Phillips Family Papers Box 2

accompany as earthly life: & we have this encouragement; "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Grace & the exercise of it also, comes from God: None can cleanse a foul heart, nor quicken a dead one, but he who raised our Redeemer from the dead. Therefore if my heart be hard, foul, weak, deceitful, treacherous, & vile as may be, I have no refuge, but to fly to my most pure, holy Redeemer, to my unchangeable God in Jesus Christ, who is both my Judge & Savior. He hears the inward pantings of his own spirit, when we can scarce hear the voice of our own prayers. He who creats light out of darkness, knows how to work up an acceptation of us to himself in Christ, when our penant, & services, as they came from us, are lothesome in our own eyes. We never go down the wind, till we say in our hearts by unbelief, The Covenant cannot stand in Heaven, because I have sinned against it on Earth. "I am God, I change not; Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." Truely, I find very often as much need of pardon Grace, as at first conversion, & I scarce know any thing that states the difference betwixt me & the vilest hypocrites, but only this, that God makes my distempers, my burthen; and in the riches of his love, inclines my heart to harken? partner? toward him for help. And forever blessed be his Name, that doth not suffer us to die away utterly, from Belief. How great is his Goodness! How wealthy & endless is that store-house of perfection that is laid up in Christ for his ransomed, & new-born seed. . Extracts from Dorney's Letters.

We ought to desire life only to mortify sin, to practice & perfect virtue, to avail ourselves of opportunities for knowing ourselves, better, and of obtaining stronger assurances of our salvation.

A Soul breathing forth itself out of an ardent affection in holy hymns, is more acceptable to God than the richest gums of the sweetest wood that can fume upon His Alter. But a Soul full of pure thoughts, too great to come out of the mouth, and more clear, than to be embodied in word, is transcendent to all oblations.

It is not to be considered as Tho' God was absolutely obliged to perform his Promises to all that fear him, so the act of Faith [??] forth towards these Promises in the application, is not required to be an Absolute Assurance that he will bestow the things promised - but only an indefinate act of recumbering & submission, casting ourselves upon him for the performance of it to us, not knowing but he may in his outward dispensation, make it good to us, yet with submission to his good pleasure, if otherwise he dispose it; and if he grant, to consider then, that whatsoever we have, it is not by a mere Providence, but my virtue of a promise.

Commit thy ways unto the Lord, trust in him, and he shall bring it to pass; cast your care upon the Lord, for he careth for you -

Not barely the Promises, but the person of Christ, is the object of Faith: We are not to rest on the promises alone, but to love? with Christ in those promises; hold therefore in receiveing of and having recourse unto a promise, we are first to reach out for Christ in it, as being the foundation of it, and to take hold of the promise in him: Then Philip directs the Eunuch, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ: the promise is but the Casket, Christ the Jewel in it; the promise but the field, Christ is the Pearl hid in it, and to be chiefly lookes at. Christ is the grand promise, in whom all the promises are yea and Amen