Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

stands the publicans to have been a much better disposed kind of sinners than the Pharisees. In these words, the Lord states a fact illustrating the divine sovereignty, and the character of his kingdom; and well calculated to beat down the pretensions of those whom he addressed—the fact, that He who hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and hardeneth whom he will, called into his kingdom many of those who were thought the most worthless, while he left to their hardness and impenitent heart those who thought themselves most worthy. But does this warrant the inference that the former were more accessible to the words of truth" than the latter? I should be glad to find you manifesting something of the character of the ingenuous believing Berean, in abandoning the sentiment unequivocally.

After endeavouring to fasten on me the charge of viewing God as yet unpropitiated, and putting some work for the purpose into the sinner's hand, you go on to charge me with having used the word offer in p. 16. of the letters," instead of declare, as it ought to be." (See vol. 1. 363.) When I first read this, I wondered, if I could inadvertently have employed any language which could, by any ingenuity of misinterpre tation, be conceived to countenance the popular idea of the gospel as an offer of mercy, &c., an idea against which I have long publicly and privately protested as inconsistent with the truth; and indeed I was somewhat amused as well as surprised on reverting to the passage of my letters to which you refer as involving that sentiment. Why, sirs, any person acquainted with plain English may see, (if they will) that the passage has no more to do with that sentiment than any other line of the work you could have quoted at random. When I there speak of persons yielding a verbal assent to "what I offer," the expression is plainly equivalent with the words, "what I lay before them;" as we talk of offering remarks-offering observations, &c. And this is so obvious, that I really should be ashamed to vindicate myself against your criticism, or to notice it all, but that it plainly stands connected with another error in your minds. You conceive of me, or of some men now on earth, as officially declaring the gospel and accordingly you conclude with a hope of my being "made more abundantly an able minister of the new covenant." I own not any man in that office but the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. THEY declare to us and to all the world his gospel officially, as commissioned by him for the purpose. I am glad of any opportunity of telling my fellow sinners, either in private or public, either orally or by writing, what I have learned from the apostolic word; and calling their attention to the divine truth declared by the Apostles. But indeed I am as far from assuming to myself, or from admitting in others, any office of declaring what the gospel is,-almost as far as from making what divines have called a gospel offer, in their presumptuous claims to the rank of negotiators between God and man. From a short passage in one of Mr. Barclay's pieces which I lately read, I think he would have joined me in protesting against that clerical leaven, with the influence of which I fear you are infected. In what follows of your letter there is a great deal so like railing, that I should decline replying to it, even if I had room and time. I

shall therefore confine myself in the remainder of this letter to some general remarks, which I shall be glad to find you receive with more patience and candour than you have my former. In my last I really meant not to bring any accusation against you. I know but little of you, and I aimed at coming to a fuller knowledge of your mind. I made inquiries and offered remarks. I candidly expressed the hopes. and the fears which I felt about your profession. I now acknowledge that your reply makes me stand much more in doubt of you, and for this among various other reasons: you evidently seem piqued and hurt at my having made any question about your soundness in the faith; really, I look upon this as a very black mark. The man who comes to me avowing his doubts whether I believe the truth, says nothing at all calculated to disturb or offend me while I am in my right mind: he gives me an opportunity, always pleasing, of putting forward that truth which I believe, and which I am sure he can never shake or overturn. If he attacks it, is it me he attacks? If he sift my meaning at all points, and be not satisfied with the soundness of my profession, without proposing ever so many forms of falsehood to see whether I reject them, is that offensive to me? No, verily. And if he add ever so many cautions against the deceivableness of unrighteousness, and the deceitfulness of my own heart, he speaks the language rather of a friend than of an enemy, in reminding me of dangers of which I would never (in one sense) lose the fear, while in the revealed salvation of God I see a sufficient shelter from them all. But I have long found that professors who have fallen into that snare, my mention of which you think so strange, of substituting a confident persuasion about their having faith, or their being among the number of the elect, for the gospel, are offended and irritated when any disciple calls this their gospel in question; and I do not wonder at it. It is a thing no where testified in the word of God. The ground is hollow on which they build, and they are up in arms lest the building should tumble about their ears. The confidence of such a professor has for its basis the principle, "I am a believer, and therefore there is no fear of me." The confidence of the believer rests on that immoveable truth, God is, that God which the word from heaven reveals him to be. I put to you a question, the very proposal of which seems to have displeased you much; and I cannot but observe that, while you multiply words about it as if to shew that it was unnecessary, you have not throughout your letter answered it. It was whether you conceived that any man can believe the written testimony of God concerning his son Jesus at any time without the Holy Ghost. Mark, I say written testimony-which does not contain one word about Duncan King or John Walker specially. Instead of answering this distinctly and cheerfully, you tell me what every Calvinist (of the most corrupt form of popular profession) would tell me, that it is God alone who calls, enlightens, manifests, or begets again, &c. O, very true!-though we may be quite disagreed as to the inquiry who are the called, enlightened, begotten, &c. But besides your appearing thus to shy a very plain and simple question, I observe afterwards a language which increases the necessity for pushing it-" Were they sanctified through the truth,

