CONTEMPLATIONS

- A SERIES OF LETTERS TO A FRIEND

William Huntington (1745-1813)

LETTER I.

TO THE REV. J. JENKINS, LEWES, SUSSEX.

Cricklewood.

Dear son in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied. I have for some time had it upon my mind to send thee some account of my late goings on, having for some few weeks back been much indulged and helped by the Holy Spirit of promise, of whose influence, help, and energetic intercession at the throne of grace, I have been very watchful and observant; and, on the other hand, could not but wonder at the backwardness, deadness, dryness, and barrenness, both in power and in expression, when his sensible influence was withheld from me. His divine person, and his most benign influences and operations, were for many days my meditation, both by night and by day: and during this time, these things were the principal subjects of my ministry; and, had I wrote them then, I have no doubt but thou wouldest have felt the blessed effects; but now it is not so with me; my harp is upon the willows - and, with respect to sensible enjoyments, the Comforter that should relieve my soul seems to be far from me. Oh, what is all religion without the operation of the Holy Spirit! An empty shew, and a weariness to the flesh.

I thought not a little of his divine personality; and wondered much how any man living, who reads the scriptures, could ever have the effrontery to deny his being, a divine person. But the world knows him not. "I will send you a comforter whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for be dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." He is therefore to be known by all believers: and those who do know him will glorify him and Honour him; reverence him and adore him; and we know that all who are destitute of him, and strangers to his operations, are sensual men, and know nothing but what they know naturally. Hence some have called the Holy Spirit no more than a quality, or an attribute of God; others an influence only; others no more than a name; avowing that there is but one person in the Godhead, but a plurality of names: - as Simon Magus gave it out, that be himself was God the Father in Samaria, the Word in Judea, and the Spirit in the other parts of the world. Surely that monster of a man must be the father or ringleader of all heretics. But we know that no curious diving, no speculative prying, no presumptuous intruding, will meet with the divine approbation. "God resisteth the proud." But O how safe, how sweet, how salutary, how satisfactory, how humbling and softening, are the sweet influences, operations, discoveries, and communications, of the Holy Spirit upon the souls of the children of God!

Various things are meant by the word Spirit in the holy scriptures: - as wind, the spirit of beasts, and the souls of men, and angels, both good and bad. But the Holy Ghost is distinguished from all these, being, emphatically called God, not in a figurative or metaphoric, but in an absolute sense; "to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ," Col. ii. 2. In which passage the Holy Ghost stands first in the Holy Trinity, and he is distinct from the Father and from Christ: and surely, if he were not essentially God, to all intents and purposes, he never would have inspired the apostle to name and place him as God before the Father. The church also is called "the temple of the Holy Ghost; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them." No spirit whatever that is mentioned in all the book of God, is ever numbered with the persons in the Holy Trinity, or ranked with the Father and the Son, except the Holy Ghost. Nor is the church the property, the temple, or the habitation, of any but of God alone: and, as the church is called the temple of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost must be God.

A ghost is a spirit The Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit is one and the same in the original, as say the learned. Now what I have upon my mind, to write to my dear brother, is upon this important subject: and, however weakly, or however imperfectly I may express myself, I am fully persuaded, by my own experience, that it is most safe, and ever will be satisfactory and establishing to the elect of God, who are regenerated and renewed by the Holy Spirit, to believe as I do: while the contrary is most dangerous, if not perilous: - I mean, that the Holy Ghost must be acknowledged to be a divine person by all those who are sanctified, and who hope to be saved. They must acknowledge the mystery of God, of the Father, and of Christ; for we are baptized in the name of all the three, and therefore, in our holy profession, we must acknowledge this greatest mystery of all mysteries.

A person, according to the account of learned men, is an individual being, an intelligent agent, who is singular, and subsists, lives, speaks, understands, acts, and works-and such is the Holy Ghost. Nor is there a distinct personal character but what the holy scriptures apply to him; such as I, me, him, he, his, thou. As for instance, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when he is come he shall guide you into all truth:" Again, "I will send you a comforter, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." Again, "Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Are these his doings?" Again, "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I go up into heaven, thou art there." Sure I am that these personal characters cannot be applied to a name, or to a quality in God, or to an influence from him, or to an accident, or to a transient impression; much less to a nonentity. It is true, that personal characters, and personal actions, are sometimes ascribed to things inanimate; as, "The trees went forth to choose themselves a king, and invited the vine and the olive to reign over them, who refused; and the bramble bid them put themselves under his shadow." The red sea is also represented as seeing and fleeing.

