The tract on which the following remarks have been made was actually circulated by the Irvingite teachers amongst those for whose sakes they have been written. Although therefore they would elude the responsibility flowing from it by saying that it is not put out by authority, they may justly be held answerable for its contents. It is perhaps right it should be known, that the only thing which has such authority among them, which they call the record, is kept carefully from the knowledge and hearing of any but themselves. If their individual teachers say anything, they are not answerable for it, for they are not the Holy Ghost. If the Spirit said plain things early in their course, it was before the ordinances were set up; though one of their angels has asserted, that, if he taught palpable error, no one was to call it in question, for the sin it might occasion would rest upon him; yet, when any one might shew the unscripturalness of the statement, then an individual was not the Church nor the Holy Ghost. And if the Spirit spoke things which actually failed, then it was said no one had a right to interpret what was said, for no prophecy was of private interpretation. This, connected with the denial of the competency of individuals to use scripture with profit alone, or any way but through their ordinances, gives a character to this matter with which we are but too familiar in this country.
This has gone so far as for their teachers to assert, in their stating what has been mentioned and being questioned, that if they taught that God was not manifest in the flesh at all, a Christian ought not to look to the scriptures to see if it was right, and that if he did, he would get no good out of it, for he had not the Spirit so as to be able, and none had but they. And, in another instance of a person in illness, they were reproved on being found reading the bible, and saying it was their only comfort there alone, for that the Church was between their soul and God; and they have gone so far as to desire some poor disciples not to pray for anything they were not taught by the angel to pray for, for it was making God a familiar spirit. They would commend the bible perhaps highly; but take it as the rule of faith which a believer is capable of using for himself, however he may benefit by others, and by which he is always bound to judge others when the occasion arises; and they will -- perhaps I should not say they will -- but they have constantly denied such competency, and reproved such use. The authority of the Church and the voice with them is the paramount thing.
It is a painful thing to be mingled up with evil, even in contention against it; but it is sometimes the duty of, because needful for, the saints.
The people called Irvingites have been plainly convicted elsewhere of so much false doctrine, false practice, and false prophecy, and that by many of the Church of God, as to make it, when known, a question only of preserving God's children against the deceits and crafts of Satan. Here they are as strangers less known. It is not my intention to go over at length in this what has been already often taken notice of. They have here circulated one of their most plausible tracts; and therefore there is a plain ground to take up with them -- and I do this the rather for this reason -- they have been often charged with holding the sinful humanity of Christ, and many of their teachers and disciples have, to the writer of this and to other persons, avowed it -- that He had the carnal mind, but kept it down or dead. Mr. Irving, bold and fearless in the statement of what he held, declared that his nature bristled with sin like quills upon a porcupine; and that the nature with which the Son of man was clothed poured forth from the centre of its inmost will streams as black as hell; and that the Augean stable of this nature was given Him to cleanse; and, what was most material, the spirit which they profess to be the Holy Ghost, though it might not sanction the language, expressly sanctioned the doctrine, the doctrine to which it gave its sanction being, that the law of sin was there all-present.
Now this was so plainly wicked and evil, and contrary to God's word and Spirit, that they have, since they have been pressed with it, taken great pains, at least the subtler ones amongst them, to disclaim and deny this. I say the subtler ones; because it has been not long since avowed by some of their teachers to the writer of this. The way they have got over the Spirit's having sanctioned it is, that they were not answerable for what was said, that is, in utterance by the Spirit, before the ordinances were set up. One of these very ordinances said to the writer of this, that the Spirit might have said it through prejudice to please Mr. Irving. I only mention this to shew the unhappy degradation to which men may be reduced by giving way to the leadings of an evil spirit. Another of their teachers confessed that damnable errors and blasphemous heresies had been taught by them at Cork and elsewhere. But few are aware of these, and many other, wretched inconsistencies which pass among them, and often tear the mind of those who are sincere among them: but who, having once given credit to the voice amongst them as the Holy Ghost, and submitted implicitly to the ordinances among them as the Church, are powerless in their hands, unless and until God, in His sovereign mercy, break the bands. And derangement and heart-breaking more than once have I known the fruit, while the testimony of those freed has been at once most sad and humbling as to what was there, though at first there may have been great form of joy and holiness. I say form; for, while there was that, it has never been heavenly or holy in its character or effects, where I have met with it, but the contrary: though I believe some holy persons have fallen into it. Deceit, worldliness, the sanction of evil tempers in those whose persons are held in admiration among them, along with the pretence of infallibility and the evil connected with that, are what I have met amongst them; nor, I may say, have I ever in any body of persons found such an entire want of truth, and so much subtlety and deceivableness. These may seem hard sayings, but I say them soberly, after painful and sorrowful discovery of it; for there are individuals among them whom I feel bound to believe are, and to love, and whom I do love clearly as, Christ's sheep.
Now the tract which I have here noticed is one which most anxiously denies, and guards itself against, the evil doctrine noticed above; and having been actually circulated by them, there can be no charge of aggravation or prejudice, if subtlety, deceit, and real dishonour to our blessed Lord, be found to characterize it. But the real value of their attempt to screen themselves from the charge of this unholy and wicked doctrine may be seen, and what the value of their most direct and plausible denial of it is. To those who are acquainted with their teaching, as one of the pillars of their angels (such is his title) said to the writer -- "a totally different gospel," which it surely is, and another foundation. There are many passages in the tract whose evil and subtlety would be most plain, but I can notice only such here as would be plain to a stranger on the face of it; and I say that those who really know Christ must at once reject them altogether. The Lord keep others from the subtlety and power of Satan in them, or working by them.
I will state their own words, to give them the full value of their denial of the doctrine. For though several have confessed it to me and others, they do often openly deny it when charged with it.
"In His [Christ's] human nature there was no inclination to sin, no stirring, no motion towards it, for He was dead to sin, being in humanity, as entirely and absolutely holy as Godhead is holy, and pure as Godhead is pure, so that, in the fullest sense in which the words can be taken, He could not sin." "But," the tract justly adds, "in knowing this we are not knowing all."
Who would not say to this, What can be more satisfactory? So it might seem at first sight to the unwary, and those who knew not with whom they had to deal.
But first you must remark the terms, "He was dead to sin." It is not in that He died, He died to sin once; therefore reckon yourselves, who have it in your nature, to be dead indeed unto sin. But while alive in the flesh He was so. Where was the sin He was dead to? They will tell you, at least they have told and written, in the nature He took, but not in His person.
Again, who would say that being holy in humanity did not mean His humanity being holy -- or think in so plain a statement of so subtle a distinction? Hear their own words in this very tract. "All holiness since the fall has been a thing not according to,+ but against, nature ... . Now this is what I mean, by regeneration holiness -- not a holiness of humanity, but a holiness in humanity by the Holy Ghost. Such has been the holiness of all the saints of God -- of Abel, Enoch, Noah, etc., Samuel, and the prophets. And such was the holiness of Him who is not ashamed to call those saints His brethren. I know that our beloved Lord was holy from the beginning, but this by no means alters the matter." It was then a holiness not according to, but against nature. We can now understand what His being dead to sin means, and in humanity holy.
This might be sufficient to shew their exceeding subtlety; and how little those not acquainted with their teaching can trust apparently satisfactory statements; but as it is wrought out through all the tract I will follow it through some of the passages it contains. And I only ask, whether this subtlety is the least like the guilelessness of the Spirit of Christ.
+The italics are not mine, but the tract's.
The consequences they draw in this very tract are most plain. It is a difference in degree merely, that of Christ's holiness and ours, not in kind. It can be realized in the members as in the head. The difference between the head and members existed between the members, but not to the same degree. Dwelling in the Father and the Father in Him meant abiding ever in the Father by faith, and having the Father abiding in Him by the Holy Ghost, and that He had not the fulness of the Spirit without a correspondent waiting on the Father, and we are to do likewise: and consequently, as the prince of this world came and found nothing in our head, he would find nothing in us either, if we only were, as our head desires to see us, filled with all the fulness of God.
Now all this really sets aside the person of Christ, and states sin to be in Christ in the flesh, or asserts that it may be out of ours, and both these latter points have been expressly taught to the writer, and Mr. Irving's printed doctrine was that Christ's work was not reconciling individuals, but human nature.
"If His human nature," says Mr. Irving in another place, "differed by however so little from ours in its alienation and guiltiness, then the reducing it into eternal harmony with God hath no bearing whatever upon our nature, with which it is not the same."
And that it was "of the substance and essence of the orthodox faith that Christ could say, till the resurrection, Not I but sin that tempteth me in my flesh."
He said also, that Christ suffered because He was in the condition of a sinner: and that if He were not, and God treated Him as if He had been so, God was a make-believe God.
And again, that Christ was made by His human nature inclined to all those things which the law interdicted.
One other passage of Mr. Irving's writings I will advert to. He says, "I hold it to be the surrender of the whole question to say that He was not conscious of, engaged with, and troubled by, every evil disposition which inheriteth in the fallen manhood."
Accordingly, their teachers still teach, that the life of the flesh may be put out of the flesh, and the life of Christ put into it; so that we may be perfect as Christ Himself. And some of their tracts state, that this is the only ground on which we stand in the judgment. Such is, in fact, the doctrine of this tract, which in page 23 states that the fallen nature, which, if left to follow its own propensities, could do nothing good, was in Christ proved capable of perfect goodness; and that the prince of this world would find nothing in us either if we were what our head desires to see us. Accordingly, though they speak of the blood, and justification by the blood, on examination they are found to hold that all the world are justified in it, and righteousness (as was stated to the writer by one of their chief teachers) imputed to the vilest unbeliever as much as to himself or any believer. The Christian will know how contrary to scripture all this is.
As regards likeness to Christ, the diligent reader of scripture will see that our likeness to Christ, when applied to this life, is always of walk, not of nature, or in Himself; and likeness to Himself is stated to take place when He appears, and, we being risen, sin is no more a part of our state at all.
I shall now follow each material page of the tract, and notice enough of its subtleties to shew its character.
Page 2. "In all things it behoved Jesus to be made like unto his brethren."
"His brethren." There is concealment here, and of a point on which the whole hangs.
Who are we? The Church or men? Here again the point is like His brethren, and it is said "of the same Spirit of which we are born again was He born in humanity holy."
What likeness is here? Were we born in humanity holy or sinful? Likeness to His brethren in His being born holy, and they being born again because they were born in sin? Or is our old nature born again? If we His brethren are the Church, this likeness does not affect the character of our old nature which was not born of the Spirit.
In setting forth Jesus as a man, how excluded is God manifest in the flesh! Surely this had something to do with setting forth Jesus as a man. How excluded that the Word was made flesh!
"Jesus abides in His Almighty Father by faith."
Where does the scripture make such a statement as that? and "having the Father abiding in him by the Holy Ghost?"
Where is this in scripture? or where is divine union here? I read the Lord saying, "the Father is in me, and I in the Father." The Holy Ghost is not the Father.
Page 3. The scripture makes no such statement as this; but I reserve any remark till we come to the place where it is made use of. I will only remark, that to avoid the consequence that (to use the expression of this tract) "He inherited the poison" of the stock, their teachers have stated that Christ had not the life of a man in Him at all, and at least one of them, in terms, that God died.
He was by His mother surely in a certain sense sprung of man's race; but He was conceived sinless of the Holy Ghost in human nature, and we clearly opposite. When scripture speaks in this wise, Adam is represented as one head and the second Adam another.
Though a branch of Jesse, and sprung of Judah, as to purpose and dispensation, He did not spring of it naturally, as every Christian knows.
Page 4. "We are all branches," etc.
"His lovely holiness." "Of this holiness we may be made partakers."
Now the question is as to His humanity.
How can we be partakers of the holiness of His humanity? Is our manhood born of the Holy Ghost? What treachery of doctrine is it, under the plea of urging our being like Him in holiness, to conceal the difference that we are as branches born in sin? Our human nature is not born of the Holy Ghost; His was. His was "that holy thing which shall be born of thee;" ours is not. And we are to observe, that this is the whole point on such a subject as being a branch, and our being a branch, so that of this holiness we may be partakers. Can we, in the sinlessness of our human nature in its conception and birth? Is ours born a holy thing?
Page 5. Second proposition: "He sprang sinless, etc., by the Holy Ghost."
"Whence came this lovely holiness?"
"We are called to be like Him."
In nature as to manhood? How so, when we are born in sin; He not?
"Unless we can tell how Christ was holy, we cannot tell how His holiness may be found in us."
In flesh, in nature, or else it is quite different; or else it is the denial of the holiness of His nature.
"Do you ask me what it is to assign a false cause for the holiness of Jesus? I answer, to trace it to something which, in the very nature of things, can never be true of us."
It never can be true of us that our human nature was born of the Holy Ghost; and that that which is born of our mother is sinless. This is the whole question.
"The holiness of Jesus a holiness to be realized in us."
Is it in nature, in the flesh, not victory? or else, was His victory over sin in Himself? For ours is.
Page 6. "For when we are taught to believe," etc.
"Holiness which God commands to be realized in us the members, in the same way as it was realized in Him the head."
Had it not its source in something which never can be true of us? Was not the manhood born through the Holy Ghost? Are we God-men? It was realized in the head by sin's never existing: is that the way it is realized in us?
"Common to say Jesus was holy because He was born of a virgin?"
No; but because He was born through the power of the Holy Ghost, which is left out here. What wickedness this is!
Again I say, it never can be true that they were born through the operation of the Holy Ghost. How is the great truth of the incarnation merged here!
These two pages, while they apparently deny in terms, most fully teach this most unholy doctrine in fact.
Page 7. "It behoved our Lord not to descend from Adam by ordinary generation."
Do not we? Is not this a distinct source of holiness?
"The lovely holiness of the man Christ Jesus came from His birth in humanity of the Holy Ghost."
Is not this a different source from us?
How is likeness to us first insisted on, and the truth kept back; and here the truth stated, and the necessary difference kept back! This is the subtlety and deceit of Satan.
"Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee."
Could this be said of us? Is not the manner and source of holiness different? The Holy Ghost is not the source of our human nature as to birth; He was of Christ's. This is all the difference. He was a man born of God as to His human nature. I am not: and this, I say, is all the difference. See the consequence, pages 11, 19.
"Because conceived and born of the Holy Ghost."
Is not again this a different cause from us? Are we so? Could this "therefore" be used of us?
"The human nature of our beloved Lord was impeccable."
Is this "to be realized in us as it was realized in Him the head?"
Page 8. "Cannot sin, because He is born of God."
"These words have a partial fulfilment in every child of God."
"Evil resulting from the doctrine which leads us to trace the holiness of Jesus in humanity, either to His birth of a virgin, or to His having been in His other nature more than man."
Again is left out His birth in human nature of the Holy Ghost. Then, as if this point was brought in, it "traces that holiness to His birth of the Holy Ghost."
"This inspires us with the blessed hope of realizing conformity to Jesus. Because birth of the Holy Ghost is common to the members with the head, and so if the holiness of the head can be traced to this source, it is a holiness in which the members may hope to share." Is birth of the Holy Ghost common to the members with the head in their human nature? Is there any community really of the members with the head as to their birth of the Holy Ghost, as to the question of their human nature, or of holiness in humanity?
"Because they have no miraculous birth, it by no means follows they have no birth."
They have no birth as to their flesh, but death by the Holy Ghost; and there is just the opposition, "if Christ be in you, the body is dead."
"There was a real work of the Holy Ghost upon Him conceiving Him holy."
"Now the very same work is done upon the members!"
As to the body, is this true? "When we know that the lovely holiness of our head came from something which is also true of us." Is it?
Page 9. "Be found holy branches."
"The Father abiding in Him by the Holy Ghost."
Where is this in scripture, or such a thought?
"In like manner, as we His members live by Him."
There is no emphasis in this. These words are not in the original.
"The life which we, whom Jesus hath sent, receive of Him; He whom the Father had sent received also of the Father."
Where is this in scripture? It is not receiving but sustaining is spoken of.
"Oneness also in the manner of receiving it, as, so."
There is no such thing really meant in the words. -- Christ was speaking of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. How was this manner like, or one with the manner He received it of the Father?
Page 10. "Jesus abiding ever in the Father by faith, and having the Father abiding in Him by the Holy Ghost."
But there was much more than this (the latter part is not in scripture), even eternal union, which is not in us at all. This is the point of christian faith, which is here set aside. This tract is a denial of Christianity in my mind altogether. Is "I am in the Father" merely abiding by faith? If not, why say it is the same, yea, one thing? Is it alike true?
Page 11. "He hath promised to us the same."
Nay. He leaned on the living Father, we on the flesh and blood, that is, on death for us. The blood being shed out of the body and therefore spoken of as drunk. This is shocking perversion.
"This was the staff on which Jesus leant," etc.
Is John 15 and John 6 the same thing? Did He live by eating the flesh and drinking the blood? Is it not the contrast that we lean as sinners. He in the same life in holiness?
"Nothing should be too hard for us that was not too hard for Him."
Can we raise ourselves from the dead? What a comparison with Christ is this!
"Shut your doors, bow your knees to the Lamb."
Why not to the Father in the Son's name? The contrary of this is just what He means by "In that day ye shall ask me nothing; whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will do it."
"Leaning on the same strength," etc.
This is not the passage. Eating flesh and drinking blood is not the same as living by the Father.
Page 12. "For He had proved them all."
Has He proved my sorrows under sin as to conflict? He did on the- cross, where I wanted it. Had He sin dwelling in Him? I have. Had He sin dwelling in Him? Did birth by the Holy Ghost make no difference?
What estate? Sin in the flesh?
But its sin, its sin, that is the question. His leaning on God in trial was perfection, and not sin.
Page 13. "Holy human nature, which God had prepared for Him."
Is that true of us? Or, on the other side, being God-man?
"He had gotten pure from the Father's hands."
Is this true of us? Neither indeed is it scriptural in itself.
What follows is all shirking the point.
Page 14. Who questions all these testimonies of the word?
Page 15 I cannot acquiesce in, but it is immaterial.
Page 16. "It was a prayer for wisdom."
It is common to say Jesus prayed as a man, but this is exceedingly incorrect language, and much calculated to mislead. "You do not imagine that the humanity of Jesus ever prayed of itself?" No, but it was not God prayed.
How do men darken counsel by words without knowledge! If it were the God-man, it was all from a source of which I am devoid, for I am not a God-man. Perhaps we should remember, in setting forth Jesus as a man, pages 2, 3, we have merely the Father dwelling in Him by the Spirit, and thus He did the Father's will. There is no part of the glory of Christ's person which is not confused and set aside here.
The difference as to Arianism is much simpler and plainer. Arianism says, that Jesus our Lord was not the true God: and Christianity or the scripture says He was. The question in Arianism was not about trusting at all.
Page 17. As to justification and example, this is not the point at all: but raising, not the true objection, but a quite distinct question, and answering it, this is mere Jesuitry.
Page 18. "Having put away our sins in His blood; and as our representative, fulfilled all righteousness."
Whose sins? Whose representative?
Page 19. "He was conceived and born holy, whereas we are conceived and born in sin."
Is this a difference only in degree?
Was He in sin? Is that only in degree?
"A difference not in kind, but only in degree."
"For of the same Spirit of which He was sanctified in humanity" "His members are sanctified."
What subtlety! Sanctified in humanity -- was He born in sin?
"In this respect, there is no difference between Jesus and us, who are children of the Spirit."
There is the difference of the flesh lusting against it in us, which was not in Him. This is not in degree, but in kind.
"But He was sanctified from the beginning, etc.; but it is only a difference in degree," etc.
How is the question of sin in the flesh dropped here! Could it have been said to Christ, "mortify therefore your members which are on the earth?" Was it not said to them to whom it was said, "ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God"?
Page 20. "If we cannot be expected to be like Christ, it makes useless all example together. I say this, because I am prepared to shew that the same difference, which we have now seen to exist between the head and the members, exists among the members themselves, though not to the same extent."
Was not sin in the nature of all the members? Is it in the head? What abominable perversion and wickedness of Satan is this!
Were any of the members conceived in human nature of the Holy Ghost? What comes of the assertion, "that in His human nature there was no inclination to sin," if difference be only in degree, and that there is the same difference between the members?
"It is said of John, that he was filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb," etc.
What has being filled with the Holy Ghost officially, and as to prophetic calling, to do with having his human nature conceived of the Holy Ghost?
"Any example will fall to the ground if the principle be admitted, that if He whom we are called to follow had more of the Spirit than we have, we cannot be expected to be like Him."
Is that all the difference in Christ? The tract says it is difference only in extent. Is not this denying the sinlessness of Christ in nature?
Page 21. "'Go thou and do likewise.' But if the principle we are thus exposing be unsound when applied to holy men, it is equally unsound when applied to the holiest of men, the Lord Jesus Christ."
Is not this making sin in Christ or none in us?
"In Jesus of Nazareth you see the bright example of what manhood can be, and can do, by the grace of God anointing it, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in it."
Is this sinful manhood as ours? if not, to what purpose is this evil subtlety? And what comes of Christ's person? Was Christ an exhibition of what sinful manhood governed and mortified by the Holy Ghost is?
"If you say that He had a fulness of the Spirit which you have not, remember that He had not that fulness without a corresponding instant waiting on the Father."
"When, therefore, at any time you are disposed to complain that God does not fill you with the Spirit whereas Jesus was always filled with Him, look on the Lamb spending nights in prayer; look on it, I say, and when you have looked on it, go you and do you likewise."
Is any comment needed to shew the wickedness of this? Before Jesus entered on service at all, and was publicly anointed with the Holy Ghost, was there no difference between us and Him; not only as to the fulness of the Godhead in Him, but the sinlessness of His human nature?
Page 22. "The tree having become corrupt, every branch springing from it inherits the poison, and, left alone, bears nothing but evil fruit."
Every branch inherits the poison. Page 4 says, Jesus, His holy one, was a branch of Adam's withered tree; and again, page 22, "for of this withered tree He sprang a branch. Nothing can be simpler, if men desire to know."
Nothing, indeed. Every branch inherits the poison, and He sprang a branch -- but was not left alone, and therefore did not bear nought but evil fruit.
"Holiness, since the fall, has been a thing not according to, but against, nature."
"Such was the holiness of Him who is not ashamed to call these saints His brethren."
"The holiness that was found in Him, He borrowed not from nature."
What Jesuitry! Had He not it in nature? Have we? Was it not the native character of His humanity? Is it of ours?
"He sprang out of our common fallen stock."
We get now the worth of the earlier statements. The sting is in the tail; so ever with Satan's deceit.
Page 23. "Last, but chief of all" "He sprang a branch."
Did He inherit the poison? The rest did, though by the Holy Ghost they kept the power down.
"A fallen nature is one, which, left to follow its own propensities, will never do any good."
Is that true of Christ's nature? That is just the point.
"That it is capable of much goodness, Enoch and Elijah, Abraham and Moses, testify; that it is capable of perfect goodness, our beloved Lord testifies."
Does He? St. Paul did not, but the clear contrary. He says, No good was in it, and it could not be subject to the law of God. No! What was in the saints was a new nature, not born of the flesh. Their fallen nature was born of the flesh, and was flesh; this was a new nature from God, through Christ, contrary to the old as scripture teaches. It lusted against the Spirit in them: could that be said of Christ? What Christ was in principle and character, the new nature is of itself, for it is Christ our life. There is the old besides in us.
Page 24. "Jesus, the branch, sprang of it sinless by the Spirit."
Do we? If not, what folly do they mean?
"The Son of God could not have taken humanity save by the Holy Ghost."
"No humanity that was not conceived by the Spirit holy ... ... could ever have been the humanity of the Father's Holy One."
Is that our humanity? Is there no difference in kind?
"You will be taught to look upon the purity of the Lamb, and the holiness which ever adorned Him, as a purity to which you might be conscious."
That is, absolutely in nature without sin. It is not then distinctively true of Him that He knew no sin. We do not deceive ourselves if we say we have none!
"For, surely, as the prince of this world came and found nothing in your head, He would find nothing in you either, if you only were as your head desires to see you, 'filled with all the fulness of God.'"
This is a worthy finishing to set aside the whole work and person of Christ; for we should be accepted on the same ground as He was, each in ourselves, according to this being what He was; and why not then?
For my own part, I do not see a single truth of Christianity connected with the person of Christ, our acceptance, and the character of our sanctification, which this tract does not deny. Though circulated to screen them from the charge of calling Christ's humanity sinful, they cannot, without setting aside their whole system, set aside this, though they may deny it. It is (as one of their chief authorized teachers said) the hinge of the whole matter; and if we do not believe that, we believe nothing of their system -- that is, that the carnal mind was in Christ, but that He kept it dead. That is the character of our holiness; and, as this tract states, it is realized the same way in the head and in the members.
My Dear F -- , I comply with your request, in writing down some of the principles and statements which deter my mind from at all receiving or acknowledging the teaching of the missionaries who have lately come from Newman Street to this place. It requires me to set aside all the teaching which I have received from God, before I can recognize their teaching to be true. This I cannot do. I have invariably found it to be the effect of receiving their teaching; but, if this be the case, it is clear I have no ground to judge of them or of anything else. If I have learned nothing from the word of God, how can I know of the Church, be interested in the Church, hope or fear anything for the Church? If I am to I try them, it must be by the word: if I receive them without trying them, I set out in disobedience, and am a necessary and helpless prey to whatever they state, having given up the only means of judging whether they are of God or not.
The relinquishment of previous knowledge of scripture I have found to be the invariable effect of receiving their teaching and mission. Now I cannot deny the grace of God given to me in order to assume that all spiritual teaching is in them. I am well aware that they talk of reading scripture in the flesh; that previous knowledge of it has been in the flesh; and that we must not come critically to hear them, but willing to receive their doctrine. I cannot be willing to receive it, till I know what it is. Now do they mean by critical judging everything they say by the word? They themselves assume that I cannot do this, as knowing nothing except in the flesh. But if they do mean this, then I confess at once that it is precisely the spirit in which I do come to hear persons professing such an authoritative mission as they do: and I confess that it makes a very strong prima facie argument against their claims, that they do not like people so to come. If I am spiritual, it is clearly my part; if not so, still I must search the scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Surely the Bereans knowledge of the scriptures was just what they call fleshly knowledge; but it is a remarkable thing, that precisely what they call knowing the scriptures in the flesh is made the guard against delusion in the perilous times of the last days. "Continue thou," says the blessed apostle to his son Timothy, "in the things which thou hast learned, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus."
Now we have here precisely what they call fleshly knowledge of the scriptures, the guard against the delusions of the last perilous times; which guard they throw down; it is wrested out of the hand of those that give heed to them. They say, the guard against the dangers of the last days is the possession of the Spirit which they bring or are sent by. I find that the fleshly knowledge as they call it of the scriptures, which they reject and discard, is the guard given by the apostle, that is, by the Spirit of God, against the delusions and deceptions of the latter day. The word is the stability and security of the Church of God. It is quite true, we cannot use it really but by the Spirit; but that which the Spirit uses, for the comfort and keeping of the children of God, is His word.
And now I will mention some of the interpretations which they have produced as being the authentic interpretations of the mind of God in the scriptures. In the first place, Isaiah 40. The former chapter had left the church in Babylon; this chapter speaks of them as actually brought out, no information being given of their state while staying there: this, according to these teachers, is the restoration of the church! "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," means the restoration of apostles. "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" is the restoration of prophets to the church. "O Zion, which bringest glad tidings," is the restoration of evangelists; and "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd," is the restoration of pastors. "Keep silence before me, O islands," (chapter 41) is a command addressed here by the Spirit to the little isolated bodies of Christians. Then, after referring to previous deliverance, the words "I will give thee a new sharp threshing instrument with teeth, and with it thou shalt thresh the mountains," mean that the poor despised people that have the Lord among them in the gifts shall thresh and break down all the systems of churches and religion. "I will open rivers in high places:" these are the gifts and presence of the Spirit restored in Newman Street and elsewhere.
I give this merely as a specimen of their interpretation; I leave the judgment of it to others. The two latter interpretations are important, because the threshing of systems, or Babylon which they avow these systems to be, seems directly contrary to the statement concerning Babylon given in the Revelation, and in the latter they directly contradict themselves. It is stated, on the one hand, that the rivers opened in the restoration of the Comforter to the church, known in these gifts, were not flowing in the intermediate time from their exercise in the early days of the church; that heaven had been shut; that they did not exist, but are now restored; so that now, if the poor and needy seek water, then it is in unexpected places thus restored, but, till now so restored, not existing in all the interval. Now it is also stated by them that the energizings of the Father, the ministries of the Lord, and the operations of the Spirit, are as identified as their persons, and one cannot be without the other, that, if one fail in any measure, the other proportionately fails; and they also state that it is the energizing of the Father which quickens souls, even as Christ was raised from the dead, which last, doubtless, they are quite right in. Now they conclude, and justly, from this ground, that if the gifts and operations of the Spirit in them ceased, then the energizing of the Father must have ceased also; but this, coupled with the other part of their doctrine, that these gifts did cease, and that there were no rivers but that they are now restored, would simply prove that there never was a soul born to God until these gifts arose and were restored in the Church.
