built around thee, he sent thee first into the bosom of a living temple; a church whose understanding of truth had grown out of a vital informing principle: and he would have had thee submit thy building of man to the building of God. And he did put thee there to prophesy to the builders of the house, to ask change of raiment for Joshua, and to strengthen the hauds of Zerubbabel; but thou wouldest not: thou wouldst be both prophet and church unto thyself. The Lord saw that he must either part with thee for his prophet, or part with us for his church. So, when thou hadst sown amongst us the seed of hope, the hope of the Man-child, he shut thy mouth, like Zacharias, for disbelieving the word and asking for a sign: and thou shalt be dumb, like him, for a season; aye, and until thou shalt yield thyself to be fashioned and builded by the Spirit of God, according to his mind, and not according to thine own.

All thy doctrines concerning our Lord's flesh, and concerning regeneration, and concerning the holiness of the believer, and concerning the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, are dead letters of tradition, as thou holdest them, blind conceptions, having in them a form of godliness without the power. O brother! I would teach thee, for I am set as a teacher in the house of God; but thou wilt not be taught. Those letters which, contrary to all honour and friendship-letters, so private, so holy-those two letters of mine, which thou hast dared (or rather, I should say, been constrained by God overruling thine evil) to publish, would have taught thee the truth, the living truth of God, concerning these great heads of doctrine. But thou wilt not be taught by any man, by any ordinance: nay, thou wouldst not be taught by the Comforter dwelling within thee; how shouldst thou be taught by man? Yet once more, for thee, and for the multitude that follow after thee, I will set forth again distinctly what my faith is, what the only living faith is, concerning these matters.

I believe that Christ's flesh, or whole human nature, differed in no one particular from the flesh of all other men; having the same sensations, feelings, inclinations, passions, thoughts, and propensities of every kind;-a part taken from the common lump without any thing added to it or taken away from it. I believe that it had no sin in it, but was ever most holy, notwithstanding that its will and its reason and its understanding, and all its members, were under the same bondage, and exposed to the same temptations, as the rest of the brethren do continually fall before; but He never fell before them, but prevailed against them and overthrew them with a great overthrow; evermore presenting his body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. I believe that he was mortal, and liable to all diseases, and was evermore delivered from death in that he feared God, and was free from all disease and

every taint of corruption. Also, that he was under the curse, and as much brought under the hand of all devils as we are, whose captivity be led captive, triumphing over the principalities and powers of darkness all his life long, and being verily the Redeemer of the body from death and corruption, and of the soul from the prison-house and captivity of hell: all his life a willing bondsman out of love to us, and a self-redeemer of himself, and of us whose common fare he took,to redeem us out of the fearful pit and the miry clay; wherein our feet would have stuck fast for ever, but for this Strong One, upon whom our help was laid. I believe that what he did openly, and once for all endure upon the cross, he did all his life long spiritually and really endure, in the crucifixion of every member of his natural man, as a just and true satisfaction made to the justice of an offended God for the sin of all men, both original and actual;-that his body was always mortal and mortified as it was when lying in the tomb, and that his soul was always under the same captivity as when it went down into hell;—and like as he did burst the gates of hell, and saw no corruption in the grave, so all his life long did he feel no taint of corruption, nor was brought into any disobedience of the law by his will; but did ever live a life out of death, triumphant over all the power of the enemy. The cross, the tomb, and the descent into hell, are but the outward manifestations of that cross, mortality, and spiritual oppression which lay on him all his life long; being ever the spotless sacrifice of God, the Lamb slain, the Man of sorrows and oppression, and ever arising above them all into the paths of life, and the fulness of joy, and the pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore. So that the work of Jesus in the flesh was the taking of God's creature, man, under the power of sin and death and hell, and enabling that creature to do God's holy and perfect will in all things; to be alive out of death with God's own everlasting life, and to be free from the captivity of hell with the liberty of the sons of God. Sin was there doing its utmost, but nothing availing to prevent his spotless holiness: death was there doing his utmost, but nothing availing to interrupt or hinder that health which went forth from his very garments, that life which was Almighty: hell was there with all its spiritual wickednesses, but nothing availing to prevent Him from ever hearing the voice of his Father and doing his good pleasure in all things. This is what I believe of the work of Jesus, that he brought into my very flesh the holiness, the power, the joy, the blessedness, and all the ways of God.

I believe that He, the Person who did thus make sin, death, and hell, to leave their hold of my flesh, and bring thereinto the will, the mind, the work, and every way of God,-so that flesh of my flesh, under the curse subsisting as I subsist, should be God's delightful temple, his heart, his mouth, his

