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the Rock
By Thomas Willcox
( S e l e c t e d Q u o t e s )
Honey out of the Rock. Psalm 81:16.
A word of advice to my own heart and yours. - You are a religious person, and partake of all the ordinances. You do well: they are glorious privileges: but if you have not the blood of Christ at the root of your religion, it will wither, and prove but painted pageantry to go to hell in. . . .
If you retain guilt and self-righteousness under it, those vipers will eat out all the vitals of it at length. Try and examine with greatest strictness every day, what ground your religion and hope of glory is built upon, whether it was laid by the hand of Christ If not, it will never be able to endure the storm that must come against it; Satan will throw it all down, and great will be the fall thereof, Matt. 7:27. . . .
You that glory in being a Christian, you shall be winnowed. Every vein of your profession will be tried to purpose. It is terrible to have it all come tumbling down, and to find nothing but itself to stand upon. . . .
Consider, the greatest sins may be hid under the greatest duties, and the greatest terrors. See that the wound that sin has made in your soul be perfectly cured by the blood of Christ! not skinned over with duties, humblings and enlargements. Apply what you will besides the blood of Christ, it will poison the sore. You will find that sin was never mortified truly, if you have not seen Christ bleeding for you upon the cross. Nothing can kill it, but beholding Christ's righteousness. . . .
Nature can afford no balsam fit for soul cure. Healing from duty, and not from Christ, is the most desperate disease. Poor, ragged nature, with all its highest improvements, can never spin a garment fine enough (without spot) to cover the soul's nakedness. Nothing can fit the soul for that use but Christ's perfect righteousness. . . .
Men talk bravely of believing, whilst whole and sound; few know it. Christ is the mystery of the scripture; grace the mystery of Christ. Believing is the most wonderful thing in the world. Put any thing of your own to it, and you spoil it. Christ will not so much as look at it for believing. When you believe and come to Christ, you must leave behind you your own righteousness, and bring nothing but your sin: (Oh, that is hard!) leave behind all your holiness, sanctification, duties, humblings, and so on; and bring nothing but your wants and miseries, or else Christ is not fit for you, nor you for Christ. Christ will be a pure Redeemer and Mediator, and you must be an undone sinner, or Christ and you will never agree. It is the hardest thing in the world to take Christ alone for righteousness: that is to acknowledge Him Christ. Join anything to Him of your own, and you un-Christ Him. . . .
Whatever comes in when you go to God for acceptance, besides Christ, call it anti-Christ; bid it begone; make only Christ's righteousness triumphant. All besides that is Babylon, which must fall if Christ stand, and you shall rejoice in the day of the fall thereof, Isa. 14:4. Christ alone did tread the winepress, and there was none with Him, Isa. 63:3. If you join anything to Christ, Christ will trample upon it in fury and anger, and stain His raiment with the blood of it. You think it easy to believe. Was ever your faith tried with an hour of temptation, and a thorough sight of sin? Was it ever put to grapple with Satan, and the wrath of God lying upon the conscience, when you were in the mouth of hell and the grave? then did God show you Christ a ransom and a righteousness; then you could day, "Oh! I see grace enough in Christ." You may say that which is the greatest word in the world, believe. Untried faith is uncertain faith. . . .
To believing, there must go a clear conviction of sin, and the merits of the blood of Christ, and of Christ's willingness to save upon this consideration, merely, that you are a sinner; things all harder than to make a world. All the power in nature cannot get up so high in a storm of sin and guilt as really to believe there is any grace, any willingness in Christ to save. When Satan charges sin upon the conscience, then for the soul to charge it upon Christ, that is gospel-like: that is to make Him Christ. He serves for that use, to accept Christ's righteousness alone, His blood alone for salvation, that is the sum of the gospel. When the soul, in all duties and distress, can say, "Nothing but Christ, Christ alone, for righteousness, justification, sanctification, redemption," 1 Cor. 1:30; not humblings, not duty, not graces: that soul has got above the reach of the billows. . . .
