Present State of Religion
“Clouds without water, carried about of winds” — Jupe 12.
“Alas! we are a company of worn-out Christians; our moon is on the wane; we are much more black than white; more dark than light; we shine but little; grace, in the most of us, is sore decayed.”” — Bun-YAN.
My pear FRrienp,
You ask me what I think of the religion of the present day — its character as well as its progress. J answer, J can hardly tell. Nor am I willing to enter upon a very full or explicit answer to such a question. I am not qualified to judge. Instead, therefore, of attempting any lengthened answer to such a question, I would merely point out a few things which lie upon the surface, which may help your own judgment upon this point, and may tend to establish you in the midst of so much instability and conflict.
As to the religion of our day, it has a very mixed sort of complexion. Its nature is rather of an indefinite kind, and its progress is not easily ascertained. Our present state is not a healthy or a natural one. It is doubtful and unsatisfactory. There is much to rejoice in, but much to grieve over. ‘There is bustle, activity, zeal, and liberality; yet all these may exist, and still spiritual life may be low. There may be much blossom and little fruit; and even that little not of the rich, mellow kind that, in other days, drew our Beloved into his garden ‘to eat his pleasant fruits.”
Religion among us lacks the intense vitality of other days. It intermits, fluctuates, and then, not seldom, evaporates. It lacks depth and strenvth. It lacks natural warmth, and too often seems to make up for the want of it by friction and excitement. Hence it is often wan and pale, relieved by hectic glows which soon depart. It bas not the healthy complexion of more primitive times. And in evidence of this, we find it continually turning in upon itself, feeling its own pulse, watching its various symptoms, a sure sign of disease, for health is unconscious of itself.*
* One of the great literary journals of our day thus speaks: — *“The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick. In the body, the first condition of complete health is, that each organ perform its function unconsciously, unheeded. Let but any organ announce its separate existence, then already has one of these unfortunate false centres of sensibility established itself; already is derangement there. The perfection of bodily well-being is, that the collective bodily activities seem one; and be manifested, not in themselves, but in the action they accomplish.”
It bears about it many marks of man’s handiwork. The finger of Jehovah is not visibly impressed upon it, so that one looking at it would be constrained to say, This is the doing of the Lord. There is much that is hollow and superficial. It is too hasty, too easy, too light and frivolous. It is wanting in the freshness, the calmness, the simplicity of primitive times. We desire something more solid and more solemn; peaceful but not stagnant; earnest but not feverish; energetic but not unstable.
On the one hand, we have some zealous for orthodoxy — tenacious of old forms and phrases, and making an idol of their ancestral creed. On the other, we have men reckless and headstrong in their innovations; rashing from doctrine to doctrine, in the feverish love of change ;* rash in judement, and shallow in intellect, despising creeds, confessions, catechisms, and old divinity of every kind; setting themselves up as those who alone preach or know the gospel, — the people with whom alone wisdom can be
* The great vice of the present day is presumptuous precipitancy of judgment; and there is nothing from which the cause of Christianity has suffered more thaw from the impatience of investigation, and that confidence of decision upon hasty and partial views which mark the literary character of an age, unde-ervedly extolled for its improvements in reasoning and philusophy.” — .Magee on the Atonement, Prefatory address. 7 supposed to exist, and with whom it is almost certain to die.
On the one hand, we have men preaching the gospel, and, at the same time, hedging it about with terms, conditions, restrictions, pre-requisites, as if afraid of the very freeness which they preach; telling men to come to Christ, yet enjoining humiliation, sorrow for sin, prayer, &c. as qualifications, without which they cannot be received, as if disliking the idea of our having to deal with Christ absolutely and simply as sinners, and as nothing else.* On the other hand, we have men, in their zeal for a free gospel, reducing it to a mere form of words — a current set of phrases, talking of it with flippancy and irreverence, as if the process of receiving it were a mere mechanical one, like the learning of the alphabet.
