Christian faith, comprehensive, not partial; definite, not uncertain : eight sermons, preached before the University of Oxford, in the year M.DCCC.LVII., at the lecture founded by the late Rev. John Bampton

ALFRED CAVE

/

CHRISTIAN FAITH,

COMPREHENSIVE, NOT PARTIAL;
DEFINITE, NOT UNCERTAIN :

EIGHT SEKMONS,

PREACHED BEFORE

THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN THE YEAR M.DCCC.LVII.

AT THE LECTURE FOUNDED BY

THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, M.A.

CANON OF SALISBURY.

BY

WILLIAM EDWARD JELF, B.D.

Late Censor of Christ Church, and sometime Whitehall Preacher.

OXFORD:

I'RINTED BY J. WRIGHT, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY,

SOLD BY J. H. & JAS. PARKER, OXFORD,
AND 377 STRAND, LONDON.

M.DCCC.LVII.

EXTRACT

FROM

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

OF THE

REV. JOHN BAMPTON,

CANON OF SALISBURY.

" I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to

" the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University
" of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and sin-
" gular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the
u intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to
" say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the
" University of Oxford for the time being shall take and
" receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and
" (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions
" made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment
" of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for
u ever in the said University, and to be performed in the
" manner following :

" I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in
" Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads
" of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room ad-
" joining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten
" in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach
" eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at
" St. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the

a 2

IV

14 last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week
"in Act Term.

" Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity
44 Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the
" following Subjects — to confirm and establish the Christ-
" ian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics
44 — upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures —
" upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fa-
44 tilers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church
44 — upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
44 Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost — upon the
44 Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the
44 Apostles'* and Nicene Creeds.

44 Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity
44 Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two
44 months after they are preached, and one copy shall be
44 given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy
44 to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor
44 of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the
44 Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall
44 be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given
44 for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the
44 Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the revenue,
44 before they are printed.

44 Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be
44 qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, un-
44 less he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least,
44 in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ;
44 and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity
44 Lecture Sermons twice.'"

P R E E A C E.

AM well aware that the following pages
leave untouched many points which are
necessary to a full exposition of the idea on
which my Lectures are founded. In a sub
ject, which practically includes the whole of
theology, time and space forbade my follow
ing it out to its extreme limits, or going into
all the details ; I was therefore obliged to
content myself with taking the more salient
points, and those which promised to afford
most opportunities for the illustration and
application of the principle with reference to
the theological questions of the day — and
even in these prominent points I have found
myself compelled to pass by much which
properly belongs to their full consideration.
As some of these points are treated of at
length in my published volume of Whitehall

vi PREFACE.

Sermons, I hope I may be held excused
for occasionally referring to what I have
there said on the possibility and impossibility
of pardon — the value and worthlessness of
good works — sins of infirmity and sins deadly
— confession and absolution — times of fast
ing, &c.

I had intended to follow the example of
my predecessors in adding an appendix : but
as I find it impossible to do justice to so
wide a subject in the time specified in the
founder's will for sending round copies to
those who are entitled to them, I think it
best to publish the Lectures alone ; should
it seem desirable that what I have advanced
should be supported by quotations, or fur
ther illustrations or arguments, I may at any
time put forth an Appendix as a separate
volume.

Cacrleon, Any. 3, ] 857.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

MATT. x. 34.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth : I came

not to send peace, but a sword.

Misuse of Christianity by men. Divisions arising from
love of system. Unity not merely conventional. Faith
comprehensive, not partial ; definite, not uncertain. Two,,
humanly speaking, contradictory statements may be true
together. Explanation and limitation of this principle.
Dangers arising from the contrary theories : arguments in
favour of them considered. The faith of our Church com
prehensive and definite. Results of holding these principles.

LECTURE II.

OUR SAVIOUR.

HEB. xiii. 8.

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
Manifold nature of Christ. His divine nature. Doctrine
of Trinity in Unity. General nature of objections to it.
View taken by comprehensive and definite faith of our
Saviour on earth : it combines all that Scripture reveals.
Effect of this manifold faith.

LECTURE III.

MAN'S STATE BY NATURE AND BY GRACE.

ROM. vii. 24, 25.
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank

God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
How far man by nature is capable of good. Rationalistic
views of human perfection, untrue and unphilosophical.

viii CONTENTS.

Human nature and Christianity not altogether antagonistic.
How faith views human nature. Restoration of man by
Christ. How far man is capable of receiving the gospel.
How far the Christian is capable of good. Practical views
of comprehensive and definite faith on this subject.

LECTURE IV.

MODE OF SALTATION.

ACTS xvi. 30.

What must I do to be saved ?

Universality of salvation — how far all men benefited by
Christ's death — how far only a few — both views received
by comprehensive faith.

Predestination and free will — both received by compre
hensive faith — lessons of faith and practice to be drawn
from each.

LECTURE V.

JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION.

GAL. in. 22.

Bat the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the
promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them
that believe.

Opposite errors on this subject — how justification and
sanctification, faith and works, are distinguished and con
nected in the application of Christ's merits. Holiness and
repentance have definite places in the scheme of salvation.

Scriptural view of repentance and good works — confusion
between the notions of merit and reward.

Function of faith — nature of faith. Living and dead
faith. What is comprised in true faith. Assurance an ele
ment of saving faith.

CONTENTS. ix

LECTURE VI.

GROUNDS OF ASSURANCE.

ROM. viii. 1 6.
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we

are the children of God.

Importance of the question. Predestination no sure
ground of assurance ; nor election. Doctrine of Perseverance
considered. Church fellowship no sure ground of assurance
— nor penances ; nor answer of a good conscience alone —
much less the answer of a bad conscience — nor convictions of
sin — nor death-bed repentance — nor religious privileges.
Nature and elements of true scriptural assurance. How
the sense of sin is compatible with a good conscience.
Assurance different in different persons, and different stages
of religious growth.

LECTURE VII.

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

EPH. iv. 23. 24.

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on
the new man, which after God is created in righteous
ness and true holiness.

Source of the spiritual life to be sought in the working
of the Spirit. The Spirit works by various means ; by the
word ; by Baptism — effects of Baptism. Conditions of, and
results of, in adults. Baptismal Regeneration of Infants.
Some objections to considered and answered. Comfort of
the Doctrine. Work of the Spirit in Conversion — repent
ance. Recovery from sin. Spiritual and rational life.

x CONTENTS.

LECTURE VIII.
THE CHURCH.

EPH. iv. 1 6.

From whom the ivhole body fitly joined together and com
pacted by that which every joint supplietli, according to
the effectual working in the measure of every part, mak-
eth increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in
love.

Eternal existence of the church. Church unchangeable.
How represented in Scripture — threefold bond of unity in—
what is necessary for a church- — individuality of persons and
congregations.

Advantages of church fellowship — does not supersede
personal religion. The church does not interfere with di
vine prerogatives — nor the individual privileges of Christ
ians — nor do these supersede the office of the clergy.
Private judgment — forms — the independence of the church.

Conclusion : Comprehensive learning necessary — cause of
its neglect. Address to those who are destined for orders.
Danger of tampering with or betraying the truth entrusted
to our church and nation by partial or indefinite views.

ERRATA.

Page i, in the text of the first Lecture for "that I came" read "that I am

come"

47, 1. 13, for "attribute" read " attributes"
59, 1. 24, for " literal sense" read " literal a sense"
149, 1. 20, for "Judge." read (f Judge ?"

LECTURE I.

MATT. x. 34.

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth ;
I came not to send peace, but a sword.

IT would perhaps be difficult to find a stronger
proof of the evil in man, than the way in which
Christianity has been rejected or misused. Could
any ancient philosopher have guessed at the nature
and circumstances of the Gospel revelation ; could
he have known that it would come in the power of
signs and wonders bearing witness to its divine ori
ginal, he would have augured Tor it universal ac
ceptance : had he known that it would disclose
those secrets of the moral and spiritual world which
had so long excited and baffled the curiosity of man;
that it would show us the Divine Being in his attri
butes, counsels, and will, he would have supposed
that men would contemplate rather than speculate
upon it: had he known that it would solve doubts
and assure hopes, that it would reveal the highest
motives, aims, destinies, consolations for this life,
and bring with it the sure promise of another, he
would have looked forward to its becoming the uri-

2 LECTURE I.

disputed guide of action : had he known that with
these revelations and these sanctions it would set
forth universal love as the practical rule of action, he
surely would have prophesied for it a reign of trium
phant peace and happiness ; he would have sighed for
this more than golden age, which was to come over
the world by the will and in the power of the Lord
of heaven and earth : and of course all these antici
pations would have been more certain had he known
the Jewish scriptures, or had he listened with the
shepherds to the tidings of great joy, peace, good-will
towards men.

How little however can we trust to any antici
pations which are based on man's goodness or wis
dom ! As we look back on the history of the
Christian world, that history will be but a sad and
awful commentary on the prophetic words of my
text. Nearly two thousand years have passed since
those words were spoken, and it is scarcely too much
to say, that every one of those years has in its private
or public records furnished an illustration of their
meaning. Not however that we are to suppose that
our Saviour is setting forth the will or aim of God
in sending Him upon earth ; He is but foreshadow
ing the workings of Satan's malice and human per
versity ; the discords introduced by man into the
harmonious counsels of God. Isaiah's prophetic
images of perfect peace, repeated as they are in the
angels' song, show to us the proper and final, as the
words of my text give us the actual and present re
sults of the coming of the kingdom of God.

It was indeed to be expected that Christianity

LECTURE I. 8.

should rouse against itself the fierce and cruel en
mity of the powers and religions it came to over
throw; and our Saviour's warning may be consi
dered to have had its first accomplishment in the
trials which waited on the early profession of the
faith ; but even when heathen darkness had yielded
to Divine light, even then peace seems to have re
sulted as little from the triumphant as it had from
the persecuted state of the Church. Christians in
deed had no longer to fear the frowns or the fancies
of the masters of the world, to cower before the
enmity of a dominant religion struggling for its very
existence; the Church stood erect not only in the
sight of God, but in the sight of man ; her warfare
with the external world was over; and then Christian
rose against Christian with fire and sword ; a man's
foes were of his own household of faith. In the
very vineyard of the Lord, where the seed of peace
and love was sown, there sprung forth armed men ;
the very name which lulled the wind and smoothed
the sea, roused passions more unruly than the storm,
more merciless than the waves ; the very name be
fore which death had loosed his grasp, was made the
death warrant of thousands of Christians, not, as for
merly, by those who persecuted the disciples, but by
those who gloried in calling themselves the soldiers
of the Cross. It was under this sacred banner, and
in His all-holy Name, that Christian countries laid
waste, Christian cities sacked, Christian populations
massacred, bore witness to the meaning of the words,
/ came not to send peace, but a sword.

And though actual persecution to death or bonds
B 2

4 LECTURE I.

has now for the most part passed away before the
milder spirit of the age, yet even in these days it
cannot be denied that the Gospel brings war rather
than peace. In many parts of the world religion is
standing with sword and shield in the attitude of
attack or defence; it is still the cause, open or se
cret, why nation is set against nation. In our coun
try it is, alas ! no small element of the differences
which paralyse our energies as a church and nation ;
while in private life there are probably very few who
cannot point to a family where religious views have
severed the ties of friendship or of blood.

Nor is it difficult to trace this state of things to
the natural tendencies of fallen man ; it has ever
been an instinct of human pride, an ambition of
human reason, to grapple with and subdue ideas
which elude its grasp and defy its power ; to ar
range and combine the various images reflected on
its broken surface, to solve difficulties, to unravel
secrets, to penetrate mysteries, so that the whole
universe, visible and invisible, should seem to bow its
head before the master powers of the human mind.
And closely connected with this mental activity
thus striving towards mental supremacy, is a mental
indolence which anticipates the time of rest and sa
tisfaction, and tries to grasp the victory before it is
won ; and hence arises a yearning after system and
simplicity, which though properly a handmaid of
truth, yet in many cases rather betrays than fur
thers it. The curious mind, weary of grappling with
difficulties without conquering them, impatient of
feeling itself baffled, oftentimes takes refuge in a

LECTURE I. 5

solution which is only such so far as it presents an
harmonious and consistent whole, whose simplicity,
by ignoring difficulties, gives to the mind an ap
parent victory over them ; reducing by force, as it
were, the various phenomena to some one principle
or cause, it is content with the shadow of knowledge
instead of its reality ; for surely that knowledge is
only a shadow, and a pretence, which, instead of
embodying and representing the true nature and
relations of things, is satisfied if all does but seem
to hang together, though the similitudes are forced
and the connection unreal ; which instead of con
fessing its ignorance of some things, is content if it
can but seem to be master of all, though the very
formulae and dogmas which it uses are but thinly
veiled expressions of ignorance. The result of
such a course in physical inquiries would be easily
recognised as error, for nature herself, ever be
fore the eyes of those who search into her, bears
witness against this pretended philosophy which thus
sacrifices truth to harmony ; and hence in physical
science, theory after theory, system after system,
passed away with the mind that created or the age
that accepted it.

Much more fatal are the effects which this love
of system and theory worked upon theology: for here,
the subject-matter being without the province of
sense, the mind was free to combine, reject, arrange,
create as it pleased, without its operations being
subjected to the test of facts or of experience ; every
man was, humanly speaking, free to systematise for
himself; and thus the various attempts to introduce

6 LECTURE I.

simplicity and harmony did but produce the con
fusions and contradictions of a variety of opposing
theories. And by this same love of system most of
the heresies which sprung from the peculiar turn of
mind, or the accidental direction given to individual
thought and study, were developed in a way which
their authors at first but little dreamed of. Some
one text or doctrine a, true in itself, attracted the rea
son or the feelings, and thus became unconsciously
the centre round which all other views and doctrines
were to group themselves ; such as did not readily
harmonise with it were straightway struck out or
explained away ; the one doctrine thus taken out of
its proper position and relation was added to or cur
tailed, as seemed necessary to work out its due pro
portion and completeness as a system. Hence again
some doctrines were lost sight of, some moulded
afresh; and then men, naturally jealous of the
honour of the idol they had thus carved, were
persuaded that it alone presented the image of Di
vine truth, and that whoever would be saved must
straightway fall down and worship it ; while, on the
other hand, those who opposed these perversions of
the gospel were led by their antagonism to exag
gerate the opposite b, to set forth, explain, define,
arrange, deduce, so as in their turn to introduce the

a Hieron. vol. iv. page 991. (ed. Ben. Ver. i 735.) " Omnis enim
h&reticus nascitur in Ecclesia." Jewell, vol. iii. p. 82. ed. Ox.
i 848, " Neither ever was any heresy so gross, but was able to make
some show of God's word."

b Cf. Aug. De Grat. vol. x. page 473. A. ed. Bened. Antw.
1700. — Bacon on Church Controversies, vol. 2. p. 510. Lond.
1819. See Appendix.

LECTURE I. 7

gravest errors, and to lose the most necessary
truths. The theological history of the Church is
made up of the disputes stirred up by those who,
taking one truth and neglecting others, framed
a religion of their own, or who were driven by one
error into the opposite extreme. And then was the
Church compelled in self-defence to set forth and
state more closely and briefly many points of Ca
tholic doctrine, which had hitherto been embodied
as living principles in the souls of the faithful, rather
than in any formal definition of the faith ; and
though we have great reason to thank God that He
has in our Creeds preserved to us those truths
which were thus imperilled, yet sad it is to see
Christian faith, instead of the manifold play of
infinite truth, assume the stern fixed features of
a system of philosophy. The stone which came
down from heaven to fill the whole earth, need
ed not to be carved or hewn into human shape
by man. To those indeed who look on our reli
gion with the eye of the flesh, it might seem to be
wanting in form or comeliness, but those who gaze
on it with the reverential eye of faith can see in it
features and proportions far exceeding any beauty or
perfection which the powers of man could possibly
confer upon it.

And when Divine truth was thus as it were
split into fragments, each with its own champions
and worshippers, it was but matter of course
that each separate system daily became more
rigid and exclusive ; new points of separation arose,
new parties were formed, the barriers between those

8 LECTURE I.

already existing daily became more impassable, till
Christendom, which should have been the land of
peace and promise, sending forth warriors well
trained for the spiritual armies of God, became the
battle field of the fiercest and angriest passions of
man ; wherein by tongue and pen, and even by fire
and sword, Christians sought the destruction of
Christians, each party denouncing and persecuting
the other in this world; and as for the next, shutting
out, in will and wish at least, all those who held the
slightest variation from their favourite dogma, or
who had not the pass- words of the system. If the
anathemas which resounded from the various parts of
Christendom were to be believed, truth had passed
away from the earth ; each condemned each, and was
in his turn condemned by the rest. Time went on ;
nations rose and fell ; circumstances restored to Rome
her position among the nations of the west as the
centre of civilisation and power; and the bishops of
her see by a skilful adaptation of her arts, her poli
tics, her religion to the weaknesses and ambitions,
the prejudices or the designs of the rude yet ener
getic men who were brought within her influence,
contrived to throw such a charm over their spirits that
all other voices but her own were well nigh hushed ;
and well indeed would it have been for Christendom
if in that high position she had been true to the faith
once delivered to the saints — if her voice, as it went
out to all corners of the globe, had been content to
preach the gospel of St. Paul and St. Peter, without
seeking to found dominion on her Divine mission : if
she had held her faith in the power of God's word to

LECTURE I. 9

establish His kingdom, without adding decrees and
doctrines of her own to keep minds in subjection
to her principle of unity. For a time there was
the semblance of peace ; it was but seldom that
the rude breath of polemics ruffled the church's sur
face ; but this, alas ! this was but a sign of the deep
stagnation of the waters of spiritual life, the lack of
the breath of the Spirit ; and then Rome went fur
ther and further from her first love ; human aims
and passions, having been admitted as her servants,
quickly became her masters, and she was alternately
the slave and the mistress, the tool and the guide of
the powers of the world. Faith, in the scriptural
sense of the word, was in most parts dead, and in
its place rose up a spirit of chivalry and self-
devotion which in its highest energies went forth
as an armed warrior with all the pomp and circum
stance of war, to win lands, cities, and kingdoms
from the infidel, instead of the hearts of men from
Satan, or perhaps now and then to crush the mi
serable, nay, rather happy, few, who refused to bow
the knee to Rome, and chose rather to suffer with
Christ than to live with her ; but these were lost in
the vastness of her empire, and, as far as Christendom
itself went, peace seemed at least to have taken the
place of the sword. It was however but for a time,
and in seeming : Rome waxed worse and worse ; her
principles of thought and action, her policy, private
and public, became more and more exclusively and
confessedly carnal and selfish, till in good truth the
spirit which was in her seemed to be rather that of

10 LECTURE I.

the powers of the prince of this world, than of God ;
obliged from time to time to contrive new supersti
tions, perversions, or negations of the pure gospel, in
order to supply her needs and to prop up the fabric of
universal dominion, which she called unity, she at
length, by the blessing of God, wore out the patience
of men. The charm was broken ; the river which had
been so long pent up from its natural course burst
the barriers, and instead of flowing in one deep
broad stream, broke into a thousand channels. The
sword again left the sheath ; Christendom, once more
alive, began to think and act for itself; but its eyes
were dim, and its step uncertain, as of men awaking
out of a deathlike sleep. Where men's minds were
weak, Rome managed to retain or to regain them :
while where there was more activity and independ
ence, there more or less of primitive freedom was
recovered ; but this was mostly the rebellion of hu
man reason against usurped authority, and mostly
therefore, as being merely human, produced the na
tural results : men of powerful mind and hasty judg
ment framed for themselves and for others systems of
theology, taking as their basis that interpretation of
Scripture which was most opposed to that particular
point which they most disliked in Rome ; and thus
arose new elements of separation, new war cries of
discord in the Christian world : in our own country
especially, which by that time had become a centre
of thought and action, men were and are so accus
tomed to think and act for themselves, that from
that time to the present fresh parties and sects have

LECTURE I. 11

been continually springing into being, each and all
claiming to take their stand on scriptural truth, and
pretending to teach men exclusively the way of sal
vation ; and this not only without, but even within
the very Church of God.

It is true that Christianity has proved itself to
have a principle of vitality above and independ
ent of human will or human cooperation, inas
much as in spite of being thus, humanly speaking,
divided against itself, it has stood and still stands
among mankind, a power mighty to save; but it
need not be said how contrary these divisions are to
the interests of our Church, and the glory of God,
and the work of Christ and his Spirit ; how much they
hinder the salvation of those who are thus lacking
in Christian love — nay, more, it is enough to call
forth a sigh even in the careless heart which looks
only to its effects on us as a nation.

I am aware that some persons acquiesce in this
state of religious variance as almost a necessary con
dition of the Church militant on earth ; something
which, though on the whole to be regretted, is no
wise contrary to the nature of Christianity. I must
say that I can see in the Bible no trace of the no
tion that difference in religious matters is to be the
proper and normal condition of different churches or
of different individuals in the same church. It is
true that there may, nay, must be, different ways of
setting forth or receiving the same truth, arising
from national or individual temperament or circum
stances, as there must be different forms of expres
sion for truth arising from difference of language ;

12 LECTURE I.

but these are not of the essence, but the accidents
of the truth. In such cases there is no difference as
to the truth itself; but where there is such differ
ence, it seems to be a sign that the Spirit of love
and knowledge is in some way or other lacking ;
for where that Spirit is, it will lead into all truth,
and therefore necessarily to the same truth ; where
that Spirit is, there may be diversities of language,
of race, of ministrations, of customs, but there will
be identity of thought in religious matters ; identity
of feeling ; identity of hope ; identity of faith ; the
same idea of God ; the same view of Christ ; the
same belief in the Holy Ghost ; the same view of
the position, the destinies, the duties, in short, of
the whole spiritual life of Christian men. It is true,
perhaps, that as things are at present we can practi
cally realise no higher form of Christian unity than
by suspending all bitterness of feeling and speaking
towards those with whom we differ, and by feeling
and acting with them, where we can do so without
compromising or imperilling what we believe to be
God's truth. It seems as if this might be the way of
leading others, and perhaps of ourselves being led to
Christian truth, and thus of reestablishing Christian
unity; but surely this does not interfere with the duty
which lies upon every man according to his ability
and opportunity of contending earnestly for the faith
once delivered to the saints, and striving to bring
about the consummation of religious peace by unity
of religious thought. Surely Christian unity is some
thing more than a mere conventional truce, a mere
suspension of hostilities. We do not find it thus

LECTURE I. 13

figured in the Bible ; we do not there find Christian
at war with Christian, and merely resting on their
arms in weariness, or it may be in pity and sym
pathy for each other, but we find them side by side
in the unity of the Spirit, prepared to do battle with
the enemies of God and man ; we find that Christ
ians are to be one, even as the Father and the Son
are one, are all to be of one mind, all think the
same thing. Divisions, indeed, and heresies are
spoken of as necessary, but it was in order that
the wheat might be sifted from the chaff; those, who
having not the spirit of truth went out from the
body, were not to be embraced, or admitted to the
Christian brotherhood ; for the simple fact of essen
tial division, of essential difference of view in reli
gious matters, destroyed that complete sympathy
of faith and unity of feeling on which the brother
hood was founded. Those were glorious and happy
times when the faithful, though outlaws from civil
ized life, though hunted like beasts from city to city
and desert to desert, knew themselves nevertheless
to be bound together by stronger ties than those of
country or race. What a contrast to the modern so-
called unity, when even those who are sprung from
the same race, living in the same country, and
under the same laws, and speaking the same lan
guage, can find no higher idea of Christian harmony
than that they should agree to differ. I am not
saying that it would be wise or right to lay aside
even this shadow of unity, but that we ought not to
acquiesce in it as our highest and best, but ought

14 LECTURE I.

always to be praying and striving towards something
higher and better. It is something to the storm-
tost ship that the jealousies and enmities of the
crew should not break out into open tumult ; but it
is not this which will trim the sails to the breeze, or
guide her prosperously on her way. It would be
something for the Church if hostile thoughts, angry
words, bitter sneers, unfair misrepresentations should
be still; but this is not all which is needed, if we
are, by the help of God and the breath of the Spirit,
to bring the ark of God and the souls of men safe
through the waves of this troublesome world.

Nor can I think that the full or real idea of unity
has been grasped or developed by the attempts of
modern times to base it on a common profession of
Christianity, as a religion, without caring for agree
ment in the particulars of which, in fact, Christianity
is made up : not merely, as in the former case, by
agreeing to differ, but by assigning to every opinion
equal and independent possession of truth. It is not
to be wondered at indeed if, amid the strife of con
flicting systems, men of warm hearts and earnest love
for their fellows have waxed impatient of the way in
which the various sects excluded each other from
communion, and arrogated the sure mercies of Christ
only to those who adopted their own theological
views and language. It is no wonder that such men
have sought to devise a remedy ; some by maintain
ing that the holding of any portion of gospel truth
is a sufficient embracing of Christ's revelation, even
though great and primitive and essential doctrines

LECTURE I. 15

are rejected ; so that no one of the religious par
ties represents Christianity more or less than an
other: that the Bible sets forth the Gospel in a
variety of aspects, any one of which may be chosen
with equal assurance : some by declaring the reve
lation itself to be so obscure, that it is impossible
to distinguish accurately truth from falsehood, or to
say that any man is wrong who believes what he
thinks he finds therein. It seems to me that each
of these views is so far right that it starts from exist
ing facts ; the one recognising in the several systems
the presence of that truth on which they are respect
ively founded ; the other implying that there are
many difficulties and perplexities in Scripture before
which human reason must bow its head. But I con
fess that in the deductions they draw and the princi
ples they evolve, it appears to me that the one does
away with the completeness and mars the proportions
of the Christian Faith ; while the other destroys its
certainty, making it a mere matter of human opin
ion, in which either of two opposites is as likely to
be faith as the other.

It will be my endeavour in the following Lectures
to exhibit what seems to me a more complete view
of truth, a more sure ground of unity, by setting
forth Christian Faith, I. as comprehensive, not partial;
II. definite, not uncertain. By showing that it com
prehends, in their positive teaching and doctrines
at least, most, if not all, of the various opinions
which have divided Christendom ; that it places be
fore the human mind no ill-defined rays of truth which

16 LECTURE I.

are essentially to vary with the focus through which
they are viewed, but the very pure and perfect light
of God Himself unchangeable and unchanged ; that
the notes which the Bible sounds, however broken
by the noisy strifes of men, are not uncertain or
wavering, but the very voice of God Himself speak
ing clearly and distinctly to those who have ears
and hearts to hear.

T. The first principle I would maintain and illustrate
is, that faith is comprehensive, that it has breadth as
well as depth; that with reference to the Bible, it
receives all the doctrines in the revealed scheme of
salvation without altering or doing violence to them:
that with reference to the various religious opinions, it
embraces all, without excluding any, which are founded
on Scripture or natural religion, and not on the will or
fancy of men. I do not mean by this, what perhaps some
would mean, that it embraces each as by itself truth,
each separately and by itself a sufficient and complete
faith; but that each is an element of the whole truth,
and contributes something to the full measure of faith;
that the different doctrines, which in their separate or
exaggerated form divide the religious world, may
be, and are, with exceptions and modifications,
true together, when reduced to their due propor
tions ; that real faith combines into one whole, and
in their proper proportions, each of the truths which
form the centre, or rather the whole, of this or that
theological system ; and in doing this, I am but ap
plying to Theology what I believe to be a true
principle of philosophy in general ; that where men

LECTURE I. 17

of talents, learning, patience, honesty deduce from
the same data different views, and support them by
fair argument and proof, there must be something
'at least of truth in each — something in each which
is wanting to complete the rest.

I hold it then to be no real objection to a doc
trine held by others, that it presents to us a view of
the Divine will, or of human nature in relation to
that will, different from what we ourselves may
rightly have accepted as a fundamental truth of real
religion. The point we have to consider is, whe
ther it is in Scripture as read by the primitive
Church b or not. If it is, then we may not so ex
pound one text of Scripture as to obscure or ignore
the truth laid down in another ; and this holds good
not only where the two doctrines may, on further
inspection, be reconciled with each other, as being
merely different phases or degrees of the same spi
ritual fact or state, or applicable to different circum
stances, or in different senses, where they may be
logically true together, but even where, according to
our finite conception, there is an actual contradiction
between them ; such as Predestination and Free
Will, or Trinity in Unity.

Still less, of course, is one doctrine overthrown by
its contradictory when the opposition is not between
Scripture and Scripture, but between Scripture and
a dogma which is built on our abstract conceptions

b Scripture as the sole Revelation. The primitive Church as
the best, because the safest, interpreter thereof. See Dr. Hook's
Sermon on i Cor. xi. 16.

18 LECTURE I.

of the Divine nature and attributes, such as the notion
that what is in Scripture termed everlasting punish
ment cannot be everlasting, because it is supposed
to be contrary to the mercy of God ; or that our
Saviour's death could not be a sacrifice, because it
would be contrary to our notions of God's moral
nature. Apart from revelation, man, fallen in feel
ings and reason, can form no real conception of
God's nature or attributes : His ways are not as our
ways, they are unsearchable and past finding out ;
and yet men talk and argue as if they knew them
as perfectly and surely as they do the motions of our
own moral being. Actually, too, in the world we
find contradictions to our dim views of perfect
goodness (such, for instance, as the permission of
evil and pain,) all which we know to exist ; and
in the history of His dealings with His own people,
there are surely things which to superficial observers
are hard to reconcile with human notions of a per
fect being. To faith, indeed, there are no such diffi
culties. Faith knows that whatever God does must
be good and just ; faith knows that we are to form
our ideas of God from what He tells us of Himself,
not to interpret what He is pleased to tell us by our
abstract views of Him.

The principle however which I have advanced
requires some limitations : first of all, it does not
apply, if one of the opposing doctrines is not in
Scripture : where it is merely an human addition,
whether in the practice of a church or the writings
of an individual, to fill up a mere humanly devised

LECTURE I. 19

system, there of course the direct revelation of
Scripture is not coordinately true with it, but bears
direct evidence against it. The so called religious
impressions of a crazed fancy or ambition, such as
that of Montanus, or of several impostors in modern
times ; additions to the faith on merely human
grounds and by human authority, such as the mass
of Romish corruptions; the blank void of the deist —
all these and such as these are excluded from the
principle of comprehension which I am advocating.
They are each in their degree direct negations of
Divine truths, not exaggerations or perversions of
them. Thus the Romish dogma of a plurality of
mediators in the persons of the Virgin and Saints is
directly overthrown by the text, There is but one
Mediator between God and men. If, indeed, the me
diation of others besides our Saviour had been re
vealed in Scripture, then the principle I have laid
down would require us to receive as true, though in
some way above our comprehension, both the single
mediation of Christ, and nevertheless the mediation
of the Saints; but one is in the Bible, and the other
is not. It is not that any two contradictory propo
sitions in theology are necessarily true together, but
that when any such are both revealed, then both are
to be received as coordinate parts of God's counsels.
Nor, again, is the principle available in such
things as are within the direct cognizance of our
senses0, in matters of fact, past or present. The

c Tertullian de Anima, c. 1 7. " Non licet nobis in Jubium
sen sim istos revocare."

20 LECTURE I.

same reasoning does not apply to things finite and
things infinite. Things infinite may not be tested
by our experience or by our notions of their possi
bility either in themselves or relatively to some
other established truth, for the simple reason that
our faculties cannot judge of what lies in so different
a sphere. Possibility and impossibility are, in fact,
mere human conceptions and expressions for the re
lations, positive and negative, between finite things,
and therefore do not obtain in things infinite ; but
where these notions do legitimately come in, where
the two really opposing doctrines relate to what is
directly in the sphere of our senses, then it is clear
that both are not true together, though Scripture
may apparently be adduced in support of each. It
is, for instance, no answer to the texts which speak
of the consecrated elements as bread and wine, to
urge that the contrary doctrine, that they are actu
ally flesh and blood, may yet, on the principle laid
down above, be true ; for the question is not one of
the coordinate truth of two Scripture statements on
matters beyond our cognizance, but of two conflict
ing facts on a matter directly within the sphere of
our senses, the opposites of which cannot both be set
forth in Scripture. And this is decided by the uni
versal perception of the factd, that to the sight, touch,
taste, the bread does remain bread, and the wine
does remain wine ; whence we see that the meaning

d See Jeremy Taylor " on the Presence of Christ in the Holy
Sacrament," vol. x. 9 sqq. (ed. Heber. 1837.) See also Jewell,
vol. iii. p. 84.

LECTURE I. <21

which the Romanist puts on the one text is not
really the sense of Scripture, and therefore cannot
be quoted as such against the other.

II. The second point I shall endeavour to establish
is of no less consequence than the former, viz. that
Christian faith is definite : that the truths and doc
trines of which it is composed are clear and certain ;
many of them indeed above our comprehension as
to the mode, but still within our apprehension as to
the fact of their reality. And this second point is
for the most part a corollary of the first, for the
notion of the indefiniteness of Scripture has arisen
very much from losing sight of its comprehensive
ness. Each truth is definite and clear enough of
itself; the indefiniteness has arisen from supposing
that other truths, really coordinate, overthrow or
neutralize it.

I do not mean to combat directly or at length the
errors which I think may be traced to losing sight
of truth, except so far as may be necessary to esta
blish or illustrate my position, or support the truth
on either side, or to mark the limits between truth
and error. I wish to treat the subject positively
rather than negatively, not so much to attack error
as to put forward truth in the comprehensive form
in which I believe it to exist in Scripture, and to
have been realized in the early church.

I am perfectly aware that such an attempt may
well be considered above the powers of him who
makes it ; but I have long been persuaded that he
who wishes to do good in the world must often throw

22 LECTURE I.

aside such personal considerations, not only by set
ting at nought blame when unjust, but by running
the risk of being justly blamed, if there is on the
other hand a chance that the church or even society
may be thereby benefitted ; and it is in this feeling
that I submit what I have to say to the judgment of
others, in the hope and prayer that if there be any
truth in it God will help and prosper it; if it be
false, that He may be graciously pleased to overrule
and hinder it.

I have been induced to enter upon this subject by
the conviction that the views against which I am
putting forward the comprehensiveness and definite-
ness of faith are unsound in themselves, and bring
with them more of danger than of real charity to
those for whose welfare they are devised.

First, any partial or untrue exhibition of Christ
ianity is dangerous to our real spiritual interests. It
seems almost a truism to say that man cannot alter
the scheme of salvation, or the dimensions, so to
speak, of saving faith. If all Christians in all
parts of the world were to agree that this degree of
belief or that degree of belief should be sufficient, it
would not make the slightest difference in the coun
sels of God's foreknowledge, or in the actual nature
of faith. It is true, that such an agreement would
give a high degree of probability that the view thus
put forth would be the true one, but still it would
not make it true. Amid all the quarrels of man,
the truth of God remains fixed, and the voice of
man is of no more avail than it would be to alter

LECTURE I. 23

the course of the winds, or the current of the sea,
or to add a cubit to his stature. Over these indeed,
and over subtler energies than these, we have esta
blished a sort of dominion ; we have in some sort
bound the elements to our service ; we entrust to
them our lives, our wealth, our thoughts, and bid
them carry us and our's from one end of the world to
the other, and, lo, they obey ; but it is only because
we have found out the properties and laws which
God has given them, and use them according to His
will. Once transgress these limits but a hair's
breadth, once try to impose on them laws which
God has not fixed, or to give them orders which are
not the interpretations of His commands, then the
pliant water and the impalpable air become more
immovable than the rocks, more obstinate than
man himself; and these visible creatures of God's
power do not laugh to greater scorn the attempts of
man to alter them according to his own pleasure
than do the invisible realities of His will, the
powers, and laws, and truths of the spiritual world.
But when I say that no man has the right, no man
has the power, to prescribe suo arbitrio to another
what he shall or what he shall not believe under
peril of his soul, I do not mean that the Church
has no authority in controversies of faith, or that it
ought not to be listened to therein. I do not see
how a church can exist without dogmatic theology,
any more than without practical teaching. A church
has the right, nay, she is bound to state clearly what
she believes to be the necessary conditions and way

24 LECTURE I.

of salvation, what she believes God to have said ;
less than this she dare not, more than this she
cannot do; but then it is necessary only so far as God
has willed it, by virtue of God's will, not by virtue
of the human dogma or decree. All that has been
said or written by theologians or decreed by councils
will not affect a single soul, except so far as, being
true or false, it leads to truth or error. A church
or any body of Christians may fix the terms of faith
or practice on which they will admit others to be
partakers of their communion ; but they cannot take
the Holy Spirit from those to whom the Holy Spirit
is promised, or give His grace where God has not
given it ; the voice of prayer will be heard if a
man be in the truth, though he be for that very
truth's sake cast out of a visible church, while the
most solemn absolution of an impenitent sinner is
but mockery. Thus no man's destiny for eternity will
be decided by what he says or thinks of himself, or by
what others think of him, but by what he himself is
in Christ ; and therefore in our religious statements
truth is the point to be regarded, and not charity ; for
charity does not obtain in the simple setting forth of
God's truth, (except in the mode of doing it,) or in
denying error, any more than in defining the laws of
light or number; or if charity comes in at all, it forbids
us to withhold what we in our consciences believe to
be God's truth, and therefore necessary for the sal
vation of souls. It does not follow that he who
simply opposes error does even in wish produce the
condemnation of any one ; nay, rather if we hold our

LECTURE I. 25

tongue against error, shall we be guilty of our bro
ther's blood. The physician is not uncharitable, he
does not arm fever or poison with death, he is not
the destroying angel who rides on the pestilence,
because in science or practice he sets forth the prin
ciples and conditions of life, the causes and results
of disease. And as charity is in nowise violated by
contending earnestly for the faith, (if it were so St.
Paul would not have told us to do it,) so neither is
it furthered by pretending to give salvation to all
men. Kind-hearted theologians must remember,
that the power of the keys is not committed to
them any more than to the bishop of Rome. Salva
tion is not ours to give: and it is no charity to
persuade men that it is, or that the terms thereof
are just wh#t any one chooses to make or believe
them. It is moreover a practical injury to our
eternal interests to take away from faith any doc
trine which God designed for it ; for every such
doctrine is meant to bear its part in the work of the
Spirit on the soul, so that the faith of those who
reject this or that truth must needs be imperfect
not only in belief but in practice.

And, secondly, as these views are dangerous in prac
tice, so are they unsound in theory ; for when we al
low that each opinion byitself is possibly true, we allow
that each is possibly false, and this we cannot do with
out taking from truth that which makes it true and
from belief that which makes it faith. That which is
essentially and not merely accidentally true refuses to
fraternize with error ; faith, like the real mother in the

25 LECTURE I.

judgment of Solomon, refuses any compromise which
shall destroy that on which her heart is fixed.

In fact, the very notion that it matters not to the
reality of a man's faith, whether he believes little or
much of what God has revealed, disproves itself;
the faith of which it speaks cannot be real faith; for
this is no transient emotion or conviction confining
itself to this matter or that, but comprehending all
Gospel truth, and realizing the whole will of God as
far as it is within its reach. Faith is the reflection
of the Divinity on the soul, as far as that Divinity
has been pleased to reveal Himself, and therefore
faith must be one and indivisible even as God, Who
is the object and author thereof. It is God Whom
faith contemplates in His nature, His attributes,
His counsels, His dealings with men, and it is a
contradiction in terms to call that faith which wil
fully accepts only part of these, as it is a contra
diction in thought to view God only in part of these
His relations, which can be separated only by a
fiction of the reason, to enable us to form con
ceptions of infinite and indivisible perfection.

And the same conclusion follows from the nature
of faith as a habit or state of rnind. To those whom
God has called He has given a power of discerning
spiritual things ; an eye of the soul whereby they
are able to receive Divine truth, even as in the
natural man there exists a power of discerning or
receiving moral or physical truth. This spiritual
vision differs indeed in different individuals, as the
Divine light is poured upon Divine things in greater

LECTURE I. 27

or less abundance, and Divine things presented to
it in greater or less variety; hence we find it spoken
of in different degrees in Scripture : how different in
degree was the faith of the centurion from the faith of
St. Paul, and yet in both it was essentially the same,
the perception and hearty reception of the Divine
Messenger in whatever degree He was pleased to
place Himself before them, as the Miracle-worker,
or the Prophet, or the Priest, or the Sacrifice, or the
Judge. Where Divine truth falls on the mind with
out affecting it, there faith in its full and perfect
nature cannot really be, just as there is no sight
in the eye on which light falls powerless. That
temper of mind then, which accepts some truths
and rejects others, cannot be more than the sem
blance and counterfeit of faith — if it had been faith,
it would have recognized one and all alike.

And as faith from its own nature cannot be par
tial, so neither from its own nature can it be un
certain ; it does not admit to itself the notion of the
possibility of error. Grounding itself on the revela
tion of an omniscient Being, it so completely ac
quiesces in the certainty of its object, that to suppose
the possibility of this being unreal destroys it. It
is not a mere weighing of probabilities ; the mind in
suspense, first inclining to one side and then to the
other : but resting on the truth which it apprehends,
it becomes a very part of our intellectual conscious
ness as well as of our moral being ; so that things
hoped for are as substantially before us as if we held
them in our hands, we have as sure a witness of things

28 LECTURE I.

unseen as if we saw them actually with our eyes.
Its sphere may be enlarged, but its nature is not
changed. It is the clear and indelible impression of
Divine revelation on our very being, so that it works
into and with all the faculties and energies, and
governs them with an unvarying and undoubting
voice. The various doctrines must work themselves
thoroughly into the reason, feelings, affections, and
how can this be as long as we doubt whether they
are not deceptions rather than doctrines ? He who
doubts whether he may be sure, has a witness in
himself that he has but the shadow of faith.

I confess it seems to me contrary to the very no
tion of a Divine revelation, to suppose that God has
revealed truth of such a sort or in such a way that
after all it is no truth to us, but varies with the short
sighted and wayward reason of each individual ; for
once admit the principle, and there may be as many
shades of truth as there are individuals in the
world. It is surely no scriptural theology which
says, " Let every man be true, and God a liar;" for
if St. John tells us, that he who believes not the
record which God gave of His Son makes Him a
liar, what are we to think of those who say that
God has given us no record of His Son, or one so
doubtful that no man can be certain what it is?

It is true, that our Saviour's teaching was often
clothed in parables, so that His meaning might be
obscure to those who could not profit by it ; but
still to those who were able to hear, it presented a
definite notion and image, while to those who were

LECTURE I. 29

not, it conveyed no notion at all, or a wrong one.
It was not that what both the one and the other
gathered from it was equally and indifferently true,
but that one did, and the other did not comprehend
our Saviour's meaning.

