1
Editor’s Note: It is my firm opinion that the Letters to Theophilus written by James Wells at this time cannot be understood without some appreciation of the overall context in which they were written. The same is true for the various sermons he preached on this subject and the end of 1860 and though 1861. To the best of my ability, I am providing these details in the order they unfolded at this time in the Earthen Vessel. The early stages of the resurfacing of this controversy started in 1859 so I’m adding what I have on this period as well. I am also including other very pertinent source material. By providing this information my intention is to give such facts as are at my disposal. I leave it up to the reader to search the scriptures and to study the honored saints of God referred to below. Creeds and Confessions have their place without doubt. However, as a particular Baptist I feel it is each man or woman’s place to study to show themselves approved in the things of God.
Postscript: As I read over and corrected the following material, I found it impossible not to comment from time to time upon what unfolded. I have sought to do so as fairly and objectively as possible. My remarks are mostly limited to footnotes so that they do not detract from the flow of the original writer. I have also added three appendixes of my own (V, VII VIII) to go into more detail on some subjects of importance. William Palmer, in appendix VI, gives a devastating critique of Philpot’s teaching on the Sonship of Christ, (from the time of the controversy). The other appendixes also provide copies of original source material for the reader’s benefit.
Information from the Earthen Vessel as laid out by W.C. Banks the editor
NEW CHAPELS OPENED. Page 158 June 1860
The Great Question, “What Think We of Christ”
J. A. JONES’S LETTER TO “THE GOSPEL STANDARD.” E.V. May 1, 1860 Pages 117-119
REPLY TO MR. PHILPOT, BY MR. J. A. JONES. OR THE REVIEWER REVIEWED. E.V. July 1860 pages 201 - 203 THE PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF GOD THE FATHER, TO THE PERSON, GODHEAD, AND
SONSHIP OF GOD THE SON. (By the late Dr. Hawker) E.V. August 1860, pages 213-215
REPLY TO MR. PHILPOT, BY MR. J. A. JONES. OR THE REVIEWER REVIEWED. Pages 216 - 218
John Newton on the Great Question, E.V. September, 1860 pages 241 - 242
THE LAST TESTIMONY OF DR. HAWKER, TO THE UNBEGOTTEN DEITY BE CHRIST.
E.V. September 1860 pages 242-243
THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR No. 1 E.V. Oct. 1, 1860 pages 258-259
VOICE OF THE INTERPRETER TOUCHING THE MYSTERY E.V. Oct. 1860 page 267-268
A LETTER FROM MR. J. WELLS TO C. W. BANKS E.V. Oct. 1860 page 273
THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR No. II E.V. Nov. 1, 1860 pages 281-283
LAYING FOUNDATION STONE OF MR. J. A. JONES’S NEW CHAFEL E.V. Nov. 1, 1860 page 290
THE SONSHIP of the SON of GOD By Mr. William Bidder E.V. December 1st 1860 pages 301 -305
EPISTLES TO THEOPHILUS THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR. No. III
MR. PHILPOT AND MR. J. A. JONES. E.V. Dec. 1860 Page 312
A Note from Mr. J. A. Jones to the Editor (W.C. Banks) E.V. Dec. 1860 pg. 324
The End of 1860 and The Closing Up of My Sixteenth Volume (Part of W.C. Banks remarks)
The Old Year and the New Year Remarks by C.W. Banks (some of his remarks) E.V. 1861 pages 710
EPISTLES TO THEOPHILUS. THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR. No. IV E.V. Jan. 1861 page 19-21
“A LITTLE ONE” EXAMINED. E.V. Jan. 1861 Pages 21-23
THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR. No. V. E.V. Feb. 1861 pages 39-41
“THEOPHILUS” HIMSELF. E.V. Feb. 1861 Pg. 41
DR. CARSON ON THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR. E.V. Feb. 1861 Pages 41-42
MR. CROWTHER DEFENDED, E.V. Feb 1861 pages 42-44
THE PROPOSITION OF MR. JAMES WELLS. E.V. Feb. 1861 Page 46
THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR. No. VI. E.V. 1860 March pages 62-64
REVIEWS E.V. March 1861 pages 67-68
A LETTER ADDRESSED TO MR. JOHN KERSHAW BY THE BAPTIST CHURCH AT ZOAB CHAPEL, LONDON, AND MR. KERSHAW’S SUBSEQUENT DISSOLUTION OF THAT
CHURCH. E.V. June 1861 Pages 145-147
The Reviewer Reviewed Again. By W. Palmer, of Homerton. London: Houlston and Wright. By Thomas S
THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST AND MR. WELLS
THE SON OF GOD, OUR SAVIOUR, A REVIEW OF MR. CROWTHER'S SERMON BY DIXON
APPENDIX I Philpot’s remarks 1859
REVIEW 1 Philpot restarts the old controversy
REVIEW: continued from page 98
REVIEW 1: Concluded from page 131
REVIEW 2 (Continued from page 323
MEDITATIONS ON THE SACRED HUMANITY OF THE BLESSED REDEEMER
APPENDIX II - Philpot against J.A. Jones
GARBLING THE WRITINGS OF GOOD MEN BY DISHONEST QUOTATIONS
APPENDIX III - Sermon of William Crowther and Review by Philpot
THINGS MOST SURELY BELIEVED AMONG US AS TO THE PERSON, MISSION, AND WORK
REVIEW of William Crowther’s sermon
THE PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF GOD THE FATHER TO THE PERSON, GODHEAD, AND SONSHIP, OF GOD THE SON
THE PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF GOD THE FATHER
An Examination of the Words “BEGOTTEN” and “GENERATION”
(William Palmer’s review of Philpot on the Sonship of Christ.)
APPENDIX VII: Christ Our High Priest
A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST By J. A. JONES,
A GOLDEN CHAIN OF DIVINE APHORISMS
A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST
Robert Hawker’s First Letter to John Stephens
Robert Hawker’s full remarks on the word “Begotten”
ADDRESS TO OUR SPIRITUAL READERS G.S. January 1860 pages 7-13
THE GOSPEL STANDARD. NOVEMBER 1, 1860. 343-347
TESTIMONY OF DR. HAWKER, TO THE TRUE, PROPER, AND ETERNAL SONSHIP OF JESUS
Mount Zion chapel, Hitchen, opened on Wednesday, March 7th, 1860, by Mr. William Crowther, of Lockwood, Yorkshire; and Mr. William Tite, of Potton, Beds. Mr. Crowther’s morning sermon has been published by W. H. Collingridge; and can be had through any bookseller; or of Mr. John Poynder, 33, Murray-street, City-road, London. The title of the sermon is ‘Things Most Surely Believed among us, as to the Person, Mission, and Work of Christ.” There is a beautiful clearness, a theological consistency, and a more wholesome development of the leading truths of the Gospel, in this sermon, than in many of the most popular. Mr. Crowther reads his Bible; he compares scripture with scripture; he examines the whole line of revelation as it runs through the pages of inspiration; and thereby gets at, and gives you, the mind of the Spirit. We think his discourses very instructive; and to humble learners they must be useful2.
EDITORS NOTE Appendix III contains both Mr. Crowther’s original sermon as well as Philpot’s reply. All of the appendixes to this essay are very important. Some contain rare original documents and a great deal of other information in the time frame covered in the main essay.
IN all ages of the Church’s history, there have arisen disputes among good men touching certain points and particular properties in the Person, Existence, Work and Offices of the Son of God, our Saviour and our Friend. We shall not now enter upon any review of those disputed points; our object being simply to call the attention of our readers to a pamphlet recently sent forth by Mr. J. A. Jones, Pastor of the Baptist Church, at Jireh Meeting, London, which bears the following title, “A. Scriptural View of the Sonship of Christ. A Letter addressed to the Editor of the Gospel Standard (London: J. Paul, Chapter-house ct., Paternoster-row). From this published “Letter,” and from other reliable sources of information, it is clear that a rather severe controversy has again arisen in certain quarters respecting “the Scriptural Doctrine of Christ’s Sonship,” and the fire has burned so warmly that resolutions have been unanimously carried by some Churches to exclude, to cut off, to treat as heretics, and to cast away entirely, all who would not subscribe their names to the documents, doctrines, and dogmas so profusely poured forth of late. Even some of the oldest veterans in Christendom, who have been received as fathers in the faith for many years, have been most cruelly excommunicated because they would not subscribe to articles which they did not believe; and it has been literally impossible to move in any circle of Gospel acquaintance without having this one test presented as the only ground upon which you can possibly stand in their presence. To say nothing for or against the point at issue now, we must confess this course appears to us exceedingly popish; and unless it could be clearly proved that the doctrine at issue was one involving either the glory of Christ, or the essential good of his people, such a course surely cannot have the sanction of Heaven, or the countenance of any truly enlightened and Gospel loving people!
There are not many ministers in our denomination more generally esteemed than is the Editor of The Gospel Standard; nor do we know of any religious publication which has been more really useful in spiritual matters than that periodical has been: this is sincerely our conviction; any remark we may make, therefore, is not from a want of deep-rooted love to those vital principles which the Standard has always contended for; but we do desire, in common with many thousands of the Lord’s professing people, to see that spirit of bitterness, and popish bigotry, so long rampant, abandoned, overcome, and entirely laid aside. And with this one object in view, we shall endeavor to continue to notice the best things possessed by, and connected with, the best men, irrespective of party, periodical, or petty feeling. Whether, therefore, a work be sent to us by “Standard men” or Herald men” or “Vessel men;” or any other class of men, (terms we would not employ, were they not so much in use,) if those works are designed for the elucidation of pure Gospel Truth, and for the separation of the precious from the vile; they shall always be as faithfully noticed by us, as our small abilities wild allow; for we do take pleasure in being entirely free from all party bias, save and except that one blessed party, “the household of faith.” Before we come to the extract, we purpose to give from Mr. Jones’s tract, we must confess, that in the ministrations of our several brethren, in the different sections of Zion where they severally labour, we have long feared that THE PERSON OF CHRIST has not been a sufficiently prominent feature in, and portion of, their preaching. One party has laboured hard to prove the doctrines of grace to be true; another party has worked hard to show a deep experience to be essentially necessary. Both- parties have done well, as far as they have gone; but to both, we think, it might be justly said, “Yet, lackest thou one thing:” and that is, a pure determination to know nothing among men, but JESUS CHRIST, and HIM crucified.
We sincerely hope that the controversy so warmly, and so ably commenced, will not be allowed to drop until this Theme of Life Divine, this glorious channel of love and mercy, truth, and vital power, has become ten thousand times more popular, prominent, and perspicuous than of late years it has been.
We have dared to think that the mainspring of Dr. Hawker’s universal acceptance among all the Churches in Christendom was this, JESUS CHRIST, with him, was everything: and if there be an illustration, or living witness of this in our own day, we venture, (at the risk of all that it may bring upon us) most purely to affirm that the genuine cause and source of John Bloomfield’s general usefulness in our Churches, is his constant concern to make the Glorious Person of the Messiah, His Names, Offices, Works, and Ways, the all-absorbing themes of his ministry. John Bloomfield must forgive us for making this use of him; but we wish him to persevere with all his might in an intelligent, Scriptural, experimental, and practical exhibition of the Fountain of Life; and we also wish to impress this upon the minds of all our young men now rising up in the ministry, that the Saviour himself proclaimed the great fact, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto me.”
Hoping, ere long, to enter more fully upon. this theme ourselves; and trusting that our few familiar remarks may lead the minds of many to think more, to speak more, to preach more, of Him, we now turn to Mr. J. A. Jones’s pamphlet.
No words can ever tell the strong affection and abiding faith of our heart toward the essential, the eternal, and all-glorious Divinity of our adorable Lord Jesus Christ: therefore, let no man believe, for one moment, that we can oppose any point which tends to establish that great and eternal truth. At the same time, there are some terms employed by our venerable author which we will not adopt. Upon a subject so immensely mysterious and awfully grand, we fear to intrude or advance one step beyond the plain words of revelation itself. Still, there are some most excellent things in this letter by Mr. J. A. Jones; and we are verily glad, that neither his ancient mind, nor his long-used pen, are at all impaired.
In the course of this letter then, to the Editor of The Gospel Standard, Mr. Jones says:
I advocate inviolably the right of private judgment; but I demur to your consigning to eternal perdition, those persons, who, while they cannot adopt your views of Divine filiation, still most firmly believe in the glorious and essential Deity of our adorable Lord Jesus Christ.
I am an old man, more than eighty years of age, and have laboured in. the work of the Christian ministry upwards of fifty years. I am considered to be sound in the truth by many, and one of the “old school.” My writings are well known; being abroad in almost every direction in the length and breadth of the land. Bear with me then in a few plain remarks * * * You write and declare that, “Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God in his Divine nature; as his eternal and only begotten Son,” &c. (p. 94).
After more quotations, Mr. Jones proceeds by saying.
When one wrote to Dr, Hawker of embalmed memory, and charged him with holding the tenet, ’‘That the Son of God, as Divine person, was eternally begotten of the substance of the Father the Doctor replied to him, saying, “I have never presumed to look into, much less enter, the hallowed ground of mystery, in relation to the modus existendi of the Divine persons in the Godhead. I have no conception of the nature of that relationship which subsists between the Father and the Son. I know, indeed, that some of our greatest divines have dwelt largely on the subject of what they call eternal generation; but I have never seen it defined by any writer to my satisfaction. For my part, I have always contemplated the subject, since I knew anything of the Lord, at an infinite distance, and with the most profound humbleness of mind!!” O pray, sir, do condescend to borrow a leaf out of Dr. Hawker’s book. [This is really our own feeling.—Ed. E. R] In reading and pondering, only a few days ago, Dr. Owen's elaborate treatise on the “Person of Christ.” comprised in 200 folio pages, I was greatly struck with the following, in his preface to that work; which I would have deeply impressed on my mind, as well as all those who write or even speak on this most solemn and unfathomable subject. “He is unhappy, miserable, and most impudent, who desires to examine or search out his Maker. Thousands of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of millions of angels and archangels, do glorify him with dread, and adore him with trembling; and shall men made of clay, full of sins, dispute of the Deity without fear? Horror doth not shake their bodies, their mind doth not tremble, but being secure and prating, they speak of the Son of God, who suffered for me unworthy sinner, and of both his nativities or generations: at least they are not sensible how blind they are in the light!”
The Lord in the midst of the flaming fire, called out and warned Moses, when he was about to pry into the mystery of the burning bush, saying, “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”, Exodus 3:5.
Mr. J. A Jones then proceeds to lay before the Editor his reasons for writing, appending thereto his own creed; which may be noticed in another number; and having called the Editor’s attention to the articles of faith, the venerable author closes his epistle in the following most beautiful and becoming words:
Such were my views nearly fifty years ago, and such they are now. I have seen no cause to alter even a solitary sentence. I commend the same to your most critical perusal. Re- member one thing, I am not alone in my views. I believe all the ministers in London, of our Denomination, who are reputed sound in the faith, are like-minded with me. I say to you, “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” But whatever conclusion you may come to, I beseech you, don't consign over to eternal perdition, an aged minister, just on the verge of Jordan; whose ministry, first to last, has tended to the exaltation of Christ the Lord, his Saviour and his God; and whose labours have been owned and blest to the spiritual profit of hundreds of immortal souls. I pray you don’t do this, merely because he cannot see with your eyes, and refuses to make use of your spectacles. But if you do so, remember, I shall appeal from your judgment to a higher court: “We must all appear before the judgmentseat of Christ.” See Romans 14:10; and 2 Corinthians 5:10.
I pray you receive kindly what I have written. I hold my principles firmly; but in the defense of them I would use kind words, coupled with “great plainness of speech.” I remain, respected Sir, your Christian brother, J. A. Jones. 50 , Murray Street, City Road, London, March 13th, 1860,
We think this closing paragraph most excellent and telling.
The Great Question, “What Think We of Christ” (Continued from page 119) E.V. June 1860 pages 149-150
There are some precious, soul-ravishing privileges which we believe none but the quickened elect of God can truly enjoy: hearing of Christ, when the Holy Ghost reveals Him to the regenerate mind; thinking of Christ, when the Divine Teacher leads to contemplation by the silent expositions of the word of Life; talking of Christ, when the heart has been inditing a good matter; anticipating a likeness and a near ness to Him in the higher and holier kingdom; and transitory seasons of fellowship with the Father, with the Son, and with the blessed Spirit, as onward through the desert we roam. These sacred pleasures, flowing from a living faith in Christ, will purify, and sanctify, and gladden; they will humble, yet encourage, the soul thus favoured; but they will never lead to bitterness of spirit, to exclusiveness of mind, to cruel cutting off of brethren who see not, say not, rise not, discern not, in exact accordance with our stature or measure of thought. No; that cannot be. A man can never come from the closet of holy communion with a Triune Jehovah, to cut off the ear and head of his fellow; the man that has fled from the law’s tremendous curse to Jesus’ righteousness, and there found clothing; the man who has run from temptation’s threatening power to the fountain of atoning blood, and has there had peace and pardon sealed home upon his conscience; such a man will not ascend the papal throne, nor sit in the judgment-seat, to cast into oblivion his poor brother whose eye-sight may not be so clear, nor whose spiritual perception may not be so high as his own. Nay, never.3 Let us, therefore, try the spirits, and think of that solemn word again, “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Let us be careful, however, not to fall into the same weakness ourselves which we censure in another. Let us not run to unholy extremes; for this is, indeed, where human nature (even in the best of men) often betrays her frailties. There are (as a writer in The Christian Observer justly, we think, remarks) the “strong points” and the “weak points” in every human being; and that man who has in some things the strongest point at one end of his mind, will be almost certain to manifest a very weak point at the other end of his mind: a fairly-balanced, an equal, a steadily undeviating spirit, mind, and mental and practical habit, is rare to find. The writer to whom we have referred says:
Now I have here to notice, in the experience of a somewhat extended life, a curious fact in the history of man; viz., the frequency with which he breaks down precisely at what is deemed his ‘strong point.' His strong points often prove, in the end, to be his weak ones; and the fortress is entered at the gate where nature had seemed to have done the most to fortify it. Let us see whether some of the histories in Scripture do not confirm this statement. “Noah is singled out in Scripture as the ‘preacher of righteousness,’ in the midst of an unrighteous world. But this righteous Noah plants a vine, drinks to excess of its fruits, and exposes the very righteousness he is called to inculcate, to the ridicule and scorn of the ungodly. Abraham, at the command of God, boldly and disinterestedly abandons his father’s house, and plunges into all the dangers of a distant and hazardous march. But this father of the faithful, and friend of God, suddenly breaks down, and inflicts a fearful wound on the faith he is called to establish. Moses is spoken of as the “meekest” of all men; but this model of meekness, under the pressure of a sudden temptation, is guilty of such a burst of passion as shuts him out from more than a distant view of the land of promise. The patient Job is provoked to curse the day of his birth. The lion-hearted Elijah casts himself on the ground in a fit of effeminate despondency. The gentle St. John desires to ‘call down fire’ on his adversaries. The loving, ardent Peter forsakes his Master in the hour of his deepest extremity. Other cases in proof of my proposition might be selected, both from sacred and profane history; and we can scarcely have gone through life, with our eyes open, without seeing them for ourselves. Perhaps, indeed, if we look for them, we shall find that our own supposed strong points have proved to be very weak ones; and the oak staff on which we were accustomed to lean is a mere reed, which has unexpectedly broken short in our hands.
If the fact to which I have referred, in the constitution of our nature, be obvious; so, I think, is the origin and source of it. Take especially the case of a true, but infirm, and perhaps fallen servant of God.
One object of the divine discipline, in the case of such a man, is altogether to strip him of high notions about himself; so to bring him down, as that he shall be satisfied to enter heaven by the low gate of deep self-humiliation. His supposed strong point was, perhaps, the main obstacle in his way. Some deep offence on the very side of this pre- dominant quality is calculated to bring the man to his senses; and in his defeated and prostrate state he calls for mercy as he never called before. Job had probably presumed on his patience. It gives way under a peculiar pressure, and he exclaims, ‘I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’
In like manner, another lesson to be learned in our education for eternity, is our absolute dependance upon the power and grace of God. Here, again, the ‘strong point’ may be the main obstacle in our way. Samson shall have the lock of his strength removed. The man shall be made to feel that, in himself, he is nothing; and accordingly, he is suffered to break down at the very point where his strength is supposed to lie. His temptation bad been independence of the Spirit of God, as to at least one point; and he is accordingly called to sustain defeat in the field of expected victory; and is thus taught that the supposed giant in the conflict with corruption is a mere child, and that he never needs divine help more than when he least seeks it. Let him only learn, as he lies thus prostrate under the power of temptation, to look exclusively to the blood of Christ as the only source of hope, and the power of the Spirit as the only source of strength, and he will thank God through eternity for his defeats and sorrows in the vale of tears.
Could we carry this conviction with us, that the best of men are men, that the strongest will sometimes show us they are weak somewhere and somewhen, we should not so readily nor so rashly judge and condemn; not that we are to wink at sins, or silently to allow heresies to creep in and abound; we plead only for a charitable conversation toward such as are known to be good men, even when the “weak, point” is most predominant for a season.
Returning to the question now agitating the churches: “What think ye of Christ?” we would call the attention of our readers again to the letter by Mr. J. A. Jones, for the purpose of fulfilling the promise we then made. His article headed “Of the Holy Trinity” we think ought to be circulated freely at this time; we therefore give it here as given by himself.4 He says:
I avow my firm belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: in essence one, in persons three. The triune Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty, possessed of absolute and infinite perfections: eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, the faithful God. Great in his signs, mighty in his wonders, his kingdom an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion from generation to generation. I not only maintain the essential Deity of the Father, but equally so of the Son, and Holy Spirit: equal in eternity;
equally possessed of Divine attributes; bearing Divine and infinite names; entitled to, receiving, and that justly, Divine honours, adoration, and praise. One in nature as in essence: not existing one from another, such as the Son being in the Divine nature, begotten of the Father; and then the Holy Ghost proceeding (as God) from both. No, sir. I believe that the Son, in his adorable Divine nature, is the self-existent Jehovah, and not a begotten God. That he is so, not by creation, derivation, generation, or indwelling but uncreated and underived. ‘My Lord, and my God!’ Further, I believe that the Holy Ghost is not an emanation merely from the Father and the Son, but a glorious distinct person in Jehovah. A witness to the eternal engagements between the Father and the Son in the economy of redemption; Him who anointed Christ God-man Mediator with the oil of gladness above his fellows; Him who is the sole author of regeneration, the quickener, and Almighty infuser of life, light, and grace in the hearts of the elect children of God: and who maintains that grace which he has imparted, till it is consummated in glory. I believe these things firmly, on the authority of the sacred word of God. The Trinity in Unity is, with me, a precious article of faith. It is an incomprehensible mystery, greatly exceeding my feeble powers of comprehension; but I find ‘It is written;’ therefore believe, wonder, and adore!5
Two hundred years ago, one Benjamin Austin, pastor of the Church of God at Castle Ashbey, in Northampton shire, published his work, entitled, “Scripture Manifestation of the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” This wholesome and solid testimony, as also Ralph Erskine’s “Saving Sight of the Saviour,” we hope to make good use of in pursuing the question, “What think ye of Christ?”
[We deeply regret the rising up of another controversy among our own brethren; but the absolutely tyrannical, and very unholy spirit of some in these times, compels us to admit a reply. Ed.]6
Dear Mr. Editor,
As it would be a forlorn hope to expert Mr. J. C. Philpot to favour me, by inserting my reply to his unhallowed, remarks in the pages of the Gospel Standard, I have therefore to request you will oblige me with a page or two of the Earthen Vessel. Of course, I am alone responsible for what I advance, leaving you entirely free to judge for yourself. I am not at all surprised at the unbecoming tenor of Mr. Philpot’s lucubration’s. The old adage has it, that “what is bred in the bone, will never come out of the flesh.” When John Wesley replied, in a feverish state of excitement, to some weighty remarks of Dr. Gill, the doctor in his rejoinder, said, “the man is pinched and is angry.” Mr. Philpot seems somewhat pinched, and as usual, is very impatient of contradiction. Let it be my concern not to render railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing.” 1 Peter 3:9. “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” Proverbs 16:32. First, I would briefly reply to some unbecoming remarks of Mr. Philpot; and secondly, standing entirely on the Scriptural ground I have already taken, I would produce a little more to the same import, also founded on the sacred Word. Leaving the spiritually-taught Bible reader to come to his own conclusions.
And here first, I notice that Mr. Philpot begins a page in the Standard, with the following, in large capitals. “Garbling the writings of good men by dishonest quotations.”7 Then he commences with “an aged minister, named J. A Jones, has addressed a letter &c.,” and he says, “the poor old man who bids us condescend to borrow a loaf out of Dr. Hawker’s book, might have condescended not to garble his words, &c.” I smiled when I read the heading of this page. “A garbler of the writings of good men.”
Now Mr. Philpot does not seem to know the only dictionary meaning of the word which he has used. What he means by garbling is, that of quoting dishonestly, now this charge. I deny in toto and call on him for proof. I have transcribed, simply and honest what Dr. Hawker has written, verbatim et literatim. The only sense in which the word “garble” stands in any dictionary that I have seen is as follows. “Garble: to sift, to part, to separate the good from the bad.” A garbler, he who separates one part from another.” My quotations are from Drs. Johnson, Ash, and Walker. Well, then, I acknowledge that I am a sifter &c., of human writings. A separator of the good from the bad. I have aimed to take heed what I read; to analyze, and bring the same to the unerring standard of God’s Word.
“This is the Judge that ends the strife,
When men’s devices fail.”
I have read a little in my long day; and I have communicated the result of my very many hours of laborious siftings and winnowing’s, (i.e. garbling’s,) in various printed treatises. And my sole aim also as a Christian minister has been, the presentation to my people of winnowed, clean provender. Isaiah 30: 24.) But alas! now I am to be told that I am spending my last days in the miserable vanity of re-printing my erroneous Creed of fifty years back, as if age could turn falsehood into truth!” My only reply to this man shall be, that the lovers of sterling gospel truth, who know my various writings, and are acquainted with my general ministry, will, one and all, declare the above to be a libel. Again, he charges me “with employing my dying fingers, in mutilating the writings of gracious men for a dishonest purpose.” Sad writing this! Well, through mercy, my dying fingers are not quite dead; they have some life in them yet. And though my oft-used pen is almost worn to the stump, yet if the Lord shall be pleased to supply me with a little gospel ink, I hope still to be able to scratch a few more pointed remarks; not perhaps exactly pleasing to my calumniator, but still not altogether irrelevant. And, if in addition, it may prove a sort of check-string to Mr. Philpot, who seems like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, to be “riding furiously,” (2 Kings 9:20.) I shall not regret this most unpleasant controversy. Regret it, did I say? I think that on the contrary, I shall have reason to rejoice. I have received encouraging letters already, to the following import, “While I regret the divisions in our body, I have no fear for God's truth, or for God’s own elect. Indeed it is my decided opinion, that scriptural truth will be cleared, advanced, and rendered glorious, by this onslaught on the churches.” And, he writes, “In relation to the Son of God, the same writer also adds, “This controversy as the first begotten, and the only begotten of will tend to close searching and close quarters; and to embrace the rock for want of a shelter, from the rash judgments, unsubdued tempers, and unmortified passions of men.”
But I promised a brief reply to some un- becoming remarks of Mr. Philpot; and in particular relative to two (so called by him,) dishonest quotations. I make my standby the quotation I have given from Dr. Hawker; the reader has it both in my present letter to Mr. Philpot, and in his quotation therefrom in the Standard. The Dr. says, “I have never seen the subject (i. e. of eternal generation) de- fined by any writer to my satisfaction” &c. I am now sorry that I did not commence my quotation where I should have begun it. It was an oversight on my part, as it contained all that I could possibly desire. Doctor Hawker replies to his opponent, “You have drawn up a creed for me to which I cannot subscribe. You have said my faith is, that the SON OF GOD, as a divine person, was eternally begotten of the substance of the Father.” Now doctor Hawker declares, in most plain words, that he cannot subscribe to such a creed.” Why not? Why because he does not hold it. If he held it he would not have objected to subscribe to it. There is no ‘‘garbling” here, master Philpot, (according to your view of the word) no; this is plain sailing. Mr. Philpot, then, is the garbler, not me. I inadvertently omitted to commence with a most important sentence, and Mr. Philpot omits it (may I say purposely) because it makes entirely against him.
Reader, take the sentences in the exact words of Dr. Hawker. He replies to his opponent, “you have drawn up a creed for me to which I cannot subscribe. You have said my faith is, that the Son of God, as a divine person, was eternally begotten of the substance of the Father. Sir, I have never presumed to look into, much less enter, the hallowed ground of mystery, in relation to. the modus extendi of the Divine Persons in the Godhead. I have no conception of the nature of that relationship which subsists between the Father and the Son. I know indeed that some of our greatest divines have dwelt largely on the subject of what they call eternal generation; but I have never seen it defined by any writer to my satisfaction.”
Well, the above quotation is plain enough I think. The doctor says that he has never seen the doctrine of eternal generation defined by any writer to his satisfaction, and there- fore he cannot subscribe to it as his creed.
What the good doctor means by saying that be cannot subscribe to as his creed, what he continually reads in the scriptures, is inexplicable to me. If Mr. Philpot can explain it, then myself and readers will be enlightened.
And now permit me to glean, winnow, sift, or “garble” (if you please,) somewhat more from the writings of Dr. Hawker. I have before me his “poor man’s Concordance and Dictionary.” Under the word “begotten,” he writes, “In relation to the Son of God, as the first begotten, and the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; if those terms are confined to the Person of the Lord Jesus in his character and office AS MEDIATOR, here all difficulty vanishes to the proper apprehension of our mind; and under divine teaching, we are not only brought to the full conviction of the glorious truth itself, but to the full enjoyment of it, in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ in his
MEDIATOR IAL character, God and Man in one Person, the head of union with his people, and the head of communication also to his people, for grace here, and glory hereafter.”
Again, under the head, “generation” in his dictionary, the Dr. says, “the Holy Ghost hath been very explicit in his sacred word, where the Son of God, when standing up as he Mediator and head of the church before all worlds, is called the first begotten Son, and the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. All these and the like phrases, wholly refer to the Son of God in his humbling himself as our Redeemer and Mediator, the God-man in one Person Christ Jesus. Here we cannot be at a loss to have the clearest apprehension because they refer to his office character. Hence, all those titles are very plain. “He is Jehovah’s servant,” Isaiah 42:1. And his Father is greater than he,” John 15:28. “And, God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Ephesians 1:17. All these, and numberless expressions of the like nature, wholly refer to the Son of God as Christ; and have NO respect to his eternal nature and Godhead abstracted from his office as Mediator.”
I have now proved that Dr. Hawker held, as firmly as I do, that the Sonship of Christ was in his complex character as God-man; and that he was not begotten in abstract Deity. I had a personal acquaintance with the Doctor. Some precious autograph letters from him to me, written 40 years ago, are now in my possession.
I think I have quoted enough, most explicit and quite to the purpose; only,
“He that’s convinced against his will
Remains the same opinion still.”
Once more, and I have done for this time. I look Mr. Philpot full in the face, and totally deny that I have acted dishonestly in my extract from Dr. Owen’s Preface. I only quoted from Fphrem Syrus to show, as he has stated, “how unhappy, miserable, and most impudent he is, who desires to examine or search out his Maker,” And I quoted it as a warning to Mr. Philpot.
Well then, dear reader, I have endeavored somewhat to clear the decks, (as they say) in replying to some unbecoming remarks of Mr. Philpot; and which I would hope on a calm consideration (if he can calmly consider) he is already ashamed of; and I shall in a future number of the Vessel, cut out a little more work for Mr. Philpot. I see he has already shifted his ground; and perhaps he may beat a retreat ere long. However, Whether he does so or not, we fearlessly avow our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, in his divine nature, is not a begotten God. I know Mr. Philpot would seem to wish to shrink from the charge as applicable to him; and he enquires, “where can we find such an expression as “A begotten God,” used by any writer who advocates the eternal sonship, &c.” I reply, not in perhaps so many words, (this would be too bold and daring) but, in several places, Mr. Philpot has himself written down the same in substance. I take one or two sentences only as a sample of all the rest. He says, “We assert that when the Scriptures speak of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, it speaks of him as such, in the divine nature.” (p. 124 Gospel Standard.)
Again, “He was his only begotten Son in his divine nature.” (p. 125) Well then, if he is the only begotten Son of God, in the divine nature, then his divine nature must be begotten. This implies a begotten Deity, or in other words, “a begotten God.” There is no evading this conclusion by all
Mr. Philpot’s hectoring. On the contrary, very many, with myself, believe him to be, “Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the ending.” In a word, he is Jehovah, which is, and which was, and which is to come: the Almighty.
I close for the present with the following all-important extract. “Great deception is practicing on the simple disciples of our adorable Jesus! But our Saviour must be such a one as heaven can prudently trust, and earth can lawfully worship. To give him divine titles, and deny him divine perfections, is to mock him in coverings not his own. He may be praised, without possibility of excess; loved, without danger of inordinacy; trusted, without liability to disappointment; and followed, without being at all misguided. His wealth is unsearchable riches, and his kingdom everlasting rest. Of Persons, he is the most wonderful, and of Servants, the most deserving. But his servitude required that he should have a Lord’s ability to perform it. He therefore who holds sentiments destructive of his true Person, as God and Man, holds principles that overthrow his mediatorial work; as his Person mutilated, is, in effect, his Work ruined.” I hope to resume my remarks next month. In the interim, I am dear Mr. Editor, yours &c.
J. A. Jones.
Dear Mr. Editor.
As you inserted in your July No. of The Earthen Vessel, certain quotations from the writings of dear Dr. Hawker, by one of your correspondents, as published by the Dr. in the year 1813, permit me the insertion of a few quotations from the same author, in a work published by him in the year 1819, six years later, entitled the “Personal Testimony of God the Father to the Person, Godhead and Sonship of God the Son as set forth in the Scriptures of God the Holy Ghost,” in the which will be seen that the dear man grew in grace and in the knowledge of God, and the which plainly discover that the doctor was not one of that class who doubt of and carnally reason, upon the doctrine of the divine Sonship of God the Son, subsisting as such in the unity of the divine nature, independent of all offices in the covenant or mediatorship, or incarnation; for, as said dear Toplady, “He who is the Son of God, is God the Son, for to tamper with this great solemn and essential truth is to me awful.” Yours truly. W. Bidder.
1. The doctor therefore goes on to say, viz., Had he never been, the Son of God, as Son of God, would have been what he is in himself in his divine nature from all eternity and to all eternity, being one with the Father over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
2. The testimony of God the Father to the Person, Godhead and Sonship of his dear Son, becomes at once final, unanswerable, and decisive; this forms a testimony which stands in the place of a thousand witnesses. For if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is Greater, “for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son.”
3. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, “sacrifice and offerings,” &c. that at the time when the Son of God came into the world, the above words were spoken by the Son of God as the Son of God, and before that human nature he was about to take, was formed. Psalm 40:6.
4. It is identity of Person in the Son of God, which gives importance to all that is related of him, for the glory of his Person as he is in himself infinitely transcends every other view the imagination can conceive of him.
5. The Son of God coming forth in our nature, forms a medium of communication and a medium of visibility.
6. He is distinguished from all the prophets by his name, God’s Son, not God’s Son by creation, but by nature. For, as among men, the image or likeness of an earthly father in a son, could not take place unless both were of the same nature.
7. When the Father bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, “And let all the angels of God worship him.” Would God have commanded the angels of God to worship his Son, had not the Son possessed the same nature and essence with himself?
8. The Person, Godhead, and Sonship, of the Lord Jesus is the bottom and foundation of everything that is blessed in the Church of God.
9. Let God’s own testimony to the God- head of his own Son be received with thanksgiving; yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.
10. There is, according to my apprehension, somewhat so truly blessed in too relationship of the Father to the Son, and the Son to the Father, that methinks I would not part with the precious doctrine, no, not for the world.
11. The relationship subsisting between the Persons of the Godhead, is not our province to explain, (yet is it our mercy to receive it,) the familiar terms of Father and Son. I can and do accept and believe it with the most cordial and heartfelt satisfaction.
12. We are so accustomed to the names of Father and Son, that it were a violence to our feelings to admit, even for a moment, their reality to be questionable; it is impossible to relinquish the one, without giving up with it at the same time, the other. For if the Sonship of the Son of God is no more, the appellation of the Father is alike no more. What a chasm would be made in Scripture, if both were done away! Where would a child of God go to find his Father from the relationship to the Son, if these connections in the Godhead bad no existence!
13. The Son of God is called his own Son, his dear Son, his only begotten Son, the Son of his love, and the like; not the Son of God by creation as angels and men are, neither is be called the Son of God by adoption, as is the church, neither as Mediator, for in this sense he is God’s servant. But he is called the Son of God in a special, personal, and particular manner, as the only begotten of the Father, of the same nature with himself, over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
14. I ascend to my Father and your Father, my Father in nature, your Father by grace, mine by Sonship, yours by adoption.
15. John 5:18, “but said also, that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.” Our translators have wholly left out a word, and that a most important word, viz., idion, and which shews that the Lord Jesus had called God his own Father; so that though our modern unbelievers in the Sonship of God’s dear Son, as Son of God, presumptuously deny this blessed truth; yet not so the Jews, they did not mistake our Lord's meaning, and declared him in consequence, according to their views, a blasphemer for making himself equal with God. But it will be for God himself to decide with whom is the greatest blasphemy, the Jews in accepting the Son of God’s words as they really were, and denying his Godhead, or those who call themselves Christians denying his Sonship.
16. But to all the cavils of carnal men in the present Christ-despising generation, the words of Agar are admirably suited, as if they had been written but yesterday; “Who hath ascended up to heaven or descended? Who hath gathered the winds in his fists? Who hath bounded the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name? and what is his Son’s name, if thou canst tell?” See also Matthew 27.
17. That Satan should tempt to this unbelief of the Sonship of God’s dear Son, is just as might be expected; for he made the attempt on Christ himself; see Matthew 4:3. But for men who call themselves Christians, to rob the Son of God of his dignity, and the church of all comfort, are such men aware that while their quiver is sent against the Person, and Godhead, and Sonship of God’s Son, their arrows are in fact directed against the buckler of the Father. Oh! what paleness! what horror! what dismay will mark the Christ-despisers of this and every other generation, “When the Son of God shall come in his own glory,” &c.
18. The Sonship of God’s dear Son, as the Son of God in nature, is of all subjects the most endearing to the church who are sons by adoption and grace.
19. I am well aware how galling these things are to all unrenewed minds, and may provoke to many a bitter expression, as I have heard, and heard indeed until my very flesh hath trembled. “The Sonship of God’s dear Son.”
Dr. Gill once said, “Take away that which would destroy the relation between the first and second Persons in the Godhead, and the distinction drops. And that this distinction is natural, or by necessity of nature, is evident, because had it been only arbitrary, or of choice, and will, it might not have been at all, or have been otherwise than it is, and then he that is called the Father, might have been called the Son; and he that is called the Son, might have been called the Father, This has so pressed those who are of a contrary mind, as to oblige them to own it might have so happened, had it been agreeable to the will of God. See what a labyrinth such notions lead to.
(From a Clergyman.) To the Editor of the Earthen Vessel.
Dear Sir,
I am much grieved to find that any real Christians, as in charity I trust they are, can deny the Eternal Sonship of the Second Person, in the ever-blessed Trinity. That God always had a Son is clear from, Proverbs 33:4; After a majestic description of God, we read, “What is his name, and what is his Son’s name, if thou canst tell?” John 3:17, “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world,” a text which proves he was God’s Son before he was sent into the world, before, that is, he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and on these accounts was called the Son of God, his second title to the same name.
Hence, the Son of God was God’s eternal Son, as there is no Scriptural warrant for the Jewish legend of the pre-existence of human souls; another foolish opinion revived in the present day.
John 1:14, “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Surely the divine glory of Jesus Christ is here referred to, as this glory the apostles did see in Christ, and therefore, “only begotten” must refer to his Godhead. And St. John (1 Ephesians 4:9,) says, “God sent his only begotten Son into the world,” so that he had his only begotten Son before he was sent.
We must surely call to mind that Jesus Christ is not the only Son of God, as regards his human nature since the first Adam is also called Son of God (Luke 3:38,) because he had no human parents; but Jesus is only begotten, if we hold the Catholic doctrine of his eternal Sonship.
Galatians 4:4, “God sent forth his Son.” so he had a Son before he sent him forth.
Hebrews 1:3, God is said to have made the world by his Son. “He hath spoken unto us by his Son, by whom also he made the worlds.” Now the second Person in the Godhead did not make the worlds as God’s Son by the Virgin Mary, (his second title to the same name,) nor by his third title to this name Son of God, namely, by his resurrection from the dead, (see Psalm 2:7, compared with Acts 8:33,) but as the Father’s co-eternal Son, he made the worlds.
Some demur to call the Second Person n the glorious Trinity, Son, because he had no divine mother, but we might equally refuse to call him Son of God, as the Virgin's Son, because he had a human mother, and not one who was divine.
Again, a Father exists many years before his Son, but not in the case before us. The second Person is the co-eternal Son of the eternal Father, and though the blessed Spirit proceeds from both, and so we might suppose existed later, still that idea is inapplicable here, for the Spirit is the co-eternal Spirit of the eternal Father and of the eternal Son.
I was astonished to hear Mr. Jones, quoting Dr. Hawker, in support of a tenet which I must be allowed to call a heresy. Dr. Hawker believed the following words; “the Son which is the Word of the Father, was begotten from everlasting of the Father,” 2nd article of the Church of England. Again he believed these words, “the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God, and of God, Light and of light, very God and of very God,” (Nicene creed;) “God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds.” Athanasian creed. I say Dr. Hawker believed these quotations, because he signed them freely and ex animo, as he held the vicarage of Charles, I believe in Plymouth. He died a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England and must have subscribed at least three times to these sentiments. We may feel sure therefore, that Dr. Hawker, could not as a godly man have held the sentiments ascribed to him by Mr. Jones, which are contradictory and quite subversive of these, else he would have left the Church of England. But to make another remark on Mr. Jones’s creed. We have three eternal independent Persons; no Son begotten by the Father, and no Spirit proceeding from both. We have then three Gods and are driven on the fearful rocks of Sabellianism. The unity of the Godhead seems entirely sacrificed if we take up this old heresy.8.
Allow me to remark in conclusion, that in controversial theology we must be very careful to avoid the workings of our corrupt nature. We may not reason where we are called to believe, nor feel chagrined, where we are detected in error, nor be unwilling to recant a false statement even though we may have held it from our youth. I trust everyone who has been permitted to wander into this sad error, will feel the force of these remarks. Let us who are Christians, all love one another and not begin to beat our fellow servants, which is one of the signs of the last times. I am, dear sir, yours faithfully. J. W.
NOTE ON THE ABOVE.
Dear Sir,
It rejoiced my heart to see you stand fast in the faith. In this August No. of Earthen Vessel, you will see what Dr. Hawker’s views were respecting the Sonship as expressed by himself in a later work of his than that quoted by Mr. Jones, (1 Corinthians 13:11). When I contrast the early writings of Hawker with his later, we admit he was not always consistent with himself, but he was a firm, staunch, and unmovable advocate for the eternal Sonship of the Son of God, or as Toplady said, viz., “The Son of God, is God the Son,” to which most blessed truth, I subscribe with heart and soul, and add my hearty Amen.
I find fault with only one expression in your letter, and I feel sure you will see with me when I point it out to you, viz., you say that the words “only-begotten” must refer to his Godhead; no, my dear sir, it refers to his Person as subsisting in the Godhead; the Divine nature, or essence is unbegotten, unoriginated and self-existent, and distinct from the Persons possessing that essence, though each possesses the whole; here some stumble; we never say that Godhead was begotten, but the second Person in that Godhead was begotten of the first, NOT MADE, and the Holy Ghost proceeding from them both in one eternal act of procession. O marvelous, inconceivable mystery! To be believed upon the authority of God himself, but never to be comprehended, nor dare any to carnally reason here. I John 5:7, 9, 10 ,11, 2 John 9. Colossians. 1:2; Thessalonians 3:11.
I herewith send you 6 sermons recently published, preached by Mr. W, Bidder, in which he boldly sets forth the doctrine of the divine Sonship, with which I perfectly agree, and so doubtless will you.
Yours’s, &c.,
(Concluded from page 203.)
Having proved that Dr. Hawker’s views of the Sonship of Christ, are not only scriptural, but in direct opposition to those of Mr. Philpot, I now produce another well-known divine, the holy William Romaine. But first, just a remark or two. I am charged by Mr. Philpot with quoting dishonestly; this I have refuted. Let Mr. Philpot turn to Romans 3:21 and read for himself a word to the wise. In my printed letter on the “Sonship of Christ,” is the following sentence. “I am not alone in my views. I believe all the ministers in London, of our denomination, who are reputed sound in the faith, are likeminded with me.” (The italics are so in my printed letter.) Mr. Philpot makes a handle of this. He says, “there was a time, when Dr. Gill was held in much respect as an authority by his Baptist brethren, but that day seems to have gone by; for we are now informed by an aged Baptist minister, named J, A. Jones, that all the London Baptist ministers agree with him in rejecting the eternal Sonship of the blessed Lord.” And again, further down the page, he has it a second time, “he says that all the London Particular Baptist ministers agree with him” (Page 192 Standard.) Now I have said no such thing. And a purpose is evidently sought to answer by this twofold dishonest quotation. A clear explanation is therefore imperatively called for. The Baptists, as a body, are not Gillites now, nor have they been so for many a long day This is well known. The name and authority of Dr. Gill, or Mr. John Brine, in matters of doctrinal import, is at a great discount. And the “London Baptist Ministers” who fully avow and maintain the theological views of those great men, are, in London, but a small minority. To name those most honoured brethren in the metropolis, who, with honest integrity abide by the truth, would be uncalled for. But I repeat, the full persuasion of my mind, that every one of them, while they would subscribe with hand and soul to the scriptural doctrine of the holy and blessed Trinity, they, at the same totally discard Mr. Philpot's unhallowed figment of our glorious Lord, being in his divine nature, only a begotten God. Respecting myself, with the solitary exception of Dr. Gill’s views on this disputed point, I am an out and out Gillite. I totally disavow the alarming error (I may say heresy) of the Arminian dead duty-faith, so awfully spreading in the pulpit and from the press. O! for the Lord to raise up some devoted Aaronites, “who shall take their censers, with holy fire from the altar, and go forth and take their stand between the living and the dead, that so the plague may be stayed,” Numbers 16:46-48.
I now continue the controverted subject of our Lord’s glorious Sonship. I have proved that Dr. Hawker did not hold with Mr. Philpot’s views. I now produce holy William Romaine, as another most decided opponent to him. I shall quote this man of God, word for word, letter for letter; withal fully believing that what he has advanced on the subject, can never be refuted while the Bible remains the “Standard” of decision.
I have Romaine’s most blessed printed letters, which are all about “Christ and him Crucified.” And his precious treatises on the “Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith” have been my vade mecum (constant companion) for many years. In his incomparable “Walk of Faith,” he writes as follows. “Our blessed Saviour declares, no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son; and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him; and this he does by the Holy Spirit. He makes them acquainted with the nature of the Godhead, Which is one. There is one Jehovah, and there is none other. And also, with the Personality in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit. These exist in the one Jehovah. They took those names, not to describe the manner in which they exist, but their manner of acting. Not what they are in themselves, but, how they stand related to us, in the economy of redemption.” Romaine is most explicit here; but methinks I hear Mr. Philpot say, that “he does not agree with him.” I expect not; but J. A. Jones does.
Again, Mr. Romaine preached and published a noble “Discourse upon the Self-existence of Jesus Christ.” In his preface to it he says, “I desire no greater honour than to be an humble instrument of magnifying and exalting Jesus Christ, who is above all blessing and praise; for, he is over all, God blessed forever.” The reader I doubt not will derive spiritual profit from some extracts I shall now make from this invaluable work. He shall have honest literal quotations. Indeed there will be no need even of sifting (i.e. garbling) here; as the treatise is all of a piece from first to last.
Romaine says, “several editions of this discourse have been printed since the year 1756; and there being still a demand for them, I have consented to republish it, as my testimony for the essential glory of God the Saviour. There have not been wanting able champions in our day, and successful, who have completely answered all objections, so that the doctrine of the trinity has been better established by the late opposition, and the truth has greatly prevailed. Upon these two grounds the truth stands perfectly established viz., Scripture Truth, and Scripture Experience: against which, he that sitteth upon the throne has said, and he has made his word good, “The gates of hell shall not prevail.”
Well then, so now, as then, I trust the sublime doctrine of the holy Trinity will, ultimately, be better established by the present controversy and opposition thereto. But I proceed in quoting. “The Divinity of Jesus Christ is the very foundation of the Christian religion. It is the first and principle article. If Christ was in any respect inferior to the Father, Christianity would be altogether the most stupid, and the most gross piece of idolatry that ever was invented in the world. The Christian church has always acknowledged Jesus Christ to be God. and co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.”
The great theme therefore of Romaine is, “the self-existence of Jesus Christ.” And he says, “our blessed Saviour is the great and eternal I AM. He is JEHOVAH. And Jehovah is self-existent; but Jesus Christ is Jehovah, therefore he is self-existent. “I am,” denotes the necessary manner in which he exists. It is used by that Person who claimed to himself all the attributes of Deity. There can be no difficulty but what arises from the names of the Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and these have been a great handle of objection, and are still, with unbelievers. They suppose that these names were to give us ideas of the manner in which the Persons exist in the essence; but the scripture had quite a different view in using them. The ever-blessed Trinity took the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not to describe in what manner they exist, but, in what manner the divine Persons have acted for us men, and for our salvation. Christ is called Son, Son of God, not to describe his divine nature, but his office. The scripture makes no difference between the divine Persons, except what is made by the distinct offices which they sustain in the covenant of grace. The Persona are each equal in every perfection and attribute; none is before or after other, none is greater or less than another; but the whole three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal.
What has been said may be summed up with this argument, the divine Persons in the essence are also self-existent; but Jesus Christ is one of the Persons in the essence, and consequently he is selfexistent. From whence I raise this syllogism, whoever is self-existent, is the true God, but Jesus Christ is self-existent, therefore, he is the true God.”
Dear reader, in opposition to all this sound scriptural argument, Mr. Philpot says, “we assert that when the scriptures speak of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, it speaks of him, as such, in the Divine nature.” Standard p. 124. Begotten in the Divine nature. What is this but a begotten God?
But further, Mr. Romaine says, “let it be no hindrance to your owning his divinity, that the scripture calls him a Son, a Son of God, Son of man, &c., for Son is a name of office and not of nature. It is not to give you an idea of the manner of his divine existence, but, of the nature of his divine actions. The name of Son is a name of economy, descriptive not of his nature.”
But I will attend for a minute to Mr. Philpot’s summing up of the whole. He says, “to sum up the whole in a few words, it is in his Person, and not in his essence, that he is the only begotten Son of God.” A begotten Person in essential Deity! In Mr. Philpot’s own words, I reply, “what confusion of thought and language is here!” The Divine Person of the Father begets the Divine Person of the Son! My hand trembles while I reply, and that reply shall also be in the words of holy Romaine, he says, “he must first give us a plain account of the manner of existence of the divine essence and must demonstrate that it cannot admit of any Persons in it. It is as far above his capacity as the heavens are above the earth.” “Canst thou by searching find out God?” Job 11:7. Caryl on this verse on the book of Job, says, “you cannot find out God in the manner of his being. When holy Augustine walked by the seaside rapt in the meditation of God, he heard as it were a voice which bade him to lade the ocean with a cockleshell. We may sooner drain the ocean with a little cockle-shell, or with a spoon, than the perfections of God with our largest understandings.” It is higher than heaven, or as the margin has it, “higher than the heights of heaven what canst thou do? (Verse 8.)
“Thine essence is a vast abyss,
Which angels cannot sound;
An ocean of infinities,
Where all our thoughts are drowned.
“In vain our haughty reason swells,
For nothing's found in Thee
But boundless inconcelvables,
And vast eternity!”
Reader! now we know but in part; but by and bye we shall know, even as we also are known, (1 Corinthians 13:12.) that is, we shall know more abundantly. The curtains shall be drawn aside; the clouds and dark vapours which stand between us and truth, shall be scattered. And these perplexed questions and controversies, which have troubled the peace of all the churches, shall have all their knots untied, and their fallacies discovered by the meanest scholar in glory!
“Wait the great teacher, death, and God adore:”
Reader! I think I have quoted quite enough and have also written enough to satisfy every thinking unprejudiced Bible reader. Nevertheless, my materials are not exhausted. I, of course, anticipate that Mr. Philpot may object perhaps to all that I have quoted and advanced. He styles mine to be “an erroneous creed of fifty years back.” On the contrary, I believe mine to be a scriptural creed; and I shall therefore firmly retain it, until such time as I receive a scriptural refutation. But I now use the plural number “WE and tell Mr. Philpot in most I plain terms, that, “we shall not bow nor succumb to the mere ipse dixit of any man; but we are determined to adopt the holy and resolute determination of the apostle, who said, “to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with us.” Galatians 2:5.
If any reply is made, needing a rejoinder, I will endeavour again, to mend my old pen, and take a little more gospel ink. If, what I have advanced of my own, or by quotations from those eminent men of God, whose views I have recited, can be proved to be unscriptural, then, a solid refutation can be effected. But, to accomplish this, I humbly conceive, is beyond the power of my opponent.
Before I close, permit me to say, that viewing the sad departures from the “simplicity that is in Christ,” (2 Corinthians 11:3,) and the alarming spread of Arminianism in almost all our churches, I sometime back, published two unparalleled gospel Charges. The one the greatest I ever read, or ever expect to read, was by the eminent Dr. Owen, and delivered by him in the year 1682, only eleven months before his death. The other by dear old father Rowles of blessed memory, who was pastor of the Baptist church at Coinbrook. I was present when he delivered this charge in September 1813, now nearly 47 years ago. It became a solemn charge to me, though delivered to another minister. His text, “it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful,” 1 Corinthians 4:2. Two or three sentences especially acted as a prickly bur on my mind and regulated my conduct from that time forward. Reader! treasure it up in your very soul. “Remember, everything that is contrary to, and against the Word, and doctrines, and ordinances of your Master, you must oppose. Love your brother, with whom on some points you may differ; pray with, and pray for him, but give not up an inch of ground to him; be your faithful to your master. Mind, that you part not with one grain of truth, either in doctrine, experience, or practice, for the dearest friend upon earth. It is not an act of friendship to confirm a man in an error; and, if you join him in whatever is erroneous, you confirm him in his error.” In a word, “prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Reader, farewell! I am, yours in the truth, J. A. Jones.
50, Murray Street, City Road, London,
NOTE: Philpot’s reply to the two letters above is in Appendix II “GARBLING OR NOT GARBLING” Gospel Standard October 1st 1860 pages 309 to 315
Editor Note
To us, there is something very painful in the continued existence of disputes touching certain difficult points in divinity, which doth neither nourish the soul of the believing saint, nor enlighten or help on the seeking sinner. The following sentence of Christopher Hoppel contains the feelings of every contrite, humble Christian; and our desire is, that the spirit and substance of these words might be our’s, and our readers from henceforth. Christopher says:
“I do not love contention; I am no disputant; I therefore leave polemical divinity to men of learning, ability, and experience. I can only say I have been greatly humbled for my sin. I know whom I have believed. I know God is love. I know it by experience. He hath loved me and given his Son for me. I have peace with God, through faith in the blood of Christ. I am at peace with all saints who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. I desire to follow after peace with all men; I love holiness; I aim at, wish, and pray for all that grace, glory, and immortality promised by the Father, and procured by the Son of his love. This I call genuine Christianity, and this religion I call mine.” To the Editor of the Earthen Vessel.
Dear Sir, As your correspondents in the last numbers of the Vessel, upon the subject of the Sonship of our all-glorious Redeemer, have quoted from the writings of Hawker, Romaine and others in support of their different sentiments, I trust it will not be out of place to submit for insertion in your pages, some extracts from a sermon by that excellent man of God, John Newton, which (if they do not contain any new ideas explanatory of the question at issue,) will be found highly worthy of attention, as pointing out the spirit in which such solemn inquiries ought to be conducted, and tending to repress presumptuous speculations and vain reasonings on a subject so high and mysterious.
The extracts are from his 27th discourse upon the scripture passages in Handel’s oratorio of “Messiah;” the subject of which is contained in Hebrews 1:3. “For unto which of the angels, said he, at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”
After some preliminary remarks, too long for quotation, he observes: “The verse contains three terms which require explanation, My Son, Begotten, this day. But who is sufficient for these things? If I attempt to explain them, I wish to speak with a caution and modesty becoming the sense I ought to have of my own weakness, and to keep upon safe ground; lest instead of elucidating so sublime a subject, I should darken counsel by words without knowledge. And I know of no safe ground to go upon in those enquiries but the sure testimony of scripture. It would be to the last degree improper to indulge flights of imagination, or a spirit of curiosity, or conjecture, upon this occasion. These are the deep things of God in which if we have not the guidance of his word and Spirit, we shall certainly bewilder ourselves. Nor would I speak in a positive, dogmatizing strain; at the same time, I trust the scripture will afford light sufficient to preserve us from a cold and comfortless uncertainty.
“The gracious design of God in affording us his holy scripture, is to make us wise unto salvation, 2 Timothy 3:15. This manner of teaching is therefore accommodated to our circumstances. He instructs us in heavenly things by earthly. And to engage our confidence, to excite gratitude, to animate us to our duty by the most affecting motives, and that the reverence we owe to his great and glorious Majesty as our Creator and Legislator, may be combined with love and cheerful dependence, he is pleased to reveal himself by those names which express the nearest relation and endearment among ourselves. Thus, he condescends to style himself the Father, the Husband, and the Friend of his people. But though in this way we are assisted in forming our conceptions of his love, compassion, and faithfulness, it is obvious that those names, when applied to him must be understood in a sense agreeable to the perfections of his nature and in many respects different from the meaning they bear amongst men. And thus when we are informed that God has a Son, an only Son, an only begotten Son, it is our part to receive his testimony, to admire and adore; for an explanation adapted to our profit and comfort we are to consult, not our own preconceived ideas, but the further declarations of his word, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, attending with the simplicity of children to his instructions, and avoiding as much as possible, those vain reasonings upon points above our comprehension, which, though flattering to the pride of our hearts, are sure to indispose us for the reception of divine truth.” * * * *
“Our Lord, in his conference with Nicodemus, was pleased to say, ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.’ &c, John 3:16. It was undoubtedly his design to give to Nicodemus, and to us, the highest idea possible of the love of God to sinners. He so loved the world, beyond description or comparison, that, be gave his only begotten Son. Surely then the gift spoken of must not be limited to signify the human nature only. This was not all he gave. The human nature was the medium of the acts and sufferings of Messiah, but he who assumed it was the Word, who was before all, and by whom all things were made. It is true the human nature was given, supernaturally formed by divine power, and born of a virgin; but he who was in the beginning with God, was given to appear, obey, and suffer in the nature of man for us, and for our salvation. And to him are ascribed the perfections and attributes of Deity; for which the highest angels are no more capable than the worms that creep upon the earth.”
“I cannot therefore suppose that the title of Son of God, is merely a title of office, or belonging only to the nature which he assumed; but that Messiah is the Son of God, as he is God and man in one person. If the forming a perfect and spotless man like Adam, when he was first created, could have affected our salvation, it would have been a great and undeserved mercy to have vouchsafed the gift; but I think it would not have required such very strong language as the scripture uses in describing the gift of the Son of God. The God-man, the whole person of Christ, was sent forth from the Father. The manhood was the offering; but the Word of God, possessed of the perfections of Deity, was the altar necessary to sanctify the gift, and to give a value and efficacy to the atonement.”
“The term begotten, expresses with us the ground of relation between father and son, and upon which an only son is the heir of his father. I feel and confess myself at a less here. I might take np your time, and perhaps conceal my own ignorance, by borrowing from the writings of wiser and better men than myself, a detail of what has been generally reputed the more prevailing orthodox sentiments on this subject. But I dare not go beyond my own ideas. I shall not, therefore, attempt to explain the phrase, eternal generation, because I must acknowledge that I do not clearly understand it myself. Long before time began, the purpose of constituting a Mediator between God and sinners was established in the divine counsels. With reference to this, he himself speaks in the character of the Wisdom of God: ‘The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old, I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. Then I was by him, as one brought up with him, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.’ Proverbs 8:22-31. If the Word of God had not engaged, according to an everlasting and sure covenant, to assume our nature, and accomplish our salvation before the earth was formed, he would not have appeared afterwards, for we cannot with reason conceive of any new determinations arising in the mind of the infinite God, to whom what we call the past and the future are equally present. In this sense, (if the expression be proper to convey such a sense,) I can conceive that be was the begotten Son of God from eternity; that is, set up and appointed from eternity for the office, nature and work by which, in the fulness of time, he was manifested to men. But if the terms begotten, or eternal generation, be used to denote the manner of his eternal existence in Deity, I must be silent. I believe him to be the eternal Son; I believe him to be the eternal God; and I wish not to exercise my thoughts and enquiries more than is needful in things which are too high for me.”
I should like to make another extract or two from the concluding part of the discourse, but I fear I have already trespassed. Those of your readers who have Newton's works, will find the whole sermon well worthy of perusal. Yours, &c., MINIMUS.
Mr. Editor, I only smiled on perusing the remarks of your correspondent, W. Bidder, who would have us believe that Dr. Hawker was not only six years older, but that the “dear man” had “grown” in the knowledge of God, and had therefore seen cause to renounce (according to Mr. Bidder’s showing) his former views of the glorious Trinity. There is nothing to reply to in the several quotations given us by Mr. B., as I hold as firmly, and as unequivocally as any man breathing, in believing in the glorious “Person, Godhead, and Sonship of God the Son.” My opposition is to his Deity being begotten. My Jesus borrows not leave to be.
But behold, I have now before me, a printed sermon, preached by Dr. Hawker, in Charles Church, Plymouth, on January 1, 1826, when the Dr. was seven years older still, and only fifteen months before his death. The sermon is entitled, “The Faithful God.” The Dr. says in that sermon, “Brethren, let me deal faithfully and plainly with you on this glorious doctrine of the Holy Trinity; it is this which lies at the bottom of all our mercies. Hence, we find the glorious name of Jehovah, which as far as our apprehension of the incommunicable name can extend, implies self-existence, independence, and underived being, and possessing all divine attributes and perfections, and all equally applied to each, and to every one of the Persons in Jehovah; and this, and no other, is the Holy Trinity. how often have I lamented to hear some of God’s chosen ones lost in attempting to account for the different appellations given to Christ as Christ, as ‘First-begotten,’ and ‘Only begotten,’ and ‘God’s dear Son,’ and the like, until they have lost sight of his own eternal, inherent, and undivided Godhead. Sure, I am that this, and this only, is the scripture statement of the Holy Trinity.” R. H.
Query. Can Mr. Bidder present us with a counter statement to the above, during the Doctor’s remaining fifteen months abode upon the earth?
I see Mr. Philpot threatens again to show up the “poor old man,” (as he contemptuously terms me,) for a fresh “garbling” Dr. Hawker. Now I present him with some more “garbling” But relative to Mr. Philpot, I count his darts as stubble, and laugh at the shaking of his spear. Job 41:29.
J. A. Jones.
Jireh Meeting, Aug., I860.
My good Theophilus. After a few months’ silence, I think it needful again to say a few more things to you, especially upon the Sonship of the Saviour. There is, among even good men, serious and real difference of sentiment relative to this vital subject. The difference is not a difference of mere words; there is a real difference between the meaning of those who place the Sonship of the Saviour in his divinity, independent altogether of his humanity, and those who place his Sonship in his complexity. They both hold it is true, that Christ is properly, underivedly and essentially God. Yet, while both hold fast this great truth, there is, nevertheless, a most serious difference in the two opposite sentiments; but as both avow the co-equal Godhead of Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the one ought not to charge the other with any intentional derogation from the dignity of his Person, but that there is a real and serious difference between the two is clear, the one holding that Christ is by nature, as God considered the Son of God; that the three divine Persons are properly, essentially, and of necessity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the other sentiment teaching, that God is a Father, not by nature or necessity, but by choice, and by creative act; that Christ is a Son, not by nature as God, or of necessity, but by choosing to take human nature, and so becoming a complete Person; and that the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit, not so much to denote what he is by nature, as to denote what he is in his lifegiving and sanctifying work in the souls of men.
Thus, my good Theophilus, you will see that between these two doctrines of the Sonship of the Saviour, there is a serious and real difference which ought not to be treated lightly, but ought to be treated carefully, especially as we have great men on both sides of this question of the Sonship of the-Saviour, men of great discernment in holy things, and well received in the churches. This does prove that it is a subject not by any means without its difficulties; but to suppress all discussion, and all controversy upon the subject, is to take things for granted, whether we are convinced of their truthfulness or not. Truth never shrinks from investigation, nor ought we to read the holy Scriptures without being concerned to know their meaning, as well as to experience, their sweetness, and practice their precepts. All union of sects and parties, when brought about by the suppression of; any part of truth, or by the suppression of freedom of speech, is a greater evil than all the divisions that can take place; peace we wish to have, but let it be solid; let it be truthful; let it be a righteous peace; honest and not hypocritical. But as to the question I wish Theophilus to consider, there is, as I have said, a real difference between these two opposite doctrines concerning the-Sonship of the Saviour; just look at it; the one doctrine teaches that the Father is a father by nature, and of course, co-eval with his existence; the other doctrine teaches that when taken in the gospel sense, that he chose to be by covenant relationship that which he was not by nature, or of necessity. Again, one doctrine teaches that Christ, independent of his human nature, is as God, also the Son of God, begotten by the Father from all eternity, yet self-existent, the other doctrine teaches that he is no more the Son of God apart from his complexity, than the Father is the Son of God. Here then, lies the mighty difference between these two doctrines, the one making an original difference between the three divine Persons; that one, namely, the divine Word is something naturally different from the Father for he is by nature as God the Son. Another
divine Person, is by necessity, a Father; thus there is, according to this doctrine, a natural and original difference in the Persons, of the Godhead; but the other doctrine teaches that there is no original or natural difference in the Persons of the Godhead, that one is no more a Father or a Son by nature or necessity, than the other is, each doctrine having of course its Scriptures to bear it out.
It is, then clear that one or the other of these, doctrines must be erroneous, that the Holy, Spirit cannot be the author of both. He would never teach one Christian that Jesus Christ is as God and, by nature the Son of God, and at the same time, teach another Christian that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God without his or independent of his manhood? The Holy Spirit never bears a selfcontradictory, testimony, for if his testimony be divided, against itself, how can it stand? It would be like the popular duty-faith gospel of men; such men labouring hard in one part of their, sermon, to persuade their hearers that salvation is all of grace; and that a chosen, people are redeemed, called, justified, and glorified; that these, and not one more or one less, ever, shall, or can be saved; and then in another part of the same sermon, labour harder still, to show they have nothing to do with eternal election; and that it is of him that willeth, and of him that runneth, and not altogether of God that showeth, mercy, for that if they do not embrace the present opportunity to will and run too, it is their own fault; and that God will not give them many more opportunities; that, they are losing; heaven and going to hell, when, at the same time, they might have been in heaven. Here, you see the former part of the creed of such a minister is completely wrecked and cast away; but anon, it is called back again, then away goes the duty-faith part of the creed! so that these two parts of such creed come alternately into the witness-box to give the lie to each other; and the minister steps in as a sort of mediator, and assures us that, these two witnesses though they so flatly contradict each now, yet, (that if we will but believe the minister) they will agree when they get to heaven, but which part of such a creed must be given up at last to bring about such agreement, or how harmony, is to be established, these creators of this self-contradiction creed nowhere inform us; and as the Bible does not contain such a creed, we are quite safe in concluding that the Holy Spirit does not teach such a creed. So with the Sonship of the Saviour, both creeds concerning his Sonship cannot be right; only happily which, ever be wrong; the one who founds the Sonship of the Saviour in his complexity, or the one who founds his Sonship in eternal generation, happily in this case, each carries with him a remedy for his error, in the fact that both the eternal generationist and the complexionist, contend without exception, or drawback, for the absolute co-equal Godhead of Christ, each trembling at the thought of derogating from his personal divinity one iota of his self-existence, or of any one of his infinite perfections; here they are all immoveable, stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God; thus showing that the Holy Spirit teaches even ordinary ministers and Christians, all essential truth, yet leaves some of them to give a partially mistaken interpretation to that essential truth. But I cannot say thus much of the duty-faith creed, for that is a Babel in itself, and therefore, well suits the Babel of this world, and the world receiveth it; it professedly holds the doctrines of free-grace, but at the same time, it neutralizes those truths; whereas the two partially opposite creeds concerning the Sonship of the Saviour, do not neutralize the great truth of his essential divinity.
Thus then, my good Theophilus, you will see that there is a serious difference between the eternal generationist and the complexicnist; and it will be my business in. my next to show to you which side the Holy Scriptures authorize you to take your stand, and I will take my stand with you, though but,
A Little One
“Beget.” God the Father begat his divine Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by an eternal, necessary, and natural generation, which implies no production of essence or personality, nor posterity, inferiority, or dependence in the Son; but the manner hereof is conceivable only to infinite wisdom, and it is presumption in any to pretend to investigate or explain it. “I will declare the decree: the Lord hath saith unto me, thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” Psalm 2:7. Brown.
Generation. This word derived from the same root is much the same as the preceding word genealogy. As it relates to the common act of man in the circumstances of descent from father to son, I should not have thought it needful to have detained the reader with a single observation; but in relation to the Son of God, as God, it becomes of infinite importance as an article of faith, that we should have the clearest apprehension which the subject will admit. Here, therefore, I beg the reader’s close attention to it.
The Scriptures in many places have said so much in defining the person of the Father and of the Son, as distinctions in the Godhead, that there can be nothing rendered more certain, and as an article of faith to the believer, none is more important. But while this is held forth to us in this view as a point most fully to be believed, God the Holy Ghost hath in no one passage, as far as I can recollect, pointed out to the Church the mode of existence, or explained how the Son of God is the Son, and the Father is the Father, in the eternity of their essence and nature. Perhaps it is impossible to explain the vast subject to creatures of our capacities. Perhaps nothing finite can comprehend what is infinite. The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God is therefore proposed as an article demanding our implicit faith and obedience; and here the subject rests.9
But while this doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God in common with the Father, is held forth to us in the Scripture as a most certain truth, though unexplained, because all our faculties are not competent to the explanation of it, the Holy Ghost hath been very explicit in teaching the church how to understand the phrases in his sacred Word, where the Son of God, when standing up as the Mediator and Head of his church before all worlds, is called the “first begotten Son, and the only begotten of the Father” full of grace and truth. All these and the like phrases wholly refer to the Son of God, in his humbling himself as our Redeemer and Mediator, the God-man in one Person, Christ Jesus; then begotten to this great design, the first in all Jehovah’s purposes for salvation. Here we cannot be at a loss to have the clearest apprehension, because they refer to his office character. Hence all those titles are very plain. “He is the head of his body the church,” Ephesians 1:22. “The head of Christ is God,” 1 Corinthians 2:3. “He is Jehovah’s servant,” Isaiah 42:1. “And his Father is greater than He,” John 14:28. “And God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Ephesians 1:17. All these and numberless expressions of the like nature, wholly refer to the Son of God as Christ; and have no respect to his eternal nature and God-head abstracted from his office-character as Mediator. And I cannot in this place help expressing my wish that the writers of commentaries on the word of God had kept this proper distinction, when speaking of the Lord Jesus, between his eternal nature and essence, as Son of God, which is everywhere asserted, but nowhere explained, and his office-character as God-man Mediator, the Christ of God, which is fully revealed. The Scriptures have done it. And it would have been a proof of Divine teaching, if all writers upon the Scriptures had done the same. Our Almighty Saviour, in a single verse, hath shewn it, when he saith, Matthew 2:27, “No man knoweth the Son but the Father;” that is, knoweth him as Son of God, knoweth him in his Sonship as God, one with the Father, and impossible to be so known but by God himself. And it is in this sense also, that it is said, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which lay in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” John. 1:18, that is, no man hath seen God, as God, in his three-fold character of Person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But when he, who lay in the bosom of the Father came forth in our nature, and revealed him as the Father, and himself as the Son, equal in the eternity of their nature as God; then the glorious truth was explained. Then was it understood, that the Father as Father and the Son, as Son, were from all eternity the same; their existence the same; their nature the same; the Father not being the Father but in the same instant as the Son the Son; for the name of one in the relationship implies the other, and the eternity of the one including the eternity of the other also, so that both in union with the Holy Ghost, from the one eternal undivided Jehovah, which was, and is, and is to come.
These words are from Dr. Hawker.10
Stepney, 1860.Wm. C.
Dear Brother Banks. As your engagement to Preach at the Surrey Tabernacle on the morning and in the evening of Lord’s day, August 26th, was (by my returning from the country a week earlier than was expected,) set aside, and some remarks have been thereon made, tending to your and to my detriment; I think in Justice to you, as well as Justice to myself, some little explanation thereof ought to be given; and the matter stands thus: that towards the middle of August, a list of the ministers for that month was sent by the Deacons into the country to me, in which list I saw your name; and was glad to see it there. I wrote to you, expressing my desire that you might feel at home at the Surrey Tabernacle; and that you and the people might have a good day. I laid the list of minister’s names Aside; but on Lord’s-day, 10th of August, I felt very much better in my health, and it being just upon eight weeks since I last preached, I, all of a sudden on the morning of the 19th, felt an irresistible impulse come upon me, that I ought to be at home; that I was now so far restored, that it was sinful to be doing nothing; and as the service of God is next to my personal salvation, the very delight of my existence, and as my heart and soul were with the people at the Surrey Tabernacle; as they were never out of my thoughts, nor out of my earnest desires to the Lord for his choicest blessing to rest upon them; and as their kindness to me has been beyond all praise, I fell in with the impulse, and off I ran directly at half-past nine on Sunday morning to the Railway Station, and sent a telegraphic message to one of the Deacons, to say that I was well ; and that I should be at home to preach the next Sunday; but I did not at the moment give it a thought who the minister was whose engagement would be thus set aside, but when I returned to my lodgings and looked at the list, I saw you were the minister engaged for the 26th ; the day I intended to be at home. I immediately wrote to you, apprising you of the same; and you wrote a very kind and Christian letter in reply. Thus far, I thought no harm was done; nor did I dream of any possible harm that could arise from such a circumstance. But presently you sent a letter to Mr. Butt, one of the Deacons of the Surrey Tabernacle, wherein you show that ministers and professors were putting all sorts of constructions upon it, saying that Wells would not let Banks preach for him, and one minister had said, he heard me say you should not preach for me. I never held such a sentiment concerning you; therefore, I must leave that minister to explain himself. Hearing of this unkind assumption, that I would not let you preach at the Surrey Tabernacle, I felt it was important that I should the very first morning, in order to set matters right, explain from the pulpit how it was I was come a week before my time, which explanation I gave in the presence of seventeen or eighteen hundred people. I think I never saw the place more crowded on any Sunday evening than it was on the morning of the 26th of August. I dare not here attempt to describe, nay, I could not describe what my feelings were. I felt overwhelmed and confused with solemn delight to witness such a practical demonstration of their delight to see their minister again restored to health, and again in his place; that morning I think I never can forget; but this did not hinder my anxiety to show to that assembly, that had it been any other minister, it would have been the same (except one*12). I here repeat that I had no objection, I have no objection whatever to your preaching in my pulpit. The sermon of that morning would have been published, but my reporter was from home; you obtained a reporter, but the manuscript did not reach me until Thursday morning, I then considered it too late, and besides my feelings were so overcome that morning, that I could not go straight on; the sermon was made up of odds and ends, and could hardly hang together; so that when I saw the manuscript, I made up my mind not to publish it.
I hope I have said enough to assure the hard-working and kind-hearted Editor of the Vessel, that James Wells has no reason whatever against him, nor any objection for Charles Waters Banks to preach in Surrey Tabernacle Pulpit whenever an opportunity may occur.
The Deacons felt that as you had engaged a supply for Unicom Yard for that day that you were entitled to the two pounds for the day. the same as though you had preached. That sum has been offered to you, but which you have declined to accept, but from what motive you declined accepting it, I must leave you to explain.
The kindness of ministers in preaching for me, and the solemn and prayerful concern of many churches for my restoration, has been far beyond all I could have expected; I feel I am indeed their debtor, and hope ever to esteem them highly in Christian love for their work’s sake.
But, Mr. Editor, you say you have many enemies. Well, of course you have. Why how in the world can you expect to come out with your SOOO-tongued Vessel every month, making a noise all over the world, and yet have no enemies? If you get one friend to a hundred enemies think yourself well off, and do not fear where no fear is. Why, see how they set upon me even in my little way. When I get a little up out of Galilee, see how even many of the brethren set upon me; call me to order, and say I am going too far; but nevertheless, I still love the hill country, and hope yet to go higher. Why we should not get on half so well if we were not well belied, misrepresented, reviled, and called by all sorts of ugly names. Why all this tends to keep us alive, drives us to the throne of grace, and to the promise of our God; so then let brotherly love continue, yours sincerely in New Testament ties,
J. Wells.
6, St. George’s Place, Brixton Road, London.
Sept. 11th, 1860.
(Our brother James Wells has, of his own free will, sent us the above, which we print; intending to make some remarks on it next month; in which also we hope to acknowledge the sweet mercy of the Lord in overruling it all for good. Ed.)
My good Theophilus, You now clearly understand, what is meant by eternal generation, namely, that Jesus Christ, not as to his divine essence, but as to his Sonship was begotten from all eternity, and this is what is called eternal generation. But this doctrine of eternal generation has no more foundation in the Scriptures than the doctrine of Arianism has, or than the doctrine of Sabellianism. This doctrine of eternal generation carries with it a self-contradiction, and an impossibility in the nature of things; it contains a self-contradiction, for if the Sonship were begotten, or Christ, as a Son, were begotten, then there was, when he was not begotten, and then how could this humanly got-up Sonship be eternal? Even the advocates of this figment, admit that if Christ, as God, were begotten as to his essence, then he could not be self-existent, then, by the same rule, if his Sonship be a derived Sonship, then it cannot be underived, then if not underived, it must be derived, and if derived, then it cannot be eternal. Here, then, is the self-contradiction, and not only a selfcontradiction, but also the divine nature must have undergone a change, for if Jesus Christ be as God, the Son of God, and was begotten into this Sonship, then the divine nature has undergone a change. He who was unoriginated as to his essence, is formed into something different from what he had been, that is, he generated by the power of the Father into a Son; and so he is by nature as God, something which the Father is not, and this is what men call eternal generation. But again, I say how can it be eternal? To apply the word generation to the divine nature, at all, is to all intents and purposes carnal, and but carnal, and as contrary to the Scriptures, as darkness is to light. And though a periodical called the Gospel Standard, has laboured hard to establish this fable of eternal generation, yet it will never do it; the eternal generation error, even though it has spread wide, and lived long, yet it has seen its day, it is dying out, it is becoming effete, waxing old and vanishing away; and though the so-called Gospel Standard has thrust very hard at Mr. Crowther’s sermon, yet it has not even touched one of his positions. And though it (Standard) speak all but contemptuously of the old age to which J. A. Jones is preserved, yet they cannot move that veteran from his tower, nor move him one inch; these would-be onslaughts of the Standard are but as the angry waves that dash and die upon the shore. Nor will Mr. Crowther or J. A. Jones,
or anyone else who has a mind and experience, and Bible of his own, be at all awed by the Standard insinuating that out of the circle of its approbation, there are no churches. So that if its churches hold the doctrine of eternal generation, why then all the churches hold that doctrine, because out of its circle there are no churches. But the editor of the Standard should read the Earthen Vessel a little more, and also the Gospel Herald, and he would soon be better informed: he would soon find a goodly number of ministers and churches, the reality of whose religion he could not very easily question; he would find that the doctrine of eternal generation is by such, held to be but a figment, and treated with all the opposition which it deserves.
Now my good Theophilus, you see that the doctrine of eternal generation carries in it a selfcontradiction, calling that which was begotten eternal; this doctrine of eternal generation carries with it also a twofold impossibility, for it is impossible that the divine nature should generate, and it is impossible for that to be eternal which was derived. Now where in all the Bible do we read of eternal generation? Ah, were indeed! Why, nowhere. And where in all the Bible is Jesus Christ called the eternal or everlasting Son of God? We answer, nowhere. And yet men are perpetually running about with the word’s eternal generation and eternal Son of God on their tongues, as though the Bible contained the very words; and so deluded are they in this matter, that if you stand opposed to their notions, they turn round and charge you with speaking unbecomingly of the Sonship of Christ, just as though their notions constituted his Sonship.
But I ask not only where in all the Bible do we read of eternal generation, of Christ being called the eternal Son of God, but we ask also where in all the Bible do we read that he lay in the bosom of the Father, or where do we read that he was set up from everlasting: why, say you, in the eighth of Proverbs. Do we? Well, stop until I come to that part, and I shall teach you better than that; but this, as well as the preceding queries, will be treated on in a subsequent letter, as I shall now go on to bring in Aaron’s rod to swallow up the Magician’s rod of eternal generation. That is, I will now show the word of the Lord upon the Sonship of the Saviour, for although the doctrine of eternal generation carries in it a self-contradiction, and an impossibility, yet if the doctrine of eternal generation were declared in the Bible, (which it is not) we should then know that the selfcontradiction and impossibility would be in appearance only, and not in reality; and we, of course, should unhesitatingly receive it ; but I deny in toto, that such doctrine is found in the Bible. Let us then come to the word, and to the testimony, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” (Luke 1:35,) “that holy thing which shall be born of thee,” what then meaneth this? Is there any eternal generation here? No, it is that which was born, and that which was born had been formed by the creative power of the Holy Ghost, and that was to be called the Son of God; but if as God he be a Son by eternal generation, why in his manhood is he here distinctly declared to be the Son of God? then why is that human nature without any apparent reference to his divinity, called the Son of God? Here then, is one comfort, that to get rid of the doctrine of eternal generation is not to get rid of the Sonship of Christ; even the opponents to the true Sonship of the Saviour must admit that we do here meet with one who is the Son of God, not by eternal generation, but by being of God in a way that no other ever was or ever will be; and he is, therefore, called the only begotten Son of God, because of no other can it be said, that his birth was on this wise. Yes, say eternal generationists; he was begotten before all worlds. Ah, but where in all the Bible do you find that? why, nowhere. It is nothing but a piece of twaddle handed down to us through all sorts of channels. Let us keep close to the word of truth, and now see how entirely John accords with Luke upon this Sonship. He, (John) in his first chapter does not call the Saviour the Son of God, until he views him as man, as well as God. Hence, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;” he does not say the Word was the Son of God, but that “the Word was God.” Then when the Word is made flesh, then we behold the glory of the only begotten of the Father; no eternal generation here. But here we do learn that one who was God, was made flesh, not by transformation, but by incarnation; and in this, his complexity he is called the only begotten of the Father. You, my good Theophilus, must mark this, that while John calls him God, he does not until he is made flesh call him the Son of God, his glory as God-man, consisting in this, that he was full of grace and truth. Grace and truth are the glory of every saved soul. We cannot lay too much stress upon his complexity, it is his complexity that decides the question of his Sonship, and though some tell us that it is presumption to investigate, or attempt to explain the subject, well, it would be so if we were not to distinguish between facts and mysteries; it is a fact that we have a soul and a body, but the abstract nature of the soul, and the mysterious union of body and soul are what we cannot explain, but the fact of their existence is obvious to all; so the Saviour is God and man in one Person, is a truth clear as the noonday, but the abstract nature of divinity, his infinity, and eternity, together, with how the two natures subsist in one person, infinity with finitude, can no man or angel explain or comprehend, but the order of his Sonship is as clearly revealed in the Bible, as is the order of his priesthood, or as is the order of his kingdom, or as is the order of the everlasting covenant, and none but a learned and fanciful metaphysician ever would have thought of such a means of opening up of the order of Christ’s Son-ship as that of eternal generation, especially as there is not in all the Bible, a hint of such a thing. Eternal generation being as I believe a metaphysical conceit, it must be rejected, and the complexity of the Saviour, together with the everlasting covenant must come in, and these two, the complexity of Christ, and the new covenant, will set everything right and straight. So believes.
A Little One.
On Wednesday, the 10th of October, I860, the foundation stone of Jireh New Chapel, for Mr. John Andrews Jones, who attained on that day his 81st year, was laid in the presence of from three to four hundred friends. The day unfortunately was very wet, otherwise, no doubt, many more would have attended to witness the ceremony. The site selected for the new chapel is a piece of ground in the East Road, close to the City Road; and the estimated cost of building is about £700. It had been stated in the bills that George Lowe, Esq., F.R.S., would lay the stone, but he was unable to attend, being absent in Ireland. He, however, sent a very kind letter to Mr. Jones, expressing his sympathy with the cause, and he had previously given the handsome sum of £25 towards defraying the expenses of the building. The stone was to have been laid at half-past two o'clock; but in consequence of the inclemency of the weather, workmen were engaged till a quarter to three in covering the temporary shed with tarpaulin. When this was done, the platform was speedily crowded; but no sooner had all taken their places than the center of the platform gave way. This caused some little alarm for a moment, but as the ground was not more than a foot distant, nobody sustained any injury. Shortly afterwards the venerable pastor, Mr. J. A. Jones, mounted the platform, and proceeded to lay the stone. A glass bottle was placed in the cavity, containing a scroll of parchment, on which the following was inscribed, written by the hand of Mr. Jones himself: “Jireh New Chapel, East Road, City Road. This house of God was erected for Divine worship by a Baptized Church of Christ. We date our origin in the year 1761. Our first pastor was the celebrated Thomas Craner, a champion for truth. He died March 18, 1773, in the 57th year of his age, and was succeeded by Mr. Thomas Powell, in Mitchell Street, who was our pastor upwards of forty-six years. He went to his rest, Nov. 18th, 1829, in the 81st year of his age. He was succeeded by our present pastor, Mr. J. A. Jones. The Church and congregation removed to Jireh Chapel, Brick-lane, in 1838, and from thence, on that chapel being taken down, they have erected this place. This Church holds, and firmly maintains, the Gospel doctrines of one God, in a Triune Jehovah, Father, Word, and Holy Ghost, eternal and personal election, original sin, particular redemption, efficacious grace in regeneration and sanctification, free justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ, the final perseverance of the saints, strict communion, and the maintenance of all gospel order, according to the Scriptures of truth. The above sacred principles this Church has held inviolable from first to last. It has been under the pastoral charge of two ministers only, for the last seventy-seven years; and this corner stone was laid October 10th, 1860, being the day our pastor completed the 81st year of his age, and in the 62nd year of his ministry.” This being done, Mr. Jones informed the friends that the speeches would be made in Buttes-land-street Chapel, close by, and all proceeded there. The little chapel was soon filled; everyone seemed to sympathize with the aged pastor, who was in good health and spirits, justifying the appellation given him by Mr. Wells, of “young John Andrew Jones.” The following ministers addressed the meeting: Messrs. Foreman, Wells, Pepper, Crowther, (of Leeds), Ponsford, and Attwood, Mr. Pells was also present, in the afternoon, and would have spoken, but was compelled to leave at the commencement of the evening, having to preach at his own chapel. Tea was provided at about five o’clock, and the meeting did not separate till nine at night, all appearing deeply impressed with what they had both seen and heard. A report of the whole was taken in shorthand and is published separately in the New London Pulpit.
(Editor’s Note: As James Wells brings out in his third letter: God’s decree is one and only one decree (This of course includes the Covenant of Grace and all that pertains to it.). It took place in eternity but comes to pass in time. From God’s point of view, it is eternal. This explains many of the scriptures Bidder and Philpot quote. Rather than accepting what the scriptures clearly teach they impose their own personal options upon the texts. Richard Schadle)
[While this controversy on the Sonship of the Son of God has been pending, we have thought seriously, and read carefully, Simeon’s prophecy concerning Christ, as recorded in Luke 2:34, “Behold!” said he, “this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against.” Then, addressing Mary, he said, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” A sword of severe contention has been piercing the soul of poor Zion most painfully of late; but the end will be in strict accordance with Simeon’s prophecy, “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed therefore, let us patiently bear the sharp conflict, comforted with this persuasion, that the glory of our glorious God-Man can never be diminished by all the mistaken views of mortal men; but rather through their frail misconceptions, shall the brightness and the beauty of our Immanuel be more powerfully unveiled. For more than thirty years the eternity of the Sonship of our Jesus has been revealed in us, and most firmly believed by us; with Peter we have rejoicingly said, ‘'Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe, and are sure, that thou art that CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD.” We stand amazed at the fact, that good men, great men, godly men, dispute and cavil here. That “A Little One” should not be with us, is an affliction indeed. As soon as our November number was out, brother William Bidder came to our office; we both mourned over some things written to Theophilus. We requested him to give the Churches his testimony. He has done so; and we must express our deep conviction that “the Truth as it is in Jesus “is contained in the following letter. Let no hot and angry spirits rise against any brother. Let us listen to them; learn all the truth we can from them; and where they err, let us strive to show unto them the more excellent way. The interest now excited, the letters now written, the books now issuing, is truly wonderful. “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Ed.]14
Mr. Editor, In compliance with your request, I forward you a few remarks upon the piece entitled, “The Sonship of the Saviour,” which appeared in your November Vessel, by “A Little One.” And if what he has therein said be a specimen of his Divinity, I give him credit for the title he assumes; very modest to be sure, “A Little One.” But doth he really mean it?15
He observes, just after he commences, “Even the advocates of this figment:” (awful, meaning the eternal Sonship of the Son of God) “admit that if Christ as God were begotten as to his essence,” &c. Now he must know, or he ought to know, that such advocates believe no such thing as that the Divine essence is, or was, begotten; nor do they dare think so, much less say so. They believe that God the Son, as a Person, subsisting in that essence, was eternally begotten of the Father; not made or created, but begotten, and in the same nature in which he is God. And there being nothing in the Divine nature, but what is eternal, then this generation must be eternal generation ;17 a phrase which is no more a contradiction than a Trinity in Unity—or a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead. And as the prophet saith (Isaiah 53:8) “Who shall declare his generation?” And why can they not? Because it is eternal and incomprehensible. I hope this was not intentional in A Little One’ to charge us with what we never asserted or believe.
Next, he reprimands the Gospel Standard for maintaining and defending the doctrine of the Divine Sonship. But here I have no need to say anything, as its editor is quite capable of defending its truth, and I have felt in my soul to bless God on his behalf for enabling him so to do.
In the next place he asks this question, “And where in all the Bible is Jesus Christ called the eternal, or everlasting, Son of God?” We answer, nowhere.
What shall we hear next? I suppose the old exclamation, “Thou art not yet fifty years old.” Had an Arian on a Socinian so written or spoken, it would not have surprised me. But for a person professing to hold the great truths of the gospel so to write, is to me very shocking; yea, awful; nay it is grievous. How absurd to object as to the phraseology of a truth, if it doth not alter its sense or mar it. I dare say that “Little One” often uses certain phrases setting forth certain truths, the exact phraseology which he uses not being found word for word in the Bible; and yet the doctrine thus set forth being easily provable. For instance, did he ever use the word Trinity? I dear say he hath, and yet the word is not in the Bible: or such assertions as eternal election, eternal predestination, eternal adoption, eternal relationship, eternal justification, &c., &c. Now though, therefore, such phraseology is not in the Bible word for word, I bless the Lord the doctrines they express are all in the Scriptures and may easily be proved. So, also, although you have not these words following each other, word after word, the eternal or everlasting Son of God, I do insist upon it, we have the truth of what they express in the Scriptures of eternal truth, set forth and proved in the most luminous and confirming manner possible, so that he that runs may read. And I do hereby engage to prove from the Scriptures of God the Holy Ghost, (but it may be that “Little One” will object to the words God the Holy Ghost, because word after word as I hereby express it, is not in the Bible. But is not his Godhead therein most luminously set forth and declared, together with his distinct personality as a co-equal Person in the Divine essence with the Father and the Son? Oh! when will mortals cease to cavil and carnally reason upon those sublime mysteries? But what is man! the eternity of God the Son with his eternal Father, and co-equal eternal Spirit. And may the Lord bless his own truth to his own chosen heritage. Amen.
One would suppose that common sense might dictate to the people that an everlasting Father supposes and proclaims an everlasting Son; and that the one could not possibly be without the other: and that they both co-eternally exist together without beginning or ending; for what is eternal is devoid of commencing or cessation. And if, as is said of a type of our Lord, (Hebrews 8: 3) “Having neither beginning of days, nor end of life, made like unto the Son of God,” how most true, then, must this hold good as to the Son of God himself. Who can get over this? Then, is he not eternal? Again, (Hebrews 1:2.) “Hath in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son,” that is God the Father, “whom he hath appointed heir over all things; by whom also he made the worlds.” But how could he have made the worlds with his Son if, as saith “A Little One,” his Sonship consists in his complexity? for that, as yet (and for 4000 years after) had not taken place. When men run from truth there are no bounds. Again, (verse 3) “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person,” &c. Some render this, “the forth-beaming of the Father's glory.” The idea seems to be taken from the material sun. Perhaps no other object in the whole compass of nature could have supplied the apostle with a piece of imagery equally majestic. Light proceeds from the sun, and yet the sun never existed without light. Christ, therefore, is at once the only begotten of the Father, and coeternal with him. The sun’s rays, or unintermittingly efflux of light, are of the same nature with the sun itself. And, why doth the apostle tell us, as in Philippians 2:6, “That be,” Christ, “thought it not robbery to be equal with God?” God the Father is an eternally Divine Person, possessed of all Divine perfections. He himself is a necessary Being. He existed and could not but exist without beginning or end; and is what he is by nature, whose nature is Divine. Now, how could the apostle call the Son the Father’s express image, and equal with him, if not eternal, and possessed of every attribute Divine, as is the Father? Had Paul for one moment considered the Son in any perfection of the Godhead inferior to the Father, he could not have so set him forth; nay, he dared not. Again, Colossians 1:17, “And he, (the Son) is before all things, and by him all things consist.” How dared the apostle to have said he preceded all things, if he was not the Son of God in his Divine Person from all eternity? As he himself declares, (Revelation 1:8,) “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord; which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” If almighty, then, eternal. Again, (Genesis 31:33,) “And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.” (Before Abraham was I am). So also (Psalms 90:1.) “Even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. (Moses wrote of me). As also (Deuteronomy 33:27) “The eternal God is thy refuge”. Compare John 17:5, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Must he not, then, be the eternal, the everlasting Son? As said Habakkuk, 1:14, “Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine Holy One?” No less Jeremiah 10:10, “But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting King: (margin reads, “King of eternity,”) then eternal. See also, Micah 5:2, “And thou, Bethlehem Ephratab, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Must he not, then, be the everlasting Son? “For to him give all the prophets witness.” Again, Psalms 93:2, “Thy throne is established of old; thou art from everlasting:” (and in the Psalms concerning me) compare with Hebrews 1:8, “But unto the Son he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” Will the “Little One” tell me, in the face of such an assemblage of witnesses, that he of whom these Scriptures speak, is not the eternal and everlasting Son of the Father in truth and love, not so by his being complex? For by his assuming human nature he became the Son of man, who was before, and from all eternity the true, the proper, the eternal, and essential Son of God: else why are people exhorted to kiss the Son (as in Psalms 2:12) a thousand years prior to the incarnation? But, according to our “Little One,” there was no Son then to be kissed. And also, as in Psalm 72:1, “Give the King thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the King’s Son,” if there was no Son then existing for righteousness to be given unto? And how came Nebuchadnezzar to remark, when looking into the furnace of fire, that he saw one there like the Son of God? Perhaps some might reply that the ignorant monarch knew not what he said. Perhaps not so ignorant as some might suppose: Daniel 3:28 and 29 sounds not much like ignorance; at all events the Holy Ghost hath thought proper to record these things in his Bible, and they have their meaning. Do reader, remark with me, Proverbs 30:4, “Who hath ascended up into heaven or descended? who hath gathered, the winds in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the name, if thou canst tell?” So then, it seems, by this Old Testament record, centuries prior to the incarnation that the Father was the Father, and the Son the Son then. Aye, and from everlasting, as said the Gentile church by the prophet Isaiah, (53:16,) “Thou, O Lord, art our Father, and Redeemer; thy name is from everlasting and his name is himself, as you read (Psalms 29:2,) ‘Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name that is himself. But Agur means by saying, “what is his name, or what is his Son’s name, if thou canst tell;” that is, it is secret. Judges 13:18. No mortal, or angel either can tell, that is how the Father is the Father, or how the Son is the Son. It is, therefore, inexplicable and incomprehensible, as declared in Matthew 11:27, “And no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son.” What is the mode of their existence, they themselves know only; and their Divine relationship together, as declared through the Bible, but explained nowhere. And why? We have no capacity for such a profound mystery, and language is too poor to express it: however, we are informed, Proverbs 8:22, “That the Father possessed his dear Son in the beginning of his ways, (and his ways are everlasting, Habakkuk 3:6,) before his works of old.” And that his dear Son, as the covenant Head and Husband of his church, was set up from everlasting, and his church set up in him as early, (Ephesians 1:4,) and blessed in him, and himself, her blessedness, forever and ever. It should he understood that the wise man in the above chapter (Proverbs 8.) all through personifies his great anti-type, and that a greater than Solomon is here; though all the “Little Ones” in the world should say to the contrary, it would not move me. (Psalms 108:1). Once more you read in Galatians 4:4, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, (then he must have previously possessed him, or he could not have sent him forth,), made of a woman, made under the law,” &c.; and verse 6th, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.” Do, reader, remark with me, that the Spirit of his Son is expressly called in Hebrews 9:14, “the Eternal Spirit;” must he not then be the Eternal Son to possess an eternal Spirit? Where is the figment of a created Son now? If created, and his man-nature was by the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost in his virgin mother without the intervention of a human father; if his Sonship consisted, as “Little One” saith, in his being complex, and this a circumstance of time, how could it be said, as in Hebrews 1:2, that the Father made the worlds by him? (The apostle does not say that Jehovah the Father made the worlds by one who in time became his Son; but “by his Son,” who of course was then with him as his Son.) And how could it be said that the Son is the Father’s express image, seeing God hath no material or tangible image? If the Sonship consisted in the human nature, as “A Little One” suggests, our apostle observes, (Galatians 1:15,) “When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I should preach him among the heathen,” &c., in accordance with his mission, the first sermon he preached, was the Sonship of his almighty Lord, as you read (Acts 11:20,) “And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, (that he is Christ, more) that he is the Son of God.” And when the Master said to Peter, (Matthew 16:15,) “But whom sayest thou that I am?” the reply was, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” So, the Eunuch (Acts 8:37,) “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Pilate also asks this question, (see Mark 14:61,) “Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am.” Said the Judge upon hearing this, “What need we further witnesses? ye have heard the blasphemy.” What was blasphemy in Pilate’s opinion? Why that his prisoner thereby laid claim to divinity, and thereby made himself God; as said the carnal Jews, when the dear Lord said (see John 5:17,) “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;” they immediately upon his so saying sought to kill him, because he said God was his Father, thereby making himself equal with God. And they rightly understood him so, for that is what he did mean. (See Philippians 2:6.) And why did they crucify him? (See John 19:7.) Because be made himself the Son of God. And how did he prove it? (See Romans 1:3, 4.) “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh; but declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Doth this prove Divine Sonship, or does it not, “ God was manifest in the flesh, not the Father or the Spirit,” who was it then? See 1 John 3:8. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested. Then he must have been the Son of God before he was manifested. Therefore, the assumption of our nature whereby he became complex, did not make him the Son of God; for this he was before, and from everlasting too, let men or devils bawl or say what they please to the contrary. I need go no further for proof, I presume, for the confirmation of those who are believers in and upon the Son of God; and as for Arians and Socinians, who can convince them but God himself? if he please so to do. I ask, therefore, of any sober-minded, simple-hearted child of God, in the face of the scriptures adduced, if I am justified in calling my Lord the eternal and everlasting Son of God. However, I shall continue so to do, I am certain, the Lord being my helper, until mortality is swallowed up of life.
I notice another saying of a “Little One,” viz., that if Christ, as a Son, were begotten, then there was when he was not begotten. O what poor limping carnal reason is this doth the “Little One” conceive of and measure eternity by the before and after hours of the fleeting years of time? is not eternity one eternal now, devoid altogether of before and after, sooner or later, was and was not? A scripture or two will soon silence such nonsensical talk as to eternity, and as it respects the Persons in the one indivisible Jehovah. God the Father, saith James 1:17, is without variableness or shadow of turning, and God the Father saith of his dear Son, Hebrews 1:12, “But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.” No was, and was not, here. God the Son saith, Malachi 3:6, “For I am the Lord. I change not.” God the Holy Ghost saith in Hebrews 8:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” And he is “the only begotten of the Father.” So, the word allows of no room for was and was not; but Jehovah’s voice therein utters forth (Exodus 3:14), “I am that I am, I am what I ever was, and I am what I ever shall remain.”16 “Moses,” said the Son of God, “wrote of me.” See John 5:46.
I fear I have been too prolix; but you must allow me to reply to one more of a “Little One’s” assertions, viz., “But we ask, also, where in all the Bible do we read that he lay in the bosom of the Father.” This astounds me positively, how a person, who reads his Bible can for a moment question this. Will a “Little One” show me one text to say he was ever out of it? I leave out the word lay and proceed to answer the question. When our blessed Lord was tabernacling upon earth in our nature, these words John heard escaped his sacred lips, (John 1:18.) “No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father be hath declared him.” No room for carnal reason here; and I hope “Little One” will admit that this is a satisfactory answer, or, if he won’t, others will. But, more (John 3:13), “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.” Can “Little One” unravel this? Again, Philip said (John 14:8), “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” To which his Majesty replied, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” and yet the Son was not the Father, but his express image. Now, I remark, that if his Sonship consists in his complexity, but I know it doth not, but in his Divine Person, irrespective of his being complex, on these words, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also,” he could not use. The Father was not complex, consequently it is only in his Divine Person he so resembles his own Father, and thereby shews that he is his Father’s own Son. Where is the complex Son now? Not but that he was a Son when complex, but his being complex did not make him so, rather thereby he became a Servant, who was everlastingly a Son; but, again, verse 10, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” Again, “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works (verse 20); at that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
As Kent sings,
“’Tis I in them, and thou in me,
For thus the union stands.”
Again, John 17:21, “That they all may be one as thou Father art in me, and I in thee,” 23rd, “I in them and thou in me.” Once more, see Isaiah 57:15, “For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, (no was, and was not, here) whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy.” I leave out the word place, as it is not in the text; now these things said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spoke of Him (our Jesus,) what is meant by the “I dwell in the high and holy.” Doth any ask “Master, where dwellest thou?” we may safely reply according to the above Scriptures, “In the Father and the Holy Ghost, and they both dwell in him,” (see Colossians 2:10,) by a mutual inbeing and inhabitation. Jehovah is his own dwelling place; no other house could contain him, for the wise man informs us, 1 Kings 8:27, “that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him,” so then he dwelleth in his adorable self, “yet condescends to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth,” Psalms 113:5, but the Psalmist declareth that there is none like him who dwelleth on high, in himself, in Persons three in essence One.
Once more: In John 15:9, you read, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you,” compared with chapter 17:24. “For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” As the Son then loveth as doth the Father love, he must be one with and equal to him, for the Father’s love is from everlasting to everlasting; so must also be the love of the Son, or it could not be said that he loveth as doth the Father, were it not so, and himself eternal and everlasting; and Paul’s doxology is, 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible &c. so speaks he of his Master, and in Hebrews 5:9, he calls Him, “the Author of eternal salvation,” and chap. 9:12, declares that “he hath obtained eternal redemption for us;” must he not then be the eternal and everlasting Son of God, “for the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world,” 1 John 4:14, so speak the apostles. O! let us listen to them, and abide by their testimony, and not be carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, where by they lie in wait to deceive, but be steadfast, unmovable &c., notwithstanding all the heresies afloat and all the errors which abound.
I must not proceed further, but would suggest that if anyone thinks proper to reply to what I have written herein, and will adduce only, “Thus saith the Lord,” it will be noticed, but if it be only carnal reasoning and abuse, I shall neither notice or reply.
After all, I believe that where the Father hath not revealed the Son by the Spirit, to, and in the heart of a sinner, showing him of the glories of his Person, as the Son of God most high in the glory of the Father; they neither can or will submit to, and cordially receive the doctrine of the Divine Sonship as testified in the Scriptures of God the Holy Ghost; but exclaim how can these things be? John saith, 1. Epistle, 5:9, “This is the witness of God, (and it must carry everything before it,) that he hath testified of his Son.” God the Father here saith, he is his Son, God the Son saith the same, John 10:36, God the Holy Ghost bears witness no less, Romans 8:3. So then my simple reason for believing that Jesus is the Son of God, is because God saith so, 1 John 5:9. Can I assign a better? 1 John 4:15, and shall continue to unite my voice with our old reformers, where they thus exclaim, “Thou art the King of glory oh Christ!
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” May the good Lord deliver his own dear church from all false doctrine, heresy and schism. So, prays yours in the faith of God’s elect, W. Bidder.
London, Nov. 15, 1860.
My Good Theophilus, I am now to show that the Saviour is never called the Son of God apart from his complexity; yet men tell us that the words Begotten Son are never applied to him as man, but are applied to him only as God. Yet so far from this being the case, (as I will show before I close the subject), it is just the reverse, that the word begotten is never once in all the Bible applied to him as God, abstractedly considered, but applied always to his manhood. So that where his human nature is not, the word begotten is not; and where the word begotten is applied to him, there his human nature is. But the eternal generation doctrine destroys the original unity and equality of the eternal three divine persons, the same said doctrine making Jesus Christ to be two sons of God; for in their doctrine they have a son of God purely and abstractedly divine; and the Holy Ghost declareth that that which was born of Mary was the Son of God, not the son of man, mind, but the son of God; and thus we get two sons; man gives us one son, God gives us another; I will say, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift, but the eternal generation doctrine I will leave for those who like it.
But ‘thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.’ Psalm 2:7. You see I have put the words this day in italics, because these words throw a light upon the whole sentence; what then is this day? Men tell us that this day means eternity. But what proof do such men give that it means eternity? Alas, none at all, but their ipse dixit. You must believe it, because these eternal generation men say it is so; but as these men give us no proof that this day means eternity, and if the word of truth do not explain it, then we must remain in the dark; but the word of God does explain it; and so far from this day meaning eternity, it means the time of Christ’s resurrection and exaltation. This is seen in Acts 4, where the rage of the people fulfilled the first part of 2nd Psalm; and where he who in the 2nd Psalm is called the begotten son, is called in Acts 4th, the holy child Jesus. Then again, Acts 13:33rd, ‘thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.’17 Here the words, as in Revelation 1:5, are applied to the resurrection of Christ. And now what becomes of men’s assertion, that the words begotten Son never relate to his manhood, but only to his divine nature? Are we to be wiser than God? Was it Christ’s human nature or his divine nature which rose from the dead? Do the words holy child Jesus refer directly to his divinity, to the exclusion of his manhood? I think not. Well, now, my good Theophilus, if we are to be led by the Holy Ghost, and receive his testimony, and I may say his explanation, then this day means the New Testament dispensation, when Christ was begotten from the dead; and this resurrection of Christ was the decree to be declared; and the Saviour himself did, as you well know, in the days of his flesh, declare this decree, over and over again. Did he not declare that he should die and rise again; and this day is but the beginning of an everlasting day. This is the day the Lord hath made, we will be glad and rejoice therein.’ The after part of this 2d Psalm refers to the ingathering of the Gentiles, another proof that the day here spoken of is the New Testament dispensation. I think my good Theophilus, that the least our opponents can do is to acknowledge, that in saying this day means eternity, means that Christ as Son of God was begotten before all worlds, and that the words Begotten Son are never applied to his human nature; the least, I say, they can do is, to acknowledge that they are wrong; for to all intents and purposes they are wrong. But let us look again at this day. Does not the Psalmist here personate the Saviour, and is he not carried in the spirit of prophecy into the kingdom of Christ, and so uses the language prophetically, which the Saviour would and did carry out practically; and is this at all unusual in the Scriptures? Does not the Psalmist often and extensively personate, in the spirit of prophecy, the Saviour in his sufferings? Are not the 22nd and 69th Psalms, interesting and instructive instances of this mode of prophecy? So then, beyond all dispute, the this day in this 2nd Psalm, means the time of the New Testament dispensation; and the same person who in this Psalm is called begotten Son, is in Acts the 4th, called the holy child Jesus. Could divinity be a child? No; but human nature could be a child, and was a child, even that holy child which was called the Son of God: and in the Acts, 13th chapter, this same holy child Jesus is begotten from the dead.
But, my good Theophilus, while you see how eternal generationists pervert this second Psalm, do not lose sight of another point well worthy of your attention, namely the Saviour's assurance of his sonship; ‘the Lord hath said unto me;’ the enemy tried to get him to doubt his sonship, but the serpent could make no impression of this kind upon this holy child Jesus, upon this invulnerable rock. He always knew he was of God, and he always set the Lord before him. He always knew that he was from God and went to God. I will declare the decree of my resurrection, ‘the Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee,' as Acts 13. and Revelation 1st, show, from the dead. So much, then, in this Scripture, for the old fable of an eternally generated divinity, generation from original constitution into sonship. But as I have here shown you, how different is the interpretation given by the Holy Ghost from the one given by the eternal generation doctrine. Isaiah says of the Saviour, ‘he was led as a lamb to the slaughter so I suppose we shall be told next, that he was not only relatively and virtually slain from the foundation of the world, but that he was actually slain from the foundation of the world; and this would be quite as true, and not a whit more preposterous, than the doctrine of eternal generation. We must, my good Theophilus, ever distinguish between a thing done in vision, and the same thing done in fact. Joseph’s dreams contained things done as yet only in counsel and vision; but the performance thereof in due time is sure. ‘Then thou spakest in vision (that is in revelation and prediction), unto thine Holy One, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty (here is his Godhead, he is the mighty God), I have exalted one chosen out of the people, (here is his manhood); I have found David my servant, (here is his servitude.) David means beloved, and so Jesus was God’s beloved servant (in whom his soul delighted), as well as his beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased, and God gave not the Spirit by measure unto him. Now you see this 19th verse of the 89th Psalm, speaks in the past tense, yet the things were not done actually until the day of Christ. Thus, God calleth things that are not as though they were and so, my good Theophilus, just in the sense that the covenant of salvation is eternal, so is the sonship of the Saviour eternal. ‘His goings forth were from of old, even from everlasting so that what he was in counsel he became in constitution; thus becoming actually what he was before relatively, as Abraham was relatively constituted a father, before he was actually a father; for the Apostle, in the 4th of Romans, thus argues, ‘I have made thee (Abraham) a father of many nations.’ So, we must understand the New Covenant paternity of the most High. His name (Isaiah 63:16) is from everlasting. Here is the relation and nomination from everlasting; here, then we have New Covenant relationship from everlasting, but are we to trifle with this, and call it being a Father and son officially, when at the same time that he had, in the excellency of his counsel, constituted a saving relationship to millions of the human race. If this is to be despised, then as the election of grace were not actually there when they were chosen, then despise election, and despise also the doctrine of Christ’s being slain from the foundation of the world, simply because he was not actually slain from the foundation of the world. Again, then, I say of the 2d Psalm, that while men tell us this day means from everlasting, the Holy Ghost, in the 4th and 13th of Acts, shews us that David was carried forward in spirit to the day of Christ, the day which Abraham saw and was glad, that in that day Christ was begotten from the dead. What, my good Theophilus, will you do here? Will you take the unproved assertion of uninspired man, and hold that Christ as a divine person was begotten before all worlds; will you believe this, or take the explanation of inspired Apostles, who refer the same to Christ’s resurrection. I am sure you will not hesitate which to choose. Thus, you must distinguish between things in their relative position, and in their actual existence and accomplishment. ‘Ye are complete in him,’ for instance, is the relative position of things to be made good actually at the resurrection, and in glorification; you will thus see though the words eternal Son of God are nowhere found in the Bible, yet as he is God, and as he went forth in mercy from everlasting (for the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting), as he thus went forth, he was relatively the Son of God from everlasting, but not by any generation of his divine nature; the word generation never once being applied to his divine nature, but is applied merely to his genealogical descent, as shown in the first of Matthew, and also to his people as one with him, called the generation of the upright, who shall declare his generation, for he was cut off out of the land of the living. Well, the Holy Spirit of God declareth by his work who his generation are; but what in the name of the world, and in the name of common sense, yea, what in the name of the Lord, has this to do with the notion that he was a divine person generated by the Father into Sonship: it has not a shadow of reference to anything of the kind. The eternal generation doctrine I most solemnly believe to be from beneath and is intended by the enemy to lower and lessen the absolute divinity and Godhead of Christ. And we are told, too, that we must not reason upon such a deep subject. Ah, thou that sayest we should not reason upon it, dost thou reason upon it? dost thou thyself do that which thou teachest should not be done? Ah, yes, thou art verily guilty, for thou reasonest thus, that as the ray of the sun issues from the sun, yet is coeval with the sun, so Jesus Christ as a divine person, thou sayest, generates from the Father, and is yet co-existent; and then thou dost with an air of great triumph, ask if we can tell which is first, the ray or the sun. Well, we will tell thee, that the light was three days before the sun: light the first day, but no sun until the fourth day; so that thy fancied sonship is three days prior to paternity. Who has heard such a thing, for a son to be three days older than the father; and this is your eternal generation doctrine, is it? Ah, good brother, drop thy fable, and come to Bible facts. Ah, are you now running off to the 45th Psalm; but there you shall find no rest for the sole of the foot for eternal generation. Well, again I say Jesus Christ is God, but never called, apart from his complexity, the Son of God. 'Unto the Son he saith, thy throne, O God is forever and ever.’ Ah, but mind, that before he is in this Psalm called the Son of God, he is viewed as man. Verse 2nd, ‘thou art fairer than the children of men;’ he was fairer than other men, because he had no sin, he did no sin, he was without blemish and without spot, and the church is all fair by him: then after he is thus brought before us as man, then, and not until then, he is called the Son of God. He is thus addressed in his complex person; and though the divine Word was not yet actually incarnate, yet he stood in covenant relation to our nature, and therefore addressed as though it was in fact, God again calling things that are not as though they were. And to confirm what I here state, he is described as living a life of love to righteousness, and hatred to wickedness, and he has hereby brought in everlasting righteousness, and has put sin away, and so is anointed with the oil of gladness above all his fellow kings, from David down to the last that reigned on Judah’s throne. No king or kingdom ever brought the joy that this king and his kingdom shall bring. Here, then, I say, the Saviour is seen in his future complexity, and so the Christ dishonoring doctrine of eternal generation has no place in Psalm 45th.
To the Editor or the Earthen Vessel,
Dear Mr. Editor, Without at all entering into the subject of controversy between Messrs. Philpot and Jones, except to avow my utter disbelief of the generation of the Godhead of Christ; I say not eternal generation, for it is manifest that cannot be eternal which is generated or begotten; will you allow me space in your columns for a few brief animadversions on the unchristian spirit which pervades and darkens Mr. Philpot’s notice of a ‘Letter’ addressed to him by that venerable servant of Christ.18
I am fully aware that Mr. Philpot is regarded by a minority of the ministers and people of God, as their leading man in a certain line of things, and that he is esteemed as a minister of the Gospel by others who do not so regard him. But if Mr. Philpot, presuming upon this, has thought, as he appears to have done, that his own ipse dixit on any subject upon which he writes, should be received as conclusive and final, and that he may indulge without impunity in that acerbity of temper which seems natural to him, and which renders him so impatient of contradiction ; or that he can treat contemptuously, and without rebuke, any who may question the truthfulness of his statements, or the soundness of his creed, he must now see from Mr. Jones’s reply the folly of such a presumption.
I agree with Mr. Philpot, and so would Mr. Jones himself, that ‘time and age cannot turn falsehood into truth,’ which he more than insinuates the latter to suppose. But time and age in Mr. Jones’s case have not attempted it. The insinuation is as untrue as it is unkind; and Mr. Philpot must have known this when he set it down. The ill-natured manner in which he refers to Mr. Joes, must be apparent to all his readers. Indeed, throughout his reply, which evinces a great deal of angry and wounded feeling, he employs no veil to conceal his spleen. It is to be seen as plainly towards Mr. Jones, as it was lately seen towards Mr. Crowther, in the malignant review of his sermon preached at Hitchin.
As if age in itself was contemptible, Mr. Philpot designates Mr. Jones, ‘the poor old man,’ and in the bitterness of his spirit charges him with ‘spending his last days in the miserable vanity of reprinting his erroneous creed' of employing his dying fingers for a dishonest purpose; and on the wrapper of the current number of the Standard, he is pronounced by its amiable editor, as a man, ‘who seems to be past shame!’ Oh, how ungenerous and unchristian-like is all this. Can Mr. Philpot reflect hereon without remorse? It is to be hoped he cannot.
If nothing more certainly proves the weakness of an argument than mere confident assertion, and the temper of an opponent than contempt and abuse, then is Mr. Philpot s argument weak, and his temper vindictive indeed! A Constant Reader.
Dear Brother, This evening I sat in my study and read through carefully and critically, your “Nature of a Gospel Church.”* I feel obliged, yea, cannot help writing just a line or so, to thank you for it. I consider it to be truth, vital truth; my desire is, that it may have a wide circulation. Not only that many may read it, but deeply think while reading it, and derive spiritual profit. I am honoured with the epithet of a “garbler” i.e., one who sifts, winnows, separates &c., &c., but I have found nothing to “garble” in what you have now put forth. If I had, I was determined to point it out to you, but I am most pleasingly prevented. You know me of old. I have told you my mind before now, and will venture to do so again if needful. See Proverbs 9:8. Since 1 began this note, a thought has struck me. You will find, in the printed paper I sent you that Thomas Craner, a celebrated man in his day was the first pastor of our church. Now I have a treatise of his entitled “A Scripture Manual, or a Scriptural Representation of a Gospel Church, the Business of its Officers, and Duty of its Members,” dated 1759, (101 years old). It is indeed a choice work. There is not its equal that I know of. And not another copy to be had in the kingdom. My dear old deacon, Mr. Beall, of Ringstead, gave it to me 40 years ago. ’Tis rather long, but ’tis as choice as gold.
• Published in Mr. Bennett's ordination.
I am yours’s &c.
J. A. Jones.
50, Murray Street, City Road, Oct. 15, 1860.
[We hope soon to issue this. Ed.]
The End of 1860 and The Closing Up of My Sixteenth Volume (Part of W.C. Banks remarks)
While speaking of his time in Yeovil and Ilchester he brings up most pointedly the topic of James Wells and the Sonship of Christ. He says:
.. Before I leave this part, I would notice the strong feeling expressed by some of the Sherborne friends respecting the “Sonship of our Saviour,” by “A Little One.” I have a rather painful conviction that some of “A Little One’s” assertions and conclusions are not so truthful as he considers them to be. Nevertheless as “A
Little One” has expressed a desire to give us his mind upon this great question, we had hoped that the Lord might make him useful in bringing the divisions to a close; but, in the present state of things, that hope is turned to disappointment. The Borough Gunner has levelled a heavy fire at us; and many on all hands are threatening; but the desire that every good man should do his best to open up the glories of Immanuel's Person has induced us to allow the controversy still to proceed; if we find that instead of those glories being more and more discovered, they are mystified and be-clouded by angry spirits and by vain speculations, we shall close our pages against it.
Let no man think, however, we are to be frightened by spasmodic effusions of anti-Christian feeling. The Eternity of the Saviour’s Sonship, the Eternity of His distinct, yet undivided Personality in the Godhead is a heavenly mystery too deeply and too powerfully received by faith into our soul, ever to be moved; albeit, we have a charitable desire that every good man who is moved to speak his mind, shall do so; and to our readers we say, be patient, read, and examine for yourselves. Receive the good, and cast the bad away; and if you are thoroughly persuaded that The Earthen VESSEL brings you nothing but “the bad”, then cast it away; while our hope and prayer shall be that richer treasure than ever shall be found therein..
Sadly, it appears that Banks and many others are encased in tradition and closed to any further enlightenment the Holy Spirit could give them. Truly it is not just a denial of what Wells teaches. It’s being closed to what many throughout the history of the church believe. Indeed, at heart, it is not even what any person teaches: it’s a question of what can be truly shown from Scripture. We must at all costs and all times adhere as close as possible to the truth as it is revealed in the Bible. I do not support Robert Hawker because he is Robert Hawker. I do not support James Wells because he is James Wells. As Hawker and Wells disagree strongly on this subject either both are wrong or one is right and the other wrong. Scripture itself, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, must be our guide to decide where the truth lies.
Editor’s Note: Please note I believe C.W. Banks truly and sincerely believed in God; that he was saved and that he tried his best in the face of great opposition. This being said, Charles Walter Banks had a profound impact on how this controversy unfolded in the pages of the Earthen Vessel. Some today, I believe, seek to understand what happened by how he viewed it. This is a grave mistake as he was, as he admits, not fully competent and also biased as a judge. His incompetency is clearly demonstrated by his editorial remarks at the beginning of the 1861 issue of the Earthen Vessel (Vol 17, No. 189). As I quote below, he actually used that arch-enemy of the truth John William Fletcher (Fletcher of Madeley) as a shining example of truth in action! He seems to feel sorry for Fletcher because of what he suffered from his opposition to Predestination. Banks was a middle of the road man, always seeking for peace at the cost of the truth. The fact that he favored those opposed to Jones and Well etc. is crystal clear and has been shown above as well as here. I am picking up his comments where he changes the subject to remark on this controversy. Richard Schadle
The past year has been one most remarkable for controversies on deep and solemn subjects. Divine Sovereignty, and the Eternal Sonship of the Saviour, have been questions for serious agitation and no small measure of unhappy feeling has been drawn forth on all sides. The farther it advances the more deeply we regret its existence. Still, if Truth is hereby tested, and more fully discovered, some good in some quarters will result there from, “Fair weather,” it is said, “cometh out of the North. The North wind is the source, or cause, of serenity.” So, we hope, when these contrary winds have well cleared our murky atmosphere, we shall have a quietness and a settledness in truth, that shall be for the church’s best interest. Controversy is not our element, especially when it giveth rise to unkind, unbrotherly, and unhappy feelings. A bitter-spirited controversy we cannot be pleased with; but upon difficult questions, when the minds of good men become divided and exercised touching any question which stands connected with the glories of God’s eternal and well beloved Son, or connected with the peace and prosperity of Zion, then I feel bound to open up a free channel for each, and for all to express their thoughts upon the question at issue. In order to affect this, and to make room for numerous correspondents, I have issued, in this year I860, no less than five supplementary numbers, and that too at no small loss.
Referring to controversy, it brings to mind that good man, Mr. Fletcher, the vicar of Madeley. He once wrote these words,
“Me thinks I dream, when I reflect I have written on controversy! the last subject I thought I should, have meddled with.”
His biographer commenting on this, says,
The wonder thus expressed by Fletcher himself regarding the character of his literary efforts must be shared by all who think of the sweetness of his natural temper, and the elevation and intensity of his personal piety. But he was led into the slough in a very simple way. About the year 1769 the Countess of Huntingdon conceived the idea of founding a college on a new principle. Denominationalism was to be ignored, no one system of theology was to be preferred before another, good young men were to be admitted from any of the Churches to receive the benefits of a free education, and when the term of instruction was ended the students were to be left at perfect liberty to enter into the ministry, either of the Church of England, or of any of the dissenting bodies to which they might have a liking. A scheme like this, impracticable though it of course turned out to be, was just one to strike the fancy, and attract the interest of such a man as the Vicar of Madeley: and when the lady founder offered him the presidentship of the institution he accepted it very readily. The college was planted at Trevecca in Wales, a spot which was within visiting distance of his own parish in Shropshire; and while still assiduous as ever in his own special pastoral work, he found time to ride over to his other charge with considerable frequency. These visitations of his do not seem to have been of very great value in an educational or academical point of view; but religiously they were, as one might have expected, exceedingly precious and profitable. “As many of you as are a thirst for the fullness of the Spirit,” would this college president say to his students, “follow me to my room.” He was followed accordingly, and hours were spent in wrestling supplication. “Languages, arts, sciences, grammar, rhetoric, logic, even divinity itself as it is called, were all laid aside when he appeared. His fall heart would not suffer him to be silent. He must speak, and they were readier to hearken to this servant and minister of Jesus Christ, than to attend to Sallust, Virgil, or any Latin or Greek historian, poet, or philosopher they had been engaged in reading. And they seldom hearkened long before they were all in tears, and every heart caught fire from the name that burned in his soul.
Very delightful as this state of things must have been20, yet between the headmaster of the college and the countess, dissensions arose about the doctrine of Divine and Eternal Predestination. This led poor Fletcher into a fire, and in that fire of controversy he was held fast nearly all his days. Like him, we have been over and over again drawn into controversy, always hoping and determining that this should be the last. But until that haughty and cruel spirit, manifested in some quarters, and that dry dogmatical mind which has been exercised in others, until a more Christian bearing is displayed, and a charity that vaunteth not itself is the clothing of our churches and of their ministers, we fear that a clear sky, and smooth waters will not be our happy portion. Still we love, and must ever pray for, pure and holy peace, even that peace which flows from the cross on which our Saviour hung; from that mercy-seat on which our Great High Priest doth sit. With all the power our God shall give us, will we still labour for the advancement of all essential truth.
It has been widely said, we should reserve our expressed testimony on the Sonship, until “A Little One” had given his, and then we should go with him. We esteem “A Little One'' as a man of God, mighty in the word and work of God. We esteem him, too, for that originality, usefulness, and steadfastness in the truth, in which the Lord has so long and so highly honored him; but we have never bowed to him as our oracle; nor been led by him as our guide. He is too much the gentleman, the Christian, the friend, ever to attempt or desire to use any such influence. Where I guilty of such cringing, I ought to be driven from my post at once. Long before I knew “A Little One's” mind or thoughts on this great subject, I wrote the following sentences in a small notebook. I was reflecting on those mighty and merciful words of Peter, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” I simply said, in these words are three branches for meditation,
I. The Person of Christ, his own self.”
II. The Sufferings and Sacrifice of Christ.
III. The Blessings flowing from him to them who do aright believe in Him: they become dead to sin: live unto righteousness; by His stripes they are healed.
Coming to the first branch, The Person of Christ, (a theme ever dear to my heart) I wrote a few hasty lines, and although not designed for public criticism, yet to show my simple mind upon a mystery so awfully grand, I give here a small section of what then flowed from my inmost soul.
I. The Person of Christ. There is no greater mystery in heaven, nor in hell, nor in the church, nor in the hearts of God’s people, nor to the world, than is the Glorious Person of Christ! I have thought it is this mystery, or rather the attempt to open this mystery; I had better say, it has been, I think, the puny efforts of men to do away with the mystery, it has been this aiming to explain what only God can explain, it has been this attempt to comprehend what mortal and finite men cannot comprehend which has split the Professing Church into so many divisions. Some will have Him to be man, not God and Man: some will have Him to be God and Man, but not specially a Covenant Head, but a universal and an unlimited Saviour. Many other things men have spoken of Him, and so divisions have sprung up. He is called a stumbling-stone, and a Rock of offence. What a solemn detail of things that Isaiah 8 contains! There is a proclamation of Christ, “He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a Rock of offence: for a gin and for a snare: and many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.” The true disciples of Christ do not stumble at this scumblingstone; they look to Him; they believe in Him; they fly to Him; they love Him, and find a shelter there, but others will find some occasion of stumbling at, or about the Son of God. This is dangerous caviling about Him is presumptuous: curious criticizing, and trying to peep into this Glorious mystery, is perilous. In proof, see what the Lord tells the Prophet to do; he says, “Bind up the testimony; seal the law among my disciples.” This is a direction to take special care of this testimony concerning Christ, “He shall be for a Sanctuary”, a Hiding Place; a Holy Place; a Worshipping Place; a Salvation Place: “He shall be for a Sanctuary.” Take care of this; hold this fast, and so shall it be well; for this is all the safety, all the comfort, all the peace, all the happiness the people of God can have. Jesus Christ for them a sanctuary, and here they hide, here they seek, here they find the Lord; therefore, the Lord again says, “Seal the law among my disciples.” The law is the Decree of Heaven, to save all who believe in Jesus Christ; this shall be scaled home, made secure unto all who really and truly follow Him.
