by William Law

A Dialogue in Three Parts

Between Thomas, Steven, and Gordon

Bro. Law had an insight, rare in his day, and rarer still today.

 

If you wish to abide in Christ, to live a life that is pleasing to God. If your conscience won't allow you to say with the Apostle Paul, "Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day." And again when Paul said "I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men." Then this is a book that will bless you, it will show you Paul's secret, the secret of maintaining a pure conscience.

 

Last Published 10-10-03

Current Edition This Date by 8/19/04

Old Truth Publishing Company

38 Borck Lane
Lebanon, Tn 37090

Printed in the 'United States Of America'

 

The First Part of the First Dialogue

Introduction

 

This book will in due time show you very clearly and in a concise way, how to find real peace with God; it will explain exactly what the phrase “Born again” means. If you want to be set free from the bondage of sin, this book will become a light for you to illuminate the path to pleasing God, with true joy in your heart.

Today, we have a great darkness masquerading in the form of a “Spiritual church.” What causes this darkness that must be illuminated in order for us to find real peace with God? The darkness is caused by all of the modern popular preachers, that dominate television and radio. By and large they preach false doctrines that sound very pleasing to the carnal mind, nevertheless, if you believe the things they preach you will be sliding down the path to hell, any doctrine or preaching that leaves you in your sin and rebellion to God, but at the same time gives you a false hope of Heaven, is a doctrine of demons. This is a strong allegation to make, I know, but I believe it to be absolutely true! 2 Timothy 4: 3-4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

Because of the magnitude of the subject, because of all the warnings from God’s word, and because of the many years of planting and sowing false doctrines that the devil has already accomplished, please give this book a very careful reading, don’t skim over it, don’t put it down until you have been fair in having read it at least once through, very carefully. If you don’t, a time might come, when it is too late to rectify the problem, and you will spend the rest of forever wishing you had read the Bible, and this book, very carefully.

We have altered this edition of “The Spirit Of Love” for the purpose of making it clearer to the reader, the older seventeenth and eighteenth century style of grammar is very difficult for today’s average reader to comprehend. This book is too important not to be read with total comprehension.   The publisher.

 

Chapter 1

What Is The Spirit Of Love?

 

This book is in the form of a “Dialogue” Between Thomas, Steven, and Gordon-

This Dialogue form of writing was very popular sometime back.

Gordon- My Dear Friend, You do not need to make any apology for the letter you sent to me, for you know that I dislike wasting time and thoughts in matters of theological debate as well as in any disagreements of a worldly nature, knowing that theological debates are generally as much, if not more, hurtful to the heart of man than debates about worldly matters are; yet, as the subject you wish to discuss rather tends to stir up the powers of love more than wrangling with words, I believe the subject is capable of bringing about an occasion for the edifying of both you and myself with the truth, and Divine blessedness of the spirit of love.

You say there is nothing in all my writings that has more affected you than the spirit of love that breathes in them, and that you wish for nothing more than to have a living sensibility of the power, life, and religion of love. But you have two objections often rising in your mind: First, that the doctrine of pure and universal love may be too refined and imaginary, because you find that no matter how much you agree with it, yet you cannot attain to it, or overcome all that is in your nature which is contrary to it, no matter what you do; and so you are left to be only an admirer of that doctrine of love which you cannot lay hold of.

Secondly, because you find written in the scriptures a righteousness and justice, a wrath and vengeance of God that must be atoned and satisfied, etc., that though you are in love with that description of the God which I have given, as a being that is all love, yet you have some doubt whether the scripture teaches that this experience is attainable in this life.

And so your objections stand, but your objections will fall into nothingness as soon as you look at them from a right point of view, and this you will do, as soon as you have found the true foundation of the nature, power, and necessity of this blessed spirit of love. Now the spirit of love began with this, God, as considered in Himself in His holy being, before anything is brought forth by Him or out of Him, is, and has always been, an eternal will to all goodness. This is the one eternal, unchangeable God, that from eternity to eternity can’t change, can be neither more nor less nor anything else but an eternal will to all the goodness that is in Himself. The creation of ever so many worlds or systems of creatures adds nothing to, nor takes anything away from this immutable[1] God. He always was and always will be the same unchangeable will to all goodness. So that as certainly as He is the Creator, so certainly is He the one that blesses every created thing, and can give nothing but blessing, goodness, and happiness from Himself because He has in Himself nothing else to give.

It is much more possible for the sun to give forth darkness than for God to give forth anything but blessing and goodness. Now this is the foundation or starting point of the spirit of love in the creature; it is and must be a will to all goodness, and you do not have the spirit of love until you have this will to all goodness, at all times and on all occasions. You may indeed do many works of love and delight, especially at such times, as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your current state or mood. But the spirit of love is not in you until it is the spirit of your life, until you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every spirit acts with freedom and uniqueness according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own life, or be what it is, no more than you need tell wrath to be wrathful. And therefore when love is the spirit of your life, it will always live and work in love, not because of this or that circumstance, but because the spirit of love can only love, wherever it is or goes. As the sparks know no motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the darkness of night or in the light of day, so the spirit of love is always in the same course; it knows no difference of time, place, or persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful work. For the spirit of love, wherever it is, is its own blessing and happiness because it is the truth and reality of God in the soul, and therefore is the same joy of life and the same good to itself, on every occasion. Would you like to know the blessing of all blessings? It is this, the God of love dwelling in your soul and killing every root of bitterness which is the pain and torment of every earthly, selfish love. For all needs are satisfied, all disorders of nature are removed, no life is any longer a burden, everyday is a day of peace, everything you meet becomes a help to you because everything you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle element of love. For as love has no selfish will, and wills nothing but its own increase, so everything is as oil to its flame. It must have that which it wills and cannot be disappointed, because everything naturally helps it to live in its own way and to bring forth its own work. The spirit of love does not want to be rewarded, honored, or esteemed. Its only desire is to propagate itself and become the blessing and happiness of everything that desires it. And therefore it meets wrath, evil, hatred and opposition with the same will as the light meets the darkness, only to overcome it with all its blessings. If you want to avoid wrath and ill will or gain the favor of any persons, you might easily fail in your mission; but if you have no will but to all goodness, everything you meet, be it what it will, must be forced to be an assistant to you. For the wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, and every other evil only helps the spirit of love to be more triumphant, to live its own life and find all its own blessings in a higher degree. Whether therefore you consider perfection or happiness, it is all included in the spirit of love and must be so for this reason, because the infinitely perfect and happy God is always and only love, with an unchangeable will to do all goodness; and therefore every creature must be corrupt and unhappy, so far as it is led by any other will other than this one will to do all goodness, all of the time, the will of God. Therefore you see the ground, the nature, and perfection of the spirit of love. Let me now in a word or two show you the necessity of it. Now the necessity is absolute and unchangeable. No creature can be a child of God but only because the goodness of God is in it; nor can they have any union or communion with the goodness of the God until their life is a spirit of love.

“This will to all goodness”

This is the only band of union between God and the creature. All besides this, call it by what name you choose, is only so much error, fiction, impurity, and corruption that has gotten into the creature, and must of all necessity be entirely separated from it before it can have that purity and holiness which alone can see God or even find the Divine life. For as God is an unchallengeable will to all goodness, so the Divine will can unite or work with no creaturely will but that which wills with Him only that which is good. Here the necessity is absolute; nothing will do instead of this will; all contrivances of holiness, all forms of religious piety, signify nothing without this will to all goodness. For as the will to all goodness is the whole nature of God, so it must be the whole nature of every service or religion that can be acceptable to Him. For nothing serves God or worships and adores Him but that which wills and works with Him. For God can delight in nothing but His own will and His own Spirit, because all goodness is included in it and can be nowhere else. And therefore everything that follows it’s own will or it’s own spirit forsakes the one will to all goodness, and as a result it does not have capacity for the light and Spirit of God.

Everything therefore but the will and life of goodness is an apostasy in the creature

The necessity therefore of the spirit of love is the very thing that God Himself cannot dispense with in the creature, no more than He can deny Himself or act contrary to His own holy being. But as it was His will to all goodness that created angels and the spirits of men, so He can will nothing in their existence but that they should live and work and manifest that same spirit of love and goodness which brought them into being. Everything therefore but the will and life of goodness is an apostasy in the creature and is rebellion against the whole nature of God. There is no peace, nor ever can be for the soul of man but in the purity and perfection of its first created nature; nor can it have its purity and perfection in any other way than in and by the spirit of love. For as love is the God that created all things, so love is the purity, the perfection, and blessing of all created things; and nothing can live in God but as it lives in love. Look at every vice, pain, and disorder in human nature; it is in itself nothing else but the spirit of the creature turned from love to self-seeking or self-will in created things. So that love alone is, and can be the only cure of every evil, and the one that lives in the purity of love is risen out of the power of evil into the freedom of the one Spirit in heaven. The schools have given us very accurate definitions of every vice, whether it is covetousness, pride, wrath, envy, etc., and has shown us how to understand them, and even how to distinguish them from one another. But the Christian has a much shorter way of knowing their nature and power and what they are and do in and to himself. For call them by what names you will, or distinguish them with ever so much exactness, they are all, just that same thing, and all do the same work, just as the scribes, the Pharisees, hypocrites, and rabble of the Jews who crucified Christ were all the same thing and all did the same work, however different they were in their 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 Emmanuel, who is the Christ that every man crucifies as often as he gives way to wrath, pride, envy, immorality, or covetousness, etc. For every temper or passion that is contrary to the new birth of Christ and keeps the holy Emmanuel from coming to life in the soul is, in the strictest sense of the words, a murderer and killer of the Lord of life. And where pride and envy and hatred, etc., are allowed to live, there the same thing is done as when Christ was killed and Barabbas was saved alive. The Christ of God was not then first crucified when the Jews brought Him to the cross but Adam and Eve were His first real murderers; for the death which happened to them in the day that they did eat of the earthly tree was the death of the Christ of God or the Divine life in their souls. For Christ would have never come into the world as a second Adam to redeem it, had He not been originally the life and perfection and glory of the first Adam. And He is our atonement and reconciliation with God, because when He is brought to life in us, we are set again in that first state of holiness, and have Christ again in us as our first father had at his creation. For had not Christ been in our first father as a birth of life in him, Adam would have been created a mere child of wrath, in the same impurity of nature, in the same enmity with God, and in the same need of an atoning Savior as we are at this day. For God can have no delight or union with any creature but because His well-beloved Son, the express image of His person, is found in it. This is as true of all the un-fallen as of all fallen creatures; the latter must be redeemed (have Christ restored to them) and the other need no redemption, because the life of Christ dwells in them. For as the Word, or Son of God, is the Creator of all things, and by Him everything is made that was made, so everything that is good and holy in un-fallen angels is as much through His living and dwelling in them as everything that is good and holy in redeemed man is through Him. And He is just as much the preserver, the strength, and glory, and life of all the thrones and principalities of heaven as He is the righteousness, the peace, and redemption of fallen man. This Christ of God has many names in scripture, but they all mean this, that He is, and alone can be, the light 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 only origin of hell, and every kind of curse and misery in the creature.

“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.”

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 hell can have no beginning or power in any creature but so far as that person has lost (or died to) 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 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. In all the universe of nature nothing but heaven and heavenly creatures ever had, or could have known the spirit of love, those which came forth out of God. For God can will nothing in the life of the creature but a creaturely manifestation of His own goodness, happiness and perfection. And therefore, where this is not found, the fact is certain that the creature has changed and lost its first state that it had from God.

Everything therefore which is the vanity, wrath, torment and evil of man is solely the effect of his will turned away from God and can come from nothing else. Misery and wickedness can have no other foundation or root, for whatever wills and works with God must of all necessity partake of the happiness and perfection of God. This therefore is a certain truth, that hell and death, curse and misery, can never cease or be removed from the creation until the will of the creature is again as it originally was when it came from God, and is a spirit of love that wills nothing but goodness. All of fallen creation, no matter how long it stands, must groan and travail in pain; this must be its hellish state until every contrariety to the Divine will is entirely taken from it. Which is only saying that all the powers and properties of nature are a misery to themselves, and can only work in anxiety and wrath until the birth of the Son of God brings them under the dominion and power of the spirit of love. Therefore you have seen the original, unchallengeable necessity of the spirit of love. It is no imaginary refinement or speculative curiosity, but is of the highest reality and most absolute necessity. It stands in the perfection of God, and not only every intelligent creature, but every inanimate thing must work in vanity and unrest until it has its state in and works under the spirit of love.

For as love brought forth all things, and all things were what they were and had their place and state under the working power of love, so everything that has lost its first-created state must be in restless strife and anxiety until it finds it again. There is no sort of strife, wrath, or storm in outward nature, or corruption in any elementary things but that which is a full proof of this truth, i.e., that nature can have no rest but must be in the strife of agitation, unrest, and corruption, constantly doing and undoing, building and destroying, until the spirit of love has set right all outward nature and brought it back again into that glassy sea of unity and purity in which John beheld the throne of God in the midst of it. For this glassy sea, which the beloved apostle was blessed with the sight of, is the transparent, heavenly element in which all the properties and powers of nature move and work in the unity and purity of the one will of God, only known as so many endless forms of triumphing light and love.

Every son of fallen Adam is under the necessity of working and striving after something that he neither is, nor has, and for the same reason, because the life of man has lost its first unity and purity and therefore must be in a working strife until all contrariety and impurity is separated from it and it finds its first state in God. All men both evil and good, and all the wisdom and folly of this life, are proof of this. For the vanity of wicked men in their various ways, and the labors of good men in faith and hope, etc., proceed from the same cause, a want and desire of having and being something that they neither are nor have. The evil seek wrong and the good seek right, but they both are seekers, and for the same reason, which is because their present state does not have the thing it wants to have. And this must be the state of human life and of every creature that has fallen from its first state. It must do as the polluted fluid does; it must ferment and work, either right or wrong, to mend its state. The muddled wine always works right to the utmost of its power because it works according to nature, but if it had an intelligent free will it might work as vainly as man does. It might continually thicken itself, be always stirring up its own dregs, just as well as the soul of man seeks happiness in the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. All which must of the same necessity fall away from the heart of man before it can find its happiness in God, as the dregs must separate from the wine before it can have its perfection and clearness. Purification therefore is the one thing necessary, and nothing will do in its place. But man is not purified until every earthly, wrathful, sensual, selfish, self-willing temper is taken from him. He is not dying to himself until he is dying to these tempers, and he is not alive in God until he is dead to all of them. For he needs purification only because he has these tempers, and therefore he does not have the purification which he wants until they are all separated from him. It is the purity and perfection of the Divine nature that must be brought again into him, because it was in purity and perfection that he came forth from God, he was a child of God, that was to be blessed by a life in Him and from Him. For nothing impure or imperfect in its will and working can have any union with God. Nor are you to think that these words, the purity and perfection of God, are too high to be used in this context, for they only mean that the will of the creature, as an offspring of the Divine will, must will and work with the will of God, for then it stands and lives truly and really in the purity and perfection of God, and whatever does not do this is at enmity with God and cannot have any union of life and happiness with Him nor in Him.

Now nothing wills and works with God but the spirit of love, because nothing else works in God Himself. The almighty brought forth all nature only for this end, that boundless love might have its infinity of height and depth to dwell and work in, and all the striving and working properties of nature are only to give essence and substance, life and strength, to the invisible hidden spirit of love, that it may come forth into outward activity and manifest its blessed powers, that creatures born in the strength, and out of the powers of nature, might communicate the spirit of love and goodness, give and receive mutual delight and joy to and from each other. All below this state of love is a fall from the one life of God, and the only life in which the God of love can dwell. Self, partiality, mine, yours, etc., are attitudes that can only belong to creatures that have lost the power, presence, and spirit of the universal good. They can’t have a place in heaven, nor can they be anywhere because heaven is lost to them. Do not think, therefore, that the spirit of pure, universal love which is the one purity and perfection of heaven has been, or can be carried too high or its absolute necessity too much asserted. For it admits no degrees of higher or lower, and is not in being until it is absolutely pure, no more than a line can be straight until it is absolutely free from all crookedness.

All the design of Christian redemption is to remove everything that is un-heavenly, dark, wrathful, and disordered from every part of this fallen world. And when you see storms and tempests, and every kind of evil, misery, and wickedness, you see that which Christ came into the world to remove, not only to give a new birth to fallen man, but also to deliver all outward nature from its present vanity and evil and set it again in its first heavenly state. Now if you ask how all things came into this evil and vanity, it is because they have lost the blessed spirit of love which alone brings forth the happiness and perfection of every power of nature. Look at darkness, it could not have had any existence, but because the light of God is no longer dwelling in it. Nature is at first only spiritual. It has in itself nothing but the spiritual properties of the desire, which is the very being and foundation of nature. But when these spiritual properties are not filled and blessed, and all held in one will by the light and love of God ruling in them, then something is found in nature which never should have been found in it.

Therefore, when the desire (the first property of nature) in any intelligent creature leaves the unity and universality of the spirit of love and shuts itself up in it’s “own will,” “own love,” and “self-seeking,” then it does all that inwardly and spiritually in the soul, which it does in outward darkness. And had not “own will,” “own love,” and “self- seeking” come into the spirit of the creature, it never could have found or felt any outward contrariety or darkness. For no creature can have any other outward nature but that which is in the same state with its inward spirit, and belongs to it as its own natural growth.

Modern metaphysics has no knowledge of the ground and nature either of spirit or body, but supposes them not only without any natural relation, but essentially contrary to one another, and only held together in a forced conjunction by the arbitrary will of God. No, if you were to say that God first created a soul out of nothing, and when that is done, then takes an understanding faculty and puts it into it, after that adds a will and then a memory, all is independently made, as when a tailor first makes the body of a coat and then adds sleeves or pockets to it. If you were to say this, the schools of Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke could have nothing to say against it. For all these philosophers were so far from knowing the ground of nature, how it is a birth from God, and all creatures a birth from nature through the working will of God in and by the powers of nature, they were so far from knowing this, that they held to the notion that we are a creation out of “nothing,” and as a result, they were necessarily excluded from every fundamental truth concerning the origin either of body or spirit and their true relation to one another.

For a creation out of nothing does not explain why everything is as it is. Now every wise man is supposed to have respect to nature in everything that he would have joined together; he cannot suppose his work to succeed unless this is done. But to suppose God created man with a body and soul, not only not naturally related but naturally impossible to be united by any powers in either of them, is to suppose God acting and creating man into an unnatural state, which yet He could not do unless there was such a thing as nature antecedent[2] to the creation of man. And how can nature be, or have anything but what it is and has from God? Therefore to suppose God to bring any creature into an unnatural state is to suppose Him to act contrary to Himself and to that nature which is from Him. Yet just about all the instructions from Bible schools do this. It supposes God to bring a soul and a body together which have the utmost natural contrariety to each other and can only affect or act upon one another by the arbitrary will of God, willing that body and soul, held together by force, should seem to do that to one another which they have no natural or possible power to do. But the true way of this matter, known only to the soul, is that by a new birth from above, it has found its first state in and from God: namely, that nature is a birth or manifestation of the triune invisible God. And as it could only come into existence as a birth from God, so every creature can only come forth as a birth from and out of nature by the will of God, willing it to come forth in such a birth. And no creature can have, or be, anything but by and according to the working powers of nature; and therefore, strictly speaking, no creature can be, or be put into an unnatural state. It may indeed lose or fall from its natural perfection by the wrong use or working of its will; but then its fallen state is the natural effect of the wrong use of its will, and so it only has that which is natural to it. The truth of the matter is this: There neither is, nor can be, anything nor any effect in the whole universe of things but by way of birth. For as the working will is the first cause or beginner of everything, so nothing can proceed further than as it is driven by the will and is a birth of it. And therefore nothing can be in anything but what is natural to its own working will and the true effect of it. Everything that is outward in any being is only a birth of its own spirit, and therefore all body, whether it be heavenly, earthly or hellish, has its whole nature and condition from its own inward spirit, and no spirit can have a body of any other properties but such as are natural to it as being its own true outward state. For body and spirit are not two separate, independent things, but are necessary to each other, and are only the inward and outward conditions of the same thing. Every creaturely spirit must have its own body and cannot be without it, for its body is that which makes it manifest to itself.

Now a desire that cannot be stopped nor receive what it wants to have, has a threefold contrariety working in it, which you may conceive as follows: The first and peculiar property, or the one will of the desire, as such, is to receive that which it does not have; and all it can do toward having it is to act as if it were seizing it; and this is it which makes the desire to be a compressing, enclosing, or astringing, because that is all that it can do toward seizing the thing it desires. But the desire cannot receive that which it desires. And thus the desire, in its working, sets out with two contrary properties, inseparable from one another and equal in strength; for the action has no strength but as it is the drawing of the desire; and the desire only draws in the same degree as it can; and therefore the desire, always receives a resistance equal to itself. Now from this great and equally strong contrariety of the two first properties of the desire, or as may be said, two contrary ways, there arises as a necessary birth from both of them of a third property which is emphatically called a “whirling” anguish of life. For a thing that can go neither inward nor outward and yet must move under the equal power of both of them, must whirl or turn around; it has no possibility of doing anything else or of ceasing to do that. And that this whirling contrariety of these inseparable properties is the great anguish of life, and may properly be called the hell of nature; every lesser torment which any man finds in this mixed world has all its existence and power from the working of these three properties. For life can find no troublesome motions or sensibility of distress but so far as it comes under their power, and enters into their whirling wheels. Now here you may observe that as this whirling anguish of life is a third state necessarily arising from the contrariety of the two first properties of the desire, so in this material system every whirling or orbital motion of any body is solely the effect or product of the contrariety of these two first properties.

“Sir Isaac Newton plowed with Jacob Behmen's heifer when he brought forth the discovery of them”

For no material things can whirl or move around until it is under the power of these two properties; that is, until it can neither go in nor out and yet it is forced to move, just as the whirling anguish of the desire begins when it can neither go inwards nor outwards and yet must be in motion. And this may be again another strict demonstration to you that all the matter of this world is from spiritual properties, since all its workings and effects are according to them. For if matter does nothing but according to them, it can be nothing but what it is and has from them. Here also, in these three properties of the desire, you see the ground and reason of the three great laws of matter and motion lately discovered, and no more need be told than that the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton plowed with Jacob Behmen's heifer when he brought forth the discovery of them. In the mathematical system of this great scientific philosopher these three properties, attraction, equal resistance, and the orbital motion of the planets as the effect of them, etc., are only treated of as facts and appearances whose ground is not pretended to be known. But in our Jacob Behman, the illuminated instrument of God, their birth and power in eternity is opened; their eternal beginning is shown, and how and why all worlds and the life of every creature, whether it be heavenly, earthly, or hellish, must be in them and from them, and can have no nature either spiritual or material, no kind of happiness or misery but according to the working power and state of these properties. All outward nature, all inward life, is what it is and works as it works from this unceasing, powerful attraction, resistance, and whirling. Every madness and folly of life is their immediate work and every good spirit of wisdom and love has all its strength and activity from them. They equally support darkness and light. Not a thought of the mind either of love or hatred, of joy or trouble, of envy or wrath, of pride and covetousness, can rise in the spirit of any creature but as these properties act and stir in it. And from this manifestation of God in the seven properties of nature or kingdom of heaven, he most wonderfully opens and accounts for all that was done in the six first working days of the creation, showing how every one of the six active properties had its peculiar day's work until the whole ended or rested in the sanctified, paradisiacal Sabbath of the seventh day, just as nature does in its seventh property. And now, sir, you may see in the greatest clearness how everything in this world, everything in the soul and body of man, absolutely requires the one redemption of the gospel. There is but one nature in all created things, whether spiritual or material; they stand and work upon the same ground, the three first properties of nature. Only that which can illuminate the soul, can give brightness and purity to the body. For there is no darkness, and contrariety in the body but that which proceeds from the same cause that makes selfishness, wrath, envy, and torment in the soul; it is but the same state and working of the first three properties of nature. All is evil, whether natural or moral, whether of body or spirit, this is the sole effect of the wrath and disorder of the spirits of nature working in and by themselves.

All of the good, perfection, and purity of everything, whether spiritual or material, whether it is the body or spirit of man or angel, is solely from the power and presence of the supernatural Deity dwelling and working in the properties of nature. For the properties of nature are in themselves nothing else but a mere hunger, want, strife, and contrariety, until the fullness and riches of the Christ entering into them and unites them all in one will and one possession of light and harmonious love, which is the one redemption of the gospel, and the reason why nothing else but the heart or Son or light of God can purify nature and creature from all the evil they are fallen into. For nothing can possibly deliver the soul from its selfish nature and earthly passions but that one power that can deliver matter from its present material properties and turn earth into heaven. And for this plain reason, because soul and body, outward nature and inward life, have the same evil in them and from the same cause. The Deist[3], therefore, who looks for life and salvation through the use of his reason, acts contrary to the whole nature of everything that he sees and knows of himself and of the nature and state of this world. For from one end of it to the other, all its material state, all its divided elements declare that they are what they are because the light and love of heaven is not working and manifest in them, and that nothing can take darkness, materiality, rage, storms, and tempests from them but that same heavenly light and love which was made flesh to redeem the fallen humanity first, and after that, the whole material system.

Can the Deist with his reason bring the light of this world into the eyes of his body? If not, why is it to be less absurd or more possible for reason to bring heavenly light into the soul? Yet nothing less than such a power can possibly help the soul out of it’s fallen, earthly state. For the corruption of flesh and blood is the natural state of the fallen soul, and therefore nothing can purify the soul, or raise it out of its earthly, corrupt state, but that which has all power over all that is earthly and material in nature. To pretend therefore that reason may have sufficient power to remove all hellish depravity and earthly lusts from the soul while it has not the least power over sweet or sour in any one particle of matter in the body is as absurd as if a man should pretend that he has power to alter the inward, invisible, life of a plant, but none at all over its outward state, color, leaves, or fruit.

