When Professors go on in a course of hypocritical friendship with Christ, he at last puts a period to their day of Grace. Thus he dealt with the unbelieving Jews, Luke 19:42. Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. Israel had her day of Grace, but now it's gone; now her Sun is set; now farewell to all Gospel Grace and offers; farewell to all wooings, and strivings of the Spirit of Grace with her: Oh! what a complicated, twisted, binding curse is here for all Christ's false friends? How much better were it to part with the Sun out of the firmament; yea, with life it self a thousand times over, than to bid Adieu to the day of Grace?Theophilus Gale, Theophilie: or a Discourse of the Saints Amitie with God in Christ (London: Printed by R. W. for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleet-street, 1671), 284. Some spelling modernized.
Observe the connections between the "day of Grace" that false professors or "Christ's false friends" receive with "Gospel grace," "offers," and the "wooings" and "strivings" of the "Spirit of Grace." In other words, for Gale, the common grace that perishing hypocrites receive is associated with the Gospel offer and the strivings (or will) of the Holy Spirit.
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Tony, are you on Twitter or Facebook? If not, I wish you'd consider joining and sharing some of your posts. Thanks, brother.
Hi Barry,
I am not presently using Twitter or Facebook. I did have a Facebook account until recently, but I closed it, at least for now. I was only using it to speak to one friend, and I didn't want to get caught up adding more and more people so as to spend even more time on the Internet. I MAY rejoin, but not now.
Also, I have such a low view of the nature of Twitter that I have been known to mock the use of it in phone calls with friends :-) However, I could see some validity in using it to let people briefly know about blog posts, recent theological discoveries, what I am reading, etc. For now, I am busy enough doing research behind the scenes, as David Ponter knows :-) If you would like to get in contact with me, Barry, feel free to shoot me an email [see Profile for the address]. Perhaps we could talk by phone some time as well, if you wanted.
Grace to you,
Tony
Thanks, Tony. I understand your low view of Twitter, but I do think it would be beneficial to others for you to tweet your posts. You can even use third party software to automate that process using your RSS feed. At that point, you could gradually tweet older posts that you felt merited attention.
Of course, if you did start using Twitter, you'd have to apologize to all of your friends for mocking them... :-)
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