On the one hand, there are those who keep the gospel in the background, and dwell continually on conviction of sin, and repentance, and certain preparatory graces, the depth, and amount, and kind of which are pointed out;
* We have seen, for instance, sermons upon the heatitudes in which “meekness,” “poverty of spirit,” &c. were made qualifications for coming to Christ; so that, unless the sinner can ascertain that he possesses these, he is not warranted to come to Christ! Few errors can be worse or more utterly unscriptural.
vy as if afraid that men should come to Christ too soon, and have peace. On the other hand, we have men making light of convictions, as if they were but hindrances, disparaging repentance as inconsistent with the peace of the gospel.
On the one hand, we have some dwelling upon evidences, and experiences, and feelings, continually turning the eye backward and inward, in quest of something there to rest upon. On the other, we have men spurning everything of the kind; not merely rejecting them as the ground of peace with God, but utterly eontemning them as nothing but self-righteousness and pride.
On the one hand, we have some giving no counsel to an anxious soul, but merely to go on praying and waiting; speaking of ‘the pool of ordinances,” at which they instruct the sinner to wait till the troubling of the water, as if he was doing right in continuing in unbelief, and as if they themselves shrunk from proclaiming the commandment of God, that men should ¢mmediately believe and turn, and that it is infinite guilt, as well as unutterable peril, to remain one moment longer in unbelief. On the other hand, we have men forbidding such to pray at all, because God has commanded q
them to believe, as if prayer were not oftentimes the first utterance and expression of faith.*
On the one hand, we have those who think assurance nothing else than presumption, and the inlet to Antinomian licentiousness; who speak of it only as a thing attainable at the close of a saint’s career — as the result of a summing up of evidences; who make doubts a proof of faith, and a mark of humility, and who look suspiciously upon any who are rejoicing in the Lord. On the other, there are men who make a God of their assurance, and a Saviour of their faith, and an idol of their peace; who will hear of no struggle with an evil heart of unbelief; no warfare between the flesh and spirit; no deep self-loathing and mourning over indwelling corruption, as if all / these were but the symptoms of the weakness or the non-existence of faith, instead of their being certain indications of its presence and — power. Jor it is where faith is in its strength, that the conflict is often most desperate.
On the one hand, there are those who make
* “It is the duty of ministers not only to exhort their carnal auditors to believe in Jesus Christ. for the salvation of their souls; but it is at our peril to exhort them to anything short of it, or which does not involve or imply it —
‘uller’s “Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation.”
the work of the Spirit 7 them a resting-place for their soul, and the ground of peace between them and God, instead of singly and steadfastly looking to Christ and his work for them, as the one resting-place, the foundation of peace and joy. On the other, we see men ridding themselves of the Spirit’s work almost entirely, and in professing to make the gospel simple and faith easy, explaining away the office and operation of that very Spirit, without whom, ‘‘gospel” and “faith” are, to the sinner, but empty and unmeaning names.
Thus far I have stated the two opposite extremes. But it is only with one of these that I have at present to do. And it is only of the latter that I would speak in the remainder of this letter.
The individuals referred to are certainly very zealous for the propagation of their opinions, and spare no pains in persuading others to join them. ‘ They compass sea and land to make one proselyte.” Wherever an inquiring sinner is heard of, he is immediately searched out, and drawn along with them to attend their meetings and to hear their minister. Books and tracts are thrust upon him; all manner of attention is shown him, and visits paid to him; and the means are plied so perseveringly, that he finds it not very easy to shake himself free. They think it very uncharitable in him to refuse to attend their place of worship, but they do not at all deem it so never to enter his. They seem to think that every denomination should join them, while they themselves are to stand aloof from all.
