Difficulties and Objections
Our brethren who oppose us seem too much to proceed upon the principle that we ought to be able to clear up all difficulties which they may start, and to solve all problems which they may present to us.
This is unreasonable. They deal with no other doctrine in this way, and they would not hesitate to object to the rule, if applied to any other doctrine, such as the trinity, the incarnation, predestination, and such like. There is no revealed truth without its hard and insoluble points. Every thought of the Infinite Mind, however apparently simple in itself, borders upon what is inscrutable, and, to us, contradictory. So that instead of the occurrence of difficulties being a mark of what is false, it is an invariable accompaniment of what is true. Instead of its being a barrier at the
outset, which we are not at liberty to pass by or pass over, it is just what we may expect to find if the doctriné be really divine. Human ideas may be so easy as to involve no difficulties, but those that are divine cannot be so. And this not merely in religion, but in every thing else. For even Coquerel, the French Socinian, argues thus: “Mystery applies not only to religion, but is universal. All knowledge terminates in a mystery; all human light is lost in obscurity; all human discourse arrives at a last word, which is pronounced, and which supposes, necessitates, and suggests another which cannot be pronounced. Where an attempt is made to utter it, the wisest man merely stammers forth confused sounds.”* ‘Vinet, in his admirable discourse upon the Jysteries of Christianity, takes up similar ground. — You are not justified in denying them (the truths of the Bible), for the sole reason that you do not understand them.... Not only are mysteries an inseparable part of all true religion; but it is absolutely impossible that a true religion should not present a great number of mysteries. If it is true,
it ought to teach more truths respecting God and
* Christianity by Athanase Ooquerel, Ch. xii, p. 28. The translator, in his preface, shows more of the infidel when he says, “Christianity must be able to stand the ordeal of every human test before it can find universal acceptance as the Word of God,” p. 5. Yet in substance this is just what is often said to us; “Millennarianism must stand the ordeal of every human test before it can be accepted as the truth of God.”
divine things than any other; but each of these truths has a relation to the infinite, and by consequence borders on a mystery.... It is clearly necessary that Christianity should, more than any other religion, be mysterious, simply because it is true.” In like manner, the American translator of Vinet remarks on the same topic, — “A religion from God must have its aspect of mystery and difficulty. It belongs to the infinite and runs into eternity. Its truths are the stars of a boundless expanse, and are set in a firmament of gloom.”*
The handle that is made of the difficulties of our system shows us what our opponents consider their strong point. Not by any means confident about the strength of thei proof-texts, and often puzzled with the explicitness of owrs, they find no refuge save in the supposed deficulties of millennarianism. These they set in the forefront of the battle, telling us that they will not move an inch to the farther examination of the subject, till these have been taken out of the way. The meaning of this is, that they consider our
system incapable of proof.t In vain we urge them to
* Introduction, p. 25; see also Butler’s Analogy, part ii. c. iv. § 2; and his Sermon on the Ignorance of Man. + On a like illogical foundation has Strauss proceeded in his Lafe of Jesus; for he sets out with requiring you to admit that a miracle is impossible, — “there is no right conception of what hislook into the proof. No. They are satisfied that it is not a doctrine capable of being proved even by Scripture. In reference to this, Mr Wood most aptly quotes Waterland on the Trinity, who thus remarks upon the way in which his opponents escape from all Scripture texts. “These texts,” says he, “are eluded on the principle that person and intelligent being are equivalent, or by something else of the kind; which is running off from the question about the Scriptural proof of the doctrine, to the natural impossibility of the thing, and is not submitting to the obvious and apparent sense of sacred writ, but is tantamount to saying that no Scriptures can prove tt.”
I do not make these statements upon slender grounds or mere inferences of my own. I have often heard the question argued thus in private, and am persuaded from what I have read of post-millennial works, that such is their actual scope, and such the foundation on which they rest their refutations of our theory, And that I have not misrepresented some of them, at least, the following passage will show. The writer, who goes farther
tory is, apart from the conviction that the chain of endless causation can never be broken, and that a miracle zs an impossibility.” Beard’s Voices of the Church in reply to Strauss, p. 80. Granting that millennarianism may turn out to be wholly false, must we set owt with the idea that we cannot hope to understand prophecy save by taking for granted that millennarianism is an impossibility?
than most post-millennialists, is condemning the idea that there is to be an outbreak of wickedness at the end of the millennium. “TI cannot believe,” says he, “that after gospel truth has prevailed and shed its holy and benign influences over mankind for a thousand years, the time will come when the genuine servants of Christ will be reduced to a small number, a diminutive camp. L cannot believe that the vast population of the globe shall be suffered to fall again under the infernal governments of destructive passions,’* &c. Such is a specimen of the reasonings alluded to, from which it may be seen that I have not testified falsely. It is in this very strain that many of our opponents proceed. “I cannot believe that Christ will reign on earth; Ll cannot believe that he can degrade himself by dwelling upon earth again; I cannot believe that he can intercede anywhere out of heaven; I cannot believe that there can be such an ‘abhorred mixture’ of the mortal and the immortal as millennarianism requires; I cannot believe in the national supremacy of Israel in the latter days; I cannot believe that Satan is really to be bound; I cannot believe that sin can be where Satan is
not.” I do not of course mean that such is the actual
* Vint’s Illustrations of Prophecy, pp. 119, 120. He has several other cannots, which I do not think it necessary to quote. The book, with all its peculiarities, is able and scholarlike.
language of any; but such is the tone and method which they adopt. In reply, I shall simply quote a sentence from Bishop Butler to this effect; “We cannot argue that this cannot be the sense of such a passage of Scripture, at least not of the prophetic parts of it; for if it had been so, it would have been expressed more plainly;... the only question is, what appearance there is that this is the sense, and scarce at all how much more determinately or accurately it might have been spoken.”* And, still farther, I would answer in the words of Leslie, — “where anything is established upon the full proof of reason, then, ten thousand objections or difficulties, though we cannot answer them, are of no force at all to overthrow it. Nothing can do that, but to refute those reasons upon which it is established; till then the truth and certainty of the thing remains unshaken, though we cannot explain it nor solve the difficulties that arise from it.”t Nor have I any hesitation in citing Bacon’s
axiom, as applicable to the present subject, “the harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is
and ought to be the true and chief confutation and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections.”
As much of the attempted refutation of millenna-
* Butler, Anal., p. ii. ch. 3. + Leslie’s Short and Easy Method with the Deists. Letter at the close.
arianism consists in the starting of difficulties supposed to be insuperable, it may not be needless to enter at some length into the whole question of difficulties. We are no ultra-fidians, as Coleridge calls those who do not feel themselves at home, save when believing absolute impossibilities.* Nor do we sympathize greatly with the maxim of Tertullian, quoted by him, certwm est guia impossibile est. We have no love for self-contradictions; and should be quite willing to yield up a point, when a proved impossibility or self-contradiction came in the way. At the same time, we have as little sympathy with minimijidianism, whose creed is constructed upon the principle of “the least possible expenditure of belief,’ — a scheme of picking and choosing of Scripture texts, for the support of doctrines, that had been learned before-hand from the higher scale of common sense.t - Difficulties ought to have our most serious consideration, were it for no other end than that of satisfying our own minds. But then they must be real difficulties, not merely those of one who having been bred in a certain system, says, “I cannot conceive how this can be.” And then further, they must keep their proper place, and not be allowed either to take too prominent a position, or to be rated too highly. Give * Aids to Reflection, p. 199. + Th. 201, 202.
74: PLACE OF DIFFICULTIES.
them by all means their due weight and proper place, but no more, else from difficulties you immediately raise them to the rank of positive and direct demonstrations. They are shoals which a good pilot will ever be cautious in steering through; but they cannot form anchorage-ground for the vessel. They are rivers or mountains, which obstruct our smooth progress, and on arriving at which, it becomes us to pause and consider; but they cannot form of themselves the necessary limit of territory, the terminus ad quem, beyond which it is not lawful to proceed. Difficulties, like the opposite counsel in a case, ought certainly to be allowed to cross-question us and sift our statements, but they must not usurp the seat of either jury or judge. Nor ought they to be thrust forward at the commencement of our inquiries, making us set out with a sort of pre-judgment, that the matter undertaken is a very hopeless one, — nay, perhaps a “sheer impossibility which betrays its own weakness, nay, its own con-
”
°
This is the Socinian mode of warfare, — a mode
sciousness of weakness, in as much as its object is to avoid all open discussion, and, by establishing a series of impossibilities at the outset, to bring the opposing arguments into the field so shackled and disabled, that they shall have no chance of success. To try to render ourselves invulnerable, by buckling on this
INCOMPREHENSIBLE. TD
armour of impossibilities, and then to bid defiance to the adversary, betokens no great consciousness of strength.
If a self-manifest impossibility could be established at the outset, there is no need of proceeding farther. The case is at an end. Proof is superseded. To heap up texts of Scripture with the intent of proving an acknowledged impossibility, would be idle. In such a case, however, the impossibility must needs be very evident.
Very often, however, impossible is identified with incomprehensible, so that when the latter can be affirmed of a doctrine, we are but too ready to pronounce the former of it. This is certainly confounding things that differ, and mystifying all controversy. A thousand things may be incomprehensible, yet perhaps not one impossible. Their being the former is no reason for my thinking them the latter; nay, if 1 cannot comprehend them, I have no right to pronounce them impossible. I must have so far comprehended their meaning and ascertained the self-contradiction or the contradiction to other truths which they contain, before I can say that they are impossible. LHternity is incomprehensible, but not impossible. Godhead is incomprehensible, but not impossible. The ever-burning fire of hell is incomprehensible, but not impossible,
The various scenes of the judgment are incomprehensible, but not impossible. Incarnation is incomprehensible, yet we believe it. Life (or vitality) is incomprehensible, yet we know it and are conscious of it. Electricity and magnetism are incomprehensible, yet the facts respecting their existence and operation are incontestible. The relationship between hyperboles and their asymptotes is incomprehensible, yet it is not the less demonstrable. That a space in one sense infinite, can by its rotation generate a solid of finite capacity, may not only be incomprehensible, but be ranked perhaps by Mr Brown as an absurdity, like that of two and two making five, yet any mathematician will demonstrate that such is the case.*
Besides the above distinction between the impossible and the incomprehensible, there is another which must be kept sight of. I mean, the difference between the esse and the modus, the fact or thing and the mode of
its being. The fact or event may be clearly revealed;
* In reference to any test of the possible or impossible, a theologian of the last century has the following remark, “Universalitas eruditorum omniwm hic consensus est, accwrata locutione, ulud omne et solum esse et dict possibile quod nullam in esse repugnantiam involvit; cujus predicata essentialia sibi mutuo non contradicunt; in cujus ideam non tngrediuntur duo aut plura quorum alterum ait, negat alterum, eodem modo. G. B. Bulfinger de origine et permissione mali, Frankfort 1724, p. 77. See also Pascal’s Letters, M‘Crie’s translation, p. 327.
the mode of it may be totally unintelligible to us. The facts of science and the facts of revelation are much on the same footing here. No one thinks of disputing the facts because the how of their coming to pass is a secret to finite man.*
The events of prophecy specially require this distinction to be applied to them. If the modus of past events is inscrutable, how much more the modus of those still future? The modus of the old creation is an abyss of wonder to us, how much more the modus of the new creation? The modus of the earth’s stoppage, when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, is a hidden thing to us, and it appears to us passing wonderful that not a stone or atom on earth’s surface should have been displaced by that sudden arrestment; so the modus of earth’s future preservation amidst, and emergence from, a more awful interference of Jehovah’s hand, may be utterly incomprehensible to us, nay, may appear to involve as great physical contradictions and impossibilities as philosophers have discovered in Joshua’s miracle; yet shall all that hinder our believing what God has revealed concerning the scenes of the latter day? The modus of the deliverance of the three children from the flames of the furnace is far
* See on this point a work by Dr Cox of America, entituled Quakerism not Christianity, pp. 81, 82.