That some men stumble at the Person and work of Christ is no wonder. But now let us consider the Person of Christ, first, as declared to be a Great Mystery; secondly, as shadowed forth by types and figures; thirdly, as Proclaimed from Heaven by God Himself; fourthly, as Preached in the Gospel: fifthly, as Revealed in the souls of God’s Quickened Elect; sixthly, as Opposed by all anti-Christian Powers; and lastly, as Shining forth now in Heaven the Present, the Future, the Everlasting
Friend of the Spouse, the Church; yea, of all who were given to Him, and are, by grace, brought unto Him by faith, and hope, and prayer, and by triumphant grace. “Who his Own Self.”
My apace will not allow me to give this SEVENFOLD VIEW OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST in this January number, but I will try and pray God to help me to give it month after month until I have come to the end of my poor testimony on a matter so beautiful and blessed to my little soul.21
Before I leave this, I shall notice a letter I received from father Jones, a part of which reads as follows:
The steps you are taking in the Vessel relative to the Eternal Generation (FIGMENT) controversy will do you no good; and so, you will find out when too late. I have received several letters from ministers on the subject of your versatility. One of them whom you well know, writes me, ‘One of the most charitable constructions I can put on Mr. Banks’s movements and sayings, is, he really does not understand the controversy. He is first led by one and then by another. The question is still to him like ‘Truth in a well.’ He peeps, and looks, and squints, and blinks, and hardly knows what it is all about.’ He adds much more which I forbear to write.
The first sentence rather surprised me, because the first step I took was, as kindly as possible, to notice Mr. J. A. Jones’s letter to the Editor of The Gospel Standard; and I did so because the spirit evinced by the latter was not good; but, even in that first step, I found exceptions to Mr. J. A. Jones’s letter. There were sentences and sentiments in it which I did not approve; but not wishing to fight, yea, knowing myself inadequate to cope with such a tough and determined Welshman, I introduced his letter to the notice of the churches in as friendly a manner as I could; believing this aged sire in Zion ought to be heard. Mr. Crowther’s sermon also I noticed most favourably, because, while there were some conclusions in it which I never could reach, still, there was nothing in it fatally delusive or injurious; but there was in it a good amount of Gospel truth, of sterling talent, of zeal for Christ’s honour, and of love to the whole family of God; and I was anxious (as the Standard leaders had acted, in the Hitchin case, so harshly) Mr. Crowther should be fairly and fully heard. Furthermore, I inserted Mr. J. A Jones’s letters because, as he said, there was no other channel through which he could get so extensively to speak to the Churches. He knows he demanded of me this service; I know I acceded to that demand very reluctantly; because contention anywhere, and everywhere, I perfectly abhor, except where I meet with a deadly error; a Christ-dishonoring doctrine, a Gospel-beclouding system; and, then, against all such delusions I would contend until I die: but I believe the only legitimate, the only efficient, mode of excluding error, is a scriptural and experimental development of the truth. I have told Mr. J. A. Jones personally, and plainly, I am what some would call, “an old Huntingtonian;” and an ardent lover of such men as Bunyan, Flavel, Bolton, Bridge, and others, who have skill and sympathy enough to deal with a broken, bleeding, yet bound-up heart. Men who are simply and only hard and heavy contenders for points, doctrinally and practically, ought to be highly esteemed by the church; but I have been so awfully bruised and beaten by sin and Satan on the one hand; and so indulged and favoured by my most precious and inexpressibly glorious Lord Jesus on the other, that hard men, harsh minds, haughty spirits, and mere defenders of doctrine, are no companions of mine. I love the doctrines of grace: there are tens of thousands in this country, and across the seas too, that know this right well; and although my talent for writing or preaching is a very tiny one, still, I have laboured with all my might, to make the best use of it I could:, having had much forgiven, I have felt an overflowing of love to all who favour God’s righteous cause; and have only been too glad to serve them to the very utmost of my power; and although I have hung about my neck responsibilities which perpetually drag me down to the dust, and keep me in temporal bonds; although priest and Levite have not only passed me by in contempt, but have cursed me as Shemei did David; although a herd of wretched men called ministers (?) (heaven forgive them) have fawned at my feet for help, and then fell foul of me behind my back; although wind and tide have been against me; and although I am as dependent upon the kind providence of God for daily help as ever I was; yet I desire to bless his holy name that he has given me such means for making known his glorious gospel; so that I am sending hundreds of thousands of epistles throughout the world to testify of his most holy name. I say then to Mr. J. A. Jones, Your threat of “finding it out when too late” alarms me not in the least. My life is one of perpetual toil and labour. If the good Lord, who gave me this labour, say, “Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest no longer be steward;” then to have grace to feel and say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord,” will be a crowning mercy indeed. If the sentence, “the steps you are taking,” &c., refers to the insertion of Letters by “A Little One,” and Mr. Bidder’s epistle, I am prepared to give an explanation. First, as regards the “Letter’s to Theophilus,” on “the Sonship of the Saviour,” they have certainly earned some startling and strange ideas; but “A Little One” holds most firmly the eternal Godhead, the co-equal and co-eternal dignities of Him who is called “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” “A Little One” loves our Immanuel, our Jesus, our best beloved Lord; but then he is always determined to be singular; he will think for himself; and he will have his own way of enunciating his views; and for me to shut my pages against every good and great man, because he uses not my eyes, adopts not my phraseology, walks not exactly according to my line in things not essential, would be vain conceit indeed: albeit, I did feel bound to add my testimony to Mr. Bidder’s on this great question; and although we are both condemned by many, it shakes not my mind one atom, I still believe in the eternity and in the Divine Personality of Him who said to John, speaking of Himself, “These things saith the Amen; the faithful and true Witness; THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION OF GOD.” Upon this scripture I purpose to give a paper, if permitted.
But Mr. Jones says, his brother minister writes, “One of the most charitable constructions I can put upon Mr. Banks’s movements and sayings is, he really does not understand the controversy. He is first led by one, and then by another. The question is still to him like truth in a well. He peeps, and looks, and squints, and blinks; and hardly knows what it is all about.” Then Mr. Jones, says the minister, “adds much more which I forbear to write.”
I do not know who this minister is, but no doubt he is a very clever man; a very excellent brother, and a minister of mighty powers. During the last twenty years the most flagrant specimen of man’s fallen nature I have witnessed is, self-conceit, the important I!
But to the point. Mr. Banks “really does not understand the controversy.” I understand there is a contention among good men about words: these good men are divided into three classes: some say Jesus Christ was not the Son of God in His Divine nature; others say He was: but, mark this one thing, all cavaliers, all critics, all writers, all disputers, come to one conclusion, that there is a mystery in the mode of the existence of the Glorious Person that no finite mind can comprehend. I have always believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, coequal and co-eternal with the Father, that before all ages, before all worlds, before all things in heaven; or earth, or hell, He “was set up” as he himself declares; but how I venture not to define. I desire with honesty of heart, with singleness of eye, and with an unwavering faith, to “acknowledge the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.” Very much that has been written and said by men of late has been to C. W. Banks “like truth in a well” indeed; and when very big men have been bouncing and brawling, with what Dr. Gill calls the gift of tongues where men are noisy, but not always spiritual, when I have listened to some great divines, perhaps I have tried to “peep” into their meaning, and tried in vain: when they have been “holding on” longer than I could bear, it may be I “blinked” a little; and who can read, or who can hear, many of our great men, and not “blink” a little?, I am sure I cannot. But as regards “squinting,” I say nothing. When men hear another or read another with prejudice or suspicion; no doubt, but these things weaken and injure their organs of vision to a great extent! To conclude, my prayer to God. is two-fold, first, to be so found in Christ; as that when He comes to receive his ransomed, I may among them stand. Secondly, that while my few remaining days are running out, I may live in my humble measure as Pau! did, and truly say, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Where, then, are we? What are our prospects? As a denomination, as a distinct branch of the visible church, we have (at the commencement of another year,) much to be thankful for. Our ministers have been spared to us, and our churches hold on their way. We have called over our list of Metropolitan Ministers, who are firm and faithful men, and we believe death has only deprived us of one during the whole of I860. We commence 1861 with nearly the same staff of London ministers of truth as we commenced 1860. There stand, each in their appointed, place, the brethren Anderson, Attwood, Ball, Bird, Bloomfield, Bowles, Bracher, Butterfield, Gaunt, Chamberlain, Chivers, Clark, Cracknell, Diekerson, Flack, Flory, John Foreman, Glaskin, Samuel Green, F. Green, Gunner, Gwinnell, Hall, Hanks, (poor dear Haslop is gone home, but Myerson is raised up in his stead;) Hazleton, J. A. Jones, Milner, Moyle, Munns, Nunn, W. Palmer, Parker, Pells, Ponsford, Rowland, Stringer, (only moved a little further off,) Thurston, J. Webb, Wigmore, Williamson, Whitteridge, Wyard; and last, though not always the least, James Wells. All at present, I believe, alive, and in good working order. For this the Lord be praised. I cannot enter upon a review of the state of our Churches this month. Praying that 1861 may be a year of gospel peace and of spiritual prosperity, I subscribe myself again the Churches willing servant,
Charles Waters Barks.
My Good Theophilus. We now proceed with our argument, namely, that the Saviour is nowhere in all the Bible called the Son of God apart from his complexity. I must just: remind you of an oversight in my last upon the 45th Psalm. I have spoken as though he was in this 45th Psalm called the Son of God, whereas the words there are, “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” But we see in Hebrews the 1st that the person (complex as I have shewn) there addressed is the Son of God, so that this oversight of mine makes neither for nor against our argument. The question which I put, in my second letter to you, was not, “where do we read in all the Bible that Christ is in the bosom of the Father?” But “where in all the Bible do we read that Christ lay in the bosom of the Father?” But that scripture will in due time come under our notice. Now before I attend to the 8th of Proverbs, I will attend to the 30th of Proverbs, and to Isaiah 9th; and we must go on carefully and soberly, and not be moved by angry men, imputing deceitful motives to us, nor by their being shocked at our calling their notions a fable; nor be moved because we do not feel at liberty to receive their explanation of the modus existi of the Eternal Three. You, my good Theophilus, believe that there are Three Co-equal Persons in the Godhead: Father, Word, and Holy Ghost, and that these Three are One. We stand second to none in our decision for the truth of a Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity; nor do we cavil about mere words: we should not have the slightest objection whatever to the words eternal generation, if the doctrine those words convey were found in the Bible, though the words eternal generation were not in the Bible; for we could neither pray, nor preach, nor write, nor converse with any freedom it we were always confined to the precise words of the Holy Scriptures. But we hold that everyone has, in these solemn matters, a right to judge for himself; and no man ought to receive any doctrine only as he can receive it honestly, and from conviction, and so let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind; every one ought to speak freely and fearlessly, but no one has a right, without clear reasons for so doing, to impute deceptive motives to his opponent. With these views and feelings I proceed as conscientiously and as much in the sight of God, as any one of my opponents themselves can do. Nor would I be too severe upon them for some ebullition of passion and prejudice, seeing I myself am compassed with infirmity, but it is nevertheless good to remember that the “wrath of man worketh not the righteous-of God.”
I will, then, my good Theophilus, show my opinion of the words of Agur in the 30th of Proverbs, simply because it seems to be a favourite scripture with our eternal generation friends. “What is his name, or what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?” They use these words generally with such a smiling countenance, or else with such forbidding frown that you would think their victory over you was complete. Ah, say they, “What is his name, or what is his son’s name, if thou can’st tell” his generation? Who can tell? Ah, yes, it is eternal generation, ah, say they, it is a mystery far too deep for human reason. Well, in their conclusion I agree, for (eternal generation) is indeed too deep for human reason, and what is more, it is a mystery too deep for the Bible itself, and so the Bible very wisely avoids it, and not only does not attempt to explain it, but does not even mention it. And I think it would be a good thing for eternal generationists if they were to do as the Bible does, that is have nothing to do with it, and so be content with what the Bible does contain, and own the great truth declared, that Immanuel is God with us; and that that Holy Thing born in Bethlehem was, and is, the Son of God.
But now, my good Theophilus, to the words of Agur. And what will you say when I tell you that the words of Agur (which they quote) have no direct reference whatever to God, or to Christ? I know what you will say, it will be this, that their partially to their favourite doctrine of eternal generation hath led them astray, and so they darken counsel with words without knowledge. I will, to make matters clear, just transcribe the words of Agur from the 2nd down to the 6th verse. “Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy. Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established the ends of the earth? What is his name, or what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell? Every word of God is pure; he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.”
Now, my good Theophilus, note here, first, that Agur describeth what he himself is; he is more brutish, &c. The description he gives of himself is just what everyone who is taught of God sees and feels himself to be. Now Agur, after thus confessing what he himself was, he then takes a survey of men at large, and asks who among them all hath done the things he here describes; thus implying that all men like himself were helpless in matters of that wisdom and holiness of which he speaks in the second verse; and so, like the questions put by the Lord himself to Job, they could be answered only in the negative. Now if any man hath done these things described here in this 30th of Proverbs by Agur, if any man have done these things, then Agur would like to know who he is; and if he could not know who the man himself was who had done these things, then, as a kind of clue to the same, he would like to know who the son is of such a man; but such man could not be found among men. No son could boast of such a father; thus, would Agur cease from man, and put his trust in the Lord. And so, he goes on to say, “every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.” I have given the pronoun nominative in small capitals; to mark more emphatically the contrast here intended between men and God; men cannot help us, but God can and doth help and defend all them that put their trust in him. Would you, my good Theophilus, suppose such a thing, that nearly all the eternal generationists bring this scripture into their service, and they make it work hard too, for they nearly all of them employ it. But was it intended by the Holy Spirit for such service? I trow22 not. Now just look at it and see if it be at all suited for such services. “What is his name, or what is his son’s name?” Now here are two persons mentioned, father and son. Now then, surely, even eternal generationists will not contend that God the Father ascended and descended. Well then, if it were not the Father it must be the Son who did ascend and descend. What, then, is his name? Well, his name is Immanuel, God with us, and “what is his son's name/” Ah, we confess we cannot tell, because this makes Immanuel to have some special or particular son, in distinction from all his brethren. Well then, as God the Father did not ascend or descend, it must, I say, be the Saviour. But then Agur wants to know what his (the Saviour’s) son’s name is. How then can this scripture refer to the mystery of the Saviour’s name; without holding the blasphemous notion, that Christ himself has some special son of his own?
Now, my good Theophilus, take this view, and then you will clearly understand it, namely, that Agur just describes what he himself was in his own eyes; secondly, that he describes by implication what all men are, as not one can be found to do the things he describes; thirdly, he flies to God for refuge; fourthly, he gives a word of solemn admonition to handle the word of God carefully, lest we have our portion with liars; and fifthly, he presents that prayer which all Christians admire, but one part of which perhaps hardly any, if they could help it, would practice. We mean the part which saith nor riches; yet riches have done Christians more harm than poverty ever did. Lazarus, with all his wants and woes, was better off than Solomon, with all his riches. No doubt the poverty and affliction of Lazarus were very trying, but Solomon’s riches were the means of piercing him through with sorrows which Lazarus never felt.
But my good Theophilus, let us suppose only one person spoken of in this 30th of Proverbs, even then what refuge would it be for the eternal generationists? Why none at all, because in answer to his assertion that he who here ascended and descended has an inexplicable name, the answer, I say, to this assertion is, who and what was it ascended and descended? Was it not Christ who ascended, but who first descended into the lower parts of the earth? (Ephesians 4:9.) who shall descend into the deep? that is to bring up Christ again from the dead. Is, then, this descending and ascending person God, and God only? Is this person a Son abstractedly Divine? What! his eternal Divinity brought up again from the dead? Talk of fallen reason; I think it must be fallen reason with a vengeance to receive such a doctrine as this; and yet this is the doctrine contained in the view the eternal generationists takes of these words of Agur. For it is beyond all dispute that it was Christ that descended by death, and that ascended by resurrection and exaltation to God’s right hand; and yet eternal generationists want to persuade us that he who descended and ascended was purely and abstractedly Divine; that he was not a complex person. As well, just as well, may they try to persuade us that he was mere man when he descended and ascended; as well, I say, may they try to persuade us that he was God abstractedly. We know he was God and man when he died, and God and man when he rose; and as Mr. Cozens has well observed in his unanswerable work upon the Sonship of the Saviour, “the human nature of Christ never was an abstract, it never existed apart from his Godhead.” Nor do I dare to use the repulsive vulgarisms that some eternal generationists have brought upon this holy ground.
Thus, then, Theophilus, though you are but a young disciple, yet I think you will clearly see what is the general drift and meaning of the words of Agur; and that you can hardly imagine anything more absurd than bringing such a scripture to favour that to which it bears no reference; and if it did bear direct reference to the Saviour, even then, as I have shewn, it could say nothing in favour of eternal generation, seeing that he that descended and ascended was the same that died and rose again. But their perversion of this scripture is like many more perversions which eternal generationism necessitate. For instance, one says, “common sense tells us that an everlasting Father implies an everlasting Son.” Now Christ is declared (Isaiah 9th) to be an everlasting Father, ergo, he has according to this reasoning an everlasting Son somewhere. “Behold a troop cometh.” Where shall we get to next? especially if led by the eternal generationism, which is certainly a dangerous doctrine.23,24 So believes,
Dear Sir, In the “Vessel” for November there is a letter to Theophilus, signed “A Little One,” on the Sonship of Christ; but the subject which he attempts to handle is above the capacity of “A Little One.” “A Little One” makes many assertions, but demonstrates none by the word of God, as applied to the second Person in the Trinity. I would ask, where do we find the phrases Trinity in a Unity; or, Unity in a Trinity, or, where do we find the word satisfaction in the doctrine of expiation of sin, and atonement made for it? or where do we find the phrase in scripture, a Triune Jehovah in one essence? Yet each of those phrases has been made use of by sound divines in all ages. Words and phrases, though not literally expressed in scripture, yet if what is meant by them is to be found there, may be lawfully made use of.
I will endeavour first to prove that Christ was the Son of God before his incarnation, yea, before the creation of the world, and consequently before time, and consequently from all eternity. Secondly, that Christ is the Son of God by eternal generation.
1st. Christ existed as the Son of God before his incarnation.
1st. John the Baptist speaking of Christ as the Son of God, says, John 1:15, 18: (compare with verse 30 and 34.) “This was he of whom I spoke. He that cometh after me is preferred before me.” In this verse John the Baptist speaks of Christ in his two-fold nature, as man he was after John, as God he was before him, see verse 18. “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he had declared him. There again John emphatically declares that he who was in the person of the Father, was his only begotten Son, and this only begotten Son was there from all eternity. Hence Christ said, “I came forth from the Father,” i.e. from the bosom of his Father, “and am come into the world” as the Son of God to be made manifest to the world. “Again, I leave the world and go the Father,” verse 30 and 34.
John the Baptist then differs from the “Little One.” The former says the son of God was made manifest in the flesh; not made the Son of God by assuming our nature.
2nd. Christ as the Son of God was before Moses. Hebrews 3:5, 6; “Moses verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after. But Christ as a Son over his own house, which is the church, (compare with Numbers 7:7.) “My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.” The Son of God is speaking here of Moses his faithful servant, which the holy apostle explains in the above cited passages: that Christ as the son of God was over the church at the same time that Moses was a servant of it.
3rd. Christ as the son of God existed before the creation of the world. This I prove from Hebrews 1:1, 2, 3; compared with John. John declares that all things were made by the Word, and without him was not anything made that was made. The “Little One'’ says, that it was not the Son of God; but the apostle Paul positively declares that it was the Son of God. Let us hear what the apostle says, “God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath made heir of all things, by whom,” i.e. by his Son, “also he made the worlds.” Which is the same with the Word spoken of by John. God the Father created the world by his Son; not as an instrument but as the efficient cause, who is co-equal with his Father. “I and my Father are one.”
4th. The existence of the Son of God before the creation of the world. I prove it from John 5:17 and 19. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;” or in like manner i.e., hitherto my Father hath wrought from the creation, and I in like manner do the same. “Then Jesus answered and said unto them, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do. For what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” As if Christ should say, “My Father works, and I who am his Son.”
5th. Melchisedec was a type of the eternal Sonship of Christ, Hebrews 7:3. Melchisedec was without father, without mother, without descent, neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God.” The Holy Ghost is silent about Melchisedec’s father and mother, his birth and death, that he might be a fit type of the eternal Sonship of Christ; what Melchisedec was. in shadow, Christ was in substance. The anti-type must be before the type. The Little One may here object by saying, that the apostle draws the parallel there, not to prove the eternity of the Son of God, but his kingly and priestly office. To this I reply, the reason Christ was invested in the above offices was because, he was the Son of God from all eternity. Had Eleazer not been Aaron’s own son he would not have been invested with the sacerdotal office, neither had Solomon been king had, he not been David’s own son; The enjoyment of their offices was by reason of their; sonship. Thus, it was with Christ if he had not been the Son of God from all eternity he could not have been the eternal King, nor eternal Priest.
6th. The Son of God existed as such before the prophets; this I prove from Romans 1:2, 3, 4. “Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David;” Now mark the words: “According to the flesh, and declared” i.e. determined or made manifest, “to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness,” or according to his divine nature, “by the resurrection from1 the dead.” Christ in his divine nature was the Son of God and as such he was declared by his resurrection.
7th. As the apostle in the foregoing passages makes mention of the promises made to the prophets respecting the Son of God; let us see what they say. 1st. Psalm 2:7. “Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee.” A son implies a father, and a father is a relative term, which implies a son. The day here means eternity; hence Christ is called the “Ancient of days,” Dan. 7:9 compare with Micah 5:2. “Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting;” or, from the days of eternity. With God there is no yesterday, or to-morrow. As God was always God, so always a Father, therefore his Son was always a Son. The apostle applying this text to the resurrection of Christ, confirms his Sonship by eternal generation. He was declared at his resurrection to be what he was from all eternity. Sec Acts 13:32, 33, Romans 1:3. 1 John 1:1. John; 14. 1 Timothy 3:16. 1 John 3:8. 2nd. Agur speaks of the existence of the Son of God. Proverbs 30:4. 3rd. Isaiah also speaks of the Son in chapter 9:6. “To us a child is born, a Son is given.” Mark, not a Son born, but a Son given. Compare this passage with John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”, the same Son of whom the prophet speaks. 4th. The Son of God existed in the time of Daniel, chapter 3:25. “Do! I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” How could Nebuchadnezzar have had a knowledge of the Son of God; except he was informed by Daniel or others? The Son of God came to comfort his children in the furnace. Thus I have proved the existence of the Son of God as a Son from all eternity in opposition to the Little One’s unscriptural assertions, and I defy the Little One to overturn my arguments.
In another letter (D.V.) I will endeavor to prove that Christ is the Son of God by eternal generation.
E. Samuel. 1 Moliere Terrace, Lower Broughton, Manchester.
[This communication from our brother Samuel was written in November; and was designed for the December number, but for want of space was omitted.] Ed.25
My Good Theophilus, Having shewn in my last, that that part of Proverbs 30:4, “What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou can’st tell?” Having shewn that these words have no direct reference, either, to God or Christ, but are merely a summary of the preceding parts of the verse, implying the helplessness and worthlessness of all men in matters pertaining to God.
We have now to go on still in a straight line, to show that the Saviour is never called the Son of God apart from his complexity; and not only so, but that it is positively declared that that holy thing which should be born should be called the Son of God. Now if eternal generationists could bring one scripture to prove that Jesus Ghrist, even as God is nothing more than the Son of God, could they bring one scripture clear against his absolute Godhead, making it a generated Sonship; could they bring one scripture as clear to lower his Godhead, as the above scripture is clear to the exaltation of his Manhood, then they may, at least, have a standing place; but as it is they have none. “That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” Again Psalm 89:19, “I have exalted one chosen out of the people.” Thus, his manhood by oneness with Godhead exalted, while Godhead is not altered or lowered: he is God manifest in the flesh. Mind this, my good Theophilus, that it is nowhere in all the Bible said, that the Son was manifested in the flesh. “God manifest in the flesh,” not the Son of God, for the human nature was the actual Sonship. And there is no actual Sonship without it', as to what is said of the person of the Saviour in Isaiah 9th, it is so clear that I need scarcely to make any remark upon it. Here is a child born, and a Son given, and so “God spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all: and the centurion bare testimony and said, truly this was the Son of God,” yet men contradict this and say, that the Son given means his Godhead, but the prophet, with unerring consistency, declares him to be, not only a child born and Son given, but something more than this, even the mighty God. Thus, we get here his birth, his Sonship, and hie Godhead. But the next clause ought to puzzle eternal generationists, to despair of ever establishing their doctrine, “the everlasting Father.” Why, this clause robs the eternal generationists of all his strength, for their main argument is, that an everlasting Father implies an everlasting Son; but here their reasoning is burnt to ashes, for I am not aware that any of them have gone so far as to assert that Christ, being an everlasting Father, proves that he has somewhere a son, who is co-eternal with himself: yet to be consistent, this is what they ought to maintain. But my good Theophilus, you know how to understand it, namely, that the people of God are the spiritual offspring of the Saviour, that he is a Father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah, and will be so forever, and therefore an everlasting Father. But, my good Theophilus, be very careful here, for this is not all I have to say to you of Christ as an everlasting Father; for I am not sure that he is not a Father, not only to everlasting but also from everlasting; and if so what a remarkable thing that he should nowhere be said to be a Son from everlasting, yet that he should be declared to be a Father from everlasting. I am, I say, strongly inclined to think that he is declared to be a Father from, everlasting. See Isaiah 63:16. “Thou art our Father, O Jehovah, our Redeemer, thy name is from everlasting.” Now there can be no dispute as to who is the “Redeemer”, and it seems to be the same person, who in the same verse, is called a Father, and if the name be a name of relationship, then he is a Father from everlasting, but if the term Father here means the Saviour, and if a Father from everlasting implies, as the eternal generationists say it does, a Son from everlasting, we ask where is this redeemer, this father’s son from everlasting? What is his name, if you like, if thou can tell? Now after getting from Isaiah the birth of the Saviour, his Sonship, his Godhead, and his eternal paternity; all this indicating the great truth, that the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. But where in all this have we the least hint of one Divine person being by another Divine person begotten into Sonship? The farther I pursue this subject the more I feel its importance; and I think you will begin to see that this eternal generation doctrine is a greater error, and a more serious matter than you have hitherto thought it to be.
We will now come to the New Testament, and see if we can find one scripture wherein he is declared, apart from his complexity, the Son of God, and if he be not called apart from his complexity the Son of God, I ask, in all solemnity, by what authority men call upon us to believe in a generated Divinity: generated did I say? I ought to have said Regenerated Divinity: for it certainly, were such a step possible, would be a downward step, for a person absolutely God to become in the same nature only the Son of God. But to manhood it was an upward step to be the Son of God. “I have,” saith the Lord, “exalted One chosen out of the people.”26
We will now come to the New Testament. Now who is that who is in the bosom of the Father? Favour and familiarity are the two chief meanings of his being in the bosom of the Father? Was it infinite Divinity, abstractedly considered, in the bosom of the Father? John carefully shews that the person of whom he is there speaking is a complex person. “The Word was made flesh.” Thus, John spoke, “He that cometh after me;” there is his manhood as it was six months after John. “He is preferred before me;” here is his pre-eminence of position; for he was before me, here is his Godhead. Now that holy thing, called the Son of God, is now increased in wisdom and in stature, is strong in Spirit, is filled with wisdom and the grace of God is upon him; and he walks with God, and all things he learns of the Father he shews unto the disciples. Here, then, as man, or which is the same thing, as the Son of God, he is in the bosom of the Father; and such an extent of revelation was made to him as was never made to any man; for God gave not the Spirit by measure unto him. But was this holy thing called the Son of God, and of course rightly called, did this holy thing, called the Son of God, dwell actually in the bosom of the Father from all eternity? I trow not. He in his birth came from the Father. John is said to be a man sent from God; not that John had preexisted, but he was of God, and therefore, said to be sent from God. Now the conception and birth of the Saviour were of God, and so he came from God and went to God; not that his human nature pre-existed, for he existed only as God. But, not as yet as the Son of God, except that he stood in new covenant relation to the church from everlasting: so, the goings forth of the Divine Word, who was God, were from everlasting; so that John the Baptist, you, my good Theophilus, and I, are perfectly one in this matter.
But before I go on with any more scriptures, it will be needful for me to give you a little cautionary counsel; for you will perceive that the doctrine of eternal generation, that doctrine which makes Christ, even as God, to be only the Son of God, you will perceive that this doctrine of theirs is altogether inferential; that those scriptures which simply and clearly indicate the Godhead and covenant relationship of the Saviour, are made use of by them to uphold their doctrine of eternal generation. But now I wish, whatever you do, to see that your inferences (for none of us can do without inferences) accord entirely with the premises to which those inferences belong; otherwise, you will pervert the holy scriptures; for instance, in relation to the question we have now in hand. When you come to a scripture, which beyond all possible dispute sets forth the complexity of Christ, you must see that your inference accords with that complexity; mere words will, if you do not look well to their meaning, lead you astray: and you must judge of their meaning by the subject to which the said words belong. For want of this kind of care men are everlastingly speaking and writing the veriest absurdities. Take for example Hebrews 1:2, “He hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son, by whom also he made the worlds.” Now this, as far as words are concerned, is the most feasible scripture which eternal generationists have on their side, and they very naturally infer, if God made the worlds by his Son, then there must have been a Son there to make the worlds by. This appears to be the natural inference to which the words lead. But the subject to which the words belong, determines, decides, and settles the matter quite in another way. Now the subject to which the words belong are the complex person and sacrificial work of Christ: our inference must accord with this. First, here is a person appointed heir of all things; can this be Christ as the mighty God? I trow not. As well may we talk of God the Father being appointed possessor of all things. Now this person (the Saviour) had, when the apostle thus wrote, by himself purged our sins. If then, God made the worlds by him, what are we to infer? Shall we infer that he was that holy thing, the Son of God, born of Mary before all worlds? Shall we infer that he purged our sins actually before the world was? Yes, this is the inference which the eternal generationist to be consistent with himself must draw. But this, of course, they dare not do. Wherein, then, lies the truth of the declaration, that God made the worlds by him who had purged our sins? Now there is but one inference which the subject to which the words belong will bear. Will it bear the inference that, as God, he was by eternal generation the Son of God? Well, just take this to be the meaning, then you at once deny that Sonship which the Holy Ghost hath declared that holy thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God. Also, you deny his work; for his work could be performed no more without manhood than without Divinity. Well, then, as this scripture will not bear the eternal generation inference, what is the inference that it will bear? It will bear this, and only this, that if God made the worlds by his Son, then his Son is something more than a Son, (for that holy thing called the Son of God did not exist when worlds were made,) he is God, the mighty God. Also, he was relatively, not merely officially, but the covenantly constituted Redeemer from everlasting. So the apostle, if men would but listen unto their Maker’s interpretation of his own word, explains the matter thus, “And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands; thou remainest; thou art the same; thy years shall not fail.” So is this Person who is now a Son something more than a Son. “Thy throne, O God is forever.” Now, my good Theophilus, which will, you take the doctrine of degenerated Divinity? into Sonship, or the exaltation of manhood into Sonship; or so take the doctrine of complexity of Christ, and rejoice that he who is now the Son of God is God also; or it would not be true that God made the worlds by him; and thus this scripture (Hebrews 1:2,) which the apostle intended, as he clearly explains farther on in this chapter, as an indication of the Godhead of Christ, is made use of by men to deny and put down that which the apostle in this same chapter asserts and sets up. Space forbids my trespassing farther this month but think not that I have yet done with this subject.
Pray then, my good Theophilus, for grace to keep you close to the complexity of Christ, to the work of Christ, and to the new covenant in its eternity and certainty, and you will have fellowship with the Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ.
So, believes,
Mr. Editor, May the Lord preserve us and all His dear people from presumptuous sins: for the riches of the full assurance of understanding is to acknowledge the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ. To comprehend it is impossible; but we are to hold the mystery of faith in a pure conscience.
About the year 1762, there were many disputes about the eternity of the Sonship of Christ, as appears by a book which was published and sold by Dilly, in the Poultry; and Mr. Romaine, at that time, appears to have considered the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as covenant offices; but, afterwards, as he advanced in years, he said he once thought he understood many things when he did not know his A B C! And I am sure, as a Greek scholar and a faithful servant, he never, towards the close of his life, supposed, much less believed, that the God of Truth would assume characters or names which were not true; for hypocrisy is a Greek word, and signifies an assumed character! Are not these sad disputes evidences of the Sardian state of the Church? When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? It will be as in the days of Noah.
Theophilus.
“The doctrine of the eternal Sonship has been much disputed by those, who, on both sides have the same views of the character of the Son of God. The common doctrine is, that Sonship with reference to Christ, expresses a relation in Deity, which consequently must be eternal. Some, however, who would view with the utmost horror anything that they should consider as tending to lower the character of our Lord, consider the phrase, Son of God, as applicable to Christ, only as he is God incarnate”.
“When, in vindication of the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, I wrote my reply to Dr. Drummond, I faltered on this point; and from excessive caution, I appeared not unwilling to give up the common doctrine as to the Sonship of Christ. Though I do not intend in this place to assign my reasons at length, yet I think it my duty publicly to announce that I now accede to the common doctrine. I cannot find any sufficient ground to hesitate on this question. The insuperable difficulties that some find in the supposition of the eternity of a relation which, as applied to men, implies precedency in time, of the one with respect to the other, are of no weight with me. It may be so with men, but the relation may not imply this with respect to God. We cannot grapple with the idea of eternity at all. The phrase “eternal decrees” is as great a mystery to me as the phrase “the eternal Son of God.” I can no more think of decrees or counsels without reference to time, than I can think of Sonship without the same reference. I can think of nothing as thought or done by God from eternity. It is alleged that the relation is never expressed in Scripture as being eternal. It is the Son of God, not the eternal Son of God. But this has no force. When Jesus is called God, we may know that he is eternal, without his being called the eternal God. If the term Son of God is used in its proper sense, there is no need of the epithet eternal to express the eternity of the relation.”
“But there is one thing that, to my mind, brings irresistible conviction of the eternity of this relation, which I will state for the consideration of my fellow-Christians who have espoused the opposite doctrine on this point. The Holy Spirit is said to be the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son. He has the same relation to each of these divine persons, as being the Spirit of each. Now this surely is an eternal relation, for the Holy Spirit did not become incarnate. But if the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son is an eternal relation, why is not the relation of the Father to the Son, and of the Son to the Father, an eternal relation? Can we understand how the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, or of the Son, more than we can understand how the Father is the Father of the Son, or the Son is the Son of the Father? It is certainly not in a figurative sense that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. But how the Father and the Son can have a Spirit personally distinct I from themselves, is as far beyond comprehension, as how the Father and Son can be Father and Son from eternity. Nothing can be more clear than that there is a characteristic distinction in the persons of the Godhead, and a mutual relation to each other. The relation of Father and Son is not more difficult to be understood, than the relation of the Spirit as the Spirit of Father and Son. This decides the question in my mind. I have every respect for some who have avowed their opposition to the doctrine which I here defend. But if I can lead them to view; the matter in the light in which I now view it, I am convinced it will be for their comfort and advantage. One thing I will press on them, with an earnestness to which I set no bounds. Whatever may be their conviction with respect to the nature of the relation here referred to, let them beware of speaking of the phrase Son of God as not implying Deity27. When I faltered on this doctrine, I was as clear as I am now that the phrase in question implies Godhead. In the reply referred to, this I think I may say, I have proved with irrefragable evidence, even while I hesitated to avow the doctrine of eternal Sonship. I will venture to risk the whole defense of the Deity of Christ on the Scripture use of this single phrase. Those; persons then, who decline employing this phrase in proof of the Deity of Christ, may boast of candour in argument, but it is candid ignorance.”
“This relation in Godhead is revealed to us, not for the gratification of our curiosity, or for barren speculation, but because of its connection with our relation to God in his Son. By our union with Christ, we become the sons of God. “Because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father.” The Spirit of the Father and of the Son dwells in us as
united to God. Every part of the character of God, as he is revealed in his Son, has a relation to something in our salvation. Redemption, instead of being an afterthought to make the best of a defeat sustained from Satan, was the eternal purpose of Jehovah, to manifest his glorious character.”
Mr. Editor, A great controversy is now raging among good men, regarding “the Sonship of the Saviour.” With a desire to pour a little oil on the troubled waters, I have copied an excellent article, written by the late learned Dr. Carson, in his work entitled, “The Knowledge of Jesus the most Excellent of the Sciences,” a work published in the year 1839, but which is now out of print. Expecting that you will give a place in your columns to this piece, and praying that we may all be led by the Spirit to love one another, I am, yours’s truly, Coleraine. T. W. Mediturst.
[We were in Yorkshire some time since; and were there most painfully convinced again of the deadly, cruel, and deeply injurious spirit which is walking through our churches; and is withering, the spirits of poor Zion to a fearful extent. Under the influence of the pain we then experienced, we promised to insert the following epistle; because we are fully persuaded Mr. Crowther is an honourable gentleman; a sincere Christian; and a valuable minister of the gospel. Falsely to stab his reputation; to misrepresent his meaning; and thus to limit his usefulness, is dangerous work, let who will be employed in it; we. may differ from, him in some things; but purely, simply, and solely upon the ground of brotherly love and charity, we must not be silent spectators of the dark designs of Satan to scatter and wound the sheep. We are determined not to be partial toward the brethren in this controversy. We shall abide by our own convictions, shall, by God’s help, speak the truth as revealed in our own souls; and aim at the restoration of Christian unity and brotherly affection. Ed.]
Me. Editor. By inserting the following remarks you will oblige a friend.
A controversy which is more than a thousand years old, has been brought upon the platform again, with its fierce and sturdy combatants, concerning the “Eternal generation of the Son of God.” In former ages the antagonists fought until they wounded and wearied one another and then fell on sleep, and the controversy with them has also slumbered in many places; but only to awake again and arouse new combatants to fight the same battle over again, and then fall asleep as their predecessors have done before them.
It is right and proper that we should “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.” But when they contend angrily and bitterly, as popes and tyrants one against another (especially with brethren) to wound, defame, and as it were to slaughter one another, we know that such wisdom is from beneath and not from above. It is the finest sport the devil has upon earth, to see brethren fight and wound one another to the quick It is one of his wiles, to divide, and then destroy; and if he cannot destroy eternal life in the saints of God, he will sometimes destroy their present comforts and peace one with another. Brethren, this is not of the Spirit of God. It is among the works of darkness “For he that hateth his brother, is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.” But he that loveth his brother abideth in light, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him.
Controversy, if carried on in brotherly love, and among one another, for edification and with a view to the helping one another’s faith, is profitable; but when only striving for the mastery, or to have dominion over one another’s faith, in an arbitrary way, it is popish and contemptible. We are instructed to call no man master over our faith and conscience, for one is our Master even Christ, and it is to our own Master we stand or fall. He has promised to hold us up, and I had rather look to him for his helping hand, than to any one of the great master parsons of the day who would sit as little minion popes in their different circles, saying (in effect) Look on Me, hear My words, and obey My authority; if not, your name will be erased from the wrapper of my periodical, and then you know the consequence.
Now, because our worthy friend and beloved brother C-----r cannot believe, and dare not preach the creeds of men, Mr. P------t, rather than debating the matter with his friend in a Christian spirit, comes upon the platform with his Herculean club in hand to knock him down at one blow, or flourishing his pen dipped in gall, to influence a certain circle with the same; who for fear of consequences keep their eyes-on him, without daring to search the word of God, and think for themselves.
Could we believe Mr. C------r to be an Arian or Socinian, as Mr. P------t apparently would insinuate, we should be amongst the first to oppose those errors, and to contend with him earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints: but it is certain that he holds no such erroneous notions. He ably and faithfully preaches what he firmly believes; viz. The eternal unity of the incomprehensible essence or nature of Jehovah, without presuming to explain or describe the mode of his divine eternal existence, which neither angels or men will ever comprehend, either in this world or in that which is to come; for in this respect God will be “past finding out” to all eternity; and all those who have attempted to do it, have only “darkened counsel by words without knowledge,” confounded themselves, and left others in confusion. What Mr. C. contends for is simply this, that he cannot believe in, and dare not preach, a derived or begotten God. Who can, and who dare? Whoever does so, they must receive it from the precepts and creeds of men, and not from the scriptures of truth, the only unpolluted fountain of wisdom, truth, and knowledge.
We do believe that the incomprehensible THREE ARE ONE in the Divine eternal essence; from everlasting to everlasting God; One Lord, without attempting to explain the mode of his eternal subsistence; yet in the opening and developing of the everlasting covenant of grace to ruined man, each Person is spoken of as GOD; essentially GOD; and in the human nature of Christ, born of the Virgin, became visible to man in One Lord Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Beyond the covenant we dare not venture; behind it we would not intrude, and those who do, trespass upon forbidden ground, and perpetrate an act of daring speculation, and awful presumption. Dendrometry 29:29.
It is both unfair and cruel of Mr. P. to charge Mr. C. withholding and preaching notions which his soul loathes and abhors; and willfully to wrest and twist his words into that which everybody well knows he never intended; to represent him as an Arian, or a heretic amongst the little circle of tiny-minded men, who seem to be looking more to Mr. P. than to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the word of God.
Nevertheless, there are some amongst Mr. P’s. own fraternity, who greatly respect him, (we amongst them) who cannot, and will not be hoodwinked, to become servile panderers to him in all that he says as law, like the Papists, who believe and receive the canon laws of their Pope, without searching the scriptures for themselves. But some others, who may be under great fears of his frowns and disapprobation, appear to have given up themselves to, and received their faith from him, saying, “My views are in unison with Mr. P. as expressed in the Gospel Standard of this month, (June, I860); but I was quite ignorant of the doctrine until it was opened up in his able review of Mr. C’s. sermon, and his article on the letter by J. A. Jones.” Here you perceive that Mr. P. is an oracle to some minds, who, when conversing upon the disputed point, are kindly asked to take up the Bible and read certain portions, angrily push that sacred book aside, and declare “It is no use, I believe as Mr. P. believes.” We believe as Mr. P. believes upon most points, but really cannot either believe or receive all that he has written in his contradictory reviews on the subject of eternal generation. Hear now the pompous expressions of one of his little-minded men against Mr. C., who confesses that he was ignorant of the subject until he had read Mr. P’s. review: by the strength of which he instantly became such a champion, that he says, “I challenge Mr. C., and all the fraternity in single combat.” “I have had three hours engagement with him; I have stormed the citadel, with its stronghold, Mr. C., and now I think all the rest of the little fry I may leave.” There is a champion for you! But that is not all: it is a sorry thing that Mr. F. could not leave Mr. C. without a cowardly blow, affirming that Mr. C. had said to him that “the Holy Ghost begat the Divine nature, or Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of the Virgin, and that she actually was the mother of God” a statement Mr. F. well knows to be utterly false, for Mr. C. believes no such absurd popish dogma. The statement was a silly inference drawn by Mr. F. himself in conversation, and then he has the meanness to attempt to father it upon Mr. C., who he well knows indignantly and instantly repudiated it.
O what a lamentable thing it is that those who would be great men, and leaders of the people, cause them to err by making strife and divisions among the churches and people of God, when there is no real cause for it, unless it be in the pride, envy, and jealousy of the great men, who make the divisions, and then cry out “Oh what a sad state the churches are in.” “Only by pride cometh contention.”
Our solemn advice to both ministers and churches is to look less to great men and more to the Lord and his holy word, for wisdom, instruction, and comfort. “Trust ye not in a friend; put no confidence in a guide; therefore, I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation.”
Aug. 6th 1860. J. Verity.
Jan. 23, 1861.
[We feel bound to state that this proposition has come from our brother, James Wells, without the least thought, hint, or suggestion on our part. We sincerely thank him for his kindness. Some suggestions have been forwarded. One before us now is to this effect: That public meetings be holden in different parts where pastors and people are favourable, and that the Editor there give a full history of the rise and present position of the Vessel; and that all contributions be placed in the hands of Mr. James Wells, until the period can be fixed for the accomplishment of the proposition.” We only announce the suggestion. A preliminary meeting will be holden in Unicorn Yard Chapel, on Tuesday, Feb. 12, to which all friends are invited. Tea at 5. Ed]
My Good Theophilus,
Having received from the Editor of the Vessel a hint that this controversy is unprofitable to the readers of the Vessel, and as the Vessel ought to be under the entire control of its Editor, who for so many years has so successfully conducted the same, and has thus so well established the fact of his ability as Editor, I hold that those who write therein, after having had reasonable opportunity to speak, ought not either to be offended or complain if the Editor step in and change the subject. There are two things at which every writer ought to aim, the good of the souls of men, and the prosperity of the Vessel. “Whenever, therefore, in the judgment of the Editor, impediments to these ends are unnecessarily thrown in, it is for the Editor to use his authority; and that the Editor of the Vessel has been and is to the uttermost liberal to us all we cannot deny; and if he (as he often does) sometimes submit to us against his own feeling, we must also, as a matter of right, sometimes quietly submit to him. I had much more to say, my good Theophilus, to you upon the Sonship of the Saviour, and thought I should go quietly on and have my say out, but have no right to claim space in the Vessel for that which readers do not profit by, as there are plenty of other ways of sending forth the same truths; so this letter, I suppose, will close, at least in this form, my remarks upon the Sonship of the Saviour. I can say that the more I search the Scriptures, the further I am removed from the heathen fable of eternal generation. Was there ever under heaven such a piece of consummate delusion as is contained in a piece in Feb. Vessel, by the late Dr. Carson, and sent to the Vessel by Mr. Medhurst? Just look at it. It is this: that if the Holy Spirit be the Spirit of the Son, then that relation must be eternal. Was ever anything by any learned Doctor more preposterous than such reasoning. The Holy Spirit was given to the Son of God, and so there was when the Holy Spirit was not given, and yet the Doctor says that relation is eternal. If the Doctor had said the eternal three Divine Persons are essentially and eternally one, we could have understood him, but when he confounds essential existence with gospel relationship, we are deluded. The Holy Spirit could not be given to Christ as God, but only as the Son of God. “This is my beloved Son,” said the Father at Jordan, and at which time the Holy Spirit, in visible form, rested upon God’s beloved Son. But, says the doctor, was not the Holy Spirit’s relation to the Father eternal? Well, good doctor, what do you mean? If you mean God the Father in his essential essence as God, we answer, without hesitation, that the eternal three are essentially and originally one, but if you mean the Father as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, then we answer that this relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father is eternal only in the same sense that the human nature of Christ is eternal, namely, in God’s eternal purpose and counsel as the Lamb who was verily foreordained before the foundation of the world. Beware, my good Theophilus, though I may not speak to you again upon this subject, beware of this piece of heathenism, this eternal generation system. It is the spirit of error, it is a denial both of the proper Sonship and of the Godhead of Christ.
I cannot close this short letter without just a word upon the opening address of the Gospel Standard of this year 1861. The question (says that address, page 10), now really is whether Jesus Christ be the Son of God or not. So says the said address. I could hardly believe my own eyes. What, said I to myself, is the Editor of the Standard so utterly unacquainted with the sentiments of his opponents as to charge them with questioning whether Jesus Christ be the Son of God? or does he delight in deluding his followers by wholesale? or is his cause so bad that he is obliged, in order to gain the victory, to resort to a wicked and willful falsehood? or does he not mean all he says? or was that sentence an oversight? I must leave it and see if he treat us a little more kindly as he goes on. Ah, no, worse and worse. O you poor deluded men who dare to read the Vessel, or anything else besides the Standard, and think for yourselves, hear what the Standard saith: “We,” not editorial we merely, but the whole of the believing family, that is, I suppose, the whole family of eternal generation believers, “we have life, and blessedness, and fellowship; we can see the truth,” &c., &c.; but you who dare to believe that God, not the Son of God, but God, was manifested in the flesh, and that that holy thing born at Bethlehem was the Son of God; that he who was baptized in Jordan was the Son of God; that he who was transfigured was the Son of Ged; and was transfigured was the Son of God; and I truly this was the Son of God, and that that the Centurion was right when he said, truly this was the Son of God, and that we have an high priest entered into the heavens, even Jesus, the Son of God, you who believe this, the Standard (dare you question such authority?) assures you that you are walking in darkness and error; that you know not that only begotten Son who is full of grace and truth; that you have no life; that you are blind, and of a bad and bitter spirit. Well, now, I think, my good Theophilus, it was time I left off writing, for you see the Standard sets us down as unconverted men; so, of course, as the Standard believing family have all the life, and light, and truth, and power, on their side, they are, of course, planting churches all over the land, raising up especially among the teeming populations of the north of England large churches, thousands being plucked as brands from the burning. It must be heaven, to hear one of their ministers preach; their success everywhere must be astounding! Would that I knew where it was, I would go and see; only, alas, the Standard assures us that we cannot see where they are. Well, there may be some truth in this, but they can see where we are. Well, then, as they have all the savour, and the life, and the light, we hope they will pray for us, unless they deem that we are too far gone. Well, now, as I have hinted, it is quite time for dead things to leave off talking; and I hope we are not taking false comfort from the notion (ah, notion again) that the Standard people are throughout the land doing immense good, and when I see this I will believe every word they say about their superior light, and savour, and power, and fellowship; yet I will not positively promise to believe that all the Vessel readers, and that all the Herald readers are dead in trespasses and in sins. I will say I have met with some good Christians among the Standard people, and I have met with some good Christians among those who do not subscribe to the Standard. This may seem impossible, but it is a truth. But I forget I am blind and unable to judge. This, of course, is very galling, and so saith the above address of the Standard that its remarks are to be galling to its opponents. Why, of course, they are. Is it not galling to be cut off from all hope and help? Why, of course, it is galling to be so put down that one dares hardly to sign oneself even,
“The Reviewer Reviewed Again; or, Strictures on Mr. Philpot and the Doctrine of Christ’s Sonship by Eternal Generation,”28 &o. By W. Palmer, Homerton. London; Houlston and Wright, 65, Paternoster row. 1860.”
How beautiful that exhortation of Paul to the Ephesians, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you with all malice; and be ye kind one to another; tender-hearted; forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you.” Yes, that is most delightful! And when the Church of Christ, and the ministers of Christ, and all true believers in Christ, get as far into Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians as the end of this fourth chapter which we have quoted, then will the exclamation break out: again, “How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” Then will the daughter of Zion verify the oft-repeated, prophetic anthem, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”
This excellent and very large prophecy of the exalted estate unto which the gospel, ministry shall arrive, stands in great contrast to all we at present see and hear of the men who are reckoned as leaders of the dispensation in which we live! The very existence of such a book as this “Reviewer Reviewed Again” leads us at once to a double conviction of a most painful kind: 1. That the ministers of Christ are fearfully at variance; they are not like a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariot; they are not striving together; but they are rending and tearing poor Zion into a thousand divisions and doing ill service to their Master. 2. It is also evident that they are reaching after some degree of supposed pre-eminency in Divine mysteries which, in their imperfect state, they will not attain unto.
Is not some strange spirit hereby diverting them from their one great mission, even that of preaching the Gospel? Instead of their eyes, their hearts and their consecrated powers all being turned towards their follow-men, as was Paul’s when he said, “If ty any means I may save some,” they are occupying their present time, and their given talents, to the publication of one another’s infirmities, unhappy tendencies, and unbecoming partialities. Oh! that we had the power to put an end to this strife and debate, and of instrumentally uniting the living servants’ of the Lord in one grand gospel union, all-aiming at one great object, the increase and consummation of the building of the house of mercy!
We are determined to condemn neither Mr. Philpot nor Mr. William Palmer: they are fathers in the Christian Church in this day; they are ministers of Christ’s gospel; they are among those to whom, by and bye (we hope and must believe), the Lord will say, “Well done, good and faithful servants they have been a blessing to Zion in their different spheres; they are men of considerable mental and' ministerial powers; yea, they are brethren in Christ, and in Him by faith they live, for Him they labour, to Him they go in earnest prayers, and with Hm they expect to dwell forever and forever. They have their different makes, their opposite modes, their varied manners; but, in all the essential glories of the gospel, we must think their minds are one. How noble it would be if this dignified J. C. Philpot, this giant-minded William Palmer, with the elastic and energetic James Wells, the sober-minded; long-headed William Crowther, and others whom we might name, if they could all be formed into one united army, all merging petty differences, and all concentrating their bountiful gifts in one work, the unfolding the way of life to their dying fellow-men! Aye, it would be a high and happy day indeed could this be seen; but the poet’s words will press themselves upon us here,
“God mores in a mysterious way
His wonders' to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.”
“The Reviewer Reviewed Again” is, beyond all question, a powerful pamphlet. The brains and the books of ages and of generations have been searched and sifted, and sentences suited to the author’s views have been extracted. The thoughts and the testimonies of many of the Lord’s servants, of both ancient and modern times, are given; Mr. Philpot’s reviews have undergone the severest examination; and a pamphlet, of some seventy-two pages29, as full of argument and of reasoning as an egg is full of meat, is the result.
We have no doubt but that this book will shake the faith of many who are unstable, and whose souls are not vitally united to Jesus Christ,30 of whom Moses spake when he said, “The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath arc the everlasting arms” (upon which beautiful words Trapp gives the Hebrew thus: “The God of Antiquity, that Ancient of Days, that Rock of Ages, who is before all things, and by whom all things consist; who is the first and the last, and beside whom there is no God”. But our firm conviction is, that where God the Holy Ghost hath revealed the Person of Gon’s Eternal Son in the wounded heart and quickened soul of an elect vessel of mercy, not all the arguments nor reasonings in this world can ever remove from such a soul that Jesus Christ is the King Eternal, immortal: (in His Deity and Eternity) invisible, the only wise God, to whom be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. Mr. William Palmer has certainly bestowed great pains upon this work, and as a talented critique, it is masterly and full of information; but we are grieved that such a book should exist at all, not that we fear the light, but because we know neither Mr. Philpot nor Mr. Palmer can define this mystery. We must here close for the present.
A LETTER ADDRESSED TO MR. JOHN KERSHAW BY THE BAPTIST CHURCH AT ZOAB CHAPEL, LONDON, AND MR. KERSHAW’S SUBSEQUENT DISSOLUTION OF THAT CHURCH. E.V. June 1861 Pages 145-147
TO THE EDITOR OF THE EARTHEN VESSEL.
Dear Brother, As the Vessel is the only periodical commanding a large circulation amongst the churches of truth to which we have access, may we, being a portion of the Church at Zoar Chapel, beg the favour of your publishing the following letter addressed to Mr. Kershaw by us, previous to his commencing to supply our pulpit this month, with a few of the particulars of our last Churchmeeting: “London, April 30th, 1861.
“Dear Friend and Brother, At our Church-meeting, held on Wednesday evening, April 17th, it was proposed, after we had vainly attempted to settle the business then before the Church, that the meeting be adjourned to Wednesday. May 8th, and that you be desired by the Deacons to preside at the adjourned meeting; but we, whose names are hereunto attached (twenty- four members and one Deacon), think that previous to your coming, we as members of the Church at Zoar, ought to give you an outline of the business that will be brought before you, and the position in which we are placed by the unchristian conduct and overbearing spirit of Mr. Lake when conducting the business of the Church.
“We will, in the first place, give you a few particulars of the three last Church meetings we have held, for your consideration. The first, on Dec. 11th, when brother Gladwin, ‘a private member,’ proposed the resolution, since sent you by Mr. Lake, and published in the Gospel Standard, but the Church not being aware of his intentions, were taken by surprise, and there being no time allowed to discuss its merit, it was carried, thirty voting for it, and only two against it; the others remaining neutral. It was then proposed that a copy of the resolution containing their newly adopted views of faith, should be sent to each of the ministers supplying our pulpit, but to no one else; and instead of complying with their own arrangement, not to make it public, two of the Deacons, Messrs. Lake and Marnack had a quantity printed, and placed them in the pews and galleries of the chapel, for the use of the congregation, thereby inviting them to discuss the business of the Church. As we do not approve of their newly adopted faith, nor Mr. Lake’s violation of the privilege of his office, we issued a printed document, containing our views of faith, and which we believe to be in accordance with the revealed word of God and the experience of his family, a copy of which we now enclose for your perusal.
On January 11th, our quarterly Church meeting was held, when it was proposed to confirm the proceedings of the former one, held on the 11th Dec., and for that purpose Mr. Lake had thirteen letters from different ministers, which he read, to confirm them in their new views, and by intimidating the members by compelling each that were opposed to them to give their names, refusing to take a show of hands, and making use of the denunciations of Mr. Gladwin, he positively asserting that they were trampling underfoot the Son of God, committing blasphemy, and denying the Holy Ghost, daring them at their peril to hold up their hands against it. They succeeded, and gained a majority of eight, twenty-nine voting for, and twenty-one against the resolution; many being so grieved with the treatment they received, that they quietly walked out without voting. “On the 17th of this month our usual quarterly meeting was held, when it was proposed by Mr. Gladwin and sanctioned by the two Deacons before-named, that the twenty-one members who voted against their faith should be immediately withdrawn from, and that they be not allowed to have a vote or permitted to raise their voice against such a flagrant act of injustice, notwithstanding they have enjoyed every privilege of Church membership until the present time.
“In opposition to Mr. Gladwin’s proposition, it was proposed in the shape of an amendment, that for the future the Church and not the Deacons exclusively, should have the choice of all ministers to supply the pulpit, and that Mr. Crowther be desired to fulfil his engagement, and that he be invited to fill the next vacancy. Now, brother Kershaw, you know that amendments take precedence over an original motion; but Mr. Lake, being chairman, refused to put it to the meeting, and we objected to their motion being put first; consequently, the meeting was adjourned, as before stated, until you come. We are willing to stand or fall by our amendment, and all we want you to do is to preside and act impartially in the fear of God between both parties, seeing justice done to both.
“We now wish to give you a brief outline of our objections to their new views, that you may have some idea of the ground we stand upon. First, it was not according to Church order for a private member to bring a proposition into the Church to alter any views of faith, or reverse the rules of the Church, without the consent of the deacons, thereby taking the Church by surprise and introducing a new faith to the Church which has not a ‘Thus saith the Lord’ for its authority. Secondly, we consider it a great presumption and a violation of the office of deacon for Mr. Lake to circulate such a document as their proposition amongst the congregation, in opposition to the express wishes of the Church. Thirdly, Mr. Gladwin said it is revealed to their souls by the Holy Ghost and in the written word of God, but he has not told us where to find it in the written word, neither has he told us where it is recorded in the word of truth that our glorious Christ ever was the Internal Son of God in his Divine nature, independent of his bride, the Church; but we believe Mr. Philpot’s Gospel Standard was the bright luminary that enlightened his mind, and not the unerring word of divine truth. If the Sonship of our dear Almighty Lord stands in his Divine nature as the only true and proper Son, exclusive of his human nature, does it not make him beneath the Father, instead of equal with him as self-existent in the one incomprehensible Jehovah? But we believe him to be self-existent and eternal, equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost; and that he was the first-born head and representative of his Church in the eternal covenant of grace, and that all the endearing names and characters that he bears is for the comfort and encouragement of his dear people ; but the incarnate mystery of our dear Lord we wish to leave with our gracious God, to whom it belongs; but Mr. Gladwin, borrowing the language of Dr. Watts, says that our precious Christ sits at his Father’s right hand, clothed in a body like our own; but the word of eternal truth says that our bodies shall be changed like unto his glorious body, and that by the mighty power of our God. Our glorious Christ has been made too endearingly precious to our souls for us to speak lightly of him and his precious person, and we believe he has made you too tender in his fear to sell us for thirty pieces of silver, to please the fancies of a would-be oracle in the position of an editor. Hoping you will give this your prayerful consideration, and that the dear Lord may guide you by his fear to act in accordance with his revealed truth, “We remain, dear Brother,
“Yours’s in the bonds of the gospel,”
“A Past of the Church at Zoar Chapel, London.”
[The foregoing letter was received by Mr. Kershaw with twenty-five signatures.]
On Friday evening, May 10th, the Church meeting was held, Mr. Kershaw not being able to attend on the Wednesday evening, as was agreed at the meeting held on the 17th of April. On this occasion Mr. Kershaw presided and commenced the business by an address to the Church, directing his remarks most pointedly at us, comparing us to several parties who had at different times left the Church, asserting that none had ever prospered. He then read portions of several hymns and two or three portions of God’s word, commenting as he read, and putting his own constructions so as to suit the views of our opponents, and which we did not consider in accordance with our views as recorded in the unerring word of truth. It was then proposed by Mr. Brown, a private member, one of our opponents, that no minister be allowed to enter the pulpit at Zoar, and that no deacon hold office in the Church, nor any person be allowed to remain a member, that did not entirely agree with the proposition as it was published in the Gospel Standard in January last. In opposition to that we proposed as an amendment, that the pulpit be kept open to all the ministers that had supplied for us, and that Mr. Crowther be desired to fulfil his engagement, and that he be invited to supply us in turn with all the other ministers, and that no reference be made to the controversy, so that none should be excluded on that ground, that peace may be restored, and the controversy cease amongst us. Our amendment was read to the Church three times by desire of Mr. Kershaw, when he called for a show of hands, and when counted forty-four were held up for us out of seventy-three members present, giving us a majority of fifteen. Mr. Kershaw, seeing the majority was against him, told us we did not know what we were doing, when one and all of us, male and female, assured him we did; but he persisted that we did not. We then called upon him to put their proposition, but instead of doing so he shouted out that all was done wrong, and that as Chairman he would dissolve the Church. Against such a violent act of injustice we strongly protested and being in the majority we expected to be listened to, when we were told by Mr. Brown that if we had double the number on our side, it would avail us nothing, for if we did not choose to submit to their proposition the doors would be locked against us. One more circumstance we wish to name is this. An influential female friend that gave us great encouragement at the commencement of the controversy, promising us to stand by us, telling us that the chapel should not be taken from us, at the same time expressing a hope that the Lord would be with us; she was asked by one of the deacons for a note from her to read to the Church, expressing what we have stated above, she replied, “A verbal message is sufficient,” at the same time stating that if Mr. Crowther was not admitted into that pulpit, if he came to London, she would hear him elsewhere. Two witnesses were present, members of the Church, who heard the message given to the deacon to convey to the Church, but she now denies ever giving the message; consequently, the deacon named is branded as a liar by the opposing party. This contention and confusion has been introduced amongst us through the doctrine of Eternal Generation, advocated in The Gospel Standard (and not from the Bible), and for our opposing it we are now unceremoniously turned out of the Church where some of us have been members for twenty years. We now believe the same as we always have believed, in the Eternal Deity of our glorious Christ, believing him to be the Son of God; and for this we are persecuted, called servants and vipers, and falsely accused of wishing to introduce Arianism and Socinianism to the Church, Mr. Kershaw declaring we wanted a fresh system of things. We hope that every Particular Baptist Minister in the kingdom, and the deacons of Baptist Churches, will peruse these lines, and communicate to you, dear Editor, their views of the treatment we have received from Mr. Kershaw, assisted by the minority of the friends at Zoar, for we believe there is not another Baptist Minister in the kingdom that professes to preach a Free Grace Gospel, would act as he has done. On Lord’s-day last, Mr. Kershaw announced from the pulpit, that those that had left had withdrawn themselves, which statement is in direct opposition to his assertion at the Church meeting, when he declared the Church dissolved, thereby turning us all out.
Signed on behalf of our brethren and sisters,
Samuel Mills, Deacon,
Abraham Frey, Member.
Samuel Bayley, Member.
S. Bayley, Member.
William Payment, Member.
John Clarke.
Thomas Cooper.
London, May 24th, 1861.
[We cannot but express the deep regret we feel at the most unscriptural and unwarrantable conduct as related above. For many years we have loved and esteemed Mr. Kershaw; but how he could lend himself to an act so cruel and un-Christlike we cannot understand but upon one principle. We always feel bound to take the side of the oppressed and injured;31 therefore, to call up the sympathies and prayers of the real Christian people in our Churches on behalf of the persecuted out-casts from Zoar, we give the above this month. Fuller particulars and comments in our next. Ed.]
(In relation to the above: July 1861 page 190)
ZOAR CHAPEL,
GREAT ALIE STREET.
We have received a letter “Signed on behalf, and by the authority, of the Deacons,” by “D. Gladwin, Secretary,” giving another account of the unhappy circumstances connected with the dissolution, and re-formation of the church in that place. The letter is too long and came too late to be inserted this month; but there are one or two plain facts which we are bound to give; that the whole letter should appear in our pages appears to us, at the present, unnecessary; but we shall not shrink from rendering to the present church all that is honourable, righteous, and just.
One painful feature in the account, is the turbulent and disorderly spirit exhibited by many of the members at the different church meetings. This evidently led to the necessity for such a course as otherwise might have been avoided. It is due to Mr. Kershaw to state, that at the meeting of Friday evening, May 10th, he (as stated in the letter before us) “addressed them as a father would his children” but, instead of peace and harmony resulting, such confusion followed, as led to thirty-nine members (out of seventy- three present) voting for the dissolution of the church. The names of those thirty-nine are now in writing before us; consequently, it was by a majority of the members present that the church was dissolved. This is a great fact hitherto unknown to us. The church has been dissolved; the members who have left have opened another place, they have commenced another cause: the members who remained in Zoar have been formed into a new church. It has been a most solemn and painful sundering of hearts and connections; but is it Christ-like or comely now to be railing one against another? Certainly not. We would say to each party, remember your position, your profession, and that very soon your earthly pilgrimage, with all its cares and sorrows, will come to an end. Let each party, each church, seek most earnestly to maintain the truth as it is in Jesus, to live and to love as brethren, and instrumentally aim to extend the kingdom of Him whom to know is life eternal32.
Since the above was written, we have had interviews with several persons on both sides; and letters have been received from individuals who are deeply interested. We are not frightened by any threat, nor do we desire, for one moment, to countenance any erroneous spirit in anyone. We are not the organ of either party. We have simply allowed the friends who are separated, to state their case; and we only have further to add, that the majority, by shew of hands, was declared to be on the side of Mr. Mills, and those he represented. After this the matter, we think, should have closed. Mr. Mills, as one deacon of the church, protested against all that was afterwards done, as being illegal. A paper is now before us, containing the names of forty-four persons, with their addresses; and the number of years they had been members of Zoar; forty-one of these forty-four formed part of those who were present on that unhappy evening. These forty-four came from Zoar, and now form the new church at Zetland-hall, Goodman’s Fields, to whom Mr. Crowther preached on Sunday, June 16th, 1861. Others are seeking union with them. We again say, let neither party manifest an unbecoming spirit. Old Zoar Chapel has been the birth-place and the banqueting-house of many precious souls. God has been in her midst. Surely, then, each party have great cause to be humbled down at the footstool of mercy, seeking to know why this painful event hath befallen them. We have no motive, but to defend and to declare the truth33, as instruments in the hands of a just and righteous God.
Such is the title of a recent work by the fertile pen of Mr. Palmer, of Homerton.
Looking at this production of Mr. Palmer’s as a whole, it is a learned and masterly performance. He is like a viper fastening upon Mr. Philpot’s strictures on the eternal Sonship; and if Mr. Philpot can shake off this viper without harm, as easily as Paul did that which fastened upon his hand, he will do well; hut that I fear is impossible. Mr. Philpot has used argument, logic, and reason in support of his hypothesis; and Mr. Palmer follows him through the whole of his reasoning, dissecting and anatomizing it, step by step, and bit by bit, till he makes both Mr. Philpot and his theory, look perfectly ridiculous. All previous writers on this subject are thrown quite into the shade by this learned and masterly performance; and we should certainly say, if the subject could be elucidated and defeated by logic, Mr. Palmer has by this last and crowning work of his, set that matter for ever at rest.
It would be useless for either Mr. Philpot or any other man to follow Mr. Palmer, to prove his logic incorrect. But, admitting this, the point at issue stands just as it did before all these reverend divines meddled with it. My faith is not in the least shaken by what Mr. Palmer, or any other man has written upon the subject, which is simply this, that Jesus Christ was the Son of God; not in purpose and covenant only, but actually and really, before he took upon him the human nature in the womb of the virgin. He was God’s true and proper Son before his Father sent him into the world; how, when, and by what means we have nothing to do with. It is not the province of logic to be employed upon this mysterious, incomprehensible subject. And Mr. Palmer’s work, if it accomplished nothing more, must certainly convince Mr. Philpot that he was wrong, decidedly wrong (not in holding the doctrine of eternal Sonship), but in employing logic and human reason to explain and enforce what can never be explained and elucidated by it. Mr. Philpot’s tenet is still believed by thousands and tens of thousands of God’s simple children; but his long chain of argument upon it, and his severe reflections upon those who do not see with him, are not, and cannot be so universally approved of. It is these which have done so much mischief, and led to such fearful results; as we have one instance, out of many, in the recent Zoar Case.
It appears from the work of Mr. Palmer, that the doctrine of Divine Sonship, is most profound and incomprehensible; that good and great men, such as Goodwin, Owen, Gill, and Hawker, have materially differed in their views, and expositions of this great subject; differed not only from each other, but each from himself; and that Mr. Philpot in endeavoring to explain what they left a mystery, has mystified himself; and, strange to say, has said and unsaid35.
This is a most sarcastic and cutting book of Mr. Palmer’s; and we should pity the man who comes under such severe criticisms;36 but when good and useful men leave their ordinary and peaceful employ of feeding the sheep, to cut, and maim, and reproach those who do not come up to their standard, or see with their eyes, it is no wonder that others, and especially those who have formerly felt the force of their lash, should turn round upon them with such severity of criticism and asperity of prejudice, as is but too manifest in the “Reviewer Reviewed.” In conclusion: let us who are little folk, be glad of our lowly position and attainments; let us learn from all these volley of shot flying over our heads, that it is better to be an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud; and that we exemplify true Christianity far more by loving all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, than by biting and devouring one another.37
Thomas S.
Trowbridge.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE EARTHEN VESSEL. Nov. 1, 1861 pages 277-279
[Editor Note: It is with some reluctance that I include this absolute nonsense from “NEMO.” Who apparently is ashamed to reveal his identity. From what he writes he appears to be some sort on non-Christian intellectual. Its insertion in the Vessel at so late a date is inexcusable.
Especially so after James Wells was so much earlier denied the right to defend himself. However, as Banks has forced it into public prominence, I feel compelled to add it in this document. Richard C. Schadle]
Sir, Having seen the controversy on the Sonship of Christ in your pages, and believing that Mr. Wells has not yet understood revealed truth on this question, I under-take to reply to his Epistles to Theophilus on this subject. I agree with one statement he made in your number for October, 1860. It is this: “To suppress all discussion, and all controversy upon the subject, is to take things for granted, whether we are convinced of their truthfulness or not. Truth never shrinks from investigation.” In keeping with these sentiments, I investigate what he has written against what is termed the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ. Strictly speaking, that phrase is not sufficiently expressive of what is meant, because something may be eternal without being divine, though eternity before time is sought to be conveyed. But many phrases of this description, which have come into common use among theologians, relate more to human conceptions of things than to the nature of the things themselves. In a strict sense, there is no such abstract entity as eternity, independent of animate or spiritual existences. It is a relative term. It is true of God essentially, that a thousand years is as one day to him. The philosophy of the mode, the HOW, of such a fact, is not known. The real subject of controversy is, whether Christ is related to God the Father, as a Son, in an essential sense, as God; whether his Sonship belongs to the mode of his being in the Godhead; and that he would have been a Son in this sense, had there been no creation, no providence, no redemption.
The mode of investigating this question, which is consistent with the infallibility of the Bible as the revealed mind of God, is to find out what that book states about the question. And if it makes a statement of a fact, which is apparently contradictory, it is the duty of a finite intellect to believe it, if it is clearly understood, according to the acknowledged laws of interpretation. It is the practice of Socinians and infidels to raise objections against the truth, from some self-contradiction which human reason imagines it to contain. In that very way, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the incarnation of Christ, are repudiated by Socinians; and the miracles of Christ by infidels. And in this way Mr. Wells rejects the Divine Sonship of Christ. And as he has partly appealed to the laws of Biblical interpretation, and partly to the reason of things in themselves, I will moot his arguments in those two senses. He says, in the number already alluded to, “Here lies the mighty difference between these two doctrines; the one making an original difference between the Three Persons: there is, according to this doctrine, a natural and original difference in the Persons of the Godhead; but the other teaches that there is no original difference in the Persons of the Godhead.” If we look at the meaning of these words by the fair rules of syllogism38,39, we find Mr. Wells a disbeliever in the doctrine of the Trinity40. For that doctrine involves “a natural and original” personal “difference” in the Godhead. The doctrine that there is no such difference in God is Unitarianism. And if the doctrine of the Trinity necessarily involves the personal difference, in the sense that one person is naturally and originally not the other person; then it follows that that difference, for aught we know by any process of reasoning to the contrary, may involve the other difference, that the Father is Father naturally and originally, and is thus different from his Son, who is also Son naturally and originally. Thus, the reasoning of Mr. Wells is absurd and selfcontradictory, except as a Socinian logic. In your number for last November, he says that the doctrine of the essential Sonship of Christ, “carries in it a self-contradiction, and an impossibility in the nature of things.” Before he can avow this as a fact, he must know the nature of things, by such a minute analysis that no philosopher has ever assumed to have made. Dr. Odling, the professor of chemistry in Guy’s Hospital, a few weeks ago, in a philosophical lecture which he delivered there, stated that what were called the laws of nature were only the theories of men’s conceptions. No man has ever understood the nature of things per se. And if this is true of the nature of creation, how much more must it be true of the nature of God? And yet Mr. Wells asserts the eternal Sonship of Christ to be an impossibility. I hesitate not to call this a presumption which is totally inconsistent with reason, and with revelation in its declarations concerning the incomprehensibility of God. “Canst thou, by searching, find out God?” Mr. Wells says: “If the Sonship were begotten, then there was when he was not begotten.” Mark, Christian reader; this is human reasoning; and if it is intended to cast a doubt upon a revealed truth, it involves a disbelief in that truth. But what is it as a piece of reasoning? It implies a belief that God is subject, like man, to the law of past, present, and future; and that the term begotten therefore cannot apply to anything essential in the order of the Trinity. Time is absolutely related to creation. It is an adjunct of created causes and sequences. God’s eternity is a NOW to him. If then, the argument of Mr. Wells has no force, by making God’s eternity a matter that is identical with the time of creation, it can have no force in reference to anything that is proper to God essentially. Moreover, it is well known that the word begotten is used in a variety of senses. The apostle Paul says that he begat the Corinthians by the gospel. In Job, it is asked, “Hath the rain a father, or who hath begotten the drops of dew.” “Of his own will begat he us,” &c. The term begotten is to be understood according to the nature of the thing or being about which, it is used. The begetting of the dew, for instance, must be understood, as to the modus operandi, according to the nature of the dew. And in this case, the thing produced was in existence before it was begotten. The begetting has to do only with a new form of what was before. Neither can it he said that the word begotten is used figuratively in this case, any more than in human generation; as everyone who is acquainted with the verb yeppou, both in its original meaning and its usus loquendi, must know. For aught that anyone can prove to the contrary, the word may be more figurative in its application to human generation than to many other cases. This verb in its application to the Godhead is to be understood, the same as in other instances, according to the nature of his being. Indeed, there is no word in existence, by which God is described, which can be understood otherwise, properly. All his attributes, as they are revealed to us, are only relative. They are not abstract, but concrete. Omnipresence is a term that derives its meaning from created existences. For if they did not exist, the Godhead would not be present among them all. Every word that is used to describe God is taken from something that is said, or conceived, about his creatures. We could not know God in any other way. The most expressive language concerning God is of this nature. Such as “higher than the heavens, deeper than hell,” &c. The magnitude of such a language concerning God arises from our conception of the height of heaven, and the depth of hell, &c. In like manner, it may be said that God reveals himself to us as Three Persons in one God, and as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The word Person in this sense is not applied to God anywhere in the Bible. The word vnooTaosw^41, in Hebrews 1:3, translated Person, does not mean person in the sense of the Trinity of divine Persons. From the use of personal pronouns, I, thou, he, by the Three Persons, respecting one another, and from the display of attributes peculiar to persons, in the very manner that we understand human personality (for no other being is known to us as to its modus existendi), we believe that there are Three Persons in the Godhead. HOW, we do not know. Indeed, we do not know how the personality of the soul exists apart from the body in the world of spirits. HOW begetting and begotten may be proper to Father and Son in the Trinity, we can no more tell, than how Three proper Persons can be in one God, especially as the accepted definition of a person is, a thinking self existing being, acting of itself, independent of any other. And if we disbelieve the doctrine of Divine begetting and begottenA because that our reason cannot see how it can be in God, in the same manner we must reject the doctrine of the Trinity. Our duty is simply to find out whether these doctrines are actually revealed in the Bible. That revelation is totally independent of whether we can see the doctrine self-contradictory or not; because, if we deny the Bible the liberty to state anything, except according to what we shall deem reasonable, we make it to be no better than the Delphic Oracle, to say what we please ; but that makes it a book of words, into which we might throw any thoughts and meaning we please. God has given us definite meanings. Let us find them out, and believe them, however above, or contrary to our reason they may appear to be. In the face of this, everything that Mr. Wells says about a doctrine being self-contradictory, goes for nothing. Such an argument as his might do for an infidel like Hume, or for the authors of '‘Essays and Reviews,” but not for those who believe in the inspiration of the Bible. Let us see how Mr. Wells explains this book on the doctrine in question. On the passage (Luke 1:35), “That holy thing which shall be born of thee,” he says, “In his manhood is he here declared to be the Son of God; formed by the creative power of the Holy Ghost.” According to this explanation, he is the Son of the Holy Ghost! And if so, the Holy Ghost is the same Person as the Father. And when Christ said that he would pray the Father to send another Comforter, he must mean that he would send himself! According to this, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be true. I am sorry to see that Mr. Wells, to strengthen his own argument, has misquoted, or wrongly paraphrased, a portion of an important text (John 1:14). He says, “Then we behold the glory of the only begotten of the Father.” See the difference between that and the text itself.42 “We beheld HIS glory, the glory AS of the only begotten of the Father,” avTov and w^ in the original, agreeing with HIS and AS. Why did Mr. Wells leave these words out? HIS is a personal pronoun. It is one of the pronouns, by the use of which we find that there is a Trinity in the Godhead. It is applied to the Person of the Son of God “as” such. His personality exclusively belongs to his Divine nature, or else he is Two Persons, Divine and human. The apostle says, that AS the Son of God, they had beheld HIS glory. If the term Son of God applied only to his humanity, as he says in his remarks upon Luke 1:35, we have only to substitute 'Son of man’, and we will see at once the absurdity of his notion. “And we beheld his glory as the Son of man!” What glory was in him as man?43 As such, was he not in a state of the lowest humiliation? It is no use for Mr. Wells to say, as he does afterwards, that he may be styled the Son of God by reason of, what he calls, his complexity; for the complexity involves his divinity; and if he is the Son of God in that sense, it must be right to say that he is so, not merely because he was born a man. If he applies Divine Sonship to Christ in a sense which does not belong to his Divine personality, then he does it in the same sense as the Unitarians themselves. In his remarks on Acts 13:33, “Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten thee,” he says that the day mentioned was the
New Testament dispensation, when Christ was “begotten from the dead.” According to his argument, Christ was not the Son of God before that day. And yet, in another letter, he says that he was the Son of God at his birth. He blames those who believe in his eternal Sonship, for saying that he was a son before he was born in Bethlehem. He is guilty of doing this himself by calling him the Son of God thirty-three years before he was begotten from the dead. According to his own theory, God has two Sons—one born of Mary, the other begotten from the dead!
This is the kind of labyrinthine self-contradiction which belongs to such heresies as the denial of the eternal Sonship of Christ, when men attempt to be wise above that which is written.
In my next, I will expose other absurdities in the logic of Mr. Wells.
I remain, yours, &c.
Nemo.
FOOTNOTE TO THE ABOVE
Charles Walter Banks, it seems, could not stop posting documents that supported his own views while at the same time were against his opponents. Because of his editorship practices I must give the following quotation. As far as I can see (at least in 1862), he never gave “Nemo” space to replay a second time. He did, however, allow this underhanded attack on Mr. Crowther in the November 1862 issue. In fact, he not only allowed it but highly praised and recommended it. In appendix III I have provided some sermons by Mr. Crowther that pertain to the subject of Christ’s sonship. These, however, were preached in the same time period and reflect his views clearly. Unfortunately, I do have access to the sermon under review. As Banks gives us no information in the 1862 volume and I do not wish to add to this already lengthy essay this will be my last quotation on this subject from the Earthen Vessel at this time.
[The Editor holds back his own review for the present to make way for Mr. Dixon Burn, whose Christian spirit and effective argument claim for him a careful hearing.]
ALLOW me, dear Sir, to give you a short review44 of Mr. Crowther's sermon on the “Word Made Flesh.”
Mr. Crowther and his party who deny that Jesus is the Son of God, in his relation to the Father as a Divine person, are on their trial; they are judged of men, and already are condemned by many. Mr. Crowther, as a leader, is not the aggressor in this controversy; but, being judged as a man of error, he has spoken and written to defend himself and his party from misrepresentation. But there are many persons (to their shame be it spoken), like the infatuated Jews who condemned our Lord, have no patience to hear a man's defence. With one voice they cry, “Away with him-away with him!” as if either the laws of God or men condemned a man before they have heard him.
Now, in matters of controversy amongst us, when any difficulty arises, we have no recognized appeal to decide our questions. The press is the only judgment-seat where we can hope for an impartial trial45. Hence Mr. Crowther, in his appeal from the press, calls us to hear and judge; and if we cast aside his words, we do him as great injustice as if he were called before a jury and condemned without a hearing. In this manner was our Lord condemned: in this manner were all our holy martyrs condemned: and by reason of this, many good men of our days have their good name taken away; they have their usefulness blighted by an evil report; they wear out their lives in pain, in vexation, in obscurity, and neglect, because men judge and condemn them without a. hearing. This is cruel and murderous.
It should be known that Mr. Crowther did not commence this controversy. He was judged and condemned by others; and was obliged to lie under the imputation of lamentable error, or to come forward and defend himself. He has chosen the latter; and, certainly, if hitherto he has failed to establish his innocence46, he deserves credit for a manly, calm, simple, and forcible defence, which demands an impartial and very careful-hearing before we can fix upon him the blot of a dangerous mistake, much less before we can condemn him for holding a damnable error.
Consider, ye zealots, does Mr. Crowther speak like a man that hath a devil? Then, why do you puff at him, as if his words were the poison of a serpent that you dare not approach? If you devour him, take heed lest you be devoured. If you judge him, will not God judge you with the same judgment? If we show no mercy, neither will God shew us mercy. For with the same judgment that we mete to others shall we be judged. Have we no fear of God? Have we no jealousy over ourselves? lest when we are judged by him whose judgment is just, he lay folly to our charge, because we have condemned the innocent without cause, and judged those who were more righteous than we.
Let me tell you, Sir, that I have no sympathy with those who will not hear any man. who does not speak exactly what corresponds with their views. By so doing, we can neither do justice to others nor ourselves. Does the brook refuse to mingle with other waters because they are muddy? On the same principle the river may refuse the waters of the brook. So should it be cut off from all its sources of life and egress and become a stagnant pool. Does not all running water possess in itself a. principle of purification? So does the mind of man. But if we be so straightened as to cut ourselves off from all communication with others, lest we be defiled by their errors, we cut ourselves off from all sources of renewing our knowledge, and so run dry like the brooks of summer, or become like stagnant pools that stink and breed infection, for want of a current stream.
One thing Mr. Crowther has certainly made clear beyond dispute, for which he deserves credit and our gratitude. Indeed, we may always learn, if we will, something to our profit from those who fairly reason and honestly communicate their thoughts, though in many things they err. He has certainly not proved that Jesus is not the Son of God in his relation to the Fa1her as a Divine person; but he has proved, beyond a question, that he was called the Son of God, because he was formed in the womb of the virgin by the power of the Holy Ghost.
But here lies the mystery and difficulty of all questions relating to our holy faith. We are apt to hold one truth in opposition to another. If we believe there is one God, we do well; but if we hold this truth in opposition to the other, that there are three persons in one God, we grievously error. If we believe that Jesus the Son was a man, we receive God's testimony. But if we deny that he is God, we hold not the mystery of the truth. So, in like manner, if we believe that Jesus was made God's first born, that he was appointed heir of all things, and that he was called the Son of God by him that said unto him, “I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son” we believe God's testimony. But if we hold this truth in opposition to the other, that he was the Son of God that made the worlds, independent of his being made God's Son in the flesh; that he was the possessor of all things, independent of his being appointed heir of all things as a man; that he was the Son of God before he came into the world, independent of his being called the Son of God when he came in the flesh, we deny the great mystery of godliness: God manifest in the flesh. One truth almost always seems to clash with another. Hence its great mystery. And when men with their unhallowed wit cannot reconcile these seeming contradictions, they err from the records of God47. Do not err, my beloved brethren. We do well to reason, and to contend earnestly for the truth. But let us remember that we tread on hallowed ground.
The substance of Mr. Crowther's sermon tends to show that Jesus, as the Word, existed from everlasting; as the Word he made all things; as the Word he himself was made flesh, and, according to the flesh, he was called the Son of God. But he denies that as a Son he actually existed before he ea.me in the flesh.48 Now, this I deem not only a gross mistake, but a dangerous error. Yet not such, I think, as to warrant us to anathematize Mr. Crowther, to separate him from our communion, or to call him “a man of error.” This is cruel and murderous. We may err much and not be men of error. Alas! who does not err very much? But l forbear, lest my zeal break forth into wrath against some as their wrath has been kindled against Mr. Crowther.
If Mr. Crowther believes that Jesus as the Word existed from everlasting in his relation to the Father as a Divi.ne person, he holds the essential truth of our most holy faith, though he seems to deny it, and in word does deny it, when he says, that as the Son of God, he did not exist save in purpose with the Father before all things. But we should always in judgment search out a man 'o meaning rather than condemn him for the mere sound of his words.
He that believes that the Word was made flesh, whether in words he says it or not, believes that the Son of God was made flesh, and it is just as orthodox and Scriptural to say that I believe that Jesus is the Word, as that Jesus is the Son of God; the two different terms being used by the sacred writers to set forth the same idea. But it appears that Mr. Crowther does not conceive that the sacred writers make use of these two terms, the Word and the Son indifferently, to signify the same thing.
It is a remarkable fact, that none of the apostles, save John, calls Jesus “the Word.” Now, if this name only be essential to his deity, to shew his relation to the Father as a Divine person, it would appear very singular, if the name of the Son of God be merely a name that belongs to him as man, and one which he receives from the Father as a dignity upon his human nature, that none of the sacred writers, save John, should call him by that name which shews his Divine glory. The presumption rather seems to favour the view, that as all the sacred writers when they speak of who the Son of man is, inva1fably call him the Son of God, that this is the name of his glory as well as the other a name that no man can have a name that is essential to Jesus only as a Divine person, in his relation to the Father. Even we, who are favoured with precious faith, it is given us to be called the sons of God. But to which of the angels said he at any time, “Thou art my son?” The angels of heaven were made by the power of God. Our first parents came immediately from the hands of God, and so were called the sons of God. But there is a mighty chasm between being called the sons of God, and being the Son of God, as much as God is high above his creatures.
Now, let us see how the sacred writers make use of these two words, the Son and the Word, to exhibit the same truth. John says, “In the beginning”, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Paul says, “God hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” Here we see that the one says that all things were wade by the Word, and the other by the Son. What conclusion can we come to more naturally, than that these two. different. words signify one and the same thing, and that as the one shews the essential. glory of Jesus, so does the other?
Again, John says, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Paul, on the other hand, declares the same truth in different words. Thus, he says, “Jesus, the Son of God, was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh.” I know not how to understand this, unless I conclude that “the Son of God” and “the Word” convey to us the same idea. Again, John names the three Divine persons, and calls them the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. Matthew, when he names them, calls them the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now, can it be thought possible that there should be such a difference in these inspired men, that the one should, when naming the Holy Ones, call Jesus by a name that shews his Divine glory, and the other by a name that was communicated to him? It is absurd and unnatural to think so. The name of the Father stands without a relation if we take away the name of the Son. The name of the Father and the name of the Spirit no doubt, are covenant names. Does anyone deny it? But are they not names which shew essential deity as well as covenant relationship? Is not the Father the beginner, the author, and father of all things? Thus, we see that this name shews his essential deity, and that it belongs to him independent of any covenant relationship. So likewise, the Spirit. Does he not give life and breath to all things, independent of that relationship in which he is the life and spirit of his people? Then this name shews his essential deity. Now, can we suppose that the Father and the Spirit have a name which shews their essential deity, and that the Son of God only is without such a name? And if he have a name that shows his glory as a Divine person, what name is so natural, so scriptural, as the Son of God? Say it is the Word. Then, as the Word, he must be in the Father's counsel; if in his counsel, he must be in his bosom. But, if he be in the Father's bosom to know all his counsels, he must have existed before there were anything made, yea from everlasting, for the counsels of the Father were from everlasting. This shews that “the Word” is a name essential to his deity, as the name of the Father and the Spirit. But is not the Son said to be in the bosom of the Father? And if he be in the Faither's bosom, privy to his counsels, as a Son he existed with the Father from everlasting; so that this to me shews forth hie glory as a Divine person. It is written, the Father doth nothing without the Son. But if the Father existed before the Son, he must have done all things before he was actually brought forth. The two words evidently lead one into the other.
See how the apostle John brings both these terms to meet in one sentence. He says, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, he hath declared him.” Now, it does as well correspond with the sentence to say the begotten Word as the begotten Son; because as the Word he more properly declares the Father. But whether we say the Word or the Son, it is all one49. For as the Son knowing all things, he declares the Father's counsels and as the Word, he expresses the image of the Father.
If there be a difficulty with respect to the name of the Son, to conceive how he could exist as the Son from everlasting, there is the same difficulty with respect to the name of the Word, how he could exist as the Word from everlasting. According to all our notions of things50, a father exists before his son. So, according to all our ideas of things, our thoughts and counsels exit before our words. Every word is conceived in our hearts before they are brought forth into words. \Words are but thoughts expressed. They are begotten and conceived in the heart before they are brought forth: just as a son is begotten and conceived before he is brought forth into birth. And as a true word expresses exactly the image of our hearts, so does the Son express the exact image of the Father.
Hence we see that by calling Jesus the Word instead of the Son, we do not disentangle ourselves from the difficulties of his wonderful name. The Word is begotten as well as the Son and the word is preceded by the thought just as a father goes before a son51.
To such things we can only say, let God be true; he hath said it, and who may make him a liar? “This is my Son.” Do not these words imply far more than that he is called his Son, as if it were merely an honour put upon him? Do they not imply more than that he is called the Son of God, because he was miraculously conceived?52 .A. mere man might be miraculously conceived and be called the son of God. But when God says, '' This is my Son,” it implies that he is the mighty God.
It is written, “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him.” But it~ according to Mr. Crowther, he is only the Son of God by being miraculously conceived in the womb of the virgin, then all that these words imply is, that whosoever believes that Jesus was miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, God dwelleth in him. But is this believing in the name of the Son of God? A mere man, I say, might be thus conceived, and be called the son of God. But to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, carries us up to his Deity, and sets us upon the rock of ages. To this agree the following Scriptures:
“Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. In this was manifest the love of God; because tha.t God sent his only begotten Son into the world. We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. And we know that the Son of
God has come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”
Look at these words attentively53. The first Scripture evidently implies that it was God that came in the flesh. The second, that the person who came into the world, or in the flesh, was the Son of God. The third, that he existed with the Father, as a Son, before the Father sent him to be the Saviour of the world, The fourth, that it was the Son of God that came into the world, and that this Son was the true God. Hence to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, is to believe that he is related to the Father as a Divine person. DIXON BURN Oct. 3rd, 1862.
Editor’s Note: What exactly motivated Philpot to embark on such a vicious attack is unknown to me. Something, however, can be known from the remarks of some who replied to this. He was, at least to a fair degree, if not much more so, attacking very godly saints of Christ who disagreed with him on this subject. Some he must have known intimately as far as their walk with God is concerned. Many were in his own denomination.
It is very necessary, especially for those who read the titles and not too much else, to bring out an important fact here at the outset. This was no “REVIEW” at all! It was a pure excuse to name drop others for Philpot own purposes. I see no mention of Wallin and only the preface of Owen’s word is quoted with no other references.
The Scripture Doctrine of Christ's Sonship. By Benjamin Wallin 1771.
Vindicice Evangelical; or the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated. By Dr. Owen. Owen's Works, Vol. VIII. 182355.
THE language of complaint put by the Lord into the mouth of one of his prophets of old, was, “Truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter; yea, truth faileth.” (Isaiah 59:14,15.) May not the same or similar language issue from the lips of his faithful servants now, when they look around and see the reception that truth, for the most part, meets with in our day and generation? As regards the general mass of what is called “the religious world,” may we not justly say, “Truth is fallen in the street” despised and trampled underfoot as a worthless thing? And as regards churches and ministers of clearer views and a sounder creed, in too many who once held and preached it, “truth faileth,” either in purity of doctrine, power of experience, or godliness in life.
And yet, what possession can be so dear to the church of God as the truth? To her it is committed by the Lord himself as a most sacred and precious deposit. (John 17: 8; Galatians 1:8, 9; Ephesians 3:10, 4:11-16, 5:25-27; Colossians 1:18-24, 2:6-10; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Timothy 3:15; Revelation 3: 22.)*56 Her very standing as a witness for God upon earth, (Isaiah 53:10; Acts 1:8; Hebrews 12:1,) as well as all her present and future blessedness, are involved in her maintenance of it. Men may despise the truth from ignorance of its worth and value and may hate it from the natural enmity of the carnal mind, and from its arraying itself against their sins and errors; but it is the only really valuable thing on earth, since sin defaced the image of God in man. Lest, therefore, it be lost out of the earth, the Lord has lodged it in two safe repositories the Scriptures of truth, and the hearts of his saints. The Scriptures, it is true, are in the hands of every man; but to understand them, believe them, to be saved and sanctified by them, is the peculiar privilege of the church of God. Therefore, her liberty, her sanctification, her position as the pure and unsullied bride of the Lord the Lamb, nay, her salvation itself are all involved in her knowing and maintaining the truth as it is in Jesus. Do we say this at a venture, or in harmony with the oracles of the living God? “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32.) Then without knowing the truth there is no gospel liberty. “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.” (John 17:17.) Then without the application of the truth to the heart there can be no sanctification. “I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11: 2.) Then another Jesus, another spirit, and another gospel than the truth corrupt the mind from the simplicity that is in Christ and seduce the bride from her rightful Head and Husband. (2 Corinthians 11:3, 4.) “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12.) Then without receiving the love of the truth there is no salvation. Thus, we see that without a vital, experimental knowledge of the truth there is no liberty of spirit, no sanctification of heart, no union with Christ, and no salvation of the soul. And what is a religion worth when all these divine blessings are taken out of it? What the salt is worth when it has lost its savor; what the chaff is worth when the grain is severed from it; what the tares are worth when the wheat is gathered into the garner. How necessary then it is for churches and ministers to hold the truth with a firm, unyielding hand, and to give no place to error, no, not for an hour! Remember this, churches and ministers, deacons, and members, and all ye that fear God in the assemblies of the saints, that there can be no little errors. How would you, ye husbands, admit of a little unfaithfulness in your wives? Is Jesus less tender, less jealous over his bride than you! Satan never introduces little errors; all, all are full of deadly poison. There was no great quantity of arsenic in the Bradford lozenges; not much strychnine in Palmer's doses; but there was death and destruction in both; or where not death, disease and suffering for life. Error in itself is deadly. In this sense, the tongue of error is “full of deadly poison;” (James 3:8;) and of all erroneous men we may say, “with their tongues they have used deceit, the poison of asps is under their lips.” (Romans 3:13.) “Their wine,” with which they intoxicate themselves and others, “is the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps” (Deuteronomy 32:33.) The patient may vomit up the poison, but it is poison not the less. Do not try, then, the strength of your stomach or presume upon the soundness of your constitution. When you have tested the error by the unerring word of truth, label it, POISON; and “touch not, taste not, handle not,” but put it away on the highest shelf, out of the reach of children and servants, lest any of the family drink and die.57
We are grieved to see an old error now brought forward, and, we fear, spreading, which, however speciously covered up, is really nothing less than denying the Son of God.58 The error we mean is the denial of the eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the only begotten of the Father, and resolving it into a name, a title, or an office. If the Lord has done anything for us by his Spirit and grace, he has wrought in our heart two things, a love to his truth, and a love to his people. By both of these principles we feel, therefore, constrained to lift up our voice for truth and against error. Many of the saints of God are weak in judgment and open to the snares of Satan. They would not willingly, willfully embrace error; but being simple, or not well rooted and established in the truth, they cannot discern false doctrine when speciously wrapped up in a cloud of words, and backed with arguments and an array of texts the meaning of which is perverted and distorted. For their sakes' therefore, as well as for the glory of God and the profit, we trust, of his people generally, we feel led to combat this error, and to open up, elucidate, and defend, as far as we can, the truth on this most important point. Let none think that this is a matter of little import, that we are plunging into a controversy about mere words, and troubling the churches with tithes of mint, anise, and cumin, and omitting the weightier matters of judgment, mercy, and faith. Examine the Scriptures for yourselves, especially the first epistle of John, and then say whether the true Sonship of Christ is a matter of little importance. This must be our justification, not only for bringing the subject prominently forward, but for devoting to it a considerable space, as we shall doubtless require more than one Number for its due consideration. And as we hope, with God's help and blessing, to examine the subject prayerfully and carefully, in the light of his teaching, and as revealed in his Sacred Scripture, we call upon our spiritual readers, not merely to give a passing glance to the testimonies that we shall bring forward, but to weigh them well in the balances of the sanctuary, and see for themselves whether we are contending earnestly for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints, or, laying aside the commandment of God, are holding the tradition of men.
We lay it down, then, at the very outset, that to a believing saint of the Most High, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that a belief in him as such is essential to salvation, is beyond all doubt and all controversy59. A few scriptures will decide this; the main difficulty being, where there are so many, which to fix upon for that purpose; but examine carefully and prayerfully the following. The first shall be the noble testimony of Peter. “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-10.) And what said Jesus to this noble confession of Simon Peter? “And Jesus said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17.) Do not these words of the blessed Lord clearly show that it was by divine revelation Peter knew and believed Jesus was the Son of the living God? And are not all “blessed” with faithful Peter, to whom the Father has revealed the same divine mystery, who believe as he believed, and confess as he confessed? But if the Father has not revealed it to their heart, need we wonder that men neither know, believe, nor confess it, but stumble at the stumbling-stone laid in Zion? Again, “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:35-36.) He\v clearly is believing on the Son of God made the test of life and salvation; how needful, then, to know who the Son of God is, that we may have a right faith in his divine Person, and not make a mistake in a matter of life and death. You may think that you believe on the Son of God, but may be looking to a name, a title, or an office instead of the Son of the Father in truth and love. Take another testimony: “Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.” (1 John 2:20.) Do you deny the eternal Sonship of Christ? Are you, as far as lies in your power, destroying that intimate and ineffable relationship which he bears to the Father as the only begotten Son of God? O what dangerous ground are you treading! Beware lest you deny the Son, and so have not God as your Father and Friend but fall into his hands as a consuming fire. Are not these testimonies enough? But on a matter of such importance take as one more witness that most comprehensive of declarations proclaiming, as in a voice of thunder, those who have and those who have not life: “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (1 John 5:9-12.)
Any observations of ours would but weaken the force of the testimonies that we have brought forward from the word of truth. You that “tremble at God's word,” (Isaiah 66:2,) and “hide it in your heart” that you may cleanse your way by taking heed thereto, and not sin against the Lord, (Psalms 119:9, 11,) weigh these scriptures well, for they are the faithful and true sayings of God, (Revelation 22:6,) the testimony of him who cannot lie.
But it will be said that we are drawing nice and needless distinctions, and that all who profess to believe in the Trinity, the Deity and atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and the other leading truths of the gospel, believe in and acknowledge the Sonship of Christ. Yes, in lip; for they dare not in so many words deny so cardinal and fundamental a doctrine; but many who think and call themselves believers in the Son of God do all they can to nullify and explain away that very Sonship which they profess to believe.
But as it is necessary to point out and overthrow error before we can lay down and build up truth, we shall, as briefly as the subject allows, first show the different modes in which this fundamental doctrine of our most holy faith has been perverted or denied.
There are four leading ways in which erroneous men have, at different periods of the church's history, sought to nullify the vital doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Jesus.
1. Some place the Sonship of Christ in his incarnation, as if he was not the Son of God before he assumed our nature in the womb of the Virgin. The main prop of this erroneous view is the language of the angel to the Virgin Mary: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore, also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35.) But these words refer not to the actual but to the manifested Sonship of Jesus. His human nature never was called the Son of God, nor can a single passage of scripture be produced where the pure humanity of Jesus, as distinct from his divine nature, is spoken of under that name. As wearing our nature, he is called “the Son of man” again and again, but never the Son of God; but as none but he had a human nature begotten of the Holy Ghost, and as his being miraculously conceived in the womb of the Virgin was the fulfilment of prophecy, (Isaiah 7:14; 9:6,) he who were that nature was called the Son of God. This pure humanity60 was called “that holy thing,” for two reasons, 1. to show that it was not a person but a nature, which had no subsistence in itself distinct from the Person of the Son of God; and, 2. to show that it was intrinsically and essentially holy not involved in the fall of Adam, nor corrupted by the taint of original sin, but, though of the flesh of the Virgin, sanctified by the Holy Ghost at the moment of its conception, under his overshadowing operation and influence. These two natures are distinctly named and kept separate in that memorable passage of the great apostle that mighty bulwark against the floods of error and heresy: “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:3, 4.) There Jesus Christ is declared to be “God's Son,” and yet “made of the seed of David according to the flesh;” therefore the Son of God before so made, and not becoming so by being made, and “declared” (margin, “determined”*61) “to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.”
Besides which were Jesus the Son of God by virtue of his miraculous conception, he might rather be called the Son of the Holy Ghost, which is a thought shocking to every spiritual mind.
Nothing can be more plainly revealed in the word of truth than that the Lord Jesus existed as the Son of God before his assuming flesh. The testimonies to this are so numerous and so plain that the difficulty is, which to name and which to omit; but take the following: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,” &c. (John 3:16.) Then he existed as his Son before he gave him. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all,” &c. (Romans 8:32.) Then he was his own Son before he spared him not but delivered him up out of his own bosom. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:9.) Then he was his only-begotten Son before.
God sent him into the world. Sending him into the world no more made him God's Son than, to speak with all reverence, my sending my son to school makes him my son.
2. Another error on this important point is that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. The main prop of this view is what we read in Acts 8:32, 33: “And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” But the meaning of the apostle is abundantly clear from the passage already quoted, Romans 1:4. His resurrection did not make him but manifest him to be the Son of God. Did not the Father, before the resurrection, twice with a voice from heaven proclaim, “This is my beloved Son”? (Matthew 3:17; 17:5.) Will any man then lift up his voice against the Majesty of heaven, and say that Christ was not the Son of God before his resurrection, which he clearly was not, if the resurrection made him such? Why, the Roman centurion, who stood at the cross, had a better faith than this when he said, “Truly this was the Son of God.” (Matthew17:54.) Nay, the very devils themselves were forced to cry out, before his sufferings and death, “Thou art Christ, the Son of God.” (Luke 4:41.) We may be sure, therefore, that none but a heretic of the deepest dye could assert that the Blessed Lord was made the Son of God by the resurrection.
3. Another erroneous view of the Sonship of Christ is that he is so by virtue of his exaltation to the right hand of God. This view is founded upon a mistaken interpretation of Hebrews 1:4: “Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” Christ was made so much better than the angels, not as the Son of God, because as that he was better than they already, being indeed their Maker and Creator. (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16.) Nor did he become God's Son by being “appointed heir of all things,” and “obtaining by inheritance a more excellent name” than all the angelic host. If I have an only son, and he inherits my property, his being my heir does not make him my son, but his being my son makes him my heir. So, the blessed Jesus is God's heir because he is God's Son, not God's Son because he is God's heir. But the beauty and blessedness, the grace and glory, the joy and consolation of his being “the heir of all things,” lie in this, that he is such in our nature, that the same blessed Immanuel who groaned and wept, suffered and bled here below, is now at the right hand of the Father as our High Priest, Mediator, Advocate, Representative, and Intercessor; that all power is given unto him in heaven and earth as the God-man; (Matthew 28:18;) and that the Father hath “set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come.” (Ephesians 1: 20, 21.) But he has all this preeminence and glory not to make him the Son of God, but because he who, as the Son of God, “thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2: 7-11.) The joy of heaven above, the delight of the saints here below, their only hope and help, strength and wisdom, spring from this, that the Son of God is exalted to the right hand of the Father in the very nature which he assumed in the womb of the Virgin. But if he were made the Son of God by this exaltation, it sinks his Deity by merging it into his humanity and constitutes him a made God which is not God at all, but an idol.
In fact, these three views, which we have endeavored to strip bare out of their party-colored dress, are all of them either open or disguised Socinianism, and their whole object and aim are to overthrow the Deity of the Lord Jesus, by overthrowing his divine Sonship. The enemies of the Lord Jesus know well that the Scriptures declare beyond all doubt and controversy that he is the Son of God. This mountain of brass they may kick at but can never kick down. But they know also that if they can by any means nullify and explain away his Sonship, they have taken a great stride to nullify and explain away his Deity62. Beware, then, simple-hearted child of God, lest any of these heretics entangle your feet in their net. Hold by this as your sheet-anchor, that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God in his divine nature, as his eternal and only-begotten Son. Faith in him as such will enable you to ride through many a storm and bear you up amidst the terrible indignation which will fall upon his enemies, when he shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
4. But there is another way in which erroneous men seek to explain, and by explaining deny, the eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus, and that is, by asserting that he is a Son by office. These men do not deny his essential and eternal Deity, nor do they seek to overthrow the Trinity. On these points they are professedly sound we say “professedly,” for we fully believe that the Deity of Christ and the very doctrine of the Trinity itself are so involved in the eternal Sonship of Jesus, that they stand or fall with it. This, however, they do not or will not see, and call themselves believers in the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of essence in the great and glorious self-existent Jehovah. But they do not believe that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are essentially and eternally such, and neither are, were, or could be otherwise, but that these are covenant offices and titles which they have assumed, and by which they have made themselves known to the sons of men. Thus, they do not believe that Christ is the Son of the Father by eternal generation, his only-begotten Son, as being eternally of his essence63, but that the three distinct Persons in the Trinity covenanted among themselves, the Father to be the Father, the Son to be the Son, and the Holy Ghost to be the Holy Ghost, and that chiefly for man's redemption.
Monstrous figment! God-dishonoring error! which needs only to be stated to be reprobated by every believer in the Son of God as a deadly blow against each Person in the Trinity, and destroying that intercommunion of nature and essence, without which they are three distinct Gods, and not three distinct Persons in one undivided Godhead. Truly Satan introduces no little errors into the church; truly all his machinations are to overthrow vital truths, and to poison the spring at the very fountain head.
We bless God that there is a Covenant a covenant of grace, “ordered in all things and sure;” we adore his gracious Majesty that in this everlasting Covenant the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost sustain certain relationships to the Church of God; but we most thoroughly deny that these relationships made them to be Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and that separate from them the Father is not really and truly Father to the Son, nor the Son really and truly Son to the Father, but only nominally so. For who does not see that if this be true, the Father might have been the Son, and the Son might have been the Father, and the Holy Ghost either the Father or the Son? for certainly if they are so, not by essence and nature but by office, and are three equal, independent Persons, at liberty to choose their several titles, there appears to be no reason why they should not have chosen otherwise than they did. We see, therefore, into what confusion men get when they forsake the simple statements of Scripture, and what perilous weapons they hold in their hands when they directly or indirectly sap the very throne of the Most High. But to clear up this point a little further, let us illustrate it by a simple figure. Suppose, then, that three friends of equal rank and station, were to go on a journey, say a foreign tour; they might say to one another before they started, “Let us severally choose the three departments which we shall each attend to. I will take this part if you and you will take that and that.” Now why might they not, as three friends of equal station, without any tie of kindred, choose different departments from what they actually selected, for there was no anterior binding necessity that they should have chosen the exact offices which they fulfil? The same reasoning applies to the three co-equal Persons of the Trinity, if Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be but mere covenant names, titles, and offices, and not their very mode of existence. But it will be said by such men, “You carnalize the subject by your figure.” Not so, we have too much reverence, we trust, for the things of God to carnalize them; but we use the figure to meet you on your own ground, and to show you by a simple argument the absurdity and folly, not to say the impiety of your views. We admit, nay more, we rejoice to believe that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost sustain each their relationships in the everlasting Covenant; but these relationships are not arbitrary offices, which they might or might not have severally chosen, but are intrinsically and necessarily connected with, and flow out of their very subsistence, their very mode of existence. So that to talk, as some have done, that “the three Persons in the Alehim” (to use their barbarous Hebrew) “covenanted among themselves to be Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” is an abominable error, and tantamount to declaring that but for the Covenant, the Father would not have been the Father, nor the Son the Son, nor the Holy Ghost the Holy Ghost. Where is there one Scripture for such an assertion? When the blessed Jesus, in that sacred, heart-moving prayer, “lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee,” (John 17:1,) was there no other relationship, no more intimate and eternal tie than being his Son by assuming an office? We cannot express what we have seen and felt in that most blessed and sacred chapter, perhaps the most solemn in the whole word of God; but there is that tender intimacy, that holy, filial communion with his heavenly Father breathing through it which conveys to a believing heart the fullest assurance that he is the eternal Son of God as being of the very essence of the Father.
But as we cannot convey to erroneous men our faith, we must meet them on the solid ground of argument. Nothing then can be more evident than that the one great and glorious Jehovah existed in a Trinity of Persons before the Covenant. What then were those three Persons before the Covenant was entered into? Did that Covenant alter their mutual relationship to each other so as to introduce a new affinity between them? You might just as well say that the Covenant made them a Trinity of Persons, or called them into being, as to say that the Covenant made them Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; for if these be but Covenant titles, had there been no Covenant they most certainly, according to your own showing, would not have been Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is indeed overthrowing the Trinity with a witness, and making the distinct, eternal subsistence of three Persons in the Godhead depend upon a Covenant made on behalf of man. For remember this, that you cannot touch one Person of the Godhead without touching all; and if you say that the Son of God is a Son only by office, you say with the same breath that the Father is only a Father by office, and the Holy Ghost only a Holy Ghost by office.
But let us further ask, What do you mean by saying that the Son of God is so only by office, or as a name or title? Has the Son of God, his only-begotten Son, no more real, intimate, and necessary relationship to his Father than calling himself his Son, when he is not really his Son, but only so by office? Do you think you clearly understand what it is to be a Son by office? for persons often use words of which they have never accurately examined the meaning. The Lord Jesus, by becoming man, became the Father's servant by office, but if you make him a Son by office, you strip him of all his glory. His glory is this, that though he was a Son by nature, he became a servant by office, as the Apostle says “Though he was (not “became”) a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things that he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8.) In this we see his unparalleled condescension, his infinite love, and boundless depths of grace, that though, by nature and essence, the Son of God, and as such co-equal with the Father, he stooped to become a servant. But apart from all Scripture revelation, it is an absurdity, an insult to common sense, to make the Lord Jesus Christ a Son by office. There are but two ways by which anyone can become a son; 1. by generation, 2, by adoption. In the first case, he is the father's son, his true, proper, and real son; in the other, his made, or adopted son. No office or service, no law or title, no covenant or agreement can make a son if he be not a real or an adopted one. A servant by office may become a son by adoption, as Abram complained that “one born in his house (as a servant) was his heir,” and as Moses became the son of Pharaoh's daughter; (Exodus 2:10;) and a son by nature may become a servant by office; but a son by office is an absurdity, both in nature and grace. Thus, on every ground we reject as a gross error, a vile heresy, the doctrine that the blessed Son of God is only a Son by office or by virtue of the Covenant and shall attempt in our next Number to show what is the Scripture doctrine on this important point, and to prove that he is the eternal only-begotten Son of God, by nature, being, and essence.
We give an extract from the Preface to the work of Dr. Owen's mentioned at the head of the present article, and think it full of that sound wisdom and vital, practical godliness which is so marked a characteristic of the Doctor's writings:
Diligent, constant, serious reading, studying, meditating on the Scriptures, with the assistance and directions of all the rules and advantages for the right understanding of them, which, by the observation and diligence of many worthies, we are furnished withal, accompanied with continual attendance on the throne of grace for the presence of the Spirit of truth with us to lead us into all truth, and to increase his anointing of day by day, shining into our hearts to give us the 'knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,' is, as for all other things in the course of our pilgrimage and walking with God, so for our preservation against these abominations, and the enabling of us to discover their madness and answer their objections, of indispensable necessity. Apollos, who was mighty in the Scriptures, (Acts 18:24,) did mightily convince the gainsaying Jews, (verse 28.) Neither in dealing with these men is there any better course in the world than, in a good order and method, to multiply testimonies against them to the same purpose.
Let us then labor to have our senses abundantly exercised in the word, that we may discern between good and evil, and that not by studying the places themselves which are controverted, but by a diligent search into the whole mind and will of God, as revealed in the word, wherein the sense is given in to humble souls, with more life, power, evidence of truth, and is more effectual for the begetting of faith and love to the truth, than in a curious search after the annotations of men upon particular places. And truly I must needs say that I know not a more deplorable mistake in the studies of divines, both preachers and others, than their diversion from an immediate, direct study of the Scriptures themselves unto the studying of commentators, critics, scholiasts, annotators, and the like helps, which God, in his good providence, making use of the abilities, and sometimes the ambition and ends of men, hath furnished us withal. Not that I condemn the use and study of them, which I wish men were more diligent in, but desire pardon if I mistake, and do only surmise by the experience of my own folly for many years, that many who seriously study the things of God do yet rather make it their business to inquire after the sense of other men on the Scriptures than to search studiously into them themselves.
That direction in this kind, which with me is instar omninm, is, for a diligent endeavor to have the power of the truths professed and contended for abiding upon our hearts, that we may not contend for notions, but that we have a practical acquaintance within our own souls. When the heart is cast indeed, into the mold of the doctrine that the mind embraceth; when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us; when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the things abides in our hearts; when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for; then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men. And without this, all our contending is, as to ourselves, of no value. What am I the better if I can dispute that Christ is God, but have no sense or sweetness in my heart from hence that he is a God in covenant with my soul? What will it avail me to evince, by testimonies and arguments, that he hath made satisfaction for sin if, through my unbelief, the wrath of God abides on me, and I have no experience of my own being made the righteousness of God in him? If I find not in my standing before God the excellency of having my sins imputed to him, and his righteousness imputed to me, will it be any advantage to me in the issue to profess and dispute that God works the conversion of a sinner by the irresistible grace of his Spirit, if I was never acquainted experimentally with the deadness and utter impotency to good, that opposition to the law of God which is in my own soul by nature, with the efficacy of the exceeding greatness of the power of God in quickening, enlightening, and bringing forth of obedience in me? It is the
power of truth in the heart alone that will make us cleave unto it indeed, in an hour of temptation. Let us, then, not think that we are anything the better for our conviction of the truth of the great doctrines of the gospel, for which we contend with these men, unless we find the power of the truths abiding in our own hearts and have a continual experience of their necessity and excellence in our standing before God and our communion with him.
Do not look upon these things as things afar off, wherein you are little concerned. The evil is at the door; there is not a city, a town, scarce a village in England, wherein some of this poison is not poured forth. Are not the doctrines of free will, universal redemption, apostacy from grace, mutability of God, of denying the resurrection of the dead, with all the foolish conceits of many about God and Christ in this nation, ready to gather to this head? Let us not deceive ourselves. Satan is a crafty enemy; he yet hovers up and down in the lubricous, vain imaginations of a confused multitude, whose tongues are so divided that they understand not one the other. I dare boldly say that if ever he settle to a stated opposition to the gospel, it will be in Socinianism. The Lord rebuke him. He is busy in and by many where little notice is taken of him.64
THERE are two things which every child of God has the greatest reason to dread; the one is evil, the other is error. Both are originally from Satan; both have a congenial home in the human mind; both are in their nature deadly and destructive; both have slain their thousands and tens of thousands; and under one or the other, or under both combined, all everlastingly perish but the redeemed family of God. Evil by which we mean sin in its more open and gross form, is, in some respects, less to be dreaded than error, that is, error on vital, fundamental points, and for the following reasons. The unmistakable voice of conscience, the universal testimony of God's children, the expressed reprobation of the world itself, all bear a loud witness against gross acts of immorality. Thus, though the carnal mind is ever lusting after evil, thorns, and briers much hedge up the road toward its actual commission; and if, by the power of sin and temptation, they be unhappily broken through, the return into the narrow way, though difficult, is not wholly shut out. David, Peter, and the incestuous Corinthian fell into open evil, but they never fell into deadly error, and were not only recoverable, but, by superabounding grace, were recovered. But error upon the grand, fundamental doctrines of our most holy faith is not only in its nature destructive, but usually destroys all who embrace it.
As, however, we wish to move cautiously upon this tender ground, let us carefully distinguish between what we may perhaps call voluntary and involuntary error. To explain our meaning more distinctly, take the two following cases of involuntary error by way of illustration. A person may be born of Socinian parents and may have imbibed their views from the force of birth and education. Is this person irrecoverable? Certainly not. The grace of God may reach his heart, and deliver him from his errors, just as much as it may touch the conscience of a man living in all manner of iniquity and save him from his sins. Or a child of God, one manifestly so by regenerating grace, may be tempted by the seducing spirit of error breathed into his carnal mind by a heretic, or by an erroneous book, and may for a time be so stupefied by the smoke of the bottomless pit as to reel and stagger on the very brink, and yet not fall in. Most of us have known something of these blasts of hell, so that we could say with Asaph, “My feet were almost gone, my steps had well-nigh slipped;” but they have only rooted us more firmly in the truth. These are cases of what we may call involuntary error. But there is voluntary error when a man willfully and deliberately turns away from truth to embrace falsehood; when he is given up to strong delusions to believe a lie; when he gives heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils and seeks to spread and propagate them with all his power. These cases are usually irrecoverable, for such men generally wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; error so blinds their eyes and hardens their hearts, that they cannot or will not see anything but what seems to favor their views, and at last they either sink into a general state of unbelief and infidelity, or die confirmed in their deceptions. It is scarcely possible to read the Epistles of the New Testament, especially those of Paul to Timothy and Titus, and those of Peter, John, and Jude without being struck by the strong denunciations which those inspired men of God launched, as so many burning thunderbolts, against error and erroneous men. Any approach to their strong language, even in opposing the most deadly error, would in our day be considered positively unbearable, and the grossest want of charity. It is with most an unpardonable offence to draw any strong and marked lines between sinner and saint, professor and possessor, error, and truth. The ancient landmarks which the word of truth has laid down have, almost by common consent, been removed, and a kind of right of common has become established, by means of which truth and error have been thrown together into one wide field, where any may roam and feed at will, and still be considered as sheep of Christ. It was not so in the days of Luther, of John Knox, and of Rutherford; but in our day there is such a general laxity of principle as regards truth and falsehood, that the corruption of the world seems to have tainted the church. There was a time in this country when, if there was roguery in the market, it was not tolerated in the countinghouse; if there was blasphemy in the street, it was not allowed in the senate; if there was infidelity in the debating-room, it was not suffered in the pulpit. But now bankers and merchants cheat and lie like coster-mongers; Jew, Papist, and infidel sit side by side in the House of Commons; and negative theology and German divinity are enthroned in Independent chapels. It would almost seem that Paul, Peter, John, and Jude were needlessly harsh and severe in their denunciations of errors and erroneous men, that Luther, John Knox, and Rutherford were narrow-minded bigots, and that it matters little what a man believes if he be “a truly pious man”, a member of a church, a preacher, or a professor. Old Mrs. Bigotry is dead and buried; her funeral sermon has been preached to a crowded congregation; and this is the inscription put, by general consent, upon her tombstone:
“For modes of faith let graceless bigots fight; He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.”
But if to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints be bigotry, let us be bigots still; and if it be a bad spirit to condemn error, let us bear the reproach rather than call evil good and good evil, put darkness for light and light for darkness, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Here, then, we resume our subject, hoping, with God's help and blessing, whilst we contend faithfully for the truth as it is in Jesus, to advance nothing that may be in the least inconsistent with his sacred word, and desiring his glory and the good of his people. But as Abraham, when he went up the mount with Isaac, left the young men and the ass at the foot; as Moses put off his shoes, at God's command, when he stood on holy ground; so must we leave carnal reasoning at the foot of the mount where the Lord is seen, (Genesis 12:14,) and lay aside the shoes of sense and nature when we look at the bush burning with fire and not consumed. Four things are absolutely necessary to be experimentally known and felt before we can arrive at any saving or sanctifying knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus: 1, divine light in the understanding; 2, spiritual faith in the heart; 3, godly fear in the conscience; 4, heavenly love in the affections. Without light we cannot see; without faith we cannot believe; without godly fear we cannot reverentially adore; without love we cannot embrace him who is “the truth,” as well as “the way and the life.” Here all heretics and erroneous men stumble and fall. The mysteries of our most holy faith are not to be apprehended by uninspired men. Spiritual truths are for spiritual men; as the Apostle beautifully says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10.) It is, therefore, utterly impossible for men who are “sensual, having not the Spirit,” to understand any branch of saving truth, much more the deep mysteries of godliness. We must be taught of God and receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child, or we shall never enter therein; and it is for those who have been so led and taught that we mainly write.
We attempted to show in our last Number the various ways in which erroneous men have sought at different times to overthrow the eternal Sonship of Jesus. If we have succeeded, with God's help and blessing, in refuting what is false, we have advanced a good way in proving what is true; for in grace, as in nature, the conviction of falsehood is the establishment of truth. Before, then, we proceed any further, let us fix our foot firmly on the ground that we have thus far made good, and not run backwards and forwards in confusion as though we had proved nothing. What is proved is proved; and as each successive step in an argument is clearly and firmly laid, it forms, as in a building, a basis to support a fresh layer of proof. These points, then, we consider in our last Number to have been fully established from the word of truth: 1, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; 2, that he is not the Son of God by the assumption of human nature, or by the resurrection, or by sitting at God's right hand, or by virtue of any covenant name, title, or office; 3, that he was the Son of God before he came into the world; and, 4, that consequently, he is the Son of God in his divine nature. The pre-existerian dreams and delusions we need not say we utterly discard as full of deadly error, and therefore need not stop to show that he is not the Son of God by virtue of a human soul created before all time and united to his body in the womb of the Virgin, at the incarnation. Here, then, we take our firm stand, that Jesus is the Son of God in his divine nature; and if that divine nature is truly and properly God, as the words necessarily imply, and as such is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, then he must be the eternal Son of the Father. No sophistry can elude this conclusion. Forsaking the Scriptures and the guiding light of divine revelation, you may reason and argue on natural grounds, and cavil at the words, “an eternal Son,” and “eternal generation,” as expressing or implying ideas naturally inconsistent, not to say impossible. But we shall not follow you on such boggy ground. If you will do so, lose yourself there, and, led by the ignis fatuus of reason, flounder from swamp to swamp, till you sink to rise no more; but we shall, with the Lord's help, abide on the firm ground of God's own inspired testimony, and draw all our proofs from that sacred source of all knowledge and instruction. But though we shall confine ourselves to the inspired testimony in opening up this subject, we shall endeavor to proceed step by step, carefully and prayerfully, in the hope that our pen may move in strict harmony with the truth of God in a matter so mysterious and yet so blessed. Follow us, spiritual reader, with the Scriptures in your hand and with faith and love in your heart, that we, as taught and blessed of God, may be able to set our seal to those words, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.” If we have not this, what witness have we worth having?
1. First, then, we lay it down as undeniable Scripture truth, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God as God. This is the express testimony of the Father himself, “But to the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” (Hebrews 1:8.) Is it not clear from this express declaration from the Father's own lips that the Son is God, and God because he is the Son? How else is he “the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his person”? (Hebrews 1:3.) The human nature of Jesus was not “the brightness of God's glory,” for how could a created, finite nature represent the brightness of the glory of the infinite, self-existent I AM? Nor could the nature assumed in the womb of the Virgin be “the express image of God's person.” The person of God must necessarily be divine, and the express image of it must be necessarily also divine66.
2. Secondly, we assert that when the Scripture speaks of Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God, it speaks of him as such in his divine nature. Thus, when John says, “And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,” (John 1:14,) that glory was the glory of Christ's divine nature; for how could his human nature, which was marred more than the sons of men, shine forth with the glory of his divine? This “glory of the only-begotten of the Father” is most evidently the same glory as that of which Jesus speaks in those touching words, (John 17:5,) “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” But this must be the glory of his divine nature, for his human nature he had not then assumed. Then “the glory of the only-begotten of the Father” must be the same “glory as he had with him before the world was,” and that could be none other than his divine. Thus, we are brought in the clearest and most indubitable manner to this point, that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God as God. The two passages that we have quoted bring us to this conclusion with all the clearness, force, and distinctness of a mathematical problem.67 Examine one by one the links of this argument and see if they are not firm and good. Jesus is the only begotten of the Father; this is the first step. As the only-begotten of the Father, he has a peculiar glory; this is the second step. This glory he had with the Father before the world was; this is the third step. As he could only possess this glory in his divine nature, for his human did not then exist, he is the only-begotten Son of God as God; this is the fourth step, and establishes the conclusion that he is the eternal Son of the Father, and that by eternal generation. You may object to the term, “eternal generation;”68 but how else can you explain the words, “the only-begotten of the Father?” If you say that this refers to the human nature of Jesus, how can you interpret in that sense the passage, “the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father”? (John 1:18.) Surely you will not say that the human nature of Jesus was in the bosom of the Father from all eternity. How was he ever in the bosom of the Father but as his only-begotten Son, and if he lay there from all eternity as his only-begotten Son, what is this but eternal generation?
But we have by no means exhausted our quiver. “Thine arrows,” we read, “are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies; whereby the people fall under thee.” (Psalms 45:5.) The Lord fill our quiver full of them; then shall we not be ashamed but shall speak with his enemies in the gate. Look at the following testimony: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16.) Does not Jesus himself here declare that the Father “gave his only-begotten Son”? Was he not, then, his only-begotten Son before he gave him? If language mean anything, the words positively declare that God had a Son, an only-begotten Son, and that he so loved poor fallen man that he freely and voluntarily gave this only-begotten Son for his redemption. But when did God love the world? Before or after Jesus came in the flesh? Of course, before love moved him to give his only-begotten Son. Where, then, was his only-begotten Son when God loved the world? In heaven, with God. And what was he in heaven, with God? His only-begotten Son. Then he was his only-begotten Son in his divine nature, for his human nature never was in heaven till after the resurrection. And if his only-begotten Son in his divine nature, and if he existed as such from all eternity, what is this but eternal generation? Surely Jesus knew the mystery of his own generation; and if he call him-self God's only-begotten Son, is it not our wisdom and mercy to believe what he says, even if our reason cannot penetrate into so high and sublime a mystery?
“Where reason fails, with all her powers,
There faith prevails, and love adores.”69
But you will say, “We do not deny that Jesus is God's only-begotten Son in his divine nature, but he is so by virtue of the everlasting covenant.” But how could a covenant beget him? Begetting implies an origin, not a compact; and to be begotten implies a nature, a mode of existence, not a covenant. The two ideas are essentially incompatible; for begetting implies a relationship in which there can be no covenant, whereas a covenant implies the existence of the covenanting parties.
But another may say, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but neither by virtue of his divine nor of his human nature viewed separately, but of his complex Person as God-man Mediator.” But was his complex Person in heaven before the incarnation? Surely not. But that the Son of God was in heaven before his incarnation we have already abundantly proved. It is evident, then, that he is not the Son of God by virtue of his complex Person, for he was so before he took our nature into union with his divine. He must be the Son of God either as God or as man. We have shown over and over again that he is not the Son of God as man. What then remains but that he is the Son of God as God, and therefore anterior to his assumption of our nature in the womb of the Virgin, and therefore anterior to his becoming God-man? The Lord at the same time declared, “He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” Do you believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God? How can you if you deny that he is the eternal Son of the Father? For we have already proved from Scripture that he is the only-begotten
Son of God in his divine nature; and he who denies that most certainly believes not “in his name,”70 by which is meant his very being and nature, Person and work, as revealed to the sons of men.
