Preaching . By John Brown of Haddington

Dear Sir, On the topics mentioned in my last, which respect the making and administration of the covenant of grace, how delightfully ought the preacher to display the exceeding riches of the grace of God and how the whole of our redemption tends to the praise of the glory of that grace; how fit the blessed Jesus is to rescue us from the broken law, from sin, death, and hell; how altogether lovely, precious, rich, liberal, and gracious He is; and what exceeding great and precious promises are given to us as the New Testament in His blood. More particularly, 1. He ought plainly to set forth God’s redoubled gift of His own Son—as a ransom, to obey and suffer for us ungodly sinners, and as a husband, effectual Savior, and portion to espouse, deliver, and satisfy us sinful and miserable sons of men—as the foundation of every call and invitation to accept of Him. Without this, His calls and invitations to receive Christ and His salvation are little else but an instructing of men how to rob God of His Son and salvation and how to take the mercies of the new covenant as stolen waters that are sweet. 2. He ought clearly to state and explain the nature of faith as an assurance, a real persuasion of the truth and veracity of God’s giving promises as directed to a man’s self; as a receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation as He is freely offered to him in the gospel; as the finishing means of our union with Christ and of our actual interest in all that He has; and as the instrument of our receiving all supplies of grace out of His fullness, that his hearers may not, like too many, be importuned with calls and charges to come to Christ and yet never be distinctly taught what this coming or believing means. 3. He must take great care to describe the persons for whom Christ was given as a ransoming sacrifice and to whom He is given as an effectual Savior, and that precisely as the Holy Ghost does in the Scriptures. Though indeed Christ laid down His life only in the room of His elect, yet, as the secret things of the divine purpose belong only to the Lord, the gospel preacher, when offering relief to sinners, ought to represent the persons for whom Christ offered Himself as a propitiation for sin under the character of men, many, unjust, ungodly, without strength, enemies to God, sinners, condemned in law, lost in themselves, and so forth. In a similar conformity to Scripture, he is to invite men to Christ not as elect or as sensible sinners duly convinced or good-hearted but as men; sons of Adam; simple; foolish; scorners; stout-hearted; far from righteousness; wicked; disobedient; gainsaying; heavy-laden with guilt and trouble; thirsting for happiness in anything, however vain or vile; self-conceited; men who weary God with their iniquities, who have spoken and done evil things as they could—nay, as many as they find out of hell. Nor will it be improper to show to them how every absolute promise in Scripture supposes the persons to whom God directs it to be in a sinful and wretched condition. To whom does God bring near His righteousness and offer His pardon but to the unrighteous and guilty? To whom does He offer His Spirit, a new heart of flesh, but to such as are sensual, in the flesh, carnally-minded, stony- and stout-hearted? To whom does He offer Himself as their God but to such as are by nature without God and without hope in the world? To whom does He offer His great and everlasting salvation but to them that are lost and by law condemned for their sins to everlasting destruction? To offer Christ and His fullness or to invite men to receive Him provided they be sincere, sensible sinners, duly convinced and humbled, and who hunger and thirst after righteousness is to contradict all the gracious offers of God in Scripture and to embarrass the consciences of men, as they who are the most sensible and sincere are the most sensible of their own stupidity and dissimulation. Nothing spiritually good can proceed from a heart under that law which is the strength of sin or from a heart which is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked—a carnal mind, enmity against God. If any such good thing could be found in a Christless person, it would necessarily exclude him from all right to salvation through Jesus, who was sent to seek and save that which was lost and is not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. The persons who labor and are heavy laden, whom He invites to His rest, are such as have fatigued themselves in sinful, carnal, and self-righteous conduct and are laden with the guilt and power of their sins and the weight of their troubles, as well as those who are burdened with some sense of their guilt and misery. The thirsty, who are invited by Him, are such as spend their money for that which is not bread and their labor for that which satisfies not. 4. In dealing with sinners, he must take no roundabout way of recommending preparation for receiving Christ but urge them to come directly to Him—guilty, polluted, and wicked as they are—that their sinful state and nature may be not rectified or amended but wholly changed by union with Him. This ministerial labor to make them sensible of their sinfulness; of the guilt, wretchedness, and danger of their natural condition; and of the fearful folly and criminality of continuing to refuse Christ offered to them—this labor to make them sensible of Christ’s infinite excellency, love, loveliness, fullness, suitableness, readiness, and earnestness to help and save them—is not designed to employ them in preparing themselves but is the using of those instituted means by which God introduces His Son, and all His salvation, into the heart. It is but a clearing of the way for their reception of Him. It demonstrates their need and drives them to Christ as they are. It demonstrates that they bear the characters of those invited to Christ and that He and His fullness of salvation exactly correspond with their infinite necessities. He must not call them to reading or hearing of God’s Word or to prayer, meditation, or any other instituted ordinance as means of preparing themselves for Christ but as Christ’s appointed means of meeting with and laying hold on their souls and of bestowing on them His righteousness and grace. I am affectionately yours, John Brown