78 THE ESSE AND THE MODUS.
beyond our philosophy, yet we believe the fact; so the modus of the preservation of the remnant, that are to survive the conflagration, may be incomprehensible by us, but shall we pronounce it a sheer impossibility? Or if we do so, how shall we rebut the sneers of the scoffer at the impossibility of the deliverance of the three children? If we refuse to believe the word of prophecy concerning the future deliverance of the. remnant amid the fires of judgment, shall we express surprise at the infidel refusing to believe the preservation of the three Jews from the blaze of the furnace? The scoffer calls the latter a fable and an impossibility, — simply because he cannot understand it, and cannot reconcile wt with the nature of fire, which consumes the flesh of man, the hair of his head, the vestments of his body. Shall we call the former an impossibility, simply because we cannot understand how men should be kept alive amid the flames of a blazing earth, and how earth itself should thereafter emerge with the same features as before. The naturalist takes the asbestos napkin when it is soiled, and casts it into the fire to purify it. He brings it out thoroughly purged of every stain, yet the same in every fibre, — the same in shape, form, texture, dimensions; — and why should it seem incredible that our God should subject this earth to the intensity of his purifying furnace-heat, and
yet cause it to come forth, the same earth, in dale, and hill, and field, and plain, and rock? The potter takes his clay, moulds it, shapes it, paints it, and then subjects it to the fierce heat of his furnace. Does that heat erase one line of moulding, alter one shaping, or burn out one colour, even the most delicate? Nay, does it not render all these firm and indelible? And why may not our God take this earth of his, and deal with it as the potter does with the clay, not in order to fuse it into shapeless chaos, but to bring it forth from the conflagration, not only unchanged, but,fromthat day unchangeable? Of this the modus may be inscrutable, but why on that account should the event be denied?
In regard then to the difficulties urged against us, let us add a few special remarks. Respecting these we affirm as follows, — either,
1, Lt is not really a difficulty at all; — as when we are charged with leaving none to people the earth during the millennium, because we say that the saints are to be caught up and the wicked destroyed. Now, we do not say that all the wicked are to be destroyed. We think that God has told us that there is to be a remnant, both Jewish and Gentile, by which the earth is to be repeopled. Or,
Qdly, Lt is a difficulty common to us and our opponents; as when we are asked to account for the falling away at the end of the millennium; or when we
are asked to explain the scenes in the 25th of Matthew, 2
or at the close of the 20th of Revelation. According to their theory, how or when are the saints to judge the world? How or when are they to judge atigels 2 How or when are they to be intermingled with the wicked so as to require the separation, (Matt. xxv. 32),
seeing they have already been caught up into the
clouds to meet the Lord, and ‘to be for ever with him?»
How or when are the foolish virgins to come knocking: for admittance, when all are at once placed before the J udge? How or when or where is Christ to say to these foolish virgins, “I know you not,” when it is only after the judgment (Matt. xxv. 41-45), that they are discovered and rejected? Or again, turning to the 20th of Revelation, how or when or where is the marriage supper of the Lamb to be, seeing it is placed before, not after the judgments of the great day? Is the marriage to be celebrated before the saints are acquitted? How can the sea be said to give up its dead after the earth and heaven have fled away, and no place been found for them?* These are difficulties of pre-
* Or how can our opponents reconcile Malachi iv. 1 with iv. 3? In that day which is to “burn like an oven” (the same day as predicted in the 3rd of second Peter) the wicked are said to be
burned up as stubble, and neither root nor branch left, yet in the third verse, they are said to be trodden down by the righteous.
EXPECTED DIFFICULTIES. 8]
cisely the same kind, and occurring at precisely the same crisis, and in reference to the same events, as we are asked to explain. Our opponents believe these, though they seem inextricable and incomprehensible; why will they not allow us to believe a few others, placed in precisely the same predicament? The order, the collocation, the connection, of these various scenes of judgment, are, I believe, incapable of being fully adjusted by us at present. Vo theory can set them in proper order just now. ‘There are links awanting ‘which we cannot supply. We see but the separate pieces, and no skill of ours can rightly arrange them all. The system of our opponents only gets quit of one difficulty to be overtaken by others. Or,
odly, The difficulties are only such as we might expect. If our opponents refuse to admit of any difficulties in their system, I cannot help suspecting its truth. For a system with no difficulties must be man’s, not God’s. Before the opening up of any one of God’s plans, there were always difficulties, — difficulties which tried faith and staggered unbelief. It could not be otherwise, unless God’s thoughts and plans were as childish as our own. ‘Therefore we may expect difficulties, especially in those scenes which bring the world’s history If our opponents insist on the simultaneous scene of consuming
fiery vengeance, how can these inconsistencies be accounted for? G to a crisis. Shall the scenes of resurrection, judgment, acquittal, condemnation, &c., present no difficulties? Shall the summing up of the earth’s history, — the recapitulation of its scenes, — the gathering together of the ten thousand threads of its complicated events, present no difficulty? Shall one broad, clear, open scene, over which the eye of man may glance in a moment, finish and unravel all? He who believes this, need not stumble at difficulties, or absurdities, or contradictions. Or,
Athly, The difficulties are such as we have had specimens of before; so that. God has in some measure prepared us for them. We have had them on the smaller scale, and why not on the larger, in that day when all shall be vast and infinite? We have had them in miniature, and why not in their full dimensions? We have seen Israel preserved amid the plagues of Egypt, and why not a remnant of Israel amid the plagues of the day of vengeance?. We have seen Noah saved from the deluge; Lot from the fire of Sodom; Daniel from the lions; the three Jews from the furnace; — and why may not a people, such as God may choose, be preserved amid the burnings of the globe? We haveseen earth abruptly arrested in its course, yet nothing on its surface topples, and no one of its inhabitants are conscious of the stoppage; and why may not God so
— — — e apply the fire as to preserve, while it purvjies its hills and valleys, — either dissolving or consolidating, as seems meet to Him who is to make all things new?! In all this, there is no contradiction, no impossibility. We do not understand the modus — the how, but that is all, Or,
5thly, They are difficulties which help to solve other dificulties. Why, for instance, may not the conflagration be made use of by God for turning the land into a plain, from Geba to Rimmon, according to Zechariah ?* Why may it not be made use of for cleaving the Mount of Olives into two, according to the same prophet.t There are also passages of Scripture, apparently contradictory, which are thus reconciled. Sometimes we read of total destruction, — at others of remnants left, — sometimes of the “oven” burning up the wicked, yet the righteous being there in that day to tread down the wicked. These are difficulties, the solution of which, I believe, no scheme, save the millennarian, can furnish. Or,
6thly, They are difficulties considerably less insoluble than others at which we do not stumble, Take the Incarnation. What endless difficulties must have en-Rox. 10:
+ The literality of these scenes is, as I shall show, acknowledged by several who are xot millennarians; and, indeed, how it can be denied I do not understand.
compassed that truth before the Word was made flesh! Yet was faith to stumble at these? What strange and serious difficulties present themselves in reference to the resurrection of the body! yet are we not to receive it? Dr Cox thus speaks of it; “rightly to believe it, according to the sure testimony of God, is well nigh impossible to any man who does not believe in the paramount authority of Scripture .. They (the ‘ Friends’) call it a gross conception, a heathen notion, a piece of folly, a thing impossible: they use the stale arguments of mere deism against it.”* Dr Bush is even more unqualified in his statements regarding the absurdities, self-contradictions, impossibilities involved in this doctrine. Yet do these difficulties, so thoroughly insoluble as they are, stagger us? No; we do with them, what Mr Brown smiles at our doing in reference to the difficulties of the conflagration, — we leave them in the hands of God. Admitting, then, the difficulties, which Mr B. charges as against our system, to be great; they are not nearly so great, or so insoluble, as those which Dr Bush has charged against the
resurrection.+
* Quakerism not Christianity, p. 188.
+ Mr Brown asks, ‘‘ who would tolerate this way of dealing with the difficulties of Atheism, of Deism, of Unitarianism, and of Romanism?” — P,. 381. I wounp, ¢f the difficulties urged against these systems are like the dificulties wrged against ours. But how
These remarks are but hints, I admit, — imperfect enough perhaps, but still they seem to me to point out at least the fontes solutionis, — the direction in which we may turn for the solution of the difficulties with which we are pressed.
But without dwelling longer on these points, let me pass on to the consideration of some of the objections raised against us and our system.
I, Lt is said that we theorize. Granting that we are given to theory, it remains to be seen what is the nature, and what the basis of our theories, before we can be condemned. If we simply theorize wpon Scripture, or in order to open up and harmonize Scripture, we ought not to be greatly blamed. If, on the other hand, we theorize independently of Scripture, or in order to set aside Scripture, then assuredly we draw
down heavy censure upon ourselves, But let there be
is it possible that they can be the same, or even similar? We take our stand upon “it is written,”’ — these four systems do not. We say, difficulties shall not move us so long as we have warrant in God’s Word for believing a doctrine; — do any of these systems say this, or any thing like it? Difficulties may be admirably made to bear (yet still as difficulties) against men who have no sure basis of revelation to stand upon. But how does this prove that they ought to have the same weight with those who are appealing to the word of Him who cannot lie? The above interrogation of Mr Brown is not a logical one, and it involves a principle charged with danger, as any one may see in the work of Dr Bush already referred to.
some inquiry as to which of these two methods ‘we have adopted before we suffer rebuke, What is a confession of faith but a theorizing or generalizing upon Scripture, in order to link together the various parts of Divine truth into one harmonious whole, — as when one thrusts a magnet into the heap of iron particles that surround it, that all the various atoms may gather according to their affinities; — as when one drops into the chemical solution, the twig or wire that, according to its proper laws, the substance held in solution may crystallize in order and beauty. In thus theorizing, we do no wrong and merit no censure; much the reverse. On the other hand, there is Newman’s Lssay on the Development of Christian Doctrine; — what is it but a theory carefully constructed to set aside or to do violence to Scripture; not to present a focus or foci, round which Scripture might, of its own will as it were, and without restraint, harmoniously cluster; but to prevent the various parts of Scripture from falling into their places; to attempt the formation of a new law of crystallization for special ends in the mind of the framer.
If we are to be named theorists at all, we claim to be classed with the former, not with the latter. In so far as we do theorize, we are, simply and in all honesty, trying to discover the connections of the Divine word,
—and to allow them to fall into their true places without violence done to them on our part.
In truth, however, we are not very much given to theory. We greatly prefer simply to interpret. The times when we are most in danger of theorizing, and of doing so unduly, are when pressed by our opponents to solve all their difficulties, — to attempt a complete collocation of prophetic events, and to explain the how and why of each of them. But as specimens of theorizing, — and not always in the best sense, — I cannot refer to two more notable examples than Mr Faber and Mr Brown. The work of the latter seems to me to be one elaborate theory, or rather succession of theories, by means of which he is enabled to generalize at will the most explicit predictions of the Divine word. Grant him but his theories, — such as those regarding Paul’s method of citing Scripture, regarding the inseparability of Satan and sin, — the substitution of systems for individuals, — of abstractions for personalities, — of the moral for the physical, — grant these and a few others, and you are furnished with sufficient implements for making void as much Scripture as may be needful. But until these novel theories have been proved, it is not to be expected that we should acquiesce in the results which Mr Brown effects by means of them. He ought to
have proved these theories before he made use of them, especially seeing he has used them so extensively, and with such demolishing results, He has not attempted to do this, but has assumed their truth throughout. All his interpretations, more or less, take their hue from these theories. His refutations of our expositions all rest upon these theories; and hence he ought to have made sure of them at the outset. A demonstration of them from Scripture is much needed, — nay, is quite indispensable. The whole value of his book depends upon such a demonstration being successfully executed.