But as the matter is so important, let us now examine another testimony: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” (1 John 5:20.) Carefully examine the mind and meaning of the Holy Ghost in this remarkable declaration, for it is well worth weighing word by word. “We know,” says holy John, “that the Son of God is come.” But how do we know that the Son of God is come? By the personal, inward, and experimental manifestation of him as the Son of God to the soul. But if not so manifested, not known. And who understand and “know him that is true”? Those to whom he hath given an understanding. Then where no such understanding is given, there “he that is true” is not understood or known. “And we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ.” Then if not in union with the Son, not in him that is true, and therefore necessarily in him that is false. “This is the true God.” Who? The Son. And why? Because he is the Son. “And eternal life.” Then out of him is eternal death. Why? Because only in union with him is eternal life. Look at the chain as thus drawn out from beginning to end; weigh it well, link by link. “The Son of God is come.” That is link the first. “We know that he is come.” That is link the second. “He hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true.” That is link the third. “We are in him that is true, even his Son Jesus Christ.” That is link the fourth. “This is the true God, and eternal life.” That is link the fifth. And may we not, with holy John, add another link to close the chain? “Little children, keep yourselves from idols;” and amongst them, from the idol of a Son by office, for such is not “the true God nor eternal life.”
4. But now let us advance a step further in our line of argument and show that Jesus is not only the Son of God in his divine nature, but as being “the only-begotten of the Father,” is God's own proper, true, and eternal Son. Take the following testimonies by way of proof of this assertion: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” (Romans 8:3.) Here the Holy Ghost declares that “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Have you ever carefully weighed the meaning of the words, “his own Son?” If you are a father, does not your own son widely differ from an adopted son? The word means literally his “proper” and “peculiar” Son his own in a sense specially distinct from any other. But let us examine this passage a little more closely. A certain work was to be done which the law could not do, for “it was weak through the flesh.” The law was strong enough in itself, for it had all the authority of God to back it; but it was weak through man's infirmity the flesh not being able to keep or obey it. God, then, sent his own Son to do what the law could not do. If words have any meaning, if the Blessed Spirit choose suitable expressions to convey instruction, what can we understand by the term, “God's own Son” but that Jesus is God's true and proper Son by his very mode of existence? This is the grand and blessed revelation of these last days, as made known to the apostles and prophets, and embodied in the inspired pages of the New Testament. What, for instance, is the foundation of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and indeed of the whole Epistle, but that the Son of God has a relation to the Father not only of a dignity but of a nature which he alone possesses? How clear and emphatic the language in which the apostle opens that weighty epistle, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” (Hebrews 1:1,2.) View the Son thus spoken of as a Son merely by office or by covenant title, and the whole force and beauty of the words are lost. But see in the Son the true and real Son of the Father, then the love and mercy of God, as speaking in and by him in these last days, shine forth in all their unparalleled luster. So, in the words just quoted from Romans 8:3, the whole foundation of redemption is laid on this rock, that God sent his own Son. Can language be more plain or more positive? If Jesus be not God's own Son, his true, real, and proper Son, what do the words mean? We say it with all reverence, that if Jesus be a Son only by office, such words as “his own Son,” would but mock and deceive us, and lead us to believe a lie. If I were to point to a son of mine, and say to a neighbor or a stranger, “This is my own son,” and a few days after the person learnt that he was not my own son, but an adopted child whom I was accustomed to call my son when he was no such relation, should I stand clear of deception in the matter? If God, then, declares that Jesus is “his own Son,” am I to believe that he is his Son by nature, by eternal generation, and thus his true and proper Son, or to make him a liar? It seems to us that holy John has already decided the matter: “He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.” This is just your case, if you say that Jesus is not God's own Son, which you must certainly do if you say that he is not his Son by nature but by office. You do not believe God because you believe not the record (or testimony) that God gave of his Son, when he said from heaven, “This is my beloved Son.” And what is the consequence? “You make God a liar.” And is not that an awful position for a worm of earth to stand in? But such is ever the result of listening to natural reasoning and argument in- stead of believing the testimony of God.
But again, have you ever looked at the word “sent,” in the passage that we are now considering? There is a singular beauty and propriety in a Father sending a Son, which is completely lost if the second Person is so far independent of the Father as to be a Son merely by office. As such he might certainly covenant to come but could hardly covenant to be sent. But view him as the Father's own Son, and then the love of the Father in sending him, and his own love in consenting to come, (“Lo! I come,”) are beautiful beyond expression.
But this is by no means the only passage in which Jesus is spoken of as God's “own Son.” Look at those words in the same blessed chapter, (Romans 8,) which has comforted thousands of sorrowful hearts, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Can words be more expressive, “He that spared not his own Son?” Believing soul, you that desire to know God's truth for yourself, who would not hold error for a thousand worlds, and are looking up for that wisdom which cometh from God, consider well the words; they are full of truth and blessedness. Do not the words, then, clearly declare that the love of God was so great to the church that there being no other way by which she could be saved, God the Father spared not his own true and proper Son? Make Jesus a Son by office, and the whole force, not to say the meaning, of the passage is gone in a moment. It would be, so to speak, like plucking away the whole love of God to his people. If Jesus be not God's own proper and true Son, where is the compassion of the Father's heart overcoming, so to speak, all his reluctance to keep him back? Where is the depth of the Father's love in delivering him up for us all? The moment that you deny the eternal Sonship of Jesus, you deny the Father's love to him as his own Son, and with that you deny also the peculiar love that God has to his people. Thus, you destroy at a stoke the unutterable love and complacency that the Father has to the Son as his own Son, and the compassion and love displayed to the church in giving him up as a sacrifice for her sins. The only foundation of our being sons of God (1 John 3:12) is, that Jesus, our Head and elder Brother, was the Son of God. Therefore, he said to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” (John 20:17.) Why “your 'Father?” Because “my Father.” Why “your God?” Because “my God.” “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” (Galatians 4 6.) Why sons? Because Christ is the Son of God. Why the Spirit of his Son? Because the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son, as his mode of subsistence. In removing these ancient landmarks of truth, men little think what havoc they make, we were going to say, in heaven and in earth. In heaven, by destroying the very essence and mode of existence of the three Persons in the sacred Godhead; in earth, by destroying the foundations on which the church is built. If you destroy the peculiar and unutterable love of God to the church, what do you leave us? And this you most certainly destroy if you deny the eternal Sonship of Jesus, for the love of the Father to the church is the same as his love to the Son: “And hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:23.) O the depth of God's love! To carry out this love, in a sense, both Father and Son made a sacrifice. The sacrifice that the Father made, out of his love to the church, was, that he gave out of his own bosom his darling Son and spared him not the sorrows and agonies of the cross, but delivered him up to the curse of the law, the temptations of the devil, the malice of men, and the burning indignation of Justice arresting him as a transgressor. The sacrifice that the Son made was to leave his Father's bosom and be delivered up to a life of suffering and a death of agony. How much is contained in that expression, “He that spared not his own Son!” But does not all its force and meaning consist in this, that Jesus is the true and real Son of God? But if you still are in doubt about the meaning of God's “not sparing his own Son,” look at an almost parallel expression, “I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.” (Malachi 3:17.) In reading that passage, what meaning do you attach to the expression of “a man sparing his own son?” Is the own son spoken of there the man's real, true, and proper son, or an adopted one, or one calling himself so when he is not? You answer, and that well. “Why, the whole force of the passage depends on the person spared being the man's own son.” Then why interpret this passage in that sense, which, indeed, you cannot help doing, and explain what is said about God's own Son in a manner quite different? But you say, “I cannot understand this eternal generation. It seems to me so inconsistent, so self-contradictory, that I cannot receive it.” Do you mean, then, to receive nothing which you cannot understand, and which appears self-contradictory? Then you must on those grounds reject the two greatest mysteries of our most holy faith, the Trinity and the Incarnation. We do not call upon you to understand it. But if you love your own soul, we counsel you not to deny it, lest you be found amongst those who “deny the Son, and so have not the Father.” (1 John 2:23.)
But again, if Jesus be not the true, proper, and real Son of God, how can we understand the parable of the vineyard and the husband men, given us by three evangelists? We need not go through the whole parable, but simply take what is said about the householder sending his son: “Having yet, therefore, one son, his well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.” (Mark 12:6.) Now, it is most plain that the whole force and beauty of the parable consist in this, that after the owner of the vineyard had sent servant after servant to the husbandmen, and they had beaten some and killed others, last of all, “having yet one son, his well-beloved,” he sent him. Two things, then, this parable most certainly establishes: 1. That his coming into the world did not make Jesus to be the Son of God, for surely none would be so foolish and ignorant as to say that the son spoken of in the parable became the householder's son by being sent to the husbandmen. It was because he was his son already that he was sent to them as the father's last messenger. 2. That Jesus bears the same relationship to the Father that the son bore to the householder, or the parable has neither force nor meaning. Look closely at this matter, for the Lord's parables are not idle tales, but though wrapped up in figures, are words of truth and righteousness. If Jesus, then, be not the true, proper, and real Son of God, what is the meaning of the parable? No one would accept this interpretation, that it was not the real son of the householder that was sent, but a neighbor or a friend who personated a son, who assumed the office and took the title when he was not his son at all. Do you not see, as a general rule of Scripture interpretation, that whilst you hold the truth all is simple and harmonious, and passage after passage confirm and corroborate each other; but the moment that error is set up all is confusion, and you cannot by any possible means get one passage of Scripture to harmonize with the other? So, with this parable as harmonizing with the true and real Sonship of Jesus. The moment you see and believe that Jesus is the true Son of the Father, and that by nature and essence, the whole parable is full of exquisite truth, pathos, and beauty; but abandon that view, and the parable at once falls to the ground as devoid of all sense or significancy.
It is with the eternal Sonship of Christ as with the Trinity, the Deity of Jesus, the Personality of the Holy Ghost, &c. It does not so much rest on isolated texts as on the general drift of God's inspired word what the Apostle calls “the proportion (or analogy) of faith.” (Romans 11:6.) And it is an infinite mercy for the church of God that the Holy Spirit has so ordered it; for single texts, however clear, may be disputed, but the grand current of truth, like a mighty river, not only bears down all opposition, but flows on in a pure, perennial stream, to slake the thirst of the saints of the Most High.71
But take another testimony to the same grand truth, and that from God's own mouth. Twice did God himself declare, with an audible voice from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5.) Surely when God speaks from heaven those who fear his great name will by his grace listen, believe, and obey. If Jesus 'received from God the Father honour and glory, when that voice came to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” (2 Peter, 1-17,) we who desire to honour and glorify him should feel a solemn pleasure in obeying the Father's voice: “Hear ye him.” Blessed Jesus, we do desire to hear thee, for thy sheep hear thy voice, and thy mouth is most sweet; yea, thou art altogether lovely. When sin distresses our conscience, or error assails our mind, may we ever feel and say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” (John 6:68, 69.) But if Jesus be the Son of God merely by office or covenant title, where is the blessedness of that voice from heaven, proclaiming him the beloved Son of the Father? It would but deceive and mislead us were it but a name not a reality, a title implying a relationship which did not actually exist. If words so plain and so expressive mean anything, (and who dare say that God's words mean nothing?) they most certainly declare an intimacy of divine relationship between the Father and the Son, peculiar and ineffable, deeply mysterious but inexpressibly blessed. No name or title can give an essential relationship. My son is called my son because he is my son; and if he were not so, no calling could make him so. In the same or an analogous manner, the covenant, however blessed, however ordered in all things and sure, could not make the Word to be the Son of God were he not so by eternal essence. Besides which, if Jesus be not the Son of God by his very mode of subsistence, there would be, at least as far as we can see, no peculiar significancy in his becoming so by the covenant. It does not at all touch the efficacy of redemption, which depends on the Redeemer being God as well as man. If then, the second Person of the Trinity be not the Son of God by nature and essence anterior to and independent of the covenant of grace, there appears to be no reason why he should assume that particular title for the purpose of Redemption rather than any other. As this, however, is a point involving many other considerations, we shall not further press it, though it has a weight with our own mind.
Thus, in whatever point of view we examine it, we see error and confusion stamped upon every explanation of the Sonship of Jesus, but that which has always been the faith of the Church of God, that he is the Son of the Father in truth and love. (2 John 3.) As such we, in sweet union with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, with the glorified spirits in heavenly bliss, and the suffering saints in this vale of tears, worship, adore, and love him, and crown him Lord of all.
REVIEW 1: Concluded from page 13172
WHETHER we set forth truth or whether we expose error, and we can scarcely do the one without at the same time performing the other, the word of God must ever be the grand armory whence we take the weapons of our spiritual warfare. This is both apostolic precept and apostolic practice. “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:17.) “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God.” (1 Peter 4:11.) “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:4.) In this spirit, as obeying this precept, and walking after this example, have we thus far attempted to overthrow that grievous error of denying the eternal Sonship of Christ, and to set forth that vital, fundamental truth of his being the Son of the Father in truth and love, which has formed the subject of our two last Reviews; and following the same rule of guidance, we hope in our present Number to bring it to a conclusion. In so doing, we have little hope of convincing those who have drunk deeply into the spirit of error. The poison is already in their veins, vitiating in them all that once seemed like truth and simplicity. As infidelity, when once it has got full possession of the mind, rejects the clearest evidences from positive inability to credit them, so error, when once it has poisoned the heart, renders it forever afterwards, in the great majority of instances, utterly incapable of receiving the truth. Against every text that may be brought forward in support of truth an objection is started, a false interpretation offered, a counter statement made, an opposing passage quoted, the object evidently being not to bow down to truth, but to make truth bow down to error; not to submit the heart to the word of God, but to make the word of God itself bend and yield to the determined obstinacy of a mind prejudiced to its lowest depths. O what a state of mind to be in! How careful, then, should we be, how watchful, how prayerful, lest we also, “being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from our own steadfastness.” (2 Peter 3:18.) A tender conscience, a believing heart, a prayerful spirit, a watchful eye, a wary ear, a guarded tongue, and a cautious foot, will, with God's blessing, be great preservatives against error of every kind. But to see light in God's light, to feel life in his life, to have sweet fellowship and sacred communion with the Father and the Son, to walk before God in the beams of his favor, to find his word our meat and drink, and to be ever approaching him through the Son of his love, pleading with him for his promised teaching, this is the true and only way to learn his truth, to believe it, to love it, and to live it. No heretic, no erroneous man, no unbeliever ever stood on this holy ground. That childlike spirit, without which there is no entering into the kingdom of heaven; that godly jealousy for the Lord's honour which makes error abhorred and truth beloved; that tender fear of his great and glorious name which leads the soul to desire his approbation and to dread his displeasure; that holy liberty which an experimental knowledge of the truth communicates to a citizen of Zion; that enlargement of heart which draws up the affections to those things which are above, where Jesus sits at God's right band; these, and all such similar fruits of divine teaching as specially distinguish the living saint of God, are not to be found in that bosom where error has erected its throne of darkness and death. On the contrary, a vain confident, self-righteous, contentious, quarrelsome spirit, breathing enmity and hatred against all who oppose their favorite dogmas, and thrust down their darling idols, are usually marks stamped upon all who are deeply imbued with heresy and error73. They may be very confident in the soundness of their views, or in the firmness of their own standing, but God rejects their “confidences, and they shall not prosper in them.” (Jerimiah 2:37.)
In resuming, then, our subject, we cannot but express our conviction that as we are enabled to read the Scriptures of the New Testament with a more enlightened understanding, and to receive them more feelingly into a believing heart, we become more and more forcibly struck with these two leading features in them: 1. The clear revelation made therein that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and 2. The amazing weight and importance attached by the Holy Ghost to a faith in him as such, and to a profession corresponding to that faith. It is not one or two passages, however plain and clear, but the whole current of revelation that carries such conviction to a believing heart. The eternal Sonship of Christ is, as it were, the central Sun of the New Testament, to remove which is to blot out all light from the sky, and to cast the church into darkness and the shadow of death. The manifestation of the Son of God is the sum and substance of the whole wondrous scheme of love which has brought heaven down to earth in the incarnation of Christ, and taken earth up to heaven in his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father, agreeably to that testimony of holy John which may be called an epitome of the gospel: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9, 10.) To believe in him as the Son of God, and to confess him as such before men, this, in the New Testament, is the distinguishing mark of the disciples of Jesus. That in believing him to be the Son of God, they believed him to be equal with God, which he could only be by being eternally of the same essence, is plain from the very language of the unbelieving Jews: “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18.)
We have already quoted two memorable instances of Peter's faith and confession as witnessing to Jesus being “the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16; John 6:69.) We will now, with God's help and blessing, examine some others of a similar kind, and amongst them we will first take Paul's belief in, and testimony unto the same vital truth. “Straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.” (Acts 9:20.) Carefully examine, spiritual reader, and prayerfully consider the words that we have just quoted. What a marvel is here! We see the once persecuting Saul called by sovereign grace, made a believer in that Jesus whose name he had so abhorred, and whose people he would fain have swept off the face of the earth, and preaching him boldly as the Son of God in the very synagogues where he intended, in his blind rage and headlong fury, to compel the saints at Damascus to blaspheme. (Acts 26:11.) What did his heart so firmly believe, what did his mouth so boldly preach but this vital truth, that Jesus is the true and real Son of God? His simple, child-like, new-born faith knew nothing of those crafty perversions, those subtle distinctions whereby truth is now denied under the pretense of being explained. Rising up by power divine into a spiritual apprehension of, and a living faith in, the Son of God, whose voice he had heard, and whose glory he had seen, he knew no such dishonoring views of God's only-begotten Son as that he was not his Son by nature and eternal subsistence, but by office, by virtue of the covenant, by a pre-existing human soul, by his complex person, or by any such other fallacious interpretation as erroneous men have since invented to darken counsel by words without knowledge, and sully the pure revelation of God. When God revealed his Son in Paul's heart, (Galatians 1:16,) it was to show him his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and this glory was the glory in which he eternally subsisted as the true and real Son of God. Paul, therefore, from the revelation that he had of him in his own soul, believed that he was the Son of God by eternal essence and original subsistence, that true and real Son of the Father in whom the Old Testament church believed as the promised Messiah, and for whose advent it was waiting in faith and hope. A few words upon the faith of the Old Testament saints may here not be out of place; for it may explain why Nathanael, Paul, the Eunuch, and others so implicitly and instantaneously received Jesus as the Son of God, when once they believed in him as the promised Messiah. There was no doubt in the mind of the believing Israelite that the true, real, and proper Son of God was to come. The clear language of the second Psalm, and the express declaration of prophecy, (Isaiah 9:6,) had already firmly laid that as the foundation of the faith of the Old Testament church. The question with the elect remnant when Christ came in the flesh was, whether Jesus of Nazareth were he. Immediately, therefore, that Jesus was revealed to a Godfearing Jew as the promised Messiah, faith flowed out toward him as the Son of God for whose coming he was looking. Such believing Israelites were Simeon, Anna, Zacharias, Elizabeth, Nathanael, and other godly men and women “who were looking for redemption in Jerusalem.” (Luke 2:38.) In a similar way, the high priest “adjured Jesus by the living God to tell them whether he was the Christ, the Son of God.” The very chief priests, and elders, and all the council did not doubt that the true and real Son of God was to come, for that was the faith of the Old Testament church; but they disbelieved that Jesus who stood before them was he; and they crucified him as a blasphemer, not as doubting that when Messiah did come, he would be the eternal Son of God, but as rejecting the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be such. Thus, not only believers but unbelievers concur in exposing the ignorance and refuting the errors of those who in our day deny the eternal Sonship of Jesus.
But now look with the same spiritual eye at the faith and confession of the Eunuch. (Acts 8:37.) Philip, who had preached unto him Jesus, and no doubt 74in so doing had declared to him his true and proper Sonship, refused to baptize him till he was assured of his faith. In answer to that appeal what was his confession? “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” (Acts 8:35-37.) Now, can we for a moment think that this believer in the Son of God viewed him as such by office, or by covenant, or by any such crafty invention of subsequent days as erroneous men have sought out whereby to obscure truth too bright, too dazzling for their dim eyes?75 Or do we not rather believe that his faith rose up at once to embrace the sublime mystery that Jesus of Nazareth whom Philip preached was the true and real Son of God? It is a sound and safe rule of interpretation that the simple, literal meaning of a passage is that which the Holy Ghost intends76. Apply that rule to those passages where Jesus is spoken of as the Son of God, and it at once follows that his true and' literal Sonship is meant by the expression. The scriptures are written for the plain, simple-hearted, believing family of God, who receive the truth from his lips in the same unreasoning faith as a child listens to the teaching of its mother. (Psalms 131:2; Isaiah 28:9.) Now where would be the childlike faith of all these simple-hearted believers if the blessed Jesus were not really and truly the Son of God, but only so by some mysterious explanation which denies the plain letter of truth? Spiritual reader, avoid mystical, forced, fanciful, strained explanations, and receive in the simplicity of faith the plain language of the Holy Ghost. It will preserve thy feet from the traps and snares spread for them by crafty men who by fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. Seek rather to know and feel the power of truth in thy own soul, and to experience that inward blessedness and sacred liberty which the Son of God gives to those who believe in his name, according to his own words’ words of solemn import against the servants of sin and error, but full of blessedness to those who kiss the Son in faith and affection. (Psalms 2:12.) “And the servant abideth not in the house forever; but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (John 8:35, 36.)
Having viewed the testimony borne to the Sonship of Christ by individuals, we will now, though not in strict chronological order, look at the united voice of all the disciples. We read that after witnessing the miracle of Peter's walking on the sea and the ceasing of the wind when Jesus came into the ship, “then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:33.) It was not that they had doubts before, but they were so overwhelmed with the greatness of the miracle, and so awed by the power and presence of the Lord then in their midst, that their hearts bowed down before him in holy adoration and believing love, as the very Son of the eternal Father, and as such possessed of all the power and glory of the Godhead. Can we suppose that their minds were taken up with speculations such as daring men have since invented to deny and dishonor both Father and Son, or did their simple, child-like, and divinely inspired faith at once embrace the blessedness of the mystery that the Jesus whom they then saw, and at whose feet they fell was the Son of the Father in truth and love?
But it is needless to multiply testimonies of this nature. It must be evident to all who read the New Testament with an enlightened eye that faith in the Son of God is put forward again and again as the grand distinctive feature of those who are born and taught of God.
We shall therefore now pass on to show the way in which this blessed truth is intimately and inseparably connected with the experience of every living soul, for that is the grand mark and test of doctrine being of God; and in so doing we shall, as before, keep as closely as possible to the Scriptures of truth. The eternal Sonship of Christ is no dry doctrine, but a fountain of life to the church of God; and as its vital streams flow into the soul, they become springs of happiness and holiness, purging the conscience and purifying the heart, and giving and maintaining communion with God.
1. A life of faith is the grand distinguishing mark of a saint of God here below. But this faith must have a living Object, and such a one as can maintain it in daily exercise. “Because I live, ye shall live also,” was the Lord's own most gracious promise. (John 14:19.) Now, let us see what was Paul's experience on this point. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20.) The life which Paul lived in the flesh was “by the faith of the Son of God.” This was his life of faith, looking unto, believing in, hanging upon the Son of God, and receiving out of his fulness supplies for all his need. (John 1:16: Philippians 4:13, 19.) Now, how is it possible for any man to live a similar life of faith unless he believe in the same way in the Sun of God? and how can he believe that he is the Son of God if he deny his true and real Sonship? His grace and glory, his Person and work, his blood and righteousness, his suitability and all-sufficiency, his beauty and blessedness, his love and sympathy, his headship and dominion, his advocacy and intercession as the great High Priest over the house of God, in the knowledge, faith, and experience of which the very life of a believer is bound up, are all so intimately connected with, all so directly and immediately flow from his eternal Sonship, that they cannot be separated from it. Thus, if there be no faith in the Sonship of Christ, there can be no true faith in the Son of God; and if there be no true faith in the Son of God, what is a man, with all his profession, but one who has a name to live and is dead?
2. Communion with God, that rich, that unspeakable blessing, whereby a worm of earth is admitted into holy converse with the Three-One Jehovah, is intimately, indeed necessarily connected with the life of faith of which we have just been treating. But there can be no communion with the Father and the Son where there is no “acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.” (Colossians 2:2.) In other words, there must be a living faith in and a sincere confession of the Father as the Father, and a living faith in and a sincere confession of the Son as the Son, before there can be any sacred fellowship with the Father and the Son. This is John's testimony: “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3.)77 How, then, can any have fellowship (that is, communion) with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ if they deny both Father and Son, which they most certainly do if they reject the eternal Sonship of Jesus? Well may God say to such, “If I be a Father, where is mine honor?” (Malachi 1:6.) You may call me your Father. I reject your claim, for you deny my dear Son, and “whosoever denieth the Son the same hath not the Father.” (1 John 2:23.) There may be a notional Christ presented to the imagination, a letter Christ conceived by the natural understanding, a Christ upon the cross, as in pictures and on the Romish crucifix, painted upon the eye of sense; and by a strong effort of the mind, there may be, with all these representations, a something like faith and feeling which may be thought by poor, deceived, deluded creatures a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. But if there be no spiritual faith in his Sonship there can be no spiritual communion with him. It is only as the soul is blessed and favored with discoveries of him as the Son of God that faith goes out toward him, hope anchors in him, and love flows forth after him; and where these three graces of the Spirit are, there and there only is there a saving knowledge of his Person, a blessed experience of his grace, and a sacred fellowship of his presence.
3. Nor can there be, as it appears to us from John's testimony, any walking in the light of God's countenance, any fellowship with the family of God here below, or any saving knowledge of the cleansing blood of the Lamb where Christ's eternal Sonship is denied. And what is a religion worth when these three blessings are severed from it? Consider, in the light of the Spirit, the following testimony: “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (I John 1:7.) Look at the three blessings spoken of in this verse: 1. Walking in the light as God is in the light; 2. Having fellowship with one another; 3. An experience of the blood of Jesus Christ his Son as cleansing from all sin. And observe how the whole stress of the verse lies upon the words, “Jesus Christ his Son.” Take away his true and real Sonship, for light there is darkness, for fellowship with the saints there is separation from them, and for the cleansing blood there is a guilty conscience and a sin-avenging God.
4. As there is no communion with Father and Son without a living faith in the eternal Sonship of Jesus, and no walking in the light, no fellowship with the saints, and no knowledge of atoning blood, so there is no indwelling of God without such a faith and confession. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God.” (1 John 4:15.) To be a saving confession there must first be a believing heart; (Romans 10:10;) and wherever the one precedes, the other certainly follows. (2 Corinthians 5:13.) If then, there be no true faith there can be no true confession, but a heart which believes aright will ever manifest itself by a confessing tongue. It is for this reason that John pronounces such a blessing on “whosoever confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God.” But do those confess him who deny his true and proper Sonship? No; he only confesses him whose eyes have been anointed to see his beauty and glory as the only-begotten of the Father, and whose faith embraces him as having been eternally such. In his happy soul “God dwelleth”, by his Spirit and grace, for in receiving the Son of God as such into his heart, he has received the Father also; (1 John 2:23;) and “he dwelleth in God,” for by dwelling by faith in the Son of his love he dwelleth also in the Father. Then how can he who denies the eternal Sonship of Jesus have any part or lot in a blessing like this?
5. Another rich blessing connected with faith in the true and real Sonship of Christ is, victory over the world. “Who is he that over cometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:5.) A man must either overcome the world or be overcome by it. To overcome the world is to be saved; to be overcome by it is to be lost. He, then, who does not believe that Jesus is the Son of G6d does not and cannot overcome the world, for he has not the faith of God's elect; he is not born of God; there is no divine life in his soul; and he has therefore no power to resist the allurements, endure the scorn, or rise superior to the frowns and smiles of the world, but is entangled, carried captive, and destroyed by it. Where the world is loved the heart is necessarily overcome by it; for in the love of the world, as in the love of sin, is all the strength of the world. Now unless the love of Christ in the soul be stronger than the love of the world, the weaker must give way to the stronger. Unbelief, heresy, and error cannot overcome the world, for such are utter strangers to the faith which purifies the heart from the lust of it, to the hope which rises above it, and to the love which lifts up the soul beyond it.
6. Again, it cannot be doubted that of all the blessings which God can bestow in feeling experience, few surpass a knowledge of the possession of eternal life. But this rich blessing is intimately connected with faith in the Sonship of Jesus. This is John's testimony: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13.) To whom does John write? To those that “believe in the name of the Son of God,” They alone can receive and believe his testimony, for they alone possess the inward teaching and witness of the Blessed Spirit to the truth of his word. He does not write to heretics, to erroneous men, to disbelievers in, to deniers of the eternal Sonship of Jesus. As these have not the Son of God they have not life; (5:12;) and John writes not to the dead but the living. For their sakes, and to confirm their faith and hope, he writes that, from the witness of the Spirit, they may know in their own hearts and consciences that they have eternal life; and this they have because they have the Son. If this be true, none can know that they have eternal life but those who believe in the name of the Son of God. And how can we think that those believe in that name who deny his true and real Sonship, to set up in its place an idol, a figment of their own vain mind; and because they cannot understand the mystery of an eternal Son, or make it square with their natural ideas of generation, renounce it altogether, or explain it utterly away?
Nor, as it appears to us, can the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity be maintained except by holding the eternal Sonship of Christ. There are two errors of an opposite nature as regards the doctrine of the Trinity: 1. One is Tritheism, or setting up three distinct Gods; the other, 2. Sabellianism, which holds that there is but one God under three different names. Each of these errors destroys the Trinity in Unity, the first by denying the Unity of the Essence, the second by denying the Trinity of the Persons. The true and scriptural doctrine of the Trinity steers between these two erroneous extremes and holds a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Essence. Now, the Lord Jesus, as the eternal Son of the Father, is distinct from him as his Son, and yet necessarily one with him as partaking of the same Essence; and the Holy Ghost, as proceeding from the Father and the Son, is distinct also from those Persons of the Trinity, and yet, as eternally proceeding from both, partakes of their Essence likewise. Thus, we have a Trinity of Persons but a Unity of Essence one God, but eternally subsisting as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Eternal Sonship gives to the Son a Unity of Essence with the Father, and yet a distinctness of Person; thus as the Son he is one with the Father, (John 10:30,) and yet as the Son he is distinct from the Father. So eternal procession from the Father and the Son gives to the Holy Ghost Unity of Essence with the Father and the Son, and yet a distinct Personality. Upon this firm basis the Trinity stands. But if you remove the eternal Sonship of Christ, you also must take away the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost; and by so doing you destroy the Unity of Essence and intercommunion of nature of Israel's Trinne God. If the denial of the eternal Sonship of Jesus involve such consequences, well may we tremble at such an error as removes the very foundations of revealed truth. All other views of the Sonship of Christ lower his essential and eternal dignity, and however craftily disguised, tend to and usually end in
Arianism. If his Sonship be not his eternal mode of subsistence, it must, in some way or other, be created Sonship, and what is this but Arian doctrine in its very root and essence? How the Son can be eternally begotten, and how the Holy Ghost can eternally proceed is a mystery which we cannot understand, much less explain; but we receive it by faith, in the same way as we receive the “great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” If once we begin to reason on these matters, we are lost at the very threshold of our inquiry. To believe, not to speculate to receive the testimony that God has given of his Son, not to doubt, argue, and cavil, is the only sure path, as well as the peculiar blessedness of a child of God.
In this spirit have we sought to handle the weighty matter which has occupied our thoughts during our last three Numbers. The subject has grown almost insensibly under our pen, and yet we feel that we have scarcely grazed the surface, much less laid bare the depths of this vital truth. We shall not, however, detain our readers any longer upon it, as it is rather in our mind to publish a small tract on the subject, recasting the whole; and whilst we preserve the chief arguments that we have brought forward, we shall endeavor to give the whole a more exact and complete form than its present fugitive shape, and thus make it, with the Lord's help and blessing, more worthy of acceptance with the church of God.
Erratum. In our last Number, page 128, second line from the bottom, instead of “all his reluctance to keep him back,” read, “all his reluctance to give him up.”
Editor’s Note: If shear verbiage and constant repetition of the same two ideas (Only Philpot correctly understands the scriptures on this subject: all those who reject his teaching are heretics and unsaved) then Philpot must surely be right. As far as this “Review”, which is as I said no review at all, he stand or falls by his use of scripture and his attitude to all who disagree with him.
The True Signification of the English Adjective, “Mortal” and the Awfully Erroneous Consequences of the Application of that Term, to the Ever Immortal Body of Jesus Christ, briefly Considered. By Henry Cole. London.
IN that wondrous prayer which the Lord Jesus Christ, as the great High Priest over the house of God, offered up to his heavenly Father on the eve of his sufferings and death, there is a declaration which demands of all who fear God the deepest and most attentive consideration. It is this: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”*80 (John 17: 3.) In the preceding verse the blessed Lord had told his heavenly Father that he had “given him power over all flesh,” for this express purpose, “that he should give eternal life to as many as God had given him.” But for the instruction of the church of God for all time, that she might clearly understand and know what this eternal life is which he has to bestow, and that on a matter so vital, so essential, no mistake might be made, he graciously adds the explanation to which we have already referred. By this plain and decisive declaration, he would forever show that the eternal life which he has to give is no visionary, imaginary, dim, and dreamy heaven; no mere deliverance at death from illness, pain, and suffering; no narrow escape from hell, just at the last gasp; no reward of merit, or purchase of a death-bed repentance; no fruit of juggling ceremonies or absolving priests, got in the very article of dissolution, by a drop of oil or a little bread and wine; no entrance for unregenerate souls into a paradise of unknown bliss, of which on earth there had been no foretaste, and for which no previous meetness or spiritual preparedness had been inwardly wrought. All such carnal views of heaven, all such natural notions of a state of happiness after death of deceivers and deceived, the blessed Lord at once and forever cast out by declaring with his own lips of truth and grace that the eternal life which he had to bestow consisted in two things: 1. The knowledge of the only true God; and, 2. The knowledge of himself as the sent of the Father.
The importance and significancy of this declaration it is impossible to overstate. Its infinite weight is determined by eternal life being laid in the opposite scale; its immeasurable breadth by the commencement of heaven dating from a life on earth. For eternal life begins below, to be consummated above; is sown in grace, to be harvested in glory. Thus, Enoch walked with God before he was translated; Abraham was the friend of God; and Moses saw the Lord face to face. These and all the Old Testament saints “desired a heavenly country” before they reached it. (Hebrews 11:16.) But how could they desire a country of which they had no knowledge, foretaste, or enjoyment? Can we desire that of which we know nothing, feel nothing, taste nothing, enjoy nothing? “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that desire beside thee,” is the experience of every soul that by the letting down of heaven upon earth finds earth itself the very portal of heaven. But how can it know there is a God in heaven, unless it has found that God on earth; or desire none beside him even here below, unless here below it has felt and known his love?
But it is not our purpose to open or enlarge upon this declaration of the blessed Lord in its general bearings, or as comprehending the whole of the important truth couched therein. The part which rests with weight upon our own mind at this present moment is that which places the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ on the same level with the knowledge of the only true God. How deep, then, how mysterious, and yet how blessed must that knowledge be to obtain, to possess, to enjoy which is to be put into possession, whilst here below, of life everlasting. Science, learning, knowledge, general or special, mental ability, mechanical skill, political wisdom, intellectual refinement, and every attainment which, in a state of high civilization, elevates men above the slaves of drunkenness and debauchery, are well for time. Who can despise such a wonder of science and skill as the Great Eastern, though he that fears God and trembles at his word may call to mind the woes denounced against ancient Tyre for her riches and her pride, (Ezekiel 26, 27, 28,) and may see with fear that what she was England is, and that the same sins may call down the same doom. But what are all the attainments of science, all the wonders of art, all the triumphs of engineering skill for eternity? Yes, were all the science and art, all the skill, wealth, and power, now divided among thousands, concentrated in one individual, what would the whole collective array be compared with one grain of grace, one ray of divine teaching, one drop of atoning blood in the conscience, or one gleam of the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost? If, then, this spiritual and saving knowledge of Jesus Christ whom God hath sent is a free gift, and yet is only bestowed upon those whom the Father has given to his dear Son, how precious the possession, but O how exclusive the boon! How as with a two-edged sword this word out of the mouth of the Son of God (Revelation 1:16) cuts both ways; how, as a key worn on his shoulder and wielded by his divine hand, it shuts as well as opens; how, whilst with one hand it raises millions to hope and heaven, with the other it sinks millions into despair and hell. As a healing word from the Lord's lips, it brings rest and peace to prayerful hearts, wounded consciences, and contrite spirits; but, as a word of truth and righteousness, it forever seals the doom of the ignorant and unbelieving, the self-confident and the self-righteous, the dead in sin and the dead in profession.
As all true Christians believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is God and man, this spiritual, saving knowledge of his Person and work, his love and grace, his blood and righteousness, divides itself into two branches: 1. A gracious acquaintance with his Deity as the eternal Son of God; 2. A gracious knowledge of his humanity as the Son of man.
In some of our late Numbers we ventured to lay before our spiritual readers some of those scriptural views of the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord which we have seen and felt in our own soul as the solemn truth of God. And as we have reason to believe that what we were enabled to write upon that subject has been received with a measure of acceptance by those who know and love the truth as it is in Jesus,*81 we have felt encouraged now to bring before them some reflections on the sacred humanity of the blessed Redeemer. To know him as God, to know him as man, to know him as God-man, and this by a divine revelation of his glorious Person, blood, and love, to our souls this is indeed to have eternal life in our breasts. Nor can he be savingly known in any other way but by divine and special revelation, “For no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth anyone the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” (Matthew 11:27.) The Apostle, therefore, prays for the saints at Ephesus, that “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ would give unto them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, the eyes of their understanding being enlightened.” (Ephesians 1:17, 18.) He prayed for the same blessing for them as he had enjoyed for himself, as he speaks, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me.” (Galatians 1:15, 16.) He knew, therefore, in himself, in his own blessed and happy experience, what it was to be “filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;” (Colossians 1:9;) and to be blessed with “all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment (or knowledge) of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:2, 3.) Thus, he travailed in birth again for the Galatians until “Christ was formed in them;” (Galatians
4:19;) and prayed for the Ephesians, that “Christ might dwell in their heart by faith.” (Ephesians 3:17.) He speaks also of their having “learned Christ,” “heard of Christ,” and “been taught of Christ,” (Ephesians 4:20, 21,) all which expressions point to a divine discovery of his Person and work to the heart. The blessed Lord also assured his sorrowing disciples that he would “come to them,” and that they should “see” him, and “live” upon him; that they should “know that he was in them,” and that he would “manifest himself to them and make his abode with them.” (John 14:18-23.) Nor were these blessings and favors limited to the Lord's own immediate disciples. As “the precious ointment which was poured upon the head” of our great High Priest “went down to the skirts of his garments,” (Psalms 133:2,) so there is “an anointing which teacheth” the lowest and least of the members of the mystical body of Christ “of all things, and is truth, and no lie.” (1 John 2:27.) By this unction from above everyone that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto Christ; (John 6:45;) and knoweth for “himself that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true.” (1 John 5:20.) If then, we are favored with this teaching, and “a man can receive nothing unless it be given him from heaven,” (John 3:27,) we shall see by the eyes of our enlightened understanding “the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,” and what we thus see we shall believe, love, and adore.
Should we not, then, with all holy awe and godly reverence, seek to approach this mystery of wisdom, power, and love? for all salvation and all happiness, as well as all grace and glory are wrapped up in it. Right views are indispensable to a right faith, and a right faith is indispensable to salvation. To stumble at the foundation, is, concerning faith, to make shipwreck altogether; for as Immanuel, God with us, is the grand Object of faith, to err in views of his eternal Deity, or to err in views of his sacred humanity, is alike destructive. There are points of truth which are not fundamental, though erroneous views on any one point must lead to God-dishonoring consequences in strict proportion to its importance and magnitude; but there are certain foundation truths to err concerning which is to insure for the erroneous and the unbelieving the blackness of darkness forever.
In opening up, therefore, according to our ability, this blessed subject, the sacred humanity of the Lord Jesus, we shall arrange our thoughts under four distinct heads.
I. The wisdom, love, and grace of God as revealed in the incarnation of his dear Son.
II. The nature of that sacred humanity which the blessed Lord assumed in the execution of this wondrous plan.
III. The work accomplished in that sacred humanity whilst here on earth, in its state of humiliation and suffering.
IV. The exaltation of that sacred humanity to the right hand of the Father in heaven; and what it involves for the present and for the future.
On a subject so deep and so important, yet so full of grace and truth, it may well behoove us to seek wisdom from above, and to take especial heed that our pen may drop no word that may be inconsistent with the oracles of God or sully the purity of the doctrine which is according to godliness.
I. To glorify his dear Son has from all eternity been the purpose of the Father; and both in the plan and in the execution has he manifested the depths of his infinite wisdom, power, and love. That the eternal Son of God should take into intimate and indissoluble union with his divine Person the flesh and the blood of the children, that in that nature he might manifest the riches of the sovereign grace, the heights and depths of the everlasting love, and the fulness of the uncreated glory of a Trinne Jehovah, has been from all eternity the determinate counsel and purpose of the great and glorious self-existent I AM; and all creation, all providence, and all events and circumstances of time and space were originally and definitely arranged to carry into execution this original plan. Creation, with all its wonders of power and wisdom, was not necessary either for the happiness or the glory of the self-existent Jehovah. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had, from all eternity, that holy, intimate union and intercommunion with each other, that mutual love and ineffable fellowship of three distinct Persons and yet but one God, which creation could neither augment nor impair. Time, with all its incidents, is but a moment; space, with all its dimensions, is but a speck, compared with the existence of a God who inhabiteth eternity, and therefore filleth all time and all space. That a self-existent God should be amply sufficient for his own happiness and his own glory is a truth as self-evident to a believing heart as the very existence of God himself. But it pleased the sacred Trinne Jehovah that there should be an external manifestation of his heavenly glory; and this was to be accomplished by the incarnation of the Son of God, the second Person of the holy Trinity. The Father, therefore, prepared him a body, which in due time he should assume. Thus, addressing his heavenly Father, he says, “A body hast thou prepared me.” (Hebrews 10:5.) That he should take this prepared body into union with his divine Person was the eternal will of God; so that when the appointed time arrived for the decree to be accomplished, the eternal Son could and did come forth from the bosom of the Father with these words upon his lips, “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, (the volume of God's eternal decrees,) to do thy will, O God.” (Hebrews 10:7.)
Now, the word of truth declares that “God manifest in the flesh” is “the great mystery of godliness.” (1 Timothy 3:16.) Therefore, without an experimental knowledge of this great mystery there can be no godliness in heart, lip, or life; and if no godliness no salvation, unless we mean to open the gates of bliss to the ungodly, who “shall not stand in the judgment;” (Psalms 1:5;) and to count for nothing that “ungodliness “ against which “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” (Romans 1:18.) It is the truth, “the truth as it is in Jesus,” which alone “maketh free;” and it is the truth, “the truth as it is in Jesus,” which alone sanctifies as well as liberates: “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.” (John 17:17.) How important, then, how all-essential to know the truth for ourselves, in our own hearts and consciences, by divine teaching and divine testimony, that, set free from bondage, darkness, ignorance, and error, liberated into the blessed enjoyment of the love and mercy of God, and sanctified by his Spirit and grace, we may walk before him in the light of his countenance. And as in the Person of the incarnate Son of God “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” how blessed is it to look up by faith to him at the right hand of the Father, and to receive out of his fulness those communications of wisdom and grace which not only enlighten us with the light of the living, but cause us to be partakers of his holiness, and thus make us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.
As thus taught and blessed, we desire to approach this solemn subject, and to look with the eyes of an enlightened understanding and of a believing heart at the mystery of an incarnate God. And if Moses at God's command put off his shoes from off his feet, when he looked at the burning bush, for the place whereon he stood was holy ground, (Exodus 3:5,) much more should we, when we look on the mystery of God made manifest in the flesh, of which the burning bush was but a type, put off the shoes of carnal reason from off our feet.
II. The sacred humanity of the blessed Lord consists of a perfect human body and a perfect human soul, taken at one and the same instant in the womb of the Virgin Mary, under the overshadowing operation and influence of the Holy Ghost. This is very evident from the language of the angel to the Virgin: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore, also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35.)
i. The first thing to be borne in mind is that it was a real and substantial human nature, consisting of a real human body and a real human soul, both of which were assumed at one and the same instant in the womb of the Virgin. It was necessary that the same nature should be taken which had sinned, or there could have been no redemption or reconciliation of that nature, or of those that were that nature. Thus the apostle argues, “For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham;” (Hebrews 2:16;) implying, that if fallen angels had to be redeemed and reconciled, the Son of God must have taken angelic nature; but as man had to be redeemed, he assumed human nature. It was not, then, a shadowy form which the son of God assumed in the womb of the Virgin, as he had appeared in human shape before his incarnation to Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, but a real human nature, as real and as substantial as our own.
Thus, the Son of God “took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men;” (Philippians 2:7;) “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;” (John 1:14;) “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh;” (Romans 8:3;) “Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.” (Hebrews 2:11) These Scripture testimonies abundantly show that the Son of God assumed a real human nature but not a fallen, peccable, mortal nature. He was “made flash” therefore real flesh; “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” therefore not in the reality of sinful flesh. He took flesh of the Virgin, or he could not have been the promised “seed of the woman,” which was to bruise the serpent's head; (Genesis 3:15;) or of “the seed of Abraham,” to which the promise was especially made, (Galatians 3:16,) and from whom the Virgin Mary was lineally descended. And this nature he so assumed, or to use a scriptural expression, so “took hold of,” (Hebrews 2:16, marg,) that it became his own nature as much as his divine nature is his own. It was not assumed, as a garment, to be laid aside after redemption's work was done, but was taken into indissoluble union with his divine Person. Nor did his death on the cross dissolve this union, for though body and soul were parted, and his immortal, incorruptible body lay in the grave, his soul was in paradise, in indissoluble union with his Deity. Thus, as each of us is really and truly man, by human nature being so personally and individually appropriated by us as our own subsistence, that it is as much ours as if there were no other partaker of it on earth but ourselves; so the Son of God, by assuming that nature which is common to all men, (therefore called “the flesh and blood of the children,”)82 made it his own as much as ours is our own nature. He is, therefore, really and truly “the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5.)
ii. The next thing to be believed in and held fast is that this humanity was not a person, but a nature.83
This point may not seem at the first glance of deep and signal importance; but as all God's ways and works are stamped with infinite wisdom, it will be seen, on deeper reflection, that it involves matters of the greatest magnitude of the richest grace and the highest glory. For look at the consequences which would necessarily follow, were the sacred humanity of our blessed Lord a person and not a nature. Were it a person, the Lord Jesus Christ would be two Persons, one Person as God, and another Person as man, and thus would be two distinct individuals.84,85,86
But being a nature, which had of itself no distinct individuality, but was assumed at the very instant of its conception into union with his divine Person, the Lord Jesus is still but one Person, though he possesses two distinct natures. The angel, therefore, called it “that holy thing;” i.e., that holy nature, that holy flesh, that holy substance a “thing,” because it had a real substance87, “ holy,” tou anthropou]) was a recognized designation of the Messiah. Jesus did not often call himself Son of God (Matt. 27:43), but it is assumed in his frequent use of the Father, the Son (Matt. 11:27;
Luke 10:21; John 5:19ff.). It is the title used by the Father at the baptism (Luke 3:22) and on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:35). The wonder of Mary would increase at these words. The Miraculous Conception or Virgin Birth of Jesus is thus plainly set forth in Luke as in Matthew. The fact that Luke was a physician gives added interest to his report. (Robertson, A. T. (1933). Word Pictures in the New Testament (Lk 1:35). Broadman Press.)
As I have shown elsewhere Philpot tried to use Robert Hawker as a support for his understanding of this subject even though Hawker differed from him widely. Hawker’s commentary of Luke 1:35 is so important I am giving it here in full. He says:
I have, in my Poor Man's Commentary, on the first chapter of Matthew, ver. 18. stated, somewhat largely, my views, according to scripture testimony, on the miraculous conception. But, as the subject is infinitely important, and the Church of GOD cannot be too clearly, nor fully established, in the most perfect conviction of this fundamental truth of our most holy faith; I would very earnestly beg the Reader's indulgence, taking advantage, from the long contents concerning it, in this chapter, to consider it yet a little more particularly. And I am free to confess, that an anxiety, for the rising generation in this kingdom, on the momentous doctrines of the Gospel, prompt me the more earnestly to this service. Never, in my view, was there a day since the Reformation, when the only principles, which make the glorious Gospel of the ever blessed GOD truly blessed, were in equal danger to be frittered away, by the carelessness of some, and the artfulness of others, who affect to call themselves rational Christians. I humbly beg to bear my testimony to the truth, as it is in JESUS, to this fundamental article of the real Christian's creed, in the evidences of the miraculous conception. And when I have stated in order, the scriptural account of this momentous doctrine, I shall leave the whole to the Reader's own mind, that he may compare spiritual things with spiritual: and that, under the teaching of GOD the HOLY GHOST, his faith may be found, not to rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of GOD.
And first: I beg him to observe with me, that with the Promise, which came in with the Fall; it was said, the seed of the Woman should bruise the Serpent's head. And in conformity to this, when, in the after age of the Church, the LORD entered into covenant with Abraham; the tenor of this covenant was conveyed in terms agreeably to this promise; that in his seed should all families of the earth be blessed. Genesis 12:3. Now, saith the HOLY GHOST by Paul, when explaining both those Scriptures, and shewing their connection; now to Abraham, and his seed were the promises made: he saith not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of One, and to thy seed which is CHRIST. Galatians 3:16. Words, as plain these, as language can furnish, in proof that the human nature, which the SON of GOD should take into union with him, thereby forming one Person, even CHRIST, should be the seed of the woman. Peter, in his sermon, on the day of Pentecost, quotes a passage from one of the prophetical Psalms of David, in confirmation. He first shews that David king of Israel could not possibly mean himself; and then saith, that David being a prophet, knew that GOD had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his body according to the flesh, he would raise up CHRIST to sit upon his throne. Acts 2:30. compared with Psalm 132:11. and Luke 1:31,32. And these scriptures most plainly shew, that CHRIST, after the flesh, should be of the seed of the woman.
The next point to be attended to, in forming suitable and becoming apprehensions of this great mystery, is, to examine into what the holy scriptures taught, concerning the Incarnation of the SON of GOD. And here we discover the Prophets, commissioned by the HOLY GHOST, informing the Church, that the event should be altogether new, and mysterious; such as never had taken place in the annals of the world. One of them cried aloud to the Church, saying: that the LORD himself would give them a sign. Behold, (said he,) a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Which (saith an Evangelist in after days, under the same authority) being interpreted, is GOD with us. Compare Isaiah 7:14. with Matthew 1:23. Another Prophet, in allusion to the same blessed promise, declared, that the LORD hath created a new thing in the earth; A woman shall compass a man. Jeremiah 31:22. And the LORD JESUS himself by the spirit of prophecy, confirms them both, in what he had long before delivered to the Church; when in that precious Psalm, which principally means himself, he had said; For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought, in the lowest parts of the earth. Psalm 139:13-15. Fearfully and wonderfully made indeed, when considered with an eye to CHRIST, by the sovereign agency of GOD, in the womb of the Virgin; here called, in prophetical language, the lowest parts of the earth. But the terms are by no means applicable to the universal generation of mankind. Great as the LORD'S power is, in all his works of creation; yet the stated order of the LORD, in those acts of his appointment, do away the expressions of fear and wonder. Now, these scriptures taught the Church to expect the birth of Him, whom they refer to, as coming out of the ordinary course of nature; and in a way, such as the Incarnation of the SON of GOD, by the miraculous conception only, can explain.
From hence we go on to what the Evangelist hath recorded in this chapter. An angel is sent to the virgin Mary, to announce the wonderful event. His salutation implied somewhat of infinite moment. Hail thou that art highly favored! Highly favored indeed! And not simply, in the grace imparted to her, of GOD'S everlasting love; personally considered in redeeming mercy, as distinguished in calling her, with an holy calling, from the Adam state of nature, in which she was born; for this blessing she had in common with all the children of GOD; but highly favored, in this singular instance of grace, which never could be enjoyed by any other; in being chosen, as the woman, whose seed should bruise the serpent's head. Concerning the chastity of Mary, in respect to her virgin state, none but unblushing infidels could for a moment question. For unless it could be supposed, that GOD the HOLY GHOST, for more than seven hundred years before the event was to take place, should have caused such a prophecy to be made, as that of the conception of a virgin; and then, be regardless of the accomplishment: unless this could be supposed, which is impossible, we cannot but suppose, that the LORD watched over his own promise, and made all due arrangement, that it should come to pass.
Assuming this point also granted, and still prosecuting the mysterious subject, we next have to consider another branch, requiring explanation. The Virgin Mary, though in herself in perfect chastity, yet certainly derived from the Adam-nature, in which she was born, taints of the same corruption from that race of fallen man, of whom it is said, by the testimony of the HOLY GHOST himself, there is none holy, no not one. It therefore becomes necessary to enquire, how He, who was conceived in the Virgin's womb, by the miraculous power of GOD, was preserved free from that contagion; so as to be, as he is blessedly described, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens? Hebrews 7:26. This question becomes exceedingly momentous. And blessed be GOD we have, in scripture, the most satisfying answer to it.
The word of GOD teacheth, that all the persons of the GODHEAD were engaged in the formation of the human nature of CHRIST. Concerning GOD the FATHER, it was said by CHRIST, under the spirit of prophecy, ages before his incarnation: A body hast thou prepared me. Compare Psalm 40:6. with Hebrews 10:5. And that GOD the SON had a hand in it is evident, for the HOLY GHOST by Paul saith; that He took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. And again, He took of flesh and blood. Hebrews 2:14&16. And in this Chapter we have the wonderful relation of the part which GOD the HOLY GHOST had in the work, in his overshadowing power.
When the Reader hath duly pondered these sublime considerations, I would beg of him to be very attentive to what the Evangelist hath recorded in this Chapter. The angel answered the modest enquiry of Mary, how the thing he spoke of should be; by saying, The HOLY GHOST shall come upon thee: and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. By which we plainly learn, that this overshadowing power became the sole act of generation. And this is in exact correspondence to what was said by the angel to Joseph. For that (said he) which is conceived in her, is of the HOLY GHOST. Matthew 1:20. Here then, the whole is explained. The act of conception from the HOLY GHOST must be holy; because it is solely from, and wrought by, the LORD himself, who is holy. Had there been the intervention of an human father, no doubt, that in this case, defilement must have followed; for it is by this corruption is derived in all generations, from father to son. But in this instance, GOD the HOLY GHOST is the agent; and therefore, as the angel said, that holy thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the SON of GOD. This then was the tabernacle which GOD pitched, and not man. Hebrews 8:2. This the stone cut out without hands: that is, without human hands. Daniel 2:45.
And I beg the Reader to observe with me, yet further, in confirmation of this most blessed, and wonderful truth; how the HOLY GHOST hath been pleased to word the mysterious subject. A virgin shall conceive. Yes! But not by man! She shall bring forth a son. Yes! But not by human begetting. The HOLY GHOST shall overshadow her. THEREFORE, (that is, his Almighty agency being the sole cause) THAT HOLY THING (not that holy person, for then there would have been two persons in one CHRIST; but that holy thing) shall be called the SON of GOD. Oh! how precious is this discovery! And further: When GOD sends forth his SON, he is said to be made of a woman; not begotten, but made: and which, though made of the substance of the seed of the woman; yet being made by the HOLY GHOST, cannot but be holy. So that as nothing is derived by generation, from the impurity of our nature, the sole agency being of GOD; that holy thing is in nature holy, and of consequence the SON of GOD.
Now Reader, pause over the wonderful subject! Put the whole together in one collected point of view. Behold, how very full and clear the several terms made use of, in representing this great truth, are; that the Church might have all suitable, and becoming apprehensions (as far as our capacities at present are capable in apprehending) of so great a mystery. Call to mind the vast preparations made for this one purpose: the union of GOD and man in one person, through a long succession of generations, from the fall of man to the coming of CHRIST. Yea, before the earth was formed, or JEHOVAH, in his threefold character of person, went forth in acts of creation. Then CHRIST was set up, as the head of his body the Church, from everlasting. Proverbs 8:22,23. And from the first promise in the Bible, concerning the seed of the woman, until we behold it fulfilled in the uncreated word being made flesh, and dwelling among us; we trace the whole scope of scripture, pointing and directing, like so many rays of light, converging to this one centre. Had the human nature of CHRIST been formed out of nothing, or from the dust of the earth, as Adam was; where would have been his relationship to his people? Or, had the human nature of CHRIST been taken from any part of man, as Eve was, from the rib of Adam; this would have been a relationship no doubt, but nothing more mysterious than the former instance. But, to form the Human Nature of CHRIST from the seed of the woman, by conception, without man, and wholly by the power of GOD; this was a sign indeed, from GOD: this was a new thing in the earth; and a mystery, surpassing all human foresight and contrivance. Well might the Apostle, in the contemplation, exclaim: Great is the mystery of godliness: GOD was manifest in the flesh. 1 Timothy 3:16. Largely as I have trespassed, I must not dismiss the vast subject before that I have first called the Reader to remark with me, and to remark it in terms suited to its because not begotten by natural generation, but sanctified in the moment of conception by the Holy Ghost, so as to be intrinsically holy, impeccable, immortal capable of dying, but not tainted with the seeds of sickness or death. It was not a body like ours, “shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin,” (Psalms 51:5;) but was begotten by a divine and supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost, and was therefore “holy,” not relatively, and partially, as we, but really, thoroughly, and intrinsically holy; “harmless,” or as the word might be rendered “free from all ill;” “undefiled” with any taint of corruption in body or soul, original or actual, in any seed, inclination, desire, feeling, or movement of or toward it; “separate from sinners” in its conception and formation, in every thought, word, or deed, so that it was as separate from sin, and sin as separate from it, when on earth as it is now in the presence of God; “and made higher than the heavens,” by the exaltation of that human nature to the throne of glory; higher than the visible heavens, for what is the glory of sun, moon, or stars to the glory of the sacred humanity of Christ in the courts of heaven? and higher too than the invisible heavens, for in his human nature as the God-man, he is exalted far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. (Hebrews 7:26; Ephesians 1:20-22.)
Among the heresies and errors which pestered the early church, was the Nestorian heresy, which asserted that Christ's human nature was a Person, and thus made two persons in the Lord, and the Eutychian, which declared that there was but one nature, the humanity of Christ being absorbed into his divinity. Against both these errors the Athanasian Creed, that sound and admirable compendinm and bulwark of divine truth, draws its two-edged sword. “Who, although he be God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; one not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking the Manhood into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person; for as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.” The Nestorian heresy is cut to pieces by the declaration that “he is not two, (i.e., persons,) but one Christ; and the Eutychian by the words, “one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.”
But consider the blessings that are connected with and flow out of this heavenly truth. The glory and beauty of this mystery, it is true, can only be seen and known by faith; for faith, as “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen,” alone gives to these divine realities a substantial existence in the believer's heart. But looking by faith into this heavenly mystery, we
infinite importance, the very blessed doctrine connected with it, of the atonement. For, the miraculous conception, once confirmed, brings up after it, the evident intention from it, of CHRIST'S sacrifice. The SON of GOD becoming incarnate, implied the design, of making his soul an offering for sin. This one act preached more fully than ten thousand sacrifices on Jewish altars; that without shedding of blood, there was no remission. Surely, all the branches of revelation, concerning GOD, might have been accomplished, (as far as revelation was necessary,) without such an event as the miraculous conception. But if CHRIST, and CHRIST only, can do away sin, by the sacrifice of himself, a body must be given him. Psalm 40:6-8. Blessedly doth GOD the HOLY GHOST bear testimony to this, by his servant the Apostle: In all things (said he) it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful, and faithful High Priest, in things pertaining to GOD, to make reconciliation, for the sins of the people. Hebrews 2:17. See the Commentary there. (Hawker, R. (n.d.). Poor Mans Commentary New Test. Hawker.) may see in the two points we have thus far touched upon signal beauty and blessedness. The human nature which the blessed Lord assumed into union with his divine Person hungered, thirsted, was weary, wept, sighed, groaned, sweat drops of blood, agonized in the garden and on the cross, was tried, deserted, tempted, buffeted, spit upon, crucified, and, by a voluntary act, died. Had it not been a real human nature, the sufferings and sorrows of the holy soul, the pains and agonies of the sacred body, the obedience rendered, the blood shed, the sacrifice offered, the life laid down would not have been real, at least not really endured and offered in that very nature which was to be redeemed and reconciled. This is beautifully unfolded by the apostle: “Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:17, 18.)
But again; were the human nature of our blessed Lord a Person, its acts would have been personally distinct, and the virtue and validity of Deity would not have been stamped upon them. We may thus illustrate the distinction between a nature and a person. Man and wife are mystically by marriage one flesh, but they still remain two distinct persons. Their acts, therefore, as persons, are individually distinct, and each is morally and really responsible for his or her individual actions. But were they so incorporated, like a grafted tree, as to become two natures and only one person, then the acts of the weaker nature, assuming for the moment that the female is the weaker, being the acts of one and the same person, would be stamped with all the strength and power of the stronger. Thus, it is with the two natures of our blessed Lord. The human nature, though essentially and intrinsically holy, impeccable, incorruptible, and immortal, being the weaker and inferior nature, yet becomes stamped with all the worth, virtue, and validity of the divine nature, because though there are two natures there is but one Person. Thus, the grand, vital truth of the two natures yet but one Person of the glorious Immanuel is no mere dry or abstract doctrine, no speculative theory spun out of the brains of ancient fathers and learned theologians, but a blessed revelation of the wisdom and grace of God.
iii. But much beauty and heavenly glory are wrapped up in the way in which that humanity was assumed. In the forming of this holy humanity, we see the three Persons of the blessed Trinity engaged. The Father prepared the body, the Son assumed it, the Holy Ghost formed it. By the preparation of the body, as the act of the Father, we understand not its actual forming or framing in the womb of the Virgin, but its eternal designation, its preparation in the council, wisdom, and love of the Father. “A body hast thou prepared me;” (Hebrews 10:5;) margin, “thou hast fitted me,” literally, “put together joint by joint.” To design, to contrive, to put together in his own eternal mind, not merely the framework of the Lord's body and the constitution of his soul, but so to prepare it that, conceived in the womb of a sinful Virgin, it should not partake of her sin, of her fall, of her sickness, of her corruptibility, this was a greater wonder to appear in heaven than what holy John saw in vision. (Revelation 12:1.) This body, thus prepared, the eternal Son of God assumed. By its assumption by the Son we understand not a creating act, as if the Son of God himself created the body to be assumed, but that ineffable act of condescension and grace whereby he took at one and the same instant of its formation, that sacred humanity, consisting of a perfect human body and a perfect human soul, into union with his divine Person. We say “at one and the same instant,” for we reject with abhorrence that vain figment, that idle tale, that pestilential and dangerous error of the pre-existence of the human soul of the Lord Jesus. He was made in all things like unto his brethren, sin only excepted; (Hebrews 2:17; 4:15;) and unless it can be proved that our soul was created before our body, and pre-existed ages before it, it cannot be shown that the human soul of the Lord Jesus had any such pre-existence. This human nature, prepared by God the Father, and assumed by God the Son, God the Holy Ghost formed. By the forming of that sacred humanity by the Holy Ghost we understand that act of miraculous power whereby he overshadowed the Virgin by his operations and influence, and created, of her flesh, a holy human nature, which he sanctified and filled with grace in the very instant of its conception.
iv. But this leads us onward to a fourth point, not less full of truth and blessedness. And we may put it in the form of a solemn question. How was it possible that in a nature so prepared, so assumed, and created, there could be any taint of sin, corruption, disease, or mortality? The Father contemplated that human nature which he had prepared for his dear Son from all eternity with ineffable complacency and delight. Could he who made man in his original creation so pure and innocent, creating him in his own image, after his own likeness, have prepared for his own Son, his only-begotten, eternal Son, a body fallen, tainted, and corruptible, or even capable of corruption and decay? Could the Son, who is “the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his Person,” assume into union with his eternal Godhead any other but a pure, holy, immortal, and incorruptible nature? It was not a body to decay with sickness and die of disease, and then be thrust away out of sight as the food of corruption but taken into intimate union with Deity itself, as its immortal and incorruptible companion. Could the Holy Ghost form anything but a holy nature for the Son of God to assume into a union so close, intimate, and indissoluble?
But it may not be unprofitable to examine these points of divine truth a little more closely.
1. And first, as to the intrinsic holiness and purity of the Lord's human nature. It was essentially a nature impeccable, that is, not only not tainted with sin, but absolutely incapable, of being so tainted. As we read of its being “impossible for God to lie,” (Hebrews 6:18,) so we may say of the sacred humanity of the blessed Lord, it was impossible it could sin. The testimonies in the word of truth are most full and clear to the impeccability of the human nature of the blessed Lord. “He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin.” (2 Corinthians 5:21.) He knew no sin; that is, in his own Person, in its taint or defilement, or in any approach thereunto. “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” (John 14:30.) Satan, the prince of this world, came to tempt and to assail him; but he had nothing in him, as he has in us; that is, no internal material on which to work. If we may use such a figure, he had no ground within the walls on which to plant his infernal artillery. He might assault the blessed Lord from without, for “in all points he was tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” which had neither birth nor being, root nor stem, nor the possibility of any, in the sacred humanity of the adorable Redeemer.
The late Dr. Cole, in the work before us, published many years ago, has exposed, in the most clear and forcible manner, the awful blasphemies of the once popular Edward Irving on this point. Well may we call them “awful blasphemies,” for Dr. Cole declares that he heard with his own ears this poor, miserable, ranting orator, for he called his own sermons “Orations,” term, the holy humanity of the blessed Lord “that sinful substance.” The sacred beauty, the ineffable blessedness of that holy humanity mainly consisted in the Lord's being “a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Peter 1:19,) as was typified by the paschal lamb, (Exodus 7:5,) and indeed by every other ceremonial sacrifice. (Leviticus 22:19-24; Deuteronomy 15:21.) We must never lose sight of the peculiar nature of the blessed Lord's humanity. The nature of Adam was peccable, that is, capable of sinning, because, though created pure, it was not generated by any supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost. It was a pure, created nature, but not a holy begotten nature. The two things are essentially distinct. Besides which, the humanity of Adam was a person, and therefore could fall; but the humanity of Jesus is a nature taken into union with his divine Person, and therefore could no more sin or fall away from Godhead than his Godhead could sin or fall off from his manhood.
2. It was therefore, as Dr. Cole has well shown, incorruptible. The body of the blessed Redeemer lay three days and nights, according to the Jewish mode of calculation, in the sepulcher, but it knew no corruption. As the apostle expressly declares, “He whom God raised again saw no corruption” (Acts 13:37.) The sacred humanity of the Lord Jesus had no seeds in it of decay. Though a real body, like our own, though it ate and drank and slept as we do, not being under the original curse, nor involved in the Adam fall, it was not subject to sickness or corruption, as our body is. The voluntary death of the blessed Lord severed for a while body and soul; but the body was no more tainted with corruption in the sepulcher than the soul was tainted with sin in paradise.
3. This sacred humanity of the adorable Lord was therefore essentially immortal. Dr. Cole, in his letter on the subject, has admirably shown this. The body of the Lord was capable of death; indeed, as dying was the main part of every sacrifice, it was taken that it might die. It did not die from inherent necessity, as our bodies die, which are essentially mortal, because involved in Adam's transgression; but it died by a voluntary act. This is most plain from the Lord's own words, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” (John 10:17, 18.) It was not the pain of the cross, the nails driven through the hands and feet, the exhaustion of nature, or the agony of soul that killed, so to speak, the Lord Jesus. When he had finished the work which his Father gave him to do, so that he could say, “It is finished,” “he bowed his head” the head did not decline of itself, weighed down by death, but he himself, full of life and immortality, bowed it; and then, by a voluntary act, “gave up the ghost,” or breathed out his life.
As in our next Number we hope, with God's help and blessing, to dwell more fully on this part of the subject, in our remarks on the sacred humanity of our blessed Lord in its state of humiliation, we shall enlarge no further upon it at present, but conclude with an extract from Dr. Cole's book:
The awful and inevitable consequences of applying this term 'mortal' to the body of Christ.
1. If the body of Christ was 'mortal' in the unalterable meaning of that term, his death, as we have already hinted, was not voluntary but of necessity. He did not die of his own free will, but died, because, being a personal sinner, (tremble my soul at the thought!) he could not save himself from death! He had no power to 'lay down' his life, but was compelled to yield it up, because he had forfeited it by his own sins! He did not give his life a ransom for many; but the just judgments of God took it from him for his own transgressions: 'The soul that sinneth it shall die.' (Ezekiel 18:4.) But is this the truth as it is in Jesus Christ? Is this the doctrine concerning the adorable Person of the Son of God that is revealed in the Word? Is this the instruction which the Holy and Blessed Spirit seals upon the heart of the
redeemed? No, no! The scriptures declare, and those that have been brought to experience the benefits of the death of Christ know and believe that his death was not of necessity, but a, free and voluntary gift. How plainly does he declare, and how expressively describe this himself: ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.' (John. 16:11.; 17:18.) His sacrifice is everywhere called 'a sacrifice of himself, a voluntary gift.' 'He offered up himself;' (Hebrews 7:27;) 'By the sacrifice, of himself;' (Hebrews 9:20;) 'Who gave himself a ransom.' (1 Timothy 2:6.) And so universally. But all these scriptures are flatly contradicted, all this cloud of testimonies is utterly nullified, if the body of Christ was 'mortal’.
REVIEW 2 (Continued from page 323)88
IN approaching the solemn subject of the sacred humanity of our blessed Lord, as engaged in the work of redemption when here below, we desire to do so under the special teaching and unction of the Holy Ghost, not only that nothing erroneous, inconsistent, or unbecoming may escape our pen, and that what we write may be in the strictest harmony with the oracles of God and the experience of his saints, but that life, and power, and savor may attend our reflections to those believing hearts which may desire to walk with us in these fields of heavenly meditation. To guide into all truth, to take of the things of Christ and to show them to his disciples, and thus glorify Jesus, is the especial work of the Holy Ghost, (John 16:13-15.) To have this divine teaching is to have “an unction from the Holy One whereby we know all things;” (1 John 2:20;) and is to be blessed with that anointing which “teacheth of all things, and is truth, and is no lie.” (1 John 2:27.) Prayer and supplication, reverent thoughts and feelings toward the sacred Majesty of heaven, inward prostration of spirit before his throne, submission of mind to the word of truth, faith in living exercise upon the Person and work of the Son of God, hope anchoring within the veil, and love flowing forth to the adorable Redeemer, will all accompany this heavenly anointing. So unspeakably holy, so great, and so perfect is that true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man; one not made with hands, as the tabernacle in the wilderness, but prepared by God the Father, assumed by God the Son, and sanctified by God the Holy Ghost, that we should as much dread to drop any word derogatory to, or inconsistent with its grace and glory as the high priest under the law would have trembled to carry swine's blood, or the broth of abominable things into the most holy place.
The sacred humanity of his dear Son, as the temple of his God-head, and as irradiated with the beams of his eternal glory, the eyes of the Father ever contemplate with ineffable complacency and delight. Nor was this tabernacle less glorious in his holy eyes who sees things as they really are, not as they appear to man, even in Jesus's deepest humiliation and shame, when he was “a worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” When dogs compassed him, when the assembly of the wicked enclosed him, when they pierced his hands and feet, when he could tell all his bones as they hung stripped on the cross, when his enemies looked and stared upon him, parted his garments among them, and cast lots upon his vesture, (Psalms 22:8, 16-18,)
he was as much delighted in by the Father, and was as glorious in his eyes as he now is at the right hand of his throne. He ever was from the hour of his incarnation, he ever will be the same Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, when he hung upon the cross, today as he sits at the right hand of God, and forever in the eternity of his kingdom, power, and glory. May we, then, who believe in his name, and cleave to him with purpose of heart, as beholding the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, feel such a sacred communion with him in his suffering humanity that we may be able to say, with holy John, in the flowing forth of faith and affection, “And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3.)
The foundation of this sacred mystery was laid in the eternal purposes of God and determined by a covenant ordered in all things and sure. The creation of this lower world, and indeed we may say, of the higher world of bright, angelic beings, was but a first step to the bringing to light of these hidden purposes of Jehovah. When he formed man in his own likeness, it was not merely after his moral image, (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10,) but after the likeness of that man who was set up in the mind of God from everlasting, or ever the earth was. (Proverbs 8:23.) It was utterly impossible that a holy God could create a sinful man. He, therefore, made man upright, but able to fall. During the period of man's innocence the promises of the covenant of grace, so to speak, slept. They were in the bosom of the covenant, ready to appear, but were not yet needed. But immediately that man sinned and fell, as soon as Justice, which, as the revelation of the intrinsic holiness of Jehovah, had the first claim to speak, had pronounced sentence on the head of the guilty criminals, Mercy, as already laid up in the Covenant of grace, stepped in with the first promise which issued from the lips of a sin-pardoning God, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Here was the first intimation of the manifestation of the Son of God to destroy the works of the devil. The bruiser of the serpent's head was to be of the seed of the woman; and the sufferings of the sacred humanity to be assumed of the woman were at the same moment foreshadowed in the declaration that the seed of the serpent should bruise his heel. As a further development of the sacred mystery of the slaughtered Lamb, the gracious Lord then instituted worship by sacrifice; for it is evident from Abel's offering “of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof,” which he doubtless burned on the altar, in strict accordance with the Mosaic ritual afterwards appointed, (Numbers 18: 17,) that the Lord then instituted the rite of sacrifice, and himself clothed our first parents with the skins of the sacrificed victims as emblematic of the righteousness of the slain Lamb of God, who was thus revealed to their faith. Let us not think that these solemn transactions in the garden of Eden were a sudden thought in the mind of God an expedient then and there for the first time devised to patch up the fall. The Covenant of grace between the three Persons of the sacred Trinity was entered into with a fore-view of the fall; and therefore, the blessed Lord is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 8: 8.) It is, indeed, derogatory to the character of him who “declareth the end from the beginning,” (Isaiah 46:10,) who “looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven,” (Job 18:24,) to think that the Adam fall took him, so to speak, by surprise, was an unlooked for, unexpected event, of which there had been no foresight, and for which there had been made no provision. Far from our mind be such low, groveling thoughts of the great and glorious self-existent I AM. Such views would root up the very foundations of our faith in his omniscience and omnipotence. If God did not foresee89 the fall, an event charged with the eternal destiny of millions, what minor circumstance can he foresee now? If God did not provide a remedy for the fall as foreseen, where is his wisdom as, well as his prescience of the circumstances whereby we are at present surrounded? Such a blind God groping, as it were, for a remedy amidst the ruins of the fall, which he never foresaw, is worse than a heathen idol. At any rate it is not the God of the Bible it is not the God whom living souls believe in, worship, and adore. They admire with holy reverence his eternal foresight and bow with submission before his fixed decrees; they adore his sovereignty in the election of the vessels of mercy and the rejection of the vessels of wrath; and when favored with a sip of his love, bless his holy name for having loved them with an everlasting love from before the foundation of the world. If these foundations of our moat holy faith be destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalms 11:3.) But blessed be God, his prescience and his providence, his wisdom and his grace, his mercy and his love, are all from everlasting to everlasting, secured by a covenant ordered in all things and sure, fixed by firm decree and ratified by his word and by his oath, two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie. (Hebrews 6:18.) In this everlasting covenant it was appointed that the Son of God, the second Person in the glorious God-head, should take our nature into union with his own divine Person, that he might offer it as a sacrifice for the sins of his elect people, and thus redeem them from all the consequences of the fall, and reconcile them unto God.90
III. We have already shown that this sacred humanity of our adorable Lord was a real human body, and a real human soul, taken at one and the same instant into union with the divine Person of the Son of God, and that it was essentially impeccable and immortal. We have, with God's blessing, in pursuance of our sacred theme, and as a further opening up of “the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,” to show the work accomplished in that sacred humanity whilst here on earth in its state of humiliation and suffering.
i. The first consideration is what he became by this voluntary act of taking our nature into
union with his divine Person. In opening up this part of our subject we shall tread closely in the footsteps of that portion of holy writ where the apostle Paul unfolds the sacred mystery of the humiliation of the blessed Lord. (Philippians 2:5-8.)
1. He emptied himself of all those outward adjuncts of his glorious Person wherewith he
had forever shone as the eternal Son of the Father in the courts of heaven. We use the word “emptied himself,” as being the literal translation of the word rendered in our version, “made himself of no reputation;” but we do not mean thereby that he deprived himself of any one of the perfections of the divine nature. Not a single essential attribute of Deity was, or indeed could be in the least degree diminished by his assumption of our nature, for he could no more cease to be all that God is than he could cease to be God. But he emptied himself of them before the eyes of men by laying aside their outward and visible manifestation. As an earthly king may lay aside for a while his regal state, and yet not cease to be a king, so the Son of God laid aside for a season those bright beams of his glory which would otherwise have shone forth too brightly and gloriously for human eyes to look upon; for no man can see God and live. (Exodus 33:20.) Besides which, there was a secret purpose in the mind of God, whose glory it is to conceal a thing as well as to reveal it, (Proverbs 25:2,) that the glorious person of his dear Son should be veiled from all eyes but those of faith. As, then, the sun is sometimes veiled in a mist, or by passing clouds, through which his light shines and his orb appears, though dimmed and shorn of those rays which the human eye cannot bear, so the Son of God veiled his divine glory by the tabernacle of the sacred humanity in which he dwelt. He is therefore said to have “tabernacled among us,” as the word “dwelt ' (John 1:14) literally means; for as the Shechinah, or divine presence, dwelt in a cloud of glory, upon the mercy-seat, in the tabernacle erected in the wilderness, (Leviticus 16:2,) so that the most holy place needed not the light of the golden candlestick which illuminated the outer sanctuary, and yet was veiled by the curtains of the tabernacle, (2 Samuel 7:2,) so the sacred humanity of the blessed Lord was as a tabernacle to his divine nature, veiling it from the eyes of men, and yet by its indwelling presence filled with grace and glory. Thus, to common eyes, he had no form nor comeliness, was as a root out of a dry ground, was despised and rejected of men, and when they saw him there was no beauty in him that they should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2.) It is true that sparkles of his eternal Sonship and glorious Godhead shone through the veil of his humanity to believing eyes and hearts, for John says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14.) And the Father not only outwardly, with a voice from heaven, twice declared that he was his beloved Son, (Matthew 3:17; 17: 5,) but revealed him inwardly as such to the heart of his disciples, according to the Lord's own testimony in the case of Peter. (Matthew 16:16, 17.) As long as he was in the world, he was the light of the world, (John 1:9; 8:12; 9:5,) as the sun, however veiled by clouds, is still the light of the earth. Though rejected and abhorred of men, he could, therefore, still look up to his heavenly Father, in the lowest depths of his humiliation, and speak in the language of filial love confidence, “Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.' (Isaiah 59:5.)
2. The second act of humiliation of the eternal Son of God in assuming our nature was to take upon him the form of a servant. Some are born servants, as Abraham had three hundred and eighteen trained servants born in his house; (Genesis 14:14;) and some are made servants by others, either taken captive in war, (Deuteronomy 21:10,) or bought with money. (Leviticus 25:44-46.) But the blessed Son of God took upon him the form of a servant, as a voluntary act of grace; and not only the form, but the reality, for the word form respects not only his outward appearance whilst here below, but his inward subjection of soul to God. Therefore, the Father said of him, in the language of prophecy, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth;” (Isaiah 52:1;) and unto him, “Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” (Isaiah 49:3.) He was formed from the womb to be God's servant; (Isaiah 49:5;) so that he became a servant at the very instant that he took our nature into union with his own divine Person in the womb of the Virgin. Thus, the apostle, quoting the words of Psalms 40:6, “Mine ears hast thou opened,” (marg. “digged,”) that is, “Hast made me thy willing servant,” in allusion to Ex. 21:6, renders them, “A body hast thou prepared me;” for by taking the prepared body he became the willing servant of the Father, according to his own words, “I delight to do thy will, O my God.” (Psalms 40:8.)
3 By taking this prepared body, he was therefore made in the likeness of men, and was found in fashion as a man, that is, though his sacred humanity was intrinsically different from ours, as being holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, impeccable, and immortal, yet, in outward form and appearance, as in reality and truth, it perfectly resembled man's. It ate, it drank, it slept, was weary, sweat drops of blood, endured pain of body and travail of soul. The early church was much pestered with what is called the Gnostic heresy, which, under the plausible assumption that real flesh was too gross and material a substance for the Son of God to assume, asserted that he took a shadowy, aerial form, in which there was no real flesh or blood, but only the appearance. It is against this heresy that holy John draws his sword, when he declares that “the Word was made flesh,” and gives this as a test of saving truth and damnable error: “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.” (1 John 4:2, 3.) We must hold fast, then, to this vital truth, that it was real flesh and blood, though holy flesh and blood, that the Son of God assumed in the womb and offered on the tree.
4 Having, then, thus voluntarily assumed the form of a servant, the blessed Lord took that in which the very essence of servitude consists, viz., obedience, and that not only to the word, but to the will of his heavenly Father.
As this obedience forms our justifying righteousness and is a part of his finished work, it claims at our hands the most attentive, prayerful, and meditative consideration. Not, however, to dwell too long on this part of our subject, we may briefly name these five particulars as most marked and blessed features of the obedience of Jesus, whilst here in this state of humiliation. It was voluntary delighted in perfect vicarious and meritorious.
1. It was voluntary. “Lo! I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God/' (Hebrews 10:7,) were, so to speak, the words in his heart and mouth when he came out of the bosom of the Father to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin. There was no compulsion to bring him down from heaven to earth but the compulsion of love. As the love of Christ is said to constrain us not to live unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again, (2 Corinthians 5:14,) so, in a sense, we may say that the love of his people constrained him to live and die for them. They were his inheritance, the portion given him by his Father when he appointed him heir of all things, (Hebrews 1:2,) that they might be his eternal possession. (Deuteronomy 32:9; Psalms 2:8.) “Thine they were,” he therefore meekly reminds his Father, “and thou gavest them me,” adding, to show the unity of mind, will, purpose, and possession in the Father and the Son, “And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.” (John 17:6, 10.) He, therefore, loved the church as his own bride, the spouse of his heart, whom he had betrothed unto himself as the gift of the Father before time was. (Jerimiah 31:3; Hosea 2:19, 20.) Yes; before the mountains were settled; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, even then was he rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth that part which his saints should inhabit, and his delights were with the sons of men. (Proverbs 8:25, 26, 31.) When, then, in and by the fall, the church had become defiled and polluted beyond all thought and expression, when sunk beyond all other help and hope, the image of God in which she had been created marred and defaced, she an enemy and an alien by wicked works, the willing captive of sin and Satan, with hell opening its mouth to swallow her up in the same gulf of eternal woe where the fallen angels were already weltering, then, even then, O miracle of grace! O wonder of unutterable love! the Son of God, by a purely voluntary act, yet in accordance with the will and counsel of the Father and the Holy Ghost, gave himself for her. This free, voluntary gift of himself, with all its blessed fruits and consequences, is beautifully unfolded by the apostle in that striking passage, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians v. 25-27.) The forlorn, abject, helpless, and hopeless state of the church by the fall, and the pitiful compassion of the blessed Lord as her covenant Head and
Husband are beautifully set forth by the prophet Ezekiel, where he compares her to a poor, deserted, abandoned infant, cast out in the open field to the loathing of its person in the day that it was born. No eye pitied it, no hand was stretched forth to do it any necessary office, or give it food, warmth, or shelter. Abandoned to die. had not he who is “very pitiful and of tender mercy” pitied her, (James 5:11,) had not he whose love passeth knowledge loved her, into what an unfathomable depth of everlasting woe must she not have sunk! But in this very hour of need he passed by, and the time was the time of love, for he spread his skirt over her, and swore unto her, entered into a covenant with her, and she became his. But before she could pass into his arms, he had himself to wash away all her filth in the fountain of his own blood, to anoint her with the oil of his grace, and the regenerating, sanctifying influences of the Blessed Spirit, and to clothe her with broidered work, even the righteousness that he wrought for her by his own active and suffering obedience, the three blessings of which the apostle speaks as the present portion of the saints of God: “And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (Ezekiel 16:5-10; 1 Corinthians 6:11.)
2. It was an obedience that the blessed Lord delighted in. His own words, in the language of prophecy, as if in holy anticipation of his coming from heaven to earth, a thousand years before the incarnation, were, “I delight to do thy will, O my God.” (Psalms 40:8.) Thus he could say, when faint and weary at Samaria's well, his love and delight in doing the will of God absorbing all feeling of the natural wants of the body, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” (John 4:34.) In this spirit also he said, a year before his actual sufferings and death, “But I have a baptism to be baptized with,” and O what a baptism of suffering and blood! of what agonies of body, and of what travail of soul! “and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50,) as though his holy soul panted with intense desires for the overwhelming baptism of garden sorrows, and pressed forward to meet it, and the sufferings of the cross, as the fulfilment of his Father's will. So on his last journey out of Galilee toward Judea, “he went before,” as if he would exceed his usual pace, and outstrip his lagging disciples, “ascending up to Jerusalem,” where the will of his Father was to be obeyed, and the atoning sacrifice to be offered. (Luke 13:3; 19:28.) Blessed Lord! would that we could follow thee in this holy example, and delight to do thy will as thou didst delight to do thy Father's will. And such surely would be our desire and delight were we more conformed to thy suffering image, and more molded after the pattern of thine obedience. (Romans 8:1, 2.) Animated by the same holy delight, he said to his disciples, on the eve of his sufferings and death, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 12:15.) And when the solemn hour drew nigh when the waters came in unto his soul, when he sank in deep mire where there was no standing, when he came into deep waters where the floods overflowed him, (Psalms 69:1, 2,)*91 in the gloomy garden, when he had to drink of the cup of wrath put into his hand, what meek submission, what holy resignation he showed to his Father's will! Where can we look to see such sorrows? But where can we look to find such holy obedience, such meek submission, such patient endurance of them?
3. Again. It was a perfect obedience. Every thought, every word, and every act of that holy and sacred humanity were perfect, not only as proceeding from a nature intrinsically pure, but as filled with all the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, that glorious Person in the undivided Godhead who not only begot by a divine operation the sacred humanity of our blessed Lord in the womb of the Virgin, but filled it with all his gifts and graces, descending upon him more visibly at his baptism, and anointing him as Prophet, Priest, and King, (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 3:22; 4:1; John 3:34; Acts 10:38; Hebrews 1:9,) but abiding in him in till his fulness during the whole of his ministry, sufferings, and death. The Law demanded a perfect obedience; it could, indeed, from its very nature, accept no other; and this obedience must be unwavering, flowing on in one uninterrupted stream from the heart, and that stream, like Jordan, all the time of harvest, overflowing all its banks with love to God and man. As the Lord promised that rivers of living water should flow out of the belly (or heart) of him that believed in his name, so the rivers of living obedience flowed from his own heart and lips, as he himself believed in God and did his will from the heart.
4. The obedience of Jesus to the Father's will was vicarious, that is, rendered on behalf of his church, and imputed to her for righteousness. He stood in her place and stead as her Surety and Representative. She owed a debt which she could not pay, an obedience to the Law which she could not render. The Father accepted his Son's, and thus his obedience became hers. Thus, as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so, by the obedience of one, many are made righteous; (Romans 5:19;) for God made the Lord Jesus to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21.)
5. This obedience was meritorious. Here we see the beauty, grace, and glory of the incarnation of the Son of God. As God, he could not suffer; as man he could not merit; but as Godman he could suffer as man, and merit as God. And as though he has two natures, he has but one Person, his doing and dying, his sufferings and obedience, his blood and righteousness, are stamped with all the value and invested with all the validity of Godhead, because he who obeyed and suffered as man is truly and verily God.
Here, then, is “the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” Here flow through this consecrated channel pardon and peace. Here God can be just and yet the justifier of him who believes in Jesus. Here every attribute of God is harmonized, the law magnified, the gospel revealed, the sinner saved, and God glorified.
But here we must abruptly pause. The subject opens too wide a field for our present limits. The Lord enable us in the next number to dwell upon these and other points, in such a way as may edify his saints and glorify his own great and holy name.
(To be continued.)
WELL might the apostle, as if in a burst of holy admiration, cry aloud, as with trumpet voice, that heaven and earth might hear, “Great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh.” (1 Timothy 3:16.) A mystery indeed it is, a great, a deep, an unfathomable mystery; for who can rightly understand how the divine Word, the eternal Son of God, was made flesh, and dwelt among us? “Who shall declare his generation?” (Isaiah 53:8;) either that eternal generation whereby he is the only-begotten Son of God, or the generation of his sacred humanity in the womb of the Virgin, when the Holy Ghost came upon her, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her? These are the things “which the angels desire to look into;” which they cannot understand, but reverently adore. And well may we imitate their adoring admiration, not attempting to understand, but believe, love, and revere; for well has it been said,
“Where reason fails, with all her powers,
There faith believes, and love adores.”
Nor, if rightly taught and spiritually led, shall we find this a barren, dry, or unprofitable subject. It is “the great mystery of godliness;” therefore all godliness is contained in it and flows out of it. There never was, there never will or can be a truly godly thought, feeling, or desire, no, not one godly word or work, a godly heart or a godly life which does not arise out of, and is not sustained by, the great mystery of an incarnate God. There may be, indeed frequently is, a legal holiness, a fleshly piety, a tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, and a profusion of good works, so called, independent of the grace that dwells in the Lord the Lamb; but godliness, as consisting in a new and heavenly birth, with all its attendant fruits and graces, can only flow from the fulness of a covenant Head, communicating life to the members of his mystical body. And this covenant Head, we know, is the Son of God, once manifest in the flesh and now exalted to the right hand of the Father. How clear on this point, that all life is in him and out of him, are his own words of grace and truth: “Because I live, ye shall live also;” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me;” “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you;” “I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing.” If, then, our hearts, as touched with an unction from above, are bent after godliness, as a felt blessing; if, as made daily more and more sensible of our miserable emptiness and destitution, and the drying up of all creature springs of happiness and holiness, we long more and more to realize the inward possession of that promised well of water, springing up into everlasting life, we shall desire to look more and more into this heavenly mystery, and to have its transforming power and efficacy more feelingly and experimentally made known to our souls. “If any man thirst,” said the blessed Lord, “let him come unto me and drink;” and to show that not only should he drink for his own soul's happiness, but for the benefit of others, he graciously added, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly (or heart) shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38.) The whole of God's grace, mercy, and truth is laid up in, is revealed through, is manifested by, the Son of his love; for “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;” (Colossians 1:19;) and this as Immanuel, God with us. Thus his sacred humanity, in union with his Divine Person, is the channel of communication through which all the love and mercy of God flow down to poor, guilty, miserable sinners, who believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. If blessed then with faith in living exercise, we may draw near and behold the great mystery of godliness. To tread by faith upon this holy ground is to come “unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than the blood of Abel;” (Hebrews 12:22-24;) for every blessing of the new covenant, if we are but favored with a living faith in an incarnate God, is then experimentally as well as eternally ours.
If then, we dwell at a little further length on the heavenly mystery of the human nature of our blessed Lord, we trust we shall not be found wearisome to our spiritual readers. We freely confess that the more we look into it, the more the subject opens to our view. We feel it, therefore, impossible to limit ourselves to a few hurried thoughts and brief sentences. Our chief cause of lamentation is that we cannot adequately set it forth, nor even fully and clearly express what we have seen in it ourselves.
In our last paper we stopped abruptly short at the very threshold of the last acts of the suffering obedience of our adorable Redeemer as couched in the words of the apostle, “And became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8.) The death of Christ was the fulfilment of the purpose for which he came into the world, which was, “to give himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.” (Ephesians 5:2.) “Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 11:26.) The sufferings, blood shedding, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ were a sacrifice offered for sin, and are therefore spoken of as a propitiation (Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10) and an atonement. (Romans 5:11.) But in a sacrifice two things are absolutely necessary; 1. That the blood of the victim should be shed, for “without shedding of blood is no remission:” “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul;” (Leviticus 17:11;) and 2. That the victim should die; for death being the penalty of disobedience, (Genesis 2:17; Ezekiel 18:4,) the sacrifice offered as an atonement for sin cannot be complete without the death of the victim. In the sacrifice of himself, offering up his sacred humanity on the altar of his Deity, the blessed Lord accomplished these two essentials of a propitiatory offering. 1. His blood was shed upon the cross, the actual living blood of his sacred humanity. It is therefore called “the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” (1 Peter 1:19,) and his own blood.” (Acts 20:28; Hebrews 9:12.) It was precious as flowing from his sacred humanity; precious, as stamped with all the validity and merit of Deity; precious in the sight of God as a sweet-smelling savor; and precious in the hearts of his people as cleansing them from all sin. Sin is an evil so dreadful, so hateful and abhorrent to his righteous character, so provoking to his justice and holiness, that God could not pardon it unless an atonement were made adequate to its fearful magnitude. Thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil could not atone for sin. Did all men consent to give their firstborn for their transgression, the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul, (Micah 6:7,) all could not suffice to outweigh the magnitude of sin. Lebanon is not sufficient for a burnt offering. Nothing short of the blood of the only-begotten Son of God could be an atonement of sufficient worth, of equivalent value. 2. But the death of the victim was also required. He who freely and voluntarily stood in the sinner's place must die in his room, or the substitution could not be effectual. Here, then, we see the mystery of the death of Jesus. There was no natural mortality*93 in that sacred humanity which the Lord assumed in the womb of the Virgin. And yet he took a nature which could die by a voluntary act. The whole of his obedience in his state of humiliation was voluntary. Therefore, the last act of it was as voluntary as the first the death on the cross as much as the assumption in the Virgin. The Lord's own words are decisive here: “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” (John 10:17, 18.) The very merit of his obedience unto death whereby it became capable of being imputed for righteousness to the church of God consisted mainly in two things, 1. The dignity of the obedient Sufferer; 2. The voluntariness of the sacrifice as an act of obedience to the will of God. Had our blessed Lord not been God, and that as the eternal Son of God, there would have been no merit in his sufferings, blood shedding, and death. As the brightness of God's glory and the express image of his Person, as his co-eternal Son, he thought it not robbery no unhallowed, disallowable claim, to be equal with God; (Philippians 2:6;) and therefore the very infinity of Deity itself attached to his words and works, so as to stamp efficacious merit upon them. It was not because his humanity was perfect that it was meritorious. Had his humanity been as perfect as it was, if Deity were not in conjunction with it, no merit could have been attached to it any more than there was merit in the obedience of Adam, or in that of an angel. But being God as well as man, the merit of Deity was stamped upon all the acts of the obedient suffering humanity, so that, as we have sometimes said, Godhead was in every drop of his precious blood. Again, if the life of the blessed Lord had been violently taken away, contrary to his will, where would have been the obedience unto death? Had he been killed, so to speak, by the cross had died because he could not help dying, had his life been violently torn from him, where would have been the laying down of his life as the last act of his voluntary obedience? What power could man have had over him? Had he so willed, he could have freed himself from the hands of his enemies. Therefore, he said unto Pilate, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above.” (John 19:11.) And again, “Thinkest thou that I cannot pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Mathew 16:53.) When then, the band of men and officers from the chief priests came to take him with lanterns, and torches, and weapons, he freely “went forth” to yield himself up; but when he said, “I am he,” or rather, as the words literally mean, “I AM,” the glory of his eternal Deity so flashed forth, that “they went backward, and fell to the ground.” (John 18:3-6.)
Thus, truly was he “brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7.) What heart can conceive, what tongue express what his holy soul endured when “the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all?” In the garden of Gethsemane, what a load of guilt, what a weight of sin, what an intolerable burden of the wrath of God did that sacred humanity endure, until the pressure of sorrow and woe forced the drops of blood to fall as sweat from his brow. The human nature, in its weakness recoiled, as it were, from the cup of anguish put into his hand. His body could scarce bear the load that pressed him down; his soul, under the waves and billows of God's wrath, sank in deep mire where there was no standing, and came into deep waters where the floods overflowed him, (Psalms 69:1,2) And how could it be otherwise when that sacred humanity was enduring all the wrath of God, suffering the very pangs of hell, and wading in all the depths of guilt and terror? When the blessed Lord was made sin (or a sin-offering) for us, he endured in his holy soul all the pangs of distress, horror, alarm, misery, and guilt that the elect would have felt in hell forever; and not only as any one of them would have felt, but as the collective whole would have experienced under the outpouring of the everlasting wrath of God. The anguish, the distress, the darkness, the condemnation, the shame, the guilt, the unutterable horror, that any or all of his quickened family have ever experienced under a sense of God's wrath, the curse of the law, and the terrors of hell, are only faint, feeble reflections of what the Lord felt in the garden and on the cross; for there were attendant circumstances in his case which are not, and indeed cannot be in theirs, and which made the distress and agony of his holy soul, both in nature and degree, such as none but he could feel or know. He as the eternal Son of God, who had lain in his bosom before all worlds, had known all the blessedness and happiness of the love and favor of the Father his own Father, shining upon him, for he was “by him as one brought up with him, and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.” (Proverbs 8:30.) When, then, instead of love he felt his displeasure, instead of the beams of his favor he experienced the frowns and terrors of his wrath, instead of the light or his countenance he tasted the darkness and gloom of desertion, what heart can conceive, what tongue express the bitter anguish which must have wrung the soul of our suffering Surety under this agonizing experience?*94 A few drops of the wrath of God let down into the conscience of a child of God have made many a living soul cry out, “While I suffer thy terrors I am distracted; thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.” (Psalms 88:15, 16.) But what is all that Job, Heman, Jeremiah, or Jonah experienced, compared with the floods of anguish and terror which all but overwhelmed the soul of our blessed Lord? We therefore read of him in the garden, when the first pangs of his agony came on, that he “began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;” and this made him say to his three disciples, who were to be eyewitnesses of his sufferings, (1 Peter 5:1,) “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” (Mark 14:33, 34.) So great was that load that his human nature must have sunk beneath the weight his body and soul been rent asunder, but for four sustaining props: 1. The power of his Deity, for though that purposely did not display its strength, it remained in firm union with his sacred humanity; 2. The help and support of the Holy Ghost sustaining his human nature under the load laid upon it; 3. The joy set before him, which enabled him in the prospect to endure the cross, despising the shame; (Hebrews 12:2;) and, 4. The strengthening of the ministering angel sent from heaven. (Luke 22:43.) Thus supported and sustained, our gracious Redeemer sank not in the deep waters, but, as our great High Priest, “offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7) not as some have foolishly thought and said, fearing the miscarrying of his undertaking, or that he should sink into hell, but because he feared his heavenly Father with the reverence of a Son,*95 for filial fear, with every other grace, was in the heart of Jesus as his treasure. (Isaiah 11:2, 3.) Let us ever bear in mind that the sufferings of the holy soul of Jesus were as real, that is, as really felt, as the sufferings of his sacred body, and a thousand times more intense and intolerable. Though beyond description painful and agonizing, the sufferings of the body were light indeed compared with the sufferings of the soul. It is so with the saints of God themselves, when the Lord lays judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet in their conscience and lets down a sense of his anger and displeasure into their soul. What is all bodily suffering compared to a sense of God's displeasure and the arrows of his wrath sticking in the conscience? So it was with our great High Priest, when both as sacrificer and sacrificed, alike priest and victim, he was bound with the cords of love and obedience to the horns of the altar. (Psalms 118:27.) Surely never was there such a pang since the foundations of the earth were laid as that which rent and tore the soul of the Redeemer when the last drop of agony was poured into the already overflowing cup, and he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Nature herself sympathized96 with his sorrow, and was moved at his cry, for the earth shook, the sun withdrew his light, and the graves yielded up their dead. Yet thus was redemption's work accomplished, sin atoned for and blotted out, the wrath of God appeased, everlasting righteousness brought in, and the church forever reconciled and saved. When, then, the Lord had been fully baptized with his baptism of suffering and blood, when he had drunk the cup of sorrow and anguish to its last dregs, and had rendered all the obedience which the law demanded and the will of God required, he cried out with a loud voice that heaven and earth might hear, “It is finished!” and then, and not till then, he meekly bowed his head, laid down his life, as the last act of his voluntary, suffering obedience, and gave up the ghost.
We might now pass on to the consideration of that sacred humanity as taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb, where it lay in all its innate purity, sanctity, and incorruptibility, perfuming the grave, and consecrating the tomb as the sleeping-place of those who die in the Lord. Thence we might pass to the resurrection of that incorruptible body, whereby he was declared to be the Son of God with power; (Roans 1:4;) thence to the continuance of the blessed Lord upon earth during the forty days of his tarrying here below; thence to his ascension on high when he led captivity captive; thence to his sitting at the right hand of God in our nature; and thence to his second coming at the great day. All these successive steps are full of blessedness to believing hearts, when they can meditate upon them, and through faith, hope, and love in them, rise up into sweet union and communion with their most gracious and glorious Lord, as their once suffering but now risen and exalted Head. We purposed briefly to look at these gracious features of our Lord's sacred humanity; but they are subjects of such deep importance, and so full of grace and glory, that we feel we cannot thus lightly pass over them. We have, indeed already much exceeded our intended limits when we sat down to meditate on this fruitful theme. We are, then, in a strait, whether abruptly to close this subject with the departing year, or embrace the opportunity of resuming it in a different form in the opening season; and we have decided, if spared to see a returning year, to devote a few pages to these divine realities; not, however, as the continuation of the Review which we shall finish with this Number, but as a series of distinct, independent papers.
But as we are still at the cross of our suffering Lord, we cannot leave that sacred spot without dwelling for a few moments on several points most intimately connected with it. Three at this present moment offer themselves to our mind.
I. The work accomplished by the sufferings, blood shedding, obedience, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the benefits and blessings which spring out of it. It was a finished work. Here is all our salvation and here is all our hope. When were such words ever uttered on this earth as those which his gracious lips spoke from the cross, “It is finished?” Well may we cry, in the language of our sweet Christian Psalmist,
“Holy Ghost, repeat the word, There's salvation in it.”
Standing, then, at the cross of our adorable Lord, and hearing these gracious words from the lips of him who cannot lie, if blessed with living faith, we may see the law thoroughly fulfilled, its curse fully endured, its penalties wholly removed, sin eternally put away, the justice of God amply satisfied, all his perfections gloriously harmonized, his holy will perfectly obeyed, reconciliation completely effected, redemption graciously accomplished, and the church everlastingly saved. Here we see sin in its blackest colors, and holiness in its fairest beauties. Here we see the love of God in its tenderest form, and the anger of God in its deepest expression. Here we see the sacred humanity of the blessed Redeemer lifted up, as it were between heaven and earth, to show to angels and to men the spectacle of redeeming love, and to declare at one and the same moment, and by one and the same act of the suffering obedience and bleeding sacrifice of the Son of God, the eternal and unalterable displeasure of the Almighty against sin, and the rigid demands of his inflexible justice, and yet the tender compassion and boundless love of his heart to the election of grace. Here, and here alone, are obtained pardon and peace; here, and here alone, penitential grief and godly sorrow flow from heart and eyes; here, and here alone, is sin subdued and mortified, holiness communicated, death vanquished, Satan put to flight, and happiness and heaven begun in the soul. O what heavenly blessings, what present grace, as well as what future glory flow through the sacred humanity of the Son of God! What a holy meeting-place for repenting sinners and a sin-pardoning God! What a healing-place for guilty yet repenting and returning backsliders; what a door of hope in the valley of Achor for the self-condemned and self-abhorred; what a safe spot for seeking souls; and what a blessed resorting-place for the whole family of God in this vale of grief and sorrow!
2. Another most blessed fruit of the sacred humanity of our adorable Redeemer is that in that nature he learnt the experimental reality of temptation and suffering', and thus became able to sympathize with his tempted and afflicted people. It was necessary under the law that the high priest “should have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also was compassed with infirmity.” (Hebrews 5:2.) Our great High Priest was not compassed with infirmity, like the high priest under the law, and therefore had no need to offer sacrifice for his own sins, (Hebrews v. 3;) but that he might be “a merciful” as well as “faithful” high priest faithful to God and merciful to man, “ it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he might be able to succor them that are tempted.” (Hebrews ii. 17, 18.) “We have not, therefore, a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews iv. 15.) Here we see the wisdom and grace of the Father in preparing, and the love and pity of the Son in assuming a nature like our own, sin only except that he might have a real experience of every form of suffering and of temptation. Those only can feel for others in trouble and sorrow who themselves have walked in the path of tribulation; nor can anyone really sympathize with the tempted but those who have themselves been in the furnace of temptation. Thus our blessed Lord became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; hid not his face from shame and spitting; endured poverty, hunger, thirst, and nakedness; was betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, and forsaken by all; was oppressed and was afflicted, not only as a part of his meritorious, suffering obedience, but that by a personal experience in his holy humanity of sorrow and affliction he might sympathize with his mourning, afflicted people. And as with affliction, so with temptation; the gracious Redeemer endured every sort of temptation which Satan could present to his holy soul, for “in all points he was tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” (Hebrews 4:15,) that he might feel for and sympathize with the tempted.
But this was not all. The blessed Redeemer had not only to sympathize with the sorrows and temptations, but experimentally to learn the graces of his believing people. He had therefore to learn obedience in the same way that they learn it, for “he learnt obedience by the things which he suffered;” (Hebrews 5:8;) was taught in the school of affliction the inward experience of submission to God's will, meekness under injury and oppression, and lowliness of heart as a heavenly grace. Therefore, he could say, “Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” (Matthew 11:29.) Let us not think that the blessed Lord had no inward experience in his holy soul of spiritual graces, or that his divine nature supplied to his human the grace of the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit that was given him without measure, (John 3:34,) who not only anointed him as Prophet, Priest, and King, but dwelt in him in all his fulness, bestowed upon him every spiritual grace, as faith, trust, hope, love, prayer and supplication, patience, long-suffering, zeal for the glory of God, and with all spiritual wisdom and understanding, all counsel and might, all heavenly knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:1, 2.) All these gifts and graces dwelt in his sacred humanity,*97 and were drawn into exercise by the Holy Ghost, so that the blessed Lord believed, hoped, and loved; prayed, sighed, and groaned; trust- ed in God and lived a life of faith in him, just in the same manner and by the same Spirit and power, though in an infinitely higher degree, and wholly unmixed with sin, as his believing people do now. So that just in the same way as his sacred body was fed and nourished by the same food as ours, so was his holy soul sustained by the same communications of grace and strength as maintain in life the souls of his people now. Thus he learnt experimentally not only their trials and temptations, their griefs and sorrows, both natural and spiritual, but their joys and deliverances, their manifestations, their waiting hope, their trusting confidence, their patient expectation, their obedient submission, and in a word the whole compass of their experience.+98 If any think it is derogatory to the Deity of our blessed Lord, to believe that he had a spiritual experience of the same graces that his people have, for being God, they might argue he could not need them, let them explain why his body needed human food, or why his soul had an experience of sorrow and temptation. Could not his divine nature, as in the wilderness, have supported the human without food? And is it not equally derogatory to say that the blessed Lord had an experience of affliction and temptation, as of joy and deliverance? As our great Exemplar, as our suffering Head, the blessed Lord was delivered as well as tempted, rejoiced in spirit as well as sighed and wept, was made glad with the light of his Father's countenance as well as felt the hidings of his face. *99
III. The third point connected with the sacred humanity of Jesus as obedient unto death, is the example he has left to his believing people that they should walk in his steps. It will little profit us to have the clearest views of the Lord's suffering humanity if it produce no impression on our hearts and lives. At the foot of the cross there stood those who mocked the sufferings and shame of the blessed Redeemer; there were those who looked on with callous indifference; and there were those who mourned and wept, believed and loved. So now there are those who mock the eternal Sonship and suffering humanity of the blessed Jesus; and there are those who look upon his suffering Majesty without faith and without feeling, without any sorrow for sin or any thirst after holiness. And there is a small remnant who look and believe, and as led into the fellowship of his sufferings, mourn and weep. These see and feel that there is a knowing him and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death; (Philippians 3:10;) a bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body; (2 Corinthians 4:10;) a being crucified with Christ; (Galatians 2:20;) a determination to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him crucified; (1 Corinthians. 2:2;) and a glorying in his cross as the only effectual means whereby the world is crucified unto us and we unto the world. (Galatians 5:14.) We need not wonder that in our day there is such a form of godliness and such a denial of the power. It must ever be so when men are ignorant willingly ignorant of the suffering humanity of the blessed Lord and know so little of the mystery of the cross.
One word more, and for the present we close the subject. All union and communion with God is only through the humanity of Jesus. God-man unites God and man. In union with God by his Deity, in union with man by his humanity, the Lord Jesus is the Daysman who lays his hand upon them both. (Job 9:33.) This made holy John say, “For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:2,3.) Happy are those who can say with him, “Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ;” but this those only can experimentally say who having been blessed with a manifestation of his Person and work can add: “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.” (1 John 5:10.)100
WE attempted on a late occasion, in our Review of Dr. Cole's work,*102,103 to lay before our readers some thoughts upon the subject of our Lord's sacred humanity; and it was our desire and intention to bring our meditations upon that sweet and solemn theme to a close with the closing year. But the subject gradually and almost insensibly grew under our hand and opened itself more and more to our thoughts until we found that the limits of a Review were a field too narrow to embrace even our scanty and feeble meditations on the great mystery of godliness, “God manifest in the flesh.” We therefore intimated our wish to pursue the sacred subject under another form, if life were spared and grace given, with the opening year. We now, then, redeem our pledge and resume the subject; but have adopted a different title, that we may allow ourselves a wider and freer scope for our meditations on so sweet and fruitful a theme than the usual character and limits of a Review would allow.
If our readers will kindly look back to our Dec. No104. they will find that we last stood at the foot of the cross. There we saw by faith the blood-shedding and death of our adorable Lord; we viewed him yielding up his life by a voluntary act of his holy will, and heard his gracious words, “It is finished,” just before he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. But we leave him not there. We have seen him die and by faith now view his sacred body still on the cross. But he did not long hang there as a spectacle to angels and men+105. His immediate disciples had fled, but there were those who came to perform those offices of love by which a safe and secure place was provided wherein that sacred body might lie. We see, then, by faith, that pallid body, of which not a bone was broken, (though hands and feet were mangled and torn, and side pierced,) taken down with all believing reverence and adoring affection by Joseph of When we took the opportunity of Dr. Arimathaea and Nicodemus, aided, doubtless, by those holy women whose names the Holy Ghost has recorded as afterwards “beholding and sitting over against the sepulcher” where that pure body was laid.
As the original penalty was, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die;” and as “the wages of sin is death,” the Surety and Sin-bearer must endure the penalty, and literally, actually die in the sinner's room and place. Thus, there was a necessity that the Redeemer of sinners should die; but as the Son of God could not die, Deity being incapable of suffering and death, the blessed Lord took a nature which could die, not by inherent mortality or external violence, but by a voluntary act*106 as voluntary as that by which he assumed that nature in the womb of the Virgin, or resumed his body at the resurrection.
Our thoughts, then, now lead us to the body of Jesus in the grave; and here we see much to engage our meditations. The first thing that strikes our mind in beholding his lifeless form is the separation of body and soul which took place when the adorable Lord by a voluntary act laid down his life. The last words that the Redeemer spoke were, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” By his “spirit” we are to understand his human soul which at once went into paradise, into the immediate presence of God, as he intimated in the words, “And now come I to thee.” John 17:13. Nor did he go thither that day alone. A trophy was soon to follow him, the soul of that repenting, believing malefactor, who, a partner with him in suffering, had become by his sovereign grace a partner with him in glory.
There was, then, an actual separation of the Redeemer's body and soul; but this did not destroy or affect the union of his Deity with his humanity. That union remained entire, as his holy soul went into paradise in union with his Deity, and thus he was still God-man as much in paradise as he was at the tomb of Lazarus, or at the Last Supper. But his sacred body, though by the act of death life was gone out of it. still remained as before, “that holy thing.” Death did not taint that sacred body any more than sin did not taint it in the womb of the Virgin. The promise was, therefore, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, [rather, in Hades; or that paradise in which it was after death,] nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.” (Psalms 16:10.) This holy body was. essentially incorruptible, as being begotten of the Holy Ghost, by special and supernatural generation, of the flesh of the Virgin; but as in all other acts of the sacred Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were all engaged that no taint of corruption should in death assail it. The Father promised, and, as a God that cannot lie, performed by his almighty, superintending power; the Son, by the same innate, active, divine energy by which he assumed that body in the womb of the Virgin preserved it untainted, uncorrupted in the grave; and the Holy Ghost, who formed that body in its first conception, breathed over it his holy influence to maintain it, in spite of death and the tomb, as pure and as incorruptible as when he first created it. These things are indeed difficult to understand or indeed conceive; but they are heavenly mysteries, which faith receives and holds fast in spite of sense, reason, and unbelief. For see the tremendous consequences of allowing any taint of corruption to assail that blessed body. Could a tainted body be resumed at the resurrection? Corruption would have marred it as it will mar ours; and how could a corrupt body have been again the habitation of the Son of God? We are often instrumentally preserved from error not only by knowing and feeling the sweetness and power of truth, but by seeing, as at a glance, the tremendous consequences which a denial of vital, fundamental truths involves107.
But we pass on to Jesus in the tomb. A sepulcher hewn out in the rock, and therefore pure, clean, and dry, and “wherein never man before was laid,” so as to be free from any taint of corruption; a great stone rolled to the door of the sepulcher to preserve the sacred deposit from external violence or unbecoming intrusion; Roman soldiers forbidding all access of strange feet into the sacred precinct: a guard of angels watching over that body in which their God and Creator had dwelt; how all these circumstances tended, and all worked together to the same result, the safe guardianship and inviolable preservation of that holy body which the Lord had assumed for the redemption of his people.
But may we not gather up some profitable instruction here? The holy women who mourned and wept at the cross did not forget their dear Lord at the sepulcher. Thither their thoughts ran during that Sabbath Day on which they rested according to the commandment; and with the first dawn of the next day, the first day of the week, they sped their steps, with spices, to anoint that dear Object of their faith and love. The mystery of the resurrection was indeed hidden from their eyes; but they ceased not to love in death and in the sepulcher that sacred form which they had loved in life. May not our thoughts turn to the sepulcher too; and may we not, with these gracious women, resort thither as to the sleeping-place of the body of Jesus? Nature shrinks from death, even apart from that which following after death makes it to so many a king of terrors. Even where grace has set up its throne, and mercy rejoices over judgment, many unbelieving, infidel thoughts at times will cross the mind and perplex the judgment about the separation of body and soul, and the launching of the spirit into an unseen, unknown world. Faith, it is true, can subdue these perplexing thoughts, better hinted at than described, but faith needs some solid ground on which to build and rest. If then, the soul is blessed with any assured hope or sweet persuasion of interest in the blood and obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, so as to remove guilty fears, how strengthening to faith is a view of his death, not merely as the only sacrifice for sin, but as the exemplar, so to speak, of our own. We shall all have to die, and therefore to look by faith at the death of Jesus maybe a profitable subject of meditation as a relief against the perplexing thoughts to which we have before alluded. Into his Father's hands the dying Lord commended his spirit. The Father received it, for him the Father heareth always; (John 11:42;) and thus his spirit returned unto him who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7.) Thus, by the act of dying, the soul and body of the blessed Redeemer were, for a time, fully and actually separated, as fully and actually as ours will also be at death. But follow by faith that soul of Jesus when he breathed it forth, and view it at once and immediately entering paradise, into the blissful presence of God. What food for faith is here! How strengthening, how encouraging to a believing heart which has often been perplexed by such thoughts as we have named, to view the soul of Jesus thus passing at once into paradise. And may we not, by faith, view the soul also of the believing malefactor, when the time of release was come, winging its flight into the same paradise whither the soul of Jesus had preceded it? If we know anything painfully and experimentally of the assaults of unbelief, the arrows of infidelity, and the fiery darts of the wicked one, and how they are all quenched by the shield of faith, we have found that faith, in order to stand firm, must have the word of truth, a “Thus saith the Lord,” upon which to rest. Let us now, then, see how this stands as connected with the death of the blessed Lord. Fortified by his holy example, if blessed with faith in his Person, blood, and righteousness, the dying believer may commend his spirit into the hands of Christ as did martyred Stephen, in the same confidence that the Lord Jesus commended his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father.
But there is another sweet and blessed thought connected with the grave in which Jesus lay. We may have seen the grave open its dark mouth to receive a dear friend and brother, or some fondly loved re- lative, who has left a sweet testimony behind of his interest in the finished work of the Son of God; and as we have looked down into that narrow cell, seen the coffin lowered slowly into it, heard the clods fall heavily on its lid, and felt how the beloved object was buried out of our sight, no more again to walk with us here below, how nature has shrunk from each gloomy sight and sound. What could then relieve the burdened mind, and soothe the sorrowing spirit, but a sweet persuasion by faith of these two things: 1st, That the soul of the departed one was with the Lord, which was far better than again to be burdened with the body of sin and death, now forever laid down; and 2nd, That the Lord Jesus, by lying himself in the grave, had consecrated it as his people's sleeping place, and perfumed it, as it were, by permitting it to be the deposit of his own incorruptible body.
What a trial to their faith must the death of Jesus have been to his disciples and believing followers! When their Lord and Master died, their hopes, for the time at least, seem almost to have died with him. This seems evident from the language of the two disciples who were journeying to Emmaus. “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” (Luke 24:21.) How staggering to their faith that the Lord of life should be put to death; the King of glory be covered with shame and ignominy; and that he, whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, should lie in the narrow precinct of a garden sepulcher.
But another thought strikes our mind as arising out of this fruitful subject of spiritual meditation, the apparent triumph of evil and of the powers of darkness, in the death and burial of the Lord Jesus.
To the eye of sense, truth, holiness, innocence, all feel crushed by the arm of violence as Jesus hung on the cross. To the spectator there, all his miracles of love and mercy, his words of grace and truth, his holy spotless life, his claims to be the Son of God, the promised Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel, with every promise and every prophecy concerning him, were all extinguished when, amidst the triumph of his foes, in pain, shame, and ignominy, he yielded up his breath. We now see that, by his blood-shedding and death, the blessed Lord wrought out redemption, finished the work which the Father gave him to do, put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, reconciled the church unto God, triumphed over death and hell, vanquished Satan, magnified the law and made it honorable, exalted justice, brought in mercy, harmonized every apparently jarring attribute, glorified his heavenly Father, and saved millions with an everlasting salvation. But should we have seen this as we see it now, had we stood at the cross with weeping Mary and broken-hearted John, heard the railing taunts of the Scribes and Pharisees, the rude laughter of the Roman soldiery, and the mocking cries of the Jewish mob, viewed the darkened sky above, and felt the solid earth beneath rocking under our feet? Where would our faith have been then? What but a miracle of Almighty grace and power could have sustained it amidst such clouds of darkness, such strength of sense, such a crowd of conflicting passions, such opposition of unbelief?
So, it ever has been, so it ever will be in this time state. Truth, uprightness, godliness, the cause of God as distinct from, as opposed to error and evil, have always suffered crucifixion, not only in the person, but in the example of a crucified Jesus. It is an ungodly world; Satan, not Jesus, is its god and prince; and, therefore, not truth but falsehood, not good but evil, not love but enmity, not sincerity and uprightness but craft and deceptiveness, not righteousness and holiness but sin and godliness prevail and triumph as they did at the cross. This tries faith; but its relief and remedy are to look up, amidst these clouds, to the cross, and see on it the suffering Son of God. Then we see that the triumphing of the wicked is but for a moment; that though truth is now suffering, it is suffering with Christ; and that as he died and rose again, so it will have a glorious resurrection, and an eternal triumph.
One or two thoughts more, before we close this part of our present subject of meditation.
To be partakers of Christ's crown, we must be partakers of Christ's cross. Union with him in suffering must precede union with him in glory. This is the express testimony of the Holy Ghost: “If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Romans 8:17.) “If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with him,” (2 Timothy 2:11, 12.) The flesh and the world are to be crucified to us, and we to them; and this can only be by virtue of a living union with a crucified Lord. This made the apostle say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I. but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20.) And again, “But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” (Galatians 6:14.) An experimental knowledge of crucifixion with his crucified Lord, made Paul preach the cross, not only in its power to save, but in its power to sanctify. But as then so now, this preaching of the cross, not only as the meritorious cause of all salvation, but as the instrumental cause of all sanctification, is “to them that perish foolishness.” (1 Corinthians 1:18.) As men have found out some other way of salvation than by the blood of the cross, so have they discovered some other way of holiness than by the power of the cross; or rather have altogether set aside obedience, fruitfulness, self-denial, mortification of the deeds of the body, crucifixion of the flesh and of the world. Extremes are said to meet; and certainly, men of most opposite sentiments may unite in despising the cross and counting it foolishness. The Arminian despises it for justification, and the Antinomian108 for sanctification. “Believe and be holy,” is as strange a sound to the latter as, “Believe and be saved” to the former.” But “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord,” is as much written on the portal of life as, “By grace are ye saved through faith.” Through the cross, that is, through union and communion with him who suffered upon it, not only is there a fountain opened for all sin, but for all uncleanness.” (Zechariah 8:1.) Blood and water gushed from the side of Jesus when pierced by the Roman spear.
“This fountain so clear, he'll freely impart;
Unlock'd by the spear, it gushed from the heart,
With blood and with water; the first to atone,
To cleanse us the latter; the fountain's but one.”
“All my springs are in thee,” (Psalms 87:7.) said the man after God's own heart; and well may we re-echo his words. All our springs, not only of pardon and peace, acceptance and justification, but of happiness and holiness, of wisdom and strength, of victory over the world, of mortification of a body of sin and death; of every fresh revival and renewal of hope and confidence; of all prayer and praise; of every new budding forth of the soul, as of Aaron's rod, in blossom and fruit; of every gracious feeling, spiritual desire, warm supplication, honest confession, melting contrition, and godly sorrow for sin, all these springs of that life which is hid with Christ in God are in a crucified Lord. Thus, Christ crucified is, “to them who are saved, the power of God.” And as he “of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” at the cross alone can we be made wise unto salvation, become righteous by a free justification, receive of his Spirit to make us holy, and be redeemed and delivered by blood and power from sin, Satan, death and hell.
Nor is there any other way to become dead to the law, our first husband, so as “to be married to another, even him who is raised from the dead, that we may bring forth fruit unto God.” (Romans 7:4.) By the baptism of the Holy Ghost, (of which water baptism is a type and figure,) we are baptized into Jesus Christ, and specially into his death. (Romans 6:3.) By his blood shedding and death, he fulfilled the law, bearing its curse, and thus lie “blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, nailing it to his cross.” (Colossians 2:14.)
But as this opens too wide a field for present meditation, and we have sufficiently trespassed on the kindness and patience of our readers, we shall, with God's blessing, defer our thoughts upon this subject to a future number.109
(Continued from page 67. G.S. pages 90-99)
In our Meditations on the sacred humanity of the adorable Redeemer we must never, even in thought, separate his human nature from his divine. Even when his sacred body lay in the grave, and was thus for a small space of time severed from his pure and holy soul by death and the tomb, there was no separation of the two natures, for, as we have before shown, his human soul, after he had once become incarnate in the womb of the Virgin, never was parted from his Deity, but went into paradise in indissoluble union with it. It is a fundamental article of our most holy faith that the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ had no existence independent of his divine. In the Virgin's womb, in the lowly manger, in the lonely wilderness, on the holy mount of transfiguration, in the gloomy garden of Gethsemane, in Pilate's judgment hall, on the cross, and in the tomb, Jesus was still Immanuel, God with us. And so ineffably close and intimate is the conjunction of the human nature with the divine, that the acting’s of each nature, though separable, cannot and must not be separated from each other. Thus, the human hands of Jesus broke the seven loaves and the fishes; but it was God-man who multiplied them so as to feed therewith four thousand men, besides women and children. (Matthew 15:38.) The human feet of Jesus walked on the sea of Galilee; but it was the Son of God who came on the waves to the ship. (Matthew 14:33.) The human lips of Jesus uttered those words which are “spirit and life;” (John 6:63;) but it was the Son of the living God who spoke them. (John 6:69.) The human hands and feet of Jesus were nailed to the cross; but the blood shed by them was indeed divine, for all the virtue and validity of Deity were stamped upon it. (Acts xx. 28.)110
But there is another thought connected with a believing view of the Lord Jesus Christ as Immanuel, God with us, and that is, the union of the Church with him in all that he did and suffered for her. He being the Head, all the members of his mystical body in covenant union with him shared in his sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification. Thus, Paul speaks of himself as crucified with Christ, (Galatians 2:20,) and of believers generally as dying with Christ; (Romans 6:8; 2 Timothy 2:11;) being buried with Christ; (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12;) as rising with him, (Colossians 3:1,) and sitting together with him in heavenly places. (Ephesians 2:6.) Now, as the Blessed Spirit is pleased to guide us into an experimental knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and to give us a measure of union and communion with his sacred Majesty, he leads us into a fellowship with him in his sufferings, death, and resurrection. This is what the apostle speaks of as typified by the ordinance of baptism as a standing figure and permanent representation of the baptism of the Holy Ghost: “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” (Romans 4:3-5.) The ordinance of baptism is thus represented as the figure of that higher, more sacred, and spiritual baptism whereby, in living experience, believers are made one with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. And here his humanity is indeed seen in its special grace and distinguishing glory, for it is only as “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones,” (Ephesians 5:30,) this being the foundation of the union, that they are baptized into this spiritual communion with him.
But this part of our subject may demand a little further opening up. The Church, then, has a mystical, but not less real, union with Christ, from his having taken the flesh and blood of the children into union with his own divine Person. By virtue of this union with him, as members with the head, she participated with him in all he did and suffered for her sake. But this mystical union all the elect have, even those still unregenerated or unborn. This union does not, therefore, of itself give communion, though it is the foundation of it. Another kind of union, then, is needed, which is peculiar to the regenerated, and which they have in exact measure to their participation of the Spirit of Christ, for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his,” that is, by inward or outward manifestation.111 By being made partakers, then, of Christ's Spirit, the members of his mystical body have a living union with him, for “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” (1 Corinthians 4:17.) Being thus baptized by the Blessed Spirit, they are made one spirit with the Lord, and thus have a fellowship with him in his sufferings, death, and resurrection. As, then, he died under the curse of the law and the guilt and burden of sin, and yet by death died unto the law and unto sin, being by death freed from the curse of the law and the penalty of sin, so the believer dies under the curse of the law and the burden of guilt and sin in his conscience; and yet by virtue of his union with Christ as a member of his body, and of communion with him as baptized by his Spirit, he dies also unto the law and unto sin, no more to suffer the penalty of the one or to live under the power of the other. But though thus delivered, yet to the end of his days, as mourning and groaning under sin, as suffering from the hidings of God's countenance, as tempted and assailed by Satan, as hated and persecuted by the world, and often forsaken by followers and friends, he is crucified with Christ, and has fellowship with him in his sufferings and death. His sorrows, his trials, his temptations, and his sufferings, all, as sanctified to his soul's good, lead him to the cross of his suffering Lord, to get life from his death, pardon and peace from his atoning blood, justification from his divine obedience, and resignation to the will of God from his holy example. Here the world is crucified to him, and he to the world; (Galatians 6:14;) here sin is mortified, (Romans 6:6; 8:13,) and its reigning power dethroned; (Romans 6:12:) the old man crucified and put off, (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22,) and the new man put on. Thus, having a spiritual union with his suffering, dying Lord, the heaven taught believer suffers and dies with him, and by this fellowship of his sufferings and death becomes here below conformed to his suffering image, (Romans 8:17, 29; 2 Timothy 2:12,) and is made conformable to his death. (Philippians 3:10.)
