A Letter To Mrs Peake – February 2nd, 1865
My dear Friend, Mrs. Peake,
I think I have in this and my last letter answered most of your inquiries. I thank you for the excellent advice of Miss — which you have kindly sent me. It is a most needful word of caution, and I hope I may have grace to beware of the snare which she so truthfully lays before me.
I hope the Lord will give me grace so to write upon the precept, as not to swerve from those discriminating truths which I hope I have been enabled so long to contend for. I quite see, with you and her, that many legalists would gladly lay hold of what I might say upon the precept, unless grace and wisdom were given to me to handle it aright, to make it appear as if I favoured their legal views. So far from that, I can assure you that I never more felt the necessity and blessedness of sovereign free grace than I do at this present moment, and was never further from creature strength, wisdom, and righteousness. My heart is and ever has been with those only who look to, hang upon, and exalt the glorious Gospel of the grace of Christ; but as I do see a beautiful harmony of promise and precept, grace and truth, love and obedience, in the Person and work of the Son of God, I have felt led to lay these things before the church of God.
In my walk yesterday in our quiet North Park, I seemed to have for a few minutes a very sweet and blessed view of the harmony of promise and precept, and indeed every Gospel truth, in the glorious Person of the Son of God. It is in Him, my dear friend, that all truths harmonize. He is the center in which all Gospel truth meets and unites; and out of Him, as an ever-flowing, overflowing fountain of life, of grace, and truth, the whole Gospel, as a complete revelation of the wisdom and love of God, flows down into the hearts of His dear family. He is the Head and they the members; and as in our natural body there is a union of will and power which cannot be separated, so it is in the mystical body. Now all this is very different from taking the precepts as so many dead and dry commands. Depend upon it, we can never see and feel the beauty and blessedness of Gospel truth, except as we see it by faith and love in the Person of the God-Man. Severed from Him and the power and influence of His Spirit and grace, the precepts are but burdensome commands.
Poor Mr. T., like us all, has his trials. But unless he needed them, they would not be sent. Wherever I turn my eyes, I see affliction is the lot of the family of God; and I observe that the nearer they advance to their end, the heavier do these afflictions become. My poor friend Mr. Parry has had another severe attack, and now Mr. Tuckwell is ill. My sister too, Mrs. Isbell, has been quite ill, though now mercifully better. How true then it is, “whom the Lord loves He chastens” &c.!
What you have said about the new chapel at Oakham has quite satisfied my mind, and I hope the Lord’s hand is in it. I fear you will all be disappointed in the Address (Gospel Standard), as it falls very short of what I could wish it to be.
I sincerely wish you and all my dear friends in Oakham and the neighbourhood every blessing of the New Year, and may we all prove the goodness and faithfulness of God, both in providence and in grace.
Yours very affectionately,
J. C. P.
Jesus is LORD! 
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