These are all the combats and conflicts with Satan, which you can prove I ever had. O, Sir, without more and greater conflicts than these, none shall see the kingdom of God.
11. In the following sections, you are equally out of your element. The ¹first of them relates to _spiritual desertions_; all which you make the subject of dull ridicule, and place to the account of enthusiasm. And the case of all you give in the following words, “We may look upon enthusiasm as a kind of drunkenness, filling and intoxicating the brain with the heated fumes of spirituous particles. Now no sooner does the inebriation go off, but a coldness and dulness takes place.”
¹ Section 8, page 75, &c.
12. As wildly do you ¹talk of the doubts and fears incident to those who are _weak in faith_. I cannot prevail upon myself, to prostitute this awful subject, by entering into any debate concerning it, with one who is innocent of the whole affair. Only I must observe, that a great part of what you advance concerning me, is intirely wide of the question. Such is all you quote from the first, and a considerable part of what you quote from my _second journal_. This you know in your own conscience; for you know I speak of myself, during the whole time, as having no faith at all. Consequently, the “risings and fallings” I experienced then, have nothing to do with those “doubts and fears, which many go through, _after they have_ by faith received remission of sins.”
¹ Section 9, page 79, &c.
The next words which you cite, “thrown into great perplexities,” I cannot find in the page you refer to: neither those that follow. The sum of them is, that “at that time I did not feel the love of God, but found deadness and wanderings in public prayer, and coldness even at the holy communion.” Well, Sir, and have you never found in yourself, any such coldness, deadness and wanderings? I am persuaded you have. And yet surely your brain is always cool and temperate! Never “intoxicated with the heated fumes of spirituous particles!”
13. If you quote not incoherent scraps (by which you may make any thing out of any thing) but intire connected sentences, it will appear that the rest of your quotations make no more for your purpose than the foregoing. Thus, although I allow, that on ¹_May 24_, “I was much buffeted with temptations, but I cried to God and they fled away; that they returned again and again; I as often lifted up my eyes, and he sent me help from his holy place:” it will only prove the very observation I make myself. “I was fighting both _under the law_ and _under grace_. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered: now I was always conqueror.”
¹ 3 Journal, pages 30, 31.
That sometime after, I “was strongly assaulted again, and after recovering peace and joy, was thrown into _perplexity_ afresh by a letter, asserting, that no doubt or fear could consist with true faith: that my weak mind could not then bear, to be thus _sawn asunder_:” Will not appear strange to any who are not utter novices in experimental religion. No more than that one night the next year, “I had no life or spirit in me, and was much in doubt, whether God would not lay me aside, and send other labourers into his harvest.”
14. You add, “He owns his frequent relapses into sin, for near twice ten years. Such is the case of a person who tells us, that he carefully considered every step he took; one of intimate communication with the Deity.” Sir, I did not tell you that: though, according to custom, you mark the words as mine. It is well for you, that _forging quotations_ is not felony.
My words are, “O what an hypocrite have I been (if this be so) for near twice ten years! But I know it is not so. I know every one _under the law_, is even as I was;” namely, from the time I was twelve years old, till considerably above thirty.
“And is it strange (you say) that such a one should be destitute of means to resolve his scruples? Should be ever at variance with himself, and find no place to fix his foot?”
Good Sir, not too fast. You quite out-run the truth again. Blessed be God, this is not my case. I am not destitute of means to resolve my scruples. I have some friends, and a little reason left. I am not ever at variance with myself; and have found a place to fix my foot.
“Now I have found the ground wherein Firm my soul’s anchor may remain; The wounds of Jesus, for my sin Before the world’s foundation slain.”
And yet one of your assertions I cannot deny: namely, that you “could run the parallel between me and numbers of fanatical papists.” And that not only with regard to my _temper_, but my stature, complexion, yea (if need were) the very colour of my hair.