manifesting their sins forgiven, as Mary was who believed in him who was the propitiation for the sins of many?" This language at least looks very like that popular doctrine of appropriation which Sandeman well exposes, while he afterwards sadly and awfully beclouds the subject by representing the gospel itself insufficient to afford the chief of sinners the fullest personal confidence towards God. The appropriators and he agree in that; as the most apparently opposed errors often meet. The scheme of which Sandeman talks at times, would supply the supposed insufficiency of the revealed testimony of God, by sending the sinner to pore over himself for some good evidences to buttress up his hope-and the appropriators would supply it by sending him to look for some supplementary revelation of a thing, not contained in the divine testimony-that Christ had died for HIM-his confident persuasion about which they call justifying faith.-You talk of the truth which Mary believed as manifesting her sins forgiven. Sirs, that truth manifests the Saviour of sinners: and they who know his name will put their trust in him. He and He alone, in that revealed work and character in which the word testifies of Him, is that fulness of Jehovah's house with which his people shall be satisfied, and in which He calls the sinful and the evil, the wicked and unrighteous, to delight their souls continually. Isa. lv. Ps. xxxvi. Our hearts are continually like a deceitful bow, bent to backsliding from him, and to go a whoring after our own inventions. But He will keep the feet of his saints abiding in the way of peace, will keep them holding fast that hope, which the publican and the harlot and the pharisee need only to see, in order to be happy partakers of it. This is that work of faith which He fulfils : while indeed the heart of man, left to its workings at any time, is abundantly competent to keep a sinner feeding on ashes, in a high evangelical profession, at the bottom of which is a confident persuasion that he has been ordained to eternal life.' Such professors

will be very apt to object to me as some do-" you are always afraid of yourself," and will think themselves very strong in faith because they are not afraid of themselves; and will be unable to see the consistency of a perpetual fear of myself with perpetual peace. But in truth there is a fear which is very different from being fearful, as there is a confidence very different from the assurance of faith.

Another ungodly symptom that I am sorry to observe in you, is your inability to discriminate between things the most essentially distinct, your confounding some of the plainest truths of scripture with the grossest falsehoods. For instance, you think that my assertion of the continued ungodliness of the flesh (or of his own heart) in the believer, is equivalent with an assertion that the believer is carnally minded; and your views on this important topic appear to be just the same with Mr. Haldane's and those of all the religious world. My assertion that unbelieving men cannot suitably be addressed with any of the precepts or exhortations directed to disciples (or as you choose to express it, " are unprepared for them") you confound with the systems which hold a progressive preparation in the sinner for the gospel, and a preparation which is to be forwarded by human exertion. But I must add on this head, that if I could

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

detect no error in your professed sentiments, I should view as a black mark on your profession, the contempt with which you treat the revealed will of the Lord concerning the walk of his people. Attention to that revelation, you set aside, as breaking our teeth upon shells," while you set in opposition to it your fancied persuasion of the truth, as "enjoying the kernel." Any supposed enjoyment of the truth that is set in such opposition, I must consider but a fancied enjoyment: and I suspect that, if you spoke out, you could point to passages in the tract No. iii. which you dislike as much as any thing else in my writings.

