the first Apostolic churches, would not have been rejected, if he, at the same time, declared that he must be excused from observing the Lord's Supper weekly? Or, do you think that the weekly observance of the Supper could therefore be fairly said to be the door of admission into the church? No–there is an ungodly inconsistency in the idea of any man's wishing to walk in fellowship with a christian church, but not to walk in the same way, or by the same rule, with them. The man who desires it, and the churches that yield it, are alike proceeding on antichristian principles. You speak of some Glasites meeting in your place. I should like to know what you think of them and of their doctrine, and why you do not seem to entertain the idea of joining that body. On the general principles of church fellowship they certainly have more scriptural notions than most others, and also, as far as I know, speak more clearly on the grand subject of grace reigning through righteousness by Jesus Christ, till they come to separate the assurance of faith from the assurance of hope, and so bewilder themselves with another hope, than that which the gospel brings to the guilty. How stands it with yourself here? Do you see in the revealed testimony concerning the work finished by Jesus Christ enough to satisfy your conscience; enough to give peace and confidence of approach into the holiest to any other sinner who believes the report of it, as declared to all alike in the scriptures? Some talk very fairly about the work finished by the Lord Jesus; but after all it appears that they do not see enough in it to satisfy their consciences and give them peace with God: and they go on to get this secret something, as yet unpossessed, by trying to walk so as to find out in themselves evidences of genuine faith. Others appearing for a time fairly to oppose that error, go on to substitute for the faith of the gospel a confidence that they are believers. The faint hopes of the former that their faith may perhaps be genuine, and the full persuasion of the latter that their faith is genuine, are much more nearly akin than the two parties imagine. But they are alike remote from the soul-satisfying peace, which the grand thing revealed in the gospel, affords to the sinner who discerns it. Blessed are their eyes that see this; that see the real character of the mercy, which the gospel reveals as belonging to the only true God, in something of the glory of its fulness, freedom, and sovereignty, and in its awful holiness, brought in and brought to light through the wonderful propitiation for sin, which has taken it away. They, indeed, see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man : they see that fulfilled which was set forth of old in vision to Jacob; and in the discovery of it have their feet set in the way of peace, and in the gracious presence of the living God. If any two or three sinners in Cupar be brought by divine power to this view, they are called to walk together and build up each other in this most holy faith, just as if there were two or three hundred of them. You call on me for my foundation from scripture, for saying that two or three disciples may be a church of Christ. I might more justly call on you to produce any scriptural warrant for the idea, that the obligation of disciples to obey the rule of the word, depends upon their

numbers. The rule is abundantly plain, that disciples of Christ are to come together on the first day of the week, to shew forth the Lord's death in the breaking of bread, and to observe the other ordinances as delivered by the apostles. Put the question, whether two or three disciples can be a church into plain English, by asking whether two or three disciples can assemble themselves, or come together thus into one place; and perhaps the magic and mystery enveloping that ecclesiastical term church may be dissolved. I forget now what is the smallest number which the Glasites and others say can constitute a church-suppose seven. Well, let there be seven disciples in any place joining in church fellowship. Are they bound by divine authority to come together and observe the ordinances as the first churches of the saints did? Are all of them alike so bound? Well-one of them dies in the course of the week. Can the divine rule be now abrogated to the other six? As to those who talk of one or more elders being necessary to dispense the ordinance of the Supper, they are but bringing in priests and priestcraft under another name. But you object (with many others) that two or three cannot form a church, because they cannot attend to the discipline as delivered in the scriptures. And shall the possible occurrence of circumstances, in which they must cease to walk together as a church, prevent their so walking together till such circumstances occur? Why-the same objection would equally prove that the seven disciples, or any other number which can be assigned, cannot constitute a church. For an evil either in sentiment or practice may appear among them, in which every individual but one may take a part and be involved; and after the reproof and admonition of that one has been rejected, the ordinary and stated course of Christian discipline for purging out the evil cannot proceed: but all which the one who stands for the Lord can further do, is to leave the body-just as if there were but two disciples, and one of them failed of restoring his fallen brother by admonition, he could then only turn away from him. You ask me about the time when we observe the Supper. It is suffi. cient to reply, that we know of no meeting of a christian church on the first day of the week but one, when we observe all the ordinances. The multiplication of religious meetings is altogether borrowed from the religious world, and makes a fair shew of edification by observances not divinely appointed, but resting on human tradition.That is always accompanied by a rejection of the appointments of God. I shall rejoice if any thing I have written be serviceable to you, and am, dear sir, yours faithfully,

LXXXIII.

TO THE SAME.

:

June 30, 1821.