Il. It ts satd that we literalize. The literality of interpretation which we claim for Scripture is much condemned, as if we robbed it of what is considered a “olorious sense,” and a “delightful sense,’ — stripping the whole word of its greenest foliage and leaving it vile and bare.*
That we make the literal the basis of all interpretations, — that we refuse to depart from it without cause shown, we admit. But I am at a loss to find in such a method of procedure, anything improper or censurable. We are quite willing to give up the literality of a passage, and adopt the figurative meaning, as soon as a case is made out and a reason given
* Jerome calls us amatores occidentis liter. Op. vol. iv. p. 176.
for so doing, but not till then.* For most of the passages which Mr Brown discusses, we claim a literal sense. At the same time we do not refuse to listen to his reasons for preferring a more “glorious sense.” These reasons do not satisfy us. They are chiefly theories, — or deductions of consequences, — but direct plain reasons for abandoning literality he has presented none.
I need not remind the reader, of Hooker’s rule, — nor of the rules of Ernesti and Ammon, which in substance are just this, “literal as far as possible;” but let me cite Jeremy Taylor’s statement of the right principle of interpretation, as it is less known yet not less excellent. “In all the interpretations of Scripture, the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen, unless
there be evident cause to the contrary.” This is all
* «T nevertheless am entirely unable to see either the necessity or the use, of considering the style in which the prophets wrote, as essentially differing from that of every other part of the Bible, or of subjecting it to quite different rules of interpretation. The oriental manner of expression in general, and that of the sacred Scriptures in particular, abounds in splendid imagery; and the descriptive part of Divine revelation is fully as figurative as the predictive. Nor can I at all admit, that predictions are never delivered in plain alphabetical language. The truth is, the writings of the prophets, even in those in which the style is truly symbolical, are subject to the same rules of interpretation, which obtain in all other writings. In every composition we find figurative language; and in several authors of our own age, we find an abundant use of the metaphor.” — Lecture on the Principal Prophecies of the Revelation, by Alex, M‘Leod, D.D., p. 8.
that we maintain, and is it not both reasonable and explicit? I do not believe that all Scripture is literal, Just as our opponents do not believe that all is figurative.* The amount of literality or figure in each passage is not to be determined by any general rule, far less by a theological theory; but by an inquiry into text and context. It is well to have some general rule or principle to guide us, but this can only carry us a certain way. ‘Take the most figurative book in Scripture, — ‘the Apocalypse: there is still a great deal of literality scattered throughout it.+ Hence it is wrong to
* Yet our opponents can venture sometimes upon an extreme literality, which would not be tolerated in us. Note the following:- — * It is not impossible, but very probable, that ways will yet be found out by men, to cut rocks and stones into any shape they please; and to remove them from place to place, with as little labour, as that with which they now cut and remove the softest and lightest wood, in order to build houses, fences, bridges, paving roads, &c. And these huge rocks and stones, which now appear to be useless, and even a nuisance, may then be found to be made, and reserved by Him who is infinitely wise and good, for great usefulness, and important purposes. ... Then in a literal sense, the valleys shall be filled, and the mountains and hills shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth, to render travelling more convenient and easy, and the earth more productive and fertile.’ — Hopkins on the Millennium, p. 72.
+ An American Professor has said of us, that we “read Isaiah nearly as we would Blackstone’s Commentaries on the British Constitution.” — M‘Lelland’s “* Manual of Sacred Interpretation.” Not just so: for we read Isaiah expecting to find many more figures than we do in Blackstone; yet expecting to be able to argue, that as it is a symbolical book, there can be nothing literal in it. One has well observed, “the use of figures in a composition is not enough to make it figurative as a whole: we constantly use figures of speech when we speak, yet who will say on that account, that the main course of our conversation is not to be taken literally.”* Besides, figures are not inconsistent with literality. A literal event or a literal person, may be described under a figure. When John uses the figurative term, ‘‘ Babylon the great,” was it not a literal city that he meant, the city of Rome? When we prove Babylon to be a figure, we simply prove that it cannot be the literal Chaldean Babylon. No more. We do not thereby turn it into an abstraction or an idea. Strauss, indeed, may reason thus, “the gospels are a figure not a literality, therefore Christ is not an individual but an idea, that is to say, humanity;””+ but shall we say the Apocalypse is a figure, therefore, Babylon is not a literality, but an idea, viz. the power of evil; or Satan is not an individual, but an idea; or, the martyrs are not individuals, but ideas, or principles, or truths?’ — Therefore we maintain that even after you have settled the figurarecognise a figure in the one as in the other, — to be able to say, this expression is figurative, and that is literal.
* Newman’s Sermons, p. 209.
+ Quinet on Strauss’s Life of Jesus, p. 25, tiveness of the book, and of the particular passage too, it still remains a question, “Is not this figure the figure of a literality, a personality, whether it be of a man, or a city, or an empire. After we have settled the question of Daniel’s image being a figure, it still remains a truth that the golden head of this image is not an idea or a principle, but the real Nebuchadnezzar himself, — “thou art this head of gold.”
‘So far from introducing any novelties in the way of literalizing, we are quite content with the rules laid down by hermeneutical writers, ancient and modern. All I ask is, that our opponents would ponder such rules as these laid down by Glassius, “sensus literalis Scripture textuum non parvi pendendus, sed maximo in pretio habendus et solicite eruendus est.* Again, “sensiis mysticr fundamentum et fulcrum est sensus lrteralis.+ Again, he quotes from Saurez, with approbation, the following canon, “improprietas verborum admittenda non est sine magna ratione et auctoritate.”t After this he takes up the allegorists, with Origen at their head. He shows that it was from that father and his allegorizing system that Porphyry drew the strength of his arguments, as well as the point of his
ridicule against Christianity. With Origen our oppo-
* Philologia Sacra, p. 371. + Ib. p. 890 +f Ib. p. 402.
nents have much in common. He was a vigorous
anti-millennarian.*
III. Zé was said that we Judaize.t I believe that Jerome was among’ the first who applied this epithet to us, probably in retaliation for that of allegoriers, which had been applied to the advocates of the spiritual reign. T’or example, speaking of the Apocalypse, he says, “which, if we take literally, we must Judaize, — Judaizandum est; if spiritually, we shall oppose the opinions of many among the Latins, Tertullian, Victorinus, Lactantius, of the Greeks, not to name others, Irenzeus of Lyons.”{ And, again, commenting on that chapter of Jeremiah, where the prophet predicts that the city shall be built from the tower of Hananeel to the gate of the corner, Wc. he remarks, “que mille annorum in terra Judea regnum Chrisir recipiunt, Judcer videlrcet et nostri Judarzantes, conantur ostendere,” &¢.§
* Yet we are told by a modern writer on prophecy, that it was “adherence to the literal interpretation of prophecy, that led the Pharisees to crucify Christ.” — Davidson’s Test of Prophecy, p. 47.
+ Lightfoot, whose spiritualizings are certainly of the extreme kind, says, ‘‘ the Millennary doth Judaize and know it not; he is fallen into the Jew’s opinion, and is not aware of it.”
t Vol. iv. p. 213.
§ Vol. iv. pp. 301, 802. He then proceeds to interpret according to the true method: “Hananeel,” he says, ‘* means obedience, and the church is built a turre obedientie sive gratia. The gate of the corner means the inconsistencies of Christians, for while we are in the flesh, we do not go in the straight line of truth, sed in an-The most emphatic charges that have been made against us on this score, are in a little book, called the “Test of Prophecy,” some few years ago, by D. Davidson. He, however, would include in his condemnation, not only millennarians, but all who, like Mr Brown, believe in the restoration of the Jews to their own land. Mr Brown brings heavy charges against us for believing in the restoration of “national supremacy’ to Israel; but Mr Davidson takes a wider sweep. “If God,” says he, “has promised to restore the Jews to - their own land, assuredly they have something to glory in before the world; they are manifestly pointed out to us as the favourites of Heaven; and they ought certainly to be known after the flesh. Is this opinion calculated to impress on the minds of the Jews the solemn truth, that with God there is no respect of persons? .... If we interpret literally many prophecies of the reign and kingdom of Messiah, the restoration of Israel to Canaan is certain; but upon the same principle we must believe that their whole religious ceremonial shall be re-established.... whoever proclaims such a national restoration is guilty of bringing
in another gospel than that of Christ and his apostles.’* Here, then, are two classes of anti-millennarians as gulo stamus et fractis lineis.”” But I need quote no more. This
was Jerome’s substitute for the simple meaning of the word! *P.112, directly opposed to each other as to us. Which of the two are we to follow? Mr Brown, in one part of his volume, speaks of some extravagant millenarians as acting the manlier part in going right through. with their principles. Shall I say the same of such men as Mr Davidson? I do not. I think the whole scheme of such ultra-post-millennialists pre-eminently feeble and foolish.
Who, then, are the Judaizers? By Judaizing, I understand substituting Jewish ordinances for the free grace of God, building partly upon rites and partly upon grace. In this sense I am no Judaizer. I believe that it is and shall be all of grace, whether now or in millennial times, in the case of Jew or Gentile. In the matter of acceptance there shall be no difference. But does this exclude national distinctiveness or national pre-eminence? Mr Brown says it excludes the latter, but not the former. Mr Davidson says it equally excludes both.
I believe that it excludes neither. I believe in the future national supremacy and glory of the Jews. [ believe that they will be in every sense the highest and mightiest of the nations — the nation of nations, their city the “joyous” as well as the holy city — themselves a fountain of blessing to the whole earth. In saying so, I am at one with old Matthew Mead, who says “they shall not only be a people again, but a most renowned people, the greatest in the world for honour and glory.”
IV, Zé ts said that we make void the intercession of
Christ. If we do so, it is certainly without knowing or meaning it. There is not one of us who does not hold fully and unreservedly the doctrine of Christ’s intercession. And even granting that we found some difficulty (which we do not) in reconciling millennarianism with this blessed truth, shall we, on that account, renounce it? Man’s free agency and God’s eternal predestination are hard to reconcile, yet we unhesitatingly receive them both,
As to the intercession of Christ, all that we believe is, that the place of intercession in the age to come is changed. And, because we held this alteration of locality, we are accused of making void the doctrine itself, Is not this laying a stress upon locality inconsistent with spirituality? Can the Saviour not mediate or intercede save in one spot? In reference to the stress to be laid upon locality, I ask attention to the following remark of Dr Owen: “Upon supposition of the obedience of Christ in this life, and the atonement made by his blood for sin, with his exaltation thereon, there is nothing in any essential property of the nature of God — nothing in the eternal unchangeable
law of obedience, to hinder, but that God might work all those things in us unto his own honour and glory in the eternal salvation of his church and the destruction of all its enemies, WITHOUT A CONTINUANOE OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE OFFICES OF CHRIST IN HEAVEN, and all that sacred solemnity of worship wherewith it is accompanied.” *
I do not refer to this passage as showing that Owen held millennarian views upon this point; so that Mr Brown need not say of me, as he says somewhat hardly and unjustly of Mr Wood, that I “am substituting for argument of my own the statements of others in a sense the reverse of what they were meant to bear.”+ But I refer to it as showing that the point of locality had been considered by Owen, and pronounced non-essential to the continuance of the intercession. This is all I am contending for at present; for if locality be non-essential, then our doctrine does not make void the intercession of Christ. Of course the proof that he is to carry on his priestly office elsewhere than in heaven, must be adduced from Scripture. But this belongs to another branch of the subject.
V. It is said that we degrade the Saviour. This, of course, must mean, “according to our ideas of degradation.” But these ideas may be very faulty, and if
* Christologia, chap. xx. + P. 163.
H
so, is it safe or right to make them the test of the
truth or falsehood of a doctrine?
