Dear Robin, tempting of God ordinarily is either by acting presumptuously in carnal confidence, or in unbelief through diffidence: both these ways Israel tempted God in the wilderness, and He was grieved by them. Not the encountering “of” difficulties, therefore, makes us to tempt God; but the acting before and without faith.[1] If the Lord have in any measure persuaded His people, as generally He hath, of the lawfulness, nay of the duty,—this persuasion prevailing upon the heart is faith; and acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more the difficulties are, the more the faith. And it is most sweet that he who is not persuaded have patience towards them that are, and judge not and this will free thee from the trouble of others actings, which, thou sayest, adds to thy grief. Only let me offer two or three things, and I have done.
Dost thou not think this fear of the Levellers (of whom there is no fear) ‘that they would destroy Nobility,’ “etc.” has caused some to take up corruption, and find it lawful to make this ruining hypocritical Agreement, on one part?[2] Hath not this biased even some good men? I will not say, the thing they fear will come upon them; but if it do, they will themselves bring it upon themselves. Have not some of our friends, by their passive principle (which I judge not, only I think it liable to temptation as well as the active, and neither of them good but as we are led into them of God, and neither of them to be reasoned into, because the heart is deceitful),—been occasioned to overlook what is just and honest, and to think the people of God may have as much or more good the one way than the other? Good by this Man,—against whom the Lord hath witnessed; and whom thou knowest! Is this so in their hearts; or is it reasoned, forced in?[3]
Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts, Whether we think
- ↑ Very true, my General,—then, now, and always!
- ↑ Hollow Treaty at Newport.
- ↑ I think it is ‘reasoned’-in, and by bad arguments too, your Excellency! The inner heart of the men, in real contact with the inner heart of the matter, had little to do with all that:—alas, was there ever any such ‘contact’ with the real truth of any matter, on the part of such men!
