him do what seemeth him good." Aaron" held his peace" on the awful destruction of his sons, when Jehovah said, “ I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people will I be glorified.” Abraham "staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith giving glory to God." The bereaved Shunamite mother left the chamber in which she had placed her child, and answered the interrogation of the man of God, with "It is well.” And David in the midst of great afflictions was enabled to say, "I was dumb and opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.” When the amiable Fenelon was introduced into the chamber in which laid the corpse of his honoured patron, he exclaimed, There lies my beloved prince, and with him all my earthly hopes; but if the turning of a straw would bring him back to life, I would not for worlds be the turner of that straw, in opposition to the will of God!' Here then is the patience of the saints, here is that submission that should characterize those who are " bought with a price," &c. and are therefore bound to glorify God in their bodies and spirits which are his. Seneca thus addressed God: — I only want to know your will; as soon as I know what that is, I am always of the same mind. I do not say you have bereaved me, that might look as though I were unwilling; but that you have accepted from me what I am ready to offer! If one who knew nothing of Jesus, or the glories which are at his right hand, could say so much, Oh! what ought we to feel and express, who know that when the "earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens ?" (For the Spiritual Magazine.) A LETTER. C. G. C. My dear brother and sister, in covenant relationship in Christ, giace, mercy, and peace be multiplied; with the most lively faith, abounding hope, and fervent love in communion with a triune Jehovah. I do most heartily congratulate you upon your happy union, and am encouraged to pray and expect the richest blessings to rest upon you; because, however attached to each other by natural affection, the foundation of your future happiness is laid in your spiritual affinity in Christ Jesus. Oh! what a mercy, first given to Christ by God the Father in bonds of everlasting love. Redeemed by Christ. from all iniquity, to shew the greatness of his love. Preserved in Christ through the whole period of your unregeneracy. Renewed by God the Holy Ghost in the day of effectual calling, Killed to all hopes in self, or the works of a broken covenant. Espoused to Christ by the drawings of the Father, and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Received by Christ in his own atonement and righteousness, led by Christ into his banqueting-house of personal communion and soul-enlargement, and accounted one with Christ in the love of his heart, the riches of his grace, and title to glory; as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. (Rom. viii. 17.) Yea, the Lord calleth thee his Hephzibah; (Isa. lxii. 4.) in whose salvation, protection, and spiritual services he delights; and to complete the whole he says, "Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.' All! all this, I trust you are in Christ! to the praise of electing, distinguishing, and unmerited grace. And with the most satisfactory evidences of interest in these glorious realities, you have now given yourselves to each other in a covenant of wedlock; and not only with the full consent of parents and friends on earth, but I trust with the concurring pleasure and approbation of your heavenly Father, whose presence and continued smiles can alone complete your happiness. After a friendship of near thirteen years standing with your family, for whom I have the highest regard, I do the more earnestly commend you to the Lord, and exhort you to seek his direction, protection, and approbation in all things. In your new relation, as husband and wife, I entreat you to observe the excellent rule for your conduct in Eph. v. 22, 23. Let your morning and evening services at the family altar be constant, and the Lord make them daily sources of refreshing to your own souls, and profitable to your servants; that while you acknowledge him in all your ways, and break your fast in communion with him in the opening of every day, you may close it by retiring for safe repose beneath the shadow of his wings, who never slumbers nor sleeps. His perfect righteousness and blood, Is all our souls can plead; He is our ever gracious God, To keep, direct, and feed. Oh glorious thought, when life shall end, And death shall close our eyes; Our souls to Jesus shall ascend, To dwell in paradise. The Lord help you to bear in mind how much you are favoured above thousands of his dear people, and ever acknowledge your high obligations to him. Not that one member of Christ is more loved, more dear, or more safe than another. Oh no, all, all, are equally the chosen, redeemed, and accepted in the Beloved! Eph. i. 6. But in your station in the world you are indulged with the brightest prospects that earth can afford; and are thereby called upon, as the Lord's stewards, to make a proper use of all he has entrusted you with; to cleave to his despised cause, to relieve the necessities of his poor members, to be diligent in your business, but not distrustful, even when disappointments and losses are your lot, to embrace every opportunity for searching the scriptures, hearing the blessed gospel, and pouring out your hearts to God in earnest prayer. You are fully aware that the contents of John xvi. 33. must be experienced by you as in all the disciples of Christ, yet rejoice, my dear fellow travellers to Zion, 1. In your privilege. "In me," says Christ, "ye shall have peace.' 2. In your portion. "In the world," which is tribulation; since it "worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Rom. v. 3-5. And 3. rejoice in your prospect of victory, because Jesus says, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." This is our joy. He overcame Satan, the god of the world. Sin, the delight of the world. Men, the enemies of grace in the world; and death, the king of terrors, who threatened the everlasting destruction of the world; and as Jesus overcame by the Father's appointment, the Spirit's anointing, and his own Deity, and all prevailing power, his people shall conquer through him, and with the heavenly-minded Paul, defy the combined efforts of all their adversaries, to separate them from the love of God in Christ. I bless God that my hope of you is stedfast, because "his foundation standeth sure," though many persons have made a fair profession for a season, and afterwards departed from the ways of righteousness, formed new worldly connections, and at last have openly shewn their enmity to vital godliness; and such awful facts afford us matter for self-examination, by the word of God, for constant prayer and dependance upon God, and they shew our need of a momentary supply of grace to persevere unto the end. Amidst the snares of the world, the delusions in the professing church, and the deceitfulness and God-dishonouring evils in our desperately wicked hearts, I believe your religion is wholly of God, emanating from the Father's sovereign