To the Editor of the "Christian Herald"
Dear Sir,
The increasing extent and progress of conviction as to the truth and nearness of our Lord's coming (to which I can bear personal witness), and the practical shape which it has assumed, makes it the more important that those most occupied in it, and therefore most likely to speak much of it, should have clear and consistent views upon the subject -- clear, and consistent with the full statement of scriptural truth.
The publications which are set at the head of this article contain the most popular and common exposition -- perhaps the only full one -- presenting, on some very important points, a very distinct view, commonly current amongst the expectants of our Lord's coming. Into this view many have been led by the actual clearness and apparent accuracy of the statements in these very books. You will not, therefore, I trust, think it amiss that I should briefly attempt to inquire into their soundness, and expose the error into which the author appears to me, as to a part of his subject, to have fallen. They have, however, I should state, very different value in my eyes. Of the first of them, I can say that I read it with the greatest satisfaction; perhaps the more so, as, with the exception of that part which more properly belongs to the second publication, I found it so exceedingly consistent with my own views. I should except, indeed, also the view given of the seventy weeks, on which I will offer some comment.
The introductory and sixth lectures are as clear and succinct an exposition of their distinct subjects as one could desire in so brief a shape. In fact, on all prophecy that is properly Jewish, it appears to me that Mr. Burgh has been favoured (with the exception only of what I conceive to be a confusion between the Assyrian and Antichrist) with great clearness of apprehension; as all, I suppose, will recognise the lucidness of statement which, with a supposed carefulness of proof from Scripture, has given currency to his views, even where they appear to me to be unfounded. But, on the other hand, I think that Mr. Burgh has wholly failed in this -- that he does not see the mystical use of the language and circumstances of literal prophecy to the great parenthetic anomaly of the Gentile dispensation; and that consequently, as a whole, his exposition of the book of Revelation, which is the expression and history of this, is founded on a false principle, and fundamentally erroneous. It is a transfer of that in which he is right as to the Jews, to that which uses the characters for another purpose, and in which, therefore, because he continues its original use and force, he is precisely and exactly wrong: that is, his view of the book of Revelation arises from his not seeing that in which it consists -- the use of the language and characters of prophetic testimony in another and special way, by which the history of the mystical body of Christ is developed, as that of His literal bride, the Jewish church, was by its ordinary use. This is a definite and important principle, as it is evident that upon its truth or error depends the whole tissue of the interpretation of the book, whatever diversity there might yet be in detail; while we shall see that the principle on which it is founded affects many other scriptural interpretations. The confusion which has consequently arisen in Mr. Burgh's mind, by the exclusion of any general development of the character of the Gentile apostasy, and the confinement of the statements of the Revelation to "Crisis," has, as I think I shall be enabled to shew, by leading him to confound Antichrist's actings amongst the Jews, where it is in Crisis, both as to them and the Gentile powers, with his actings in the general Gentile apostasy, induced direct contradictions and inconsistencies in his statements. And at this we cannot be surprised; for, if he has forced himself to apply to one period, passages applicable to two very distinct states of things, it is no wonder that, when brought into juxtaposition, they are not found to hold together.
+By the Revelation William Burgh, A.B., Tims, Dublin, 1832.
Some of these contradictions I shall now notice -- not, I trust Mr. Burgh will feel, with any invidious object, but as illustrating the error on which, it appears to me, he has framed his system. I will only make two observations before I do so. One is, sir, to complain of the Church a little, for their readiness to receive a system when any one will make it for them, without investigating the proofs of its statements; and the other is, that the importance of my present inquiry consists in this -- that Mr. Burgh's views divert the attention of Christians from the present actings of antichristian principles, as now deceiving the nations, to some supposed or future actings of a personal Antichrist, with which they may have nothing to do; and this I conceive to be most injurious. The time and principles of Antichrist I believe to be daily developing themselves, and the time to be fast approaching in which it will be said, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still. And he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still." Nor do I know a more solemn consideration, nor one which drives a believer closer to Christ, and the supply of the Spirit, for salvation and direction.
The first example which I shall take, as illustrating the careless confusion of Antichrist's actings in Jerusalem, and his evil in the Gentile apostasy, is the exposition of the little open book, in the Sixth Lecture on the Apocalypse. Mr. Burgh applies the whole of this to the personal acting of Antichrist in the literal temple of Jerusalem. Now that Antichrist will place his abomination there, in the way understood by Mr. Burgh, I fully believe, and think it a very important truth. But it is equally evident to me that this passage can have nothing to say to it; for the very gist of this passage is precisely opposed to the special point of Antichrist's actings there. There the point of Antichrist's actings, is, that he sits in the temple, and the sanctuary is defiled. Here the precise point is, that they are measured, and the rest is given -- the court without and the city is given -- to the Gentiles; so that they are diametrically opposed in their essential characters. I do not notice this as an error merely, but as illustrating the confusion of principle in applying what is literal, and Jewish, and consummating, to what is Gentile, and moral, and mystical.
Take another point, arising from the same principle -- page 152 of the "Lectures on the Second Advent."
"For half of the week (three-and-a-half years) he (Antichrist) is true to this covenant; but he then breaks it, and for the last half, the remaining three-and-a-half years, the "time, times and a half," "forty-two months," or "one thousand two hundred and sixty days," he "causes the sacrifice and the oblation to cease"; and ... "he places the abomination that maketh desolate.""
Now, if we turn to chapter 8 of the same book (of Daniel), we shall find the consequence of thus forcing all interpretation into the literal crisis; for there we learn -- "How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice" (that is, "by him was the daily sacrifice taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down"), "and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Now, if I am to take these things as declaring the literal actings of Antichrist for so many days, I have, in one case, the dominion and treading down of Antichrist to continue 1,260 days, or half the week; and, in the other, 2,300 days, or very nearly the whole week. (Compare "Lectures on the Revelation," pages 133, 134.)
Again, in Lecture 8 on the Revelation, the 144,000 are the remnant among the Jews.
"In verse 6 commences the part of the prophecy which more immediately and exclusively affects the Gentile world." "Hitherto we have been occupied with the future destinies of the Jewish people; ... now the Gentile world and the other nations of the earth come under consideration. This is after the beast has arisen, etc. Nor even is this preaching of the gospel for the purposes of conversion; it will be to test, not convert, the nations -- "for a witness to all nations"; that is, as I take it, finally to decide the great controversy between Christ and Antichrist -- to shew who is for Christ, and who is against Him."
Mr. Burgh then refers to the warning of the third angel, as confirmatory of this character of the testimony: that is, that "If any man worship, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God," etc. (Revelation 14: 9).
"As, then, I before said, the period here alluded to is the period set for the decision of the great controversy on this earth between Christ and Antichrist -- between the true God, as revealed in the gospel in the Person of Christ, and him who will then "sit in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." This eventful crisis will be ushered in by a renewed preaching of the everlasting gospel to every nation under heaven," etc.
In the ninth lecture we then read, that in which I fully agree: --
"The faithful servants of God are removed from the scene of judgment.'' (Page 158.)
But previous to this crisis, every nation under heaven has been tested. Those that have been faithful, and killed, or appointed unto death, removed; and those that worshipped the beast are to be tormented, day and night, for ever and ever. Who is for Christ, and who against Him, has been shewn. But
"The apostasy must first be consummated, and afterwards judged, before there will be a free course for the word of God." (Page 160.)
And
"Then shall the nations be converted to the faith of Christ." (Page 161.)
Here, again, in the course of these two chapters, from this love of crisis, concentrating all the prophetic testimony of the Revelation to the actings of Antichrist in that crisis, we have a positive interpretation inconsistent with itself. For, after the withdrawing of the saints, and giving up of all others to the worshipping of the beast, and therefore to irremediable torment consequent upon the critical test of the everlasting gospel being put to them, we have, upon the judging of Antichrist, the nations converted by another and subsequent preaching of the gospel, as associated with the new dispensation.
Another instance of inconsistency, arising from the same cause, is to be found in the view taken of the dragon and the beast, in Lecture 3, on the Second Advent, and Lecture 7, on the Revelation. All is to be forced into the crisis in Judea. But what is the consequence? The dragon is the fourth beast, previous to the existence of the ten kingdoms; the little horn, before whom three fell, is the Antichrist, the second beast, during whose continuance the ten horns are in existence. That is, Antichrist personally, as the head of the ten, or rather seven, horns, is the persecuting power of the Jews in Judea. But this dragon, during whose time the horns had no existence,
"Persecuted the woman, that is, the Jewish nation, against whom Antichrist, in this his short reign, will, for reasons before stated, direct all his malignity," etc.
So that, from pressing it all into one scene, the identity of the dragon and the beast is denied and affirmed almost in the same breath; for the dragon is affirmed to be the fourth beast, exclusively before the ten kings, and they to have their place with and under Antichrist, directing all his malignity, when thus formed, against the Jews. Yet have we the dragon, as Antichrist, acting against the woman, that is, the Jews, and that in the land (see page 136, on Revelation), though, as yet, characteristically of his dragon state, there are no kings at all. And yet, Antichrist is the horn that rises after the ten horns, or kings, and subdues three. The cause of the inconsistency is obvious: all was to be brought, at any rate, into the climax. And indeed, though all the malignity of Antichrist is here directed against the Jews, elsewhere we learn that he is to kill all the Gentile saints also, or, at least, they are to be delivered to death. What conclusion do I draw from all this? That the attempt to force everything into the three years and a half, during which Antichrist is to sit in the temple of God in Jerusalem, involves necessarily, in contradictions and inconsistencies, which prove the falseness of the principles from which they flow; besides that, the exercise of that power by which all the nations are wielded against the Jews in that day, supposes, and especially as regards the ten kings, the exercise of all that evil and deceivableness, as "man of sin," previous to the holding and exercise of that power in Judea, which especially concerns Christendom to beware of; and that the system, which supposes the dangerous actings of Antichrist to be confined to the time of his evil reign in Judea, necessarily, in contradiction of itself, supposes him to have previously so powerfully practised by deceit or violence, that the ten kings have given their power to him, and that he is there, by virtue of those deceivings, as agent of Satan, the prince of this world. And, what is remarkable, Mr. Burgh's system precisely puts out of sight, and treats as a nullity, all that part of Antichrist's actings, in which alone, even according to his own system, we are concerned; that is, the power by which he deceives and carries after him the ten kings, or kingdoms; and, I may add, this confirms the argument previously gone into, as to the everlasting gospel. For the kingdoms of Christendom have manifestly been deceived previously to the preaching of the everlasting gospel, if that be subsequent, as Mr. Burgh supposes, to the setting up of Antichrist's throne in Jerusalem.
You will observe, sir, that I am not considering these merely as particular misinterpretations, but as inconsistencies flowing from, and therefore shewing the fallacy of the system of interpretation. It seems to me exceedingly inconsistent to call the beast Antichrist, when Antichrist cannot be till the horns are all crowned; for he is to arise up as a little horn after them, and subdue three; and yet the ten are to "have power as kings one hour with the beast."
But I have no object in going at large into mere errors. One or two, which in another way affect the system, I shall notice. Popery, by those who hold these views, is made but little of, and all that is not concentrated in the personal Antichrist is immaterial. Thus, the fifth trumpet having been settled (for no other reason, that I can see, but having a king called Apollyon) to be Antichrist, that is, observe, the last great final opposer of Christ, including everything, of the next, "far more terrible," nothing decided can be spoken. No wonder! Again, the sixth seal, it is quite clear, we are told, can be nothing but the final wrath of the Lamb, closing the whole scene of earthly power. It is so plainly His second coming, that "there is no room for difference of opinion" (page 52). Yet the next thing we read of, is, the holding of the winds, previous to the outbreaking of all Antichrist's doings; and, says, Mr. Burgh, "the trumpets are but the detail of the seventh seal" (page 87); that is, after the final wrath of the Lamb, which none could abide, come all the manifestations of Antichrist's power; and the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, set up against the Lamb; and Antichrist himself desolates, according to Mr. Burgh's system, for the whole period of prophetic history, sitting in the temple of God, as God, raging against all, even to death, who will not worship him. The question, then, sir, is, who is able to endure his wrath?
I confess, sir, that, plausible and easy as it may appear, when read by itself, it appears to me a very superficial system, and, when compared with Scripture, not to be for a moment tenable, and the whole of it arises from the effort to contract all to the three years and a half, and apply it to Judea, with yet the forced consciousness that it does concern the Gentiles. Thus, the prayers of all saints are the prayers of the hundred and forty-four thousand sealed Jews, wherever all the other saints are, and whatever they are doing; yet, the first four trumpets, in answer, fall literally on the earth, sea, rivers, and trees, sun, moon, and stars. The fifth, however, and (page 87) all the trumpets, afflict only the Jewish nation; though, what part of the Jewish nation the literal sun and moon are, it would be hard to say; however, so it is argued (pages 87, 88). Again, as to the seals, we are told to conclude that, because there is, "Behold a white horse, and one that sat on him," and that a white horse is mentioned in chapter 19, therefore he that sat on him is clearly the same. It may be so, but I do not see why, on any ground that would not prove each individual in the armies of heaven to be Jesus Christ also, for they all sat on white horses. The emblem of the white horse has nothing to do with who sits on him. But we are told that it is Christ's second advent, and the horses which follow it are the actings of Christ in judgment, as come -- I say, as come, or else the coming, after all, is figurative; and, to say the least, Mr. Burgh's language here is very vague. But, as far as I understand, it is King Messiah Himself come forth to destroy His enemies; and then we are referred to Matthew 24 for the identical signs. But there, all these things precede the coming of the Son of Man; and we are expressly told, that "the end is not yet"; in a word, they are but "the beginning of sorrows"; and, after all, the coming is as the lightning. Yet we are told that the parallelism is perfect, not only in the events, but in the order of their occurrence. I wonder the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, the great test, as Mr. Burgh has stated elsewhere (a statement I am by no means disposed to question, though I do his use of it), did not arrest his mind as to the accuracy of this most unfortunate comparison.
Again, sir, the supposed uncertainty of interpretation, as to the two-horned beast, is made the subject rather of triumph, on the part of Mr. Burgh, though he gives no additional light whatever on the subject. But it ought to have led Mr. Burgh, I think, to more soberness of consideration on the subject, when he found, besides his favourite Antichrist, the beast, the third, or two-horned beast, at Armageddon, as the false prophet, and a distinct subject of destruction. He appears, too, in his zeal to substitute the personal Antichrist for Popery, to forget, that whatever may be the wicked and monstrous presumption of the Antichrist in Jerusalem, in Babylon "was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." I leave to more full development the connection between this and chapter 17. This only, that it is not itself the beast, and that in her was found, etc.; and that, supposing, now, it be merely the literal city of Rome (the lowest supposition), it is not Antichrist at Jerusalem which is thus charged with the accumulated guilt of the blood of all that were slain upon the earth. In a word, sir, it is plain to me that there are two characters in which Antichrist (I use it now in an extended sense) is developed. The one of deceivableness, and perhaps using power, and so sometimes causing to be killed; the other of power, in which he acts haughtily against God as the revealed "man of sin." In the latter of these two characters he acts against the Jews in Jerusalem; in the former, and now especially, in deceivableness as separated from power, we particularly have to do with it, and in this is his great guilt. In this way he gathers the power which he will use to his own destruction in that day. I say not what desperate deception, as well as power, he will use in that day amongst the Jews; but I say that the spirit of evil, by which he gathers and carries up there the power which he then exercises, is that with which we have to do. And "the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved," will find its application, not amongst Jews, but amongst Gentiles, to whom the truth was preached. And this character, though finding its full manifestation in his false anti-regal power, and therefore not excluding this, is that in which he is also fully developed in the New Testament scriptures. And if this be once admitted, the system on which this interpretation of the Revelation is founded falls to the ground; and we are enabled, with whatever additional light the investigation may have afforded us, to pursue our inquiry into the Revelation, unfettered by a system which, as it appears to me, must be added to the many which it rejects; and which, while I must feel it to be superficial in its inductions, is founded on a principle as all-important, which, to my mind, is simply ignorance of the whole frame of New Testament prophecy, and mars its great aim -- the warning of the Gentile church. For, I repeat, it is quite clear that, with all its confusion of application, Mr. Burgh's system does not at all contemplate those actings of evil, by which the nations are carried up by Antichrist to, and against, Jerusalem, and their doom irrevocably sealed.
Save as applied to the point in question, I have stated little of my own views. I confess I find it more profitable to learn from Scripture, than to frame a system. If the Lord permit me, in time and service, I will send you some things which appear to me the mind of God in Scripture, and shall be glad to be corrected by any of your correspondents; merely saying, that the two great symbolical powers of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius seem to me to give the full clue to the history of the times of the Gentiles, ended in and by Antichrist.
As regards, then, the Jews, and the great results, it appears to me that Mr. Burgh is exceedingly clear, and may be always read with profit. As regards the Revelation, I think he has manifestly mistaken the whole principle and structure of the prophecy, from beginning to end. I must also add, that his views of symbol appear to me to be without any principle whatever, as his statements on the subject are most astonishingly hasty and unfounded. It would be impossible to go into this at large in such a communication as the present; I will only remark, that his assertion (page 83 of the "Lectures on Revelation"), "Scripture history affords a precedent for one interpretation, but Scripture does not afford any precedent for the other," is one of the most unprecedented assertions anybody ever met with, to a person who had ever read the Scriptures at all.
And I would here, sir, remark, that, clear as Mr. Burgh's interpretation of the seals may seem to some, I confess I can gain no determinate idea of what he means from it. I find, in page 28, that
"The book of Revelation is thus the book of the Lord's second advent, and is solely occupied with the account of the last great crisis, with the coming of Christ, and the attendant events, during the several acts of His taking to Himself, and redeeming, His inheritance."
Accordingly, the first seal is Christ going forth, to which he makes parallel the question, "What shall be the sign of thy coming?" though, what the force of such a question can be to the parallelism, I cannot see. However, it is the last great crisis, and Christ's going forth to it. Now, I must ask, What does Mr. Burgh mean by "Christ's going forth to it"? It is not, manifestly, His personal coming in Judea, though the quotation of Psalm 45 would lead one to suppose so; for, in page 55, we have merely preparatory judgments, instead of improvements, till "God's four sore judgments shall have devastated the world. And all this is to be but "the beginning of sorrows" -- the beginning of sorrows, I will here ask Mr. Burgh, to whom? He has parallelised Matthew 24 with this: whose sorrows does he think Matthew 24 refers to? Here he says, "Will the Church of Christ remain couched?" etc. However this may be the first seal is,
"The Lord Jesus Christ Himself going forth -- going forth in the character of His second advent -- going forth to redeem His inheritance, and rescue it from the hand of the enemy, and assert His claim to His possession."
Then, the following seals are the arrows in His hand (see page 48), and are said (page 47) to be
"Sharp in the heart of His enemies, in reference to His conflict with the confederate nations, who, at the era of His advent, shall oppose Him; and shall then fall under Him, as in Revelation 19; and thus is every part of this seal proved to refer to that conflict."
That is, Mr. Burgh allows (and indeed reasons at large elsewhere, and, as I have said, I think very clearly), in Judea; yet, as we have seen, all these arrows are the judgments which devastate the world, and all this to be but the beginning of sorrows. Again, all the arrows refer to that conflict, the book being occupied solely with the last great crisis; yet, speaking of these very seals, or arrows of judgment Mr. Burgh says:
"And when these several signs have been developed, these several seals opened, then the sixth seal opens with the day itself of His coming, or, at least, those signs by which it is more immediately announced."
So that, after they have been shewn to be arrows in the hearts of "the confederate nations, who, at the era of his advent, shall oppose them, and who shall then fall under Him, as in Revelation 19," we find the sixth seal itself to be after all those as signs -- "at least those signs by which it (His coming) is more immediately announced." To me, clear as it may seem to others, there is nothing but confusion in all this; and the confusion, it appears to me, is simply this -- that Mr. Burgh saw nothing but with the last great crisis before his eyes, and it mingled itself confusedly with all, while the intrinsic evidence of the passages gave them a positive force which he could not help stating; and in the system he had formed obliged him to put them in an order, which made the confusion more determinate and marked.
I think students of prophecy are indebted to Mr. Burgh, as to every one else who has written candidly on the subject; but I do not think he has interpreted the book of Revelation rightly or successfully, and, by making a system of it, he has made all his errors hang together. I will freely submit my own thoughts to his judgment and criticism, I trust for the same just and useful purpose that he has done, when opportunity is given me.
I have merely been able, my dear sir, in much occupation, to trace hastily those things which appear to me evidences of the fallacy of the system which Mr. Burgh has put forward in his Lectures on the Revelation; and I point this out as the fallacy -- the concentrating the actings of Antichrist to the last exhibition of him in Judea; and it is exceedingly material for us to see it so, because it is his previous actings with which we are concerned, and by which, as Mr. Burgh's system implies (while it denies), we are liable to be deceived. And here I must charge these lectures with inconsiderate confidence of haste; because, if Antichrist was to sit in Jerusalem, as head of a great apostate system, it ought to have involved, instead of refuted, the consideration of the apostasy of which he had previously made himself the head -- an apostasy at present working in the world, and in which we are all vitally and immediately concerned. How much this presses upon my mind, I shall not at present dwell upon; and
Remain, dear sir, Yours unworthily in the Lord,
P.S. -- This paper has extended to such a length, that I have omitted some remarks I had to make on the seventy weeks, and the days. I shall only now say, that I do not think (though quite open to believe it) that the covenant is Anti-christ's, as Mr. Burgh supposes; and that he is unwarranted in so constantly putting 62, 7, 1, when the Scriptures as decidedly put 7, 62, 1; yet on this his view depends; I have already stated that it appears to me erroneous. As to the days, the readers of The Christian Herald may recollect a principle once stated by me in it,+ that, as to the Jews, we might look for what was literal; as to the power of the Gentiles, and their times, we might expect protracted symbol. However imperfectly stated there, I am still inclined to believe in the truth of the statement. If you, or your correspondents, think it worth while, I will give you the evidence and interpretation which is connected with this subject, and the distinction between Antichrist and the Assyrian, as well as some remarks on Matthew 24, and the analogous passages.
+See an article on "The Twelve Hundred and Sixty Days," in Volume 1, No. 12, for December, 1830. (Collected Writings, Volume 2.)
"Now if any man build upon this foundation [Jesus Christ] gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it." ... (1 Corinthians 3: 12, 13).
It is, although not a pleasant, at any rate an exceedingly easy task to answer a hostile attack, when the opponent himself gives the answer. Such is the case with the article contained in the "Zionsbote," "upon Darbyism." The arguments of the writer are chiefly summed up in the statement of two antitheses, expressed in the words: "We say, Everything must be restored, as it was in the apostle's time; We can never return, the Darbyites say, to what existed at the time of the apostles." In his opinion everything must be revived in the church according to apostolic model; and his censure affects the so-called Darbyites, because, instead of assenting to his conception, they rather maintain that, since the church has abandoned her first state and is in apostasy, according to the clearest and most unambiguous testimonies of the Scriptures, she is not capable of restoration.
Then, after the writer has been somewhat zealous over the bad principles of the brethren he indicts, he finds occasion for the remark, which defeats his contention: "Moreover nothing remains until the Lord come, but that every Christian take pains according to the best of his knowledge and conscience to ascertain and to carry out the mind of Christ; but so that the fullest brotherly relationship may obtain between the different church parties." In fact, no Christian who is unprejudiced and free from bias will be able to close his eyes to such contradictions. What is the meaning, then, of wishing to restore everything in the church as it was in the apostle's time, if it must be confessed that at the end nothing remains but Christian parties, in which every member has to ascertain and carry out the will of Christ according to the best of his knowledge and conscience? Were there such parties in the time of the apostles? Do they so much as bear the seal of apostolic recognition? Certainly not. Jewish prejudices, as we know, threatened to split up the assembly at Antioch into two parties; but the wisdom of God prevented the deadly evil; and peace even and prosperity grew out of this very evil for the assembly at Jerusalem; Acts 15. In Corinth also church parties displayed their first germs; but apostolic power was present, and apostolic energy was exercised to restore divine order in the church. But where is there now that apostolic energy? Where is there an assembly that sends its ministers into all communities, so that all can enjoy the blessed message? Neither such energy, nor such an assembly is within the range of possibility in our days.
+From the German.
The restoration of the church according to apostolic model, consequently, makes the previous restoration of apostles an absolute necessity. As Christians will not recognise their inability to restore everything, they sink into the state of indifference in respect of the evil which they cannot remedy. But instead of a recognition of their own incapacity, the willingness to continue in a bad, unscriptural, condition is in fact one of the saddest phenomena amongst Christians of our day. They refuse to bow in the dust, and humbly acknowledge, "We are to blame, we have abandoned the first state of the church, and are unable to restore everything; God is faithful; we are to blame."
The writer must allow me to alter a word in his thesis; for without this alteration, the sentence is devoid of force and meaning. He says, "We must restore everything, as it was in the apostles' time." He ought to have said, not we "must," but we "can," restore everything. For if we cannot do it, our labour is useless. We know well -- and the Lord be praised for it -- that His grace is fully sufficient, just as much for our low state, as for that of the apostles. But to what a degree the pretension of such Christians has reached, who ascribe to themselves the ability to restore to its old state whatever the power of the apostles wrought and set up, I leave to the judgment of the reader. Christians need apostolic power in order to be able to do apostolic works. They are able by grace to be faithful, amidst the circumstances in which they are found as the result of the continuous power of evil. They can abandon the evil, but as we have said, to be able to do what the apostles did, they need apostolic power. Why do they not restore apostles? why not gifts? Why not prophets, and miracles? In fact, to restore everything is a wide field! Where do we hear in our days words like those of Paul, of Timothy, and of Barnabas? Where is the power of the Spirit, which in the days of the apostles was so very active? Paul says, "For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock," Acts 20: 29. Why such intimations for times after his departure, if others could do everything which he had done?
The principles which the writer supposes to be scriptural only help to confound ideas still more; and they betray only too clearly how little people in general seek to inquire what holy Scripture says about God's assembly. It is clear that Scripture knows only of a general assembly of God. Christians are regarded as members of the body of Christ. To be a member of on assembly is a thought of which one finds no trace in the word of God. And yet this thought forms the basis of the whole system to which the writer addresses himself. As we are shewn in 1 Corinthians 12, as well as in Ephesians 4 and Romans 12, all gifts were introduced of God not in one fixed and local assembly, but in the whole assembly. Apollos ministered with his gift as teacher as well in Ephesus as in Corinth, because this gift had been bestowed upon him not for an assembly but for the assembly, and consequently, for the whole body of Christ. But where do we find in our days anything like the condition portrayed in 1 Corinthians 12? "Now, that was for apostolic times," our brethren will answer. But how can they then say, "We must restore everything as it was at the time of the apostles?" Will they then imitate only outward forms? That power cannot be imitated, no one will dare to dispute; for one needs the power to be able to exercise it. But they have not even the form, for to be teacher of an assembly is not scriptural.
But how does it stand with the question of elders? Scripture teaches us that they were not elected by the assemblies. As we find in Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas "chose them elders"; and of Titus we know that he was sent back to Crete to appoint elders; Titus 1: 5. Who now could claim the right to do that for which the persons named were divinely authorised? Where is there now in our days a Paul and a Barnabas, a Timothy and Titus? Moreover, there still remains the question which settles everything, whether it is in general the will of God to restore all as it was at the time of the apostles. As we have said, "we must" is without force and meaning if it cannot be supported by a positive "we can." Therefore Scripture must decide whether restoration is a thing permitted or required by God. We deny it. For "we must" is not scripture; and the writer has in general brought forward no passage for his assertion. He speaks of a command, but he assigns no command. Let us examine then the word of God, to see if it does not speak of the results of man's unfaithfulness in respect of the kingdom of God, and His assembly upon the earth.
