General Principles, Continued
“Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?’’ — IsaiAu xly, 9.
My pear FRienp,
Having stated what appears to me to be the origin of the theological opinions that are now trying to make way among us, I would briefly advert to some of the principles out of which they spring. I might at once have gone on to discuss the different points or opinions themselves; but I think it may be useful to notice some of the principles which they involve, or what may be called the general aspect and essence of these opinions. We have already seen the sow! in which they flourish, — we shall forthwith proceed to advert to the branches and fruit; but, before doing so, it may be well to call attention to the roots of the tree.
Speaking generally of the new doctrines, and of the movement which has taken place in connection with them, we may affirm several things.
1. Man has too much to do with all this, — God too little. We hear much of what man does, and can do, and ought to do, but by no means so much of what God is doing, and has purposed to do. Man’s agency stands very prominently out to view, — God’s arm and power are hidden. It seems almost as if man would thrust aside God, take the reins of government out of his hands, and be to himself a god. Man gets much credit for doing and saying great things, — God gets little glory. The position of the sinner, as mere receiver of salvation, and every blessing connected with it in this life or the next, is denied; and he is exalted to be a co-operator with God in the matter of salvation. He begins the work by becoming willing, and God ends it. He does what he can, and God does all the rest. He is represented as helping God to save him; or rather, we should say, God is represented as helping man to save himself! In the old creation, God did all; but in the new creation, as being a far more stupendous work, he requires the assistance of man, — nay, he commits half the work, at least the most difficult and momentous part of it, to man himself! If some of the new theories be true, God is not all in all, but is, on the contrary, considerably indebted to man; and man, in like manner, is not a little indebted to himself. In all this, we hear still the whisperings of the old serpent, ‘“Ye shall be as gods;” and we see man, like his first father, aspiring to the Divine prerogative.
2. Man’s way, and not God’s, is taken as the guide of action? God has a way, a plan, a purpose, well and wisely ordered. This plan, which he acts by, he has revealed, and he expects us to take it as our guide in all our schemes. This plan touches and rules things both great and small, — nations, communities, churches, with all their movements. Man’s wisdom would be to search out this plan, and shape all his movements accordingly. Inattention to this must not only lead to fruitless efforts and unscriptural schemes, but to much false religion, self-will, formality, excitement, and sectarianism. (God’s design is to glorify himself, — to show to the whole universe what an infinitely glorious Being he is. This is his mighty end in all he does and says — to manifest himself and show forth his glory. For this, sin was allowed to enter the world; for this, the ‘‘ Word was made flesh;” for this, the Son of God shed his blood and died; for this, He is taking out of this world a people to himself; to this all things are tending, and in this shall they be consummated ere long. Nothing less than this does God propose to himself in his doings; and nothing less than this should we ever make our aim and end. All things are but means to this one end. Even the incarnation of his own Son is but means toward an end, but not the end itself. The ingathering of his chosen ones is the means, not the end. The salvation of Israel, the conversion of the world, and the restitution of all things in the day of the coming kingdom, shall be the means, but not the end. ‘ For of him, and through him, and to him are all things; to whom be glory forever.”
Whenever we overlook this, we go wrong, and our efforts are but the beating of the air. When we make an end of anything lower than this, we are sure to fall into error; because, when we fix on ends of our own, we are certain to adopt means of our own. ‘Take the case of the conversion of a soul. We cannot be too much in earnest about the saving even of one lost one. I believe we know almost nothing of that deep compassion and yearning love for a dying world which, as saints, we ought ever to feel.* Yet still it is quite possible to
* What an example, and, at the same time, what a reerr in this matter, — not in being too earnest, but in being so intent on having men converted as to lose sight of the mighty end for which this is to be sought. Hence the glory of God is hidden from view; I do not say denied, but hidden from view. And what is the consequence? We cease to look at conversion in the light in which God regards it, as the way in which he is to be glorified. We think if we can but get men converted, it does not so much matter how. Our whole anxiety is, not how shall we secure the glory of Jehovah, but how shall we multiply conversions? ‘The whole current of our thoughts and anxieties takes this direction. We cease to look at both things together; we think it enough to keep the one of them alone in our eye; and the issue is, that we soon find ourselves pursuing ways of our own. Bent upon compassing a particular object, we run recklessly forward, thinking that, as the object is right, anything buke in regard to this is conveyed to us in Edwards’ statement of the feelings of some during a time of revival. “There was found an universal benevolence to mankind, with a longing to embrace the whole world in the arms of pity and love. Sometimes a disposition was felt to a life given up to mourning alone in a wilderness over a lost and miserable world; compassion towards them being often to that degree that would allow of no support or rest but in
going to God and pouring out the soul in prayer for them,” Works, vol, i. p. 877.
