by William Law

A Dialogue in Three Parts

Between Thomas, Steven, and Gordon

Bro. Law had an insight, rare in his day, and rarer still today.

 

If you wish to abide in Christ, to live a life that is pleasing to God. If your conscience won't allow you to say with the Apostle Paul, "Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day." And again when Paul said "I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men." Then this is a book that will bless you, it will show you Paul's secret, the secret of maintaining a pure conscience.

 

Last Published 10-10-03

Current Edition This Date by 8/19/04

Old Truth Publishing Company

38 Borck Lane
Lebanon, Tn 37090

Printed in the 'United States Of America'

 

The First Part of the First Dialogue

Introduction

 

This book will in due time show you very clearly and in a concise way, how to find real peace with God; it will explain exactly what the phrase “Born again” means. If you want to be set free from the bondage of sin, this book will become a light for you to illuminate the path to pleasing God, with true joy in your heart.

Today, we have a great darkness masquerading in the form of a “Spiritual church.” What causes this darkness that must be illuminated in order for us to find real peace with God? The darkness is caused by all of the modern popular preachers, that dominate television and radio. By and large they preach false doctrines that sound very pleasing to the carnal mind, nevertheless, if you believe the things they preach you will be sliding down the path to hell, any doctrine or preaching that leaves you in your sin and rebellion to God, but at the same time gives you a false hope of Heaven, is a doctrine of demons. This is a strong allegation to make, I know, but I believe it to be absolutely true! 2 Timothy 4: 3-4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

Because of the magnitude of the subject, because of all the warnings from God’s word, and because of the many years of planting and sowing false doctrines that the devil has already accomplished, please give this book a very careful reading, don’t skim over it, don’t put it down until you have been fair in having read it at least once through, very carefully. If you don’t, a time might come, when it is too late to rectify the problem, and you will spend the rest of forever wishing you had read the Bible, and this book, very carefully.

We have altered this edition of “The Spirit Of Love” for the purpose of making it clearer to the reader, the older seventeenth and eighteenth century style of grammar is very difficult for today’s average reader to comprehend. This book is too important not to be read with total comprehension.   The publisher.

 

Chapter 1

What Is The Spirit Of Love?

 

This book is in the form of a “Dialogue” Between Thomas, Steven, and Gordon-

This Dialogue form of writing was very popular sometime back.

Gordon- My Dear Friend, You do not need to make any apology for the letter you sent to me, for you know that I dislike wasting time and thoughts in matters of theological debate as well as in any disagreements of a worldly nature, knowing that theological debates are generally as much, if not more, hurtful to the heart of man than debates about worldly matters are; yet, as the subject you wish to discuss rather tends to stir up the powers of love more than wrangling with words, I believe the subject is capable of bringing about an occasion for the edifying of both you and myself with the truth, and Divine blessedness of the spirit of love.

You say there is nothing in all my writings that has more affected you than the spirit of love that breathes in them, and that you wish for nothing more than to have a living sensibility of the power, life, and religion of love. But you have two objections often rising in your mind: First, that the doctrine of pure and universal love may be too refined and imaginary, because you find that no matter how much you agree with it, yet you cannot attain to it, or overcome all that is in your nature which is contrary to it, no matter what you do; and so you are left to be only an admirer of that doctrine of love which you cannot lay hold of.

Secondly, because you find written in the scriptures a righteousness and justice, a wrath and vengeance of God that must be atoned and satisfied, etc., that though you are in love with that description of the God which I have given, as a being that is all love, yet you have some doubt whether the scripture teaches that this experience is attainable in this life.

And so your objections stand, but your objections will fall into nothingness as soon as you look at them from a right point of view, and this you will do, as soon as you have found the true foundation of the nature, power, and necessity of this blessed spirit of love. Now the spirit of love began with this, God, as considered in Himself in His holy being, before anything is brought forth by Him or out of Him, is, and has always been, an eternal will to all goodness. This is the one eternal, unchangeable God, that from eternity to eternity can’t change, can be neither more nor less nor anything else but an eternal will to all the goodness that is in Himself. The creation of ever so many worlds or systems of creatures adds nothing to, nor takes anything away from this immutable[1] God. He always was and always will be the same unchangeable will to all goodness. So that as certainly as He is the Creator, so certainly is He the one that blesses every created thing, and can give nothing but blessing, goodness, and happiness from Himself because He has in Himself nothing else to give.

It is much more possible for the sun to give forth darkness than for God to give forth anything but blessing and goodness. Now this is the foundation or starting point of the spirit of love in the creature; it is and must be a will to all goodness, and you do not have the spirit of love until you have this will to all goodness, at all times and on all occasions. You may indeed do many works of love and delight, especially at such times, as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your current state or mood. But the spirit of love is not in you until it is the spirit of your life, until you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every spirit acts with freedom and uniqueness according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own life, or be what it is, no more than you need tell wrath to be wrathful. And therefore when love is the spirit of your life, it will always live and work in love, not because of this or that circumstance, but because the spirit of love can only love, wherever it is or goes. As the sparks know no motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the darkness of night or in the light of day, so the spirit of love is always in the same course; it knows no difference of time, place, or persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful work. For the spirit of love, wherever it is, is its own blessing and happiness because it is the truth and reality of God in the soul, and therefore is the same joy of life and the same good to itself, on every occasion. Would you like to know the blessing of all blessings? It is this, the God of love dwelling in your soul and killing every root of bitterness which is the pain and torment of every earthly, selfish love. For all needs are satisfied, all disorders of nature are removed, no life is any longer a burden, everyday is a day of peace, everything you meet becomes a help to you because everything you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle element of love. For as love has no selfish will, and wills nothing but its own increase, so everything is as oil to its flame. It must have that which it wills and cannot be disappointed, because everything naturally helps it to live in its own way and to bring forth its own work. The spirit of love does not want to be rewarded, honored, or esteemed. Its only desire is to propagate itself and become the blessing and happiness of everything that desires it. And therefore it meets wrath, evil, hatred and opposition with the same will as the light meets the darkness, only to overcome it with all its blessings. If you want to avoid wrath and ill will or gain the favor of any persons, you might easily fail in your mission; but if you have no will but to all goodness, everything you meet, be it what it will, must be forced to be an assistant to you. For the wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, and every other evil only helps the spirit of love to be more triumphant, to live its own life and find all its own blessings in a higher degree. Whether therefore you consider perfection or happiness, it is all included in the spirit of love and must be so for this reason, because the infinitely perfect and happy God is always and only love, with an unchangeable will to do all goodness; and therefore every creature must be corrupt and unhappy, so far as it is led by any other will other than this one will to do all goodness, all of the time, the will of God. Therefore you see the ground, the nature, and perfection of the spirit of love. Let me now in a word or two show you the necessity of it. Now the necessity is absolute and unchangeable. No creature can be a child of God but only because the goodness of God is in it; nor can they have any union or communion with the goodness of the God until their life is a spirit of love.

“This will to all goodness”

This is the only band of union between God and the creature. All besides this, call it by what name you choose, is only so much error, fiction, impurity, and corruption that has gotten into the creature, and must of all necessity be entirely separated from it before it can have that purity and holiness which alone can see God or even find the Divine life. For as God is an unchallengeable will to all goodness, so the Divine will can unite or work with no creaturely will but that which wills with Him only that which is good. Here the necessity is absolute; nothing will do instead of this will; all contrivances of holiness, all forms of religious piety, signify nothing without this will to all goodness. For as the will to all goodness is the whole nature of God, so it must be the whole nature of every service or religion that can be acceptable to Him. For nothing serves God or worships and adores Him but that which wills and works with Him. For God can delight in nothing but His own will and His own Spirit, because all goodness is included in it and can be nowhere else. And therefore everything that follows it’s own will or it’s own spirit forsakes the one will to all goodness, and as a result it does not have capacity for the light and Spirit of God.

