with me tended in a great measure to excite mine towards you in the several heavy burdens you lie under. It has been the desire of my heart, as to the affairs of your great congregation, he would order it in his infinite wisdom to his own glory, their good, and your comfort. Your distressed friends have also been on my heart, and particularly poor that she may be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, to the glory of his free grace. This, with my kind respects to your spouse, and Mr and his, (whose sympathy I hope I have,) and whom, together with other Christian friends, I wish you to stir up to Christian sympathy and prayer in behalf of me and my family, is from, Rev. and Dear Brother, your very affectionate though afflicted Brother, R. ERSKINE. To MRS SARAH FISHER. MADAM, Your line came to my hand a considerable time after the date of it, and also at a season when I was obliged to lay it aside unopened; but lately, having taken it up again in my hand, I thought it my duty to gratify your desire by giving you some answer. I am glad the Lord hath made any poor writing of mine refreshing to you, meantime I see by your line you are under fears least, notwithstanding the advantages you have enjoyed, you have no more but a head knowledge, and several other grounds of jealousy you express about yourself, wherein you desire I may deal plainly with you. Dear Madam, though it is hard for me to write on this head to one that I know no more of than just what your letter relates, yet there are some things dropt in it which if they be told from an upright ingenuous heart, may give some handle to shew that the seeds of grace may be really sown, and that the Lord is humbling you in order to heal you in due time. 1st, You pretend you want the sealing testimonies of the Lord's grace, which you judge you would have if you belonged to him. As to this it may be in mercy that the Lord is withholding the seals of his love, and the comfortable feelings of it until you be brought to find it in a more scriptural way of believing his love. It is said, in Eph. i. 13. After ye believed ye were sealed." The only sure ground of faith is the word of grace and truth there spoken of, and not our feeling. The felt sealing of the spirit of promise is not to be expected before our believing the word of promise; if we would have any thing like a feeling of his love before a believing of his love, we would be ready to build our faith upon transient feelings, and frames and influences, and not upon the sure word of promise. Though the revealing work of the Spirit opening the word is prior to faith, yet the sealing work of the Spirit is posterior to it. Many are deluded that rest on feelings, and build their faith of God's love not upon what God hath said, but merely upon what they have felt; and as these feelings are up and down, so is their faith. It will be therefore your mercy, if the Lord be withholding what you call the sealing testimonies of his love, till once you be made to give him the glory of his truth, by believing his love revealed to you in his word, and then you may expect the comfort of it sealed to you in your heart. The woman with the bloody issue had not sensible feeling of virtue coming from Christ till once she touched the hem of his garment by faith, Luke viii. 43 to 49. If you expect and wait for feelings to found your faith on, they are mercifully denied you, that you may build upon a surer foundation, namely Christ speaking in the word for the ground of your faith before you have any feeling of him in your heart for the encouragement of faith. 2dly, You'tell me you hear others talk of sweet communion with the Lord, and of their longing to be dissolved and to be with Christ, while yet the thoughts of death are terrible to you; and at the same time you complain of deadness, coldness, and carnality, fearing you want love to Christ, and that those things are not the spots of God's children. Dear Madam, if you have got a view of the plagues of your own heart, and are indeed kept poor and needy and empty and humble, under a sense of your want of all grace and goodness in yourself, that Christ and his fulness may be the more precious and acceptable to you, you have the advantage of those who are enriched with greater enjoyments, if they be lifted up with them, Mat. v. 3,-6. I hope this is the case with you, and that because of what also you say afterward in your letter, that sometimes you can rejoice at the doctrine of God's everlasting love to his chosen ones, though you cannot see your own interest in it, and are sure if ever you be saved, the crown must be on the head of Christ. This looks like the language of one whom God is humbling in order to exalt, and emptying in order to fill in due time. See Psal. ix. 18. and x. 17. 3dly, You speak of being under many temptations, but that you do not remember any promise to have come with power for your deliverance. Dear Friend, if deliverance has come to you from time to time according to the promise, even powerful and merciful deliverance, whether suddenly or gradual, though the promise itself has not come to you with such power or in such a manner as you think it has come to others, you should be thankful, the Lord's ways of bringing home the promise to the heart are various towards some and others; however I know little odds between a promise poured in sweetly upon the heart, and a heart poured in sweetly upon the promise, the latter may be as sweet and sure as the former, if the promise has but in holy providence come to your mind whether by hearing, reading, or musing, so as you have been helped to make it matter of prayer and pleading before a throne of grace, be you content, Madam, and bless God for it. Many are ready to depend more upon the felt power and sweet influence by which the promise comes to them, than upon the promise itself, and hence, when the power and influence is withdrawn, their faith is to seek; they cannot rest upon the bare word of God, the bread on which the soul should live, unless like little children they get the butter and honey of some sweet influence spread upon it. This disposition in any godly soul is much owing to the sad remains of a legal temper, that makes them seek for a ground of faith and hope more in themselves, and in what is done by them, and wrought or felt in them, than