Margaret Allen

“ Do I share with Him that agony for souls, that inexhaustible pity and love which will never let one perish, for whom, by any extremity of sacrifice, I can do anything? Do I breathe out the breath of God upon those with whom I come in contact, making the world feel that I have no harmony with any of its aims or inclinations, but that I really belong to Heaven? ”

“ What is saving faith? I dare not say that it is ’believing heartily’ my sins are forgiven me for Christ’s sake; for, if I live in sin, that belief is a destructive conceit, and not saving faith Neither dare I say, that ’saving faith is only a sure trust and confidence that Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me;’ for, if I did, I should almost damn all mankind for four thousand years. ”

“ Unbelief is a sin of so deep a dye that the devils in hell cannot commit the like. Our Saviour never prayed, wept, bled, and died for devils He never said to them, ’Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life.’ They can never be so madly ungrateful as to slight a Saviour Mercy never wooed their stubborn, proud hearts as it does ours They have abused grace, it is true, but they never trampled mercy underfoot. ”

“ All my hopes of salvation rested on my prayers, devotions, and a certain habit of saying, ’Lord, I am a great sinner; pardon me for the sake of Jesus Christ!’ In the meantime I was ignorant of the fall and ruin in which every man is involved, the necessity of a Redeemer, and the way by which we may be rescued from the fall by receiving Christ with a living faith. I should have been quite confounded if anyone had asked me the following questions: ’Do you know that you are dead in Adam? Do you live to yourself? Do you live in Christ and for Christ? Does God rule in your heart? ”

“ With respect to my soul, I find it good to be in the balance—­awfully weighed every day for life or death I thank God the latter has lost its sting, and endears to me the Prince of Life But oh, I want Christ, my resurrection, to be a thousand times more dear to me; and I doubt not He will be so, when I am filled with the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him Let us wait for that glory, praising God for all we have received, and trusting Him for all we have not yet received Let our faith do justice to His veracity ”

“ Praise Him! With our souls blended into one by Divine love, let us with one mouth glorify the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; our Father, who is over all, through all, and in us all “I charge you before the Lord Jesus, who giveth life and more abundant life; I entreat you by all the actings of faith, the stretchings of hope, the flames of love you have ever felt, sink to greater depths of self-abasing repentance ”

“ The way to perfection is by the due combination of prevenient, assisting free grace, and of submissive, assisted free will... ‘God worketh in you to will and to do,’ says St. Paul Here he describes the passive office of faith, which submits to, and acquiesces in, every divine dispensation and operation. ‘Therefore work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,’ and, of consequence, with haste, diligence, ardour, and faithfulness... Would ye then wait aright for Christian perfection? ”

“ You indulge spiritual and refined self-righteousness; you are not yet dead to the law, and quite slain by the commandment Now the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to none but the poor in spirit Jesus came to save none but the lost What wonder, then, if Jesus is little to you, and if you do not live in His kingdom of peace, righteousness, and joy in the Holy Ghost? ”

“ Is Christ the life of all my affections and designs, as my soul is the life of my body? Have I always the presence of God?...Am I saved from the fear of man? .. Am I always ready to confess Christ, to suffer with His people, and to die for His sake?...Am I willing to give up my ease and convenience to oblige others, or do I expect them to do so to my hours, ways, and customs?...Do I never take that glory to myself which belongs to Christ?...Am I courteous, not severe; suiting myself to all with sweetness ”

“ So sad was he about the spiritual condition of his parishioners, that he applied to Wesley for one of his helpers, who was then a master in Kingswood School; believing truly that two who were of one mind, both living in communion with the Holy Ghost, had great hope of bringing to life a dead parish, even though one were not an authorised curate, and the other but a sick vicar Fletcher had learned to look past man—­to God and God alone. ”

“ Shall we be made perfect in love by an habit of holiness suddenly infused into us, or by acts of feeble faith and feeble love so frequently repeated as to become strong, habitual, and evangelically natural to us? ”

“ But what will be the Salvationist’s condemnation if, with all the opportunities he has to cultivate the utmost freedom in prayer and service, he never attains to that intimacy with God, that delight in communion with Him, that power to force others into God’s presence, which John Fletcher’s life discloses to us? ”

“ Faith is the gift of God to believers, as sight is to you The parent of good freely gives you the light of the sun, and organs proper to receive it. Everything around you bids you use your eyes and see; nevertheless, you may not only drop your curtains, but close your eyes also This is exactly the case with regard to faith Free grace removes, in part, the total blindness which Adam’s fall brought upon us; free grace gently sends us some beams of truth, which is the light of the sun of righteousness; it disposes the eye of our understanding to see those beams ”

“ Not content, as many are, with consciousness of sins forgiven, Fletcher at once began to plead that God would take fullest possession of his heart, and grant to him a deeper experience of His love. While lying upon his face in earnest prayer the Saviour strangely manifested Himself to his eye of faith, and it was revealed to him that Jesus had wondrously become his soul’s inmost life, abiding in him to conquer sin. ”

“ Perhaps your conscience bears you witness that you are not a swearing Christian, or rather a swearing infidel Well, but are you clear in the point of adultery, fornication, or uncleanness? Does not the guilt of some vile sin, which you have wickedly indulged in time past, and perhaps are still indulging, mark you for the member of a harlot, and not the member of Christ? ”

“ But I have seen so much weakness in my heart, both as a minister and a Christian, that I know not which is most to be pitied—­ the man, the believer, or the preacher Could I at last be truly humbled and continue so always, I should esteem myself happy in making this discovery. I preach merely to keep the chapel open until God shall send a workman after His own heart. ”

“ The Eye of Faith
“Believing is the gift of the God of Grace, as breathing, moving, and eating are the gifts of the God of Nature. He gives me lungs and air, that I may breathe; He gives me life and muscles, that I may move ”

