed Lord conversed with the woman at 
 Jacob's well. He said unto her, "If thou knewest the gift of 
 God, and who it is that talketh with thee, thou wouldst have 
 asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water." 
 How happy (may anyone well say) was this woman of 
 Samaria, to stand so near this Gift of God, from whom she 
 might have had living water had she but vouchsafed to have 
 asked for it ! But, dear Christian, this happiness is thine; for 
 this holy Jesus, " the gift of God " first given into Adam, and 
 in him to all that are descended from him, is the Gift of God 
 to thee, as sure as thou art born of Adam ; nay, hast thou 
 never yet owned him, art thou wandered from him, as far as 
 the prodigal son from his father's house, yet is He still with 
 thee. He is the gift of God to thee, and if thou wilt turn to 
 Him, and ask of Him, He has living water for thee. 
 
 Poor sinner ! consider the treasure thou hast within thee : 
 the Saviour of the world, the eternal Word of God, lies hid in 
 thee, as a spark of the divine nature which is to overcome 
 sin, and death, and hell within thee, and generate the life of 
 heaven again in thy soul. Turn to thy heart, and thy heart 
 will find its Saviour, its God, within itself. Thou seest, 
 hearest, and feelest nothing of God, because thou seekest 
 for Him abroad with thine outward eyes ; thou seekest for 
 Him in books, in controversies, in the church, and outward 
 exercises, but there thou wilt not find Him till thou hast 
 first found Him in thy heart. Seek for Him in thy heart, 
 and thou wilt never seek in vain ; for there He dwelleth, 
 there is the seat of His Light and Holy Spirit. 
 
 For this turning to the Light and Spirit of God within thee 
 is thine only true turning unto God ; there is no other way of 
 finding Him but in that place where He dwelleth in thee. 
 For though God be everywhere present, yet He is only 
 present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy 
 soul. Thy natural senses cannot possess God, or unite thee 
 to Him; nay, thine inward faculties of understanding, will, 
 and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the 
 
14 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 place of His habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth 
 in thee, from whence all these faculties come forth as lines 
 from a centre, or as branches from the body of a tree. This 
 depth is called the centre, the fund, or bottom, of the soul. 
 This depth is the unity, the eternity, I had almost said the 
 infinity of thy soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy 
 it, or give it any rest, but the infinity of God. 
 
 Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and Christ, who from 
 all eternity hath been espoused to thy soul, shall give thee 
 Light. Begin to search and dig in thine own field for this 
 Pearl of eternity, that lieth hidden in it ; it cannot cost thee 
 too much, nor canst thou buy it too dear, for it is all, and 
 when thou hast found it thou wilt know that all which thou 
 hast sold or given away for it is as a mere nothing, as a 
 bubble upon the water. 
 
 But if thou turnest from this heavenly Pearl, and tramplest 
 it under thy feet for the sake of being rich or great, either 
 in Church or State, if death finds thee in this success, thou 
 canst not then say that though the Pearl is lost, yet some- 
 thing has been gained instead of it. For in that parting 
 moment the things and the sounds of this world will be 
 exactly alike ; to have had an estate, or only to have heard 
 of it, to have lived at Lambeth twenty years, or only to have 
 twenty times passed by the palace, will be the same good or 
 the same nothing to thee. 
 
 Thy reason and senses, thy heart and passions, have turned 
 all their attention to the poor concerns of this life, and there- 
 fore thou art a stranger to this principle of heaven, this riches 
 of eternity within thee. For as God is not, cannot be, truly 
 found by any worshippers but those who worship Him in 
 spirit and in truth, so this Light and Spirit, though always 
 within us, is not, cannot be, found, felt, or enjoyed but by 
 those whose whole spirit is turned to it. 
 
 This Light and Spirit of God thus freely restored again to 
 the soul, and lying in it as a secret source of heaven, is 
 called grace, free grace, or the supernatural gift, or power of 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 15 
 
 Ciod in the soul, because it was something that the natural 
 powers of the soul could no more obtain. Hence it is, that 
 in the greatest truth, and highest reality, every stirring of 
 the soul, every tendency of the heart towards God and 
 goodness, is justly and necessarily ascribed to the Holy 
 Spirit, or the grace of God. It is because this first Seed of 
 life, which is sown into the soul as the gift or grace of God 
 to fallen man, is itself the Light and Spirit of God ; and there- 
 fore every stirring or opening of this Seed of Life, every 
 awakened thought or desire that arises from it, must be 
 called the moving, or the quickening of the Spirit of God ; 
 and therefore that new man which arises from it must of all 
 necessity be said to be solely the work and operation of God. 
 Hence also we have an easy and plain declaration of the true 
 meaning, solid sense, and certain truth of all those Scriptures 
 which speak of the inspiration of God, the operation of the 
 Holy Spirit, the power of the Divine Light, as the sole and 
 necessary agents in the renewal and sanctification of our 
 souls, and also as being things common to all men. It is 
 because this Seed of Life, or Bruiser of the serpent, is 
 common to all men, and has in all men a degree of life which 
 is in itself so much of the inspiration or Life of God, the 
 Spirit of God, the Light of God, which is in every soul and 
 is its power of becoming born again of God. Hence also it 
 is, that all men are exhorted not to quench, or resist, or 
 grieve the Spirit; that is, this Seed of the Spirit and Light 
 of God that is in all men as the only source of good. 
 
 When this Seed of the Spirit, common to all men, is not 
 resisted, grieved, and quenched, but its inspirations and 
 motions suffered to grow and increase in us, to unite with 
 God, and get power over all the lusts of the flesh, then we 
 are born again, the nature, spirit, and tempers of Jesus 
 Christ are opened in our souls, the Kingdom of God is come, 
 and is found within us. On the other hand, when the flesh 
 or the natural man hath resisted and quenched this Spirit or 
 Seed of life within us, then the works of the flesh — adultery, 
 fornication, murders, lying, hatred, envy, wrath, pride, 
 foolishness, worldly wisdom, carnal prudence, false religion, 
 
i6 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 hypocritical holiness, and serpentine subtlety — have set up 
 their kingdom within us. 
 
 See here, in short, the state of man as redeemed. He has 
 a spark of the Light and Spirit of God, as a supernatural gift 
 of God given into the birth of his soul, to bring forth by 
 degrees a new birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. 
 This holy spark of the divine nature within him has a natural, 
 strong, and almost infinite tendency, or reaching, after that 
 eternal Light and Spirit of God from whence it came forth. 
 It came forth from God, it came out of God, it partaketh of 
 the divine nature, and therefore it is always in a state of 
 tendency and return to God. And all this is called the 
 breathing, the moving, the quickening, of the Holy Spirit 
 within us, which are so many operations of this spark of life 
 tending towards God. On the other hand, the Deity, as 
 considered in itself and without the soul of man, has an 
 infinite, unchangeable tendency of love and desire towards 
 the soul of man, to unite and communicate its own riches 
 and glories to it, just as the spirit of the air without man 
 unites and communicates its riches and virtues to the spirit 
 of the air that is within man. This love or desire of God 
 towards the soul of man is so great, that He gave His only- 
 begotten Son, the brightness of His glory, to take the human 
 nature upon Him, in its fallen state, that by this mysterious 
 union of God and man all the enemies of the soul of man 
 might be overcome, and every human creature might have 
 a power of being born again, according to that Image of God 
 in which he was first created. The Gospel is the history of 
 this love of God to man. Inwardly he has a Seed of the 
 divine Life given into the birth of his soul, a Seed that has all 
 the riches of eternity in it, and is always wanting to come to 
 the birth in him, and be alive in God. Outwardly he has 
 Jesus Christ, who, as a Sun of righteousness, is always 
 casting forth His enlivening beams on this inward Seed, to 
 kindle and call it forth to the birth, doing that to this Seed 
 of heaven in man which the sun in the firmament is always 
 doing to the vegetable seeds in the earth. 
 
 On the other hand there is hidden also, in the depth of thy 
 nature, the root or possibility of all the hellish nature, spirit, 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 17 
 
 and tempers of the fallen angels. For heaven and hell have 
 each of them their foundation within us ; they come not into 
 us from without, but spring up in us, according as our will 
 and heart is turned either to the Light of God, or the kingdom 
 of darkness. But when this life, which is in the midst of 
 these two eternities, is at an end, either an angel or a devil 
 will be found to have a birth in us. 
 
 Thou needcst not, therefore, run here or there, saying, 
 " Where is Christ?" Thou needest not say, " Who shall 
 ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above? 
 or who shall descend into the deep, to bring Christ up from 
 the dead?" For behold the Word, which is the Wisdom of 
 God, is in thy heart; it is there as a Bruiser of thy serpent, 
 as a light unto thy feet, and lantern unto thy paths. It is 
 there as an holy oil to soften and overcome the wrathful, fiery 
 properties of thy nature, and change them into the humble 
 meekness of light and love. It is there as a speaking Word 
 of God in thy soul; and, as soon as thou art ready to hear, 
 this eternal speaking Word will speak wisdom and love in 
 thy inward parts, and bring forth the birth of Christ, with all 
 His holy nature, spirit, and tempers, within thee; hence it 
 was (that is, from this Principle of heaven, or Christ, in the 
 soul), hence, I say, it was that so many eminent spirits, 
 partakers of a divine life, have appeared in so many parts of 
 the heathen world ; glorious names, sons of wisdom, that 
 shone, as lights hung out by God, in the midst of idolatrous 
 darkness. These were the apostles of a Christ within, that 
 were awakened and commissioned by the inward Bruiser of 
 the serpent, to call mankind from the blind pursuits of flesh 
 and blood to know themselves, the dignity of their nature, 
 the immortality of their souls, and the necessity of virtue to 
 avoid eternal shame and misery. These apostles, though 
 they had not the Law or written Gospel to urge upon their 
 hearers, yet, having turned to God, they found and preached 
 the Gospel that was written in their hearts. Hence one of 
 them could say this divine truth, viz., that " such only are 
 priests and prophets who have God in themselves." Hence 
 also it is that in the Christian Church there have been in all 
 ages, amongst the most illiterate, both men and women who 
 have attained to a deep understanding of the mysteries of the 
 
i8 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 wisdom and love of God in Christ Jesus. And what wonder? 
 Since it is not art or science, or skill in grammar or logic, but 
 the opening of the divine Life in the soul, that can give true 
 understanding of the things of God. 
 
 There is but one salvation for all mankind, and that is the 
 Life of God in the soul. God has but one design or intent 
 towards all mankind, and that is to introduce or generate His 
 own Life, Light, and Spirit in them, that all may be as so 
 many images, temples, and habitations of the Holy Trinity. 
 This is God's will to all Christians, Jews, and Heathens. 
 They are all equally the desire of His Heart ; His Light con- 
 tinually waits for an entrance into all of them ; His "Wisdom 
 crieth, she putteth forth her voice," not here, or there, but 
 everywhere, in all the streets of all the parts of the world. 
 
 Now, there is but one possible way for man to attain this 
 salvation, or Life of God in the soul. There is not one for the 
 Jew, another for a Christian, and a third for the Heathen. 
 No ; God is one, human nature is one, salvation is one, and 
 the way to it is one ; and that is, the desire of the soul 
 turned to God. When this desire is alive, and breaks forth 
 in any creature under heaven, then the lost sheep is found, 
 and the Shepherd hath it upon His shoulders. Through this 
 desire the poor prodigal son leaveth his husks and swine, and 
 hasteth to his Father ; it is because of this desire that the 
 Father seeth the son while yet afar off, that He runs out to 
 meet him, falleth on his neck, and kisseth him. See here 
 how plainly we are taught that no sooner is this desire arisen 
 and in motion towards God, but the operation of God's vSpirit 
 answers to it, cherishes and welcomes its first beginnings, 
 signified by the Father's seeing and having compassion on 
 His son whilst yet afar off, that is, in the first beginnings 
 of his desire. Thus docs this desire do all : it brings the soul 
 to God, and God into the soul; it unites with God, it 
 co-operates with God, and is one life with God. Suppose 
 this desire not to be alive, not in motion either in a Jew or 
 a Christian, and then all the sacrifices, the service, the 
 worship, either of the Law or the Gospel, are but dead works 
 that bring no life into the soul, nor beget any union between 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 19 
 
 God and it. Suppose this desire to be awakened, and fixed 
 upon God, though in souls that never heard cither of the Law 
 or Gospel, and then the divine Life, 01 operation of God, 
 enters into them, and the new birth in Christ is formed in 
 those that never heard of His name. And these are they 
 " that shall come from the east, and from the west, and sit 
 down with Abraham and Isaac in the Kingdom of God." 
 
 O my God, just and good, how great is Thy love and 
 mercy to mankind, that heaven is thus everywhere open, and 
 Christ thus the common Saviour to all that turn the desire 
 of their hearts to Thee ! O sweet Power of the Bruiser of 
 the serpent, born in every son of man, that stirs and works 
 in every man, and gives every man a power, and desire, to 
 find his happiness in God ! O holy Jesus, heavenly Light, 
 that lightest every man that cometh into the world, that 
 redeemest every soul that followeth Thy light, which is 
 always within him ! O Holy Trinity, immense Ocean of 
 divine Love, in which all mankind live, and move, and have 
 their being ! None are separated from Thee, none live out 
 of Thy love, but all are embraced in the arms of Thy mercy, 
 all are partakers of Thy divine Life, the operation of Thy 
 Holy Spirit, as soon as their heart is turned to Thee ! O 
 plain, and easy, and simple way of salvation, wanting no 
 subtleties of art or science, no borrowed learning, no refine- 
 ments of reason, but all done by the simple, natural motion 
 of every heart that truly longs after God ! For no sooner is 
 the finite desire of the creature in motion towards God, but 
 the infinite desire of God is united with it, co-operates with it. 
 And in this united desire of God and the creature is the salva- 
 tion and life of the soul brought forth. For the soul is shut 
 out of God, and imprisoned in its own dark workings of flesh 
 and blood, merely and solely because it desires to live to the 
 vanity of this world. This desire is its darkness, its death, 
 its imprisonment, and separation from God. 
 
 When, therefore, the first spark of a desire after God arises 
 in thy soul, cherish it with all thy care, give all thy heart into 
 it; it is nothing less than a touch of the divine Loadstone 
 that is to draw thee out of the vanity of time into the riches 
 of eternity. Get up, therefore, and follow' it as gladly as the 
 wise men of the East followed the Star from heaven that 
 
20 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 appeared to them. It will do for thee as the Star did for 
 them ; it will lead thee to the birth of Jesus, not in a stable 
 at Bethlehem in Judaea, but to the birth of Jesus in the dark 
 centre of thine own fallen soul. 
 
 For this turning to God according to the inward feeling, 
 want, and motion of your own heart, in love, in trust, in 
 faith of having from Him all that you want, and wish to 
 have; this turning thus unto God, whether it be with or 
 without words, is the best Form of Prayer in the world. 'Now 
 no man can be ignorant of the state of his own heart, or a 
 stranger to those tempers that are alive and stirring in him, 
 and therefore no man can want a Form of Prayer ; for what 
 should be the Form of his Prayer but that which the con- 
 dition and state of his heart demands? If you know of no 
 trouble, feel no burden, want nothing to be altered or 
 removed, nothing to be increased or strengthened in you, 
 how can you pray for anything of this kind? But if your 
 heart knows its own plague, feels its inward evil, knows 
 what it wants to have removed, will you not let your distress 
 form the manner of your prayer? or will you pray in a form of 
 words that have no more agreement with your state, than 
 if a man walking above ground should beg every man he met, 
 to pull him out of a deep pit. For prayers not formed 
 according to the real state of your heart are but like a prayer 
 to be pulled out of a deep well, when you are not in it. 
 
 If you were obliged to go a long journey on foot, and yet 
 through a weakness in your legs could not set one foot before 
 another, you would do well to get the best travelling crutches 
 that you could. 
 
 But if, with sound and good legs, you would not stir one 
 step till you had got crutches to hop with, surely a man 
 might show you the folly of not walking with your own legs, 
 without being thought a declared enemy to crutches or the 
 makers of them. Now a Manual is not so good an help as 
 crutches, because that which you do with the crutches is 
 the very same thing that you should have done with your 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 21 
 
 legs, you really travel ; but when the heart cannot take one 
 step in prayer, and you therefore read your Manual, you do 
 not do that very same thing which your heart should have 
 done, that is, really pray. A fine Manual therefore is not to 
 be considered as a means of praying, or as something that 
 puts you in a state of prayer, as crutches help you to travel ; 
 but its chief use as a Book of Prayers, to a dead and hardened 
 heart that has no prayer of its own, is to show it what a 
 state and spirit of prayer it wants, and at what a sad distance 
 it is from feeling all that variety of humble, penitent, 
 grateful, fervent, resigned, loving sentiments, which are 
 described in the Manual ; that so, being touched with a view 
 of its own miserable state, it may begin its own prayer to 
 God for help. 
 
 The painful sense and feeling of what you are, kindled into 
 a working state of sensibility by the Light of God within 
 you, is the Fire and Light from whence your Spirit of Prayer 
 proceeds. In its first kindling nothing is found or felt but 
 pain, wrath, and darkness, as it is to be seen in the first 
 kindling of every heat or fire. And therefore its first prayer 
 is nothing else but a sense of penitence, self-condemnation, 
 confession, and humility. This prayer of humility is met by 
 the Divine Love, the mercifulness of God embraces it ; and 
 then its prayer is changed into hymns and songs and thanks- 
 givings. When this state of fervour has done its work, has 
 melted away all earthly passions and affections, and left no 
 inclination in the soul but to delight in God alone, then its 
 prayer changes again. It is now come so near to God, has 
 found such an union with Him, that it does not so much 
 pray as live in God. Its prayer is not any particular action, 
 is not the work of any particular faculty, not confined to 
 times, or words, or place, but is the work of its whole being, 
 which continually stands in fulness of faith, in purity of 
 love, in absolute resignation, to do, and be, what and how 
 its beloved pleases. This is the last state of the Spirit of 
 Prayer, and is its highest union with God in this life. 
 
II. 
 
 APPENDIX TO THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND. 
 
 The schools have given us very accurate definitions of every 
 vice, whether it be covetousness, pride, wrath, envy, etc., 
 and shown us how to conceive them as notionally dis- 
 tinguished from one another. But the Christian has a much 
 shorter way of knowing their nature and power, and what 
 they all are, and do, in and to himself. F'or, call them by 
 what names you will, or distinguish them with ever so much 
 exactness, they are all, separately and jointly, just that same 
 one thing, and all do that same one work, as the Scribes, the 
 Pharisees, hypocrites, and rabble of the Jews, who crucified 
 Christ, were all but one and the same thing, and all did one 
 and the same work, however different they were in outward 
 names. If you would therefore have a true sense of the 
 nature and power of pride, wrath, covetousness, envy, etc., 
 they are in their whole nature nothing else but the murderers 
 and crucifiers of the true Christ of God ; not as the High 
 Priests did many hundred years ago, nailing His outward 
 humanity to an outward cross, but crucifying afresh the Son 
 of God, the holy Immanuel, who is the Christ that every man 
 crucifies as often as he gives way to wrath, pride, envy, or 
 covetousness, etc. For every temper or passion that is 
 contrary to the new birth of Christ, and keeps the holy 
 Immanuel from coming to life in the soul, is, in the strictest 
 truth of the words, a murderer and killer of the Lord of life. 
 And where pride, and envy, and hatred, etc., are suffered to 
 live, there the same thing is done as when Christ was killed 
 and Barabbas was saved alive. 
 
 This Christ of God hath many names in Scripture ; but they 
 all mean only this, that He is, and alone can be, the light, 
 
24 APPENDIX TO THE SPIRIT OF PRA YER 
 
 and life, and holiness of every creature that is holy, whether 
 in heaven or on earth. Wherever Christ is not, there is 
 the wrath of nature, or nature left to itself and its own 
 tormenting strength of life, to feel nothing in itself but 
 the vain, restless contrariety of its own working properties. 
 This is the one only origin of hell, and every kind of curse 
 and misery in the creature. It is nature without the Christ 
 of God, or the Spirit of Love, ruling over it. And here you 
 may observe that wrath has in itself the nature of hell ; and 
 that it can have no beginning or power in any creature, but 
 so far as it has lost the Christ of God. And when Christ is 
 everywhere, wrath and hatred will be nowhere. Whenever, 
 therefore, you willingly indulge wrath, or let your mind work 
 in hatred, you not only work without Christ, but you resist 
 Him, and withstand His redeeming power over you ; you do 
 in reality what those Jews did when they said, " We will not 
 have this Man to reign over us." For Christ never was, nor 
 can be, in any creature, but purely as a Spirit of Love. 
 
 Now, the difficulty which you find in attaining to this purity 
 and universality of the Spirit of Love is because you seek for 
 it, as I once told you, in the way of reasoning ; you would be 
 possessed of it only from a rational conviction of the fitness 
 and amiableness of it. And as this clear idea does not put 
 you immediately into the real possession of it, your reason 
 begins to waver, and suggests to you that it may be only a 
 fine notion, that has no ground but in the power of imagina- 
 tion. But this. Sir, is all your own error, and as contrary to 
 nature as if you would have your eyes do that which only your 
 hands or feet can do for you. The Spirit of Love is a spirit of 
 nature and life ; and all the operations of nature and life are 
 according to the working powers of nature ; and every growth 
 and degree of life can only arise in its own time and place 
 from its proper cause, and as the genuine effect of it. Nature 
 and life do nothing by chance, or accidentally, but everything 
 in one uniform way. Fire, air, and light do not proceed 
 sometimes from one thing and sometimes from another ; but, 
 wherever they are, they are always born in the same manner, 
 and from the same working in the properties of nature. So, 
 
APPENDIX TO THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 25 
 
 in like manner, Love is an immutable birth, always proceeding 
 from the same cause, and cannot be in existence till its own 
 true parents have brought it forth. 
 
 How unreasonable would it be to begin to doubt whether 
 strength and health of body were real things, or possible to 
 be had, because you could not by the power of your reason 
 take possession of them? Yet this is as well as to suspect 
 the purity and perfection of Love to be only a notion, because 
 your reason cannot bring forth its birth in your soul. For 
 reason has no more power of altering the life and properties 
 of the soul than of altering the life and properties of the body. 
 That, and that only, can cast devils and evil spirits out of the 
 soul that can say to the storm, " Be still," and to the leper, 
 " Be thou clean." 
 
 Hold it, therefore, for a certain truth, that you can have 
 no good come into your soul but only by the one way of a 
 birth from above, from the entrance of the Deity into the 
 properties of your own soulish life. Nature must be set right, 
 its properties must enter into the process of a new birth, it 
 must work to the production of light, before the Spirit of Love 
 can have a birth in it. For love is delight, and delight 
 cannot arise in any creature till its nature is in a delightful 
 state, or is possessed of that in which it must rejoice. And 
 this is the reason why God must become Man ; it is because 
 a birth of the Deity must be found in the soul giving to 
 nature all that it wants, or the soul can never find itself in a 
 delightful state, and only working with the Spirit of Love. 
 For whilst the soul has only its natural life it can only be in 
 such a state as nature, without God, is in, viz., a mere 
 hunger, want, contrariety, and strife for it knows not what. 
 Hence is all that variety of blind, restless, contrary passions 
 which govern and torment the life of fallen man. It is 
 because all the properties of nature must work in blindness, 
 and be doing they know not what, till the Light of God is 
 found in them. Hence also it is, that that which is called 
 the wisdom, the honour, the honesty, and the religion of the 
 natural man, often does as much hurt to himself and others 
 as his pride, ambition, §elf-love, envy, or revenge, and is 
 
26 APPENDIX TO THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 subject to the same humour and caprice ; it is because nature 
 is no better in one motion than in another, nor can be so, till 
 something supernatural is come into it. 
 
 The Deity must become Man, take a birth in the fallen 
 nature, be united to it, become the life of it, or the natural 
 man must of all necessity be for ever and ever in the hell of 
 his own hunger, anguish, contrariety, and self-torment ; and 
 all for this plain reason, because nature is, and can be, 
 nothing else but this variety of self-torment till the Deity is 
 manifested and dwelling in it. 
 
 And now. Sir, you see also the absolute necessity of the 
 Gospel doctrine of the Cross, viz., of dying to self, as the one 
 only way to life in God. This Cross, or dying to self, is the 
 one morality that does man any good. Fancy has as many 
 rules as you will of modelling the moral behaviour of man ; 
 they all do nothing because they leave nature still alive, and 
 therefore can only help a man to a feigned, hypocritical art 
 of concealing his own inward evil, and seeming to be not 
 under its power. And the reason why it must be so is plain : 
 it is because nature is not possible to be reformed ; it is 
 immutable in its workings, and must be always as it is, and 
 never any better, or worse, than its own untaught workings 
 are. It can no more change from evil to good than darkness 
 can work itself into light. The one work, therefore, of 
 morality is the one doctrine of the Cross, viz., to resist and 
 deny nature, that a supernatural power, or divine goodness, 
 may take possession of it, and bring a new light into it. -^■ 
 
 In a word, there are, in all the possibility of things, but 
 two states, or forms of life; the one is nature, and the other 
 is God manifested in nature ; and as God and nature are both 
 within you, so you have it in your power to live and work 
 with which you will, but are under a necessity of doing either 
 the one or the other. There is no standing still ; life goes on, 
 and is always bringing forth its realities, which way soever 
 it goeth./You have seen that the properties of nature are, 
 and can be, nothing else in their own life, but a restless 
 hunger, disquiet, and blind strife for they know not what, till 
 the property of light and love has got possession of them. 
 
APPENDIX TO THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 
 
 27 
 
 Now, when you see this, you see the true state of every 
 natural man, whether he be Ctesar or Cato ; whether he 
 gloriously murders others, or only stabs himself, blind nature 
 does all the work, and must be the doer of it, till the Christ of 
 God is born in him. For the life of man can be nothing else 
 but an hunger of covetousness, a rising up of pride, envy, 
 and wrath, a medley of contrary passions, doing and 
 undoing it knows not what, because these workings are 
 essential to the properties of nature ; they must be always 
 hungering, and working one against another, striving to be 
 above one another ; and all this in blindness till the light of 
 God has helped them to one common good, in which they all 
 willingly unite, rest, and rejoice. In a word, goodness is 
 only a sound, and virtue a mere strife of natural passions, till 
 the Spirit of Love is the breath of everything that lives and 
 moves in the heart. For Love is the one only blessing, and 
 goodness, and God of nature; and you have no true religion, 
 are no worshipper of the one true God, but in and by that 
 Spirit of Love which is God Himself living and working 
 in you. 
 
III. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE. 
 
 Now this is the one will and work of God in and through 
 nature and creature. From eternity to eternity He can will 
 and intend nothing towards them, in them, or by them, 
 but the communication of various degrees of His own Love, 
 Goodness, and Happiness to them, according to their state 
 and place, and capacity in nature. This is God's unchange- 
 able disposition towards the Creature ; He can be nothing 
 else but all goodness towards it, because He can be nothing 
 towards the Creature but that which He is, and was, and ever 
 shall be in Himself. 
 
 Now there is in the nature of the things an absolute neces- 
 sity of this twofold life in every creature that is to be good 
 and happy ; and the twofold life is this — it must have the life 
 of nature and the life of God in it. It cannot be a creature 
 and intelligent, but by having the life and properties of 
 nature; that is, by finding itself to be a life of various 
 sensihiUHes, that has a power of tinder siandins:, ivilUng, 
 and desiring. This is its creaturely life, which, by the 
 creating power of God, it has in and from nature. 
 
 Now this is all the life that is, or can be, creaturely, 
 or be a creature's natural own life; and all this creaturely 
 natural life, with all its various powers and sensibilities, 
 is only a life of various appetites, hungers, and wants, 
 and cannot possibly be anything else. God Himself 
 cannot make a creature to be in itself, or as to its own 
 nature, anything else but a state of emptiness, of want, of 
 appetite, etc. He cannot make it to be good and happy in 
 and from its natural state : this is as impossible as for God 
 to cease to be the one only Good. The highest life there- 
 fore, that is natural and creaturely, can go no higher than 
 this ; it can only be a bare capacity for goodness and happi- 
 
30 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 ness, and cannot possibly be a good and happy life but by 
 the life of God dwelling in and in union with it. And 
 this is the twofold life, that of all necessity must be united 
 in every good and perfect and happy creature. 
 
 The difference then of a good and a bad man does not lie in 
 this, that the one wills that which is good, and the other does 
 not; but solely in this, that the one concurs with the living, 
 inspiring Spirit of God within him, and the other resists it, 
 and is, and can be only, chargeable with evil because he 
 resists it. 
 
 Therefore, whether you consider that which is good or bad 
 in a man, they equally prove the perpetual indwelling and 
 operation of the Spirit of God within us, since we can only be 
 bad by resisting, as we are good by yielding to, the Spirit of 
 God ; both which equally suppose a perpetual operation of the 
 Spirit of God within us. 
 
 And thus also you have the fullest proof in what your 
 salvation precisely consists. Not in any historic faith, or 
 knowledge of any thing absent or distant from you, not in 
 any variety of restraints, rules, and methods of practising 
 virtues, not in any formality of opinion about faith and 
 works, repentance, forgiveness of sins, or justification and 
 sanctification, not in any truth or righteousness that you can 
 have from yourself, from the best of m^n or books ; but 
 wholly and solely in the life of God, or Christ of God, 
 quickened, ard born again in you. 
 
 And thus it is, that you are to conceive of the holy Jesus, 
 or the Word of God, as the hidden treasure of c\ery human 
 soul, born as a Seed of the Word in the birth of the soul, 
 immured under flesh and blood, till as a Day-Star it arises 
 in our hearts and changes the son of an earthly Adam into 
 a Son of God. 
 
 The faith of the first patriarchs could not have been in 
 being, Moses and the prophets had come in vain, had not 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 31 
 
 the Christ of God lain in a state of hiddenness in every son 
 of man. For faith, which is a will and hunt^^er after God, 
 could not have begun to be, or have any life in man, but 
 because there was something of the divine nature existing 
 and hid in man. For nothing can have any longing desire 
 but after its own likeness, nor could anything be made to 
 desire God, but that which came from Him and had the 
 nature of Him. 
 
 The Deity is an infinite plenitude, or fulness of riches and 
 powders, in and from itself; and it is only want and desire 
 that is excluded from it, and can have no existence in it. 
 And here lies the true immutable distinction between God and 
 nature, and shows why neither can ever be changed into the 
 other; it is because God is an universal all; and nature, or 
 desire, is an universal ivant, viz., to be filled with God. 
 
 Depart from this idea of God as an infinity of mere love, 
 wisdom, and goodness, and then everything in the system of 
 Scripture and the system of nature only helps the reasoning 
 mind to be miserably perplexed, as well with the mercies as 
 w-ith the judgements of God. 
 
 But when God is known to be Omnipotent Love, that can 
 do nothing but works of love, and that all nature and creature 
 are only under the operation of love, as a distempered person 
 under the care of a kind and skilful physician who seeks 
 nothing but the perfect recovery of his patient ; then, what- 
 ever is done, whether a severe caustic or a pleasant cordial is 
 ordered ; that is, whether, because of its difference, it may 
 have the different name of mercy or judgement ; yet all is 
 equally well done, because Love is the only doer of both, and 
 does both, from the same principle and for the same end. 
 
 The Scriptures frequently say, " Christ gave Himself for 
 us." But what is the full meaning, effect, and benefit of His 
 thus giving Himself for us? The apostle puts this out of all 
 doubt, when he says, " Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for 
 us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to 
 
32 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 Himself a peculiar people ; that He might deliver us from 
 this present evil world — from the curse of the Law — from 
 the power of Satan — from the wrath to come:" or, as the 
 Apostle says in other words, " that He might be made unto 
 us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification. " 
 
 The whole truth, therefore, of the matter is plainly this : 
 Christ given for us is neither more nor less than Christ given 
 into us. And He is in no other sense our full, perfect, and 
 sufficient atonement, than as His Nature and Spirit are born 
 and formed in us, which so purges us from our sins, that we 
 are thereby in Him, and by Him dwelling in us become new 
 creatures, having our conversation in heaven. 
 
 A late writer, who has as much knowledge, and zeal, and 
 wit in the cause of Deism as any of his predecessors, is 
 forced to attack our redemption by giving this following 
 false account of it. 
 
 " That a perfectly innocent being, of the highest order 
 among intelligent natures, should personate the offender, and 
 suffer in his place and stead, in order to take down the wrath 
 and resentment of the Deity against the criminal, and dispose 
 God to show mercy to him, — the Deist conceives to be both 
 unnatural and improper, and therefore not to be ascribed to 
 God without blasphemy." 
 
 And again, "The common notion of redemption among 
 Christians seems to represent the Deity in a disagreeable 
 light, as implacable and revengeful," etc. 
 
 What an arrow is here, I will not say, shot beside the 
 mark, but shot at nothing ! Because nothing of that which 
 he accuses is to be found in our redemption. The God of 
 Christians is so far from being, as he says, implacable and 
 revengeful, that you have seen it proved, from text to text, 
 that the whole form and manner of our redemption comes 
 wholly from the free, antecedent, infinite love and goodness 
 of God towards fallen man. That the innocent Christ did 
 not suffer to quiet an angry Deity, but merely as co-operating, 
 assisting, and uniting with that love of God which desired 
 our salvation. That He did not suffer in our place or stead, 
 but only on our account, which is a quite different matter. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 33 
 
 And to say that He suffered in our place or stead is as 
 absurd, as contrary to Scripture, as to say that He rose from 
 the dead, and ascended into heaven, in our place and stead, 
 that we might be excused from it. For His sufferings, 
 death, resurrection, and ascension are all of them equally on 
 our account, for our sake, for our good and benefit, but none 
 of them possible in our stead. 
 
 And as Scripture and truth affirm that He ascended into 
 heaven for us, though neither Scripture nor truth will allow 
 It to be in our place and stead ; so, for the same reasons, it is 
 strictly true that He suffered and died for us, though no more 
 in our place or stead, nor any more desirable to be so, than 
 His ascension into heaven for us should be in our place and 
 stead. 
 
