Introduction
Tuxse Letters are little more than fragments. They do not aim at a complete statement of the truth, or a systematic arrangement of it. It is only a few important points that they touch.
‘To have extended them and embraced a wider range of doctrine would not have suited my design. I wished to warn you against some of the prevailing errors of the time, lest ye, being “led away from your steadfastness,” should follow after the “diverse and strange doctrines” of these last days. Hence it was necessary to dwell upon those errors which have been most prominently advanced, and to open up those truths which have been most perverted and denied.
There may be found here and there a few repetitions. These I tried to avoid as much as possible, but could not altogether succeed.. I found that so close is the connection between
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the different truths as well as the different errors, that after I had discussed them in one place, they would rise up in a second, or even a third, springing now out of one doctrine, and again out of another. Ido not regret this. It may tend to show more fully the harmony of all the different parts of the truth, and their connection with each other, so that it will be ‘seen that as all truth is linked together in its different parts, so is all error. How great, then, the danger of slighting any truth or giving way to any error!
My appeal is to the Word of God. What are the reasonings, or opinions, or inferences of men? What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Let the Bible decide each question. It is for this end that I have appended to each letter a selection of passages at length.
The real question of the present day is just this, — Is man a totally and thoroughly depraved being by nature ? — Is he ruined, helpless, and blind, dead in trespasses and sins? Many other questions have arisen, but this is the centre one. According to the views we entertain regarding this, will be our views on other points. It is upon the truth of this doctrine that the whole Bible proceeds. And hence I would at the outset warn you strongly against any attempt to modify, or abate, or dilute the statements of Scripture on this point.
Man being thoroughly depraved in nature, is it possible, I ask, to save him without a special and direct intervention of Father, Son, and Spirit, in his behalf? In other words, can he be saved in any way which does not involve personal election by the Father, particular redemption by the Son, and direct, immediate, overcoming operation of the Holy Spirit? Or, putting the question in another form, and using the language of science — given a totally depraved being, is it possible to save that being by any plan which makes the previous concurrence of his own will an indispensable preliminary, or which makes it necessary that he should take the first step in the matter of return to God?
If you place the different errors of the day before you in this light, you will find that they all more or less directly deny or encroach upon the doctrine of man’s original and actual depravity.
You will find, also, that the objections urged against God’s sovereignty and man’s helplessness, are just diflerent manifestations of hux INTRODUCTION.
man pride, — the pride into which Satan tempted Adam, “Ye shall be as gods,” and into which all his offspring have fallen along with him. Man will not consent to be nothing, that God alone may be atu. And it is curious to observe that the objections urged against these truths are not passages of Scripture, but human reasonings — man’s inferences and opinions. ‘Take, as a specimen, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. We have many passages breadly declaring this, but not one setting forth the opposite. How, then, do men contrive to deny this truth? They begin to reason and speculate upon it; and by means of certain ¢nferences of their own, try to make it appear inconsistent with other doctrines to which they attach great importance. They say, ‘‘ Does not God invite the sinner to come to Christ, does he not tell us that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that he should turn and live: now, how can this be true, if He be absolutely sovereign in his proceedings? We cannot reconcile these things together, therefore we must explain away the passages which assert God’s sovereignty and electing will. They cannot be understood in their plain and literal sense: we must devise some other meaning for them
INTRODUCTION. Xl which will accord with our ideas of God’s love.” Thus, pride of intellect, confidence in human reason, eagerness to establish one favorite doctrine and to make everything bend to it, supersede and overturn the Word of God. Scripture is not implicitly relied upon, unless borne out by the systems or the syllogisms of reason and the conclusions of man’s poor fallen intellect.
Cleave, then, to the Word of God. Distrust your own hearts, lean not to your own understandings, — but receive with meekness the ingrafted word. “The world through wisdom knew not God:” and we must stoop to “become fools, that we may be wise.” “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.””*
It is a singular fact, that the tendencies of the present day are to substitute the operation of general laws for the direct interposition of God. This is Satan’s present device; and it is a device which he is carrying out into all departments of knowledge, — philosophy, science, literature, and theology. Some ten or
* See first and second chapters of First Corinthians, “>
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twelve years ago, for instance, we had a specimen of this in a work called “‘ My Old House, or the doctrine of changes,” by an individual taking to himself the name of a minister of Christ. He had conjured up a magnificent system of laws, a self-moving universe; and though he frequently spoke of Divine Providence, it was evident that the idea of Providence was a disturbance of the harmony, a disfigurement of the graceful beauty of his system. Just so is it with the theology of some in our day. ‘They would carry on everything by means alone, by intermediate agencies; and though they often speak of the Holy Spirit, yet it is very manifest that the doctrine of the Spirit’s work sets their system out of joint, and is quite an incumbrance to it. Their system is quite complete without any such agency.* This is already felt, and hence His direct personal operation is set aside. What may be the issue of this in a few years,
* If this seems a strong statement, I just ask what is meant by a sort of proverbial expression of theirs, in common use, “that man needs no more help to believe God’s truth, than to believe the devil’s lie.” A more complete denial of the Spirit’s entire work there could not be. For as man does not need the Spirit at all to enable him to believe the lie, so according to them he does not need in any sense the Spirit to enable him to believe the truth, See this adverted to in Letter Ninth.
we shall not venture to predict. Whether such a theory can long subsist with the belief of the Divine personality of the Spirit, or which of the two is likelier to give way, we shall leave to others to determine.
