Huntington, William
A Letter to the Rev. Torial Joss
London, 1V94

YALE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

A LETTER

TO

THE REV. TORIAL JOSS,
MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL,
Tabernacle Walk.

By WILLIAM HUNTINGTON, 8.S.
MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL
AT PROVIDENCE CHAPEL, LITTLE TITCHFIELD-STREET,
AND AT MONKWELL-STREET MEETING.

LONDON:
Printed for the Author, and sold by G. Tjbbet, No. 54, Paternoster Row. -Jfc
Sold also at Providence Chapel on Monday and Wednesday Evenings, and at
Monkwell-Street Meeting on Tuesday Evenings.

1794.
REPRINTED, 1850,

TO
The Rev. T. JOSS.

REV. AND DEAR SIR,
" Grace, mercy, and peace, be with thee."
It is with some degree of grief that I frequently hear of
your bearing- so hard upon me as an Antinomian, in your
pulpit. You, who heard the whole of my testimony, and
the confession of my faith, and my call to the ministry at
my ordination; you, who publicly declared, before the
whole audience, that God was the author of it, and that
this you should never be at a loss to prove while you was
in possession of a bible. And in this faith your hands,
with the rest of the presbytery, were laid upon my head,
attended with an humble prayer to God to bless my labours,
which he has condescended to do to this day. You then
desired me to take my axe and go to work. I did so, and
have kept hard at it ever since ; and I took the same axe
that the Lord's forerunner did ; and endeavoured to lay it
to the root of the trees, by cutting at their legal and partial
obedience

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Obedience, at their birth privileges, and at their form of
godliness without the power, warning such hypocrites to
fly from the wrath to come ; and have enforced repentance
toward God, and fruits meet to prove it genuine, and
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ ; and that he that be
lieves on him is not condemned, nor ever shall be; but is
justified freely from all things; but ' he that believes not is
condemned already, and the wrath of God abides upon
him.' But then, why does my good old father cut at me
for this good work ? it is doing the work of an evangelist,
and making full proof of the ministry. I know what I
say in these things, and whereof I affirm. I am at a point
when I preach them, and I am at a certainty in the faith of
them. I do not like partiality. My good old father has
laid his hands upon some who have told all the world that
they were nothing but impostors ; but then they escaped
without being called Antinomians; this honourable title
falls to me, who, by the way, and through the good hand
of God, have brought more honour to them than all that
they ever set apart before or since.
Last Wednesday night at the Tabernacle my good old
father was very warm, and rather violent. But there
were some present who could prove the apostle's assertion
to be true — that those, who desire to be teachers of the
law, know not what they say, nor whereof they affirm.
And thou, Reverend Sir, art the man; you cleared nothing,
you proved nothing, you settled nothing. " But my prin
ciples are horrid." Here is the charge, but no proof to
support it. Is is horrid to say that we were shut up under a

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a schoolmaster till faith comes, and when it is come we are
no longer under a schoolmaster? To assert that we are
redeemed from under the law, delivered from the law, and
divorced from the law, that we might be married to another;
yea, become dead to the law by the body of Christ, and
espoused to him, that we might bring forth fruit unto God ?
Is it horrible to say that the law of faith, which is the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, makes me free from
the destroying power of the law of sin, and from the law
of death, engraven on tables of stone, and from the
bondage of it? Does looking into the perfect law of
liberty, and continuing therein, bring nothing to a man's
heart but horrid principles, and nothing to his life but
horrid practice? I read that such a man shall be blessed
ire his deed, though not for it; which shews that such a
law inclines him to good deeds, and the very doing is at
tended with the blessing of heaven. These things, Sir, do
not lead to licentious living: it is the proud doer that lives
in sin ; all that are in the flesh, and under the law, bring
forth fruit unto death. Sin has dominion over every man
that is under the law; nor will it ever be subdued till
under grace. Where the covenant of life and peace is
revealed with power, there the law of truth will be both in
the heart and in the mouth; and such, and only such, will
walk with God in peace and equity. And this doctrine
maintained will turn many away from iniquity ; Mai. ii. 5, 6;
while the opposite party will cause many to stumble at the
law, by being partial in it, and not using it lawfully to
those persons for whom it was made ; namely, for the law less