It is true also that we are said to see " through a
glass darkly," " &/' ea-oTtrpov ev a/v/y/xa-n," and this text
has been used to show that it is impossible to say with
certainty what is revealed and what is not. The more
correct translation however is, in a glass, in a riddle.
We see in a glass the reflection of things invisible, not
the very things themselves ; but a reflection is not
necessarily less distinct and clear than the object itself;
we see Divine truths only as they are reflected on our
spiritualized reason; but they are reflected as clearly
and distinctly as that whereon they are reflected
admits ; as far as our spiritualized reason can grasp
such mysteries unto understanding there is no un
certainty ; we do not perhaps see the whole, but
that does not make what we do see indistinct f.
The mountain top may be hid in clouds, but the rocks
and woods, the vineyard at its foot are not for that re
flected less distinctly in the polished surface. We see
them ev alvtyfjMTt ; we cannot comprehend them in all
their relations ; they are mysteries and puzzles to us.
We see them in a glass : we cannot subject them to
the same searching process as we do earthly truths
in the visible objects in which they reside. We
must be content to receive them as they are pre
sented to us ; we must be content to be puzzled
1 Calv. ad loc.

30 LECTURE I.

by the mysteries thus partially disclosed to us, but
still there is no ground for uncertainty or doubt
as far as they are disclosed. Our inability is no
reason for disbelieving, but rather for acquiescing in
them. Thus did the Apostles see our Saviour trans
figured before them clearly enough, but they knew
not what to say, nor what to think of the vision ;
thus the notion of eternity set forth clearly in
Scripture is to us, who know only time, a riddle ;
thus the ever blessed Trinity, which we see so dis
tinctly in the glass of faith, is a mystery we cannot
solve ; thus even the Deity Himself, revealed as He
is so certainly in Nature and in Scripture, is revealed
ev alviyfAMTi. He baffles our keenest wit, and con
founds our minds as soon as they try to search Him
out. The time will come when these riddles may
be read to us, but our souls and bodies must first
have undergone that change which is to fit them for
seeing face to face. Each degree of revelation is
suited to the state to which it belongs ; the present
partial is suited to what we are, the future total to
what we shall be.

But it may be said, it is not meant that Divine
truth is in itself uncertain ; but that it is uncertain
to us, that we have not faculties to grasp it firmly ;
but if not, why not ? What is faith but a faculty of
the soul purified, strengthened, enlightened to ap
prehend Divine things, and if not so purified,
strengthened, enlightened, how can our weak, dark,
carnal perceptions be called faith, except in a se
condary and almost figurative sense? We have al-

LECTURE I. 31

read)7 seen that faith excludes uncertainty ; if then
our faculties cannot in Divine things rise ahove
uncertainty, then they cannot be properly termed
faith. Whatever uncertainty exists in some men's
minds arises from their hearts not being sufficiently
in subjection to the Spirit ; the truths revealed are
not uncertain, unless we make them so by trying to
reduce them to human proportions, and to measure
them by a human standard. The more we examine
into the nature and origin of this uncertainty, the
more I think shall we see the necessity of all dog
matic theology being founded on that comprehen
sive belief, which accepts without questioning, which
with bowed head and willing heart listens humbly to
what the Lord says concerning Himself and us.

And, if I rightly gather the mind of our Church, in
her dogmatic as well as her practical teaching, it is
in this sense that she may justly be called a broad
Church, including many differing views. She is a
broad and comprehensive Church, but it is with
reference to the breadth and comprehensiveness of
Divine truth, and not to the vacillation and indefi-
niteness of human opinion. It is not so much that
she meant to take all opinions under her wings,
(though this of course is an accidental result,) but
that she meant to accept and set forth the several
truths out of which those opinions had grown ; it is
not that she meant to include men of every shade of
opinion, as if the faith were indefinite or their dif
ferences unimportant, as if each was in complete and
sufficient possession of truth, but that she felt herself

32 LECTURE 1.

bound to lay before men the whole counsel of God,
trusting to Him to overrule whatever danger there
might be in so doing. It is not that her view is dim
and uncertain, if she at one time brings one doc
trine forward, at another time another, but that she
is far-sighted and comprehensive ; it was not in the
way of a disloyal compromise of the faith once deli
vered to the saints and entrusted to her stewardship
that she embraced opposing doctrines in her teach
ing, opposing parties in her communion, but because
she recognised in each portions of the truth, however
exaggerated or distorted, and she trusted that each
would correct and perfect each ; hence it is that men
of opposite opinions are able each to claim our Re
formers as favouring their peculiar views*, because
our Reformers held them both as far as they were
true, and modified each by the other as far as it was
false. I cannot look upon those Fathers of our
Church without reverential wonder, as men whose
natural powers God was pleased in that emergency
to strengthen with an especial gift of discernment of
Himself and His Scriptures. The Church of the
saints had long been in ruins ; above and around it
the ingenious foolishness of men had raised an im
posing structure, with all that could please the eye,
or cheat the reason, or enlist the sympathies of the
men who worshipped there. It was their business
to search among the half forgotten ruins for what-

g This is sufficiently illustrated in the arguments held on the
theological points which have unhappily heen matters of strife in
our own times.

LECTURE I. S3

ever bore the impress of Divine workmanship, to
pick up a key-stone here, a column there, a mould
ing here, and thus to reconstruct the sanctuary after
the pattern of primitive times ; and by God's bless
ing on their labour, or rather by the presence of
God's Holy Spirit in their hearts, they missed no
thing which was necessary to their work ; and the
Church of Christ rose beneath their hands, and now
stands among us in its beautiful yet simple com
pleteness; weakened indeed and marred by the want
of faith and firmness in those who have been built
into her spiritual building: but in herself, as a de
pository of God's truth from generation to genera
tion, in her liturgies, her doctrines, her ordinances,
her sacraments, setting forth fully before us the
Divine will, and the Divine scheme of salvation, as
it was set forth by Christ and His Apostles.

And though the great variety of religious views
and parties tell a sad tale of the lack of the Spirit of
truth dwelling in us, yet, as regards our Church as
an ark of the truth, it is no slight witness to her
Scriptural character, that men of so many different
opinions have found and still find shelter under her
wings, and think that they have Scriptural grounds
for doing so; nor would I have it otherwise : I be
lieve if any one of the parties were to succeed in
driving the other out, there would be, as things are
at present, a truth lost; it would exist indeed in
formularies and articles of faith as long as these were
unaltered ; for this is one blessing of a fixed liturgy
and creed, that truth is preserved in spite of men's

D

34 LECTURE I.

rejection of it ; but it would be dead as far as exer
cising any influence over the minds of that genera
tion, and it could not be revived in another without
much strife and trouble. I confess that I believe,
that if our Church were what God designed her to be,
what perhaps our Reformers sometimes dared to
hope she would be, if her clergy and laity were filled
with the Spirit of God at all in proportion to their
opportunities and privileges, there would not be in
her differing parties holding different truths, but one
united body, holding even as the Church in the days
of old, all truths in the unity of the Spirit and the
bond of peace. It might be that one truth or the
other would at this time or that be brought more pro
minently forward according to the needs of person or
place, but not so as to overshadow the rest, just as
in the primitive writers, and even in Scripture, we
find one part of the Christian character spoken of
as if it were the whole; sometimes as if it were
nothing but love, sometimes nothing but hope, some
times as a mere intellectual belief, sometimes as re
pentance ; because perfect hope, perfect love, perfect
belief, perfect repentance, all meet together in per
fect Christian faith ; and it is not that any one of
these is the whole, but that each properly implies
the rest ; so that in this, as in all things, Scripture
puts before us what we should be. And would that
it were so ; would that the Spirit of truth might
by the reality of our prayers, and the piety of our
hearts, and the warmth of our love, and the holiness
of our lives, and the earnestness of our desires, be

LECTURE 1. 35

won to come among us as the Spirit and Power of
peace, so that the same faith should speak among us
though in different tongues ; as it is, what I should
pray for, as the result of the idea I shall endeavour
to set before you is this, that while we are zealous and
anxious in maintaining what we believe to be the
truth, we should look earnestly and lovingly on that
which others think to be true, and see if there be
not something therein which we lack; that each may
learn from each ; surely there is scarcely one of us
who can say Lord, I believe, but has reason to add
help Thou my unbelief \ we have all of us reason to
be on our guard lest, our hearts being hardened by
that pride and self-sufficiency which is the spirit of
unbelief, Divine truth should be shining around us
without our comprehending it. Thus might we hope
that our faith will attain its Scriptural proportions,
and our Zion be at peace, and better able to defend
God's kingdom, against superstition on the one
hand, and godless indifferentism on the other.

Not that there is to be any compromise of truth :
compromise may obtain in matters of state policy or
of individual interest, but I do not see whence either
individuals or churches get the right to compromise
one jot or one tittle of Divine revelation : to say " I
will allow that what I believe is matter of doubt,
is no belief, no revelation, if you will allow the same
of what you believe." No man is to sacrifice what
he Scripturally believes to be true ; on the contrary,
he must thoroughly, and practically, and humbly
realize the truth which he holds, before he can see the

D 2

36 LECTURE L

truth which others hold. There is surely a spiritual
affinity between truth and truth : each truth which
is realized in its due proportions, makes our appre
hension of other truths in their proportions more
quick and sure ; but each must be realized, not as a
point for controversial warfare or theological victory,
but as a soul-stirring life-guiding principle ; in pro
portion as we do this, one truth will open our eyes
to more truth ; in proportion as it is to us a mere
point in theology, it will dim our eyes and hide
other truth from us.

Nor is the spiritual sphere of our minds at all
narrowed, nor our spiritual liberty abridged there
by, but rather much enlarged and increased. Men
on either side are now in captivity to their own
one-sided opinions ; this truth or that truth is keep
ing them bound to itself, so that they do not
enjoy the range which God has provided for them.
The truth will set them free. God has given
us a vast and comprehensive revelation of His
own Divine nature and counsels, and of man's po
sition, duties, and destinies; and the more we
realize this in all its parts, the more extended will be
our sphere of spiritual thought, the more complete
our knowledge of and communion with Him, the more
completely shall we be transformed to His image.
It is true many things in the spiritual world are ob
scure and mysterious to us ; but the more we believe
the more will be given us to believe, the greater will
be our power of believing; the more will faith be
revealed to faith. There may seem to us in the

LECTURE I. 37

revelation many impossibilities, many contradictions;
but as we grow in all truth the impossibilities will
change into realities, the contradictions into har
mony; we shall see more clearly the meaning of
each doctrine, as we allow its influence to be im
pressed on our soul by faith and practice ; as we fix
the eye of faith on the yet far off figures, they will
be made nearer and clearer to us; the mist, the
clouds, the distance will melt away before the in
tensity of our gaze, and we shall almost anticipate
the time when we shall see face to face ; each doc
trine, each mystery will assume its proper place and
proportion, will exercise its proper influence over our
hearts and lives. We shall know what each has to
say to us, what each would have us to do ; we shall
see how all spring from, all end in, all have their
meaning from Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-
day, and for ever.

LECTURE II.

HEBREWS xm. 8.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday ', to day, and for ever.

IT is the natural result of the truth which breathes
throughout a Divine Revelation, that Christianity
gives us far more exalted ideas of the Supreme
Being and all that belongs to Him than any of the
other systems which have stood in the place of reli
gion to man. The God of the Christian is not a
mere deified hero, or an abstract essence or power.
The very fact, that we have no images of thought or
speech whereby we can adequately represent God to
ourselves, does but make Him known to ns in His
real nature as higher and better than any thing we
can imagine. The heaven of the Christian is not a
mere beautiful earth above the clouds — think of it
as we may, we can form no real picture of it, and yet
no Christian can think of it without the deepest in
terest and hope, If God and heaven are the proper
objects of religious thought and feeling, then is the
Christian blessed above all men, if it were only in
having a true object of worship, a real resting-place
for his soul.

LECTURE II. 39

And though God and heaven are thus presented
to us in all their majesty, yet is the Christian's at
tention drawn to earth with an interest no less
intense. It is not as in the so-called religion of old
that we have put before us the creations of poetic
fancy, which loved to people earth, sea, and sky
with ideal divinities ; nor yet the fables of the
grosser mythology, which gave to the gods the
desires, the enjoyments, the passions, and even the
crimes of humanity ; nor yet are we taught to listen
for the Divine voice coming forth from the caves or
shrines which superstition assigned to the Divinity as
its dwelling place on the earth.

But the Christian's gaze is fixed on earth, as the
place wherein our salvation was accomplished by
Him who came down from heaven, God manifest in
the flesh, living and dwelling in visible existence
and shape, as man among men, the man Christ
Jesus : on Him whose nature is so infinite, and
whose functions so manifold, that they cannot be
taken in with one glance of even the spiritual
eye. God, Man, Son, Prophet, Priest, King, Sa
viour, Redeemer, Mediator, Judge, Sacrifice, Power,
Word, Wisdom, Light, Life — what words shall fitly
declare His glory, what mind fully conceive it?

It is no wonder then that when men tried to
bring down this all-wonderful Being to the level of
human understanding, to form of Him as consistent
conceptions as they did of any of God's creatures,
they were obliged to strip Him of His glories ; and
thus while they were professing to be wise above

40 LECTURE II.

others, they were shutting themselves out from the
knowledge which others, more simple-minded, pos
sessed. Hence it is that from the very earliest times
so many heresies sprung up as to Him who is the
very Truth itself, from whom all truth springs.
There was in Him of necessity from His very na^
ture, from the very scheme of salvation, so much
which reason could not comprehend or recon
cile, that men who would not be content with
what the Bible told them, were obliged to solve
their difficulties by taking a partial and carnal
view of Him, as their fancies, or lives, or circum
stances led them to look at Him exclusively from
the one side or the other — How can He who is God
be also man ? How can He who is God have died ?
How can He who is subordinate to the Father be
one with the Father? How can He who is eternal
have ever been begotten ? These and the like diffi
culties, which are founded entirely on the notion
that heavenly things differ in no respect from earthly,
occupied the attention and made shipwreck of the
faith and hope of thousands ; many a one whom
God had gifted with His choicest natural gifts, whom
He had embraced in His church, and brought to the
living waters of scriptural truth, was led astray by
a wayward love of system, a wayward impatience
of submitting to what can not be understood or ex
plained, a wayward confidence in human perceptions,
inferences, deductions. Where Christ was looking
for adoration, there was nothing to be found or heard
but philosophical questions and logical doubts as to

LECTURE II. 41

those very points which the Apostles received and
set forth in humble and thankful faith. These
men would not receive the gospel until there was
nothing left which their reason had not mastered.
It seems to me that this was just the disputing
and the wisdom against which St. Paul warned
his children in the faith. Happy they who amid
those perilous heresies listened to his warning, and
throwing philosophy and vain deceit to the winds,
shut their ears to those who would have robbed their
faith of its deepest and highest objects of contem
plation. Strange that men should refuse to be borne
upon the boundless ocean, unless they can fathom
its depths ; that they should refuse to drink in the
glories of the sun, unless they can master the causes
of its light and warmth. Wiser, surely, they who
are content to wonder, and adore, and love.

That there are in Scripture many (humanly speak
ing) contradictions as to our Saviour, no one, I think,
will deny ; but according to the principle I have set
forth in the first lecture, we have not to reconcile
these statements : all that we have to do is to assure
ourselves that they are in Scripture : to study them
separately and together : to find out and lay to heart
what they separately and together teach us. It may
be that some of them will be to us as long as we
are here contradictions : while of others we may
see how they fit as it were into each other, and have
a definite place and office in the scheme of our
salvation ; at all events, comprehensive faith accepts
them all.

42 LECTURE II.

The first point which would occur to one to whom
Jesus Christ was for the first time made known
would naturally be, " Who is He ?" and this brings
us directly to the consideration of the view which
Christianity gives us of the Divine nature, as con
tained in the revelation that God is Three and
One. This question indeed has been so fully and
so exhaustively treated by other hands, that it is
not necessary for me to enter into it, except so far
as it bears on the principle I am advocating, or as
the principle may be brought to bear upon it; for
in regard to those within our church, and indeed to
the majority of Christendom, where there is no dif
ference of opinion on this point, I would rather use
it as an admitted truth in support of the principle
that opposed notions in theology may be true to
gether ; while to the others I would urge my prin
ciple in answer to their objections to the doctrine
which are based mainly on the theory that the same
Being cannot be both Three and One.

The proofs of this doctrine of the Trinity, whether
direct, such as in the institution of baptism, or indi
rect, as where each person is separately spoken of as
God, or has Divine powers and attributes assigned to
Him, as well as the argument from primitive consent,
are so familiar to all, that they need no further men
tion. But against all this direct scriptural evidence,
it is urged that there are other passages of Scrip
ture which both directly and indirectly represent God
as One ; for I have not to deal with those who deny
the doctrine simply on the ground of its being con*

LECTURE II. 43

trary to reason, but to those who oppose it on the
ground of its being incompatible with other state
ments in Holy Writ. These statements, they say, can
not be true together, and therefore we have as much
right to choose the one as the other ; and since one
or the other cannot on Scripture grounds be true,
we are justified in taking that which is most agree
able to the general sense of mankind, and the voice
of natural religion. I suppose this would not un
fairly represent the reasoning whereby such a person
would deny the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now our church rightly maintains that the proof
that God is One does in no way exclude the proof
of there being in the unity of this Godhead three
persons. We are Unitarians in as proper and full a
sense as those to whom the name is more technically
and exclusively given : but we are Trinitarians also;
we maintain that these, humanly speaking, incon
sistencies, subsist and are true together, and that the
acceptance of the one does not necessitate the re
jection of the other. For why should it ? The notion
that the one destroys the other is entirely based on
the supposition that the Divine nature is the same in
kind as our own, subject to the same conditions as our
selves—conditions which, after all, are only abstractions
of the mind, shadowing dimly forth those accidents
and properties which are attached to an imperfect
state of being, but from which the existence of God
must from its very perfection and infinity be free ;
one and many — divisible and indivisible — separate,
together — before and after, and the like, are simply

44 LECTURE II.

human modes of expressing certain states and rela
tions of number, space, and time, in the com
pound and complex universe : while to Him whose
being is one and simple, whom size, space, time,
affect not, they are, properly speaking, inapplicable.
Nor should we with any propriety apply them to
Him, were it not that the Scripture partially re
veals Him by them as the modes of conception and
thought necessary to beings such as we are. The
Scripture then being the only ground whereby these
notions and terms are applicable to the Deity, it fol
lows that they are applicable to Him only in the way
in which Scripture has applied them : that is, by op
posing them one to the other, and thus giving us
some idea of what is properly above human compre
hension ; to refuse to receive them because they are
opposed to each other, is to refuse to receive know
ledge in the only way in which it can be given : for
reason itself confesses that the only way in which we
can conceive or define those natures and essences
which belong to a different and far higher state
of things than our own, is by that combination of
notions which we might rightly reject in matters
which our faculties can grasp. In fact, almost all our
true notions of the Deity involve attributes which
would in created things be incompatible, as may be
seen even in the points of natural religion which
have always been connected with the Divine essence
where it has been at all realised by man. Take for
instance the omnipresence of the Deity ; the notion
that a person is in more than one place at the same

LECTURE II. 45

moment of time, is as contrary to our natural con
ceptions of possibility as the Trinity in Unity, if not
more so ; and yet mankind instinctively attribute to
God personality and ubiquity, and acquiesce in the
difficulty implied in their conjunction ; and while
some have pretended to solve the difficulty by Pan
theism, or an anima mundi, yet it is easy to see
that they do in reality but bring before us more
vividly the difficulty they profess to solve. In sooth,
when we begin to think on the Divine nature, and
try to search it out by those faculties of analysis
which are almost all-powerful within their proper
sphere, to try to systematize and to measure it,
instead of realising it spiritually by contemplation,
our minds must find themselves lost, not only in the
immensity, but the perplexity of the subject. We
must acquiesce in what some might perhaps call
contradictions, or else take from the Deity one after
another of those notions which are involved in the
idea of the Divinity, until at length He is brought
down to the level of deified humanity. And thus
it is in strict accordance with the theory and prac
tice of sound reason, that the catholic faith, finding
both Three Persons and One God clearly revealed
in Scripture, accepts them both with wondering
gratitude, as the only complete revelation of the
Godhead which was ever vouchsafed to man. In
days of old even philosophy was compelled to be
content with very partial views of the Divinity :
thinking men, indeed, sighing for more complete
knowledge, searched out the secret places of their

46 LECTURE II.

own souls, to see if therein they could discern
any reflection of God ; looking around on outward
things they felt after Him in the elements, the laws,
the powers of the universe, if haply they might
find Him ; having only part, and feeling that it was
only part, they longed and strove after what was yet
lackisg to that Divine science. Modern philosophy,
now that God Himself has spoken, refuses to take
the whole, and standing proudly aloof, thinks to
choose for herself what part she shall accept and
what reject : and falls back on theories and fancies
not more real or satisfactory than the theology of
antiquity.

And as in the essential existence of the Deity we
must teach ourselves to acquiesce in unexplained dif
ficulties as our best wisdom, so must we also expect to
find them in His moral attributes when viewed from
the side of earth. There are indeed instinctive feel
ings of morality embodying the rights and duties of
man to man, correlative with many perfections and
infirmities, bound up with our very being and our
idea of goodness, to lose which would be almost to
cease to be man. These may be said to have their
birthplace in heaven, because they are the guides
and laws which God's will has attached to man's
nature ; but to try to bind the Deity with such as
these, is as if we were to try to guide Him by ex
citing in Him those passions the right operation
and laws of which these principles of morality em
body. In fact, to ascribe the attributes of human
morality to God, seems to be only so far allowable as

LECTURE II. 47

it is our only way of expressing those partial glimpses
of the Divine will which from time to time we are able
to catch. At present we see only in part ; we are sure
indeed that every conceivable element of perfection
must exist in the Divine Being, though not perhaps
exactly in the way in which we should conceive of
it. The notion of perfection is implied in the notion
of God. This we can read in nature — in the pages
of history, sacred and profane — in the events of the
world as they pass before us — in the events of our
own lives — in the experiences of our own hearts — in
the primary notions of our own mind. And though
to us His attribute of infinite justice and infinite
mercy may seem to be opposed, yet in Himself He
is as infinitely just as if there were no mercy, as in
finitely merciful as if there were no justice ; for we
may not conceive of His attributes as if they were
separate qualities or habits residing in a moral being,
and operating in moral acts. However heathen
poetry may have impressed such images on the minds
and language of men, it is certainly contrary to the
true idea of God to suppose that His nature is made
up of parts and affected by passions. And it is the
more necessary to insist upon this, because tlie re
jection or misinterpretation of many parts of Scrip
ture arises from arguing from human to Divine per
fections. There are indeed those who map out the
Divine mind, and bind the Divine will and power by
chains of human possibility, necessity, and morality :
who weigh one attribute against another, and thus
work out what seems to them to be a consistent

48 LECTURE II.

scheme for the operations of His counsels ; who
will allow Cod to be wise, ami just, and merciful,
only in the way in which they themselves would
be so ; who say He cannot do this, He must have
done that; and seem to think that if God had had
them for counsellors, the wrorld would have been
more perfect, man more happy than we find him to
be as God has created him and ordered his goings;
nay, that God himself would have been more wise
than Scripture reveals Him to us. With such ques
tionings and systems faith has nought to do; she
believes whatever Scripture reveals, as she reads
it therein ; Scripture tells us that God is just, and we
believe it. The same Scripture tells us that unborn
generations were lost for the sin of Adam ; the suf
ferings of the innocent were exacted in lieu of the
punishment of the guilty, and we believe it. Scrip
ture tells us that God takes vengeance, and we be
lieve it ; and yet that sinners practically go unpu
nished, and we believe it. The Scripture tells us
that God is merciful, and willeth not the death of a
sinner, and we believe it : the same Scripture speaks
of eternal punishment, the worm that never dieth,
and the fire that is never quenched, and we be
lieve it. Terrible in vengeance, strict in justice,
infinite in mercy ! faith receives and dwells upon
each and all. She receives them all, knowing that
the terms whereby they are expressed are but as the
shadows which the painter is obliged to use to de
fine and express the rays of light, which fall with
different hues from the one single indivisible centre

LECTURE II. 49

of pure light — terms whereby we are able to con
ceive somewhat, though after a very imperfect fa
shion, of Him who dwelleth in the heavens out of
our sight.

We may see from this how very inadequate and
fallacious are all a priori conceptions of the parti
cular exhibitions of God's nature in His dealings
with men. We may argue in general that His justice,
mercy, power, goodness, love, will exhibit themselves
in some way or other to man ; we may argue of an
act of God that it is just because it is God's, because
there can be no unrighteousness with God ; we may
argue that the idea of injustice is necessarily excluded
from the idea of God : and that therefore what might
at first sight seem to be unjust or unkind, cannot
be really so, because the Judge of the world must
needs do right, because " He is the Rock, His work
is perfect : for all His ways are judgment : a God of
truth and without iniquity, just and right is He a."
But we cannot put one of God's attributes against
another, and argue negatively that His justice could
not have acted in this manner or that, as Scrip
ture has in express terms revealed it to us, be
cause it would be contrary to His mercy or His
love, for the simple reason that such moral contra
dictions imply separate parts and passions and per
fections : and that His nature being one and indi
visible, it follows that His mercy and justice and
love are inseparable likewise; and therefore we
cannot tell how His mercy, or love, or justice

a Deut. xxxii. 4.
E

50 LECTURE II.

would act by itself. We may contemplate Him
in silent adoration as just, or merciful, or kind,
as He is revealed in Scripture, but we may not
wrest or reject Scripture to suit our notions of a
deified humanity. Man may be in his own conceits
elevated above his real position, by fancying that he
can see himself reflected in the Majesty of heaven,
that he himself is as God only in a lower sphere ;
but I confess it seems to me worse than vain to at
tempt to pourtray God with a pencil dipped in
mere earthly colours ; just as one shrinks from
those representations wherein the painter, with a
mistaken and presumptuous piety, has thought to
image the Deity by clothing Him in the most per
fect proportions and most venerable aspect of hu
man shape and feature.

The same comprehensive belief which accepts the
doctrine of Three Persons and One God, and conse
quently the Divinity of our Saviour, holds likewise
when we read of Him as man, coming down from
heaven, manifest in the flesh. It is not however
His humanity which is so much called in ques
tion as his Divinity. It is undoubted that it is hu
manly speaking impossible to reconcile His being
God with all the Divine attributes and perfections,
and yet at the same time being man with all human
passions and infirmities — all that faith cares to know
is that Scripture does most certainly and definitely
speak of Him as God and man; and therefore we
believe that He is both God and man, " not by con
fusion of substance, but by unity of Person."

LECTURE II. 51

[Nor is true faith staggered in her belief by the
various contradictory statements which we find in
Scripture on various points connected with our Sa
viour ; such, for instance, as that He is coexistent
from the beginning with, and yet begotten from
everlasting of the Father— that He is one with the
Father and yet His Son — that the Father is greater
than the Son, and yet He is equal to Him. All these
and the like do not to faith suggest doubts, but pre
sent themselves as mysteries, which we, bound as we
are by the conditions of our present state, can neither
fathom nor explain ; as sources of fruitful meditation
and wonder, which may impress upon our mind a
wholesome sense of the Divine Majesty of Him who
though he took upon Himself the likeness of man,
and the form of a servant, yet so evidently belongs
to an infinitely higher sphere of existence, and re
fuses to bow before our laws of being or our laws of
thought ; and if the Church has ever attempted an
explanation of those mysteries, as in the Athanasian
Creed, it is because heresies forced the question upon
hera, and because she hoped that she might stop the
evil and reclaim those who were taken captive
of itb.]

And as we receive Christ both as God and man,
so do we take no partial view of Him when He is
presented to us, not so much in His own nature as

a See Bacon, of Church Controversies, vol. 2, page 501, Lond.
1819. See also Hilarius de Trin. II. i, quoted by Giesler, Kir-
chen Gesch. I. 367.

b The passages between brackets were omitted in delivery.

E 2

52 LECTURE II.

in His relation to men, and in His functions in the
work of our salvation. In this as in other points,
the faith of the early Church, and I may say of our
own, comprehends the whole truth, while each of the
contending parties is in error by stopping short of it
on either side. What each directly affirms of our
Saviour from Scripture faith receives, but in that
each denies some Scriptural statement concerning
Him she goes further, higher, and deeper than they
do ; she has all that they severally and separately
hold.

There are those who look on Christ as a Hero, a
man raised above His fellows by the loftiness of His
spirit, the greatness of His actions ; and He is un
doubtedly the greatest man, the greatest hero, if you
will, who ever appeared upon earth ; with all human
infirmities, He triumphed over the weaknesses and
frailties which mar the perfection of ordinary men ;
He won men's hearts, and founded by His will a power
before which imperial Rome was forced to bow. A
Hero doubtless He was, and as such He is repre
sented in Scripture. No one realises this so truly
as he who believes Him to be God. How could it
be otherwise ? how could God come among men in
any other character? nay, surely the very act of
suffering on earth for the salvation of sinners
was in itself an act of heroism to which neither
history nor mythology present any parallel. The
highest heroes of poetry or of history were men
who, finding themselves in the midst of and set
above an evil world, did their part boldly in the

LECTURE II. 53

battle ; but this our Hero entered upon it by His
own free will ; and as for His actual doings on
earth, Fame herself grows pale beside them. To
attempt to enlarge upon them, or to clothe them
with human panegyric, would be but to diminish
their grandeur : one might as well try to give fresh
hues to the rainbow, or to gild the setting sun.
They are familiar to us ; every page of Scripture
bears their impress ; they are written on every
faithful heart.

As a Hero, then, Christian faith receives Him.
But was He nothing more ? Watch the child Jesus
as He comes forth, led by His mother s hand, from
the temple, followed by the wondering eyes and
thoughts of the doctors, and see even there in His
earliest years the Teacher sent from God. Mingle
with the crowds that gather round Him as He raises
the widow's son or bids Lazarus come forth from
the grave ; as He stills the sea, or cures the sick, or
casts out devils ; listen to Him ordaining sacraments,
instituting a ministry, giving new commandments
or confirming the old ones ; follow Him again when,
in His glorified body after His resurrection, He spake
to His disciples of the things pertaining to the
kingdom of God ; and who can fail to recog
nise the Prophet of the Gospel revelation, the
Leader of the new Exodus, the Moses of the new
covenant? And Christian faith, too, delights to
dwell on Him in this character and office ; to watch
His miracles of mercy and of power, and drink in
from His lips the secret mysteries of the Divine

54 LECTURE II.

nature and counsels, principles and rules for life :
new hopes to animate and restrain ; new command
ments to guide. Who can choose but exclaim,
Surely never man spake as this man ! what man can
do these works except he be sent of God f

But, again, listen more attentively and look more
curiously. Amid all His acts of heroic benevolence
and authority, amid these deep and practical lessons
of morality, there fall from His lips and appear in
His actions indications of His Divine nature and
power ; and instinctively, unless the instinct be
overpowered by pride or foolishness, we fall down
to worship God, made fiesh for our redemption.
His wisdom, His mercy, His power receive fresh
hues, as being the very words and works of God
Himself. And if this instinctive worship of the
heart were at a loss how to clothe itself, it would
find in Holy Scripture words of adoration put into
men's mouths by the Holy Spirit Himself, as fit ex
pressions to be spoken of and addressed to Christ.
If the Bible be true, the fact of His Divine nature
is verily and really expressed in these expressions of
worship ; if the Bible be not true, then all the reve
lation contained in it fades away, and we are again
reduced to the dreamy abstractions of philosophy,
or the absurd fictions of a popular belief. Our
Saviour's divinity and the whole Christian revela
tion stand or fall together. It is idle to talk of the
evangelical writings as historic narratives like that
of Mahomet ; if the Bible be not true as a revela
tion, neither can it be as an history.

LECTURE II. 55

And so again in the crowning and finishing act of
His earthly life ; what can fitly express the wondering
adoration with which faith sees the Man of Sorrows,
the Captain of our salvation, nailed to the cross by
the very men whom He carne to save. Who is there
who stands in imagination among the crowds on
Mount Calvary without being moved by tender and
pitiful interest when he beholds the patient bravery,
the unconquered charity, the sublime resignation of
the man Christ Jesus in the moments of His agony ?

Again, who is there who is not struck with the
un repining obedience with which He Whom the
Father sent submits to the will of Him Who sent
Him. Surely in Him, above all others whom the
world has seen or heard of, we recognise the devo
tion of One Who knows Himself to be sent by God
on earth to do great things, and to change the desti
nies of man.

But the sufferings of the Hero, the obedience of
the Prophet, can be realised and exhausted by hu
man thought and feeling. There is something be
sides and above all this which Christian faith realises,
which the more it is thought upon the more inex
haustible a source of thought and feeling is it found
to be — the Son of man dying for us to restore us to
the favour of God.

And as Christ is differently regarded as to His
nature and office, so are there differences of opinion
as to the way in which His death is connected with
our salvation. What may be called the human
theory of redemption is held by those who do

56 LECTURE II.

not recognise any act of reconciliation performed
by Christ between God and man ; who think that
Christ's death was effectual to salvation only as
raising the tone and destinies of the human race in
setting before us an example, by the following of
which we may raise ourselves above the common
herd, and scale the heights of heaven for ourselves.
Nor is their view so wholly wrong as to be wholly
lost sight of: nay, it sets forth a great truth which
we must not lose sight of; Christ did set us an ex
ample, that we should follow his steps c, by the follow
ing of which man may be almost more than man : /
have given you an example that ye should do as I
have done unto you(]. He did set us an example of
obedience and virtue, in order that we should arm
ourselves with the like mind ; and woe unto us if
we do not according to opportunities, which life
presents in some shape or other to every man, fol
low the example He set. Christian suffering and
Christian daring, Christian heroism e, if you will, is
part of the scheme of salvation ; Christianity is not
set before us as a pleasant path in which we may
saunter leisurely along; an ever flowing stream on
which we have only to embark to be passively and
easily wafted to the land of promise without any effort
on our part. We read of a battle — of hardships, of
adversaries, of giants in the road, spiritual enemies on
all sides. As there is much to do, much to endure,

<• i St. Pet. ii. 21. d St. John xiii. 15.

e Leigh ton, vol. iii. p. 234. cd. Lond. 1830.

LECTURE II. 57

much to overcome, so is there ample sphere for the
highest heroism of men. Nay, where has the world
seen greater heroism than was shown by those who,
treading closely in their Master's steps, took up
their cross boldly and denied themselves ; who
counted all things loss, so that they might come
out as conquerors in the struggle in which God had
placed them, victors in the race which He had given
them to run ?

Others, again, go somewhat further ; they hold
that Christ by His patience and obedience so pleased
God that the souls of mankind were given Him as
a reward, and that His patience and obedience thus
worked out our salvation. Nor does faith look
upon this obedience and patience as things apart
from the work. Like all other acts of Christ's life,
it bore its part ; and doubtless the obedience of
the second Adam has something especially to do in
the reconciliation of man, inasmuch as it stood in
contrast to, and in some sort did away with the
disobedience of the first. When we read of His
bowing to His Father's will, in spite of the inclina
tions of the flesh and the suggestions of Satan, we
surely ought not to be moved with sympathy only,
or wonder, or stirred up to imitation, but with a
deep sense that all this, viewed merely in its ex
ternal relations of obedience and patience, was
suffered and done for us and for our salvation. The
words of Scripture rise to our thoughts, By the
obedience of one many are made righteous.

[The way. moreover, in which the end and purpose

58 LECTURE II.

of Christ's coming upon earth is spoken of combines
all these views: sometimes as a Hero, to elevate
human nature, to turn from sin, to destroy evil, to
set captive souls free, to bring triumph and peace
to the Israel of God ; sometimes as a Prophet and
Teacher to bear witness to the truth, to be a light
to lighten the Gentiles, a day-spring from on
high ; sometimes to obey and suffer, and to teach
mankind by His example ; sometimes simply to save
sinners, to give us eternal life ; sometimes more de
finitely to put away our sin by His death in the
body ; to be lifted up for the salvation of sinners.]

But we do not stop here ; for as in Scripture, so
in Christian faith, the prominent feature is the
Lamb that was slain ; Christ bearing our sins in
His body on the tree; the blood which was shed;
the sin-offering which was offered ; the ransom
which was paid.

And what is Christian faith without it? it may
perhaps be a consistent philosophical theory based
on human probabilities and counsels, and embodying
what may seem to us the interests of the human
race; it may be a code of most perfect morality,
but it is not what it ought to be — the Bible
written in our hearts ; for who shall say that Scrip
ture is indefinite on this point, that it speaks doubt
fully ? that it may perhaps be true that Christ died
for us ; perhaps it may not ; that those who deny it
may be as right as those who hold it? either it is in
the Bible or it is not. And who can read Scripture
without seeing that the sacrifice of Christ is put for-

LECTURE II. 59

ward as the key-stone to the whole fabric? Nay, those
who deny the doctrine are forced practically and in
the common sense view of the case, to admit that it
is distinctly mentioned by every New Testament
writer. The manifold forced arguments they are
compelled to use ; the number of facts they have to
get rid of; the number of sentences to which they
must give a forced interpretation ; the number of
words which must be wrested from their proper and
acknowledged meaning : all these are in reality so
many arguments furnished by the opponents in
favour of the doctrine they oppose. In spite of
themselves the truth rises up from their own lips,
and stands forth in their own pages. They may
prove beyond a doubt that our Saviour was man ;
faith receives it as fully as they do ; but this does
not disprove that He was God also. They may en
large on His obedience and example as working in
the redemption of man ; faith receives it as fully as
they do ; but this is no reason why we should not
likewise believe what Scripture tells us no less
plainly and definitely, that He was offered as a
sacrifice to suffer for our sins, in as true and
literal sense as any of the sacrifices under the
Law, which are in reality only so far effectual sacri
fices as being the types and substitutes for the sacri
fice of Christ. Nor does the absolute truth of any
one of these make the others uncertain. We cannot
say that the sacrifice is doubtful because the others
are true, nor that the others are doubtful because
the sacrifice is true. Christ's death indeed is not

60 LECTURE II.

always or only represented as a sacrifice : it is some
times the price paid for our ransom from the power
of sin ; sometimes the price paid to purchase for us
everlasting life ; and each of these differs somewhat
in idea from the notion of a sacrifice to atone for our
sins ; but these terms are not merely figurative, they
represent realities, — real facts in God's counsels, in
Christ's death, in our salvation. No one of these is
excluded by the other ; together they form one
great whole ; not indeed on exactly equal terms, for
the sacrifice is the centre from which the others
radiate, and to which all converge. The sacrifice is
the essence ; the others the antecedents rather, or
the accidents. The sufferings and obedience of
Christ would, as far as God's will is revealed to us,
have been of no avail without the sacrifice ; nor can
we, with due regard to Scripture, say that the sacri
fice could, according to the same Divine will, have
been offered without these its parts ; Scripture tells
us that it pleased God to make the Captain of our
salvation perfect through suffering.

In fact, the notion of uncertainty on this point
seems frequently to arise from the lack of a fitting
sense of our own demerits. Where a man feels that
his sins deserve punishment, which if he were to
pay in his own person he is for ever lost, then is
this doctrine forced home to his heart; he feels it
to be true ; not that its Scriptural foundation is
deficient, but as human pride destroys the effect of
Scripture evidence, so does this sense of our sin
realise and apply it.

LECTURE II. 61

The Pharisee and Publican go np to Calvary toge
ther : the one, proud of his knowledge, proud of his
piety, spotless in his own conceit, unfailing in the
performance of his duties, can at the best only
wonder, and learn how to die patiently and bravely.
To him the cross is a stumblingblock. The Publi
can standing, as in the temple afar off, with his —
" God be merciful to me a sinner," feels that God
has provided a ransom for him ; is ready to believe
that in the blood poured out the mercy he seeks for
is vouchsafed to him.

And who shall say that this is a narrow faith ? it
takes in all that others have, and something above
and beyond them. Who shall say that it is in theory
less exalted, less worthy of the dignity or destinies
of man, than the view which makes Christ a mere
example, His death a mere act of obedience ? In
good truth, it has always seemed to me that a
lack of a really high moral sense of the perfection
and beauty of holiness lies at the bottom of the
notion that man needs not the sacrifice of Christ
and His righteousness. The standard of human
perfection is low, men can corne up to it ; and
therefore, fancying themselves able to purify and
justify themselves, they feel no need of a sacri
fice. That we should look forward to being clothed
upon with a righteousness above the highest con
ceptions of man, to being presented before the
throne of God pure and spotless as washed in
the blood of the Lamb, not mere men, but men
clothed upon by Christ, may be contrary to reason,

62 LECTURE II.

offensive to pride ; but it is not contrary to the
truest interests, the most earnest yearnings, the
most sensible needs of him who knows earth, and
has formed any real conception of heaven.

Who, again, shall say that the feelings excited by
it are less divine, less true, less pure, that the heart
in which it abides is less exalted, less filled with
adequate notions of the Divine nature and coun
sels, or the life or office of Christ in all its parts ? It
may well be doubted whether the Socinian dwells on
the patience and obedience of Christ with the same
intensity of heart as the more scriptural and more
comprehensive believer, who looks at them as com
bined with the sacrifice.

Three men go up to Calvary together : the one
gazes with curious wonder on the suffering of the
Man of Sorrows, sympathizes perhaps with Him,
and draws in a lesson of patience and endurance for
the troubles of life. The second looks with grateful
reverence on the moral act of obedience whereby he
thinks Christ wins the favour of God for man ; but
who shall describe, what words express, the feelings
of the one who views Him as suffering in his stead,
crucified by his sins, reconciling him to God by
bearing his punishment?

And who shall say that the knowledge which this
divine mystery opens to us is narrow and degrading,
because it calls on us to believe, even though we
understand not? Surely God's revelations are, to
say the least, as true knowledge as any thing we can
find out for ourselves. If a man is higher the more

LECTURE II. 63

he knows, then surely we cannot object to a reve
lation that it is narrowing because it is higher and
more extensive than any thing we have yet known ;
that it transports us beyond the sphere of human
sight and thought, and confounds the petty imagina
tions and deductions of human knowledge. Jf it
did not do so, it would not be divine. On the ac
knowledged principle of these rational philosophers,
that knowledge elevates and purifies, that the higher
the knowledge the better the man, they ought not
to allow their prejudices to make them content
with the lower when the higher is within their
reach.

It seems, in good truth, well nigh impossible to
estimate justly how much they lose who take their
stand on one text and truth of Scripture relating to
Christ, and refuse to acknowledge other truths and
other texts which seem to overshadow or overthrow
the view which has recommended itself to and oc
cupied their minds. Not only do they shut them
selves out from the ennobling and quickening
thoughts, hopes, feelings, consolations, which arise
from a comprehensive and definite faith in Christ as
the Priest and Sacrifice, but there are other Scrip
ture facts and mysteries which they are obliged to
distort or deny : His miraculous conception : the
power of His resurrection, whereby the dead are
to rise from their graves, whereby we rise again
into newness of life ; the ascension into heaven ;
His eternal presence in the Church ; His eternal
mediation in heaven : all these must be given up ;

64 LECTURE II.

all the texts which speak of them must be explained
away as forgeries or delusions. Strange and suicidal
misuse of reason, to employ it in struggling against
the spiritual blessings wherewith Christ is waiting
to bless them !