DEAR SIR, I have received your letter of the 12th inst. with much pleasure: the reasons you assign for not thinking of joining the Glasites are abundantly conclusive, and the view you take of that people seems quite to coincide with my own; yet I cannot but hope at times that there will be found, both among them and the Bereans, scattered disciples, who cannot however be manifested as such on earth, till they come out from their present connexion. When I speak of the Glasites as having juster views than most others, of the principles of church fellowship, I refer particularly to their profession of holding sacred all the institutions delivered to the first churches, in opposition to the ungodly liberality which, in most other societies, tolerates disobedience to them. In this Glas and Sandeman had quite the advantage of John Barclay. The latter (as far as I know, or can judge from his followers that I have known) appeared not to trouble his head about the divinely appointed order in the churches of the saints probably under the idea of confining the direction of his zeal to the maintenance of the uncorrupted gospel. This certainly is the only topic on which I should ever wish to insist against those who deny it but in walking with those who confess it with me, if we thought it released us from solemn attention to all the revealed will of our heavenly Father, as delivered to his children in the apostolic writings, we should certainly be setting the revelation of the Lord's glorious name in opposition to the reverence and godly fear which it commands from all who know it: and those who do so, however clearly they may talk of the truth, are not walking in it. Those who confess Christ before men, must confess him with reverential subjection as the king of Zion, as well as with godliness of heart, as the great high priest who has taken away sin by the one offering of himself in the place of the ungodly. I fancy that John Barclay would have been quite willing to remain in connexion with the Kirk of Scotland to his dying day, if he had been allowed : probably his flesh caught at the corruption of doctrine in the Glasite societies, as a pretext for turning away his ear from their testimony for other points of the divine word; and probably the Glasites were hardened in their rejection of his testimony against their corruption of doctrine, by observing his open disregard for divine institutions. I have formerly read what John Barclay wrote on the assurance of faith, and in general with much pleasure; though I recollect thinking one or two passages ambiguously expressed, and suspecting that the Bereans have taken them in a sense different from what I believe the author intended. But I am much better acquainted with his work on the Psalms, and esteem it highly. As to the expression in the Glasites' prayer which you mention, and on which you desire my

opinion, I have no hesitation in saying that I think it very bad, and indicative of a mind quite aside from the truth, under a fair shew of lowliness; but it corresponds with what I have often noticed in their prayers; that they seem to study to pray, as if they did not think themselves believers; as if they did not think themselves at present children, and possessed of eternal life in Christ Jesus; but hoping some time or other to become so. This is altogether opposite to the prayer of faith; opposite to the mind in which Christ taught his disciples to pray, saying, "our Father;" opposite to the persuasion that God is what his word declares him to be; for he that professedly calls upon God, and is at the same time doubting and questioning whether he is heard, and comes with acceptance before him, must at bottom be questioning whether the god, upon whom he calls, be the only living and true God, who has revealed himself as the justifier of the ungodly, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus-the Saviour of all that call upon him. Those who use the phrase you mention, "if thou wilt thou canst make me clean," appear wholly to forget the declaration of our Lord Jesus to his disciples, Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you;" appear to avow their doubt whether his blood has taken away sin, whether it be true that he saves to the uttermost all who come to God by him. I think it very likely that many of them have no distinct idea annexed to the words which they use; but employ them as an unmeaning cant which they have been taught to think very modest and humble; but it is too probable that others, by the cleansing after which they groan, mean some change for the better in their own hearts, of which I am bold to say that the man who asks it, gravely asks God to falsify his word. The full Glasite system upon the assurance of hope, where it is fully imbibed, I consider utter y inconsistent with all prayer, as well as with all praise; that blessed exercise to which the Gospel calls continually all those who are brought nigh to God by the blood of the covenant, and for which the man, who was to the last moment a blaspheming infidel, but is this moment convinced of the great things of God reported in his word, has all the same ground and warrant with an apostle I have met with one Glasite, a dear old man now dead, an Elder of the body in Liverpool, who, in prayer and conversation, seemed to have that peace of God in his conscience which the Gospel gives; yet he was evidently restrained by the trammels of the system, so as to be half afraid of speaking as if he had it he used to admit me also to a freedom of conversation with him, which is very unusual in their connexion. I confess that I often regret the repulsive stand-off manner by which they commonly shut the door against free and patient discussion.

And now, my friend, opposite as the Berean confidence appears to be to the doubting system of the Glasite, I apprehend that the same principle is at bottom of both; while the evil is much more refinedly disguised in the former. The thorough Glasite prays doubtingly, because he is doubtful whether he has faith. The thorough Berean prays confidently, because he is confident he has faith in each case is not our faith considered the warrant of our confidence? The Gospel calls the evil and the lost to draw nigh with boldness to the

throne of grace, because the grand things which it reports from heaven are assuredly true; because Christ has once suffered for sin, the just for the unjust,-and has risen again from the dead— because God is such a God as he has revealed himself to be. The divine certainty of these things warrants the fullest confidence towards God in any sinner on earth: but I have to acknowledge my own evil heart continually working in opposition to the divine glory of God; and have nothing fine to say like the Bereans, about the high degree of believing confidence in which I actually walk: when it is strongest it is less than a grain of mustard-seed, in comparison of the greatness of the things of God which excite it; while I bless him that his real glory and truth so much over-pass the narrow limits of my faith.

You tell me that the Bereans with you object to the expression of my reply, "while kept standing in the truth, I can never," &c. (Vol i. p. 456.) I need no more information about them to mark to me their mind, high and lifted up with a presumptuous self-confidence altogether different from the hope of the Gospel. So then they would have me say absolutely, I never can have any difficulty in avowing that I believe, and that believing I have eternal life:' the professor, who would deliberately say so, I would consider as advancing a boast as vain as Peter before he fell: there is no depth of unbelief into which I could not, or should not plunge, if but left to my own heart. Yet this consideration cannot in the least disturb my rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, while kept in memory (you see I again use that offensive while) of that salvation which belongeth to the Lord. I would observe to you that I have no wish for the concealment of any thing I write upon Scripture subjects, or indeed any thing I think, so far as I have formed a judgment upon them. I should be very glad that both the Bereans and the Glasites with you would give a patient reading to what I have written; you are surrounded by a great variety of professors; and your country is the most theological country I ever knew. Guard against your mind being occupied, and your attention being distracted from the simplicity of the word, by the various systems of men. Human theology, in its most shining form, is a thing essentially different from the light and understanding, which the entrance of the divine word giveth to the foolish, and such are we continually.

P.S. Some expressions in pages 24 and 25 of J. Barclay's Assurance of faith, I think very bad.