THE Spiritual Magazine ; OR, SAINTS' TREASURY. There are Three that bear record in heaven; the FATHER, the WORD, and the HOLY GHOST; and these Three are One." Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." SUPPLEMENT, 1834. 1 John v. 7. Jude 3. THE NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE OF MODERATION. "Let your moderation be known unto all men."--Phil. iv, 5. It is a blessed truth, that there is perfect and everlasting harmony in the whole system of the religion of the Son of God; the will of the Father, the worth of the Saviour, and work of the Holy Spirit, takes a merciful and sure hold of the sinner that is ordained to eternal life. The Father wills the sinner's endless bliss by the worth and worthiness of the great Mediator-he is entitled to it. By the work of the Holy Spirit, he is capacitated for it. Whatever the law demands, the gospel furnishes the believer with. Whatever the precept enjoins, the promise ensures what the Father wills for him: the Holy Spirit works in him; nor can his views of his covenant God be too exalted; for he is not loved with a moderate love, kept by moderate power, led by moderate wisdom, defended by moderate justice, redeemed with a moderate price, clothed in a moderate righteousness, remembered by moderate mercy, saved by moderate grace, secured with moderate care; nor is he to be filled when he gets home with moderate joy for a moderate time, but with a fulness of joy and pleasure for evermore: no danger of extravagance here: the more of this the better. Nor is the believer to be moderate at the throne of grace in his confession to the Lord of what he is as a sinner. He is saved with a great salvation, and he knows was he not a great sinner he should not need so great a salvation. All his sins are great ones; he has no little ones. He knows that one evil thought if laid to his charge, would take him to perdition. "He that offendeth in one point, is guilty of the whole." I had almost said, if one sinful thought would thus sink the poor creature lower than the grave, what must all his sins put together do? O how truly welcome to those who VOL. X.-No. 129.] 3 D know what they are, is the heavenly declaration, that "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." Those taught of God will freely acknowledge that they are vile enough, and poor enough to need all the covenant transactions of their covenant God. Their confession of what they are, makes way for the coming in of all that the Lord has done; and when led on to taste that the Lord is gracious, and to understand the scheme of eternal love somewhat clearly, so far from the believer being angry with the doctrine of election, he will rejoice that it was this act of mercy that made him an heir of God, and joint-heir with Jesus Christ. And can he be offended with the Lord for so firmly fixing the love of his heart upon him as thus to make him one of his own children ? However much through a blind and a fallen nature, he might in times past have been offended, he will now bless the dear name of the Lord, that from the beginning the Lord hath chosen him to salvation. He is now at war with himself, and at peace with God; bows to the sovereignty of his will, sings of the triumphs of his cross, and is thus a true believer of the Lamb: and so they are exhorted to be followers of God as dear children. I do not wonder at the apostle calling them dear children. Their completeness in their covenant Head, Christ Jesus, is indeed at once a declaration, that these children are infinitely and everlastingly dear to him; and one happy consequence is, the Lord makes himself superlatively dear to them. They are to be followers of God; they are not to go before, and so make the Lord depend on them; although this is how freewill would have it so that the poor creature's continuance in the love of God, promises of his word, fear of his name, and liberty of his truth, is a matter that lies not with the Creator, but with the creature; and so the Lord must be much obliged to his creature that he begs so kind as to accept his offered mercy. The Saviour might well call the advocates of such a system thieves and robbers, John x. 8.; for they (sentimentally) go before the Lord, instead of following him; they choose him, and then he is to come after and choose them; they desire eternal life, and then the Lord is to come after and design the same for them; they go first in being faithful to him, and he is to come after and be faithful to them. Thus they turn the truth of God into a lie, (that is, make it speak falsehood) by putting the hind side before, upside down; and so making the prosperity of the dear Mediator to depend on creature caprice. This is what all the Lord's people, more or less, have been guilty of: but when those who thus erred in spirit come to understanding, when those who thus murmured, experimentally learn doctrine, they walk after the Lord, not go before him; they will freely acknowledge that they love, choose, and desire the Lord; because the Lord first loved, chose, and ordained them to eternal life. This gives unto the Lord the glory due unto his name: this acknowledges that he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will;" that he has secured all the blessing to them, by which all the glory redounds to him. Again, they are not to be moderate in their request of the Lord's mercy; they are to open their mouths as wide as ever they can ; and the Lord says he will fill them. The Lord has promised great things, the Holy Spirit makes them feel their need of great things: the Lord has freely done great things for them, and so he enables them to long after great things: and many of them are favoured to realize great things; "for the works of the Lord are great, sought out by all them that have pleasure therein." And if the reader be one of this happy number, he will agree with me when I say that there is no danger of being too fervent in prayer, too firm in hope, too ardent in love to the Lord, too much assured of interest in him, too much decided for him, or of having too much enjoyment of him. The language of the believer is and will be, all the way to heaven, "Lord, revive thy work." The most thus favoured is rich relatively, and he is anxious to be rich experimentally. Heavenly truth is a treasure that moth cannot corrupt, that thieves cannot rob the believer of every branch of it endears the Lord to his heart. The business of a gospel minister is to preach the gospel (that is, the truth) to every creature the Lord in his providence shall lead within the sound of his voice; and signs and wonders are, more or less, sure to follow. The dead will be quickened, the benighted illuminated, the prisoners emancipated, the wavering established, the traveller refreshed, the devil will be offended, pharisees frightened, the children of Zion will grow, and God, even their own God, will be glorified. Therefore, the minister is not to be moderate in dealing out ministerially the unsearchable riches of Christ. He may rest fully assured, that his hearers cannot hear too much about Jesus Christ; so that the man of God may