that can contribute towards the securing of it cannot be wrong. We thus come to measure the correctness of our plans, simply by their seeming to contribute to our favorite aim. We estimate the soundness of our doctrine, not from its tendency to exalt and glorify Jehovah, but entirely by the apparent facility with which it enables us to get sinners to turn from their ways. The question is not asked concerning any doctrine, Is tn itself a God-honoring truth, but will it afford us facilities for converting souls? Will it make conversion a more easy thing, — a thing which a man may accomplish for himself and by himself? Will it make conversion less dependent upon God, and more dependent upon man? Will it make a man’s salvation to hinge less purely and solely upon the will of Jehovah, and more entirely upon the will of the sinner himself? Will it enable us to meet such a text as — ‘‘No man can come unto me unless the Father draw him;” ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you;” ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?”
The man who thinks of nothing but how he may (as he calls it) get sinners converted, is continually apt to take these devious courses.
Impelled but by one force, in one direction, from one motive, he soon errs and loses himself in mazy thickets, which, as he plunges on, thicken into deeper intricacy and darkness. Such texts as these present themselves and cross his path. Intent on but one thing, he either shuns them or treads them down. ‘They are incompatible with his one idea, — they seem to impede him in the pursuit of his one end. And therefore they must be got quit of. It does not occur to ask, Am I not looking at objects in a partial light, from too low a position, and with a false bias which unfits me for coming to a right judgment? Were such a question but asked and answered as it ought, there would be less of one-sided doctrines, mis-shapen systems, got up to accomplish a favorite and engrossing object. Were the glory of the infinite Jehovah seen in its true light, as the mightiest and most majestic of all objects and ends, not to the exclusion of other matters, but simply to their regulation and subordination, — then should we be saved the pain of seeing men rushing headlong over Scripture and reason, striking out strange by-paths of their own, in their eager pursuit of an object on which they have fixed an exclusive and partial eye.
I do not wonder at men, who either have lost sight of the glory of Jehovah or have made it a subordinate object, or who think that if they can only get men converted, God will look after his own glory, — I do not wonder at them being fretted when such texts as those I have referred to, confront them in their schemes for facilitating conversion, and making man the converter of himself. A man with only one object in view, and that not the highest, must be stumbled at such declarations, and feel at a loss to reconcile them with others. But the man who has set his heart upon the glory of his God, and views everything in relation to that, feels no such difficulty. He takes Scripture as he finds it. He has no need to explain away even one verse or clause of the Book of Truth. He enters into the purpose of God; he looks at things in the light in which God looks at them. He tries to see them as they might have appeared in the long past eternity, — or as they will yet appear in the eternity to come. And he finds all harmony. ‘There is no conflict, no discord at all. One class of passages show him the yearnings of God’s heart over sinful man. They show him that God is in earnest in beseeching men
to come to him; that he really means what he says when he makes proposals of friendship and reconciliation to them. They show him that the sinner’s unbelief is the cause of his damnation; and that if he is lost, it is not because God would not be reconciled to him, but because he would not be reconciled to God. They show him that the water of life is free; free to every man; free to every sinner as he stands; and that he is invited to partake, without*price or preparation, not only although he is a sinner, but just because he is a sinner. They show him these things, and in them he greatly rejoices. He does not wish to abate one jot of the blessed freeness, or cloud by one restriction the joy of the glad tidings. No. He takes these passages just as he finds them. He sees how suitable they are to one of the objects on which his heart is set, — I mean the conversion of souls. But then he finds another class of passages which follow out another line of truth. They will run him up at once into the purpose and will of Jehovah as the fount and cause of everything great or small. ‘They are quite explicit; just as much so as the other. He cannot explain them away. They are so plain and simple, that a child may see what they mean. He has no wish to take them in any other than their obvious sense.