I am at a loss to understand wherein the degradation consists. Is it in leaving heaven? No; that cannot be. Is it in coming down to earth? No. “Not this simply,” an opponent would say, “for I believe that the renewed earth will yet be his abode,” Wherein then lies the derogation? In his coming into contact with sin? But who holds this? He is not to.dwell in the habitations of sinful men as he did the first time. He dwells in the new (not the earthly) Jerusalem, round which is gathered the pavilion-cloud of glory. That is his palace, in which he reigns as king. He no more comes in contact with sin than did the pillar-cloud come in contact with the pollution of Israel over which it hung, or than the Schekinah-glory with the defilement of the ministering priests. He comes no more in contact with sin than he shall do, when before him all the wicked shall stand to receive their sentence. No millennarian ever said that He and his saints walk up and down the earth conversing with unconverted men — though of unconverted men, how few will there be in that holy time! Not one amongst ten thousand. And as to holding intercourse with saints on earth, who are still imperfect and mortal (supposing this to be; but
it
-
of this we affirm nothing, for we know nothing) where will the derogation be? Was it a derogation for the Angel Jehovah to converse with Abraham? or for the Captain of the Lord’s host to converse with Joshua! or for the Angel of the Lord to appear to Gideon and Manoah? And why should not the risen saints visit holy men on earth, as angels did of old? especially now when Satan is bound, and there are no legions of devils roaming the airt Where can be the degradation of these things in a new earth, covered with holy men, delivered from the curse, unpolluted with hosts of devils? Mr Brown speaks strongly of the “abhorred mixture;” but where is it? If he object toa “mixture” of risen saints and mortal men, why does he not protest against the far more abhorred mixture of angels and devils now, seeing both of these are now surrounding us, intermingling with each other? And then in his millennium, this abhorred mixture will be kept up, for he refuses to believe that Satan is to be bound.
I sum up this with a quotation from good old Joseph Perry. I am aware of the truth of Mr Brown’s statement regarding him, at p. 96, as to the peculiarities of his millennarianism, but still, the following ‘passage may not be an unapt conclusion to the preceding remarks.
“But what is there of weight in all this? If it be the will of Jehovah that so it shall be, then this, with all the objections, that by men can be made against it, will flee away as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor before the wind. Besides, what weakness is it to say, or think, that Christ’s coming from heaven to reign upon earth, will be a lessening of his glory! I would fain know of such, what is it that makes any place to be heaven? sure this can be no other than the display, manifestation, or the irradiation of the eternal Deity, or God going forth and manifesting of himself in a way of mercy, love, and favour? It is nothing less than the fruition and enjoyment of the Divine presence that can make heaven. Was God to go forth in a way of mercy, and display his glorious grace, in the manifestation of his Divine presence, unto the damned, sure it would make that place which we call hell, to be no less than heaven. Well, then, seeing it is the glorious presence of God in his love, shining through the Mediator, that makes heaven, wherein then can the Lord Jesus Christ’s coming from heaven to reign upon the earth, be a lessening of his, or of the saints’ glory? It is a common expression among us, that where the king is there is the court; sure I am, that where Christ is (in his personal glory) there is heaven. Heaven is in him, he is
a heaven of eternal glory to himself, his presence makes heaven; the Lord Jehovah, or God in Christ, is the heaven of the saints.” *
I thought that the charge of gross carnality in former ages brought against millennarians had been abandoned. I find, however, one or two instances in which it is laid heavily at our door. Take the following, — “These gentlemen are well known as the supporters of a system of interpretation which attaches to all the symbolical representations of millennial and heavenly glory, the gross ideas of literal mundane felicity. Their view of the reign of Christ on earth is that of a personal and local reign; their notions of the New Jerusalem are those of an earthly city, with substantial walls and bulwarks; and their anticipations of a heaven of purity, peace, and everlasting joy, are characterized by every attribute of pure materialism. Human nature, the same in all ages, has ever been pleased with images of earthly gratification.” Our views are then compared to those of the Indian and Mahometan; and we are said to be “delighted with dazzling coruscations of sceptres, crowns, and all the splendid regalia of that dignity with which the saints are to be palpably invested at the coming of the Lord.”+
Of course all this is pure fiction, — the mere infer- *:The glory of Christ’s visible kingdom, by Joseph Perry.
Epistle to the reader, pp. xii. xii.
+ Modern Fanaticism Unveiled, pp. 189 — 90.
ence of the author’s fancy. Of the unfairness of the above statement, and its attempt to identify us with Cerinthus, I shall say nothing save what Bishop Bull says of the millennarianism of the early ages, “verwm horum sententia, ut erronea fortasse fuerit, a Cerinthiana tamen heeresi toto ceelo distabat.”*
VI. It ts sard that we contradict Scripture by separating the resurrections, and dividing the judgment into several paris. This objection assumes, that because no separation or interval is specified, therefore none can exist. Now, of course, we maintain, first of all, that an interval zs specified, — an interval of a thousand years We have thus at least some show of a plea for our disjunction. But, secondly, there are very many events mentioned in Scripture, both historically and prophetically, as if there were no interval, when we know that there was one, sometimes one of eas length. Let us note some of these.
In the first five verses of the first chapter of Genesis there is a scene presented to us, in which apparently there is no break or interval, — nay, not the slightest intimation of any such thing. Yet, I suppose that it is now a settled point, that there must have been myriads of ages between the first verse and the fifth, i. e. between the act of creation and the first day. What
* On the Judgment of the Catholic Church,
9: ee
ee ad
‘science has done in reference to creation, that we
maintain the twentieth of Revelation has done in reference to resurrection and judgment. It has showed that they are not one instantaneous act, but several,
separated by intervals, Yet Mr Brown uses the following language towards us; “the word of God represents the judgment and every enlightened conscience instinctively looks forward to it, as one unbroken and simultaneous act, how brief or how protracted,. does not in the least affect the view of it; and every introduction of these details, which the pre-millennial theory brings into it, of morning acts and evening acts, besides the mid-day acts of government and rule, is an intrusion which the mind will not tolerate, and
ean only listen to at the expense of having all its
‘solemn impressions of it dissipated.”* Apply this
language to the first verses of Genesis, and let geologists undergo the reproof as well as millennarians,
Take the fourth chapter of Genesis: “And Adam
knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was
a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground,” Here one would suppose there was no interval between the birth and the manhood of Cain and Abel, but that they had grown up at once. Yet, who believes
* P. 365, this? Who does not believe that there was an interval of some twenty or thirty years perchance between the events referred to in the above passage.
Take again the second Psalm. It seems all one
scene without break or duration. Yet we know it began to be fulfilled at the first coming, and that its fulfilment will be completed at the second. Thus is the whole interval between the two advents passed over. There is not one hint of it. Why may there not be an Interval between the first and second resurrection, be- ‘tween the judgment of the quick and the dead? Many other of the Psalms are illustrations of the same principle. Or take Isaiah lxi. 2, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God.” The acceptable year began at the first advent, and the day of vengeance is to begin at the second; unless we believe with Jerome that vengeance means here recompense or reward to the righteous!* Here there is an interval of already 1800 years, yet not the slightest hint of such a thing in the passage before us. Why may there may not be such an interval between the two resurrections and the two judgments?+ But let these examples suffice.
* See en loc.
+ The following remark of Dr Carlile may help to illustrate the statement above made. ‘“As both of the comings of the Messiah, under the Old Testament dispensation, (Dr C. uses the very word
The scene described in the 25th of Matthew, which is supposed to be an insuperable barrier, refers, 1 am satisfied, only to those upon the earth, not to risen men at all. It is “all nations” that are gathered together. It is the judgment of the “quick.” The scene is quite different from that in the close of the 20th of Revelation, where all the dead arise from earth and sea. And it resembles most closely that of Joel.* “I will gather all. nations (mara ra dyn, in both passages) and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat... proclaim ye this among the Gentiles, (v roi edveow) ... assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen (ravra ra edvy xux-Addev)... let the heathen (ra é4vy) be awakened, come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about, (rdvra ra gbyn xuxd0éev). .. multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.” If this be the case, the difficulty supposed to lie against us from this passage does not exist. lam unable to appreciate the force of Mr Brown’s reasonings against the judgment being broken up into parts. My conscience may not be one of the “endispensation, so censured in us), among the promises they were not so clearly distinguished from one another, as that the saints of that age could discriminate between them, or even be certain
there were to be a first and second coming.” P. 4. * iii, 1 — 15.
106: JUDGMENT IN DETAIL.’
lightened” ones of which he speaks; but I confess I do not see how the breaking up of the judgment into acts
or parts will dissipate its solemnity. The truth is, ’ that the judgment is an event of such infinite extent and grandeur, that it must be broken into parts ere a finite being can be impressed with it. It is not possible that I can be impressed with a scene presented to me upon a scale such as my feeble mind cannot grasp. It must be broken down. It must be spread out. It must be taken in detail and at length. The magnitude of the scene is such as none but God can take in at once. I suspect that we have been deceiving ourselves with a fond idea or fancy of our own. We imagined that in a moment the whole scene of judgment would unfold itself to view, and we have imagined how we should feel in such circumstances. But did it never strike us that we could not see all with these eyes, nor hear all with these ears of ours? All Europe (to speak within bounds) would not hold the assemblage; — and how could we see and hear in the remote parts what was transacting in the centre or even a few miles off? But let it come in parts, — in detail, — let it slowly unfold its procedure and its issues, and how great the difference! — But let this suffice. Ido not attempt to theorize.* I would merely add, that there
* Not a few of the old divines believed that the day of judgis nothing more common than the apparent juxtaposition of events which are yet disjoined by vast intervals, It is just like the deception often observed either in mountain or island scenery. Two mountain-peaks will rise up together apparently contiguous, — though separated in reality by a wide strath or wider arm of the sea. And just as the telescope has brought out the binary combinations of the stellar universe, and has shown us that many of the stars in our firmament, which sparkle but as one orb, are, in truth, two orbs, separated from each other by inconceivable distances, so the apocalyptic telescope has resolved into double orbs, the several stars of RESURRECTION, and AD-VENT, and supGMent, which must otherwise have been regarded as one; revealing to us the wide interval of separation, which but for this would have remained undiscovered and unknown. The two advents, the two resurrections, the two judgments, are thus ascertained from prophecy to be each of them dowble stars.
VII. We are said to overlook the conflagration. In truth we do not overlook it; for we look upon the passage in Peter, where such special mention is made ofment would be like the day of grace, a long period. Fleming does so most decidedly. Boston also seems to have inclined to this, for he remarks, “Christ will go to work so exactly, that ‘some divines have thought that the day of judgment will last as long as the day of the gospel’s administration hath done or shall do.” — Body of Divinity, vol. ii. p. 108.
it, as one of our strongest demonstrations that there can be no millennium before the advent. Indeed, whatever difficulty it may present to our system, it presents a much more formidable one to that of our opponents.
Both Mr Brown and Mr Faber insist largely upon this point, the latter regarding it as the millstone hung round the neck of our theory, under the weight of which it cannot but sink and disappear.*
The solution of this supposed difficulty is in substance what Mr Faber has stated. “Mr Birks, he writes, does not venture to deny the mundane universality of the conflagration, but since the control of God over the two elements of fire and water is alike regally complete, and since the three children walked loose in the midst of the burning furnace without being consumed, he thinks that as the Noetic family escaped from the universal deluge of water, so a remnant may be spared even in the midst of the future universal deluge of fire.”
Now, why should it not be thus? Is there aught unscriptural, unlikely, or wnreasonable in this? Let us look at it.
* See Mr Faber’s Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, vol. iii. pp. 447 — 452. — Eight Dissertations, vol. i. pref. p. 13-18, vol. ii. p, 126,
note, in which he affirms that “the very crux of pre-millenna rianism lies in this prediction.”
