Redemption

It is infinitely important to possess the Spirit of God, and to have “the love of God shed abroad in one’s heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” Having this, of course we are lovers of God; and if lovers of God, we are lovers of everything that is godly, or God-like; and therefore, it is a very great mercy for us that the Holy Spirit has condescended to mention a very considerable number of infallible evidences of Christianity,—of interest in the everlasting love of God. The child of God has frequently derived comfort from the declaration of Divine truth by the Apostle John,—“By this we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” If, therefore, we love Christians, we love Christ. If we love the brethren…

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Jesus Christ Crucified Outside Jerusalem

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According to some people, Christ died to give all a chance of being saved!

I do not know that I hate anything more in my soul than to hear that. It makes Jesus Christ so little that He should do so much, and after all only to get us a chance of being saved. Why, if a man is set up in business, you see how often it happens that he fails in it; and if man cannot manage the…

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Two sermons preached at Gower Street Chapel, London on 14 and 21 November 1841

[On Sunday, 14 November 1841, Pastor Kershaw spoke on the subject of justification. His text was Job 25:4. Although he intended to cover his three headings in a single sermon, he took up only the first heading on Sunday 14 November, then completed the final two headings on Sunday 21 November. The two sermons are combined in the manuscript that follows.]

“How then can man be justified with God?”—Job 25:4

The doctrine of justification is clearly and strikingly revealed in the sacred oracles of truth, and is by God the Holy Ghost made manifest in the souls of all the election of grace. Hence, Paul speaks of it as one of the links in the chain of our salvation. “Moreover,” says he, “whom God did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also…

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On Friday, 21st March 2014, Dr. Matthew Hyde delivered the annual lecture for the Strict Baptist Historical Society at Bethesda Chapel.^[1] After the lecture, he and I shared a brief exchange on the subject of high-calvinism and nineteenth-century Strict Baptist pastors. Since one of these pastors, John Hazelton, had been connected with the church that I pastor,^[2] his name naturally came up. Subsequent to our chat, Dr. Hyde graciously gave me one of his copies of William Styles’, “John Hazelton: A Memoir”.

I believe Baptists should be familiar with the life and ministry of John Hazelton for three reasons:

First, the life and ministry of John Hazelton is worth knowing because he was one of the leading Baptist ministers in the city of London during the nineteenth-century.

Second, the life and ministry of John Hazelton is worth knowing because he is among a gallant group of Baptist ministers who tenaciously subscribed to a high view of Sovereign Grace.

Third, the life and ministry of John Hazelton is worth knowing because he has much to teach this generation of professing Christians who like to call themselves Reformed Baptists.

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The Triune God.

The glorious, yet incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity is to be seen in every Book of Scripture. The earliest writers, after the Apostolic age, when they propose to give a summary of the faith, proceed no farther than the doctrine of the Trinity. Athanasius, for instance, says: “The whole sum and body of our faith is comprised in the words “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,”—not mere characters and offices or mere names and titles, but expressive of…

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The Everlasting Covenant.

Covenant salvation has ever been the glory of the ministry in the Church of God, and where it is not proclaimed in its fulness, there are weakness and decay, and an approximation of the preaching to the colourless and feeble utterances of thousands of speakers to-day. It is of urgent importance that our younger men should prayerfully seek that the Holy Spirit would open up to their understandings, apply to their hearts, and enable them to tell out with power, the covenant security of God’s covenant people; soul-establishing truth to the tried believer, and most gracious encouragement to the poor, seeking sinner. Salvation, in the wondrous love of God…

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The Doctrine of Grace.

We use the singular number because the Bible does so, for salvation is a divine unity, and throughout the Scriptures this oneness is set forth. “That form of doctrine which was delivered you” (Rom 6:17), “My doctrine” (John 7:16), “The apostles’ doctrine” (Acts 2:42), “Sound doctrine” (2 Tim 4:3). In writing and speaking we, of necessity, describe first one phase of the doctrine and then another; doctrines are, as Bunyan says of the two natures of Christ, “plain to be distinguished, but impossible to be divided,” but all are comprehended in the word Grace, which means favour, and there can be no favour which is not sovereign and free. Grace always flows down to creatures who do not deserve it. Therefore all that God does for us in Christ, and all that is disclosed to us…

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A lecture by Dr. Matthew Hyde on the significance and influence of William Gadsby’s Selection of Hymns. Dr. Hyde was invited to deliver his remarks by the Strict Baptist Historical Society, at their annual meeting, held on the 21 March 2014.

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Preached, on Lord’s Day Morning, Nov. 1st, 1840, in Manchester.

“I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”—Ps. 116:17.

Under the Jewish dispensation, God had appointed a variety of offerings and sacrifices for the Jews, under certain circumstances, to be attended to; and if you turn to Leviticus 7, you will find that the offering of the sacrifice of thanksgiving was to be accompanied with unleavened bread, mingled with oil, with wafers anointed with oil, and with cakes fried in oil. Now in reality, beloved, there is no sacrifice of thanksgiving without this oil; and it is…

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God’s people are privileged! This proposition is extracted from Malachi 1:1-5: “The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD . . .

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And now why should not this doctrine be preached and insisted upon in public?—a doctrine which is of express revelation, a doctrine that makes wholly for the glory of God, which conduces, in a most peculiar manner, to the conversion, comfort and sanctification of the elect, and leaves even the ungodly themselves without excuse. But perhaps you may still be inclined to question whether predestination be indeed a Scripture doctrine. If so, let me by way of sample beg you to consider the following declarations—first, of Christ; secondly, of His apostles.

“If the mighty works that have been done in thee had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented,” etc. (Matt. 11), whence it is evident…

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