Successful Ministry from Samuel Davies

The following is a portion from a sermon by Samuel Davies, The Success Of The Ministry Of The Gospel Owing To A Divine Influence. It is dated 19 November 1757, from Hanover, Virginia (where, incidentally Phyllis and I received our marriage license). The great Martyn Lloyd-Jones of London commended Davies as one of the greatest preachers ever produced in America. Born in Delaware in 1723, he became President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) upon the death of Jonathan Edwards. Unfortunately, Davies himself succumbed to pneumonia and blood poisoning in 1761, only eighteen months after having taken office. He opens his message with the following:

THE design of God in all his works of creation, providence, and grace, is to advance and secure the glory of his own name; and, therefore, though he makes use of secondary causes as the instruments of his operations, yet their efficacy depends upon his superintending influence. It is his hand that sustains the great chain of causes and effects, and his agency pervades and animates the worlds of nature and of grace.

And "just for fun" may I include one sentence simply because of his word selection, which remember, he preached to average laymen! Building on the argument that the hard-hearted simply cannot understand the gospel until God unlocks their minds; no outside influence can accomplish that feat. He articulates, "What can persuasions do to extirpate inveterate, implacable enmity?" Get my point? He was a very humble man and a gifted orator. So, this sentence is simply the way he thought. In terms of this contrary disposition he says later:

Now, since the innate dispositions of men are thus averse to the gospel, it is evident that nothing but divine power can make it effectual for their sanctification. Instructions may furnish the head with notions and correct speculative mistakes, but they have no power to sway the will and sweetly allure it to holiness. Persuasions may bring men to practise what they had omitted through mistake, carelessness, or a transient dislike: but they will have no effect where the heart is full of innate enmity against the things recommended. In this case, he that planteth, and he that watereth, are nothing; it is God alone that can give the increase. 

Davies beautifully reinforces that both the lost and saved have had the experience of God's Word doing it's work in various ways and with diverse effects upon their hearts.

Your own experience proves the same thing. Have you not found that the very same things have very different effects upon you at different times? Those truths, which at one time leave you dull and sleepy, at other times quicken all your powers to the most vigorous exercise? Sinners, do you not return from the house of God in very different frames, though the service there has been substantially the same? At one time you sweat and agonize under a sense of guilt, and make many resolutions to change your course of life; and at another time, there is a stupid calm within, and you matter not all the concerns of eternity. Some indeed have lain so long under the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, that they are hardened like clay, and hardly susceptive of any deep impressions at any time, after they have murdered their conscience, and silenced all its first remonstrances. . . . 

And you, saints, you also experience a like vicissitude. Sometimes, oh how divinely sweet, oh how nourishing is the sincere milk of the word! How does the word enlighten, quicken, and comfort you! How exactly it suits your very case! At other times it is tasteless; it is a dead letter, and has no effect upon you. At times a sentence seems almighty, and carries all before it: and you feel it to be the word of God; at other times you perceive only your feeble fellow-mortal speaking to you, and all his words are but feeble breath; as different from the former as chaff from wheat.

What a blessed sermon indeed! Find it and drink in it's fullness. You would do well to secure a copy of the three volumes of his sermons published by Soli Deo Gloria, Sermons of the Rev. Samuel Davies.