BR 45 .H36 v.2A
Dickson, David, 15837-1663.
The sum of saving knowledge
HANDBOOKS
BIBLE CLASSES
AND PRIVATE STUDENTS.
EDITED by/
REV. MARCUS DODS, D.D.,
AND
REV. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.
THE SUM OF SAV/NG KNOWLEDGE.
BY REV, JOHN MAC PHERSON, M.A.
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, .... GEORGE HERBERT.
NEW YORK, .... SCRIBNER AND WELFORD.
THE
SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
TOttJ KntrotJuction antr Notes,
/ BY
REV. JOHN MACPHERSON, M.A.,
FINDHORN.
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
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CONTENTS.
[ntroduction.
7-8
I. Our Condition by Nature —
§1. Preliminary. The Mystery of the Godhead,
§ 2. Doctrine of Creation and Covenant of Works,
§ 3. The Beginnings of Human Sin,
II. The Remedy Provided in Jesus Christ—
§ I. The Counsels of Eternity, . . . ,
§ 2. Covenant of Redemption — Election and Incarna-
tion, ......
§ 3. Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King,
III. Means toward Partaking of the Covenant—
§1. The Means of Grace, . . . .
§ 2. Substantial Agreement of Old and New Dis-
pensations, . . . . .
IV. Blessings conveyed to the Elect by those
Means —
§ I. Spirit's Work on the Persons of the Elect,
§ 2, Spirit's Work in changing the State of the Elect, .
9-22
23-42
42-53
54-61
61-89
90-97
98-113
113-117
118-125
125-133
INTRODUCTION,
The authorship of this short treatise on Christian doctrine,
which is made the basis of the following notes, is ascribed to the
celebrated Scottish divine, Mr. David Dickson. This able theo-
logian and valiant defender of the faith was born in Glasgow in
1583. After passing through the regular course of study in
Glasgow University, he was licensed, and in 161 8 ordained as
minister at Irvine. Sentenced four years later, because of his
opposition to Episcopacy, and especially his bold denunciation of
the erastianism of the attempt to impose any form of Church
government against the will of the people, to deprivation of his
ministerial charge and to exile to Turriff, in Aberdeenshire, he
continued his useful labours, aided by the testimony of a good
conscience. Returning in 1623, he resumed his labours in Irvine,
and much blessing attended his ministry there. In 1641 he was
appointed Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, and
about 1650 he was transferred to occupy a similar chair in Edin-
burgh. He continued to hold the Professorship of Divinity until
his death in 1662. Thus for twenty-one years he was actively
engaged in the systematic study of theology. He was a ripe
theologian and a cultured scholar, according to the learning of
his day. At the time when the Westminster Assembly met, in
1643, Dickson, along with David Calderwood and Alexander
Henderson, drew up by command of the General Assembly that
Directory of Public Worship which is bound up with the West-
minster Confession and Catechisms among the Subordinate
7
8 INTRODUCTION.
Standards of the Church of Scotland. In this volume we also
find the Sum of Saving Knowledge. In the Act and Declaration
anent the publication of the Subordinate Standards of the Church
of Scotland in 1851, in the enumeration of documents, this one is
described as ' a practical application of the doctrine of the Confes-
sion,' as * a valuable treatise which, though without any express
Act of Assembly, has for ages had its place among them.' It is
understood that Dickson and Durham consulted together in
drawing up this summary. For those who may be somewhat
doubtful as to the effect of strictly doctrinal summaries on the
spiritual condition of our youth, it may be interesting to learn
that M'Cheyne attributes his first clear perception of the way of
salvation to the reading of this treatise. His diary of March 11,
1 834, has this entry : ' Read in the Sum of Saving Knowledge,
the work which I think first of all wrought a saving change in me.'
[See Scots Worthies on David Dickson, edited by Mr. Carslaw ;
and editor's note on p. 294.]
The type of doctrine here presented is precisely the same as
that set forth in the Westminster Confession. The editor has in
his notes entered into detailed exposition of the earlier sections,
where historical references are helpful ; while in the later sections,
which did not seem to call for such treatment, he has confined
himself to short, and purely explanatory notes.
HEAD I.
UR CONDITION BY NA TURK.
§ r. The almighty and eternal God,, the Father,, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, three distinct persons in one and the same
tmdivided Godhead, equally infinite in all perfections, did,
before time, most wisely decree, for his own glory, whatsoever
C07neth to pass in time; and doth most holily and infallibly
execute all his decrees, without being partaker of the sin of
any creature.
Preliminary. — The subject brought before us in this first
section is the doctrine of God, the mystery of the Godhead.
Before proceeding to explain the doctrines expressly stated, it
is necessary that we should glance at certain truths that are
presupposed in the above statement. It is evidently assumed
that God is, and that God is knowable.
Behef in God is the first indispensable condition of all religion.
This must appear if we consider what religion is. To be religious
is to be under a powerful sense of obligation, to be conscious and
to make acknowledgment of certain relations which we bear to a
higher Being. In worship we approach this Being with whom we
have to do. This Being, other than ourselves and higher than
ourselves, we call God. He who cometh unto God must believe
that He is. No rehgious act, no act of worship is possible until
lO SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
we have the conviction that there is One really existing to whom
such acts are due from us, and who is able and willing to receive
homage at our hands. In Christian countries, where the light of
revelation has been shed abroad, almost all, even those who are
but little under the influence of religious principle, make profes-
sion of belief in the existence of God. There cannot be even the
form of religion, either in an individual life or in the life of a
community, without the assumption that God is.
To say explicitly, There is no God, is pronounced to be folly
not only by Scripture, but also by sceptical and critical philosophy.
It is an assertion, and not a simple expression of ignorance or
doubt. A declaration so positively made is dogmatic Atheism.
To say, There is, or there may be, a God, but He is unknowable,
is also to make a thoroughly dog^natic statement. The Agnostic
may say that after careful search he has failed to discover God,
and that so God remains to him unknown : he makes a very
sweeping and reckless generalization, when he lays down the
dogma that God is unknowable. Before we can affirm that God
is unknowable, — not merely unknown, but such as cannot be
known,— we must already have a knowledge not only that God
is, but also a knowledge in some measure of what He is. Those
who hold this doctrine as a theological belief (such as Dean
Mansel) not only say, God is, but also, God is the Absolute or
Infinite. This is a definition of God, but it is not the Christian
idea of God. We say not that He is the Infinite in the abstract,
but that He is infinite in all perfections. The Infinite in the
abstract we cannot know ; it — we do not say He — is unknowable.
To identify God with this unknowable Infinite is irreligious. The
only religious conception of God is that which regards Him as the
infinitely Good, to whom our goodness does not reach, but out of
whom our goodness springs. While thus we cannot comprehejid
His perfections, we apprehendhoih. His being and His nature. If
we seek Him, we shall find Him to be not far from any one
of us.
The doctrine of the existence of God lies at the root of all
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. IT
religion, — not only of revealed, but also of natural religion. Certain
proofs of reason apart from revelation have been wrought out
with great ingenuity in various forms. There are five principal
methods of proving the divine existence, — the Cosmological, the
Teleological, the Ontological, the Moral, and the Historical.
(a) The Cosmological argument starts from the contingency of
the world. Nothing that we see is self-existent or independent.
If there be nothing higher, no infinite as opposed to the finite
existences around us, then we can only think of an endless
succession of these things. The idea of the Infinite is absolutely
necessary to supply a beginning, ip) The Teleological argument
starts from adaptations observed among finite existences and in
their several parts. The fact of nice adjustment of parts in natural
objects and of fitness in particular agents for the accomplishment
of certain results, the evidence in the objects around us of
adaptation between means and end, demands the assumption of
a supreme Contriver as the author of this prearranged plan. This
argument from design receives illustrations from all departments
of science, and from investigations in the history of nature and
man. The best and most apt illustration is that afi"orded by the
growth of the vegetable and animal organisms, which from the
first have in themselves the principle of all that is afterward
evolved, {c) The Ontological argument starts from the presence
in our minds of an idea of God. Anselm (1033-1109) argues that
God's existence follows from the very idea we have of Him. We
think of Him as the greatest possible Being, and as such He must
exist in the sphere of reality as well as in that of thought. Accord-
ing to Descartes, we have an idea of infinite perfection which
must have its origin in an infinitely perfect One really existing.
{d) The Moral argument starts from the facts of the moral law
and moral life, and holds that these necessarily imply the exist-
ence of a supremely holy, just, and true Lawgiver. This argument
proceeds on lines similar to the ontological ; as the idea of infinite
perfection in man, who lives in a finite and imperfect world;
implies the existence of One in whom such an idea is realized, so
12 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
the presence of moral ideas and a moral law in a society where
such ideals are never reached, necessitates the assumption that
a Being exists in whom the ideal moral standard is attained.
{e) The Historical argument starts from the fact of the universal
spread of religious belief. There is no well-authenticated instance
of any utterly atheistic tribe. Various travellers have reported that
among certain races no appearance of religion and worship was to
be found : but in all such cases we discover on investigation either
that the traveller had no opportunity or time fora satisfactory inquiry,
or that low forms of religion were disregarded and a higher mani-
festation of religious sentiment looked for than could reasonably be
expected. — Not one of these five proofs, viewed by itself, can be
regarded as satisfactory or convincing. Their force is cumulative.
The inability to rest in mere finitude, evidence of design which
no theory but that of an all-wise Contriver can account for, the
actual presence of an idea in man's mind of an infinite cause for
finite things, the existence of a moral standard above any empirical
attainment in this world, and finally the apparently universal
belief among the races of mankind in a superhuman Being, —
these together constitute a proof as strong as the nature of the
subject will admit. These are precisely the kind of proofs to
which Scripture makes appeal in addressing the reason and
natural conscience of men. The creation, — the world of finite
things from which the Cosmological argument starts, — shows forth
the glory of God (Ps. xix. xxix. civ.) ; and especially man,
insignificant in himself, yet great in his destiny (Ps. viii. 5, 6), —
an argument along the lines of the Teleological proof,— witnesses
to the existence of an all-wise God. According to the teaching
of the New Testament, there can be no true conception of nature
and of human life apart from the assumption of the divine exist-
ence. Thus nature teaches the being of God : Rom. i. 19, 20 ;
Acts xiv. 17. Then the Moral proof is recognised in the assertion
that man as a natural being has the law of God written in his
heart : Rom. ii. 14. Scripture, however, regards the witness of
the divine Spirit in the spirit of the child of God as the principal
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 1 3
and most satisfactory proof of the divine existence : Rom. viii. 16 ;
Gal. iv. 6 ; Eph. i. 14.
Starting, then, with these assumptions that God is, and that
God can be known, the first section of this Summary treats of the
Mystery of the Godhead. We have first of all. The Mystery of
God's Being — three Persons, but One undivided Deity. We
have secondly. The Mystery of God^s Wilt, — decreeing and
determining in eternity all that takes place in time. And we
have thirdly, The Mystery of God's Holiness, — carrying out His
decrees, yet not partaking in the sin of any creature.
I. The Mystery of God's Being. — The al?7iighty and eternal
God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three distinct
persons in o?ie and the same undivided Godhead, equally infijiite
in all His perfections, (a) The God in whom the Christian
believes is described first of all as a Person. In much of our
popular literature there is a tendency to indulge in a dreamy
vague style of talk regarding the divine in nature and in man.
There is a sense in which such statements are strictly true.
Nature is divine, — earth and sea and sky — because the hand that
made them is divine. And if we study the wonders and beauties
by which we are surrounded in the world in a reverent spirit,
recognising in them the wonderful works of God the Creator,
nothing will be more helpful to us in illustrating the truths
concerning God told us in His holy word. The Bible is full of
references to the displays of God's glory in the works which He
has made. But this is the very opposite of that which those do
who, while they study nature, never seek to rise to nature's God.
Those who either deny or ignore the existence of a spiritual or
super-sensuous world are called Materialists. But there are
others who speak of God and spirit, finding these, however, only
in nature. Nature is their God. Those who think and write in
this way are called Pantheists, which means that they profess to
find God in everything, and that they do not believe that God has
any separate existence in and by himself. They do not believe
14 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
that God was before all things, and that by Him all things were
made. But this is what every Christian does believe. In modern
scientific theology the distinction referred to is indicated by the
use of the terms immanence and transcendence. The Pantheist
thinks of God as immanent, present in nature and only thus
existent. Others again, among whom may be reckoned many of
the English deists of last century, think of God as transcendent,
outside of and not present in His creation. The Christian view
recognises at once the immanence and the transcendence of God.
God is in every place and in every thing, but before there was any
place or any thing, from everlasting to everlasting He is God. The
Creator is distinct from His creation. He is a Person^ not a mere
force, or influence, or power.
{b) This divine Person is equally infinite in all perfectio7is.
Described in the Bible as a person, God is necessarily represented
as thinking, feeling, and willing. But we must not suppose that,
in the exercise of these personal attributes, He is like one of
ourselves. In Him all these personal properties are present in just
proportion and in relation to one another, — nothing in excess
and nothing in defect. What we distinguish in the characters of
men as quahties of the head and qualities of the heart are in them
disproportionately developed, but in God they are perfectly
balanced. He is equally infinite in all perfections, for one does
not encroach upon and so render imperfect any of the others.
Here arise many popular misconceptions of God. Some regard
Him from the intellectual point of view only. They picture Him
as Righteousness, the God of Judgment, cold and unattractive,
because the qualities of the heart are left out. Righteousness, —
or what they conceive to be righteousness, which is something
very different from the Bible idea of righteousness, — is magnified
at the expense of Grace. Others view God under the emotional
aspect only. They picture Him as Goodness, as the God of Grace
in whom is no severity, but the representation is one of weakness,
where the qualities of the head are left out. If God's goodness is
described in terms which lead to the notion of such weak fondness
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 1 5
as allows Him to disregard His own holy law and never mind
though it be broken, there is evidently given an encouragement
and licence to sin. The Christian doctrine of the divine attributes
is not open to the charge either of Stoical or of Epicurean excess.
The Christian's God is a Just God and a Saviour : His perfections
are equally infinite.
{c) There can be but one such God : the almighty and eternal
God. The gods of heathenism were not regarded as equally
infinite in all perfections ; rather each leading perfection was
personified in the life and character of one particular deity.
Hence arises the Polytheism of heathen religions. The ancient
Eranians in Media and Persia, springing from an old Indian
stock, made a new departure in religion. Starting evidently from
a primitive Monotheistic tradition, of which faint traces remain
in the oldest Vedic literature, they stumbled over the seeming
contradiction of blessing and cursing, good and evil coming from
the one Supreme Being, and so their Magi devised a Dualistic
religion, recognising two supreme and eternal divine principles,
which manifested themselves in the form of good and evil spirits.
Zoroaster's own doctrine admitted only one supreme creator
from whom both good and evil proceeded. The popular Parsee
doctrine is dualistic, naming the good spirit Ormazd and the evil
spirit Ahriman. Among historical religions the first that is
consistently in principle and development Monotheistic is the
religion of Israel. The unity of God was the central doctrine of
the Old Testament (Deut. vi. 4). This truth, as there set forth,
springs directly from the doctrine of the absolute perfection of
God. Jehovah is thus contrasted with the gods many and lords
many of heathenism. Their power and jurisdiction were limited : —
Gods of the hills, of the valleys, of the sea, of the winds. They
were distinguished as male and female, partly to express the
inability of their worshippers to combine perfectly in one being
the ideas of power and grace, firmness and tenderness. Now if
this heathen notion had been true, the worshipper would be in
constant danger. Seeking protection from one deity, he might
1 6 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
!
arouse the enmity of another. Or through ignorance, he might '
go to one for that which another alone could give. It is for us '
a glorious and blessed doctrine that there is but one God, in
whom all grace and power are centred. If there had been many-
there would have been uncertainty : because there is but one, j
there is confidence. What He is once He is for ever. He changes i
not, therefore the children of men are not consumed.
(d) This one God exists and reveals Himself under three
personal forms. Tke almighty and eternal God^ the Father,
the Sojt, and the Holy Ghost, three distinct persons in one and \
the sa?ne undivided Godhead. This mysterious doctrine is clearly i
a revelation of Scripture. As one might expect, there is no i
special passage in which it is expressly announced. It is not |
according to God's manner of revealing truth to state the full :
doctrine in the form of a proposition. The Bible gives us in \
history, and prophecy, and the record of human experience, the j
materials out of which exact doctrinal propositions may be con- |
structed. No other doctrine of God than the Trinitarian fits in I
with the various representations of God throughout the Scriptures. ■
Not resting on any one text, but taking one with another, the ;
following may be mentioned as affording Scripture proof for the |
doctrine of the Trinity :— Matt. iii. 13-17 ; Matt, xxviii. 19 ; 2 Cor. i
xiii. 14 (cf. Num. vi. 24-26) ; John xiv. 11-20 ; John xv. 26. This,
then, is a doctrine of faith. We cannot say that it is contrary to '
reason, for it is certainly above reason. It comes to us and can '
only come from immediate revelation. '
There are two ways in which we may view and state this i
doctrine of three persons in the one Godhead, the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. We speak of the essential and of the i
oeco7t077iic Trinity. By the essential Trinity we mean the doctrine j
that before creation and apart from redemption, there are still \
three divine persons. There was no time when either the Son or I
the Spirit was not. To each person the name is equally due— ■
the almighty and eternal God. The Arians thought that the ;
Son was created before the world, the first-begotten Son of God, j
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 1 7
the Creator of the world, but not eternal. The Council of Niccea
(a.d. 325) condemned this heresy, and declared it to be the true
doctrine that the Son is of the substance of the Father, very God
of very God, begotten, not made. By the oeconomic Trinity we
mean the doctrine that each person of the Godhead is specially
prominent in different parts or economies of the work of man's
redemption. The Father plans and sends, the Son comes and
suffers and leaves us an example, the Spirit descends and applies
Christ's work and sanctifies. These two ways of stating the
doctrine of the Trinity are true together, not apart from one
another. It is the heresy of Sabellianism that it confounds the
persons with the essence, and that, in the endeavour to avoid
Tritheis7n (a doctrine of three Gods), it falls into the error of
denying the separate and distinct personality of Father, Son, and
Spirit. Sabellians in ancient and modern times have always
professed to be Trinitarians. It is, however, the doctrine of the
oeconomic Trinity which they hold, while they deny that of the
essential Trinity. They represent the One divine person as
appearing in certain operations of Creation, Redemption, and
Grace, as Father, Son, and Spirit. Our doctrine maintains unity
of essence and trinity of persons in the Godhead.
II. The Mystery of God's Will. — The almighty and eternal
God . . . did^ before tiine^ most wisely decree, for his owjt glory ,
whatsoever cometh to pass in time. This is the doctrine of the
decrees of God. To say that before all time God wisely decreed
is only another way of saying that the eternal God had a plan
for His work. Every thought and purpose of the eternal God
must be eternal, must be before time. The thing which is thought
of and purposed does not exist in eternity. It has yet to come
into existence in time. But that it is to exist, and the manner of
its existence, have been determined before time by God. When
this doctrine, as the doctrine of the divine sovereignty, is applied
to the lives and doings of rational and responsible creatures such
as man, there is another truth of God's word, the doctrine of
B
1 8 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
man's freedom, that must also be kept in remembrance. God
decrees in eternity not only that man is to be, but also that he is
to be free to choose. His eternal decree regarding the individual
likewise takes into account that individual's hberty of will. The
following sentence from Martensen's Dogmatics (p. 169) should
be carefully studied : ' It is not only a decree determined from
eternity, but it is also determinable by the freedom of the creature;
it is not a perfected decree, concluded already for all time, but
one continually coming into existence, and being realized.' For
the Scripture statement of the doctrine see Eph. i. 1 1 ; Acts
iv. 23. This latter passage illustrates the harmony of man's
free responsible action and God's absolute sovereignty in His
eternal decree.
The ratige of this decree is necessarily universal. Both the
attributes of God referred to — almighty and eternal — involve the
application of His decree to everything that comes to pass. On
the part of men many things happen unexpectedly. It can never
be so with God. Nothing can happen without His knowledge and
will, and as His attributes of knowledge and will are eternal, and
His decree gives expression to these, this decree cannot relate to
some things only, but to all things. His decree is before time,
for it embraces the resolve to make a beginning of time. There
is no time but only eternity until there are created finite things
by which time can be measured. God's creating marks a
beginning. Now the eternal decree of God, made before this
beginning, embraces everything that comes to pass from that
beginning up to the very end.
This decree again has a 7noral character : it is most wise. The
wisdom that characterizes this decree cannot be fully understood
or appreciated by one whose standpoint is time and not eternity.
It is as an eternal decree that it is most wise. It is often
misunderstood by creatures who, having finite minds, and being
able to view only little portions of time, cannot see how it stands
in relation to eternity. Part of the divine counsels is published
and known. All this is seen to be most wise, and in regard to
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE.