Everything therefore but the will and life of goodness is an apostasy in the creature

The necessity therefore of the spirit of love is the very thing that God Himself cannot dispense with in the creature, no more than He can deny Himself or act contrary to His own holy being. But as it was His will to all goodness that created angels and the spirits of men, so He can will nothing in their existence but that they should live and work and manifest that same spirit of love and goodness which brought them into being. Everything therefore but the will and life of goodness is an apostasy in the creature and is rebellion against the whole nature of God. There is no peace, nor ever can be for the soul of man but in the purity and perfection of its first created nature; nor can it have its purity and perfection in any other way than in and by the spirit of love. For as love is the God that created all things, so love is the purity, the perfection, and blessing of all created things; and nothing can live in God but as it lives in love. Look at every vice, pain, and disorder in human nature; it is in itself nothing else but the spirit of the creature turned from love to self-seeking or self-will in created things. So that love alone is, and can be the only cure of every evil, and the one that lives in the purity of love is risen out of the power of evil into the freedom of the one Spirit in heaven. The schools have given us very accurate definitions of every vice, whether it is covetousness, pride, wrath, envy, etc., and has shown us how to understand them, and even how to distinguish them from one another. But the Christian has a much shorter way of knowing their nature and power and what they are and do in and to himself. For call them by what names you will, or distinguish them with ever so much exactness, they are all, just that same thing, and all do the same work, just as the scribes, the Pharisees, hypocrites, and rabble of the Jews who crucified Christ were all the same thing and all did the same work, however different they were in their outward names. If you would therefore have a true sense of the nature and power of pride, wrath, covetousness, envy, etc., they are in their whole nature nothing else but the murderers and crucifiers of the true Christ of God; not as the high priests did many hundred years ago, nailing His outward humanity to an outward cross, but crucifying afresh the Son of God, the holy Emmanuel, who is the Christ that every man crucifies as often as he gives way to wrath, pride, envy, immorality, or covetousness, etc. For every temper or passion that is contrary to the new birth of Christ and keeps the holy Emmanuel from coming to life in the soul is, in the strictest sense of the words, a murderer and killer of the Lord of life. And where pride and envy and hatred, etc., are allowed to live, there the same thing is done as when Christ was killed and Barabbas was saved alive. The Christ of God was not then first crucified when the Jews brought Him to the cross but Adam and Eve were His first real murderers; for the death which happened to them in the day that they did eat of the earthly tree was the death of the Christ of God or the Divine life in their souls. For Christ would have never come into the world as a second Adam to redeem it, had He not been originally the life and perfection and glory of the first Adam. And He is our atonement and reconciliation with God, because when He is brought to life in us, we are set again in that first state of holiness, and have Christ again in us as our first father had at his creation. For had not Christ been in our first father as a birth of life in him, Adam would have been created a mere child of wrath, in the same impurity of nature, in the same enmity with God, and in the same need of an atoning Savior as we are at this day. For God can have no delight or union with any creature but because His well-beloved Son, the express image of His person, is found in it. This is as true of all the un-fallen as of all fallen creatures; the latter must be redeemed (have Christ restored to them) and the other need no redemption, because the life of Christ dwells in them. For as the Word, or Son of God, is the Creator of all things, and by Him everything is made that was made, so everything that is good and holy in un-fallen angels is as much through His living and dwelling in them as everything that is good and holy in redeemed man is through Him. And He is just as much the preserver, the strength, and glory, and life of all the thrones and principalities of heaven as He is the righteousness, the peace, and redemption of fallen man. This Christ of God has many names in scripture, but they all mean this, that He is, and alone can be, the light and life and holiness of every creature that is holy, whether in heaven or on earth. Wherever Christ is not, there is the wrath of nature or nature left to itself and its own tormenting strength of life, to feel nothing in itself but the vain, restless contrariety of its own working properties. This is the only origin of hell, and every kind of curse and misery in the creature.

“Whenever therefore you willingly indulge wrath or let your mind work in hatred, you not only work without Christ, but you resist Him and withstand His redeeming power over you.”

It is nature without the Christ of God or the spirit of love ruling over it. And here you may observe that wrath has in itself the nature of hell, and hell can have no beginning or power in any creature but so far as that person has lost (or died to) the Christ of God. And when Christ is everywhere, wrath and hatred will be nowhere. Whenever therefore you willingly indulge wrath or let your mind work in hatred, you not only work without Christ, but you resist Him and His redeeming power over you. You do in reality what those Jews did when they said, "We will not have this man to reign over us." For Christ never was, nor can be, in any creature but purely as a spirit of love. In all the universe of nature nothing but heaven and heavenly creatures ever had, or could have known the spirit of love, those which came forth out of God. For God can will nothing in the life of the creature but a creaturely manifestation of His own goodness, happiness and perfection. And therefore, where this is not found, the fact is certain that the creature has changed and lost its first state that it had from God.

Everything therefore which is the vanity, wrath, torment and evil of man is solely the effect of his will turned away from God and can come from nothing else. Misery and wickedness can have no other foundation or root, for whatever wills and works with God must of all necessity partake of the happiness and perfection of God. This therefore is a certain truth, that hell and death, curse and misery, can never cease or be removed from the creation until the will of the creature is again as it originally was when it came from God, and is a spirit of love that wills nothing but goodness. All of fallen creation, no matter how long it stands, must groan and travail in pain; this must be its hellish state until every contrariety to the Divine will is entirely taken from it. Which is only saying that all the powers and properties of nature are a misery to themselves, and can only work in anxiety and wrath until the birth of the Son of God brings them under the dominion and power of the spirit of love. Therefore you have seen the original, unchallengeable necessity of the spirit of love. It is no imaginary refinement or speculative curiosity, but is of the highest reality and most absolute necessity. It stands in the perfection of God, and not only every intelligent creature, but every inanimate thing must work in vanity and unrest until it has its state in and works under the spirit of love.

For as love brought forth all things, and all things were what they were and had their place and state under the working power of love, so everything that has lost its first-created state must be in restless strife and anxiety until it finds it again. There is no sort of strife, wrath, or storm in outward nature, or corruption in any elementary things but that which is a full proof of this truth, i.e., that nature can have no rest but must be in the strife of agitation, unrest, and corruption, constantly doing and undoing, building and destroying, until the spirit of love has set right all outward nature and brought it back again into that glassy sea of unity and purity in which John beheld the throne of God in the midst of it. For this glassy sea, which the beloved apostle was blessed with the sight of, is the transparent, heavenly element in which all the properties and powers of nature move and work in the unity and purity of the one will of God, only known as so many endless forms of triumphing light and love.

Every son of fallen Adam is under the necessity of working and striving after something that he neither is, nor has, and for the same reason, because the life of man has lost its first unity and purity and therefore must be in a working strife until all contrariety and impurity is separated from it and it finds its first state in God. All men both evil and good, and all the wisdom and folly of this life, are proof of this. For the vanity of wicked men in their various ways, and the labors of good men in faith and hope, etc., proceed from the same cause, a want and desire of having and being something that they neither are nor have. The evil seek wrong and the good seek right, but they both are seekers, and for the same reason, which is because their present state does not have the thing it wants to have. And this must be the state of human life and of every creature that has fallen from its first state. It must do as the polluted fluid does; it must ferment and work, either right or wrong, to mend its state. The muddled wine always works right to the utmost of its power because it works according to nature, but if it had an intelligent free will it might work as vainly as man does. It might continually thicken itself, be always stirring up its own dregs, just as well as the soul of man seeks happiness in the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. All which must of the same necessity fall away from the heart of man before it can find its happiness in God, as the dregs must separate from the wine before it can have its perfection and clearness. Purification therefore is the one thing necessary, and nothing will do in its place. But man is not purified until every earthly, wrathful, sensual, selfish, self-willing temper is taken from him. He is not dying to himself until he is dying to these tempers, and he is not alive in God until he is dead to all of them. For he needs purification only because he has these tempers, and therefore he does not have the purification which he wants until they are all separated from him. It is the purity and perfection of the Divine nature that must be brought again into him, because it was in purity and perfection that he came forth from God, he was a child of God, that was to be blessed by a life in Him and from Him. For nothing impure or imperfect in its will and working can have any union with God. Nor are you to think that these words, the purity and perfection of God, are too high to be used in this context, for they only mean that the will of the creature, as an offspring of the Divine will, must will and work with the will of God, for then it stands and lives truly and really in the purity and perfection of God, and whatever does not do this is at enmity with God and cannot have any union of life and happiness with Him nor in Him.