The risen and changed saints are caught up out of the conflagration, the remnant of Israel and the remnant of the Gentiles are preserved by God, we know not where or how, — “in their chambers,’* until the indignation be over-past; — for it is expressly written, “HE INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH ARE BURNED AND FEW MEN LEFT.”+ By them Judea and the whole earth are repeopled. Is this incredible or impossible? Can we venture to say “it cannot be,” because we do not understand how. Nay, — but is it not a possible and a likely thing? Has it not been God’s way all along thus to preserve a people miraculously, either in the midst of judgments, or by snatching them out of such judgments, as it seemed best to him? Enoch he caught up out of the judgments. Noah he preserved in the midst of them. Lot he snatched out of them. Rahab he preserved in the midst of them. When the ten plagues successively smote Egypt with desolation, Israel was protected from them all. Whatever the plague might be, Israel was safe. An unseen arm eircled them around. In the midst of darkness, they had light. When the cattle of Egypt were dying around, “of the cattle of the children of Israel there died not one,” When the ashes of the furnace were sprinkled
towards heaven and became a boil breaking forth on
* Isaiah xxvi. 20. + Isaiah xxiv. 6.
man and beast, it was the Egyptians alone that suffered. When the hail smote the land so terribly, Israel was exempt. When the first-born of Egypt perished, Israel suffered not. When Pharaoh pressed sore on Israel, the sea opened to let them pass. When, in later times, the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, as if utterly to overwhelm Jerusalem, God interposed his shield, — Israel was safe, and the enemy lay dead in one night by tens of thousands. In the lion’s den, Daniel was preserved by God. Out of the fiery furnace the three children came unhurt. Jonah came forth alive from the belly of the fish. Thus, in every way, has God showed us how he can preserve a people for himself, — whether from the water, or the fire, or the plague, or the sword, or the lion’s mouth. And is it impossible, that in the latter days some of these scenes should be repeated on a larger scale, or similar ones enacted? ‘Reasoning from God’s past dealings, we should say, it is not only possible, it is not only credible, it 1s also most likely and probable. Nor let it be said that in these past cases of miraculous preservation, it was only the righteous who escaped. In several, of these it was the wicked as well as the righteous. In the ark, Ham was preserved; and we have no evidence that either he or his wife was righteous. Certainly he was not. In Zoar, Lot’s daughters were preserved, and assuredly they were not godly. So with Rahab’s relatives. So with multitudes in Israel when coming out of Egypt. And why should not God, if it please him to do so, preserve even an unconverted remnant both of Israel and the Gentiles? With these instances before us, we think the following statement of Mr Faber’s entirely without foundation: — “In this manner (by being caught up) will all the then living saints of God be preserved; and as the residue will be the irreclaimably wicked alone, the same parallelism (the deluge) will show that as all the ungodly perished of old in the universal deluge of water, so al, the ungodly, at the final consummation, will perish in the analogous universal deluge of fire.”* So far from this being the case, most of the various parallelisms would lead us to conclude that al, the ungodly are not to be destroyed, but some preserved, in that great crisis-day of the world. Jwidging then from the past, we should be led to a different inference from Mr Faber, who affirms that such a thing is “not only altogether unsupported by Scripture, but is virtually contradicted by Scripture.”+ Let us put the case as follows, for the sake of illustration. Suppose it were predicted that the world was again to be overflowed with water, and after that, re-inhabited by the same
* Pp. 15, 16. + PL 1S.
race as before, would there be anything unlikely in the opinion, that God would make provision, in his
own way, for preserving a remnant to re-people it,
as he did before? Suppose it were to be predicted:
that universal pestilence was to fall upon the earth, exterminating its inhabitants, and, after it had passed away, that the earth was to be repeopled by the same race, would there be anything unscriptural in the idea that God might make provision for keeping alive a remnant? Suppose it were to be predicted that the “noisome beasts” were to be let loose over the whole earth, in every region, to devour its inhabitants, would there be anything incredible or unscriptural in supposing that God would shut their mouths, so that the remnant whom he had chosen would, like Daniel, be
uninjured? If, then, it be predicted that this world is
to be subjected to a second deluge, — a deluge of fire, —
as universal as the fifst, is there anything incredible, unscriptural, or unlikely, in the supposition that a remnant may be saved out of it, in God’s own way, to repeople the purged earth?
In confirmation of this view, we may refer to several passages of Old Testament prophecy. Let us take the 24th of Isaiah, which we are inclined to regard as synchronous with second Peter. There we have a picture of desolation, ruin, extermination, as complete
as that given by the apostle, “Behold the Lord maketh the earth empty and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, ... the curse hath devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, a few men left,... the earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, (the very language of Peter) the earth is moved exceedingly, ... the earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed as acottage,.. it shall fall and not rise again.” Can expressions be stronger than these to denote utter desolation, desolation as wniversal, as wasting and destructive, as the fire described by Peter? Yet in the midst of this scene, a remnant is spoken of as preserved; and the next chapter describes the earth renewed and repeopled. Or take the 34th chapter of the same book: a similar scene is described, and the language used is still more closely similar to that of the apostle; “all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll,” &c. Yet the next chapter describes earth repeopled, evidently by those who had come out of these fiery judgments. There are several similar passages, which all set forth a scene as terrific and universal as that of Peter, yet all speak of men surviving
these judgments and repeopling the earth, and these men evidently not the risen saints, but Jews and Gentiles, men in flesh and blood as we are.
But that which is perfectly conclusive on this point is the passage in the 65th of Isaiah, to which Peter evidently refers when he says, “we according to his promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” The new earth of Isaiah and of Peter must be synchronous, or else the citation of Peter has no meaning.. What can “according to his promise” mean, but just, “we, as Isaiah has foretold, expect a new earth to come out of this conflagration.” We turn then to Isaiah to see what this new earth is, and we find it a new earth in which there is a Jerusalem; in which there are infants, children, old men, houses, vineyards, wolves, lambs, lions, serpents. How can Mr Faber explain this? Surely he will not deny the synchronism; nor that Peter is citing Isaiah; and as Peter tells us that the new earth has been the result of the conflagration, he must admit that a remnant, just like that preserved along with Noah in the ark, has been saved by God to repeople the globe. If he deny that Peter is quoting Isaiah, or if he maintain that Isaiah is figurative, then why might we not be allowed, (if we were inclined) to say that the conflagration in Peter is figurative. also?* And
* Lightfoot and Owen make both figurative!
might we not say of himself, what he says of some of us, “the unequivocal language of St Peter, (and Isaiah, we add,) by the procrustean process of the quidlibet ex quolibet, and for the mere purpose of serving a turn in exposition, is mercilessly compelled to deliver any thing rather than what it really does deliver.”* And we might use this language of his, with no less force against his figurative interpretation of the Coming in the 24th of Matthew. If that be figurative, we know not what in Scripture can be proved literal. But (as Mr Faber says of us in reference to another passage) “the truth is, itisa millstone suspended from the neck of post-millennialism, which no effort and no ingenuity can shake off.”
As to the earth remaining much the same in outward appearance after as before the fire, I would only say, that Scripture does not appear to me to warrant the idea that the earth, and sea, and sky, are actually to be fused together like molten lead. Indeed, how could this be the case with the heaven or sky? The scene presented in prophecy is more like that of Sodom and Gomorrah. And even granting that there is to be liquid fusion, still, if our opposers will tell me how the bodies of the wicked are not consumed in the eternal fire of hell, but remain for ever in that burning
iy Aah B lake, tormented but not destroyed, I shall tell them how this solid earth is to be burned with fire, all over, and yet is to emerge the same in its hills and valleys as before.*
In regard to the above point Mr Brown will not admit our right to set down the objections of our opponents as difficulties which we are content to leave in the hands of God; and uses rather strong language in reference to the position taken up by us;+ affirming, that to term them difficulties merely, is “an abuse of
words;” that they are difficulties “which no light from heaven can remove; difficulties “of the same kind as two and two’s making four is a difficulty in the way ot believing that they make five.”{ If, however, what I have suggested above, have any amount of truth in it, these difficulties are not the “sheer impossibilities” which Mr Brown represents them to be. They may be difficulties; but they are difficulties which have their frequent parallel in God’s past dealings with his people,
* There is a hint thrown out by Toplady, in speaking of angels, which is worth noticing: “They perhaps will, when Christ gives the signal, set fire to the world, and regulate that conflagration which shall issue in the new heavens (i ¢. new body of air) and new earth.” — Sermon on Jesus seen of angels. Let this conjecture as to angels be true or false, it matters not. God will regulate the conflagration. And why should he not so regulate it as to consume or preserve, to fuse or to consolidate, what he pleases.
+ Peo, P. 382.
and which, therefore, may be reckoned upon as neither impossible nor unlikely to occur in time to come. A few farther remarks here, however, may not be unsuitable. 1. Isaiah (as I have already noticed) declares that “the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.” Will Mr Brown say, how even these few are left, if the inhabitants are burned? Daniel tells us that the three children were cast into the seven-times heated furnace. Will Mr Brown say how they came out without one hair of their head singed, or the smell of fire passing upon them; and yet the flame of this furnace, at the same moment, slew the men that cast them in? Were we reasoning after Mr Brown’s method, we should say this was a sheer impossibility, and that to call it a difficulty was an abuse of words. 2. This is precisely the ground on which the Jews rejected the incarnation. It was, according to them, not a difficulty, but an impossibility. Trypho the Jew, in Justin’s Dialogue, tells him, “that which you assert, viz.-that Christ is God, who existed from all eternity, and that he afterwards condescended to be born and made man, and that he was not man of man,
seems to me not only incredible but absurd.”* This
* Section forty-eight. Not having the original beside me, I, quote from Brown’s translation, published first in 1745, and republished in 1846, — P. 108.
is also the ground on which Dr Bush rests his opposition to the belief of a resurrection. He thinks it a sheer impossibility — a “difficulty of the same kind as two and two’s making four is a difficulty in the way of believing that they make five.” His first chapter is upon the argument from reason, and in this he summons up and spreads forth, with considerable force and acuteness, the difficulties, scientific, physical, and rational, in the way of a resurrection of the body. He will not allow that they are mere difficulties, he holds them up to ridicule as absurdities, telling us, that “a resort to omnipotence leaves the difficulty
just where it was before.” Nay, he asks, “how can
omnipotence establish the relation of which we are in
quest.” *
* Thus he scoffs: ‘In the endless cycles of change it is scarcely more the work of imagination than of reason to conceive, that a portion of the matter which once entered into the body of Goliath of Gath may have found its way into the flesh of Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, from which it might be traced till lodged in the person of some dancing dervish of an eastern city, whirling about in as many antic gyrations as ever did Bucephalus himself when attempted to be mounted by any one but his royal rider. But suppose the sojourning particles to be traced back to the giant of the Philistines, have we yet reached their ultimate destination? Whence did he obtain them? May there not have been a prior claimant still? And may not his title be challenged by another still prior, and so on indefinitely? Suppose an individual body at the present day to consist of a million of particles; what is easier than to conceive that each of
Take the following as a specimen of his reasoning: ©The question is, whether the true doctrine of the resurrection requires us to believe that these dispersed materials are to he re-collected again, and to enter into the composition of spiritwal bodies? If that is the case with the antediluvian dust, it doubtless is with all other, and how this is to be effected without taking to pieces and unravelling, as it were, the whole framework of nature, surpasses conception. And if this cs to be the case, when? Is it to be at the period denominated the last day, when it is for the most part held that the conflagration of the heavens and the earth is to take place? If such be unequivocally the Divine testimony, we must of course receive it. But it would surely seem to human view, priori, a strange and incomprehensible procedure, that the re- gathering of these scattered particles, there-building of these dilapidated human temples, should be going on in the midst of this scene of ‘telluric combustion!
“It is obvious beyond question, that the popular theory reduces us to great extremities of solution. In these particles was derived from one of a million of bodies that have lived in former ages? If these bodies were each to claim its own on the ground of the same right which the present possessor has to them, what would be left to ham from whence to ‘form a resurrection body?” — P. 42.
deed we see not but that the difficulties which cluster about are absolutely insuperable.”*
And then place side by side with this the following paragraph from Mr Brown.
“Who can fail to see in all this the inextricable difficulties of the system? (Dr Bush calls them insuperable.) But you say, We admit them, and yet are unmoved: ‘ We may safely, says the writer first quoted, and all speak the same language, ‘leave them with our God to unravel.’ This, however, is a most wnwarrantable and dangerous abuse of a right principle, (so says Dr Bush.) Doubtless, there are difficulties which must be dealt with in this way. But who will deny that there are difficulties which ought not to be so disposed of, and which cannot be so treated without abusing the intelligence which God has given for discovering truth, and throwing down one of the great barriers which he has mercifully thrown up against error? (The very argument of Dr Bush.) Who would tolerate this way of dealing with the difficulties of Atheism, of Deism, of Unitarianism,
and of Romanism? We have a book in fact upon the
‘ Difficulties of Infidelity” and another on the ‘ Difficulties of Romanism.’ Does any one object to the
principle upon which those systems are attacked? If it * PpiG3,.64.