Of late, the well-known work, “* Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” is another specimen of what we mean. In that work the author tells us that he has suggested “a physiological explanation of the development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, leading to the conclusion that the designs of Creative wisdom were entirely effected by the intervention of natural laws.” His object is to prove that God works only mediately and indirectly, through his law, but not by the forth-putting of his power in any more direct manner. Now it is this very principle that pervades the new theology. Like the above writer, the new divines frequently speak of the Spirit, so as to lead many to suppose that they do not at all question his work; but they never fail to add, that He only works “in the use of means,” not by ‘‘an inward direct energy.”* Now, in re-
* See the Correspondence of the Congregational Churches, p. 26, and other places. The Churches who held fast the truth, and remonstrated with their brethren, thus express gard to the statements of the man of science, we are quite willing to admit that God does work “by the intervention of natural laws;” but the question is, does He work in that way alone? He affirms; we deny it, and maintain that such doctrine is philosophic scepticism. So in regard to the statements of the divines alluded to, we are equally willing to grant that the Holy Spirit does work by the use of means; but the question is, does he work by the use of means alone? ‘They affirm; we deny it. We say that he operates directly upon the soul, and maintain that the opposite of this is theological scepticism.
Both of these are truly signs of the last days — signs arising in different quarters of the heavens, yet obviously the same in kind. They manifest singular wnity of design on the part of Satan. In both, we see his repugnance to the direct will of Jehovah. In both,
their judgment as to their opinions: “Honesty requires us to say that you seem to us to admit in words what you deny in fact,’ p.10. Again they remark on the ambiguous and equivocal language used by their correspondents — * It is the hackneyed subterfuge employed in all ages by those who have held the errors that we are opposing, to say that the influence of mere means is the influence of the Spirit, since the means have proceeded from and express the mind of the Spirit, and thus they have sought to cheat the unwary with words, spreading the belief that they have admitted the Spirit’s influence, when in fact they have denied it.”
his object is to separate men from Him in whom they live, and move, and have their being. In both, he is seeking to make the creature’s communication with the Creator less personal and direct; to set aside the necessity of His ever-interposing agency; to impugn the equity of making the creature thoroughly dependent upon the all-regulating will and pleasure of the Creator; to deny the great Bible truth which is the very basis of redemption, that separate from God, there can be no stability for the creature, and that it is only by the grace of His own continuallyimparted power that the creature can be holy, or even Je at all.
Were these new theories correct, most melancholy were our case! For where would be the blessedness that flows from our direct dealings with God in prayer and praise? Are prayer and praise to be mere messages, sent by us to a far-distant Being, whose feelings and ours can never intermingle? Or are they to be the close, real, personal converse of one friend with another, face to face? Admit the modern theory, and direct communion with God must be a thing unknown. For, if God only communicates with us through means, then we only communicate with him through the same. The far-off influence of the moon upon the tides of ocean is, in such a case, the true emblem of God’s operations upon Us, and the responsive but cold heaving of the billows upward would be the only figure of our intercourse with Him. The living God and the living soul could never meet and embrace each other in love. ‘They could only carry on their intercourse by signs, and means, and influences.* But let these remarks suffice as an Introduction. I put these Letters into the hands
* «The distinction which is sometimes made, that in a miracle God is immediately working, and, in other events, is leaving it to the laws which he has established to work, cannot at all be admitted, for it has its root in a dead mechan- ‘cal view of the universe, which lies altogether remote from the truth. The clock-maker makes his clock, and leaves it; the ship-builder builds and launches his ship, and others nayigate it; but the world is no curious piece of mechanism which its Master makes and then dismisses from his hands, only from time to time reviewing and repairing it; but, as our Lord says, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work, ‘he upholdeth all things by the word of his power’ And to speak of ‘laws of God, ‘laws of nature, may become to us a language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes. Laws of God exist only for us. It is a will of God for himself, That will indeed, being the will of highest wisdom and love, excludes all wilfulness, is a will upon which we can securely count; from the past expressions of it, we can presume its future, and so we rightfully call it a law. But still from moment to moment it is a will; each law, as we term it, of nature, is only that which we have learned of nature concerning this will in that particular region of its activity.’” — Z’rench on the Miracles, pp. 9, 10.
of you, my dear people, that you may be helped to understand the truth of God, and may be kept steadfast therein. You know that these are the very truths which, during these eight years of my ministry among you, I have ever sought to teach you. My desire is to lay before you, in a more abiding form, the substance of my teaching from the pulpit. In the freeness of the glorious gospel, I have endeavored to instruct you in many ways; and I would not that you should be left unwarned against the errors which some are introducing amongst us, under pretext of preaching that gospel more freely; ‘lest Satan should get an advantage over us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.”
‘‘ Little children, it is the last time; and, as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time.”
‘Behold, I come quickly; hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”
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