Now nothing wills and works with God but the spirit of love, because nothing else works in God Himself. The almighty brought forth all nature only for this end, that boundless love might have its infinity of height and depth to dwell and work in, and all the striving and working properties of nature are only to give essence and substance, life and strength, to the invisible hidden spirit of love, that it may come forth into outward activity and manifest its blessed powers, that creatures born in the strength, and out of the powers of nature, might communicate the spirit of love and goodness, give and receive mutual delight and joy to and from each other. All below this state of love is a fall from the one life of God, and the only life in which the God of love can dwell. Self, partiality, mine, yours, etc., are attitudes that can only belong to creatures that have lost the power, presence, and spirit of the universal good. They can’t have a place in heaven, nor can they be anywhere because heaven is lost to them. Do not think, therefore, that the spirit of pure, universal love which is the one purity and perfection of heaven has been, or can be carried too high or its absolute necessity too much asserted. For it admits no degrees of higher or lower, and is not in being until it is absolutely pure, no more than a line can be straight until it is absolutely free from all crookedness.

All the design of Christian redemption is to remove everything that is un-heavenly, dark, wrathful, and disordered from every part of this fallen world. And when you see storms and tempests, and every kind of evil, misery, and wickedness, you see that which Christ came into the world to remove, not only to give a new birth to fallen man, but also to deliver all outward nature from its present vanity and evil and set it again in its first heavenly state. Now if you ask how all things came into this evil and vanity, it is because they have lost the blessed spirit of love which alone brings forth the happiness and perfection of every power of nature. Look at darkness, it could not have had any existence, but because the light of God is no longer dwelling in it. Nature is at first only spiritual. It has in itself nothing but the spiritual properties of the desire, which is the very being and foundation of nature. But when these spiritual properties are not filled and blessed, and all held in one will by the light and love of God ruling in them, then something is found in nature which never should have been found in it.

Therefore, when the desire (the first property of nature) in any intelligent creature leaves the unity and universality of the spirit of love and shuts itself up in it’s “own will,” “own love,” and “self-seeking,” then it does all that inwardly and spiritually in the soul, which it does in outward darkness. And had not “own will,” “own love,” and “self- seeking” come into the spirit of the creature, it never could have found or felt any outward contrariety or darkness. For no creature can have any other outward nature but that which is in the same state with its inward spirit, and belongs to it as its own natural growth.

Modern metaphysics has no knowledge of the ground and nature either of spirit or body, but supposes them not only without any natural relation, but essentially contrary to one another, and only held together in a forced conjunction by the arbitrary will of God. No, if you were to say that God first created a soul out of nothing, and when that is done, then takes an understanding faculty and puts it into it, after that adds a will and then a memory, all is independently made, as when a tailor first makes the body of a coat and then adds sleeves or pockets to it. If you were to say this, the schools of Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke could have nothing to say against it. For all these philosophers were so far from knowing the ground of nature, how it is a birth from God, and all creatures a birth from nature through the working will of God in and by the powers of nature, they were so far from knowing this, that they held to the notion that we are a creation out of “nothing,” and as a result, they were necessarily excluded from every fundamental truth concerning the origin either of body or spirit and their true relation to one another.

For a creation out of nothing does not explain why everything is as it is. Now every wise man is supposed to have respect to nature in everything that he would have joined together; he cannot suppose his work to succeed unless this is done. But to suppose God created man with a body and soul, not only not naturally related but naturally impossible to be united by any powers in either of them, is to suppose God acting and creating man into an unnatural state, which yet He could not do unless there was such a thing as nature antecedent[2] to the creation of man. And how can nature be, or have anything but what it is and has from God? Therefore to suppose God to bring any creature into an unnatural state is to suppose Him to act contrary to Himself and to that nature which is from Him. Yet just about all the instructions from Bible schools do this. It supposes God to bring a soul and a body together which have the utmost natural contrariety to each other and can only affect or act upon one another by the arbitrary will of God, willing that body and soul, held together by force, should seem to do that to one another which they have no natural or possible power to do. But the true way of this matter, known only to the soul, is that by a new birth from above, it has found its first state in and from God: namely, that nature is a birth or manifestation of the triune invisible God. And as it could only come into existence as a birth from God, so every creature can only come forth as a birth from and out of nature by the will of God, willing it to come forth in such a birth. And no creature can have, or be, anything but by and according to the working powers of nature; and therefore, strictly speaking, no creature can be, or be put into an unnatural state. It may indeed lose or fall from its natural perfection by the wrong use or working of its will; but then its fallen state is the natural effect of the wrong use of its will, and so it only has that which is natural to it. The truth of the matter is this: There neither is, nor can be, anything nor any effect in the whole universe of things but by way of birth. For as the working will is the first cause or beginner of everything, so nothing can proceed further than as it is driven by the will and is a birth of it. And therefore nothing can be in anything but what is natural to its own working will and the true effect of it. Everything that is outward in any being is only a birth of its own spirit, and therefore all body, whether it be heavenly, earthly or hellish, has its whole nature and condition from its own inward spirit, and no spirit can have a body of any other properties but such as are natural to it as being its own true outward state. For body and spirit are not two separate, independent things, but are necessary to each other, and are only the inward and outward conditions of the same thing. Every creaturely spirit must have its own body and cannot be without it, for its body is that which makes it manifest to itself.

Now a desire that cannot be stopped nor receive what it wants to have, has a threefold contrariety working in it, which you may conceive as follows: The first and peculiar property, or the one will of the desire, as such, is to receive that which it does not have; and all it can do toward having it is to act as if it were seizing it; and this is it which makes the desire to be a compressing, enclosing, or astringing, because that is all that it can do toward seizing the thing it desires. But the desire cannot receive that which it desires. And thus the desire, in its working, sets out with two contrary properties, inseparable from one another and equal in strength; for the action has no strength but as it is the drawing of the desire; and the desire only draws in the same degree as it can; and therefore the desire, always receives a resistance equal to itself. Now from this great and equally strong contrariety of the two first properties of the desire, or as may be said, two contrary ways, there arises as a necessary birth from both of them of a third property which is emphatically called a “whirling” anguish of life. For a thing that can go neither inward nor outward and yet must move under the equal power of both of them, must whirl or turn around; it has no possibility of doing anything else or of ceasing to do that. And that this whirling contrariety of these inseparable properties is the great anguish of life, and may properly be called the hell of nature; every lesser torment which any man finds in this mixed world has all its existence and power from the working of these three properties. For life can find no troublesome motions or sensibility of distress but so far as it comes under their power, and enters into their whirling wheels. Now here you may observe that as this whirling anguish of life is a third state necessarily arising from the contrariety of the two first properties of the desire, so in this material system every whirling or orbital motion of any body is solely the effect or product of the contrariety of these two first properties.