True faith, on the other hand, drawing her inspir
ations from Scripture, dwells on all that Christ was
or did, and finds in all, subjects for adoration and
thanksgiving ; sees in all, the Father's love working
towards our salvation. Thus is Christ brought be
fore us by our Church in all His characters — Hero,
Example, Prophet, Priest, King, Sacrifice ; each act
of His life and being exercises a definite influence on
our spiritual state, and on our growth in grace, in spi
ritual strength, and in knowledge. When we look up
to Him as the Captain of our salvation, the Prince of
the people of God, the patient, the heroic Deliverer,
we surely feel our hearts swell with loyalty and
devotion, with patience and courage ; we resolve to
resist unto blood, striving against the enemy: we
find our hearts armed and steeled to withstand the
assaults of the evil one, and to triumph over him in
the world even as Christ triumphed over him in the
wilderness, and the garden, and the cross. When
we listen to our Teacher, we cannot choose but
drink in the words which fall from His lips in such
persuasive force and beauty ; we cannot choose but
let our hearts be somewhat moulded and guided by
His teaching. When we gaze on Him as our ex
ample, there rise up within us, without our bidding,
good resolutions to tread in the steps of His humil-

LECTURE II. 65

ity, patience, charity, meekness. When we look at
the crowning act of His obedience and submission to
God's will, we cannot but feel, in spite of our fleshly
selves, God's will stealing over our souls, and pre
senting itself to us as our reasonable service. When
we know that He has bought us for Himself, we
recognise His claims to our being His soldiers and
servants throughout life. When we realise the fact
that he has set us free, we feel it would be foolish
ness for us to let sin be master even of our mortal
bodies. But it is chiefly by the adoring contemplation
of His sacrifice on the cross, by the realising in our
souls the fact and the aim of the shedding of His
blood as an atonement for our sins, that we are
raised above ourselves by a sense of the dignity and
value of man ; of the value of the soul, nay, of the
value of Christ's body, for which He died ; that we are
awakened to a sense of the heinousness and de
formity of sin, from which such an act of love could
alone save us ; that we are made alive to the glories
of a heavenly life, to obtain which for us God sent
His only begotten Son into the world, and allowed
Him to die as a man; that we are stirred up to
the work of attaining thereto. It is by recollecting
that God, according to the revealed purposes of
His Divine will, does avert the consequences of
sin by His Son's bearing them for us, that we
are made most fearful of sinning, most sensible of
its danger : it is by recollecting that Christ died for
us, that our spirits are most moved to love Him ;
it is by recollecting that Christ died for all men,

F

66 LECTURE II.

that we are most effectually touched with sym
pathy and charity towards those who, involved in
the same ruin with ourselves, stricken with the
same plague, are by the same act of the same
Deliverer restored, by the same talisman of the
same Physician healed. There is nothing that binds
human hearts so strongly together as the lying
under the same burden, and partaking of the same
deliverance, being together lifted up above the in
terests and cares of this life by the same gratitude
to a common Saviour, the same duties to a common
Master, the same promptings of a common Guide,
the same hopes of a common home, the same faith
in a common Redeemer. It is by keeping in mind
that a ransom has been paid for us, that our punish
ment has been borne for us, that we are most re
freshed by consolation and assurance, knowing that
it is not our own work which is to wash out our
sins and to turn away the destroying angel from us,
for Christ our Passover has for us been slain.

Nor is there in these feelings any thing indefinite
or uncertain. Jesus Christ is to us the same yester
day, to-day, and for ever. Faith knows whom she has
believed, in whom she puts her trust ; her fountain
does not ebb and flow ; is not now raised by a hope
that Christ has made the atonement ; now disturbed
by a fear lest it be not so ; not now hoping she may
be right ; now fearing she may be wrong ; but being
assured that God has spoken, and that He will not
deceive man, enters with joy and thanksgiving on
the work of her calling, ever looking up to the cross

LECTURE II. 67

and to Him who is nailed thereon. And should
ever an unhappy doubt be cast over the soul, the
shadow, as it were, of Satan passing by, she turns
from it with hasty fear to the Bible Revelation,
and finds therein more than sufficient answer to the
delusions and temptations of the enemy.

Our souls indeed may well doubt if we lose sight
of Christ dying for us, and atoning for our sins ;
fully aware of our infirmities, how weak the will to
good, how fierce and strong and reckless the im
pulses to evil ; finding ourselves bound up in a body
in which the passions within are ever ready to re
peat and enforce the temptation from without, we
may well tremble and cry aloud, Who shall deliver
us from the body of t/iis death f but peace returns
to us when, catching sight again of Christ bearing
our sins in His own body on the tree, we are able
to hear the words which faith speaks within, / thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

LECTURE III.

ROMANS vii. part of 24th and 25th verses.

Who shall deliver me from the body of this death f
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

MAN has ever been a mystery to himself. Of all
God's living creatures, he alone, as far as we know, has
within him a mixed nature. The angels in heaven are
wholly good ; the devils in hell are wholly bad ; the
brute creation move in obedience to fixed instincts,
in which there is neither good nor evil ; the wills of
all these are simple and uniform : man alone is a con
tradiction. His action, as of some cunningly devised
machine, seemingly regular and simple enough, is found
to be produced by a number of impulses and checks,
moving, balancing, controlling, disturbing each other.
And that the movements of this wondrous piece of
mechanism were deranged, that man was not what
his Creator meant him to be, was perceived, or
rather suspected by even heathen philosophy, with
more or less accuracy; but the more it was looked
into, the more perplexing it was. The great ancient
master of the moral nature of man, though he has

LECTURE III. 69

given us a most masterly and correct analysis of the
phenomena and immediate causes of this derange
ment, was unable to trace it to its real cause or
devise any real remedy. These are both laid down
by the apostle in the words of my text ; the state
and feelings of the man who found himself unable
to combat the evil which he hated, and to do the
good which he would, are well expressed in — Who
shall deliver me from the body of this death f and the
only remedy is no less clearly stated in the words, /
thank God through Jesus Christ.

At the very threshold then of our inquiry into
the results of Christ's sacrifice, the question meets us,.
What is the body of this death from which Christ
came to save us ? in what does our salvation consist ?
what is the state of man by nature ? how, and how
far, is he restored by grace ? On these points, as>
alas ! on most others, modern Christendom is not
agreed.

There are those who hold that man is not all,
or very little, fallen from the image in which he
was created ; that he is now as he came forth from
the hands of his Maker. They point to the brighter,
we can hardly say the bright, pages in man's history ;
to the virtues which have from time to time shone
forth in the heathen world ; to the almost divine
thoughts which were breathed into many parts of
ancient poetry and philosophy by men at whose feet
Christians in all ages have been content to sit in the
attitude of disciples ; they point to the distinction
between right and wrong in the mass ; to the de-

70 LECTURE III.

voted lives, the calm constancy, the confiding re
signation, the pure piety, the unruffled patience
which we read of in the lives of those whose names
are as household words even throughout civilized
Christendom ; they point to such texts as — " These
have the law written in their hearts ;" " In every
nation he that worketh righteousness is accepted of
God? to the witness borne by Scripture to the pre
sence of an accusing or excusing voice of conscience :
and they argue that beings who display such capaci
ties and exhibit such development, and are spoken
of in such terms in Scripture, cannot truly be con
ceived or spoken of as fallen creatures.

[As for those who deny the fall on the ground
that it is contrary to God's mercy and justice as
conceived of by them, it is not necessary to repeat
here what has been already said on all denial of
direct Scripture statements and human experience
on a priori grounds. The practical bearing of their
view on human life is much the same as of the one
just stated, which has however this advantage, that
it is built on a less shifting foundation than the
creature's notions of the Creator.]

Others, again, hold that man is wholly fallen, nothing
but evil ; that he has not and never can have in him any
trace of good; they dwell on that which, as experience
as well as Scripture tells us, proceedeth out of the
heart of man, evil thoughts, evil desires, evil works ;
they point to the almost satanic hatred, wrath, jea
lousy, revenge, cruelty with which nearly every page
of history is darkened ; they point to such texts as—

LECTURE III. 71

" The imaginations of man are evil from his
" In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."
" In sin hath my mother conceived me ;" to the
mournful yet true picture drawn by St. Paul in the
first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. The
brighter gleams which others dwell on, they take
to be but lightning flashes, few and far between,
passing away in an instant, and which even while
they last do but mark more strongly the darkness
out of which they burst.

The result of these conflicting opinions is, that the
one party think that the work of redemption is con
fined almost entirely to the averting from man the
penalties of his natural corruption — losing sight of his
danger and his duties with reference to actual sin
and actual holiness, they think that the work is
complete and his salvation secure when by God's
mercy the merits of Christ's blood are applied to
his original sinfulness ; that the acts of a man,
whether viewed as heathen or Christian, can be
nothing but unmixed sin, and that therefore it does
not signify whether there is much sin or little ; nay,
some go so far as to assert that the greater the sin
the more glorious the salvation, the more certain the
assurance. It need not be said how the spiritual
state and destinies of beings who are only too ready
to accept any excuse or cloke for sin are affected by
teaching which, by holding up one half of Scripture,
putting aside and hiding the other half from view,
makes sin into almost a means of grace. The other
side, losing sight of original sin and its consequences,

72 LECTURE III.

think that a man can stand by himself; that he comes
before God as a sinner only on account of the actual
sins he commits; that he is able to save himself either
as a man by his natural powers without Christ, or as a
Christian only by accepting His atonement so far as
his deeds of actual evil outweigh those of actual
good. Some are led to think that they may, as re
deemed of Christ, endure the severity of God's
judgment in their own name and by their own
righteousness.

At first sight it would perhaps seem natural to
say that the contrary views of human nature on
which these opinions are founded cannot be true
together ; but if the principle on which these Lec
tures are grounded is right, it is more correct to
say they cannot be true apart ; each represents one
side of truth, and when combined by comprehensive
faith, they convey to the mind the state of man as
he is drawn in Scripture, and of course as he is
really in life.

It must, I think, be allowed that in Scripture
man is represented as fallen, and yet capable of
good. The texts on either side to which I have
alluded, and others which are familiar to all, pre
vent our denying the coexistence of these two
statements. Let us see how they may be together
true.

I do not see how, except by shutting our eyes to
the evidence of all history and philosophy, as well as
of daily experience, we can deny that as a mere hea
then, as a moral, social, and political being, man, in

LECTURE III. 73

his state by nature, is capable of so performing' his
parts and duties of moral, social, and political life as
to claim, in a human sense, the name of righteous*;
that there was in the heathen world some knowledge
of and practice of good. And this is proved, first,
by the universal reprobation attached to some acts
which did not directly injure society, for evil cannot
be recognised as evil by those to whom good is ut
terly strange; and secondly, the notions of virtue and
vice, the sense of praise and blame, the aims and
laws of the legislator, the theories of philosophy,
the rules of moralists, the exhortations of poets, all
prove the same point of the heathen world in ge
neral : while, turning to individuals, I do not see how
we can deny that one who had never even heard the
name of Christ was capable of acting bravely, kindly,
generously, and even, in a certain sense, piously. He
might worship and serve God according to the law
he had ; he might have had a true and loving know
ledge of God as far as He may be apprehended in
the material world ; and where there is any such
knowledge of God at all, there, in that same degree,
must there be some good : he might be, after a cer
tain fashion, unselfish ; he might have impulses and
habits, and perform acts which externally differ very
little from the fruits of the Spirit, though, viewed
internally, they differ most essentially ; perhaps in
many things his life would bear comparison with the
lives of those who call themselves Christian ; he had,

a On the application of the word righteous to man's works,
see Lect. V.

74 LECTURE III.

whether he listened to them or not, powers, feelings,
hopes, cravings, the tendency of which was to lead
him from what is utterly low and sensual to that
which cannot be called evil, except with reference
to the higher rule and standard of good which
Christ has revealed.

[Nor can we, I think, suppose that an act of cha
rity (for instance) performed by a heathen is abso
lutely displeasing to God in the same way in which
an act of murder is : not because the supposition is
contrary to our notions of God, for I shall not use
myself the argument I deny to others ; but because
the Spirit, though speaking of the whole world as
concluded under sin, does nevertheless draw a dis
tinction between one sort of men and the other sort
of men, between Abel, for instance, and Cain, be
tween every soul of man, Jew or Gentile, that
worketh good, and every soul of man that worketh
evil b.]

But in spite of all these tendencies and powers and
feelings, man by nature is so far lost, that he is not
capable of faith and turning unto God; nay, the
works which he does in the state of nature, shadows
and resemblances though they sometimes may be of
Christian holiness, have so far the nature of sin, in
that they spring from that selfishness and self-will
which is naturally engendered in every son of Adam,
and whereby Adam's sin is from day to day repro
duced. Their best actions are done not with a
view to God, but to self in some shape or other —

b Rom. ii. 9, 10.

LECTURE III. 75

to their happiness, dignity, or pleasure; their highest
motive is but a sense of praise and blame, of good
or bad desert as referred to self. They have in them
nothing of that element which makes the Christian's
life acceptable to God, adoption through Christ, and
the sanctification of the Holy Ghost ; and hence man
is, as well in his works as in his being, a child of
wrath, inasmuch as his life is only the energy of that
nature which the sin of Adam alienated from God :
thus too is he very far gone from original righteous
ness, and of his own nature inclined to evil ; for when
the Spirit left him at his fall, self with its passions,
the flesh with its lusts, rose up in the place of God,
and these were so strong within him, that those who
resisted them were thought very prodigies of virtue .
And yet not wholly lost, for there yet existed some
memories of what he had been, some cravings after
escape from what he was ; he still had such an ap
preciation and such a powrer of good, as springs from
its being conformable to reason or agreeable to self-
love ; and hence we conclude that the heathen man is
capable of that lower good which belongs to unassist
ed nature, but incapable of that true spiritual good
which arises from the indwelling and consists in the
energies of the Spirit.

And if there be to this some exceptions : if there
have even in heathen times and countries been some
who had feelings and views above their merely un-
regenerate nature, these do not disprove the rule,
for they are by the hypothesis rare and exceptional
cases ; and those wise men of old who seem to speak

76 LECTURE III.

with a wisdom above their own, may be not unrea
sonably supposed to have been enlightened from
above, to be God's servants in the midst of crooked
and perverse generations. It is true also that Scrip
ture tells us of men under the old dispensation who
were not outwardly partakers of the Christian cove
nant, and yet were able to please God, as fully as
any of the saints under the covenant of grace ; such
for instance were Enoch, Noah, Abraham, David,
Hezekiah ; such too, in his degree, was Cornelius :
these, it may be urged by some, were unregenerate
men, and yet were capable of works pleasing to God.
To this we answer, It is clearly laid down in Scrip
ture, that those who are in the flesh cannot please
God, that it is faith in Christ and the grace of the
Holy Spirit which can take us out of the flesh, and
put into our minds spiritual desires, good counsels,
and just works, and therefore these men must have
prospectively had faith ; and the Holy Spirit, which
is now poured out to all who seek, was before the
coming of Christ vouchsafed to these chosen ones
who, though seemingly unregenerate men, were ne
vertheless counted as sons of the adoption, heirs of
the promises.

Thus comprehensive and definite faith does not
halt between two opinions, whether man is by nature
good or bad, but holds firmly that for some things he
has good in him, though of a lower order ; and that,
on the other hand, not only are there in him a
number of evil passions which make him love what
is bad, but that for the higher sort of good he is by

LECTURE III. 77

nature not only incapacitated, but disinclined : while
she gratefully recognises the relics and shadows of
good, which kept those men who retained them in
a comparatively moral state, yet she recognises too
man's absolute need of a higher and better nature,
and no less gratefully acknowledges and accepts God's
mercy in the restoration through Christ.

So that this is not merely an abstract question; it
has a practical bearing on our salvation. The doc
trine of the corruption of our nature is the ground
work of our hopes of perfection, for it makes us feel
our need of, makes us accept our Saviour; while of
those who lose sight thereof, some so far deny Christ
as to look upon Him merely as an example, and
fancy that their highest religious perfection consists
in the development of their natural gifts and
powers, it may be after the pattern of Christian
virtues, but independent of the motions of that Holy
Spirit without Whom Christian virtue is but a name.
Others, again, deny Him wholly, and treat His ex
istence and history as a myth, without divine sanc
tion or authority. Their confidence in human nature
is such, that they think the spirit of man which is in
him, if its flight be but soaring and daring enough,
will of itself reach heaven ; that self, if devoutly
worshipped, will disclose itself as a god ; that each
individual is, by giving his soul free range, un
restricted by fear of God or man, to develope the
Divine particle which is by nature in him, and there
by to place himself above the weaknesses and cares
and follies of this life, and in perfect security for the

78 LECTURE III.

next, if next there be. According to this philosophy,
it is not Christianity, which is by its supernatural
powers to raise the whole race, as it spreads wider
and wider, and throws its roots deeper and deeper,
but the destinies of the world are to be worked out
to the fullest consummation by the progressive ex
pansion and concentration of human perfections.

Against these Babel-builders faith points to the in
herent corruption of human nature as revealed by
God, and illustrated in the pages of history no less
than in the facts of daily life. And that this cor
ruption is to be subdued by the self-dependent ef
forts of the individual soul, no one, whose con
science is true to him, can believe. Men may talk
of the pure calm happiness of the triumphant intel
lect; of the purity and repose of a soul self-possessed
in its philosophy ; of the elevating visions which rise
up from the contemplation of the beautiful and true;
of the delights of sympathy, and communion with
those whom these visions raise above the cares of
ordinary life ; but that which is of the flesh is flesh,
and he who sows to the flesh must in the end reap
corruption. By the side of the philosopher there
sits a figure who whispers the word "death" in his ear,
and all his visions vanish like a dream ; and even
while the dream lasts evil mingles with its purest and
best. The calm intellect is ruffled by pride ; in the
self-possessed soul there is the debasing element of
self-worship ; in the sympathies of kindred souls
there is absorbing selfishness, and oftentimes a proud
disregard of the laws of God and man; in their

LECTURE III. 79

beautiful and true there is but a lower sort of beauty
and truth : it is after all but a whitened sepulchre.

Nor is this corruption a thing from which the
world may free itself by the progressive advance
ment of generation after generation. Men may point
to the conquests of science, to the stores of know
ledge laid up by one generation for the next, and
ask what . bounds are to be set to this progress ;
but this progress is rather apparent than real ; they
cannot point to any one particular in which civiliza
tion has affected our inborn nature. When we look
at the heart of man, and take away the disguises in
which refinement and language have hidden the mo
tions and acts of sin ; when we see how actions seem
ingly different and called by different names do in
reality flow from the same fountain of evil, we are
obliged to confess that there is very little difference
between the philosopher and the savage, between
what man is now and what he was two thousand
years ago. Human life is not an abstraction which
can grow really better or purer, except so far as
those who are born into it and live in it are better
and purer. It is not that one generation begins
where the other left off; it may be so in knowledge,
in organisation, in the arts and appliances of life, but
it is not so with the secret springs of thought and
feeling with which each man is born into the world.
These are for the most part the same. Jealousy, the
love of power, of self, of pleasure, of money — are not
they as rife and strong in our towns, or ports, or
schools, as they were when the places where these

80 LECTURE 111.

stand were occupied by men who knew nothing of
civilised life? And what result can be produced by
time? If the world were to last millions of years, we
have no reason from analogy to suppose that the
living soul, which was last born into it, would, by
virtue of any moral or intellectual perfection of his
forefathers, inherit as his principle of being capa
cities different in kind from our own, any more than
we can conceive that by successive development of
the body man would in time arrive at the stature
of a giant or the beauty of an angel. Not that I
mean to say that in the outward developments of
the moral nature, the actual phases of moral life, no
improvement can take place ; such an assertion
would be contrary to the world's history. We can
discover a gradual though real improvement in the
tone and feeling of society in one generation as com
pared with another, as the reason discerns and ap
proves more and more of rational good. We can see
that there is less of actual evil in the daily lives of
men in one time and place as compared with ano
ther, just as we see a difference between children
brought up in a godly home and those for whom
such a home exists not. Man may again from si
milar though opposite causes sink lower in one age
or place than in another ; but this is not a difference
of nature, but the same nature acted upon somewhat
differently by the different circumstances and exam
ples whereby it is developed and moulded ; and this
has a limit - a man may rise or sink in the scale,
but he does but seldom destroy entirely the rational

LECTURE III. 81

good which is in him ; never can he eradicate the
evil ; he can neither rise nor sink beyond his
proper nature; he can become neither devil nor
angel.

Vain, then, are the theories and attempts of those
who think that man carries within himself his own
perfection, the seeds of a mighty present, a mightier
future. Proud dreamers ! foolish wisdom ! suicidal
self-worship ! for see how they frustrate the purposes
of God for them. He, knowing the secrets of their
hearts and the issues thereof, has provided for them
a moral growth by having their natural powers
clothed upon by the Spirit ; real holiness by having
their sinfulness and sin washed out by the blood of
Christ, their imperfect endeavours after perfection
made perfect by being clothed upon with His right
eousness. This is man's high destiny — to be set free
from the body of this death, to be made partakers of
the Divine nature: this is God's purpose for him,
at this His counsels aim, towards this His dispensa
tions work ; man turns from them and trusts to
himself: and what is the end thereof, even at the
best ? Does he succeed ? He may for a time act up
to his creed, he may struggle with himself and the
evil he cannot but feel to be within and around, he
may try to familiarise his soul with what seems to
him to be pure and good, but the evil will present
itself in spite of him ; he may try to fashion his life
on unselfish principles, but selfishness will come in
some shape or other ; he may flatter himself in that
he turns from the grosser forms of sin, but he does

G

82 LECTURE III.

not know the various disguises which sin as an
enchanter assumes : not the same to the philosopher
and the peasant ; nor to the man of cold blood, and
to him in whose veins passion flows as the very
principle of life ; not the same in all ages ; not the
same to the solitary of the desert and to the dweller
in cities ; but still the same in issue and result. He
may fancy that he may be as a good spirit among
men, that he can purify and elevate the world ; he
may enter on the task with as much singleness of
aim and honesty of heart as man is capable of, and
he may perhaps do something ; but it falls far short
of his own notions of what man should be, how in
finitely short of what God designs him to be ! He
finds that it is like fighting singlehanded against
giants ; the world, with its evil is too strong for him ;
he sinks into dreamy unrealities, a shadowy life, made
up of words and theories, or else wraps himself up in
an unsympathising communion with a chosen few ;
he has failed, and knows he has failed, but can de
vise no remedy. The Christian, on the other hand,
knows his weakness and his strength before he be
gins ; feeling the evil of his nature to be too strong
to be curbed by human will, already corrupted and
betrayed by it, he throws himself on Christ ; his
own inability is to him a pledge of power from
above : out of weakness springs forth strength ; out
of failure, triumph ; out of sin, so that it be not
wilful, springs righteousness ; out of deserved pun
ishment springs up undeserved reward.

Nor, again, as it seems to me, are they to be heard

LECTURE III. 83

who hold the corrupt ion of nature so exclusively as
to place the Christian and the man in unmixed and
unvarying antagonism ; for though it is maintained
by faith as a fundamental truth that no degree of
moral perfection attainable by man can raise him
above the world, no degree of intellectual develop
ment translate him to heaven, yet she does not in
the practical application of this doctrine confine her
self to a one-sided view. She does not think that
evil is to be acquiesced in as a necessary condition
of our life, or that we are to retire from the duties
and cares of that world in which evil reigns. She
does not teach men to say to God, ' I have no talent
to account for, Thou never gavest me any.' She
recognises the natural powers of man as a gift from
God : in their proper development and use, she sees
something that elevates even the heathen above what
is low aud sensual, and brings his soul more into
harmony with the higher and spiritual things for which
God designs him. She does not sympathise with that
view which makes it almost a part and duty of religion
to let the faculties of the mind and heart be neglected
and misused. She sees they have their part and office
even in the regenerate man, so that it be in strict
subordination to the mysteries, the precepts, the
powers of Christ and His Spirit. She sees that rea
son may be enlightened to discern and realise spi
ritual things, that desire may become hope, affections
deepen into charity. She gives earthly wisdom its
due, but does not make it a god or worship it. She
holds that the notion of man's real perfection being

G 2

84 LECTURE III.

the putting on of Christ in no way implies the
neglect of the rational man.

Nor does faith oppose progress, provided that it is
real and not chimerical ; that it does not claim to
do what it cannot do, nor hold out false hopes of
gathering figs from thorns and grapes from thistles.
Faith sees that progress in anything which tends
to elevate society by turning man's desires and
thoughts from what is merely animal and carnal is,
provided it does not deny or usurp religion's place
and functions, a progress in, or, at the least, towards
religion. She uses the arms and energies arising
from such progress in advancing the kingdom of
Christ. She holds out to art and science the right
hand of fellowship, and bids them God-speed :
surely art and science should embrace the offer
which faith makes them of rendering their work
more certain, more effectual, more enduring.

Man then is by nature at a distance from God, ca
pable only of the lower good which Adam in his
foolishness chose for himself and his children in lieu
of the higher good in which he was created ; and
further, he is under the dominion of that evil under
which Adam fell by obeying Satan unto disobe
dience. By God's mercy, however, the comparative
restoration of the higher good, and a comparative
freedom from evil is offered him, according to a
scheme of salvation ordained before he fell. How
is he to lay hold of it ? And here Christians
differ.

And herein, too, faith is comprehensive : she

LECTURE III. 85

firmly believes what the Spirit has told her, that no
man can come to Christ except the Father draw
him, but she cannot, on the other side, shut her
eyes to the correlative truth that man has something
to do in the matter, implied in the numberless ex
hortations and reproaches addressed in Scripture to
those to whom the gospel was preached : for ex
hortations and reproaches find no place where there
is no room for choice and action, no responsibility
for acceptance or rejection. She does not believe
that a man may safely live in the works of the flesh
in the notion that God will surely compel him to
come against his will : the call to change of heart,
which was the prelude to the gospel, implies that
there is a state of heart which is a preparation for
its acceptance, and that this change comes not upon
the will which has hardened itself against it. She
knows that the coming to Christ cannot be done by
man, that it is the work of the Spirit, but she gathers
from Scripture that the spirit of man must work with
the Spirit of God.

And this may be in two ways ; first, negatively :
man has a power of opposition and refusal, whether
this arises from the natural evil of his nature in
creased by self-indulgence, or is, as with the Jews,
a judicially inflicted blindness. Thus Christ came to
His own, and His own received Him not. Thus 'in
the marriage feast did the guests refuse the invita
tion of their King, who would have drawn them to
His table. Against this power of refusal he may
successfully struggle.

Next positively ; we have seen that man, lost as

86 LECTURE III.

he is. may still have rational yearnings, indistinct
and aimless though they be, for something better,
a certain dissatisfaction with what he is. Indeed,
the very purpose of God in giving the natural man
a law, and implanting the motions of conscience dis
cerning between good and evil, was not merely to
guide him in life, but to make him long for a better,
by giving him the knowledge of sin, as displeasing
to God and contrary to his own real happiness.
And when this has been increased and improved by
a life of such righteousness as is within a heathen's
reach, then is his soul in some sort ready to receive
the gracious and merciful inspirations of the Holy
Spirit, whereby, transmuting the rational into the
spiritual, He draws them to Christ, in whom they
will find what they have been longing for. We may
never forget that, even when the soul is moved to
desire something above itself, yet without God's
preventing grace it is not so really conscious of
the corruption of nature as to desire or even com
prehend the real remedy. Grace vouchsafed in
creases the desire by making sin appear still more
sinful, placing it before our eyes not as an outward
act, or even as an act of choice alone, but as the
natural fruit of the corrupt tree. The will too,
weakened by the very inherited and inherent evil
from which it longs to escape, is too weak and blind in
itself to accept the mercy of God in the shape in
which it is offered him : The natural man under-
standeth not the things of the Spirited therefore would
never conceive or understand the promises and pur
poses of God through Christ, unless God Himself

LECTURE III. 87

interpreted them to him by His Spirit : strong
desires perhaps were his, but these were impotent of
themselves, unless God had helped them. It is as
if a man were weary of earth, and God were to open
heaven to his view and give him wings to rise there
to ; as if a blind man were mourning hopelessly over
his blindness, and Christ had given him sight. Where
the Holy Spirit is present in power, there the human
will is able to receive the gospel ; where He is not,
there the human will is blind, and halt, and deaf.

And that good works only so far prepare a man
for salvation as to imply a vague desire to be saved,
may be seen from the fact that not only the " just,"
or " righteous," those who were waiting for the
kingdom of God, such as Simeon or Anna ; or those
who, according to their light, had sanctified their
unregenerate nature by keeping God and His will
in view, such as Cornelius ; not only were these
blessed with ears to hear and eyes to see, but even
those who had spent their substance in riotous
living, and yet when the strange fame was spread
abroad that a Messenger from heaven had come to
seek and save such as they were, felt themselves
moved by thoughts which had never before oc
curred to them, by wishes which had never before
stirred with them — these too had their wishes con
firmed and fulfilled by receiving the will and the
power to come to Him Who was to save them.

It seems, then, that we may conclude generally that
those who having nothing higher than natural reli
gion yet did try to listen to and live up to this, were

88 LECTURE III,

so far in a better condition than those who did not,
as to have a certain willingness to be saved, hindered
indeed by the lusts of the flesh and their captivity
to Satan. The mode too of salvation was indeed
still a stumblingblock : but to those who were or
are in earnest, these hindrances vanish before pre
venting grace, and they see spiritual things by the
light of the Spirit. If a man ivill (or rather wishes)
to keep my commandments, lie shall know of my doc
trine whether it be of God. To those that received
Him, He gave power to become the sons of God. Those
who, in the Jewish or Gentile world, either humbly
walking with their God, or obeying His call to re
pentance, received Christ, and saw in Him a messenger
from heaven, those were drawn to Him in His more
definite character of a Redeemer and Sacrifice.

But to look at this a little more closely, let us take
a man in whom human ability may be supposed to be
strongest; give him all the natural perfection and de
velopment which may raise him above the lower ap
petites and grosser forms of evil; let him have as true
and practical knowledge of God and his duties as may
be gathered from natural religion or his own moral
sense, — and such men have been found in nations
where the name of Christ has never been heard — so
far there would be chords in his soul which would
vibrate to the echoes of our Saviour's voice : the
news of the Prophet of Nazareth would have some
attraction for him : in as much as he had in some
sort loved truth, he would not wholly shrink from
the light: but how far will his human perfec-

LECTURE III. 89

tions lead such a one to the doctrine of the cross,
or even to the doctrine of such a Saviour as Christ ?
how could they recommend to him the notion that
his only real perfection, his only real wisdom, his
only real virtue, is to be found, not in working out
the tendencies and capacities of humanity, not in any
surpassing excellence of developed reason or taste,
but in sitting at the feet of the lowly Jesus, and
learning from Him the alphabet of knowledge, and
in being clothed upon with a righteousness not his
own ? Would not his natural perfections rather lead
him to think scorn of that religion which held them
so cheap, which contradicted all the principles of
his philosophy and the results of his experience,
unless the Holy Spirit, having led him to a deeper
insight into the realities of things present and to
come, had presented the gospel to him in such a
shape as he could hardly fail to accept ? Thus does
the Spirit graciously overrule the inability of human
nature.

Next, take a man in whom the inability of the
natural man may be supposed to be strongest, short
of the case of the reprobate man, whom we shall
consider presently ; one over whose reason and feel
ings the genial influences of religion, philosophy,
civilisation has never been shed, whose moral sense
has from childhood been blunted by familiarity with
notions and customs and deeds from which civilised
man shrinks. Even in such a man there may be
some relics of good ; some trace of his belonging
morally as well as physically to the same race as the

90 LECTURE ill.

sages and saints of old. His conscience need not at
all times and in all cases be dumb ; he may be
open to some of the tenderer influences of natural
affection, the absence of which is a sign of the re
probate mind, and which, even in its less exalted
form, has something in it of good ; there may
come over him now and then a feeling of self-
reproach ; a dim shadow of guilt and punishment
hanging over him ; and when Christ is preached to
him as able to deliver him from the body of this
death, would there not rise up a voice within him
which would say, "Go and be healed?" and if this
feeling were not present to him, would he not go
on his way without heeding the Saviour, just as a
man who is not thirsty passes by the fountain to
which others throng? But he would be little able
to obey this voice of his soul thus pleading for him
self, unless some strength greater than his own were
vouchsafed him from on high to overcome the
otherwise invincible obstacles which his evil lusts
and evil habits would oppose to his laying hold of
the offered Saviour.

But besides these two, there is one yet lower than
the lowest of them — the man of reprobate mind ; in
whom natural corruption has been worked out to its
fullest and deadliest issues, so that he is neither under
the influence of any instincts towards even his lower
good, nor of such principles of right and wrong as
obtain even in the heathen world ; the light that is
in him is darkness ; his reason approves sin as the
law of his being, his heart rejoices in it for its own

LECTURE III. 91

sake. On his ears naturally our Saviour's message
would fall as music on the ears of the deaf, or light
on the eyes of the blind. He would be unable and
unwilling to accept salvation, unless by some special
manifestation of wrath or mercy the Spirit roused
and changed him. And if we look to this cha
racter alone, we must say, that man is totally
corrupt, without any trace of his original creation,
utterly averse to being saved : and, if he is saved at
all, it must be by a special miracle of grace, with
out any even passive cooperation whatever on his
part ; while in the other two cases, we might in
the one be led to mistake the wish of a better life
for the will and power to be saved, the desire to
have a Saviour for the actual coming to Christ ;
and in the other, we might confound the absence of
the power and will with the entire absence of that
impatience of evil, those yearnings towards good,
which make a man in some sort ready, though not
able or willing, to receive Christ. [And we should
be wrong in so doing; for in either of these cases
there is, in different degrees, a willingness, or
rather a wish more or less vague, to be saved :
though, almost coincidently with it, the old man
would neutralise and make it ineffectual. In the
one, it would be pride of reason, in the other, the
lusts of the flesh ; so that unless the Holy Spirit
interposed to give them that power which by nature
they cannot have, the offer of Christ would be
made to them in vain.]

In our own age and country indeed this question

92 LECTURE III.

is scarcely a practical one, as far as regards the first
acceptance of Christ, inasmuch as the boy who as he
grows up comes to Christ, and accepts the mysteries
and duties of Christianity with his reason and his
will, has already in his baptism received the grace of
the Spirit for this especial purpose ; and as he im
proves or neglects this gift, as the Holy Spirit is
cherished or stifled, the spirit of the man has or has
not the desire and the will and the power to compre
hend and lay hold on gospel promises and privileges,
the doctrines and precepts of the Bible. To him
who submits himself to the Spirit, these doctrines
and precepts are as living waters ever springing up
unto everlasting life, a savour of life unto life:
to him who does despite to the Spirit, and follows
the will of the old man, these mysteries arid precepts
become, under the influence of his natural cor
ruption, mere formal unrealities, a savour of death
unto death ; he is ever being taught, ever learning,
and yet never coming to the knowledge of the
truth. Of ail miserable sights, there is none much
more so, than to -hear a deliberately wicked child
saying the Catechism or repeating chapters of the
Bible. It may possibly be of use to him in after
life ; at present it seems to me to be a taking God's
name in vain.

It is not however only with regard to our first ac
ceptance of the gospel that in consequence of the
corruption of our nature we need God's grace,
but throughout every stage, every moment of our
Christian life. For though we are delivered from

LECTURE III. 93

the powers of darkness, though we have with the
putting on of Christ received a new principle of spi
ritual life, jet side by side there still is the old man;
the infection of nature yet remains. There is the
same struggle between the law of the mind and law
of the members, but its issues are reversed : before,
the law of the members conquered by virtue of the
corruption of nature ; now, the law of the mind by
virtue of the power of the Spirit. It is not however
that having received in addition to our natural being
a Divine nature, we are henceforward able to act for
ourselves by the goodness and strength of our own
reason and feelings; it is not that our heart is so
changed that henceforward it naturally, vi natures,
chooses its highest good, not that our feet are so strong
that we can walk by ourselves, that our reason is so
clear that we can see with our own eyes; we need
fresh and continual supplies of grace from the Holy
Spirit, to strengthen, purify, enlighten us from day
to day and hour to hour.

On the other hand, we are so far restored by the
indwelling of the Spirit, as to be capable of and
bound to a spiritual life in faith and good works.
We are not to be content with continuing in sin, in
the notion that sin is the ordained life of man,
or that the more we sin the more will grace
abound ; nor to fancy that the proper actions
of the natural man are in themselves higher or
better than they were before, so as to become the
highest life of the Christian ; they are so only so far
higher as the Spirit dwells in and works in them,

94 LECTURE III.

and the Spirit leads us to a life far above the highest
and best of the heathen. We are to be perfect not
as man is perfect, for here love admits hatred to sit
beside her; but we are to be perfect as God is perfect,
not so much in degree as in kind. It is true that
when our natural tendencies towards mere human
good are under the guiding influence of the Spirit,
our wills, not by virtue of any inherent goodness or
holiness of their own, but by virtue of that indwelling
grace, do move in a new and heavenly direction. It
is true that our reason, desires, affections may have
an habitual, though not wholly unopposed, and there
fore riot sinless, impulse towards that spiritual good
in Christ to which the natural man is a stranger ; but
these habits, this second nature as it were, are not
formed by those faculties having by repeated ener
gies glided into powers of good, but they are merely
the results and energies of the expansive power of
that grace which has been at work in us and
on us. We are not so wholly restored as the Ro
manists hold, to be able to attain to spotless, sinless
perfection, not yet, as Wesley saysa, to be unable to
sin, but we are so far restored as not to be unable to
do anything but sin. We are still obliged to confess
ourselves miserable sinners, and to say there is no
health in us ; we are still so far gone from original
righteousness, that evil lusts and tempers, which the
original creation knew not, abide in us and burst
out into choice and action; but still those natural in
stincts whence man's natural good springs are not to

a See Magee's Atonement, vol. i. p. 163.

LECTURE III. 95

be quenched, but having been so far set free as to be
able to accept and follow the desires and counsels
which come from God, are to be yielded as servants
of God, His instruments of good, as before they
were servants of Satan, his instruments of iniquity.
Those who say we are so wholly restored in baptism
as to be able wholly to avoid sin, make shipwreck of
their faith on the quicksand of self-merit. Those
who say that we are so wholly restored by being
justified by Christ as not to be able to sin, have to
take heed lest they fall into spiritual pride, and en
danger the possession of that grace which is given
only to the humble. Those who say that we need
no restoration, will find in the end that their natural
powers will not, if the Bible be true, avail them.
Those who say we are not restored at all, are apt to
lay their actual sins to the account of their original
sin, and to take no care to rid themselves of those
habits which they think will be atoned for by
Christ, or to form that real holiness without which
no man can be saved. They are apt to forget that
Christ came not only to bear their sins, but also to
purify to Himself a peculiar people zealous of good
works — to purge ow* conscience from dead works to
serve the living God.

Nor, again, is there any indefiniteness here, ex
cept what arises from taking only one side of the
truth. The doctrine of the corruption of man, his
sinfulness in God's sight, his inability to help him
self or wholly to avoid sin, stands out as boldly
in the comprehensive faith of our Church as it

96 LECTURE III.

does to him who makes it the sum and substance
of Christian life. The doctrine that the re^ene-

o

rate Christian is able to do good works accept
able unto God, that the natural powers of man,
when directed and guided by the indwelling Spirit,
have something to do in that which Christ sets be
fore us as our work in life, is not less firmly and
practically held by our Church than it is by those
who wrest it to the heresy of human merit, and the
essential holiness and ability of a Christian man.
The man of comprehensive faith feels deeply his own
corruption, but he does not make it an excuse for
sinning, or a substitute for repentance : he feels that
he is a sinner, saved by Christ, as a brand from the
burning, but he feels likewise that, if he would in
the end be saved, he must conquer sin ; he feels
deeply and strongly too his call unto good works;
feels within him strongly his liberty to avoid sin
and to choose good, and his choice is made ;
but he knows whence his power comes: he feels
deeply his proneness to sin, his duty to turn from
it, but he knows too in whose strength his weak
ness is made strong, with what arms he must
fight against his spiritual foes. He feels bound to
bend all his natural capacities to good, but he knows
Who alone can enable him to do it. He knows too
that his best works cannot endure the severity of
God's judgment ; he knows that he must serve God,
but he knows too that his service must be unpro
fitable. He listens to the suggestions of his natural
love, benevolence, piety, bravery within, shame, ho-

LECTURE III. 97

nour, praise, blame without; to the promptings and
warnings of his natural conscience, knowing they
now speak to him with a higher authority than
his own; he turns from his natural evil — lusts of
the flesh, impulses of anger, revenge, jealousy, covet-
ousness and the like, knowing that God will make
a way for him to escape, if he will follow His will
and use His grace ; but in his aspirations and en
deavours after holiness, in the hour of temptation or
of doubt such a one takes not counsel of his reason
alone ; places not his reliance on any resolutions of
his own human will ; takes not his stand on his own
powers of resistance, but falls on his knees and
seeks fresh supplies of grace, without which he
knows that his counsels, his will, his resolutions, will
pass away as the morning dew before the mid-day
sun ; with which he knows his counsels will be made
sure, his will determined, his resolutions effectual;
Lord, save me, or I perish, is the watchword of his
vigil, the battle cry of his warfare. In all his
musings on his spiritual progress, in all his endea
vours to grow in faith, he looks not to his own
wisdom, or desires, or love of God, but holding his
reason ready to believe, his desires and his love
ready to obey, he looks up to the cross, with the
words, Lord, what must I do to be saved f

LECTURE IV.

ACTS xvi. part of 3Oth verse.
What must I do to be saved ?

JLHE question which the gaoler of Philippi thus
earnestly put to his prisoners is the first sign of a
change of heart in those to whom Christ has effectu
ally presented Himself as able to deliver them from
the body of this death: and though the answer to it
contains the sum and substance of practical reli
gion, yet it is a question which a man very sel
dom puts to himself; for it is one of the disadvan
tages of living in a Christian community, and in the
midst of Christian ordinances, that we are apt to
take it for granted that we are in the way of salva
tion, and therefore care not really to inquire what
we must do to be saved. It is a question indeed
which is frequently asked in tones of deepest agony
at the last, when a man who has all his life long
either cared nothing for his salvation or taken it for
granted, finds the vanities of this world passing away,
and the realities of the next forcing themselves
upon his soul with more and more distinctness : and

LECTURE IV. 99

therefore it is a question which every man would do
well to examine into while he is yet able to realise
in his life the answer which the Bible gives him ;
and besides this practical bearing, it is a question
which must be of the utmost importance in any
inquiry into the nature and extent of Christian faith ;
because to enable us to answer it truly is the proper
object of the teaching of the Apostles, of the preach
ing and ministrations of the Church in all ages — it
is this question which theologians and pastors have
alike to solve.