First of all, I would refer briefly to the "Parable of the Tares." I find on the part of the writer -- in noticing some thoughts from a tract dealing with this parable -- many hard and bitter expressions, accompanied by the remark: "How much might be said upon this fundamental principle!" But he neither gives another interpretation of the parable, nor does he seek to refute the "singular" one given, by the citation of even one passage. But all such shibboleths are powerless, if not founded upon the word of God.
Let us turn therefore to the alone infallible word. The tares are sown by the devil where good seed has been sown by the Lord. The subject is, of course, not the church itself, but the kingdom. The field is the world. But this parable is of great importance if it be a question of the restoration of the good state of Christianity. The question of the servants, if they should root up the tares, the Lord answers in the negative with the words: "Let both grow together until the harvest." A restoration of the earlier state is not prescribed, and consequently is impossible. The judgment alone will deal with it. But someone might object, "Why do you not remain in the state-church?" I answer: Because Scripture knows of no state-church, but only of the church, and because it expressly says, that in the last perilous days everything will demonstrate the ruin, and men have the form of godliness but deny the power thereof. "From such turn away," says the apostle; and thus in following the divine exhortation and turning away, I act in obedience, even if I remain alone. But why, it might be further asked, since everything is not to be restored, do you not remain alone? and I bring forward in reply 2 Timothy 2, where I am taught that, since the Lord knows His own in spite of the confusion in the last days, I am not only to depart from iniquity, but to walk with those who "call upon the Lord out of a pure heart" (verse 19, 22); whilst at the same time I possess the precious and comforting promise: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," Matthew 18: 20. So saith the Scripture. And if now I order my course according to these divine directions, the pretension to wish to restore everything is in no wise hidden therein; but with thankful heart I make use of the instructions which God has given for the last days in His precious word, in individual obedience.
As a whole, the passage quoted enlightens us clearly as to whether a restoration will take place in the last days. But "this know also," says the apostle, "that in the last days perilous times shall come," 2 Timothy 3: 1. Then follows (verse 2-5) a picture of the sad state of Christendom, become like heathenism. (Compare Rom 1. with 2 Timothy 3.) Will the church then, not be roused again out of this state? No: it will grow worse and worse (verse 13). There is not a trace of restoration. In 2 Thessalonians 2 we see that the apostasy comes, and the man of sin, the son of perdition, shall be revealed (verse 3). Will the apostasy have an end, or the man of sin be removed, by the renewed power of the gospel? By no means. Already in the time of the apostle, the mystery of lawlessness was at work. And this fire, smouldering in ashes, has developed -- "worse and worse," as the apostle foresaw, and will not be stayed until, as soon as every hindrance is taken out of the way, the lawless one shall be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming (verse 7, 8). There is nowhere a thought of restoration. Jude also teaches the same truth. In his epistle we see that false brethren had crept in, of whom Enoch had prophesied: "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints," ... (verse 14). They go the way of Cain, give themselves for reward to the error of Balaam, and perish in the gainsaying of Korah (verse 11). That is the character of the evil in the last days, which already had begun in the days of the apostles. For in 1 John 2: 18, we read, "Little children, it is the last time, and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." Already, then, as Peter teaches, the time of the judgment of God's house had come; 1 Peter 4: 17. In short, everywhere we find testimony to the apostasy, and nowhere 8 word of restoration, although in the days of the apostles the principles of evil and apostasy had already penetrated into the church.
It may perhaps be asked, "Shall not the world then be filled with the knowledge of the Lord by the gospel of grace?" No. The gospel of the kingdom will indeed be preached amongst all nations, but then will the end come; Matthew 24: 14 "The everlasting gospel" will be sent to every nation and every kindred and every tongue, with the announcement: "Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come," Revelation 14: 6, 7. Then follows the destruction of Babylon, and finally the appearing of the Son of man on the cloud. But then, will not the world generally be filled with the knowledge of the Lord? Certainly. But how? By the gospel of grace? Not at all. There are three passages in holy Scripture in which mention is made of this subject: Numbers 14: 21, Isaiah 11, Habakkuk 2: 12-14. But none of these passages speak of grace: all speak of judgment; and in Isaiah 26: 9, 10, it is declared definitively that the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness when the judgments of God are in the earth; but that, though favour be shewn to the wicked, "they will not learn righteousness." The reader will also see in Isaiah 25: 7-9, that at the time when the veil that is spread over all nations is removed, the resurrection has taken place, and the Jewish people is restored in blessing.
It is therefore a lack of spiritual understanding, and is nothing short of disobedience, to desire to restore everything, since for such a work there is not only no command, but Holy Scripture teaches exactly the reverse. It is not obedience to content oneself with Christian parties, because Scripture condemns them; it is not obedience to form a so-called church, and to be a member of it, because Scripture knows only of members of the church, as the body of Christ, but not members of a church calling itself so-and-so; it is not obedience to elect or appoint elders, because in the New Testament this was never the act of the churches; it is not obedience to institute an office of preachers because Scripture knows nothing of such an office, but speaks only of gifts which God bestowed, with which to serve the whole church. But it is obedience to keep aloof from a Christianity which has the form of godliness but denies the power, because Scripture in 2 Timothy 3 expressly exhorts us to do so; and it is obedience to assemble ourselves with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart (2 Timothy 2), and not to neglect the assembling of ourselves together, because Scripture enjoins it, and promises the precious and blessed presence of the Lord to all those who gather in His name.
Certainly a calm consideration of the word of God teaches us that the different churches which call themselves Independents, Baptists, etc., do not answer to the churches at the time of the apostles. For could the apostle send to one of these so-called churches an epistle addressed "To the Church of God at N."? Which of them would obtain the letter at the post office? If on the other hand I go no further than Holy Scripture allows me, I profess a principle which makes it a sacred duty for me to acknowledge as members of Christ all Christians, whether in the Baptist or Independent communities, or in the state-church. And that I do with all my heart. I am fully convinced that with regard to church questions they do not walk in paths marked out by the word of God, but that they are, notwithstanding, dear to the heart of the Lord; and I hope that in these lines I have said nothing by which the heart of an upright brother could be wounded. If, however, it should be so, I beg beforehand for forgiveness.
The small compass of these few pages allows of my only briefly adducing, and by passages of Scripture establishing, some elementary principles. It were to be wished that the writer of the article which occasioned this reply had in like manner supported by the word of God the points he has brought in question. It only remains for me to appeal to this word, alone infallible; and I hope that the brethren who heap so many charges upon us will perceive why we cannot recognise their path as the path of obedience. In my judgment, but small measure of intelligence belongs to the pretension of desiring to restore everything as it was at the time of the apostles, to the recognition of anything else than obedience. God has never laid down such a path. He does not improve the old man who has fallen, but introduces the "second Man," and gives us a portion in His glory. He does not renew the Jews according to the old covenant, but we find, after long patience, grace and help at the end of judgment, then to establish with them the new covenant upon the ground of grace. And with regard to the church we can say: What Christ has built for ever will endure for ever, what is divine and heavenly will be indestructible; but wood, hay, and stubble, with which man has built, must perish in the fire.
Beloved Brother,
But let us probe the question. I shall bring to light some facts, and then speak of the principles. Mr. O. says: "All I know, is, that some of those who had held with him (Mr. N.) were admitted to the Lord's supper, at the church called Bethesda. For this the whole assembly of Bethesda were excommunicated." If Mr. O. only knows this, he knows very little, and would have done better not to speak of it. It appears that Mr. O., while saying all he can for Mr. N., considers his doctrines such, that the Lord's table must be denied, not only to the one who teaches them, but to those who are drawn away by him. He says that, on his own authority, he declared to a young sister, by letter, dated 21st May, 1867, that she could not break bread with the worship-meeting of the Rue du Lac, although she had said she did not admit the doctrine, which, however, Mr. N. taught in his tracts, which tracts she could not disavow, as she did not think their author could be mistaken in anything. If a poor victim of his influence, who does not admit his doctrine, must be rejected, we surely were right in rejecting the one who wrote the tracts, and boldly maintained blasphemies. Neither is it true that Mr. N. did not want to "weaken propitiation." Mr. N. said the death of Christ was only an incident of the life of Christ. This expression was taken up. To excuse himself, he said he was accustomed to use the word 'incident' in a special sense, and not as others employ it. But he also said that Christ suffered far more before the coming of John the Baptist than after; that, on hearing the gospel from John the Baptist's lips, He passed from being under law to being under grace.
+"What is the Unity of the Church?" ("Collected Writings, Volume 20.)
Well, we have broken off with all this, and Mr. N. got a chapel built for himself, where he preached the doctrine which he had, unknown to the brethren, been teaching secretly for six years.
Now this is how the Bethesda meeting got involved in the question. A lady, who liked Mr. N.'s teaching, left the Bath meeting when he was no longer allowed to preach there. She was at once surreptitiously brought into Bethesda. Then seven persons of the chapel and meeting of Mr. N. were received at Bethesda, some of whom agreed fully with his doctrine. Some pious brethren in Bethesda protested, and entreated Messrs. Muller and Craik, the two pastors, to examine the doctrine, and not to let persons from Mr. N.'s meeting in, without having first subjected them to an examination. They refused, and several meetings were held, and a letter was signed by the ten elders, or labourers, of the assembly, declaring that they would not do it, and that it was a new test of communion to examine them on this point; and Messrs. M. and C. asserted that they must be justified, on that ground, according to the principles of this document (called the letter of the ten), otherwise they would cease to be the pastors of the assembly, and they got the whole meeting to vote, by rising, and sitting, so that the whole meeting, as a meeting, justified the admission of persons whom Mr. O. would exclude. This letter remains in force to this day. Not long ago, Mr. M. refused to withdraw it, on being requested so to do.
Now, why should I separate from the people at Plymouth, and be in fellowship with them at Bristol? But what is of importance to note, is, that the meeting voted that it was not necessary to examine if Christ was thus blasphemed, or not. The fact is that Mr. C. favoured the doctrine, and taught, in great measure, the same errors. It is not a question of excommunicating an assembly. It is individuals that are excommunicated. One separates from an assembly, and this is what was done with regard to Bethesda; but the individuals coming from a meeting which has, as a meeting, received the evil into its bosom, may be guilty of the act, and responsible for what the assembly has done. Thus, when the meeting voted the acceptance of the letter of the ten, and a good number of Christians had separated from it, because, in reality, they had voted that they would not, and should not, examine whether to accept blasphemy against the Lord, when, to say the least, it was habitually heard -- when the members of the assembly had voted that indifference to blasphemy was a good thing, were the individuals not all under responsibility for the action of the assembly? There was no question of whether the individuals held the doctrine, or not. (The young person excluded by Mr. O. did not admit Mr. N.'s doctrine; like Bethesda, she did not disavow his tracts.) The assembly had taken the ground of indifference to blasphemy against Christ, and the persons constituting the assembly (save in the case of real ignorance as to the facts) were defiled with the defilement of the assembly. This is the doctrine of Scripture: "Ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter"; they were not incestuous, but, as long as incest was permitted, the assembly was guilty of it, and was not clear of it, neither were the individuals composing it. So the apostle says: "Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump." Therefore they were not a new lump, unless they purged out the old leaven. The assembly, and those composing it, were old leaven, unfit to celebrate the feast. But all the assemblies of God are jointly responsible; and, whether God's assembly, or not, an assembly which chooses to accept the principles of fellowship with Bethesda is identified, has identified itself, with Bethesda.
A distance of twenty, or two hundred, leagues does not alter the moral fact in anything; in what is moral, space is of no account. If an assembly, knowingly and wilfully, accepts fellowship with Bethesda, it is defiled, as Bethesda is -- it accepts the principle of indifference to blasphemy against Christ. Some meetings invited Mr. N.; in some neutral gatherings influential persons went to Bethesda for the purpose of testimony; and some have boldly avowed their opinion, and published, with their names attached thereto, tracts, advocating the principle of Mr. B. cited by Mr. O., namely, that if an assembly permits fornication, the assembly cannot be defiled by it, but only the guilty person. Now, I do not consider blasphemies against the Lord less serious, if less shocking, than moral corruption; yet the principle, that an assembly cannot be defiled, is taught by several tracts on their side. Now, it is all the same, if there are two, or two hundred, meetings consecutively; it is only throwing dust in the eyes. This is the question: Has such and such an assembly identified itself with the impure principle that wishes the evil to be admitted? As I have already said, in America the question was not Bethesda, but non-eternity of punishment. The question which I here state is all the more important, since, in these last days, the principle on which we have to meet, is, separation from evil. The second and third chapters of 2 Timothy are clear on this point.
Now, as regards the principles of gathering of the children of God in these times, it is well to notice that Mr. O. frankly admits that he does not profess to meet on the principles laid down in Scripture -- on pages 31 to 33 he declares it. I only quote two sentences. "The principle asserted is that of the primitive church, but can it be the principle of the dismembered church?" That is the question. Then (page 46) "Mr. D. professes to be able to realise today what was the principle of the unity of the church when the church was one; whereas, I consider that this principle is, nowadays, quite impracticable." He wants a principle in the air, deprived of its substructure. Now it is certain that God's word knows of none other, and has no two principles of gathering. We say, the word must be reverted to, and, whatever our low condition, we must go by the word, where we find what may be applied to the present time. Now, to gather two or three in the name of Jesus belongs to all times. If Mr. O. cannot meet on scriptural principles -- and this he admits -- then his meeting is merely a human meeting, on human principles; if it is not on the principle of the unity of the church, it is independent churches.
What is not within the unity is, by the very principle of its existence, outside it. Here is what Mr. O. says: "This is the problem to be solved: to find a means of constructing worship-meetings which depart as little as possible from the notion of the unity of the church, and which, at the same time, permit of a connection subsisting with the dismembered church." One cannot act on the recognised primitive and scriptural principle, that is, the principle owned of God, and one must depart as little as possible from it. And who is to be the judge whether the departure is to an allowable degree, or not? And if the gathering is not on the scriptural principle -- that is to say, that which alone has God's authority -- each one is free to select the principle he chooses to meet on. "The dismemberment rules everything"; that is to say, the effect of man's sin liberates us from the duty of returning to the word and the will of God. Impossible to have a more distinct admission of his having abandoned the principle of God's word, than what is found in the pages I have indicated. When this is once done, God's authority is null and void. A little, more or less, departure is, comparatively speaking, indifferent. The principle is not a divine one. Let this avowal be well weighed. If it is impossible to meet according to the Word, better not meet at all. We believe God is faithful to His children. The Lord has a flock, and He has given in His word what is appropriate to all times. Here it must be explained. Mr. O. would have us profess to re-establish the primitive unity of all Christians as a whole. But it is not so. I hope there will be much more seen, and I do not think the thing is complete. This ought to be. I doubt whether unity will be re-established in an absolute way. But that is not the question for us. What God will do is not our rule of conduct, but what He wants us to do, what is found in His word. There is a great system where the form of godliness is found, the power of it being denied. I ought to separate from it. I do so. Other Christians are unwilling to do so. I must leave them, and follow the Word. Also, as regards details, I name the name of Christ; I must depart from iniquity, and I do so, wherever it may be. Then, in a great house, there are false teachers; I purge myself from these, and follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
But on what principle am I to meet? Must I depart from scriptural principles? Why is it more difficult to meet on scriptural principles than on others? Where two or three are gathered together in the name of Christ, there is He. As to the ground, the primitive church could have no more; this is a promise made at the brightest time of the apostles, a promise available for us in times of difficulty and dispersion. We cannot control others, but, by grace, we can ourselves, as obedient children, act according to the Word. Mr. O. wants us to depart as little as possible from the Word. Be it so. But that one must depart from it, and that obedience is impossible, I do not think. He says we should have a centre of attraction to unite everything; we should -- I do not deny it -- I have often even said so. The whole church should be one, and I accept that we are all responsible for the lack of unity, and that the brethren, as all who meet according to the truth, should be, or should have in their midst, the magnetic pole, which would attract and bow every heart; but if we do not possess it, we are not thereby hindered from yielding obedience to the Word, and from enjoying the blessing attached thereto. We dare not do otherwise. The question is thus definitely laid down. Mr. O. thinks he must -- I do not say wishes to, but is forced to -- depart from the principle of the Word. We think it should not be departed from at all, that if anyone departs from it, little or much, he has abandoned it; it is no longer obedience; the authority of God is no more the basis of gathering. If the body is separated from the Head, much or little is all the same. If our walk is not obedience, it is man's will. I do not accuse Mr. O. of wilfully departing from Scripture, but he considers himself forced to do so. I think it is want of faith, to say that what he calls the dismemberment of the church has rendered a Christian's following the Word impossible. For months after I discovered the ruin in which everything was found, I knew not what to do. Then I saw that the Word supplied what is needed for these very times, and that one had only to follow it. One might count on the Lord for the difficulties of the road.
If Mr. O. says we have been poor labourers, I have no reply to make. But we have met with blessing, and certainly the patient grace of the Lord has not failed us. Moreover, I think the firmness of the brethren regarding Bethesda has reacted on those who condemn them. They have not always been so decided in rejecting everything in connection with Mr. N.
I touched slightly on the subject of discipline, but more must be said, and I must justify what I said about the principles enunciated by Mr. B., and cited by Mr. O. "Where will you find," says Mr. B., "a meeting defiled, on account of one only of its members, in such a way, that any member communicates this defilement to every other meeting with which he has communion?" I know of a case, where two persons got into the brethren's meeting at Vevey. I had not the slightest idea of the Vevey meeting being defiled because these persons had deceived the assembly, and the assembly had received them in good faith; but if a meeting, knowingly and wilfully, accepts the wicked person it is not a new lump, if I am to believe 1 Corinthians 5. If the meeting judges the evil, or even if it has been admitted ignorantly -- in such a case it may be that there has not been sufficient vigilance -- but the assembly is not defiled, because the conscience has not been engaged in it. But if the evil is there, and brought to light, the assembly must shew itself pure in the matter, otherwise it is not a new lump; it is impure, none of the members call upon the Lord out of a pure heart, unless there is real ignorance of the fact; and this is true ad infinitum, two, or two million, meetings do not alter the matter. In every case the question is: Has the assembly, knowingly and wilfully, admitted what is impure? Has it willingly associated itself with that which is impure? If so, it is itself impure, and so are those forming it.
What Mr. O. wants, is, that if the assembly even is rejected, those coming from it, who are pure, should be admitted. So do I: however, the question is not that, but to know if those coming from it are pure, if they are knowingly associated with impurity. 1 Corinthians 5 settles the question. The word of God, in these last days, requires us to separate from evil -- this is the clear, precise, and pointed instruction of 2 Timothy. An assembly such as we speak of will not do it, and we cannot go on together, and persons who are willingly in such a position are not what the apostle insists on, for walking together. It is not a question of re-establishing Christians, as a whole, in unity -- a thing much to be desired in itself -- but of being faithful to the Word and to the Lord in these last days.
Now, on another point, in connection with discipline, as to the independence of the assemblies, Mr. O. fully confirms what I say about it. Here are his words: "Every act of discipline in an assembly should be respected in the others, as long as one has no ground for considering it unlawful; but when one sees that a meeting has judged unjustly, then its decision is no longer binding on the other meetings." "For my part, I could never submit to a discipline which I could not judge." There is complete independence; Mr. O. is right in saying the assemblies should respect each other, but, as a natural and necessary consequence of having abandoned the primitive and only scriptural system, there is no joint responsibility. One respects the other when they are independent; one accepts when one thinks it is right, otherwise the discipline is in no way binding. Good people respect each other; if a man has been driven from the house, the other will reflect before receiving him, but they are independent, and each one will do in his own house what he thinks proper. It is certain that it was not so at first. The church, being one, whoever was put out at Corinth, was put out of the church on earth. The church was united. It will be said I have already spoken of it; I repeat it, because it is the universal objection. I am bound by a judgment I disapprove of, you will say. Confess, at least, that you are independent, and that you want to judge for yourself, and only accept what you approve of. This is the system of independent churches, in contrast with that of one sole church -- the only system found in Scripture. But because the church is one, every member is at liberty to object, and to communicate with those who act, though not claiming competence to judge, refuse, or receive, at will, but, as a member of the whole, acting also according to his gift. Paul and his companions did so here (Corinth), to urge on to discipline when this course was not desired. It may happen -- as Mr. O. himself admits -- that one rejects the discipline of an assembly; but then one entirely rejects the competency of this assembly to act in the name of the Lord. Mr. O.'s system is, then, the system of independent churches, which respect one another, but not the unity of the church; only he adds to it his own competency to act in his own right, to judge the verdict of the whole church himself, and upon his own authority to reject a person he may consider unsuitable for communion. He has added the clerical principle to the independent church principle; neither of them is found in the word, unless one assumes the rights of an apostle, which should be supported by the power of an apostle. My purpose is only to ascertain the principles.
Mr. O. may have found contradictory expressions in my writings, that the totality of the churches constitutes the church, and that the totality of the churches does not constitute the church. There is a contradiction in the form, but none in the intention of the phrases; I believe both. The one meant that all Christians, and the churches containing them, are not independent bodies, but one whole. The second meant that the churches do not compose this unity as a body corporate, but that individuals, and not local corporations, form the body of Christ. I fully believe both -- Mr. O. also, as it appears.
I do not care to make further reply to remarks referring either to my labours or my writings. It is God who justifies and condemns. I know I am very incapable of doing as I would, but I can leave myself in His hands. The important question is: What is the church, and what is the Christian's course to be in the midst of these times of ruin? Must we give up scriptural principles as impracticable, as Mr. O. would have us do? Or must we humbly submit to His word, confident that God will never abandon those who seek to obey Him, and that the word of God, and the grace of the church's Head, suffice, and ever will suffice, at all times for those who are satisfied to walk in littleness, and unappreciated by the world?
There is still one idea I wish to point out. Mr. O. wants to keep himself free to join the dismembered church. I am united to all Christians as a member of one only body, and am happy to be united with them, wherever this would not call me from the path traced out in the Word. Disobedience is not communion, and communion is not to be found in disobedience. Some souls will be more scrupulous than others in this respect; each conscience must be left free. I do not join the system I have left, and do not build up again what I destroyed, to make myself a transgressor, but I rejoice to meet every child of God in the path of obedience to His will, wherever it be. My reader will find that Mr. O. has added a word as to what makes the link of his churches. In his first pamphlet he said: "United by the same worship, by the same faith" -- what evidently does not make them one, not recognising the unity of the church at all. Now he adds, "and by the same Spirit"; but this alters nothing; they are still independent churches respecting each other. It is not the one church; they are still separate associations, whether Mr. O. likes the word or not, and each one acts in its own sphere as an independent body, and the case being such, judges of the other's discipline. The word, "and by the Spirit," where it now stands, has hardly any sense, except it be an exceedingly vague one.
As for the passage out of Clement,+ Mr. O.'s remark leads me to the belief that he never thoroughly examined the passage, otherwise I should have to accuse him of insincerity, which I have no desire to do. It is impossible for him to have examined the passage, without coming across a word acknowledged by all as difficult, which, in reality, presents no difficulty, and for the sense of which one might even have done without Alexandre non-revised. I did not name the difficult word, and I spoke of another word with quite another object, as everybody can see. But if Mr. O. had looked up the passage, he would have seen it. Now, I suppose that the eleventh edition of Alexandre, and certainly Stephanus, Pape, etc., will give it a sense which is impossible to apply to its use by Clement, and no other, and he will find but little more than I have said of it in my pamphlet, except that, I think, they quote Aelian also. Let us see if Mr. O. can enlighten us further as to its force. Such may well be. As for me, I have no time to make deeper researches, but I can only think, that, if he had searched the original, he would at least have encountered the difficulty.
To sum up, here is what is stated in the pamphlet that I have examined. By Mr. O.'s admission, the meetings he would like to establish are not set up on scriptural principles. The principle we follow, Mr. O. himself admits is the one recognised by the word, and which governed the path of the church as God established it, but it is impracticable, he says, to act on this principle at present. Having abandoned the principle of the unity of the church, he cannot meet on the principle of this unity. That is impracticable, and he forms independent churches, which respect one another, and mutually accept each other's discipline from each other, provided it be judged expedient, otherwise not. This is not the discipline of the church according to the promised presence of the Lord, but the discipline of a voluntary association, accepted, or not, according to circumstances. An assembly may admit sin or blasphemy, and the assembly not be defiled; the one who committed the sin is guilty; those who accepted him, and remained in fellowship with him, are clear of all defilement. Then the minister may exclude on his own authority. I admit that Mr. B. did not speak of the permission of sin in an assembly; he tries, as all the Bethesdaites, to hide facts under their common formula. "If there is a wicked person in an assembly," then this story of defilement communicated by one assembly to another; but it is only hiding facts; but the point is, when the matter, being done wittingly -- the sin, or blasphemy, knowingly and voluntarily admitted -- whether the assembly is defiled, or not. Mr. O.'s system would entail the consequence that I might participate in the exclusion of a wicked person in one meeting, and take the Lord's supper with him in another.
+See "Collected Writings," Volume 20.
It is also recognised by Mr. O., and this is a point gained, that Mr. N.'s doctrine has not been retracted, and that those who will not reject his tracts should be excluded. Now this is not what Bethesda did, and numbers of the neutrals, or intermediates -- if Mr. O. prefers the word -- have declared that one ought not to exclude. But I do not know what an intermediate position, between the worship of God and the acceptance or admission of blasphemy against the Lord, can be.
I have only to add, that Mr. O. has confounded the church corporate with the persons composing it. John speaks of the latter, but never of the church. On the other hand, he confuses it with the kingdom, but to discuss all this would lead me too far. It seems to me that all who have spiritual intelligence can discern that John 17 applies to a moral and spiritual union among Christians, and not to the idea of the body of Christ; besides, John always speaks thus -- he speaks of individuals, not of corporations.
This is my reply to Mr. O. I have indeed done it in haste, my time being already well filled. You can use it as you may find good.
Yours ever affectionately,
"Is the 'one body' of Ephesians 4: 4 the divinely constituted ground of gathering?" A small paper with this title has been sent to me, signed C. E., initials with which I am not acquainted. The reply is very simple. It is. A very little attention to the passage itself and others which I shall cite, will prove it to every spiritual mind. It is, Christ being the centre and head, the great principle of gathering which has been the basis of those called Brethren, and has governed at any rate those of them intelligent in God's ways from the beginning. I add intelligent, because a person may be recently converted, and be sealed and of the body and so have title to be there, though his knowledge be defective. I shall quote a few passages to shew this point very quickly, profiting by the attack made upon the principle, to keep the point before the minds of Christians, which it is always profitable to do. As to making it clear and proving it, it has been done, not only in tracts drawn from Scripture, but in discussions with Christians of various phases, National and Free Church, since it came up, and dissenters of all classes, mostly, but not exclusively so, in Switzerland some thirty years ago or more, but translated most or all of them, into English.
It is clear that the perfection of the body of Christ, united to the Head, will be in glory. This has been contested, however, on the plea that Scripture never speaks but of the body on earth. But it seems to me that the end of Ephesians 1 clearly teaches the supremacy of Christ over all things as Head of the body, as the counsel of God in this respect. That was one extreme;+ the other is, that the unity of the body is not on earth, but only in heaven.
The tract confounds the kingdom with the church, quoting Matthew 13, as to tares being among the wheat. But this would deny all discipline; both are to grow together till the harvest. Final judgment would be the only putting out. This I may dismiss. It is simple nationalism or popery, no present gathering of saints at all.
+There is really only one church spoken of in Scripture, though the state be different in heaven and on earth; but of this further on.
It also confounds the house and husbandry of 1 Corinthians 3 with the body, which is not spoken of at all. We have a temple, that is, where God dwells, but in which there is no union with Him who dwells there. Here we have three cases. He who builds with God's materials; he who, himself a saint, builds with bad, and loses his labour; and he who seeks to corrupt and will be destroyed; but no thought of the body. The writer tells us the word church, or assembly, denotes in their collective character those who profess to have obtained salvation, as when Paul addresses his epistle to the church of God which is at Corinth. The example is an unhappy one, because the apostle states what he means by the church, and makes the difference of those who profess, though these are assumed to be genuine unless proved otherwise. The address of the apostle is as follows: "To the church of God, which is at Corinth, the sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus." That is, universal profession and sanctified ones are clearly distinguished, the former looked at as composing the assembly at Corinth, and that by God's calling. And the difference is maintained in the epistle; it is only in chapter 10 that the apostle comes to speak of the body.
