A Happy State

A selection from a letter by Henry Venn, Church of England minister, to his son, Rev. John Venn. He stated his satisfaction with Christ as Lord and Saviour and his contentment with a life of preaching the whole counsel of God. The letter was written January 1, 1796.

I have to tell you—and would, if it were with my last breath—that I can wish for nothing more than I now find Christ is to me. And though I discover, more than ever, most lamentable defects in my preaching, and cannot place the smallest confidence in the multitudes to whom God has been pleased to make His Word a blessing by my mouth and pen, yet I am absolutely certain that I have preached the very doctrine that Christ and His Apostles did. The whole Word of God is equally acceptable to me—not less those parts which are the fortress of Arminians, Perfectionists, and Antinomians, than the others; so that I am, and have been for thirty-five years, in the happy state of not being tempted to wrest any Scripture, or pervert it, in order to make it favour my own tenets.

Letters of Henry Venn, by John Venn, first published in 1835, republished by the Banner of Truth, 1993, pp. 531-32.