 A religion that is not founded in nature is all fiction and 
 falsity, and as mere a nothing as an idol. For as no creature 
 can be, or have anything in it, but what it is and has from 
 the nature of things, nor have anything done to it, good or 
 harm, but according to the unalterable workings of nature; 
 so no religion can be of any service but that which works with 
 and according to the d'^mands of nature. Nor can any fallen 
 creature be raised out of its fallen state, even by the omnipo- 
 tence of God, but according to the nature of things, or the 
 unchangeable powers of nature ; for nature is the opening and 
 manifestation of the divine omnipotence; it is God's Power- 
 world : and therefore all that God doth is and must be done 
 in and by the powers of nature. God, though omnipotent, 
 can have no existence to any creature, but it must have 
 that existence in space and time. — Time comes out of 
 eternity, and space comes out of the infinity of God. — God 
 has an omnipotent power over them, in them, and with 
 them, to make both of them set forth and manifest the 
 wonders of His supernatural Deity. Yet time can only be 
 subservient to the omnipotence of God according to the 
 nature of time, and space can only obey His will according 
 to the nature of space ; but neither of them can, by any power, 
 be made to be in a supernatural state, or be anything but 
 what they are in their own nature, 
 
34 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 Now right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, 
 happiness and misery, are as unchangeable in nature as time 
 and space. And every state and quality that is creaturely, 
 or that can belong to any creature, has its own nature, as 
 unchangeably as time and space have theirs. 
 
 Nothing, therefore, can be done to any creature sxiper- 
 naturally, or in a way that is ivithotit, or contrary to, the 
 powers of nature ; but every thing or creature that is to be 
 helped, that is to have any good done to it, or any evil taken 
 out of it, can only have it done so far as the powers of nature 
 are able and rightly directed to effect it. 
 
 And this is the true ground of all divine revelation, or that 
 help which the supernatural Deity vouchsafes to the fallen 
 state of man. It is not to appoint an arbitrary system of 
 religious homage to God, but solely to point out and provide 
 for man, blinded by his fallen state, that one only religion 
 that, according to the nature of things, can possibly restore 
 to him his lost perfection. This is the truth, the goodness, 
 and the necessity of the Christian religion ; it is true and good 
 and necessary, because it is as much the one only natural and 
 possible way of overcoming all the evil of fallen man, as light 
 is the one only natural, possible thing that can expel darkness. 
 
 And therefore it is that all the mysteries of the Gospel, how- 
 ever high, are yet true and necessary parts of the one religion 
 of nature ; because they are no higher nor otherwise than the 
 natural state of fallen man absolutely stands in need of. His 
 nature cannot be helped, or raised out of the evils of its 
 present state, by anything less than these mysteries ; and 
 therefore they are in the same truth and justness to be called 
 his natural religion, as that remedy which alone has full 
 power to remove all the evil of a disease may be justly called 
 its natural remedy. 
 
 For a religion is not to be deemed natural because it has 
 nothing to do with revelation ; but then is it the one true 
 religion of nature, when it has everything in it that our 
 natural state stands in need of; everything that can help us 
 out of our present evil, and raise and exalt us to all the 
 happiness which our nature is capable of having. Supposing, 
 therefore, the Christian scheme of redemption to be all, and 
 nothing else in itself but, that which the nature of things 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 35 
 
 absolutely requires it to be, it must, lor that very reason, 
 have its mysteries. 
 
 For the fallen, corrupt, mortal state of man absolutely 
 requires these two things as its only salvation. First, the 
 divine life, or the life of God, must be quickened again, or 
 revived in the soul of man. Secondly, there must be a 
 resurrection of the body in a better state after death. Now 
 nothing in the power of man, or in the things of this world, 
 can effect this salvation. If, therefore, this is to be the 
 salvation of man, then some interposition of the Deity is 
 absolutely necessary, in the nature of the thing, or man can 
 have no religion that is sufficiently natural ; that is to say, no 
 religion that is sufficient, or equal to the wants of his nature. 
 
 Now this necessary interposition of the Deity, though 
 doing nothing but in a natural way, or according to the 
 nature of things, must be mysterious to man, because it is 
 doing something more and higher than his senses or reason 
 ever saw done, or possible to be done, either by himself, or 
 any of the powers of this world. 
 
 And this is the true ground and nature of the mysteries of 
 Christian redemption. They are, in themselves, nothing else 
 but what the nature of things requires them to be, as natural 
 efficacious means of our salvation, and all their power is in 
 a natural way, or true fitness of cause for its elTect ; but they 
 are mysterious to man, because brought into the scheme of 
 our redemption, by the interposition of God, to work in a way 
 and manner above and superior to all that is seen and done in 
 the things of this world. 
 
 The mysteries, therefore, of the Gospel are so far from 
 showing the Gospel not to be the one true religion of nature, 
 that they are the greatest proofs of it, since they are that 
 alone which can help man to all that good which his natural 
 state wants to have done to it. 
 
 For instance, if the salvation of man absolutely requires 
 the revival or restoration of the divine life in the human 
 nature, then nothing can be the one sufficient, true religion 
 of nature but that which has a natural power to do this. 
 
 \\'^hat a grossness of error is it, therefore, to blame that 
 doctrine which asserts the incarnation of the Son of God, or 
 the necessity of the Word being made Flesh; when, in the 
 
36 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 nature of the thing, nothing else but this very mystery can be 
 the natural, efficacious cause of the renewal of the divine life 
 in the human nature, or have any natural efficacy to effect 
 our salvation ! 
 
 And thus stands the matter between the Deists and myself. 
 If I knew how to do them or the subject more justice, I 
 would gladly do it, having no desire, either for them or 
 myself, but that we may all of us be delivered from every- 
 thing that separates us from God, all equal sharers of every 
 blessing that He has for human nature, all united in that 
 Spirit of Love and Goodness for which He created us, and 
 all blessed with that faith and hope to which the God of 
 Love has called us, as the one only possible, natural, and full 
 means of ever finding ourselves saved, and redeemed from 
 all the evils both of time and eternity. 
 
 Love is the Christ of God ; wherever it comes, it comes as 
 the blessing and happiness of every natural life, as the 
 restorer of every lost perfection, a redeemer from all evil, a 
 fuIfiUer of all righteousness, and a peace of God which 
 passeth all understanding. Through all the universe of 
 things, nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but because 
 it is not governed by love, or because its nature has not 
 reached or attained the full birth of the spirit of love. For 
 when that is done, every hunger is satisfied, and all com- 
 plaining, murmuring, accusing, resenting, revenging, and 
 striving, are as totally suppressed and overcome, as the 
 coldness, thickness, and horror of darkness are suppressed 
 and overcome by the breaking forth of the light. If you ask 
 why the spirit of love cannot be displeased, cannot be dis- 
 appointed, cannot complain, accuse, resent, or murmur, it is 
 because divine love desires nothing but itself; it is its own 
 good, it has all when it has itself, because nothing is good 
 but itself and its own working; for love is God; "and he 
 that dwelleth in love, dwclleth in God." 
 
 For divine love is a new life and new nature, and introduces 
 vou into a new world ; it puts an end to all vour former 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 37 
 
 opinions, notions, and tempers ; it opens new senses in you, 
 and makes you see high to be low, and low to be high ; 
 wisdom to be foolishness, and foolishness wisdom ; it makes 
 prosperity and adversity, praise and dispraise, to be equally 
 nothing. " When I was a child," says the apostle, " 1 
 thought as a child, 1 spake as a child ; but when I became 
 a man, I put away childish things." Whilst man is under 
 the power of nature, governed only by worldly wisdom, his 
 life (however old he may be) is quite childish ; everything 
 about him only awakens childish thoughts and pursuits in 
 him; all that he sees and hears, all that he desires or fears, 
 likes or dislikes ; that which he gets, and that which he 
 loses ; that which he has, and that which he has not, serve 
 only to carry him from this fiction of evil to that fiction of 
 good, from one vanity of peace to another vanity of trouble. 
 But when divine love is born in the soul, all childish images 
 of good and evil are done away, and all the sensibility of 
 them is lost, as the stars lose their visibility when the sun 
 is risen. 
 
 Nature has all evil, and no evil, in itself. Nature, as it 
 comes forth from God, is darkness without any evil of 
 darkness in it ; for it is not darkness without or separate from 
 light, nor could it ever have been known to have any quality 
 of darkness in it, had it not lost that state of light in which 
 it came forth from God, only as a manifestation of the good- 
 ness, virtues, and glories of light. Again, it is nature, viz., 
 a strife and contrariety of properties, for this only end, that 
 the supernatural Good might thereby come into sensibility, 
 be known, found, and felt, by its taking all the evil of strife 
 and contrariety from them, and becoming the union, peace, 
 and joy of them all. Nor could the evil of strife and con- 
 trariety of will ever have had a name in all the universe of 
 nature and creature, had it all continued in that state in which 
 it came forth from God. Lastly, it is self, viz., an own life, 
 that so, through such an own life, the universal, incompre- 
 hensible goodness, happiness, and perfections of the Deity 
 might be possessed as properties and qualities of an own life 
 in creaturely finite beings. 
 
 And thus, all that is called nature, darkness, or self has not 
 
38 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 only no evil in it, but is the only true ground of all possible 
 good. 
 
 But when the intelligent creature turns from God to self, 
 or nature, he acts unnaturally, he turns from all that which 
 makes nature to be good ; he finds nature only as it is in itself, 
 and without God. And then it is, that nature, or self, hath 
 all evil in it. Nothing is to be had from it, or found in it, but 
 the work and working of every kind of evil, baseness, misery, 
 and torment, and the utmost contrariety to God and all 
 goodness. And thus, also, you see the plainness and certainty 
 of our assertion, that nature, or self, hath all evil, and no 
 evil, in it. 
 
 Covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath are the four elements 
 of self, or nature, or hell, all of them inseparable from it. 
 And the reason why it must be thus, and cannot be otherwise, 
 is because the natural life of the creature is brought forth for 
 the participation of some high, supernatural good in the 
 Creator. But it could have no fitness or possible capacity to 
 receive such good, unless it was in itself both an extremity 
 of want, and an extremity of desire of some high good. 
 When, therefore, this natural life is deprived of or fallen from 
 God, it can be nothing else in itself but an extremity of want 
 continually desiring, and an extremity of desire continually 
 wanting. And hence it is that its whole life can be nothing 
 else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride, 
 and wrath, all which is precisely nature, self, or hell. 
 
 Now covetousness, pride, and envy are not three different 
 things, but only three different names for the restless work- 
 ings of one and the same will or desire, which, as it differently 
 torments itself, takes these different names, for nothing is in 
 any of them but the working of a restless desire ; and all this 
 because the natural life of the creature can do nothing else 
 but work as a desire. And therefore, when fallen from God, 
 its three first births, which are quite inseparable from it, 
 are covetousness, envy, and pride ; it must covet, because 
 it is a desire proceeding from want ; it must envy, because it 
 is a desire turned to self ; it must assume and arrogate, 
 because it is a desire founded on a real want of exaltation, or 
 a higher state. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 39 
 
 Now wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can 
 have no existence till some or all of these three are contra- 
 dicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to 
 their will ; and then it is that wrath is necessarily born, and 
 not till then. 
 
 And thus you see, in the highest degree of certainty, what 
 nature or self is as to its essential constituent parts. It is 
 the three forementioned, inseparable properties of a desire, 
 thrown into a fourth of wrath that can never cease, because 
 their will can never be gratified. For these four properties 
 generate one another, and therefore generate their own 
 torment. They have no outward cause nor any inward power 
 of altering themselves. And therefore all self, or nature, 
 must be in this state till some supernatural good comes into 
 it, or gets a birth in it. And therefore every pain or dis- 
 order in the mind or body of any intelligent creature is an 
 undeniable proof that it is in a fallen state, and has lost that 
 supernatural good for which it was created. So certain a 
 truth is the fallen state of all mankind. And here lies the 
 absolute, indispensable necessity of the one Christian redemp- 
 tion. Till fallen man is born again from above, till such a 
 supernatural birth is brought forth in him by the eternal 
 Word and Spirit of God, he can have no possible escape or 
 deliverance from these four elements of self or hell. 
 
 Whilst man, indeed, lives amongst the vanities of time, 
 his covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath may be in a tolerable 
 state, may help him to a mixture of peace and trouble ; they 
 may have at times their gratifications as well as their 
 torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of 
 all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of he 
 supernatural Word and Spirit of God must find itself unavoid- 
 ably devoured or shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, 
 self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath. 
 
 There is no need of a number of practices or methods in 
 this matter. For to die to self, or to come from under its 
 power, is not, cannot be done by any active resistance we can 
 make to it by the powers of nature. For nature can no more 
 overcome or suppress itself, than wrath can heal wrath. So 
 long as nature acts, nothing but natural works are brought 
 
40 THE SPIRIT OF LOVE 
 
 forth, and therefore the more labour of this kind, the more 
 nature is fed and strengthened with its own food. 
 
 But the one true way of dying to self is most simple and 
 plain, it wants no arts or methods, no cells, monasteries, or 
 pilgrimages, it is equally practicable by everybody, it is 
 always at hand, it meets you in everything, it is free from all 
 deceit, and is never without success. 
 
 If you ask, What is this one, true, simple, plain, immediate, 
 and unerring way? It is the way of patience, meekness, 
 humility, and resignation to God. This is the truth and 
 perfection of dying to self ; it is nowhere else, nor possible 
 to be in anything else, but in this state of heart. 
 
 Could I help you to perceive or feel what a good there is 
 in this state of heart, you would desire it with more eager- 
 ness than the thirsty hart desires the water-brooks, you 
 would think of nothing, desire nothing, but constantly to 
 live in it. It is a security from all evil and all delusion ; 
 no difficulty or trial, either of body or mind, no temptation, 
 either within you or without you, but what has its full 
 remedy in this state of heart. You have no questions to 
 ask of anybody, no new way that you need inquire after, 
 no oracle that you need to consult ; for whilst you shut up 
 yourself, in patience, meekness, humility, and resignati'^i to 
 God, you are in the very arms c f Christ, your whole heart 
 is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you. 
 
IV. 
 
 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT THE TRUTHS 
 OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 It is not for notional or speculative mistakes that man will 
 be rejected by God at the last day, or for any crimes that God 
 could overlook if He was so pleased ; but because man has 
 continued in his unregenerate state, and has resisted and 
 suppressed that Birth of Life, by which alone he could become 
 a member of the Kingdom of Heaven. The goodness and 
 love of God have no limits or bounds but such as His omni- 
 potence hath : and everything that hath a possibility of 
 partaking of the Kingdom of Heaven will infallibly find a 
 place in it. 
 
 God comes not to judgement to display any wrath of His 
 own, or to inflict any punishment as from Himself upon man : 
 He only comes to declare that all temporary nature is at an 
 end, and that, therefore, all things must be and stand in their 
 own place in eternal nature : His sentence of condemnation is 
 only a leaving them that are lost, in such a misery of their 
 own nature as has finally rejected all that was possible to 
 relieve it. 
 
 You fancy that God will not reject you at the last day for 
 having not received this or that mode, or kind, of religion : 
 but here all is mistake again. You might as well imagine 
 that no particular kind of clement was necessary to extin- 
 guish fire, or that water can supply the place of air in kindling 
 it, as suppose that no particular kind of religion is absolutely 
 necessary to raise up such a divine life in the soul as can 
 only be its salvation ; for nature is the ground of all creatures, 
 it is God's manifestation of Himself, it is His instrument in 
 and by which He acts in the production and government of 
 every life ; and therefore a life that is to belong to this world 
 must be raised according to temporal nature, and a life that 
 
42 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 is to live in the next world must be raised according to 
 eternal nature. 
 
 Therefore, all the particular doctrines, institutions, mys- 
 teries, and ordinances of a revealed religion that comes from 
 the God of nature, must have their reason, foundation, and 
 necessity in nature ; and then your renouncing such a 
 revealed religion is renouncing all that the God of nature 
 can do to save you. 
 
 When I speak of nature as the true ground and foundation 
 of religion I mean nothing like that which you call the 
 religion of human reason, or nature ; for I speak here of 
 eternal nature, which is the nature of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, or that eternal state where all redeemed souls must 
 have their eternal life, and live in eternal nature by a life 
 derived from it, as men and animals live in temporal nature 
 by a life derived from it ; for seeing man stands with his 
 soul in eternal nature as certainly as he lives outwardly in 
 temporal nature, and seeing man can have nothing in this 
 world, neither happiness, nor misery, from it, but what is 
 according to temporal nature, so he can with his soul attain 
 nothing, nor suffer nothing in the next world, but what is 
 according to the eternal nature of that world ; and therefore 
 it is an infallible truth that that particular religion can alone 
 do us any good, or help us to the happiness of the next 
 world, which works with and according to eternal nature, 
 and is able to generate that eternal life in us. But your 
 notion of a goodness of God that may be expected at the last 
 day is as groundless as if you imagined that God would then 
 stand over his creatures in a compassionate kind of weighing, 
 or considering who should be saved, and who damned, 
 because a good-natured Prince might do so towards a variety 
 of offenders. 
 
 Your notion of a goodness of God at the last day sup- 
 poses that if a man has erroneously chosen death instead of 
 life, fire instead of water, that God will not suffer such a 
 creature to be deprived of salvation through a mistaken 
 choice ; but that in such a creature He will make death to be 
 life, and fire to be water. But you might as well expect that 
 God should make a thing to be, and not to be, at the same 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 43 
 
 time; for this is as possible as to make Hell to be Heaven, or 
 Death to be Life ; for darkness ran no more be light, death 
 can no more be life, fire can no more be water, in any being 
 through a compassion of God towards it, than a circle could 
 be a square, a falsehood a truth, or two to be more than three, 
 by God's looking upon them. 
 
 Our salvation is an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven : 
 now, the life, light and spirit of Heaven must as necessarily 
 be in a creature before it can live in Heaven, as the life, 
 light, and spirit of this world must be in a creature before it 
 can live in this world ; therefore the one only religion that 
 can save any one son of fallen Adam must be that which can 
 raise or generate the life, light and spirit of Heaven in his 
 soul, that when the light and spirit of this world leaves him, 
 he may not find himself in eternal death and darkness. 
 
 Now if this light and spirit of Heaven is generated in your 
 soul as it is generated in Heaven, if it arises up in your 
 nature within you, as it does in eternal nature without you, 
 (which is the Christian new birth, or regeneration) then you 
 are become capable of the Kingdom of Heaven, and nothing 
 can keep you out of it ; but if you die without this birth of the 
 Eternal Light and Spirit of God, then your soul stands in the 
 same distance from, and contrariety to, the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, as Hell does : if you die in this unregenerate state, 
 it signifies nothing how you have lived, or what religion you 
 have owned, all is left undone that was to have saved you ; 
 it matters not what form of life you have appeared in, what 
 a number of decent, engaging, or glorious exploits you have 
 done, either as a scholar, a statesman, or a philosopher; if 
 they have proceeded only from the light and spirit of this 
 world they must die with it, and leave your soul in that eternal 
 darkness which it must have, so long as the light and spirit 
 of eternity is not generated in it. 
 
 And this is the true ground and reason why an outward 
 morality — a decency and beauty of life and conduct with 
 respect to this world, arising only from a worldly spirit — has 
 nothing of salvation in it ; he that has his virtue only from this 
 world is only a trader of this world, and can only have a 
 worldly benefit from it. For it is an undoubted truth that 
 everything is necessarily bounded by, or kept within, the 
 
44 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 sphere of its own activity ; and therefore, to expect heavenly 
 effects from a worldly spirit is nonsense. As water cannot rise 
 higher in its streams than the spring from whence it cometh, 
 so no actions can ascend further in their efficiency, or rise 
 higher in their value, than the spirit from whence they pro- 
 ceed. The spirit that comes from Heaven is always in 
 Heaven, and whatsoever it does, tends to, and reaches 
 Heaven. The spirit that arises from this world is always 
 in it; it is as worldly when it gives alms, or prays in the 
 church, as when it makes bargains in the market. When, 
 therefore, the Gospel saith, " He that gives alms to be seen 
 of men, hath his reward," it is grounded on this general 
 truth : that every thing, every shape, or kind or degree of 
 virtue that arises from the spirit of this world has nothing to 
 expect but that which it can receive from this world ; for 
 every action must have its nature and efficacy according to 
 the spirit from whence it proceeds. He that loves to see a 
 crucifix, a worthless image, solely from this principle, because 
 from his heart he embraces Christ as his suffering Lord and 
 pattern, does an action poor and needless in itself, which yet, 
 by the spirit from whence it proceeds, reaches Heaven and 
 helps to kindle the heavenly life in the soul. On the other 
 hand, he that from a selfish heart, a worldly spirit, a love of 
 esteem, distinguishes himself by the most rational virtues of 
 an exemplary life, has only a piety that may be reckoned 
 amongst the perishable things of this world. 
 
 You think it a partiality unworthy of God, when you hear 
 that the salvation of mankind is attributed and appropriated 
 to faith and prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. It must be 
 answered, first, that there is no partiality of any kind in God ; 
 everything is accepted by Him according to its own nature, 
 and receives all the good from Him that it can possibly 
 receive : secondly, that a morality of life not arising from the 
 power and spirit of Jesus Christ, but brought forth by the 
 spirit of this world, is the same thing, has the same nature 
 and efficacy, in a heathen as a Christian, does only the same 
 worldly good to the one as it does to the other ; therefore there 
 is not the least partiality in God with respect to the moral 
 works of mankind, considered as arising from, and directed 
 by, the spirit of this world. 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 45 
 
 Now, were these the only works that man could do, could 
 he only act from the spirit of this world, no flesh could be 
 saved — that is, no earthly creature, such as man is, could 
 possibly begin to be of a heavenly nature, or have a heavenly 
 life brought forth in him ; so it is only a spirit from Heaven 
 derived into the fallen nature, that makes any beginning of a 
 heavenly life in it, that can lay the possibility of its having 
 the least ability, tendency, and disposition towards the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. This spirit derived from Heaven is the 
 Birth of the Son of God, given to the soul as its Saviour, 
 Regenerator, or Beginner of its return to Heaven ; it is that 
 Word of Life, or Bruiser of the Serpent, that was in-spoken 
 into the first fallen Father of men ; 'tis this alone that gives 
 to all the race of Adam their capacity for salvation, their 
 power of being again sons of God. 
 
 Therefore, though Jesus Christ is the one only Saviour of 
 all that can anywhere, or at any time, be saved, yet there is 
 no partiality in God ; because this same Jesus Christ, who 
 came in human flesh to the Jews in a certain age, was that 
 same Saviour who was given to Adam when all mankind were 
 in his loins ; and who, through all ages, and in all countries, 
 from the first patriarchs to the end of the world, is the 
 common Saviour, as He is the common Light that lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world, and that principle of 
 life both in Jews and heathens by which they had any relation 
 to God, or any power, or right, or ability to call Him Father. 
 When, therefore, you look upon the Gospel as narrowing the 
 way of salvation or limiting it to those who only know and 
 believe in Jesus Christ since His appearance in the flesh, you 
 mistake the whole nature of the Christian redemption. 
 
 When the Gospel saith that man fallen from the state of 
 his crcati<Mi. and become an earthly animal of this temporal 
 world, must be born again of the Son and Holy Spirit of God, 
 in order to be a heavenly creature, it is because all nature 
 saith that an immortal, eternal soul must have an immortal, 
 eternal light and spirit to make it live in eternal nature, as 
 every animal must have a temporal light and spirit in order 
 
46 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 to live in temporary nature. Must you not, therefore, either 
 deny the immortality of the soul, or acknowledge the necessity 
 of its having an eternal light and spirit? When the Gospel 
 saith that nothing can kindle or generate the heavenly life 
 but the operation of the light and spirit of heaven, it is 
 because all nature saith that no temporal life can be raised 
 but in the same manner in temporary nature. Must you not 
 therefore be forced to confess that nature and the Gospel 
 both preach the same truths? 
 
 Light and Spirit must be wherever there are living beings ; 
 and there must be the same difference betwixt the light and 
 spirit of different worlds, as there is betwixt the worlds 
 themselves. Hell must have its light, or it could have no 
 living inhabitants ; but its light is not so refreshing, not so 
 gentle, not so delightful, not so comfortable, as flashing 
 points of fire in the thickest darkness of night ; and therefore 
 their light is called an eternal darkness, because it can never 
 disperse, but only horribly discover darkness. Hell also must 
 have its spirit ; but it is only an incessant sensibility of wrath- 
 ful agitations, of which the thunder and rage of a tempest is 
 but a low shadowy resemblance, as being only a little outward 
 eruption of that wrath which Is the inward, restless essence 
 of the spirit of Hell ; and therefore that life, though it be a 
 living spirit, is justly called an eternal death. 
 
 The Light and Spirit of God admit of no delineation or 
 comparison, they are only so far known to anyone as they 
 are brought into the soul by a birth of themselves in it. 
 
 Now consider, I pray you : the light and spirit of this world 
 can no more be the light and spirit of immortal souls, than 
 grass and hay can be the food of angels ; but is as different 
 from the light and spirit of heaven as an angel is different 
 from a beast of the field. When therefore the soul of a man 
 departs from his body, and is eternally cut off from all tem- 
 poral light and spirit, what is it that can keep such a soul 
 from falling into eternal darkness, unless it have in itself 
 that light and spirit which is of the same nature with the light 
 and spirit of eternity, so that it may be in the light of Heaven 
 or Eternal Nature, as it was in the light of this world in 
 temporary nature? 
 
 Light and spirit there must be in every thing that lives, 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 47 
 
 but the death of the body takes away the Hght and spirit of 
 this world ; if therefore the Hght and spirit of Heaven be not 
 born in the soul when it loses the body, it can only have that 
 light and spirit which is the very death and darkness of Hell. 
 
 Now, seeing the light and spirit of Heaven, or Eternal 
 Nature, is as different from the light and spirit of this world 
 as an angel is from an animal of the field, if you have lived 
 here only to the spirit and temper of this world, governed by 
 its goods and evils, and only wise accor'ding to its wisdom, 
 you must die as destitute of the light and spirit of Heaven 
 as the beasts that perish. You have now an aversion and 
 dislike, or at least, a disbelief of the doctrines of Christian 
 regeneration, you struggle against this kind of redemption, 
 you would have no salvation from the light and spirit of 
 eternity regenerated in your soul ; where then must you be, 
 when the light and spirit of this world leaves you? 
 
 Do you think that the light and spirit of God will then 
 seize upon you, shine up in you by an outward force, though 
 they never could be born in you? Or do you think that the 
 light and spirit of God can now be generating themselves in 
 you, and ready to appear as soon as you have ended a life 
 that has continually resisted them, and would have no new 
 birth from them? Or that God, by a compassionate goodness, 
 will not suffer you to be in that condition into which your own 
 will has brought you? No, my friend, the will that is in you 
 must do that for you which the will that was in angels did for 
 those that stood, and for those that fell. 
 
 God's goodness or compassion is always in the same 
 infinite state, always flowing forth in and through all nature 
 in the same infinite manner, and nothing wants it but that 
 which cannot receive it. Whilst the angels stood, they stood 
 encompassed with the infinite source of all goodness and 
 compassion; God was communicated to them in as high a 
 degree as their nature could receive; and they fell, not 
 because He ceased to be an infinite, open fountain of all good 
 to them, but because they had a will which must direct itself. 
 For the will, at its first arising in the creature, can be 
 subject to no outward power, because it has no outward 
 maker; as it stands in a creaturely form, God is its true 
 
48 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 Creator; but as a will It has no outward maker, but is a ray 
 or spark derived from the unbeginming will of the Creator, 
 and is of the same nature in the creature as it was in the 
 Creator, self-existent, self-generating, self-moving, and 
 uncontrollable from without ; and there could not possibly be 
 a free will in the creature but by its being directly derived, 
 or propagated from, the same will in the Creator, for nothing 
 can be free now, but that which always was so. 
 
 But if the free Will of God, which is above and superior to 
 nature, be communicated to the creature, then the creature's 
 free will must have the same power over its own nature, that 
 theWill of God has over that Eternal Nature which is His own 
 manifestation : and therefore, every free creature must have 
 and find its own nature in this or that state, as a birth from 
 the free working of its own will. And here appears the true 
 reason why no creatures of this world can commit sin ; 'tis 
 because they have no will that is superior to nature : their will 
 in every one of them is only the will of nature ; and therefore 
 let them do what they will they are always doing that which is 
 natural, and consequently, not sinful. But the will of angels 
 and men being an offspring, or ray, derived from the Will 
 of God which is superior to nature, stands chargeable with 
 the state and condition of their nature ; and therefore it is 
 that the nature of the devil, and the nature of fallen man, is 
 imputed to both of them as their sin, which could not be but 
 because their will was uncontrollable, and gave birth and 
 being to that state and condition of nature, which is called, 
 and is, their sin. 
 
 Therefore, O Man ! look well to thyself, and see what 
 birth thou art bringing forth, what nature is growing up in 
 thee, and be assured that stand thou must in that state in 
 nature which the working of thy own will has brought forth 
 in thee, whether it be happy or miserable. 
 
 The free grace and mercy by which we are said in the 
 Scripture to be saved is not an arbitrary good will in God 
 which saves whom He pleases ; as a Prince may forgive 
 some, and not forgive others, merely through his own 
 sovereign grace and favour : nothing of this kind hath any 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 49 
 
 place in God, or in the mystery of our redemption ; but the 
 mercy and grace, by which we are saved, is therefore free, 
 because God hath freely, and from His own goodness, put us 
 into a state and possibility of salvation, by freely giving us 
 Jesus Christ (the divine and human nature united in one 
 person) as the only means of regenerating that first divine 
 and human life, which the whole race of mankind had lost. 
 
 The truth of the matter is this, God is as infinite and 
 boundless in love and goodness as He is in power, but His 
 omnipotence can only do that which is possible, and nothing 
 is possible but that which hath its possibility in nature ; 
 because nature is God's first power. His great, universal 
 manifestation of His Deity, in and through and by which all 
 His infinite attributes break forth and display themselves : 
 so that to expect that God should do anything that is above 
 or contrary to this nature is as absurd as to expect that God 
 should act above or contrary to Himself : as God can only 
 make a creature to be in and through and by nature, so the 
 reason why He cannot make a creature to be and not to be at 
 the same time is only this, because it is contrary to nature. 
 Let no man therefore trust to be saved at the last day by any 
 arbitrary goodness or free grace of God ; for salvation is, and 
 can be, nothing else but the having put off all that is damnable 
 and hellish in our nature, which salvation can be found by no 
 creature but by its own full conforming to, and concurring 
 with, those mysterious means which the free grace of God 
 hath afforded for the recovery of our first, perfect, glorious 
 state in nature. 
 
 Was there no nature, there could be no creature, because 
 the life of every creature is, and can be, nothing else but the 
 life of that nature out of which it was created, and in which it 
 has its being. Eternal beings must have their qualities, 
 nature, form and manner of existence, out of eternal nature, 
 and temporal beings out of temporary nature : was there no 
 eternity, there could be no time, was there nothing infinite, 
 there could be nothing finite ; therefore we have here two 
 great fundamental truths that cannot be shaken ; first, that 
 
50 
 
 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 there is, and must be, an eternal nature, because there is a 
 nature that is temporary ; and that it must be that to eternal 
 creatures, which temporal nature is to temporal creatures ; 
 secondly, that everywhere, in all worlds, nature must stand 
 between God and the creature, as the foundation of all mutual 
 intercourse ; God can transact nothing with the creature, nor 
 the creature have any communion with (lod, but in, and by, 
 that nature in which it stands. 
 
 I hope no one will here ask me for Scripture proofs of this, 
 or call these truths nostrums, because they are not to be found 
 in the same form of expression in some particular text of 
 Scripture. Where do the holy writings tell us that a thing 
 cannot be, and not be, at the same time? or that every con- 
 sequence must arise from premisses? And yet the Scripture 
 is continually supposing both these truths, and there could be 
 no truth in the Scripture, or anywhere else, if these things 
 were not undeniable. 
 
 There is nothing said of man throughout all Scripture but 
 what supposes him to stand, in nature, under a necessity of 
 choosing something that is natural, either life or death, fire 
 or water. There is nothing said of God with relation to 
 creatures but what supposes Him to be the God of nature, 
 manifesting Himself in and through nature, calling, assisting, 
 and directing everything to its highest natural state. Nature 
 is the scene of His providence, and all the variety of His 
 governing attributes display themselves by His various 
 operations in and through nature ; therefore it is equally 
 certain that what God does to any creature must be done 
 through the medium of nature, and also that what the 
 creature does toward God must be done in and through the 
 powers of that nature in which it stands. No temporary 
 creature can turn to God, or reach after Him, or have any 
 communion with him, but in, and according to, that relation 
 which temporary nature bears to God ; nor can any eternal 
 beings draw near to, or unite with, God, in any other manner 
 than that in which eternal nature is united with Him. Would 
 you know why no omnipotence of God can create temporal 
 animals but out of temporary nature, nor eternal animals but 
 out of eternal nature ; it is because no omnipotence of God 
 can produce a visible triangle, but out of, and by, three visible 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 51 
 
 lines ; for, as lines must be, before there can be any lineal 
 figures, so nature must be, before there can be natural 
 creatures. 
 
 Everything that is in being is either God, or nature, or 
 creature; and everything that is not God is only a manifesta- 
 tion of God ; for as there is nothing, neither nature, nor 
 creature, but what must have its being in, and from, God, so 
 everything is, and must be, according to its nature, more or 
 less a manifestation of God. Everything, therefore, by its 
 form and condition speaks so much of God, and God in every- 
 thing speaks and manifests so much of Himself. Temporary 
 nature is this beginning, created, system of sun, stars, and 
 elements ; it is temporary nature, because it begins and hath 
 an end, and therefore is only a temporary manifestation of 
 God, or God manifested according to transitory things. 
 
 Properly and strictly speaking, nothing can begin to be : 
 the beginning of everything is nothing more than its begin- 
 ning to be in a new state. Thus time itself does not begin to 
 be, but duration, which always was, began to be measured by 
 the earth's turning round, or the rising and setting of the sun, 
 and that is called the beginning of time which is, properly 
 speaking, only the beginning of the measure of duration. 
 Thus it is with all temporal nature, and all the qualities and 
 powers of temporal beings that live in it : not quality or 
 power of nature then began to be, but such qualities and 
 powers as had been from all eternity began then to be in a 
 new state. Ask what time is, it is nothing else but something 
 of eternal duration become finite, measurable, and transitory. 
 Ask what fire, light, darkness, air, water, and earth are ; they 
 are, and can be, nothing else but some eternal things become 
 gross, finite, measurable, divisible, and transitory. For if 
 there could be a temporal fire that did not spring out of eternal 
 fire, then there might be time that did not come out of 
 eternity. 
 