19
the imrevealed and as yet unknown part of the divine counsels,
we must consider that as the decree of the ever wise God it is
in thorough harmony with all that is revealed. So Paul celebrates
the wisdom and knowledge of those judgments and ways that are
unsearchable and past finding out (Rom. xi. 33).
The end or ai7n of the divine decree is God^s own glory. For
any creature to resolve and plan simply for his own glory would
be immoral. Self-love, self-seeking, self-aggrandizement, where
self is finite, implies a disregard of other finite beings. To
every creature, to every finite being, the admonition of the
Apostle applies : ' He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.'
Again, we must be careful in forming our conception of God,
before assigning to Him this attribute. The Pantheist says that
God aims at and realizes His own glory, but this is reached by
crushing or ignoring the individual life and wellbeing. The
Jesuits sought sanction for their inhuman and immoral procedure,
by assigning as the end of all ' the greater glory of God ; ' but
their God was not the God of righteousness and love. The God
who can make His own glory the end and purpose of all His
designs and doings, and can claim at the same time the
approbation of His intelligent creatures, must be infinite in all
perfections and most wise. In human systems of theology and
of religious philosophy there has been a tendency to run to one or
other extreme. Systems which lay special stress on the divine
sovereignty have too often overlooked the love and tenderness of
the divine character : the error to which such views tend is
Fatalism. Systems, on the other hand, which lay special stress
upon man's happiness and wellbeing, urging false views of
human liberty, overlook the claims of the divine righteous-
ness and sovereignty : the error to which such views tend is
Antinomian lice7ice. God has Himself shown what His own
glory is. Christ is the brightness of the Father's glory (Heb. i. 3) ;
Christ's glory is full of grace and truth (John i. 14) ; those who
trust in Christ contribute to the praise of God's glory (Eph. i. 12),
because they are brought together into one in Christ (Eph. i. 10),
20 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
Thus it appears that Christ is the manifestation of God's glory,
and all who are in Him contribute to God's glory ; and hence
when God sets His own glory as the end of all His designs and
works, the realization of this glory, which is full of grace,
embraces as its most characteristic feature the salvation and
wellbeing of mankind.
ni. The Mystery of God's Holiness. — The almighty and eternal
God . . . doth most holily and infallibly exectite all his decrees,
without being partaker of the sin of any creature. It is of
the Almighty God that we are speaking. Hence what He
wills He can accomplish ; what He is pleased to decree He can
execute. But further, as the Eternal God He is unchangeable,
and consequently, He will infallibly execute what He decrees.
When anything is made a subject of the divine decree, its
execution is ensured. If this were not so, God would not be
unchangeable. Now God is unchangeable, because He is
Almighty and All-wise. There is no need of change, because,
on the one hand, there is no want of power to carry out, and on
the other hand, there is no call for correcting and improving,
what was purposed. The All-wise and Almighty God changes
not, and so what He decrees is infallibly executed.
But further, when rightly understood, perfect wisdom implies
Holiness. In God's language regarding man, folly and sin,
wisdom and holiness, are identified. God's decree, as the result
of perfect wisdom, does not need to be repented of. It is
executed holily. There is no contradiction between that which is
executed in accordance with the divine decree and God's own
holy nature.
But just here one of the most puzzling questions in theology
makes its appearance, to crop up again and again under almost
every subsequent division. How may we describe the origin of
evil so as to avoid representing it as something for which God is
responsible ? When it is said that God is not partaker in the sin
of any creature, we start with the assumption that any theory
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 21
that requires or allows the notion that God is the author of sin,
is thereby shown to be false. Sometimes theologians have
expressed themselves incautiously so as to give some excuse to
their adversaries for the reproach that they make God the author
of sin. Several of the old Church Fathers, notably Augustine,
carried away by their desire to glorify the cross of Christ and
to praise the riches of divine grace shown in redemption, used
extravagant language, and spoke of sin as a happy fault inasmuch
as it was the occasion of so glorious a salvation. Closely
allied to this — though the connection, perhaps, was not generally
perceived — is the theory called Supralapsarianism^ according to
which man's fall into sin for the manifestatiott [of God^s grace
and glory i?t redemption^ formed part of the divine decree.
Bellarmine (1542-1621) was extremely anxious to fasten upon
Luther (1483-1546), Calvin (i 509-1 564), and the Protestant
divines generally, the charge of making God the author of sin.
Now it was evidently not the intention of Supralapsarians to teach
any such doctrine. They abhorred and repudiated it. Still it
seems as if their theory when logically carried out involved this
dreadful result, and this forms the best refutation of their theory.
The leading divines of the Reformation, certainly those of the
sixteenth century, held no such doctrine, nor do orthodox
theologians of the present day. There is a distinction that ought
to be carefully made between \hQ foreknowledge and the decree of
God. The divine foreknowledge is much wider, more com-
prehensive than the divine decree. When we say that anything
has been decreed by God, we mean that He has actually willed it.
All that He wills He must have foreknown ; but it does not follow
that He wills all that He foreknows. But, it may be asked, does
not such a statement imply that something happens or may
happen against God's will ? What He foreknows as something
that is to take place, although He does not will it, cannot will it,
seems a contradiction to His Almightiness and Eternity. When
put in this way, it seems as if God were not supreme. Can we
say without profanity ; Something happens against God's will ?
22 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
To answer this we must consider what God did in executing His
decree. He created the world, and He created angels and men.
We have to speak in detail of creation further on. Here we note
the fact that God decreed to call into being creatures endowed
with reason and will — intelligent and moral creatures. What
then the divine decree is responsible for, is the calling of such
creatures into being. God has decreed that creatures should
exist possessed of the power of saying whether they will do any
particular thing or not. It was God's decree to people His world
with beings who should be capable, not merely of mechanical,
but of moral, action. Obedience in a creature who could do
nothing else than obey, would be nothing better than the
indication of time by a correctly made and well regulated watch.
God executed His decree, and made moral and responsible
creatures, — man endowed with free will, the power of choosing
for himself. With this arose the possibility of disobedience, that
is, sin. The possibility of sin, then, was a result of the divine
decree, according to which man — a moral agent — was created ; the
committing of sin on the part of the creature, though necessarily
foreknown by God, had no place in His decree. Any attempt to
illustrate a profound truth like this is dangerous, and cannot,
from the very nature of the case, be perfectly applicable. Upon
the whole, however, the matter is well put by Archbishop Ussher.
' God,' He says, ^ is the author of every action, as it is a mere
action, but the devil and our concupiscence are the authors of
the evil in it ; as he that rideth upon a lame horse causeth him
to stir, but is not the cause of his halting.' This only, says the
preacher, have I found, that God hath made man upright ; but
they have sought out many inventions.
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 23
§ II. This God^ in six days, made all things of nothing, very
good in their own kind : in special, he made all the angels
holy J and he made our first paretits, Adam a?td Eve, the
root of manki7td, both upright and able to keep the law
writte7t in their heart. Which law they were 7iaturally
bou7id to obey imder pain of death j but God was not bound
to I'eward their service, till he entered into a covenant or
contract with them, and their posterity in them, to give them
eternal life, upon condition of perfect personal obediences
withal threatening death in case they should fail. This is
the covenant of works.
In this section we have the doctrine of creation set forth, — the
creation of the world, of angels, and of man, — and then the story
of the covenant made with man immediately upon his creation.
I. The Creation of the World. — ' This God, in six days, 7nade all
things of nothing, very good in their own kind?
In regard to the universe of the world and man, this short state-
ment supplies us with four particulars, (i) The Creator — this
God : (2) the period of the creative operations — six days • (3) the
absoluteness of the beginning in creation — all made of nothing :
and (4) the quality of the creation in all its parts — all very good.
(i.) The Creator. — This God made all things. The author of
creation is here indicated with admirable precision : this God.
The reference clearly is to the preceding section, which speaks
of the Almighty and Eternal God, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. The three-one God is creator of the universe.
Scripture enables us to assign special parts to each of the three
divine persons in the work of creation. John and Paul speak of
the world as made by Christ (John i. 3, 10 ; Col. i. 16). So, too,
.the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. i. 2) speaks of Christ
as the Son by whom God made the worlds. These passages do
not entitle us to speak of the Second Person of the Godhead as
24 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
the creator. It should be observed that in all these passages, the
object which the writers have in view is to prove the dignity of
Christ the Son. God assigns Him a place which none could fill
who was not equal to God. The work of creation was a work of
the Godhead : Christ is God, and, as a divine person, had a direct
efficiency in the work of creation. When, however, creation is
referred to apart from the argument for the divinity of Christ, it
is directly spoken of as the work of the Father, as in some sense
the first in order of the divine persons.
The statement before us may be regarded as a declaration that
the world was the work of the supreme God. Some early Christian
teachers were infected with speculative error, which they had
inherited from pagan philosophy. Taught to look upon matter
and the world generally as necessarily tainted with evil, they
hesitated to attribute creation to God. They did not see how
they could affirm that God was not the author of sin, if they admitted
that He was the creator of the finite world. Hence the Gnostic
teachers (that is, knowing ones, who professed to have knowledge
of profound mysteries) produced out of their own imaginations an
inferior sort of deity, whom they called the Demiurge, the crafts-
man or artificer. The theory that absolutely separates between
matter and spirit is Manichceism. It is called a dualistic theory
because it recognises two original principles. Of these, the one
is good, and originates all that is good ; the other is bad, and
originates all that is bad. Whatever is finite and material is con-
sidered to issue from the bad principle. In all the sects and
denominations of Gnosticism, — and these were very numerous, —
there was more or less of a Manichaean element, a tendency to
assign the origin of matter and finite being to some other power
than the good and supreme God. One of these Gnostics was
Marcion (who lived early in the second century), and he main-
tained the curious notion that the God of the Old Testament was
inferior to the God of the New Testament, who is the Father of
Jesus Christ, and that this inferior Old Testament God was the
Creator. Scripture, on the contrary, claims for God — the one
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 25
living and true God — the origination of all that exists. ' I form
the light, and create darkness ; I make peace, and create evil : I
the Lord do all these things ' (Isa. xlv. 7).
The truth that is here specially emphasized is that of an
immediate creation by a personal God, as distinguished from an
infinite series of processes. This latter view is really equivalent
to a belief in the eternity of matter. Pagan philosophy never
really transcended this point of view. Though Plato declines to
call matter eternal, he nevertheless fails to reach any distinct idea
of its creation in time. When we come down to the Christian era,
we find opposing systems of pagan philosophy, and those strange
blendings of that philosophy with certain elements of Christian
truth, which is called Gnosticism, still carefully avoiding the idea
of creation. There is a strange mixture here of pantheistic and
materialistic views. Things that are appear as emanations or new
forms of things that were before. It is curious to see how, under
the name of modern science, these old attempts to evade the idea
of creation by a personal God are, under various forms, revived.
German materialists like Buchner and Hosckel boldly deny
creation. As, according to them, there is nothing but matter,
they quite consistently regard matter as eternal, and affirm
spontaneous evolution of one form of being from another. Such
thoroughgoing materialists are avowed atheists. It is not so
with Darwin and EngHsh Darwinians. They trace back the
present varieties in the organic world to a few primary forms.
But whether they actually postulate a personal self-conscious deity
as the creator of these primary forms or not, they certainly do not
maintain the doctrine of the eternity of matter. Besides, they
admit that there is no proof of spontaneous generation, no case
known of a living organism (however low) originating from some-
thing without life. Hence the evolutionist has not been able to
avoid a break in the continuity when the lowest form of life is
reached. There is a gulf between the organic and inorganic
kingdoms. The evolutionist that acknowledges this leaves the
lowest member of the organic kingdom, as well as the simplest
26 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
element or elements in the inorganic kingdom, unaccounted for,
except on a hypothesis equivalent to that of creation. The evolu-
tionist who maintains his belief in a personal God, and so remains
untainted by materiahstic or pantheistic tendencies of thought,
will always clearly distinguish evolution from creation. It is
upon created things— whether these be many or comparatively
few — that his evolution theory must operate. Science must
decide whether this sort of evolution is such a theory as accounts
for discovered scientific facts. Scripture has nothing to say about
it good or bad, but simply affirms the antecedent truth that the
Almighty and Eternal God is the creator of all things.
(2.) The Period of the Creative Operations. — This God^ in six
days, 7nade all things. This statement has been objected to
by certain men of science, and regarded by timid believers with
considerable misgivings. There are several different ways in which
this account of Genesis has been interpreted, {a) The six days of
the Mosaic narrative have been understood by many to mean
six literal days. In support of this view, the account of the
institution of the Sabbath, as a period immediately following
creation, is supposed to imply that the day which designates
its duration must be the same as the days which mark the
various stages of creation. If the seventh day be a day of
twenty-four hours, so also must each of the other six. {b) The
use of the expression day in the primitive record was understood by
some as a merely figurative way of describing the manifoldness of
creation, which yet was the simultaneous and instantaneous work
of the divine Creator. This was the prevalent view of early and
mediaeval times. All the great Fathers and Schoolmen main-
tained that successive production was an idea unworthy of
God. {c) Then again, many, influenced by comparatively recent
geological discoveries, have supposed that the Mosaic days
indicated indefinitely long periods. This last theory has,
perhaps, been most generally accepted, but it has the difficulty
of the seventh day Sabbath to overcome, {d) Another view
of this whole subject is presented by Dr. Dods in his Hand-
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 27
book on Genesis^ in the present series. See especially, Introd.
pp. xvii.-xxi.
What has been called the Vision hypothesis seems most
successfully to avoid difficulties, while answering the require-
ments of an honest exegesis of the Scripture statements. A
series of pictures are presented before the writer of Genesis ;
each represents a distinct scene ; and the order of their repre-
sentation accurately sets forth the order of succession in the
production of the divine works. Modern science is in thorough
agreement with Moses as to the order in which the various forms
of being made their appearance. That there should be light
sufficient for vegetable life before the sun, was at one time thought
a fatal objection to the Mosaic account. Light appears on
the first day ; the sun, as ruling and central influence in our
system, on the fourth. Science now shows that light, as the
vibration of the ether, is independent of the sun, that the sun
really presupposes the existence of light. It is curious to notice
that in the creation narrative of the Zendavesta (the sacred book
of the Parsees), the creation of the sun is put before that of hght,
apparently intended as a correction. Further, science shows that
the earliest strata were deposited in water, which presupposes the
state of matters described as existing during the second day : then
the vegetable productions of the third, and the two separate
developments of animal life of the fifth and sixth days (of which
the sunlight and heat called forth on the fourth day are con-
ditions), are represented in the succession required by science.
The six pictures, then, set forth the actual succession in God's
creative working, while it leaves the question of the duration of
these successive operations to be discovered and determined by
scientific research.
(3.) The Absoluteness of the Beginning made in Creation. — This
God made all things of nothing. The substance of this statement
has been already discussed. The material universe is not eternal.
This world was not formed out of the wreck of former worlds ;
but by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the
28 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of
things that do appear (Heb. xi. 3). According to the Mosaic
account, the formless mass, which we call chaos, out of which God
produced the orderly universe (the cos7tios)^ was itself the creation
of God. It is said that the earth was without form, but even of
this earth it is said God created it. It is not only said that it was
formless, but also that it was empty : new beings had to be made
to people it. Scripture tells us nothing about the first calling into
existence of this chaos ; but, as each successive operation upon it
is attributed to the powerful action of the divine word as express-
ing the divine will, we must assign the origination of the formless
mass to the same influence. It is evidently in regard to this chaos
that it is affirmed that God made it of nothing. This chaos is
absolutely primeval.
The expression 'made of nothing,' though it accurately states
a biblical doctrine, is not itself a biblical phrase. The Apostles,
indeed, speak of God as caUing those things that be not as though
they were (Rom. iv. 17), and making things that are seen of things
that do not appear (Heb. xi. 3). But these statements are not so
explicit as the one before us, and are to be viewed rather as
general declarations of God's unlimited power. In an apocryphal
book, written somewhere between the years 100 B.C. and 50 B.C.,
the words are used by the mother who exhorts her son to constancy
under torture, ' Look upon the heaven, and the earth, and all that
is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were
not^ (2 Mace. vii. 28). The Vulgate renders this phrase by the
Latin word ex nihilo, out of nothing. The contrary view, that
nothing can come from nothing (familiarly known under the
equivalent Latin phrase, ex nihilo nihil fit) ^ was maintained by
Epicurus (B.C. 341-270), and it is curious to observe that the
philosopher was driven to this opinion, because no one could
satisfy him as to the origin of that chaos of which the ancient
Greek poets had sung. Though the exact phrase before us is not
found in Scripture, the doctrine that God created the world out of
nothing is strictly scriptural. No other theory satisfies the pre-
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE.
29
suppositions and the fundamental point of view of the Bible. The
Scripture doctrine of the divine perfections requires us to main-
tain that nothing outside of God has necessary, and therefore
eternal, being.
(4.) The Quality of the Creation in all its Parts. — This God made
all things very good in their kind. This is plainly the doctrine
of the Old and the New Testaments. The record of each day's
work in Genesis is closed by the declaration that it was found to
be very good. Paul (i Tim. iv. 4) says every creature of God (or
rather everything made by God) is good. Thus Scripture every-
where (as in Deut. xxxii. 4) declares God's work perfect. At the
same time, the biblical view of creation indicates certain restric-
tions and limitations which show that absolute perfection was not
claimed for the original work of the Creator. Perfection was the
goal which could be reached only by overcoming those restrictions
and limitations in a legitimate way. All things were very good
in their kind.
There are two contrasted philosophical theories which en-
deavour to account for the world as it is. Optimism, with
which the name of Leibnitz (1646-17 16) is commonly associated,
says of the world that it is the best of all possible worlds.
This we could maintain only if prepared to regard sin as
something desirable, or at least indispensable for the ultimate
attainment of a higher good. Pessimism, with which is usually
joined the name of Schopenhauer (1788-1860), maintains that
this world is the worst of all possible worlds, and that had it
been worse, it could not have secured existence. Hartmann,
again, says that it is the best of possible worlds, but it is not
good, and it would have been better had there been none. As
a consequence of the prevalence of pessimist views, the question
has been much agitated of late, whether life be worth living.
In contrast to these extreme and intemperate statements, the one
given above commends itself for its sobriety. There is nothing
originally made evil. All parts of creation, however, have not the
same office or rank, and are therefore not equally developed and
30 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
endowed. Each in its kind, like the members of the body in their
several offices, is very good.
n. The Creation of Angels. — In special^ this God made all the
angels holy.
This is a point on which Scripture says little. Nowhere,
indeed, have we any account of the creation of angels. Through-
out the Old and the New Testaments, however, there are constantly
recurring references to angelic beings and their operations. They
are represented, as their name indicates, as the messengers of
God. As the Bible is the revelation of God's relations to man,
wherever mention is made of angels in the Scripture history, they
are found to be bearers of messages from God to man, or agents
for God acting in the affairs of men. The earlier references to the
angelic order in Genesis are indefinite. Then in a large number
of passages in which allusions to angels are made the language is
evidently highly poetic. In other Old Testament passages the
angel seems to be the Son of God Himself anticipating His
incarnate work. The remaining references in earlier Hebrew
hterature are sufficient to show the existence .of angels as God's
messengers, but give us scarcely any further information. It is
only when we come to a late book like Daniel (written probably
about B.C. 530) that we find particular angels named, and
accounts given of their doings as individuals. We read of
Gabriel (Dan. ix. 16, x. 21) as God's messenger sent to comfort
and strengthen His servant. We read, also, of Michael (Dan.
X. 13, xii. i), the great prince, whose office it is to oppose and
restrain the enemies of the saints. In the same attitude Michael
reappears in a curious passage in the New Testament (Jude 9).
In the New Testament history angels play important parts, and
especially in the course of our Saviour's life. The personality of
those ministering spirits is everywhere assumed. And they are
holy — faithful in service and loving in their obedience.
On the other hand, they are represented as beings capable of
moral and spiritual development. Paul speaks of them (Eph. iii.
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 3 1
10) as coming to a knowledge of the divine wisdom which they
had not before by means of the historical redemption ; and Peter
describes the angels as possessed of a desire to look into those
things made known to man in the gospel (i Pet. i. 12). Capacity
for such development is proof of creaturely and dependent being.
Besides, this view of the angel-nature as one capable of moral
development allows us, or even requires us, to assume a testing
experience similar to that through which man passed. The
intense devotion of the holy angels can be best accounted for on
the hypothesis that they had deliberately refused to render unto
the creature — that is, to lavish upon self — what was due to the
Creator. With a view to the realization of such holiness they
were created, and their actions show that they have reached the
end of their being.
III. The Creation of Man. — This God made our first parents^
Adam and Eve ^ the root of tnankmd^ both upright a7id able to keep
the law written in their hearts.
