By the REV. WILLIAM ROMAINE (1767).
Dear Sir,
Mr. F. informed me of your commission to buy the Law and Gospel. I make you a present of the Life of Faith. I have also sent you a book of inestimable value, which I was inclined to do, because it affords me an opportunity to introduce myself to you, and give you a word of advice on your going into orders. It is a great undertaking, and I will speak freely to you upon it, as, were I in your circumstances, I should have wished some one would have dealt with me. The Lord God make it a blessing to you.
* We take the liberty of printing this letter which appeared in the Gospel Magazine, of December, 1955.—Editor.
First, I would have you, sir, to consider one qualification for the ministry indispensably necessary, and that is, the knowledge of yourself: you cannot teach this till you have been taught, nor farther than you have been taught it. Consider what is your state: is not sin, misery, helplessness, your conditions in Adam? Are not you by nature a child of wrath? Mr. M., do you know this? Have you ever felt the plague of your heart? Have you ever seen the legion of lusts within you, every one of them ready to take up arms and rebel against God? Are you sensible how often they have drawn you into actual rebellion? And do you know what will be the end of this state without a Saviour? Think, sir, how can you preach these things, if you have not felt them? O beg of God, then, to make you sensible how much you want a Saviour, that you may know how to address yourself to others upon the same subject.
Secondly, another indispensable qualification is the knowledge of Christ, to know His person—God-man—His work, in His life and death, as our whole salvation; made ours whenever His Spirit enables us to receive it, and enjoyed as ours so far as by faith we dare believe in Him. This is the doctrine to be preached. How can a man preach it who does not know it, or who does not believe it? Try yourself here, Mr. M. Is He, in whose name, and to preach whom, you are ordained—is He true and very God, the self-existent Jehovah? Is there salvation in none other person or thing? God help you not to be deceived in that most essential doctrine.
A third thing is absolutely necessary, namely, the knowledge of God’s Word. I send you this little blessed book, in reading which you will learn yourself—here is your true picture—and here is the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom to know is life eternal. In reading and hearing the Scriptures, the Spirit sets in with the Word, and shows the sinner himself, and then shows him the Saviour, and enables him to believe unto salvation. All the teaching of God’s Spirit is in and by the Word: He accompanies nothing but His own truth with His own blessing, and that He does so bless, that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Are these things so? Is the Bible the Word of God? Does it make the believer wise unto salvation? Is it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, etc? O, sir, what are you doing, that other books are so much read, and the Bible so neglected?
Will you learn from a poor penitent? Indeed I repent, and God forgive my mis-spent time in sciences and classics. I saw my folly two-and-twenty years ago, and have since studied nothing but the Bible; and I assure you, sir, I am got but a little way. I see such things before me which I know but in part, that I am pressing on, and I wish for some of my lost time to spend in this blessed study. Take warning. Prize my little present: read it over and over: it is valuable as coming from my heart’s love, but infinitely more so as the copy of Christ’s love. You cannot read it too much: wear it out in reading, and I promise you a much neater and finer edition; but the finest is that which the Spirit writes upon the heart. O that He may write a very fair copy upon yours.
Fourthly, your next thing is to know your office: to what are you ordained? If you know not yourself, and know not Jesus, nor His Word, how can you possibly discharge your office? In these things the chief part of it consists. A minister, unacquainted with himself, can never show his people what they are in themselves. What can he say of Christ, who is not acquainted with Him? Or how can he preach the Word who never studied it, or who never had his understanding opened to understand the Scriptures? Think of these things, sir, and meditate much upon them. Weigh well your office; examine well your call to it. Are you enabled faithfully to declare the whole counsel of God?—with boldness, to tell sinners their great danger: which will make all the unconverted your bitter enemies—with clearness, to set forth the way of salvation, through our surety, God-Jesus—with evidence, to show the work of the Spirit in convincing of sin—in working faith in Jesus’ word, to rely upon His blood and righteousness, and enabling the believer to live upon the fulness of Jesus’ grace, receiving out of it grace every moment for all the purposes of spiritual life?
And that you may do this successfully, in spite of all opposition, are you made willing to practise what you are to preach? That is the best sermon which the minister preaches all the week. Nothing is so powerful as example. Blessed is he who lives out of the pulpit what he says in it, and knows his doctrine to be truly experience: so may it be with you.
W. ROMAINE.