This is no mere doctrine, an article only of a sound creed, but a fountain of life to every believer's soul in proportion to the measure of the Spirit112 whereby he is baptized into the death of Jesus. But for the most part it is only through a long series of afflictions, bereavements, disappointments, vexations, illnesses, pains of body and mind, hot furnaces, and deep waters, as sanctified to his soul's profit by the Holy Spirit, that the child of God comes into this part of Christian experience.113
These things are indeed death to the flesh, and are meant to be so, that it may be crucified and mortified; and are killing blows to all schemes of earthly joy, worldly happiness, and temporal prosperity and pleasure, as well as to all legal hopes and pharisaic righteousness; but they are, in the Spirit's hand, the very life of the believing soul. For “by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of their spirit.” (Isaiah 38:16.) Crucifixion is a long, painful, lingering death. Nature dies hard, and struggles, but struggles in vain, against the firm but blessed hand that nails it to the cross of Christ; but grace, cleaving all the more closely to him who suffered and bled there, draws life and power from his blood and love. This experience made the apostle say of himself, “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” (2 Corinthians 4:10, 11.) Here was the secret of all his strength, of all his holiness, and all his happiness. This inward experience of the power and blessedness of the cross inspired him with a firm and holy determination to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and him crucified; and this made him say, as the grand distinguishing test of the lost and of the saved, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18.) For this was not Paul's experience only, a hidden secret of which he alone was made by grace the happy partaker. All who are taught by the same Spirit and have the same union and communion with a crucified Lord, whether Jew or Greek, know him to be the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24.) We read of believers being “trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified,” (Isaiah 61:3,) and this planting is a being planted into Christ so as to have that union and communion with him which the living branch has with the vine. The apostle therefore speaks of our being “planted together in the likeness of his death.” (Romans 6:5.) What the vine is, the branches are. Where the vine is, there will the branches be. The vine was once prostrate on the ground: the branches were prostrate with it. The vine rose from earth to heaven; the branches rise with it. As then a tree planted into good soil drinks of its juices, or rather as a grafted scion becomes so incorporated with the stock as to be one with it, not merely in outward strength and firmness of union, but so one with it as to draw virtue, sap, and fruitfulness out of it, so the true believer, being planted into the likeness of Christ's death, draws supplies of grace and strength out of his fulness. Here, then, we see the blessedness of the bleeding, suffering, dying humanity of our adorable Redeemer. By virtue of his suffering humanity, he has union with a suffering people, and by virtue of being baptized with his Spirit they have union and communion with a suffering Lord. He died that they might live, bore the curse of the law that it might not light on them, and suffered “the just for the unjust” that they having fellowship with him in his sufferings and death might have every gracious motive communicated, and the supply of all spiritual strength imparted, to crucify them to sin, to the world, and to self.
But we pass on to the resurrection of the blessed Lord from the dead; and here we shall have to establish the doctrine before we enter into its experimental fruits.
1. The first thing that we notice is, what we may call the grand fact of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. On this the whole verity of the Christian faith may be said to be suspended. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, he was not what he declared he was, “the Son of the living God.” But if he rose from the dead, it was God's own attestation that he was his only-begotten Son,114 for all will admit that nothing short of the power of God can raise the dead. For this reason we find in the Acts of the Apostles the resurrection of the Lord Jesus made a leading feature in every sermon and every address. Whether Peter preached to the inquiring Jews, (Acts 2:23,24; 3:15,) to the opposing Sanhedrim, (Acts 4:10; 5:30,31.) or to Cornelius and his friends; (Acts 10:39,40;) or whether Paul addressed the synagogue of Antioch, (Acts 13:30,) the Athenian Areopagus, (Acts 17:31,) or king Agrippa and the most noble Festus, it might be said of them what the Holy Ghost declares of all the rest: “And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 4:33.) Look for a few moments at this remarkable circumstance, that these blessed men of God made the resurrection of Jesus, as it were, the very foundation of all their sermons and addresses; for we may be sure that the Holy Ghost inspired the apostles thus to preach. And see the reason why they bore this firm testimony in the very forefront of the battle which they waged in the name of God against the kingdom of darkness and death. The Lord of life and glory had been condemned to death by the Jewish council on a charge of blasphemy, first, because he had said that “he would destroy the temple made with hands, and within three days build another made without hands” (Mark 14:58;) and, secondly, that he had declared, in the very presence of the council, that he was the Christ, the Son of God. (Mark 14:61-64.) He therefore died under the charge of blasphemy, in pain and ignominy, crucified openly for that alleged crime in the face of the assembled thousands who had come from all parts to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Now, had Jesus not risen from the dead that charge would have been substantiated, and he would have been justly convicted by the voices of many thousands as having been put righteously to death. It was necessary, then, not only for the whole economy of redemption but for the very veracity of Jesus himself, and for the whole truth of the gospel, that he should be raised from the dead by the power of God as the seal of his mission, as the standing, undeniable, irrefragable truth that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, as he claimed to be. We see, then, the force and meaning of the apostle's words, where he says that the Lord Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:4.) It was God's attesting witness to his divine Sonship, the visible, ratifying seal to his heavenly mission. And not only so, but God's own assurance to the church that his atoning sacrifice had been accepted, that the debt due to law and justice was fully discharged, and her justification complete, for he “was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification;” (Romans 4:25;) that is, he, as the head and representative of the church, was raised by God from the dead as justified from all law charges, and the church was thus visibly and authoritatively declared to be justified in him. This was the attesting witness from heaven that her justification was complete, and that Jesus lives at God's right hand to reveal that justification to her heart, put her into experimental possession of its unspeakable blessedness, and seal it effectually by the Holy Ghost upon her breast.
2. The next thing that we notice is that each Person of the sacred Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, was engaged in the blessed work of raising Jesus from the dead. Though the Persons of the Trinity are essentially distinct, and their acts in the great economy of redemption separate, yet as one God they participate in the putting forth of every act of divine power. Thus, God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, as we learn from almost innumerable passages; but see the following, which we need not quote at length but simply refer to: Acts 2:24; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:37; 17:31; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 2:12. But the Son of God raised himself from the dead, according to his own words of grace and truth, “Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again.” (John 10:17,18.) He is “the resurrection;” (John 11:25;) and as he raised Lazarus from the tomb and will at the last day raise up the sleeping dust of all that the Father gave unto him, (John 6:39,40,) so, by the exercise of the same divine power, did he raise his own incorruptible body from the grave. The Holy Ghost also had a blessed participation in the same divine act. We therefore read that the Lord Jesus was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, (I Peter 3:18), the same Holy and Blessed Spirit who will also quicken the mortal bodies of the saints at the great resurrection. (Romans 8:11.)
3. The next thing that we notice is, the identity of the Lord's risen body. It is a cardinal, fundamental article of our most holy faith that the same actual, identical body was raised from the grave which was deposited in it115. If erroneous men had not indulged their vain speculations about the risen body of the Lord Jesus, we might well wonder at their daring attempts to pull up the landmarks which the Holy Ghost has so plainly set up in the word of truth. The Lord never had, never could have, two different bodies, one before, another after the resurrection. We might as well talk of his having two different souls, one soul for earth and another soul for heaven. The identity of his body is as indispensable to his still being Jesus, “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,” as the identity of his soul, no less certain, no less necessary, and no less precious. But because, after the resurrection, the Lord came miraculously into the place where the disciples were assembled, the doors being shut, and vanished out of the sight of the disciples at Emmaus, and because they cannot conceive how he can wear a human body in heaven, such as he had upon earth, men who would be wise above what is written have assumed that a change took place in that body, and that it no longer consisted of flesh, and bones, and blood, as before, but was, as it were, transmuted into some aerial, celestial substance, they know not what, but such as they imagine would be more fitting to inhabit the courts of heaven. Now, nothing can be more plain, if we are willing to follow the footsteps of the Holy Ghost, than that it was the same identical body which hung on the cross
The linking of the resurrection and the parousia of Jesus throws light on both events. This will confirm:
(1) First, the connection between the resurrection and the parousia makes plain, what in any case is commonly acknowledged, that the resurrection of Christ is a truly eschatological event. It is not to be thought of in terms of God imparting a ‘kiss of life’ to Jesus, whereby he resumes an existence of the old order; rather it is to be conceived of as the revelation of Christ’s new existence in a ‘transformed’ body in God’s new world. Observe the placing of the term ‘transformed’ in quotation marks. If we are asked to define what we mean by it in this context we have to confess that we cannot do so. The NT does not describe the mode of Christ’s resurrection, and we are unable to fill in the lacuna. In the resurrection of Jesus we are conscious of standing before God’s eschatological secret, the mystery of the new creation. Paul assumes this understanding in his well known utterance of 2 Corinthians 5:17: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (New RSV)
This appears to mean that to enter into the koinonia of Christ is to step into the new creation that came into being in the Easter of the Son of God. Before any creature could proclaim, ‘Christ is risen’, there was the new creation in the person of the risen Lord.
This point needs to be emphasized, for it is perhaps insufficiently appreciated. It is stressed by Walter Kunneth time and again in his work on the theology of the Resurrection.
The primal miracle of the Resurrection is eschatologically determined. It is a primal miracle like that of the creation of the world, but in distinction from the provisionally and perishability of the latter, in the former the finality and imperishability of a new final creation breaks through once for all.4
Karl Heim similarly asserts: ‘The Resurrection of Christ is something that is fundamentally distinguished from all events which take place on the plane of the present world-time, namely the beginning of the consummation of the world, the beginning of the end-time victory of God over this earth.’5 It is, of course, a beginning which anticipates an end. So Neville Clark rightly affirms, ‘As the Resurrection signified the inauguration of a new world, so the parousia must mark that total consummation which is the new heaven and the new earth (Is. 65:17, 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1)’.6 (Beasley-Murray, G. R. (1991). Resurrection and Parousia of the Son of Man. Tyndale Bulletin, 42(2), 300-301.)
that rose from the dead116. It would seem, as if to stop all cavil, and crush in the very bud all such erroneous speculations as we have alluded to, the Lord himself gave again and again the most incontrovertible proofs after his resurrection that he was the same Jesus as before, and not another, and that he were the same body in all respects without change or alteration. He did not appear for a few moments only, as if “showing himself through the lattice,” and then hastily withdrawing, but conversed with them most familiarly, and ate with his disciples after the resurrection; (Luke 24:42,43; Acts 10:41;) and for this very purpose, that they might be standing and undeniable eye and ear witnesses that it was indeed the very same Jesus with whom they had consorted before his crucifixion. Now we all know what a marked change a little alteration makes in a person's form and features, so that a severe illness, or the lapse of a few years, makes him scarcely recognizable as the same person by even his most intimate friends. If then, any visible change had taken place in the body of the Lord Jesus, it would not only have destroyed its identity but its identification. The whole chain of evidence that it was indeed the same Jesus who had been crucified that was risen from the dead would have been broken to pieces unless it was clearly and undeniably the same form, the same features, the same feet and hands, the same voice, in a word, the very same Jesus whom they knew so well and loved so dearly. Did not Mary Magdalene know his form and features well? Could she have been deceived? Was not John, who leaned on his breast at the last supper, well acquainted with his voice, gestures, and countenance? Could he have been deceived? So, with Peter and James, not to name the other disciples who had attended him daily from the baptism of John. (Acts 1:22.) One witness might be deceived, but not so many. But besides this, there were several special seasons on which the Lord did not only appear for a short time to his disciples but was with them some space. Look at the instance of Thomas. What can exceed the clearness of the testimony mercifully produced by his very unbelief? So firmly fixed was he in his disbelief of the resurrection that he would not believe that the disciples had seen the Lord as risen from the dead; and declared that except he should see in his hands the print of the nails; and, lest his eyes should deceive him, unless he put his fingers into the print of the nails; and even lest he should be deceived then, except he should thrust his hand into the very side which had been pierced by the Roman spear, he would not believe. But how condescendingly to him, and how graciously for the saints in all ages, did the blessed Lord, eight days after this unbelieving declaration, appear again gently to reprove him for his unbelief, but at the same time to afford to the church through him the memorable testimony that he were still the same body; that the hands were the very same hands, still bearing the print of the nails which had fastened them to the cross, and that it was the very same side which still were the thrust-mark of the Roman spear. If this were not a proof of actual identity where shall we find one? If this evidence be rejected, what remains but to reject the whole mystery of the resurrection as an idle tale? Learned men have, by comparing scripture with scripture, ascertained that the blessed Lord appeared ten times to eyewitnesses after his resurrection,*117 and that at some of these appearances, as that memorable one recorded John
21, he conversed with his disciples as closely and as intimately as before his resurrection. And that his human body in which he ate and talked with them was not a shadowy appearance, which had neither flesh nor bones, he spoke to them those ever-memorable words, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have/' (Luke 24:39.) “Behold,” said he, “my hands and my feet” they are real hands, they are real feet; “that it is I myself.” the same, the very same Jesus, having the same body which you saw him wear before; “handle me, and see,” feel, if you will, whether it be real flesh or an aerial body, “for a spirit,” such as you take me to be, a disembodied soul, or an airy, unreal phantasm, “ hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” Can anything be stronger than this, the Lord's own testimony to the actual identity of his body before and after his resurrection? And if it be objected that whatever the body of the Lord was then it is now so exceedingly glorified that it has lost in that glory all the distinctive features of its former humanity, we reply, How was it with that same body before the resurrection, on the holy mount, when it was transfigured before the three disciples, so that “his face did shine as the sun, and his very raiment,” as borrowing luster from his glorious humanity, “was white as the light?” (Matthew 12:1,2.) There we see that the brightest glory no more altered the identity or changed the substance of the Lord's body than the glory of the face of Moses altered his. When we come to the ascension of our blessed Lord, we shall see this perhaps more clearly and distinctly still, or at least view more at length the blessings and benefits connected with it.
We shall attempt now, then, to show the spiritual bearing and influence which the resurrection of the Lord has upon the believing soul.
The apostle's earnest desire and prayer were that he might “know the Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of his resurrection.” (Philippians 3:10.) It was not, then, the bare fact of his resurrection, or the mere doctrine of it as revealed in the scripture, which would satisfy his panting soul, though both of them in themselves as foundation truths full of unspeakable blessedness; but what his believing heart intensely longed to enjoy was the inward experience of its power, fruits, and effects. What was that power? Let us see, if we can, with God's blessing, what it was to know, to enjoy which drew forth such intense desires from Paul's inmost soul. The prayer which this man of God offered for the church of God at Ephesus (Ephesians 1:16-23) will, we think, form a blessed key to this experimental secret. Among the heavenly blessings which he there prays that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,” would grant unto them, he begs that “he would give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, that they might know what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 1:19,20.) If we read the whole of that blessed prayer we shall see that the Lord Jesus is there spoken of as the Head and Representative of his body, the church, a multitude which no man can number. When then, he died on the cross, he sank, so to speak, under the load of millions of sins, for “he bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” We know, indeed, that by the shedding of his precious blood the sins of the church were purged away, and that he himself said, “It is finished”, before he gave up the ghost; but as under the law the death of the victim was the essential part of the sacrifice, so, until the Lamb of God died, the sacrifice was not complete. In this sense, then, he died and sank into the grave under the tremendous weight of sin laid on his sacred head. By these, as dead under the law, he was bound fast in the tomb, faster than by the burial-clothes, the Roman guard, or the stone rolled to the door of the sepulcher; and by these he was held fast till the resurrection morn. These, then, were the “pains [or cords*118] of death” of which Peter speaks, which held him fast. (Acts 2:24.) But God “loosed” these cords, because he being the Son of God and the Prince of life, “it was not possible that he should be holden” of death; and therefore he raised him up as the justified Head of his body the church, leaving in the grave the sins under the guilt and weight of which he had died. Being thus raised up as the Head of the church, and openly acquitted and justified, she rose in and with him. This view of Christ's resurrection may prepare us to enter more clearly and fully into the experimental meaning of that blessed prayer for the Ephesian believers, to which we have already referred; and to show us why the apostle prayed that they might know “what is the exceeding greatness of his power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is here spoken of as a most miraculous display of the mighty power of God. Why was it such? Not surely in merely raising the dead body of the Lord Jesus to life, for that miracle had been before done in the case of Lazarus and the widow's son, and in many other instances. But it was because in raising up Christ from the dead God raised up millions of redeemed sinners with him, and that, too, out of all their sins and miseries, which had sunk his sacred head, as bearing them all, into death and the grave. The church is, therefore, said to be “quickened together with Christ,” and “raised up together with him;” (Ephesians 2:5,6; Colossians 2:12,13;) and believers are spoken of as “risen with Christ.” (Colossians 3:1.)
Now, what a living child of God longs to experience is the felt power of this resurrection, that as having been mystically and virtually quickened together with Christ at and in his resurrection from the dead, he may feelingly enjoy the spiritual power of that resurrection in his own soul, enabling him to rise up out of the cords of death which so often hold him firm and fast. This putting forth of the power of Christ to quicken, renew, and deliver the soul is so exceedingly great that it is compared by the apostle to the display of that mighty power which God put forth in raising Jesus from the dead. For though the believer was virtually and really quickened together with Christ when he rose from the dead and has already risen out of the grave of death and sin by this power regenerating and making him alive unto God, yet he often sinks back into the gloomy grave of carnality and deadness. He therefore wants a mighty power to be put forth in his soul, the power of Christ's resurrection; for he feelingly needs the same almighty power which raised Jesus from the dead to raise him up once more to faith, and hope, and love. The resurrection of Jesus, and his interest therein as a quickened member of his body, is indeed the sure pledge that he shall again be blessed with this renewing, reviving grace; but O the power! inwardly and experimentally to feel this power from time to time coming into his soul as the power of God came into the tomb of Christ and raised him from the dead; and by the experience of this power to rise with Christ to light, life, liberty, and love, this is indeed to have the kingdom of God which is not only “in power,” but is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (1 Corinthians 4:20; Romans 14:17.)
As, then, by the resurrection of Christ the church was mystically “quickened together with him,” (Ephesians 2:5,) so regeneration is the first proof, the initial pledge, of the resurrection of each individual believer with him. This is the first act of the power of Christ's resurrection as a felt, experimental reality in each member of his mystical body. As, then, the regenerated soul experiences more and more of the putting forth of this risen power and feels more and more deeply and sensibly the contrast between the workings and movements of this hidden life and its own miserable darkness, bondage, and death when this divine fruit of Christ's resurrection is not realised, it hungers and thirsts after its renewed enjoyment. Regeneration in itself is an instantaneous act which cannot be repeated, but its effects are permanent. A child can be born but once; but having once breathed it breathes again; and without breath and food cannot live. So, every sweet revival, gracious renewal, soft word, melting touch, comforting look, heavenly smile, applied pro- mise, encouraging testimony, or blessed manifestation of or from the risen Lord of life and glory is not, indeed, regeneration, but the fruit and effect of it; and to experience it in the soul is to experience the power of his resurrection.
So, with pardoned sin and justification from the curse of the law by the imputation of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. When God raised him from the dead, he gave a public attestation that the ransom price was accepted, and the church justified in him. To have this revealed to the heart and sealed with a divine power on the conscience is to experience the power of Christ's resurrection, for he was raised for our justification.
But we have already trespassed too long on the time of our readers; and as this subject is closely connected with the ascension and glorification of the blessed Lord which we hope, with God's help and blessing, next to consider, we shall defer our further meditations on this point to our following Number.
(Continued from page 67. G.S. pages 124-131)
THE more we view by faith the resurrection of our adorable Redeemer, the more grace and glory shall we see shining through it; and the more we feel of our own sinfulness and helplessness, the more shall we desire to realise the power of that resurrection in our own personal experience. The guilt of sin makes us cleave to a dying Christ; the power of sin makes us hang upon a risen Christ. The Holy Ghost, therefore, in the scripture sometimes exhibits Jesus to our view as a slaughtered Lamb, and sometimes as the church's glorious risen Head. Holy John blessedly unites them both in one verse, “And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful Witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.” (Revelation 1:5.) Though he had such a view of his glorious Person as a risen Jesus that he fell at his feet as dead, yet his faith departed not from the cross, or from the fountain opened therein for sin and for uncleanness. So blessed Paul, in the longing aspirations of his soul, breathes forth at one and the same moment his desires to know Christ risen and to sympathize with Christ suffering: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death.” (Philippians 3:10.) Even in the courts of heaven, in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, John had a view of a Lamb, standing “as it had been slain,” and heard the song of the representatives of the redeemed as they fell down before him: “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou are worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.” (Revelation 5:9.) Whether then, dying on the cross, or risen from the dead, or ascended up on high, he is still Jesus, “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” wearing still the same sacred humanity which he assumed in the womb of the Virgin. We cannot separate Jesus' cross from Jesus' crown; the slaughtered Lamb from the risen Conqueror; the High Priest offering sacrifice from the High Priest carrying the blood within the veil; the Church's suffering Surety from the Church's glorified Representative. We need him as much for what he was as for what he is. Without a dying Jesus there could be no redemption; without*a living Jesus there could be no salvation. It is sweet to lie at the foot of the cross that the drops of his atoning blood may fall on the con- science; it is sweet to see his languid eyes sealed in death, and to know that he died the just for the unjust that he might bring us unto God; it is sweet to see the prisoner of death break through the barriers of the tomb and come forth into the light of heaven as the Church's justified Head; and it is sweet to see him ascended up on high to take possession of the kingdom given him by the Father before the foundation of the world. And well it is for poor sinners, and especially for those who are burdened with the guilt of sin, that it is so. For though we are said to be come to “Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, &c., and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant,” all which blessings spring from Christ risen, yet we are said also to come “to the blood of sprinkling,” which, as issuing from Christ crucified, “speaks better things than the blood of Abel.” (Hebrews 12:22-24.) We have dwelt a little largely upon this lest any apprehension might arise in our readers' minds that we are looking away from the cross by speaking so much of the resurrection. In thought they may be separated, but not in blessing; for as without the cross there could have been no atoning blood, so without the resurrection there could be no prevailing intercession.119
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With this explanation we resume our Meditations on the resurrection of our adorable Redeemer.
1. We have already named several blessings that spring out of an experimental knowledge of the power of his resurrection, one of the greatest being that which we briefly touched upon at the close of our last paper, the manifest justification thereby of everyone who believes in the Son of God. according to those words, “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” (Romans 4:25.) We have used the expression, “the manifest justification” for the elect are not really and actually justified by Christ's resurrection, but by the imputation of his active and passive obedience, as the apostle speaks, “Therefore 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. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19.) The resurrection of Christ from the dead is not, then, the procuring cause, but the manifest proof that his obedience to the law was accepted on their behalf, and that they were raised up together with him as justified persons; for “in the LORD,” that is, by virtue of union with him, “shall all the seed of Israel be justified;” (Isaiah 45:25;) and this they were manifestly when their covenant Head was raised up and openly acquitted of all law charges. Now as the resurrection of Christ was the manifest justification of their persons, so a knowledge of its power is the manifest justification of their consciences. For till Christ is revealed to the soul as risen from the dead, it is shut up under the law, full of guilt and condemnation, a prisoner in the pit where there is no water; but when he is manifested, or rather, when he manifests himself, which he could not do unless he were alive from the dead, he seals a sense of justification on the conscience. “I bring near,” he says, “my righteousness,” (Isaiah 46:13,) which he does when he experimentally clothes the soul with the garments of salvation and covers it with the robe of righteousness. (Isaiah 61:10.) Then the power of his resurrection experimentally felt raises the child of grace out of the grave of bondage and death, and by faith in him as a risen head, he is “justified from all things from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses.” (Acts 13:39.) Christ is thus sensibly made of God unto every believing soul righteousness and in the language of faith he can say, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.” (Isaiah 14:24.) This made the apostle say, “And if Christ be not raised your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17.) Why are you not, he might ask them, yet in your sins as regards their condemnation by the law? Because Christ is risen from the dead. Why are you not yet in your sins as regards their condemnation in your own conscience? Because by faith in him as risen from the dead you are justified experimentally from them. It is thus the apostle connects, in another place, the two blessings of manifest and experimental justification: “Who was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 4:25; 5:1.) Why that “therefore” connecting the two chapters, but to show that as by Christ's resurrection we are manifestly justified, so by faith in him as risen from the dead we are experimentally justified, of which the proof is to have peace with God?
This justifying faith gives manifest union with Christ, and, opening up a divine channel of communication with him, produces another blessed fruit of the power of his resurrection, viz.:
2. Communion with him as a risen Head. In his last consoling discourse Jesus said to his disciples, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.” (John 14:18,19.) Being able only to view him with the natural eye, when his personal presence was withdrawn the world could see him no more. “But ye see me,” said the blessed Lord to his disciples. And how should they see him? In the same way as is recorded of Moses: “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” (Hebrews 11:27.) Faith is the eye of the soul, for it is “the evidence of things not seen” by sense; and thus, by faith they would see him at the right hand of the Father. But if they saw him there, would they not see him as a living Head, for he says, “Because I live, ye shall live also?” And would not life, flowing into them from union with him, flow back unto him in sacred communion? But he also said, “I will not leave you comfortless,” as mourning my death and your own disappointed hopes; “I will come to you.” But how? By personal manifestation. “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21.)120 Thus, communion with Christ rests on three things, seeing him by faith, living upon his life, and experiencing his manifested presence. But all these three things depend on his resurrection and a knowledge of its power. As risen from the dead, the saints see him; as risen from the dead, they live a life of faith upon him; as risen from the dead, he manifests himself unto them; and as life and feeling spring up in their souls from sweet communion with him, the power of his resurrection becomes manifest in them.
The sacred humanity of our blessed Lord, as seen by faith, has a blessed effect in drawing the soul up unto himself. We cannot have communion with pure Deity. Our fallen condition and miserable state as guilty sinners has forever shut out that way. But eyeing by faith the pure humanity of our adorable Redeemer, in union with his eternal Deity, we may now draw near to God in all holy boldness.121 The blood of Jesus gives us access within the veil, as the apostle urges, “Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh, and having an High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:19-22.) And again, “Seeing, then, that we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession, for we have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14-16.) Now, just in proportion to our faith in him as a risen Head shall we feel the holy boldness of which the apostle speaks; and as thus venturing nigh and enabled to plead with him, pour out our heart before him, show before him all our trouble, confess our sins, bewail our backslidings, and seek some manifestations of his pardoning love, will communion with him be sensibly experienced, for he will more or less manifest himself, apply some comforting word, and melt and soften the heart into humility and love.
This communion, therefore, with the Lord Jesus as a risen Head all the reconciled and justified saints of God are pressing forward after, according to the measure of their grace and the life and power of God in their soul. It is indeed often sadly interrupted and grievously broken through by the sin that dwelleth in us. But the principle is there, for that principle is life; and life is the privilege, the possession, and the distinction of the children of God. You need none to assure you that Jesus is risen from the dead if he manifests himself to your soul. You want no evidence that you are a sheep if you have heard and know his voice. So, you may say, “Jesus is risen, for I have seen him; Jesus is risen, for I have heard him; Jesus is risen, for I live upon him.” Communion with Jesus is the life of religion, and indeed without its religion is but an empty name. If without him we can do nothing; if he is our life, our risen covenant Head, our Advocate with the Father, our Husband, our Friend, our Brother, how are we to draw sap out of his fulness, as the branch from the vine, or to know him personally and experimentally in any one of his endearing relationships, unless by continual communion with him on his throne of grace? In fact, this is the grand distinguishing point between the living and the dead, between the true child of God and the mere professor, that the one has real union and communion with a risen Jesus and the other is satisfied with a form of godliness. Every quickened soul is made to fed after the power of God, after communion from above, after pardon and peace, after visitations of mercy and grace; and when he has had a view of Christ by faith, and some revelation of his Person and work, grace and glory, nothing afterwards can ever really satisfy him but that inward communion of spirit with Jesus whereby the Lord and he become one; “for he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6:17.)122
3. Another fruit of Christ's resurrection, and closely and intimately connected with the foregoing, is, the rising with him of the spiritual affections of his believing people, as the apostle urges on the
Colossian saints: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Colossians 3:1,2.) By nature, we cleave to earth and to earthly objects. Our affections are buried in the grave of death, nor are we able of ourselves to raise them up to high and heavenly things. We need, then, the power of Christ's resurrection to be inwardly felt and realised, that, as risen with him our covenant Head, we may no longer lie buried in the things of time and sense, the vain and fleeting objects here below, but may set our affections on things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Our Head is risen from the dead. Why, then, should we, the members of his body, still grovel here below in the dust of the earth? He is gone up on high. Let our affections mount with him. He is in heaven. Let our hearts be with him. Now just in proportion as we realise the power of Christ's resurrection do we thus rise in our heart and affections up from this miserable earth, with all its cares and all its passing vanities. Nothing seems to be a greater evidence of the low, sunken state of the church in the present day than the manifest want of this heavenly grace. How few there are whose affections are set on things above. How few can really say, “Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:20.) How few there are who, either by their conversation or their life, manifest that their heart is in heaven, we will not say continually, but ever there at all. How few seem to have any affectionate thoughts toward Jesus, any longing for his manifested presence, ”O, when wilt thou come unto me?” any delight in him as the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely, any breaking forth of heart after him as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, any adoring contemplation of his glory, any inward retirement of spirit, whereby their wandering affections are gathered home and fixed upon heavenly things. We know, indeed, how cold, stupid, and carnal the heart often is, and how the affections stray after the things of time and sense; but to be always so, never to have any sweet incoming of divine life and power drawing the affections heavenward, how do such persons differ from those altogether dead in a profession? Where there is life, it will work; where there is faith, it will act; where there is love, it will flow. Such persons, to say the least, are in a very perilous condition, for if not wholly dead, their affections being so set on things of earth, they lie open to the worst snares of the devil and the flesh. Even some of the Lord's more clearly manifested people are verily guilty in this matter. Some of them are bowed down with a daily load of care. Worldly anxieties fill their mind and occupy their thoughts from morning to night. Can these be said to be spiritually risen with Christ? Would not the power of his resurrection experimentally felt lift them up from their family cares, their business cares, their too often imaginary, their self-tormenting cares? Were their faith more firmly fixed on a risen Christ, their affections more set on a living Christ, what a load of carking cares would be removed from their shoulders! Others of the Lord's family are bowed down with worldly grief and sorrow. Some beloved object has been removed out of their sight, and their affections linger round the tomb which holds his earthly remains. The sorrow of the world is working death in them, nor can they look beyond the sepulcher to the resurrection. But is not Christ risen from the dead? Has he not destroyed death and him that had the power of death, and as having felt the power of his resurrection, should not their affections rise with him, and there find their happiness and their home, instead of seeking the living among the dead? Others, again, who once did run well, and whose heart and affections once seemed fixed on heavenly things, through that root of all evil, the love of money, are now eagerly pursuing the world, intent upon gain, thinking they never can have enough, elated with every flush of success, and correspondingly depressed with failures and reverses. Knowing what we are by nature, and how surrounded by temptation on every side to do evil, we cannot wonder that even those who have some marks of the fear of God in their hearts may be, for a time, left to live so far from the power of Christ's resurrection. But it will not always be so with them. There are in reserve for them heavy crosses, hot fires, deep waters; and by these, as so many chastening rods, they will be brought once more to feel the power of Christ's resurrection raising them out of their carnality and death, and then once more they will set their affections on things above.
4. Closely connected with the setting of our affections on things above, as the fruit of the resurrection of Jesus and of our union with him as a risen Head, is the being made spiritually-minded; that heavenly grace which contains in its bosom these two blessed fruits, “life and peace.” (Romans 8:6.) Just in proportion as our heart and affections are engaged on heavenly objects, shall we feel a sweet savor of heaven resting upon our spirit; and as we can only give back what we receive, every going forth of divine life from the soul below is but the fruit and effect of the incoming of that life from above. Christ is our life above; (Colossians 3:4;) and as he by his Spirit and grace maintains the life of faith in the soul, it manifests itself in gracious acting’s upon himself. This movement of the life within up to its divine Author and Object is the breathing of the spirit from under its house of clay, the ascension of the soul up unto God, the taking possession beforehand of its mansion above, and sitting down with Christ in heavenly places before the glorious celebration of the marriage supper of the Lamb. (Revelation 19:7,9.) Without this spirituality of mind religion is but a mere name, a empty mask, a delusion, and a snare. There must be wrought in the soul of every heir of glory before he departs out of this time state what the apostle calls a being “made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.” (Colossians 1:12.) God does not take into heaven, into the fulness of his own eternal bliss, those whom he does not love, and who do not love him. It is a prepared people for prepared mansions. And this preparedness for heaven, as an inward grace, much consists in that sweet spirituality of mind whereby heavenly things become our only happiness, and an inward delight is felt in them which enlarges the heart, ennobles the mind, softens the spirit, and lifts the whole soul, as it were, up into a holy atmosphere in which it bathes as its choice element. This is “life,” not the cold, dead profession of those poor, carnal creatures who have only a natural faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the truths of his gospel; but that blessed life which shall never die but live in the eternal presence of God when earth and all it holds shall be wrapped in the devouring flames. And it is “peace”, the Redeemer's dying legacy, whereby, as he himself fulfils it, he calms the troubled waves of the soul, stills every rebellious movement, and enthrones himself in the heart as the Prince of peace.
5. The last fruit of the resurrection of the blessed Lord that we shall mention is that it is the first fruits and pledge of the resurrection of the saints at the last day. So speaks the apostle in that chapter which has comforted thousands of mourners when they have laid in the tomb the remains of their beloved husbands, wives, children, or friends who have departed in the Lord. “But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept; for since by man carne death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22.) Christ risen is the first fruits of that mighty crop of buried dead whose remains still sleep in the silent dust, and who will be joined by successive ranks of those who die in him, till all are together wakened up in the resurrection morn. The figure is that of the sheaf of the first fruits which was waved before the Lord before the harvest was allowed to be reaped. (Leviticus 23:10,11.) This offering of the wave sheaf was the consecration and dedication of the whole crop in the field to the Lord, as well as the manifest pledge that the harvest was fully ripe for the reaper's sickle. The first fruits represented the whole of the crop, as Christ is the representative of his saints; the offering of them sanctified what was still un-reaped in the field, as Christ sanctified or consecrated unto God the yet un-reaped harvest of the buried dead; and the carrying them into the tabernacle was the first introduction therein of the crop, as Christ entering heaven as the first fruits secures thereby the entrance of the bodies of the saints into the mansions prepared for them before the foundation of the world. Thus, Christ rising from the dead presented himself before the Lord as the first fruits of the grand harvest of the resurrection yet un-reaped, and by so doing consecrated and dedicated the whole crop unto God. As, then, he rose from the dead, so shall all the sleeping saints rise from the dead at the last day, for his resurrection is the first fruits, the pledge, and earnest of theirs.
His risen body also is the type to which the risen bodies of the saints are to be conformed, “for as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” (1 Corinthians 15:48.) This is that glorious image to which the saints are to be all conformed. “For whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:29.) But though fully retaining all the essential characteristics of humanity, for otherwise it would cease to be manhood in conjunction with Godhead, yet so unspeakably glorious is this risen body of the blessed Lord, to the image of which the risen saints will be conformed, that in this time state we can not only form no conception of its surpassing glory, but not even of that inferior degree of glory which will clothe the bodies of the saints at the resurrection. “Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2.) But of this we may sure, that there will always be an essential and unapproachable distinction between the glory of Christ's humanity and theirs. His humanity, being in eternal union with his Deity, derives thence a glory which is distinct from all other, and to which there can be no approach, and with which there can be comparison123. The glory of the moon never can be the glory of the sun, though she shines with his reflected light. “He will change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body;” (Philippians 3:21;) but though like, it will not be the same. It will be the saints' eternal happiness to see him as he is, and to be made like unto him; but it will be their everlasting joy that he should ever have that pre-eminence of glory, which is his birthright, and to adore which will ever be their supreme delight. To have a body free from all sin, sickness, and sorrow, filled to its utmost capacity of holiness and happiness, able to see him as he is without dying under the sight, and to be re-united to its once suffering but now equally glorified companion, an immortal soul, expanded to its fullest powers of joy and bliss, if this be not sufficient, what more can God give?
There remain three more aspects of the humanity of the blessed Redeemer—his ascension into heaven, his present state there, and his second coming, the consideration of which we must defer to a future occasion.
(Continued from page 131. G.S. pages 154-163)
WE intimated at the conclusion of our last paper that there remained three aspects of the sacred humanity of our blessed Lord still to be considered, viz., his ascension into heaven; his present state of mediatorial grace and glory there; and his second coming. If we are but favored with the life, light, and unction of the Blessed Spirit to gather up any portion of “the fruits new and old which are laid up at these gates for his church, his beloved,” (Song 7:13.) they will be found not less sweet to the taste, nor less nourishing to faith and love than those holy and heavenly subjects connected with the Lord's sacred humanity upon earth which have already engaged our Meditations. For there is this peculiar blessedness in the Person and work of the adorable Redeemer, that, like the sun which shines in every clime, he is ever beaming forth out of his inexhaustible fulness rays of grace and glory, under every aspect, to believing eyes and hearts; so that the more we look to him the more we see in him to admire and love, the more we believe in his name the more it becomes as the ointment poured forth, and the more we experience of his grace the more we feel of its power. “Have I been,” he asks his people, “a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness?” (Jerimiah 2:31.) No, Lord, we may well answer; not “a wilderness,” for from thee is all our fruit found; not “a land of darkness,” for with thee is the light of life. If then, no fruit be gathered by us from that portion of the heavenly garden through which we now purpose, with God's help and blessing, to walk with our readers, it is not because no fruit grows there, but because our eyes are too dim to see, or our hands too weak to reach it down from the tree of life. In this, as in everything else that we speak, write, or do in his name, we willingly acknowledge our shortcomings; for though we would wish to set forth to the utmost of our power the grace and glory of the incarnate Son of God; and though what has lately engaged our pen has not been without some amount of careful thought and consideration, yet we feel miserably to fail both in conception and ex- pression, and must confess, with Berridge,
“But we lisp and falter forth
Broken words, not half his worth.”
And if this be true as regards our past Meditations on the holy humanity of Jesus in his state of humiliation here below, how much more must it be so when we have to view him as he now is, enthroned on high in all the fulness of his mediatorial grace and glory. Still, we essay the task, in the hope that our meditation of him may be sweet and be attended with a blessing from on high to those who love his name and long for his appearing. For though he is exalted far beyond all present conception, yet in the word of truth we have a sure guide, by following which we may obtain some believing apprehensions of what he is to those who see him by faith at the right hand of the Father.
I. The first point, then, that will now engage our thoughts is the Ascension of the blessed Lord; and the first step in our meditation upon it will be to prove the fact. This, in the depth of his wisdom, God has been pleased to place beyond all doubt or controversy, at least to all who receive the scriptures as an inspired revelation; and by so doing he has given us much reason to admire his infinite condescension and grace. The Lord might have ascended to heaven immediately after his resurrection, without showing himself to his disciples; or after appearing to them, to prove that he was risen from the dead, he might have gone up on high without any eyewitnesses of his ascension. But that so stupendous and yet so indispensable a fact might rest on an immovable foundation, the Lord did not ascend till forty days after the resurrection, that by his repeated appearances to his disciples he might afford them so many “infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3) that indeed he was risen from the dead; and when he went up on high it was in the presence and in the open sight of his eleven apostles, that not only they themselves might have the evidence of their own eyes, the strongest of all possible proofs, but that through all ages the church might be able to rest with sure confidence on such indubitable testimony. The fact, then, of the Lord's ascension we have now more particularly to show from the scriptures of truth. On the morning of that day on which he ascended to heaven the blessed Lord appeared for the tenth and last time to his followers. The eleven apostles met together at his command in Jerusalem, and there Jesus appeared in their midst. As we read: “And being assembled together with them, he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” (Acts 1:4,5.) During this last solemn interview, the Lord conversed at some length with his disciples, as recorded, for we need not quote the passages at length, Mark 16:14-18; Luke 24:4149; Acts 1:4-8. He thus afforded them not only the sweet consolation of his actual, living presence before he was parted from them, but the clearest possible evidence that he was the very same Jesus whom they had so well known and so dearly loved in the days of his flesh, during the whole time that he had consorted with them. Having, then, afforded them this confirming evidence that it was indeed he himself, he ascended visibly before their eyes to give to them, and to the church of God through all ages by them, the surest testimony that he had gone up into heaven in the same bodily form, the same identical humanity, in which they had ever known him.
As this is so important a feature of our present subject, and must form the foundation of our Meditations upon it124, we will quote the very language of the Holy Ghost as we find it written in the inspired page, “And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them; and it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.” (Luke 24:50-53.) “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:9.) Consider for a moment the strength of this testimony. Could these eleven men have been deceived or mistaken in what they thus personally witnessed? Most of them afterwards laid down their lives in confirmation of what they then saw.125 When, then, they viewed him with whom they had been for some time holding sweet converse taken up before their eyes, and they watched his ascension till a cloud received him out of their sight, could they have had a more indubitable testimony of the fulfilment of his own words, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father?” (John 16:28.) And again, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” (John 20:17.) But to leave not a shadow of doubt on their minds, and to seal it more effectually on their hearts, as well as to assure them of his future return, the Lord was graciously pleased to add to their own eye-witness angelic testimony: “And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:10,11.)
It may seem, perhaps, to some of our readers, almost unnecessary for us to have brought forward so much scripture testimony on a point which no believer doubts. But, through some little acquaintance with the unbelief and infidelity of the human heart, and continued assaults from that quarter, we have long seen and felt in our own mind that faith wants the strongest and surest foothold that God has given on which it may stand during seasons of darkness and temptation. Some never seem to doubt either the certainty of the rock or their own standing on it; but we freely confess that there are times and seasons with us when hell, with all its infernal artillery, and the infidelity of the human mind combine together to shake our faith to its very center. But we have learnt this lesson in the school of temptation, that faith needs the firmest possible foothold on which it may stand while the storm rages. As, then, the shipwrecked sailor, washed ashore by the heaving billow, cleaves with all his strength to the rock which he has happily reached, lest the receding wave should sweep him out to sea, so does the believing soul, landed on the rock of truth, cleave with all its might to the word of God's grace, lest the wave of infidelity sweep it away into the sea of destruction126. Now, when by divine grace faith can stand upon facts so clearly attested as the resurrection and ascension of the blessed Lord, it feels that there is firm ground beneath its feet; and that in believing in a risen and ascended Lord it does not “follow cunningly-devised fables,” but receives the truth as it is in Jesus from the sure witness of those who “have made known the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, as eye-witnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16.) Faith, too, needs food as well as foothold; and it is upon these divine verities, so plainly revealed and so clearly established in the word of truth, that faith feeds as its choice provision. The time may come with you, dear reader, when you may feel as if clambering up a steep and lofty mountain, whose top you must reach or die; and yet, with all your exertion, every stone on which you would place your foot rolls away from under you, filling you with dread at every step lest life be lost or limb be broken. Under such circumstances how you would prize a solid rock, on which, step by step, you could set your trembling, staggering feet. This rock is Christ, which God has laid in Zion; but that faith may stand upon it unmoved, immovable by the assaults of unbelief and infidelity, he has in the word of his grace laid this foundation firm and sure by the strongest testimony. 127
2. Having, then, seen the strong foundation on which the ascension of the blessed Lord rests as an ascertained fact, we may now proceed to view him by faith128 as entering the courts of bliss. And the first most obvious view that faith obtains of him is that he entered heaven in the same identical human body in which he last communed with his disciples, and which they had seen taken up before their eyes; for one part of “the great mystery of godliness” is that “God manifest in the flesh” was “received up into glory,” and therefore in the same flesh as that in which he was thus manifested. (1 Timothy 3:16.) Dr. Owen has so clearly expressed the faith of the church on this vital point that we prefer giving his words to any of our own.
“All perfections whereof human nature is capable, abiding what it was in both the essential parts of it, body arid soul, do belong unto the Lord Jesus Christ in his glorified state. To ascribe unto it what is inconsistent with its essence is not an assignation of glory unto its state and condition, but a destruction of its being. To affix unto the human nature divine properties, as ubiquity or immensity, is to deprive it of its own. The essence of his body is no more changed than that of his soul. It is a fundamental article of faith that he is in the same body in heaven wherein he conversed here on earth; as well as the faculties of his rational soul are continued the same in him. This is that 'holy thing' which was framed immediately by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin. This is that ' Holy One ' which, when it was in the grave, saw no corruption. This is that body which was offered for us, wherein he bare our sins on the tree. To fancy any such change in or of this body, by its glorification, as that it should not continue essentially and substantially the same that it was, is to overthrow the faith of the church in a principal article of it. We believe that the very same body wherein he suffered for us, without any alteration as to its substance, essence, or integral parts, and not another body of an ethereal, heavenly structure, wherein is nothing of flesh, blood, or bones, by which he so frequently testified the faithfulness of God in his incarnation, is still that temple wherein God dwells, and wherein he administers in the holy place not made with hands. The body which was pierced is that which all eyes shall see, and no other.” A Declaration of the Mystery of the Person of Christ, chap. 19 By Dr. Owen, Works, vol. XII., page 297. The clearness, wisdom, holy and heavenly sobriety of the above extract need no commendation from us.*131,132,133,134 It speaks sufficiently for itself to those who know and love the truth, and are willing to submit themselves to the oracles of God as its only infallible source. We must have no
131 * We have often thought that if the children of God who are blessed with time and opportunity, instead of galloping over the flimsy religious productions of the present day, would set themselves prayerfully and carefully to read such works as Owen on “The Person of Christ,” his” Meditations on the Glory of Christ,” his “Communion with God,” his ”Exposition of Psalm 130.,” &c., they would, with God's blessing, derive a benefit from them which would amply repay them. We can say for ourselves that when favored with a spiritual frame-and there is no profit even in reading the Bible in any other -we have rarely taken up any of the above-named works without finding some instruction, or edification, or reproof, or something to do our soul good, and draw it up to heavenly things. 132 Q: #425. Does Jesus have a body in Heaven right now?
By: Steve Shirley (https://jesusalive.cc/does-jesus-have-body-now/)
A: Honestly, since the Bible does not “clearly” give us an answer to this question, we cannot know for sure. A vast majority of scholars believe that He is still in the same body He was in during the 40 days He was on Earth after His resurrection. However, His body is now a “glorified body,” as opposed to the human body He had before His resurrection (more on this below). So, why is it believed that He still has His glorified body? Let’s look at this first, then I will share a few reasons why He may not be in that glorified body now.
Most believe that Jesus is still in His glorified body because it is inferred in several Scriptures.
First, while Jesus was clearly in a body during His 40 days (with His crucifixion scars: Jn 20:20,27, Lk 24:39-40), it was different from the body He had before His resurrection. While He still looked the same, in His new, glorified body He could do such things as: instantly appear (Lk 24:36) and disappear (Lk 24:31) from sight, and pass through closed doors (Jn 20:19,26). It was in this glorified body that He arose into Heaven:
(Lk 24:50-51) And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. (51) And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.
(Mk 16:19) So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
Now, look at what (Acts 1:9-11) says: “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. (10) And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; (11) Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, SHALL SO COME IN LIKE MANNER AS YE HAVE SEEN HIM GO INTO HEAVEN.” (caps emphasis mine)
So, the question that must be asked is, “If Jesus went to Heaven in His glorified body, and is also returning in the same way He left (in His glorified body), does it seem likely that in-between these two events Jesus shed His glorified body?
There are also several verses which speak of the state Jesus is in right now, and these make it sound like Jesus still (presently) has a body. For example:
(Phil 3:21) Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
(1 Jn 3:2) Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
(Col 2:9)(NASB) For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form. (“dwells” sounds like now, as opposed to “dwelled”)
(1 Tim 2:5) For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the MAN Christ Jesus. (Christ Jesus is our mediator right now, and as mediator is called “the MAN.”) (caps emphasis mine)
(Rev 1:17) John mentions that when Jesus appeared to him in a vision, he “fell at His feet,” and Jesus “laid His right hand on me.”
Now, as to why He might not be in a physical body, here are two things to consider.
#1. Jesus said that the body He was in after His resurrection was “flesh and bone” (Lk 24:39), and (1 Cor 15:50) says that, “flesh and blood” cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” The Bible seems to point pretty clearly to the fact that all who are in Heaven right now are not “flesh and bone,” but rather “spirit.” God (Jesus is God) is by nature “spirit” (Jn 4:24) and “invisible” (Col 1:15)(1 Tim 6:16)(1 Tim 1:17)(Heb 11:27). God is not “flesh and blood” (Mt 16:17), nor “flesh and bone” (Lk 24:39). Angels are also “spirit” (Heb 1:14) by nature and “invisible” (2 Kin 6:16-17)(Num 22:22-31). In fact, in Heaven right now, even people who have died are “disembodied spirits.” This being the case, would Jesus still be in His body?
***Note: There may well be a distinction between “flesh and bone” and “flesh and blood.” Perhaps “flesh and bone” could enter the “kingdom of God,” but not “flesh and blood.”
***Note: The term “disembodied spirits” is used because the moment a believer dies, his soul (Gen 35:18)(Rev 20:4) and spirit (Eccl 12:7)(Eccl 3:20-21) leave his body and go to be with the Lord. Our soul/spirit will not be reunited with our body (which will be a “glorified body’) until Jesus returns. Therefore, our soul/spirit remains in a “disembodied” (without a body) state until that time.
#2. Jesus told the disciples in (Jn 16:5-7) that it was GOOD He was going to leave, because then the Spirit would come. Why was this good? Most believe the primary reason is because Jesus could only be at one place at a time because of the physical limitations of His body. However, when the Holy Spirit would be sent, He could be everywhere at once (omnipresent), indwelling all believers. If Jesus is now in a glorified body, can He be everywhere at once (omnipresent) like the Father and Holy Spirit can? For example, when He was with the disciples after His resurrection in His glorified body, was He also everywhere else too?
I like to think that one day when I get to Heaven, I will see Jesus with those scars in His hands and feet, and have a visual reminder of the sacrifice He made for me, and His love for me. But, whether He is in that physical form, or another form, it will be AMAZING to see Him!
133 1 Corinthians 15:35-49, Philippians 3:21
134 Does Jesus have a physical body in heaven?
ANSWER
The physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus is foundational to Christian doctrine and our hope of heaven. Because Jesus rose from the dead with a physical body, every Christian has the guarantee of his own bodily resurrection (John 5:21, 28; Romans 8:23). Now Jesus is in heaven, where He is pictured as sitting in a place of authority, at the right hand of God (1 Peter 3:22). But is Jesus’ body in heaven the same as His body on earth?
The Bible is clear that Jesus’ body was resurrected. The tomb was empty. He was recognizable to those who knew Him. Jesus showed Himself to all His disciples after His resurrection, and more than five hundred people were eyewitnesses to His earthly, post-resurrection presence (1 Corinthians 15:4-6). In Luke 24:16, on the road to Emmaus, two of Jesus’ disciples “were kept from recognizing [Jesus].” However, later, “their eyes were opened tampering, then, with that fundamental article of our most holy faith, that the Lord Jesus took into heaven the identical humanity which he assumed in the womb of the Virgin. But this thorough identity of his holy humanity does not impair or detract from every perfection as now made manifest in that glorified human nature which is consistent with its preserving its real form and essence. And of this we seem to have a very clear proof in the word of truth. When holy John had a revelation of his glorified humanity, in the Isle of Patmos, it was not of an aerial body, retaining no traces of the human form, a Jesus whom he could not at once recognise as having seen him before in the flesh, but “one like unto the Son of man” that very same Son of man whom he had known here below, one, too, who had “head, and hair, and eyes, and feet, and hands,” these human members all still retained in their entirety, but all unspeakably glorious and whose “countenance” is still the same human countenance “was as the sun shineth in his strength.” (Revelation 1:13-16.) It is necessary, indeed, to bear in mind that whilst we speak of the identity of the risen and ascended body of the Lord, we utterly separate from it what the apostle calls” the weakness” of Christ; (“he was crucified through weakness;” 2 Corinthians 13:4,) for though this weakness was compatible with, and even necessary unto, his state of humiliation, it is not consistent with a heavenly condition) or his exaltation to eternal glory. The body of the blessed Lord ate, and drank, and slept, was weary and thirsty here below. But no such infirmities, or, to speak more correctly, no such sinless contingencies of a state of humiliation were taken with him into heaven. His body and soul are still identically and un-alterably the same as they were upon earth; but heavenly glory, without destroying or even impairing the reality of his human nature, has eternally swallowed up all those mere passing and contingent circumstances which necessarily attended his humanity in a time state. This will also be the case with the risen bodies of the saints at the great day, as the apostle so beautifully speaks: “Behold, I show you a mystery we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound,
and they recognized Him” (verse 31). It’s not that Jesus was unrecognizable; it’s that, for a time, the disciples were supernaturally restrained from recognizing Him.
Later in the same chapter of Luke, Christ makes it plain to His disciples that He does have a physical body; He is not a disembodied spirit: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). After spending forty days with His disciples, Jesus ascended bodily into heaven (Acts 1:9). Jesus is still human, and He has a human body in heaven right now. His body is different, however; earthly human flesh is perishable, but heavenly bodies are imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:50). Jesus has a physical body, with a difference. His resurrected body is designed with eternity in view.
First Corinthians 15:35-49 describes what the body of the believer will be like in heaven. Our heavenly bodies will differ from our earthly ones in type of flesh, in splendor, in power, and in longevity. The apostle Paul also states that the believer’s body will be an image of Christ’s body (verse 49). Paul discusses this subject again in 2 Corinthians, where he compares earthly bodies to tents and heavenly bodies to heavenly dwellings (2 Corinthians 5:1-2). Paul says that, once the earthly tents come off, Christians will not be left “naked”—that is, without a body to live in (2 Corinthians 5:3). When the new body is “put on,” we will go from mortality to immortality (2 Corinthians 5:4).
So, we know that the Christian will have a heavenly body like Jesus’ “glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). At His incarnation Jesus took on human flesh, and at His resurrection His body was glorified—although He retained the scars (John 20:27). He will forever be the God-Man, sacrificed for us. Christ, the Creator of the universe, will forever stoop to our level, and He will be known to us in heaven in a tangible form that we can see, hear, and touch (Revelation 21:3-4; 22:4). https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-physical-body.html
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed, for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal put on immortality.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53.)
But though they will be fashioned after the likeness of the risen body of Jesus, we must ever bear in mind that the glory of Christ's human nature in its mediatorial state essentially differs from that glory which will clothe the souls and bodies of the risen saints at the great day; for his humanity, as existing in intimate union with his divine Person, is thereby eternally distinguished from theirs, and exalted infinitely beyond any glory which the risen bodies of the saints shall wear. They will indeed see his glory face to face, without a veil between, (Job 19:27; John 17:24; 1 Corinthians 8:12,) and be partakers of it, which will be their eternal joy; (John 17:22; Luke 12:29,30; Revelation 3:21;) they will be conformed in body and soul to his glorified image, so as to be eternally resplendent in all the beauties of holiness; (Psalms 17:15; 1 Corinthians 15:49; Philippians 3:21;) and as such they will “shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars forever and ever.” (Daniel 12:3.) But with all this eternal weight of glory, the glorified humanity of the blessed Lord, from its ineffable union with his Deity, will ever differ from theirs not only in degree, but in nature. For this reason, his human nature, as being so glorious from its conjunction with his Deity, is the object of adoration and worship of all creatures, the very same worship which is paid to the Person of the Father: “And every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I, saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” (Revelation 5:13.) This glory it has from its subsistence in his divine Person, therefore inherent in it, and thus essentially distinct from the inferior glory of the risen saints, who have it as a gift and not a necessary adjunct. All the glory which they will have is from him as a gift of his grace, and as being members of his mystical body; but it dwells in him in all its fountain fulness, for “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” What we have here, or shall have hereafter, is only by gift; but what he is and has he is and has by right.129 Besides which, though his sacred humanity in its glorified state still remains a creature, and neither is nor can be deified, yet, from its intimate conjunction with his Deity it receives emanations of power and glory which we may apprehend by faith, but of which no adequate conception can ever be formed by a finite intellect, not even of the highest angel. His eternal Deity irradiates his humanity with a lustre beyond its own, and shines through it with resplendent glory, as the sun shines through a cloud, or as at the moment of his transfiguration the glorious Person of the God-man made “his raiment become shining, exceeding white as snow.” (Mark 9:3.) If such a comparison be admissible, as our soul ennobles our body, and thus, even in our fallen state, as being an immortal principle, separates us from the lower creation, so the essential Deity of the Son of God ennobles his humanity, and separates it from all approach or comparison of the inferior glory of his risen saints.
But we pause, lest we seem to intrude too much on high and speculative subjects, though, as far as we have gone, we cannot but feel they are blessed mysteries when apprehended by a living faith.
3. We may pass on, then, to examine in what way, and to accomplish what special purposes of wisdom and grace the blessed Lord entered upon his present state of mediatorial exaltation at the right hand of the Father. And viewing him as ascending on high that, in his complex Person as God-man, he might be “set at God's own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come,” (Ephesians 1:20, 21,) we may consider his entrance into his glory (Luke 24:26) under these two different aspects:
1. As a triumphant King.130
2. As a gracious High Priest.
1. He entered heaven, then, in glorious triumph, to take possession of his mediatorial kingdom, as Zion's anointed King, and “to sit and rule upon his throne.” (Psalms 2:6; Zechariah 6:13; Luke 1:32,33.) God the Father had appointed unto him a kingdom (Luke 12:29) as the reward of his incarnation and humiliation, (Philippians 2:9,10; Hebrews 2:9,) and this he went into heaven to take possession of, (Luke 19:12; Revelation 3:21.) Immediately, then, that he left earth, and was received out of the sight of the eleven apostles in a cloud of glory, his royal progress began. Surely, if a chariot of fire and horses of fire were dispatched to take Elijah up to heaven, (2 Kings 2:11,) the blessed Lord had no inferior convoy. Was the servant so honored, and was no honor paid to the Master? Should the subject be taken gloriously to heaven, and the King have no train of celestial glory? Did “his train fill the temple' when Isaiah “saw his glory and spoke of him?” (Isaiah 6:1; John 12:41;) and did no train of glory follow him as he ascended on high to take possession of his mediatorial kingdom? But we are not left to conjecture upon this point. The scripture affords the clearest proof of the triumphant manner in which the Lord of life and glory went up on high. In Psalms 68131. there is a blessed description of the glorious convoy of angels which attended, him on his royal progress up to heaven’s gates; for as, when “he shall appear a second time without sin unto salvation,” he will be “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,” (2 Thessalonians 1:7,)132 and shall, “come in the glory of his Father, with his angels,” (Matthew xvi. 27,) so thousands upon thousands of ministering angels attended upon him at his triumphant ascension. “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels; the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high; thou hast led captivity captive; thou bast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also; that the Lord God might dwell among them.” (Psalms 68:17,18.) This triumphant ascension of the blessed Lord is also clearly intimated in Psalms 47, “O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with one voice of triumph; for the Lord most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth. God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises; for God is the King of all the earth; sing ye praises with understanding.” (Psalms 47:1,2, 5-7133.)
Nor are we left without scriptural intimations134 even of the blessed Lord's reception at the very courts of bliss. When he reached the gates of heaven the celestial courts were, as it were, moved at his approach, for then was accomplished that memorable transaction recorded in Psalms 24. As thus represented to our faith, it was as if the attendant angels that formed his glorious convoy shouted aloud before him, as the heralds of his approach, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.” (Psalms 24:7.) But from within is made the inquiry, “Who is this King of glory? “The answer is given from without by the attendants of his train, “The LORD, strong and mighty; the LORD, mighty in battle.” Then comes forth the universal chorus, from without and from within, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.” (Psalms 24:9,10.) We do not say, it might be rash to assert it, that all this was literally and actually transacted, for heavenly realities are beyond the range of human conception; but it is so represented to our faith in the word of truth; and as such we receive it in the simplicity of little children.
Nor were good angels the only attendants of his train. Ancient kings, returning home after triumphant wars, brought back conquered enemies as well as congratulating friends. In a similar way the blessed Lord is represented in scripture as then manifestly triumphing over Satan and all his angels, as if in his glorious ascension, when “he led captivity captive,” he dragged at his chariotwheels the infernal hosts of hell, and openly showed them to all the holy angels as vanquished prisoners. Thus, at least, the apostle speaks, “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,” that is, the cross, or, to adopt the marginal rendering, “in himself.” (Colossians 2:15.) The ancient promise was that “the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head.” When Satan, by entering into Judas, and by instigating the chief priests and the people to demand that Christ should be crucified, had, as he thought, effectually succeeded in destroying Jesus, he little imagined that this was to be, by God's eternal design, the very means of accomplishing that prediction. On the cross the seed of the woman bruised the serpent's head, the seat of his poison-fangs, as well as of his infernal craft and cruelty. There Jesus spoiled principalities and powers and cast them out of their usurped dominion. But when he ascended on high he “led captivity captive;” (Psalms 68:18; Ephesians 4:8;) that is, he led captive those who had led poor fallen man captive, in the open sight of all the angelic host, that the elect angels might be eye-witnesses of the ruin and misery which had fallen on the heads of their apostate brethren in the defeat of all their schemes against the Holy One of Israel. It would appear, from the testimony of scripture, that the holy angels were partially, if not wholly, ignorant of the designs of God in the mystery of the incarnation till all was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus; and even now are waiting for further developments of the wisdom of God as therein displayed in the present grace and future glory of the church of Christ. This was represented in the Levitical dispensation by the cherubim looking toward the mercy-seat of the ark, as Peter explains the figure, “which things the angels desire to look into;” (1 Peter 1:12;) and observe that the apostle does not say that they “desired,” but that they “ desire.” that is, still desire, to look into these heavenly mysteries, to afford them renewed discoveries of the wisdom and glory of God; for it is not by creation, with all its wonders, nor by providence, in all its displays, that the wisdom of God is made known to angelic minds, but by redemption. “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Ephesians 3:10,11.)
With what surpassing and resplendent glory, then, was the infinite wisdom of God displayed to these bright, angelic intelligences when, at the ascension of their Lord and ours, they personally witnessed how, in that very nature which “ was made a little lower than the angels,” in his state of humiliation, he had defeated all the designs of Satan, vindicated the honor of God, glorified his justice, magnified the law given by their ministration, and made it honorable, revealed the grace, mercy, and love of the Father in the salvation of millions of redeemed sinners, and was now returning triumphant into heaven to reign and rule at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
4. And this leads us to consider the ends for which Jesus ascended thus triumphantly into glory. They may be briefly viewed as two, which may be severally characterized by the two different instruments of regal power which the enthroned King of Zion bears as the insignia of his authority.
i. The rod of iron whereby he rules over his enemies. This has been put into his hands by his Father: “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. ” (Psalms 2:9.) “Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies,” was the charter of his authority, when the Father said unto him, “Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” (Psalms 110:1,2.) Thus, power is given him “over all flesh;” (John 17:2;) yea, “all power in heaven and in earth;” (Matthew 28:18;) for “God hath put all things,” and therefore “all enemies,” “under his feet.” (1 Corinthians 15:25-27.) All persons and things are subject to his control; and though “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed; he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.” (Psalms 2:4).
ii. But there is the scepter of his grace, by which he rules in the hearts of a willing people; (Psalms 110:3;) bows them at his feet in sweet submission to his will; and becomes enthroned in their heart and affections as the Prince of peace. But as we shall have occasion to speak more particularly of the exercise of this twofold kingly power when we come to the consideration of our Lord's present state in heaven, we shall not dwell any longer on this branch of our subject, but proceed to view the adorable Redeemer as
5. Ascending on high that he might be a High Priest over the house of God, and that “not after the law of a carnal commandment,” as the priests under the law, “but after the power of an endless life.” (Hebrews 7:16.) It was prophesied of him that he should be “a Priest on his throne,” (Zechariah 6:13,) as uniting in his glorious Person the regal and priestly dignities. Of this conjunction of king and priest in one Person Melchisedec was a type, who was “king of Salem and priest of the most high God;” (Hebrews 7:17) and we know that the testimony of God to his dear
Son was, “Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedec.” (Psalms 110:4; Hebrews 7:17.) When then, the blessed Lord had fulfilled one part of his priestly office here below by offering the sacrifice of his sacred humanity, his pure body and his holy soul, on the cross, thereby making an expiation for the sins of his people, he went up on high to accomplish on their behalf the second part of the priestly office, which is to make intercession for them. (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25.) This was beautifully typified by what took place on the solemn day of atonement, when the high priest, wearing the holy linen garments, a type of the pure humanity of Jesus, first offered sacrifice in the outer court, and made atonement for sin, and then, with the blood of the bullock and of the goat, and the smoke of incense beaten small, lighted by coals taken from the brazen altar, entered into the most holy place. This most holy place was a type of heaven, (Hebrews 9:24,) and the ascension of our great High Priest thither was represented by the steps up which the high priest went when, after offering sacrifice, be entered with the blood into the temple.
We may also observe that when the high priest thus ascended the steps of the temple to present himself before the Lord in the most holy place, this was the very time when the jubilee trumpet sounded through the land, and proclaimed liberty to all slaves and captives, and to those who had sold their houses and lands that they might freely return and take possession of them. Thus when Christ ascended up on high to enter heaven with his own blood, proclamation was made of pardon and peace, for then began the spiritual jubilee, when those who lay captive under the law, in bondage to doubt and fear, and who had sold themselves and all their possessions for nought were to be liberated by the joyful sound of a free grace gospel preached by the apostles on the day of Pentecost.
But as this is closely connected with another branch of our subject, the receiving gifts for the rebellious, we shall defer the consideration of it to a future number.
(Continued from Page 169, pages 284-292;)
ABANDONING for the present the thorny paths of controversy, in which, though sometimes compelled to tread them, we always walk with much reluctance135, we now resume our “Meditations on the Sacred Humanity of our adorable Redeemer.” If favored with that “anointing” from above which “teacheth of all things, and is truth, and is no lie,” dropping into our heart and from our pen, our “meditation of him will be sweet” to both writer and reader. And indeed, if in any part of our Meditations on this sacred subject we especially need the unction of his grace to lead us into the truth, to endue us with the spirit of faith so as to receive into a believing heart what the Holy Ghost has revealed in the inspired word, to be kept from unhallowed, presumptuous speculation, whilst treading such sacred ground, and to unfold with any measure of holy and heavenly wisdom the mysteries of the kingdom of grace and glory of our risen and ascended Lord, it is now, when we approach that part of our subject where we have to contemplate him as seated at the right hand of the Father. We have seen him rising from the dead and ascending up on high, and our last view of him in these “Meditations” was his triumphant entry into the courts of heaven, or, as the Holy Ghost expresses it, “received up into glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16.) The subject, then, of our present meditation will be a view by faith of what Jesus now is at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
But before we enter upon this most blessed theme, as the proposed subject of our Meditations was “The Sacred Humanity of our adorable Redeemer,” it may not be out of place to cast a glance at this sacred humanity in its present exalted state of majesty and glory.
The exaltation of human nature, (what the scripture calls “the flesh and blood of the children,” (Hebrews 2:14,) meaning thereby the whole of our humanity, body and soul,) as a necessary but most blessed consequence of its intimate and indissoluble union with the divine Person of the Son of God, is the greatest display of the wisdom, love, and grace of a Triune Jehovah that could be afforded to men or angels. In our present time-state, whilst groaning in our earthly house of this tabernacle, surrounded by evils innumerable without, and burdened with a body of sin and death within, we can only apprehend and realise by faith what our nature now is in union with the Person of the Son of God, and what it hereafter will be in that great day when he shall come “to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe,” when he “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” (Philippians 3:21.) Viewed, however, by mortal eyes, as an object of existing sight and sense, human nature can now only be seen in its debased, degraded condition. The original beauty and glory of man, as made in God's image, after his own likeness, were utterly lost in the Adam fall. Sin has marred body and soul, filling the former with disease and pain, and the latter with pollution and corruption. Of this we have daily experience, not only in its most pressing and painful form as the poison in our own body and soul, often making us groan, being burdened, as regards ourselves, but as witnessing also with grief the pain and misery of others by which we are surrounded and seeing spread before our eyes the vile abominations which run down our streets like water. But this is not all. Though even of this world's present misery and sin but an infinitely small fraction has pressed on our heart or entered our eyes or ears, we have not seen, and God grant we never may see, how human nature thoroughly let loose can both sin and suffer. What sins it is capable of we feel in ourselves, for in our own hearts lie deeply imbedded and struggling for life and growth the vital seeds of every foul and damnable crime; what it has done, and is ever greedily, exultingly, remorselessly doing in others, abandoned to its lusts, we see or read in daily act. Not to speak of such scenes as the courtyard and well of Cawnpore or the late massacres in Syria, even in this civilized land what foul crimes are continually surging up to view, as if from a bottomless deep, where sin is ever seething and boiling as in a flaming cauldron. But in this present life human nature is no more what it will be hereafter in the unregenerate, than what it will be hereafter in the regenerate. Its future capacity for sin is no more known by the iniquities which it now throws up into open view than the depths of the sea by the seaweed cast upon the shore. Take all the depths unfathomed, unfathomable, of your own heart, or look at the vilest wretch whom sins of every shape and name have debased to the lowest pitch, say a Norfolk Island convict, or Australian bushranger, steeped to the neck in blood and crime, so sworn a foe of all laws, human and divine, that, if to be taken in no other way, he must be shot down like a wild beast for the security of the lives of the community; when you have probed the depths of your own heart, or painted in your own imagination the blackest wretch that the hulks have ever held, or vomited forth on a penal colony, you have not then seen or imagined in your mind the millionth part of what human nature really is as sunk and debased by the Adam fall. The very present constitution of the human body, the limited powers of the mind, the laws of society, the restraints of God's providence, and a thousand other visible or invisible checks, now keep human nature shut up in itself, as a wild beast in an iron cage. Nor will earth ever witness the full outburst of the fury of sin as blazing forth in the body and soul of man to its utmost height. Hell, and hell alone will fully manifest, as hell, and hell alone will fully develop human nature as burning with the most intense and unquenchable enmity and blasphemy against God and the Lamb.
But take the converse. We have taken a glimpse at human nature debased and degraded, polluted by sin and set on fire of hell. Now view human nature pure and holy, unspotted, unfallen, and especially look at it as exalted above angels, principalities, and powers in the glorious Person of Immanuel, God with us. There we see humanity in intimate personal and indissoluble union with Deity. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God in suffering man, made after his own image, to sink so low, and in the Person of his dear Son to exalt it so high, that the same nature should be in hell and in heaven; in hell, out-vying devils in blasphemy, in heaven, in union with Deity. It is at human nature thus exalted that we would now chiefly look; and if we have thus briefly touched upon man as debased and degraded by sin, we have thrown in these gloomy colors merely by way of contrast. As in a picture the dark shades set off and more clearly bring out the bright lights, so the very degradation of human nature by sin and its miserable consequences only more clearly brings out into open view the stupendous grace displayed in its glorious exaltation in the Person of the Son of God.
These thoughts, though at first sight perhaps somewhat discursive and foreign to our subject, may, with God's blessing, prepare our minds to approach that portion of our heavenly theme on which we now attempt to enter.136
We have, in our past Meditations, beheld the blessed Lord ascend up on high, and have by faith traced his course up to the very gates of heaven; we have seen his angelic convoy, viewed his dismayed foes, and heard the shouts of exultation from the heavenly host which welcomed him home. We have now, then, to consider, 1, the place to which he thus triumphantly ascended, and, 2, the end and object of his triumphant entry there.
1. The place into which he ascended is heaven, by which we mean the immediate residence of God in all his majesty and glory. The blessed Lord is said (Hebrews 4:14) to have “passed into,” or rather, as the word literally means, “through the heavens,” i.e., the material heavens, both the watery heavens, (Genesis 7:11; Deuteronomy 28:12; Job 38:29,37,) and the starry heavens; (Psalms 8:3; 19:1;) and to be “made higher” than they, that is, not only actually but locally. (Hebrews 7:20.) It is, then, into “the heaven of heavens,” (Psalms 148:4.) or; “the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2,) that the Lord ascended when he went up on high. He is therefore said to be “set on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.” (Hebrews 8:1.) We pointed out, in our May No. the two chief ends for which the blessed Lord entered into the immediate presence of God and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 1. That he might there reign and rule as God's Vicegerent, in other words, as Zion's enthroned King: 2. As the great High Priest over the house of God.
It is to the first point that we shall chiefly direct our present thoughts, reserving our meditations upon him as Zion's risen and exalted High Priest to a future paper.
I. Just before the blessed Lord ascended up on high, he “came and spoke” unto his eleven disciples: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (Matthew 28:18.) Previous to his resurrection his was in a state of humiliation and suffering, for “he was made a little lower than the angels;” (Hebrews 2:9;) “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death;” (Philippians 2:8;) was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;” (Isaiah 53:3;) yea, “a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” (Psalms 22:6.) But when he rose from the dead, his humiliation was past, and his glory began, as Peter speaks, “Who by him do believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory.” (1 Peter 1:21.) Thus his resurrection was the commencement of his Mediatorial reign, and his ascension and going up into heaven was the entering into possession of it,137 as he himself said to the two disciples, when journeying with them to Emmaus: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to cuter into his glory?” (Luke 24: 26.) When then, he entered into glory, he took possession of the throne of David, according to the promise made of him unto the Virgin Mary: “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” (Luke 1:32,33.) He was then “called the Son of the Highest,” i.e., openly proclaimed as the Son of God, at and by the resurrection, for he was then “declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead;” (Romans 1:4,) and when he went up on high, and was set “at God's right hand in the heavenly places,” (Psalms 47:4; 68:18; Ephesians 1:20,) he “received the kingdom,” as he intimated in the parable of the nobleman and his ten servants: “He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.” (Luke 19:12.) The “far country”' is heaven; the “kingdom” received is his present mediatorial reign; and his returning is his second coming. He received the kingdom not only as a kingdom of grace and glory, but as a kingdom of authority and power. All things were then put under his feet, and all power given him in heaven and earth. The universal power, the spiritual nature, and the eternal duration of this kingdom are no less clearly than beautifully unfolded in Psalms 72: “He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous nourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust. For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy and shall save the souls of the needy. His name shall endure forever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed.” And that this exaltation to the right hand of God is for the good of his people, and that lie might be the spiritual, ever-living Head of his church, is blessedly unfolded by the apostle where, speaking of Christ's resurrection, he says that God “raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” (Ephesians 1:20-23.) Men have unhappily thrown discredit upon this most blessed doctrine of the kingship of Christ, which, as revealed in the scriptures, is full of sweet consolation to the exercised family of God, by carnalising it into an earthly millennium. No doubt there are glories n this sovereign rule of Jesus to be one day more fully manifested, but it is proposed to our faith all through the New Testament as an object of our present spiritual experience; for as Zion's enthroned King he is the Head of his body the church, and as such supplies her out of his own inexhaustible fulness. He died that we might never die. To him, as raised from the dead, we are married that we might “bring forth fruit unto God.” (Romans 7:4.) “Because he lives, we shall live also.” (John 14:19.) To him, as our enthroned King, we give the allegiance of our hearts; before his feet, as our rightful Sovereign, we humbly lie; and we beg of him, as possessed of all power, to subdue our iniquities, subdue our rebellious lusts, and sway his peaceful scepter over every faculty of our soul. That he should thus reign and rule, and that over all flesh, (Matthew 28:18; John 17:2; 1 Corinthians 15:25,26; Hebrews 2:8,) was the promise made unto him in Psalms 2, the subject of which is the exaltation of the Son of God as the anointed King of Zion, This exaltation of the Son of God in our nature made “the heathen rage, and the people [I.e., the Jewish people] imagine a vain thing,” which was, that by their rebellion and disobedience they could “break the bands asunder, and cast away the cords” in which they were bound by God's firm decree, when he said, “I have set my King upon my holy hill of Zion.” This exaltation of the Son of God in our nature138, as of the seed of David, Peter preached in that Pentecostal sermon which the Holy Ghost so inspired and so honored: “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses; therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear; for David is not ascended into the heavens; but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:32-36.) Jesus is here declared to be made by the Father “both Lord and Christ,” that is, King and Priest, “Lord,” as invested with sovereign and supreme dominion, “Christ,” as the anointed High Priest over the house of God. This exaltation of the Lord Jesus was given him as a reward for his incarnation, humiliation, and suffering obedience, as the apostle so beautifully speaks, “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. “Wherefore, God hath also highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 8-11.)
This exaltation wherewith God hath so “highly exalted him,” is to his own right hand; and “the name which he hath given him, which is above every name,” is that of “Lord,” that in our nature as God-man he might rule and reign, and exercise supreme dominion and sovereign authority over things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. The mystery of grace and glory contained in and made manifest by this exaltation of the Son of God is not that he reigns and rules as one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, for this he did as one with them in essence, power, and glory before the foundation of the world; but that he reigns and rules as God-man, as the Son of God and yet the Son of man, as David's Lord and yet as David's Son. (See the following scriptures: Matthew 22:42-45; John 10:26,27; Acts 7:55,56; Romans 1:3,4; 14:9; Ephesians 1:20-23; Hebrews 2:9.) This exaltation of Jesus to the throne of glory was typified by the glorious throne which Solomon made for himself, and on which he sat in royal state139: “Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with the best gold. The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind; and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays. And twelve lions stood there, on the one side and on the other upon the six steps. There was not the like made in any kingdom.” (1 Kings 10:18-20.) It was “a great throne,” to show the greatness of his power and dominion; made of “ivory,” to denote purity and perfection; and “overlaid with the best gold,” to signify value and preciousness. It had “six steps,” to denote elevation; and “the top was round behind,” to signify that past and present were alike open to view, that there was no escaping the sight and power of him who sat on it, for the throne being round, he could turn his eyes and hands in all directions. There were “stays on either side on the place of the seat,” to signify the firmness of the throne; and the two lions beside the stays and the twelve lions on the six steps denoted the power and authority of him who sat thereon, for he is the Lion of Judah. (Revelation 5:5; Genesis 49:9.)
This aspect of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus as the enthroned King of Zion is a blessed subject of meditation when we consider its bearing upon the helpless, defenseless, condition of the church of God. She stands surrounded by foes, internal, external, infernal; and all armed against her with deadly enmity. “Behold, I send you forth,” said the blessed Lord, “as sheep among wolves.” (Matthew 10:16.) What would have become of the flock, especially in those early times, when persecution so raged on every side, unless the Lord Jesus, at the right hand of the Father, had guarded the fold? Never could the church have more loudly sung the song of preserving power: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side. when men rose up against us, then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us; the stream had gone over our soul; then the proud waters had gone over our soul.” (Psalms 124:1-5.) And even now, when the strong arm of the law protects them from external violence, what would become of the saints of God had they no sovereign Protector, who, in their nature, as their Head and Husband, rules and reigns on their behalf in the courts of heaven? We are encompassed with foes; for “we wrestle” not only “against flesh and blood”, strong in others, but far more strong and subtle in ourselves, but “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12.) What hope or help, then, can we have but in that all-seeing eye, which sees; that all-sympathizing heart, which feels; that all-powerful hand, which delivers the objects of his love from all the snares and wiles, and defeats all the plans and projects of these mighty, implacable foes?
As our enthroned King, also, Jesus is the especial object of our faith. We daily and hourly feel the workings of mighty sins, raging lusts, powerful temptations, besetting evils, against the least and feeblest of which we have no strength. But as the eye of faith views our blessed Lord at the right hand of the Father, we are led by the power of his grace to look unto him, hang upon him, and seek help out of him. Trials in providence, afflictions in the family, sickness and infirmities in the tabernacle, crooked things in the church, opposition and persecution from the world, a vile, unbelieving heart, which we can neither sanctify nor subdue, a rough and rugged path, increasing in difficulty as we journey onward, doubts, fears, and misgivings in our own bosom, inward slips and falls, wanderings, starting’s aside, and hourly backslidings from the straight and narrow path, jealous enemies watching for our halting, with no eye to pity, nor arm to help, but the Lord's, how all these foes and fears make us feel our need of an enthroned King, Head, and Husband, whose tender heart is soft to pity, whose mighty arm is strong to relieve!
It is good also to bear in mind that Jesus, as Zion's exalted King, has received “gifts for the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” This Peter puts prominently forward in that sermon which he preached on the memorable day of Pentecost. “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear. (Acts 2:33.) It was as our enthroned King that he received and shed forth the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, the promised Comforter. The same blessed truth is asserted and unfolded by the apostle Paul, Ephesians 4: “Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.” (Ephesians 4:8-10.) The apostle is here alluding to the prophetic declaration in Psalm 68:18. One expression in this declaration is very sweet and beautiful: according to the marginal rendering. “Thou hast received gifts for men” is in the margin, “in the man,” i. e., in his human nature, in which he is exalted as our anointed King, The gift of the Comforter was, so to speak, dependent on the resurrection, ascension, and exaltation of Jesus. “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you.” (John 16:7.) Thus, he is said to send the Comforter, (John 15:26,) which he only does by virtue of his exaltation and glorification at the right hand of God, as holy John speaks: “But this spoke be of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:36.) No heart can conceive or tongue describe the blessedness of this gift, the gift of the Comforter. How effectual his teachings! how divine his operations! how heavenly his influences! how sacred his anointings! how sweet his consolations, and yet how deep his convictions! how earnest his cries! how fervent his breathings! how unutterable his groanings! What could we know, or feel, or be, or have, or do; what could we think or say; how could we believe, or hope, or love; repent, or watch, or pray; submit, or suffer; preach, or hear, or write; how could we live; and, above all, and last of all, how could we die, without this holy and blessed Comforter?
But were Jesus not exalted as Zion's King, this shedding forth of the gifts and graces of the Blessed Spirit could not and would not be. It is because God “hath given him power over all flesh, that he gives eternal life to as many as God has given him.” This “eternal life” is spiritual life, for its very being and blessedness is that they to whom he imparts it “may know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent.” (John 17:2,3.) But this life and this saving knowledge of the Father and of the Son, are given by the Spirit, whom Jesus sends, and who glorifies him by coming to testify of him; for he receives of Christ's and shows it to his people. (John 16:14.)
Thus, as Jesus is exalted to the right hand of the Father, he becomes a gracious and glorious head of influence to the mystical members of his body.140 This was prophesied of him under the figure of Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, “And it shall come to pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah; and I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle; and I will commit thy government into his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and' to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a, sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house.” (Isaiah 22:20-23.) The Lord, therefore, who appeared in so glorious a manner to John, (Revelation 1,) as the exalted Head of the church, (for though he was still the Son of man, (Revelation 1:13,) his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength; and though he was once dead yet, he liveth and is alive forevermore, and has the keys of hell and death,) and said of himself, in his message to the church at Philadelphia, “And to the angel of the church at Philadelphia write, These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth.” It were good for us to be looking up to the blessed Lord as our enthroned King, not only that he might sway his sceptre over our hearts, controlling our rebellious wills, and subduing us to his gentle might, but as Lord over all our enemies, external, internal, infernal.
But pressure of time and space compels us to defer any further thought on this subject to a future No.
(Continued from Page 292, pages 316-324)
IN contemplating the blessed Lord at the right-hand of the Majesty on high, we have thus far viewed him as Zion's anointed King; and have endeavored to show a little of the blessedness of his present reign, and the suitability of his mediatorial scepter to our wants and woes. But one point we must ever bear in mind, for indeed it will surely be taught us if we are amongst the number of his loyal subjects, that however great may be the benefits and blessings of having such a King as our gracious and glorious Sovereign, we can only truly know, and experimentally realise them as we are brought into the obedience of faith. Let us not deceive ourselves by merely seeing and acknowledging his dominion when our heart is destitute of submission to his scepter. “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doeth the will of mv Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21.) The Holy Ghost, in Psalm 18:44, draws a distinction between the true obedience of Christ's “people” and the feigned obedience of the “strangers” to God and godliness. “As soon as they (the people) hear of me they shall obey me; the strangers shall submit themselves (“lie, or yield feigned obedience,” marginal reading) unto me.” But the same grace which makes the heart honest and bows it in willing obedience to Christ's scepter; the same holy anointing which, by revealing the love and blood of the cross, reconciles the stubborn will and softens and meekens the obdurate spirit, opens also the eyes of the child of God to see and his soul to feel his daily need of Jesus as his gracious King. His scepter is felt to be a scepter of grace; his kingdom an inward kingdom, (Luke 17:21,) which is “not in word but in power;” (1 Corinthians 4:20;) “not meat and drink”, legal observances and fleshly obedience, “but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (Romans 14:17.)
But that this blessed kingdom may be set up with power in our hearts, we are led into trials and temptations, and thrust as it were into a very host of foes, that we may prove for ourselves the reality and blessedness of such a kingdom and such a king. Every child of God is surrounded by a host of enemies without and within, who, unless they be overcome for him and by him, will most certainly overcome him. There is no neutrality in this warfare; it is a fight for life or death; for certain victory or certain defeat. All the promises are made to him that overcometh, (Revelation 3:12,) and that most glorious one of all: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” (Revelation 3:21.) But to be overcome is to be lost, forever lost, and to perish under the wrath of God. How then shall we overcome but by faith in our risen Head; but by calling upon our enthroned King to fight our battles, who must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet? If we belong to Jesus and walk in obedience to his will and word, we shall surely have many outward foes, “for all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2 Timothy 3:12.) But let them pass; they cannot really hurt us, for “who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?” (1 Peter 3:13.) There are much more numerous and mightier enemies within than any foes without; and of these we may truly say with Judah of old, in the presence of the embattled host, “O, our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon thee.” (2 Chronicles 20:12.) And well it is when we can look up in faith and prayer to the blessed Lord as our risen Head and enthroned King, and, from a believing view of his surpassing grace and almighty power, ready to be stretched out on our behalf, can say, “Our eyes are upon thee.” When we feel the power of sin, the tyranny of our vile lusts and passions, and what our nature is capable of if left to its own will and way, how sweet and suitable is the promise, “He will turn again; he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities.” (Micah 7:19.) When then our blessed Joshua brings the captive kings out of the cave, and by his Spirit and grace puts our feet upon their necks, (Joshua 10:24,) then he becomes endeared to us as our sceptred King; for in these favored moments we can truly say, “O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us; but by thee only will we make mention of thy name.” (Isaiah 26:13.) “Lord,” we say, “subdue our iniquities; bend our wills to thine; reign and rule over and in us as our Lord and God; bring into captivity every rebellious thought to the obedience of Christ; come into our soul in thy love, and blood, and grace; conform us to thine image; make us to walk in thy footsteps and let not any sin have dominion over us.” When thus subdued by the scepter of his all-conquering grace, we can lie humbly and resignedly at his feet, and, yielding the obedience of a believing, loving heart, commit all we are and have into his sacred hands as our most blessed rightful Sovereign; then we prove that the present kingship of Jesus at the right hand of the Father is no dry doctrine, nor mere speculative notion, but, as received into a feeling, believing heart, is a matter of vital and daily experience. This is the reign of grace; (Romans 5:21:) the building of the spiritual temple, in which there is heard neither hammer nor axe; (1 Kings 6:7,) but noiselessly carried on in believing hearts by our glorious Joshua, of whom we read: “Behold the man whose name is the Branch; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord; even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” (Zechariah 6:12,13.)
2. But this leads us to another character of our blessed Lord, as wearing our nature in the courts of heaven, for in the prophecy of him just quoted, it is promised that “he shall be a priest upon his throne.” The high priest under the law never sat upon a throne. He was a servant, not a sovereign; for he “served unto the example and shadow of heavenly things.” (Hebrews 8:5.) But Jesus is a royal Priest, and as such was typified by Melchizedek, who united in himself the two characters of priest and king, for he was “King of Salem, and Priest of the most high God.” (Hebrews 7:1.) This was “the order of Melchizedek,” according to which Jesus was made a high priest by virtue of the ancient oath: “The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4.) There were three especial features in the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek which distinguished it from the Levitical order: 1. It was a royal priesthood; for Melchizedec was “by interpretation King of righteousness, (that being the meaning of his name) and after that also King of Salem, which is King of peace.” (Hebrews 7:2.) 2. It was made by an oath. “And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest; (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec”.) By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.” (Hebrews 7:20-22.) 3. It was forever, for so ran the promise, “Thou art a Priest forever.” Jesus was, therefore, not a temporary high priest, as the high priests under the law, whom sickness struck and death removed, for “they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death: (Hebrews 7:23.) But Jesus being “made not after the law of a carnal commandment,” as was the high priest under the law, “but after the power of an endless life,” continueth ever, as having an unchangeable priesthood. And in this consists much of the suitability and blessedness of his priestly office as now carried on in heaven, as the apostle speaks: “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:2-5.) Let us then, as the Lord may enable, now take a view by faith of the Lord Jesus, as the high priest over the house of God, and this may give us holy boldness to venture nigh. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say, his flesh.” (Hebrews 10:19,50.) If thus enabled to draw near with a true heart, we may find a benefit in meditating upon our blessed Lord in this relationship to his church and people.
The high priest, under the law, on the great day of atonement, which occurred once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month, made a solemn atonement, first for the sins of himself and his house, and then for the iniquities of the children of Israel. (Leviticus 16:34.) But this he did in two ways; 1. by offering a bullock as a sin offering for himself, and a goat, upon which the Lord's lot fell, as a sin offering for the people; (Leviticus 16:6,9,11;) 2. by taking a censer full of burning coals from off the altar, and filling his hands with sweet incense beaten small, and entering therewith into the most holy place. This was that sacred spot called “the holy of holies;” or “the holiest of all;” (Hebrews 9:3;) which contained the ark of the covenant on which, between the cherubim, was the shechinah or visible manifestation of the presence and glory of God. Into this holiest of all, the high priest never entered but on the great day of atonement; and even on that day he was forbidden, under the penalty of death, to come within the vail which separated it from the holy place, unless 1. he had washed his flesh; 2. had put on the holy linen garments; 3. taken with him the blood of the sacrifice; and 4. put the incense upon the burning coals in the censer. All these things were highly typical of Jesus as the great high priest. The washing of the flesh denoted his purity as high priest; the holy linen garments, the holiness of his human nature; the blood, his atoning blood shed upon the cross; and the incense, his meritorious intercession. The most holy place was typical of heaven; and the vail of the separation between God and us, and that “the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.” (Hebrews 9;8.) When Jesus died, this vail was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; (Matthew 27:51;) to show that there was no longer a separating vail between God and his people.
But the high priest going within the vail with the blood and the incense, was a special type of Jesus, our risen High Priest, entering into the courts of heaven. There was a connection between the intercession of the high priest without, and within the vail. Outside the vail the sacrifice was offered, but the blood was taken inside it. The brazen altar was without the vail, but the ark of the covenant was within. The high priest shed the blood without but sprinkled it within. The burning coals were taken from the brazen altar which stood in the open court; but the incense was put upon them as he entered into the most holy place, that the cloud of its fragrance might cover the mercy seat on and before which he sprinkled the blood of the bullock, offered for his sins, and that of the goat, for the sins of the people. Thus our most blessed High Priest, after he had offered his holy body and soul as a sacrifice for sin, rose from the dead, and ascended up on high to enter into heaven in his pure and sacred humanity, typified by the holy linen garments worn by Aaron, when he went within the vail, that he might there fulfil the second part of his priestly office, viz., to make intercession for us. This was beautifully typified, as we have already hinted, by the high priest taking the incense beaten small within the vail, together with the atoning blood. The incense was beaten small, bruised, not cut, not only that the fragrance might more freely flow forth when lighted by the coals, but as typical of the sufferings and sorrows of our agonising High Priest. “It pleased the Lord to bruise him.” (Isaiah 53:10.) “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities.” The coals from off the brazen altar typified the wrath of God, for the fire on the brazen altar, kindled in the first instance by the Lord himself, (Leviticus 9:24,) was never put out; and on it were burnt not only all the whole burnt-offerings, but every part of the other sacrifices, as the fat of the sin-offering, which was laid thereon for that express purpose. The cloud of incense which filled the most holy place, and covered the mercy seat, represented the fragrance of the present intercession of our great and glorious High Priest in heaven. And the blood, sprinkled on and before the mercy seat, typified “the blood of sprinkling which speaks better things than that of Abel;” (Hebrews 12:24;) even that precious blood “which cleanseth from all sin;” which he took with him into heaven when he entered there in his holy humanity, and the efficacy of which to purge a guilty conscience from filth, guilt, and dead works to serve a living God, he still makes manifest when the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ, and reveals them to the soul with his own divine power.
A believing view of Christ, as typified by the high priest under the law entering within the vail, on the great day of atonement, will prepare our minds more clearly and fully to contemplate him as now carrying on his priestly office in the glorious temple above; for he “is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” (Hebrews 9:24.) The entering in of the high priest within the vail was one special part of his sacred office, by which he was distinguished from his priestly brethren, who might offer the ordinary sacrifices, (Leviticus 1:5,) but not go into the most holy place with the blood of the bullock and the goat. (Leviticus 16:1.) Thus, part of his priestly office was without, and part within the vail; and yet the two parts were continuous, connected, and inseparable. So it is with our great and glorious High Priest now within the vail, hidden, indeed, from mortal eyes, as the high priest was from the children of Israel by the vail of the tabernacle, but as really and truly still ministering in our nature there as Aaron ministered in the holy of holies, when he sprinkled the blood on and before the mercy-seat, and filled the place with the smoke and fragrance of the incense. We have already traced a connection between the blood of the sacrifice shed without the vail and the same blood carried within, and a similar connection between the coals taken from the brazen altar and the incense beaten small, the smoke of which covered the mercy-seat. So, there is a necessary and most blessed connection between the blood-shedding and sacrifice of Christ on earth and his intercession in heaven. The fragrance of his intercession rises from the altar of his sacrifice, as typically from the burnt offering of Noah “a sweet smelling savor” ascended up to the Lord; and as he is ever presenting his blood-shedding and death on behalf of his people here below, he, in this sense, “ever liveth to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:25.) We need not suppose, therefore, that the intercession of our blessed High Priest is a vocal intercession, carried on by actual prayers and supplications. In the typical intercession of the high priest, on the great day of atonement, it was not his vocal prayers which prevailed with God, for of them no mention was made, or commandment given, but the blood of the sacrifice and the smoke of the incense. Thus, his office is described by the apostle: “For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” (Hebrews 5:1.) And as a remarkable illustration of this we may instance what occurred when the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron, and the Lord was about to consume them as in a moment: “And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them; for there is wrath gone out from the Lord; the plague is begun. And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague was begun among the people; and he put on incense and made an atonement for the people.” (Numbers 16:46,47.) Moses did not bid Aaron pray for the people but make an atonement for them; so that it was not the prayers of Aaron, as the interceding high priest and typical mediator, but the incense lighted with fire from the brazen altar, which prevailed with the Lord, and stayed the plague which had already begun. (Numbers 16:45-48.) So, it is the presence of Jesus in heaven in our nature, and the continual presentation of his blood-shedding and sacrifice on earth before the eyes of his Father in which the power and prevalence of his intercession consist.141 Thus, he is represented as “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood;” (Revelation 19:13;) and John had a view of him in the courts of heaven as a slaughtered lamb, for he says, “And I beheld, and lo! in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain.” (Revelation 5:6.) His office as an interceding High Priest was thus represented, for as “a lamb as it had been slain” is a type of his sacrifice for sin, so his standing as a slain lamb in the midst of the throne denotes that his precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, (1 Peter 1:19,) yea, of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” in the predestinating counsels and purposes of God, (Revelation 13:8,) now continually avails for the salvation of the redeemed, and is ever presented before the eyes of the Father.
The present intercession of our great High Priest at the right hand of the Father, as viewed by the eye of faith, is full of encouragement and consolation to every believing heart. There are but few of the Lord's living family who do not at various times and seasons sigh and groan under a load of sin and sorrow. Now there are two especial features in the intercession of Jesus within the vail which meet this twofold burden. 1. The prevalency of his intercession; 2. The sympathy and compassion of his loving heart. The former suits the burden of their sins; the latter that of their sorrows.
We will, with God's help and blessing, consider these two points separately.
1. Let us first, then, take a glance at the prevalency of his intercession, and see how suitable it is to relieve the soul under a burden of sin. “If any man sin,” says John, “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1.) What can we do with our sins?; their burden, their guilt, their filth, and their power? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but to sink under them; for we can neither put them away nor subdue them. But Jesus can do both, for he “of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” (1 Corinthians 1:30.) To him, then, a poor, guilty, miserable, sinking sinner may look to plead his case, for in him he has “an Advocate with the Father,” one of God's own appointing, and therefore sure of the ear of the Judge, a wonderful Counsellor, (Isaiah 9:6;) who can stand up in the court of heaven on his behalf; one who never lost a cause, rejected a humble petition, or disappointed a client. But the power and prevalency of this advocacy in heaven rest on his atoning sacrifice offered on earth; for John immediately adds, “And he is the propitiation for our sins.” It is because “he has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” and “was once offered to bear the sins of many;” (Hebrews 9:26,28;) it is because he “blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;” (Colossians 2:14;) it is because his is a finished work; (John 17:4; 19:30;) and he has made peace through the blood of his cross, (Colossians 1:21,) that he is now our prevailing Advocate and successful Intercessor in heaven, where the cause is heard and decided. We are very apt to lose sight of these most blessed truths, and that we have such a Friend above. We believe them, indeed, firmly and fully, anchor in them, and have no hope but what is connected with and springs out of them. But in seasons of darkness and distress, when guilt from repeated backslidings lies hard and heavy on the conscience; when the mists and fogs of unbelief gather over the foundations of our hope; when our evidences are beclouded and our signs but dimly seen, then we want a living Advocate who can plead our cause, we being unable to do it ourselves, and by presenting on our behalf his blood and obedience, his sufferings, sacrifice, and death, may bring142 us off more than conquerors against every accusing plea and every opposing adversary. As Satan stood at the right hand of Joshua the high priest, to resist him; (Zechariah 3:1;) as the accuser of the brethren accuses them before God day and night; (Revelation 12:10;) and neither Joshua nor the brethren could plead a word in their own defence, and yet both came off conquerors by the help of the Lord and the blood of the Lamb; so poor guilty sinners now prevail through the power of their heavenly Advocate. It is, then, because we feel the weight and burden of sin, yet see by faith that our great High Priest has passed within the vail, that our eyes, hands, and hearts are all up unto him. As thus realised by faith, there is a peculiar power in this believing view of our heavenly Advocate, which draws desire and supplication out of the soul unto and after him. Nay, it is this living and daily intercourse with Jesus in heaven in which the very life and power of godliness consist. “Because I live, ye shall live also.” (John 14:19.) He, as exalted above all principality and power, is the church's glorious Head, (Ephesians 1:22,) “from which all the body, by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.” (Colossians 2:19.) This union with him as a living Head brings about communion with him; for as he communicates grace out of his own fulness, there springs up in the soul a sweet and sacred fellowship with him, as viewed by faith on his throne of grace as the Mediator between God and man. And these communications of divine light and life out of his fulness, enlightening the eyes of the understanding, and being attended by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, (Ephesians 1:17,18,) there arises in the heart a gracious view of his beauty and blessedness, of his grace and his glory. (Psalms 112:4; Isaiah 33:17; Luke 1:78,79; 2 Peter 1:19.) This is drinking at the fountain of life and seeing light in God's light; (Psalms 36:9;) and is the very “light of life,” which the Lord gives to those that follow him.” (John 8:12.) As, then, the soul walks in the light of these gracious teachings, the blood of Jesus is seen as a fountain of infinite value and unspeakable efficacy for sin and uncleanness; his righteousness as a most blessed covering for all its shame and nakedness; his bleeding, dying love as a most healing balm for a wounded conscience143, and a heavenly cordial for a fainting spirit. It is by these teachings that the reality of true religion and of vital godliness is learnt, and in no other way. No truly exercised soul can be satisfied with seeing salvation as a mere doctrine of the gospel, a fixed and certain truth that shines in the inspired page. Glad, indeed, he is that the way of salvation is so clearly revealed in the word of truth; and that there is the light, and life, and power of the Spirit within to bear his inward witness to the truth and certainty of the written testimony; but all this light and knowledge in the letter of truth falls short of a salvation revealed and manifested to his own heart and conscience. Here, then, comes in the blessedness of an ever-living Advocate and Intercessor at the right hand of the Father, who, by applying his blood and love with power, says to the soul, “I am thy salvation.” It is therefore said of him, “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Who shall describe, as who shall limit God's “uttermost?” David, “from the ends of the earth;” (Psalms 61:2;) Heman, when “laid in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps;” (Psalms 38:6;) Hezekiah, “from the gates of the grave and the pit of corruption;” (Isaiah 38:16,17;) Jeremiah, “out of the low dungeon,” where “the waters flowed over his head, and he said, “I am cut off;” (Lamentations 3: 54,55;) Jonah, “out of the belly of hell;” (Jonah 2:2;), all these deeply-taught and deeply-tried saints of God knew both man's uttermost and God's uttermost, and that man's uttermost was sin, hell, and despair; and God's uttermost was mercy, salvation, and heaven.
Never is the prevalency of our great High Priest's intercession so proved as when it thus saves to the uttermost. And who that knows anything of himself as a sinner, or in whose heart the fountains of the great deep have in any measure been broken up, who that has ever had a view of sin as seen in the light of God's infinite purity and holiness, and trembled before him; who that has ever felt the guilt of backslidings, the pangs of slips and falls, and his own miserable helplessness, not only in the hour of temptation but to remove the load of transgression off his conscience, who of all these but has his “uttermost,” if not really so deep and desperate as Heman's and Jonah's, yet, in his own feelings, such an uttermost as none can save him from but that High Priest and Advocate who liveth at God's right hand to make intercession for him?
It is here we prove the experimental reality and felt blessedness of having such an Advocate with the Father, against whom and before whom we have sinned. The Lord enable us to commit our cause into his hand, however deep or desperate, and wait and watch for him to appear and save.
We shall hope to resume the subject (D.V.) in our next No.
(Continued from Page 324, pages 348-356; 370-381)
WE intimated in our last No. that there were two especial features in the intercession of our great High Priest within the vail which are most blessedly adapted to all our wants and woes: 1, The prevalency of his intercession; 2, The sympathy and compassion of his loving heart. The former meets the burden of our sins; the latter that of our sorrows.
Having attempted, then, to show the nature and prevalency of the intercession of Jesus at the right hand of the Father, and how mercifully and graciously it meets our case as burdened with countless sins and pressed down with innumerable infirmities, we come now to the consideration of the blessed Lord as our most compassionate and sympathizing High Priest in the courts of heaven. Sympathy and compassion are necessary qualifications of a high priest, as sustaining the office of a mediator. A priest implies a sacrifice; a sacrifice implies a sinner; a sinner implies a guilty, burdened wretch, justly amenable to the wrath of God, and therefore in a most pitiable condition. For such a one the high priest offers a sacrifice, that he may obtain thereby the pardon of his sins. He must, therefore, compassionate the case of this guilty sinner, that, as feeling sympathy with him, he may present prayer and supplication on his behalf, that the sacrifice offered for his sins may be accepted. The apostle, therefore, says, “For every high priest, taken from among men, is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people so also for himself, to offer for sins.” (Hebrews 5:1-3.) The high priest under the law differed in this point from the blessed Lord in that he was himself a sinner, and as such had to offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for the sins of the people. By this offering for his own sins two things were intimated: 1, that as a sinner he himself needed a propitiating sacrifice; and 2, he was reminded thereby that, though a high priest, he was really no better than the sinner for whose sins he offered sacrifice. By this sense, then, of his own sinfulness, thus vividly and distinctly brought before his eyes, he was taught to have compassion on his fellow-sinners, and especially on those who had sinned ignorantly, and were “out of the way” through backsliding or infirmity, for there was no sacrifice provided for presumptuous sinners. (Numbers 15:27-31.) Our blessed Lord, then, as the great High Priest over the house of God, would not have been suitable to us, as encompassed with infirmities, unless he could compassionate our case, and sympathise with us in our troubles and sorrows. It is true that, as perfectly free from sin, both in body and soul, he had no necessity to offer sacrifice for himself; but, as a most loving and tender High Priest, he could compassionate the sinner without partaking of his sins. But this was not all, for even in eternity, before he gave himself for his people, he had pity on them; and we read that, apart from electing love or saving grace, in the days of his flesh, he had compassion on the hungry multitude. But that he might become a merciful and compassionate High Priest he had to learn sympathy with his people in a very different way. In the wondrous depths of the wisdom and grace of God, he learnt to sympathise with us in our afflictions by a personal experience of them. This is the apostle's
declaration: “For we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15.) And what a most encouraging conclusion does he draw from this most blessed view of the compassion of our once suffering Head: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16.)
We showed in our last No. the close and intimate connection that subsists between the two main branches of our Lord's priestly office, viz.: the sacrifice which he offered in the days of his flesh on earth and his present intercession in heaven. So, there is a similar connection between the personal experience of suffering and temptation which the Lord endured here below and his present sympathy above with his tempted and suffering people still in the wilderness. We must not, however, suppose the personal experience of suffering was essential to his knowledge of it. As omniscient in his divine nature, the Lord perfectly knows what his people suffer, for “he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.” (Psalms 103:14.) Tn this sense he searcheth and knoweth us, for he understandeth our thought afar off; he compasseth our path and our lying down and is acquainted with all our ways. (Psalms 139:2,3.) As the all-seeing, heart-searching God, he sees and knows all our afflictions and sorrows as he knows everything in heaven and earth. But he could only have the personal experience of suffering by becoming himself a sufferer. This is a deep mystery; but as it is revealed to our faith in the word of truth and is full of blessed consolation to the afflicted family of God, we will approach it with all reverence as a part of our Meditations on the Sacred Humanity of our Blessed Redeemer.
It was the eternal will of God that his dear Son should take the flesh and blood of the children, and that he should take it without sin, but not without suffering. Suffering was a part of the atonement: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:18.) Our blessed Lord was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” not only that by these sorrows and griefs he might redeem us from the depths of the fall, but that he might experimentally learn to feel for, and sympathise with us in our troubles and afflictions.
None can really sympathise with the afflicted but those who have passed or are passing through similar afflictions. We might as well expect a newly married bride to sympathise with a bereaved widow, or a merchant worth a million with a ruined bankrupt, as for the unafflicted to sympathise with the afflicted. The very word “sympathy” means a suffering with; but how can there be a suffering with another, if the suffering itself be personally unknown? The primary element of the whole feeling is wanting if suffering be absent on the part of the sympathiser. Thus, in order that our blessed Lord might personally, feelingly, and experimentally sympathise with his suffering people, there was a necessity that he must himself suffer. O mystery of mysteries! O wondrous heights and depths of redeeming love! that the Son of God should suffer, not only that he might redeem, but that he might personally feel for, and experimentally sympathise with his suffering people!144
But though we feel our inability and inadequacy to open up this sacred subject, yet, as we have proposed it as a part of our Meditations, let us now examine this point a little more closely, and see what sufferings the blessed Lord endured that he might learn there- by to sympathise with his afflicted ones, who drink of his cup and are baptized with his baptism.
In viewing these, we cannot well distinguish between the Lord's sufferings as meritorious and his sufferings as intended to teach him compassion and sympathy; for all his sufferings were a part of his atoning sacrifice: “By his stripes ye were healed.” (1 Peter 2:24.) He that was “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” hath also surely “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” (Isaiah 53:4,5.) In fact, by the sorrows and sufferings of the blessed Lord several purposes, according to the sovereign will and wisdom of God, were at once accomplished, and principally these following: 1. God was glorified, as the Lord himself said, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” (John 13:31.) “I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” (John 17:4.) By his meek endurance of the sufferings laid upon him, and by his voluntary and patient obedience to the will of his heavenly Father, through the whole course of his suffering life from the manger to the cross, God was supremely glorified. 2. The work of redemption was fully accomplished.145 3. He learned obedience by the things which lie suffered. (Hebrews 5:8.) 4. He left us an example, that we should follow his steps (1 Peter 2:21.) 5. He was made perfect; (Hebrews 5:9;) that is, he became by suffering perfectly qualified to sustain his high office as a merciful and faithful High Priest, who, “in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, is able to succor them that are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:17,18.)
It is the last point which chiefly demands our present consideration, as contemplating him now in our nature at the right hand of the Father. The sympathy and compassion of the blessed Lord, as now exercised in the courts of heaven, are chiefly shown under the following circumstances: 1. To his people under affliction; 2. To his people under temptation.
I. The Lord's people are all, without exception, an afflicted people. This was their promised character from the days of old: “I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord.” (Zephaniah 3:12.) Their afflictions, indeed, widely vary as regards nature, number, length, and degree, but all find the truth of that solemn declaration that we must “through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”
1. Thus, some are afflicted in body, racked with continual pain, or suffering perhaps for years from some complaint which may not much shorten life, yet render life often a burden. If health be the greatest, as all must admit, of temporal blessings, the want of it must be the greatest of all temporal miseries. The blessed Lord, indeed, had no personal experience of sickness, for in his holy, immortal body there were the seeds neither of sickness nor death; but he experienced bodily pain, as when scourged by Pilate's command, when he were the crown of thorns, when struck and buffeted by the rude Roman soldiery, and more especially when nailed to the cross. Thus, even in the matter of bodily suffering, our gracious Lord can sympathise from a personal experience with his poor afflicted family still in the flesh who are racked with pain on their bed of languishing.
2. Many again of the Lord's people are deeply tried in providence. Poverty, if not absolute want, is the daily cross of many of the excellent of the earth. But what a personal experience their gracious Lord had of this sharp trial, who had neither purse nor scrip, but was maintained by the contributions of the women who ministered to him of their substance. (Luke 8:3.) Did he not hunger in the wilderness, and before the barren fig-tree? Did he not thirst at Samaria's well and on the cross? And did he not say of himself, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head?” (Matthew 8:20.) He who for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be rich, not only spiritually made himself poor by laying aside his divine glory, but actually and literally made himself poor by voluntarily submitting to the pain and pressure of bodily poverty.
3. Others of the Lord's people are subject to cruel persecutions. This, indeed, has been the lot of all the saints from the days of righteous Abel, and will be to the end of time, for “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” Fire, indeed, and faggot are now unknown, and the spirit of the times, at least in this country, will not suffer fine and imprisonment, and the other acts of violence which our godly forefathers endured for conscience' sake; but the scourge of the tongue is still wielded, heads cut off instead of ears, and reputations branded instead of foreheads. But what a deep and personal experience had the blessed Lord of persecution from the day that Herod sought his life till he was nailed to the cross! How every word was watched which fell from his lips, every action misinterpreted, his character calumniated as a glutton and a winebibber, and shame and contempt poured upon him until, as the consummation of hatred, and to cover him, as they thought, with everlasting ignominy, they crucified him between two thieves.
4. Others of the Lord's people suffer from the treachery of false friends. Had not our blessed Lord an experience of this in the treachery of Judas, so that he could say, “ He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me?”
But it is not necessary for us to dwell longer on those temporal afflictions which press down so many of the Lord's people, but in which their gracious Head still sympathizes with them. He who wept at the grave of Lazarus; he who had compassion on the widow of Nain, (Luke 7:13,) on the beseeching leper, (Mark 1:41,) on the possessed with a devil, (Mark 5:19,) on the blind man, (Matthew 20:34,) and on the fainting, scattered multitudes, (Matthew 9:36,) surely pities and sympathizes with his people in all their temporal sorrows, however diversified. These, though heavy, are not the severest afflictions which befall the saints of the Most High. We will now, therefore, divert our thoughts to those spiritual sorrows and troubles which all the family of God experience, though, these, too, vary widely in number and degree, yet are allotted to each living member of the mystical body of Christ, according to the appointed measure. In these, as peculiar to the Lord's people, Jesus has a special sympathy with his afflicted people, for of this cup he drank to the very dregs, and with this baptism he was baptized with all its billows and waves rolling over him. Whatever spiritual troubles and sorrows the Lord's people may be called upon to endure, their gracious Lord and Master suffered much more deeply than their heart, however deeply lacerated, can feel, or their tongue, however eloquent, can express. But we will look at some of these spiritual afflictions, and endeavor to show how the blessed Lord had a personal experience of them, and thus learnt to sympathize with his people under them.
1. The chief burden of the Lord's living family is sin. This is the main cause of all their sighs and groans, from the first quickening breath of the Spirit of God in their hearts till they lay down their bodies in the dust.
But it may be asked, what experience could the blessed Lord have had of sin, seeing he was perfectly free from it both in body and soul? It is indeed a most certain and a most blessed truth that our gracious Redeemer “knew no sin;” (2 Corinthians 5:21;) was “a lamb without blemish and without spot;” (1 Peter 1:19;) and was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” (Hebrews 7:26.) Still, sin was so imputed to him, and the Lord so “laid on him the iniquities of us all,” that he felt them just as if they had been his own. “He was made sin for us;” its guilt and burden were laid on his sacred head, and so became by imputation his that it was as if he had committed the sins charged upon him. Take the following illustration. View sin as a debt due to the justice of God. Now, if you are a surety for another, and he cannot pay the debt, it becomes yours just as much as if you had yourself personally contracted it. The law makes no distinction between his debt and yours; and the creditor may sell the very bed from under you to pay the debt, just as if you were the original debtor. So, the blessed Lord, by becoming Surety for his people, took upon him their sins, and thus made them his own. How else can we explain those expressions in the Psalms, which are evidently the language of his heart and lips, such as the following? “For innumerable evils have compassed me about; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head; therefore, my heart faileth me.” (Psalms 40:12.) Does not the Lord here speak of his iniquities taking hold upon him, so that under their weight and burden he could not look up, and that they were more in number than the hairs of his head?
2. With the burden and weight of sin comes the wrath of God into sinner's conscience; and this is the most distressing feeling that can be well experienced out of hell. So, the blessed Lord, when he took the burden and weight of sin, came under this wrath. This was “the horrible pit” into which he sank, (Psalms 40:2,) “the deep mire in which there was no standing,” “the deep waters where the floods overflowed him.” (Psalms 69:2.) This made him say, “For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread. For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, because of thine indignation and thy wrath; for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down.” (Psalms 102:3,4,9,10.) None who read the word of truth with an enlightened eye can doubt that these Psalms refer to the blessed Lord, and that it is he who speaks in them.
3. Then there is the curse of the law, which peals such loud thunders, and sinks so deeply into the heart and conscience of the awakened sinner. But did not Jesus endure this too? Surely he did, both in body and soul, as the apostle declares, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” (Galatians 3:13.)
4. Then there are the hidings of God's countenance, the with drawings of his presence, and his forsakings of the soul that still hangs upon him and cleaves to him. But cannot our gracious Lord here deeply sympathise with his people who are mourning and sighing under the hidings of God's countenance, for was not this the last bitter drop of the cup of suffering which he drank to the very dregs? Did heaven or earth ever hear so mournful a cry as when the darling Son of God, in the agony of his tortured soul, cried out, “My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?”
Thus, whatever in number or degree be the spiritual griefs and sorrows of the Lord's people; whatever convictions, burdens, sorrows, distresses, pangs of conscience, doubts, fears, and dismay under the wrath of God, the curse of the law, the hidings of his face, and the with drawings of the light of his countenance they may grieve and groan under, Jesus, their blessed Forerunner, experienced them all in the days of his flesh, and to a degree and extent infinitely beyond all human conception. Can any heart conceive, or any tongue express what the dear Redeemer experienced in the garden of Gethsemane, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; when he thrice prayed that the cup might pass from him, and being in an agony, prayed more earnestly, so that his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground? Might he not truly say, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.” (Lamentations 1:12.) An awakened sinner, under divine quickening, has to bear but the weight of his own sins; but Jesus had to bear the sins of millions. It is at best but a few drops of the wrath of God, and that wrath as already appeased, that fall into a trembling sinner's conscience; but Jesus had to endure all the wrath of God due to millions of ransomed transgressors. It is but the distant peals of the law which sound in a convinced sinner's soul; but the whole storm burst upon the head of the Surety. In a little wrath God hides his face from his Zion for a moment; but in great wrath he hid his face from his dear Son. Thus, whatever be the spiritual sorrows and troubles of afflicted Zion, even though she be “tossed with tempest and not comforted,” in all she has a Head who suffered infinitely more than all the collective members. They do but “fill up what is behind of the afflictions of Christ;” (Colossians 1:24;) but O how small is that measure of affliction compared with his!
It was, then, his personal experience of these spiritual afflictions which makes the blessed Lord so sympathising a High Priest at the right hand of God. Though now exalted to the heights of glory, he can still feel for his suffering saints here below. The garden of Gethsemane, the cross of Calvary, are still in his heart's remembrance, and all the tender pity and rich compassion of his soul melt towards his afflicted saints; for, “His heart is touched with tenderness, His bowels melt with love.”
II. But the gracious Lord can also sympathise with his saints under all their temptations. This is a deep mystery, but not deeper than blessed; and as it is pregnant with consolation to the tried and tempted children of God, we will attempt to unfold it to the best of our ability. The Holy Ghost expressly declares that our blessed Lord “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15.) This, then, we must accept as a most solemn and, as viewed by faith, a most blessed truth. Nor must we limit the language of the Holy Ghost, but as he has said “in all points,” so must we receive it on the testimony of him who cannot lie, But as the word “temptations” has in the original two significations, including in its meaning “ trials “ as well as temptations, properly so called, we will extend the sense of the term, and view,
1. Our Lord's trials.
2. Our Lord's temptations.
1. The distinction between them is sufficiently evident. Trials may have God for their author, but not temptations, for we are expressly told that God tempteth no man. (James 1:13.) Indeed, as temptation implies the presentation of sin to the mind, it would make God the Author of sin to make him the Author of temptation. But do we not read, it may be asked, that God “tempted Abraham?” (Genesis 22:1.) The word “tempted'' there should be rendered “tried,” for in Hebrew as well as Greek the same word means to tempt and to try. God did not tempt Abraham to sin, as Satan tempted Eve, or as he tempted David, but “tried” him, as the apos the speaks, (Hebrews 11:17,) whether his faith was genuine. Thus, our blessed Lord was tried, and tried by God himself; for he is “a stone, a tried stone,” of God's own laying. (Isaiah 28:16.) When the Father provided him with a body in which to do his will, he became God's servant, as he speaks, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.” (Isaiah 52:1.) As a servant he yielded obedience, for he “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:8.) His obedience was a tried obedience. God tried it; men tried it; devils tried it; enemies tried it; friends tried it. The weakness and ignorance of his disciples; the treachery of Judas; the desertion and denial of Peter; the craft and malice of the Scribes and Pharisees; the unbelief and infidelity of the people; the sins by which he was surrounded; the sinless infirmities of the flesh and blood which he had assumed, as hunger, thirst, and weariness, the long journeyings, the nightly watching’s, the daily spectacle of sickness and misery, all these, and a thousand other circumstances beyond our conception tried the blessed Lord during his sojourn here below. But he bare all that was laid upon him. The purity of his human nature, in which were no seeds of sin actual or original, the strength of his divine nature with which it was in union, and the power of the Holy Ghost, which rested on him without measure, all concurred to bring him through every trial, and give him victory over every foe.
But by these trials he learnt to sympathise with his tried people. He is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” (Hebrews 4:15.) We may then freely go to him with our trials, may spread them before his face, as Hezekiah did the letter of Sennacherib in the temple, may feel a sweet persuasion that he sympathises with us under our heavy burdens, and will alleviate them, or support us under them, or if they be not removed will sanctify them, and make them work for our spiritual and eternal good. Thus, faith in the sympathy of our blessed Lord is wonderfully calculated to subdue fretfulness, murmuring, and self-pity, to teach us submission and resignation under afflictions, and to reconcile us to a path of sorrow and tribulation. It brings before our eyes the sufferings of the blessed Lord here below, the trials which he endured, and his holy meekness and submission under them when he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. If we compare our sorrows and troubles with his, how light they seem! This works submission to them, and when we can look up in faith and love and see the once suffering Lord now sympathising with us under our afflictions, it makes even sorrow sweet. A conformity to the dying image of Jesus is hereby wrought into the soul, a fellowship given of his sufferings, a crucifixion of the flesh with its affections and lusts, a deadness to the world, a mortification of the whole body of sin, a separation of heart and spirit from everything ungodly and evil, and a communion produced with the blessed Lord at the right hand of the Father. Thus we may bless God for our afflictions and trials, our sicknesses, our bereavements, our losses and crosses, our vexations and disappointments, our persecutions, our being despised by the world and graceless professors, our doubts, fears, and exercises, our sighs and groans under a body of sin and death, and, in a word, for every footstep in the way of tribulation which brings us nearer to Jesus, and opens to us more and more of his love and blood, grace and glory, sympathy and compassion, and all that he is as a merciful and faithful High Priest, whom God has raised from the dead, and seated at his own right hand in the heavenly places, “far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church; which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:21-23.)146
We hope, with God's help and blessing, to bring our Meditations to a close with our next Number.
(Concluded from Page 356, pages 370-381)
ONE important part of the ministration of the blessed Lord, as the great High Priest over the house of God, we have not yet touched upon. This is his blessing the people. This, we know, was committed to the typical high priest under the law as one of the functions of his ministerial office. “Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.” (Numbers 6:23-27.) The chief season when the high priest blessed the people according to this formula was on the great day of atonement; when, after having carried the blood of the bullock and the goat into the holy of holies, and sprinkled it on and before the mercy-seat, he laid aside his linen garments, and, putting on the garments of glory and beauty, showed himself to the people who were praying without. (Luke 1:10.) In all this there was a beautiful propriety. The high priest had two distinct sets of consecrated garments. One set was made wholly of linen, which he were on the great day of atonement. This was simplicity and purity itself; and as such is elsewhere used as a type of the pure humanity of the Son of God in the flesh, as Ezekiel 9:2,11; Daniel 10:5. The other set of consecrated garments was worn on days of high and great solemnity; and being made of gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, was called “golden,” or “garments of glory and beauty.” The linen garments, then, which the high priest were when he offered the bullock and the goat, and took their blood into the most holy place, were not only typical of the pure and perfect human nature of the Lord Jesus, but of that nature in its state of humiliation on earth. Similarly, the garments of glory and beauty, such as the robe of the ephod of woven work, all of blue, with its hem adorned with bells of pure gold and pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twined linen, and the ephod on the breast, with the twelve precious stones on which the names of the tribes were engraved, (Exodus 39,) typically and figuratively represented the glorified humanity of the blessed Lord, which he now wears at the right hand of the Father. As, then, the high priest, when he had laid aside his linen garments, and assumed the garments of glory and beauty, blessed the people from the court of the tabernacle, so the Lord in his glorified humanity blesses his waiting people here below from the courts of bliss. In him, as the church's risen Head, all spiritual blessings are lodged: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3.)147 He is the living Fountain whence all the streams flow to water his church here below. The ancient promise made to Abraham was, that “in him and his seed,” that is, Christ, as the apostle explains the word, (Galatians 3:16,) “all the nations of the earth should be blessed.” Every blessing, then, which the elect enjoy either for time or eternity, in providence or in grace, comes from him as their covenant Head. They are blessed in him as they are chosen, adopted, and accepted in him. (Ephesians 1:4-6.) Not to speak of his blessings in providence, though in these “he daily loadeth us with benefits,” (Psalms 68:19,) how unspeakable are his blessings in grace? Look at the blessing of eternal life which hangs before the eyes of the poor way-worn pilgrim in this world of sin and sorrow, as the prize of his high calling, the prospect of which, at the end of his race, animates his drooping spirits, this rich and glorious crown, without which all others would cease to be blessings, is given in Christ. “And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” (1 John 5:11.) This blessing the risen Lord bestows on his people when he first quickens their souls into spiritual life, for he is “the resurrection and the life,” (John 11:25,) and “quickeneth whom he will;” (John 5:21;) and the life thus given he ever maintains; for his own words are, “Because I live ye shall live also.” (John 14:19.) As, then, he ever lives at God's right hand, for he says, “I am-he that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore;” (Revelation 1:18;) and again, “Seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them;” (Hebrews 7:25;) he sends down the blessing of eternal life into their soul. And this blessing of eternal life which he thus bestows has a sweet connection with the anointing which he received as the consecrated High Priest; for the droppings of that rich unction went down to the very skirts of his garments, and falls in regenerating grace upon the hearts of his people, like the dew of Hermon: “It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments. As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.” (Psalms 133:2,3.) How sweet to carry in the bosom the pledge, earnest, and foretaste of eternal life, and to feel it to be the gift of God; (Romans 6:23;) stored up in Christ who is himself “the true God and eternal life;” (1 John 5:20;) manifested and brought to light in the Person of Jesus; (1 John 1:2;) and firmly secured by covenant oath and everlasting promise. (Psalms 21:2-4; 89:34-37; Titus 1:2; 1 John 2:25.) From this ever flowing and overflowing fountain of eternal life proceed all other spiritual blessings, as reconciliation to God by the blood of the Lamb; free and full justification by his imputed righteousness; deliverance from all condemnation, past, present, and to come; and, as a consequence of these glorious mercies, manifested pardon of sin; peace of conscience; fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ; revelations of his presence, power, loveliness, glory, and beauty; sips and tastes of his dying love; spiritual affections: heavenly desires; holy longings after conformity to his image, for grace and strength to imitate his example and walk in his footsteps, for power to do that which is pleasing in his sight, and to live to his praise; in a word, all that sweet and sacred intercourse with the blessed Lord which is the very life and power, sum and substance of all vital godliness; and without which all religion is but an empty form, a name, and a notion. It is thus that the reality of the presence of the Lord Jesus at the right hand of the Father is made experimentally known. He is seen, felt, and believed in as the Way, the Truth, and the Life; for he is walked in as the Way of access unto God; sought unto as the Truth, the knowledge of which maketh free; and cleaved unto as the Life, from whom it was first received, and by whom it is ever maintained.
Our blessed Lord was to be “a High Priest after the order of Melchizedec.” It will be remembered that Melchizedec met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him. (Genesis 14:19.) In the same way our great High Priest blesses the seed of Abraham; for “they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham;” (Galatians 3:9;) and as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, they walk in his steps who “believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” (Romans 4:3,12.) But Melchizedec the type could only ask God to bless Abraham. He could not himself confer the blessing; but Jesus, the antitype, our great Melchizedec, whose priesthood is after the power of an endless life, (Hebrews 7:16,) blesses his people, not by merely asking God to bless them, but by himself showering down blessings upon them, and by communicating to them out of his own fulness every grace which can sanctify as well as save. Even before his incarnation, when he appeared in human form, as if anticipating in appearance that flesh and blood which he should afterwards assume in reality, he had power to bless.148 Thus, we read that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, which angel was no created angel, but the Angel of the covenant, even the Son of God himself in human shape, he said, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me.” And in answer to his wrestling cry, we read that “he blessed him there.” Jacob knew that no created angel could bless him. He therefore said, when he had got the blessing, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32:26-30.) To this blessing Jacob afterward referred when, in blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, he said, “The angel which redeemed me from all evil bless the lads.” (Genesis 48:16.) Thus, also, our gracious Lord, immediately before his ascension to heaven, as if in anticipation of the gifts and graces which he was to send down upon them when exalted to the right hand of the Father, “lifted up his hands and blessed his disciples;” and as if to show that he would still ever continue to bless them, “ he was parted from them and carried up into heaven,” even “while he blessed them,” as if he were blessing them all the way up to heaven, even before he took possession of his mediatorial throne. (Luke 24:50,51.) As, then, he sits in glory at the right hand of the Father, he sends down blessings upon his people. He blesses them “with the blessings of heaven from above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts and of the womb, and unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills.” (Genesis 49:25,26.) He holds all nature in his hands; the gold and the silver are his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills; his is the earth and the fulness thereof; all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth; he holds the reins of government, doing according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; so that none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?149 He is the sun and shield of God's people, their sun, ever to be their light; their shield, to be ever their defence. He giveth grace and glory, grace here, glory hereafter. (Psalms 84:11.) He makes his strength perfect in their weakness, that they may glory in their infirmities; (2 Corinthians 12:9;) nourishes and cherishes them, as being members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones; (Ephesians 5:29,30;) and communicates to them more than heart can conceive or tongue express out of his own fulness; for it hath pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell. (1 Corinthians 2:9,10; John 1:6; Colossians 1:19.) He can see all the designs of their enemies, and defeat them; all the temptations of Satan, and overrule them; all his snares, and break them to pieces; all his enmity and malice and can bruise him under their feet shortly. He can pity their case when bowed down with grief and afflictions; can hear their sigh and cry out of the depths of trouble and sorrow; and can stretch forth his hand to deliver them from the worst of foes and the worst of fears. And what a matter this is of living, daily experience, so as to make the presence of Jesus at the right hand of the Father no mere doctrine seen in the letter of truth, but a very fountain of spiritual life in the heart. How continually, how, in deep trouble, almost unceasingly, is the poor, tried, tempted, and afflicted child of God, looking up to this merciful and faithful High Priest, and begging of him to appear and bless his soul. This is all that he needs. For the Lord himself to bless him comprises every desire of his heart. One word, one look, one touch, one manifestation of his love and blood, is all that he wants. But if he did not see him by the eye of faith at the right hand of the Father, and able to bless him with the blessing that maketh rich and addeth no sorrow with it, would his prayers, desires, tears, and supplications be so directed toward him? If, too, at times he has been blest with a sweet sense of his presence and his love, he cannot rest satisfied without some fresh manifestation of these blessings to his soul.