“Sir Isaac Newton plowed with Jacob Behmen's heifer when he brought forth the discovery of them”

For no material things can whirl or move around until it is under the power of these two properties; that is, until it can neither go in nor out and yet it is forced to move, just as the whirling anguish of the desire begins when it can neither go inwards nor outwards and yet must be in motion. And this may be again another strict demonstration to you that all the matter of this world is from spiritual properties, since all its workings and effects are according to them. For if matter does nothing but according to them, it can be nothing but what it is and has from them. Here also, in these three properties of the desire, you see the ground and reason of the three great laws of matter and motion lately discovered, and no more need be told than that the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton plowed with Jacob Behmen's heifer when he brought forth the discovery of them. In the mathematical system of this great scientific philosopher these three properties, attraction, equal resistance, and the orbital motion of the planets as the effect of them, etc., are only treated of as facts and appearances whose ground is not pretended to be known. But in our Jacob Behman, the illuminated instrument of God, their birth and power in eternity is opened; their eternal beginning is shown, and how and why all worlds and the life of every creature, whether it be heavenly, earthly, or hellish, must be in them and from them, and can have no nature either spiritual or material, no kind of happiness or misery but according to the working power and state of these properties. All outward nature, all inward life, is what it is and works as it works from this unceasing, powerful attraction, resistance, and whirling. Every madness and folly of life is their immediate work and every good spirit of wisdom and love has all its strength and activity from them. They equally support darkness and light. Not a thought of the mind either of love or hatred, of joy or trouble, of envy or wrath, of pride and covetousness, can rise in the spirit of any creature but as these properties act and stir in it. And from this manifestation of God in the seven properties of nature or kingdom of heaven, he most wonderfully opens and accounts for all that was done in the six first working days of the creation, showing how every one of the six active properties had its peculiar day's work until the whole ended or rested in the sanctified, paradisiacal Sabbath of the seventh day, just as nature does in its seventh property. And now, sir, you may see in the greatest clearness how everything in this world, everything in the soul and body of man, absolutely requires the one redemption of the gospel. There is but one nature in all created things, whether spiritual or material; they stand and work upon the same ground, the three first properties of nature. Only that which can illuminate the soul, can give brightness and purity to the body. For there is no darkness, and contrariety in the body but that which proceeds from the same cause that makes selfishness, wrath, envy, and torment in the soul; it is but the same state and working of the first three properties of nature. All is evil, whether natural or moral, whether of body or spirit, this is the sole effect of the wrath and disorder of the spirits of nature working in and by themselves.

All of the good, perfection, and purity of everything, whether spiritual or material, whether it is the body or spirit of man or angel, is solely from the power and presence of the supernatural Deity dwelling and working in the properties of nature. For the properties of nature are in themselves nothing else but a mere hunger, want, strife, and contrariety, until the fullness and riches of the Christ entering into them and unites them all in one will and one possession of light and harmonious love, which is the one redemption of the gospel, and the reason why nothing else but the heart or Son or light of God can purify nature and creature from all the evil they are fallen into. For nothing can possibly deliver the soul from its selfish nature and earthly passions but that one power that can deliver matter from its present material properties and turn earth into heaven. And for this plain reason, because soul and body, outward nature and inward life, have the same evil in them and from the same cause. The Deist[3], therefore, who looks for life and salvation through the use of his reason, acts contrary to the whole nature of everything that he sees and knows of himself and of the nature and state of this world. For from one end of it to the other, all its material state, all its divided elements declare that they are what they are because the light and love of heaven is not working and manifest in them, and that nothing can take darkness, materiality, rage, storms, and tempests from them but that same heavenly light and love which was made flesh to redeem the fallen humanity first, and after that, the whole material system.

Can the Deist with his reason bring the light of this world into the eyes of his body? If not, why is it to be less absurd or more possible for reason to bring heavenly light into the soul? Yet nothing less than such a power can possibly help the soul out of it’s fallen, earthly state. For the corruption of flesh and blood is the natural state of the fallen soul, and therefore nothing can purify the soul, or raise it out of its earthly, corrupt state, but that which has all power over all that is earthly and material in nature. To pretend therefore that reason may have sufficient power to remove all hellish depravity and earthly lusts from the soul while it has not the least power over sweet or sour in any one particle of matter in the body is as absurd as if a man should pretend that he has power to alter the inward, invisible, life of a plant, but none at all over its outward state, color, leaves, or fruit.

The Deist therefore, and not the Christian, stands in need of continual miracles to make good his doctrine. For reason can have no pretense to amend or alter the life of the soul but so far as it can show that it has power to amend and alter the nature and state of the body. The unbelieving Jews said of our Lord, "How can this man forgive sins?" Christ showed them how by appealing to that power which they saw He had over the body: "Which," says He, "Is it easier to say, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, arise, take up your bed, and walk?" But the delusion of the unbelieving Deist is greater than that of the Jew. For the Deist sees that his reason has no power over his body; can remove no disease, blindness, deafness, or lameness from it, and yet will pretend to have power enough from his reason to help the soul out of all its evil, not knowing that body and soul go hand in hand, and are nothing else but the inward and outward state of the same life, and that therefore He only, who can say to the dead body of Lazarus, "Come forth," can say to the soul, "Be cleansed." The Deist therefore, if he pleases, may style himself a natural or a moral philosopher, but with no more truth than he can call himself a healer of all the diseases of the body. And for a man to think himself a moral philosopher because he has put together a choice collection of witty sayings in order to quicken and revive a Divine goodness in the soul, or that no redeemer need come from heaven because human reason when truly left to itself has great skill in the severing of logic, may justly be deemed such an ignorance of the nature of things as is seldom found in the illiterate and unlearned people of this world.

“By denying and dying to self”

To return to our chief subject, the sum of all that has been said is this: All evil, no matter what it is, all misery of every kind, is in its birth, and working, nothing else but nature left to itself, and under the divided workings of its own hunger, wrath, and contrariety; and therefore no possibility for the natural, earthly man to escape eternal hunger, wrath, and contrariety, but solely in the way the gospel teaches, by denying and dying to self. On the other hand, all the goodness and perfection, all the happiness, glory, and joy that any intelligent, Divine creature can be possessed of, is, and can be, from nothing else but the invisible uncreated light and Spirit of God manifesting itself in the properties of the creaturely life, filling, blessing, and uniting them all in one love and joy of life. And again: no possibility of man's attaining to any heavenly perfection and happiness, but only in the way of the gospel, by the union of the Divine nature of God and human nature, by man's being born again from above of the Word and Spirit of God. There is no possibility of any other way because there is nothing that can possibly change the first properties of life into a heavenly state but the presence and working power of the God united with, and working in them. And therefore the "Word was made flesh," and must of all necessity be made flesh if man is to have a heavenly nature. Now as all evil, sin, and misery have no other beginning, nor power of working, but in the manifestation of nature in its divided, contrary properties, so it is certain that man has nothing to turn to, seek or aspire after but the lost spirit of love. And therefore it is, that God only can be his redeemer, because God only is love, and love can be nowhere else but in God and where God dwells and works.

Now the difficulty which you find in attaining to this purity and universality of the spirit of love is because you seek for it, in the way of reasoning. You would be possessed of it only from a rational conviction of the fitness and amiableness of it. And as this clear idea does not put you immediately into the real possession of it, your reason begins to waver, and suggests to you that it may be only a fine notion that has no ground but in the power of the imagination. But this is all your own error, and as contrary to nature as if you would have your eyes do that which only your hands or feet can do for you. The spirit of love is a spirit of nature and life, and all the operations of nature and life are according to the working powers of nature, and every growth and degree of life can only arise in its own time and place from its proper cause and as the genuine effect of it. Nature and life do nothing by chance or accidentally, but everything is done in a uniform way. Fire, air, and light do not proceed sometimes from one thing and sometimes from another, but wherever they are, they are always born in the same manner and from the same working properties of nature. So in like manner, love is an unchallengeable birth, always proceeding from the same cause, and cannot be in existence until its own true parents have brought it forth.

How unreasonable would it be to begin to doubt whether strength and health of body were real things or even possible to be had, because you could not by the power of your reason take possession of them? Yet this is as well as to suspect the purity and perfection of love to be only a notion, because your reason cannot bring forth its birth in your soul. For reason has no more power of altering the life and properties of the soul than of altering the life and properties of the body. That, and that alone, can cast devils and evil spirits out of the soul, that can say to the storm, "Be still," and to the leper, "Be cleansed."