Fe ee ee
be asked why, admitting this, the difficulties of the pre-millennial theory regarding the conflagration, should be set down amongst the latter, and not ranked amongst the former? the answer is plain: They are difficulties - which no light from heaven can ever remove. (Dr Bush says, in reference to the other difficulties, “omnipotence itself cannot remove them.”) <A universal conflagration, from the ravages of which vast multitudes are mysteriously preserved, who never so much as heard of it, and in spite of which uninterrupted tranquillity reigns over the whole face of the earth — to talk of the mere difficulty attending the belief of this is an abuse of words. It is a difficulty of the same kind as two and two’s making four is a difficulty in the way of believing that they make five.”* (Just Dr Bush’s statement.)
What difference is there between the argument of these two writers? ‘Their ideas, nay, their language, is almost the same. Asking the reader to compare the two passages above cited, I leave this subject.
One remark more, and we are done. Granting that the passage in Peter is fatal to pre-millennialism, it is equally fatal to post-millennialism. For by no effort or ingenuity can any one thrust in a millennium of holy blessedness between the scoffing and wickedness
* Pp. 381, 382..
of the last days and that conflagration. The wickedness began in the times of the apostles. It was to increase, spread, swell, wax worse and worse, till it ended in the fiery flood. When can we wedge ina holy millennium, between the first and second comings of the Lord?
VIII. It is said that we sow the seeds of all heresy. Dr Carlile affirms that our system “endangers the whole fabric of Christianity;” Mr Brown, that it is “subversive of the fundamental principles of the word of God,” requiring “not only a new dispensation, but a new Christianity.” Dr Hamilton, Mr Morrison, and others, bring nearly the same charge against us. I know also how keenly this is asserted in private, whereby not only is our doctrine sought to be discredited, but ourselves brought under suspicion.
Let me inquire into the connexion said to subsist between millennarianism and false doctrine. Can it be proved by facts? Or is it the mere inference of those who, having a very bad opinion of the system, think that it must be, and ought to be, connected with all forms of error?
I state then, and am willing to prove, that those who have not only endangered, but subverted the whole fabric of Christianity, have not been millennarians, but their opponents.
The gnosticism of the early ages was openly as well
as essentially anti-millennarian. It was allegorical and anti-literal, a patch-work of Christianity and pagan philosophy. It not only allegorized into a spiritual shadow the jirst resurrection, but all resurrection whatsoever, condemning as carnal all who believed in any resurrection, just as our opposers condemn us for believing in the first resurrection. And who upheld the truth against these anti-millennarian and allegorizing gnostics? Ireneeus and Justin Martyr, two noted millennarians, The connexion between anti-millennarianism and heresy, in the first ages, can be clearly established by fact. The antagonism between millennarianism and heresy can be as clearly proved. The heretic gnostics were the only opposers of millennarianism in these days; the thoroughly orthodox fathers were its unanimous supporters, Gnosticism and anti-chiliasm were friends; Gnosticism and chiliasm were open enemies, Yet our system is said to be all along linked with heresy.
The carnal follies of Cerinthus are sometimes exhibited as specimens of millennarianism. But Cerinthianism and chiliasm were thoroughly and openly opposed to each other. The millennarian fathers were the strongest condemners and confuters of Cerinthus and his abominations. There was antagonism, not
alliance between them; and it would be as correct to identify Calvinism and Socinianism, because Priestley happened to be a predestinarian, as to identify chiliasm and Cerinthianism, because Cerinthus spoke of the saints reigning on the earth.
In the second century the state of matters was the same; millennarianism and orthodoxy still went hand in hand, Whencesoever the danger to the fabric of Christianity might come, it did not come from millennarians. “Chiliasm constituted (says a German writer,) in the second century, so decidedly an article of faith, that Justin held it up as a criterion of perfect orthodoxy.”*
Then Origen came into the field, — no friend to chiliasm, and as little to orthodoxy. He turned the whole Bible into a riddle; he denied the doctrine of eternal punishments. He seems to have been thoroughly unsound even upon fundamental points. In his case, surely heresy and anti-chiliasm were the allies. The chiliasts in these days, instead of “endangering the whole fabric of Christianity,” were its steadfast supporters against anti-chiliastic heretics, who were introducing “not only a new dispensation, but a new Christianity.”+
* Semiscu’s Justin Martyr, vol. ii. p. 365.
++ Dionysius of Alexandria, who is considered to have given the finishing stroke to chiliasm in the Eastern Church, was a denier
of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit. See Lampe’s Vindicie Dertatio, S. S., chap. iv. sect. 4.:
Then came Jerome, one of the keenest and most unswerving opponents that millennarianism ever had; one who never loses an opportunity of assailing it. Was Jerome sound in the faith? Alas! he seems to have no idea of free justification at all. All with him is works; — superstition and self-righteousness darken the pages both of his Epistles and his Commentaries. Perhaps Popery owes more to Jerome than to any of the fathers. Even in his day, the great mass of the godly, as he tells us more than once, were millennarians. Are chiliasm and heresy then inseparable? or is not the reverse the truth? I know that Augustine was against us, and he was much sounder in the faith; but his case is only a confirmation of our statements, for he is almost the only example in that age, of orthodoxy and anti-millennarianism being in union,
Anti-chiliasm was now spreading. And how did its abettors defend it? By denying the inspiration of the Apocalypse! “It is worthy of remark,” says Bishop Russell — no chiliast, — “that so long as the prophecies regarding the millennium were interpreted literally, the Apocalypse was received as an inspired production, and as the work of the apostle John; but no sooner did theologians find themselves compelled to view its annunciations through the medium of allegory and metaphorical description, than they ventured to call in question its heavenly origin, its genuineness, and its authority. Dionysius, the great supporter of the allegorical school, gives a decided opinion against the authenticity of the Revelation.”*;
Thus, in the early ages, we find anti-millennarianism associated with gnosticism and Origenism; with the demia of resurrection, of future punishments, and the divinity of the Spirit, with worse than rabbinical allegorizing of Scripture, with denial of justification by faith, with superstition, with the denial of part of the Word of God. Can our opponents show our system linked with one of these, or with any heresy at all? Yet we are said to endanger the whole fabric of Christianity.
In other ages, Popery took up anti-millennarianism, and condemned the opposite as aheresy. It finds great difficulty in rescuing the early fathers from the charge of heresy. But it does what it can, both in its systems of theology and by its historians, to save their reputation, and to vindicate tradition, even when condemning millennarianism. Thus Popery links itself to anti-millennarianism, and stamps our system with its brand. In what way then do we pave the way for heresy, seeing heresy has always hated us, and condemned us ?+
* Discourses, pp. 87, 88. + It is amusing to see the way in which the Popish editor of
THE ALLY OF HERESY. 127
Since the Reformation, the same alliance of orthodoxy with millennarianism, and the converse, may be traced out. Moehler tries to identify the anabaptists and the chiliasts* in order to help in discrediting and disparaging the Reformation; but granting that there was an adoption of a kind of chiliasm by these fanatics, still we can afford to make the exception, and allow that for once chiliasm was associated with heresy. But since that, it is strange to observe how false doctrine has invariably taken the field against us, Arianism, Socinianism, Rationalism, Arminianism, Pelagianism, and lastly, Morrisonianism, has opposed ws and befriended our opposers. They have always felt a sympathy for anti-millennarianism, and displayed a dislike and scorn for the opposite.
Chiliasm has invariably shown the strongest affinity to Calvinism, In the last century, Whitby was our great opponent, and he was an Arminian. It is singular to, notice, at the end of his Commentary, two Treatises, — one against millennarianism, the other against the imputed righteousness of Christ! Since his day, the Rationalism of Germany and the Arminianism of England have condemned and ridiculed
Tertullian smoothes over that Father’s chiliasm. See the Milan edition (not a very correct one), p. 518. * Symbolism, vol. ii. p. 157, millennarianism as a folly and a fable. Dead churches have been pre-eminently anti-chiliastic, and from the pens of some of our coldest divines have come the strongest condemnations of our system. In the days of the Westminster Assembly there were many chiliasts to be found: Twisse, the prolocutor, and many members were such. A century after, hardly a supporter of the system was to be found in England. When there were life and soundness, there was chili- ‘asm; when there were death and error, there was none.
Of late years, two of the bitterest opponents of millennarianism have been Moses Stuart of Andover, who has gone strange lengths in rationalism, and Dr Bush of New York, who has turned Swedenborgian! Our opponents may point to Hdward Irving and his followers as specimens of our system. I point to Bush and his followers as examples of theirs.
How we pave the way for heresy I know.not; but this I know, that charges like this against us are not fair arguments. They betoken something like peevishness and unmanly apprehension of confronting the broad argument of the case. It is not just to whisper suspicions against the orthodoxy of millennarians, in the hope that by rendering them suspected
men, their influence may be lessened, or in the hope that by charging fancied tendencies upon the doctrine, it may be avoided as infectious, and dreaded as pregnant with dark errors.
I have no objection that our system should be hotly and unsparingly assailed; but I have many reasons for thinking it wrong that it should be smothered in the dark by evil report. If it be not the truth of God, let it be confuted and silenced; but let not honest inquiry be arrested, and the subject itself fenced off from the search of the candid, by that unfair pre-judgment, through means of which all truth might be excommunicated and suppressed. ‘To bring a doctrine into such disrepute, as that it shall cease to be studied by the majority of Christians, may not be difficult; but in what respect can this avail either to build up solid truth or tear up noxious error ?*
This method of casting out surmises against millennarians is one which from its very nature it is not easy to meet. It seldom takes definite shape; and besides,
* A writer in the Pree Church Magazine for January last, classes together Morrisonianism and Millennarianism. I know not why, save for the end of suggesting a connection between them, and thereby discrediting millennarianism without the necessity of having recourse either to argument or Scripture. Morrisonians are all anti-millennarians, — and millennarians are all anti-Morrisonians: so that, the relationship has not yet been exhibited in fact. Seeing Morrisonians are anti-millennarians, I might more fairly class these together, and assert that the fact proves the relationship.
it is generally confined to private circulation. Sometimes it is suggested that we deny the work of the Spirit in conversion; sometimes it is affirmed that we subvert the foundations of grace; sometimes it is said that we degrade the Saviour; sometimes it is said that we disparage all evangelistic effort; sometimes it is asserted that we disorganize theology; sometimes it is said that we think that the mere majesty of the advent will convert the world without the Spirit;
‘and then, when we broadly repudiate all these, — when
no fact can be adduced to corroborate such charges,
it is affirmed, — “it will end in all these.” This last surmise is, by its very nature, unanswerable. We are
no prophets, and cannot foresee the end. Against such insinuations who can stand? All that we can. say is, that some of us have held the millennarian doctrine for ten, some for twelve, some for twenty years, and we have remained unshaken in our Calvinism; — nay, we have been mightily confirmed in it. We find no system to which millennarianism has any affinity save this. If I be then asked, “in what will your views land you?” I should answer, so far as I can judge of the future by the past, “they will land me in a far firmer belief of the Father’s sovereign purpose, — of the Son’s vicarious work in behalf of the
church, — of the Holy Spirit’s work in, conyincing,
LAW OF PROGRESS. 13]
converting, renewing, sanctifying souls: they will land me in far clearer perceptions of the offices of Christ, as Prophet, Priest, and King: they will land me in a far deeper conviction, that all God’s dealings with our fallen world have been and shall be to the end, of grace; for it is in the ages to come that he is specially to show the exceeding riches of his grace; that the church of God, the bride, the Lamb’s wife, is and must be the eternally chosen of the Father, given to him in covenant to be by him redeemed, and to be by the Spirit sanctified, and made ready in robes of bridal splendour, for the glory of the bridal day.”
As it is not merely our doctrine itself but our mode of interpretation that is said to end in heresy, I must allow myself a few pages for the consideration of this.