(i.) Here we notice, first of all, that Scripture recognises and
requires the hypothesis of the unity of the human race. Adam
and Eve are made the root of mankiiid. The narrative of Genesis
certainly leaves the impression that what is told is intended to
afford an account of the first appearance of man on the earth.
We should find it difficult to reconcile the Mosaic story of man's
creation with the idea that there had been earlier races of men
than that beginning with Adam, or that, in different parts of the
world, other human pairs had been placed coeval with Adam and
Eve. Yet this unscriptural view of the plurality of the human
race, in both of these forms, has been held. In 1655, a French
writer, de la Peyrere (Pererius), founding upon early traditions
and speculations, set forth the curious doctrine that other races
of men had lived on the earth before Adam, and that these were
the progenitors of various existing races ; but that Adam is alone
mentioned in Scripture, because he was the progenitor of the Jews.
These ancestors of the other races were called Pre-Adamites.
32 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
The opinion that the races of mankind sprang from several quite
distinct and separate stocks, whether these originated earlier than
or coeval with Adam, was eagerly insisted upon by those interested
in maintaining the institution of negro slavery. It was thus
that many endeavoured to excuse their subjection and degrada-
tion of the coloured races. The negro was, according to their
view, a member of a race physically, morally, and spiritually inferior
to that of those whom he served. In creation there was set
before him another destiny, and no system of education or
civiHzing processes ever could or should be expected to qualify
him for discharging the functions of the white population. This
theory, and not that of the tenacity of a father's curse (that of
Noah against Ham and Canaan), could alone supply anything
like a feasible argument in favour of slavery. This same notion
of plurality in the origin of the human race was subsequently
taken up by men of science, who supposed that human remains,
or at least signs of the presence of man, had been discovered in
formations, which were proved to be long anterior to the creation
of Adam. But this idea of the human race having sprung from
several centres rather than one is now generally discredited as a
scientific hypothesis. The Darwinian theory of development
insists upon a single progenitor for all the varieties of mankind,
and refuses to see in these varieties separate species owing
their origin to differently constituted ancestors.
The natural interpretation of the record of Genesis is borne out
by subsequent parts of divine revelation. Paul declares, in
opposition to pagan theories that separate the interests of the
various nationalities, that all the nations are of one (Acts xvii. 26),
and he can explain the universality of sin only on the hypothesis
of one human centre through which it entered into the world
(Rom. V. 12). There is thus a moral and a theological interest
in the question as to the unity of the human race. Christian
ethics bases its doctrine of the brotherhood of man and the
obligation of man's love to man on the fact of their common
parentage. With the Latin poet the Christian says, *I am a
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE.
33
man, nothing that concerns man can be no concern of mine.'
Christianity traced the common parentage back to God Himself,
but it did so through the one human ancestor. Then chiefly,
this doctrine is of interest theologically as an essential presup-
position of the Christian doctrines of sin and redemption. If our
first parents, Adam and Eve, be viewed as the ancestors of the
whole race of men, then, and only then, can they be regarded as
the root of mankind. The oneness of the human race in respect
of sin and of redemption (often now spoken of as the solidarity
of the race) is the central postulate of the theology of the Apostle
Paul.
(2.) We have, in the next place, a statement regarding man's
original condition : — This God made our first parents both upright
and able to keep the law written in their hearts; which law they
were naturally bound to obey under pain of death. The upright-
ness describes the original condition ; ability to keep the law is
the result of that condition ; and the appearance of death is
contingent upon the breaking of that law.
{a) God hath made man upright (Eccles. vii. 29). The term
used indicates that man's will was originally straight in reference
to the divine law. God's idea was realized in him. He was in
his beginning what God intended that in his beginning he should
be. Man did not occupy a position of indifference toward good
and evil, but had his place within the range of the good. Pelagians
and Rationalists, who make as little as possible of human sin,
represent primitive man as not yet moral, and so in equilibrium
between good and evil. The original bias of the will was, how-
ever, toward good, and this gave to our first parents a signal
advantage. They were not only experiencing, but also exercising
the love of God, and to them God said, ' Continue ye in my love.'
Man's original righteousness may be regarded as a phrase more or
less equivalent to the divine image in man, and corresponding to
the state described as upright. In describing this original state
of man two different termj are used (Gen. i. 26), image and like-
ness. These have been commonly regarded as synonymous
34 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
expressions. Augustine, however, following earlier Fathers, and
followed by Roman Catholic theologians and several Protestant
divines, distinguished these : the image of God designates those
natural endowments which are never wholly lost to men ; the
likeness of God indicates those higher spiritual qualities which
were lost by the fall. The divine image is not lost by the fall :
for in Gen. ix. this is given as a reason why he who sheds man's
blood must be capitally punished— that men were created in the
image of God. If this attribute of the first man did not apply to
his descendants, there would be no argumentative force in the
statement. There is a decided advantage in appropriating terms
like image and likeness to indicate respectively, what is continued,
and what is lost, of the original endowments of men. Human per-
sonality, which consists in consciousness (of God, the world, and
self) and self-determination, is not lost. Original righteousness is
lost, which embraced sufficient knowledge of God, and conformity
in will and feehng to the will of God. The original words, how-
ever, do not imply any such distinction. What both together
describe is a conformity that is perfect. On the spiritual side,
there is maturity and strength of understanding (Gen. ii. 19;
Col. iii. 10), and of will (Eph. iv. 24). On the sentient and bodily
side there is freedom from suffering and death. As a consequence
of the possession of such natural and spiritual endowments, there
is granted to man dominion over the other creatures. Man thus
endowed is upright, and he is straight as concerns God's holy law,
as concerns what is good — if his attitude toward the good changes,
it must be through the surrender of God-bestowed endowments.
The seeking out of many inventions is making crooked what was
straight. Man's ceasing to be upright is the loss to him of his
original righteousness.
iV) Our first parents were able to keep the law written in their
hearts because of the original bias of their wills toward that
which is good. This statement implies that the first man had
a competent knowledge of God's will. He was endowed with a
conscience, a moral faculty which enabled him to distinguish
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 35
right and wrong. Though our first parents had not the ten com-
mandments written on tables, which they could handle, that
written in their hearts corresponded to the sum of these, — the
duty of love to God and to others. This law written in the heart
said simply, Do the right : and Adam could read the writing of
this law. Primitive man, therefore, had an intelligence and a
moral sense sufficiently formed to be serviceable. He was neither
a rude savage nor a weakly child. It is a favourite hypothesis
with the savants of our day, that man's social, intellectual, and
moral development begins with a savage condition scarcely dis-
tinguishable from that of the lower animals. Thoroughgoing
materialists, who maintain the theory that man's descent is to be
traced from the brute creation, necessarily hold that mind, which
they say is but a function of the brain, gradually advances with
the rest of the animal organism. Man thus derived, when first
he has gained possession of limbs that can be called human,
appears as a creature with only the hidden germ of moral and
intellectual faculties. The first man, according to this theory, is
a savage of a lower type than any to be found now among the
most barbarous hordes. It used to be very confidently asserted
that among savage races no trace could be found of earlier
civilization. It is now admitted by many eminent ethnologists
that no proof has been offered for this statement. Within the
historical period and among the historical races we find such de-
terioration from a position of high culture to the very borders of
the savage state, that we should find no difficulty in supposing that
tribes outside the historical circle may exhibit in their present
condition the wreck of prehistoric forms of culture, — a wreck so
complete as almost to destroy all traces of the past. This
hypothesis alone will satisfy the requirements of the biblical
narrative, and ethnological science has advanced nothing, in the
form of proved statements, to render it improbable. But while
firmly maintaining this position, we must be careful not to rush
to an opposite extreme. A famous English preacher. Dr. South,
was guilty of an exaggeration when he said, — An Aristotle was
36 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
but the rubbish of an Adam. There is nothing in the Scripture
narrative to warrant such a saying. Man's primitive condition
should not be regarded certainly as one of childishness. His was
rather a beautiful childlike nature of holy simplicity. The intel-
lectual and moral powers had not yet had any extensive means of
exercise. Conscience and understanding, however, mind and
will, were in harmony. Primitive man knew and could perform
the good, which the will of God revealed to him.
{c) Death of the body was not an element in man's original
condition ; its entrance into human history was contingent upon
our first parents' breaking the law written in their hearts : —
which law they were naturally bound to obey under pain of death.
In his original condition man was not subject to bodily infirmities
and that death of the body of which they are the prelude. It may
be, as geologists think they can prove, that there was death in the
animal creation before the appearance of man. But, according
to the Scripture account, the distinction between man and the
beasts of the field, — he being capable of exercising dominion over
them,— was of such a kind as would lead us to expect exemption
as concerned him from that law of animal life. This exemption,
however, could only hold when man's whole complex nature was
in harmony. Let discord appear, dissolution would follow. We
may gather from the whole narrative that it is regarded as a law of
nature that what is from the dust returns to dust. The Apocryphal
writer Jesus, son of Sirach, describes God's works in creation, and
says (Ecclus. xvi. 29, 30) : * After this the Lord looked upon the
earth and filled it with Hisblessings; withall manner of living things
hath He covered the face thereof, and they shall return into it again.'
And further, to show that where earth is the substance from which
anything is made a return to earth may be expected, he adds :
'The Lord created man of the earth, and turned him into it again,'
But, so long as the spiritual faculties of man wrought in harmony,
their harmonious action kept off this dissolution of the bodily
substance. The declaration of God to Adam, that in the day he
should eat of the forbidden tree he should die, clearly requires us
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 37
to believe that should this disobedience never occur, it would
never be said of man's body, ' Dust thou art, and unto dust thou
shalt return.' Man's death is spoken of in Scripture, not according
to its physical, but according to its moral and spiritual aspect
It is never spoken of as natural (a debt of nature) but as penaL
It is indeed universal, but it is so because all have sinned, —
because our first parents who sinned were the root of mankind.
The keeping of the law written in their hearts was simply main •
taining the equipoise of their nature and its powers. This would
be continuing to live. Such was man's natural immortality : he
need not die. His moral freedom, however, introduced a con-
trary possibility : he might die. Death cannot be called natural,
nor yet unnatural, to man. It is the threatening addressed to
the creature placed under law, to strengthen the resolution of
his will to keep that law. It is the doom of the law-breaker,
coming not from without, but actually consisting in the confusion,
distortion, disunion of the spiritual elements in man's being.
rv. The Covenant of Works, — But God was not bound to reward
their service till he entered into a covenant or co7itract with thetn^
a?id their posterity ift them^ to give them eternal life, upon conditio fi
of perfect perso7ial obedience; withal threateni7ig death in case
they should fail. This is the covcna7it of works.
(i.) We have here, first of all, the covenant form under which
this obligation was expressed. Some people object to the mode
of expression here adopted. They say that there is no mention of
any covenant arrangement entered into by God with man. The
thing, however, which we mean by a covenant is there, and it is
foolish to dispute over a word. The term covenant, though not
used in Scripture to describe the relations of God and man, as
respectively lawgiver and subject of law in the primaeval state, is
a very convenient one. In the same way the words Trinity and
Sacraments are extremely useful in theology, and the theologian
is surely entitled to employ them, though they are not found in
Scripture, to give convenient and exact descriptions of scriptural
38 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
truths and ordinances. By a covenant we mean a contract
entered into between two parties with the free consent of both,
wherein mutual obligations are recognised and mutual assurances
given, confirmed by solemn sanctions. The general terms of
God's covenant with man are through all ages the same ; God
saying, I will be your God, and man saying, I will be Thy subject,
servant, son. The obligations are, on God's part, His continued
exercise of rule and government over man, and, on man's part,
his yielding obedience to God's law. Reward and punishment
are the sanctions by which the fulfilment of covenant engage-
ments is enforced ; death is threatened as the doom of those who
break the covenant. Though the reward of faithfulness is not
explicitly stated, it is legitimately inferred that, when once the
temptation to disobedience has been successfully met, the mere
negative attitude toward death (thou shalt not die) will be
exchanged for a positive attitude toward life (thou shalt live).
(2.) It is here said, further, that, under the covenant, God binds
himself, but not man, to do more than under the terms of the law
simply could be required. The obligations of man as under law
are not enhanced by the terms of the covenant. It was perfect
personal obedience that was required of him from the first. The
penalty for any breach of the law written in the heart was death,
just as in the case of the breach of the covenant. But God places
himself under a new obligation by attaching a promise of reward
to the obedient. The law written in the heart corresponded, as we
have said, to the sum of the ten commandments. It was moral,
and so the apprehension of its injunctions as right belonged to the
very constitution of man's being. It spread out into multitudinous
details, but the principle underlying all was the obligation of
obedience to the holy and wise will of the Creator. If the period
of trial and probation were to be extended without limit, then no
other revelation of law would be necessary. But God graciously
resolved to restrict the term of man's temptation. When the
appointed days of sifting were over, if man should stand the test
and prove faithful, the trial would end, and he would enter upon
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 39
a State of confirmed holiness. This resolve of the Creator was
altogether in favour of man. But in order to carry it out, the
substance of the law written in the heart, the moral law, must be
expressed by means of a positive command. We mean by a
positive command a simple, unexplained utterance of the superior
will. That God wills it is the sanction or authority of His positive
laws ; that it is right is the sanction of the moral law. Now, as
we have seen, the substance of the moral law is obedience to God's
will. The presentation, therefore, of a positive command will test
once and for all man's attitude toward the moral law. God forbids
eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, a thing indifferent,
neither good nor bad in itself. This not only shortens, but it
simplifies man's task, yet the principle of the trial — obedience to
God's will — is ever the same. On the other hand, while no new
obligation is laid on man, God places Himself under a new
obligation. This he does in shortening man's probation, which
involves the new promise of eternal life — that is, the possession of
life beyond the possibility of danger — as the reward of faithfulness.
This covenant is therefore called the covenant of life, because the
promise of life is the one really new provision in it. Outside the
covenant there is death threatened to the disobedient : only under
the covenant is there any promise of assured and perpetuated life.
(3.) We have to consider, in the next place, the parties and their
obligations under the covenant of works. As to the parties, we
have seen throughout that these are God on the one hand, and
man on the other. God makes the covenant with man, for man's
advantage ; and for this reason, besides those mentioned, that he
may be able to deal with Adam as the root of mankind. Had
no covenant, with its positive command, been entered into, the
test resulting from the keeping or breaking of the law written
in the heart, must from the very seat of that law have been
individual and not radical. Under the covenant only could God
deal with the first man as representative of mankind. Adam
in his probation was the covenant head of the race, or fcederal
head (from foedus, a covenant). That the trial should be made
40 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
thus, and not in the several hves of individuals, was a decree of
divine wisdom. We cannot fathom or explain it. This at least
appears, that only in the case of a sin-fall taking place under a
covenant arrangement could such a redemption as that wrought
for sinful man have been accomplished. Consider the case of the
angels. Created in number, so as at once to present the whole
extent of the race, not increasing by addition of successive
generations, each individual angel stands the trial for himself.
Certain of these fall, like so many units, by their own act. They
are not a fallen race : theirs is not a fallen nature. There is no
fallen angel race into which a redeemer can be born. Mysterious
as the subject is, we seem to see in man's trial under the provisions
of a covenant the foundations of a possible redemption, laid in
case man under his trial should fail. Then as to the obligations
under the covenant, we have seen that God's obligations were the
rewarding and punishing of the faithful and the unfaithful. The
obligation laid upon man was the rendering Qi perfect persotial
obedience. The test applied by the imposition of a positive law
clearly did not admit of degrees in the enduring of it. The
result must either be utter failure or complete success, disobedience
or obedience, with no intervening gradations more or less.
During the period of probation the one under trial had before
him the forbidden object. In such circumstances we could
conceive of the fluctuations of feeling ; an alternating approach
toward and retreat from that which was not to be touched. Such
motions of feelings did not become sin, until the deed was con-
sciously resolved upon with the prohibition in full view and
distinctly understood. An evil suggestion resisted and put from
us is not sin : the putting away is the victory by which sin is
barred out. Had Adam decided to obey, when the issue of
obedience or disobedience had been distinctly set before him, his
act of will would have been perfect personal obedience, whatever
swayings of feeling might have preceded that decision. The
crisis was reached when the serpent counselled the rejection of
the expressed will of God. There was no doubt entertained as
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE 41
to the Lernis of the divine command (Gen. iii. 3, 4) ; the act of
eating the fruit, therefore, was one of defiance. Man dared the '
consequence of disobedience. His act was one of thorough
personal disobedience.
(4.) We have still further in this paragraph — God's purpose
concerning man under this covenant. The question is often put :
Why did not God set down man in a position where no tempta-
tion to disobedience would assail him ? This has been already
answered when we described man as a moral being. The reason
why God could not do what is suggested was that perfect personal
obedience could not be rendered apart from temptation. If no
opportunity were ever given of disobeying the divine will, man's
doing of the divine will (we cannot rightly call it obedience)
would not be a moral act or course of conduct. An act is moral
only when a man might have done otherwise and yet does what
is good. The innocence of our first parents in Eden was that of
childhood, which implies ignorance. They knew the good only
in a half-conscious way, because they did not know or know about
its opposite. Until they knew the good in full consciousness by
contrasting it with and choosing it before the evil, they could not
be said to have reached the position of positive and confirmed
holiness. Only two classes of beings are exempt from temptation,
— the divine and the irrational. God, because of His positive
holiness, the irrational creatures, because incapable of moral dis-
tinction, cannot be tempted. For man, however, the temptation
struggle is inevitable if he is to outgrow his original moral
childhood. The truth has been generally recognised in the more
earnest and spiritual ethical systems of antiquity. Admirable ex-
pression was given to it in the myth of Hercules at the cross roads
by Prodicus the Sophist (nearly 500 B.C.). He who was to be
the typical example of human strength, is represented as put under
a probationary trial. He is shown the way of pleasure, and none
of its immediate attractiveness is concealed, and the way of duty,
and none of its immediate hardness is hidden. His choice of
virtue is a moral triumph, and a condition of the development of
42 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
moral strength in character. There is no character, in the proper
sense, till such an ordeal has been passed through. What
Hercules, as an individual, is represented to have endured, Adam
passed through as the root of mankind. The necessity of such a
moral struggle on the part of man is symbolically set forth by the
trees of the garden. The benefit of the tree of life — that is, the
attainment of life in the true moral and spiritual sense — was
possible only to those who walked round and round, but did not
taste of the tree that was forbidden. Wisdom, says Solomon, is
a tree of hfe to them that lay hold upon her (Prov. iii. i8). But
those who fail in the temptation struggle, who eat of the forbidden
fruit, find, that by reason of the Cherubim and their flaming
sword, they cannot lay hold upon the tree of life. Only the holy
who have conquered temptation can enjoy life ; for Hfe has its
source and being in holiness.
§ III. Both angels and men were subject to the change of their
own free willj as experience proved {God having reserved
to himself the inconununicable property of being naturally
unchangeable) : for ma7ty angels of their own accord fell
by sin from their first estate^ and became devils. Our first
pare?tts, being enticed by Satan, one of these devils, speaking
in a serpent, did break the covenant of works, in eating the
forbidden fruit; whereby they, and their posterity, beitig in
their loins, as branches in the root, and cojnprehended in the
same covenant with them, became not only liable to eternal
death, but also lost all ability to please Godj yea, did beco?ne
by nature e?te?nies of God, and to all spiritual good, and
iftc lined only to evil continually. This is our original sin,
the bitter root of all our actual transgressions in thous^ht,
word, and deed.
This section treats of the beginning of human sin There are
certain presuppositions, which must be taken into account before
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 43
any conception can be formed of the origin of sin in man.
We must postulate the existence, and understand in some
measure the nature, of real freedom. In the previous fall of
angelic creatures, we get a superhuman source of temptation. In
the first sin of a responsible and representative man, as head of
the race, we have an explanation of mankind's universal sinful-
ness in the doctrine of original sin.
I. The intelligent and moral creatures of God — angels and
men — are changeable, whereas God is Himself alone unchange-
able. This statement concerning God is quite equivalent to that
of James (i. 13), God cannot be tempted with evil. It is a notable
quality of God that He is not subject to change.
(i.) Unchangeableness is a property of God. When we speak
of divine properties, we mean those characteristics by which
God is distinguished from all other beings. These properties
(so, e.g., Amesius and other divines) tell us how great {qiiantus)
and of what kind (gualis) God is. Under the divine qualities
we have God's faculties and virtues. The faculties are two, —
intellect and will. In regard to each of these it is affirmed that
God is unchangeable. His knowledge and His purpose are the
same in all ages (Acts xv. 18; Ps. xxxiii. 11). Nothing outside
of God can cause Him to change, for He is absolutely indepen-
dent of the world. There is no imperfection or incompleteness
in His nature that could allow of development or call for
modification. It is, however, no mere dead, uniform changeless-
ness that we attribute to God. Although no need of His being
requires change, there is yet inner movement. His eternal
knowledge and will, too, are manifested at sundry times and in
divers manners.
