EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF THE LATE JOHN RYLAND.

Imputation of Adam's sin to all his children.-Original sin, imputed, consists in God's placing to the account of all Adam's children those unjust and unlawful thoughts and actions which he was the author of in his first act of rebellion, when he stood as the public head of all mankind; and God's esteeming and judging them as unjust and evil, or guilty, according to the nature of that first grand act of most aggravated sin, rebellion, or disobedience.

The consequence and effects of this imputation of our first father's sin to us. We are born with an ugly, deformed, corrupted soul, and are naturally and necessarily, according to the order of God's essential justice, under wrath, or a sentence of death, and obligation or bond to suffer punishment.

Imputation of all the original and actual sins of the elect to Christ. This is an act of God, in his sovereign and unchangeable will, whereby, on the consideration of the sinful and unclean natures and actions of his people, he reckons and places to the account of Christ, their Head and Surety, all their personal guilt, or their true and proper sins, and really accounts them as Christ's, on the footing of his own act as a Sovereign Judge. He binds Christ down as a guilty person in the e eye of the law, in all its utmost extent and force, without the least mitigation, in the proper room and stead of his elect, and no other persons.

The consequence of this placing of original and actual sin to the account of Christ.-He was from his very birth under an obligation, a moral and unchangeable bond to pay for all his people the full price of redemption; to offer a pure, spotless, reconciling sacrifice; to endure the evil of suffering for their evil actions, and undergo the very same punishment which was due to them, to the end that he might make a full satisfaction, or rather solution-an eternal and complete solution of their debt; and thus, by paying what was in our obligation to pay, and by suffering what was in our obligation to suffer, we are, upon the footing of God's strict and inflexible justice, released from paying or suffering. Our obligation is for ever dissolved.

Imputation of Christ's righteousness to his people.-This is an act of God, as a Father and a just Judge. An act, within God, of his own good will or free love, by which, on the consideration of the obedience the all-perfect and glorious obedience and atoning death of Christ, considered as a price, or sacrifice, or punishment, he makes an absolute grant and gift of a true and perfect justifying righteousness or rectitude in the court of God-even the righteousness of Christ himself-unto all the elect; and, justly accounting it as theirs, of his own gracious and judicial act he releases or frees

* Christ's obedience was perfect with respect to the inward springs of action, be having an exact rectitude in his moral powers-perfect with regard to the parts of the divine law, in its vast spirituality, extent, and obligation-perfect as to the various operations of his mind and body-perfect as to the whole period of his obedience.

them from all obligation to suffer, and justly grants them a right to all kinds of blessings, or all manner of good things, and a firm and indisputable claim and title to eternal life.

The consequence of this placing of Christ's holy nature and actions, sufferings and death, to our account.-All this being reckoned to our persons in God's eternal mind, we had, before our conversion-yea, permit me to say before our being, before the world began a secret right, in the eye of God, to pardon and life; a secret right to all sorts of blessings, considered in union with or related to Christ; yea, even a right to the eternal possession and enjoyment of the adorable Godhead, to the utmost of our immortal powers and capacities. After regeneration this secret right is laid open to us, and becomes pleadable by us.-I am, dear sir, inviolably yours, Warwick, Dec. 3, 1753.

JOHN RYLAND.

[We do not very much admire the above piece. It is not very clear, and seems to us amazingly dry; but it shows how much sounder in doctrine the old. Midland Counties Baptist ministers were than those who now occupy their pulpits. As a witness against them it seems worth preservation.-EDs.]

LET US EXALT HIS NAME TOGETHER.