 'Tis thus with every temporary thing, and the qualities of 
 it ; 'tis the beginning of nothing, but only of a new state of 
 something that existed before : therefore all temporary nature 
 is a product, offspring, or out-birth of eternal nature, and is 
 nothing else but so much of eternal nature changed from its 
 eternal to a temporal condition. Fire did not begin to be, 
 
53 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 darkness did not begin to be, light did not begin to be, water 
 and earth did not begin to be, when this temporary world first 
 appeared, but all these things came out of their eternal state 
 into a lower, divided, compacted, created and transitory state. 
 Hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling, did not then begin 
 to be when God first created the creatures of this world, they 
 only came to be qualities and powers of a lower and more 
 imperfect order of beings than they had been before. 
 
 Figures, and their relations, did not then begin to be when 
 material circles and squares, etc., were first made, but these 
 figures and relations began then to appear in a lower state 
 than they had done before : and so it must be said of all 
 temporal nature, and everything in it. It is only something 
 of eternal nature separated, changed, or created into a new 
 temporary state and condition. 
 
 Temporal nature opened to us by the Spirit of God becomes 
 a volume of holy instruction, and leads us into all the 
 mysteries and secrets of eternity ; for as ever} thing in 
 temporal nature is descended out of that which is eternal, and 
 stands as a palpable, visible out-birth of it, so when we know 
 how to separate the grossness, death, and darkness of time 
 from it, we find what it is in its eternal state. 
 
 In Eternal Nature, or the Kingdom of Heaven, materiality 
 stands in life and light ; it is the light's glorious Body, or that 
 garment wherewith light is clothed, and therefore has all the 
 properties of light in it, and only differs from light as it is its 
 brightness and beauty, as the holder and displayer of all its 
 colours, powers, and virtues. But the same materiality in 
 this world, being created or compacted into a separation from 
 fire united with light, is become the body of death and dark- 
 ness, and is therefore gross, thick, dark, heavy, divisible, 
 etc., for death is nothing else but the shutting up, or shutting 
 out, the united power of fire and light : this is the only death 
 that ever did, or can, happen to anything, whether earthly or 
 heavenly. Therefore every degree of hardness, darkness, 
 stiffness, etc., is a degree of death; and herein consists the 
 deadness of the materiality of this world. When it shall be 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT ^^ 
 
 raised to life, that is, when the united power of fire and light 
 shall kindle itself through all temporal nature, then hardness, 
 darkness, divisibility, etc., will be all extinguished together. 
 
 All beings that are purely of this world have their existence 
 in, and dependence upon, temporal nature. God is no maker, 
 creator, or governor, of any being or creature of this world 
 immediately, or by Himself; but He creates, upholds, and 
 governs all things of this world, by, and through, and with, 
 temporal nature. As temporary nature is nothing else but 
 eternal nature separated, divided, compacted, made visible 
 and changeable for a time, so heaven is nothing else but the 
 beatific visibility, the majestic preference, of the abyssal, 
 unsearchable. Triune God : 'tis that Light with which the 
 Scripture saith, God is decked as with a garment, and by 
 which He is manifested and made visible to heavenly eyes 
 and beings ; for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as they are the 
 Triune God, deeper than the Ivingdom of Heaven or Eternal 
 Nature, are invisible to all created eyes ; but that beatific 
 visibility and outward glory which is called the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is the manifestation of the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, in, and by, and through, the glorious union of eternal 
 Fire, and Light, and Spirit. In the Kingdom of Heaven these 
 are three and one, because their original, the Holy Trinity, is 
 so ; and we must call them by the names of Fire, Light, and 
 Spirit, because all that we have of fire, and light, and spirit 
 in this world has its whole nature directly from them, and is 
 indeed nothing else but the Fire, and Light, and Spirit of 
 Eternity, brought into a separated, compacted, temporal 
 state. So that to speak of a heavenly fire has no more gross- 
 ness and offence in it than when we speak of a heavenly life, 
 a heavenly light, or heavenly spirit ; for if there is a hea\ enly 
 light and spirit, there must of all necessity be a heavenly fire ; 
 and if these things were not in heaven in a glorious state of 
 union, they never could have been here in this gross state of 
 a temporal compaction and division : so that as sure as there 
 are fire, and light, and air in this world, in a divided, com- 
 pacted, imperfect state, in which consists the life of temporary 
 nature and creatures, so sure is it that fire, and light, and 
 
54 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 spirit are in the Kingdom of Heaven, united in one perfection 
 of glory in which consists the beatific visibiHty of God, the 
 Divine Nature as communicable to heavenly beings. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven stands in this threefold life, where 
 three are one, because it is a manifestation of the Deity, which 
 is Three and One; the Father has His distinct manifestation 
 in the Fire, which is always generating the Light ; the Son 
 has His distinct manifestation in the Light, which is always 
 generated from the Fire; the Holy Ghost has His manifesta- 
 tion in the Spirit, that always proceeds from both, and is 
 always united with them. 
 
 It is this eternal unbeginning Trinity in Unity of Fire, 
 Light, and Spirit, that constitutes Eternal Nature, the King- 
 dom of Heaven, the heavenly Jerusalem, the Divine Life, the 
 Beatific Visibility, the majestic Glory and Presence of God. 
 Through this Kingdom of Heaven, or Eternal Nature, is the 
 invisible God, the incomprehensible Trinity, eternally break- 
 ing forth and manifesting itself in a boundless height and 
 depth of blissful wonders, opening and displaying itself to all 
 its creatures as in an infinite variation and endless multiplicity 
 of its powers, beauties, joys, and glories. So that all the 
 inhabitants of Heaven are for ever knowing, seeing, hearing, 
 feeling, and variously enjoying all that is great, amiable, 
 infinite and glorious in the Divine Nature. 
 
 Nothing ascends, or comes into this Kingdom of Heaven, 
 but that which descended, or came out of it, all its inhabitants 
 must be innate guests, and born out of it. 
 
 God, considered in Himself, as distinct from this Eternal 
 Nature, or Kingdom of Heaven, is not the immediate Creator 
 of any angels, spirits, or divine beings ; but as He creates 
 and governs all temporal beings in, and by, and out of, 
 temporal nature, so He creates and governs all spiritual and 
 heavenly beings in, and by, and out of. Eternal Nature : this 
 is as absolutely true as that no being can be temporal but by 
 partaking of temporal nature, nor any being eternal but by 
 partaking of the eternal, divine nature; and therefore, what- 
 ever God creates is not created immediately by Himself, but 
 in, and by, and out of, that nature in which it is to live and 
 move and have its being ; temporal beings out of temporal 
 nature, and eternal beings out of the heavenly kingdom of 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 55 
 
 eternal nature : and hence it is, that all angels and the souls 
 of men are said to be born of God, Sons of God, and 
 partakers of the Divine Nature, because they are formed 
 out of that Eternal Nature, which is the r-beginning Majesty 
 of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, or visible glory of the Deity. 
 In this Eternal Nature, which is the majestic clothing, or 
 glory of the Triune God, manifested in the glorious unity of 
 Divine Fire, Light, and Spirit, have all the created images 
 of God, whether they be angels or men, their existence, 
 union, and communion with God ; because fire, and light, and 
 spirit have the same union and birth in the creature as in 
 the Creator : and hence it is, that they are so many various 
 mirrors of the Deity, penetrated with the Majesty of God, 
 receiving and returning back communications of the Life of 
 God. Now, in this ground, that is, in this consideration of 
 God as manifesting His Holy Trinity through nature and 
 creature, lieth the solid and true understanding of all that 
 is so variously said of God, both in the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, with relation to mankind, both as to their creation, 
 fall, and redemption. God is to be considered throughout as 
 the God of Nature, only manifesting Himself to all His 
 creatures in a variety of attributes in and by nature ; creating, 
 governing, blessing, punishing, and redeeming them 
 according to the powers, workings, and possibilities of 
 nature. 
 
 This God over nature and creature darts no more anger 
 at angels when fallen, than He did in the creation of them : 
 they are not in Hell because Father, Son, and Holy Ghost 
 are angry at them, and so cast them into a punishment 
 which their wrath had contrived for them ; but they are in 
 wrath and darkness because they have done to the light 
 which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does 
 to the light of the sun who puts out his own eyes : he is in 
 darkness, not because the sun is darkened towards him, has 
 less light for him, or has lost all inclination to enlighten 
 him, but because he has put out that birth of light in him- 
 self, which alone made him capable of seeing in the light of 
 the sun. 
 
56 AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 If you ask what Fire is in its first, true, and unbeginning 
 state, not yet entered into any creature, it is the power and 
 strength, the glory and majesty of eternal nature ; it is that 
 which generates, enriches, brightens, strengthens, and 
 displays, the light of Heaven. It is that which makes the 
 eternal light to be majestic, the eternal love to be flaming : 
 for the strength and vivacity of fire must be both the majesty 
 of light, and the ardour of love. It is the glorious out-birth, 
 the true representative of God the Father eternally generating 
 His only Son, Light and Word. 
 
 If you ask what Fire is in its own spiritual nature, it is 
 merely a desire, and has no other nature than that of a 
 working desire, which is continually its own kindler. For 
 every desire is nothing else but its own striking up, or its 
 own kindling itself into some kind and degree of fire. And 
 hence it is that nature (though reduced to great ignorance 
 of itself) has yet forced all nations and languages to speak 
 of its desires as cool, warm, or burning, etc., because every 
 desire is, so far as it goes, a kindled fire. 
 
 But you will perhaps say, though this be a truth yet it is 
 more speculative than edifying, more fitted to entertain the 
 curiosity than to assist the devotion of Christians. But stay 
 a while, and you shall see it is a truth full of the most 
 edifying instruction, and directly speaking to the heart. 
 
 For if every desire is in itself, in its own essence, the 
 kindling of fire, then we are taught this great practical 
 lesson, that our own desire is the kindler of our own fire, the 
 former and raiser of that life which leads us. What our 
 desire kindles, that becomes the fire of our life, and fits us 
 either for the majestic glories of the Kingdom of God, or 
 the dark horrors of Hell : so that our desire is all, it does 
 all, and governs all, and all that we have and are must arise 
 from it; and therefore it is that the Scripture saith, " Keep 
 thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of 
 life." 
 
 We are apt to think that our imaginations and desires may 
 be played with, that they rise and fall as nothing, because 
 they do not always bring forth outward and visible effects. 
 
AN APPEAL TO ALL WHO DOUBT 
 
 57 
 
 But indeed they are the greatest reality we have, and arc 
 the true formers and raisers of all that is real and solid in us. 
 All outward power that we exercise in the things about us 
 is but as a shadow in comparison of that inward power that 
 resides in our will, imaf^ination, and desires; these commu- 
 nicate with eternity, and kindle the life which always reaches 
 either heaven or hell. This strength of the inward man 
 makes all that is the angel, and all that is the devil ; and we 
 are neither good nor bad, but according to the working of 
 that which is spiritual and invisible in us. Now our desire 
 is not only thus powerful and productive of real effects, but 
 it is always alive, always working and creating in us ; I 
 say creating, for it has no less power, it perpetually 
 generates either life or death in us : and here lies the 
 ground of the great efficacy of prayer, which when it is 
 the prayer of the heart, the prayer of faith, has a kindling 
 and creating power, and forms and transforms the soul into 
 every thing that its desires reach after : it has the key to 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, and unlocks all its treasures ; it 
 opens, extends, and moves that in us which has its being and 
 motion in and with the Divine Nature, and so brings us 
 into a real union and communion \\ith God. 
 
 The same fire that is mere wrath in a devil, is the sweetness 
 of flaming love in an angel ; and the same fire which is the 
 majestic glory of heaven, makes the horror of hell. 
 
V. 
 
 SOME ANIMADVERSIONS. 
 
 In will, imagination, and desire, consists the life or fiery 
 driving of every intelligent creature. And as every intelligent 
 creature is its own self-mover, so every intelligent creature 
 has the power of kindling and inflaming its will, imagination, 
 and desire as it pleases, with shadows, fictions, or realities, 
 with things carnal or spiritual, temporal or eternal. And 
 this kindling of the will, imagination, and desire, when raised 
 into a ruling degree of life, is properly that which is to be 
 understood by enthusiasm ; and therefore enthusiasm is, and 
 must be, of as many kinds as those objects are which can 
 kindle and inflame the wills, imaginations and desires of 
 men. And to appropriate enthusiasm to religion is the same 
 ignorance of nature as to appropriate love to religion ; for 
 enthusiasm, a kindled, inflamed spirit of life, is as common, 
 as universal, as essential to human nature, as love is ; it goes 
 into every kind of life as love does, and has only such a 
 variety of degrees in mankind as love hath. And here we 
 may see the reason why no people are so angry at religious 
 enthusiasts as those that are the deepest in some enthusiasm 
 of another kind. 
 
 He whose fire is kindled from the divinity of 'fully 's 
 rhetoric, who travels over high mountains to salute the dear 
 ground that Marcus Tullius Cicero walked upon ; whose 
 noble soul would be ready to break out of his body if he could 
 see a desk, a rostrum, from whence Cicero had poured forth 
 his thunder of words, may well be unable to bear the dulness 
 of those who go on pilgrimages only to visit the Sepulchre 
 whence the Redeemer of the world rose from the dead, or 
 who grow devout at the sight of a Crucifix because the Son 
 of God hung as a sacrifice thereon. 
 
 He whose heated brain is all over painted with the ancient 
 hieroglyphics ; who knows how and why they were this and 
 
6o SOME ANIMADVERSIONS 
 
 that, better than he can find out the customs and usages of 
 his own parish ; who can clear up everything that is doubtful 
 in antiquity, and yet be forced to live in doubt about that 
 which passes in his own neighbourhood ; who has found out 
 the sentiments of the first philosophers with such certainty 
 as he cannot find out the real opinion of any of his con- 
 temporaries ; he that has gone thus high into the clouds, and 
 dug thus deep into the dark for these glorious discoveries, 
 may well despise those Christians, as brain-sick visionaries, 
 who are sometimes finding a moral and spiritual sense in the 
 bare letter and history of Scripture-facts. 
 
 It matters not what our wills and imaginations are 
 employed about ; wherever they fall and love to dwell, there 
 they kindle a fire ; and that becomes the flame of life, to which 
 everything else appears as dead, and insipid, and unworthy 
 of regard. Hence it is that even the poor species of fops and 
 beaux have a right to be placed among enthusiasts, though 
 capable of no other claim than that which is kindled by tailors 
 and peruke-makers. All refined speculatists, as such, are 
 great enthusiasts ; for being devoted to the exercise of their 
 imaginations, they are so heated into a love of their own ideas 
 that they seek no other siimmum bonuni. The grammarian, 
 the critic, the poet, the connoisseur, the antiquary, the 
 philosopher, the politician, are all violent enthusiasts, though 
 their heat is only a flame from straw, and therefore they all 
 agree in appropriating enthusiasm to religion. All ambitious, 
 proud, self-conceited persons, especially if they are scholars, 
 are violent enthusiasts, and their enthusiasm is an inflamed 
 self-love, self-esteem, and self-seeking. This fire is so 
 kindled in them, that everything is nauseous and disgustful 
 to them that does not offer incense to that idol which their 
 imagination has set up in themselves. .All atheists are dark 
 enthusiasts ; their fire is kindled by a will and imagination 
 turned from God into a gloomy depth of nothingness, and 
 therefore their enthusiasm is a dull burning fire that goes in 
 and out, through hopes and fears of they know not what that 
 is to come. All professed infidels are remarkable enthusiasts ; 
 they have kindled a bold fire from a few faint ideas, and 
 therefore they are all zeal, and courage, and industry, to be 
 constantly blowing it up. A Tyndal and a Collins are as 
 
SOME ANIMADVERSIONS 61 
 
 iiiflanied with the notions of infidelity, as a St. Bennet and 
 St. Francis with the doctrines of the Gospel. 
 
 Enthusiasts therefore we all are, as certainly as we are 
 men ; and consequently, enthusiasm is not a thing blamable 
 in itself, but is the common condition of human life in all its 
 states ; and every man that lives either well or ill is that which 
 he is, from that prevailing- fire of life, or driving of our wills 
 and desires, which is properly called enthusiasm. Vou need 
 not then go to a cloister, the cell of a monk, or to a field 
 preacher, to see enthusiasts ; they are everywhere, at balls 
 and masquerades, at Court and the Exchange ; they sit in all 
 Coffee houses, and cant in all Assemblies. The beau and the 
 coquette have no magic but where they meet enthusiasts. 
 The mercer, the tailor, the bookseller have all their wealth 
 from them ; the works of a Bayle, a Shaftesbury, and Cicero, 
 would lose four-fifths of their astonishing beauties, had they 
 not keen enthusiasts for their readers. 
 
 That which concerns us, therefore, is only to see with what 
 materials our prevailing fire of life is kindled, and in what 
 species of enthusiasts it truly places us. For either the flesh 
 or the spirit, either the wisdom from above or the wisdom of 
 this world, will have its fire in us ; and we must have a life 
 that governs us either according to the sensuality of the 
 beast, the subtlety of the serpent, or the holiness of the angel. 
 Enthusiasm is not blamable in religion, when it is true 
 religion that kindles it. We are created with wills and desires 
 for no other end but to love, adore, desire, serve, and co- 
 operate with God ; and therefore the more we are inflamed in 
 this motion of our wills and desires, the more we have of a 
 God-like divine nature and perfection in us. Religious 
 enthusiasm is not blamable when it is a strong persuasion, 
 a firm belief of a continual operation, impression, and influ- 
 ence from above ; when it is a total resignation to, and 
 dependence upon, the immediate inspiration and guidance of 
 the Holy Spirit in the whole course of our lives ; this is as 
 sober and rational a belief as to believe that we always live, 
 and move, and have our being in God. Both nature and 
 Scripture demonstrate this to be the true spirit of a religious 
 man. Nature tells everyone that we can only be heavenly by 
 a spirit derived from heaven, as plainly as it tells us that we 
 
62 SOME ANIMADVERSIONS 
 
 can only be earthly by having the spirit of this world 
 breathing in us. The Gospel teaches no truth so constantly, 
 so universally, as this, that every good thought and good 
 desire is the work of the Holy Spirit. And therefore both 
 nature and Scripture demonstrate that the one only way to 
 piety, virtue, and holiness is to prepare, expect, and resign 
 ourselves up wholly to the influence and guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit in everything that we think, or say, or do. The 
 moment anyone departs from this faith, or loses this direction 
 of his will and desire, so far, and so long, he goes out of the 
 one only element of all holiness of life. There is nothing that 
 so sanctifies the heart of man, that keeps us in such habitual 
 love, prayer, and delight in God ; nothing that so kills all the 
 roots of evil in our nature, that so renews and perfects all our 
 virtues, that fills us with so much love, goodness, and good 
 wishes to every creature, as this faith that God is always 
 present in us with His Light and Holy Spirit. When the 
 heart has once learnt thus to find God. and knows how to live 
 everywhere, and in all things, in this immediate intercourse 
 with Him, seeing Him, lov"ing Him, and adoring Him in 
 eversthing, trusting in Him, depending upon Him for His 
 continual Light and Holy Spirit ; when it knows that this faith 
 is infallible, that by thus believing it thus possesses all that 
 it believes of God : then it begins to have the nature of God 
 in it, and can do nothing but flow forth in love, benevolence, 
 and goodwill towards every creature ; it can have no wish 
 towards any man but that he might thus know, and love, 
 and find God in himself as the true beginning of heaven, and 
 the heavenly life in the soul. 
 
 On the other hand, no error so hurtful to the soul, so 
 destructive of all the ends of the Gospel, as to be led from 
 this faith and entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit of God, 
 or to place our recover}- in anything else but in the operation 
 of the Light and Holy Spirit of God upon the soul. It is 
 withdrawing men not only from the earliest, the most natural, 
 the most fruitful, but the only possible source of all light and 
 life. For every man, as such, has an open gate to God in 
 his soul, he is always in that temple where he can worship 
 God in spirit and truth ; every Christian, as such, has the first 
 fruits of the Spirit, a seed of Life, which is his call and qualifi- 
 
SOME ANIMADVERSIONS 63 
 
 cation to be always in a state of inward prayer, faith, and 
 holy intercourse with God. All the ordinances of the Gospel, 
 the daily sacramental service of the Church, is to keep up, 
 and exercise, and strengthen this faith, to raise us to such an 
 habitual faith and dependence upon the Light and Holy Spirit 
 of God, that by thus seeking and finding God in the institu- 
 tions of the Church we may be habituated to seek Him and 
 find Him, to live in His Light and walk by His Spirit, in all 
 the actions of our ordinary life. This is the enthusiasm in 
 which every good Christian ought to endeavour to live 
 and die. 
 
 The whole system of Christianity has generally been looked 
 upon as a mystery- of salvation solely founded in the divine 
 pleasure ; and to be such a scheme of redemption as is wholly 
 to be resolved into the contrivance of the Will and Wisdom 
 of God ; and therefore men can think as differently of it, can 
 fall into as many opinions about it, as they can of the Will 
 and \\'isdom of God. Hence has arisen all the speculative 
 opposition to the Gospel ; it is because reason, human specu- 
 lation, and conjecture, is always imagining it can form a 
 religion more worthy of the wisdom and designs of the 
 Supreme Being than the Christian is ; and would be thought 
 to oppose the Gospel only for the honour of God and the 
 divine attributes. This is the great, prevailing idolatry- of 
 the present heathen world, or that part of mankind who are 
 Infidels, or Deists. Hence also is risen another species of 
 idolatry, even amongst Christians of all denominations ; who, 
 though receiving and professing the religion of the Gospel, 
 yet worship God not in spirit and in truth, but either in the 
 deadness of an outward form, or in a pharisaical, carnal trust 
 and confidence in their own opinions and doctrines. This 
 body of people, whether they be clergy or laity, are but 
 nominal Christians, because they have little more than the 
 name of every mystery of the Gospel ; historical Christians, 
 because satisfied with the history of Gospel-salvation ; literal 
 Christians, because looking only to, and contending only for, 
 the letter of the institutions and mysteries of Jesus Christ. 
 For the letter, for the federal rite, and the figurative expres- 
 sion of regeneration, they are all zeal and industrt- ; but the 
 
64 SOME ANIMADVERSIONS 
 
 reality of it, the true life of the new birth, they oppose 
 and reject as heartily as the Deist does the outward form 
 and letter. 
 
 To those who confine idolatry to the worship of such idols 
 as the old Heathens and Jews worshipped, it may seem a 
 paradox to talk of the idolatry of the present world, either 
 amongst Deists or Christians. But if we consider things 
 more than words, we shall find that idolatry is nowhere but 
 where the heart has set up something in the place of God ; and 
 therefore is everywhere, and in everything, where the heart 
 places that repose, trust, and delight, which should be placed 
 in God alone. For God is only owned, and confessed to be 
 our God, by these acknowledgments and dispositions of our 
 hearts towards Him. It is an infallible truth that all sin has 
 its beginning and continuance in and from idolatry : this alone 
 debauched the former and the later ages of the world, and is 
 the one source of all the corruption of manners, from the 
 beginning to the end of time. You do not make a Golden 
 Calf, as the Jews did, to worship it ; but if Mammon is your 
 God, if your life is devoted to pride, ambition, and sensuality, 
 your idolatry is not so sensible, but it is as real, as theirs who 
 danced about a Golden Calf. You fancy that Venus is not 
 vour goddess, because you are not worshipping a figured 
 image of her in a temple called by her name ; but if you look 
 at the odes, the hymns, the songs, which you love, which lust 
 has inspired, then you may know that Venus is the goddess 
 of your heart. It is thus with every object, and in every 
 course of life ; that which possesses and governs our hearts 
 has usurped the right and place of God in it, and has that 
 worship, trust, the devotion of the heart, which is due to 
 God alone ; and therefore the idolatry of the present world is 
 only of a different kind from that of the ancient ; it is less 
 seen, and less confessed, but not less real, than when carved 
 images and figured idols were adored. Deism, or the religion 
 of human reason, set up in opposition to the Gospel, is direct 
 idolatry, and has every grossness and vanity of image 
 worship. For to put our trust in our own reason, to be 
 content with its light, to resign ourselves up to it, and depend 
 upon it as our guide, is a mistake that has every grossness 
 
SOME ANIMADVERSIONS 65 
 
 and vanity of the adoration of an idol. Now this kind of 
 idolatry has overrun all the last ages of the world ; it is the 
 last effort of human vanity ; it is the utmost that idolatry can 
 do, both to hide and propagate itself, and is the devil under 
 the appearance of an angel of light. The Gospel has no 
 enemy but this idolatry, and it is as visible in the Church as 
 out of it. 
 
VI. 
 
 AN EARNEST AND SERIOUS ANSWER. 
 
 Vain man, taken with the sound of heavenly things and 
 prospects of future glory, yet at the same time a fast friend 
 to all the interests and passions of flesh and blood, would 
 fain compound matters between God and Mammon. He is 
 willing to acknowledge a Saviour that died on the Cross to 
 save him ; he is ready to receive outward ordinances and 
 forms of divine worship, and to contend with zeal for the 
 observance of them. He likes heaven and future glory, on 
 these conditions. He is also ready to put on an outward 
 morality of behaviour, to let religion polish his manners, that 
 he may have the credit and ornament of a prudential piety, 
 well-ordered passions, and a decency of outward life ; this 
 gives no hurt, or at least no death's-blow, to the old man. 
 But to lay the axe to the whole root of our disease, to cut all 
 those silken cords asunder which tie us to the world and the 
 world to us, to deny every temper and passion that cannot 
 be made holy, wise, and heavenly ; to die to every gratification 
 which keeps up and strengthens the folly, vanity, pride and 
 blindness of our fallen nature ; to leave no little morsels of 
 sensuality, avarice, and ambition for the old man to feed 
 upon, however well covered under his mantle ; this, though 
 It be the very essence of religion on our part, is what he flies 
 from with as much aversion as from heresy and schism. 
 Here he makes learned appeals to reason and common sense 
 to judge betwixt him and the Gospel ; which is just as wise 
 as to ask the learned Greek and the worldly Jew whether the 
 Cross of Christ be not foolishness and a just rock of offence ; 
 or to appeal to flesh and blood about the narrow way to that 
 Kingdom of Heaven into v/hich itself cannot possibly have 
 any entrance. 
 
 To seek for anything in religion but a new nature fitted for 
 a new world is knowing neither it nor ourselves. To be born 
 
68 AN EARNEST AND SERIOUS ANSWER 
 
 again is to be fit for Paradise, in whatever part of the 
 universe we Hve. Not to be born again is continuing where 
 the sin and death of Adam left us, whatever Church, or sect 
 of religion, we have fellowship with. All ways and opinions, 
 all forms and modes of divine worship, stand on the outside 
 of religion. They may be, and certainly are, great and 
 desirable helps to the Kingdom of God, when we consider 
 them only as the gate, or guide, to that inward life which 
 wants to be raised and brought forth in us. But this is 
 unquestionably true, that our salvation consists wholly and 
 solely in the birth of the Son of God and the renewal of the 
 Holy Ghost in our souls. When this begins our salvation 
 begins ; as this goes on our salvation goes on ; when this is 
 finished our salvation Is finished. 
 
 To renounce the poor interests of a worldly lift-, to be 
 content with a pilgrim's fare in it, to live looking and longing 
 after that which you have lost ; to have no more of covetous- 
 ness, of pride, of vanity, and ambition, than John the Baptist 
 had; to live unto God in your shops, your employments and 
 estates, with such thoughts and desires of going to your 
 heavenly Father as the lost son had when he saw his poor 
 condition, eating husks among swine, is only a proof that 
 you are, like him, come to yourselves, that you begin to see 
 what, and how, and where you are. 
 
 There is not the smallest degree of distraction, pain, or 
 punishment, either within us, or without us, but what is 
 owing to this, viz., that man stands out of his place, is not 
 in and under and united to God as he should be, as the nature 
 of things requires. God created everything to partake of 
 His own nature, to have some degree and share of His own 
 life and happiness. Nothing can be good or evil, happy or 
 unhappy, but as it does or does not stand in the same degree 
 of divine life in which it was created, receiving in God, and 
 from God, all that good which it is capable of, and co- 
 operating with and under Him, according to the nature of 
 its powers and perfection. As soon as it turns to itself, and 
 would, as it were, have a sound of its own, it breaks off from 
 
AN EARNEST AND SERIOUS ANSWER 69 
 
 the divine harmony, and falls into the misery of its own 
 discord ; and all its workings then are only so many sorts of 
 torment, or ways of feeling its own poverty. 
 
 What now can be so desirable to a sober, sensible man as 
 to have the vain, disorderly passions of his own corrupted 
 heart removed from him, to be filled with such unity, love, 
 and concord as flows from God, to stand united to, and 
 co-operating with the divine goodness, willing nothing but 
 what God wills, loving nothing but what God loves, and 
 doing all the good that he can to every creature, from a 
 principle of love and conformity to God. Then the Kingdom 
 of God is come, and His Will is done in that soul as it is done 
 in heaven. Then heaven itself is in the soul, and the life 
 and conversation of the soul is in heaven. From such a man 
 the curse of this world is removed ; he walks on consecrated 
 ground, and everything he meets, everything that happens 
 to him, helps forward his union and communion with God. 
 For it is the state of our will that makes the state of our life ; 
 when we receive everything from God, and do everything for 
 God, everything does us the same good, and helps us to the 
 same degree of happiness. Sickness and health, prosperity 
 and adversity, bless and purify such a soul in the same 
 degree; as it turns everything towards God, so everything 
 becomes divine to it. For he that seeks God in everything 
 is sure to find God in everything. When we thus live wholly 
 unto God, God is wholly ours, and we are then happy in all 
 the happiness of God; for by uniting with Him in heart, and 
 will, and spirit, we are united to all that He is and has in 
 Himself. This is the purity and perfection of life that we 
 pray for in the Lord's Prayer, that God's Kingdom may come 
 and His Will be done in us as it is in hea\en. And this, we 
 may be sure, is not only necessar\- but attainable by us, or 
 our Saviour would not have made it a part of our daily prayer. 
 It may now then justly be asked, have we yet obtained that 
 which we have been so long and so universally praying for? 
 Can we look upon the Church of this nation as drawing near, 
 or even tending to this state of perfection? Can we be 
 carried to any one parish, either in town or country, where it 
 
70 AN EARNEST AND SERIOUS ANSWER 
 
 can with truth be said of any one Pastor and his flock that 
 there the Kingdom of God is coming, and His Will begins to 
 be done on earth as it is done in heaven ? 
 
 The Christian religion has not had its proper effect, nor 
 obtained its intended end, till it has so set up the Kingdom 
 of Heaven amongst us that His Will is done on earth as it is 
 done in Heaven. 
 
VII. 
 
 A DEMONSTRATION OF THE ERRORS OF A LATE 
 
 BOOK. 
 
 There never could have been any dispute about the possibiUty 
 of saving ourselves, nor any pretence to save ourselves by 
 our own natural faculties, had not men lost all true knowledge 
 both of God and themselves. For this dispute cannot happen 
 till men suppose that God is some outward being, that our 
 relation to Him is an outward relation, that religion is an 
 outward thing that passes between God and us, like terms of 
 behaviour between man and man ; that sin hurts and separates 
 us from God only as a misdemeanour hurts and separates us 
 from our Prince ; that an offended or angry God either gives 
 or refuses pardon to us as an angry Prince does to his 
 subjects ; and that what He gives us, or forgives us, is some- 
 thing as distinct and different from Himself as when a 
 Prince, sitting upon his throne, gives or forgives something 
 to an offender that is an hundred miles from him. 
 
 Now all this is the same total ignorance of God, of what 
 He is, of the relation we have to Him, and the manner of His 
 being our Good, as when the old idolaters took men to be 
 gods. And yet nothing is more plain than that your religion 
 of reason is wholly founded upon these gross and false 
 notions of God. Vou have not an argument in its defence 
 but what supposes all these errors just mentioned ; that our 
 relation to God is an outward relation like that of subjects 
 to their Prince, and that what we do to, and for God, as our 
 service to Him, is and must be done by our own power, as 
 that which we do to, and for our Prince, must be done by our 
 own power. And here lies the foundation of all your religion 
 of reason and natural power ; that if it was not sufficient to 
 obtain for us all that we want of God, He must be less good 
 than a good earthly Prince who requires no more of us than 
 
72 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 that which we have a natural strength to do, or can do by 
 our own power. 
 
 And yet this error appears to have all the grossness of 
 idolatry, as soon as you suppose that God is no outward 
 separate Being, but that we are what we are, have what we 
 have, can do that which we can do, because He has brought 
 us to this state of life, power and existence in Himself; 
 because He has made us, so far as we are made partakers or 
 possessors of His own nature, and has communicated to us 
 so much of Himself; or, in the words of Scripture, because 
 in Him we live, and move, and have our being, and conse- 
 quently have no life, motion or being out of Him. For from 
 this state of our existence in God it necessarily follows, first, 
 that by the nature of our creation we are only put into a 
 capacity of receiving good. A creature, as such, can be in no 
 other state ; it is as impossible for him to enrich himself, or 
 communicate more good to himself, as it was to create 
 himself. Secondly, that nothing but God Himself can do 
 us any good. Thirdly, that (iod cannot do us good but by 
 the communication of Himself in some manner to us. 
 
 For hence it evidently follows that your religion of reason, 
 which supposes that we have natural powers that can put us 
 in possession of that which we want to be possessed of in 
 God, or that we need no more divine assistance to recover 
 what we have lost of God than to obtain a pardon from a 
 Prince, or that God need communicate no more of Himself to 
 us in our salvation than a Prince communicates of himself to 
 his pardoned subject, has all the mistakes, error and ignor- 
 ance of God that is in idolatry when it takes God to be 
 something that He is not ; and has all the false devotion that 
 is in idolatry when it puts the same trust in, and expects the 
 same help from, its own powers and faculties, w hit^h idolaters 
 did in and from their idols. 
 
 Therefore your religion of reason, which you esteem as the 
 modern refinement of an human mind, and more excellent and 
 rational than the faith and humility of the Gospel, has all the 
 dregs of the heathen idolatry in it, and has changed nothing 
 in idolatry but the idol ; but has the same mistakes of the 
 nature of God, and of the manner in which he is our God and 
 our Good, as those idolaters had ; and only differs from them 
 
ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 73 
 
 in such a degree of philosophy as the religion of worshipping 
 the sun differs from the religion of worshipping an onion. 
 