Again we are told that in Acts 20, Paul speaks of grievous wolves entering into the church. Nothing of the kind. The church of God spoken of, is what is purchased with His own blood, I suppose the true church which belongs to Christ for ever, and which He will present to Himself. All we have is, that wolves would not spare the flock, from which true members of Christ might suffer, if they could not be lost. I suppose, feeding God's assembly was on earth, yet it is viewed as purchased by the blood of Christ. Now the church or assembly of God, here, though set up in perfection by God, was, as man, as Israel, as everything God has set up, placed under man's responsibility; and man, as he has already done and that the first thing, has failed. But that failure was not the principle on which it was set up, any more than sin was the principle of man's standing in creation, nor disobedience and idolatry the principle of Israel's standing under Sinai. In each case it was man spoiling what God had set up. Even in Matthew 13 (which I do not refer to as the church) it was an enemy's doing, while men slept. The opposite doctrine is what Jeremiah so sternly denounces: "We are delivered to do all these abominations." What the Lord did is clearly stated, Acts 2: 47, "The Lord added daily such as should be saved."
Why does Paul say in the passage on which C. E. relies, "after my decease," but to shew that spiritual energy preserved what God had set up, as long as it was there? C. E. with his independent churches, and others, and I holding the unity of the body, all believe that the church on earth has been corrupted, and that in the last days perilous times would come. That is not the question; but, is that corruption part of the divine principle of meeting, or a corruption which makes us guilty? Is it a part of the divine intention or man's fault? What I find in Scripture, in the seven churches C. E. refers to, is, that it ends in the terrible judgments of Thyatira, and being spued out of Christ's mouth as nauseous to Him, and the threat of judgment if they did not repent so soon as they left their first works. But what the author cites of Jude teaches us the same truth; certain men had "crept in unawares"; but creeping in unawares was not the principle upon which the saints were gathered, was not accepted as the order of the place. They were spots in their feasts of charity, feasting with those among whom they had crept. Enoch had prophesied of them. Nothing can be clearer than that they had nothing to do -- their being there had nothing to do -- with the principle of the gathering; they had crept in. Jude writes to them that are sanctified by God the Father. In John they were not in the assembly at all, but antichrists who had been in it, and were to be manifested that they were not of it.
Another objection, which is not new to me, is more plausible, and goes upon a certain borrowed acquaintance with Scripture, namely, that the unity of the body was not known till Paul taught it. Now, there was a time of transition of God's patience with the Jews, and Paul, called specially out to be the minister of the Gentiles, was the instrument in God's hands for unfolding the mystery of the union of Jews and Gentiles on the same footing. But God took care that it should not be a new, separate thing in its nature and essence. After Paul was called he was not allowed to begin the introduction of the Gentiles, and Peter insisted on this in Acts 15. He, not Paul, was the means of introducing Cornelius, and C. E. confounds the existence of the thing and the development of the doctrine. Paul was the great instrument, both of promulgating the doctrine, and carrying it out in practice; a dispensation was committed to him. But God graciously took care to guard against the mistake of C. E. by employing Peter to begin publicly that work as a fact, and securing its stability by not allowing Paul to make good at Antioch the truth he had received; and the church remained one from the beginning. But what is its essence is much more important. The union of the body subsists from the day of Pentecost. It was established as to Gentiles, before Paul's ministry, at Caesarea in the bright and godly centurion, and Paul, in God's wisdom, was not allowed to secure it among the Gentiles. That was to be done (where it was important to do it) among the Jews at Jerusalem. No doubt the union of Jew and Gentile was of importance, especially in those days; but it was not the essential principle of the body or its unity. That was union with Christ, the Head, by the Holy Ghost. That was what made the body and unity, and each Christian, so sealed, a member of Christ.
Was there no body of Christ till Paul spoke about the mystery? Yet, if the confusion made by C. E. between the existence of the body, and the knowledge of the mystery be accepted, there could not have been. Thousands have come into communion amongst those whom C. E. attacks, who know nothing but to cry Abba, Father, as sealed with the Spirit, and learn the mystery there. It is much to be desired that they should be intelligent as to it, and that they should know the place they are in. But I never heard of such being a term for communion. I suspect a very large number would have to be put out. That it is as such the assembly meets, that the truth as to this is found in tracts and writings, is quite true. The writer does not mean to say that we should meet as if there were two churches of God on earth. Meeting on that principle, as an expression in common use, means quite a different thing. We cannot meet as being the one assembly, because a great number of Christians are outside of us, but we meet on the principle of that unity. It is this unity of the whole body on earth which C. E. denies. What a new believer is introduced into, is that unity which unquestionably existed in the beginning, and which we seek to realise as far as we can. Supposing I was to say that we meet on the principle that holiness becomes God's house. C. E. seems hardly to think so, but who would say that could not be the bond of union? Unity with the Head by the Holy Ghost is the only bond of union, but that produces the unity of the body of which we are thus all members. We meet with the conviction that the gathered saints were at the beginning the body of Christ, and members one of another, and as such all one on earth (does C. E. mean to say they were not?), and that we ought to seek to realise it. To be of the assembly as having the Holy Ghost, and to understand and explain it, are two things; to deny it, which is C. E.'s place, is a third. But his statement goes further. God formed the church -- for it began down here -- on the ground, according to his system, of there being evil in it, tares. They hold the church met on that principle; not that men crept in unawares, but that it is the principle they are united on. Now holiness is not what binds us, nor the principle of unity, yet the assembly meets as composed of those who are sanctified, called saints, sanctified in Christ Jesus, on that principle, and as all one (all saints are one body), and we seek to realise it as far as we can. The principle or ground of gathering is that of all saints being one in Christ, and as such forming the one church of God on earth. Christians had lost this principle, and it has been recovered; hence much, and rightly, put forward.
I shall now shew, that what Scripture presents to us is a body on earth, formed on earth as Christ's body, the Head being in heaven, by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Let my reader look at 1 Corinthians 12: 12 to the end. It is perfectly impossible for a man in his senses not to recognise a body on earth. The apostle compares it to our natural body: we have body and members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body; the body is not one member, but many. But C. E. will say that this is in heaven. But, unfortunately, it is by one Spirit we are baptised into one body: now this was on earth. "Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence." They were to tarry at Jerusalem for the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon them. It was one of the two great characters of Christ's work. He it is that baptised with the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God came down to earth and formed one body before Paul was called. If anything need be added, it is found here, verse 25: and there was to be no schism in the body, the members were all to have the same care one for another; if one member suffered, all the members suffered with it, or one member were honoured, all the members rejoiced with it. "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular; and God hath set some in the church, etc ... ." Will C. E. tell me which of these gifts are to be exercised in heaven? The whole passage is as clear as language can make it, that there is a body on earth formed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and recognised on earth with these words, "so also is Christ." Chapter 10: 17 does not refer to the connection of the heathen with idols, or Jews with the altar. It is used in reference to this as the basis of the argument. "For we, being many, are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." The same principle is recognised as known truth in Romans 12, "For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." And all that follows applies to the saints down here exclusively. It is now (Ephesians 3: 10) that the manifold wisdom is to be made known by the church to principalities and powers in heavenly places, the Gentiles being a joint body. So in chapter 4, the very verse cited by C. E. It is exhortation to us now to endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit, and what we are called to is still a hope, as the verse itself says. It will be said, "But the hope of the calling is glory with Christ above." Undoubtedly, but it will then have ceased to be a hope; it is when we have been called and have it as a hope (for we are saved in hope) that there is one body and one Spirit; there is that, as there is one faith and one baptism. The whole passage plainly shews that it is the present time, the time when the Spirit is personally down here, and faith has its place -- hence the apostle speaks of the edifying of the body of Christ, "till we all come," etc. Hence C. E. cannot speak so; He has given these ministries, not for the edifying of the body, as Scripture speaks, but "the members of His body on earth." He has lost the great truth, that God has revived in these last days that presence of the Holy Ghost down here. He confounds the kingdom of heaven with the church and the body of Christ, and so will have tares in it, and tares to remain in it till harvest. In Scripture, "an enemy has done it."
I find in this same passage, Ephesians 4: 15, 16, "Speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." A husband is to love his wife as the Lord loves and cherishes the church, for we are members of His body. The only other passages, as far as I am aware, are Colossians 1: 18, and 3: 15. The former does not help us one way or the other, saying Christ is the head of the body, save as far as shewing, a remark that has its importance, that the apostle does not make the difference C. E. does. The latter passage clearly applies to earth as a present exhortation to peace; it shews clearly, as I said, that as to the unity of the body the apostle makes no distinction between the calling of God in its responsible effectuation now, and its sure divine effectuation when all is complete in result. There is one passage which speaks of it in this result, that is, takes in this view, Ephesians 1: 22, 23, but even so -- looks at the church as an existing thing. I have not to complain of the spirit in which the leaflet is written, but I am surprised in realising the complete loss of truth by those to whom the writer belongs.
I add a few supplementary words, to shew how this evil system destroys the whole idea of the church of God. First I would remark, that Christ gave Himself to gather together in one the children of God which were scattered abroad. Now I admit that this is not properly the body. John never speaks of the body. But it is unity, and it is down here, for those who were scattered will all be one any way up in heaven. Their being scattered abroad down here makes no difference as to that; there is no scattering there; yet whereas they were scattered, they were now to be gathered. This unity is ignored by C. E. The word 'church,' says C. E., denotes in their collective character those who profess, whereas in Scripture it is certainly not so at the founding of Christianity. There the Lord added daily+ such as should be saved. Further, who added? The Lord. Did He add mere professors? That such crept in ere many years were past we know. So later, "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." C. E. does not believe in a divine gathering at all at any time. God does not gather professors. And here the language is not quite honest. The writer says: "they (who profess to have obtained salvation) compose the assembly or assemblies." Which? for they are not the same thing. Hence the assembly is slipped out directly, and we read, "the church of God which is in Corinth," "the seven churches in Asia." Hence we read (page 3) that Christ, in His love and care for the members of His body on earth, provides for their edification, through various ministries and gifts of the Holy Ghost. But this does not alter the character of the assembly, whether in Corinth or Ephesus. He then speaks of evangelists as having their service outside the assembly, while gifts of healing were intended to meet the physical needs of men as men. All very well if we do not go to Scripture, but the assembly is wholly lost, save to say that the service of the evangelist is outside it. But where were the gifts, whether their service were in or out of the assembly, or for men as men? Here is the answer of Scripture: "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular; and God hath set some in the church, first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles; then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues," not all in a church, but in the church -- the assembly. Nothing can be more clear or definite. Evangelists are not there. The gifts are viewed simply as the power of the Spirit. In Ephesians 4 we find only gifts of edification, and they are attributed to the gift of Christ, in His care for the church, His body. There, there are evangelists: "He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" -- even the evangelists, for though they served in the world, they did not leave the fruits of their service there; they were brought into the church, never into a church, but into the church. And then pass on to verses 15, 16, "but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body to the edifying of itself in love." Can anything be clearer or more definite?
+I do not add "church," as the reading is generally rejected. I quote for thee character of those gathered, also who were the gathered.
But this passage leads me to the remark that this distinction, of what is here from what is in heaven, is destructive of the whole nature of Christianity, and the holiness that belongs to it. I have clearly shewn from Scripture that the word of God speaks of the body on earth, that its unity is there, its members are Christ's members,+ and members one of another. But I go further, and add that while, as was predicted, the church on earth has corrupted itself, the blessing that God had established being confided to man in responsibility,++ yet to separate the two in faith is to destroy not only the scriptural idea of a church, but the whole divine principle of holiness, individually and collectively. Our calling is heavenly, our hope is heavenly, our standard of walk only heavenly. Not seeing this was the source of the folly of the perfectionists. There is no goal, no measure of attainment down here. They took the deliverance of Romans 8 for perfection. The Christian has no goal of attainment but Christ in glory. If faithful, he does that one thing, runs to win Christ, and by any means to attain to that first resurrection; that produces the effect, so far as it operates, of walking like Christ down here. The believer's conversation (his living associations) is in heaven; he looks for Christ to change his body and conform it to Christ's glorious body. We say therefore, with Paul to the end, "not as though I had already attained," but we have no other measure of attainment, and he who best knows Christ, best knows how far he is from having attained. Every step of progress enables him to see more clearly what Christ is and how far he is from it. But there is no other goal, no other measure known or given. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the first-born among many brethren. He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one.
+I have not cited the latter part of Ephesians 5: 30, as probably the words are not genuine. Nor "to the church" (Acts 2: 47), for the same reason.
++So it ever has been since Adam, the first thing man has always done being to fail, while God's patient goodness has continued till the time of judgment came.
Now it is the knowledge of this glorified Christ by the Holy Ghost which is the formative power of holiness. This I proceed to shew from Scripture. God chastises us (Hebrews 12: 10) that we may be partakers of His holiness. Hence, in a very remarkable passage in 1 Thessalonians 3: 12, 13, "and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." Where is the difference for faith between our responsible state here and our presentation before God our Father there? How far we realise it, is another and important question; but the measure and principle is the same, or rather, blessed be His name, all one. And this is wrought by the revelation of Christ to our souls by the Holy Ghost, and Christ as He is in glory. Hence He says: "For their sakes I sanctify myself [set myself apart as the glorified man in heaven] that they also might be sanctified through the truth." And this is as clearly taught as possible. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure," 1 John 3. Again, "We, beholding with open [unveiled, alluding to Moses' veil] face the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory, into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord." All this is as clear as possible. There are not two holinesses; we cannot say, any of us, that we have attained, but our conversation is in heaven; and as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall bear the image of the heavenly. There is no other goal after which we run: our object is to grow up to Him who is the Head in all things, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. And note well here, this is not the question of our acceptance in Christ. There, there is no growth. As to that we say, "As he is so are we in this world."
It will be said, "But this is individual." I admit it. I quote it to shew the principle on which God deals with us as regards our responsible state in this world. Being made partakers of the divine nature, having the risen and glorified Christ as our life, and the revelation of this glorified Christ by the Holy Ghost, we cannot look at anything as goal of attainment but that glorified Christ; and as He could say being a divine Person "the Son of man who is in heaven" -- making, and in Him perfectly, His life, what it was down here -- so we (united to Him in glory, sitting in heavenly places in Him, and the Holy Ghost revealing what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor entered into the heart of man to conceive) take the affections, spirit, self-denial, practical realisation of what answers to Him in glory, as the motive and measure of a holy walk here; and thus, he that saith he is in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked. Hence it is said "Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us and given himself for us, a sacrifice and offering to God for a sweet-smelling savour." "Hereby know we love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." And in this chapter of the Ephesians referred to, the other essential name of God is taken, Light, and we are declared to be light in the Lord, and are to walk as children of light; and if our poor eyes have drooped in sleep, and we are lying among the dead, we are called to awake from sleep and Christ shall give us light. Our life is hid with Christ in God; we have no other measure than what He is.
There is not one holiness for heaven, and another for this world, as 1 Thessalonians 3: 13 so remarkably teaches. We have our treasure in an earthen vessel, know in part, see through a glass darkly, but the treasure, what we know and what we see, is one and the same. Eternal life is the end, but it is eternal life we have, but that life is Christ, the present Christ. "He that hath the Son, hath life"; then we shall have it as He is, but it is not another. I repeat he who is nearest to Him by faith, in whose heart Christ dwells, knows best how dear he is to Him, but how far he is from Him as an object of attainment. But he has not two Christs, but one. This is the principle of Scripture. We are in Christ as to acceptance, and Christ in us as present life, and the hope of glory before us; our path, as we are yet in the body, is always to bear about there the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
This principle would involve the church on high and below being but one, though here hindered by weakness in a responsible condition as individuals are. There is really no difference, but happily we are not left to draw conclusions on the subject. The word of God is formal and positive on the subject. "Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." C. E. may say this means the members. Of course it takes place in the members, though collectively too; but the church that was loved, and that will be presented to Christ without blemish -- the assembly that was loved and for which He gave Himself, the church that will be presented without a wrinkle by Christ to Himself -- is the church that He has sanctified down here in time by the word. The same thing is expressly taught in chapter 4 already quoted, except that it is also called His body, Christ being the Head, to whom we are to grow up; verse 16 specifically presenting the present operation in grace, and the increase of the body by the effectual working in the measure of every part; so that it is impossible to separate that body of which Christ is the Head, from that which grows and edifies itself here -- and the whole body, and an edified and increasing body. There is but one. Nothing can be more specific, positive, and formal.
Even as to a particular assembly, this as owned of God, is not as C. E. states. As such its members are not viewed as professors, but as to be presented blameless before Christ. In Corinth, blamed in all its ways, so bad that the apostle could not go there, he says, "Ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall confirm you to the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ." That was their present calling, that their final state, called into His fellowship (koinonian, to partake of His state) now, and blameless in it there. The beginning of the epistle to the Ephesians largely confirms this principle. In chapter 1, from verses 3 to 8, what time is it that is presented to us? When are we holy and without blame before Him in love? It is evidently the thought of God about us. Is it something else we are to realise now? And is what is here, the spiritual blessings with which God hath blessed us, only for the heavenly places, and our calling different now?
I admit surely the difference of realisation in human responsibility by the power of the Holy Ghost, and the perfect accomplishment by divine power when Christ shall come and change our body of humiliation, conforming it to His glorious body, when we shall be to the praise of His glory; but there are not two things. It is spoken of in itself: "to the glory of His grace" now, "to the praise of His glory" when all is perfected. And so in what follows as to the church. It is presented as in the purpose of God, with this much accomplished that Christ is set at His right hand in heavenly places, and the result is there stated as part of the same thing; "though we see not as yet all things put under him." But in what follows He takes care to shew that "we are quickened with him," according to the same power which raised Him from the dead where He lay for our sins in which we were dead, "raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ." Is this present or not? he does not say "with Christ," but "in Him," but this is to shew in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Is that of which He speaks, as shewing in coming ages the exceeding riches of His grace, a different thing from that which He has wrought now? But this is identified with "head to the church, his body." I admit fully it will be accomplished in glory. We have the spirit of adoption now; we wait for the adoption, to wit the redemption of the body. But I close.
The word of God is perfectly clear, and the identity of what is revealed and discerned by the Holy Ghost with what will be revealed in us, is seen to be of the very essence of Christianity, as Scripture presents it in its fulness. It is the very meaning of the phrase "we are saved in hope," and "though now we see Him not, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorified, receiving the end of our faith, the salvation of [our] souls." A church of professors denies that it is the church of God. He does not form one of the professors, that is quite clear. The thought is next door to blasphemy. The system denies Christian responsibility, and that the professing church will be judged for its unfaithfulness. It falsifies the nature of holiness, and Christ's present relation to the church. There is no bride to say "Come!" No purity according to what there will be then, as in Thessalonians, or according to what Christ is now as in 1 John 3. No recognition of the predicted corruption of the church, for even now we have to walk with those who call on the name of the Lord out of a pure heart. If it were to be a church of professors, and God would have it so, how many are to be allowed? That such may creep in unawares nobody denies, but the theory is that this is what God owns, His church on earth; that we are not to purify ourselves from vessels to dishonour, or go outside the camp.
For one thing I am thankful to C. E.: he has clearly brought out what has been really at stake in the painful questions which have lately exercised the saints he blames, in London, and which all have felt. It is because this was in question, without my having an unkindly feeling toward a human being, that I took my stand in the matter. The whole testimony of the unity of the body, and even of our heavenly calling was at stake, and in great danger, I admit too. Many of the brethren were much more immediately in the conflict than myself, and I thank God for giving them to be faithful in it; and while, I dare say, all was not perfect wisdom, God sustained them in grace. I speak thus as personally distinct, because I was almost all the time out of the country. But C. E. by his tract shews what was at stake, the whole special testimony of God as distinct from gospel truths as to pardon. As to this I say no more. If my reader wished to see where man's responsibility is taught, where the church is viewed as the house or temple, he must turn to 1 Corinthians 3, "Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon!"
I should never have replied to this tract, but that it offered an opportunity of shewing from Scripture the real character of the church now, and its identity for faith -- though placed here under man's responsibility (save God's infallible grace) -- with the church and spouse on high; and that Christians were bound to recognise and act on this, and so responsible for the state C. E.'s church of professors is in; and that even present individual holiness cannot be separated in its measure from what it will be in glory. All that is there, is brought down here now, as that which we are in the new creation and by the Holy Ghost, and according to which we are to live, and seek withal the unity of the Spirit.
I recognise that the brethren in question were well nigh in utter failure. I trust, humbled before Him, we may be allowed to maintain better than ever the holy testimony of God. As to the one who gathers, it is a present power here, the Holy Ghost. As to the centre to which they are gathered, it is Christ; but that makes all saints one, and on that principle they meet.
It may be well to state directly from Scripture what the new lump is, as it is now so much spoken of. Such a thing as leaving an assembly to be a new lump is not thought of in Scripture. I may have to leave an assembly on other grounds; but it is not what is spoken of here. The assembly of God is looked at in its true nature as an unleavened body; thus we are called upon to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And as leaven had got in, they were called on to purge out the old leaven, that they might be a new lump as they were unleavened. The discipline applied to all, the putting out all leaven, that the assembly, as a whole, might be a new lump. Thus, there is no such thing as leaving to be a new lump. The only new lump contemplated, is the whole assembly purified by putting out leaven -- the passage is as clear as possible. The great body of the saints is everywhere to be a new lump.
But, as I have referred to the currency of these questions, it is well to notice another element in operation, more moral, and wider in realisation. The discussions at London Bridge had given rise to the most widespread distrust of various brethren; the feeling being -- I am in communion with B., as I am of them, and thus in communion with positive evil; and getting away from evil governed the heart, and wide distress existed. Now, here, I fully recognise, was real trial; he who names the name of Christ was to depart from iniquity; yet these brethren were corporately connected with unfaithfulness. I do not identify a person bearing the name of Christ, and individually walking badly, and ecclesiastical connections with those who do. Actual right is right, and wrong wrong; still, it is very unsatisfactory to the heart and conscience to be in full confessed communion with evil; and as the evil thing judged was allowed to exist by those immediately concerned, their consciences were not at their ease. Many thought of leaving brethren. I had been in the deepest degree exercised by the very question; I agreed with them as to their judgment of the evil. But I did not think desertion was the remedy; it did not remedy the evil -- satisfied, perhaps, the individual conscience, but left the saints to their fate. I not only felt the evil was not remedied, but could not be, humanly speaking. But there was another difficulty: the door was closed against the interference of those who might have sought to apply one. Still, I felt the Lord had not given up His people, and it was not my place to flee as an hireling. I was accounted an unfaithful person by those disposed to leave; but, while I sympathise with those disposed to leave, as having personally done with evil, I do not think it was the path of faith. I trusted God for His testimony; I do not find it has been in vain.
There was a third principle of extra excellence which prevailed, under the popular name of Cluffism, which professed this superiority, and does, where it still holds its ground. It took a very high ground, carrying up to the third heaven, and making the Christ who is there, as communicated in all He is there to us, to be divine righteousness, though I always found it filled people with themselves. But the truth is, its origin was a filthy, carnal mysticism, not unfolded to all, but was such, that one of its adepts admitted it could not be propounded in a mixed company, where females were present. I know this was professed to be given up, but I doubt, from what I have heard, that it is thoroughly. But it is certain that from out of this resulted a pretension of a special remnant, brethren (so called) being Laodicean. This was based, too, on theories, and all sorts of theories, as to Philadelphia. The theories I believe to be all delusion. First, the four last churches all go on to the end, and what is found is a general estimate of the church by Christ, and of its result, with a promise to him who overcame, in the circumstances in which the church was. It is a mistake to think that the churches passed, by a kind of natural sequence, from one into the other.
But having taken up the proposed remedies for a low state of things -- my reader may have noticed three -- the first, some "silly women" plan of a new lump, clean contrary to the whole sense of the passage; secondly, conscience justly at work, but faith failing as to trusting Christ's faithfulness in taking care of His, and His testimony; and, thirdly, Cluffism, full of pretension and want of self-knowledge (though I fully admit several dear people got among them, misled by its promises of more spirituality, which suited itself more to their cravings). Still, two of the principal adepts of the system at Edinburgh, and a third at Cork, were put out for immoral conduct. Of that I think worse than I did, for, though wild, I thought it honest, which I do not now, as a system. But having briefly reviewed these, I add the new lump, as given in Scripture, as the great point for believers -- that is, the application of the divine principles of truth and holiness, and devotedness in testimony to the whole body of testimony-bearers; for that is the very force of the new lump. It might seem premature to speak of the company of testimony-bearers, but I do not believe it. I believe there are details to be carried out of God, but He does very much of it by the faithful testimony-bearing; but what He looks for now, is, not occupation with evil, but the springing up of testimony in grace -- plants of the Lord's planting by clear shining after rain.
My Dear Brother,
Further, it is a subject to be treated delicately, lest any should comfort themselves with the thought that you are content they should stay in the state spoken of in Romans 7, a supposition I should earnestly oppose. I do not think it is a Christian state at all: it is a man born again, but under the law, the state under the first husband. The deliverance is found in chapter 8, or more exactly the state of one delivered But my objection to the Wesleyan system, is, that it falsifies the whole Christian state as presented in Scripture; and, as to Dr. C., there is scarcely one definition or position right or scriptural, and all so loose and incoherent, that it is difficult to deal with.
Perfection is simply, as used in respect of man, being of full growth, neither more nor less in Greek. It is the word used in Hebrews 5, "them that are of full age," and referred to in Hebrews 6: I. The question is, what is the perfection held out to us in the New Testament?
All our blessings are in connection with the second Man, not with the first. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." We are predestinated "to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren"; and the effect of this, as to our present state and hopes, is seen in 1 John 3, "Beloved, now are we sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Hence a thought of perfection down here is foreign to the whole thought and scope of Christianity; lowers its standard, and, note -- it is not makes "mistakes in judgment,"++ etc., but "purifieth himself even as he is pure."
+A Letter on "Christ and Sanctification," by Dowgan Clark, M.D. (1879), and "Perfect, but not Perfected; or, Entire Sanctification," etc., by the Revelation G. O. Eldridge.
++"Mistakes in judgment will lead to mistakes in practice, even in the most holy person; and thus we conclude that, while it is the privilege and duty of the Christian to expect ... a restoration unto man's original condition, so far as moral purity is concerned; yet, in the present state of being, he must ever be subject to weakness, infirmities, and mistakes."
Reference to innocence, or the first Adam as innocent, is a ruinous mistake as to the whole nature of Christianity. That wholly refers to the second Man. Innocence has gone for ever with the entrance of the knowledge of good and evil. Holiness is the character of the new man, likeness to Christ, as He is the object set out before us: and this only, and being with Him, the object we run after. This "one thing I do"; it is that, and that only, goal, that is before us, never fully attained till He has changed our vile body, and fashioned it like His glorious body. The apostle denies all other object in his race; this "one thing I do"; and mark, this was his calling; first, that he might win Christ, not as life and station -- that he had -- but Himself; next, that he might attain to the resurrection from among the dead. He pressed towards the hope of his "calling (not "high," which is vague) above, of God in Christ Jesus": hence the apostle does not leave the subject without bringing in the changing the vile body. This object, sole object and goal of progress, leaves us always with the only end we aim at unattained here: we are always, not correcting "mistakes," but "purifying ourselves as he is pure.
The perfect, or full-grown, Christian is one who in faith is in the place that is ours in the purpose of God, one not merely knowing that Jesus is the Christ, and that his sins are forgiven him, but that he is in Christ before God, dead and risen with Him. Forgiveness refers to the works of the old man, to sins committed: perfection, to the new place into which we are entered in the second Man, to the actual possession of which we press forward, to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of us. This is the teaching of Philippians 3. Christ is our life; He has laid hold of us for that, and we are pressing forward towards it: there is no other object before us.