One cannot help having considerable doubt as to the “law of progress” in theology, suggested by Archdeacon Hare,* “according to which divers portions of Christian truth were not to attain to their rightful prominence in the systematic exposition of doctrines, till after the lapse of several generations.” How far any “law” can be traced, and specially how far it can be called a “law of progress,” are questions, the settlement of which will require more extensive investigation than he has given in that note, able and learned
* Mission of the Comforter, vol. ii. p. 410, note G.
though it be. That different truths have sprung up
into lofty and isolated prominence in different ages is matter of history; that God has owned these truths and handed them on to us as our heritage I gladly concede; but there are things that strike a reader of church-history in connection with these doctrines, — Ist, That it is impossible to trace any link (specially
a link of progress or development,) between these doctrines thus successively shooting up into notice, 2dly, That some of them, such as that of the Trinity in the fourth century, to which Mr Hare refers,* we owe more to the philosophy or metaphysics than to the piety of the age. 3dly, That the only law of progress which others of them followed, such as that of the Godhead of Christ, was the law of the progress of error, — that is, some denier of the truth arose, and forthwith the church rallied round the assailed doctrine, upholding it, illustrating it, enforcing it with a breadth and fulness which had never been thought of before.
In several cases, the “law” was a law of retrogression, not of progress; the law of decay, not of development. Truth withered down to its very roots, then it sprang up again; then withered; then shot up again. In some ages it blazed brightly, then like a revolving beacon-light, it passed round and all was
*aPydlby
+ dark. Such has ever been the broken, isolated character of truth in this fallen world. It has always had to wrestle for life, and often to fall in the struggle. For man’s natural affinities are with error, not with truth. Hence, in Newman’s Zheory of Development, there is much to interest and strike the thoughtful reader. He meant it for a development of truth; whereas it is a strange but most skilful development of error. It is the theoretical revelation of Antichrist, which he has unwittingly been constrained to lay upon the altar of God, as the first fruits of his apostacy. The apostle Paul declared “the mystery of iniquity doth already work,” and Mr Newman has demonstrated this, by following it out in all its subsequent ramifications. His work is the development of Antichrist, or at least of the Antichristian idea or ideas already afloat in the early church in the days of the apostle. Perhaps this work of his may yet be found a false step for Rome, like the liberalism of Pio Nono. Feeling the pressure of the age, and the impossibility of maintaining much longer the footing of tradition, he has with no small daring cut the ancient cable of the Papacy. Whether ‘the new one which he has substituted will bear the increased strain which the storms of these last days is
producing, remains to be seen. It is a perilous thing
134 ‘DISLIKE OF POPERY
for Popery to meddle with these ancient things. Men’s minds are familiar with the old, and feel awkward about the new. There is no small danger of putting new wine into old bottles. The new prop may perchance prove the ruin of the fortress which it was built to uphold.
In this development of error, I confess I feel gratified to find that chiliasm finds no place. It occupied large space in the belief of the early church, but was ere long set aside, as error grew apace, — or rather it naturally fell off, as the structure of error rose. Thus Mr Newman writes, “whereas at first certain texts were, inconsistently, confined to the letter, and a millennium was in consequence expected; the very course of events, as time went on, interpreted the prophecies about the church more truly.... this is but one specimen of a certain law of Christian development,””*
This “mystical sense,” as he calls it, whereby the literal millennium was shaken off, as an odious exerescence, which the growing anti-christianism of the age could no longer bear, he treats as the true sense of Scripture. Of his dislike of the literal sense, and his preference of the allegorical, he makes no secret; affirming (like some of our modern friends) the cer-
* Pp, 319-320.
tain connection between it and heresy, with the no less certain connection between the “allegorical” and truth. In support of his statement, he quotes a paragraph from a “learned German,”* to the effect that it was a perilous thing to “desert the spiritual for an exclusive cultivation of the literal method.” He then goes on to contrast with this a passage from “the latitudinarian Hales’s Golden Remains,” of the following purport; — “the literal, plain, and uncontrovertible meaning of Scripture, without any addition or supply by way of interpretation, is that alone which for ground of faith we are necessarily bound to accept, except it be where the Holy Ghost himself treads us out another way. ... The doctrine of the literal sense was never grievous or prejudicial to any but only to those who were inwardly conscious that their positions were not sufficiently grounded. When Cardinal Cajetan, in the days of our grandfathers, had forsaken that vein of postilling and allegorizing on Scripture, which for a long time had prevailed in the church, and betaken himself to the literal sense, rt was a thing so distasteful to the Church of Rome, that he was forced to find out many shifts and make many apologies for himself. The truth is, this sticking close ¢o the literal sense was that alone which made him to shake off so
* Lengerke on Ephraim Syrus.
many of those tenets upon which the Church of Rome and the reformed churches differ.”*
It is clear that from the days of Origen downwards even to our own, the literal sense has been the foundation of orthodoxy, the allegorical of the opposite. By setting aside the literal sense, Origen got quit of the doctrine of future punishments and other truths, at the same time that he got quit of chiliasm.t In like manner Mr Newman finds that the literal sense is a barrier of rock against all his developments, and accordingly sets it aside, briefly telling us that the use
of Scripture, especially in zts spiritual or second sense,
‘eit
as a medium of thought and deduction, is a character-
istic principle of the development of doctrine in the church.
* Newman’s Essay on Development, pp. 825-826. The epithet of “‘latitudinarian,” applied to Hales, may not be wholly undeserved, as his principles, or at least his practice, underwent considerable changes, and Laud’s favour for him, in later years, proved that he had dismissed all his Calvinism. But, (though Mr N. merely refers to the page, not the treatise,) if I remember right, it is from a Sermon on ‘ Scripture,” that the above passage is taken, which sermon stands jirst in his works, whence I am led to suppose that it was written in the earlier and sounder part of his life, for it was at or after the Synod of Dort, that, it is said, “‘he bid good night to Calvin.”
+ “In this century (8d), its (chiliasm) credit began to decline, principally through the influence and authority of Origen, who opposed it with the greatest warmth, because it was incompatible with some of his favourite sentiments.” Mosheim, cent. iii. ch. iii, § 12.
Thus, the Church of Rome has flung off as heresy, not only chiliasm itself, but the literal mode of interpretation on which chiliasm is founded, adopting in its place the figurative or allegorical sense, by which, while it gets quit of chiliasm, it also, with equal faeility, gets quit of any truth which it dislikes, and adopts any error which it favours.*
Again, in the case of Socinianism, is it the adoption of the literal or the figurative that has led to the denial of the divinity of the Lord Jesus? Which of the two modes of interpretation do Socinians prefer? On which of the two do they rest their hope of serving their blasphemy?
In the case of judaism, whether is it the literal or the figurative with which the rabbinical works abound? Will the Targum and the Talmud afford specimens of the former or the latter? Are they not altogether compounded of the latter, and by reason of being so, — by reason of their discarding the literal — they can con-
*The only two cases in which the Church of Rome. clings to the literal sense, are in reference to Peter, as the rock, and transubstantiation, This only shows that, while it denies holding by it, it fastens upon the literal when there are good reasons for leaving it. In both of these two cases, we may call the Romish sense the literal, but it is not really so; it is not the natural but the unnatural, not the simple but the perverted meaning that is adopted. See a Letter to Dr Wiseman on Transubstantiation, by Herman Ueinfetter. London, 1848, pp. 7, 8, 9.
Les jure up what doctrines, or what fancies, or what follies they please? Whether is it the literal or the fieurative that they make use of in rejecting the claims of
Jesus of Nazareth? Whether is it the literal or the
figurative interpretation of the 53d of Isaiah that they adopt?
In the case of rationalism, whether is it the literal or the figurative mode of interpretation that is employed? Were the literal adhered to, could rationalism sustain itself one single hour? Is not its bulwark the figurative, the non-natural?
In the case of Morrisonians, whether is it the literal or the figurative mode of interpretation that is received? Is it not the dteral that is set aside by their writers, and the figurative that is adopted? Were the literal to be held fast by them, could they defend their heresy? Is it upon the literal or the figurative that they base their denial of election, and their perversion of the ninth of Romans?
And as to the deniers of future punishments in our own day, how do they argue their case? By asserting that eternal is not literal, but figurative; that fire is not literal, but figurative; that torment is not literal, but figurative.
These examples may suffice as specimens of the tendencies of the two modes of interpretation. If there be a law of progress or of development in error, that law has invariably turned aside from the straight line of the literal to follow the ever-varying curves of the figurative. I hardly know a heresy that has developed itself from the literal, or that being developed, can abide the test of the literal. I hardly know a heresy that has not sprung from the figurative, or that can be met and overthown by it, as a weapon of assault. IX. It is said that we paralyze all missionary efforts, and make missions unnecessary.* In reply, I remark that this isa mere inference of our opponents from our system, and just as logical as that of Arminians from the doctrine of predestination. Anti-millennarians say that millennarianism paralyzes missions; Arminians say that predestination paralyzes the ministry of the gospel. Is the inference of either a fair one? And is it not, practically at least, in the case of the former, contradicted by the lives and proceedings of those against whom it is directed? I know of no millennarian who disparages missions, or thinks it needless to send forth the everlasting gospel over the whole world. All with whom I am or have been acquainted, are most zealous and liberal in the missionary cause; and no insinuation can be conceived more ungenerous or more
* <The millennarian theory paralyzes exertion for the spiritual benefit of mankind.” — A/odern Fanaticism Unveiled, p. 219. untrue than that their millennarianism has dried up - their liberality and withered their zeal. An insinuation like the above seems like some false rumour got up in order to place the party thus defamed in the unpleasant dilemma of silently admitting the calumny, or of letting their left hand know what their right hand doeth. Our expectations of success are not so large as those of our opponents. But this makes rather a difference in our favour; for we are not embittered with the sore disappointments which vex and dishearten them. They have been hoping, for fifty years, to convert the whole world by their efforts; and they have not succeeded. Hence the hope that they set out with must have been a false one; and could the zeal which it kindled be all of God? We did not expect to convert the world by missions. We set out with no such ungrounded hope. Hence we were not dispirited by being only the instruments of gathering in the elect. We felt that such was God’s purpose, and that we were doing his will whether many or few were saved. Zeal and liberality for God are not surely feelings originating in and sustained by the hope of converting the world. Our faithfulness in his cause is not to turn upon the nwmbers which he has promised to give us as seals of our ministry; so that if we are told that we may only look for few, are we
af
a ee
warranted in slackening our fervour, or our toil, or
our prayers?
