Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/72

68 This is what is meant by man's being an organ of life, or a form adapted to the reception of love in his will, and of wisdom in his understanding; these two constituting the essential principles of life flowing into him from the Lord. But as he was created to be both useful and happy, and these ends could not be attained, unless he were placed in a condition favourable to the active exercise of his talents, in other words, unless the influent life appeared to him to be his own property, and entirely at his own disposal, therefore such appearance was and is granted him by the Lord, yet under this especial condition, that he shall live in the perpetual acknowledgment, that it is not really his own, but the Lord's in him, who alone is life in himself. This also is agreeable to the Sacred Scripture, which expressly teaches, that there is only one fountain of life, from which all created beings from moment to moment derive their existence; and that the same life is communicated to all in the spiritual world, and to all in the natural world, but is received differently by each, according to the quality of the recipient subject.

IT is an important doctrine of the true christian religion, that man is gifted with, and continually preserved in, a state of freedom of determination in things spiritual, equally as well as in things natural; since without such freedom man would possess neither faith nor charity; nay, the Word itself, with all it's injunctions to repentance and amendment of life, would be of no use, and consequently no church could possibly exist. But by virtue of free-will in spiritual things, the conjunction of man with the Lord,