And how” fully adapted and divinely qualified he is to communicate these rich blessings; for God, by exalting; him to his own right hand, has “made him most blessed forever;” or as we read in the margin, “set him to be blessings.” (Psalms 21:6.) He has “prevented him” (or, as the word means, anticipated him in his wishes and petitions) “with the blessings of goodness, and set a crown of pure gold, up on his head.” This is the reward of his sufferings, for “his glory is great in God's salvation” and therefore “honor and majesty has he laid upon him.” (Psalms 21:5.) And does he not deserve it all? Has he not “obtained eternal redemption for us?” (Hebrews 9:12;) and is he not “of God made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption?” (1 Corinthians 1:30,) Is he not “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth;” (Romans 10:4;) and “the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him?” (Hebrews 5:9.) How, then, can we doubt that he is “able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him?” For what is there which he has not done for their salvation in his finished work? and what is there which he cannot do in the application of that finished work to their heart? For we need his present help as well as his past obedience. When the soul, then, sinks low into trouble or dejection; when troops of sins come to view, like so many gaunt spectres of the past; when innumerable backslidings, slips, and falls crowd in upon the conscience, bringing guilt and fear in their train, how the cast-down spirit will sometimes look at and ponder over the various cases of those sinners of every shape, and hue, and dye, whose salvation, without money and. without price, is recorded in the word of truth. How it looks, for instance, at a sinning David, a blood-stained Manasseh, a dying thief, a returning prodigal, a weeping Mary Magdalene, a denying Peter, a persecuting Saul, a trembling jailer, the Jerusalem sinners who killed the Prince of life. And as it views these selfcondemned, self-abhorred sinners, so freely accepted, so graciously pardoned, so everlastingly saved, how it looks up to the Lord of life and glory that it may receive similar blessings out of his fulness. It is in this and similar ways that a communication is kept up with the risen and ascended Lord upon his throne of grace; and as he, in answer to prayer, from time to time drops down an encouraging word into the soul, each fresh discovery of his Person and work, of his beauty and blessedness, of his grace and glory, raises up renewed acting’s of faith, strengthens a lively hope, and draws forth every tender affection of the heart to flow unto and centre in him150. Seeing light in his light, and how rich and free his blessings are, it cries out with Jabez of old, “O that thou wouldst bless me indeed.” An “indeed” blessing is what the soul is seeking after which has ever felt the misery and bitterness of sin, and ever tasted the sweetness of God's salvation. And these “indeed” blessings are seen to be spiritual and eternal. Compared with such blessings as these, it sees how vain and empty are all earthly things, what vain toys, what idle dreams, what passing shadows. It wonders at the folly of men in hunting after such vain shows, and spending time, health, money, life itself, in a pursuit of nothing but misery and destruction. Every passing bell that it hears, every corpse borne slowly along to the grave that it sees, impresses it with solemn feelings as to the state of those who live and die in their sins. Thus it learns more and more to contrast time with eternity, earth with heaven, sinners with saints, and professors with possessors. By these things it is taught, with Baruch, not “to seek great things” for itself, (Jerimiah 45:5,) but real things, things which will outlast time, and fit it for eternity. It is thus brought to care little for the opinion of men as to what is good or great, but much for what God has stamped his own approbation upon, such as a tender conscience, a broken heart, a contrite spirit, a humble mind, a separation from the world and everything worldly, a submission to his holy will, a meek endurance of the cross, a conformity to Christ's suffering image, and a living to God's glory. Compared with spiritual blessings like these, it sees how vain and deceptive is a noisy profession, a presumptuous confidence, a sound creed in the letter of truth, without an experience of its life and power; and afraid of being deceived and deluded, as thousands are, it is made to prize the least testimony from the Lord's own lips that its heart is right before him. Looking around then, as with freshly-enlightened eyes, it sees how the world is filled with sin and sorrow; how God's original curse on the earth has embittered every earthly good; how it has marred the nearest and dearest social relationships; how trial and affliction, losses, crosses, bereavements, vexations, and disappointments enter every home, and especially that where God is feared; how, amid these scenes of sorrow and trouble, all human help or hope is vain; that it is dying in a dying world, and must soon pass away from this time state, where all is shadow, into eternity, where all is substance. As, then, the gracious Lord is pleased to indulge it with some discovery of himself, shedding abroad a sweet sense of his goodness and mercy, atoning blood, and dying love, it is made to long more and more for the manifestation of those blessings which alone are to be found in him. For his blessings are not like the mere temporal mercies which we enjoy at his hands, all of which perish in the using, but are forever and ever; and when once given are never taken away. They thus become earnests and foretastes of eternal joys, for they are absolutely irreversible. When Isaac had once blessed Jacob in God's name, though the blessing had been obtained by guile, yet having been once given, it could not be recalled. He said, therefore, to Esau, “I have blessed him, and he shall be blessed.” (Genesis 27:33.) So when the Lord has blessed his people with any of those spiritual blessings which are stored up in his inexhaustible fulness, these blessings are like himself, unchanging and unchangeable; for “he is in one mind and none can turn him;” “The same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” Those whom he loves he loves to the end; and his gifts and calling are without repentance; (Romans 11:29,) for he never repents of having bestowed them, as everlasting love is their unvarying, unceasing source. But these blessings have more than the sweetness of their present communication. They stretch forward as well as reach backward; look into eternity to come, as well as from eternity past. By their communication and manifestation his people are made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, for these blessings have a sweet sanctifying influence. Thus, believers in Jesus are said “to rejoice in him with joy unspeakable and full of glory;” (1 Peter 1:8;) and having a hope of seeing him as he is, to “purify themselves even as he is pure.” (1 John 3:3.) Spiritual blessings are not like mere doctrinal opinions, which often leave a man just where they found him, a slave to sin, self, Satan, and the world. They have a blessed sanctifying influence upon the heart. They prepare the soul for glory; they are earnests and foretastes of it and are an enjoyment beforehand on earth of the delights of heaven. Thus, their effect is to separate the heart with its affections from the world; to subdue and crucify a worldly spirit; to mortify pride and covetousness; to cause the conscience to be tender and alive in the fear of God; to make sin exceedingly sinful, its remembrance bitter, and its indulgence dreaded; to draw forth a spirit of prayer and supplication; to open up the scriptures in their spiritual meaning; to encourage holy meditation; to feed the soul with choice fruit out of the word of truth; to breathe into it that spirit of faith which gives life and feeling to every gracious movement Godward, and in a word, to communicate, maintain, and keep alive that inward holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Can earth show a more blessed sight than a believer upon his knees before the throne of grace, looking up to his most blessed Lord at the right hand of the Father, and his sympathising High Priest looking down upon him with love in his heart, pity in his eye, and blessings in his hand? These are, indeed, for the most part but rare seasons, and are often sadly broken through and interrupted by coldness, carnality, and death; but it is only in this way, however long the interval or dark the mind in the intermediate season, that fellowship is maintained with Jesus as the great High Priest over the house of God, and he experimentally made the soul's all in all.
But we have another view to take of our blessed Lord as having entered into the courts of bliss. He is gone thither as his people's forerunner, as the apostle speaks, “Whither the forerunner is for us entered even Jesus, made a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:20.) How blessedly did the Lord comfort his sorrowing disciples when he said to them, “In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” He is gone to take possession beforehand of his and their everlasting home; for he is ascended to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God. He has, as it were, filled heaven with new beauty, new happiness, new glory. His glorious Deity shining through his spotless and glorified humanity illuminates heaven with a peculiar glory, for he has fought the fight and won the day; he has fulfilled all the types and figures of the Old Testament, accomplished the purposes of the everlasting covenant; glorified God by the highest obedience that could have been yielded to his will, and having finished the work which the Father gave him to do, has returned triumphantly to the courts of bliss to receive the reward of his humiliation, sufferings, and death. In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. His glorious Person as Immanuel is become the object of heaven's praise and adoration. The elect angels, whom he has confirmed in their standing, adore him as God-man; and the spirits of just men made perfect worship him in company with the angelic host. What a view had holy John of heaven's glorious worship, (Revelation 5,) when he saw the four living creatures and the four-and-twenty elders fall down before the Lamb; when he heard their new song and the voice of many angels round about the throne, and all saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” (Revelation 5:12) Heaven itself is waiting for the completion of the great mystery of godliness, when the whole church shall be assembled around the throne; when the marriage supper of the Lamb shall come; when the top stone shall be brought forth by the hands of the spiritual Zerubbabel, with shouting’s of Grace, Grace unto it. Earth itself is groaning under the weight of sin and sorrow; and “the souls of those under the altar who were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held, are crying with a loud voice, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:9,10.) Nay, the very signs of the times themselves are all proclaiming as with one voice that it cannot be longer before the Lord will come a second time without sin unto salvation.151
And this brings us to the last point, with which we shall close our “Meditations on the Sacred Humanity of the Blessed Redeemer,” viz., his second coming, and the posture in which his people should be found, as looking for and expecting his return.
When the Lord ascended up on high in the sight of his disciples, “they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up,” their faith, hope, and love all following him up the shining way; and as they thus viewed his glorious track, they seemed to lose sight of every other consideration. But “behold, two men,” two angelic beings in human shape, “stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11.) It was as if the angels said to them, “Jesus, your Master, your Head, your King, is not gone away from you forever. He will one day, according to his own promise, return in the same glorious Person as that in which he is gone up, in the same divine and human nature, and in the clouds of heaven which have now received him out of your sight. For this, meanwhile, look, watch, wait, and pray.” From that moment, therefore, the Lord's return has always been a leading feature in the faith of the church of Christ, especially in the early period of her history. Thus, we find Peter at once proclaiming it, “And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:21,22.) That it ever after formed a prominent point in the teaching and testimony of the apostles is plain from the inspired epistles of the New Testament, in which it is continually brought forward and alluded to. Thus, not to quote numberless passages, the apostle reminds the Thessalonians how “they had turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven;” (1 Thessalonians 1:9, 10;) and seeks to comfort them under their persecutions with the prospect of eternal rest, “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ;” (2 Thessalonians 1:7,8;) as well as to console them under their bereavements with the sweet persuasion that “if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” (1 Thessalonians 4:14.) To be looking, then, and waiting for the Lord's second coming was the especial hope and consolation of the saints of old. By this prospect their hearts were comforted when they could look forward to that glory which should be revealed at the appearing of Jesus Christ, for they knew that when he should come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, he would be glorified in his saints, and be admired in all them that believe.” (Matthew 16:27; I Peter 1:7; 2 Thessalonians 1:10.) This faith and expectation had a most blessed and enduring influence on their hearts and lives. It made them feel that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth; and that their Master having promised to return, and it being uncertain at what watch of the night he would come, their “loins should be girded about, and their lights burning, and they should be like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they might open unto him immediately.” (Luke 12:36.)
We shall not enter upon the question of the nature and circumstances of the Lord's return, or its immediate consequences, as these are disputed points, and we wish to consider the subject more with a view to edification than to controversy. It is sufficient for us to believe that Jesus will come again with all his saints, and that when he comes it will be to the salvation and joy of his friends, and the destruction and confusion of his enemies. We shall, therefore, rather address ourselves to the consideration of the posture in which the church should stand as waiting her Lord's return.
During our present time state we are to be conformed to the suffering image of Christ, and to bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal body. Our present life is to be one of trial, affliction, and temptation, that we may walk in the footsteps of our blessed Lord. (Luke 12:28.) We are to be persecuted by the world, despised by professors, assailed and tempted by Satan, and walk in a path of tribulation and sorrow, that we may, as members of his mystical body, fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. (Colossians 1:24.) We are to drink of his cup and be baptized with his baptism; for “it is a faithful saying, If we be dead with him we shall also reign with him;” (2 Timothy 2:11;) and “we must suffer with him that we may be also glorified together.” (Romans 8:17.) The world knew him not, and it is to know us not. It hated and despised him, and it will hate and despise us; for “the servant is not greater than his Lord; and if they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household.” (Matthew 10:25; John 15:18,19.) But to suffer will not always be the portion of the church of God. There is a day coming when Zion shall be raised from the dust; when she shall put on her beautiful garments; when the marriage of the Lamb shall come, and to his bride and spouse it shall be granted that she shall be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, and shall sit down with her Head and Husband at the marriage supper. (Isaiah 52:1,2; Revelation 19:7-9.) Then those who have been partakers of the sufferings of Christ shall be partakers of his glory. Then the righteous shall shine forth as the sum in the kingdom of their Father. Then they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever. (Daniel 12:3.) Then the mystery of God will be finished, and there will be time no longer, for all the former things of this miserable time state shall have passed away. (Revelation 10:6,7; 21:4.)
Now what should be the posture of the church as looking for and hastening to the coming of the day of God? and what influence should this blessed truth have upon our hearts and lives? 1. First, it should reconcile us to afflictions, as feeling with the apostle that “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a for more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” (2 Corinthians 4:17.) And again, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Weighed in such a balance, what are all our afflictions, though seemingly so heavy? Are they not light indeed, if they are conforming us to the suffering image of Christ, and preparing us for an eternal weight of glory? 2. It should raise up and draw forth heavenly desires and spiritual affections, as the apostle says, “For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:20.) Believers are called upon “not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of their mind,” (Romans 12:2,) and to “set their affections on things above, not on things on the earth;” (Colossians 3:2;) they are said to crucify the flesh, with the affections and lusts; (Galatians 5:24;) and by the Spirit to mortify the deeds of the body. (Romans 8:13.) It is true that we are sorely hindered in running the race set before us, for we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, having to carry about with us a body of sin and death, which is our constant grief and plague; and the flesh lusting against the spirit, as well as the spirit against the flesh, we cannot do the things that we would. (Romans 7:24; 2 Corinthians 5:4; Galatians 5:17.) We are beset, too, by innumerable temptations, have often to mourn over our darkness, deadness, coldness, and unbelief, as well as on account of the hidings of the Lord's face, and the absence of that blessed Comforter who alone can console the cast-down spirit. Still, though in themselves grievous hindrances, spears in our side and thorns in our eyes, these things do not utterly quench that prevailing bent of the renewed heart to look up and look forward to a brighter day, when tears shall be wiped from off all faces. As, then, a view of the glory of Christ is obtained, and his coming again is realised by a living faith, the soul looks beyond this time state, and all the cares and sorrows of this vale of tears, to that glorious day when it shall be perfectly conformed to the glorified image of Christ, and never sin against him more. At his second coming he will change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:21.) And “then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:54,55.)
Now, if these things are so, if Jesus is but gone before to prepare a place for us, and has promised that he will come again and receive us unto himself, that where he is there, we may be also, (John 14:3,) will not this heavenly truth, if received into a believing heart, exercise a gracious influence upon our daily walk and life? Such, at least, is John's testimony, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2,3.) If we are led by divine teaching to see and feel that this present world is an evil world, from which Christ came to deliver us by giving himself for our sins, (Galatians 1:4,) and as such is under the wrath and curse of God; if we feel everything in it marred by sin and sorrow; and have a good hope through grace that when the Lord appears we shall appear with him in glory, will not this separate us. in heart and spirit from the world, and lead us, with God's help and blessing, to walk as becometh the gospel, and to speak and act as a peculiar people, zealous of good works?
But taking a general view of the professing church, can we say that such is its experience or its walk? The wise virgins, as well as the foolish, are sleeping and slumbering; and a cold, lukewarm profession is everywhere prevalent. Error abounds on every side; strife and division widely prevail; and we seem fallen upon those last days when perilous times were to come. We cannot, indeed, marvel that the world is what it ever was, a foe to God and godliness, buried in carnality and death, ignorant of its misery and ruin, and unconcerned at the awful judgment that is awaiting it, and almost ready to burst upon it. But we may justly wonder that the church of Christ, which professes to be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, should be sunk so low, and manifest so little of the life and power of vital godliness. Yet this is only what we are led to expect from the word of truth. The Lord himself said, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8;) and, “Because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold.” (Matthew 14:12.) Thus, instead of expecting that the world will gradually get better and better, as men idly dream, or that bright and glorious days are awaiting the professing church, we may rather expect that things will get gradually worse and worse with both, until he comes who shall come and will not tarry. But come when he will, come when he may, it shall be well with the righteous. Unto those that fear his name the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings; and to them that look for him the Lord shall appear a second time without sin unto salvation.
Here, then, we close our “Meditations upon the Sacred Humanity of the Blessed Redeemer; and can only lament that our views of this most glorious subject have been so dim, and our expression of them so faint and feeble. But such as they are, we commend them to the God of all grace; and if they have been or should be in any way blessed to the spiritual profit of his people, to Him and to Him alone be ascribed all the glory.
EDITORS NOTE: Philpot nowhere in the following two essays tackles any of J.A. Jones interpretation of the Scriptures on this subject. His sole purpose is to use Dr. Hawker, (and Owen) to discredit and humiliate Jones. In other words, he takes up his pen for side issues only, leaving the actual battle unfought at this time. R.C.S.
AN aged minister, named J. A. Jones, has addressed a printed letter to the Editor of the “Gospel Standard” in which he gives an extract from a work of Dr. Hawker's, in order to show that the Doctor did not hold the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord. The extract which he gives from Dr. Hawker is thus introduced and applied:
When one wrote to Dr. Hawker, of embalmed memory, and charged him with holding the tenet, ‘That the Son of God, as a divine person, was eternally begotten of the substance of the Father;' the Doctor replied to him, saying, ‘I have never presumed to look into, much less enter, the hallowed ground of mystery, in relation to the modus existendi of the divine persons in the Godhead. I have no conception of the nature of that relationship which subsists between the Father and the Son. I know, indeed, that some of our greatest divines have dwelt largely on the subject of what they call eternal generation, but I have never seen it denied by any writer to my satisfaction. For my part, I have always contemplated the subject, since I knew anything of the Lord, at an infinite distance, and with the most profound
humbleness of mind!' O pray, Sir, do condescend to borrow a leaf out of Dr. Hawker's book.”153
The poor old man who bids us “condescend to borrow a leaf out of Dr. Hawker's book,” might have condescended not to garble his words, for he has omitted the passage which immediately follows:
“I read of it continually in the scriptures, and I most cordially accept it as it is proposed for the object of my faith. But as the word of God, though plainly declaring it, hath not explained it, so neither do I.
Afterwards, at the bottom of the same page, the Doctor adds:
“The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are all equal in glory, and in all the eternal properties which distinguish the Godhead. One in nature, being, essence, sovereignty, will, purpose, pleasure.”
The doctor most firmly held eternal generation, for these are his express words:
“The eternal generation of the Son of God as God, is declared in scripture as a most blessed reality, and as such forms an express article of our faith.” Hawker's Works, Vol. 6, p. 87.
“Everlasting, in the language of Scripture, is without beginning and without ending. So that in the eternal generation of the Son of God, as the Father is eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Father, so must the Son be eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Son. If there had been a period in eternity when the Son of God was not the Son, in that same period the Father would not have been the Father; for both in the very nature of things, in the constitution of each character, must have been equally existing together.” Hawker's Works, Vol. 6, p. 89.
In a similarly dishonest way, he has given an extract from Dr. Owen's Preface to his work on the Person of Christ, where the Doctor cites a passage from Ephrem Syrus, as if that writer denied the eternal Sonship of the blessed Lord. He tells us in his letter that “in reading and pondering, only a few days ago, Dr. Owen's elaborate treatise on the Person of Christ, he was greatly struck with a quotation which the Doctor gives, and which he would have deeply impressed on his mind as well as on all those who write or even speak on this most solemn and unfathomable subject.”
Now what are Dr. Owen's own words just before he gives this quotation? They are these: “Of the eternal generation of the divine Person of the Son the sober writers of the ancient church did constantly affirm that it was firmly to be believed, but as unto the manner of it not to be inquired into.” He then gives an extract from Lactantius; and then comes the quotation from Ephrem Syrus which J. A. Jones has cited as if he did not hold eternal generation. How dishonest is this; for Dr. Owen quotes him as holding the doctrine, but wisely cautioning us, in which we most fully agree, as to any carnal searching’s into that sublime mystery.
Neither Dr. Hawker nor Ephrem Syrus denied the eternal generation of the Son of God, but, on the contrary, were firm advocates of the doctrine. But they most wisely declined for themselves and cautioned others against carnal reasoning on so deep and sublime a subject, as being entirely beyond the reach of human intellect. This is exactly what we say.154 We receive the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord as a mystery revealed in the scriptures, but which we cannot and do not profess to explain. The censure, therefore, does not fall upon us, but upon those who, by their carnal reasonings and unhallowed speeches, have sought to cast contempt upon a mystery which they reject because they cannot understand it, nor make it square with the deductions of human reasoning. But is it not sad to see an old man, with one foot in the grave, spending, as it were, his last days in the miserable vanity of reprinting his erroneous creed of fifty years back, as if time and age could turn falsehood into truth; and what is worse, employing his dying fingers so to mutilate and garble the writings of gracious men for the dishonest purpose of persuading his readers that these men of God did not believe in the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord, but were one with him in his errors.155
GARBLING OR NOT GARBLING G. S. October 1st 1860 pages 309-315
MR. J. A. JONES has written two long letters in the “Earthen Vessel,” which he has also reprinted in a. little tract, by way of reply to our charge of dishonest quotation from the writings of Dr. Hawker. We have no intention of following the poor old man through this long and labored attempt to clear himself from the charge; still less do we feel dis- posed to imitate the personal reflections which he has so freely used, or the angry spirit which, with one foot in the grave, he has been so left to manifest.156 Truth, not personalities, is our aim and object; for we are well convinced that it is the force of truth, not of angry words, or of personal attacks, which can alone effectually settle a controversy. We much feel the force of those words which, many years ago, fell with much weight on our mind: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.” (2 Timothy 2:24-26.) But is it not staggering, to say the least, that in his very defense of himself from garbling*157 the writings of Dr. Hawker, and in the very face of this denial, he has again twice done the very same thing? for, in quoting from his “Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary,” portions of the articles “Begotten” and “Generation,” he has cited the passages which, as he thinks, make for him, and omitted those which make dead against him. This we will distinctly prove, and then let our readers form their own judgment between us.
1. And first let us see what he quotes and what he omits from the article “Begotten.” We will give both passages, for the sake of better comparison:
But in relation to the Son of God, as the first begotten and the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, if those terms are confined to the person of the Lord Jesus in his character and office as Mediator, here all difficulty vanisheth to the proper apprehension of our mind; and under divine teaching, we are not only brought to the full conviction of the glorious truth itself, but to the full enjoyment of it, in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ in his mediatorial character, God and man in one person, the Head of union with his people, and the Head of communication also to his people, for grace here and glory forever.
Now let us see the passage which immediately precedes this, and which J. A. Jones has kept back:
If we look at the several scriptures which speak of Christ being begotten, we find the word connected at different places with different terms. Sometimes, Christ is said to be the first begotten, and at other times, the only begotten of the Father. (See Hebrews 1:6; Revelation 1:5; John 1:14,18; 3:16.18; 1 John 4:9; Psalms 2:7.) And some have supposed that these expressions refer to the eternal generation of the Son of God as God. But with all possible respect to the judgment of those men, I venture to believe that those phrases have no reference whatever to that subject. The eternal generation of the Son of God as God is declared in scripture as a most blessed reality; and as such forms an express article of our faith. But as God the Holy Ghost hath not thought proper to explain it in any part of his revealed word, it becomes an article of faith only, and here the subject rests. We are not called upon to say how that eternal generation is formed, any more than we are to tell how Jehovah exists, or how that existence is carried on in an unity of substance, while distinct in a threefold character of Person. Our capacities are, at present, incompetent to form any adequate conception, and, perhaps, even in our future state, they never may be able.
It is possible that the poor old man, from age and infirmity of intellect, does not understand the Doctor's meaning; and because he cannot reconcile what he considers to be conflicting statements, takes that which he thinks is for him, and omits that which he sees to be against him. But the Doctor's statements, when properly understood, do not at all clash with each other, as we shall now show. He is explaining the scripture word “Begotten” not unfolding a doctrine from the word, but simply opening the meaning of the term. He remarks, therefore, that “some have supposed that the expressions 'first-begotten,' and f the only-begotten of the Father,' refer to the eternal generation of the Son of God as God.” It will be observed that he does not deny the doctrine of eternal generation, but merely expresses his belief that these phrases have no reference to that subject. But then, to guard himself, for he was a very cautious writer, from the suspicion of thereby denying so great and glorious a truth, he expressly adds, “The eternal generation of the Son of God as God is declared in scripture as a most blessed reality; and, as such, forms an express article of our faith.” Can anything be more express? He most wisely adds that we are not called upon to say how that eternal generation is formed any more than we are to explain the existence of Jehovah or of the Trinity in Unity; but his language most plainly shows that he held the doctrine of eternal generation to be as much an article of our most holy faith as the very being of God, or the doctrine of the Trinity. Upon the point of eternal generation, then, the Doctor and we are most fully one. The only point which affords the least color to Mr. J. A. Jones for claiming him to be on his side is his explanation of the words “first-begotten” and “only-begotten,” which he understands as used only in reference to the setting up of the complex Person of Christ as God-man Mediator. But it will be at once seen that the interpretation of a word or of a text is one thing, and the assertion or denial of a doctrine is another. Two men may hold precisely the same doctrine but differ in opinion whether such and such a text refers to it. The grand truths of revelation do not stand upon isolated texts, or rest upon the interpretation of this or that word. They shine through the whole scripture as its illuminating sun and animate it as its inspiring breath. God the Holy Ghost has not committed the grand doctrines of the Trinity, the Deity and Sonship of Christ, &c., to the custody of single texts or of individual words, but to the whole body of the scriptures. Thus, whether the Doctor were right or wrong in his explanation of the word “Begotten,” it did not in the least degree affect his judgment or his faith in the eternal Sonship of Christ, and that he was the Son of God as God, and not as God-man. His faith in the Son of God as the true and proper Son of the Father rested on far deeper and more solid foundations than one or two words and their correct interpretation. This made him say that “the eternal generation of the Son of God as God was declared in Scripture as a most blessed reality,” for he had felt its reality in his own soul and enjoyed its blessedness.
But in the following passage the Doctor is still more express, for he say. explicitly:
Everlasting, in the language of scripture, is without beginning and without ending; so that, in the eternal generation of the Son of God, as the Father is eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Father, so must the Son be eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Son. If there had been a period in eternity when the Son of God was not the Son, in that same period the Father would not have been the Father; for both, in the very nature of things, in the constitution of each character, must have been equally existing together.
Can anything be plainer than this, or at the same time more opposed to the creed of J. A. Jones, who, in his “Letter” to us, expressly says,
The term, 'Son of God,' in the scriptures, uniformly and invariably has respect to our glorious Immanuel in his complex character as God man; and in this sense, and this sense only, is Christ the only-begotten of the Father.” “I venture to assert that there is not one text in the Bible that speaks of him under the character of the 'Son of God,' but it has respect to his office as Mediator, and not to his original, Divine, and essential nature as Jehovah, and coeval with the Father.
And again:
“His obedience flows from his Sonship; and this proves him to be the Son of God in his complex character, What saith the apostle? 'Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.' (Hebrews 5:8)”
“The character of the Son of God (I repeat it) belongs to him only in the union of natures. If we consider him only in his Divine essence, as God, the scriptures never give him the character of a Son so considered. And in the human nature only he could not be the 'only-begotten of God.’”
Now, in exact contradiction of this most unscriptural position that “the character of the Son of God belongs to him only in the union of natures;” and that “if we consider him only in his divine essence as God the scriptures never give him the character of a Son so considered,” the Doctor expressly declares that “in the eternal generation of the Son of God, as the Father is eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Father, so must the Son be eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Son.” By his “personal character” the Doctor means his divine nature as a Person in the blessed Trinity; and in this personal existence he declares he is eternal and everlasting. This is all we contend for, that God the Son is the Son of God as a Person in the blessed Trinity, distinct from and independent of his covenant engagements, his mediatorial character, and his complex Person, whether set up in the mind and by the decree of God or manifested in and by his incarnation. There is not, then, the shade of a difference between Dr. Hawker's views of the Sonship of Christ and ours. The only difference is, whether the expressions “begotten” and” only-begotten” refer to his eternal generation, which the Doctor holds as firmly as we do, or to his being set up as the God-man Mediator; and the reason why he refers these expressions to his being set up in his complex Person is because of the words, “this day,” and “today,” which he considers cannot refer to eternal generation. But the good old Doctor is not here always consistent with himself, for in his Morning Portion for February 28, he thus writes:
“Who shall undertake to speak of the most glorious state of the Son of God, before he condescended to come forth from the bosom of God for the salvation of his people? Who shall describe the blessedness of the Father and Son in their mutual enjoyment of each other? .... Did
Jesus leave the Father's bosom; and did the Father take this only-begotten, only-beloved Son from his bosom?”
And again, in his “Personal Testimony of God the Father to the Person, Godhead, and Sonship of God the Son,” he writes:
The Son of God is called his own Son, his dear Son, his only-begotten Son, the Son of his love, and the like, not the Son of God by creation as angels and men are, neither is he called the Son of God by adoption, as is the church, neither as Mediator, for in this sense he is God's servant. But he is called the Son of God in a special, personal, and particular manner, as the only-begotten of the Father, of the same nature with himself, over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
This last quotation, we should think, must settle the question beyond all doubt what the Doctor's views were not only as to the eternal Sonship of Christ but as to the application of the word “only-begotten” to express that generation. Whether he was always consistent in his use and interpretation of the word “only-begotten” it is not for us to determine.
2. But we will now show that in quoting from the article, “Generation,” this poor old man who denies the charge of garbling, has repeated the offence, and that in a still more aggravated manner, for he has commenced his quotation in the very middle of a sentence, omitting that part of it which asserts the eternity of the Son of God. To prove this, we will first give the quotation as he has given it, and then as it stands in Dr. Hawker's works:
Again, under the head ‘Generation’ in his Dictionary, the Doctor says, 'The Holy Ghost hath been very explicit in his sacred word, where the Son of God, when standing up as the Mediator and Head of the church before all worlds, is called the first-begotten Son, and the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. All these and the like phrases wholly refer to the Son of God in his humbling himself as our Redeemer and Mediator, the God-man in one Person Christ Jesus. Here we cannot be at a loss to have the clearest apprehension, because they refer to his office character. Hence, all those titles are very plain. 'He is Jehovah's servant.' (Isaiah 42:1.) And 'his Father is greater than he.' (John 14:28.) And God is the 'God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Ephesians 1:17.) All these, and numberless expressions of the like nature, wholly refer to the Son of God as Christ, and have no respect to his eternal nature and Godhead abstracted from his office character as Mediator.
Now see the quotation as it stands in the original, and then judge whether our charge of garbling be well founded or not.
The scriptures in many places have said so much in defining the Person of the Godhead, that there can be nothing rendered more certain, and as an article of faith to the believer, and none is more important. But while this is held forth to us in this view as a point most fully to be believed, God the Holy Ghost hath in no one passage, as far as I can recollect, pointed out to the church the mode of existence, or explained how the Son of God is the Son, and the Father is the Father, in the eternity of their essence and nature. Perhaps it is impossible to explain the vast subject to creatures of our capacities. Perhaps nothing finite can comprehend what is infinite. The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God is therefore proposed as an article demanding our implicit faith and obedience; and here the subject rests.
But while this doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God in common with the Father, is held forth to us as a most certain truth, though unexplained, because our faculties are not competent to the explanation of it, the Holy Ghost hath been very explicit in teaching the church how to understand the phrases in his sacred word, where the Son of God, when standing up as the Mediator and Head of his church before all worlds, is called the 'first-begotten Son, and the only-begotten of the Father,' full of grace and truth. All these and the like phrases wholly refer to the Son of God in his humbling himself as our Redeemer and Mediator, the God-man in one Person,
Christ Jesus; then begotten to this great design; the first in all Jehovah's purposes for salvation. Here we cannot be at a loss to have the clearest apprehension, because they refer to his office-character. Hence all those titles are very plain: ‘He is the Head of his body the church.' Ephesians 1:22.) 'The Head of Christ is God.' (1 Corinthians 11:3) He is Jehovah's Servant, (Isaiah 42:1,) and his Father is greater than he. (John 14:28.) And God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 1:17.) All these, and numberless expressions of a like nature, wholly refer to the Son of God as Christ, and have no respect to his eternal nature and Godhead abstracted from his office-character as Mediator.
And I cannot, in this place, help expressing my wish that the writers of commentaries on the word of God had kept this proper distinction, when speaking of the Lord Jesus, between his eternal nature and essence as Son of God, which is everywhere asserted but nowhere explained, and his office-character as God-man Mediator, the Christ of God, which is fully revealed. The Scriptures have done it. And it would have been a proof of divine teaching, if all writers upon the Scriptures had done the same. Our Almighty Saviour, in a single verse, hath shown it, when he saith, (Matthew 11:27,) 'No man knoweth the Son but the Father;' that is, knoweth him as Son of God, knoweth him in his Sonship as God, one with the Father, and impossible to be so known but by God himself. And it is in this sense also that it is said, 'No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which lay in the besom of the Father, he hath declared him;' (John 1:18;”) that is, no man hath seen God as God, in his threefold character of Person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But when he who lay in the bosom of the Father came forth in our nature and revealed him as the Father and himself as the Son, equal in the eternity of their nature as God, then the glorious truth was explained. Then was it understood, that the Father, as Father, and the Son, as Son, were from nil eternity the same; their existence the same, their nature the same; the Father not being Father but in the same instant as the Son the Son ; for the very name of the one in the relationship implies the other, and the eternity of the one including the eternity of the other also. So that both, in union with the Holy Ghost, form the one eternal, undivided Jehovah, which was, and is, and is to come.
Will our readers oblige us by comparing together the quotation as given by J. A. Jones, which we have copied word for word from his defence of himself in the “Earthen Vessel,” with the same quotation as given by us word for word from Dr. Hawker, in the second paragraph? They will then clearly see that he has commenced in the middle of a sentence and suppressed the beginning. Now, if what is suppressed were unimportant, there would be no good ground of complaint; but when the suppression of one part of a sentence makes it appear that an author held one doctrine when he really held another, this, in ordinary language, is termed “garbling.” This charge we have brought against him before, and we now make it again. He denies the charge in toto and calls on us for proof. Here it is. The Doctor declares that “the doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God, in common with the Father, is held forth to us as a most certain truth, though unexplained, because our faculties are not competent to the explanation of it.” Does not the Doctor here most plainly declare that “the doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God is held forth to us as a most certain truth?” Why, then, did J. A. Jones suppress those words, and begin in the middle of a sentence, except with the purpose of making it appear that the Doctor did not hold that doctrine? And what is this but “garbling” his words, and that for the dishonest purpose of representing him as holding views contrary to those which he really held? for after he has given the quotation he goes on with these words:
“I have now proved that Dr. Hawker held as firmly as I do that the Sonship of Christ was in his complex character as God man, and that he was not begotten in abstract deity.”
But how has he proved or attempted to prove this, but by garbling his words, and suppressing a most important sentence? In this way anything may be proved; and scripture itself might be brought forward to prove “there is no God,” by suppressing, “The fool hath said in his heart.”
But what can we think of a man's claiming Dr. Hawker to be on his side in denying the eternal Sonship of our most blessed Lord in the very face of the following expressions, which he could not possibly have overlooked, for they form part of the very article upon “Generation,” from which he has quoted, and which therefore he must have read: “God the Holy Ghost hath in no one passage, as far as I can recollect, pointed out to the church the mode of existence, or explained how the Son of God is the Son, and the Father is the Father, in the eternity of their essence and nature.” The Doctor evidently declares, what we most fully and reverently acknowledge, that the Holy Ghost has not explained how the Son of God is the Son, &c. But does he deny that he is the Son of God as his eternal Son, or consider him to be such only by virtue of his complex Person? On the contrary, he declares that “the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God is proposed as an article demanding our implicit faith and obedience;” that “the Son of God is the Son and the Father is the Father in the eternity of their essence and nature;” that “the doctrine of the eternity of the Son of God in common with the Father is held forth to us in Scripture as a most certain truth;” and that “the Father as Father, and the Son as Son, were from all eternity the same; their existence the same, their nature the same; the Father not being the Father but in the same instant as the Son the Son; for the very name of the one in the relationship implies the other, and the eternity of the one including the eternity of the other also.” We admire the simplicity, the clearness, and the force of this language, and give to it our most hearty and unfeigned assent as a most blessed declaration of the eternal Sonship of our adorable Lord. But the Doctor draws a most sound and scriptural distinction between the eternal essence and nature of Jesus as the true and proper Son of God, and his office character as God-man Mediator; and whilst he holds the eternal Sonship of Christ, and that he is so by eternal generation, he explains the words “begotten” and “only-begotten” as applicable to him in his office character.
It must surely be either great ignorance or great disingenuousness to contend that the Doctor denies the blessed Lord to be the Son of God by eternal generation, because in his explanation of the word “generation” he applies the term “only-begotten” to him as expressive of his standing up as the Mediator and Head of his church before all worlds. One would have thought that a very little knowledge of the Scriptures would have shown that the sacred writers themselves have applied the words, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee,” to the resurrection of Christ, as Acts 13:33. It would not, therefore, at all affect the application of the words to the eternal generation of our blessed Lord even if we admitted that they were also applicable to the setting up of the complex Person of Christ in the mind of God; the fact being that a passage of scripture frequently admits a secondary as well as a primary signification. But nothing can be more unsound or lead to greater error than employing a secondary meaning of a word to overthrow a primary one.
It is our mercy that we have not learnt the doctrine from man, but by the teaching of God in our own soul, and by the blessed light cast upon the Scriptures, and shining thence into our heart.158 We highly esteem Dr. Hawker, and believe he was a man sweetly led into the truth of God. For this reason and knowing how high his authority stands with the church of God, we have vindicated him from holding such an error as the poor old man is involved in who is so angry at being exposed. Romaine, we freely acknowledge, did not hold that Christ was the Son of God in the eternity of his nature, but that it was a covenant title. He is, we believe, the only writer of any repute in the church of God who has denied the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord; but early in life he became imbued with Hutchinsonian views, and from these he never seems to have been fully delivered. But it is the mercy of those who fear God that their faith does not “stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God;” and that they are blest with that “anointing which teacheth of all things, and is truth, and is no lie.”159
Here, then, we leave the subject, as far as regards Mr. J. A. Jones, for we are sure, if he still claim the authority of Dr. Hawker, all words must be wasted on him. But as we have found much sweetness and savor in looking over the Doctor's works for further confirmation of his views, we may, in a future No., give some further extracts from them.
THE OPENING OF MOUNT ZION CHAPEL HITCHIN, ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, MARCH 7th, 1860,
THE PROFITS ARISING FROM THE SAIE OF THIS SERMON WILL BE APPLIED IN AID OF THE FUNDS OF THE ABOVE CHAPEL
LONDON:
W. H. COLLINGRIDGE, CORNER OF LONG LANE, 117 to 119, ALDERSGATE STREET
SERMON
“That thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed,” Luke 1:4
This letter or treatise, which we call “the Gospel by Luke,” was addressed, as well as subsequently was the “Acts of the Apostles,” to Theophilus. Who Theophilus was we have no clear account; but it is evident he was, as his name signifies, a lover of God; and, as Luke designates him, a “most excellent” man. It is also plain he was an inquirer and a seeker after truth; and Luke, knowing this, and “having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first,” deemed it good to follow the example of some others who had “taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us and accordingly joined his confirmatory testimony to theirs, that Theophilus might know, by the confirmation of every word in the mouth of two or three witnesses, “the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed.” And we may add, not only that Theophilus might know, but that all the disciples, not only those then living, but them also “who should believe on Jesus through their word,” might be certain that they were not following cunningly devised fables, but veritable realities, in believing the testimony that God had given of his Son and in feeling that “these things were written, that they might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, they might have life through his name.”
It is of great importance that you and I should know what we really do believe; for it is very possible that we may have a kind of faith that has no foundation in certainties, but merely rests on probabilities or reports, and creeds of other men. We need to beware of taking anything for certainty but what we know from the word of God; and know, not by any man’s interpretation, but by a personal search of the Scriptures, whether these things are so. It needs no Hebrew or Greek for a spiritual man to learn the truth from the Scriptures; because “the engrafted word,” engrafted by the Holy Ghost in his soul, as a living vital power, which causes him to have the witness in himself, enables him, by comparing “spiritual things with spiritual” that is, the spiritual testimony in him, with the spiritual testimony in the Word; to search out and to know what is truth. Though the translation of the Scriptures we possess may not be perfect, I would sooner rely on it than on any self-appointed interpreter, who may think himself capable of improving, or, rather of altering it. If we carefully regard the testimony of the four Evangelists, we find a wonderful agreement in their account “of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach;” which can only be attributed to the agency of God the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration and guidance they wrote. And though it would appear many took in hand to write the same records, yet it has only seemed good to the Holy Ghost to preserve for our use the four witnesses whose written evidence we have before us.
Their whole testimony is of Jesus. Luke had evident reference to him, as his entire subject, for the “things which (he says) are most surely believed among us,” and of which he desires that Theophilus may “know the certainty,” are none other than the things connected with the person, the mission, and the work of Jesus. And I purpose this morning to make a remark or two on each of those three important matters; and it seems the more requisite to do so, as false (I use the word advisedly) representations have been made, by those who ought to have known better, and of whom more honesty might have been expected, of the views of myself and others respecting the person, mission, and work of our most precious and gracious Christ.
I shall endeavor, as I may be enabled, to speak first of the person of Christ.
Let us try to dispossess ourselves of all we have heard and known of Christ and let us seek to approach a knowledge of him afresh, as he is introduced to us in the Scriptures, and more especially by these Evangelists; and if we are enabled to do so, we shall, doubtless, have a profitable meditation, and a further assurance of the verity of the one faith.
As to the Old Testament, I may observe, from it, as taken in and by itself (and without the interpretation furnished by the New), we learn little of Christ; for though it speaks much of him, and he is the burden of its direct and indirect testimony, yet, except as we see that testimony as interpreted by the actual events recorded in the New, we could not clearly trace its application to him. It is prophetically that Christ is spoken of in the Old Testament; and he who tries to explain beforehand the exact course of events indicated in unfulfilled prophecy (as is attempted in the present day to some extent, amongst those who presume to give dates for the fulfilment of those prophecies of Daniel and John that yet wait their accomplishment) exposes himself to deserved contempt, as professing to understand “the times and seasons which God has reserved in his own power.” When the prophets of old spoke of Christ, the very words they uttered were mysterious to themselves; and though they had a faint knowledge, as seeing Christ afar off as he that was to come, yet, as Peter intimates to us, both they and the angels had to wait for the actual events before their own prophecies became clearly intelligible to them (I Peter.1:10, 11). There was something so singularly ambiguous and paradoxical in the prophecies of Christ that nothing but His own actual coming could reconcile and explain the apparent contradictions. “A virgin was to conceive,” in total reversal of the order of nature; and “to bear a son, and call his name Immanuel,” or “God with us!” What an extraordinary paradox, that the son of a virgin should be called God and be such with us! And then again, “the child born, and the Son given, is to be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, or the Father of Eternity!” How he, who was to be the Son born of a woman, should be the Father of Eternity, was mysterious indeed; nothing but the actual event could explain these and such scriptures; and therefore the prophets constantly refer us to the future, saying, “shall be called,” not is called, or has been called, though it is certain to us that Jesus is “truly God,” and as such existed in his “Eternal Godhead,” with the Father and the Holy Ghost, from all eternity; and though he only became “manifest in the flesh” in time; yet, in the Divine purpose, he was foreseen and regarded as such from everlasting. David shows us this when he says, “I will declare the decree: The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day (referring to a definite day) I have begotten thee.” The decree was unfulfilled in actual fact, and yet the same as if already past in the mind of him to whom the end and the beginning are equally present, and to whom there is nothing new. It is not, then, from the Old Testament we must first seek the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as it only knows him, and testifies of him as “He that was to come, but from the New; that having learned who he is, and what he is, as recorded there, we may be able to trace him in the ancient prophecies as testimonies of his coming and works.
To begin with Matthew, who stands first amongst the witnesses who join in proclaiming him; will you notice the very title of his book? He calls it, at the very first verse, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ,” and at once begins to give us a pedigree of him, according to the flesh; telling us that “from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.” Luke goes further, and traces the pedigree up to Adam, who, he tells us, “was the Son of God”, the Son of God, not like Christ by generation, but by creation, as the angels also are. Now, these two pedigrees seem to set forth, as to one of them, the descent of the “supposed” father, Joseph; and as to the other, that of Mary. Now, why are the Evangelists so particular about tracing the descent of Jesus? According to the views of those who talk about an eternal generation, Matthew and Luke must have been busying themselves very uselessly in tracing out the generation of Him whose generation was before all worlds. On this subject I may say, though some of us have been instructed in such a theory, according to human creeds, and by learned definers of God’s mode of existence, yet we have failed, and shall ever fail, “to learn the certainty” of it from anything that either Luke or any other of the Evangelists said, or from the word of God. We, therefore, say to these upholders of the creeds of men, we do not wish to follow your unscriptural theory of a generated or begotten God; but we wish to adhere to the “Law and the Testimony.” In doing so, we are at no loss as to why the two Evangelists trace the descent of Jesus. It is that they may show us that as truly as he is self-existent God, in essential equality with the Father and the Holy Ghost; so also, is he truly man, and born as truly as we have been born, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, but without sin. Mark how carefully the Evangelists note every step in connection with his birth. Matthew says: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” and ‘‘that which was conceived (begotten) in her was of the Holy Ghost.” Mark says nothing about the mother of Jesus, but, as Matthew had carefully introduced him as born of Mary, he at once heads his book as “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;” at once asserting the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, who was the agent of his birth, and at the same time identifying him as the son of Mary, by using the same title (Jesus Christ) as was used by Matthew. Then Luke goes into more particulars than Matthew: “Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and briny forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest;” and again: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore, also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” And, as if to show the identity of Mary’s state referred to, with that of the wife of Zacharias, the angel added: “And behold thy cousin Elizabeth she hath also conceived a son in her old age,” &c. Look at every word of this testimony, for every word is expressive. The cause of Christ being called the Son of God, and Jesus, is his being begotten of the Holy Ghost; as is plainly apparent by the use of the word therefore, in so emphatic a way. Luke further tells us, while Joseph and Mary were at Bethlehem, “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son and the angels announced to the shepherds the glorious fact of his birth in these words, “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Mark the three titles, Saviour (the same as Jesus), Christ, the Lord; the Lord was born in our nature! God had put on human flesh and had been brought forth in a stable! “And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”
You may ask why I am thus particular in tracing the circumstances of the birth of Christ? Because there are two or three things made indisputably plain and certain thereby. I will just name them, and then pass on. The first is, that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin, and thus became the only-begotten Son of God; all other sons of God, such as angels and men, being made, but he alone being begotten; and every scripture that speaks of him as begotten refers obviously to this only begetting; besides which none other is known, except in the imagination or invention of men (John 1:14 and 18; Hebrews 1:5, 6; John 3:16, 1 John 4, 9); and every other scripture that speaks of Christ as begotten, speaks of him with evident reference to his birth into the world, and only need consulting by those who wish to “know the certainty of the things wherein they have been instructed,” for this to be perceived; and also for it to be seen that there is not one particle of evidence, from Genesis to Revelations, that the Deity of Christ is a derived, a begotten, a generated, and thus an originated and not an original Deity161. Another thing that is obvious, is, that the name Jesus was never given to Jesus on until after his birth at Bethlehem, except in the purpose of and by prophecy, and that the same remark applies to the title, “Son of God.” I would also name, that he that was born at Bethlehem was the Lord! and that the human and divine nature were combined in his person. How this could be, I have nothing to do with. It was so; and the Holy Ghost, as if to meet any doubt or question on the subject, said to Mary (Luke 1:27), “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”
I wish next to say a few words on the names and titles of Christ, which help us to a more intimate knowledge of the greatness and dignity of his Person as the Incarnate God. This I will very briefly do.
And, first, among his names we would refer to that dear name Emmanuel, or God with us. He was God, and he was man, God in our nature, retaining the omnipotence of the Deity, and yet amenable to all human laws and requirements. As to his veritable and eternal Godhead, the scripture is very plain, and ascribes to Him the same self-existent Majesty as to the Father and the Holy Ghost; and it holds out no sanction to the notions of those who contend that the Sonship of Christ has reference to his divine nature as such. He is stated to be the “Mighty God,” “Eternal God,” “God,” “I Am,” “God over all,” “the Great God,” “Lord of Lords,” and as such he condescended to take flesh in the womb of the virgin, and became the “Son of God,” by his being begotten of the Holy Ghost. Can anything be plainer to the man who takes his faith from his Bible? Human creeds, and especially that called Athanasian, would have us believe that Christ is “God of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds;” but no man ever found such a theory in the Scriptures, nor is there a text that even appears to favor such a notion, unless it be wrested from its connection, or distorted by human sophistry from its natural meaning. It is possible, by separating one part of a scripture from its connection with another, to make almost anything seem true; but those who do this “handle the word of God deceitfully” and do not the truth. If Christ had been produced by an eternal generation, his highest title would have been “Son of God” and instead of his name being “God with us,” it would have been the “Son of God with us” and those scriptures just now referred to would have designated him “Mighty Son of God.” “Eternal Son of God,” “Son of God,” “Son of I Am,” “Son of God over all,” “the Great Son of God.” Had the Scripture said this, or anything like it, there would have been good reason to receive it; but, as it is perfectly plain to every unbiassed searcher of the Word, that the God-head of Christ is fully asserted; and that no part of the Scripture warrants the belief that the term Son applies to his divine nature, but to his complex person, I see no reason to consider either Athanasins or his abettors any authorities at all, and, therefore, reject them all, and take my stand on the Scripture. I know it is often alleged that the Scriptures abound with proofs that “Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” as if this was what we dispute. What we assert is, that Jesus Christ, and not the Deity of Jesus Christ separately from his humanity, is the Son of God, and that the meaning of those scriptures that say so is not that God, or Christ in his divine nature, is the son of God, but that Emmanuel, God with us, God manifest in the flesh, the God-man, is the Son of God. There is no revelation about the origin of God, save that He is and it is not meet that we should presume to tell how God is, otherwise than as he has told us, namely, that “from everlasting to everlasting he is God,” and that he exists essentially in a Trinity who are One, and yet Three, Three and yet One. All else we know of him has reference to the relation he bears to his people in Christ, and however much assertions may be made about Eternal Sonship,” “Eternal generation,” or “begotten God,” those assertions, being totally at variance with both the letter and spirit of the Word, are not entitled to any weight. The Scripture doctrine of the prior and self-existent Deity of Jesus is so plain, that he who searches must find it, unless his mind is pre-occupied with a different theory that be prizes more than Scripture testimony.162 The Lord Jesus Christ is either (as the Arians say) “The Highest Creature, and as such worthy of Divine honors or he is (as the Sabellians say) “a mere title, which the one God with three names” has assumed; or he is (as the Church of England says) “begotten God,” being (or having his origin) “by the Father;” or he is (as we say) “Self-existent God, equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and became man by a mere act of his own will, and for the declaration of the love of God in his Trinity of persons to his eternally chosen people.” Let every man look in his Bible which of these views are true, and if he have any spiritual discernment, the conclusion is inevitable.
The title “Jesus” expresses to us much the same as Emmanuel; and the reason I mention it is, to remind you again that its application is entirely to the complex person of Christ. “His name shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins,” is what the angel said of him before his birth into the world; and he was not qualified to be “Jesus,” and to do what is signified in that dear name, except as he were our nature. The term, therefore, of Jesus is never used with exclusive reference to his divine nature, though it is true that in the purpose of God, and by the engagements of the everlasting covenant, he was, in Jehovah’s reckoning and foresight, Jesus from everlasting. This remark also applies to the title “Christ,” the Sent or Anointed. The fact of his being sent gave birth to the name which expresses his Messiahship; and if he received the title before his coming in the flesh, it was entirely in contemplation of it. All his other titles of Brother, Friend, High Priest, Captain, Son of God, and such like, declare to us the same palpable truth, that He who is such, is such only as he wears our nature in unison with his own, and is thus possessed at once of a sympathetic heart and an omnipotent hand, both of which are ever in exercise towards us.
It is certain that the divine nature of Christ existed from all eternity, and that the human nature was begotten in time; and if those who censure us, and yet admit this, would use Scripture language and Scripture ideas to convey their meaning, they would find themselves compelled to proclaim the self-existent Godhead and pure humanity of the Lord Jesus, as we do, and would find the fallacy of following mere human creeds.
Having thus glanced at the Person of Christ, as introduced to us by the testimony of the Evangelists, we will now say something as to his Mission. He was sent into the world, he was brought into the world, he came into the world. The Father sent Him, the Holy Spirit brought Him, and He came. These expressions, though apparently at variance, are all consistent with each other. The Trinity were concerned in the Incarnation. The Father recognized the babe at Bethlehem as the son of David, of whom he had said, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son,” (see Hebrews 1: 5, with 2 Samuel 7:14); the Holy Ghost was upon him in his mother’s womb and anointed him without measure; whilst He himself was a consenting agent in his own manifestation in the flesh. Who can comprehend this wonder? It is not a subject for comprehension, but a matter of revelation and faith! How God could become incarnate, and still retain all the essential attributes of Deity, being less than God and a little lower than the angels, only by his participation of flesh and blood, we cannot describe nor define: but that such was the case is “surely believed among us,” because the record in heaven and the record on earth both agree in that one testimony of him. How, when he was on earth, he could be “the Son of Man which is in heaven,” faith alone can understand by relying on the unaltered and unalterable attributes of his Deity, and by recognizing his secret and eternal intercommunication with the Father and the Spirit, with whom he is one, even whilst he is one with us, and we one in Him! Though we cannot fathom God’s modes of operation, yet we indeed can say we know that Jesus Christ was “born of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law;” and we know also, that the “taking the seed of Abraham” was an act of his own will, in which he was a consenting and a willing agent. How beautifully does Paul express this to the Philippian Church in the 2nd chapter: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men,” &c. Here you see the apostle speaks of everything connected with Jesus’s humiliation as his own personal and voluntary act; and the Lord Jesus himself put the matter in the same aspect; for he said of himself, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world:” again, “I leave the world, and go to the Father and also of his life he said, “I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He thus asserted his own entire freedom of action in what he did. “He gave himself for us,” according to the willing consent that he had given when he had said in the engagements of old,
“Lo! I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, O God.” He came of himself: and yet he did not come of himself only, but the Father sent him; and these statements, though apparently contradictory, are perfectly reconcilable and consistent; for his being sent of the Father, and brought by the Holy Ghost, was the result of his own willingness to come; and that willingness was the result of no necessity of his being, as it would have been where he essentially a son, but arose out of the purpose of his own good pleasure. I know some speak of God as if a necessity of his being had originated the covenant of his mercy; but this view represents God as if ruled by some law of necessity and would attribute to him no pure freedom of will. Beloved, there is no law above God; he alone is free to will and do whatsoever he pleases; and when he willed to love his people, the love was secondary to, and originated by, the will. When men speak of the essential attributes of Deity, they often confound his covenant relationship to his people in Christ with the essential features of his character; and thus, speak of love and of mercy as though they were both essential characteristics of Deity. These, and every other feature of benignity exercised by Jehovah towards his people, have their origin in his sovereign, free, and un-biased Will, and their exercise only in and through Christ. Take away Christ, and there is no love or mercy in God to sinners; for justice then steps in to vindicate its offended rights, and the attributes of a Holy God demand vengeance on the transgressor. The will of God is absolutely his own, and under his own control; and no persons can supplant it; nor is he constrained in what he does or wills by any influence out of Himself. Thus, when Jehovah Jesus willed, in the covenant settlements of old, to take flesh, and when the Father willed to send him, and the Holy Ghost to bring him, there was no law but his own good pleasure influencing him thus to will. So, the Scripture assures us over and over again, proclaiming that “he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” and “according to his own good pleasure.” When, therefore, we speak of the mission of Christ, it is as a mission in which God in the full sense was concerned, and in which he had a clear, a special, and a definite object in view; an object which, to spiritual minds, is clearly set forth.
He is said not only to have come, but to have been sent. He not only came of his own will, but was sent by, and to do, the Father's will. The Father is spoken of as doing all things in and by him, because all bad his sanction and approval. What Christ did was said to be done by the Father in him, what Christ said, he said as having learned of the Father, and what he taught, he taught as having received the revelation of it from the Father; and to show the unison of purpose and action he taught his disciples, “I and my Father are One,” “he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father,” and “believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” Christ came, as sent by the Father, in the capacity of servant, to do his will, and carry out all his purpose; and yet that will and purpose was as much Christ's own as the Father’s, for the mind of the Father and of Christ are One, When, therefore, we speak of Christ as sent, and as a servant, it is no disparagement of his true equality in the essential Godhead; because his own consent and will led him to take the form of a servant, and to subject himself to the will of Him that sent him. Grasp this idea if you can, friends: and remember also that its application is equally true of the Holy Ghost; of whom, as the co-equal of the Father and of Christ, and of whose mission, as helping us to a fuller view of that of Christ, I will now say a few words.
There are many who seem not to know if there be any Holy Ghost, or who regard him as a mere emanation or attribute of the Deity. We preach the true personal and eternal God-head of the Holy Ghost as one with the Father and the Word, and as being the Author of the same acts of creative omnipotence. There is the same Divine power exerted in regenerating a sinner as in creating a world, or calling light out of darkness; and as in the chaos which existed before God said “Let there be light,” the Spirit is stated to have “moved upon the face of the waters;” so he moves among the chaos of the Adam-fall ruin, and exercises his creative power upon the morally shapeless mass of degraded and sinful humanity according to his own will. The wind is the figure used by Christ to express the sovereignty of his operations, as being totally independent of external influence; and as the “wind blows where it listeth,” and never asks man’s consent as to whence or where its course shall be, “so everyone born of the Spirit” is influenced by a power as totally independent of him spiritually as is the current of the wind naturally. The Majesty and Godhead of the Spirit was wonderfully proclaimed by Christ when he said, “Whosoever speaks against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” And Peter also, when Ananias and Sapphira had lied to the Holy Ghost, said to them, “Ye have not lied unto men, but unto God.” The Holy Ghost is here plainly set forth as being personally God; not a mere emanation, attribute, or procession, but true and sell-existent Deity. Some who acknowledge the personality of the Holy Ghost, and deny his being a mere emanation or attribute, still maintain that his being is by a “proceeding from the Father and the Son.” Now, on this matter permit me to refer you to two scriptures, the one relating to the Holy Ghost, and the other to Christ, as they will help us to know the “certainty of the things;” concerning the true mission of Christ and of the Holy Ghost, which are both intimately connected, and illustrate each other. You may depend upon it, if we err as to the Personality of the Holy Ghost, we are not likely to have any correct views of Christ. If you look at John 15:26, you find it thus written of the Holy Ghost: “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me.” A great stress is laid on the word proceeds, as used here, as if it had reference to the origin of the Holy Ghost and gave a foundation on which to build the creed that he was not “made nor begotten but proceeding.” Is it not somewhat strange that this single scripture, which refers entirely to the Spirit’s mission in succession to that of Christ, should be regarded as authority on which to build a theory of the nature of the Holy Ghost’s being as God? And yet upon this, and no other authority that I know of, we are told to believe that the divine nature of the Holy Ghost proceeded, not by creation or generation, but in some way, from that of the Father and the Son. I decline to believe any theory that detracts from the true and personal Godhead of either Christ or the Spirit; and I decline to believe that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father any otherwise than as Christ did, namely, in his mission to this world. In no other sense did Christ or the Holy Spirit proceed, save as they came forth from the essential glory of the Godhead, to minister to the saints on earth; and that procession was a fulfilment of the Divine will for the salvation of his people. The procession of Christ is just as plainly indicated as is that of the Spirit. In John 8:42, you find Christ saying, “If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God: neither came I of myself, but He sent me.” Now, I never heard any one quote this scripture as a description of the mode of Christ’s existence; and yet, if the other indicate the origin of the Holy Ghost, I do not see how this could be refused the same application to Christ. At any rate, it is plain the expression is used as to both in the same way; and if procession means mode of being in the one case, it does also in the other. But to the searcher of the Scriptures it does not mean that in either case, but in both expresses to us the sovereign going forth of Christ and the Eternal Spirit for the salvation of the Church. We see here the fallacy of those traditions of men which would pretend to point out an essential difference in the mode of being of the glorious Trinity; a difference which the scripture does not authorize, and which rests only on the authority of man. That there is a difference in the economical characters which the sacred Three bears towards his people, is unquestionable; but that difference is one existing only as the result of Jehovah’s purposes of covenant love and grace towards his people, and plainly set forth in the word.
We may now ask, briefly, to whom and for what was Christ sent? On this head I will say little, as I wish to reserve space for a few observations on His work. To whom did Christ come? He came into the world, but his mission was not to the world, but to his own people who were in it. He did not come to persuade the Scribes and Pharisees to believe on him, for he spoke parables, that they might not know what he meant; and over and over again he avoided the multitude that followed him. He had a definite mission on behalf of certain who were “his own,” who were “given to him,” and who are spoken of as “his sheep,” “his friends,” “his brethren,” and of whom he declares it to be the pleasure of the Father that none should be lost, but that they should inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. It was to and for his people that he came as a Surety, a Captain, a Saviour, and a Shepherd; that he might undo all the evil they had done, and were penally liable for, and that he might gather them together and bring them home to their predestined glory. He came to die, that they might live; to be made poor, for their endowment with his riches; and to take their sin in exchange for his spotless righteousness. His mission was not for mere indiscriminate benevolence, but for specially appointed objects and purposes. It was not to offer or propose, but to perform; and in Him there was a performance and finishing of all the Father gave him to do, and there was nothing he undertook which he did not complete, finishing transgression, making an end of sin, and bringing in everlasting righteousness unto and upon all that believe.
And as to the Work of Christ, of which I now wish to speak, I may say, if we could comprehend the fulness and completeness of it, we should not indeed hesitate to feel and know that Jesus accomplished, in his own person, every object of his mission, to the entire satisfaction of all the attributes of Deity, and to the everlasting joy of every chosen and heaven-born soul. On him alone hangs all the glory of the house “that is builded for a habitation of God through the Spirit.” Look at his humiliation, his service, his example, and his teaching! Was ever humiliation like his? There never was a condition of poverty, affliction, or sorrow, of which He did not personally partake, no depth of wretchedness of which He did not feel the misery. How touchingly is the picture of his humiliation drawn by Isaiah, in the words, “His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men;” and “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” “He had no form or comeliness; and there was no beauty in him.” Can you picture in your mind’s eye the person here described? I seem to see him as pointed out by a Pharisee, who turns away his face as from an object disagreeable to look upon, and, turning the language of prophecy into modem phraseology, seems to say, Do you see that person? what a strangely-disfigured countenance he has! and how deeply the furrows of sorrow have left their lasting mark upon him! I cannot bear to look upon him, he is such an object of suffering and misery; it is pitiable to see his whole frame so distorted by anguish and grief. We know not whence he is; but we esteem and think him stricken of God: some special judgment must have befallen him, either on account of sin, or from some other cause; for he is a woefully afflicted man, and must have incurred the fearful wrath of the Almighty to be so terribly dealt with! The Jews despised him and set him at nought, because there was not one particle of natural attraction in his appearance, but everything that in their minds excited a repulsive feeling and a wish to turn away from him, as being a painful sight to look upon. They hid their faces from him; and many would now do the same if he were in the flesh, and would no doubt think of him as the barbarians of Malta thought and said of Paul, when they saw the viper fasten on his band: “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.” They would turn from him as an object disagreeable and uninviting and would despise his poverty-stricken and undesirable form. But though the Scribes and Pharisees of the past and the present would so regard him, we know better the meaning of his position; for “surety he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him.” It was for us his visage was marred, and for us he humbled himself. That he might raise us out of the abyss of sin and ruin into which original guilt and actual transgression had plunged us, and inextricably plunged us unless Power had adapted itself for our rescue and brought omnipotence to bear upon our last estate. We see a beauty in his furrows, and a loveliness in his grief, because He bore them for us, and in the riches of his grace gave us the benefit without money and without price, that we might be made his eternal debtors, and perpetual pensioners on his mere bounty.
His service was also very remarkable. He took upon himself the form of a servant, and he did the work of a servant; for he “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” He did not look and wait for his disciples to serve and minister to him, but he was among them “as he that serves.” His healing the sick, casting out devils, cleansing the leprous, and raising the dead, were acts of service done to and for his people, and not, as some might suppose, rewards of merit, or expressions of approval of conduct or service rendered to Him. He was indeed not by mere name, but in positive fact, a servant of servants. He did service to his people for the love he bore them, as those whom he came to save. He did service and despised the shame of being a servant. Men might condemn him as the companion of poor, unlettered fisherman, and think nothing of him or his work; but he despised the shame, and was not ashamed of such companions. He shunned the honour that comes from such men, and sought obscurity rather than notoriety. His greatness showed itself in the wonders of his condescension, And he was mighty in the menial capacity he assumed. None, or if any, few indeed amongst men, seek to be great in the same way; they seek greatness in the importance they assume, and in the service they exact from others. Some who profess to be his followers, or his servants assume titles and honours which he never sanctioned or accepted, and instead of following him in his lowliness, they often strive among themselves who shall be greatest. The mighty God came to be the servant of man; and so served him that He bore his burdens, cleared his way, provided for his wants, healed his diseases, gave him a kingdom, brought him grace and glory, washed his feet, suffered for his sin, appeased divine wrath, and opened the portals of eternal life to him; and in doing all this Jesus lost not his Deity, but kept it enshrouded in his humanity, and adhered to the fashion of a man and the form of a servant, that he might complete the service he had undertaken.
His Example is also worthy of our note at this time. Many profess to seek a rule of life, and to be anxious that God’s people should not be lawless. The example of Jesus is a living law, which he has given us, that we should walk in his steps, and he that loves Christ will follow him; for of the faithful it is said, “these are they that follow the Lamb, whithersoever he goeth;” and Jesus plainly declares that except a man do so, he cannot be his disciple. He that follows the footsteps of Jesus will walk safely and consistently, whilst he that seeks another guide is sure to err. There is no trait of the fruits of the Spirit that we do not find illustrated in His life; and there is no virtue which is not shown in His acts and walk. He that says he abides in Christ, best shows it by walking as Christ walked; and whatever may be a man’s zeal, or whatever regard he may express for consistency of walk and life, he only evinces the sincerity of his professions in proportion as he follows the example of Jesus. It is in Jesus we find the true example of humility, in his “ making himself of no reputation it is in Him we find perfect submission, to the will of God; “not my will, but thine be done;” entire obedience, which says, “I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me;” true zeal for God’s honour, true trust in His word, and complete acquiescence in His wisdom; and thus he is our living law. His example is the most blessed incentive to obedience in all things; for he that loves Christ will delight in following him and will find great reward in keeping his commandments. And, I may add, those who are intent on following Christ, do not need the disputations of men to enable them to know what is the nature, and what the mode, of attending to his ordinances, precepts, and injunctions. The plain narrative of his life needs but to be well observed, in order to discover the living precepts that are thoroughly qualified to direct our every movement in life; and the only reason why there has been so much disputation as to the nature, subjects, and modes of his ordinances and precepts, is because men have forsaken the fountain for the streams, and have sought by human wisdom to subvert the simple appointments of the Master of the house.
His Teaching was a further part of his work, for he came “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of His people Israel.” “He taught as one having authority, and not as the Scribes,” and “His words were spirit and they were life;” for whosoever heard and kept them was like a house founded on a rock, impervious to all the raging storms and billows of time. It is well when you and I can feel that Christ’s teaching is the sole authority for our faith, and we can regard ourselves as having no dependence on the authority of man. There are but few who are willing to believe Christ, to the exclusion of every human authority; even the Lord’s people like human props to lean on, and would soon forget what manner of faith and spirit they are of, if it were not that at times something arises to put the matter to the test, and to make manifest who they are that follow the Lord in spite of the authority of men; and who they are that follow him, so far as they can do so, with the approbation and sanction of men. There are many now-a-days that name His name but hate His word, that love to be “called by His name to take away their reproach; but who eat their own bread, and wear their own apparel,” disdaining dependence on the blood and righteousness of Jesus. But his true disciples, when put to the proof, turn away from all others to follow him, and will not go away from him, knowing. with Peter, that he “has the words of eternal life;” and that what we know from the experience of his teaching, we know so, that no other authority can persuade us to renounce it for another doctrine of man’s invention, however specious it may be made to appear by the testimony of the greatest and most learned men that ever lived. It is a blessed thing to abide in the truth, and to stand fast in the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ; for they who follow him shall neither abide in darkness, nor want an authority for what they believe and do. Let us, then, beware of anyone who would seek to supersede the teaching of Jesus; and be it ever our earnest desire to abide in Him, and to stand fast in the faith as taught by Him in his sojourn here, and in the exercise of his power and grace on the hearts and consciences of his children.
The life of Christ was full of work. There were twelve hours in his day, and he must work the works of Him that sent him. His works were absolutely his own, done by his own power and agency, and in his own name. Divinity was stamped on his operations; and none could have watched his movements without seeing that, as Lord over all, he displayed in what he did his Majesty of Omnipotence, though disguised in a human form. He commanded the devils, and they (though reluctantly) both acknowledged and obeyed him; they knew he was the Holy one of God, and they dared not resist his right to command and expel them. The sea, the winds, and waves, and even death itself, yielded obedience to him. The fishes and beasts ministered to him and fulfilled his behests. Every disease fled when he commanded, and what he wished was furnished by any means he was pleased to employ; the water was turned to wine, and the loaves and fishes were multiplied at his will. He had the key of men’s hearts, and knew their thoughts, and made them willing to serve, or follow, or entertain him, when he pleased; or he escaped from their enmity, and defeated all their plans of vigilance for his injury, until the appointed hour and power of darkness arrived, and then he gave himself up into the hands of men to be crucified. When an account was asked from him of his works, he contented himself with asserting his sovereign right, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;” proclaiming his co-equal power and authority with the Father. All his works showed him to be God, God manifest in the flesh; and they who observed him saw in him a glory, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,” and adored him as the image and expression of the infinite mercy and condescension of the Godhead, the fulness of which was made to dwell in him bodily. This was illustrated in his baptism, when the Father spoke his sanction, and the Holy Ghost descended on him; and in his transfiguration, when God the Father said, in the presence of Moses and John the Baptist (or Elias), “This is my beloved Son; hear ye him.” As if he had said: Moses, thou gave the Law, which prefigured and testified of Christ by types and shadows, but now the reality is come; and thou mayst resign thy office to this of any rival in their hearts; for they say, from evidence in themselves, as forcible as that which Israel saw on Carmel, “The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God.” They worship him only, not because the law says, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve;” but because they have witnessed the exceeding greatness of his power in his kindness towards them in Christ Jesus, and in bringing them to believe on his name. Not that the Lord’s people have no idols from which they need to be kept; they have many, but the Lord has promised to cleanse them from them; and he does by his grace so fulfil that promise, that he brings Ephraim often to say, “What have I to do any more with idols?” and to inquire of him, that he may be effectually purged from them. The Lord’s people never depart from him after their own idols, without being soon made to feel, it is an evil and a bitter thing to depart from the living God unto dumb idols, and to return again to the Lord with the cry of necessity, “Heal me and I shall be healed, save me and I shall be saved; for thou art my praise.”
They shall worship him in the “HOLY MOUNTAIN at Jerusalem,” even at the mountain of his own holiness, in the midst of his living people. God’s people, we may observe, worship him everywhere; in the cottage or the palace, on the dunghill or on the throne, on the sea or the land, in solitude or in company. Every place where God is pleased to show his goodness is a mercyseat, and it is true of his people:
“Where’er they seek him he is found,
And every place is holy ground:”
for he dwells not in temples made by hands, but in his living people; builded for a habitation of God through the Spirit; which they are, both individually and collectively. But there are especial times and places where and when the Lord’s people worship him; and I understand their worship of him in the holy mount at Jerusalem to mean their meeting in and with a certain portion of the one family, and there, in their testimony by words and acts, setting to their seal that God is true. There were many mounts at and about JERUSALEM; and the whole family of God is divided into many little hills of Zion, which are placed hither and thither in the world: and where God is wont to “show his power and glory,” and where “he sends down the shower of blessing.” Here the outcasts and those who were ready to perish come to sing the song of praise to their delivering God; here, in the congregation of the righteous, they give thanks: and here, by walking in gospel ordinances, and by following the precepts of their gracious Lord, they are enabled as prisoners sent forth, to show themselves before men, and to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour, by uttering forth the praises of him who hath called them out of darkness into his marvelous light.
They WORSHIP. What is the worship rendered by the Lord’s people? The Scribes and Pharisees of old, like those of the present day, imagined they worthily worshipped God by repeating forms of prayer, by using vain repetitions, by external forms; but such worship being only according to the precept of man, was abomination unto the Lord. The true worshippers are they who “worship God in spirit and truth;” and in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, with their “hearts; sprinkled from an evil conscience,” that is, having their hearts sensibly and deeply affected with the consciousness of their present and constant unworthiness. Without this feeling there is no true worshipping of God. He that knows nothing of the absolute worthlessness of all he is and has, knows nothing of himself in his true light; and can never approach God as an acceptable worshipper. But he who is prostrate in the dust, is emptied of self, has seen an end of all perfection, and is satisfied that he is nothing, with sighs and groans truly worships God, and is accepted and heard of him; and the desire of such an one is granted. It is when chastened in our souls and humbled before him, that we find real access, and the answer of peace is given; and the more entirely we have been made to cease from man, and from earthly hopes and expectations, the more certain is it that we shall “serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” Thus, the true worshipper is he who has no sacrifice or gift to bring, no goodness to plead, no anything but groans, and doubts, and fears, save the glimmering hope which pleads, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”
Worship is of two parts, PRAYER and PRAISE. The prayers of the saints, as the cries of living children to a kind and merciful parent, are not, and never can be, cast out; for the “eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers;” he hears their cry when they call upon him, he saves them in the time of trouble and danger, and proves to them that he has not said, “Seek ye my face in vain,” for he makes all his people prove and find him to be a prayer-hearing and answering God, who visits them in sorrow, helps them in weakness, comforts them in sadness, and gives them light in the time of darkness. Well might Paul say, “If only in this life we had hope in Christ, we were of all men most miserable;” for with such an experience of our own helplessness and need as the Holy Ghost gives the soul, we should be in a miserable plight indeed if our hope in Christ only had reference to this life; in other words, if his help were only human. What would a mere human Christ be worth to a soul deeply convinced of sin? or what is our position as Christians worth, if we have not found that the hope we have in Christ, and the help we derive from him in every season of need, is such as lifts op our minds above both the comforts and sorrows of this life, to hope for, and by faith to realize, the foretaste of things unseen and eternal? And, ah, my brethren, cannot you and I bear our testimony, and say, “We have prayed, and the Lord has heard, and has delivered us from all our fears;” he has caused our prayer to be turned to praise, so that we have found the words to be true, “Prayer shall be made unto him, and daily shall he be praised.”
Believer, however great thy sorrow or thy difficulty, pray. Carry thy case to thy gracious Father, and he will comfort thee with the help of his countenance. If he removes not thy grief, he will give thee strength to bear it; a way of escape shall be made for thee, and it shall be well. God hath said thou shalt worship, and as surely as thou hast prayed so surely thou shalt praise. Thy weeping’s shall give way to smiles, and thy darkness to sunshine; and God, even thy God, shall compass thee about with songs of deliverance; and thou shalt testify of Him unto thy brethren, and shalt say, “Come unto me, all ye that fear God, and I will tell you what he hath done for my soul.” He shall put joy in thy heart by the light of his countenance, and thou shalt exult and sing, “The Lord is my light and salvation, whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” Praise is comely for Zion. The believer is never in his right position except when he is acknowledging and praising God for his goodness. Praise is his fitting employ here, and shall be his full employ hereafter; for when the trumpet of the gospel has sounded its last note in this dispensation, and the last elect vessel is gathered, then shall the Lord Jesus himself take that same trumpet, and shall give that one final blast from it, that shall summon all his elect from the four winds of heaven, and simultaneously gather them all to him, as they have been individually gathered to him in time. That well-known sound shall once more warm the hearts of them that are ready to perish, and collect the outcasts. It shall make his foes and their foes fly, and seek the shelter of the mountains and rocks. It shall separate between the sheep and the goats, shall declare the mystery of God to be finished, and shall call the whole family of God to enter into the joy of their Lord.
My friends, if you have heard the trumpet, we may say of you, “Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance. In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted; “and we may add, “they shall behold his face in righteousness, and shall be satisfied when (at the sound of the same trump of God in the hands of Christ) they awake with his likeness.” May it be your lot and mine to hear that final sound with joy, and to recognize in it that same voice which has gladdened our hearts in time, has been to us as “apples of gold in pictures of silver; “and may it betoken to us the end of sorrow and the beginning of a cloudless and eternal day. Amen.
W. H. Collingridge, City Press, Long Lane, and Aldersgate St., E.C.
Things most surely believed among us, as to the Person, and Work of Christ. A Sermon preached at the opening of Mount Zion Chapel, Hitchin, on Wednesday Morning, March 7th, 1800, William Crowther. London: IT. H. Collingridge.
MANY of our readers are doubtless aware that for some time past a warm controversy has been going on in some of the churches of truth concerning the nature of the Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ. We, in common, we believe, with well-nigh all the saints and servants of God who have ever lived and died in the faith of God's elect, believe and hold that he is the eternal Son of God; in other words, that he was in his divine nature the Son of God and God the Son before he became manifested in the flesh. The author of the above sermon, who seems to have come forward as the main champion of the opposite side of the question, openly denies this doctrine, and boldly asserts that Jesus was not the only-begotten Son of God before his incarnation, but became so by being begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin. Our readers well know that we have already written somewhat largely on the subject, and it may, therefore, seem scarcely necessary for us again to take it up by noticing the above sermon, the main object of which is distinctly to explain the views entertained by Mr. Crowther and his friends. But apart from the interest which we take, from our very position cannot but take, in the maintenance of truth and the refutation of error, we have another reason which has induced us to offer a few remarks upon the sermon preached at the opening of Mount Zion Chapel, Hitchin. The views of those who advocate the eternal Sonship of our blessed Redeemer are in some points much misunderstood, if not misrepresented by the adversaries of truth, and conclusions freely drawn from these mis-statements which we altogether disclaim and disavow. A great handle has in consequence been made thereby to injure the cause of truth, to prejudice the mind of the weak, to wound and distress the heart of the tender and timid, and to harden and confirm the obstinate in their error. It has, therefore, for some time past, struck our mind that it would be highly desirable, if it lay in our power, to remove some of these stumbling-blocks; and we have thought the appearing abroad of this sermon has afforded us a favorable opportunity to set forth one or two matters in a somewhat clearer light than we have hitherto done. Not that we mean to confine ourselves to this part of the subject, as we may find it necessary, in the course of our Review, to make some remarks on the sermon itself and the statements contained in it. But that none may accuse us of misrepresenting the views which Mr. Crowther holds, we will give an extract from his sermon:
“You may ask why I am thus particular in tracing the circumstances of the birth of Christ? Because there are two or three things made indisputably plain and certain thereby. I will just name them, and then pass on. The first is, that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin, and thus became the only-begotten Son of God; all other sons of God, such as angels and men, being made, but he alone being begotten; and every scripture that speaks of him as begotten refers obviously to this ONLY-begetting; besides which none other is known, except in the imagination or invention of men;
(John 1:14, 18; Hebrews 1:5, 6; John 3:16; 1 John 5:9;) and every other scripture that speaks of Christ as begotten speaks of him with evident reference to his birth into the world, and only need consulting by those who wish to know the certainty of the things wherein they have been instructed, for this to be perceived; and also for it to be seen that there is not one particle of evidence, from Genesis to Revelation, that the Deity of Christ is a derived, a begotten, a generated, and thus an originated and not an original Deity.”164
This is plain language enough; and we are always glad when men will speak out boldly and clearly what they really do hold. Evasions and concealment of their real views are too much the practice of preachers and writers who have an inward consciousness that they hold sentiments contrary to the received faith of the churches of truth, and in this point they too nearly resemble the ancient Arians and the modern Arminians, who, under a form of sound words, cloak the most deadly errors. But though we commend Mr. Crowther's boldness and plainness, we cannot bestow the same encominms upon his modesty; and we certainly think that he might have had, if not a little less presumption, at any rate a little more good sense and right feeling than to send out his sermon with such a title as he has prefixed to it. It is, to say the least of it, a thorough misnomer.
It comes forth with this title stamped in large characters on its face, “Things most surely believed among us as to the Person, Mission, and Work of Christ.” Who are the “us?” We are very certain that it is not the saints of God, nor the ministers of Christ, for they almost unanimously reject the error which this sermon attempts so laboriously to set up. Nor are they “things surely believed,” even by those who hold his erroneous doctrine, for the faith of God's elect, and of such a faith only Luke speaks as a sure belief, (Luke 1:1) never embraces error in any shape or form, and therefore certainly not the leading error which it is the main object of this sermon to establish. The Holy Ghost, whose work it is to glorify Christ, never revealed a doctrine, either in the word of truth or in the heart of a saint, which robs the Son of God of his highest claim and dearest title. Men may confidently hold and boldly maintain certain views which they believe they see in the scriptures; but, as Hart says on another subject, such persons.
“Do not believe, but think.”
It appears, therefore, to us a piece of presumption at the very outset for a man up to his neck in error to take as the title of his book the language of inspiration, as if he spoke in it with the authority of an apostle, and was the mouthpiece of all the ministers, and all the churches, and all the believers in the land. He must at any rate be conscious that the churches of truth and the ministers of Christ in this land do not surely believe his views, and that there is scarcely a writer of any weight or authority, either in times past or at the present moment, who has advocated them. Luke the evangelist could use such language, for he spoke by express inspiration; but Luke, the inspired penman, writing truth, and William Crowther, the un-inspired minister, preaching error, cannot speak with the same authority to the church of God. We, then, if we may speak in the name of the ministers and the churches of experimental truth in this land, reject and reprobate the title. Whomsoever it includes, it does not include “us.” This may seem strong language; but it is time to speak out. We were, we confess, at first, grieved and pained at seeing the strife that this controversy was causing, how it divided churches and separated chief friends; but lately we have felt that there was a needs-be for this winnowing fan to sift the churches, and to separate the lovers of truth from the lovers of error, as the apostle speaks, “For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” (1 Corinthians 11:19) As lovers of truth, then, we have no wish to be included among the lovers of error, and therefore repudiate the title of the sermon as folding us in its embrace. But if by “us” he mean the church and congregation to whom he was preaching, or a few ministers and people of similar sentiments with himself, we cannot decide for them whether they will accept or not this fraternal embrace; but as the denial of the true and proper Sonship of the blessed Lord includes not only them but all the Pre-existerians and Socinians of the land, we beg leave respectfully to decline any participation in so wide and so erroneous an association.
But leaving the title, let us come to the sermon; and first, let us examine the extract which we have given above, that we may see more plainly and clearly than we have yet done, the real views advocated by the self-constituted leader and brother of the “us.”
According to this extract, then, if Jesus “became the only begotten Son of God, by being begotten of the Holy Ghost”165 in the womb of the Virgin, he clearly-was not the Son of God before he came into the world. This narrows the question into a small compass and raises what lawyers call “an issue;” that is, a point on which both parties agree to try the respective merits of the case, and stake the event of the dispute in hand. So far, then, we willingly join issue with Mr. Crowther in arguing the case upon that point as the chief gist of the whole question.
We have already intimated that we have thought it well to take advantage of the present opportunity to remove some misunderstandings or misrepresentations of the views of those who do believe that Jesus is the Son of the Father, in truth and love; that he was and is the Son of God in his divine Person from all eternity, and therefore before he was manifested in the flesh. The extract which we have already given contains one of these misunderstandings or misrepresentations, and we therefore take the present opportunity to remove it, if possible, out of the way.
The adversaries of the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord, often throw into our teeth that we hold what they are pleased to call (for there is a sad want of holy reverence in their language,) “a begotten God.” Thus the author of the above sermon says, “There is not one particle of evidence from Genesis to Revelation, that the deity of Christ is a derived, a begotten, a generated, and thus an originated and not an original Deity;” and again, (p. 9,) “However much assertions may be made about 'Eternal Sonship,' ‘Eternal generation,' or ‘begotten God,' those assertions being totally at variance with both the letter and the spirit of the word, are not entitled to any weight.” Mr. Crowther and others may have deduced such a conclusion, but they must be sadly ignorant of divine truth not to know that in such sacred mysteries as the Trinity, and truths of a similar kind, it is not permissible to deduce logical conclusions from given premises, as in mere natural reasoning166. But where can they find such an expression as “a begotten God” used by any writer or preacher who advocates the eternal Sonship of the blessed Lord? It is an expression highly derogatory to the blessed Jesus and intended only to cast contempt on the doctrine of his eternal Sonship. A few words, therefore, on this point may not be out of place. We draw a distinction, then, between the essence of God, and the subsistence of the three Persons of the Godhead in that essence. God “is.” (Hebrews 11:6) His great and glorious name as the one Jehovah is, “I AM,” or, “I AM that I AM.” This is his essence, which is necessarily self-existent; and this self-existent essence is common to the three Persons in the Godhead. Were it not so, Jehovah would not be one LORD. (Deuteronomy 6:4) But in this self-existent essence there are three Persons; and the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father, not in his essence, which is self-existent, but in his Personality, or that by which he subsists as a Person in the Godhead. No writer to our mind has handled this point with greater clearness and ability than Dr. Gill; and as his words will justly and necessarily have more force and weight than any of our own, we will give an extract from his “Body of Divinity” on the subject. And first let us see what the Doctor says about the essence of God:
There is a nature that belongs to every creature which is difficult to understand; and so to God the Creator, which is most difficult of all. That Nature may be predicated of God, is what the apostle suggests where he says, the Galatians before conversion served them, who, ‘by nature, were no gods,' (Galatians 4:8) which implies that though the idols they had worshipped were not, yet there was one that was, by nature, GOD; otherwise, there would be no impropriety in denying it of them..... Essence, which is the same thing with nature, is ascribed to God; he is said to be excellent, in essence, (Isaiah 28:28) for so the words may be rendered; that is, he has the most excellent essence or being. This is contained in his names, Jehovah and I am that I am, which are expressive of his essence or being, as has been observed; and we are required to believe that ‘he is,' that he has a being or essence, and does exist; (Hebrews 11:6) and essence is that by which a person or thing is what it is, that is, its nature.
This nature is common to the three Persons in God, but not communicated from one to another; they each of them partake of it, and possess it as one undivided nature; they all enjoy it; it is not a part of it that is enjoyed by one, and a part of it by another, but the whole by each; as ‘all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ,' so in the Holy Spirit; and of the Father there will be no doubt; these equally subsist in the unity of the divine essence, and that without any derivation or communication of it from one to another. I know it is represented by some who, otherwise, are sound in the doctrine of the Trinity, that the divine nature is communicated from the Father to the Son and Spirit, and that he is fons Deitatis, 'the fountain of Deity,' which I think are unsafe phrases, since they seem to imply a priority in the Father to the other two Persons; for he that communicates must, at least, in order of nature, and according to our conception of things, be prior to whom the communication is made; and that he has a super-abundant plenitude of Deity in him, previous to this communication. It is better to say that they are self-existent, and exist together in the same undivided essence; and jointly, equally, and as early one as the other, possess the same nature.” Body of Divinity, Book I., Chap. 4167 *
The essence of God, then, as thus ably and clearly explained, is that by which he exists; and as there can be but one God, and he is necessarily self-existent, his essence is clearly distinct from the modes of subsistence of the three Persons in the Godhead. The adversaries of the eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord, we will not say designedly, but probably through misconception, would represent our views somewhat in the following light, which, however, we put forward with considerable reluctance, as on a subject so holy and sacred we dread to think, much more to speak in any way derogatory to the glory of a Triune Jehovah. They would represent us, then, as holding that first there existed the Father alone; that He begot another God, whom we call the Son; and that from the Father and the Son there proceeded another God, whom we call the Holy Ghost. But this perversion of truth is not our doctrine, nor can any such conclusion be legitimately deduced from our views. It may serve their purpose to seek to overthrow the scriptural doctrine of the eternal Sonship of the adorable Redeemer, by dressing up our views in a garb of their own manufacturing or passing off their illegitimate progeny as our true-born offspring; but we refuse the dress which they would put upon our back and disavow the children which they would lay at our door. It does not follow because the Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God in his divine nature, that he is “a begotten God.”
How, then, it may be asked, do we sustain our doctrine of eternal generation and at the same time obviate such a conclusion? We sustain it thus. We have already shown that there is a distinction between the essence of God, which is one and self-existent; and the personality of the Three Persons in the Godhead, which is threefold, and thus intercommunicative, and so far dependent. We have to lament the inadequacy of language, or, at least, of our own language, to set such sublime mysteries forth; but the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity can only be so defended. The Unity of God implies self-existence; the Trinity in Unity implies relationship. Thus, as regards the Unity of Essence Christ is self-existent; but as regards the Trinity of Persons he is begotten. He is therefore not a begotten God, though he is a begotten Son. This explanation may be called mystical and obscure; but on such deep and incomprehensible subjects all thought fails and all language falters. Yet as we are sometimes called upon to state or defend our views of divine truth, it is desirable to have clear ideas of what we believe, and to express them as plainly as possible. We believe, then, that there are three Persons in the Godhead, and that these are distinguished from each other by certain personal relationships, and that these personal relationships are not covenant titles, names, or offices, but are distinctive and eternal modes of existence. We are thus preserved from Sabellianism on the one hand, which holds that there is but one God, with three different names; and Tritheism, on the other, which makes three distinct Gods. But believing in a Trinity of Persons, in the Unity of the divine essence, we say that the Father is a Father as begetting; the Son is a Son as begotten; the Holy Ghost is a Spirit as proceeding. If, as imputed to us, we were to say that the Son is “a begotten God,” we should deny him self-existence in his essence, as one with the Father and the Holy Ghost; as if we should say that he is a Son by office or by his incarnation we should deny, as Mr. Crowther does, his true, proper, and actual Sonship. To sum up the whole in a few words, it is in his Person, not in his essence, that he is the only begotten Son of God.
Dr. Gill has opened up this distinction with his usual clearness and ability, and as his words will doubtless carry with them much more authority than our own, we have thought it desirable to give them in the following extract from his Body of Divinity:
When I say it is by necessity of nature, I do not mean that the divine nature, in which the divine persons subsist, distinguishes them; for that nature is one, and common to them all. The nature of the Son is the same with that of the Father; and the nature of the Spirit the same with that of the Father and the Son; and this nature, which they in common partake of, is undivided; it is not parted between them, so that one has one part, and another a second, and another a third; nor that one has a greater and another a lesser part which might distinguish them, but the whole fulness of the Godhead is in each.
To come to the point: it is the personal relations or distinctive relative properties which belong to each Person which distinguish them from one another; as paternity in the first Person, filiation in the second, and spiration in the third; or, more plainly, it is begetting, (Psalm 2:7) which peculiarly belongs to the first, and is never ascribed to the second and third, which distinguishes him from them both, and gives him, with great propriety, the name of the Father; and it is being begotten, that is the personal relation, or relative property of the second Person, hence called ‘the only begotten of the Father’ (John 1:14) which distinguishes him from the first and third, and gives him the name of the Son; and the relative property, or personal relation of the third Person is, that he is breathed by the first and second Persons, hence called the breath of the Almighty, the breath of the mouth of Jehovah the
Father, and the breath of the mouth of Christ the Lord, and which is never said of the other two Persons, and so distinguishes him from them, and very pertinently gives him the name of the Spirit, or breath.” (Job 33:4; Psalm 33:6; 2 Thessalonians 2:8) Body of Divinity, Book I., Ch. 28
Toplady, speaking of Dr. Gill, has recorded of him the following memorable comparison, “What was said of Edward the Black Prince, that he never fought a battle that he did not win; what has been remarked of the great Duke of Marlborough, that he never undertook a siege which he did not carry, may be justly accommodated to our great Philosopher and Divine, who so far as the distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel are concerned, never besieged an error which he did not drive from its strongholds, nor ever encountered an adversary whom he did not baffle and subdue.”
This witness is true, and there was a time when Dr. Gill was held in much respect as an authority by his Baptist brethren; but that day seems to have gone by, for we are now informed by an aged Baptist minister, named J. A. Jones, who has done us the honor of writing and publishing a letter addressed to us, in which the vanity and garrulity of old age sadly appears, that all the London Baptist ministers agree with him in rejecting the eternal Sonship of the blessed Lord. J. A. Jones thus gives us his creed, as it originally appeared in the Gospel Magazine, May, 1811:
An extract, ‘I avow my firm belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in essence one, in Persons three, the Triune Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty. I not only maintain the essential Deity of the Father, but equally so of the Son, and Spirit. One in nature as in essence; not existing one from another, such as the Son being in the divine nature begotten of the Father, and then the Holy Ghost proceeding from (as God) both. No; I believe that the Son in his adorable divine nature is the self-existent Jehovah, and not a begotten God. That he is so, not by creation, derivation, generation, or indwelling; but, uncreated and underived; my Lord and my God.'
The Son of God, in his divine nature, is unbegotten, self-existent, independent, coexistent with the Father. The nature, essence, and perfections of the Trinne Jehovah are infinitely above the apprehension of a finite mind. The term 'Son of God,' in the scriptures, uniformly and invariably has respect to our glorious Immanuel in his complex character as God-man; and in this sense only is Christ the ‘only-begotten of the Father.' I venture to assert, that there is not one text in the Bible that speaks of him under the character of the 'Son of God,' but it has respect to his office as Mediator, and not to his original, divine, and essential nature as Jehovah, and coeval with the Father.
The character of the Son of God (I repeat it) belongs to him only in the union of natures. If we consider him only in his divine essence, as God, the scriptures never give him the character of a Son, so considered. And, in the human nature only, he could not be the 'only-begotten of God.'
This, he says, was his creed in 1811, and is so now in 1860, and that all the London Particular Baptist ministers agree with him:
Such were my views nearly fifty years ago, and such they are now. I have seen no cause to alter even a solitary sentence. I commend the same to your most critical perusal. Remember one thing, I am not alone in my views. I believe all the ministers in London, of our denomination, who are reputed sound in the faith, are likeminded with me. I say to you, ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.' But, to whatever conclusion you may come, I beseech you don't consign over to eternal perdition an aged minister, just on the verge of Jordan; whose ministry, from first to last, has tended to the exaltation of Christ the Lord, his Saviour and his God; and whose labors have been owned and blest to the spiritual profit of hundreds of immortal souls. I pray you don't do this, merely because he cannot see with your eyes; and refuses to make use of your spectacles.
We have never “consigned to eternal perdition” those who differ from us on this point. We are not their Judge. We consider that they are in a serious error on a very important point, but we wish to leave their state before God.
But to return to the sermon now before us. We are not Sabellians, Arians, or Tritheists, but Trinitarians; that is, we hold a Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the divine essence, not three distinct Gods, one undivided and self-existent, and the other two derived and originated. They seem to forget that we hold firmly the Unity of the divine essence, that there is but one God, and that this self-existent, underived essence, is common to the Three Persons in the Godhead. This then effectually disposes of their invidious expression “a begotten God,” which we reject as much as they can possibly do. Bold assertions, we know, pass off with many for infallible proofs; but we have rarely met with a sermon on a controverted point which so abounds in them as Mr. Crowther's.
If a person were totally unacquainted with the nature of the controversy, and took up this sermon in that state of ignorance, he would naturally conclude from it that those who held the eternal Sonship of Christ were a few insignificant individuals who had recently sprung up, and had imbibed from one Athanasins, an obscure man, who, in ancient times, had composed an obscure creed, a very erroneous doctrine, which had not the slightest foundation in the scriptures, but which they obstinately held, from, their absurd reverence for his name and authority.168 turned out to be heretical by later standards of orthodoxy, he was never condemned or even harshly criticized. (pg. 162)
Here it will be beneficial to quote at some length from Athanasius’s great classic text On the Incarnation of the Word in order to illustrate his vision of the connection between salvation and incarnation:
He [the Logos] took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery—lest the creature should perish, and His Father’s handiwork in men be spent for nought—He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours...And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father—doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord’s body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again towards incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire.
On the one hand, this beautiful theological description of Christ’s work on our behalf well illustrates why Athanasius considered it so essential that he be divine as well as human. If he were something less than truly God, his life could hardly banish death from mortal bodies. On the other hand, the statement also illustrates a problem in Athanasius’s Christology. It leaves unanswered a question, and therein lies the “troubling legacy” Athanasius left behind for later theologians to wrestle with. The question is how Jesus Christ could accomplish the work of salvation if only his body or flesh was truly human and the divine Logos—the Son of God—remained immutable and impassible and even outside of the body throughout Jesus’ life and death? Is this then a real incarnation? Did the Son of God actualy experience birth, suffering, and death? Athanasius’s answer is that he only experienced such creaturely things through the human body that he took on. The Son of God was himself in no way limited or diminished or hindered or caused to change or suffer through the incarnation. 15
What kind of “incarnation” is that? one may fairly ask. Even during Athanasius’s own lifetime another theologian named Apollinarius taught a view of the person of Jesus Christ nearly identical to Athanasius, and it was declared heretical at the Council of Constantinople in 381. It appears that Athanasius, as great as he was, was an “Apollinarian before Apollinarius.”16 * (pg. 170-171)
15. Athanasius On the Incarnation of the Word, 8.2 and 4.
16. Young, From Nicea to Chalcedon, pp. 74-75
* My note: Appollinarianism is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as:
A Christological theory, according to which Christ had a human body and a human sensitive soul, but no human rational mind, the Divine Logos taking the place of this last.
** Note 2: Olson’s “The Story of Christian Theology” has been awarded the following awards (as shown at Amazon.com):
Winner of the 2000 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award for Theology/Ethics. — Christianity Today, April 24, 2000
Winner of the 2000 ECPA Gold Medallion Award in Theology/Doctrine. — Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, July 2000 (Taken as posted from: https://lehislibrary.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/athanasius-the-heretic/)
Can anything exceed the dogmatism and bold unscrupulous statements of the following extract, except their erroneousness? Speaking of the names and titles of Christ, he thus explains how he is the Son of God:
And, first, among his names we would refer to that dear name Emmanuel, or God with us. He was God, and he was man, God in our nature, retaining the omnipotence of the Deity, and yet amenable to all human laws and requirements. As to his veritable and eternal Godhead, the scripture is very plain, and ascribes to him the same self-existent Majesty as to the Father and the Holy Ghost; and it holds out no sanction to the notions of those who contend that the Sonship of Christ has reference to his divide nature as such. He is stated to be the ‘Mighty God,' ‘Eternal God,' 'God,' ‘I Am,' ‘God over all,' ‘the Great God,' ‘Lord of Lords.' and as such he condescended to take flesh in the womb of the virgin, and became the 'Son of God,' by his being begotten of the Holy Ghost. Can anything be plainer to the man who takes his faith from his Bible? Human creeds, and especially that called Athanasian, would have us believe that Christ is 'God of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds;' but no man ever found such a theory in the scriptures, nor is there a text that even appears to favor such a notion, unless it be wrested from its connection, or distorted by human sophistry from its natural meaning. It is possible, by separating one part of a scripture from its connection with another, to make almost anything seem true; but those who do this 'handle the word of God deceitfully' and do not the truth. If Christ had been produced by an eternal generation, his highest title would have been 'Son of God;' and instead of his name being 'God with us,' it would have been the ‘Son of God with us;' and those scriptures just now referred to would have designated him 'Mighty Son of God,' ‘Eternal Son of God,' 'Son of God,' 'Son of I Am,' 'Son of God over all,' 'the Great Son of God.' Had the scripture said this, or anything like it, there would have been good reason to receive it; but, as it is perfectly plain to every unbiassed searcher of the Word that the Godhead of Christ is fully asserted; and that no part of the scripture warrants the belief that the term Son applies to his divine nature, but to his complex person, I see no reason to consider either Athanasins or his abettors any authorities at all, and, therefore, reject them all, and take my stand on the scripture. I know it is often alleged that the scriptures abound with proofs that 'Jesus Christ is the Son of God,' as if this was what we dispute. what we assert is, that Jesus Christ, and not the Deity of Jesus Christ separately from his humanity, is the Son of God, and that the meaning of those scriptures that say so is not that God, or Christ in his divine nature, is the Son of God, but that Emmanuel, God with us, God manifest in the flesh, the God-man, is the Son of God.
Amidst bold assertions and apparently clear statements, what error and confusion lie buried here! Let us see whether we can dig the error up and strip it of the graveclothes in which it is muffled up as a corpse in a coffin. We have, we trust, plainly enough declared that we ascribe to the Son of God “the same self-existent Majesty as to the Father and to the Holy Ghost;” for we have already shown that the eternal Sonship of the blessed Lord is not a derived Deity, but a derived Sonship.
Therefore, all the shafts aimed at us at Hitchin or elsewhere, which we have reason to believe were not a few, as denying the self-existent Deity of Christ, and his co-equality with the Father and the Holy Ghost, fall to the ground. They would gladly fasten upon us the charge of Arianism, and that we hold that Christ is a begotten or created God, and not co-equal with the Father; but we are in heart and soul Trinitarians, and, with Dr. Gill, believe that the doctrine of the Trinity stands or falls with the eternal Sonship of Jesus:
That Christ is the Son of God, (Acts ix. 20; 2 Corinthians i. 19,) is indeed the distinguishing criterion of the Christian religion, and what gives it the preference to all others, and upon which all the important doctrines of it depend, even upon the Sonship of Christ as a divine Person; and as by generation, even eternal generation. Without this, the doctrine of the Trinity can never be supported; of this the adversaries of it are so sensible, as the Socinians, that they have always set themselves against it with all their might and main, well knowing that if they can demolish this, it is all over with the doctrine of the Trinity; for without this the distinction of Persons in the Trinity can never be maintained, and indeed without this there is none at all; take away this, and all distinction ceases.
But observe how lightly and contemptuously the preacher speaks of the “notions” of those who contend that the Sonship of Christ has reference to his divine nature as “such.” How much he must have presumed upon the ignorance of his audience to call that divine truth which has been held in all ages as a precious reality by all the saints and servants of God169 “a notion.” What would he think if any person, professing to be a servant of Jesus Christ, should call the Trinity “a notion,” or the atoning blood of Christ “a notion,” or the work of the Holy Ghost “a notion?” Those who have had a revelation of the Son of God to their souls, and have believed in, loved, adored, and worshipped him as the Son of God in his divine nature, and felt him, as such, unspeakably precious, are as much shocked and repelled when this is denied or lightly treated as a mere “notion,” or an opinion, as if the Trinity in Unity, the atoning blood of Christ, and the work of the Holy Ghost on the heart, were called “notions.” It may seem, but a trifle not worth noticing, or a mere caviling at a word; but words are signs of things, expressions of thought, and as such they have a deeper significance than at first sight appears. Viewed in that light, the use of such an expression as applied to the true and proper Sonship of our blessed Lord implies to our mind a want of that holy reverence and godly fear which those possess who have been taught to tremble at God's word, and who therefore dread to err or stumble on the very foundation which God has laid in Zion.
1. That the Holy Ghost was the Father of the Son of God; and 2. That Christ is the Son of God only in his human nature, for that and that only was formed of the Holy Ghost. Is not the first conclusion absolutely revolting to every spiritual mind, and without a particle of scriptural evidence to sustain it? Is the Holy Ghost ever spoken of as the Father of Christ, or did the blessed Lord ever address him as such? When, in that blessed chapter, (John 17) he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour is come,” did he address the Holy Ghost as his Father, which he should and must have done if he was the Son of God as begotten by him? How revolting is such a conclusion to a spiritual mind, and how it at once stamps error upon a doctrine which necessarily leads to it! But it might be replied: “As the Holy Ghost is God, Christ became the Son of God, not as the Son of the Holy Ghost separate from the other Persons of the Trinity, but as the Son of the Father through him.”
But if so, each Person of the Trinity, as well as the Father, begat the human nature of Christ and as the Lord Jesus is a Person in the Trinity, he, according to this view, begat himself; and thus his divine nature begat his human.
Into what confusion do men get when once they leave the word of truth! But as we shall have occasion to point this out more fully, and our limits do not admit of our now doing so, we must defer our remarks upon this subject to a future Number.
REVIEW of William Crowther sermon (Concluded from Page 195)
IT has been our lot at various times for now about five-and-twenty years, to be engaged in controversy. From that circumstance some might naturally draw the conclusion that we are of a very pugnacious and quarrelsome spirit; love to fish in troubled waters; and, like the gull, are most at home in a storm. We do not profess to be favored with any large amount of self-knowledge, but so far as we are acquainted with our own natural and spiritual inclinations, we can decidedly say that our disposition, both in nature and in grace, is the very opposite of this; that our inmost desire is not for war but peace, and that if we ever do take up the weapons of controversy, it is not for the pleasure of the strife, or the love of contention, or even for the gratification of arguing difficult and abstruse points of doctrine, all of which have an attraction for some minds, but that, when we come into the field of battle, it is solely for the purpose of establishing or defending the truth of God which has been commended to our conscience, or made precious to our heart.
If we loved fighting for fighting sake, we have had attacks enough made upon us to provoke us to wield sharper weapons, and deal heavier blows, than have yet fallen from our lips or pen. But did the fear of God not restrain us from returning blow for blow, our own self-respect would preserve us from retorting upon others such language as they have used against us. If a street boy from behind a corner throw at us a piece of dirt, if no policeman be near, we pass by the affront. To pelt him again would but debase us to his vulgar level. So, when anonymous writers in Magazines pelt us with their scurrility and abuse, it would be but to degrade ourselves to their low level to adopt language which is suitable to them, but not suitable to us. As in the case of the street boy, dirt does not soil their fingers, but it would ours. It is sad enough to witness violence and abuse in matters of worldly strife, but to see it rife and rampant in the deepest mysteries of our most holy faith, where angels veil their faces in silent awe and worship with adoring love, seems more like the spirit of Satan than the Spirit of God.
And yet, without using such weapons, a good soldier of Jesus Christ may be sometimes called upon to defend truth, without pawing like the war horse in the valley to meet the armed men, or smelling the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. Should the Lord, as a scourge for our sins, ever permit an invading foe to land on our shores, a man might defend his house and home, protect his wife, or fight for his children, without being naturally devoured by a military spirit, or now burning to join a rifle corps for the mere pleasure of wearing a uniform, or of winning the prize to be given to the best marksman. So, we may find ourselves sometimes called upon to defend truth, without necessarily possessing a warlike spirit, and may see and feel it belongs to our very position, both as a minister and an editor, to take up the arms of controversy, without loving the excitement of the fray.
But though desirous to claim exemption from a controversial spirit, we are free to confess that when controversy is carried on in the spirit of the gospel, we see much good often to arise from it. It has, as all must allow its evils; but they rather spring out of human infirmity than are inevitably connected with controversy itself. Thus, the Lord himself came not to send peace on earth, but a sword; (Matthew 10:34) and the prophet, in answer to his complaint that his mother had borne him a man of strife, was bidden to take forth the precious from the vile, that he might be as God's mouth. (Jeremiah 15:19) Nay, his original commission and special work were to “root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down,” as well as “to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:10) Nor was this confined to the prophets, who might seem designated as special instruments for this work, this strange work. Of his people generally, and of the weakest and feeblest portion of them, the “worm Jacob,” God declares that he will make them “as a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth,” and promises that they shall “thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and make the hills as chaff.” (Isaiah 41:15, 16) Those who are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called are bidden, as one man, to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the saints;” (Jude 3) and the Lord himself commends the church at Ephesus, because it had “tried those which said they were apostles and were not, and had found them liars.” (Revelation 2:2.) Thus, there is nothing unscriptural, but the contrary, in controversy, if it be carried on in, the meekness and spirit of the gospel170. In fact, we owe to it the firm and full establishment of all the most precious truths of the gospel, for there is not one which has not been at one time or other furiously assailed by the foes, and we may add, as valiantly defended by the friends of the Lamb. The Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the Deity and Personality of the Holy Ghost, the real incarnation of the Son of God, the benefits and blessings of the blood and obedience of the Lord Jesus, salvation by grace, the doctrines of election, personal and particular redemption, final perseverance, and, in fact, all those truths which we hold and abide by as the grand distinctive features of our most holy faith, have all been established by long and arduous controversy. The walls of Jerusalem were built in troublous times, for “the builders, everyone had his sword girded by his side, and so builded.” (Daniel 9:25; Nehemiah 4:18) So have the walls of our spiritual Zion been built; and the truths which the church of Christ now holds as its most precious possession, have been all won, as it were, at the sword's point by the Lord's warriors, in the days when our martyred fathers in the faith carried their lives in their hand. These are the treasures which, out of the spoils won in battles, the ancient warriors of the Lord dedicated to maintain the house of the Lord. (1 Chronicles 26:27) We are like those children of Israel who were born in the promised land, after their fathers had won it from the Canaanites. We peacefully enjoy what our godly forefathers won, almost with their heart's blood. But if the Canaanite be still in the land, if the same evils or the same errors again come forth which our godly fathers overcame by their sword and their bow, the Lord teaching their hands to war, and their fingers to fight; we, their successors and descendants, may lawfully fight the same battles with the same enemies. We touch no man's person, assail no man's reputation, judge no man's state, for “he weapons of our warfare are not carnal,” to wound name or fame, feelings or character, “but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds” the strongholds of evil and error.
Apply this train of thought to the case before us. A great error, which has at various times pestered the church, has again lifted up its head. Are the servants of Christ to be silent when such a foundation truth as the true and proper Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ is denied, and is infecting ministers and churches? Or to confine the argument to our own case. Should we, with our large circulation among the people of God, sit idly by and see the Son of God dishonored, his crown stripped from his head, and his dearest title trampled in the dust, and hold our peace, would not the very stones cry out against our silence or our cowardice? We know the odium that we incur from those who have deeply drunk into the error; the spirit of hostility that we raise against us in ministers and churches; and are not insensible to the contempt and scorn hurled at us by those who have taken their seat in the scorner's chair; but the truth of God is dear to our heart, and we love it too much to sell it for such considerations. “Let them curse; but bless thou,” has often been the feeling of our soul. And we know that we have on our side not only truth and a good conscience, but a whole host of witnesses, both of the departed servants and saints of the Lord, and of the most gracious and experimental ministers, as well as the best taught, most deeply led, most humble, savory, and consistent Christians to be found in England now. We have offered this excuse, or rather explanation, why we still prolong the controversy. The sermon, indeed, which we are reviewing, as a sermon, does not deserve the attention which we have given it, but we have merely taken it as an exposition of an error; and the notice is due not to the sermon, which is sadly destitute of all features of a gracious experience, and is as cold and dead, as far as regards all power, unction, and savor, as the error it upholds; but to the controversy itself.
The point where we left off in our last Number was to expose the error of asserting that the Lord Jesus Christ became the Son of God by being begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin.
We there pointed out that this doctrine involves two great errors:
1. That the Holy Ghost was the Father of the Son of God, which we characterized as “a conclusion absolutely revolting to every spiritual mind, and without a particle of scriptural evidence to sustain it;” and 2. That Christ, according to that doctrine, was the Son of God only in his human nature, for that, and that only, was formed*171 by the Holy Ghost.172
But Mr. Crowther may answer, “That is not my belief; for I have stated in my sermon, of which you have given an extract, (p. 194,) that Jesus Christ, and not the Deity of Jesus Christ, separately from his humanity, is the Son of God; and that the meaning of those scriptures that say so is not that God, or Christ in his divine nature, is the Son of God, but that Emmanuel, God with us, God manifest in the flesh, the God-man, is the Son of God.” Then why, we may reply, do you speak so confusedly? You first tell us “that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin, and thus became the only-begotten Son of God,” which most evidently implies, if it do not absolutely assert, that he is the Son of God by virtue of the miraculous formation of his human nature; and then you say that he is the Son of God by virtue of his complex person. Thus, first you declare that he is the Son of God in his human nature; and then, dropping that, you say that he is not the Son of God by virtue of either of his natures, but by virtue of both together.
But, adopting this last statement as Mr. Crowther's real view, disentangled of the confusion pointed out, that Christ was not the Son of God from all eternity, but became so in time by virtue of his complex Person, we may well ask, What connection is there between Sonship and the manifestation of God in the flesh? Manifestation does not change the nature of the object manifested; it merely discovers to open view what before was hidden or not revealed. Thus when it is said of the blessed Lord that “God was manifest [margin, manifested] in the flesh,” (1 Timothy 3: 16) it does not mean that his Deity became what it was not before, or that he was made the Son of God thereby; but that he, the invisible God, by taking flesh, revealed and discovered Deity to the eyes of men. But for this manifestation of God in the flesh he could neither be seen, known, nor enjoyed. Were there no other cause, the fall has cut off all access unto, all communion with God; for “no man can see him and live.” “He dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see.” (Exodus 33:50; 1 Timothy 6:16.) Deity is essentially invisible to mortal eye. John the Baptist therefore testified, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” (John 1:18,) clearly intimating that God is essentially invisible, but that the only begotten Son, which is (not “was,” but eternally “is”) in the bosom of the Father, hath declared or revealed*173 him. He who, as the only begotten Son of God, is essentially and eternally “the brightness of his glory and the express image of his Person,” (Hebrews 1:3) has made God known, for “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
Now, when we thus view him as the true and proper Son of the Father, and that before all worlds, there is a beautiful propriety in this manifestation of Deity in the flesh being committed to God the Son. It is consistent with the character of a Father to send, and of a Son to be sent; of a Father to propound terms of reconciliation to rebels, and of a Son to come as the Mediator and Messenger of those terms; of a Father to love the creatures of his hand, and that with a love so great as even to yield up his Son as a proof of that love, and of a Son to obey his Father's will in being willing to be yielded up. Thus viewed, the whole covenant of grace and the plan of salvation have a beautiful propriety and harmony. But if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct personages, without any such mutual relationship as their very names imply, there seems to be no reason why the Father might not have come and become the Son of God by incarnation; or why the Holy “Spirit might not have become the Son of God in a similar way; for if, previous to his coming, the Son was not the Son, but became the Son by incarnation, and by virtue of his complex Person, there seems to be no reason why the Father or the Holy Spirit should not have become the Son of God in the same way. It shocks us to utter or even to conceive such a proposition, and we believe that every child of God who has had a revelation of Christ to his soul as the eternal Son of God, feels the same. It is by such inward faith and feeling that many a poor simple child of God, who cannot argue or dispute the point as a point of doctrine, is kept firm in the truth which he has received from God. He cannot reason, but he can believe; he cannot argue, but he can feel. To believe in the Son of God to the saving of the soul is not, he well knows, a matter of reason, but of faith; not of argument, but of, revelation. Here Mr. Crowther's sermon so woefully fails. It is all matter of mere assertion, or some attempt at argument;174. He can darken the word, but not give light upon it; pervert plain texts, but not open obscure ones; confuse and perplex the mind, but not instruct or edify the soul. There is nothing of the savour and power of the Holy Ghost in it; no dew, nor unction, nor life, nor feeling; no experience of his own or anybody else's. And, indeed, how can there be, unless we believe that the Holy Ghost, whose special work and office it is to reveal Christ, and take of the things which belong to Christ, should bless what robs Christ of his dearest title and highest glory; that he who leads into all truth should sanction error; and that he, who is one with the Father and the Son, should own what equally dishonors the Father and the Son??175 (Matthew 16:17) and to Paul, (Galatians 1:16) and which the Lord himself declares is indispensable to a knowledge of the Father, and, by consequence, of the Son. (Matthew 11:27) Nor does he speak as if he ever himself had it. He attempts to bring forward some show of argument from the scriptures, but never tells us when, where, and how Christ was revealed to his soul by the power of God. But those who have had a revelation of him as the Son of God, know both what and in whom they believe; and by this inward light and divine teaching, having seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, (2 Corinthians 4:4) though they may not be able to argue, or even explain, what they know and believe, yet can they see into the very bowels of the error, and that it is as distinct from what has been revealed to their soul as light is from darkness. And here we should advise the simple-hearted child of God to rest, and not argue with erroneous men, if such fall in his way, who, having drunk deeply into the spirit of error, are sure to misunderstand or pervert all he attempts to bring forward in defense of his faith. Or if he feel it necessary to bring forward something to silence the adversary, we should advise him to confine himself to this main point, in which indeed the chief core of the question lies. Was Christ the Son of God before he came into this world or not? If he were not, what is the meaning of such a text as this? “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) It is here declared by the blessed Lord himself, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,” &c. Then, says the simple-hearted believer, he must have had an only begotten Son to give, and he must have been his Son before he was given. How, he may add, all the strength and tenderness of that love, and the very love itself, are all nullified by the view that Christ became the only begotten Son of God by being given. The very strength of the love of God was manifested by this, that having an only begotten Son, sooner than the whole human race should perish in their sins, he gave up this Son to sufferings and death, that those who believed in him might not perish but might have everlasting life. The feeblest child of grace can surely see this grand truth written as with a ray of light in the text. And so, these two kindred texts: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins; (1 John 4:10;) “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) The weakest believer who may find much difficulty in coping with the subtle arguments of the adversaries of truth, may, with God's help and blessing, rest his case on these plain and simple declarations without attempting higher and more difficult ground; for his simple, child-like faith may well reply to all their reasonings, “ How could God send his Son to be the propitiation for our sins if he had no Son to send ? And how could he be said 'not to spare his own Son' if he had no Son to spare, or to 'deliver him up' if he had no Son to deliver? Here the sucking child can play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child can put his hand on the cockatrice1 den.
To show the little weight or importance that Mr. Crowther attaches to any manifestation of Christ to the soul, or to any experimental knowledge of him, we present to our readers the following extract, that they may judge for themselves whether we bear too hard upon him in the remarks we have made of the absence, in his sermon, of all personal experience, and even of any intimation either of the nature or necessity of a revelation of the Son of God to the believer's heart, that he may know him for himself: “Let us try to dispossess ourselves of all we have heard and known of Christ, and let us seek to approach a knowledge of him afresh, as he is introduced to us in the scriptures, and more especially by these evangelists; and if we are enabled to do so, we shall, doubtless, have a profitable meditation, and a further assurance of the verity of the one faith.”
We are to discard, then, out of our heart, and “dispossess ourselves of all we have heard and known of Christ;” “all we have heard” from his blessed mouth, all we have “known” of him in sweet fellowship and sacred communion; in a word, all that divine and heavenly acquaintance with him by which he has made himself near, dear, and precious to our hearts. See how we are called upon by a professed ambassador of Jesus Christ to part with all our former experience of love and mercy; to strip ourselves naked of everything we have heard and known of Jesus in times past, and thus actually and really to give up our very hope of eternal life; to abandon our only support in trouble and affliction, and cast all our faith to the winds, the very thing which Satan is tempting us to do sometimes all the day long. And when, at Mr. Crowther's invitation, we have cast away all our hope of eternal life, then what are we to do, and what are we to have? We are “to seek to approach a knowledge of him afresh, as he is introduced to us in the scriptures;” in other words, we are to seek for a new Christ, a fresh Christ; a Christ whom we have never yet seen, nor known, nor heard of, nor tasted, nor handled, nor felt, nor believed in, nor loved, but to be found somewhere “in the scriptures, and more especially in these evangelists,” that is, if we are willing to read them in the light of Mr. Crowther's interpretation. And what are we to have when, at his invitation, “we have dispossessed ourselves of all we have heard and known of Christ?” “We shall doubtless have a very profitable meditation.” The truth of that little word “doubtless” we very much doubt; and we certainly have neither intention nor inclination to follow the invitation even with the word “doubtless” to encourage us to make the attempt. And as to “the profitable meditation” we shall have when we have dispossessed ourselves of all we have heard and known of Christ, it would be as profitable a meditation, and as comfortable a season, as any poor soul could enjoy, who has cast aside all its past experience of the power and presence of Christ, been robbed and spoiled of all its faith and hope, and now sits down as hitherto a poor deceived deluded wretch, to begin to seek a fresh Christ under Mr. Crowther's direction. But we are also promised “a further assurance of the verity of the one faith.” How can there be “a further assurance,” when we have first to dispossess ourselves of all we have previously heard and known of Christ? We are invited to cast aside all previous knowledge of Christ, and with it, of course, all faith in him, for,
“Faith is by knowledge fed,”
and to begin afresh, and then we are promised a further assurance of the verity of the one faith which we have just renounced; which is just the same good sense and sound argument as if a person were to say to us, “Hitherto you have been all wrong; you have imbibed certain opinions and doctrines which are quite erroneous. Renounce all these, and commence quite afresh, and then you will get a greater certainty than you ever had before. ” But of what? Of the old faith, or of the new? Not of the old, for that you have just discarded; not of the new, for you cannot have “a further assurance” of what you are just going to understand and are presumed to be now learning for the first time, and of which, as a learner, you can have no assurance at all. What confusion of thought and language is here!
And yet this is the teacher and the teaching which we are invited to follow, and these confused, self-contradictory statements are entitled, “Things most surely believed amongst us as to the Person, Mission, and Work of Christ.” We are very certain that such teachings and such teachers, were we to listen to their advice and follow their guidance, would drag us into error, confusion, and bondage, separate us from the saints and servants of God, rob and plunder us of all our experience of the grace and glory of Christ, and leave us at the last without help or hope.
But this is not the only confused statement. The sermon is full of such, and indeed must necessarily be so; for as all truth is harmonious and consistent, so all error is confused, inconsistent, and selfcontradictory. With a show of truth in some leading points, such as the recognition of the Deity of Christ, and the Deity and Personality of the Holy Ghost, of the Trinity and the covenant of grace, without which the sermon would not go down at all with the doctrinal professors of the day, there is not only the leading, the master error which crops out in every page, but confused if not erroneous statements throughout. Take the following as an instance: “When men speak of the essential attributes of Deity, they often confound his covenant relationship to his people in Christ with the essential features of his character; and thus, speak of love and mercy as though they were both essential characteristics of Deity. These, and every other feature of benignity exercised by Jehovah towards his people, have their origin in his sovereign, free, and unbiassed will, and their exercise only in and through Christ.”
Love and mercy are here denied to be essential characteristics of Deity, and an attempt made to distinguish between the essential and covenant attributes of God. The covenant made no change in the mind of God, nor communicated attributes which did not before exist, “God is love.” This is his essential attribute. As such he loved his only begotten Son, and as such he loved his people, for the Lord himself says, “And hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:23) The covenant of grace did not make God love his people. It was the effect of love, not the cause. As love preceded and was the cause of God's covenant with Israel of old, (Deuteronomy 4:37,) so love preceded and was the moving cause of the covenant of grace. Nor did the covenant make God merciful or introduce mercy as an attribute which was not an essential one. All his attributes are essential, and indeed cannot be otherwise. He is what he is, and with him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The covenant of grace is but the expression of what he is eternally and essentially in himself. To introduce love and mercy into the bosom of God, which before were not there, is like the attempt to put into his bosom a new Son who was not his Son till about 1860 years ago.
These are, it is true, isolated extracts, on which we may seem to lay too much stress; but to our mind there is a chilling air breathing through the whole discourse, as if the heart of the preacher had not been warmed, at least not at the time, by a beam of the Sun of righteousness, or his lips touched with a live coal from off the altar.176
It is true there is a show of reasoning and arguing from scripture, if perverting the meaning of texts can be so called; but that “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” which is necessary that “our faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God,” seems to us absolutely wanting. He speaks frequently as if searching the scriptures, reading them with an unprejudiced eye, and discarding what he calls “creeds,” and “theories,” and “preconceived notions, in other words, the doctrine against which he is driving, would certainly lead us to see as he does. Such expressions put us in mind of a conversation between Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, the learned Socinian writer, and good John Newton. “Sir,” said the learned Doctor, “I have collated every word in the Hebrew scriptures seventeen times, and it is very strange if the doctrine of atonement you hold should not have been found by me.” But what was Newton's answer? “I am not surprised at this. I once went to light my candle with the extinguisher upon it. Now, prejudices from education, learning, &c., form an extinguisher. It is not enough that you bring the candle, you must remove the extinguisher.” So, as long as Mr. Crowther and those in the same error read the scriptures with the extinguisher on their mind, all their searching only confirms them more fully in their present views. We have heard of one in this error who sat down with his Bible, Concordance, and Johnson's Dictionary, to see whether he could find the words, “eternal generation” in the scriptures; and because he could not find them, and the Concordance and Dr. Johnson could not by their combined efforts enable him either to discover the words or understand their meaning, he declared that the doctrine was not in the word of God. But could he find the words “Trinity,” “God-man,” or “the Personality of the Holy Ghost”' in the Bible, even with the help of Cruden on one side and Johnson on the other? And if not, would he say that not one of these doctrines was to be found in the scriptures at all? How little do such men seem to know of “the anointing which teaches the saints of God all things and is truth and is no lie.” Had he gone upon his knees, with the Spirit of grace and supplications in his heart and begged of the Lord to show him the truth, he might have received the same blessed deliverance from the error as a much-esteemed servant of God has just experienced, as recorded in our present Number. Men may read the Bible as the Jews did in our Lord's time, but with the same result as the apostle speaks of: “Even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart.” (2 Corinthians 3:15.) The veil must be taken away that they may “with open (or unveiled) face behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord”, the glory of the Lord Jesus, “as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth;” (2 Corinthians 3:15-18; John 1:14;) and then, ravished with his glory, they will fall down before him with adoring faith and love, and say, “Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.” Contrast with these warm acting’s of living faith such cold, chilling expressions as these:
“The scripture doctrine of the prior and self-existent Deity of Jesus is so plain, that he who searches must find it, unless his mind is pre- occupied with a different theory, that he prizes more than scripture testimony.”
“As to the veritable and eternal Godhead, the scripture is very plain, and ascribes to him the same self-existent majesty as to the Father and the Holy Ghost; and it holds out no sanction to the notions of those who contend that the Sonship of Christ has reference to his divine nature as such.”
“But as it is perfectly plain to every unbiassed searcher of the word, that the Godhead of Christ is fully asserted, and that no part of the scripture warrants the belief that the term Son applies to his divine nature, but to his complex person, I see no reason to consider either Athanasins or his abettors any authorities at all, and, therefore, reject them all, and take my stand on the scriptures.”
“I decline to believe any theory that detracts from the true and personal Godhead of either Christ or the Spirit; and I decline to believe that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father any otherwise than as Christ did, namely, in his mission to this world.”
How faith here is made a mere matter of opinion, as if a man could believe or “decline to believe” just as and when he pleases! And mark how invidiously and insidiously he stamps the precious truths of Jesus being the true and proper Son of God, and the proceeding of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, as “theories that detract from the true and personal Godhead of Christ and the Spirit.”
Mr. Crowther must have known when he used these words, that no persons assert so fully and positively the true and personal Godhead both of Christ and the Spirit as those who hold the blessed doctrines which he declines to believe as mere theories; and that none are so jealous of anything that detracts from them. And this setting up of a natural and notional faith and knocking down the most holy and sacred truths in so reckless a way, is called “experimental preaching” at the opening of a chapel for experimental truth. Mr. Hart held different language, both as regards faith and the Sonship of Jesus, when, in accordance with scripture and experience, he wrote,
“True faith's the gift of God;
Deep in the heart it lies;”
and,
“Glory to God the Father be,
Because he sent his Son to die.
Glory to God the Son that he
Did with such willingness comply.”
“But to the searcher of the scriptures it does not mean that in either case, but in both expresses to us the sovereign going forth of Christ and the Eternal Spirit for the salvation of the church. We see here the fallacy of those traditions of men, which would pretend to point out an essential difference in the mode of being of the glorious Trinity; a difference which the scripture does not authorize, and which rests only on the authority of man.”
“Let every man look in his Bible which of these views are true, and if he have any spiritual discernment, the conclusion is inevitable.”
“Grasp this idea, if you can, friends.”