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less and disobedient, for the ungodly, and for sinners, &c.
But my good old father had another throw, " That I made
" no difference between the moral law and the ceremonial."
But this charge had no more to support it than the other.
When Paul tells the Romans to reckon themselves dead to
the law, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ ; and the
Galatians, that if they sought perfection in the flesh, and
righteousness by the works of the law, then Christ should
profit them nothing ; and the Collossians, that the hand
writing against them was nailed to the cross ; and the
Corinthians, that the law engraven upon tables of stone
was done away and abolished, 2 Cor. chap. iii. ver. 7,
11 , 12, 13 — does he mean the ceremonial law ? if he
does, let Mr. Joss tell us when that law was given to the
Romans, &c &c.
I never read that God ever brought the Gentiles under
the ceremonial law at all. It is true, the Gentiles might
steal some things from the Jews, and especially the things
of their altars and sacrifices, and adopt them into their
heathen worship ; but then we are told that those things
which the Gentiles sacrificed they sacrificed to devils, not
to God ; for God never gave that law to them, thai I read
of; and so, according to Mr. Joss, Paul preached up
among the heathen deliverance from the bondage of a law
they were never under. But this fruitless toil can never
be ascribed to so wise a master builder. It is not to be
found in Paul's writings, though it is in Mr. Joss's words.
But father Joss says he never expects " to be delivered
" from a law, which commands him to love God with all
"his

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" his heart and with all his soul." The Antinomian that
Mr. Joss cuts at loves his Maker as much as ever Mr. Joss
did. But I am determined, by the grace of God, to be
honest in this matter, and not make people believe that
my love to God comes by the law, or that it sprung up in
my heart while I was under the law ; or that it flowed
into my heart as a fruit of my obedience to the law : for
this is giving the lie both to God and conscience ; for ' the
carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject
to the law of God, nor can be;' nor does love come by
the law, nor faith, nor life ; nor is love of the law ; nor is
it obtained by obedience to the law ; nor is it communicated
by the preaching of the law ; for God neither works mi
racles, nor ministers the Spirit, by the works of the law,
but by the preaching of faith. God's self-moving love to
his elect was fixed upon them from everlasting, before the
creation of the world, consequently before ever the law was
given. This love is secured and promised to us in Christ
Jesus, and not in the law, which worketh wrath — quite the
reverse of love. This love is free in its fountain, free in
its channel, free in the administration of it, and free in its
operation. ' I will love them freely,' irrespective of works,
worth, or worthiness. God's love ' is shed abroad in the
heart by the Holy Ghost freely given to us ;' which ever-
blessed Spirit is the Spirit of promise ; a free gift to us ;
whose first fruit is love, and real love is perfect liberty, and
a perfect deliverance from the yoke of bondage, from the
law of works, from the fear of its curse, and from the
torment that it threatens. Now, if father Joss has ever
received

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received the love of God, he must have received it in
this channel, and in no other ; and, if he has received it,
why does he boast as if he had not ? The law does not
exclude boasting. Why does he palm his love to God
upon the helpless commandment, which commandment is
weak through the flesh, and can afford no help to us in
this matter? And shall I stand up before an audience, and
preach up and plead for the law, and talk of my love to
God, and call it my obedience to the law, and so degrade
the sovereign bounty of heaven, and Jesus Christ, the
grand medium of all conveyance ? If a man loves God, it
is because God first loved him; and, if the righteousness
of Christ is on the sinner, and the love of God in his
heart, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in him.
This I allow, but it is not fulfilled by him; for both
righteousness and love are freely bestowed upon un
righteous persons, who are avowed enemies to God, and
to all godliness.
Let us be honest, father Joss, and not cry up our
obedience to the law, but the unmerited mercy of God in
Christ to such poor, cursed, hell-bred sinners as we were,
who were by sin the slaves of Satan, and by nature the
children of wrath. When I met you in the Tabernacle
vestry at Bristol, I gave you an opportunity to dispute this
point with me. I brought it upon the carpet on purpose,
but you declined, and fell in with all I said, without con
tradicting a word. You blessed me for my faithful testi
mony, delivered before you and three thousand more, and
begged God's blessing on it, aud gave me the right hand of