[ocr errors]

You say that I do not see eye to eye with you on that subject." There is much truth in the old vulgar saying, that none are so blind as those who do not choose to see. I suspect you are forced to see more than you choose, on the discrepancy between the course of your sects, and the divinely ordered course of the first (disciples)—the first christian churches. That discrepancy happens to be too clearly marked in my letters: (see Vol. 1. 370.) and I dare say your minister has a decided objection to its removal. Choose then what you will hear. But till you manifest an ear for the word of the Lord, notwithstanding all the high ground you take, your professed knowledge of Christ and rejoicing in him, I must suspect that a deceived heart has turned you aside, and that there is a lie in your right hand. But believe me it will give me great joy to have my suspicions scripturally removed. Remaining, dear sirs, your real well wisher,

LXVIII.

TO MRS. L. S. G

April 18, 1820.

DEAR MADAM,-I am not quite sure that I may not presume too much in addressing a written communication to you: but I am quite sure that, even if I do, your kindness will forgive me, from a consideration of the motive; and that your professed views of scriptural truth will plead for my writing with all plainness, when I write at all. I have not seen any of my brother C's communications to you, but I have seen with much pain yours to him: your short note of yesterday looks too much like a finale, occasioned by the tenor of his last to you. Perhaps from his natural quickness he may have employed a language somewhat too summary; though, from our perfect unity of mind, I cannot suppose that he has expressed any sentiment in which I do not fully concur. The truth of the gospel of the glory of God, as the divine testimony concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, his person, work, and office, is a sacred and in

violable truth, not admitting any change or alteration. It is one, woven from the top throughout without seam; and any attempt to rend it, any avowed rejection of any part of the testimony, whether in the form of taking from it or adding to it, must be regarded with abhorrence by the believer standing in the truth, as a profanation of the holiness of the Lord. Even the profession of subjection to it for ourselves (as some speak) in its uncorrupted integrity, but accompanied with the false charity for others, which would admit them to be right enough, though they hold some other doctrine under the name of gospel than that which we profess, is utterly inconsistent with the real discernment of the truth. How far your notions of the gospel come at present under either of those cases, I really pretend not to pronounce; but I must unequivocally pronounce, that the sentiment you have adopted concerning the laws of Christ's house, (that subject on which I perceive my brother has forborn to enter) is altogether irreconcileable with the real nature of his kingdom. It is very little I am about to say upon the subject: you seem to require some text of Scripture expressly informing us, that the precepts issued from the King of Zion through his apostles to his disciples, and recorded in the scriptures of the New Testament, are of binding authority on his disciples at this day: and you will perhaps be confirmed in the sentiment which rejects them, when I tell you at once that I can refer to no such express declaration as you require. But may I not more suitably require from you the divine revelation which has repealed them? Is not the ungodliness of your sentiment sufficiently marked to a believer by all the scriptures, which do expressly describe the Messiah's kingdom as one "which cannot be moved;" of which "not one of the stakes shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken." Is. xxxiii. 20. Heb. xii. 28. And observe, dear madam, as in the last quoted passage, that this is one of the characters by which it is expressly contrusted with the Mosaic dispensation which was to be removed, and which has passed away. (It is remarkable, indeed, that it is in that very epistle to the believing Hebrews, which announced to them the termination of the earthly kingdom, that the express warning occurs, not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.) Accordingly, with those apostles whom He commissioned to teach his disciples in his name to observe all things, whatsoever he commanded them-with these apostles He declares that he will be-binding what they bind, and loosing what they loose, even unto the end of the world: that stability is sufficiently ascertained to us, in opposition to all the corrupt glosses that would confound it with the end of the Jewish dispensation, by the permanent nature of that kingdom that was to remain after the other vanished away, as well as it is distinctly marked in 1 Cor. xv. 23, 26. But, in short, your sentiment immediately strikes at the throne of Him who is seated as a king upon the holy hill of Zion; and if it nominally leave him a lawgiver and king, (Isa. xxxiii. 22.) exhibits him as a lawgiver without laws, and a king who allows his subjects to do whatsoever is right in their own eyes. And here, dear madam, I must briefly mark an inconsistency-(one of those inconsistencies with which error is pro

« AnteriorContinua »