Worship God in spirit and in truth - William Huntington

"...we "worship God in spirit and in truth, for God seeks such worshippers to worship him," John, iv. 23. To "worship God in the Spirit" shews that a man must be inspired, and approach God with a spiritual mind, with a spiritual understanding, 1 Cor. xiv. 15; with spiritual affections; and to pray as the Spirit operates on him, 2 Sam. vii. 27; and "gives him utterance," Acts, ii. 4. "The words of his mouth must be the meditation of his heart," Psal. xix. 14. He must pray in spiritual faith, James, i. 6. He must plough in spiritual hope, Prov. xiii. 12. And in spiritual expectation, Hab. ii. 1. Yea, he must pray against every thing of which the Spirit convinces him to be evil, 1 Cor. iv. 10. And he must pray for every blessing which the Spirit convinces him of the need of, Heb, iv. 16. And he will find this blessed Spirit will help his weaknesses, and kindle a willing frame when he is reluctant; a fervent frame when he is lifeless; yea, a bold frame when he has cause to blush and take shame to himself, Dan. ix. 7-9. Yea, and a believing frame, to enable him to call Godfather, as the prodigal son did, even "when he was in a far country," Luke, xv. 18. This blessed "Spirit makes intercession for us according to the will of God" revealed in his word and never contrary to it, Rom. viii. 26, 27. To worship God in truth, implies that a man prays for what he truly feels the want of, Matt. v. 6; and that he prays to the only true God, whom he hath a scriptural and an experimental knowledge of; that he, by the Spirit, sees how all the glorious attributes of God harmonize together in Christ Jesus, the true substance and sacrifice of all the ceremonial types, figures, and shadows. To worship God in truth, is to let our lips and our hearts go together, Prov. iii. 26; to pray against every sin and error that the Spirit points out to us; to pray for every blessing that God has promised to give, and to take a scriptural warrant for it; and so address God in his own language, Hoses, xiv. 2. This is spiritual, and this is true worship; and, if my reader tries this way, he will find "the Spirit help his infirmities, and make intercession with groanings that cannot be uttered," even when he has grieved him. And, under the fervent influences of the Spirit's intercession, he will be brought to know the very thoughts of the Lord concerning himself, Psalm, cxxxix. 17; and to "pour out his very soul before him, and shew him all his trouble," Psalm, cxiix. 2; and leave his burdens with him, Psalm, lv. 22; like Hannah, that sweet female wrestler, when she went from her knees at Shiloh, with her blessed "countenance no more sad," 1 Sam. i. 18." -William Huntington

On the difference of Myself from Myself - Ambrose Serle

"LORD, how variable a creature am I! Unstable as water, changeable as wind, different as the weather, when I am left, in any instance or degree, to myself. One of our English kings, from is slackness, was called the unready; and the same name, with respect to my best concerns, will too often serve for me.

Sometimes I have a fair day of comfort and hope; but the clouds come on again, and gather blackness over my soul. Suavis hora, brevis mora: Short and sweet was the hour of my spiritual delight; but the time of my dullness and drooping has been frequent and long.

Blessed be your name, O Lord, that my real state with you does not depend upon my vigor, liveliness, and constancy, but upon those only sure grounds, your faithfulness, mercy, omnipotence, and truth. Whatever I am or may be in myself, you are and will be always the same, and always the same to me.

The time, or rather the eternity, is at hand, when my state will be unchangeable, and my frames will be unchangeable too. The crowns of glory cannot fade; nor those, who wear them, alter or decay. I shall both know, as I am known, and in all things shall be like to my immutable and glorious Savior, when I get into his kingdom.

Why then should my present variations distress me? I live not by them, nor for them, but upon a higher principle, and for a more exalted end. This is the time of faith, in which I must wrestle, and labor, and strive against all the disadvantages of an evil nature and an evil world: and I am to look for strength from Christ, who will be honored in my weakness and deficiency, which compel me to give up myself incessantly to him. He is engaged to preserve me by his own oath and unchangeable covenant; and therefore, come fair, come foul: let me have either comfort or sorrow: all must be well at the last, for he has promised, and most assuredly will give me, a safe and abundant entrance into heaven." - Ambrose Serle

