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