William Law · 5 of 5

The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration · Part 5

[Reg-215] The matter will not be much mended by saying, that this feeling and assurance is acknowledged to be the pure gift of God, and so cannot be called our own, or our own justification. For if I have not this gift of God, till I pronounce it myself, till my own feeling and assurance confirms it to me, I am self-justified, because my justification arises, from what I feel and declare of myself

[Reg-216] (46.) How strangely must they have read the gospel, who can take a naked implicit faith, and an humble total resignation of our spirit, state, and life, into the mercy and goodness of God, to be not only a poor and imperfect, but a reprobate state; or that a man has no true and saving faith, till it is an infallible own-feeling, and self-assurance? What must such people think of our savior dying upon the cross, with these words in his mouth, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" Will they say that this is a dangerous state? Is the spirit of Christ here to be renounced? Will they say, that no new-born Christian can die in this manner? Or that if he does, he is not in a state of salvation

[Reg-217] To know no more, and to seek to know no more of our salvation, than we can know by an implicit faith, and absolute resignation of ourselves to God in Christ Jesus, is the true saving knowledge of Christ, and such as keeps us in the highest degree of fitness to receive our perfect salvation

[Reg-218] (47.) I hope it will here be observed, that I no way depreciate, undervalue, or reject any particular impressions, strong influences, delightful sensations, or heavenly foretastes in the inward man, which the Holy Spirit of God may at times bestow upon good souls; I leave them their just worth, I acknowledge them to be the good gifts of God, as special calls, and awakenings to forsake our sins, as great incitements to deny ourselves, and take up our cross, and follow Christ with greater courage, and resolution

[Reg-219] They may be as beneficial, and useful to us in our spiritual life, as other blessings of God, such as prosperity, health, happy complexion, and the like. But then, as outward blessings, remarkable providences, religious complexion, and the like, may be very serviceable to awaken us, and excite our conversion to God, and much assist the spiritual life; so they may very easily have a contrary effect, serve to fill us with pride, and self-satisfaction, and make us esteem ourselves, as greater favorites of God, than those that want them. Who may yet be led to a higher degree of goodness, be in a more purified state, and stand nearer to God in their poor, naked, and destitute condition, than we in the midst of great blessings

[Reg-220] It is just thus with regard to those inward blessings of the spiritual life. They are so many spurs, motives, and incitements to live wholly unto God; yet they may instead of that, fill us with self-satisfaction and self-esteem, and prompt us to despise others that want them, as in a poor, mean, and reprobate state; who yet may be higher advanced, and stand in a nearer degree of union with God, by humility, faith, resignation, and pure love, in their inward poverty and emptiness, than we who live high upon spiritual satisfaction, and can talk of nothing, but our feasts of fat things

[Reg-221] All that I would here say of these inward delights and enjoyments, is only this, they are not holiness, they are not piety, they are not perfection, but they are God's gracious allurements, and calls to seek after holiness and spiritual perfection. They are not to be sought for, for their own sakes; they are not to be prayed for, but with such a perfect indifference and resignation, as we must pray for any earthly blessings; they are not to be rested in, as the perfection of our souls, but to be received as cordials, that suppose us to be sick, faint, and languishing; and ought rather to convince us, that we are as yet, but babes, than that we are really men of God

[Reg-222] But to demand them in others, to make them uneasy under the want of them, full of search and endeavor how to come at them, and satisfied in the enjoyment of them, is as great a mistake in itself, and as prejudicial to true piety, as to make outward blessings of providence, marks of salvation, or worldly poverty, pains, and distress, to be proofs, that we are not born of God

[Reg-223] "There are indeed impressions and communications from God, which are more necessary and essential to the pious life of the soul, than the impressions of the sun are to the comfortable life of our outward man. And he that prays for nothing else but these divine communications and impressions, who thinks of nothing else, trusts in nothing else, as able to comfort, strengthen, and enrich his soul; he that is thus all prayer, all love, all desire, and all faith, in these communications and impressions from above, is just in the same state of sobriety, as he that only prays that God would not leave him to himself. For he that is without anything of these communications and impressions of God upon him, is in the same state of death and separation from God, as the devils are." {"Demonstration of the gross errors, &c., in the Plain Account of the Sacrament, p. 287.}

[Reg-224] These impressions or operations of God upon our souls, are of the essence of religion, which has no goodness in it, but so far as it introduces the life, power, and presence of God into the soul. The praying therefore for impressions of this kind from God, is only praying that we may not be left to ourselves; to pray always for these with faith, and hunger and thirst after them, is only praying earnestly, that the kingdom of God may come, and his will be done in us

[Reg-225] For the soul is only so far cleansed from its corruption, so far delivered from the power of sin, and so far purified, as it has renounced all own will, and own desire, to have nothing, receive nothing, and be nothing, but what the one will of God chooses for it, and does to it

