them, in vain; while at other times a single glance of thought fills them with the most fervent emotions of holy love and joy."* 66 DEAR SIR, "Chapel Street, February 9, 1798. ........I was very much pleased with the contents of your letter, and with your way of stating the meaning of the terms to which I had objected. Many of these expressions would be harmless enough, if men were more simple, teachable, and upright but the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; and Satan is continually employing all the deceivableness of unrighteousness, in order to impose upon men with the semblance of truth. He is ever aiming to mix poison with our food; and, according to the prevailing sentiments of the more religious sort of persons, he accommodates his devices, making some damnable heresy palatable and unsuspected, by grafting it on, or infusing it into, the doctrine that most currently passes with apparently serious people: just as an artful destroyer of vermin mixes his poison with the very food of which they are severally most fond. Such plans of deception, such methods of keeping men asleep in sin, as succeed to the uttermost where the precious truths of the Gospel are not known, are of little avail where those truths are generally known, and considered as essential to true religion. But shall the enemy, then, here give up his designs, and make no further attempts to deceive? Has he nothing in the human heart congenial to devices of another kind? If men can no longer be lulled asleep in carnal security, either without any religion, or by superstition, forms of worship, or pharisaical self-righteousness; does he give it up as a lost case? By no means. He has many ways of effecting his work of deception yet remaining. But, alas! numbers, both of teachers and writers, seem ignorant of his devices. As a friend of mine expresses it, They barricado the front door, and keep guard there incessantly, but leave the back doors and windows unguarded and unclosed.' They have discovered that the human *Scott's Works, vol. iii. p. 395-397: or his edit. of the Pilgrim's Progress, 12mo. p. 296, 297: English Edition.-See also observations upon the same subject, and on "schemes of preaching" formed on this erroneous view, in Warrant and Nature of Faith, part ii. sect. 3. Works vol. i. P 474-477. heart is prone to self-righteous pride, but seem not aware that it is equally prone to the love of sinful pleasures and worldly objects; and that the Pharisee and the Antinomian lodge more peaceably in the same dwelling, than we are apt to suppose.-The grand object of aversion to the carnal heart in the gospel is, the honour put upon the strict and holy law of God by the obedience and death of Christ; which shews the evil of sin so fully and unanswerably, that it proclaims the strictest moralist and formalist so deserving of condemnation, that he must have perished if Christ had not thus obeyed and died; and must still perish, unless, renouncing all other confidences, he avail himself of this provision, in the same manner with those very immoral wretches whom he so proudly disdains: nay that, if the vilest of these believers in Christ, he will certainly be saved, while the most amiable and respectable unbeliever will perish deservedly and without mercy. This forms the grand objection of the carnal mind to the Gospel; but, when an unrenewed heart is driven by argument, and unanswerable scriptural testimonies, from the ground of direct oposition, it immediatly lies open to Satan's attempts to substitute a form of knowledge, a dead faith, false affections, and a presumptuous hope, instead of its former confidence. The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be: and its enmity to the purity and spirituality of the precepts is as strong, as its enmity to the indiscriminate sentence of final condemnation which it denounces. Nor can this enmity be reconciled; it must be crucified and destroyed. When therefore, terror and conviction drive a man to disavow his former self-justifying pleas, and to allow that mercy alone can save him; his enmity to God and his law will make him seek deliverance from its commanding authority, as well as from its condemning sentence; and in this way, as well as in many others, Satan is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers into ministers of righteousness: and, alas! many good men endorse bad bills.-Direct avowed antinomianism is too scandalous to be general: barefaced rascals do comparatively little mischief in the common state of society: but, by carrying certain parts of religion to an extreme, as if men could not use too strong words in stating and extolling them, or be disproportionately zealous for them; other parts, of equal importance, are run down or kept out of sight. In this way a most subtile, pernicious, and disgraceful bias to practical, and in some sense to doctrinal, antinomianism has become very general, by means of unscriptural terms, and methods of stating the doctrines of the Gospel.-The head may be the principal part of a man; but it is not the whole man. The doctrine of justification is not the whole of Christianity; nor being justified the whole of salvation.