In my last to you I have only objected to the mere obsolete and unmeaning phrase—the moral law a believer’s rule of life. I beg you to bear in mind, I do not say it is not a rule, but I maintain it is an insufficient rule of conduct for a believer under the gospel dispensation. If it had been a sufficient rule, why all the laws of Christ given as set forth in the preceptive parts of the New Testament? The doctrine of the gospel are the rules of our faith, and the precepts delivered to the churches, the rules of our conduct: this is a truth which cannot be overthrown—for asserting the above, it is surprising the enmity of the advocates of the law of Moses, as they call themselves, manifest against those who differ from them; yea, they would persecute them to bonds and to death. This is evident in the life of the late truly experimental, devout, and faithful Mr. W. Huntington, a man truly devoted to God; nor could his vigilant enemies find a single fault in his moral deportment, although they tried for it all his days; those serpents were disappointed of their food in this particular; God blessed and kept him—owned his message to thousands; and, while the Lord has a church upon earth, most of his writings will be of signal service to God’s own family; yet he was made the butt of spite and malice, ridicule, and contempt; nor could the rage of an empty professor be ever so excited, than to hear of persons attending his ministry; workmen and servants discharged from their situations by great professors; wives, husbands, neighbours, and relations, persecuting each other on this account; pastors cutting off members without mercy, when they had been starved under their ministry, and went in search of food under the ministry of that man of God. Preachers, when sadly off for a subject, had only to introduce the frightful Antinomian, and this filled up the time. A very rev. gentleman loaded him with every ill-natured and low-life name he could; like Esau of old, whose conduct is strongly reprobated in the book of _Obadiah_, to which I must refer you. This elder brother fled from town to town, place to place, and house to house, to oppose, traduce, misrepresent, and vilify the Lord’s servant; but, as Mr. H. was a brother in Christ, in the faith of the gospel, and the love of the Spirit, sad must be the state of that man who manifests such hatred? See the epistles of _John_, then draw an inference. What a mercy for us, who are dubbed Antinomians, that the civil sword is not in the hands of these Balaams; {114} you may partly judge how they would serve such asses as we are. It is a good remark I have met with—the name Antinomian, we view as a kind of scare-bird, which the devil hangs up in the pulpits of hypocrites, on purpose to keep the Lord’s doves from flying to their windows; and it has happened to this figure, as it often does to an image set up in a cherry-tree, it will frighten the birds for