The Deist therefore, and not the Christian, stands in need of continual miracles to make good his doctrine. For reason can have no pretense to amend or alter the life of the soul but so far as it can show that it has power to amend and alter the nature and state of the body. The unbelieving Jews said of our Lord, "How can this man forgive sins?" Christ showed them how by appealing to that power which they saw He had over the body: "Which," says He, "Is it easier to say, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, arise, take up your bed, and walk?" But the delusion of the unbelieving Deist is greater than that of the Jew. For the Deist sees that his reason has no power over his body; can remove no disease, blindness, deafness, or lameness from it, and yet will pretend to have power enough from his reason to help the soul out of all its evil, not knowing that body and soul go hand in hand, and are nothing else but the inward and outward state of the same life, and that therefore He only, who can say to the dead body of Lazarus, "Come forth," can say to the soul, "Be cleansed." The Deist therefore, if he pleases, may style himself a natural or a moral philosopher, but with no more truth than he can call himself a healer of all the diseases of the body. And for a man to think himself a moral philosopher because he has put together a choice collection of witty sayings in order to quicken and revive a Divine goodness in the soul, or that no redeemer need come from heaven because human reason when truly left to itself has great skill in the severing of logic, may justly be deemed such an ignorance of the nature of things as is seldom found in the illiterate and unlearned people of this world.

“By denying and dying to self”

To return to our chief subject, the sum of all that has been said is this: All evil, no matter what it is, all misery of every kind, is in its birth, and working, nothing else but nature left to itself, and under the divided workings of its own hunger, wrath, and contrariety; and therefore no possibility for the natural, earthly man to escape eternal hunger, wrath, and contrariety, but solely in the way the gospel teaches, by denying and dying to self. On the other hand, all the goodness and perfection, all the happiness, glory, and joy that any intelligent, Divine creature can be possessed of, is, and can be, from nothing else but the invisible uncreated light and Spirit of God manifesting itself in the properties of the creaturely life, filling, blessing, and uniting them all in one love and joy of life. And again: no possibility of man's attaining to any heavenly perfection and happiness, but only in the way of the gospel, by the union of the Divine nature of God and human nature, by man's being born again from above of the Word and Spirit of God. There is no possibility of any other way because there is nothing that can possibly change the first properties of life into a heavenly state but the presence and working power of the God united with, and working in them. And therefore the "Word was made flesh," and must of all necessity be made flesh if man is to have a heavenly nature. Now as all evil, sin, and misery have no other beginning, nor power of working, but in the manifestation of nature in its divided, contrary properties, so it is certain that man has nothing to turn to, seek or aspire after but the lost spirit of love. And therefore it is, that God only can be his redeemer, because God only is love, and love can be nowhere else but in God and where God dwells and works.

Now the difficulty which you find in attaining to this purity and universality of the spirit of love is because you seek for it, 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 the imagination. But this 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 is done in a 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 properties of nature. So in like manner, love is an unchallengeable birth, always proceeding from the same cause, and cannot be in existence until 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 even 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 alone, can cast devils and evil spirits out of the soul, that can say to the storm, "Be still," and to the leper, "Be cleansed."

The birth of love is a form or state of life, and has its fixed place in the fifth form of nature. The three first properties or forms of nature are the ground of life that is in itself only as an extreme hunger, want, strife, and contrariety. And they are in this state, that they may become a proper fuel for the fourth form of nature, the fire, to be kindled in them. You will perhaps say, "What is this fire? What is its nature? And how is it started? And how is it that the hunger and anguishing state of the properties are a fitness to be a fuel of this fire?" It may be answered, this hunger and anguish of nature, in its first forms, is its fitness to be changed into a life of light, joy, and happiness: and, it is in this hunger and anguish only for one reason, because God is not in it. For as nature comes from God, and for this end that the Deity may manifest heaven in it, it will remain in this hungering and anguishing state until God is manifested in it. And therefore its hunger and anguish is its true fitness to be changed into a better state, and this is its fitness for the birth of the fire. For the fire means nothing and is nothing else but that which changes them into a better state. Not as if fire was a fourth, distinct thing that comes into them from without, but is only a fourth state, or condition into which the same properties are brought.

The fire then is the very thing that changes the properties into a new and heavenly state. Therefore the fire does two things. It alters the state of nature and brings heaven into it, and it must work from a two-fold power: the Deity and nature must both be in it. It must have some strength from nature, or it could not work in nature. It must have some strength from God or it could not overcome and change nature into a Divine life. Now all this is only to show you that the fire can only be kindled by the entrance of the supernatural God, into a union with nature. And this union of the Deity and nature makes, or brings forth, that state or form of life which is called and truly is, fire:

First, because it does that in the spiritual properties of nature which fire does in the properties of material nature.

Secondly, because it is that alone from which every fire in this world, whether in the life of animal or vegetable or inanimate matter, has its source and power and possibility of burning. The fire of this world overcomes its fuel, breaks its nature, alters its state and changes it into flame and light.

But why does it do this? Why did it get this nature and power? It is because it is a true out-birth of the eternal fire, which overcomes the darkness, wrath, and contrariety of nature, and changes all its properties into a life of light, joy, and glory. Not a spark of fire could be kindled in this world, nor a ray of light could come from any material fire but because material nature is, in itself, nothing else but the very properties of eternal nature, standing for a time in a material state or condition; and therefore they must work in time as they do in eternity; and consequently there must be fire in this world, it must have the same birth and do the same work in its material way, which the eternal fire has, and does in spiritual nature. And this is the reason why everything in this world is delivered as far as it can be from its earthly impurity, and brought into its highest state of existence only by fire. The eternal fire is the purifier of eternal nature and the opener of every perfection, light, and glory in it. And if you ask why the eternal fire is the purifier of eternal nature, the reason is plain; it is because the eternal fire has its birth and nature and power from the entrance of the pure, supernatural Deity into the properties of nature, the properties must change their state and become something they were not before, as soon as God enters into them. Their darkness, wrath, and contrariety is driven out of them, and they work and give forth only a life and strength of light and joy and glory. And this two-fold operation, on the one hand taking from nature its wrathful workings, and on the other hand opening a glorious manifestation of God in them, is the whole nature and form of the fire, and is the reason why from eternity to eternity it is and must be the purifier of eternal nature, namely, as from eternity to eternity changing nature into a kingdom of heaven. Now every fire in this world does, and must do, the same thing in its low way to the utmost of its power, and can do nothing else. Start a fire where or in what you will, it acts only as, and by the power of this eternal purifying fire; and therefore it consumes everything, and makes all that is pure and spirituous to come forth out of it; and therefore purification is its only work through all material nature, because it is a real out-birth of that eternal fire which purifies eternal nature, and changes it into a heaven of glory.

This entrance of the supernatural Deity into them is the consuming of all that is bad in them and turning all their strength into a working life of light, joy, and heavenly glory; and therefore is called fire, as having no other nature and operation in it but the known nature of fire, and also as being that from which every fire in this world has all its nature and power of doing as it does. But, fire has but one nature throughout the whole universe, and material fire has no more nor less of the nature of fire in it than that which is in eternal nature because it does nothing, works nothing but what it has, and works from this. How easy is it for you to see that the fire of the soul and the fire of the body has only one nature? How else could they unite in their heat? How easy also to see that the fire of animal life is the same fire that burns in the kitchen[4]? How else could the kitchen fire be serviceable to animal life? What good would it do you to come to a fire of wood when you wanted to have the heat of your own life increased? In animal life the fire is kindled and preserved in such a degree and under such circumstances as to be life and the preservation of life, and this is its difference from fires that are kindled in wood and burnt to ashes. It is the same fire, only in a different state, that keeps up life and consumes wood, and has no other nature in the wood than in the animal. Just as in water that is heated up to make it warm, or to make it boiling hot, the same nature and power of fire is in both but only in a different degree.

Now will you say that fire is not to be literally understood when it only makes water to be warm, because it is not red and flaming as you see it in a burning coal? Yet this would be as well as to say that fire is not literally to be understood in the animal life because it is so different from that fire which you see burning in a piece of wood. It is the same great power of God in the spiritual and material world; it is the cause of every life and the introduction of every power of nature, and its one great work through all nature and creature, animate and inanimate, is purification and exaltation; it can do nothing else for this reason, because its birth is from the entrance of the pure Deity into nature, and therefore must in its various states and degrees be doing that which the entrance of God into nature does. It must bring every natural thing into its highest state.

But to go back now to the spirit of love and show you the time and place of its birth before which it can have no existence in your soul, no matter what you try to do to have it. The fire, you see, is the first over-comer of the hungry, wrathful, self-tormenting state of the properties of nature, and it only overcomes them because it is the entrance of the living God into them; and therefore that which overcomes them is the light of the Deity. And this is the true reason why every right-kindled fire must give forth light and cannot do otherwise. It is because the eternal fire is only the effect or operation of the supernatural light of the Deity entering into nature; and therefore fire must give forth light because it is only a power of the light, and light can be nowhere in nature but as a fifth form or state of nature, brought forth by the fire. And as light brought forth is the first state that is lovely and delightful in nature, so the spirit of love has only its birth in the light of life, and can be nowhere else. For the properties of life have no common good, nothing to rejoice in, until this light of God is found, and therefore there is no possible beginning of the spirit of love until then. The shock that is given to the three first properties of nature by the amazing light of God breaking in upon them is the operation of the fire that consumes or takes away the wrathful strength and contrariety of the properties, and forces each of them to shrink, as it were, away from itself, and come under the power of this new-risen light. Here all strife, enmity and wrathful contrariety in the properties must cease because all are united in the love of the light, and all are equally helping one another to a higher enjoyment and delight in it. They are all one triune will, all doing the same thing, all rejoicing in the one love of the light. And here it is, in this delightful unity of operation, that the spirit of love is born, in the fifth property or light of life, and cannot possibly rise up in any creature until the properties of its life are brought into this fifth state, therefore changed and exalted into a new sensibility of life. Let me give you this similitude of the matter: Imagine, yourself a man shut up in a deep cave underground, without ever having seen a ray of the light, your body is tortured all over with pain, your mind distracted with rage, whirling and working with the utmost fury and madness, and you don’t know why; and then you have an image of the first properties of life as they are in themselves before the fire has done its work in them. Think for a moment of you being suddenly surrounded, with a glare of light as in the twinkling of an eye, it struck dead every evil working of every pain and all rage, both in your body and mind; and then you have an image of the operation of the fire and what it does to the first properties of nature. Now as soon as the first terror of the light has had its fiery operation, and struck nothing dead but every working sensibility of distress, and wrath, imagine yourself, in the sweetest peace of mind and bodily sensations, blessed in a new region of light, giving joy to your mind and gratification to every sense; the overflowing of love and delight in this new state may give you an image of how the spirit of love is and must be born when fire and light have overcome and changed the state of the first properties of nature, and never until then can they have any existence in any creature, nor can they proceed forth from any other cause. You may sufficiently see how vainly you attempt to acquire for yourself the spirit of love by the power of your reason; and also what a vanity of all vanities there is in the religion of the Deists who will have no other perfection or Divine life but what they can have from their reason, as great a contradiction to nature as if they would have no life or strength of body but that which can be had from their faculty of reasoning. For reason cannot alter or exalt any of the properties of life in the soul nor bring it into its perfect state, no more than it can add one cubit to the stature of the body. The perfection of every life is not possible, nor can it be had but as every flower comes to its perfection, from its own seed and root and the various degrees of alteration which must be gone through before the flower is found. It is strictly this way with the perfection of the soul; all of its properties of life must have their true natural birth and growth from one another.

“Nature must be set right, its properties must enter into the process of a new birth”

The first, as its seed and root, must have their natural change into a higher state; it must, like the seed of the flower, pass through death into life, Blessed by the fire and light and air of this world until it reaches its last perfection and becomes a beautiful sweet-smelling flower. And to think that the soul can attain its perfection any other way than by the change of its first properties, until it flowers, for as whatever dies cannot have a death particular to itself but the same death in the same way and for the same reasons that any other creature, whether animal or vegetable, ever did die, so every life and degree of life must come into its state and condition of life in the same way and for the same reasons as life and the perfection of life comes into every other living creature, whether in heaven or on earth. Therefore, the Deists religion of reason, which is to raise the soul to its true perfection, is so far from being the religion of nature that it is quite unnatural and declared to be so by every working in nature. For since reason can neither give life nor death to anything in nature, but everything lives or dies according to the working of its own properties, everything either dead or alive gives forth a demonstration that nature asks no counsel of reason, nor stays to be directed by it. Cling fast to this certain truth, that you can have no good come into your soul but only by way of a birth from above, from the entrance of the Deity into the properties of your own soul. Nature must be set right, its properties must enter into that 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 until its nature is in a delightful state or is possessed of that in which it must rejoice. For while the soul has only its natural life, it can only be in such a state as nature, without God in it, a hunger, want, and strife, for something, and it does not even know what it 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, until the light of God is found in them. Hence also it is that, that which is called the wisdom, honor, honesty, and the religion of the natural man, often does as much hurt to himself and others as his pride, ambition, self-love, envy, or revenge does, and they are all subject to the same impulses; this is because nature is no better in one motion than in another, nor can it be, until something supernatural has come into it.

“For self can have no motion, do no action, but that which is selfish”

We often charge men, both in and out of the church, with changing their principles; but the charge is too hasty, for no man ever did change his principals, or even can change his principles but only by a birth from above. The natural man, called in scripture the old man, is always the same in heart and spirit in everything he does, whatever variety of names may be given to his actions. For self can have no motion, nor do anything, but that which is selfish, wherever it goes, or whatever it does, either in church or state. And be assured of this, that nature in every man, whether he is educated or uneducated, is always this very self and can be nothing else until a birth of Jesus Christ is brought forth in it. There is therefore no possibility of having the spirit of love or any Divine goodness from any power of nature or working of reason. It can only be had in its own time and place; and its time and place is nowhere but where nature is overcome by a birth of the life of God in the properties of the soul. And so you see the infallible truth and absolute necessity of Christian redemption; it is the most demonstrable thing in all nature. 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 forever 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, until the Deity is manifested and dwelling in it. And now, you can see the absolute necessity of the gospel doctrine of the cross, of dying to self as the only way to have life in God. This cross, or dying to self, is the only thing that can do man any good at all. Imagine as many rules as you will, of remodeling the moral behavior of man, they all do nothing because they leave self-nature still alive, and therefore can only help a man to pretend, or act out in a hypocritical art of concealing his own inward evil and pretending not to be under its power. And the reason why it must be so is obvious; it is because it is not possible to reform nature; it is unchallengeable in its workings and must be always as it is and never any better or worse than its own un-Godly workings are. It can no more change from evil to good than darkness can work itself into light. The only work therefore of morality is the doctrine of the cross, to resist and deny nature, that a supernatural power to 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 (the old man) and the other is God manifested in nature (newness of life); and as God and nature are both within you, so you have it in your power to live and work with which one you will, but you are under a necessity of obeying either the one or the other. There is no standing still; life goes on and will always bring forth its realities, whichever way it goes. You have seen what the properties of nature are, and they can be, nothing else in their own life, but a restless hunger, unrest, and blind strife for they know not what, until the property of light and love has gotten possession of them.

Now when you see this, you see the true state of every natural man, whether he is Caesar or Cato, whether he gloriously murders others or only stabs himself; blind nature does all the work and must be the doer of it, until the Christ of God is born in him. For the life of man can be nothing else but a 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 the other, striving to be above one another, and all this in blindness, until the light of God has helped them to one common good, in which they all willingly unite, rest, and rejoice. Goodness is only a word, a sound, a virtue, and can be nothing more until the spirit of love is the breath of everything that lives and moves in the heart. For love can be the only blessing and goodness of nature; and you have no true religion, you are not a worshiper of the one true God, but in and by that spirit of love which is God Himself living and working in you. But here I put down my pen and shall leave the remaining part of this teaching for another opportunity. King's Cliffe, June 16, 1752.

 

Chapter 2

The Essence of the Spirit Of Love

A Dialogue between Thomas, Steven, and Gordon

 

Thomas- Gordon, I’d like you to meet Steven, a pastor in my neighborhood; he would not let me wait any longer for your second conversation about the spirit of love, nor be content until I consented to our inviting you for another visit. And indeed, we are both equally impatient to have your full answer to a particular part of my objection, which you reserved for this second conversation.

Gordon- My heart embraces you both with the greatest affection, and I am very pleased at this occasion of your coming, and I am looking forward to sharing with you, the most delightful subject in the whole world, and to help both you as well as myself to rejoice in that Deity whose infinite being is an infinity of love, an un-beginning, never ceasing, and forever overflowing ocean of meekness[5], sweetness, delight, blessing, goodness, patience, and mercy, and all this as so many blessed streams breaking out of the ocean of universal love, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a triune infinity of love and goodness, forever and ever giving forth nothing but the same gifts of light and love, of blessing and joy, before and after the fall, both of angels and men. Look at all nature, through all its height and depth, in all its variety of working powers; it is what it is for this reason only, so that the hidden riches, the invisible powers, blessings, glory, and love of the un-searchable God may become visible, sensible, and manifest in it. Look at all the variety of creatures; they are what they are for this one purpose, that in their infinite variety, degrees, and capacities they may be as so many speaking figures, and living forms of the manifold riches and powers of nature, so many sounds and voices, preachers, and trumpets, giving glory and praise and thanksgiving to that God of love who gives life to all nature and creatures. For every creature of un-fallen nature, call it by what name you will, has its form, and power, and state, and place in nature for no other end but to open and enjoy, to manifest and rejoice in some share of the love, happiness and goodness of God, as springing forth in the boundless height and depth of nature. Now this is the one will and work of God in and through all nature and creature. From eternity to eternity He can will and intend nothing toward them, or in them, or even 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 unchangeable disposition toward the creature; He can be nothing else but all goodness toward it because He can be nothing toward the creature but that which He is, and ever shall be in Himself. God can no more begin to have any wrath, rage, or anger in Himself after nature and creature are in a fallen state, than He could have been infinite wrath and boundless rage everywhere and from all eternity. For nothing can begin to be in God, or to be in a new state in Him; everything that is in Him is essential to Him, as inseparable from Him, as unalterable in Him as the triune nature of His Deity.

Thomas- Gordon, Please let me ask you this, does not patience and pity and mercy begin to be in God, and only then begin, when the creature has brought itself into misery? These things could have no existence in the Deity before. Why then may not wrath and anger begin to be in God when the creature has rebelled against Him, though it neither had, nor could have had, any existence in God before?

Gordon- It's true, Thomas, that God can only then begin to make known His mercy and patience when the creature has lost its righteousness and happiness, yet nothing then begins to be in God, or can be found in Him, but that which was always in Him in the same infinite state, a will to all goodness, which can will nothing else. And His patience and mercy which could not show forth until nature and creature had brought forth misery, this was not a new temperament, or the beginning of some new disposition that was not in God before, but only new and occasional manifestations of that boundless eternal will to all goodness, which always was in God in the same height and depth. The will to all goodness, which is God Himself, began to display itself in a new way when it first gave birth to creatures. The same will to all goodness began to manifest itself in another new way when it became patience and compassion toward fallen man. But neither of these ways are the beginning of any new tempers or qualities in God, but only new and occasional manifestations of that true eternal will to all goodness, which always was, and always will be, in the same fullness of infinity in God. But to suppose that when the creature has abused its power, lost its happiness and plunged itself into a misery out of which it cannot deliver itself, to suppose that only then, there begins to be something in the holy Deity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost that is not of the nature and essence of God, and which was not there before, i.e. a wrath, and fury, and vindictive vengeance, breaking out in storms of rage and resentment because the poor creature has brought misery upon itself, is wickedness and absurdity that cannot be enough abhorred. For nothing can be in God but that which He is and has from Himself, and therefore no wrath can be in God Himself unless God was in Himself before all nature began and from all eternity an infinity of wrath, and anger. Why are love, knowledge, wisdom, and goodness said to be infinite and eternal in God, capable of no increase or decrease, but always in the same utmost state of existence? Why is His power eternal and omnipotent, His presence not here, or there, but everywhere? No reason can be assigned, but because nothing that is temporary, limited, or bounded can be in God. It is His nature to be that which He is, and in an infinite, unchangeable degree, admitting neither higher, nor lower, neither here nor there, but always and everywhere in the same unalterable state of infinity. If therefore wrath, rage, and resentment could be in God Himself, it must be an un-beginning, boundless, never-ceasing wrath, capable of no more, or less, no increase or decrease, but always existing, always working, and breaking forth in the same strength, and everywhere equally burning in the height and depth of God.

There is no middle ground here; it must be either all or nothing, either no possibility of wrath, or no possibility of its having any bounds. And therefore, if you would not say that everything that has, or can, or ever shall proceed from God are and can be only so many effects of His eternal and omnipotent wrath, which can never cease, or be less than infinite; if you will not hold this monstrous blasphemy, you must stick close to the absolute impossibility of wrath having any existence in God. For nothing can have any existence in God, but in the way and manner as His eternity, infinity, and omnipotence have their existence in Him. Have you any objections to this?

Thomas- Gordon, both Steven and myself have been from the first fully satisfied with what has been said of this matter in your book of “Regeneration,” “The Appeal[6],” and “The Spirit of Prayer,” We find ourselves incapable of thinking any otherwise of God than as the one and only good, or, as you express it, "An eternal immutable[7] will to all goodness," which can will nothing else to all eternity, but to communicate good, and blessing, and happiness, and perfection to every life, according to its capacity to receive it. Had I a hundred lives, I could with more ease part with them all by suffering a hundred deaths than give up this lovely idea of God. Nor could I have any desire of eternity for myself if I did not have the hope that, by partaking of the Divine nature, I could be eternally delivered from the burden and power of my own wrath and changed into the blessed freedom of a spirit that is all love and a will to nothing but goodness. An eternity without this is but an eternity of trouble. For I know of no hell either here or hereafter, but the power and working of wrath, nor any heaven but where the God of love is all and in all, and working in the life of all. And therefore, the holy Deity is one blessing, and goodness, willing and working only love and goodness to everything as far as it can receive it. This is a truth as deeply grounded in me as the feeling of my own existence. I ask you for no proof of this; my only difficulty is how to reconcile this idea of God to the letter of scripture. First, because the scripture speaks so much and so often of the wrath, and fury, and vindictive vengeance of God. Secondly, because the whole nature of our redemption is so plainly grounded on such a supposed degree of wrath and vengeance in God as could not be satisfied and atoned by anything less than the death and sacrifice of His only begotten Son.

Gordon- I will do more for you, Thomas, in this matter than you seem to expect. I will not only reconcile the letter of scripture with the foregoing description of God but will show you that everything that is said of the necessity of Christ's being the only possible satisfaction and atonement of the vindictive wrath of God is an absolute proof that the wrath of God spoken of never existed, nor exists now, or can possibly ever exist in God.

Steven- Gordon, you have forced me now to speak, and I cannot contain the joy that I feel in this expectation which you have raised in me. If you can show that the scriptures do all that which you have just promised to Thomas, I shall be in paradise before I die. For to know that love alone was the beginning of nature and creature, that nothing but love encompasses the whole universe of things, that the governing hand that overrules all, the watchful eye that sees through all, is nothing but omnipotent and omniscient love using an infinity of wisdom to raise all that is fallen in nature, to save every misguided creature from the miserable works of its own hands, and make happiness and glory the perpetual inheritance of all the creation is a reflection that must be quite magnificent to every intelligent creature that is sensible of it. Therefore to think of God, of His providence, and eternity while we are in this valley and shadow of death is to have a real foretaste of the blessings of the world to come. Please, let us hear how the letter of scripture is a proof of this God of love.

Gordon- Before I do this, Steven, I think it is necessary to show you in a word or two the true ground and nature of wrath in all its kinds, what it is in itself, where it has its birth, life, and manner of existence. And then you will see with your own eyes why, and how, and where wrath or rage can, or cannot be. And until you see this fundamentally in the nature of things, you cannot be at all qualified to judge of the matter in question, but must only think and speak at random, merely as your imagination leads you. For until we know the nature of wrath, what it is in itself, and why, and how it comes into existence, we cannot possibly know where it can or cannot enter. Nor can we know what is meant by the satisfaction, appeasement, or atonement of wrath in any being but by knowing how, and why, and for what reason wrath can rise, and work in any being; then and only then can we know how any wrath, wherever raised, can be atoned for or be made to cease. Now there are two things, both of them visible to your outward senses, which entirely open the true ground and nature of wrath and undeniably show what it is in itself, and from where it arises, and what its life, and strength, and being consists of. And these two things are a tempest in the elements of this world and a raging sore in the body of man or any other animal. Now that a tempest in the elements is wrath in the elements, and a sore in the body of an animal is a wrath in the state of the health of the body is a matter, I think that, needs no proof or clarification. Consider, then, how or why a tempest arises in the elements, or an inflamed sore in the body, and then you have the true ground and nature of wrath. Now a tempest does not, cannot arise in the elements while they are in their right state, in their just mixture or union with one another. A sore does not, cannot break forth in the body while the body is altogether in its true state of health. Consequently you can plainly see that wrath has its whole nature and it’s only ground and existence in and by the disorder or bad state of the thing in which it exists and works. It can have no place of existence, no power of breaking forth, but where the thing has lost its proper perfection and is not as it ought to be. And therefore no good being that is in its proper state of goodness can, while it is in such a state, have any wrath or rage in it. And therefore, as a tempest of any kind in the elements is a sure proof that the elements are not in their right state, but under disorder, as a raging sore in the body is impure and corrupt and not as it should be, so in whatever mind or intelligent being wrath or rage works, and breaks forth, there is proof enough that the mind is in that same impure, corrupt, and disordered state as those elements that raise a tempest and that body which gives forth an inflamed sore. And now, gentlemen, what do you think of a supposed wrath, or rage in God; will you have such things to be in God Himself as cannot have a place or existence in any creature until it has become disordered and impure and has lost its proper state of goodness?

Steven- But pray, Gordon, let me observe that it does not appear to me that there is only one type of wrath possible to be in nature or creature. I grant there is such a likeness in the things you have appealed to as is sufficient to justify poets, orators, or popular speakers in calling a tempest wrath, and wrath a tempest. But this will not do in our present matter; for all that you have said depends upon this, whether, in a philosophic strictness in the nature of the things, there can be only one wrath, wherever it is, proceeding strictly from the same ground, and having everywhere the same nature. Now if you can prove this identity or sameness of wrath, be it where it will, either in an intelligent mind, the elements of this world, or the body of an animal, then your point is absolutely gained, and there can be no possibility for wrath to have any existence in God. But as body and spirit are generally held to be quite contrary to each other in their most essential qualities, I do not know how you can sufficiently prove that they can only have one kind of wrath, or that wrath must have the same nature, whether it be in a body or spirit.