( 9 )
of fellowship, and wished me success in the work. I
am the same man now that I was then. At Stroud, in
Gloucestershire, you told au inquirer that you did not
like me at all. Be it so. I always liked you. But at
Greenwich, when in company with a friend of mine, you
liked me much, and my doctrine too. Let us lay by this
walking in craftiness; but, above all, lay by handling the
word of God deceitfully. You have been so long used to
say ' a confederacy ' to all the Tabernacle connection, and
to conform to all that venerable society, by conniving at
some reproof-worthy, countenancing others who ought to
be shunned, and cutting at others out of complaisance to the
rest, that I much fear you have lost a good deal of that
tenderness, feeling, conscientiousness, honesty, upright
ness, and faithfulness, that is required in a steward of
God. It is not shaping a profession, a conversation, and
a ministry, to every person's humour, temper, principles,
and empty profession, nor fawning over a parcel of old
women, that can be called doing the work of an evangelist.
Grying up old Wesley, that enemy of all divine righteous
ness, in one pulpit, and preaching eternal election in
another, is preaching to please men with a witness : but
this is not the characteristic of a good minister of Jesus
Christ. God has instructed me with too strong a hand to
suffer me to walk in this way. Sending persons to heaven
who were never converted, and in whom or by whom the
Spirit never spoke, and who sought and preached them
selves, not the Lord Jesus, and who have left nothing
behind them but a testimony against their own souls, is
assuming

( io )
assuming an authority which God has not granted ; and to
charge persons with horrid principles, which you cannot
disprove, is no better. If you choose to dispute this point
with me, undertake it; if not, don't fight against God,
nor his grace, lest he serve you as he did Evans at Bristol.
You are not equal at present to this task. Your conformity
has dried up a good deal of the moisture and power of
your right arm, and your right eye is not a little darkened ;
you are not so bright as you were. Be a little more faith
ful ; separate the vile from the precious ; don't aim to
please all, lest your profiting appear to none. Congrega
tions that are like a parish pudding, made up of all manner
of ingredients, are not true churches of Christ. Armi
nians, Moravians, Socians, Arians, Pharisees, andCalvinists,
all huddled together, and a ministry shaped to please such
a convocation, must veil the wise, and varnish the fool;
starve the saint, and feed the hypocrite. This is Tabernacle
and Tottenham work. And sure I am that God will purge
his floor ; and, if it is not done by the faithful preaching of
his word, he will do it by the sword of war, by the wind-
fan of damnable errors, by more faithful labourers raised
up, or by persecution unto blood. And the present or
rising generation of the righteous will have to thank the
linsey-woolsey preachers of the present day for it; and,
among the rest, the dissimulating captain Joss.
My good friend knows that many have laboured long
and hard in reproaching me ; but what have they gained
by it ? Poor old father Woodgate toiled at it till he lost
the favour of many of his friends, which so filled him with
jealousy

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jealousy that he became delirious and useless. Mr. Morton
pursued the same till his charge dismissed him ; Mr. Meyer
went on till he got into prison ; Mr. Watts laboured at it
till he called preaching free grace rocking the devil's
cradle, who has since been laid aside as a dry tree ; Mr.
Barnet, at Lewes in Sussex, till the congregation turned
him out, and he got another place built in expectation tliat
many would follow him, (but not four did ;) Mr. Garret,
at Basingstoke, went on with the same till the people
despised him, and he left the place at midnight ; Mr. Evans
went on till God struck him first dumb, and then mad,
and at last sent him to his grave ; and Mr. Gwynnep has
toiled, till he is so shut up that he cannot come forth,
either with a mouthful of truth, or a grain of common
sense ; as a sermon of his now in my possession shews ;
and, as for Maria and John Ryland, they are no more :
and I believe the captain will get no more honour from
God than these did. My testimony for Christ is the same
that it was when you so much applauded it. If this
shooting is intended to thin my followers, it has all been
hitherto in vain. I have above three thousand even in
London to this day. If it is intended to stop my useful
ness, it is in vain also ; for God still gives testimony to the
word of his grace. If it is intended to blacken my
character, it has had no effect. I can still shew my faith
by my works ; or, if it is intended to deter or frighten the
people, it has not succeeded ; they are bomb-proof, and I
stand manifested in their own consciences ; yea, they see
eye to eye with me, and a consistency and a certainty in
my

( 12 )¦:. -
my doctrine. • It is neither beating the air, blowing an
uncertain sound, nor running at an uncertainty. Grace
and works, service in the oldness of the letter and in the
newness of the Spirit, can never stand together. You
may at this work bring a deal of sin to your door, which
some future trial may awaken your conscience to let in ;
which will never be removed'b'y looking to the law, but by
doing as I do— looking to Jesiis, and trusting in him as the
sinner's all in all. Dying in faith has the promise of a
crown of lifej and nothing else ; and let it be your wisdom
to live as you would hope to die.
Rev. Sir,
I remain affectionately yours,
In the truth of the Gospel,
WM. HUNTINGTON, S. S.

Church-Street, Paddington,
March 25, 1794.

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