There are not wanting those who make this grave
matter of very little moment, by holding what they
call the universality of salvation : by which is meant,
that as Christ died for all men, alt men will be
saved. Indeed it would seem that this opinion is
held by many who do not openly profess it. if we
listen to the way in which it is generally assumed
that every one who departs this life passes at once
and without doubt to heaven. It may possibly be
from charity or sympathy that men thus follow their
dead in hope ; but if this hope is real, it must, I
think, imply that Scripture speaks of all men as
finally saved by Christ.

Others again restrict the possibility of salvation
to a chosen few, and contend that for these alone
the sacrifice of Christ is efficacious. And as each
party adduce Scripture to support their respective
positions, it is part of the scheme of these Lectures
to see what is the whole truth which these respective
tenets bring before us in parts.

H 2

100 LECTURE IV.

There are undoubtedly texts which speak of all
mankind as in some way or other benefited by
Christ's death. Such for instance are, As in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alivea.
As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men
to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the
free gift came upon all men unto justification of life^.
In both these passages the results of Adam's fall
and the results of Christ's triumph are represented
as coextensive. So again He is said to have tasted
death for every manc, and to have given Himself a
ransom for alld. While in many other passages the
form of expression evidently limits the benefits of
His sufferings to those who believe.

That Christ died for all mankind may be inter
preted to mean that the sacrifice of Christ will be
available to all who in heart and soul turn to Him :
or again, it may mean that salvation is now within
the grasp of all men, if they only according to God's
will accept it. But I am inclined to think that this
is more definitely and really expressed by saying,
that by the death of Christ the whole human race
was in part at least relieved from the spiritual curse
which Adam's disobedience brought upon it, and was
placed in a new relation to God. I confess, I cannot
read (for instance) of the world having been recon
ciled to Gode through Christ, without gathering

a i Cor. xv. 22. b Rom. v. 18. c Heb. ii. 9.

d i Tim. ii. 6. Cf. 2 Cor. v. 14, i^, where mention of the
death of Christ for all is immediately followed by a limitation to
those who live unto Him. So again in i Tim. iv. TO.

e 2 Cor. v. 19. Cf. Col. i. 20.

LECTURE IV. 101

from it something more than the all-sufficiency of
Christ's sacrifice, or the mere universal possibility of
salvation, though of course these must be included
in whatever interpretation we give to such passages :
it seems to me that it is not merely a possible but
an actual benefit which is spoken of as vouchsafed
to the world through Christ. And we may find
such a benefit in the fact which is revealed to us in
Scripture, that Christ's death abolished so much of
the consequences of Adam's sin as consisted in all
the world, save the Jews, being excluded from the
highest love of God and the highest energies of
spiritual life. Before our Saviour's death mankind,
as a race, were, with the exception of the chosen
people, enemies of God f, aliens to the covenant of
the promises — removed from all spiritual intercourse
with Him. God did not reveal Himself to them in
His personal relations ; He was the Lord of heaven
and earth and sky, summer and winter, seed time
and harvest ; but He was not the Father, the Guide,
the Pattern of life. They were left to grope their
way in the world, to feel after God with no better
guide than the instincts of their souls, and the wit
ness which He gave them of Himself in the things
which He had created, and in the workings of His
providence. God's spiritual gifts were out of their
reach — no rules for life save the few sparks which
they might strike from their own hearts — no form or
ceremonies of religion whereby they might approach
God. Their sacrifices had no meaning, nay, so small

f Rom. v. 10.

102 LECTURE IV.

was their knowledge of the true God, that they
were often offered to devils. They might be thirsty,
but no one said, "Come to the fountains" — they
might be hungry, but no manna of consolation fell
to them from heaven — no voice of prophecy to
lead the longing eye of hope over the present degra
dation to the future deliverance. The whole creation
was groaning and travailing till Christ came to do
for the whole world what the call of Abraham and
the gift of the law had done for the Jews. And
then God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself X The middle wall of partition was broken
down — the enmity was abolished h. Mankind fell
in Adam — mankind rises in Christ — and by His
death for all men, all men, being so far reconciled
to God, became friends instead of enemies ; no
longer strangers and aliens, but capable of becoming
fellow citizens with the saints and of the blessed
household of God ; capable of admission to as close
communion and intimate relations with God as the
elect people themselves. God disclosed Himself no
longer only in the sacrifices and oracles of the
law — not only in Jerusalem — but in Christ — in all
the world. The life and immortality which they
had dimly guessed at were brought to light, and
made as much realities and certainties as the life
which now is. God was henceforth the God of
the Gentiles as He had been of the Jews. They
were the objects of His loving will*. Thus in

£ 2 Cor. v. 19. h Eph. ii. 14, 15.

i 2 Pet. iii. 9.

LECTURE IV. 103

Abraham's seed were all the nations of the earth
blessed. Thus did they who sat in darkness see a
great light; thus did Christ become a light to
lighten the Gentiles, as well as the glory of His
people Israel. And as a result of mankind being so
far released from the curse of Adam's guilt as no
longer to be looked upon as enemies, the Holy
Spirit was poured out on all flesh k, so that He was
within the sphere of their prayers and wishes. They
might by His help become that which they could not
become before, His chosen people1. The apostles' pro
phetic office was addressed to them as much as to the
Jewsm, while it is observable, that previous to the
descent of the Holy Spirit the revelation was con
fined to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The
message of salvation which was now to be preached
throughout all the world11 was a real message, a
real offer to them, because they could now by the
help of the Holy Spirit accept it0. And thus did
Christ die for all men; firstly, because His love was
not confined to this or that portion of the human
race, but shone as widely as the sun itself; secondly,,
because the virtue of His death was so great that
it sufficed for all the wickedness of all mankind ;
thirdly, because He placed them in a new relation
to God ; and lastly, because by His death He pro
cured for them the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that
it was possible for any one by His grace to accept

k Acts ii. 17, and x. 45. 1 Eph. iii. 6.

m Rom. iii. 29, 30. 2 Tim. i. n. Rom. x. 12. Acts xxvi. 17, j 8.
n Luke xxiv. 47. ° Acts xi. 18. See also Acts xvi. 14.

104 LECTURE IV.

the salvation unto everlasting life. Thus is the
world saved through Christ.

Nor does the interpretation which makes it to
mean that all might be saved if they came to Christ,
really differ from that which makes it refer to the
outpouring of the Spirit ; for we have seen that no
one without the Holy Spirit can come to Him : and
therefore the universal possibility of salvation and
the universal gift of the Spirit are in reality different
ways of looking at the same result, except that the
former expresses only a possible, the latter an actual,
benefit resulting to all mankind from the death of
Christ; the actual though not complete reconcilia
tion of the world.

Comprehensive faith then takes no narrow view
of the purpose of God in sending His Son into the
world ; she believes that it was and is for all men ;
and this not only from any mere abstract notions of
what God's love must do ; [we rejoice indeed when
we find that Scripture confirms and recognises those
instinctive notions of the human heart which look
upon God's love as universal. For there certainly is
an instinct, though possibly a false one, which makes
one shrink from the doctrine of God's love working
only for a few as contrary to the view of that love
which we get alike from nature and from grace :
who can look upon the glorious sun, the blessings of
light, air, strength, reason, vouchsafed to all man
kind, who can read of the rain coming on the just
and unjust, and not feel that this love can neither
be partial nor sparing ? but still it is not on these

LECTURE IV. 105

that we rest our belief. In all revelations of God's
nature and will we know that those instincts of
natural religion which are revelations in matters of
duty cannot be relied upon :] it is not that all men
have the same abstract claim, that God would be
unjust if He gave to one what He denies to another ;
we know that the creature may not thus argue with
the Creator ; the clay must not thus reply to the
potter ; that the Gentile had no right to complain
of Jews being admitted while he himself was shut
out : but we rest on the Scripture witness that
Christ died for all ; we magnify God for His mercy
for all mankind, and call upon all the ends of the
earth to join with grateful hearts in praising His
redeeming love, as set forth in Scripture.

And yet again the same Scripture compels us to
fix our eyes in silent sadness on that smaller body
for whom alone Christ's sacrifice is in the highest
sense and most proper results effectual ; not for any
lack of God's love towards the many, but from their
blindness and perversity : on those few who for His
sake and through His sufferings are sanctified in
this life, and will be placed on His right hand in
the day of judgment : while of the world at large,
great as are the blessings which He procured for
them, it will, inasmuch as they have rejected God's
message, but increase their condemnation : and so,
surely, many of God's natural gifts are created for
and offered to all, and yet practically exist only for
some. And we can find the interpretation of this
limitation of God's universal mercy in the indolence,
and carelessness, and worldliness of mankind ; in the

106 LECTURE IV.

spiritual state of heathendom as well as Christendom,
Even while we believe that it was for all that Christ
died, we cannot but see that there are thousands
upon thousands who have never laid hold on the hope
which springs from, or rather is in Christ ; thousands
upon thousands who have never heard of His name ;
to whom those mysteries of God revealed, Christ
crucified, the Holy Ghost poured out, which are to us
as household words, are utterly unknown. And were
it safe for faith to pass the bounds which God has
marked out for her, and to speculate on the possible
future of the myriads to whom from age to age the
Gospel has never been preached, we could scarcely
say " nay" to a pious hope, or even a pious belief,
that even these having been so far reconciled by
Him may in Him likewise find a Saviour; that He
will be to them, as to us, the Lamb which taketh
away their sins ; to them, as to us, wisdom, and sanc-
tification, and righteousness, and redemption. Who
shall venture to say that God turns his face from
these to save whom Christ died ? that His eye sees
not their trials? that His ears are closed to their
prayers ? Who shall say that the life of the savage,
ignorant and perhaps superstitious though it may
be, is not acceptable unto God through Christ?
or when one in the solitude of his desert, with
no other temple than those mountains on which
our Saviour was wont to commune with His
Father, lifts up his heart to God in rude thanks
giving for the blessings of his natural life, or for
preservation from some danger, or some special
blessing vouchsafed to him or his, who shall say

LECTURE IV. 107

that Christ does not present this outpouring be
fore the Christian throne of grace? who shall say,
when he prays God to pardon some sin which even
his uninformed moral sense has pointed out to him,
that these sighings of a contrite heart are but
wasted on the desert air? When a sinner, by some
mysterious providence, which men call chance, is
moved to leave his sin, and to be as righteous as he
may be, who shall deny, not indeed that he, but
that Christ, will save his soul alive? Who shall say
that the pulses of human love in any breast are un
marked by Him without whose knowledge not a
sparrow falls to the ground ? When one in his
forest hut, or amid the busier scenes of a heathen
town, looks on mankind with a loving eye ; cherishes
the wife of his bosom, the children of his flesh,
the sick or needy, with an affection, only less deep
than that of the best and holiest of Christians,
because it lacks the Divine element of Christian
love, the love of Christ, who shall say that he is
not owned by Him, even though he knows Him
not? When the ruler of an heathen nation observes
right and judgment, defends the cause of the father
less and widow, sees that such as are in need and
necessity have right ; who shall say that he will not
be placed on the right hand in the day of judgment,
when those professing Christians who have sacrificed
thousands and thousands to their ambition or pride
or selfishness will be cast out? When a heathen-
suffers for what he believes to be, and even, in its
degree, is righteousness' sake ; or when he bears
bravely and patiently the sorrows or evils which

108 LECTURE IV.

God has pleased to send him, who shall say that his
sufferings do not in Christ's eye take the shape of the
cross ? who shall say that his soul is not sustained
and comforted by the Holy Spirit, whose motions
he thus unwittingly obeys? who shall deny that he,
living up to the light which he hath, will be judged by
that light, and not by the light which he hath not?
who shall deny that he will, not for his own right
eousness, but by Christ's death and for His merits^
be numbered with the saints ? And surely the same
may be said of and hoped for those who even in
Christendom itself are ignorantly in deadly error,
not by wilful rejection of the truth, but rather by
circumstances of their birth, or by the cunning of
designing teachers, whose spiritual dominion is more
or less founded on the spiritual ignorance of the
people.

But it may be said, If so, what is the need of
preaching the Gospel to the heathen ? what ad
vantage hath the Christian ? Much every way. Be
cause to them are committed the oracles of God ;
because they enjoy that soul-stirring knowledge;
those grace-giving dispensations which the heathen
has not ; that stream which to the heathen creates
an oasis here and there, gladdens the whole of
Christendom. It is still true that the Gentiles
need a preacher to bring to their knowledge those
counsels of God which are working invisibly for
them. Supposing our wishes and hopes to be true,
that the (humanly speaking) good heathen will be
owned by Christ, still how few in each nation are
these compared with the number that might have

LECTURE IV. 109

been turned unto God, had the pure Bible light
shone upon them ; had their hearts been moved by
the actual preaching of the Gospel ; by a deep
sense of their sin, and of their need of a Saviour;
by the wonderful history of God's love and Christ's
sufferings ; by certain hope of forgiveness and
salvation ; by the dispensations of the Holy
Spirit in His Church ; in short, by all that living
word which we know has the power of moving
men's souls and turning them to God. But, after
all, these thoughts, like all other speculations on
God's counsels and man's future, which are not di
rectly revealed, savour too much of the ques
tion, Are there few saved f Suffice it for us to
know, that we and those with whom our lot is cast
have been called, and that it is part of our calling
to spread that knowledge, and to repeat that calling,
which we ourselves have received. We cannot how
ever turn from these myriads of immortal souls
without a prayer that God would of his infi
nite mercy so mould their hearts by the secret
agencies of His Holy Spirit that they may work
out their salvation in Christ, as we in our light, so
they in their darkness : not without a prayer too that
our hearts may be effectually moved to minister to
them of those spiritual blessings to which (humanly
speaking) they have as good a right as ourselves,
seeing that we are all sinners in the sight of God,
equally in need of a Saviour.

But when we turn our eyes from the heathen to
the civilised world lying in the mid-day light of the
Gospel, and see how that world is occupied with it-

110 LECTURE IV.

self, careless of Christianity, as if it were still a
heathen world ; how it is still fast bound in the
misery and sin of the flesh, still doing the works
and receiving the wages of evil ; what a fearful
significance is given to texts of Scripture which
speak of Christ's sacrifice as available only for a few;
such as, Many are called, but few are chosen. Look
at the actual facts of the Christian world. Many
are called to an actual knowledge of Christ ; many
do know Him, have known Him from childhood ;
think of Him, speak of Him as their Redeemer.
Few are working out their salvation ; few are living
up to the doctrines they profess, to the mysteries
they receive, to the love which they express in
words. No barren question this, no idle speculation ;
it is the serious lesson suggested by our Saviour's
practical answer, Strive to enter in. See every
where new forms of error, some of them even re
pulsive to reason and morality, establishing them
selves on some negation or perversion of God's truth,
and assuming to themselves the name and form and
office of churches, leading men away from Christ
even while they profess to lead them to Him. See
many men waxing weary of religious differences, and
learning to believe nothing. See men persuading
themselves that the broad road is the narrow way.
See social evils every where defying faith to remove
them — every where declaimed against, every where
submitted to ; the world, and the principles and
fashions of the world, every where triumphant.
Walk through our streets, and see, not the cheer
ful face and light heart of industry and piety,

LECTURE IV. Ill

but covetousuess rushing about with wild and dis
ordered step See vice in the very light of day
proclaiming herself tolerated, and even welcomed in
a Christian city. Go into our villages and hear
deadly sins spoken of as trifling occurrences ; watch
shame fading away from the fresh countenances of
the young, and shamelessness taking its place. What
clergyman is there who could not in his own min
istrations find the meaning of the words, Many are
called, but few are chosen f See our schools ; those
nurseries and mimicries of after-life, and mark there
how a generous sense of duty to God for Christ's
sake ; how the pious lessons of Christian faith and
duty, the noble principles of Christian honour, are
sapped and destroyed by temptation, or ridicule, or
example. Take even this very place, where religion
and learning are designed to go hand and hand in
forming minds according to the image of God by
the power of grace ; see the numberless opportuni
ties and means of growing in grace — the numberless
pious influences, past and present, by which we are
surrounded: — it were needless for me to point out
to you the things which, even in this place, furnish
us with a commentary on the words, Many are
called, but few are chosen. No idle question, then,
no barren speculation — but one fraught with the
deepest interest to ourselves, and the deepest results
to us as a Church and nation — one which strikes
harshly on many a chord of anxious thought in all
who care for their own or their brethren's salvation.
To the mere theologian, indeed, it is a topic which
can be handled as coolly as any abstract point of theo-

LECTURE IV.

logy or morals ; but by him on whom the Bible has
done its work it cannot be approached without feel
ings of the deepest anxiety, like that of a city which
is hanging on the word of the physician, who is to say
whether the plague is among them or not.

And yet, even when we fix our eyes sadly on the
few who are in the narrow way, we cannot but see,
with deep gratitude to God, that even the many who
in the civilised world practically refuse their calling
are somewhat benefited by Christ. What has for
such an one placed the possibility of salvation,
even yet within his reach ? what has ordained the
means of grace and the word of God, which from
time to time thrust themselves on him ? what the
possibility of repentance, the efficacy of repentance,
if he repents, but the sacrifice of Christ ? through
whom is it that, if he has wandered, he may yet re
turn ; and if he does, he will be accepted ? What
has done all this for him but the death of Christ on
the cross for all mankind ? Whence does consolation
spring up in the heart of a mother who is sighing
over the wasted youth, the abused talents, the de
spised grace, the unchristian life of a wayward son,
but from the knowledge that Christ died to save
him ; from the trust that He will yet so order his
way that he may not perish for whom Christ died ?

The question of predestination will be considered
presently ; but though it is suggested by the point
immediately before us, yet it has no direct bearing
upon it; for whether the few chosen are predestinate
or no, it is equally true that Christ's sacrifice, offered
for all the world, and bringing some spiritual bless-

LECTURE IV. 113

ings to all, will in the end be practically confined to
comparatively few; equally true that He died for
all, and yet only for some?. Each truth may and
has been used as a source of pure contemplation, as
well as a practical lesson by that faith which takes
in the whole counsel of God — may be, and has been,
and is, a source of error to those who take each by
itself as if it were the whole.

And comprehensive faith, as a necessary conse
quence of her acceptance of both, shrinks from the
exaggeration of each — on the one hand, from that
misuse of Scripture language and misconception
of God's purpose1*, which would restrict Christ's
death, by an absolute decree of the Almighty, to a
chosen few, without any regard to human conduct ;
shutting out those whose hearts and lives bear wit
ness to their desire to be saved ; making God turn a
deaf ear to the sighings and groanings of their con
trite and believing heart, unless they be among that
chosen few ; while those who are, or rather who
suppose themselves to be, of this chosen number,
may go on in reckless wickedness, relying on their
natural sinful ness as an excuse for sin, confident that
their sins are pardoned, and themselves accepted in
Christ.

Comprehensive faith, too, on the other hand, turns
from the presumptuous philanthropy which ventures
to extend the sacrifice of Christ to all; even to those
who are walking not after the Spirit, but after the
flesh; and even to those who rely and trust in them-

P See i Tim. iv. 10. q See Acts xvii. 30. i Tim. ii. 4.

I

114 LECTURE IV.

selves, and count the blood of the covenant an un
holy, or at the least a needless thing.

Nor does the doctrine that Christ died for all men
give authority to the notion, which either tacitly or
openly has obtained very commonly in the religious
so called liberality of the day, that it matters not
what a man's creed is, provided he is living up to the
convictions of his own reason and heart, and that his
life be pure and holy. We have seen in the last
Lecture that the terms pure and holy can only be
applied to the life of a natural man in a lower and
secondary sense, because there is nothing better or
holier within his reach; and therefore those who hold
this notion are begging the question when they as
sume that the life of any man who cannot or will not
believe in the truth when set before him can be pure
and holy ; for surely the power of submitting the
reason to the word, and the practical submission
thereof, is an element and a test of that spiritual
state which is acceptable to God through Christ.
And such texts as Every one that worketh righteous
ness is accepted of Him, do not prove the point in
question. Even in the case of the heathen these
words may hold good only in the sense in which they
were applied to Cornelius; in respect of his capacity
for admission to Christian privileges, rather than of
being saved where those privileges are not given ;
but still it may be true, as we have seen above, of
the ignorant heathen,, (God grant that it may be so,)
that he will be saved, not by the powerless creed
which he professes, but by the Divine application
of Christ's sacrifice, if he perform according to his

LECTURE IV. 115

knowledge and ability those conditions of the
Christian covenant which are necessary for the
Christian ; faith readily and gladly confesses that this
would only be in analogy with the general known
purposes and will of God towards reconciled man :
but this evidently is a very different case from that
of the man who, living in a Christian country, in
the full light of the Gospel, adds to the ignorance
of Christ, which he has in common with the hea
then, that from which the heathen is free, the posi
tive rejection or neglect of Him through pride of
intellect and love of self; even though that very
pride of intellect and love of self may keep him
from the grosser forms of sin, or urge him to recog
nised acts of holiness. I confess it seems clear to
me that it is both logically and theologically wrong
to argue from the possible salvation of the ignorant
heathen to the certain safety of the obstinate infidel.
But while the Church can find in human conduct
as we see it in the world, a sufficient explana
tion of the doctrine contained in the words, many are
called, but few are chosen, without either limiting or
extending God's mercy otherwise than it is set forth
in Holy Writ ; yet she is not blind to the fact, that
the doctrine of predestination or preordaining in
God's counsels, whether it is viewed as a result of
the arbitrary will of the Omnipotent, or as the fore
knowledge of the Omniscient, is stated in Scripture
in terms which it is impossible to explain away.
Nor need we shrink from the question, or approach
it in any feeling of fear, lest the real happiness of

i 2

116 LECTURE IV.

mankind, or real practical holiness, can be injured
by the receiving it, and teaching it as God has given
it us: we are certain that whatever God has given us
is designed for the spiritual good, not of a few, but
of the whole world; and therefore we may search out
this question in the full conviction that the doctrine
will be found to be life-giving — the danger is, lest it
be allowed to overthrow or overshadow other truths,
which in their turn and place are equally parts of
God's truth, equally portions of the bread which
cometh down from heaven.

The doctrine itself is indeed but sketched in dim
and mysterious outlines1*, such as we might expect
in a subject of such profound mystery ; neither is it
possible for man, either by random guesses or by
any philosophical anatomy of abstract intelligences,
to fill up the outline thus left unfinished, of course
for some wise end, by the Spirit of God — God's will
is our wisdom — if we shut our eyes to what He tells
us, we are foolishly losing something which He de
signed for our good — if we define where He has not
defined, or speak where He is silent, then are we
equally frustrating and preventing His wise and mer
ciful designs towards us.

It seems to me to be agreeable to the general
analogies of Scripture to look upon the doctrine
to have been thus mysteriously set forth rather to
exalt the glory of God in our salvation8, than to
give any practical guidance to men ; though of
course it may be used for this purpose, provided
that the matter be handled as it is in Scripture.

r See Eph. i 9. * Eph. i. 5. 6.

LECTURE IV. 117

It was meant to show, or at all events it may be
viewed as showing, that the whole scheme and
work of our redemption in its design and execu
tion, in its principles and details, in all its relations,
past, present, or future, were at once comprehended,
designed, ordained, as it were, by a single glance, a
single act of the will (to use human expressions)
of Him, for whom time has no existence ; to whom
what is, humanly speaking, undone is as if it were
done ; things that are not, as if they were ; whose
counsels, though they seem in execution to spread
over generation after generation, and to be worked
out by a long succession of men and events, did ne
vertheless spring into actual being at once, perfect,
and complete, designed and accomplished : and yet
are continually sustained and developed throughout
all ages by the Almighty power. Nor is this a mere
fanciful speculation : we are expressly told, that to
God one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day* — and of course this is but a
human way of putting before us the great fact
that time belongs to earth, and not to heaven ; to
man, and not to God — that it is an accident of hu
man existence. It has always seemed to me that a
great truth was embodied in that fanciful tale of the
East, wherein we read of a king who merely dipped
his head into water and took it out again in a single
moment of time, and yet in that space had gone
through a strange variety of adventures for many
years.

' 2 Pet. iii. 8.

118 LECTURE IV.

At all events, whatever may have been God's pur
pose in revealing it, man's part is to receive it in
reverent contemplation, as a subject wherein God has
been pleased to allow him a slight glance of His
Omnipotence and Omniscience ; not as a subject for
curious speculation, which can end in nothing but
increasing the difficulties of the subject, by judging
of it on human experience and principles; far less
was it designed to be made by theological dog
matism the basis of a whole system of religion, to
which all other truths were, if necessary, to be sacri
ficed. And as to the point alluded to above, whe
ther this predestination is a result of the arbitrary
will or of the absolute foreknowledge of God, it seems
to me to be one of those things which will not be
solved to us till we know even as we are known. It
is in vain for us to attempt to balance one Divine
energy against another, even by the aid of the most
successful results of metaphysical researches. Who
shall distinguish between the will and the know
ledge of such a Being as God ? who shall say where
one begins or the other ends? who shall say that
they are not identical, even though they present
themselves to human comprehension as distinct and
divisible?

Be this however as it may, it does not directly
affect our actions, or give any direct answer to the
question, What must we do to be saved f for it is clear
from Scripture, that however certain the doctrine
of predestination may be, yet in some way or other,
incomprehensible perhaps to us, it does not interfere

LECTURE IV. 119

with the free agency and consequent responsibility
of man ; for if it be held to the contrary, that man
is so predestinated that his spiritual present and
future is in no way affected by his own choice or
actions, then no small portion of Scripture is made
of no meaning. It may perhaps be true that prac
tical exhortations to live worthily of our Christian
vocation, as a matter of propriety, might still find
place, even supposing that our destiny were not af
fected thereby; but what becomes of all exhortations
and directions to which hope and fear are attached
as motives? All passages wherein exertion, or repent
ance, or holiness, are spoken of as necessary for one
who would be saved ; all calls to repentance in or
der to salvation ; all revelations of a future judg
ment, of rewarding men hereafter according to their
works here, are mere forms and pretences. The
apostolic writers cannot have been inspired by the
Spirit, if that to which they give the prominent
place in Scripture is a mere delusion ; and if they
were not inspired, the doctrine of predestination has
no ground to stand upon. It would be endless to
go through the confusion and absurdity which a one
sided view on this question casts upon Scripture.
If certain men are saved whatever they do, the an
swer to the question, What must we do to be saved f
should have been, not Repent and be baptized, but
" Do nothing — you are either saved already, or you
never can be saved." What sort of exhortation is
it to say, " Do this which you cannot do ?" " Take
care to keep that which you cannot lose ?" " Seek

120 LECTURE IV.

for that which you already have?" " Seek for that
which you can never find?" " Strive to enter in
where your striving can make no difference one
way or the other?" The two doctrines of predes
tination and free will must either both be true to
gether, (which is the position I am contending for,)
or one must be false ; and there cannot, I think, be
any doubt that the passages which testify to our
hopes of salvation being affected by our choice and
conduct are more numerous, direct, arid clear, than
those which favour predestination : if either is to be
explained away (which God forbid), it certainly can
not be the responsibility of man.

Again, the promises of God must of course be co
extensive with his predestinated will, whatever this
may be; and these promises are, in almost every
case, made expressly to depend on the performance
of certain conditions by those to whom they are
given : whence it is clear, that regard to human
conduct is not incompatible with predestination ;
otherwise the promises, which are the expression
thereof, would be absolute and unconditional, not
contingent and conditional.

Nor, on the other hand, can we fail to give some
definite value and reality to the passages which are
relied on in proof of this doctrine. It is true that
some of them may be considered as expressing only
a national, and not a personal appointment to or
exclusion from spiritual privileges, as the argument
in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans,
founded on the history of Esau and Jacob u ; or as
u See also Acts ii. 39.

LECTURE IV. 121

generally signifying God's supreme prerogative to
do what He thought best with His creatures, such
as the passage in the same chapter, He hath
mercy on whom He will haw mercy, and whom He
will He hardeneth. But still there remain a suffi
cient number of passagesx in which men are spoken
of as definitely and personally appointed or preor
dained to life eternal, to justify our Church in giving
this doctrine a place among the revealed truths of
God's word ; especially as she takes care to premise
that these preordained counsels are secret to us, and
depend, in some sort or other, on the further gift of
grace to those who are the objects of them ; and we
know that the gift of grace by God, and the accept
ance thereof by man, does depend on the state of
the soul : God, for instance, we are told, resisteth
the proud, and giveth grace unto the humble; and this
may be the way in which men may frustrate or fulfil
the merciful purposes of God for them : for we
must not forget that all human holiness arises from
the submission of our wills to the grace of God, and
that resistance to that grace is the refusal of, or the
falling away from, that spiritual state of acceptance,
wherein we are to make our catting and election sure.
That the human will can thus withstand the grace
of God, is clear from the fact, that the Jews are
spoken of as having rejected the counsel of God
against themselves?. Wherefore, when we read in
Scripture of men being preordained or appointed

x Acts ii. 47. xiii. 48. 2 Thess. ii. r.-j.
y Luke vii. 30. Acts xiii. 46.

LECTURE IV.

for the wrath of God z, though our hearts may well
sink within us, yet surely may they draw comfort
from the conviction which Scripture likewise gives
us, that this terrible sentence is not pronounced,
except we by our want of lively obedient faith bring
it on ourselves. There is comfort in the thought,
that we perish not except with the consent and
agency of our own wills ; there is fear also when we
reflect how readily and how often those wills choose
the evil and refuse the good.

Nor does it in any way solve the difficulty, to say
that man is not predestinated to everlasting life, or
everlasting punishment, without any respect had to
his holiness or his wickedness ; but that the one
sort are predestinated to be wicked, to prefer dark
ness to light, evil to good, while the others are pre
ordained to be holy ; for the Jews, on whom this
spiritual blindness is represented as falling by God's
will, were once confessedly the beloved people of
Goda, the elect heirs of the promise; so much so that
the offer of salvation was not made to the Gentiles
till the Jews had refused to retain their former pre
ordained privilege of being the witnesses and mes
sengers of God's truth to the surrounding world; and
they were brought to this state of rejection in conse
quence of their own neglect of their inheritance, and
the abuse of the privileges which as heirs they en
joyed. St. Paul, too, in the first chapter of the Epistle
to the Romans, traces the downward progress of the
Gentile world, which ended in their being given
z i Pet. ii. 8. Jude 4. a Deut. vii. 6.

LECTURE IV.

over to a reprobate mind, as proceeding from the
choice of men, and not from the will of God, except
as a consequence of that choice5, and rather against
the lights and aids from without and within, which
His will had provided for them ; this shows that
man neither begins nor proceeds in wickedness
without his own consent and agency. Hence no
one (such is the weakness of man) is so holy, that
he may without doubt assure himself that he is
predestinated to final salvation; for he that thinketh
he stand eth has most cause to fear lest he fall ; no
one (so great is the mercy of God and the power of
grace), no one who has one spark of the Spirit yet
unquenched, one yearning after forgiveness, need
fear that he is by any Divine decree excluded from
the possibility of repentance c. Our Church does
but embody the sense, not of this or that text alone,
but of all Scripture, when she says, that God " desir-
eth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he
may turn from his wickedness and live."

Nor is there any greater inconsistency between
the predestinate counsels of God and the free agency
of man than there is between those passages of
Scripture which declare God's purposes to be fixed
and unchangeable — His gifts without repentance
or shadow of turning — and those passages which as
sign to prayer the power of turning away God's
wrath or winning God's favour for nations and indi
viduals ; or those passages which speak of promises
•

b Rom. i. 26. For this cause, &c.

c James iv. 8. 2 Pet. iii. 9.

124 LECTURE IV.

and privileges being withdrawn from some persons
and transferred to others — I will call them my people
which were not my people, and her beloved which was
not beloved^. God's promises are doubtless without
repentance ; there is in Him no shadow of turning:
He is ever the same : He does not withdraw His
gifts from men, but men reject them, and sometimes
sin themselves into a state past the possibility of re
ceiving them ; and then of course His promises,
though living and unchanged in themselves, are a dead
letter to such men. Thus prayer is effectual as being
part of the act of seeking after and receiving some
thing which we do not know whether it is God's
pleasure to give us, but which we shall surely receive
if it is His pleasure. Lack of prayer argues either
a lack of the wish to have God's gifts, or a disbelief
that God can or that He will grant them ; earnest
prayer implies exactly the contrary. Thus it is that
God's gifts are poured forth in answer to prayer;
thus it is that the effectual fervent prayer of a right
eous man availeth much in bringing to pass God's
purposes of pardon and blessing.

But we must not attempt to explain, or even to
illustrate, what is inexplicable, and to which nothing
that we can know or conceive presents any real
analogy ; but neither does the impossibility of expla
nation make it uncertain. Predestination is one
Divine truth certainly and definitely revealed in
Scripture ; the free agency and responsibility of man
is another. We know not how this can be ; but we
d Rom. ix. 25.

LECTURE IV. 125

do know that it is. We must let each perform
its function in conforming us to the image of Christ.
The practical result of what we do know is, that
we should walk as those whom God has chosen:
worthily of our calling, leaving low and sensual
things, and rising to the high and spiritual ; heartily,
as those who are assured that the Lord will finish
the work He has begun in us ; carefully, fearfully,
watchfully, lest after all we should frustrate His pur
pose for us. It is certain, that if a man be walking
with Christ with an honest heart, if his will and
conscience do not bear witness against his profession,
he may find much comfort in the thought that he is
not walking in his own strength and wisdom, but
according to the wisdom and strength and will of
the Omnipotent and Omniscient. Nor need any one
who has unhappily fallen into sin fall still lower into
desperation or wretchlessness of unclean living, by the
notion that he is ordained to die, as long as he sees
around him God's mercies and warnings and dispen
sations of grace, whereby Christ is seeking to recall
the sheep that is lost.

It is certain, too, that all of us in this Church and
nation are called ; called in Baptism ; called in the
Church ; called by preaching ; called by all the va
rious ministries of grace : it has now become almost
part of our birthright that we are Christians by call
ing ; our very names signify as much : what we are
we know ; what we may be we know ; what we shall
be we know not till the day when the chosen of
God are acknowledged as His. Then will the secret

126 LECTURE IV.

counsels of God stand forth, and also the secret
hearts and wills of men. Then will it be seen how
the many reprobate have worked their own destruc
tion, even out of the very things which were sent
for their salvation. It will be seen too how God's
foreknowledge worked on and with the wills of the
few chosen, and framed their willing souls and mind
to conformity to Him. For the coming of the time
when all this will be known we must perforce wait
God's good pleasure.

And the doctrine of predestination may raise our
eyes to the God of all power and might, the God of
heaven and earth, the same Almighty Being from
whom all things sprung, and in whom all things have
their being, as the Author and Giver of our salvation.
And thus it is that definite faith in God the Father
as the Author of our salvation is necessary, as well as
in Christ ; for only those who believe in this His will
can expect it to work in them and on them. Thus
we are said in Scripture to be justified by God the
Father®: that is, released from our sins, and recon
ciled to Him, whose love sent the only-begotten Son
into the world for this end. And this love, shining
forth as it does, not only out of the Book of grace,
the Scripture, but out of the book of nature also,
some have thought to be the sole and sufficient
cause of our salvation ; as if no sacrifice of Christ
was needed, before Almighty love, by its own sole
energies, took wretched man out of his wretched
ness, and gave him happiness here and hereafter:
e Rom. viii.33. 2 Cor. v. 19.

LECTURE IV. 127

and hence men think to trust to the unlimited
love and mercy of God for salvation. " If God so
loved the world," say they, " He surely will not cast
out any whom He thus has loved." Doubtless it
might have been so ; but Scripture tells us that God,
of His own good will, has been pleased to bind up
His saving love for man to the sacrifice of Christ,
and our acceptance of it. Why this is we know not,
nor does it concern us to know : we seem to gain
some faint glimmering of it when we catch sight of
His justice in the words, that He might be just, and
the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus; but it is
wiser, surely, to receive and wonder than to rea
son before receiving. Suffice it to say, that so far
from the preordained mercy of God being excluded
or lessened by the sacrifice of Christ, it is rather
heightened and glorified thereby ; for this very love
of God is most fully set forth and realised in the
scheme of Redemption by Christ, far more fully than
it is by those who trust to God's mercy without
Christ; to them God's love, in spiritual things at
least, must be an abstract term conceived of in the
visions of hope as that which will embrace them
when this life is over and another begins. We do
not merely forecast God's love in the far off future,
but we realise it to ourselves in His will for us in
the past and present. We know that He has loved
our souls ; we know how and when : we know that
God commendeth His love towards us, in that while
we were yet sinners Christ died for us ; that in Him
He loved the world ; that in Him His love is mani-

128 LECTURE IV.

fested towards us. To God's mercy and love then do
we look as the first cause, as of all things, so of our
salvation, but not as excluding the sacrifice of Christ;
to the preordaining will of this His love, though not
excluding the will and agency of man.

Again, while the doctrine of predestination leads
our hearts to ascribe our salvation to God the Father,
and to see His will ever working therein ; so with
reference to our part in the work are we said to be
justified f or saved by the Holy Spirit; according to
His mercy hath He saved us by — the renewing of the
Holy Spirit ; because it is that Holy Spirit who is
(so to speak) the minister of His predestinating will :
He it is who gives us both effectual repentance and
lively faith : He it is by whom, sent to us by God
as the Spirit of faith or repentance, our wills, free to
err, are turned with gentle violence to Christ, pre
pared for the effectual reception of Him ; through
whose invisible operation in the water of baptism
the merits of Christ are by faith applied to our souls
on our acceptance of Him : He it is who works in
us, moving us with good desires, convincing us of
sin, purging us and presenting us to Christ ; giving
us knowledge of the things that are freely given us
by Christ ; shedding the love of God abroad in our
hearts; sealing us with Christ's seal as accepted and
beloved ; creating us anew unto good works, teaching
us in our ignorant minds, guiding us in our faltering
steps, enlightening us in our blindness, strengthening
us in our weakness, comforting us in our troubles ;

f i Cor. vi. ii.

LECTURE IV. 129

giving us the spirit of prayer, interpreting for us our
utterances. And this will shew us how faith in the
existence and operation of the Holy Spirit is neces
sary for those who would be saved ; for he who re
jects the Holy Spirit cannot hope to be partaker of
the gift of that Spirit, without which no one can
even take the first step in the narrow path which
leadeth to everlasting life. Thus he who blasphemes
and denies the Holy Ghost does virtually and practi
cally cut himself off from the possibility of salvation;
he can never hope to be forgiven, either in this world
or in the world to come. It is as if a man in a laby
rinth were to cut the clue which is to guide him out.
And as the predestinating will of God the Father, and
the sanctifying operation of God the Holy Ghost,
having their separate yet indivisible functions in our
redemption, are neither superseded nor controlled
by our free agency, so neither do they in any way
trench upon or interfere with the sacrifice of Christ
as the sole meritorious cause of our Salvation. Who
is it that most fully realises God's eternal purposes
for him, and his calling in Christ, who is it that most
completely apprehends the preconceived message, and
experiences the preordained working of the Holy
Spirit in his soul, but the man who most fully un
derstands and lays to heart, in its height and length
and breadth, the great Gospel revelation, that the
Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the pro
mise by faith of JESUS CHRIST might be given to
them that believe?

K

LECTURE V.

GALATIANS in. 22.

Bid the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that
the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given
to them that believe.

1 HE way in which salvation is offered to man,
though full of Divinest wisdom and mercy, is the
very last which would have been devised by human
reason, or acceptable to human pride. Ambition
has ever been a principle of our nature, though in
most men it has been checked by that indolence
and love of pleasure which is a direct consequence
of the fall. Even when earth was more like heaven
than it can ever be again, the temptation by which
Satan chose to assail Eve was the hope of becoming
as gods, knowing good and evil ; while the Bible
history of the tower of Babel, reflected as it is in
the myth of the rebel giants, seems to point to
man's desire to raise himself above his present state,
and his belief that he had the power of setting at
nought the will of Him who had made him what,
and placed him where, he is. And we may perhaps
find traces of the same notion in the yearnings and
strivings of the higher order of minds in old times,

LECTURE V. 131

to pass from the visible world into the invisible,
which stood to them in the place of, and seemed to
them to be, a higher and more spiritual state,

If then salvation had been set before men as
something to be won by their own will and strength,
those of more energetic temper would have found no
slight attraction in the notion of freeing themselves
by their own moral or mental energies from the evil
which was around and within ; it would have flattered
man to feel himself the conqueror and to have fought
his own way to the promised land. When too we
look at the trials and duties of the Christian's course
as marked out in the Bible, it seems hard to strip him
of his laurels ; it seems hard that one who has to fight
so hard should after all have to receive the crown
as an undeserved gift from the hand of another.
Thus man's pride ever rebels against confessing him
self to be what he is.

[Now to these ambitious hopes and energies the
doctrine of justification by faith only is directly
opposed ; we are not allowed the triumph — it is of
faith, not of works, lest any man should boast — the
glory is reserved for God alone — and well it is for us
that it is so ; that Gocl knows man better than he
does himself. Salvation is given us in the only way
in which it could be ours ; we have seen in the last
Lecture how those who think to work out their
own salvation find it leads them to a disappointment
which is oftentimes the very shadow of despair.]

It is a natural result of this inherent pride and
ambition, that to all those who have sought to adapt

K 2

LECTURE V.

Christianity to human views and aims, the doctrine
of justification by faith only has always been a stum
bling block. Indeed for those many ages of the
Church's history in which Christianity was trans
formed to the likeness of the world, this great Gospel
truth was almost forgotten. And on the other hand,
it was a natural reaction from its long neglect, that
others who saw its scriptural nature, and its adapta
tion to the real state and real wants of man, gave it
so prominent a place in their religious system, as to
exclude other truths no less scriptural and necessary,
and indeed absolutely implied in it, but which
seemed to them to encroach upon or even to con
tradict the truth to which they had exclusively con
fined their attention and teaching. [And no small
portion of the Christian world were only too glad to
accept a view which they could easily use to the
purposes of self-deception.

For in most men the principle of ambition was
checked by the love of pleasure and dislike of exer
tion which made them shrink from the toils and
sacrifice through which even heathen philosophy
made the road to heaven lie ; and thence when the
doctrine of justification by faith was set forth, many
were willing enough so to understand it as if it
superseded good works, and thus enabled them to
enjoy all that earth holds out for the present, and to
hope for all that heaven promises for the future.
This Christianity was all the more acceptable to them
in that it did not entail upon them the labours and
energies which Scripture requires.