Thus the very principles of their system do not hang together. They boast of the restoration of the gifts for themselves. The thing that they announce is, that they are evangelists of the restoration of them; so that if we do not join them we shall, to say the least, not escape the coming judgments; for they do not venture to say we shall be lost, and yet we are told, if they did not continue, the energizing of the Father did not, so that no soul was born to God at all; and they press the necessary continuance of the gifts in the Church all through.
Again, though they would now admit that the Spirit dwelt in every believer, at least in some sort or sometimes, but not that the Comforter was in them, their language varies. They sometimes compare it to the difference of dwelling with them as in Jesus, and being in them as subsequently after the day of Pentecost. In this latter sense of the Comforter thus being in them, they say we have not the Spirit; and so much so that, if we do not join them as having this in whatever measure, we are in danger of the judgments coming. If we have it, all their pretensions and warnings are but idle bombast and terror. But I read that the Comforter, so promised as taking the place of Christ, should abide with them for ever. Which am I to believe? Let God be true. I admit our unfaithfulness; but while God's faithfulness cannot justify my unfaithfulness, my unfaithfulness cannot make that word of none effect: "He shall abide with you for ever." I do not find the consistency with themselves or with scripture, which the Spirit of God would give and manifest. The word condemns them: they deny themselves.
Again, one point they are very fond of is this, that they are the hundred and forty four-thousand in Revelation 14, and that afterwards the harvest will be: but that those in it will not be able to sing the song which the hundred and forty four thousand do. But, again, they will take the parable in Mark, and teach us that first there is corn sown, then the long stalk of apostasy, producing nothing, and then the full ear like the grain sown. These are themselves, not indeed in their present state, but when fully ripened, baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire, and thus perfected to meet the Lord: and then, when they are ripened, immediately He will put in His sickle, because the harvest is come. Now, it is clear, they change the whole structure and statement of the parable; but both cannot be true: for one identifies them and the harvest, the other makes the very point of their importance, that they are quite distinct from the harvest, and that the harvest is not then come at all, but many most important things between it and them. I do not agree with their interpretations; but the Spirit of God clearly cannot teach opposite and discordant things.
Thus far upon the face of their teaching. Many things I am well aware they would answer, as, that they may err, but they are not the Spirit. But what then is their teaching, and why receive their extraordinary mission? They may state the gospel, for aught I know, and state it clearly: others state that they have done so. I am ready to believe them: one of those who are here ought at least to have known it. But we are here only where we were before. The question is, Do they, besides the gospel, state things inconsistent with the truth and Spirit of God? Besides, do they privily bring in (whether deceived themselves, or doing it wilfully, is not the question, though concerning one at least I am satisfied he is doing it without wilfulness) -- do they privily bring in heresy? When I have heard them, they preached what I judged very contrary to the gospel. They taught, as to forgiveness of sins, on Psalm 32, that the love of God led us to judge sin He did, and to confess it to Him and to man, searching it out till we found none, and so we had peace; and Christ and His blood-shedding were not mentioned in connection with it, nor Christ's name, save requiring in one sentence conformity to Him.
I confess, to me this was not preaching the gospel, nor the forgiveness of sins in Christ's name, and therefore I heard what I believe not to be the gospel. But be it that they have at other times preached the gospel: what else have they taught? Certainly, they preach themselves; and the joining them as the way of security, not Christ. They say they were sent by a spirit, the presence of which among them is the only security in the evil day. And I must therefore judge them by that which the Spirit has done and said, if this is offered as any security in the evil. They preach the gospel; they explain many things; and I must say that the multiplied variety of the way in which they state things, the very great difference of their statements to different people, their extreme guardedness in the presence of those informed so as to know the contradictoriness of their statements, their refusal to reason the matter when opposed, or unless received as teachers, which is their habit, all to my mind, and specially the want of openness as to what they do hold, contradict that character of the Spirit's truth -- "We use great plainness of speech."
I have observed even that, where evil is brought in, it is brought in privily -- when truth, the house-top is the suitable place for its announcement. "Ask them which heard me" (when a nation had been taught), was the righteous appeal. Ask them, Do they hold that the humanity of our blessed Lord was sinful humanity? -- a principle originally boasted of by the great instrument and leader in all this work, Mr. Irving, as the very ground of the introduction of the gifts, that these could not be given till this truth was brought in; and to one they will deny it, to another explain it, to another modify it, and fall back upon scripture words, but saving the point really by something; to another they will acknowledge it to be there, but dead; but that it is really the hinge of the matter, which it really is. If charged with Mr. Irving's views on the subject, they disclaim him and his doctrines, and say that they are not bound by them although sent by the church over which he presided as angel, the teacher and expounder of truth or doctrine in it. Let any one able to see the bearing of an answer, or capable of insisting on a direct one, ask them the question, Do they hold the sinful humanity of the Redeemer? and judge of this. Now I confess all this want of openness I hold to be one of the strongest marks that the teaching is not the known truth of God; and in connection with this, the secrecy of their own meetings (not for discipline or correction, in which it might be fit, but in which the initiated take a part) does speak most loudly against the spirit which guides them.
But I would press upon your mind that, while I have stated here as to teaching merely what has passed in this country, coming as they do we cannot confine ourselves to their own account of themselves. They are sent by a spirit which has already expressed itself elsewhere: this spirit is their authority for coming; the gifts connected with it are the very subjects brought before us by their mission. The gospel we have had, feebly perhaps, before. The Spirit, or, as they would say, the restored Comforter, is the great point they present -- its presence the security they propose -- its sending them the authority with which they come. That spirit pronounced young Napoleon to be the man of sin: it stated that an American Indian Chief, then in London, would be converted there, and receive the work and return to America, and lead back his countrymen, who were the ten tribes, to Palestine; but he went back unconverted. And there are many other things not verified as declared; but I pass by all this. Signs and wonders may be wrought; things that happen may have been spoken of beforehand; this we know is quite possible, though it is impossible that the Spirit of God could give an untruth.
They have attempted to explain these failures in many ways, which a little attention shews to be utterly futile. Such is the prophecy of conferring apostolic gifts on Mr. Baxter, and the then promised baptism by fire. They have attempted to explain it, which is the admission of its failure, by the case of Nineveh. But the Lord has expressly declared that a pronounced judgment He will turn from, if they against whom it is pronounced repent. They have attempted to explain it by saying, that Satan had used the person as his instrument, and that what was true was of God-what failed of the enemy, though the utterances had declared this should never be. They have, in the support of one utterance given to another by acknowledged prophets, really subverted what was given by a former. They have sometimes got over this by declaring that no individual had any right to interpret the prophecies at all (they were not of private interpretation): the Church only could do it. Thus the whole tenor of the matter strongly bears against it in my mind.
But the fact is, which to me is determining, they do clearly hold the sinful humanity of the Lord Jesus. Mr. Irving was honest enough to own it openly; they are more guarded in their statements -- their present manner is to reject him; they say that the Spirit declared he had said unguarded things, and declare that they will merely use scripture statements; as, that "Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin;" and that the latter clause does not qualify the former. To me that is quite sufficient; for the latter clause not qualifying the former just means, that sin is not excepted as to temptation. This is the whole point in question; but the fact is, they do hold the sinful humanity, and have acknowledged that it is the hinge of their whole scheme of doctrine. Nay, more; the spirit which has sent them has borne witness to it in its worst form; and this is the whole question. Let them deny, or modify, or perplex any as they will: the spirit on whose authority they act has expressly sanctioned Mr. Irving's doctrine on the subject -- what this is I shall state to you.
Mr. Irving says, "It is an heretical doctrine that Christ's generation was something more than the implantation of that Holy-Ghost-life in the members of His human nature which is implanted in us by regeneration.
"If Christ was made under the law, He must have been made by His human nature liable to, yea, and inclined to all those things which the law interdicted.
"If His human nature differed, by however little, from ours in its alienation and guiltiness, then the work of reducing it into eternal harmony with God hath no bearing whatever upon our nature with which it is not the same.
"Was He conscious then to the motions of the flesh and of the fleshly mind? In so far as any regenerate man, when under the operation of the Holy Ghost, is conscious of them.
"I hold it to be the surrender of the whole question to say, that he was not conscious of, engaged with, and troubled by, every evil disposition which inheriteth in the fallen manhood, which overpowereth every man that is not born of God, which overpowereth not Christ only because He was born or generated of God."
Many passages more openly revolting could be added -- none I think more distinct in their meaning. I add but one more: "I believe it to be most orthodox, and of the substance and essence of the orthodox faith, to hold that Christ could say until His resurrection, Not I, but sin that tempteth me in my flesh."
What is the answer attempted to this? First, it is said, that Mr. Irving wrote this before the spirit came amongst them; just as it is said, when some of the obvious weaknesses and mistakes of one of the evangelists now here are quoted, and the term "the fiction of imputed righteousness" is quoted from his pamphlet, he had not joined them then. The answer at once is, they are the principles which made him join them. But Mr. Irving has stated subsequently, and on the point in question, equally decided things; for, on being condemned for these things by the General Assembly, he desires the Scotch to go to the ministers of their parishes, and ask them to their face if they believe that Christ came in the flesh, and had the law of the flesh and the temptations of flesh to struggle with and overcome; and, if they confess not to this doctrine, to denounce them as denying the Lord that bought them, "as wolves in sheep's clothing;" so that he held the doctrine after the spirit was amongst them, as well and as strongly as before. But, as the matter stands, his holding it before was the more important, because the spirit came as the seal to it. And, not only so, but on the question being raised, the spirit which sent these two missionaries gave its express sanction to the doctrine. I am well aware that they allege that the spirit said that Mr. Irving had used unguarded expressions. This may be so; and they may be consequently much more guarded in their expressions, more careful not to alarm people, which he honestly did; but the spirit which sent them confirmed the doctrine as taught by him.
Mr. Baxter, once designated as their apostle, wrote to Mr. Irving, stating fully his error in conceiving the law of sin to be in Christ's flesh, etc. Mr. Irving warmly supported his own views, and tells him the spirit came upon Miss E. C. and (after speaking in a very grieved tone and spirit in a tongue) she was made to declare that Mr. Baxter had been snared by departing from the word and the testimony; that Mr. Irving had maintained the truth, and the Lord was well pleased with him for it; which was followed by a similar utterance from Mrs. C. and a renewed utterance to the same effect from Miss E. C. Thus Mr. Irving's previous statements just give occasion to our knowing the express sanction of them by the spirit which has sent the missionaries here; and they believe it. It is (and they know it to be so) the hinge of the whole question; or, as Mr. Irving stated it of old, "The way for the promise of the Comforter had to be prepared by the preaching of the full coming of Christ in our flesh, and His coming again in glory, the two great divisions of christian doctrine which had gone down into the earth, out of sight and out of mind, and which must be revived by preaching before the Holy Spirit could have anything to witness unto."
That Christ came in the flesh, in the ordinary sense of the word, has ever been held save by the Docetae. The doctrine which Mr. I. alludes to, therefore, is coming in our (that is, in sinful) flesh. This it was which, as we have afterwards seen, the spirit amongst them explicitly witnessed to. It is then a shame for any to come here from the Newman Street church, sent by the spirit which has so expressly borne witness to it, and cloak, or hide, or garble the doctrine. Let them deny the spirit that sent them, if they deny the doctrine; or own the doctrine honestly, if they claim and terrify people with the authority of the spirit. I say, terrify; for while they do not state openly their doctrine in intercourse with strangers, they use the most imposing and frightening terms of responsibility to make people come and hear them where they teach; then for a long time perhaps, unless of spiritual discernment, they hear nothing to shock them of open avowal of their doctrines, and they are gradually prepared for the full reception of them and denial of others. The "fiction of imputed righteousness"+ is too hard, too unguarded an expression to state; when this was used, they had not the spirit: at least, if they had not, they had honesty; and where they have opportunity of boldness, they mock at it and the idea of substitution.
Let us read the simple effect of the doctrine of the sinful nature, as stated by Mr. Irving. "The man who will put a fiction, whether legal or theological -- a make-believe, into his idea of God, I have done with. He who will make God consider a person that which he is not, and act towards him as that which he is not, I have done with. Either Christ was in the condition of the sinner -- was in that form of being towards which it is God's eternal law to act as He acted towards Christ, or He was not. If He was, then the point at issue is ceded, for that is what I am contending for. If He was not, and God treated Him as if He had been so; if that is the meaning of their imputation and substitution, or, by whatever name they call it, away with it from my theology for ever."
+Hardman's Tract on 1 Corinthians 12-14.
These are Mr. Irving's words, and shew the identity of the doctrine of the sinful humanity with the denial of the doctrine of substitution, and therefore with the denial of any reality in the blessed truth of scripture -- "he suffered, the just for the unjust." "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
If Christ had a sinful nature, that is the thing that must be reconciled, not we. He is not, as knowing no sin, to be made sin for us, but, as conscious of every evil disposition, to reconcile this nature to God; or as Mr. Irving expresses it, "It is no reconciliation of individuals, but a reconciliation of human nature. It is not thine, it is not mine, it is not Christ's, but it is the common unity of our being." It is ridiculous to talk of unguarded expressions. Either sin was in Christ's nature or it was not: if it was, then it had to be reconciled; if not, then we had, by a sinless, spotless offering. I have not quoted the revolting language in which it is often conveyed: the doctrine is the thing in question.
I shall merely here give one statement to shew its effect upon the view of the atonement, and how distinctly contrasted it is. "The atonement," says Mr. Irving, "upon this popular scheme, is made to consist in suffering; and the amount of the suffering is cried up to infinity. Well, let these preachers -- for I will not call them divines or theologians -- broker-like, cry up their article; it will not do; it is but the suffering of a perfectly holy man treated by God and by men as if He were a transgressor." Would any person taught by God in the matter, or under the influence of the Spirit of God, so speak of the death of Christ? The language may be rash, but it is explicit. It shuts out the value of the person of Christ in His sufferings most explicitly.
The system is consistent with neither scripture nor itself; but so it ever is with error. It is consistent only in affirming sin to have been in the nature of Christ; and, consequently, in denying the value of the atonement in its common popular sense. Christ was treated as He was, because of the condition He was actually and really in Himself, not because of the sins of others -- that would have made a make-believe God. And, now, what does it come to? If this sinful nature was in Christ, this carnal mind, the frovnhma sarco;" this nature that needed to be reconciled, what do I find concerning it in scripture? "It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." So that the moral reconciliation of the nature was impossible; nor could Christ fulfil the law in its intrinsic requisitions. And, according to Mr. Irving himself, instead of being reconciled, God had to deal with Him according to the eternal law, by which He must act towards one in that condition -- the condition of a sinner, and dealt with Him because in it. When was the reconciliation? That He was treated as a transgressor by God, Mr. Irving himself tells us, and it was no "make-believe."
Is this the gospel of the grace of God? It all hangs together on the foundation of the whole system to which the spirit had to witness, that Christ took and had a sinful nature. If so, it is clear it must be reconciled; not He make reconciliation [or, rather propitiation] for the sins of others; and to this doctrine, the spirit which the teachers here profess to be sent by, has borne explicit witness, is the seal of it, identified with it -- first, teaching it, then sanctioning it; and these persons come here under the special character of being sent by that spirit, after it has sanctioned this very doctrine. They may guard their expressions, but they have not guarded them so as not to be quite clear to those aware of the difference. But they are the servants of that spirit; and my inquiry in judging of them is, what is that spirit the sanction of? It is the sanction of this doctrine (and in their case of the promulgators of it), therefore, that Christ took sinful human nature.
And now, one word as to "temptation." The poor tried soul is easily, when undiscerningly, led to desire the sympathy of Christ in its temptations and trials. Who that knows himself, as a poor, weak, sinful creature (but observe, renewed to love and holiness), does not feel this?
But a moment's reflection on one's self will shew one the fallacy of their use of this. Does the renewed soul want sympathy of Christ in its sinful feelings? No, it has learnt to hate them itself -- to say, "Not I." It wants the sympathy of Christ's strength with its new man to judge them, to put them down. It does not desire sympathy in the sin: that is not what we mean or want by sympathy; we want strength against that. It is in our new man, in mind, we are one with Christ; it is by Christ risen we are quickened. His sympathy is with us in our new man, and what is that in us? Hating sin, condemning sin, saying, "Not I," etc., and bearing trials of opposition from without, which press upon us as holy persons and in proportion as we are holy persons.
The sufferings of Christ in us are the sufferings of a holy loving nature in the midst of evil: our giving way to sin in us is not the sufferings of Christ in us. Our remedy for sin is the atonement of Christ, in what He suffered for us; the entire absence of sin in Him who represents us is the comfort and remedy for this, and, sins being known to be forgiven, having our feet washed, we seek to walk in the strength of that new life, in the conflicts of which we have His full sympathy; and, as has been justly remarked, we should want sympathy in the sorrow of actual transgression, if He were to sympathise with us as to sin. And, I say, we have this sympathy; but how? where? In His having borne the penalty for them -- "bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our transgressions." It is precisely in the discovery that He did bear our transgressions, and so has justified us -- in knowing that He hath "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" -- that we have comfort under all sense of sin -- not by His having been conscious of the evil disposition; or He could not, as "knowing no sin," be made sin for me. And this then I take in its full, unlimited sense, according to my whole need, as believing in Him.
It is not partial subdued sin -- a mind kept always dead -- a consciousness of what a regenerate man is conscious of. This would not do for me; for I am and have been much more. This would be no real adequate sympathy for me, or for any sinner. He must be atoned for in all his sins. He is atoned for in them by Jesus, made sin for him. And here is the sympathy of Christ as to this; that is, here it is he gets comfort, either originally, as by the work typified in the day of atonement, or by the Spirit's witness (as in the type of the red heifer) that Christ had entirely put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself -- access to God by the blood upon the mercy-seat, -- knowledge of all our transgressions being laid upon Christ in the scape-goat; and in the kept ashes of the red heifer, sprinkled by the running water, the continual witness that sin is put away by the sacrifice. To these the apostle refers in Hebrews 9 and refers as purging the conscience: and this is what we want as to sin -- not sympathy+ (save this great, immense, invaluable sympathy, that Christ has put it away, having borne our transgressions).
+I cannot want sympathy as to sin, till I am conscious of it. If I have sympathy in this, by similar trial, then was Christ conscious of it too; and this would destroy every ground of hope.
But we do want actual sympathy in a godly life; for we are living under effects and trials of evil and sin in the world, though belonging to a higher scene spiritually. I suffer pain for Christ -- reproach and shame enough to break my heart; it is no sin to feel this, but quite the contrary -- contradiction, desertion, want of sympathy, and like-mindedness. For my love I have hatred, misrepresentation, my words daily mistaken, snares laid for me, efforts to entrap me and dishonour the name of God in my person. Supposing even I do not fall into them, they are utter pain to me -- the insensibility of those around me to the love of God, the evil estate of the church of God's planting, the little fruits of grace in those who receive the Lord, the insensibility to the hopes He sets before us, the blindness to His testimony on many important points, the prevailing of Satan's power over so many. The more I am like God, the more grace I have, the more holy I am, the greater sense I have of His love, the greater love I have to men and the Church, the more and greater will be my sufferings: and if drawn into the activity of love, the more endurance of the contradiction of sinners against myself. But these are not sin in me, but just the contrary. Christ was quite perfect in spirit and thought; and therefore He perfectly felt the evil. Had there been any one evil in His nature, He could not have felt as He did the perfect evil of all that was around Him; nor, therefore, have any perfect sympathy with the trials of the godly; for, when we read of being "tempted like as we are," the apostle is speaking for the comfort of saints in trials -- calling them to consider Him who endured the contradiction, lest they be weary and faint in their minds. This is the sympathy the saint wants, not sympathy in sin. That Christ met in atonement and sacrifice; and now, in the judging power of His Spirit, revealing in that the power of His sacrifice.
And now as to the word "temptation," to be tempted is another thing from having a lust to sin, the carnal mind. Temptation is used in scripture, not for internal sin at all, nor in connection with it, save where it is the actual giving way to the temptation by reason of the sin -- "drawn away of our own lusts, and enticed." This will not be affirmed (I suppose) of Christ; if it be, then let it be said so, and the name of Christian given up; for then He was a sinner indeed. Tempted, there, is the giving way to the trial. But temptation otherwise is just the trial of what is in the person so tried; and this may be very various. God in this sense may be tempted; yet, we know from His very nature and from the word, He cannot be tempted of evil. But "they tempted God in the desert." They tempted and were destroyed of the destroyer. God was put to trial -- what He was, which was just their sin. In Him, it need not be said, absolute essential perfection was found. Neither can God tempt any man in the way of evil or lust. Yet God did tempt Abraham; He put Abraham to trial, and proved the grace which He had given him, saying, thereon, "Now I know:" exhibition of grace was the result of the trial of the temptation here. So we pray, "Lead us not into temptation" -- clearly not into lust or evil, but into a place of trial of what is in us -- we knowing our weakness, and therefore adding, "But deliver us from evil," or the evil one.
But the Spirit of God did lead Christ into temptation (we are expressly told in Matthew 4 and Luke 4), not surely into any exercise of a sinful nature, but into Satan's trial of what He was. So the first Adam, confessedly innocent and having no sin (that we may turn to man), yet was tempted, and so tempted that he fell into sin. So that clearly here temptation does not imply existing evil, or a sinful nature; for there may be temptation, so as to fall into sin, where there was no evil nature at all. He was tried and fell; weakness and fallibility being there, though not sin. We are tempted -- what is in us is tried; and in our case evil continually is found. The old sinful nature is found. there may be cases where, through divine grace, we get the victory, "are more than conquerors," glorying in tribulations, happy as enduring. The sinful nature is distinct from the temptation, though discovered by it. So Christ was tempted, tried in all points, according to the likeness of His brethren; but the result was, that nothing was found in Him but perfectness. Adam was tried and fell; we are tried, and often evil is found in us, and we are led away and enticed. Christ was tried, and neither fell nor was led away, nor evil found in Him.
If sin was needful to temptation, then would sin be justified in every temptation we were in, for we could not, they say, be tempted without it. Now temptation coming from an enemy without, and sin being needful to this, it is justified if we are so tempted. This is exactly what it is not. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man" -- a human temptation -- and God is faithful, who "will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."
Thus, though we often do give way, it is shewn to be sin when we do, and unjustifiable; and this, as to its source, is what is meant by condemning sin in the flesh. Christ, having placed Himself in our circumstances (which as to trial He fully did), and having never, in any sort or sense, given way, has proved that what does give way (the lusts that entice us, and make us yield to the temptation) is sin; for perfect human nature, and thorough temptation was in Him, cwri;" aJmartiva" -- everything except sin; and so has condemned sin, not in His flesh but in the flesh, being without sin, and passing through all the temptations, and so made a sacrifice for sin. Thus, concerning it, He has proved it all to be sin in us; He has condemned sin in the flesh, though He gives us peace concerning and in spite of it, because He is a sacrifice for sin, peri; aJmartiva".
Thus His being tempted in all points apart from sin is precisely the way in which He condemned it; not in its acts but in its source -- the very difference of a believer taught by the Spirit and having the Spirit of Christ. He knows not only transgression, but sin as an evil, sin dwelling in him. More correctly, God condemned sin in the flesh, by the exhibition of a tempted man, in every point without it. It was not actual sin that He thus condemned (that had been done, and would be done in due time), but "sin in the flesh." The law could not do this (it only called it out into knowledge, and even action); but God has effectually done it, sending His own Son, free from every spot, stain, or motion of it -- from it in His nature; so that it is all condemned as mere sin in me, not in its effects, but "in the flesh." Had it been in Christ, I could not condemn it as sin, or I must have charged Christ with it as sin; so that the absence of it from Him is the very means of my condemning it as such. The thing wanted was to shew this as judged, condemned sin by God. The law could not do this, but found sin everywhere; it was weak through the flesh. Law connected itself with men as they were, leaving it; and though therefore it might prove they had sin, it only therefore condemned them. But God, sending His own Son in the likeness of this sinful flesh and for sin, has condemned (in propitiation withal) this in the flesh: and the life which we have of Him, strengthened in His might by His Spirit in the inner man, judges and condemns it in us, as not according to the power of the inner life in Christ. This is the force of the passage, hanging upon the absence of sin from Christ's nature: the sinlessness of His nature, and consequent perfectness through temptation, proves that what yields in us is sin. It is that in us which was not in Christ, and yields to the trials of Satan, which He, not having, never did; it is sin, it is condemned.
And this as to the fact is the express doctrine of scripture. He was in all points tempted like as we are, according to the likeness He was in, except sin. The English passage does not convey the meaning properly, specially the latter clause; for "yet" might imply that it might mean actual sin resulting; though, I admit, a simple scripture-taught mind would take the sense aright. The statement of the teachers from Newman Street is, that the latter clause is not meant to qualify the former. What then is it for? this is just the difference -- He was tempted in all points, according to the likeness [He took], except (or, apart from) sin; that is, that which is connected, or continually so in us, with temptation, was not so in Him. It is the revelation of that difference precisely: He was tempted apart from sin -- we are tempted in connection with that which has been condemned as sin, not being in Him. It is sin which is in our nature, which makes us give way.
The "yet without sin," which I translated "apart from sin," is the same word as in the passage, "He shall appear the second time without sin." As free as He then will be from it, so free was He in the temptations He went through. Thus, we have the express testimony of scripture on the point. Every trial, every sorrow, every circumstance, in which the enemy of our souls could try Him, He was tempted with caq j oJmoio/thta. Everything which sin had caused as an effect He bore; in His nature He was sinless. He sympathizes with us in every trial of ours as new creatures. He judges -- God has judged -- and strengthens us against the suggestions of our old man, with which He can have no sympathy, but which is all condemned, we being received because He has willingly died for us as to it all, which was the sympathy we wanted for it, and which He could not have given if He had been in any way or sort sinful Himself. He could not then have been made sin.
But while scripture is thus express on the point, the contrary doctrine, their doctrine, really destroys the incarnation. Christ's generation, to use Mr. Irving's words, is no more than the implantation of that Holy Ghost life in the members of His human nature, which is implanted in us by regeneration. This is denial of the incarnation; for we must not take what they merely allege, but what the spirit which authorizes their mission sanctions. Now, God the Son being manifest in the flesh -- flesh not conceived in sin (that which was of His mother being a holy thing), maintained it a holy thing; and there never was anything which defiled the incarnate Son in suggestion, act, or otherwise, through everything that tried and wearied Him without; and this having been proved through years of trial, the prince of this world came at the end; and, though He shewed His love to His Father, and therein also obeyed His commandment in laying down His life, the enemy found nothing. He offered Himself without spot to God. If the human nature which was born of His mother was a holy thing -- if the person of the Lord was sinless in its generation -- then, when did sin enter? If ever there was failure -- if in that which was born of His mother there was sin -- then, as born, it was not a holy thing. Consequently, when speaking of the nature of our Lord, Mr. Irving speaks not of "the Word made flesh," or the like, but the human nature He was clothed with, thus destroying the incarnation.
I cannot see, therefore, a single doctrine of the gospel left untouched by this destruction of the person of our blessed Lord. The incarnation, the substitution of a sinless offering, the fact and condemnation of the sin that dwells in us, and that it is sin -- our judgment of it as such -- all are struck at by this doctrine.
It appears to me that the real truth of the Comforter's presence is also denied, saying that it is restored, when God said it should abide for ever, and consequently the power of judging them taken out of the Christian's hands; for if He has not the Spirit, it is clear He is incapable of it. The word is rendered of no avail; because, as they speak, we have read it in the flesh, and therefore can use no previous knowledge of it against them. All this is the crafty subversion of the great truth on which the soul rests. God is for me, is already with me, and by His help and word I must judge of all that is presented to me; and this, with fundamentally false doctrine and no sign of authority about them, we are called upon to believe what they say, under pain of being in awful, perhaps fatal, judgments. Their great instrument is terror. If a man knows his peace with God, knows he is taught of God, and that he has the Spirit of God; and if he is not unsound on the sinfulness of the Lord's nature, and holds to the word of God, their persuasions -- however subtle, and full of gorgeous promises when listened to, promises often falsified by facts -- are without effect. Thus, if false prophecies, and false doctrine as to the foundations of Christianity, and the spirit of concealment, and the slighting of the word, and the terrifying with false fears those to whom the Lord has given peace, be not the way of the Spirit of our blessed God, their way we safely reject, and are bound to reject, however we may pity the immense pretensions of those who assume to be sent by divine authority, without sign or scripture to warrant them.
The more the question treated in the following tract is weighed, the more important it will be found; and the doctrine taught in Mr. Newton's "Remarks" to be the destruction of the gospel of truth, and to subvert the foundations of Christianity. The denial that it is meant so to do is nothing to the purpose. Mr. Irving denied it just as stoutly; but a man's teaching is to be judged by what he teaches, not by his own opinion about it. What Mr. Newton teaches subverts the truth as to Christ. If he says it does not, it only proves that he does not know the truth which it clearly does subvert. The largest expressions of piety and holiness prove nothing. They were found in Mr. Irving's writings, and much most blessed and precious truth too: few writings could be named where there is so much. It is well known how widely Mr. Prince's books were circulated, how highly they were appreciated, and how many were supposed to be converted by him. Now all acquainted with the circumstances know the horrible blasphemies in which it all has ended. And now persons who examine the books judge that they find all through them the germ of the present horrors.