We do not know whether this sermon be a correct transcript of what was really preached at Hitchin, as it bears great marks of being altogether rewritten, still less do we know the feelings of the people that heard it. But we think we can tell pretty well what our feelings would have been under it. 1. Sadness of heart, if not indignation of spirit, at hearing the grand leading truth of the gospel trampled underfoot as a “notion,” a “theory,” a “traditional creed,” just as if the true and proper Sonship of our adorable Redeemer were a Popish tradition, like the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. 2. We should have been struck, if not shocked, at the presumption of the preacher, in treading on such holy ground with so bold and wanton a foot. 3. We should have wondered how people who professed to know and love experimental truth; who had heard the servants of God time after time speak of the revelation of Christ to their soul, and had themselves been brought out of dead churches, and away from letter ministers, could sit and listen to, and as the sermon is printed for their benefit, we presume express their approbation of such a cold dry letter performance as this. Should they not have seen that they were called to leave the old paths for new and untried ones, and that by a minister of whom they knew nothing? Should they not have felt that on a point so vital, in “grasping an idea,” they might clutch an error; and “in declining to believe” a theory, they might decline to believe in the Son of God to the saving of their soul? How different from all this cold chilling language, as if preached under the lee of an iceberg, is the language of the saints of old: “We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” (John 6:69.) “Of a truth, thou art the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:33.) “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” (Acts 8:37.) “The life that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 220.) “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 5:20.) “And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3.) These blessed saints and servants of God knew in whom they believed, for they had seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and they knew by a sweet revelation of him to their soul, that he was the Son of the Father in truth and love. One of the worst features of the present day, and truly grievous it is to every spiritual mind, is to see the instability of professors of truth, how little they know for themselves of the power of the gospel; how little rooted or grounded, by a divine operation upon their hearts, in the very foundation truths of our most holy faith. Thus, like “the silly women” spoken of, they “are ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;” for not experimentally knowing its liberating, sanctifying power, they change their opinions as they change their clothes, with as little conscience or as little scruple.
Were it not so, we should not see ministers professing Calvinistic truth, denying so cardinal, so fundamental a doctrine as the true and proper Sonship of our adorable Redeemer, a truth which has been held by all the apostles, saints, and martyrs, and all the servants of God, from generation to generation, and which may well be called the grand distinguishing doctrine, and the glory of our most holy faith.
AS SET FORTH IN THE SCRIPTURES OF
An everlasting Truth of unspeakable Blessedness, to the Church of GOD in all Ages:
But of peculiar Sweetness in the present awful Day of a
Affectionately recommended to the Attention of the LORD's People;
BY ROBERT HAWKER, D. D.
VICAR OF CHARLES, PLYMOUTH,
And lol a voice from heaven saying: This is my beloved SOM in Whom I am well pleased. Matthew 3:17.
If we receive the witness of men, the witness of GOD is greater: for this is the witness of GOD, which he hath testified of his SON. 1 John 5:9
He that hath received his testimony, hath set to his seal that GOD is true, John 3:33.
Plymouth:
PRINTED FOR JOHN TREGO, LITTLE CHURCH LANE,
By P. Nettleton and Soft, Market Street
Some short time since, the Church of God was threatened with an attempt to take from her, at a stroke, the whole of those soul refreshing comforts, which arise from the special offices of GOD the HOLY GHOST, by denying his Person and with the same, his divine Agency in the Covenant of grace. Against so dating an heresy, I entered my warmest protest; and in defence of the truth, I sent forth my lectures, formed from Scripture, in proof of the, PERSON, GODHEAD and MINISTRY, of the HOLY GHOST. Since that period, the Church of GOD hath been again attacked, and from the same quarter, with a similar blasphemy, by calling in question, the PERSON of GOD the SON Against this heresy, I beg to send forth the present little work, in which I have endeavored to compress into as small a compass as possible, for humble pockets, the testimony of GOD the FATHER to the PERSON, GODHEAD, and SQNSHIP of his dear SON. What the eventual consequences of both these labors may be I know not; but very humbly, and cheerfully, I leave all with the LORD.
In the meantime, 1 know not whether the Church of GOD hath moat causa to deplore, or most to rejoice, in such dispensations. No doubt there is great cause to deplore the awful day, in which we live, of a CHRIST despising generation But perhaps, there is yet greater cause to retire, in the opposition made by the Enemy of souls, to the faith once delivered unto the Saints For without the springing up of heresies in the world the Church would want those evidences which the HOLY GHOS T himself expressly said should distinguish the latter days. See 1 Timothy 4:1. 2 Peter 2:2. Jude throughout. 1 Corinthians 11:19. And in regard to the ultimate termination of such things there can be no danger. The Church herself is founded on the Rock CHRIST JESUS; against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. Matthew 16:18 Neither (as the great Head of his Church himself declared), shall one of his little perish. Matthew 28:14.
1 commit the whole to the LORD with humble prayer, that our Covenant GOD, in his Trinity of PERSONS may confirm his own word onto his own people: and now the Enemy is come in like a flood, the SPIRIT of the LORD (for so is the Original RUACH JEHOVAH) shall lift up a standard against him. Isaiah 59:19.
ROBERT HAWKER.
Plymouth, Charles Vicarage, April 13, 1819
It was an interesting question which the Daughters of Jerusalem put to the Church, at a time when she had been giving them a charge concerning her beloved; What is thy beloved (said they) more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women, that thou dost so charge us? And this gave occasion to the Church to describe her LORD, under some of his lovely and engaging characters. But after running over in the relation several charming features, she stopped short in the midst, as if conscious of her inability to speak of him in terms suited to his infinite greatness, and finished her account with saying; yea, he is altogether lovely! Song 5:9 &etc.
And I pray the Reader to remark with me, that it is the Person of her LORD of whom the Church is so enamored, and of whom she speaks. Him, (as she elsewhere called him, without mentioning his name, as if the whole world knew that before) him (said she) whom my soul loveth; Song 3:3 Observe; she doth not here speak of what he had done for her; no, nor what he was to her, as much as what he was, and is, and everlastingly will be, in himself. Not his work, not his grace, not his love; but his Person, For all though all that the SON of GOD hath done, and wrought, and sustained, and suffered, for his Church and People is great, yea, incalculably great and precious in her esteem; yet his Person far exceeds all.
And I pray the Reader yet further to observe with me, that it is the Person of GOD’s dear SON, which is above every other consideration, in the esteem and affection of GOD the FATHER. GOD indeed loves his dear SON, in having become the Mediator. He loves Him for having taken into union with himself our nature; marrying our nature; redeeming our nature) living for us; dying for us; washing us from our sins in his own blood; and, in short, for the whole of what he hath done, is now doing, and will to all eternity do, for his body, the Church. all are precious, acts in GOD the FATHER'S esteem, and for which he loves his dear SON; the SON of his love Colossians 1:13. But all these are secondary and subordinate considerations in the love and affection of the FATHER, to what love he hath to the SON, as he is in himself. It is the SON of GOD, as SON of GOD; his Person, and not his works, which fills the heart of the FATHER with delight. For the FATHER is not benefited, neither indeed can be benefited, by all that the SON hath done or suffered in our nature for his people. And to this unquestionable truth the SON of GOD himself bears testimony, when he said; my goodness extendeth not to thee, but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight. Psalm 16:2. 3.
Shall I prevail upon the Reader to pause over this statement; and to ask himself, whether he hath been accustomed to consider the subject, in this point of view? If he hath, he will need no observation of mine, by way of showing him the great blessedness of it. If he hath not, and GOD the HOLY GHOST shall be graciously pleased to open it.to his apprehension; he hath a greater pleasure to propose to himself from it, than I can represent. And sure I am it cannot fail, under divine teaching, to induce in the soul a joy unspeakable and full of glory.
There is somewhat very delightful even in the bare contemplation of it. For the consideration of the Person of the SON of GOD, as he is in himself and independent of his relationship to his
people; opens to a subject, at once both sublime and blessed. For it is the infinite dignity of his Person, which gives infinite value and preciousness to that relationship. And as GOD the FATHER is more glorious in what he is in himself, than in all his ways and works towards his creatures; so GOD the SON is more glorious in himself and his own personal glory, in common with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST, in the essence of the GODHEAD, than in all the grace and love he hath manifested to his people» His love to us is indeed precious; yea very precious; and as the Apostle saith; we love him because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19. Nevertheless, had he never loved us, had he never taken our nature, nor done and suffered for us, what that love prompted him to do and suffer; yea had we never been: the SON of GOD; as SON of GOD, would have been, what he is in himself, in his divine nature, from all eternity, and to all eternity, being One with the FATHER over all GOD blessed forever, Amen.
And if the Reader will indulge me yet further, on a subject so infinitely interesting and important, I would add, that from such views of the Person of the SON of GOD; there ariseth in the mind the consciousness of a glory which is His, surpassing all conception. So that above all the praise we now do or can. give him; above all the love we now do, or can offer him; there is an higher note both of praise and of love, which is due to him from what he is in himself, and above all that can arise from what he hath done or suffered for his people. And where it possible to divest ourselves of that selfishness which inseparably cleaveth to our present fallen nature; our apprehensions of the SON of GOD in his own personal glory, would rise to a standard far above any idea we can now form; and open a contemplation at once most blessed and delightful. When we drop this body of sin which now becomes a medium too dense for beholding bright objects through; and especially those which are of a divine nature; and when we get beyond the present twilight o£ existence then our vision will be no longer imperfect; but we shall behold things as they are, and know, even as. we are known. And what will be the rapture of the whole Church of GOD, in the contemplation of the SON of GOD, beheld through the medium of our nature; when we see him as he is in himself and as he is in his relationship to his people, being, the Head of his body the Church, the fulness which filleth all in all.
Since then the Person of the SON of GOD, considered in his Person, and as he is in himself, abstracted from every other view, is of such immense blessedness; and the proper apprehension of him by faith, of such unspeakable importance to his people; it ceaseth to be the subject of surprise, that the great enemy of souls should attempt by every means in his power, to obstruct the knowledge of him among the LORD'S chosen ones. He knoweth full well that if he can persuade to the denial of the Person of GOD’s dear SON; he will no less persuade to put little value in his blood, and righteousness. I do not wonder therefore, that as the Devil hates, with the most deadly hatred, both the SON of GOD and his people; all his subtility is directed to the accomplishment of this one purpose. I do not wonder, (and especially in a day like the present,) that the Prince of the power of the air, (as he is called Ephesians 2:2) should raise a mist to cloud, if possible, the view of the LORD’S Person from the sight of the LORD'S people; his becomes a matter of no surprise to me. Neither do I wonder that a foe so crafty, and with abilities so bent to nothing but evil, should dress up his deceptions, under the specious covering of giving glory to the Unity of the divine nature. The Devil never deceives more successfully than when transforming himself into all Angel of light, 2 Corinthians 11:3, 14. In pretending therefore to give great glory to the Unity of the GODHEAD, he tempts to the denial of the Person in the GODHEAD, not suffering his blinded disciples to recollect, that the true faith is the Unity of the divine Essence existing in a trinity of Persons. Hence, he tempts to the denial of the Person of the SON of GOD and with it, the denial also of the Person of GOD the HOLY GHOST, and of his agency in the Covenant of grace. For Satan is well aware that it is among the special offices of GOD the HOLY GHOST first to glorify the Person of the SON of GOD and then, to take of the things of his, and show unto his people (John 16:14) If therefore the Archfiend can entice to the disbelief of the one, he effectually induceth a disregard to the other. So that this plan is the masterpiece of hell; and is such as might be expected from such a quarter.
Let the Reader recollect, that the Serpent hath been studying human nature, for nearly six thousand years, m order to find out the vulnerable parts, the better to deceive. As a creature, and a creature of nothing but malignity, his venom is most bitter against the Church of GOD. And; hence, by this bold and desperate attempt, which none but the Devil himself could have devised and none but such as are under his delusions could have been brought to believe, he hath endeavored to palm off upon the world (what in the moment of its temptations, he knew to be a lie, and trembled as he tempted; (Luke 4:31 to 44) those blasphemies against the Person of the SON of GOD, and the Person of the HOLY GHOST, that by reducing the whole body of revelation to a mere system of natural religion, he might do away at once all the pure mysteries of our holy faith, and take the world in the possession of any form of worship, no matter what, when void of the power of godliness, which never did, nor ever will tend to injure his kingdom.
Let the Reader, who is a partaker of grace, call to mind these things; and then he will neither be surprised nor affected by them. Nay, I should rather have said, he will find cause to bless GOD for them, in as much as they become however unintentional on the part of the Enemy of souls, and of those who are bringing them forward under his delusions, so many confirmations to the faith. Such things were foretold by the HOLY GHOST to be, yea, such things must be. We are they upon whom the ends of the world are come. The last times, and the perilous times are arrived. The world hath entered. and by some years run on, the Nineteenth Century. And as John, for nearly two thousand years since, heard a voice from heaven proclaiming Woe to the earth, because the Devil was come down having great wrath knowing that he had then but a short time; he is well aware by so much now is it shorter. Of this he is conscious. And while he knoweth it and trembleth in the tremendous prospect before him, the horrors of his mind only tends to make him more desperate. His rancor boils with greater wrath. His malice rageth with tenfold more hellish fury. Like a burning mountain, whose combustion within sendeth forth the desolating lava without, in every direction scouring with its tempest wherever it can reach; so, Satan who is himself a Volcano, more horrid than all the etnas of the Universe, scatters the fiery blasphemies which he hath engendered in his own guileful mind against the Church of the living GOD, aiming to sweep it from the earth with the besom of his destruction.
But while the Reader with due attention contemplates these things, let him no less call to mind what a mercy it is that the LORD hath not left us ignorant of his devices Yea, what a greater mercy still to know that the Church of GOD is in no danger, no, not in a single instance from his devices. Though the last times, are indeed come; and we are taught to expect in them as the rising up of such heresies prove, the worst times; yet the final issue of all things relating to the Church hath nothing doubtful. Say ye to the righteous it shall be well with him! Hence there are no peradventures, no uncertainties. The Covenant is an everlasting Covenant, and ordered in all things and sure. True indeed the Scena antepenultima. (as One very properly calls it) the prelude to the close of all will be trying; not however as if the event was doubtful, or a single, iota which concerns the people of GOD, left to the maybes of the creature. Blessed be GOD; the grace of GOD, depends not upon the will of man. The HOLY GHOST, in a single verse shows the contrary. Nevertheless, the foundation of GOD standeth sure having this seal; the LORD knoweth them that are his ! 2 Timothy 2:19.
In reference to the present exercise of the Church from the blasphemy against the Person of GOD the SON which hath lately come forward with unblushing confidence; (the forerunner only of others to be expected as the great day of GOD is drawing nearer) the testimony of GOD the FATHER, to the PERSON, GODHEAD, and SONSHIP, of his dear SON, becomes at once final, unanswerable, and decisive. For this forms a testimony, which stands in the place of a thousand witnesses and supersedes the necessity of every other. For to use the Apostles words, “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of GOD is greater; for this is the witness of GOD, which he hath testified of his SON”, 1 John 5:9. It is to this subject I beg to invite the attention of the LORD'S people, by the ministry of this little Tract. I say, the LORD'S people; for if is such only I have in view, and for whose service, as an humble means in the LORD's hand, this work is designed. To appeal to mankind in general; or to address, what by a misnomer is called the religious world, (in direct contradiction to the word of GOD; 1 John 5:19,) is beside my purpose. The Church of the living GOD is attacked by the blasphemies of the day. And to defend that Church from such heresies, and especially to be helpful to the weak in faith among the LORD’S people, under the LORD’S blessing, is the sole purpose for which! write. And very sure I am GOD the HOLY GHOST will condescend to bless this little work (which I most humbly implore) the child of GOD, who by regeneration, is brought into some acquaintance with the plague of his own heart, and the knowledge of the LORD JESUS, will find in the testimony of GOD the FATHER, to the PERSON, GODHEAD, and SONSHIP of his dear SON, such a powerful conviction to those glorious truths of our most holy faith, as will level to the dust all the attacks made against them by the proud, presumptuous, and self-taught reasonings of men. May he, with whom is the residue of the SPIRIT, give both to Writer and Reader, such an unction to his testimony in our hearts, that we may set to our seal that GOD is true. John 3:33.
I begin the subject with that, which is the first and leading feature in the whole character of the SON of GOD, namely his PERSON, for if the identity of PERSON in the SON of GOD be defined and proved, and by the testimony of the FATHER himself; his GODHEAD and SONSHIP will necessarily follow. And this once established, will bring with it, a full testimony to the glorious fundamental doctrine of the faith involved in the same; namely, the identity, and by consequence, the co-existence and co equality of all the Persons in the GODHEAD, as set forth in that blessed scripture; “For there are Three that bear record in heaven; the FATHER, the WORD, and the HOLY GHOST: and these THREE are ONE.” 1 John 5:7.
Now it is well worth the closest attention of the Church of GOD, (and it should seem to have been designed to shew forth the distinction of the PERSONS in the GODHEAD) that at the very entrance to the Gospel, at the baptism of the LORD JESUS, an open revelation was made, by the HOLY THREE PERSONS, in the One undivided essence of JEHOVAH, of each .distinctly, For thus we read. And JESUS when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and lo! the heavens were opened unto him; and he saw the SPIRIT of GOD descending like a Dove, and lighting upon him; And lo! a voice from heaven, saying; “This is my beloved SON, in whom I am well pleased Matthew” 3:16, 17.
Here is at one view the most plain, palpable, and decided proof, which can be required of GOD the FATHER’S testimony to the Person of his dear SON. Yea, not only to his Person, but the whole revelation here made, becomes one general testimony to each Person, and from each other, in the undivided essence of JEHOVAH. For let it be first observed; here are present, the whole Three Persons, clearly distinguished from each other, and manifestly distinct in such a way, and manner, as can be necessary to define the Person of each. Here is the Person of the FAFHER, manifested by a voice from heaven. Here is the Person of the SON, manifested in our nature, coming up from the water. And here is the PERSON of the HOLY GHOST, manifested in the form of a dove, lighting upon the SON. But as if to afford a more distinct testimony of each, and of all, here are actions also ascribed to each by which the Persons of each are more strikingly ascertained and confirmed, For the voice from heaven, declaring the SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON did, at the same time, and by the same words, as fully testify to the Person of the FATHER, who proclaimed it. For when he declared that Sonship, he did no less than declare his Paternity. And the action of GOD the HOLY GHOST, in hovering over the Person of the SON, not only distinguished himself from both the FATHER and the SON, but pointed out his personal office, in the anointing the SON for the ministry, into which he was then baptized. And can anything more clearly define a person, than is here done, when we behold an express distinction in the FATHER speaking; from the SON spoken of the HOLY GHOST distinguished from both?
And so unanswerably conclusive and satisfactory was this “testimony considered by holy men of old, in the first ages of; the Church; that if any Enquirers after the truth needed confirmation to the same, it was the custom to send them to this account of the baptism of our LORD, by way of establishing them firmly in the faith. “Go (said they) to the river Jordan, and there learn, from divine teaching, the blessed doctrine of the Trinity.”
But let us not stop here. That gracious GOD, who bore such testimony to the Person of his own dear SON, at his baptism in Jordan; was pleased to vouchsafe a renewed instance to the same, and in the very same words, at his transfiguration, in the Mount Tabor. This transaction is related by Three of the Evangelists. Was is not, indeed, because the LORD knew, that in the latter ages of the Church this daring blasphemy would arise in denying the Person, of his dear SON? The LORD therefore caused this precious record to be thrice, written, (that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word might be established.
I stay not to quote the several passages, but rather refer the Reader to the scriptures themselves. See Matthew 17:1, 5. Mark 9:1-7 Luke 9:28. But I beg to offer the Apostle Peters comment upon the whole, as we have it in his second Epistle, 1:15-18, by which it appears, that the HOLY GHOST was pleased the Church should have the dying testimony of this man, as if to confirm yet more the glorious relation, which GOD the FATHER gave in the Mount, to the Person of his dear SON. “I will endeavor (said Peter) that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our LORD JESUS CHRIST but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from GOD the FATHER honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory: This is my beloved SON, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came, from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.”
Now let the regenerated child of GOD ponder well this delightful relation. delivered to the Church by the Apostle, concerning that glorious scene at Mount Tabor, so many years after it took place, and which appears to have been so fresh in his memory, as if it had only been the day before. Yes, the old Apostle seems to have forgotten both age and infirmities, from the refreshment his soul found in rehearsing it. What other idea could Peter have entertained of this revelation from heaven, but that of GOD the FATHER testifying to the PERSON, GODHEAD, and SONSH1P of his dear SON? Could he, indeed, have called his manifestation the power and coming of our LORD JESUS CHRIST; and declared himself and his companions, James and John, which were with him, eye witnesses of his Majesty; had he conceived, that He of whom such things were spoken of by the FATHER, and whom the FATHER declared to be his beloved SON, was in fact no Person: but only GOD the FATHER dwelling in the human nature of CHRIST, and in this sense only his SON; as the awful blasphemy of the present day would temp the Church to believe. In this view, what powers or what coming of His, could have been meant; or what Majesty could in truth have been called: his Majesty, when he himself had no Person, and was no other than only a shrine, a covering of flesh and blood for the FATHER to dwell in? How would the Apostle have stood amazed, or rather, how would his honest indignation been excited, had the infidels of our days lived in his days, and he had heard them deny Person to GOD’s dear SON? How would Peter, above all men, have spurned at the daring blasphemy, who had himself received, from the mouth of the SON of GOD, An assurance that he was blessed, because he had borne testimony both of the Person and Sonship of his LORD and which JESUS himself assured him, none but GOD the FATH ER Could have revealed to him. “Thou art CHRIST” (said Peter) “the SON of the living GOD! Blessed art thou Simon Barjona” (said JESUS) “for flesh, and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my FATHER which is in heaven.” Matthew. 16:16, 17. Let the child of GOD ponder over these things: yea, bless GOD for them. For GOD the FATHER’S testimony, to the Person of his dear SON is abundantly proved by them. But flesh and blood now, no more than then, can reveal it in the heart. Galatians 1:16.
From these two most striking testimonies given by GOD the FATHER to the Person of GOD the SON let us pass on to a third. It appears from the gospel, that the LORD JESUS had been discoursing with his disciples in the presence of the multitude. On a sudden, he ceased from speaking to them, and addressed his “FATHER, FATHER” (said JESUS) “glorify thy name! Then came there a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The people that stood by and heard it, said, that it thundered: Others said that an Angel spake to him. JESUS answered and said, “this voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.” John 12:28.
I stay not to enquire for what other purposes beside the one now before me, this conversation took place between the SON of GOD and his FATHER. All that I am at present concerned in, is; to shew here from, the distinction of Person, between the FATHER and the SON. And surely, the •peaking of the one to the other, and the answers returned by the one to the other, carry with it as palpable a testimony of two persons as anything can shew. For here are two distinct Speakers; and consequently, two distinct Persons. And if distinct Persons, then are the Persons of the FATHER and of the SON ascertained as distinct. For to suppose according to modern heresy, that in both there is but one Person, namely, GOD as one Person only in the GODHEAD, and dwelling in the human nature under the name of CHRIST: and thus, GOD is speaking to himself and from himself; is so glaring an absurdity, as needs only the being mentioned to be refuted.
We have a beautiful illustration of the Person of the FATHER and of the SON, in the GODHEAD, in one of the Psalms, as is highly conclusive in point, and may serve as an example and to throw light over similar portions of a like nature. I mean that memorable passage in the 40th Psalm, where, under the spirit of prophecy, the SON of GOD is described as saying to the FATHER: “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hath thou opened, burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required; then I said: Lo! I come.” Psalm 40:6, 7. No one will question but that these words were spoken, and to the FATHER, by the SON of GOD. But the Church would never have known at what lime they were spoken; and modern heresy would have been alive to have said, that they were spoken in the human nature of CHRIST, had it not been elsewhere said to the contrary. But GOD the HOLY GHOST by Paul, hath most clearly revealed the blessed secret. Indeed, the importance of the matter itself was too great to be left at conjecture, for the countenancing of heresy, and therefore the HOLY GHOST instructed the Apostle to tell the Church when the SON of GOD, as SON of GOD, and at the moment of his assumption of our nature, so addressed his FATHER. “Wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith sacrifice and offerings thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure, then said I, Lo, I come!” Hebrews 10:5, 6, 7. Here the passage of the Prophet is opened and explained by the Apostle: and we behold, as plain as words can make it, that at the time when the SON of GOD came into the world, to take the body prepared for him, and not when he had taken it, he so spake to his FATHER. Consequently, the words were spoken by the SON of GOD, as SON of GOD, then coming into the world for the purposes of redemption, and before that human nature he was about to take was formed, and hence, both his PERSON and GODHEAD are hereby at once proved.
To these decided testimonies of the Person of the SON of GOD, might be added, the many collateral proofs also in which the same identity of Person is shewn, from what is said concerning the FATHER and the SON, distinct from each other. “My Father worketh hitherto” (Saith Jesus) “and I work.” John 5:17. “I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” John 6:38 “It is also written in your law,” (saith Jesus to the Jews) “that the testimony of two men are true. I am one that bear witness of myself: and the FATHER that sent me beareth witness of me.” John 8:17, 18. Now in all these and the like scriptures, if any form of words can define Person, And the distinction of Person, surely it is here. My Father working: and I working, can be no other than distinct Workers, though the work be the same. The I and the He ; the I which is said Io work, and the He which worketh, can never be otherwise than distinct Persons. And when the SUN of GOD speaks of his own will, distinct from that of his FATHER'S will; and the FATHER sending, distinct from his being sent; language can have no precise nor determinate ideas, if these are all one and the same. One might have thought that the judgement which the SON of GOD himself hath given, on this subject, would have put an end to all dispute, and been considered final. “I am one” (said be) “that bear witness of myself; and the FATHER that sent me, he beareth witness of me.” Surely here are two express witnesses, distinct from each other; and which the SON of GOD declares as such, to be tantamount to two men under the law, confirming any truth.
Everything may be allowed which the mysterious unity: in the divine essence makes necessary to be allowed, of difficulty on a subject so sublime; but yet, in all these scriptures, the distinction of the Persons in the GODHEAD is so plain and legible, as cannot be overlooked. If indeed we were called upon to explain, what from the very nature of the subject is not explainable, and shew, in what distinction of Persons consists, then there might because for demur. But the faith once delivered to the saints, considers the LORD’S people as humble believers, and not proud reasoners. The doctrine of the existence of Three Persons in One glorious Essence is mysterious, very highly mysterious to creatures such as we are. And to creatures such as we are, it would be wonderful, indeed, if the nature and mode of Being in JEHOVAH were not so.
But it should be remembered, that if the assent of the understanding is withheld to all that we cannot explain, we need not go far from home to find subjects which baffle the largest grasp of human faculties to take in and unfold. Man is a mystery to himself, and, with all his boasted knowledge, totally incapable of explaining to himself the nature of his own being. I believe, and take for granted, as a point no one is disposed to question, that there is a certain identity in every man’s person, which defines that person, and by which that person is known. I have no doubt, but that the hand that now writes these lines, and the eyes which hereafter may read what is here written when gone from me, are distinct persons. I say, assume this as a fixed principle, because no one, as far as I have ever heard, is disposed to deny it. But if I were called upon to shew in what that identity consists, very sure I am I have no principles, nor data to act upon in proof, If then on a subject apparently so simple and obvious, and where I may be supposed to be perfectly at home, I find myself bounded by an horizon too dense for me to look through; shall I be astonished that my dazzled eye cannot behold objects, so bright and glorious, so as to have becoming apprehensions of them when the contemplation is no less than JEHOVAH in his trinity of Persons: FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST?
Great GOD, I, desire to fall down under the deepest self-abasement, in the consciousness of my own nothingness and ignorance before Thee! I bless the LORD for that degree of information he hath been pleased to give of Himself, while here below. It is enough! It is enough! Oh! for grace “to the acknowledgment of the mystery of GOD and of the FATHER, and of CHRIST; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Colossians 2:2, 3.
And now having in as brief a manner as possible brought before the reader the first great branch of the subject, the testimony of GOD the FATHER to the PERSON of his dear SON: I will beg his further indulgence to bring before him also the second part I proposed, namely: GOD the FATHER's testimony to the GODHEAD of his dear SON. Before however I enter into this department of the subject, I would desire to pause a moment, and review the ground already trodden, in order to consider the very-great blessedness the Church derives from the consciousness of the Person of GOD’s dear SON, and her due apprehensions of him.
It is the identity of Person in the SON of GOD, which gives importance to all that is related of him. For the glory of his Person, as he is in himself, infinitely transcends every other view which the imagination can conceive of him. It is in Him, personally considered as he is in himself, is founded all the purposes of JEHOVAH in relation to his Church. It is said that they shall hang on Him all the glory of his FATHER'S house. Isaiah 22:24. And indeed without Him there is nothing to hang creation upon. “By Him all things consist.” Colossians 1:17. For there is nothing in JEHOVAH, considered in his trinity of Persons, that is tangible. The SON of GOD, coming forth in our nature, forms a medium of communication, and a medium of visibility. John 1:18. But then, all this is founded in his Person. He comes between all the purposes, council, will, and pleasure of JEHOVAH towards the Church; as the glorious Person in our nature, to work all by, to form all in, and to be the substance all of, for grace here and glory forever. The church hath no bottom, no basis, no foundation, adequate to her need, for durableness and unchangeableness, but in the Person of the SON of GOD. And it is he, and he alone, that fills the vast and infinite mind of JEHOVAH. For as the FATHER’S choice of the Church, in the several members of the Church, is personal; so the SON of GOD in his Person, having taken our nature, is the glorious head, which filleth all things to his body the Church: the fullness that filleth all in all. Of such moment therefore it is, that, under divine teachings, the church of GOD should have suitable and becoming apprehensions of the Person of the SON Of GOD; and receive the FATHER’S testimony, which we have seen he hath more than once proclaimed from heaven by a voice, saying, “This is my beloved SON, in whom I am well pleased.”
But this is not all. The just and proper apprehension of the Person of GOD’s dear SON, is essentially necessary, in order that we may have just and proper apprehensions, no less, of the benefits and blessings we have in him. The benefits and blessings derived from him will be more or less according to the dignity of his Person. It is therefore this being the SON of GOD which renders his Person so transcendently great and glorious; and consequently it is from the same, which renders all that we derive from him transcendently great and glorious. So that above all things as we value the grace and love, the benefits and blessings we receive from him; we must see to it that it is his Person which crowns the value and preciousness of all. The one indeed followeth the other; and it is the former which gives all the blessedness to the latter. For the glories of his Person infinitely transcends all that he hath done for his people; just as cause transcends effect. Yea, GOD our FATHER hath chosen the Church in Him, and not from the benefits we derive from Him. We are said to have been chosen in him, adopted in him, accepted in him; but we are never said to have been chosen in him for his merits, or adopted in him for his merits, or accepted in him for his merits. It is his Person which is the first of all objects in his FATHER’S approbation, and the Church in him: and then next follows the whole of what he hath wrought for his Church and People. For the works and merits of the SON of GOD in our nature were all subsequent acts to our being chosen in him, and adopted in him, and accepted in him. Whereas those original and eternal purposes of GOD, towards his Church in CHRIST, were in his Person before the foundation of the world; and, consequently, before sin or the necessity of salvation. It is, as I have before observed, most blessed to view and review, and that unceasingly, what the SON of GOD hath done, and is doing for us, and will do to all eternity; nevertheless, what the SON of GOD is in himself demands our regard still more. And it were a sad return of love to give the benefits we derive from him the first place in our esteem, and his Person the second. Rather dear LORD! let my soul love thee for what thou art in thyself; not for that thou hast given me life, but that thou art my life: not for that thou hast accomplished salvation, but that thou art my salvation: not that through thee I shall have an inheritance among all them that are sanctified, but that thou art mine inheritance, my home, my habitation, my dwelling place, and my portion forever.
One word more. So very interesting is it to the Church of the living GOD, to have a clear apprehension of the Person of the SON of GOD, that, according to my view, I see no possibility of personally enjoying the love of the, FATHER, in having chosen and given the Church to his dear SON; or the love of the SON in betrothing and redeeming the Church to himself for ever; or the love of the HOLY GHOST anointing and quickening the Church together with CHRIST: until we apprehend the Person of the SON of GOD, in whom, and by whom, and from whom all these blessings come to us. Holy men of old were so much alive to this personal enjoyment, from the personal knowledge of Him, that in all their triumphs of faith, his Person was the burden of every hymn they sung. The Person of the SON of GOD became the one object and subject of all their confidence and joy. “He gave himself” (said one of them) “for me.” Galatians. 2:20. “Who his own self” (said another) “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” 1 Peter 2:24. “He hath washed us” (said the Church) “in his own blood.” Revelation 1:5. Observe how these lovers of the SON of GOD dwelt upon his Person! It is himself of whom they speak; his own self; his own blood. Not his deeds, not his gifts, not his graces, bestowed upon them; though all these were immense things in their esteem, and immensely valued by them; but the whole was not equal to himself. It was on Him they feasted, their souls, and hung like bees upon the loveliest flower.
And indeed, what are the sweetest and most endearing thoughts, on which regenerated souls dwell when entering into communion with all the Persons of the GODHEAD, but the same? When we feel the love of GOD the FATHER, in the gift of his SON; how is the gift heightened, when we say, “he spared not his own SON”? Romans 8:32. When we dwell upon His love to the Church, as elected in CHRIST, how infinitely sweeter to hear the SON of GOD call that Church his own elect? Luke 18:7. And when the Church is called the Temple of the HOLY GHOST deeding in us, how blessed the addition, which saith, and ye are not your own! I Corinthians 6:19.
If the Reader, through divine teaching, can and doth enter into a proper apprehension of these golden things of scripture, he will need no other guide to make him sensible of their blessedness. It is the Person of the SON of GOD that is all in all to his Church. Our union with him, and everlasting blessedness in him, are all founded in his Person, as the Person of GOD’s dear SON. And of such infinite importance is this doctrine, that we do not exceed the bounds of truth, neither magnify the Church, in point of rank, too highly, when we say, that from our union with the Person of the SON of GOD, we are brought into a scale of being above Angels: because none of their order can claim such a relationship. Oh! with what holy rapture and joy is my soul looking forward to that blessed hour, when He, who is the object of my faith now, will then be revealed to me in open vision; when I shall see him as he is and dwell with him forever!
I proceed now, as was proposed, to the consideration of the second point designed in this little work, namely: the Personal testimony of GOD the FATHER to the GOD-HEAD of his dear SON.
And Here I shall have no occasion to direct the steps of the Reader, to follow me over a large part of the holy ground of scripture, in quest of this testimony. For though the Bible itself is everywhere abounding with witnesses to this great truth, which like the PLEIADES among the heavenly bodies, shine in one full constellation, yet I am limited, by the plan proposed to myself upon the present occasion, to bring this one only, namely, GOD the FATHER’S Personal testimony to this glorious doctrine; and, therefore; I have nothing at this time to do with any other. I have indeed elsewhere, from other witnesses, largely substantiated this fundamental doctrine of our faith:*177 but here I am confined to a single testimony, in that of GOD the FATHER. And blessed be GOD this is enough. One proclamation, one line, yea, a single word from the FATHER, testifying to the GODHEAD of his dear SON, (as we have before, his testimony to his dear SON’s PERSON) will bear down and carry all before it, be the opposition what it may, either from men or devils!
In the prosecution of this part of the subject I might again advert to what hath been before noticed, of the testimony given by the FATHER to the Person of his dear SON, both at his Baptism and Transfiguration for his GOD-HEAD and SONSH1P were equally then attested, and, from the same authority. But I wave what might be added from thence. It were needless here to go over that ground again. I have one scripture in view, to which I wish to call the Reader’s attention; and of which I feel confident, if the LORD brings him under his divine teaching, he will find so abundantly convincing for our present purpose as to supersede the necessity of every other. It was first delivered to the Church by the ministry of one of the Prophets, and afterwards explained by one of the Apostles; and is so truly blessed in both, as to induce, under God’s grace, in all truly regenerated minds, a firm belief to the record GOD hath given of his dear SON.
The scripture, to which I refer, is that memorable one in the 45th Psalm, written about a thousand years before the Incarnation of the SON of GOD: and explained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, after the SON of GOD had finished redemption work, and was returned to glory. The words are: “Thy throne O GOD is for ever and ever.” The Reader will do well to observe how the Prophet introduced it. He began the Psalm with describing some mighty King, whom he speaks of, as fairer than the children of men; into whose lips grace was poured, and whom GOD hath blessed forever. And after several other striking descriptions, in reference to his Person, he speaks of his throne as of everlasting duration: “Thy throne O GOD is for ever and ever.” Psalm 45:1-6.
The unenlightened Jews contented themselves, as they read this scripture, with concluding that Solomon, King of Israel was He, to whom the Prophet referred: but nothing could be more foreign to the purpose. For Solomon, poor man, though a great king while he lived, manifested the fallen race to which he belonged, and fully proved it when he died. Neither was he fairer than the children of men; for though a partaker of grace yet was not grace poured into his lips without measure, neither was his throne established for ever and ever. So that the Prophet could not mean any of the sons of Adam, but, as our Lord upon another occasion said: “a greater than Solomon is here.” Luke 11: 31.
It is our mercy, that though from the days of the Prophet the secret, to whom this scripture had respect, lay in the bosom of GOD, perhaps known only to the HOLY THREE IN ONE; yet after the Incarnation and return of the SON of GOD to glory, the HOLY GHOST was pleased to make it known to the whole Church by the ministry of the Apostle Paul: and in so many words declared that it was spoken by the FATHER to his dear SON. If the Reader will open the Epistle to the Hebrews and compare the words given by the Prophet in this Psalm, with what is said in the first chapter of this Epistle, he will see the whole graciously explained, and carrying with it a direct testimony of GOD the FATHER personally witnessing to the GODHEAD of his dear SON, when he said to him, “thy throne O GOD is for ever and ever!”
The Epistle to the Hebrews is opened by the Apostle in express words concerning the SON of GOD. His mind indeed appears to have been blessedly laid out in speaking of Him under such characters of GODHEAD as could not have been said, but from the dearest evidence, that he possessed in common with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST all the essential attributes of JEHOVAH. These are his words: “GOD who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the Fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his SON: whom he hath appointed heir of all things; by whom also he made the Worlds: who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person, and upholding all things by the word of his power: when he had by himself purged our sins sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” Hebrews 1:2, 3, 4.
Now let the Reader pause. Here are several features of character ascribed to the SON of GOD, preparatory to what GOD the FATHER hath expressly afterwards spoken to the SON himself and which can be said of none, but of the Persons in the GODHEAD; and which therefore being said of the SON of GOD, beyond all dispute proves his GODHEAD in common with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST.
As first, He is distinguished from all the Prophets which ministered in the Church before him, by his Name, GOD’s SON. Not GOD’s SON by creation, but by, nature: for the actions ascribed to him, which immediately follow, manifest this. For he is said to have made the worlds and to uphold all things by the word of his power. The making worlds, or upholding them when made, are manifest acts of the GODHEAD so the He who is here said to have done both, cannot himself have been created. For the Apostle in. the same Epistle hath observed: “He who built all things is GOD.” Hebrews 3:4.
Secondly, He is spoken of as being the brightness of his FATHERS glory and the express image of his Person. Here again we have the fullest and most decided testimonies of his GODHEAD, from the sameness and equality of nature in both. For as among men the image or likeness of an earthly father in a son could not take places unless both were of the same nature; so, the image of GOD the FATHER, be that image what it may, could not be in the SON, unless the nature and essence were the same. And therefore, while the very name of FATHER and of SON imply a distinction of Person; as the express image of a Person and the Person are distinct: so the perfect resemblance as fully proves the nature of both to be one and the same.
Thirdly, As if to distinguish the GODHEAD of the SON yet more fully, the HOLY GHOST has not only drawn a line of everlasting distinction, between the SON; of GOD and the Prophets as between a LORD and his Servants: but in a verse or two, which follows, he hath carried on the subject farther, in making the same comparison between the SON of GOD and Angels, in order to shew the vast distinction: he being the begotten SON of GOD, and they nothing but ministering spirits. “For unto which of the Angels said he at any time thou art my SON: this day have I begotten thee?” To which we answer without hesitation: to none of them. And to which of them did GOD speak, as to his SON? Here again we answer to none. But of Him GOD said, “I will be to him a FATHER; and he shall be to me a SON.” And yet in a more distinguishing manner of the SON of GOD it is said, that when the FATHER bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith: “And let all the Angels of GOD worship him. Verses 5, 6,7. Let the Reader pause over these things, and ponder them well. Would God have said such and such things, yea, and commanded the Angels of GOD to worship his SON, had not the SON possessed the same nature and essence with himself? Would GOD, who declares himself to be JEHOVAH, and so jealous of his glory as not to give it to another neither his praise to graven images, have so joined his SON with himself, and the HOLY GOST as One in the undivided nature of the GODHEAD, had He not indeed possessed the right in common with himself and the HOLY GHOST; and the FATHER by this very act proclaimed the same to all his creatures? Let the Reader pause over these things, and judge accordingly!
And lastly to crown all, After all these palpable demonstrations to the dignity and glory of the SON of GOD, the whole is finished, by way of confirmation, in the personal testimony of GOD the FATHER to the Person and GODHEAD of his dear SON; when, as this scripture in the plainest form of words that can be uttered expresseth it, GOD the FATHER himself calls the SON of GOD, GOD; and declares his throne to be eternal. “But unto the SON he saith: thy throne O GOD is for ever and ever!” If this be not a plain scriptural record of GOD the FATHER’s personal testimony to the GODHEAD of his dear SON then is there not a single testimony to any one matter of fact in the Bible: and the Church cannot sufficiently bless GOD the HOLY GHOST for the same. Yea, the very gracious manner in which GOD the HOLY GHOST hath caused it to be done, first by giving the Church the precious testimony by one of the Prophets; and then at a distance of a thousand years afterwards, explaining and confirming it by one of the Apostles; is a proof of divine love that the Church might be in possession of both, and having received his testimony set to his seal that GOD is true.
Perhaps it may be said, that very much of this first chapter to the Hebrews, when speaking to the SON of GOD, is in express reference to him as Mediator. To which I answer, most certainty it is. And great cause hath the Church for thankfulness it is so, and that such precious things are here said of the SON of GOD, under that blessed and endearing character. Thus, for example. When it is said that GOD the FATHER appointed him heir of all things: that he by himself purged our sins: that he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows: and the like: no doubt these things are spoken of Him, in his official character as Mediator. For as GOD, one with the FATHER over all GOD blessed forever, he could not be appointed heir bf all things: for all things from everlasting were his own, in common with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST. Neither could the purging our sins or being anointed with the Unction of the HOLY GHOST, have reference to his divine nature, but to his human nature, which he took into union with his GODHEAD for the purpose of redemption. Hebrews 2:16. But these and many similar ones, both in this chapter and other scriptures Which shew, and are intended to shew, his manhood, do not militate at the same time against what the same scriptures as plainly testify, to his GODHEAD. For he could not have been competent to the high office of Mediator, had he not been GOD as well as man: and therefore, so far are these scriptures, which speak of him in his human nature, from lessening what is said of him in his divine; that they are confirmed by them: yea, they mutually establish and confirm each other: and it is our mercy when through grace we are enabled thankfully to receive and to rejoice in both. And I take occasion here from to make a short remark in this place, in which hope the Reader will indulge me. It is among the chief beauties and glories of scripture, and which prove their divine origin and authority, that there are so many descriptions of the SON of GOD in the holy word, where the Person of the SON of GOD, as GOD; and his Character as Mediator, are so sweetly blended. There is no Writer like the HOLY GHOST. His infinite mind possesseth an infinite com prehension: and therefore he used a vast comprehension of language. And hence it is He differs herein from every other Writer. Sometimes a short verse, yea, not unfrequently a word, will contain an immensity of divine truths. So that here also, among a thousand other marks of distinction, the SPIRIT JEHOVAH proves his PERSON, GODHEAD, and MINISTRY.178
Perhaps it may be further said that the throne of the SON of GOD, which GOD the FATHER speaks of, in these scriptures, refers to his mediatorial throne. I desire on all subjects of such sublimity to speak warily and humbly. But while walking within this sacred enclosure, I would beg to say, that if there be any allusion in these words to the mediatorial throne of the LORD JESUS: it can be only in reference to that throne during the reign of grace, and while the LORD is gathering in his people. For on this ground, we have the warrant of the holy word. “The HOLY GHOSTS by Paul, when speaking of the reign of CHRIST as Mediator over sin, death, hell, and the grave; saith, that when all things are subdued unto him; That is, when the last elect vessel is brought home by grace; that then the purposes of his Mediatorial Kingdom upon earth being full, accomplished, he will deliver up the kingdom to GOD even the FATHER, that GOD may be all in all, 1 Corinthians 15;24-28. So that the Throne, which the FATH ER speaks of to his dear SON, as for ever and ever, is evidently distinct from this Mediatorial administration of grace upon earth; and begins only to break forth with greater luster when grace is consummated in glory in heaven. The SON of GOD, as GOD, possesseth in common with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST, this eternal throne; and when GOD in his trinity of PERSONS will be all in all, this throne is and will be, as it hath been, for ever and ever!
While the Reader is enabled through grace to receive this testimony, and to set to his seal that GOD is true, let him not fail, through the same divine teaching, to connect with it the soultransporting assurance, that the union of the SON of GOD with his Church, is the same in both kingdoms, whether grace or glory. No period will ever come, through all the countless ages of eternity, when the SON of GOD will cease to be what He now is, the Head and Husband of his body the Church; the fulness that fills all in all. His Church, his Spouse, his fair One, his undefiled, is His; and always was His; and always will be His. And He is hers, and always will be hers: the same yesterday, today, and forever. So, He himself hath said, and so, through grace, we know. I in them (saith He to his FATHER) and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in One; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me John 17:23
Before I pass on to what is proposed under the third part of this little work, namely, to bring before the Reader the testimony of GOD the FATHER in the SONSHIP Of his dear SON; I would beg indulgence to offer an observation or two, as in the former instance, on his Person; so now on his GODHEAD; for both form an equally interesting subject, involving in their eventful consequences, everything that is blessed, in relation to the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
And first, I would fain persuade myself, that such a testimony as we have now beheld in scripture of GOD the FATHER himself, to the GODHEAD of his dear SON, cannot but appear in characters so luminous and convincing as to put out in everlasting darkness all the false meteors of the present day, which blaze but for the moment, and are formed from the sparks of men’s own kindling. And sure I am, if that Almighty SPIRIT, who first commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in the Reader’s heart; be will give him the light of the knowledge of the glory of GOD, in the face of JESUS CHRIST. 2 Corinthians 4:6. And I would vain hope, that the LORD will not only give him the light of the understanding on this immense truth, but make it a living principle in his heart. It is with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. The conviction of the head, uninfluenced by the work of God on the heart, is a barren unprofitable faith, producing nothing; whereas, that which is of the operation of the SPIRIT leads to the salvation of the soul.
The PERSON, GODHEAD, and SONSHIP of the LORD JESUS, is the bottom and foundation of everything that is blessed in the Church of GOD, For could it be supposed for a moment only, that this became questionable; instantly the whole superstructure would totter and fall: and then, with it, all that is truly valuable and of eternal consequence, would fall also. For if He, whom the scriptures set forth under the endearing name of the SON of GOD, be not a Person in the GODHEAD and of the same nature and perfections with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST: and if He be not GOD, as well as man, then can there be no efficacy in his blood; no justification in his righteousness; no redemption in his merits; neither can faith find a warrant to lay hold of for the belief of any one revealed truth. And is it possible there can be Any who name the name of CHRIST, to take up with such a creed? But thou O man of GOD, flee such things! Let GOD’s own testimony, to the GODHEAD of his own SON, be received with thanksgiving; Yea, let GOD be true, but every man a liar!179 Romans 3:4.
Moreover. The GODHEAD of GOD’s dear SON not only becomes essential for giving efficacy to all that he has wrought, in his divine office of Mediator, as relating to himself: but also, for carrying on and completing all those immense designs, yet to be accomplished; and for communicating all the blessed fruits and effects of them, as relating to his people. Were He not GOD, it were impossible for him to be the object of faith, hope and trust; impossible for him to be present at all times, and all places, with his Church and people: impossible for him to create and dispense all the incalculable blessings which he hath promised them, and which they need, for grace here and glory hereafter. True indeed, (and a blessed truth it is for us) the Church, in both worlds, doth receive, and will receive the whole, through the medium of his human nature. But if he were not a PERSON thus to act, and if he were not GOD, as well as man, thus to have a fulness; he could not hold out forever, to be everlastingly supplying; and yet he himself be everlastingly undiminished in that fullness, which filleth all in all. So that under this view also as in the former, yea, and in every other, it is inconceivably sweet and precious to consider this testimony, which GOD the FATHER hath given to the PERSON and GODHEAD of his dear SON! Oh! the blessedness of thus knowing Him, in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the GODHEAD bodily, and that the Church is complete in Him, Colossians 2:9,10.
Once more The GODHEAD of GOD’s dear SON is not only essentially necessary, on all these accounts, and in every other, for communicating to his people the blessings both in time and in eternity: but also, to make these blessings what they are promised to be, everlasting and unchangeable. I speak with all possible reverence, when I say that the Church to be everlastingly holy and everlastingly happy, and not subject to any change in either; must derive both from a source out of herself. Created holiness in us, and created happiness arising therefrom might, indeed, last a great while, yea. for ages, but from the very nature of things could not last forever. Angels have fallen; Angels might fall: yea, Angels must fall, from the mutability which all merely created nature is subject to, if not supported and preserved by a power greater than their own. Hence, we read of Elect Angels, 1 Timothy 5:21. And as elect Angels, they are preserved by CHRIST. But then their preservation is from the LORD’S dominion over them. Whereas the Church derives her security from her LORD’S union with them; So that by virtue of this union, all her members are everlastingly safe, and, everlastingly blessed in him. And hence as all the holiness, and all the happiness flowing from that holiness, is not in the Church herself, but in her glorious Head and Husband: there can be no possibility to change; and consequently, no possibility to be lost forever. And in this sense, that sweet scripture is blessed indeed. “GOD cannot be tempted with evil.” James 1:13. And the Church being one with him in his human nature, who is one with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST in the divine; can be subject to no temptation, (as the Angels which fell being in themselves when tempted were) but as the LORD JESUS promised, so the certainty hereby is confirmed, when he said: because I live, ye shall live also. John 14:19. Oh! how little have those men considered, these precious things, on the certainty of which the everlasting security, and the everlasting blessedness of the Church depends. It is from the Church’s union with her glorious Head, that her unchangeableness to all eternity is made sure; the LORD her Husband being in himself unchangeable. But if his PERSON and GODHEAD become questionable, of consequence all our connections, and everlasting safety in Him would become questionable also and then farewell to that promise of our GOD: “and they shall reign for ever and ever.” Revelation 12:3,5. Precious, precious LORD JESUS! let thy sweet words be always uppermost m my heart, and their divine melody unceasingly sounding in my ears: because I live, ye shall live also “John 19:19.
I have but one point more to finish the subject: namely, the Personal testimony of GOD the FATHER to the SONSHIP of his dear SON: and this is as sweet and as interesting as either of the former: and together, with both, gives a finishing beauty and loveliness to the whole. Indeed, if I may venture so to speak, the SONSHIP of the LORD JESUS hath a certain claim in our affections, peculiarly endearing and of inexpressible sweetness. For all those blessings which flow to us from GOD our FATHER in His relation as FATHER, flow to us in and through his dear SON and, from our union with him. And so infinitely important is this doctrine in the Covenant of grace, that if it were to be relinquished, the Church must relinquish with it also, all those great and exceeding precious Promises given by the FATHER to the SON, and the Church, in Him. And there is, according to my apprehensions, somewhat so truly blessed in the relationship of the FATHER to the SON; and the SON to the FATHER, as our FATHER in CHRIST JESUS, that methinks I would not part with the precious doctrine, no, not for the world. And though I dare not, because in truth I cannot, enter into the full apprehension of the subject myself, much less describe it to others; (indeed the relationship subsisting between the Persons of the GODHEAD is not our province to explain) yet is it our mercy to receive it; and being so plainly revealed, and so fully confirmed in scripture, under the blessed and familiar terms of FATHER and SON; I can, and do, accept and believe it, with the most cordial and heartfelt satisfaction Yea. I find cause to bless GOD in his whole trinity of PERSONS for this, as well as every other divine revelation, which he has been pleased in infinite condescension to make of himself. My only astonishment is, that poor creatures of such limited faculties as we know ourselves to be; and in such a state of imperfection and ignorance as the present life is; should, through grace be enabled to discover so much, rather than wonder that we know no more!
In calling the Reader's attention to this third branch of the subject, namely, GOD the FATHER'S testimony to the SONSHIP of his dear SON; I beg once mote to remind him (and I shall but remind him of it, without going over it again) that what was proclaimed by the FATHER at the Baptism and Transfiguration of the PERSON and GODHEAD of the SON of GOD, becomes equally a witness to his SONSHIP Let the Reader recollect this, and then proceed to the examination of other testimonies to the same amount, which, through, grace, I will now bring before him.
I begin with observing, that from the general statement of the Scriptures, on this sublime subject, we are so accustomed to the names of FATHER and of SON; that it were a violence to our feelings to admit, even for a moment, their reality to be questionable And as these distinctions are personal and not simply confined to the nature and essence of the GODHEAD; it were impossible to relinquish the one, without giving up with it at the same time the other. For if the SONSHIP of the SON of GOD be no more, the appellation of the FATHER is alike no more; the relation of both depending (as necessarily they must depend) upon each other. And in this Case, what a chasm would be made in scripture if both were done away? Where would a child of GOD go to find his FATHER, from the relationship to the SON, if these connections in the GODHEAD had no existence? And what would become of all those great and glorious promises of our GOD and FATHER, as our GOD and FATHER in the Person of his dear SON before the world began; if the Church hath no relationship through the SON; neither the SPIRIT witnessing to our spirits that we are the children of GOD?180
Moreover. The word of GOD hath in express terms given to the Church the testimony of the FATHER to the SONSHIP of his dear SON, in not only declaring the oneness in nature and essence of the FATHER and the SON; but by expressions so near and tender whereat any time speaking of the SON, as most decidedly confirms the FATHER’s testimony on this point and renders it unquestionable. The SON of GOD is called his own SON; his dear SON; his only begotten SON; the SON of his love, and the like. And all these distinctions are in a way and manner as none beside is or can be called Not the SON of GOD by creation, as angels and men are for all things are said to be created by him and for him, consequently he himself cannot be created. Colossians 1:16,17. Neither is he called the SON of GOD by adoption, as is the Church. Ephesians 1:5, for our adoption is by him and consequently he himself is not adopted. Neither as Mediator, GOD and Man in one Person; for in this sense, he is GOD’s Servant181. But he is called the SON of GOD, in a special, personal and particular manner, as the only begotten of the FATHER, of the same nature with himself, over all GOD blessed forever. Amen Romans 9:5. And to this SONSHIP, GOD the. FAT'HER bore testimony not only as hath been already shewn by these public attestations before noticed; but also, by his resurrection from the dead after he had assumed our nature. For it is said, that he was declared to be the SON of GOD with power according to the SPIRIT of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:4. Now neither his SONSHIP nor GODHEAD would have been declared by this act, had not his own Almightiness been manifested in it in conjunction with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST. So that here also, as on many other occasions, the FATHER gave testimony to the SONSHIP and GODHEAD of his SON.
But we must not stop here. The SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON is further confirmed by the testimony of the FATHER, in that he hath graciously shewn our sonship to arise wholly out of it. John, the beloved Apostle, felt his mind so overwhelmed in the contemplation of it, that, unequal to express himself in terms equal to the subject, he exclaimed “Behold! what manner of love the FATHER hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of GOD!” 1 John 3:1. And the truth itself is blessedly explained in these two scriptures. Ephesians 1:4,5, and Galatians 4:4,5,6. In the former, GOD the FATHER is declared to have chosen the Church in CHRIST before the foundation of the world, having predestinated us to the adoption of children by JESUS CHRIST to himself. And in the latter, GOD the FATHER is said to have sent forth his SON in the fulness of time, that we might receive the adoption of sons.182 The first gracious act was before all worlds: consequently, it was made among the Persons of the GODHEAD, and becomes the highest proof of the SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON, as SON of GOD. And the second was made in time when the SON of GOD, as SON of GOD, took into union with himself our nature, that the Church in all her members might receive her adoption character. So that these scriptures when blended bear testimony, and from GOD the FATHER himself, to the SONSHIP of his dear SON, and while confirming his SONSHIP, no less confirm ours. So blessedly shines this precious truth as though written with a sun beam in both these scriptures of GOD.
The Apostle Paul, like John, felt his soul overpowered in the contemplation, and falling down before GOD, cried out: “For this cause I bow my knees unto the FATHER of our LORD JESUS CHRIST of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” Ephesians 3:14,15. But why, talk I of Paul? GOD himself, our FATHER, called the Church Daughter, ages before the SON of GOD became incarnate, in the view of her marriage with his dear SON; and bade the Church, like Abraham, to forget all her time alliances in nature, to enter into the enjoyment of this eternal relationship. “Hearken, O daughter, and consider incline thine ear: forget also thine own people, and thy father's house.” Psalm 14:10. Genesis 12:1. Yea, the SON of GOD himself, following up the same precious truth after that he had finished redemption work and was about to return to glory, said to Mary, and through her to all his body the Church: “I ascend to my FATHER and your FATHER and to my GOD and your GOD.” John 20:17. My FATHER in nature: your FATHER by grace: Mine by SONSHIP; yours by adoption: my GOD as Mediator; your GOD in Covenant. So plain, palpable, and decisive, are these testimonies in proof!
I do not think it unimportant in this place to add, that the Jews themselves perfectly understood our LORD as giving his own testimony to this SONSHIP in nature, and for which they charged him with blasphemy: a term wholly inapplicable, according to their view of things, but on the presumption that this SONSHIP was assumed by the LORD JESUS as thereby declaring himself GOD, and of the same nature and essence with his FATHER. Therefore, the Jews sought to kill him, because he had not only broken the sabbath, but said also that GOD was his FATHER, making himself equal with GOD. John 5:18. These words, strong as they are to this SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON would yet have been stronger, had our translators given the full sense of every word. But they have wholly left out a word, and that a most important word, which is in the original: namely, idion, and which shews that the LORD JESUS had called GOD his own FATHER. So that though our modern unbelievers in the SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON, as SON of GOD, presumptuously deny this blessed truth: yet not so the Jews.
They did not mistake our LORD’S meaning when he said that GOD was his own FATHER: for they took our LORD’S words just as they were, and declared him in consequence, according to their views, a Blasphemer, for making himself equal with GOD. But it will be for GOD himself to decide with whom is the greatest blasphemy: the Jews, in accepting the SON of GOD's words as they really were, and through unbelief denying his GODHEAD; or those who call themselves Christians, while refusing to accept CHRIST’S own words as they truly are; but by a construction of their own denying his SONSHIP, and also, the record GOD has given to his dear SON! But Reader! pause over the united testimony both of the FATHER and of the SON; and observe how beautifully these things harmonize, with other scriptures, to this glorious truth! The SON of GOD calleth GOD His own FATHER; as the SON is elsewhere represented in being called GOD’s own SON. And what can such expressions mean, but to teach the Church the nearness and dearness of this special, personal and peculiar relationship? Romans 8:32.
Once more. The SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON derives another testimony from GOD our FATHER, in that he is called his first born; his first begotten; his only begotten; and who is said, to be in the bosom of the FATHER, John 1:18. Perhaps it may he said that the two former of those characters, may be spoken of the SON of GOD as Mediator. And perhaps they may. Be it so. I will not stay to enquire. But the same cannot be said of the two latter. Only begotten; and to be in the bosom of the FATHER can be applicable only to Him, as SON of GOD, and to the exclusion of every other. And let it be observed, (for it is a point of no small consequence to observe) this only begotten is not only limited to the Person of the SON of GOD; but his GODHEAD is more decidedly shewn thereby, in that he is said to be in the bosom of the FATHER, and this even at a time when declaring him. He is not said to come forth from the bosom of the FATHER, but to be in the bosom, as one with him in heaven when as Mediator he is declaring him in the earth. Who will unriddle this! Shall we do as we are commanded, explain one scripture by another: comparing spiritual things with spiritual? 1 Corinthians 2:13. Then let us take the text on the same sublime subject, which the SON of GOD himself preached from in his discourse with Nicodemus. “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven: even the SON of man that is in heaven.” John 3:13. Who will solve this difficulty? As in the former scripture the SON of GOD, as SON of GOD, was in the bosom of the FATHER in heaven: when as son of man he declared him to his people upon earth: so in this latter scripture we are told that his ascension was not before his descension, and that, as SON of Man: and yet further, that He that came down from heaven was even the SON of Man which is in heaven, even while discoursing as the SON of Man with Nicodemus upon earth! These are indeed. Paradoxes, and must ever be so, to men of the world, untaught of GOD: but they are among the plainest truths to the LORD’S people, in the mystery of the gospel.183 And hence it was the LORD JESUS so expressed himself to his FATHER. “I thank thee, O FATHER! LORD of heaven and earthy that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes!” Matthew 2:25. But to all the cavils of carnal men in the present CHRIST despising generation, the words of Agar are admirably suited, and as applicable as if they had been written but yesterday; “Who hath ascended up to heaven or descended? Who hath gathered the winds in his fist? Who hath bounded the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name; and what is his SON’s name? if thou const tell, Proverbs 30:4.
When I take into one mass of evidence the cloud of witnesses with which the Church is encompassed, on this great truth of our most holy faith; I stand amazed that there should be found any, among those who admit the Bible as the standard of decision, who venture to call in question a doctrine so fully authenticated, and so essential to the being and well-being of the Church, as is the PERSON, GODHEAD, and SONSHIP of GODs dear SON. That Satan should tempt to this unbelief, is just as might be expected; for we know he had the impudence to tempt the SON of GOD himself to question his own SONSHIP. Matthew 4:3,6. but it cannot be reconciled upon the principles of common sense, that men, who call themselves Christiana, should take their stand upon the same ground, and by endeavoring to rob the SON of GOD of his dignity, rob the Church of all comforts. Are such men aware that while their quiver is bent against the PERSON, and GODHEAD, and SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON; their arrows are, in fact, directed against the buckler of the FATHER?184 For added to the testimony GOD the FATHER hath given from heaven to the SONSHIP of his beloved SON; did he not at the same time command the Church to hear him? Hath he not held him forth, through all the sacred scriptures of his word, as the great object of trust, and faith, and confidence? And would he be the suited object of either, but upon the presumption of his Oneness with himself in all the divine essence? Nay, would GOD have said to the Church as he hath done; “He is thy Lord, and worship thou him!” Psalm 45:12. Yea, have commanded all Ike Angels of GOD to worship him; Hebrews 1:6. had he not possessed, in common with himself and the HOLY GHOST, all those distinguishing attributes of GODHEAD, by which alone He becomes the suited object of adoration? Oh! what paleness, what horror, what dismay will mark the CHRIST despisers of this and every other generation, when the SON of GOD shall come in his own glory; and to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe, LORD! if the prayer be awakened in grace, answer it in mercy; and since thou thyself hast said whosoever speaketh a word against the SON of man it shall be forgiven him; Matthew 12:33 and since thou hast put up with a thousand and ten thousand wrongs from thy people, in all ages of thy Church; if any of thine have been led away with the error of the wicked; oh! for the sweet constraining love of the LORD JESUS to call them back, that they may kiss the SON lest he be angry and they perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little! “Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” 2 Peter 3:17. Psalm 2:12.
Let not the Reader pass away from the review of the Personal testimony of GOD the FATHER, to the SONSHIP of his dear SON, before he hath gathered from it, one or two observations, which present themselves to our regard.
The SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON as the SON of GOD in nature, is of all subjects the most endearing to the Church who are sons by adoption and grace. It opens to the first of all enjoyments in life. Yea, the perfect knowledge and enjoyment of it will be among the highest felicities in the life, that is to come. For heaven itself with all its blessedness, be that blessedness what it may, can have nothing equal to that of the relationship into which the Church is brought, to all the PERSONS the GODHEAD, by virtue of our personal relationship with GOD’s dear SON. For this, as a cause, must exceed all that spring from it as effects. The Apostle John seems to have had his very soul on fire as he viewed it. “Beloved! said he, now are we the sons of GOD! and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2. And so ought every regenerated child of GOD to feel. For our relationship in this our adoption character, from our union with Him, begets a likeness to Him, and a participation in every grace from Him. We shall be holy in his holiness; blessed in his blessedness; and happy in his happiness. And as far as the capaciousness of our faculties when ripened into glory can extend, we shall be as holy, blessed, and happy as GOD can make us: yea, so complete, that GOD himself, in his Trinity of PERSONS will not find in us, any spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but go be without blame before Him forever.
And what tends to endear this yet more, is the special and distinguishing nature of it. None but the Church of GOD can be brought into it. None can receive the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, FATHER; but those who are predestinated to the adoption of children, by JESUS CHRIST to the FATHER! No Angel can partake of it. For though Angels are sometimes called sons. Job 38:7, yet never sons by adoption. This belongs only to CHRIST’s mystical body. So that our relationship to GOD’s dear SON, from his taking into union with him our nature, is a higher dignity and privilege than all the Angels of heaven possess. Not one of them can claim this relationship. Yet every sinner upon earth can, when truly and savingly regenerated by the HOLY GHOST, Yea, it is more to be a child of GOD by adoption, than all the blessedness in the fruits and effects which arise out of it. All the blessings of redemption, with all the benefits we derive from redemption in time and to all eternity, are but the consequences of our Sonship; and not to be mentioned with our Sonship itself. Oh! the unspeakable gift of adoption. We are made heirs of GOD and joint heirs with CHRIST!
One word more. Though it is impossible to form a true estimate of the immense blessings included in the Sonship of the children of GOD, from their adoption character in GOD’s dear SON; yet I would, for my own part, be so very cheery of it, as never, if it were, possible, to lose sight of it, no, not for a moment: but clasp it to my arms, and make it the grand sweetener of all my highest enjoyments in life. I would carry the remembrance of it about me wherever I went. And as Moses enjoined Israel to have an eye to their covenant mercies in all things, so would I consider this relationship as the source of all my blessings. It should lie down with me, and rise up with me, and be a sign upon mine hand and as frontlets between mine eyes: Yea, I would speak of it in the house and by the way, and write it upon my door posts and upon my gates. Deuteronomy 11:18, &c. Here also I would learn a lesson from men of the world, who are wiser in their generation than the children of light. And as they carry themselves proudly, from their carnal alliances, and are very fond of letting everyone know if they have connections with the great ones of the earth; so would I desire that all men should discover by my life and conversation, that my alliance is heavenly, being by regeneration brought into the high privilege of my adoption character in CHRIST JESUS, and rank among the sons and daughters of the LORD GOD Almighty! 2 Corinthians 6:18. This indeed is a relationship which beggars every other. This is an affinity which all the proud annals of the world cannot boast; yea, compared to which, time itself is ds nothing, and will sink into everlasting forgetfulness before it. For when we shall have done with this dying, sinful, sorrowful, world: yea, when we shall not only have entered heaven, and lived ages beyond the remembrance of all things here below; our sonship will be the same from our union with GOD’s dear SON; and He that is our GOD and FATHER now, will be our GOD and FATHER then and Our Portion forever.
And now having, in as brief a manner as I am able, set before the Reader what was proposed in the title page of this little work; and shewn from the scriptures of GOD the HOLY GHOST, the Personal testimony of GOD the FATHER, to the PERSON, GODHEAD, and SONSHIP of GOD the SON; I commit the whole to the LORD and humbly wait his divine blessing. What the result will be I know not: this is not with me. My province is to labour in the word and doctrine. His is to bless according to his holy will and pleasure. And here the whole must rest.
But the more I contemplate the subject, the more I stand amazed in the contemplation. That the high and lofty ONE, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is HOLY! and who in his Trinity of PERSONS hath possessed, and doth assess, and from everlasting to everlasting must possess, inconceivable and uninterrupted glory, and blessedness, and felicity, to which nothing can be added; and from which nothing can be taken; and yet to manifest the riches of his grace should go forth in acts of creature communion; and call into being a church, to be everlastingly holy, and everlastingly happy, from union with his dear SON! What a subject is here opened to the contemplation of the mind of all the intellectual creation of GOD! What grace, in the exceeding riches of grace; must it be in the LORD GOD that when the glories of his nature and essence could receive no addition; and must have been eternally and unchangeably the same though no world had been made, nor a single creature called into existence;185 yet was pleased to go forth in such acts of favor: not that he might be more glorious, for that is impossible; but that he might import blessedness to the Church he had chosen in his dear SON, and cause his grace to shine in the richest luster of love upon their Persons in CHRIST through all the endless ages of eternity!
Neither do the riches of his grace stop here. For invisible and incomprehensible as JEHOVAH of necessity is, in his trinity of PERSONS; and such as in relation to the essence of the GODHEAD he is, and must be, to all eternity; yet in this depth of divine wisdom, which he hath manifested in the revelation of himself to the Church he hath called into being; he hath made such discoveries of himself in each PERSON of the GODHEAD, as, through divine teaching, hath enabled, and doth enable, the highly favoured objects of his love, to form suitable and becoming apprehensions of the HOLY THREE, which bear record in heaven; and to know by faith the perfect assurance of that glorious mystery, that these THREE are ONE. 1 John 5:7. By that glorious act of GOD’s dear SON taking into union with himself our nature, he hath hereby opened a medium of communication to make known (what without such a medium never could be known) the being and nature of GOD. Hence though no man (or as it is in the original, oudeis, no one, neither angel nor man, hath seen GOD at any time; “the only begotten SON, which is in the bosom of the FATHER, he hath declared him”, John 1:18. And by making known to the Church the personal acts of each, in each PERSON of the GODHEAD; the people of GOD find somewhat for the mind to lean upon, for personal communion with each, and with all. So that the children of GOD when quickened and regenerated by the SPIRIT, can and do know; and can and do sweetly and savingly enjoy; communion with the FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST, as the one united source of all grace and salvation. Hence, they feel a blessedness and a joy which is unspeakable, and full of glory, receiving the end of their faith even the salvation of their souls.
I am well aware how galling these things are to all un-renewed minds. And should this little work fall into the hands of men of this complexion, I am sensible it will not fail to displease. Yea, it is possible it may provoke to many a bitter expression, such as I have heard, and heard indeed until my very flesh hath trembled. The SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON, and particularly the atonement of his blood, hath called forth in the lightness of their minds such awful sentiments, as if that precious plan of grace represented GOD the SON as most amiable, and GOD the FATHER inexorable! But amidst this horrid blasphemy, the glorious truth itself stands where it always stood, from the foundation of the world, 1 Peter 1:19,20. Revelation 13:8. The rock of ages feels no motion from all the dashing waves of the momentary ebbing and flowing of the tide below! Could these men see, (what indeed nothing short of divine illumination can enable them to see) the beautiful order in the economy of grace, they would discover both the original formation of the Church in holiness, and the fall and recovery of the Church from sin; are equally alike the result of one and the same JEHOVAH, in his trinity of PERSONS; and that the whole is founded in the depths of divine wisdom, to minister equal glory and praise to the FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST. And so vast are GOD’s purposes in this scheme of grace, that redemption itself, with all its blissful consequences, is ordained more for the glory of GOD than the welfare of man. The revenue of glory the whole brings in, is the LORD’S. His praise is the first and ultimate design of all things186. This is indeed the cause. All else is but the effect. And when the upshot of the whole comes to be unfolded and explained, before the congregated world, millions of voices will proclaim, in words like the Apostle: “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of GOD! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the LORD? Or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed again! For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen.” Romans 11:33.
Netthson and Son, Printers Plymouth.
As shown in the body of this essay Mr. William Bidder, with the full approval of C.W. Banks, made a statement about what they and those likeminded believe in regard to The Eternal Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ. This statement was written expressly to oppose what James Wells (and others) believe. Mr. Bidder, in the December 1860 edition of the Earthen Vessel made the following statement. Speaking of James Wells, he says:
Now he must know, or he ought to know, that such advocates believe no such thing as that the Divine essence is, or was, begotten; nor do they dare think so, much less say so. They believe that God the Son, as a Person, subsisting in that essence, was eternally begotten of the Father; not made or created, but begotten, and in the same nature in which he is God. And there being nothing in the Divine nature, but what is eternal, then this generation must be eternal generation; ..
James Wells, in relation to the word “begotten” brings out an extremely important scriptural fact. Speaking of the Lord Jesus he says:
So that where his human nature is not, the word begotten is not; and where the word begotten is applied to him, there his human nature is. But the eternal generation doctrine destroys the original unity and equality of the eternal three divine persons.187
Before getting down to the main purpose of this appendix, I beg leave to look at what Bidder is proposing as scriptural truth. This is important because it lays the foundation for his deception. First, he denies that they believe that the divine essence, as such, was ever “begotten”. In fact, he says they do not even think or say it. Secondly, and here we come to the nonsensical part, that somehow: “that God the Son, as a Person, subsisting in that essence, was eternally begotten of the Father; not made or created, but begotten, and in the same nature in which he is God.” I fail to see how in any way, shape or form this can be anything but a change in the Godhead. Hence the importance of the word: “begotten.” Robert Hawker whom I have extensively quoted seems to go a step further. He wishes his readers to see Christ as the Son of God, completely detached from the covenant of redemption. He says:
There is somewhat very delightful even in the bare contemplation of it. For the consideration of the Person of the SON of GOD, as he is in himself and independent of his relationship to his people; opens to a subject, at once both sublime and blessed. For it is the infinite dignity of his Person, which gives infinite value and preciousness to that relationship. And as GOD the FATHER is more glorious in what he is in himself, than in all his ways and works towards his creatures; so GOD the SON is more glorious in himself and his own personal glory, in common with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST, in the essence of the GODHEAD, than in all the grace and love he hath manifested to his people. His love to us is indeed precious; yea very precious; and as the Apostle saith; we love him because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19. Nevertheless, had he never loved us, had he never taken our nature, nor done and suffered for us, what that love prompted him to do and suffer; yea had we never been: the SON of GOD; as SON of GOD, would have been, what he is in himself, in his divine nature, from all eternity, and to all eternity, being One with the FATHER over all GOD blessed forever, Amen.188
Therefore, Hawker makes the sonship of Christ to be in his very nature as God and not dependent upon the covenant of grace at all.
The importance of the words “begotten” (beget), “generation” and the extension to “eternally begotten” and “eternal generation” are the main subject under discussion here. By what I see as a slight of hand or a magic trick if you like two words or phrases are instantly exchanged in the quote from Bidder given above. These are “begotten” to “generation” and “eternally begotten” to “eternal generation”. To build up to this flight of fancy the biblical word “begotten” is first changed by Bidder to “eternally begotten”. Various questions arise from what Bidder has done. First: what words or phrases are actually used in the Bible itself? Second: what does each word or phrase mean? Third is there in fact any biblical justification for substituting the word generation for begotten when speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ?
First than what words are used in the bible in relation to the bringing into being of the “Son of God”? Psalm 2:7 is of key importance. Because the King James version was used almost exclusively by those involved in the controversy at this time, I will use that version as a reference.
Psalm 2:7: In the King James version Psalm 2:7, 8 reads as follows:
7 I will declare the decree: The LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son;
This day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, And I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
The Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon gives the following reference to the Hebrew word translated “begotten”.
3205 H}?, 7?>' [yalad /yawlad/] v. A primitive root; TWOT 867; GK 3528 and 4256;
498 occurrences; AV translates as “beget” 201 times, “bare” 110 times, “born” 79
times, “bring forth” 25 times, “bear” 23 times, “travail” 16 times, “midwife” 10 times, “child” eight times, “delivered” five times, “borne” three times, “birth” twice, “labour” twice, “brought up” twice, and translated miscellaneously 12 times.
1 to bear, bring forth, beget, gender, travail. 1A (Qal). 1A1 to bear, bring forth. 1A1A of child birth. 1A1B of distress (simile). 1A1C of wicked (behaviour). 1A2 to beget. 1B (Niphal) to be born. 1C (Piel). 1C1 to cause or help to bring forth. 1C2 to assist or tend as a midwife. 1C3 midwife (participle). 1D (Pual) to be born. 1E (Hiphil). 1E1 to beget (a child). 1E2 to bear (fig.—of wicked bringing forth iniquity). 1F (Hophal) day of birth, birthday (infinitive). 1G (Hithpael) to declare one’s birth (pedigree).
Acts 13:33 Paul, preaching to the Jews, quoting Psalm 2:7 said in part:
31 And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. 32 And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, 33 God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. 34 And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David.
It’s important and interesting that Paul makes this quotation in direct reference to Christ’s resurrection. As we saw earlier, James Wells brings this out correctly in his third letter.
One source is particularly valuable when it says:
3. Ps. 2:7 in the AT. This verse is much used in the AT. Its “today” is referred to the resurrection of Jesus in Acts 13:33. On one reading of Lk. 3:22 it applies to his baptism. No point of time is given in Heb. 1:5; 5:5. The birth stories do not quote it (though cf. Lk. 1:35), but on the basis of the resurrection and impartation of the Spirit Jesus is for the church more than a superior human being. The new aeon comes with him. In him we see true generation from God. In faith in him believers are assured of the resurrection and have the pledge of the Spirit. Hence they also see themselves as born of God.189
The Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon gives the following reference to the Greek word translated “begotten”.
1080 Ysvvaw [gennao gheirnalvo] v. From a variation of 1085; TDNT 1:665; TDNTA 114; GK 1164; 97 occurrences; AV translates as “begat” 49 times, “be born” 39 times, “bear” twice, “gender” twice, “bring forth” once, “be delivered” once, and translated miscellaneously three times. 1 of men who fathered children.
1A to be born. 1B to be begotten. 1B1 of women giving birth to children. 2 metaph.
2A to engender, cause to arise, excite. 2B in a Jewish sense, of one who brings others over to his way of life, to convert someone. 2C of God making Christ his son. 2D of God making men his sons through faith in Christ’s work.
Hebrews 1:5; Hebrews 5:5: The author to the Hebrews quotes various Old Testament passages including Psalm 2:7: all with relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:5 in context reads:
1 GOD, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; 3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; 4 Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. 5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? 6 And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. 7 And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. 8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. 9 Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. 10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: 11 They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; 12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. 13 But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? 14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?
Here again, the immediate context is to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Surely this is not coincidental!
The author again quotes Psalm 2:7 in his 5th chapter and fifth verse. Hebrews 5:5 in context reads:
5 For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: 2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. 3 And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. 4 And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. 5 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee. 6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. 7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; 8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; 9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; 10 Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
Here the context is to Christ being made a High Priest and especially to his salvation work.
In both passages from Hebrews the same Greek work gennao is used.
For my purpose here this leaves five more references to the word “begotten” with reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. All of these are by the Apostle John.
John 1:14,18: In John 1 the apostle first introduces his readers to Christ as the eternal “Word.” It is not until verse 14 that John talks about the second person of the trinity becoming flesh and blood: “14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” In verse 18 he again refers to this begetting, saying: “18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Both of these references clearly speak of Christ in his complex person.
In both instances a different Greek word is translated as “begotten” That word is:
3439 uovov^vq; [monogenes /mowog^ewace/] adj. From 3441 and 1096; TDNT 4:737; TDNTA 606; GK 3666; Nine occurrences; AV translates as “only begotten” six times, “only” twice, and “only child” once. 1 single of its kind, only. 1A used of only sons or daughters (viewed in relation to their parents). 1B used of Christ, denotes the only begotten son of God.190
Among others one source gives us a lot of detailed information about John’s use of the Greek word ‘monogenes’:
2. Only John uses the term for Jesus. John calls Christians the tekna of God rather than his huioi (cf. 1:12; 11:52; 1 Jn. 3:1). Jesus is the only huios; his unique relation to God is thus given emphasis. God is the pater ^dios of Jesus; no others stand in the same relationship (Jn. 5:18). It is thus that Jesus is monogenes (Jn. 1:14; 3:16;
1 Jn. 4:9). Because he is the only-begotten Son, his sending into the world is a supreme proof of God’s love (Jn. 3:16). But it also means that decision for life or death takes place in relation to him (3:18). As the only-begotten Son he shares all things with the Father. His glory is not merely like that of an only child; it is that of the only-begotten Son (1:14). He is not just unique; he is the Son, for combined with huios191 the term describes his origin. The risen Lord is also the preexistent Lord, who is with God, is loved by him, and shares his glory from all eternity (17:5, 24). Whether or not this implies actual begetting by God is debated by some, but 1 Jn. 5:18 definitely teaches this, for sonship is here presented in terms of begetting. John does not lift the veil of mystery that lies over the eternal begetting, for he aims to awaken faith rather than give systematic knowledge. Yet eternal begetting is an implication of monogenes in its distinctive application to Jesus. [F. BUSCHEL, IV, 737-41]192
Here is what one modern commentator has to say about “begotten” in John 1:14
The “glory” (doxa) of the Word is seen by the children of God, appropriately enough, as the glory of “a father’s One and Only.”18193 With this, the Gospel’s terminology takes a decisive turn from the expressions “God” and “the Word” (vv. 1-2) toward what is to be the dominant relationship from now on, between “the Father” and “the Son.”19194 The classic declaration of that relationship in the Gospel tradition is of course the voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22; compare Mt 3:17).20 It is widely recognized that the synoptic term “beloved” (agapetos; compare Mt 12:18; Mk 12:6; Lk 20:13) and the Johannine “One and Only” (monogenes; compare 1:18; 3:16, 18; 1 Jn 4:9) are almost equivalent terms, both accenting the uniqueness of Jesus’ relationship to the Father.21 The reference to “a father” seems to have been introduced to explain the otherwise abrupt “One and Only.” Otherwise, we might have wondered, “Whose One and Only?” The answer is “a father’s One and Only” (perhaps with the implication: “You know, as in the baptism story”), or literally, “a One and Only from a father” (para patros).22 At the same time, the choice of words could imply that “the One and Only” was also “sent” from his father, just as John was “sent from God” (v. 6). The notion that the Word “came” is, after all, still very much in the author’s mind.23 Yet in the absence of any explicit word for “coming” or being “sent,” it is probably safer to view the reference to a father (or the Father) as simply part of the definition of “One and Only.”24
In this Gospel (unlike the synoptics), the notion of Jesus as God’s “One and Only,” or more commonly as “the Son,” arises out of a certain perception of his ministry as a whole, not out of a specific incident such as the baptism or the transfiguration. The Gospel of John, in fact, makes no direct mention of either of these events. Similarly, “we looked at his glory” is not a claim based on a single experience (contrast Lk 9:32; 2 Pet 1:17-18), but a testimony to Jesus’ entire life on earth. His “glory” (doxa), closely identified with “the glory of God,” is revealed in his miracles (2:11; 11:40), but above all when he is “glorified” (doxazesthai) in his death on the cross and the events leading up to it (7:39; 11:4; 12:16, 23, 28; 13:31; 17:1, 5). The verb for “we looked at”
(etheasametha) is used of John’s vision of the Spirit descending on Jesus (1:33), once of observing a miracle (11:45), and three times in 1 John of believers’ perceptions of God or Christ (1 Jn 1:1; 4:12, 14). It is also used of Jesus’ own perception (1:38; 6:5) or that of his disciples (4:35) in the presence of potential converts or an opportunity for mission. In two of these instances the expression “Lift up your eyes and look” (4:35), or “Lifting up his eyes and looking” (6:5), suggests a deliberate act of the will. For this reason “we looked at” (like the “beheld” of the KJV) is a marginally better translation than “we saw.”195
In other words John sees Christs sonship in the complexity as God-man mediator in all that his earthly ministry involved.
One internet source states that there are 166 references to the word “Generation” in 13 Bible versions in the Bible.196 None of these verses refer to the “generation” of the Son of God.
Another internet source gives some detailed and interesting details:
The Bible uses the term generation in some different ways. Normally, the word generation refers to all the people living at the same time—i.e., the word in the Bible has the same definition that we are used to in modern usage when we speak of Generation X or the Millennial Generation. Normally, a generation is about thirty years; one generation raises the next. However, in some biblical contexts, a “generation” can refer to a longer age or a group of people spanning a longer period of time.
In Genesis 2:4, “generations of the heavens and the earth” (ESV) seems to include all of human history—the era begun by the creation of the universe. In Exodus 1:6 the “generation” who dies refers to everyone who had been alive during the time that Joseph and his brothers lived. In Numbers 32:13, the “generation” is limited to Israelites—the group of them, twenty years old and older, at the time of their refusal to enter the Promised Land. That one generation was doomed to wander in the wilderness until they all died, except for Joshua and Caleb. When the plural word generations occurs in the Bible, as in Isaiah 51:9 and Acts 14:16, it refers to an indefinite period of time—many successive generations.
The original languages of the Bible used at least three different words that are translated “generation” in English. The Hebrew dor can refer to a normal, physical generation, as in Exodus 1:6. But it can also be used metaphorically to identify people of a distinguishable type. For example, Psalm 78:8 says, “They should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God” (ESV). Here the word dor is used twice to refer to a group of people through a long period of time who were characterized by rebellion and sin. The “generation” in Psalm 78:8 is not limited to a normal thirty-year period but stretches back through the history of Israel to include all who were stubborn against God.
The other Hebrew word we translate as “generation” is toledot. This doesn’t refer to the character of a group or an age but to how that age was generated. So the “generations of the heavens and the earth” in Genesis 2:4 refers to the time periods that started with creation and continued organically from that point. The “generations of Adam” in Genesis 5:1 means the civilization of people that began with him. The next “generation” is that of Noah, to include the flood and the civilizations that came after. Shem’s influence is marked as a “generation” as he was the father of the Semites (Genesis 11:10). And Terah’s, because he left Ur with his son Abram (Genesis 11:27). Later, Ishmael (Genesis 25:12) and Isaac (Genesis 25:19) were the source of new generations. In each case, the men either experienced or caused a significant event that changed the course of their family line. They generated a culture-altering event.
In the New Testament, the Greek genea is the source of generation. It is similar to both Hebrew words. Literally, it means “fathered, birthed, nativity,” referring to a genetic line. But it can be used as both the time frame characterized by a specific cultural attitude and the people in that culture. In Matthew 1:17, the generations are marked off by significant events and people—Abraham, David, Babylonian captivity—like the Hebrew toledot. But when Jesus calls the Pharisees and scribes a “wicked and perverse generation,” He is referring to the culture that they lived in and encouraged (Matthew 12:39; see also Matthew 17:17 and Acts 2:40).
So, when we read “generation” in the Bible, we have to consider the context. Usually, a generation in the Bible is roughly thirty years long or the people living during that time, the same as what we understand a generation to be in everyday talk. But there are times when generation is used poetically to refer to a class of people demarked by something other than age.197
The online Merriam-Webster dictionary198 backs this up and provides additional meaning:
1 a
: a body of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor
b
: a group of individuals born and living contemporaneously the younger generation c
: a group of individuals having contemporaneously a status (such as that of students in a school) which each one holds only for a limited period
d
: a type or class of objects usually developed from an earlier type first of the .. new generation of powerful supersonic fighters
—Kenneth Koyen
2 a
: the action or process of producing offspring: PROCREATION
b
: the process of coming or bringing into being generation of income
c
: origination by a generating process : PRODUCTION especially : formation of a geometric figure by motion of another
The website “gotquestions.org”199 starts to answer the question: “What is the doctrine of eternal generation and is it biblical”. I’m skipping ahead slightly as the word “eternal” has not been considered yet. However their answer goes a long way to support my contention that using the word “generation” when speaking of the Sonship of God can only refer to his complexity as the God - man mediator.
They start to answer this question then in the following way:
The doctrine of eternal generation harkens back to the very early stages of the Christian church. This doctrine, along with the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, form the basis for the complete doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine was codified in the Nicene Creed, which is universally accepted as an accurate statement of faith in both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. Furthermore, this doctrine has also been included in such Reformation confessions of faith as the Belgic
Confession (Articles X & XI) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter II.3). These two confessions stand as the doctrinal standard for many Reformed and Presbyterian churches worldwide.
When discussing the doctrine of the Trinity, we are immediately confronted with the fact that it is a doctrine clouded in mystery. As finite, created beings, we will never be able to fully comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity; it is simply beyond our ability to fully comprehend. All human analogies used to explain the Trinity break down at some level. The point in saying this is to raise the level of humility in trying to explain these things. We should not attempt to go further than the Scriptures warrant. Every heresy concerning the Trinity has arisen out of an attempt to explain the inexplicable.
Later they go on to give scriptural support for what men has conceived as the truth. Each one, John 1:14 for example, can refer equally to the doctrine that Philpot so vigorously denied. The fact is abundantly illustrated in the document of mine from beginning to end. The fact that “Got Questions” started with man’s ideas before finally coming to the scriptures makes this abundantly evident. As I have shown elsewhere in this essay200 it was one man, Athanasius who started the ball rolling on this topic.201
Simply put, changing the word “begotten” to “generation has no scriptural basis.
1 Timothy 1:17 reads as follows in the KJV: Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen
The Greek word translated “eternal’ is “aiwv aion” One primary source has this to say about aion as used in 1 Timothy 1:17 and other verses:
B. aion in the Sense of Prolonged Time or Eternity.
I. The Formulas “from Eternity” and “to Eternity.”
a. The concepts of time and eternity merge in the use with prepositions suggesting indefinite time (Lk. 1:70; Acts 3:21; Jn. 9:32; Jude 13). Sometimes the meaning is “from a remote time” (Lk. 1:70; Jn. 9:32—“never”), but sometimes there is a strong hint of eternity (Lk. 1:55; Jn. 6:51). This is especially true of the plural (Mt. 6:13; Lk. 1:33; Rom. 1:25; Heb. 13:8; Jude 25; cf. also with a past reference 1 Cor. 2:7; Col. 1:26; Eph. 3:11). The double formula “for ever and ever” (Heb. 1:8), especially in the plural (in Paul and Revelation; cf. also Heb. 13:21; 1 Pet. 4:11), is designed to stress the concept of eternity, as are constructions like that in Eph. 3:21 (“to all generations for ever and ever”).
b. The usage corresponds to that of the LXX (cf. Am. 9:11; Is. 45:17; Ps. 45:6), the only difference being intensification in the NT.
2. The Eternity of God.
a. ai6n means eternity in the full sense when linked with God (Rom. 16:26; 1 Tim. 1:17; cf. Jer. 10:10).202
Hebrew and Greek words and their use and meaning in the Bible are a vital tool God has given us to understanding Himself and His Covenant of Redemption. There is however, a great need to step back and look at more of the complete picture. All I can do here is to touch very briefly on a small part of this wider view: on what are called the “Attributes of God” Even here the scope must be limited to only a part of this vast and important subject. Theologians and Bible scholars, somewhat artificially divide God’s attributes into two classes: “incommunicable” and “communicable” attributes. Any theory of the Sonship of Christ which does properly address all of what scripture reveals about God’s attributes scripturally is doomed to failure. God is perfect and complete in himself, nothing, especially man action or inaction effects or changes God. In this respect, even though I believe he is wrong Hawker comes closer to the truth. For Dr. Hawker came to believe that if Jesus Christ is God’s son he must have been so from all eternity, apart from the covenant of redemption. God is unchangeable and any theory that comes even close to “eternal sonship” or as they like to call it “eternal generation must accept what Hawker says or negate God’s attributes by human reasoning. The Bible from cover to cover is the story of the redemption of God’s elect by the Lord Jesus Christ. Hawker’s interpretation deals a deadly blow to Christs person and work and the Son of God and the Son of Man.
For the sake of limiting the size of this essay I am simply giving two quotation on this important subject.
The Attributes of God by Louis Berkhof
God reveals Himself not only in His names, but also in His attributes, that is, in the perfections of the divine Being. It is customary to distinguish between incommunicable and communicable attributes. Of the former there are no traces in the creature; of the latter there are.
1. The Incommunicable Attributes. These emphasize the absolute distinction between God and the creature, and include the following:
a. The independence or self-existence of God. This means that God has the ground of His existence in Himself, and unlike man, does not depend on anything outside of Himself. He is independent in His Being, in His virtues and actions, and causes all His creatures to depend on Him. The idea is embodied in the name Jehovah and finds expression in the following passages, Ps. 33:11; 115:3; Isa. 40:18 ff.; Dan. 4:35; John 5:26; Rom. 11:33-36; Acts 17:25; Rev. 4:11.
b. The immutability of God. Scripture teaches that God is unchangeable. He is forever the same in His divine Being and perfections, and also in His purposes and promises, Num. 23:19; Pa 33:11; 102:27; Mal. 3:6; Heb. 6:17; Jas. 1:17. This does not mean, however, that there is no movement in God. The Bible speaks of Him as coming and going, hiding and revealing Himself. He is also said to repent, but this is evidently only a human way of speaking of God, Ex. 32:14; Jonah 3:10, and really indicates a change in man’s relation to God.
c. The infinity of God. This means that God is not subject. to limitations. We can speak of His infinity in more than one sense. Viewed in relation to His being, it may be called His absolute perfection. He is unlimited in His knowledge and wisdom, in His goodness and love, in His righteousness and holiness, Job 11:7-10; Psa. 145:3. Seen in relation to time, it is called His eternity. While this is usually represented in Scripture as endless duration, Ps. 90:2; 102:12, it really means that He is above time and therefore not subject to its limitations. For Him there is only an eternal present, and no past or future. Viewed with reference to space, it is called His immensity. He is everywhere present, dwells in all His creatures, filling every point of space, but is in no way bounded by space, I Kings 8:27; Ps. 139:7-10; Isa. 66;1; Jer. 23:23, 24; Acts 17:27, 28.
d. The simplicity of God. By ascribing simplicity to God we mean that He is not composed of various parts, such as the body and soul in man, and for that very reason is not subject to division. The three persons in the Godhead are not so many parts of which the divine essence is composed. The whole being of God belongs to each one of the Persons. Hence we can also say that God and His attributes are one, and that He is life, light, love, righteousness, truth, and so on.203
Secondly:
God’s Incommunicable Attributes
Every field of study has specialized vocabulary. Theology, which is the study of God, is no different. We have looked at the being of God (who He is), and we have looked at the names of God. Now we look at His attributes.
An attribute of something is its quality or characteristic. Water is wet; fire is hot; iron is hard—these are attributes. When we ask about God’s attributes, we are asking, “What is God like?” God tells what He is like in the Bible.
God has two kinds of attributes, which theologians sometimes classify as “incommunicable” and “communicable” attributes. A communicable attribute can be shared with the creature. The creature, therefore, can reflect and display some of God’s characteristics. An incommunicable cannot be shared with the creature. No creature can reflect or display such divine qualities.
God’s attributes are essential to His being. Perhaps, you have the attribute of strength. You are a strong person. But you will grow old and weak, and sometimes (for example, when you are sick) you lose the attribute of strength. You are still yourself, but without the characteristic of strength. Strength, therefore, is not essential to your being. God’s attributes are who and what He is—God is not only good. He is goodness; God is not only wise. He is perfect wisdom; God is not only holy. He is holiness. He is unchangeably and infinitely and perfectly good, wise, holy, and all His other attributes.
Many of God’s attributes are misunderstood, or even ignored and denied. For many, God is simply a God of love, but they forget about His spotless holiness, His perfect righteousness, and His awesome power. When we do this, our view of God is too low, and we dishonour Him.
God’s incommunicable attributes are His independence or self-sufficiency, His simplicity or unity, His infinity (or eternity and omnipresence), His omnipotence or sovereignty, His immutability or unchangeableness and His omniscience. No creature can share any of these attributes of God—they are something that only God is.
When we understand God’s glorious incommunicable attributes, we worship before this great God. And we are glad, because all of the attributes of this great God are necessary for our salvation, and all them are revealed so that God—and not we— receives all the glory.
This God—and only He—is the God of glory. Worship Him, all the earth!204
THE REVIEWER REVIEWED AGAIN:
OR
STRICTURES ON MR. PHILPOT
AND THE DOCTRINE OF CHRISTS SONSHIP BY
ETERANL GENERATION
(As advocated in “The reviews of the ‘Gospel Standard for March and April 1859 and June and July, 1860)
BY W. PALMER205
Homerton
London: Houlston and Wright, 65 Paternoster Row.
1860
“LUKE, the inspired penman, writing truth, and William Crowther, the uninspired minister, preaching error, cannot speak with the same authority to the ' church of God.” Mr. Philpot; “Standard” for June, 1860.
“Here Mr. Crowther’s sermon so woefully fails. It is all matter of mere assertion; for real scriptural argument there is none. He can darken the word, but not give light upon it; pervert plain texts, but not open; obscure ones; confuse and perplex the mind, but not instruct, or edify the soul.” Mr. Philpot; “Standard” for July, 1860.
“Faith, in order to stand firm, must have the word of truth, a ‘Thus saith the Lord.’” Mr. Philpot; “Standard” for February, 1860.
I Thus, barring the last quotation, wrote Mr. J. C. Philpot of his good brother William Crowther; and as we think, mutatis mutandis, allowing for necessary changes, the language is as applicable to the Reviewer as the Reviewed, we have given prominence to it.
Personally, we know nothing of either Mr. Philpot or Mr. Crowther. They are both Dissenters; both Particular Baptists; both ministers of the New Testament; and both, we doubt not, steadfast believers in the Sonship of Jesus Christ. They differ, however, in their respective views of this important doctrine, and in the temper and spirit with which they seek to propagate their respective opinions.
Whatever be the merits or the demerits of Mr. Crowther’s sermon, the candid manner in which he brought forward the sacred subject entitled him to a fair review; and we cannot help being grieved to find a brother in the capacity of a reviewer, indulging in a kind of luscious invective, classing his friend among “the enemies of Christ,” penning the passages we have transcribed, and misrepresenting, one would fear willfully, the genuine meaning of the author whose sermon he criticises.
The ill-concealed bitterness which poisons the whole review has been ascribed, let us hope unfairly, to cherished resentments, or personal dislikes to Mr. Crowther. We must say that the management of a periodical implies certain responsibilities; and to make any periodical, that is public property, the medium of private interests or personal gratification, argues the want of integrity, and is the pollution of a public trust.
Now we must say, and we call Mr. Philpot’s attention to the fact, that for years, what is called “The Gospel Standard,” has been very much at his command; that it has been not unfrequently pressed into his service; that it has been a medium of undeserved abuse; that the Reviewer has forgotten his high position and had access to dishonorable condescension’s, uttering and printing at the expense of others, his own opinions and his own dislikes. In the four numbers before us no fewer than forty-six pages are occupied by Mr. Philpot, and we may say for his own gratification: because the selection of Wallin and Owen for review is clearly a feint and is implicitly admitted to be so by the Reviewer himself. We hear he is going to write a book. Let him do so. This will be honest. And will have something manly about it. We hope the manuscript will not be lost, like poor Collyer’s; nor the book have to be called in as soon as it is out, as his had.
We certainly pity Mr. Crowther. Yet if there be solace in society, he may surely find relief. There are others who are “free among the dead,” whom the Reviewer has “cut off.” The author of the sermon is only one among many. Everybody who does not believe the Reviewer’s dogma is abused, sneered at, and condemned for making “God a liar,” so nearly are Mr. Philpot and the Divine Being on a par! We hold the sacred text to be inspired; but is Mr. Philpot’s comment inspired also? Surely the comment may be refused, though the text be admitted. Yet for this simple thing, so reasonable in itself, this servant of the Lord waxes wroth, uses censorious language, kicks one, bites another, cuffs a third, snubs a fourth, and lumps them all with the “adversaries of truth.”
Our opinion of the public servants of Christ is, that they are efficienced for their respective labours by the Holy Ghost, who manifests a Divine sovereignty in distributing to everyone severally as he will. So that everyone has his peculiar gifts, Divine appointment, and order of things to be by him set forth and illumined. This is God’s way of dispensing his gifts; and none of his servants are to be rashly blamed, or held inferior to others, as if by their own fault they were so. Nor are they to be stimulated to emulations and commutations, albeit their allotted tasks are of different dignities, and their granted instruments of different keenness. The same Lord over all, who is rich unto all that call upon him, fails not to regard his faithful servants wherever they toil in his good cause, according to the grace they have received from him; and we therefore cannot but feel pained at heart when we see one public servant, like the Reviewer, arrogating to himself rights and functions by which he tramples down the just rights of others.
On these grounds we cannot help attaching great blame to the Reviewer, who has been engaged for a quarter of a century in acrimonious disputation. We say acrimonious, because for his being in earnest we offer no censure. It is for his having been ensconced in an editorial chair, and having the command of a public trust which he has not only used for personal purposes, but used offensively and viciously, that we thus remind him of his frailty. Surely a man may be faithful without being spiteful. He may “contend earnestly for the faith,” without contending maliciously for it. We think a man may “fulfil his ministry,” apart from religious brigandage. Throttling his fellow-servants can be no part of his commission. The ministry that he has received of the Lord
Jesus authorizes no such conduct. May it not be said of Mr. Philpot, He perceives not what manner of spirit he is of? Grieved by the hardness of his heart, we have sometimes sighed, “ Father, forgive him; for he knows not what he does.”
We should have been glad if the Holy Ghost had led him to the precious wells of Jesus, and if he had drank of the waters of life freely. Had he the “mind of Christ” expressing itself through him; did the word of Christ dwell in him richly, in all wisdom; or where he, like his Divine Master, full of grace and truth, what a blessing he would be to the churches!
Paul’s glory was, not that he had ruled and domineered, but that he “laboured more abundantly than they all.” Not that we charge the Reviewer with formal indolence or blame him for being dogmatical. We are no enemies to dogmatic theology. We rather like it and wish that there were more of it. But a man may dogmatize without being intolerant, unchristian, or offensive. Even “Michael the archangel”, who was superior to the Reviewer, “when contending with the devil” the worst foe he could meet, “he disputed about the body of Moses”, and therefore had truth on his side, “durst not bring against him”, heretical though he was, “a railing accusation,” which shows a very different trait from that portrayed by the Pastor of two churches. “The Lord rebuke him.”
This, however, is Mr. Philpot’s peculiar failing. The blot that rests upon his escutcheon. The great blemish of his life. And “the sin that doth so easily beset him.”
Mr. Philpot was once in the Establishment. He has also supplied this “evil and adulterous generation” with the grounds of his secession. But he has such a penchant for church steeples, that we have thought he would have done well had he remained among the “monuments.” So strong is his inclination for “typical spires,” that one might charitably ascribe its potency to a maternal incident. A playful mind would surmise that when he left the land of his nativity, he clutched St. Paul’s, and founded another Lambeth in his adopted country. For when he speaks he speaks as a prelate, excathedra, always, and not like Scribes and Pharisees.
The “Gospel Standard,” we opine, has been always rather racy; but when the Reviewer was inducted to the editorial chair, we are unable to say. We find him, however, in 1839, before he was editor, engaged in the review department, and delivering a bilious diatribe against Dr. Hawker. But as he has expressed deep regret for the fault, we shall not lay this sin to his charge. We shall pass on to October 1841, when, we presume, he was editor, when he emptied the vials of his wrath upon the ministers of Christ, and run amuck at all missionary societies and Christian associations, even when framed for promoting the distinguishing truths of sovereign grace.
In that remarkable number, the Reviewer stigmatized the ministers of truth who followed not with him, as “proud, presumptuous boasters,” without any “scriptural marks” of having been “commissioned to preach the gospel,” or of knowing it even. Neither they nor their messages, he declared, were anointed by the Holy Ghost. They neither “knew nor loved the truth;” were neither “rivers nor reservoirs;” had neither “seed basket nor sieve.” They neither “distributed nor divided,” “fertilized nor fenced.” As to fencing, “they never set up a fence a hypocrite could not get over.”
Not sated by all this, he compared them to a “joint stock company,” working their capital against the people from whom they obtained it, as the woodman used the axe against the forest from which he obtained the helve. He likened them to “tall interlaced trees,” beneath which all truth died and the living family starved; to Ezekiel’s “strong cattle;” to “legal task masters;” to “ lords over God’s heritage;” and to such other objects as came within the sphere of his diseased imagination.
Having thus “discharged his conscience, or perhaps his stomach, our Reviewer “got better.” But it was only for a time. For, barring intermediate attacks, upwards of five years afterwards, on Oct. 31, 1846, he penned a note in justification of the onslaught. So that it happened to him according to the true proverb: “The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”
Since then, and so lately as 1859-60, our friend has had a second lapse. He has converted the ineffable dogma of eternal generation into a “Gospel Standard:” into a “matter of life and death,” and “the witness in one’s own self.” He who refuses to be measured by this standard, or denies this dogma, “denies the Son also;” is “without the Father;” “makes God a liar;” and “hath not life.” Such persons are charged with being “open or disguised Socinians,” whose “whole object and aim are to overthrow the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, by overthrowing his Divine Sonship;” p. 94; with doing that which is “like plucking away the whole love of God to his people;” p. 128; with “dishonouring the Son of God, stripping his crown from his head, and trampling his dearest title in the dust;” p. 218; with “destroying at a stroke the unutterable love and complacency that the Father has in the Son;” with “removing the ancient landmarks of truth,” and making havoc “in heaven and in earth;” p. 129. Denying eternal generation is a “vile heresy;” p. 97; which saps “the very throne of the Most High;” p. 95; and overthrows “the Trinity with a witness;” p. 96.
Men who recognize neither Mr. Philpot nor his dictum, are, of course, “heretics;” p. 94; and some of them “heretics of the deepest dye;” p. 93. They are the “doctrinal professors of the day;” p. 223; “the adversaries of truth;” p. 221; and “the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ;” p. 94. “With their tongues they use deceit;” the “poison of asps is under their lips;” “their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps;” p. 89. A storm of terrible indignation is to fall upon them, as “the enemies of our blessed Lord,” when “he shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel;” p. 94.
When the dumb ass spake with man’s voice, he forbade the madness of the prophet. But who is to remonstrate with a presumptuous editor? And such an editor as the one with whom we have to do? Still we would reverently enquire, “Who art thou?” “Tell us who thou art;” “by whose authority thou doest these things, and who gave thee this authority.” Is Mr. Philpot anything more, by Divine appointment, than an able minister of the New Testament? If nothing more, he has exceeded his instructions. If anything more, we should like to see some proof; “but especially the parchments.” We hope they are not lost.
We shall not charge Mr. Philpot with the gluttony of vituperation which these passages may seem to imply; nor with that vein of voluptuous vilification which some might imagine runs through the whole of these reviews, though not after the style of Silver, or Collyer, or some of the Reviewer’s followers, which, for the most part, is rough, ragged and vulgar; but after the fashion of a man who has had some education, and who evidently aims to protect himself from the charge of vulgar abuse. We shall not charge him with these things; but we shall charge him with an unfair treatment of men and books; with the use of grievous and bitter language; with evident misrepresentation, and, as there is reason for supposing, in some instances willful misrepresentation.
We are not aware that our Reviewer ever attained to the degree of a D. D. But we certainly think, and our readers, for the most part at least, will think with us, that unquestionably he has merited the title of a M.M.; for he is a Master of Maledictions.
There are times when our Reviewer seems to regard the whole of Christendom, himself and his party always excepted, as mystical Babylon; and when one might think he had a prophetic mission to “shoot at her and spare no arrows;” forgetting that it was one thing to have been inspired of God, and sent by him to utter denunciations either against apostate Israel or her heathen enemies, and quite another thing for Mr. J. C. Philpot, who, although an imperious Reviewer, is an uninspired man, fallible, and unsent of God with a message of malediction against anyone; much less has he a carte blanche for anathematizing whomsoever he pleases. He may think that whoso killeth heretics doeth God service; but so, thought the murderous Jews of old. So thought the Inquisitors. So thought our pious fathers. And so, thinks every zealot, Pagan, Jewish, or Christian.
By one means or other, men sometimes get credit for being what they only seem to be; as Louis XIV. His courtiers called him “great;” and Macauley says he had the art of making himself appear so. They styled him learned, though he scarcely knew the Latin of his mass-book. He was considered a military strategist; but the triumphs which gave eclat to the early part of his reign were not achieved by himself, and his latter days were marked by signal defeats and humiliations. Many thought him a great statesman, but his government was as defective as himself, and his policy ended in revolution. Some thought him great in his person, and “he had a way of holding him, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and raising his head, which deceived the eyes of the people.” Eighty years after his decease, the royal cemetery was broken into, his coffin opened and his body measured, when it turned out, says the same authority, that he whose “majestic figure” had been so blindly extolled, appeared in truth “a really little man.” This really little man had the tact of making himself and his party appear “majestically great,” in spite, says the same historian, “of the clearest evidence, that both were below the ordinary standard.”
Mr. Philpot’s power is, we should surmise, that of a man, not of a mind. A man whose every passion, particularly his arrogance, crops out in all he says. You cannot read his writings without reading him. Self-magnification seems the staple of his mind. It turns up everywhere. It resembles, in another point of view, his shade, meeting you in every nook, startling you at every corner.
!
With the Reviewer everything is intensely personal. Nothing is simply itself. Nothing is neuter. Nothing can be so. The abstract is constantly tortured into the concrete, and the impersonal into the personal. He is, besides, his own standard, his own weighing machine, and his own scales and weights; for he weighs and measures everything, as well as everybody, by himself; showing no small repugnance, if we may judge from the Hitchin affair to his being measured by any other standard or weighed in any other scales.
He is also the personification of a party and a creed. Sometimes he reminds us of “old Cobbett,” who illustrated every wise maxim and every real excellence by his own biography. Hit sons, hit seeds, hit crops, hit farming, hit books, hit political principles, &c., were all models respectively, and all who did not join the Cobbett clan were “ Boroughmongering villains.” In like manner is it with Mr. Crowther’s Reviewer. Hit churches, hit ministers, hit pulpits, hit books, hit ser-mons, hit tracts, hit religious creed, hit standard, and— we suppose—hit gospel too, are all models respectively, and all who do not support the Philpot clan are “ dead letter men.” Not that all this is formally asserted, but it is substantially implied.
A shrewd writer was wont to describe certain persons by the name of “good haters:” a class with which, we are sorry to say it, the Editor of the “Standard” has close affinities; for he seems to hate with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength, and his neighbour more than himself.
Some anatomists say that the human brain begins at the lowest point of organic nature, whereupon is super induced the completed cerebral economy of the successive stages of sensuous, instinctive, animal, and at last intelligent and reflective being. Where the Reviewer’s brain begins, or whether his cerebral economy has been completed, are questions we care not to be vexed by. It is enough to know that one master passion has clearly become epidemic to the whole of his soul’s faculties; so that to him no common thing is common, but everything he espouses, however trifling, like the widow’s mite, is suggestive beyond all proportion as to its connection in the rank and nature of things. On no other ground can we account for the huge importance he attaches to some of his opinions, the supercilious airs he assumes, and the uncivil treatment his antagonists may expect to receive from him.
What we have sometimes wondered at with great admiration is, the miraculous way in which the very essence of evil becomes transformed through connexional influence with our magical friend. He carries fire in his bosom but is not burned! He touches pitch but is not defiled! He throws dirt for a quarter of a century, but his fingers are not soiled! p. 216. Then again, what with us would be “vile mannerism,” is with him pure simplicity, “native and to the manner born;” what in us would be mask and caricature, is face and feature with him; what in us he declares, over and over again, to be carnal, fleshly, earthly reason, mis-guiding and perilous in the extreme, is with our talismanic friend, spiritual, pure scriptural reason, of sound tendency, and “such as the weakest child of God can understand” even eternal generation!
Scarcely less marvellous are his mental transitions. For on page 195 he is actually “shocked” by the doctrine of eternal generation being called a “notion;” and yet on page 217 he illustrates his contention for it by “the excitement of a fray!!” To some this may appear quite a phenomenon; but we assure them that many such things are with him. For if, like Carlyle, he does not always bring up paradox to “the height of dignity,” he often places it before us in admirable perspicuity: vivid, warm, and breathing like a “waxen doll in a painted glass case!”
There is, likewise, in our Reviewer, a kind of innocent simplicity too characteristic to be wholly omitted. We know not how to describe it exactly. The French would, perhaps, call it naivete. To give an example: after all the epithets he had heaped upon his antagonists; after describing them in the broad, hard, graphic manner he has done: after making the belief of his eternal nostrum “a life and death question;” and after bundling together with Socinians, Arians, and infidels, after a true Gathercolian model, all who refuse belief in his incomprehensible dogma, he turns round, wipes his pen, looks you calmly in the face, and in the sweetest simplicity exclaims, “We have never consigned to eternal perdition those who differ from us on this point!!” One stares, looks amazed, and feels breathless at this incredible announcement!!
At one time, if our memory plays us not false, the Editor of the “Standard” rather reviled literature; but in these last days he comes out in Greek, and sneers at his opponents for using “barbarous Hebrew.” They had, it appears, pronounced the Hebrew word for God by Alheim instead of Elhoim, which offended the ears of our learned friend. We, however, beg permission to hint, that had he sneered at something else he might have sneered more expressively. Does he know that when he writes and speaks his own “mother tongue,” he does not always draw from “the pure well of English, undefiled.” We are pleased, however, to observe that since 1846 he has made some progress in English syntax; but we doubt if his pretensions to the refinements of Hebrew literature be not something like erecting his own reviews into a “standard of pure English,” and railing at Lindley Murray.
We should be ashamed of carping at mere trifles. The wart on Cicero’s cheek; the hump on jEsop’s back; Scott’s limp; Brougham’s twitch of the lip and snubbed nose, no one complains of. They serve, indeed, to verify one’s conceptions of the men, and even aid the pleasures of imagination. There are spots on the sun, as well as specks in the eye, we should do ill to complain of; and had the Reviewer’s moral make, his inner pulchritude, been right and well proportioned, we had certainly not drawn attention to the wrinkles in his forehead or the freckles on his cheek.
What we take to be the great fault in the Reviewer is that of implicitly identifying himself with prophets and apostles, who, being inspired of God, often employed comminatory language. He revels in what a quaint writer calls “dyslogistic” lore. Biblical terms and phrases descriptive of evil times, evil persons, and evil deeds; denunciatory passages directed against heathen nations, apostate Jews, heretical teachers, cardinal vices, hypocritical professors, &c. Mr. Philpot applies without scruple, and with a kind of unctuous zest, to those who reject his doctrine or go not after him. With passages of this description the Reviewer seems astonishingly familiar. We have thought that he sometimes quotes them without knowing it. Apparently, they minister aliment to his inner man. He seems filled with their fulness. And “out of the abundance of his heart his mouth speaketh.”
Those who differ from our scriptural friend, are reviled as using “natural reason and argument;” p. 128. But wherein their reason differs from his, in this respect, we have puzzled ourselves in vain to find out. Two berries on the same branch, or two fingers on the same hand are not more alike, we believe, than their reasoning and his.
We have heard that Mr. Philpot “is a spiritual man, and his reason is assisted by the Spirit of God.” We are not aware that our Stamford friend has yet claimed inspiration; though there seems something like a feeler reached out, on p. 123. At present, however, he seems a prophet in circumbandibus, not having attained to “many of the Lord’s people who were blessed by the Spirit’s testimony under the late Mr. Huntington’s ministry, whereby they perceive at once those that are unregenerate, and watch their end before they are sure they are damned!” A party of these gifted saints, according to an autograph letter of Mr. Silver, dated Dec. 31,1834, from which this extract is made, held the late Mr. John Stevens under their spiritual surveillance, expecting his deliverance or destruction in the year 1835.
In the same kind of spirit, Mr. Philpot vociferates, p. 124: “you may argue on natural grounds, and cavil at the words ‘an eternal Son,’ and ‘eternal generation’ as expressing or implying ideas naturally inconsistent, not to say impossible. But we shall not follow you on such boggy ground. If you will do so, lose yourself there, and led by the ignis fatuus of reason, flounder from swamp to swamp, till you sink to rise no more.” Is this in accordance with 2 Timothy 2:24-26?
In the same savage way, Mr. J. A. Jones, pastor of Jireh, is first pelted and then pitied, pitied and then pelted. He is reproached as “an old man with one foot in the grave,” possessed of “miserable vanity,” reprinting his own “falsehoods,” and “employing his dying fingers” in mutilating and garbling “the writings of gracious men” for a “dishonest purpose.”*206
Still there are compensations for the wormwood and the gall. For now, and then the Reviewer says, and does, and advises to be done, things which, for so grave a man, are supremely ludicrous. For instance, on p. 125, he says, “the two passages we have quoted bring us to this conclusion, with all the clearness, force, • and distinctiveness of a mathematical problem.” Now a problem, whether mathematical, logical, moral, or otherwise, denotes doubt, darkness, uncertainty; being opposed to that which is clear, evident, certain. So that, according to our educated friend, the doctrine of eternal generation is as clear as mud! Had not the Reviewer graduated at Oxford, we should have felt confident that “either from a want of education,” or from “ a failing intellect,” he did not really know a problem from a demonstration.
Again; instead of performing the office of sexton, he actually plays the part of a literary resurrectionist, and sets about digging up a damnable heresy which Mr. Crowther had “muffled up” in its “grave clothes,” like a “corpse in a coffin;” p. 184. Why if it was “dead and done up” not let it alone? Why intensify and exhibit it? Was it for the fun of the thing?
Again; on pp. 126, 127, our laborious Reviewer having “drawn out a chain from beginning to end,” exhorts his readers to “weigh it well, link by link.” Men “draw out” wire, but they make chains at a forge. And then to weigh a chain “link by link!” What an operose method! And how difficult withal! But our brother likes to be particular. And we cast no stone at him for this. We are pleased by it, indeed. It remind us of his “waxen doll exhibited in a glass case, painted with gilt!”
Mr. Philpot relates a pleasant anecdote respecting a man sitting down with the Bible, a Concordance, and Johnson’s dictionary, to see if he could find the phrase “eternal gen cion;” and because he could not find it, concluded the doctrine could not be there. Rather precipitate, perhaps, and somewhat illogical. But we can tell a better tale than this. A real one, too. One not imagined. Not manufactured for the occasion. Not partly true and partly false. But one in print. It is this: A zealous author, of Mr. Philpot’s views, but who had not the moral courage of our Reviewer to contradict himself, wrote against the Arian heresy; in his progress he found it impossible to reconcile the doctrine of eternal generation with the self-existence of God; he therefore gave up the self-existence of both the Son and the Holy Ghost, and wrote a chapter entitled, “ The Divine Person of the Father only self-existent.” What will Mr. Philpot say to this?
The Reviewer says, “we are not Sabellians, Arians, or Tritheists, but Trinitarians;” p. 193. Nevertheless, in our judgment, the Reviewer’s theory has a little of them all, and something more. There is a little, or perhaps not a little, of Sabellianism in his doctrine which makes the Spirit to be perpetual breath; a little of Arianism, in one unoriginated and two originated persons in the Godhead; a little of Tritheism, or perhaps a good deal, in making separate persons by generation and procession, and in making the nature of Deity different in the three Divine Persons respectively; a little of Trinitarianism, and only a little of sound Trinitarianism, which recognizes three Divine Persons co-eval, co-equal, and self-existent; and a little of something else which may be called Quatemionism ; for if the Sonship of Christ stands exclusively in the Divine nature, and consists of a Divine birth, you have something very like a person in a human birth, which is called the generation of Jesus Christ. Certainly, here are two births, or two generations, one eternal, and one not eternal, which looks more like two sons than one. So that we should think our Reviewer is more of a Quaternion than a Trinitarian. Nevertheless, he will higgle for the latter; and say and unsay to the end of the chapter.
We have received copies of seventy-five letters written by Mr. Philpot and others, mostly on this subject. It is a pity the originals cannot be added to the republic of letters; and yet upon the whole, we dare not advise it. It seems, however, these first and second births are rather disquieting to eternal generationists. They do not know how to disconnect the humanity of Christ from his Sonship. Only they are “quite sure” that Sonship is independent of it. Mr. Philpot says, “His human nature was never in heaven till after his resurrection!” p. 125. One of the correspondents says, “I told Mr. ____207 at your house that it was utterly impossible that the Sonship of our Lord
stood in his human nature, as that was never begotten but made” He adds: “I have been obliged to remind dear Philpot that he ought not to apply the term (word) begotten to the human nature of Christ abstractedly considered.” But “Dear Philpot” in a note on p. 219, vindicates its use by appealing first to the marginal reading of Matthew 1:20, where the word conceived is translated “begotten;” and second, to the Greek word there employed, which means first, to bring forth as a mother, and is translated “born,” Luke 1:35; and second, to beget as a father. The same aforesaid correspondent, speaking of the human nature of Christ, cunningly remarks: “though called a seed, it never had any vegetable properties by itself only as taken into oneness with the only begotten Son of God.” What vegetable properties it had then, or has now, this quaint epistolarian stated not.
This delicious confusion, from the midst of which they speak of their enemies, is amusing enough. It evidences a want of agreement among themselves, and shews, as Dr. Gill said of Socinians, “the puzzle they are in.” Our atrabilious friend seems to be looked up to as an oracle; while some of the worshippers, not being agreed, endeavour to “work the oracle,” which is sufficiently obscure to mean anything, everything, and even nothing at all.
Here is a specimen: First we are told the Sonship of Christ is inexplicable; then it is explained by an eternal generation; then we are informed that the explication itself is inexplicable; then the explanation, though inexplicable, is explained; then the explained explanation is admitted to be “mystical and obscure,” the reason of which is said to be the incomprehensibility of all such deep subjects! But if the subject be incomprehensible, why try to make it comprehensible? Why try to explain that which is incomprehensible by something else which is incomprehensible? Can one incomprehensibility explain another? To explain that which cannot be explained; then to explain the explanation; then to tell us the explanation of the explanation needs a further explanation which cannot be rendered, because “all thought fails and language falters,” is not the way to instruct and edify the children of light.
The illogical character of the Reviewer’s logic, as well as his palpable inconsistencies, are conspicuous from nearly every point of view. One can hardly read a few lines, seldom a whole page, and never an entire piece, without perceiving the truth of this remark. His definitions are rarely satisfactory. His reasoning is always full of gaps. Sometimes he explains a metaphor by a simile: and his analogies are against his arguments. In the Reviews under notice he flounders about personalities, essence, and nature. He sometimes contradicts himself; often confuses his readers, becomes irascible, and consigns, mostly by implication, to eternal wrath, all who refuse his logic or his doctrine. He defames reason, and yet employs it; affirms none but spiritual men can understand the gospel, and yet speaks as if they could; and when involved in the meshes of his own argument, breaks loose by exclaiming, “in mysteries of this sort it is not permissible to deduce conclusions from given premises, as in mere natural reason!” p. 189.
The Reviewer lays no small stress upon his own experience as a source of proof in this matter. But to this we object. 1. Because experience is no absolute proof of any doctrine. 2. Because the doctrine of eternal generation is so contrary to the nature of things, that nothing short of an express revelation can justify the belief of it. 3. Because the Reviewer’s experience is no more to be relied on than the experience of others. 4. Because it is not so safe as the experience of some is, for he speaks of it hypothetically; p. 89. 5. Because the same truths poured into different minds crystalize into different forms. 6. Because the experience of others contradicts the experience of the Reviewer. For instance, Mr. Philpot says, in effect, that his experience: “if” he has any, on the Sonship of Christ is from the Holy Ghost. But Mr. Tite, whose written experience we have seen, says, in effect, that his experience, which contradicts Mr. Philpot’s, is from the Holy Ghost also. Mr. Philpot speaks of the blessed feelings he has had in relation to the Sonship of Christ by eternal generation, while reading the seventeenth chapter of John; but the venerable George Murrell, of St. Neot’s, who is a pre-existerian, remarked to us only a short time since, the peculiar pleasures which had flowed into his soul while reading that very chapter, and contemplating the glories of Immanuel’s Sonship as therein revealed. He said, “Sonship by complexity there shines forth in peculiar brightness.” We think so too. Mr. Philpot’s experience, therefore, is no source of reliable proof.
Mr. Shorter’s conversion to the doctrine of eternal generation, has been much insisted on by the Reviewer as an instance of Divine teaching, and by consequence of the truth of the doctrine now under notice. It is heralded forth in the “Standard” for July, 1860, headed “GLAD TIDINGS,” as if it were a supplementary gospel But we know a preacher, one of Mr. Philpot’s sort too, who said he obtained his sermons on his knees and immediately from God, just as Mr. Shorter says he obtained his new light; and yet we are sure Mr. Philpot would no more indorse this man’s expositions, than we are prepared to accept Mr. Shorter’s conversion as being immediately from God, or as a Divine answer to prayer. Besides, we could give fifty better examples of persons who have struggled out of the mire of natural Sonship into the doctrine of pre-existence. Mr. Shorter, it seems, thought upon the first chapter of Hebrews, reasoned upon some of its contents, and according to his own showing, drew a most illogical conclusion therefrom, which he calls a light that “shone into his heart as clear as noonday;” p. 207. Revelations of everything, and conversions from everything, may be obtained anywhere, always, and wholesale.
Speaking of eternal generation the Reviewer says, it is “a truth which has been held by all the apostles, saints, and martyrs, and all the servants of God, from generation to generation;” p. 227. How does Mr. Philpot know that all the apostles believed this doctrine? How does he know that any of them believed it? Not one of them has recorded his belief of it: and the presumption is that not one of them ever heard or even thought of it. He says, all the “saints” believed it. Where did he get this information from? Who, besides the eternal God, knows what all the saints have believed? Have all the “martyrs,” or all “the servants of God” published their views on the Sonship of Christ? If not, how can Mr. Philpot be sure they cherished any regard for the creature of his imagination? Is he inspired to write thus? Or has Gabriel supplied him with a celestial record, as an angel did Smith with the plates of Mormon?
The Reviewer’s assertion is so far from being probably true, that we have no hesitation in saying it is certainly false; and that, as an educated man, the Reviewer knew it was false. We should have cared little about the assumption had not the Reviewer converted it into polemical capital and conveyed a totally false idea to the majority of his readers. The fact is, and Mr. Philpot knows it, for nearly three hundred years there were no settled forms of faith. Everyone had his own opinions, as well upon the Trinity as upon any other doctrine. There were no formularies of faith, no human schemes, no explicit articles or nice propositions imposed on the teachers or members of Christian churches. To agree in the Scripture account of a Triune God was held sufficient, without differing about philosophical distinctions as to the mode of their existence. There is nothing to show, no historic proof whatever, that the doctrine of eternal generation entered into the belief of all the apostles, saints, martyrs, and servants of God, from generation to generation; but there is abundant proof of the contrary.
Now, either the Reviewer knew that his assertion was contrary to historic evidence, or he did not. If the first, he has falsified historic evidence knowingly and therefore wickedly; if the last, he is an undoubted ignoramus; and upon either the one hypothesis or the other he is an unsafe guide. An oracle not to be trusted.
The doctrine of eternal generation, as stated by the Reviewer, was unknown in the church for more than three hundred years. The Nazarenes of the second century, who according to the learned Mr. Jones and Dr. Mosheim, held that Christ was born of a virgin, and in some manner united to the Divine nature, were not hereticated till the fourth century. The Ebionites cherished similar views, and yet remained in the churches. Praxeas, who maintained that the Father united to himself the human nature of Jesus, freely propagated his belief, but was never declared heretical; nor did he or his followers separate themselves from the ordinary assemblies of Christians. Theodotus and Artemon believed that a Divine energy, or a portion of the Father, and not the Person of the Father, united itself to Jesus at his birth. About the year 257, Sabellius, who embraced, with some modification, the scheme set up by Praxeas, propagated it with much success at Pentapolis, from which place it spread over the Eastern and Western churches, till Arius turned the waters of strife into another channel. There were numerous opinions besides these.
A mixture of Oriental and Egyptian philosophy diffused its subtle poison through the whole system of Christianity. But controversies about the Divine Persons, which sprung up in the second century, must be attributed to the prevalence of Grecian philosophy, which produced innumerable explications of that inexplicable mystery. Theophilus of Antioch was the first who applied the word Trinity to express the doctrine of three persons in the Godhead: Platt's Univer. Biog. vol. 2. p. 166. Praxeas began to propagate his philosophical explications at Rome. The practice soon became general; and the subtlest philosophers were the ablest polemics, and the best Christians. See Mosheim.
The opinion most prevalent among the ancient fathers was, “That Christ existed in the Father from eternity, and at the creation, the Father put him without him, to create the world; which they called bringing him forth, prolation, or generation. Whilst he was in the Father, he was God from eternity, as everything that is in God is God; but by his coming out from the Father, as he became the Son of God, so from thence they styled him God of God.” In Murray's clear Display of the Trinity; pages 311,312.
But as to the manner of his existence they seem to have had no very clear ideas. Most of the anti-Nicene fathers thought with Eusebius, that the Son existed potentially in the Father, as the Divine reason which was generated like a ray of light from the Father’s Godhead; or proceeded from him as a river; Theophania, pp. 5, 12; or, according to Tertullian’s distinction, as the ratio or reason of the Father from eternity, till brought forth into sermo or word, and so became distinct from the Father, in the relation of a Son. But the notion of eternal generation, as set forth by the Reviewer, had no place in their fertile minds. Justin, Ignatius, Tatian, Theophilus, Hippolytus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Novatian, &c., have all spoken of Sonship by the will of God. And what is more, they have spoken of the Son in such a way, as no eternal generationist can reconcile to his creed. A pre-exterian might; but no eternal generationist can. See Celestial Filiation, pt. 2. sect. 7.