LECTURE V. 133

And thus there were two opposite errors — the
one flattering human pride, the other favouring
human self-indulgence ; and yet each is founded on
that scripture which is meant to destroy both pride
and sin ; each points to texts of Scripture as its
warrant, while comprehensive faith receives and
applies them all.]

Nor is this a point of mere abstract theology ; for
our Church does but say the very truth when she
calls the doctrine of justification by faith only most
wholesome and very full of comfort ; what it takes
from human pride it adds to human hope : but it is
of the utmost importance to our spiritual state that
this doctrine should not be so misused as to be a
cloak for continuing in wilful or unrepented sin : for
then instead of hope it will bring forth fear, death
instead of life.

I must first of all lay before you some distinctions
to which I wish to call your attention in the con
sideration of this very difficult subject. We must
distinguish between the act of God by Christ, and
the state of man resulting from that act. Justifica
tion or remission of sinsa may be looked upon, firstly,
as the act of the Judge of all the earth ; wherein, the

a The term Justification in its scriptural and theological sense
is so nearly equivalent to the remission of sins for Christ's sake,
that it may be laid down that when a man is spoken of as justi
fied, it is meant that his sins are forgiven, and whenever a man
is said to have obtained remission of sins, there justification must
have taken place ; and as the latter term conveys of itself a definite
notion, which is scarcely the case with the other, I shall not un-
frequently use the term Remission of sins, where I might have
used with propriety the term Justification.

134 LECTURE V.

Bufferings of Christ being accepted in place of the
penalty we owe, He is pleased to pronounce us judi
cially (so to speak) free from the punishment of sin,
and to account us righteous ; imputing to us that
guiltlessness which in fact only exists in the person
of Him who has thus borne our punishment ; and
secondly, it may be viewed as the state of guiltlessness
wherein a man in Christ is thus placed by God ; the
state of forgiveness and remission of sins; the being
accounted righteous by virtue of the righteousness
of Christ — and these must be distinguished from
each other. Again, we must distinguish between the
act of God's pardoning mercy, of Christ's redeeming
love, and our application of it to ourselves ; and
further, between that which is thus vouchsafed to us,
and the instruments and channels whereby it is con
veyed to and accepted by us.

With regard to the act of God's pardoning mercy,
each man's sins were atoned for at once and for ever
when Christ died on the cross. Christ's act whereby
our pardon is obtained is not a thing of to-day, or
yesterday, or to-morrow ; it has been and is per
formed once for all : and therefore in this sense our
justification is already accomplished even before we
are born into the world ; and God's love for us, Christ's
death for us, sinners though we be, nay, because we
are sinners, stands forth in the Christian scheme
prior to any acceptance or even seeking on our part.

Our pardon is prepared, the price has been paid,
the sentence has gone forth — but this does not ex
clude the acceptance thereof on our part ; each per-

LECTURE V. 135

son must, so to say, sue it out, and apply the sacri
fice of Christ to his own individual soul. And this
application of Christ's merits to the cleansing away
our sin, and reconciling us with God, this laying hold
of the pardon of our sinful ness is not performed
once for all ; it may, it must, be repeated throughout
our life, although it is not in all its details and
effects always exactly the same, but differs somewhat
according to the state and need of individuals*

When we first accept God's offer of justification
we are thereby placed in new relations with God ;
we become what we never were before, sinless
in His sight, His children by adoption, and heirs of
the kingdom of heaven : and for this there never can
be any claim, or worthiness, or meetness in any of
the sons of the fall : all mankind are in this point
equal : all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Every one is concluded under sin, so that the
gift of life might come through Jesus Christ, and
from Him only. It is a free act of the mercy and
grace of God in pity towards the sinful ness and
hopelessness of those beings whom He had once
created in his own likeness ; not, indeed, so free
but that it is purchased for us by the blood of
Christ, but still perfectly free as far as regards our
selves, or any thing we have done or can do. God's
mercy has provided for us an ark not of man's build
ing ; and for those who take refuge therein, the flood
of sin which overwhelms the rest of the world does
but bear them higher and nearer to heaven ; their
sins are atoned for in Christ's person on the cross i

136 LECTURE V.

His righteousness is imputed to them in consequence
of their believing in and trusting to Him and His
work for them.

But while Scripture thus places before us the re
mission of our sins and the imputation of righteous
ness not our own as the free gift of God to faith, with
out any works or merit of our own, so does it like
wise perpetually place before us also sanctification as
implied in the effectual application of Christ's merits
to our souls. It is, surely, impossible to read the
Bible without seeing that a Christian from the very
moment of his becoming so is to be holy ; that though
sinners, we are to be saints ; that every one who
nameth the name of Christ is to depart from iniquity.
Nor is this spoken of merely as if it were vicarious
holiness consisting in the imputation of Christ's right
eousness to us, though that is the crown and perfection
of our spiritual state ; but in that personal holiness
which consists in the work of the Holy Spirit within
us : for we cannot too constantly remember that any
holiness we have in ourselves is simply the submis
sion of our wills to that most holy Power of good ;
and this connection between justification and sancti
fication may be shown in more ways than one.

[First, In the benefits of Christ's sacrifice applied
to our souls by faith, there is not only remission, but
also renovation. In justification the penalty of Adam's
sin is remitted to us ; and part of that penalty was the
withdrawal of the Spirit and the consequent inability
to do good works pleasing unto God in the highest
sense ; and hence our punishment having been borne

LECTURE V. 137

by Christ, this power of good works is restored to us,
not by any change in our natural powers themselves,
but by the gift of the Spirit to direct and sanctify
them ; and thus it is not, like faith, the instrument
whereby we lay hold on Christ's mercy, but part of
the benefit received. Hence we do not make void
the law through faith ; yea, we rather establish the
law: for if good works be, as is generally held, the
necessary result and fruits of faith, then must there
be implied in the spiritual state produced by faith
the gift of the Spirit, without which good works are
impossible. And the same connection is implied in
the expression purifying their hearts by faith b, for
this purification is the work of the Holy Spirit.
And again the victory over the world ascribed by
St. John to Faith has the same bearing on this
question, for this victory over the world is nothing
more or less than that practical holiness of life which
flows from the gift of the same Spirit.

And again, such texts as If any man be in
Christ, he is a new creature, show us that an in-
pouring of the Spirit as the power of holiness accom
panies the imputation of Christ's righteousness in
our justification, though it is distinct and different
from it ; that the gift of the Spirit and the remission
of sins are two parts of the same gift : if any man
be in Jesus he must be justified, nor can any man be
justified without being in Jesus : they are, logically
speaking, convertible terms, and imply each other ;
and surely this new creation does not consist in a new
b Acts xv. 9.

138 LECTURE V.

view of ourselves, our conditions, our destinies, our
salvation, but in a real power of spiritual good within
us, issuing in actual counsels and acts of life, in actual
turning from sin, in the actual possession of the
Christian graces : If Christ be in us the Spirit is
life because of (or rather through, <$td) righteousness:
and hence in the Epistle to the Corinthians sanctifi-
cation and righteousness are said to be the results of
our being in Christ Jesus ; and in the same Epistle
sanctification and justification are spoken of in the
same breath ; and again in the Epistle to the He
brews we are said to be sanctified through the offer
ing of the body of Jesus Christ, and the blood of the
covenant a.

And though there are passages which speak of
imputed righteousness as the only result of faith,
yet also are there passages which speak of holiness
as if it were the sole result of our Saviour's coming
upon earth : but in neither passage does the mention
of the one exclude the other, which is similarly set
forth elsewhere.]

Nor does this presence of the Spirit of righteous
ness in our souls as a living and governing prin
ciple of action in any way trench on the office of faith,
or on the being accounted righteous by faith only.
We need the righteousness of Christ no less than we
should if there were no mention of personal holiness
in the Bible ; for this personal holiness, does not
atone for our sins, nor cover them, nor procure us

a i Cor. i. 30 : vi. 1 1 . Heb. x. i o and 29.

LECTURE V. 139

salvation, nor reconcile us to God : this is done by
Christ's righteousness alone. Jt is, moreover, as I have
before observed, something received by faith as
part of that which is given us for Christ's sake, not
set up against it as if it were an antagonistic and
independent instrument of salvation.

Comprehensive faith, then, holds each without
denying the other ; she finds that both are definitely
and clearly stated in Scripture, and therefore she does
not venture to sacrifice either to the other : and it is
from contrasting these two results of the sacrifice of
Christ, instead of combining them, that some have
held that justification does make us personally right
eous, others that it does not : the truth being that
imputed righteousness and personal righteousness are
so inseparably connected, that when one takes place
the other takes place also ; so sometimes one, some
times the other is represented as the result of the
cause common to both, the sacrifice of Christ, and
our personal application thereof by faith.

[In order to understand this more clearly we must
distinguish between the scriptural use of the word
righteous when used to signify the being looked upon
as innocent, in what may be called its forensic sense,
and when used to denote either the state of the un-
regenerate man who was living up to the light and
law which he had, or that comparative degree of holi
ness which man by the Holy Spirit is able to attain
unto, and to which, perhaps, we should hardly have
ventured to apply the term had not Scripture so ap
plied it ; even though it also declares that there is

140 LECTURE V.

none righteous, no, not oneb. In the first sense
Christ's holiness is only imputed to us ; in the second,
it is proposed to us as an example, and up to a cer
tain degree communicated to us by the gift and
working of the Spirit ; inasmuch as we are in our
hearts and lives to be conformed to the image and
stature of Christ, to follow him, though with faltering
steps and at an immeasurable distance.

Nor does the imputed righteousness of Christ
exhaust the Scripture idea of righteous as necessary
for salvation, nor are they to be confounded together
in such a way as to allow any one to argue that he
is righteous in the one sense because he fancies him
self to be righteous in the other. It must have been
some such notion that St. John is warning us against
when he says, Be not deceived, he that doeth righteous
ness is righteous c. It may be said that the one implies
the other. So it does, if it is real : but it is safest to
use Scripture language, and Scripture certainly does
use the term in both senses : righteousness was im
puted to Abraham in the first sense, and it is attri
buted directly to Lot in the second.]

Nor must I omit again to state distinctly that,
after all, this personal holiness is no work of man's
self, no result of any power or tendency of our own,
but of grace turning our powers and tendencies
into a new direction, and by a new path. It is
simply Christ abiding in us by His Spirit, and using
our wills and faculties, so far as we yield them to
Him, as the instruments whereby He works and

b Rom. iii. 10. c i John iii. 7.

LECTURE V. 141

manifests Himself. So that He is not only our right
eousness in the sense of our being accounted that
which we are not and cannot be, unstained by sin,
but also because whatever holiness we may have is
His, or rather, He in us. He is our sanctification as
well as our justification : He is our wisdom, because
if we are wise unto salvation it is He that is wise in
us, and not we ourselves.

And though all holiness within us is God's work
and not man's, and thus has in it somewhat of the
Divine life, yet it in no wise supersedes or supplies
the place of that complete clothing of the whole
Christian man, body, soul, and spirit, by Christ's su
perhuman and yet human righteousness ; that stain
less wedding robe which is prepared for His ser
vants, when their bodies have been purified by death,
their souls set free from earthly lusts, their spirits
wholly clothed upon by the Spirit of God : when they
will be summoned to the marriage supper of the Lamb,
when His bride, the Church, shall be received into
her place in heaven. As long as we live here, as
long as we are men on earth, this holiness of ours,
as far as it is in us, must be a very imperfect and
comparative acceptance of what is in itself perfect
and final ; for our sanctification consists of the in-
pouring of the Spirit, and submission of our wills ;
the former is the positive act of God through faith,
ever accompanying the real application of the merits
of Christ ; the latter, alas ! is in our power to do
or not to do, as we choose ; for Scripture tells the
sad secret of the falling away of the children of God :
that we are able to quench the Spirit, by being en-

142 LECTURE V.

ticed of our own lasts into following our fleshly
wills. Nor need it be said in how many cases the
combined deceitfulness of sin and of our hearts
makes it needful for us to use heartily the confes
sion which the Church wisely and truly puts into
our mouths, " We have left undone those things which
we ought to have done, and have done those things
which we ought not to have done, and there is no
health in us." How earnestly, even while we strive
to let our light shine before men to the glory of Cod,
we must look forward to the time when the light, as
well as the darkness which is in us, will be absorbed
and lost in the glories of imputed righteousness.

Hence, from the imperfection of our most perfect en
deavours, arises the necessity for what may be called
the daily application of the merits of Christ to our
selves ; a daily taking advantage of the act of justi
fication, of the pardon once pronounced over us by
God for Christ's sake ; so that we may be released
from the burden of those sins which day by day we
have grievously committed, in thought^ word, and
deed, against His Divine Majesty. We must know
that we have no health in us : but thanks be to
God, our sickness need not be unto death ; our
Physician is ever at hand to heal us ; we have not
to cast about for an acceptable way of making our
peace with God ; we have not to say, " how shall we
ascend into heaven, or how shall we descend into
the deep?" but we have to feel our sin, our need of
a Saviour; to turn from our sin, at least in heart
and will, and to believe on Him, and what He has
done for us ; and our past sins, though they were as

LECTURE V. 143

scarlet, will become white as snow. Oh wonderful
wisdom of Cod, in thus seeing the secret needs of
man's heart ! oh wonderful love of the Father ! oh
wonderful virtue of the blood which was shed ! oh
wonderful power of faith !

This need of continual cleansing, this laying hold
of His all-sufficient sacrifice, by this power of
faith, is what our Church teaches us to seek in her
several prayers and sacraments. This is what she
teaches us to seek in the daily confession of our
sins : this too, when she puts into our mouth the
prayer, " that we may obtain remission of our sins,
and all other benefits of His passion" — " that we,
worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our
wretchedness, may obtain of the God of all mercy
perfect remission and forgiveness." This is what
she teaches us when His ministers in her proclaim
to all that truly repent, that He pardoneth and ab-
solveth them. It is this scriptural comfort that she
teaches us to seek, when she puts before our souls
the Scripture truth, that " if any man sin, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the ricjht-
eous" — " the blood of Jesus Christ cleans eth from all
sin." In the midst of the condemnation which
speaks to us from our works, it is a wholesome doc
trine truly and full of comfort, that if we believe
with our hearts on the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall
be saved. It is no small blessing to us, that in our
Church we are led to feel the necessity and the cer
tainty of obtaining day by day, by daily energies of
faith, the pardon of the sins we have committed.

144 LECTURE V.

And thus life goes on ; the Christian pilgrims clay
by day seeking for and obtaining mercy from Him in
whom their faith unceasingly and unchangeably rests,
till at the last we shall stand before the judgment-
seat. What shall we then do? Shall we point to
our lives — to what we have done — to what we have
suffered ? Shall we say that our good deeds, if fairly
weighed, will be found to counterbalance the evil ?
No. surely ; unless we have put on Christ, we shall
be speechless ; our works will make us dumb ; and
if we have put Him on, we shall turn in haste from
what we were on earth, to what He was and is for
us. We shall look to Him, and say, " Lord, Thou
hast saved me." We shall point to the cross, and
say, we trust to Him who died thereon ; that there
our sins are atoned for, our pardon won. Who shall
lay any thing to the charge of those who thus put
their trust in Him, round whose unrighteousness His
righteousness is thrown, as a robe of spotless light,
such as no fuller on earth can whiten? Our Judge
— nay, He is our advocate, our sacrifice — sinless
Himself, He makes us sinless in Him. Shall the
adversary, the accuser, lift up his voice against us?
Nay, but he sees that we have our pardon in our
hands ; he knows that we do not trust to our works,
wherein he could easily find enough to condemn us;
he knows that the sacrifice of Christ has long been
accepted by God as a full, perfect, and sufficient satis
faction for the sins of the whole world, and specially
of those who believe.

But while our Church does thus scripturally set

LECTURE V. 145

forth and hold most unreservedly the great evan
gelical doctrine of justification by faith only, neither
does she lose sight of the equally scriptural fact,
that holiness and repentance have both of them
definite places assigned to them by God in the
work of our salvation — places from which man has
not the power, and ought not to have the wish, to
cast them down. Repentance necessarily waits on
justification, whether it be viewed as the change of
heart which chooses God instead of mammon; that
abhorrence of and sorrow for sin, without which a
man cannot effectually turn to Christ ; or the con
tinual progressive renewal which follows on such
an effectual turning. And the relations between
repentance and faith before conversion are suffici
ently marked in Scripture, where it is repent and
believe, not believe and repent. There are even
passages which speak of repentance as alone neces
sary to salvation, without one word of belief or faith,
just as there are texts which speak of faith without
one word of repentance ; but the latter no more
exclude repentance, than the former exclude faith ;
in fact, they imply each other. The immediate re
sult of true repentance is acceptance of our Saviour
by faith, just as true faith implies previous repent
ance d; while the one or the other is brought for
ward according to circumstances of time, place, or
person. Thus when the Jews, on the day of Pen
tecost, asked St. Peter, What shall we do to be saved f
St. Peter answers them, Repent and be baptized;

d See Acts xx. 21. Mark i. 15.
I-

146 LECTURE V.

because on that repentance, on the removal, that is,
of the hardness of heart, of the false views of sal
vation, which had so long made them shut their
minds against the evidently Divine character and
mission of Christ, it would follow, as a matter of
course, that they would believe on Him, whom they
had ignorantly crucified. While in another case, that
of the gaoler at^Philippi, he had, by his very anxiety
to receive the religion for the sake of which the
Apostles were in prison, manifested repentance, and
therefore St. Paul answers the same question by,
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" without one word
of repentance; while it is clear, from the history
of Simon Magus, that the words, Believe, and thou
shalt be saved, would not in every case express all
that was necessary for justification ; for we read
that Simon Magus believed, as his very sin proves
that he did ; and yet St. Peter tells him that he was
in the bond of iniquity. And sometimes neither
faith nor repentance are mentioned, as in the case
of St. Paul : here repentance and faith had evidently
taken possession of his mind at his conversion, and
hence, by God's command, it was said to him, "^ me,
and be baptized, and wash away thy sins." Baptism
alone was in his case required to complete the work
which faith and repentance had begun : but surely
we should be wrong in arguing from this passage,
that baptism alone was necessary to salvation, though
the argument is as fair and conclusive in one case
as the other.

Repentance, then, occupies a place in the work of

LECTURE V. 147

making the merits of Christ available to us ; and the
system which excludes the one is as unscriptural as
that which excludes the other ; not that repentance
occupies the same place as faith — there is no such
thing as justifying or saving repentance, even in the
sense in which there is justifying or saving faith.

But there are other grounds drawn directly from
Scripture, why we are not warranted in thinking
of repentance as of no importance to faith, much
less in speaking of it, as it has been spoken of —
for our trust in Christ must of course be wholly
founded on His promises, — we cannot trust further
than His promises extend — and His promises do
not extend to unrepented sin, and therefore without
repentance our trust in Christ is impossible. And
hence from the moment of a believer's acceptance of
Christ and the benefits of His Passion, he has need
of daily repentance — not as a substitute for faith,
but as the handmaid thereof — firstly, because there
must be daily progress, daily renewal, daily trans
formation, continual mortifying the old man, daily
advancement in Christian graces. In religion, non
progredi est regredi — the pale shades of night must
be hourly giving way to the bright tints of morning
— the bright tints of morning must ever be bright
ening into the brightness of the mid-day sun ; the
powers of the old man must daily be clothed upon
by the Christ within. And, secondly, because, unless
we repent of and confess our sins, we shall fail daily
to apply by faith the merits of Christ to ourselves to
do away with those sins, which, if allowed to accu-

L 2

148 LECTURE V.

inulate, will create a darkness in our souls whereby
we shall not be able to see them, much less to lay
them on Christ's head. It is often from this neglect
of daily sins, this hiding them, as it were, in a vague
notion of the general sinfulness of mankind, that
men allow sin to regain dominion over them. There
is no more fatal sign of a man's spiritual state, no
more hardening process, than when a man sins at
first without caring for it, then without knowing it.
If we say that we have no need of daily repentance,
no daily sins to confess, we not only deceive our
selves, but we destroy ourselves, for we shut our
selves out from the fountains of mercy.

And, lest the doctrine of justification by faith only
should become a snare to men's souls, by making
them careless about holiness, Scripture sets before
us most plainly and unceasingly a doctrine of good
works; assigning to them not indeed the same office
as faith, but still a very important one. We have
already seen that holiness is rather a result than a
cause of our being accounted righteous ; it is true,
indeed, that the so called good works of the heathen
may, as we have seen in a former Lecture f, make
him more ready to receive the Gospel ; the instru
ment that is tuned, though but rudely, obeys the
master's touch more readily than that in which there
is nothing but discord ; and the history of Cornelius
teaches us that they may in this way be said to
move God to present for our acceptance by faith the
knowledge of a Saviour: but good works in no sense
f See Lecture III.

LECTURE V. 149

make a man more worthy or more meet for this un
deserved mercy of God ; and it is clear from many
passages, as well as many instances in Scripture,
that they are not even the necessary antecedents
of justification. We have seen, too, that faith is the
instrument whereby certain gifts are conveyed to
the soul, and that the power of good works, without
which of course good works cannot exist, is part of
the gift so conveyed, part of that gift which is given
us so freely, that we have clone nothing, can do no
thing, to earn or deserve it. In ourselves as men,
in ourselves even as Christians, we have no title to
forgiveness. In Christ we have through faith, for thus
God has promised it us. Nor does this doctrine of good
works involve any notion of establishing our own
righteousness. It is not by any works or deservings of
our own that the stain is washed out, and the punish
ment averted ; even in our best works, inasmuch as
they fall short of perfect obedience, we are accursed";
and all mankind are on the same footing, as far as merit
is concerned, sinner and saint alike: all this will suf
fice to show that faith and good works in no way in
terfere with each other. Nor again does it take away
from the comfortableness of the doctrine of justifica
tion — for Scripture does not lay down any absolute
standard or degree of holiness — this must differ, will
differ in different men, according to temperaments,
opportunities, position, temptations : hence no man
may on these grounds judge his brother in respect
of his final acceptance ; God is the sole judge ; what
is at the least required of all is an honest struggle
? Gal. iii. 10.

150 LECTURE V.

against sin and temptation ; but, it is a sad misuse
of the comfort contained in the doctrine of faith, so
to set it forth as to make willing sinners comfortable
in their sin.

The notion of the merit of good works has probably
arisen from those texts which excite us to good works
by putting before us the reward attached to them ;
for though the notion of merit is excluded, not so that
of reward. There are very many passages of Scrip
ture which speak of salvation, everlasting life, the
crown of glory, as the reward, though not the conse
quence of good works, vouchsafed to faith through the
free mercy of God for the sake of the sufferings of
Christ. It cannot be denied that works of piety and
charity are represented in Scripture as winning God's
favour for those who believe ; and it is surely doing
great injustice to the doctrine of justification by
faith only, to speak of it as if it destroyed the
teaching of these passages ; if either one or the
other must be given up, for one passage which
speaks of justification by faith only, many may be
brought which speak of or imply the absolute neces
sity of good works ; but they stand together in the
word of God, as they were combined by His wisdom.

And this has a practical bearing on our views of
life, and our salvation. There is doubtless danger lest
those whose will and opportunities, inspired and im
proved by grace, lead them to a life of active pietyh,
should trust to it rather than to Christ, and so make
shipwreck of their faith. So cunning, so watchful,
so persevering, is our enemy, that he seeks to turn
h Whitehall Sermons, page 172.

LECTURE V. 151

what should have been for our good into an occasion
of falling. But the devil does not tempt us on one
side only ; there is a danger, put forward quite as
prominently and frequently in Scripture, lest those
who have opportunities vouchsafed to them should
he as barren fig-trees, — leaves, and no fruit ; words,
and no works ; — it is true, too, that the more a man
abounds in good works, the greater will be the as
surance with which, grounding himself on the ex
press counsels of God, he looks forward to the re
compense of the reward ; but still, as far as any no
tion of desert goes, he is no wise in any different
position from him who comes to Christ when the
heat of the day is over. Salvation is the gift of God
to both alike.

Nor does it make much difference whether the
doctrine of human deserving be modified by adding,
that good works have indeed in themselves no merit,
but have been made meritorious by Christ's death.
Here is the same confusion between reward and
merit ; it is indeed by Christ's death that reward is
attached to them; but this blessing, undeserved as
it is, rather excludes than implies the notion of merit,
which is of right.

Those then alike fall short of the comprehensive
faith of the Bible and of our Church, who, on the
one hand, hold or teach that good works are, either
in themselves or by virtue of Christ's death, merito
rious ; and those who, on the other, speak of good
works as if they were absorbed or rendered unneces
sary by faith, or as if they were a presumptuous in-

152 LECTURE V.

terference with the work and glory of Christ ; each
loses sight of the truth which the other exclusively
maintains. The Bible is our sure guide, and it is
sufficient for me to remind you of the great practical
lesson which, amid all the theological strifes on jus
tification and sane tin* cation, faith and works, is ever
in the Bible impressed on those who wish to make
their calling and election sure, that while they put
all their trust in Christ by faith, none in themselves,
or in what they do, they nevertheless be careful to
maintain good works, and to have a conscience void of
offence towards God and man.

And this is most forcibly impressed upon us by
the Scripture revelation, that in the day of judgment
every man will have to appear before the judgment
seat of Christ, and give an account of what he has
done in the body, and receive according to his
works, whether they be good or evil. Our Lord has
in the 25th chapter of St. Matthew lifted a corner
of the veil, and allowed us to see some of the secrets
of that day. There is not in the whole Bible a more
impressively awful passage than that, in which we
read of those who, thinking themselves safe through
their belief, find themselves cast out for lack of those
works which would have resulted from their faith,
had it been real : and of those too who, so far from
trusting in or pleading their works that they were
even unconscious of them, do nevertheless find those
works acknowledged and accepted by Christ as done
to Himself — here we find that in the day of account
the question whether we have faith, whether we are

LECTURE V. 153

Christians or not, will be decided by those very
works which are utterly powerless of themselves to
save us.

But after all, the mean whereby the merits of
Christ are applied to our souls, and the blessings,
thus given us, accepted, whether at our first admis
sion into His body, or in our daily struggles, or at
the last, is faith. Not, however, that we ascribe even
to faith any merit or justifying power of its own ;
this belongs to Christ alone : and faith, like other
energies belonging to man, may not interfere with
His glory or prerogative. We only mean, that we
are made partakers of the justification which Christ
has prepared for us solely by putting our whole trust
in Him, or, in other words, by faith, per fidem pro-
pier Christum.

And what is faith ? It is no wonder that an ab
stract term, which must, up to a certain point, derive
a meaning from the experiences of each individual
and the dogma of each school, should have received
a variety of explanations and definitions, each of
which has narrowed its scriptural force and use ;
these it is the privilege of comprehensive belief to
realise, by receiving and combining them all as far
as they are found in God's word.

What is faith? It may be somewhat understood
by its results. It is no partial or transient feverish
emotion, with which the soul throbs now and then,
but it is the regular pulse of our spiritual life. It is
not an occasional recognition of the facts of our re
demption, but a steady, lively remembrance of all

154 LECTURE V.

that Christ has done for us. It is not merely the
casting an occasional glance to Him, not an occa
sional dedication of ourselves to Him as His liege
subjects ; but it is a fixed and concentrated gaze, the
total surrender of ourselves, our reason, and our wills.
It is not an occasional Lord, Lord ; but it is as if a
man should say, " Lord, Thou art mine, and I am
Thine ; I am sick, do Thou heal me ; I am lame, do
Thou support me; I am blind, do Thou lead me; I
am lost, do Thou save me ;" combined with a ready
mind, a firm step, a quick eye : a ready mind, to do
what He bids, to follow where He leads; a quick
eye, to see His bidding, catch His glance and mean
ing; a firm step, to tread in His path. In the days
of physical miracles, or of the more visible working
of God's hand in the things of daily life, it could
remove mountains, stop the mouths of lions : in
these days of spiritual miracles, of the invisible deal
ings of God with the soul, it can remove the burden
of sin, and ward off the fiery darts of the wicked one:
keep us safely from the lion, who goeth about seeking
whom he may devour.

Thus it bends our wills to the will of the Spirit,
making us see our true wisdom and happiness. Faith
arms us for the battle ; faith promises us victory, and
reveals to us Christ on our side. Faith puts vividly
before us the crown of glory ; it looks into futurity ;
in self-denial it can see future triumph ; in the seed
time it can see the crop ; it can trace beginnings to
their ends, counsels to their issues : in sin it can hear
the weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth ; in

LECTURE V. 155

holiness it can catch the words, Well done, good and
faithful servant : it sees and seizes upon opportu
nities which pass by other men unobserved : it sees
the angel of God in the way. It can detect Satan
in his most cunning disguises. In a vain, profitless,
idle, thoughtless youth, it can see the worldly, am
bitious, covetous, selfish man of the world ; and still
further, unless repentance comes in, the faithless,
hopeless, godless death-bed. In the light-hearted
enthusiasm, the noble self-denial and self-discipline,
the patient, eager industry, the humble trust, of a
godly boy, it can see the formed mind, the vigorous
action, the determined will, the patient purpose, of
the man of God.

And in itself it is variously described in Scrip
ture. First, it is what might perhaps be more con
veniently called belief, except that it is not dis
tinguished by a separate term in Scripture ; and
that it is safer and truer to use Scripture language
on such points than the terms and distinctions of
theology : it is a merely intellectual energy, wherein
the reason assents to what is proposed to it on the
sufficient evidence of Divine revelation, whether in
nature or in grace, though it be above its power
to comprehend the nature or possibility of its ex
istence. Now this simple act of the intellect is
not excluded from the notion of faith ; for it is
mostly this sort of faith which we read of previously
to our Saviour's resurrection in those who received
and worshipped our Saviour as the Prophet sent from
God. Nor indeed does even St. Peter's declaration,

156 LECTURE V.

Thou art the Son of God, seem to go further than
the recognition of our Saviour as the Messiah: and
even this intellectual act of belief may be considered
to imply a certain degree of repentance or prepara
tion of heart ; for the evidence being moral, and
not scientific, the intellect would have rejected it,
unless itself had been biassed by some degree of spi
ritual desire and hope. And thus, on the other hand,
hardness of heart is given as the cause why the Jews
were unable to see any thing but foolishness in Him
to whose Divine nature and office every hour bore a
more and more convincing witness.

And it may well be that in old times this intel
lectual faith had a greater religious value, so to
speak, than it can have now : for it then required a
far greater submission of the reason, and implied a
far greater preparation of the heart, to receive a re
ligion everywhere spoken against and persecuted,
than now, when, in name and profession at least, it
is accepted in every part of the civilized world ; when,
in our way of viewing it, it is almost synonymous
with civilization : with most men it now requires
no effort of the reason, no submission to the will, to
assent, at least, to that which is everywhere recog
nised by the general voice of the world ; which has
been handed down and impressed on our tenderest
memories, and is repeated around us by a thousand
voices of popular belief and feeling. And hence in
Scripture faith is sometimes spoken of as if it were
merely an intellectual belief in this or that part of
revelation ; not that it excluded or superseded the

LECTURE V. 157

rest, but included and implied them. At the pre
sent day it affords very little evidence of the state
of the inner man ; and therefore by no man can it
be received as giving him assurance of safety, till it
has passed from the reason to the other parts of our
being: for the essential resemblances and essential
differences between a living and a dead faith, be
tween a saving and an accusing faith., may be stated
very briefly, and yet, I think, fully, by saying that in
both the intellectual energy is the same : the same
truth believed, the same propositions accepted : but
in a dead faith these do not go beyond the reason ;
they abide there like any mathematical truth : in
living faith they pass from the reason, though still
abiding there ; they steal through, and leaven and
spiritualise the instincts, desires, affections : in short,
the whole inner man, changing both it and its rela
tions to the outer world, arming conscience with
new powers, giving love a new sphere, opening to
hope new visions, giving life a new character and
new destiny. And this again shews that justification
cannot take place without sanctification ; for if faith,
to be real faith, must spread itself through the moral
man, turning him from the world to God, it fol
lows, that if a man is not sanctified, neither is he
justified.

And this faith again, whether living or dead, is
spoken of in Scripture in different ways. In its
simplest form, it is that faith of natural religion
which is also an element in Christian faith — a belief
in God and His goodness and power : He that cometh

158 LECTURE V.

to God must believe that He is, and thai He is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him}\ This is
doubtless an element of saving faith ; but where do
we find iu Scripture that it is, as some would con
tend, the whole of it ?

So again it is spoken of as a simple belief in some
special revelation which God was pleased to give of
Himself and His will and His power. The faith of
Abraham ', for instance, which was counted to him
for righteousness, as our faith is to us, was belief in
the wisdom and truth of God, and a reception of Him
as the rightful Lord of all his actions and counsels, his
goings out and comings in. And, indeed, the whole
of the instances of the acts of faith given in the llth
chapter of the Hebrews do not imply a belief of any
thing relating to our Saviour, but a simple belief in
God, and a reception of His word ; sufficient for
them, because no more was within their reach ; not
sufficient for us, to whom the whole counsels of God
have been disclosed.

Again, it is spoken of as a simple belief in our
Saviour, in whatever character and degree He was
pleased to reveal the kingdom ; a simple acceptance
of the mysteries and powers connected with Him ;
a knowledge of spiritual things ; of Gospel facts, as
told to us by Christ or His apostles, and handed
down to us in the Scriptures.

This was the faith which could work miracles,
speak in tongues, or exercise other spiritual powers,
as the Spirit gave, not to all alike, but severally
* Heb. xi. 6. i Heb. xi. 8.

LECTURE V. 159

to every man according to His will. This in itself
implied no real acceptance, nor even a real know
ledge, of onr Lord in His highest functions, no real
belief of the heart unto salvation. This was the faith
of those who were to prophesy in His name, and
cast out devils, (and who therefore must have had
some faith.) and yet all the while work iniquity, so
as to draw from Him the words, Depart from mei.
This is the faith which is below charity, as being
only an imperfect sort of knowledge ; which will be
lost when we see face to face. And this knowledge
of and belief in spiritual things is necessary, in a
greater or less degree, according to our opportunities,
as an ingredient of true faith.

And this to us, with the Bible in our hands, and
the Church as a witness to the Bible around us, im
plies a belief in all that the Spirit of God has told
us in the Bible; such as the doctrine of Trinity in
Unity ; belief in Three as One, belief in each sepa
rately; and this not only because each is revealed
to us by Christ, but because a belief in each is ne
cessary to the effectual acceptance of that part of
our spiritual privileges which flows to us severally
from each : for instance, belief in God the Father
as our Father is necessary in order to our effectually
receiving the adoption of sons; in His will for us is
necessary in order to that will working in us ; in God
the Son as our sacrifice, in order to our effectually
laying hold of the benefit thereof; in God the Holy
Ghost, as the Spirit of truth and holiness, in order

J Mat. vii. 22.

160 LECTURE V.

to our partaking of those operations and influences
without which we cannot be saved. Thus does faith
minister to us of the several mercies which God has
been pleased to provide for us, as it is written,
according to your belief be it unto you.

Nor is it confined exclusively to one part of our
Saviour's life or being ; of all the Persons in the
Godhead He is oftenest revealed to us, most clearly
and variously ; and therefore our faith in Him must
be, so to speak, more manifold, as it presents Him
to us in a greater variety of aspects and relations :
each of these points, as far as they are presented to
us, is to be believed with our whole heart as fully,
and definitely, and lovingly as if each were the whole,
and yet not so as to hide or overshadow the rest.

And thus does Scripture speak. We are, for in
stance, said sometimes to be saved by our belief in
our Saviour as God, and the Son of God, and in His
mission upon earth1; the first step, so to say, to re
ceiving Him in His more immediate relation to us.
Thus the eunuch's belief that Jesus was the Son of
God was complete enough to admit him to the privi
leges of a believer, because this is what he gathered
from the prophecy which Philip interpreted to him ;
though of course, compared with the knowledge of
Christ, which was afterwards disclosed to him or the
Church, it was a very imperfect state of belief. Not
that this belief in our Saviour's divinity and mission
renders unnecessary a belief too in any or all of the
points which Scripture reveals as connected with

1 i St. John iv. 2 and i.

LECTURE V. 161

this twofold nature ; His eternal existence ; His mi
raculous conception by the Holy Ghost ; His per
fect humanity, and yet freedom from sin ; in short,
all those matters which our creeds have gathered for
us from Scripture, and which make up the Scrip
ture account of Christ, come into that belief which
believes in the Christ of the Bible ; and each of
them moreover has a distinct bearing on the general
scheme of Christ's redemption.

Some of them are pointed out in Scripture as
special objects of belief, especial causes of our salva
tion : thus, for instance, we are said to be saved by
our Saviour's resurrection, because this is the part of
Christ's existence, by power and virtue of which we
rise again unto newness of life through faith in the
operation of God, who has raised Him from the dead^.
This is spoken of as absolutely as if nothing else were
necessary for our salvation ; and yet no true Christian
would argue from it that it is not necessary for a
man to believe in Christ's sacrifice ; it does not ex
clude the rest ; our belief in this, if it is faith,
includes and implies belief in all ; for, as I have
shewn in the first Lecture \ that alone is Scripture
faith which receives not only this or that portion of
Divine truth, but the whole of it, as it falls on our
spiritual vision.

And yet comprehensive faith, while it accepts and
realises each of these articles of our belief, each in
its fulness, does not limit itself to them ; for these
several acts and parts of faith tend to and end in,

k Col. ii. 12. Rom. x. 9, Cf. Rom. iv. 24. l Page 27.

M

162 LECTURE V.

are combined and perfected by that highest revela
tion of God, which points to Christ on the cross;
that highest energy of the soul, which looks to the
crowning act of His suffering, the act of our justifi
cation, with undivided trust. This it is which may
perhaps be in the highest and most proper sense
called justifying faith, because it realises that which
justifies us ; but neither does this exclude the rest,
each in their several proportion and degree ; nor do
any of these supersede the necessity of Baptism, or
Prayer, or the Holy Communion, or any thing else
which God has been pleased to ordain.

Nor is there any thing indefinite or uncertain here
in, whether they be taken separately or together;
each is laid down in Scripture with as much clearness
and precision as if it alone were all ; they do not
neutralize nor interfere with each other: together
they fill the intellect, leaven the heart, move the
feelings, quicken the desires, raise the hopes, purify
the souls of those whom they are designed to bring
unto final acceptance, and«in some sort to prepare
for heaven.

And besides all these, perfect and complete as they
seem to be, there is yet another element of saving faith,
the result of all the rest : a personal assurance of our
own redemption in Christ, a looking forward to the
realisation of that hope the consolations of which we
now feel. To the eye of this sort of faith it is not
mankind who are sinners, but ourselves. It was not
Adam's sin only which crucified Christ, but my sin.
It was not for mankind that Christ died, but for me.

LECTURE V. 163

It was not that He has sought for many lost sheep,
but that He has sought me, and found me, and car
ried me gently in His arms, and placed me in His
own fold, and given me to drink of that grace which
springs up unto everlasting life. An assurance un
mixed with fear, unsullied by doubt as far as re
gards Christ's power and will to save, as far as re
gards His having saved us ; but not without fear
and trembling when we look to ourselves, and know
that in order to be saved finally we must remain
steadfast in good works. He who has not this sort
of assurance, who does not believe that He is in
Christ and Christ in him, in whose soul fear of the
Judge ever rises up rather than trust in the Advo
cate, he has not saving faith. There is some secret
sin growing at the root of the tree ; some enemy
has poisoned the spring whence should flow unto him
the waters of everlasting life. And hence too we may
see how good works are essential to faith. He who
is in unrepented sin, or he who cares not for works
of piety and love, cannot, with the 25th chapter
of St. Matthew before him, think of himself as
living in the faith and fear of Christ ; cannot truly
think of Christ as any thing more to him than the
Saviour of the world. It is essential to our faith
that v/e should know it to be justifying faith.

For can it ever be a matter of much doubt to us,
unless we wish to deceive ourselves, whether we
have faith or not : it is neither slow nor unwilling to
bear witness to its own presence. If it is present,
it will overcome the world ; if it be absent, the

M 2

164 LECTURE V.

world will have overcome us, and destroyed us :
if it be present, it will consecrate us and all that
belongs to us to the service of God ; if it be ab
sent, we shall straightway think that what God has
given us is wholly our own : we shall stand as it
were on the rights of self against God ; if it be pre
sent, the course and the wisdom of this world, life,
power, talents, opportunities, wealth spent in no
thing but self-indulgence and self-degradation, will
seem to us madness ; if it be absent, the lusts of the
flesh and the spirit, the pomps and vanities of the
world, amusements, pleasures — pride of place, birth,
talents, wealth — will occupy our being: those spi
ritual blessings and duties which God has intrusted
to us, and put in our path, will seem both in theory
and practice to be of little moment when compared
with the accidents of temporal existence. If it be
absent, we shall ever be clinging to some unscrip-
tural form or view of Christianity or other : to the
notion that being sinners we shall be saved by our
sin : or that the undefined mercy of God will save
those who have not been His or on His side in life ;
to the hope that after all, personal union with Christ
through faith working by love is not the secret of
our salvation, fearing lest perchance the Bible be
true, and our hopes false. If it be present, it will ever
be increasing ; we shall ever be growing in grace and
holiness, and dwell with increasing fruition and in
creasing assurance on the sure mercies of God in
Jesus Christ, for then the Spirit will bear witness with
our spirit that we are the sons of God.

LECTURE VI.

KOM. viii. 16.
The Spirit itself bear eth witness with our spirit, that

we are the children of God.

LlT is one of the most practical results of Christian
faith on the heart of man that it raises the eye of
hope from earth to heaven, from this life to another.
In days of old, visions, perhaps, of the islands of
the blessed, and of the princes and judges of the
dead may have floated across the mind ; but it was
rather as the creations of the poet's imagination, or
the fancies of a popular superstition, than as giving
any real practical direction to the thoughts or hopes.
They did not find any place among the realities of
life from which they were separated by the broad
river of death. The needs or the aims of the day,
the good of country or family, the calm ease of phi
losophic study, or the busy excitement of active life ;
the ambitions and triumphs of the forum or the battle
field, — these gave shape and purpose to the powers
and energies of men ; and if a serious thought of
future reward and punishment, future happiness and
misery, ever crossed the mind, it was too dim and

166' LECTURE VI.

vague to turn them from the pursuits of the present ;
they were content, for the most part, to enjoy their
clay, and let life's morrow take care for itself.

Now with the Christian all this is altered ; nay,
even wherever Christianity is preached, there can be
very few, even of those to whom it is practically
preached in vain, on whom the future does not press
with more or less of importunity; whatever may be
a man's calling, whether he be in luxury or poverty,
in the busiest crowds of the city or the quietest re
treats of the country, the same question is suggested
to the mind by a thousand things and voices around,
"Am I in the way of salvation ?" " Will heaven be
mine?"]

