To the Reverend Mr. _S._
_My dear Friend and Brother_,
IT is a great pleasure to me to think (as you ♦you say) that my letter to you, will also be to two of your brethren, who stand in the same state of earnestness to know how to be faithful and useful in their ministry, as you do: I hope God will increase your number.
♦ duplicate word “you” removed
The first business of a clergyman awakened by God into a sensibility, and love of the truths of the gospel, and making them equally felt, and loved by others, is thankfully, and calmly, to adhere to, and give way to the increase of this new-risen light, and by turning his heart to God, as the sole author of it, humbly to beg of him, that all that, which he feels a desire of doing to those under his cure, may be first truly and fully done in himself.
Now the way to become more and more awakened, to feel more and more of this first conviction, is not to reason yourself into a deeper sensibility of it by finding out arguments: but the true way is, to keep close to the presence and power of God, which has manifested itself within you, willingly resigned to, and solely depending upon the one work of his all-creating word, and all-quickening spirit, which is always more or less powerful in us, according as we more or less depend upon it.
And God is always ours, in such proportion as we are his: as our faith is in him, such is his presence in us. What an error therefore, to turn one thought, from him, or cast a look after any help but his; for, if we ask _all_ of him, if we seek for all in him, if we knock only at his own door for mercy in Christ Jesus, and patiently wait there, God’s kingdom must come, and his will must be done in us.
And therefore all the progress of your first conviction, which by the grace of God you have had from above, consists in the simplicity of your faith, in adhering to it, as the work of God in your soul, which can only go on in God’s way, and can never cease to go on in you, any more than God can cease to be that which he is, but so far as it is stopped by your want of faith in it, or trusting to something else along with it. God is found, as soon as he alone is sought; but to seek God alone, is nothing else but the giving up ourselves unto him. For God is not absent from us in any other respect, than as the spirit of our mind is _turned_ from him, and not left wholly to him.
*This _spirit of faith_, which not here or there, or now and then, but every where, and in all things, looks up to God alone, trusts solely in him, depends absolutely upon him, expects all from him, and does all it does for him, is the utmost perfection of piety in this life. And this is that union with God, in which man was at first created, and to which he is again called, and will be fully restored by God and man being made one Christ.
_Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost._ These are always together, the one can never be without the other.
This was _Stephen_’s qualification for the deaconship, not because of any thing high or peculiar in that office, but because the gospel dispensation was the opening a kingdom of God amongst men, a spiritual theocracy, in which as God, and man fallen from God, were united in Christ, so an union of immediate operation between God and man was restored. Hence this dispensation was called, in distinction from all that went before it in outward types, figures, and shadows, a _ministration of the Spirit_, that is, an immediate operation of the Spirit of God itself in man, in which nothing human, or depending upon the power of man’s wit, ability, or natural powers, had any place, but all things begun in and under obedience to the Spirit, and all were done in the power of faith united with God.
Therefore to be a faithful minister of this new covenant between God and man, is to live by faith alone, to act only, and constantly under its power, to desire no will, understanding, or ability as a labourer in Christ’s vineyard, but what comes from faith, and full dependance upon God’s immediate operation in and upon us.
This is that very thing which is expressly commanded by St. _Peter_, saying, _If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God_, if any _man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth_. For all which he giveth this reason, which will be a reason as long as the world standeth, viz. _That in all things God may be glorified thro’ Jesus Christ_. A plain declaration, that where this is not done, there God is not glorified by Christians through Christ Jesus.