The birth of love is a form or state of life, and has its fixed place in the fifth form of nature. The three first properties or forms of nature are the ground of life that is in itself only as an extreme hunger, want, strife, and contrariety. And they are in this state, that they may become a proper fuel for the fourth form of nature, the fire, to be kindled in them. You will perhaps say, "What is this fire? What is its nature? And how is it started? And how is it that the hunger and anguishing state of the properties are a fitness to be a fuel of this fire?" It may be answered, this hunger and anguish of nature, in its first forms, is its fitness to be changed into a life of light, joy, and happiness: and, it is in this hunger and anguish only for one reason, because God is not in it. For as nature comes from God, and for this end that the Deity may manifest heaven in it, it will remain in this hungering and anguishing state until God is manifested in it. And therefore its hunger and anguish is its true fitness to be changed into a better state, and this is its fitness for the birth of the fire. For the fire means nothing and is nothing else but that which changes them into a better state. Not as if fire was a fourth, distinct thing that comes into them from without, but is only a fourth state, or condition into which the same properties are brought.

The fire then is the very thing that changes the properties into a new and heavenly state. Therefore the fire does two things. It alters the state of nature and brings heaven into it, and it must work from a two-fold power: the Deity and nature must both be in it. It must have some strength from nature, or it could not work in nature. It must have some strength from God or it could not overcome and change nature into a Divine life. Now all this is only to show you that the fire can only be kindled by the entrance of the supernatural God, into a union with nature. And this union of the Deity and nature makes, or brings forth, that state or form of life which is called and truly is, fire:

First, because it does that in the spiritual properties of nature which fire does in the properties of material nature.

Secondly, because it is that alone from which every fire in this world, whether in the life of animal or vegetable or inanimate matter, has its source and power and possibility of burning. The fire of this world overcomes its fuel, breaks its nature, alters its state and changes it into flame and light.

But why does it do this? Why did it get this nature and power? It is because it is a true out-birth of the eternal fire, which overcomes the darkness, wrath, and contrariety of nature, and changes all its properties into a life of light, joy, and glory. Not a spark of fire could be kindled in this world, nor a ray of light could come from any material fire but because material nature is, in itself, nothing else but the very properties of eternal nature, standing for a time in a material state or condition; and therefore they must work in time as they do in eternity; and consequently there must be fire in this world, it must have the same birth and do the same work in its material way, which the eternal fire has, and does in spiritual nature. And this is the reason why everything in this world is delivered as far as it can be from its earthly impurity, and brought into its highest state of existence only by fire. The eternal fire is the purifier of eternal nature and the opener of every perfection, light, and glory in it. And if you ask why the eternal fire is the purifier of eternal nature, the reason is plain; it is because the eternal fire has its birth and nature and power from the entrance of the pure, supernatural Deity into the properties of nature, the properties must change their state and become something they were not before, as soon as God enters into them. Their darkness, wrath, and contrariety is driven out of them, and they work and give forth only a life and strength of light and joy and glory. And this two-fold operation, on the one hand taking from nature its wrathful workings, and on the other hand opening a glorious manifestation of God in them, is the whole nature and form of the fire, and is the reason why from eternity to eternity it is and must be the purifier of eternal nature, namely, as from eternity to eternity changing nature into a kingdom of heaven. Now every fire in this world does, and must do, the same thing in its low way to the utmost of its power, and can do nothing else. Start a fire where or in what you will, it acts only as, and by the power of this eternal purifying fire; and therefore it consumes everything, and makes all that is pure and spirituous to come forth out of it; and therefore purification is its only work through all material nature, because it is a real out-birth of that eternal fire which purifies eternal nature, and changes it into a heaven of glory.

This entrance of the supernatural Deity into them is the consuming of all that is bad in them and turning all their strength into a working life of light, joy, and heavenly glory; and therefore is called fire, as having no other nature and operation in it but the known nature of fire, and also as being that from which every fire in this world has all its nature and power of doing as it does. But, fire has but one nature throughout the whole universe, and material fire has no more nor less of the nature of fire in it than that which is in eternal nature because it does nothing, works nothing but what it has, and works from this. How easy is it for you to see that the fire of the soul and the fire of the body has only one nature? How else could they unite in their heat? How easy also to see that the fire of animal life is the same fire that burns in the kitchen[4]? How else could the kitchen fire be serviceable to animal life? What good would it do you to come to a fire of wood when you wanted to have the heat of your own life increased? In animal life the fire is kindled and preserved in such a degree and under such circumstances as to be life and the preservation of life, and this is its difference from fires that are kindled in wood and burnt to ashes. It is the same fire, only in a different state, that keeps up life and consumes wood, and has no other nature in the wood than in the animal. Just as in water that is heated up to make it warm, or to make it boiling hot, the same nature and power of fire is in both but only in a different degree.

Now will you say that fire is not to be literally understood when it only makes water to be warm, because it is not red and flaming as you see it in a burning coal? Yet this would be as well as to say that fire is not literally to be understood in the animal life because it is so different from that fire which you see burning in a piece of wood. It is the same great power of God in the spiritual and material world; it is the cause of every life and the introduction of every power of nature, and its one great work through all nature and creature, animate and inanimate, is purification and exaltation; it can do nothing else for this reason, because its birth is from the entrance of the pure Deity into nature, and therefore must in its various states and degrees be doing that which the entrance of God into nature does. It must bring every natural thing into its highest state.

But to go back now to the spirit of love and show you the time and place of its birth before which it can have no existence in your soul, no matter what you try to do to have it. The fire, you see, is the first over-comer of the hungry, wrathful, self-tormenting state of the properties of nature, and it only overcomes them because it is the entrance of the living God into them; and therefore that which overcomes them is the light of the Deity. And this is the true reason why every right-kindled fire must give forth light and cannot do otherwise. It is because the eternal fire is only the effect or operation of the supernatural light of the Deity entering into nature; and therefore fire must give forth light because it is only a power of the light, and light can be nowhere in nature but as a fifth form or state of nature, brought forth by the fire. And as light brought forth is the first state that is lovely and delightful in nature, so the spirit of love has only its birth in the light of life, and can be nowhere else. For the properties of life have no common good, nothing to rejoice in, until this light of God is found, and therefore there is no possible beginning of the spirit of love until then. The shock that is given to the three first properties of nature by the amazing light of God breaking in upon them is the operation of the fire that consumes or takes away the wrathful strength and contrariety of the properties, and forces each of them to shrink, as it were, away from itself, and come under the power of this new-risen light. Here all strife, enmity and wrathful contrariety in the properties must cease because all are united in the love of the light, and all are equally helping one another to a higher enjoyment and delight in it. They are all one triune will, all doing the same thing, all rejoicing in the one love of the light. And here it is, in this delightful unity of operation, that the spirit of love is born, in the fifth property or light of life, and cannot possibly rise up in any creature until the properties of its life are brought into this fifth state, therefore changed and exalted into a new sensibility of life. Let me give you this similitude of the matter: Imagine, yourself a man shut up in a deep cave underground, without ever having seen a ray of the light, your body is tortured all over with pain, your mind distracted with rage, whirling and working with the utmost fury and madness, and you don’t know why; and then you have an image of the first properties of life as they are in themselves before the fire has done its work in them. Think for a moment of you being suddenly surrounded, with a glare of light as in the twinkling of an eye, it struck dead every evil working of every pain and all rage, both in your body and mind; and then you have an image of the operation of the fire and what it does to the first properties of nature. Now as soon as the first terror of the light has had its fiery operation, and struck nothing dead but every working sensibility of distress, and wrath, imagine yourself, in the sweetest peace of mind and bodily sensations, blessed in a new region of light, giving joy to your mind and gratification to every sense; the overflowing of love and delight in this new state may give you an image of how the spirit of love is and must be born when fire and light have overcome and changed the state of the first properties of nature, and never until then can they have any existence in any creature, nor can they proceed forth from any other cause. You may sufficiently see how vainly you attempt to acquire for yourself the spirit of love by the power of your reason; and also what a vanity of all vanities there is in the religion of the Deists who will have no other perfection or Divine life but what they can have from their reason, as great a contradiction to nature as if they would have no life or strength of body but that which can be had from their faculty of reasoning. For reason cannot alter or exalt any of the properties of life in the soul nor bring it into its perfect state, no more than it can add one cubit to the stature of the body. The perfection of every life is not possible, nor can it be had but as every flower comes to its perfection, from its own seed and root and the various degrees of alteration which must be gone through before the flower is found. It is strictly this way with the perfection of the soul; all of its properties of life must have their true natural birth and growth from one another.