Romans 1 to 5: 11 treats of forgiveness and justification as regards our sins and guilt; chapter 5: 12 to the end of chapter 8, our new place in Christ; and though it does not speak of our resurrection with Him, makes Christ our life, and we in Him, and He in us. The last is deliverance; the ground in chapter 6; the state in chapter 8; the bearing of the law on a soul renewed, not yet possessing the deliverance, is described in chapter 7. The full-grown Christian, one who has apprehended his place as such in Christ, has his conversation (all his living associations) in heaven as a new creature, and presses forward for the possession of it, only must wait for the changing of this poor vile body, but can have no other goal.
There is another point which makes all this system false. There is no communication of a new life, which Adam innocent had not, did not need. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Of this Wesleyanism knows nothing; the man is changed by the operation of the Holy Ghost. But what Scripture says is, "He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life." "Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear." Both these things, the new life, and the only true calling, are left out in the system and in the tract, and change the whole form and system of Christianity. I do not call a person in Romans 7 properly a Christian; he is born of God, under the law, like the prodigal before he met his father.
But I turn to the definitions. All is wrong: conviction and repentance come before faith. Now if the Word had not reached the conscience, how was he convicted, and how did he repent? Nor is even conviction, that (save in the vaguest way) of "his undone condition," but of his guilt, and so danger of judgment. His state is a distinct thing, and a deeper lesson. One refers to what we have in Romans 1 to chapter 5: 11 -- all the world guilty by their own sins; the other to man's state by Adam's disobedience, as to which I discover that in me there is no good thing, and that the flesh cannot be subject to the will of God.
In repentance there is a change of mind, but there is no firm resolve to take any steps at all:+ that is a sign of its being untrue or superficial, though it may follow. Repentance is the self-judgment we pass upon ourselves in view of God's goodness, and refers to what we have done, not to what we shall do. As to his account of faith,++ it is so muddled, that it is hard to say anything of it. It is not the acceptance of God's mercy in Christ Jesus: it is, "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." It is the word of God brought home to the soul by the power of the Holy Ghost: it is then mixed with faith in those that hear it. Whenever what God presents to us in the Word is believed (as when Christ personally present here on earth was believed in as God's revelation of Himself and His mind to the soul), the testimony of God is received, "not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God," which works effectually in them that believe. Peter's sermon told the Jews what they had done, and God had done, to Christ, and then, on their being pricked in heart, so that they believed God's testimony as to that, he announced forgiveness and the gift of the Spirit.
+"Repentance is change of mind, a firm resolve to take the necessary steps for securing salvation."
++"Faith is the acceptance of God's mercy and grace in Christ Jesus. The grace of faith, or the power of believing, is the gift of God; the act of faith, or actual believing, is the exercise of that power. When God presents His truth to us ... He holds us accountable for the exercise of the faith He has given us."
The particular subject of faith is not faith itself, nor is it the acceptance of anything, but believing the testimony, and here in a divine way by the word. All the rest is without any authority of the Word, or indeed any sense. "The grace of faith or power of believing!" What is that when nothing is yet believed, for the act of faith comes afterwards? Yet he contradicts even his own distinction, for we are accountable for the faith which He has given to us, and this is so in the case when it is he that believeth not. That man is accountable, as in John 5, on adequate evidence from God, I fully own; but all this statement is an utter muddle.
Next, right and necessary as repentance is, justification is never referred to it.+ The end of the sentence may have a right use, which I therefore accept; but "his sins" leave it vague whose. The next is all confusion and error.++ What is his whole spiritual nature before its renovation? "The mind of the flesh is enmity against God," "is not subject to the law of God," cannot be; lusts against the Spirit when we have it; requires a thorn, a messenger of Satan, to keep it down, if a man has been in the third heaven. Does what is renewed and revolutionised require buffeting by Satan's messenger to keep it down?
+"By repentance towards God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the sinner experiences justification ... . By the atonement ... . the guilt of his sins is taken away, their legal penalties remitted, and his indebtedness cancelled."
++"He experiences conversion. This implies a change of heart; a renovation and revolution of the whole spiritual nature."
I must ask, too, was repentance a mere change of mind, and conversion a change of heart, and a distinct thing? Is all this before, what he calls, regeneration -- a word he does not explain? Does he really mean a new life, something he had not before, a new man contrasted with the old, something born of the Spirit which is spirit? Is there renovation without being born again? Is this being born again a new spiritual life he had not before, or a mere change? Is the eternal life that Christ is (as come down from heaven, 1 John 1) and gives, a mere change, or a new thing conferred? All turns on this. The eternal life which I receive was with the Father; is that a mere change?
His explanation of adoption+ is not correct, but not such as needs large remark. We are waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption of the body, but we are sons by faith of Jesus Christ, and receive therefore the spirit of adoption. All this comes from their not seeing that our only place in result is association with Christ in glory, though we here wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
It is worthy of remark, that though the atonement is mentioned in an early part of the series as ground for experience, the blood of Christ, in its efficacy with God, is never mentioned: it is a sinner experiences this and that. Nor is there a hint of our being in Christ, or the righteousness of God in Him; nor indeed of God's love to the sinner when he was in his sins.
All believers are said to be sanctified -- sanctification as all the rest of the blessings, being through faith. I do not only recognise, but insist on, the gift of a holy nature (but I do not see hinted at, Christ being our life); a nature which hates sin; and I see progress and growth taught and insisted on in the word of God, but I find no such statement as is here made. Where is "holiness" taught to be "sanctification in perpetuity"? Holiness as a quality is heart purity, not implies it, but it is according to the divine nature: He chastens us that we may be partakers of His holiness.
+"He experiences adoption -- God takes him into His family for Christ's sake, and he becomes a son."
'Freedom from sin' is an ambiguous term in English, and this ambiguity is used here. A captive is set free: a horse is free from vice, that is, has none. Now in the last sense we are never said to be free from sin: set free, not from sin, but from the law of sin and death, with a real, true deliverance, we are said to be. It will be said: Is it not written, "He that is dead is freed from sin"? Now the word is really "justified from sin" as you may see in the margin.
But I turn directly to the statement: who is freed from sin? He that is dead, no one else: death of the old man alone frees me. Are we to wait, then, till we are actually dead, that there should be no sin in us? If you mean that there should be death in the nature of the old man -- "sin in the flesh" -- I say certainly; but to be dead, we must die. But that is not the doctrine here, save quite in the abstract. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin, as having been crucified with Christ, yet living, but not we, but Christ living in us. Before this, we are captive to the law of sin in our members -- not the full, true Christian state: now, as having by faith reckoned ourselves dead to sin, and alive unto God, we are not in Adam, but in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death"; not free from sin, so that there is no sin in the flesh, but made free from its law. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; but it is now no law to us. Romans 8: 2 answers, as deliverance from it, to chapter 7: 23; the way of it is in chapter 8: 4.
I totally deny+ the utterly false definition of sin given in this paragraph. Paul made a great fuss about nothing in Romans 7, if that be what sin is. It certainly was not voluntary, for the point insisted on (is), that he was doing what he would not, and hated. He was not delivered, but to will was present with him, but he could not perform; he was a captive. Besides, it is written, "Until the law sin was in the world," it became exceedingly sinful by it; and they that have sinned without law, perish without law. All this is false theology, not scripture.
+"The term sin, is used in the Bible, either in the sense of sin committed -- an actual transgression in thought, word, or deed; or sin indwelling -- that depravity of heart which leads to all sinful acts ... .. In the one sense, sin is a voluntary violation of the divine law, in the other, it is an involuntary state of the heart! ... Now our definition of holiness is intended to apply to sin in both these aspects. It is freedom from the guilt of sin," etc.
But the new man being denied as a distinct thing, he makes it a mere state of the heart; whereas Scripture speaks of sin in the flesh, a mind which cannot be subject to the law of God; and the lusts of the flesh, sin working lust in us, flesh lusting against the Spirit, a thing which ceases by death, only actually by actual death, as to its present power, by reckoning ourselves dead, and always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus; death working in us, and that, that the life of Jesus might be manifested in our bodies. Why death working in us, if there was nothing to be kept down? We are not under the law of sin; not only have we a new life in power, but sin in the flesh is condemned (not forgiven) in the cross, and we have died with Christ for faith there; but to make this good, we must carry about the dying; death must work in us.
Further, Christ's grace is sufficient for us. His strength is made perfect in weakness; and God, as to our walk, is faithful not to suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able, so that we have no excuse when we do fail, and can walk, as far as sufficiency of grace goes, in growing joy in God. Further, holiness has nothing to do with freedom from guilt; that is, by the blood of Christ. To have part in this, a man must be born again, but holiness does not efface guilt. The deliverance we get does deliver us from its dominion, but not from the existence of the flesh; hence the standard of holiness is always lowered by those who pretend to it.
I do not deny walking in constant communion with God. I do not believe Romans 7 the true state of a Christian at all; but to say sin is not in the flesh, is not opposed to the Spirit, is wholly anti-scriptural. There is a sealing and anointing with the Holy Ghost, which delivers from the dominion of sin, but does not alter the nature of the flesh. I deny Adam was created in a state of holiness: Scripture never says so. He was innocent, and had not the knowledge of evil: there was a tendency to sin.
Scripture says, "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light, having no part dark." The tract says we are liable to false perceptions, etc., because of imperfect physical organisation.+ Does want of a single eye come physically from the body? All this lowers the idea of holiness. They deny that in many things we all offend, and what Christ ascribes to want of a single eye they excuse, and make compatible with the original condition of moral purity in which unfallen man was: growing conformity to Christ in glory, by purifying ourselves as He is pure, doing this one thing, never enters their mind.
It is false to say He will not reign in a divided heart: Christ's statement is totally different, and indeed contradicts this. He does not reign at all there.++ "The will of God, even your sanctification," is an abuse of the passage (1 Thessalonians 4: 3); the end of it is left out, which totally alters the sense. Peter says, "holy in all manner of conversation."
The blood of Christ cleansing from all sin is also an abuse of the passage. John is speaking of sins and righteousness in a passage which declares, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." It is a question of our standing before God in the light, while we cannot say we have no sin. I am sanctified and cleansed; though I fully insist on walking by grace up to the place I am in -- but not in lowering God's holiness and my thought of what sin is, by pretending to be as pure as Adam, and talking about physical organisation when I fail. Had Adam any lusts?
I fully recognise the power of the Spirit of God to keep us in peaceful communion with God in love, but will not lower the standard of holiness to excuse what is of the flesh. It is not without meaning that the author quotes only the Old Testament for his promises, where we know the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest, and the question of purity is quite different. One has only to consult the passages to see they have nothing to do with it. It is the removal of evil men and wickedness by judgment, in Isaiah 1: 25. In Ezekiel 36: 25, it is the cleansing of Israel from filthiness and idols when they are restored, and making them walk in His ways, with no word of absolute internal purity of soul. The Lord's allusion to it with Nicodemus is not a state of perfection, but being born again.
+"There are, doubtless, differences, which need not detain us, between the perfection of Adam before the fall, and the Christian perfection which is the object of this essay. The differences arise chiefly from the diseased and imperfect physical organisation which now appertains to our race, and which did not appertain to Adam; in consequence of which, the mind, through its connection with such a body, is liable to false perceptions and erroneous judgments."
++The new Jerusalem is not down here.
If the Spirit be distinctly the sanctifier (page 10), as distinguished from the blood-cleansing, why did he use before the latter for meaning sanctification? 'Convicted for sanctification,' I find nothing of in Scripture; I deny the very state they speak of (which is a mere ignorant confusion with the deliverance of Romans 8), as being what the Christian is running after. He has Christ glorified for his standard, and is changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord, and judges as sin what they excuse.
The whole system naturally takes them out of grace: they must be absorbed by the idea of attainment, and the consecrating act is our own. That we should yield ourselves to God, as those alive to God, is blessedly scriptural, and have fruit unto holiness with the end -- not a state of holiness, but everlasting life; but it is the peaceful consciousness of a delivered soul who feels the claim of infinite love, and that it is not its own, but bought with a price. Here we are 'to do all we can,' even when dead in sins, whereas Scripture says, then we are quickened, created in Christ Jesus. We are, when dead, to 'surrender ourselves to be saved,' a thing never said in scripture; we are to submit to God's righteousness. And now mark the phrase, 'measurably quickened.' Are they born of God, or not? Have they life, eternal life? 'There is some life in them.' Those to whom Paul writes are viewed as having the old man crucified with Christ, and alive in Him; and what they are called to is, not to dream there is no sin in them, when there is, and call lusts no sin unless the will consents, but not to let sin reign in their mortal body, to fulfil it in its lusts. For sin should not have dominion over them, because they were not under law, but under grace, and, as alive and set free withal from the law of sin, given the blessed privilege, as being so, to yield themselves to God. It is a lovely passage, but exactly the contrary of what is stated in the tract. It is a freed man blessedly giving himself to God; not a man wanting to be free, able to do something, as having some life, to get free in another sense, altogether free from sin, a sense not in Scripture at all. It is Christ, not his own faith, nor repentance, nor prayer, that justifies the sinner; albeit the repentance, the faith, the prayer, are all necessary to the bestowment of the pardon. He puts this on wholly wrong ground, but I do not dwell on it.
The whole position of Adamic purity is false, never found again here; and not the object, which is the state of the last Adam, not of the first. But what has, "I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty," to do with perfect holiness? The apostle is speaking of an unequal yoke, and the manifested acceptance of faithful Christians in the position of sons. He talks of self-consecration, of being accepted of God; he does not know what it means, nor the liberty in which a Christian serves. We are Christ's. He tells us, "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you," is the baptism by the Holy Ghost. Now Christ is careful to tell His own they were already clean by the word, when they had not yet received the Holy Ghost at all, of which He goes on to speak to them as of something to come. The constant abuse of scripture is really deplorable.
Then he tells us that by the baptism of the Holy Ghost the soul is freed from the dominion of sin. Now this I fully admit, but free from dominion of sin, and freed from sin, so as to be pure as Adam, are two different things. "Victory" is anything but the absence of an enemy. The life of a Christian is a life of faith, moment by moment, but his being purged from his sins by Christ's blood is once and for ever, if Scripture be true. He did not sit down on the throne on high till "he had by himself purged our sins," or, as it is said in Hebrews 9, "must he often have suffered"; but, as to the conscience, "by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," so that "the worshippers once purged" should, as to imputation, "have no more conscience of sins," but "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." Then let the believer, knowing that his old man has been crucified with Christ, seek to grow up to Him who is the Head in all things, and walk as Christ walked, "changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." The evil one cannot touch him, if he walks with Christ in lowliness and diligence of heart, "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body."
I would press his believing in deliverance, if he has not found it, but not excuse evil, and the workings of the flesh within, to maintain a fancied purity and absence of sin, instead of judging himself for not having been enough with Christ to prevent it stirring, and purifying himself, as Scripture tells him to do, as Christ is pure, because he knows he is going to be like Him.
The other tract -- though I doubt not the sincerity of either -- is more mature, and goes further; but with more light, the root of bitterness still there. I agree with it that the only normal state of Christians is what they call perfection, but this is merely the deliverance of Romans 6 and 8; falsified by calling it perfection, with which it has nothing to do, and thereby most mischievously lowering the estimation of sin. It tries to ground this by distinguishing in the same passage perfected and perfect, and giving the latter a sense it never has in Scripture.+
Paul was doing only one thing, seeking to be perfected, but not being so, nor having yet attained, doing only that; yet he is made to affirm some other perfection, of which there is not one idea or thought in the chapter, which is wholly occupied with the first kind of perfection, ending with changing his body, which he has not apprehended or laid hold of, and which alone occupies him. The winning Christ is not what the author says. Paul was now seeking to win Christ: "do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." The statement falsifies the whole passage. 'Now his one ambition'++ hence is false; it is, "if by any means he might attain to the resurrection from among the dead." No doubt he sought to know Him better here, but it was all one thing, and Christ had been always everything to him from the beginning (verse 7, 8), and he had been running the same course, and was all through; his conversation was in heaven, and he had been, and was always, looking to win, and be conformed to Christ in glory.
The sense given to "perfect" is not given in the chapter, and is wholly excluded by it. Yet, after all, "perfection" is only spiritual infancy, the foundation of a healthy growth.+++ Deliverance, the normal Christian condition, is. But, after all, though we are in moral purity, like Adam before the fall, it is such a state (page 10) that we 'could not stand for a moment before God, if tried by the law.' Was this Adam's state? And why not? Then we get the abominable doctrine, that 'temptation is not sin.' Temptations from without are not sin: Christ went through everything that could try a holy being, but this is not the point. (See James 1: 2, 14.) They are suggestions, and he talks of supposing our hearts to be impure. Had Adam these impure suggestions? And they are 'vile suggestions,' only our 'will rises up in opposition to them,' 'we are in heaviness through them' (this applies to the other kind of temptations, trials which it is our joy to fall into). Had Christ any of these vile suggestions? Did Satan ever succeed in putting them into His mind? Mr. E. avoids the point; but are lusts not sin? James is quoted to prove it; but James speaks of effects, and Paul tells us that sin produced all manner of lusts -- goes to the root, the evil nature. It is the ignoring this which is one grand evil of this system.
+"In this verse (Philippians 3: 15) he claims perfection for himself and some others; though, in verse 12, he acknowledges that he has not been perfected."
++"Now his one ambition was to know Christ more fully, etc., that he might attain in the resurrection complete likeness to his Lord."
+++"Entire sanctification is a healthy spiritual infancy, which leads on to Christian maturity."
Now, if we were humble and faithful, I believe that Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, these evil suggestions, these impure thoughts, would not arise; but in this false perfection they are allowed, instead of the heart being judged for having them, to keep up the credit of fancied perfection. I asked a perfect person once, and I believe a sincere, good person, whether, if the devil suggested to her to eat a handful of mud, she would do, or desire it. She owned she would not. There was something more than a suggestion, there was the sinful nature -- the lust, that met it where it was. There are fiery darts, temptations to blasphemies, yet even these, if Christ dwells in us, if really delivered, do not come; but that is from the evil, sinful nature, and is to be judged, as shewing the sin that dwells in us. Satan has nothing for the life of Christ; if we do not keep the dying of Jesus on the flesh, he has for that. The dangers of it are justly depicted by the author: I have seen plenty of it.
My objection to it is not that, but that it connects a vital Christian truth, the passage from Romans 7 to 8 with false doctrine; denying sin in the flesh, and the communication of a wholly new life -- Christ our life ("he that hath the Son, hath life"); denies lust to be sin, consequently, which betrays this nature, and mischievously lowers the standard of Christian holiness, palliating what a true soul knows to be evil, and falsifies the race and object of a Christian. That Mr. E. presses it in a true love of holiness and self-consecration, I do not doubt, and in this I should sympathise wholly with him; and he has got on a good step when he says it is the normal Christian: with that I fully agree, only that he is tied up by his doctrinal system to a false presentation of it all. His separating perfected and perfect is a poor attempt to put it straight, I mean to reconcile his sincere desires and his old doctrine. I have written in haste, being excessively occupied, which has also caused delay.
Ever affectionately yours in the Lord,
(Remarks on a paper of Reverend S. Minton)
"Finding that great misconception prevails with regard to the views propounded in a course of sermons lately preached at Eaton Chapel, I think it well to give the following summary of them.
"1. Scripture declares that the 'everlasting punishment' of the wicked will consist of 'everlasting destruction,' after the infliction of 'many' or 'few stripes,' according to their several deserts. The popular theory teaches that it will consist of everlasting pain.
"2. Scripture declares that God will 'destroy both body and soul in hell.' The popular theory teaches that He will destroy neither one nor the other; but preserve both of them alive for ever, in unmitigated agony.
"3. Scripture declares that 'our God is a consuming fire.' The popular theory teaches that He is only a scorching fire.
"4. Scripture declares that the 'fiery indignation' will 'devour the adversaries.' The popular theory teaches that it will do no such thing, but only torture them.
"5. Scripture declares that the wicked will perish 'like natural brute beasts.' The popular theory teaches that there will be no analogy whatever between the two cases.
"6. Scripture declares that whosoever 'will save his life' by unfaithfulness to Christ, shall ultimately 'lose it' in a far more terrible manner. The popular theory teaches that no man can lose his life more than once, and that 'the second death' is no death at all, but eternal life in sin and misery.
"7. Scripture declares that whosoever 'doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' The popular theory teaches that every man will abide for ever, whether he does the will of God or not.
"8. Scripture declares that if we desire 'immortality,' we must seek it 'by patient continuance in well doing.' The popular theory teaches that every man possesses inherent indefeasible immortality, and what we have to seek for, is, that it may prove a blessing, and not a curse, to us.
"9. Scripture declares that 'the wages of sin is death.' The popular theory teaches that it is eternal life in misery; in other words, that God will inflict upon impenitent sinners a punishment infinitely greater than what He has pronounced to be their due.
"10. Scripture declares that 'the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' The popular theory teaches that eternal life is the common possession of all men, and that the gift of God, through Christ, is the privilege of spending it in holiness and happiness.
"11. Scripture declares that 'the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.' The popular theory teaches that they never will be destroyed at all, but that a portion of the universe will be specially set apart for the eternal exhibition of them in their fullest maturity.
"12. Scripture declares that Christ is to 'reconcile all things to God.' The popular theory teaches that all things will never be reconciled to God; that discord and disorder will never cease, but only be confined to one particular locality.
"13. Scripture declares that in Christ 'all things consist.' The popular theory teaches that a whole kingdom will 'consist' for ever, although not 'in Him.'
"14. Scripture declares that 'he that hath the Son, hath life; but he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life'; that 'if we live after the flesh, we shall die, but if, through the Spirit, we mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live.' The advocates of the popular theory, say, that the life of the believers and unbelievers, of natural men and spiritual men, must be of equal duration -- that the doctrine of eternal happiness, and the doctrine of eternal misery, must stand or fall together -- in other words, that if what scripture asserts be true, what it denies must be also true.
"I take my stand, therefore, on the plain, consistent, emphatic teaching of the whole bible, from beginning to end, as opposed to the 'traditions of men,' which have so grievously perverted it, and thereby obscured the glory of Christ, reduced to an unmeaning form the declaration that 'God is love,' produced a frightful amount of infidelity, robbed the law of its terrors, by making it threaten sinners with what they are sure will never be executed, incalculably weakened the saving power of the gospel, and damaged the believer's whole spiritual constitution, by putting an unnatural strain upon it, that God never intended it to bear.
"The three or four passages that are thought to confirm the traditional view have been examined in a volume entitled, 'The Glory of Christ in the Creation and Reconciliation of all Things' (Longmans), and been found either to entirely fail in lending it even the appearance of support, or to be but as dust in the balance against the overpowering weight of testimony on the other side.
"SAMUEL MINTON, Incumbent of Eaton Chapel, Eaton Square."
I see, as I have ever seen in like cases, simply Satan and the will of man, in the paper of Mr. M. on "The Eternity of Evil." The accompanying inquiry,+ is in a different spirit; but it is a mere fallacy. The scripture does not merely teach that the "wages of sin is death," though this be true; it states that after death comes the judgment -- that is, that the whole proper final punishment of sin is after death. It never speaks of everlasting death; it does several times of everlasting punishment or torment. This no one can deny. That is, the facts are quite opposed to what the inquirer states. It does speak of everlasting destruction. But this proves, not that they cease to exist, but that destruction does not mean what they say, as it may last. And those who hold these doctrines admit it does last, and may a long time, for the everlasting destruction is at the coming of the Lord to be glorified in His saints (that is, at the beginning of their punishment, not at the end). That is, "destruction" does not mean their ceasing to exist. Adam was not threatened with never-ending torments! Quite true. Life, incorruptibility, and wrath from heaven (though gathered from a few passages in the Old Testament, and rightly) were not revealed and brought to light but by the gospel. The gospel does speak expressly of everlasting punishment. And everlasting (though accommodated to what lasts as long as the thing it is attached to -- to what only ceases with the existence of the object spoken of) yet properly means eternal, always existing. We read of the "eternal God," the "eternal Spirit," and "eternal redemption," and "eternal inheritance," and "eternal life." It means eternal, or everlasting; and eternal life and eternal punishment go together in Matthew 25, as of equivalent import as to the word 'eternal.' Any attempt to get rid of the force of this word, proves the will of him who attempts it, and nothing else. Further, the same words are used as to torment and the existence of God. He lives "for ever and ever," and they are tormented "for ever and ever," Revelation 14: 11.
+"The bible teaches that 'the wages of sin is death'; its general teaching is not endless pain, but everlasting death and destruction. Adam was not threatened with never-ending torments. Do favour me with your thoughts on this great subject."
1. As to the first statement of the accompanying paper, it is false. Scripture does not speak of everlasting destruction after the infliction of many or few stripes. It is simply false; it speaks of everlasting destruction from His presence, when Christ comes, and it speaks of many or few stripes at the same time in Luke not after; proving quite the contrary -- that destruction does not mean ceasing to exist.
2. Destruction does not mean causing to cease to exist. "The lost sheep of the house of Israel" is the same word. "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself." "Carest thou not that we perish?" Destruction cannot be everlasting, if it means causing to cease to exist. Indeed, it is not said (which I merely note to shew the carelessness of the writer) that "God will destroy both body and soul in hell," but that He is able. Man can only kill the body. It is a question of power to be feared.
3. As to the third, it is clap-trap; and when Scripture is consulted, it proves the contrary. In Deuteronomy 4: 24, God is a jealous God, a consuming fire, and Israel are destroyed (that is, perish off the land, and are scattered). They are destroyed, and perish, but do not cease to exist.
4. This, again, proves the idle inattention to Scripture on this weighty subject. If devouring adversaries means ceasing to exist, it is the end of sore punishment, and is the same result as for those who died without mercy. Yet it is "much sorer punishment"; that is, the whole principle of interpretation is careless and false.
5. As to this, the scripture never says anything of the kind. The people are compared to beasts, not the destruction. The word, too, itself is used here for moral corruption, shewing it does not mean mere ceasing to exist. Compare 1 Corinthians 3: 17 in Greek.
6. As to this, Scripture says nothing of the kind. This is too bad, because Scripture speaks expressly of the second death, which is the lake of fire; that is, as far as language goes, that he does lose his life more than once. A second death is declared to be the torment of the lake of fire, not its termination; at any rate, a second death is a statement of losing life more than once. I notice it to shew the extreme carelessness of assertion; for I do not believe that, in the full sense of ceasing to exist, life ceases in either case.
7. In saying he that does the will of God abides for ever, it is wholly in contrast with the fashion of this world, and there is no allusion to the wicked, good or bad; nothing is said about them. Elsewhere it is taught that they survive death, and are punished eternally.
8. It is false; it speaks of incorruptibility, which Scripture distinguishes from immortality; and in the passage, a state of glory is referred to, not the mortality, nor immortality, of the soul, neither of which is spoken of.
9. Of this I have spoken. It is dishonest, because all admit judgment comes after.
10. Eternal life and immortality are distinct things. Christ is eternal life (see 1 John 1), and God gives it us in giving Christ; nor is it ever said even to be in us, but in His Son; and so we have it. Eternal life is in the Son; and he that has the Son, has life. This the wicked have not. The angels are immortal, but they are never said to have eternal life. There is no such thought as that eternal life is the common possession of all men; there is, that men have immortal, undying souls -- a very different thing.
11. It is a gross blunder. The punishment of the wicked is not the work of the devil; he is in the punishment himself.
12. This, again, is quite false. Destruction is a strange reconciliation! But it is not said. It is said, in Colossians, that God will reconcile all things to Himself, in heaven and in earth, by Christ. But in Philippians it is said that all things bow, in heaven and in earth and under the earth (infernal), shewing that there are things forced to bow which are not reconciled.
13. It is another blunder. All things are said to consist in Him now, or subsist by Him; and so, if this argument be of any avail, the devil and wicked men do so now -- and may much more reasonably when presented. But it speaks of all as creatures simply being upheld in existence by Him, as they must be by God. There is no kingdom at all.
