Anne Dutton's
Letters on Spiritual Subjects
Dear Sir,
I am glad that you see your own exceeding vileness. The exceeding riches of
God's free grace in using you will be thereby the more abundantly displayed
in your sight. We are indeed, Sir, in what the Lord does by us, "like the
tools that the workman takes into his hand, by which he does his work as
pleases him;" only there is this difference—the workman chooses tools that
are fit for his work, and not such as will be troublesome and offensive to
him therein. But the Lord chooses the worst, the basest, the vilest
things to work with, that the excellency of the power might be of God
and not of us, and the exceeding riches of His grace displayed—while our
unworthiness and vileness serve as a foil to commend and reflect His
infinite glory!
I an sure of this—that the Lord takes the worst, else He
had never taken vile, provoking me, to do the least service by. But so it
is, because grace reigns, and forever shall free grace have all the glory,
while I, humbled before the majesty thereof and happy under its glorious
shine, do loath myself in my own sight for all my abominations.
The Lord can work by whom He will. And to show His
power and grace, He takes the most unworthy and unfit, and makes them fit
for His work. He puts a value upon worthless worms as if they were well
deserving, and upon their work as if it was well done, whereas, all the good
that was done was from Himself, and all the evil that attended us in doing
of it He casts into the depths of the sea—into the infinite depths of His
pardoning grace and the merit of the Redeemer's blood. This is the Lord!
This is our God!
Truly, we are like knotty, cross-grained wood, which
requires much skill, labor, and patience in the workman that works it, and a
variety of instruments to be used upon it to bring it to that order, beauty
and usefulness which other wood is easily wrought unto. But the Lord, our
glorious worker, will not give over working upon such knotty, cross-grained
pieces as we, nor will He ever become weary of His work, because, in His
infinite, free, unchangeable love, He has taken us into His own hand to work
us for Himself, and is firmly resolved that He will off with all our knots
and ruggedness, whatever it cost Him, whatever ways and means to effect it,
and put such a beauty, usefulness, and glory upon us, even upon us, the
worst pieces that could be found, as therein and thereby to show His art,
power, and patience as God, and the exceeding riches of His grace, upon us
the vessels of mercy, whom in His eternal counsels and designs, He had afore
prepared unto endless glory.
He is resolved to bring us up to that pattern of glory
which He had in His eye; to make us perfectly conformed to the image of His
Son in holiness and glory; and for this great good, all things, as so many
instruments in His hand, the great, the Almighty Agent does jointly,
harmoniously and continually work together.