We have seen, moreover, in the last Lecture, that
the being able to give a satisfactory answer to this
question ; the being able to feel assurance more or
less according to individual temperament and cir
cumstances, of our being among Christ's elect — the
looking to Him as dying for us, on ourselves as saved
by Him — is necessary to the completeness of that
faith which so applies to us His merits as to obtain
justification and all other benefits present and to
come of His Passion.

And to this question theologians and schools of
theology have returned a variety of answers, each
professing to be founded on the word of God, and
each, perhaps, containing an element of truth with
more or less admixture of error. These it is my
purpose to consider in the present Lecture, together
with such collateral notions as will spring out of
points more directly brought before you.

LECTURE VI. 167

And first I will speak of those who place their
hopes of salvation on the predestinate counsels of
God for them. Now that this can give them no
real assurance is clear from the fact that these abso
lute decrees of God, be their nature and effect on
human destinies what they may, are hidden from
mankind; whatever may be the certainty and necessity
of their operation, yet the test and evidence whereby
this predestination is discerned or even guessed at
must be looked for in something besides itself; there
must be something to which it is to be referred; and it
is evident that whatever is to be referred to something
else cannot of itself give assurance. And our Church
does truly give the teaching of Scripture, when in
her article on predestination she lays down the result,
and therefore the tangible test, of being predestinate,
to be the walking religiously in good works.

We have already seen that the doctrine of predes
tination does not destroy the free will or the re
sponsibility of man, or do away with the necessity of
a holy life. And hence no man can say of himself
that he is predestinate ; for there must be much in
his heart and life which, if fairly examined, will lead
him to doubt it. Every one, on the other hand, who
knows that he has been admitted into Christ's body
according to His will, and by His ordinances — who
knows that he is created anew unto good works, and
lives in accordance with this conviction, may hope that
he is of the number of those who have from the begin
ning been ordained unto salvation : but no one who is
living in wilful or unrepented sin, no one who is setting
God's grace and God's laws at defiance, can find any

168 LECTURE VI.

Scriptural reason for comfort or hope in the predesti
nate counsels of God ; and to apply such comfort or
hope to oneself or others is indeed a most fearful per
version of Scripture, a most fearful injury to the souls
of men. It is, surely, no light thing to say of the
Holy Spirit that He has sealed unto the day of re
demption those whose lives are a practical denial of
God and Christ.

[Still, though we may hold that the main pur
pose of this mysterious doctrine being thus revealed
is to set forth the glory of God, yet it is, doubtless,
of great practical use in giving encouragement to
those who are working out their salvation with serious
ness of purpose : it may aid us much in resisting the
world, the flesh, and the devil, to know, that if we
are true to ourselves God will never desert us : to
have the conviction that it is God's purpose and will
for us that we should triumph over them.]

Nor is their confidence much more sure who rest
on that modified form of predestination which teaches
men to believe, not, perhaps, that they have been
irrespectively and irreversibly preordained to ever
lasting life, but that having accepted Christ through
faith they cannot fail of everlasting life, in conse
quence of their being among the elect. For although
the Bible does most clearly tell us that in the midst
of this wicked world there is an elect people ; nay,
that individuals are elect; yet we must avoid that
false security into which so many have been led by
not taking heed of the corresponding truth, that
these elect may fall from the state of grace in which
by God's mercy they have been placed.

LECTURE VI. 169

The doctrine of an elect people of Christ is almost
a necessary result of Christianity being preached in
a world some part only of which would receive it.
[In some passages, indeed, the term elect is used
for the whole body of believers, either in the whole
church or in its several branches in different parts
of the world ; the professing as well as the real
members thereof, inasmuch as all had been called
out of the world by Christ, and had, to all appear
ance at least, obeyed the call : and these passages
have, of course, no definite bearing on the doctrine
in question, except so far as they illustrate the mean
ing of the term : but it is also used in Scripture evi
dently to denote those who have obeyed the call in
reality, and are the chosen and adopted sons of God in
Christ.] Nor is there any reason to doubt that these
elect have many and great privileges, great and pre
cious promises, of which I do not say they may well be
proud, but of which they ought to be gratefully con
scious. Blessed indeed is the thought that we are
embraced by the arms of God's special mercy and
grace ; that we are the sons of God, brethren of Christ,
temples of the Holy Ghost : such thoughts may well
lift our souls above this lower world, except so far as
we may serve God herein. Blessed is the thought,
that for us the mercy of God through Christ is ever
ready to forgive, his power ever ready to strengthen ;
blessed is the thought, that the fountains of grace are
ever open to us ; such thoughts may well make us
ready to embrace this mercy, and use this grace.
Blessed is the thought, that in all our spiritual trials
the eye and hand of God is over us just as it is over

170 LECTURE VI.

the affairs of all men in life temporal ; that as He
sends rain or sun as seemeth Him best for the tem
poral good of men, so whatever He does is for our
spiritual good ; such thoughts may well make us
careful to see in all things how they are to be spiri
tually used by us ; may well make us submit our
selves wholly to His holy will and pleasure as loyal
sons to a loving Father. And more blessed still is
the hope, that in the day of judgment we shall be
on His right hand ; such hopes may well quicken
our souls, and steady our wills, and bind them to
Christ, and loosen them from the world, to which we
feel, as God's elect, that we belong only for a time ;
but still to these promises and hopes the Holy Spirit
has by the Bible joined the awful word if: If we
hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto
the end*. And who shall venture to take away the
condition which the Holy Spirit has attached to
His promises? or if any one is bold enough to
do so, what reasonable hope can he have that his
sentence will stand ? [It is most true, that God
after His own good pleasure worketh in us both to
will and to do ; but we are not on that account
the less to work out our own salvation, but rather
all the more ; for if it were our work and not
God's, we might well fold our hands in despair, as
those who had been told to move a mountain, or
make the shadow go back on the dial. But now
that it is God's work in us, God's pleasure for us, we
may be sure that our work is not in vain. What we
have to do is to submit ourselves to Him who is
a Hebr. iii. 14.

LECTURE VI. 171

at work in our work, and to follow His pleasure :
and it can scarcely be too often repeated, it certainly
cannot be too constantly remembered, that man's
part in the work of his salvation is not the result of
his independent active powers of goodness or piety,
but of his submission to the Holy Spirit within him ;
to that expansive Spirit of holiness which turns away
from the proud, and works in those who are humble
and lowly of heart.] And not only do the direct
expressions of Scripture make our final acceptance
depend on our final stedfastness, but the same doc
trine, that the elect are not so absolutely sure of their
salvation as to make themselves or others careless
about it, is taught in other passages b, which will lose
their meaning if it is denied. What is the meaning
of St. Peter's telling those who had obtained like pre
cious faith with himself, through the righteousness of
God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, and who therefore
must have been among the elect, that they were to
make their calling and election sure? If they were
sure already, what need of being more so ? if they
could make themselves neither more sure nor less
sure than they were (as the exaggerated doctrine of
election implies), what need of telling them to do
that which they could not do ? Again, what is the
meaning of St. Paul, who, called by Christ's very
self, did, in some moments of highest spiritual vision,
see clearly the crown of glory, when he expresses
his fear lest he should be a cast-away ? The persua
sion, then, nay, the fact of a man's being among

b Compare i Thess. i. 4, and v. 9. with several exhortations
in the two last chapters.

172 LECTURE VI.

the elect, even could he be perfectly certain of it,
though it may give him hope, cannot by itself give
him assurance.

But, nevertheless, the doctrine of perseverance is
so laid down in Scripture that it cannot but form a
part of comprehensive faith : and Scripture has more
over explained clearly enough its nature and bearing
in the passage of St. Peter, where, after exhorting his
readers to the progressive acquirement of Christian
graces, he adds these words — -for if ye do these things,
ye shall never fall*; that is, as long as we retain God
in our love ; as long as we so use the grace given us
that we are fruitful and abound ; as long as a sin
cere, earnest, real endeavour to live after the Spirit
is borne witness to by our spiritual growth ; so long
God will never desert us, or allow the issues of
our own hearts, or the temptations of the world,
to carry us away from Him ; He will bear with our
infirmities ; He will listen to the sighings of a con
trite heart ; He will send down the consolations of
His Spirit, with the assurances of pardon for Christ's
sake ; He will make us strong : as long as we are in
earnest in the work, Christ will work with us, even
unto the end. And this we find in other parts of Scrip
ture. But this is a very different thing from that form
of the doctrine of perseverance which sets at nought
the texts which speak of the possibility, nay, the
danger of our falling, through our hearts being either
insensibly or suddenly turned from God. [And we
can even so far trace the course of sin as to see how
all this may be, if we keep in mind what I have be-
a 2 St. Peter i. 10.

LECTURE VI. 173

fore said — that the submission of the will to the
Holy Spirit is the principle of holiness, as far as we
are concerned. As long as one who has tasted of
the powers of the Gospel keeps his heart in subjec
tion to the Spirit ; as long as he desires in very truth
to make that Divine Will his will, though he may be
sorely tried by temptations, yet will that Spirit ever
make a way for him to escape : but let self creep in
as the spring of action, as the guide of our wills,
then we cast off the Spirit, and though He may strive
with us for our own souls, and seek to win us back
to Himself and our calling, then are we in imme
diate danger — though unseen by others, and even un
suspected by ourselves — of falling into those sins,
which are falls from grace. As long as the ship obeys
her helm, the sailor may see without alarm the fury
of the storm ; but when the power that guides her
is cast off, then hope must be cast off too. When
the counsel of the Spirit is put from us as a prin
ciple of action, and we begin, even before we commit
actual, wilful sin, so far to love sin as to wish it were
possible to sin without losing our salvation, then our
strength is passing away, and, being left to our own
weakness, we straightway fall. And hence the ne
cessity for that daily repentance and forgiveness of
even what we may call little sins: for the very
smallest sin is, in its degree, an energy of self, and
a quenching of the Spirit : a departure from God,
which may lead, and, if not counteracted, will lead,
to fresh and further transgressions. Or if, casting
off the Spirit in another fashion, we think we can
stand by our strength,, then is the result the same :

174 LECTURE VI.

and herein is one of the clangers of the exaggerated
doctrine of perseverance, that men are taught to
trust to themselves, to their calling, to their own
supposed spiritual state, rather than to a continued
and conscious dependence on God : hence men think
that they stand, even while the ground is slipping
from under them. Thus does spiritual pride confute
and confound itself.]

Nor is there any better scriptural foundation for
the notion, that though the elect may fall, yet they
are sure to rise again, while the practical encou
ragement to sin is as great, and even greater:
the word which St. Paul used to express the state
into which he thought it possible he himself might
fall, does not signify a temporary or partial, but a
total and final fall. It is certain, however, that as
long as our hearts are right before God, as long as
there is no secret heart of unbelief, no secret prefer
ence of sin, we shall by God be enabled to stand.
The spiritual enemies on all sides, the fiery darts
of the evil one — whether they take the shape of
persecutions and afflictions, as in apostolic times,
or of the sorrows, pleasures, aims of life — may well
make us afraid, when we think of what we are in
ourselves; but still we may gird on our arms and
trust in God, knowing that He who is for us is
greater than he that is against us; that our weak
ness will be to His glory who strengtheneth us. And
thus faith is the weapon whereby we are to resist
the enemy; for faith is not merely the receiving
Christ as our Saviour, but clinging to God through
Him, heart and soul and will ; submitting ourselves

LECTURE VI. 175

wholly to His holy will and pleasure as given us
through the Spirit, and studying to serve and please
Him all the days of our life.

[There may perhaps be a point in a believer's
spiritual growth where he is past the possibility of
sinning, by the Spirit's having complete possession of
his whole being : that we acknowledge such a notion
is clear, from our surprise when we see one whom we
supposed to be righteous fall away : but no one can
know himself to be in such a state ; the only outward
test of it would be his never sinning, even in trifles —
for no one can tell where a trifle may lead him — and
if we say we do not sin, we deceive ourselves. I need
not remind you that the Scripture in which the impos
sibility of sinning is most emphatically ascribed to
perfect faith or holiness, is the first Epistle of St. John ;
and I think it will be seen that the whole of this Epistle
is an emphatic warning against our being contented
with our spiritual state, and an exhortation to come
nearer to the unattainable perfection whereunto we
had been called. The application of the argument
is not, " You have the Spirit, and therefore you do
not sin ;" but, " If you sin, and as far as you sin, you
are not so perfect as you may be."]

Nor can they be thought to have any sure or suf
ficient ground of confidence who are resting entirely
or mainly on their fellowship with Christ's visible
church on earth. For though Scripture does set
forth all true Christians as belonging to that visible
body, with visible ministers, word, sacraments ; and
commands that those who are utterly reprobate
should be shut out therefrom, yet she never speaks

176 LECTURE VI.

of those who are in that body as certain of salvation,
nor even as of necessity belonging to the true mys
tical body of Christ : [and though it is, to say the
least, safer and better to be joined to that body which
Christ blessed, and promised to be with to the end
of the world ; to be enclosed in that net which was
cast by Christ's apostles at His bidding and by His
authority ; to be citizens of that commonwealth
which was founded by Christ himself; members of
that family which can trace up its spiritual ancestry
by a long succession, not of clergy only, but of clergy
and laity together, to the day of Pentecost, and to
the upper chamber at Jerusalem; to eat the same
spiritual meat and to drink the same spiritual drink
with the saints of old, who saw Christ face to face ;
to feel that His word and sacraments are ministered
to us by those who have commission and authority
from Him : — yet all this is not safety ; nor can it
give us confidence ; for all such outward fellowship
and privileges may, though they should not, exist
without conformity to Christ, without that personal
faith in Him which is necessary to Christian as
surance.] It is in vain for any one to fancy or
to teach, that this is the only, nay, that it is the
main point to be considered ; that the being recon
ciled to the visible church, and readmitted to her
offices at the last, will place a man among the elect :
will be a talisman to apply the merits of Christ to the
soul, or to open the gates of heaven to those whose
lives have been of the flesh, and not that of the Spirit.
Nor, again, can any true hope be drawn from
those austerities or self-abasements whereby some

LECTURE VI. 177

have thought to assure themselves of heaven. Such
things, founded on a wrong view of the great prac
tical doctrine of self-denial, are too apt to give self-
denial a shape and a place in the scheme of redemp
tion which is not given to it in Scripture. To mor_
tify the body does not imply the mortification of the
carnal mind, much less stand in its place ; mere
penances can never give assurance of repentance or
of faith. It seems to me, that the self-denial which
is spoken of in Scripture, as necessary for our being
Christ's, is mainly that submission of the flesh to
the Spirit of which I have so often spoken. It is
not merely the abstaining from particular food on
particular days; it is not the being of a sad counte
nance, and declining amusements and relaxations ;
it is not withdrawing from social life, and spending
one's days within the walls of a convent or the
friendless home of the desert : but it is checking,
keeping under, mortifying, crucifying the corrupt
affections of self, which, alas ! spring up within us,
whether we fast or feast, whether we turn from God's
good things or enjoy them : whether we are in a con
vent or a court, in a city or a desert. We deny our
selves, i. e. what we by nature are, when we turn away
from the suggestions of anger or lust ; when we curb
our tongues ; when we humble our pride. No doubt
but that external acts of mortification and absti
nence, so far as they promote our powers of self-
denial, are agreeable to the spirit of Scripture b; but
neither is there doubt but that they have, by individuals
and churches, been made to stand in place thereof:

b See Collect for first Sunday in Lent.

N

178 LECTURE VI.

that they have kept thousands from self-denial rather
than led them to it. The utmost they can do is to
testify to a person's self of his sincerity; and in this
they often testify falsely. [They are not so sure a
sign of the soul being subdued to the Spirit as Chris
tian bearing amid the trials, troubles and duties of
every day life ; for as these trifles supply in them
selves a less motive to spiritual exertion, the in
ward spiritual principle must be stronger.] These
penances often proceed from that sort of pride
which finds pleasure in enduring what others shrink
from ; as may be seen from the otherwise inexpli
cable tortures which we read of as inflicted by per
sons on themselves, without any motive beyond ex
hibiting their powers of endurance. And moreover
they have, in many recorded cases, been mere ex
cuses for continuance in sin, whereby Satan contrives
to deprive men's consciences of their sting, and to
substitute formal service for real. [What answer do
self-inflicted sufferings give to the question, "Am I
in the way to be saved ?" Not surely the answer of
faith, for that puts its whole trust in Christ, as having
made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice and atone
ment for any sins of which we repent ; and if we re
pent, such penances savour rather of a mistrust of
God's mercy, or may be merely the energies of our
human self, thinking that by our own sufferings we
may be cleansed, and thus keep us from Christ to
whom our repentance should have led us. And if
we do not repent, then are they but vain subterfuges
of a conscience which knowing its sin, and what are
its consequences, yet loving it too well to leave it,

LECTURE VI. 179

bad sooner bear pain and privation than give up
the pleasure and self-indulgence which has become a
second self. Such devices might suit the heathen,
who look upon God as a power of fear, and think
that He is a man whom they may cheat ; but they
do not suit the Christian to whom God is revealed
as a God of love, as ready to pardon us, as having par
doned us, without any punishment borne, any satis
faction made, by us : as seeing not our outward pre
tences only, but the very secrets of our hearts.]

Nor is that reliance much better which is placed
wholly on the text, If OUT heart condemn its not, then
have ive confidence towards God9-; for we know that
the heart is deceitful above all things, and to many
men speaks peace when there is no peace. It is
true that this answer of a good conscience, this ap
proval of our heart, is necessary to the looking for
ward with real hope to the day of the Lord. How-
it is that sinners, such as the best of us must ever be,
can have the answer of a good conscience, we shall
be led to inquire hereafter; suffice it now to say,
that we are not saved by works, and therefore works
by themselves cannot assure us. And again, how easily
do men deceive themselves in this matter : how
many men there are, who, measuring their lives by
mere human morality, comfort themselves with the
thought that they are free from what the world calls
sin, and care not to inquire whether they are free
likewise from what the Bible calls sin ; who know
nothing of the energies of Christian life ; who mis
take the silence of a sleeping soul for the approval
a i John iii. 21.
N 2

180 LECTURE VI.

of a watchful and sensitive conscience. Strange to
say, the more a man has the answer of a good con
science, the more sensitive and dissatisfied with itself
does his conscience become, the more does it notice
and reprove those things which other men pass
over imcared for. The more spotless the sky, the
more clearly is every spot discerned. So far from a
quiet conscience being a test of saving faith, and
hence a source of assurance, there is nothing easier
than for a man without faith to satisfy his conscience ;
in fact, the less the faith, the easier is conscience
satisfied ; and yet without faith it is impossible to
have even a true conception of Christian hope. And
again, suppose that a man really had a conscience
void of offence towards God and man, what is there
in this to save him, unless faith in Christ crucified
takes possession of his soul ? What sacrifice for sin will
his works provide him, if in the pride of spotless mo
rality he think scorn of the blood which was shed ?
Much then must be added to a good conscience before
it can speak to us the assurance which we seek.

But still less can any comfort rise up from the
answer of a bad conscience, from our souls being
burdened with the memory of some great sin ; nor
yet from an uneasy consciousness that we are sinners,
joined to an involuntary recognition of the fact that
Christ died to save sinners, forced upon us by the
general belief of the world around ; for there are
two sorts of this consciousness of sin — one is a ne
cessary element of faith, the other is a direct nega
tion of it. And though the love of Christ for sinners,
His death for sinners, is the foundation of all Christ-

LECTURE VI. 181

ian hope, and is written in characters of light on
every page of Scripture, yet another truth is found
side by side with it, not less bright than the other,
yet often seemingly dark and threatening to those who
read not Scripture aright — that the real will of this
love is, that those whom He loves, and who name His
name, should fly from and conquer sin. And hence
a sense of our being sinners cannot be a source of
true comfort to us, unless we obey that His will for
us. Those who try to take the one truth without the
other ; who persuade themselves or others that His
love will accept them simply because they are sin
ners, without their leaving their sin, cannot be
said to have a scriptural foundation for their assur
ance, but rather to most fearfully misread the mes
sage of mercy, and despise the longsuffering of God,
which leads them to repentance. Do they say they
believe in Christ ? Mere belief will not justify them.
We are expressly told that Simon Magus believed,
and yet was in the bond of iniquity : he believed in
Christ perhaps so far as to see in Him a possible
way of preserving and increasing his own power and
fame ; but he did not believe on Him as He was
preached by the apostles ; and this is the case with
those who look on Christ merely as a means of their
living their own way in the world with impunity.
Those who fancy that turning to Christ is nothing
more than being saved while in unrepented sin may
do well to ponder His words, Not every one that
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king
dom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven.

182 LECTURE VI.

Much less can we receive those still greater per-
verters of the great doctrine, that all men are sinners,
and that for sinners Christ has died, who would
have it believed that past deeds of darkness are the
surest warrant for their being now children of light,
elect of God ; who say not only, " My sins have made
me a fitter object of God's mercy — my pardon is a
greater miracle of God's redeeming love" — which in
very truth it is — but " my sins have actually made me
more sure of my being Christ's than I should have
been without them ;" who, in the echoes of former
unholy lusts and unbridled passions, and in the
avenging voice of self-condemnation, can hear no
thing but the harmonies of heavenly hope. Surely
such men would turn funeral bells into merry
chimes, and see hope and health in the fixed eye
and pale wan face of death.

And not only so, but often they even cast scorn
and despair on the spiritual state of those, who,
having from their youth up striven as far as might
be to make their calling and election sure, have in
no time of their lives felt the agonies of despair or
the conviction of being outcasts from the covenant
into which they were through faith baptized.

It is true, indeed, that the conviction of pre
sent or the remembrance of past sin, need not
(thanks be to God for his unspeakable mercy) keep
any one from hopefully turning to Christ in repent
ance unto faith, and seeking from Him that which
repentance and faith are sure to find — acceptance
and renewal. We cannot repeat too often our Sa
viour's invitation to those who travail or are heavy

LECTURE VI. 183

laden ; we may impress upon the most fallen God's
love for sinners, His will that men should not perish,
in order to move them to come to Him ; we may
tell such a one of the joy in heaven over the one
piece of silver, the single sheep — great truths, in
which all our consolation lies; we may endeavour to
animate his faith, and quicken his hope, and kindle
his love, by holding these gospel truths before him. The
salvation of sinners is most assuredly one object of
Christ's coming upon earth ; but will any one with
the Bible in his hand say, that the promotion of prac
tical holiness of heart and life is not another ? We
may not so teach the one as to destroy the other ; we
may not, consistently with Scripture, throw around
the murderer's head, when his life is forfeited to his
country's justice, a brighter glory than we give to
the saint, whose faith has been tried and proved
by the fiery trials of life. It is true the greater the
sinner the greater his need of God's mercy, but the
mere conviction that he is a sinner cannot make
him sure that he has entered in by the straight gate,
or even left the broad way, for the conscience even
of sinners is not dumb. It is true also, that the
remembrance of past sins may, when the sacred love
of Christ has once been kindled, well make it burn
more unceasingly and intensely, as in the woman
whose many sins were forgiven ; but still in them
selves these are no warrant for believing that the
love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts; for this
implies something real and practical ; a real subjec
tion of our hearts and affections and wills and pas
sions to Him, of which the remembrance of sin is no

184 LECTURE VI.

sign. Where in Scripture do we find that sin, even
committed ignorantly, is the seal of salvation ? much
less when it has been persevered in, in spite of
grace and opportunities and professions. It may
be the occasion of the manifestation of God's love;
the disease calls forth the physician's skill, and, it
may be, the patient's gratitude for his cure; but
who would point to his bed of sickness, to his once
wasted limbs and exhausted nerves, as a proof that
he is now in perfect health and strength ? It was
not so with St. Paul ; he does not rest his sure
hope of mercy on the great sin of his early life, but
on Christ's love for sinners and on his having fought
the good fight. He was the chiefest of sinners, and
therefore with good reason magnified God's mercy ;
but it was in consequence of his labours of love, not
of his former preeminence in sin, that he knew
himself to be not a whit behind the chiefest of the
Apostles. It is true that publicans and harlots pressed
into the kingdom of God before the self-righteous
Pharisee, or the infidel Sadducee, equally sinful,
though in a different way, with themselves : but not
without repentance, nor yet before Simeon or Anna,
or Peter or John. It was surely no heinous sin that
opened the door for Cornelius ; but his prayers and
alms, which went up for a memorial before God.
True hope is not the reflection of the avenging fire
which waits on sin, but of the Sun of righteousness,
which, in spite of sin, dawns on that repentance
which ends in faith.

And hence it cannot be safe to place assurance on
those agonized professions of faith which so often mark

LECTURE VI. 185

the death-bed of one who has all his life avowedly
been merely a nominal Christian. This is no sure
sign of saving* faith, no sure sign of repentance. It
were needless to remind you of the numberless cases
in which seemingly death-bed professions, when tested
by the return of health and strength, have been found
to pass away as specks of light in a tempest. True
faith forbids us to doubt that as the pale form of
death stands by the bedside of the faithful, and
brings him the message that he is to come to God,
his soul will oftentimes break into fervent ejacula
tions, cries of passionate devotion, earnest entreaties
for mercy, undoubting expressions of trust, sure vi
sions of glory ; yet these ejaculations, if they are to
express hope, must rise from something better than
the immediate pressure of death. Sorrow for sin, to
give witness of saving faith, must be something more
than the maddening feeling of remorse which sinful
pleasures are wont to leave in the soul when ebbing
life bears witness to their being pleasures no more.
Expressions of faith must be something more than
the mere echo of despair which is making merry in
the soul — more than the mere convulsive catching of
a drowning man at what the world holds out to him
as a substitute for Christianity — more than the mere
repetition of formal professions. Those who trust to
such, or teach others to do so, must take the texts
which speak of the salvation of sinners without those
which speak of repentance and fighting the good
fight, and the judgment of men good and bad, and
the account which every man must give of his works
in this life, whether they be of the flesh or of the

186 LECTURE VI.

Spirit. And whence do they get authority so to hold
or interpret one passage of Scripture that it shall
destroy others ?

God forbid that any limits should be placed to
the Divine mercy, save those which He Himself has
placed — it were the act of a suicide to do so ; but
neither may we represent His mercy otherwise than
He has revealed it. And it seems to me that Scrip
ture gives us no warrant to speak of those who thus
depart this life, as we may of those whose light has
shone before men ; whose faith is not at the best a
mere possibility, hidden from our eyes, but a reality,
as far as we can see or conclude. God forbid too that
any doubt should in such moments be thrown upon
the soul which, on the brink of eternity, is already
in an agony of doubt. We may pray, we may hope,
we may exhort him to look to Christ as his only
Saviour ; in Him to put his trust ; to lay aside all
that shuts him out from Christ ; to repair injuries,
to forgive enemies, and the like ; we may leave the
issue in God's hand, not perhaps without hope; but
surely we cannot say he is safe; nor can we, when
he is gone, hold him up as a shining light; for we
cannot conceal from ourselves, we may not conceal
from others — lest we bring ourselves and them to the
same miserable end — that in order to be saved by the
Saviour we must come to Him with changed hearts :
not as Judas came, not as Simon Magus came, not
even as the willing rich young man came ; not only
from terror of the punishment of hell fire, but in
grief for the burden, impatience of the evil, abhor
rence of the pleasures of sin ; not merely with a dead,

LECTURE VI. 187

but with a living faith — the faith of the whole heart,
not merely of part of it. And what if sin has got
such possession of the dying man, that it will not let
him go ? — for often one of the results of sin is, that it
binds a man in chains too strong to break. When
a man turns in health, he can tell, and we can in
some degree tell, whether his faith is real or false ;
but the actual state of the soul of one who only
turns from sin at the last, no one knows but God ;
we have no means of testing it ; all that we do know
of him is, that his life has been spent in wilful re
jection of the Holy Ghost, wilful despite of Christ.
In the midst of light he has preferred darkness, be
cause his deeds were evil ; we cannot tell whether
his turning to Christ is the returning of the will in
love, or merely of the reason in fear. In good truth,
the profession of such persons very often bears witness
against themselves ; it is very seldom that it wears
the calm, assured features of real faith in such ex
tremity. There is very seldom .the calm confidence
which breathes in the words, Lord, remember me when
Thou comest into Thy kingdom. Nor does the thief
on the cross afford any real parallel to such cases ;
his case would be found in that of a heathen who had
not known or heard of Christ till his very last, and
then turned to Him in love and faith. The parallel
to the death-bed of the ungodly Christian would have
been exhibited to us, if it had been Judas Iscariot
who hung on the cross beside the Lord whom he
had betrayed.

Nor can a man rest with confidence on having [jar-
taken in any of the outward privileges of religion ;

188 LECTURE VI.

such as Baptism, or the Lord's Supper ; nor on going
to Church ; nor sermon-hearing ; nor knowledge of
the Bible ; nor again, on being deeply and sensibly
moved by Divine things when forcibly brought before
him. Faith is not the feverish excitement of an hour,
which is mostly a sign of spiritual sickness, but the
steady pulse of life. The Jews were strongly excited
by our Saviour's entry into Jerusalem, and welcomed
Him as their King with palms and hosannahs, and
yet it was all unreal ; for within five days they cried
out, Crucify Him ! Crucify Him !

Nor can assurance be a witness to itself; no one
can safely say he is sure because he is sure ; if he is
sure, it will shew itself in a thousand ways ; in his
life ; his conversation ; his acts without ; in his tem
pers, counsels, wishes within.

If then true scriptural assurance waits on none of
these simply and separately, the question is, Whence
does it spring? comprehensive faith answers readily,
From each and all together as far as they are scrip
tural ; from the spiritual life as distinguished from
and yet containing and implying the moral life ; com
prising within itself a deep, humble, contrite sense of
and sorrow for our sin and sinful ness ; the earnest
and practical energies of repentance ; full belief in
all that the Scripture tells of God and ourselves ;
love of God and man ; a striving after all the graces
of Christian holiness ; earnest self-denial of our car
nal wills and passions; the practical energies of good
works ; a deep gratitude for His will that we should
be saved, with an earnest zeal in making our calling
and election sure, and a full belief that if we watch

LECTURE VI. 189

and pray, God will surely finish the good work He
hath begun, and bring us to everlasting life through
Christ; an earnest looking to Christ; a deep faith
in Him ; full reliance on Him and His atonement
by the sacrifice offered on the cross ; none on our
selves or our works ; full conviction that He has
both the will and the power to save us ; nay, that He
has saved us : with a loving remembrance of all that
He has done for us, and, above all, of His death for
us. These elements may differ in different minds,
but none may be absent, because all are scriptural :
one must ever hold the chiefest place — deep love
towards Him, arising as well from His infinite per
fections, as from a deep sense of what He has wrought
for us and in us — and to such an assurance it is God's
will, unless we reject His will, that all who are called
shall come.

And all this is very briefly but forcibly set forth in
the words of my text, The Spirit itself beareth wit
ness with our spirit that we are the children of God :
for herein are evidently two elements of assurance :
first, the witness of the Spirit, and next the witness
of our own hearts : both are required to a true wit
ness : if the witness of our own spirit be true, the
Spirit beareth witness with it ; if it be false, the
Spirit is silent : if that which is outwardly the wit
ness of the Spirit be so indeed, then will our spirits
bear witness to it ; if it be not, then will our spirits
be unmoved and listless, and we may know that the
Spirit does in reality bear no witness to our salvation.

The witness of our own spirit consists in various
emotions and energies of our souls, which may be

190 LECTURE VI.

classed under reason or the feelings; and each of
these, though differing in degree in different cases,
will nevertheless be held by comprehensive faith to
have its place in real assurance.

First, there is the witness of our reason when we
find within ourselves that our reason submits to the
mysteries of God's revealed Word ; a firm intellec
tual assent to and persuasion of the truth of the
mysteries which God has revealed to us, and, above
all, of the sacrifice of His Son. Hence it is said in
Scripture, He that believeth on the Son of God hath
the ivitness in himself*. On this no doubt must ever
cast its shadow, or, if it be ever cast by the tempter,
must quickly be repelled, and pass away before the
brightness and certainty of the Gospel revelation.

And next, this apprehension and conviction of
the Gospel mysteries must pass from our reason
into our feelings, for it is with the heart that man be
lieveth unto salvation : and must not only bring those
various feelings into subjection to itself, but must
awaken them to higher objects and energies. The
believer must believe, not only that Christ died for
all mankind, but that He died for him personally
and individually. The gospel-history must fall on
his ears as a message which brings to his very self the
tidings of pardon and peace ; and thence there will
naturally arise a grateful confidence that Christ has
died for him, has cleansed his soul, has washed away
his sins, has restored him to the love of the Father,
has placed him among His elect, has made him an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven ; and then in

c i St. John v. 10.

LECTURE VI. 191

his heart necessarily there will spring up, as water
from the earth, a deep love of God, a casting of all
our care upon Him, a sense of being adopted by
Him, of being by Him preordained to everlasting
life, A man may well feel himself lifted somewhat
above his fleshly and mortal self by such thoughts
and persuasions as these ; some of warmer tempera
ment may well feel themselves in an ecstasy ; while
•in others of a colder and more practical mould, their
love and peace in believing may be of a less tu
multuous sort, but not less deep or pure for that.

And perhaps the more ecstatic witness of the
feelings may wait on those who after a long course
of sin find themselves by God's infinite mercy
awakened to repentance and faith ; just as one who
is rescued from shipwreck, or drawn back from the
edge of a precipice, has a more lively sense of deli
verance, than those who have been preserved from
day to day without death thus threatening them face
to face ; though in reality they owe their life to the
same Providence. We read in Scripture5 of two
persons standing before our Lord, to one of whom
our Lord says much had been forgiven, to the other
comparatively little — it is true it is a parable, but it
seems to apply directly to the two persons then in
our Lord's presence. — The assurance of both was
the same. The sins of both were forgiven, and they
knew it. She to whom many sins were forgiven
showed her joy after a fashion which seemed strange
to the disciple who had never known what it was
to have passed from utter wretchlessness of unclean
1 St. Luke vii. 41.

192 LECTURE VI.

living to the knowledge of Christ. Our Saviour did
not by this parable so much find fault with Simon's
lack of sensible emotion, as with his finding fault
with her who ceased not to show her joy; — a lesson
for those who think that all such transports of joy
are either self-deception or deceit.

It may not, however, be denied, that in this
witness of the feelings men easily and readily
deceive themselves ; and therefore to it must be
added the witness of the Spirit; and since the power
to bear fruit meet for our calling, to make a fruitful
use of our spiritual blessings and privileges, to do
good works pleasing and acceptable to God, can be
the work of no other save the Holy Spirit within us,
it follows that a life of faithful obedience, our walk
ing after the Spirit and not after the flesh, brings
with itself the witness of the Spirit: it is a witness
that the Spirit is with us. It is not safe to trust
to mere spiritual emotions or convictions ; we must
test their reality by seeing whether our life is that
of the Spirit; whether He is abiding in us in power;
whether in daily events, as they come before us, He
puts into our minds holy desires, good counsels, and
enables us to bring the same to good effect ; whe
ther the means of grace are effectual upon us ; whe
ther we have the power of prayer : if not, then is
the witness of the Spirit against us, and not for us ;
the witness of our reason or our feelings is a delu
sion ; our spirit beareth witness alone ; and being
alone, its witness is unreal.

And, on the other hand, if the answer of a good
conscience, the witness of good works, stands alone,

LECTURE VI. 193

then it, too, being alone, is a delusion. If a man
never feels himself moved by the high and noble
thoughts, aspirations, hopes, assurances, which wait,
more or less, on Christian faith ; if he never feels
the love of God and Christ ; if he never feels his
soul beat quicker as he thinks of Christ having died
for him ; if his obedience is a cold, formal matter;
if he prides himself upon it, and thinks scorn of
those who are less able to resist temptation than
himself; then may he know that his obedience is
hiding Christ from him, even as He was hid from
the Pharisees. He may be sure that he yet needs
to be especially renewed in the spirit of his mind ;
to look to his sins, rather than to his obedience, in
order that a true sense of what he is, and what he
needs, may give him somewhat of the spirit of the
woman who had been a sinner.

For thus it is that a sense of sin, which is some
times made the sole ground of assurance, is a neces
sary element in it : first, because it makes us put
our trust in Christ ; next, because it makes us sen
sible of what He has done for us ; and thus, by the
spiritual power which God has given us, makes our
love more quick and active; not the sense of sin
unrepented and continued in, but the sense of sin
forgiven and abandoned ; for sin unrepented and
continued in, sin unconquered, comes as a dark
cloud between us and Christ, and hides Him from
us. Every such sin perils our salvation, not only
by putting us out of covenant with God, and ex
posing us to His wrath, but by weakening and de-

0

194 LECTURE VI.

stroying our faith and assurance in Him. Faith
looks at our Saviour as our Advocate, not less than
our Judge. Disobedience in its first beginnings weak
ens this holy confidence, and in its end destroys it.
At first it seems to us as if our Saviour's loving eye
was turned in sorrow and pity on His children as
they begin to go astray. He calls to them, and tries
to win them back ; but as sin follows on sin, and at
last the dark waters close over the soul, then the
wrath of the Judge seems to speak to us from the
eyes which to faith beam with love. We may still,
indeed, hold ourselves to be Christians, but it will
be in the spirit of bondage, not in the spirit of adop
tion, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

And hence, combined with this sense of sin, there
must be that answer of a good conscience which seems
at first sight to be incompatible with it : it seems a
hard saying, that we must be sinners, and yet must be
saints : and yet so it is ; though one of these truths
or the other is lost sight of in too many religious
systems of the present day. Even supposing the two
were to us incompatible, both are laid down in Scrip
ture, and therefore must find a place in any true
portraiture of our faith. But they are not only not
incompatible, but are even closely connected ; for
the answer of a good conscience is not the con
sciousness of any excellence in ourselves, or of our
selves, but of our will being in subjection to the
Holy Spirit; free from the dominion, though not
free from the presence of sin. In ourselves we are
weak, blind, easily deceived, full of evil desires

LECTURE VI. 195

and lusts, disinclined to real good, and therefore
sinful ; in almost every thing we do even well, we
can trace either the impulses of evil overruled by
grace, or the motions of grace opposed and hindered
by the flesh. All that our conscience can tell us of
any good in us is, that we are yielding ourselves to
Him who is perfect good, as far as our weakness
will admit : and therein are by Him kept from
much that is evil, and enabled to do something
that is good, though imperfectly, and even sinfully
in respect of the element of sin, which our
fleshly nature introduces into all we do: and this
may easily be tested by the experience of any one
who takes the trouble to analyse his heart and ac
tions. Thus the answer of a good conscience, the
actual deeds of a holy life, so far from contradicting
our sense of sin, do in reality set it forth and illus
trate it; for our holiness is sin overpowered by grace.
And further, we must distinguish between those
which are called sins of infirmity : which even where
the Spirit is in power, spring up from the weakness,
or weariness, or carelessness, or hastiness of human
nature; and those which come from the heart; where
the Spirit is absent and the flesh reigns supreme.
The one sort do not destroy our assurance, for if we
say we are free from them, the truth is not in us.
The other sort, according to their degree and fre
quency, are signs of our falling or having fallen from
a state of grace a.
Nor, again, can this assurance be generally so com-

a Whitehall Sermons, on " Sins of Infirmity," p. i 19, sqq.
o 2

196 LECTURE VI.

plete but that some doubt must yet remain ; not, in
deed, doubt of God's mercy and love, or of our having
been called by Him to the adoption of sons, but of
our being able to continue stedfast unto the end :
perfect love, indeed, casteth out fear ; but where in
this life shall we find perfect love ? St. Paul, when
speaking of himself or to others, counts not himself
or them to have apprehended, but presses forward
towards the prize, and urges them so to run that
they obtain.

We must, indeed, ever doubt, when we look at
ourselves, and think on the many temptations which
beset us ; the evil which is around, ready to lead us
wrong ; the evil which is within, ready to follow
therein. We must ever distinguish between the doubt
which arises from this sense of our own frailty and sin,
and that which springs from the secret conviction that
in our hearts and lives we are God's enemies rather
than his children ; that we are walking after the
flesh, ajid not after the Spirit : the one brightens
into hope ; the other deepens into fear: the one is the
fruit of holy humility, and that distrust of ourselves
which is part of our assurance in Christ; the other
is the sentence of conscience, in anticipation of the
day of judgment, when the Saviour will say to those
who work iniquity, Depart from me, I know you not.

And I would again remind you that assurance is
not always the same in kind or degree to all ; the ele
ments are variously mixed. In one soul, the witness
of our own spirit, the deep energies of a spiritualized
reason, or the sensible emotions of spiritualized feel-

LECTURE VI. 197

ings, will be most prominent, though not to the
exclusion of the answer of a good conscience. Others
will commit the keeping of their souls to Him in
well doing: not trusting therein, or priding themselves
therein, but blessing God for that they can in their
lives of Christian faith find that sufficient evidence of
their being Christ's which they in vain look for, and
perhaps long for, in their reason or their feelings..

And as this assurance must vary in kind and de
gree in different sorts of men, so must it also in dif
ferent stages of life. In early childhood, when the
soul first learns to trust in Christ crucified, and to
look up to Heaven as its home : while the evil of the
world, with its selfish pleasures and unworthy tempt
ations, is yet hid from our eyes — we are able to rest
with undoubting confidence on the truths which we
have heard and received. The child rests in his
Father's bosom, in love and hope. As life calls
the youth or man into the busy temptations and dis
tractions of life, as new pleasures solicit him, new
desires unfold themselves, he cannot but fear for
himself, lest he be led away to destruction, as thou
sands have been, and are, before our very eyes. Here
his assurance will show itself to him in an ever pre
sent belief of the realities of his spiritual existence,
a deep sense of his own unworthiness : in earnest
trust in Christ ; earnest seeking after and use of
grace : an earnest performance of the duties of love
towards God and man : in an earnest and fearful
struggle against those things which will bring him
into captivity to the law of the members, and turn
him from that love and grace which he is gratefully

198 LECTURE VI.

conscious have hitherto held him up. And as he thus
goes on in life, his assurance increases day by day.
As each temptation resisted, each sinful desire sub
dued, each duty performed, bears witness to the pre
sence of the Holy Spirit within, something is daily
added to his hope, as the strong man stores up the
spoil from the battle, or the covetous man adds gold to
his gains. And as his faith keeps its ground, and waxes
stronger, not only will his present security in Christ
increase, but it will throw itself more and more into
the future : so that at the last the Spirit does com
pletely bear witness with his spirit, and he looks for
death as the messenger which is to carry him to his
rest first, and then to his crown ; as he traces through
life the predestinating will of God leading and hold
ing him up by mercies and by trials, his faith brightens
into undoubting assurance and almost fearless hope,
and the old man once more trusts as the loving, fear
less, child. The hill, which, when he began his journey
seemed so far off, is now brought within his sight,
and he can almost see the walls and count the towers
of the heavenly Jerusalem ; not that he is even yet
content with his faith or his assurance; he whose faith
and assurance are strongest knows most surely that
if they seem strong enough, if they do not increase,
they are insecure and unreal: inexpressibly thankful
that he sees so much, that he can hope so much, he
is still yearning, still praying to see more, still striving
to hope more ; and this is the gift of God to the
obedient faith of the godly; — how different from the
wages of sin to the sinner ! how different from the
struggles of death-bed repentance !

