I trust you labour for God and fouls, not for praise and felf. When the latter are our aim, God, in mercy, bleffes us with barrennefs, that we may give up Barrabas, and release the humble Jefus, whom we crucify afresh by fetting the thief on the throne, and the Lord of glory at our footstool: for fo do thofe who preach Chrift out of contention, or that they inay ́have the praife of men. That God may blefs you and your labours, is the prayer of your old brother, I. F.

James Ireland, Esq.
My dear Friend,

Madeley, July 19th, 1785.

BLESSED be God we are still alive, and, in the midft of many infirmities, we enjoy a degree of health spiritual and bodily. O how good was the Lord, to come as Son of Man to live here for us, and to come in his Spirit to live in us for ever! This is a mystery of godlinefs: the Lord make us full witneffes of it!

A week ago, I was tried to the quick by a fever with which my dear wife was afficted: two perfons whom he had vifited having been carried off, within a piftol hot of our houfe, I dreaded her being the third. But the Lord hath heard prayer and the is fpared. Oh what is life! On what a lender thread hang everlasting things! My comfort however is, that this thread is as ftrong as the will of God, and the word of his grace which cannot be broken.-That grace and peace, love and thankful joy may ever attend you, is the wifh of your moft obliged friends, I. and M. F.

SIX LETTERS

ON THE

SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION

OF THE

SON OF GOD.

I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak the words of truth and soberness. Acts xxvi. 25.

Wisdom is justified of her children. Matt. xi. 19.

FIRST LETTER.

SIR,

WHEN I had the pleafure of feeing you laft, you feemed furprised to hear me fay, that the Son of God, for purposes worthy of his wifdom, manifefts himself, fooner or later, to all his fincere followers, in a fpiritual manner, which the world knows not of. The affertion appeared to you unfcriptural, enthufiaftical, and dangerous. What I then advanced to prove, that it was fcriptural, rational, and of the greateft importance, made you defire I would write to you on the myfterious fubject. I declined it, as being unequal to the task; but having fince confidered, that a miftake here may endanger your foul or mine, I fit down to comply with your requeft: And the end I propofe by it is, either to give you a fair opportunity of pointing out my error, if I am wrong; or to engage you, if I am right, to feek what I efteem the most invaluable of all bleffings, revelations of Chrift to your own foul, productive of the experimental knowledge of him, and the prefent enjoyment of his falva

tion.

As an architect cannot build a palace, unlefs he is allowed a proper spot to erect it upon, fo I fhall not be able to establish the doctrine I maintain, unless you allow me the existence of the proper fenfes, to which our Lord manifefts himself. The manifeftation I contend for, being of a spiritual nature, must be made to fpiritual fenfes; and that fuch fenfes exift, and are opened in, and exercised by regenerate fouls, is what I defign to prove in this letter, by the joint teftimony of fcripture, our church, and reafon.

I. The fcriptures inform us, that Adam loft the experimental knowledge of God by the fall. His foolih attempt to hide himself from his Creator, whose

eyes are in every place, evidences the total blindness of his understanding. The fame veil of unbelief, which hid God from his mind, was drawn over his heart and all his fpiritual fenfes. He died the death, the moral, fpiritual death, in confequence of which the corruptible body finks into the grave, and the unregenerate foul into hell.

in us.

In this deplorable ftate Adam begat his children. We, like him are not only void of the life of God, but alienated from it, through the ignorance that is Hence it is, that though we are poffeffed of fuch an animal and rational life, as he retained after the commiffion of his fin, yet we are, by nature, utter ftrangers to the holiness and blifs he enjoyed in a state of innocence. Though we have, in common with beafts, bodily organs of fight, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, adapted to outward objects; though we enjoy, in common with devils, the faculty of reafoning upon natural truths, and mathematical propofitions, yet we do not understand fupernatural and divine things. Notwithstanding all our fpeculations about them, we can neither fee nor tafte them truly, unless we are rifen with Chrift, and taught of God. We may, indeed, fpeak and write about them, as the blind may fpeak of colours, and the deaf dispute of founds, but it is all guefs-work, hear-fay, and mere conjecture. The things of the Spirit of God cannot be difcovered, but by spiritual, internal fenfes, which are, with regard to the fpiritual world, what our bodily, external fenfes are with regard to the material world. They are the only medium, by which an intercourfe between Christ and our fouls can be opened and inaintained."

The exercise of these fenfes is peculiar to those who are born of God. They belong to what the Apoftles call the new man, the inward man, the new creature, the hidden man of the heart. In believers, this hidden man is awakened and raised from the dead, by the power of Chrift's refurrection. Chrift is his life, the Spirit of God is his fpirit, prayer or praife his