I

Dear Friend in the Lord,-I drop this line to rejoice with you in the mercies of a covenant God, in that his kindness has been manifested to you, as I am informed, by restoring to you your hearing. Truly I did feel for you, and desired that the dear Lord would restore to you that great blessing. O that you may be favoured with a grateful heart to the God of all your mercies! know that spiritual thankfulness is his free gift, bestowed in a sovereign way upon the heirs of promise. We are poor, forgetful worms of the earth, without the blessed Remembrancer, God the Holy Ghost. O how often do I forget the Fountain of all my mercies, and look to secondary causes, instead of going to Him who is the Giver of all good, and who never has withheld one good thing from unworthy me! Dear friend, may you often think of that River the streams whereof make glad the city of the living God. O what a fulness there is treasured up by God the Father of mercies in the Son of his love, for all the seed royal, and made known to them by God the Holy Ghost in the day of his heavenly power! O how sweet at times is a free-grace salvation to poor sinners, when God brings them forth from their prison, their darksome night, their tempting devil, their barren state, their lust and pride, their worldly mind, their stubborn will, their roving heart, their rebellious nature, and raises them up by love divine, and makes them shine in his beauty, as one with and in their covenant Head-all fair in him, though all deformed in self! O wondrous love, to embrace such vile sinners! O rich blood, that flowed so freely for such polluted sinners! O wonderful righteousness to cover such naked sinners! O free grace to pardon such base sinners, covenant mercy to relieve them, sweet promises to cheer them, almighty arms to bear them up, power to keep them, and infinite wisdom to direct them! Faithfulness is his gir

dle around the church, lovingkindness shall crown their lives, and an eternal song will be their employ. Worthy is the Lamb that once was slain to receive the honour due to him alone in saving us to the highest heaven from the lowest hell, which was our just desert, yet he, our heavenly Kinsman, came to take away our guilt and shame. O mysterious deep, without bottom or shore, that Christ should suffer, bleed, and die, that we might live eternally! May the dear Spirit lead our faith (which is God's gift) into the amazing scene of Jesus' heart-breaking sorrows, and into the secret mysteries of his bleeding love, that we may have fellowship with him in his sufferings; and then may we mount on grace's wing, and have communion with the King, as seated on his heavenly hill, with all power in heaven and on earth, with the keys of death and hell, and, as our best and only friend, presenting our poor petitions perfumed with the incense of his most precious blood, and sending the Holy Spirit down with tokens of his grace!

I hope that the dear Lord will be with you all and in you all, and make his goodness pass before you, until you sit down with him above. Yours to serve in the path of tribulation,

B-, March 1, 1844.

J. K.

GODLINESS HATH THE PROMISE OF THIS LIFE AND OF THAT WHICH IS TO COME.

To my very dear Friends in our dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied.

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I was glad to hear from you. We received your present, for which thank you kindly. We are both tolerably well in health; at least, as well as can be expected, considering the infirmities that old age brings with it. Things are going on as I expected respecting the business I am employed in. As I told you in Oxford, I know that I am in the Lord's hand and at his disposal, to do with me what seemeth him good, knowing there can be no removal till his time. I am at a point in this; the Lord put me here; and when he is pleased to remove me, let him do what seemeth him good. I caunot pray in this business any other way than, "Lord, do with me what seemeth good to thee, and let me be resigned to thy blessed will." So that I am on the watch tower.

My Brother, I find it sweet living when I can live wholly dependent upon God, being assured that he will perform and fulfil all his new covenant blessings which he hath promised us in Christ Jesus; and I find also, by daily experience, that it seemeth good to our God to exercise us with many trials and difficulties while we are passing through this world, that, under a feeling sense of our want of him to support, strengthen, and keep us, in all his covenant engagements, in every office-character he sustains, we may be enabled to plead his promised blessings which he hath given us in Christ Jesus, our covenant Head. All things pertaining both to this life and that which is to come he hath promised, but for all things he will be inquired of, to do it for us: Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me," saith the Lord.

See the poor leper's prayer, and the Lord's answer: "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean;" "I will, be thou clean." Jesus: Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Bless his precious name, he has become my only hope, my only help, my unchangeable and everlasting Friend. A daily cross we must have to counterbalance the spirit of this world. We are to go in and out and find pasture. Much exercise and trouble will cause much selfexamination, and a searching of things to the bottom. The fiery trial is to try every man's work of what sort it is, and the Lord sits as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness," and know that no affliction is joyous to flesh and blood, but grievous; yet we find it profitable, when the peaceable fruit of righteousness is brought forth thereby, though it is sharp work at times, as we know not how it will end. But, by the help of God, we continue to this day, though many have been watching for our falling. The Lord's hand is made known toward us, and we have seen the counsel of the wicked come to nothing.