"The floods lift up their hands on high, and the little hills skip like lambs." Yet we have no voice from any of these, only dumb signs at best; these all wanted persons to speak for them. Jotham speaks for the trees and the bramble; Habakkuk speaks the motions of the sea, and David the actions of the little hills. But the Holy Spirit wants none to speak for him; he can speak of himself, and for himself. He spoke in Adam, giving names to all creatures. He spoke to Philip - "Go near, and join thyself to this chariot." He spoke to Peter - "The Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee; arise, therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, nothing doubting." The Spirit said, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." The Holy Spirit not only speaks; but all that have ever spoken to any good purpose have been taught to speak by him; he brings the things to their minds, puts words in their mouths, and teaches them how to pronounce them. "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," I Cor. ii. 13. The Spirit put a word in Balaam's mouth, and bade him speak thus and thus; and "the apostles spake as the Spirit gave them utterance." He not only speaks to the saints, and in them, but be teaches us in some measure to discern between those whom be teaches to speak, and those who follow their own spirit, and speak a vision out of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. And how evident this is in all who write or speak of divine things without the Spirit's teaching! What flagrant errors, self-contradictions, inconsistencies, confusion, and darkening of counsel, doth appear! Instead of making rough places plain, and crooked things straight, they make the plainest places rough, and the straightest things crooked; and, instead or going through the gates, and removing the stumbling blocks, and casting up the high-way, they grope like the blind for the wall, cause many to stumble at the law, and destroy the way of our paths. And, if at any time any of them appear to be tolerably sound in the letter, yet the deep things of the text, the unctuous matter of it, or the choice experience of the holy penmen that lies hid in it, is never dived into, nor brought up; the glorious beauty of it is obscured, the surface of it is skimmed over; a few parallel texts are brought in, and dark constructions put upon the words, and the passage left more obscure than when the workman began. There is nothing, in your ears but swelling words and empty sound; and nothing in your soul but leanness and beggary. Instead of watering the trees of righteousness, or refreshing the bowel of the saints, these clouds without rain rather exhale or dry up all the dew of heaven that is on the soul, however refreshed before. Such workmen obscure and becloud the Spirit's work, cast a dimness on the brightest evidences, contract the most enlarged heart, and imprison those whom the Lord has made free indeed. This I know by woful experience. And it must be so; for "the natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

Personal properties also, or those properties and things which are ascribed to persons, are also ascribed to the Holy Spirit such as will, power, mind, judgment, wisdom, understanding, knowledge, love, joy, grief, vexation, &c. for instance - "All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. Mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Holy Ghost." And "God that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the spirit." And "The Lord of hosts shall be for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment: upon him shall rest the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." Again, "Now I beseech you, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit." Again, "YOU received the word with joy of the Holy Ghost." "Grieve not the Spirit of God, by which ye are sealed." "But they rebelled and vexed his Holy Spirit, till he turned to be their enemy, and fought against them." I cannot see how all the above-mentioned things can with propriety be ascribed to anything but a person. To apply them to a quality, an accident, a name, or a nonentity, must be absurd to the last decree. And I have often thought that, if men were allowed to take the same liberties with the evidences of a purchase, a man's will and testament, title-deeds, and writings of estates, &c. that some take with the word of God, there are lawyers and counsellors wise enough to dispute every landholder in the nation out of all that he hath, and even out of his own personality and existence too. For it is but to prove that there is no such man, no such person that it is only a name; and all the relative or personal characters are to be understood in a figurative or an allegorical sense; and that it means no more than a quality in man, or a power put forth by man on certain occasions; or that it signifies only the breath of a man's mouth, an accident, or a transient emanation, flowing out with his words when he speaks. Allow a wise lawyer or counsellor to go this way to work, and we should soon see the greatest landholders in the nation begging in the streets.

Now, my dear brother, I must leave this subject for the present, submitting this my scribble to your perusal. And, should your thoughts meet with any rubs in the way, as they rove; should any thing grate upon your ears; should any thing sound harsh, should any of the things appear to clash, or seem unintelligible; or appear low, mean, unworthy, or unbecoming the glorious subject; signify the same, and offer your thoughts freely-it will be kindly received by him who subscribe himself, in undissembled love,

Yours in Christ Jesus,