(2.) The divine property of unchangeableness is incomtmrnkabie.
Properly speaking, no divine property is communicable inasmuch
as it it is a manifestation of the divine nature. Instead of
speaking of certain attributes of God as communicable, and
others as incommunicable, we would rather say, that some are
44 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
imitable and others iniimtable. All God's moral attributes —
goodness, truth, etc. — are imitable by man and are revealed and
manifested in order that they may be imitated. His meta-
physical and psychological attributes — omnipresence, omnisci-
ence, omnipotence, absolute freedom — are inimitable. The
quality in each of these which man cannot imitate is unchange-
ableness. Thus, for instance, man can relate himself to space,
but his presence in various portions of space can only be
successive, and implies change on his part ; when God relates
Himself to space, His omnipresence secures the simultaneous and
continuous occupation of all portions of space, and implies no
change on the divine being. God's omnipotence is power which
no opposition or hindrance can invalidate. Take away the
quality of unchangeableness and these attributes of God would
be distinguished from the properties of man, it may be in degree,
but certainly no longer in kind. It is therefore rightly said that
as respects His nature God has specially reserved to Himself
this property of unchangeableness. Yet, although this property
cannot belong 7iaturally to any other being than God, it may be
the gift of grace to angels and men who have stood their trial, and
are, by a gracious covenant arrangement, confirmed in holiness.
II. In the history of the angels, as beings who are not un-
changeable, we meet with the incidents of a trial and a fall : —
Many angels of their own accord fell by sin from their first
estate^ and became devils.
(i.) It is here said that many atigels fell. The fall of the
angels is certainly a presupposition of Scripture history, but is
not very prominently or explicitly referred to. The reason of
this is that man, and not the angels, is the subject of revelation.
In the earlier books of the Bible, and indeed throughout the
Old Testament, we have no clear statement regarding a fall in
the angel world. One, indeed, bearing the name of Satan
appears in the Book of Job and in the Book of Zechariah (ch. iii.),
but he is the minister of God, bent upon testing the sincerity and
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 45
purity of motive in God's professed servants. In the New Testa-
ment, however, light is shed upon obscurer passages in the
earher Scriptures. The serpent that tempted Eve is identified
with the Devil and Satan (2 Cor. xi. 3 ; Rev. xii. 9, xx. 2). Then
we are told by the Saviour (John viii. 44) that the devil abode
not in the truth ; while the Apostle John declares (i John iii. 8)
that by the devil a beginning of sin was made. In two of the
catholic Epistles very definite reference is made to the fall of
angels. Peter says that God spared not the angels that sinned
but cast them down to hell (2 Pet. ii. 4). Jude says that God
has reserved in everlasting chains the angels which kept not
their first estate, but left their own habitation (ver. 6).
(2.) Their fall is described as resulting from an act of will : —
Many angels of their ow?i accord fell. The main thing to be
observed here is that the angel world is regarded as consisting,
not in a race of angelic beings, but in a multitude of individual
angels. There may be grades and orders among them, but there
is no federal union. What one of their number does can affect
tlie rest only as example and stimulus. Each one acts for himself,
and secures praise or incurs blame for his own particular action.
It would have been so with men had they been created in numbers,
and not as a single pair. The whole number of the angels must
have been created at once, for no addition was to be made to
their ranks. Many of them fell, the higher and more powerful
no doubt exercising a mighty influence over others. Whether
the passage in Rev. xii. 3, 4 refers to Satan's original fall, as
Milton assumes {Par. Lost., ii. 691-695), or not, it may serve for
an illustration of what we say. The mighty rebel inspires a
multitude of other spirits with rebellious thoughts. But they do
not sin in him and fall with him in his transgression, but each
one through his own act.
(3.) The occasion of this fall of angels is said to be sin : —
Many angels fell by sin from their first estate^ and becajne
devils. How sin could originate in a pure creation of God is an
unsolved and unsolvable mystery. We must, however^ postulate
46 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
an absolute beginning of sin in the angel world, and nothing else
but sin can be conceived of as sufficient to account for a fall of
angels. As to the particular form of that first sin, Scripture
speaks only in one passage. Paul warns Timothy against
ordaining to the office of the ministry any very recent convert,
lest such a one should be lifted up into pride, and so fall into
the condemnation of the devil (i Tim. iii. 6). The apostle here
evidently assumes that pride was the occasion of the devil's fall,
that it was this that brought condemnation upon him. Many of
the Fathers and the Schoolmen thought that the occasion on
which this pride showed itself was the declaration of the divine
counsel to set up a kingdom under Christ, the Son of God, which
was to embrace all angels and men. That refusal of submission
to the dominion of the Son, saying we will not have Him to rule
over us, was the angels' sin, seems supported by the 6th verse of
Jude, in which the significant words occur (as literally rendered
in the Revised Version), the ' angels kept not their own princi-
pality, but left their proper habitation.' They refused subjection
to the Son, and strove to set up a rival kingdom. They would
themselves be as gods. Here, too, we get a view of the extent
of the fall. The angel fallen becomes the devil. The strength
and intensity of self-originating wickedness show themselves in
the whole course of diabolical actings.
m. Man in the possession of free will is naturally changeable :
— Men were subject to the change of their own free will. This
statement indicates that man's original position was in the realm
of good. In this he might continue, or he might possibly change
and enter into fellowship with evil. In either case, he must
exercise his free will, and this would give a moral character to
the result. An important distinction is made between real and
formal freedom. [See especially Miiller, Doctr. of Sin, vol. ii.
pp. 6-21.] Real freedom means the harmony that exists between
man's will and man's moral ideal. As the creature of God his
end is the fulfilment of God's will. Man exercises his real freedom
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 47
by refusing to depart from the doing of God's will, and resolving
to carry out the purpose of his being. Formal freedom means
simply the power to choose between good and evil. This formal
freedom, this liberty of choice, is absolutely necessary in order to
the exercise of real freedom. Adam could not have freely willed to
obey God, and thus in the exercise of real freedom attain to his
chief end, unless he had formal freedom, the power to determine
whether he could yield this obedience or disobey. The will of
man has a law. As free, it can determine whether or not it will
observe this law. If it does so, its freedom is maintained ; if it
does not, its freedom is lost. In the exercise of his free will man
first sins, but in doing so he forfeits his freedom and becomes the
bond-slave of sin. The service of sin is slavery, because it implies
change and deviation from man's own ideal ; the service of God
is freedom, because it involves no change, but the attainment of
the purpose of man's creation.
IV. Man as possessed of the power of free will is subjected to
temptation: — Our Jirst parefits, being enticed by Satan, one of
these devils, speakirig in a serpent, did break the covenant of
works. The point which is here to be attended to is the origina-
tion of sin in man as the result of suggestion and enticement
coming, in the first instance, from without. The Scripture record
affords a most instructive account of the several stages in man's
temptation. Man is represented as consciously observing the
positive command of God, which forbade his eating the fruit of a
particular tree. He knew this to be God's will, and he knew that
obedience to God's will was the ideal rule of his life. In the
exercise of his free will, however, as we have seen, he might
persevere in this natural obedience till through victorious conflict
it had become moral, or he might change and refuse to continue
this natural obedience, and thus, failing to render perfect personal
obedience, break the covenant of works. Neither alternative
could be gained unless a fuL presentation of the one side as well
as of the other had been made. So the tempter appears to
48 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
contradict the word that God had spoken. He begins subtly to
inquire whether the prohibition is actually admitted to be God's
word. This does not at once awaken doubt : the command was
certainly from God. This was Christ's reply in His temptation,
and His victory was won by adhering to what God had enjoined.
But when man had shown full acquaintance with God's word
and will (Gen. iii. 2, 3), the serpent was allowed without contra-
diction to deny the truth and the love of that word. Sin, on the
part of men, begins here in the absence of zeal and jealousy for
God's honour and glory. It is not liability to temptation, but
yielding to it, that marks the entrance of sin into our world. The
subject of any real temptation must feel its force, understand the
advantage offered, but only when the suggestion is so received as
to determine thought and feeling does it become sin.
V. The nature of man's sin : — Our first parejits did break the
covenant of works in eating the forbidden f'uit. The first sin of
man is described as disobedience. The act of eating the fruit
of that particular tree viewed in itself was not moral ; it was
neither good nor bad. It can be regarded as bad only when
viewed as disobedience to a divine command. The law of God
is the most comprehensive expression for the will of God, which,
however it may be uttered, ought to be obeyed. It may express
itself in conscience (the law written in the heart), or in a positive
command (as to Adam), or in the moral law (as given by Moses
and expounded by Christ), or in the hfe and example of our Saviour
Himself. God's law under any mode of expression is the rule of
our obedience ; and sin is the transgression of the law (i John
iii. 4). This then is the most comprehensive description of human
sin : it is disobedience. Another question here presents itself : —
What, looking upon man's inner nature, is the inmost root of sin ?
Has it a spiritual or a sensuous origin? It is evidently possible,
in a being like man, consisting of flesh and spirit, that sin may
have its source in one or other of these constituent elements.
Looking to the record in Genesis of the first sin, we find (Gen.
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE, 49
iii. 6) that the eating of the forbidden fruit commended itself to
our first parents on a threefold ground : the fruit seemed good for
food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and also somehow desirable as
hkely to make the eater wise. Here it would seem that we have
the sensuous, under a lower and higher form, and also the spiritual,
element in Adam's first sin. An exactly similar account of sin
among the generations of fallen man is given in i John ii. 16,
where the world that is the contradiction of God is described as
comprising the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride
of life. This, again, agrees with the order of the three temptations
of our Lord as given by the third evangelist (Luke iv. 1-13).
But flesh and spirit in man constitute one individual being. No
act of man can be absolutely sensual to the exclusion of the spirit,
nor can it be absolutely spiritual to the exclusion of sense. Sin is
an act of the whole man. As disobedience to God's will, it is the
setting of man's own will against, instead of along with that of
God. This is selfishness on the part of man. There is here self-
assertion. Man would be as God : he would subordinate all to
self. Pride, says an apocryphal writer (Ecclus. x. 13), is the
beginning of sin ; but he had just said, " The beginning of pride
is when one departeth from God, and his heart is turned away
from his Maker." Man's sin therefore, in its beginning and in its
consummation (2 Thess. ii. 3, 4), is the setting self in the place of
God.
VI. The consequences of man's sin : — Our first parents did
break the covenant of works, whereby they and their posterity,
being in their loins, as branches in the root, and comprehended in
the same covenant with them, becafue not only liable to eternal
death, btct also lost all ability to please God; yea, did become by
nattc?'e enemies to God and to all spiritual good, and inclined
only to evil continually. This is our original sin, the bitter root
of all our actual transgressions, in thought, word, and deed.
(i.) We have here, first of all, the mysterious yet undoubted
truth set forth, that mankind is involved in Adam's sin. The
D
50 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
posterity of our first parents is described as being in their loinSy
as branches in the roof, and coinprehended in the same covenant
with them. Adam is not one individual among many, but he is
the starting-point of a race. What he does in terms of the
covenant he does as representative of mankind. This is what the
older divines mean by calling him a coi7imon person. The first
sin, therefore, as an act under the covenant, exerts a disturbing
influence on the development of the whole human race. With
this, however, the federal relation of Adam to his posterity ended.
The covenant was thereby broken. Whenever Adam disobeyed,
he ceased to be head and representative of man. What affects
his posterity is this one sin of eating the forbidden fruit. Had
not the covenant of works ended with the first transgression, then
all Adam's subsequent transgressions would have been trans-
mitted, and those of the fathers to the sons through all generations.
Original sin is not our parents' sins, but our first parents' sin.
Hence the prophet says (Ezek. xviii. 20), the son shall not bear
the iniquity of the father ; and the apostle says (Rom. v. 19), by
one man's disobedience many were made sinners.
(2.) We have here, in the next place, the statement that Adam's
sin has rendered mankind liable to death: — Our first parents
and their posterity became liable to eternal death. Throughout
Scripture death is always spoken of as the wages of sin and the
common doom of all men. The penalty announced for any breach
of the covenant was death (Gen. ii. 17). Paul most explicitly
asserts (Rom. v. 12), that death entered the world by the sin of
one, and became universal in its sway over man just as sin did.
The only question requiring consideration is as to the meaning of
this death. We distinguish in some sort death physical, spiritual,
and eternal. But the distinction is not thoroughgoing. We
have here rather spiritual death as the proper doom of sin, the
immediate effect of sin upon man, leading on to physical death,
and this again opening the way to eternal death. In the day
thou eatest thereof, said God, thou shalt die. Disobedience
meant the derangement of man's inner being and the breaking up
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 5 1
of his fellowship with God, and this is spiritual death. The
commission of sin and the subjection of man to this death
were precisely simultaneous. Physical decay, betokened by the
removal of man from the presence of the tree of life, immediately
set in, and the death of the body became henceforth a necessity.
The dissolution of the body, however, did not put any limit to
the dominion of death over the man. Apart from a redemption
throi gh grace, the penalty of sin was death eternal.
(3.) The next point to be observed here is that Adam's sin has
rendered man incapable of doing good: — Our first par etits and
their posterity lost all ability to please God. The inability of
fallen man to do good so as to please God is an element in
spiritual death. Man by reason of sin has lost all ability to
please God. It is total inability that is spoken of. By theologians
it is called natural and moral inability. It is natural., not as
characterizing man's original nature, but as a property of certain
faculties of his fallen sinful nature, apart from the will, such as
the understanding, bodily powers, etc. It is moral., as consisting
in the want of inclination, or the presence and power of a contrary
inclination. [See Jonathan Edwards, Inquiry into the F?'eedo?n
of the PVill, Pt. i. § 4.] This loss came upon man just through
the entrance of sin, which, we have seen, is selfishness. Love, we
are told, is the fulfilling of the law. Man transgressed the law by
withdrawing his love from God and squandering it on self. This
love of God, which is just another name for harmony between
our will and God's, is the one indispensable condition for pleasing
Him. Enoch walked with God, and so he has won this testimony,
that he pleased God. But without this agreement it is impossible
to please Him. By reason of the fall this harmony with God's
will, and the consequent pleasing of Him, are to man naturally
impossible.
(4.) But we are called to observe, further, that Adam's sin has
produced in man an actual aversion from the good and a bias
toward the evil : — Our first pare7its and their posterity did become
by nature enemies to God., and to all spiritual good, ajid inclined
52 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
only to evil contmually. It is true of all fallen men that they are
not subject to God's law, and want of subjection constitutes
enmity. This is regarded by many in our day as a hard saying.
It is customary, and in accordance with approved forms of modern
culture, to extol the excellences of human nature. Scripture says,
and conscience bears witness to its truth, that the mind of the
flesh — that is, the unregenerate nature of man, present in remnant
even in the children of God — is enmity against God. Consider
Rom. V. lo, viii. 7; Eph. ii. 15, 16; Col. i. 21; Jas. iv. 4.
Nothing so signally shows the intensity of the sinner's hatred of
God, as the display of bitterness awakened in one obdurately
impenitent by any special manifestation of divine grace, or by the
sight of one faithfully witnessing for God. Men hated Jesus just
because they could not convict Him of sin. The Athenian mob
voted Aristides' condemnation because wearied by hearing him
called the Just. It does certainly seem hard to say of such a one
as the noble pagan just named, and of unbelievers in Christian
lands and ages of beautiful natural character, that they are inclined
to evil continually. It simply means that where love to God is
wanting as the motive, nothing can be good before God, but all
is evil.
(5.) Finally, we learn that the sinful nature inherited from
Adam is the source of all particular acts of sin : — This is our
original sin, the bitter root of all our actual transgressions, in
thought, word, and deed. This is the interpretation which the
Church has put on the teaching of Scripture. The doctrine of
original sin is expressed with no uncertain sound in the Old
and in the New Testaments (Ps. li. 5 ; Eph. ii. 3). Augustine
(354-430) gave full and accurate expression to the doctrine in his
controversy with the British monk Pelagius (fl. 410). According
to Pelagianism, children are born innocent as Adam, but like him
unconfirmed in holiness, and under evil influences they fall into
sin. According to Augustinianism, children are born with a sinful
and perverted nature, which is the root and spring of actual
transgressions. The Church Councils decided in favour of the
OUR CONDITION BY NATURE. 53
Augustinian doctrine, but gradually the corrupt Church of Rome
drifted toward the Pelagian view. The Jansenists of Port Royal
(Pascal, 1623-1662, and others) were Augustinians in conflict with
the Jesuits, who were more or less Pelagians. Luther (1483-
1546), Calvin (i 509-1 564), Knox (i 505-1 572), and other leading
Reformers were vigorous maintainers of the doctrine of original
sin. Only on the basis of this doctrine can this universality of
sin, which is a historical fact, be philosophically explained.
Apart from its unscripturalism, the view of Pelagius completely
fails to account for facts. Adam's children are (Gen. v. 3) in his
own likeness as a fallen man.
HEAD II.
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST.
§ I. Albeit 7}ia7i^ having brought himself ijito this woeful co7iditioii^
be 7ieither able to help himself ttor willitig to be helped by
God out oj it, but 7'ather i7icli7ted to lie stilly i7tse7tsible of
it, till he perish J yet God, for the glory of his 7'ich grace,
hath revealed i7i his word a way to save si7t7iers, viz. by
faith i7i Jesus Christ, the eter7ial So7i of God, by virtue of
aiid accordi7ig to the te7ior of the cove7ia7tt of rede)7iptio7i,
77iade a7id agreed up07i betwee7i God the Father a7id God the
So?t, i7t the cotmcil of the Tri7iity before the world begaTt.
In this section we have brought before us the remedy provided
by God for our fallen and lost condition of sin and misery, viewed
as the subject of God's thought in eternity. It is His eternal plan
that arranges the terms and conditions according to which
deliverance may be wrought for the sinner. Here we necessarily
fall back upon the statements of the last section in order to
enforce the doctrine of men's inability, and to make it the basis
of the doctrine of redemption. Principal Cunningham calls
attention to the unique importance of this doctrine of human
depravity, on account of its close connection with the mainten-
ance of spiritual life. During certain periods of the Church's
history other fundamental doctrines have been more or less
imperfectly appreciated without the warmth of the Christian life
54
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 55
being thereby destroyed ; but any failure to estimate aright the
indispensable necessity and sole efficiency of divine grace, and,
consequently, the utter inadequacy and unsuitability of man's
natural powers to contribute anything to his salvation, has always
resulted from and been a proof of a low degree of spirituality in
the Church. Hence the importance of connecting closely a deep
consciousness of man's unworthiness and weakness with a pro-
found realization of the sovereignty of God's grace in the salvation
of the sinner.
I. Our attention is, first of all, called to the doctrine of the
sinner's resp07isibility for his state : — Man brought hmiself into
this woeful conditioti. It is necessary to keep this very carefully
in mind, that the inability to good and the proneness to evil which
characterize the natural man are wholly consequences of the fall.
There are theories of human nature widely prevalent in these
days which regard man's present state as the result of limitations
imposed originally in his creation. Finite creatures, it is said,
are necessarily imperfect. According to this view, imperfection
belongs to the very notion of creaturely existence. All admit, of
course, that finitude means limitation ; but are we to identify
limitation and human sin ? This is what the theory in question
does. It says. What you call sin is nothing else than the limita-
tion, which is a characteristic attribute of the finite creature.
There is no room here for any conception of guilt. If carried out
consistently, the conclusion would be that man was no more
responsible for what is called sin than for the colour of his hair.
It results from the imperfect constitution of his being. Scripture,
however, supported by the universal conscience of the human
race, maintains that man is what he is by his own fault. Not
against our will, as Augustine says {non inviti tales sumus), do
we become sinners.
II. In the next place, we are reminded of the helplessness and
insensibility of the sinner in his sinful condition : — Mati is 7ieither
56 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
able to help himself nor willing to be helped by God out of it^
but is rather inclined to lie still, insensible of it, till he perish.
That spiritual death, which has been shown to be the penalty
which followed the breaking of the covenant of works, involves
not only the enfeeblement of man's faculties, but their complete
destruction or effacement in the direction of any spiritual good.