 And if you expect that divine assistance from your reason, 
 which one did from the sun and another from an onion, ye 
 arc all equally idolaters, though ye may not be cqualh 
 philosophers. 
 
 For as soon as it is known and confessed that God is all 
 in all, that in Him we live, and move, and have our being ; 
 that we can have nothing separately or out of Him, but 
 everything in Him ; that we can have no being, nor any 
 degree of being, nor any degree of good but in Him ; and 
 that He can give us nothing but Himself, nor any degree of 
 salvation but in such degree as He communicates something 
 more of Himself; as soon as this is known, then it is known 
 with the utmost evidence that to put our trust in the sun, an 
 onion, or our own reason, if not equally absurd, is yet equally 
 idolatrous, and equally prejudicial to our salvation. 
 
 Further, that principle of life, or light of the mind, which 
 I have said that every man receives from Jesus Christ as the 
 beginning of his salvation, is entirely different from your 
 magnified light of reason, as that signifies a faculty of 
 viewing the relations of the ideas of things, and drawing 
 consequences from them. For that light I speak of is Good- 
 ness itself, a seed or degree of so much of the heavenly life 
 in the soul ; but this faculty of speculating and reasoning has 
 nothing of the nature of goodness or religion ; it has not so 
 much as the shadow of it, and is in its own nature as foreign 
 from religion when it is speculating upon it, as when it is 
 speculating upon anything else. Just as our faculty of seeing 
 has no more of goodness or the nature of an angel in it when 
 it sees the picture of an angel, than when it sees the picture 
 of a beast. 
 
 And as a blind man has no more light in him when he 
 reasons about light and colours, than when he discourses 
 about weights and measures ; so this ratiocination, or reason- 
 ing of the mind, has no more of religion in it when it 
 speculates its ideas of God, goodness, and morality, than 
 when it speculates its idea of trees and houses. 
 
74 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 And the reason is plain, because this faculty of speculating 
 and arguing is only the activity of the mind upon its own 
 images and ideas, and is only the same bare activity, what- 
 ever the images be that exercise it; it has nothing of the 
 nature of the images that it views, nor gets the nature of 
 them, because it views them ; as it does not become dark 
 when it considers the nature, causes, and effects of darkness, 
 nor becomes light when it reasons about it ; so neither is it 
 religion, nor gets anything of the nature of religion, when it 
 is wholly taken up in making descriptions and definitions of it. 
 
 If the needle touched with the loadstone was an intelligent 
 being, it could reason and make definitions of itself, of attrac- 
 tion, and of the loadstone; but it would be easy to see that 
 the attraction in the needle, or the virtue of the loadstone 
 that was left in it, was something in its whole nature really 
 different from this reasoning about it ; and that this reason- 
 ing and defining had no relation to this attraction, nor would 
 ever be the more like it for its reasoning upon it, though it 
 continued ever so long or improved ever so much in its 
 descriptions of it ; but would always be at the same distance 
 from it, and could have nothing of its nature in it. But now 
 if this reasoning faculty in the needle should pretend that the 
 needle need not be drawn by an inward attraction, that it need 
 not be unfixed, or delivered from any outward impediments 
 of its turning to the loadstone, because this reasoning faculty 
 was its true and proper attraction, being full of ideas and 
 definitions of it ; you would then have a plain example of 
 your practice in taking natural reason to be true religion, and 
 to have the nature and power of something that carries the 
 soul to God. 
 
 For this instance is a clear explication of the whole matter ; 
 for that which I have called the first redemption of Christ in 
 the soul, a seed of life, an instinct of good, a stirring of 
 conscience, and attraction to God, is that to the soul, which 
 attraction is to the needle that is tourhcti ; and is as difl'erent 
 from your religion of reason as a reasoning faculty in the 
 needle would be different from its attraction, and never could 
 be attraction, or have the nature of it. 
 
 If the needle loses its attraction, its communication with 
 the loadstone is at an end ; and though it reasons never so 
 
ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 75 
 
 long about it, it is still at the same distance from it. So if 
 the soul loses its instinct of goodness, its seed of a divine 
 life, its attraction to God, all its reasonings and definitions 
 about God and goodness are of no use to carry it to God, but 
 it must lie in an absolute state of separation from Him, if its 
 attraction, its inward tendency to God, is lost. 
 
 And let me tell you, my dear friend, for so I must call you, 
 and think of you, that there is much more in this instance 
 than you imagine. For all is magnetism, all is sentiment, 
 instinct and attraction, and the freedom of the will has the 
 government of it. There is nothing in the universe but 
 magnetism and the impediments of it. For as all things 
 come from God, and all things have something of God and 
 goodness in them, so all things have magnetical effects and 
 instincts both towards God and one another. This is the life, 
 the force, the power, the nature of everything, and hence 
 everything has all that is really good or evil in it ; reason 
 stands only as a busybody, as an idle spectator of all this, 
 and has only an imaginary power over it. 
 
 We discover this magnetism in some things, where it 
 breaks out sensibly ; but it is everywhere for the same reason 
 that it is anywhere, though we are too busy with the fictions 
 of our own minds to see it, or too much employed in such 
 things as resist and suppress its force. 
 
 But because this magnetism is a secret life that wants to 
 increase its strength before it can sensibly show its power ; and 
 because we have an activity of reason within us that is soon 
 in action, and concerns itself with everything, and takes all 
 upon it as if it did all ; because it can look at all and dispute 
 about all; therefore it is that this magnetism, or instinct 
 towards God and goodness, has much difficulty to show itself 
 sufficiently, and only stirs now and then within us, or when 
 sickness, distress, or some great outward shock has so 
 dashed in pieces all images of reason, and stopped the 
 activity of our minds, that the secret power of the soul has 
 liberty to awake in it. 
 
 This is that trumpet of God which will raise and separate 
 the dead ; and then, all impediments being removed, every- 
 thing will take its place, not according to the images and 
 ideas it has here played with, but according to the inward 
 
76 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 tendency and attraction of its nature ; and Heaven and Hell 
 will each take its own. 
 
 And even whilst we are in this life, this magnetism is the 
 mark within us to what part we belong ; and that which has 
 its attraction in us has the right to us and power over 
 us, though for a while flesh and blood, and the nature of our 
 temporal state, hinders this from being visibly and sensibly 
 known. 
 
 Nothing however is more plain than that our goodness 
 bears no proportion to our intellectual abilities of reason ; 
 everyone sees this, and yet no more than this need be seen 
 to give us the fullest demonstration that natural reason has 
 no connection with virtue and goodness, and therefore surely 
 can have no connection with our salvation, or be the proper 
 cause of it. 
 
 And therefore, when you place the power of your salvation 
 in yiKU' intellectual light, or the strength of your own reason, 
 you place it in your weakest part, in the poorest, most 
 trifling and insignificant thing that belongs to you, and upon 
 that which has the least effect in human life. 
 
 The only good that reason can do to you is to remove the 
 impediments of virtue, and to give room to that inward 
 instinct or attraction to God and goodness to display itself ; 
 that the inmost spirit of your mind may receive its strength 
 and assistance from the Spirit of God, from which, as the 
 needle from the loadstone, it has all its instinct of goodness 
 and tendency towards God. 
 
 For this inward instinct of goodness, or life of God in the 
 soul, is all the real and living goodness that is in you, and is 
 as different and distinct from natural reason as the light, and 
 heat, and power, and virtue of the sun is different from a 
 picture of it upon a piece of canvas ; and has as different 
 effects upon the mind. 
 
 For this light of bare reason, or the reasoning faculty of 
 the mind, has no contrariety to the vices of the heart; it 
 neither kills them, nor is killed by them. As pride, vanity, 
 hypocrisy, envy, or malice, do not take away from the mind 
 its geometrical skill ; so a man may be most mathematical 
 
ERRORS OF 4 LATE BOOK 77 
 
 in his demonstrations of the religion of reason when he has 
 extinguished every good sentiment of his heart, and be the 
 most zealous for its excellency and sufficiency when he has 
 his passions in the most disordered state. 
 
 But in that light of the heart, or attraction to God, which I 
 have said is common to all mankind in and through Jesus 
 Christ, all is contrary. As it is a gift and grace of God, so 
 it is a real life, a living thing, a sentiment of the heart ; and so 
 far as it grows and increases in us, so far it destroys all 
 that is bad and corrupt within us. It has the same contrariety 
 to all vices of the heart that light has to darkness, and must 
 either suppress or be suppressed by them. 
 
 Now when I speak of this light, or instinct of the heart, 
 or attraction to God, I have not only the authority of Scrip- 
 ture, but every man's own experience on my side; that 
 distinction between the head and the heart, which every one 
 knows how to make, plainly declares for all that I have said. 
 It shows that the state, and manner, and tendency of our 
 heart is all that is good within us ; and that the reasonings 
 and speculations of the head are only an empty show and 
 noise that is made in the outside of us. 
 
 For that which we mean by the heart plainly speaks thus 
 much ; it is a kind of life and motion within us which every 
 one knows contains all that is good or bad in us ; that we are 
 that which our hearts are, let us talk, and reason, and dis- 
 pute what we will about goodness and virtue ; and that this 
 state of our heart is as distinct from, and independent of, all 
 speculations of our reasoning faculties, as it is distinct from, 
 and independent of, all the languages in which a scholar can 
 reason and speculate upon it. And if a man should say that 
 the excellency and sufficiency of natural religion consisted 
 in knowing all the languages in which virtue, goodness, and 
 religion are expressed by different sounds and characters, he 
 would have said as much truth, and as well grounded, as he 
 who places the excellency and sufficiency of natural religion 
 in the many arguments and demonstrations which reason can 
 raise about it. For all reasoning and speculation stand on 
 the outside of the heart, in the same superficial manner as 
 all languages do. 
 
 For our heart is our manner of existence, or the state in 
 
78 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 which we feel ourselves to be ; it is an inward life, a vital 
 sensibility, which contains our manner of feeling what and 
 how we are; it is the state of our desires and tendencies, of 
 inwardly seeing, hearing, tasting, relishing and feeling that 
 which passes within us : it is that to us inwardly with regard 
 to ourselves, which our senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, 
 etc., are with regard to things that are without, or 
 external to us. 
 
 Now as reason is a poor, superficial, and insignificant 
 thing with respect to our outward senses, unable to add 
 anything to our hearing and seeing, etc., or to be the true 
 power and life of them, by all its speculations and reasonings 
 upon them ; so it is much more a poor, and superficial, and 
 insignificant thing with respect to the inward sensibility of 
 the heart, or its seeing, feeling, etc., and much more unable 
 to add to, or amend the state of the heart, or become the life 
 and power of its motions, by its arguings about them. 
 
 And therefore, to seek for the religion or perfection of the 
 heart in the power of our reason is more groundless and 
 absurd, and against the nature of things, than to seek for 
 the perfection and strength of our senses in the power of our 
 reason. 
 
 Now I appeal to every man in the world for the truth of 
 all this ; for every man has the fullest inward conviction that 
 his heart is not his reason, nor his reason his heart, but that 
 the one is as different from the other in its whole nature, as 
 pain, and joy, and desire, are different from definitions of 
 them ; and that as a thousand definitions of joy and desire 
 will not become that desire and joy itself, so a thousand 
 definitions of religion will not become religion itself, but be 
 always in the same state of distance from it; and that all 
 reasoning and speculations upon religion are at the same 
 state of distance from the nature and power of religion, as 
 speculations upon our passions are from the nature and 
 power of them. 
 
 You know, not by hearsay, reasoning, or books, but by an 
 inward sentiment, that your reason can be very nicely 
 religious, very strict in its descriptions of goodness, at the 
 same time that the heart is a mere libertine, sunk into the 
 very dregs of corruption : on the other hand, you know that 
 
ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 79 
 
 when your reason is debauched with arguments, is contend- 
 ing for profaneness, and seems full of proof that piety is 
 superstition, your heart at the same time has a virtue in it 
 that secretly dissents from all that you say. 
 
 Now all this proof that the state of reason is not the state 
 of your heart is the same proof that reason is not the power 
 or streng-th of our relig-ion ; because what our heart is, that is 
 our religion, what belongs to our heart, that belongs to our 
 religion ; which never had nor can have any other nature, 
 power, or perfection, than that which is the nature, power, 
 and perfection of our heart. 
 
 You are forced to know and feel, whether you will or no, 
 that God has a certain secret power within you, which is 
 watching every opportunity of saying something to you, 
 either of yourself, the vanity of the world, or the guilt and 
 consequences of sin. 
 
 This is that instinct of goodness, attraction of God, or 
 witness of Himself in the soul of every man, which without 
 arguments and reasonings rises up in the soul, and would be 
 doing some good to it, if not quenched and resisted by the 
 noise and hurry either of pleasures or business. 
 
 And this is everyone's natural religion, or call to God and 
 goodness, which is faithful to every man, and is the only 
 foundation of all the virtue and goodness that shall be 
 brought forth in him. And the least stirring of this inward 
 principle, or power of life, is of more value than all the 
 activity of our reason ; which is only, as it were, a painter of 
 dead images, which leave the heart in the same state of death 
 and emptiness of all goodness, in whirh thev find it. 
 
 Therefore, my dear friend, know the place of your religion, 
 turn inwards, listen to the voice of grace, the instinct of God 
 that speaks and moves within you ; and instead of forming 
 dead and lifeless images, let your heart pray to God that all 
 that is good and holy in Him may touch, and stir, and revive 
 all that is capable of goodness and holiness in you. Your 
 heart wants nothing but God, and nothing but your heart 
 can receive Him. This is the only place and seat of religion, 
 and of all communication between God and you. 
 
 We are apt to consider conscience only as some working of 
 our heart that checks us, and so we are rather afraid than 
 
8o ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 fond of it. But if we looked upon it as it really is, so much 
 of God within us revealing Himself within us, so much of a 
 heavenly life that is striving to raise us from the dead, we 
 should love and adhere to it, as our happy guide to heaven. 
 
 For this reason I have called this spark of life, or instinct 
 of goodness, our inward Redeemer ; not only because it is 
 the only thing within that helps forward our salvation, but 
 also because it is the first beginning of Christ's redemption 
 in the souls of all men, by His becoming the atonement for all. 
 
 And as it is the first step of Christ's redemption in the soul, 
 and that which became their capacity of salvation, so the 
 progress of their redemption consists in the increase and 
 growth of the first seed of life, till the new man be wholly 
 raised up by it. 
 
 Lastly, another real difference between this instinct of 
 goodness, or piety of the heart, and your religion of reason, 
 is this, that natural reason in itself is incapable of Jesus 
 Christ; it cannot comprehend Him, it is at enmity with Him, 
 and sets itself up against Him. For it feels no want of a 
 Saviour, and therefore is unwilling to receive one. Or if 
 it were to admit of a Saviour, it must be only such a one as 
 came to increase the number of its images and ideas, or to 
 help it to be more active and artful in arranging, dividing, 
 and distinguishing them. And for this reason it is that a 
 book of ideas and distinctions is more valued by some people, 
 than all the salvation that is offered in the Gospel. 
 
 But this natural religion or instinct of goodness, of which 
 I have spoken as God's free gift to all men in Jesus Christ, 
 has that natural fitness for the receiving of Christ as the eye 
 has for receiving the light; it wants Him, it desires Him, it 
 is for Him, it knows Him, it rejoices in Him, as the eye 
 wants, desires, knows, and rejoices in the light. And of this 
 natural religion, or religion of the heart, does our Saviour 
 plainly speak, when He saith, He that is of God heareth 
 God's Word, — and again, My sheep hear My \'oicc. There- 
 fore this instinct of goodness, or piety of the heart, though 
 it is God's gift to man before his hearing the outward word, 
 is yet a certain preparation for it ; and if it be brought forth 
 in us is a never-failing fitness to receive it. Therefore he 
 that has this natural religion of the heart, of which I have 
 
ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 8i 
 
 spoken, has the greatest fitness to receive the Gospel ; he is 
 so of God that he hcarcth God's word, sucli a sheep of Christ 
 as knoweth His voice. And therefore the receiving-, or not 
 receiving the Gospel, is the greatest of all demonstrations 
 whether the man hath, or hath not, that right religion that is 
 antecedent to it. 
 
 Natural religion, when rightly understood, is a real thing, 
 and of the same truth as revealed religion. But the mistake 
 lies here, in our taking natural religion to be the work or 
 effect of natural reason ; whereas reason, or our faculty of 
 reasoning upon our ideas, is not a part of natural or revealed 
 religion, but only a bare spectator of its own images of 
 natural and revealed religion ; just as it is not a part of our 
 hearing and seeing, nor can come any nearer to them, than 
 as it is a bare spectator of its own images of them. 
 
 Let your reason pretend what it will, and fancy it has ever 
 so many objections of speculation and argument against the 
 Gospel, they are all objections of the heart. For the Gospel 
 speaks only to the heart, and nothing but the heart can 
 either receive or reject it. For this is an eternal truth, which 
 you cannot too much reflect upon, that reason always follows 
 the state of the heart, and what your heart is, that is your 
 reason. If your heart is full of sentiments of penitence, and 
 of faith in the divine mercy, your reason will take part with 
 your heart, and will entertain itself with all arguments, ideas, 
 and discourses, that can exercise this religion of the heart. 
 
 But if your heart is shut up in death and dryness your 
 reason will be according to it, a poor quibbler in words and 
 dead images ; and will delight in nothing but such dry 
 objections and speculations as answer to the deadness and 
 insensibility of your heart. 
 
 So that what you imagine of your having a religion of pure 
 reason is the merest fiction of deceit that can be imposed 
 upon you ; for reason has nothing of its own, it acts nothing 
 of itself, it barely reflects that which comes from the heart, 
 as the moon barely reflects that which comes from the sun ; 
 it is the servant of the heart, and must act or not act in 
 obedience to it ; what the heart loves, that reason contends 
 
82 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 for ; and what the heart has no inclination to, that reason 
 objects against. Therefore there neither is, nor was, nor 
 ever can be any other rehgion but the religion of the heart ; 
 and reason is only its servant, in the same manner and in the 
 same degree, whatever the religion of the heart be, whether 
 true or false. 
 
 And to imagine that natural religion is the effect of pure 
 reason and speculation is as great an error against the nature 
 of things, and more hurtful to you, than to imagine that 
 natural hearing and seeing is the effect of reason and 
 speculation. 
 
 Natural religion, if you understand it rightly, is a most 
 excellent thing ; it is a right sentiment of heart, it is so much 
 goodness in the heart, it is its sensibility both of its separa- 
 tion from and its relation to God ; and therefore it shows 
 itself in nothing but in a penitential sentiment of the weight 
 of its sins, and in an humble recourse by faith to the mercy 
 of God. Call but this the religion of nature, and then the 
 more you esteem it the better; for you cannot wish well to 
 it without bringing it to the Gospel state of perfection. 
 
 For the religion of the Gospel is this religion of penitence, 
 and faith in the mercy of God, brought forth into its full 
 perfection. For the Gospel calls you to nothing but to know, 
 and understand, and practise a full and real penitence, and 
 to know by faith such heights and depths of the divine mercy 
 towards you, as the religion of nature had only some little 
 uncertain glimmerings of. Therefore there is the same 
 agreement, and the same difference, between the true religion 
 of nature and the religion of the Gospel, that there is between 
 the breaking of the day and the rising of the sun to its 
 meridian height ; the one is the beginning, and the other is 
 the perfection, of the same thing. .And as tlu' light of the 
 daybreak and the light of the noon-day are both the same 
 light, and from the same producer of light ; so the light of 
 the religion of nature and the light of the Gospel are the 
 same light, and from the same producer of light in the mind. 
 
 If you only stood for some time in the first break of day, 
 sensible of the misery of darkness and only feeling some hope 
 and expectation of the light, yet knowing nothing of that 
 globe of fire that afterwards was to apjicar, and bless you 
 
ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 83 
 
 with so many unknown and unhoped for joys and comforts 
 of the noon-day light, you would then resemble one standing 
 for some time in the daybreak of natural religion, sensible of 
 the weight of his sins, and only hoping in God for some kind 
 of mercy towards him ; yet knowing nothing of that globe of 
 fire, that mystery of divine love, that was by degrees to dis- 
 cover itself, and bless him with so many unknown, unhoped- 
 for joys and comforts of the divine mercy towards him. 
 
 The original instinct of goodness in the soul, which I have 
 shown to be the only religion of nature, is the light of day- 
 break in the soul, and is that light which lighteth every man 
 that Cometh into the world. The light of the Gospel is that 
 noon-day light, which discovers such joys and comforts as 
 no one could have thought of, that had only stood in the 
 break of day. 
 
 And as no one, when the day arises, can reject or dispute 
 the coming or goodness of the rising sun, but because he 
 has lost that sense which was to distinguish light from dark- 
 ness ; so no one can reject or dislike, or dispute against, the 
 light of the Gospel, but he that has extinguished that instinct 
 of goodness in his soul, which alone can distinguish good 
 from evil, and make him love the one and reject the other. 
 
 Do not, therefore, my dear friend, deceive yourself, nor 
 let anyone else deceive you. The matter is of infinite con- 
 sequence that you have before you. You come into the 
 world but once, and have but one trial, but the effects of it 
 are to last for ever. The time of disputing and speculating 
 upon ideas is short ; it can last no longer than whilst the 
 sun of this world can refresh your flesh and blood, and so 
 keep your soul from knowing its own depth, or what has 
 been growing in it. But when this is over, then you must 
 know and feel what it is to have a nature as deep, and 
 strong, and large, as eternity. 
 
 If you have lived upon the amusements of reason and 
 speculation, your life has been worse than a dream ; and your 
 soul will, at the end of such a life, be left to itself in its own 
 darkness, hunger, thirst, and anxiety, to be for ever devoured 
 by its own fire. But if you have watched over that instinct 
 of goodness which God planted in your soul, and have 
 eKcrcised yourself in that penitence for your sins, and humble 
 
84 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 faith in the mercy of God, that the Gospel proposes to you ; 
 then when your body falls off from you, you will feel and 
 know what a Kingdom of God lay hid in your soul ; you will 
 see that you have a life and strength like that of eternity, 
 and the fulness of God Himself will be your everlasting 
 enjoyment. 
 
 For Heaven and Hell stand ready to awake and be revealed 
 in you, and can no longer be hid from you, than whilst you 
 are under the cover of flesh and blood. And then will be 
 fully verified in you that saying of Scripture, he that seeketh 
 findeth : for you will find that which you have sought, and 
 according to your faith, so will it eternally be done unto you. 
 V'our soul will have nothing- taken from it, but it will have 
 all that good which you sought after and provided for it. 
 You chose to be saved only by the powers of your own 
 reason, and refused the mercy of God that was to have saved 
 you, and therefore you will have that very salvation you have 
 chosen, you will be entirely without the mercy of God, and 
 left wholly to your own nature : and that salvation is the 
 misery of hell. 
 
 You are now your own carver, and must be that which you 
 shall have made of yourself. If the depth of your heart has 
 not in this lifetime its proper cure ; if it has not something 
 done to it, which your reason can no more do than it can 
 create the light, your heart will become your Hell. And if 
 you let the light of the Gospel shine into it, and revive the 
 good seed of life in it, then it will become the seat and 
 habitation of your Heaven. 
 
 Can any echo answer better to the voice that raises it, than 
 the voice of your nature answers to the sound of the Gospel? 
 And do you not hereby plainly see that you stand nearer to 
 the truth of the Christian religion, than you do to anything 
 else? It is only the description of that which passes within 
 you. It is the book of yourself, it talks of nothing out of 
 you, it speaks but that which is written within you, and 
 therefore you have sufficient help to understand it. To look 
 for outward testimonials is like looking for yourself abroad ; 
 turn but your eyes inward, and you have no need of miracles 
 
ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 85 
 
 to show you that Jesus Christ came from that God that made 
 you, and that He teaches you the only way to find that 
 perfection and happiness for which He made you. 
 
 What can the Gospel say to you of the fall of man that 
 your heart does not feel to be true? What can it say to you 
 of your redemption that is not at the same time said to you 
 bv the state of vour own soul? 
 
 Complain therefore no more of want of evidence ; neither 
 books, nor study, nor learning is wanted ; the Gospel is 
 within you, and you are its evidence ; it is preached unto 
 you in your own bosom, and everything within you is a 
 proof of the truth of it. 
 
 Ask how you shall know there is such a thing as day and 
 night ; for the fall and redemption are as manifest within you 
 as day and night are manifest without you. 
 
 Here, sir, in this intimate and true knowledge of yourself 
 lies the most precious evidence of the Gospel, and is as near 
 to you as you are to yourself; because all that is said, and 
 declared, and recorded in the Gospel is only a plain record of 
 that which is said, and done, and doing in yourself. 
 
 And when you once feel it thus proved to you, by its agree- 
 ment with the state of your own nature, then it becomes a 
 pearl that is dearer to you than your life ; and what is best, 
 it is then a pearl which no one can rob you of. You are then 
 in such assurance and possession of the power and goodness 
 of Christ as those blind men were whose eyes He had opened 
 to see the light. 
 
 Then, all the wrangle and dispute of learned men against 
 the truth of the Gospel will signify no more to you, nor raise 
 any more doubt in you, than if by history and criticism they 
 would prove that you never had any benefit from the light of 
 the sun. 
 
 If you go on only outwardly to work, and seek only for an 
 outward proof of the truth of the Gospel, you can only know 
 it by such labours and in such uncertainty as you know other 
 matters of history, and must be always balancing what is said 
 for and against it. And if you come to believe it this way, 
 your faith will be held by an uncertain tenure, you will be 
 
86 ERRORS OF A LATE BOOK 
 
 alarmed at every new attack, and frightened at every new 
 enemy that pretends to lessen the evidence of the Gospel. 
 
 But these, sir, are difliculties that we make to ourselves 
 by neglecting the proper evidence of the Gospel, and choosing 
 only to know it as we know other histories that have no 
 relation to us, or connection with our own state. 
 
 The Gospel is not a history of something that was done 
 and past seventeen hundred years ago, or of a redemption 
 that was then present, and only to be transmitted to posterity 
 as a matter of history ; but it is the declaration of a 
 Redeemer, and a redeeming Power that is always in its 
 redeeming state, and equally present to every man. 
 
 We all stand as near to the reasons and motives for 
 receiving the Gospel as they did to whom it was first 
 preached. No one then did, or could, receive Jesus Christ 
 when He was on earth, but for the same reasons that the 
 sick, the lame, and the blind sought Him to be cured, namely, 
 because they felt their infirmities, and wanted to be relieved 
 from them. But if this state of heart, or their sensibility of 
 their condition of what they were, and what they wanted, 
 was then the only possible reason they could have for 
 receiving Christ ; then it follows that every man of every age 
 has all the reasons for receiving or not receiving the Gospel 
 within himself, and stands just as near to and just as far from 
 the evidence of it, as those did who first heard it. 
 
 If you know of no burden or weight of sin, nor want any 
 assistance to overcome it, the Gospel has no evidence for 
 jou; and though you had stood by our Saviour you had been 
 never the nearer to it. But if you know your state, as the 
 sick, the lame, and the blind knew their state ; if you groan 
 under the power of sin, and are looking towards God for 
 some assistance to overcome it, then you have all the reasons 
 for receiving the Gospel written in your heart, and you stand 
 as near all its proper evidence, whether you were born the 
 last age, or seventeen hundred years ago. 
 
VIII. 
 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS. 
 
 Letter II. 
 
 "If Christ be not in us, we are none of His." But how 
 can Christ be in us but because all that which Christ was, in 
 the spirit and nature of His whole process, is in us as it was 
 in Him? If the same mind be not in us which was in Christ 
 Jesus ; if that which loved, that which willed, that which 
 suffered in Him be not the same Spirit in us, we shall never 
 reign with Him. He may be truly called a Redeemer, but 
 we are not His redeemed, for such as the Redeemer is, such 
 are they that are redeemed. 
 
 " To him that overcometh," saith Christ, " will I grant to 
 sit with me on my Throne, (N.B.) even as I overcame and 
 am set down with My Father on His Throne." What 
 becomes now of the vain fiction of an outward imputation? 
 Is Christ's victory here imputed to us? Is not the contrary 
 as strongly taught us as words can do it? " To him that 
 overcometh, even as I also overcame." 
 
 Can we have fuller proof that Christ's righteous nature 
 must be inwardly born, living and manifesting itself in us, 
 as it did in Him ; how else can we overcome even as He over- 
 came? That spirit which overcame in Christ was manifest 
 in the flesh for no other end but that the same conquering 
 spirit might be born in us. 
 
 Letter III. 
 
 That which is Spirit in man must be godlike, before it can 
 unite with that Spirit which is God. And was there not a 
 Divine Spirit in man truly born of, and proceeding from, the 
 Spirit of God as His real offspring, no union of will, love, or 
 desire could be between God and man. For this is a truth 
 that extends itself through all that is natural, or supernatural, 
 
88 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 that like can only unite with like. There is no separation 
 between things but that which is effected by contrariety. If 
 therefore nothing in man was a partaker of the Divine Nature 
 man must in his whole nature be for ever separated from 
 God, and stand in the same impossibility of being united with 
 Him that two of the most contrary things do to one another. 
 So sure, therefore, as the mediation of Christ is by Himself 
 declared to be for this end, namely, "that they all may be one, 
 as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also 
 may be one in Us ; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may 
 be made perfect in one "; so sure is it that an outward!}- 
 imputed Christ is as absurd in itself, and as contrary to 
 Scripture, as an outwardly imputed God. 
 
 Letter IV. 
 
 Unreasonably therefore have our scholastic systems of the 
 Gospel separated the sacrifice of Christ's death from the 
 other parts of His process, and considered it as something 
 chiefly done with regard to God, to alter, or atone, an infinite 
 wrath that was raised in God against fallen man, which 
 infinity of just vengeance, or vindictive justice, must have 
 devoured the sinner unless an infinite satisfaction had been 
 made to it by the death of Christ. 
 
 All this is in the grossest ignorance of God, of the reason 
 and ground, and effects of Christ's death, and in full contra- 
 diction to the express letter of Scripture. For there we are 
 told that God is Love, and that the infinity of His love was 
 that alone which showed itself towards fallen man, and w anted 
 to have satisfaction done to it ; which love-desire could not 
 be fulfilled, could not be satisfied, with anything less than 
 man's full deliverance from all the evil of his fallen state. 
 That love, which has the infinity of God, nay, which is God 
 Himself, was so immutably great towards man, though fallen 
 from Him, "that He spared not His only begotten Son." 
 And why did He not spare Him? It was bc(\Tusc nothing 
 but the incarnate life of His eternal Son, passing through all 
 the miserable states of lost man, could regenerate his first 
 divine life in him. Can you possibly be told this in stronger 
 words than these, " God so loved the world, that He gave 
 
.4 COLLECTION OF LETTERS 89 
 
 His only begotten Son "? How did He give Him? ^^'lly, in 
 His whole Process. And to what end did He give Him? 
 Why, " that all who believe in Him might not perish, but 
 have everlasting life." Away then with the suptrstitious 
 dream of an infinite wrath in God towards poor fallen man, 
 which could never cease till an infinite satisfaction was made 
 to it. All Scripture denies it, and the light of nature abhors 
 it. The birth, the life, the death of Christ, though so 
 different things, have but one and the same operation ; and 
 that operation is solely in man, to drive all evil out of his 
 fallen nature, and delight the heart of God that desires his 
 salvation. God is Love, and has no other will towards man 
 but the will of Love. 
 
 Do not, my friend, be here so furious as to say that if it 
 were strictly true that there was no wrath in God you would 
 burn your Bible : for if it was not strictly true, you would 
 never have had a Bible to burn ; nor any more messages from 
 Heaven about man's salvation, than from Hell. 
 
 What a paltry logic to say, God is Righteousness and 
 Justice, as well as Love, and therefore His Love cannot help 
 or forgive the sinner till His justice, or righteous wrath, has 
 satisfaction ! Every word here is in full ignorance of the 
 things spoken of. For what is Love in God, but His Will 
 to all goodness? What is Righteousness in God, but His 
 unchangeable love of His own goodness, His impossibility 
 of loving anything else but it, His impossibility of suffering 
 anything that is unrighteous to have any communion with 
 Him? What is God's forgiving sinful man? It is nothing 
 else in its whole nature but God's making him righteous 
 again. There is no other forgiveness of sin but being made 
 free from it. Therefore the compassionate love of God that 
 forgives sin is no other than God's love of His own righteous- 
 ness, for the sake of which, and through the love of which. 
 He makes man righteous again. This is the one righteous- 
 ness of God that is rigorous, that makes no abatements, that 
 must be satisfied, must be fulfilled, in every creature that is 
 to have communion with Him. And this righteousness that 
 
go A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 is thus rigorous is nothing else but the unalterable purity 
 and perfection of the Divine Love, which from eternity to 
 eternity can love nothing but its own righteousness, can 
 will nothing but its own goodness ; and therefore can will 
 nothing towards fallen man but the return of his lost good- 
 ness, by a new birth of the Divine Life in him which is the 
 true forgiveness of sins. For what is the sinful state of 
 man? It is nothing else but the loss of that Divine Nature 
 which cannot commit sin; therefore the forgiving man's sin 
 is in the truth and reality of it nothing else but the revival 
 of that nature in man which, being born of God, sinneth not. 
 Lastly, let me ask these dividers of the Divine Nature, what 
 different shares, or different work, had the righteousness and 
 the love of God in the creation of man? Was there then 
 something done by the love of God which ought not to be 
 ascribed to the righteousness of God ? Who can be so weak 
 as to say this? But if the love and righteousness of God is 
 one, as God is one, and had but one work in the creation of 
 man, it must be the highest absurdity to say that in the 
 redemption of man the love and righteousness of God must 
 have, not only different, but contrary works, that the love 
 of God cannot act till the righteousness of God, as something 
 different from it, is first satisfied. 
 
 All that which we call the attributes of God are only so 
 many human ways of our conceiving that abyssal All, which 
 can neither be spoken nor conceived by us. And this way 
 of thinking and speaking of God is suitable to our capacities, 
 has its good use, and helps to express our adoration of Him 
 and His perfections. But to conclude, and contend, that 
 there must therefore be different qualities in God, answer- 
 able, or according, to our different ways of thinking and 
 speaking of His perfections, is rather blaspheming, than 
 truly glorifying. His name and nature. For omnipotent love, 
 inconceivable goodness, is that unity of God which we can 
 neither conceive as it is in itself, nor divide into this or that. 
 
