Thus sir, you have seen the original, immutable ground and necessity of the spirit of love. It has in itself nothing but the spiritual properties of the desire, which is the very being and ground of nature. It is because the meekness and fluidity of the light and air and water of this world have little or no.
And as fire is the first deliverer of the flint from its hard compaction, so the last. It is no objection to all this that Almighty God must be owned to be the true creator of the materiality of this world. He means by it the holy manifestation of the triune God in the seven properties of nature or kingdom of heaven.
For reason can have no pretense to amend or alter the life of the soul but. For reason has no more power of altering the life and properties of the soul than of. For the properties of life have no common good, nothing to rejoice in, till the light is found, and therefore no possible beginning of the spirit of love till then.
They are all one triune will, all doing the same thing, viz., all rejoicing in the one love of the light.
THE SECOND PART
And what we call wrath in the body is truly and strictly speaking the wrath of the spirit in the body. Now there is, in the nature of the thing, an absolute necessity of this two-fold life in every creature that is to be good and happy; and the two-fold life is this, it must have the life of nature, and the life of God in it. I consent also to everything that you have said of the nature and origin of wrath.
And, N.B., this is the true ground of rightly understanding all that is said of the wrath and vengeance of God in and upon the creatures. The scriptures therefore are literally true in all that they affirm of the wrath, etc., of God. And yet, everything that has been said in proof of the wrath of God shows and proves to you at the same time that it is not a wrath in the holy Deity itself.
And therefore all that man can find or feel of the wrath and vengeance of God can only be in this fire and this death, and not in the Deity itself. And in this two-fold life of the creature is fire and water, life and death. I shall now only add this one word more to strengthen and confirm your right understanding of all that is said of the wrath, or rage of God in the scriptures.
Either, therefore, all hell is in the essence of the holy Deity, or nothing that wants to be atoned by the merits and death of Christ can possibly be in the Deity itself. For look where you will, no other cause or reason of the death of Christ can be found but in the love of God toward fallen man. This is the absolute necessity of Christ’s being all that he was before he became man, a necessity arising from the nature of the thing.
Now all that Christ was, and did, and suffered after he became man is from the same necessity founded in the nature of the thing. If, therefore, this is to be the salvation of man, then some interposition of the Deity is absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, or man can have. This was unalterable in the nature of the thing and therefore all mankind must come forth in his fallen state.
Or whether everything that is said of them in scripture is not here proved from the very nature of the thing to be absolutely true. I would have you strictly to believe all this in the fullest sense of the words. And from this state of heart also it is that the spirit of prayer is born, which is the desire of the soul turned to God.
No, God is one, human nature is one, salvation is one, and the way to it is one, and that is the desire of the soul turned to God.”.
FINIS
You need say no more, Theophilus; you have not only removed that difficulty which brought us hither, but have by a variety of things fixed and confirmed us in a full belief of that great truth elsewhere asserted, namely “that there is but one salvation for all mankind, and that is the life of God in the soul. And also, that there is but one possible way for man to attain this life of God, not one for a Jew, another for a. If we see you no more in this life, you have sufficiently taught us how to seek and find every kind of goodness, blessing, and happiness in God alone.
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