freely tell his hearers all he can about their condemnation hy the divine law, the total depravity of human nature, the evil of sin, and the entire poverty of the creature, the ancient covenant of mercy, the person and work of Immanuel, the invincible witness of the Holy Ghost. He may freely bring every dish to table; it will all be wanted-the children are hungry, the host is great, the provisions good, and freely given. And happy indeed is that people, whose tent, (gospel ministry) where they lodge, is so full of the Lord's glory that Moses cannot enter the tent, Numb. xl. 35. Let Christ be all in all. The meaning of the apostle appears to me to be explained by the following passage in Eccl. vii. 16, 17. " Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself over-wise; why'shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not over-much wicked, neither be thou foolish; why shouldest thou die before thy time?" When a sinner is first called by grace, he is generally righteous over-much, thinking that a rigidness of attention to formality will bring that ease of mind and peace of conscience which he so much desires; so that almost all of his attention is confined to the exterior of religion, and often surprised and even staggered at some of the infirmities of the aged traveller he also is in one sense over-much wise; for when he is told what he has got within, what wickednesses and infirmities he will find himself the subject of, what a plague he will have with his own abominable nature, he cannot scarcely believe it; so that you may see in his manner what he is saying in his mind, I know better. He is so wise that he considers that he ought to be talking to every body and every where about religion; he thinks he ought to try to convert them all. Thus he is righteous over-much, and over-much wise; and as far as words can do it, destroys himself; as Peter did, when he told the Lord he should never wash his feet, according to poor Peter's doctrine (though Peter little thought it); and so the Lord gave him to understand that he could not be saved unless he washed him (in his own blood.) Peter pretty soon altered his tone then. The mother of Zebedee's children wished one of her children to sit at the Saviour's left-hand, not knowing those that are lost are to be there; but she knew not what she asked, Matt. xx. 22. So that if there were no better salvation for them than what they in their legal state talk of, they could not be saved at all. And so in their being over-much righteous and over-much wise, they would (if possible) destroy themselves. But when the fountains of the great deep within are broken up, when temptation arrests them, when tribulation tries them, and the enemy begins severely to buffet them, they then become moderated, their heart becomes sealed, (Job xxxvii. 7.) so that they can neither do nor talk of doing any thing. The enquirer's concern now is, (now he finds he can do nothing himself) to know what the Lord has done for him; nor can he rest until he can call the Redeemer his. He is thus delivered from immoderate talk about fleshly sanctity and creature doings; so that he must sing small concerning himself, but he may safely boast in the Lord all he can. "Neither be wicked over-much." The enemy is ever ready to tempt the believer to one evil or the other; and the believer finds he has nature quite as ready to agree to the enemy's wish. If an heir of glory is left to repeated inconsistencies, he becomes as it were dead to the church. I believe this has fell to the lot of many a true follower of the Lamb. This is what Solomon calls dying before their time; that is, it is dying to the church as to comfortable communion with it, before it is their time to depart out of the world; they have, as it were, lost (not their Saviour,) but their external savouriness; so that they are neither fit for the Lord, (the church) nor the dunghill, (the world). They stand as it were, as to their external, between the church and the world, and are cruelly trodden on under the feet (not of the Lord, but) of men. But he is a vessel of mercy still, and the Lord will take good care to tow all his vessels safe home to glory, where they shall see "The worthy Lamb with glory crown'd In his august abode; Enthron'd sublime, and deck'd around (sunshine) Surrey. JAMES. THE SPIRITUAL CRY, WALK, &c., OF FAITH. ALWAYS ACCORDANT WITH THE DIVINE PROMISE; PROVED FROM THE INFALLIBLE RECORDS OF HEAVEN. "FOR the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even (O, sweet, blessed even: Lord, help thy dear chosen family to take fast hold by precious faith of thy infallible word of promise) even as many as the Lord our God, (Zion's covenant Alehim) shall call," Acts ii. 39. Yes, blessed be thy faithful Majesty that thy word of life, grace and salvation, is not yea and nay, for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was, and is, and shall be, preached in thy everlasting gospel, till all thy redeemed be brought into a state of grace by the regenerating power of God the Holy Ghost, was not, is not, cannot be yea and nay. Oh no, thou faithful and true witness, "for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him (Zion's Almighty incarnate Head) amen, unto the glory of God," the exaltation of his holy King, Psalm ii. 6. the everlasting comfort, peace, joy, and safety of his mystical body, the church; yes, it is a grand point in the blessed gospel, and the great warrant to that faith which is of the operation of God, and that worketh by love, that Jehovah the Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world, John iv. 14. Thus, the ever blessed God "commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet ungodly, and without strength, in due time Christ died for us." Where is boasting then for us, vile, guilty, sinful, helpless, mortals? why? it is for ever excluded. But by what law? of works; nay, but by the law of faith. And "whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world ;" and this is the church's victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy, that the purpose of God, according to election might stand to all eternity, not of works, but of him that calleth," whom he wills to the delightful and everlasting fellowship of his dear Son : "even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And O, believing child of God, let us take comfort in these ancient, everlasting, and sure settlements of divine love and grace; for although our British Isle seems almost inundated with false religion, like base coin, fair to the eye, but will not bear inspection, nor weighing in the King's standard; yet the election ever hath, must, and shall obtain it, i. e. eternal life; yes, for this, with all grace blessings they had in Christ before the world was. "O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of (Zion's gracious covenant) God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! for of him (are we made to differ, and through him, Christ Jesus, we obtain mercy,) and to him our infinitely kind God and Father in Christ Jesus, be all the glory for all things, world without end. Amen. |