14. It proves simply nothing. It speaks of spiritual life. "He that hath not the Son, hath not life"; but he is fully alive now in this world; existence has nothing to do with the matter. All this is really trifling with Scripture.
But I have a word to add. The doctrine presented does not say all. I have not, according to it, an immortal soul, now or at all, but a mere animal life, such as a beast has, though superior in degree of intelligence. God, it may be alleged, could give eternal life to a beast. Be it so; but the beast cannot be responsible for sin while he is a beast, nor repent of what he had done; nor can I; nor can any atonement be made for it. Thus, with a pretended doctrine of eternal life and love and mercy, responsibility, repentance, and atonement disappear. This is wholly of Satan. Scripture everywhere teaches these truths; and I cite, as first distinctly establishing it, the case of Cain; Genesis 4: 6, 7. The creation of man brings out as distinctly as possible, the difference of man's position as to his soul; Genesis 1: 24. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." And man is not included. "God saw that it was good." It was the subject creation; man's is taken up apart in verse 26, when man is created in God's image, and after His likeness. And the manner is taught in chapter 2: 7. He formed man out of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. That is, it was by a direct communication from God Himself that he became a living soul.
Hence we are declared, in Acts 17, to be the offspring of God. And the body is distinctly and expressly said to be mortal, in contrast with the soul, as in 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 4, etc. And where it is said, "Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do ... . Fear him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell." The testimony of Scripture is express; "their [not, the] worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." It is not punishment, if there is no one to bear punishment; and the contrast with life leaves no ambiguity as to the force of everlasting.
There is a passage which illustrates this doctrine: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
I can only briefly reply to what is before me. It is much more elaborately taught in other publications. Nor does it in any shape approve itself to a right-feeling mind. A hater of God, if immortal, must be miserable when time has ceased to be. Pure vengeance for a lengthened period on which is to perish is gratuitous misery. I admit fully this is no proof. It merely shews that what men may allege as better to attract may, when rightly viewed, repel as offensive.
The remarks of Mr. M. seem to me singularly weak and careless; but it is these I have to meet here. I know it is spreading; but so is infidelity in other shapes. I have had a good deal to say to the doctrine elsewhere. Responsibility and the atonement are lost, and must be so, wherever it is received. It is simply a work of Satan. It is infidelity even as to what man is; for in this case we are beasts with a bigger brain. The creation of man directly contradicts this.
My Dear Brother,
Save as to the immortality of God, where it declares death, of course, has no part, mortality and immortality as to men, are applied solely to the body and have nothing to do with eternal life. Eternal life is what we have in the Second Adam: the question is the condition of the first. Thus, "when this mortal shall have put on immortality," "the life of Jesus in our mortal flesh." The places are these -- Romans 6: 12, "mortal body"; chapter 8: 11, "mortal bodies"; 1 Corinthians 15: 53, "this mortal"; verse 54, where it is the resurrection, that is, the body (or change); 2 Corinthians 4: 11, "our mortal flesh"; verse 4, "mortality swallowed up of life," when he speaks of the tabernacle we are groaning in. Mortality is always of the body; immortality is put in contrast with mortality (not mortality of the soul, but of your present mortal condition). 1 Corinthians 15: 53, 54, is the change from a mortal state. Otherwise it is used only of God. In 1 Timothy 6: 16, He is undying in nature. Mortal is applied to our present state, but is not applied to the soul at all. That God only has immortality does not affect an undying existence conferred; for angels are not mortal, as all admit, and as Luke 20: 36 shews. With these and the state of the fallen angels these teachers never trouble themselves. Men must not suffer; their love goes no farther than themselves. Now the everlasting punishment is prepared for the devil and his angels, and there the judged of Matthew 25 are sent; so Revelation 20: 10, 15; chapter 21: 8.
As to the life we have naturally, beasts were formed by God's word out of the ground, and there the ordinary creation ended, and then beasts were pronounced good; Genesis 1: 25. And then God proceeds in solemn consultation to form man as His image, as lord of all that had been created, and in His likeness, and first makes him a frame out of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man by partaking of what came directly from God became a living soul (not at all as the beasts), God's image on the earth. Hence he is called (Acts 17) His offspring. He has a spirit as well as a mere soul, when the distinction needs to be made, which death does not touch. We are not to fear them which kill the body and after that have no more that they can do -- that death does not touch what is beside bodily life. I will speak of "destroy" in good time; but death leaves the soul in existence, not merely the souls of saints. When the resurrection was called into question by the Sadducees, it is not said of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob only, that they are alive, nor is this founded on their being saints, though they were such, but it is added, "for all live unto him." Death does not affect the soul, All live, not for man indeed on the earth but, for God.
The case of Lazarus and Dives clearly teaches the same solemn truth; the sinner was as much alive as the saint. They allege that this is a Jewish figure. I admit it fully as to the form; but it is not a figure of a person's not existing. The second death is the lake of fire -- is punishment. They allege that it burns man out in time, and that ceasing to exist is the second death; but Scripture says the punishment is itself the second death. Death never means ceasing to exist.
Then as to this word "everlasting." It is incontrovertible that its proper sense is everlasting. It is defined carefully to mean it by Aristotle and Philo (the last a religious Jewish writer of the apostles' age) and others. Scripture speaks of the eternal God, the eternal Spirit, the eternal inheritance, eternal redemption; and what makes it conclusively evident that the word in itself means it is the statement of the apostle in 2 Corinthians 4: "The things which are seen are temporal, and the things which are not seen are eternal," where it is used in express contrast with temporal, without any subject (as they allege) which on other grounds shews what it means. So eternal life and eternal punishment are used in direct contrast -- eternal life is in Christ, the gift of God. It is only named twice in the Old Testament, and both refer to the millennium (Daniel 12; Psalm 133); for life and incorruptibility were brought to light by the gospel. In Romans 2: 7 it is incorruptibility, not immortality.
None of the quotations following, apply to the subject at all. I have eternal life now; yet I am as mortal as ever. That life is not touched in any way when I die; 2 Corinthians 5: 6-8. It is in full glory, when I get a glorious body; mortality or immortality it has nothing to do with, nor they with it. It is "life and incorruptibility" which are brought to light by the gospel. There is a resurrection of the unjust as of the just. They subsist meanwhile, or there is no one to raise; their judgment comes after their death. At any rate eternal life does not touch or take away mortality -- has nothing to do with it, nor does it give immortality. It is only the darkness of common doctrine that has given rise to these statements, which have no real foundation at all. "All live unto him." Destroying the body does not touch the soul. "Who only hath immortality" does not apply to created existence. The angels are not mortal as we are, but they have no existence independent of God any more than we have.
Dr. Whately is wrong altogether -- + "of those only," he says, "who shall," etc. Now it is not so. Immortality is only used twice, applied only to the body, and when it has ceased to be mortal.
+"It is certain that the words, 'life,' 'eternal life,' 'immortality,' etc., are always applied to the condition of those, and of those only, who shall at the last day be approved as 'good and faithful servants,' who are to 'enter into the joy of their Lord.'" Dr. Whately.
Another thing important to remark here is the abuse of the word "die." We may be quite right in seeing, as spiritual persons, that men may be dead while they live; and that we may be dead in sin, as towards God, when alive; and that the judgment of death implies estrangement from God, as the gift of life is bringing us, in principle, in blessedness to Him. But dying in its positive sense is never applied to the soul. Thus Ezekiel 18, constantly quoted for this, and used by good people with good intentions, speaks only of death in this world -- present judgment here; not for a father's, but for our own sins.
Quoting such a passage as "He that hath not the Son of God hath not life" proves utter confusion of mind; for if I were a living sinner, I have not life in that sense, yet am alive all the same; and if I never died at all, was not mortal as to the body, I should not have it a bit more. What lost life has the sinner no power to regain? Not the fact of life (namely, conscious existence); he has it as much as ever. It does not touch the question; and I know from Christ's word that death to which I am sentenced does not affect the soul. Why so diligently confound spiritual life and actual existence? And this is the whole secret of the way they puzzle people -- poor work! Death as judgment on man may intimate a great deal more, just as life does. But "thou shalt surely die" was bringing in mortality; and hence man was not allowed to touch the tree of life lest he should eat and live for ever -- live for ever as a sinner in the world. Here, as a matter of fact, God was not precluding him from getting spiritual life; and if when actually alive, as he was, he had eaten of the other tree, he would not have died at all. Immortality in his then state, before or after the fall, would have been immortality as a living man as he then was. The death threatened we have plainly declared to us -- "till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."Did the spirit God breathed into Adam come out of the dust? It returns to God who gave it; and the body will be raised, and then judgment come, and only then the award of sin by judgment. The corruption of the body is only an intermediate state. common alike to saints and sinners, just as death itself is, save by special intervention of God's power.
As to union with the Saviour giving life, it is all a blunder. It has no such effect. None but already quickened ones are united, and that by the Holy Ghost. I need not say that all he speaks of the end of all things at a common resurrection is no part of our belief; but it is one of the acts of Satan to take fresh light and use it, where it has not been, to pour in his darkness.
The statement of everlasting punishment to a simple soul is as plain as possible in Scripture: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into everlasting life." To a simple soul it would be monstrous to say that "everlasting" was not meant to mean the same thing. They are "tormented for ever and ever." Death gives up all it held, into the lake of fire -- that is, for ever and ever; the same word always used in that book for God's existence. "They are punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." Now everlasting destruction has no sense if non-existence be meant by destruction. Total destruction I understand; but everlasting destruction in such a sense, is nonsense. And in this case, on their own theory, it is no destruction then at all; for 2 Thessalonians 1 is at the beginning of the millennium, when, according to their own system, and my own full conviction, they are not destroyed at all.
This leads me to the word "destroy." It is, like death, used for the ruin of a present state of things, even moral ruin, not for cessation of existence. "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help." "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" -- the same word. "He that loseth [destroyeth] his life for my sake, shall save it." "Carest thou not that we perish?" Zacharias "perished between the temple and the altar." Take an English-Greek Concordance, and you will easily see. So destruction; waste of the ointment; the son of perdition; damnable heresies -- heresies which ruin people. Moral ruin is meant, as well as destruction of existence, if that is ever meant. The world of the flood perished -- the flood came and destroyed them all; Yet they are spirits in prison after that another proof that death destroys no soul; does not mean it. Abaddon and Appolyon are the Hebrew and Greek for destroyer: are they able to make to cease to exist finally? Take "abad" (Englishman's Hebrew Concordance page 8); I do not think "destroy" is ever used for finally ceasing to exist, but totally ruining as to the state anything has been in. When men are everlastingly destroyed from the presence of the Lord, it confessedly is not so; they then go into punishment; but that is final. And when it is said, "their fire is not quenched," to assert that it means that they do not exist at all is a miserable come-off, not more. It is a figure no one denies, and refers, as is stated, to Isaiah; but the figure is one of the continuous existence of the objects of punishment. "From one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another. shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord; and they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." It is continuing abiding objects of punishment which are now before the eyes of those who come up. It was not a supply of fresh material, etc. All this is false. The opposite is what God is teaching. It is of continued existence; it is the carcases that were indestructible -- at any rate undestroyed: an external matter, no doubt, in Isaiah, and used by the Lord as a figure, but a figure of continued shame and misery, and no fresh supply. And what is the meaning of everlastingly supplying hell, where body and soul are, with fresh materials? "Destroyed for ever," Psalm 92: 7, applied to this world; so Psalm 104: 35, "consumed out of the earth." You may take it as a general rule, that in the Old Testament, judgment, destruction, etc., refer to this world, though a future state is referred to in the Psalms.
Again, the passage "seek for glory, honour, and immortality," immortality is incorruptibility. God is immortal in His present existence -- cannot die. Man is looked at, when spoken of as such, as body and soul, and now mortal in that condition; and mortality is used only in respect of his existence in the body, and immortality too, only in another state. In Romans 2: 7 and 2 Timothy 1: 10, it is incorruptibility; but it is always a state in the body, now mortal, then immortal (i.e., the soul separable from the body or inseparable). It does not touch the question, though habit uses it for it. Ignorance or dishonesty can alone quote the word. Angels are acknowledged to be immortal -- and what we have to do is to learn from Scripture what becomes of that which was directly communicated from God when He breathed into man's nostrils, and which, most certainly from Scripture, death does not touch.
I have already said eternal life has nothing to do with it; I am as mortal when I have it as before. Now Scripture is positive that death does not touch the soul. It subsists after death and apart from the body. There could not in their use of it be a second death, if it meant ceasing to exist. Death does not mean for men ceasing to exist; neither does the second death. That is going into the lake of fire, not getting out of it. And this driving out of the presence of the Lord is for ever; punishment is everlasting. When dead, all live for God; when raised, they are cast into the lake of fire, and that is the second death, and the final state spoken of. They shall then have their part in it. This is "for ever and ever" -- the term used for the duration of God's own life, and the duration of His glory; Revelation 4: 9; chapter 5: 13, 14. It is exclusion from the presence and dwelling-place of God: "Without are dogs," etc. The time when God is all in all, and no more death, sorrow, etc., is the time when the evil are cast into the lake of fire. For death is separation of soul and body, which will never take place again. There will be no more dying, but just punishment on the raised wicked, but no more death; that and hades are over. But that judgment is destruction from the presence of the Lord.
What they specially insist on is that, till we get eternal life, we have, though more intelligent, life like any other animal. Now the falseness of this is evident. So we have seen, we are God's offspring, but I speak of it for another purpose now. I have a conscience; I have a soul that can hate God and did -- formed to have to say to Him -- that can be rebellious and disobedient, and enter into appeals to my conscience. In a word, I am a moral being. When I am converted, I feel how I have failed as to my previous responsibility; I repent, I feel I am guilty -- liable to judgment from God: what has this to do with animal life? If I get eternal life, it makes me look backward on all my previous course as guilt, as subjecting me to divine punishment. When I know myself, I know that the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. God claims moral authority over the unconverted man. For these sins Christ, I find, has died. I was dead in sins. With Him I have died to sin. If I am a mere nephesh chayah,+ as they speak (and we are that physically), I cannot repent nor think of atonement for what I did as such. The idea of sin is lowered. All there is, is merely a temporary punishment for certain faults which takes place now and also hereafter. For Scripture, it is enmity against God, and the remaining so is infinite misery, when the veil of sense is taken away and final judgment pronounced. The atonement, responsibility, the true sense of sin, repentance, all go when this fatal falsehood and device of Satan gets into the mind. It is a soul as to its nature capable of hatred and love of God. Would you put the cleverest elephant into this place of responsibility? or could it have a need for its sins to be borne?
+Living soul (Hebrew).
If you deal with a simple soul, shew it the plain language of Scripture: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." Conscience will tell what that means, and if they have been dealt with to prove eternal does not mean eternal, shew them what is said in 2 Corinthians 4: 18; and simple souls, souls where Satan's wiles have not polluted them, will bow to the plain word of God. I have nothing to do with popular statements (though better, if essentially sound, than these immoral deceits); but the conscious subsistence of the soul after death, and eternal judgment and punishment of the wicked, are as plainly taught in Scripture as possible. Men have spoken of it (though sound in intentions) in a way designing people can lay hold of, specially from the Lord's coming not having been seen. But the word of God is clear. It does not detail the misery as it does the blessing, and this is its perfection; but it declares it, and this is right. "I am" is essential existence. No other word is used for the duration of God's existence which is not used for that of the punishment and torment of the wicked. And while a few persons have been scandalised who seek their own thoughts and take their own feelings, when there is no just sense of what their sins have deserved (for this is the secret of it), how many thousands of thousands have been awakened by the just terror of judgment!
I write thus to you because you will have to say to it. I have not entered into all, nor could in this letter. Save a few misapplied texts, there is no serious investigation of Scripture, as bearing on a responsible soul, the offspring of God -- no sense of what sin is; and that is the evil of the matter.
In the first place, there are the direct passages -- John 1: 1: "The Word was with God, and was God." This is in every way a striking passage: when every thing began, He was -- that is, had no beginning, was God, as indeed it must be, yet was a distinct personality; He was with God, and always such, was so in the beginning, that He created everything. Subsequently we find the Word made flesh. The effort to weaken the force of the word of God here by the absence of the article is perfectly futile; unless in reciprocal propositions the predicate never has the article.
We find in Hebrews 1 the same truths. He the Messiah, for of Him he speaks, the Son, is God, is worshipped by angels, in the beginning laid the foundations of the earth, and is "the same" -- in Hebrew (Psalm 102), atta Hu, Thou art the existing One, the Being, where the testimony is so much the stronger by comparison with verse 12 of the Psalm, where Christ in humiliation addresses Jehovah.
In John 8 we find, "before Abraham was I AM," in contrast with His age as man; which the Jews perfectly understood, and would have killed Him for blasphemy.
Colossians 1: 16: "All things were created by him and for him," where it is unquestionable Christ is spoken of, the true force of verse 19 being "all the fulness (pleeroma) was pleased to dwell in Him," and spoken of Him as man living upon earth, and accomplished in fact in chapter 2: 9, "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."
John 10: "I and my Father are one."
His name is called Jesus -- Jehoshua, that is, Jehovah the Saviour, for He shall save His people -- who, and whose people, in connection with the explanation of such a name? Christ is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Thus John 12, Isaiah saw His glory, and spoke of Him, quoting Isaiah 6. Whose glory was seen there? Jehovah of hosts.
Hebrews 12: 24-26: whose voice spoke from heaven (compare chapter 1: 1, 2) -- whose at Sinai on earth? Hence His name was also Emmanuel, God with us.
So John the Baptist's ministry was preparing the way of Jehovah, Matthew 3: 3, quoting Isaiah 40: Malachi 3: 1, "I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and Jehovah, whom ye seek, shall come." (Compare Mark 1: 41.) If the judgment to come on the earth is referred to, difference of interpretation as to this, or the passing on from Christ's first coming to His second, does not affect the question of the Person who comes; He who first came will come again.
The more we compare passages as to this, the more we shall see this identification, and that it is not forcing one or two texts, but the doctrine of Scripture woven into its whole texture. Jehovah is Israel's righteousness, but Christ is made our righteousness. "The Lord (Jehovah) my God shall come, and all his saints with thee" (Zechariah 14: 5) . "and Jehovah said ... a goodly price that I was prized at of them, and I took the thirty pieces of silver," etc. "Then shall Jehovah go forth ... and his feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives," chapters 11, 14. So, as to Redeemer, Jehovah alone is their Redeemer. In Isaiah 63 this Redeemer is clearly Christ. So in Isaiah 50: "Thus saith Jehovah ... . Wherefore when I came was there no man?" And then He goes on, and asserts His unenfeebled divine power, yet He continues, "Jehovah-elohim hath given me the tongue of the learned," and the sufferings of Christ are then spoken of.
In Psalm 2 the kings of the earth are called to trust in the Son -- the Christ -- yet a curse is pronounced on trusting in man, or in any one but Jehovah. See Revelation 22, He who comes quickly is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last. (I do not quote chapter 1: 11, as it is probably not genuine, nor verse 8, because its application to Christ may be questioned, although I have no doubt of it.)
In many of the passages in which God and the Lord Jesus are mentioned, with one article in Greek, it may possibly unite them, only in the subject matter of the sentence. Hence, although I think they prove a great deal as to the identification of God and the Lord Jesus, I do not quote them as simply proving, in an absolute way, the divinity of Christ. But the force of the passage in Titus is apparent, "Waiting for the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ." It is unquestionably Christ who appears; as it is now in the face of Jesus Christ that we see the glory of the Lord.
This unity of God and Christ is manifest throughout John's writings, "I and my Father are one." "We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." Take, again, such an example -- for it is only an example -- "And now, little children, abide in him, that when he shall appear we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Now, who will say to whom this applies Christ, or God? It is impossible to distinguish them. What characterises all the writings of John, in the language of Christ, is One who has the place and title of perfect equality, yet now being a Man, takes nothing, never glorifies Himself, but receives all from His Father, as in John 17. In them we have God over all, blessed for ever (Romans 9: 5), which, I doubt not, for my part, is the only true sense; and other passages I do not quote, as they are matters of criticism. Indeed, I have only cited such as suggest themselves to my memory. So Thomas -- "My Lord and my God."
But there is another class of tests, which to the mind, sensible of what is due to God, evidently shew who He is. Grace coming from Him, as is found everywhere -- "Out of his fulness have we all received, and grace for grace." Christ is all. His love passes knowledge. Christ is to dwell in my heart by faith. If Christ be to me what the scripture says He is to be to me, and be not God, He must exclude God altogether. The very fact that Christ made Himself of no reputation when in the form of God, is again a moral proof of His divine nature. Every creature was bound to keep its first estate; He who was high and sovereign could, in grace, come down and take another nature.
Everything confirms this. He does not merely work miracles and cast out devils, but sends others out, and gives them authority over all devils. When He says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," who was dwelling in the temple? This kind of proof shines forth in every page of the gospels, and to the mind whose eye is open to see, affords a proof more powerful even than individual texts stating it in the letter, as I speak of the letter.
Let me add the remark, that when it is said the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, it is not a vague word, as we speak of what is divine. The Greek has a distinct word for these two things; for the vague thought it is theiotees, used in Romans 1; and theotees, used in Colossians 2.
Where the leper says, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst, and He says, I will, be thou clean -- who can so speak? The proofs that He is a man must not be cited against it. We hold to this as anxiously as any one. His being God is only of special value to us because He is man -- a true very man, though a sinless one -- God with us, and then we in Him before God -- One who took flesh and blood, that He might die, and partook of flesh and blood because the children were partakers of it -- a dependent, obedient man, who, though He had life in Himself, lived by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.
When I am called to believe in Jesus Christ come in flesh, which Christians are, they hold He is a man; but why insist on this? If He was simply a man, how else could man come? Not an angel, for an angel must not leave its estate, and He did not take up angels -- words which have no sense if He had been one, and was taking up the cause of others as such. When He says, "the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father," and that He is in the Father, and the Father in Him, the last might be said of a man, perhaps; the former impossible as a mere man, or of any but a divine Person. So, when He says, "None hath ascended up to heaven," that is, to state what is there -- "save he that came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven." And, if all men are to honour the Son even as they honour the Father, it cannot be that He is a mere man, or not have the nature which is to be honoured.
Jehovah has sworn that every knee shall bow to Him, and every tongue give an account of himself to God, but it is at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. Hence, though the Son quickens whom He will, as the Father, yet the Father judges no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son as they honour Him. There is no God but Jehovah -- I know not any, as says the prophet; but we have seen, by multiplied examples that Christ is Jehovah.
That as Son He has taken a place subject to the Father as man, every Christian believes -- receives the glory He once had with the Father before the world was -- every one who bows to Scripture joyfully accepts; for He is a man for ever, in that sense a servant, but He who is the servant can say, I and my Father are one, and I am in the Father, and he who has seen Him has seen the Father also.
Compare the description of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7 and Revelation 1, and see if the Ancient of Days, who receives the Son of man in Daniel 7, be not the Son of man in Revelation 1, and in Daniel 7 too; from verse 22 of the chapter the Ancient of Days comes. Hence we have, "the blessed and only Potentate, King of kings, and Lord of lords" -- then, the appearing of Christ; but in Revelation He who comes on the white horse has on His vesture and on His thigh, King of kings, and Lord of lords. You see, the more Scripture is gone through, the more comes to light that He is the true God and Eternal Life.
I know not that I need multiply passages, after these I have quoted. What you will remark, is, that it is not a question of expressions as to which criticism may be exercised, but the doctrine and system of Scripture. It is Christianity, as it is given to us in Scripture. I take up Christianity as the truth, and that is Christianity. A religion is what it professes itself to be, and that is what Christianity professes itself to be -- the revelation of God, and eternal life in the Person of Christ.
It professes another truth, that is, atonement, or expiation of sin. It does not teach a goodness of God which can bear with any sin, but maintains the perfect holiness of God, and the putting away of sin, but it does it in a way which equally maintains infinite and perfect love. Man instinctively felt the need of expiation. This is publicly known in heathenism; but there it was very much the dread of a god who had passions like ourselves, and men might justly say, tantaene animis coelestibus irae (can such anger dwell in heavenly minds)? Judaism, as revealed of God, maintained this thought, but it began by a deliverance of the people, and witnessed a God not revealed, but who gave commandments, ordained sacrifices, which kept up the thought that sin would in nowise be allowed; but it was the "forbearance of God" in view of a work to be accomplished, the way into the holiest not yet having been made manifest, nor peace given to man's conscience, though it was relieved through sacrifice when occasion called for it; Christ appears in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; was once offered to bear the sins of many, and give a perfect conscience, without diminishing -- nay, in maintaining in the highest way -- holiness, in the judgment of sin in the conscience, according to the majesty of God; and withal giving the perfect sense of unbounded love, in that God did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us -- the love that gave Christ. Christ gave Himself in a love that is divine, and passes knowledge.
The foolish question has been asked, What righteousness is there in an innocent being suffering for the guilty? It is a foolish question. There is no righteousness in my paying my friend's debts. It is kindness, love; but it meets the righteous claim of his creditor. The claims of a holy God are maintained -- intolerance of evil; and that is of the last importance for the conscience and heart of man; it gives him the knowledge of what God is in holiness. There is no true love without it. Indifference to good and evil, so that the evil-doer is let pass with his evil, is not love, and the dissociation of right and wrong, by God's authority -- the highest possible evil. Now, good and evil are elevated to the standard of it in God's nature. We walk in the light, as God is in the light, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses from all sin. The glory of God is maintained, and the heart of man placed in association with the perfectness of that nature, and in peace with the perfect knowledge of His love, and that is the highest blessing, the highest good. Diminish the holiness, diminish the love -- I have not God, I have not my soul formed into communion with Him. Take away the character of judgment or righteousness exercised, as regards evil, and you obliterate the authority of God -- the creation, place, and responsibility of man.
This part of the truth, again, enters into the whole texture of Scripture, from Abel to the allusions to it in Revelation. I shall merely quote a sufficient number of passages to shew that Christianity must be given up, as taught by Christ and His apostles, if expiation be. I do not quote the Old Testament; expiatory sacrifices are, beyond all question, its doctrine, and prophetic testimony is clear that He was wounded for our transgressions, the chastisement of our peace laid upon Him, and that with His stripes we are healed; that He made His soul a sacrifice for sin, and that He bare our iniquities.
When I turn to the New Testament, I find Christ stating that He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many (Matthew 20: 28). The Lord's supper -- the standing institution of Christianity -- is the sign of His blood shed for many, for the remission of sins. John the Baptist points Him out as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world; John 1: 29. Paul tells us that God hath set Him forth as a propitiation, through faith in His blood (Romans 3: 25); Peter, that we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1: 18, 19); John, that He is the propitiation for our sins and the whole world (1 John 2: 2); Peter, again, that He bare our sins in His own body on the tree; 1 Peter 2: 24. The Hebrews enlarges on it fully as a doctrine. He must offer for sins (chapter 9). He offers one sacrifice for sins, and then sits down (chapter 10). We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; Ephesians 1: 7. We are justified by His blood; Romans 5: 9. Without shedding of blood is no remission; Hebrews 9: 22. He gave Himself for our sins; Galatians 1: 4. It is when He had made the purification of our sins that He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens; Hebrews 1: 3. Cleansing, justification, forgiveness, peace, redemption, are all attributed to His blood. He bare our sins, gave Himself for our sins, makes propitiation for the world, is delivered for our offences.
As I have said, it is a doctrine interwoven with all Scripture, forms one of the bases of Christianity, is the sole ground of remission -- and there is none without shedding blood -- and that by which Christ has made peace; Colossians 1: 20. The thought that He was sealing merely His doctrines by His death is utterly groundless, it is never stated as its force in Scripture, expiation is constantly; and if it was a mere testimony -- perfect as He was in it -- it does not serve for one, for the testimony would be, that the most faithful of men was forsaken of God. What testimony would that be? Take out expiation, and Scripture becomes impossible to understand: introduce it, and all is plain.