 Letter V. 
 
 Live as you now do, in such activity' of spirit and multi- 
 plied ways of being good, and though you were to live half 
 
A COLLECTION OF LETTERS gi 
 
 an hundred years longer, you would stick in the same mire, 
 and end your life in the same complaints, as filled your last 
 letter to me. You tell me that after all the great change you 
 have made in your life, you find nothing of that inward good 
 and satisfaction which you have so much expected, and more 
 especially since you have been a reader of the books 
 recommended by me. 
 
 But, sir, you quite mistake the matter ; you have not 
 changed your life, for that which is and only can truly be 
 called your life is in the same state it was when 1 first knew 
 you. Nothing is in your life, whether it be good or bad, 
 but that which wills and hungers in you ; and your own life 
 neither is, nor can be, anything else but this. Therefore 
 nothing reaches your life, or can make a real change in it 
 from bad to good, from falseness to truth, but the right ivill 
 and the right hunger. Practise as man}' rules as you will, 
 take up this or that new opinion, be daily reading better and 
 better books, follow this or that able man ; the Bread of Life 
 is not there. Nothing will be fed in you but the vanity and 
 self-conceited righteousness of your own old man. And thus 
 it must be with you, till all that is within you is become one 
 will and one hunger after that which angels eat in Heaven. 
 
 But now, if will and hunger are the whole of every natural 
 life, then you may know this great truth with the utmost 
 certainty, namely, that eating is the one preservation of every 
 life, from the highest angel in Heaven to the lowest living 
 creature on earth. That which the life eats not, that the 
 life has not. 
 
 And here you may find a glorious meaning of those words 
 of our Lord, saying, " My Kingdom is not of this world "; 
 because it is a kingdom of those heavenly powers of the 
 Triune God, which give food and nourishment, purity and 
 perfection, to the fire, light, and spirit of those Divine 
 Creatures which are to be holy as He is holy, perfect as He 
 is perfect, in His own Heavenly Kingdom. 
 
 Here therefore, in this spiritual eating of that same 
 invisible food, that gives life and perfection of life to all the 
 angels of God, and not in any human contrivances, or 
 activity of your own, are you to place your all as to the 
 
92 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 change of your life ; it all consists in the right hunger, and 
 the right food, and in nothing else. 
 
 Live in the love, the patience, the meekness, and humility 
 of Christ, and then the celestial, transparent, spiritual bod}- 
 of Christ's Flesh and Blood is continually forming itself, 
 and growing in and from and about your soul, till it comes 
 to the fulness of the stature in Christ Jesus ; and this is your 
 true, substantial, vital eating the Flesh and drinking the 
 Blood of Christ, which will afterwards become your body of 
 glory to all eternity. And though your astral reason and 
 outward senses, whilst you are in Adam's bodily fiesh, know 
 nothing of this inward body of Christ, yet there it is, as 
 surely as you have the love, the patience, the meekness, and 
 humility of Christ; for where the true spirit of Christ is, 
 there is His true spiritual body. 
 
 On the other hand, live to selfishness, to diabolical pride, 
 wrath, envy, and covetousness, and then nothing can hinder 
 these tempers from forming wrthin you such a spiritual body 
 to your soul as that which devils have, and dwell, and 
 work in. 
 
 Be as unwilling as you will, through learned wisdom or 
 fear of enthusiasm, to believe this, your unbelief can last no 
 longer than till Adam's flesh and blood leave you; and then, 
 as sure as your soul lives, you will and must have it living 
 cither in the spiritual body of fallen angels, or in the spiritual 
 body of the redeeming Jesus. 
 
 Now spiritual eating is by the mouth of desire, and desire 
 is nothing else but will and hunger ; therefore, that whiih 
 you will and hunger after, that you are continually eating, 
 whether it be good or bad ; and that, be it which it will, 
 forms the strength of your life, or, which is the same thing, 
 forms the body of your soul. If you have many wills, and 
 many hungers, all that you eat is only the food of so many 
 spiritual diseases, and burdens your soul with their com- 
 plication of inward distempers. .And under this working of 
 so many wills it is, that religious people have no more good 
 or health and strength from the true religion, than a man who 
 has a complication of bodily distempers has from the most 
 
A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 93 
 
 healthful food. I'or no will or hunger, be it turned which 
 way it will, or seem ever so small or trifling, is without its 
 effect. For as we can have nothing but as our will works, so 
 we must have always some effect from it. It cannot be insig- 
 nificant, because nothing is significant but that which it does. 
 
 Do not now say that you have this one will and one 
 hunger, and yet find not the Food of Life by it. For as sure 
 as you are forced to complain, so sure is it that you have it 
 not. " Not my will, but Thine be done "; when this is the 
 one will of the soul all complaints are over; then it is that 
 patience drinks water of life out of every cup ; and to every 
 craving of the old man, this one hunger continually says, 
 " I have meat to eat that ye know nothing of." 
 
 " Thy Kingdom come, Thy \\'ill be done," is the one will 
 and one hunger that fills the soul with the life-giving Bread 
 of Heaven. This will is always fulfilled, it cannot possibly 
 be sent empty away, for God's Kingdom must manifest 
 itself with all its riches in that soul which wills nothing else ; 
 it never was nor can be lost, but by the will that seeks some- 
 thing else. Hence you may know, with the utmost certainty, 
 that if you have no inward peace, if religious comfort is still 
 wanting, it is because you have more wills than one. For 
 the multiplicity of wills is the very essence of fallen nature, 
 and all its evil, misery, and separation from God lies in it ; 
 and as soon as you return to, and allow, only this one will, 
 you are returned to God and must find the blessedness ot 
 His Kingdom within you. 
 
 Give yourself up to ever so many good works, read, 
 preach, pray, visit the sick, build hospitals, clothe the naked, 
 etc. ; yet if anything goes along with these, or in the doing 
 of them you have anything else that you will and hunger 
 after, but that God's Kingdom may come, and His Will be 
 done, they are not the works of the new-born from above, and 
 so cannot be His life-giving food. For the new creature in 
 Christ is that one will and one hunger that was in Christ ; 
 and therefore where that is wanting, there is wanting that 
 new creature which alone can have His conversation, which 
 alone can daily eat and drink at God's table, receiving in all 
 that it does continual life from "every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God." 
 
94 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 From what Word, and from what Mouth of God? Why, 
 only from that hidden, supernatural power of the Triune 
 Deity which speaks and breathes continual nourishment to 
 that heavenly fire, light, and spirit, in and from which all 
 that are about the Throne of God have their inward joy above 
 all thought ; and their outward glory, that can only be 
 figured or hinted to us by pearls, sapphires, and rainbow 
 beauties. 
 
 It is from this power of the Triune God, working in the 
 fire, light, spirit, and spiritual water, or body, of your new- 
 born creature, that all the good, and comfort, and joy of 
 religion, which you want, is to be found, and found by 
 nothing but the resurrection of that divine and heavenly 
 nature which came forth in the first man. 
 
 Do not take these to be too high flown words, for they are 
 no higher than the truth ; for if that which is in you is not 
 as high as Heaven, you will never come there. 
 
 Think it not hard, or too severe a restraint, to have but 
 one will and one hunger ; it is no harder a restraint than to 
 be kept from all that can bring forth pain and sorrow to your 
 soul ; no greater severity than to be excluded from every 
 place but the Kingdom of God. For to have but this one 
 will and one hunger is to have every evil of life, and all 
 enemies, put under your feet. It is to have done with every 
 thing that can defile, betray, disappoint, or hurt that eternal 
 nature which must have its life within you. On the other 
 hand, every thing that is not the effect and fruit of this one 
 will and one hunger, but is added to your life by a selfish will 
 and worldly hunger, must sooner or later be torn from you 
 with the utmost smart, or become food for that gnawing 
 worm which dieth not. 
 
 Do you ask, how you are to come at this one will and one 
 hunger, I refer you to no power of your own, and yet refer 
 you to that which is within yourself. 
 
 Hence it is that nothing can put an end to this multiplicity 
 of wills in fallen man which is his death to God, nothing can 
 be the resurrection of the Divine Nature within him which is 
 
A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 95 
 
 his only salvation, but the Cross of Christ; not that wooden 
 Cross on which He was crucified, but that Cross on which 
 He was crucified through the whole course of His life in the 
 flesh. It is our fellowship with Him on this Cross, through 
 the whole course of our lives, that is our union vi'ith Him; it 
 alone gives power to the Divine Nature within us to arise out 
 of its death and breathe again in us, in one will and one 
 hunger after nothing but God. 
 
 To be like-minded with Christ is to live in every contrariety 
 to self, the world, the flesh and devil, as He did; this is our 
 belonging to Him, our being one with Him, having life from 
 Him, and washing our robes in the Blood of the Lamb. For 
 then, and then only, are we washed and cleansed by His 
 Blood, when we drink His Blood; and we drink His Blood 
 when we willingly drink of the Cup that He drank of. 
 
 But to have done, cast not about in your mind how you 
 are to have the one will and one hunger which is always 
 eating at God's Table, and continually fed with the Bread of 
 Life; the thing is already done to your hands. " I am the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life," saith Christ, the same as if 
 He said, the Way is nowhere, the Truth is nowhere, the Life 
 is nowhere, but in me. What room therefore for any learned 
 contrivances, or further inquiry about the matter? Follow 
 Christ in the denial of all the wills of self, and then all is 
 put away that separates you from God : the heaven-born new 
 creature will come to life in you, which alone knows and 
 enjoys the things of God, and has His daily food of gladness 
 in that manifold blessed, and blessed, which Christ 
 preached on the Mount. 
 
 Tell me then no more of your new skill in Hebrew words, 
 of your Paris editions of all the ancient Fathers, your com- 
 plete collection of the Councils, Commentators, and Church 
 Historians, etc. Did Christ mean anything like this when 
 He said, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life?" Did 
 the Apostle mean anything like this when he said, " No man 
 can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost?" Great, good, 
 and divine teachers, you say, were many of the Fathers : I 
 say nothing to it, but that much more great, good, and divine 
 
96 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 is He who is always teaching within you, ever standing and 
 knocking at the door of your heart, with the words of 
 eternal life. 
 
 You perhaps may ask why I go on writing books myself, 
 if there is but one true and divine teacher? I answer, 
 though there is but one Bridegroom that can furnish the 
 Blessing of the Marriage Feast, yet His servants are sent 
 out to invite the guests. This is the unalterable difference 
 between Christ's teaching and the teaching of those who 
 only publish the glad tidings of Him. They are not the 
 Bridegroom, and therefore have not the Bridegroom's voice. 
 They are not the Light, but only sent to bear witness of it. 
 And as the Baptist said, " He must increase, but I must 
 decrease " ; so every faithful teacher saith of his doctrine, it 
 must decrease, and end, as soon as it has led to the true 
 Teacher. 
 
 But I will have done as soon as I have given you a little 
 piece of history which your friend Academicus has given of 
 himself : " When I had," says he, " taken my degrees in the 
 Univ^ersity, I consulted several great divines to put me in a 
 method of studying Divinity. It would take up near half a 
 day to tell you the work which my learned friends cut out 
 for me. One told me that Hebrew words are all ; that they 
 must be read without points, and then the Old Testament is 
 an opened book. He recommended to me a cartload of 
 Lexicons, Critics, and Commentators upon the Hebrew Bible. 
 Another tells me the Greek Bible is the best, that it corrects 
 the Hebrew in many places, and refers me to a large number 
 of books learnedly writ in defence of it. Another tells me 
 that Church history is the main matter, that I must begin 
 with the first Fathers, and follow them through every age, 
 not forgetting to take the lives of the Roman Emperors along 
 with me, as striking great light into the state of the Church 
 in their times. Then I must have recourse to all the Councils 
 held, and the Canons made in every age : which would enable 
 me to see with my own eyes the great corruptions of the 
 Council of Trent. Another who is not very fond of ancient 
 matters, but wholly bent upon rational Christianity, tells me 
 I need go no higher than the Reformation ; that Calvin and 
 
A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 97 
 
 Cranmer were very great men ; that Chillingworth and Locke 
 ought always to lie upon my table ; that I must get an entire 
 set of those learned volumes wrote against Popery in King 
 James's reign; and also be well versed in all the discourses 
 which Mr. Boyle's and Lady Moyer's Lectures have pro- 
 duced ; and then, says he, you will be a match for our greatest 
 enemies, which are Popish priests and modern Deists. My 
 tutor is very liturgical; he desired me, of all things, to get 
 all the collections that I can of the ancient liturgies, and all 
 the authors that treat of such matters, who, says he, are very 
 learned and very numerous. He has been many years making 
 observations upon them, and is now clear as to the time when 
 certain little particles got entrance into the liturgies, and 
 others were by degrees stopped. He has a friend abroad in 
 search of ancient MSS. liturgies ; for, by-the-bye, said he 
 at parting, I have some suspicion that our Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper is essentially defective for want of having a 
 little water mixed with the wine. Another learned friend 
 told me that the Clementine Constitutions is the book of 
 books ; and that all that lies loose and scattered in the New 
 Testament stands there in its true order and form. And 
 though he will not say that Dr. Clarke and Mr. Whiston are 
 in the right, yet it might be useful to me to read all the Arian 
 and Socinian writers, provided I stood upon my guard and 
 did it with caution. The last person I consulted advised me 
 to get all the histories of the rise and progress of heresies, 
 and of the lives and characters of heretics. These histories, 
 he said, contract the matter, bring truth and error close in 
 view ; and I should find all that collected in a few pages which 
 would have cost me some years to get together. He also 
 desired me to be well versed in all the casuistical writers, 
 and chief schoolmen ; for they debate matters to the bottom, 
 dissect every virtue and every vice, and show how near they 
 may come together without touching. And this knowledge, 
 he said, might be very useful when I came to be a parish 
 priest. 
 
 " Following the advice of all these counsellors as well as 
 I could, I lighted my candle early in the morning, and put it 
 out late at night. In this labour I had been sweating for 
 some years, till Rusticus, at my first acquaintance with him, 
 
98 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 seeing my way of life, said to me, had you lived about seven- 
 teen hundred years ago you had stood just in the same place 
 as I stand now. I cannot read, and therefore, says he, all 
 these hundreds of thousands of doctrine and disputing books, 
 which these seventeen hundred years have produced, stand 
 not in my way ; they are the same thing to me as if they had 
 never been. And had you lived at the time mentioned you 
 had just escaped them all as I do now, because, though you 
 are a very good reader, there were then none of them to be 
 read. Could you therefore be content to be one of the 
 primitive Christians, who were as good as any that have been 
 since, you may spare all this labour. It is not easy for me, 
 says Academicus, to tell you how much good I received from 
 this simple instruction of honest Master Rusticus. What 
 project was it to be grasping after the knowledge of all the 
 opinions, doctrines, disputes, heresies, schisms, etc., which 
 seventeen hundred years had brought forth, through all the 
 extent of a Christian world ! What project this, in order 
 to be a Divine, that is, in order to bear true witness to the 
 power of Christ as a deliverer from the evil of earthly flesh 
 and blood, and death and hell, and a raiser of a new birth 
 and life from above ! For as this is the divine work of 
 Christ, so he only is a true and able Divine that can bear a 
 faithful testimony to this divine work of Christ. How easy 
 was it for me to have seen that all this labyrinth of learned 
 inquiry into such a dark, thorny wilderness of notions, facts, 
 and opinions, could signify no more to me now, to my own 
 salvation, to my interest in Christ, and obtaining the Holy 
 Spirit of God, than if I had lived before it had any beginning. 
 But the blind appetite of learning gave me no leisure to 
 apprehend so plain a truth. Books of Divinity indeed, I 
 have not done with, but will esteem none to be such but those 
 that make known to my heart the inward power and redemp- 
 tion of Jesus Christ. Nor will I seek for anything even from 
 such books but that which I ask of God in prayer, namely, 
 how better to know, more to abhor, and resist, the evil that 
 is in my own nature, and how to obtain a supernatural birth 
 of the Divine Life brought forth within me. .Ml besides this 
 is push-pin." 
 
A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 99 
 
 Letter VI. 
 
 Every man comes into this world in a twofold state ; Adam 
 and Christ are both born in him. And if this was not the 
 state of man, nothing within you would, or could, ask as you 
 have done, or have any anxiety after the truth. And your 
 being either led from this true knowledge of your state, or 
 having never been sensible of it, is the reason of your having 
 made so many religious inquiries in vain, both from yourself 
 and other people. For nothing can tell you the truth, or 
 establish you in a just and solid discernment of right from 
 wrong, in doctrines, opinions, and practices of religion, but 
 this home knowledge of yourself, namely, that Christ and 
 Adam are not only both of them essentially within you, but 
 the whole of you ; that nothing is life or salvation but that 
 which is the life and growth of Christ in you, and that all 
 that is done from the life, the power and natural capacity, 
 of the Adamical nature, is heathenish, is mere vanity and 
 death, however gloriously set forth by the natural gifts of 
 wit and learning. 
 
 Religion has no good in it but as it is the revival and 
 quickening of that Divine Nature which your first Father had 
 from God, and nothing can revive it but that which first 
 created it. God is no otherwise your God but as He is the 
 God of your life, manifested in it ; and He can be no other- 
 wise the God of your life but as His Spirit is living within 
 you. Satan is no other way knowable by you, or can have 
 any other fellowship with you, but as his evil spirit works 
 and manifests itself along with the workings of your own 
 spirit. " Resist the devil, and he will flee from you "; but 
 he is nowhere to be resisted but as a working spirit within 
 you ; therefore to resist the devil is to turn from the evil 
 thoughts and motions that arise within you. " Turn to God, 
 and He will turn to you "; but God is an universal spirit 
 which you cannot logically turn to, or from ; therefore to 
 turn to God is to cleave to those good thoughts and motions 
 which proceed from His Holy Spirit dwelling and working 
 in you. This is the God of your life, to whom you are to 
 adhere, listen, and attend, and this is your worshipping Him 
 in spirit and truth. .'\nd that is the Devil that goeth about 
 
lOo A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 as a roaring lion, who has no voice but that which he speaks 
 within you. Therefore, my friend, be at home and keep 
 close to that which passes within you, for be it what it will, 
 whether it be a good in which you delight, or an evil at which 
 you grieve, you could have neither the one nor the other, but 
 because a Holy God of light and love is essentially dwelling 
 in you. Seek therefore for no other road, nor call any thing 
 the way to God, but solely that which His eternal, all-creating 
 Word and Spirit worketh within you. For could any thing 
 else have been man's way to God the Word had not been 
 made Flesh. 
 
 To be in the truth as it is in Jesus is to be come from under 
 the veil, to have passed through all those dispensations which 
 would never have begun, but that they might end in a Christ 
 spiritually revealed and essentially formed in the soul. So 
 that now, in this last dispensation of God, which is the first 
 truth itself restored, nothing is to be thought of, trusted to, 
 or sought after, but God's immediate, continual working in 
 the soul by His Holy Spirit. This, sir, is the Where you are 
 to go, and the What you are to do, to be in the truth. For 
 the truth as it is in Jesus is nothing else but Christ come in 
 the Spirit; and His coming in the Spirit is nothing else but 
 the first lost life of God, quickened and revealed again in 
 the soul. Everything short of this has only the nature of 
 outward type and figure, which in its best state is only for 
 a time. If therefore you look to any thing but the Spirit, 
 seek to any power but that of the Spirit, expect Christ to be 
 your Saviour in any other way than as He is spiritually born 
 in you, you go back from the grace and truth which came by 
 Jesus, and can at best be only a legal Jew, or a self-righteous 
 Pharisee ; there is no getting further than these states but 
 by being born of the Spirit, living by the Spirit, as His child. 
 His instrument, and holy temple in which He dwells and 
 works all His good pleasure. Drop this full adherence to, 
 and dependence upon, the Spirit, act as in your own sphere, 
 be something of yourself and through your own wisdom, 
 etc., and then, though all that you say, or do, is with the 
 outward words of the spiritual Gospel, and in the outward 
 practices of the spiritual Apostles, yet for all this you are but 
 
.4 COLLECTION OF LETTERS loi 
 
 there where those were who worshipped God with the blood 
 of bulls and goats; for (N.B.) nothing but the Spirit of God 
 can worship God in spirit and in truth. 
 
 But you will perhaps say that you are still but where you 
 were, because you know not how to find the continual 
 guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you know how to find your 
 own thoughts you need not be at a loss to find the Spirit of 
 God. For you have not a thought within you but is either 
 from the good of the Spirit, or from the evil of the Flesh. 
 Now the good and the evil that are within you, and always 
 more or less sensible by turns, do each of them teach you 
 the same work and presence of the Spirit of God. For the 
 good could not appear as good, nor the evil be felt as evil, 
 but because the immediate working of the Spirit of God 
 creates or manifests this difference between them ; and there- 
 fore be in what state you will, the power of God's Spirit 
 within you equally manifests itself to you ; and to find the 
 immediate, continual, essential working of the Spirit of God 
 within you, you need only know what good and evil are felt 
 within you. For all the good that is in any thought or 
 desire is so much of God within you, and whilst you adhere 
 to and follow a good thought, you follow, or are led by, the 
 Spirit of God. And on the other hand, all that is selfish and 
 wicked in thought, or affection, is so much of the spirit of 
 Satan within you which would not be known or felt as evil, 
 but because it is contrary to the immediate, continual work- 
 ing of the Spirit of God within you. Turn therefore inwards, 
 and all that is within you will demonstrate to you the Presence 
 and Power of God in your soul, and make you find, and feel 
 it, with the same certainty as you find and feel your own 
 thoughts. And what is best of all, by thus doing you will 
 never be without a living sense of the immediate guidance 
 and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, always equal to your 
 dependence upon it, always leading you from strength to 
 strength in your inward man, till all your knowledge of good 
 and evil is become nothing else but a mere love of the one, 
 and mere aversion to the other. For the one work of the 
 Spirit of God is to distinguish the good and evil that is within 
 you, not as in notion, but by affection ; and when you are 
 wholly given up to this new creating work of God, so as to 
 
I02 A COLLECTION OF LETTERS 
 
 stay your mind upon it, abide with it, and expect all from it, 
 this, my friend, will be your returning to the rock from 
 whence you were hewn, your drinking at the fountain of 
 living water, your walking with God, your living by faith, 
 your putting on Christ, your continual hearing the word of 
 God, your eating the Bread that came down from Heaven, 
 your supping with Christ, and following the Lamb wherever 
 He goeth. 
 
IX. 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY. 
 
 Here lies the true unchangeable distinction between God, 
 and nature and the natural creature. Nature and creature are 
 only for the outward manifestation of the inward, invisible, 
 unapproachable powers of God ; they can rise no higher, nor 
 be anything else in themselves, but as temples, habitations, 
 or instruments, in which the supernatural God can and does 
 manifest Himself in various degrees, bringing forth creatures 
 to be good with His own goodness, to love and adore Him 
 with His own Spirit of Love, for ever singing praises to the 
 divine nature by that which they partake of it. This is the 
 religion of divine inspiration, which, being interpreted, is 
 Immanuel, or God within us. Everything short of this is 
 short of that religion which worships God in spirit and in 
 truth. And every religious trust or confidence in anything 
 but the Divine operation within us is but a sort of image- 
 worship, which though it may deny the form, yet retains the 
 power thereof in the heart. And he that places any religious 
 safety in theological decisions, scholastic points, in particular 
 doctrines and opinions that must be held about the Scripture 
 words of faith, justification, sanctification, election, and 
 reprobation, so far departs from the true worship of the living 
 God within him, and sets up an idol of notions to be 
 worshipped, if not instead of, yet along with Him. And I 
 believe it may be taken for a certain truth, that every society 
 of Christians whose religion stands upon this ground, how- 
 ever ardent, laborious and good their zeal may seem to be 
 in such matters, yet in spite of all, sooner or later, it will be 
 found that nature is at the bottom, and that a selfish, earthly, 
 overbearing pride in their own definitions and doctrines of 
 words will by degrees creep up to the same height, and 
 become that same fleshly wisdom, doing those very same 
 things which they exclaim against in Popes, Cardinals, and 
 
I04 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 Jesuits. Nor can it possibly be otherwise. For a letter- 
 learned zeal has but one nature wherever it is, it can only 
 do that for Christians which it did for Jews. As it anciently 
 brought forth Scribes, Pharisees, Hypocrites, and Crucifiers 
 of Christ, as it afterwards brought forth heresies, schisms, 
 Popes, Papal decrees, images, anathemas, transubstantia- 
 tion, so in Protestant countries it will be doing the same 
 thing, only with other materials ; images of wood and clay 
 will only be given up for images of doctrines ; grace and 
 works, imputed sin, and imputed righteousness, election and 
 reprobation, will have their synods of Dort, as truly 
 evangelical as any Council of Trent. 
 
 This must be the case of all fallen Christendom, as well 
 Popish as Protestant, till single men and Churches know, 
 confess, and firmly adhere to this one Scripture truth, which 
 the blessed Behmen prefixed as a motto to most of his 
 epistles, namely, " That our salvation is in the life of Jesus 
 Christ in us." And that, because this alone was the divine 
 perfection of man before he fell, and will be his perfection 
 when he is one with Christ in heaven. Every thing besides 
 this, or that is not solely aiming at and essentially leading 
 to it, is but mere Babel, in all sects and divisions of Christians 
 living to themselves and their own old man, under a seeming 
 holiness of Christian strife and contention about Scripture 
 works. But this truth of truths, fully possessed and firmly 
 adhered to, brings God and man together, puts an end to 
 every, Lo here, and, Lo there ; and turns the whole faith 
 of man to a Christ that can nowhere be a Saviour to him, 
 but as essentially born in the inmost spirit of his soul, nor 
 possible to be born there by any other means but the 
 immediate inspiration and working power of the Holy Spirit 
 within him. To this man alone all Scripture gives dailv 
 edification ; the words of Christ and His apostles fall like 
 a fire into him. And what is it that they kindle there? Not 
 notions, nor itching ears, nor rambling desires after new and 
 new expounders of them, but a holv flame of love to be 
 always with, always attending to, that Christ and His Holy 
 Spirit within him, which alone can make him to be and do 
 all that which the words of Christ and His apostles have 
 taught. For there is no possibility of being like-minded with 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 105 
 
 Christ in anything that He taught, or having the truth of 
 one Christian virtue, but by the nature and .spirit of Christ 
 become essentially living in us. Read all our Saviour's 
 divine Sermon from the Mount, consent to the goodness of 
 every part of it ; yet the time of practising it will never come 
 till you have a new nature from Christ, and are as vitally 
 in Him, and He in you, as the vine in the branch, and the 
 branch in the vine. " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God," is a divine truth, but will do us no divine 
 good unless we receive it as saying neither more nor less than 
 " Blessed are they that are born again of the Spirit, for they 
 alone can see God." For no blessedness, either of truth or 
 life, can be found either in men or angels, but where the Spirit 
 and Life of God is essentially born within them. And all 
 men or Churches not placing all in the life, light, and 
 guidance of the Holy Spirit of Christ, but pretending to act 
 in the Name, and for the Glory of God, from opinions which 
 their logic and learning have collected from Scripture words, 
 or from what a Calvin, an Arminius, a Socinus, or some 
 smaller name, has told them to be right or wrong, all such 
 are but where the apostles were, when " by the way there 
 was a strife among them who should be the greatest." And 
 how much soever they may say and boast of their great zeal 
 for truth and the only glory of God, yet their own open 
 notorious behaviour towards one another is proof enough 
 that the great strife amongst them is, which shall be the 
 greatest sect, or have the largest number of followers — a 
 strife from the same root, and just as useful to Christianity, 
 as that of the carnal apostles, who should be greatest. For 
 not numbers of men or kingdoms professing Christianity, 
 but numbers redeemed from the death of Adam to the life 
 of Christ, are the glory of the Christian Church. And in 
 whatever national Christianity anything else is meant or 
 sought after, by the profession of the Gospel, but a new 
 heavenly life through the mediatorial Nature and Spirit of 
 the eternal Son of God born in the fallen soul, wherever this 
 spirituality of the Gospel-redemption is denied or overlooked, 
 there the spirit of self, of Satanic and worldly subtlety, will 
 be church and priest, and supreme power, in all that is called 
 religion. 
 
io6 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLER(;Y 
 
 But to return now to the doctrine of continual inspiration. 
 The natural or unregenerate man, educated in pagan learn- 
 ing and scholastic theology, seeing the strength of his genius 
 in the search after knowledge, how easily and learnedly he 
 can talk and write, criticise and determine upon all Scripture 
 words and facts, looks at all this as a full proof of his own 
 religious wisdom, power and goodness ; and calls immediate 
 inspiration enthusiasm, not considering that all the woes 
 denounced by Christ against Scribes, Pharisees, and Hypo- 
 crites, are so many woes now at this day denounced against 
 every appearance and show of religion, that the natural man 
 can practise. 
 
 And what is well to be noted, everyone, however high in 
 human literature, is but this very natural man, and can only 
 have the goodness of a carnal secular religion, till, as empty 
 of all as a new-born child, the Spirit of God gets a full birth 
 in him, and becomes the Inspirer and Doer of all that he wills, 
 does, and aims at, in his whole course of religion. 
 
 Our Divine Master compares the religion of the learned 
 Pharisees to " whited sepulchres, outwardly beautiful, 
 but inwardly full of rottenness, stench, and dead men's 
 bones." 
 
 Now whence was it that a religion, so serious in its 
 restraints, so beautiful in its outward form and practices, 
 and commanding such reverence from all that beheld it, was 
 yet charged by Truth itself with having inwardly such an 
 abominable nature? It was only for this one reason, because 
 it was a religion of self. Therefore, from the beginning to 
 the end of the world it must be true that where self is kept 
 alive, has power, and keeps up its own interests, whether in 
 speaking, writing, teaching or defending the most specious 
 number of Scripture doctrines and religious forms, there is 
 that very old Pharisee still alive, whom Christ with so much 
 severity of language constantly condemned. And the reason 
 of such heavy condemnation is because self is the only root, 
 or rather the sum total, of all sin ; every sin that can be 
 named is centred in it, and the creature can sin no higher 
 than he can live to self. For self is the fulness of atheism 
 and idolatry, it is nothing else but the creature broken off 
 from God and Christ; it is the power of Satan living and 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 107 
 
 working in us, and the sad continuance of that first turning 
 from God which was the whole fall or death of our first 
 father. 
 
 Now that which we are here taught is the whole end of all 
 Scripture ; for all that is there said, however learnedly read 
 or studied by Hebrew or Greek skill, fails of its only end till 
 it leads and brings us to an essential God within us, to feel 
 and find all that which the Scriptures speak of God, of man, 
 of life and death, of good and evil, of heaven and hell, as 
 essentially verified in our own souls. For all is within man 
 that can be either good or evil to him : God within him is his 
 divine life, his divine light, and his divine love ; Satan 
 within him is his life of self, of earthly wisdom, of diabolical 
 falseness, wrath, pride, and vanity of every kind. There is 
 no middle way between these two. He that is not under the 
 power of the one is under the power of the other. And the 
 reason is, man was created in and under the power of the 
 divine life; so far therefore as he loses, or turns from the 
 Life of God, so far he falls under the power of self, of Satan, 
 and worldly wisdom. When St. Peter, full of an human good 
 love towards Christ, advised Him to avoid His sufferings, 
 Christ rejected him with a " Get thee behind me, Satan," 
 and only gave this reason for it, " for thou savourest not the 
 things that be of God, but the things that be of men." 
 
 " Rabbi," says Nicodemus to Christ, " we know that thou 
 art a teacher come from God." Now that which was here 
 truly said of Christ in the flesh is the very truth that must be 
 said of the Scripture teaching in ink and paper ; it is a teacher 
 come from God, and therefore fully to be believed, highly 
 reverenced, and strictly followed. But as Christ's teaching 
 in the flesh was only preparatory to His future vital teaching 
 by the Spirit, so the teaching of Scripture by words written 
 with ink and paper is only preparatory, or introductory, to 
 all that inward essential teaching of God which is by His 
 Spirit and Truth within us. Every other opinion of the holy 
 Scripture, but that of an outward teacher and guide to God's 
 inward teaching and illumination in our souls, is but making 
 
jo8 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 an idol-God of it : I say an idol-God, for to those who rest 
 in it as the constant abode and supreme illumination of God 
 with them it can be nothing else. For if nothing of divine 
 faith, love, hope, or goodness, can have the least birth or 
 place in us but by divine inspiration, they who think these 
 virtues may be sufficiently raised in us by the letter of 
 Scripture do, in truth and reality, make the letter of Scripture 
 their inspiring God. The Apostles preached and wrote to 
 the people by divine inspiration. But what do they say of 
 their inspired doctrine and teachings ? What virtue or power 
 was there in them? Do they say that their words and teach- 
 ings were the very promised Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, 
 the true abode and supreme illumination of God in the souls 
 of men? So far from such a blasphemous thought, that they 
 affirm the direct contrary, and compare all their inspired 
 teachings and instructions to the dead works of bare planting 
 and watering, and which must continue dead, till life comes 
 into them from another and much higher power. " I have 
 planted," says St. Paul, " Apollos has watered, but God 
 gave the increase." And then, further to show that this 
 planting and watering, which was the highest work that an 
 inspired Apostle could do, was yet in itself to be considered 
 as a lifeless, powerless thing, he adds, " So then, neither is 
 he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth, but God 
 that giveth the increase." But now, if this must be said of 
 all that which the inspired Apostles thought in outward 
 words, that it was nothing in itself, was without power, 
 without life, and only such a preparation towards life as is 
 that of planting and watering, must not that same be said of 
 their inspired teachings when left behind them in writing? 
 For what else are the Apostolical Scriptures, but those very 
 instructions and teachings put into writing, which they 
 affirmed to be but bare planting and watering, quite 
 powerless in themselves till the living Spirit of God work 
 with them? Or will anyone say that what Paul, Peter, John, 
 etc., spoke by inspiration from their own mouths was indeed 
 bare planting and watering in order to be capable of 
 receiving life from God; but when these .\postolic teach- 
 ings and instructions were written on paper, they were raised 
 out of their first inability, got the nature of God Himself, 
 
AN ADDRESS 'TO THE CLERGY 
 
 109 
 
 became spirit and life, and might be called the great 
 quickening Power of God, or the constant abode and supreme 
 illumination of His Spirit with us? 
 