They are very censorious. A great part of their religion appears to consist in judging others, and pretending to determine their spiritual state.* They talk flippantly about conversion, and seem to have no difficulty in settling who are converted and who are not, by some peculiar tests of their own. Those who have a single doubt, or who shrink from their laneuage of assurance, are pronounced to be upon the way to hell. ‘They will have it, that nobody preaches a free gospel but themselves, and that it is scarcely possible to hear the gospel out of their meeting-place, or beyond their sect. Their self-confidence is amazing. They boast much of the progress of their sect,
* President Edwards, in his well-known account of the revival at Northampton, under his ministry, mentions as a remarkuble feature of some of the converts — a peculiar aversion to judge other professing Christians of good standing in the church, with respect to their conversion or degrees of grace, 4 Thoughts on the Present Revival, de, sect. Vy Works, vol. 1. p. 837.
and of all their doings in advancing their cause. If they have contrived to raise a little excitement in a place, immediately they announce a revival of religion, number up their converts, and proclaim abroad their success. They are harpers upon one string — what they call the gospel. One would suppose that there was nothing else in the Bible but this. They never seem to get farther than the first principles of the oracles of God. Those passages or chapters out of which they cannot extract this gospel are passed over. Many portions of Scripture are left unread. We “have heard of such profane contempt for the word as omitting in family reading such chapters as the ninth of the Romans, or the first of the Ephesians.* As for the ‘sure word of prophecy,” they turn away from it. None of them seem to know aught about it. The second coming of the Lord is little thought of, Tittle preached upon, as the church’s BLEssED HoPE. ‘I’o the millennarian views they have
* Dr. Porter of America, in his work upon Revivals, mentions, that having once preached on election, a man came to him to express his dissatisfaction. “So,” said I, “you were not pleased with the doctrine of election?” “No, certainly I am not.” — * And what do you think of my text and the chapter (ninth of Romans) out of which it was taken?” * Indeed, sir, to be honest, I have always thought that the Bible would have been quite as good a book without that chapter.”
he LETTER X.
a very strong hostility; for their idea is, that they will ere long be able to convert the world, and thus the thought of Christ’s speedy coming, and of the world’s waxing worse and worse until he comes, are sad interruptions to their magnificent plans. Hence their antipathy to the subject.
They sit in judgment upon what they hear, not so much caring to be fed, as to criticize and discuss the subject afterwards — to be able to say whether the minister knows the gospel or not — whether he be a converted man or not, They would not scruple to rise and leave the church, if any part of the discourse was not” exactly to their taste. ‘They will not endure sound doctrine: but, after their own lusts, they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.”
With these things before me, may I not be permitted to question the reality and solidity of much that is called religion in the present day?
I see careless men taking an easy way of getting to heaven by saying that they believe; and making their own confidence their Saviour. No wrestling with flesh and blood, or with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places!* I see troubled souls saying peace to themselves when there is no peace, by resolving to be quite sure that all is well with them, though their hurt be not healed, but only skinned over, and their conscience remains unpurged by the blood of sprinkling. JI see men intent upon widening the strait gate and the narrow way, making what they call faith a substitute for everything, superseding conviction, repentance, self-abasement, by their own act of faith. I see men, instead of trembling at the word, taking it into their lips as they would do a song ora proverb, with all the easy flippancy of men who were above being solemnized and overawed with the majesty of the voice of Jehovah. I see men turning the grace of God into las-Civiousness, boastful of their conversion, forward to speak of it, yet living much as others live, and holding it bondage or legality to be strict in Sabbath-observance, or days of fasting, or similar forms and duties ; — nay, some are already denying the authority of the Sabbath. I find men holding the doctrine of ‘“nerfection,” (some having attained it, and
* “Every man,” says Rutherford, in solemn irony, “hath conversion and new birth; but it is not leal come; they had never a sick night for sin; conversion came to them ina night dream.” — Letters, vol. li. p. 33.