I have not written a treatise, but simply recalled what must present itself to every unprejudiced reader of Scripture, as memory furnished it, and what the soul convinced of sin cannot do without. If Christ be not God, I do not know Him, have not met Him, nor know what He is. No man can by searching find it out. If Christ has not offered Himself as a sacrifice for sin, then I had neither peace of conscience according to the holiness of God -- but pass lightly over the guilt of sin, remaining at a distance from God -- nor do I know God's love, who so loved as not to spare His own Son. There is no true knowledge of sin without it, no true knowledge of God.
I deny absolutely development in divine things. In the human mind there is development; in the present truth there cannot be, for God has been revealed. There is no revelation more, nor meant to be any. Individuals may learn more and more, but it is there to be learned. The Scriptures give two positive grounds for this -- that I am to continue in what I have learned as the only true ground of safety, and that I know of whom I have learned them. There is a negative ground of proof -- the apostles committing us, when they should be gone, to that which would be a security for us. If the Person of Christ be the foundation-truth of Christianity, as Scripture declares it is, as the Son revealing the Father, it is clear there can be no development. His Person cannot be developed.
I quite understand it will be said, Of course not; but the revelation of it can. Equally impossible. He Himself is wholly fully revealed, and reveals the Father. The Holy Ghost has revealed, and is, the truth. Hence John, who treats this subject, declares that was to continue (abide in them) which they had learned, and they would so abide in the Father and in the Son. They could not have more. If any doctrine "other than (para, beyond, or on one side, besides) that which we have preached," says Paul, was preached, neither the doctrine nor the preacher was to be received. If the church did not possess fully the revelation of the Father in the glorified Son by the Holy Ghost, it did not possess Christ at all as there revealed. If it did, it could not be added to nor developed. If it did add to it, it falsified Christ. That men speculated about it, and their foolish and irreverent speculations had to be rebuked, repressed, corrected, this is true; but whatever was more than returning to the simplicity of the first revelation, or went beyond its fulness, was pure mischief. Either the apostles and first church had a full revelation of Christ, or the church never was founded on it. If they had, there was no development of it. So of His work. It is complete, or the church is not saved; it was completely revealed, or the church had not its ground of justification and peace. If it had, there was no development. That much was lost, I believe. The greatest stickler for church authority does not pretend the church receives a fresh revelation. He merely says that the church pronounces on truth as having been revealed. But then there can be no development. Till revelation was complete, there were further truths unfolded, but it was by revelation. Once that is complete, all is closed; and Christianity completes it. The word of God is fulfilled, completed, says Paul to the Colossians. We are to walk in the light, as God is in the light It was an unction of the Holy One, by which we know all things. "The Spirit," says the apostle, "searcheth all things, even the deep things of God." And then the apostle tells us he spoke by the Holy Spirit, in words which He taught. The true light now shines. We have the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost may guard the saints against error, and shew it is error; but the apostles were guided into all truth. Thus John, in a passage quoted, "Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father." We have "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." So Paul: "Continue thou in the things that thou hast learned, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." Paul, in going, commends them to God, and the word of His grace, as sufficient. Peter writes that they should have, after his decease, these things always in remembrance. As Tertullian justly says, "What is first is the truth." If Eutyches introduces error, Eutyches may be condemned, and truth stated; yet this is not development, but maintenance of the truth as it had been revealed.
It is plain, then, that the church does not teach; the teacher teaches. The church abides in and professes the truth she has learned. She is, or ought to be, the pillar and ground of the truth; but she does not teach it. The mystery of iniquity began in the apostles' days: the last days were already come. The Truth was there; but men, like Satan, abode not in it. But abiding in it, walking in it, in the truth perfectly revealed in Christ, this was the duty of the saint, even if the professing church would not, and the time should come when they would turn away from the truth, as Paul declared they would
My Dear -- ,
So they have added pronouns, which destroy the whole force of the scriptural statement. Thus they have added "our" to redemption -- "in whom we have our redemption" -- instead of, "redemption." Now, "our" redemption is our personal deliverance -- a great and saving blessing surely -- but redemption is the great and stupendous work of the Saviour. I would add, before going further, that I can gather why they have used pronouns with it, namely, to distinguish it from the price of redemption, such as antilutron -- ransom price. But this does not in the least authorise the use of the pronoun not in scripture, raising a question as to its limits, and making it solely something about us, which scripture does not. The thing itself is lost, in its application to us, whoever we are.
They have in no way the force of the preposition en, in Greek. Thus, "hath at the end of these days spoken to us in his Son," but that is not the force of "in Son"; difficult it may be to translate into English, and the margin is worse -- an example of their use of "a." "In Son" is the character of the speaking, as contrasted with the prophets. The italics of this save the translation here a little; but it is as doing a thing (en pneumati), in Spirit -- (en sarki), in flesh. The Greek en has a very varied force, from its abstract nature, especially when used anarthrously; i.e., without the article.
I take up some passages now which are crucial. First, Romans 1: 17. "Therein is revealed a righteousness of God" -- "a righteousness of God" I have already noted, it is as if there were several -- but "a righteousness of God by faith unto faith." Now this changes the whole sense of the passage; the Greek has apokaluptetai ek pisteos, is revealed by faith, if "by" be used, but that is nonsense; so, to use "by," they have transferred ek pisteos to 'righteousness,' separating it from 'revealing.' The point is, it is righteousness of God, hence clearly not man's work -- it is revealed already, of course, in existence to be so. Is it revealed on the principle of man's works fitting him for it, or the means of getting it? Clearly not, or it would not be God's righteousness. Is it proclaimed on the principle of faith? whoever believes, then, has it, be he Greek or Jew. The whole statement of what made Paul not ashamed of the gospel is lost; the very hinge of all the truth is broken, the foundation-statement of the gospel gone. The righteousness is a righteousness by faith, something realised in man, not simply "God's righteousness."
Verse 23. I object to "for," but it is of minor importance. Verse 28, "refused" is false. Verse 32, "ordinance of God," very bad morally; and the verse very weak. So the instructive abstraction of chapter 2: 15 is taken away. "Therewith" is not in the sentence, and mars it; and the sense of the closing phrase is lost by inserting "them" -- it is not what is said. In chapter 1: 17, 18, "righteousness of God," and "wrath of God," may be a little bold, but alone give the sense and are in the fair analogy of the English language -- not the abstraction of something known, but what can be known in its nature. Colour is so, and so darkness causes fear; light saves from stumbling. Here "of God" gives the character, but the subject is known.
The "you," in 2 Corinthians 5: 20, destroys the whole bearing of the passage; the Authorised Version had the same.
In Colossians 1: 16 we have, "in him" (Christ), which has no sense at all. It is ignorance of the force of en. It is not 'by' as an instrument (dia), but the power and energy, or character, of that which works -- difficult, I admit, to put in English, but they have made nonsense of it. That all things were created by Him is said in John 1; Hebrews 1. En is different; it is the one in, through, whose power a thing is done (Matthew 9: 34; Acts 17: 31). It is used generally for the character in which a thing is done, or the power. "All creation" (Colossians 1: 15); though I have much hesitated, I believe the change to be right. "Every creature" makes up the whole creation, but "every creature" takes up each individually; "all creation" takes it up as such, and sets Christ as Head over it as a whole; "first-born of every creature" sets Christ, no doubt, as first among them, but more, apparently, as one of themselves, and this has been used for mischief; but I notice it, as leaving without excuse their translation of Ephesians 2: 21, as the fruit of a doctrinal predilection, of which I will speak more fully further on. It is sad to see verse 19 (Colossians 1) retained -- a complete change in sense from the Greek, and utterly false. It states that the Father has willed about the whole Godhead, that it should dwell in the Man, Christ: the fact is found in chapter 2: 9, the thought of the Godhead, chapter 1: 19. To those acquainted with Gnostic follies, and Paul and John's use of the word, "the fulness," or "completeness," of Godhead has a distinct and unquestioned force.
I am aware that 2 Corinthians 5: 14 and following is a controverted passage; but I cannot but regret that, where it is so, they should lead people wrong, as I have no doubt they have. The question is, is the true sense, "then had all died," or, practically, as in the Authorised Version, "then were all dead"? How does the love of Christ constrain him, as One dying for all, because saints have died to sin? But if all had died through Adam, Christ's descending into death for them all is that by which we know love. The apostle judged that if one died for all, it was because death was the condition of all; and what makes it to me incontrovertibly the sense is, that he speaks of "they that live" as a portion out of them, whereas, if it be the saints dying with Christ, they are the same people. It was not a Messiah of the Jews he now knew, but a Christ who had died for all because of their condition, and was now glorified. The revised passage is, moreover, nonsense -- "that one died for all, therefore all died." How did Christ's dying for all make all die?
I take another example of fancied accuracy -- 1 John 4: 16: "We know, and have believed, the love that God hath in us," which has no sense at all. In the margin, you have sense made of it, but the translation is wrong, nor do I understand why they put the tenses of the verbs as they do. I quite admit the perfect may be sometimes translated by the present. In the case of the Greek "to possess" it is regularly done so: but why one should be present, and the other past, is hard to tell. It is done so, because the Greek perfect is what is clearly done, but which continues to be, and so is, a present; but here both verbs are perfect.
In Galatians 2: 17 the force of the passage is greatly lost by not seeing the force of the absence of the article. "While" is all wrong; it should be "if, in seeking to be" -- then Christ is a minister of sin. "For I through law have died to law." ... "For if righteousness is through law." So verse 16: "by works of law"; and "save" is very bad, for it would affirm we were, only that it was through faith it was so. So in chapter 3: 18: "law," but not "the" law. There is also a grave question as to the tenses; using imperfect for aorist may be right, no doubt, but may be wrong, as it in English implies a denial of the present: thus, Romans 12: 3, "the grace that was given" -- "has been," or simply "given." Chapter 11: 31 maintains the old error, contradicting exactly what he is teaching.
Romans 10: 5 is quite false, and justified only by a new reading, but, as a question of criticism, I leave it; but it is a most twisted sentence.
I now take an ordinary passage, where supposed refinement and exactitude has, in my judgment, injured their rendering of the passage, and what needed correction remains as it was, Philippians 1: 4 -- I believe a mistake in the stopping. "Always, in every prayer of mine, making," etc. So verse 7: "because you have me in your hearts." Then, "Ye all are partakers with me in the grace," or "in my grace"; that is, took part in helping the activities of the gospel, as he goes on to say. Grace wrought in Paul in both service and suffering, and they shared with him in them. Verse 12, "have happened." They are mistaken in fancying they can render the aorist by the English historical imperfect. There are no aorists in English, save as the only two tenses are often such in English. Here the effect remains, which is the Greek perfect. I speak of principle, for there is no verb here in verse 12; "things concerning me" -- "what concerns me has resulted ... so that my bonds are become (or, abstractedly, should become) manifest." The truth is, they have not understood what Paul was saying. Verse 22 has very little sense. Verse 26, we have the unhappy phrase -- "in Christ Jesus in me" -- in which I can see no meaning, it is, "as to me," "in my case," or "through." This leads me to another case I lit upon, 1 John 4: 16: "We know, and have believed, the love that God hath in us."
In chapter 2: 25, "the life eternal" is simply wrong; the abstract use of a word has the article in Greek, not in English. So, in Ephesians 3: 21: "glory," not "the" glory; so, verse 7, next chapter. In using, "have ye been saved," Ephesians 2: 5, the real force of the perfect (present continuance) is greatly lost. "With him ... in Christ Jesus" (verse 6) has no true sense. There is no "him" in Greek. Verse 13: "in" the blood is all wrong. I have no doubt that the "yet" of the Authorised Version, in Hebrews 4: 15, is a great mistake.
I need not add any more, for this is no systematic criticism; then there might be often controversy, and the system of manuscripts, and modern judgment of them, would come in question. Nor is it saying there are no improvements, as words have been justly changed, as "lawlessness" put for anomia ("transgression of the law" -- Authorised Version); "judge" for "condemn" (John 5), and other changes, which give the sense more clearly. But, as a whole, it will be of no use to give the mind of God to one turning from the Authorised Version to search it, but often merely perplex him. In this respect, which would be its main practical use, it seems to me a total failure.
I do not think their system of tenses clear; their use or disuse of the article is all wrong, so as to surprise me, in men, many of whom, I do not doubt, are better scholars than I am; nor is their estimate of the force of prepositions more than superficial.
But my great objection is, that I do not find the mind of God apprehended, so as to help a simple Christian; nor do I find, though the grace of Almighty God is referred to, any reference to the Spirit of God as Author, or as help in the work. I have not, of course, read it through, and compared it, but taken passages of considerable importance here and there, and noticed different details in running through it; but it has, I confess, surprised me. But the word of God is only apprehended [discerned] by the Spirit of God.
My former letter consists of mere desultory remarks, occasioned by passages which had caught my eye, or were important, so that I looked at them. At present I will write more studiedly.
It is a mistake to think that English tenses are simply grammatical expressions of time, or that they answer to Greek ones. The common use of auxiliary verbs makes them less such; for the auxiliary verb may be one time, the participle another, and give together the metaphysical force which connects both. 'We saw his star,' 'we have seen his star,' are not different in time, but vary in the force of the expression. One is the simple historical fact, what happened a long while ago; the other -- and these are much more striking and important -- is the present state of their minds, what rests upon them now, though the fact of seeing be passed. As to this last form, in general it would be taken for the perfect of the Greek, a past thing continuing. But to take it as regularly answering to it is a mistake. 'He took the city, but lost it the next day.' 'Took' is an aorist. It is a fact that happened, and no more -- past, no doubt, when I say so, but true in the past. If I said, 'He has taken the city,' it supposes he is in possession of it, because 'has' is present, and adds its force to taken -- he has taken possession of the city. But to apply this rule as constant would mislead. One says he lives (or is living, the true present) in London. I say, No, he has lived there; that 'lived' is a past participle; 'lived' is continuing, but 'has' here denies the present continuance; the continuance is in the past participle; 'has' only affirms as a present conviction of my mind, that once he did so continue to live there; 'has' affirms something presently, but the thing affirmed is past -- it is a past thing present in its moral force to my mind. 'He did live there' affirms that the fact is past. 'He has lived' is no affirmation of time, but of a fact in question, but being a fact must have previously existed, characterising him in that particular respect. If I say 'he has lived there a long time,' it supposes he lives there still. If I spoke of time past, I should say, 'he lived there a long time' -- this is an aorist. The other is an affirmation as to a fact characterising him, meeting the question whether he ever did -- 'he has.' It is a present truth, to my mind. 'He lived there,' 'did live there,' 'has lived there,' in themselves are all, as to the living the same time, but the mental effect quite different. I say 'in themselves,' because if I say, 'he has lived there nine years,' it goes up to the present time; on the contrary, 'he lived there nine years' supposes it was in past times, because 'lived' is historical and past; 'has' is present, and characterises the person. Thus the preterite -- or call it what you please -- is a past historical fact, that is all. 'I ate at his table' -- that is an historical fact. 'I have eaten at his table' is a characteristic, or, perhaps, questioned fact, an affirmation of intimacy. The difference is not one of time, but of mental or metaphysical force.
Let us take the passive, 'I am crucified.' The participle is a thing done, and I affirm I am as a present thing in that accomplished state. 'I was crucified' is a past historic fact. 'I have been crucified' is no doubt a past fact, but the 'have' gives a present moral power to it, which is no question of time: I am not a living man, I have been crucified. 'I have' has always a present application, though the thing spoken of be past. Hence, 'he has taken the city,' supposes he has it, because 'taken' means taking into possession, and 'has' affirms that as a present fact. 'I have,' 'he has,' is present; it may be only the moral force which is present, but this depends on the force of the participle it is connected with. 'He wrote, but I never got the letter'; 'Yes, he has written, but I shall pay no attention to it.' 'Has' involves its present moral value, to my mind.
Now, in the case of the blessed Lord, this difference is of the last importance. "Thou gavest him power over all flesh" is an historical fact in past unknown time, and no more. "Thou hast given" is the eternal counsels of God as to Christ in the power of present fulfilment.
I would now apply these remarks to the revision. The Revisers have, in their Preface, raised the question as to the use of the auxiliary verb in the case of the aorist, and even referred to John 17 to illustrate their course. After quoting a few passages dependent on this question, I shall do the same. If what I have said above as to the metaphysical or moral force of the expressions in English be just, all their reasoning, which depends merely on the force of the Greek text, falls to the ground.
The Greek and English do not answer to one another. Take Matthew 2: 2. They have used the preterite (or imperfect) in English. "We saw his star in the east." This is a merely historical fact. There is nothing wrong in the translation, but 'we have seen it' has quite a different force to the mind. 'We saw' is the simple fact for some past time or another. 'We have seen' is a present abiding effect in their minds. His star had been revealed to them, and under the present, and then present, influence of that, they were come to worship. "We have seen" expresses the present state of their minds, and what acted on them; "We saw" is a mere past fact, a bald, naked fact. In Matthew 28: 5 they have used what, I suppose, is called the English perfect for the Greek participle; 'was,' it seems to me, would be better. The word is characteristic; but 'has been' brings time as a present thing in that character, in which the whole point is to shew He was not. "Jesus, the crucified," might do; but in turning it into a verb the mental link is lost. (The Revisers have changed the reading, or they would have an analogous case in John 12: 1. The use of the Greek article, with a participle to characterise a class, is quite common, without any reference to time, sometimes where a reference to it is impossible.)
I shall now give a summary of John's Gospel, interesting in other ways, to lead us to the position the Lord takes in chapter 17. The first three chapters are introductory, but in some respects chapter I stands alone. It gives the Person and work of Christ, but not His relationships as Christ, High Priest, or Head of the church; it begins with His divine nature -- the world did not know Him, and the Jews did not receive Him. Those born of God did. Hence the Jews are treated as reprobates in all the Gospel, and the elect recognised. Then His work; setting the world right, fulfilled in the new heavens and new earth; and baptising with the Holy Ghost, by which we know our relationship with God, the Father's love, and are cognisant of heavenly things. There is yet another point. Nathanael, the godly remnant, owns Jesus, according to Jewish promise, developed in Psalm 2, but a psalm which reveals His rejection by men (so quoted by Peter), and makes way, in Christ's answer, for larger hopes (Psalm 8), when He is set as Son of man over all the works of God's hands. This change characterises the Gospel all through.
Chapter 2. -- We have the wedding-supper, and judgment which will characterise His return. This completes the earthly hope.
Chapter 3. -- We have the great principles which form the basis for us of our part with God, a new birth and the cross. This, too, judges Israel as a nation, though to be restored, and in what was needed for men, opens out heavenly things in a crucified Son of man, Son of God, given in love. But this closed His history as the living Messiah of the Jews. It was the crucified Son of man, and carries the Lord's coming, out and away from the region of promise into the testing of man by the manifestation of God as light -- what His testimony was as speaking the words of God, and then that as Son He was loved of the Father, who had given all things into His hand. Entered on this larger sphere, there was one point of contact between man and God, believing on the Son. Jew or Gentile were here nothing. He that believed had eternal life, and he that believed Him not would not see life, the wrath of God abode upon him. The whole of John goes on this ground. The Jews are a rejected people, according to chapter 1. And all is in resurrection, and consequent on death.
Messiahship to the Jews is repudiated, and all the blessing is in resurrection, and through death. What I have to say on the following chapters will be much more brief. The fourth is the transition from Messiahship in Judea, where He was practically rejected, to the worship of God in spirit and in truth. Jerusalem and Samaria both gone. The Father in grace seeking such worshippers, and here, in one alien in position from the promises, and fallen in her ways. But all now depended on a God who gave, not required, and gave eternal life, in the power of the Spirit, in Christ, and this springing up in its full development on high.
Chapter 5 is the Son of God, who quickens as the Father, and alone judges, as Son of man, with divine authority.
Chapter 6. -- It is the humbled Son of man, on whom we feed, and thus live spiritually, and abide in Him. He is viewed as incarnate, and dying. His going up where He was before is just alluded to, but four times over the blessing is said to be in resurrection and the last day.
Chapter 7 introduces the millennium, typified by the feast of tabernacles, the feast of Israel's rest in the land, and of Christ's shewing to the world, which could not be then. Instead of it, Christ's heavenly glory is introduced, and the consequent giving of the Holy Ghost sent down, revealing His glory from heaven.
Chapter 8. -- His word is rejected, and that word expressed Himself.
Chapter 9. -- His works are rejected.
Chapter 10. -- He declares that He takes His sheep out from the fold of Israel -- that was the purpose of God, and would not be hindered -- gives them eternal life, and never lets them perish. He had sheep not of that fold; these (the Gentile sheep) He would bring, and there would be one flock and one Shepherd. Being thus rejected, though God's purpose was accomplished, God does not allow that rejection without giving the blessed Lord a full testimony, and that in His three characters -- Son of God, Son of David, and Son of man. In the resurrection of Lazarus He is manifested as Son of God; in riding on the ass's colt into Jerusalem, He was declared Son of David. The Greeks then come up, and He says that the hour was come for the Son of man to be glorified; but then He adds, to gather the fruits of that Name, the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die; and then He looks at the cross, bows to His Father's glory in it, and sees His new and more glorious place by it. A living Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews, a dying Saviour was the attractive object of all men in the world.
We have, moreover, in the first two, Messiah's titles, or position, on earth -- Son of God and King of Israel -- but rejected, as given in Psalm 2; in the third, that of Son of man (Psalm 8), to which that led, but which could not be taken in its divine development but through death. Christ could ever, surely, have gone back perfect to His Father, but He would have remained alone. The corn of wheat must die, for Him to take His true place as such. Here, then, the development in John of the place and Person of Christ, as come down here, closes. His heavenly place, and what led to it, now begins, and this is expressly stated in the beginning of chapter 13. His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father. And we have then the whole scheme of God's thoughts, partly revealed in His Person, and in what had been done through that; and then, in contrast with that, what was to come on His being glorified, and the sending of the Holy Ghost, and the fact of His return in glory, but to give His disciples a heavenly place.
The change is stated in chapter 13. What had taken place, is -- after the statement that He went on high to prepare a place, and return, in chapter 14: 6-11 -- the Father had been revealed in the Son. What follows -- the Spirit, giving us knowledge of our place, was to come.
Having given from Scripture the great basis of God's thoughts as to that, as to which chapter 13 brings in the historical moment of accomplishment, I proceed with the chapters to chapter 17, where we shall enter into fuller development.
Chapter 15. -- He, not Israel, was on earth the true Vine, and the disciples the branches, already clean through the word ("now," in verse 3, is "already"). He exhorts them to abide in Him -- that was future.
Chapter 16 continues with the presence of the Holy Ghost, entirely then future.
Chapter 17 returns to the change, only addressing the Father for its accomplishment. "Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son."+ He states what He had done, and looks to the future for them, and that on to the time of their glory, and being with Himself on high, already held out in principle in chapter 13. The Son of man was personally entering into glory. I now take up a general truth in direct connection with this, the basis really of the development of all the Gospels. It was in the eternal counsels of God that all things should be in the hands of the Son of man. All things even were created by Him, and for Him; Colossians 1. As Son He was the appointed Heir (Hebrews 1), and, in the purpose of God, it was to be in man's hands, according to Psalm 8, as applied in Hebrews 2, 1 Corinthians 15, and Ephesians 1, already noticed. It was part of this purpose that He should have co-heirs -- how rich the blessing for us! -- and the creation itself be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.
At this moment I only occupy myself with the committal of all things to Christ as Son of God and Son of man, though our place in this scheme, as fully associated with the blessed Lord, may be the most precious to us, save His own glory in it. He came as the Heir of promise here on the earth, as Seed of David and Seed of Abraham as to His place, but personally the Revealer of the Father -- rejected because He really was so -- men not bearing light, though it came in love; John 15: 22-24; chapter 3: 19. But this gave occasion to the bringing forth the eternal counsels of God in the second Man, through death and redemption, from behind the working of man's responsibility under law and promise, His government of this world. For this, too, the cross must come in, because of man's sin (hatred against God in goodness, as well as breaking the law), because of God's glory (John 13: 31, 32), that the promises made to Abraham without condition, might be forfeited -- forfeited by man -- yet fulfilled hereafter in the second Man, but all lost as to the first man by his rejection of Him in whom they were. The cross closed up the history of the first man, and the world was judged (John 12: 31), and then, through redemption and the glorifying God, God's history began in the second Man in a new state, risen from the dead -- sin, death, Satan's power, God's judgment, all passed through, and left behind, a place and state beyond them all, God being perfectly glorified; John 13: 31, 32.
+Chapter 13 gives the ground in God's righteousness, and the wider general place given of the Father. In chapter 17 it is the Son's title, and the place of sons with Him, and first of all the disciples, and that on to their glory.
Now, the fulfilment of the counsels of God as to the glory, always comes after this, and necessarily must. As regards the Person of the Lord, His title and competency were ever complete; but that is not the question, but of the accomplishment of it in His manhood. Thus, if He created all things, as He did, they were created for Him as well as by Him, but not to take them as man in their corruption.
So, as Son He is Heir of all things; Hebrews 1. His given glory is a consequence there, and as to His title as Son of man, though personally glorified, the psalm (as we see in Hebrews 2) is not fulfilled; and as to the earthly royal part (Revelation 11: 17), we have -- as indeed many parables and passages teach us -- the testimony that He has not taken it. Psalm 110, too, is simple and plain on this point. David's Son was to sit at God's right hand as David's Lord till the time came.
But our inquiry now is not as to personal title and competency, but as to what is said as to the given glory. I should insist upon all being His in personal title from creation on, only that He must be a man, and that the counsels of God as to this were identified with His Person, so that I could always say all was His. There remains the question of any scriptural statements of the fulfilment in fact.
I will now cite the passages of scripture as to this glory belonging to Him. We read in John 3: 35, "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." Here we have the title of His Person (verse 31), and the rejection of His testimony; no man received it, though He spake the words of God coming from heaven. What God was in His nature is stated up to this, here the relationship of Son with the Father. It is the absolute gift of all things by the Father to the Son -- as to facts, the cross, and the universal rejection of His testimony, and then the Father's counsels in love to the Son. So, in Hebrews 1, where, again, it is, when He had by Himself made the purification of sins, that He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens as man, as such become more glorious than angels, as He had by inheritance a more excellent name than they; this, was His title; that, the place He took, or what He became as man, consequent on the cross.
So, in Matthew 11, it is on His entire rejection, and taking knowledge of it in His heart, that He says, "All things have been+ delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. Come unto me ... learn of me." In the following chapter Israel is cast out. The direct teaching is, that the rejection of Christ was the proof of the helpless state of man, but led to the unveiling of the counsels of God, which were behind, in which all things were delivered to the second Man as Son, the full purpose and grace of God; and here again it is the Father. The moral principle of it, then, receiving His word, is at the end of Matthew 12. In chapter 13 the kingdom of heaven is brought in. I may add chapter 16, the church; chapter 17, the kingdom in glory. In chapter 13, at the end of the age the Son of man exercises His power. His place down here is in chapter 20: 23. The end of Matthew is His closing controversy with the Jewish people; but in Matthew 28: 18, 19, He bases His commission to His disciples on all power being given to Him in heaven and on earth -- a commission never fulfilled historically in Scripture, unless alluded to at the very end of Mark. The disciples gave up the gospel to the Gentiles to Paul; Galatians 2: 7-9. The change of position is noted in Matthew 26: 64, where, for "hereafter," read, "henceforth." From that onward they would only see Him in His heavenly glory at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds. (John 1: 51, read also "henceforth," where it is personal title to the service of angels down here; but by many the word is left out here.)
The statement of Matthew 11: 27, is found in Luke 10: 22, but is the same, and again the Father and the Son. The kingdom of God was come amongst them, proved by the casting out of Satan's power. Yet He could say, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. (See Luke 12: 50.) He must die to let loose (so to speak) the purpose of God in grace. (See chapter 19: 12.) He went away to receive the kingdom, and return. The Lord tests them with the perplexing point of David's Son being David's Lord. But we have further light in Scripture on the actual historical time both of the glory and the dominion -- the great and glorious work of the cross being the moral ground of it all. "Now," we read -- John 13 -- (when Judas had gone out) "is the Son of man glorified" -- in accomplishing, that is, the work of the cross -- "and God is glorified in him; and if God be glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and will straightway glorify him" -- not wait for His taking the public and manifested glory, but do it now.