hand, his every feature, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,-is theWORD which was in the beginning with God, and which was God; very God of very God, the eternally begotten Son, which was in the bosom of the Father, and whose goings forth are from everlasting. The WORD was made flesh not the FATHER, not the HOLY GHOST, but the WORD, He was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us. The ruin was under his hand, and he made it to be the pavilion of God. It was His to receive the arrows of the curse, to be bound with the cords of death, and to be held with the pains of hell; to be laid in the lowest pits, in darkness in the deeps. It was His to bear our sins in his own body on the tree; to be the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. It was His, by coming in the likeness of sinful flesh, to condemn sin in the flesh; and His it was by death to destroy him which had the power of death, which is the devil. And all this he did, not by altering the flesh, for it was in him the same weak, fallible, mortal, cursed creature that it is in me; nor yet by bringing into it his Godhead nature, which it can in nowise contain; but by emptying himself into the measure of a man, and the condition of a serving man, and the misery of a crucified man. And ever making himself man, he was darkened, deadened, sorrow-stricken, woe-begone, and so marred, more than the sons of men; taking the lowest cast, the roughest weather, and the hardest post, which it was possible to find. For, in very deed, all the arrows of God stuck fast in him, all the billows and water-spouts of God passed over him; and, compared with any other of the cloud of witnesses, he was treated of God as a worm, and no man. Yet, withal, he was not mere man, but the Son of God acting within the most extreme and most perilous condition of man the work of man, and bearing the curse and the burden which sin had brought upon man: and he shewed himself to be the mighty God in that very thing, that, being thus cribbed up and hemmed in, weakened and oppressed, and with no weapons of any temper but those withered rushes of man's fallen being, he did by endurance, by the perfect work of patience, by the long-suffering of love, and the full confession of man's guilt and allowance of God's righteous judgment, by bearing all and enduring all with shame and confusion of face, that it should all be due to sin; saying (Ps. xl.), "Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up;" and ever pleading the mercy God, "Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me ;"-in one word, by willing to bear what God pleased to inflict, by minding to do what God desired to be done, and by believing what God had promised to do for sinful man; by setting his God always before him, and persevering in his uprightness; magnifying the Law, and making it honourable; thus, and no otherwise, by continuing in that way in which all men are required to serve and wait for God, did he prepare the vessel, the living

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holy vessel, unto which his Father might perform all his good pleasure before the sons of men. For this was what God desired to have in man, a living creature meet in all respects for the living God to dwell in; where he might find room and verge enough for expressing his mind to all creation, upholding their blessedness, and ruling them with the royal law of liberty. Adam failed to give God this his desire, and brought God's building into a ruin: Jesus took up the ruin, and gave God the fulness of his desire; redeeming, regenerating, and renewing man wholly after the image of God, who thereupon straightway did present in man the form of his subsistence, of his disposition, and of his action towards all creatures, both visible and invisible. The living vessel had become dead; Jesus made it alive, to shew a living God: the vessel had become sinful; Jesus made it sinless, to shew a holy God: the vessel had been occupied with the prince of death and darkness; Jesus possessed it with the spirit of an upright, faithful man, that God might express all his love and holiness to the creatures whom he had made. Oh the mystery of godliness, "God manifest in the flesh !"

Such are the views of Christ's work in the days of his flesh which so helped on the downfall of my brother. He thinks that they degrade the work and the Workman alike; but I do testify before my God, and before all saints, that I believe the work of the Son of God in sanctifying his own flesh to have been as perfect and complete in the act of his being made flesh, as in the act of his offering himself upon the cross, and all the acts which lie between these extremes, by reason of temptation and suffering. And therefore I believe Christ's flesh to have been most holy, through the operation therein of the Word of God: which Word of God did thereby sanctify all flesh; and wherever there is faith upon him, there is holiness in the flesh: "For this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith." Ofttimes have I said to my dear brother, that he either would not or could not apprehend me, and did grievously misrepresent and traduce me, thinking he did God service: he willing to say that the law of sin was not in the members of Christ, to the intent that he might keep them holy; I willing to say that it was there ever made void, by the same energy of God which he acknowledgeth was needed to make it void in the Divine generation. Now he cannot understand, that what God doeth he ever doeth, and till he will understand this, he must ever mistake, not this point only, but every point of divinity. Whether is better, to believe that this pen which I hold in my hand is nothing, by the creative word of God formed into and upholden as something; or to believe that it was made a pen by the creative word six thousand years ago, and that God hath had nothing to do with it since? Surely it is the right way of honouring the Creator, to feel at every moment that we, and

the world we dwell in, are nothing in ourselves, but ever upholden in our state by the creative word resting in power upon

us.

Even so the Word being made flesh, that flesh was holy; but its holiness standeth not in itself, being sinful flesh, as part of the lump made holy by the incarnation, and kept holy by the presence of the incarnate One. I give unto the Word the honour of making and upholding flesh holy against its own natural rebelliousness: thou givest him no such honour, and therein pluckest the crown from his head, for which he suffered and laboured so extremely. Why wilt thou, O my brother, treat me as a blasphemer of my Lord, whom thou knowest, by the fellowship of many years, to be no such hateful person? When wilt thou cease to put thy formal conceptions, in place and time subsisting, for living, spiritual truths, which alone do quicken the soul? But I am not making any apology for myself, or for my faith, but only once more endeavouring to take the stumbling-block out of the way of thee, and such-like honest though ill-instructed men. If thou ask me, brother, why I speak so surely and authoritatively, I answer, Because I have long stood in the ordinance of a teacher in the house of my God, and by serving him faithfully therein have earned for myself great boldness in the faith. Thou hast not stood in that ordinance, but wilt erect thyself above those who there do stand; and therefore hast thou fallen.

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Now, as concerneth Atonement, and Imputation of Righteousness, which thou sayest I set aside: again thou errest in thy judgment, and smitest me wrongfully. Atonement is the finished work of Christ in the flesh; for all flesh performed, by keeping of the law, by suffering unto the death, and continuing under the power of death for a time and imputed righteousness is the partaking thereof by faith therein; whereby God doth accept us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone. But, being accepted of our God in the name and for the sake of Jesus, and putting away the filth of the flesh in the waters of baptism, and out of them arising with the answer of a good conscience toward God; what then, O my brother? is the Christian life thereby ended, or is it only thereby begun? Thou hast got the mercy-seat fashioned out of the lump of pure gold, but thou art only beginning to fashion the cherubim out of the same lump. Now, that we have got into thine own region of types and forms, learn thou that the cherubim and mercy-seat were hammered out of one piece of gold. Thou hammerest the mercy-seat, and thou dost well: but I go on to hammer out the cherubim also, and I do better. Why wilt thou not understand and be wise? Put away thy Manicheanism from thee, and be a Christian; neither go thou about to say that from the fall of