“In the order of God’s covenant it has not pleased him to deliver even believers, all at once, from sinful inclinations and passions; he has provided for their final complete deliverance, and sin shall not have dominion over them even here; but it is still in them while in the body, and a dying body; and the remains of sin in the soul make the believer’s life a warfare, and this world a wilderness; soul and body are diseased; both are redeemed, and provision made for the entire deliverance of both—­for the soul at death, for the body at the resurrection; but while in the body, ’if any man say he has no sin, he deceiveth himself, and the truth is not in him.’  I John, I:8.  Look at Paul’s experience—­what does he say of the believer’s state?  He calls it a warfare, a fight, a captivity for a time:  see 1 Tim. 6:12; 1 Cor. 9:26.

“I write not thus to dishearten you, but as a friend I warn you, lest you fall again into unbelief.  Look not within for comfort, for consolation, for confidence.  Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, his blood the atonement, and you are complete in him, his grace is sufficient for you, his strength shall be perfected in your weakness, and you shall go on.  Grieve for sin you will, grieve you ought; but keep ever in your remembrance 1 John, 2:1, and 5:11.

“Yours, etc.”

To the same.

“JANUARY 14, 1800.

“My dear friend says, ’O that I could have the society of some aged pious clergyman or Christian, who had gone through his warfare.’  O that you could, in the Lord’s hand.  I hope it might do you good:  yet, after all, the Lord himself must loose your bonds; aye, and he will, and also appoint the means.

“There are two kinds of rest awaiting you, the one in this life, the other will not be attained till the mortal shall put on immortality.  When was it that Paul, the great apostle, could say he had fought the good fight?  Not till he could also say he had finished his course, and was ready to be offered up; till then, he like others had to continue the warfare between grace and corruption; like others, found a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, so that the thing that he would, he did not, and that which he would not, that he did.  Notwithstanding this, there is a blessed rest attainable here, rest from the fear of wrath and hell—­a rest in Christ as our atonement, our surety, our complete righteousness, our title to eternal life, and all the grace necessary to fit us for it.  This is the work of faith, or rather, this is faith itself.  The soul established in this can rest in all possible circumstances; it depends not on its frames:  in darkness, when it is tossed, tempted, wandering, conscious of unhallowed tempers, perhaps of the actual commission of sin, though at such times the warfare between grace and corruption is so strong as to make the Christian exclaim, ’O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of sin and