Life, in respect of the exercise of its functions, is extinct, since
the numbness, which indicates death's presence and reign, is
already felt. We must be on our guard here against extreme
views. It ought to be remembered, and to be emphatically stated,
that all the powers which belong to man as a creature of God are
continued to him since the fall, not merely in name, but distinctly
as powers. And not only is there no diminution in the faculties
of man, but there is no addition to their number. There is,
further, no withdrawal of any substance belonging to man's
nature, and the substitution of some other in its place. It was a
grievous error of Flacius (i 520-1 575), one of a band of violent and
one-sided Lutherans that rose up immediately after Luther's
death, when he maintained that original sin was a substance, just
as holiness is a substance, and that the soul of fallen man is a
mirror or image of Satan, and that, in effect, the soul is itself, as
to its substance, original sin. This is a reintroduction of
Manichaeism, which gives substantial form to evil as well as to
good. This is the one extreme, which springs out of a denial of
human freedom, with the intention of exalting the divine sove-
reignty, but ends in a denial of man's responsibility for his conduct
and his belief. On the other hand, the contrary extreme, which
exaggerates the capabilities of the natural powers of man in a
sinful condition, must be met by calm, well-balanced statements
of Scripture truth concerning man's helplessness and insensibility
under sin. The sinner does not draw near to the Saviour, but
is drawn by the Father (John vi. 44). This does not mean that
men are treated as stocks and stones, for they are drawn by
influences that work upon their intelligence and will. The
opposition of fallen human nature is recognised. The powers of
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 57
man are there ; misapplied, yet active. He must be spoken to
and dealt with through these ; but with these nothing spiritual
can originate. The natural man refuses to acknowledge his sin,
but the Spirit C07ivinces him of it (John xvi. 8). His inclination
toward God, as well as his perception of what separates him from
God, man owes to the teachings of the Divine Spirit, to the work-
ings of God's grace. The first faint trace of a desire after God
is the Holy Spirit's work. Even those movements toward good,
which are not followed up, and do not lead to decision for God,
are to be attributed to God's Spirit. There is a preparing grace
{gratia prcBveniens) which moves and affects man, who is in
himself insensible to spiritual things. We owe convictions, which
are silenced by our own sinful wills, as well as conversion, where
our wills are conquered and brought into captivity to the obedience
of Christ, to the awakening power of God's grace.
in. We are shown, in the next place, how God provides a
remedy for the breach of the covenant of works by making a new
covenant of redemption : — God, for the glory of His rich grace^
hath revealed in His word a way to save sinners^ viz. by faith
in Jesus Christy the eternal Son of God, by virtue of a7id
according to the tenor of the covenajit of redeinption, made and
agreed upon between God the Father and God the Son^ in the
Council of the Tritiity, before the world began. Here it is to be
observed that in many particulars the covenants of works and
of grace correspond. Of both, the author is God, the moving
cause His grace, the end the manifestation of His glory, the
parties God and man, the condition perfect obedience, and the
promise everlasting life. There are also various differences
between these two covenants, resulting from the fact that the fall
of man and his enmity against God introduce modifying con-
ditions into the new covenant arrangement. The covenant of
redemption is with Christ, the second Adam, on behalf of those
of fallen mankind represented by Him. Throughout the Sjiin of
Saving Knowledge^ it will be observed, the covenant agreement
58 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
with Christ in eternity, and the covenant made with elect indivi-
duals in time, are distinguished by name, and are referred to
respectively as the covenant of redemption and the covenant of
grace. This distinction is undoubtedly a real one, and when
consistently carried out, as in the following section of the
formulary before us, will be very helpful in securing clearness
of statement and definition. Turretin (i 623-1 687) and Witsius
(1636- 1 708), together with those divines who followed the
covenant scheme in the distribution of theology, and Dr. Hodge
(1797- 1 878), who largely sympathized with that school, approve
of this distinction in the use of these terms. Certainly it is only
Christ who can redeem^ and it is only finite creatures who can be
said to be the recipients of grace. On the other hand, we find
the term covenant of grace ordinarily employed to designate the
new covenant generally, in contrast to the covenant of works. It
is thus used in a wider and less exact sense, and also in a way
more particular and limited. Boston (1676-1732) and the West-
minster divines in the Larger Catechism (1648), while recognising
the distinction indicated, refuse to speak of two covenants, and
give to the new covenant the name of the Covenant of Grace.
Thus {Larger Cat. Qu. 31) the covenant of grace was made with
Christ as the second Adam, and in Him with all the elect as His
seed — referring to Gal. iii. 16. We should remember, too, that
the covenant of works also is properly a covenant of grace.
(i.) We speak here of the Father's covenant with the Son in
eternity: — The covenant of redemption.^ ?nade and agreed upon
between God the Father and God the Son, in the Council of the
Trinity^ before the world began. As we have already seen,
though God, in decreeing the creation of moral and responsible
creatures, willed the possibility of sin, He simply foreknew, with-
out willing man's actual fall into sin. In the councils of eternity,
however, provision was made for the foreknown consequences
of man's probation. The covenant made with the Son, and the
decree to create man as a moral being, are thoughts of eternity ;
but, as ideas presented to our minds, the covenant with the Son
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 59
appears as a consequence of the decree to create man, and of
the impending fall of man as foreknown of God. Of such a
covenant transaction in eternity we have ample Scripture proof.
God hath saved us according to His own purpose and grace,
which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began (2
Tim. i. 9). That eternal life which is our hope God promised
before the world began (Tit. i. 2) ; and this is but the sum of
those promises that are yea and amen in Christ (2 Cor. i. 20).
The redeeming blood of Christ is called the blood of the ever-
lasting covenant (Heb. xiii. 20) ; and the gospel of salvation
is the everlasting gospel (Rev. xiv. 6). Christ Himself and the
evangelists who record His earthly life always go on the assump-
tion, often giving to it express statement, that the Son came
into the world in fulfilment of the eternal counsel of the Father.
We should notice, further, that this covenant is made by the
Father. There are certainly abundant proofs of the willingness
of the Son. The plan of redemption, however, is ascribed to
the Father. He is not reluctant, unsympathetic, or indifferent,
urged by the warm, compassionate eagerness of the Son to
permit Him to become the Saviour of sinners. A Moravian
system of theology, which inclines to recognise as the originator
of any redemptive process no person of the Godhead but the
second, necessarily gives an impression of God the Father that
is, to say the least of it, unattractive. On the contrary, God
essentially^ that is, as Father, Son, and Spirit alike, is love. The
plan is by the Father, which is wrought in the Son and applied
by the Spirit. Again, the Son, as the party with whom the
covenant is made by the Father, is the second Adam, the
representative Head of redeemed humanity. Like the first Adam,
Christ is viewed as a public person under the covenant. He
says to the Father, when speaking as a party in the covenant :
Behold I and the children whom Thou hast given me (Heb. ii.
13). He puts Himself under the covenant of works when He
becomes man. In this way He becomes subject to the curse of
the law, and that for the purpose of redeeming them that are
6o SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
under the law. For this reason, that is, in view of its purpose,
the covenant with the Son is called the Covenant of Re-
demption.
(2.) In the next place, we speak here of God's gracious purpose
regarding fallen men: — God^for the glory of His rich grace ^ hath
revealed iji His word a way to save sinners^ viz. by faith in
Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. {a) The way of salvation
under the covenant of grace is here described as the subject of
divine revelation. There are many things regarding his own
nature, condition, and responsibilities, and also regarding God,
which man may know from the light of nature and the exercise
of his reasoning faculties ; but the way of salvation can only
be made known to us directly by Him who devised it. If we
turn to the Scripture history of redemption, we find that God
Himself made the first announcement of His purpose of grace
to fallen man (Gen. iii. 8-15). In gospel times, too, the pro-
clamation is from God regarding that which had been hid until
He, through His messengers, made it known (Eph. iii. 3-5).
And, again, the revealing of this gospel of salvation to the
hearts of those who are being saved is described as immediately
of God (Matt. xi. 25, xiii. 11). {b) This way of salvation is by
faith in Jesus Christ. We here meet with one of the most
important differences between the covenant of works and the
covenant of grace. Under the first covenant it was said : This
do, and thou shalt live. There was no mediator between God
and man : for the covenant was one between friends, and so
was naturally an arrangement made directly between the parties.
But the parties on whose account the covenant of grace was
devised were at enmity with God, who devised the covenant,
and that covenant was designed to bring about their reconcilia-
tion. Since the unalterable condition of a covenant is obedience
on the part of those on whose behalf it is contracted, and
those who are in a state of enmity cannot render this, it
becomes necessaiy to have a surety or substitute appointed,
who is able to yield perfect obedience. The new covenant
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 6 1
which demands perfect obedience, is made by God with Christ,
and faith in Him exercised by the individual man secures that
he as a believer is reckoned in Christ. The eternal Son of God^
with whom the covenant in eternity is made, is Jesus Christ,
the appointed Saviour, who, as the Head of redeemed humanity,
the second Adam, represents and secures acceptance before God
for all who are bound together into one in Him. To this Christ
are all the promises made. Faith unites the sinner to Him ;
and union with Him is salvation. The exercise of such
uniting faith is essential to salvation, and nothing more can
be required as a condition under the new covenant. ' It was
by no accident that union with Christ exalted and transfigured
the whole spiritual nature of man, and raised him to diviner
levels of life. Man was made for this : " before the foundation
of the world " God has determined that in Christ man should
find God, and God find him ' (Dale, Ephes. p. 34). Seeing,
then, that the whole transaction takes place in Christ, the
moving and efficient cause is God's rich grace, and the end is His
glory. Whatever God works in grace must yield Him glory as its
end. Each manifestation of divine grace is a contribution to the
divine glory : and the fulness of God's grace is the consummation
of His glory. Christ is seen in His glory when full of grace.
§ II. The sum of the covenant of redemption is this : God having
freely chosen unto life a certain number of lost mankind, for the
glory of his rich grace, did give them, before the world began,
unto God the Son, appointed Redeemer, that, upoji condition
he would humble himself so far as to assume the hicmaji nature,
of a soul and a body, unto personal tmion with his divine nature,
and submit himself to the law, as surety for the?n, and satisfy
justice for the/n, by giving obedience in their na7ne, even unto
the sufferi7ig of the cursed death of the cross, he should ransom
and redeem them all from sin and death, and picrchase unto
them righteousness and eternal life, with all saving graces
62 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
leading fhereu?ito^ to be effectually^ by means of his own ap-
pointment, applied in due time to every one of them. This
condition the Son of God (who is Jesus Christ our Lord) did
accept before the world began, a?td in thefuhiess of time cajne
into the worlds was born of the Virgin Mary, subjected him-
self to the law, and completely paid the ratisom on the cross.
But by virtue of the aforesaid bargain, made before the wo7'ld
began, he is in all ages, since the fall of Adam, still upon the
work of applying actually the purchased benefits unto the
elect J and that he doth by way of entertaining a covenant of
free grace and reconciliation with the?n, through faith in
himself; by which covenant he makes over to every believer
a right and interest to himself and to all his blessings.
This section treats in detail of that covenant of redemption
which was spoken of in the previous section as the eternal con-
dition of man's salvation. Here we distinguish two main topics
under which the contents of the section may be grouped. We
are shown, first of all, how in God's electing love the covenant of
redemption with His Son becomes a covenant of grace in respect
of man ; and secondly, what the conditions are to which the Son
must submit in order that this purpose of grace may be realized.
Here then we have to treat of two leading doctrines of the
Christian faith : the doctrine of Election, and the doctrine of the
Humiliation of Christ.
I. God has sovereignly chosen certain from among the fallen
sons of Adam unto life in Christ : — God, having freely chosen unto
life a certain number of lost ma7ikind,for the glory of His rich
grace, did give thein, before the world began, unto God the Son,
appointed Redeemer. In the controversies about election, dis-
putants have been found to assume one or other of three possible
positions. The Socinian denies altogether the divine foreknow-
ledge as well as the divine foreordination of what takes place in
time. He is thoroughly self-consistent in refusing any place in
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 63
his theology to the doctrine of the decrees of God. The Arminian
maintains that God did not elect particular persons to eternal
life, thereby securing to them the faith and other graces necessary
to their attaining unto salvation, but that at most He foresaw in cer-
tain individuals the presence of faith, and such perseverance therein
as would entitle them to be included in His purpose of grace.
The Calvinist, on the other hand, holds that the decree of God
depends not upon, but itself provides, the grace needed for securing
the end of election ; that men are not chosen for their faith, but
that upon the chosen is bestowed the gift of faith. The sentence
upon which we are commenting expresses in the plainest and
most unmistakable terms the Calvinistic doctrine. Principal
Cunningham has given {Refor?ners and Theology of the Reforma-
tiojt, Essay viii. • Calvinism and Arminianism, p. 433) a most
admirable condensed statement of the Calvinistic doctrine of elec-
tion, which, in every phrase contained in it, deserves careful study :
'The Calvinistic doctrine is this, that God from eternity chose or
elected some men, certain definite individuals of the human race,
to everlasting life, — that He determined certainly and infallibly to
bring these persons to salvation by a Redeemer, that in making
this selection of some men and in resolving to save them. He was
not influenced by anything existing in them, or foreseen in them,
by which they were distinguished from other men, or by any
reason known to or comprehensible by us, but only by His own
sovereign good pleasure, by the counsel of His own will, — and that
this eternal decree or purpose He certainly and infallibly executes
in time in regard to each and every one included under it.' This
doctrine was first carefullyformulatedbyAugustine in the beginning
of the fifth century : the views of earlier Church Fathers on this
question are vacillating and not self-consistent. It was reaffirmed
in a very rigid and precise dogmatic form at the Synod of Dort
(1618). Theopinions of Arminius(i 560-1 609) had been vigorously
controverted by Gomarus(i 563-1641), and a defence under the title
of a Remonstrance was s^ ibmitted by the followers of Arminius in
1610 to the States of Holland. The tenets of the Remonstrants
64 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
were condemned at the Synod, and the principles of Calvinism
reaffirmed and very carefully formulated in its published Acts.
Calvinism was now recognised as the legal and orthodox doctrine
of the Reformed Church. The Westminster Assembly (1643-
1649) gives in its Confession and Catechisms perhaps the very best
and the most carefully defined expositions of the doctrine that have
ever been given from the standpoint of Calvinism. It is pointed
out by Principal Cunningham that among those who reject the
Socinian doctrine, the only alternative lies between Calvinism and
Arminianism. The rejection of the one necessarily involves the
adoption of the other.
From this general description of that type of doctrine set forth
in the section under review, we now pass to consider a few points
of detail which seem to call for special consideration.
([.) It is important that special prominence should be given to
the statement that the election spoken of is an election to life :
God hath freely chosejt unto life. What has occasioned by far
the most serious objection to the doctrine of election, is the idea
that its acceptance necessarily leads to the belief in a doctrine of
divine reprobation. Unguarded and rash statements have given
a colour to such objections. If we speak simply of an absolute
decree, according to which some are chosen of God, there seems a
logical necessity for proceeding to the declaration that equally by
a divine decree the rest are rejected. There is a decree of
election, but no decree of reprobation. We must not forget, or
leave out of sight, the solemn and stern utterances of Scripture
(Rom. ix. 22 ; Eph. ii. 3). It is to be noted that the vessels of
wrath who are fitted, that is, destined, to destruction are not said
to have this destiny from God ; while, on the other hand, it is said
that glory was afore-prepared for the vessels of mercy; and those
called children of wrath are those who cease to be such by being
called to participate in the blessings of the elect. God's choosing
is unto life. We ought to be very careful always to bear with us
the Scripture truth, all-important as a safeguard alike against
fatalistic and antinomian error, — God is not the author of sin.
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 65
Now death eternal as the consummation of death spiritual is to be
viewed only as the consequence, the wages of sin. If, then, we
refuse to say that God is the author of sin, we must with equal
determination maintain that He is not the author of death. The
decree of God, as the definite expression of His will, embraces not
the reality, but only the possibility, of sin ; so this decree embraces,
not the absolute assignment, but only the possible self-abandon-
ment, of man to death. God has to do with holiness and life.
What God wills is that man should live ; and if any man misses
life, it can only be because his will thwarts the will of God. P^or
man there is no exclusion but self-exclusion. It is man, not God,
that has to do with death. He loves and chooses death who
hates and rejects Christ, the wisdom of God. What is all-im-
portant for us to know has been duly revealed : God wills and
decrees the absolute association of sin and death.
It is an unalterable law of His kingdom : the soul that sinneth,
it shall die. There is certainly a profound mystery here in
regard to God's passing over some. This is a mystery stated but
not explained in revelation, and we ought not to attempt or insist
upon an explanation. We can only advance to the limit which
Scripture fixes. If, then, we listen to Scripture and follow its
example, we shall reflect adoringly and thankfully upon an
election by God unto life, and not speak or speculate about a
decree of reprobation, which human reason may suppose to be
its logical complement. This we know, that a decree is an ex-
pression of will, and Scripture explicitly assures us, as does also
the experience of all who know Him, that God has no pleasure in
the death of him that dieth, that He wills not that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance (Ezek. xviii. 32 ;
2 Pet. iii. 9).
(2.) This election unto life is an eternal and free act of divine
grace : — God hath freely chosen . . a certain number of lost
mankind for the glory of His rich grace. The practical use of
the doctrine of election ib the humbling of man before God. In
any measure of reconciliation and recovery, it was necessary that
E
66 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
some safeguard against the entertaining of proud thoughts should
be provided. Under the covenant of works none was needed, for
the keeping of that covenant would have secured man against the
entrance of pride into his heart. If he had rendered perfect
personal obedience to the divine law, he would not have been
boastful, for innocence would have continued unbroken, and he
would have known by experience no other power than the love ol
God. But under the covenant of grace, God was dealing with a
corrupt nature where selfishness and pride were already present.
When faith was introduced in place of works as the condition of
the covenant on man's side, there would be a danger of man's
regarding faith as a work of his own upon which he might pride
himself. It was necessary, therefore, in order to exclude boasting,
to show those who are children of God by faith, and to make
them remember that their faith was no work of their own, but a
gift of God. Now, this is just another way of stating the doctrine
of election. Those on whom God bestows the gift of faith are
the chosen. It is His sovereign good pleasure alone that deter-
mines who are to receive this gift. It is the divine election
which is the condition of our receiving His gift of faith. At the
same time, so far as we are concerned, God's choice of us in His
electing love, can become known only through our possession of
that grace of faith which is the gift from God by which all His
chosen are distinguished. In bestowing this gift He showeth
mercy unto whom He will have mercy (Ex. xxxiii. 19; Rom. ix. 15).
That there is a certain number freely chosen of God as recipients
of this grace is a necessary consequence of the fact of the divine
sovereignty. This we can only affirm, but we cannot comment
upon it. Alongside of it we must place the doctrine of man's
full responsibility, and, in keeping therewith, the universal gospel
invitation. The one as well as the other — the doctrine of God's
sovereignty as well as of the free call addressed to man — is a
doctrine of divine revelation. Each must be held with equal
persistence, but the unrestricted call to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ is what v/e have to do with as sinners. When we have
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 67
believed, then God shows us that our believing is not of ourselves
but of His grace.
(3.) This election unto life is in Christ, and, viewed in terms of
the covenant of redemption, the chosen from among men are a
gift of God to the Son : — God having chosen unto life a certaitt
nmnber . . . did give them, before the world began, unto God the
So7i, appoi7ited Redeemer. This is repeatedly affirmed by our
Lord and Saviour Himself. Those who come unto Him are
those given Him of the Father (John vi. 37). As the Father's
possession they are made over to the Son, and are kept by Him
in time and for eternity (John xvii. 6, 12, 24). 'The Elect, being
the Father's property, are not entrusted with that happiness to
be conferred upon them, but are given over to Christ, and
committed to Him in the covenant of redemption, that He may
die to satisfy justice and obtain eternal redemption for them, and
may apply His purchase in converting them and preserving them
and their furniture till they come to obtain everlasting life'
(Hutcheson Ott Joht, publ. 1657). The grand benefit secured
unto the chosen in Christ is that they have God's word declared
unto them by Christ ; and the immediate effect of that declaration
of the word with power, which is made unto those given of God
to Christ, is that they keep His word. Chosen unto life in Christ,
having their life hid with Christ in God, it is true of them that
because Christ lives they live also.
When all this has been said, much still remains mysterious. It
is very frequently objected to Calvinism, that it undertakes to
solve and definitively answer all difficulties in connection with
this subject. This is a pure calumny, and those who circulate it,
like most calumniators, seem utterly ignorant of the system and
its authoritative expounders of which they so confidently and
offensively affirm. So far as I have been able to discover, no
Calvinistic divine has ever pretended to fathom the mystery or to
explain how the two sides, which to human reason seem irrecon-
cilable, are brought into harmony. What the Calvinist does
affirm is that divine sovereignty and human freedom and
68 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
responsibility, implying a real and honest offer of the gospel
unto all, are two Scripture truths, each of which finds corrobora-
tion in the fact of man's own consciousness. That they are both
true, on the evidence of Scripture and of his own conscience, he
believes : how they are to be reconciled he does not know, and
a scheme for their reconcilement he has never attempted or
proposed.
II. We are next shown what the conditions are to which the Son
must submit, in order that this purpose of grace may be realized.
