the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints. Moreover, the letter of" Abijah" in the November issue of the Magazine, wherein he declares, that himself and others had been discomforted by this passage, gave me further assurance that I was not fighting with the wind. His simple, though unanswerable deducements, carry their own weight and cannot be gainsayed.

I am not ashamed, Sir, of being numbered with those who dare to criticise the translation of the word of God, but I should be much ashamed of receiving their opinion of the mind of God, as manifested in the original language, because we are told they were "so very learned." Was it in heavenly wisdom they were so very learned? Oh! tell it not! Why then is a knowledge of the original languages so useful as it truly is, if such a Popish spirit is to be propagated, as would dare a person to assume to criticise the inspired word? The Rector of Hayes, Kent, after a work of immense labour, has published a Translation of the Scriptures, and in very many instances he has differed, justly, from the very learned translators; about four months since this book was reviewed by the Times newspaper, which declared it to be "a work which expunged those errors, which in our translation are visible, and well known." If you have not read the review, it will repay you to peruse it, in which you will see that the most learned of the day, are sufficiently daring to criticise and correct.

This controversy concerning the word "castaway" has now extended over a period of nine months, and what is the result? I find you making this confession :-" I am gladly willing to admit your comment was according to truth." Then allow me to advise you for the future to attack that which is untrue, and not that which is "according to truth." If my object was to afford comfort to any, this word might have distressed, by substituting another which might be more easily understood, you have done ill in attacking me. You proceed to state "that although my comment was true, it was upon a wretchedly false foundation," and then in the following page of your letter, is found a statement, which, while it proves that my foundation was "truth," and superstructure "according to truth," likewise shows your letter to contain "contradictions," and, that with regard to the application of your remarks, as bearing upon my veracity, you were evidently blinded. You say, "that a firm house must have a solid foundation," which is true, but "that my comment was according to truth though my foundation was false !" How can these things be reconciled? Truth is appointed to triumph. So then, my comment is true, and my foundation solid.

As there are several most lamentable mistakes in your letters, which it might be profitable to point out to you, I beg to say, you may learn my address of the Editor, for I should like a personal interview. I am, yours, with Christian wishes,

LAUDI DEI.*

* The address referred to having been mislaid, our correspondent had better send it under cover to "T. A." care of W. Bennett, 53, Paternoster Row.-ED.

To one of the Pilgrims.

MY DEAR BROTHER IN THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST,

Grace, mercy, peace, and love, be with you, and the dear family of Zion's pilgrims, with whom you are united in the bonds of truth, who are still I perceive sojourners in Mesech, and dwellers in the tents of Kedar, whom I sincerely love in the Lord. I therefore greet you all, in the name of the Father, the word, and the Holy Ghost, in whom, through whom, and by whom, we live and move and have our being. I received your truly kind epistle, dated Castle Cary, Feb. 25th, 1846. I was heartily glad to hear from you, and to perceive that you are as "brands plucked out of the fire" (Zech. iii. 2), standing securely upon the Rock of eternal ages, clothed with that righteousness which is unto all and upon all them that believe. I have considered over the request you have made in your epistle-viz, "that you shall esteem it a favour to hear a little from me in reply to its contents." Well, what shall I say to my dear brother in reply to the melancholy picture he has drawn of the state of his mind, and experience in his pilgrimage to Zion? You say, "Oh, I do feel more and more the desperate rebellion and wickedness of the human heart, and have to go mourning the most of my days." Hence doubts and fears arise whether I have any interest in Christ, or part or lot in this matter of salvation. Hence the darkness of the mind, the hardness of the heart, the distress of the soul, the wandering of the thoughts, the enmity of the carnal nature, the old man of sin, striving to gain the ascendency over every spiritual desire of the mind, to bring you into captivity to sin, appears to be the reasons assigned by Satan working upon the corruptions of your heart why you have no part or lot in this matter of salvation. Well, glory be to God, for that there is nothing in all you have said, contrary to the experience of the elect regenerate children of God. Therefore I would say, in the language of the Holy Ghost (Psalm xlii. 11), "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for thou shalt yet praise him who is the health of thy countenance and thy God." I perceive this breathing throughout your epistle that as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth your soul after the living God. He who hath thus taught you, and brought you to see and feel your need of him, is God the Holy Ghost, and if he had meant to have destroyed you he would not have shown you these things. And " Though you have lien among the pots, yet shall you be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." And you shall surely shine forth in all the resplendent beauty of his grace.

There is, at all times, something excellent and blessed to a spiritual mind, in being led by the Spirit, to search the Scriptures of eternal truth,

for they testify of Jesus; by which a true and spiritual knowledge of the person, work, blood, and righteousness of Jesus is communicated, whom to know is life eternal. The knowledge of Christ is found, in the knowledge of the blessings derived through him. Without this knowledge, all natural acquirements and human knowledge, all forms and ceremonies, with nothing but an empty profession, however pompous in appearance will sink its votaries into eternal ruin. Hence I believe that it is the highest attainment of the children of God, in experience in this wilderness state, to know him, and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings; being made conformable to his death. This knowledge being brought home to the heart, by the power of the Holy Ghost, will be powerfully opposed by Satan, who will try to prevent the enjoyment of every covenant blessing which the Lord Jehovah has eternally secured to us in the person of our most glorious Christ before the foundation of the world. Therefore in the world we shall have tribulation, by which we shall learn something of the real value of divine and sovereign grace, and therefore we must through much tribulation enter the kingdom. But we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience will have her perfect work in our experience, and experience will show or teach us the real value of the grace of hope which maketh not ashamed: because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Rom. v. 3). I feel persuaded, according to the word of God, that it is only in proportion as we are led by the Spirit of God to see and know the Lord Jesus Christ, that we see and know the Father; and from the realization of these blessed truths by faith, as they are developed by the Spirit, and we receive them in our hearts in the love of them, so we receive Christ Jesus the Lord and walk in him. Then it is we can freely say, Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." Hence all the elect family of heaven are taught by the Lord, and the Lord the Spirit guides them into all truth. Therefore the Scriptures of God being the revelation of himself in the unity of the self existing essence, the Lord Jehovah; and in that essence subsisting in unity in a Trinity of Persons, Father, Word, and Spirit, the three that bear record in heaven, and these three are one (1 John i. 7). It is only by this glorious revelation revealed in us, by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we receive the true knowledge of God; and it is the only true mode of communication through which we experience and know the love God hath to us, poor fallen sensible sinners.