That this was the prevalent doctrine for nearly three hundred years is admitted by Dr. Waterland; and cannot be denied by the Editor of the “Standard.” It is a positive error to affirm that the doctrine in question was held by the council of Nice. They who composed that council held that the Son of God was begotten, in opposition to Arius who held that he was created; and they anathematized all who should say, “That he did not exist before he was begotten.” They thought he was potentially and eternally in the Father, or in him as the eternal reason, by whom all things were made, and who was brought forth, or begotten by the will and power of God. They called this eternal generation; but it was not “eternal generation,” nor anything like it.
For a long time, as has been remarked, there was no fixed human standard for regulating theological opinions. As for the “Apostle’s Creed,” that is a worthless pretension. The same may be said of the “Apostolic Canons;” the “Apostolic Constitutions;” and the “Recognitions of Clemens.” They are all forgeries. Gregory Thurmaturgus, of the third century, was the first who drew up a brief summary of the Christian religion in his “Exposition of the Faith;” Mosheim, vol. 1. p. 221.
The case stands thus: For three hundred years there was no religious formulary. The doctrine of the Trinity was received for a long time as a Divine mystery. Praxeas was the first who broached his speculations upon the Deity. Sabellianism flourished till the time of Arius; and Arianism continued, says Platt, “in great luster for more than three hundred years.” For above two centuries it ruled in the religion of Spain. It prevailed in Italy, France, Parmonia, and Africa; and though it became hereticated, it was once deemed orthodox, and was accepted by the “faithful.” So that the Reviewer’s assertion respecting “eternal generation,” as explained by himself and others, is palpably opposed to historic fidelity.*208
When the cuttle-fish sheds his ink, you cannot see him distinctly; nor can you distinctly see the Reviewer when he sheds his. Sometimes he heaps simile on metaphor and illustrates a comparison by analogy. Sometimes our friend deals in the suppressio veri,209 or the suggestio falsi,210 as in the case we have been examining, wherein truth is suppressed, and falsehood suggested. Now his logic is eccentric, now it is concentric, anon it is both, and sometimes both with the presence of something else. Ofttimes, have we likened his logic to a Turkey carpet, in which the colours are good but the patterns are vile. We own that the Reviewer knows how to colour his logic. With him colour is everything. Discharge that, and what have you left?
What is called petitio principii, or begging the question, is a familiar practice with our logician: see pp. 218, 226; and elsewhere. The same may be said of what is styled ignoratia elenchi; for frequently the argument is destitute of any perceptible connection with the question in hand. As an instance, see p. 128, on which the Reviewer asks: “If God, then, declares that Jesus is his ‘own Son,’ am I to believe that Jesus is his Son by nature, by eternal generation, and thus his true and proper Son, or to make him a liar?” We advise him to do neither; for what has one to do with the other? Eternal generation has no more to do with the veracity of God, than Tenterden Steeple with the Goodwin Sands.
Mr. Philpot proves the Sonship of Christ to be by eternal generation, by a similar process to that which a young hopeful employed to prove that an eel pie was a ' pigeon-pie; or by a method similar to that whereby the moon was demonstrated to be a noun. Here it is: The moon is round; round is a noun; ergo, the moon is a noun. In like manner Mr. Philpot argues: Christ is God’s own Son; own means nature; ergo, Christ is God’s Son by nature! This he deems remarkably clear. “As clear as a mathematical problem!” That is to say, as clear as fog! Believe it or be damned!!
But these are not the only complaints we prefer against the Reviewer; he also confounds and contradicts himself. For instance, on p. 189, nature is spoken of as being synonymous with essence; but on p. 131, we find the phrase “nature and essence,” the conjunction denoting two different subjects, thus making the nature of God one thing, and the essence of God another. Who is to know what is piped or what is harped, if the Reviewer prepare the music? Here is great confusion. But the following is worse: it is contradiction, downright, positive contradiction. Thus, it stands: on p. 131, the Reviewer steadfastly affirms Jesus Christ to be “the Son of God by nature and essence;” but on p. 189 he explicitly declares that “Christ is the Son of the Father not in his essence, which is self-existent, but in his Personality.” So that Christ is self-existent in his nature, but not in his personality! By and by we shall have a chapter headed, “The Father only self-existent.”
The Reviewer has accepted the ordinal numbers of first, second, and third, as applicable to the Holy Trinity. But that any such order exists in the Divine Subsistence, is an assumption, we believe, wholly gratuitous. To us it seems clear that no such order can exist; because such an order, if it exist, must relate either to existence or to dignity. If to existence, then the Persons are before and after one another; and if to dignity, then they are superior and inferior to one another. By the first you destroy their co-evality; by the second their co-equality. The only way in which these numbers can be used without detriment to the Deity, is in an economical sense, which admits of priority and posteriority, supremacy, and subordination. But even here they are not necessary. And as they are not words which the Holy Ghost teaches, and are more likely to mislead the multitude than to edify the few, it would be well to discontinue the use of them, especially in the pulpit.
We shall here state our objection to the word “generation,” as applied to the Person of Christ. 1. Because the word is nowhere so applied in the Holy Scriptures. We would not object simply on this account; but where a word violates existing usages and established order, it ought to appear in divine revelation before it is seen in human composition. 2. Because when so applied, it is fatal to the self-existence of Christ. He who exists by another cannot exist by himself. 3. Because it robs Christ of his eternity. For however far back you carry his generation, there is in the nature of things something lying beyond it; because generation implies a communication of nature, or essence, which in this case would be a generated God. The Reviewer denies communication; but most absurdly so, for the idea is patent to the understanding, is embodied everywhere, and is by some writers admitted without scruple. Hussey says, “We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God by eternal generation of the substance of the Father;” p. 97. Boston says, “He is the Son, in a most proper and singular manner, viz., by the Father’s communicating the Divine Essence to him Illustrations of Doctrines, &etc. vol. 1, p. 523; also p., 524. Dr. Goodwin in his exposition of some parts of Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, speaks of the Father as the Fountain of Deity, p. 15; which implies a communication of essence. Even Dr. Owen, whose work the editor has reviewed, says “There is a two-fold communication of the Father to the Son: (1) by eternal generation. So, the Son receives his personality, and therein his Divine Nature from him who said unto him, ‘Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee’ vol. 12:213. Dr. Gill objected to the Father’s being the Fountain of Deity; and thought that the Deity was the fountain of the Divine Persons, from which they arose together. Body of Div., p. 114. But if they rose together, how can one be begotten by another? Or how could one proceed from the other two? Were the Divine Persons formed in the Godhead? One would think they must have been, if they emerged from it. Did the Godhead exist before the Divine Personalities? Or had the Divine Persons & potential existence in the Godhead? If they rose together out of the Godhead, how can there be a natural order of first, second, and third? And if the Divine Persons rose out of the Godhead, we should like to know how they can be eternal. It seems they have an origin. And if they have an origin, how can they be without one? “Into what confusion,” says Mr. Philpot, “do men get, when once they leave the word of truth!” p. 195. We think so. The Reviewer says that Mr. Crowther is “up to his neck in error p. 187. How far is Mr. Philpot in? Up to his mouth?
We also object to the phrase “eternal generation.” If formed into one word, it is a suicidal compound; if taken in separate words, it is a term that contradicts itself. Constructed anyhow, taken anyhow, or applied anyhow, it is unintelligible, foolish, and contradictory. We reverence the mysteries of Scripture. But “eternal generation” is not a mystery; it is an absurdity, a phrase repugnant to the whole theory of mind, insulting to one’s common sense, and subversive of the entire structure of language. The immanent acts of God may be eternal; but his transient acts cannot: and generation is a transient act, implying time, however distant. That which is begotten, acquired, produced, brought forth, or generated, can never be eternal. The moment Divine Power is exerted by the will of God, in that moment is the birth of time, it is not by putting the word eternal before the word generation, that you can make the generation eternal. Put the word eternal before the word time; does time cease to be time on that account? Place it before the words creation, creature, soul, thing, &c., respectively; and what is the result? Nonsense. Eternal nonsense. If the pastor of two churches feeds his flocks with this kind of food, the sheep must be very like Ezekiel’s lean cattle, which the Reviewer talked about in October, 1841.
“Words are signs of things, expressions of thought,” says the Reviewer, p. 195. We should like much to see the object of which “eternal generation” is the sign. We cannot be persuaded that that term represents “anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.” Is our learned friend so Quixotic as to fancy that by bringing contraries into juxtaposition, they will become wonderful harmonies by a conversion of properties? Is he of opinion that a beginningless beginning, an endless end, an infinite finity, or terms of similar construction, are intelligible or defensible? Are they “signs of things?” Of what things? “A want of education?” Or of “a failing intellect?”
Justice appears conspicuous where providence hangs a man upon his own gallows. So, Ahasuerus thought; and so others have thought. The Reviewer and the author of the Hitchin sermon, have frequently reminded us of Haman and Mordecai. We hope there is nothing typical of our cynical friend, who seems to have fancied this modern Mordecai to have stood in his way, and to have made up his mind to hang him in print. We trust that the ends of retributive providence may be superseded by a grant of repentance unto life. But we admonish him of his danger, and shall quote here only his reply to Mr. Crowther, who is made to say, “That is not my belief;” to whom our friend rejoins, “Then why, we may reply, do you speak so confusedly?” p. 219. Mr. Philpot is frequently exclaiming, We don’t believe this, or we don’t believe that; and Our reply is, “Then why do you speak so confusedly?”, Lay aside your theological jargon, come down from the clouds, and render your speech intelligible.
When we find our stately brother talking of Divine Sonship by eternal generation; of differences in the Deity; of a begotten Personality with an unbegotten nature; of a successional or hierarchical Trinity, and other subjects too high for our attainments, we cannot sufficiently admire him when he says, on p. 191, “It is desirable to have clear ideas of what we believe, and to express them as clearly as possible.” “The desires of the righteous shall be granted,” we know; but the grant is sometimes long delayed and has not yet reached our illustrious penman.
“Bold assertions, we know,” says Mr. Philpot, “pass off with many for infallible proofs p. 193. Doubtless our friend here speaks experimentally. Nobody, perhaps, knows better than himself, how frequently bold assertions are taken, or rather mistaken, for “infallible proofs.” There are hundreds, yea thousands, who believe “eternal generation,” (as stated by Mr. Philpot), simply because Mr. Philpot boldly asserts it, and renders its acceptance, as an article of faith, necessary to salvation. That they have received it upon the ground of Scripture evidence, or by a divine illumination, we flatly deny.
Still our Reviewer laments “the inadequacy of language” for setting forth the sublime mystery of such subjects as eternal generation; p. 190. But did he not know the paucity of language before he meddled with mysteries so divine? If either language in general, or his own language in particular, were incompetent for his purpose, why made he the attempt? And why, as if there were not mysteries enow, was the mystery of eternal generation invented? Can one mystery explain another? Or was the mystery of eternal generation expected to be a universal solvent?
We are frequently told, as well by others as by our Reviewer, that the doctrines of the Divine Trinity and Sonship of Christ contain inexplicable mysteries. Nothing seems more worthy of our belief than this. But what seems strange to our minds is, that the persons who make these assertions act as if they had no faith in them: act as if they did not believe themselves. They say that they are inexplicable, and yet they are constantly explaining them. Mr. Norton says that the first way of the Divine Essence acting upon itself PRODUCETH the FIRST PERSON; that the second way of its acting upon itself PRODUCETH the SECOND PERSON; and that the third way of its acting upon itself PRODUCETH the THIRD PERSON; in Celes, Filia., pt. 2, pp. 50, 51. Mr. Boston considers the Father to be the fountain or principle of the Deity. As the Deity or Godhead is begotten, it is the Son; and as proceeding from the Father and Son it is the Holy Ghost; Illustra., &etc., vol. 1, p. 89. Mr. Philpot tells us that the existence of the Trinity is an ineffable mystery, and yet he proceeds to tell us how it is; pp. 190, 191; and elsewhere. The Sonship of Christ cannot be explained; and yet it is explained by eternal generation; p. 190. Then eternal generation is inexplicable, but that also is explicated; p. 125; and, as we think, by the oddest of all odd conceits, viz., by the Son’s lying in the bosom of the Father from all eternity! Had it been in the womb of eternity, some unthinking persons might have accepted the “bold assertion for infallible proof.” Our friend pertinently remarks, on p. 96, that “persons often use words of which they have never accurately examined the meaning.” Has he ever accurately examined the meaning of the words “eternal generation?”
The Reviewer admits that his explications and his language “may be called mystical and obscure.” This is a great concession; but the reason assigned for it is, “that in such sacred mysteries as the Trinity, and truths of a similar kind, it is not permissible to deduce conclusions from given premises, as in mere natural reasoning;” p. 189. Whatever Mr. Philpot might think of his readers, he certainly expected that they had large throats: the only capacity some disciples have, and a good thing too for their masters. We say nothing about a periodical called “The Gospel Standard.”
On p. 125, Mr. Philpot exclaims, “Surely Jesus knew the mystery of his own generation.” Suppose he did; yet if he has not declared it, how can his followers be enlightened by his lips? enlightened, at least, on that point. Now, has Jesus Christ anywhere declared himself to be the Son of God in his divine nature, by an eternal generation? If he has, the question is settled; if he has not, how can Christ’s knowledge of his birth affect us? How can it affect the question at issue? What has Christ said about the mystery of his Sonship? Mr. Philpot says that he called himself “God’s only begotten Son.” We know he did; and we believe in his Sonship, as fully as the Reviewer himself. But what has the language to do with eternal Sonship? with Sonship standing exclusively in the Divine nature? or with the doctrine of eternal generation? Nothing at all.
Why, then, was it adduced? Let the Reviewer answer. It is unpleasant to be always exposing a brother’s sophistry and finding motives for his conduct.
There are but three passages of Scripture that mention the generation of Christ. One is in Isaiah 53:8; another is in Acts 8”33; and the other is in Matthew 1:I. The first passage refers to the contemporaries of Christ; the second is a quotation from the first; and the third is a record of his pedigree and birth. “Faith” says Mr. Philpot, “in order to stand firm, must have the word of truth, a thus saith the Lord.” But here again he falls into his own pit, is caught in his own trap; for where has he a “thus saith the Lord” for the doctrine of eternal generation? Nowhere. And yet he says, in effect. Believe this or be damned!! First, he says we cannot believe safely without direct testimony from God; yet here is a dogma, and one most unlikely to be true, because contradictory, without any such testimony as faith requires, which yet we are called upon to believe, or to forego eternal life!! This is monstrous.
Speaking of our adorable Lord and Saviour, Mr. Philpot says, “his human nature never was in heaven till after his resurrection;” p. 125. This proves the Reviewer to be neither a good theologian nor a good texuist. Paul said that he knew a man, whether in the body or out of the body he could not tell; implying, what is implied in some other passages, and what is allowed in common discourse, that the soul, which is part of the man, is put for the whole of man. This is by a figure of speech called synecdoche, which is constantly being used, and is common in the sacred writings, where a part is often put for the whole.
The soul of our triumphant Redeemer was somewhere during the interval which interposed between his crucifixion and his resurrection. The Reviewer says it was not in heaven. Then where was it? In hell? Or on the earth? Or in the starry heavens? Or where? Has our friend adopted the Socinian hypothesis of intellectual suspension? Has he accepted the visionary scheme of some modern pre-millenarians, who tell us Paradise is not heaven, but is situated somewhere on the borders of that better country? Or has something happened to him? When the “Holy One of God” said to the repentant thief, “To day thou shalt be with me in Paradise,” did he not expect to be there? And when he enquired, “What, and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?” Did not this imply that the Son of Man had been there before? “As wearing our nature,” says Mr. Philpot, “he is called the ‘Son of Man’ again and again, but never the Son of God,” p. 92.; therefore, according to his own rule, this ascending must be predicated of his human nature, and must imply that his human nature existed in heaven prior to his incarnation.
We never knew a zealous eternal generationist, who did not preach or teach, by implication, the pre-existence of Christ’s human soul. A member of the late excellent Mr. Stevens, whose writings on the Holy Trinity, and on the Sonship of Christ, are distinguished by every Christian excellence, as well as by intellectual greatness, vast range of thought, clearness, and Scripture evidence, used to say, he always supposed that Dr. Hawker, whom he formerly heard, was a pre-existerian. He was sure he used to preach it. And we are sure he used sometimes to print it; as in his reflections on Judges x., where he says, “Jesus’s soul participated in the miseries of his people!” That the Doctor believed in eternal generation, after a fashion, we may conclude; and yet in his Dictionary he says, that the phrases first-begotten and only begotten, “have no reference whatever to the eternal generation of the Son of God as God!” Now if these phrases have no reference whatever to this doctrine, we should like to know in which of the Scriptures it is declared to be a “blessed reality?” And how it can possibly be so clear as for the weakest child of God to discern it? That the Doctor should contradict himself; that others should contradict themselves also; that the Reviewer should contradict himself likewise; and that he and they should all contradict one another, is a fact not to be marveled at, when it is considered that eternal generation is the most mystical, the most unintelligible, and the most self-contradictory scheme ever invented by the human mind.
Mr. Philpot affirms the human nature of Christ was never called the Son of God; which is contrary to Isaiah 7:14; 9:6; and Luke1:35. “As wearing our nature,” he observes, “he is called the Son of Man, but never the Son of God;” p. 92. Yet, marvelous to say, only three lines further on, he declares exactly the reverse! The truth is, that in the Person of Christ there are two natures: one Divine, the other human. His complex Person is begotten and unbegotten; self-existent and dependent. His personality stands in his Divinity. So that he was a Person, before he was a complex Person; and, therefore, before he was a Son: Personality being founded in his Divine nature only, Sonship takes in, or comprehends, the Divine and human natures; so that both natures, being united, become only one Agent. The Son of God is thus God-man; and God in the Person of the Son is so united to “the man Christ Jesus” as to constitute one complex agent; on which account the two natures are not personally distinguished in the Scriptures; the man-nature having no personal existence by virtue of the hypostatical union, its personal denomination disappears, and singular pronouns are used when he is spoken of. The Son of God is thus infinite and finite, Divine and human; and that, which in strictness of speech, is applicable to only the human nature is predicable of his whole Person. And as among men, the body only being begotten is the ground of filial relationship, without the generation of the soul; so, our Lord’s human nature, or his soul only, being begotten in union to his Divine Person, by God the Father, is a sufficient reason, or ground, for his whole Person being called, the Son of God. The body is inferior to the soul, to which it belongs, both in nature and dignity, and is disposed of by the soul, for the execution of its purposes; even so, or in a similar manner, the manhood of Christ being inferior in nature and dignity to the Divine Person of the Son, it is meet and right that he should have full dominion over it, and use it as that which belongs to him, with a view to the accomplishment of those purposes for which it was assumed. Hence, “he bore our sins in his own body;” “he gave himself for us;” “he purged our sins by himself-” “he had power to lay down his life, and power to take it again.” It was his own; and he had full authority over it. The Reviewer seems anxious to do something against the ancient, complex glory of the “only begotten Son of God,” but he fumbles about like a stupefied man; and we may exclaim of him, as he exclaims of Mr. Crowther: “Into what confusion do men get when once they leave the word of truth;” p. 195.
As an instance of his bewilderment, we find him attaching great importance to the title “Son of Man concluding, that because it always denotes humanity, it never denotes anything more; and that as it denotes abstract humanity, the title “Son of God” must imply abstract Deity, and therefore, eternal generation. But though the title “Son of Man” is never applied to anyone who is not really human, we find the title “Son of God,” applied to Adam, to angels, and to men. The analogy, therefore, fails. It fails also just where it is most wanted and holds good where it is not wanted; for it supposes derivation, dependence, inferiority, &c., as Sonship among men always does; which if applied to his Divine Person as a begotten Son, destroys his self-existence, eternity, and equality with the Father. For though a judge, by virtue of his office, may be superior to his father, yet as a son, he is in the nature and order of things, inferior to his father, posterior to him, and bound to render him filial service. The most that can be inferred from the two titles, “Son of Man,” and “Son of God,” we think is, that the first directs attention to him as the most eminent of all who ever wore that title, “the chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely;” the second points to him as the most distinguished Person in nature, character, and office, of all that have ever been honoured by so sublime a title. Further, we believe the title “Son of Man” was never his used merely to show that Christ was really man. For what necessity was there for this? Did anybody deny his manhood? Was the fact of his being really a man ever publicly disputed? Ordinarily, we believe, the name “Son of Man,” signifies no more than man, sometimes a distinguished man; and as used by Christ of himself, or by others when speaking of him, it means the Messiah; i.e. God's anointed Son. “Some think it is equivalent to Son of Eve, that is the grand offspring of the human race, the supreme progeny of humanity;” Taylor in Calmet.*211
It seems to be a main point with the Reviewer, that the human nature of Christ is never called the Son of God. If this be true, in the sense Mr. Philpot means, will he show us how the following passages can be explained: “The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment ALSO, because he is the SON OF MAN;” John 5:25-27. Are the “two natures kept separate” here? Are not “the Son of God,” and “the Son of Man,” names of the same import, applied to the same Person, and denoting the same relation? The Son of God is the Son of Man, and the Son of Man is the Son of God. Again; “What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?” John 6:62. It appears “The Son of Man” was somewhere before he was incarnate. That he had been above, and had descended; and that he, as “the Son of Man,” would ascend up where he was before. Where was that? By turning to Mark 16:19; and Luke 24:51; and Acts 1:9, we find it was no other place than heaven, So that the Son of Man had clearly been in heaven before he tabernacled among men. Except, therefore, “the Son of Man” be synonymous with the “Son of God,” Mr. Philpot will, despite of his own declaration to the contrary, make the human nature of Christ to have been in heaven before it was on earth. Again: “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father;” John 16:28. Here is real humanity coming forth from the Father, coming into the world, leaving the world, and returning to the Father. Are the two natures separate here? Not if we may credit verse 15, where the God-man says, “All that the Father hath are mine.” How will Mr. Philpot explain coming forth from the Father, coming into the world, leaving the world and going to the Father? Can he leave out the humanity? Can he leave out the Divinity? Can he avoid the complexity of Christ? How will he make it appear that One Divine Person, in his abstract nature, could leave another Divine Person, come into this world, tarry here for a time, and then return? Will he circumscribe, localize, and materialize the Deity, making him altogether such an one as himself? “He will explain it figuratively” Figuratively! Why, did not the disciples say, “Lo now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb?” Did they think of learned figures or recondite interpretations. Was the doctrine of eternal generation before their minds? In no wise. They understood him to mean that he was the Messiah. They thought nothing of his abstract Deity, nor of his abstract humanity, but included both. Besides, was it not the human nature of Christ that wept, toiled, sorrowed, bled, prayed, and died? Yet this “Son of Man” called God his Father and prayed to him as his Father; but if he was a Son as he is God, by eternal generation, it could be only his Divine nature that sustained a filial relation, which is evidently one of great inferiority. And the seventeenth of John, which the Reviewer speaks of, is full of our blessed Lord’s complexity. It begins with the name of Jesus, which nowhere signifies abstract Deity. The whole of that wonderful prayer, from beginning to end, is founded in the complexity of his Sonship. Nor can it be explained on any other ground.
As to the word Son, we may remark that it is used in several analogical senses. Besides the immediate offspring of parents, it denotes grandsons, remote descendants, sons-in-law, sons by position, adoption, education, office, disposition, &c.; also, by reference to age, country, and species. Sometimes the word denotes genuine Christians, young converts or disciples. Sometimes it is used in relation to inanimate things; and then threshed corn is the son of the floor, the oil of the olive-tree is a son of oil, a spark is the son of a coal, and an arrow the son of a bow, just as a bullet is the son of a gun because it issues or proceeds therefrom. At other times it indicates desert, as the son of beating, the son of death, and the son of perdition. At other times it represents character, as sons of the world, of disobedience, of Belial, of God, of the devil, and of hell. “The greatest care should be taken,” says Taylor, in Calmet, “in quoting or applying this word, lest false ideas should attend it, ideas contrary to biblical intention, and therefore perversions, when conveyed in English phraseology.” It is evident the word Son may be applied to Christ without including the doctrine of eternal generation; though the Reviewer writes as if it could not.
On p. 131, the Reviewer remarks, somewhat quaintly. “My son is called my son because he is my son.” We should hope so. Does Mr. Philpot know anyone who insinuates the contrary? The belief, we doubt not, is general, and we trust it is well founded. But what has the fact to do with the Sonship of Christ by an eternal generation? The Reviewer meant to illustrate this abstruse subject; but like nearly every other illustration and proof in these reviews, it not only seems to come short, but turns to his confusion. For, 1, let it be conceded that father and son are correlates; it will not follow that a father does not exist before a son. Is Mr. Philpot no older than his son? Was he not in existence before his son? Or had he a son before he was a man? 2. It is supposed that Mr. Philpot’s son is a son by nature. All that we can say is, if he is a son by nature, he is not a son by generation, except Mr. Philpot be nature. 3. If the Reviewer’s son be a son by nature, the Reviewer, we presume, must be a father by nature, and so have been a father before he had a son. In fact, he must have been born a father, as Dr. --------- said he was born a veterinary surgeon; and of whom
Vaughan wittily said, “He came whinnying into the world.” The Reviewer’s son, according to this theory, may not be called his son because he is his son, after all. He is one of “nature’s dear children,” who properly belongs to nobody, and to whom nobody belongs.
Again, because Mr. Philpot finds that Christ is called God’s “own Son,” he jumps to the conclusion that he must be so in his Divine nature, and in that exclusively. This seems to be one of his main facts. It is also a sweet morsel, and he rolls it under his tongue. See pp. 128, 129, 130, 131, and elsewhere. But that the possessive title implies a Divine birth by an eternal generation, is nowhere asserted, is nowhere implied. It is pure supposition. A mere figment. Or, in the Reviewer’s phraseology, a “monstrous figment:” p. 95. Paul styled Timothy his “own son” and so he did Titus. But did he literally beget them, as Mr. Philpot begat his own son that serveth him? Timothy was Paul’s son in the faith. A son by education and likeness. And as a “son with the father,” he served with him in the gospel; Philippians 2:22. Besides, are not all the family that are named in Christ Jesus, God’s “own sons?” If not his sons, whose sons, are they? Does not the Spirit itself bear with our spirits that we “are the children of God? And if children then heirs.” Surely if God owns and claims us, loves and seals us, we may well be reckoned his “own.” Did not the interceding Advocate affirm, “All mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them?”
Except Jesus Christ is begotten of the Father in his Divine nature, the Reviewer insinuates, “over and over again,” he cannot be really, truly, and properly the Son of God. But are not all the sons of God, however the relationship is formed, really, truly, and properly his sons “If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons,” said an inspired writer. Yet no one supposes they are sons “by the eternal essence.” They have a spiritual and a supernatural nature, but that nature, though called the “Divine nature,” is not the Godhead. “Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth,” i.e., by Christ, the personal Word, which is a different thing from begetting a Divine Person in the Divine essence. However, the relationship is formed, there can be no question that Christ is the true and proper Son of God. But as all the heirs of salvation are true and proper sons, without the Divine essence, it is evident the Divine essence, or nature, in a way of generation, cannot be necessary to constitute our blessed Lord a “true and proper” Son.
Besides, Christ is called God’s “First-born Son,” and “First-born among many brethren,” “the Image of the invisible God, and the First-born of every creature.” This looks as if the Sonship of Christ stood in a two-fold nature or implied the existence of two natures in his Person: one human and one Divine. One, in itself invisible; the other, in itself visible: the invisible nature making itself known and manifest, through the nature that is visible. So that he who sees the visible, may be said to see the invisible. The human nature, thus united, becomes the image, revealer, or manifester of the Divine nature and he who sees the Son, sees the Father also. That which was begotten and brought forth, manifests, reveals, or makes known, that which is unbegotten, and not brought forth; as that which was begotten of Mr. Philpot’s “own son,” manifests, reveals, or makes known that which was not begotten. And as the unbegotten nature united to a begotten one, constitutes that complex person whom Mr. Philpot calls his “own son:” his own true, real, and proper son, though only his body was begotten, as he must confess, except he believes in the traduction212 of human souls; so, or in a manner somewhat analogous, the Divine and human natures constitute the complex Person of Immanuel, whom the Father calls his Son, his own dear Son, and who is his real, true, and proper Son, though only his humanity was begotten. He is the Son of the Father in truth and love. Really, truly, and properly his Son. As much so, we will add, as Master Philpot is really, truly, and properly, the Reviewer’s own son.
And let it be noted that the first-born of a family implies an after-born family, just as the first-fruits implied and stood related to the after-fruits. Christ is styled “the first-begotten from the dead.” But had he not the nature of those that had died? Had he not died himself? Had he not been with the dead, among the dead, and of the dead, before he rose from the dead? It is true he rose in his own right; but it is not less true that he had the nature of those among whom he had been and whom he left behind. He is the first-fruits of them that slept. But were not the first-fruits of the same nature as the after-fruits? They might be superior; but they differed not in their nature.
In addition to this, it implies sameness of nature, or homogeniety, in the first-born and the afterborn. Is not Mr. Philpot’s first-born child of the same nature as his after-born children? Would Mr. Philpot have, in the family of God, a first-born Son, wholly Divine, without any humanity, as the first in order, the Head and Representative of a family wholly human, or without any Divinity? How absurd this conception must be, our readers shall determine for themselves.
Irrational creatures, because they are irrational, propagate the whole of their natures; but man who is “in the similitude of God,” by reason of his dignity in the constitution of his person, propagates only the inferior part of his being. Spirits are not generated. Mind does not propagate itself by generation. This is contrary to its nature. Hence God is said to be “the Father of spirits;” Hebrews 12: 9. When he produces a human spirit, he stands in the relation of a Father to it. If God, therefore, produced the human spirit, or soul of Christ, he stands in the relation of a Father to it; and if this soul is begotten in personal union to a Divine Subsistent in the Godhead, that Divine Subsistent, in its complexity, becomes the Son of God; even as the son of Mr. Philpot, who, by a body begotten into personal union with an unbegotten soul, became his son. This appears to us so obvious, so rational, and so consonant with the whole tenor of Scripture as it bears upon the mighty subject, that we marvel how any man in his senses, regenerated or not, can write as the Reviewer has written upon it. Generation is propagation. And eternal generation is eternal propagation. If one Divine Person is begotten by another, one Divine Person is propagated by another. Spirit begets spirit. Deity propagates itself; and the Godhead is neither inseparable nor immutable. We hope we speak reverently when we say God cannot be a Father as he is God; nor have a Divine Son by generation. Mr. Philpot, we know, will deny the consequences, and perhaps the facts, here stated. But let him adduce evidence to shew that they are not true.
Great stress is laid upon Christ’s being called “the only-begotten Son of God;” from which it is argued he must be a Son by eternal generation; p. 125. Mr. Silver, however, in his profound learning, will have it that the Greek word monogenes is wrongly translated. He, therefore, would render it only or only one, denying that Christ is a begotten Son in any sense. But nothing is clearer than this; that prototokos and monogenes, rendered “first-born,” “first-begotten,” and “only-begotten,” all refer to the same identical Person, and point to his wonderful origin as a complex Person, for to abstract Deity they have no reference. Christ is God’s only begotten Son, that existed, as a Son, before all worlds; that was in the beginning with God; who was begotten in the personal union, so as to be in one person God and man; who was the “Image” and “Word” of God, his Revealer and Manifester, and he through whom Divine operations were put forth. There is no necessity for supposing that the word only begotten must mean the eternal generation of a Divine Person.
On p. 127, Mr. Philpot seems to conclude that because the phrase only-begotten Son, denotes a “peculiar” son, Christ must be a Son in his Divine nature, and therefore by eternal generation. But this is one-sided, limping logic. We admit that Christ is the Son of God in his Divine nature; but it does not follow that his Divine nature is begotten. However begotten, and in what way soever he is a Son, he must be a “peculiar” Son. Persons who deny the antiquity of Jesus, think they find a ground of union of the two natures in his incarnation. Our own opinion is that the soul which Jesus Christ now has, was brought forth by the first of all Jehovah’s acts, in union with that Person, who, on account of this unition, had condescended to be called the Son of God. So that the Son given in Heaven’s high counsels, was the child born of a Virgin, the woman who compassed the man.
Except Jesus Christ be a Son by eternal generation, the Reviewer thinks he cannot be eternal. But why not? Do we not find the “Child born” called the Mighty God? But how can he who is begotten be the Mighty God? We answer not by his being begotten, but by his Divine nature which is unbegotten. The name “Son of God” is expressive of his whole Person, and therefore of eternity as well as time. He who is able to account for one expression will be at no loss to account for the other. He who was an eternal Person before he was a Son, did not cease to be an eternal Person when he became a Son. We may therefore say, the Son is eternal, but not as a Son. He is eternal in one nature, and in that nature his personality stands. Hence he is “that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us.” Eternal life must stand in an eternal Person, in whom shall be found the nature of those who are chosen to eternal life. “This is the true God and eternal life.” Why, then, may we not call the Son of God an eternal Son? He certainly is eternal. And in rendering this ascription to him, we give him only his righteous due. Years ago, we surrendered the doctrine of eternal generation, as dishonorable to our glorious Immanuel, inconsistent with his proper eternity, and incompatible with his covenant relations. We thought the doctrine of eternal generation contributed to the growth of Arianism, and we think so still. We should like to see the Reviewer grappling with an Arian.
Great repugnance to the title of “Son by office,” is manifested by our sensitive Reviewer; pp. 9497. That the Divine names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are personal and relative we fully believe; but as the Divine Persons are officially distinguished by these in an economy of grace, it may be reasonably supposed that they were voluntarily assumed with a view to federal relations and official acts; though what is actually meant by mere office it is difficult to say. Offices and officers are distinguished by names; but names of nature imply a contradiction. Suppose every human being had a name of nature; would not every man have the same name? Where there is but one nature, there can be but name. If the nature of God is one, there is but one name for it; and if the Three Divine Persons have one and the same nature, they must have one and the same name, if that name be a name of nature. If the Divine Persons have three different names, and if every name be a name of nature, they must have three different natures. And if the Divine Subsistents be distinguished by names of nature, they must be distinguished by their respective natures. And if distinguished by their respective natures, they cannot all have the same nature. But if they have not the same nature, there must be different natures in the Godhead; and every Divine Person having something peculiar to himself, has something the others have not. No one Person, according to this view of the subject, has all the Godhead; nor is the Divine nature simple, or uncompounded. Other consequences arise out of this theory; So and it must be abandoned as untenable. The true idea seems to be this: The Divine nature is one infinite sameness; and the Divine Persons in which this infinite sameness is seen, are three distinct Sameness’s, inseparable, indivisible, and undistinguishable from one another by anything in their nature, or in the mode of their existence. If, therefore, there be a name descriptive of this infinite nature, consistency requires that all the adorable Persons in the ineffable Godhead should have that name. This, however, would not distinguish them from one another; because they are essentially in all things alike. It remains, therefore, that if they reveal themselves so as to be distinguished from one another, it must be by an assumption of names for that purpose. And if this revelation is to be through an economy of grace, those names will clearly have an economical relation, although, in strict propriety of speech, they may not arise out of federal relations or voluntary obligations.
Horrified at this idea Mr. Philpot exclaims, “Who does not see that if this be true, the Father might have been the Son, and the Son might have been the Father, and the Holy Ghost either the Father or the Son;” p. 95. It may suit the Reviewer’s purpose to confound names with personalities; but suppose Mr. Philpot had no name at all, or a different name from the one he has; or suppose he had had his name changed, as Daniel had his; or had changed it himself, as the “Coal-heaver” changed his; would not his personality have been just what it is? Names are not essences, nor personalities, nor identities. What if God, willing to make his glorious grace and power known, sovereignly and condescendingly takes up certain names, enters into certain relations, and brings himself under certain obligations, by oath and promise, must we conclude that the Divine Persons by becoming what they were not, ceased to be what they had been? Had Mr. Philpot never been a father he would have been a person; and if the person of the Father had never been a father, he would have been a Person. Still further, had he taken the name of Son, he would have been the same Divine Person. But the conglomerated hallucinations of some men’s minds form a kind of celestial logic, reminding one of the poor creature who exclaimed, “You need not think I am mad. I am a doctor and have come to cure the lunatics.” It seems a pity Mr. Philpot is not a doctor.
Whatever amount of natural acerbity213 there may be in the Reviewer, and we think it must be considerable, there are times when he is actually surcharged with all goodness, and even does evil that good may come. To carnalize the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is, in Mr. Philpot’s view, a heinous sin; yet on p. 95 he perpetrates this very evil, for the sake, he says, of meeting persons whom he had branded as “heretics,” yea, “vile heretics,” on their “own ground.” But it falls out, as. the best-intentioned things will sometimes fall out, rather unpropitiously; for his illustration, which he calls “carnalizing the subject”, gives no force to his argument. What we assert is, that the Divine names were assumed prior to covenant relations, engagements, and offices; that the names are not necessary but voluntary; and if voluntary there was a Divine liberty in the assumption, which implies the very idea the Reviewer, labours to terrify his readers by. Had the Divine Person who assumed the name of Father, condescended to have received the human nature into personal union with his Divine nature, and have taken the name of Son, what is there in the nature, or reason of things, so far as we can understand them, to render that condescension incongruous? Will the Reviewer say what?
That Jesus Christ cannot be a begotten Son by virtue of the everlasting covenant, Mr. Philpot thinks abundantly evident, 1, Because a covenant could not “beget him;” and 2, Because begetting implies an origin, a nature, a mode of existence p. 126. We call particular attention to this second reason, because it is just what we have been all along charging as a necessary consequence, upon the doctrine of eternal generation; to wit, that what is begotten has an “origin,” This is just what common sense says; what everybody allows to be most certain; and what is accepted without proof. Here our logician appears in complete armour. His panoply is perfect. No dart can penetrate it; no arrow can enter it. His argument is invincible. He is fortified by common sense and is master of his position. All that we now claim of him is, that he abandon the doctrine of eternal generation, or demonstrate how that which has an origin is un-originate, and how that which had actually a beginning is absolutely eternal. In equity, in honour, in justice, as a minister of Christ, and for the truth’s sake, he is bound to do one or the other.
Mr. Philpot will not accept a “begotten God” as an object of his faith; but he pleads for a generation in which a Divine Person was begotten! Here we find him at the poles. He reasons at the antipodes of reason; and his arguments are, logic versus common sense. This is evidently his doctrine: Christ is a Divine Person; as a Divine Person he is God; as God he was begotten; ergo, he is a begotten God. Again: the Son is God; as God he was begotten; ergo, he is a begotten God. Again: Christ was begotten as a Son in his Divine nature; that Divine nature is God; ergo, he is a begotten God. This is the theory of eternal generation. We know Mr. Philpot says his Person and not his nature was begotten. But this is a mere subterfuge. A pitiable quibble. For can a person be begotten without a nature? That which constitutes a person is his nature; and when a person is begotten his nature is begotten. Nature, in this connection, means descent. And till Mr. Philpot can tell us how Christ can be a Divine Person without a Divine nature; or how his Divine Person could be begotten and not his Divine nature, we must continue to charge him with holding forth a doctrine which necessarily involves a begotten God.
We have always considered it a monstrous thing for one man’s definition to be another man’s damnation. Yet we find the leader of a party teaching his followers that denying the doctrine of eternal generation, as applied to the Sonship of Christ, though confessedly inexplicable, and evidently contradictory, is “really nothing less than denying the Son of God;” p. 89; “that he who denies that (doctrine) most certainly believes not in his name, by which is meant his very being and nature p. 126. The damnatory consequences of this disbelief are logically deduced by what the Reviewer calls a chain of arguments or a series of steps; while all the reviews are bitterly suggestive, being plentifully sprinkled with hints and innuendos, besides breathing a spirit of deep, insufferable intolerance, which makes one feel that if times permitted there would be no lack of Lauds and Bonners, of judges and Star Chambers, of inquisitors and inquisitions. When a minister so far forgets his relation to Christ and the church, as to claim the homage of his brethren, and to separate himself from those who deny it; when he refuses to preach in a pulpit because his dogma is not cherished by the resident minister; when he reviews a sermon with feelings of evident mortification and ill-will, because that sermon attacks his theological figment; when he labours to bring a minister into disesteem among the churches and his brethren, by speaking disparagingly of his public gifts; when he gratifies a splenetic taste by snubbing one, cuffing another, and putting down, if possible, everyone his jealous eye has looked askance at; when the trust-deeds of ecclesiastical property are so framed as to exclude from their respective pulpits, all Christian ministers, however excellent or however eminent, simply because they bring not this hallucination with them; when a man exerts an influence for passing resolutions intended to exclude from pulpits, the same class of ministers, because not legally excluded by the deeds of trust; when members are virtually excluded from the table of the Lord, and deacons removed from office; when a man becomes so denunciatory, so imperious, and so intoxicated with the love of power, as to act in this way, however meek he may seem, put him in red stockings and send him a cardinal’s hat. He is not far from the Popedom of Rome.
Speaking of the eternal Trinity before the covenant of grace, Mr. Philpot asks, “Did that covenant alter their mutual relationship to each other, so as to introduce a new affinity between them?” p. 96. Our answer is that voluntary relationships made no changes in the essential relations of the Deity, which are necessary and immutable. But voluntary relations required appropriate designations; and hence the Triunal names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The Reviewer continues: “You might just as well say that the covenant made them a Trinity of Persons, or called them into being, as to say that the covenant made them Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;” p.96. Now does not this imply that Mr. Philpot understands as little of a logical sequence, as he does of a “mathematical problem?” There are whole pages in these reviews which remind us of what is called in algebra a “minus” quantity, which signifies less than nothing. Who says that “the covenant made the eternal Three, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?” What we have said is, that these sacred names were assumed by the holy Trinity, for the purpose of making themselves known in acts of sovereign grace, by the fulfilment of pactional stipulations through the complex Person of Jesus the Mediator. These names were graciously taken prior to covenant engagements, and therefore did not originate in them; and had they originated there, except names are persons, how could they have originated the self-existent Trinity? Had these glorious names never been assumed, Jehovah, who is one God, would have been essentially and eternally what he now is.
As a man of capricious enmities and unreasonable likings, the Reviewer denounces the Anti-Athanasian doctrine, however presented, as a abominable error;” p. 96; from which he has received several shocks, at which he is holily alarmed, of which he is constantly warning his simple-minded followers, and against which he is most vindictively arrayed with a bow and arrows, beseeching the Lord to fill his quiver; p. 125. But he loves, even to distraction, one would think, the illogical credenda of an old tyrannical man, named Athanasius, whose bitter, damnatory spirit crept into the creed which he imposed by oaths and curses, whenever and wherever he could. Probably they were his enemies who blackened his character; but he was an ecclesiastical tyrant, the Reviewer anticipated, and seems to have been exiled as much for his cruelty as for his creed. What was his creed? Observe the next paragraph.
“Believing in a Trinity of Persons, in the unity of the Divine essence, we say that the Father is a Father as begetting; the Son is a Son as begotten; the Holy Ghost is a Spirit as proceeding;” p. 191. This is Athanasianism, substantially considered. Understand it if you can. Reconcile it to the eternity, independence, and equality of the Divine Persons, if you are able. You cannot. We defy you. The thing is impossible. You may scream infidel, heretic, and names yet more awful, we shall not be alarmed. Screaming is not reasoning. Abuse is not argument. We shall go on.
Let us analyze this precious farrago, if we can. Here is a portion of it: “The Father is a Father as begetting. This is the well-considered language of a man who religiously eschews the use of words without knowing what they mean. Let us see if we can evolve their real sense. And first of all, we find the verb, the adverb, and the participle, all in the present tense. Mark that. The Reviewer does not say the Father is a Father because he has begotten a Son, but that he is a Father as begetting; implying that he has always been begetting and always will be! That to be always begetting is natural to him; and what is natural is necessary; so that he cannot be a Father without the continued act of begetting! This is being a Father by nature!!
In the next place, let us examine the little word as: “The Father is a Father as begetting.” This is an adverb in the present tense, agreeing with the verb is and the participle begetting. But what does it mean: as begetting? It means while, during, at the same time. So that the Father is a Father, while, during, or at the same time he is begetting, and no longer. This is being a Father by nature,
or as begetting! As therefore he has always been a Father, he has always been begetting; and as he will always be what he always has been, and is now, he will always be begetting: always be begetting one only Son! A Son who was begotten before all worlds but is not begotten yet! A Son who was born before he was begotten! A Son who was actually sent as a begotten Son, lived as a begotten Son, died and rose as a begotten Son, and was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead, while his Father, as a Father, was actually begetting him!! He must, therefore, have come in appearance only. So that if this scheme be defensible, redemption by his blood is a fallacy; the “glad tidings” are a great cheat; and Christianity is one huge, comprehensive swindle. Our faith is vain if this statement contains a fact. For according to this doctrine, Christ was not begotten eighteen hundred years ago! Nay, he is not begotten now!! And what is more, he never will be!!! Honest reader, can you credit Mr. Philpot’s dogma? Mr. Philpot says he believes it. And what he believes is a great thing; and quite enough for some of his disciples. Are you one of them? Examine yourself, whether you have the faith of Christ. Never mind Mr. Philpot. Your soul is of more value than Mr. Philpot’s patronage. Shake off his trammels. Assert your claim to free enquiry, and sing as you do it, “I’ll be a slave no more.” [
Some probably will think, we must have misrepresented Mr. Philpot, somewhere, or somehow. Our reply is, that we have quoted exactly. As for our analysis, that is before the reader; and so are the results we have obtained. But hear Dr. Goodwin: “We believe that, as Son of God, his birth is from everlasting; and it is termed going forth, because it is actus continuus, and hath been EVERY MOMENT CONTINUED FROM EVERLASTING: as the sun begets light and beams every moment, so DOTH GOD HIS SON vol. 2, p. 57. This explains how God is a Father by nature, as begetting; and how Christ is a Son by eternal generation!! We thus learn 1, That though the Father is always generating the Son, and though the Son is not yet begotten, he was nevertheless born in eternity! 2, That his birth is by a Divine generation. 3, That this generation commenced from everlasting, and has been going on ever since. 4, That the modus operandi, or manner of generating the Divine nature, or Person of Christ, resembles the generation of sunbeams, which is by a perpetual law of nature. 5, That this perpetual generation is called goings forth, in the plural, because it has been every moment continued; though why perpetual motion should be better expressed by a plural than by a singular number, only doctors and reviewers can understand. 6, To make the whole subject quite clear, we have the sun and his beams to illuminate it. Gentle reader, what do you think of all this? What do you think of the doctrine Mr. Philpot has been scolding us about? What will you say to his making this doctrine a test of life and death? What you think of him as a Teacher sent of God? Is he to be followed implicitly? When he calls the doctrine a “blessed mystery,” and says the Spirit of God has “revealed it to his soul,” do you not think there are signs of imbecility, and that he is driveling into pupilage?
Again, Mr. Philpot believes “the Son is a Son as begotten.” What does he mean by this? Has he any meaning? Any fixed determinate ideas? We should rather think his mind “through many changes goes for between the earlier and later reviews we perceive a change did o’er his spirit come: occasioned, we presume, by his passing, not from death unto life, but from Owen to Gill. In 1859 he reviews Owen; and in 1860 he quotes Gill. Both are doctors. But the doctors differ on the nature of eternal generation. Dr. Owen believes that Christ is a Son by essence, communicated by the Father; Dr. Gill believes the essence was not communicated or begotten. In the March and April reviews, Christ is styled a Son “by nature and essence;” p. 95; “as being of the very essence of the Father;” p. 96; “by nature, being and essence;” p. 97; “in his Divine nature;” p. 123; the same on p. 124, and on the same page, “the Son of God as God.” On p. 125, he is called “the only-begotten Son of God as God;” and his “only-begotten Son in his Divine nature.” On p. 127, “he is the Son of God as God;” on p. 128, “he is his Son by nature, by eternal generation, and thus his “true and proper Son;” on p. 131, he is “the Son of God by eternal essence;” and on the same page, “the Son of God by nature and essence.” In all this we perceive Dr. Owen's theory of eternal generation: a communicated, or begotten essence, constituting the Person of the Son.
Observe here 1, in 1859, Mr. Philpot proves, he says, that Christ is God’s true and proper Son by the “very essence of the Father,” being begotten of it; and 2, that a belief in him as thus begotten, is necessary to eternal life. But in 1860 he lays aside Owen and reads Gill; in doing which he discovers that Christ is “the true and proper Son of God,” not by being begotten in his essence but in his PERSON. This also he PROVES. And what is more, he proves that the belief of Christ’s Sonship as thus set forth is necessary to eternal life. From which we learn 1, That Mr. Philpot's views of Christ’s Sonship are necessary to salvation. 2, That in his views of this subject he is “unstable as water.” 3, That his proofs are not to be trusted; because in 1859 he proved that to be true, which in 1860 he proved to be not true. 4, That his experience is marvelously deceptive, seeing in 1859 the Holy Ghost taught him the Sonship of Christ by “the very essence of the Father and in 1860 taught him that such a Sonship was “derogatory” to Christ, because it made him a “begotten God.” 5, We learn also that the doctrine he proclaims has not been taught him by revelation, but by Owen and Gill.
Mr. Philpot’s versatility is observable in men as well as things. It pleases him just now to eulogize Dr. Hawker and Dr. Gill; although in 1839, if we remember rightly, he stigmatized them both as servants of the devil, or, of doing the devil’s work. Hasty opinions, on very partial evidence may, we know, be expressed; and we have reasons for believing that Mr. Philpot has felt sorry for casting such deep reproach on Dr. Hawker: what he has felt for the indignity done to Dr. Gill, we can offer no opinion. But having discovered his error, would it not have been manly, just, and Christianly, to have publicly acknowledged his error, and publicly expressed his regrets? We think so.
But this distinction between the Person and essence of Christ is unsound and frivolous. For 1, What is the nature or essence of Christ, but that life, or infinite perfection, without which he could not be a Person? 2, What is a Divine Person but a Person who has Divinity? And how could Christ be begotten as a Divine Person, without his Divinity? 3, If Christ was begotten as a Divine Person, must there not have been a communication of the Deity? Could he be a Divine Person without the Deity? Does not his personality stand in his Deity? Or can we conceive of one without the other? In what way? How? 4, If the Son of God received his Divine existence by generation, what besides his Divine nature could be generated? Is not existence nature? Can a being, of any kind, exist without a nature? 5, Mr. Philpot himself acknowledges, that “to be begotten implies a nature;” p. 126. 6, Is not the Divine nature the substance of the Divine Personalities? If not, what is? Will the Reviewer say? 7, If the Son of God has a Divine nature by which he is truly and properly a Person, as a human being has a nature by which he is truly and properly a person, then is the Son as much a begotten God as Mr. Philpot is a begotten man.
But in whatever sense he is said to have been begotten in his personality, he cannot be self-existent, eternal, independent, nor equal to the Father.
First, he cannot be self-existent. Because 1, To beget is to communicate life; and communicated life is not self-existent life. 2, Begetting is bringing into existence; and whatever is brought into existence cannot exist of itself. 3, To be begotten is to derive existence from another; but derived existence is not self-existence. 4, He who exists by the will of another cannot exist in his own right, and therefore cannot be self-existent. 5, Self-existence can neither be begotten nor born. 6, Whatever is begotten implies mutation; and mutation is contrary to self-existence.
Second,; he cannot be eternal. For 1, To beget is to give existence to what was not before; and that which once was not, cannot be eternal. 2, Mr. Philpot confesses that “begetting implies an origin” p. 126; but what had an origin cannot be eternal. 3, To be begotten is to be after him who begat; but he who is after another cannot be eternal. 4, If that which is begotten is eternal, that which is created may be eternal also; and thus, we may have an eternal creation as well as an eternal generation. Nor is one more absurd than the other. Place the Divine personality of Christ in his Sonship, and his eternity is lost. You may find antiquity but not eternity in it. You may make the Son Eternal, by an endless duration; but eviternity214 is not eternity. '
Third; he cannot be independent. Inasmuch as 1, He who has been begotten has been dependent for his existence upon him who begat him. 2, If the Father is a Father as begetting, and so is always begetting, as the Reviewer’s language supposes, he is still dependent; and, what is more, he always will be. 3, If dependent, he is a creature; for it is a property in all creatures to be dependent as it is a property in the Creator to be independent.
Fourth; he is an inferior Deity. Because 1, He who is of another cannot be equal to him who is of himself. 2, Derived existence must be subordinate to self-existence. 3, That which is unbegotten must be superior to that which is begotten. If, therefore, Christ has been begotten in his Divine Person, he is not self-existent, eternal, independent, nor equal to his Divine Father in glory and honour. At most he is but an inferior Deity. An Arian's Jesus Christ.
The third portion of the Reviewer’s belief is: “The Holy Ghost is a Spirit as proceeding.” Here again we have the verb, the adverb, and the participle in the present tense. According to this, the Person of the Spirit consists in the continuous breathing of the Father and the Son, by which he is distinguished from them both; and which is called spiration. So that the natural and necessary modes of existence are by paternity, filiation, and spiration. But can Mr. Philpot really believe that the breath of two Divine Persons constitutes the subsistence of another Divine Person? That if a Divine Person could be thus constituted, that Divine Person being continually dependent on the will and power of both the Father and the Son, could be equal to them in power, honour, and glory? And if the Father, as a Father, is always begetting the Son, and the Son as a Son is always being begotten, how can the Son who, as a Son, is not perfectly begotten, nor ever will be, be perpetually contributing to the personality of the Holy Spirit?
Dr. Gill says in his Commentary on John 15:26, that what is spoken of the Holy Spirit is distinct from his mission, “and designs no other, than the eternal, ineffable, and CONTINUED ACT of his procession from the Father and the Son.” In his “Body of Divinity” p. 313, he abrogates this sense of the passage, but adheres to his theory, as may be seen in the extract selected by the Reviewer on p. 191. There is but one passage on which the doctrine of procession can be colourably founded, and that the doctor has surrendered.
An extract from a living author, whose publication an editor thinks “may lead many in confusion to a right and scriptural conclusion,” shall close the subject. Here it is: “The third, Divine selfexisting Person in God constituted himself the eternal Holy Ghost. And by his eternal Divine proceeding, in the one Divine eternal will and way of the Father and the Son, he, the Holy Ghost, brought forth from the bosom of the Father, the eternal, Divine, only-begotten, possessed, anointed Son, Jesus Christ, which the Scripture declares was the Son’s Divine eternal birth:” the italics are our own. Here then you may learn, honest enquirer, that the Holy Ghost made himself a Holy Ghost; that though self-made, and self-existing, he has an “eternal proceeding that this eternal proceeding is in the eternal will and way of both the Father and the Son; that by this proceeding, whatever it once was or now is, he brought forth the Divine Person of the Son; that the place he brought him from was the Father’s bosom; that he was in the Father’s bosom, possessed and anointed, before he was born; that it was the Holy Ghost who brought him forth, add not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; that “the Holy Ghost, was, is now, and ever will be the Deity and Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ:” proof reference Isaiah 9:6, 7; p. 8; that this is the eternal birth, or origin, of the only-begotten Son of God; that this is according to the Scripture; that the Scripture is the author’s own gospel, as he tells us p. 11; that all this, with much more, has been revealed to him, of course, by “the one will and way of the glorious Three- ne God;” p. 7; and that this is the true doctrine of Christ’s Sonship, to the steadfast belief of which all God’s elect will surely be brought!! What think you of this, troubled reader? Has the fog cleared off? Are you out of the wood? Have you been helped to a safe conclusion by this lucid logician? which the editor recommends perplexed saints carefully to read; but which, we should say, he has never carefully read himself. Nor is that a loss. For more egregious nonsense, ignorance, self-complacency, and rhodomontade215 we hardly ever met with; and which is the most insane, he who wrote or he who recommended the tract, might puzzle a whole bench of judges to decide.
This, patient reader, is the eternal generation theory; only not half developed. What a medley! What an incoherent, chaotic mass! Was ever creed like this? Were the question put on this point, “What is truth?” could one of a thousand answer? According to some, the Father is of none; according to others he is of himself, “negatively, not positively;” the Son is of the Father, and the Holy Ghost is of them both, though some say he is of one only; the Divine Persons are all eternal, and yet the Son is after the Father, being begotten, and the Holy Spirit is after them both, because proceeding from both of them; that the Divine Persons are all self-existent, while only the Father is so, and even he is so as not to be so; that they are all independent, yet the Son is every moment being begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is every moment proceeding from the Father and the Son; that they are all equal in power, honour and glory, yet one is unbegotten, one begotten, and one neither begotten nor unbegotten, but continually breathed; that they have all only one nature, and yet are all different; that they are Three eternal Same-nesses, and yet are actual likenesses; that each Divine Person has all the Divine nature, yet everyone has something the others have not; that while the Divine Essence is one infinite simplicity, uncompounded, indivisible, and incommunicable, it is nevertheless peculiar to the nature of the Father to beget, peculiar to the nature of the Son to be begotten, and peculiar to the nature of the Holy Ghost to proceed!! According to some, the Father is the Fountain of Deity and conveys it to the Son and Holy Ghost; according to others it is not so. One says the essence does not beget; another tells us all the Divine Persons were produced by the Divine Essence. Some tell us the modus existendi is an impenetrable secret; others acquaint us with the modus operandi, and say the Divine Persons were produced by the Divine Essence acting upon itself. All maintain, dogmatically, that the Divine Persons are coeval and coequal; yet all agree, by statements and implications, that they are neither one nor the other. Doctors are arrayed one against another; and the small and the great contend. Some tell us the Divine Persons have an order of subsistence called first, second, and third; others tell us they all rose together from the Godhead; and the Reviewer maintains both, perhaps because Dr. Gill maintained both.
A little piece more, Christian reader; it may do you good; especially if you are following after Mr. Philpot. Some eternal generationists affirm that the Son was begotten in the essence, others that he was not; but according to Mr. Philpot he was begotten both in the essence and not in it! According to one tale, each Divine Person is “God by himself” and yet there is but one God; according to another tale, they cannot exist without “intercommunion.” Dr. Owen thought there was a kind of subordination among the Divine Persons; and in 1859 the Reviewer seemed to lean on the doctor’s understanding. You must believe that the Son was begotten of the substance of the Father, and yet that he was not; that the Father communicated the Deity to Christ, and yet that he did no such thing; that the Divine nature does not generate itself, and yet that it generated the Son; that the Father begat the Son, and yet that he did nothing of the kind, for the Holy Ghost brought him forth and is both his Father and his Deity! You must believe that God is absolutely immutable, and yet that he generates and is generated, which implies mutation; that Christ was begotten as God, and yet is not a begotten God; that the Son is a Son as begotten, and that the Father as a Father is always begetting him; that the Holy Ghost is self-constituted, yet always proceeding; that there is neither priority nor posteriority, superiority nor inferiority among the Divine Persons, yet that one is after another, and one is underived while two are derived!! You must believe, in fact, great absurdities, great contradictions, and palpable untruths, bewildering, stupefying, and dishonourable to reason, candour, truth, and all the Holy Trinity.
In passing to another part of the subject, it may be useful to observe; 1, That the nature of God is not a subject of definition. 2, To say any of the Divine names are names of nature, is to define, or limit, the Holy One of Israel. 3. To say the relative names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are names of nature, or three representatives of one Infinite Nature, is to speak without authority from God, and contrary to reason. 4, There is no ground for concluding that these Divine Names, which are so different, and which eternal generationists allege as necessary to a Triunal subsistence, are intended to suggest an internal order of existence, relationship, or necessary operations. 5, If the Holy Trinity, who ought not to be thought of without reverence, are Father, Son, and Holy Ghost by nature, or necessary existence, and all the Divine perfections dwell naturally in them, the Divine perfections must be all different, and act differently in all the Divine Persons. In the Father, they must be naturally paternal, because he is naturally so, and because they are according to his nature; in the Son they are naturally filial, because he is a Son by nature, and because they are according to his nature; and in the Holy Spirit they are all spiritual, because he is a Holy Spirit, and because all the Divine perfections are according to his nature also. The belief of this can hardly be necessary to salvation.
Another hint by the way: if the Father be a Father by nature, and so “a Father as begetting,” he is so by a physical necessity: the same kind of necessity as that is by which he exists, which is necessarily exclusive of the Divine will, and which leads to the consequence of a Divine nature necessarily generating itself and being generated. But this is contrary to reason, analogy, and Scripture: 1, To reason; for generation is an act and supposes a will. Whatever is not the act of a personal agent is not an action, but a mode of existence, as light, heat, and the like. 2, To analogy; for nature itself generates nothing. It changes the mode of existence, but never produces existence. Spontaneous generation was a doctrine once advocated by philosophers, but it has long been abandoned. See Ray, on the Creation. Origination, generation, causation, derivation, and the like, are all figurative expressions when applied to nature, i.e., to power undirected by intelligence. Besides, spirit does not generate spirit. Analogy, therefore, opposes the human scheme of eternal generation. And 3, so do the Scriptures; for they represent all the Divine Persons as self-existent, independent, and eternal.
“But has not Mr. Philpot appealed to the Scriptures on behalf of the doctrine you oppose?” He has. And we may say of him, in an enlarged sense, what he said of Mr. Crowther: “He can darken the word, but not give light upon it; pervert plain texts, but not open obscure ones; confuse and perplex the mind, but not instruct or edify the soul:” p. 220. We cannot examine all the texts he has quoted, with his comments thereon. Nor is it necessary we should. A few may suffice. The rest we will leave.
That on which the Reviewer lays much stress, and from which he deduces two conclusions, is Matthew 16:16, 17, where Peter says: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God;” upon which Christ pronounced Peter the subject of a Divine revelation, and blessed him. From all this Mr. Philpot concludes, that the Holy Ghost revealed the doctrine of eternal generation to Peter, that he reveals it still, and has revealed it to him. But in the first place, we wish it to be noted that the Holy Ghost has said nothing whatever upon the subject of dispute. 2, To say that the Holy Ghost revealed Mr. Philpot’s view of Christ’s Sonship, is simply gratis dictum: assumption without proof. 3, The names Christ and Son, present us with the same object of faith. 4, The name Christ is a complex name, and supposes one filling an office, for which he has been qualified and to which he had been inducted. 5, The Christ of the New Testament, was the Messiah of the Old. 6, The Messiah of the Old Testament was the Son of God, who was to come into the world. 7, The question was whether he who was born in Bethlehem and brought up at Nazareth, whose mother was a virgin, whose reputed father was a carpenter, who was baptized in the Jordan, who was proclaimed by John and preached a new dispensation; whether He, of whom all men mused, and respecting whom public opinion was so much divided, was the long-promised Messiah. Some said one thing; some said another. “Who do ye say that I am?” Peter said, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.” The question was not about the nature, or origin of his Sonship, but the fact of it; and the apostle’s reply is so far from countenancing the Reviewers doctrine, that it lies dead against it; for assuredly it recognizes complexity in Sonship. As to the Holy Ghost’s revealing the doctrine of eternal generation to men who hold that doctrine, we tell them at once that the Holy Ghost has never done any such thing. 1, Because he whose office it is to teach the truth, never teaches error. 2, Because his work is to glorify Christ, whereas the doctrine of eternal generation depreciates his Person and robs him of his glory. 3, Because the Holy Spirit never reveals anything to the soul that has not been revealed in the Scriptures; and eternal generation is nowhere revealed in the Scriptures. “But Mr. Philpot says the Holy Ghost has revealed it to him.” What then? We are not obliged to believe him. The Holy Ghost revealed Sonship by nature, or essence, to him in 1859; and in 1860, revealed the uncomfortable fact, that the first revelation was an error, and derogatory to Christ; subsequently teaching him to distinguish between person and essence, i.e., to make a distinction where there is no perceptible difference, or where the distinction can be of no possible use! “But other persons say the Holy Ghost has revealed it to them also.” We know they do. But we no more believe them than we do him. “To the law and to the testimony. If any man speak not according to this, it is because there is no light in him.” “If the light within you be darkness, how great is that darkness! No men are more to be pitied, or less to be trusted, than men who boast of their revelations.
The second scripture we shall notice is Philippians 2:7-11; p. 94; where Christ is proposed as an example to the believing Philippians. It is intimated that Christ is here spoken of in his abstract Deity, as the Son of God. To this we reply: 1, Morphe, here rendered form, rarely, if ever signifies essence; but shape, aspect, figure, delineation, appearance. It here means his soul, in distinction from his Deity, but in personal union with it. 2, Deity, as such, is nowhere proposed as a pattern of humility; of love, mercy, goodness, patience, &c., it is 3. How could God, as God, in his Divine nature, make himself of no reputation? Is not a God without reputation the veriest blasphemy? 4. Could God part with his reputation, and at the same time claim the reverence, worship, trust, admiration, and service of his creatures? “But the phrase, ‘made himself of no reputation;’ signifies he emptied himself” So let it. But how, even in this sense, does it help the doctrine of Sonship by eternal generation? For if Christ had been a Son in his Divine nature only, which is the Reviewers doctrine, then 1, He had only his Divine nature to empty himself of. 2, When he had emptied himself of his nature, what was left of his Person? 3, If when he became incarnate, he parted with his Deity, where was his fitness for the great work of redemption? In every point of view, the proof sought to be drawn from the passage entirely fails; and like, perhaps, every passage the Reviewer has cited as a proof-text, establishes the Bible doctrine of Sonship by complexity. Admit the ancient complexity of Immanuel, who is God with us, and the passage is at once clear, striking, and beautiful: in heaven his soul was in the form of God; on earth he was in the likeness of sinful men. Here is his humiliation, divestment, and poverty. “Yes, but he was rich as God, and poor as man.” How so, honest friend? That in which a person becomes poor, is that in which he was rich. It is a crucifixion of him, with common-sense and patience on either side, to be always splitting hairs which make nothing when they are split.
Another alleged proof is Hebrews 1:3; which Mr. Philpot has garbled for the purpose of imposing a sense favorable to the doctrine he so zealously advocates; for the words God and his, are not in the text; and as for the Greek hypostasis, rendered person, it occurs but in four other places, in not one of which is it translated person. Dr. Campbell says, the word hypostasis “occurs often in the LXX., but is never the version of a Hebrew word which can be rendered person.” Jerome rendered it substantive, or substance. But its primary meaning is under, or something put under, as a basis, or foundation, and hence a low station, a state of humiliation or condescension. Murray renders the passage: ‘‘Who is the brightness, or splendour of glory, and the distinguishing mark of his condescension.” Certainly, our Immanuel is the brightness of glory. But of what glory? Read the first verse, which is a key to the text. It was customary with the apostle to collect a number of particulars and express them by some striking word or phrase; as in Galatians 6:14, where the word “cross” comprehends all the particulars of Christianity; and in Romans 8:14, where the “Lord Jesus Christ,” represents all the excellencies and virtues of Christian life. It is the same here. “Brightness of glory,” is a phrase expressive of all that is great, rare, or excellent. It comprehends the various appearances, declarations, prophecies, and promises which illumined the ages that had gone by. It included the entire ceremonial of Judaism, with its Tabernacle, Temple, Priesthood, and Regalia; especially the types and figures. There was also the Shekinah, or visible glory, called the presence of the Lord,” including the visional glory of God as seen by Micah, Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. All these the Jews gloried in and held apostasy from so glorious a religion, in utter abhorrence. And the ministration of Judaism, especially in its normal state, was glorious; but it disappeared at the coming of Immanuel, like the milky way at the rising sun. For that which was glorious had no glory, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
The Greek word character rendered “express image,” occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It signifies something engraved or stamped. A character. A letter, mark, or sign. It here means something conspicuous, striking, and highly illustrative: as in the apocalypse, where the appearance of our blessed Lord in the midst of the throne, like a slain lamb, with the marks of slaughter upon him, is a living, striking image of God’s infinite love, in the sending and sufferings of his dear Son.
We know that in his Person he “is the image of the invisible God.” But how, we pray? Not simply in his essential Deity, which is invisible too; but in his begotten complexity, in which the manhood becomes the reflecter of the Godhead. This begotten nature, though it could be assumed by only one Divine Person, belonged to them all, and is the image of them all, of one as much as another; and in Genesis 1:26, is claimed by them all. By the unition of this exalted portion of our nature to a Divine Person, Jehovah, in the Trinity of his Persons, becomes known in his Divine perfections, sovereign grace, and saving acts. In this luminous nature the Son of God was the reflected splendor, or radiancy of the light that no man hath seen, or can see; the medium of God’s essential majesty, of the celestial beams, emitted splendours, or emanations of the God-head. As man, his human soul living in personal union with a Divine Subsistent of the Godhead, is the most eminent, the most holy, the wisest and the best of created spirits, possessing the greatest possible perfection; thereby approximating nearer to God in dignity and glory than any other dependent being, and thus becoming an appropriate and striking image of the invisible God. He is God’s Secretary, Treasurer, Agent, Fulness, Medium, and Manifester. He in whom God is seen, by whom he is known, and through whom he acts. He is styled “the man;” “the man Christ Jesus;” “the man whose name is the Branch “ Messiah the Prince the “Captain of the Lord’s host” and “the head over all things to the church.” He was, and he is, Jehovah’s “shepherd;” the man who was God’s “fellow” a word not expressing equality, but nearness, connection, and the like. The Hebrew omnith, here rendered “my fellow,” signifies a friend, a neighbour, a near one, an intimate companion, a consociate. One always at hand. A loved one. “One by whom God represents himself to his people,” says the learned John Calvin. Thus, he who by nature was “consubstantially God,” was by generation the Son of God, the form of God, the face of God, the similitude of God. It was his ancient grandeur which made the low station he took on earth, so distinguishing a character of Divine condescension and love.
That Christ cannot be the image of God in abstract Deity, as Mr. Philpot teaches, is evident, from the following reasons: 1, An image is inferior to the original. And if the Deity of Christ be inferior to the Deity of the Father, the Son is but an inferior Deity, which is undisguised Arianism, and which, we believe, the doctrine of eternal generation necessarily involves. 2, An image posterior to the original. Consequently, if Christ be an image in his Divine nature, his Divine nature must be after the Divine nature of the Father. This too is Arianism. 3, An image is the production of will and power. If Christ be an image in his Divine nature, or Person, his Divine nature, or Person, is the production of Divine will and power. This also is Arianism. 4, An image must be completed. For while it is in progress it is not an image; and if the Father is every moment begetting the Son, how can the Son be the image of the Father? 5, An image must be different from the original. So that if Christ in his Deity be an image of the Father, his Deity must be different from the Deity of the Father. 6, An image is a separate thing from the original. If, therefore, Christ in his Divine Person only, be the image of the Person of the Father, then his Divine Person must be separate from the Divine Person of the Father. 7, An image must make the original manifest. But if Christ be an image in his Divine nature, he is as invisible as his Father. 8, On the ground of eternal sameness, one Divine Person cannot be the likeness of another, because sameness and likeness are not synonymous. 9, An image cannot be a resemblance of itself. But according to the Reviewer’s notion, Christ is as much the image of himself as he is the image of his Father. 10, In his Divine nature the Son is no more the image of his Father, than the Father is the image of his Son. Is the soul of Mr. Philpot’s son any more the image of his father’s soul, than the father’s soul is the image of his son’s? 11, On the ground of natural sonship, there is no more reason why the Son should be called the image of the Father, than the image of the Holy Ghost. 12, If the Divine perfections are the same, in all the Divine Persons, how can one Person be the image of another? “But he may be an image of relationship.” An image of relationship! Why sonship is exactly the opposite of paternity. How can filiation be the express image of paternity, when it is just the reverse? The idea is preposterous.
Once more, to obtain an image, or likeness of a person, you must have another nature, or substance. In a statute, a painting, a print, or a photograph it is so. Nor can it be otherwise. In a resemblance there must be a difference; for resemblance without difference is impossible. Sameness is not resemblance, but identity. The essence of a thing is not the resemblance of the thing but the thing itself. The essence, or Deity, of the Godhead, is not a resemblance of the Godhead, but the Godhead itself. How then, can the Person of Christ, in his Divine essence, be the image of God? That essence is God. We cannot say that the essence of God is the image of his essence; or that God is the image of God. We once saw a photograph of the Reviewer. In what did that likeness consist? In his essence? We trow not. From what was it derived, or whence? From his essence, or nature? As much so as the image of God consists in his Divine nature or was derived therefrom. Had the photograph been Mr. Philpot’s essence, or nature, would it have been his likeness? It would not. What would it have been? It would have been himself; or himself multiplied. And if Christ as God be the image God, then the image of God is himself; or himself multiplied. It cannot be otherwise.
Why, even Dr. Goodwin says, that “image is not to be understood of the Godhead, or Person of Christ, who, considered simply as second person, is in himself as invisible as the Godhead of the Person of the Father; but that he is such an image as makes the Godhead, which is in itself invisible, or incomprehensibly, to be manifest and visible: for that is the end of an image; namely, to hold forth a thing, to make it apparent to the view, which otherwise is not seen. It is in Christ as man united to the second person, that there is a resultance, an edition of the Godhead, in all the perfections of it. The brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, is applied by the apostle to Christ, as he was man; namely as he was appointed heir of all: which phrase, as he is merely second person, might not be used of him: this image, or shine of the
Godhead’s glory in the manhood of Christ is but an effect; and so far inferior to that essential glory which, as a second person, he partakes of with the Father.” We have put some of the words into italics, for the sake of effect; and shall only add, that our glorious Lord is the image of the Trinity; and that his begotten nature is the archetype from which all the copies of creation, in its intelligent forms, have been derived.
From this interesting subject we must break off. But enough has been said to demonstrate three things: 1, That this passage fails to establish the doctrine of eternal generation. 2, That it establishes the doctrine of Sonship by complexity. And 3, that Mr. Philpot is not to be implicitly followed as an interpreter of Scripture. We will say still further, proof of which we will give if required, that every text he has produced fails in establishing the doctrine he seeks to maintain, and most of them, if not all, may be adduced in proof of the contrary! What say you, thoughtful reader, to Mr. Philpot, as a leader, and as an expositor of God’s word? Is he all you have taken him to be? Do you still hold him to be infallible, or nearly so? Are you still inclined to confide in his judgment? If a party-man, you very likely are; but if a seeker after Divine truth, as that by which God is glorified in its transforming light, power, and fruitfulness in the soul, through the Holy Ghost, you will probably shake off the bondage imposed by human authority, and in that freedom wherewith Christ has made you free, seek by reading, meditation, and prayer, that Divine illumination which will guide you into all truth, and glorify the object of your faith, hope, and love.
From the whole we learn: 1, That Mr. Philpot is not a safe expositor of the “lively oracles.” 2, That he is not a sound logician. 3, That his pretended revelations respecting the Sonship of Christ by an eternal generation, are illusory. 4, That the doctrine he so zealously advocates, is indefensible by Scripture, reason, and argument. We have seen how the Reviewer has changed his opinions of men as well as things. Little did he think in 1839, when he branded Dr. Hawker and Dr. Gill, with doing the Devil’s work; and when he drew an invidious contrast between Hawker and Huntington, that in 1860 he would write in eulogistic strains of both the Doctors and justify his new opinion of Gill by an appeal to Augustus Toplady! Does not this prove that some of his opinions have been ill-formed, crude, and indefensible? Is such a man a safe leader? Does his judgment merit public confidence? Is he not as likely to be wrong in his belief respecting the nature of Christ’s Sonship, as in some of his other beliefs? By comparing his reviews, we perceive that his belief was not exactly the same in 1859 that it was in 1860; though at both periods he professed to have received the doctrine of eternal generation from the Holy Ghost.
And that Mr. Philpot’s belief, which is no more than the belief of a most absurd dogma, cannot be necessary to salvation, is evident from the following considerations: 1, Whatever is necessary to salvation must be clearly revealed. 2, Whatever in the nature of things, or of reason, appears to be self-contradictory, ought not to be believed without an express revelation from God. 3. That thousands, and probably many millions of glorified saints, when on this terraqueous globe, knew no more of the Reviewer’s theory than the man in the moon.
But what entirely sets aside the Reviewer’s teaching on this subject, are the teachings of the holy Apostles, who make believing in Jesus Christ to be exactly the same thing as faith in the Son of God. They expressly taught that, “JESUS CHRIST is the SON OF GOD and affirmed that, “whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is BORN OF GOD.” See John 20:31; 1
Thessalonians. 1:10; 1 John 4:15; 5:1, 5,6. The same doctrine was taught by Jesus Christ himself; John 8:24; 9:35-38; and elsewhere. Ought not the teachings of both Christ and his apostles to satisfy Mr. Philpot? What more does he want? Is he wiser than a whole college of inspired men, with the great Teacher for its head? Fie216 upon him.*217
There are six ways by which men have sought to explain the Sonship of Christ. 1, By a natural and eternal generation of his Divine Person. 2, By official relationship. 8, By an ancient complexity, in which his glorious Person was the same as it is now, his body only excepted. 4, By his birth of a virgin mother. 5, By his resurrection from the dead. 6, By his exaltation. Some place it in all the last three; but it seems safer to say that it is exemplified in them all, and not that it is founded in them all, or in any one of them. This, however, may be safely affirmed: that in whatever his Sonship consists, it does not consist in the eternal generation of his Divine Person.
To conclude, for the present. We believe: 1, That God is a Spirit. 2, That we can know nothing of him but by revelation. 3, That only God can make a revelation of himself. 4, That as he stands related to his creatures, not by nature but by acts of will and power, the revelation which he makes of himself is not a revelation of his essence, or of the mode of his necessary subsistence, but of his character as it shines through his acts, his rights, and his gifts. 5, That as the nature of God is but one, without parts, and therefore infinitely simple, there can be but one Divine name for that Divine nature. 6, That an infinite nature would require an infinite name, which would be as incomprehensible to us as the nature it represented. 7, That whatever names God in his wisdom and grace is pleased to make himself known by, they must be names voluntarily assumed for that purpose. 8, That the Triunal names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are not names of nature but of grace; not necessary nor essential, but voluntary and economical. 9, That they were elected in wisdom, love, and grace, with a view to the complex Person and character of our adorable Lord, who thereupon entered into a complex state of existence, and became the Firstborn, or Elder Brother, Federal Head, engaged Surety, and the one Mediator between God and his chosen people. 10, That Sonship always implies the human nature of Christ, but never the generation of his Divine Person. 11, That the human nature of Christ was brought forth by Jehovah under a personal distinction, so that he who assumed the personal name of Father, is always represented as having begotten, brought forth, acquired, and possessed a Son. 12, This complex Person, is therefore called the Son of God the Father, and also God; because in his begotten nature he is OF the Father, while in his unbegotten nature he is not of the Father, but equal with him. 13, We thus obtain a plain reason for the names of Father and Son, while a visible distinction is kept up. 14, The name of Holy Ghost, is expressive of his Divine operations: principally as he is the efficient cause of life in the humanity of Christ, and as he anointed, inspired, and filled it with the communicable riches and fulness of both grace and glory; also, as he engaged to breathe life, light, and sanctity into all the children that had been given to Christ; as he inspired holy men to write the Scriptures; and as he breathes his influences upon the souls of men through the Scriptures he inspired. We have thus a triune God in Christ. In Essence one; in Persons three. Distinguished, but not divided. Neither begotten nor created, born nor made. But essential Same-nesses; being equal in nature, dignity, right, power, glory, and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen.
In looking over the corrected proofs we observed several mistakes, some of which we noted for an errata; but have since determined upon trusting to the candour of our readers.
My main objective in this appendix is to look briefly at Hebrews 4:14 which reads as follows: “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.”218 As highlighted above I’m looking particularly at Jesus Christ in his humanity and divinity becoming the “great high priest”. Scripture teaches that he could not fulfill this office as either God alone or as man alone. It is only as God-man mediator that he is our great high priest in heaven. Narrowing down my objective I’m concerned with Christ’s Sonship and how this relates to his high priestly office.
Before turning to this object in particular, it is well worthwhile to briefly view Christ as our High Priest in its scriptural context as a whole. The following quotation is from Brandon Crowe (PhD, Edinburgh). It is titled “Our Great High Priest” 219 I have added emphasis to certain sections.
From the earliest centuries of the church, Christian theologians have articulated Jesus’ person and work in terms of prophet, priest, and king. One of the clearest places we see the interplay of these three offices of Christ is in Hebrews. More specifically, one of the distinctive contributions of Hebrews is its teaching on Jesus as our great high priest. In fact, one could argue that the main point of Hebrews is to explain the significance of Jesus’ high priesthood. In Hebrews 8:1 we read: “Now the [main] point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven.” Protestants today may not always see the practical value in priesthood, since we do not believe that the mediation of a special order of priests is necessary to assist in our approach to God (unlike, for example, Roman Catholicism). However, this does not mean that priesthood is somehow unimportant or unnecessary. In fact, Scripture teaches that we all require a priest to approach God. But Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus Christ himself is our priest—indeed, our great high priest—and he has no rivals. Therefore, we do not need to rely on any lesser order of imperfect priests to approach God. What, then, does it mean for Jesus to be our great high priest? We will consider three aspects from Hebrews, and then broaden our focus to consider some other New Testament passages as well.
The High Priesthood of Jesus in Hebrews
First, as our great high priest Jesus has offered the final sacrifice to atone for sins (Hebrews 10:14). Because Jesus’ sacrifice is perfect, no additional sacrifice is needed forever. This is the case because Jesus did not simply offer a sacrifice that was external to himself, but he offered himself as the perfect sacrifice. A key text in this regard is Hebrews 10:5-7, which quotes Psalm 40:6-8:
“Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
Hebrews 10:9 then adds: “And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Jesus’ sacrifice provides the solution to a problem that we often find in the Old Testament: even where sacrifices may be offered, people’s hearts (including those of the priests) were often far from God.
Jesus overcame the imperfection of previous offerings by offering the sacrifice of his own body. For in his body, Jesus was fully devoted to God in every way. Jesus never sinned, whether by deeds of omission or commission, and therefore he realized the perfection in himself that is necessary for true remission of sins. Jesus lived a perfect life, which enabled him to serve himself as the perfect sacrifice. As Hebrews says, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (9:22). However, the blood of bulls and goats can never suffice to take away sins (10:1, 4). That is why it is such wonderful news that Jesus himself is our final sacrifice. Jesus can actually bring true and lasting forgiveness of sins because of the value of his sacrifice.
Second, Jesus is our great high priest in a way that is superior to the high priesthood of the Old Testament because Jesus ministers in heaven itself. We see this in Hebrews 1:3, which states that Jesus sat down at the right hand of God when he had made purification for sins (see also 10:12). It is important to remember that Jesus’ sacrifice is effectual because he did not stay dead, but was raised to an indestructible life (7:16), and this resurrection life is the presupposition for the heavenly, priestly reign of Christ. His seat at the right hand of God is the seat of the victorious conqueror, who has conquered all his enemies, including sin and death (cf. 1:13; Ps. 110:1). There is no one who can provide closer access to the throne of God. He is our “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,” our “hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” (Heb. 6:19).
Jesus thus reigns as our great high priest in heaven itself (Heb. 8:1; 9:11, 24). As our great high priest who makes final atonement for sins, Jesus is fully human. Yet the same verse at the beginning of Hebrews that tells us of his ascension to the right hand of God also emphasizes the divinity of the Son: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (1:3a). The power of Jesus as our great high priest to forgive our sins is therefore keenly related to his divinity as well.
And as the risen-and-ascended, divine-and-human great high priest, Jesus is a priest forever. He never has to be renewed in his office. He never takes a break or goes to sleep. Death will never prevent him from executing his office as priest. He is a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. He is the royal priest-king whose priestly reign has no end. He therefore is able to save his people to the uttermost, because he always lives to intercede for us, and never ceases to provide access to God, blessing us with the benefits of salvation acquired by his high priestly work (see Heb. 7:23-25) Third, lest we think that Jesus is far removed from us in the heavens, Hebrews teaches that Jesus is our great high priest because he is near to us. He is our brother, the one who goes before us. In Hebrews 2 we read that the Son of God was not ashamed to be known as our brother. In other words, Hebrews emphasizes the solidarity of Jesus’ condition with our own, even to the point that he endured suffering in order to bring many sons to glory (2:10). In fact, Hebrews says that Jesus learned obedience by what he suffered, and was thus made perfect (5:8-9).
How are we to understand this perfection? It does not refer to any lack of perfection in the Son’s essential character. Instead, it refers to the perfection of his priesthood. Jesus is the perfect priest for us. He was made like us in his humanity in every way, except for sin (4:15). He therefore understands what it means to live in this world with all its difficulties, not least the need to struggle against temptation (2:18). And this is key: because Jesus is made like his brothers in every respect, he is qualified to serve as a “merciful and faithful” high priest. Don’t neglect to see his mercy.
As one who understands our frailty and struggle with sin, he is gentle with us (cf. 5:2). And Jesus not only understands us better than any earthly priest, but because he never gave in to sin, he is actually able to help us in time of need. Indeed, as the one who has won final victory over sin, Jesus is the source of eternal salvation (5:9).
The importance of Jesus’ priestly work in overcoming sin is seen most acutely in his conquering death. As our priest and brother, Jesus goes before us as the pioneer or trailblazer for where we are to follow. He has even gone before us in death, defeating, by his own sacrifice, the devil—the one who has the power of death and would confine us in fear to lifelong slavery (2:14-15). But sin had no power to keep our great high priest in the grave; therefore, sin has no final power over those who trust in Christ as great high priest. Jesus Christ has conquered death and is the trailblazer for all those who share in the faith of Abraham (2:10, 16-17).
THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD OF JESUS ELSEWHERE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Hebrews may have the most to say about Jesus as our great high priest, but by no means is the rest of the New Testament silent. In the Gospels, as Jesus moves deliberately toward the cross, he identifies his priestly mission in Matthew 20:28 / Mark 10:45: “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Similar to what we read in Hebrews, these passages teach that Jesus came to give his own life as a substitutionary ransom for his people.
We can also understand Jesus’ healing ministry as a function of his high priesthood, since even in his healing ministry Jesus is the one who bears our transgressions (Matt. 8:14-17; cf. Isa. 53:4-5). On this point the second-century church father Irenaeus remarked, in his book Against Heresies, that Jesus “did not make void, but fulfilled the law, by performing the offices of the high priest, propitiating God for men, and cleansing the lepers, healing the sick, and Himself suffering death, that exiled man might go forth from condemnation, and might return without fear to his own inheritance” (4.8.2).
More broadly, in the Gospels Jesus performs the work of a priest by identifying with his people in their estate of sin, bearing the curse of sin throughout his life (cf. Matt. 3:13-15; Luke 3:15-22; 12:49-50). And when Jesus ascends into heaven, we see him with arms outstretched in a priestly benediction (Luke 24:50-51; cf. Num. 6:22-27). In the Gospel of John, Jesus is identified as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), whose blood brings about final cleansing (cf. 1 John 1:7). And who can forget the majesty of what is often known as the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17, where he intercedes for his disciples and for all those who will believe after them? The passages that speak of the sublime realities of Christ’s priestly ministry are too numerous to mention here. We could consider at length, for example, the theology of reconciliation we encounter in Paul’s letters (e.g., Rom. 5:10-11; 2 Cor. 5:17-21). The good news of the gospel includes the good news of Jesus’ high priesthood: because of his final sacrifice, we can be reconciled to God.
THE ONLY PRIEST WE WILL EVER NEED
We all need a priest to make atonement for our sins and provide access to God. Hebrews—and the rest of the New Testament—teaches us that Jesus Christ is our great high priest. The priests and priestly institutions of the Old Testament prepare us to understand this important aspect of Jesus’ work as mediator. We have no need to revert to a purely human priesthood to mediate for us; Jesus is the best and only priest we will ever need. He has perfectly atoned for our sins, provides intimate access to God, and is able to help us in times of weakness like no one else. Why would we look elsewhere? It is fitting to conclude with the encouraging exhortation of Hebrews 4:14-16: Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Brandon Crowe (PhD, Edinburgh) is associate professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary and book review editor for the Westminster Theological Journal. He is the author of The Message of the General Epistles in the History of Redemption: Wisdom from James, Peter, John, and Jude)
Returning than to the more specific topic of Hebrews 4:14 let’s review the central point at issue in this essay. As I quoted in the body of this essay, James Wells summarizes the point at issue very clearly. Speaking of the two different points of view he said:
... as both avow the co-equal Godhead of Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the one ought not to charge the other with any intentional derogation from the dignity of his Person, but that there is a real and serious difference between the two is clear, the one holding that Christ is by nature, as God considered the Son of God; that the three divine Persons are properly, essentially, and of necessity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the other sentiment teaching, that God is a Father, not by nature or necessity, but by choice, and by creative act; that Christ is a Son, not by nature as God, or of necessity, but by choosing to take human nature, and so becoming a complete Person; and that the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit, not so much to denote what he is by nature, as to denote what he is in his life-giving and sanctifying work in the souls of men.220
Many commentators, possible by careful consideration, simple assumption or blind faith assume that Christ, as the eternal son, joined with human flesh to become our great high priest. In some, like John Gill or Robert Hawker, this is not at all surprising as it’s what they believe and teach. One modern commentator on the book of Hebrews makes Christ eternal sonship the very foundation of his priesthood. Commenting on Hebrews 4:14 he says:
Christ, however, was able to enter God’s presence as our High Priest only because he was the eternal “Son of God” 12 who became the fully human “Jesus”13 and offered himself to “provide purification for sins” (1:3). In 7:1-25 the pastor will explain how Christ’s divine sonship empowers his high priesthood, while in 8:1-10:18 he will show how “Jesus’” sinless humanity and self-offering provide access into God’s presence. Christ’s full identification with humanity and his divine sonship are the basis upon which he surpasses every other mediator.14221
In his footnote 12, he says,
“Son” in 1:2, 5, 8 and 3:6 means “Son of God.” Here, however, the pastor uses the full title for clarity and to highlight the contrast with the name Jesus. Our High Priest’s humanity and deity are put side by side. The pastor also uses “Son of God” for clarity and emphasis in 6:6; 7:3; and 10:29.
In footnote 13, Cockerill quotes Donald Guthrie. His footnote 13 reads as follows:
The pastor uses the name “Jesus” when he wants to direct our attention to the earthly life and humanity of our Lord (see 2:9; 3:1). “Jesus” is also used in connection with high priesthood in 6:20; 7:22; 10:19; 12:24; 13:12 (Donald Guthrie, 121).
In other words, Cockerill is quoting Guthrie to back up his assertion that Jesus Christ must be the eternal son of God to fulfill his great high priesthood office. Guthrie, however, expands on his own understanding of Christ as the God - man mediator in his comments on Hebrews 4:14 below. Guthrie, unlike Cockerill, at the least, appears to see the sonship in the complexity of Christ’s person. It should be noted that Cockerill is correctly quoting and using Guthrie’s comment. It is not my intention to “mangle” either commentator. I just found it illuminating that one heads straight for “eternal sonship” as expressed by Mr. Well on what he opposed, while the other seems, at least, to be more open to the complexity of Christ’s person. A far more detailed examination of Donald’s stance would be needed to make positive assertions.
Commenting then on Hebrews 4:14 Guthrie says:
14. Although it has been stated a number of times (cf. 1:3; 2:17; 3:1) that the high-priest theme occupied a prominent place in the writer’s mind, only now does the full explanation of it begin. It is probable that the conjunction, Since then (oun), which opens this verse links directly with 2:17-18, the intervening section being something of an interlude which nevertheless sets the tone by calling the attention of the readers to the importance of the theme.
There are three statements made about our high priest. First he is great, which marks him out as superior to other lesser priests. The writer thinks primarily of his superiority to the Aaronic order of priesthood which he deals with in the subsequent passage. This greatness extends not only to his character but also to his work.
The second characteristic is that he has passed through the heavens. Since the plural ‘heavens’ is used, it is suggested by some that the Jewish idea of an ascending series of heavens is here in mind. Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:2 speaks of being caught up into ‘the third heaven’. Clement of Alexandria refers to seven heavens. But since it was the regular practice in the Old Testament for the plural to be used for heaven, it is unlikely that the Jewish idea of successive heavens is in mind. It is most likely that the idea is general and is intended to contrast with the limited entrance of the Aaronic high priest within the veil. Our high priest penetrates to the very presence of God. The words suggest that no hindrance obstructs his passage. We may compare the statement here with that in 10:19 which declares that, in view of our high priest’s work, we now have confidence to enter ‘the sanctuary’. We share the access of our high priest.
The third statement about him gives his name, Jesus, the Son of God. The former of the two names has already appeared in 2:9 and 3:1, where it identifies him in his human nature to show his eligibility for the office of high priest. The name is again used in connection with the high-priestly theme in 6:20; 7:22; 10:19; 12:24; 13:12. Indeed the name Jesus without any other titles occurs as frequently in this epistle as the single title ‘Christ’ (9 times each). The writer does not appear to use the different names indiscriminately. It is highly important for him to establish without question that our high priest is none other than the historical Jesus. At the same time he reiterates what he has already made clear, that this Jesus is also Son of God. Although the Sonship of Jesus is assumed in the preceding part of the epistle, the title Son of God is not used until this point in the discussion, and it is no doubt intentionally introduced here to combine the humanity and divinity of Jesus as the perfect qualifications for a high priest who was to be superior to all others.222 It is used again in 6:6; 7:3 and 10:29; in the first and last of these references Son of God describes the one who is treated with ignominy by those who apostatize.223
Both sources, list the five other references in Hebrews that Guthrie records (6:20; 7:22; 10:19; 12:24; 13:12) Lets look briefly at what Guthrie teaches about the Sonship of Christ in each of these verses.
Hebrews 6:20224
20. The idea that Jesus has gone behind the curtain is highly suggestive. The curtain is the veil in the tabernacle (and temple) which separated the holy of holies from the holy place. The allusion is to the fact that only the high priest could go behind the curtain and even then only once a year. We are reminded that the veil of the temple was split from top to bottom when Jesus died (Matt. 27:51). But our writer is concerned with a deeper spiritual reality. It is a fait accompli that our high priest is ‘behind the curtain’, i.e. in the direct presence of God. The close connection between Christian hope and our exalted high priest is one of the major themes in this epistle. Hope is based on the finished and yet continuing work of Jesus as high priest.
He is first described as forerunner (prodromos), a word which occurs only here in the New Testament and which was used of an advanced reconnoitring part of an army. A forerunner, therefore, presupposes others to follow. It is a great inspiration to realize that what Jesus has done, he has done on our behalf, a statement which strongly brings out his representative character and may indeed imply a substitutionary role.225
Hebrews 7:22226
22. In a summary statement which gathers up the main point of the preceding discussion, Jesus is again mentioned by name (the last time was 6:20). Moreover in the Greek text the name stands in the emphatic position at the end of the sentence. It is clear that special significance must be attached to the use of the human name here, since it is as perfect representative of man that he becomes the surety (engyos). This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is common in the papyri in legal documents in the sense of a pledge or as a reference to bail. When a father assents to the marriage of his daughter he gives a surety of the marriage dowry (see MM). In the present case the surety is related to the covenant and not directly to man. Since the covenant in the biblical sense is an agreement initiated by God, the surety (i.e. Jesus) guarantees that that covenant will be honoured.227
Hebrews 10:19228
.. This confidence is here specifically related to approach to God, to the entry into the sanctuary or holy place, understood symbolically of the presence of God. The picture is of all believers now having an open invitation to come into the holy place, which is no longer reserved for the priesthood.
The means of approach is said to be by the blood of Jesus, which here sums up all that Jesus did for us in the offering up of himself. The holy place is no longer sealed off for the continual performance of sacrifices. It is wide open on the strength of the perfect offering already made. However it should be noted that access is available only to those who are classified as brethren, those who, according to 3:1, ‘share in a heavenly call’. It is important to note that those who discover a new approach to God through Jesus Christ also discover a new relationship to each other.229
Hebrews 12:24230
. The sprinkled blood sums up the sacrificial act of Jesus. It recalls the sprinkled blood which ratified the old covenant (cf. 9:19), and at once establishes the superiority of Christ’s offering. It has a voice, which speaks in totally different style from the voice at Sinai. The blood speaks of deeper things than itself, for it proclaims a new way of approach to God. .231
Hebrews 13:12232
12. The writer draws a parallel with Jesus, although it is by no means an exact parallel. The bodies outside the camp cannot be exactly equated with the fact that Jesus suffered outside the gate of Jerusalem. Some mental adjustment is needed. The comparison is clearly not intended to be precise. The major point is that both the shedding of blood and the suffering of the body form a part of the Christian understanding of Jesus’ work on the cross. Instead of being inferior, the sacrifice of Jesus was superior because it took place outside. This outside character of Christianity clearly holds great importance for the writer. It must be understood in the light of verse 13, which shows that Judaism is in mind. The readers need to be assured once again that Christ’s purpose was to sanctify (hagiazo) his people, an idea which has more than once been emphasized in the course of the epistle. It involved a process of separation on the part of Jesus, and it is on this basis that the readers are also exhorted to go outside the camp.233
As far as I can determine none of the above comments would be opposed to the “Complex Person” theory. Indeed, I think these scriptures (see the footnotes) back that theory up completely. Scripture clearly gives a great deal of information on the complexity of Christ as the God - man mediator and all that he accomplished in this capacity,
Certainly, much more could be said on the subject of Jesus Christ being our High Priest. I give the above appendix as food for thought.
Pastor of the Baptist Church, at Jireh Meeting, London, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, The Almighty” Revelation 1:8
LONDON:
J. PAUL, 1, CHAPTER-HOUSE COURT, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1860
ON THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST
I am an occasional reader of the “Gospel Standard,” and have perused your Reviews therein, contained in the numbers for March, April, and May, 1859, on “The Scripture Doctrine of Christ’s Sonship.” You have given your readers more than thirty pages in octavo, closely printed, of what purports to be a Review of two books, which you hang up as a sort of signboard, but ’tis no Review of either, so we must put up with your lucubration’s instead. Permit me to enquire with Zophar, “Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified?” (Job 11: 2) You would have your readers believe that your doctrine is pure; but you must bear to be told that there are not a few who call in question its purity; and all those who do so, you term “Heretics of the deepest dye.” Of course, I mean your unscriptural doctrine of “a begotten God.” You write, and write, and there seems to be no end to your writing; and now we are to have, in addition, a book full more. Well, what can’t be cured must be endured. I advocate inviolably the right of private judgment; but I demur to your consigning to eternal perdition, those persons, who, while they cannot adopt your views of Divine filiation, still most firmly believe in the glorious and essential Deity of our adorable Lord Jesus Christ.
I am an old man, more than eighty years of age, and have labored in the work of the Christian ministry upwards of fifty years. I am considered to be sound in the truth by many, and one of the “old school.” My writings are well known; being abroad in almost every direction in the length and breadth of the land. Bear with me then in a few plain remarks. If I understand what you have written, and if you yourself are acquainted with what your words imply, then you advocate the doctrine of a “begotten God.” You write and declare that, “Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God in his Divine nature; as his eternal and only begotten Son,” (p. 94.) “The Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God as God.” “We assert that when the Scripture speaks of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, it speaks of him, as such, in the Divine nature,” (p. 124.) “How was he ever in the bosom of the Father, but as his only begotten Son; and if he lay there from all eternity as his only begotten Son, what is this but eternal generation?” “He was his only begotten Son in his Divine nature, (p. 125.) “Jesus is not only the Son of God in his Divine nature, but as being the only begotten of the Father, is God’s own proper, true, and eternal Son” (p. 127.) There is no need for more quotations. You have written plainly; there is no misunderstanding you. Your sentiment is that Jesus Christ in his Divine nature is begotten; therefore, according to your showing, he is a begotten God. You say, “He is the Son of God in his Divine nature,” (p. 123;) and yet you aver that, what “constitutes him a made God, is not God at all, but an idol,” (p. 94.) Here you are right! The sentences I have quoted are so plain that “he that runs may read.”
When one wrote to Dr. Hawker of embalmed memory, and charged him with holding the tenet, “That the Son of God, as a Divine person, was eternally begotten of the substance of the Father;” the Doctor replied to him, saying, “I have never presumed to look into, much less enter, the hallowed ground of mystery, in relation to the modus existendi of the Divine persons in the Godhead. I have no conception of the nature of that relationship which subsists between the Father and the Son. I know, indeed, that some of our greatest divines have dwelt largely on the subject of what they call eternal generation; but I have never seen it defined by any writer to my satisfaction. For my part, I have always contemplated the subject, since I knew anything of the Lord, at an infinite distance, and with the most profound humbleness of mind!!” O pray, Sir, do condescend to borrow a leaf out of Dr. Hawker’s book.
In reading and pondering, only a few days ago, Dr. Owen’s elaborate treatise on the “Person of Christ” comprised in 200 folio pages. I was greatly struck with the following, in his preface to that work, which I would have deeply impressed on my mind, as well as all those who write or even speak on this most solemn and unfathomable subject. “He is unhappy, miserable, and most impudent, who desires to examine or search out his Maker. Thousands of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of millions of angels and archangels, do glorify him with dread, and adore him with trembling; and shall men made of clay, full of sins, dispute of the Deity without fear? Horror doth not shake their bodies, their minds doth not tremble, but being secure and prating, they speak of the Son of God, who suffered for me unworthy sinner, and of both his nativities or generations: at least they are not sensible how blind they are in the light!”
The Lord in the midst of the flaming fire, called out and warned Moses, when he was about to pry into the mystery of the burning bush, saying, “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5.
And now I will tell you candidly, what has occasioned me to write to you. I have seen part of a letter addressed by you to a gentleman, in which you write as follows: “I should like to know what your friends really do believe, for I have never heard any clear declarations of their Creed. And I think when men set themselves to oppose grand foundation truths, (?) they should let us know what they really do hold; they should declare fully, and manfully, what their views really are; that we may be able to expose them, if erroneous, or, to embrace them if true:” On reading this, I resolved with Elihu (Job 32:10) “Hearken to me; I also will show mine opinion.” Whether you will hearken to me or not, is a question. Permit me, however, to say, that “great men are not always wise;” while I leave you to reply, “Neither do the aged understand judgment,” (ver. 9.)
What I really do hold in relation to the sublime doctrine of the Trinity, I shall now declare in most plain and unadorned language. Indeed, my whole mind, respecting Scriptural Truth, in doctrine, experience, and practice; that is, what I have “most surely believed,” and uniformly preached, has been weighed in the balances of the Sanctuary: these are on the shelf Probatum est234 is written on the same; and, unless I receive a scriptural refutation, on the shelf my Creed must and shall remain.
Know, then, that I commenced as a writer in the Gospel Magazine forty-nine years ago; and my very first piece therein was on this very subject, “The Sonship of Christ.” It was in reply to a writer, pretty nearly, if not entirely, of your views. You will find it in the “Gospel Magazine” for May, 1811, signed, “Andrew.” But as you may not possess that volume, I send you, with this, a lengthened verbatim extract. Such were my views nearly fifty years ago, and such they are now. I have seen no cause to alter even a solitary sentence. I commend the same to your most critical perusal. Remember one thing, I am not alone in my views. I believe all the ministers in London, of our Denomination, who are reputed sound in the faith, are like-minded with me. I say to you, “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” But whatever conclusion you may come to, I beseech you, don’t consign over to eternal perdition, an aged minister, just on the verge of Jordan; whose ministry, from first to last, has tended to the exaltation of Christ the Lord, his Saviour and his God; and whose labours have been owned and blest to the spiritual profit of hundreds of immortal souls. I pray you don’t do this, merely because he cannot see with your eyes, and refuses to make use of your spectacles. But if you do so remember, I shall appeal from your judgment to a higher court. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” See Romans 14:10, and 2 Corinthians 5:10.
I pray you receive kindly what I have written. I hold my principles firmly; but in the defence of them I would use kind words, coupled with “great plainness of speech.”
I remain, respected Sir, Your Christian brother, J. A. Jones.
POSTSCRIPT
With this letter you will also receive a copy of my “Confession of Faith,” delivered by me forty-four years ago this very day, (March 13, 1816.) There you have my mind on every Scriptural doctrine. As I was in 1816, so I am now, to a hair’s-breadth, in 1860. Respecting the point in hand, see Article 2.
An extract, “I avow my firm belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; in essence one, in persons three. The Trinne Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty. I not only maintain the essential Deity of the Father, but equally so of the Son and Spirit. One in nature as in essence; not existing one from another, such as the Son being in the Divine nature begotten of the Father, and then the Holy Ghost proceeding from (as God) both. No; I believe that the Son in his adorable Divine nature, is the self-existent Jehovah, and not a begotten God. That he is so, not by creation, derivation, generation, or indwelling; but uncreate and underived: My Lord and my God.” But closely examine the whole of that Article.
A GOLDEN CHAIN OF DIVINE APHORISMS
(As inserted in the “Gospel Magazine” for March 1811)
“We say that there are Three Persons, but not to the prejudice of the Unity in essence: we say that there is one God, but not to the confounding of the Trinity. The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten, nor proceeding. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. We must so avoid, in these Divine matters, the name of diversity, that we take not away the unity of essence. We must avoid the name of separation and division, that we take not away the simplicity of the Divine essence We must avoid the name of disparity, that we take not away the equality of Persons.
We must not deny the Son to be eternal, because he is begotten of the Father; for he is begotten from all eternity. The eternal Father begetteth the eternal Son. Notwithstanding the Son is properly said to be begotten; the Word is properly the Son of God; and therefore, he is truly and properly begotten of the Father. What it is to be begotten, and what it is to proceed, I profess I know not. Let us gather from what has been said, this definition, “The Father eternal, who, of his own essence from all eternity, begot the Son, his substantial image; and the Son begotten of the Father from all eternity; and the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father and the Son; one only true God, blessed forever.”
The following is a reply to the above, as inserted in the “Gospel Magazine” for May, 1811.
A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF THE SONSHIP OF CHRIST235
Mr. Editor, I have perused with attention, “A Golden Chain of Divine Aphorisms” inserted in your last month’s Magazine; but I very much question if every link thereof, may be termed “Gold tried in the fire.” The writer transcribes a portion of the creed called Athanasins' “The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten, nor proceeding. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten.” And again, he adds, “The eternal Father begetteth the eternal Son.” The deity of Christ must be better maintained from the Scriptures of Truth, than that the second Person in the glorious Trinity, in his Divine nature abstractly considered, is of the Father alone, not made but begotten, or else the Arians and Socinians will take leave to trinmph. The Lord Jesus Christ says of himself, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty:” Revelation 1:8. “I am that I am” Exodus 3:14, with John 8:58.
The Son of God, in his Divine nature, is unbegotten, self-existent, independent, co-existent with the Father. The nature, essence, and perfections of the trinne Jehovah, are infinitely above the apprehension of a finite mind. The term “Son of God” in the Scriptures, uniformly and invariably has respect to our glorious Immanuel in his complex character as God-man; and in this sense, and in this sense only, is Christ the “only begotten of the Father.” I venture to assert, that there is not one text in the Bible that speaks of him under the character of the “Son of God,” but it has respect to his office as Mediator, and not to his original, Divine, and essential nature as Jehovah, and coeval with the Father. Besides, Christ himself speaks of his Sonship as placing himself subordinate to his Father; and to suppose him subordinate in the Divine nature, the very thought is blasphemy. But Jesus says, (speaking of himself as the Son of God,) “My Father is greater than I:” John 14:28. “Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do:” John 5:19. His obedience flows from his Sonship; and this proves him to be the Son of God in his complex character. What saith the apostle? “Though he were a Son, yet learned he also obedience by the things which he suffered Hebrews 5:8. “I honour my Father:” John 8:49. “If I honour myself my honour is nothing:” ver. 54. When the apostle says, “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one,” (1 John 5:7) he means one in nature, not existing one from another; such as, the “Father made of none, the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from both” no, no; each Person in the Godhead is selfexistent and co-existent.
I would wish of all errors to avoid that most erroneous position, that, my Lord, on whom I alone rely for life and salvation, (Acts 4:12) is, in his Divine nature, only a begotten God. And although Athanasins scatters fire-brands and death at all those who agree not with him, that Christ is “God of the substance of the Father begotten” saying that such “cannot be saved,” and, “without doubt shall perish everlastingly;” I nevertheless believe it not .
And now, in most plain words, for my Creed. The understanding is sanctified, when the renewed mind is instructed by the Holy Spirit, into the knowledge of God the Father, as he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. No man can understand the grace and salvation of God, without the knowledge of the Father. A stream of infinite blessings, spiritual, heavenly, and eternal, cannot subsist without a fountain of equal perfection as its origin and perpetual supply. Our God and Father is called, the Father of mercies, the Father of lights, the Father of glory, the God of all grace, God of peace, love, &c. But these blessings do not proceed at random from the fountain, in wandering streams; but are conveyed in one perfect channel, even in and by our Lord Jesus Christ. The character of the Son of God (I repeat it) belongs to him only in the union of natures. If we consider him only in his Divine essence, as God, the Scriptures never give him the character of a Son, so considered. And, in the human nature only, he could not be the “only begotten of God.” Of all that he is, all that he performs, and all the blessings he bestows, he continually ascribes all to the glory of his Father. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do. Neither came I of myself, but he sent me.” And as he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus is the Head and Husband of his Church; he and they composing one Body, so God is the Father of that select body. He loves them with the same love as he has loved Christ. “Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me:” John 17:23. “I in them and thou in me.”
In a word, all the blessings that ever were, are, or ever shall be bestowed on God’s elect, proceed from the Father, according to His sovereign will, love, wisdom, power, grace, truth, and immutable good, pleasure, which he purposed in Himself. And every purpose and counsel of God, from eternity, he purposed as a Father in His beloved Son. “According to the purpose of Him, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” Ephesians 1:11. “According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 3:11.
And, so, all blessings come from the Father, are given to the Son; in Him they center, and from Him they are, by the Spirit, communicated to every member of the Church, “which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.”
Andrew*236
Guildford, April 13th, 1811,
J. C. Philpot’s quotations from Robert Hawker are so misleading that I feel compelled to give the reader the context of what Rev. Hawker said. As the reader will be able to discern Hawker and Jones are in agreement with each other and the scriptures on this subject IN THIS CASE and TIME. Hawker of course, changed his mind and switched his doctrine on this subject later in his life.
Robert Hawker’s First Letter to John Stephens237
Dear Sir,
Grace and peace be multiplied unto you, through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord!
Many thanks to you for your letter, on the subject of ‘the Pre-existence of the Human Soul of Christ.* And as many thanks more for the many good things which are contained in it. The exceptionable parts of it, do not prevent me from very cheerfully, presenting to you these acknowledgments; and I beseech you to accept them with the same sincerity as they are offered.
In making answer to your favour, I venture to assure myself, that you will allow me equal freedom to that which you have assumed, and which, indeed, the solemn subject of our correspondence demands. Our object is truth; yea, God’s truth, and not man’s opinion. And most readily will I give you credit, from the contents of your letter, (though I have no knowledge of your person) that you are equally earnest with myself, for the establishment of the truth, and that truth only as it is in Jesus. Under these impressions I write. And while I pray God the Holy Ghost to guide me; I beseech the same Almighty Teacher to be with you. May it please the Lord, that both may be directed by his unerring wisdom, and enjoy that sweet covenant promise; “I am the Lord thy God, which teacheth thee to profit; which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go,” Isaiah 48:17.
And here, in the opening of this correspondence, on my part, it behoves me to soften, if possible, the asperity of your displeasure, from the unfavorable impressions you received in the perusal of my lecture on the Person, Godhead, and ministry of the Holy Ghost. And I cannot but hope, that you will not consider the terms I used in that lecture so harsh, when I tell you, that they were wholly directed against the Sabellian heresy. For at the time when I published that lecture, I had never heard of any one which espoused the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence in an human soul, but the followers of Sabellius, the Lybian. And as this long exploded, but now revived error of the Sabellian carries in its pestilential bosom some of the most deadly poison to the vitals of the true faith; denying a trinity of persons in the Godhead, and excluding the Holy Spirit from being a party in the covenant of grace; in my view of one tenet belonging to the sect, I included the whole; and, as such, deemed it what I still consider it to be, an awful heresy. And as far as relates to Sabellianism, I see no cause to retract a single expression; and more especially, when it be further considered, that it is not the persons led away with these errors, but the errors themselves, against which I wage war. I am still indeed at a loss to explain, how a doctrine, which forms so prominent a feature in the creed of. the Sabellian, should be found among any of those who hold “the faith once delivered unto the saints.” You yourself will, I presume, be ready to acknowledge, that nothing short of a divine authority can be sufficient to give it credence with the church. And how this is to be proved, I am further at a loss to know; for such as profess Sabellianism hesitate not to say, that they learnt it not from God the Holy Ghost, for they deny his Person, Godhead, and ministry.
Having made this apology for myself, I will beg to observe, that there needeth one from you. You have drawn up a creed for me to which I cannot subscribe. You have said, my faith is, ‘that the Son of God, as a divine person, was eternally begotten of the substance of the Father.’ Sir, I have never presumed to look into, much less enter, the hallowed ground of mystery, in relation to the modus existendi of the divine persons in the Godhead. I have no conception of the nature of that relationship which subsists between the Father and the Son. I read of it continually in the scriptures, and I most cordially accept it, as it is proposed for the object of my faith. But as the word of God, though plainly declaring it, hath not explained it, so neither do I.
I know, indeed, that some of our greatest divines have dwelt largely on the subject of what they call ‘eternal generation’ and the phrase hath been, and still is, very commonly used. But I have never seen it defined by any writer to my satisfaction. Dr. Gill, in his day, strongly contended that the term is correct when applied to the Sonship of Christ. And in the memoirs of this great man (for a great man he certainly was) prefixed to his exposition on the bible, his biographer hath observed, that the Doctor was of opinion, ‘a trinity of persons in God cannot be defended, but on the ground of the proper Sonship or filiation of Christ.’ For my part, I have always contemplated the subject, since I knew anything of the Lord, at an infinite distance, and with the most profound humbleness of mind. And though few in the school of Christ have manifested greater dullness, or made slower advances in the attainment of divine knowledge; yet, through grace, I have a long time been able, in relation to the subject of mysteries, to make the holy scriptures the only stand and of my faith. Hence, I do most firmly believe, that Jehovah, while existing in a manner peculiarly his own, namely, in a trinity of persons, is in essence but one and the same. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are all equal in glory, and in all eternal properties which distinguish the Godhead. And although, in reference to the covenant of grace, as it concerns the church, Jehovah hath been pleased, and is pleased, to make himself known to his people in distinct acts of love from each person in the Godhead; some of which (according to our weak apprehension of things) appear greater, some less; yet in the glory of the Godhead, and in all divine perfections and attributes, there is the most perfect equality. One in nature, being, essence, sovereignty, will, purpose, pleasure.
You have added a second article to the creed which you have drawn up for me, which I equally disavow; namely, when you observe, that I say, ‘in some sense Christ died for the sins of all mankind.’ I am unconscious that an error so palpable hath fallen from my tongue or pen for many a year. Indeed, Sir, I should blush if there were a man alive who cherisheth with greater warmth of affection in his heart the glorious truths, which are the fundamental doctrines of our most, holy faith; namely, the everlasting, electing love of God the Father; the special, personal love, both in marriage union, and redemption-grace of God the Son; and the equal favour and affection in regenerating, distinguishing mercy of God the Holy Ghost!
I am sorry also to observe, in the midst of this creed, which you have compiled for me, I know not from whence gathered or for what designed, that you have made an attack upon the establishment of the church of England. Dear Sir, what hath the establishment to do with the subject in question? If I understand right, you and I are engaged in one single point of inquiry; namely, whether Christ had, or had not, a pre-existent human soul, prior to his incarnation? Let it be supposed, if you wish it, that the established religion of this land is full of errors; and that Dr. Hawker, in belonging to it, is enveloped in them; yet, what have these things to do with the point in question? They ought not to be taken into the account since they neither make for or against the main thing at issue.
True, dear Sir, I do belong to the church of England. For indeed, and in truth, amidst many things in her liturgy and discipline which would admit of much improvement, the soundness of her faith, in her articles and homilies is such, as without giving offence to any order of orthodox professors whatever, I may venture to say, is exceeded by none. And where I disposed to leave the establishment, because mingled with sound doctrine, there are errors in it which I lament, but cannot remove; I should be much at a loss to know what class of dissenters to join, where nothing of equal incorrectness is discoverable.
Bear with me while I say, (for I mean no offence in saying it) I know of no community, or order, among my dissenting brethren, with whom I could meet in church communion, which would afford me an asylum for greater spiritual privileges than I now enjoy. I know indeed many, yea, very many of the excellent of the earth, who are members of meetings, with whom I now live in true Christian and brotherly love; and with whom I shall one day eternally dwell, and be forever united to them in our glorious head, when communion upon earth is over; but there are causes for which we cannot now always join in the same form of worship. I believe, dear Sir, that you, as well as numbers of those holy men of God, lament in secret with me, the sad, sad departures from the faith, which hath taken place in too many of the churches of the saints, since the days of their fathers. I often think, if it were possible for the faithful dissenters of our orthodox brethren, which lived a century since, to look up from their graves, and visit those places of worship which they once occupied, where the great and distinguishing doctrines of the gospel were unceasingly proclaimed, and where their souls were warmed and refreshed with them from one Lord’s day to another; what would they say at the sad change? Neither do I conceive their minds would be less affected, had they the consciousness of knowing what is going on in the present day, in beholding many public meetings of what is called the religious world; where one great leading character marks the several different denominations assembled, which is to conceal their particular tenets, that no little party spirit, as it is called, may interrupt the general design; but every other consideration be swallowed up in the name of Christian philanthropy. I thank God, “I have not so learned Christ!” Neither do I think that my correspondent, Mr. Stevens, with all his partiality for the dissenters, would recommend me to leave the establishment, while such things are in my view!
Moreover, if I do not greatly err, the Lord hath blessed me, and my poor labours, where I now am. I was born in the establishment; and new born in it; and have witnessed the new birth of others in it also. Until therefore, that I see ‘the pillar of the cloud’ going out before me, I should not think myself justified in departing. Every servant of the Lord, ordained by the Lord to his ministry, is like a sentinel on his post. And it is death by the military law for a soldier to leave his station, before that he who planted the watch comes to relieve him. I need not tell you, who it is that fixeth the bounds of his people’s habitations!
But it hath been said, (and probably you may have heard it) that I am wedded to the establishment by the love of gain: and but for the “loaves and fishes,” I should have left it long ago. I am in a great measure a stranger to you. Nevertheless, an old man as I am, and lately brought back from the border of the grave, and now every day hastening fast towards it again, may be credited when I say, that had the love of money preponderated with me, many a year since I might have quitted the church of England on very advantageous terms of worldly profit. Neither on this ground hath the temptation been small. For although I am a man of little expense, yet never in any one year, since I entered the ministry, hath the income of my labours been competent to cover the maintenance of my household; and but for other resources I must have been poor indeed. Pardon, dear Sir, this garrulity, induced as it hath been from your observations on the church of England, in my belonging to it!
Had I been at your elbow when you were framing my creed, I should have put you in mind of a church to which I hope, notwithstanding our differences in other points, you and I both belong; and without we do 'belong to it indeed, it is of no consequence what other congregation we are the members of, whether church-man or dissenter. Yes, dear Sir, the church to which I allude is the church of Christ, which the glorious head of it himself saith is one, and but one, “the only one of her mother; the choice one of her that bare her.”
And the sure and certain proof of belonging to this church is, when “by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; being justified by his grace, we are made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:5-7.) This is the standard of character, whether in the establishment or out of it. This is the door of entrance to every member. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3.) And wheresoever this regenerated child of God is, there the church is in every individual member of Christ’s mystical body: where this is not, the church is not, be the ordinances in themselves ever so well formed or constituted. Infant baptism, or adult baptism, are alike unprofitable without the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I venture to conclude, Mr. Stevens will join issue with me here!
I was sorry to note an error in your titlepage. I have before observed, that the single point of contention (and that I hope a friendly one) between you and me is, whether Christ had, or had not, a pre-existent human soul. But whosoever reads the titlepage of your letter, would at once conclude that Dr. Hawker denies the pre-existence of Christ: than which, nothing can be more foreign to the truth. I would fain persuade myself that this mistake of yours’s could not be intentional. And, therefore, I please myself with the assurance, that if any future editions are called for of your letter, you will do me the justice to correct it.
I am not authorized to suppose that my humble writings, numerous as they are, have fallen in your way. But had it so happened that you had seen any of them, in which I have treated of this subject, and especially my ‘Poor Man’s Commentary on the Bible’ you would have perceived, that none of the modern writers, (as far as my abilities have reached) hath gone further than I have done, in exalting the glorious person of the Son of God, as God-man Mediator in his pre-existent state.
According to my apprehension of this sublime subject, next to the glory of Jehovah, in his trinity of persons, which of necessity is the first and supreme end of all things; the great object for which Jehovah went forth in acts of creation, and for communion with his creatures, was for the express purpose of aggrandizing, and giving personal glory to his dear Son. God was pleased that the Son of his love should be visible in human nature. God was pleased to behold him as such! It “pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” It pleased the whole trinity of persons; for such is that scripture, (Colossians 1:19.) “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” (or personally) Colossians 2:9. Hence the Son of God, is the visible Jehovah; as that text of scripture proves; “no man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” (John 1:18.) So that the Person of the Son of God in human nature, before a single act was wrought by Christ, as God-man Mediator, stood in Jehovah’s view, as the first of all objects of his complacency and delight. He beheld him, as “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person in whom all grace and glory are met, and centre, and shine forth in one full constellation. And hence Jehovah’s proclamation of him to the church; “behold mine elect! in whom my soul delighteth!” Hence in his first bringing him into the world, he saith, “and let all the angels of God worship him!” And we have authority from the word of God to conclude, that the first and ultimate acceptation of the church here in grace, and hereafter in glory, is wholly in Christ. For it is said, to be “to the praise of the glory of his grace, that we are accepted in the beloved.” (Ephesians 1:6.) and there can be no doubt, but that when the church is brought home to glory, and is become perfectly holy and perfectly happy, without blame before God for ever in love; yet even then, when millions of ages shall have passed away, the church of Christ will be more acceptable and pleasant in Jehovah’s view from being beheld and accepted by him in Christ’s person, than all the benefits derived from Christ’s labours. Such are the glories of his person as set up from everlasting, God-man Mediator!
These things in relation to the personal glory of Christ, in his pre-existent state, set up as God-man Mediator from everlasting, are scattered more or less over all my writings; and in a more especial manner in my ‘Poor Man’s Commentary on the Bible.’ The observations I have particularly made on this subject, on the 8th chapter of the Proverbs in the Old Testament, and on the first chapter of the epistle to the Colossians in the new, I would refer to in proof. And as the former was written not less than seven years since, and the latter not less than four, it will be manifest from both what my views then were, as well as in the present moment, in relation to the personal glory of Christ, in his pre-existent state, as Head and Husband of his church.
But, dear Sir, I need not observe, that there is a mighty difference between the person of Christ, considered in his being set up from everlasting, as he stood in the view of Jehovah, the Head and Husband of his church; and, according to your system, his then having a preexistent human soul. The former is clearly revealed in scripture. The latter hath, in my apprehension, not one scripture in confirmation plainly and clearly revealed to rest upon. Arguments and reasonings taken from the judgments and opinions of men are too inconclusive and unsatisfactory in a point of such vast consequence. And as you and I are both anxious to come at the real truth on this momentous concern, you will pardon me when I say, that not a single line have you advanced in your letter to make me a convert to the doctrine. I had rather have one sentence in the scriptures from God the Holy Ghost, with a “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts,” in confirmation of any of his blessed truths, than all the reasonings and opinions of the world.
I will beg permission to state to you my views upon the subject, and the causes of objection which I have to this doctrine. I have read your observations in favour of it with all due attention; and most readily and cheerfully do I bear testimony, that you have shewn great ability, and gone as far, I think, as any man can go, in endeavouring to establish a hypothesis which hath (according to my apprehension) no scriptural foundation. And when I have brought before you my objections to the belief of the preexistence of Christ’s human soul, prior to his incarnation, I shall persuade myself, that with whomsoever the truth is, there will be no further cause for displeasure, having explained the circumstance, which, unintentionally on my part, first excited it. And hope, looking, “guide us into all truth, and glorify the Lord Jesus in taking of the things of Jesus, and shewing unto us.”
And first. The one great, and to me I confess, invincible objection to the belief of the pre-existence of the human soul of Christ, is the silence of the Holy Ghost upon the subject. A doctrine so important, and so intimately connected with the welfare of the church, if true, might have been expected to have been found in every part of scripture. That the Son of God should have a human soul, four thousand years at least, (to say nothing of the eternity before,) prior to his having an human body; and yet, that the Almighty author of inspiration should pass it by unnoticed, is marvelous indeed! If on the presumption that Christ’s possessing an human soul from before the foundation of the world, had been with a view to his glory, would not the Holy Ghost in this case, (whose office in the covenant of redemption it is to glorify Jesus, by taking of the things of Jesus, and shewing to his people,) have delighted in bringing the whole church acquainted with it? And if on the presumption that this possession of a human soul by Christ, before all time, had been with an eye to the church’s comfort, would not the Holy Ghost have acted in his gracious character as Comforter, in communicating the glad tidings to the people? But instead of any revelation on the subject, we find a total silence, and the church is left to her own conjectures, wherefore her Lord and husband so many ages before his assumption of a human body, should possess an human soul; and how at a period so remote from each other, the junction between the soul and body should take place at his incarnation? Surely nothing short of the testimony of God the Holy Ghost ought to be considered sufficient to establish the belief of such a doctrine in the church. And this one view alone, if there were no other, would, I confess, be with me an invincible objection to the ad- mission of such a tenet into my creed.
But secondly. I am the more confirmed in the rejection of this doctrine, from beholding the very different method God the Holy Ghost hath observed respecting his making known the incarnation of Christ. We find the Lord the Spirit watching over the church with a tenderness peculiarly his own, and from the first dawn of revelation to the coming of Christ, unceasingly engaged in preparing the church for that great event, God manifest in the flesh. Let any reader of the bible, whose eyes are spiritually open, attend to the records of holy scripture concerning this auspicious aera of the Son of God tabernacling among us. Let him begin the subject where God the Holy Ghost hath begun it, from the days of Adam; and prosecute the glorious history as it is carried on, like a golden thread in the word of God, from one age to another, until he comes to Bethlehem, where Christ was born; and he will behold with what a world of apparatus the momentous doctrine is introduced; and the church taught every generation more and more, to expect the coming Lord. The Holy Ghost seems to be anxious, (if the expression be warrantable,) that the church shall be led on step by step towards the glorious period of Christ’s incarnation, and is therefore gradually opening to her view more enlarged descriptions of his person in his two-fold nature, to render her knowledge of him and her desire after him, increasingly precious as the light of the morning, “which shineth more and more unto a perfect day.”
Thus, God the Holy Ghost opens the subject of the incarnation immediately on the fall; and the first revelation of this miraculous work, begins with directing the church to expect Christ as “the seed of the woman,” (Genesis 3:15.) When the day of Abraham arrived, the Holy Ghost enlargeth the view of the interesting subject to the church, (and now declares the nation from whence Christ after the flesh should come.) “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,” (Genesis 12:18.) Progressively going on in keeping the church awake to the blessed expectation, the patriarch Jacob is influenced by the Holy Ghost in his dying hours, to proclaim Christ in his household; and he points to the very tribe in Israel, out of whom the Shiloh should appear, Genesis 49:10. And when David in after generations arose, the family was marked from whose loins the Redeemer should proceed, 2 Samuel 7:12. Still more as the period drew nearer, the Holy Ghost stirred up the minds of his servants the prophets, to declare somewhat more or less, pointing to this great event. Isaiah was influenced under a spirit of prophecy to tell the church that Emanuel, God with us, should be born of a virgin, Isaiah 7:14. The prophet Micah pointed to the place; and Daniel to the time of the Redeemer’s advent, Micah 5:2; Daniel 9:24. Thus did God the Holy Ghost gradually unfold the gracious mystery; and never remitted his information to the church until the Lord came. By his unceasing instruction, the Lord’s people were kept alive from one age to another in the expectation of him whose name, by the same divine teaching among his people, was uniformly spoken of as “He that should come,” (Matthew 11:3.) And to the very moment of Christ’s incarnation, we are told that the Holy Ghost filled the minds of the Lord’s chosen with the expectation of it, in the instances of John the Baptist, Simeon, and Anna the prophetess, and no doubt many others who were waiting for the consolation of Israel,” (Luke 2:25-36.)
