this, thou afflicted and drunken, but not with wine: thus saith the Lord God, even God that pleadeth the cause of his people, behold, I have taken out of thy hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury: thou shalt drink it no more. But I will put into their hand that spoil thee: which have said to thy soul, bow down, that we may go over; and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street to them that went over." What comprehensive language is this! God avers that he is the God of his people, and then affectionately declares that no evil shall prevail against them. Think of this, ye highly favoured saints; and when you are wading through seas of sorrow, then turn these blessed expressions of immutable love into prayer. Jehovah your Father delights to hear his children speak to him in the language of his own book. Indeed what could we do in the hour of temptation and conflict, if the word of God were not our guide and support! It is given to us for present use. The doctrines, promises, precepts, statutes, and exhortations, are expressions of eternal love. Nothing is wanting in the volume of revelation to make us, by the illuminating teaching of the Holy Ghost, wise unto endless salvation. A little faith in the word of God is of more worth to the true saint than the riches of the world can be, for they may pass away, but faith in Christ is an imperishable grace, given according to covenant engagement by God our Father, for holy purposes and ends. It is that habit or quality of the heart produced by the Holy Ghost to receive present pardon through the redemption of Christ from all sin, and to embrace and wear in all our duties and services, his righteousness for justification to eternal life. Prize this precious gift of God, however weak it may be. Call upon him, and entreat him to be merciful to you, by putting forth his omnipotent grace in and on you, that it may be strengthened, and your hearts be established and comforted through the knowledge of him, by whom we are called to glory and virtue.

(For the Spiritual Magazine.)

UNPUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LATE REV. SAMUEL EYLES PIERCE.

My Friend,

(No. 5.)

Bethel House, June 13, 1814.

I hope you and your spouse, and the church of the living God with you, are all well in your souls and bodies, and pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We live for no purpose, if we do not grow into an increasing knowledge of the love of the Holy Trinity unto us in the person of the God-man Christ Jesus; as it is in our increasing knowledge

of their mutual and everlasting love to us, in the person of Christ, we have increasing communion with the eternal Three in the blessings contained in their love to us. We should never contemplate the doctrine of the Trinity but in Christ: nor should we ever think of God's loving us with an everlasting love, but as we consider the same, and our persons also in Christ, God's elect, had being and existence in Christ from everlasting. They were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world; therefore they were beloved in Christ before the world was. It is good to have your thoughts exercised in considering your persons in Christ, the objects and subjects of God's infinite love and complacency. It is good to be viewing your persons, as always shining in the person of Christ, in the presence of your heavenly Father. This will sublimate your mind: it will raise it up to high and heavenly things; you will hereby have your affections set on Christ, and fixed on him; and by this very means you will greatly delight in the Lord your God. It will make way for you to

enter into the holiest of all, and converse with the Lamb on his throne, and with his holy Father, and with the Holy Spirit. Look round about you-look within you look where you will, there is no creature nor thing, no object nor subject, neither war nor peace, neither trade nor plenty of all things, worth one single thought, nor the least concern to the man in Christ; no. Christ exceeds the whole creation; he transcends all contained in it. His person goes beyond all the beauties of it: his love beyond all the sweets contained in it: his mercies beyond all the miseries of it: his salvation beyond all the sins of the fall: his blood and righteousness beyond all the sin and guilt, pollution and demerit in all the Lord's people put together: and in heaven, the glory of Christ, or Christ the Lord of glory, puts down all other glory in elect saints and angels. Their glory is but the reflection of his. He shines on them; this reflects glory, such as we can have no tolerable idea of on their minds, and they are for ever fixed on him who is their glory, and will be their all for ever. Whilst we are here below, we want our Lord's shine on us; and it is most wonderful that he should shine on such as we are and it appears wonderful to us, when we see, feel, and know what we are in our nature selves. In our old Adam nature I do not know, neither do I desire to know your experience of this. I know my own, and think the power which will be put forth at the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is not beyond the power he is continually putting forth in my soul, in bearing up my mind, and exercising of it on his person and finished salvation, notwithstanding all I see, feel, and experience of fallen nature in myself. Blessed be the Lord, the love of Christ is invincible: his grace is unfrustrable: his mercy endureth for ever: his compassions fail not: his goodness is continual: his righteousness everlasting: his blood contains everlasting health, purity, and cure. It is as in an immense ocean all the sins of the elect are swallowed up. We are purified in the blood,

of the Lamb from every spot and stain of sin. In it we have everlasting purity, health, cure, life, and salvation. Christ said to his beloved ones, "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." And what he says to us is to the same effect. "I, even 1, am he, that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." It would be to live by the faith of the Son of God, to be receiving those words into our minds every day, hour, and moment, and give full credit to them, and live in the full belief of them. This would be to honour the Lord Jesus Christ, and to set the crown of salvation on his blessed head. Many talk of faith, and of living by faith, and it is all notion: there is no reality in it, for it is without the word. It is not faith, or Christ as revealed in the word. It is not taking in Christ as he is revealed in the gospel into our minds, and living over those sights of Christ, which we through the Spirit receive thereby. The Lord Jesus is revealed in the everlasting gospel. It is there real believers see him. It is from thence through the Spirit they receive and derive all their knowledge of him. What they believe of him, and concerning him, is derived therefrom. It is in this glass they behold the glory of the Lord. This produces a glorious change, and supernatural effects_within them, which are thus expressed by the apostle, who says, "But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." It is well for us to be looking into this glass every day. It is blessed when the Holy Ghost lets down his own light and beams of glory on it, and thereby in his own light to give us to see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, in his person, in his love, in his salvation, in his relation to us, in his interest in us, in his fulness, fitness, and union to us. Then we cannot but give up our whole persons to the Lord, to be his for ever.

