_To a Clergyman of_ Westmoreland.
_Reverend Sir_,
ADAM’s turning from God, to hear the voice of his own _reason_ and _imagination_, and the suggestions of a satanical serpent, was that which created in him a new hardened heart, bold enough to eat of the forbidden tree. Now this rise of the first sin, demonstrates how the matter stands between God and every sinner, to the end of the world. The whole nature of God, his one unalterable will and work, stands in the same full opposition and contrariety to every work of sin in every man, as it did to _Adam_’s first transgression. And that which God did to prevent the first sin, saying to _Adam_, _Eat not_, that same voice of love, keeps saying, to every son of _Adam_, _Sin not_.
Yet so wise in the ways of God, are some divinity students, as to teach and preach, that the whole world through its thousands of years, has been bringing forth its millions of myriads of sinners all round the globe, who as soon as they have done with the vanity and misery of this world, are to be roaring in the hottest fire of an eternal hell. For what? Why, because they have been just as wicked, as the decrees of God required and forced them to be. And also thro’ every age of the world, there hath always been a little number of righteous, who were to go to heaven, which number had no littleness in it, but because God would not suffer it to be greater.
Can a charge like this be brought against Satan? Nay, doth it not even free Satan from all the evil that is charged upon him, and make him, though going about as a roaring lion, to be as insignificant a tool in the work of sin, as the preacher is in the work of godliness, though with ever so loud a voice, he beseeches the _reprobate_ to be reconciled to God, or with tears in his eyes, exhorts the _elect_ not to depart from him?
You once, I remember, said to me, that you thought I over-did the matter, in my censure upon learning. Let learning therefore speak for itself. Let its own works praise it. What has it done? What has brought forth a _multiplicity_ of churches, but that very same acuteness of learning, which asserts and proves there is but _one_? Whence comes transubstantiation, election, reprobation, insignificancy of works, socinianism, arianism, but from that knowledge of history, and critical skill in words, which is the glory of the learned world.
_Without me ye can do nothing_, saith Christ. _That which a man soweth, that shall he reap_, saith the apostle. Truths like these, of which the scripture is full, would keep all believers in the true church, attentive to the one thing needful, had not a learning, falsely so called, filled all eyes with the dust of darkness.
Now, Sir, be as sober as you will about the use and power of learning, logic, and eloquence, in the doctrines of salvation; condemn the bad use that heretics, schismatics, arians and socinians have made of them; yet let me whisper this truth into your ear, that you will never be delivered from the delusion and cheat of your own learning, till by a light risen up within you, you come to see, and know, that you want no more learning, to change you from a sinner into a saint, than _Mary Magdalen_ did.
*God said to _Abraham_, _Walk before me, and be thou perfect_. This was the _Hebrew_ school, in which the father of the faithful, was to learn to be perfect. But here now comes the scholar-critic, and finds that matters stand not thus now, because the glorious light of the gospel (he says) has discovered that all lies in an _election_ and _reprobation_, and that salvation and damnation come from nothing else, the apostle expressly saying, _It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy_. What a learned strife has there been about the meaning of these words? And yet they mean not one jot more or less, than when the apostle saith, _The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them_. All that is in the one text, is in the other; and both of them say only this one great and good truth, that the creature can have no divine life, light, goodness, and happiness, but from _that_, which the holy triune God is, and operates in it.
_Farewell._
An Extract from Mr. LAW’s Address to the CLERGY.
_Published a little after his Death._