Now, as to the doctrine of the writer of the "Remarks," he states that Christ, associating Himself with man in the flesh at a distance from God, had to find His way to a point where God could meet Him, and which point was death under the wrath of God. Now if Christ was "obnoxious" to this wrath ("exposed" to it) from the place He was in, He could not bear it besides in a vicarious way for us. A man that has not himself incurred debts, but, being partner with one who has, is liable to them, cannot as surety in the way of kindness take them upon him. That is, vicarious suffering is set aside. If it be said that death under the wrath of God consequent on the distance man was at from God was wrath of chastisement, not vengeance, it is clear the whole truth of God as to man is set aside altogether. Was wrath of chastisement man's place in his distance from God? Was not condemnation, utter condemnation, his place? And what was death under the wrath of God as needful because in man's place? Is that only chastisement? But if Christ had this due to Him from His position, He could not also bear it for others.+
+Irvingism taught that there was no personal sin in Christ, but that there was in the nature He took, so that He was exposed and liable to death. Mr. N. teaches that there was no personal sin in Christ; and not that there was in His nature, but that He was liable to the consequences of it from His position in relation to God from the time He was born into the world. Both alike set aside the atonement.
As to the nature of Christ's sufferings, there is another passage I would refer to.
The apostle desires that he might know the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death. Now we have here the nature of the sufferings of Christ even to death, not in the sense of vicarious sufferings. The apostle clearly could not desire to be obnoxious and exposed to wrath because of the position he was in at a distance from God. But in the devotedness of service in which, in denial of all will of his own, he found himself as acting for God, and manifesting Him in life and in word in opposition to the whole wickedness of man and power and malice of Satan, and in the suffering of that devotedness in love to them that were God's, he did desire to be made conformable to Christ by His grace. Now this came upon him from without, but it was weighed and realized in the Spirit of Christ beforehand within, so that all this suffering without was understood, and took its place in his mind from what was already spiritually there. Thus he was "pressed out of measure, above strength, so that he despaired even of life; but he had the sentence of death in himself, that he should not trust in himself but in God which raiseth the dead;" so, "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in his mortal body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal body." Here Christ's sufferings were not vicarious,+ and such as we can seek fellowship with in the power of the Spirit of God according to our measure. That is not exposure to wrath from which a man by faith preserves himself. We get a clear view of what the sufferings of Christ are as in the world other than what was vicarious, and this even unto death itself.
+So he speaks of filling up that which was behind of the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake, which is the church; the fruit of devoted love which brought him into them, not the effect of his relation to God inflicted by God upon him.
As regards the statement from Mr. Bonar, it is obscure enough, as is also that on the application of the same type to the church, and in some respects certainly inaccurate. Such as it is, Mr. Newton's tract is much borrowed from it, and it is sufficiently obscure to furnish a handle to his doctrine. What the nature of it was, Mr. B. does not explain. But he does subsequently guard his statements, so as to secure himself from meaning what Mr. N. means. He says, "Chastisement+ supposes sin; suffering does not, for Jesus suffered -- nay, learned obedience by the things which he suffered." But chastisement does. "Some have, indeed, applied the word chastisement to Jesus also, for He was made perfect through suffering, and in the sense of passing through discipline, that He might know by experience our condition here, and be seen as the doer of the Father's will -- the man that pleased not Himself, in this sense His sorrows might be called by that name; yet in no other." Now it is altogether another, to say that He was obnoxious and exposed to wrath in His relation to God as associated with us in the position we were in. That He experienced our condition here, every true Christian believes. But this is what Mr. N. says it was not; and that we never are in the position He was in under Israel's curse. Our discipline is in love; His under wrath and the curse.
The quotations from the "Words of Truth" are exactly the opposite of Mr. N.'s doctrine. Christ's being obnoxious to wrath along with the people, and so being glad at John's message, is precisely the opposite to His identifying Himself entirely with the condition of His people: His being baptized was taking their place. So in His really entering into the circumstances of man's condition. Blessed be God, He did. But Mr. N. distinguishes this from what he means, namely, inflictions by reason of the relation of God to Him who did so enter. Mr. Bonar, speaking of his knowing by experience our condition here, says, "in no other;" though he does speak so obscurely that Mr. N. himself says he could not use his expressions without defining them his own way. So defined, I have discussed their value in this tract. That is what we have to do with here. As to Mr. Bonar, I avow I do not understand, and therefore I do not condemn, him; I much doubt whether he understands himself, or ever defined to his own mind the sentiment he is expressing, and expressing in a way which is certainly not scriptural in its form; but he has entirely guarded himself against Mr. Newton's view. I may add, that other teachers of the school of the writer of the "Remarks," in borrowing also the expressions and sentiments of Mr. Bonar, have applied it to Christ Himself in a way that Mr. Bonar declares to be impossible. I refer to the chapter on purifying. The way in which statements of truth are made to sanction the teaching of error is shewn in page 25: -- "If He was made to realize the distance into which man had wandered out of the presence of God," is sought to be sanctioned by "He must really enter into the circumstances of man's condition, into the misery and desolation in which man is, as wandering, yea, as departed from God" -- two things as different as can well be.
+This is the word chosen by Mr. N. to apply to Christ -- wrath of chastisement, not of vengeance.
It is important that the saints should well notice that the writer of the "Remarks" is speaking of actual inflictions from God due to man's sin but not vicarious; not of suffering, into the depths of which Christ surely entered. But these were "superadded inflictions from the hand of God." He shared "the fearful inflictions of God's broken law" -- "inflictions in displeasure" -- "inflictions because He was a man." These are often confounded, as in the last case, with the outward condition of man, as labouring in the sweat of his brow. But this is not all. "They depended upon His (God's) appointment." If He came under the special inflictions that had come on His own peculiar nation, He saw Israel's standing with all the terrors of that mountain arrayed against it. "God pressed these things on the apprehensions of his soul according to His own power and holiness." He is "speaking of the exercises of his heart from God; ... . not the spontaneous actings of His soul, but of the manner in which He was directly exercised of God." Thus, "in the Psalms ... . we find ... . not only the sufferings and reproach that pertained to Him as the appointed servant of God; but sufferings also which pertained to Him because He was a man, and because He was an Israelite;" and these, inflicted of God. He was "chastened by the hand of God," but not vicariously. That it is not vicarious, he says, "is very evident." Sufferings and direct infliction are often entirely confounded; but the reader must remember, while noticing the confusion, that that which the writer teaches is inflictions in wrath (as the curse of a broken law) directly from the hand of God -- which are not vicarious but arising from His own relation to God -- not by personal sin indeed, but by personal position.
How very remarkably is this contradicted by the word of God! This is the language of the godly remnant when they look on Him whom they pierced, as the truth of it is believed by the saint now. "Surely he hath borne our griefs [here He is associated with the people] and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." How very plain and how very sure is the word of God, God be praised for it!
The writer's notion is the notion of Jewish unbelief. It did please Jehovah to bruise Him. There were sufferings by His appointment. He hath put Him to grief -- "when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin." The whole chapter is an instructive commentary on, and reply to, the doctrine of the tract. He subverts the work of Christ.
I have yet another remark to make.
Mr. Newton has been sought to be justified by some of his friends, by citing a paper of his in the "Christian Witness." From having been so much abroad, I do not know who are the authors of several papers; but I take for granted this is his as stated. I have in consequence looked into it. It is a paper written against Irvingism. I judge that the germ of his present doctrine is clearly to be found there, and escaped the eye or the judgment of the editor.
The germ of the doctrine is clearly found in volume 2 page 113. But I can quite understand its being overlooked,+ as it was a paper exposing a more evident and glaring heresy, and the subtlety of a new one was not expected to be found there; and it is stated in the form of insisting on Christ's personal holiness, and expressed in a general way so as easily to escape observation and be construed in a good sense, as being in the form of urging Christ's excellency against the horrible doctrine of Irvingism; and thus value for Christ carried the editor along with the statement, the evil being merely introduced in general terms by the by. Now that we have the heresy full blown, it is quite evident that the germ of it was there, and the writer unsound in the faith from the outset, though undetected. Often, indeed, strange and painful expressions were heard, but what is called charity told us not to make a man an offender for a word. They were rash.
+Alas! I have discovered, since sending this to the press, that the true account of this is quite different. The matter containing this doctrine was not at all in the first edition, superintended by Mr. Harris. It was introduced into the second edition issued from the tract shop under the control of Mr. N., so that the "Witness" was made to accredit the doctrine unknown to the person originally responsible. The fact of the long time Mr. N. has held the doctrine remains unaffected, proving its systematised character.
But the citation of this paper in the "Christian Witness" is the proof that it is no rash expression which ought to be forgotten, or which is distorted by want of charity. Those who cite it avow that it was taught as a principle when none suspected, and none opposed, nearly ten years ago. And so it was. No one can doubt it who reads the paper in question; and we can understand now the value of all the private teaching meetings at which other brethren who laboured in the word were not allowed to be present. It was at one of these, when, from peculiar circumstances visiting the house where it was held, I heard it taught that Christ had to be judged after His death like another man: a teaching which has been again recently propagated among the poor elsewhere. But no remarks questioning what was taught were allowed at these meetings; and hence other brethren of independent spiritual judgment were excluded.
But there is another very important point which results from this paper of the "Christian Witness," and shews the subtle and guarded way in which heresy and the work of Satan grow up. The doctrines of Mr. Newton were then checked by the presence of men sound in the faith, and he was obliged, therefore, to ally his doctrine with that sound faith. And in saying this, I dare say that the heresy which he has now put forth had not ripened in his mind; for Satan is behind all this, and does not alarm those he deceives and uses. In doctrine as in practice a man might say "Am I a dog that I should do this?" Deceivers are deceived by one cleverer than they. They are but tools in the enemy's hand.
Now, while the germ of the doctrine is very clearly in the paper in the "Christian Witness," the possibility of such an error as Mr. N. now holds is denied, and the doctrine which he repudiates now is stated to guard what he had said, so that suspicion would be further lulled; just as he had sought in the second tract, since his views have been exposed, to lull suspicion by expatiating on the cross. But he does not here in the least return to the statements of the "Christian Witness," but maintains the substance of his heresy in worse and stronger terms than before. Further, remark that, by quoting this paper, Mr. N.'s friends confirm and establish very distinctly and positively, that there is a special doctrine deliberately taught by Mr. N., and what that doctrine is, being already discoverable in his writings ten years ago.
I now quote from the "Christian Witness" to shew the way in which he then identified the sufferings in question with vicarious sufferings.
"All that the soul of a saint recognizes as true in the writings of Mr. Irving, respecting Christ being in 'that condition of being and region of existence which is proper to a sinner,' will be found to be altogether comprised in the fact of His being born under the curse of the exiled family vicariously incurred. But He rose out of this 'region' through the power of His own inherent holiness; and, therefore never would have come 'into that experience into [read, of] God's action which is proper for a sinner,' unless He had chosen to abide it+ for the sake of others; and when He had chosen this, then it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, and to lay upon Him iniquity; a burden which He felt just as if it had been His own iniquity. Without having any sin, He was made to feel the consequences of sin, even so as to say, 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me.' But this was not because 'He was in our region of existence,' but because He was pleased, whilst being there, to become the sin-bearer for others."
Now this might well lead an unsuspecting mind to suppose that he was opposing the truth of Christ's vicarious suffering to Mr. Irving's heresy of sin in Christ's nature. Now, however, Mr. Newton declares positively that this was not vicarious. Not that He never would have come into that experience into God's action which is proper for a sinner, unless He had chosen to abide in it for the sake of others; and that when He had chosen this, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, and to lay iniquity upon Him, applying the passages in the Psalms to this. It is not this that he teaches now; but that He did come, was exposed to it all, that is, to experience God's action proper to a sinner without being one, not vicariously; and that He preserved Himself from it by faith, prayer, and obedience.
+Note particularly here, that it is expressly stated that what Christ incurred as born was the curse of the exiled family, which He had to abide, as making atonement, when He was Himself risen out of it.
The doctrine of the vicariousness of these sufferings was taught in the "Christian Witness," is denied in the recent tract. What he, still ten years ago, said never would have come, he now says He was exposed to.
The doctrine in the "Christian Witness" is absurd: born under a curse vicariously incurred is itself nonsense. Rising out of this region, that is, vicarious suffering, through the powers of His own inherent holiness, is far worse than nonsense, nonsense though it be; and then choosing to abide there for others, and then having iniquity laid upon Him. But the writer has relieved himself from the contradiction of His being born subject to the penalties of Adam's guilt, as a member of the family and yet vicariously incurring them; not by holding fast the truth he had associated with this, but by denying it, and leaving the pure unmingled heresy of wrath on Christ, which was not vicarious. But nothing can make clearer what the heresy is than this reference to the "Christian Witness" -- guarded there by truth so as to make nonsense -- now taught in its naked evil. It may be seen by this how accurately I have stated it, in comparing it in a note with Irvingism, page 53. The doctrine of the "Christian Witness" ought to have been detected perhaps by a discerning eye. For it is this: that Christ was obnoxious to wrath, "penalties to which He had become subject on account of Adam's guilt" -- "born under the curse of the exiled family" -- "God's action proper to a sinner" -- "but He rose out of this region through the power of His own inherent holiness;" "He might have entered into life by Himself alone;" "He was able to enter into life by keeping the commandments" -- "able to fulfil the law, and so rise above the penalties to which He had become subject on account of Adam's guilt." This is, we know, death under guilt and wrath, though He rose out of it,+ the law being strong unto him -- it was "unto him life" -- as it is written, "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily, righteousness should have been by the law." But He "preferred to lay down His life that He might take it again" -- "He had chosen to abide it [God's action which is proper to a sinner] for the sake of others. When He had chosen this, then it pleased the Lord to bruise Him." He was then there, rose out of it, but chose to abide it. Now this ought to have been seen; it was covered by the word vicariously. This last is now denied. But the doctrine that Christ was obnoxious to the wrath due to Adam's guilt is most plain; the curse of the exiled family vicariously incurred is not earning His bread in the sweat of His brow, nor are sinless penalties vicariously incurred.
+This teaches that He saved Himself from the curse of the broken law, to which He was subject, by keeping it Himself.
Further, the article distinguishes three particulars which mark our condition as sinners: --
"First, Original or vicarious guilt imputed (or reckoned) tous on account of the transgression of our first parent.
"Secondly, Original sin or indwelling corruption.
"Thirdly, Actual transgression."
"The Lord Jesus was as free from indwelling sin as from actual transgression; yet, nevertheless, He was a member (so to speak) of the exiled family, and therefore was born subject to their penalties" -- called lower down "the curse of the exiled family vicariously incurred." Under this "He was born," but He was able to rise above these penalties -- He rose out of it. Now He was not, and did not, as regards labour and toil, and hunger and thirst, and weariness, which are called the sinless penalties. I repeat, the doctrine taught is perfectly clear. The recent tract only takes away the vicariousness.
I believe that what has been the instrument of ripening this terrible doctrine as to Christ, subversive as it is of the truth, is really the prophetic system of the writer. And in this way: he does not admit the existence of a Jewish remnant which has life, and which is consequently within the reach, and the immediate object, of the sympathies of Christ. Hence he is obliged to associate Christ in His condition with the sinful and rebellious nation, (and the consequence follows immediately,) instead of His being the gracious vessel of feeling, thought, and faith, for the believing remnant, in the position of which He did put Himself, and sympathy with which He perfectly has; though it must indeed, in its application, be based upon that in which He was alone -- the atoning work which He wrought for them as for us. Psalm 16 shews this association. All their sorrow was His, and He enters into and associates Himself with it. He had that which was His own, whether bearing or feeling and anticipating the curse and the sin of others. But the means of falling into the error, though important as a guard to the saints, are nothing to the error itself, because the person, relation with God, and condition and work of Christ Himself, are concerned in it, and have been lightly sacrificed to these notions. The paper in the "Witness" shews that the principle has long been adopted by the writer of the tract.
I have now to turn to the publications on the sufferings of Christ; and first, of notes of a lecture by one of the teachers of Ebrington Street. Indignation at the destruction of everything that is precious in the truth and the glory of Christ Himself, and poignant sorrow that those I once knew well should be agents in it, contend in one's heart. But the very essence of the glory of the Lord and the foundation-truth of God, and mischief and ruin to souls, claim imperiously the warning that this teaching is the worst deceit and craft of Satan. The second publication, by Mr. Newton himself, only seriously aggravates the matter. It is not that there are not many truths, and precious truths, long taught by others; and, no doubt, he has corrected the gross outrage on truth found in the expressions of the first part. But precious truths put forward carefully for the purpose of introducing what undermines foundation-truth for the soul, without being suspected, is one of the surest marks of Satan's direct work Such is the case here. Mr. N. declares he cares for the cross, that it is the sacrifice for sin; but he refers in doing so directly to the matter of the tract Mr. Harris has printed. So that he does not, as he knows he cannot, deny that tract as to the doctrine taught in it (which came, indeed, from his own family, and was circulated by his friends) in Exeter, London, etc. The person from whom it came, residing in the house with him, was apprised that it would be kept, and stated that it was the substance of Mr. N.'s lecture correctly given. One can understand that he could not disown it, and that he dared not own it.
And now, one word as to the general principle of publishing such documents. I can understand that an honourable mind may shrink from the detection and exposure of evil and dishonourable means employed by evil men for propagating error. It is hard to touch pitch and not be defiled: I am glad to be spared it. But, for my part, I judge that the courage which is bold enough to do it is more to be respected than silence. A man manufactures poison and distributes it without avowing his name, and disseminates it assiduously in secret to destroy and ruin. It comes to the very house and family of those able to detect it. Is it evil, if the proof is clear of its character and origin, to shew what it is, and whence it comes? Is it not to be labelled because the poisoner, in order to facilitate his mischief, will not do it? Is not the character of what he produces to be made known, that people may be on their guard? Because he acts secretly and subtilly, am I to keep his secret, if, without any art or even seeking it, I have discovered it by the providence of God? No; I publish plainly what it is, and who it is.
I trust no one will seek to get at it by any art, but that every one will publish, or communicate to those capable of dealing with it, what falls into their hands by the providence of God, inculcated (as their doctrines are) in a way which itself demonstrates that the light is hated because the deeds are evil.
Let all be brought into the light. That which is upright will not fear it.
And now, to take up the doctrine. Any of us may err. Any of us much occupied by one side of a question may exaggerate it, and so fail in just truth. But there are certain things -- a certain knowledge of Christ, which is a part of our life, our salvation, the glory of Him we love touch it, the whole soul is up in arms. If it be not, life is not there. The soul cannot, would not, dare not, bear that certain points should be touched. The soul is livingly roused, as if itself were touched and more. A surgeon may dissect and pull to pieces a dead body, but if a living one he may make mistakes -- turn his knife wrong; but if he be a surgeon and knows what vital parts are, he dares not approach the danger of touching them, let his plans of operation be what they may. If he do, it is a proof he does not know what the vital parts are, or else that he means to kill. The ignorance of some things proves there is no knowledge of God. The woman that could quietly acquiesce in the division of the infant was plainly, to the eye of one taught of divine wisdom, not its mother: the tie of a mother's heart was not there. The first tract shews this in the things of God; the second still more (in the effort to save the writer's credit) -- entire indifference to the truth and glory of Christ. He declares his value for things which not to value would discredit him; but fatal error is slurred and glossed over without a regard for the Christ it denies, and fatal ignorance of essential truth displayed. This I shall now shew, as a solemn warning to brethren, not to give heed to this seducing spirit. Had the second not been published, I might have left it simply to Mr. Harris's notes. But God has taken care that the second should come out, and that I should know nothing till it did, so as to be free to comment on what is authorized by the writer himself.
The system of the tract published by Mr. Harris is an elaborate and complete system, and undoubtedly, for the substance and system of it, Mr. Newton's.
This has been acknowledged by those to whom the notes belonged, when apprised that they would be kept.
Now, the system and principle of this is to present a third kind of suffering of Christ not vicarious -- not His soul's entering into the condition of those amongst whom He was, and whose cause He had taken up, but suffering arising from God's relation to Him, and His relation to God, as being one of them: -- "For it was not merely the sufferings He had because His soul entered into the condition of things around Him, but there was quite another question, the relation of God to Him while thus suffering. For a person to be suffering here because He serves God is one thing, but the relation of that person to God is another." "We there see [in the Psalms] what His relations to God were during those thirty years which passed before His baptism." "So Jesus became a part of an accursed people; a people who had earned God's wrath by transgression ... . so Jesus became obnoxious to the wrath of God the moment He came into the world. Accordingly we find many of the Psalms speaking of this."
Note here, it is not taking wrath nor being made sin: that the writer distinguishes: but God's relation to Him and His to God, not for personal sin, but as part of an accursed people. He was, in relative position, a child of wrath even as others. Mr. N. to clear himself may cite Hawker, and Hervey, and Witsius, as speaking of Christ being always vicariously subject to wrath. They may be wrong in this notion, but it is nothing to the purpose; they never dreamt of His being obnoxious to it otherwise than vicariously. Error as to the period of vicariousness has nothing to do with fundamental error as to the position of Christ Himself -- His relation to God. They had no such thought as the writer whatever. Their names are a mere blind. "I do not refer," says the writer, "to what were called His vicarious sufferings." "He came to be baptized because He was one with Israel, was in their condition, one of wrath from God" -- not, mark, His soul entering into the condition of things around Him, but His relation to God, and God's to Him. This was so much so, that "consequently, when He was baptized, He took new ground;" and "the moment He took that ground the Holy Spirit was sent down -- God's seal was set upon Him. 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.'" "He found a new character of affliction as the servant of God."
"Observe, this is chastening in displeasure, not that which comes now on a child of God, which is never in wrath, but this rebuking in wrath to which He was amenable, because He was part of an accursed people: so the hand of God was continually stretched out against Him in various ways." "He felt the hand of the Lord rebuking Him in hot displeasure." "We do not read of such chastening after He began His ministry." "He was able to cure sicknesses and heal diseases, so that the last three and a half years were by far the happiest in His life, for He was not afflicted by the hand of God as before." All this is very distinct as a system; it is not a casual expression liable to be misconceived, but a well-matured system. In the new tract, the whole of which refers directly to the one published by Mr. Harris (page 26), we find these two periods noticed among five into which the writer divides Christ's life, and he says, "It is the second and third of these divisions that I have been seeking to contrast."+
All this is very clear: that He suffered during thirty years as part of a cursed people, and changed this position at John's baptism.
The next point is Gethsemane: "What gives the character to Gethsemane is weak humanity, and all the power of Satan allowed to be brought upon Him."
"I should regard this as the most terrible hour He ever passed through; we shrink from this more than from any other part of His history ... . He dreaded not the cross as He did Gethsemane!" What, I ask in passing, made Gethsemane terrible? What was the cup He had to drink? "When it was over, so conscious was He that the difficulty was surmounted, that He said to them, 'Sleep on now, and take your rest.' That is His word to the Church now: we may rest; the difficulties are over, and we may sleep on undisturbed in blessed and happy security and rest, for all is over now." What! before the atonement and the cross? "He dreaded not the cross as He did Gethsemane. The cross was the place where He was made distinctly the sacrifice for sin." The reader will see the contrast here between Gethsemane and the cross. They were two distinct objects of dread -- Gethsemane the worst. They are distinguished as periods in the division into five (page 26 of the second tract). Now, that Mr. Newton really owns this paragraph, is evident (page 37 of the second tract). He there says, "But because I say that the end was virtually reached when Jesus delivered Himself up and was led unresistingly away, I do not on that account depreciate or undervalue that which remained actually to be done."
+"He stood in a new position;" second tract (page 23). "His (page 22) baptism may be considered the great turning point in the life of the Lord Jesus ... His life of service here ... It was the introduction into the earth of the new economy of grace ... . If the soul of Jesus had realized, experimentally realized, and that too under the hand of God and to a degree that we little think, the fearful condition of Israel; if He had seen It, as it were, girt about by fiery indignation, and threatened by the full devouring power of that mountain of fire, blackness and tempest, under which they had been abiding." What kind of wrath was this -- chastisement or vengeance? that which was supplanted by the new economy of grace at Jesus' baptism -- "how joyful to His soul the sense of the introduction of new things!"
I shall just now consider why that, namely, humanity in weakness on the cross, was, in the garden, "firmness inconceivable to us, because perfect, such as can be found only+ in God." But the question of the value of the passage I have quoted from the first tract, glossed over in the second, is discussed in the second, as that which Mr. N. recognizes as his. As again in (page 33), the second tract, "It was the most terrible hour through which He had ever yet passed." Can any one doubt to what this alludes, adding the word "yet" to do away the effect? Now I say that no person taught of God in the foundation-principles of God's truth could say, that though the cross was the place where He was made distinctly the sacrifice for sin, Christ dreaded not the cross as He dreaded Gethsemane; for, though he may be forced to say the cross was a sacrifice for sin, such a statement makes it clear that the idea of the wrath of God does not exist in his mind, and that, having suffered what was not a sacrifice for sin, but a distinct character of suffering not vicarious, but weak humanity under the power of Satan allowed to be brought upon Him; that "Sleep on, take your rest" was His word to the Church now: "we may rest, the difficulties are over; and we may sleep on undisturbed in blessed and happy security and rest, for all is over now" -- I say it is impossible one taught of God could say so, because it is not a question of difficulties but of atonement. The forsaking of God was not come; the subject of dread according to the writer was a distinct and more terrible one. The sacrifice for sin was not yet in accomplishment. Nothing vicarious was touched as yet. It was not anticipation of the cup according to the writer, but a distinct thing which Jesus dreaded, and which was over when Gethsemane was finished; and yet all was over, so that the Church was secure and at rest when the vicarious work of atonement was not begun! I say, no person to whom the faith of God's elect is precious, to whom the atonement of Christ is a reality and the centre of hope, could possibly have had such a thought, or (unless blinded of Satan) not have recognized that it was of Satan.
+The principles of the two tracts are precisely the same. I have given the statements of the first tract, as shewing that the whole is a well-ordered system; but this quotation is from the second. The second says also, "the felt weakness of His humanity." I add here this monstrous statement as to Gethsemane from the second: "The danger that had approached so nigh the sleeping disciples, and which Jesus alone had appreciated, was driven away. A gulf unseen by them had yawned around them -- but it was gone." What was gone? "His conflict just passed had given them deliverance from the danger that threatened them in Gethsemane ... . It [Jesus' will] had not wavered. And, therefore, was not Jesus justified in speaking [saying, Sleep on now] as if the end had been perfectly and fully reached? ... If therefore, the danger that had just threatened was removed, and if that which He was then doing was to give them sure, unchangeable, peaceful security from all the power of Satan and of sin for evermore, why should He not regard them as those who had passed through their last dangerous storm, and who had virtually reached the haven. 'Sleep on and take your rest.'" What has their last dangerous storm to do with atonement? They could aid here, it is said? "'Sleep on and take your rest.' They are words not of upbraiding, but of comfort, or if anything like sorrow mingles with them, it is in the thought that the occasion was lost of aiding in a conflict such as that in Gethsemane had been ... . They might have prayed with Him in Gethsemane." So His seeking for sympathy and prayer from His disciples (tract 1, page 18). He never sought their prayers. "Tarry ye here while I go and pray yonder." He certainly never sought their aid in a conflict where He found "the terrors of the Almighty set in array against him."
Further, that Christ was obnoxious to wrath from His coming into the world as part of a cursed people, and changed His relationship to God at John's baptism, because he preached repentance and remission of sins, and the new economy of grace was introduced, and that He found relief in his message, so that, from the moment He took that ground, God's seal was set upon Him, "This is my beloved Son," and He ceased to afflict Him as obnoxious to wrath -- is doctrine so destructive of the real human relationship of the blessed Jesus to God, so ruinous to His person, motives, and the path of Him who grew in favour with God, that no one who knows Christ could receive it for a moment.
That the writer means the relation Jesus was in is clear, for he speaks of His escaping much of it by prayer, faith, and obedience (page 8, second tract), and extricated Himself out of it by His own+ perfect obedience (page 12); and, moreover, contrasts it in the first with His soul entering into the condition of others.
+The statements of the writer are inconsistent and absurd enough. It was by the appointment of God and measured by that, and a positive infliction of God; yet, being from His birth obnoxious to it, He escaped a great deal by faith, prayer, and obedience. But it was His privilege and glory to have a great deal, and be chief in it. We, however, are never under Israel's curse, which this was. He extricated Himself out of this privilege by His perfect obedience, elsewhere by accepting John's message by a wise heart; and though measured by the appointment of God, and a dealing of the hand of God, yet there were "continual interferences of God in His behalf" to deliver Him from them. How truly those who depart from the faith and exercise their own mind in order to have a great appearance of knowledge, know not what they say, nor whereof they affirm! Nothing more strikes me, than the total absence of all divine teaching in all these statements. That total absence in the writer's teaching I have been fully convinced of now for several years.
The writer talks of the privilege of suffering. There is no privilege in suffering under a curse not vicarious.
These statements, of which I can only give the briefest outline, would be impossible to any one to whom the reality of atonement was known, or the essence of truth clear. Being put out with pretension to entering deeply into the sufferings of Christ, and the literal acknowledgment of many truths which they undermine, they are evidently the work of Satan himself to destroy the truth, and to deny the Lord in His special work. The aim is evident; to set up service and sorrow in conflict in man above the great fact of atonement, in which we can have no part whatever (save our sins and the fruit in salvation).