+This is an aorist passive, where the Revised Version puts 'have been' quite rightly. But if it is right here, it is right elsewhere. On their system it should have been 'were.'
The cross, then, as that in which all the moral glory of God was made good, and the Son of man glorified in doing it, was the basis and the point of departure of the given glory. Divine glory had been eternally His with the Father, but now there was a glorifying of the Son of man in connection with His perfectly glorifying God. So it is said, "To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." This was the ground and the epoch (with forty days interval on earth) of the personal glorifying of Christ. He suffered, and entered into His glory. The prophets even spoke of the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow. The difference between this and exercising dominion is clearly stated in Hebrews. Revelation brings it out in detail. Based on Psalm 110, in Hebrews 10, we are told He is sitting at God's right hand, expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. So, in Hebrews 2, "we see not yet all things put under him, but we see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour." There Stephen saw Him, not yet sitting down, His intercession on the cross having suspended judgment, till rejected in glory as He had been in humiliation, but returning then (Acts 3) if they repented. The history of that people, and indeed of man, as responsible, was closed, but the foundation laid in His work, and in eternal righteousness, for sovereign grace to bring the saints into the same glory in which He will appear.
All authority is His now; its development and display are according to the purpose and wisdom of God, who is gathering in grace His joint-heirs, while He sits -- proof that His work is finished -- at the right hand of God, till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. All dominion is His now as Man, Satan's having been annulled by death, though for us that last enemy is not destroyed, only it is become gain to us. What we have seen, then, in Scripture, is the full title of the Person of Christ as Creator, Son of God, and Son of man; and in application -- sin and Satan's power having come in, and through man, the ground having been laid in the cross for taking it according to God -- a special work going on which delays its public assumption, namely, the gathering the joint-heirs to be with Him in glory, and for ever with Him; and then (though title was always His -- personal position in glory, founded on the cross now His) He will, as Son of man, openly take and display His power and glory, and us with Him, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, all things in heaven and earth being headed up in one under His authority. This glorifying and giving all power to man in the Person of Christ, is the great central truth and fact of God's counsels.
And now let me recall and define the difference between the preterite, and the participle and the auxiliary verb. The preterite states that a fact has happened long ago, or, more exactly, in a time separated from the present; 'has,' with the participle, clothes the person or at least his position, as a present thing, with the character flowing from the thing spoken of. The subject here spoken of is the counsels of God as to Christ, and 'has given' views Him as clothed with what is given -- those counsels of God clothing His Person, first, in the thoughts of God; then, in the accomplished fact, those thoughts realised. Now, the thoughts of God -- as is amply revealed in Scripture -- were, that the Son as man should inherit all things. On this point Scripture is quite clear. It is equally clear that the possession of this place of glory and dominion was to be after suffering. It is difficult to separate the two, as historically the suffering was necessary to the possession of the glory; still, some passages contemplate distinctly the purpose of God. Thus, in John 3, "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." This, though rejection had been spoken of, speaks of what was in the Father's mind.
In Ephesians 1, in the dispensational arrangements of God, we learn that His purpose was to head up all things in Christ -- all things in heaven and on earth. So, in Matthew 11 -- though here rejection comes in -- the purpose, "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father." So Psalm 8, used by Paul as to Christ in 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, Ephesians: "He hath put all things under his feet." It was not in this character of glory He came. He was to assume it after suffering; this characterised it. He emptied Himself, and took on Him the form of a servant, and was found in the likeness of man, humbled Himself as man, and was obedient unto death; wherefore also God hath+ highly exalted Him, and given Him a name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. His obedient descent to death was the ground of His ascent to glory and universal dominion. "Ought not," says the Lord Himself, "Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" So Peter: "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." So, in the passages cited for the general fact, John 3; it was when, though He spoke the words of God, no man received His testimony, that the giving all things into His hand is spoken of. The cross had been brought in, and it was when rejected as presented to man that this new glory of God's purpose was brought in, in the risen and glorified Man. So, in Matthew 11, it was when John and Christ's testimony had been both rejected, and terrible judgment was to come in consequence, that He says, "All things are delivered unto me of my Father." "God," says Peter (Acts 2: 36), "hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." The passage referred to in the Ephesians is as plain as can be: "What is the exceeding greatness of his power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church." So, indeed, in the psalm quoted here; it is when rejected as the Christ, in the second psalm, that He is set as Son of man over all the works of God's hands. But Ephesians is as plain as possible. It is the Christ raised from the dead that becomes Head over all things. He that ascended is He that descended into the lower parts of the earth, and thus ascended that He might fill all things. It was when Christ was raised that He says, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." We have thus clearly taught, the Father's giving all things to the Son to be the mind and counsel of God; that this purpose of the Father was to be fulfilled in Him as man, and that, founded on His sufferings, He glorifying God in them.
+Here we may see the force of the difference of the preterite and 'has.' 'God highly exalted Him 'is a past historical fact; 'has exalted Him' -- He is in the glory.
Hebrews 2 shews the fulfilment of Psalm 8 in part, after He had come down, and been made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, in that He was crowned with glory and honour, but all things not put under Him. And the important point which is fully developed in the first three Gospels, is, that He came according to promise as the Messiah prophesied of, and this, though far from being all even then, yet was of moment as regards the faithfulness of God. The testimony to who was there was full in word and work, and therein man was finally and fully tested, but therein, not only man's state was shewn, but God's, who said, "It may be they will reverence my Son," and closed the whole history of that people -- that is, of man under God's culture, His vineyard and fig-tree -- and the Lord pronounced its judgment in cursing the fig-tree. Man under the first covenant should never bear fruit, and the Lord says, "Now is the judgment of this world." The whole dealing with men, not only on the ground of law, but of promise, in the Person of Christ, the Messiah, was over, till He return in glory; and then it will be in grace under the new covenant, when they shall repent. But this rejection of Christ in this character gave occasion to the more glorious and wide-reaching position of Christ as Son of man, He having in death, and as made sin, perfectly glorified God in all that He is, and that, as made sin, obedient unto death.
The Messiahship of promise was closed; and God brought out, through the faithfulness of Christ, these counsels which, existing before the worlds, had been held in abeyance till man was fully tried, and as to sin, God fully glorified. He passed from a rejected Messiahship into the present Heirship of eternal glory, and the accomplishment of eternal redemption; and, being that eternal life to believers which was manifested in Him, not merely to quicken in a divine way, as He had done from Adam on, but to be the present manifestation of that life in a Man down here, and the communicator of it to others, so that they should be sons brought through redemption into His place -- "My Father and your Father, my God and your God" -- He Himself taking His place as a Man in glory. But while He entered into the glory He had had with the Father before the world was, He did so as Man, gone to prepare a place for us, entered as our Forerunner, but entered into heavenly glory, according to the counsels of God, as contrasted with an earthly Messiahship and an earthly kingdom.
Christ's position was wholly changed -- a change than which there could be nothing greater morally, or in the manifestation of glory. A rejected Messiah becomes a divine Saviour and Lord of all. Such had ever been God's counsels, but now the accomplishment of them was come to the birth. It is touching and instructive to see, how fully Christ felt this rejection, while yet His heart goes out in grace, weeping over the now God-deserted city, but then bows in perfect obedience to His Father; and then, how the new universal and heavenly glory, the counsels of God as to Him hidden (so to speak) in His Messiahship before, burst in upon His sight. We have examples of this in Matthew 11 and John 12.
Now the preterite in English is merely an historical statement of a fact which is viewed as past, and past at a time looked at as apart from the present. 'He lived in London'; 'he walked the whole journey': 'we saw His star.' The participle, with the auxiliary, embodies in the person spoken of, as a present thing the character or thing which is the subject spoken of in the sentence; only, when God's counsels are spoken of, very constantly the thing spoken of is spoken of as existing, because it exists and is certain in His mind. Its being there is a reality. This is well known in the prophetic writings. Thus, "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me;+ ... then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will? O God." These were the counsels of God freely accepted of the Son, written in the volume of the book; but it is said, "A body hast Thou prepared." So Psalm 110: so frequently. In time comes the accomplishment, the actual realisation in time, of God's eternal thought. The Father loveth the Son, and hath put all things into His hand. This is God's mind and counsel, which we have seen was connected in its accomplishment with the cross -- the proof of the total sinfulness of man, the close of the Messiahship of Christ, as a relationship with Israel on the ground of their responsibility, come according to promise. As said in the Hebrews, "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second." It was a Man despised and rejected of men (so that all connection of God with them was broken on that ground for ever, the fig-tree never to bear fruit), but, through the cross and suffering even to death, entering into the glory purposed of God from everlasting for Christ, and that on high.
+So translated in LXX, and quoted in Hebrews. It is not, 'Hast thou opened,' but 'Thou hast dug ears for me'; that is, put me in the place of a servant -- that was in taking a body. (See Philippians 2.)
Now John 13 and 17 give us the moment of this change. Chapter 13 is not my direct object now, save as presenting the moment in question, and what attached to it. The hour was come that Jesus should depart out of this world unto the Father. The history of the sufferings of Christ is not the subject of John's Gospel, but nothing can be clearer than the passage from the old position of Christ to the new -- His position of humiliation, and position of glory, which enabled Peter to say (1 Peter 3: 22), "Who is gone into heaven ... angels, and principalities and powers being made subject unto him." In the other Gospels you get allusions to it, as in Matthew 11, and what is connected with it, as the change from Matthew 12 to 13, but there more connected with His Person, but here we find precision as to the time and way in which the change took place. He would not desert His disciples, nor cease to serve them; if He could not be associated with them here, He must fit them to have a part with Him where He was going. Clean they were by the word, as to what they were, but their walk in a defiling world might render them unfit to have a part with Him, for He was going to God, and He girds Himself, and washes their feet -- a beautiful and blessed expression of grace, but it must not detain us here -- for His hour was come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, and He knew that the Father had delivered all things into His hand, and that He was going to God. That which we have seen doctrinally stated in Ephesians 1, 1 Peter 3, and elsewhere, is now presented as a fact in the consciousness of Jesus,+ a fact in the counsels of God, and now historically realised. His tune was come, when He should take the place -- His in God's counsels -- where everything was delivered into His hands, according to the statement in John 3, Hebrews 1, etc. Here it is connected with His work, and the position based on the righteousness of God; John 13: 31, 32.
+We have an example here John 13: 3) that it is impossible to render the aorist by the preterite. The Revisers have changed the T.R. perfect into the aorist, but it was impossible to use the preterite, and they have properly translated it, "had given," as in T.R.; but then their grammatical rule is gone. In edoka and dedoka a the readings are perpetually interchanged: Tischendorf says Luke constantly prefers the perfect.
Henceforth the Son of man was to sit on the right hand of power. In His lifetime, in virtue of the dignity of His Person, and His perfectness, angels came and ministered unto Him; the time was coming when all things would be put under Him, but His present glory was to be immediate. In chapter 17 the connection is with the Father, and Christ's place of Son, but the event is the same. The hour was come for Christ to take His glory, according to the purpose of God. The Son was to be glorified, and this lays the basis of the whole chapter, which treats of the new place of the saints, up even to the glory, and being where Christ is, and as distinct (though both were the Son's) from what had been while He had been on earth. Now here they have changed the word into the preterite. "As thou gavest him power." This is merely an historical fact at some distant epoch of past time, and may have been merely temporary. It merely recites a past fact at some period distinct and separate from the present. If I read, "As thou hast given him authority over all flesh," etc., it is the counsels of God as to His Son as Son of man (which I have therefore gone through) but withal His being now -- for the hour was come to glorify Him -- clothed with the purposed glory in which He was to have dominion; the whole chapter stating what had been, and the change now taking place. All this -- the counsels as abiding in the mind of God, their accomplishment in clothing the Saviour with glory consequent on the cross, the glorious arrangement by which every attribute of God [had been revealed and glorified], the judgment of man's estate, what had been done already in the Person and service of Christ here below, a service now closed, with the consequent position of the disciples, as developed in the chapter -- all is lost to give us a very inadequate translation of a Greek aorist. Some time or other God had given Him this power, effectually exercised, when given is not said. As the present moment of change for the accomplishment of God's counsels, expressed in "Thou hast," all is clear. The Father had been revealed in Him (John 14), could not before the Son came, for in whom was it, or could it be?
God's rule for man had been given in the law. Jehovah's will was made known. He had preserved in faithful mercy, as the Almighty, the patriarchs He had called. He had warned by prophets, and spoken to Israel of a Saviour to come -- had given precious revelations of His ways and goodness, and by grace met the faith of those that trusted in Him; but He was not there, or, if there, professedly hidden behind the veil where it was death to intrude. The law and the prophets were until John, and he came -- still, earthly -- before the face of Jehovah, to prepare His way before Him. And the clouds broke, and the Sun of Righteousness was there (though not yet in judgment, as in Malachi). The Father Himself revealed in the Son, only in humiliation, that He might in grace be close to man, as He touched the leper, saying, "I will, be thou clean." And the knowledge of the Father thus revealed, and of Him who came down as life from Him, was eternal life. It was not the just and perfect law of God, and obedience to it, required from men; it was He in whom was life come down to manifest it to men, and communicate it in grace to them. (See 1 John 4: 9; chapter 1: 2; chapter 2: 8.) He came also to make propitiation for our sins, but this regarded our being made fit for the presence of God, and though not separated from, yet not in itself life. That was in the Person of the Father, and of the Son revealing Him. And now note, that while it was the eternal purpose of the Father thus to glorify the Son, and that the title over all creation belonged to the Son as Creator, yet this supremacy was to be in the hands of the Son of man. Thus, till the Son was on earth, the Father was not, and could not be, revealed; nor could the Son till He was a man hold it; nor, though personally qualified, could He, in point of fact, take it into possession till He had suffered, and was risen.
Hence the historical vagueness of the preterite is quite out of place. It was the hour of His being glorified in order to His taking it, and the whole matter was confined to His life here, and His glorious position which followed His faithfulness in it; as I have said, at the moment of passing from one to the other, He declares what belonged to each. "Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." First, the Father, in grace infinite, original, and uncaused save by what was in Himself, sent His Son, before which the passage has no application. The Father was known in Him; the Son, in absolute obedient grace, came, at all cost, to do His will, not sparing Himself, that the Father might be glorified, and we, poor sinners, blest. The Sent One had come. He had glorified the Father on the earth, but to this time only it applies, and to the place of the obedient Sent One. "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." The hour is now come that this is closed, but now He can say as to that definite time and place, now presently closed, I have finished the work, and glorified Thee in what Thou sentest Me to do.
Here is a true aorist, no time, but the object of sending. Had it been said, "Thou hast given me to do," it would be a present unfinished task; and yet, "I glorified thee on the earth, I finished," etc., is a past historical time. From fancied, not real, accuracy as to Greek, they have constructed what is no grammatical English at all: 'I finished a work some time ago (namely, a time apart from this), which Thou hast given me to do,' which has a present sense. The reading they adopt makes no difference. 'I glorified (past historical) Thee, having finished the work,' etc. Indeed, reading as they do makes it worse, because the finishing is in the same historical time, and has the causative sense common to this participle. He 'glorified His Father' is past time, 'having finished the work.' This destroys the whole force of the passage, that the hour was come.
There are only two states of the Son of man (though many details may be added, as His taking the kingdom, giving it up, etc.); but as to His own state only two: a sent, humbled Christ, obedient unto death; and Man exalted consequently into the glory which, as Son, He had with the Father before the world was. It is of the moment of the change from one to the other He is speaking. He looks to the Father to glorify the Son in the glory which had been His before the worlds, but in a new place and state, as Man; one of these states was then closed, the other just about to begin, and He states what He had done in the state now passing away for ever. But it is not, 'I glorified Thee on the earth when I was there' -- perhaps a long time ago, at any rate apart from the present -- which is the sense of the revision; it is what He had been doing up to the moment of change now come, and could be no other time. He had glorified the Father on earth, seeking that the Father should now glorify Him with Himself, had finished (or, if the reading be preferred, 'having finished') the work the Father had given Him to do: and this could only be just then, if Christianity be in question. And now that the work was finished, the Father was to glorify Him -- this between Him and the Father.
Then, as to the disciples, He had manifested the Father's name to them, which indeed could only be done then. Now they knew that what the Father had given Him was of the Father to the Son, not of Jehovah to Messiah, for all the words the Father had given to the Son as Man down here He had communicated to them, and they had believed in His coming out from the Father. Now He prayed for them as left down here, when He was going, for they were the Father's, and He was glorified in them. In verse 12 you have the difference of the preterite (imperfect) and 'have.' "I kept" is historical. "I have kept" up to now, so that none (save Judas) is lost. He has prayed for them as put in immediate relationship with the Father, like His own (verse 9). He then prays for them as set in the place of testimony with the Father's word, as He had been (verse 15), and thus sets them, in both respects, in His own place, they being formed by His now being sanctified in glory. Then, He prays for those who believed through their word, that they may be all one; and finally, gives them the glory given to Him -- in everything put in His place, and associated with Him -- loved as He was loved; and at last will have them -- blessed be His name! -- where He is; gives them to enjoy this love meanwhile, when the world does not know it as it will when they are seen in the same glory. It was the present full revelation of the Father's name, for their place with Him and testimony in the world: and lastly, brought where Christ was going. The Father's name is the key to the whole chapter. All depends on its being the present moment of change, as stated in the first verses. It is a chapter of known, of imperfectly known, blessedness, but presents the disciples as loved of the Father as Christ was, and Christ in us, that we may enjoy it; and the whole counsels of God in this, and their accomplishment, are sacrificed, as far as such splendour of grace can be, for a fancied Greek aorist.
A detail in verse 18 here shews the absurdity of it, and how the point of the chapter is lost. "I sent them into the world" -- whereas the only time He sent them out in His lifetime, historically, they were strictly forbidden to go near it, or to any but Israel; so utterly were the Revisers ignorant of the mind of God here. And while, in many passages, the preterite, or participle with 'has,' may be a matter of taste, or delicacy of apprehension, yet often it is of all-importance. I might go to other examples, but I have taken one where the fulness of the grace into which we are brought on Christ's going away is unfolded, that we may see of what moment it is; and that where the foundation is laid in Romans 1, and in crowning the blessing in John 17, the Revisers have wholly missed the mind of God. I do not the least deny they have rightly corrected many sentences -- I think they have -- but it is not a translation to be trusted, as giving us the mind of God; and this alone has made me write these remarks.
A few special cases have caught my eye in the revision, which I notice. 1 Corinthians 15: 49 they have translated "we have borne," quite rightly, but proving that their rule of adapting the preterite to the aorist cannot be carried out as a general rule. Here, too, also -- I doubt not rightly -- they have not followed mere diplomatic criticism, and read "let us bear" for "we shall bear." Even if the Vatican MS. opposed, it is a pity they were not equally bold in Romans 5: 1; [where they have put 'let us have peace'].
In Acts 2: 36 we have a passage rightly, I believe, translated, but which shews the fallacy of their rule, the observance of which in John 17 has deprived it of all its force. "God hath made this Jesus whom ye crucified both Lord and Christ" -- one of the verbs they translate by a preterite, the other by 'has,' and the participle. But this passage proves also clearly an ignorance of Greek, which has destroyed the sense of a passage, which, if not fundamental, is one of the richest parts of the structure of truth -- Ephesians 2: 21, where they have translated "every building," not, "all the building." One would have thought that the whole tenor of the passage which insists on the middle wall of partition being broken down, and both reconciled in one body to God, would have guarded them from such a blunder -- for blunder it is, but a blunder affecting the whole doctrine of the church, the absence of unity being ostentatiously put forward in the epistle consecrated to its establishment. Every tyro knows that, as a general thing, pas in Greek, with an article, is 'the whole' -- without it, 'every,' but to make it an absolute rule is only ignorance. The received text has it, with very good authorities, as A,C,P, correction of the Sinaiticus, and many others; and if not the original reading, it was added to make plain what the Revisers have set aside. But it is false that it is a universal rule as to pas. Where there is a genitive which determines, the article is left out -- for example, "every house of Israel," is nonsense on the face of it; indeed, where the noun stands as a composite whole in itself, no article is added, as Romans 1: 29. Oikodome (building), though one word, is a composite word, and oikos is a practical genitive after dome, and the whole word a composite whole in itself. The doctrine is false. No particular church is the habitation of God through the Spirit; nor can what is said of oikodome here be said of any particular church, that each is growing to a holy temple. Was Thyatira doing so? Was Laodicea doing so? to say nothing of Ephesus and Sardis. And where are all the early Christian churches? The attempt to make it "every house," in Acts 2: 36 (marg.), is a want of common sense, and ignorance of Greek.
I confess I am surprised with men, some of whom (and, I doubt not, others whom I do not know, are so) I sincerely believe to be much better Hellenists than myself, that such evidence of want of scholarship should crop up. They have not attempted it -- not even in the margin -- in Romans 11; it would have been too absurd; and in Ephesians 2 there was doctrinal purpose, for they have, "each several building," and "every building," in the margin. Why, if "every" was a universally binding rule, as to the meaning, not stick to it? But to make it, after the verses 19 and 20, from which it cannot be separated, "each several building" is perversion, not translation. Oikodome is not a classical word, and does not receive an article at all, but in special cases, even where we might expect it, in Greek -- only three times in the New Testament, where it is plural, and refers to the various constructions of the temple: Romans 14: 19, where it is specified in character by the Greek article following, not used in the abstract, and 2 Corinthians 12: 19, where it is also specially determined by the Greek pronoun for your. Taken simply it qualifies the act, and is not a direct specified fact; nor does an article after pas always make it signify 'the whole,' but distinctly the contrary, as with participles, as Romans 2: 10; chapter 10: 4; chapter 1: 16. It characterises pas; so Romans 12: 3; but I need not multiply instances. There is another case, where pas is used without an article, not in the sense of 'every': moral ideas, which embrace a number of thoughts or acts composing the idea, as people compose the house of Israel; as "in all goodness and righteousness and truth"; Ephesians 5: 9; "all deceit," Acts 13: 10; where there are four other cases; "all wisdom and understanding," Colossians 1: 9, and "all power" verse 11; "all lowliness," Ephesians 4: 2; "all fear," 1 Peter 2: 18; "all honour," 1 Timothy 6: 1; "all joy," James 1: 2. Probably others which are not recorded in the books which furnished me with these. 'Whole,' in the sense of holos, which is often used, would not do; nor would 'every'; the thought is composite, and "all" is justly used, but 'every' would be false, as in power, lowliness, fear, so in "joy and peace," in Romans 15: 13, where compare "the hope," in the same verse. To make pas without an article, as necessarily always 'every,' is a blunder, and in the Revision it is put in the margin, Acts 2: 36, as we have seen, as if this were the case, where it would be simple nonsense. 'All,' and in German allerlei, which Luther uses, specially the English, all convey the meaning. I had nearly forgotten one instance of a different character -- flesh, used as denoting men, in Matthew 24: 22, etc., in English, 'no flesh' -- an article could not be used. It is, again, a word embracing many individuals in one thought, "all flesh," and then, viewed as a whole, the verb as to it, negatived what is said.
Let me add here, as the subject has been before us in the passage, that we must not confound the "house" (church) built by man, according to 1 Corinthians 3, and the "house of God" built by Christ (Matthew 16), against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. The latter is found in the passage which occupies us (Ephesians 2: 21), Matthew 16, and 1 Peter 2-1 am not aware of any other place. In these it is Christ who builds, or no one else is spoken of; the "living stones" come, or "the house" grows.
The more their use of the word en is examined, the more erroneous it will be found. In 1 Corinthians 8: 11 they have been forced to put 'through'; in chapter 6: 11, 'in,' as to the Spirit, hardly makes sense; but such passages as Colossians 1: 16, 17, as indeed others, are not only wrong, but shew they have not seized the force of en, where not used locally or materially at all. Compare 2 Corinthians 6, where en and dia, and a third reciting form are used, with substantially the same sense; in en and dia, the latter with the genitive is the instrumental means, en the character or power of that in which a thing is done. Either would often do. 'His graciousness was shewn by his kindness to those who deserved nothing, in his kindness to,' etc. -- either would do; not that they ever mean the same; one was the means of shewing; the other, the character of that 'in' ('by,' 'through') which it was shewn, but the result is the same. They are really changed for style in 2 Corinthians 6; one may suit one word better than the other, but, 'in much patience,' or 'by much patience,' though not the same idea, if analysed, is the same thing: in verse 7, "through the arms of righteousness," en would not do so well, and the apostle changes to dia, and then uses it four times, where en would do very well, and where dia has pretty much the sense of en -- his mouth was opened. But for this reason -- to make en mean simply 'in' is a gross mistake. "In spirit" -- "in flesh" have a sense difficult to put in English, but which in many cases 'in' could not render. I pray "in (en) spirit"; so 2 Corinthians 7: 1, "in (en) the fear of God." Here the English use of 'in' answers to en, but it is characteristic of the moral state in which the perfecting was done.
But what is the force of 2 Corinthians 7: 7? The Revisers are obliged to say 'by.' But the attempt to force the use of 'in,' as if that was the literal translation always of en, has falsified different passages. To "baptise into" is not the sense of the preposition eis with baptise; it is that to which you are brought, and with which you are associated. "All baptised into Moses" is flat nonsense, or, "baptised into John's baptism." This is simply prejudice. Were I to go through the book, many things might call for remark.
I think Galatians 4: 13 a complete mistake; verse 14 makes it plain, I think, comparing, too, other passages; but controversy on particular passages is not my object, but what affects fundamentally the whole character of the translation and that as affecting the foundations of truth. I have just come across another case, which has a peculiar character, but shews their rule to be untenable. John 3: "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen"; and again, "What he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." Now there is no aorist to the Greek verb horao, "to see" or "take heed," but the irregular tense, which is found in the conjunctive in Luke 13: 28, only there in the New Testament, I believe. In John 3: 32 we have "what he has seen and heard"; the first a perfect, the second an aorist. They have translated, "What he hath seen and heard," to which I have no objection; but their rule is given up -- could not be applied. They may take the form of the word as used for the aorist, for the reason above mentioned, but then the rule is doubly given up, as it is in verse 11. The truth is, the preterite is historical of past facts, and when the aorist is so used is all well -- "Jesus having entered," but 'has' is much more so, which states a past fact, present to the mind, but whose object is not time at all.
But in the first passage which struck me in Matthew 2: 2, their rule fails, or their translation -- it should be, 'was born,' and verse 3, 'was troubled'; and again, if they put 'saw,' they should put 'came.' Now in this case it is not of any consequence, save the force of the language; I use it to shew that their rule is a fallacy, and that they cannot maintain it. And this affects the whole translation, and in John 17 deprives us of the true force of one of the most blessed portions of scripture. There is a use of the aorist which is a conditional future in English, as where hina (that) is used (John 3: 20, 21), but it is a delicacy of language difficult to reproduce, though often of moment; it is not that the thing may take place, but that it may have taken place. (See Matthew 3: 13, 14.) It is found in exhortation, not as the desire that they become so, but so have acted as that the subject of the exhortation may be already true of them: there, with hina, John 3: 17; Matthew 5: 18 -- here a future perfect might do.
