"THE GLORIOUS LIBERTY THERE IS IN THE TRUTH."
A Sermon Delivered by WILLIAM SAVERY, 7th month 19th , 1796, at
Houndsditch Meeting, London.)
Five Sermons and a Prayer, Delivered at the Meetings of the Society of
Friends in England, by William Savery. Taken in Short Hand by Job Sibley.
Newtown, PA: Printed by William C. Coale, 1804.
This is The Quaker Homiletic Online Anthology, Section 2: The 18th Century.
There are certain obligations that are the same in all nations and countries; and I
would not have you believe, my friends, that when I spoke of the outward and
typical things, such as washing, such as abstaining from blood and things
strangled, which are not observed in the present day by large numbers of
Christians, that I meant to censure any part of the moral Law. No: I believe it
never can be dispensed with; but the whole of those things that the council of
Jerusalem forbade, are [not] forbidden in all nations as an eternal decree. I
thought I might so far explain upon this head, as I do not know, my dear friends,
when it may please the Lord to bring me with you again. I feel my heart bound in
affection to many of the citizens of London, I wish their everlasting welfare; I
seek not you, nor anything that is yours to myself; but all men and my own soul
also, to God; that we may with reverence of soul seek him if happily we may
find him; that those that are convinced by the light of Christ in their consciences,
of what their duty is to God, may, with child-like submission and obedience to
his holy will, conform to it in all things; for if it has pleased God to enlighten
thee in any matter or thing, as soon as he is pleased to show thee what thou
oughtest to do, and thou neglectest thy duty therein, then thou becomest
condemnable before him; no man will be condemned for that which God hath
not shown him; but I believe it possible for men to neglect the means of
obtaining the knowledge of the will of God. Not being serious enough, not
seeking it in the way it is to be found. Not asking wisdom of him who gives
liberally to all men and upbraideth none. Our all is at stake. If I am an enthusiast
in these things, the Lord preserve me an enthusiast to the end of my days. I
believe that the whole world, and all the advantages any can obtain, will be
indeed as the smallest dust in the balance against the salvation of the immortal
soul; therefore it is that I am serious, and concerned for my own soul and for
those of others. And I believe that if those who are convinced of the ways of
Truth and Righteousness, if they with simplicity of soul acknowledge the truth,
and live in the truth of the divine law, they will not only have a gladdening hope
of a glorious immortality in the world to come; but they will also be favoured
with an hundredfold of peace and joy in this life. I think I know it from some
degree of experience, I never knew what true and real enjoyment was in the
Lord's temporal blessings, till it pleased him to touch my heart and bring me to a
sense of my state, and of obedience to him. I am firmly persuaded that the way
the Lord Jesus Christ has cast up for those that will finally be heirs of his
kingdom, is neither gloomy, nor improper for a reasonable, sensible, dignified
mind to walk in; there is liberty enough, there is room enough; we do not want
to rob you of anything; neither did your Redeemer and Saviour, that was truly
valuable even in the enjoyment of the present world, not of any temporal
blessing which God has granted; the true and solid enjoyment of them is found
only by a truly religious mind. Oh! the glorious liberty there is in the truth as it is
in Jesus! What are all the opinions of men in comparison to it? how trifling, how
light, their senseless contradictions; they are ever changing! There is, my friends,
a glorious and blessed liberty in the truth as it is in Jesus, that I would to God all
men might enjoy; that so his Church might once more put on her beautiful
garments: that all those uncharitable dispositions which are harboured by some,
though I hope in this enlightened day, not by a great many, may be removed;
God is doing them away, seeking thus his own work; he is abolishing those
things which kept us so long at a distance secretly, and will bring them to
nought; this is my opinion; and more and more charity will prevail: let us
cherish, let us with one accord be willing to live in it, and to die in it; then
indeed shall we embrace one another as brethren. There will be no such thing as
hurting, or doing one another an injury: the peaceable kingdom of Jesus Christ
our Saviour, being established and set up in the hearts of men, would put an end
to war, and all the horrors appending to it in the world. Oh! that men might once
more embrace one another as brethren, and enjoy the glorious liberty of children
of one common family.