But I shall now take up the second tract more directly, though briefly. For while glossing over many of the grosser statements+ of the first, they save them for those who have received them, while they seek to save the writer's credit with those who have not. This is always the way with a seducing spirit. The first tract had gone too fast, had been seen and detected, and then, not withdrawn, but, while it worked, the credit of the system was to be saved, and confidence (ruined by the first) sought to be regained. But it could not be attempted to deny directly the first, nor has it been done in the second: some things it must be sought to back out of.
+The reckless upsetting of truth as to the person of Christ by other teachers of this school, may be guessed by a lecture on John 15, where it was taught, that there were things in Christ which needed to be removed, and that, therefore, the Father used the pruning knife as to Him. Happily the hearers were guarded enough of God for it to strike and alarm them: the lecturer was spoken to, and it was of course explained away. The way in which the doctrine of the tracts used to be taught at Plymouth (for it is nothing new), was that Christ was a constituted sinner subject to death, and worked His way up to life. But not being in writing, it was hard, as regards others, to verify it. See Introduction, as to the "Christian Witness," however.
Whereas in the former the periods were doctrinally distinguished in the nature of their sufferings, now His sufferings, because He was an Israelite, cannot be restricted to the years of His public service. Thus the grosser form of the error is obviated, for he does not, in this expression, get on to a new ground and position by John's baptism of repentance and remission, so as to be sealed; but the substance of the error rests, and though thus apparently set aside by the word "restricted," it is fully set up again (page 23), where it is declared, that the difference of Christ's dispensational relation is illustrated by that of Sinai and Zion (the place of the Church of the firstborn). I have not attempted to go through the tortuous contradictions of error. They abound in the tract. They are convenient for partisans; because, while error is propagated by one statement, if detected, it can be denied by the other. (See the quotation also from page 22, in a previous note.) He is obnoxious to wrath which is not vicarious, by reason of His own relation to God, such as He was, born part of an accursed people. Now how did being obnoxious to wrath in His own relation to God shew His perfectness? His conduct under it we may suppose did -- were such a thing possible. It is the obnoxiousness to wrath in Him as soon as He was born into the world, a position out of which He had to extricate Himself, that is the point pressed by the writer of the tract.
And here let me notice what is believed by all.
Not only are the vicarious sufferings of Christ owned by every true Christian, but that He suffered also as the righteous One on the earth. The reproaches of those that reproached Jehovah fell on Him. He suffered being tempted, having come in grace, the sinless One, into our position. His holy nature, sinless and untouched by Satan; still as a man, suffered being tempted. His soul entered in the fullest way into the condition of sorrow and distress in which sin had plunged man, and Israel too, especially. In all their affliction, in this sense also, He was afflicted. His heart, fully feeling, entered into the fullest depths of it, so that under the sense of it He could groan deeply in spirit. Not only so: it is evident that He anticipated the trial and suffering of death to which He was to be subject. By the grace of God He tasted death, and we know that He felt it beforehand, not only from the Psalms and the solemn sufferings of Gethsemane, but from His own words, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And here note, Christ, because it was His soul entering into it, could go to the full depths of all this, unspared, and unsparing Himself. It was sinless grace and perfectness of love, which, having brought Him into this condition, made Him enter into it in all its fulness, and shrink from none of it. It became the divine majesty, seeing He had placed Himself there, to lead Him through the sufferings suited to this position; that is, it was fitting He should suffer.
Hence our souls, though unable to estimate it, can understand its perfectness, and in spirit pass adoringly with Jesus into the midst of His sorrow: nay, it is our privilege to enter into that part of His sorrow -- His holy sorrow -- which flowed from sinlessness and love, from service in spirit and knowledge of the mind of God in the midst of sin, to have the fellowship of His sufferings. His death itself can and is to be viewed in this light also, looked at as coming from man, and even Satan, however far this may be from being all that is found there, as indeed it is.
But the writer takes entirely different ground -- ground which bases the sufferings of Christ on an entirely different principle. He speaks of sufferings. not into the depths of which He entered as the holy One, but of wrath, to which He was obnoxious by reason of the position He was in, from which God interfered to deliver Him, from which He extricated Himself by perfect obedience, so that He never felt the whole of it. It was the curse of a broken law He was under by position, not vicariously, without conflict with wicked men, not by the contradiction of sinners endured in grief by a holy soul, which it is our privilege to endure too for His and righteousness' sake, but what it was no privilege to endure, and no profit either; for if it was to be endured for the profit of others, how could He extricate Himself from it, and be preserved from suffering it all by the interference of God in comforting Him? It lay upon Him, and not vicariously, as that which it was well for Him to get out of as a curse not vicarious. Is it not sufficient to present this to the soul of a saint, for him to see that it subverts the faith of God's elect? It is not the true Christ of God, the Holy Thing born of Mary, that we have here, but one who participates, not by grace but by birth, in the curse, the fruitless curse which is fallen on man by reason of sin -- not One who has taken the place in grace, for He extricates Himself from it, but one who is in it under the curse of the law by dire necessity of position. The substance of the truth of Christ's holy person is set aside, and His taking the curse on Himself is set aside, the two cardinal truths of the gospel of grace; and hence we shall find that all is confusion on these subjects, as it must be where the substance of the truth is lost, and the use of the Psalms as untrue and unfounded as possible. Under pretence of presenting the sufferings of Christ in a new and important point of view, the whole grace of them is lost; and, instead of in grace entering into the depths of the sorrows and suffering, whether of man or of Israel in their position before God -- His soul entering into all the full depth of it in full purpose of soul without the least sparing, that, His soul knowing all, our souls might know His love had entered into all, and find its power there -- it is a condition He is in necessarily by position as under a curse which He prays against, extricates Himself from, and is saved from enduring the full extent of, God interfering to deliver Him. I have already given the quotations which expressly teach this.+
+The reader may see page 8 of the "Remarks," pages 12, 16, etc.
It is in vain to present other truths to make good the writer's orthodoxy. It is a mere blind. They are not the truths in question. On the point which the tracts teach, the truth of God is subverted. It is not a true Christ which is taught there. Nor does Christ enter fully into our sorrow, for He is spared it, and extricates Himself from it.
I now refer to some points in the second tract, shewing the entire confusion on the subject of suffering and wrath, whether from intention or ignorance I do not pretend to say, but which, at any rate shew, if it be ignorance, fatal ignorance as to Christ Himself. (pages 3, 4.) "Had He been a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, having drunk of that cup which Job and Jeremiah had tasted before." What cup was Jeremiah (though suffering, as Christ Himself did, under the outward consequences of Israel's evil), as a prophet in his Lamentations by the Spirit of Christ drinking? The cup of sorrow in sympathy. His soul entered into Israel's sorrow in love by the Spirit of Christ. But this the writer of the tract says is quite another question from Christ's sufferings from God's relation to Him. But what were Job's sorrows? Were they not personal discipline -- Satan let loose at himself? It was no suffering on account of others: he was the occasion of his own sorrow (I do not speak of any type now), and confessed himself, when he saw God, a sinner, and repented in dust and ashes. Was "the interpreter, one among a thousand," shewing to man his uprightness, so that God restored him, saying, "I have found a ransom," to be applied to Christ as one who needed a ransom? or could Elihu speak to Christ in any sense as he did to Job? and did not Elihu much more represent Christ than Job? That Christ voluntarily took Job's case, looked at as a typical sufferer, may be also admitted, His soul entering into it; but this is distinguished as another thing by the writer -- it is His own relation to God.
Again, what was the nature of the wrath? In the first tract it is left as but displeasure and terror, quoting Psalms which evidently do go as far as possible in the wrath of God, as Psalm 88. Here it is attempted to be distinguished as wrath, as chastisement from wrath in vengeance. It is not chastisement in love+ as we have it; it is not vicarious suffering; it is wrath on Israel, the consequence of sin. Now what is it the writer refers to as that which had-fallen upon Israel? Not the process of government which accompanied the law, and formed terms under which Israel held certain blessings. They were already Lo-ammi indeed under that. Messiah could be presented to them according to the promise of Deuteronomy in grace, if indeed their hearts, under whatever affliction, turned back to the Lord and to obedience; but in this respect Christ presented Himself to them as a witness and a prophet, and their heart was as the nether millstone. But what is the position of Israel to which the writer refers? "They had earned, by their disobedience, the fearful inflictions of God's broken law."++ Mark that. Did Christ take that not vicariously? And what is meant is clearly stated enough: "for it had been said, Cursed is he that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them (Galatians 3: 10)"!! I repeat: Did Christ take this place otherwise than vicariously?
+This, after all, is confusion, for, as a nation, the iniquity of Israel is declared to be purged by the chastisement which she has received at the hand of the Lord, "double for all her sins."
++So page 23: "The difference between Sinai the mountain of blackness, and Zion the mountain of light, and grace and blessing, the place of the Church of the firstborn, might be used to illustrate the difference between the two dispensational positions held by the Lord Jesus in the midst of Israel previous to His baptism, and that which He dispensationally and ministerially took when anointed by the Holy Ghost." That Christ was born under the law, and, being sinless under it, was not obnoxious to wrath, and that He took its curse on the tree: that scripture teaches. But that He was obnoxious to wrath under it by identification with Israel, and the relation He was in to God thereby, is unknown to scripture. That relation is vengeance, certain inevitable vengeance: as many as are of its works, as mere men, are under its curse, which is vengeance. Christ, exempt from that, took it on Himself. That there were curses written in the law which were come on the people, as recited by Daniel, is unquestionable, and that Christ's soul entered into the sorrow of them. But that is not the question; and, to reduce the curse of a broken law to the level of this, and cite Galatians 3: 10 as referring to it, only shews that the bearing of the apostle's teaching, the light which the rent veil has cast on the true extent of the curse of the broken law, does not enter at all into the mind of the writer. What is Sinai's mountain of blackness in the eye of the apostle, if it be not condemnation and death, even in spite of the grace in government introduced by the mediation of Moses? For it is the law after, and in spite of this, which is spoken of in 2 Corinthians 3. As if to heap inconsistency on inconsistency, though it is useless to point all of them out, especially when far more solemn things are in question. the place of the Church of the firstborn, used, in page 23, to illustrate Christ's place after John's baptism and the anointing which followed, is declared, in page 31, not to have been His place during His ministry. "Man was yet in his distance from God. There was as yet no glorified humanity on the right hand of the throne of God," etc. "The mighty power of God [in resurrection] not yet put forth; the Spirit, not yet become the unfolder and seal [of things to come], etc.; and Jesus, as man, was associated with this place of distance, in which man in the flesh was, and He had, through obedience, to find His way," etc. And note here, this goes on to the cross. Where, then, is all the grand difference on John's baptism, illustrated by a change from Sinai to the place of the Church of the firstborn? Is it not pitiable to see souls bewildered and misled by such things, under the pretence of deep knowledge? In page 16 of the first tract it is said, that Christ's place, during the time of His ministry is granted to us, and that we never come under the curse of Israel, which was His first place; in page 31 of the second -- during His ministry on earth, He came into a place dispensationally lower than that into which He has now brought His Church. If we are not in the first condition, and not in the second, it is hard to tell how Christ is an example If it be said: As man (here, page 31, referred to the place He took in ministry after all), He is associated with man at a distance from God, which is said not to be our place at all. On the last paragraph I have referred to, I shall comment on its own account. But how, in this confusion, is Christ lost to those under this instruction? Thus at sea, with Jesus not really known, they are a prey to any thoughts imposed upon them. But my object is not to shew the confusion, and leave souls in it to fly in despair they know not where, but to shew the very distinct, positive, deadly error insisted on in the midst of this confusion into which the soul, lost in it, falls, having no true knowledge of Christ to keep them.
In Galatians 3 there is not a semblance of security, not an appearance of reference to Christ's life or identification as obnoxious to God's wrath with Israel from the moment of His birth, a position changed by His taking the place Israel ought to have taken under John's repentance and remission. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." Nothing can be simpler, or more blessed for us in grace, perfect grace. It is the simplicity that is in Christ. But what becomes of the distinction of vengeance and chastisement, or what the meaning of the inflictions of God's broken law according to Galatians 3: 10? Was what they had earned by disobedience under the curse of God's broken law inflictions of chastisement? The writer adds: "Inflictions consequent upon this [this follows immediately the citation of Galatians 3: 10] had long begun to operate both on individuals in Israel, and upon the nation as a whole." "Consider the sufferings of the prophets: the chastenings and sorrow of Ezekiel." It is then added, "One thing at least in this list of woe -- He must be allowed to have experienced in no ordinary degree -- toil unrecompensed by results." Was this -- the curse of the broken law according to Galatians 3: 10? It is sorrow in service, which the writer has distinguished, as he has the soul entering into the condition of the people, from Christ's relation to God as identified with them. Sinless penalties have nothing to do here: no one questions Christ underwent them; but that is not the sense of Galatians 3: 10.
I will now refer to some of the Psalms which are quoted to shew Christ's sufferings in them, and we shall see if they are not connected with the contradiction of sinners, that is, with His service in respect of them and suffering from them; not His relation to God as being in the same place with them; ending (after faithfulness through it all) with their outwardly getting the mastery over Him, and therein (because making atonement) being left to them and forsaken of God. Whereas, the remnant of Israel in the latter days, to which much refers in the sympathy of Christ, will for the most part be delivered as others had before. They had trusted in God and been delivered; whilst the enemy could taunt Him with trusting in God, and not being delivered.
In Psalm 6 itself, we find the contradiction of sinners, and reaching onward in spirit to death, not a common relationship along with them to God, of wrath to which He was obnoxious, and inward visitations of God in common with wicked Israel:+ only there is no present deliverance.
+See Remarks, pages 14, 22, and many other passages. This sixth Psalm, as I shall shew, entirely contradicts the writer's theory, for its appeal is "for thy mercies' sake."
"Mine eye is consumed because of grief, it waxeth old because of all mine enemies. Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity, for Jehovah has heard the voice of my weeping. Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed." Here the Lord, looked at in His connection with Israel, is oppressed by wicked enemies, and cries to Jehovah against them. Death staring Him in face, He prays, entering as He does in spirit into the deserts of Israel as identified with the saints in the earth, the excellent, not to be rebuked in anger; as elsewhere not to shut up His soul with the blood-thirsty; the providing,+ having entered into it, for the comfort of the faithful of Israel in the latter day. So in Psalm 7 ++ this contradiction of sinners is fully brought out. For thus it was. The Lord ordered+++ that certain persons should be in trial and oppressed, that they might be fit vessels of Christ's Spirit, who alone could enter into all sorrow. The expression of what was true perhaps of them as to sin became suited to Christ as entering in spirit, in grace, into the condition of Israel in the remnant -- fully and entirely entering into it, not escaping or extricating Himself from it as naturally under it by position -- and thus providing most blessed instruction as to Him for us, and what shall instruct and sustain the remnant of Israel as of His spirit prophetically, when really in the circumstances and state and guilt which He entered into in spirit.
And here remark, that if it be not Christ entering into it in spirit, or vicariously, these Psalms go a great deal too far; for they do not merely speak of relationship to God, but of actual guilt and sin.
See one of the very psalms quoted by the writer of the tract as being Christ's condition -- His relation to God: "There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger [this would be taken as a proof by the writer of His position, but it is added], neither is there rest in my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone over my head: as an heavy burden, they are too heavy for me." Now this is not relationship, nor position, nor sinless penalties. Either Christ is speaking as charging Himself with the iniquities, or His soul is entering into their condition, both of which the writer says it is not; or in some way Christ must be responsible for iniquities otherwise than vicariously. According to the writer Christ was not in this condition after His baptism, but often before, referring to this very Psalm. And mark, it is not what is earned in the way of punishment which is spoken of here (that may be understood); nor merely of the anger and hot displeasure (the same terms as in the sixth), but He speaks of Himself as involved in what earned it. That He can thus take it on Himself for the remnant, the full consequence of which was the cross, is readily accepted and understood; but that it was a position out of which He extricated Himself, and God interfered to spare and relieve Him, is nonsense indeed, but nonsense which destroys the whole truth as to Christ. And note here further, that He is in the presence of active enemies seeking His life.
+Not extricated Himself out of it.
++The same thing is found in Psalm 26 very distinctly.
+++Not as the only reason, but He so ordered it.
Many psalms answer to this. And as further explanation of this we have Psalm 40, where the testimony of Christ in the great congregation is declared to have been delivered in faithfulness on God's behalf; and after that He declares Himself in the very condition out of which He is said to have emerged on entering into this ministry, His whole state being changed from Sinai to Zion: "For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me." So also we find Him in presence of His enemies.
Cry there was -- but it was well seen here, that it was a longer patience and a better deliverance than John's baptism -- and a testimony which only made the clouds gather darker and darker around Him, till the forsaking of God upon the cross closed the scene that the Lord speaks of in this Psalm. Yet we have the very same elements as before and His heart failing Him.
In Psalm 18 the reader will find the way in which Christ, as in this trial, takes up the whole history of Israel from Egypt to their final deliverance, as based on this cry and suffering of His, just shewing Him in all their affliction afflicted -- not under curse of law (for it begins before law); but as interested in the people who derive their deliverance from enemies, evil, and oppression, from the cry of Him who was pleased in grace to identify Himself with them and undertake their cause -- afflicted in all their affliction. That His perfect obedience was available to this -- and this integrity He pleads often -- that He went to the full depths of the consequences and cause in the sorrow of His heart (not escaping it, I repeat, for His own sake, as the writer states), is most true, and most blessed; but this is not what is allowed.
It is for the writer a personal suffering, though not personally deserved, to which He was obnoxious from position, which He was partly spared through obedience and from which He emerged by John's baptism. And note, this as a system, is fully confirmed by the second tract, though the expressions are modified, and the writer hardly knows what to say: for, in the second tract, it is illustrated by the change from Sinai to Zion. And yet he speaks to get rid of the abominableness of the system of its not being restricted to His ministry. How is a Sinai-state not restricted to a Zion-state illustrated by that of the Church of the firstborn? But it is the thing itself, restricted or not, which is the grand evil. Whatever Christ took of the curse of Sinai He neither escaped in part by prayer, obedience, and faith, nor extricated Himself from.
I turn now to the difference of Gethsemane and the cross, not to repeat any of the remarks of Mr. Harris, but to notice what is in the second tract. The first was too bad, too grossly offensive to every christian mind, too plain a proof that the idea of the curse and wrath Christ endured there was wholly wanting. To say that Christ was a sacrifice for sin, but that Gethsemane was more terrible though there He was not, was too open a denial of the reality of the atonement to be allowed to pass, or not to discredit any one that wrote or even circulated it. Hence in the second tract all this is carefully modified and explained. To say, as some advocates of Mr. Newton do, that the second tract, does not refer to the first is too flagrant an imposition on common sense, and the direct and positive evidence of the tracts themselves, to do anything more than excite pity. But it is a part of the same system. The sorrows of Gethsemane are dwelt upon in the terms for the most part in which Christians sound in the faith have spoken of them, as if that was the full force of the statement of the first tract; and, instead of "the most terrible hour He ever passed through," we have "the most terrible hour through which He had ever yet passed;" and then we are told "that the unequalled hour of pressure was indeed still to come; for that was on the cross. Yet on the cross He seems to have manifested no feelings such as these. There was no such bloody sweat -- no such development of agonized human sensibilities. Observe, I say, development. I know well that the hour of the cross was an unequalled hour," etc. Why then were there no such feelings? "And yet how peculiarly calmness and strength mark the whole period of the crucifixion. His care for His mother; His reply to the supplication of the thief; ... . all these ... . mark also the incarnate God ... . In Himself alone power of sustainment was -- for He was God, and therefore He endured ... . The divine character of the human sufferer is thus made very prominent on the cross; just as the human character of the same Sufferer is made, I think, prominent in Gethsemane. Even that Psalm, which is so peculiarly the Psalm of the cross, and commences with the cry of His most bitter anguish, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' concludes with thanksgiving," etc.
Such is the attempt to undo the effect of the horrible statements of the first tract. It contradicts the statements of the first tract clearly enough, while referring plainly to them, and adopting the substance of the principle. But how low must that soul be fallen which can give garbled statements as to the cross itself, and the infinite and sacred sufferings of the Holy One there, when He made His soul an offering for sin, in order to save its own credit and character! Was there no shame, no pang in the writer's heart, when penning all this? Alas! alas! and alas! for those, that for the credit of a man, amiable as the feeling may be, can sacrifice, ay, one sorrow, or one feeling of the blessed and holy Jesus. I pity the man that is not revolted and indignant at these tracts.
The writer has changed "weak humanity and all the power of Satan allowed to be brought upon Him" into "the felt weakness of His humanity, with the terrors of the Almighty set in array against them." But in this even he is in error; for He was praying to His Father in full communion with Him, with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death. The hour was that of wicked man and the power of darkness. He anticipated death. The power of it was on His spirit in prospect, but the cup was not then drinking; it was His Father's ascertained will that He should drink it. In this sense it was not the time in which the terrors of the Almighty were in array against Him, that is, as from the Almighty Himself.
And hence it was, according to the system of the tract, what He had often suffered before, instead of being a distinct position (see pages 10, 19), when through "many years of sorrowful experience" before the mission of John Baptist, He could feel and say, "I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up; while I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. They came round about me daily like water; they encompassed me about altogether." So that the terrors of the Almighty set in array were not, according to the writer, peculiar to Gethsemane. Here, however, we are told that the experiences of Gethsemane were not assigned to Him by God till the great appointed time (page 33).
But as to the cross, it was a time of calmness and strength, because the incarnate God was there. That Divine power and nature sustained Him everywhere, and there especially, yet so as to enable Him to endure not to screen Him, had been said, by those from whom the writer has borrowed it, long before him. But here it is used to put the cross as a place of "strength," in contrast with Gethsemane as a place of weakness.
Frightful, really, is it to read their efforts -- frightful almost thus to discuss the cross, instead of its awakening the adoring feelings of a heart that bows at the thought of the blessedness of Him who endured it. But let us turn to scripture. Blessed be God, it meets every error, let it be ever so guarded or subtilly put, or shrouded in beautiful forms of thought. Is the cross a place of strength according to scripture? "He was crucified through weakness, but he liveth by the power of God." What is the statement of the first tract as to this very event? "For example the veil was rent." -- We know that was His flesh in death. "It was of purple, and scarlet, and fine linen; but nothing that could not be rent was intertwined in it, and this is strictly preserved through all the types, that we may never mingle the thought of Divinity with the humanity of the Lord Jesus."
Now, He is so sustained by the Divinity, that there are no such agonized human sensibilities -- sustained by the divine nature in Himself. It is the divine character of the human sufferer which is prominent, so that strength marks the whole period of the crucifixion. And when the thought, which would instantly suggest itself as the reply to every holy soul, comes into the mind, on recalling "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" -- is that the divine character of the human sufferer, His saying that God has forsaken Him? -- it is sought to elude it (I am ashamed to write the word) with, it "concludes with thanksgiving." This is really worse than error. What can one think of one who can reason thus?
Brethren, it is the cross, the atonement, the foundation of our faith -- the sufferings of Jesus we are speaking of. Can you rest under or endure for a moment the work of Christ being thus trifled with? Did the thanksgivings come before the atonement and work of expiation was over? Could Christ declare God His Father's name to His brethren before the offering was accomplished which made it a declaration of righteous love? You know He could not. Was this declaration a testimony to Christ's being calm and full of strength on the cross as a divine character while enduring the wrath, so that there was no development of agonized human sensibilities similar to Gethsemane?
But I turn to the psalms which speak of His death -- the psalm and psalms of the cross. First, Psalm 22 -- I shall copy a large part of it; and it is well to refresh one's spirit with the truth, instead of contending against error.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on Jehovah that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. But thou art he that took me out of the womb ... . Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. Many bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. But be not thou far from me, O Jehovah: O my strength, haste thee to help me."
Is this the self-sustaining and divine character of the human Sufferer, giving calmness and strength, marking the whole period of the crucifixion: this which is indeed so peculiarly the psalm of the cross? Is it not evident that the forsaking of God, as to the condition of His soul, crowned the sorrow and accomplished the holy dread of One whose soul was poured out already like water, His heart melted like wax in the midst of His bowels?
Take again Psalm 69, also a psalm of the cross.
When they gave Him gall for His meat, and in His thirst vinegar to drink: -- "I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty." The Lord then refers to His zeal and faithfulness for God, and righteous and gracious dealings towards men, and continues, "Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink ... . Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." And afterwards, "But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high."
The Lord, as a man, did never indeed go out of the perfect position of dependence, not even on the cross. What distinguished that was, as we have seen, not only that men, His enemies, were lively, but that that dependence, while His soul was an offering for sin, was not, and could not be, answered. This was infinite sorrow as well as expiation.
Psalm 102 may also be referred to: "He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days." But these amply suffice. Ought they to be needed?
There is another statement here also which really sets aside all the previous efforts to save the doctrine taught in these tracts from the charge of falsifying the very relationship of God with Christ, by distinguishing His being under the wrath of chastisement and the wrath of vengeance. The whole career of the Lord is thus described, page 31 (all being put together, the dispensational position of Christ and the wrath and curse of God in vengeance): "Man was yet in his distance from God ... . Jesus, as man, was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was; and He had through obedience to find His way to that point where God could meet Him as having finished His appointed work -- glorify Him, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places: and that point was death -- death on the cross -- death under the wrath of God."
Now that Jesus as captain of our salvation, a place He had taken in voluntary grace, was exposed to suffering and trial, arising from the place He had taken amongst us, every Christian recognizes; but that is not the point here. The writer's doctrine is, that from the moment He came into the world He was obnoxious to a wrath which He escaped in part by prayer, faith, and obedience.
Now here "man was yet in his distance from God," and "Jesus, as man, was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was." Now His having personal sin is not the question here. The writer is not charged with saying that; and hence his clearing himself of that is clearing himself of nothing at all.
What was the place of distance in which man in the flesh was? What was due to it? Was it not condemnation? Christ was there by association. He was in this place; not as made an offering for sin, not vicariously, but by association.
The doctrine of truth is, that, perfectly acceptable and accepted in His person and sinless under the law, He was made sin, and by one offering, offered without the gate, perfected for ever those that are sanctified -- a sin-offering once for all. The doctrine of the writer of the second tract is, that Christ was personally sinless indeed, but was associated as man with the place of distance in which man in the flesh was. Not as earning His bread in the sweat of His brow: that is not the meaning of the distance from God of man in the flesh." "He had through obedience to find His way to that point where God could meet Him as having finished His appointed work -- glorify Him, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places: and that point was death -- death on the cross -- death under the wrath of God." Can anything be plainer than this? Is this wrath of chastisement? Is death on the cross -- death under the wrath of God -- the meeting-point obtained for man at a distance from God, because the appointed work was finished -- is that chastisement, or wrath due, in the full sense, to man as in the flesh and at a distance from God?
This, then, according to the writer, was Christ's place. Not He who knew no sin made sin, but from the beginning of His life finding His way through obedience out of a place of wrath naturally due to man as at a distance from God, and which was not reached till it arrived at death under wrath. But there He was from the beginning. It is idle, then, to speak of appointment of God as to the extent of His sufferings, not merely because it contradicts God's alleged interference to deliver Him from them; but because His position was the position of man at a distance from God. What had God appointed? What, by the very nature of God Himself, was the necessary result of that? Hence it is not merely terrors as an occasional thing which might reach His Spirit: He was associated with man's place of distance, and therefore under wrath for sin. When He said, Mine iniquities are gone over my head, it was the place He was in (for man was there), not vicariously: He had to extricate Himself out of it,+ to escape what He could by faith, and obedience, and prayer, "to find His way to that point where God could meet Him as having finished His appointed work" -- that is, "death under the wrath of God."++ He was under this wrath then all the time in His relation to God in the position He had taken -- not vicariously, but by association. It is another gospel, which is not another; for death under the wrath of God is not here itself vicarious -- not the bearing of the sins of His redeemed -- but finding His way, by reason of the position He was in Himself, to that point where God could meet Him as having finished the work which death on the cross, due to the position He was Himself in, closed. It is not (as Irvingism) that He partook of sinful nature, so that He was obnoxious to wrath as such; but it is that He was from His birth, by the position which He took as man, Himself at a distance from God. Not that He bore sins and took wrath on the cross: it was His own position; out of which He had to find His way to that point where God could meet Him, which point was death under wrath, which is what indeed is due to man in the flesh at a distance from God -- the place where Christ always was.
+Page 12, Second Tract.
++Page 31, Second Tract.
If any man has a respect for Christ, or the fear of God; if any man values the essential truth of the gospel, he will flee from such teaching as from a serpent, and much more earnestly. "Cease, my son, to hear the instruction which causeth thee to err from the words of knowledge."