I am glad that the young man whom you spoke of cannot fill his belly with the husks which swine eat. It must be a faithful witness that God makes use of to feed the souls of the hungry. There is no spiritual life or power but what is brought forth by the Holy Spirit. I must leave off, for my paper is full. We remain, your truly affectionate friends.

Oxford, Dec. 25, 1816.

OBITUARY.

THOS. & JANE TOMS.

To my dear Friend and Brother in Christ Jesus, whom I love in the truth. I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth; for it afforded me great pleasure and rejoiced my heart to read the contents of your kind and affectionate letter, and more particularly so as the account which E sent you of the last dying words of our dear departed sister Mrs. Cathery was truly consoling both to yourself and others around you. It is a rare thing to see so full, sweet, and blessed an account of the love, mercy, goodness, and faithfulness of God to his beloved children on a dying bed. Many, no doubt, there are, whose experience and enjoyments are equally great, but they are not able to speak of it to others; and, for my own part, I see no just reason, when such things do take place, why the wonders God has wrought should be passed by in silence and forgotten.

Since I last wrote to you, the Lord has been pleased to take home to himself another of his beloved handmaids, and one whom you knew, Mrs. Wills. She died very happy in the Lord, and left a most sweet and blessed testimony; and as I visited her for many months previous to her departure, and took down in writing many of her sayings in course of conversation, I thought that the perusal of the account would prove as satisfactory to you as the previous one. I shall therefore transcribe it verbatim as it was first written.

But as our dear departed sister, Mrs. Wills, had been under the afflicting hand of God for many months previous to her departure from this vale of tears, it will be quite impossible for me to furnish you, at this remote period, with anything more than a few brief outlines of the many conversations I had with her during her long and severe illness. Yet I trust that sufficient may be here given to show you the real state of her mind, as it respects her interest in the dying love of a dear Redeemer, and of the deep exercises of her soul from time to time, and more particularly so toward the close of her natural life.

At one of my visits she said, "The Lord has given me many exceeding great and precious promises by way of encouragement to my poor soul, particularly this, which I found exceeding sweet, 'I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon; his branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.' O what beauty have I seen in this precious text! Christ is indeed the dew unto Israel; yes, and unto my soul too. How sweetly do I feel it drop and distil upon me! It revives and replenishes me; it makes me grow as the lily; it makes me fat and flourishing; to take deep root in Christ Jesus, and lay fast hold of him; and my views to be sweetly expanded. He spreads his skirt over me, and the smell of his garment is as Lebanon. When Christ comes to visit our souls, how sweetly does he time everything! how he comes beforehand to prepare our hearts for his reception! Sometimes it is in reading his most blessed word, in humble prayer and supplications, acknowledging our manifold sins and transgressions. He softens the heart, humbles the mind, brings us to his blessed feet, casts out the Accuser of the brethren, disperses our doubts and fears, and drives away our enemies; so that there is not a dog that can possibly move his tongue." I observed to her, You will remember what our blessed Lord did, when he appointed and sent forth other seventy disciples, two and two together, before his face into every city and place; it was, we read,whither he himself would come.' Thus, you see it has been, and still is, his uniform manner of acting with and towards his dear disciples. They went forth at his special command, and preached the gospel, and Jesus went also, and blessed and confirmed the counsel of his messengers and the word of his grace." She then said, "If any person would bring millions of gold into my room, and say to me, 'It is all yours; you shall have it all, and enjoy an uninterrupted state of health as long as you think proper,' I would spurn it all from my presence, and count it as so much dung and dross; nay, I would abominate it altogether, rather than give up my enjoyment of the love of Christ; his love is so precious, that it far exceeds all earthly things. My whole and sole desire is to see Jesus as he is, and to be made like him.” I said, "The prospect now before you is great and animating indeed. You will soon meet your dear husband and your two children that are gone before you, who died in the Lord." She answered, "I did not think of them until you spoke; my heart is set alone upon Jesus." I then