Acceptor

“ I have insisted the more particularly on this subject of courtship, because it may most readily happen to you at that early period of life, when you can have little experience or knowledge of the world; when your passions are warm, and your judgments not arrived at such full maturity as to be able to correct them.—I wish you to possess such high principles of honour and generosity as will render you incapable of deceiving, and at the same time to possess that acute discernment which may secure you against being deceived. ”

“ It has been said that when a proposition is presented to us for our acceptance or rejection we treat it as we would treat an article of furniture presented to us for our apartments. We try it. If it fits in character and complexion, we accept it, and it becomes a part of our paraphernalia. If it does not fit, we reject it. ”

“ You have been taught that divine acceptance comes after your repentance and as a result of all your works of sacrifice and penitence, but I assure you that the Father accepts you even before you have repented and sends the Son and his associates to find you and bring you, with rejoicing, back to the fold, the kingdom of sonship and spiritual progress. You are all like sheep which have gone astray, and I have come to seek and to save those who are lost. ”

“ My judgment is just, because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father Who hath sent Me, that is, not the will of man, whom ye see, not the will of man, whom ye only judge as man, not the will of the flesh, (for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,) but the Divine will, which is the Origin of law, and the Rule of judgment. So likewise that witness is true, who bears witness not to himself but to another, for it is written, Prov. xxvii. 2. Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth. ”

“ Let it exceedingly please you, to think that you are wholly his: it being much better for you, as to your safety, honour, and happiness, than to be your own, or any's else. 3. As God requireth it in his covenant of grace, that he have his right, by your consent, and not by constraint; so you must thankfully accept the motion, and with hearty and full consent of will, resign yourselves to him, as his own, even as his creatures, his ransomed ones, and his regenerate children, by a covenant never to be violated. ”

“ How beautifully all our blessed Lord’s precepts hang together, and fit the one the other; if your consent to follow him in his poverty as he has commanded, you have little to fear in following his other commands of non-resistance: if you accept not the first, you will not accept the second, except in such circumstances as expose you to perhaps little comparative danger. May the Lord make me willing, whatever it costs, to learn all his will, and give me grace to love it. ”

“ Why should we go out of our way, one and all of us, to impute personal motives in explanation of the conversion of every individual convert, as he comes before us, if there were in us, the public, an adhesion to that absolute, and universal, and unalienable principle, as its titles are set forth in heraldic style, high and broad, sacred and awful, the right, and the duty, and the possibility of Private Judgment? ”

“ Yet since I could not give thee this, we have given thee a certain portion of ourself, this faculty of choice and refusal, of desire and aversion, or, in a word, the faculty which makes use of external impressions; if thou care for this and place all that thou hast therein, thou shalt never be thwarted, never hampered, shalt not groan, shalt not blame, shalt not flatter any man. ”

“ This matter has already been discussed in the chapter on poverty and purity and in that on annihilation and subsistence. They say also that the words in question signify the negation of Man’s choice by the affirmation of God’s choice. Hence that blessed one said: “God’s choice for His servant with His knowledge of His servant is better than His servant’s choice for himself with his ignorance of his Lord,” because love, as all agree, is the negation of the lover’s choice by affirmation of the Beloved’s choice. ”

“ The Lord's Resurrection appears as, so to speak, the mighty sequel, and also the demonstration, warrant, proclamation, of His acceptance as the Propitiation, and therefore of our acceptance in Him. For indeed it was our justification, when He paid our penalty. True, the acceptance does not accrue to the individual till he believes, and so receives. ”

“ So we should not found our acceptance nor our peace and satisfaction on ourselves, nor on any thing we have or do; nor should we conclude our exclusion or want of acceptance, because we do not apprehend our frame so good as it ought to be ”

“ What proof have you of the negative of the existence of God the Father, or of Jesus as the Mediator, or of the Holy Ghost as God's minister, or of the gifts and graces that God has bestowed upon his people? None at all, not the least thing in the world. Is there anybody living on the earth that has the proof of the affirmative? ”

“ For where the I and the Mine are, thither, of necessity, inclineth every living thing: if in the flesh, then the supremacy is there; if in the Will, it is there; if in outward things, it is there. If, then, mine I is where my Will is, thus only shall I be the friend I should be, or the son or the father. ”

“ We may explain the modus operandi of the great offering in any of these ways, for the Scripture presents it in all of them—but the great thing is to accept it; for by the nature of our mental constitution, such an acceptance, whether with or without an intellectual explanation, affords the assurance which we stand in need of; and building upon the Foundation we can safely rear the edifice of our future development. ”

“ Were God a person to be moved by the breath of praise, or less than Infinite in understanding, or changing in Love and Wisdom, He might do more good because of our petitions, and grant them on the ground of the petitioner, in which case lip-service were an advantage not to be overlooked. But God is Love, and do we ask Him to be more than this to man? ”

“ It may be asked whether a confessor may give advice to a penitent in opposition to his own opinion; or, if he should think in any case that restitution ought to be made, whether he may advise that the [242] opinion of others may be followed, who maintain that it need not be made? I answer, that he lawfully may, ... because he may follow the opinion of another in his own practice, and therefore he may advise another person to follow it. ”