Gordon- Wrath can have no other nature in body than it has in spirit for this reason, because it can have no existence or manner of working in the body but what it has directly from spirit. And therefore, in every wrath that is visible in any body whatever, you have a true manifestation of the ground and nature of wrath, in whatever spirit it is in. And therefore, as there is but one ground and nature of wrath in all-outward things, whether they are animate or inanimate, so you have proof enough that so it is with all wrath in the spirit or mind. Because wrath in any body or outward thing is nothing else but the inward working of that spirit which manifests itself by an outward wrath in the body. And what we call wrath in the body is truly and strictly speaking the wrath of the spirit in the body. For you are to observe that the body does not begin from itself, nor is anything of itself, but is all that it is, whether pure or impure, has all that it has whether of light or darkness, and works all that it works, whether of good or evil, from spirit. For nothing, my friend, acts in the whole universe of things but spirit alone. And the state, condition, and degree of every spirit is only opened by the state, form, condition, and qualities of the body that belongs to it. For the body can have no nature, form, condition, or quality but that which the spirit that brings it forth gives to it. If there had not been an eternal universal spirit, there could be no eternal or universal nature; that is, had not the Spirit of God been everywhere, the kingdom of heaven, or the visible glory of God in an outward majesty of heaven, could not be everywhere. Now the kingdom of heaven is that to the Deity which every body is to the spirit, which lives, works, and manifested itself in it.

“Nothing can be wrathful but spirit!”

The spirit is not body, nor is the body spirit; they are so essentially distinct that they cannot possibly lose their difference, or be changed into one another; and yet all that is in the body is from the nature, will, and working of its spirit. There is therefore no possible room for a supposition of two kinds of wrath, or that wrath may have two natures, the one as it is in spirit, and the other as it is in body; first, because nothing can be wrathful but spirit, and secondly, because no spirit can exert or manifest wrath but in and by its body. And therefore, through the whole universe of things, there is and can be but one possible ground and nature of wrath, whether it be in the sore of an animal body, in a storm in the elements, in the mind of a man, in an angel, or in hell.

Steven- Enough, enough, Gordon, you have made it sufficiently plain that wrath can be no more in God Himself than hell can be heaven. And therefore we ask no more of you, but that you reconcile this with the language and doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. 

Thomas- You are in too much haste, Steven; it would be better to let Gordon proceed further in this matter. He has told us what wrath is in itself; no matter where it is, I would like to know its true origin, how, and where, and why it begins.

“There is no evil in anything, but the working of the spirit of wrath!”

Gordon- To inquire or search into the origin of wrath is the same thing as to search into the origin of evil and sin. For wrath and evil are but two words for the same thing. There is no evil in anything, but the working of the spirit of wrath. And when wrath is entirely suppressed, there can be no more evil, or misery, or sin in any part of nature or creature. This therefore is a firm truth, that nothing can be capable of wrath, or be the beginning of wrath but the creature, because nothing but the creature can be the beginner of evil and sin. Again, the creature can have no beginning, or sensibility of wrath in itself, but only by losing the living power, the living presence, and governing operation of the Spirit of God within it, or in other words, by losing that heavenly state of existence in God and the influence from God which it had at its creation. Now no intelligent creature, whether angel or man, can be good and happy but by partaking of, or having in itself, a two-fold life. Hence so much is said in the scripture of an inward and outward, an old and a new man. For there could be no foundation for this distinction but because every intelligent creature, was created to be good and happy, and must of all necessity have a two-fold life in itself, or it cannot possibly be capable of goodness and happiness, nor can it possibly lose its goodness and happiness, or feel the least need of them, but by its breaking the union of this two-fold life in itself. Therefore so much is said in the scripture of quickening, raising, and reviving the inward, new man, and of the new birth from above, of Christ being formed in us as the only redemption and salvation of the soul. That's why the fall of Adam was said to be a death, that he died the day of his sin though he lived so many years after it; it was because his sin broke the union of his two-fold life and put an end to the heavenly part of it and left only one life, the life of this brutish, earthly world in him. Now there is, in the nature of the thing, an absolute necessity of this two-fold life in every creature that wants to be happy; The two-fold 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 only by having the life and properties of nature, that is, by finding itself to be a life of various sensibilities, that has a power of understanding, willing, 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, anything else but a state of emptiness, of want, of appetite, etc. He cannot make it to be good or happy, in and from its natural state: This is as impossible as for God to cease to be the one and only good.

The highest life, therefore, that is natural and creaturely can go no higher than this; it can only be a bare capacity for goodness and happiness and cannot possibly be a good and happy life, but by the life of God dwelling in union with it. And this is the two-fold life that of all necessity must be united in every good, perfect and happy creature. See here the greatest of all demonstrations of the absolute necessity of gospel redemption and salvation. There can be no goodness and happiness for any intelligent creature, but in, and by this two-fold life; and therefore the union of the Divine and human life, or the Son of God incarnate in man, to make man again a partaker of the Divine nature, this is the only possible salvation for all the sons of fallen Adam, Deism, therefore, or a religion of nature, pretending to make man good and happy without Christ, without the Son of God entering into union with the human nature, is the greatest of all absurdities. It is as contrary to the nature and possibilities of things as for emptiness to be its own fullness, or hunger to be its own food, and want to be its possession of all good things. For nature and creature, without the Christ of God, is and can be nothing else but emptiness, hunger, and want of all that which alone can make it good and happy. For God Himself, as I said, cannot make any creature to be good and happy by anything that is in its own created nature; however high and noble any creature is supposed to be created, its height and nobility can consist in nothing but its higher capacity and fitness to receive a higher union with the Divine life, and also a higher and more wretched misery when left to itself, as is manifest by the hellish state of the fallen angels. Their high and exalted nature was only an enlarged capacity for the Divine life; and therefore, when this life was lost, their whole created nature was nothing else but the height of rage, and hellish distraction. A plain demonstration that there can be no happiness, blessing, and goodness for any creature in heaven or on earth but by having, as the gospel says, Jesus Christ made unto it, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and peace with God. This is because goodness and happiness are absolutely inseparable from God, and can be nowhere but in God. And on the other hand, emptiness, want, insufficiency, etc., are absolutely inseparable from the creature, as such; its whole nature cannot possibly be anything else, no matter what it is, an angel in heaven, or a man on earth; it is and must be in its whole creaturely nature and capacity a mere hunger and emptiness, etc. And therefore all that we know of God, and all that we know of the creature, fully proves that the life of God in union with the creaturely life (which is gospel salvation) is the one only possibility of goodness and happiness in any creature, whether in heaven or on earth. Hence also it is certain enough that this two-fold life must have been the original state of every intelligent creature when it first came forth from God. It could not be brought forth by God to have only a creaturely life of nature, and be left to that; for that would be creating it under a necessity of being in misery, in want, in wrath, and all painful sensibilities. A thing most unworthy of God, and impossible for Him to do.

No creaturely life can in itself be any higher, or better, than a state of want or seeking for something that cannot be found in itself; and therefore, as sure as God is good, as sure as He would have intelligent beings live a life of goodness and happiness, so sure is it that such beings must of all necessity in their first existence have been blessed with a two-fold life, i.e., the life of God dwelling in and united with the life of nature or created life. 

Steven- What an important matter you have here proved in the necessity and certainty of this two-fold life in every intelligent being that is to be good and happy? For this great truth opens and asserts the certain and substantial ground of the spiritual life and shows that all salvation is and can be nothing else but the manifestation of the life of God in the soul. How clearly does this give the solid distinction between inward holiness and all outward, creaturely practices. All that God has done for man by any particular dispensations, whether by the law or the prophets, by the scriptures, or ordinances of the church, are only as helps to a holiness which they (the law and the prophets, the scriptures, and the ordinances of the church) cannot give, but are only suited to the death and darkness of the earthly, creaturely life, to turn it from itself, from its own workings, and awaken in it a faith and hope, a hunger and thirst after that first union with the life of God, which was lost in the fall of the first father of mankind. How unreasonable is it to call continuous inspiration fanaticism when there cannot be the least degree of goodness or happiness in any intelligent being, except that which is in its whole nature, truly breathing, the life, and the operation of God in the life of the creature? For if goodness can only be in God, if it cannot exist separate from Him, if He can only bless and sanctify not by a creaturely gift, but by Himself becoming the blessing and sanctification of the creature, then it is the highest degree of blindness to look for any goodness and happiness from anything but the immediate indwelling, union, of God in the life of the creature. Immediate, continuous inspiration, therefore, is in the nature of the thing as necessary to a life of goodness, holiness, and happiness, as the perpetual breathing of air is necessary to animal life. For the life of the creature, while only creaturely and possessing nothing but itself, is hell; that is, it is all pain and want and distress. Now nothing in the nature of the thing can make the least alteration in this creaturely life, nothing can help it to be in light and love, in peace and goodness, but the birth of God within it, and the life of God working through it, because nothing but God is light, and love, and goodness. And therefore, where the life of God has not become the life and goodness of the creature, there the creature cannot have the least degree of goodness in it.

What a mistake it is, therefore, to confine inspiration to particular times and occasions, to prophets and apostles and extraordinary messengers of God, and to call it fanaticism when the common Christian looks and trusts to be continually led and inspired by the Spirit of God. For though all are not called to be prophets or apostles, yet all are called to be holy as He who has called them is holy, to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect, to be like-minded with Christ, to will only as God wills, to do all to His honor and glory, to renounce the spirit of this world, to have their conversation in heaven, to set their affections on things above, to love God with all their heart, soul, and spirit, and their neighbor as themselves. Behold a work as great, as Divine and supernatural as that of a prophet and an apostle. But to suppose that we should and may always be in this spirit of holiness, and yet are not and ought not to be always moved and led by the breath and Spirit of God within us, is to suppose that there is a holiness and goodness which comes from something other than God, which is no better than supposing that there may be true prophets and apostles who have not received their truth from God.

The holy and good Spirit of God is to be always operating as a principle of life within us.

Now the holiness of the common Christian is not an occasional thing that begins and ends, or is only for such a time, place, or action, but is the holiness of that which is always alive and stirring in us, namely, of our thoughts, wills, desires, and affections. If therefore these are always alive in us, always driving or governing our lives, if we can have no holiness or goodness but as this life of thought, will, and affection works in us, if we are all called to this inward holiness and goodness, then a perpetual, always-existing operation of the Spirit of God within us is absolutely necessary. For we cannot be inwardly led and governed by a spirit of goodness, but by being governed by the Spirit of God Himself. For the Spirit of God and the spirit of goodness are not two different Spirits, nor can we be said to have any more of the one than we have of the other. Now if our thoughts, wills, and affections need only be now and then holy and good, then indeed the moving and breathing Spirit of God need only now and then govern us. But if our thoughts and affections are to be always holy and good, then the holy and good Spirit of God is to be always operating as a principle of life within us, as a continual source of holy power! 

“The difference between a good and a bad man”

The scripture says, "We are not sufficient of ourselves to think a good thought." If so, then we cannot be chargeable with not thinking and willing that which is good but upon this supposition, that there is always a supernatural power within us, ready and able to help us to the good which we cannot have from ourselves. The difference between 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 yields to the living inspiring Spirit of God within him and the other does not, and can only be chargeable with evil because he resists the inspiring Spirit of God. 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 only good by yielding to the Spirit of God, both of which equally suppose a perpetual operation of the Spirit of God within us.

The true ground of this doctrine of the necessity of the perpetual guidance and operation of the Holy Spirit lies in what has been said above, of the necessity of a two-fold life in every intelligent creature, in order to be good and also to be happy. For if the creaturely life while alone, can only be want, misery, and distress, if it cannot possibly have any goodness or happiness in it until the life of God is in union with it as one life, then everything that you read in the scripture of the Spirit of God as the only principle of goodness opens itself to you as a most certain and blessed truth, about which you can have no doubt. 

Gordon- Let me only add, Steven, to what you have said, that from this absolute necessity of a two-fold life in every creature, that is, in order to be good and happy, we may in a still greater clearness see the certainty of that which we have so often spoken of at other times, namely, the in-spoken Word in paradise, the bruiser of the serpent, the seed of the woman, the Immanuel, the holy Jesus (for they all mean the same thing) is the only possible ground of salvation for fallen man.

For if the two-fold life is necessary and man could not be restored to goodness and happiness but by the restored union of this two-fold life into its first state, then there is an absolute necessity in the nature of the thing, that every son of Adam should have such a seed of heaven in the birth of his life, as could by the intervention of Christ be raised into a birth and growth like that of the first perfect man. This is the original power of salvation without which no external dispensation could have done anything toward raising the fallen state of man. For nothing could be raised but what was already a seed of life there to be raised, nor can life be given to anything but to that which is capable of life. Unless, therefore, there had been a seed of life or a smothered spark of heaven in the soul of man which needed to come to birth, there would not have been any possibility, for any of the dispensations of God to bring forth a birth of heaven in fallen man. Moses and the prophets would have come in vain, had not the Christ of God lain in a concealed state in every son of man. For faith, which is a will and hunger 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 hidden in man. For nothing can have any longing desire for anything but its own likeness, nor could anything be made to desire God but that which came from Him and had the nature of Him in the beginning. The whole mediatory office of Christ, from His birth to His sitting down in power, at the right hand of God, was only for this end, to help man to a life that was fallen into death and insensibility, back to Himself. And therefore His mediatory power was to manifest itself by way of a new birth. In the nature of the thing, nothing else was to be done, and Christ had no other way to proceed, because of this reason, because life was the thing that was lost, and life wherever it is must be raised by a birth, and every birth must and can only come from its own seed. But if Christ was to raise a new life like His own in every man, then every man must have had, originally, in the inmost spirit of his life, a seed of Christ, or Christ as a seed of heaven, lying there as in a state of insensibility or death, out of which it could not arise but by the mediatory power of Christ, who as a second Adam was to regenerate that birth of His own life, which was lost in all the natural sons of the first Adam. But unless there was this seed of Christ or spark of heaven hidden in the soul, not the least beginning of man's salvation or of Christ's mediatory office could be made. For what could begin to deny self if there was not something in man different from self? What could begin to have hope and faith and desire of a heavenly life if there was not something of heaven hidden in his soul, and lying there as in a state of inactivity and death until raised by the mediation of Christ into its first perfection of life, and set again in its true dominion over flesh and blood? 

Steven- You have, Gordon, sufficiently proved the certainty and necessity of this matter. But I would be glad if you knew how to help me have a more distinct idea and conception of it. 

Gordon- An idea is not the thing to be sought for; it would hinder more than help your true knowledge of it. But perhaps the following example may be of some use to you. The Ten Commandments when written by God on tables of stone and given to man did not at first belong to man; they had their existence in man, were born with him, they lay as a seed and power of goodness hidden in the form of his soul and were altogether inseparable from it before they were shown to man on tables of stone. And when they were shown to man on tables of stone, they were only an outward imitation of that which was inwardly in man, though not legible because of that impurity of flesh and blood in which they were swallowed up in. For the earthly nature, having overcome the divinity that was in man, gave commandments of its own to man and required obedience to all of the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. For this reason it became necessary that God should give an outward knowledge of such commandments as had become inwardly unknown, unfelt, lost, and, as it were, shut up in death, in the soul. But now, had not all that is in these commandments been really given into the soul of man before as its own birth and nature, had they not still lain therein, and although totally suppressed yet in such a seed as could be called forth into its first living state, in vain had the tables of stone been given to man; and all outward writing or teaching of the commandments had been as useless as instructions given to beasts. If therefore you can conceive how all that is good and holy in the commandments lay hid as an unfelt, inactive power or seed of goodness until called into sensibility and stirred by laws written on tables of stone. This may help you to understand and believe how Christ as a seed of life or power of salvation lies in the soul as its unknown, hidden treasure until awakened and called forth into life by the mediatory office and process of the holy Jesus. Again, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself." Now these two precepts, given by the written word of God, are an absolute demonstration of the first original perfection of man and also a full and invincible proof that the same original perfection is not quite destroyed but lies in him as a hidden, suppressed seed of goodness capable of being raised up to its first perfection. For had not this Divine unity, purity, and perfection of love toward God and man been man's first natural state of life, it would have nothing to do with his present state. For had any other nature, or measure, or kind of love began in the first birth of his life, he could only have been called to that. For no creature has or can have a call to be above, or act above its own nature. Therefore, as sure as man is called to this unity, purity, and perfection of love, so sure is it that it was his first natural, heavenly state, and still has its seed, or remains within him as his only power and possibility of rising up to it again. And therefore, all that man is called to, every degree of a new and perfect life, every future exaltation and glory he is to have from the mediation of Christ, is a full proof that the same perfection was originally his natural state and is still in him in such a seed of existence. You are to conceive of the holy Jesus in this way, or as the Word of God, as the hidden treasure of every human soul, born as a seed of the Word in the birth of the soul, enslaved in flesh and blood until as a day-star it arises in our hearts and changes the son of an earthly Adam into a son of God. And if the Word and Spirit of God was not in us all, preceding any dispensation or written word of God as a real seed of life in the birth of our own life, we would not have any more of a gospel redemption, than the animals of this world which have nothing of heaven in them. And to call us to love God with all our hearts, to put on Christ, to walk according to the Spirit, if these things did not have their real nature and root within us, would be as vain and useless to command us to do, as to make rules and orders how our eyes should smell and taste, or our ears should see. 

Now this mystery of an inward life hidden in man as his most precious treasure, as the ground of all that can be great or good in him and hidden only since his fall, and which can only be opened and brought forth in its first glory by Him to whom all power in heaven and on earth is given, this is a truth to which almost everything in nature bears full witness. Look where you will, nothing appears or works outwardly in any creature or in any effect of nature but that which is done from its own inward invisible spirit, not a spirit brought into it, but its own inward spirit which is an inward invisible mystery until it is made known or brought forth by outward appearances. The sun in the firmament gives growth to everything that grows in the earth, and life to everything that lives upon earth, not by giving or imparting a life from without, but only by stirring up in everything its own growth and its own life which lay as in a seed, or state of death until helped to come out of it, by the sun, which as an emblem of the redeemer of the spiritual world helps every earthly thing out of its own death into its own highest state of life. That which we call our sensations, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling, are not things brought into us from outside, or given to us by any external causes, but are only so many inborn, secret states of the soul which lie in their state of concealment until they are awakened and brought forth into sensibility by outward occurrences. And were they not previously in the soul as states and forms of its own life, no outward objects could bring the soul into a sensibility of them. For nothing can have or be in any state of sensation but that which it is and has from itself, as its own birth. But these sensations are only internal states of the soul which appear, or disappear, are found, or not found, just as occasions bring them into sensibility. 

Again, the greatest artist in music can add no sound to his instrument, nor make it give forth any other melody but that which lies silently hidden in it as its own inward state. Look now at what you will, whether it be animate, or inanimate: All that it is, or has, or can be, it is, and has in and from itself, as its own inward state; and all outward things can do no more for it than the hand does to the instrument, to make it show forth its own inward state, either of harmony or discord. It is strictly so with ourselves. Not a spark of joy, of wrath, of envy, of love or grief can possibly enter into us from without, or be caused to be in us by any outward thing. This is as impossible as for the sound of metals to be put into a lump of clay. And as no metal can possibly give forth any other or higher sound than that which is enclosed within it, so we, however struck, can give forth no other or higher sound either of love, hatred, wrath, etc., than that very degree which lay shut up within us. The natural state of our nature has a variety of covers under which they lie concealed at times, both from ourselves and others; but when this or that accident happens to remove the cover, then that which lay hid under it breaks forth. And then we vainly think that this or that outward occasion has not shown us how we really are within, but has put into us or caused us to be wrathful, or envious, and we go on believing that this is not our natural state or of our own growth. This is mere blindness and self-deceit, for it is as impossible for the mind to have any grief, or wrath, or joy, but what it has all from its own inward state, as for the instrument to give forth any other harmony or discord, is but that which is within and from ourselves. Persons, things, and outward occurrences may strike our instrument improperly, but as we are in ourselves, such is our outward sound, whatever strikes us, or however we are struck! If our inward state is the renewed life of Christ within us, then every thing and occasion, let it be what it will, only makes the same life to sound forth and show itself; if one cheek is smitten, we meekly turn the other also. But if nature, or the “old man” is alive and only under a religious cover, then every outward accident that shakes or disturbs this cover, allows that bad state, whether of grief, or wrath, or joy that lay hid within us to show forth itself, in truth. But nothing at any time makes the least show or sound outwardly, but only that which lay ready within us for an outward birth, as occasion should offer. What a miserable mistake it is therefore to place religious goodness in outward observances, in notions and opinions which good and bad men can equally receive and practice, and to treat the real power and operation of an inward life of God in the birth of our souls as fanaticism, when not only the whole letter and spirit of scripture, but every operation in nature and creature demonstrates that the kingdom of heaven must be within us, or it never can possibly belong to us. Goodness, piety, and holiness can only be ours, as thinking, willing, and desiring are ours, by being in us as a power of heaven in the birth and growth of our own life. And now, Steven how is the great controversy about religion and salvation shortened. For since the only work of Christ as your redeemer is this, to take from the earthly life of flesh and blood its usurped power, and to raise the smothered spark of heaven out of its state of death into a powerful governing life of the whole man. And you have the utmost certainty what you are to do, where you are to seek, and in what you are to find your salvation. All that you have to do, or can do, is to oppose, resist, and, as far as you can, to renounce the evil tempers and workings of your own earthly nature. You are under the power of no other enemy, are held in no other captivity, and need no other deliverance but from the power of your own earthly self.

Everything that your earthly nature does is under the influence of self-will, self-love, and self-seeking

This is the one murderer of the Divine life within you. It is your own Cain that murders your own Abel. Now everything that your earthly nature does is under the influence of self-will, self-love, and self-seeking, whether it carries you to praiseworthy or blamable practices, all is done in the nature and spirit of Cain and only helps you to such goodness as when Cain slew his brother. For every action and motion of self has the spirit of anti-Christ and murders the Divine life within you. Judge not therefore of yourself by considering how many of those things you do which preachers and moralists call virtue and goodness, nor how much you abstain from those things which they call sin and vice. But daily and hourly, in every step that you take, watch the spirit that is within you, the one that guides you, and see whether it is of heaven or of earth. And judge everything to be sin and Satan with which your earthly nature, own love, or self-seeking has any share of life in you; nor should you think that any goodness is brought to life in you but so far as it has become an actual death to the pride, vanity, wrath, and selfish tempers of your fallen, earthly life. Again, here you see where and how you are to seek your salvation, not in taking up your traveling staff, or crossing the seas to find a new Luther or a new Calvin to clothe yourself with their opinions. No. The revelation is already at home with you that speaks the truth to you, because nothing is your truth but that good and that evil which is yours within you. For salvation or damnation is no outward thing that is brought into you from outside, but is only that which springs up within you as the birth and state of your own life. What you are in yourself, what is happening in you, is all that can be either your salvation or damnation. For all that is our good and all that is our bad has no place nor power but within us (Did not someone say “Clean the inside of the cup . . .”). Again, nothing that we do is bad but simply for this reason, because it resists the power and working of God within us; and nothing that we do can be good but because it conforms to the Spirit of God within us. And therefore, as all that can be good and all that can be evil in us necessarily supposes a God working within us, you have the utmost certainty that God, salvation, and the kingdom of heaven are nowhere to be sought, or found, but within you, and that all outward religion from the fall of man to this day is not for itself, but merely for the sake of an inward and Divine life which was lost when Adam died his first death in paradise. Therefore it may well be said that circumcision is nothing, and un-circumcision is nothing, because nothing is wanted, and therefore nothing can be available but the new creature called out of its captivity under the death and darkness of flesh and blood into the light, life, and the perfection of its first creation, a result you have the fullest proof as to what your salvation precisely consists. Not in any historic faith, or knowledge of anything absent or distant from you, not in any variety of restraints, rules, and methods of practicing virtues, not in any formality of opinion about faith and works, repentance, forgiveness of sins, or justification and sanctification, nor in any truth or righteousness that you can have from yourself, from the best of men or books, but wholly and solely in the life of God, or the Christ of God born again in you, or in other words in the restoration and perfect union of the first two-fold life in humanity. 

Thomas- Though all that has passed between you and Steven concerns matters of the greatest importance, yet I must call it a digression and it is quite useless to me. For I have not the least doubt about any of these things you have been asserting. It is clear enough that there can be no middle way in this matter; either religion must be all spiritual or all carnal, that is, we must either take up with the grossness of the Sadducees who say there is neither angel nor spirit, and with such purification as the Pharisees had from their washing of pots and vessels and tithing their mint and rue; we must, I say, either agree with all this carnality, or we must profess a religion that is all spirit and life, and merely for the sake of raising up an inward spiritual life of heaven that fell into death in our first father. I consent also to everything that you have said of the nature and origin of wrath. That it can have no place nor possibility of beginning but solely in the creaturely nature, nor even any possibility of beginning there until the creature has died to, or lost its proper state of existence in God, that is, until it has lost that life and blessing and happiness which it had in and from God at its first creation. But I still ask, what must I do with all those scriptures which not only make God capable of being provoked to wrath and resentment, but frequently inflamed with the highest degrees of rage, fury, and vengeance that can be expressed by words?

The answer!

