PREFACE. Friendly Reader, The labours of the servants of God ought always to be precious in the eyes of his people; and for that reason the very fragments of their services are not to be lost, but gathered up for edification and that is the cause we expose the following discourses to public view; and I hope it will please God to make them effectual to such as seriously peruse them, since we have always found the Lord ready to second the services of his worthies upon the spirits of their readers; not suffering that which is his own to go without a voucher in every conscience; I mean those divine truths it has pleased him to reveal among his children, by his own blessed Spirit; without which no man can rightly perceive the things of God, or be truly spiritually minded, which is life and peace. And this indeed is the only beneficial evidence of heavenly truths; which made that excellent apostle say in his day. "We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lieth in wickedness:" for in that day, true religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, consisted in visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keeping unspotted from the world; not only a tradition, of what others have enjoyed, but the experimental enjoyment and knowledge thereof, by the operation of the Divine power in their hearts, which makes up the inward Jew and accomplished Christian, whose praise is not of men but of God. Such are the Christians of Christ's making, that can say with the apostle, "It is not we that live, but Christ that liveth in us;" dying daily to self, and rising up, through faith in the Son of God, to newness of life. Here formality bows to reality; memory to feeling, letter to spirit, and form to power; which brings to the regeneration, without which, no man can inherit the kingdom of God: and by which he is enabled in every state to cry Abba, Father. Thou wilt see a great deal of this in the following author's writings; and that he rightly began with a just distinction between true wisdom and the fame of wisdom: what was of God, and taught of God, and of man and taught by man, which at best is but a sandy foundation for religion to be built upon, or rather the faith and hope of man in reference to religion, and salvation by it. And Oh! that none who make a profession of the dispensation of the Spirit, may build beside the work of Jesus Christ in their own souls, in reference to his prophet ical, priestly, and kingly office; in which regard, God his Father gave him as a tried stone, elect and precious, to build by, and upon, concerning which great and glorious truth, we do most humbly beseech the Almighty, who is the God of the spirits of all flesh, the Father of lights and spirits, to ground and establish all his visited and converted ones, that they may grow a holy house and building in the Lord. So shall purity, peace, and charity abound in the house and sanctuary that he hath pitched, and not man. Now, as to this worthy man, the author of the following Treatises, I hope I may, without offence, say, his memorial is blessed, having known him above forty four years, a heavenly minister of experimental religion, of a sound judgment, and pious practice, valiant for truth upon the earth, and ready to serve all in the love and peace of the gospel. He was among the first in Cumberland that received the glad tidings of it; and then readily gave up, with other brethren, to declare unto others, what God had done for their souls. Thus I first met him, and as I received his testimony through the savour of life, so I was kindly accepted and encouraged by him in the belief of the blessed testimony of the Light, Spirit, Grace, and Truth, of Christ in the inward parts; reproving, instructing, and redeeming those souls from the evil of the world, that were |