love and personal choice, incorporated with the person, love, covenant engagements, and performances of the Incarnate Word, and evidenced by the life-giving, life-maintaining, and soul-illuminating power of the Holy Ghost. And in proof of this, may you through grace abound in all the fruits of the Spirit in good word and work. Avoid as much as possible the society of the world, and especially the mere formal professors of religion; who if it were possible, would eat up the vitals of spirituality in the true church; and are more to be shunned than open infidels. Therefore seek the society of the most spiritual, experimental, established, and savory christians, (Mal. iii. 16.) but most of all seek for an enlarged acquaintance, conformity, and communion with the Lord Jehovah, who says, "I will cause those who love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasure." (Prov. viii. 21.) every In conclusion, allow me to remind you, it is near two years and a half since I addressed your dear brother and sister P. on the same occasion, in whom my poor petitions have been answered, and still for them, for you, and all the favoured branches of your large family, our God" is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask, or think" to him I again commend you; his eye is upon you to keep from evil; his everlasting arms are underneath to support and succour in trial; every his covenant is ordered in all things and sure, to supply all your needs according to his riches in glory; his love is immutably fixed upon you, and all his pleasure shall be performed in you and for you, through all the chequered scenes of life, in the hour of death, and in the pure and peaceful kingdom of eternal glory. In conclusion, pray that the union now formed on earth, may be recognized in heaven, and perpetuated to the praise of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in whose joint names, I subscribe myself, most faithfully and most affectionately your's, (For the Spiritual Magazine.) EXTRACTS FROM HUPTON'S BLOW AT THE ROOT OF FULLERISM, IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND. "DOES the moral law require faith in the Mediator? or, does the moral law require the faith of God's elect? That the above law requires faith, I never yet denied, or thought of suggesting to any one. I well know that there is a faith, which is one of the great and weighty matters of the law; but what faith is it? Is it that which stands inseparably connected with eternal life and salvation? If it is, then we are saved through the law: but the apostle says we are saved through faith; now, if the faith through which we are saved is a duty of the law (as it must be if the law requires it) we must be saved through the law, and a work of it. But the fact is, we are saved through the gospel, called the gospel of our salvation, and the law of faith, and not through the law: for the promise that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith, Rom. iv. 13. The eternal inheritance, then, is not through the law and its duty, but through the gospel and its promises, Gal. iii. 18. The faith under consideration is a blessing of the covenant of grace: this you must dmit or deny. If you deny it, you renounce the gospel, which says, that "faith is the gift of God. That he chose his people to the belief of the truth; that he gives them on the behalf of Christ to believe on his name; that when he calls them to believe, it is according to his own purpose and grace given them in Christ before the world began; and that his covenant is ordered in all things and sure ;" and, therefore, must include FAITH." "While the two covenants are distinct, the things belonging to the one, must be kept separate from those pertaining to the other. The blessings of that of grace cannot with the least shadow of propriety be said to be the duties of that of works." "Before the fall, the law was the rule of our innocent progenitor's conduct. After his apostacy, it thundered forth the divine vengeance against him, and poured forth its tremendous curses upon his guilty head. It shewed him no pity - gave him no quarter revealed no Saviour to him-made no mention of a way to escape-nor pointed him to the most distant shadow of a remedy. All it could do for him, or any of his ruined posterity, was to convince them of their sins, and drive them to despair and death, and leave them without the smallest degree of hope or help. Far, very far from direéting them to believe in him who saves the guilty. It is the office of God the Father to give faith, not to demand it as a law-giver, but to give it as a covenant God of grace. It is the office of the gospel to reveal Christ, the object of faith; and it is the office of the Holy Ghost to work faith in the hearts of the elect. If faith is a duty of the covenant of works, are not believers under that covenant and its curse? I think they are; for if it requires faith in Christ of them, it obliges them, not only to begin, but to continue to believe. Now, if they are thus bound by it, they must be under it; for, if a man is bound by any covenant, human or divine, to perform an act, either natural or spiritual, he is under that covenant. Thus, by making the faith of God's elect an old covenant duty, you put the legal yoke upon the necks of the disciples of Jesus, bring the free covenanters of Zion into bondage, and expose them to all the thunders of the ministration of death: "for, whatsoever the law saith, it saith to those who are under it; and, as many as are of the works of the law (of which you say faith is one) are under the curse." Your notion robs both Christ and his people. Christ, of the honour of making them free from the yoke of bondage; and them, of their right to that liberty wherewith he has made them free. "How a man can be bound by a law to perform a duty, and at the same time be free from that law," I think you will find it a task too difficult for you to shew. "If it is still maintained, that the law originally contained a command to believe in the Saviour, but did not reveal the command to Adam, because his circumstances were not suited to such a revelation:"-to this I reply, if the law originally contained a command to believe in the incarnate God and Saviour of sinners, it must also contain a revelation of the object to be believed in; for it is impossible to separate the one from the other. It would be a contradiction to both reason and truth to say, that a command to believe in an object can be without a revelation of that object: because the command itself is the revelation. Now if both these were originally contained in the law, but were concealed on account of Adam's circumstances, we may reasonably suppose, that when his state was changed, and he was in a suitable condition, the secret would have been divulged, and what before was hid, proclaimed upon the house-top. But was this the case? Did the law proclaim the Saviour, and publish justification, pardon, and salvation, in his name? If it did, where was the need of the gospel? Does the gospel do more than this? And why did not the apostle Paul preach the law instead of the gospel, for the obedience of faith, among all nations? Either the |