“Nature must be set right, its properties must enter into the process of a new birth”

The first, as its seed and root, must have their natural change into a higher state; it must, like the seed of the flower, pass through death into life, Blessed by the fire and light and air of this world until it reaches its last perfection and becomes a beautiful sweet-smelling flower. And to think that the soul can attain its perfection any other way than by the change of its first properties, until it flowers, for as whatever dies cannot have a death particular to itself but the same death in the same way and for the same reasons that any other creature, whether animal or vegetable, ever did die, so every life and degree of life must come into its state and condition of life in the same way and for the same reasons as life and the perfection of life comes into every other living creature, whether in heaven or on earth. Therefore, the Deists religion of reason, which is to raise the soul to its true perfection, is so far from being the religion of nature that it is quite unnatural and declared to be so by every working in nature. For since reason can neither give life nor death to anything in nature, but everything lives or dies according to the working of its own properties, everything either dead or alive gives forth a demonstration that nature asks no counsel of reason, nor stays to be directed by it. Cling fast to this certain truth, that you can have no good come into your soul but only by way of a birth from above, from the entrance of the Deity into the properties of your own soul. Nature must be set right, its properties must enter into that process of a new birth, it must work to the production of light before the spirit of love can have a birth in it. For love is delight, and delight cannot arise in any creature until its nature is in a delightful state or is possessed of that in which it must rejoice. For while the soul has only its natural life, it can only be in such a state as nature, without God in it, a hunger, want, and strife, for something, and it does not even know what it is. All that variety of blind, restless, contrary passions which govern and torment the life of fallen man, it is because all the properties of nature must work in blindness and be doing they know not what, until the light of God is found in them. Hence also it is that, that which is called the wisdom, honor, honesty, and the religion of the natural man, often does as much hurt to himself and others as his pride, ambition, self-love, envy, or revenge does, and they are all subject to the same impulses; this is because nature is no better in one motion than in another, nor can it be, until something supernatural has come into it.

“For self can have no motion, do no action, but that which is selfish”

We often charge men, both in and out of the church, with changing their principles; but the charge is too hasty, for no man ever did change his principals, or even can change his principles but only by a birth from above. The natural man, called in scripture the old man, is always the same in heart and spirit in everything he does, whatever variety of names may be given to his actions. For self can have no motion, nor do anything, but that which is selfish, wherever it goes, or whatever it does, either in church or state. And be assured of this, that nature in every man, whether he is educated or uneducated, is always this very self and can be nothing else until a birth of Jesus Christ is brought forth in it. There is therefore no possibility of having the spirit of love or any Divine goodness from any power of nature or working of reason. It can only be had in its own time and place; and its time and place is nowhere but where nature is overcome by a birth of the life of God in the properties of the soul. And so you see the infallible truth and absolute necessity of Christian redemption; it is the most demonstrable thing in all nature. The Deity must become man, take a birth in the fallen nature, be united to it, become the life of it or the natural man must of all necessity be forever and ever in the hell of his own hunger, anguish, contrariety, and self-torment; and all for this plain reason, because nature is and can be nothing else but this variety of self-torment, until the Deity is manifested and dwelling in it. And now, you can see the absolute necessity of the gospel doctrine of the cross, of dying to self as the only way to have life in God. This cross, or dying to self, is the only thing that can do man any good at all. Imagine as many rules as you will, of remodeling the moral behavior of man, they all do nothing because they leave self-nature still alive, and therefore can only help a man to pretend, or act out in a hypocritical art of concealing his own inward evil and pretending not to be under its power. And the reason why it must be so is obvious; it is because it is not possible to reform nature; it is unchallengeable in its workings and must be always as it is and never any better or worse than its own un-Godly workings are. It can no more change from evil to good than darkness can work itself into light. The only work therefore of morality is the doctrine of the cross, to resist and deny nature, that a supernatural power to Divine goodness may take possession of it and bring a new light into it. In a word, there are in all the possibility of things but two states or forms of life; the one is nature (the old man) and the other is God manifested in nature (newness of life); and as God and nature are both within you, so you have it in your power to live and work with which one you will, but you are under a necessity of obeying either the one or the other. There is no standing still; life goes on and will always bring forth its realities, whichever way it goes. You have seen what the properties of nature are, and they can be, nothing else in their own life, but a restless hunger, unrest, and blind strife for they know not what, until the property of light and love has gotten possession of them.

Now when you see this, you see the true state of every natural man, whether he is Caesar or Cato, whether he gloriously murders others or only stabs himself; blind nature does all the work and must be the doer of it, until the Christ of God is born in him. For the life of man can be nothing else but a hunger of covetousness, a rising up of pride, envy, and wrath, a medley of contrary passions, doing and undoing it knows not what, because these workings are essential to the properties of nature; they must be always hungering and working one against the other, striving to be above one another, and all this in blindness, until the light of God has helped them to one common good, in which they all willingly unite, rest, and rejoice. Goodness is only a word, a sound, a virtue, and can be nothing more until the spirit of love is the breath of everything that lives and moves in the heart. For love can be the only blessing and goodness of nature; and you have no true religion, you are not a worshiper of the one true God, but in and by that spirit of love which is God Himself living and working in you. But here I put down my pen and shall leave the remaining part of this teaching for another opportunity. King's Cliffe, June 16, 1752.

 

Chapter 2

The Essence of the Spirit Of Love

A Dialogue between Thomas, Steven, and Gordon

 

Thomas- Gordon, I’d like you to meet Steven, a pastor in my neighborhood; he would not let me wait any longer for your second conversation about the spirit of love, nor be content until I consented to our inviting you for another visit. And indeed, we are both equally impatient to have your full answer to a particular part of my objection, which you reserved for this second conversation.

Gordon- My heart embraces you both with the greatest affection, and I am very pleased at this occasion of your coming, and I am looking forward to sharing with you, the most delightful subject in the whole world, and to help both you as well as myself to rejoice in that Deity whose infinite being is an infinity of love, an un-beginning, never ceasing, and forever overflowing ocean of meekness[5], sweetness, delight, blessing, goodness, patience, and mercy, and all this as so many blessed streams breaking out of the ocean of universal love, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a triune infinity of love and goodness, forever and ever giving forth nothing but the same gifts of light and love, of blessing and joy, before and after the fall, both of angels and men. Look at all nature, through all its height and depth, in all its variety of working powers; it is what it is for this reason only, so that the hidden riches, the invisible powers, blessings, glory, and love of the un-searchable God may become visible, sensible, and manifest in it. Look at all the variety of creatures; they are what they are for this one purpose, that in their infinite variety, degrees, and capacities they may be as so many speaking figures, and living forms of the manifold riches and powers of nature, so many sounds and voices, preachers, and trumpets, giving glory and praise and thanksgiving to that God of love who gives life to all nature and creatures. For every creature of un-fallen nature, call it by what name you will, has its form, and power, and state, and place in nature for no other end but to open and enjoy, to manifest and rejoice in some share of the love, happiness and goodness of God, as springing forth in the boundless height and depth of nature. Now this is the one will and work of God in and through all nature and creature. From eternity to eternity He can will and intend nothing toward them, or in them, or even by them, but the communication of various degrees of His own love, goodness, and happiness to them, according to their state, and place, and capacity in nature.