Gordon- I promised, to remove this difficulty, and will be as good as my word. But I must first tell you that you are in much more distress about it than you need to be. For in the little book of Regeneration, in the Appeal[8], in the Spirit of Prayer, etc., which you read and gave your entire approval, the whole matter is cleared up from its true ground, how wrath in the scriptures is ascribed to God and yet cannot belong to the nature of the Deity. Therefore you are told in the “Appeal,” after these two falls of two orders of creatures (that is, of angels and man,) that God Himself came to have new and strange names, new and unheard of tempers and inclinations of wrath, fury, and vengeance ascribed to it. I call them new because they began at the fall; I call them strange because they were foreign to the Deity and could not belong to God in Himself. Consequently, God is said to be a consuming fire. But to whom? To the fallen angels and lost souls. But why, and how is He this way to them? It is because those creatures have lost all that they had from God but the fire of their nature, and therefore God can only be found and manifested in them as a consuming fire. Now is it not justly said that God, who is nothing but infinite love, is yet in such creatures only a consuming fire? And though God is nothing but love, yet they are under the wrath and vengeance of God because they have only that fire in them which is broken off from the light and love of God, and so can know or feel nothing of God but his fire of nature in themselves. As creatures, they can have no life but what they have in and from God; and therefore that wrathful life which they have is truly said to be a wrath or fire of God upon them. And yet it is still strictly true that there is no wrath in God Himself, that He has not changed in His temper toward the creatures, that He does not cease to be the same infinite fountain of goodness, infinitely flowing forth in the riches of His love upon all and every life. Now, understand what follows as the true ground, how wrath can and cannot be ascribed to God. God is not changed from love to wrath, but the creatures have changed their own state in nature, and so the God of nature can only be manifested in them according to their own state in nature. And, this is the true ground of rightly understanding all that is said of the wrath and vengeance of God in and upon the creatures. It is only in such a sense as the curse of God may be said to be upon them, not because anything cursed can be in or come from God, but because they have made that life which they must have in God to be a mere curse to themselves. For every creature that lives must have its life in and from God, and therefore God must be in every creature.

This is as true of devils as of holy angels. But how is God in them? Why, only as He is manifested in nature. Holy angels have the triune life of God as manifested in nature, and so it is manifested also in them, and therefore God is in them all love, goodness, majesty, and glory, and theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Devils have nothing of this triune life left in them but the fire or wrath of eternal nature broken off from all light and love; and therefore the life that they can have in and from God is only and solely a life of wrath, rage, and darkness, and therefore, theirs is the kingdom of hell. And because this life (though all rage and darkness) is a strength and power of life, which they must have in and from God, and which they cannot take out of His hands, therefore is their cursed, miserable, wrathful life truly and justly said to be the curse and misery, and wrath, and vengeance of God upon them, though God Himself cannot and does not have any curse, misery, wrath, and vengeance than He can have mischief, malice, or any fearful trembling in His holy triune Deity. See now, Thomas, what little reason you had for your present difficulty. For here, in the above cited words, which you have been several years acquainted with, the true ground and reason is plainly shown to you, how and why all the wrath, rage, and curse that is anywhere stirring in nature or breaking forth in any creature is and must be in all truth called by the scriptures the wrath, and rage, and vengeance of God, though it be the greatest of all impossibilities for rage and wrath to be in the holy Deity Himself. The scriptures therefore are literally true in all that they affirm of the wrath, etc., of God. For is it not as literally true of God that hell and devils are His, as that heaven and holy angels are His? Must not therefore all the wrath and rage of the one be as truly His rage in them, as the light and joy and glory of the other is only His goodness opened and manifested in them, according to their state in nature? Take notice of this fundamental truth. Everything that works in nature and creature, except sin, is the working of God in nature and creature. The creature has nothing else in its power but the free use of its will; and its free will has no other power but that of concurring with or resisting the working of God in nature. The creature with its free will can bring nothing into being, nor make any alteration in the working of nature, and cannot feel or find something in its state that it did not feel or find before. Thus God, in the manifestation of Himself in and by nature, sets before every man fire and water, life and death; and man has no other power but that of entering into and uniting with either of these states, but not the least power of adding to, or taking anything from them, or of making them to be other than he finds them. For this fire and water, this life and death are nature, and have their unchangeable state in the uniform working of God in nature. And therefore, whatever is done by this fire and water, this life and death in any creature may, no must, in the strictest truth be affirmed of God as done by Him. And consequently every breathing forth of fire, or death, or rage, or curse, wherever it is, or in whatever creature, must be said, in the language of scripture, to be a provoked wrath, or the fiery vengeance of God, poured forth upon the creature. And yet, everything that has been said in proof of the wrath of God shows and proves to you at the same time that it is not a wrath in the holy Deity itself. For you see, as was said above, that God sets before man fire and water, life and death; now these things are not God, nor existent in the Deity itself; but they are that which is, and is called nature, and as they are the only things set before man, so man can go no further, reach no further, nor find, feel, nor be sensible of anything else but that which is to be felt or found in this nature, or fire and water, life and death which is set before him. And therefore all that man can find or feel of the wrath and the vengeance of God can only be in this fire and this death, and not in the Deity itself.

Thomas- Gordon, you have given me the greatest satisfaction on this point, and in a much better way than I imagined. I expected to have seen you glossing and criticizing away the literal expression of scriptures that affirm the wrath of God, in order to make good your point that God is love. But you have done the utmost justice to the letter of scripture, you have established it upon a firm and solid foundation and shown that the truth of things require it to be so, and that there can be no wrath anywhere, but what is and must be called the wrath and vengeance of God, and yet it is found only in nature. What you have said seems as if it would clear up many passages of scripture that have raised much perplexity. I think that I now begin to see how the hardness of Pharaoh's heart, how eyes that see not and ears that hear not, may in the strictest truth be said to be from God, though God Himself stands in the utmost contrariety to all these things, and in the utmost impossibility of willing or causing them to be. You have shown from the letter of scripture that nothing else is set before man but fire and water, life and death; and therefore, no possibility of wrath or love, joy or sorrow, curse or happiness is to be found by man but in this state of nature set before him, or into that which at his creation he is introduced into, a region of various sensibilities where all that he finds, or feels is truly God's, but not God Himself, who has His supernatural residence above and distinct from everything that is nature, fire or water, life or death. But allow me to mention one point of difficulty that I still have. You proved that wrath, rage, vengeance, etc., can only exist or be found in nature and not in God; and yet you say that nature is nothing else but a manifestation of the hidden, invisible powers of God. But if that is so, must not all that is in nature be also in God? How else could nature be a manifestation of God? 

Gordon- Nature is a true manifestation of the hidden, invisible God. But you are to observe that nature, as it is in itself, in its own state, cannot have the least possible spark, or stirring of wrath, or curse, or vengeance in it, but on the contrary is from eternity to eternity an infinity of heavenly light, love, joy, and glory; and therefore it is a true manifestation of the hidden Deity, and the greatest of proofs that God Himself can’t have wrath in Himself, since wrath only then begins to be in nature when nature has lost its first state. 

Thomas- This is answer enough. But now this brings another thing to my mind. For if God in Himself, in His supernatural state, is only love, and only a will to all goodness, and if nature in itself is only a manifestation of this Deity of love in heavenly light and glory, if neither God nor nature have or can give forth wrath, how then can fire and water, life and death be set before man? What can they come from, or where can they exist, since God in Himself is all love.

Gordon- I will open to you all this matter from the bottom to the top, in as few words as I can. Before God began His creation, he was only manifested or known to Himself in His own glory and majesty; there was nothing but Himself in His own glory and majesty; there was nothing but Himself beholding Himself in His own kingdom of heaven, which was, and is, and ever will be as unlimited as Himself. Nature as well as God is the predecessor to all creatures. For as no seeing eye could be created unless there was antecedently[9] to it a natural visibility of things, so no creature could come into a sensibility of any natural life unless such a state of nature had been created before it. For no creature can begin to be, in any world or state of nature, but by being created out of that world or state of nature into which it is brought to have its life. For to live in any world is the same thing as for a creature to have all that it is and has, in and from that world. And, therefore, no creature can come into any other kind of existence and life but such as can be had out of that world in which it is to live. Neither can there possibly be any other difference between created beings whether animate or inanimate but what arises from that out of which they were created. Seeing then that before the existence of the first creatures there was nothing but God and His kingdom of heaven, the first creatures could receive no other life but that which was in God because there was nothing living but God nor any other life but His, nor could they exist in any other place or outward state but the kingdom of heaven because there was nothing else in existence; and therefore, the first creatures must, of all necessity, be Divine and heavenly, both in their inward life and outward state. 

Thomas- Here then, Gordon is my question. Where is that fire and water, that life and death that is set before the creature? For as to these first creatures, nothing is set before them, nothing is within them or outside of them but God and the kingdom of heaven.

Gordon- You should not have said there is nothing within them but God and the kingdom of heaven. For that which is their own creaturely nature within them is not God, nor the kingdom of heaven. It has been already proved to your satisfaction that no creature can be Divine, good, and happy, but by having a two-fold life united in it. And in this two-fold life of the creature is fire and water, life and death unavoidably set before it. For as its will works with either of these lives, so will it find either fire or water, life or death. If its will turns from the life of God into the creaturely life, then it enters into a sensibility of that which is meant by death and fire, i.e., a wrathful misery. But if the will keeps steadily given up to the Deity, then it lives in possession of that life which was its first and will be its everlasting heavenly joy and happiness. But to explain this matter a bit deeper to you according to the mystery of all things opened by God in his chosen instrument, Jacob Behmen. You know we have often spoken of eternal nature, that so sure as there is an eternal God, so sure is it that there is an eternal nature, as universal, as unlimited as God Himself, and everywhere working where God is and therefore everywhere equally existent, as being His kingdom of heaven or outward manifestation of the invisible riches, powers, and glories of the Deity. Before or without nature, the Deity is entirely hidden, shut up, unknown, and an unknowable area. For nature is the only ground or beginning of something; there is no ground for conception, no possibility of distinction or difference; there cannot be a creature to think, nor anything to be thought upon until nature is in existence. For all the properties of sensibility and sensible life, every mode and manner of existence, all seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, all inclinations, passions, and sensations of joy, sorrow, pain, pleasure, etc., are not in God but in nature. And therefore, God is not knowable, not a thought can begin about Him until He manifests Himself in and through and by the existence of nature, that is, until there is something that can be seen, understood, distinguished, felt, etc. And this eternal nature or the out-birth of the Deity, called the kingdom of heaven, i.e., an infinity, or boundless opening of the properties, powers, wonders, and glories of the hidden Deity, and this not being done once, but is ever being done, ever standing in the same birth, forever and ever breaking forth and springing up in new forms and openings of the abyssal[10] God in the powers of nature. And out of this ocean of the manifested powers of nature, the will of the Deity created hosts of heavenly beings, full of the heavenly wonders introduced into a partaking of the infinity of God, to live in an eternal succession of heavenly sensations, to see and feel, to taste and find new forms of delight in an inexhaustible source of ever-changing and never-ceasing wonders of the Divine glory. Thomas, what an eternity is this, out of which and for which your eternal soul was created? What little, crawling things are all that an earthly ambition can set before you? Bear with patience for a while the rags of your earthly nature, the veil and darkness of flesh and blood as the lot of your inheritance from father Adam, but think nothing worth a thought but that which will bring you back to your first glory and land you safe in the region of eternity.

But to return. Nothing is before this eternal nature but the holy, supernatural Deity; and everything that is after it is creature, and has all its creaturely life and state in it and from it. This eternal nature has seven chief properties that are the doers or workers of everything that is done in it and can have neither more nor less because it is a birth from, or a manifestation of the Deity in nature. For the perfection of nature (as was before said of every Divine and happy creature) is a union of two things, or is a two-fold state. It is nature, and it is God manifested in nature.

Now God is triune and nature is triune, and hence there arises the ground of properties, three and three; and that which brings those three and three into union, or manifests the triune God in the triune nature, is another property, so that the glorious manifestation of the Deity in nature can have neither more nor less than seven chief properties from which everything that is known, found, and felt in all the universe of nature, in all the variety of creatures either in heaven or on earth, has its only rise, or cause, immediately.

Thomas- You say, Gordon that the triune Deity is united or manifested in triune nature, and that from this comes the glorious manifestation of God in seven heavenly properties called the kingdom of heaven. But how does it appear that this nature, before the entrance of the Deity into it, is triune? Or what is this triune nature before God that is supposed to be in union with it? 

Gordon- It is barely a desire. It neither is, nor has, nor can be anything else but a desire. For desire is the only thing in which the Deity can work and manifest Himself; for God can only come into that which wants and desires Him. The Deity is an infinite abundance, or fullness of riches and powers 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, unchallengeable distinction between God and nature and shows why neither can ever be changed into the other; it is because God is a universal all; and nature or desire is a universal want, or need to be filled with God. Now as nature can be nothing but a desire, so nothing is in or done in any natural way but as desire does it, because desire is the total of nature. And therefore, there is no strength or substance, no power or motion, no cause or effect in nature but that which is in itself a desire or the working and effect of a desire. This is the true origin of attraction and all its powers in this material world. It gives essence and substance to all that is matter and the properties of matter; it holds every element in its created state, and not only earth and stones, but light and air and motion are under its dominion. From the center to the circumference of this material system, every motion, separation, union, vegetation, or corruption begins no sooner, goes on no further than as attraction works. Take away attraction from this material system, and then it has all the annihilation it can ever possibly have. Why does nature have this attraction? It is because all nature, from its eternity has been, is, and forever can be only a desire and has nothing in itself but the properties of desire. Now the essential, inseparable properties of desire can be neither more nor less; and in this you have that tri-unity of nature which you asked after and in which the triune Deity manifested itself. I shall not now prove these three properties of the desire because I have already done that plainly enough elsewhere. But to go back now to your question where, or how this fire and water, etc., can be found since God is all love and goodness and His manifestation in nature is the kingdom of heaven. They are to be found in the two-fold state of heaven and the two-fold state of every heavenly creature. For seeing that the perfection of nature and the perfection of the intelligent creature consists in the same two-fold state, you have here the plainest ground and reason why and how every good, happy and new created being must of all necessity have fire and water, life and death set before it. Because it has it in its power to turn and give up its will to either of these lives, it can turn either to God or nature and therefore must have life or death, fire or water in its choice. 

Now this two-fold life which makes the perfection of nature and creature is, in other words, signified by the seven heavenly properties of nature; for when God is manifested in nature, all its seven properties are in a heavenly state. But in these seven properties, though all heavenly, lies the ground of fire and water, etc., because a division or separation can be made in them by the will of the creature. For the three first properties are as distinct from the four following ones as God is distinct from that which wants God. And these three first properties are the essence, or whole being of that desire which is called nature, or that which wants and needs God. When, therefore, the will of the creature turns from God into nature, it breaks or looses the union of the seven heavenly properties because nature, as distinct from God, has only the three first properties in it. And such a creature, having broken or lost the union of the seven properties, has fallen into the three first, which sums up to death. For when the first three properties have lost God or their union with the last four, then they are only nature, which in its whole being is nothing else but the strength and rage of hunger, an excess of want, of self-torment, and self-vexation. Surely now, my friend, this matter has been explained enough. 

Thomas- Indeed, I am quite satisfied; for by this account which you have given of the ground of nature and its true and full distinction from God, you have brought light into my mind. For if nature is always and only want, and has nothing in it but a strength of want generated from the three self-tormenting properties of it’s desire, if God is all love, joy, and happiness, an infinite all that is good, then the limits and bounds of good and evil, of happiness and misery are made as visibly distinct and as certainly to be known as the difference between a circle and a straight line. To live to desire, that is, to nature, is unavoidably entering into the region of all evil and misery because nature has nothing else in it, but on the other hand, to die to desire, that is, to turn from nature to God, is to be united with the infinite source of all that is good and blessed and happy. All that I wanted to know is now cleared up in the greatest plainness. And I have no difficulty about those passages of scripture which speak of the wrath, and fury, and vengeance of God. Wrath is His, just as all nature is His, and yet God is love that only rules and governs wrath as He governs the foaming waves of the sea and the madness of storms and tempests. The following propositions are as true as that two and two are four. First, that God in His holy Deity is as absolutely free from wrath and rage and as totally incapable of them as He is of hardness, and darkness because wrath and rage belong to nothing else, can exist in nothing else, have life in nothing else but in hardness, and darkness. Secondly, that all wrath is disorder and can be nowhere but in nature and creature because nothing else is capable of changing from right to wrong. Thirdly, that wrath can have no existence even in nature and creature until they have lost their first perfection which they had from God and are become that which they should not have become. Fourthly, that all the wrath and fury and vengeance that ever did or ever can break forth in nature and creature can be called and looked upon as the wrath and vengeance of God, just as the darkness as well as the light is to be called His. Gordon, what a key you have given me to the right understanding of scripture! For when nature and creature are known to be the only theater of evil and disorder, and our holy God as that governing love which wills nothing but the removal of all evil from everything as fast as infinite wisdom can find ways of doing it, then whether you read of the raining of fire and brimstone or only showers of heavenly manna falling upon the earth, it is only the same love working in such different ways and with diversity of instruments as time and place and occasion had made wise and good and helpful. Pharaoh with his hardened heart and Paul with his voice from heaven, though so contrary to one another, were both, the chosen vessels of the same God of love because both were miraculously taken out of their own state and made to do all the good to a blind and wicked world which they were capable of doing. And consequently, are all the treasures of the wisdom and goodness of God hidden in the letter of scripture and made the comfort and delight of my soul. Everything I read turns itself into a motive of loving and adoring the wonderful working of the love of God over all the various changing of nature and creature, until all evil shall be extinguished and all disorder go back again to its first harmonious state of perfection. 

If you depart from the idea that God is an infinity of 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 with the judgments 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 is under the care of a kind and skillful physician who seeks nothing but the perfect recovery of his patient, then whatever is done, whether a severe treatment of some sort or the other, or a treatment that is not painful, that is, whether or not the treatment includes pain, yet all is equally well done because love is the motive of both and both are done from the same principle of love and for the same end, to heal the patient. 

Gordon- Thomas, when love is the triune God that you serve, worship, and adore, the only God in whom you desire to live and move and have your being, then of a truth God dwells in you, and you in God. I shall now only add this one word more to strengthen and confirm your right understanding of all that is said of the wrath, or rage of God in the scriptures. The psalmist, you know, says this of God, "He gives forth His ice like morsels, and who is able to abide His frosts." Now, sir, if you know how to explain this scripture and can show how ice and frost can truly be ascribed to God as His, though absolutely impossible to have any existence in Him, then you have an easy and unerring answer of how the wrath and fury and vengeance that falls anywhere, upon any creature, is, and may be truly ascribed to God as His, though fury and vengeance are as inconsistent with and as impossible to have any existence in the God as lumps of ice, or the hardness of intolerable frosts. Now in this text setting forth the horror of God's ice and frost, you have the whole nature of Divine wrath set before you. Search all the scriptures and you will not find any wrath of God but what is bounded in nature, and is so described as to be itself a proof that it has no existence in the holy supernatural Deity. So, the psalmist says again, "The earth trembled and quaked, the very foundations also of the hills shook, and were removed, because He was angry." No wrath here but in the elements. Again, "There went a smoke out in His presence, and a consuming fire out of His mouth, so that coals were kindled from it. The springs of water were seen and the foundations of the round world were discovered at your chiding, O Lord, at the blasting of the breath of your displeasure." Now every working of the wrath of God described in scripture is strictly an example of this, it relates to a wrath solely confined to the powers and working properties of nature that lives and moves only in the elements of the fallen world, and does not reach the Deity any more than ice or frost do. The apostle says, "Avenge not yourselves, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." This is another full proof that wrath or vengeance is not in the holy Deity Itself as a quality of the Divine mind; for if it was, then vengeance would belong to every child of God that was truly born of Him or he could not have the Spirit of His Father, or be perfect as His Father in heaven is perfect. But if vengeance only belongs to God and can only be so affirmed of Him as ice and frost are His and belong to Him, if it has no other manner of working than as when it is said, "He sent out His arrows and scattered them, He cast forth lightning and destroyed them," then it is certain that the Divine vengeance is only in fallen nature and its disordered properties, and is no more in God Himself, than hailstones and coals of fire. And here you have the true reason why revenge or vengeance is not allowed to man; it is because vengeance can only work in the evil or disordered properties of fallen nature. But man being himself a part of fallen nature and subject to its disordered properties is not allowed to work with them because it would be stirring up evil in him, and wrath or revenge is a sin! God therefore reserves all vengeance to Himself, not because wrathful revenge is a temper or quality that can have any place in the Holy Deity but because the holy supernatural Deity, being free from all the properties of nature from where partial love and hatred spring, and God being in Himself nothing but an infinity of love, wisdom, and goodness, He alone knows how to overrule the disorders of nature and so to repay evil with evil that the highest good may be promoted by it. To say therefore that vengeance is to be reserved for God is only saying in other words that all the evils in nature are to be reserved and turned over to the love of God to be healed by his goodness. And every act of what is called Divine vengeance recorded in scripture may, and ought with the greatest strictness of truth, be called an act of the Divine love. When Sodom flamed and smoked with stinking brimstone, it was the love of God that kindled it, only to extinguish a more horrible fire. It was the same infinite love when it preserved Noah in the ark, when it turned Sodom into a burning lake, and overwhelmed Pharaoh in the Red Sea. And if God commanded the waters to destroy the old world, it was as high an act of the same infinite love toward that chaos as when it said to the first darkness upon the face of the deep, "Let there be light, and there was light." 

Everything in all scripture concerning the wrath or vengeance of God only teaches you these two infallible truths.

First, that all the wrath spoken of, works nowhere but in the wrathful, disordered elements and properties of fallen nature.

Secondly, that all the power that God exercises over them, all that he does at any time or on any occasion with or by them is solely the one work of his unchangeable love toward man. Just as the good physician acts from good will toward his patient when he orders a bitter or sour dose of medicine, as when he gives a sweet tasting dose. Now suppose the good physician to have such intense love for you as to disregard your dislike toward them and to force such medicines down your throat as are needed to save your life, suppose he should therefore call himself your severe physician and declare himself so rigid toward you that he would not spare you, nor permit you to escape his bitter medicine until all means of your recovery were tried, then you would have a true and just, though small representation of those bitter cups which God in his wrath forced fallen man to drink. Now as the bitter, sour, etc., in the physician's medicine are not an affirmation of any similar bitterness, heat, or sourness in the spirit of the physician that uses them but are things quite distinct from the state and spirit of his mind and only manifest his care and skill in the right use of such materials toward the health of his patient. So in like manner, all the elements of fallen nature are only so many outward materials in the hands of God formed and mixed into heat and cold, into fruitful and pestilential[11] effects, into serenity of seasons and blasting tempests, into means of health and sickness, of plenty and poverty, just as the wisdom and goodness of providence sees to be the fittest to deliver man from the miserable difficulty of his earthly nature and help him to become heavenly minded. If therefore it would be great folly to suppose bitterness, or heat, etc., to be in the Spirit of the physician when he gives a hot or bitter medicine, much greater folly it must surely be to suppose that wrath, vengeance, or any pestilential quality is in the Spirit of the holy Deity when a wrath, vengeance, or pestilence is stirred up in the fallen elements by the providence of God as a proper remedy for the evil of this or that time or occasion. 

Hear these decisive words of scripture, i.e., "Whom the Lord loves, he chastens." What a grossness therefore of mistake is it to conclude that wrath must be in the Deity because he chastens and threatens chastisement when you have God's own word for it that nothing but His love chastens. Again, the Lord says, "I have smitten you with blasting and mildew. Your vineyards, and your fig trees, and your olive yards did the palmerworm devour," and then the love that did this makes this complaint, "Yet you have not returned to me." Again, " I sent Pestilence among you; I have made the stench of your tents come up even into your nostrils," etc. And then the same love that did this, that made this use of the disordered elements, makes the same complaint again, "Yet you have not returned to me" (Amos 4:9-10). Now, how is it possible for words to give stronger proof that God is love, that he has no will toward fallen man but to bless them with works of love, and this as certain when he turns the air into a pestilence as when he makes the same air rain down manna upon the earth? Since neither the one, nor the other are done but as time and place and occasion render them the fittest means to make man return and adhere to God, that is, to come out of all the evil and misery of his fallen state and into God’s love. What can infinite love do more, or what can it do to give greater proof that all that it does proceeds from love? And here you are to observe that this is not said from human conjecture or any imaginary idea of God, but is openly asserted, constantly affirmed and repeated over and over again in the scripture.

 

Chapter 3

The Absolute Necessity Of the Spirit Of Love

Steven- There is no reason to continue our last discourse. The following propositions are sufficiently proved. First, that God’s love, wisdom, and goodness is infinite, that He always has and always will be the same unchangeable will to all goodness and works of love, as incapable of any sensibility of wrath or acting under it as of falling into pain or darkness and acting under their direction. 

Secondly, that all wrath, strife, discord, hatred, envy, or pride, etc., all heat and cold, all enmity in the elements, all grossness, and darkness are things that have no existence but in and from the sphere of fallen nature. Thirdly, that all the evils of contrariety and disorder in fallen nature are only as so many materials in the hands of infinite love and wisdom, all made to work in their different ways as far as is possible to the same end, i.e., to turn temporal evil into eternal good. So that whether you look at light or darkness, at night or day, at fire or water, at heaven or earth, at life or death, at prosperity or adversity, at blasting winds or heavenly dews, at sickness or health, you see nothing but such a state of things in and through which the supernatural Deity wills and seeks the restoration of fallen nature and creature to their first perfection. It now only remains that the doctrine of scripture concerning the atonement, which is necessary to be made by the life, sufferings, and death of Christ be explained, or in other words, the true meaning of that righteousness of God that must have satisfaction done to it before man can be reconciled to God. For this doctrine is thought by some to support the opinion of a wrath and resentment in the Deity itself. 