some not,) yet still censorious, proud, uncharitable, sectarian. I see men mistaking indifference to sin and ignorance of their own deceitful hearts for holiness, — making a merit of not mourning for sin, as if that were unsuitable to one who is forgiven, — not seeking for pardon, nor confessing sin in their prayers, — thus combining the vileness of Antinomianism with the mock-sanctity of perfectionism.* I see some, even, whom I believe to be at heart Christians, running from doctrine to doctrine, from book to book, from church to church, attracted by every novelty in the man or the message. Having lost the glow of their first love, they are seeking it in change and excitement, or the bold asseveration of their assu-
* “The vain, foolish, and ignorant disputes of men about perfect keeping of the commands of God, of perfection in this life, of being wholly and perfectly dead to sin, I meddle not now with. It is more than probable that the men of those abominations never knew what belonged to the keeping of any one of God’s commands; and are so much below perfection of degrees, that they never attained to a perfection of parts in obedience, or universal obedience in sincerity. And therefore many in our days who have talked of perfection have been wiser, and have affirmed it to consist of knowing no difference between good and evil.... Others, who have found out anew way to it by denying original indwelling sin, and attempering the spirituality of the law of God unto men’s carnal hearts, as they have sufficiently discovered themselves to be ignorant of the life of Christ, and the power of it in believers, so they have invented a new righteousness that the gospel knows not of, being vainly puffed up in their fleshly minds.” — Owen on the Mortification of Sin.
rance. Miserable exchange, indeed, for the loss of their first love! Vain device to recover the fresh life and glow of other days by having recourse to something else than the living Christ himself! Sad delusion of the false spirit, to which some seem to be given over, in righteous recompense for having rejected the unction of the Holy One!
But I shall not prolong the description. I have already said enough to give you some idea of the state of religion among many in our day. I do not say that this description applies to all the holders of the new theology. No; I believe there are some to whom it does - not. ‘They are holy, and living men, in spite of their system, and in opposition to their own theology.
Those to whom it may apply may take offence at what I have written. ‘They may deem me uncharitable and harsh. But I have written strongly because I felt that the evil was great, and that smooth words would have but concealed its magnitude. The words may seem sharp and severe, but no hostile feelings towards any individuals whatever mingle with my exposition of their doctrines.
Having myself written much in defence of a free gospel, I felt the more called upon now to write what I have written here, and to write it in the way that I have done. TI hold and preach as free a gospel as ever I did, nor shall I be driven from it by the extremes into which some have gone. They have brought reproach upon the freeness of the gospel by the false doctrine with which they encircle it. They have made many suspicious even of the very name of the gospel. But this is only Satan’s old device. He wants to make the gospel odious; and he has, to no small extent, succeeded. But shall this binder us from proclaiming it as before? Shall this lead us to hedge it about and guard it, and affix conditions to it, because of such abuses? No; let us grasp it entire. Let us lilt up our voices as loudly as ever, — ‘‘ Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”
Let us not limit the gospel, nor abate aught of its absolute and unconditional freeness. Let us not cast any stumbling-block in the sinner’s way, nor tell him that he is not at liberty to come and be forgiven, just as he stands this very instant. Let us not tell him that he must get quit of his sins, and repent and pray, and wait, and do his best, in order that after all this he may be qualified for coming to the Saviour. Let us not allow him to suppose
’ ) ‘ that there is any one thing required of him before coming, or that he is not welcome to his Father’s house and his Father’s arms, even now, poor prodigal as he is.
We may be accused of inconsistency and self-contradiction, — one sermon may be contrasted with another, — one statement may be held up as the antagonist of the other. But still let us not be moved away, either from the the gospel or its hope. We believe in a gospel free to aL, and we preach it as such, — going up to every man with the message of peace on our lips, and the blessings of salvation in our hands, saying, ‘‘ Be thou reconciled to God.”
Or, perhaps we may be accused of an ignorant attachment to antiquated creeds, and of blind veneration for the straitened theology of other days. Now, though wishing to draw direct from the fountain-head, and to call no man master, yet we do confess a liking to those doctrines which, in life and in death, were grasped so strongly by our fathers,- — those much-praying, much-believing, deep-thinking, hard-toiling, sore-suffering men, whose eyes grew early dim, and whose hair grew early gray. We are not ashamed to confess a satisfaction in sitting at the feet of such men, and listening to their solemn teaching, in preference to seeking instruction from men whose shallowness and self-confidence make us feel, that instead of teaching others, they have need that one teach them again what be the first principles of the oracles of God.
