TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
An Eccentric English Vicar
JOHN BERRIDGE, M.A., of Clare Hall, Cambridge, friend of Wesley and Whitefield, wrote a letter which explains itself:
“My desire and intention in this letter is to inform you what the Lord has lately done for my soul. In order to do this, it may be needful to give a little previous information of my manner of life, from my youth up to the present time.
“When I was about the age of 14, God was pleased to show me that I was a sinner, and that I must be “born again” before I could enter into His kingdom. Accordingly I betook myself to reading, praying, and watching, and was enabled thereby to make some progress, as I flattered myself, in religion. In this manner I went on, though not always with the same diligence, till about a year ago. I thought myself on the right way to Heaven, though as yet I was wholly out of the way, and imagined I was travelling toward Zion, though I had never set my face thitherward. Indeed, God would have shown me that I was wrong, by not owning my ministry; but I paid no regard to this for a long time, imputing my want of success to the naughty hearts of my hearers, and not to my own naughty and unscriptural doctrine.
“You may ask, perhaps, ‘What was my doctrine?’ Why, it was the doctrine that every man naturally holds whilst he continues in an unregenerate state, that we are to be justified partly by our faith and partly by our works. This doctrine I preached for six years at a curacy which I served from college, and though I took some extraordinary pains, and pressed sanctification very earnestly, yet the people continued unsanctified as before, and not one soul was brought to Christ. There was, indeed, a little more of the form of religion in the parish, but not anything of its power.
“Now some secret misgivings arose in my mind that I was not right myself. (This happened about Christmas, 1755.) These misgivings grew stronger, and at last very painful. After about ten days, as I was sitting in my house one morning and musing on a text of Scripture, the following words were darted into my mind, and seemed indeed like a voice from Heaven: ‘Cease from thine own works.’ Before I heard these words my mind was in a very unusual calm; but as soon as I heard them my soul was in a tempest directly, and tears flowed from my eyes like a torrent. The scales fell from my eyes immediately, and now I clearly saw the rock I had been splitting on for nearly thirty years.
“Do you ask what this rock was? It was some secret reliance on my own works for salvation. ‘Doing, doing, doing.’ I had hoped to be saved partly in my own name, and partly in Christ’s Name, partly through my own works, and partly through Christ’s mercies; though we are told we are saved through faith, not of works (Eph 2:8-9). I hoped to make myself acceptable to God partly through my own good works; though we are told we are accepted in the Beloved (Eph 1:6). I hoped to make my peace with God partly through my own obedience to the law; though I am told that peace is only to be had by faith (Rom 5:1). I hoped to make myself a child of God by sanctification; though we are told we are made the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 3:26). “Thus I stumbled and fell. In short, to use a homely similitude, I put the justice of God into one scale, and as many good works of my own as I could into the other; and when I found, as I always did, my own good works not being a balance to the Divine justice, I then threw in Christ as a makeweight. And this every one really does, who hopes for salvation partly by doing what he can for himself, and relying on Christ for the rest. At last when, in obedience to the Heavenly vision, I ‘ceased from my own works’ entirely, cast them all aside as ‘filthy rags,’ and rested alone in ‘the finished work’ (John 19:31) of the Redeemer, did I learn the true meaning of ‘having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom 5:1). It is not surprising that this eccentric man should write his own epitaph, and we venture to quote it in full.
HERE LIE
THE EARTHLY REMAINS OF
JOHN BERRIDGE,
LATE VICAR OF EVERTON,
AND AN ITINERANT SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST,
WHO LOVED HIS MASTER AND HIS WORK,
AND AFTER RUNNING ON HIS ERRANDS MANY YEARS
WAS CALLED UP TO WAIT ON HIM ABOVE.
Reader,
Art thou born again?
No salvation without a New Birth!
I was born in sin, February, 1716.
Remaining ignorant of my fallen state till 1730.
Living proudly on faith and works for salvation till 1754
Was admitted to Everton Vicarage, 1751.
Fled to Jesus alone for refuge, 1756.
Fell asleep in Christ, Jan. 22, 1793.