I warn every saint, that it is destroying Christ in what is most essential -- subverting the gospel -- the error of the enemy himself. Souls may be foolish enough to go and ask him who teaches such things, does he mean to do this? Of course he will say, No The answer is: I have no need to ask him; I know he does it. I have read his own authentic publication -- a publication professedly put forth to clear up his views, because of circumstances which have arisen. This proves, in the fullest way, that he does subvert it. I know well that this is the doctrine that has been habitually taught: that Christ was a constituted sinner, and under death, and worked His way up to life. But it would have been hard to catch flying words.+ God has taken care that the doctrine should be printed and published. Every one now who countenances them is answerable to God for the doctrine and for the souls that may be ensnared by it; and therefore it is that I speak plainly of it, as the teaching of a seducing spirit contrary to God. With the motives of those who teach it I have nothing to do -- there may be seducers and seduced. The point is to guard souls against the teaching itself, and to warn them against those who teach it.
+Very recently, a brother under the teaching of this system stated that Christ had to be judged, after His death, like another man. This alarmed a brother who heard it, and he spoke of it. The circumstance struck me much, because I had myself heard Mr. N. teaching this from Hebrews 9 at least five years ago, or more, at a private teaching meeting at which I happened, as just arrived at the house where it was held, to be present. I spoke about it, on going out, to Mr. Harris, who was present, with astonishment; but said nothing about it at the meeting, as Mr. Newton never could bear anything to be called in question. I supposed it was some rash view or statement; and as I did not (though unsatisfied by his teaching, and already miserable at the state of things) suspect any design or system of doctrine, I went no farther than to speak of it anxiously to Mr. Harris. There is daily more of this extraordinary teaching coming out since attention has been drawn to it, but I advert no farther to the particulars here. The ground of this was, that, as it was appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment, Christ being a man, these things were for Him too. The same ground was stated in the recent case referred to.
I shall add a few words directly on the Psalms. It is the custom of heresy, in all ages, to take difficult passages, not generally, or not at all understood, and found on them its doctrines as something more deep and excellent than others possess. Because it is evidently more difficult to reply when the passages are not understood -- more difficult to wrest them out of the hands of those who use them thus perversely according to Satan. The thing taught can be disproved by scripture, but the passage rests beclouded. It is thus with the writer. Certain passages, if you introduce Christ as speaking in the Psalms, are difficult; as, speaking of sins, of foolishness, of sin. To understand the bearing of them all supposes an acquaintance with the meaning of the prophetic Spirit, and capacity to apply them exactly to the right object of the prophecy. On these the writer seizes to pervert souls. Confessing that the Gospels afford him nothing, he seeks to introduce his hearers here, to prove to them that Christ suffered wrath by reason of His own position and relation to God. I have replied to this from scripture and plain scriptural truth. It may assist some souls to dwell a little more on the Psalms themselves, which, while blessedly feeding the affections in many parts (indeed in all, as far as understood), and specially when Christ is fully seen in them, are perhaps the most difficult of interpretation in their prophetic application.
But I beg the reader's attention to this point: that the writer, instead of increasing our apprehensions of the entering of Christ into our sorrow, or Israel's sorrow, does exactly the contrary. The truth teaches that His soul entered into the full depth of them, avoiding nothing -- that, as Captain of our salvation, and as the good Shepherd, He led the way in sorrow. The writer teaches, that He was obnoxious to wrath in virtue of His position as man and amongst Israel, and was preserved from much of what He would have suffered as in that position by prayer, faith, and obedience; so that the sympathies of Christ are largely curtailed. It would be hard to say, why He was not spared all, or why He had to bear some. He was there by reason of others, as in the position they had brought themselves into; but not for others, for He extricated Himself out of it as far as possible. Moreover, it was God's appointment to Him of a certain quantity. I am not here returning to the inconsistency of this statement, but shewing that it was a limited suffering, arising from the position He was in in His relation to God -- a position we have seen to be positive wrath, for this was man's -- not His soul entering into that of others.
Now, I say that the Psalms, whether taken as to man or Israel, teach us that He entered into the full depths of suffering, which made Him the vessel of sympathizing grace with those who had to pass through them; and that, as seeing and pleading with God in respect of them. They were sinners, could claim no exemption, count on no favour which could deliver and restore. They must have taken the actual sufferings in connection with the guilt which left them in them without favour. But this was not God's thought -- He was minded to deliver them; and Christ in grace steps in. He takes the guilt of those that should be delivered -- this was vicarious suffering as a substitute -- and, in the path of perfect obedience, puts Himself in the sorrow through which they had to pass; enters into it so as to draw down the efficacy of God's delivering favour on those who should be in it, and be the pledge, in virtue of all this, of their deliverance out of it as standing thus for them, the sustainer of their hope in it, so that they should not fail. Not that they should not pass through it. Because they were so to pass through it according to the righteous ways of God in respect of their folly and wickedness, and to purify them inwardly from it all, that Christ entered into it, to be a spring of life and sustainer of faith to them in it, when the hand of oppression should be heavy from without, the sense of guilt terrible from within, and hence no hope of favour but that One, who had assured and could convey this favour, had taken up their cause with God, and passed through it for them. And hence Christ did not escape where they would,+ because He must suffer the full penalty of the guilt and evil, or He could not deliver them. Thus Christ must pass personally fully through the sorrow, as He did in spirit; and, besides that, have no deliverance, but, on the contrary, make atonement for the guilt.
+It is in this the sufferings and the atonement meet; He suffered onwards up to death, then He also made atonement. Some of the remnant may suffer on to death; but then, like Christ, they will obtain a better resurrection.
But it was as being near to God, save as in atonement, that He passed through it all. And though, in entering into it in spirit, He might see all the terrors of death and judgment before Him, and feel it anticipatively, yet He, as perfectly near to God and in favour, could at once turn to Him in perfectness, and hence make available all the grace and favour of God towards Him, as regarded that case, in behalf of those who should come to be in it (this we see continually in the Psalms and in the Gospels too), and have all the mind of God for them in that case, which they could use when they found themselves in it, even though in darkness. And how many in darkness, even in these christian times, have so availed themselves of them! And this, because He was in the perfect favour, and could count on the perfect favour of God, while passing through these depths, and thus, through the atonement, make it available as to all the circumstances for others in its suitable application -- for others ruined else in their guilt. It was favour, and sustaining, and blessing, during the whole course of and in the circumstances, not the deliverance of One who was at a distance as in the position of those who were so, Himself obnoxious to wrath.
And hence we find that, while all the most exquisite sympathies of the Lord's sufferings are precious in Him and for us, inasmuch as in general the saint is always a sufferer among sinners, and the circumstances are analogous, and we have to walk as He walked, and the grace precious in His walk by which He lived is precious for us, yet the prophetic application is, properly speaking, to Israel, not to the Church, save in a particular way in some very peculiar passages, where the remnant of Israel is considered after His resurrection, which formed the first nucleus of the Church; and where the heavens are vaguely alluded to -- where we now know the Church will be, when the judgments come on the earth. There is one point which particularly refers to this -- the constant claim for vengeance and deliverance by destruction of the psalmist's enemies. This is not the Church's cry, because her deliverance is by being taken out of the scene. That is the certain character of the deliverance. But in the Psalms it is destruction of enemies. The resurrection is clearly put forward as the confidence of those whom the enemy may slay -- a principle ever true, and, in fact, accomplished in Christ. How fully this applies to the remnant of Jews, in the latter day oppressed by the enemy, every one will see. But this by the bye.
Let us examine the Psalms in their connection with Christ Himself, who was, as in Israel, the faithful One in the midst of a rebellious and apostate race; but yet put to the test by this last visit in goodness. But as regards His path and trials, Christ was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He called all as such, doubtless; but it was a separative mission. His sheep were to hear His voice. His fan was in His hand -- the axe at the root of the trees. The meek were to inherit the land -- the poor in spirit to have the kingdom. His preaching righteousness and truth was in the great congregation; but the effect was to gather a little flock, with whom all His associations were, and to whom it was His Father's good pleasure to give the kingdom. This was His position in Israel. From such, and the thoughts of One perfect before God in such a position, the testimony of the Spirit of prophecy in the Psalms flowed, and flowed for those who shall be in such a position in the latter day; while, as the revelation of the perfection of Christ, they are the blessed portion of the Church in all ages. From all this it flows that some psalms speak of Christ Himself as alone making atonement; others of His sorrows in life as taking up the cause of the godly and being perfectly so Himself; others the prophetic provision of the expression of right feelings by the remnant in the latter day, into whose condition He thus enters in spirit.
We will examine the Psalms a little to bring this out. The first psalm presents the blessedness, natural in God's ways, to the perfect man under the law; distinguishing him from the wicked. The second presents the title of Christ, in the decree of Jehovah, to the headship over the heathen, as set King in Zion. The third at once turns to the actual position: the righteous man is surrounded with enemies -- suffers instead of reigning. The rest shew out all the thoughts of God, as to this, in sorrow, or in purpose and final glory. "How are they increased," says the righteous man, "that trouble me! There is no help for him in his God. But thou, O Jehovah, art a shield;" closing with the great testimony in Israel -- ever true -- "Salvation belongeth unto Jehovah. His blessing is upon his people." The fourth: they turn His glory into shame. But they would know that Jehovah had set apart the godly man for Himself. Many could say there was no good, but for him the light of Jehovah's countenance satisfied him. The Lord only was his refuge. Here we have the position of the righteous remnant fully provided for, and the Spirit of Christ entering fully into it; putting real strength into it, for the name of Jehovah is a strong tower. The fifth: He finds Himself surrounded by confident wickedness; but God does not take pleasure in it. He knows God's name. There were bloody and deceitful men. He calls on God to destroy them. He will come into His temple. The Lord would bless the righteous. The sixth: in the midst of these workers of iniquity the righteous soul sees death before it. His soul is vexed. He sees the righteous indignation of God upon the people. The Spirit of Christ enters into that which was due to, and ought to be felt by, the righteous remnant in the day of trouble as really due to it.+ The righteous soul felt it as the chastening hand of God, saw the rod, and who had appointed it, and bowed down as in the presence of death (the simple pass on and are punished), but looked perfectly to the Lord in that condition, saying, "Thou, O Jehovah, how long?" The Spirit of Christ, entering into this, does not "preserve" from seeing the rod and feeling the burden, but quite the contrary, and enables the soul to look constantly to the Lord.
Christ, then, does enter in spirit into this sorrow of the remnant fully: but it is not His relation to God as due to Him as associated with the people. It is because He is near God through it all, that He can hold the soul of the remnant in the place of sustaining grace by faith in the position where they were to receive the chastisement. It is not Himself "at a distance," as the place of the sinful man under wrath (save in atonement) in His relation to God; but the link with the remnant in spirit, when in the circumstances where they would feel all pressing upon them, and could not have been near God, being sinners and guilty as a nation, but that He who had drawn them to seek righteousness maintained them in spirit, brought them into the sustaining value of His place by entering into theirs in grace. The position is the position of the remnant; the link with God in it, Christ. Sometimes it rises up therefore to where He alone could individually stand, and becomes a direct prophecy of Him; and then we find His interest in, and application of, all this to the remnant as a distinct body from Him. In general, to understand the Psalms, we must see the Jewish remnant faithful in trial, and the Spirit of Christ taking up this position to link them with the strength of Jehovah, as well as, in some psalms, bearing sin alone in the way of atonement that He might be able to do so. Sometimes it is the deliverance and glory which this strength will accomplish as the answer.
+Hence a claim in the psalm founded on mercy, entirely incompatible with the writer's doctrine as to Christ.
So (Psalm 7) Christ pleads in the midst of the people in His righteousness, and calls to Jehovah to awake to the judgment which He has commanded, lifting up Himself in anger against the rage of His enemies. Christ, as He was, did not do this, and could not, but the contrary, for higher and more glorious reasons; nor can the Church now. It is His Spirit speaking in and for the remnant. Yet the Spirit of Christ knew perfectly His title to this righteous vengeance: but He had a higher work to accomplish. He could have asked His Father, and have had twelve legions of angels; but the scriptures were to be fulfilled. The disciples were not even to tell that He was the Christ: the Son of man was to suffer, and hold a higher and more glorious place. He had come to save men's lives, not to destroy them; and He prayed for His ignorant enemies.
Hence, from the accomplishment of the effect of Christ's taking up the cause and entering thus into the circumstances of the earthly people, in Psalm 8 Jehovah, the God of Israel, has His name excellent in all the earth, as the God of the Jews, in the exaltation of the Son of man. In Psalm 9 we have the judgment executed against the enemies so often complained of, and an enlarged account of it. So in Psalm 10 the wicked thus domineering in the latter day are fully described, and the result for the humble remnant, whose heart God prepared and caused his ear to hear.
In the psalms which follow on this, this is fully entered into; that is, the Spirit of Christ draws out the whole scene, becoming the spring and portrayer of all the varied exercises of feeling in that day, in the fullest sympathy with the humble, whose heart God had prepared. And it is exceedingly lovely to see all the weaknesses, sorrows, thoughts, feelings, exercises, spoken of by the Spirit of Christ Himself. All this supposes weakness: "I had said almost as they," says the poor oppressed upright one in that day; that, when all the circumstances by which they shall be occasioned in that day are there, they may have, by the word, the vehicle to their hearts of this sympathy, and the certainty of it in the very thoughts presented by it for and in the circumstances. It is not an excellency out of the reach of their condition; it is the entering of the Spirit of Christ into it.
This is partially true of us; but it is not quite the same, because there Christ descends in sympathy into the circumstances as there with them, whereas for us He is on high; and we having received the Holy Ghost, consequent on the knowledge of full redemption, to join Christ in heaven, and so be ever with Him -- we have Him as our High Priest on high to bring us in spirit there, out of where we are, and having suffered being tempted, maintaining the communion of the weak with the perfectness of the light we belong to, and the fulness of glory and perfection which we see by faith, and in which we walk. The Holy Ghost in us presents those groanings which cannot be uttered, because, being already associated with the joy and glory of that new creation, we groan, being burdened with our connection with the old. Our enemies are spiritual. We do not look for deliverance by the execution of judgment on earthly foes, though we see and can desire the deliverance of earth by it in due time. But here the blessed Jesus provides His sympathies for a people who are not in this position, but in trials from which, for the most part, unless killed, the execution of judgment can alone deliver them; and they wait for the Lord, saying, "How long?" and find in the words of Jesus that He has not forgotten them, knows their sorrows, and furnishes them through His Spirit with the expression of them -- an expression of them of which God takes notice as being of the Spirit of Christ Himself who has made the atonement for the nation, though it be but the cry of weakness, but divinely suited to their state. They, too, vent their sorrow in what they know outwardly and inwardly, for it cannot be otherwise, for the words of God are sweet and known by His own to be the words their God has given them.
Often, as in Psalm 14, we have the Lord's view of all this. He rises above the circumstances and takes a view of them. How encouraging to the poor tried remnant! yet, putting them in their place as sinners, for they are not by known redemption out of that, though they wait and hope for it. Hence it is, too, that these psalms often suit souls awakened and in that state. Thus in Psalm 15 we have just a description of the character of those who shall find a place in God's tabernacle. In Psalm 16 we find one of those psalms which shews us, as the apostle quotes their general principle as illustrating the position of Christ, that He did not merely depict and express, or sympathize, in a way of provision for or in divine intelligence, the sorrows of the remnant, but that He came Himself into their place, and suffered, being tempted, and tasted all the sorrow, so as to be able to succour them that were tempted. He was in the place, not of distance, but of dependence. It is saints who want sympathy, however weak, and however their feelings are the expressions of infirmity -- not man at a distance and disobedient. He was in the position of dependence in the place of sorrow, but perfection, in the dependence of a saint. Here Christ looks to be preserved by God, for, as a man, He puts His trust in Him. He said to Jehovah, "He was his Adon (his Lord): to the saints and the excellent on earth, all his delight was in them" -- not with man at a distance, as Himself obnoxious to wrath because He was there (though saints may feel their sins when called into the place of trial and repentance and chastening -- feel them according to grace), nor with the mass of disobedient Israel, but with the saints and excellent of the earth. This is Christ's place in the Psalms, unless alone in the atonement. Still it is in Israel. He will not go after another god: Jehovah was the portion of His inheritance; and He sees, in this confidence in Jehovah, the resurrection as His path of life and joy.
I think I see in these Psalms, which are the expression of the thoughts of Christ Himself, in a certain sense a higher tone, more perfectness, in that He is in the absolute completeness and perfectness of feeling which belongs to perfectness in the place in which He is. He may be in the very depths, but He is perfectly and perfect. there. He has exactly that feeling which suits a perfect apprehension of the place He is in. He enters perfectly into the tossings to and fro of the hearts of His poor saints who through grace feel rightly, but hardly know how, and do not know how to estimate absolutely (it would be impossible and contradict their place as exercised because of imperfection, and always feeble, never divine), the place they are in in relation to God. He enters, I say, perfectly into their feelings; but His feelings are perfect; and hence there is an exact perfect setting of each thing in its place, which leaves no broken or vague impression. We see One who has scanned in the light the whole extent of His position, though that position be the depth of darkness itself, giving God perfectly His place in relation thereto. Hence these psalms become as centres of thought for the whole book (as stakes in the hedge which sustain and keep it all in place, though others form it), as they will be in fact for the remnant, as a pledge of blessing for all in similar circumstances of trial, though Christ were alone in the expiatory part of them; and this they habitually express also.
Thus this Psalm 16. So Psalm 22 -- forsaken of God, no uncertainty, no hope He may not be. He is yet (O wondrous thought, and blessed one that it should have been so!) equally perfect in His estimate of God: "Thou continuest holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." All the powers of evil were then against Him: He is at the same time forsaken of His God, for whom to be near Him He cried in the hour of distress: but perfect in owning the perfection of God in it notwithstanding all. Weakness, hostility, and abandonment did not give an imperfect thought of all that God was. He was heard.
So, in my judgment, Psalm 23 where He walks the path of the blessing and trial of faith. and presents the confidence of it (putting forth His sheep, He goes before them), and shews it to them whatever He had to suffer in it, assured to them what Jehovah was -- He who He was proved Himself to be in Psalm 24.
But one word as to Psalms 20, 21, in their connection with 22. In the two preceding psalms the Spirit presents Messiah the object of the contemplation of the saint in spirit prophetically; for we must remember they are prophecies. Psalm 19 gives the testimony of creation and the law, such as they really are. But in Psalm 20 Messiah is seen in the day of trouble. Strange sight! but one that the saint must enter into, and he knows now that the Lord saves His anointed, and none is to be trusted but Jehovah. Here it is the day of trouble, and the saints can enter into it -- Jewish saints and expressed in Jewish circumstances. It closes with their hosanna. In Psalm 21 they contemplate the answer, seeing Messiah not only delivered but exalted; glory and great majesty set upon Him. What they had looked for, as interested in His desires, Psalm 20: 4, they see answered, Psalm 21: 2; and much more, too, as the answer opens out upon their view in the blessing and exaltation of the Messiah, with whom they had identified themselves in heart in the day of His trouble prophetically; but all this in Jewish association, and hence they see His power in judgment. "Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies."
But in Psalm 22 it was not sufferings in a day of trouble which could be contemplated and entered into by others, and the psalm is, and must be, in the mouth of Jesus Himself. He alone could enter, and in entering understand, that depth. And hence, being of expiatory power as bearing the forsaking of God, which was not the portion of His believing people, He, as now heard+ in resurrection, can declare Jehovah's name on a new ground to His brethren; and, assembling the remnant round Himself, sing in the midst of the congregation, the gathered remnant of Israel redeemed into fuller blessings, and which became the nucleus of the Church -- the Church, in fact, itself in its commencement. But thereon He calls on all Israel also, in virtue of this His being heard. And His praise is in the great congregation -- all Israel, when fully gathered hereafter; and then all the ends of the world, "for the kingdom is Jehovah's." This gives a very peculiar force to this psalm -- in its own proper depth, beyond all our feelings, and the foundation of all our hopes.
In Psalm 69 we have another of the character I have just now mentioned, which will afford us much instruction, and where the Lord fully expresses the well known and well defined position He is in before God, and really in His ways as well as His sorrows. The waters had come into His soul. He cried to God -- His throat was dry while waiting for Him -- His eyes failed -- there was no standing in the depth He was in -- His enemies were there, and mighty. But even here, in speaking of foolishness and sins, which we know to have been of others, not His own, He speaks as fully in the presence of God, all being in the light. "Thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee." His whole case is before God, He knowing it. It is not merely the sorrows and effects of sin down here. Hence, as I have said, He pleads for other godly ones (what touching grace in such a case!), that He, having to suffer the full depths of rejection, having taken all on Him, may not be an occasion of stumbling to the godly, the remnant who waited upon God. How likely in hearts prompt to say on His apparent rejection, because man had rejected Him, and His own word ill-believed, "We thought that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel;" as in the latter day, in Psalm 73, when the godly man felt, "therefore his people return thither, and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them;" and they were ready to say, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency." "Let not them that wait on thee be ashamed for my sake, let not them that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel, because for thy sake I have borne reproach;" and the Lord shews the real ground on which, on man's part, trouble had come upon Him -- His grace in sorrow towards them. But still in all the trouble also He is fully and consciously before God. "Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour," though as a man reproach had broken His heart, and He cried for deliverance. Here also we find judgment claimed from the God of Israel against the enemies; and, in verse 26, Christ brings together Himself and the remnant. In the end, seeing all the result, "their heart should live that seek God; for God will save Zion."
+I believe Jesus's soul passed into peace, that He might give up His own Spirit -- which no one took from Him -- to God His Father. He delivered it up, as it is stated in John 19: 30; He commended it into His Father's hands. (Luke 23: 46.) His soul, while living, had gone morally through all the full depth of the -- to us -- unfathomable suffering of the atoning work, and gave up His spirit Himself to God His Father. But it is evident that the full answer to His prayer was in resurrection. "He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him long life, even length of days for ever and ever. His glory is great in thy salvation." Full glory, indeed, at God's right hand, and the redemption of the Church; and, indeed, power over all flesh, and headship over all things, are the only full answer to His work as to result; but we speak here of life. So Psalm 16 -- "Thou wilt shew me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand pleasures for evermore."
Again, in another Psalm (51), we have, though inspired for them by the Spirit of Christ, the confession of the remnant, the blood-guiltiness being indeed of all from Abel to Zacharias, but surely above all of Christ Himself. Then the confession of the remnant in Israel by the Spirit of Christ clearly applies to them, and not to Christ, save so far as Christ has taken it all on Himself indeed in grace. "In sin did my mother conceive me" cannot in any sense be applied to Christ; for it was not only the absence of personal sin, but an entirely different manner of introduction into manhood, which distinguished the position of Christ. It was a holy thing which was born, so born as to be called the Son of God, so that there was a necessary and special relation between Him and God His Father, even as a man born into the world, whatever He took on Himself, or into whatever He perfectly entered.
In Psalm 40, where we have Christ personally again, we find Him pleading His entire and unfaltering faithfulness, but having come to do God's will, and that through the offering of His body once for all (for we have the apostle's application of it here) His iniquities take such hold upon Him, that He is not able to look up: they are more in number than the hairs on His head. It is not His being sorry for them, or remission, as deliverance or relief, but the weight of them on Him. Again, He asks judgment on the enemy, and that the remnant may rejoice.
In Psalm 102 we have again one which applies personally to Christ, rises up to the height, that is, of His person, though never separated from the interests of His people. He had been lifted up, as One chosen out of the people, as Messiah, and cast down to the lowest place. His days were like a shadow, but, as ever, the full recognition, as standing in the light, of the glory of Jehovah in relation to Him: "Thou, O Jehovah, shalt endure forever." Let Him suffer and be cut off as He might, Jehovah and His glory, His remembrance (and that was to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God revealed to Moses) should endure. He should arise and have mercy on Zion, and the Spirit of Christ goes on to the time of the remnant in the latter day. The set time was come, for the servants of God (for such these were: see Isaiah 65 and 66) took pleasure in her stones. Also, when the Lord built up Zion, He would appear, and His glory among the heathen be established; for He would look down and hear the cry of the poor remnant appointed to death. But what should Christ do? His strength had been weakened in the way, His days had been shortened, yet had He cried to God. "He asked life" of Him. But what a glorious answer to bring out the full person of Christ, in contrast, yet in full recognition and connection in unity of person, with His suffering dying humanity, and with the sparing of those appointed to death, on whom the Lord shall look down on that day! "Of old" -- is the glorious answer -- "thou hast laid the foundation of the earth; the heavens are the work of thy hands;" they would perish, but He was the same, His years should have no end. The sufferer was Jehovah, the Creator Himself. And then the remnant of Israel are brought in in millennial blessing. "The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee." He, all glorious as He was, could not do without them; nor could they fail who had waited on such as He, though suffering as listening to His word in the midst of the enemies of His name, and appointed to death.
In Psalm 25 we have Christ entering as the head of the godly remnant into the sorrows and consequences of the sin of Israel which that remnant cannot repudiate, but, on the contrary, are known by the confession of, as we see in Daniel. The wicked say, as in Malachi, Wherein have we offended? It is a weariness to serve, the remnant confess. And note here, Daniel is reserved, and makes his confession amongst the Gentiles, now recognized as beasts after the restoration: shewing that for the full and best intelligence of the mind of God there was no restoration yet really of the people. Loved infallibly of God as His people, they were still in condition Lo-Ammi, not God's people. Hence the post-captivity prophets never call them so, though prophesying that they will be in a future day. Daniel, taking fully their position in prophetic sympathy by the Spirit of Christ, can address God according to His mind, and, confessing their sin, consider Jerusalem as the holy mountain, and all in the full light of God's unchangeable thoughts of love+ (see Daniel 9); and their condition, as driven out, is the curse he speaks of in which they were. But he speaks also in the certainty of divine love, and of the people as God's people, called by His name.
In Psalm 25, then, Christ speaks as the head of the remnant, so to speak. "O my God, I trust in thee; let me not be ashamed; let not mine enemies triumph over me;" for in the presence of ungodly enemies we ever find Him, never associated with them. And, therefore suffering, He prays that He may not be shut up with them.++ "Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed; let them be ashamed that transgress without cause. Lead me. Remember thy tender mercies. Remember not the sins of my youth [here Israel is personified -- Christ entering into their case; for sins of His youth are clearly not His relation to God], but according to thy mercy remember me." He enters into the spirit of that word, God's real and only possible way of dealing with Israel, "that he might have mercy upon all." Christ had come for the truth of God to confirm the promises, but He had been refused of Israel, and now Israel must come in under mercy. This the remnant understand. The meek are those the Lord will accept and guide. The Lord's ways are owned; and so conscious are they of no excuse on Israel's part for their sin, that their forgiveness is based on the name of the Lord, the only sure ground, as it is necessarily perfect in its power. The man that fears the Lord will be taught in this way; and, finally, Israel will be redeemed (so is the desire) out of all his troubles.
+Daniel, as among the Gentiles, or any answer of God to him, never goes beyond the point of closure, and introduction of the full blessing: never enters on it prophetically; for Israel was among the Gentiles, and he represents the remnant amongst them, but predicts the close of this and the bringing-in all prophesied of, sealing it, but there ends.
++So see Psalm 28: 2.
I have noticed this psalm, because it shews the spirit in (in which association in grace with the remnant, with those that wait on Jehovah) Christ takes up in spirit, as in the condition of the people, looked at not as bearing the sin Himself, but in the feelings of the remnant about the sin of Israel (right though sorrowful feelings), in which, I say, He takes up the sins and the cause of this remnant: for if He did not take up the question of their sins, He could not take up their cause, nor His spirit be the inspirer and expresser by the word of right feelings in them. For, have they these feelings, they must feel, own, recognize, and even groan under the sins which have brought them to that low estate, as is true of every saint, whose sorrow under the consciousness of sin is the fruit of the working of the Spirit of Christ, not His relation to God as at man's distance from Him.
I will now turn, therefore, to some other psalms, referred to as expressing the greatest positive anguish in respect of these sins.
In Psalm 38 Israel is evidently viewed in the anguish of the bitter consequences of sin; but then, mark, of sin confessed as the true source of the anguish, unrighteous as was the oppressing enemy. Seeing it as the hand of the Lord, and bowing under it, and hoping in the Lord who would hear, and saying (as Job at the close, when the testimony of Elihu and Jehovah had reached his spirit, and made the suffering spiritually available), he would declare his iniquity, and be sorry for his sin. In a word, he no longer keeps silence, and guile is not now in his heart, so that we recognise the working of the Spirit of Christ in the remnant; and, consequently, here expressed according to the perfect workings of that Spirit.+ All my desire is before thee. The condition is the condition of Israel under the heavy hand of God's chastening -- the sentiments are the sentiments of the elect remnant (and so in spirit morally true of any soul in such case), in faith confessing the sin, and sure that God will hear -- a certainty expressed for them by the Spirit of Christ, who fully enters into their case, and produces the sentiments, as having made the atonement which enables Him thus to lead them to God, though as yet they know not its value, and are crying out of the depths.
+Historically there may be imperfection in the remnant, as there is in us, but these feelings are expressed in the word, according to the perfectness of the spirit which inspires them, and this is the blessedness of having Christ's Spirit entering into them, furnishing withal the expression to them when He does inspire them, and for His sake accepted of God, though mixed and imperfect in us, according to that perfectness.