We are here charged with blaming God - William Button

"...there is a most unworthy reflection (at least it appears so to me) cast on those who differ from Mr. F.'s (Fuller) sentiments concerning faith. After attacking the Arminians, he adds, “others, that err as much on the opposite side, seem willing that God should have all the praise for the good; but then they are determined as well, eh shall have all the blame for the bad, for they will have none of it” (p. 7). The persons here alluded to, I conceive to be those who with me think the reason why many believe not, is, because they are not predestinated to eternal life, for as many as are so do believe, Acts 10:48, and our Lord gives this as a reason of unbelief, in John 10:26. Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, and because this is our sentiment we are here charged with blaming God. This is illiberal; we believe the Lord dispenses the blessings of his grace, and faith amongst the rest, according to his sovereign good will and pleasure, that he is the absolute proprietor of his own grace; that he gives it when, and where, and to whom he pleases; but are we to be considered as blaming God for not bestowing these blessings on all? We disdain the thought. There were, it seems, in the Apostle's days, some who drew such an unjust conclusion from his doctrine, which made him with earnestness reply to the adversary, “Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.” No, instead of blaming God for not bestowing special faith on all, we adore his sovereignty, and admire his grace in bestowing it on any. Were I disposed to return the attack, I might ask, who casts the most blame on God, Mr. F. who asserts, it is the duty of all men to believe with a special faith, with that faith which is peculiar to the elect, which is out of their power to obtain, and the want of it is the cause of damnation; or we who believe that because this faith is a new covenant blessing, peculiar to the elect, none will be condemned by God for the want of it? But I forbear, as I am persuaded Mr. F. does not by any means intend to cast any blame on the Divine Being, however his sentiment may appear to carry that in it. I should have been glad if he had spared this invective." -William Button

He supposes to find himself more holy - Robert Hawker

"He [a child of God] feels at times such a deadness to divine things, that he is at a loss to ascertain any growth in the divine life. But the truth is, the growth he is looking for, is to be found in the reverse of what he expects to find. He supposes to find himself more holy: whereas, the holiness, the HOLY GHOST is ripening him in, is in CHRIST, He doth indeed make great progress, when, from making every day more discoveries of his own unholiness, he becomes more and more longing for the holiness in JESUS. When a sense of the remains of indwelling sin, makes him more out of love with himself and more in love with CHRIST. This is indeed, from small beginnings, to arise to large attainments; because, as it begins in CHRIST, so it ends in CHRIST. And CHRIST is the tree of life, under whose branches, his people find both a banquet and a shadow. Song Of Solomon 2:3-4." -Robert Hawker [Commentary on Mark 4]

Sanctification by J. C. Philpot

Sanctification
By J. C. Philpot

As from the cross flows all salvation, so from the cross flows all sanctification.
What have not men done, to make themselves holy; and by this means render
themselves, as they have thought, acceptable to God! What tortures of body,
what fastings, scourgings, self-imposed penances to sanctify their sinful
nature, and conform their rebellious flesh to the holiness demanded by the
law! And with what success? They have landed either in self-righteousness or
despair—though at opposite points of the compass.

The flesh cannot be sanctified. It is essentially and incurably corrupt; and
therefore, if we are to possess that inward holiness, "without which no man
shall see the Lord," it must be by Christ being "of God, made unto us
sanctification," as well as righteousness—sanctifying us not only "with his
own blood," (Heb. 13:13,) but by his Spirit and grace. If we believe in Him, we
shall love him ("unto you which believe, he is precious;") if we love him, we
shall seek to please, and fear to displease him; if we believe in Him, by the gift
and work of God, this divine and living faith will purify our heart, overcome
the world, produce that spiritual mindedness which is life and peace, give
union and communion with the Lord of life and glory; and every believing
view of him, every act of faith upon him, and every visit from him, will
conform us to his likeness, as the Apostle speaks: "But we all, with open face
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Cor. 3:18.)
If, then, we are to feel an inward power sanctifying our hearts, drawing up
our minds to heavenly things, subduing our sins, meekening and softening our
spirit, separating us from the world, filling us with holy thoughts, gracious
desires, and pure affections, and thus making us "meet for the inheritance of
the saints in light," this inward sanctification must flow wholly and solely
from the Blessed Spirit, as the gift of a risen Jesus: as he himself said,
"Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if
I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will
send him unto you." "He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and
shall show it unto you" (John 16:7, 14).

It is not, then, the hair-shirt, the monk's cell, the midnight vigil, the
protracted fast; no, nor the soothing strains of the swelling organ, the
melodious chant of surpliced choristers, the "dim religious light" of the
stained Gothic window; no, nor the terrors of the Law, the accusations of
conscience, the tears, cries and resolutions of a heart that still loves sin,
though professing to repent of it; no, nor gloomy looks, neglected apparel,
softly uttered words, slow walk, holiness of face, manner, and gesture, hollow
voice, demure countenance, a choice assortment of Scripture words and
phrases on every occasion, or no occasion; no, nor all the array of piety and
sanctity which Satan, transformed into an angel of light, has devised to
deceive thousands, that can purge the conscience from the guilt, filth, love,
power and practice of sin, or raise up that new man, which after God is
created in righteousness and true holiness.