Gordon- This doctrine, of the atonement made by Christ, and the absolute necessity and real effectiveness of it to satisfy the righteousness, or justice of God, is the very ground and foundation of Christian redemption and the life and strength of every part of it. But then, this very doctrine is so far from supporting the opinion of a wrath in the God that in fact, it is an absolute and full denial of it and the strongest of demonstrations, that the wrath or resentment that is to be pacified or atoned cannot possibly be in God Himself. For this wrath that is to be atoned and pacified is in its whole nature nothing else but sin, or disorder in the creature. And when sin is extinguished in the creature, all the wrath that is between God and the creature is fully atoned. Search the entire Bible from one end to the other, and you will find that the atonement of that which is called the Divine wrath or justice and the extinguishing of sin in the creature are only different expressions for the same individual thing. And therefore, unless you will place sin in God, that wrath that is to be atoned or pacified cannot be placed in Him. The whole nature of our redemption has no other end but to remove or extinguish the wrath that is between God and man. When this is removed, man is reconciled to God. Therefore, where the wrath is, or where that is which needs to be atoned, there is that which is the blamable cause of the separation between God and man; there is that which Christ came into the world to extinguish, to quench or atone. If, therefore, this wrath, which is the blamable cause of the separation between God and man, is in God Himself, if Christ died to atone or extinguish a wrath that had gotten into the holy Deity itself, then it must be said that Christ made an atonement for God and not for man, and that which is called our redemption ought rather to be called the redemption of God, as saving and delivering Him and not man from his own wrath. This blasphemy is unavoidable if you suppose that the wrath for which Christ died to be a wrath in God Himself.

Again, the very nature of atonement absolutely shows that that which is to be atoned cannot possibly be in God nor even in any good being. For atonement implies the alteration or removal of something that is not as it ought to be. And therefore, every creature, so long as it is good and has its proper state of goodness, neither needs nor can admit of any atonement because it has nothing in it that needs to be altered or taken out of it. And therefore, atonement cannot possibly have any place in God because nothing in God needs, or can receive, alteration; neither can it have place in any creature but so far as it has lost or altered that which it had from God and is fallen into disorder, and then, that which brings this creature back to its first state, which alters that which is wrong in it and takes its evil out of it, is its true and proper atonement. 

Water is the proper atonement for the rage of fire; and that which changes a tempest into a calm is its true atonement. And, therefore, as sure as Christ is a propitiation and atonement, so sure is it, that that which he does, as a propitiation and atonement, can have no place, but in altering that evil and disorder which, in the state and life of the fallen creature, needs to be altered. Suppose man had not fell, then there wouldn’t be any room nor need for atonement, a plain and full proof that the work of atonement is nothing else but the altering or quenching of that which is evil in the fallen creature. Hell, wrath, darkness, misery, and eternal death mean the same thing throughout all scripture, and these are the only things from which we need to be redeemed; and where there is nothing of hell, there is nothing of wrath, nor anything that needs the benefits of the atonement made by Christ. Either, therefore, all hell is in the essence of the holy Deity, or nothing that needs to be atoned for by the merits and death of Christ can possibly be in the Deity itself. The apostle says that “We are by nature children of wrath,” the same thing as when the psalmist says, "I was shaped in wickedness, and in sin has my mother conceived me." And therefore, that wrath which needs the atonement of the sufferings, blood, and death of Christ is no other than that sin or sinful state in which we are naturally born. But now, if this wrath could be supposed to be in the Deity itself, then it would follow that by being by nature children of wrath, we should thereby be the true children of God; we should not need any atonement or new birth from above to make us partakers of the Divine nature because that wrath that was in us would be our dwelling in God and He in us. 

Again, all scripture teaches us that God wills and desires the removal or extinction of that wrath which is between God and the creature, and therefore all scripture teaches that the wrath is not in God, for God cannot will the removal or alteration of anything that is in Himself; this is as impossible as for Him to will the extinction of His own omnipotence. Nor can there be anything in God contrary to, or against His own will; and yet, if God wills the extinction of a wrath that is in Himself, it must be in Him, contrary to or against His own will. 

This, I presume, is enough to show you that the atonement made by Christ is itself the greatest of all proofs that it was not to atone or extinguish any wrath in God, nor, indeed, in any way to affect or alter any quality or temper in the Divine mind, but purely and solely to overcome and remove all that death and hell, and wrath, and darkness that had opened itself in the nature, birth, and life of fallen man. 

Steven- The truth of all this is not to be denied. And yet it is as true that all our systems of divinity give quite another account of this very important matter. The satisfaction of Christ is represented as a satisfaction made to a wrathful Deity, and the merits of the sufferings and death of Christ as that which could only avail with God to give up his own wrath and think of mercy toward man. No, what is still worse, if possible, the ground, and nature, and effectiveness of this great transaction between God and man is often explained by debtor and creditor. Man as having contracted a debt with God that he could not pay, and God as having a right to insist upon the payment of it, and therefore only to be satisfied by receiving the death and sacrifice of Christ as a valuable consideration instead of the debt that was due to Him from man. 

Gordon- And so you may see, Steven, how unreasonably, complaint has been made against the books “Appeal[12],” The Spirit of Prayer, etc., as introducing a philosophy into the doctrines of the gospel that is not supported by the letter of scripture, though everything there asserted has been over and over again, shown to be well grounded in the letter of scripture and included in the most fundamental doctrines of the gospel. Yet they who make this complaint blindly swallow a vanity of philosophy of the most important part of gospel religion, which not only has less scripture for it than the infallibility of the Pope, and is directly contrary to the plain letter of every single text of scripture that relates to this matter, as I will now show you. First, the apostle says, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life." What becomes now of the philosophy of debtor and creditor, of a satisfaction made by Christ to a wrath in God? Is it not the greatest of all fictions and in full contrariety to the plain written word of God? "God so loved the world"; behold the degree of it. But when did he so love it? Why, before it was redeemed, before He gave His only Son to be the redeemer of it. Here you see that all wrath in God that was before our redemption, or the sacrifice of Christ for us is utterly excluded; there is no possibility for the supposition of it, it is as absolutely denied as words can do it. And therefore the infinite love, mercy, and compassion of God toward fallen man is not purchased, or procured for us by the death of Christ, but the incarnation and sufferings of Christ come from and are given to us by the infinite love of God, and are the gracious effects of His own love and goodness toward us. It is needless to show you how constantly this same doctrine is asserted and repeated by all the apostles, but I will give you a few examples. John again said, "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because he sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." Again, "This is the record that God has given to us, eternal life; and this life is in his Son." Again, Paul says, "Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation." Which is repeated and further opened in these words, "Giving thanks unto the Father, who has made us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son" (Col. 1:12-13). And again, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). 

How great therefore, Steven, is the error, how total the disregard of scripture, and how vain the philosophy which talks of a wrath in God prior to our redemption, or of a debt which He could not forgive us until He had received a valuable consideration for it when all scripture from page to page tells us that all the mercy and blessing and benefits of Christ as our Savior are the free foreordained gift of God Himself to us, and bestowed upon us for no other reason, from no other motive but the greatness of His own love toward us, agreeable to what the evangelical prophet says of God, "I am he that blotted out transgressions for my own sake" (Isa. 43:25), that is, not for any reason or motive that can be laid before Me but because I am love itself, and my own nature is my unchallengeable reason why nothing but works of love, blessing, and goodness can come from me. Look now at the scripture account of the nature of the atonement of Christ, and this will further show us that it is not to atone or alter any quality or temper in the Divine mind, nor for the sake of God, but purely and solely to atone, to quench, and overcome that death and wrath and hell under the power of which man had fallen. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." This is the whole work, the whole nature, and the sole end of Christ's sacrifice of Himself; and there is not a syllable in scripture that gives you any other account of it. It all consists from the beginning to the end, in carrying on the one work of regeneration; and therefore the apostle says, the first Adam was made a living soul, but the last or second Adam was made a quickening Spirit because He was sent into the world by God to make alive and revive that life from above which we lost in Adam. And He is called our ransom, our atonement, etc., for no other reason but because that which He did and suffered in our fallen nature was as truly an effective means of our being born again to a new heavenly life of Him and from Him, as that which Adam did was the true and natural cause of our being born in sin and the impurity of bestial flesh and blood. 

And as Adam by what he did may be truly said to have purchased our misery and corruption, to have bought death for us, and to have sold us into a slavery under the world, the flesh, and the devil, though all that we have from him or suffer by him is only the inward working of his own nature and life within us, so according to the plain meaning of the words, Christ may be said to be our price, our ransom, and atonement; though all that He does for us as buying, ransoming, and redeeming us is done wholly and solely by a birth of His own nature and Spirit brought to life in us. The apostle says, "Christ died for our sins." Therefore it is because He is the great sacrifice for sin and its true atonement. But how and why is He so? The apostle tells you in these words, "The sting of death is sin; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ"; and therefore Christ is the atonement of our sins when by and from Him living in us we have victory over our sinful nature. The scriptures frequently say Christ gave Himself for us. But what is the full meaning, effect, and benefit of His giving Himself for us? The apostle does away with all doubt when he says, "Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to Himself a peculiar people...that He might deliver us from this present 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 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 is born and formed in us, which so purges us from our sins that we are thereby in Him, and by Him dwelling in us we become new creatures having our life in heaven. 

As Adam is truly our defilement and impurity by his birth in us, so Christ is our atonement and purification by our being born again of Him and what is this that has been made alive and revived in us? It is that first Divine life which was extinguished in Adam. And therefore, as Adam purchased death for us, just so in the same manner, in the same degree, and in the same sense, Christ purchases life for us. Each of them only, and solely by their own inward life within us. This is the one scripture account of the whole nature, the sole end, and full effectiveness of all that Christ did and suffered for us. It is all comprehended in these two scriptures:

1)"That Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil;”

2)“That as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive."

From the beginning to the end of Christ's atoning work, no other power is ascribed to it, nothing else is intended by it as an appeaser of wrath but the destroying of all that in man which comes from the devil, no other merits, or value, or infinite worth than that of its infinite ability and sufficiency to bring to life again in all human nature that heavenly life that died in Adam. 

Steven- Though all that is here said seems to have both the letter and the spirit of scripture on its side, yet I am afraid it will not be thought enough to assert the infinite value and merits of our Savior's sufferings. For it is the common opinion of the doctors of divinity and Bible school teachers, that the righteousness or justice of God must have satisfaction done to it. And that nothing could avail with God as a satisfaction but the infinite worth and value of the sufferings of Christ. 

Gordon- It is true, Steven, that this is often, and almost always asserted by human writers, but it is neither the language nor the doctrine of scripture. Not a word, not one Scripture is there, that says that righteousness or justice is an attribute of God that must be satisfied or that the sacrifice of Christ is that which satisfies the righteousness that is in God Himself. It has been sufficiently proved to you that God did not want to be reconciled to fallen man; that he never was, nor had He ever been anything else toward fallen man but love; and that His love brought forth the whole scheme of His redemption. That is the reason that the scriptures do not say that Christ came into the world to procure for us the Divine favor and good will of God in order to put a stop to the antecedent righteous wrath in God toward us. No, in fact, the reverse of all this is the truth, i.e., that Christ and His whole mediatorial office came purely and solely from God, already so reconciled to us as to bestow an infinity of love upon us. "The God of all grace," says the apostle, "Who has called us to His eternal glory by Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 5:10). Here you see Christ is not the cause or motive of God's mercy toward fallen man, but God's own love for us, His own desire of our eternal glory and happiness has for that end given us Christ that we may be made partakers of it. The same as when it is again said, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," that is, calling and raising it out of its ungodly and miserable state. Therefore all the mystery of our redemption proclaims nothing but a God of love toward fallen man. It was the love of God that could not behold the misery of fallen man without demanding and calling for his salvation. It was love alone that wanted to have full satisfaction done to it and such a love as could not be satisfied until all that glory and happiness that was lost by the death of Adam was fully restored and regained again by the death of Christ. 

Steven- But is there not some good sense in which righteousness or justice may be said to be satisfied by the atonement and sacrifice of Christ? 

Gordon- Yes, most certainly there is. But then it is only that righteousness or justice that belongs to man and ought to be in him. Now righteousness, wherever it is to be, has no mercy in itself; it makes no condescension; it is inflexibly rigid; its demands are unstoppable; prayers, offerings, and entreaties have no effect upon it; it will have nothing but itself, nor will it ever cease its demands or take anything in lieu of them as a satisfaction instead of itself. Consequently, "Without holiness," says the apostle, "No man shall see the Lord." And again, "Nothing that is defiled or impure can enter into the kingdom of heaven." And this is what is meant by righteousness being rigid and having no mercy; it cannot spare, or have pity, or hear entreaty because all its demands are righteous and good and therefore must be satisfied or fulfilled. Now righteousness has its absolute demands upon man because man was created righteous and has lost that original righteousness which he ought to have kept in its first purity. And this is the only righteousness or justice which Christ came into the world to satisfy, not by giving some highly valuable thing as a satisfaction to it, but by raising up again in all human nature that holiness or righteousness which originally belonged to it. For to satisfy righteousness means neither more nor less than to fulfill it. Nor can righteousness intend to have satisfaction in any being, but in restoring or fulfilling righteousness in that being which had departed from it. And therefore the apostle says that we are created again unto righteousness in Christ Jesus. And this is the only way of Christ's taking away the sins of the world, namely, by restoring to man his lost righteousness. For this end, says the scripture, "Christ gave Himself for the church, that He might sanctify and cleanse it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:25-27). This is the one righteousness which Christ came into the world to satisfy by fulfilling it Himself and enabling man by a new birth from Him to fulfill it. And when all unrighteousness is removed by Christ from the entire human nature, then all that righteousness is satisfied, to accomplish this, Christ poured out His most precious, availing, and meritorious blood. 

Steven- Gordon, the ground on which you stand must certainly be true. It so easily, and so fully solves all the difficulties and objections and enables you to give so plain and solid an account of every part of our redemption. This point is fully cleared up for me.

Gordon- However, Steven, I will add a word or two more upon it so that there may be no room left either for misunderstanding or denying what has been said of the nature of that righteousness which must have a full satisfaction done to it by the atoning and redeeming work of Christ. You will then be fully possessed of these two great truths. First, that there is no righteous wrath in God Himself and therefore none to be atoned for. Secondly, that though God Himself is an infinity of love from whom nothing else but works of love and blessing and goodness can proceed, yet sinful men are hereby not at all delivered from that which the apostle calls the terrors of the Lord, but that all the threatening of woe, misery, and punishment denounced in scripture against sin and sinners both in this world and that which is to come, stand in their full force, and are not in the least degree weakened, or less to be dreaded because God is all love. Everything that God has created is right and just and good in its kind and has its own righteousness within itself. The goodness of its nature is its only law, and it has no other righteousness but that of continuing in its first state. No creature is subject to any pain or punishment or guilt of sin but because it has departed from its first right state, and can feel the painful loss of its own first perfection. Every intelligent creature that departs from the state of its creation is unrighteous, evil, and full of its own misery. There is no possibility for any disordered, fallen creature to be free from its own misery and pain until it is again in its first state of perfection. This is the certain and infallible ground of the absolute necessity of a perfect holiness in this life, and a further purification after death before man can enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now this pain and misery which is inseparable from the creature that is not in that state in which it ought to be, in which it was created, is nothing else but the painful state of the creature because it has lost its own proper righteousness, as sickness is the painful state of the creature which has lost its own proper health. No other righteousness, no other justice, no other severe vengeance demands satisfaction or torments the sinner but that very righteousness which once was in him, which still belongs to him, and therefore will not allow him to have any rest or peace until it is again in him as it was at the first. All, therefore, that Christ does as an atonement for sin or as a satisfaction to righteousness is all done in and to and for man, and has no other operation but that of renewing the fallen nature of man and raising it up into its first state of original righteousness. If this righteousness which belongs solely to man and needs no satisfaction but that of being restored and fulfilled in the human nature, is sometimes called the righteousness of God, it is only called this because it is a righteousness which man received originally from God, in and by His creation; and, therefore, as it comes from God, has its whole nature and power of working as it does from God, it may very justly be called God's righteousness. This way of ascribing to God this righteousness, which is to be found in man, the psalmist has said of God, "Your arrows stick fast in me, and your hand pressed me sore." And yet nothing else is meant by it than when he says, "My sins have taken such a hold of me that I am not able to look up...My wickedness are gone over my head, and are like a sore burden too heavy for me to bear." Now whether you call this state of man the burden of his sins and wickedness or the arrows of the Almighty and the weight of God's hand, they mean the same thing which can be called by these different names for no other reason than this, because man's own original righteousness which he had from God makes his sinful state a pain and torment to him and lies heavy upon him in every commission of sin. And when the psalmist again says, "Take your plague away from me, I am even consumed by means of your heavy hand," it is only praying to be delivered from his own plague, and praying for the same thing as when he says in other words, "Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

Now this language of scripture which teaches us to call the pains and torments of our sins the arrows, darts, and strokes of God's hand upon us, which calls us to have the power, presence, and operation of God in all that we feel and find in our own inward state, is the language of the most exalted piety and highly suitable to that scripture which tells us that in God we live, and move, and have our being. For by teaching us to find and own the power and operation of God in everything that goes on within us, it keeps us continually turned to God for all that we want and by all that we feel within ourselves. It brings us to this best of all confessions, that pain as well as peace of mind is the effect and manifestation of God's infinite love and goodness toward us. For we could not have this pain and sensibility of the burden of sin but because the love and goodness of God made us originally righteous and happy; and therefore, all the pains and torments of sin come from God's first goodness toward us and are in themselves truly the arrows of His love and His blessed means of drawing us back to that first righteous state for which His first and never ceasing love created us. 

Steven- The matter, therefore, plainly stands accordingly. There is no righteous wrath or vindictive justice in God Himself, which as an attribute of resentment in the Divine mind wants to be contented, atoned, or satisfied; but man's original righteousness which was once his peace, and happiness, and rest in God is by the fall of Adam become his tormentor, his plague that continually exercises its good vengeance upon him until it truly regains its first state in him. 

Secondly, man must be under this pain, punishment, and vengeance to all eternity; there is no possibility in the nature of the thing for it to be otherwise though God be all love, unless man's lost righteousness be fully again possessed by him. Therefore, the doctrine of God being all love, of God having no wrath in Himself, has nothing in it to abate the force of those scriptures which threaten punishment to sinners, or to make them less fearful of living and dying in their sins.

Gordon- What you say, Steven is very true; but then it is but half the truth of this matter. You should have added that this doctrine is the only reason why the scriptures abound with so many declarations of woe, misery, and judgments sometimes executed and sometimes only threatened by God, and why all sinners to the end of the world must know and feel "That the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness,“ and that “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish must be upon every soul of man that does evil" (Rom. 2:8-9). For all these things, which the apostle elsewhere calls the terrors of the Lord, have no ground, nothing that calls for them, nothing that vindicates the fitness and justice of them either with regard to God or man but this one truth, i.e., that God is in Himself an infinity of love from whom nothing but the out-flowing of love and goodness can come forth, from eternity to eternity. For if God is all love, if He wills nothing toward fallen man but his full deliverance from the blind slavery and captivity of his earthly, bestial nature, then every kind of punishment, distress, and affliction that can extinguish the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of this life may, and ought to be expected from God merely because He is all love and good will toward fallen man. 

To say, therefore, as some have said, if God is all love toward fallen man, how can He threaten or chastise sinners? This is like saying, if God is all goodness in Himself and toward man, how can He do that in and to man which is for his good? As absurd as to say, if the able physician is all love, goodness, and good will toward his patients, how can he give them medicine that tastes bitter, how can he order a limb cut off? No, so absurd is this reasoning that if it could be proved that God had no chastisement for sinners, the very lack of this chastisement would be the greatest of all proofs that God was not all love and goodness toward man. The meek, merciful, and compassionate Jesus who had no errand in this world but to bless and save mankind said, “If your right eye or your right hand offend you, pluck out the one, cut off the other, and cast them from you” And that He said all this from love He adds, “It is better for you to do this than that your whole body should be cast into hell”; therefore, if the holy Jesus had been lacking in this severity, He was lacking in true love toward man. Therefore, because of the pure love of God sinners can justly expect from God that no sin will pass unpunished, but that His love will visit them with every calamity and distress that can help to break and purify the bestial heart of man and awaken in him true repentance and conversion to God. It is love alone in the holy Deity that will allow no peace to the wicked, nor ever cease its judgments until every sinner is forced to confess that it is good for him that he has been in trouble, and thankfully own that not the wrath but the love of God has plucked out that right eye, cut off that right hand which he ought to have done but would not do for himself and his own salvation. 

Again, this doctrine that declares that there is no wrath in the Divine mind, but places all wrath in the evil state of fallen nature and creature, has everything in it that can prove to man the dreadful nature of sin and the absolute necessity of totally departing from it. It leaves no room for self-delusion, but puts an end to every false hope or vain seeking for relief in anything else but the total extinction of sin. And this it effectually does by showing that damnation is no foreign, separate, or imposed state that is brought in upon us or attributed to us by the will of God, but is the inborn, natural, essential state of our own disordered nature, which is absolutely impossible in the nature of the thing to be anything else but our own hell both here and hereafter, unless all sin be separated from us and righteousness be again made our natural state by a birth of itself in us. And all this, not because God will have it so by an arbitrary act of His sovereign will, but because He cannot change His own nature or make anything to be happy and blessed, but only that which has its proper righteousness and is of one will and spirit with Himself, because He and He alone is the source of all happiness! If then every creature that has lost or is without the true righteousness of its nature must as such be of all necessity absolutely separated from God and necessarily under the pain and misery of a life that has lost all its own natural good, if no omnipotence or mercy or goodness of God can make it to be otherwise or give any relief to the sinner but by a total extinction of sin, by a birth of righteousness in the soul, then it fully appears that according to this doctrine, everything in God, and nature, and creature calls the sinner to an absolute renunciation of all sin as the only possible means of salvation and leaves no room for him to deceive himself with the hopes that anything else will do instead of it. Vainly therefore is it said that if God be all love, the sinner is let loose from the dreadful apprehensions of living and dying in his sins. On the other hand, deny this doctrine and say with the current of scholastic Divines that sin must be doomed to eternal pain and death unless a supposed wrath in the mind of the Deity is first atoned and satisfied, and that Christ's death was that valuable gift or offering made to God by which alone he could be moved to lay aside or extinguish His own wrath toward fallen man, say this; and then you open a wide door for licentiousness and infidelity in some, and superstitious fears in others. For if the evil, the misery, and sad effects of sin are placed in a wrath in the Divine mind, what can this cause in the minds of the pious, only superstitious fears about a supposed wrath in God which they can never know when it is, or is not, atoned for? Every kind of superstition has its birth from this belief and cannot be otherwise. And as to the licentious, who want to stifle all fears of gratifying all their passions, this doctrine has a natural tendency to do this for them. For if they are taught that the hurt and misery of sin is not its own natural state, not owing to its own wrath and disorder but to a wrath in the Deity, how easy is it for them to believe either that God may not be so full of wrath as has been reported, or that He may overcome it Himself and not keep the sinner eternally in a misery that is not his own but wholly brought upon him from without by a resentment in the Divine mind.

Again, this account which the Bible schools give of the sacrifice of Christ made to atone for a wrath in God by the infinite value of Christ's death is that alone which helps Socinians, Deists, and infidels of all kinds to splitting of hairs and objections to the mystery of our redemption that can’t be silenced by the most able defenders of that Bible school fiction. The learning of a Grotius or Stillingfleet when defending such an account of the atonement and satisfaction rather tends to increase rather than lessen the objections to this mystery. But if you take this matter as it truly is in itself, i.e., that God is in Himself all love and goodness, therefore can be nothing else but all love and goodness toward fallen man, and that fallen man is subject to no pain or misery either present or to come but that which is the natural, unavoidable, essential effect of his own evil and disordered nature and that it is impossible for him to alter it by himself, and that the infinite, never ceasing love of God has given Jesus Christ as the highest and only possible means that heaven and earth can afford to save man from himself, from his own evil, misery, and death, and restore to him his original Divine life.

When you look at this matter in this true light, then a God all love, and an atonement for sin by Christ, not made to pacify a wrath in God but to bring forth, fulfill, and restore righteousness in the creature that had lost it. An atonement that has everything in it that can make the providence of God adorable and the state of man comfortable. Here all superstition and superstitious fears are at once totally cut off, and every work of piety is turned into a work of love. Here every false hope of every kind is taken from the wicked; they have no ground left to stand upon. Nothing to trust to as a deliverance from misery but the total eradication of sin. The Socinian and the infidel are here also robbed of all their philosophy against this mystery; for as it is not founded upon, and does not teach an infinite resentment that could only be satisfied by an infinite atonement, as it does not stand upon the ground of debtor and creditor, all their arguments which suppose it to be such are quite beside the matter and do not touch the truth of this blessed mystery. For it is the very reverse of all this, it declares a God that is all love and the atonement of Christ to be nothing else in itself but the highest, most natural and effective means through all the possibility of things that the infinite love and wisdom of God could use to put an end to sin, and death, and hell and restore to man his first Divine state or life. I say the most natural, effectual means through all the possibilities of nature; for there is nothing that is supernatural, however mysterious, in the whole system of our redemption; every part of it has its ground in the workings and powers of nature, and all our redemption is only nature set right, or made to be that which it ought to be. There is nothing that is supernatural but God alone; everything besides Him is from and subject to the state of nature. It can never rise out of it, or have anything contrary to it. No creature can have either health or sickness, good or evil, or any state either from God or itself but strictly according to the capacities, powers, and workings of nature. The mystery of our redemption, though it comes from the supernatural God, has nothing in it but what is done within the sphere and according to the powers of nature. There is nothing supernatural in it or belonging to it but that supernatural love and wisdom which brought it forth, presides over it, and directs it until Christ as a second Adam has removed and extinguished all that evil which the first Adam brought into the human nature. And the whole administration of Jesus Christ, from His being the in-spoken Word or bruiser of the serpent given to Adam, to His birth, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven has its foundation and reason in this because nothing else in all the possibilities of nature, either in heaven or on earth could begin, carry on, and totally effect man's deliverance from the evil of his own fallen nature.

“With this one difference . . .”