They are the remnant that, in the midst of trial, "follow the thing that good is." Now that was Christ's place. He sorrowed in the sorrow of Israel, and suffered the suffering of Israel; but His soul was with God about it, though the effect of His righteous path was to bring trial and forsaking upon Him, and the Lord left Him there till all was complete: but, however groaning deeply in spirit, knowing that the Father heard Him always. As in His previous life, one doubtless of deep thoughts about Israel unknown to man, He knew well, though subject to the path of ordinary duty as of God till God called Him, that He must be about His Father's business, thus shewing, not merely an unchangeable and eternal relationship as Son in the bosom of the Father, but a known relationship down here (and that in service), according to that which He was as a man born of God, who was His God from His mother's belly, who made Him hope when He was on His mother's breasts; and as such He grew in wisdom and stature, in favour with God and man.
Nor can it be doubted that He entered into the sufferings and sense of Israel's guilt in a more peculiar way, when sealed and anointed with the Holy Ghost, and with power for official service, though I doubt not His heart felt it all along. But He waited in private upon God. Look at the sense of the presence and working of His enemies, and the pressure of the ungodly, the contradiction of sinners, which are invariably spoken of in these psalms. And when was that the case? Was it the blameless carpenter who had grown in favour with God and man, whatever His inward thoughts (and I doubt not at all they were deep and full of the glory of God, the glory of God in Israel, of God dishonoured in Israel, and deep and earnest love to His people, and His glory in them)? Or was it the anointed servant of Jehovah declaring His righteousness in the great congregation, and following His ways so as to confound the hypocrites, and asserting His glory in the temple itself, when the zeal of His house ate Him up, that found that the reproaches of those that reproached God fell on Him, that felt the desolation of a people sold for their iniquities to the Gentiles, and the enmity of a cruel nation, and whose lovers and friends stood aloof? But in all these psalms this pressure and sense of enemies are found.
In such a Psalm as 38, then, Christ enters into the sorrow of the godly remnant where He had been, but in the confession, and inspiring the confession of their sin, taking guile out of their heart, and as One who could do it, as He who had come into all its bitterness, and had borne all its weight as known in the light of God.
So in Psalm 6 it is not the iniquities, but the grief and prostration of spirit, and that in the presence of these same enemies, which bring the weeping souls of the remnant to the gates of death. But this, according to the perfectness of the Spirit of Christ (in man in effect and previously to reading such a word, often mixed with unbelief and the sorrows likely to produce disheartening and turning to the world); here encouraged by the comforting testimony for their hearts in that day -- "Jehovah hath heard." But it is here because of "all mine enemies," but the hand of God looked to in it -- not chastening on man at a distance, but a cry acceptable, and heard because the Spirit of Christ is in it, and heard in the judgment of their enemies: which note.
In Psalm 88 we get deeper into this scene of trial, and as we know that Christ was heard in that He feared, that His soul dreaded death and the cup that His Father gave Him to drink, though perfect in obedience, so He expresses this all here. His perfectness before God was seen: that no sin, no evil, no distance had clouded His sense of how terrible separation from God and His wrath was in that which His soul here expresses. He looks at it as under it. He had seen and apprehended it, we learn here, from His youth up. But it was His nearness to God,+ and sense of what He was, made Him feel what the sorrow and horror was of the contrary. He was Jehovah God of His salvation; His loving-kindness as to man (hence not declared in the grave as to man in the flesh) well known; that is, the relation of God with His people, the godly ones before Him according to His faithful love to Israel; but, on the other hand, the full depth of judgment, sorrow, and wrath, entirely entered into, often anticipated, and now measured and known; for He could measure and know it, and He alone, for He has passed under it.
+His soul entering in a perfectly righteous feeling into what the condemnation of the law was, and its curse, and the terror of God's majesty in respect of it, is entirely different from, and indeed the very opposite to, God's inflictions of wrath on Him, according to the position of distance in which He was from God. Piety and suffering vengeance are surely distinct things; but deep as these sufferings of Christ were, they were the depth of piety: "He was heard in that he feared."
"Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance from me; I am shut up, I cannot come forth. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, thy terrors have cut me off." This is no escape nor extrication from a state of distance from God. He is afflicted with all God's waves: He is in the lowest pit. His soul is cast off. God's fierce wrath went over Him. His terrors cut Him off. That Christ anticipated this we know. That He anticipated it in all its extent during the time of His service in the intelligent power of the Spirit (doubtless His righteous soul entered into it before) we know. But with what result? To escape it partially, or extricate Himself from it? No. Or was it merely after His service was closed, that He entered into another position? No. Jesus, knowing all things that should come upon Him, steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. That the hour of the power of Satan's darkness, and the hour of the dreadful wrath of God, were different from all before, from the holy anticipation of it, and from that service during which Satan departed from Him for a season (having first tried to seduce, and now, having been unable to succeed, oppressing Him with terror, sorrow, and death) -- all this is quite true.
But the thing weighed by the Spirit of Christ in this psalm is the terror, and the wrath, and the waves in their full extent. Till it was accomplished, He had a baptism to be baptized with; and He was straitened till it was accomplished. That Christ's feelings varied, though the foundation of them all was the same, is undoubted. He could speak of our partaking of His joy, and of the fellowship of His sufferings. He had meat to eat in accomplishing His Father's work, and a cup to drink so bitter, that it, and it alone, He prayed might pass. But it did not, and He had to drink it, but at His Father's hand. He might be in the joy of communion with Him who heard Him always, in the service of love to men, or grieved, infinitely grieved, with the unbelief and contradiction of sinners; in glory, speaking of His decease with the saints in glory, or suffering it under the wrath of God. He could be led in the Spirit to be tempted, and return in the power of the Spirit to cast out demons, having bound the strong man; and Satan return as the prince of this world, to whom Jesus would not be subject, nor own: and He was perfect in each position, I mean perfect in His feelings relative to that position. So He might enter prophetically into the sorrows of others, and by His prophetic spirit so record His own that the word became His word when He was in them. But in all this His perfectness never changed in His own relation to God, nor His nearness to Him as man, as Son of God down here born of the Virgin.
The time of atonement had another character, and this we know He anticipated in spirit. And here I would remark, that, instead of escaping wrath to which He was relatively obnoxious, whether by position or appointment, we do find Him, when that one cup had to be drunk, seeing that it should pass, though perfectly submissive; but it could not. For nothing else was like that.
For before, the reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him, and, though He suffered in every way, in the midst of it all He looked constantly to God. Every groan in spirit, as in the case of Lazarus, was heard, and reproaches because of unbelief turned in the same hour into thanking God in spirit, who hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes. The sense of unbelief, even in His disciples, which disabled them from using the power of His name against the demon that tormented the world, which made Him feel, on descending from the momentary vision or rather realization of glory, that that generation was not long to be supported, nor He to be with them, yet turns without an interval into the exercise of love and display of power against the enemy, while He was with His poor unhappy people -- with unhappy man.
But now, when this cup (not reproaches for God, not contradiction from sinners, but wrath from God because man was at a distance, was proved to be so, proved incapable of being won back by anything such as He was) was to be drunk -- now, He prays it may pass -- that from this hour He may be saved. But no, it could not be. We well know why: our hearts know it well. That cup could not pass; not that one. It was drunk for us; and He drinks it in love to His Father, in obedience, and in accomplishment of His blessed and precious love to us. And our souls adore Him, and Him who gave Him for us -- Him who came to do the will which sanctifies and perfects us by one offering. Associated with us in wrath, from which He extricates Himself, and escapes, in part, by prayer, faith, and obedience! -- does not the soul revolt from such a thought, and leave it with disgust to the friends or dupes of Satan to entertain or adopt it? But let us turn rather to the Lord.
In this Psalm (88) the Lord enters prophetically into the depth of this; not as in it historically, but as reflecting on it, if I may so speak, so that, in verse 16, He can speak of it as entering into it in spirit at all times. This He has done, no doubt, for every saved soul; but, I do not doubt, also in contemplation of the condition of Israel ruined under the law, the curse of which He fully bore. For, note, it is not a question if Christ enters into this place -- He did fully. It is His being associated in it as coming into the world, and escaping part, and extricating Himself from it, and applying His sense of the terror of it to this, that is so evil. Verses 17 and 18 refer, I do not doubt, to that, which however is a minor part here -- His enemies and the removal of His friends. But here it is from the hand of God. In Psalm 38, when looked at in another point of view, they stand aloof. It is the misery there -- here the wrath.
In Psalm 35 we have Christ again in spirit entering into the sorrow of the remnant, and claiming judgment on the enemy; but giving the remnant credit, as it were, for being identified with Him and His cause, as the righteous one in spirit, and praying that they may shout for joy that favour His righteous cause.
In Psalm 34. He takes up the song of praise for the faithfulness of the Lord. Not a bone of Him had been broken. His soul makes its boast in the Lord -- the humble should hear thereof and be glad: "heard in that he feared;" and, whatever the glory that resulted, as seen in Psalm 21, and yet better known by us, He applies it to the comfort of the tried remnant in that day, so that they may bless the Lord at all times, even in trial and seeming desertion. They were to magnify the Lord with Him, and exalt His name together. He sought the Lord, and He heard Him and delivered Him from all His fears. They looked unto Him and were lightened. So they can say, "This poor man cried, and Jehovah heard him and saved him out of all his troubles." In verses 21 and 22 the grand conclusion, as to the wicked and the remnant, is drawn.
I have, I think, gone through a sufficient number of psalms,+ and those the most difficult, I believe, to give the principle on which I judge we can understand them and their application, so as to facilitate the interpretation and application of the others, and, in having the true sense, the avoiding of a false one. If the Lord permit, and give leisure, most joyous and profitable would it be, not only to search into them all, but I would trust for others, to unfold the application of them; but this, as deeply interesting, would require a long time and much application. I have only rapidly given great principles, but most precious, as rendering us more familiar with the spirit and mind of the Lord Jesus, which is everything to us, and makes the Psalms so precious. Exhortations, prophetic history, psalms of praise, all are found flowing from His Spirit, easier in general of application, specially if we have the latter days in view. I will, before closing, just notice Psalm 91 as one used by the enemy we know to Christ, and affording a key to the position of Christ before Jehovah in Israel.
The first verse gives the two names of the trust and blessing of Abraham, looked at as heir of the world. As the Almighty He was made known to Abraham we know (see Exodus 6: 3). The Most High was His name of blessing by Melchisedek. He who knew the secret place of this last should enjoy the protection of that other first-mentioned name. Messiah (verse 2) takes the name of the God of Israel, as the secret place of the Most High, Jehovah -- by which name He was known to them. (Exodus 6: 3.) Down to verse 8 the consequence is stated. He is, indeed, the Almighty Protector who should shield Him. As thus in Israel, only with His eyes should He see the reward of the wicked. This was His relationship, and the ground of it with the God of Israel. In verse 9 the Spirit in the remnant of Israel takes up the song: "Because thou hast made Jehovah which is my refuge, even the Most High," whose secret place He had thus known, His dwelling, He should give His angels charge over Him; He should be borne up and trample on the power of evil. In verse 14, the Fear of Israel, Jehovah, speaks: "Because he has set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name." The exaltation of the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel, is constant in the Psalms; and the refusal to look to any but Him, or accept deliverance, or honour, or exaltation but from His hands, and consequently in His time; and this characterizes the faithful remnant in the latter day, though smitten into the place of dragons. But it brings trial and sorrow on them; and into this Christ, therefore, entered in spirit, in its fullest and highest sense -- it was His place. And, indeed, when we seek relief elsewhere, we must act on principles below His, for He acts on His own in His own blessed and perfect time; and hence suffering. Satan sought to make the Lord count on this out of the way of obedience, and as putting it to the test to exalt Himself, which would have been really unbelief, saying, "Is the Lord indeed among us?"
+The reader may turn to Psalm 70, where he will again find this desire that the godly in Israel may not be stumbled at Jesus's sufferings, desiring that they may ever have praise in their mouth; and to Psalm 71, where we evidently find circumstances in the condition of the writer alluded to, "old and grey-headed:" but still used by the Spirit of Christ prophetically; not to speak of Christ merely personally, but of His taking up the condition of the remnant in Israel, feeble in the old age, as it were, of their history, in the presence of their enemies, whose hope God had always been, marking the faith of the believing remnant, and who should shew His righteousness to that generation -- His power to every one that was to come. And so it shall be according to the spirit and title of Christ in that day.
This psalm, then, gives the key to the relationship of Christ with Jehovah in Israel. But He awaited therein His perfect pleasure, and suffered for and in spirit with His people, and, blessed be God, not for that nation only.
The division into five books is generally known, and will give a diversity of bearings in this relation, prophetic relation, of the Lord in spirit with the remnant; but I cannot enter into this now, as it would carry me too far, and leads properly to or indeed is rather founded on, the interpretation of the whole book. Peace be with my reader. May he be enabled, indeed, to enter into the spirit of the Psalms as of the Spirit of Christ, and enjoy it as much as my poor and feeble soul has done. And, if only so, he will know Christ the better, and not lose much pains if he bestow it on them. Though, indeed, it is not pains, but the gift of teaching of the Spirit of God, that makes us know Christ, and understand the Psalms as speaking of Him, as of every other good gift.
We may do well to consider what the New Testament does say as to the sufferings of Christ. Mr. Newton's theory is based on the principle that this kind of sufferings of Christ is not found in the history of the New Testament, but only in the Psalms. But surely a doctrine of such immense importance as the subjection of Christ to the wrath of God previous to the cross, and not vicariously, whether up to John's baptism, as he sometimes states it, or up to His death, as at others -- from which He was delivered by His obedience, or by John's baptism, or not at all, till He had endured it all (for all these are taught too in the tract, as well as the direct opposite to the last) -- a doctrine, I say, of such importance as Christ's being under wrath would be found in the epistles, in the way of comment on the history. But not a word of any such doctrine is found, but quite the contrary. Sufferings in righteousness from the contradiction of sinners are indeed spoken of, and bearing sin also, but so as to exclude the thought of any other kind. Thus, 1 Peter 3: 18, "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God [not find His way to a point where God could meet Him], being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." So, chapter 2: 21, "For even hereunto were ye called [that is, to do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently]: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye are healed. For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."
Now here we have the whole course of Christ's sufferings for righteousness' sake and for sins in contrast moreover with the wandering+ condition of Israel. So, 1 Peter 4: 1, "For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." Now here we have Christ's sufferings in the flesh given as a whole when they were not vicarious sin-bearing. And we are called upon to arm ourselves with the same mind, not most certainly with inflictions from God in wrath. So, verses 12-19, of the fiery trial: -- "Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial ... . but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings ... If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God ... Wherefore, let them that suffer according to the will of God ... ."
+It is well to remark, that the word in Psalm 119, "I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost," which Mr. N. applies to Christ, is the same that is used in Isaiah 53: 6 -- "All we, like sheep, have gone astray;" and in a moral way it is ever used of moral error -- indeed, is always used in the sense of evil, either moral, or, in a few passages, of misery. This application of Psalm 119 to Christ by Mr. N., well known to all who have heard him, and confirmed in his own tract on the sufferings of Christ (note to page 16), is to be remarked by Christians. It is a part of that utter and revolting disrespect for Christ which characterizes all their teaching; because it is not only verse 176 in which going astray is attributed to him who speaks, but in verse 67: -- "Before I was afflicted, I went astray: but now have I kept thy word." What does "go astray" mean here? And here I shall mention some circumstances connected with this word. In the notes which are so abundantly circulated, one, amongst others, was furnished to persons in communion where all this evil is not received, in which sins of ignorance were directly in terms attributed to Christ; and here I shall give a brief statement of what these notes are. They are not the communication of casual notes taken by anybody, for which it would be hard to render any one responsible: they are taken by a clever and assiduous disciple of Mr. N.'s, a very good and correct note-taker, copied out fair, and given to other disciples to be copied and circulated; some being paid for doing it. Now I will not here attribute to Mr. N. the ascribing sins of ignorance to Christ in the lecture referred to -- I shall just now say why. But this is certain, that his most efficient and ardent disciples so take it, copy it, read, recommend, and circulate it. These notes having been read by another whose faith was not yet ruined by this teaching -- this person was naturally shocked at the blasphemous doctrines contained in them, and the thing became known and spoken of at Plymouth; and a friend of Mr. N.'s, one, though his disciple, too much taught of old in the faith to bear this, got the notes and had them interlined so as that the words "sins of ignorance" should be disconnected from Christ, and taken as a comparison of what in others was like what was spoken of as being in Him. But how must feeling about Christ have been lost and destroyed by the teaching, that the disciples of Mr. N. should not have been at once stopped by finding sins attributed to Christ! Nor is it surprising; for, though I do not pretend to attribute to Mr. N. what some of his friends say cannot be, though others have diligently circulated as his, it is quite certain that Mr. N.'s teaching does so. Psalm 119 he applies directly to Christ. See page 15 of his tract, where, verse 9, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way," is applied to Him; and the psalm in general, note to page 16. But, as to attributing sins of ignorance to Christ, which Mr. N.'s poor deluded victims are circulating as such blessed teaching, this is certain, that there is nothing more in it than what Mr. N. does teach. He attributes Psalm 119 to Christ; explaining away, indeed, one of the passages which says, that he who speaks went astray. But verse 67, which also states that before he was afflicted he went astray, employs the word which is used all through Leviticus and Numbers for sinning or sins through ignorance. And I beg also the reader to remark the comparison he makes to justify the application of this and other psalms to Christ. "If I were to send a faithful servant heavily burdened to scale the sides of an icy mountain, and were to see his foot slide, should I marvel? But what, if I should see him stumble or slip in some easy path, because of carelessness, etc., how different my judgment of his conduct!" Did the faithful servant heavily burdened (and whom that represents I can leave the reader to judge of) -- did His foot slide on the icy mountain? What does Mr. N. mean about Christ in saying this? He would not marvel at His foot sliding! Is indignation to be restrained at such language? Woe be to the man that hears, encourages, or sanctions such blasphemies. Either Mr. N. is deliberately seeking to degrade and dishonour Christ, or he is a blind instrument of Satan in doing it.
Here, then, we have sufferings by appointment, and that by judgment on the house of God; and true saints suffering as Christians, partaking of Christ's sufferings in it: in which they were to rejoice; so that the nature of such sufferings, as known in and by Christ, is entirely contrary to what the writer has taught concerning them. It was no strange thing, but a thing understood and known; and the very contrary of the writer's doctrine on the points he treats of. For such sufferings by appointment, and inflictions of God in judgment on the house of God, we, according to him, have nothing to say to. Christ extricated Himself out of, and preserved Himself from, them; whereas I find we are to rejoice in partaking of them with Him.
So in Hebrews 12, after many partial though blessed exhibitions of faith held up to lead us to run with patience, it is added, "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith," One who has begun and finished the whole course of faith, in which faith is exercised; so that we have here everything in which He trod the path -- ajrchgo;n cai; teleiwth;n -- who has led in and completed the course: "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners+ against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." And then taking, as to us, another view of it. "And ye have forgotten the exhortation, which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Now that Christ had no need to be rebuked is certain; but so far as this can have any application to Him, as a trial and exercise of perfectness in circumstances, it is clear it relates to His enduring from the wickedness of men, as we in following Him have to endure -- giving another character to those sufferings of Christ than that which the writer gives -- namely, that one in which the godly man has to follow Him in the path of faith.
+We have seen this principle all through in examining the Psalms.
So, in the doing of God's will, which was His whole career in life and death, in Hebrews 10, the apostle sees no such thing as inflictions of God on Him as associated with those who had not done it. It was to do God's will that His body was prepared: but there is no connection with sins in relation to God in wrath but the offering of His body once.
Indeed, Hebrews 7: 27, I doubt not, contradicts directly the statement of the writer; for though, as High Priest, Christ exercises His office as made higher than the heavens, yet His qualifications must have existed previously in order to be in that place: holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens. He is made (genovmeno") higher than the heavens, but He was constantly separate from sinners, distinguished in position from them.
And Christ perfect through sufferings, as has been observed by others, is connected with His tasting death. So, if He partook, and in as far as He partook of the children's, not the wicked's, place -- flesh and blood, it was that through death, etc.; and it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren. But how so? "For in that he hath suffered being tempted, he might be able to succour them that are tempted," "for he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." It was not extricating Himself out of something He was in, because sinners were there; but entering into all, that the children were in, of trial and difficulty, that He might succour them there. So in the "strong crying and tears in the days of his flesh," giving thus the whole constant character to them as such, it was "unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared." It was not inflictions on the position of the ungodly. It was piety met God's eye in His cry and reached His ear; and thus, "though he were a son, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect," etc. There is no thought of another kind and class of sufferings; yet the sufferings are fully spoken of and considered, and so as to leave no room for, but entirely exclude, the blasphemous doctrine of the author as to the position Christ was in.
Indeed, other considerations shew the antiscriptural nature of his doctrine on this all-vital point. For Christ was to get out of this place of being exposed to what was due to man's sin and Israel's disobedience. If He was then answerable for it, how without blood? "For without shedding of blood, there is no remission." Hence, when Christ did put Himself there, He did shed His blood, and was brought again from the dead according to the power of the blood of the everlasting covenant. But how, when He was under it the first time, as born into it? Was His obedient life sufficient to put away the consequences of sin? That He was never under it, by reason of that life, a Christian understands; but that He redeemed Himself out of it by good living is an unscriptural principle.
Further, remark, the position He was in was for sins of others; so that, if this redemption by living righteously under the law was accomplished and effectual, it was accomplished effectually for them, for it was the position they were in He took. But, indeed, it is hard to say it was; for, according to the author, though He extricated Himself from this position by His own righteousness, He preserved Himself only from a part of it. For some eighteen years He had to bear as much as God thought proper during that period. Of what avail, then, was His perfect obedience to bring Him out of it, since He suffered under it a good while? or, why so suffer, if He was perfect enough in obedience to merit getting out of it? For it was not for others in effect then, for He alone got out; nor for us, for we were never in it, says the author. Or why was John's baptism for the remission of sins so blessed to Him to get out of this position, if He was getting out of it solely by His own righteousness? It is no answer to say that He chose to abide there with Israel, for it was a different way of getting out; nor, if He was relieving Himself by remission, was He fulfilling righteousness. He falsified His place, for, then, to work effectually for Israel, He ought to have separated Himself from them, as now able to take up their cause; nor can it be said that He chose then to enter into their condition, because getting remission of sins by repentance, as joy and deliverance to His own soul and new ground, was not associating Himself with their sins.
He got from Sinai to Zion then; but how was that taking Sinai-place with them? And it is all confusion moreover to say, that He did what Israel would not, because, without any previous title of righteousness at all, multitudes were baptized by John, confessing their sins; nor was John's ministry to Israel such as the writer presents it, namely, the new economy of grace. It was the representing of an axe at the root of the tree, and Messiah with the fan in His hand about to cleanse His floor, and judge, and execute vengeance against all that did not bear good fruit, gather up the grain into His garner, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire; so that it was not, in any real or true sense in its address to Israel, the introduction into the earth of the new economy of grace. John did, indeed, prophetically point out something more; but this he identified entirely with the death of Christ and the baptizing with the Holy Ghost. "Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world." "He it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." And, rising above the circumstances in which Jesus placed Himself, he bears testimony to Him, "and I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." "I knew him not."
Again, shewing the entire misapplication in principle of the Psalms, the doctrine of the writer is, that Christ wrought His way by righteousness up to the point of meeting God, learned obedience, proved His perfectness, etc. It was not a need of, nor had He a claim on, mercy. He must make His way by obedience and righteousness; He extricated Himself by His own perfect obedience. Now what is remarkable in the Psalms is, that they constantly appeal to the mercy of God, putting it ever before His righteousness, as it will be with Israel in that day. It is this that distinguishes them: "God prepares their heart;" for they must come in under mercy, according to Romans 11. And this is the case in Psalm 6 itself, on which the writer comments, and where it is said, "Save me for thy mercies' sake." It sets aside his whole principle of application to Christ.
I will add also a few words on Jeremiah, which is also used to puzzle the minds of the saints. Recalling the fact, that the question is not, if Christ in spirit entered into the sorrows of Israel: I believe, that, as being always near to God, He could. The doctrine taught is that He was under wrath in a way we never can be, and did not suffer all its consequences but saved Himself from it.
Jeremiah then, in spirit, by the Spirit of Christ, entered in his measure into the sorrows of Israel: not as subject to the wrath, though as a man he was of course; but as having the mind of Christ's love, and His word about them.
"I have set thee," says God, "for a tower and a fortress among my people, that thou mayest know and try their way." (Jeremiah 6: 27.) God had sanctified him for this (chapter 1: 5), and the nation would fight against him. (verse 19.) This is not sufferings as associated with them, but as separated from them, though divinely interested in them, that is, as a prophet. (Chapter 15: 15.) We have his trials under it; and what was the ground it went upon? Just so far as he was there in the Spirit of Christ. "Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart ... . I sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation." Now, here he is filled with it. How? Is it by being naturally exposed and obnoxious to it, and extricating himself out of it? No, but as sanctified to it by God, and called by His name; it is as partaking of the word of God that he suffered, and suffered as far as that was the case, as Christ did. And this was the identification with Israel which made him suffer, according to the grace of God, and in spiritual understanding according to His mind; his heart and spirit being associated with them, according to God's love to them, and feeling their sorrow and their sins; the grace of God identifying itself in the prophet with the people as loved of Him -- suffering in their sorrows, and calling for judgment on them who wilfully opposed the testimony, despised the sorrower, and helped on the evil.
But this was the opposite of suffering the inflictions of God's wrath from him as due to the people. Jeremiah 10: 24, 25, shews plainly the impossibility of such an idea of wrath, so due and escaped from: "O Lord, correct me, but with judgment not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing." Now, no such desire could be expressed as to inflictions of God's wrath, to which a man was naturally obnoxious. It looks for correction, but not in anger. No one could look for nor acquiesce in this way in the infliction of the curse of the law. And as to the Lamentations: that Jeremiah and the Lord Jesus entered into the sorrow of the actual wrath and evil that had fallen on Israel, who doubts? But this was not exposure to it from which the prophet preserved himself. His heart entered into it all, as sorrowing over what was loved of God but guilty, and with which he identified himself, being in such a case. Here also the enmity of ungodly Jews is not lost sight of. (Lamentations 3: 14.) Besides, here also mercy is what is referred to and expected, not wrath due and avoided in a measure, but suffering felt from wrath executed, and looking to mercy out of it, because of God's goodness and His love to the people. He had seen affliction. (See verses, 22, 31, 32, 48, 52 to the end.)
I shall add some of the doctrines taught which may put brethren on their guard against the whole system. It was taught in London that Christ had no human feelings -- that the weakness of man was an evil as well as sin, and hence it was not in Christ.
This was taken notice of, and the cases of Christ's loving the young man, and His reference to His mother on the cross, were referred to, as proving that He had those feelings: but the first was declared to be the love of election; and the second the divine nature suggesting what was right; but neither human feeling. The fire consuming the wood upon the altar was expounded, as shewing that God did consume nature, not sin merely as a thing hateful to Himself.
It was assiduously taught in more than one place, that Abel's sacrifice was more abundant than Cain's, and that this, not its nature, was its superiority,+ the word pleivona being relied on to prove it. Lecturing on Leviticus 1, it was taught that the preciousness of it was, that if our devotedness, though acceptable, was inadequate in quantity, the deficiency was made up by Christ's; and the peculiar preciousness of this was, that it was made up for by a thing of the like kind.
I feel bound to add, that the doctrine of the tract involves really, though more obscurely, the person of the Lord; because, it is stated that, as the Eternal Son, He had an unchangeable relation of favour; but, that as man, not vicariously, He was obnoxious to wrath. Now this divides the person entirely. That He took it vicariously, though in perfect favour Himself, is true; but that He was in favour as Eternal Son, and under wrath Himself as man, not vicariously, subverts the doctrine of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is near as Eternal Son, and as man at a distance, not as a substitute.
The horrible and frightful doctrine of this tract then is -- it makes one shudder to state it -- that Christ was exposed to damnation Himself from the position He had taken; being that of man's distance++ from God, and the curse of a broken law, according to Galatians 3: 10 -- that He extricated Himself from it, and again entered into it for others. The same doctrine is, not only in the notes published by Mr. Harris, but in the paper of the author in the second edition of the "Christian Witness." There Christ is said to be not guilty of actual transgression, nor having original sin, but to be under the third part of the consequences of Adam's guilt, the imputed or reckoned penalty of it as being a man. Nor can there be any doubt what the doctrine is; for it is stated+++ that He chose to abide what He had delivered Himself from, by the law being strong for Him; and so the iniquity was laid upon Him, and the wrath came. So that what He was liable to, was the wrath judicially due to sin, for that is what He did abide. Many of the most inconceivable things are in MS. notes, which are in the hands of others, but those I leave to the persons who possess them. But I do say, Woe be to those who pervert the truth and ruin souls by it; or, who are not faithful in their denunciation of it where it is really before them; or, who seek to palliate it so as to enfeeble the security of simple souls against it. It is not for me here to discuss what are the motives, nor what system of doctrine has led to it -- of this I may feel pretty well assured. But the business of a faithful man is with the evil itself as the work of Satan, and to warn in the most solemn manner, every saint against those who teach it.