“ We accept: so have all men. We obey: so have all men. We venerate: so have some in past ages or in other countries. We add but one other term—we love. We would perfect our submission and so reap the full benefits of submission in the improvement of our hearts and tempers. ”

“ L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right life, we must continually and reciprocally submit and surrender in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways: and these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, are as good for the yielder as the receiver: they strengthen and perfect as much as they soften and refine. ”

“ ACCEPTANCE. Thus saith the Lord unto this people, thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet; therefore the Lord doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins.—Jeremiah, xiv. 10.
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.—Psalm xix. 14.
Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.—Ephesians, v. 10.
God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.—Acts, x. ”

“ Above all one should accept everything, in general and individually, in oneself or in others, agreeable or disagreeable, with a prompt and confident spirit, as coming from the hand of his infallible Providence or the order he has arranged. ”

“ Consider this point also, what pleasure acceptance gives the sender, and what mortification follows upon non-acceptance . . . . [† 38] even after many days to come to you. Pray believe that the law of Gods and cities and friends is a just one . . . . [† 39] but as friends do not parade such a forwardness of goodwill but from diffidence conceal it, I send before you give permission. Do not you send back my gift a second time, as you ought not to have done even the first time.
To Appian from Fronto. ”

“ By this adoption we partake in some degree of the divine perfections — such as wisdom, fortitude, justice, charity, and God's other attributes, which are His by His own nature, and communicated to us by grace. Learn, then, duly to appreciate a benefit, which assimilates you in some respect to God.
III. The benefit of adoption makes us heirs to the kingdom of heaven, according to the expression of the Apostle, " You are heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ." ”

“ No, my father, I will never marry without your consent, and I do not expect you to give that consent to a man whom you treat as you would a beggar; but I want you to understand how impossible it is for me to accept any one else, even if he were as rich as Crœsus. ”

“ They must always give judgment according to equity (v. 26) ; they must give a right answer, that is, give their opinion and pass sentence according to law and them true merits of the cause; and every one shall kiss his lips that does so, that is, shall love and honour him, and be subject to his orders, for there is a kiss of allegiance as well as of affection. He that in common conversation likewise speaks pertinently and with sincerity recommends himself to his company and is beloved and respected by all. ”

“ But if thou doubtest in thy heart, thou shalt receive none of thy petitions. For they that are doubtful towards God, are the double-minded men, and they shall obtain none at all of their petitions. But they that are perfectly sound in the faith ask for all things in reliance upon the Lord, and receive them, because they ask without hesitation and with no dividedness of heart. ”

“ We are slowly learning to substitute for the notion of any kind of preferential treatment at the hand of God a belief in the unchanging goodness of His decrees, in the wisdom of His counsel, {201} and in the reality of His abiding and enfolding love; by Providence we mean something that is neither local nor personal, nor particular, but universal—the Providence of unchanging law—that living and loving Will which "knoweth altogether." ”

“ When external profession and confessions are separated from the internal contrition of the heart and godly sorrow for sin, and when both internal contrition and external profession and confession are divided from conformity, or study of conformity to God's will, then they are in no better acceptance with God than those external sacrifices which God rejected, though he had required them, because they were disjoined from the true life of them and spiritual meaning, that is, faith in a mediator, and love to obedience. ”

“ The confessor asks if he is to grant absolution to a penitent in this state of mind, or to deny it."—Civiltá, VII. ii. 151.
The reasoning ascribed to the supposed penitent is the following—
You, as my confessor, have not the right to lay on me as you would on a private man, the duty of devoting a certain day, and of adopting certain means for the conversion of this or that person. Doubtless, I ought, by word and example, to lay myself out for the conversion and edification of my neighbour; but it rests with me as a free agent to select the means and to discern the opportunity. ”

“ The wish to obtain a competency of worldly goods is orderly and proper, provided that in the pursuit of that wish the life be kept within the strict bounds of honesty and uprightness, and the desire itself be held ever in subjection to the desire for higher and heavenly things, and be conjoined with trust in Divine Providence, and a submission to the Lord's will. ”

“ Were proselyte and chattel synonymes, in the Divine vocabulary? Must a man be sunk to a thing before taken into covenant with God? Was this the stipulated condition of adoption, and the sole passport to the communion of the saints?
II. We argue the voluntariness of servants from Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him." ”

“ For the central truth of the new position is that the Lord has fully dealt, for us, with the Law's claim that man shall deserve acceptance. "Boasting" is inexorably "excluded," to the last, from this new kind of law-fulfilling life. For the "fulfilment" which means legal satisfaction is for ever taken out of our hands by Christ, {213} and only that humble "fulfilment" is ours which means a restful, unanxious, reverent, unreserved loyalty in practice. To this now our "mind," our cast and gravitation of soul, is brought, in the life of acceptance, and in the power of the Spirit.|Ver. ”

“ But it is better in my judgment to say counsel of counsel, and will of will, as substance of substance, wisdom of wisdom, that we may not be led into that absurdity, which we have refuted already, and say that the Son makes the Father wise or willing, if the Father has not in His own substance either counsel or will. ”

“ Having considered some of the false standards of judgment in the choice of a companion for life, we now revert to those true tests which are given us in the Word of God. There we have the institution and true idea of marriage, and the principles upon which we should proceed in making the marriage choice. ”