Therefore Christ is the one, full, sufficient atonement for the sin of the whole world because He is the only natural remedy and possible cure of all the evil that has happened as a result of the fall of man, the only natural life and resurrection of all holiness and happiness that died in Adam. And seeing that all this process of Christ is given to the world from the supernatural, antecedent, infinite love of God, therefore is it that the apostle says God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. And Christ in God is nothing else in His whole nature but that same, certain, and natural parent of a redemption to the whole human nature, as fallen Adam was the certain and natural parent of a miserable life to every man that is descended from him, with this one difference, that from fallen Adam we are born in sin whether we will to be or not, but we cannot have the new birth which Christ has all power to bring forth in us, unless the will of our heart chooses it. As nothing came to us from Adam but according to the powers of nature, and because he was that which he was with relation to us, so it is with Christ and our redemption by Him: All the work is grounded in and proceeds according to the powers of nature or in a way of natural efficiency to produce its effects; and everything that is found in the person, character, and condition of Christ is only there as His true and natural qualification to do all that He came to do in us and for us. That is to say, Christ was made to be that which He was; He was a seed of life in our first fallen father; He lived as a blessing of promise in the patriarchs, and prophets, and Israel of God; He was born as a man of a pure virgin; He did all that He did whether as suffering, dying, conquering, rising, and ascending into heaven only as so many things which as naturally and as truly, according to the nature of things, qualified Him to bring about the return of the Divine life in us, just as the state and condition of Adam qualified him to make us the slavish children of earthly, bestial flesh and blood. This is the comfortable doctrine of our redemption: nothing in God but an infinity of love and goodness toward our fallen condition; nothing in Christ but that which had its necessity in the nature of things to make Him able to give, and us to receive, our full salvation from Him.

I will now only add that from the beginning of Deism and from Socinus to this day, not a Socinian or Deist has ever seen or opposed this mystery in its true state as is undeniably plain from all their writings. A late writer, who has as much knowledge, zeal and wit in the cause of Deism as any of his predecessors, is forced to attack our redemption by giving this false following account of it. "That a perfectly innocent being (Jesus Christ) of the highest order among intelligent natures should personate the offender and undergo in his place in order to take down the wrath and resentment of God against the criminal (us) and dispose God to show mercy to him, we Deists conceive it 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 God 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, infinite love and goodness of God toward fallen man. That the innocent Christ did not come to still an angry Deity but merely as cooperating, assisting, and uniting with that love of God which desired our salvation. That He did not suffer in our place but on our account, which is a very different matter. 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 were to be “in our place.” 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 than His ascension into heaven for us should be in our place and stead. I have quoted the above passage only to show you that a defender of Deism, however acute and ingenious, has not one objection to the doctrine of our redemption but that which is founded on the grossest ignorance and total mistake of the whole nature of it. But when I lay this gross ignorance to the Deists charge, I don't mean any natural lack of intelligence, or incapacity in them to judge correctly, but that something, either men or books or their own way of life has hindered their seeing the true foundation and real nature of Christianity as it truly is. 

Steven- I would hope, Gordon, that from all that has been said in the Demonstration of the Fundamental Errors of the Plain Account, the Appeal to all that Doubt, etc., and the rest that follow, to these dialogues in which Christianity and Deism, is so plainly explained so that all who are serious amongst the Deists will be prevailed upon to reconsider the matter. For though some people have been hasty enough to charge those writings with fanaticism, and as disclaiming the use of our reason in religious matters, yet this charge can be made by none but those who, have not read them, but, instead listen to rumored censures. The true ground, nature, and power of faith is opened by fully proving that this saying of Christ, "According to your faith, so be it done unto you," takes in every human; and that all men, whether Christians, Deists, idolaters, or atheists, they are all equally men of faith, all equally and absolutely governed by it and therefore must have all that they have, salvation or damnation, strictly and solely according to their faith. All of this is so evidently proved that I can't help thinking that every reader with understanding must be forced to accept it. 

Thomas- All of this has been well said. But let us now return to the finishing of our main point which was to show that the doctrine of a God all love does not do away with the necessity of Christ's death and the infinite value and merits of it but is itself the fullest proof and strongest confirmation of both. 

Gordon- How it could enter into anyone's head to charge this doctrine with destroying the necessity and merits of Christ's death is exceeding strange. For look where you will, no other cause or reason of the death of Christ can be found but in the love of God toward fallen man. Nor could the love of God will or accept the death of Christ but because of its absolute necessity and effectiveness to do all that for fallen man which the love of God would insist be done for him. God did not, could not, have or desire the sufferings and death of Christ for what they were in themselves. No, the higher and greater such sufferings would have been, were they only considered in themselves, the less pleasing they would have been to a God who wills nothing but blessing and happiness to everything capable of it. But all that Christ was and did and suffered was infinitely prized and highly acceptable to the love of God because all that Christ was, and did, and suffered in His own person was that which gave Him full power to be a common father of life to all that died in Adam. Had Christ not accomplished any of the things that He did or had He suffered in His own person, He could not have stood in that relation to all mankind as Adam had done. Had He not been given to the first fallen man as a seed of the woman, as a light of life, enlightening every man that comes into the world, He could not have had His seed in every man as Adam had, nor have been as universal a father of life as Adam was of death. Had he not in the fullness of time become a man born of a pure virgin, the first seed of life in every man must have lain only as a seed and could not have come to the fullness of the birth of a new man in Christ Jesus. For the children can have no other state of life but that which their father first had. And therefore Christ, as the father of a regenerated human race, must first stand in the fullness of that human state which was to be derived from Him into all His children. This is the absolute necessity of Christ's being all that he was before he became man, a necessity arising from the nature of the thing. Because He could not possibly have had the relation of a father to all mankind, nor any power to be a quickener[13] of a life of heaven in them, but because He was both God in Himself and a seed of God in all of them. Now all that Christ was, and did, and suffered after He became man is from the same necessity founded in the nature of the thing. He suffered on no other account but because that which He came to do in and for human nature was and could be nothing else in itself but a work of sufferings and death. 

A crooked line cannot become straight but by having all its crookedness taken from it. And there is but one way possible in nature for a crooked line to lose its crookedness. Now the sufferings and death of Christ stand in this same kind of necessity. He was made man for our salvation, that is, He took upon Himself our fallen nature to bring it out of its evil crooked state and set it again in that righteousness in which it was created. Now there were not two ways of doing this, no more than there are two ways of making a crooked line straight. If the life of fallen nature which Christ had taken upon Himself was to be overcome by Him, then every kind of suffering and dying that was a giving up or departing from the life of fallen nature was just as necessary in the nature of the thing as that the line to be made straight must give up, and part with every kind and degree of its own crookedness. And therefore the sufferings and death of Christ were, in the nature of the thing, the only possible way of His acting contrary to and overcoming all the evil that was in the fallen state of man. The apostle says, "The captain of our salvation was to be made perfect through sufferings." This was the reason for His sufferings. Had He been without them, He could not have been perfect in Himself as a son of man nor the restorer of perfection in all mankind. But why is this so? Because His perfection as a son of man, or the captain of human salvation, could only consist in His acting in and with a spirit suitable to the first created state of perfect man; that is, He must in His Spirit be as much above all the good and evil of this fallen world as the first man was before his fall. He could not do this but by showing that all the good of the earthly life was renounced by Him and that all the evil which the world, the malice of men and devils could bring upon Him could not hinder His living wholly and solely to God and doing His will on earth with the same fullness as angels do it in heaven. But had there been any evil in all fallen nature, whether in life, death, or hell that had not attacked Him with all its force, He could not have been said to have overcome it. And therefore so sure as Christ the son of man was to overcome the world, death, hell, and Satan, so sure is it that all the evils which they could possibly bring upon Him were to be felt and suffered by Him and this was as absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, to declare His perfection and prove His superiority over them. Surely, my friend, it is now proved enough to you how a God all love toward fallen man must love, desire, and delight in all the sufferings of Christ which alone could enable Him as a son of man to undo and reverse all that evil which the first man had done to all his posterity. 

Steven- Oh, sir, what a sweet light this mystery is now placed. And yet in no other light than that in which the letter of all scripture sets it. No wrath in God, no fictitious atonement, no folly of debtor and creditor, no suffering in Christ for suffering's sake, but a Christ suffering and dying as His same victory over death and hell as when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. 

Gordon- Steven, you can plainly see in what the infinite merits, or the availing effectiveness and glorious power of the sufferings and death of Christ consist, since they were that in and through which Christ Himself came out of the state of fallen nature and received power to give the same victory to all His brethren of the human race. Wonder not therefore that the scriptures so frequently ascribes all our salvation to the sufferings and death of Christ, that they continually referred to them as the wounds and stripes by which we are healed, as the blood by which we are washed from our sins, as the price (much above gold and precious jewels) by which we are bought. Wonder not also that in the Old Testament, its service, sacrifices, and ceremonies were instituted to typify and point at the great sacrifice of Christ, and to keep up a continual hope, a strong expectation, and belief of it. And that in the New Testament, the reality, the benefits, and the glorious effects of Christ our Passover being actually sacrificed for us are so joyfully repeated by every apostle. It is because Christ, as suffering and dying, was nothing else but Christ conquering and overcoming all the false good and the hellish evil of the fallen state of man. His resurrection from the grave and ascension into heaven, though great in themselves and necessary parts of our deliverance, were yet but the consequences and genuine effects of his sufferings and death. These were in themselves the reality of his conquest; all His great work was done and effected in them and by them, and His resurrection and ascension was only His entering into the possession of that which His sufferings and death had gained for Him. 

Wonder not then that all the true followers of Christ, the saints of every age, have so gloried in the cross of Christ, have attributed such great things to it, have desired nothing so much as to be partakers of it, to live in constant union with it. It is because His sufferings, His death and cross were the fullness of His victory over all the works of the devil. Not an evil in flesh and blood, not a misery of life, not a chain of death, not a power of hell and darkness, for all were broken, and overcome by the process of a suffering and dying Christ. Well therefore may the cross of Christ be the glory of Christians. 

Steven- This matter is so solidly and fully cleared up that I am almost ashamed to ask you anything further about it. Yet explain a little more, if you please, how it is that the sufferings and death of Christ gave Him power to become a common father of life to all that died in Adam. Or how it is that we, by virtue of them, have victory over all the evil of our fallen state. 

Gordon- You are to know, Steven, that the Christian religion is no arbitrary system of Divine worship, but is the one true, and only religion of nature, that is, it is wholly founded in the nature of things, has nothing in it supernatural or contrary to the powers and demands of nature, but all that it does is only in and by and according to the workings and possibilities of nature. A religion that is not founded in nature is all fiction and falsity and as much 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 bad 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 demand of nature. Nor can any fallen creature be raised out of its fallen state, even by the omnipotence 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; and therefore all that God does, is and must be done in and by the powers of nature. God though omnipotent can give no existence to any creature but that which does exist 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. 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 supernaturally, or in a way that is contrary to the powers of nature; everything 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 promises 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 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 only natural and possible way of overcoming all the evil of fallen man, as light is the only natural, possible thing that can expel darkness. And therefore it is that all the mysteries of the gospel, however 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; it is 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 us up to all the happiness which our nature is capable of having. 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[14] 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[15] of God is absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, or man can have no religion that is sufficient or equal to the needs 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 that his senses and reason never thought possible to be done, either by himself or by 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, effective means of our salvation, and all their power is in a natural way, or true fitness of cause for its effect, but they are mysterious to man because they are 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 the world. The mysteries, therefore, of the gospel are so far from showing the gospel not to be the one true religion of nature that in fact, they are the greatest proof of it, since they are that alone which can help man to all that good which his natural state needs to have done to it. For instance, since the salvation of man absolutely requires the revival or restoration of 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. What a grossness of error it is, 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 fact nothing else but this very mystery can be the natural, effective cause of the renewal of the Divine life in the human nature, or have any natural ability to bring about our salvation? 

Having now established this ground, that nothing is or can be a part of true, natural religion or have any real effectiveness in and from the nature of things or in the natural fitness of cause to produce its effect, you are brought into a clear view of this truth, i.e., that the religion of Deism is false, and vain, and visionary, and should be rejected by every man as mere fanaticism, and the product of imagination, and all for this reason, because it quite disregards the nature of things, stands wholly upon a supernatural ground and goes as much above and as directly contrary to the powers of nature as that faith that trusts in and prays to a wooden god. I say this not[16] in the spirit of accusation, or to raise any disgust. No, by no means. I have the utmost aversion to such a procedure; I would no more bring a false charge against the Deist than I would bear false witness against an apostle. And I desire to have no other disposition, spirit or behavior toward them but such as the lord, and that with all my heart. And in this spirit of love, I charge them with visionary faith and fanatical religion, and only so far as I have from time to time proved that they trust to be saved by that which, according to the unchangeable nature of things, can have no power of salvation in it. For a religion not grounded in the power and nature of things is unnatural, and is rightly called fanaticism, superstition, or idolatry, just as you please. For all these are but different names for the same religious delusion. And every religion is this delusion but that one religion which is required by and has its effectiveness in the unchangeable nature of things. And so 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 toward them or myself but this one thing, that we may all be delivered from everything that separates us from God, all be 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, and only, possible, natural, and full means of ever finding ourselves saved and redeemed from all the evils both of time and eternity. 

And now, Steven, upon this ground, i.e.,

(1) That there is but one true religion, and that it is the religion of the natural effect of God upon us.

(2) That a religion has no pretense to be considered as the religion of nature because it rejects Divine revelation and has only human reason for its guide, but wholly and solely because it has every good in it that the natural state of man needs and can receive from religion.

 (3) That nothing can be any religious good, or have any real effectiveness as a means of salvation, but only that which has its effectiveness in and from the natural power of things, or the fitness and sufficiency of cause to produce its effect.

(4) That the religion of the gospel, in all its mysteries and doctrines, is wholly grounded in the natural powers of things and their fitness to produce their effects.

Upon this ground I come to answer your question, i.e., how it is that the sufferings and death of Christ gave Him full power to become a common father of life to all those that died in Adam. Or how it is that we by virtue of them are delivered out of all the evils of our fallen state. The sufferings and death of Christ have no supernatural effect, that is above, or contrary to nature. Because the thing itself is impossible; for a thing is only therefore impossible because the nature of things will not allow it. The fall of all mankind in Adam is no supernatural event or effect, but the natural and necessary consequence of our relation to him. Could Adam at his fall into this earthly life have absolutely overcome every power of the world, the flesh, and the devil in the same spirit as Christ did, he would have been his own redeemer, he would have risen out of his fall, and ascended into paradise and he would have been the father of a paradisiacal offspring, just as Christ when he had overcome them all rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. But Adam did not do this because it was as impossible in the nature of the thing as for a beast to raise itself into an angel. If therefore man is to come out of his fallen state, there must be something found that, according to the nature of things, has power to effect it. For it can no more be done supernaturally by anything else than it could by Adam. 

Now the matter stood accordingly: The seed of all mankind was in the loins of fallen Adam. This was unalterable in the nature of the thing and therefore all mankind must come forth in his fallen state. Neither can they ever be in any state whatever, whether earthly or heavenly, but by having an earthly man or a heavenly man for their father. For mankind as such must of all necessity be born of, and have, that nature which it has from a man. And this is the absolute necessity of the one mediator, the man Christ Jesus. For mankind as such must have that birth and nature which they had from man, seeing they never could have had any relation to paradise or any possibility of partaking of it but only because they had a paradisiacal man for their father, they never could have had any relation to this earthly world, or any possibility of being born earthly but because they had an earthly man for their father; and seeing all this must be unalterably so forever, it plainly follows that there was an utter impossibility for the seed of Adam ever to come out of its fallen state or ever have another or better life than they had from Adam unless such a son of man could be brought into existence as had the same relation to all mankind as Adam had, was as much in them all as Adam was, and had full power according to the nature of things to give a heavenly life to all the seed in Adam's loins as Adam had to bring them forth in earthly flesh and blood. And now, Christ was this very son of man, standing in the same fullness of relation to all mankind as Adam did, having His seed as really in them all as Adam had, and as truly and fully qualified according to the nature of things to be a common and universal father of life as Adam was of death to all the human race.

The doctrine of our redemption absolutely asserts that the seed of Christ was sown into the first fallen father of mankind called the seed of the woman, the bruiser of the serpent, the in-grafted Word of life, called again in the gospel, that light which lights every man that comes into the world. Therefore, Christ was in all men in that same fullness of relation of a father to all mankind as Adam was in the beginning. Secondly, Christ was born of Adam's flesh and blood, and therefore took human nature upon Himself and stood as a human creature in the same relation to mankind as Adam did. Nothing therefore was deficient in Christ to make Him as truly a natural father of life to all mankind as Adam was at the first, but God's appointment of Him to that end. For as Adam could not have been the natural father of mankind but because God created and appointed him for that end, so Christ could not have been the natural regenerator or redeemer of a heavenly life that was lost in all mankind but because God had appointed and brought Him into the world for that end. Now that God did this, that Christ came into the world by Divine appointment to be the Savior, the resurrection and life of all mankind is a truth as evident from scripture as that Adam was the first man. And therefore it appears to the utmost degree of plainness and certainty that Christ was, according to the nature of things, as fully qualified to be a common redeemer as Adam was to be a common father of all mankind. He had His seed in all mankind as Adam had; He had the human nature as Adam had; and He had the same Divine appointment as Adam had. But Christ, however qualified to be our redeemer, could not actually be such until He had gone through and done all that by which our redemption was to be effected. Adam, however qualified, yet could not be the father of a paradisiacal offspring until he had gone though his trial and fixed himself victorious over everything that could make a trial of him. In like manner, Christ, however qualified, could not be the redeemer of all mankind until He had also gone though His trial, and had overcome all that by which Adam was overcome and had fixed Himself triumphantly in that paradise which Adam had lost. Now as Adam's trial was whether he would keep himself in his paradisiacal state, above and free from all that was good and evil in this earthly world, so Christ's trial was whether, as a son of man and loaded with the infirmities of fallen Adam, sacrificed to all that which the rage and malice of the world, hell, and devils could possibly do to Him, whether He in the midst of all these evils could live and die with His spirit as contrary to them, as much above them, as unhurt by them, as Adam should have lived in paradise. Christ overcome everything which had overcome Adam, and Christ's victory did in the nature of the thing, everything to open an entrance for Him and all His seed into paradise as Adam's fall cast him and all his seed into the prison and captivity of this earthly, bestial world. Nothing supernatural came to pass in either case but paradise lost and paradise regained according to the nature of the thing, or the real effectiveness of cause to produce its effect. Therefore your question is fully answered, i.e., how and why the sufferings and death of Christ enabled Him to be the author of life to all that died in Adam. Just as the fall of Adam into this world under the power of sin, death, hell, and the devil enabled him to be the common father of death, he was the natural, unavoidable cause of our being born under the same captivity, just so that life and sufferings and death of Christ which declared His breaking out from them and superiority over them must in the nature of things, as much enable Him to be the common author of life, that is, must as certainly be the full, natural, effectual cause of our inheriting life from Him. Because by what Christ was in Himself, by what He was in us by His whole state, character, and the Divine appointment, we all had that natural union with Him and dependence upon Him as our head in the way of redemption, as we had with Adam as our head in the way of our natural birth. So that as it must be said that because Adam fell, we must of all necessity be heirs of his fallen state, so with the same truth and from the same necessity of the thing, it must be said that because Christ our head is risen victorious out of our fallen state we as His members and having His seed within us must be and are made heirs of all his glory. Because in all respects we are as strictly, as intimately connected with and related to him as our one redeemer as we are to Adam as the one father of all mankind. So that Christ by His sufferings and death become in all of us our wisdom, our righteousness, our justification and our redemption, is the same sober and solid truth as Adam by his fall became in all of us our foolishness, our impurity, our corruption, and death.

And now, my friends, look back upon all that has been said and then tell me, is it possible more to exalt or magnify the infinite merits and availing effectiveness of the sufferings and death of Christ than is done by this doctrine? Or whether everything that is said of them in scripture is not proved here, from the very nature of the thing, to be absolutely true? And again, whether it is not sufficiently proved to you that the sufferings and death of Christ are not only consistent with the doctrine of a God of all love, but are the fullest and most absolute proof of it? 

Steven- Indeed, Gordon, you have fully explained to us all that we wanted to know; we are now ready to take leave of you. As for my part, I want to return home to enjoy my Bible and delight myself with reading it in this comfortable light in which you have set the whole ground and nature of our redemption. I am now in full possession of this glorious truth that God is love, the most glorious truth that can possess and edify the heart of man. It drives every evil out of the soul and gives life to every spark of goodness that can possibly be kindled in it. Everything in religion is made agreeable by being a service of love to the God of love. No sacrifices, sufferings, and death have any place in religion but to satisfy and fulfill that love of God which could not be satisfied without our salvation. If the Son of God is not spared, if he is delivered up to the rage and malice of men, devils, and hell, it is because, had we not had such a captain of our salvation made perfect through sufferings, we could not have sung, "Oh death, where is your sting, Oh grave, where is your victory!" It never could have been true that "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so by one man came the resurrection of the dead." It never could have been said " That as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." 

Therefore, dear Gordon, goodbye. God is love, and he that has learned to live in the spirit of love has learned to live and dwell in God. Love was the beginner of all the works of God, and from eternity to eternity nothing can come from God but a variety of wonders and works of love over all nature and creature. 

Gordon- God prosper you, Steven, this spark of heaven in your soul; may it, like the seraphim's coal taken from the altar, purify your heart from all its uncleanness. But before you leave me, I would like to tell you about the practical part of the spirit of love, so that in doctrine and practice, hearing and doing, all may go hand in hand.

 

Chapter 4

How To Acquire and Maintain this Love

Steven- You have shown great good will toward us, Gordon, in desiring another meeting before we leave you. But yet it seems to me that I have no need of learning anymore on this subject. For this doctrine of the spirit of love cannot have more power over me or be more deeply rooted in me than it is already. It has gained possession of my whole heart so that everything else must be under its dominion. I can do nothing else but love; it is my whole nature, I have no taste for anything else. Can this matter be carried higher in practice?

“You are as yet only charmed with the sight, or rather the sound of it.”

Gordon- Steven if this truly was the state of your heart, you would bid fair-well to leave the world as Elijah did; or like Enoch to have it said of you that you lived wholly to love, and was not. For if there were nothing but this Divine love alive in you, your fallen flesh and blood would be in danger of being quite burnt up by it. What you have said of yourself, you have spoken in great sincerity but in a total ignorance of yourself and the true nature of the spirit of Divine love. You are as yet only charmed with the sight, or rather the sound of it; its real birth is as yet unfelt and unfound in you. Your natural complexion has a great deal of the animal meekness and softness of the lamb and the dove, your blood and spirit are of this turn; and therefore a God all love and a religion all love quite carries you; and you are so delighted with it that you fancy you have nothing in you but this God and religion of love. But, my friend, bear with me if I tell you that all this is only the good part of the spirit of this bestial world in you and may be in any unregenerate man that is of your personality. It is so far from being a genuine fruit of Divine love that if you do not look to it, it may prove a real hindrance of it, as it oftentimes does by its appearing to be that which it is not. You have quite forgot all that was said in the letter to you on the spirit of love, that it is a birth in the soul that can only come forth in its proper time and place and from its proper causes. Now nothing that is a birth can be brought into the soul by any philosophy. You may love it as much as you please, think it the most charming thing in the world, think of everything as dung in comparison of it, and yet have no more of its birth in you than the blind man has of that light of which he has only been told of. His blindness still continues the same; he is at the same distance from the light because light can only be had by a birth of itself in seeing eyes. It is so with the spirit of love; it is nowhere, but where it rises up as a birth. 

Steven- But if I am no further than this, what good have I received from having so energetically agreed to all that you have said of this doctrine? And to what end have you taken so much pains to establish it? 

Gordon- Your error lies in this; you confound two things which are entirely different from each other. You may see the difference between the doctrine, and necessity of the spirit of love, and the spirit of love itself, which yet are two things so different that you may be quite full of the former and at the same time quite empty of the latter.

I have said everything that I could say to show you the truth, and necessity of the spirit of love. It is of infinite importance to you to be well established in the belief of this doctrine. But all that I have said of it is only to induce and encourage you to buy it at its stated price and to give all that you have for it, for this is the purchase price. But if you think (as you plainly do) that you have already received it because you are so highly pleased with what you have heard of it, you only embrace the shadow instead of the substance of that which you need to have. 

Steven- What is this price that I must pay for it? 

Gordon- You must give up all that you are, and all that you have from fallen Adam, for all that you are and have from him is that life of flesh and blood which cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Adam, after his fall, had nothing that was good in him, nothing that could inherit eternal life in heaven but the bruiser of the serpent or the seed of the Son of God that was placed into him. Everything else in him was devoted to death, that this incorruptible seed of the Word might grow up into a new name in Christ Jesus. All the doctrine of God's reprobation and election relates wholly and solely to these two things, i.e., the earthly, bestial nature from Adam, and the incorruptible seed of the Word, or Immanuel in every man. Nothing is elected, is foreseen, predestinated, or called according to the purpose of God, but this seed of the new man. Because the one eternal, unchangeable purpose of God toward man is this, namely, that man should be a heavenly image or son of God; and therefore nothing can be elected or called according to the purpose of God but this seed of a heavenly birth, because nothing else is able to answer and fulfill the purpose of God; but everything else that is in man, his whole earthly, bestial nature, is from sin and is quite contrary to God's purpose in the creation of man. On the other hand, nothing is reprobated, rejected, or cast out by God but the earthly nature which came from the fall of Adam. This is the only vessel of wrath, the son of perdition, that can have no share in the promises and blessings of God. Here you have the whole unalterable ground of Divine election and reprobation; it relates not to any particular number of people or division of mankind, but solely to the two natures that are, both of them without exception, in every individual. All that is earthly, serpentine, and devilish in every man is reprobated and doomed to destruction; and the heavenly seed of the new birth in every man is that which is chosen, ordained, and called to eternal life. Election therefore and reprobation as respecting salvation equally relate to every man in the world because every man as such, has that in him which only is elected, and that in him which only is reprobated, namely, the earthly nature and the heavenly seed of the Word of God. Now all this is evident from the very nature of the thing; as soon as you suppose man at his fall to have a power of redemption or deliverance from the evil of his fallen nature engrafted into him, you then have the first unchangeable ground of election and reprobation; you are infallibly shown what it is that God elects and reprobates and the absolute impossibility of anything else being reprobated by God but that fallen, evil nature from which he is to be redeemed or of anything else being elected by God, but that seed of a new birth which is to bring forth his redemption. Here therefore you have a full deliverance from all perplexity upon this matter and may rest yourself upon this great, comfortable, and most certain truth, that no other election or reprobation with regard to salvation ever did or can belong to any one individual son of Adam, but that very same election and reprobation which both of them happened to, and took place in Adam's individual person. For all that which was in Adam, both as fallen and redeemed, must of all necessity be in every son of Adam; and no man can possibly stand in any other relation to God than Adam did, and therefore cannot have either more or less, or any other Divine election and reprobation than Adam had. For from the moment of man's redemption which began at the fall when the incorruptible seed of the Word was given into Adam, every son of Adam to the end of the world must come into it under the same election and reprobation with regard to God. Because the whole earthly nature from which man was to be redeemed, and the seed of the Word by which he was to be redeemed, were both in every man, one as certainly as the other. 