+This piece of false criticism I do not comment on; but I do warn the reader, who may be imposed on by an appearance of exact learning, that the Greek criticisms of the writer are oftener wrong than right. This is the case with some found in the papers which have given occasion to these remarks.
++See page 31, of "Remarks," by Mr. N.
+++Only, as we have seen it said, there to be vicariously incurred; but this does not affect, unless in the way of confirmation, the evidence of what He had "incurred."
I repeat here, to facilitate the use of the Psalms, three things found in them: -- 1, The Spirit of Christ entering into the sorrows of the godly remnant of Israel, especially in the latter day; 2, His own grief and sorrow as in life down here (and oh! what sorrow, reproach, desertion, and treachery, for his tender and perfect spirit!), as well as going through this very place of the remnant in principle; 3, The atonement and sin-bearing, which enabled Him to use effectually for others His nearness to God, so that He could bring their sorrows as occasions of mercy, and give to them right feelings in the sense of sins as their drawing near to God. Of course, this develops itself largely in many ways as to suffering and feeling, while other psalms largely introduce the consequences in blessing -- Christ's coming in glory, who He is, and the circumstances and thoughts in the godly among the people connected with these things.
Since the publication of this, an answer to Mr. Harris's remarks on the notes has been published; but, while labouring to get rid of the effect, it fully confirms the blasphemous doctrine taught. I have examined it elsewhere. It has been doubted whether one passage in this tract made sufficiently clear that the atonement was the ground on which alone blessing could come on the remnant. I judged it clear enough, but, if there be any obscurity, I add this to take it away.
I had purposed giving a brief recapitulation of the statements and doctrines propounded in Ebrington Street, that every one might see clearly what they are by extracts drawn from printed documents; having already discussed the merits of the system at some length in a tract. Since entertaining the thought of giving this brief summary, Mr. Newton has answered Mr. Harris's tract, so that we have the fullest opportunity of ascertaining what his views are. The author, as is his known custom, after making statements which subvert the faith, seeks by modifying, by making statements which are entirely different appear to be the same, or substituting one for the other, smothering up what was said by expatiating on recognized truths, to confound the minds of the simple, and escape the discrediting detection of the doctrines he has taught. Happier would it be to let it all alone; but it is due to souls that it should be known. I leave to others to express their feeling as to the hopeless dishonesty of the author. To one who knows the facts, this last tract does carry it to an extent inconceivable were it not there in print. I shall merely state the doctrines of the author clearly, and state one or two facts connected with his attempt to evade the effect of it.
There can be no doubt that this last tract is intended to confirm the substance of the doctrine already taught.
The author says, "I increasingly feel, after writing the present tract, that the doctrine intended to be conveyed will bear, as a whole, most rigid examination by the word of God."
The author's doctrine is that Christ came by birth into man's relative condition as a sinner, and into Israel's under a broken law, making part thus of an accursed people; that He was exposed to, and threatened by, obnoxious to, the consequences of this position -- not vicariously, but as being one of them, but preserved Himself in a measure from those consequences, and extricated Himself out of that condition, by His life under the law, which was strong to Him though weak to us, and subsequently underwent what was due to it vicariously on the cross; that is, that Christ was subject, not vicariously but as associated with us, to damnation and wrath, but freed Himself from it by keeping the law; that what He suffered when in this position during the first thirty years of His life was the infliction of God upon His soul; not entering into the condition of man in spirit, though this might be true too; and that He got out of this condition, this relation to God, at John's baptism (though in this he contradicts himself).
And here I press on the reader always to bear in mind that Christ is stated to have been exposed or obnoxious to this from His birth -- not perhaps to have endured it all, which shews that it is not His spirit entering into it, but exposed and obnoxious to it; that it is distinguished as inflictions by God, even when felt, from exercises of His own soul; that these inflictions were under law, not under love. Let him remark also that sinless penalties, though freely spoken of to confound the reader, have nothing to say to the matter. Christ did not extricate Himself from them; hunger and thirst and weariness were His portion all through; nor is that the meaning of the curse of the law. Saint and sinner are alike subject to them. Jesus might have felt their true character as, though more deeply than, the saints will; but this is not an infliction from God on His soul. All this is an attempt to throw dust in the eyes.
I shall now state the doctrines from Mr. N.'s own writings, and first from No. 6 of the second+ edition of the "Christian Witness," vol. 2, 111, 113. "In order to form a scriptural judgment on these things, it is needful to consider attentively the state in which we, as the descendants of Adam, are placed before God. There are three particulars which mark our condition as sinners before Him: first, original, or vicarious guilt, imputed (or reckoned) to us on account of the transgression of our first parent,++ of which Romans 5 treats; secondly, Original sin, or indwelling corruption; and thirdly, Actual transgression.
+It is not in the first.
++Hence Christ, though personally able to rise out of it, was really an heir of wrath naturally as man. For this, as we shall see, was of the three particulars that which applied to Him. Mr. N. has sought to distinguish wrath from wrath. But what is due to man's distance from God, by imputation of Adam's guilt, and the curse of a broken law, or, as we shall see, the future condition of lost man, if it be not wrath in the full sense?
"The distinction between imputed transgression, and indwelling corruption is often neglected. It may be thus illustrated. The children of an exile in Siberia, though innocent of rebellion themselves, might yet be involved in all the penalties of their parent and be punished for and on account of him. Even so the one transgression of Adam in the garden exposes all his posterity to be treated by God as transgressors on account of him. The penalty of death would still have impended over them, even though they could have been born pure as angels in themselves." "The Lord Jesus was as free from indwelling sin as from actual transgression: yet nevertheless He was a member, so to speak, of the exiled family, and was therefore born subject to their penalties. But He was made under the law; and, being essentially holy, He was able to fulfil the law, and so to rise above the+ penalties to which He had become subject on account of Adam's guilt. He was able to enter into life, by keeping the commandments; and the very same law, which had been death to every other, was unto Him life, even as it is written, 'If there could have been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.' On account of our sinful flesh, to us the law was weak, but strong unto Him, because He had no sinful flesh, but was essentially the holy One. He learned obedience in the midst of suffering, and was proved to be the righteous One, who might have entered into life by Himself alone, but who preferred to lay down His life that He might take it again, that so, through the knowledge of Him, many might be justified. All that the soul of a saint recognizes as true in the writings of Mr. Irving, respecting Christ being in 'that condition of being and region of existence which is proper to a sinner,' will be found to be altogether comprised in the fact of His being born under the curse of the exiled family,++ vicariously incurred. But He rose out of this region through the power of His own inherent holiness; and therefore never would have come into 'that experience into [read, of] God's action which is proper for a sinner,' unless He had chosen to abide it for the sake of others. And when He had chosen this, then it pleased the Lord to bruise Him."
+It is clear enough here that it is not "sinless penalties," such as hunger and the sweat of His brow, which are in question. He never rose above them. Note here sinless penalties is an expression conveniently borrowed to confuse people. All penalties are sinless. The expression has been used to express that Christ partook of the sorrows incident to human nature in consequence of the Fall, but had not the taint of sin which came by it. But this leaves untouched the question: was He under the guilt imputed to Adam's children and exposed by His birth amongst them to the penalties due to it, without taking them vicariously, according to Romans 5? Mr. N. says He was, and got out of it by keeping the law. Note the word "But He was made under the law." That is, without this there was no hope for Him to be delivered from the guilt He was under. And if we remember that He was the true God, think what it was to be born liable to the penalty of Adam's guilt; not to bear it in grace!
++It is equally clear here that Christ was born under the curse due to man, but did not endure it because He rose out of it by keeping the law. Mr. N. in both the subsequent tracts says that "vicariously" is wrong here; and declares that the condition of suffering spoken of was not vicarious; as indeed is evident, for He did not rise out of vicarious suffering, save in quite another sense, but underwent in Note, He was born under the curse, not took it on Him therefore vicariously. Afterwards He abode it for others. This shews plainly what He was under by birth. For, what did He abide?
Nor is there any ambiguity as to the extent of this.
"Now it is fully allowed, as has been stated in the preface, that He was born into our 'condition of being' in the sense of being born out of paradise. And also that He exposed Himself to the danger of receiving all the punishment which followed upon the imputation of Adam's offence: but, though exposed to it, He rose above it all, because He was by birth the holy One, made under the law; who did not, as we, find it weak through the flesh, but effectually ordained unto life, because His flesh was holy. 'This do and thou shalt live,' was to Him a word of delivering power. So far, therefore, from His having been punished on account of the condition of being into which He had come, He would not have been punished at all, unless He had freely chosen whilst standing as the 'justified one,' to offer atonement to the Father, and to become the substitute and sin-bearer of all who believe in His name." (Page 126.)
It is impossible anything can be clearer than this. Exposed to judgment as inheriting the whole guilt of Adam, He by keeping the law becomes the justified One, and then offers Himself as a substitute. Had He not been made under the law, He must have been condemned as every child of Adam. Nor could He from the beginning have been so offered as the guiltless Lamb, for He was under guilt and exposed to judgment. It was only when by keeping the law He was the "justified one" that He could offer atonement to the Father.
The author now seeks to confound all this in the mind of the reader, by speaking of Christ's suffering, entering into these sorrows, appropriating the sins, and His and our privilege in suffering. I shall proceed to quote passages from his two late tracts, shewing, with all this garbling and changing for others the statements made, that the doctrine is still contained therein: what that is, we have plainly seen from the extracts from the "Christian Witness." I do not quote from the notes Mr. Harris published; though they are worth perusing, because, after the corrections of Mr. Newton in his last, they afford the clearest evidence of what is really taught. Those corrections leave the substance unchanged. Many of the grosser forms which are corrected are to a reflecting mind comparatively immaterial. It will be seen, moreover, that to read "the Lamb made perfect through suffering," or "the One made perfect through suffering," makes no difference whatever; because it is stated that He was made perfect through suffering in order to be a sacrifice;+ and that is the whole point of the objection. This Mr. N. leaves as it is. And this is quite consistent with the doctrine in the "Christian Witness," since there He was exposed by birth to the judgment due to Adam's guilt, and rose by keeping the law out of that region and then offered Himself -- and so in the "Remarks," page 31, "He had to find His way to a point where God would meet Him."The "Remarks" justify the form, "had to be found," as the sum of the notes, whatever its force. For there (page 3), it is said, "The appointment of God required that He should be proved," "and He must ... . be proved a righteous servant." But to proceed.
And first to shew that the two tracts confirm the doctrine that Jesus was by birth associated with Israel in its condition before God, that is, the curse of a broken law; not that He took the sin vicariously, but that He was exposed by birth to the consequences of it.
+The passage in Hebrews 2 refers to Christ being perfect on high by passing through suffering unto death, not being made perfect in order to be a sacrifice.
"The fact of Jesus being by birth an Israelite would have been alone sufficient to link Him in direct association with that people in the estimate of God." ("Observations," page 23.) His baptism by John "was the acknowledgment of the condition of His people and of His association with them in that condition." (Page 24.) As to birth (see also "Remarks," pages 4, 5. So "Observations," page 20, 21), "It must not be thought that the fact of Israel's being under wrath and the curse at the time when the Lord Jesus was born amongst them is of trivial importance in the present controversy." "And if it can be shewn (as it has been shewn) ... . that Jesus became by birth one of that family."
And now, as to the extent of this: though we ought not to have to shew it, for Christians ought to know what is due to a broken law, it will be found to embrace man's position, as such. "He was born, not in paradise, but into the midst of the fallen family of man." "But He had not merely become connected with the sorrows and sufferings of man. There was a part of the human family, etc. This was Israel." "They had fallen from that ground of professed obedience, and like Adam, had earned, by their disobedience, the fearful inflictions of God's broken law, for it had been said, 'Cursed is he that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.'" Galatians 3: 10.+ ("Remarks," pages 4, 5.)
"And observe ["Remarks," page 21], what full identification with Israel's position, and Israel's sin, is implied in this act of the Lord Jesus, in submitting to baptism by the hand of John; not indeed identification in the same sense as that in which He is made one with His elect people, for that is identification in substitution and in union -- identification therefore that cannot fail. But although not that identification, how beautiful the grace, and how perfect the development of character shewn in owning, though innocent and spotless, the shame and guilt of others, as if it were His own."
Now, fair as these words are, to elude the doctrine taught, it must be remembered that it was not associating Himself with the people in grace in that baptism: He was by birth in this condition. And it must be remembered that He is said to have emerged out of this Sinai condition at John's baptism. (See "Remarks," page 23. So page 25.)
+We see here what the colour given to it by the term, sinless penalties, is worth. It was a condition expressed by Galatians 3: to, into which Jesus came: and it will be remembered that in Galatians 3 this is expressly referred to what was borne on the cross.
"If He was made to realize the distance into which man had wandered out of the presence of God, and if He realized also the distance of Israel ... . I believe it to have been chiefly, if not exclusively before His baptism. Observe, I am speaking of the exercises of His heart from God. That His own soul did not cease to enter into the condition of things around Him; and that the poignancy of His sorrow increased rather than lessened, in proportion as the blind wilfulness of Israel in rejecting Him became more and more developed, I most assuredly believe. But I am not now speaking of the spontaneous actings of His soul, but of the manner in which He was directly exercised+ by God." ("Remarks," page 25.) The doctrine that Christ was born, subject to condemnation, according to Galatians 3: 10, is confirmed by page 15, "Observations." "It is said by the apostle, 'as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.' Law worketh wrath; for where no law is, there is no transgression. Israel had formally taken their stand before God, under a covenant of law, and therefore the very first moment disobedience was found amongst them, they were brought 'under curse.'++ The fire of Sinai began instantly to burn against them, and therefore, even if every deserved infliction had been withheld from that moment to the time when Jesus was born, yet still He would have been one of a nation that was exposed+++ to all the terrors of Sinai. They were all set in array against Israel."
Again, page 29. "As an Israelite, He was under that holy covenant which was made at Sinai ... . He was standing in closest association with those whose dispensational relation to God was marked by the darkness and lightnings and voices of Sinai -- a sight so terrible that even Moses said, 'I exceedingly fear and quake.' Sinai marked the relation of God to Israel when Jesus came -- and the worship of the golden calf (though that would not fully represent the ripened evil) may be taken as marking their relation to God. And since God, in exercising the souls of His servants, must exercise them according to truth -- and the application of truth by God varies according to the nature of the dispensation under which His servants live -- we might be very sure, even if the evidence of scripture were less direct than it is, that the Lord Jesus was caused to appreciate to the full the relation in which Israel (and++++ Himself because of Israel) was standing before God. We may hear of Sinai, or think of Sinai, but Jesus realized it, as the power of an actual subsisting relation betwixt His people and God. He had to live in the midst of Israel, at a time when God's only declared relation to it was that of Sinai. Years passed over His head thus. And unless we say that through the whole of that period He remained unexercised before God, according to the circumstances around Him, we shall not find it difficult to say what the nature of His experiences must have been. Every experience in which He realized the condition either of man or Israel must have caused Him to long for that hour when the appointed messenger should go forth to prepare His way before Him."+++++
+It will be remarked here that, to whatever extent these inflictions from God came upon Him, they are positively distinguished from His own soul entering into the condition of things. So that all that may be said attractively about that has nothing to say to the doctrine we are discussing. When confounded with it, or presented as what is meant, it is but an attempt to deceive.
++Let the reader remember, from Galatians 3, what curse.
+++It must be remembered, that this is not vicarious, nor His soul entering into it. The exceeding and outrageous folly of putting Christ in such an identification with Israel is seen, page 18, where it is shewn they were declared not My people, and page 20, where the passage, "Therefore they would not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts," etc., is quoted as part of this curse and affliction, adding, "are these words obscure?" But think of a system that puts Christ under that!
++++Mark this, for it is not vicarious nor entering into sorrow. Christ's own relation to God (because of Israel), before He took sin on Him vicariously, was that of being under the curse of a broken law, and guilty of ripened evil. Note all the italics in the quotations are the author's. All Christians believe that Christ was made under the law; but they believe, that as the sinless spotless Son of God, He was perfectly acceptable under it, and took its curse only vicariously, and as a substitute for others; though He suffered many outward consequences in sorrow of Israel's condition, and entered in spirit, into their afflictions.
+++++Note here too, that John's baptism and message were for the relief of Christ Himself from the relation in which He stood to God. It is the more out of the way, because the message goes before the face of the Lord to prepare His way. And, note, sinless penalties have nothing to say here: John's message did not relieve Christ from them.
But (page 31) "The moment that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Ghost as a dove, God stood in a new relation to Israel. The dove belongs not to Sinai."
How far this goes in the author's mind may be seen (page 11) when, speaking of John Baptist's ministry, he says, "Indeed unless grace be the same as law, and destruction the same as salvation, the infinite importance of that era cannot be denied."
So that Christ's position, previous to that era, is beyond all question, though it was not His own sin that brought Him there.
And it was not, as we have seen, substitution.
"So different," we read ("Remarks," page 11), "is the place of a substitute for sinners, from the place of suffering amongst sinners." And see quotation given from "Remarks," page 21, and, "Observations," page 33, "It was indeed a different character of suffering."
"And what was the world, what more especially was Israel to Him, but as the oven's heat? God's holy hand in stern controversy with transgressing flesh was there. The Lord Jesus was not unconscious of the presence of that hand, nor of the nature of that+ controversy. He felt it the more, because He was the holy One. It was not the presence of God as in paradise ... It was His holiness present++ in a fallen world, in the midst of sinful flesh and of 3 transgressing people. (Page 33.)
"How should we feel ["Observations," page 35], imperfect as our sensibilities are, if God, according to the power of His own holiness, were to press upon the apprehension of our souls a truthful sense of the present and future+++ condition of ruined man? And what relations were there, either of Israel or of man, that Jesus was not caused to estimate thus?"
So, "I cannot well conceive how anyone should suppose that He whose distinctive allotment was 'to learn,' should be a man without being caused to feel what man was, or an Israelite without being taught to feel what Israel had become before God." ("Observations," page 56.++++)
+Remember, that, though not because of His personal sin, it was His own relation to God, according to the author.
++It must not be supposed that this means that Christ was God's holiness present in a fallen world. Christ was subject to the presence of God's hand in judgment as one of the fallen world, though not Himself fallen. See next quotation, page 35.
+++This can leave no mistake as to where Christ is said to have been; for every Christian knows that the future condition of ruined man is damnation. And remember that is Christ's relation to God; and not on the cross. Nor is there any confusion of mind with the cross, nor with the soul of Christ entering into the sense of it. The passage is introduced (page 34) by the following statements: "But we should form a very inadequate conception of the living experiences of the Lord Jesus, if, in addition to the sufferings which flowed spontaneously, as it were from the condition of man and of Israel, we did not recognize a more close and searching dealing of God with His servant." What is the good of talking about sinless penalties? Is hell a sinless penalty? Well, so it is, perhaps; but is that what people mean? And, remember, Christ was obnoxious, exposed, to this, at any rate up to John's baptism.
++++The entire forgetfulness of all scripture truth by the author, is remarkable here, for he adds, "And did not Jesus appreciate and long after this instruction? Did He shrink from it, because He who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow? No! He longed for it as hid treasure." That is, He longed to know what damnation was, and what man was in his distance from God, and what Israel was, as under the curse of a broken law, according to Galatians 3: 10, and this as His own relation to God. We know, that when He had to suffer it for others, He desired, both at the time, and before, and He prayed, that the cup might pass. And it is singular, that all the author's remarks are founded on his comment on a psalm, which prays that He may not so suffer. But once on such ground intellectually, without any guidance from God, and there is no end to the folly.
And that this was what He was exposed to in relation to God, not merely what He was made to learn as of an understanding heart, is clear, not only from passages already quoted, but from others where He is said to have been so exposed, but to have escaped a part, or otherwise got out of it or through it.
Thus "Remarks," page 8: "Was then the Lord Jesus subjected during His life to all the inflictions that were due to man as man, and to Israel as Israel? I answer, No! To be obnoxious, that is, exposed to certain things, is a different thing from actually enduring them. His faith, His prayer, His obedience, all contributed to preserve Him from many things to which He was by His relative position exposed, and by which He was threatened." "And since He was not until the cross punished substitutionally, why was it that He was chastened at all? How could it be but because He was made experimentally to prove the reality of that condition into which others,+ but more especially Israel, had sunk themselves, by their disobedience to God's holy law, a condition out of which He was able to extricate Himself, and from which He proved that He could extricate Himself by His own perfect obedience?" (Page 12.)
And we have always the same reason for the infliction. "But observe I do not say that Jesus was personally accursed, because He formed part of a people on whom curses were resting." (Page 13.) And curses here were no partial thing; "and secondly, when we remember that Jesus had no feeble or imperfect estimate of the place in which Israel stood; that He indeed truly saw it standing with all the terrors of that mountain arrayed against it, where there were fire and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, and that His soul appreciated the meaning of these things; and lastly (which is indeed the thing more than any else distinctive of those sufferings of Jesus of which I speak), that God pressed these things on the apprehensions of His soul according to His own power and holiness, and caused Him to feel as a part of that which was exposed to the judgments of His heavy hand." ("Remarks," page 14.)
+Note here that it is not the sorrows of Israel under divine government, for this does not apply to "others." Nor sinless penalties, nor entering into sorrows, nor appropriating them, for "extricating" Himself from them admits of no such application.
Again, "Remarks," page 31: "Man was yet in his distance from God." "And Jesus, as man, was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was, and He had through obedience to find His way to that point where God could meet Him as having finished His appointed work -- glorify Him and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, and that point was death -- death on the cross -- death under the wrath of God."+
I shall now quote some passages less consecutively, collaterally bearing upon the subject. First shewing what the place is Christ so took according to the author. "The being so united to another as to be necessarily involved in the consequences of that other's actings suggests an idea which is very near akin to that of vicariousness. But a distinction is to be made. We were in Adam when he sinned; we are accounted before God as sinners because he sinned," etc. ("Observations," pages 46, 47.)
"The poor defiled sinner, who has nothing in which to stand before the holiness of God -- but has resting on Him all the condemnation which He inherits from Adam.
+This passage is plain enough. There was no point where God could meet Jesus as a man, till He had worked His way up to the wrath of God which was due to man. This is neither entering into sorrows nor appropriation of anything. Jesus as man was there. To reconcile this with His deliverance from Sinai to Zion, and change of relationship with God, by John's baptism, is not for me to undertake. In either case the doctrine is substantially the same. Jesus was, not as a substitute but as a man and as an Israelite, under that wrath which was measured, if infinite can be said to be measured, in His sufferings in death on the cross; and He worked His way up out of it -- "rose out of that region" -- "emerged" out of it -- "extricated" Himself from it. Only here no room is left for His afterwards undergoing it vicariously; for He suffered death as part of the obedience necessary to get at the point of meeting. Save this very important point, it is the doctrine of the author in his article in the "Christian Witness," in the second edition.
"Neither do we say that Adam disobeyed in our stead, although by his one act of disobedience we are all constituted sinners in the sight of God." I give these extracts as shewing the view the author takes of the position into which Christ entered by birth, as distinguished from vicariously. The following is given as characterizing the days of Christ's manhood, as affording "certain and extended knowledge respecting all the years of the Lord's sojourn here." ("Observations," page 40.) "Therefore I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation, my God will hear me. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise, when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. Passages like this supply an abundance of principles which must have, more or less, characterized all the days of the manhood of the Lord Jesus." So page 39, Psalm 119 is quoted as affording it also; in which we read, "before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy law."
Speaking ("Observations," page 9) of the analogy of a Son, who had banished Himself, it is said, "we should regard Him not only as one of the banished, but as one suffering also under the penalties which the law of His Father had imposed on the banished ones, with whom He had thus placed Himself in association." "He was exposed for example, because of His relation to Adam, to that sentence of death, that had been pronounced on the whole family of man; personally He evinced His title to freedom from it, and His title to life by keeping that law of which it had been said, This do, and thou shalt live. And if He was exposed to the doom of man," etc. (Page 9.) Now all this is given as explaining His being by birth exposed to sinless penalties.
The very extraordinary statements of the author, and how truly, in another tract, their source has been judged of, as it has been indeed by others, and what state of mind one led by this system may be in, will appear from another quotation, "Observations," page 26: "Moreover, the exercises of soul which His elect, in their unconverted state, ought to have,+ and which they would have, if it were possible for them to know and feel everything rightly according to God -- such exercises, yet without sin, Jesus had." This very clearly brings out the position he places the blessed One in.
+Note, an unconverted man in such a case must know himself to be lost. This clearly confirms the statement of what the doctrine is. Did Jesus know and feel this?
And here is the source in his prophetic system, "At an hour not yet come, one portion of His elect will have to pass through a furnace of affliction, the like to which has never been, since there was a nation upon earth. They will live when every jot and tittle of the desolation described in Jeremiah, and the prophets will, in full accomplishment, have fallen upon Israel. They will live when the last grasp of Satan, through his great instrument, Antichrist, shall have laid hold upon Israel. They will live even through the day of the Lord's visitation -- will pass through its fires, and be refined like silver in the furnace. Here is a peculiar experience indeed of some of the elect of God. Into this also Jesus entered. Hence His bitter cries in the Lamentations. The remnant of Israel will not taste of a cup of sorrow of which He will not have drunk; but the difference is this -- they will feel partially, incompletely, wrongly, not unfrequently self-righteously, in the midst of the desolations, which their eyes cannot but recognize and their hearts cannot but feel. They will see the ruin, but their hearts will not be in communion with the thoughts of God, whereas Jesus beheld it with and according to God." All this is connected with the system+ of the author of the unconverted state of the saved remnant of the Jews in the latter-day, and many of the Psalms being expressions of their self-righteous feelings. Hence I doubt not the way he has associated Christ with unconverted sinful Israel, not with the saints and excellent of the earth, in whom is all His delight, and to whom the Psalms will supply the blessed expression of thought and feeling.
"Observations," page 81. The writer says of the law, "No blessings were ever proposed to Israel save in the form of a testament, and a testament implies death, even the death of a testator. God could not even have given the law to a sinful people, much less have given blessings consequent upon its being kept (had such a thing been possible), except on the ground of the precious efficacy of the blood of Jesus." So that the law not in the heart, but written and engraven on stones, as a ministration of condemnation and death, and which entered that the offence might abound, as given under the old covenant, gendering to bondage, was founded necessarily on the blood of the new.
+I have not the least doubt (from circumstances I have heard lately of the authenticity of which I have not the smallest question) that Mr. Newton received his prophetic system by direct inspiration from Satan, analogous to the Irvingite delusion.
I shall now quote a passage which, while confirming the statements as to Christ being relatively by birth at man's distance from God, shews that all attempt to attract the affections of the saint by the notion of Christ's soul entering into our sorrow, and our fellowship in His sufferings by the Spirit, is really the merest deceit.
"His servants ["Observations," page 35], such for example as St Paul, may follow their Master in drinking in their more feeble measure of the cup of others' woe; they may suffer much with others, and for the sake of others; they may also have exercises of spirit; but none excepting Jesus ever had His soul exercised in the same manner (for the dispensation was one of law), nor with the same intensity -- the intensity of truth. The Lord Jesus was as much alone, in His living estimate under God's hand of the circumstances of human life here, as in enduring wrath upon the cross. He who, before He was made flesh, had known all the heights of uncreated and eternal glory; was also, when here, made to estimate according to the sensibilities of that nature, which He had taken, the (to us) inconceivable+ distance of humanity from God. And when thus exercised, though personally holy and beloved, He was made to feel that His association with them, thus standing in the fearfulness of their distance from God, was a real thing, and that it was so regarded by God. His was no mere pretended imaginary association."
Hence all such language as that, "To know the fellowship of His sufferings, as well as the power of His resurrection, was the desire of one who was wise in Christ, wise in seeking the true riches -- one who has told us to imitate him as he imitated Christ" (page 62) -- such words, I say, are merely seeking to delude, because he has told us (pages 35, 36) that this very Paul, to whom he alludes, could not possibly have anything to say to the sufferings of which he is treating in these tracts, any more than he could to those of the cross. So also he says (note to page 58), "though our experiences are very unlike to His" (Christ's). And hence, also, all that is said (page 57), "when believers now are exercised in spirit, when they are caused to feel -- to feel perhaps keenly the present ruin of the Church, etc., are such exercises esteemed contrary to blessing -- are they inconsistent with the closest abiding in love?" All this is merely seeking to delude, because there is, according to pages 35, 36, no analogy whatever in these sufferings. It is added, "So far from being tokens of divine displeasure towards the individual, they may be, and in the case of Jesus always were, tokens of highest honour." This goes farther than seeking to delude; it is, after what is said in pages 35, 36, positive deceit. And what is the curse of the law, and man's distance from God, and that under law, in the intensity of truth, and that as exposed to it by birth -- if it be not divine displeasure, as to the exercise of the soul? It is, moreover, a singular remark in a tract, vindicating the application of Psalm 6 to Christ, which says, Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure, affirming that Christ did pass through this.
+Mark that this was His own relation by birth. It is not the cross.
