COMMUNICATIONS.
For the Signs of the Times.
New Charlottesville, Va., May 29, 1846.
BROTHER BEEBE:—I herewith enclose, for publication—if you
please, not otherwise—a transcript of a letter written by Elder Wm. C. Luckett,
in answer to a request made by Brother Wesley Spiller, of Indiana.
By a mere casualty I happened to see this letter, and having
been exercised upon the subject of preaching in a manner not very dissimilar
from my dear Brother Luckett, I felt strengthened and encouraged, and the
thought striking me that others might derive comfort and encouragement from
reading it, I asked and obtained permission to copy and dispose of it as I
might please, (I love to do so I please,) and there being, I have thought, some
congeniality or cognation of mind existing between you and me, I have concluded
to send it to you, that you may have the pleasure of doing with it as you
please.
I have, as I’ve said, been exercised upon the subject of
preaching, in a manner very little dissimilar from that of my beloved Brother
Lauck, and yet my fears and doubts relative to the reality, legitimacy, and
authenticity of my call, are far, very far, from being either quieted or
dissipated, for in the matter of obedience I have fallen infinitely below and
behind my dear Bro. Lucket, who, you know, is an obedient, active, zealous,
laborious, energetic, efficient, and highly pleasing and acceptable preacher of
the everlasting and most glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. O! my God,
what am I? With shame and with deep contrition of soul, I am constrained to
acknowledge that I am the very reverse of all this, and if a preacher at all of
the Lord’s choosing, infinitely less than the least of all; and yet I sometimes
hope that “I know Grace of God I am what I am.” I am, I know, a poor sinner; a
poor, little, diminutive, isolated being; too proud and too independent in
spirit to seek popular favor by fawning, affliction, or compromise of
principle, and in circumstances too lowly to be thought worthy of any
particular notice, in this world, deserving of little and holding to deserve
less. I am—and I’m thankful for the boon—neither courted by the rich nor flattered
by the poor; and indulging the fancy sometimes, that I am indeed the Lord’s
Free Man, I take the liberty to think for myself in all matters of religion, to
speak what I think, (if I please) to write to whom I will, and when I will, and
upon what subjects as I please; as respects men I truckle to none, and yet am
in subjection; I fear none, and yet I am in dread; I care for none, and yet I
care for all; I love all, and yet I love but few; I war against none, and yet
I’m at war with all; I love and greatly desire peace, and yet I fry to arm to
arms to stem the high flood of folly to be found very prevalent, as appears
peace, where there is no peace. I fear for and not against men, but must raise
the hue and cry against spiritual wickedness in high places. I hate none of the
creatures of God, as they are his creatures, and I would greatly deprecate the
inflicting of a wound or an evil atrocity on any one poor fellow sinner. No, I
would not for the sake of wounding, hurt a hair of the head of any individual
even if a New School Baptist—for, as I’ve said—or even against men but against
what I conceive to be false doctrine and false or corrupt preachings in matters
of religion. I do not fight nor desire to fight with carnal, but with spiritual
weapons—weapons which are mighty through God, to the pulling down of the strong
holds of the wicked one.
I hate no New School Baptist, nor any other arminian; for
many of them I esteem highly for their moral worth and their high honorable
bearing in civil society. It is not them that I hate, it is only the filthy
rags of self-righteousness they have put on, that I hate—it is that false
light, that ignorance, that will-wisdom, or black-with-light, that I so deeply
abhor; that dark light by which I apprehend many of the weaklings of the flock
of Christ have been deceived and led away into Mystery Babylon, the mother of
harlots, and of all abominations; to whom I would say—come out of her midst,
turn hastily and blushingly from her foul embraces, flee for your lives lest ye
become partakers of her plagues.
I love the Old School Baptists as I love no other people,
because I believe they love him whom my soul loveth; who is the chiefest
amongst ten thousand and altogether lovely, and yet I do not love all the ways
and doings of too many of them. I do not love their bickerings, broils,
squabbles, revilings, babblings and whisperings; nor do I love their
lascivious, illiberal and penurious closefistedness in them, which often
withholds from the poor and needy that which they, as the stewards of the Lord,
ought to bestow, and which often muzzles the ox that treadeth out the corn. I
hope none will think that I speak in respect of myself, for I being, as I hope,
the Lord’s Free Man, and only present or absent try to preach when I think it
is expedient, am not the ox of the church, consequently the oxen me nothing in
a pecuniary point of view, and nothing do I either desire or expect—but the
faithful ox ought to be well provided for by labor. And again, I do not love in
Old School Baptists that spirit of affiliation or compromise in many of them,
which loosens and enfeebles the stake of fellowship, and blunts the powers
together that they may have an opportunity to join in what they call
associationality, with the known and avowed enemies of their order, and this
they do to save and conciliate the feelings of the New Divinity Doctors and
their deluded followers. Yes, they (many of the old fashioned Baptists,) so far
forget their allegiance to their prince that, for self ends, they will solemnly
sit down and hear these New School Doctors traduce, revile, misreport and
virtually deny their Lord and King,—the Head and Husband of the Bride—the
Lamb’s wife. O! how must the spirit of an affectionate, devoted husband be
grieved, when he knows that the wife of his bosom, for whom he would cheerfully
lay down his life, can composedly sit down and hear his foul enemy
misrepresent, vilify and abuse him, and not open her mouth in vindication of
his honor, or in any way show her disapprobation and disgust. And do not many
who claim to be the Bride—the Lamb’s wife, and are accounted to belong to this
very thing in running after and waiting upon the ministry, or rather vain
babbling of those false teachers who have gone out from us, seeking perverse
things to draw away disciples after them. O, my dear brethren, go not after
them, and be you careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God wherewith you are
sealed to the day of redemption.
What I have written, Brother Beebe, I have written, and now
submit to your arbitrament. I do not wish you, and I feel a confidence that you
will not publish anything from me, or from any other correspondent, merely to
feed the pride or gratify the vanity of the writer. And now, my dear brother,
farewell! May the Lord bless you and yours. May He cause your heart to abide in
strength, and you to be in nothing terrified by your adversaries. Your labors
and responsibilities are great. I feel for you, but I know you can rely upon
the promise—“As your days, so shall your
WM. W. COVINGTON.
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