Let the reader note the following sentence from Dr Chalmers, and see how he states the matter: — ““As far as we can read into the prophecies of the time that is before us, we feel as if there was to be the arrest of a sudden and unlooked-for visitation to be laid on the ordinary processes of nature and history, and that the millennium is to be ushered in, in the midst of judgments and desolations, and frightful convulsions, which will uproot the present fabric of society, and shake the framework of its machinery into pieces. It is still as much the part of missionaries to carry the gospel unto every people under heaven, as it was of the apostolic missionaries who went forth over all the then known world, previous to the destruction of Jerusalem. But though in these days they preached it universally, they did not plant it universally; and in like manner, we can imagine now a general publication without a general conversion of the nations, and that, instead of a diffused and universal Christianity being anterior to the next coming of the Saviour, that coming may be in judgment and sore displeasure on the irreligion and apostacy of a world that had now prepared itself for the outpourings of an accumulated
wrath, by its continued resistance to all the ordinary demonstrations. Instead of a diffused and universal Christianity being anterior to the next coming of the Saviour, that coming itself may be anterior to a diffused: Christianity — to the restoration of the Jews, and the consequent fulness of the Gentiles.”* And let him also note the following passage in the Pastoral Letter of the Free Church, written by Dr Candlish in 1845 : — “We trust the time is gone by when Christians fondly trusted to the advancing progress of civi — lization, and the gradual diffusion of the light of the gospel, and looked for the melioration, or the ultimate disappearance of Popery under these benign influences. It was in ignorance of the depth of human corruption, and in flagrant disregard of the warnings of holy Scripture, that such expectations prevailed; and now that, blessed be God, his church, in all her. various branches, has had her attention turned more earnestly to the predicted events of the latter times, and the circumstances connected with that second coming of her great Head and Lord, which, whatever obscurity may hang over its details, should ever have been, and now, more and more, must ever be, in its grand outlines, the bright pole-star of her hope, — a jJuster impression is cherished of the real nature of that subtle power which is yet again to raise its
* Evidences, vol. i. p. 872.
head, as the plague of guilty Christendom, and the instrument of God’s judgments among the nations.” It is very plain that the authors of these two statements did not expect the world to be converted by missionary efforts; nay, that they were looking for darkness, and convulsion, and tribulation. Yet it is as plain that neither Dr Chalmers nor Dr Candlish felt themselves in the very least impeded in their missionary efforts, or cooled in their missionary zeal, by such forebodings, Neither of them imagined that such a prospect could have any effect save that of stimulating the ardour of the Church, and calling forth new efforts of still greater energy and larger compass. The only writer (so far as I know) who slights and disparages Bible and Missionary Societies, is Mr Vint, an anti-millennarian, in several passages of a work elsewhere referred to. Of this I give one specimen: “J cannot persuade myself that the man wearing the
triple crown, or the Sultan of Constantinople, or his
imperial majesty of China, will ever be converted to
the faith of the gospel by the operations of Sunday Schools, Tract Societies, Bible Societies, and Missionary Societies. The language of Scripture leads us to a, conclusion directly the reverse; the Spirit of prophecy teaches us to expect a great earthquake, the darkening and falling of celestial luminaries, and the powers of heaven being shaken; all this must mean something different from the successful progress of ordimary means.”* Had a millennarian given utterance to such words, I know not what weight of censure would have fallen upon him and his system. He himself would have been deemed an enemy to missions, and his system upbraided as the cause of the enmity. I refuse to bear no blame legally attaching to me or my system; but in the present case, I cast it off, or at least consent only to share it on equal terms with my opposing brethren. Yet the following is a specimen of the language in which we are addressed. How far it is fair, let others judge.
“Millennarians may regard, if they will, the various plans and schemes of the church for the conversion of the world, as the mere utopianism of romantic expectation; they may speak with the utmost contempt of the miserable committees of our Bible and Missionary societies; they may look upon the pious endéavours of Christians for the salvation of the human family as the effervescence of an overheated imagination; they may -talk loudly of the inadequacy of the means at present in operation for the subjugation of the nations to Messiah, and they may fondly indulge the hope of Christ taking into his own hands, and effecting by
* Pp. 217, 218.
his presence and his power, what the people of God, by the Saviour’s outpoured Spirit on their labours and exertions, are now in vain seeking to effect in his absence; all this, we may be told, in the language of wnmeasured confidence and arrogant dogmatism, but let the church remember that she has in her possession those very means which, when accompanied by the powerful energy of God’s Spirit, can effect the moral renovation of the world.”*
I suppose that when, some years ago, Dr Candlish gave utterance to the following sentiment, he did not consider himself released from the duty of furthering the cause of our Church, nor feel himself paralysed in the struggle which she was then maintaining: “There is commonly a tendency among those who have been accustomed to things proceeding smoothly and tranquilly, to believe that every storm will blow by, that after a few years the scenes of excitement will disappear; that this controversy, like others that have preceded it, will be consigned to a quiet and peaceful grave, and that matters will go on as before. Now I must say that I think religious men, who study the word of God, and who take direction from the light of prophecy, coming to such a conclusion as this, forget first of all the fact which all our history teaches,
* Morrison on the Millennium, pp. 124, 125.
that never have the great principles for which the church is now contending, come openly to issue with the power of the world, without suffering a temporary defeat, and consequently convulsing the empire. They forget also that we are nearer the troublous times of the end of the world, and that there are signs and tokens, not in our Establishment only, but in all the Establishments of the empire, of a shaking and convulsion, which I trust I do not err when J compare and even rdentify with the predicted indication of the second and glorious coming of the Son of Man wn his kingdom.”
Do I paralyse effort when I say, “work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work”? Nay, do I not thus stimulate zeal, and toil, and prayer, and love to the uttermost? Do I lull men asleep when I say, “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh?’ — or do I flatter into flesh-pleasing, the great, or the noble, or the beautiful of the earth, when I tell them, that —
it
the tide of pomp, That beats upon the high shore of this world,”
is ebbing fast? Do I tempt the sinner to postpone his conversion, because I speak of the “wrath to
come” asso very nigh? Ordo I with less serious haste
beseech men to be reconciled to God, because I add that the time of reconciliation, the acceptable year of the Lord, is fast running to a close? Do I cherish idleness instead of diligence, softness of spirit instead of “hardness” (xaxovade), heedlessness about redeeming time instead of eagerness to gather up its fragments, when I announce that “the day goeth away and the shadows of evening are stretched out”? Do I soothe the bride into a deeper sleep when I say, “behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him”? Do I tempt the minister or the missionary into indolent security, when I declare that the Judge standeth before the door, and that ere long, the time of working, and preaching, and inviting, will be over? Do I persuade the soldier of the risen Jesus to ungird his weapons, because I tell him that his feet are already on the battle-field, and bid him listen to the loud roar afar that forewarns of the deadly onset? Do I preach Christ crucified the less because I preach also Christ coming to reign? Or do I the less proclaim that here we have no continuing city, because I can point so clearly to that which is to come, the city which hath foundations, whose builder and whose maker is God? Or do I make saints feel the less that they are strangers here, because I set forth to them the new earth wherein
dwelleth righteousness? Do I undervalue the cross because I magnify the throne? In holding’ up to view the crown of glory, do I depreciate the crown of thorns? Do I enfeeble my proclamation of immediate and free forgiveness to sinners through the sin-bearer, because I enforce it with the announcement that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh? Do I foster error, or heresy, or lax walking, or any departure from the faith, when I warn men that the perilous times of the last days are setting in, when Satan will “cast abroad the rage of his wrath,” and the unclean spirits will overflow the earth with their delusions, to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect, and to gather the nations together to the battle of the great day of God Almighty?
I do not know how it may be with others, but I feel that when I can say “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh,” I have got a weapon in my hand of no common edge and temper. ‘To be able to announce, “the Lord will come,” is much; but to be able to say, without the reservation of an interval, “He is at hand,” is greatly more. I can go to the struggling saint, against whom the battle seems to go hardly, and say, “Faint not, the Lord is at hand, an he will bruise Satan under your feet shortly.”. To the saint, wearied with a vexing world, fretted with its vanities, and troubled
with the thickening darkness of its midnight, I can
THE SAINT. THE MAN OF EARTH. 14? say, “Be of good cheer, the Lord is at hand; but a little while and that world shall cease to vex; sooner than you think the morn will break, — yea, before it is broken we shall be caught up and meet morning ere it is yet spread upon the mountains.” ‘To the suffering saint, I can say, “Weep not, the Lord is at hand; the torn heart shall be bound up, and the bitterness of bereavement forgotten in the joy of union for ever.” - To the flagging saint, heavy and slothful in his walk, I can say, “Up, for the Lord is at hand; work while it is day; look at a dying world all unready for its Judge; cast off your selfishness and love of ease.” To the covetous saint, I can say, “The Lord is coming — it is no time for hoarding now, — heap not up treasure for the last days.”
To the fond worldling, in love with the gay earth, and fascinated with the smiles of its wmning companionships, and out of these, forming to himself a new condition of being, into which the thoughts of another condition, and a sad future, and a weary spirit, and a sore reckoning for sin, shall find no way, I can say, — “Man of the earth, can you bea god to yourself, or give the world the place of God, or set at nought decay, and judgment, and wrath? The Lord is at hand; and at his coming, all time’s goodliness shall fade and turn
into corruption; its blossom shall go up as dust. Behold, He comes, — He whom you would shut out from the circle of your joy, — He without whom you would fain be happy, — He comes to end your mirth, to silence your song, to sever the links of fond companionship, to spread vileness over all the beauty which is blinding you, to turn into wailing and blackness the gaiety and brilliance of the midnight revel. ‘The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, ‘” — what shall all these then be to thee? Pomp and greatness ! — What have these to do with the worm that never dies? Sweet melody of voice and instrument! — what is that save the pleasant sound of the harps of Babylon that shall soon be heard no more at all! The dreams of romance and poetry ! — what have these to do with the realities of infinite judgment now preparing for you? The tender affections of ripening manhood and womanhood ! — what are these but flowers upon the crater’s edge; and what have flowers to do with the endless burnings and the ever-binding chain? Do you think the world not an evil, or do you think it too great an evil for God to meddle with, or at least that so vast an evil can only be drained off gradually, thereby soothing your fears and hoping for safety in the end? Then know that in one hour shall its judgment come, and that one stroke of the iron rod will
be enough to shiver it in pieces like a potter’s vessel!
Or do you conceive that the world is to go on improving till it brightens into millennial peace, thereby consoling yourself with the thought, that you are ere long sure of becoming religious, when religion shall thus, like dew, alight upon the world, and turn all to freshness, without judgments, without wrath, without terror, and without a struggle? But stay, — what then becomes of the treading of the wine-press, and the battle of the great day of God Almighty? And what becomes of that time of which it is written, ‘the earth mourneth and fadeth away; the world languisheth and fadeth away; the haughty people of the earth do languish; the new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merry-hearted do sigh; the mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone’? In that day of tumult and wrath, when Satan shall make his last and fiercest onset for the world’s throne, (the preparation for which we now see in the marshalling of his troops, and their falling rapidly into line,) and when Christ shall appear for vengeance and for victory; — where will your place be if you belong to the world, — what will your hope be if you now neglect the great salvation?”
Next to our own salvation must come the duty of
sending the gospel to all. We begin at the inner circle; but woe tousif we stop there. Woe be to us if we seek not to preach the gospel to every creature. We feel a peculiar call to this, and a peculiar urgency enforcing this call from our very system. For but little time remaineth. The night is falling. The storm is beginning to burst. We cannot tarry. We must go forth. We cannot heap up treasure for the last days. We must give liberally as long as the time allows. Those who look for a calm long day may sit down listless; but we dare not. Those who think the millennium will unfold itself slowly and gradually, may excuse themselves from the duty of working, but we dare not. Those who look for a mere extension of the present state of religion as all the millennium the world is to enjoy, may excuse themselves from giving, and may heap up treasure. But we dare not, we feel that there is not a moment to be lost; and that whether there are few or many to be saved, it matters not to us. We must fulfil our ministry, not counting even our lives dear unto us, that we may do the will of Him who sends us, and testify the gospel of the grace of God. Of what use would it be to cheat or dazzle men by such rhetoric as the following? ‘Was there ever a period in the history of our world in which so many vistas of glorious hope opened to mankind as at the present moment? Let the siege which has been so auspiciously commenced upon the forces of the enemy be kept up with ever-growing skill and determination; let existing advantages be seized upon with a resolution worthy of the cause; let the armies of the living God muster their whole strength, and go forth to the help of the Lord against the mighty; and ere long the camp of the enemy shall be seized with sudden overwhelming dread; the legions of darkness shall flee apace, and the conquest, of a world shall be given to the saints of the Most High.”* Well spoken! But what if it be all a dream? Go forth (fond theorist!) from the study or the pulpit, and look on Hurope now! Is there aught in the mad tempest of God-hating, Bible-hating, Sabbath-hating, man-hating passions to justify so fair a picture? Is there aught in the turbid swelling of the great deluge of European atheism on which to build such “glorious hopes?” What is Europe, — what is the world now? Is it not like the horrid Charybdis so wildly painted by the German : —
“It bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars, As when fire is with water commixed and contending, And the spray of its wrath to the welkin upsoars, And flood upon flood hurries on never-ending; And it never will rest, nor from travail be free, Like a sea that is labouring the birth of a sea.”
* Bogue’s Discourses on the Millenniwn.
Do I then disparage Bible Societies, and Missionary Societies, and Tract Societies? Far from it. I rejoice in them. I would strain every sinew to uphold, to extend, to multiply them. They seem to me like stars not yet extinguished in the darkening midnight, like life-boats going forth to the rescue of a sinking world. Ifa millennarian should say one word to discourage such efforts, I would call him one of the most
heartless and inconsistent of men.