Man by his disobedience had fallen under the curse of the broken
law. In order that this curse might be removed, divine justice
must be satisfied, and the honour of the law and of the lawgiver
must be upheld. Further, sin had entered by a personal act, so
also a person must perform the work of redemption. This
personal redeemer must be man, in relation to the race as truly
representative as the first man had been. The Son of God,
therefore, appointed Redeejner, must become man. That this
may be. He must humble Himself by resigning His heavenly
form of being. It is the incarnate Son of God who renders
obedience on man's behalf in fulfilment of the law's demands,
and suffers the penalty due to them who had broken the divine
law. He is the only Redeemer of God's elect, and therefore all
who are saved in all the ages owe their salvation to Him.
I. We are to consider, first of all, what the Son was called to
surrender when He undertook to redeem man : — Upon co7iditio7t
that He would humble Hi?nself. The classical passage on the
doctrine of the humiliation of Christ is Philippians ii. 5-8. Christ
Jesus had His being from all eternity as God, yet He resigned
the glories of His heavenly state, and stripped Himself of
the outward marks of divinity. The phrase ^made Himself
of no reputation' is in the Greek one word {ekenosen), which
literally means ' emptied.' There has been a long-continued dis-
cussion in German theology on this subject, in which one side
spoke of the humiliation of Christ as a kenosis, an emptying, and
THE REDEMY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 69
the Other side preferred to speak of it as a krypsis, a concealing.
This controversy is in part interesting, in part very drear}^ John
Brenz (i 499-1 570), the head of what is known as the Swabian
school, in the interests of the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity or
omnipresence of the body of Christ, taught that Christ's humanity
possessed from the first all that it has as exalted at God's right
hand. As has been well said by Dr. Bruce {HwniL of Christy
p. 120): 'In the system of Brenz, the two states of exaltation
and humiliation are not successive, but rather simultaneous and
co-existent.' The human nature of Christ was endowed with
majesty, which was simply concealed during the period of suffering
and death. This gave to Christ's humiliation an appearance of
unreality. Those, again, in the Lutheran Church who were
anxious to preserve the doctrine of Christ's humiliation in its
fulness, were charged with surrendering the Lutheran doctrine of
the ubiquity of Christ's body, on which Luther's doctrine of the
Supper rested. What distinguished the Lutheran Christology,
and occasioned much difficulty, was what is called the doctrine of
the co7mnunicatio idiomattwi, the communication of divine pro-
perties to the humanity of Christ. The Reformed theologians,
that is, those who accepted the Calvinistic system, maintained the
integrity of Christ's human nature, undisturbed by the infusion of
divine properties. When endeavours were being made during
the first half of the present century to bring about the union of
the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Germany, various
schemes were proposed to explain the humiliation or self-
depotentiation of the Son of God. The self-emptying or kenosis,
to use St. Paul's phrase, corresponded literally to the exinanitio
of the Reformed theologians. The latter, however, wisely con-
fined themselves to the statement of Scripture facts, while the
Lutherans had indulged in rash theorizings. The nineteenth
century theologians clearly perceived that the attempt made in
the sixteenth century to explain the incarnation as a raising of
finite humanity by the infusion of divine properties, had failed
by destroying the integ'-ity of Christ's human nature. Modern
7© SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
modes of thought demanded that the humanity be preserved
entire. So the endeavour is made to explain the incarnation
as a descent of the infinite into the region and within the limits
of the finite. All the elaborate Christological theories of
Thomasius, Gess, Ebrard, and Martensen, are just so many
attempts to show how two natures, the divine and the human,
can be conceived as coexisting in the one person of the God-
man. According to the old Lutheran view, the incarnation was
a deification of the humanity of Jesus ; according to the point
of view of these recent theories, the incarnation was, as Scripture
and, in accordance with Scripture, Calvinistic theologians affirm,
a self-emptying of divine properties on the part of the Son of
God in assuming the form of man. In their attempts to explain
this mysterious subject, those German theologians referred to
either fail to appreciate the unity of the person, that is, assume
a twofold life, divine and human, alongside of one another, or
confuse the natures, that is, make the divine nature take the
place of a human soul. That human speculation on such a
theme should thus result is inevitable. It must end in one or
other of these erroneous conclusions, in which one side of the
truth is emphasized, while the other is ignored. Just as in
regard to the doctrine of election, we are assured from Scripture
and our own spiritual experience that God's grace is sovereign,
and that yet all men have the gospel call honestly and freely
addressed them, — we know the facts, but cannot explain their
harmony ; even so, the revelations of Scripture plainly teach that
our Saviour is true God and true man, that as God He humbled
Himself to assume the form of man, but how the two natures
coexist together we are not told, probably because we could not
comprehend the telling of it ; and, therefore, in vain and at our
peril, are speculations attempted on this theme.
2. We have to consider, in the next place, that this self-limita-
tion of the Son of God was in order to this assumption of our
nature :— the condition of His acceptance as party in the covenant
was that He would himible Himself so far as to assume the humari
tHE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. yj
nature^ of a soul and a body, unto personal union with His
divine nature. This statement places before us all that Scripture
makes known as to the nature of the incarnation. It falls
naturally into two divisions. We are told, in the first place, that
in the God-man there are two distinct natures ; and, in the second
place, that these two natures are brought together in personal
union.
(i.) In the God-man there are two distinct natures : — God the
Son humbles Himself so far as to assume the human nature of
a soul and a body. In the very earliest ages of Christianity
errors arose over the nature or natures of the God-man. Confu-
sion entered into men's thoughts about Christ just because they
allowed one or other of the natures to gain undue or exaggerated
importance. What they required to do was to say He is very
man, and at the same time, and with equal emphasis, He is
very God. Whenever they began to call out boldly the one,
and to whisper timidly and doubtfully the other, error made its
appearance.
{a) Some began to speak almost exclusively of His human
nature. This was the form of error into which early Jewish
Christians were most liable to fall. There were two reasons for
this. On the one hand, the very purity of the idea of God in
which they had been educated made it difficult for them to say of
a man he is God. They had learned to know God as a spirit,
and a spirit hath not flesh and bones as Jesus had. On the other
hand, the traditions of His everyday life were fresh among them.
His relatives and the descendants of those who had talked with
Him and familiarly known Him continued with them. The
Apostles, and those who received the Apostles' doctrine, found in
all these reminiscences an aid to their faith in Jesus as the Son of
the living God. Yet we find, even in New Testament times, that
among the Jewish followers of Christ there was a tendency to
make too much of the types and shadows of the ceremonial law.
It is very evident that if such leanings were encouraged, the im-
portance of the person of Christ, amid such a crowd of rites and
72 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
ceremonies, would be seriously compromised. Hence Paul and
the other Apostles, in order to maintain sound doctrine, emphati-
cally denied the necessity for salvation of any thing or any being
save Christ alone. Jewish customs were permitted, and their
continued observance even recommended to Christians of Jewish
origin, especially if living in Jerusalem ; but thc) were duly warned
against the danger of allowing such practices to obscure or depre-
ciate the supreme significance of Christ. During the period
covered by the Pauline Epistles — and that brings us down to
about the year 68 — Judaism is not quite formally a heresy, but a
dangerous tendency in that direction within the Church. After
the destruction of Jerusalem, however, Christians in Palestine
more or less escaped trouble by making the difference between
themselves and Jews as distinct and marked as possible. In
Aelia Capitolina, for example, which was built by Hadrian in
A.D. 134 on the site of Jerusalem, no Jew was allowed to settle,
but quiet and orderly Christians of Jewish nationality were free
from all restriction or molestation. Many Jewish Christians now
cleared themselves of every vestige of Judaism, and were hence-
forth thoroughly assimilated in doctrine and practice with Gentile
Christians. Those who were not prepared to take this step fell
back more and more into Judaism, until the person of Christ as
divine became not merely imperilled, but utterly destroyed.
Those who remained Jewish, after all excuse for doing so had
been, by the destruction of the temple, removed, ceased to be
regarded as orthodox Christians. The Jewish Christians gene-
rally had been usually distinguished by the name of Nazarenes,
and this designation was long reserved for those small Palestinian
communities, which continued to follow the faith and practice of
James and the elders of Jerusalem. To those who so far fell
back into Judaism as to speak of Jesus simply as a great Jewish
prophet and teacher, the name of Ebionites was given. The
word ebion means poor ; and this word, and not the name of a
leader, is the origin of the designation. Some have supposed
that it was applied to the heretical sect, because of the poor and
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 73
low views entertained of the nature of Christ. It seems rather to
have been given first of all to Christians generally, because of
their prevailing poverty ; then to the Jerusalem Christians, who
were poor even among the poor ; and finally, to those who had
further suffered loss through the destruction of the nation, to
whose fortunes they fanatically adhered. In course of time it
was undoubtedly applied and restricted to those who held poor
and unworthy views of Christ. To the Ebionites^ properly so
called, Jesus was simply the son of Joseph and Mary, a wise
teacher, and a noble Jew, but nothing more than a man. This
is htimanitarianisjn in its baldest form. It recognises only the
human nature, and fails to discern the presence of the Son of God.
Arianism, Socinianism, modern Unitarianism, are all modifica-
tions of this thoroughgoing humanitarian heresy. In accordance
with Scripture, we say with them all that they can say as to the
perfection of Christ's humanity, but we also call attention to the
singular omission of that part of His being which renders Him
unique among men. He is the Son of God. Even in the days
of His flesh, when His glory was veiled, Peter saw that He was
the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xvi. 16). Unto Paul,
who had apparently not seen Him during His life on earth, He
was declared to be the Son of God with power (Rom. i. 4). In
accordance with this witness regarding the historical Jesus of
Nazareth and regarding the risen and exalted Saviour, the
doctrine of the Church has emphasized the truth of Christ's
divinity alongside of its assertion of His full and perfect
humanity. In modern times attempts have been made from the
purely naturalistic standpoint (Strauss), and from the sentimental
standpoint (Renan), and from the purely moral standpoint {Ecce
Hoind)^ to account for the Hfe of Christ, without any assumption
that we have more to deal with than simple human nature. For
the most part we find in these valuable contributions toward the
understanding of one side of Christ's person ; but even Christ's
humanity can be studied successfully only under the light of His
divine nature. He is not perfect man unless He is also much
74 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
more than man. It is evidently impossible for us to appreciate
the beauty of His humility as man, unless we know Him to be the
Son of God.
{b) While some gave attention to the human nature of Jesus in
such a way as to lose sight of His divinity, others formed such
views of the divine Christ that they were inclined to explain
away the reahty of His human nature. Those who entertained
such views did so in connection with other religious notions.
They were distributed over a great variety of more or less
heretical sects, which were all embraced under the general
designation of Gnostics, because they professed to know and
ventured to speculate about mysteries. Among these were found
great diversity of views regarding Christ. Some of them, like
Cerinthus (about A.D. loo), were Ebionites and viewed Christ
simply as a great prophet ; but most of them thought that to
attribute to Him an ordinary human body of flesh and blood was
unworthy and unsuitable. Such views are called Doketic^ because
they explain Christ's humanity as a mere appearance or sem-
blance, not a reality. Doketisin is thus the theory that seeks to
preserve Christ's divinity, by supposing that what His contem-
poraries took for a human nature of soul and body was only the
appearance of such, which the divine Logos or Word of God
assumed that He might be visible among men. This was an
opposite tendency to that which led to Ebionisin. It made its
way most rapidly among non-Jewish but Eastern Christians,
especially in Syria and Alexandria. Generally the systems in
which it appeared were distinguished by their vigorous opposi-
tion to Judaism, and doketic views were often called forth by
antagonism to the merely human conception of Christ prevail-
ing among the more reactionary Jewish Christians. But even
where the individual remained devotedly attached to the Church
and in general sympathy with Church doctrine, the tendency
often made its appearance, especially during the earlier centuries.
The apostles looked upon this error as no less dangerous than
that which overlooked or depreciated the doctrine of their Lord's
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 75
divinity. If He was not very man, a real member of our race,
He would be no more fit to be our Mediator than if He had
been a man and nothing more. Hence Paul, who had put the
doctrine of our Lord's divinity in the forefront of every Epistle,
is equally emphatic in his assertion of the reality of His
humanity. Especially in his later Epistles — those addressed to
Timothy — we find the Apostle enforcing with special earnestness
the doctrine of the completeness and reality of the Lord's human
nature, evidently in order to oppose and correct certain doketic
tendencies which were making their appearance in the churches
of Asia Minor (i Tim. ii. 5, iii. 16 ; 2 Tim. ii. 8). It is as man,
as manifested in the flesh, as sprung of the seed of David, that
the Son of God is quaUfied to be Mediator between God and man.
When we pass from the later writings of Paul to the later writings
of John, we find that the thirty intervening years had wrought
a material change in those heretical tendencies. Towards the
end of the first century heretical teachers were boldly preaching
a mere phantom Christ, who had not actually assumed flesh and
blood ; they shrank not from denying that the Son of God had
come in the flesh, or that the man Jesus was actually the Son of
God. This John opposed by a direct counter statement of the
truth. He advances the evidence of his own experience as that
of one who had heard, seen, looked upon, and handled the Word
of life (i John i. i). It is the one decisive proof of being taught
of God, if we confess that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ
come in the flesh (i John iv. 2, 15). There is no other productive
faith, such as can secure victory over the world, save that which
consists essentially in believing that Jesus is the Son of God
(i John V. 5). Whoever denies this truth is a liar and a deceiver
(i John ii. 22 ; 2 John 7). The same truths are enforced, less
controversially, but rather by way of simple doctrinal statement,
in the prologue of John's Gospel. In the opening verses of this
Gospel, which is occupied in an eminent degree with unfolding
the fulness of the divine nature of Christ, we are told that
the Word, which was God, was made flesh and dwelt among
76 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
US (John i. I, 14) ; and in its closing verses, the object of
the entire history is declared to be to persuade men to beheve
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John xx. 31). The
earlier and more simply narrative accounts of our Lord's
life on earth in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
assume throughout the reality and integrity of His human
nature. From another point of view, as partaker with us of all
our human sensibilities and emotions, the writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews (especially ch. ii. 9-18) lays much stress on the
pure humanity of Jesus. In the creeds and confessions of the
Church, the doctrine of our Lord's humanity is emphasized just
as strongly as that of His divinity. The so-called Apostles'
Creed (which, as based on the baptismal formula, is no doubt
very ancient), in its simple and objective style, as opposed to the
elaborate and doctrinal style of later creeds, gives a very clear
statement of the doctrine of the twofold nature of Christ : — I
believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was con-
ceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. Even the
Creed of the Nicene Council (a.d. 325), which was drawn up for
the purpose of giving a strong and explicit statement of the
doctrine of Christ's full divinity, fails not to describe this divine
being, very God of very God, as very man who ' came down from
heaven, was incarnate, was made man, suffered, rose again the
third day,' etc. In our Scottish Confession (a.d. 1560), in the
XXXIX. Articles of the Church of England (A.D. 1562), and in the
Westminster Confession (a.d. 1649), ample expression is given to
the truth of our Lord's humanity. The brief statement before us
is equally satisfactory. It has, however, been commonly charged
against ordinary Christian orthodoxy, that it gave preponderating
attention to the divine aspect of Christ's person, and did but
scanty justice to the human side. Perhaps the general tendency
of Christian thought has been somewhat one-sided ; and in so
far as this may have been the case, the modern tendency to
minute study of every trait of His human character, though in
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 77
most instances showing itself in thoroughly one-sided discussions,
will afford an important and desirable corrective.
{c) It ought further to be observed, that it is the human nature,
not simply a human body, that the Son of God humbled Himself
to assume. The earher Church Fathers simply used scriptural
or synonymous phrases to describe the relation of the human and
the divine in Christ. But it was always humanity or the flesh
which they spoke of as joined with the divine nature. During
the first three centuries, it seems to have been assumed that the
flesh or humanity of the Lord meant ordinary human nature of
soul and body. No need had yet arisen for giving an explicit
statement of this truth. It was only after an attempt had been
made to represent this humanity of Christ as only part of a
human nature, that Church teachers began to say that Christ had
a true body and a reasonable soul. About the middle of the
fourth century, Apollinaris, a very learned and pious Syrian
bishop, in endeavouring to describe the union of divine and
human natures in Christ, made room for the divine by impairing
the human. Accepting from Plato a thoroughgoing trichotomy
of man's nature, as consisting of body, soul, and spirit, he ex-
plained the person of Christ as comprising a human body and
soul, and the divine Logos in place of the human spirit. The
great Church leaders, Athanasius (299-373), Gregory Nazianzen
(330-390), and Gregory of Nyssa (322-396), all perceived the
danger of thus interfering with the true and perfect manhood of
the Redeemer. They saw clearly that unless Christ is man, with
all the powers and faculties that belong to man, He cannot be the
God-man. What is meant by * soul,' in the statement before us
is that which Apollinaris distinguished as soul and spirit. It is
more particularly and exactly described in our Shorter Catechism
as a reasonable soul : all in man, in short, that is not body. It is
not a body that constitutes man, but, along with that, all his
intellectual, moral, and spiritual powers. Our Lord assumes
man's moral and religious consciousness. He takes our nature,
— not merely part of it,
78 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
(2.) In the God-man, the two distinct natures of God and man
are joined together in the unity of one person : — He assumes the
human nature unto personal imiojt with the divine iiature. While
the two natures in Christ are distinct from one another, and each
uncurtailed and perfectly complete, they form together not two,
but only one person. It is not therefore proper to speak of
certain experiences of the life of the Redeemer in the world as
belonging to the one nature, and certain experiences as belonging
to the other nature. Everything that He said and everything
that He did, are to be attributed to His divine-human person.
It is the God-man, and not the God or the man in Him, that
speaks, and works, and suffers. In the early Church some
erred in this way. There were two opposite extreme tendencies
which caused excessive annoyance and trouble during the first
half of the fifth century. On the one hand, there were some
who completely distinguished and separated the two natures in
Christ, so that, while they continued to speak of one person,
they made the divine and human practically two complete
persons bound together only by a common name. There were
not only two natures, but two persons. Those holding such views
came to be called Nestorians^ from Nestorius, who had been
educated under Theodore of Mopsuestia, deriving his doctrinal
views mainly from the teaching of this celebrated master. Nes-
torius was consecrated Bishop of Constantinople in A.D. 428 ; he
had for his principal opponent the well-known Cyril of Alexan-
dria ; and he was finally condemned and deposed in A.D. 431, at
the third OEcumenical Council held at Ephesus. Considerable
misunderstanding of one another's position seems to haVe pre-
vailed, and exaggerated statements occur on both sides. Nes-
torius objected to such expressions as these : God was born, God
suffered, Mary was the bearer of God. The use of such terms is
certainly objectionable. We should not speak of God, but of the
God-man, as being born, and as suffering. At the same time, it
is equa'ly erroneous to attribute such experiences simply to the
human nature of Christ. God in Himself cannot suffer or be
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 79
subject to change — this is the truth emphasized by Nestorius :
God the Son incarnate, having assumed human nature, subjects
Himself, not merely His human nature, to suffering and change of
being, — this is the truth emphasized by Cyril. This last state-
ment is the accepted doctrine of the Church regarding the wnion
of the two natures in one person in Christ. On the other hand,
there were some who confounded and mixed up the natures with
one another, so as to have not merely one person in Christ, but
only one nature. These were called generally Monophy sites,
maintainers of the doctrine of one nature, while the orthodox
were called Dyophysites, maintainers of the doctrine of two
natures. Those who keenly opposed the heretical tendency of
the Nestorians, which threatened the unity of Christ's personality,
were in danger of overlooking the completeness of each nature,
the divine and human, in the God-man. This, indeed, was made
a charge against Cyril (Bp. of Alexandria, A.D. 412-444) by the
followers of Nestorius ; but whatever exaggerations of language
he may have indulged in, he explained away in an orthodox
sense. Others did not show this moderation, and Monophysit-
ism spread in many quarters. Those under the influence of such
tendencies revelled in the use of the very phrases which had
given offence to Nestorius ; and cunningly charged moderate,
that is, orthodox men, with Nestorian leanings. This party was
headed by Eutyches, who had before been a zealous opponent of
Nestorius. He was head of a large monastery near Constanti-
nople, and was, in the year A.D. 448, already an old man of
seventy years, when he was first called before the Synod of Con-
stantinople to answer the charge of heresy. After a good deal
of what looks extremely like prevarication, Eutyches explained
his behef in these words : I confess that before the union of the
Godhood and manhood He was of two natures ; but, after the
union, I confess only one nature. The Synod proceeded to
depose Eutyches, and a most emphatic condemnation of Mono-
physitism in every form was pronounced by the CEcumenical
Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. It will be seen that this
8o SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
heresy is simply a development of that one-sided tendency which
appeared earlier in Apollinarianism. From the middle of the
fifth century onwards, the doctrine of the two natures united in
one person in Christ has continued without dispute as the
orthodox Church doctrine. Any subsequent discussions on such
questions were only in regard to details — like that of Mono-
theletistn and Dyotheletism^ in the seventh century, where the
doctrine of the completeness of the two natures, and their union
in one person, was not disputed, but it was simply asked whether
this required us to speak of two wills, or only of one will, in the
God -man. The details of all such controversies now seem
insufferably tedious, and many of the points raised appear, from
our point of view, extremely frivolous. Reflection, however,
shows that these discussions were absolutely necessary. Until
all possible difficulties had been stated, and all possible modes of
answering the question had been sifted, the Christian Church
could never have framed those admirable statements of Scripture
truth regarding the nature and person of Christ, which are so
conveniently expressed in the words before us, and in our Shorter
Catechism.