Yours, &e.
THUS SAITH THE LORD:
“They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” — Jer, vi. 14.
“They are prophets of the deceit of their own hearts.” — Jer, xxili. 26.
“Tam against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words, every man from his neighbor.’ — Jer. xxiii. 30.
“A voice of a multitude being at ease was with her.” — Ezek. xxiii. 42.
“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” — 2 Tim. ill. 7.
“Beguiling unstable souls.”” — 2 Pet. ii, 14.
NOTES.
Towards the close of the 16th century, lax views regarding the work of the Spirit seem to have been introduced into Holland in connection with or at least in the train of Socinianism. In the beginning of the following century, these Opinions spread, and a controversy arose which led to the assembling of the Synod of Dort in 1618, at which Synod these were strongly condemned. The statement of the Synod is as follows: — * Which regeneration, or second creation, is not brought to pass by bare instruction sounding to the outward ear, nor by moral inducements; no, nor by any kind of operation so carried on, that when God had done his part, it should remain in man’s choice to be or not to be regenerate, to be or not to be converted; but is 2 supernatural, a most powerful, and withal, most sweet, wonderful, hidden, and unspeakable working, being for the mightiness thereof not inferior to the creation of the world, or the raising of the dead.”
But the decree of the Synod did not arrest the controversy; it rather called it forth in a new shape. The old Arminians were silenced, but not convinced; while in their place there arose a Class professing to agree cordially with the synodical articles, yet putting a construction of their own upon them. Among the first of these was Johu Camere or Cameron, originally a Scotsman, but who had spent many years abroad. He was attacked on right and left. The orthodox maintained that he was departing from the Synod’s Articles, Some of the thorough-going Arminians assailed him as dishonest, and one of them anonymously, under the name of “Vir Doctus,” published a letter against him, of very considerable length, expressing his surprise that Camero should profess to agree with the Synod. Camero wrote a long and somewhat sharp but elaborate reply, occupying nearly 80 folio pages of his works, in which he maintains his orthodoxy most strenuously. He is perhaps not so explicit as he might have been; at the same time, he is very far from countenancing the modern notions. His disciples, Amyrald and Testard, continued to maintain the same ground. They were vigorously and learnedly opposed by Rivet.
The controversy went on, and was taken up in France by Pajon, Protestant minister at Orleans, a man of acute and subtle mind, who had distinguished himself in the Popish controversy. He was born in 1626, and died in 1685. His opinions went under the name of Pajonism.* He did not deny the necessity of grace, even preventing grace; nor even the reality of grace working in us all that is good; nor the particularity and efficacy of grace. “He wished only to Inquire into the mode of the Spirit’s operation, and how grace is rendered effectual in us; whether this operation of grace in those that believe, or the elect, is only moral and rational, — that of an objective cause, by which the Spirit acts efficaciously, no doubt, upon the mind in illuminating it, upon the heart and will in powerfully turning them, yet still through the mediate operation of the word and other external means, such as the power and efficacy of reasons, motives, opportunities, which are objectively presented to our mind in the
* “Tnvisum nomen Pajonismi.” — Spanhemii LHlenchus, p- 285.