I may cite some passages to shew a false licence in translating, which wholly spoils and destroys the sense. Thus, Ephesians 2: 6, they have added 'him,' which is not in the Greek at all, and makes nonsense of the passage, "made us to sit with him [Christ] in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." The passage means that the Jew by nature is a child of wrath, like the Gentile, being quickened with Christ, is raised with (the Gentile), a state in which there is no difference -- both are sitting in heavenly places 'in' Him; 'with' Him, neither are Then, in Romans 5: 1, I have not the smallest doubt that "we have" should never have been changed into "let us have" -- indeed the Fathers, who quote it thus, cannot give a simple sense to it, and I affirm that it has none. 'Let us have peace.' What does that mean? I am exhorted to have peace with God. How? And in what state is the Christian, or any one, when he is exhorted? Grace was at once forgotten after the apostles were gone -- often before, as Galatians shews -- and all made to depend on man; but He has made peace by the blood of His cross. They have not ventured to accept the reading, "we should bear," 1 Corinthians 15: 49 (which would have made nonsense); yet, though they have the Vatican MSS. (corrected) for "let us have" in Romans 5: 1, not for "we should bear," they have the Sinaiticus and others for the latter. I am glad they have not accepted it, but the reasons were not the manuscripts, but the spiritual absurdity of our being called to bear the glorious image of Christ here. But Tischendorf, 8th edition (not 7th), and Tregelles give us "we should bear" they go by manuscripts; spiritual apprehension would have taken "we have" in Romans 5 too; Tischendorf, till the Sinaiticus MSS. influenced him, had this.
I add, in passing, we have the usual perversion of the text, 'We have had our access,' of which not a word in the Greek: so, in our tribulations -- I suppose ignorance of the abstract use of the article. I notice this passage because of such importance to souls. In Luke 2: 49 they translate "I must be in my Father's house," putting the evident sense "about my Father's business," in the margin; indeed, often the margin is only proper to lead the reader to uncertainty where there is none. "Extort no more" (Luke 3: 13) is nonsense. Luke 1: 35 is, I have no doubt, false. Chapter 3: and "he shall thoroughly cleanse" should at least be in the margin Chapter 2: 14: There is no possible ground for translating, "in whom he is well pleased," even if -- which I do not believe -- we should read, as the Revisers have. I am satisfied it is a corruption, as all theirs are, to exalt man. I do not accept their critical text; it is the vulgar acceptance of the Sinaiticus and the Vatican -- valuable manuscripts if used with discrimination, and testing them by others and versions, but which it is now the fashion to swallow down undigested. We have no manuscripts which have not been tampered with by the clergy, and that when the church was thoroughly corrupt; for our Puseyite friends know -- if they were honest enough to own it -- that the church was, and had long been, thoroughly and utterly corrupt in doctrine and in practice; doctrines which denied the foundations of Christianity read in the churches, and practices and habits not fit to be left in English on the drawing-room table. But I do not enter into the criticism of the text, it is too wide a subject, on the one hand, and I have learnt that I am not competent to form a clear and decided judgment, but know enough to judge those who pretend to do so.
I do not doubt the value of the Sinaitic and the Vatican manuscripts, but I do not accept their authority as conclusive; I confine myself therefore to the translation, and I must say, that I judge it to be a bad book, and that those who trust to it will lose in their knowledge of divine truth. I do not see the Spirit of God owned, nor the effect of owning it produced, nor the acquaintance with the mind of God drawn from Scripture, which qualifies for the performance of it, and the discovery of the force of particular passages. It is private interpretation, and very often only such. Much is lost by needless changes in the language, but this is a trifle comparatively. I will instance, "Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature." Authorised Version, "increased"; the sense is the same; but, besides the prestige of the old, the change is for the worse. I take this merely as an example. I believe that a person who takes it up for his daily use will injure his own soul. I have no doubt that Ephesians 5: 13 is wrong. Whatever "is made manifest is light" is not merely not true, but it is not the object of the passage -- it is speaking of being made manifest by the light. I admit the passage is difficult, but I believe the sense to be, "what makes everything manifest is light"; or, "it is the light which makes everything manifest": the form of the Greek word is found only here, and would be a middle with an active sense. There is no article with pan (everything); the sense would be different, and out of place -- it would be the universe. Philippians 2: 4 is, I believe, a mistake. What he seeks is, owning the good and gifts in others. Verse 10: 'At' is the sense -- 'in' has none. What is "bowing in his name"? They violate their rule of the preterite twice over: Acts 2: 36; Romans 6: 7. "United with him by the likeness" (verse 5) gives no sense. What does 'unite by a likeness' mean? No one who knew what being livingly united by the Holy Ghost to Christ is, could have penned such a sentence. "Be in bondage to sin" is not what is said; verse 6. In verse 10, "The death that he died" is not what is said; the margin, or old translation, is alone right. Verse 16: "Present yourselves" is very bad; 'yield,' or 'give up,' or 'deliver up.' Verse 4: "through the glory" is also bad -- better, as in the Authorised Version, "by." Verse 17: "Ye have been instructed," the commonest use of the Greek word with Paul. Chapter 7: 3, 4: "joined" better left out. Verse 13: "by" not in Greek -- better left out. Chapter 8: 4: "ordinance" very bad; in walking after the Spirit the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled. Verse 5, and elsewhere -- Spirit with a small s misleads and confuses; their rule for it is badly imagined. "They that walk after the spirit, mind the things of the spirit," Romans 8: 5; and then "the Spirit of God"; and even there "in the spirit" (verse 9) with a small s. Romans 8: 26,27: "how" is wrong, and the big S here makes the little one totally wrong elsewhere, and seriously so.
In 2 Timothy 2: 26 -- a confessedly difficult passage, they have introduced words, without any warrant at all, most unwarrantably. The margin, with their words in the text, makes it worse. The "Lord's servant"; margin, or "the devil." The Greek word in 1 Corinthians 5: 1 does not mean 'actually,' but 'commonly.' I merely give all these as leading to an estimate of the character of the work.
There is another point, not unimportant, I would notice: "the Lord added those that were being saved," Acts 2: 47. It is not correct. We have a different translation of the same words in Luke 13: 23: "Are they few that be saved?" The article, with the present participle, has constantly the same character, without reference to time. With the past participle it is so in English; 'the saved' and 'the lost.' In 2 Corinthians 2: 15, "are being saved." Both this and Luke 13 cannot be right -- in truth neither are. Revelation 21: 24, they leave out, "of the saved"; if they are in the right, the common text shews the use of the word -- it always means those who have this character, as also "those perishing," in 2 Corinthians 2: 15; so "him that was to come,' Romans 5: 14; "who is to come," Revelation 1: 4, i.e., 'the coming One,' of Christ. See 1 Thessalonians 5: 7; chapter 3: 5; Matthew 10: 20 for other examples. Instances without number may be found. As to the particular word, it refers to the spared remnant among the Jews, the number of whom was much discussed amongst the Jews. (See Lightfoot and Schoetgen.)
In Ephesians 1: 11, they have translated "we were made a heritage." Besides the false preterite already sufficiently spoken of, the Authorised Version is alone right, and the revision a false rendering. The Greek means, 'we have been placed by lot in possession of,' 'have obtained a lot, or inheritance,' and the point is of importance. We are joint-heirs with Christ.
On the whole, then, I accuse the Revisers of having mischievously erred as to the use of prepositions, particularly en, to have been entirely ignorant of the force of the definite article, and to have made a complete mess of the Greek aorist, blundering as to Greek and English.
I think, dear brother, that there are already explanations of the thirteenth of Matthew published, but as it appears that several brothers have not read them, in reply to the request of your correspondent, I shall give a short explanation of this chapter.
The end of chapter 12 had terminated Christ's relations with the Jews, and even with man according to the flesh; seven spirits, worse than the one which had gone out of this people, would re-enter with him into the empty, swept, and garnished house, abandoned, alas! to the enemy, but not for ever. Jesus no longer owned the ties which were of the flesh. Those who did His Father's will were His brother, and sister, and mother. With regard to His teaching the people, as being Himself the Prophet that should come, all was ended. He leaves the house, and seated Himself in a ship on the sea. He no longer thinks of gathering fruit from His vine. He sows, He brings with Him that which, being received into the heart, will bear fruit, but He no longer seeks it in His vine, as He had done; still less does He look for fruit in the world.
Now let us come to the parables of the chapter. We find seven; the first is not a similitude of the kingdom, but it treats of the effect produced on the individual by the word. Then follow three parables, similitudes of the kingdom, proclaimed in the presence of the multitude. At last, when Jesus had gone again into the house, He gives the disciples alone an explanation of the first of these parables; then He adds three others, declaring on this subject, that He spoke in parables, because it was no longer given to the people to hear the kingdom announced as being still for them; this was only given to those who had received the testimony of Jesus, and Jesus Himself as the Christ (verse 11).
The first parable is, indeed, the word of the kingdom, though not a similitude of the kingdom. The point in question is the reception of this word in the heart, not the establishment of the kingdom in this world. There are four classes: the careless hearer; here, just as the birds pick up the seed sown by the wayside, so the devil takes away the word sown in careless hearts, for the word coming from God's heart is adapted to man's heart. Next comes a heart receiving the word with joy. The glad tidings of the kingdom, and of divine blessing, rejoice the heart, but the conscience is untouched; there is not consequently any root, and when persecution and tribulation arise on account of the word, as the careless one had only received it for the joy it brought him, he renounces it on account of the tribulation that ensues. There is no fruit. A third case appeared to give hope of the seed germinating, but the briers and thorns choke it; cares, the love of riches, do not allow the word to bring fruit to maturity. Finally, the seed falls into good ground, there is spiritual intelligence; the heart understands the word, it receives it; then it produces more or less fruit in each one. The cases are not presented as declaring the doctrine of grace and of the operation of the Spirit, no -- the contrary, but the actual result that is manifested as the effect of the sowing of the word. Still, these various cases are placed by the Lord before the conscience. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
+From the French.
Then come the parables of the kingdom. The first three present the external appearance of the kingdom, what it becomes to the world's view. The first of these three adds the separation of the wicked from among the righteous; it ends by the order being given to the reapers to gather the good seed into the granary. Save the fact announced by the Lord, that the wheat was, according to His orders, to be gathered into the garner, we have in these parables only the public effect in the world of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven; that is to say, of the kingdom of God while the King remains hidden in heaven, and has not yet either taken His great power, or acted as Ring, so that the kingdom without a recognised or manifested king, progresses, takes certain forms which testify of the Ring's absence, and makes its way as though He was not occupied with it, although He, in reality, does act, in His grace, to call His own, and make them grow. (Compare Mark 4: 26-29.)
The Son of man sows good seed (the word of God). While men sleep, Satan comes, and sows tares where the good seed had been sown. It is not the natural condition of a heathen or unbelieving heart; it is what Satan has introduced among real Christians, to spoil the crop on earth. He cannot injure the good seed, nor prevent its being gathered into the garner, but in this world the crop is spoiled. This must last till the time of harvest. Then the Son of man will again personally occupy Himself with it. In the meantime His servants are not to be occupied with the tares in the world, with the purpose of purifying the crop in the world. Their business is not with the tares; the crop, once spoiled, remains spoiled to the end. But this refers to the state of the crop in the world, that is, to Christianity. We have nothing to do here with the church, the assembly of God. Here the good seed is not united into an assembly. At the time of harvest all will be put in order. In rooting up the tares of the field (the world), one might also pluck up the good seed; it is just what occurred when Rome wanted to destroy the heretics.
The second parable presents the kingdom as a great power in the earth. (See Daniel 4.) This is what a great tree is always a figure of in Scripture, as Assyria, Egypt. The seed of the word, in appearance insignificant at the beginning, has in fact become a great, and even the greatest, power on earth.
The third of our parables -- that of the leaven -- shews not an individual and real effect, as was the case in that of the sower, where the effect disappears when the word does not take root in the conscience; but it is a question of a general influence, which completely fills a limited sphere. Moreover a term (leaven) is used, which everywhere else has the sense of corruption. This is Christianity again.
After this the Lord sends the multitudes away, re-enters the house, and there speaks only to His disciples. He explains the parable of the tares, then adds three others. We have some remarks to make on the Lord's explanation of the parable of the tares and the field. (Verses 36-43; compare verse 24-30.)
The judgment of God manifests publicly what is only spiritually known before the judgment. Thus every explanation of parables and prophecies introduces elements which are not to be found in the parable or prophecy itself. Here the tares, already bound into bundles (in masses associated together and remaining on the field), are cast into the fire. Christ, by an earthly judgment, takes out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity. The earthly part of the kingdom is purified. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. This is the heavenly part; then the kingdom of heaven will present two distinct parts -- the kingdom of the Father above, and that of the Son of man below.
The three parables which follow (verse 44-50) shew the intention of Christ, and divine intelligence, in these things. The field is purchased to obtain the treasure. Christ has bought (not redeemed) the world to possess His own. His power over those who refuse His rights will be manifested in judgment, but this is not the subject of the parable.
Next (verse 45, 46), the moral beauty of the church engages His affections. He seeks what is lovely. There He finds it. In these two cases He renounces all His rights as Messiah Son of God on the earth, to the promises as Son of David, and come in the flesh. He went so far as to empty Himself of everything, to have the fruit of His humiliation in the glory of His own, the fruit of the travail of His soul.
Finally (verse 47-50), the kingdom takes at the end the character of a net thrown into the sea, and which gathers every kind of fish, good and bad. The subject is Christianity, which does not embrace all the people of the world, but a limited number, although composed of all sorts of men. Here the fishermen are employed in separating, and again the divine purpose is found that would have good fish, whereas the fishermen's labours have collected all sorts; however, they separate the good. This is what they sought, and they leave the others there. Then the explanation goes outside (the parable) to judgment. The angels separate, not the good from the bad, but the evil from among the good; then the bad are thrown into the furnace of fire. The act of the fishers is one of spiritual intelligence, when Christianity is formed as it is at present.
Thus you have in a few words, dear brother, the true sense, I believe, of these parables, full of instruction for us. The scribe, instructed in the things of the kingdom, possesses, indeed, that which the prophets announced; and he adds to it explanations which are the fruit of the coming and of the rejection of Christ -- facts which give the kingdom a form which is presented to us in these parables.
To the Editor of an American periodical.
Will you allow me to call in question some details of your explanation of the parables of Matthew 13? No matter of faith is in question, or indeed of doctrine, in any way, for I suppose on this we are quite agreed, but merely the interpretation of certain passages; but we lose by any mistake in this, and Scripture is too precious to allow of it, when in a form that acts on souls, for we are sanctified by the truth.
I suppose that the kingdom of heaven, in the six parables in which it is here spoken of, means the same thing. It is the subject of comparison. It may be, and is, viewed in various aspects, but the thing compared is the same. Your interpretation of the last makes of it an entirely new dispensation, when Christ has taken to Him His great power, and is reigning and judging; or, at least, you mix these two together as one. I am not aware that, though "the heavens rule," the term "kingdom of heaven," is applied to the earthly dominion of the Son of man. The Son of man gathers out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity, and the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
It has been long ago noticed that the first three of these parables present the outward apparent effects of the gospel in the world, the last three the thoughts of God in it; one, the result in man's responsibility; the other, the intention of God. We get the manifested effect on earth in the first three. The crop spoiled in the world, and to be left so till the harvest; the spread of a common doctrine in place of individual conversion, and that doctrine corrupt; a great power in the earth. Hence, in the parable, the tares are only gathered together in bundles on the earth, and the wheat gathered into the garner. The scene has ceased on earth, save that the tares are gathered in bundles for judgment. The wheat has disappeared there. Then God's actual judgment in power explains what now is known only spiritually. Hence the explanation of symbolical prophecy and parables always goes further than the parable or prophecy, because these give the facts in their enigmatic form, which the spiritual mind alone can explain. In actual judgment all is manifest. In the explanation, the tares are cast into the fire, which they were not in the parable, and the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The parable closes with the closing of the public state of things in the world -- the closing of the present state of things. The explanation (not the parable) gives the judgment of God on the wicked, and the shining forth in glory of the saints. The Son of man in judgment gathers out of His kingdom all things that offend.
In the last three parables we have the mind of the Lord in what took place; and first, it seems to me, in contrast with Judaism. Judaism, and Israel itself, was no hidden treasure, no mystery of the kingdom. The Lord gave up nothing to have it. They were His known people and inheritance in the world. He came to His own, though His own received Him not. When He comes again, He will take them to have the world, not the world to have them. In no case has the Lord, it seems to me, taken the world to have the Jews.
To come more directly to what drew my attention to these statements, or (to speak more exactly) to which my attention was drawn, the net cast into the sea. I cannot receive the thought, that it refers to the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, after the church is gone. As to the facts of that day, and that the preaching will take place, we are agreed. It is to the parable and its explanation that I refer. In the tares you have the position of the kingdom in the world. It is not the work of Christ and the Spirit for His own objects. Simply the facts, and the result, till the close of all here. They are found as such in the world, and dealt with. In the parable of the net, the net is cast into the masses of population, the sea, and gathers out, the object being good fishes, though the net enclosed all; but they are taken out of the sea, and brought to be handled by the fishermen who drew the net. In the parable of the tares there is no gathering a company into one net-full, with which the fishermen are occupied. The whole, in the case of the net, is their work. In the tares it is the Lord's, and Satan's, who spoils it in its effects on earth, though he cannot injure the wheat, or hinder its being put into the garner. It is the effect in the world till harvest, with the fact that the wheat is hid in the garner.
Further, in the gospel of the kingdom, when the church is gone, there is no gathering a net-full of good and bad. All is individual; and in the judgment, all the world is brought together, without exception; not a net-full gathered, and the separation made between those only who are in it, the mass of fishes being left in the sea. The kingdom of heaven, the subject of all these parables, never embraces all the world, but is a partial thing -- save buying the field to have the treasure hidden in it, which makes the special object more distinct, but the operation of the Lord is partial. The field is the world, but the operation is sowing, and tares, and a treasure which is there; but in the parable of the sheep and goats it is expressly all the Gentiles who are gathered, and no partial collective operation at all. Nor am I, indeed, aware that the throne of judgment set up on earth is ever called the kingdom. The parable of Matthew 25: 31 seems to me to make a clear distinction.
Besides this, the comparison of the use made of the sea does not seem to me to seize the true use of these figures. In Isaiah the wicked are like the troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt. This is a special action of the surf, and the wicked are viewed in this character, and compared to it. That is another idea from the vast sea of nations, out of which a net-full of fishes is taken, good as well as bad. The sea and the fishes of the sea are distinct things; and it is a different thing to bring up all the nations -- everybody -- for judgment, and to gather every kind and leave the mass of the rest where they were. There is no bringing to shore in the judgment of the nations, before the judgment, but a gathering of all together. The fish are brought out of the sea into a net: that is the fishing work. I do not enter on the analogies of the days of creation, as not necessary to my object; but I think in the remark, that this subject occupies thirteen out of twenty-two chapters of Revelation, there is confusion between the beast and the Gentiles outside.
I have only one more remark to make, already alluded to as a principle. The statement of the parable is overlooked, and confounded with the explanation. In the parable of the net, as in the tares and wheat, the explanation is, and is meant to be, different from the parable. In the parable it is carefully stated that the persons who separate are the persons who have drawn the net: "which when they had drawn to shore, they sat down, and put the good into vessels." They are occupied with the good, and simply reject the bad. In the explanation, the angels -- certainly not the fishermen -- separate the wicked from among the just -- another kind of act -- and cast them into the fire. In the parable we have the fishermen's work carried out to the end of the fishermen's part in it. The two previous parables give the thought and purpose of God in the kingdom of heaven; this, the part His servants take in it. In the tares, further, you have no action of men, but of Christ, and Satan, and then judgment in this world, providential and actual, the wheat being gone out of the way into the garner. The gathering into the net, and out of it into vessels, is a distinct part of the parabolic action, and done by the fishermen. In the parable of the tares and wheat, the servants are forbidden to meddle with what is to be done, and the work of judgment, which is all, save the Lord's and Satan's, committed to others.
The Gospel of John has a special character, which has struck the minds of all those who have given it a little attention, even though they have not always clearly understood what it was that produced this effect: it not only strikes the mind, but attracts the heart in a way not to be found in the other parts of the holy book. The reason of this is, that the Gospel of John presents the Person of the Son of God -- the Son of God come down so low, that He can say, "Give me to drink." This attracts the heart, if the heart be not altogether hardened. If Paul teaches us how a man can be presented before God, John presents God before man. His subject is God, and eternal life in a man, the apostle following out the subject in the Epistle, shewing us this life reproduced in those who possess it in possessing Christ. I speak only of the leading features which characterise these books; for many other truths besides those which I have just noticed are to be found in them, it is needless to say. Indeed it is John's Gospel which gives us the doctrine of the sending of the Spirit of God, that other Comforter, who is to abide with us for ever.
The Gospel of John is very clearly distinguished from the other three synoptical gospels, and we shall do well to pause for a moment to consider the character of these last, especially as this concerns the difference between them and the Gospel of John. The three synoptical gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, afford the most precious details of the life of the Saviour down here, of His patience and His grace: He was the perfect expression of good in the midst of evil; His miracles (with the exception of the cursing of the fig-tree, which expressed the truth as to the state of Israel, that is, of man in possession of all the privileges which man could enjoy from God) were not only a confirmation of His testimony, but were all miracles of goodness -- the expression of divine power manifested in goodness. Here we find good; God Himself, who is love, acting, although, in a certain sense, still hidden, according to the grace which was soon to be plainly revealed. Thus was the blessed Saviour presented to man, to be recognized and received: He was unknown and rejected. It has often been noticed that each of the three evangelists presents the Saviour in a different aspect: Matthew brings before us Emmanuel in the midst of the Jews; Mark, the Servant Prophet; Luke (after the first two chapters, which present to us the most interesting picture of a remnant with whom God was, in the midst of a hypocritical and rebellious people) gives us the Son of man, more in relation with that which exists at present; that is, heavenly grace; but all three, in the main, present the Saviour in His patient ways of grace in this world, that man may receive Him; and man rejected Him! Mark's Gospel, relating the service of Jesus, has no genealogy. Matthew, in relation with the Jews and earthly dispensations, traces the Saviour from Abraham and David, and also shews the three things, which take the place of Judaism; that is, the kingdom as it exists in the present time (chapter 13), the church (chapter 16), and the kingdom in glory (chapter 17). Luke, which presents to us grace in the Son of man, follows His genealogy up to Adam. These three Gospels always speak of Christ as a Man down here, presented to men historically, and they follow up their account until He is positively rejected, announcing then His entering into the new position which He has taken by resurrection. The ascension, which is the foundation of our present place, is only given in Luke directly; allusion to it is made in the last supplementary verses in Mark.
The Gospel of John regards the Lord in quite another manner: it presents to us a divine Person come down here, God manifested in this world; a marvellous fact, upon which all in man's history depends. It is no longer a question here of genealogy; it is no longer the second Man responsible toward God (though that be ever true), and perfect before God, and all His delight, while we see upon every page that it is no longer Messiah according to prophecy; it is no longer Emmanuel, Jesus, who saves His people; it is no longer the messenger who goes before His face: in John it is God Himself, as God, who in a Man shews Himself to men,
John N. Darby.REPLY TO AN ARTICLE IN THE "ZIONSBOTE" UPON "DARBYISM"+
A LETTER ON A PAMPHLET BY MR. F. OLIVIER, ENTITLED, "THE BODY OF CHRIST, AND A MISUNDERSTANDING ON THE SUBJECT" (FROM THE FRENCH)
The pamphlet you sent me shews me I did not miss my object in the one I had previously published.+ There is progress in the development of the question. I make no reply to the review of the brethren's course. It is best to go forward. I will only remind Mr. O. that, at one time, he had wanted to join the brethren at Lausanne, and to preach in their room, he having hitherto had a separate meeting of his own at Montbenon, and, the brethren agreeing to his proposal, one fine day they found a pulpit in the room, without their being informed of it, and, at the same time, they learned that Mr. O. purposed having his own separate meeting at Mountbenon permanently. The matter was (dropped) not carried out. What had induced the brethren to accept the proposal of Mr. O. was, the scandal of two meetings, without adequate reasons.
J. N. D.IS THE "ONE BODY" THE GROUND OF GATHERING?
NEW LUMP
CHRIST AND SANCTIFICATION+
I fully recognise a deliverance, and have for fifty years, having then got it -- a deliverance which the evangelical world denies; and Pearsall Smith admitted in his last tract that all he meant by the "better life," was passing from Romans 7 into chapters 6 and 8; which is what I insisted on. My tract on cleansing with water goes into this. It is the passing from being under law, or the reference of acceptance to our state by redemption wrought in Christ, and experimentally known by the sealing of the Spirit, into the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free; indeed it is one special ministry in which I have been blessed, and on that deliverance I should insist.
J. N. D.ON EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT -- "THE ETERNITY OF EVIL"
LETTER ON IMMORTALITY AND EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT
As this question, this evil heresy, is the one by which, most commonly just now, Satan seeks to perplex the minds of the simple, I write a line to you in connection with the tract sent to me. A great many human names are introduced, but Scripture is little inquired into. In this doctrine the great point of consequence to me is that the true character and import of sin, of atonement, of repentance, are overlooked, and the responsibility of man. Atonement is either denied or dropped out. Here it is entirely dropped out. Now it is evident, if temporary punishment is the whole desert of sin, Christ had only to suffer accordingly. Repentance is proportionate. And one of the chief teachers in the United States declared in his book, that the deep distress of conscience and terror about sin committed was a base servile fear and wrong. To one who found he had lost the atonement and the sense of responsibility out of his mind, and who asked him what he made of responsibility, he replied, it was impossible to reconcile it with his system, but he saw it in Scripture, and so did not deny it. They insist that souls of men and beasts are the same, and plead Genesis to this end -- all in whom was the breath of life perished in the flood -- that beasts have a living soul and so has man. If this be so (that we have more intelligence, but a living soul like a beast's), you cannot charge a beast with sin, nor make Christ die to put away a beast's sins. What did Christ do for us -- not as giving life, but in the way of atonement? That is the grave question. Again, they confound eternal life and immortality, which is not honest.THE DEITY OF CHRIST AND WHAT CONSTITUTES CHRISTIANITY; BEING AN ANSWER TO THE INQUIRIES OF AN UNITARIAN STUDENT OF DIVINITY
DEVELOPMENT
LETTERS ON THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT
I have no pretension, with the leisure or ability I have, to give even a summary view of the Revision of the New Testament, which now occupies every one. But it seems to me, that, while there are many excellent changes in it, it is, for any practical purpose, a failure. It might seem invidious in one who has published a new translation to comment on this; perhaps presumptuous for an individual, when so many learned men have been engaged in it. But I might quote a crowd of passages in which they have adopted as their version what I had also adopted from the Greek, and that in some very important passages, besides a crowd of less important ones. I do not set about to criticise their text, though I should strongly demur to some changes; nor do I pretend to have gone through the whole in detail. But where the word of God is in question, our minds should rise above all considerations but one: Is the mind of God, as given in His word, substantially afforded us in what we possess in the Revision? Two objects may be sought in it, to this end: it may be before us as a public Bible for the country, taking the place of the Authorised Version; or as a book of reference for the student of the word, to have a more sure and certain sound for his own soul. It does not seem to me it can be either. If, indeed, it had, so to speak, a divine stamp upon it as a translation, this might have overcome the nature influences of a long and, in very many excellent qualities, justly cherished translation. But I do not think this is so. We have many appliances in the version -- learning, scholarship, textual criticism, and, I do not a moment doubt, assiduous care. But I do not see the mind of Christ, the spiritual-mindedness which alone can reproduce the word of God; nor do I think there is a fine sense of many Greek usages of words, nor of the finer shades of English ones. The definite article is put in, with no notice that it is not in the Greek, where it makes a very great difference. Thus Kurios (Lord), without the article for Jehovah following the LXX, and the Lord, what the Lord Jesus became. God hath made Him "both Lord and Christ." You have the two in Psalm 110: "Jehovah said unto my Lord." The distributive article, "a," is put in where, without it, the word gives the character of the person or thing spoken of. Thus, "a righteousness of God," so that you might think there were several, whereas, "righteousness of God," is in contrast with righteousness of man. In some cases this only drops the true force. "Paul an apostle," as one of many, instead of, "Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ," simply what he was.LETTER ON THE PARABLES OF THE THIRTEENTH OF MATTHEW+
A NOTE ON THE PARABLES OF THE TREASURE AND THE NET
J. N. D.ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
INTRODUCTION