3. We have brought before us in the next place, the relations
which the Mediator, as God-man, bears directly to God and His
holy law : — He htmibles Himself to submit Himself to the law, as
surety for them [the elect'], and to satisfy justice for thetn, by
giving obedience in their name, eveii unto the stiffering of the
cursed death of the cross. Christology is generally divided into
two great divisions, in which we treat respectively of the Person
and of the Work of Christ. In the two preceding sections we
have had before us the questions affecting Christ's person, and
the conclusion reached sets before us the Redeemer as the Son of
God, who has assumed our nature of soul and body into personal
union with His divine nature. In this and the following sections,
we are required to consider the reason that led the Son of God to
assume our nature. It is the question that is answered by the
doctrine of the Atonement. Cur Deics Homo ? Why does God
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 51
become man ? The Sum of Saving Knowledge, construing doc-
trine from the point of view of the eternal divine covenant,
answers that, in order to be accepted as party in the covenant
transaction with God the Father, the Son had to submit Himself
to law, had to yield satisfaction for those whose place He took,
and had in all things to render perfect personal obedience to
God.
(i.) The God-man sudnn'ts Himself to the lazv, as surety for the
elect. As Son of God He was lawgiver, rather than subject to
the law; but as Redeemer He places Himself under its sanction.
It is, however, only as Redeemer that He is thus under law ; He
is born under law simply for the purpose of redeeming those who
were already under it (Gal. iv. 4, 5). This statement of the doc-
trine by the apostle calls our attention to the important point that
His position under law was that of the law-breakers. Had He
simply appeared as an example of the perfectly sinless man, to
influence us by an exhibition of holiness. He would not have been
subject to a law which was not made for a righteous man (i Tim.
i. 9). Personally observing the precepts of the law throughout
His spotlessly holy hfe, the curse of a broken law lay upon Him
on account of those breakers of the law whose place He had
assumed. Submitting to the law as man's substitute, means
submitting to the sufferings and penalties which constituted the
curse of the broken law. To be born under law was for Christ
equivalent to being made a curse for us. Here we already reap
the benefit of previous discussions about Christ's person. We
can distinguish between what is true of Christ in Himself as Son
of God, and what is true only of the God-man, the Son of God
after assuming our human nature. It is only as surety for His
people that the penal expressions of Scripture can be applied to
Him. As the Word made flesh, He is our substitute, made sin for
us, whereas otherwise he had nothing to do with sin.
(2.) The God-man makes full satisfaction for the elect : — He
htcmbles Himself to satisfy pestice for them. No calm, patient,
fair-minded student of the New Testament can fail to see that
82 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
Christ and all the Apostles set forth, under various modes of
expression, the one truth that our Lord's death was for our sins.
The wages of sin is death. Scripture knows of no other death
than that which follows sin. The death of Christ is no excep-
tion to this ; He dies for sins, but not His own. As surety for us
He has to pay our debt, and in doing this, nothing less and
nothing more, He satisfies divine justice. The law delivets over
guilty man — man lying under God's wrath — to death. This is
the curse of the law, and from it only the death of our surety can
deliver the guilty. His death, looked at from man's point of
view, is Redemption ; looked at from God's point of view, it is
Satisfaction. It is God's law that is broken ; it is His claim that
must be met. The doctrine of Christ's death as an expiatory
sacrifice, a satisfaction rendered to God, is most thoroughly
treated by Paul, and his most elaborate expositions are given in
the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians. It is there
shown that God might have exhibited His righteousness by
judging the guilty and pronouncing and executing the sentence
of death. He shows His favour or grace in passing over the
guilty. But when He exacts the penalty of our surety. He at
once shows His grace to us, and receives satisfaction to His
righteousness. Hence we are justified freely by His grace, and
it is God's love toward us that is commended ; but this is brought
about by a propitiation in Christ's blood, by Christ dying for us
sinners, which declares God's righteousness (Rom. iii. 24-26,
v. 8-10). God regarded us as His enemies, that is, because of
our sin we were objects of His wrath ; and only propitiation in
Christ's blood, satisfaction to His claims by the shedding of the
blood of our surety, could turn that wrath away.
The Church doctrine of satisfaction was matured by very slow
stages. From Paul to Anselm marks a period of a thousand
years. The theologians of the early Church in the East and in the
West were occupied with other problems. In the Eastern division
of the Church, as we have seen, Christological questions occupied
the attention of the most influential and thoughtful divines; and
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 83
in the West, the principal interest of the leaders and scholars of
the Church was given to anthropological questions, such as
emerged in the Pelagian controversy. Soteriological questions,
that is, discussions leading to the formulating of the doctrine
of the work of Christ, to the establishing of a Church doctrine
of the Atonement, were reserved, or at least did not secure any
prominent place. Undoubtedly the early Fathers have much to
say about the work of Christ, but their modes of expression are
inexact, vague, and unsystematic. They were unable to present
a well-balanced doctrine of the Atonement, because of their
defective and one-sided view of sin. Themselves recently
rescued from heathenism, and directly engaged in the contest
with heathenish practices and modes of life, it was the power,
rather than the guilt, of sin that occupied the most prominent
place in their thoughts. They had much to say about human
weakness and ignorance, much to say about the strength of the
evil principle in man's corrupt nature, and in demoniacal powers
which had access to those hearts already prone to evil. This was
all true and important : it was not in the least inconsistent with a
strongly-expressed doctrine of the sinner's guilt before God ; but
where undue prominence was given to the idea of the dominion of
sin, that of its guilt became obscured. For want of a strongly-
accentuated idea of the guilt of human sin, a strict and systematic
statement of satisfaction for sin rendered to God, redemption
from guilt by the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, could not be set
forth. Anselm (1033-1109) of Canterbury made the first con-
siderable scientific attempt to elaborate a doctrine of the Atone-
ment. In a short treatise, entitled Cur Deus Homo? Why did
God become man ? of which the first part was published in 1094,
and the second part in 1098, he cleared the way by repudiating
the old patristic notion that Christ's death was a ransom-price
paid to Satan. Some of the Fathers stated this notion at length,
supposing that Satan was deceived or disappointed of his expected
prize when Christ burst the bonds of death. Anselm was able
to overcome this crude conception, by means of the idea of the
84 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
importance of human personality which had been gradually rising
into prominence. An illustration of the growth of the sense of
individual responsibility may be found in the fact, that in the
Western Creeds the expression ' we believe,' with which the earlier
Eastern Creeds open, is changed into the more direct ' I beUeve.'
On the basis of such a conception of human personality rests the
true conception of the guilt of sin. Previously, the idea of the
value of Christ's work for conferring on sinful men a right of grace
for the conquest of sin, had been enforced, while the equally true
idea of the value of Christ's work for the satisfying of the divine
justice in regard to its sentence already pronounced against sinful
man, had been overlooked. When the sense of man's individual,
personal responsibility before God — his answerableness for his
conduct as an intelligent moral and spiritual being — was more
clearly realized, the idea of satisfaction in connection with Christ's
death, claimed in the scheme of doctrine its rightful place. This
doctrine of satisfaction by the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is, as
we have seen, a doctrine prominently and clearly expressed in
Scripture. Anselm performed a distinguished service to theology,
— and won a place for himself with Augustine and Calvin among
the very greatest of theologians, — by securing for this doctrine of
satisfaction by atonement its proper place in the theology of the
Church. The only objection that can be brought against the
position of Anselm by one who accepts in their natural sense the
statements of the New Testament regarding Christ's work, is one
that concerns his pecuHar way of stating the doctrine, not the
doctrine itself. Anselm speaks of the honour of God as demand-
ing satisfaction for sin, and the work, and especially the death, of
Christ as reparation offered for what we might call a personal
injury or wrong done to God. Calvin and his modern followers
prefer to regard sin as an offence against the holiness and right-
eousness of God, and the work of Christ, especially His death, as
the satisfaction rendered to the divine holiness and righteousness,
which makes it possible for the Righteous One, after He has
exacted the penalty of sin from the sinner's surety, to be reconciled
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 85
to the sinner that believes in Christ Jesus. The doctrine of a real
satisfaction rendered to God by the work of Christ as an atone-
ment to reconcile God to us, alongside of the doctrine of the
effective influence of that work upon the believer's heart in recon-
ciling him to God, is an essential and indispensable doctrine of
scriptural Christianity. Any departure from it inevitably leads
in the direction either of Mysticism or of Socinianism.
(3.) This work of the God-man, which was wrought by Him as a
subject under law, and as a surety yielding satisfaction to divine
justice, was obedience rendered in doing and in suffering even unto
death : — He submits to law and satisfies justice for His people,
by giving obedience in their ncwie, even unto the suffering of the
ctcrsed death of the c?'oss. This constitutes a comprehensive
description of the whole work of Christ for man. As man's
substitute, He requires to render that perfect personal obedience
which was the condition of the first covenant. This is what is
called the active obedience of Christ. It was accomplished in that
life of holy service in which He did the will and the work of Him
that sent Him. Under this must be included all observances of
the details of the divine law (Matt. iii. 15, v. 17, etc.) which He
rendered as man's representative ; and the whole range of that
obedience rendered by the Second Adam, which is set over
against the disobedience of the First Adam (Rom. v. 19). This
active obedience involved at every step an element of suffering.
With the development of the active life of service, this element
of suffering also developed. From time to time, the element of
suffering became more and more prominent, till at last it assumed
a greatly enhanced and intensified form. It culminated in the
death of the cross. This yielding to suffering, viewed as the penal
suffering of the sinner's surety, constitutes ih.^ passive obediejice of
Christ. The whole obedience of Christ, under the two aspects of
active and passive obedience, and not merely under one of these,
constitutes the ground of the sinner's justification before God.
The one really cannot be viewed apart from the other, any more
than the divine and human natures in Christ can be viewed as
86 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
operating separately. Christ^s holy life, His active obedience,
gives value to His suffering, His passive obedience. Unlike
priests taken from among men, He did not need first to offer for
His own sins. Suffering unto death was just the extreme Hmit
short of which His obedience did not stop. The reaching of this
limit was claimed as satisfaction by God's righteousness, and the
obedience of the Son did not fail to attain unto it. Inasmuch as
the God-man gave Himself to death, the cUmax of His suffering
was His own act. His active and His passive obedience alike
culminated in His sacrificial death upon the cross.
4. The work of Christ has not only this Godward aspect as
the reconciliation by satisfactory obedience of God to man, but it
has also a manward aspect as the means of man's deliverance
from sin and death, and of his obtaining righteousness and life.
God did give a people unto Christ, that He should ransom and
redeem thejn from all sin and death, and purchase unto them
righteousness and eternal life, with all saving grace leadi?tg there-
unto, to be effectually, by means of His own appointmeiit applied
in due time unto every one of thejn. Here we have three different
points, which may be separately treated in order, (i) The work
of Christ accomplishes man's deliverance from sin and death ;
(2) The work of Christ secures to man possession of righteousness
and eternal life ; and (3) This deliverance wrought and possession
secured by Christ's work, are by Himself made effectual to His
chosen ones individually.
(i.) One important element in God's purpose in giving His Son
as the sinner's surety, and in giving a people to His Son, was,
that he should ransom and redeem thejnfrom all sijt and death.
Man is viewed not only as guilty before God, but as under the
power of sin, and consequently of death. That work of Christ,
His Hfe and death, which renders satisfaction to God's justice, and
so delivers man from his guilt, also gives to man power over
sin, that otherwise has power over him, and so frees him from
bondage. Christ's righteousness sets the believer free from sin.
Our surety covers our disobedience against God by His own
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 87
obedience, so that the guilt of our disobedience is forgiven ; but
He also wins our hearts from disobedience, and delivers us from
the dominion that sin had gained over us. It was for this purpose
that Christ gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all
iniquity (Tit. ii. 14), that He might redeem us from our vain
conversation or evil manner of life, which we live after the precepts
and examples of men (i Pet. i. 18), and this redemption is by the
precious blood of Christ. The righteousness of Christ that atones
for sin before God, and delivers the conscience from the power of
sin, necessarily secures deliverance from death, which is the wages
of sin. Death cannot be visited upon those whose sins are for-
given, and for whom sin, in respect of guilt and dominion, is no
more. This is the first stage, or negative result of Christ's work
in the believer, — deliverance from sin and death.
(2) Christ's work not lonly has this negative effect on the
believer in respect of sin, it has also a positive effect in respect
of righteousness. God gave a people to His Son that He should
purchase unto them righteousness and eternal life. Everywhere
throughout the New Testament that righteousness which charac-
terizes the believer, as sin had characterized his natural state, is
described as the purchased gift of Christ to His own. Our
righteousness is spoken of as the gift of righteousness (Rom.
V. 17), and is always ascribed to Christ as its source. Just as
death follows sin, so hfe follows righteousness (Rom. v. 20, 21).
Life as a possession at Christ's disposal is obtained by Him as
wages for His righteousness, as death was secured by us as
wages of sin. Our receiving of righteousness is as a gift from
Christ (Rom. vi. 23). The bestowing upon us life through
righteousness was the end for which God gave His Son (John iii.
16, vi. 40, xvii. 2), and for which the Son declares that He gave
Himself (John iii. 14, v. 24, vi. 47, 51, x. 27, 28). It is because
this righteousness is Christ's righteousness that it stops not short
of eternal life. The value of Christ's work is infinite. 'The
merit of this His obedience is so great, as it shall never be recorded
to the full ; the saints shall not learn to eternity the full worth
88 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
of it out in glory ' (Goodwin). The idea of purchase ought never
to be pressed so as to present a notion of exact equivalence between
the sufferings of Christ and the blessedness of believers. We
only say Christ's work was adequate to this result.
(3.) Christ Himself in His own way renders His work effectual
to every believer, in delivering from sin and conferring righteous-
ness ; so God gave to His Son a people to redeem and make
righteous, and also for this end to endow with all saving
grace leading thereunto, to be effectually^ by means of His own
appointment^ applied in due time to every one of the7n. Christ's
work is saving grace. It does not consist simply in something
which lies outside of man, which he may take and apply to
himself or leave alone. He who works for us works in us. All
those manifold influences by which the power of sin is shaken
and the power of righteousness enhanced, — by which, therefore,
movement in the direction of salvation is secured, — are not
simply divine influences, but are such as issue from the mediatorial
work of Christ. All that helps to salvation, as well as that
salvation itself, is from Christ, either directly, or by some means
appointed by Him. This embraces all providential occur-
rences and combinations, consequences of our social relations and
what is often regarded as the merely fortuitous association of
ideas. Whatsoever maybe the means, He makes these effectual,
so that His righteousness might for us actually become ours unto
eternal life. This personal application of His abundantly sufficient
work is secured for all who were given Him of the Father
(John vi. 37). But though the provision is made at once and
once for all, each of the chosen ones has his own due time, his
day of salvation, when the means of grace are made, by the opera-
tion of God's Spirit, effectual to him individually in conversion.
5. In the somewhat lengthy statement which concludes the
present section, it is shown how Christ, as party with the Father in
the covenant of redemption, becomes party with the elect in the
covenant of grace, and how, in the terms of this covenant, the bless-
ings of 5,a.lvation have been conferred to all ages throughout the
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 89
history of fallen man. The idea that runs through the whole sen-
tence is that of Christ as the centre or middle point of all history.
The covenant theolog}', of which the sum of saving knowledge may
be regarded as an example, is in the best sense Christocentric.
The engagement of the Son with the Father in the covenant of
redemption, being an eternal act, has a bearing upon, and an
efficacy in regard to, the whole course of the history of that race
which it concerned. He assumes the garb of flesh, indeed, only
when the fulness of the times had come ; but so soon as sin and
death, which His redemption work has undertaken to remedy and
remove, make their appearance in our world, the practical activity of
the Saviour begins. For those before Christ's incarnation, as well
as for all who have lived since, there is no salvation by any other,
but by Christ alone. By the merit of His obedience unto death, the
chosen of God in all ages have been saved. Expression was given
to this truth from age to age in language of ever-increasing clear-
ness, as the gradual advance of the dispensations would allow. The
promise that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the
serpent (Gen. iii. 15), given on the day of the fall, is usually called
the Protevangelimn, or earliest announcement of the gospel.
In a striking manner the promise of blessing was renewed to
Abraham and his seed, to be perfectly realized in Him who is
the seed of men, summing up in Himself all that is genuinely
human to the rejection of all else (Gal. iii. 16), To all alike,
whatever the characteristics of the age or the special circum-
stances of the individual life, salvation consists in the appropriating
of Christ by faith ; a right to and enjoyment of the blessing of
His grace are dependent upon vital personal union with Himself.
This relationship of the believer and the Saviour is described
under terms of the covenant. It was simply the Father's will
expressed in the eternal covenant of redemption that the Son
carried out. To raise up in the last day and give eternal
life to those given Him, was the Father's will (John vi. 38-40),
but these blessings are to be enjoyed only by those who are in
Christ
90 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
§ IIL For the accomplishment of this covenant of redemption^ ana
maki7ig the elect partakers of the benefits thereof itt the covenant
of grace, Christ Jesus came clad with the threefold office of
Prophet, Priest, and King : made a Prophet, to reveal all
saving knowledge to his people, and to persuade thein to
believe and obey the sainej made a Priest, to offer up himself
a sacrifice once for them all, a7id to ijitercede cotitinually with
the Father, for makijtg their persons and services acceptable
to him; aftd made a King, to subdue them to himself, to feed
and rule them by his own appointed ordinances, and to defend
them from their enemies.
In the covenant of works there were but two parties : God
and man. In the new covenant there are three : God, and man,
and the mediator between God and man. This new covenant
embraces the covenant of redemption, under which there are
two parties, God the Father and God the Son, and the covenant
of grace, under which there are two parties, Christ and man.
By reason of sin, the parties in the covenant, God and man, are
kept apart, and the covenant arrangements can be brought about
only by means of a mediator. The mediatorial work of Christ,
the Son of God incarnate, is described as executed by Him under
the offices of a Prophet, of a Priest, and of a King. This distribu-
tion of the work of Christ is thoroughly scriptural. The division
is nowhere expressly made in the Old or New Testament, but
His work is viewed under all these aspects. Moses is directed to
promise to the people of Israel their Messiah as a Prophet (Deut.
xviii. 15), while Isaiah, in oft-repeated utterances, foretells His
prophetic activity (Isaiah xli. and onward) ; as a Prophet, Christ
Himself declares that it is at Jerusalem that He must suffer (Luke
xiii. 33), and the people recognise in Him a great Prophet, the
Prophet of Nazareth (Luke vii. 16; Matt. xxi. 11). He is
described as a Priest of the order of Melchizedec (Psalm ex.),
and this idea is elaborately developed in a doctrinal form in the
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 9 1
Epistle to the Hebrews ; He is represented as Priest upon His
throne (Zech. vi. 13), to whom is owing the existence and glory of
the temple (comp. Heb. iii. 1-6); and Christ speaks of sanctifying
Himself that He may sanctify His people (John xvii. 19), which is
the language applied to the action of a priest. The kingly office
is set forth especially in the Psalms (Ps. ii., Ixxii., ex.) ; in the
parables of the kingdom, and before Pilate, our Lord Himself
assumes the title (Luke xix. 12; John xviii. 33-36). The three
offices are bound together, though with no dogmatic intention, in
Rev. i. 5, — Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-begotten of
the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Use was made
in theology of this threefold distinction in the work of Christ by
Eusebius, as early as the beginning of the fourth century. All the
greater theologians, such as Augustine and Aquinas, show their
acquaintance with it by occasional references. Calvin first used
it {Institutes^ ii. 15) as a principle of division, employing it,
exactly as it is employed in the Sum of Saving Knowledge^ to
explain in detail how Christ accomplishes His mediatorial work
on our behalf.
We shall now consider in order the three offices which Christ
executes as Mediator of the New Covenant, in terms of the
covenant to bring together God and man.
I. Christ the mediator is a prophet : — made a Prophet^ to reveal
all saving kfio%u ledge to His people^ and to persuade them to believe
a7id obey the sa7ne. The Word is the name given to the pre-
existent Christ, and when the Son of God became man it is said
the Word was made flesh. This name marks out the Sou as
from all eternity in idea, and then through all time in reality, the
instrument of communication between God and His creation.
He is the revealer of God, — in a state of holiness as the Word,
and in a state of sinfulness as the Word made flesh. Not only
is He with God, but He is sent of God. Thus He is called the
Apostle (Heb. iii. i), as sent by God with a message to men.