Word of God, by the promises, threatenings, d&c., and necessarily determine us. And that thus the efficacy and insuperability of grace does not arise from the invincible, immediate, and supernatural operation of the Spirit upon the mind and will of those who are called according to God’s purpose, distinct from the external efficacy of the Word, and of the means which are presented to us; but it arises, on the one hand, from an internal disposition of the man, which is very different. according to the difference of mind, inclination, corruption; and on the other, from the external presenting of objects, which grace so dispenses to the elect, and with such circumstances, that they cannot fail to affect the minds of those who are rightly disposed, and to win the assent of their wills, and thus produce faith.” Such is the account given us of Pajon’s opinions by a contemporary. (Frederick Spanheim the younger, in his Hlenchus Controversariumselectiorum, p. 285.) ‘hey are a step in advance of Camero’s views, and come nearer the Pelagianism of modern times than almost any heretofore. Mosheim seems to wish to discredit the charges against Pajon as made by his adversaries; but Spanheim, who gives a very calm and particular account of his views, professes to draw his statements from unexceptionable authorities. Both Mosheim and his translator leaned too much to Pajon’s views, and hence the desire of both to ward off the accusations. After Pajon’s death, his nephew, Papin, carried on the controversy, in which he was opposed by the famous Jurieu of Rotterdam. Papin’s opinions were condemned in 1688 by the French Synod, and shortly after he himself joined the Church of Rome.
Somewhat similar opinions, though in measure modified, appeared not only in our own country, but also on the Continent, about the middle or towards the end of the last century. The whole tone of that century was decidedly of an Arminian cast. Pajon’s views are substantially the same as those to be found in Doederlein and Knapp in their Institutes of Theology, the latter of which has lately been reprinted. The former of these devotes a long section to the illustration and defence of his views upon the work of the Spirit, which correspond very strikingly to the dogmas of our own day. Doederlein, vol. ii. pp. 585-650, De operationibus gratiae. Knapp, pp. 396-412. The translator of Knapp, however, gives two very striking passages from Bretschneider and Reinhard, in favor of an immediate operation of the Spirit. “That God has power to act inwardly upon the souls of men,
— — — — and to awaken ideas in their minds, cannot be denied, Ag the Creator of their spirit, he knows their nature, and how he can operate upon them, and as Almighty he must be able to produce in his creatures any effect which he desires. The possibility of an inward agency of God upon the world of spirits cannot be denied, although the manner in which this agency is exerted is inscrutable, which indeed is true as to the manner of all Divine operations, With what truth is it supposed that these influences must hamper the free agency of the mind, and reduce the subject of them to a mere machine? Does not the teacher often, in giving instruction to the child, suddenly interrupt the course of his thoughts, and put him on an entirely new train of ideas? But are the laws of mind in the child violated by this interruption? But the teacher, it is said, makes use of words. Cannot God, however, by an alloguiwin internum cause new thoughts in the souls of men? Or are words the only way in which a spirit can impart his light to other spirits?’ — Bretschneider. “There can be no reason why we, with the Scriptures, should not conceive of an immediate influence, since such an influence is far more adapted than one which is mediate, to the sphere (the spiritual world) of which we are speaking.” — Reinhard.
It is worthy of notice that all the Socinians and Neologians abroad, all the High Church divines in England, and Mod-rate divines in Scotland, have denied the doctrine of an immediate operation of the Spirit, while almost all the godly Lutheraas and Calvinists abroad, Reformers, Puritans, Nonconformists, Covenanters at home, have maintained it. Whenever there was death in the church, then the immediate energy was denied — when there was life then it was admitted, even by such men as Wesley, who contended for an universal atonement. The Rowites in our own day never maintained that the Spirit was in the word, or that he wrought equally in all. They held only that Christ had the Spirit given him for all, and that it was out of him that the sinner is to obtain it. See Campbells Sermons, vol. 1. pp. 100 and 179, and other places,
I have thrown these few facts together, merely as what have occurred in my own reading, without pretending to give anything like a full or connected view of the matter in question.
In addition to the above hints, the reader may consult Dr. M‘Crie’s Life of Rivet, in the volume of his Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 124-128. There the following curious remark
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occurs, — a remark illustrated by the tactics of some in our day. “Those who have attempted to introduce novel opinions in churches have often defended themselves from the writings of those who were never before suspected of entertaining such sentiments as theirs,... It is not difficult to extract from former authors detached sentiments, or incidental and loose expressions, appearing to favor an error which was not then broached, or which they were not guarding against, while they wrote against adversaries of an oppo- site description.” P. 126.