-This disproportionate way of teaching only balances parties, and rules by thus balancing them: whereas the scripture attacks equally all the corruptions of the carnal heart, and gives no quarter to any of them. "I remain very sincerely, 26 DEAR SIR, "Your affectionate friend and servant, "THOMAS SCOTT." "Chapel Street, May 12, 1798. "The account you give of yourself is very interesting, and suggests many important instructions. It confirms me in my sentiments respecting education, in which I am deemed singular. I am very averse to public schools and I never sent any one of my children to school in my life, because I thought the danger to their morals and religious principles vastly more than compensated all the advantages to be derived. When parents are really pious, and can possibly do it, they had better give their children an education at home, defective as to learning, than run the risk of sending them to situations where their very advantages are unspeakably dangerous, and where the boldest sinner will commonly be the example, and give the tone to the manners of all the boys; and where they will be almost sure to corrupt one another, whatever pains a master may bestow. "One might go through every statge of your history with similar observations.-The danger connected with the love and pride of science, with the choice of agreeable companions, agreeable, perhaps, because flatterers, or because they are congenial in disposition to our own predominant carnal propensities; with the removal of children from under the inspection of pious parents, when it can be avoided, &c. 66 In many respects your account shews you to have been naturally very much like me in the turn and bias of your mind; and I was reminded of many past transactions by reading your letter.......In one thing especially I mark a similitude my bad history would have been still worse, had I not been restrained by want of money, and want of effrontery, from acting out what was conceived in my heart; and I seldom fail, several times in the course of the week, to thank the Lord for thus keeping me from rendering myself and others miserable and mischievous. "There is a notion very common, that a studious disposition, or what I call the love and pride of science, preserves a man from sensual inclinations or indulgences: and so it may as far as pride of character is concerned; but I believe no further. It is, I apprehend, very common for the most scientific persons to be by turns, in secret, very sensual: and, in short, though there are various differences of character, nothing can preserve any man, but a serious regard to the all-seeing eye of God, and a diligent use of his appointed means, in dependence on his all-sufficient grace. What discoveries will the day of judgment make! How many through life stand high for moral virtue, because they artfully and successfully elude detection! And how often is the detection itself of some concealed vice the first thing that excites suspicion; while the person himself has for years been conscious that he was quite another character than he was supposed to be! "The deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the hu man heart; the artifices of Satan and his instruments; the inefficacy of forms, about which men so zealously contend the corrupt motives of many conversions of this external kind, which have the fairest appearance of impartiality, serious examination, and conviction; the difference between convictions, impressions, and temporary earnestness, and a real change of heart; the sovereignty and super-abundance of divine grace; the excellence of true Christianity; the unspeakable advantage of a pious education: these and several other particulars might be selected as topics on which to enlarge. But it is not needful, and I have neither time nor room- -The Lord has indeed dealt most wonderfully with you; and I trust your future life will shew that the grace bestowed on you has not been in vain ; but that he intended to make you not only blessed, but a blessing.—I see no reason to doubt the reality of your humiliation. If you thought it deep enough, I should doubt. But you seem rather to confound humiliation with terror and distress: the former is essential to repentance, the lat ter merely circumstances: repentance may be without them, and they without repentance. “Believe me, in great haste, "Your affectionate and faithful "THOS. SCOTT." "Chapel Street, May 26, 1793. 66 DEAR SIR, "I THANK you for your kind inquiries about my health, it is no worse than usual; for I never had strong health and for nearly twenty years have been very much subject to asthma and bilious complaint, which require me to use such means as often keep me languid. But on the whole I am better in some respects than I was some years since; though I do not seem capable of quite so much work. During the twelve years and a half that I have been in London, I have never once been laid by on the Lord's day; though I have often been apparently unfit for my work but the Lord has helped me through; and I am best when employed. ...... 66 the bookseller has bought the whole stock in hand of the Bible, and at most we shall not divide two shillings and sixpence in the pound on the original publisher's debts, which to me were £842. If I could have raised the money, I should have purchased the residue of the work but perhaps, indeed certainly, it was best I should not.* "I shall be glad to hear from you more at length; and, as my engagements will permit, shall be happy to give my sentiments on any subject you desire, and to make any communications in my power.-I trust the Lord is your guide and teacher: he hath done great things for you, as an earnest of greater; and I hope it will be found that he means you to be an instrument of good to many others also. "I remain, Your sincere and faithful "Friend and servant, "THOMAS SCOTT." * See Life, pp. 188, 195. |