Like the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the
unclean, they may, and even that very imperfectly, sanctify to the purifying of
the flesh; but it is the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered
himself without spot to God, which can alone purge the conscience from filth,
guilt, and dead works, to serve the living God; and it is the work of the blessed
Spirit alone which, by revealing Christ, and forming him in the heart, "the
hope of glory," can create and bring forth that new man of grace which is
renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him.

The Two Natures in a Believer By J. C. Philpot

The Two Natures in a Believer
By J. C. Philpot

Among those branches of divine truth which, without special teaching, we
cannot enter into, is, that of the two natures in a believer. And yet, though
every child of God must in all ages have been experimentally acquainted with
the inward conflict between flesh and spirit, nature and grace; and though
authors innumerable have written on such subjects as sanctification, the trial
of faith, the strength of grace, the power of sin, the deceitfulness of the heart,
the commencement and progress, decline and restoration, of the life of God in
the soul, yet how few even of these really spiritual and experimental writers
have laid out the truth of the case as made known in the Scriptures, and felt in
the experience of the saints! How blind have many gracious writers, as, for
instance, Dr. Owen, and most of the Puritan authors, been to the distinctness
of flesh and spirit! In fact, as it seems to us, many good men have been afraid
of the real, actual truth. Our Puritan ancestors especially, living in a day when
profanity and ungodliness ran down the streets like water, and holiness,
therefore, of heart and life was powerfully urged as the distinctive feature of
the children of God, intuitively shrank from anything that seemed in its
faintest coloring opposed to their view of gospel sanctification. They feared to
believe, and dreaded to proclaim, that "the carnal mind is enmity against
God; that it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed could be." They
seemed to think, if they once admitted that the flesh, the carnal mind,
underwent no spiritual change; in other words, could not be sanctified; it was
opening a wide and open door to the worst Antinomianism.

There is a distinction between "the flesh" and "the carnal mind." The flesh is
the corrupt principle itself: the carnal mind is the breathing, moving, and
acting of the corrupt principle. The flesh is, as it were, the body, the carnal
mind the soul of sin; the flesh is the still atmosphere, pregnant with disease
and death; the carnal mind is the same air in motion, carrying with it the
noisome pestilence; the flesh is a giant, but lying down or asleep; the carnal
mind is the giant awake and hurling his weapons of defiance against heaven
and earth.

On no one point, it may be remarked, are the minds of men professing some
measure of truth so sensitive as upon that of the believer's personal
sanctification. You may be three parts an Arminian, and four-fifths of a
Pharisee, and men will speak well of you and of your religion; no, many even
of God's children will think favorably of you. But be in their eyes one-tenth of
an Antinomian, and they will unchristianise you in a moment, if you had the
experience of Hart, the gifts of Huntington, the godly life of Romaine, and the
blessed death of Toplady. Now, nothing so much exposes a man to the
suspicion of secret Antinomianism as his denying the sanctification of the
flesh. The cry is at once raised, "You are an enemy to holiness; you turn the
grace of God into licentiousness; you allow people to live as they list; you
encourage men under a profession of religion to continue in sin."
Who does not know the charges which they ring on this peal of bells against
all who assert that the flesh is incurably corrupt, and cannot be molded
afresh, or new modeled, or sanctified, or conformed to the image of Christ,
but remains to the last what it was at the first, "the old man which is corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts?" We may oppose to these clamorous
reproaches a godly life, a gospel walk, a spiritual mindedness, a heavenly
conversation, a filial fear, a tender conscience, a separation from evil, a
liberality to the poor and needy, and a deadness to the world of which our
opponents profess little and manifest less; but all in vain. The very suspicion
that we deny the holiness of the flesh, present or possible, makes us viewed by
most of the "very religious" people of our day much as the Protestant heretic
is looked upon by the staunch Papist—a kind of horrid being, who may,
perhaps, by a death-bed conversion to their views, and a full recantation of his
own, escape hell, but who, at present, is in a very awful and dangerous
condition.

