Selected from: The Works of the Truly Pious and Learned Mr. Joseph Allan (Beith: John Shaw, 1806), 526-529.
To my most dearly beloved friends, the chosen of God in Taunton, grace and peace.
Most beloved Christians,
My heart is with you though I am absent, as to my bodily presence from you, and therefore as I have often already, so I have now written to you to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, and to call upon you for your steadfast continuing, and vigorous proceeding in the ways of God. Dear friends and fellow soldiers under Christ, the Captain of our salvation, consider your calling and station, and approve yourselves as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, as men of resolution and courage, be discouraged with no difficulties of your present warfare. As for human affairs, I would have you to be as you are, men of peace: I would have you armed not for resisting, God forbid, but for suffering only, as the Apostle hints: you should resist, even to the uttermost, striving against sin. Here you must give no quarter, for if you spare but one Agag, the life of your souls must go for the life of your sins: you must make no peace, for God will not smile on that soul that smiles on sin, nor have any peace with him, that is at peace with His enemy. Other enemies you must forgive, and love, and pray for (which I again desire you to mind as one special duty of the times) but for these spiritual enemies, all your affections, and all your prayers must be engaged against them; yea, you must admit no parley1parley – a conference between opposing sides in a dispute. It is dangerous to dispute with temptations. Remember what Eve lost by parleying with Satan: you must flee from temptations, and put them off at first with a peremptory2peremptory – insisting on immediate attention or obedience, especially in a brusquely assertive way denial. If you will but hear the devil’s arguments, and the flesh’s pleas and fair pretences, it is an hundred to one but you are ensnared by his sophistry. And for this present evil world, the Lord deliver you from its snares. Surely you had need watch and be sober, and use your spiritual weapons dexterously and diligently, or else this world is like to undo you and destroy you.
I have often warned you not to build upon an external happiness, and that you should promise yourselves nothing but hardship here. Oh, still remember your station: soldiers must not count upon rest and fulness, but hunger and hardness. Labour to get right apprehensions of the world. Do not think these things necessary; one thing is needful: you may be happy in the want of all outward comforts. Do not think yourselves undone, if brought to want or poverty. Study eternity, and you will see it to be little material to you, whether you are poor or rich; and that you may have never such an opportunity for your advantage in all your lives, as when you put all to hazard and seem to run the vessel upon the rocks. Set your enemies one against the other; death against the world: no such way to get above the world, as to put yourselves into the possession of death. Look often upon your dust that you shall be reduced to, and imagine you saw your bones tumbled out of your graves, as they are like shortly to be, and men handling your skulls, and enquiring, Whose is this? Tell me of what account will the world be then, what good will it do you? Put yourselves often into your graves, and look out from thence upon the world, and see what judgment you have of it then. Must not you be shortly forgot among the dead? Your places will know you no more, and your memory will be no more among men, and then what will it profit you to have lived in fashion and repute, and to have been men of esteem? One serious walk over the churchyard, as one speaks, might make a man mortified to the world. Think upon how many you tread, but you know them not: no doubt they had their estates, their friends, their trades, their businesses, and kept as much stir in the world as others do now. But alas! What are they better for any, for all this? Know you not that this must be our own case very shortly. Oh the unhappiness of deceived man! How miserably is he bewitched, and befooled, that he should expend himself for that which he knows shall for ever leave him. Brethren, I beseech you lay no stress upon these perishing things, but labour to be at a holy indifference about them. Is it for one that is in his wits to fell3fell – to cut, beat, or knock down his God, his conscience, his soul, for things that he is not sure to keep a week nor a day, and which he is sure after a few sleepings and wakings more, to leave behind him forever? Go and talk with dying men, and see what apprehensions they have of the world, if any should come to such titles of honour and delights, if you will now disown religion, or subscribe to iniquity, do you think such a notion would be embraced? Brethren, why should we not be wise in time? Why should we not now be of the mind of which we know we shall be all shortly? Woe to them that will not be wise, till it be to no purpose! Woe to them whose eyes nothing but death and judgment will open! Woe to them that though they have been warned by others, and have heard the world’s greatest darlings in death to cry out of its vanity, worthlessness, and deceitfulness, and have been told where and how it would leave them; yet would take no warning, but only must serve themselves to, for warnings to others. Ah, my beloved, beware there be no worldly professors among you that will part rather with their part in paradise than their part in Paris; that will rather part with their consciences than with their estates; that have secret reserves in hearts to save themselves whole, when it comes to the pinch, and not to be of the religion that will undo them in the world. Beware that none of you have your hearts where your feet should be, and love your mammon before your Maker. It is time for you to learn with Paul, to be crucified to the world.
Farewell, my dear brethren, farewell, and be strong in the Lord. I am yours to serve you in the gospel, whether by doing or suffering—Jos. Allan.
From the common gaol [jail] at Juelchester, June 31st, 1663.