He sees in them that which exactly meets his own feelings, and coincides with his view of God’s glory as being the paramount and all-regulating end in all the movements of the universe. He sees in them not a restriction upon the gospel, but the simple statement of an infinite truth — a truth not arbitrarily thrown across the sinner’s path as a stumbling-block, but a truth necessarily arising from the fact that God is God, the Creator, and that man is man, the creature, the sinner. That truth is just this, that God’s will is the law of the universe, — his glory the object and end both in creation and in redemption — his everlasting purpose the mighty and all-perfect mould in which all things are cast, and from which they take their shape and fashion from first to last. In such passages he sees God pointing out to men the true end which they ought to have in view, and by which all their movements are to be regulated. In them he sees God setting a fence and guard around his own majesty, lest men should imagine that their will is everything, their salvation God’s only end, and that in the gospel He has thrown the reins of this fallen earth into the sinner’s hands, telling him that everything depends upon his own will and power, and that he has but to put forth that
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will and power in order to save himself, and restore a ruined world to the perfection of its former beauty.
Whenever we lose sight of God’s great end in all things — his own glory, — we fall into a wrong track. We go wrong in judging of doctrine; we go wrong in the formation of our plans; we go wrong in the bent of our efforts; we miscalculate the relative importance of different truths. Thus our whole tone of feeling, judging, and working, is lowered and contracted. Zeal for our own ways and opinions takes the place of higher aims. A revival is got up to propagate these opinions, or to prop up asect. Sectarianism and selfish exclusiveness steal in. Egotism, boasting, censoriousness are introduced. Religion becomes an instrument for working out our own views and ends. ‘T’he most solemn and spiritual things are spoken of with levity and irreverence. Conversion soon becomes the same as the holding of certain opinions, and the mark of an unconverted man is, that he rejects these opinions. Being loosened from their anchorage, men drift away without a guide. One doctrine after another is embraced, and change succeeds change, as month follows month. To make conversion easy is the great object; and to accomplish this particular end, favorite passages are dwelt upon incessantly, doctrine after doctrine smoothed over, and text after text pared away.
And after all this toil and change, what is the issue? Is anything gained? Nothing. Scripture has been perverted, man all but deified, and God all but dethroned, — byt has any difficulty been cleared off, have contradictions been harmonized? No. One class of difficulties has been substituted for another, that is all. The new system gets quit of the alleged contradictions of the old, only to substitute others of its own of a more serious kind. If for instance I deny that Christ is truly God, I certainly get quit of the mystery of the incarnation, but I land myself in endless scriptural difficulties, for the passages which declare his divinity are numerous and explicit.* In like manner, by denying the direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the soul of the sinner, 1 get quit of certain apparent difficulties. about man’s free agency and responsibility, but I
* If, to take another instance, I deny the pre-millennial advent, and personal reign of Christ, I rid myself of some things which I find hard to be understood, or even conceived of, things which appear to some low, carnal, derogatory to Christ, — but I call up a whole host of scriptural difficulties which are far more formidable. substitute for these most serious difficulties as to man’s utter depravity, and as to the personal agency and operation of the Spirit. But old difficulties are to some minds so stale and threadbare as not to be endurable. New difficulties recommend themselves by their freshness and novelty. ‘T’o get quit of a single old one, someswould welcome a hundred new ones.
From such roots many other evils spring, which I cannot here enumerate. There is often manifested a narrow-mindedness, a contraction of the spiritual eye, and a limitation of the spiritual horizon, which is apt to end in engrossing selfishness. Hence, we often see ereater zeal to proselytize to a sect than to win men to Christ. We see great activity displayed in making known and forcing upon others the points on which the difference exists, and much less concern about propagating those in which all believers are agreed. We hear much talking about doctrines and peculiarities, little about Christ himself. We find conversation turning too much upon the spiritual state of others, and that often in flippancy or censoriousness, — this one being pronounced unconverted, that other converted, — this one being mentioned as having joined the sect, or that other as being inclined to join it, or that other again as standing aloof. We find discussions arising as to whom this one was awakened under, or whom this other, as if this were a matter of any moment, provided the soul be saved, and Jesus glorified. We find people extolling the exploits of their ministers, or the doings of their sect, numbering up the conversions that took place at this or that revival, under this or that minister, in this or that town or village.