LECTURE VI. 199

And if we wish that this assurance shall wait on us,
either in our active life or in our quiet age, or on
our death-bed, come when it will, we must recollect
that as our assurance must spring from the death of
Christ for us sinners, so whatever sin weakens or
destroys our personal union with Him, in the same
degree weakens or destroys our assurance. Falling
away from a godly childhood to a godless youth-
hood ; wilful, beloved, unrepented sins ; nay, even
sins of infirmity if not repented of and watched ;
self-indulgence; amusements, if they degenerate into
self-indulgence and luxury and forgetfulness of our
calling and election — all such energies of the flesh
coming over our souls, and wrapping them in dark
ness, hide Christ from our view, as the mists which rise
from earth obscure the glorious sun. If we find our
selves forgetting our Christian profession as embodied
in our baptismal vows; if we find ourselves deaf to
those warnings which the Holy Spirit gives us by our
reason, our memory, our hope ; if we find ourselves
unwilling or unable to pray; if we feel a secret wish
to turn from the holy communion; if the high and
noble motions and desires of the Spirit seem strange
and foolish to us; if we love to explain away the
higher and nobler functions of the Christian life, we
may fear lest the axe be laid to the root of the
tree ; for we may be sure that we are not re
newed in the spirit of our mind ; that we have not
put on the new man, which after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness.

LECTURE VII.

EPHESIANS iv. 23, 24.

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye
put on the new man, which after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness.

1 HE blessings which wait upon the Christian are
not confined to the future ; even in this life he has
an inestimable advantage over other men. While
they are obliged to wait for their happiness upon
the tide of human affairs — to be humble suitors to
the world for what it has to inve, the Christian rides

O '

triumphantly over the troublesome waves, and uses
the world as his servant instead of bowing down to
it as his master. That which is commonly most
valued and sought for in life has for him but a value
and an interest as it subserves the higher interests
in which and for which he has his being. His
whole course is a puzzle to the man of the world ;
it seems trackless and aimless ; but in reality his
path, though unseen save by the spiritual eye, un
known save to the spiritual mind, is far more marked
and certain than any of the highways of life — more

LECTURE VII.

secure too and more happy ; tor from every step he
takes, instead of care arid vexation there spring up
joy and peace ; fleshly sorrows do not destroy his
peace of mind, fleshly trials do not weary him ; they
are but petty annoyances, which are scarcely felt by
those who are travelling with eager and certain hope
towards a long- desired much-loved home, in company
with a much-loved all- trusted guide — he is walking
not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

When we look into the nature and origin of
this spiritual life, from which alone, as we have
seen, springs the assurance necessary to justifying
faith, we shall find that most if not all of the con
flicting views on this subject are really embodied in
the comprehensive faith and definite teaching of our
Church. Each of these views by itself takes some
particular aspect, some particular part of the spiritual
life, some particular stage of the spiritual growth,
as the complete and only development of which the
man in Christ is capable ; as if a physician were to
draw his science from one class of patients alone,
and to suppose that death was in all cases produced
by the same causes, and to be met by the same
remedies.

In considering the beginnings of the spiritual life,
we must try to trace how the Spirit works herein :
for whatever degree of religious perfection we may
attain unto, it is solely by His dwelling in us as the
Spirit of life, and by His omnipotent power mould
ing what we are or what we have to the work of our
calling ; hence the motions of our merely rational
being give us a very inadequate idea of the motions

LECTURE VII.

of our spiritual being ; so the various powers of the
physical world — the gigantic forces of steam — the
irresistible strength of water — the subtle fluid of
electricity, are by themselves powerless for the pur
poses of man for which they now seem designed ;
but when the spirit of man takes possession of them,
working in and by them, then do they assume
almost the energies of life, the functions of animate
beings ; they seem by their own inherent* power to
produce results which affect the destinies of the
whole world, and which were undreamt of till human
invention made them what they are ; their full nature
is only known by viewing them through the medium
of human genius and skill. Thus if we wish to
know the powers of the spiritual life, we must see
how the Holy Spirit acts upon and directs the various
parts of our nature, which without Him have no life
in them.

Now one function of the Holy Spirit in making
us spiritually alive is to impress upon the soul a con
viction of the truth of the Christian Revelation, so
as either to give the general desire for salvation a
definite direction towards Christ, or to awaken that
desire by making us feel that Christ has died for us.
In the early church this conviction of the truth of
Christianity was sometimes impressed upon willing
men by supernatural signs and wonders, as in the
case of Cornelius ; but now, it is generally by the
word, the foolishness of preaching and teaching, that
the Spirit works in putting before us the various
mysteries and promises and precepts of the Gospel.
And without doubt those who listen to Scripture

LECTURE VII. 203

with attentive and willing hearts do feel therein the
influences of the Holy Spirit working upon them,
and creating in their souls spiritual desires and
counsels : the word preached can scarcely fail to
be unto them a well of water springing up unto
everlasting life, food come down from heaven ; for
we must bear in mind that the words of the Bible
are in outward form alone the words of man ;
within they are the very breath of the Spirit speak
ing through human lips. Where this word is re
ceived as God's word, there it naturally works as of
God to the quickening of our souls ; and thus are
Christians said to be begotten of the word ; hence
the preaching of the Gospel is in one view the com
mencement of the spiritual life.

But this does not supersede Baptism ; for the
spiritual life cannot actually, or properly speaking,
begin, till we have been taken out of the state of
nature into grace by the formal acceptance and ap
plication to ourselves of the merits of Christ ; and
hence when the believing child of Adam has in
Baptism been definitely admitted to the place and
privileges of a Christian, has therein been sacra-
mentally and figuratively, though for spiritual pur
poses really, buried into His death, then does the
Holy Spirit coinciclently with this death of the old
man come into our souls as the Spirit of the new
man. A new birth takes place ; we are born again,
in that by this indwelling of the Spirit we have
new powers and tendencies proper for the life of
the Christian, as in our natural birth we have the

204 LECTURE Vil.

powers arid tendencies proper for the life of the
man ; and thus are we born again in Baptism — thus
is Baptism the commencement of the spiritual life.

But the nature and functions of this Sacrament
are so manifold, and so much confused in the theo
logical disputes of the day, that it is necessary to
examine this rather more closely, and to distinguish
between the essence of Baptism and its antecedents
and results : the former will be in every case the
same, the latter will vary somewhat according to
persons and circumstances.

Arid firstly, we learn from Scripture that in Bap
tism there is remission of sins through the applica
tion of Christ's merits by faith ; the believer is
therein identified with Christ, and being spiritually
nailed with Him to the cross, pays thereon the
penalty of his sins both original and actual ; so that,
secondly, his relation to God is changed, he is no
longer an enemy and rebel, but a son and a coheir
with Christ. Arid thirdly, the old man, whereby he
was held in captivity to sina, that whereby sin was
his master, being dead, he is now set free to work
things pleasing and acceptable to God, arid is bound
not to allow Satan to regain his dominion over him.
And fourthly, when he is thus freed from the
dominion of sin, there rises up from the grave of the
old man, by the power of the resurrection of Christ,
the new man, after the pattern of Christ, that is,
the Spirit of God clothing Himself upon our natural
being ; and if we were at liberty to follow out the

a Rom. vii. 6.

LECTURE VII. 205

figurative reasoning strictly, we should say that, the
old man being thus dead, the evil lusts which belong
to the old man would wholly perish ; but Scripture
tells us they remain, and therefore we see that this
logically true analogy cannot be carried further; the
evil tendencies are still in us, but in consequence of
the power of grace they are not the supreme or active
principles as before. But the existence of evil within
us is not incompatible with a spiritual state, for
even before the Fall, Eve, as well as Adam, was liable
to evil desires, and by admitting them fell. Yet
Satan is no longer our tyrant ; he comes again only
as the cunning tempter, trying to seduce us into
allowing him to regain his throne.

And if we look to the conditions of Baptism being
thus effectual unto our partaking of the sanctifying
and regenerating influences of the Spirit, we shall
see that in the adult at least there must be a definite
sense and weariness and dislike of sin — a belief in
and acceptance of Christ as the sacrifice for sin, as
the Mediator and Priest between God and man, — a
renunciation of ourselves and our works — and a
general belief in the promises and mysteries of re
velation, as far as they have by the ministry of the
word been brought before us. There need not in
deed be good works, for of these in their Christian
sense the man is not yet capable ; and in their hea
then sense God may have drawn him to Himself
without them ; a man may turn to God in heart
and desire, and straightway be baptized, as in the
case of St. Paul and others, of whom we read in

LECTURE VII.

Scripture ; but there must always be that change in
our notions of our nature, our good, our pleasures, our
happiness — in our views of the world arid its belong
ings ; of ourselves, our aims and destinies, which is
usually termed repentance — and where this repent
ance whereby we forsake sin, and this faith whereby
we steadfastly believe the promises of God, are pos
sible, and as far as they are possible, there are they
requisite before a man can be justified, and therefore
of course before he can be born again unto newness
of life by water and the Spirit.

So again in an adult the results are immediate
and sensible, unless there be in him something which
hinders the proper operation of the sacrament, so that
it becomes merely a fruitless outward sign, without
any inward grace : whatever he has, it is clothed
upon by the Spirit and turned to God ; his powers
and tendencies of mind and heart, being in full
activity, straightway move in the^new and hea
venly path which is opened for them ; his reason
apprehends Christ ; his will obeys Him ; his ima
gination passes to the invisible world ; his desires
and hopes rise to heaven ; old things have passed
away, and he is become a new creature, in active
possession of those spiritual powers which have
been engrafted on his natural being in its full deve-
lopement and strength ; he thinks, reasons, desires,
acts as a man born again of Christ into a new sphere
of desire, thought, and action ; his regeneration may
be tested in his life and conversation.

But where neither these conditions nor these

LECTURE VII. 207

results are possible, there of course they are not re
quired before nor to be looked for after the ordi
nance ; and therefore in the baptism of infants this
regeneration is the sole gift and act of God ; His
sole gift not only in the sense of our having done
nothing to procure or deserve it, but without any
desire, wish, belief, preceding on the part of the
recipient. Nor can its results be visible or tested by
thought and action, because the child has not yet
begun to think or act, at least so as to be discernible
to us. And this brings me to a part of the subject
which cannot be approached without trembling, lest
I should add fuel to the fire, even while wishing to
do something towards extinguishing it.

And first, it will I presume be allowed, that where-
ever Baptism is spoken of in Scripture in connection
with the new birth, there is no limitation excepting
infants from its operation ; we must see whether
there is any Scriptural warrant for limiting it more
than it is limited in Scripture ?

I cannot help thinking that the objections to in
fant regeneration arise partly from applying human
reasoning to Scripture revelation, and partly from
supposing that certain Scripture truths are incompa
tible with the doctrine, and therefore prove it to be
unscriptural. I believe it will be found, that in
reality each and all have an independent place in
Scripture, as the facts which they represent have a
definite function in our salvation ; are each and all
taught in the Bible as they are recognised in the
comprehensive faith of our church. I cannot, for
instance, see any reason why the Scripture language

208 LECTURE VII.

on Baptism should be explained away or limited
from any jealousy lest it should interfere with that
personal religion which is taught in every page of
the Bible. Baptismal regeneration, so far from
excluding or neutralizing any one requisite of spi
ritual life, does in reality point to, and enforce
them. There can be no stronger reason for living
spiritually than having from the beginning received
spiritual life. There is much more danger lest per
sons should fancy themselves relieved from the obli
gations to this Divine life, from supposing that their
new birth is something yet to come.

Nor is there any weight in an argument which
attempts to overthrow the doctrine in question by
saying that, as no one can be regenerate without
faith, and infants are not capable of having faith,
therefore they cannot be regenerate ; this reasoning
is fallacious. By an exactly similar argument it
might be said, No one can be saved without faith ;
infants cannot have faith; and therefore infants can
not be saved — a conclusion which I need not occupy
your time by disproving. The position on which
the argument is founded must be qualified in order
to be true ; no one who is capable of faith can be
regenerate or saved without it — and the bear
ing of the one premiss thus stated is evidently
destroyed by the other.

The reasoning, such as it is, might easily be turned

against those who introduce it, by saying that no one

can be saved who is not regenerate ; and therefore

baptised infants, being saveda, must be regenerate.

a See the Rubric at the end of the Baptismal Service.

LECTURE VII. 209

But how are they able to assert that a child has
not faith ? Who shall tell what are the secret motions
of an infant soul, where the Holy Spirit deigns to
dwell ? Who shall say what visions of heavenly
things float across it — visions which, if they exist at
all, are not the less clear or less glorious because
the reason has not yet begun to stir, or because the
world of sense has not yet sullied the mirror ? Who
shall say what visions crossed the souls of those
whom Christ blessed b ? who shall say what is in the
soul of the poorest and weakest infant ? Ask Philo
sophy, she is dumb ; ask your own memories, arid
they answer not.

But leaving this, on which it is impossible to
make any certain assertion on one side or the other,
we may allow for a moment that an infant cannot
have faith ; but this does not prove that an infant
cannot be regenerate ; for we must riot confound
the power of life with the life itself; the energies
and functions of the body — feeling, motion, breathing
— with that which is the secret principle of them all,
the breath of life, whereby man becomes a living
soul. And so in spiritual things, we must not con
found the principle or power of spiritual life with
the exhibitions and workings thereof, either within
or without. Regeneration is not faith or hope or
charity, but that which enables us to form and pos
sess and enjoy those graces, that whence these graces
spring, the new power of life, the presence of the
Holy Spirit. The essence of this regeneration is,
b Mark x. i 6.
P

210 LECTURE VII.

that this Spirit takes possession of our being as far
as it is developed, and works in us as far as we are
capable of working ; and hence there is a material
difference between our judgment of the regeneration
of an adult and that of a child0. In the former case,
as I have before observed, the several parts and
powers, being more or less in active exercise, are
spiritualised coincidently with the act of regeneration:
so that faith, hope and charity must be in a greater
or less degree the immediate results and tests of the
inpouririg of the Spirit, and hardly to be distin
guished from it. But this is not the case, as far
as we can see, in the child ; he has little else than
faculties and tendencies which do not at once, and
may never, exhibit themselves in act ; and there
fore the absence of visible fruits of the Spirit is
in this case no proof of the absence of His regene
rating presence, as it would be in the case of the
adult. For an infant may be, as far as his undeve
loped nature admits, as really a new creature as the
saint who dies in the full stature of Christ. The
powers of life are as real in the unconscious child as
in the giant beneath whose step the earth trembles.
Nor again, as it seems to me, is that argument
more conclusive, which is drawn from the actual
workings of the child's heart, when, as life goes on,
they become discernible. " This child," they say,
" cannot be regenerate : look at the actual motions
" of the unregenerate man in him ; look at the work-

c See Davisori on Baptismal Regeneration. — Quarterly Review,
vol. XV. 475 sqq.

LECTURE VII. 211

u ing of Adam's sinf illness ; self-will breaking out
" into disobedience ; watch his struggles to get his
" own way ; his wayward tempers, his selfishness,
" and even lusts making their presence felt before
" their time." Yes, my brethren, true enough ; but see
also how a careful parent, by prayer and watching,
can call into existence the struggles against self and
the flesh, whence in course of time result the Christ
ian graces of self-denial and self-control ; how, even
in a wayward child, the energies of prayer, and of
love of Christ, a trust in Him, a desire for heaven, a
wish to be good for Christ's sake, can be awakened ;
whence comes this power of resistance to evil, of
motions towards good ? from nature ? surely not :
there is no principle in nature of denying self for
righteousness sake, whatever there may be of form
ing the virtues which are in fashion in the world.
Surely in this we can trace the operation of the
grace of God's ordinance, of which Scripture speaks,
the being born again of water and the Spirit ; the
renewal by the Spirit in the washing of regeneration,
working in him so as to bring the law of the mem
bers into captivity to the law of the mind.

Others again point to baptized persons, and urge,
with but too much truth, that they belong not to
the new birth, but to the old : and were it true, that
the having been regenerated necessarily implies a
present spiritual life — were it true, that having
been once born again unto righteousness, we could
not become again dead in trespasses and sins, the
argument would be conclusive. The proper result

p 2

LECTURE VII.

indeed, of having received the Spirit in infancy is,
that as our being expands day by day in the succes
sive stages of life, each power, each tendency, each
affection, as it unfolds, should yield itself to the
Divine life, and become a Christian grace ; but we
have already seen that the human will is free to ac
cept or reject the spiritual influences which are
offered to it, and that even after the entrance of the
Holy Spirit into the soul the flesh strives to turn
us from Him to itself : and therefore we cannot
argue, from the present carnal life of any baptized
person, that he has never received the new birth
unto faith and good works, any more than we can
argue from a man's sickness or death that he never
was born.

It is, however, urged by some, that if the regene
rating work of the Holy Spirit has taken place in
the soul, it is impossible to conceive that the work
of that infinite and omnipotent Being can ever be
undone : to these it is sufficient to answer, that it is
no sound theology to set aside the statements of
Scripture by reference to supposed possibilities or
impossibilities in spiritual things. The argument
they use has essentially that rationalistic character
which they themselves would most shrink from ; it
may be used against the whole doctrine of all spi
ritual agencies by those whom they would most
oppose. When we meet plain Scripture statements
by our impossibility of conception, we are putting
arms into the hands of the enemy.

Nor have the Scripture texts which are adduced

LECTURE VII.

to support the notion that the regenerate cannot
fall, any real weight in this matter. Thus, to take
the most decided of them, that from the Epistle of
St. John — Whosoever is born of God doth not com
mit sin, for His seed remaineth in him, and he
cannot sin because he is born of God* — it has been
shown by a variety of most trustworthy divines, on
grammatical as well as theological grounds, that it
does not bear the meaning which is sought to be
given it : and we may further observe, that the
seed of God is simply the Holy Spirit, which is
sown in the heart of the sons of God ; as long as
we continue to be sons of God, as long as that seed,
the Spirit, abides in reality and power, so long is
the man kept from sin ; not of course from those
sins which spring from the weakness of our nature,
and are therefore inseparable from our state here6,
but from those which spring from wilful rebellion,
and end in, or rather are spiritual death. Before
Satan can lead a child of the adoption into this sort
of iniquity, the will must be alienated from God ;
in wish he must have sinned, though not, perhaps,
in act : and thus is the process described by St.
James f ; first, a man is enticed of his own lust to
wish to disobey God, by a rebellious heart of un
belief : the seed of God is blighted, the Holy Spirit
is unheard or despised ; then lust conceiveth ; the
desire of sin is matured into resolution and counsel;
and then after this conieth forth sin in act and com
pletion. Thus it is true that a regenerate man does
d i John iii. 9. e i John i. 8. f James i. 13.

214 LECTURE VII.

not fall from God as long as he submits himself to
the Spirit, that is, as long as he continues to be re
generate ; but when the seed of God fails in him
through the preference of his will for selfish lusts,
then does he in the same degree cease to be regene
rate, arid falls away, not necessarily into, but at least
towards actual trespasses and deadly sin; still, as
was before observed, his ceasing to be regenerate does
not prove that he has never been regenerated. If a
man who had been once made alive had no cause to
fear spiritual death, there would be no such notions
or expressions in Scripture as being again dead in
trespasses and sins, or turning to old sins, or falling
away after having been made partakers of the Holy
Ghost f.

It may be said that there is danger lest a trust in
Baptismal Regeneration should deceive persons as
to their spiritual state, and make them slack in the
work of their salvation. This may be true ; but we do
not teach any one to trust to his baptism for his
spiritual state ; this must be evidenced by the state
of his heart and the course of his life : still there
may be danger lest some may do so. This is a rea
son for stating the doctrine clearly, and pointing out
in connection with it those other Scripture doctrines
which bear on the spiritual life, and which will se
cure us from the expected danger : it can be no rea
son for explaining away the doctrine altogether.
The self- wisdom of man needs perpetually to be re
minded, that theologians and pastors have not to
contrive a system of their own, but to use and ad-
f Hob. vi. .

LECTURE VII. 215

minister a system which a higher wisdom than
theirs has put into their hands.

For if there is danger herein, there is wisdom
also ; and in this wisdom comfort and blessing ; for
I cannot but think that no small comfort and bless
ing is missed by those who are unable to receive the
doctrine of the Regeneration of infants in Baptism :
surely, for any of us who are impressed with a sense
of the responsibility of training and teaching those
whom God has given us, who feel how weak are
our powers of instructing them properly in spi
ritual things, it is no small blessing to know, on the
pledge and security, as it were, of Christ's ordained
Sacrament, that before those infant wills are able to
discern between good and evil — before they can fully
understand those holy lessons which we would fain
impress upon their inmost hearts — before they even
know whether there is a Holy Spirit or not — there
is a Power within moulding their unformed will,
making them understand those mysteries of life arid
death which can be but faintly expressed in the most
earnest and powerful words : quickening their in
stincts to see good ; making them shrink from evil ;
putting godly sorrow into their hearts when the old
man leads them wrong : it is true, that all this is in
miniature ; the evil is small, the tears soon dried,
the self-reproach soon forgotten ; but they are not
for that any less the work of the Spirit. So
again, when we have to cast them on the sea of
life, it is no small comfort to us to know, on
the security of Christ's ordained Sacrament, that

216 LECTURE VII.

it is not our own strength or wisdom alone
which has been labouring for them, that they may
be able to live and die in the faith and fear of
Christ, and thus be partakers with us of the
resurrection unto everlasting life. We would lay
down our lives to save them, we would almost con
sent for them to be anathema ; but in vain ; no
man may make agreement even for his child's soul.
No love, no care can shield them from the snares,
the temptations, the example, the ridicule of the
evil world. We know that the lessons of faith,
hope, charity, if merely impressed upon their me
mory, or even engrafted on their reason, by our
careful teaching alone, will pass away before the
fiery darts of the enemy, as the image of heaven in
the morning lake before the shadows of a stormy
day. What a comfort for us to know, on the secu
rity of Christ's ordained sacrament, that if by God's
blessing they have laid to heart those things which
they have been taught for their souls' health, the
religious principles which are within them are not
the result of our weak teaching and training, but of
the new birth unto righteousness ; of the indwelling
power of the Spirit, who has impressed and confirmed
in their souls those lessons which we ignorantly
and weakly, though lovingly, have endeavoured to
teach them.

But then it must not be to us a mere doctrine to
talk about, or preach about, or argue about, to
others ; it must be to us an household, heartfelt
truth, to guide, comfort, help us in the spiritual

LECTURE VII. 217

nurture of those souls whom God has intrusted to
our care ; to guide us really and definitely in our
practical views and treatment of them, as having
great treasures, though in earthen vessels ; causing
us to keep in mind that the great secret of spiritual
growth, and therefore of continuance in spiritual
life, is submission to the Spirit ; that as in the man
so in the child the Spirit is quenched by following
his own will ; that to check this dangerous impulse
of their own wills, we must work watchfully and
humbly with the Spirit; in trying to fill the opening
mind with divine things and principles ; praying
to God and trusting to the Spirit to engraft them
spiritually in the soul ; to lead them by gentle
firmness from self to God ; to teach them to find
the highest self in Christ ; their highest virtue in
yielding themselves to grace ; to form in them a
principle of obedience, not merely of obedience to
their parents and masters without, but obedience to
the Divine Guide within.

And very far it is from our Church's teaching to
make any one contented with his spiritual state or
progress, because he believes that he was born
again in Baptism. Our Church teaches us to seek
for and to pray for daily renewed; continual mor
tification of the flesh ; daily increasing submission
to the Spirit ; a daily increasing power of good
works ; a daily increasing heavenly-mindedness ; a
daily increasing distrust of ourselves and trust in
Christ; in short, a daily increase of real, lively,
personal religion. Baptismal regeneration does not

218 LECTURE VII.

imply that a man is now alive because he was
alive once, or that nothing more remains to be done.
Regeneration is but the beginning to which the rest
of our lives here should be conformable. Even after
the new birth in Baptism we are taught that we have
yet to put on the new man ; to pass by the successive
stages of spiritual growth from spiritual childhood to
spiritual manhood. And for this our spiritual man
hood all the several instruments of the Spirit are in
their proper degree and office necessary ; the Word,
the ministrations and teaching of the Church, the Holy
Communion, in short, all those things which God has
ordained as means towards the development of our
spiritual life. Even after Baptism we may be said
to be continually begotten of the word, inasmuch as
in those who are alive in Christ, the word, which
is a mere dead letter to those who are dead, conti
nually produces fresh stages of growth — spiritual
thoughts, feelings, desires. All these are so far
from being superseded by Baptismal Regeneration,
that they belong to it as its proper results, lacking
which, it is as something which has passed away
without leaving any trace behind.

And as Baptismal Regeneration in no way super
sedes personal religion or spiritual growth, or the
other means of grace according to the nature and
power of each, so neither is it opposed to conver
sion. This undoubtedly has a definite place and
office assigned to it by Scripture ; but we may not
extend this place and office beyond its scriptural
limits. To those in whom, by God's blessing, their

LECTURE VII. 219

Baptismal Regeneration has brought forth its proper
results, there is no need of conversion, except in the
sense of that daily growth, wherein the most advanced
Christian is daily advancing nearer to God, daily
turning more and more from earth to Christ ; but
in the sense in which conversion is often used in
modern theology, as the beginning of spiritual life,
it is clearly inapplicable to those who have grown
up into Christ from the beginning, or even to those
who later in life are striving to make their calling
and election sure.

But where these fruits of the Spirit are not —
where a person who has once received the gift of
grace for the work is nevertheless living in careless
ignorance or infidelity, or in careless formality,
having a name to live even while dead — then there
is as much need of conversion as of Baptism itself.
If, as children, our own wills lead us instead of the
Spirit ; if our hearts with their impulses and issues
are moulded by the principles, fashions, maxims of
men and not by the laws of God, then the precious
gift we have received is passing away, and we fall
into the old condemnation, and we need conversion.
If as men we live merely a natural life, excelling, it
may be, in our several paths — being merely philoso
phers, statesmen, moralists, teachers, merchants, and
not Christian philosophers, Christian statesmen,
Christian moralists, Christian teachers, Christian
merchants — then are we strangers to grace, even
while belonging seemingly, through our baptism, to
the number of the elect, and living within the dis
pensations of grace, and we need conversion. It

220 LECTURE VII.

need hardly be said what is the effect of grosser
sin ; one might as well say that the thunderbolt
kills the tree it strikes, or that the body is dead
when the soul has departed from it ; and it is im
possible not to see that this is the state of a very
large proportion of baptized persons.

And yet sometimes such an one is not dead, hut
sleepeth; Christ raises him up by some of those min
istrations which are always at work among men, some
for one sort, some for another : comprehensive faith
does not dogmatize as to the precise way in which
life is restored to those who have lost it ; we know
that the hearts of men are as various as their paths
in life, and that God has, in his infinite mercy and
wisdom, provided means of restoration for all who
desire it. Our Church takes Baptism as it is in
Scripture, without limiting or extending or alter
ing either itself or its privileges. We follow Scrip
ture in teaching that Baptism is necessary for all,
and that certain spiritual gifts are vouchsafed
therein to all who receive that sacrament according
to Christ's institution. We follow Scripture in
laying down the necessity of conversion for all who
are not spiritual ; and while we hold out the vari
ous means and ministrations which are provided by
God as well for the refreshment of the strong as the
recovery of the weak, we do not venture to lay
down one universal rule for the awakening again
unto life. We receive and teach them all as far
as they are found in Scripture ; or even in the
religious experiences of those who having been
again dead have again been made alive, as far as

LECTURE VII. 221

these are confirmed, or at least not contradicted
by the revealed truth.

Thus it is not denied that to many persons the
new creation unto holiness comes into active being
at a later period : nor can there be any doubt but
that many, especially among the uneducated classes,
have dated their becoming spiritually alive from
some definite moment, in which God's mercy has
visited them; from some startling warning, or by
some sudden and strange accident ; sometimes even
the visions of a disordered imagination ; or some
chapter in the Bible ; or some soul-stirring dis
course which placed things in a new light, and
awakened feelings of self-reproach akin to despair ;
and then, when at the same time Christ and His
promises were brought before them, they hastened to
Him as men in a shipwreck hasten to the boat
which is to save them ; old things in that short
space of time have so far passed away, that what was
their best is now such no longer ; what a few hours
before they did not know or care for, they now seek
and desire ; the sins they loved, they now hate and
fear; what they hated, they now love. There is
nothing contrary to Scripture in this ; it is not in
all cases mere self-deceit or delusion.

Let us take a case to illustrate what has been
said : a man, who has been long living in wilful
sin or carelessness, has the promises of God and
the sure mercies of Christ, the terrors of the Lord,
set before him in words which have the breath
of the Spirit, and to which he cannot help listening

222 LECTURE VII.

in spite of himself: as he listens dark images of
wrath, rendered still more striking by the light
which is cast on them by the star of mercy shining
from afar, throng his soul ; the fear of hell awakens
him; he ventures to look into himself; and there
the busy crowd of sins moving to and fro on their
several ministries of evil disclose themselves to him.
He sees himself as he is in God's sight, and he cries
out in his fear, " Who shall save me ?" Christ the
sacrifice answers, Come unto me, all that travail
and are heavy laden ; the sweet sense of hope, of
gratitude, comes across his soul ; he believes that
Christ did die to save him; his eyes are opened, and
he sees, on the one hand, the bottomless pit, with his
own shadow reflected therein, and on the other, his
Lord nailed to the cross, and bearing his punishment
for him, and he turns to Him : it is as if a leper who,
by some strange lack of sense and reason, had long
walked among men ignorant and careless of his
disease, were suddenly to have his eyes opened, and
seeing the Healer by his side, were to say, " Lord,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Does our
church a teach us to doubt what our Saviour's reply
would be ? Who can doubt, who can teach others to
doubt, whether Christ would accept him? who would
teach such a one to expect to be rebuffed ? Does
our Church venture to keep out of sight the Scrip
ture promise, that though his sins be as scarlet, yet
shall they be made as white as snow ? Far from it :
we bless God for His mercy thus shown to him and to

a See The Exhortation in the Commination Service.

LECTURE VII.

us. We do not strive so much to turn his eyes to God's
past mercies, vouchsafed to him at Baptism, as if he
were still alive in them, but to the fresh mercies of
spiritual life now vouchsafed to him. But still it
must be remembered that such a one is, at the best,
in no better or more spiritual state than he would
have been, had he made use of God's former mercies
in Baptism ; than those who have submitted them
selves to the Spirit from their infancy ; in many,
and those not unimportant respects he, is worse1'.

For we must distinguish the pardon of past sins,
and the beginnings of spiritual life which are con
nected therewith, from the restoration of that life
to its full functions arid powers ; that holiness, in
short, without which we are told no one can see the
Lord. While therefore we hold that in such a con
version the spiritual life is revived, we do not
therefore conclude that it is developed to the full
stature of the man in Christ. The work is begun,
but it is not therefore completed ; conversion is not
final, any more than Baptismal regeneration ; and
moreover, the work of spiritual progress is more
difficult in the one case than the other. Has his
life left no traces behind ? has he nothing to do
which hitherto he has left undone? nothing to
undo which he has done? his heart is in its full
strength, with its faculties, passions, active and
vigorous ; are they renewed by grace ? do his feel
ings, thoughts, desires, ebb and flow with the Spirit?
have they thrown off their fleshly leaven ? are his

h See Whitehall Sermons, p. 101.

224 LECTURE VII.

energies spiritual ? is anger still ? covetousness
motionless, lusts quenched ? does he in his daily life
serve the flesh or the Spirit ? All this surely makes
the development of the spiritual life after a long
continuance in sin, even more difficult and uncertain
than it is in consequence of our natural corruption.
And does the sense of this very corruption of nature
make him more vigorous and determined in resist
ing nature, and using grace ? or is it a mere cloke
for continuance in sin ? In good truth, it is to be
feared that the onesided view of conversion, wherein
the first moment of turning to God is every thing,
leaves many men more unconverted than they were
before.

Nor, again, can it be doubted that to many men
the work of conversion has been begun and perfected
by a more gradual process ; by the work of the Spirit in
a gradual repentance ; by a sorrowful recollection of
their baptismal vows and privileges ; by the laying
aside one sin after another, from the principle of
formal obedience to God ; by an earnest use of the
means of grace. They gradually feel the emotions
and energies of the Spirit, and not merely His
counsels and promptings ; a lively sense of spi
ritual blessings, the consolations of spiritual peace ;
and then, after a while, Christ discloses Himself
to them as their Saviour, their sacrifice, and wel
comes them again to His bosom ; so that they find
themselves spiritually alive in Him, though not con
scious of the exact time, nor even mode in which
the Holy Spirit of life first began to work in them.

LECTURE VII.

And they have this advantage over the other sort,
in that they have in some degree subdued the old
man, and thus done that which the others have yet
entirely to do.

Or, again, spiritual life may be rekindled by the
working of the Spirit in the personal ministrations
of one of God's servants : by his labour in teaching,
his remonstrances, entreaties, warnings, example ; and
it is in this sense that St. Paul speaks of himself as
travailing of certain of his converts till Christ be
born again in them a : though the confusion of
metaphor in this passage scarcely allows of its
having any direct bearing on the question, beyond
the fact, that the personal labours and prayers of
the Apostle had in some way or other been effectual
in promoting the spiritual life of those for whom he
laboured.

Thus do many things combine to produce and keep
alive and restore that new man whereof we are speak
ing ; and no one of these excludes the other. Regene
ration in Baptism does not exclude what may be called
Regeneration in conversion, when it is needed, or the
begetting again by the Word, or by the labours of
God's servants, in whatever sense these are set forth
in Scripture : still less can any of these exclude
Baptism from the office which is given to it in Scrip
ture without exception or limitation.

And we must not omit to notice a distinction be
tween the Sacraments and the other means whereby,
as we have seen, certain spiritual emotions and
a Gal. iv. 19.
Q

226 LECTURE VII.

energies are produced : and this distinction is
suggested by the objection which some make to
Baptismal Regeneration — that it is impossible to
conceive how water can produce the new birth. It
is true, it is beyond our conception ; it is the imme
diate and (so to speak) the arbitrary working of
God's Spirit, according to His own good pleasure,
and above our conception, attached to this rite by
God in Scripture : its being beyond our conception
is a feature of its sacramental character. We can
tell how the Spirit works upon us in reading the
Scriptures, or hearing sermons, for instance; the
connection can be traced: by exciting thoughts, hopes,
or fears, or some one or other of those feelings whence
human action springs : while in the Sacraments the
connection between the means used and the result
produced cannot be traced ; the operation is secret
and incomprehensible. The Spirit bio wet h where it
listeth ; we cannot tell whence it cometh, except
where God has revealed it to us. And thus the ar
gument brought against these especial means of grace
does in reality confirm our belief in them, and point
out, though not explain, their distinctive character.
After what has been said, I need not detain you
by pointing out at any length that Baptismal Rege
neration does not shut out from forgiveness those who
have failed of that spiritual growth which is the
proper privilege and inheritance of every baptized
person : nor how such persons may regain what they
have lost or neglected. Let the Scripture speak for it
self : I will arise and go to my Father, and will say
unto Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven,

LECTURE Vll. 227

and before Thee, and am no more worthy to he called
Thy son. This is the first step towards recovery; arid
it may be taken without hesitation or doubt, so it be
taken with childlike humility and confidence. There
is no sinner so lost but that he may go in faith and
repentance to Christ, and he will be accepted a ; he
will receive of the gift of the Spirit for the work
which is before him. Nor is there any delay in his
acceptance : if he wishes for Christ, much more does
Christ yearn towards him. A penitent sinner may
be led by his natural temperament to take vengeance
on himself for the injuries formerly done to his soul :
but God does not require this of us ; such severities
and outward acts of self-abasement are not, properly
speaking, acts of religion ; they are not necessary to
acceptance ; no long course of penitential discipline,
no fountains of tears before Christ will accept us,
and restore us to our privileges as seemeth to Him
best for us : the prodigal son had not to sit at his
father's door in sackcloth and ashes. No long course
of good works before Christ will accept us, and give
us fresh supplies of His Spirit : the prodigal son
had not to work in his father's fields as a hired ser
vant, though he was willing to do so. But, on the
other hand, we may riot think that a simple act of
belief will make us alive again ; for we have seen
that this belief is not faith, unless the Spirit be in
us : where the Spirit is not, there Christ is not ;
where Christ is not, the notion of our being spiritu
ally alive because we believe in Christ, or because

a Whitehall Sermons, " There remaineth no more sacrifice for
sin," p. 59, sqq.

228 LECTURE VII.

we have been baptized as infants, or for any other
reason whatever, is simply a spiritual delusion, an act
of self-deceit. It is in vain for one who hath not Christ
to say that he hath life. Wherefore our church scrip-
turally limits Christ's mercy in pardoning and ab
solving to them who both truly repent and unfeign-
edly believe.

It is true, that to many persons it would seem
waste of time and words to speak so much of the
spiritual life, of which so little is visible in com
parison with that which is continually before us
in the varied affairs of men. It is as if one were to
bid us turn our eyes from a mighty river, with cities
on its banks and fleets on its waters, to contemplate
a rivulet, whose course can hardly be discerned.
And hence it is, I fear, little thought of even amongst
those to whom life presents itself as a battle-field
rather than a playground — as a sphere for serious
exertion rather than for self-indulgence. And for
this reason we must be careful to keep in mind, not
only the difference between the life of the Spirit and
the life of the flesh, but between the life of the
Spirit and what we may call the life of the rea
son ; I mean, that life which a rational creature
would choose in preference to the life of sense : and
this all the more, because one is so easily and so
often mistaken for the other : because in their out
ward appearance and acts they resemble one an
other : and because so few live up even to the ra
tional life, that those who do so are apt to fancy that
they have attained their highest perfection. In
reality, this rational life is as far below the spiritual

LECTURE VII. 229

life as the animal life of the uneducated sensualist
is below the energetic life of the philosopher, or
statesman, or poet. This, indeed, may seem to open
a wide field for our highest powers — to promise
great and glorious results. The perfect man of an
cient philosophy was, in many respects, a noble
character, and presents many points for our imita
tion. But we, as Christians, have a more noble
perfection, a more excellent destiny, even in this
world. Our highest life is not merely the punc
tual performance of duties or acts of love, in which,
like the rational life, it outwardly consists : but
Christ dwelling in us by that His spiritual pre
sence, of which outward duties and acts are but the
reflections : it is hid with Christ in God, but it will
be seen when He who is our life shall appear. Not
that the rational and spiritual life are necessarily
opposed or incompatible ; it is only when they are
separated that the difference between them appears,
and the different results which wait upon each be
come seen : when united, as they ought to be, they
work together towards the same end, and to their
mutual increase. It is not possible for us, it is not
required, it would not be right, that we should
neglect the duties of individual and social life; but
these, when they are all in all, have but a savour
unto death, as the body without the soul : while
to those who are spiritually alive, fresh life springs
up even from what by itself and in itself is lite-
less. There is much in the world, much in our
hearts, to make us neglect the spiritual life, to make
us lose sight of it, in the formal duties and pursuits

230 LECTURE VII.

of life : but recollect, no amount of rational develop
ment can supply the place of the life of the Spirit ;
no amount of temporal success can compensate
for spiritual death ; though each of these is, in
its proper degree and place, among the motives
which may animate us to labour and perseverance.
It is a legitimate object of your ambition, nay, it is
part of your spiritual duty, to develope the powers
which God has given you : it is a legitimate object of
your ambition, that you should hereafter direct the
destinies of empires, or be guides and lights among
men ; that you should have within your reach, and
be able to place within the reach of others, the
means of self-improvement and recreation ; that by
your progress in the arts and sciences you should
bring to light those blessings which God has pre
pared for our comfort or use> and which may yet lie
hid in the secret treasuries of His natural world.
All these, and such as these, may stimulate your
exertions, so that you keep in mind the higher ob
ject of a Christian's aims, and that which is to sanc
tify all the rest — that object which, though capable
of almost infinite expansion, and placed before us in
the Bible under a vast variety of aspects, is yet
shortly stated in the Apostle's exhortation — that
speaking the truth in love, ye grow up into Him
in all things, which is the Head, even Christ:
from whom the whole body, fitly joined together
and compacted by that which every joint supplieth,
according to the effectual working in the measure
of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the
edifying of itself in love.

LECTURE VIII.

EPHESIANS iv. 16.

From whom the whole bodly fitly joined together and
compacted by that which every joint supplieth^ ac
cording to the effectual working in the measure of
every part, maketh increase of the body unto the
edifying of itself in love.

1HAT there is nothing fixed in the affairs of men,
is an aphorism to which the history of the world, as
well as our own experience, bears abundant witness.
Various indeed have been the empires, languages,
customs, which the stream of time has reflected on
its bosom as it has silently glided by and left them be
hind. The crumbling memorials of past ages, whether
in the silent ruins of some deserted city, or in the
crowded rooms of our museums; new cities rising
up in desert places; new inventions changing the
whole tone and destinies of nations ; empires rising
and falling before our eyes ; our languages living
and dead ; the customs of the childhood and the age
of the present generation ; all repeat the same tale,
there is nothing fixed in the affairs of men.

232 LECTURE VIII.

And yet it is not so universally true as it seems.
There is a kingdom, \\hich from its first institution,
though ever changing, yet remains unchanged ; ex
isting, and ever to exist in some part of the earth
or other ; with the same powers and constitution,
governed by the same laws, preaching the same
word, administering the same blessings, performing
the same office, in the same Name and by the same
authority as when it first sprung into being by the
breath of the Spirit at the day of Pentecost.

Nor is this strange when it is remembered, that
this kingdom of Christ, the church, is no human in
stitution, depending on the wisdom or skill, or even
consent of man. The breath of its life is that which
can never leave it, the presence of Christ the Lord.
Men indeed can leave it, can withdraw from it their
support and protection ; but as long as any remain
who retain the faith once delivered to the saints as
it was delivered to them, so long will the church
have a visible place among men ; bearing witness by
the miracle of her own unchanged existence to her
divine original and foundation.