This is God's unchangeable disposition toward the creature; He can be nothing else but all goodness toward it because He can be nothing toward the creature but that which He is, and ever shall be in Himself. God can no more begin to have any wrath, rage, or anger in Himself after nature and creature are in a fallen state, than He could have been infinite wrath and boundless rage everywhere and from all eternity. For nothing can begin to be in God, or to be in a new state in Him; everything that is in Him is essential to Him, as inseparable from Him, as unalterable in Him as the triune nature of His Deity.

Thomas- Gordon, Please let me ask you this, does not patience and pity and mercy begin to be in God, and only then begin, when the creature has brought itself into misery? These things could have no existence in the Deity before. Why then may not wrath and anger begin to be in God when the creature has rebelled against Him, though it neither had, nor could have had, any existence in God before?

Gordon- It's true, Thomas, that God can only then begin to make known His mercy and patience when the creature has lost its righteousness and happiness, yet nothing then begins to be in God, or can be found in Him, but that which was always in Him in the same infinite state, a will to all goodness, which can will nothing else. And His patience and mercy which could not show forth until nature and creature had brought forth misery, this was not a new temperament, or the beginning of some new disposition that was not in God before, but only new and occasional manifestations of that boundless eternal will to all goodness, which always was in God in the same height and depth. The will to all goodness, which is God Himself, began to display itself in a new way when it first gave birth to creatures. The same will to all goodness began to manifest itself in another new way when it became patience and compassion toward fallen man. But neither of these ways are the beginning of any new tempers or qualities in God, but only new and occasional manifestations of that true eternal will to all goodness, which always was, and always will be, in the same fullness of infinity in God. But to suppose that when the creature has abused its power, lost its happiness and plunged itself into a misery out of which it cannot deliver itself, to suppose that only then, there begins to be something in the holy Deity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost that is not of the nature and essence of God, and which was not there before, i.e. a wrath, and fury, and vindictive vengeance, breaking out in storms of rage and resentment because the poor creature has brought misery upon itself, is wickedness and absurdity that cannot be enough abhorred. For nothing can be in God but that which He is and has from Himself, and therefore no wrath can be in God Himself unless God was in Himself before all nature began and from all eternity an infinity of wrath, and anger. Why are love, knowledge, wisdom, and goodness said to be infinite and eternal in God, capable of no increase or decrease, but always in the same utmost state of existence? Why is His power eternal and omnipotent, His presence not here, or there, but everywhere? No reason can be assigned, but because nothing that is temporary, limited, or bounded can be in God. It is His nature to be that which He is, and in an infinite, unchangeable degree, admitting neither higher, nor lower, neither here nor there, but always and everywhere in the same unalterable state of infinity. If therefore wrath, rage, and resentment could be in God Himself, it must be an un-beginning, boundless, never-ceasing wrath, capable of no more, or less, no increase or decrease, but always existing, always working, and breaking forth in the same strength, and everywhere equally burning in the height and depth of God.

There is no middle ground here; it must be either all or nothing, either no possibility of wrath, or no possibility of its having any bounds. And therefore, if you would not say that everything that has, or can, or ever shall proceed from God are and can be only so many effects of His eternal and omnipotent wrath, which can never cease, or be less than infinite; if you will not hold this monstrous blasphemy, you must stick close to the absolute impossibility of wrath having any existence in God. For nothing can have any existence in God, but in the way and manner as His eternity, infinity, and omnipotence have their existence in Him. Have you any objections to this?

Thomas- Gordon, both Steven and myself have been from the first fully satisfied with what has been said of this matter in your book of “Regeneration,” “The Appeal[6],” and “The Spirit of Prayer,” We find ourselves incapable of thinking any otherwise of God than as the one and only good, or, as you express it, "An eternal immutable[7] will to all goodness," which can will nothing else to all eternity, but to communicate good, and blessing, and happiness, and perfection to every life, according to its capacity to receive it. Had I a hundred lives, I could with more ease part with them all by suffering a hundred deaths than give up this lovely idea of God. Nor could I have any desire of eternity for myself if I did not have the hope that, by partaking of the Divine nature, I could be eternally delivered from the burden and power of my own wrath and changed into the blessed freedom of a spirit that is all love and a will to nothing but goodness. An eternity without this is but an eternity of trouble. For I know of no hell either here or hereafter, but the power and working of wrath, nor any heaven but where the God of love is all and in all, and working in the life of all. And therefore, the holy Deity is one blessing, and goodness, willing and working only love and goodness to everything as far as it can receive it. This is a truth as deeply grounded in me as the feeling of my own existence. I ask you for no proof of this; my only difficulty is how to reconcile this idea of God to the letter of scripture. First, because the scripture speaks so much and so often of the wrath, and fury, and vindictive vengeance of God. Secondly, because the whole nature of our redemption is so plainly grounded on such a supposed degree of wrath and vengeance in God as could not be satisfied and atoned by anything less than the death and sacrifice of His only begotten Son.

Gordon- I will do more for you, Thomas, in this matter than you seem to expect. I will not only reconcile the letter of scripture with the foregoing description of God but will show you that everything that is said of the necessity of Christ's being the only possible satisfaction and atonement of the vindictive wrath of God is an absolute proof that the wrath of God spoken of never existed, nor exists now, or can possibly ever exist in God.

Steven- Gordon, you have forced me now to speak, and I cannot contain the joy that I feel in this expectation which you have raised in me. If you can show that the scriptures do all that which you have just promised to Thomas, I shall be in paradise before I die. For to know that love alone was the beginning of nature and creature, that nothing but love encompasses the whole universe of things, that the governing hand that overrules all, the watchful eye that sees through all, is nothing but omnipotent and omniscient love using an infinity of wisdom to raise all that is fallen in nature, to save every misguided creature from the miserable works of its own hands, and make happiness and glory the perpetual inheritance of all the creation is a reflection that must be quite magnificent to every intelligent creature that is sensible of it. Therefore to think of God, of His providence, and eternity while we are in this valley and shadow of death is to have a real foretaste of the blessings of the world to come. Please, let us hear how the letter of scripture is a proof of this God of love.

Gordon- Before I do this, Steven, I think it is necessary to show you in a word or two the true ground and nature of wrath in all its kinds, what it is in itself, where it has its birth, life, and manner of existence. And then you will see with your own eyes why, and how, and where wrath or rage can, or cannot be. And until you see this fundamentally in the nature of things, you cannot be at all qualified to judge of the matter in question, but must only think and speak at random, merely as your imagination leads you. For until we know the nature of wrath, what it is in itself, and why, and how it comes into existence, we cannot possibly know where it can or cannot enter. Nor can we know what is meant by the satisfaction, appeasement, or atonement of wrath in any being but by knowing how, and why, and for what reason wrath can rise, and work in any being; then and only then can we know how any wrath, wherever raised, can be atoned for or be made to cease. Now there are two things, both of them visible to your outward senses, which entirely open the true ground and nature of wrath and undeniably show what it is in itself, and from where it arises, and what its life, and strength, and being consists of. And these two things are a tempest in the elements of this world and a raging sore in the body of man or any other animal. Now that a tempest in the elements is wrath in the elements, and a sore in the body of an animal is a wrath in the state of the health of the body is a matter, I think that, needs no proof or clarification. Consider, then, how or why a tempest arises in the elements, or an inflamed sore in the body, and then you have the true ground and nature of wrath. Now a tempest does not, cannot arise in the elements while they are in their right state, in their just mixture or union with one another. A sore does not, cannot break forth in the body while the body is altogether in its true state of health. Consequently you can plainly see that wrath has its whole nature and it’s only ground and existence in and by the disorder or bad state of the thing in which it exists and works. It can have no place of existence, no power of breaking forth, but where the thing has lost its proper perfection and is not as it ought to be. And therefore no good being that is in its proper state of goodness can, while it is in such a state, have any wrath or rage in it. And therefore, as a tempest of any kind in the elements is a sure proof that the elements are not in their right state, but under disorder, as a raging sore in the body is impure and corrupt and not as it should be, so in whatever mind or intelligent being wrath or rage works, and breaks forth, there is proof enough that the mind is in that same impure, corrupt, and disordered state as those elements that raise a tempest and that body which gives forth an inflamed sore. And now, gentlemen, what do you think of a supposed wrath, or rage in God; will you have such things to be in God Himself as cannot have a place or existence in any creature until it has become disordered and impure and has lost its proper state of goodness?