I hope you see more in Christ than ever. I do not want to know more of him, but I want to know what his good Spirit hath taught me of, and concerning him, from and by the gospel more fully and truly. It is no new truth concerning Jesus, and the Father's love to me in him, I want the knowledge of; no. But these I want more fully to understand, that they may in believing be experienced as divine and eternal realities in my heart. They are so; but in believing I experience the weight, influence, and importance of them, and it is only then the fruits of the same can be produced.

I am just at the close of my sixty-eighth year. I intend, if the Lord will, to set off from London to Chard, the first Monday in July. I am far from being able to pronounce how it may be; but should my Lord permit, I intend going to Truro. Should it be so, you must not expect my writing to you, but I will desire Mr. W— But if I should visit you then you must not

N. B. A small portion of the sheet from which this letter is transcribed has been cut off, and it remains incomplete.

REVIEW.

Narrative of Facts, characterizing the Supernatural Manifestations in Members of Mr. Irving's Congregation, and other Individuals in England and Scotland, and formerly in the Writer himself. Second edition, with Preface, on the Spiritual Influence permitted to Satan, and remarks on Mr. Irving's and the Morning Watch's Review of the Narrative. By Robert Baxter, 12mo. p.p. 155. London, J. Nisbet.

OUR readers will recollect that many months since, when this delusion was in its most green and palmy state, in our notice of Mr. Pilkington's pamphlet, we unhesitatingly spoke out our opinion of the blasphemy and its ringleader. Of course, therefore, they will not, now that the deception is daily becoming more and more manifest, suppose our views are changed. Let not any one, however, hence imagine that we take up this narrative with pleasure or self-gratulation; the thing is too awful to be a subject for any other feeling than that of humility, and it should incite in our minds fervently and constantly the prayer," Lead us not into temptation."

That under the assumed garb of liberalism, the grossest, because an enlightened infidelity, is making rapid inroads among the professors of christianity has long been our opinion; and we believe that Satan, the father of unbelief, hath long pleasantly looked upon, and doth now busily employ the Rev. Edward Irving, as a fit and able tutor to train up votaries for his child. Do any of our readers start at this opinion of Mr. Irving? Do they call it uncharitable? With what delight would we hail the day, and the circumstance, which shall enable us likewise to call it so, and to blame ourselves for having ever given it out; but as finite men, we can but regard individuals from their fruits, and as editors of the Spiritual Magazine, we feel it to be our imperative duty to warn off our readers, and all by whom we may happen to be seen, from the fascinating but perilous allurements of the man's ministry, whose fruits are blasphemy.

Let us enquire, who is this Edward Irving? Not a great while ago he was a humble minister of the Scottish Kirk. So humble and so unthought of, that according to his own words, he "was revolving in his mind purposes of missionary enterprize," when he was called to assist Dr. Chalmers, at the Tron Church, Glasgow. So far well; the sun sometimes rises in gloom, the same sun which shall gild the after hours of the day with brightest beams. He continued at the Tron Church; his ministry still lightly esteemed, until he was called or was sent to the Caledonian Chapel, Hatton Garden. Now began the dawn of that popularity, which, poor man! he hath laboured so long and so arduously, and with so many changes to keep up. What were his sentiments then? A mongrel compound, half heathenism, half divinity; and the divinity half, divided yet again into half CalVOL. IX.-No. 110.]

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vinism, and half Arminianism. But there was much eloquence, and that drew around him the great, and the learned, and the noble; and there was at times so much faithful reproof of the reigning sins prevalent among these great, and learned, and noble, and such an apparent sincerity and desire to be useful withal, that the christian— we speak not now of him who just takes up the name as a convenience or continues it as an heirdom-the real christian, the saint of God, thought there must be somewhat in him; and they too, as the great, and the learned, and the noble-tired as is their wont when the novelty was done,-though not entirely forgetful of the eloquent and eccentric looking orator, left him-they too came and listened; and then the preacher's creed was altered, and a Calvinism higher than Calvin ever broached was by degrees brought forward.

It was in the early part of this change of his, that we confess we were among those captived by him. It was then that we thought and acknowledged, that he was a man of God. "How is the gold become dim! how is the fine gold changed!"

But to proceed. His heresy on the person of our Lord was then preached ;—then came Universal Redemption;—then his vagaries on the Millennium; and now his blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.

Our readers, such particularly as are strangers to the man, may be led to enquire-surely the versatility of such a mind, the changes in such a creed must be repulsive, and drive off the congregation as fast as it was collected; and so it did: but the grand secret, and which hath made Edward Irving so useful a minister of Satan was, the undescribable something, which, while it made the shocked listener determine never again to come and hear so erroneous a preacher, still kept so fast a hold on his curiosity, that an opportunity never recurred but each was desirous yet once more to look in and hear what he preached now. It might be his personal appearance, it might be his apparent earnestness, it might be the boldness of his statements, or it might be, the tout ensemble, which constituted the attraction.

That there was this attraction is generally allowed. Then, we argue, that the changes in his creed, inasmuch as each change gathered around him a new congregation, made his services invaluable to the evil one. A man might preach for a century errors as base as Mr. Irving's; but without this versatility and this attraction, although he might establish the few around in his heresy, he would not enlist so countless a number of votaries. Before the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost was brought forward by Mr. Irving, his congregation had dwindled to almost none; his spacious and elegant chapel (to the credit of the Scottish Kirk now no longer his) was less than half filled; then it was that Satan-for Satan is a master of arts politic, as well as evil-looked in upon him, and whispered it, for we think, with Mr. Baxter, it is a delusion too tremendous to be concocted by the unassisted mind of man, and Irving bethought him it was just the very thing to call around him the departed and oft-lamented crowd. Satan,