[Reg-226] This, and this alone is the true kingdom of God opened in the soul, when stripped of all selfishness, it has only one love, and one will in it, when it has no motion or desire, but what branches from the love of God, and resigns itself wholly to the will of God

[Reg-227] There is nothing evil, or the cause of evil to either man, or devil, but his own will; there is nothing good in itself, but the will of God; he therefore who wholly renounces his own will, turns away from all evil; and he who gives himself up wholly to the will of God, puts himself in the possession of all that is good

[Reg-228] (48.) It may freely be granted, that conversion to God, is often very sudden and instantaneous, unexpectedly raised from variety of occasions. Thus, one by seeing only a withered tree {Frere Laurent.}, another by reading the lives and deaths of the antediluvian fathers, one by hearing of heaven, another hell, one by reading of the love, or wrath of God, another of the sufferings of Christ, may find himself, as it were, melted into penitence all on a sudden. It may be granted also, that the greatest sinner, may in a moment be converted to God, and feel himself wounded in such a degree, as perhaps those never were, who had been turning to God all their lives

[Reg-229] But then it is to be observed, that this suddenness of change, or flash of conversion, is by no means of the essence of true conversion, and is no more to be demanded in ourselves, or others, than such a light from heaven, as shone round St. Paul, and cast him to the ground. Secondly, that no one is to expect, or require, that another should receive his conversion, or awakening, from the same cause, or in the same manner, as he has done, that is, that heaven, or hell, or the justice, or love of God, or faith in Christ, either as our light, or our atonement, must needs be the first awakening of the soul, because it has been so with him. Thirdly, that this stroke of conversion, is not to be considered, as signifying our high state of a new birth in Christ, or a proof that we are on a sudden made new creatures, but that we are thus suddenly called, and stirred up to look after a newness of nature. Fourthly, that this sensibility, or manifest feeling of the operations of God upon our souls, which we have experienced in these first awakenings, is not to be expected, or desired, to go along with us, through the course of our purification. Fifthly, that regeneration, or the renewal of our first birth and state, is something entirely distinct, from this first sudden conversion, or call to repentance; that it is not a thing done in an instant, but is a certain process, a gradual release from our captivity and disorder, consisting of several stages and degrees, both of death and life, which the soul must go through, before it can have thoroughly put off the old man. I will not say that this must needs be in the same degree in all, or that there cannot be any exceptions to this. But thus much is true and certain, that Jesus Christ is our pattern, that what he did for us, that we are also to do for ourselves, or, in other words, we must follow him in the regeneration. For what he did, he did, both as our atonement, and example, his process, or course of life, temptations, sufferings, denying his own will, death and resurrection, all done, and gone through, on our account, because the human soul wanted such a process of regeneration and redemption; because, only in such a gradual process, all that was lost in Adam, could be restored to us again. And therefore it is beyond all doubt, that this process is to be looked upon, as the stated method of our purification

[Reg-230] It is well worth observing, that our savior's greatest trials, were near the end of his process or life, that he then experienced the sharpest part of our redemption. This might sufficiently show us, that our first awakenings have carried us but a little way; that we should not then begin to be self-assured of our own salvation, but remember, that we stand at a great distance from, and in great ignorance of our severest trials

[Reg-231] To sum up all in a word: nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. All the disorder, and corruption, and malady of our nature, lies in a certain fixedness of our own will, imagination, and desire, wherein we live to ourselves, according to our own will, imagination, and desires. There is not the smallest degree of evil in us, but what arises from this selfishness, because we are thus, all in all to ourselves

[Reg-232] It is this self, that our savior calls upon us to deny; it is this life of self, that we are to hate and to lose, that the kingdom of God may arise in us, that is, that God's will may be done in us. All other sacrifices that we make, whether of worldly goods, honors, or pleasures, are but small matters, compared to that sacrifice and destruction of all selfishness, as well spiritual, as natural, that must be made, before our regeneration hath its perfect work

[Reg-233] There is a denial of our own will, and certain degrees even of self-denying virtues, which yet give no disturbance to this selfishness. To be humble, mortified, devout, patient in a certain degree, and to be persecuted for our virtues, is no hurt to this selfishness; nay, spiritual-self must have all these virtues to subsist upon; and his life consists, in seeing, knowing, and feeling the bulk, strength, and reality of them. But still in all this show, and glitter of virtue, there is an unpurified bottom on which they stand, there is a selfishness, which can no more enter into the kingdom of heaven, than the grossness of flesh and blood can enter into it

[Reg-234] What we are to feel, and undergo in these last purifications, when the deepest root of all selfishness, as well spiritual as natural, is to be plucked up, and torn from us, or how we shall be able to stand in that trial, are both of them equally impossible to be known by us beforehand

[Reg-235] It is enough for us to know, that we hunger and thirst after the righteousness which is in Christ Jesus; that by faith we desire, and hope to be in him new creatures; to know, that the greatest humility, the most absolute resignation of our whole selves unto God, is our greatest and highest fitness, to receive our greatest and highest purification, from the hands of God.