they do by going out of themselves to what the Lord is in himself, and has wrought for them and spoken to them. Faith is most strong when it can live on a bare promise without the supports of sense. Endeavour you, Madam, through grace, to trust in a promising God, giving credit to his truth, and you shall find him in his own time a performing God, giving comfort to your heart. Seek rest not in streams of blessings and comforts that come from him and take various turns, but in himself the fountain, who is still the same. If you want, I should explain any thing here written further, you may let me know by another line. I have not in the least studied to flatter you, I have no temptation to do so, being quite ignorant of you further than you have told me. If you please to let me know your outward station or situation in life, whether it be high or low, it will be agreeable to me. I shall wish I may be able to do service to your soul; and if what I have here written be any way useful to you, and suitable to the case you wrote of to me, I will be glad you let me know you have received this line; if it come in time to answer any difficulties you may yet be under, you will the more readily pardon and excuse my having been so long of coming with it. May the Lord bless all his own means of grace, and make your soul prosper. I am, &c. Dunfermline, Jan. 19, 1742. RALPH ERSKINE. REV. AND VERY DEAR BROther, I received joyfully your letter, and desire to praise the Lord with you for his wonderful care of and works done by you. I sent two letters to you, and wish to know whether you got them. It refreshes me to hear, that any of my poor writings, in verse or prose have been and are blessed in this or any other part of the earth. If I travel by pen as far as you do in person, and contribute my mite for spreading gospel light, I rejoice in it, and bless his name, who has ordered this beyond my views and expectation. I am glad that the Marrow of Modern Divinity has been helpful to you, as it has been to many: I hope that and Boston's Works, which you have perused, will contribute to give you the same views of the gospel with all truly evangelical divines, and be more and more a fence to you against the erroneous stuff that loads the most part of preachings and prints. Glory to God, that has enlightened you so clearly, and enables you to give testimony so faithfully against the dangerous errors that are springing up. I have not seen the sermon entitled Free Grace, and but very lately heard of some of Mr John Wesley's errors, and wrote to him if matters were so, but had as yet no return. Blest be God you are set for the defence of the gospel, and that I hear you sing of distinguishing grace, and of our Lord's powerful presence with you. Go on, dear Brother, in asserting and publishing the doctrine of sovereign grace reigning through his righteousness unto eternal life; for this, and only this gospel, will be the organ of omnipotency, and the power of God to the salvation of sinners O great is our need of such awakening gales of heaven, as you speak of, in the last visit you made to Georgia, &c. Within these two days I have seen the bitter queries sent you, and your mild answers. Blessed be the Lord, that makes you, like the industrious bee, to gather sweet honey out of bitter flowers. Some of these observes will, I hope, work more and more for your good, advance your growth, and further your caution and circumspection: your docile and humble spirit, so willing to rectify whatever seems wrong, will recommend you more and more to all that love Christ. As I did greatly disrelish the bitter spirit in which they wrote, so I noticed their legal strain in vindicating Tillotson and The Whole Duty of Man. I see them confound the covenant of grace, or redemption, that stands fast in Christ, with the divine method of the application and dispensation thereof in the gospel; and confounding the condition of the covenant (which alone is properly the doing and dying, or perfect righteousness of Christ) with the duties or works of the covenanted. You are still dearer and dearer to me: I think, by your last journal I saw, I discern your growing zeal for the doctrine of grace. Rev. and very dear Brother, yours in him who is (the best uniter of our love and union) the Lord our Righteousness, - RALPH ERSKINE. To the Rev. Mr WILLISON, Dundee. Dunfermline, Feb. 7, 1750. REV. AND VERY DEAR BROTHER, Having heard from my brother Mr Johnson, that your distress and weakness of body continue to increase, and that, since the last time I saw you, you have come to no greater measure of health, but rather seem to be hastening nearer and nearer to your change, I thought it proper to shew my sympathy with one for whom I have always had a great regard: whatever differences have taken place anent some things, by different degrees of light in the dark valley of this world, yet it never lessened my esteem of you as one that desired to be faithful to the truth and interest of our Lord Jesus Christ, and whom I hope the Lord will now ripen, to make ready for the full enjoyment of himself. Rev. and dear Brother, I hope, as you have taken up yourself by faith in Christ as the Lord your righteousness and strength, so, when flesh and heart shall fail you, you will, through grace, lay your head in his bosom, and remain confident in this, that whatever winds blow or waves beat, even amid the swellings of Jordan, your Rock remains firm and immoveable; and that you shall endure, as seeing him who is invisible, when all visible and sensible things give way and disappear, until faith issue in fruition. This being all the bearer's time allows me to add, I remain, very dear and Rev. Brother, yours very affectionately, RALPH ERSKINE. P. S.--While you live, mind in your prayers Zion, and those you may leave behind you. A POEM, TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE REV. MR. RALPH ERSKINE Plangito, Melpomene! ARESKINI funera, clarum Eja tamen gaude! ARESKINUS carmine vivit; LONG did the muse * impatient wait to see SCOTIA! what ground hast thou to drop a tear? Speak forth his real excellence to all, O Scottish Church! how much mayst thou regret Whose mind could search heaven's mysteries most profound, * This Elegiac Poem was not composed till the year 1765, being about thirteen years after Mr Erskine's death. |