But leaving these poor ignorant creatures who speak evil of things that they
know not, and who are actuated by much the same principle and spirit as
those of old who said of the Lord himself, "He has a devil, and is mad; why
hear you him?" let us look for a few moments at a very different class of
people to whom the mystery of the two natures is but little known. These are
the honest and sincere, the tender in conscience and broken in heart of the
children of God, who, for want of divine light on this point, are often deeply
tried and perplexed, and sometimes almost at their wit's end from what they
feel of the inward workings and strength of sin. They are told, and their
naturally religious mind, their traditionary creed, and their unenlightened
understanding, all fully fall in with what they hear enforced on their
conscience, that the sanctification of the soul, without which there is no
salvation, is a gradual progress from one degree of holiness to another, until,
with the exception of a few insignificant "remains" of sin, which, from some
unknown cause, obstinately resist the sanctifying process, the believer
becomes thoroughly holy, in body, soul, and spirit. Sin, they are told, may
occasionally stir up a bad thought or two, or now and then a carnal desire
may most unaccountably start up; but its power is destroyed, the rebellious
movement is immediately subdued, the hasty spark, which straight is cool
again, is put out at once without further damage, and the process of
sanctification keeps going on as harmoniously and uninterruptedly as before,
until the soul is almost as fit for heaven as if it were already there.
Beautiful theory! but as deceptive and as unsubstantial as the mirage of the
desert, or the summer evening cloud bathed in the golden glow of the sinking
sun. And so those sincere, honest-hearted children of God find and feel when
"the motions of sin which are by the law," stirred and roused from their
torpid inactivity by its application, work in their members to bring forth fruit
unto death.

The doctrine of progressive sanctification, implying, as it does, in the mouth of
its strenuous advocates, the gradual extirpation of sin and the molding of the
carnal mind into the image of Christ, is to the honest and tender conscience a
torturing doctrine, pregnant with guilt, bondage, and despair. To a man who
merely plays with religion, all doctrines are pretty much alike. None cause
him trouble, and none cause him joy. The holiness of God, the spirituality and
curse of the law, the evil of sin, the helplessness of the creature, the sinfulness
of the flesh, the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the heart, as long as
they are mere doctrines, have no more effect upon the conscience than a
narrative of the battle of Alma or an account of the fight at Inkermann. To a
professor of religion dead in his unregeneracy, the fall of man is nothing like
so stirring as the fall of Sebastopol; and the recovery by Christ does not give
him half so much pleasure as the recovery from a bad cold. These are the men
to preach progressive sanctification; and none urge it so continually, and
press it so forcibly, except, perhaps, those that are living in sin, who are
usually the greatest advocates for holiness, either as a mask of their practice,
or on the principle of a set off, that, having none of their own, they may get as
much as they can of other people's. "In for a penny, in for a pound," is the
maxim of a man who runs into debt without meaning to pay.

And so, if a man means to pay God nothing of the obedience and holiness
which he urges upon others, he thinks he cannot do better than get into debt
as deep as he can. None set the ladder so high as the master who stops at the
foot, and urges his man on to the topmost round. None lay such heavy
burdens on men's shoulders as those who themselves never touch them with
one of their fingers; and none wield so unmercifully the whip as those who
have never felt the end of the lash. To all such miserable taskmasters the tried
and distressed in soul may well say, "What is play to you is death to us; you
are in jest, but we are in earnest; you are at your ease, we are laboring to
attain unto what you only talk about. The holiness that you are preaching we
are striving to practice. Your flashes of exhortation are but summer lightning,
and your denunciations but stage thunder; while we are at the foot of the
mount that burned with fire, and where there was blackness and darkness
and tempest.

The sanctification of the flesh that you urge may do for you who have learned
your lesson at the academy, and preach what you neither know, nor
understand, nor feel—blind leaders of the blind, as you and your tutors are.
Such a doctrine lies with no more weight on your conscience than the
preacher's gown upon your back, or the gold ring upon your little finger; but
it is not so with us, who are daily and hourly groaning beneath a body of sin
and death. It is the load of sin that so deeply tries us, and our utter inability to
bring forth the holiness that you urge upon our sore and bleeding consciences.
It is our base backslidings, our sins against love and blood, our barrenness
and deadness; the dreadful depravity of our hearts; our getting every day
worse instead of getting every day better, that so deeply tries us: and your
doctrine rubs salt into our bleeding, gaping wounds."

To such tried and distressed souls as these, who have been harassed almost to
death by the doctrine of progressive sanctification, how reviving and
encouraging it is when the mystery of the two natures is opened up to their
spiritual understanding, and sealed upon their conscience by the Blessed
Spirit!