Now this being the inward, essential state of every man born into the world, having in himself all that is elected and all that is reprobated by God, therefore it is in order to publish the truth and certainty of such an election and reprobation and the truth and certainty of that two-fold nature in man on which it is grounded, consequently it is as the Spirit of God in holy scripture has represented this matter to us by such outward figures as are yet in themselves, not symbolic, but real proofs of it. This is first of all done under the example of Cain and Abel, the two first births from Adam, where the one is murdered by the other thereby demonstrating to us by this contrariety and difference of these two births the inward real state of the father of them, namely, that the same two-fold nature was in him that discovered itself in these two first births from him. The same thing is age after age set forth in a variety of examples, more especially in Ishmael and Isaac, and Esau and Jacob. All of this, only further confirms and establishes this great truth, i.e., that such strife and contrariety as appeared in the sons of the same father were not only outward representations, but full proofs of that inward strife and contrariety which not only existed in their fathers but universally in every human creature. For Cain and Abel did not come from Adam but only for this reason, because both their natures were antecedently[17] in him and in the same state of opposition and contrariety to each other. Cain and Abel were no other than the genuine effects of the two-fold state which Adam as fallen and redeemed was then in, so every man, descended from Adam, is in himself infallibly all that which Adam was, and has as certainly his own Cain and Abel within himself as Adam had. And from the beginning to the end of the human race, all that which came to pass so remarkably in the births of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, all of this some way or other more or less comes to pass in every individual of mankind. In one man, his own Abel is murdered by his own Cain, and in another his own Jacob overcomes his own Esau that was born with him. 

And all the good or the evil that we bring forth in our lives is from nothing else but from the strife of these two natures within us and their victory, the one over the other. Which strife no son of Adam could ever have known anything of, had not the free grace and mercy of God chosen and called all mankind to a new birth of heaven in and out of their corrupt and fallen souls. No possible war or strife of good against evil could be in fallen man but by his having from God a seed of life in him, ordained and predestinated to overcome his earthly nature. For that which is put into him by God, as the power of his redemption must be contrary to that from which he is to be redeemed. And consequently a war of good against evil set up within us by the grace and mercy of God to us, and is the greatest of all demonstrations that there is but one election and one reprobation, and that all that God rejects and reprobates is nothing else but that corrupt nature which every individual man, Abel as well as Cain, has in himself from Adam as fallen; and that all that God elects, predestinates, calls, justifies, and glorifies is nothing else but that heavenly seed which every individual man, Pharaoh as well as Moses, has in himself from Adam as redeemed. And so you have an unerring key to all that is said in scripture of the election falling upon Abel, Isaac, and Jacob, etc., and of the reprobation falling upon Cain, Ishmael, and Esau, not because God has respect to persons or that all men did not stand before him in the same covenant or redemption; but the scriptures speak accordingly, that the true nature of God's election and reprobation may thereby be made manifest to the world. For the earthly nature, which God only reprobates, having broke forth in predominance in Cain, Ishmael, and Esau, they became proper figures of that which God reprobates and were used by God as such. And the heavenly seed, which is alone elected to eternal glory, having broke forth in predominance in Abel, Isaac, Jacob, etc., they became proper figures of that which God only elects and were used by God as such. Nothing is here to be understood personally or according to the flesh of these persons on either side, but all that is said of them is only as they are figures of the earthly nature and heavenly seed in every man. For nothing is reprobated in Cain but that very same thing which is reprobated in Abel, i.e., the earthly nature, nor is anything elected in Jacob but that very same which is equally elected in Esau, i.e., the heavenly seed.

And now, gentlemen, you may easily apprehend how and why a God in whose holy Deity no spark of wrath or partiality can possibly arise, but who is from eternity to eternity only flowing forth in love, goodness, and blessing to everything capable of it, could yet say of the children before they were born, or had done either good or evil, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. It is because Esau signifies the earthly, bestial nature that came from sin, and Jacob signifies the incorruptible seed of the Word that is to overcome Esau and change his mortal into immortality. But now I stop, for you may perhaps think that I have here made a digression from our proposed subject. 

Steven- A digression you may call it, if you please, Gordon, but it is such a digression as has entirely prevented my ever having one more anxious thought about God's decrees of election and reprobation. The matter now stands in open daylight, notwithstanding that blanket of educated darkness under which it has been hidden from the time of Augustine until now. And now, sir, proceed as you please to lay open all my defects in the spirit of love; for I am earnestly desirous of being set right in so important a matter.

”Yet I am continually unable to practice it”

Thomas- Let me first observe to Gordon that I am afraid the matter is much worse with me than it is with you. For though this doctrine seems to have gotten my heart, as it is a wonderful doctrine, yet I am continually unable to practice it, and find myself as daily under the power of my old tempers and passions as I was before I understood it. 

Gordon- You are to know, my friends, that every kind of virtue and goodness may be brought into us by two different ways.

1)     They may be taught us outwardly by men, by rules and precepts.

2)     They may be inwardly born in us, as the genuine birth of our own renewed spirit.

In the former way, as we learn them only from men by rules and instruction, they at best only change our outward behavior and leave our heart in its natural state and only put our passions under a forced restraint, which will on occasion break forth in spite of the dead letter of precept and doctrine. Now this way of learning and attaining goodness, though imperfect, is yet absolutely necessary in the nature of things, and must first have its time, and place, and work in us; yet it is only for a time, as the law was a schoolmaster to the gospel. We must first be babes in doctrine as well as in strength before we can be men. But all of this outward instruction whether from good men or the letter of scripture, must acknowledge the same as that which the apostle has said of the law, "That it makes nothing perfect," and yet is highly necessary in order to bring about perfection. The true perfection and profitableness of the holy written word of God is fully set forth by Paul to Timothy: "From a child," says he, "You have known the scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation, which is by faith in Christ Jesus." Now these scriptures were the law and the prophets, for Timothy had known no other from his youth. And as they, so all other scriptures since, have no other good or benefit in them, but as they lead and direct us to a salvation that is not to be had in themselves but from faith in Christ Jesus. Their teaching is only to teach us where to seek and to find the fountain and source of all light and knowledge. Of the law, says the apostle, "It was a schoolmaster to Christ." Of the prophets, he says the same. "You have," says he, "A more sure word of prophecy, whereunto you do well, that you take heed as unto a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns, and the daystar arises in your hearts." The same thing is to be affirmed of the letter of the New Testament; it is but our schoolmaster unto Christ, a light like that of prophecy to which we are to take great heed until Christ as the dawning of the day or the daystar arises in our hearts. Nor can the thing possibly be otherwise; no instruction that comes under the form of words, can do more for us than sounds and words can do; they can only direct us to something that is better than themselves, that can be the true light, life, spirit, and power of holiness in us. 

Steven- I cannot deny what you say, and yet it seems to me to minimize the scripture.

Gordon- Would you then have me to say that the written word of God is that Word of God which lives and abides forever; that was with God, which was God by whom all things were made; that Word of God, which was made flesh for the redemption of the world; that Word of God, of which we must be born again; that Word which lighted every man that comes into the world; that Word, which in Christ Jesus is become wisdom and righteousness and sanctification in us; would you have me say that all this is to be understood of the written word of God? But if this cannot possibly be, then all that I have said is granted, namely, that Jesus is alone that Word of God that can be the light, life, and salvation of fallen man. Or how is it possible more to exalt the letter of scripture than by acknowledging it to be a true, outward, verbal direction to the one true light and salvation of man? Suppose you had been a true disciple of John the Baptist, John’s only office was to prepare the way to Christ, how could you have more magnified his office or declared your fidelity to him than by going from his teaching, to be taught by that Christ to whom he directed you? The Baptist was indeed a burning and a shining light, and so are the holy scriptures; "But he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness to that light. That was the true light, which lighted every man that comes into the world." What a folly would it be to say that you had undervalued the office and character of John the Baptist because he was not allowed to be the light itself but only a true witness of it and a guide to it? Now if you can show that the written word in the Bible can have any other or higher office or power than such a ministerial one as John the Baptist had, I am ready to hear you. 

Steven- There is no possibility of doing that. 

Gordon- But if that is not possible to be done, then you have come to the full proof of this point, that there are two ways of attaining knowledge, goodness, virtue, etc., the one by the ministry of outward, verbal instruction either by men or books, and the other by an inward birth of Divine light, goodness, and virtue in our own renewed spirit, and that the former is only of value to point you to the latter, and of no benefit to us, but as it carries us to be united in heart and spirit with the light and Word and Spirit of God. Just as the Baptist had been of no benefit to his disciples unless he had been their guide from himself to Christ. 

But to come now closer to our subject at hand. From this two-fold light or teaching there necessarily arises a two-fold state of virtue and goodness. For as the teacher or teaching is, so is the state and manner of the goodness that can be had from it. Every effect must be according to the cause that produces it. If you learn virtue and goodness only from outward means, from men, or books, you may be virtuous and good according to time and place and outward forms; you may do works of humility, works of love and benevolence, you may pray often; all this virtue and goodness is suitable to this kind of teaching and may very well come from it. But the spirit of prayer, the spirit of love, and the spirit of humility or any other virtue are only to be attained by the operation of the light and Spirit of God, not outwardly teaching, but the inward bringing forth of a newborn spirit within us. 

“Everything you do will be a mixture of good and bad; your humility will help you to pride, your charity to others will give nourishment to your own self-love, and as your prayers increase, so will the opinion of your own holiness.”

And now let me tell you both, that it is much to be feared that you as yet stand only under this outward teaching; your good works are only done under obedience to such rules, precepts, and doctrines as your reason assents to, but are not the fruits of a newborn spirit within you. But until you are accordingly renewed in the spirit of your minds, your virtues are only learned practices, and are built upon a faulty foundation. Everything you do will be a mixture of good and bad; your humility will help you to pride, your charity to others will give nourishment to your own self-love, and as your prayers increase, so will the opinion of your own holiness. Because until the heart is purified from the top to the bottom and has felt the ax at the root of its evil (which cannot be done by outward instruction) everything that proceeds from it partakes of its impurity and corruption. That Thomas is only under the law or outward instruction, is obvious from the complaint that he made of himself. For notwithstanding his progress in the doctrine of love, he finds all the passions of his corrupt nature still alive in himself, and only altered in doctrine and opinion. The same may well be suspected of you Steven, who are so mistaken in the spirit of love that you fancy yourself to be wholly possessed of it from no other ground but because you embrace it, as it were, with open arms, and think of nothing but living under the power of it. Whereas if the spirit of love was really born in you from its own seed, you would account for its birth and power in you in quite another manner than you have done here; you would have known the price that you had paid for it, and how many deaths you had suffered before the spirit of love came to life in you.

Steven- But surely, sir, imperfect as our virtues are, we may yet, I hope, be truly said to be in a state of grace; and if so, we are under something more than mere outward instruction. Besides you very well know that it is a principle with both of us to expect all our goodness from the Spirit of God dwelling and working in us. We live in faith and hope of the Divine operation; and therefore I must say that your criticism toward us seems to be more severe, than just. 

Gordon- Dear Steven, I censure neither of you, nor have I said one word by way of accusation, so far from it that I can say that I am very pleased and approve the state you are both in. It is good for Thomas that he feels and confesses that his natural tempers are not yet subdued by doctrine and precept. It is good for you also that you are so highly delighted with the doctrine of love, for by this means you have your true preparation for further advancement, and though your state has this difference, yet the same error is common to both of you. You both thought you had as much of the spirit of love as you could, or ought to have; and therefore Thomas wondered why he had no more benefit from it, and you wondered why I should desire to lead you further into it.  Therefore, to deliver you from this error, I have desired this conference upon the practical ground of the spirit of love so that neither of you would lose the benefit of the good state in which you stand.

Steven- Therefore proceed as you please. For we desire nothing so much as to have the truth and purity of this Divine love brought forth in us. For as it is the highest perfection that I adore in God, so I can neither wish nor desire anything for myself but to be totally governed by it. I could as willingly consent to lose all my being as to find the power of love lost in my soul. Neither doctrine, nor mystery, nor precept has any delight for me but as it calls forth the birth, and growth, and exercise of that spirit which does all that it does toward God and man under the law of love. Whatever therefore you can say to me, either to increase the power, manifest the defects, or remove the hindrances of Divine love in my soul will be heartily welcome to me. 

“For Divine love is perfect peace and joy”

Gordon- I can see that you don't understand yet what Divine love is in itself, nor what its nature and power in the soul of man is. For Divine love is perfect peace and joy, it is a freedom from all unrest, it is all contentment and happiness, and makes everything to rejoice in itself. 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 fulfiller of all righteousness, and a peace of God which passes all understanding. Through all the universe, nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but for this one reason, 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 complaining, 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 disappointed, 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 dwells in God, dwells in love; tell me now, Steven, are you blessed in the spirit of love? 

Steven- Would you have me tell you that I am an angel? And without the infirmities of human flesh and blood?

“For Divine love is a new life and new nature and introduces you into a new Heavenly world”

Gordon- No, but I would have you judge of your state of love by these angelic tempers and not by any fervor or heat that you find in yourself. For just so much and so far as you are freed from the folly of all earthly affections, from all anxiety, trouble, and complaint about this or that, just so much and so far is the spirit of love come to life in you. For Divine love is a new life and new nature and introduces you into a new Heavenly world; it puts an end to all your former opinions, and temperament; 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, "I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things." While 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 with and all emotional response of them is as lost, as the stars lose their visibility when the sun is risen.

Thomas- I am fully convinced that this is the true power of the spirit of Divine love, from my own uneasiness at finding that my natural disposition is not overcome by it. For where could I have this trouble but only because of the small dawning that I have of the spirit of love in me that makes upon me just demands to be the one light, breath, and power of my life and to have all that is within me overcome and governed by it. And therefore, I find I must either silence this small voice of new-risen love within me or have no rest from complaints and self-condemnation until my whole nature is brought into subjection to it. 

Gordon- You have judged rightly, Thomas; and now we are brought to the one great practical point on which all our adeptness in the spirit of love entirely depends. Namely, that all that we are, and all that we have from Adam as fallen, must be given up, absolutely denied and resisted, if the birth of Divine love is to be brought forth in us. For all that we are by nature is in full contrariety to this Divine love, nor can it be otherwise; a death to itself is its only cure, and nothing else can make it subservient to good, just as darkness cannot be altered or made better in itself or transmuted into light; it can only be subservient to the light by being lost in it and swallowed up by it. Now this was the first state of man; all the natural properties of his creaturely life were hid in God, united in God, and glorified by the life of God manifested in them, just as the nature and qualities of darkness are lost and hid when enlightened and glorified by the light. But when man fell from, or died to the Divine life, all the natural properties of his creaturely life, having lost their union with God, broke forth in their own natural division, contrariety, and war against one another, just as the darkness, when it has lost the light, must show forth its own coldness, horror, and other uncomfortable qualities. And as darkness, though in the utmost contrariety to light, is yet absolutely necessary to it and without which no manifestation or visibility of light could be possibly, and so it is with the natural properties of the creaturely life; they are in themselves all contrariety to the Divine life, and yet the Divine life cannot be communicated but in them and by them. 

Steven- I never read or heard of darkness being necessary to light. It has been generally considered as a negative thing that was nothing in itself and only signified an absence of light; but your doctrine not only supposes darkness to be something positive that has a strength and substantiality in itself, but also to be antecedent to the light because it is necessary to bring it into manifestation. I am almost afraid to hear more of this doctrine.

Gordon- Don't be frightened, Steven- I will lead you into no doctrine but what is strictly conformable to the letter of scripture. The scripture says, "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all"; therefore the scripture affirmed light to be superior, absolutely separate from, and eternally antecedent to darkness; and so do I. In this scripture you have a noble and true account of light, what it is, where it is and was, and always must be. It can never change its state or place, or be altered in itself, be anywhere or in another manner than as it was and will be to all eternity. When God said, "Let there be light, and there was light," no change happened to eternal light itself, nor did any light then begin to be; but the darkness of this world began to receive a power or operation of the eternal light upon it, which it did not have before. And therefore it is that I assert the priority and glory of light and put all darkness under its feet, as impossible to be anything else but its footstool.

Steven- What is it then that you understand by the materiality of light? 

Gordon- No more than I understand by the materiality of the wisdom, mercy, and goodness of God when they are made intelligible and credible to me by the materiality of paper and ink, etc. For light is as distinct from and superior to all that materiality, in and by which it gives forth some visibility of itself, as the wisdom, mercy, and goodness of God are distinct from and superior to all that written materiality, in and through which they are made in some degree intelligible and credible to human minds. The incomprehensible Deity can make no outward revelation of His will, wisdom, and goodness but by articulate sounds, voices, or letters written on tables of stone or such like materiality. Just so the invisible, inaccessible, supernatural light can make no outward visibility of itself but through such darkness of materiality as is capable of receiving its illumination. But as the Divine will, wisdom, and goodness, when making outward revelation of themselves by the materiality of things, are not therefore material, so neither is the light material when it outwardly reveals something of its invisible, incomprehensible splendor and glory by and through the materiality of darkness. All light then that is natural and visible to the creature, whether in heaven or on earth, is nothing else but so much darkness illuminated; and that which is called the materiality of light is only the materiality of darkness in which the light incorporated itself. For light can be only that same invisible, unapproachable thing which it always was in God from all eternity. And that which is called the variation of light is only the divergence of that darkness through which the light gives forth-different manifestations of itself. It is the same, whether it illuminates the air, water, a diamond, or any other materiality of darkness. Whatever is delightful and ravishing, sublime and glorious in spirits, minds or bodies, either in heaven or on earth, is from the power of the supernatural light, opening its endless wonders in them. Hell has no misery, horror, or distraction but because it has no communication with this supernatural light. And if the supernatural light did not stream forth its blessings into this world through the materiality of the sun, all outward nature would be full of the horror of hell. And therefore all the mysteries and wonders of light in this material system so astonishingly great and un-searchable, is because the natural light of this world is nothing else but the power and mystery of the supernatural light breaking forth and opening itself according to its omnipotence in all the various forms of elementary darkness which constitute this temporary world. 

Thomas- I could willingly hear you, Gordon, on this subject until midnight, though it seems to lead us away from our proposed subject. 

Gordon- Not so far out of the way, Thomas, as you may imagine; for darkness and light are the two natures that are in every man, and do all that is done in him. The scriptures, you know, make only this division: The works of darkness are sin, and they who walk in the light are the children of God. Therefore light and darkness do everything that is done in man, whether good or evil. 

Thomas- What is this darkness in itself, or where is it? 

Gordon- It is everywhere, where there is nature and creature. For all nature, and all that is natural in the creature, is in itself nothing else but darkness, whether it is in the soul or the body, in heaven or on earth. And therefore, when the angels (though in heaven) had lost the supernatural light, they became imprisoned in the chains of their own natural darkness. If you ask why nature must be darkness, it is because nature is not God and therefore can have no light, as it is only nature. For God and light are as inseparable as God and unity are inseparable. Everything, therefore, that is not God, is, and can be, nothing else in itself but darkness, and can do nothing but in, and under, and according to the nature and powers of darkness. 

Thomas- What are the powers of darkness? 

Gordon- The powers of darkness are the workings of nature or self; for nature, darkness, and self, are but three different expressions for the same thing. Now every evil, wicked, wrathful, impure, unjust thought, temper, passion, or imagination that ever stirred or moved in any creature; every misery, discontent, distress, rage, horror, and torment that ever plagued the life of fallen man or angel are the very things that you are to understand by the powers or workings of darkness, nature, or self. For nothing is evil, wicked, or tormenting, but that which nature or self does. 

Thomas- But if nature is the seat and source of all evil, if everything that is bad is in it, and from it, how can such a nature be brought forth by God who is all goodness? 

Gordon- 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 goodness, virtues, and glories of light. Again, it is nature, i.e., a strife and contrariety of properties for this purpose only, that the supernatural good might in that way 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 contrariety of will ever have had a name in all the universe of nature and creature had it all continued in that same state in which it came forth from God. Lastly, it is self, i.e., an “own” life, that through such an “own” life, the universal, incomprehensible goodness, happiness, and perfections of God might be possessed as properties and qualities of an “own” life in creaturely, finite beings. And therefore, all that is called nature, darkness, or self, not only has 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 can make nature to be good, he finds nature only as it is in itself and without God. And then it is that nature or self has 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 consequently you see the plainness and certainty of our assertion that nature or self has all evil and no evil in it. 

Thomas- I perceive that nature or self without God manifested in it is all evil and misery. But I would like to, if I could, more perfectly understand the precise nature of self, or what it is that makes it to be so full of evil and misery.

Covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath!

Gordon- 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 this way 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 that good. When, therefore, this natural life is fallen from God, it can be nothing else in itself but an extremity of want and continual desiring, and an extremity of desire continually wanting. And so 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 workings of the same will or desire which, as it torments itself in different ways, takes 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 first three 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, because it is a desire, founded on a real want of exaltation, or a higher state. Now wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence until some or all of these three are contradicted or have something done to them that is contrary to their will; and then it is that wrath is born, and not until then. And so you see in the highest degree of certainty what nature or self is as to its essential, parts. It is the three aforementioned, 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 they 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 until some supernatural good comes into it or has a birth in it. Therefore, every pain or disorder 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 redemption. Until fallen man is born again from above, until 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. While man, indeed, does live amongst the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath may be in a bearable 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 existents, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural Word and Spirit of God must find itself unavoidably devoured or shut up in its own, insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath. Thomas, I wish that I had power from God to take those dreadful scales from the eyes of every person, which hinders them from seeing and feeling the infinite importance of this most certain truth! 

Thomas- God give a blessing, Gordon, to your good prayer. And then let me tell you that you have quite satisfied my question about the nature of self. I shall never forget it, nor can I ever possibly have any doubt of the truth of it.

Gordon- Let me however go a little deeper in the matter. All life, and all sensibility of life, is a desire; and nothing can feel or find itself to exist, but as it finds itself to have, and be, a desire; and therefore, all nature is a desire, and all that nature does or works is done by the working of desire. And this is the reason why all nature and the natural life of every creature is a state of want, and therefore must be a state of misery and self-torment, so long as it is mere nature left to itself, apart from God. For every desire as such is, and must be made up of contrariety, as has been sufficiently shown elsewhere. And its essential contrariety, which it has in itself, is the only possible beginning or ground of its sensibility. For nothing can be felt, but because of contrariety to that which feels. And therefore no creaturely desire can be brought into existence or have any possible sensibility of itself but only because desire as such is unavoidably made up of that contrariety from which comes all feeling and the capacity of being felt. Again, all natural life is nothing else but a mere desire found in want; now want is contrary to desire, and, therefore, every natural life as such is in a state of contrariety and torment to itself. It can do nothing but work in, and feel, its own contrariety, and so be its own unavoidable, incessant tormentor. For this reason we may plainly see that God's bringing a sensible creature into existence is His bringing the power of desire into a creaturely state; and the power and extent of its own working desire is the bounds or limits of its own creaturely nature. And, therefore, every intelligent creature, of whatever rank in creation, is and can be nothing else in its creaturely, or natural state, but a state of want; and the higher its natural state is supposed to be, the higher is its want and the greater its torment, if left only in its natural state. And this is the reason for the excessive misery and depravity of fallen angels. Now the contrariety that is in desire, and must be in it because it is a desire and the only ground of all sensibility is plainly shown you by the most undeniable appearance in outward or material nature. All that is done in outward nature is done by the working of attraction. And all attraction is nothing else but an inseparable combination and incessant working of three contrary properties, or laws of motion. It draws, it resists its own drawing; and from this drawing and resisting, which are necessarily equal to one another, it becomes an orbital or whirling motion, and yet draws and resists, just as it did before. Now this threefold contrariety in the motions or properties of attraction and by which all the elements of this material world are held and governed and made to bring forth all the wonders in all kinds of animate and inanimate things, this contrariety being the only possible ground of all material nature is a full demonstration that contrariety is the only possible ground of nature and all natural life, whether it be eternal or temporal, spiritual or material.

That no other contrariety is or can be in the properties or laws of attraction in this material nature but that same contrariety which was from eternity in spiritual nature, and is inseparable from it, and can be nowhere but in it. For time can only partake of eternity, it can have nothing in it but the working of eternity, nor be anything but what it is by the working of eternity in it. It can have nothing that is it’s own, or peculiar to it but its transitory state, and form, and nature. It is a mere accident, has only an occasional existence; and whatever is seen or done in it is only so much of the working of eternity seen and done in it. Therefore, that which is called the attraction of materiality is in itself nothing else but the working of the spiritual properties of desire which has in itself those three inseparable contrarieties which make the three contrarieties in the motions of attraction. Material nature, being an accidental, temporary, transitory out-birth from eternal nature and having no power of existing but under it and in dependence upon it, the spiritual properties of eternal nature do, as it were, materialize themselves for a time in their temporary out-birth and force matter to work as they work and to have the same contradictory motions in it which are essential to eternal nature. And so the three inseparable, contrary motions of matter are in the same manner and for the same reason a true ground of a material nature in time, as the three inseparable, contrary, contradictory workings of desire are a true ground of spiritual nature in eternity. And you are to observe that all that is done in matter and time is done by the same agents or spiritual properties which do all that is naturally done in eternity, in heaven or in hell. For nothing is the ground of happiness and glory in heaven, nothing is the ground of misery, woe and distraction in hell, but the working of these same contrary properties of desire which work contrariety in the attraction of matter and bring forth all the changes of life and death in this material system. They are unchangeable in their nature and are everywhere the same; they are as spiritual in hell and on earth as they are in heaven. Considered as in themselves, they are everywhere equally good and equally bad because they are everywhere equally the only ground for either happiness or misery. There is no possible happiness or sensibility of joy for any creature but where these contrary properties work, nor is there any possibility of misery but from them. Now attraction, acting according to its three constant, inseparable contrarieties of motion, stands in this material nature, exactly in the same place and for the same end and doing the same office as the three first properties of desire do in eternal or spiritual nature. For they can be or do nothing with regard to earth and time but that same which they are and do in heaven and eternity. 

