Letters to an Anxious Inquirer; Designed to Relieve the Difficulties of a Friend Under the Serious Impressions (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER III. J'lmsu difficulties which are of least importance most generally discouraging?Impatience arising from disappointed expectations?A complaint ?Its causes?The dread of increasing anxiety?A false conclusion? Evils arising from natural buoyancy of feeling?Difficulty in the doctrine of Election?Inclination and despair aid each other?"I am seeking," a false plea?" I am waiting for a day of power"?" I am waiting for God to do Ms part." MY DEAR SIR, Suffer me to add a few words more to some remarks in my last letter. I will commence with a position which, to me, appears worthy of serious reflection; it is this?the temptations to which the awakened sinner is exposed are inconsiderable and weak, in proportion to the sincerity and earnestness with which he sets out. When his mind was entirely engrossed in worldli- ness, it seized with avidity on the most contemptible objections to evangelical truth: and the smallest of these might have been sufficient, at times, to satisfy an understanding vitiated by sensual habits and taste. But when the remonstrances of the Holy Spirit are brought to bear, in some measure, on the mind and the conscience, such objections disappear, and perplexities of a different character arise in their place. And the magnitude of these will depend on the same rule, whether they arise from the state of the Inquirer's mind, or from the agency of his spiritual adversary. He who never pays a higher price for the soul than his victim demands, and who met the venality of a Judas with thirty pieces of silver, because he asked no more, uses the same economy of means in the difficulties with which he would dishearten the sinner who has been led to a partial seriousness. Have you not remarked how fully this position is exemplified among Inquirers ? Have you ...