Page images
PDF
EPUB

to heaven with him; only faith, hope, and love; we may therefore ask him what becomes of these? But my answer to the above question is this, I believe the Holy Spirit to be the implanter of every grace; and that he is the life of every grace; the quickener, animater, and reviver of all his own implantation; that all the life, actings, or exercises, of every grace are wholly owing to his sovereign influences and operations, for he is called the Spirit of grace: hence Peter styles the whole divine crop, the grace of life, 1 Peter iii. 7. And I believe that there is life in faith, for faith that cannot work, James says, is dead. And we read of a lively hope, and of passing from death to life, by loving the brotherhood; so that life is the choicest principle in every grace; and Christ tells you that grace, and the gracious influences of his Spirit, shall be in us a well of living water, springing up into everlasting life, John iv. 14. And Paul says, "Grace [all grace] shall reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus. Christ our Lord," Rom. v. 21. There, reader, our Lord and Master, and there Paul, his own sent servant, have left it; content thyself, therefore, with this conclusion, and be not wise above what is written. Remember the saying of the man after God's own heart," Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me," Psalm cxxxi. 1. Wandering stars are sad guides; Satan leads them by the nose,

till they are lost and bewildered in the labyrinths of error, darkness, and confusion, therefore, "Meddle thou not with them that are given to change, for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the ruin of them both?" Prov. xxiv. 21, 22.

I come now to consider and dissect some more daring, bold, presumptuous and perilous flights of this airy prophet, in which he pretends to delineate the internal endowments, even of angels, and of Moses and Elias who appeared in glory on the mount. I do not set these things before the reader for an example, but as a warning and a caution, and to be shunned, even as he would shun the devil himself. Contemplating the heavenly bodies in the east, as they lay in bed on their house-tops, led many of old to worship the hosts of heaven. And legions since, of the antichristian race, have by their presumptuous arrogance pretended to such knowledge and acquaintance with angels, that God has given them. up to such blindness as to employ them as mediators, and even to worship them. Paul describes such bold adventurers much better than I can. "Let

no man beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary humility, and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind; and not holding the head," Col. ii. 18. He calls such men, beguilers of others; as they are only volunteers in religion; never chosen, called, invited, nor ac

cepted; but are bold intruders, and blind, pretending to what they never saw; their vain mind being fleshly, Satan blows into it, and puffs it up with pride, errors, and confusion, just as we blow a bladder: and, as the Covenant Head never laid hold of them, so these never hold the Head, but float in the elementary heavens, just as the prince of the power of the air is pleased to blow into them.

I shall therefore dissect some other parts of this epistle. Not that I believe Onesimus's letters were ever written and sent to any creatures living; nor do I believe that the manuscripts are, or ever were, in the hands of any person under heaven, except the author and the printer. My opinion. is, that Onesimus has met with some honest servant of Christ; and that he has been wounded, beaten, and driven out of every refuge of lies, where he had taken shelter: this mountain being threshed, and this hill being made as chaff, the wind has taken him away, and the whirlwind has scattered him. To be avenged of his enemy, he has dressed up this man of straw, and then attacked him from the press. And it appears to me that the desperate wound he has received was given by a man in orders, a reverend divine, and that by the word preached by some person who does not skim the scriptures, as many who merely give an exhortation; but who takes a certain portion of holy writ, and endeavours to give the sense: and it certainly was done in a public man

ner from a pulpit; this I gather from his sharp invectives against all such. Hence this strawman is represented as being revered, or receiving reverence from his followers, for which he is most severely reprimanded. Again, he is represented as preaching; and for this he is severely handled. Then again he is supposed to be in a pulpit, and giving out a text of scripture; for which things Onesimus comes again with a rod, for these things Onesimus will not spare. Hence I conclude, that a desperate wound has been inflicted on Onesimus in this way, which, still rankling within, has driven him to reprobate all the above things, which in my dissection of his works I shall replace and establish by the scriptures of truth. I now come to make a few more remarks on this letter. Onesimus gives us a wonderful, short, and concise description of faith and hope.

[ocr errors]

'Faith,' he says, 'signifies reliance, and hope expectation.' To which I answer, If faith is no more than this, it is easily removed from one prop to another. This the scriptures witness. "And at that time Hanani, the seer, came to Asa, King of Judah, and said unto him, Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and not relied on the Lord thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out of thine hand. Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host with very many chariots and horsemen? yet, because thou didst rely on the Lord, he delivered them into thine hand," 2 Chron. xvi. 7, 8. This is the faith

of Onesimus, and, like his, it is given to change. First, it relied on the Lord, then on the king of Syria; and Asa seemed as angry at the prophet for shewing the vanity of it, and the falseness and deception of his heart, as Onesimus is at the text, the preaching, and the reverend divine who discovered his hypocrisy: for it follows, "Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in a prison house; for he was in a rage with him because of this thing. And Asa oppressed some of the people the same time. And Asa was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians," 2 Chron. xvi. 10-12. The last object of this reliance was the college of physicians; but living faith in the heart is the substance of things hoped for, and is found not in Asa, nor in Onesimus, but in the spiritual family of God. But we proceed.

Onesimus asks, Does not Christ reign now in hope of his Father putting all things under his feet, which thing is not yet accomplished?'

To which I answer, The Bible knows nothing of this, nor ever once mentions it, although this presumptuous son of ignorance has been bold enough to assert it. We read of a joy that was set before him, for which he endured the cross, despising the shame, Heb. xii. 2. And the scriptures once mention his exercising hope; but this was at his death, never beyond it. "Therefore

« PreviousContinue »