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Hence, my dear brother, I trust that you are enabled to see that the communications which I can clearly perceive by your epistle are made to your mind from time to time, are made by the Spirit, whose office it is to take of the things of Christ, and make them plain to your mind. My advice to you is, go forward in the strength of the Lord, making mention of His name and His righteousness only; through Him you shall do valiantly, for He it is that shall tread down your enemies; for by Him shall you run through a troop of them; and by Him shall you

leap over a wall. He will save his afflicted people from all their enemies, and will enlighten thy darkness and lift up upon thee the light of His countenance. My prayer to God for you and all Zion's pilgrims at Castle Cary is, that you may be kept from all error, that there may be no temporizing among you, that you may not be drawn away from the simplicity of the Gospel, for non-essential ordinances, which can never profit the soul. May you be preserved in the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of perfectness; and may you all be steadfast in the faith of the Gospel, striving together for the faith once delivered to the saints, that your profiting may appear unto all; being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever (1 Pet. i. 23). That you may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, till you all come in the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the fulness of Christ: that you henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may delight yourself in the Lord, and he shall give you the desire of your hearts. Then, my dear brother, your rebellions will be subdued, your doubts and your fears will be removed, your darkness turned into light, your hard heart melted into tenderness and love; in the place of distress, you will have joy and peace in the Holy Ghost through believing; your wandering thoughts will be collected, and your mind stayed upon the Lord, as that where your treasure is there will your hearts and thoughts be also; the enmity of the carnal mind, and the old man of sin, will be brought into subjection to the will of God, and sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. So then, dear brother, your legitimate right and title to the salvation of God's elect is fully established. Hence all the vile crew of persecuting professors, workmongering corrupters of the word of God, proud-boasting self-righteous Pharisees, enemies of all true righteousness, and persecutors of the right way, shall fall like Dagon before the ark. For Christ is all and in all, and he shall reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. Hallelujah! Amen.

I sincerely thank you and all the dear people, for their very kind remembrances of me and mine; and especially for your united prayers for my usefulness in my present sphere of labour in the vineyard of Christ. 1 am happy to inform you, that he has granted me many seals to my ministry, since I have been in this place; to Him be all the praise. You know I delight in speaking well of His eternal, glorious, matchless name, who, being the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. The apostle never treats of that great act of Christ putting away our sins, and purging away the filth of them by sacrifice of Himself, without speaking of His co-existence in the Godhead and equality with the Father, that from the view of

him as one in the essential, incomprehensible, self-existing essence, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, we might trust in his work as our finished salvation; and thereby derive everlasting consolation from his glorious engagements with his Father on our behalf; and from his offices through which we receive all the blessedness treasured up in him before the foundation of the world. The very foundation of the Church's being, existence, interest in, and relation to Christ, before the foundation of the world, is founded upon the Father's everlasting free and sovereign love to her in him, who has ever been viewed as a head, husband, and representative; he becoming her Surety, she is therefore justified and pardoned from eternity in the mind and will of God. "For God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Cor. v. 19). The people who have thus been the objects of the Father's love before time, were redeemed in the fulness of time, from sin, the curse, Satan, and hell, by the most precious blood of Christ. Who gave himself a ransom that he might redeem them from all iniquity unto himself a peculiar people, whom he had destined to show forth the praises of God in their being called by the Holy Ghost out of darkness into his marvellous light, as the fruits and effects of their election of God.

I now commend you and your's, and all Zion's pilgrims with you, into the hands of our Covenant God and Father. May he bless you daily with the choicest tokens of his everlasting love, and comfort you with all the comforts wherewith he is wont to comfort his people. And believe me, my dear brother, to be

Yours very truly and sincerely in the bonds of the everlasting
Gospel of Christ,

Devonport, March 5th, 1846.

ANSWER TO AN INQUIRER.

C. D. GAWLER.

TO JOSEPH.

We need hardly remind thee, that what the Lord says he means; and if he applied his word with power to thy soul, even though that word was first spoken ages since, yet the Lord's powerful application of it to thy soul made it as much thine-and the Lord as much engaged to fulfil it as if it were spoken personally to thee, and thee alone. Now, therefore, since the Lord did give thee that sweet word, "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin," take it in thy hand and plead it before him as thy discharge from all law and sin charges upon the ground of Him who paid thy ransom price; and then with respect to thy wilderness-trials, plead also before the Lord his other most suitable promise, "Being fully persuaded that what He hath promised he is able also to perform." Thou hast the Lord's own warrant for so pleading. Thou canst not make too free. Thou art as welcome as the Lord can make thee to the mercy-seat, and to every needed covenant favour.