Thomas- Gordon, you quite surprise me by showing me with so much certainty how the powers of eternity work in the things of time. Nothing is done on earth but by the unchangeable workings of the same spiritual powers which work after the same manner, both in heaven and in hell. I now sufficiently see how man stands in the midst of heaven and hell under an absolute necessity of belonging wholly to the one, or wholly to the other, as soon as this cover of materiality is taken off from him. For matter is his only wall of partition between them, he is equally near to both of them; and as light and love make all the difference there is between heaven and hell, so nothing but a birth of light and love in the properties of his soul can possibly keep hell out of it or bring heaven into it. I now also see the full truth and certainty of what you said of the nature and power of Divine love, i.e., "That it is perfect peace and joy, a freedom from all unrest, making everything to rejoice in itself. That it is the Christ of God, and 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 fulfiller of all righteousness; and the peace of God, which passes all understanding." So that I am now a thousand times more than ever athirst after the spirit of love. I am willing to sell all and buy it; its blessing is so great and to be without it, so dreadful a state that I am even afraid of lying down in my bed until every working power of my soul is given up to it, wholly possessed and governed by it. 

Gordon- You have reason for all that you say, Thomas; for were we truly affected with things, as they are our real good or real evil, we should be much more afraid of having the serpents of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, kept alive within us than of being shut up into a dungeon of venomous snakes. I said the serpents of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath because they alone are the real, dreadful, original serpents; and all earthly serpents are but transitory, partial, and weak out-births of them. All evil, earthly beasts are but short-lived images or creaturely eruptions of that hellish disorder that is broke out from the fallen spiritual world; and by their manifold variety, they show us the multiplicity of evil that lies in the womb of that abyss of dark rage which has no maker but the three first properties of nature fallen from God and working in their darkness. So that all evil, mischievous, ravenous, venomous beasts, though they have no life but what begins in and from this material world and totally ends at the death of their bodies, yet they have no malignity in their earthly, temporary nature but from those same wrathful properties of fallen nature which live and work in our eternal fallen souls. And therefore, though they are as different from us as time is from eternity, yet wherever we see them we see so many infallible proofs of the fall of nature and the reality of hell. For if there had not been a hell broke out in spiritual nature, not only no evil beast, but no bestial life could ever have come into existence. For the origin of matter and the bestial, earthly life stands accordingly. When the fall of angels had made their dwelling place to be a dark chaos of the first properties of nature left to themselves, the infinite wisdom and goodness of God created this spiritual chaos into a material heaven and a material earth and commanded the light to enter into it. Therefore this chaos became the foundation or the materiality of a new and temporary nature in which the heavenly power of light and the properties of darkness, each of them materialized, could work together, carrying on a war of heaven against earth so that all the evil workings of fallen spiritual nature and all the good that was to overcome it might be equally manifested both by the good and bad state of outward nature, and by that variety of good and bad living creatures that sprung up out of it. To stand in this state, i.e., of a spiritual chaos changed into a materiality of light striving against darkness until the omnipotent wisdom and goodness of God, through the wonders of a first and second Adam, had made this chaotic earth to send more angels into the highest heaven as fell with Lucifer into the hellish chaos. 

But to return. I have, I hope, sufficiently opened up to you the malignant nature of that self which dwells in and makes up the working life of every creature that has lost its right state in God, that all the evil that was in the first chaos of darkness or that still is in hell and devils, all the evil that is in material nature and material creatures whether animate or inanimate is nothing else, works in, and with nothing else, but those first properties of nature which drive on the life of fallen man in covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath. 

Thomas- I could almost say that you have shown me more than enough of this monster of self, though I would not be without this knowledge of it for the world. But now, sir, what must I do to be saved from the mouth of this lion, for he is the depth of all subtlety, the Satan that deceived the whole world. He can hide himself under all forms of goodness, he can watch and fast, write and instruct, pray much, and preach long, give alms to the poor, visit the sick, and yet often gets more life and strength from these forms of virtue than he has in publicans and sinners. Instruct me, therefore with whatever you please; all rules, methods, and practices will be welcome to me if you judge them to be necessary in this matter. 

“The way of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God”

Gordon- 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, and cannot be done by any active resistance we can make to it by the powers of nature. For nature cannot overcome or suppress itself than wrath can heal wrath. So long as nature acts, nothing but natural works are brought forth; and therefore the more labor 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 needs no methods, monasteries, or pilgrimages, it is equally feasible for anyone and everyone, 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 this one, true, simple, plain, immediate and unerring way is, it is the way of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God. This is the truth and perfection of dying to self; it is not possible for it to be in anything else, but in this state of the heart. 

Thomas- The Excellency and perfection of these virtues I readily acknowledge; but, how will this prove the way of overcoming self to be so simple, plain, immediate, and unerring as you speak of? For is it not the doctrine of almost all men and all books, and confirmed by our own woeful experience, that a great length of time and exercise and a variety of practices and methods are necessary and scarce sufficient to the attainment of any one of these four virtues? 

Gordon- When Christ our Savior was upon earth, was there anything more simple, plain, immediate, unerring, than this way to Him? Did scribes, Pharisees, publicans, and sinners need any length of time or exercise of rules and methods before they could have admission to Him, or have the benefit of faith in Him? 

Thomas- I don't understand why you ask this question, nor do I see how it can possibly relate to the matter before us. 

Gordon- It not only relates to, but is the very heart and truth of the matter before us. It is not appealed to by way of the illustration of our subject, but is our subject itself, only set in a truer and stronger light. For when I refer you to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God as the one simple, plain, immediate, and unerring way of dying to self or being saved from self, I call it so for no other reason but because you can as easily and immediately, without skill or method, by the mere turning your mind to faith, have all the benefit of these virtues, as publicans and sinners by their turning to Christ could be helped and saved by Him. 

Thomas- But, good sir, would you have me to believe that my turning and giving up myself to these virtues is as certain and immediate a way of my being directly possessed and blessed by their good power as when sinners turned to Christ to be helped and saved by Him? Surely this is too simple, and has too much of a miracle in it to be now expected. 

Gordon- I would have you strictly to believe all this in the fullest sense of the words. And also to believe that the reasons why you or anyone else spend so much time vainly endeavoring after, and never quite attaining these virtues is because you seek them in the way they are not to be found, in a multiplicity of human rules, methods, and contrivances, and not in that simplicity of faith in which those who applied to Christ immediately obtained that which they asked of Him. "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." How simple and certain a way to peace and comfort from the misery and burden of sin! What becomes now of your length of time and exercise, your rules and methods and roundabout ways to be delivered from self, the power of sin, and find the redeeming power and virtue of Christ? Will you say that turning to Christ in faith was once indeed the way for Jews and heathens to enter into life and be delivered from the power of their sins, but that all this happiness was at an end as soon as Pontius Pilate had nailed our redeemer to the cross, and so broke off all immediate union and communion between faith and Christ?  

What a folly would it be to suppose that Christ, after His having finished His great work, overcome death, ascended into heaven with all power in heaven and on earth, had become less of a Savior, and gave less than certain, and immediate help to those that by faith turn to Him now, than when He was clothed with the infirmity of our flesh and blood upon earth? Has He less power after He has conquered, than while He was only resisting and fighting our enemies? Or has He less good will to assist His church, His own body, now that He is in heaven, than He had to assist publicans, sinners, and heathens before He was glorified as the redeemer of the world? And yet this must be the case if our simply turning to Him in faith and hope is not as sure of a way of obtaining immediate assistance from Him now, as when He was upon earth. 

Thomas- You seem, to me to have stepped aside from the point in question which was not whether my turning or giving myself up to Christ in faith in Him would not do me as much good as it did to those who turned to Him when He was upon earth, but whether my turning in faith and desire to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God would do all that as fully for me now as faith in Christ did for those who became His disciples. 

Gordon- I have stuck closely, my friend, to the point before us. Let it be supposed that I had given you a form of prayer in these words: "O Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world,” or “O bread that came down from heaven”, or “You that are the resurrection and the life, the light and peace of all holy souls, help me to a living faith in You." Would you say that this was not a prayer of faith to Christ because it did not call Him Jesus, or the Son of God? Answer me plainly. 

Thomas- What can I answer you but that this is a true, and good prayer to Jesus, the Son of the living God? For who else but He was the Lamb of God, and the bread that came down? 

Gordon- Well answered, my friend. When therefore I exhort you to give yourself up in faith and hope, to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, what else do I do but turn you directly to faith and hope in the true Lamb of God? For if I ask you what the Lamb of God is, must you not tell me that it is and means the perfection of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God? Can you say it is either more or less than this? Must you not therefore say that a faith of hunger and thirst and desire of these virtues is, in spirit and truth, the very same thing as a faith of hunger and thirst and desire of salvation through the Lamb of God? And consequently that every sincere wish and desire, every inward inclination of your heart that presses after these virtues and longs to be governed by them, is an immediate direct submission to Christ, is worshipping and falling down before Him, is giving up yourself to Him and the very perfection of faith in Him? If you distrust my words, hear the words of Christ Himself. "Learn of me," he says, "For I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls." Here you have the plain truth of our two points fully asserted, first, that to be given up to, or stand in a desire of, patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God is strictly the same thing as to learn of Christ, or to have faith in Him. Secondly, that this is the one simple, short, and infallible way to overcome or be delivered from all the malignity and burden of self, expressed in these words, "And you shall find rest unto your souls." And all this because the simple tendency or inward inclination of your heart to sink down into patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God is truly giving up all that you are and all that you have from fallen Adam; it is perfectly leaving all that you have to follow Christ, it is your highest act of faith in Him and love of Him, the most ardent and earnest declaration of your cleaving to Him with all your heart and seeking for no salvation but in Him, and from Him. And therefore all the good, and blessing, pardon, and deliverance from sin that ever happened to anyone from any degree of faith and hope and application to Christ is sure to be had from this state of heart which stands continually turned to Him in a hunger and desire of being led and governed by His Spirit of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God. Thomas, if I could help you to perceive what good there is in this state of heart, you would desire it with more eagerness than the thirsty deer 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 ways that you need inquire after, no oracle that you need to consult, for while you shut yourself up in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your whole heart is His dwelling place and He lives and works in you most certainly. 

Learn whatever else you will from men and books, or even from Christ Himself besides or without these virtues, and you are only a poor wanderer in a barren wilderness where no water of life is to be found. For Christ is nowhere but in these virtues, and where they are, there He is in His own kingdom. From morning to night, let this be the Christ that you follow, and then you will fully escape all the religious delusions that are in the world, and what is more, all the delusions of your own selfish heart. For to seek to be saved by patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God is truly coming to God through Christ; and when these tempers live and abide in you as the spirit and aim of your life, then Christ is in you of a truth and the life that you then lead is not yours but Christ that lives in you. For this is following Christ with all your power. You cannot possibly speed faster after Him, you have no other way of walking as He walked, no other way of being like Him, of truly believing in Him, of showing your trust in Him and dependence upon Him but by wholly giving up yourself to that which He is, i.e., to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God. Tell me now, have I enough proved to you the short, simple, and certain way of destroying that body of self which lives and works in the four elements of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath? 

Thomas- Enough of reason. But as to covetousness, I thank God I cannot charge myself with it, it has no power over me, no, I naturally abhor it. And I also now clearly see why I have been so long struggling in vain against other selfish tempers. 

Gordon- Permit me, my friend, to remove your mistake. Had covetousness no power over you, you could have no other selfish tempers to struggle against. They are all dead as soon as covetousness has stopped working in you. You mistakenly take covetousness to relate only to the wealth of this world. But this is but one single branch of it, its nature is as large as desire, and wherever selfish desire is, there is all the evil nature of covetousness. Now envy, pride, hatred, or wrath can have no possibility of existence in you but for this one reason, because there is some selfish desire alive in you that is not satisfied, not gratified, but resisted and disappointed. And therefore so long as any selfish desire, whether of envy, uneasiness, complaint, pride, or wrath is alive in you, you have the fullest proof that all these desires are born and bred in and from your own covetousness, that is, from that same selfish bad desire which, when it is turned to the wealth of this world, is called covetousness. For all these four elements of self or fallen nature are tied together in one inseparable band, they mutually generate and are generated from one another, they have but one common life and must all of them live, or all die together. This may show you again the absolute necessity of our one simple and certain way of dying to self and the absolute insufficiency of all human means whatever to effect it. For consider only this, that to be angry at our own anger, to be ashamed of our own pride and strongly resolve not to be weak, is the end result of all human endeavors, and yet all this rather promotes the life of self, rather than the death of self. There is no help but from a total despair of all human help. When a man is brought to such an inward, full conviction as to have no more hope from any human means than he can hope to see with his hands or hear with his feet, then it is that he is truly prepared to die to self, that is, to give up all thoughts of having or doing anything that is good in any other way but that of a meek, humble, patient, total resignation of himself to God. All that we do before this conviction is in great ignorance of ourselves and full of weakness and impurity. Let our zeal be ever so wonderful, yet if it begins sooner or proceeds further, or to any other matter or in any other way than as it is led and guided by this conviction, it is full of delusion. No repentance, however long or laborious, is conversion to God until it falls into this state. For God must do all, or all is the same as nothing; but God cannot do all, until all is expected from Him; and all is not expected from Him until by a true and good despair of every human help, we have no hope, or trust, or longing after anything but a patient, meek, humble, total resignation to God, which is in other words, Christ formed in us! And now, my dear friends, I have brought you to the very place for which I desired this day's conversation, which was to set your feet upon sure ground with regard to the spirit of love. For all that variety of matters through which we have passed has been only a variety of proofs that the spirit of Divine love can have no place or possibility of birth in any fallen creature until it wills and chooses to be dead to all self in a patient, meek, humble resignation to the good power and mercy of God. And from this state of heart also it is that the spirit of prayer is born, which is the desire of the soul turned to God. Stand, therefore, steadfastly in this will, let nothing else enter into your mind, have no other contrivance but everywhere and in everything to nourish and keep up this state of heart, and then your house is built upon a rock; you are safe from all danger; the light of heaven and the love of God will begin their work in you, will bless and sanctify every power of your fallen soul, you will be in a readiness for every kind of virtue and good work and will know what it is to be led by the Spirit of God. 

Thomas- But, Gordon, though I am so delighted with what you say that I am reluctant to stop you, yet permit me to mention a fear that rises up in me. Suppose I should find myself so overcome with my own darkness and selfish tempers as not to be able to sink from them into a sensibility of this meek, humble, patient, full resignation to God; what must I then do, or how shall I have the benefit of what you have taught me? 

Gordon- You are then at the very time and place of receiving the fullest benefit from it and practicing it with the greatest advantage to yourself. For though this patient, meek resignation is to be exercised with regard to all outward things and occurrences of life, yet it chiefly respects our own inward state, the troubles, perplexities, weaknesses, and disorders of our own fallen souls. And to stand turned to a patient, meek, humble resignation to God when your own impatience, wrath, pride, and un-resignation attacks you is a higher and more beneficial performance of this duty than when you stand turned to meekness and patience when attacked by the pride or wrath or disorderly passions of other people. I say, stand turned to this patient, humble resignation, for this is your true performance of this duty at that time; and though you may have no comfortable sensibility of your performing it, yet in this state you may always have one full proof of the truth and reality of it, and that is when you seek for help in no other way, nor in anything else, neither from men nor books, but wholly leave, and give up yourself to be helped by the mercy of God. And of consequently, no matter what state you are in, you may always have the full benefit of this short and sure way of resigning yourself to God. And the greater the perplexity of your distress is, the nearer you are to the greatest and best relief, provided you have but patience to expect it all from God. For nothing brings you so near to Divine relief as the extremity of distress; for the goodness of God has no other name or nature but the helper of all that need to be helped; and nothing can possibly hinder your finding this goodness of God and every other gift and grace that you stand in need of; nothing can hinder or delay it but your turning from the only fountain of life and living water to some cracked cistern of your own making, to this or that method, opinion, division, amongst Christians, carnally expecting some mighty things either from Paul or Apollos, which are only and solely to be had by worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth, which is then only done when your whole heart and soul and spirit trusts wholly and solely to the operation of that God within you, in whom we live, move, and have our being. And be assured of this as a most certain truth that we have neither more nor less of the Divine operation within us because of this or that outward form or manner of our life but just and strictly in that degree, as our faith and hope and trust and dependence upon God is in us. What a folly then to be so often perplexed about the way to God? Nothing is the way to God, but our heart; God is nowhere else to be found, and the heart itself cannot find Him or be helped by anything else to find Him but by its own love of Him, faith in Him, dependence upon Him, resignation to Him, and expectation of all from Him. These are short, but full articles of true religion which carry salvation along with them, which make a true and full offering and oblation of our whole nature to the Divine operation and also a true and full confession of our Holy God in unity. For as they look wholly to the Father as blessing us with the operation of His own Word and Spirit, so they truly confess and worship the Holy Trinity of God. And as they ascribe all to, and expect all from God alone, so they make the truest and best of all confessions, that there is no God but one. Let then Arians, semi-Arians, and Socinians who puzzle their laborious brains to make for themselves paper images of a trinity, they can have nothing from you but your pity and prayers; your foundation stands sure while you look for all your salvation through the Father’s working life in your soul by His own Word and Spirit which dwell in Him and are one life, both in Him and you. 

Thomas- I can never thank you enough, Gordon, for this answer to my fear. It seems now as if I can always know how to find full relief in this humble, meek, patient, total resignation of myself to God. It is, as you said, a remedy that is always at hand, equally practicable at all times, and never in greater reality than when my own tempers are making war against it in my own heart. You have quite carried your point with me; the God of patience, meekness, and love is the one God of my heart. It is now the whole desire of my soul to seek for all my salvation in and through the merits and mediation of the meek, humble, patient, resigned, suffering Lamb of God who alone has power to bring forth the blessed birth of these heavenly virtues in my soul. He is the bread of God that came down from heaven, of which the soul must eat, or perish into everlasting hunger. He is the eternal love and meekness that left the bosom of His Father, to be Himself the resurrection of meekness and love in all the darkened, wrathful souls of fallen men. What a comfort is it to think that this Lamb of God, Son of the Father, light of the world, who is the glory of heaven and joy of angels is as near to us, as truly in the midst of us, as He is in the midst of heaven. And that not a thought, look, or desire of our heart that presses toward Him, longing to catch, as it were, one small spark of His heavenly nature, is in as sure a way of finding Him, touching Him, and drawing virtue from Him as the woman who was healed by longing but to touch the border of His garment. This doctrine also makes me quite ashamed of all my own natural tempers, as to being many marks of the beast upon me; every whisper of my soul that stirs up impatience, uneasiness, resentment, pride, and wrath within me shall be rejected with a "Get behind me, Satan," for it is His and has its whole nature from Him. To rejoice in a resentment that has been gratified appears to me now to be quite frightful. For what is it, in reality, but rejoicing that my own serpent of self has new life and strength given to it, and that the precious Lamb of God is denied entrance into my soul. For this is the strict truth of the matter. To give into resentment and go willingly to gratify it, is calling up the courage of your own serpent and truly helping it to be more stout and valiant and successful in you; on the other hand, to give up all resentment of every kind and on every occasion, however artfully, beautifully, and outwardly colored. To sink down into the humility of meekness under all contrariety, contradiction, and injustice, always turning the other cheek to the smiter, however haughty, is the best of all prayers, the surest of all means to have nothing but Christ living and working in you as the Lamb of God that takes away every sin that ever had power over your soul. What a blindness was it in me to think that I had no covetousness because the love of self was not felt by me! For to covet is to desire; and what can it signify whether I desire this or that? If I desire anything, but that which God would have me to be and do, I stay in the mire of covetousness and must have all that evil and unrest, living and working in me, which robs misers of their peace both with God and man. Oh sweet resignation of myself to God, happy death of every selfish desire, blessed unction of a holy life, the only driver of all evil out of my soul, You be my guide and governor wherever I go! Nothing but You can take me from myself, nothing but You can lead me to God; hell has no power where You are; nor can heaven hide itself from You. Oh may I never indulge a thought, bring forth a word, or do anything for myself or others but under the influence of your blessed desire. 

Forgive me, Gordon, my soul is transported; I cannot stop it. The sight, though distant, of this heavenly Canaan, this Sabbath of the soul, freed from the miserable labor of self to rest in meekness, humility, patience, and resignation under the Spirit of God, is like the joyful voice of the bridegroom to my soul and leaves no wish in me but to be at the marriage feast of the Lamb. 

Gordon- Thomas, here you must certainly come if you keep to the path of meekness, humility, and patience under a full resignation to God. But if you turn aside from it, even if the occasion seems ever so glorious, or the effects ever so wonderful to you, it is only preparing yourself for a harder death. For die you must, to all and everything that you have worked for, under any other spirit but that of meekness, humility, and true resignation to God. Everything else, no matter what it is, has its rise from the fire of nature, it belongs to nothing else and must of all necessity be given up, lost, and taken from you again by fire, either here or hereafter. For these virtues are the only wedding garments; they are the lamps and vessels well furnished with oil. There is nothing that will do instead of them; they must have their own full and perfect work in you, or the soul can never be delivered from its fallen wrathful state. And all this is no more than is implied in this scripture doctrine, i.e., that there is no possibility of salvation but in and by a birth of the meek, humble, patient, resigned Lamb of God in our souls. And when this Lamb of God has brought forth a real birth of his own meekness, humility, and full resignation to God in our souls, then are our lamps trimmed and our virgin hearts made ready for the marriage feast. This marriage feast signifies the entrance into the highest state of union that can be between God and the soul in this life. Or in other words, it is the birth of the Spirit of love in our souls, which whenever we attain will feed our souls with such peace and joy in God as will blot out the remembrance of everything that we called peace or joy before. This birth neither does nor can possibly begin any sooner than at the entrance or manifestation of the Divine light in the three first wrathful, self-tormenting properties of nature, which are and must be the ground of every natural life and must be darkness, rage, and torment until the light of God, breaking in upon them, changes all their painful working into the strongest sensibilities of love, joy, and triumph in the perception and possession of a new Divine life. Now all that we have said today of the necessity of the fallen souls dying to self by meekness, patience, humility, and full resignation to God is strictly the same thing and asserted from the same ground as when it was said that the three first properties of nature must have their wrathful activity taken from them by the light of God breaking in upon them. Now this was always the state of nature, it never was a state of wrath because it never was without the light of God in it. But the natural, creaturely life, having a possibility of falling and having actually fallen from God, has found and felt (that which ought never to have been found and felt), That which nature is in itself without the manifestation of God in it. 

Therefore, as sure as the light of God or the entrance of the Deity into the first three properties of nature is absolutely necessary to make nature to be a heavenly kingdom of light and love, so sure and certain is it that the creaturely life that is fallen from God under the wrathful first properties of nature can have no deliverance from it, cannot have a birth of heavenly light and love by any other possible way but that of dying to self by meekness, humility, patience, and full resignation to God. The reason is this, it is because the will is the leader of the creaturely life, and it can have nothing but that to which its will is turned. And therefore it cannot be saved from, or raised out of the wrath of nature until its will turns from nature, and wills to be no longer driven by it. But it cannot turn from nature or show a will to come from under its power any other way than by turning and giving itself up to that meekness, humility, patience, and resignation to God, which, so far as it goes, is leaving, rejecting, and dying to all the guidance of nature. 

And so you see that this one simple way is, according to the unchallengeable nature of things, the only possible and necessary way to God. It is as possible to go two opposite ways at once as to go to God any other way than this. But what is best of all, this way is absolutely infallible; nothing can defeat it. And all this infallibility is fully grounded in the two-fold character of our Savior,

1) As He is the Lamb of God, a principle and source of all meekness and humility in the soul.

2) As He is the light of eternity that blesses eternal nature and turns it into a kingdom of heaven. 

For in this two-fold respect, He has a power of redeeming us, which nothing can hinder; but sooner or later, He must see all His and our enemies under His feet, and all that is fallen in Adam into death must rise and return to a unity of an eternal life in God. For as the Lamb of God, He has all power to bring forth in us a sensibility and a weariness of our own wrathful state and a willingness to flee from it into meekness, humility, patience, and resignation to that mercy of God which alone can help us. And when we are as a result weary and heavy laden and wanting and willing to get rest for our souls in meek, humble, patient resignation to God, then it is that He, as the light of God and heaven, joyfully breaks in upon us, turns our darkness into light, our sorrow into joy, and begins that kingdom of God and Divine love within us which will never have an end. Need I say more, Thomas, to show you how to come out of the wrath of your evil earthly nature into the sweet peace and joy of the Spirit of love? Neither notions, nor speculations, nor heat, nor fervor, nor rules, nor methods can bring it forth. It is the child of light and cannot possibly have any birth in you but only and solely from the light of God rising in your own soul, as it rises in heavenly beings. But the light of God cannot rise or be found in you by any talent or contrivance of your own but solely in the way of that meekness, humility, and patience which waits, trusts, resigns to, and expects all from the inward, living, life-giving operation of the triune God within you, creating, quickening, and reviving in your fallen soul that birth and image and likeness of the Holy Trinity in which the first father of mankind was created.

Thomas- You need say no more, Gordon; you have not only removed that difficulty which brought us here, but have by a variety of things, fixed and confirmed us in a full belief of that great truth elsewhere affirmed, namely "That there is but one salvation for all mankind, and that is the life of God in the soul. And also, that there is but one possible way for man to attain this life of God, not one for a Jew, another for a Christian, and a third for a 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." Therefore, Gordon, farewell. If we see you no more in this life, you have sufficiently taught us how to seek and find every kind of goodness, blessing, and happiness in God alone.

Finis.

 

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