 It would be great folly and perverseness to charge me here 
 with slighting, or lessening, the true value, use, and impor- 
 tance of the inspired Apostolical Scriptures ; for if the charge 
 was just it must lie against Paul, and not against me, since I 
 say nothing of them but that which he says, and in his own 
 express words, viz., that all their labour of preaching, 
 instructing, and writing by divine inspiration had in them- 
 selves no other nature, use, or power, than that of such 
 planting and watering as could not fructify till a higher 
 power than was in them gave life and growth to that which 
 they planted and watered. 
 
 And when all Scripture is thus understood, and all that 
 either Christ says of Himself, or His Apostles say of Him, 
 are all heard, or read, only as one and the same call to come 
 to Christ in hunger and thirst, to be filled and blessed with 
 His divine nature made living within us ; then, and then 
 only, the letter kills not, but as a sure guide leads directly 
 to life. 
 
 The true nature and full distinction between literal and 
 divine knowledge is set forth in the highest degree of 
 clearness in these words of our Saviour, " The Kingdom of 
 God is like a treasure in a field." Thus far is the true use 
 and benefit, and utmost power of the letter ; it can tell us of 
 a treasure that we want, a treasure that belongs to us, and 
 how and where it is to be found ; but when it is added that a 
 " man goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field," 
 then begins the divine knowledge, which is nothing else but 
 the treasure possessed and enjoyed. Now what is here said 
 is the same that is said in these other words of Christ, 
 " Except a man denies himself and forsakes all that he hath, 
 he cannot be My disciple," that is, he cannot partake of My 
 mind, My spirit and My nature, and therefore cannot know 
 Me ; he is only a hearer of a treasure, without entering into 
 the possession and enjoyment of it. And thus it is with all 
 
no AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 Scripture, the letter can only direct to the doing of that 
 which it cannot do, and give notice of something that it 
 cannot give. 
 
 Now, clear and evident as this distinction is between a 
 mere literal direction to a thing, and a real participation of 
 it, which alone is a true perception of it, the generality 
 of Christians seem quite insensible of any other religious 
 perception, or knowledge of divine things, but such 
 ideas or notions of them as a man can form from Scrip- 
 ture words. Whereas good and evil, the only objects 
 of religious knowledge, are an inward state and growth of 
 our life ; they are in us, are a part of us, just in the same 
 manner as seeing and hearing are in us ; and we can have no 
 real knowledge of them any other way than as we have of 
 our own seeing and hearing. And as no man can get or lose 
 his seeing or hearing, or have less or more of them, 
 by any ideas or notions that he forms about them, just so 
 it is with that which is the power of good and the power of 
 evil in us ; notions and ideas have no effect upon it. Yet no 
 other knowledge is thought of, or sought after, or esteemed 
 of any value, but that which is notional and the work of 
 the brain. 
 
 Thus, as soon as a man of speculation can demonstrate 
 that which he calls the being and attributes of God, he 
 thinks, and others think, that he truly knows God. But what 
 excuse can be made for such an imagination, when plain 
 Scripture has told him that to know God is Eternal Life, 
 that is, to know God is to have the Power, the Life, and the 
 Spirit of God manifested in him ; and therefore it is Eternal 
 Life. " No man knoweth the Father, but the Son, and he to 
 whom the Son revealeth Him"; because the revelation of 
 the Son is the birth of the Son in the soul, and this new 
 creature in Christ has alone knowledge of God, what He is, 
 and does, and works, in the creature. 
 
 Again, another, forming an opinion of faith from the 
 letter of Scripture, straightway imagines that he knows what 
 faith is, and that he is in the faith. Sad delusion ! For to 
 know what faith is, or that we arc in the faith, is to know 
 that Christ is in us of a truth ; it is to know the power of His 
 life. His sufferings. His death, His resurrection and ascen- 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY iii 
 
 sion, made good in our souls. To be in the faith is to have 
 done with all notions and opinions about it, because it is 
 found and felt by its living power and fruits within us, which 
 are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. All 
 which are three names or powers peculiar to Jesus Christ ; 
 He alone is our righteousness, our peace, our joy in the Holy 
 Ghost. And therefore faith is not in us by reason of this 
 or that opinion, assent, or consent, but it is Christ, or the 
 Divine Nature, in us ; or its operations could not be 
 righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. By faith 
 ye are saved has no other meaning than by Christ ye are 
 saved. And if faith in its whole nature, in its root and 
 growth, was anything else but Christ, or a birth of the 
 Divine Nature within us, it could do us no good, no power 
 could be ascribed to it, it could not be our victory, it could 
 not overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. Every 
 faith that is not Christ in us is but a dead faith. 
 
 No salvation would have ever been ascribed to faith, but 
 because it is, in the strictest sense, Christ Himself, the power 
 of God, living and working in us. It never would have been 
 said of faith that every power of the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil must yield to it, but because it is that very Christ 
 within us, without whom we can do nothing. But if without 
 Christ we can do nothing, and yet all things are possible to 
 our faith, can there be a fuller demonstration that our faith 
 is nothing else but Christ born and living within us ? What- 
 ever therefore there is of power within us that tends to 
 salvation, call it by what name you will, either faith, or 
 hope, or prayer, or hunger after the Kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness, it is all but one po\ver, and that one power 
 is Christ within us. 
 
 It may perhaps be here said, Must there then be no 
 learning or scholarship, no recondite erudition, in the 
 Christian Church? Must there be nothing thought of, or 
 got by the Gospel, but mere salvation? Must its ministers 
 know nothing, teach nothing, but such salvation-doctrines 
 as Christ and His Apostles taught ; nothing but the full 
 
112 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 denial of self, poverty of spirit, meekness, and humility, 
 and unwearied patience ; a never ceasing love, an absolute 
 renunciation of the pomps and vanities of the world, a full 
 dependence upon our heavenly Father ; no joy or rejoicing 
 but in the Holy Ghost ; no wisdom but that which God gives ; 
 no walking but as Christ walked ; no reward or glory for 
 their labours of love but that of being found in Christ, 
 flesh of His flesh, bone of His bones, spirit of His spirit; and 
 clothed with the wedding garment when the bridegroom 
 comes, " when the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven 
 with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the 
 trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first "? 
 
 To this the first answer is, happy, thrice happy, are they, 
 who are only the thus learned preachers of the Gospel ; who 
 through all their ministry seek nothing for themselves or 
 others but to be taught of God ; hunger after nothing but the 
 Bread of Life that came down from heaven ; owning no 
 master but Christ, no teacher but His Holy Spirit ; as unable 
 to join with the diggers in pagan pits of learning, as with 
 those that " labour for the wind, and give their money for 
 that which is not bread." 
 
 Secondly, with regard to the demand of learned know- 
 ledge in the Christian Church, it may be answered that all 
 that has been said above is only for the increase and pro- 
 motion of it, and that all ignorance and darkness may be 
 driven quite out of it. The Church of Christ is the seat or 
 school of all the highest knowledge that human nature 
 is capable of in this life. Ignorance is everywhere but in the 
 Church of Christ. The Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel 
 are the only treasures of all that can be called the knowledge 
 either of God or man ; and he in whom the Law, the Prophets, 
 and the Gospel are fulfilled is the only well-educated man, and 
 one of the first-rate scholars in the world. But now, who is 
 he that has this wisdom from these rich treasures ? Who is 
 he in whom all is known and fulfilled which they teach? The 
 lip of truth has told us that it is he, and he alone, " who loves 
 God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, 
 and with all his strength, and his neighbour as himself." 
 This is the man that is all wisdom, all light, and let into full 
 possession of all that is meant by all the mysteries contained 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 113 
 
 in the Law, the Prophets and the Gospel. Where this divine 
 love is wanting, and a diabolical self sits in its place, there 
 may be great wits, shining critics, orators, poets, etc., as 
 easily as there may be a profound Machiavel, a learned 
 Hobbes, or an atheistical virtuoso. But would you divinely 
 know the mysteries of nature, the ground and reason of good 
 and evil in this world, the relation and connection between 
 the visible and invisible world, how the things of time pro- 
 ceed from, are influenced by, and depend upon, the things and 
 powers of eternity, there is but one only key of entrance; 
 nothing can open the vision but seeing with the eyes of that 
 same love which begun, and carries on, all that is and works 
 in visible and invisible nature. Would you divinely know the 
 mysteries of grace and salvation, would you go forth as a 
 faithful witness of Gospel truths, stay till this fire of divine 
 love has had its perfect work within you. For till your heart 
 is an altar on which this heavenly fire never goes out, you are 
 dead in yourself, and can only be a speaker of dead words 
 about things that never had any life within you. 
 
 Need it now be asked whether the true Christ of the Gospel 
 be less blasphemed, less crucified, by that Christian theology 
 which rejects an inward Christ, a Saviour living and working 
 in the soul as its inward light and life, generating His own 
 nature and spirit in it as its only redemption ; whether that 
 which rejects all this as mystic madness be not that very same 
 old Jewish wisdom sprung up in Christian theology, which 
 said of Christ when teaching these very things, " He is mad, 
 why hear ye Him?" Our blessed Lord, in a parable, sets forth 
 the blind Jews as saying of Himself, " We will not have this 
 man to reign over us." The sober-minded Christian scholar 
 has none of this Jewish blindness ; he only says of Christ, we 
 will not have this man to reign in us ; and so keeps clear of 
 such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusi- 
 astically said, " Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me." 
 
 Christian Doctors reproach the old learned Rabbis for their 
 vain faith, and carnal desire of a glorious, temporal, outward 
 Christ, who should set up their Temple-worship all over the 
 world. Vanity indeed, and learned blindness enough ! 
 
114 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 But nevertheless, in these condemners of rabbinic blind- 
 ness, St. Paul's words are remarkably verified, namely, 
 " Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, 
 for thou that judgest dost the same thing." For take away 
 all that from Christ, which Christian Doctors call enthusiasm ; 
 suppose Him not to be an inward birth, a new life and spirit 
 within us, but only an outward, separate, distant heavenly 
 prince, no more really in us than our high cathedrals are in 
 the third heavens ; but only by an invisible hand from His 
 throne on high, some way or other raising and helping great 
 scholars, or great temporal powers, to make a rock in every 
 nation for His Church to stand upon ; suppose all this (which 
 is the very marrow of modern divinity), and then you have 
 that very outward Christ, and that very outward Kingdom, 
 which the carnal Jew dreamed of, and for the sake of which 
 the spiritual Christ was then nailed to the Cross, and is still 
 crucified by the new risen Jew in the Christian Church. 
 
 Let no one here imagine that I am writing against all 
 human literature, arts, and sciences, or that I wish the world 
 to be without them. I am no more an enemy to them than 
 to the common useful labours of life. It is literal learning, 
 verbal contention, and critical strife about the things of God, 
 that I charge with folly and mischief to religion. And in 
 this I have all learned Christendom, both Popish and 
 Protestant, on my side. For they both agree in charging each 
 other with a bad and false Gospel-state, because of that which 
 their learning, logic, and criticism do for them. Say not 
 then that it is only the illiterate enthusiast that condemns 
 human learning in the Gospel Kingdom of God. For when 
 he condemns the blindness and mischief of Popish logic and 
 criticism, he has all the learned Protestant world with him; 
 and when he lays the same charge to Protestant learning, he 
 has a much larger kingdom of Popish great scholars, logically 
 and learnedly affirming the same thing. So that the private 
 person, charging human learning with so much mischief to 
 the Church, is so far from being led by enthusiasm, that he is 
 led by all the Church-learning that is in the world. 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 "5 
 
 Now look where you will, through all the whole nature of 
 things, no divine wisdom, knowledge, goodness, and deliver- 
 ance from sin are anywhere to be found for fallen man, but in 
 these two points : (i) a total entire entrance into the whole 
 process of Christ ; (2) a total resignation to, and sole depend- 
 ence upon, the continual operation of the Holy Ghost, or 
 Christ come again in the Spirit, to be our never-ceasing 
 Light, Teacher, and Guide into all those ways of virtue in 
 which He Himself walked in the flesh. All besides this, call 
 it by what name you will, is but dead work, a vain labour of 
 the old man to new create himself. And here let it be well 
 observed, that in these two points consists the whole of the 
 mystic divinity to which a Jewish orthodoxy at this day is so 
 great an enemy. For nothing else is meant, or taught by it, 
 but a total dying to self (called the Process or Cross of Christ), 
 that a new creature (called Christ in us, or Christ come in 
 the Spirit) may be begotten in the purity and perfection of 
 the first man's union with God. Now, let the Christian 
 world forget, or depart from, this one mystic way of salva- 
 tion ; let anything else be thought of, or trusted to, but the 
 Cross of Christ and the Spirit of Christ ; and then, though 
 Churches, and Preachers, and Prayers, and Sacraments are 
 everywhere in plenty, yet nothing better can come of it than 
 a Christian Kingdom of Pagan vices, along with a mouth- 
 belief of an Holy Catholic Church and Communion of Saints. 
 To this melancholy truth all Christendom, both at home and 
 abroad, bears full witness. Who need be told that there is 
 not a corruption or depravity of human nature, no kinds of 
 pride, wrath, envy, malice, and self-love; no sorts of 
 hypocrisy, falseness, cursing, swearing, perjury, and cheat- 
 ing ; no wantonness of lust in every kind of debauchery, but 
 are as common all over Christendom as towns and villages? 
 But to pass these by, I shall only instance in two or three 
 particulars, which though little observed, and less con- 
 demned, yet fully show that the Beast, the Whore, and the 
 fiery Dragon are in possession of Protestant as well as Popish 
 Churches. 
 
 And first, can it be said that Mammon is less served by 
 Christians than by Jews and Infidels? Or can there be a 
 fuller proof that Christians, Jews, and Infidels are equally 
 
ii6 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 fallen from God and all divine worship, since truth itself has 
 told us that we cannot serve God and Mammon? Is not this 
 as unalterable a truth, and of as great moment, as if it had 
 been said, Ye cannot serve God and Baal? Or can it with 
 any truth or sense be aflfirmed that the Mammonist has more 
 of Christ in him than the Baalist, or is more or less an idolater 
 for being called a Christian, a Jew, or an Infidel? Look now 
 at all these particulars which Christ charged upon the Jewish 
 Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees, and you will see them all 
 acted over again in the fallen state of Christendom. And if 
 God's prophets were again in the world, they would have 
 just the same complaints against the fallen Christian Church, 
 as they had against the old carnal stiff-necked Jews, namely, 
 " that of their silver and gold they had made themselves 
 idols " (Hos. viii. 4). For though figured idol-gods of gold 
 are not now worshipped either by Jews or Christians, yet 
 silver and gold, with that which belongs to them, is the 
 Mammon god that sits and reigns in their hearts. How 
 else could there be that universal strife through all Christen- 
 dom, who should stand in the richest and highest place to 
 preach up the humility of Christ, and offer spiritual sacrifices 
 unto God? What God but Mammon could put into the 
 hearts of Christ's ambassadors, to make, or want to make, 
 a gain of that Gospel which, from the beginning to the end, 
 means nothing else but death to self, and separation from 
 every view, temper, and affection, that has any connection 
 with the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride 
 of life? Our Blessed Lord said a word to the Jews that 
 might well have made their cars to tingle, when He told them 
 that they " had made His Father's House a den of thieves " ; 
 because sheep and oxen were sold, and money-changers 
 sitting in the outer court of the Temple. Now if you will 
 say that Mammon has brought forth no profanation like this 
 in our Christian Church, your best proof must be this, because 
 our Church-sale is not oxen and sheep, but holy things, cures 
 of soul, parsonages, vicarages, etc. ; and our money-changers, 
 our buyers, and sellers, are chiefly consecrated persons. 
 
 Look at things spiritual, and things temporal, and say, if 
 you can, that the same arts, the same passions and worldly 
 wisdom, are not as visibly active in the one as in the other. 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 117 
 
 For if Christ, at leaving the world, had said to His disciples, 
 Labour to be rich ; make full provision for the f^esh ; be 
 conformed to the world ; court the favour and interest of 
 great men ; clothe yourselves with all the worldly honours, 
 distinctions, and powers you can get; I appeal to every man, 
 whether Popish and Protestant Churches need do anything 
 else than that which they now do, and have done for ages, to 
 prove their faithfulness to such a Master, and their full 
 obedience to His precepts. And now, what is all this in 
 truth and reality, but the same Whore riding upon the same 
 Beast, not here or there, but through all fallen Christendom, 
 where God has only, in every age, people, and language. His 
 seven thousands who have not bowed the knee to Mammon ? 
 
 What blindness can well be greater than to think that a 
 Christian kingdom, as such, can have any other goodness, 
 or union with Christ, but that very goodness which makes 
 the private Christian to be one with Him, and a partaker of 
 the Divine Nature? Or that pride, wrath, ambition, envy, 
 covetousness, rapine, resentment, revenge, hatred, mischief, 
 and murder are only the works of the devil whilst they are 
 committed by private or single men ; but when carried on by 
 all the strength and authority, all the hearts, hands, and 
 voices of a whole nation, that the Devil is then quite driven 
 out of them, loses all his right and power in them, and they 
 become holy matter of Church thanksgivings, and the sacred 
 oratory of pulpits. 
 
 Look at that which the private Christian is to do to his 
 neighbour, or his enemy, and you see that very thing which 
 one Christian kingdom is to do to another. Look at that 
 which proves a man to be not led and governed by the Spirit 
 of Christ, and you see that which proves a kingdom to be 
 under the domination and power of Satan. Wherever pride 
 is, there the Devil is riding in his first fiery chariot ; and 
 wherever wrath is, there he has his first murdering sword at 
 work. What is it that fallen man wants to be redeemed from, 
 but pride and wrath, envy and covetousness? He can have 
 no higher separation or apostasy from God, no fuller union 
 with Satan and his angels, than he has of the spirit of these 
 
ii8 AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 
 
 tempers ; they constitute that of which, whether you call it 
 self, or Satan in him, the meaning is the same. Now suppose 
 man not fallen into this self or Satan, and then there could 
 be no more war or fighting in him, than there was in the 
 Word made man in our flesh. Or suppose him redeemed 
 from his fallen nature by a new birth of the Lamb of God 
 born in his soul, and then he can no more be hired to kill 
 men gloriously in the field, than to carry a dark lanthorn by 
 night to a powder-plot. 
 
 Love, goodness, and communication of good, is the 
 immutable glory and perfection of the Divine Nature, and 
 nothing can have union with God but that which partakes of 
 this goodness. The love that brought forth the existence of 
 all things changes not through the fall of its creatures, but is 
 continually at work to bring back all fallen nature and 
 creature to their first state of goodness. All that passes for 
 a time between God and His fallen creature is but one and 
 the same thing, working for one and the same end ; and 
 though this is called wrath, that called punishment, curse, 
 and death, it is all, from the beginning to the end, nothing but 
 the work of the first creating Love ; and means nothing else, 
 does nothing else, but those works of purifying fire, which 
 must, and alone can, burn away all that dark evil which 
 separates the creatures from its first created union with God. 
 God's Providence, from the fall to the restitution of all 
 things, is doing the same thing as when He said to the dark 
 chaos of fallen nature, " Let there be light " ; He still says, 
 and will continue saying the same thing, till there is no evil 
 of darkness left in all that is nature and creature. God 
 creating, God illuminating, God sanctifying, God threatening 
 and punishing, God forgiving and redeeming, is but one and 
 the same essential, immutable, never ceasing working of the 
 Divine Nature. That in God, which illuminates and glorifies 
 Saints and Angels in Heaven, is that very same working of 
 the Divine Nature which wounds, pains, punishes, and 
 purifies sinners upon earth. And (N.B.) every number of 
 destroyed sinners, whether thrown by Noah's flood, or 
 Sodom's brimstone, into the terrible furnace of a life insen- 
 sible of anything but new forms of raging misery till 
 Judgement's Day, must through the all-working, all- 
 
AN ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY 119 
 
 redeeming Love of God, which never ceases, come at last 
 to know that they had lost, and have found again, such a 
 God of Love as this. 
 
 And if long and long ages of fiery pain and tormenting 
 darkness fall to the share of many, or most, of God's apostate 
 creatures, they will last no longer than till the great fire of 
 God has melted all arrogance into humility ; and all that is 
 self has died in the long agonies and bloody sweat of a lost 
 God, which is that all-saving Cross of Christ which will never 
 give up its redeeming power, till sin and sinners have no more 
 a name among the creatures of God. And if long ages here- 
 after can only do that for a soul departing this life under a 
 load of sins, which days and nights might have done for a 
 most hardened Pharaoh, or a most wicked Nero, whilst in 
 the body, it is because whilst the soul is in the body it has 
 only the nature and state of fallen Adam, but when flesh and 
 blood are taken from it, the strong apostate nature of fallen 
 angels is found in it, which must have its state and place in 
 that blackness of darkness of a fiery wrath, that burns in them 
 and their kingdom. 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Theophilus : If you please, Humanus, pray tell me, in what 
 manner you would attempt to make converts to Christianity. 
 
 Humanus : I would not take the method generally practised 
 by the modern defenders of Christianity. I would not attempt 
 to show from reason and antiquity the necessity and reason- 
 ableness of a divine revelation in general, or of the Mosaic 
 and Christian in particular ; nor enlarge upon the arguments 
 for the credibility of the Gospel-history, the reasonableness 
 of its creeds, institutions and usages ; or the duty of man to 
 receive things above, but not contrary to, his reason. I would 
 avoid all this, because it is wandering from the true point in 
 question, and only helping the Deist to oppose the Gospel 
 with a show or argument which he must necessarily want, 
 was the Gospel left to stand upon its own bottom. 
 
 And, on the other hand, should the Deist yield up such a 
 cause as this, and change sides, he could only be said to have 
 changed his opinion about facts, without any more altering 
 or bettering his state in God than if he had only altered his 
 opinion about things in dispute amongst the ancient 
 philosophers. 
 
 This, therefore, is the one true essential distinction between 
 the Christian and the Infidel. The Infidel is a man of this 
 world, wholly devoted to it, his hope and faith are set upon 
 it ; for where our heart is, there and there only is our hope 
 and faith. He has only such virtue, such goodness, and such 
 a religion, as entirely suits with the interest of flesh and 
 blood, and keeps the soul happy in the lust of the flesh, the 
 lust of the eyes, and the pride of life : this, and this alone, is 
 infidelity, a total separation from God, and a removal of all 
 faith and hope from Him into the life of this world. It 
 
122 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 matters not whether this Infidel be a professor of the Gospel, 
 a disciple of Zoroaster, a follower of Plato, a Jew, a Turk, 
 or an opposer of the Gospel-history : this difference of 
 opinions or professions alters not the matter, it is the love 
 of the world instead of God that constitutes the whole nature 
 of the Infidel. 
 
 On the other hand, the Christian renounces the world as 
 his horrid prison ; he dies to the will of flesh and blood, 
 because it is darkness, corruption, and separation from God ; 
 he turns from all that is earthly, animal, and temporal, and 
 stands in a continual tendency of faith, and hope, and prayer 
 to God, to have a better nature, a better life and spirit, born 
 again into him from above. 
 
 Where this faith is, there is the Christian, the new creature 
 in Christ, born of the Word and Spirit of God : neither time 
 nor place, nor any outward condition of birth and life, can 
 hinder his entrance into the Kingdom of God. 
 
 But where this faith is not, there is the true, complete 
 Infidel, the man of the earth, the unredeemed, the rejector of 
 the Gospel, the Son of Perdition that is dead in trespasses 
 and sins, without Christ, an alien from the commonwealth of 
 Israel, a stranger from the covenants of promise, having no 
 hope, and without God in the world. 
 
 He therefore that opens a field of controversy to the Deist 
 about revelation in general, or the history of facts, creeds, 
 and doctrines of Churches, not only leads him from the merits 
 of the Gospel, but brings him into a field of battle where he 
 may stand his ground as long as he pleases. This I can truly 
 say from my own experience, who have been twenty years 
 in this dust of debate, and have always found that the more 
 books there were written in this way of defending the Gospel, 
 the more I was furnished with new objections to it, and the 
 less apprehensive of any danger from my not receiving it. 
 
 For I had frequently a consciousness rising up within me 
 that the debate was equally vain on both sides, doing no more 
 real good to the one than to the other, not being able to 
 imagine that a set of scholastic, logical opinions about 
 history, facts, doctrines, and institutions of the Church, or a 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE J23 
 
 set of logical objections against them, were of any signifi- 
 cancy towards making the soul of man either an eternal 
 Angel of Heaven or an eternal Devil of Hell. And therefore 
 it was that I was often tempted rather to think there was 
 neither Heaven nor Hell, than to believe that such a variety 
 of Churches and systems of opinion, all condemning, and all 
 condemned by one another, were to find the Heaven of God 
 opened to receive them ; but he who was equally led by opinion 
 to reject them all was doomed to Hell. But you, sir (and 
 how can 1 enough thank you for it?) have put a full end to 
 all this vain strife of opinions floating in the brain ; you have 
 dispersed the clouds that surround my bewildered mind ; you 
 have brought me home to myself, where I find Heaven and 
 Hell, Life and Death, Salvation and Damnation at strife 
 within me ; you have shown me the infinite worth of 
 Christianity, and the dreadful nature of Infidelity, not by 
 helping me to a new opinion for my reason to maintain, but 
 by proving to me this great and decisive truth, that 
 Christianity is neither more nor less than the goodness of 
 Divine Life, Light and Love, living and working in my soul ; 
 and that infidelity, in its whole nature, is purely and solely 
 the heart of man living in, governed by, and contented with, 
 the evil workings of the earthly life and spirit and nature. 
 
 It is wonderfully astonishing that you men of learning 
 seldom come thus far as to see and feel this glaring truth, 
 that goodness must be a living thing ; but, blinded with the 
 empty sounds of words in variety of languages, are as content 
 and happy with a religion of nature delineated, or a book of 
 axioms, maxims, and deductions, mathematically placed one 
 after another, as if you had really found the Tree of Life. 
 Whereas, in truth, all this is no better than the reading a 
 lecture upon the use of the heart, liver, and lungs, to a dead 
 carcase : for the life of goodness can no more be raised, or 
 brought into the soul, by this art of reasoning, than life can 
 be brought into the carcase by a discourse upon the heart, 
 liver, and lungs, made over it. 
 
 Oh ! AcADEMicus, forget your scholarship, give up your 
 art and criticism, be a plain man ; and then the first rudiments 
 
124 'iHE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 of sense may teach you that there, and there only, can good- 
 ness be, where it comes forth as a birth of Life, and is the free 
 natural work and fruit of that which lives within us. For 
 till goodness thus comes from a Life within us, we have in 
 truth none at all. For reason, with all its doctrine, discipline, 
 and rules, can only help us to be so good, so changed, and 
 amended, as a wild beast may be, that by restraints and 
 methods is taught to put on a sort of tameness, though its 
 wild nature is all the time only restrained, and in a readiness 
 to break forth asrain as occasion shall offer. 
 
 No, the learning of the Christian world must bear the 
 blame of these fruitless disputes : the demonstrators of the 
 truth and reasonableness of Christianity have betrayed their 
 own cause, and left true Christianity unmentioned in their 
 defences of it. What a reasonableness of Christianity have 
 some great names helped us to ! Just as useful, and good to 
 our fallen souls, as the reasonableness of consenting to the 
 death of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. But you, my 
 friend, being rightly converted to a Christianity that began 
 before the Scriptures were written, and is as old as the 
 creation and fall of Man, keep close to its true and real 
 ground ; and, instead of showing the reasonableness of 
 believing a long history of things, show the absolute necessity 
 of man's dying to his present life, in order to have a better 
 from God. This is the Christianity that began with the fall, 
 and has been preached ever since to every son of fallen man, 
 in every corner of the world ; and by the same preacher that 
 tells every man that he ought to be better than he is. 
 
 How many hundred barns must there be to hold ail the 
 learned volumes that had never been written, had man looked 
 upon the Scriptures as having no other end in view but to 
 teach him to renounce the tempers of his fallen earthly nature, 
 and live unto God in faith and prayer ; to be born again of 
 the Divine Nature ! But this one end being overlooked by 
 learned reason, Hebrew and Syriac, Arabic, Greek and Latin, 
 have been called in to torture the Scriptures into a chaos of 
 confused opinions, that has ro\crcd the Christian world with 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 125 
 
 darkness, and lost the only good that was to be had from the 
 written word of God. Whereas, standing upon the ground 
 on which you stand, with only this one great point at heart, 
 the Scriptures are a plain, easy, and certain instruction ; and 
 no honest unlearned heart stands in need of any commentator, 
 to help him to all the benefit that can be had from Scripture, 
 or secure him from anv hurtful error. 
 
 Why was the Son of God made Man? It was because man 
 was to be made again a Divine Creature. Why did man want 
 such a Saviour? It was because he was become earthly, 
 mortal, gross flesh and blood. Now take Christ in this light, 
 and consider man in this state, and then all that is said in the 
 Gospel stands in the fullest light. 
 
 For to man insensible of his fallen state the glad tidings of 
 the Gospel are but like news from fairyland ; and the Cross 
 of Christ can be only a stumbling-block and foolishness to 
 him, whether he be a Christian, a Jew, or a Greek. Thus 
 does it appear that all the doctrines and sayings of Christ 
 and His Apostles are full of a comfortable, divine, and exalted 
 sense, or mere empty words, just as the fall of man from a 
 divine life is either owned or disowned. But I have done. 
 
 Theophilus : Thus far then, Humanus, we are agreed that 
 the fall of man into the life and state of this world is the whole 
 ground of his redemption ; and that a real birth of Christ in 
 the soul is the whole nature of it. Let me now only ask you 
 how you would endeavour to convince a man of his fallen 
 state. 
 
 Humanus : I would not begin with the account that Moses 
 gives of it, for several reasons ; but chiefly for these two : 
 first, because the fall is not an historical matter, nor would 
 a mere historical knowledge of it be of any use, or do any 
 real good to him. Secondly, because Moses's account is not 
 the proof of the fall, and therefore not to be appealed to 
 as such. 
 
 Moses is the first historian of natural death, and has 
 recorded the death of the first man, and of many others who 
 were born to him ; but the proof that man is mortal lies not 
 
126 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 in Moses's history of the death of the first man, but in the 
 known nature of man, and the world from which he has 
 his life. 
 
 Thus it is with the fall ; we have no more occasion to go 
 to Moses to prove that man and the world are in a fallen 
 state, than to prove that man is a poor, miserable, weak, 
 vain, distressed, corrupt, depraved, selfish, self-tormenting, 
 perishing creature ; and that the world is a sad mixture of 
 false goods and real evils, a mere scene of all sorts of trials, 
 vexations, and miseries, all arising from the frame and nature 
 and condition both of man and the world. This is the full, 
 infallible proof of the fall of man ; which is not a thing learnt 
 from any history, but shows itself everywhere, and every day, 
 with such clearness as we see the sun. 
 
 Theophilus : All that we want to know, my friend, is the 
 certainty of the fact ; and this is of the greatest moment to 
 us. For this is it that takes us from the herd of earthly 
 animals, and lays the foundation of religion and divine virtue. 
 For had not a divine life at first been in us we should be now 
 at the same distance from all true virtue and goodness, and as 
 incapable of forming the least thought or desire of it, as other 
 animals ; and should have nothing to do but to look to our- 
 selves, live to our earthly nature, and make the most of this 
 world. For this is the only wisdom of goodness that an 
 earthly nature is capable of, whether it be a man or a fox. 
 The certainty therefore of the fact of our first divine birth is 
 all ; nothing more need be inquired after. For on this 
 ground stands all our comfort ; hence it is that in faith and 
 hope we can look up to God as our Father, to heaven as our 
 native country, and have the honour to be accounted only as 
 strangers and pilgrims upon earth. 
 
 But, however, to remove your difficulty, I shall give you 
 a little sketch of the possibility of man's falling, although 
 created in the perfection above-mentioned. 
 
 Now supposing God to have brought a new intelligent 
 Creature into a new world, all the attributes of God oblige us 
 to suppose this Creature to be created in a perfect state both 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 127 
 
 inwardly and outwardly. As intelligent, it must partake of 
 the divine understanding ; as living, it must have a degree of 
 the divine life in it; as good, it must have a birth of the 
 divine goodness in it; as an offspring of divine love, it must 
 have a divine happiness, for the enjoyment of which the love 
 of God created it. Now there is but one possible way for 
 this intelligent Creature, thus endowed, to fall from, or lose, 
 the happiness of its first created state. It cannot knowingly 
 choose misery, or the loss of its happiness : therefore it can 
 only fall by such an ignorance, or power of falling, as is 
 consistent with its perfect state. Now this power lay wholly 
 in the Newness of its Life. It only began to find itself an 
 intelligent being ; and yet had a power of looking with the 
 eyes of its understanding either inwards, or outwards, 
 upwards, or downwards. It had a power of acquiescing 
 and rejoicing in that which it found itself to be, and adoring 
 that power and goodness which had brought it into the 
 possession of such a nature : and it had a power of wandering 
 into conjectures and reasons about that which it was not. 
 Now, as a free, intelligent Creature, it could not be without 
 this power of thus turning its intelligent eye ; and yet, as a 
 beginning Creature that had no experience, this power could 
 not be free from a possibility of wandering ; and therefore its 
 power of wandering was not a defect, but a necessary part of 
 its first perfect state. Now in this possibility of wandering 
 with its intelligent eye, looking where it ought not, and enter- 
 ing into conjectures about that which it was not, may be 
 clearly seen the possibility of its falling from a state of high 
 perfection. 
 
 This is the one only possible way for a good, intelligent, 
 new Creature to lose its happiness. 
 
 Indeed, I very well know, from former experience, that 
 all discourses about the reasonableness of Christianity, the 
 doctrine of the Cross, the exceeding love of God in giving 
 so great a Saviour, with many more things of the like nature, 
 were mere empty sounds, heard with the greatest indifference, 
 and incapable of raising the least seriousness in me, merely 
 because I had not the least notion or suspicion of the truth 
 
128 THE WAY rO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and greatness of my fallen state, and therefore was not the 
 man who had any fitness to be affected with these matters. 
 And thence it was that Christ said, " Come unto me, all ye 
 that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you "; 
 as plain as if He said. No one else can come to Me, nor 
 anyone else be refreshed by Me. 
 
