The Child of Liberty in Legal Bondage or, The Son and Heir in the Servant's Yoke. A Sermon, Preached at Monkwell Street Meeting, Sept. 9, 1794, by William Huntington (1745-1813)"I am shut up, I cannot come forth." Psalm 88:8 "Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke." Jeremiah 31:18 TO MR. HUNTINGTON. London, Sept, 10, 1794. Rev. and dear Sir, As I understand you are frequently troubled, and put to unnecessary expense, with impertinent and unedifying letters, I humbly beg excuse for troubling you again at this time, hoping you will not have reason at least to complain of the impertinence of this letter, how much soever of its ignorance; and not at all of its expense. I…

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage," Gal. 5:1 When the apostle came first into the regions of Galatia, he and his message were most cordially received. His personal deformity, which he calls the temptation in his flesh, they despised not, but received him as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. The weight and power of the message counter balanced all the unsightliness of the messenger. The joyful tidings that he brought so excited their gratitude, that they would have pulled out their own eyes, and given them to Paul. But love soonest hot is soonest cold. Paul withdraws from these regions, to lengthen the cords of Zion,…

I come now to treat of this spirit of bondage, and the workings of it; and, when I have so done, shall appeal to the experience of all real believers; and I verily think that, where the redoubtable Mr. Hector has one believer's voice against it, I shall have an hundred for it, because I know that God's saints are in the path of tribulation, where Hector never was. In discoursing on the operation of this spirit of bondage, I shall 1. Treat of the darkness that attends it. 2. Of servile or slavish fear. 3. Of narrowness and contraction. 4. Of wrath and sensible anger. 5. Of suspicion and cruel jealousy. 6. Of rebellion and discontent. 7. Of despondency and desperation. 8. Of sensible…

2. Of the fear that attends this spirit of bondage. By which I do not mean filial fear; for that is a grace of the Holy Spirit, planted in the heart by him, and has the goodness of God in Christ for its object. This fear is a reverential awe of a good and gracious God, that presents us under his watchful eye, and him always before our eyes. This fear is a little sentinel, one of the post army of grace, Song vi. 13. For the church is a company of two armies, grace and corruption, which war against each other. This fear is to keep us from departing from God, in which we are counselled to walk. "My son, be thou in the…

3. To treat of the narrowness and contraction of soul that attends a believer under the influences of this spirit of bondage. This legal spirit closes the heart, and bars it up against every warm, cheerful, savoury, and unctuous Christian; yea, such an one will even shun their company and their sight; finding a heart to embrace none, to receive none, to commune with none, no, nor even to seek fellowship with any but those that are in shackles, bondage and slavery, as well as himself. "Like love its like." Hence the Galatians received the Judaizing teachers and their companions, who crept into houses, cordially; they were zealously affected by them, and zealously attached to them; even to the danger of excluding Christ himself. But,…

4. To treat of the wrath that works in us, which is this spirit of bondage. "The law worketh wrath," Rom. iv. 15. All that the broken law ministers, reveals, or works, in a man, is the anger, displeasure, indignation, and wrath of God at the sins of men; which wrath is revealed in the law against all ungodliness, and is treasured up there. Fury is not in me, saith the Lord. It is not in him as considered and viewed by the eye of faith in Christ. Here God cannot, God will not, be wroth with us; but get back to the law, and there we are sure to feel it, as nothing but wrath and death can be found in that broken covenant,…