All temptations, Satan's advantages, and our complainings, are laid in self-righteousness, and self-excellency. God pursues these, by setting Satan upon you, as Laban did Jacob for his images. These must be torn from you, be as unwilling as you will. These hinder Christ from coming in; and till Christ comes in, guilt will not go out; and where guilt is, there is hardness of heart: and therefore much guilt argues very little if anything of Christ. . . .
When guilt is raised up, take heed of getting it allayed in any way but by Christ's blood: that will tend to hardening. Make Christ your peace; "for he is our peace." Eph. 2:14; not your duties and your tears. Christ your righteousness, not your graces. You may destroy Christ by duties, as well as by sins. Look at Christ, and do as much as you will. Stand with all your weight upon Christ's righteousness. Take heed of having one foot on your righteousness, another on Christ's. Till Christ come and sit on high upon a throne of grace in the conscience, there is nothing but guilt, terrors, secret suspicions; the soul hanging between hope and fear, which is an ungospel-like state. . . .
When we come to God, we must bring nothing but Christ with us. Any ingredients, or any previous qualifications of our own, will poison and corrupt faith. He that builds upon duties, etc., knows not the merits of Christ. This makes believing so hard, so far above nature. If you believe, you must every day renounce, as dung and dross, Phil. 3:7,8, your privileges, your obedience, your baptism, your sanctification, your duties, your graces, your tears, your meltings, your humblings, and nothing but Christ must be held up. Every day your workings, your self- sufficiency must be destroyed. You must take all out of God's hand. Christ is the gift of God, John 4:10. Faith is the gift of God, Eph. 2:8. Pardon, a free gift, Isa. 45:22. Ah, how nature storms, frets, rages at this, that all is of gilt and it can purchase nothing with its actings and tears and duties, that all workings are excluded, and of no value in heaven. . . .
And God intends that you should look on Him, for He has set Him on a high throne of glory, in the open view of all poor sinners who desire Him. You have infinite reason to look on Him, no reason at all to look away from Him: for He is meek and lowly of heart, Matt. 11:29. He will do that Himself which He requires of His creature, namely bear with infirmities, Rom. 15:1. Not pleasing Himself, not standing upon points of law, ver. 2. He will restore with the spirit of meekness, Gal. 6:1. and bear your burdens, ver. 2. He will forgive, not only till seven times, but seventy times seven, Matt. 18:21, 22. It put the faith of the apostle to it to believe this, Luke 17:4, 5. Because we are hard to forgive, we think Christ is hard. . . .
That Christ which natural free-will can apprehend, is but a natural Christ of a man's own making, not the Father's Christ, nor Jesus the Son of the living God, to whom none can come without the Father's drawing, John 6:44. . . .
Finally, search the scriptures daily as mines of gold in which the heart of Christ is laid open. Watch against sins to which you are prone, see them in their vileness, and they shall never break out into act. Keep always an humble, empty, broken frame of heart, sensitive to any spiritual misconduct, observing all inward workings, fit for the highest communications. Keep not guilt in the conscience, but apply the blood of Christ immediately. God charges sin and guilt upon you to make you look to Christ, the brazen serpent. . . .
Abide in your calling. Be dutiful to all relations as to the Lord. Be content with little of the world; little will serve. Think little of the earth, not much, because unworthy of the least. Think much of heaven, not little, because Christ is so rich and free. Think every one better than yourself, and always carry self-loathing about you, as one fit to be trampled upon by all saints. See the vanity of the world, and the doom of all earthly things; and love nothing but Christ. Mourn to see so little of Christ in the world; so few wanting Him; trifles please them better. To a self-secure soul Christ is but a fable, the scriptures but a story. Mourn to think how many are under baptism and church-order, who are not under grace, looking much after duty, obedience, little after Christ, little versed in grace. Prepare for the cross; welcome it; bear it triumphantly like Christ's cross, whether scoffs, mockings, jeers, contempt, imprisonments, and so on, but see it be Christ's cross not your own. . . .
NOTE: If anyone has or has access to the works of Thomas Willcox, and is able to photo copy anything, PLEASE let me know so we can make them available to the Saints. This brother had a real grasp of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
JAD-ATS