 Here therefore, in my humble opinion, should all begin 
 who would propagate Christianity, or make true converts to 
 it ; and here stop, as Christ did. It is only the weary and 
 heavy laden that are fitted to be converts, or refreshed; and 
 therefore we can no way help a man to be a Christian, or fit 
 him to be refreshed by Christ, but by bringing him into a 
 full sensibility of the evil, and burden, and vanity of his 
 natural state. And if he cannot be made sensible of this, we 
 are to leave him to himself in his natural state till some good 
 providence awakens him out of it ; and not make proposals 
 to him of the reasonableness of believing the Holy Trinity, 
 the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the necessity of His 
 sufferings and death, etc. ; for this method is full as absurd 
 as to enter into solemn debate with a confessed Atheist about 
 the reasonableness of worshipping God in spirit and truth ; 
 for, as the existence of a God is the only ground of proving 
 that He ought to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, so the 
 certainty and belief of our fallen state is the only ground for 
 showing the reasonableness of the mysteries of redemption. 
 
 And as you have also shown that the whole nature of the 
 Gospel redemption means nothing but the one, true, and only 
 possible way of delivering man from his miserable state in 
 this world, Christianity is shown to be the most intelligible 
 and desirable thing that the heart of man can think of. And 
 thus, contrary to all expectation, the tables are quite turned ; 
 Deism can no longer be founded on argument, and Chris- 
 tianity is as self-evident as our senses; all learning on both 
 sides, either for or against it, is insignificant ; Christianity 
 stands upon a bottom quite superior to it, and may be the 
 sure possession of every plain man who has sense enough to 
 know whether he is happy or unhappy, good or evil. For 
 this natural knowledge, if adhered to, is every man's sure 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 129 
 
 guide to that one salvation preached by the Gospel. Which 
 Gospel stands in no more need of learning and critical art 
 now, than it did when Christ was preaching it upon earth. 
 How absurd would it have been for art critics in Greek and 
 Hebrew to have followed Christ and His Apostles, as neces- 
 sary explainers of their hard words, which called for nothing 
 in the hearers but penitent hearts turned to God, and 
 declared that they only who were of God could hear the 
 Word of God ! How strange that Christ should choose 
 only illiterate men to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of 
 God, if only great scholars could rightly understand what they 
 said ! Again, supposing learned men to have only the true 
 fitness to understand the word of Scripture, and that the 
 plain man is to receive it from them, how must he know 
 which are the scholars that have the right of knowledge? 
 From whence is he to have this information? For no one 
 need be told that ever since learning has borne rule in the 
 Church, learned doctors have contradicted and condemned 
 one another in every essential point of the Christian doctrine. 
 Thousands of learned men tell the illiterate they are lost in 
 this or that Church ; and thousands of learned men tell them 
 they are lost if they leave it. 
 
 If, therefore, Christianity is in the hands of scholars, how 
 must the plain man come to it? Must he, though unable to 
 understand Scripture through want of learning, tell which 
 learned man is in the right, and which is not? If so, the 
 unlearned man has much the greatest ability, since he is to 
 do that for scholars which they cannot do for themselves. 
 
 But the truth of the matter is this ; Christian redemption 
 is God's mercy to all mankind; but it could not be so if 
 every fallen man, as such, had not some fitness and capacity 
 to lay hold of it. It must have no dependence upon times and 
 places, or the ages and several conditions of the world, or 
 any outward circumstance of life ; as the first man partook of 
 it, so must the last; the learned linguist, and the blind, the 
 deaf and dumb, have but one and the same common way of 
 finding life in it. And he that writes large commentaries 
 upon the whole Bible must be saved by something full as 
 different from book-knowledge, as they were who lived when 
 there was neither book nor any alphabet in the world. 
 
I30 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 For this salvation, which is God's mercy to the fallen soul 
 For this saivauu , something that meets every 
 
 ^'ar"ar:Lh ev "Can 'rf^^^^^ hL something that 
 man , and whicn e^e y , ^^^ .^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^ 
 
 have a '^-^^^^^^^^^"eTroots and Greek phrases, 
 
 the fall and ^de-P""';,]^'^^ .he fal^ which alone saved 
 fr«r ™^ aj P t e b - rand^:;U^ l:Z 
 
 r^fSH?H:nih;^:^^^^ 
 
 the part of "i^". ^'?"f, '" ^ 'imfle and plain as the feeling 
 ourolV "viUnt'l'eJ^.'^nd .^^Tafural as^the desire of being 
 
 ^^?h1s^ if the'ch's^a^t';- which every n,an n,us. hrst be 
 
 further mysteries of the Gospel. 
 
 For the whole of the matter lies solely in this, whether 
 Heaven or Earth, hath the heart and government of man. 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 131 
 
 Nothing divides the worshippers of the true God from 
 Idolaters but th.s : where earth possesses and rules the heart 
 there all are of one and the same religion, and worship on*; 
 and the same God, however they mav be distinguished by 
 sect or party. '^ "-^ 
 
 And wherever the heart is weary of the evil and vanitv of 
 the ear hly life and looking up to God for an heavenly nature 
 here all are of the one true religion, and worshippers of th^ 
 
 to tim. n 7^"'' "^'''""^ '''^^ "^^y ^^ ^'^^ one'^another as 
 to time or place. 
 
 a new 
 
 Hence the Apostles were new men, entered into a n 
 kmgdom come down from heaven, enlightened with new 
 light, mflamed w.th new love; and preached not any absent 
 
 o GoTI u"^; ^' -t'"' ^'•"•^^ ^' *^^ Wisdom and Powe 
 of God, felt and found within them, and as a power of God 
 ready to be communicated, in the same manner asTnew birth 
 
 waTtolhT'H' '" '"^r "^"'^ '"^P^"^ ^"^ believe in h^' t 
 uas to this change of nature, of life and spirit, to this certain 
 immediate deliverance from the power of sin, 'to be possessed 
 and governed by gifts and graces of an heavenly Ufe that 
 men were then called to, as true Christianity.^ And the 
 preachers of it bore witness, not to a thing hat they had 
 heard, but to a power of salvation, a renewal of nature a 
 birth of heaven, a sanctification of the spirit, whTch they 
 themselves had received. Gospel Christianit; then stood 
 upon ,ts own true ground; it appeared to be what it was 
 And what M.as it? Why, it was an awakened Dh ine Life 
 et up amongst men; itself was its own proof; it appealed to 
 s proper judge to the heart and conscience of man which 
 new nle" "^'''' °' '""^ ^'^"^'^^^ ^^"'^^ ^^ese offe'rs of ' 
 of^r^:-,^J^Ur^^tt^:7-J^^/elt the burden 
 glad tiding.. Whilst theV^^id'ptariLtTh^o'hoXp:?;^^ 
 
 rejecting and abhorring a spiritual stioirf ^hat waf t^sa^e 
 
133 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 them from their carnal selves and the vanity of their own 
 rational selfish virtues. But when, after a while, Christianity 
 had lost its first glory, it appeared no longer as a Divine Life 
 awakened amongst men, and itself was no longer its own 
 proof of the power and spirit of God manifested in it ; then 
 heathenish learning, and temporal power, was from age to 
 age forced to be called the glory and prosperity of the Church 
 of Christ. 
 
 Dear Academicus, be not so uneasy; I am no more an 
 enemy to learning than I am to that art which builds mills 
 to grind our corn, and houses for ourselves to dwell in. I 
 esteem the liberal arts and sciences as the noblest of human 
 things ; I desire no man to dislike or renounce his skill in 
 ancient or modern languages, his knowledge of medals, 
 pictures, paintings, history, geography, or chronology ; I 
 have no more dislike of these things in themselves, than of 
 the art of throwing silk, or making lace. But then, all these 
 things are to stand in their proper places, and everyone keep 
 within its own sphere. 
 
 Now, all this circle of science and arts, whether liberal or 
 mechanic, belongs solely to the natural man ; they are the 
 work of his natural powers and faculties ; and the most 
 wicked, sensual, unjust person, who regards neither God nor 
 man, may yet be one of the ablest proficients in any or all of 
 them. But now. Christian redemption is quite of another 
 nature; it has no aflfinity to any of these arts or sciences; it 
 belongs not to the outward natural man, but is purely for 
 the sake of an inward, heavenly nature that was lost, or put 
 to death, in Paradise, and buried under the flesh and blood 
 of the earthly, natural man. It breathes a spark of life into 
 this inward, hidden, or lost man ; by which it feels and finds 
 itself, and rises up in new awakened desires after its lost 
 Father and native Country. 
 
 This is Christian redemption ; on the one side, it is the 
 hfavonlv divine life offering itself again to the inward man 
 that had lost it. On the other side, it is the hope, the faith, 
 and desire of this inward man, hungering, and thirsting, 
 stretching after, and calling upon, this divine and heavenly 
 life. 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 133 
 
 Now, whether this awakened new man breathes forth his 
 faith and hope towards this divine life in Hebrew, Greek, or 
 English sounds, or in no one of them, can be of no signifi- 
 cancy : a man that can do it only in one, or in all these 
 languages, is neither further from, nor nearer to, this 
 redeeming life of God. Or can you think that the heavenly 
 life must more willingly enter into, and open itself in, a man 
 that has many languages, than in him who knows only one? 
 Or that a man who can make High Dutch, Welsh, or Greek 
 Grammars must have a stronger faith, a more lively hope, 
 and a more continual thirst after God, than he who can but 
 poorly spell in his mother tongue? But now, if this is too 
 absurd to be supposed ; then, my friend, without the least 
 injury done, or the least enmity shown to learning, science, 
 reason, and criticism, you must place them just where I have 
 done, amongst the things and ornaments of this earthly life ; 
 and such things as, in their own nature, are as easy to be 
 had, and as highly enjoyed, by men that despise all goodness, 
 as by those who fear God and eschew evil. 
 
 And therefore, sir, no truths concerning the divine and 
 heavenly life are to be brought for trial before this learned 
 Bar, where both Jury and Judges are born and bred, live and 
 move and have their being in another world, which have no 
 more power of feeling the divine life than an eagle's eye can 
 look into the Kingdom of God. If you, my friend, having 
 read many old Greek and Latin books, should intend to 
 publish Homer, or Caesar's Commentaries, with critical 
 notes, I should have nothing to object to your ability ; you 
 might be as well qualified by such means for such a work 
 as one man is to make baskets, or another, traps to catch 
 flies. But if, because of this skill in Greek and Latin, you 
 should seem to yourself, or others, to be well qualified to 
 write notes upon the spirit and meaning of the words of 
 Christ, I should tell you that your undertaking was quite 
 unnatural, and as impossible to be free from error as when 
 a blind man undertakes to set forth the beauty of different 
 colours. 
 
 For the doctrines of redemption belong no more to the 
 natural man, than the beauty of colours to him that never saw 
 the light. And from this unnatural procedure it is that the 
 
134 
 
 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Scriptures are as useful to the Socinian or Arian, the Papist 
 or the Protestant; and they can as easily, by the light of 
 reason, charge one another with absurdities, and confute each 
 other's opinions, as two blind men can quarrel, and reject each 
 other's notions of red and green. 
 
 Now this true ground of the Christian redemption gives 
 the greatest glory to God, and comfort to man. It explains 
 the fact why plain and simple souls, having their inward man 
 kindled into love, faith, and hope in God, are capable of the 
 highest divine illumination ; whilst learned students, full of 
 art and science, can live and die without the least true know- 
 ledge of God and Christ, and slaves to all the lusts of the 
 flesh. For thus, this redemption belongs only to one sort of 
 people, and yet is common to all. It is equally near, and 
 equally open, to every son of man. There is no diflerence 
 between learned and unlearned, between Jew or Greek, male 
 or female, Scythian or Barbarian, bond or free; but the same 
 Lord is God over all, and equally nigh to all that call 
 upon Him. 
 
 The other sort of people, whom Jacob Behmen excludes 
 from his books, and for whom he has writ nothing, are the 
 men of reason, who give themselves up to the light of reason 
 as the true touchstone of divine truths. To these he declares 
 over and over that he has not his light from reason, and that 
 he writes nothing to reason. " The rational man," saith he, 
 " understands nothing in reference to God ; for it is without, 
 and not in God." Again, "The true understanding must 
 flow from the inward ground, out of the living Word of God. 
 In which inward ground, all my knowledge concerning the 
 divine and natural ground hath taken its rise, beginning, 
 and understanding. I am not born of the school of this 
 world, and am a plain simple man; but by God's Spirit and 
 Will am brought, without my own purpose and desire, into 
 divine knowledge in high natural scarchings." 
 
 All true knowledge, cither of God or Nature, must be born 
 in you. You cannot possibly know anything of God but so 
 far as God is manifested in you ; so far as His Light and Holy 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 135 
 
 Spirit is born in you as it is born in Him, and liveth and 
 worketh in you as it liveth and worketh in Him. A distant, 
 absent, separate God, is an unknown God. For God can 
 only manifest God, as light can only manifest light, and 
 darkness make darkness to be known. 
 
 Nothing can come forth from man, or any creature, but 
 that which first had its seed in him ; and to think that any 
 knowledge can be put into him, but that which is a birth of 
 his own life, is as absurd as to think that the tree and its 
 branches may first grow, and then be brought to the root. 
 
 We are led into mistakes about this matter from the 
 common practice of the world, which calls everything know- 
 ledge that the reason, wit, or humour of man prompts him 
 to discourse about ; whether it be fiction, conjecture, report, 
 history, criticism, rhetoric, or oratory : all this passes for 
 sterling knowledge; whereas it is only the activity of reason, 
 playing with its own empty notions. 
 
 From this idea of knowledge it is, that when this rational 
 man turns his thoughts to the study of divinity, he is content 
 with the same knowledge of divine matters as he had in these 
 exercises of his reason ; and he proceeds in the same manner 
 as when he studied history and rhetoric. 
 
 He turns his mind to hearsay, to conjecture, to criticism, 
 and great names ; and thinks he is then a member of the true 
 Church when he knows it as plainly as he knows the ancient 
 Commonwealth of Rome. His knowledge of the Being of 
 God stands upon the same bottom, and is made known to 
 him by the same means and methods of proof, as he comes 
 to be assured that once upon a time there was a first man and 
 his name was Adam. His knowledge of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is looked upon to be sufiicient, as soon as he knows 
 it as he knows that there is such a place as Constantinople. 
 When he turns his inquiries into the mysteries of Christian 
 redemption, he looks as much out of himself as when he is 
 searching into the antiquities of Greece; and appeals to the 
 same helps for this knowledge, as when he wants to know 
 the inward structure of Solomon's Temple, and all its 
 services, etc. 
 
136 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 This is the great delusion which has long overspread the 
 Christian world ; and all countries, and all libraries, are the 
 proof of it. It is this power and dominion of reason in 
 religious matters that Jacob Behmen so justly calls the Anti- 
 christ in Babel ; for it leads men from the life and truth of 
 the mysteries of Christ, to put a carnal trust in a confused 
 multitude of contrary notions, inventions, and opinions. 
 
 For nothing that is brought into the mind from without, 
 or is only an idea beheld by our reasoning faculty, is any more 
 our knowledge than the seeing our natural face in a glass is 
 seeing our own selves. And all the ideas or images that your 
 reason can form of any absent, unpossessed thing, is no more 
 a part of your own knowledge, than your drawing a picture 
 of your own hand is making a member of your own body. 
 It is therefore a vain and fruitless inquiry to be asking 
 beforehand for the knowledge of any unpossessed matters ; 
 for knowledge can only be yours as sickness and health is 
 yours, not conveyed into you by a hearsay notion, but by the 
 fruit of your own perception and sensibility of that which 
 you are, and that which you have in yourself. How often 
 have you been warned against this procedure, in words like 
 these: "Therefore let the reader be warned not to dive 
 further into these very deep writings, nor plunge his will 
 deeper than so far as he apprehendeth ; he should always 
 rest satisfied with his apprehension, for in his apprehension 
 he standeth yet in that which hath its reality ; and therefore 
 he erreth not, how deep soever the Spirit leadeth him ; for 
 to one more will be given than to another. And this is the 
 only mark to be observed, that everyone continue steadfast 
 in humility towards God, and submit himself, that He may 
 make the will and the deed as He pleaseth. When you do 
 that, you are in yourself as dead ; for you desire nothing but 
 God's will, and the will of God is your life, which goeth 
 inward even to the opening of the highest mysteries." 
 
 Every other thing, besides the Life and Light of God, stands 
 only in a state of ministerial service towards you; whether 
 it be words of a message from God written on paper, 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 137 
 
 engraven on tables of stone, or spoken by the mouth of an 
 angel, a prophet or apostles ; be it which it will, it is only 
 a creaturely thing ; and its creaturely service can rise no 
 higher, nor go any further, than to show the true way to 
 Him who only Himself can be the truth, the life, and the 
 light in you. For the Light of God cannot, even by God 
 Himself, be communicated to you by any creature ; and the 
 reason is because the Light of God is God Himself : it is the 
 light of His own Life, and therefore only Himself can bring 
 it forth wherever it is ; and no creature can possibly partake 
 of His Light but by having a birth in and from the divine 
 nature ; for the Light of God can never be separate from the 
 divine nature, or be anywhere but where the divine birth is. 
 And thus you fully see that all that can be divinely known, 
 either in heaven, or on earth, can only be known in that one 
 way, and by that one means, by which fallen man can be 
 saved ; namely, by a new birth of the Light and Spirit of God 
 within us. And therefore the simple way of the Gospel is 
 the one only way to attain all knowledge of all that which 
 can be known of God and nature ; for nothing can manifest 
 God and nature but the Spirit of God working in man, as 
 He worketh in nature, which can only be done by a new birth 
 of the divine nature brought forth in man. But when man 
 is thus born again of God, then the Life and Spirit of God is 
 in him, and worketh in him as it doth in nature. And thus 
 it is, that man can only be a divine philosopher when Christ, 
 who is the Light of God and the Light of nature, is revealed 
 in him. Then he is in that living Word, and that living 
 Word is in him, by which all things were at first made ; and 
 which maketh, createth, and worketh in him, as it worketh 
 in all things both in heaven and earth. 
 
 For nothing leads or carries you anywhere, nothing 
 generates either life or death in you, but the working of 
 your mind, will, and desire. If your will is angelic, you are 
 an angel, and angelic happiness must be yours. If your will 
 is with God, you work with God ; God is then the life of your 
 soul, and you will have your life with God to all eternity. 
 If you follow an earthly will, every step you take is a 
 
138 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 departure from God, till you become as incapable of God, and 
 the life of God, as the animals of this world. If your will 
 worketh in pride and self-exaltation, in envy and wrath, in 
 hatred and ill-will, in deceit, hypocrisy, and falseness, you 
 work with the Devil, you are generating his nature within 
 you, and making yourself ready for the Kingdom of Hell. 
 And thus it is, that our works follow us ; and that everyone 
 will be rewarded according to his works ; and none can reap 
 anything else but that which he hath sown. And the seed 
 of everything that can grow in us is our will. The will 
 maketh the beginning, the middle, and the end of everything ; 
 it is the only workman in nature, and everything is its work. 
 It has all power ; its works cannot be hindered ; it carries all 
 before it ; it creates as it goes : and all things are possible 
 to it. It enters wherever it wills, and finds everything that 
 it seeks ; for its seeking is its finding. The will over-rules all 
 nature, because nature is its oflspring and born of it ; for 
 all the properties of nature, whether they be good or evil, in 
 darkness or in light, in love or in hatred, in wrath or in 
 meekness, in pride or humility, in trouble or joy, are all of 
 them the offspring or birth of the will ; as that liveth, so 
 they live; and as that changeth, so they change. So that 
 whatever you are, or whatever you feel, is all owing to the 
 working and creating power of your own will. This is your 
 God or your Devil, your Heaven or your Hell ; and you have 
 only so much of one, or the other, as your will, which is the 
 first mover, is either given up to the one or to the other. 
 
 For where the will of man is not, there he hath nothing ; 
 and where his will is, there is all that something which he 
 hath, be it of what kind it will ; and it is inseparable from 
 him till his will worketh contrary to it. 
 
 The will is not a made thing, which is made out of some- 
 thing, or that came out of some different state into the state 
 of a will. But the free will of man is a true and real birth 
 from the free, eternal, uncreated Will of God, which willed 
 to have a creaturely offspring of itself, or to see itself in n 
 creaturely state. And therefore the will of man hath the 
 nature of divine freedom ; hath the nature of eternity, and 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 139 
 
 the nature of omnipotence in it ; because it is what it is, and 
 hath what it hath, as a spark, a ray, a genuine birth of the 
 eternal, free, omnipotent will of God. And therefore, as 
 the will of God is superior to, and ruleth over, all nature ; so 
 the will of man, derived from the will of God, is superior to, 
 and ruleth over, all his own nature. And thence it is, that 
 as to itself, and so far as its own nature reacheth, it hath the 
 freedom and omnipotence of that Will from which it is 
 descended ; and can have or receive nothing but what itself 
 doth, and worketh, in and to itself. 
 
 All things stand in the will, and everything, animate or 
 inanimate, is the effect and produce of that will which 
 worketh in it, and formeth it to be that which it is. And 
 every will, wherever found, is the birth and effect of some 
 antecedent will ; for will can only proceed from will, till you 
 come to the first working Will, which is God Himself. 
 
 And here, my friend, you have an easy entrance into the 
 true meaning of many important passages in the books of 
 Jacob Behmen, like those that follow : " All," says he, " is 
 magical ; the eternity is magical. Magic is the Mother of all 
 things. I speak from a magic ground. Here the reader 
 must have magical eyes. This hath a magical understand- 
 ing," etc. Vulgar reason is offended at these expressions, 
 because the word magic has for many ages been mostly used 
 in a bad sense. But do not you be frightened at the sound 
 of these words ; they are not only innocent, but truly good 
 and wise, and deeply founded on the truth of things. They 
 have the most Christian and divine meaning ; are strictly 
 conformable to the spirit of the Gospel, as shall be shown 
 by-and-by ; and are used for the best of ends ; namely, to 
 open the true ground of eternal and temporal nature, and the 
 birth of Creatures in each of them. They are to show how 
 the hidden, invisible I3eity acteth and worketh all its wonders 
 in both these worlds, in one and the same uniform way ; as 
 also, how everything in religion, whether it be a mystery of 
 God, a grace of God, or a duty of man, hath its whole ground, 
 and nature, and efficacy, therein. 
 
 Now magic power meaneth nothing but the working of 
 
140 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the will, whether it be the divine, or the creaturely will ; and 
 everything that is the work of the will, and is produced by 
 it, is called its magic work ; which only means that it is 
 generated by and from the will, as a birth brought forth by it. 
 The will is the workman, and the work is that which it 
 bringeth forth out of itself. So that by these words you 
 are always to understand these two things, the working, and 
 the work of the will. And now you may already sufficiently 
 see that their meaning is not only innocent and good, but as 
 necessarily and divinely to be ascribed to God, as the power 
 of bringing things into existence by the working of His Will. 
 For here you have the true ground and original of the 
 creating power of God ; how everything that is not God is yet 
 come from Him, and out of Him, as so many births of His 
 invisible power, breaking forth into visibility, and sensible 
 qualities of an outward life. 
 
 It is because will is the first original of all power, and the 
 omnipotence of God consisteth in nothing else but His 
 working Will ; and therefore no power ever was, or ever can 
 be, anywhere else but as it is in God ; and if the creature hath 
 any power, it must have it, as God hath it, in the working 
 will. For since all nature, with all its qualities, births, and 
 creatures, are all brought into being by the working Will of 
 God, it evidently follows that every creature, with every 
 quality, power, and property in it, is magically born, and 
 therefore must have a magic nature; that is, a nature tliat 
 Cometh from, and standeth in, a working will. 
 
 And now, sir, you are come into a full view of the most 
 important matter of the mystery of all things ; a matter 
 which, if rightly apprehended in the inward ground of your 
 soul, puts an entire end to all the jargon of a false philosophy, 
 and to all those fictions of doctrines and disputes w liich reason 
 has built upon the written word of God. 
 
 I'or nothing is effected by liction and inxention, bv anv 
 contrived arts or scarchings of rational inquiries ; all this 
 is nothing, because it toucheth not nature, but leavcth it to 
 itself; which carrieth on its own works by its own power, and 
 can only work in its own way, and must bring forth its own 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 141 
 
 births, independent of everything but its own working life. 
 But all lieth in the will and working desire of the soul, because 
 will began, and brought forth, all that nature that lives in the 
 soul, and is the only life in it ; and this life can work and 
 grow from nothing else but that which first brought it forth. 
 Hence you see the full meaning of these words of our author, 
 " All is magical "; and " that magic is the mother of all 
 things," and, consequently, the only Opener of all divine 
 knowledge. All which expressions only imply thus much, 
 that the ufill, whether in God or the Creature, is the ground 
 and seed of everything ; is the generating working power, 
 which maketh and worketh all things to be in that state and 
 condition which they are ; and that everything begins, goes 
 on, and ends in the working of the will, and that nothing can 
 be otherwise than as its will worketh ; and therefore Eternity 
 and Time are magical, and magic is, and must be, the Mother 
 of all things. 
 
 Now here you see, in the utmost degree of clearness, how 
 all true and false religions divide from one another. For if 
 nothing worketh but the will, if nothing else carries on the 
 work of nature, then all is false and vain in religion but the 
 working of the will ; and nothing is saving, or redeeming the 
 life of the soul, but that which helps the will to work towards 
 God. 
 
 All things in heaven and in earth stand in this magic birth ; 
 and nothing can change its state, either for better or worse, 
 but as the working of its will changes. Justly, therefore, is 
 it said, that where this truth is found there is a full and true 
 deliverance from Babel, that is, from all strife, and zeal, and 
 division about opinions, sects, and churches; since the one 
 thing that works either to life or to death, the one thing that 
 alone opens Heaven or Hell for us, is with every individual 
 man, in every place, and in every age, of the world ; and that 
 one thing is the working of the will. And when, in any such 
 man, his will is turned from his earthly self and this earthlv 
 life, and worketh with its desire to God, then all these sayings 
 of the Scripture are true of him, viz., " That he is redeemed 
 from this evil world — that he has his conversation in heaven 
 — that he is of God, and heareth God's word — that he is 
 
142 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 saved by faith — that Christ is revealed to him — that he is 
 Christ's, and Christ is his — that Christ is in him of a truth — 
 and that he is led by the Spirit of Christ." All these texts 
 would be true of him though he had never seen, nor heard, 
 a syllable of the written Word of God. 
 
 For the Word of God which saveth and redeemeth, which 
 giveth life and light to the soul, is not the word printed on 
 paper, but is that eternal, ever-speaking Word which is the 
 Son of God, who in the beginning was with God, and is the 
 God by whom all things were made. This is the universal 
 teacher and enlightener of all that are in heaven and on 
 earth ; who, from the beginning to the end of time, without 
 respect of persons, stands at the door of every heart of man, 
 speaking into it not human words but divine goodness ; 
 calling and knocking, not with outward sounds but by the 
 inward stirring of an awakened divine life. And therefore, 
 as sure as that is true which St. John saith, that this eternal 
 Word " is the life of men, and the light that lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world," so sure is it that our 
 Saviour and Salvation, our Teacher and Enlightener, from 
 whom we have every good thought, is Christ within us ; not 
 within this or that man, but in every man, wherever born, 
 in whom the light of life ariseth. And indeed how can it be 
 otherwise? For if God is the God of all men ; and the Word 
 of God the life and light of all men ; and all men are capable 
 of goodness ; and all goodness can only be from God ; and no 
 goodness can belong to man but that which is witliin him ; 
 then every man must have the Word, or Christ of God, within 
 him, and can have it nowhere else. 
 
 Again, see here, in a still higher degree of proof, the 
 absolute necessity and unspeakable benefit of the spirit of 
 prayer; how it does, and must, in spite of all opposition, 
 raise the fallen soul out of the poverty of flesh and blood into 
 the riches of an heavenly nature brought forth in it. For 
 since all things in heaven and earth stand in a magic birth 
 or working of the will, the will is that which hath all power; 
 it unites all that is united in heaven or on earth ; it divides 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 143 
 
 and separates all that is divided in nature; it makes heaven 
 and it makes hell ; for there is no hell but where the will of 
 the Creature is turned from God ; nor any heaven but where 
 the will of the Creature worketh with God. Therefore, as 
 we pray, so we are ; and as our will-spirit secretly worketh, 
 so are we either swallowed up in the vanity of time, or 
 called forth into the riches of eternity. And therefore the 
 spirit of prayer is most justly conceived, and most simply 
 expressed, when it is said to be the rising of the soul out of 
 the vanity of time into the riches of eternity : for all the 
 vanity which the soul hath is from its living in, and loving, 
 the things of time ; and therefore it can only come out of 
 the vanity of its state by loving and living in the truths 
 which are the riches of eternity : for the spirit of prayer is 
 the hunger of the soul ; and as every hunger is, so it eats ; 
 it always eateth that which it hungereth after, and hath a 
 life suitable to the nature, state, and condition, both of its 
 hunger, and its food. If it hungereth after the things of 
 flesh and blood it eateth nothing else, and only groweth in 
 the bestial life, and the flesh must reap the corruption that 
 belongs to flesh; and if it hungereth after God, it eateth the 
 food which giveth life to the angels, it eateth the Bread 
 that is come down from heaven, namely, the real heavenly 
 Body and Blood of Christ, which surely may be called the 
 riches of eternity. 
 
 The delusion of the Deist lies here : he refuses an assent to 
 the history of facts and doctrines of the Gospel ; and this is 
 his proof to himself that he lives by reason, and that it is 
 the real principle of his life. On the other hand, he that 
 assents to the history of facts and doctrines of the Gospel is 
 by the Deist reckoned to be a man of Gospel faith, and that 
 lives by it. But this is all mistake on both sides. For this 
 assent on one side, and dissent on the other, touches not the 
 matter either of reason or faith. For both these persons, 
 notwithstanding this difference of assenting, may not only 
 be equally governed by faith, but have strictly one and the 
 same faith. For if the things of this world have the heart of 
 both of them, which very easily may be, then they have but 
 
144 '^^^ ^^^^ ^O DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 one and the same faith, and are equally governed by it; for 
 they both equally live by a faith in this world. 
 
 The Deist therefore hath no other possible way of showing 
 that he is not as much a man of faith as any Christian can be, 
 but by showing that he has no will, no desire, no inclination 
 of heart left in him ; that his life drives no way, is given up 
 to no one thing, as its end and good ; but that reason, without 
 affection, carries him only from syllogism to syllogism, in 
 quest of nothing. Then it is that he may deem himself to 
 be a man of reason, but not till then ; for if he has any heart 
 that hath any inclination to be united with, or belong to, 
 anything, then he becomes a man of faith ; and he lives by 
 faith in that to which he is given up, as much as any Christian 
 does who is given up to the mysteries of Christian redemption. 
 
 The men of speculative reason, whom you seem most to 
 apprehend, are powerless enemies, that cannot strike at your 
 religion with the strength of a straw. Did you but rightly 
 see what their power is, you would see it as ridiculous as that 
 of a few water-engines trying to quench the fiery globe of 
 the sun : for reason stands in the same inability to touch the 
 truth of religion as the water-engines to affect the sun. Nay, 
 its inability is much greater ; for could the water thrown 
 from the engine be made to reach the sun, it would have 
 some, though an insignificant, effect upon it; but reason can 
 no more affect the truth of religion than nothing can affect 
 something. If reason seems to have any power against 
 religion, it is only where religion is become a dead form, has 
 lost its true state and is dwindled into opinion ; and ^hen 
 this is the case that religion stands only as a well-grounded 
 opinion, then indeed it is always liable to be shaken ; either 
 by having its own credibility lessened, or that of a contrarv 
 opinion increased. But when religion is that which it should 
 be, not a notion or opinion, but a real life growing up in God, 
 then reason has just as much power to stop its course as the 
 barking dog to stop the course of the moon. For true and 
 genuine religion is nature, is life, and the working of life ; 
 and therefore, wherever it is, reason has no more power over 
 it than over the roots that grow secretly in the earth, or the 
 life that is working in the highest heavens. If therefore 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 145 
 
 you are afraid of reason hurting your religion, it is a sign 
 that your religion is not yet as it should be, is not a self- 
 evident growth of nature and life within you, but has much 
 of mere opinion in it. 
 
 Observe the word self-evident ; for there lies the truth of 
 the matter ; for you have no more of the truth of religion 
 than what is self-evident in you. A blind man may be rich 
 in notions and opinions about the nature, power, and good of 
 light ; and in this case one blind man may perplex another 
 and unsettle his notions ; but when the light manifests itself 
 and is become self-evident, then he is at once delivered from 
 an uncertainty about it. Now religion is light and life ; but 
 light and life can only manifest themselves, and can nowhere 
 be known, but where they are self-evident. 
 
 You can know nothing of God, of nature, of heaven, or 
 hell, or yourself, but so far as all these things are self-evident 
 in you. Neither would any of these things be of any concern 
 to you, but because they can all of them be self-evident in 
 you. For the bare history, or hearsay, of any one thing, 
 signifies no more to you than the hearsay of any other thing. 
 And if God and heaven and hell, and the devil, the world and 
 the flesh, were not all of them self-evident in you, you could 
 have no more good or hurt from any hearsay about them, 
 than from the hearsay of pleasant gardens, and dismal 
 prisons, in the world of the moon. 
 
 Let it be supposed that your ingenious reason should 
 suggest to you that there are no devils or hell, and therefore 
 no occasion to believe that revelation that gives an account 
 of them : in this case, do but turn to that which is sensible 
 and self-evident in you, and then you must know, in the same 
 certainty as you know yourself to be alive, that there is 
 wrath, self-torment, envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty, 
 revenge, etc. Now say, if you please, there are no other 
 devils but these, that men have no other devils to resist ; 
 and then you will have said truth enough, have owned devils 
 enough, and enough confessed that you are in the midst of 
 them, that you are everywhere tempted by them ; and that 
 flesh and blood is too weak to resist them, and therefore 
 wants some kind of Saviour of so contrary a nature as has 
 power to destroy these works of the devil in you. 
 
146 THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Now this is the only knowledge that you can possibly have 
 of an outward hell, and outward devils ; and this knowledge 
 is as self-evident in you as your own thoughts, and is as near 
 to you as your own life. But to see and know an outward 
 hell, or outward devils that are outward living creatures, 
 can never be your own case till all that is divine and human 
 in you is extinguished ; and then you will have knowledge 
 enough how hell is a place, and how the devils of rage, 
 wrath, envy, and pride, etc., are living creatures. 
 