There are those who deny any visible church.
"The kingdom of God," they say, " is within you."
And so it is ; there is a kingdom of God in the
soul of every true Christian. There sits God on the
throne of our hearts as a king in his palace, as a
Deity in his temple. There too by His side is the
Son, the Priest, the Sacrifice, the Intercessor ; there
too the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Counsellor.
There are faith, hope, charity, the princes and

LECTURE VIII. 233

warriors of the kingdom : there are the reason, the
desires, the energies of the natural man, as the
subjects and ministers hastening in loyal obedience
to do their sovereign's will. There is indeed a
kingdom within ; woe for us if we know it not ;
but that does not prove that the kingdom without,
of which Scripture so often speaks, is a mere dream
and unreality, which has imposed upon the whole
world from our Saviour's day to the present : it does
not disprove that which Scripture tells us, that Christ
did institute a visible kingdom, with functions, mi
nisters, sacraments, and has declared it should exist to
the end of the world. And if so, it must exist some
where now ; and I need not remind you that, among
other unhappy differences, the question as to where
the church exists, and what is the nature thereof,
holds a very prominent place.

There are those who look upon the visible Church
as merely the creation of man ; merely composed of
a number of men professing, in some shape or other,
to be followers of and believers in Christ ; and thus
that any such assemblage of men can at their own
free will and pleasure assume an independent exist
ence as a Church. Others, again, almost worship
it, as partaking of the Divine nature, second only
to the Divine Persons in the economy of salvation,
representing His will to the world in her formu
laries and doctrines ; the mother of all Christians,
from whom all life flows to those whom God has
given into her bosom ; in no way depending for her
existence, on those who compose her, but solely on the

234 LECTURE VIII.

unchangeable life of Christ. The former would say,
that the Church only exists as made up of individual
Christians ; the latter, that individual Christians
have a spiritual existence only by virtue of their
corporate connection with the Church.

We may, I think, discern in a visible Church a
twofold character, each part of which is inseparable
from the other, so that if either is wanting we have
an incorrect idea of the whole. 1. It is outwardly
a congregation of men in the same place and time,
professing a common faith, joining in the acts of a
common worship, and hence varying from generation
to generation, according to the changes and chances
of this mortal life. And so far the opinion which
views it merely as an assemblage of Christians is
correct ; but this is not all. For 2ndly, it has an
abstract, though real, existence as the depositary of
God's word and Sacraments, in and by which the
Spirit works from hour to hour, and from generation
to generation, in the work of carrying out God's will
for the salvation of mankind ; and hence it is the
same in all ages, existing eternally, above and beyond
the particular individuals composing it from age to
age.

And thus, as in this body there is part changeable
and depending on man, part unchangeable and de
pending on something above man, it follows that a
real Church must, in all its unchangeable points, be
the same now as it was in Apostolic times. It is
true that the whole face of the world is changed ;
generation after generation, congregation after con-

LECTURE VIII. 235

gregation have passed away ; but still in its essential
points the Church now on earth is the same as that
in which Christ first gave authority to the Apostles.
Nor is it the same, merely by resemblance; but it
is the same Church, reproduced from day to day in
the congregations of successive ages. The ocean and
the seas, into which it divides itself, are continually
varying from age to age in their material com
position ; fresh waters are ever pouring in to supply
the place of that which from time to time has been
drawn up to heaven ; and yet this mighty body
performs the same functions in the economy of the
visible world now, as it has performed from the
beginning ; it is the same as to the powers and the
laws which God has given it. And thus faith can
see in the visible Church now existing upon earth
the same body as there was eighteen hundred years
ago, having the same nature, and performing the
same functions, with the exception of those points
which arise directly from the necessities of ancient,
or the circumstances of modern times. With God
these eighteen hundred years are as nothing : hence
we have no reason to conclude, that in God's sight
there is any greater difference between the true
Church of to-day and the Church of the Apostles,
than between the Church of to-day and the Church
of to-morrow : or than between the Church in the
fellowship of which the last of the Apostles died,
and the Church in which, on the day after his death,
the Christians joined in blessing God for his depar
ture. Whatever was requisite to the essential ex-

236 LECTURE VIII.

istence of the Church then must be requisite now ;
whatever ordinary powers and privileges the Church
had then, she must needs have now ; for what is
essential in the Church is not affected by the ac
cident of time. Hence, when any body of Christians
desire to examine into or advance their claims to
be a branch of the original Church of Christ, the
safest plan is to inquire whether they would have
been taken for such in the Apostolic times ; and for
this it will be safest to refer to Scripture, though
there is not wanting historical evidence of another
kind, which might fairly be brought forward in this
matter, were it not that I think we find in Scrip
ture itself sufficient indication of the truth.

In Scripture then, we find the Church as the
visible embodiment of Christianity, combining into
one all individual Christians, with forms, arrange
ments, government, and acts of worship, ordained
by the Apostles according to the will of Christ,
by the guidance of His Spirit. It would seem that
the first and simplest bond whereby the members
were thus bound into one body was congregational ;
the Christians who found themselves by the acci
dent of place thrown together naturally assembled
together for the purposes of common worship, or
common safety and comfort. But besides this, they
were bound together in this bond of peace by their
unity in the Apostles' doctrine. Their prayers, their
praises rose up to heaven together ; their hearts
beat together with common desires and hopes, their
souls with common definite faith ; their acts of wor-

LECTURE VIII. 237

ship were the common acts of each and all. They
were joined together by the strongest of all ties,
real, lively religious sympathies on their daily con
gregations.

But further, there was not merely a congregational
or doctrinal, but also a spiritual bond of unity:
no congregation had a spiritual existence indepen
dent of the whole body. Christians were not mem
bers one of another and of the whole only because they
worshipped in one place, or because they all thought
the same thing ; but also because they were by one
Spirit baptized into one body, between wrhich and
Christ there exists a spiritual, but real, union, spoken
of in Scripture in mysterious terms which well suit
so great a mystery ; in which His presence dwells
and His Spirit works in the public acts and minis
trations of the whole body, dispensing grace to each
one severally as he has need.

And if this be so, we must, I think, conclude that
not every accidental assemblage of men, met toge
ther to worship, is a church in God's sight ; to this
must be added identity in doctrine and in ministra
tions with the Church of the Bible : for as these are
the unchangeable elements in the church's existence,
they cannot vary from generation to generation, ac
cording to the caprices and judgment of men ; they
must be the same as of old. [And thus the visible
church of the present day is not only held together
(so to say) by these principles of unity, but also is
by them joined to that part of the church which,
once visible, has now, by the course of time, been
carried out of our sight.

238 LECTURE VIII.

And, of course, the doctrinal bond of unity is pre
served and continued by the holding and speaking
the truth. A true visible church must be composed
of men who, in respect of their scriptural views,
would have been recognised by St. Paul or St. James
as belonging to the body of Christ in their days.
Christian truth must be the same in all ages ; no
doctrine which was unknown to the inspired apostles
can be true now : hence no modern so-called disco
very of Scripture doctrine can be true ; it bears wit
ness against itself. Nor can the term church be
applied to any congregations who claim to them
selves a spiritual existence by virtue of some doc
trinal peculiarity unknown to Christendom in times
past, except by a secondary and deceptive use of the
word. Thus we cannot suppose that there was in
St. Paul's mind any such notion as the church of the
Nicolaitans, or of the Gnostics, or of any other of the
heretics who disturbed the unity of the early church.

But how was the spiritual unity of the church
preserved from generation to generation ? As the
life of the body is sustained by the continual ener
gies of the living powers, and continued by the
continual handing down of these from genera
tion to generation ; so was the spiritual life of the
body of Christ, as distinguished from the spiritual
life of the members, sustained by the perpe' al
ministrations of the Spirit. Where these ministra
tions were from time to time carried on according to
Christ's institution, there was the Spirit from age to
age continued : and where the Spirit was, there was
Christ ; and where Christ was, there were all bound

LECTURE VIII. 239

together; not only the congregations and individuals
of the existing generation, but also the church of
one age to the church of all the ages which had
preceded it, up to its very earliest days.]

But this unity of the whole does not destroy the
individuality either of congregations or persons ; each
member of the church has an individual existence
by his own personal faith and holiness : and it was a
natural consequence of the rapid increase of the dis
ciples, and the preaching of the Gospel in various
parts, that this one church should comprehend a
number of congregations, the members of which
were bound together as well by their common belief
and common worship, as by their relations to the
other churches, and to the whole body of which
Christ was Head.

When we examine into the gradual division of
Christendom into national or local churches, we shall,
I think, recognise the providential wisdom of God in
giving a spiritual character to even earthly bonds of
union. Wherever men were already bound together
by common country, common language, or laws, there
arose national churches; e,.jh differing possibly from
the rest in some accidental points, but identical with
them in its essence ; and this not only by a common
profession of Christianity, but by a common possession
of the essentials of Christian verity — the same views
of God in heaven, and Christ on earth, of man's call
ing, duties, destinies — and by common relations to
the whole body. And where, again, in any nation
local subdivisions had created fresh centres of union,

240 LECTURE VIII.

there arose too diocesan or parochial churches, dif
fering from the national church in the accident of
place, but agreeing with it in all else. So that the
several churches scattered over the world, though
many, were still one : there was but one church in
the same place, but one church in the same nation,
but one church in the whole world.

And as we have seen that the church of the
present day must be the same as that of the apostles,
that would seem to be a perfect church, in which
these elements of unity are combined — the faith
and holiness of the individual members — the posses
sion of the faith of the saints — and the ministrations
of the word and sacraments as ordained by Christ at
the first. But still these may exist separately; and
as far as any of them do exist, so far does the body
partake of the character and hold the position of a
branch of the true church. The apostolic ministra
tions may survive in their original integrity, and yet
there may be errors of doctrine and practice; or
there may be true doctrine, and yet, for some reason
or other, the public acts and ministrations may differ
in some essential points from those in which Christ's
Spirit worked at first : and for such as these modern
theology has invented the term of an imperfect
church.

Further, as we must distinguish between the con
gregational, doctrinal, and spiritual character of
church unity, so must we not confound the spiritual
union of the church to Christ with the spiritual
union of each individual to Christ by virtue of His

LECTURE V11I. 241

presence in the soul of each. It does not follow
that because a church in its corporate capacity is
imperfect, as lacking some one of the requisites for
a complete church, that all the members thereof are
cut off from Christ. Nor again, because the indi
vidual members are as single Christians striving to
work out their salvation with fear and trembling, can
we argue that the body in its corporate capacity is a
member of the church catholic. We cannot argue
from the completeness or incompleteness of the
ministrations in a church that the members thereof
are or are not united to Christ; nor yet from the
piety or wickedness of individual Christians that
the Body is or is not part of the church of
Christ : the two points are distinct : and therefore
we do not conclude from any one belonging to a
body, which is an imperfect church, or no church at
all, that therefore he is lost. This depends on the
spiritual state of each individual soul in Christ's sight ;
and though of course the spiritual life and growth of
a Christian must be hindered or furthered, as the
case may be, by the privileges and teaching of the
body to which he belongs, yet his salvation or con
demnation is only the accidental result of his belong
ing or not belonging to the visible body of Christ;
except, of course, so far as he is personally responsi
ble for the wilful rejection of any part of God's
truth, or any part of what God has ordained by His
Spirit.

As for ourselves we cannot be thankful enough
to God. who in His infinite mercy planted His

R

242 LECTURE VIII.

church, and allowed her to exist from age to age,
that He has also caused her to shake off the corrup
tions which a superstitious perversion of. or addition
to, Christian truth had thrown round her; that He
has led her back to her first love ; so that in the
spirit of comprehensive faith, which is her essential
characteristic, she has been careful to retain each of
the three elements of church unity — congregational,
doctrinal, and spiritual — after the pattern of early
times. Our people join together in the offices of
prayer and praise ; our acts of worship are performed
by the whole congregation, except where, from the
nature of the case, or for the sake of decency and
order, they are committed to men appointed for that
purpose. We can see too, that the unchangeable
elements of unity are preserved to us; we are bound
together by the doctrinal truth of the gospel, as may be
seen by comparing our teaching with the Bible, and
by the fact that it agrees with that of the catholic
and apostolic church of ancient times. The essential
ministrations of this early church have been con
tinued in our church from age to age, overlaid indeed
at one time by the inventions of man, but restored
to us in their original purity and power.

It is difficult perhaps to point out from Scripture
the hindrances to spiritual growth, arising from not
being in the fellowship of the visible church ; for
the simple reason that Scripture does not contem
plate such a case as persons who were spiritually
alive not being in the visible fellowship of the whole
body ; but it is impossible not to see in Scripture

LECTURE VIII. 243

that the visible church, with its visible congrega
tions, visible ministrations, visible ordinances, oc
cupies a very prominent place in the scheme of
redemption. It is impossible not to gather from
Scripture that church fellowship was an important
element of the Christian profession, and that many
privileges and blessings flow to us thereby, which
can ordinarily flow to us in no other way. It is
true that the Bible is full of the calling, the posi
tion, the privileges, the duties, the hopes of indi
vidual Christians; but this does not do away with
the texts in which Scripture speaks of the visible
church as the body of Christ — the pillar and ground
of the truth — the spouse of Christ ; whereby we are
members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones —
that which He sanctifies by His word and sacraments.
Faithful Christians are invariably viewed and address
ed in Scripture as belonging to the visible Church ;
those who were admitted by baptism to the position
of Christians are spoken of as being added to the church
in which the Apostles visibly ministered. When
any had plainly lost their spiritual life they were
cast out from the same visible fellowship. And the
position which the visible church held in apostolic
times is curiously recognised by those, who, practi
cally denying the existence of any visible centre of
unity, assume to themselves the name and, as far as
may be, imitate the functions of that body which they
profess to despise. It is for them to consider whether
they have not lost the substance by grasping at the
shadow.

11 2

244 LECTURE VIII.

Nor is it difficult to see, even by the light of
human reason, that it is no small blessing and pri
vilege to belong to the fellowship of God's chosen
saints of old ; to know that we are flesh of their
flesh and bone of their bone, not only by the sym
pathies of faith and hope, but by our having been
baptized into the same visible body — by partaking
of those same unchangeable and unchanged ministra
tions with which Christ blessed them at the begin
ning; to know that we eat of the same spiritual
meat, and drink of the same spiritual drink. Surely
it must add to our joy and peace, our resolution and
patience, when we hear the Church speaking to us
out of the far off past the wonderful mercies and
providences of God to that body to which we in this
our generation belong ; to feel that, being in the
fellowship of our Church, we may have a double
ground of sure hope — our own personal faith and
union with Chirst, and our being in the unity of that
body which He will one day present to Himself
without spot or blemish*.

It cannot indeed be doubted that there have been
and are systems of Christianity in which the Church
is put so prominently forward as to obscure Christ
on the one side, and the individual Christian on the
other ; but of this there is no danger as long as we
recollect that personal union with Christ by personal
faith and holiness is the essence of personal Christ
ianity, the test of personal hope. Our Church insists
no less on personal religion than on Church fellow-
a See Eph. iv. 27.

LECTURE VIII. 245

ship. Nor do I see why they should be separated —
why one should be allowed or supposed to interfere
with or supersede the other; it is not so in Scrip
ture : a belief in the privileges and blessings flowing
to us from the Church is so far from being incom
patible from* hindering personal holiness, that this
latter is a condition of our really and effectually
possessing the former. The text of St. Johnb, If we
walk in the light as He is in the light, ive have fellow
ship one with another, enters as much into our theo
logical teaching as the text of St. Paul c, by one
Spirit we are all baptized into one body, which brings
forward the formal and spiritual ministrations of the
Church as binding us together and joining us to the
Head.

Nor does the Church interfere with the Divine
prerogatives ; we own but one Head, the Lord
Christ — we own but one Priest, the Lord Christ — we
own but one Sacrifice, the Lord Christ — we own
but one Mediator, the Lord Christ — we own but
one infallible Guide, the Holy Spirit of God,
speaking to us from the Bible, and from the practice
and teaching of the Catholic and Apostolic Church,
as the witness and interpreter of the Bible, where
such aids are needed.

Nor again does the Church interfere with or
supersede the royal Priesthood which true Christians
possess as personally united to Christ ; by virtue of
which we may in our own sinful persons, our own
mortal bodies, draw near with boldness and obtain
b i John i. 7. c i Cor. xii. 13.

246 LECTURE VIII.

mercy and find help in time of need. The public
acts of the Church are not the acts of the clergy for
the laity, but of the clergy and laity together ; personal
acts of worship in which each bears his part, to the
increase of the body and the edifying of the whole.
There is properly speaking, and in what may be
called the technical sense of the word, no priest in
the Church save Christ : there is no priestly caste
or office on earth ; all priesthood is confined to
Christ. The minister of our Church does not in
his ministerial functions stand as a mediator be
tween God and man to procure peace and pardon.
He does not offer a sacrifice for them, when with
them he shews forth the Lord's death till He come.
He does not in the public offices of prayer pray for
them as a mediator, but with them and in their
name. It is not " I beseech Thee," but " We be
seech Thee, O God ;" though his private prayers
have of course the same intercessory power as those
of any other righteous man.

Nor again do these privileges of the whole church,
or of individual Christians, do away or destroy the
spiritual character or the ministerial office of the
clergy ; these do not derive their authority and com
mission from man, except so far as the visible minis
trations of man have been from the beginning the
appointed channels of grace. They come to us ac
cording to Christ's institution, and by His authority,
and in His name. They are not indeed ambassadors
from man to God, but from God to man. To them
is entrusted the stewardship of God's mysteries, the

LECTURE VIII. 247

ministry of reconciliation ; the dispensing of those
spiritual blessings which are committed to the whole
Church, in which they are Christ's ordained messengers
and ministers. It is their high privilege to awaken re
pentance, to engraft faith, to give in Christ's ordi
nances the grace of the Comforter ; in their public
and private ministrations so to proclaim Christ's pardon
to the penitent according to the needs of each, that he
may be able to lay hold of it with faith and hope. It
is their privilege to feed His sheep, to preach His
word ; to warn the impenitent, to strengthen the
bruised reed, to raise up them that fall ; in short, it
is their office and privilege to perform among men
those ministerial functions which Christ performed
when He came on earth to preach the Gospel, as far
as they did not arise from those miraculous and
divine powers which Repossessed as God ; and which,
though in part vouchsafed at first to those whom He
chose, have now passed away from the Church. High
and noble functions and privileges, and which may
well excite the zeal, the ambition, the energies of
the most gifted of God's creatures. But they may
not assume to themselves the divine character or
office ; nor act as possessing the powers of spiritual life
and death ; or as independent sources of revelation
or of grace ; or as being able to open or shut the
gates of heaven at their caprice. Woe to the church
that is in such a case ; woe to the church of which
Christ is not the head.

Nor have these ministrations of grace any power
to make alive without the personal cooperation of
each man in his own soul. It is in vain that confes-

LECTURE VIII.

sion of sins is made in the congregation, unless our
hearts join therein; it is of no avail that the' pro
mises of pardon are proclaimed in our ears by the am
bassadors of Christ, unless we lay hold thereof by the
energies of faith. It is in vain for us that the prayers
or praises of the church are poured forth, unless our
desires, and needs, and gratitude ascend in and with
them. It is in vain that we are baptized into the body
of Christ in His church, and by the ministrations of
His minister, unless we grow up into Him in all things.
It is in vain that the consecrated elements are presented
to us by the minister, unless by faith we receive and
in our souls feed upon His spiritual body and blood.
It is in vain that our names are written among Christ's
disciples, unless they be written also in the book of life.
It is in vain that we belong to the visible, unless we
be enrolled in the invisible and mystical church.

Nor can submission to one visible head in matters
of faith, or even in matters of government, be es
sential either to church fellowship or to church unity ;
for it was not so in the catholic and apostolic church.
It is true that apparent unity may be produced by
such submission; nay, it is even true that, in a certain
degree, real unity in matters of faith might arise
from it, provided that the judgment of this one visi
ble head, was always in harmony with God's will.
But still it would be a result of a human, not of
spiritual wisdom. And I need not remind you that
no outward unity between the members of any
church now existing, can compensate for that disunion
from the primitive body of Christ which has resulted
from trying the perilous experiment of giving to the

LECTURE VIII. 249

voice of man, the authority of the voice of God ; from
substituting the judgment of man for the teaching of
the Bible.

And though there can, I think, be no doubt that
in apostolic times the faith of the individual was in
all essential points moulded by and identified with
the faith and teaching of the church, yet this does
not deprive any man of the right or do away with the
duty of studying and interpreting the Scriptures for
and to himself, and realising by his own moral and
mental powers the divine truth ; so that it may be
not merely something without, to which he bows his
head in submissive silence, but something within,
part of his spiritual, his moral, his rational being.
He may form his own opinion if he will ; to his
own Master he will fall or stand. But neither does
this liberty of prophesying imply that every man's
judgment will lead him right, or that he will not
have to answer for every error of faith or practice
into which it may lead him. It is for each individual
to consider whether private judgment is likely to
lead him to truth or error : we know it has led
thousands wrong : it has been the parent of much
evil : we know that it has led many right : to the
exercise of private judgment against the authority
of the Church of the time we owe the Reformation.
A man has a perfect right to be, if he pleases, his
own physician ; he will live or die according as the
treatment he adopts, and the remedies he uses, are
right or wrong ; but this does not give that treat
ment or those remedies the power of restoring health
or averting disease ; and therefore while our Church

250 LECTURE VIII.

puts the Bible into the hands of every one, and
thereby recognises and encourages private judgment,
yet it recognises too its correlative responsibilities ;
wherefore have we at the same time placed before us,
from our childhood, those essential points of faith
which the primitive Church collected out of Scripture,
or to which, where the primitive church is silent, the
fathers of our own church were led, we trust, by the
Spirit of God ; not indeed to supersede private judg
ment, but to guide it to a right knowledge of the
word, and to guard it against the errors of later
times by the statement of that definite truth which
in God's counsels seems designed to correct the weak
inventions or additions of man. Thus true private
judgment, so far from looking on church authority
as hostile to it, accepts it to strengthen and guide
its own faltering steps. I think, indeed, there
can be but little doubt to what issue private judg
ment will, in most cases, lead those who so exercise
it as to reject the aid which right reason expects,
and which God has mercifully provided ; who neither
in the voice of the church in which God has placed
them, nor in that of the primitive church, nor in the
opinions of men whose powers and studies make
them competent judges, can find any clue to the
meaning of Scripture ; who trust to their own su
perficial view of an expression or a passage or a
version to insist upon an opinion or practice which
has hitherto been unknown in Christendom : but
still if any one in consequence hereof fails of his
salvation, it will only be an accident of his failure
that private judgment led him astray : the essence

LECTURE VIII. 251

of it will be that lie did not understand Scripture
aright, and thus missed saving truth. The truth
which by God's blessing we teach is not true because
the church teaches it, but because the Spirit has re
vealed it in the Bible ; to this the church, in her
doctrine and practice, bears witness, and sound
private judgment receives her witness as true.

And as there are points in which church authority
and private judgment may cooperate, so are there
points in which each obtains separately. Individual
opinions, or convenience in matters of public form,
order, discipline, must be sacrificed to the judgment
of the church ; while on the other hand a man's
private acts of religion or of worship are left to his
own discretion as to what may best promote his
spiritual welfare. And hence all such matters as
fasting, special confession of our sins, receiving per
sonal absolution3, and the like, are left to the decision
of each to do, or to leave undone, as seemeth him
best. To insist on such matters as necessary to sal
vation is as absolutely unscriptural, as it is to pro
nounce them incompatible with a true and lively
faith.

So again with regard to forms : it is perfectly
true, that the Spirit giveth life, the letter profiteth
nothing ; that God must be worshipped in spirit and
in truth ; that we are not to think to be heard for
vain repetitions. But how do forms prevent a per
son worshipping in spirit and truth? what is there
in them to destroy or disparage spirituality? The

d Whitehall Sermons, X. "on Times of Fasting," p. 175., and
XI. " on Confession and Absolution," p. 195.

252 LECTURE VIII.

Spirit does not work less certainly in baptism be
cause it is administered in the form which our Sa
viour appointed : the Spirit does not breathe less in
our prayers because through the use of forms of
prayer we know what we are going to pray for, be
cause the souls of the faithful can pray with one
breath, instead of listening to a single voice praying
for them. If our forms are lifeless, they are so, not
because they are forms, but because the spirit of
prayer is dead in the hearts of those who use them.
And this spirit of prayer is awakened by the well
known words as they fall on our ears and reach our
hearts, and our souls are able at once to rise up, as
it were, and go along with their brethren's souls in
their approaches to the throne of grace. If all forms
were vain repetitions, then would not our Saviour
have taught us to pray in the form of the Lord's
Prayer. It is true also that the gift of the Spirit in
any sacrament or other rite depends on the state of
the souls of those to whom it is offered ; but the use
of forms does not contradict this. The apostles were
to say, Peace be to this house^ as a form of conveying
the spiritual blessing of peace. Where the Son of
peace was not, the blessing did not work; where
the Son of peace was, the house was blessed. The
blessing did not come without the form ; but neither
did the form, by its own virtue, convey the blessing
to those who were unfit for it. We can see some uses,
at least, of forms in their securing that identity of
thought and action in the souls of all Christians which
makes the religious acts of all and each more acceptable
d Luke x. 5.

LECTURE VIII. 253

and more prevailing; and their reminding- us that the
blessing in every case is the same, and flows from
the same Divine Source, the Head of the Church,
without taking its shape or power from the thoughts
or the will of those who speak in His name: so
far from hiding or diminishing the spiritual element,
they are found, when rightly viewed, to illustrate
and confirm it.

So, again, those who assert the Church's inde
pendence of the temporal power, and those who
bind her hand and foot, have each to learn some
thing from the other. It is certain that the church
has an existence independent of any earthly power ;

(that the Lord is her Head, and King, and Master,
and Guide; that to Him she must look in all things:
but for the church to assume a temporal power; to
dispute, in things purely temporal and accidental,
the civil authority, is contrary to the spiritual nature
of Christ's kingdom. It is true that the apostles,
when commanded by the Jewish council to preach
no more in that name, answered by the Spirit, We
ought to obey God rather than man ; an answer which
every true Christian should sympathise in, and be
ready, if need be, to adopt. But suppose the Jewish
council had merely commanded the apostles to
preach in a particular part of the city, or at a par
ticular hour of the day ; can we think that they
would have deemed it contrary to obedience to
God to be subject in such matters to the higher
powers ?

There are other points by which I might illustrate

LECTURE VIII.

and enforce the comprehensive uml definite faith,
which I have thus partially and imperfectly brought
before you ; but the space allotted to these Lectures
forbids me to enter upon them. I trust enough has
been said to suggest a principle which may be
carried out in our personal faith — in our theological
studies, as well as our pastoral ministrations; enough
to show, that as in the true Church the whole body
is fitly joined together by that which every joint
supplieth, so in the faith of that Church the several
doctrines work effectually together. Apart they are
comparatively powerless, or by exaggeration lead to
error ; together, they have the Spirit, and may hope
for the victories of truth. Again, as each fact, or
mystery, or precept has its proper place in the Divine
economy, so the doctrine which embodies each is
meant to have its effect on the believer's soul ; so
that in these too, the several parts of our nature,
quickened and spiritualised, may work together to
the edifying and increase of the whole.

It will not, I hope, be deemed foreign to my
subject, if I conclude these Lectures by a few words
ori what seems to me, one at least of the causes
why this comprehensive faith has, on the one side or
the other, been mutilated of its fair proportions. I
mean the lack of self-preparation on the part of
those wbo propose to themselves to seek the office
of stewards of the mysteries and interpreters of the
word of God. I do not mean merely their moral,
(which of course is indispensable,) but likewise their
intellectual preparation. A contrast is sometimes
drawn between a pious and a learned ministry,

LECTURE VIII. 255

to the disparagement of the latter; and a practical
inference is drawn, that as a learned ministry is
not always or necessarily pious, that an igno
rant ministry is therefore better than a learned
one. But why cannot piety and learning he joined?
surely each must be more powerful together than
either separately. It is true that in apostolic times
the lack of worldly position and worldly gifts was
compensated by inspiration ; the learning which
we have to seek was given them directly by God;
they were ignorant men no longer. It is true if a
man depends on his learning, or acquirements, or
gifts, whatever they are, rather than on the Spirit
of wisdom and grace, that then his gifts become
worse than useless to him ; but ignorance is not
found to be a specific against self-dependance or
spiritual pride. I know nothing in reason, I know
nothing in Scripture, which would lead us to suppose
that the cultivation of whatever talents we have, in
subordination to the Spirit, the possession of what
ever acquirements may be within our reach, will
shut a man out from the ordinary inspirations of the
Holy Ghost, or make his ministrations less accept
able to God, less effectual to the saving of souls. It
may be said, that piety is always necessary, learning
not so ; but this latter statement does not hold alto
gether good ; for surely our having made good use of
opportunities already vouchsafed to us, is a Scriptural
condition of further gifts and aids. And where
we have had opportunities of mental cultivation,
then the absence of that cultivation according to our

256 LEG TURK VIII.

several talents, is a proof of wasted time and neg
lected opportunity. And do not suppose that the three
years wasted here will easily be compensated by a
year's retirement to some fresh place of study, or by
reading through a few books on divinity, or even
some slight acquaintance with the practical workings
of the Gospel, and the practical experiences of indi
vidual souls. The pastor's mind, to be able to
become what it should be, a spiritual treasure-house,
must have its natural powers quickened and informed
as well as spiritualised, it must by reason of use have its
senses exercised to discern both good and evil*, both
truth and error.

Nor need I remind you how often it happens that
those, who have thus wasted their time and energies
here, have found themselves, when their spiritual call
ing has brought the Gospel really before them, unable
to cope with the manifold and wonderful questions of
belief and practice which they have had almost daily to
solve for themselves or others; and, unable to realise
the faith in its comprehensive and definite charac
ter, have betaken themselves to one extreme or the
other, or sometimes alternated between both as their
temperaments or their spiritual experiences have led
them. Their own awakening from spiritual death
was sudden ; and they have made this sudden con
version the sole and universal condition of spiritual
life; or they have been led back by the more gra
dual ministrations of the Church, and they think that
every one must return by the same path. In either
e Heb v. 14.

LECTURE VIII. 257

case they cast down the other means of life and grace
from the place which the Scripture has assigned
them — in either case they think they have solved
all their difficulties by adopting a simplicity which
is in good truth only simple, as it suits their imper
fect knowledge of spiritual things ; not simple in the
sense of combining in one comprehensive view all
that Scripture teaches us as necessary for our souls'
health.

Nor does it seem quite clear that Christianity is
so simple a matter as it is sometimes represented.
In it indeed there are certain central points which
involve the rest — which stand out by themselves in
their grandeur ; as in a distant mountain view our
gaze is arrested and engrossed at first at least by
the more striking features — and to these we must
of course always give the same prominence which
they occupy in God's word; but still we may not
neglect them in that expanded and detached form
in which Scripture likewise presents them to us.
Even that simplest Gospel, on which all our teaching-
is founded, by which we are able to awaken so many
to spiritual life, " Christ came to save the world," —
how infinitely is it worked out in Christ's own
teaching, and still more by those whom He in
structed in the things of the kingdom of God !
How much does it imply in its Divine as well as
human aspect — man's original state — man's fall —
man's natural corruption — the curse under which we
lay for the present and the future — God's Justice,
Mercy, Love — our need of a Saviour — His predesti-

s

258 LECTURE VIII.

nated counsels — His predestinating providence —
man's free-will and responsibility — Christ's nature
and office — His birth, life, death, resurrection, ascen
sion, mediation — His office as our Priest of sacrifice
and prayer — our salvation from the punishment and
release from the power of sin — our own part in the
work — the motives of fear, love, gratitude, which
should move us thereto — our perpetual conflict with
the power of evil — our struggles with ourselves—
our need of a sanctifier — the office and power of the
Holy Spirit — our new birth in Baptism — our daily
begetting by the word — the daily regeneration of
the heart — our daily renewal — our spiritual nourish
ment and growth — the power of prayer — of the
Holy Communion — our nourishment by the spiritual
body and blood of Christ — the nature and office of
the Church — the nature of Christian hope and as
surance — individual and personal union with Christ.
— How our reason is to be spiritualised, our wills
subdued — the relation between faith and good works ;
— our lives here — our resurrection — the day of ac
count — how we may hope to be accounted righteous
therein — Which of these points, and indeed, of many
others, can be left out without leaving out a part of
Scripture, and thus neglecting something which it
behoves us to know and act upon ?

And if this acquaintance with the revealed word is
no simple or easy matter even for the spiritual nurture
of our own souls, how much more complex and diffi
cult must a full knowledge of the Gospel be to those
who have to divide the word of truth ! to those who

LECTURE VIII. 259

are to train and bring others to the practical know
ledge of the Gospel in its bearings on their own souls !
For they must not only have a definite and dogmatic
acquaintance with saving truth in all its scriptural
proportions, but they also require no small know
ledge of human nature, in its infinite varieties ; and
if they are to exercise their ministry profitably they
must know how to apply the several truths of Scrip
ture as may suit the spiritual needs of each. We
have to present Christ crucified in all the aspects
and relations in which He is pourtrayed in Scripture,
and yet to bring one or the other more forward ac
cording to the soul with which we have to deal. At
one time we must hold Him up as the Saviour, at
another as the Intercessor, at another as the Judge,
at another as the King. The Pharisee who is lost
in spiritual pride we have to humble, by showing
him how little there is in man's best works to stand
the severity of God's judgment. The Publican
whose heart is doubting and step faltering, we have
to tell that the fruits of the Spirit are the sure tests
of faith. To one who rests his hopes on the security
of the Elect, we have to point the true nature and
limits of that security, and the fact of human re
sponsibility. Another who is ever fearful and weak
hearted we have to remind of the predestinate
counsels of God, and to give him Scriptural confi
dence for hoping that God will continue the work
He has begun. To the impenitent sinner we have
to hold up the terror of the Lord — to the returning
sinner His mercies. In one we have to watch the

260 LECTURE VIII.

developing energies of life begun in Baptism — in
another the more convulsive throes of conversion —
and to guide a third safely through the paths of
repentance. At one death-bed we have to rouse
and sustain faith, at another we must try to awaken
repentance. In short, as many as are the varieties
of human temperaments, of human failings, and
human circumstances, so manifold is the Pastor's
office in applying the Gospel of Christ as Christ
Himself would have done it — as the Apostles did do
it. We must bring out of our treasures things both
new and old ; and how can this be, except we be
thoroughly instructed in the things of the kingdom
of God ?

Nor can we hope that our people will be bound to
gether by the acceptance of this comprehensive faith
— that the whole counsel of God will take root in our
land, unless we have comprehensive teaching, and
we cannot have comprehensive teaching, unless and
until we have comprehensive learning.

If you, my younger brethren, have at all gone
with me in what has been said, it will not be neces
sary for me to use many words to persuade you that
logical quickness and accuracy of thought — clearness
of perception — readiness and variety of expression
— an acquaintance with human nature — will make
you all the more effectual instruments in the hands
of that Spirit, by whose strength alone you can be
strong ; it is your business to cultivate your talents
to the utmost : if you do not do so, you may depend
upon it that hereafter you will have to leave many a

LECTURE VIII. 261

sinner unconverted, many a death-bed comfortless.
Of course it will not be supposed that I mean that
mere intellectual cultivation will enable you to do
the work. The truths which you will have to teach
must sink into your own hearts in their practical
reality ; your own faith must be comprehensive,
definite, real, before you can give comprehensive
ness, definiteness, and reality to the faith of others.
Nor do I mean that only men of great talents
can be labourers in God's vineyard. If you have
not great talents, it matters not, so that you honestly
improve what you have ; then may you hope that
whatever your deficiencies, they will be made up by
Him, without whom the most eloquent human wis
dom is but foolishness and weakness. If the bow
be strung, and the arrow fitted to the string, then
may we hope that the breath of the Spirit will guide
our shafts in power to their mark. But if the bow
be unstrung, and the arrows allowed to remain in the
quiver, how can we hope that men's souls will fall to
us as our prey ? If our rude instrument be in tune,
then may we hope that even our powerless touch
will draw from it most heavenly harmonies, powerful
by grace; sounds far more persuasive than those
which any master-touch of man can draw from the
most perfect instrument of human workmanship.
But if the strings hang loosely, and only give out now
and then a few chance notes, as they are swung
hither and thither by every shifting wind of doctrine,
what reason have we to hope that our discord will
be changed to angels' songs?

262 LECTURE VIII.

And in good truth it is time that all those who
have at heart the welfare of this Church and nation
should buckle on their armour ; not only against
superstition on the one hand, and avowed infidelity
on the other, but also against those, who being
secretly conscious that they fall short of the truth,
would persuade us for the sake of peace, as they say,
to betray the trust which God has committed to us,
of preserving and spreading His gospel. I say " com
mitted to us," for it is, I think, impossible not to
recognise the office which God has designed for us.
Our privileges as a nation illustrate our duties as a
Church ; our privileges as a Church illustrate our
duties a nation. God has preserved to us the
Apostolic truth of the Bible in all its comprehen
siveness, the Apostolic ministrations in all their
purity. This teaches us why it is that he has
allowed our nation to spread itself to the East and
the West, the North and the South, why He gives
victory to our arms, and free passage to our com
merce, and has blessed us with singular success in the
arts of life — that the light of His truth might through
us shine forth among men. These blessings to us, as a
nation, tell us that we must be doubly careful to
preserve the faith once delivered to the saints, in
order that the message we are to bear to the end
of the world may be His message and not man's.
By God's mercy to our Church, our Prayer-book,
our teaching, our formal definitions of faith, do truly
represent His truth in its comprehensive and definite
character as it is in the Bible. No partial view —

LECTURE VIII. 263

no concealment of this part of God's message, or of
that, because to human reason they may seem at
variance — no faltering voice of doubt whether God
has spoken or not, or whether the book in which
His voice still speaks to us is true or false — we have
a definite Revelation from God, definite in its out
line, definite in its details; it is in vain that men
try to get rid of the smallest portion of it, or diminish
its certainty ; it is in vain that the various counter
feits of truth conspire together to destroy her, and to
share the empire between them, and each to bear
rule in her name — to work, each by itself, her work ;
God's truth will not bear to be thus treated; she
will arise and go forth and seek another people, more
truthful, more faithful than we are. We moralise
on Tyre, and Babylon, and ancient Rome ; we speak
of them in our pulpits, and schools, and books, as
monuments of God's judgments against abuse of
privileges and neglect of duties : but we need not
look so far; we have proofs enough, even in our
own land, of the judgments which God inflicts on
those who conspire against His truth. There is no
part of our land where the ruins of some ancient
church or abbey do not speak to us the same lesson
which Tyre, and Babylon, and Rome speak to the
world. We can scarcely tread such spots, even with
careless step and glad hearts, and under the glorious
sun of a summer day, without finding in them deeper
sources of thought and feeling than mere admiration
for the present beauty, to which decay has but added

264 LECTURE VIII.

fresh charms, or mere sympathy for what lias been
and is no more. As we pass along those noble courts
where religion once sat enthroned in all the pomp
which superstitious art could throw around her—
as memory's eye recalls those glorious processions
and services wherein men strove to set forth our
faitli rather in gorgeous splendour than in primitive
simplicity — as memory's ear catches the echoes of
those soul-stirring anthems of praise and prayer,
which once pealed forth year after year, hour after
hour, to the glory of that Name, which we worship —
not alas ! unmixed with other names, to worship
which is sin — as we recall that past, and compare
it with this present, we cannot but be reminded
of the times when our Church, having accepted as
her master in matters of faith one visible head,
instead of the invisible Head, Christ, shared every
superstition and error with which man's foolishness
had overlaid God's wisdom ; and having thus fallen
away from the truth, and slumbering in idle pomp
and worldliness, was awakened from her dream by
the rough hand of the spoiler whom God sent upon
her, using the tyranny of man as the instrument of
His wrath, even as upon Jerusalem of old, to lay
her low. And of His mercy too, in that He did
not utterly make an end, but allowed our fathers to
return to their first love, and caused our Church to
take root downwards and to bear fruit upwards ;
and hath given increase to our nation from that
day to this. And of our danger too — for surely

LECTURE VIII. 265

if we, as a nation and a Church, again fall away,
though in a fashion somewhat contrary to the back-
slidings of our forefathers — if, having the whole
truth of God, we cannot or will not realise, and use,
and hand down that truth in its fulness and per
fection — if we deny, some one part of God's truth,
some another, and thus, as far as gainsayers are
concerned, deny all truth — if we fraternise with
those who, jealous of the influence which religion
exercises on the world, say among themselves,
" Come, let us kill her, and then the inheritance
wilt be ours" — who are striving secretly and openly
to substitute philosophy for revelation, and self-
worship for morality — surely there is danger lest
God's wrath be stirred up against us, and ruin
overtake us ; first as a Church, and then as a
nation ; there are not wanting those who would be
willing and stern instruments of our punishment. And
if our short-sightedness should bring this fate upon
us — if the churches in which we worship should
ever become mere picturesque ruins — if our palaces
of piety and learning should be level with the dust
— if our cities should return to their former de
solation — if our ports should be filled up with the
crumbling relics of their former greatness — and what
has been once and to others, may well be again and
to us — then history will surely moralise on our fall,
and holding us up as a proverb and a parable of
warning to all nations, will write our Epitaph,
" This Church and nation was once blessed above
all others — she was false to her trust — she distrusted

T

266 LECTURE VIII.

God's truth — she disbelieved it — she deserted and
betrayed it — lo ! her place is desolate !"

Passage referred to in foot-note p. 6. — Bacon's Works,
vol. ii. p. 510.

" The third occasion of controversies I observe to be,
an extreme and unlimited detestation of some former
heresy or corruption of the Church, already acknowledged,
and convicted. This was the cause that produced the
heresy of Arius, grounded especially upon detestation of
Gentilism ; lest the Christian should seem, by the assertion
of the equal Divinity of our Saviour Christ, to approach
unto the acknowledgment of more gods than one. The
detestation of the heresy of Arius, produced that of Sabel-
lius ; who holding for execrable the dissimilitude which
Arius pretended in the Trinity, fled so far from him, as
he fell upon that other extremity, to deny the distinction
of persons ; and to say they were but only names of several
offices and dispensations. Yea, most of the heresies and
schisms of the Church have sprung up by this root. This
manner of apprehension doth in some degree possess many
in our times. They think it the true touchstone to try
what is good and evil, by measuring what is more or less
opposite to the institutions of the Church of Rome ; be it
ceremony, policy or government — yea, be it other institu
tions of greater weight, that is ever most perfect which is
removed most degrees from that Church ; and that is
ever polluted and blemished which participateth in any
appearance with it. This is a subtle and dangerous con
ceit for men to entertain ; apt to delude themselves, more
apt to delude the people."

THE END.

•

'In