“ I sometimes feel a desire of being buried where you are buried, and of having my bones lie in a common earthen bed with yours; but I soon resign that wish, and exult in thinking that, whatever distance there may be between our graves, we can now bury our sins, cares, doubts, and fears, in the one grave of our Divine Saviour If I, your poor unworthy shepherd, am smitten, be not scattered, but rather be more closely gathered unto Christ, and keep near each other in faith and love, till you all receive our second Comforter and Advocate, the Holy Ghost, the third Person in our Covenant God. ”

“ With Fletcher there was no preaching against the absent wrong-doer, no haranguing evil in the abstract, but there was never lacking a definite and personal denouncement of present and personal sin. One tremendous word loomed large before his hearers, nor could any misunderstand when he talked about sin, and the arousing thought was pressed ever closer to them by his pointed use of the word you. Here is an example:—­
“Did you ever make a prey of the poor and helpless? Are you like the horse-leech, ever crying, ‘Give, give!’ still wanting more profit, and never thinking you have enough? ”

“ In writing to his schoolmaster at Madeley, the Vicar gives a real home-thrust, yet in so kindly a manner that it could hardly be resented:—­
“If I were not a minister I would be a schoolmaster, to have the pleasure of bringing up children in the fear of the Lord. That pleasure is yours, relish it, and it will comfort and strengthen you in your work The joy of the Lord and of charity is our strength Salute the children from me, and tell them I long to show them the way to happiness and Heaven Have you mastered the stiffness and shyness of your temper? ”

“ Faith—­I mean the evidence of things not seen—­is a powerful cordial to support and exhilarate us under the heaviest pressures of pain and temptation. By faith, we live upon the invisible, eternal God; we believe that in Him we live, move, and have our being; insensibly we slide from self into God, from the visible into the invisible, from the carnal into the spiritual, from time into eternity Here our spirits are ever young ”

“ Do you not kindle the wrath of Heaven against yourself and your country, as the men and women of Gomorrah did against themselves and the other cities of the plain? If you cherish the sparks of wantonness, as they did, how can you but be made with them to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire? ”

“ Are they receiving, sealing, spreading the truth everywhere within your sphere? Are you dead to praise or dispraise? Could you quietly pass for a mere fool, and have gross nonsense fathered upon you without any uneasy reflection of self? ”

“ Prayer, with Fletcher, was not a duty but a refreshment and an inspiration Every Sunday morning, between four and five, and two or three nights in the week, after his pupils were asleep, he used to go out into the meadows, or on to the banks of the Severn, to meet an Excise Officer, a servant, and a poor widow These four would pour out their whole souls to God in prayer, and wonderful were the manifestations of Divine love and grace vouchsafed to them. ”

“ Instead of going straight to Christ I have lost my time in fighting against sin with the dim light of reason, and the use of the means of grace I fear my notions of Christ are only speculative, and do not reach the heart. I never had faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God Then every thought, word, and work of mine have only been sin and wickedness before God, though ever so specious before men All my righteousness is as filthy rags I am a very devil, though of an inferior sort, and if I am not renewed before I go hence, hell will be my portion to all eternity.... ”

“ Fortunately for Mary Bosanquet, towards the end of these two years there came to London her friend Mrs. Ryan (housekeeper of Wesley’s new Room at Bristol) , who fell ill, was nursed by her with great devotion, and afterwards taken home to share her rooms.
“I acknowledge,” she writes, “I neither gained honour, gold, nor indulgence to the flesh by uniting myself to a sickly, persecuted saint; but I gained such a spiritual helper as I shall eternally praise God for.” ”

“ The man was a true Christian, deeply humble, and full of zealous love for God The knowledge of many things he had borne patiently for Christ, coupled with the strange power with which he spoke, smote the tutor with a sense of his own shortcomings, and made him exclaim to his own heart, “I am not renewed in the spirit of my mind, and without this the death of Christ will not avail for my salvation!” ”

“ He loves the pleasures and comforts of an animal life; but are these the same with the exercises of the spiritual life? His conversations, his readings, his amusements, as void of edification as of usefulness, rarely fatigue him; but an hour of meditation or prayer is insufferable If he be not born again, not only he cannot be in a state to rejoice in the pleasures of Paradise, any more than a deaf man to receive with transport the most exquisite music ”

“ But whoever is red-hot will ceaselessly be thinking and planning for the worst; that is to say, not only for those commonly called the worst, whose wild career of sin strikes all decent people with horror, but for the far more seriously in danger, who turn their very religion into a form or an amusement, and care nothing for any real intercourse with God. ”

“ We conclude that the gate of Heaven must be opened upon earth by regeneration, and by the love of God, or that it will remain shut for ever; and that a local paradise would be only a sorrowful prison to a man not regenerated, because, carrying nothing thither but depraved and earthly appetites and passions, and finding nothing there but spiritual and celestial objects, disgust and dissatisfaction would be the consequence ”

“ In his very Introduction Fletcher refuses to have anything to say to the personal charges vindictively hurled by his opponent:—­
“These charges,” he writes, “being chiefly founded upon Mr. Toplady’s logical mistakes, they will, of their own accord, fall to the ground as soon as the mistakes on which they rest shall be exposed May the God of truth and love grant that if Mr. Toplady has the honour of producing the best arguments, I, for one, may have the advantage of yielding to them! To be conquered by truth and love is to prove conqueror over our two greatest enemies—­error and sin.” ”

“ Do you take more care to heap up treasure on earth than in Heaven? Have you got the unhappy secret of distilling silver out of the poor man’s brow, and gold out of the tears of helpless widows and friendless orphans? ”