 Again, let it be supposed that your sceptic reason has 
 brought you into doubt about the Being and Providence of 
 God in you ; you have no occasion to consult the demonstra- 
 tions which heathen philosophers. School divines. Deists, or 
 Atheists, have produced about it, from the existence of 
 things; all concluding, as well Christians, as Deists and 
 Atheists, that there must be some eternal First Cause from 
 which all has proceeded. 
 
 For what a God is this that is only proved to be, because 
 something now is and therefore something must always have 
 been, an infinite, eternal Something, with infinite power to 
 bring forth all that is come into being ! What a God, I say, 
 is this, which the Arian, the Deist, the Atheist, is as willing 
 to own as the Christian ; and which is as serviceable to the 
 cause of Arianism, Deism, Idolatry, and Atheism, as it is to 
 Christianity ! For the Atheist has his omnipotent, eternal, 
 First Cause, as well as all the disputers of a God. 
 
 But now, if you turn from all these idle debates and 
 demonstrations of reason, to that which is sensible and self- 
 evident in you, then you have a sensible, self-evident proof 
 of the true God of life, and light, and love, and goodness, as 
 manifest to you as your own life. For with the same self- 
 evident certainty as you know that you think, and are alive, 
 you know that there is goodness, love, benevolence, meek- 
 ness, compassion, wisdom, peace, joy, etc. Now this is the 
 self-evident God, that forces Himself to be known, and found, 
 and felt, in every man, in the same certainty of self-evidence 
 as every man feels and finds his own thoughts and life. 
 
 And this is the God whose Being and Providence, thus 
 self-evident in us, call for our worship, and love, and adora- 
 tion and obedience to Him ; and this worship, and love, and 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 147 
 
 adoration and conformity to the divine goodness, is our true 
 belief in, and sure knowledge of, the self-evident God. And 
 Atheism is not the denial of a first omnipotent Cause, but is 
 purely and solely nothing else but the disowning, forsaking, 
 and renouncing the goodness, virtue, benevolence, meekness, 
 etc., of the divine nature, that has made itself thus self- 
 evident in us, as the true object of our worship, conformity, 
 love, and adoration. This is the one true God, or the Deity 
 of goodness, virtue, and love, etc., the certainty of whose 
 Being and Providence opens itself to you in the self-evident 
 sensibility of your own nature; and inspires His likeness and 
 love of His goodness into you. And as this is the only true 
 knowledge that you can possibly have of God and the divine 
 nature, so it is a knowledge not to be debated, or lessened 
 Dy any objections of reason, but is as self-evident as your 
 own life. But to find or know God in reality, by any outward 
 proofs, or by anything but by God Himself made manifest 
 and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here 
 or hereafter. For neither God, nor Heaven nor Hell, nor 
 the Devil, nor the World and the Flesh, can be any other- 
 wise knowable in you, or by you, but by their own existence 
 and manifestation in you. And all pretended knowledge of 
 any of these things, beyond or without this self-evident 
 sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge 
 of them as the blind man hath of that light that never 
 entered into him. 
 
 But seeing a worldly spirituality, called in Scripture the 
 Whore riding upon the Beast, has had its thousand years in 
 the Church ; since not only every kingdom, but almost every 
 corner of Christendom, has a Babel of its own built upon 
 some rational interpretation of the letter of Scripture ; since 
 learned reason within the Church knows no other use of 
 Scriptures but to reproach and condemn all other Babels, and 
 to find materials to strengthen its own ; since reason without 
 the Church finds it as easy to reproach and condemn all 
 revelation as it is to reproach all these Babels built upon 
 it; since this is the finished confusion brought forth by the 
 reason and fleshly wisdom both of those that defend, and 
 
148 THF. WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 those that oppose the Gospel ; how adorable is the goodness 
 of God, in vouchsafing to these last ages of the world such 
 a remedy (namely, the opening the ground and mystery of all 
 things) as is suitable to the distressed and confused state of 
 religion in the world ! And how easy is it also to see the 
 greatest reasons why this remedy was not afforded sooner ! 
 For as true faith did not want it, and learned reason, whilst 
 pleased with itself, could not be in a condition to receive it ; 
 so it was highly suitable to the goodness and wisdom of God 
 not to give forth this mystery till reason, or fleshly wisdom, 
 had made shipwreck of faith ; and had so filled up the measure 
 of its folly as to stand in its last and highest state of distress, 
 perplexity, and confusion. h^or any remedy is only then 
 likely to be rightly received, when distress and perplexity 
 make the want of it to be sensibly felt. 
 
 Let not therefore the genuine, plain, simple Christian, who 
 is happy and blessed in the simplicity of Gospel-faith, take 
 offence at this mystery because he has no need of it. For 
 it is God's goodness to the distressed state of the Church, 
 fallen from life and power of Gospel-faith, and groaning 
 under the slavery, darkness, and perplexity, of bewildered 
 reason and opinions. 
 
 Neither let the orthodox Divine, who sticks close to the 
 phrases and sentiments of antiquity, reject this mystery as 
 heretical, because it opens a ground of man and the divine 
 mysteries not known or found in the primitive writers. For 
 this is the very reason why he should thankfully receive it 
 with open arms, as having, and being, that very thing which 
 the distressed, divided state of the Church now so greatly 
 wants ; and yet did not want till it was fallen from its first 
 simplicity of faith. For whilst faith and life defended the 
 mysteries of religion, the ground and philosophy of it was 
 not wanted. But when orthodoxy had given itself up to 
 reason, and had nothing else for its support but reason and 
 argument from the letter of Scripture, without the least 
 knowledge of the first ground of doctrines ; then it could only 
 be defended as it is defended in every sect and division of the 
 Christian world. For if reason will defend the mysteries of 
 redemption without knowing the true ground on which they 
 stand, or why they must be as they are from the nature of 
 
THE WAY TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 149 
 
 the thing ; the more zealous and learned any man is, the more 
 error must he fall into in the defence of them. For the 
 greater the strength is that works without light, the more 
 extravagancies it must produce. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE GROUNDS AxND REASONS OF CHRISTIAN 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 The Bruiser of the Serpent, given to Adam as his Saviour, 
 was not a verbal promise of something only that should 
 come to pass in future ages to redeem him, and which left 
 his soul in the same state of inward darkness, disorder, and 
 weakness in which it found him ; but it was a Redeeming 
 Power which, by the mercy of God, was treasured up in his 
 fallen nature, which was to resist and overcome the wrath, 
 and death, and awakened nature of Hell, that was in his 
 soul; and from that time of God's accepting him to a salva- 
 tion through the Seed of the woman, he was saved by the 
 power of Christ ivithin him, as really as those that lived and 
 believed in Christ after He had become incarnate. As 
 nothing can save the last man, or become his righteousness 
 or redemption, but the divine nature of Jesus Christ derived 
 into his soul, so nothing else could be righteousness, 
 redemption, or salvation to the first man. 
 
 All men therefore that ever were or shall be descended 
 from Adam have Jesus Christ for their Saviour as Adam 
 had ; they receive the promise made to him, and receive by 
 that promise that which he received by it ; they have a Seed 
 of the woman, an incorruptible Seed of Life, springing up in 
 the first essence of their life. 
 
 This mystery of an inward power of a salvation hidden in 
 all men has had just such degrees of security and manifes- 
 tation as the nature, and birth, and person of the Messiah 
 have had ; that is, as the nature and person of Jesus Christ 
 as an Atonement, Saviour and Redeemer of mankind were 
 
152 CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 
 
 for several ages of the world only obscurely pointed at and 
 typified by the religion of the Jews ; so this Seed of a new 
 birth, or saving power of Christ, hidden in the souls of all 
 men, was through the same ages under the same veil and 
 obscurity. 
 
 But when the eternal vSon of God became incarnate, and 
 manifested to the world the mysteries of His nature, person, 
 and office ; when it was publicly declared that He was the 
 Life and Light of the World, the only source of goodness in 
 every creature, the " Light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world "; that we must all be born again of 
 Him, be born again from above, be born of the Spirit ; and 
 that everyone was to profess the owning, seeking, and 
 desiring this divine birth by a baptism into the name, or 
 nature, of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; then it became 
 plainly manifest what Christianity was from the beginning, 
 and in what manner Jesus Christ was the Saviour of Adam, 
 and what it was that he received by receiving a Bruiser of 
 the Serpent into the first essences of his life. 
 
 Therefore when Jesus Christ came into the world, declaring 
 the necessity of a new birth to be owned, and sought, by 
 a baptism into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 this was not a new kind or power of salvation that had 
 been till then only typified and veiled under certain figures and 
 shadows, as He Himself had been. And men were called, 
 not to a new faith in Him as then first become their inward 
 Life and Light, but to a more open and plain acknowledge- 
 ment of Him who from the beginning had been the one 
 Life and Light and only Salvation of the first man and all 
 that were to descend from him. 
 
 And here it is that we see again how "God is Love," 
 universal Love towards all mankind, having put all into a 
 state of redemption. For if all men, as sons of Adam, are 
 by the free grace of God made sons of the second Adam, 
 and as such have a Seed of Life in them from Him, in order 
 to be raised up to a perfection of the new Man in Christ 
 Jesus ; and if this Seed of a new birth, or Light of Life, is 
 the general and preventing grace of all men, that enables 
 
CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 153 
 
 them to act as to obtain God's assisting grace in the renewal 
 
 of their hearts and minds ; then it is a glorious and 
 undeniable truth that there is no partiality in God. 
 
 This Seed of the new birth, that is God's free and 
 fore-ordained gift to man as the power that is to redeem 
 him, is the reason and foundation of that language in 
 Scripture of a new, inward, and spiritual man, and of the 
 enmity between the one and the other ; in which enmity the 
 whole warfare and trial of the Christian life consists. 
 
 This inward man is alone the subject of religion and divine 
 grace; he only is of God and heareth God's Word; he only 
 hath eyes to see, and ears to hear, and a heart to conceive 
 the things of God. 
 
 This is he alone that is born of God and cannot sin, 
 because he has no sin in his nature. This is he alone that 
 overcometh the world, because he is of a divine nature and 
 is both contrary to the world and above it. This is he alone 
 that can love his brother as himself, because the Love of 
 God is alone alive and abideth in him. 
 
 The old natural man, or the rational man of this world, 
 is the dark, fallen nature enlightened only and solely with 
 the light of this outward world ; it is the diabolical nature, 
 only softened with flesh and blood, quieted and comforted 
 with the light of the sun. By this light he can only see the 
 outward images of things, whether divine or human, and 
 can only reason, dispute, and wrangle about his own 
 shadowy images ; but can know no more of God and the 
 things of God, than such dead images can represent unto him. 
 
 The old or natural man may be an historian, a poet, an 
 orator, a critic, a politician, or worldly wise man, etc. ; all 
 this skill and art lies within his reach ; the fire of his soul, 
 kindled only by the light of the sun, may do all this. But 
 notwithstanding all these trappings and endowments he is 
 wholly shut up in his own dark prison of selfishness, envy, 
 pride, and wrath ; his virtues, piety, and goodness can only 
 be such as give no disturbance to these four elements of the 
 fallen nature. 
 
154 
 
 CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 
 
 He is an animal, full of earthly, sensual passions and 
 tempers, and can only favour such things as can gratify 
 their nature. 
 
 Here, and here only, lies the true, solid, and immutable 
 distinction between the old and the new man, and the plain 
 reason why the life of the one is the death of the other. 
 
 Now, in this essential difference between the old and the 
 new man we may at one view see a clear and solid ground 
 of distinction between what is called a bare historical and 
 superficial faith, which cannot save the soul but leaves it 
 a slave to sin ; and that living and real faith, which effecteth 
 our salvation and sets us in the glorious liberty of the Sons 
 of God. 
 
 Human reason, or the natural man of this life, can believe 
 and assent to this truth that Christ is our Saviour, and that 
 we are to be saved by a righteousness from Him, as easily 
 as it can assent to any other relation or matter of fact. But 
 whilst it is human reason only that assents to this truth, 
 little or nothing is done to the soul by it ; the soul is under 
 much the same power of sin as before, because only the 
 notion, or image, or history of the truth is taken in by it ; 
 and reason of itself can take in no more. 
 
 But when the Seed of the new birth, called the inward 
 man, has faith awakened in it, its faith is not a notion, but 
 a real, strong, essential hunger, an attracting, or magnetic 
 desire of Christ, which, as it proceeds from a seed of the 
 divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like, 
 it lays hold on Christ, puts on the divine nature, and in a 
 living and real manner grows powerful over all sins, and 
 effectually works out our salvation. 
 
 And therefore it is justly called a divine faith, not only 
 because of its divine effects, but chiefly because it arises 
 from that which is divine within us, and by its attracting 
 hunger and thirst after that Fountain of Life from whence it 
 came, becomes essentially united with it, breathes by that 
 Spirit, and lives by that Word, which eternally proceeds out 
 of the mouth of God. Of this faith alone it is that our Lord 
 speaks, when Me says, " Whoso eatcth My Flesh and 
 drinketh My Blood, hath eternal Life." 
 
CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 155 
 
 When religion is in the hands of the mere natural man 
 he is always the worse for it ; it adds a bad heat to his own 
 dark fire, and helps to inflame his four elements of selfish- 
 ness, envy, pride, and wrath. And hence it is that worse 
 passions, or a worse degree of them, are to be found in 
 persons of great religious zeal than in others that make no 
 pretences to it. History also furnishes us with instances of 
 persons of great piety and devotion, who have fallen 
 into great delusions and deceived both themselves and 
 others. The occasion of their fall was this ; it was because 
 they 7nade a saint of the natural man. My meaning is, they 
 considered their whole nature as the subject of religion and 
 divine graces ; and therefore their religion was according to 
 the workings of their whole nature, and the old man was as 
 busy, and as much delighted in it, as the new. And hence it 
 was that persons of this stamp, all inflamed, as they seemed 
 to be, with piety, yet overlooked in their own lives such 
 errors of moral behaviour as the first beginners in religion 
 dare not allow themselves in. 
 
 Others, again, perhaps truly awakened by the Spirit of 
 God to devote themselves wholly to piety and the service of 
 God, yet making too much haste to have the glory of Saints, 
 the elements of fallen nature, selfishness, envy, pride, and 
 wrath, could secretly go along with them. For to seek 
 for eminence and significancy in grace is but like seeking 
 for eminence and significancy in nature. And the old man 
 can relish glory and distinction in religion as well as in 
 common life, and will be content to undergo as many labours, 
 pains, and self-denials, for the sake of religion as for the 
 sake of secular glory. There is nothing safe in religion but 
 such a course of behaviour as leaves nothing for corrupt 
 nature to feed or live upon ; which can only then be done, 
 when every degree of perfection we aim at is a degree of 
 death to the passions of the natural man. 
 
 The only useful question in this matter is this : How a 
 man may know that he is in the way of regeneration, that 
 he is spiritually alive, and growing in the inward and new 
 man? 
 
156 CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 
 
 It may be answered, Just as the state, nature, and life of 
 the natural man makes itself to be known and felt. The 
 soul of man, or that which is the subject both of the old 
 and new nature, is not two, but one soul. The fire of the 
 soul, or that spiritual fire which is the soul itself, is kindled 
 or enlightened by the light of the sun ; this makes the natural 
 man, and from whence the imagination, will, desires, 
 thoughts, and inclinations of the natural life arise. 
 
 The same individual fire-soul, enlightened by the son of 
 God, makes the true new man, from which soul, thus 
 enlightened, the imagination, will, desires, thoughts, and 
 inclinations of the new man arise. So that the same proofs 
 are to be expected in both cases ; the spiritual man is to 
 know that he is alive in the same manner as the natural man 
 knows and feels his life. In these things, in the imagination, 
 will, desires, thoughts, and inclinations, consists the life of 
 each nature ; and what are more than these are to be con- 
 sidered as the outward fruits and effects of each nature. 
 
 Now though the natural life in all men is one and the same, 
 yet there are under it variety of complexions, which makes 
 men of the same nature almost infinitely different from one 
 another. Now the matter is just thus with the spiritual man, 
 or in the inward world. As many different complexions 
 arise in the soul enlightened by the Son of God as in the 
 soul enlightened by the outward light of this world. 
 
 For the outward world is but a glass, or representation, of 
 the inward ; and every thing and variety of things in temporal 
 nature must have its root or hidden cause in something that 
 is more inward. 
 
 It is therefore a well-grounded and undeniabk' trutli that 
 the new spiritual man hath his particular complexion, as sure 
 as the outward and natural man hath. Hence it is that 
 there has been so great a difference in the form and 
 character of the most eminent and faithful servants of God ; 
 one could think of nothing but penitence and penitential 
 austerities ; another, all inflamed with the love of God, could 
 think or speak of nothing else ; some have been driven into 
 a holy solitude, living as John the Baptist; others have been 
 wholly taken up in works of charity, loving their neighbour 
 even more than themselves. A great variety of this kind 
 
CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 157 
 
 has been always found among those who were most truly 
 devoted to God, whose variety is not only not hurtful in 
 itself, nor displeasing to God, but is as much according to 
 His will, and the designs of His wisdom, as the difference 
 between Cherubim and Seraphim, or the variety of the stars 
 in the firmament. 
 
 Every complexion of the inward man when sanctified by 
 humility, and suffering itself to be tuned, and struck, and 
 moved, by the Holy Spirit of God, according to its particular 
 frame and turn, helps mightily to increase that harmony of 
 divine praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, which must arise 
 from different instruments, sounds, and voices. To condemn 
 this variety in the servants of God, or to be angry at those 
 who have not served Him in the way that we have chosen 
 for ourselves, is but too plain a sign that we have not enough 
 renounced the elements of selfishness, pride, and anger. 
 
 How strangely must they have read the Gospel who can 
 take a naked implicit faith, and an humble total resignation 
 of our spirit, state, and life into the mercy and goodness 
 of God, to be not only a poor and imperfect but a reprobate 
 state ; or say that a man has no true and saving faith till it 
 is an infallible oiim-jeeling and self-assurance ! What must 
 such people think of our Saviour dying upon the Cross with 
 these words in His mouth : " My God, My God, why hast 
 thou forsaken Me " ? Will they say that this is a dangerous 
 state? Is the spirit of Christ here to be renounced? Will 
 they say that no new-born Christian can die in this manner? 
 Or that if he does he is not in a state of salvation? 
 
 To know no more, and to seek to know no more of our 
 salvation than we can know by an implicit faith, and absolute 
 resignation of ourselves to God in Christ Jesus, is the true 
 saving knowledge of Christ, and such as keeps us in the 
 highest degree of fitness to receive our perfect salvation. 
 
 I hope it will here be observed that I in no way depreciate, 
 un'lervalue, or reject, any particular impressions, strong 
 influences, delightful sensations, or heavenly foretastes in 
 the inward man, which the Holy Spirit of God may at times 
 bestow upon good souls ; I leave them at their just worth 
 
158 CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 
 
 I acknowledo^e them to be the good gifts of God, as special 
 calls and awakenings to forsake our sins, as great incitements 
 to clear ourselves and take up our Cross and follow Christ, 
 with greater courage and resolution. 
 
 They may be as beneficial and useful to us in our spiritual 
 life as other blessings of God, such as prosperity, health, 
 happy complexion, and the like. But then, as outward 
 blessings, remarkable providences, religious complexions, 
 and the like, may be very serviceable to a\\al<en us and 
 excite our conversion to God, and much assist the spiritual 
 life ; so they may very easily have a contrary effect, serve to 
 fill us with pride and self-satisfaction, and make us esteem 
 ourselves as greater favourites of God than those that want 
 them; who may yet be led to a higher degree of goodness, 
 be in a more purified state, and stand nearer to God in their 
 poor, naked, and destitute condition, than we in the midst of 
 great blessings. 
 
 It is just thus with regard to those inward blessings of the 
 spiritual life. They are so many spurs, motives, and incite- 
 ments to live wholly unto God ; yet they may instead of that 
 fill us with self-satisfaction and self-esteem, and prompt us 
 to despise others that want them, as in a poor, mean, 
 and reprobate state; who yet may be higher advanced, and 
 stand in a nearer degree of union with God, by humility, 
 faith, resignation, and pure love, in their inward poverty and 
 emptiness, than we who live high upon spiritual satisfactions, 
 and can talk of nothing but our feasts of fat things. 
 
 All that I would here say of these inward delights and 
 enjoyments is only this. They are not holiness, they are not 
 piety, they are not perfection; but they are God's gracious 
 allurements and calls to seek nftcr holiness ;ind spiritual 
 perfection. They are not to be sought for, for their own 
 sakes ; they are not to be prayed for, but with such a perfect 
 indifference and resignation as we must pray for any earthly 
 blessings; they are not to be rested in as the perfection of 
 our souls, but to be received as cordials that suppose us to 
 be sick, faint, and languishing ; and ought rather to convince 
 us that we are as yet but babes, than that we are really 
 men of God. 
 
CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 159 
 
 There are indeed impressions and communications from 
 God, which arc more necessary and essential to the pious 
 life of the soul than the impressions of the sun are to the 
 comfortable life of our outward man. And he who prays 
 for nothing else but these divine communications and 
 impressions, who thinks of nothing else, trusts in nothing 
 else, as able to comfort, strengthen, and enrich his soul; he 
 that is thus all prayer, all love, all desire, and all faith, in 
 these communications and impressions from above, is just in 
 the same state of sobriety that only prays that God would 
 not leave him to himself. For he that is without anything of 
 these communications and impressions of God upon him is 
 in the same state of death and separation from God as the 
 devils are. 
 
 These impressions or operations of God upon our souls are 
 of the essence of religion, which has no goodness in it but 
 so far as it introduces the life, power, and presence of God 
 into the soul. The praying, therefore, for impressions of 
 this kind from God is only praying that we may not be left to 
 ourselves. To pray alwa}s for these with faith, and hunger, 
 and thirst after them, is only praying earnestly that the 
 Kingdom of God may come and His Will be done in us. 
 
 For the soul is only so far cleansed from its corruptions, 
 so far delivered from the power of sin, and so far purified, 
 as it has renounced all own will and own desire, to have 
 nothing, receive nothing, and be nothing, but what the one 
 Will of God chooses for it, and does to it. 
 
 This, and this alone, is the true Kingdom of God opened 
 in the soul when, stripped of all selfishness, it has only one 
 love and one will in it, when it has no motion or desire but 
 what branches from the Love of God, and resigns itself 
 wholly to the Will of God. 
 
 There is nothing evil, or the cause of evil, to either man or 
 devil, but his own will ; there is nothing good in itself but 
 the Will of God : fee therefore who wholly renounces his own 
 will turns away from all evil ; and he who gives himself up 
 wholly to the Will of God puts himself in possession of all 
 that is good. 
 
 To sum up all in a word : Nothing hath separated us from 
 God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation 
 
i6o CHRISTIAN REGENERATION 
 
 from God. All the disorder and corruption and malady of our 
 nature lies in a certain fixedness of our own will, imagina- 
 tion, and desire, wherein we live to ourselves, are our own 
 centre and circumference, act wholly from ourselves, 
 according to our own will, imagination, and desires. There 
 is not the smallest degree of evil in us but what arises 
 from this selfishness, because we are thus all in all to 
 ourselves. 
 
 It is this Self that our Saviour calls upon us to deny ; it 
 is this Life of Self that we are to hate and lose, that the 
 Kingdom of God may arise in us; that is, that God's Will 
 may be done in us. All other sacrifices that we make, 
 whether of worldly goods, honours, or pleasures, are 
 but small matters compared to that sacrifice and destruc- 
 tion of all selfishness, as well spiritual as natural, that must 
 be made before our regeneration hath its perfect work. 
 
 There is a denial of our own will, and certain degrees even 
 of self-denying virtues, which yet give no disturbance to 
 this selfishness. To be humble, mortified, devout, patient, 
 in a certain degree, and to be persecuted for our virtues, is 
 no hurt to this selfishness ; nay, spiritual-self must have all 
 these virtues to subsist upon, and his life consists in seeing, 
 knowing, and feeling, the bulk, strength, and reality of 
 them. But still, in all this show and glitter of virtue, there 
 is an unpurified bottom on which they stand, there is a 
 selfishness, which can no more enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, than the grossness of flesh and blood can enter 
 into it. 
 
 What we are to feel and undergo in these last purifica- 
 tions, when the deepest root of all selfishness, as well spiritual 
 as natural, is to be plucked up and torn from us, or how we 
 shall be able to stand in that trial, are both of them equally 
 impossible to be known by us beforehand. 
 
 It is enough for us to know that we hunger and thirst 
 after the righteousness that is in Christ Jesus, that by faith 
 we desire and hope to be in Him new creatures, to know that 
 the greatest humility, the most absolute resignation of our 
 whole selves unto God, is our greatest and highest fitness 
 to receive our greatest and highest purification from the 
 Hands of God. 
 
XII. 
 
 A SHORT CONFUTATION. 
 
 The promise and the fulfilling are but one thing, one 
 operation, one gift of God, the one only redemption, 
 reconciliation, satisfaction, and atonement, that ever did, 
 or ever can, help fallen man to peace, blessing, and union 
 again with God. 
 
 It is therefore a great truth that all that is said in the 
 Gospel of the power of Christ and the availing efficacy of 
 His whole process, from His divine birth to His ascension 
 into heaven, is in truth and reality so much said of the Why, 
 and the How, the Seed of the woman has worked from the 
 beginning, and been the one power of salvation through 
 every age of the world. 
 
 For though the visibility and outward manifestation of 
 Christ's Process was and only could be first and fully known 
 at His ascension into heaven, yet its inward spiritual power 
 in all its parts began with the first covenant of life made with 
 Adam and Eve. And though all was then as a hidden life, 
 under the name of a Seed of the woman, yet it had its divine 
 power and working within, and brought men to God by that 
 Spirit of Christ, which manifested itself through all His 
 Process. 
 
 Not the smallest spark of goodness ever sprung up in 
 fallen man, no kind of faith, hope, or trust in God, no 
 patience in adversity, no self-denial, no love of God, or desire 
 of doing His will; no truth of humility, meekness, and com- 
 passion ever did, or could, work in the heart or spirit of 
 any Son of Adam, but solely for this reason, because all 
 these tempers were the Spirit of Christ's Process, which 
 Spirit was inspoken, or ingrafted, into fallen man, as soon 
 
i62 A SHORT CONFUTATION 
 
 as God looked with pity, compassion, love, and relief towards 
 Adam and Eve. 
 
 For this looking of God with compassion, love and relief 
 at man was in truth the very beginning of the Incarnation 
 of the Son of God ; for it was not something without or 
 separate from man (because God is not without or separate), 
 but it was divine compassion, love, and relief inwardly 
 working in the inmost ground of the life of man ; which 
 blessed power of the redeeming love of God in the soul was 
 first called the Seed of woman. 
 
 Now that which Christ did, suffered, and obtained in and 
 through His Process in our flesh, calling all to turn to God, 
 to deny themselves, to be of His Spirit, to enter into the 
 strictest union with Him, giving heavenly birth and life and 
 all divine graces to men, and yet only and solely according 
 to their faith in Him ; that very same the Seed of one woman 
 did, and from the beginning was always doing, in the same 
 way of life and blessing and heavenly graces, yet only and 
 solely according to their faith in it. 
 
 Faith in God is nothing else but a full adhering to God ; 
 and therefore it is one with God and God with it ; and all 
 that is holy, divine, and good may well be found in it. 
 
 It matters not in what age or under what dispensation of 
 God we live, the necessity, the nature, and power of faith 
 is always the same; that simple, illiterate, unreasoning faith 
 that helped Abraham to righteousness, life, and union with 
 God is the one faith that alone can be justification, life, and 
 salvation to Christians ; or, which is the same thing, can 
 alone be Christ in us, the hope of glory. For faith is nothing 
 else but so much of the Nature and Spirit of Christ, born 
 and living in us. 
 
 For the Spirit of Christ, or which is the same thing, the 
 spirit and power of His Process, did not begin to be 
 
A SHORT CONFUTATION 163 
 
 but only came into outward manifestation in the Gospel age ; 
 
 it was, and had been invisibly, the one only possible source 
 of goodness in man, as well before, as after. His Incarnation. 
 
 Nor was there ever any man in the world, either before or 
 after Christ's manifestation in the flesh, that ever had the 
 least faith, hope, or desire of God, or any possible access or 
 communion with Him, but so far as the Spirit of Christ's 
 Process was begotten, living, and working in him. 
 
 And thus it is that the availing efficacy of Christ's media- 
 tion, reconciliation, etc., reached backward to the first man 
 in the world, not by an arbitrary imputation of it, or because 
 God would account it as there, though it were not there ; but 
 the true reason is because the Spirit of Christ's Process, 
 which alone reconciles God to Man, began to work from 
 the beginning, and was as really and vitally operative in the 
 first man and his descendants, as it was in that human soul 
 and body which Christ took from the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Goodness cannot come into man, or belong to him, two 
 different ways, or from two different causes. 
 
 So plain is it that nothing but the one Spirit of Christ 
 living and working in man, from the beginning to the end 
 of the world, can possibly be the source or cause of any 
 goodness, holiness, or redemption of man. 
 
 To come at the knowledge of outward things a man must 
 look outwards, because nothing can be seen or found but 
 where it is ; and therefore for the same reason all that 
 concerns man's life, or has relation to or connection with his 
 life, can only be found and known by his finding out That, 
 which lives in him. 
 
 So far as God is living and operating in the creature, and 
 manifesting Himself in it, either by light and love, or reproof, 
 so far it truly knows and is taught of God. Any other 
 
i64 A SHORT CONFUTATION 
 
 knowledge of God, however learned, high, or deep it may 
 pretend to be, is as vain and spurious as that goodness which 
 proceeds from something else than God's good Spirit living 
 in us. 
 
 Now that this form of a divine life is in every man, and 
 that no man is without this witness of God in himself, is a 
 truth as evident as anything that can be affirmed of human 
 nature. For was not God in man as a principle of life, and 
 man in God as a birth of Him and in Him ; or, in Scripture 
 words, did he not live and move and have his being in God, 
 he could no more begin to form a thought of inquiry after 
 God, or have the least desire of knowing anything about 
 Him, than the worms in the earth can begin to hunger after 
 the power of syllogisms, and crawl about in quest of them. 
 
 But as all instincts, appetites, and inclinations are, and 
 can be nothing else but, the various workings of that kind of 
 life which is in the animal, so the cares, fears, hopes, etc., 
 relating to God, and inseparable from man, are and can be 
 nothing else but the various workings of a life and power of 
 God essentially existing as a Birth in the soul of man. 
 
 And as it is a certain truth that no fruits, flowers, or 
 virtues can be or come forth in any vegetable but what 
 were first in its seed or root, so no divine glory, perfection, 
 or power can ever come forth in any creature in heaven, but 
 what arises from the Seed of the Deity sown into it at its 
 creation. Therefore, as sure as the heavenly soul will to all 
 eternity increase in new openings and enlargements of divine 
 union, enjoyment, and perfection in God, so sure is it that in 
 the centre, or inmost birth of the soul's life, lie the riches 
 of the divine nature as a Seed, or Root of Glory, given to it 
 by its first created image or likeness to God. 
 
 Everything that is endless and numberless in the depth of 
 eternity is endless and numberless in the essence of the 
 Soul : what seeing is, what hearing, feeling, etc., are in their 
 boundless variety and ever-increasing newness of delights 
 in eternity, these, with all their wonders, are the innate 
 birthright and sure inheritance of every immortal godly 
 
A SHORT CONFUTATION 165 
 
 Soul; the things " which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 nor hath the heart of man conceived," nor will conceive till 
 all that belongs to time is separated from it. 
 
 For every creature of this world, animate or inanimate, is 
 in its degree a microcosm of all the powers that are in the 
 great world of which it is a part. And every thing or crea- 
 ture is that which it is because the powers of this world, or 
 properties of nature, are, in such or such a combination, 
 included or treasured up in its essence, and give it its differ- 
 ence from other things. 
 
 In eternity, or before the creation, the Spirit of Life is 
 unfathomable, incomprehensible ; but the Spirit of Life 
 coming by the divine Fiat to be creaturely is life generating 
 a body ; for body, form, and creature, are synonymous 
 terms ; for nothing can be creaturely but because it is bodily, 
 and under some form. 
 
 The Spirit of Life cannot come into any creature from 
 without ; nothing can be its life but that which arises as a 
 birth within itself. And as life, so every quality, state, or 
 condition of every creature, whether good or bad, is from a 
 birth or magical power working in it, for birth and magical 
 power is the same thing. Every vegetable and animal of 
 this world demonstrates the truth and certainty of this 
 magical power ; they are all, both as to their existence, 
 qualities, and conditions, whether good or bad, so many full 
 proofs of it ; they are what they are, and have what they 
 have, as so many births and growths of a magical power. 
 
 The Will-Spirit in God is the beginner or first cause of all 
 that is in nature and creature ; it is that mysterious and 
 abyssal power of the Deity which generateth and bringeth 
 forth nature with all its properties, is always in them and 
 with them as the cause of all that they are and work. 
 
 The Will-Spirit in the creature, called in things inanimate, 
 attraction, and in animals, instinct, coming from the Will- 
 
i66 A SHORT CONFUTATION 
 
 Spirit of the Creator a^ a ray from it, is that which keeps up 
 the whole system of stars and elements, with all its creatures, 
 vegetable and animal, in their full conformity to the first 
 working Will of God in their creation, which is never 
 separate from them. 
 
 The Will-Spirit in the intelligent Free Creature is of a 
 much higher nature; it has the never-beginning eternity in it, 
 and is a genuine offspring of the Will-Spirit of God, and 
 therefore, in its degree, partakes of the power of God over 
 nature. And were it not so, that is, had it not something in 
 it higher than nature, it would be as right and fitting in 
 every man to follow his natural lusts and appetites as it is in 
 beasts ; neither could it be any part of man's glory and perfec- 
 tion to imitate the divine goodness, or strive to be perfect 
 as his Father in Heaven is perfect. 
 
 The Will-Spirit, therefore, is justly called the great 
 magical power of the Soul, because, though working 
 secretly, and without any materials, yet it never is, nor can 
 be, without its real and vital effects. It always generates, 
 and a birth must be brought forth, either from above or 
 below. For our nature standeth in the growth for a life out 
 of time into eternity. 
 
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 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 
 
 NOV 1 198 J 
 
 
 
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 JUL 2 2 198( 
 
 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
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 GENERAL LIBRARY -U.C. BERKELEY 
 
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