The turning-away of our inward from the outward, and the secret converse with God, are the best — yea the only — means to the overcoming of all our spiritual enemies.

The Sixty-seventh Letter.

The turning-away of our inward from the outward, and the secret converse with God, are the best — yea the only — means to the overcoming of all our spiritual enemies.

In the grace of the Lord, beloved friend and brother!

Your kind letter of the 9th of August I duly received on the 15th of this month; I would have answered sooner, but had meanwhile to make a journey to N. to visit the friends. ——

Through God's goodness I am, after being away four weeks, happily and in my usual weak health arrived back here from Holland; for my health remains still much the same, though with variations. My life, both according to the outer and the inner man, stands in the hand of the Lord, to whom I have given it, and whom I desire ever more fully to give it. God has been with me on the journey. I meant to keep myself incognito in Holland; but against my seeking it turned out quite otherwise: I found there, in many, still a marked hunger, so that I had little quiet; but with most there, as here too, and in the Berg country, it goes thus: it comes so hardly to a childlike heart-being; one stays too much hanging in the senses and the reason, so that the mind stands open to a thousandfold seeming temptations and disorders. Yet in Holland I became acquainted with various inward souls, who might well stir us here to follow their faith.

The inward prayer of the heart and the secret converse with God — whom one believes inwardly present — is the best, yea the only means to the overcoming of all your enemies in general, and also of that one in particular of which you write. You flutter about too much in your thoughts, and the inner man has too much fellowship with them. The door is open; the inner goes out, and the outer comes in; hence come temptation, weakness, and a confused inconstancy. Do you not know that we are to be dead to the world, and that the body too is to be dead, because of sin? Romans 8. The inner heart-man — your heart, love, desire, deepest will, and heart's devotion — separates itself gently from all the outward, and from whatever may stir in the outer man, be it what it will; the outer man becomes a stranger to it; the inner man just named holds himself in spirit near to God, whom he believes present, as well and simply as he can; he occupies himself with Him secretly, softly, and stilly; he gives himself to God; he worships God; he loves Him; he converses with Him in unfeigned simplicity, and awaits from Him the annihilation of all evil.

Now by this — that one gradually grows acquainted and familiar with God, but strange to the outer man — by this, I say, there die out in that outer man ever more all sinful stirrings, or at least lose their force and dominion, like a lamp to which one gives no more oil: and to this very thing you will be drawn inwardly, wherever you attend to it. I say it once again: think not much on sin, and you will commit it the less. World and sin have a bewitching — or shall I say a poisoning — power; they harm us by the mere looking. Often one carries the image of a sin and corruption about with one the whole day, and ponders ways and means how one may be delivered from it; and precisely by looking at the image of the sin, the desire of the sin is ever again aroused. One must learn to divert oneself from world and sin by a simple forgetting of them, and by quiet liftings-up of the heart and converse with God in spirit. Whoever thus walks in the spirit will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, nor whatever else the nature may crave. Galatians 5. But when one is in the flesh, and the inner man makes himself too common with the outer beast, and is too much turned out upon it, then the sinful lusts work mightily in the members (Romans 7), and one cannot please God (chapter 8:8), however earnestly one sets about it.

See there, dear brother, such an inward-turned walk and being is the best fasting that I counsel you, in the said circumstances. I do not counsel off the outward fasting altogether; yet a perpetual moderation in eating and drinking is better, yea very needful; but it teaches itself best when one keeps all desire that would fall upon the creature turned to God. Be outwardly never idle, yet also not too much turned out upon the work. As much as possible keep a good order in all outward things — in eating, sleeping, working, withdrawing, and so forth. One must, for God's sake, mortify the inconstancy of one's temperament.

God be praised, who does not leave Himself unattested by His good stirrings at your heart! Give Him only a free hand in you, and I live in the good confidence that He will make Himself known to you, ever more essentially, by His presence and its blessed workings, as I wish it from the heart. ——

With hearty greeting, as also to your wife, I am

Your

Mülheim, 27 August 1734.

bound weak fellow-combatant.

German

Der 67te Brief.

Die Abkehr unseres Inneren von dem Aeußeren, und der geheime Umgang mit GOtt sind das beste, ja einzige Mittel zur Ueberwindung aller unserer geistlichen Feinde.

In der Gnade des HErrn geliebter Freund und Bruder!

Dein Angenehmes vom 9ten August habe den 15ten dieses richtig bekommen; ich hätte eher geantwortet, habe aber inzwischen eine Reise nach N. thun müssen, um die Freunde zu besuchen.

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).