How much is there in all this of selfishness and sectarianism! how little of simple zeal for the glory of the name of Jesus! <A taste for religious gossip, in which the spiritual state of others is freely canvassed, criticized, and decided on, is a very different thing from that relish for the things of God and Christ, which shows itself in the saint by the delight which he takes in truly spiritual converse on things pertaining to God and his glory, to Jesus and his love- — I am, yours, &c.
THUS SAITH THE LORD:
“Vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.” — Job xi. 12.
“The Lord hath made all things for himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.” — Provy. xvi. 4,
“Cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold as the clay in the potter’s hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel.” — Jer, xviii. 6, “Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?’ — Rom. ix. 20.
NOTE.
As a specimen of the way in which plain texts are twisted, we refer to Rom. ix. 15, “1 will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” &c. This they venture to translate, “I will have mercy on whom I can have mercy,’ — that is, “I will have mercy on those on whom I can consistently with righteousness have mercy.” Now [ say without hesitation, that such is not the meaning of the Greek words. Men have wrung this meaning out of them because it was the only way in which they could destroy their explicit testimony to Jehovah’s sovereignty. But no scholar will ever say that such is their meaning. If any doubt existed as to this, Paul removes it completely in the 18th verse, by giving us his comment upon them, “therefore hath he mercy on whom he WILLETH,” not on whom he can merely, but oa whom he winters. Even though they might succeed in thrusting can into the words of Moses, they must admit that Paul is explicit enough. And will not his testimony suffice? Lest, however, our statement should be suspected, we add higher authority, which is beyond suspicion. Grotius, an old commentator, whose dislike to Calvinism makes his testimony the more impartial, translates it exactly as in our version, and illustrates the statement by referring to the way in which kings issue orders according to their pleasure, without making known their reasons. Limborch, also, another Arminian divine, takes precisely the same view. Wolfius, another divine of the same class, when referring to one critic who wished to substitute can for will, makes this remark — * I would not, however, depart from the interpretation of the Septuagint, which Paul has here approved of, and which the connection of Paul’s discourses seems to require.” I observe also, that a modern Neologian, or at least semi-Neologian critic, Kuttner, takes the same view. He denies the doctrine of personal and unconditional election, maintaining, with others of his own stamp, that it is a national election that is spoken of, yet he has no hesitation about the meaning of the 15th verse. The substitution of the can for the will does not seem to have occurred to him. He interprets honestly, and as a scholar. The sense, says he, is, “I will show kindness to whom I will to show kindness,” benefictis afficiam cui benefacere volo (see his Hypomnemata upon the New Testament, p. 243.) I might have quoted other Arminian commentators to the same effect. But I need not. These are enough. We see what honest men and sholars think of the passage. Fyen when wishing to bend it to their theory, they cannot. Even when alluding to the very inter pretation now sought to be put upon it, they refuse to allow it to be either possible or tenable. They at once set aside the can, as not only not admissible according to the rules of criticism, but as positively discountenanced by the apostle’s interpretation of the words of Moses. It is somewhat strange to see the Arminians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Neologians of the nineteenth, united in this view, and the authors of the new theology setting themselves against it. Are the latter better critics and scholars than the former? No man will assert that. Of criticism and scholarship they seem to know almost nothing; yet, with strange self-confidence, they insist upon trying their hand at new translations, and boldly asserting them to be true and right in the face of all critics and scholars, ancient and modern. How is this? These old critics, though Arminian, were really scholars, and had some reputation to sustain, which might have been materially damaged had they ventured upon ayy gross perversions of the original. Modern divines who have no such name to uphold, may do what they like with the Greek. They have nothing to lose, even though their attempts at criticism
should betray theif ignorance of the language. And again, we fear that the Arminianism of the present day is really of a lower grade than that of former centuries. Most of the Arminians of the seventeenth century would have abhorred the ultra-Pelagianism of the present day. The tone of doctrine being lowered, the tone of interpretation has of necessity become laxer and more pliable.