These truths are in every one’s knowledge who is acquainted with the word of God. Allow me then to ask, is it possible to suppose that God the Holy Ghost should be thus earnest to prepare the church from one generation to another, in looking for the coming of Christ in an human body; and yet be everlastingly silent through all his scriptures concerning his human soul? On the presumption that Christ in his pre-existent state had an human soul, would not God the Spirit have spoken of it, yea, and dwelt upon it as a subject of great importance for the church to know? Nay more than this, supposing the doctrine true of the preexistence of the human soul of Christ before all worlds, and which soul was to be united to the human body of Christ at his incarnation, would the Holy Ghost have dwelt so much as he hath done in relation to this mysterious union of God and man, when the fulness of time came to be born of a woman; and yet never once in the account taught the church, that the Son of God had an human soul in his pre-existent state, which was then to be brought into union with the body when miraculously born of the virgin? These things are, in my view, insuperable difficulties to the reception of the doctrine of Christ having a human soul in his pre-existent state. And here, as in the former statement of objection, the silence of God the Holy Ghost on the subject, is with me an invincible obstacle to its belief.
Thirdly. The difficulty of belief receives another addition from the want of analogy between the supposed production of this human soul of Christ in a preexistent state; and that of the human body of Christ at his incarnation. There is not an article of our holy faith more strongly marked in the scriptures of eternal truth, than that one which most plainly, fully, and clearly shew the whole three persons of the Godhead to have been equally concerned, and equally engaged in the mysterious
work of God incarnate. The Son of God by the spirit of prophecy, ages before his incarnation, ascribed the preparation of his human body to God the Father. Compare Psalm 40:6, &c.; Hebrews, 10:5, &c.; Psalm 139:13-16. But that God the Holy Ghost was equally an Almighty Agent in this stupendous formation, the overshadowing of the womb of the virgin by the Holy Ghost is declared to have been the cause of her conception; and wherefore that holy thing which was born of her, should be called “the Son of God,” (Luke 1:35.) And the act itself of the assumption of our nature into union with the Godhead, is as strongly declared to be the work of the Son of God. “For verily, he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham,” Hebrews 12:16. Now the inference from this statement, (which let it be remembered is wholly scriptural,) is plainly this: If the whole three persons of the Godhead alike engaged in the production of the body of Christ, is it not reasonable to conclude there would be the same concurrence in the production of the soul? But if the human soul of Christ in his pre-existent state be produced as the act of the Father only; and as you state, (page 30,) ‘who is therefore called his only begotten Son, and his first born; and yet he did not beget his divine personality, but his human nature only,’ where is the analogy between the production of Christ’s human soul and his body in the agency of that production? Had the Son of God himself no hand in the assumption of this human soul in the pre-existent state, when it is so expressly said he had in the assumption of our nature at his incarnation? And was God the Holy Ghost no agent in the production of this human soul before all worlds, who is so blessedly shewn to have wrought his part in the production of Christ’s human nature in the fulness of time. Here is a point of no small difficulty to be removed before that I can subscribe to the doctrine of Christ having an human soul in his pre-existent state. And though I will most readily and cheerfully give credit to the orthodoxy of my correspondent, Mr. Stevens faith in a trinity of persons in the Godhead; yet I would without offence venture to hint that the belief of God the Father’s sole agency in the production of the human soul of Christ, savours a little of Sabellianism, which allows but of one person' in the Godhead.
Fourthly. Though I lay the whole stress of my incredulity to your system of Christ’s human soul in his pre-existent state to the silence of God the Holy Ghost upon the subject, and never can be proselyted until taught it by the blessed Spirit himself; yet were I disposed to follow up what I have advanced on this ground by other arguments, I venture to think that there are not a few collateral circumstances which serve to explain the evident cause of the Holy Ghost’s silence, on a doctrine which hath no foundation but in human opinion.
You have conceived, it appears by your letter, that in the human generation, nothing is derived from father to son but body: and if I understand right what you have advanced upon this subject, you make this an argument for giving some degree of sanction to the doctrine in hand. But that I may not by any misapprehension pervert your meaning, I will beg to repeat your own words on this occasion page 29, 80. ‘An animal,’ (you say,) ‘generates its own kind; but who does not see that man stands higher in the scale of beings by reason of his not generating entirely his own kind; and because he has an immortal nature or spirit immediately from God, which borrows nothing of its being from material things.’ And by way of confirmation to this statement, a sentence or two after you add, ‘and as Abraham begat Isaac, his only begotten son, who was therefore called his son; and yet Abraham begat Isaac’s body only, so the eternal Father begat his beloved Son Jesus Christ, who is therefore called his only begotten Son, and his first born, and yet he did not beget his divine personality, but his human nature only.’ This Sir,’ you add, ‘is my manner of conceiving of this important subject; and it is hoped, it is not a daring heresy that I thus commend to your patient and serious consideration.’
In answer, I beg you to take no further offence when I say, though it be your manner of conceiving of this important subject, it is not mine: neither do I believe you can derive any sanction for it from scripture. In relation to the term, “only begotten Son,” and the like, in reference to the Godhead, I have in the former part of this letter observed, that a subject necessarily involved in such mystery, I presume not to explain. But if considered in relation to the mediatorial offices of Christ, I venture to accept the phrase, as including the whole of our Lord’s engagements in our nature.
Your views of man’s standing higher in the scale of being than brutes, and that by reason of his not generating entirely his own kind, is assuming a thing which you have not supported by any authority. And the instance you give in the history of Abraham in begetting Isaac, that he begat his body only, I think you would find no small difficulty to prove. The word of God appears to intimate more. The Holy Ghost, speaking of the two Adams as the heads of their respective seed, saith, “The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit,” 1 Corinthians 15:45. Who can take upon him to say, what is, and what is not, communicated by those respective heads to their respective seeds? In respect to Christ here called the last Adam, in his being said to be “a quickening spirit,” we cannot but know, that this is not said in allusion to the quickening himself, but of his seed, John 5:21. And as this is said of Christ, by way of explaining what was said before of the first Adam, his being a living soul; it should seem to say, that he is not considered as a single person, but as a public head; and so formed to convey that nature to others, which he had personally in himself. What that nature is, and of its full extent and meaning, I have no apprehension, much less to explain.
But on the ground you take, that every man hath an immortal nature, or spirit, immediately from God, which borrows nothing of its being from material things; it will follow by an undeniable consequence, that if we have our spirits immediately from God, and borrow nothing of that being from material things, neither can we then borrow, or derive anything of their corruptions; and then original sin in our spiritual part is done away. Somehow or other, therefore, this statement of yours’s cannot be correct. If God, in the instance of every human being created, gives an immortal nature or spirit immediately from himself, and we derive nothing from our parents but a mere body; polluted and sinful as that body is, because generated from such a stock; yet our immortal part coming from God, must be holy. The question is, how comes it tainted with original sin? The scripture, which in consequence of original, as well as actual transgression, declares every son and daughter of Adam to be dead in trespasses and sins, considers the soul in this state of spiritual death (for it is not the body that is here spoken of,) and hence the necessity of the new birth I cannot therefore discover any one advantage in point of argument to be derived from this statement, much less any parity of reason in reference to Christ’s pre- existent human soul.
Fifthly. Your ideas, that this pre-existent human soul you speak of (given to Christ or begotten of the Father; for you do not say a word of the Son of God assuming it himself,) renders Christ a real, and not an imaginary Son. That I may not pervert your words, neither misconstrue your meaning, I will beg to transcribe them, page 29. ‘The soul of man’, you say, ‘becoming united to a begotten nature, is denominated, and acts; accordingly, so the divine person, being self-existent, and unbegotten in the divine nature, becoming united to the begotten human nature, is denominated, and acts accordingly. This is the Son of God existing, and not an ideal or imaginary Son.’
Dear Sir, is it possible that you can mean by such expressions to say, that the Son of God was only an ideal or imaginary Son until the Father had begotten for him a human soul! Do you indeed carry your notions of this pre-existence of the human soul of Christ to such an extravagant height? Was the Godhead of the Son incapable of entering into covenant engagements with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and to act in his mediatorial character as the chosen head of all election without this previous union with a human soul? Was it then an ideal, or imaginary counsel we read of in scripture, when Jehovah spake “in vision to his Holy One?” Psalms 89:19. And upon the presumption that things are so, can you shew cause wherefore so important a point, in the economy of grace, should not have been revealed, but the Holy Ghost be altogether silent upon it? Is it not among subjects of mystery the most mysterious, that the Father should have begotten an human soul for union with the Son four thousand years at least, before his open incarnation; and the Holy Ghost left the discovery of it to the wisdom of man? Yea, that the belief of it now should rest only on human testimony?
I must beg to enter my protest against such opinions. And in proof that the Son of God, had he not been formed with an human soul in his pre-existent state, would neither have been ideal or imaginary; I desire to call to your remembrance what the Holy Ghost hath recorded in scripture concerning Abraham, when the Lord first called him as the head and representative of his spiritual seed.
We read in Genesis 17:1-5. that the Lord promised to make Abram a father of many nations. And the Lord in speaking of this grant, speaks of it as of a thing already done. The words are (ver. 5.) “for a father of many nations have I made thee.” And the Holy Ghost in after ages, when explaining this subject by his servant Paul, puts the words in the past tense; “I have made thee.” And the Lord the Spirit then shews how. “As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not, as though they were,” Romans 4:17. Now let it be remembered, that at the time the Lord so promised the patriarch there was not a single one of the seed born: yet the Lord speaks of it as already done: “I have made thee a father,” &c. meaning as plain as words can speak, that before him, or in God’s view, to whose infinite and comprehensive mind, past, present, and future, form but one object, the things promised subsisted in Abram as if done; and he stood before the Lord, not an ideal or imaginary father, but the real head and representative of the whole seed. And the Holy Ghost, as if to remove all difficulties in our apprehension of this great event, adds, “God who quickeneth the dead, calleth those things which be not, as though they were.” Quickening the dead, or calling into being what before had no being, but in the divine mind, being the same thing in point of operation with God. If then in the instance of Abram such things were said, when as yet he had no child, but only chosen of the Lord, as the elect head and representative of all that was to follow; shall it be thought incredible that the Son of God, to whom Abram was but a type, should personate his church, when standing up before all worlds as their glorious head and husband, when as yet he had made no open manifestation of himself in his office character of Mediator? If God the Father who quickeneth the dead, calleth those “things which be not, as though they were,” shall not God the Son, “who quickeneth whom he will,” be supposed competent to act in this headship of Mediator to his church, and not be considered ideal or imaginary, though until the fulness of the time he neither assumes himself, nor hath begotten for him by the Father and the Holy Ghost, either an human soul or body.
Before men decide upon subjects of so mysterious a nature, and are guided in framing their opinions, more by reason than revelation; it would be well to pause and inquire, what saith the Holy Ghost upon these momentous things? If it be considered ideal or imaginary, that the Son of God should stand up from everlasting as the elect head of his church without either an human soul or body; what reality shall we be able to annex to those precious things spoken of the church, and which are said to be given of the Lord to the church from everlasting. To instance one among many. The apostle, speaking of the Lord’s mercy to the church, saith: “Who hath saved us, and called us, with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,” 2 Timothy 1:9. How, or in what manner is this said to be done? The members of Christ’s mystical body had no actual existence when these blessings are said to have been given them. And yet somehow or other there must have been in the divine mind, both the knowledge of their persons, and an ordination of grace the Lord in his purposes determined for them, or such things could not have been said. Had the promise ran in different terms, of grace given to Christ for us; then the thing would have been otherwise. But the words are, given to us in Christ Jesus. Most evident therefore it is, that the church had a being in Christ; yea, and a well-being in Christ, according to God’s purpose and decree, before any of the church had actual existence in the world, or before the world began. And if the members of Christ’s body needed no actual existence to render the grace given them before the world began to be sure, but as they stood in the purpose and decree of God; what necessity could there be for the glorious Head to have a human soul in a pre-existent state, and without which to have been ideal, or imaginary? How much more agreeable to the whole analogy of scripture is it to believe, that in the covenant transactions of the holy persons in the Godhead before all worlds, the Son of God personated, what afterwards he would fully be at his incarnation: and when the fulness of the time was come, he tabernacled openly in substance of our flesh, being as it behoved him to be, both in soul and body, made like to his brethren: and in the union of God and man, wrought out deliverance for his church and people, “having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
I have far exceeded the limits I meant to have observed in this letter, and therefore shall not enlarge. But I might add that I have other objections, besides those I have stated, against the reception of the doctrine you appear to have so warmly embraced, of the pre-existent human soul of Christ.
I know not how it strikes you, but with me I confess, that instead of those sweet constraining affections to draw to Christ, which the precious doctrine of God incarnate taking into union my whole nature, awakens through grace in my soul; I should feel a distance and shyness in the contemplation of the human soul of Christ without a body as existing before all worlds. Neither can I make out any relationship between this part of Christ’s human nature and ours, to give the confidence of drawing nigh to him. Indeed, as the scripture informs me, that he was to be made “in all things like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God as long as I considered his human soul as not so made, I could not reconcile it to myself that, under my soul travail and soul exercises, he could enter into my feelings by his own! But as long as I look to Jesus, as God the Holy Ghost instructs me to look to him, as taking into union with the Godhead a nature both of soul and body, made of the same materials as my own, yet without sin; I feel a boldness to go to him at all times, and upon all occasions, as one that not only knows as God, but feels as man; and can, and will, grant the suited “grace to help in all time of need.”
Moreover. Under the idea of Christ’s human soul being begotten before all time, and not coming to us as his body; I cannot see the possibility of his answering the character all along in the scriptures spoken of him, as being “made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law.” In my apprehension of the truths of God, it forms a distinguishing point, that he which buys out the mortgaged inheritance of his brethren, and performs the part of the Redeemer, must have the right of redemption belonging to him. He must be next of kin. Now as long as I have formed my creed upon what the Holy Ghost in his scriptures teacheth me, and have traced the gracious, but mysterious pedigree of the Lord Jesus Christ after the flesh, as “the seed of the woman,” and both in soul and body becoming our Kinsman-Redeemer, the nearest and dearest of all relations; I have felt, and do feel, and enjoy the blessedness of it. I behold the fulness, and completeness, and suitableness, and all-sufficiency of his sacrifice; and I behold no less, at the same time, his right of redemption from the relationship between the Redeemer and the redeemed. But I shall never be able to divest my mind from the apprehension that the offering of a pre-existent human soul, doth not answer to scripture testimony on this ground. And until God the Holy Ghost makes it known, mere human reasoning and argument lose all effect with me.
Add to these, I should feel distressed in the idea of Christ having a pre-existent human soul, when I have all along been taught of God the Holy Ghost to take comfort in that scripture, which, beginning with one of the sweet names of Christ, “verily”, tells the church how the Son of God manifested his love to his people, in taking their nature in preference to that of angels. “For, verily, he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” But, dear Sir, forgive me if I say, the beauty and glory of this scripture is lost, if the Son of God, in choosing to take upon him “the seed of Abraham,” took only a body without a soul, as you tell us, Abraham begat Isaac’s body only. Neither can I discover the needs be of this information to the church, that the Son of God took not on him the nature of angels, on the presumption that the Holy Ghost knew the church was already apprised of the human soul the Son of God before had in his pre-existent state. And all that follows of the necessity of being made like to his brethren in all things, that he might be both merciful and faithful, is lessened in its effect, when this nature of Christ, according to your creed, is made up of a human soul begot- ten before the world, and a human body born in time. How far a union of nature so remotely formed, and so differently produced, could be suited to the feeling of our infirmities, remains with you to shew. I feel a blessedness in the assurance, that as he was made in all things “like unto his brethren”, so was he in all points “tempted like as we are” and the conviction of this gives a confidence to conclude, that as “he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able also to succor them that are tempted.”
And now, dear Sir, I shall bid you farewell! I know not whether it may please you to write to me again or not. But if the former, I beseech you to let the whole body of evidences you send on the subject of our different opinions, be all taken from divine and not human authority. One decision of God the Holy Ghost, is of more weight with me, than ten thousand arguments taken from among men. A point of such vast moment can derive nothing by way of conviction from “the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but from what the Holy Ghost teacheth.” And very sure
I am, my correspondent, as well as myself, is equally desirous that the faith of both should not stand “in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”
And on the presumption of my hearing from you again on this subject, I shall beg of you moreover, to give me scriptural proofs, for the removing of all my fears, that this doctrine you wish to be received, of ‘the pre-existence of the human soul of Christ,’ doth not favour too much the Sabellian heresy, of the admitting only of one person in the Godhead. In the manner which you say you conceive of the Father’s begetting this human soul for the Son, nothing is said of the agency of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost in this divine act; where as it is a grand doctrine of the true faith of the gospel, that the formation of the human nature of Christ, engaged the joint agency of all the Holy Three Persons in the Godhead. That the body of Christ (according to your creed) without a soul, should call forth the united operations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and that the soul of Christ, formed before all time, should be the personal act only of the Father, requires scripture proofs to confirm. But that (according to my creed) both soul and body, being in the fulness of time the joint operation of the whole persons of the Godhead, which scripture declares, and which is consistent with the whole analogy of faith; this is agreeable to all the other truths of the gospel, and is blessedly confirmed by the Holy Ghost.
Ere long, the subject which has thus engaged your pen and mine, will cease to be the subject of any further dispute, and engage both no more. At my advanced time of life, I cannot be far remote from that blessed period, when I shall see the Lord Jesus “face to face and know even as I am known.” And you, dear Sir, though I know not either your person or your age, cannot be far behind to the same enjoyment. May the great Head of his church and people, in the meantime, grant to both, while exercising our feeble services here below, the suited grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” I very sincerely and affectionately “commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified.”
Yours’s, dear Sir, In the Lord Jesus,
Robert Hawker’s full remarks on the word “Begotten”
BEGOTTEN. I detain the reader at this word, because of its importance. Not in respect to the real meaning of the word itself, either in a natural or spiritual sense, for both are generally understood, but for an higher purpose. It is easy to apprehend what is meant by the term begotten, in natural generation among men. (See Matthew 1:2, &c.) And we no less understand the scriptural meaning of spiritual generation, in application wholly to God. They who are newborn in Christ, are expressly said to be born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:13.) But the meaning of the word begotten, when applied to the person of Christ, differs wholly from both these and (according to my apprehension of the scriptural sense of the word) is perfectly another thing. I beg to explain myself upon it.
If we look at the several Scriptures which speak of Christ being begotten, we find the word connected at different places with different terms. Sometimes, Christ is said to be the first begotten, and at other times, the only begotten of the Father. (See Hebrews 1:6. Revelation 1:5. John 1:14.18; 3:16.18. 1 John 4:9. Psalm 2:7.) And some have supposed that these expressions refer to the eternal generation of the Son of God as God. But with all possible respect to the judgment of those men, I venture to believe that those phrases have no reference 'whatever to that subject. The eternal generation of the Son of God as God, is declared in Scripture as a most blessed reality; and as such, forms an express article of our faith. But as God the Holy Ghost hath not thought proper to explain it, in any part of his revealed word, it becomes an article of faith only, and here the subject rests. We are not called upon to say, how that eternal generation is formed, any more than we are to tell how Jehovah exists, or how that existence is carried on in an unity of substance, while distinct in a threefold character of person. Our capacities are, at present, incompetent to form any adequate conception, and perhaps, even in our future state, they never may be able.
But in relation to the Son of God, as the first begotten and the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, if those terms are confined to the person of the Lord Jesus in his character and office as Mediator, here all difficulty vanishes to the proper apprehension of our mind; and under divine teaching, we are not only brought to the full conviction of the glorious truth itself, but to the full enjoyment of it, in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ in his mediatorial character, God and man in one person, the Head of union with his people, and the Head of communication also to his people, for grace here and glory forever.
In this sense, Christ is the first begotten and the only begotten of the Father before all worlds. In this sense, that sweet passage in the Psalms is explained, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” (Psalm 2:7.) Begotten; that is, when in the decree concerning redemption, the Father predestinated the Son unto the being and office of the God-man Mediator. And this day means, when in the covenant transactions, the Lord Jesus stood up the Head of his church, at the call of God the Father. Had this begetting referred to the eternal generation of the Son of God as God, how could it be called this day? Eternity is never spoken of as a day in Scripture. For when the Holy Ghost would describe the eternal nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, he speaks of him in the past, present, and future; “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and f forever.” (Hebrews 8: 8.) And hence, when describing also the eternal and everlasting nature and essence of him, the high and holy One, who inhabiteth eternity, the Holy Ghost saith, “from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” (Psalm 90:2.) Everlasting, in the language of Scripture, is without beginning and without ending. So that in the eternal generation of the Son of God, as the Father is eternal (and everlasting in his personal character as Father, so must the Son be eternal and everlasting in his personal character as Son. If there had been a period in eternity when the Son of God was not the Son, in that same period the Father would not, have been the Father; for both, in the very nature, of things, in the constitution of each character, must have been equally existing together. Hence, therefore, (according to my view of things) nothing can be plainer than that in those expressions of the first begotten and only begotten of the Father, there is not the least reference to the eternal generation of the Son of God; but those, and the like terms of Scripture, respect only the person of the Lord Jesus in his character and office of Mediator.
In farther confirmation of this doctrine, I beg the reader to turn to the forty-second chapter of Isaiah 1 to 9, compared with Mathew 8:17, &c. the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, 1 to 3, compared with Luke 4:16 to 22; and yet as particularly as either, the forty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, 16, 17: in which the Lord Jesus, under the Spirit of prophecy, describes his commission as Mediator both from the Father and the Holy Ghost, ages before his incarnation, and the consequent execution of his office as Redeemer to his church and people.
I hope that I have explained myself in the clearest manner, in order to render my meaning perfectly intelligible to the humblest capacity. And if so, and my view of this sublime subject is agreeable to the unerring word of the holy Scripture, and if the reader’s apprehension of this doctrine corresponds with mine, he will find (what I bless the Lord I have found,) much sweetness in such precious views of the Lord Jesus Christ. The distinction is, in my apprehension, highly important in the exercises of faith, between the eternal generation of the Son of God as God, and the Son of God as Mediator, begotten to the office and character of Mediator. The distinction is essential, that we may not confound things, and thereby lessen our proper conception of the Son of God, “one with the Father over all, God blessed forever.” And it is no less most blessed and interesting to behold the Son of God thus begotten of the Father, the God-man Mediator, when, for the gracious purposes of salvation, he stood up in his covenant character, that he might be both the head of union and of fulness for communication to his people in grace, and in glory, forever.
I beg the reader to pause over a subject so infinitely sublime, and so infinitely consolatory. And I beg of him farther to pause and remark with me, the wonderful grace manifested to creatures, such as we are, in the Lord’s giving such blessed manifestations of himself. Instead of being astonished that we know no more, the only astonishment is, that we know so much. Great must be the communicated influence of the Holy Ghost to our poor fallen nature, to enable us to grasp anything relating to the Godhead, in his threefold character of person, in this our fallen state. By and by, we are promised that we shall know, even as we are known; that is, as far as our spiritual faculties, ripened into perfection, are capable of advancing. But here below, we are only, in our highest attainments, in the twilight of knowledge, and our best discoveries are but as seeing “through a glass darkly.” See Generation.
Before I depart from the contemplation of this sublime subject as it refers to the person of God’s dear Son, I would beg to drop a short observation on what I humbly conceive to be a misapplication of the term begotten, as is sometimes made in reference to man. I mean, when ministers themselves, or others for them, are said to have begotten souls to Christ by the instrumentality of their preaching. It is more than probable that the first idea of such a thing took its rise from what the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, (1 Corinthians 4:15.) I have begotten you through the gospel. And in like manner, concerning Onesimus, the apostle saith. Whom I have begotten in my bonds. (Epistle to Philemon, ver. 10.) But whatever the apostle meant by the expression, certain it is, that the act of the new creation, as the act of the old, is wholly of the Lord. And uniformly in Scripture, the act of begetting is altogether ascribed to the Lord. (See 1 Peter 1:3. 1 John 5:1.18.) And, perhaps it would be no difficult matter to show, that the apostle did not mean what some have supposed, that when he used those expressions, he considered himself as their spiritual father. The very term sounds haughtily, and not scripturally; Paul himself would hardly have joined such words together, in application to one he thought the chief of sinners. But even admitting the contrary, supposing it be granted, that this inspired apostle used the term in relation to himself, what warrant would this be for the use of it among ordinary ministers? If it be said that it is only meant to imply their instrumentality, I answer, that the term spiritual father is still unsuitable and unbecoming. There is no warrant in the word of God for such an appellation. And when it is farther considered, how much it tends to minister to spiritual pride, it is a very plain proof it cometh not of the Lord. I shudder to think to what lengths this misapplication of the words begetting souls to Christ, and spiritual fathers, have hurried men, when I have heard it hath been said from the pulpit, or committed to the press, that such preachers, at the last day, will have to say, “Behold I, and the children which the Lord hath given me!” Words which can belong to none but the Lord Jesus Christ, and never were intended to be used, or can with truth be used, by any other. (Isaiah 8:18. Hebrews 2:13.)238
.. But enough of this subject for the present. We turn to the Church, the general aspect of which, we must say, is but dark and gloomy, too. The perils may not be so obvious, as they are usually most dangerous when least seen, but not less real. If, then, in all friendliness, and yet in all faithfulness, we attempt to unfold what we consider as peculiarly dark and gloomy features of the present time in the churches of truth, for with them lies our main concern, and to them do we chiefly speak, we trust that we shall not be hastily or indignantly met by the retort, “Physician, heal thyself;” “Art thou so free from these evils, or perhaps worse, that thou canst afford to reprove us? Self-constituted reprover of the churches, first cast the beam out of thine own eye before thou attemptest to take the mote out of our eye.” But may not all or any rebuke, reproof, warning, or admonition, from any quarter, be similarly met? If we, and those in our position, are to wait till we are perfectly free from all fault before we may venture to reprove or admonish others, all reproof or admonition must at once and forever cease. None may point out an evil, expose an error, rebuke a sin, or reprove a transgression, because the party condemned thereby turns from the reproof to fall upon the reprover. The pulpit must be silent because the pew requires perfection above before it will listen to it below. The grossest disorder may prevail in a church, and neither minister nor deacons be suffered to reprove any disorderly members or carry out church order and discipline because themselves not free from visible faults and failings; nor dare one private Christian admonish or rebuke another, however entangled in a snare, or acting however inconsistently, because there may be infirmities still cleaving to himself. This would indeed be a most fearful state of things, and would afford the clearest indication possible not only of universal corruption but of universal connivance; and the church would resemble a huge jail where one criminal countenances another till all shame is gone, or the thoroughly corrupt establishment of some profligate nobleman, where all are too deeply steeped in vice for reproof or remonstrance. But, laying aside the unwelcome office of a public reprover, may we not view present matters under the following aspect? If a number of persons are, at one and the same time, suffering under any severe complaint or epidemic illness, one patient may surely say to another, “Brother sufferer, we are both very ill. But is there not some cause for this wide-spread illness? Let us look and see whether, as more specially regards ourselves, there may not be some entrapped sewer beneath the house, or some reeking dung-heap under the windows, or some slimy pool at the bottom of the garden, or some neglect of cleanliness of person or dwelling; or whether sun and air may not have been too much shut out, and we are now reaping the sad fruit of our negligence and folly in taking so little heed to these causes of illness?” In a similar way, if we see and feel epidemic sickness in the churches, we may, on good grounds, search and see not only the nature of the malady, but whether we may not be able to discover the cause, as the first step to the cure. In this spirit, let us, then, plainly point out some evils which seem to us to be undermining the health of the churches.
1. The first that we shall name as being, if not the most widely spread, yet the most important, is, the breaking out of great and grievous errors in various churches professing the doctrines of discriminating grace.
Not being wholly ignorant of Satan's devices and led to it by a train of circumstances which we need not here enumerate, we had long suspected that there was a good deal of error, covered up with a form of sound words and a show of experience, secretly entertained by many members of professing churches. But we certainty were not prepared to find such a serious amount of it in the churches professing a high standard of doctrinal and experimental truth. Now, what has brought these errors to light? The distinct, clear, positive declaration of truth. It is this, and nothing but this, which at once detects and discovers error. Truth wrapped up in vague, general declarations is the sword in the scabbard, which, as it wounds no conscience, so it pierces no error. Clear, plain, positive statements of divine truth are the two-edged sword which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit; and this naked sword discovers the foundation of error unto the neck. How, for instance, John Wesley wrapped up his free will till Toplady unmasked him; and how Butler, Terry, the legalists, and the Jacobins in Mr. Huntington's day all held in secret their different errors, till that vigorous thresher winnowed them in his sieve, and drove them off the floor like chaff before his fan. The same thing is going on in our day. There are gross and grievous errors in the churches, and these will be undetected till the sieve and the fan come into the barn door. If we are forbidden to hide our talent in a napkin, much more are we prohibited to wrap up the sword of the Spirit in a cloth; and this is done when men, through fear or carnal policy, wrap up naked truth in general statements, that they may please all and offend none. Now, just see how this act in the case of a grievous error to which especial attention has been lately drawn in our pages. All will subscribe to the general statement “that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” because each puts his own interpretation upon the expression. The Socinian, the Arian, the pre-existerian, the Sabellian, &etc., will all allow that he is the Son of God in their sense of the term. But when you come to a more clear, precise, and positive declaration that Jesus Christ is the Son of God by eternal generation, and that he is truly and properly his only-begotten Son as the very mode of his subsistence in the Godhead, then the error of those who deny this foundation truth is discovered, as the spear of Ithuriel detected by its touch Satan as he squatted in the form of a toad at the ear of sleeping Eve:
“Him thus intent, Ithuriel with his spear
Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper, but returns
Of force to its own likeness: Up he starts
Discovered and surprised.” MILTON.
In a similar way the touch of heavenly truth239 has detected an error previously existing but working unseen, undermining the churches like a gangrene, but covered up with a form of godliness. The present necessary consequence of this has been strife and confusion. Ancient bonds have been broken, and anger and bitterness on both sides perhaps have been shown. Seeing this contention where quiet seemed before to reign, many who love peace at any price, and would sooner have a church seemingly united even if it involved the sacrifice of truth and a good conscience, rather than strife and division, look on with regret, if not anger, that such mere questions, as they call them, should ever have been brought forward to distract the churches; and they secretly, if not openly, condemn those who have done all this mischief. “We were peaceful before,” say they, “but now, since the introduction of this controversy about the eternal Sonship of Christ, we are all strife and confusion.” Yes, but what sort of peace was it? Was there ever any real union of heart and spirit between the lovers of truth and the lovers of error? Was there ever any vital agreement between those who mourn, and sigh as chastised for their sins and those who reject the doctrine of chastisement for transgression? Or was there ever any real soul union between those whose “fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” and those who deny that he is the Son of the Father in truth and love? Much that passes for union in a church is merely a natural feeling of friendship and regard as worshippers in the same place, and as from time to time brought together in a kind of social religious intercourse. Real soul union is one of the rarest things in the world240. There is much warm shaking of hands, and kind inquiries, and friendly looks and expressions, and a few words about the sermon or general soul matters, where the Holy Ghost has neither given spiritual life nor cemented spiritual union. When then, God means to sift a church in his sieve, and search Jerusalem as with candles, he brings to light errors and heresies hitherto concealed; and this is the first snap which begins to break to pieces the false bond of union. This is cutting asunder the staff “Bands” to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. (Zechariah 11:14.) And the staff is often broken thus. A man of God sounds the trumpet through the camp with a clear sound, and proclaims boldly and plainly the truth, in doctrine, experience, or precept, which his own soul has experimentally tasted, felt, and handled. He does not do this in a controversial, angry, bitter spirit, as if for the very purpose of stirring up strife and contention,241 but as a part of the gospel entrusted to him, the burden of the Lord which lies upon his conscience, which he delivers for the glory of God and the profit of his people. The lovers of truth, who have been taught by the same Spirit, and known and felt the power of the same vital realities in their own souls, at once respond to the clear notes of the trumpet, and cleave to the certain sound, for it fills their hearts with peace and joy. Being thus blessed, they cannot but speak warmly of the truth, and of the instrument who has proclaimed it so faithfully and feelingly. But what response do they meet? The erroneous and the unsound, who have been hugging their errors in secret, are offended by the naked truth, as pointed, they think purposely, against their views, and are stirred up to opposition and anger. And now the strife commences; for those who have been blessed under the truth and know it for themselves by divine teaching and divine testimony, will not, and must not, give way, and sacrifice truth and conscience, and even the Lord himself, to maintaining a false peace.
But we have said enough, and perhaps more than enough, on this subject. There is another prominent evil which has of late forced itself upon our observation, and that is, the loose, Antinomian spirit so widely prevalent in the Calvinistic churches.
In order to observe this, compare the loose, careless spirit and walk of many professors of doctrinal truth in our day with the vital, experimental, practical godliness contended for by Bunyan, Owen, Rutherford, Romaine, &c., or, to appeal to a higher standard, with the precepts of the Lord and his Apostles, and then see how deeply, as a body, many churches and congregations professing the letter of truth are sunk into carnality and disobedience. As evil may be manifold in act and yet one in spirit, so this denial of practical godliness, by deed rather than by word, has assumed two distinct forms:
1. It appears under a resting upon mere doctrinal truth in a vain confidence of interest therein, without any vital experience of its liberating or sanctifying effect, or any fruits made manifest in the walk and life. Books, periodicals, and sermons are coming continually under our eye, sound in the letter of truth, in which there is not the faintest attempt to enforce vital, practical godliness, either in its experience in the heart, or in its influence on the life. The highest doctrine is set forth, in the most decided, unflinching way; free will, so called, is chased over hill and dale; the Arminians and Pharisees are soundly rated as the most weak and foolish of men; and shouts of victory are pealed forth to the triumph of sovereign grace. But there it begins and ends. A little shallow experience may be named, but of fruit inward or outward, a godly life, a Christian walk, not a syllable. Spiritual readers, judge for yourselves. Is fruit generally insisted upon as the mark of union with Christ? Such fruits as self-denial, crucifixion of the flesh with its affections and lusts; labouring to know and do the will of God; repentance and godly sorrow for sin; mourning and sighing over a backsliding heart; a prayerful, meditative spirit, and that sweet spirituality of mind which is life and peace, are not these vital realities positively ignored, and not even named, much less insisted upon? It would almost seem, from the general neglect of enforcing upon believers practical godliness, as if the elect might do anything they liked, and that we are saved not from sin but in sin; delivered, not from the curse of the law to walk in the obedience of the gospel, but almost to do any abomination in which the carnal mind delights. (Jerimiah 7:10.) Doctrinal preaching in many pulpits has become crystallized into a regular form, so that were the preacher to diverge from the established round to insist upon the vital experience of truth in the heart, and the fruits of the Spirit as manifested by a holy, godly walk in the life and conduct, a suspicion would spread from pew to pew that he was wavering in his creed, and was secretly introducing free will and Arminianism. There are very few men who dare be faithful to their own congregations and break through bands which they have themselves forged. Nor can a man be expected to preach his own condemnation. If a minister is not himself living under the influence of the Spirit, and seeking to know and feel the power of divine truth in his own heart and life, he cannot and will not insist upon vital, experimental godliness in others; and if the leaders in the church and congregation are sunk into carnality and death, they will cover up their own misdeeds by resenting all practical preaching as a departure from the truth, and will rather hurl back the arrow than allow it to stick in their conscience.242
2. But there is another phase in this loose, Antinomian spirit, which is, a, resting in the doctrine of man’s thorough helplessness, and in a knowledge of sin, without any deliverance, and scarcely a desire after deliverance from it. How many old professors are there, in almost every congregation where truth is preached, who never rise, and never have risen, beyond a confession of their sinfulness and helplessness. Were this deeply felt and groaned under, were there, in the midst of all this conviction, a spirit of prayer, a sighing and crying for help and deliverance, there would be good ground of hope that there was life at the bottom, and that the Lord would, in due time, appear; but when we know that an enlightened judgment and the convictions of natural conscience, with repeated disappointments in the attempts to break the bonds of sin, are amply sufficient to produce this sense of sinfulness and helplessness, we cannot ascribe that to the blessed Spirit which is but another form of Antinomian carelessness. But how little is this evil seen and faithfully met and exposed. On the contrary, what pillows are sewn under armholes, and poor, dead, carnal professors pitied and patted as dear children of God, weak indeed in faith, but precious souls. Is it not a solemn fact that many preachers of doctrinal truth are well satisfied if their hearers are not Arminians, and set down the reception of the truth into the mind as a sure evidence of divine life? Have such teachers ever seriously thought, or ever deeply felt, that men might cease to be Arminians to become Antinomians; that a change of creed is not necessarily a change of heart; that there is a form of godliness whilst denying the power; that a man may be called a Christian, and rest in the gospel, and make his boast in God; may know his will in the letter, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the word; may be confident that he himself is a guide of the blind, a teacher of babes; may have all the form of knowledge and of the truth; (Romans 2:17-20;) and yet, with all this confidence, all this knowledge, and all this profession, be but a servant of sin and Satan? It will be found in that great day that not only “many who are first shall be last and the last first,” but, more solemn truth still, “Many are called, but few chosen.”
Did time and space, and perhaps we may add, did the patience of our readers admit, we might mention other prominent evils, such as the general coldness and deadness, the spirit of strife and division, the disposition to harsh judgment and suspicion, and often to slander and detraction, the want of spirituality of mind and conversation; and the pride, covetousness, carnality, and worldly conformity so widely prevalent243.
But we do not wish to dwell wholly on the disease, and omit all mention of the only full, glorious, and sufficient remedy. Thanks be to God, he has still in this land a seed to serve him, still a people whom he has formed for himself, and who show forth his praise. He has still his hidden ones, who, through much tribulation, are entering the kingdom; still his sighing, mourning people, who love and long for his appearing. He has not left himself yet without witnesses, for here and there he has his faithful ambassadors, who shun not, as far as they are acquainted with it, to declare all the counsel of God244; and we trust he is raising up others to take their place when they are called out of time into eternity. For the consolation of such, and of all who desire to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection, the Lord has said, “My grace is sufficient for thee;” and to encourage us, as we feel to sink under our weakness, he graciously added, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” May we ever bear in mind that there is no healing for sin but by his precious blood; no shelter for the guilty and self-condemned but his glorious righteousness; no salvation but by his grace; and no sanctification but by his Spirit.
The coming year will, doubtless, bring its trials and afflictions, and these perhaps heavier than the past. The clouds that even now hang over the scene may become thicker and darker, as there is every symptom from present appearances; and, in addition to trials of a more public or general kind, we may each have an increasing share of personal or domestic sorrow. Shall we, then, sink under their weight as men without help or hope? Has not the Lord hitherto supported us under our loads and burdens? Has he not promised that “as our day is so our strength shall be?” that “he will deliver us in six troubles, and in seven no evil shall touch us,” if indeed we love and fear his great name? As regards our little monthly work, in reviewing the past year we may again raise our grateful Ebenezer, for indeed, “Hitherto the Lord hath helped us.” All our wants have been supplied; needful strength has been given to fulfil our monthly task; and the blessing which maketh rich, we trust, has not been withheld.
Here, then, we pause, commending our work to the care of the God of all grace, and ourselves to the prayers of our spiritual readers, that life may be spared, and health given to continue our labors; and that they may issue in the glory of a Triune God and the benefit of his believing people.
THE EDITOR.
That Dr. Hawker should be claimed as denying the true, proper, and eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord must surprise all who are at all acquainted with his works; for, if there be one author more than another who is sound and clear on that vital point, it is the good old Doctor. The doctrine of the Trinity, it is well known, was one of the chief features of the Doctor's preaching; and in this Trinity, he always speaks of the Three persons as being God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, which in itself is a sufficient declaration of Jesus being the Son of God as God the Son, distinct from and independent of his complex Person as God-man245. Take the following instances: “But we must not stop here; for blessed be our God, in his Trinity of Persons, he hath not stopped here. Acts of unparalleled grace are unfolded of this distinction of Persons in the Godhead, and as particularly made known to the church, in the several manifestations of love from each, and to every individual of Christ's mystical body. It is the Father, of whom the whole family, the church, is named, in heaven and in earth. (Ephesians 3:15.) His is the choice of their persons; his, the adoption of them as children; his, the acceptation of them in Christ. (Ephesians 1:4-6.) It is God the Son, who hath espoused them to himself; taken their nature and redeemed them from the Adam-fall transgression ‘by the sacrifice of himself.' (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:19; Hebrews 2:16, &c.) It is God the Holy Ghost, who hath anointed them together with Christ; and, by his own personal work, carries on the whole process in the renewal of our nature from the fall, from grace to glory. (Titus 3:4-6.)” Vol. 1, p. 3.
And again: “Now the Scriptures, which are the only data from whence we can derive any fixed and undeniable rule of knowledge on this important topic, have revealed to us this great and august Being, under certain eminent properties; the sum and substance of whose exalted character, taken in a collected point of view, is, that in the unity of a divine nature, or essence, there are three distinct persons, hypostases, or subsistences, existing in a manner inconceivable by human comprehension. We are taught to regard one, who, by way of distinction, is called the Father, as a Being possessed of every attribute which constitute Godhead. We are informed also of another, called the Son, who equally participates in all the essential perfections of the Godhead. And in the same sacred records we read of a third, distinguished by the name of the Holy Ghost, in whom we trace, as clearly defined, all the characters of Godhead. And while to each is distinctly ascribed every possible quality which defines the nature of God, and can belong to none but him, we are carefully instructed to consider that the sacred Three, by a mysterious unity of essence, in a manner transcending human intellect to conceive, form but the one Jehovah.” Vol. 1, p. 208.
Once more: “There is a glory in Jehovah, which may be called his essential glory, arising from his very nature and being, which is perfectly incommunicable to, and altogether incomprehensible by, any mere creature. This is that glory in which he dwells, in Unity of the Divine Essence and Trinity of his Persons, in which the Holy Three in One, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, possess alike and in common all divine perfections; and in the mutual enjoyment of each other, have existed from all eternity, and to all eternity, in one unceasing and never to be ended state of holiness, blessedness, and glory. Now with this essential glory no mere creature ever hath or ever can have, communion. Angels or men are alike precluded all approach, for so saith the scripture: 'He is the King eternal, immortal, invisible: who only hath immortality:’ that is, per se in himself. 'Dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, or can see.' (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16.) The very nature of those perfections, here described, implies as much. His invisibility, his incomprehensibility would cease if discoverable. Hence John saith, 'No man (the word is oudeis, no one, that is, not man only; but all mere creatures, whether angels or men} hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.' (John 1:18.) It is the Son of God only, who came forth from the bosom of the Father, and assuming our nature into union with the Godhead, which made God in any manner visible.” Vol. 1, p. 488.
But the completest proof that Dr. Hawker held the true, proper, and eternal Sonship of our blessed Lord will be found in a work which the Doctor published, entitled, “The Personal Testimony of God the Father to the Person, Godhead, and Sonship of God the Son”.246 From this we make the following extracts: (NOTE: Philpot nowhere explains that the controversy Hawker was engaging in was different to Philpot’s. He gives the opposite idea.)
“And I pray the reader yet further to observe with me, that it is the person of God's dear Son which is above every other consideration in the esteemed affection of God the Father. God indeed loves his dear Son, in having become the Mediator. He loves him for having taken into union with himself our nature; marrying our nature; redeeming our nature; living for us; dying for us; washing us from our sins in his own blood; and, in short, for the whole of what he hath done, is now doing, and will to all eternity do, for his body the church. All are precious acts in God the Father's esteem, and for which he loves his dear Son, the Son of his love. (Colossians 1:13.) But all these are secondary and subordinate considerations in the love and affection of the Father to what love he hath to the Son, as he is in himself. It is the Son of God as Son of God; his person, and not his works, which fills the heart of the Father with delight. For the Father is not benefited, neither indeed can be benefited, by all that the Son hath done or suffered in our nature for his people. And to this unquestionable truth the Son of God himself bears testimony, when he said, 'My goodness extendeth not to thee, but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight.' (Psalms 16:2, 3.)” Vol. 3, p. 568.
“There is somewhat very delightful even in the bare contemplation of it. For the consideration of the person of the Son of God, as he is in himself, and independent of his relationship to his people, opens to a subject at once both sublime and blessed. For it is the infinite dignity of his person, which gives infinite value and preciousness to that relationship. And as God the Father is more glorious in what he is in himself than in all his ways and works towards his creatures, so God the Son is more glorious in himself, and his own personal glory, in common with the Father and the Holy Ghost, in the essence of the Godhead, than in all the grace and love he hath manifested to his people. His love to us is indeed precious, yea, very precious; and as the apostle saith, 'We love him because he first loved us.' (I John 4:19.) Nevertheless, had he never loved us, had he never taken our nature, nor done and suffered for us what that love prompted him to do and suffer; yea, had we never been, the Son of God, as Son of God, would have been what he is in himself, in his divine nature, from all eternity and to all eternity, being 'One with the Father, over all, God blessed forever. Amen.’” Vol. 3, p. 560. (I found it on p. 569 R.S.) PLEASE see this note:247
“I have but one point more to finish the subject; namely, the Personal testimony of God the Father to the Sonship of his dear Son: and this is as sweet and as interesting as either of the former; and, together with both, gives a finishing beauty and loveliness to the whole. Indeed, if I may venture so to speak, the Sonship of the Lord Jesus hath a certain claim on our affections, peculiarly endearing and of inexpressible sweetness. For all those blessings which flow to us from God our Father in his relation as Father, flow to us in and through his dear Son, and from our union with him. And so infinitely important is this doctrine in the covenant of grace, that if it were to be relinquished, the church must relinquish with it also all those great and exceeding precious promises given by the Father to the Son, and the church in him. And there is, according to my apprehensions, somewhat so truly blessed in the relationship of the Father to the Son, and the Son to the Father as our Father in Christ Jesus, that methinks I would not part with the precious doctrine, no, not for the world. And though I dare not, because in truth I cannot, enter into the full apprehension of the subject myself, much less describe it to others, (indeed the relationship subsisting between the persons of the Godhead is not our province to explain,)248 yet it is our mercy to receive it; and being so plainly revealed, and so fully confirmed in Scripture, under the blessed and familiar terms of Father and Son, I can, and do, accept and believe it, with the most cordial and heartfelt satisfaction.” Vol. 3, p. 569.
“I begin with observing, that from the general statement of the Scriptures on this sublime subject, we are so accustomed to the names of Father and of Son, that it were a violence to our feelings to admit, even for a moment, their reality to be questionable. And as these distinctions are personal, and not simply confined to the nature and essence of the Godhead, it were impossible to relinquish the one, without giving up with it at the same time the other.
For if the Sonship of the Son of God be no more, the appellation of the Father is alike no more; the relation of both depending (as necessarily they must depend) upon each other. And in this case, what a chasm would be made in Scripture if both were done away! Where would a child of God go to find his Father, from the relationship to the Son, if these connections in the Godhead had no existence? And what would become of all those great and glorious promises of our God and Father, as our God and Father in the person of his dear Son before the world began, if the church hath no relationship through the Son? neither the Spirit witnessing to our spirits, 'that we are the children of God?'
“Moreover, the word of God hath in express terms given to the church the testimony of the Father to the Sonship of his dear Son, in not only declaring the oneness in nature and essence of the Father and the Son; but by expressions so near and tender, when at any time speaking of the Son, as most decidedly confirms the Father's testimony on this point and renders it unquestionable. The Son of God is called his own Son, his dear Son, his only begotten Son, the Son of his love, and the like. And all these distinctions are in a way and manner as none beside is or can be called. Not the Son of God by creation, as angels and men are for all things are said to be created by him and for him, consequently he himself cannot be created. (Colossians 1:16,17). Neither is he called the Son of God by adoption, as is the church, (Ephesians. 1:5,) for our adoption is by him; and consequently, he himself is not adopted. Neither as Mediator, God and man in one person; for in this sense he is God's servant. But he is called the Son of God, in a special, personal, and particular manner, as the only begotten of the Father, of the same nature with himself, 'over all, God blessed forever. Amen.' 255 (Romans ix. 5.)” Vol. 3, p. 600.
“I do not think it unimportant in this place to add, that the Jews themselves perfectly understood our Lord as giving his own testimony to this Sonship in nature, and for which they charged him with blasphemy; a term wholly inapplicable, according to their view of things, but on the presumption that this Sonship was assumed by the Lord Jesus as thereby declaring himself God, and of the same nature and essence with his Father. 'Therefore, the Jews sought to kill him, because he had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.' (John 5:18.) These words, strong as they are to this Sonship of God's Son, would yet have been stronger had our translators given the full sense of every word. But they have wholly left out a word, and that a most important word, which is in the original; namely, idion, and which shows that the Lord Jesus had called God his own Father. So that though our modern unbelievers in the Sonship of God's dear Son, as Son of God, presumptuously deny this blessed truth, yet not
255 Here again as noted in a previous footnote Hawker misuses scripture to fit his own ideas. so the Jews. They did not mistake our Lord's meaning when he said that God was his own Father; for they took our Lord's words just as they were, and declared him in consequence, according to their views, a blasphemer, for 'making himself equal with God.' But it will be for God himself to decide with whom is the greatest blasphemy; the Jews, in accepting the Son of God's words as they really were, and through unbelief denying his Godhead; or those who call themselves Christians, while refusing to accept Christ's own words as they truly are; but by a construction of their own denying his Sonship, and also 'the record God has given to his Son.' * * *
“Once more. The Sonship of God's beloved Son derives another testimony from God our Father, in that he is called his 'first born, his first begotten, his only begotten;' and is said 'to be in the bosom of the Father.' (John 1:18.) Perhaps it may be said that the two former of those characters may be spoken of the Son of God as Mediator. And perhaps they may. Be it so. I will not stay to inquire. But the same cannot be said of the two latter. 'Only begotten,' and 'to be in the bosom of the Father,' can be applicable only to him as Son of God, and to the exclusion of every other. And let it be observed, (for it is a point of no small consequence to observe) this 'only begotten' is not only limited to the person of the Son of God; but his Godhead is more decidedly shown thereby, in that he is said to be in the bosom of the Father, and this even at a time when declaring him. He is not said to come forth from the bosom of the Father, but to be in the bosom, as one with him in heaven, when as Mediator he is declaring him in the earth.
* * * “When I take into one mass of evidence the cloud of witnesses with which the church is encompassed, on this great truth of our most holy faith, I stand amazed that there should be found any, among those who admit the Bible as the standard of decision, who venture to call in question a doctrine so fully authenticated, and so essential to the being and well-being of the church, as is the Person, Godhead, and Sonship of God's dear Son. That Satan should tempt to this unbelief, is just as might be expected; for we know he had the impudence to tempt the Son of God himself to question his own Sonship. (Matthew 4:3, 6.) But it cannot be reconciled upon the principles of common sense, that men, who call themselves Christians, should take their stand upon the same ground, and by endeavoring to rob the Son of God of his dignity, rob the church of all comfort. Are such men aware, that while their quiver is bent against the Person, and Godhead, and Son-ship of God's beloved Son, their arrows are, in fact, directed against the buckler of the Father? For added to the testimony God the Father hath given from heaven to the Sonship of his beloved Son, did he not at the same time command the church to hear him? Hath he not held him forth, through all the sacred Scriptures of his word, as the great object of trust, and faith, and confidence? And would he be the suited object of either, but upon the presumption of his oneness with himself in all the divine essence? Nay, would God have said to the church as he hath done, 'He is thy Lord, and worship thou him.' (Psalm 45:11)249 Yea, have commanded 'all the angels of God to worship him,' (Hebrews 1:6) had he not possessed in common with himself and the Holy Ghost, all those distinguishing attributes of Godhead, by which alone he becomes the suited object of adoration? Oh! what paleness, what horror, what dismay will mark the Christ-despisers of this and every other generation, when the Son of God shall come 'in his own glory’ and 'to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe,'” Vol. 3. pp. 603-607.
“The Sonship of God's dear Son, as the Son of God in nature, is of all subjects the most endearing to the church, who are sons by adoption and grace. It opens to the first of all enjoyments in life. Yea, the perfect knowledge and enjoyment of it will be among the highest felicities in the life that is to come. For heaven itself, with all its blessedness, be that blessedness what it may, can have nothing equal to that of the relationship into which the church is brought to all the persons of the Godhead, by virtue of our personal relationship with God's dear Son.” P 607, 8.
“By that glorious act of God's dear Son taking into union with himself our nature, he hath hereby opened a medium of communication to make known (what without such a medium never could be known; the being and nature of God. Hence, though no man (or as it is in the original, oudeis, no one, neither angel or man) hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18). And by making known to the church the personal acts of each, in each person of the Godhead, the people of God find somewhat for the mind to lean upon, for personal communion with each, and with all. So that the children of God, when quickened and regenerated by the Spirit, can and do know, and can and do sweetly and savingly enjoy, communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as the one united source of all grace and salvation. Hence, they feel a blessedness and 'a joy which is unspeakable, and full of glory, receiving the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls.'
“I am well aware how galling these things are to all unrenewed minds. And should this little work fall into the hands of men of this complexion, I am sensible it will not fail to displease. Yea, it is possible it may provoke to many a bitter expression, such as I have heard, and heard indeed until my very flesh hath trembled. The Sonship of God's dear Son, and particularly the atonement of his blood, hath called forth in the lightness of their minds such awful sentiments, as if that precious plan of grace represented God the Son as most amiable, and God the Father inexorable! But amidst this horrid blasphemy, the glorious truth itself stands where it always stood, ‘from the foundation of the world.' (1 Peter 1:19,20; Revelation 8:8.) The Rock of Ages feels no motion from all the dashing waves of the momentary ebbing and flowing of the tide below! Could these men see, (what indeed nothing short of divine illumination can enable them to see) the beautiful order in the economy of grace, they would discover both the original formation of the church in holiness, and the fall and recovery of the church from sin, are equally alike the result of one and the same Jehovah, in his Trinity of Persons; and that the whole is founded in the depth of divine wisdom, to minister equal glory and praise to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Pp. 611,612.
These extracts will speak for themselves. We assent heart and soul to every one of them. They express with a clearness, a power, and a savour far beyond our pen the very faith of our heart, and the very feelings of our soul. O that it might please the Lord to open the eyes of those who deny the true, real, and eternal Sonship of Jesus, to see that glorious truth against which now they fight, and to bow down their hearts to believe it as it is revealed in the word of truth, and experimentally made known to the saints of God.
Please see appendix I for Philpot’s articles that appeared in the Gospel Standard in 1859. This appendix contains the re-start of the controversy from Philpot’s side. See also appendix IX for Philpot’s remarks for 1860 to 1861. In total I have given a great amount of this essay to quotes from Philpot so that he can as it were, speak for himself.
In light of the remarks of Mr. Philpot, Banks remarks here are very illuminating.
This paragraph is exceedingly informative and revealing. It again shows up the fact that C.W. Banks can hold two contradictory facts at the same time. All was sacrificed for the sake of peace and unity. Taken at face value he here on the one hand tells his readers that Mr. Philpot is not exercising a living faith in the gospel because of this Popish vengeful attitude. At the very same time he sides with Philpot. This can be seen where he describes those who oppose Philpot: “his poor brother whose eye-sight may not be so clear, nor whose spiritual perception may not be so high as his own” This is tact acknowledgement that in Banks opinion Philpot is still the master in Israel. Banks as can be seen goes to great lengths to provide an excuse for Philpot. Philpot’s on conduct throughout this controversy shows that up to 1861 at least he never repented of his attitude.
This was a very good thing that Banks did here.
As this clear God glorifying statement is at the heart of what Philpot condemned as the most serious heresy I have emphasized it.
Please note: All text in bold is done by me for emphasis and was not part of the original text unless so noted. RCS
Here again this is very good and faithful of Walter Banks. For once he allows just anger (as when Christ cleansed the temple) to come to the fore. He shows up plainly what Philpot is doing to Jones.
Please see appendix IV for the Hawker’s entire essay.
This statement of Philpot’s is a gross, untruthful defamation. He is so full of pride and hatred that he stoops to the lowest depths to discredit his opposers.
Here is that clearest possible admission that the doctrine of “eternal sonship” is based on human imagination and not on the Bible itself. Also, as Doctor George M. Ella has pointed out using the term “mode” in relation to Christs being is theologically dangerous.
It is far from clear, at least to me what words are Dr. Hawker’s and what words are Wm. C: whoever he was.
This letter goes a long way in showing Mr. Wells humility and kindness, especially at this important time.
• Mr. John Foreman.
I have inserted this here because it shows the true state on Mr. Jones condition and what others including James Well thought of him. This is of as can clearly be seen, the direct opposite of what Mr. Philpot would have us believe.
This clearly shows that Mr. Banks was firmly on the side against James Wells.
Like Philpot, Bidder sinks to the lowest possible slander.
This is a singularly false quotation from Bidder. I have no idea of who he was supposedly quoting as he gives no reference, but this is NOT a quotation from the Bible. Exodus 3:14 reads as follows in the KJV: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” It’s not false in the sense that it is not true but its false to quote it as if it were an actual Bible reference. It’s a deduction from a quote from the Bible. In fact, all Bidder’s many bible references are made to fit his preconceived notions of God’s sonship. Like Philpot he presents them all as if there were no other possible meaning whatsoever.
See also appendix V An Examination of the Words “BEGOTTEN” and “GENERATION”.
The same of course if true of Bidders very harsh words again Wells. Wells reply is of a totally different, Christian, nature.
I start quoting Banks on page 7 and follow through to the end. His remarks start on page 5 so the first part with is not relevant to this controversy is excluded.
How could Banks say this when the truth was being thrown out the window?
I feel that I have given enough of Banks’ theology on this subject. For those who seek more information please refer to the E.V.
In other words, “I think not”
A. The Prologue (30:2-6) Agur begins with a humble confession. He is incapable of understanding the mind of a human being, so how much less would he presume to comprehend the mind of God. All of his study of wisdom has made him feel that he lacked wisdom. If he could not profess to be an expert in wisdom, how much less could he pretend to be an expert on the knowledge of God? The more he learned about God, the less he really knew God. For Agur God was the “Holy One.” The basic idea in the concept of holiness is “separateness.” Morally God transcends man to such a degree that no mortal can fully understand him (30:2-3).
Agur raises a series of five questions which point to the impossibility of any person having perfect knowledge of God (cf. Job 38). First, “Who has ascended up into heaven and descended?” To fully understand God one would have to ascend into heaven. No person had done this. None had descended from heaven at this time save God himself (Gen 11:7; Exod 19:18).
Second, “Who has gathered the wind in his fists?” Obviously man cannot gather up the invisible wind so as to restrain it or to release it at his pleasure. That is an act of God (Amos 4:13; Ps 135:7). Third, “Who has bound the waters in his garment?” This question is clarified by Job 26:8, “He [God] binds up the waters in his thick clouds.” God stores up waters to provide the rain without which existence on earth is impossible. Obviously man cannot do this. Fourth, “Who has established all the ends of the earth?” The reference is to the fixing of the boundaries of the earth as the habitation of the human race, across which the ocean does not trespass. Obviously man had nothing to do with this. The answer to the first four questions is the same: Almighty God!
Fifth, “What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if you know?” If someone asserts that any person possesses these qualifications, then he should name that person. Obviously the question is sarcastic. If such a person existed at any time in the past, then what is the name of his son or descendant? (30:4).
Philosophy cannot lead to the creator. Ultimately, man must be satisfied with that which God has revealed to man in his word. Every word of God is “tried,” i.e., tested and proved to be true. This sentence uses two words which are found nowhere else in Proverbs: “word” (’imrah) and “God” (’eloah). The reference is to the declarations of God in the inspired record, the Torah. Those who take refuge in the God of the Bible find him to be a shield against assaults by the unbelieving. Thus the second half of the verse indicates a second way in which the knowledge of God is obtained, viz., through the experiences of those who trust in the Lord (30:5).
Beyond that word, man dare not tread with speculation about the heavenly mysteries which baffle human comprehension. “Do not add unto his words.” No attempt should be made to supplement the divine revelation with one’s own ideas (cf. Deut 4:2). God’s will, as announced in revelation, is to be simply accepted and acted upon, not watered down, not over strained. The one who is guilty of this faces “rebuke” in the form of some misfortune which would reveal the divine displeasure. Events would prove the pretender to be a “liar,” i.e., the falsity of his unfounded opinion would be made obvious (30:6). Smith, J. E. (1996). The wisdom literature and Psalms (pp. 672-673). College Press Pub. Co.
The above commentary backs up what James Wells is teaching. There are, however, many commentators, especially older ones who take it in the eternal sonship way.
Whether purposely or not including it here gives the impression that James Wells never answered nor could answer the questions when in fact he already answered many of them. I find this unfortunate. It would have been much fairer of Banks to bring this out in his own note.
Psalm 89:18
As far as I can see such a statement as this, has no relevance whatsoever in regard to this controversy at this time. That was at no time questioned by anyone involved.
Please see Appendix VI for a copy of the full review.
As noted at the beginning of this review please see Appendix VI for the full document.
If C.W. Banks really had reviewed this short book, and I must presume that he did, then several facts become evident. First, he was totally closed to any interpretation of Scripture that in any way threated his own personal understanding. Second, he was unfit to deal with this controversy as an editor of a major Christian publication. To refer to such a God glorifying, edifying, scripturally accurate work in such a way without any quotations or real acknowledgement is inexcusable. It’s interesting the Banks allows a second review, again by someone opposed to Mr. Palmer. I quote further below in its proper order. So much for fairness and openness!!
I do not see how this can be true in fact. Banks is always really for peace at any cost, even at the cost of the truth.
This can of course only be done by adhering to the truth and not by watering down the truth.
As he has made abundantly clear, not as an unbiased neutral but as one firmly on the side of Philpot.
As in a previous footnote I again bring to the reader’s attention the just how biased Banks continued to be on this subject.
Thereby ignoring the clear scriptural doctrines Palmer expounded.
Placing Palmers book on one side and Philpot’s “book” on the other it is clear that Philpot’s is by far and away the most un-Christian like possible. Palmer in return is most gracious and fair.
Would that he had told Philpot this in the first place!
The Merriam-webster online dictionary give three meaning for this word:
1 : a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion (as in "every virtue is laudable; kindness is a virtue; therefore kindness is laudable")
2 : a subtle, specious, or crafty argument
3 : deductive reasoning
Notes the “technical” way this person attacks Wells: anything but the scriptures first!
This is of course patently absurd and only in this author’s warped mind.
2. Hebrews. The other three instances of hypostasis are all in Hebrews. The usage is simplest in 1:3, where the term is parallel to doxa and relates to God’s essence. “Transcendent reality” is perhaps closest to what is meant. Christ as Son reflects God’s glory and bears the impress of this reality (Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (pp. 1238-1239). W.B.
Eerdmans.)
In context James Wells is correctly paraphrasing the verse, he does not quote it verbatim. He said: “He, (John) in his first chapter does not call the Saviour the Son of God, until he views him as man, as well as God. Hence, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;” he does not say the Word was the Son of God, but that “the Word was God.” Then when the Word is made flesh, then we behold the glory of the only begotten of the Father; no eternal generation here.”
As in every case he simply reads out any idea of complexity as God and Man and just as Philpot does splits the two as far apart as possible!
As can be clearly seen this is anything but a “short” review!
What nonsense is this? It is in no way at all scriptural or Christian.
Again, he is pre-judged but false judges, just as our Lord was.
This is of course what he himself is doing and that without doubt! No wonder Banks likes him so much as he does exactly what Banks does: without true scriptural backing he clings to his own ideas on the sonship.
These are gross misstatements of the truth as it ignores the complexity of Christs person and what Mr. Crowther, Well &etc. really taught.
This is sinful human logic! It is a demonstrated fact that the complex person of Christ the God-man is what the Holy Spirit is teaching here. Some of what he says is heresy.
Here he lays bare his heart: humanism.
Again, and again human logic placed over the very Word of God.
Of course, they do and that is not that point in dispute!
This is exactly what Philpot did: forcing the Word of God into a predefined human understanding.
Gospel Standard: March 1859 Pages 88-98
Please see my editor’s not above.
* Our space does not admit of our opening up and working out the above scriptures; but they all deserve the most attentive examination and consideration, as witnessing to the above declaration.
All of the above is more or less superfluous. Any Christian would agree to it all.
As elsewhere in this document all emphasis is my own.
This is a very ambiguous statement. To my knowledge as I demonstrate in this document, all parties in the controversy believe this statement and more importantly the scriptures. Any attempt on either side to say otherwise is unjust and false. The point of controversy is about exactly what “The Son of God” means. Is Christ such as a result of his complex person (God and man) or of his very nature apart from his humanity. Philpot as will become clear takes the latter view and that emphatically so.
Philpot, both here and by what follows is stating his own doctrinal beliefs: i.e., that Christ’s humanity has nothing whatsoever to do with his being “the Son of God”. To Philpot, as expressed here the sonship lies wholly with his divine nature from all eternity.
* The literal meaning of the Greek word is, “distinctly marked out,” or “clearly defined.”
Explaining or defending his own view is one thing, defaming the righteous in this gross manner is another altogether.
Yet again he is clearly defining his own position.
Again, any true Christian would agree, certainly those who Philpot accuses would. So far, we have had nothing of a “Review” of either work. The only purpose I can see of his thus quoting Owen is to indirectly accuse his opponents of being Socinian. Thereby giving the unsupported assumption that Owen himself opposes them.
Gospel Standard: April 1859 Pages 121-131
Here as in what follows Philpot grossly minimizes the uniqueness of the God-man mediator
In so saying he makes Robert Hawker (on this subject) to be a heretic even though Philpot erroneously he says Hawker agrees with him. Many in this controversy came to the same conclusion as Hawker and many other Godly saints from all ages.
This is a human devised expression, and it is not found in the Bible.
This is true, YES, but only where we are truly guided by the Holy Spirit into these mysteries.
Again and again, he condemns his fellow believers because they disagree with his interpretations.
This is an interesting and important paragraph. Philpot in this essay uses an immense number of scripture references. In almost every case, if not every case he treats each as a “proof” text for his own personal views. Yet here he admits that many of them could bear a different interpretation, other than his view. Hence his necessity to bolster his humanistic, perhaps academic would be a better word, use of reasoning to carry his point.
Gospel Standard May, 1859: pages 155-163
This is another telling sentence. As a “self-confession” of Philpot’s own conduct throughout this statement could not be bettered. Just compare his spirit compared to his adversaries within his own denomination throughout this document.
Here as in so many cases he imposes his own per-conceived concepts into the various scriptures.
It’s never what we “think”; it’s what the Holy Spirit reveals when and how He pleases. It’s as Paul said “a mystery” revealed by God alone.
This is an obvious dumbing down of the scriptures to give the human mind superiority. It’s a well-known fact that what is a simple and literal meaning to one may mean something very different to another even if both are truly saved. Scripture uses many various techniques to teach us the truth. Like so much of what Philpot says this is a half-truth or rather part of the truth.
Just to take this single scripture as an example: What was it that the apostle saw and heard? Whether we take Philpot’s rule (the obvious and natural meaning) or not they saw and heard the God-man mediator.
Gospel Standard October, 1859 Pages 312-323
I would like to point out the fact that there is a great deal of truth and blessedness in what Philpot teaches here.
* These words are often incorrectly quoted, by which much of their force and meaning is lost, “And this is life eternal, to know thee,” &c. But the Lord's words are, “that they might know thee.” In the original the article stands before “life eternal,” so that the meaning of the whole passage is, “And this is the life eternal which he has to give, that they whom thou hast given him may know thee,” &c. He thus explains what this eternal life is, and that it is given to the objects of his Father's love and choice, that they, and they only, might have the inward and unfailing possession of it in time and for eternity.
* We hinted our intention to publish those papers, if the Lord enabled, in a more complete form. This we still hope, with his blessing, to do; but continued absence from home, through ministerial engagements, has at present prevented us from carrying our purpose into execution. To write on so deep and important a subject, especially in the face of the opposition which those papers have called forth, demands much meditation, prayer, searching the Scriptures, and a seeking of wisdom and unction from above, all which are best obtained and maintained in the quiet of one's own home, and in comparative rest from ministerial engagements in other places.
No bible verse is given here because this phrase in not in the Bible. It is in various confessions of faith.
Some care should be taken in understanding what Philpot is teaching. The problem is that he over stresses the divine nature of God and seeks to minimize his human nature. In effect he seeks to push the idea that Christ is the “Son of God” only by his divine nature; his human nature being necessary for our salvation but having nothing to do with him being the “Son of God” as such. This comes out in a clearer manner as he continues his discourse. I have added extensive footnotes to help both myself and my readers to better understand what the Holy Spirit teaching us on this matter in the Bible. With this caveat there is a great deal of good in his teaching as I mentioned earlier in the Appendix.
The First London Baptist Confession of Faith (1646) in article 16 specially speaks of Christ as a human person when it states: That He might be a prophet every way complete, it was necessary He should be God, and also that He should be man; For unless He had been God, He could never have perfectly understood the will of God; and unless He had been man, He could not suitably have unfolded it in His own person to men. John 1:18; Acts 3:22; Deut. 18:15; Heb. 1:1.
It further elaborates on this in two notes under that article: That Jesus Christ is God is wonderfully and clearly expressed in the Scriptures. He is called the mighty God, Isa. 9:6. That Word was God, John 1:1. Christ, who is God over all, Rom 9:5. God manifested in the flesh, 1 Tim. 3:16. The same is very God, 1 John 5:20. He is the first, Rev. 1:8. He gives being to all things, and without Him was nothing made, John 1:2. He forgiveth sins, Matt. 9:6. He is before Abraham, John 8:58. He was and is, and ever will be the same, Heb. 13:8. He is always with His to the end of the world, Matt. 28:20. Which could not be said of Jesus Christ, if He were not God. And to the Sone He saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever, Heb. 1:8, John 1:18.
Also, Christ is not only perfectly God, but perfect man, made of a woman, Gal. 4:4. Made of the seed of David, Rom 1:3. Coming out of the loins of David, Acts 2:30. Of Jesse and Judah, Acts 13:23. In that the children were partakers of flesh and blood He Himself likewise took part with them, Heb. 2:14. He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, verse 16. So that we are bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh, Eph. 5:30. So that He that sanctifieth, and they that are sanctified are all of one, Heb.2:11. See Acts 3:22, Deut. 18:15; Heb. 1:1.
Hypostatic union (from the Greek: unooTaoiq hypostasis, "person, subsistence") is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis, or individual personhood.[1] Ref. 1 - Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology. 1947, reprinted 1993; ISBN 0-8254-2340-6. Chapter XXVI ("God the Son: The Hypostatic Union"), pp. 382-384. (Google Books) Cited from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypostatic_union
The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man.
Jesus’ two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity. Jesus sometimes operated with the limitations of humanity (John 4:6, 19:28) and other times in the power of His deity (John 11:43; Matthew 14:18-21). In both, Jesus’ actions were from His one Person. Jesus had two natures, but only one personality.
The doctrine of the hypostatic union is an attempt to explain how Jesus could be both God and man at the same time. It is ultimately, though, a doctrine we are incapable of fully understanding. It is impossible for us to fully understand how God works. We, as human beings with finite minds, should not expect to totally comprehend an infinite God. Jesus is God’s Son in that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). But that does not mean Jesus did not exist before He was conceived. Jesus has always existed (John 8:58, 10:30). When Jesus was conceived, He became a human being in addition to being God (John 1:1, 14).
Jesus is both God and man. Jesus has always been God, but He did not become a human being until He was conceived in Mary. Jesus became a human being in order to identify with us in our struggles (Hebrews 2:17) and, more importantly, so that He could die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins (Philippians 2:5-11). In summary, the hypostatic union teaches that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, that there is no mixture or dilution of either nature, and that He is one united Person, forever. Cited from: https://www.gotquestions.org/hypostatic-union.html
This is a super simplistic understanding that 1. Is not even true of the Greek word translated in the KJV as “thing” and 2. Does not do justice to what the angel said to Mary in the context. Frist than to the Greek: I am not a Greek scholar, therefore I am not speaking here dogmatically. This is just my impression. I believe the King James translators used the word “thing” to stress the idea that this passage is not talking about two personalities. As I show below Robert Hawker was happy with that translation. My point here is just to show what the literal Greek is.
1080. Y^vvaw gennao, ghen-nah'-o; from a var. of 1085; to procreate (prop. of the father, but by extens. of the mother); fig. to regenerate:— bear, beget, be born, bring forth, conceive, be delivered of, gender, make, spring. (Strong, J. (1996). In The New Strong’s Dictionary of Hebrew and Greek Words. Thomas Nelson.)
1080 YEvvaw [gennao /ghen^nah^o/] v. From a variation of 1085; TDNT 1:665; TDNTA 114; GK 1164; 97 occurrences; AV translates as “begat” 49 times, “be born” 39 times, “bear” twice, “gender” twice, “bring forth” once, “be delivered” once, and translated miscellaneously three times. 1 of men who fathered children. 1A to be born. 1B to be begotten. 1B1 of women giving birth to children. 2 metaph. 2A to engender, cause to arise, excite. 2B in a Jewish sense, of one who brings others over to his way of life, to convert someone. 2C of God making Christ his son. 2D of God making men his sons through faith in Christ’s work. (Strong, J. (1995). In Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.)
For reference the NASB95 translates the work as “child”.
Secondly to the context:
Shall overshadow thee (EnioKiaoEi [episkiasei]). A figure of a cloud coming upon her. Common in ancient Greek in the sense of obscuring and with accusative as of Peter’s shadow in Acts 5:15. But we have seen it used of the shining bright cloud at the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:5=Mark 9:7=Luke 9:34). Here it is like the Shekinah glory which suggests it (Ex. 40:38) where the cloud of glory represents the presence and power of God. Holy, the Son of God (aYiov uioq 0eou [Hagion huios theou]). Here again the absence of the article makes it possible for it to mean “Son of God.” See Matt. 5:9. But this title, like the Son of Man (o uioq tou avQpwnou [Ho huios
Gospel Standard Nov. 1859 pages 348-356
He uses a very weak “foresee”. Foreordained by God’s decree seems better.
Is there a limiting of Christ’s complexity here?
* It is in the Psalms, especially Psalms 22, 40, and 69, that the inward experience of the Messed Lord as a man of sorrows is set forth.
Gospel Standard Dec. 1859 pages 372-382
* Though we have in our preceding Numbers used the word “immortal* as applicable to the sacred humanity of the blessed Lord, we are well aware that it is a term not fully appropriate; for the word immortal strictly means not capable of death and is in this sense applied to the soul of man as not only not dying with the body, but not capable of dying.
In this sense, the humanity of the blessed Lord was not immortal, for it could and did die. If such a word were admissible, “unmortal” or “non-mortal” would be a preferable term denying that it was mortal, and yet not asserting that it could not die. The main difficulty arises from the inherent defect of human language as applied to heavenly mysteries. The mind naturally contemplates only two states of existence, 1. What must necessarily die; and 2. “What cannot possibly die. The first it terms “mortal,” the second it calls “immortal.” A third idea, viz., that of a body which does not necessarily die, and yet is capable of dying, as being a conception lying out of its reach, it has invented no word properly to express.
* Those who deny the eternal Sonship of Jesus rob him of his grace as well as of his glory, by diminishing his sufferings, and thus really strip away the greatness, and consequently much of the merit of his sacrifice. It was because he was God's own true and proper Son he so deeply, so keenly felt his wrathful displeasure. A Son by office, by mere name, without any filial relationship but a bare title which might have been any other, could not feel towards his adopted Father what the true, the proper, the only-begotten Son of God felt to his heavenly Father. One error always lets in another, and thus we see that the denial of the eternal Sonship of Christ lowers and disparages the greatness, and consequently the merit of the atonement. Let the deniers of the eternal Sonship look to this.
* The margin reads, “for his piety,” but the truer and more literal meaning is, “on account of his reverential fear.” “Had God in honor.” Luther.
What an extraordinarily thing for Philpot to say: What does he think “nature” is?
* If space admitted, we could easily show from those Psalms in which, beyond all controversy, Christ speaks that all the graces which we have here enumerated dwelt in him and were expressed by him. Let our spiritual readers examine Psalms 18., 22., 40., 69., all of which the most indubitable external and internal evidence assigns to Christ, with an eye to this particular point, and trace it for themselves.
+ Thus in reading David's deliverances and blessings, though we know that they were really David's, and truly felt and acknowledged by him as such, yet we may often say, “A greater than David was here.” Thus compare Psalms 18 16-19 with verses 43,44.
* Our blessed Lord had no experience of regeneration or of repentance; for the one is the quickening of the soul out of death, and the other implies the existence of sin. These two things are to be carefully distinguished from his experience of faith, trust, &c.
It should be noted again about what he is really saying: He is saying that anyone, at all, who does not believe exactly what he believes cannot be saved. Therefore, to him, his opponents in the E.V. cannot be saved.
G.S. February 1860 pgs. 61-66
* When we took the opportunity of Dr. Cole's work to lay before our readers some thoughts upon the sacred humanity of the blessed Lord, as a sequel to what we had written on his eternal Sonship, we were not in the least aware that the pamphlet was originally written by Dr. C. against two ministers whom we much esteem and love as servants of God, Mr. John Vinall, of Lewes, and Mr. David Fenner, of Hastings. No doubt these good men, and eminent servants of God, erred in using the word "mortal" as applicable to the sacred body of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it was more from the imperfection of human language than because they believed there was any inherent mortality in the humanity of Jesus.
Our object, in taking up Dr. Cole's work, was not to revive a forgotten controversy, still less to wound the feelings of those two good and gracious men to whom we have referred, but to lay the truth before our readers which Dr. Cole has so ably handled, as well as to furnish a convenient heading as the title of a Review.
Please see Philpot’s “Review II” above.
Please see the December part of Philpot’s “Review II” above.
+ As the blessed Lord breathed out his life about the ninth hour, or three o'clock in the afternoon, and the preparation of the Passover began about four o'clock, it would seem that his dead body did not remain above, and most probably under, an hour upon the cress before taken down for burial.
* It is remarkable that three of the evangelists use three distinct words, (in the original,) to express the voluntary way in which the Lord Jesus yielded up his life. In Matthew 27:51, it is" yielded up the ghost,” literally, "dismissed his spirit;" in Mark 15:38 and Luke 23:47 it is the same word, "he. gave up the ghost," literally, breathed it out," and John 19:31, "gave up the ghost," literally, "delivered it,” all implying a voluntary act.
I’m not disagreeing with Philpot is what he is teaching here. I just want to point out that God is not in any way dependent of what we can only speculate upon. For example, Lazarus, as John 11 tells us lay dead in the tomb for three days. When Jesus called to him, he came forth, apparently in perfect condition. Also, as we are told many other rose from the dead as well. God is simply not limited in any way by our sinful logic. Faith is the gift of God, not something we can ever simply manufacture at will. RCS
As I expressed earlier, he means all those who like Wells reject his view of the Sonship of Christ.
Aside from the very intense presumption that anyone who disagrees with him is outside of and against all that he is saying, there is much good in what he has written so far.
Here as in many other places Philpot strives to drive as big a wedge as possible between the two natures of Christ. His overwhelming desire to prove the eternal generation of Christ drives this theme. John Gill in his comments on this verse does a much better job of explaining this topic. Gill says: “The purchaser is God, Christ who is God over all, blessed forever, not a creature; that could never have made such a purchase, it could not have purchased a single sheep or lamb in this flock, no man can redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him,
much less the whole flock; but Christ being God, was able to make such a purchase, and he has actually made it, and given a sufficient price for it; not to Satan, with whom these sheep were a prey, and from whom they are taken in virtue of the ransom given; but to God, from whom they strayed, against whom they sinned, and whose law they broke; and this price was not silver and gold, nor men, nor people: but Christ himself, his life and blood; and which were his own, the human nature, the blood of which was shed, and its life given being in union with his divine person, and was in such sense his own, the property of the son of God, as the life and blood of no mere man are theirs: and this purchase now being made in this way, and by such means, is a very proper one; it is not made without price, but with an invaluable one; and it is a legal purchase, a valuable consideration being given for it, perfectly equivalent to it; and therefore is a complete one, there is nothing wanting to make it more firm, it is a finished purchase; and it is a very peculiar one, it is a peculiar people that are purchased, called the purchased possession, Ephes. 1:14 and a peculiar price which is paid for it; there is no other of the same kind, nor anything like it, and it is made by a peculiar person, one that is God and man in one person.” (Gill, J. (1809). An Exposition of the New Testament (Vol. 2, p. 341). Mathews and Leigh.)
113 Surely this is gibberish! There is only one mystical union. He deliberately introduces a pre-union before the only union Scripture teaches: This is because of his faulty theology.
Question: Surly there is no measure, all equally share in Christ?????
He is not only talking about progressive sanctification here but of personal sanctification perfected through our personal suffering.
It was of course far, far more than that!
Philpot for his own purposes as I have sought to explain wants to undo the complexity of Jesus nature and concentrate on the ‘eternal sonship’ part. Here he hammers away at this to such an extent that he grossly misrepresents the Lord Jesus Christ. For an example of the truth, here is a quotation from one author who presents the scriptural truth:
Again, despite all his forceful logic he is clearly dead wrong in all of this. Those who would worship the Lord must do so in Spirit and in Truth, not in the flesh as flesh.
* The Lord's first appearance was to Mary Magdalene; (Mark 16: 9-11; John 20:14-18;) his second to the disciples journeying to Emmaus; (Mark 16:12 ; Luke 24:13-32;) his third to Simon Peter; (Luke 24:33,34; 1 Corinthians 15:5;) his fourth to the eleven disciples in the absence of Thomas; (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:19-25;) his fifth to the eleven again, when Thomas was present; (Mark 16:14; John 20:27-29;) his sixth to the women who had at first visited the sepulcher; (Matthew 28:9, 10 ;) his seventh to the apostles and five hundred brethren at once in Galilee; (Matthew 28:16-20; 1 Corinthians 15:6 ;) his eighth to the disciples when fishing on the lake of Galilee;
(John 21:1-24;) his ninth to James the Lord's brother; (1 Corinthians 15:7;) and his tenth and last to all the apostles assembled at Jerusalem just before his ascension. (Luke 24:44-4!); Acts 1:4-8; 1 Corinthians 15:7.) These are the
“many infallible proofs” of which the Holy Ghost speaks (Acts 1:3) that he was really and truly risen from the dead.
* The word, “sorrows of death,” (Psalms 18:4; 116:3,) to which Peter evidently alludes, is literally, in the Hebrew, “cords of death.”
It’s difficult, for me a least, to get at what Philpot is doing. Why separate to such an extent the blessed work of Christ in the Covenant of redemption? As I commented on before the only reason I can think of is to get away from the scriptural doctrine of the complexity of Christ as God-man mediator in all the work of salvation. RCS
It seems very strange that he leaves out completely the “Comforter”: the Holy Spirit through who Christ is revealed.
This statement reveals server things about what he is seeking to do here. It shows clearly his overwhelming desire to separate the physical manhood of Christ from any thought of the sonship of Christ. Like I have shown elsewhere he, like C. H. Spurgeon, sees the “blood” as just that physical real blood separated from form Christ the God-man mediator.
This is not the Holy Spirit he is talking about here.
This contradicts what he said earlier of Christs body being identical in heaven: 3. The next thing that we notice is, the identity of the Lord's risen body. It is a cardinal, fundamental article of our most holy faith that the same actual, identical body was raised from the grave which was deposited in it . If erroneous men had not indulged their vain speculations about the risen body of the Lord Jesus, we might well wonder at their daring attempts to pull up the landmarks which the Holy Ghost has so plainly set up in the word of truth. The Lord never had, never could have, two different bodies, one before, another after the resurrection. We might as well talk of his having two different souls, one soul for earth and another soul for heaven. The identity of his body is as indispensable to his still being Jesus, “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,” as the identity of his soul, no less certain, no less necessary, and no less precious. But because, after the resurrection, the Lord came miraculously into the place where the disciples were assembled, the doors being shut, and vanished out of the sight of the disciples at Emmaus, and because they cannot conceive how he can wear a human body in heaven, such as he had upon earth, men who would be wise above what is written have assumed that a change took place in that body, and that it no longer consisted of flesh, and bones, and blood, as before, but was, as it were, transmuted into some aerial, celestial substance, they know not what, but such as they imagine would be more fitting to inhabit the courts of heaven. Now, nothing can be more plain, if we are willing to follow the footsteps of the Holy Ghost, than that it was the same identical body which hung on the cross that rose from the dead. It would seem, as if to stop all cavil, and crush in the very bud all such erroneous speculations as we have alluded to, the Lord himself gave again and again the most incontrovertible proofs after his resurrection that he was the same Jesus as before, and not an- other, and that he were the same body in all respects without change or alteration. He did not appear for a few moments only, as if “showing himself through the lattice,” and then hastily withdrawing, but conversed with them most familiarly, and ate with his disciples after the resurrection; (Luke 24:42,43; Acts 10:41;) and for this very purpose, that they might be standing and undeniable eye and ear witnesses that it was indeed the very same Jesus with whom they had consorted before his crucifixion.
To be consistent with himself Philpot should teach that all saved people in heaven will have their very own bodies in heaven in order to be tike their Lord in heaven.
This astonishing concentration upon the purely physical is not even consistent with the very passages he proceeds to quote. It’s so absolutely important to Philpot that he willingly contradicts but himself and the scriptures.
The absolute facts of all aspects of Christs work of redemption are in no way what soever disputed by any of those who Philpot is so vigorously opposing. He is totally obsessed with the eternal sonship part of the controversy that it spills over into everything he touches at that time. This is clearly shown in the quotations that follow.
Does he even believe in the Perseverance of the saints?
Does he forget Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Do we or the original disciples need to “see” to believe? I think not.
NOW we need faith rather than facts “i.e., a strong foundation”.
Philpot goes on at some length, but this is a good point to stop and think about what he is proposing as truth. This whole long section which of course continues for some time is full of absolute illogicalities. Quoting one group of scriptures he swings wildly to one extreme that is unsupported by the scriptures themselves. He then for a while takes up other scriptures and even more wildly swings to the opposite direction. It’s all to scripture fit in to his predefined meaning at great cost to Christs entire work and exaltation as well as the believer’s true union with Christ. For example, by his false logic its inescapable the all believers must have a body in heaven the is as identical in all possible aspects as Christs body is in heaven (i.e., as he explains it being identical). He is exactly like Saruman in the Lord of the Rings. With is coat of many colors he seeks to take individual sets of scriptures one at a time. In each case he wants them to prove on “truth” but to free to then speak to a different set of scriptures: making them say the opposite.
In the following footnotes I give some detailed information about some of the scriptures Philpot quotes. He is a master at making scripture say what he wants it to say. The fact is that scripture is silent on Jesus actual ascension. in Acts 1 we are given an eyewitness account of what happened in the sight of his apostles. Beyond that we can guess and speculate. This is a natural desire as all true Christians want to glorify Christ as much as possible. There is nothing wrong with doing this perse. Philpot however goes far beyond this. He deliberately puts 2 Thessalonians 1:7 in the middle of his arguments. In any way he can he pushes speculation into the realm of fact as much as possible. Very great care is needed to not be taken up with his arguments and excessive quoting of scripture. I hope that the following foot notes help the reader. As explained there in God’s eternal view Christ has been risen from the beginning in the Covenant of Redemption. RCS
PSALM 68:18
Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them.
This is the verse of verses, which serves as a key to unlock the sacred treasury of this whole Psalm. And the HOLY GHOST himself is his own commentator. By his servant, the apostle Paul, he hath taught the church how to apply it to the person of our LORD JESUS CHRIST; Ephesians 4:8, &c. Hence, by comparing these scriptures, and looking up for his divine teaching, who is the almighty Author of both, we are admitted into a blessed apprehension of the things here recorded, concerning CHRIST. Reader! do observe, in what words the thing is spoken of, thou hast ascended. Whereas this was written by the spirit of prophecy, at least a thousand years before CHRIST was born. But to His almighty eye, before whom things past, present, or future, form but one object, the event is so sure, that what he hath counseled must stand, and be as certain as if finished. The ascension of the LORD JESUS is the subject here contemplated; but the whole of CHRIST'S triumphs over death, hell, and the grave, together with his exalted state at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, is included in this hymn of praise. Psalm 47:5-7. Precious thought to the believer! JESUS, thy JESUS, thy surety, the Captain of thy salvation, hath led captive the devil and all his host, that led thee captive, and hath destroyed forever the dominion of sin and the grave. Hallelujah! I desire the Reader, in comparing this verse with the parallel one, in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, to observe the variation of expression. It is beautifully diversified, as if GOD the HOLY GHOST would have the church take notice of each particularly. (Hawker, R. (n.d.). Poor Mans Commentary Old Test. Hawker.)
B. Circumstances of fulfillment (1:7b) 7b “When the Lord Jesus is revealed” (lit., “at the revelation of the Lord Jesus”) identifies the time of God’s righteous judgment. This second advent will occasion a “paying back” (v. 6) of both the troublers and the troubled.
As defined by these Epistles, the objects of Christ’s revelation are twofold. On the one hand, he will appear to those who are in Christ. It will be an appearance that means rest (1:7a) when he comes “from heaven” (cf. 1 Thess 4:16) to meet the dead and living in Christ in the air (1 Thess 4:17) and gather them to himself (2 Thess 2:1). This begins their unending fellowship with him (1 Thess 4:17; 5:10) and participation in his glory (2 Thess 1:10, 12). Paul hoped to be alive at this time (“and to us as well;” cf. “we who are still alive, who are left,” 1 Thess 4:15, 17).
The other group on whom God’s righteous judgment and the revelation of the Lord Jesus will make their impact are “those who trouble you” (v. 6). The consequences for these will be prolonged and painful. Christ will not be unveiled personally to them at first, but will begin by subjecting earth’s rebels to a period of intense “trouble.” The human misery of those days is and will be without parallel in the annals of history (Dan 12:1; Mark 13:19). It will grow into a dominant factor during the time of “the rebellion and the man of lawlessness” (2:3). As the period runs its course, it will witness the abomination of desolation (2:4; cf. Dan 9:27; 11:31, 36; 12:11; Matt 24:15) and the Satanic deception of an unbelieving world (2:9, 10). All this is the initial phase of God’s vengeance (“he will punish,” v. 8; lit., “rendering vengeance,”) against a world that persists in rebellion (cf. Luke 21:22; Rev 6:10; 19:2). (Thomas, R. L. (1981). 2 Thessalonians. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon (Vol. 11, p. 311). Zondervan Publishing House.)
The only verses here of any possible importance are 5-7. Philpot himself uses the word “intimated” and Robert Hawker agrees as far as that in the following quote.
PSALM 47:5-7 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet. (6) Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises. (7) For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.
This, if confined literally to the carrying up of the ark, would not be strictly true; for though there were shootings and the sound of the trumpet at that festival, yet GOD himself could not be said to have gone up, unless we still apply GOD'S presence to this symbol of it; 2 Samuel 6:15. In like manner, if we apply it to the ascension of CHRIST, in which we may truly say, GOD is gone up, yet
upon this occasion it is not said that there was any sound of a trumpet or shoutings among the astonished disciples. But notwithstanding this, there might have been shoutings in the upper world beyond the hearing of mortals. If the sons of GOD shouted for joy at creation, as we are told they did, can we suppose they would be silent when redemption work was completed? And if at the return of the LORD JESUS to judgment he is to descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of GOD, is it not probable that the heavenly regions shouted for joy, when CHRIST the GOD-man, returned from the vast work which he had accomplished in our salvation? Job 38:7. 1 Thessalonians 4:26. (Hawker, R. (n.d.). Poor Mans Commentary Old Test. Hawker.)
140 an indirect, usually subtle suggestion, indication, or hint (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
He is speaking about the Sonship controversy and his extremely active and vigorous role in the same. From at least mid-1859 to well into 1861 he was occupied in condemning any who opposed his eternal sonship doctrine. He goes on to express a sharp demarcation from that topic to the one in hand. He now says that he needs even more of God’s grace than before! What then is he saying that he had before? The fact is, as I continue to seek to show, that he never really left off the subject of his view of eternal sonship. All he has to say is in relation to a greater or less extent to Christ’s humanity. This is part of his “complex person” and therefore central to the controversy as a whole.
This whole introduction is both important and instructive. First, notice that he completely ignores one of most important reasons why Christ lived those 33 years on earth. He is the second Adam even in his union as the Godman mediator. His life and teaching while on earth is our standard of what true perfection is. It’s obviously true that we must worship and contemplate Jesus exalted at the right hand of God. But, however keeping in mind his sinless and holy life while on earth. Philpot again want to drive a wedge between Christ as a complex person. He seeks to see just one or the other side but not both together. Secondly what about Paul’s words in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Any true Christian knows something of the depths of sin that dwells within, without this graphic description before us. Philpot himself admits all this when he says: “These thoughts, though at first sight perhaps somewhat discursive and foreign to our subject...”
This is plain and simple error of the greatest degree. This is how Philpot wants it to be for his own present purposes of breaking up the complex Person of Christ. Christ’s mediatorial kingdom, however, is from all eternity. One source, which quotes even more scriptures than Philpot himself says, speaking of this one aspect of his kingdom:
III. Christ’s Mediatorial Kingdom is Everlasting.
III. It is everlasting. Christ was appointed to it from all eternity, Ps 2:6-8; Prov 8:23; Mic 5:2. He began to execute his kingly office immediately after the fall, Gen 3:8-19. He executed it all along under the Old Testament, in taking Adam, Noah, Abraham, and their families, into a church state, Gen 3:24; Gen 4:3-4; Gen 9; Gen 12-28;—in prescribing laws to the Hebrews in the wilderness, Exod 15 through Deut 31;—in appointing the form and service of Solomon’s temple, 1 Chron 17; 1 Chron 22-26; 1 Kings 5-9.
In his incarnation, he was born a king, Matt 2:2. He was acknowledged as such by the wise men, Matt 2:1-2,11; by Nathaniel, John 1:49; and by the Syrophenician woman, Matt 15:22; by blind men, Matt 9:27; Matt 20:30-31; by mariners, Matt 8:27; by the crucified thief, Luke 23:42; by Pilate, John 19:19; by angels, Luke 1:31-33; Luke 2:10-11; and by his Father, Matt 17:5. In his state of humiliation, he acted as King of his church, in instituting ordinances, appointing officers, and issuing forth commandments in his own name, Matt 10; Matt 16:18-19; Matt 18:15-20; Matt 26:26-28; Matt 5-7; Luke 6; Luke 10;—in dislodging devils, Matt 4:25; Matt 12:28, etc.; in repeatedly purging the Jewish temple from buyers and sellers, John 2:13-17; Matt 21:12-13;—in triumphantly riding to Jerusalem on an ass, Matt 21; John 12; Zech 9:9; in conquering and triumphing over his enemies on the cross, Col 2:14-15; Gen 3:15.—In, and after his resurrection, he was more solemnly invested with royal power, Matt 28:18-20; Phil 2:8-11; Acts 5:31; Acts 2:36; 1 Pet 1:21; 1 Pet 3:18,21-22; Eph 1:20-23; Ps 47:5-7; Ps 24:7-10; Ps 68:18; Ps 110:1-7.
In his exalted state of royalty, he appointed the form and laws of his New Testament church, John 20:21-22; Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:3-4,8; Mark 16:15-18; 1 Cor 12:28-29; 1 Cor 11:23-29; Eph 4:11-12; he hath and shall govern her to the end of the world, Matt 28:20; Ps 89:37; 2 Sam 7:13; Isa 9:7; 1 Cor 11:23,26. At the last day, he will judge the world; and thereafter continue his reign through all eternity, Ps 50:2-6. Matt 25:31-46; Rev 20:11-15; Ps 45:6-7; Ps 89:37; 2 Sam 7:13; Dan 2:44; Dan 7:14,27; Luke 1:33; Isa 9:7; 1 Thess 4:17.
At the end of the world he will account to his Father for his management in time, present all his redeemed, perfect in holiness and happiness, and change his present form of government, 1 Cor 15:24-28; but will for ever retain his kingly power. His enemies, being then all conquered, and under his feet, will not be able to dethrone him, John 16:33; Col 2:15; Heb 2:18; Isa 25:8; Ps 110:5-6; 1 Cor 15:25. His subjects will not seek to dethrone him, Isa 54:9-10; Isa 61:10; Isa 26:2; Jer 32:39-40. Nor will his Father attempt it, Ps 45:6; Heb 1:8; Ps 89:3-4,28. Nor would it be for the honour of God or the benefit of his people, that he should be deprived of his peculiar honours of reward, while they enjoy the glories which he purchased.
(https://purelypresbyterian.com/2018/04/09/christs-mediatorial-dominion-and-two-kingdoms/ April 9, 2008 by Paul J. Barth)
Here again in these two bolded instances and really in the whole context, he is presenting all these scriptures in light of his idea of “eternal generation”. It is another clear instance of his separating the complex person of the God-man mediator into two separate parts as much as possible. Scripture on the other hand does just the opposite.
I have consulted various commentaries to refresh my mind on the passages concerning the great wealth of Solomon. As best as I can determine Philpot is very much overreaching in his use of this throne for his own purposes: again, to stress the humanity of Christ. Gill seems to take the analogy as far as scripture allows when he says: “Ver. 18. Moreover, the king made a great throne of ivory, &c.] To sit on and judge his people; and ivory being white, may denote the purity, justice, and equity with which he judged; the white throne in Rev. 20:11. may be an allusion to this; the ivory he had from Tarshish, ver. 22. and overlaid it with the best gold: for the greater splendour and majesty of it; not that he covered it all over, for then the ivory would not be seen, but interlined it, or studded it with it, whereby it appeared the more beautiful and magnificent. Such a throne of gold and ivory was decreed to C^sar by the Romans.” (Gill, J. (1810). An Exposition of the Old Testament (Vol. 2, pp. 719-720).
Mathews and Leigh.)
As he does over and over again, Philpot puts this in purely humanistic terms, as if none of this happened until that exact moment in time. For example, Paul in Ephesians 2:4-6 says: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:” The actions of three persons of the Godhead in the covenant of redemption are in God’s decree perfect and complete and always have been. By faith we look at the whole finished work of Christ as both God and man.
I have, in my work on this essay, turned multiple times to this section in Philpot’s. It just does not seem to me to be theologically correct. With this in mind I give the following quote from a commentary on Hebrews 9:26. His comments on the whole of chapter is valuable. Hopefully this brief quote with aide the reader in this matter:
26. There was no difficulty for Jewish minds in a constant repetition of sacrifices since a constant supply of sacrificial animals was available. But the problem arose over the death of Christ, for in the nature of the case this could not be repeated. What the readers needed to know was that one sacrifice was adequate for continual access. The writer implies that if the offering had been repeatedly made it would have involved Christ in repeated suffering. He does not refer to repeated deaths, for this would be unintelligible, but he clearly implies it. By this means he shows that Christ is continually before the face of God, which shows the sacrifice to be sufficient. The effectiveness of that offering is always before the Father’s eyes. But why does the writer suggest that suffering would be implied since the foundation of the world? It is implied, rather than explicitly stated, that the sacrifice of Christ, if repeatable, would have needed to begin from the dawn of human history and to continue throughout the ages. Since, however, the self-offering of Christ could happen only once in history, the timing of the event was attributable only to the perfect wisdom of God. The writer does not discuss why the event did not happen as soon as sin was committed. He is more concerned about the nature of the offering.
The words But as it is call the readers away from speculation to historical event. However intriguing it might be to consider why God chose one particular time in history rather than another, it is an established fact that he did. The writer dates the event at the end of the age, which is reminiscent of his opening phrase ‘in these last days’ in 1:2, although rather different from it. He evidently regards the atonement as the climax of the age just ended, since a new era has now begun on the strength of Christ’s sacrifice. Several features about the atonement are here summarily presented. The first concerns the manifestation of Christ (he has appeared, pephanerotai). This connecting of the sacrificial offering with the incarnation at once places the event in history, among men. The second facet is the finality of the offering—once for all, an echo of 7:27. This is the exact opposite of the ‘repeatedly’ of verse 25, which related to the offerings of the Aaronic high priests. The phrase stresses the complete adequacy of the sacrifice of Christ.
The third point is the effect of the sacrifice—to put away sin. There is a close connection between this statement and the idea of redemption from transgressions mentioned in verse 15. Here, however, the effect is even more comprehensive since the putting away (athetesis) involves the annulment of sin, i.e. treating it as if it no longer existed. This cannot mean that sin is so treated for all men, for the epistle does not support the view that unrepented sin will now go unpunished. As in the Levitical system the effectiveness of the sacrifices for each worshipper depended on the attitude of the worshipper, so in the application of Christ’s offering an attitude of repentance and faith is assumed. The fourth statement is a repetition of the fact that the offering that Christ made was himself. Again the writer is determined that his readers should not forget this. It is central to his whole argument. (Guthrie, D. (1983). Hebrews: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 15, pp. 200-201). InterVarsity Press.)
Please see the pervious footnote.
Here as well as in many other places he sees the blood as real blood from Christ as a man. Now of course Christ as the God-man mediator shed real human blood as blood both before and while on the cross. This is most important part of the faith of any real Christian. Philpot however goes so far to this side of Christs nature that he looses sight of the fact that the “blood” represent all the Christ did to fulfill his obligations under the covenant of grace and especially his atonement for sin.
Philpot in this section, even more than in other parts humanizes Christ and his suffering to an extreme extent. He appears want his readers to look at Christ as a human being apart from his God-man mediatorial Sonship Please see appendix VII for a better explanation of this Christ’s High Priestly Office.
Philpot’s overwhelming desire to split up the complexity of the God-man mediator leads him to summarize Christs mediatorial work into these five brief headings. Point number “2” is as abbreviated as possible: “The work of redemption was fully accomplished.” This is in actual fact is the Gospel. The Gospel that Christ ordained his apostles to preach. In order to give the reader some reference point to compare Philpot’s 5 reasons to, I quote here how Got Questions (https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-suffering.html) answers the question: “Why did Jesus have to experience so much suffering. In summary it is that “There was no other way for us to be saved.”
Jesus suffered severely throughout His trials, torture, and crucifixion (Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19). His suffering was physical: Isaiah 52:14 declares, “There were many who were appalled at Him—His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness.” His suffering was emotional: “All the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56). His suffering was spiritual: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus had the weight of the sins of the entire world on Him (1 John 2:2). It was sin that caused Jesus to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus’ brutal physical suffering was augmented by His having to bear the guilt of our sins and die to pay our penalty (Romans 5:8).
Isaiah predicted Jesus’ suffering: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:3, 5). This passage specifies the reason for Jesus’ suffering: “for our transgressions,” for our healing, and to bring us peace.
Jesus told His disciples that His suffering was certain: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Luke 9:22; cf. 17:25). Note the word must—He must suffer, and He must be killed. The suffering of Christ was God’s plan for the salvation of the world.
Psalm 22:14-18 details some of the suffering of the Messiah: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” In order for this and other prophecies to be fulfilled, Jesus had to suffer.
Why did Jesus have to suffer so badly? The principle of the innocent dying for the guilty was established in the garden of Eden: Adam and Eve received garments of animal skin to cover their shame (Genesis 3:21)—thus, blood was shed in Eden. Later, this principle was set in the Mosaic Law: “It is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Leviticus 17:11; cf. Hebrews 9:22). Jesus had to suffer because suffering is part of sacrifice, and Jesus was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus’ physical torture was part of the payment required for our sins. We are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19).
Jesus’ suffering on the cross showed the devastating nature of sin, the wrath of God, the cruelty of humanity, and the hatred of Satan. At Calvary, mankind was allowed to do his worst to the Son of Man as He became the Redeemer of mankind. Satan may have thought he had won a great victory, but it was through the cross that the Son of God triumphed over Satan, sin, and death. “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31; cf. Colossians 2:15).
Jesus suffered and died in order to secure salvation for all who would believe. The night of His arrest, as Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, He committed His all to the task: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The cup of suffering was not taken from Christ; He drank it all for us. There was no other way for us to be saved.
I am very pleased to say that there is much in the paragraphs above that is both true and helpful. It was a blessing to my own soul. RCS
As is often the case, Philpot so stresses one partial aspect of the true glory and work of the Lord Jesus that he de-glorifies Christ in actual fact. The main purpose of the earthly tabernacle, its furniture, the high priest, the sacrifices and all that was commanded by Moses centered around how the jews were to worship God. Christ’s atoning death as God-man mediator bearing our sins of the cross is the focal point of all the Old Testament types Philpot would have us forget about that in order to concentrate of Jesus Christ being a mere human.
See the previous foot note and the bolded text following below.
Here and again in a great many places in this long essay he so concentrates on Christ’s humanity as to lose sight, sometimes all together, that Christ is and was and has been the God-man mediator in God’s decree in the covenant of redemption from all time. What takes place in time to our understanding has eternal existence to God in his single decree.
It the extent that Philpot fails to recognize the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit is astonishing!
he finally deals with the complexity here near the very end.
G.S. June 1860 pages 184-185
Different parts of this essay deal with the views of Dr. Hawker. He is without question, one of my very favorite expounders of scripture. I have quoted and continue to quote him a great deal. That said, it is with a very heavy heart, needful to point out that like any other man or women, (except the Lord Jesus Christ), imperfect. He is very unreliable on the subject of the Sonship of Christ as he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. It’s not so much that Jones is wrong, and Philpot correct in using Hawker. Its more that Hawker was very inconsistent with himself on this subject. Even Philpot sees this for he says later, (as I quote there): “But the good old Doctor is not here always consistent with himself,”
As we have seen elsewhere in this essay, he does the opposite and strives to explain it.
This among many other examples show Philpot’s extreme pride and arrogance. He hates and despises those for whom Christ died for and has loved from eternity.
As the reader can see this is a classic example of “the pot calling the kettle black". He is projecting (blame shifting) his own guilt and error onto Jones.
* The poor old man, who, from want of education or failing intellect, is obliged to have recourse to dictionaries for the meaning of this common word, has retorted upon us what is commonly called a tu quoque, and charged us with garbling an extract from his "Letter." Now, we can honestly say that, in speaking of the London Baptist ministers, the omission of the words, "who are reputed sound in the faith," was altogether undesigned. We understood by the expression the ministers who are sound in the doctrines of grace; for it was of such ministers only that we were speaking. This was naturally assumed, for such only could be considered followers of Dr. Gill. The omission of the words did not at all affect the meaning, and therefore cannot be called garbling. We do not consider any to be "sound in the faith," who reject such a foundation truth as the true and proper Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He does not use his supposed privately inspired by the Holy Spirit understanding. He uses human authors throughout these two essays. His object is simply to discredit Jones.
Here again he openly displays his great pride and prejudice while at the same time defending and using mere men.
Any bolded text in this appendix is my own. I am using it to highlight those sections that Philpot quoted. In this case he used the whole title but emphasized the word “us”.
In this instance Philpot deliberately quoted just enough to give a totally false meaning to these words. A meaning that he then attacks like a “straw man” in his comments below.
This last sentence is quoted separately by Philpot.
G.S. June 1860. Pages 186-195; Pages 216-227
See the bolded parts of the original sermon above for the context. As I stated there Philpot has carefully chosen just this small portion of the context. By doing so he gave himself a pretext to bring up false accusations against Mr. Crowther. In effect Philpot is charging him falsely with heresy. This is baseless on Philpot’s part as a few sentences later Crowther states: ”And, first, among his names we would refer to that dear name Emmanuel, or God with us. He was God, and he was man, God in our nature, retaining the omnipotence of the Deity, and yet amenable to all human laws and requirements. As to his veritable and eternal Godhead, the scripture is very plain, and ascribes to Him the same self-existent Majesty as to the Father and the Holy Ghost; and it holds out no sanction to the notions of those who contend that the Sonship of Christ has reference to his divine nature as such.” He goes on to state Christ’s divinity ever more clearly. The prior context shows Crowther is speaking on the humanity of Christ only in that section.
Philpot places this supposed quotation in quotes. The fact is that this is not a quote but his interpretation of what was said. It is taken out of context and falsely represented.
Surely this is just what Philpot goes on to do. It would seem that it is OK for him but not for those he opposes.
* There is an excellent summary of the Doctor's views on these points in the Memoir of Dr. Gill, prefixed to Mr.
Doudney's edition of his Commentary on the Old Testament, page 26
Athanasius the Heretic Aug 6 by James
Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 293 - 2 May 373) is considered by many to be a champion or orthodox Trinitarianism. Indeed, he was the leader of the fight against Arianism during the heyday of that controversy. A Trinitarian creed (composed much later) was even named after him. However, it is less known that Athanasius held some views that are now considered heretical. Athanasius was, in fact, a heretic. He believed something very similar to Apollinarianism, a heresy condemned in 381.
I’m adding this to the blog because it is an interesting footnote of history, and one that I think could be useful. The hero of many Trinitarians turns out to be a bit of heretic himself.
This is from Evangelical scholar Roger Olson in his book “The Story of Christian Theology.” I’ve kept the same footnote numbers he used, and I added my note own at the end:
He is truly one of the great heroes of the faith, and yet, like Origen before him, he left a troubling legacy. Unlike Origen, Athanasius’s reputation is unsullied in all major branches of Christendom. Although some of his opinions
Philpot himself is outright lying here as he knows these statements are not historically true as he is speaking here of eternal generation. He fails to undo this grave error.
Let the reader decide if such was the spirit in which he carried on the controversy.
* Good men, we know, generally object to the expression “begotten,” as applied to the human nature of the Lord Jesus; and out of deference to that feeling, and to avoid putting any stumbling-block in the way, we have usually avoided the term; but if we look at the marginal reading of Matthew 1:20, we shall find that the word rendered in the text “conceived,” is there translated “begotten.” The Greek word used there has two meanings: 1. To bring forth as a mother, and is therefore translated “born,” (Luke 1:35;) and 2. to beget as a father. To “conceive,” is quite a different word in Greek, which is not found in the New Testament. But this begetting, even if we admit the expression as applicable to the miraculous formation of the human nature of Jesus, must be carefully guarded from having any reference to his being the “only begotten Son of God,” which he was before all worlds, as his eternal Son. (Original footnote by Philpot)
remember both of these are his own interpretations.
* The word means literally “led out,” that is, into open view, or “made him known.”
for real scriptural argument there is none
Nothing is said in the sermon of the necessity or nature of a revelation of Christ to the soul, such as was given to Peter.
Philpot is saying the Crowther is not saved, he is condemning him.
* See my eight Sermons on the Divinity of CHRIST.
Here and elsewhere Huntington address the complexity of Christ as the God-man mediator. He wants to be in agreement with both sides. Both sides can claim his as their advocate. The fact is that he is an unsafe guide on these particular subjects. Sometimes he speaks the truth and other times he speaks against the truth.
I would just like to take notice, again, of the fact that Wells, Jones etc. all believed firmly in the absolute deity of Christ. Hawker is in this essay dealing with real genuine heretics. The point of contention was with the doctrine of eternal generation and not at all with deity.
Here again he is contradicting himself for he just explained, a few paragraphs above, that it is in the Covenant of Grace.
Here is perhaps his most direct statement to the point at issue. He seeks a middle ground as it were. He does not fully support either side. He is however directly against the Sonship laying in the complexity of Christ as the God-man mediator.
Again, the Covenant of Redemption explains that perfectly as being in the complex person of Christ. God, as God is not in any way limited by our time/space relationships. Hawker seems to confine God to time, even before time began.
This is in direct contrast to what he said in earlier works about it being such a mystery that we should not look into it.
Its important to underscore the fact that the Doctor here was fighting a battle essentially different from that battle that Philpot chose to fight. Both he and Philpot bend all their efforts (and the scriptures) to fit what they see is the central conflict in each case. Those Philpot chose to fight were upholding the “the PERSON, and GODHEAD, and SONSHIP of GOD’s dear SON with all their strength and might! It was the very fact that they saw Philpot himself lessening these truths by making Jesus a substandard God, that they fought for the truth. Dr. Hawker changed his mind, to a fair degree, and bent the scriptures on this subject to fight against a real heresy. Both Hawker and Philpot were wrong but for very different reasons.
This is of course one of very reasons to reject the doctrine of Eternal Generation. God is as he is in himself.
Amen
This is near the beginning of his third letter on this subject.
Near the beginning of his essay in APPENDIX IV. “THE PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF GOD THE FATHER TO THE PERSON, GODHEAD, AND SONSHIP, OF GOD THE SON”
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 115). W.B. Eerdmans.
Strong, J. (1995). In Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.
Translated as “only”
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 607). W.B. Eerdmans.
Gr. wq ^ovoYEvouq napa naTpoq. The term “One and Only” (^ovoYEvqq) distinguishes Jesus’ sonship from that of Christian believers generally (the “children of God” of v. 13). Jesus’ sonship is unique. He alone is “the Son,” or “One and Only,” and believers are always God’s “children” (compare 11:52), never God’s “sons” (though compare “sons of light,” in 12:37). The ambiguity of our translation (with “One and Only” capitalized, but with “father” in lower case) is an attempt to reflect the ambiguity of the text, in which both words are indefinite yet fraught with meaning in the setting of the Gospel as a whole. Michaels, J. R. (2010). The Gospel of John. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Both terms will become definite in verse 18, ^ovoYEvqq by virtue of being linked to 0Eoq, and naTqp by acquiring the definite article, “the Father.” The point of wq (“as”) is not that the glory of the Word is simply analogous to the glory of “a father’s One and Only,” but that it actually is that glory (see BDAG, 1104; also Brown, 1.13). Michaels, J. R. (2010). The Gospel of John. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Michaels, J. R. (2010). The Gospel of John (pp. 80-81). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/words/Generation.
https://www.gotquestions.org/generation-in-the-Bible.html
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/generation
https://www.gotquestions.org/eternal-generation.html
In Appendix VI by William Palmer where Palmer shows something of his real make-up.
It would need an entire essay to examine this man and the effects of his teaching. For a starting point, though it is somewhat biased in his favor, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius of Alexandria
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 31). W.B. Eerdmans.
https://www.apuritansmind.com/the-attributes-of-god-by-c-matthew-mcmahon/the-attributes-of-god-by-louis-berkhof/ Or see his systematic theology.
https://www.limerickreformed.eom/blog/2016/1/29/gods-incommunicable-attributes
William Palmer: Pastor of the Homerton Baptist Church, 1854-1873. See: https://homerton.church/history-1854-1873.htm
* Strange to say, the Reviewer observes in relation to this very matter: "We much feel the force of those words which, many years ago, fell with much weight on our minds: ‘The servant of the Lord must not strive ; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will”; 2 Timothy 2:24-26. Will it be believed that at the bottom of the very page from which this quotation is made, the Reviewer designates the object of his resentment “the poor old man, who for want of education or failing intellect, is obliged to have recourse to dictionaries for the meaning of this common word” garble. Is this helping him out of the snare of the devil gently, meekly, patiently? Why accuse him of being ignorant? and why quote Latin, as if to put him to shame! Besides, the first line of the note is such bad English, that Mr. J. A. Jones would not have penned it! The Editor says, “for want of education or a failing intellect the poor old man is obliged to have recourse to dictionaries.” Now, surely it could not be from a want of a failing intellect, but on account of one: not from the absence, but the presence of a failing intellect, that he would be obliged to have recourse to dictionaries. Is Mr. Philpot crazed? or what ails him? Such conduct is beneath the dignity of a gentleman, the suavity of a Christian, and the character of a religious editor.
It is an outrage upon the common sentiments of social existence. And it is all the more revolting when one remembers that the Editor, who sneers at the “old man’s want of education,” never himself wrote, we will answer for it, half-a dozen pages of pure English in his life! And then to quote Scripture in the connection he has! What is that but to act the part of a parodist, to bring religion into contempt, and to wound the best feelings of humanity?
? Mr. Tite as referenced later.
* Local, provincial, and general councils; proscriptions, tortures, banishment, and murders; mutual antipathies, excommunications, anathemas, and recantations, with scenes of rancorous strife, occasioned by diversity of views respecting the Sonship of Christ, proclaim trumpet-tongued the falsehood which asserts a universality of belief in the figment of Sonship by “eternal generation.” Who originated that doctrine we know not. A writer well versed in history is said to have given his name. We suspect the author of it to have been some apostate Jew, who probably united heathenism to the gospel; for the term “eternal generation” is far more applicable to heathen mythology than it is to the object of Christian worship. This much is certain, that the ancient fathers generally spoke of the generation of Christ as being temporary and voluntary.
This, so fir as can be determined by their writings, was the prevailing opinion before the council of Nice. Nor did that council decide in favour of the Reviewer’s doctrine. That council was called against Arius, and confirmed the doctrine that Arius denied; which was not the doctrine of “eternal generation,” but of the generation before named, for that council anathematized all who should say that Christ did not exist before he was begotten; i. &, brought forth as the wisdom, reason, or word of God, before all worlds. The word begotten had no reference to his generation of the Virgin, for Arius never denied his existence before that. It refers to his generation or bringing forth, as before explained; which voluntary generation by the will of the Father, Arius explained to signify a real creation, and the person of the Son to be a created Being.
Theophilus of Antioch had introduced the word Trinity; those who opposed Sabellius adopted the word hypostasis, which they afterwards explained to signify substance, as being directly opposed to Sabellianism. This explanation led to a belief in Tritheism; and in the turmoil of controversy a general council was called, by which it was decided that the word substance, as applied to the Trinity, should not signify a distinct being, or separate substance; but something real or substantial, which afterwards was called subsistence. Subsequently, the Latin church, not satisfied with the word hypostasis as applied to the Trinity, brought in the word persona, or person, Which meets with general acceptance. Arians and Socinians object to the word person, as implying distinct individual beings; and eternal generationists play into their hands by affirming, with our Reviewer, that the Divine essence subsists in a different manner in each of the three Persons, as “the foundation of their distinct Personalities.”
The numerous sects created, or occasioned, by this question; the scenes exhibited in many of the ancient councils ; the way in which bishops quarreled, maligned, and cursed one another; the secularizing effects of power and position; the temporizing policy of ecclesiastics; the means by which majorities were obtained; the fraud,
concealment, and disreputable conduct of all parties; the facts of their contradicting themselves as well as one another, and publicly begging pardon at one council for having voted against and publicly cursed the very doctrines and persons they were then prepared to accept and bless, demonstrate two things: first, the utter falsity of the fact as stated by the Reviewer; and, second, the worthlessness of the fact could it be proven. We confess ourselves astonished that a gentleman educated at one of our universities, professing himself a Christian, a pastor not only of one church but of to, an editor of a religious periodical and the head of a party, we marvel, that he should be so reckless as to place on record so bold an assertion, which he must have known to have been palpably untrue!! To be convinced of its untruthfulness the reader has only to consult Baxter’s Church History, Mosheim, Platts, any Encyclopedia, Universal Biography, or sketch of religious denominations.
215 Suppression of truth
216 Suggestion of an untruth
* We find the prophet Ezekiel called Son of man, nearly one hundred times; but never the Son of Man. In the New Testament the title Son of Man, preceded by the definite article, and applied to Christ, is used upwards of eighty times. He whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, mostly spoke of himself in this complexity. And there are many reasons for his delighting in it. It implied nearness, likeness, and sympathy with the objects of his love. His criminal brethren were partakers of flesh and blood; and he would neither disown his ancestors, nor turn away from his own flesh. To be “made flesh” was necessary to the service he had engaged to render them; for “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” He delighted also in doing the will of Him that sent him, and finishing his work. He was that eminent Son of Man, who was to “bruise the serpent’s head,” and whom Eve thought she had brought forth: a man, a man from the Lord, a man the Lord, the Lord-man, or, as we say, the Godman. He was also the ancient Pattern-man: the first Man in heaven, the form and image of God, after whom Adam was made, and who was the second public man on earth, “the Lord from heaven.” He was before Abraham, communed with Adam, and stood up a public Head in heaven, and the Heir of all things, before Adam stood up a public head on earth, the heir of all he saw. He appeared to the patriarchs; was present in the bush that Moses put off his shoes to witness; gave the law on Mount Sinai; spoke to Joshua, Gideon, and others: was with the “church in the wilderness,” and seen in vision by the prophets of old time. The Holy Ghost styled him God’s “Angel,” “the Angel of his presence,” “the Messenger of the covenant”, and his “Elect” in whom his soul delighted. He was the Head, Husband, Ancestor and Original Likeness of the whole family in heaven and earth, named in him: the firstborn Son of God, the root of all the after-born family, called the children of God, heirs, and joint heirs with him. In the fulness of time the First-born of time appears in the interests of all the after-born through time, the Man of God’s right hand, even “ the Son of Man” whom he made strong for himself He was the Son given by the Father, before he was the Child born of his virgin mother; but the Son given was the Child born, and the Child born was the Son given; the God-man, the Al-Gibbor and Abi-gnad, Patercetemitatis: the mighty God, and Father of eternity; or the eternal Father of the everlasting age. This glorious complex Person is called Immanuel: a name so constructed, as to represent his whole complex Person. For the Hebrew AL, in the last syllable of the word Immanuel is the name of God, is so translated, and “none is AL but God” Yet AL is united to man, and thus the Son of God is the Son of Man. The Hebrew is Omnu-AL; which may be thus analyzed: AL, God ; om, with; and nu, us: “God with us.” By a personal subsistence in the Divine nature, he is God; and by the assumption of a human nature, he is man. In both, he is God-man, God with us, in our nature, on our behalf. “God manifest in the flesh.” Begotten and yet unbegotten. Having all the ages of time in his manhood; and all the ages of eternity in his Godhead. For the word that was with God in one nature, was God in another nature; and the Word, or complex Person of Christ, “was made flesh and dwelt among us,” called himself “the Son of Man,” and thereby expressed the complexity of his Divine Person. Complexly viewed, there dwelt in him “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” When the unction fells on his human nature, and it can fell on no other, he is anointed with the “oil of gladness above his fellows.” For the Father “giveth not his Spirit by measure unto him.” His local descent, his miraculous conception, his glorious baptism, and his transfiguration on the mount; to which may be added his public ministrations, his benevolent miracles, and “the works which no other man did;” together with the offices he sustained, the commission he bore, the endowments he received, the names, privileges, dignities, and honours conferred upon him in his human nature, render him “fairer than the children of men.” “Let thy hand be upon the Man of thy right hand, upon the Son of Man, whom thou I madest strong for thyself.” Psalm 53:17. “Behold! one like the Son of
Man came with the clouds of heaven,...and there was given him dominion and glory.” Daniel 7:13. “Behold! I see heaven opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God Acts 7:56. Lastly, “Behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” Revelation 4:14. These passages clearly prove that the name “Son of Man” implies more than humanity. It implies complexity; and shows that the Son of God is a name expressive not of nature, nor of generation, but of a complex person who is God and Man. What, therefore, is done in either of his natures, is done by his Person; and what is spoken of either of his natures, is spoken of his Person. If this be not admitted, something else must: it must be admitted that there are two persons in Christ; for beyond all doubt the “Son of Man” is a personal name. Son of God, and Son of Man, must, therefore, mean one and the same glorious Person. “Dost thou believe on the Son of God? Who is he? Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talked with thee.” Was it not the Son of Man whom he saw? And was not the Son of Cod the Son of Man? And the Son of Man the Son of God?
an act of defaming : defamation, slander.
sharpness and directness in speech
eternal existence; everlasting duration
boastful or inflated talk or behavior
used to express disgust or outrage
* That the Sonship of Christ does not consist in his abstract Deity, but in his actual complexity, is evident from the following facts: 1, The different names of Christ which imply complexity of being, are used synonymously with the name of Son. 2, The name of Son is expressive of his whole Personality as God-man. 3, It is used as descriptive of a character which contains in it a number of distinct facts; and so, it is sometimes applied to one part of his character, and sometimes to another. 4, It comprehends the different relations he sustains to his church; as Head, Husband, Goel, or Redeemer, which suppose complexity. 6, When joined to the official name of Messiah, or Christ, it denotes the excellency of the Person who fills that office. 6, The name is often used to represent economical relations; such as building his Father’s house, trans mitting his Father’s name, &c. 7, From certain texts in the Old Testament; which speak of him as “the Son,” and of his being brought forth, acquired, and set up from everlasting. 8, From explanatory scriptures in the New Testament; such as those which record his baptism, his transfiguration, his resurrection, &c. 9, From the fact that his headship is founded in his Sonship. 10, From the fact, that his mediation is built upon the complexity of his Person. 11, From the fact, that the sonship of believers is founded in the Sonship of Christ, who is their Elder Brother; so that if the Sonship of Christ be natural and necessary, ours must be so likewise; but this would make salvation an act of necessity, and not of sovereignty; it would impugn the justice of God in the destruction of the wicked; and it would render God a most cruel and tyrannical Being, inasmuch as he would have to violate the essential rights of his creatures for the sole purpose of tormenting them. 12. From the fact, that the Son who undertakes to save guilty men must be related to them. 13. From the further fact, that his Person must present something that is suited to them; neither of which can be predicated of abstract Deity. 14. From the clear fact, that perishing sinners are commanded to believe in the name of the Son of God. 15. From the fact, that the Apostles, who shunned not to declare all the counsel of God, have not said a word about eternal generation, implying that eternal generation is no part of the counsel of God.
KJV
July 09,2016 By Brandon Crowe: https://credomag.com/2016/07/our-great-high-priest-brandon-crowe/
EPISTLES TO THEOPHILUS. THE SONSHIP OF THE SAVIOUR No. 1 E.V. Oct. 1, 1860 pages 258-259
Cockerill, G. L. (2012). The Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 224). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
As throughout this essay the emphasis is added by me.
Guthrie, D. (1983). Hebrews: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 15, pp. 124-125). InterVarsity Press.
“Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.”
Guthrie, D. pp. 156-157.
“By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.”
Guthrie op cited p. 168.
“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,”
Guthrie op cited p. 213.
“And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”
Guthrie op cited p. 264.
“Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”
Guthrie op cited p. 275.
Meaning: 'it is tried, tested, or proved'
Please see appendix VIII by Jones for the whole essay.
* John Andrew Jones and the same in 1860 See Acts xxvi. 22,23.
Vol 9 page 439ff of Hawkers works. Letters to the Rev. J. Stevens
Hawkers Works Vol 6 Pages 87-92 1831 edition
What a very strange way to refer to this controversy.
All this and etc. is coming from Philpot’s own hatred of anything or anyone who dares to differ from himself. Again and again, he includes many elements that have nothing whatsoever to so with the real controversy.
Anything that well belittle his opponents is cast onto the flames.
This is a fragment outright lie. He is full to the brim of bitterness, anger and hatred.
he is accusing anyone who opposes him and his follower of antinomianism as he goes on to say explicitly. He sides very much with the modern day so called “reformed” churches who charge any form of gospel preaching “Antinomianism”.
This is to me, at least, the most astonishing statement of all the statements made by Philpot now under review.
He appears to be totally blind to his very own hardness of heart and evil tongue.
Openly and without shame he means himself and his followers as oppose the very many other children of God.
Philpot is of course ignoring any teaching, no matter how sound. While ignoring any other teaching he charges ahead making Scripture, Hawker and other be in 100% agreement with him alone. Any fair-minded person, male or female can see that there are two sides, not just one to this question. Both sides seek to uphold the trinity in all its glory. The fact that Hawker is correctly quoted and used by both sides in this controversy is a sad testimony of how even the greatest of preachers and teachers can fail us at times.
Please see appendix IV for the whole essay.
This wording of Hawkers: “One with the Father, over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Is NOT a quotation from the Bible. After searching the internet several times (Google), I found that Robert Hawker made this up for his on personal use in teaching others. He is using Romans 9:5 which reads as follows in the King James version: “Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” Hawker takes this statement, which all members of this controversy profess to believe, and changes it. The source seems to be in his Concordance and Dictionary. Under the word “Glory” he says in part: “For in the same moment that JEHOVAH declares his jealousy of his name and glory, and that he will not give his glory to another, neither his praise to graven images, he commands both praise and glory to be given to his dear Son, whom he gives as a covenant to the people, that he may have all the praise and glory of redemption. A plain proof that in JEHOVAH’S esteem Christ is one with the Father, “over all, God blessed for ever.” Amen. (Rom 9:5) The glory of JEHOVAH, though, no doubt, existing personally in the essence of the GODHEAD, can only be known by his creatures in the manifestation of it.” Hawker uses the statement as quoted by Philpot in his Poor Man’s commentary under various verses: “One with the Father, over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” The only references I could find are from Hawker. This of course, demonstrates Hawker’s agreement with Philpot. It does not however, harmonize with Scripture!
He says this over and over again, yet he seeks to do the very opposite. This can be seen immediately in the next quotation from Philpot.
Hawker gives us only part of the actual verse as it is in the KJV, were it reads: “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.”