The Most Pauline of Divines: Walter Marshall and His Book, The Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification

WILLIAM COWPER writes thus in one of his classical letters: The book you mention lies now on my table. Marshall is an old acquaintance of mine. I think Marshall one of the best writers, and one of the most spiritual expositors of Scripture I ever read. I never met a man who understood the plan of salvation better, or who was more happy in explaining it to others.’ And James Hervey, the well-known author of Theron and Aspasio, says of Marshall’s book: It has been one of the most useful books to my own soul. I scarce ever fail to receive spiritual consolation and strength from the perusal of it. And, was I to be banished into some desolate island, possessed of only two books beside my Bible, this should be one of the two, perhaps the very first I would choose.’ The saintly Robert Trail also says: ‘Mr. Marshall was a holy and retired man, known only to the world by this one book,

UP 225 which is deep, practical, well-connected, and requiring a more than ordinary attention to read it with profit. Its great excellence is that it leads the serious reader directly and immediately to Jesus Christ, And Adam Gib of Edinburgh used to say of Marshall: ‘I have scarcely ever been acquainted with any practical treatise of human product so evangelical, in a thread more correct and a method more exact than this, ‘Did I ever speak to you about Marshall on Sanctification? ’ asks Dr. Chalmers. ‘He is at present my daily companion.’ And Dr. Andrew Murray of South Africa says in his introduction to a most excellent abridgment of Marshall: ‘There is but one book in the English language admitted by all to be the standard book on sanctification. It is the work of the Rev. Walter Marshall, published in 1692. It has at all times received the highest praise from men of eminence both as theologians and saints.** And Dr. Elder Cumming once said to the present writer: ‘Ah! Walter Marshall is just Keswick for theologians and men of mind.’ And Dr. Laidlaw in a like conversation: ‘Marshall is simply the last word on the subject.’

Walter Marshall’s one book is but a small book in bulk, and his life is like his book. He was born in 1638. He was educated at Oxford. He was settled in Hursley. He declared for Presbytery. He was cast out of his parish. He profited greatly himself by his preaching: from its efficacy on his own heart he attained to very uncommon degrees of faith and holiness and comfort. He had been for long in great darkness as to the way of attaining to true holiness and true peace. He consulted Richard Baxter and Thomas Goodwin, among others. After he had confessed to Goodwin many sins in his heart and in his life, Goodwin replied, ‘You have forgotten to mention the greatest sin of all. The great sin of not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ both for the remission of sins, and for holiness of heart.’

In reading such authors as Hooker, and Leighton, and Owen, and Goodwin, and Rutherford, and Edwards, we continually come upon this expression, — the mystical union. Now, that is a theological and an experimental expression. The thing is in the Scriptures, though not the exact words. The Scriptures, indeed, are full of the thing. And that so expressive phrase has been coined by our great evangelical theologians in order to convey to the mind a certain picture of that glorious relationship which is constituted between Christ and the soul, when the soul is once truly united to Christ, and is, as it were, incorporated into Christ. Now, Paul is the great apostle of the mystical union. The mystical union is in every epistle of his, it might almost be said that the mystical union is in every chapter of his. For Christ, and the believer in Christ, is Paul’s constant theme. We are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. We are accepted in the Beloved. It hath pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell. And ye are complete in Him, for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the

Godhead bodily. Rooted and built up in Him, we are to grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ. Compared with Christ and the mystical union of believers with Christ, Paul as good as knows nothing, either in his preaching or in his epistles. And in this Marshall is a ’ right Pauline divine,’ as Luther says. This is what Dr. Murray says on this subject. ‘In chapter three Marshall teaches us how in Jesus Christ a new nature was prepared for the believer; how the needed endowments for living holily are provided for in that new nature, and how this is communicated to us through our living union with Christ. The beauty of Marshall’s book is that he makes the Mystical Union the starting-point in the Christian course. He points out how by faith the sinner receives Christ and His salvation: how justification and sanctification are both given in Christ, and received only through the faith that unites to Him. In our union to Christ, realised by faith from day to day, and in each duty we perform, is the only, but the sufficient, strength for a holy life.’ And Dr. Murray adds, ‘Let me in conclusion urge every believer who longs to understand better the secret of a holy life, to take time for the study of this little book. He need be afraid of no new doctrine, though the distinctness and the point may make it appear new. But let no one imagine that a hasty reading of this book will do him any good. Let him return and read more than once or twice, till mind and heart become familiarised with the blessed truth of a sinner on earth living and speaking and acting daily and hourly as a saint, and that in the power of a holiness dwelling in heaven, because the life of Jesus is his life. And I cannot but think that such a reader will find our writer to be indeed God’s messenger to guide him into God’s highway of holiness, and into a life of peace and power before unknown.’ Walter Marshall has found an editor worthy of himself in Andrew Murray.

And now, to close with, take one or two of Marshall’s many striking sentences that arrest us in the course of our reading of * The Gospel-Mystery.’

On the law of love he says incidentally, — * Take notice, that the law which is your mark, is exceeding broad, and yet not the more easy to be hit: because you must aim to hit it in every duty of it, with a performance of equal breadth, or else you do not hit it all.’ And his whole argument revolves round such a passage as this: ‘Many men, who are seriously devout, take a great deal of pains to mortify their corrupted nature by pressing vehemently upon their hearts many motives to holiness; labouring importunately to squeeze good affections out of their hearts, as oil out of a flint. On this account they think the entrance into a holy life to be harsh and unpleasing, because it costs so much struggling with their evil hearts to new-frame them. If they only knew that this way of entrance into a holy life is not only harsh and unpleasant, but altogether impossible; and that the true way to mortify sin and quicken their hearts to holiness is by receiving a new nature out of the fulness of Christ; and that we do no more to the production of a new nature than to the production of original sin, though we do more to the reception of it, — if they only knew this, they might save themselves many a bitter agony, and employ their endeavours to enter in at the strait gate in such a way as would be far more pleasant and successful.*’ And again: ‘The old man, the body of sin, is destroyed in us, not by any wounds that we ourselves can give to it, but by our partaking of that freedom from it, that death unto it, that is already wrought out for us by the death of Christ. Therefore we must be content to leave the natural man vile and wicked, as we found it, until it be utterly destroyed by death, though we must not allow its wickedness.’ And again: ‘Nature remains wicked, and only wicked, even after we have put on Christ.”* And again: ‘As our natural corruption was produced originally in the first Adam, and was propagated from him to us: so our new nature is produced first in Christ, and is derived from Him to us; or, as it were, propagated.’ And to wind up: ‘Christ would have us believe on Him that justifieth the ungodly; and therefore He doth not require us to be godly before we believe. He came as a physician to the sick, and He does not expect that they shall recover their health in the least degree before they come to Him. The vilest sinners tixe. fitly prepared anv qualified for this design, which is to show forth the exceeding riches of grace. For this end the law of Moses entered, that the offence might abound: so that, where sin abounded, grace might much more abound.’