Barton, March 17,1781

Dear Friend,

I hope you are rejoicing in God your Saviour, and blessing Him from the ground of your heart, because He has dealt bountifully with you.

What streams of pardoning, justifying, and sanctifying mercy flow from Jesus! Enough to fill our soul with greater wonder and amazement than Elizabeth was filled with, when she brake forth and said: "And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" For Jesus to dwell in your hearts by faith and set up His abode there, is such marvelous grace, that your soul will admire Him for it, on your own behalf, to eternity. I hope your thoughts are often led to contemplate the eternal love of God towards you, and the glorious acts of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in the well-ordered covenant, in which the eternal Son of God undertook your cause, became your surety, engaged to fulfill His Father's holy law, and bear your sins in His own body on the tree; and blessings on Him! He has magnified the law by His obedience unto it, and made it everlastingly honorable, and He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Oh! look off every object beside, and look wholly and only to the love, the everlasting, eternal, and unchangeable love of God towards you, which encircles you (and if I may so express it), in the arms of which you will be sustained in eternity.

Look on Jesus, in Whom all the glories of the Godhead shine forth. In Him the glories, the titles, word, and works of God shine forth and are displayed.

Jesus Christ is the great Days-man between God and us. As one says: 'He is the miracle of wonders! the marrow of our love! life of our joys! fountain of our comforts! and centre of our hearts!' In Him we have all our souls can possibly desire. He is our Head, our Brother, our righteousness, our sanctification. Who has obtained for us eternal redemption. Who is now at His Father's right hand, as our representative, and glorious forerunner, and has assured us. "that where He is, we shall be also, to behold His glory," and to be like Him, by seeing Him as He is. I doubt not but the language of your heart is: Hasten, O Lord, that blessed time! Oh, let Thy kingdom come!

Look upon Jesus as the brightness of the Father's glory, and look upon Him as wearing our nature, and as fulfilling all righteousness in His life, and dying for our sins, and he appears under all these considerations, as altogether lovely.

Oh! look upon Him as made sin for you, as having borne all those sins of thought and practice, original and actual, you have been guilty and are the subjects of. Look on Jesus in His sufferings, and as having undergone and sustained all that anguish, grief, and torment which was due to your transgressions; and in those sufferings read His love towards you, which is indeed higher than heaven, deeper than hell, longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. You may lose yourself with pleasure in the contemplation of Christ's love; and the more you study it, the more happy your soul will be. Never forget that you are not accepted of God on account of any thing in yourself, but you are accepted in the Beloved. Your righteousness in which you appear before the Lord, and on account of which God justifies you, is the complete and perfect righteousness of the God-man. And as this righteousness is always one and the same before God, so you are always and alike righteous in the sight of God. in this glorious robe of your elder Brother's righteousness. Keep your eye constantly fixed upon this. And ever remember that all you feel, find, and experience in yourself, has nothing to do with making you righteous. You are to hang all your hopes of justification before God on Christ's righteousness. Your pardon and justification does not depend, nor is it to be built upon your experience, but upon the most precious blood-shedding, and perfect obedience of the Son of God. And therefore remember. though you may at times feel much coldness, dullness, and corruption; yet all this should only serve to drive you more out of yourself to Christ, to rest more upon what Jesus has done and suffered for you. If Jesus is a Saviour, make use of Him as such, and don't put any thing of your own in the place and room of Christ .

I wish you would read over 'The Drop of Honey' with great attention, you will find it full of substance. The more you understand it, and live out of yourself by faith on Christ's fullness, as you are there directed, the more your soul will flourish, and the stronger you will grow in the grace which is in Christ Jesus. 'My brethren,' says Dr. Goodwin, 'all your grace must be grace in Christ, all your holiness must be wrought in Christ, all your holiness must be acted in Christ and by motives from Christ, and by grace fetched from Christ. 'Eye,' says he 'the souls going out after Christ, more than after all the legal holiness in the world.' Holy Romaine, says, 'Jesus Christ gives us life, not that we may live independently of Him, but that we may live in Him, and on Him.' Oh that the Lord Jesus may daily be more and more precious to you. May you daily by faith, be meditating upon, and taking a survey of, the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths of His wonderful love. It is His love that must warm our hearts. 'Tis a sight of His for, full, perfect, and finished salvation, that alone humbles us in the dust, and brings us to renounce ourselves. I hope you trample under foot all your own righteousness as filthy rags, and rest upon Christ alone for present and eternal salvation.

Hear what an excellent worthy says, 'In Christ thou hast perfectly obeyed the law, perfectly suffered, and satisfied for all thy sins to the justice of God; so that in Christ thou art perfectly just and righteous; and therefore it is said, that "our life is hid with Christ in God," and we are raised up with Christ, and made to sit with Him in heavenly places.'

Though in thy flesh, there is a body of lust, and corruption, and sin, and there is a law revealing sin, accusing, and condemning for it; yet we are to live by faith, in and on Christ, and in the apprehension of His love, believing in the life, righteousness, obedience, satisfaction, and glory of Whom the Spirit call ours. Christ is ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. When the believer lives in the belief of these truths, he lives out of the power of all condemnation, Christ being the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. And thus a believer is blessed only in a righteousness without him, not within him; and all his assurance, confidence, and comforts flow into him, through the channel of faith, in believing what Christ hath done for him; not for what he hath done or can do for himself.

A believer's comfort, hope, joy, and confidence should be the same in God at all times, because that God who hath loved him with an everlasting love, hath loved him in His Son. Thou are not beloved for thy own sake, or for any thing in thee, but upon the account of the Lord Jesus, in Whom God is well pleased. Believers are never the more just before God for their own integrity, not the less unjust for their iniguity. God doth say of Himself, I am God and not man. I am the Lord, and I change not. His love is as Himself, ever the same; and Christ in Whom we are beloved is ever the same, yesterday, today, and the same for ever; and here upon should we live by faith, and rejoice evermore with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

We should keep our justification and sanctification distinct, and not reason out our justification, from our sanctification; but we should look to Jesus Christ, the rock on Whom a christian should build his soul.

We should always keep up, and keep distinct our justification as the spring and way to sanctification: for the fruits of justification are peace, joy, boldness, and strength to do the will of God. All this doth come into the soul from Jesus Christ in a way of believing, and not from sanctification. And as we are not to conclude our justification from any effects of sanctification, so we are not to conclude that apprehension of justification to be from God, which takes us off from the ways and rules of sanctification or holiness.

Justification is quite out and off ourselves, consisting in the imputation of Christ's righteousness, inherent in Him Who sits at God's right hand, far above the reach and sphere of sin's activity. Thus it is therefore perfect and complete, yea the foundation of all blessedness. The latter (namely sanctification) is in ourselves, therefore, weak and uncertain. He that understands not the true nature and doctrine of justification, cannot enjoy true and stable peace, but is apt to be led away with every wind of doctrine. In the right understanding of this point, is treasured up a fountain of reviving consolation. So says Robert Purnell. And they are choice sayings indeed.

May the Holy Ghost in all His divine influences and graces descend upon you, revealing unto you more of the Father's love in Jesus, and shedding it abroad in your heart, making you perfectly happy in Jesus, and filling you with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

My most cordial love to the whole society, and I earnestly wish the choicest blessings of the everlasting covenant may be communicated to them.

I am, yours in the bowls

Of the slaughtered Lamb of God,

S.E.P.