how can you hold them fast? Can a man hold the wind in
the hollow of his hand, or keep a sound within it? You know no more but a
sound and a wind that passeth by your ear, without observing either truth
or life in it. But then again, you who understand these sound words, and
have "a form of knowledge, and of the letter of the law," what will that
avail you? You cannot hold it fast, except you have it within you, and it
is within you indeed when it is in your heart,--when the form of it is
engraven upon the very soul in love. Now, though you understand the sound
of these words, and the sound of truth in them, yet you receive not the
living image of them which is faith and love. Can you paint a sound? Can
you form it, or engrave it on any thing? Nay, but these sound words are
more substantial and solid. They must be engraven on the heart, else you
will never hold them. They may be easily plucked out of the mouth and hand
by temptation, unless they be enclosed and laid up in the secret of the
heart as Mary laid them. The truth must hold thee fast or thou canst not
hold it fast; it must captivate thee, and bind thee with the golden chains
of affection, which only is true freedom, or certainly thou wilt let it
go. Nay, you must not only have the truth received by love unto your heart
but, as the apostle speaks, you must also "hold fast the form of sound
words." Scripture words are sound words; the Scripture method of teaching
is sound and wholesome. There may be unsound words used in expressing true
matter, and if a man shall give liberty to his own luxuriant imagination
to expatiate in notions and expressions, either to catch the ear of the
vulgar, or to appear some new discoverer of light and gospel mysteries, he
may as readily fall into error and darkness as into truth and light. Some
men do brisk up old truths, Scripture truths, into some new dress of
language and notions and then give them out for new discoveries, new
lights, but in so doing, they often hazard the losing of the truth itself.
We should beware and take heed of strange words that have the least
appearance of evil such as _Christed_ and _Godded_.(137) Let us think it
enough to be wise according to the Scriptures, and suspect all that as
vain empty, unsound, that tends not to the increase of faith in Christ and
love and obedience unto him, as ordinarily the dialect of those called
Antinomians is. Giving, and not granting, that they had no unsound mind,
yet I am