Steven- But pray, Gordon, let me observe that it does not appear to me that there is only one type of wrath possible to be in nature or creature. I grant there is such a likeness in the things you have appealed to as is sufficient to justify poets, orators, or popular speakers in calling a tempest wrath, and wrath a tempest. But this will not do in our present matter; for all that you have said depends upon this, whether, in a philosophic strictness in the nature of the things, there can be only one wrath, wherever it is, proceeding strictly from the same ground, and having everywhere the same nature. Now if you can prove this identity or sameness of wrath, be it where it will, either in an intelligent mind, the elements of this world, or the body of an animal, then your point is absolutely gained, and there can be no possibility for wrath to have any existence in God. But as body and spirit are generally held to be quite contrary to each other in their most essential qualities, I do not know how you can sufficiently prove that they can only have one kind of wrath, or that wrath must have the same nature, whether it be in a body or spirit.

Gordon- Wrath can have no other nature in body than it has in spirit for this reason, because it can have no existence or manner of working in the body but what it has directly from spirit. And therefore, in every wrath that is visible in any body whatever, you have a true manifestation of the ground and nature of wrath, in whatever spirit it is in. And therefore, as there is but one ground and nature of wrath in all-outward things, whether they are animate or inanimate, so you have proof enough that so it is with all wrath in the spirit or mind. Because wrath in any body or outward thing is nothing else but the inward working of that spirit which manifests itself by an outward wrath in the body. And what we call wrath in the body is truly and strictly speaking the wrath of the spirit in the body. For you are to observe that the body does not begin from itself, nor is anything of itself, but is all that it is, whether pure or impure, has all that it has whether of light or darkness, and works all that it works, whether of good or evil, from spirit. For nothing, my friend, acts in the whole universe of things but spirit alone. And the state, condition, and degree of every spirit is only opened by the state, form, condition, and qualities of the body that belongs to it. For the body can have no nature, form, condition, or quality but that which the spirit that brings it forth gives to it. If there had not been an eternal universal spirit, there could be no eternal or universal nature; that is, had not the Spirit of God been everywhere, the kingdom of heaven, or the visible glory of God in an outward majesty of heaven, could not be everywhere. Now the kingdom of heaven is that to the Deity which every body is to the spirit, which lives, works, and manifested itself in it.

“Nothing can be wrathful but spirit!”

The spirit is not body, nor is the body spirit; they are so essentially distinct that they cannot possibly lose their difference, or be changed into one another; and yet all that is in the body is from the nature, will, and working of its spirit. There is therefore no possible room for a supposition of two kinds of wrath, or that wrath may have two natures, the one as it is in spirit, and the other as it is in body; first, because nothing can be wrathful but spirit, and secondly, because no spirit can exert or manifest wrath but in and by its body. And therefore, through the whole universe of things, there is and can be but one possible ground and nature of wrath, whether it be in the sore of an animal body, in a storm in the elements, in the mind of a man, in an angel, or in hell.

Steven- Enough, enough, Gordon, you have made it sufficiently plain that wrath can be no more in God Himself than hell can be heaven. And therefore we ask no more of you, but that you reconcile this with the language and doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. 

Thomas- You are in too much haste, Steven; it would be better to let Gordon proceed further in this matter. He has told us what wrath is in itself; no matter where it is, I would like to know its true origin, how, and where, and why it begins.

“There is no evil in anything, but the working of the spirit of wrath!”

Gordon- To inquire or search into the origin of wrath is the same thing as to search into the origin of evil and sin. For wrath and evil are but two words for the same thing. There is no evil in anything, but the working of the spirit of wrath. And when wrath is entirely suppressed, there can be no more evil, or misery, or sin in any part of nature or creature. This therefore is a firm truth, that nothing can be capable of wrath, or be the beginning of wrath but the creature, because nothing but the creature can be the beginner of evil and sin. Again, the creature can have no beginning, or sensibility of wrath in itself, but only by losing the living power, the living presence, and governing operation of the Spirit of God within it, or in other words, by losing that heavenly state of existence in God and the influence from God which it had at its creation. Now no intelligent creature, whether angel or man, can be good and happy but by partaking of, or having in itself, a two-fold life. Hence so much is said in the scripture of an inward and outward, an old and a new man. For there could be no foundation for this distinction but because every intelligent creature, was created to be good and happy, and must of all necessity have a two-fold life in itself, or it cannot possibly be capable of goodness and happiness, nor can it possibly lose its goodness and happiness, or feel the least need of them, but by its breaking the union of this two-fold life in itself. Therefore so much is said in the scripture of quickening, raising, and reviving the inward, new man, and of the new birth from above, of Christ being formed in us as the only redemption and salvation of the soul. That's why the fall of Adam was said to be a death, that he died the day of his sin though he lived so many years after it; it was because his sin broke the union of his two-fold life and put an end to the heavenly part of it and left only one life, the life of this brutish, earthly world in him. Now there is, in the nature of the thing, an absolute necessity of this two-fold life in every creature that wants to be happy; The two-fold life is this, it must have the life of nature, and the life of God in it. It cannot be a creature, and intelligent, but only by having the life and properties of nature, that is, by finding itself to be a life of various sensibilities, that has a power of understanding, willing, and desiring. This is its creaturely life, which, by the creating power of God, it has in and from nature. Now this is all the life that is or can be creaturely, or be a creature's natural, own life; and all this creaturely natural life, with all its various powers and sensibilities, is only a life of various appetites, hungers, and wants, and cannot possibly be anything else. God Himself cannot make a creature to be in itself, anything else but a state of emptiness, of want, of appetite, etc. He cannot make it to be good or happy, in and from its natural state: This is as impossible as for God to cease to be the one and only good.

The highest life, therefore, that is natural and creaturely can go no higher than this; it can only be a bare capacity for goodness and happiness and cannot possibly be a good and happy life, but by the life of God dwelling in union with it. And this is the two-fold life that of all necessity must be united in every good, perfect and happy creature. See here the greatest of all demonstrations of the absolute necessity of gospel redemption and salvation. There can be no goodness and happiness for any intelligent creature, but in, and by this two-fold life; and therefore the union of the Divine and human life, or the Son of God incarnate in man, to make man again a partaker of the Divine nature, this is the only possible salvation for all the sons of fallen Adam, Deism, therefore, or a religion of nature, pretending to make man good and happy without Christ, without the Son of God entering into union with the human nature, is the greatest of all absurdities. It is as contrary to the nature and possibilities of things as for emptiness to be its own fullness, or hunger to be its own food, and want to be its possession of all good things. For nature and creature, without the Christ of God, is and can be nothing else but emptiness, hunger, and want of all that which alone can make it good and happy. For God Himself, as I said, cannot make any creature to be good and happy by anything that is in its own created nature; however high and noble any creature is supposed to be created, its height and nobility can consist in nothing but its higher capacity and fitness to receive a higher union with the Divine life, and also a higher and more wretched misery when left to itself, as is manifest by the hellish state of the fallen angels. Their high and exalted nature was only an enlarged capacity for the Divine life; and therefore, when this life was lost, their whole created nature was nothing else but the height of rage, and hellish distraction. A plain demonstration that there can be no happiness, blessing, and goodness for any creature in heaven or on earth but by having, as the gospel says, Jesus Christ made unto it, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and peace with God. This is because goodness and happiness are absolutely inseparable from God, and can be nowhere but in God. And on the other hand, emptiness, want, insufficiency, etc., are absolutely inseparable from the creature, as such; its whole nature cannot possibly be anything else, no