Mark the note too to page 57, where it is sought to be said, that it is not "implied that such exercises, whether in our Lord or in ourselves [we have seen that we cannot be in those in which Christ was], had anything to do with atoning for sin" -- then it would not be mysticism merely, but direct heresy and sin. "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." Now if Christ came under "man's doom," under the reckoned or imputed guilt of Adam, though not a sinner, how did He get out of it? By keeping the law. He rose out of that region, that is, through these very sufferings, "for the dispensation [p. 36] was one of law, in which He exposed Himself to the danger of receiving all the punishment which followed upon the imputation of Adam's offence. But though exposed to it, yet He rose above it all, because He was by birth the holy One made under the law." "'This do and thou shall live,' was unto Him a word of delivering power." "He would not have been punished at all, unless He had freely chosen, whilst standing as the 'justified one,' to offer atonement to the Father." So that the imputation of sin was got rid of by another means than by shedding of blood. Where the imputation was to be altered nothing. Christ's being exposed to it (as we well know by the cross) could not set aside God's eternal principles.
The whole system of doctrine is, according to the author, heresy and sin, and in my judgment of a worse character than that he attaches to it.
It is needless to quote many other passages which confirm the doctrine taught, or which speak of Christ's sufferings, to attract the heart, in a way denied to be true, by the writer himself. There is another passage I would quote, as remarkable collaterally: "The anointing of the Spirit would never have come on Him at Jordan unless He had been fore-ordained, and certainly known as the victim to be slain on Calvary." (Page 32.) Now that all was fore-ordained, and known and linked together in the purposes of God, is most sure. But that Christ could not have been anointed without blood is most false and heretical: the writer has not said, could not; what he means by "would not," I must leave the reader to judge. One other class of reasoning may be noticed -- suffering from association with others. ("Observations," page 23.) "Did not Caleb and Joshua suffer under the infliction that had fallen upon Israel, when," etc. What has that to do with man's distance from God and exposure to the whole of the punishment of Adam's guilt? the sufferings in which Christ is as much alone as on the cross? All saints suffer sorrows consequent on common failure. This is not wrath on their souls. Did Caleb and Joshua suffer that? All this is merely misleading.
Next a few words as to the shelter sought under others' names, and the diversion attempted to be made by discrediting others.
Dr. Hawker's doctrine has no analogy or connection with that of Mr. N. The statement is that, Christ having become the surety and representative of His people, He suffered in this world the sorrows and infirmities incident to their state, its calamities, and participated in every groan He heard; and even through life as well as in death was a man of sorrows. No one questions that this was the case, but it has nothing whatever to do with the doctrine of Mr. Newton; as he admits, having contrasted what Dr. Hawker speaks of with what he means (page 21, of "Remarks"), while he declares that he does not agree with the doctrine of Dr. Hawker. Dr. Hawker states that all His life the blessed Jesus was a man of sorrows; and who is there that does not believe it? Mr. N. tell us that He was by birth liable to the condemnation man was in. With this Dr. Hawker's statement has nothing to do. The use of His name is merely an attempt to cover, by one that all respect, what it has no connection with at all.
Nor has Witsius. He, like Hawker, holds Christ's sufferings through His life to be a part of His vicarious work; but he merely speaks of "vicissitudes of human misery," and has no such thought as that of Mr. N. at all. Nor is there a word that leads to the idea of what Mr. N. says he must have found in the Psalms -- direct inflictions from God. He speaks of "misery which has followed upon sin, and to which the sinner man is obnoxious all His life."
I will next say some few words on the subject of the Rock.
The reference ("Observations," page 34) to the Reply to the "Wreck and the Rock" is a dishonest statement. The language used in the Reply is not an argument to shew that Peter was not individually gathered to safety on that Rock.
That paragraph begins thus: "And here let me state a point of greater importance; namely, that what the Lord meant by building His Church upon the rock is a totally different thing from the representation made in this tract." It is a discussion on the import of Christ's words in Matthew 16: 18. The reader will judge how far Mr. Newton's statements are honest from the following facts. Mr. Newton declares that, the Hagar vessel in which the Jews were being wrecked, John Baptist was on the sand, and Peter gathered by Christ on the Rock. The author of the Reply says, If you mean really safety, or being saved by having an interest in Christ, Abel, Abraham, and John Baptist, were all on the Rock as well as Peter himself. If you speak of being really gathered to safety, how can you speak of John Baptist being on the sand? If you speak of the ground of safety as to actual accomplishment then you must bring in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ: without which safety cannot be, or you make incarnation sufficient to save without blood-shedding and resurrection. Hence Christ says, I will build my Church. If you mean in God's mind, every saved one in all times was on the Rock as much as Peter. And in truth a more absurd, and unsound, contradictory statement could not well be than the Wreck and the Rock. For, as a system of argument, it put John Baptist expressly and in fact all the saints previously, out of safety and off the Rock of salvation. In reasoning on this, the author of the Reply says, that when in Matthew 16: 18 the Lord speaks of building on the rock, He speaks of a thing future, I will build, and not of what He was then doing. And as to the point in question he says, "But, first of all, the disciples of Jesus were not gathered on the Rock in His lifetime in the sense of Matthew 16." Because to begin the building actually He must be dead and risen, the firstborn of the dead, the Head of the body of the Church.
I add that this expression, rock-man, given as if of inspired authority, is without sense. Because, in the author's meaning of it, there is nothing peculiar to Peter at all, for all were rock-men one as another; for they were all gathered in safety to Him on the rock. Whereas it is evident that there is something special as to Peter in the passage.
The author's argument in the Reply is, that when Mr. N. speaks of Christ's presence being a new ground of safety, he is in error. Because if he speaks of real fundamental safety, it was not new ground, but the only one in all ages. If he speaks of actual accomplishment, then he makes incarnation, and not death and resurrection, the ground of safety, which is false doctrine; and that Christ therefore, in Matthew 16: 13, speaks in the future, I will build. To say therefore that it is attempted to shew that Peter was not individually gathered to safety on that rock is a dishonest statement. Nobody says Peter was not placed on that rock as to personal safety, but so was John Baptist too, whom Mr. N. places on the sand. And so was Abel and Abraham and all else. They were rock-men in that sense. I proceed to the attacks in page 35.
"I read that union with the Son of God+ is a thing which the scripture knows nothing of." Mr. N. would lead the reader to suppose, that the person he alludes to and others deny the well-known doctrine of union with the Lord Jesus Christ. What is the fact? The term union with the Son of God, had been used in a general sense by all, and innocently enough, because the term was taken as a title of the person of Christ. Mr. N., however, declared that the saints in glory would be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, declaring it in terms. It then became necessary to distinguish and shew that union with the person of the Son of God was not a scriptural expression++ -- necessary, because Mr. N. used it in the sense of partaking in the attributes of Godhead. And in this way taken, as a divine title, scripture does know nothing of union with the person of the Son of God.
As to the seed of Abraham, it is very certain to me that this title of God's children does not amount to the full statement of a church position, because it does not express unity in one body by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven.
+There are no references which enable me to verify the statements. This point is treated in page 69 of the Examination of the Thoughts on the Apocalypse, where it is stated that union with the person of the Son of God is an unscriptural statement, on the ground here referred to, and union with Christ, as the head of the body, is fully spoken of.
++All this may be seen in the "Answer to the second Letter," etc.
Of the next statement, what shall I say? I am ashamed really to allude to it. There are some things almost too bad to talk of.
Mr. N. had taught for a length of time, that the Old Testament saints had not life at all. He subsequently charged me with it in print, at which I was amazed, as I had brought him out of it, and we had had a long discussion just before, before thirteen people, as to what he had taught. However, many knew he had taught this, as Lord Congleton, Sir A. Campbell, Mr. Deck, and others, and he at last confessed it was himself who had taught it, but said he had never charged me with it, which, as it was in print, was no use either.+
To the rest of the reasoning no answer is required. "In Him as the Son of Abraham" is, I apprehend, as new as many others of the author's expressions. I prefer the truth of scripture and the language of scripture. The honesty of declaiming on two modes of union may be judged of by the following quotation from a tract of the author's. (Second Letter, page 54.) "Observe, I do not say there was the same character of union as afterwards in resurrection. But I hold that it would be an equal error, to say that there was no union previous to the resurrection, and to say that it existed after the same sort as in resurrection." What "forms of salvation" mean, I really do not know. Of modes of union I am not aware that I have said anything.
I have adverted, thus far, to the attempt to direct attention from the views of the author, by attacking others. I leave it without further comment, because my object here is to place Mr. N.'s doctrine plainly before the saints by extracts from his own elaborate writings, so that all may judge of it.
I append the following as another form in which the doctrine was stated in public teaching, affording further distinct evidence of what it was.
+The doctrine of the author on the communication of the divine life is fundamentally unsound now, as it was subversive of fundamental truth to deny life to the Old Testament saints. But all this has been already discussed. He confounds Deity with communicated life, and hence expressly in terms attributes omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience to the saints. See "Answer to the Second Letter to the Brethren and Sisters," etc. As to having life from the Son of man, I can find nothing about it in anything I have written on the subject. The writer gives no references.
Christ was in the place of man's distance from God, and had to work His way home to God, and we begin where He finished. I would just refer too to page 13 of "Observations," and ask, if that was meant to depict Israel's position as Christ identified Himself with it, what was originally due to it, remembering that all through his statements, Mr. N. declares that he was under law, not under our discipline in love?
Another expression, noticed elsewhere, used to express this doctrine was, that Christ as coming into the world was a constituted sinner, and worked His way up to life. This is important as being the application of Romans 5: 19 to Christ according to the doctrine of the article in the "Christian Witness:" the word "constituted" being habitually, and not wrongly, employed for "made," there used. See page 14, last paragraph.
Mr. Newton having addressed "A Statement and Acknowledgment" respecting certain doctrinal errors to very many brethren (so, indeed, as to have reached, directly or indirectly, almost all), I desire to make some remarks upon it. I do not doubt many are quite able to judge of its value. Still, as there are very many ignorant of the real point and bearing of the error, and on whom the idea of an acknowledgment would act so as to set their mind at ease, and that from a disposition (which every one would hail) to receive in grace the confession of error or fault, I feel it right, for the sake of the beloved church of God, to weigh its value. I am aware that I shall be considered relentless; but I think of the interest of the church of God in it, and even of Mr. Newton's own. If the Spirit of God be really working in his mind, the pointing out the deficiency of this will not hinder his going farther; and as the evil is confessedly very great, and specially as it is sought to be excused by the fact, that many brethren did not find it out, it is worth while, for the sake of simple and unsuspecting minds, to enquire seriously if it is really abandoned, and to what extent.
I proceed then at once to say (for I am satisfied that the plainest way is the most charitable here), that it is impossible that anything can be more unsatisfactory in every way; and I shall now say why. Mr. Newton has taught that Christ was, from the position He was in by birth as a man and an Israelite, under the curse of the exiled family, not vicariously on the cross, but in His own relation to God; that He was under the doom of death, under the curse of the law, and had to work His way up to a point where God could meet Him; that He had the experiences which an unconverted elect man, if he felt rightly, would have. These are not deductions, but the statements of Mr. Newton himself.
Besides this the "Christian Witness" furnished the evidence that this view of Christ's position has been originally based on an application of Romans 5, which subjected Christ to the imputation of Adam's guilt. This last, which gave so horrible a character to the doctrine itself as to shock everybody, is withdrawn, but the doctrine of the tracts is not withdrawn at all. The imputation of Adam's guilt was not the point taught in the tracts -- was not presented as the basis of the doctrine taught in them. They were an attempt to maintain all that Mr. Newton taught as to Christ, the basis formerly laid in the "Christian Witness" being withdrawn.
The "Statement and Acknowledgment" now gives up professedly what was already given up silently in the tracts, the doctrine itself, as to what Christ was, being now based in the "Statement" on another and a new ground: but it does not give up the doctrine itself at all, but quite the contrary; it maintains it distinctly on a new ground, more subtle and less apparently offensive in its character, and most carefully limits the confession of error to what was made the ground of the doctrine in the "Christian Witness." Pages 3, 4, Mr. N. says, "It was this that first introduced Romans 5 into the controversy, as shewing that death of the body resulted from that which one man had done;+ and if due care had been taken to discriminate between the mode in which the consequences of Adam's transgression reached mankind through federal headship, and the manner in which the Lord Jesus took certain of these consequences upon Himself, but not through federal headship -- the error which I now have to confess would have been avoided. If I had watched this, I should have carefully avoided referring that part of Romans 5 to the Lord Jesus, and I should have stated, that His connection with these consequences was in virtue of His being made of a woman, and thus having brought Himself into association with a race on whom these penalties were resting." Now, here, Christ's connection with the consequences before attributed to the imputation of Adam's guilt is reaffirmed, and based on another ground. It is true, "certain consequences" leaves room enough to bring in anything, or leave out anything; but lower down we have "in virtue of such association He partook of these consequences, even all the consequences in which He could share unconnected with personal sin." Now, this is not retracting the doctrine as to the position Christ was in, but affirming it anew, and putting it on a new ground.
+Every one owns that it resulted from what one man had done; but Mr. N.'s interpretation of Romans 5 is entirely wrong and unfounded. He reads, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," as being by one man's sin exclusively that death entered into the world, which is quite another thing; and the passage continues, "and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned."
Further on Mr. N. says. "I have been led, as I have above stated, to see that I was distinctly in error, in holding that the Lord Jesus came by birth under any imputation of Adam's guilt, or the consequences of such imputation ... .. And I hereby withdraw all statements of mine, whether in print, or in any other form, in which this error, or any of its fruits,+ may be found." Now, mark here, that positive and necessary subjection to death is one of the consequences directly lying on Christ, according to the "Statement and Acknowledgment;" a necessity not arising, according to Mr. N., from one's own sin (for that, indeed, would make Christ a sinner), but solely from Adam's. So that Christ was born under the consequences of Adam's sin, as to the penalties pronounced by God, not merely the circumstances He was in, but the penalties judicially pronounced on man because of sin, though it was not by imputation of His guilt but by association of nature. In a word, though the tracts are withdrawn from circulation for reconsideration, the doctrine contained in them is carefully maintained.
And here I beg, too, to draw attention to another point. Mr. Newton grounds his statement and new views on the distinction between the imputation of Adam's guilt and association with his penal condition by birth (a wonderfully narrow distinction, more fitted to save the credit of the doctrine than the glory of the person of the blessed Jesus): but there is another ground on which Christ's liability to condemnation -- the horrible and frightful doctrine of His being Himself a condemned and lost man -- exists in the tracts (not one atom of which is recalled), and that is, that He was born an Israelite under the curse of a broken law. This is the doctrine of the tracts. Now this, so far from being recalled, is really still maintained by confining retractations as to the law to the point of imputation of Adam's guilt. It is said, page 6, "Nor yet that He had by keeping the law, or by anything else, to deliver Himself from such++ imputation or from its consequences." Now Mr. Newton declares in the tracts, that Christ was born under the curse of the broken law, according to Galatians 3, and that He found His way to a point where God could meet Him; all this remaining in its full force unretracted.
+The italics are Mr. Newton's.
++The imputation of Adam's guilt, with which in fact the law had nothing to do.
In a word, I repeat, the "Christian Witness" is given up; the tracts are maintained, unless so far as the doctrine of the imputation of Adam's guilt may be found in them. The whole of the statements, so justly frightful to every one that honours the Lord Jesus Christ, remain untouched and unrecalled, though the ground laid for them in the "Christian Witness" in the application of Romans 5 is acknowledged to be error. And it is very well known that, when these things were first brought before Mr. N. a few weeks before the "Statement and Acknowledgment" appeared, he took this very ground: and that further retractations were proposed to him and refused. And here, I feel bound to add, that the way Christ is spoken of is to me really as frightful as the doctrine. Think of referring to the blessed Lord in such language as that, "if a faithful servant heavily burthened be set to walk up an ice mountain, if he slip I do not marvel," and such-like statements!
The only advance made is, that the tracts are withdrawn from circulation to reconsider. To reconsider what? Whether Christ was by birth in such association with Israel as to be under the curse of a broken law? All this, let it be noted, is connected, not with Romans 5, but with the interpretation of the Psalms and the Lamentations, and with the whole system of Mr. N.'s interpretation. But if Christ's honour be the thing in question, if that is what we have at heart, would not that be the very first point, and easily settled? But as to all this there is total silence. The doctrine is removed from an evidently assailable ground to a more abstruse one, as to Christ's connection with Adam, and the worst part of the evil is by the "Statement" endeavoured to be made more free from possibility of attack, while the second ground of it -- connection with Israel, so as to be under the curse of the broken law not vicariously -- is carefully reserved. It is not a confession of the evil of the doctrine in the tracts, but a direct maintaining of it. In the meanwhile, the tracts are withdrawn from circulation, which, while the doctrine is not, does more harm than good, because the plain evidences of the abominable evil are concealed from sight, and it seems to be unjust to appeal to them. But let the reader remember that the doctrine is maintained as to Christ's position, for in setting it on a new ground it is maintained, and as regards His connection with Israel all remains unretracted, as is all as to the effect of John's baptism in putting Jesus for the first time under grace.
And now mark the facts. Mr. N. for ten or twelve long years has been teaching, in his own circle, doctrines which, it is now confessed, subvert the person and work of the Lord Jesus altogether -- make Him a guilty lost man. This has been spread farther by private communications. He has spread it, through the ignorance of the clergy of the establishment, in India: his defence is, that brethren themselves have propagated it; though I affirm them to have never thought of such a thing, save his own immediate disciples and helps.
The horrible dishonour done to Christ is brought to the notice of unsuspecting brethren, and is denounced; his own friends declare that they can have nothing more to say to such teaching, and acknowledgment becomes necessary. Now if Christ had been thought of, what would have been the effect if the soul had been touched with the sense of the subversion of His person and glory and work, and the harm done to souls? Even if some difficulties remained, would not there have been (is there not always when sin is judged by the person convinced of it?) the strongest sense of it, the greatest horror of it, the self-condemning reprobation of it, in the person who has been thus dishonouring Christ?
If Mr. N. had said, "Well, whatever I can understand of the Psalms, the devil has been deceiving me, and I have been deceiving others: what can I do enough to condemn and undo what I have been doing?" Would it have been a translating of the dishonour to safer ground -- a statement that he had guarded and limited the teaching on it? How guarded and limited the teaching that Christ was a lost and condemned man by birth; that he was right in this, and right in that: only he overstepped the mark in seeking to do the wisest thing to meet another error twelve years ago! Would it be the practical claim to be still the person to make it clear, and to state the right extent to which, and guards under which, it is to be adopted? Is all this safely guarded reserve of the error humiliating or anything like it? He says he does not wish to extenuate the error by it. What does he wish, then? He desires this to be considered as an expression of deep and unfeigned grief and sorrow, especially by those who may have been grieved or injured. What is to be considered so? The placing the worst part of the error on new grounds as to one half, so as to re-establish it; and reserving the other, which was quite as bad?
I cannot see the deep sorrow in the tract. I write on christian grounds -- for the sake of the church of God. The present statement is calculated to do more injury than the tracts withdrawn from circulation. They were too plain, though less so in terms than the "Christian Witness." If Christ was under the doom of death from His birth, by association with man as made of woman, coming under the penalty of God's judgment against sin not vicariously -- under all its consequences, in which He could share unconnected with personal sin -- and this is the doctrine of the "Statement" -- the question of the imputation of Adam's guilt is only a nice distinction. If Christ was under the curse of the law, He could not be made a curse for others.
And now one word as to what is said as to the deductions I have drawn. Were I seeking myself, I might be content with the statement of their being legitimate; but I am not. Mr. N., and any of those who have erred, will find that, when the Spirit of God is to be seen working in them, I shall be the first to hail it with unfeigned joy. But I am perfectly satisfied that all this work is a work of Satan. This doctrine has proved it. T hat it is so is my hope as to the personal integrity of many; nay, it is now confessed even by themselves; for what is the preaching of error so gross and horrible, without finding it out for some ten years, but a delusion of Satan? Now that work I resist openly and everywhere for Christ and the brethren's sake, and shall expose, heeding very little the comments made, and looking for the Lord's approbation, and not man's. I say, then, that what was charged on Mr. N. was no deduction, legitimate or not. He stated, that the Lord Jesus was by birth, as a man and an Israelite, under the curse of the broken law; that He was under the imputation of Adam's guilt; that He was under the doom of death; that He had to work His own way up to life; that He was exposed to the danger of all the punishment due to Adam's guilt, and other like statements. Now there was no need of deductions from this. The meaning of the statements themselves is plain to all who know what guilt and a curse mean. It is not a doctrine deductions from which can be guarded against. The things complained of are the statements themselves. There is no guarding them. Nor are they retracted save one.
And here I beg leave to remark, that there are others who have to answer to the church of God as to these errors. Messrs. -- and -- and -- + have all been fully involved in this doctrine, and committed themselves to it. Nor is a sudden casting it all over on Mr. N. any satisfaction to others, or likely to produce confidence in them. I am aware that Mr. -- has stated, at East Coker, that he repudiated it all; but I know that, but few days before it was detected and exposed, he had declared that for eight years back the doctrine had been fully canvassed in Ebrington Street, and that all were thoroughly made up in it. Mr. -- has declared, not that Adam's guilt was imputed indeed, but that the doctrine in general was necessarily true from the constitution of Christ's nature. I do not pretend to give the words, nor those in which Mr. Walker stated his judgment; but it is very well known that they held and taught these views (possibly without knowing what they were about), and that they approved and admired the tracts. They must explain themselves. If they do not, it is clear they are seeking something else than the glory of the Lord Jesus. Even if Mr. N. be the originator of the doctrine, it will not do to make him a scape-goat for their errors. With this I have no kind of sympathy. If Mr. N. were restored, it would be the joy of my heart. They have set up for teachers and guarders of sound doctrine, for holding "the truth." They have boasted of uniformity of doctrine and of its importance, gladly driving away others who would not submit to their yoke. Is this the doctrine, uniformity in which was essential?
+It is rumoured that there is another retractation to be published by them, they not being satisfied with Mr. N.'s. If there be, my present remark is justified, and remains, of course, harmless to any.
Do they hold the doctrine in the tracts or not? Is it wholly and definitely rejected by them? Are the souls they have been aiding to seduce into error delivered from it? Have they been humbled enough to call in question their path in other things and doctrines, while under this awful delusion of Satan? Their disciples were brought to believe and recommend as precious truth, that Christ was guilty of sins of ignorance in these very terms. Mr. N.'s constant teaching on the Psalms confirmed this. Are they restored? And are those who have been their leaders during this time, still professing to guide them?+
Further, the way in which the matter has been more than once put to me and others obliges me to refer to another point. I have been asked, "Well, now, if there has been a retractation of the errors, cannot there be a re-association?" Now I have opposed it as a work of Satan. It has been found to be so. I look for this being set aside. My answer then has been, I look for a work of God's Spirit, where this work of evil has been. It seems to me that when persons claiming to have been not only teachers but guardians of the truth have been teaching really that Christ was a lost man, and discover that they have been thus deluded for years, they would be in the dust, and, instead of pretending to teach or guide, hide themselves as dishonourers of the Lord, supposing even it were done ignorantly. It would lead them to distrust themselves. Were this so, it would go farther, and grace would surely soon settle all. Were the Holy Ghost beginning to work even, one would hope, surely, that He would go farther; yea, be certain of it. If He be working, it will do so -- and I should with joy forget all, as I hope to be forgiven myself by Him who remembereth no more our sins and iniquities. Every part of the sorrow would be more than effaced: but the church and poor of the flock cannot be sacrificed meanwhile to the power of error and evil.
+Are evils of this character to be made mere matters of human regard and a personal question?
But a mere retractation of error cannot set aside the charges of untruth, which have forced so many to disown these persons before the heresy came out. Intercourse with those who have been recently delivered, and who, by various questions, brought my mind back to this part of the subject, many of the details of which I had forgotten, has recalled me to these details; and I can only say, not speaking now of Mr. Newton, but of Messrs. -- , -- , and -- , that I have never met with such wretched trickery, or such bold untruth, as in the printed documents they have circulated. I dare say Satan's delusion may be the cause; and that there may be various qualities in the evil, as misled and misleading, so that once delivered I might hail some as Christians as much as ever. But there the evil is: the proof that they were delivered from the delusion would be the confession of the sin.
I would further remark, that, as to this, there has been no question of investigation at all. It was proposed to them to meet brethren at the last London meeting, but they did not come; and, further, even as regards Mr. Newton, the alleged investigation did not apply to the great body of the charges. They had never been made when the investigation took place. The great bulk of them were made long after the alleged investigation at Plymouth; since then no investigation or pretence of one has taken place, save that many, forced to examine for themselves, have found out the truth of the matter. No retractation of subsequently discovered error can set aside this ground of action, which subsisted before and is unremoved. Men who set up to be teachers have been guilty of acts, which have led some to say they could not sit down in the same room with them. That remains where it was.
As to what Mr. -- has added, it does not call for a reply. If it does anything, it is to destroy the little hope we might have had of a commencement of breaking down. Supposing unsuspecting brethren circulated the tract, having very likely read it in its original form, free from error, or taking it on trust; how does that excuse the deliberate insisting on it when objected to, as the fact was as to Mr. N. three years since? If the error escaped the clergy of Madras, what then? As to Dublin, Mr. N. stated at Langport,+ that it was a letter of Mr. -- 's. Mr. -- is perfectly certain he never wrote any such letter, and had never read the tract. As to the work at Dublin, I was occupied in every detail of it. I remember the paper (in which the doctrines were not) serving me, as giving the extracts from Mr. Irving's works, as did Mr. -- 's book; but I never heard of any reference to the article in the Dublin controversy. That some one may have written a letter as to the original article in the "Christian Witness" is possible: but what then? What paper was found useful then, supposing it were so? The paper in which not one particle of the statements objected to is found. Because this was found useful, the tract was then published, and the errors added. What has the Dublin recommendation to do with the matter? The only remark suggested by Mr. -- 's note is, that it is a very poor sign of humiliation, seeking to prove that others did not detect the error, and that others were as bad, because they were deceived by it, if that were true, which it is not.
There is one point of doctrine which I would desire to advert to in explanation. "Mortal" is a word used in two senses -- being capable of dying, and being actually subject to death as a necessity. Now of course Christ was capable of dying, or He could not die. But the doctrine taught here is that He was mortal as we are. Now Mr. N. insists on everything being God and man unitedly. Now, if He gave Himself, this can be understood; but how, if it was the penal condition to which He was subjected necessarily as man made of a woman?
Note too here, in passing, that there is, in many minds, the same confusion as to 'immortal.' God only has immortality essentially; but other beings are in the condition of immortality actually. I do not discuss the doctrine further here, as it is not my object.
+I have been also told Mr. -- did. It is possible, as both were present.
I trust, that, in -- to me at any rate -- the remarkable work which the Lord is now doing in the deliverance of valued brethren from the recognized snare of the enemy into the blessed liberty of grace and truth, I may be enabled to wait as patiently on that grace, through unfeigned faith in it, as I have felt it right to be active when I was satisfied the power of the enemy was at work. Where our blessed God deigns graciously to be at work, we may surely trust Him to bring it to a good and happy end. But where the enemy is still at work, there I feel the same cause for activity as ever.
Now the "Statement from Christians in Ebrington Street, Plymouth," is, I am satisfied, distinctly marked by the power of the same evil spirit which so many now recognize to have been at work -- disingenuousness, subtlety, reserving all the error possible, while the credit of those concerned is sought to be maintained, a Christ, or that which bears His name, which is no real living Christ of faith, accompanied by professions calculated to blind the simple and unwary. By whom drawn up I know not, or what Christians profess it, or how far to be taken as a profession of the assembly, or for the assembly by those who now assume to guide them, I know not, nor can anyone; nor know what authority to attach to an unsigned document. I can deal only with the document itself. It is said, "We can and do say that we have no wish to cloke or defend error;" but as to who can and do say it, we are left entirely in the dark. Still, in the Lord's hands, I believe this mysterious way of presenting it a mercy. I turn to the document.
A system of doctrine has been denounced, as is well known, by those who have recently left the assembly and others. "This system," the "Statement" tell us, "it is said, involves these errors," etc. I need not repeat them here. "With regard to these errors, we desire to state, that the great majority amongst us were wholly ignorant of their existence, so that the assertions made touching 'our having lost Christ,' or having had presented to us a 'false Christ' for years past, were assertions perfectly strange and appalling to our ears and hearts; and they appeared to us to be not only untrue, but also of a most painful character and tendency."A LETTER TO A CLERGYMAN ON THE CLAIMS AND DOCTRINES OF NEWMAN STREET
OBSERVATIONS ON A TRACT ENTITLED "REMARKS ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE LORD JESUS: A LETTER ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN BRETHREN AND SISTERS IN CHRIST, BY B. W. NEWTON"
INTRODUCTION
And oft while Wisdom wakes, Suspicion sleeps
At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity
Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems. OBSERVATIONS
A PLAIN STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE SUFFERINGS OF OUR BLESSED LORD PROPOUNDED IN SOME RECENT TRACTS, IN EXTRACTS TAKEN FROM THE AUTHOR'S WRITINGS
INTRODUCTION
A PLAIN STATEMENT, ETC.
NOTICE OF THE STATEMENT AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ERROR CIRCULATED BY MR. NEWTON
OBSERVATIONS ON "A STATEMENT FROM CHRISTIANS IN EBRINGTON STREET"