Being entrusted with such a mission, He is a prophet, a revealer
92 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
in His person and work of God's will. By Him all saving know-
ledge is made known to His people. It is not otherwise attain-
able. The appearance of a great prophet marks an epoch. The
arrival of each of the great Old Testament prophets proclaimed
in a sinful world the advancing fulfilment of God's word of truth.
Their messages were ever being spoken more and more plainly ;
but of this prophet it was said, Never man spake like this man.
He does not make known anything altogether new. There is not
a single doctrine of Christ which we do not find in the Old Testa-
ment. But He is Himself personally the embodiment of them
all. Other prophets were with God, and spoke on behalf of God ;
but Christ as prophet was God, and when He spoke on behalf of
God, He spoke in His own name, for He and the Father are one.
His position as prophet is quite unique. No man knoweth the
Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him.
No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which
is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. The great
work of the prophet is to reveal God. Christ had therefore to
show Himself in word and deed ; and then He said, he that hath
seen Me hath seen the Father also. Thus He executed the office
of a prophet, especially in the training of the twelve, — manifesting
and declaring unto them the Father's name, and giving them the
words which the Father had given Him (John xvii. 6, 8, 26). He
felt it to be His mission to preach the gospel to all the people of
Israel as the children of the promise, and to make known God's
saving will. In performing this work He makes bold claims.
His self-assertion is such as only His divine nature and divine
commission can justify. He speaks with personal, not delegated,
authority. Impressively, and with strong emphasis. He says,
Verily, verily, I say. Christ's prophetic office, however, is not
limited to His state of humiliation. The risen Saviour continues
to execute this office by means of His Holy Spirit in the Church.
As He was leaving the world, as He protested before the Father
His faithfulness to His commission. He said not only I have
declared, but also I will declare Thy name to those whom
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 93
Thou hast given Me. The Spirit's work is rightly regarded as
that of the glorified Christ ; and the work of the Spirit in
persuading men to faith and obedience, may fitly be reckoned
under the prophetic office of the Redeemer.
II. Christ the mediator is a priest : made a Priest^ to o^er tip
Himself a sacrifice 07ice for them all, and to intercede contijitcally
with the Father, for making their persojts and services acceptable
to Him. The prophet represents God to man ; the priest repre-
sents man to God. The mediator of the New Covenant must
be at once a prophet and a priest, reconciling man to God by
revealing God in a loving and attractive aspect, and reconciling
God to man by removing, by means of expiation, that which
prevents God having any dealing or intercourse with men.
What Christ proclaimed as prophet. He procured as priest.
The priestly office consists of two main parts, — sacrifice and
intercession.
I. Christ as a priest offers Himself a sacrifice once for thciii
all. It is evident that no earthly type, either Melchizedec or
Aaron, can adequately represent the idea of Christ's priesthood.
While throughout the Old and New Testament the work of
Christ is very frequently referred to in terms and under figures
borrowed from sacrificial rites and priestly actions, it is in the
Epistle to the Hebrews that the doctrine of Christ's priesthood
is thoroughly elaborated. There a careful comparison is insti-
tuted between Christ as priest, on the one hand, and Aaron
and Melchizedec as priests, on the other hand. All the parti-
culars in which these two types of priesthood foreshadowed the
priestly office of the Mediator, are brought together and constitute
the perfected New Testament doctrine of Christ's work as con-
ceived under the head of priesthood. According to the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the mediator as priest must
satisfy three demands, (i) He must be appointed of God. No
one assumes such an office of himself. There is, indeed, no
temptation to do so. Any attempt rashly to arrogate such an
94 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
office would indicate unfitness, ignorance of the serious and onerous
nature of the undertaking. God alone can judge of qualification,
and determine when His requirements are satisfied, — and Christ
is called of God (Heb. v. 4). (2) He must be taken from among
men to act in things pertaining to God. The most essential
feature in the priestly office is its representative character.
The priest stands before God for men, and therefore he must
be taken from among them. He does officially what God's law
demands of every man. Those who nailed Christ to the cross
represented man in his sinfulness ; but also the crucified repre-
sented mankind. The sanctifier and the sanctified are all of
one. (3) He must have somewhat to offer. The offering of
earthly priests could never be perfect, because it was something
external to themselves. They had nothing to offer; therefore,
something had to be given them to provide a sacrifice first for
their own sins, and then for the sins of the people. Christ,
as Himself sinless, had in Himself that which He could offer.
Christ was Himself priest, sacrifice, and altar {^Ameshis' Medulla^
I. cxix. 19). He was priest in His two natures as God and
man ; sacrifice, specially as viewed in His human nature, hence
the reference is not so much to His person as to His body,
His blood, etc. ; and altar, in respect more immediately of His
divine nature, and thus the altar sanctified the gift. As Amesius
further admirably says : Christ the Mediator was necessarily
God and man, for unless He had been man He would have
been no fit sacrifice, and unless He had been God this sacrifice
would not have been of sufficient worth.
2. Christ as a priest intercedes coiitmually luith the Father.
This function of the mediatorial office is executed by Christ, partly
in His earthly, partly in His heavenly state. As exercised on
earth, it may be regarded as an anticipation of the functions of
the glorified Redeemer, just as the redemption of those saved
before the crucifixion of Christ was accomplished in anticipation
of that sacrifice. Christ's priestly intercession consists in His
apoearing before God as our representative, and presenting in His
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 95
presence the works of satisfaction and merit which He had wrought
on earth. This intercession is practically the continuation of
Christ's sacrifice, and so is to be regarded as the continued cause
of our justification. We have had access into the grace of God by
the death of Jesus Christ (Rom. v. 2), and by Him too, through His
intercession, we are kept standing in that grace. The continuance
of our standing in grace depends upon the continuance of His
intercession. God has determined that access to Him can never
be, save by a mediator. Hence the mediator whose priestly
offering of himself reconciles enemies unto God, must as a living
Saviour by his intercession secure continued salvation unto those
who are reconciled (Rom. v. 10). The death of Christ was an all-
satisfying atonement for man's guilt and the perfectly sufficient
means for procuring salvation {medm7n impetratioiiis) ; the inter-
cession of Christ is simply the means of applying salvation {^mediiiui
applicationis)^ adding nothing in supplement of the sacrificial work,
but securing the effectual application thereof. As thus understood,
intercession forms an essential function of Christ's priestly office.
His office would have been imperfect had He remained on earth
(Heb. viii. 4). Just as the Jewish High Priest with the blood
entered into the Holiest of all to make intercession, so Christ in
the exercise of His priestly function enters heaven as intercessor,
and He realizes the ideal of priestly intercession by continuing it
for ever. (See an admirable exposition of this doctrine in Good-
win, Works, iv. pp. 56-91.) This intercession of Christ precedes
our prayers and anticipates our temptations. Christ says to Peter,
while foretelling his fall, that He had already interceded for him
so that his fall should not be final. It may be defined simply as
the expression of the Saviour's will (John xvii. 24). It should also
be observed that the same name, Paraclete^ is given to Christ
and to the Spirit. This word means 'one called upon,' and
is translated 'advocate' as applied to Christ (i John ii. i), and
'comforter' as applied to the Spirit (John xiv. 16, etc.). The in-
tercession of Christ as our priest is to be distinguished from the
intercession of the Spirit. Christ's intercession is apart from us,
96 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
on our behalf ; we can take no share in it, for it is something done
for us that we cannot do for ourselves (i John ii. i ; Rom. viii.
34 ; Heb. vii. 24, 25 ; Heb. xii. 24) ; the Spirit's intercession is,
along with and in our spirits, teaching and moving us to approach
God (Rom. viii. 15, 26, 27). This doctrine of the eternal inter-
cession of Christ enforces, in a very striking way, the great truth
that God's favour toward us is wholly and for ever dependent upon
the satisfaction that He has in Christ. It is the presence of
Christ before God that secures a continuation of the divine good-
ness to us, and it is the eternity of Christ's presence as intercessor
that assures us of eternal salvation from God.
111. Christ the mediator is a king : — Made a King to subdue them
to Himself^ to feed a?id rule them by His own appointed ordinances^
a?id to defeftd them fro?n their eneinies. In virtue of His divine
being, Christ is king. In the exercise of this personal right. He
has dominion over all things that exist and over all intelligent
beings. As mediator. He is king of saints, and has this office
conferred upon Him by His Father. He is by the Father set
king in Zion (Ps. ii. 6), the government is put upon His shoulder
(Isa. ix. 6), and the Father hath put all things into His hand
(John iii. 35). The universal sovereignty which He exercises as
mediator is exercised by Him on behalf of His own people : He
is head over all things to the Church (Eph. i. 22). In dealing with
those who belong to His mediatorial kingdom, that is, with those
whom God has given Him out of the world, Christ, in the execution
of His kingly office, exercises a threefold activity, (i) He reduces
them to subjection, that they may acknowledge His sovereignty :
He is made a king to subdue the7n to Hi7nself. This He does by
His Word and Spirit, seeking them out, convincing them of sin,
enlightening their minds in the knowledge of the truth, and
renewing their wills. It is as king that the mediator sends His
Spirit into our hearts to accomplish these gracious results. (2)
He supplies nourishment and the means of growth to those who
are thus actually brought under His kingly authority : He is made
THE REMEDY PROVIDED IN JESUS CHRIST. 97
a king to feed and rule them by His own appointed ordinances.
The king is lawgiver. His laws are at once authoritative com-
mands and means of spiritual nutriment to His people (Ps. cxix.
4, 93). Besides the word, which under the Spirit is the means by
which the mediator subdues and then feeds His people, He
employs special means, granted only to those who have been
brought into subjection, and devoted to providing them with their
necessary food, the sacraments, and especially the sacrament of
the Lord's Supper. In the life of faith, and in believing reception
of the Supper, He gives us His flesh to eat, and we find that
His flesh is meat indeed, and His blood is drink indeed (John vi.
51, 55). His rule is spiritual, and results from the indwelling of
His Spirit. In spiritual matters this rule is sovereign. Unless
we resist all hierarchical and papal pretensions on the one hand,
and all Erastian encroachments on the other hand, we shall be
guilty of breaking our allegiance to our king. The relation of
Christ the king to the Church universal is set forth in the name
which He assumes : He that holdeth the seven stars in His right
hand (Rev. ii. i). Chastisement and the manifold discipline of
life are forms of the exercise of His regal authority over His
people. (3) He wards off hostile attacks, and makes the evil
designs of His people's foes to work out good to them : He is made
a king to defend them from their enemies. The believer's worst
enemy is the plague of his own heart. While the guilt or con-
demning power of sin is removed, and its dominion is broken, it
continues to exist, but under sentence of utter destruction. Satan
also seeks to overthrow and destroy, but Christ promises His
Church that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt.
xvi. 18). He now restrains the enemy of His people, and shall
bruise him under their feet shortly (Rom. xvi. 20). In the exe-
cution of these three offices the Mediator of the New Covenant
effects such a communion between Himself and His people, that
they are brought into eternal relations with the Father in the bonds
of the covenant of peace.
HEAD IIL
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE
COVENANT.
§ I . The outward means and ordinances, for inaking men partakers
of the covenant of grace, are so wisely dispensed, as that the
elect shall be infallibly converted and saved by them; and the
reprobate, among whom they are, not to be justly stunibled.
The means are specially these four — (i) The Word of God j
(2) The Sacrainents J (3J Kirk-government j (4) Prayer.
In the Word of God, preached by sent messengers, the Lord
makes offer of grace to all sinners, upon condition of faith in
Jesus Christ; and whosoever do confess their sins, accept of
Christ offered, and submit themselves to his ordinances, he
will have both them and their children received into the honour
and privileges of the covenant of grace. By the Sacrajnents,
God will have the covenant sealed for confirnmig the bargaijt
on the foresaid condition. By Kirk-govern7?ient, he will have
them hedged in, and helped forward unto the keeping of the
covena7it. And by Prayer, he will have his own glorious
grace, promised in the covenant, to be daily drawn forth,
acknowledged, and employed. All which means are followed
either really, or in profession only, according to the quality
of the covenanters, as they are true or counterfeit believers.
This section deals with the quebtlon of the means of grace,
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. 99
defining precisely what is meant by the term, showing what
particulars are included under it, and how these means are used
really or in appearance only.
I. We have here, first of all, a careful statement as to what may
be expected from the use of the outward means, and what ends
these are fitted and intended to serve: — The outward mea?is ajid
ordinances f for making men partakers of the covenafit of grace,
are so wisely dispensed, as that the elect shall be infallibly con-
verted and saved by them; and the reprobate^ among whom they
are, not to be justly stumbled. The general statement is here
made, that outward means of grace have been ordained of God
for the conversion of sinners, and in order to secure for the con-
verted the blessings of the covenant. This results from the
Scripture revelation of God, which declares Him to be the author
not of confusion but of peace (i Cor. xiv. 33). To the Jews had
been committed the oracles of God (Rom. iii. 2), and to them
pertained the covenants, the giving of the law, and the service
of God (Rom. ix. 4). This constituted their peculiar privilege.
According to the Apostle, the same privilege is open now to all
in the spiritual use of ordinances in which Christ is set forth as
crucified for us. This Scripture doctrine of the means of grace
has been faithfully maintained in the Church. It was necessary
to insist upon the doctrine of the means of grace in its scriptural
simplicity, and to guard against extravagances leading to
dangerous errors, which had been favoured by superstition and
fanaticism. Ever and anon the tendency to fall away from the
Biblical and Church doctrine made its appearance, at one time
in the direction of an over-estimation and magical conception of
the ordinances, as though they had, sensuously or materially,
some power for effecting the end in view, and at another time,
in the direction of an under-estimation and hyper-spiritualistic
depreciation of all outward means, as though what is in form
outward and sensible, codld never have any place in the accom-
plishing of a spiritual work. We have the Romanizing tendency,
100 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
on the one hand, and the mystical tendency, in its various forms,
on the other hand.
I. Very early in the history of the Church there arose that
erroneous doctrinal tendency which consists in confounding the
means with the efficient cause, and regarding the use of such
means as necessarily securing salvation. Many unguarded and
exaggerated expressions may be collected from the writings of the
earliest of the Fathers, in which it is only too evident that the
Church and its ordinances receive an honour and authority
which belong to Christ Himself alone. Through the early
centuries we can trace the growth of High Church and
Sacramentarian views. Particular aspects of the truth were
dwelt upon in a one-sided manner, — the ministry, the sacraments,
public worship, were considered as in themselves possessed of
grace, rather than as simply channels of grace. The outward
ordinances were supposed to confer grace by something in them-
selves. This is the Romish doctrine ex opere operatum. This
regards the power in the outward means of grace as magical and
not spiritual. Belief in such a conception is superstition. It
regards the outward and sensible ordinance, or the elements in the
ordinance, as endowed substantially with the power of accom-
plishing supernatural results. There is in this, on the one hand,
a Jewish element, in so far as it interjects something of a mere
outward nature between God and man ; and, on the other hand,
there is a heathenish element, in so far as it ascribes a saving
power to that which is of the creature and not of God. Illustra-
tions of this tendency may be found in all ages, and under the
most varied conditions of society. It appears wherever there is a
form of godliness without the power. Not only the Buddhist,
with his written prayers rotating on a wheel, and the Jewish
Pharisee thinking to be heard by his much speaking, and the
Romanist who pays for others to perform religious rites on his
behalf, but also all who go to Church and outwardly conform to
religious observances without the love of God in their heart, have
latent in their minds an idea, more or less definite, that some
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. lOI
benefit will accrue to them from the mechanical, purely external
use of those ordinances. This is to attribute a magical influence
to the means of grace. In superstitious ages, and among super-
stitious people, this tendency is specially noticeable. Under the
influence of superstition, the most immoral and reckless sometimes
betake themselves to the utterance of words of prayer and to the
reading of Scripture, using prayer and the word of God simply
as charms to ward off danger or secure deliverance. Such use
of holy things, the holiness of which is really not in themselves
but in the Holy Spirit's presence in them, is no better than the
endeavours of Simon Magus and the sons of Sceva (Acts viii. 19,
xix. 13), who would use the name of Jesus for magical ends.
2. While the exaggeration of the effect of ecclesiastical
ordinances exercises a wonderful fascination over certain minds,
there is another class, represented more or less largely in every
age, which is just as easily moved on the other hand to an undue
depreciation of all outward rites and ceremonies. The intensity
of the protests made by such men against Church organization
was often occasioned by the almost exclusive attention which
leading Churchmen often gave to mere externals, to the outward
framework of Christian institutions. Many who made such pro-
tests in behalf of spiritual life, and against a barren formal
Churchism, were thoroughly alive to the importance of outward
ordinances, if only these were regarded as means and not as
ends. Among the early so - called Christian Gnostics we find
sometimes a tendency to underrate ordinances which were being
overrated, or rather misplaced by the orthodox and recognised
leaders of the Church. The first decided formal revolt against
prevailing externalism in Church organization was that of
Montanism. About the close of the second century this
spiritualistic movement began, and for three or four centuries
did much to moderate and hold in check the unspiritual in-
fluence of ambitious and secular-minded Churchmen. During
the Middle Ages isolated thinkers arose from time to time, who,
disgusted with the grasping worldliness of ecclesiastics, and the
I02 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
Utter secularization of the Church, abandoned and even denounced
Church observances, substituting for these a religion of the
spirit in which the use of forms was treated as of no account.
During the sixteenth century various sectaries and enthusiasts,
generally embraced under the name of Anabaptists, occasioned
great trouble to the Reformers by their arbitrary and lawless
proceedings. The wilder spirits among them seemed determined
to break away from all manner of restrictions, and refused to
acknowledge any constituted authority. Pietism and Moravianism,
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, represented a revolt
of a purely religious character ; the undue exaltation of external
means was condemned, and their regular and orderly observance,
though not expressly repudiated, was often unduly neglected.
The Quakers, or Society of Friends, with George Fox (1624-
1690) and Robert Barclay (1648- 1690) as their chief representa-
tives, carried the revolt so far as to proscribe all outward forms,
interpreting injunctions to the observance of ordinances as re-
ferring to an inward and spiritual experience, and elevating
what they call the internal light, or presence of the Spirit in the
heart of the individual Christian, to so exclusive an authority
that Scripture no longer is regarded as the supreme judge of
controversies. It is worthy of notice that in all those more or
less mystical movements referred to, as well as in the more
recent Plymouthistic reaction against excessive externalism in
the Church, the revolt against the use of means of grace
is only partial. In certain movements one particular ordi-
nance, in other movements some other ordinance, is rejected.
They all agree in under-estimating the means of grace, and
taking an inadequate view of the importance of organization in
general.
In opposition to these contrasted erroneous tendencies, the
Slim of Saving Knowledge asserts the orthodox doctrine of the
means of grace, in which the claims of the inward and the
outward are equally admitted. It is the wisdom with which
those means and ordinances are dispensed — that is, the opera-
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. 103
tion of the divine wisdom in and by them — that infalUbly
secures conversion and salvation by them. This is made all
the more evident by the Hmitation of the range within which
the means are effectual to the elect, who alone use those means
in a spiritual manner ; whereas the reprobate, from their un-
spiritual use of those means, secure no profit, but are left
without excuse. By the gift of grace bestowed on the elect,
God enables them so to use His ordinances that they become
channels of grace for conversion and edification.
n. We have in the next place an enumeration of the principal
means of grace : — The means are specially these four — (i) The
Word of God; (2) The Sacraments j (3) Kirk-governmejit ; (4)
Prayer. The Larger and Shorter Catechisms mention explicitly
only three ordinances as worthy to be placed in the first rank
as means of grace : the word, sacraments, and prayer. It is
quite evident that the Westminster divines regarded Church
discipline as a very important means of grace. The parts of
religious worship, as given in the Westminster Confession, are
prayer, with praise and thanksgiving, the reading and preaching
of the word, and the dispensation of sacraments. In some of
the Lutheran standards there are three means of grace named
— the word, sacraments, and the power of the keys : prayer,
as indicative of a spiritual condition, is regarded as a necessary
presupposition of the effectual use of any of those means. A
very generally received distribution is the twofold one, the
word and sacraments. The immediate purpose of the treat-
ment of the subject is sufficient to determine which of those
arrangements should be adopted. No exhaustive distribution
of the means of grace is attempted, because none is possible.
God does not confine Himself within the limits of any number
of enumerated means. Whether we name two, or three, or
four, we speak only of ordinary means, of those which have
been and are so regularly and statedly used by God that they
are deserving of special mention.
T04 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
III. The first of the means of grace here named is the word
of God : — In the word of God, preached by sent messengers, the
Lord makes offer of grace to all sinners, upon condition of faith
in Jesus Christ j and whosoever do confess their sins, accept of
Christ offered, and submit themselves to his ordinances, he will
have both them and their children received into the honour and
privileges of the covenant of grace. The word of God as a means
of grace is in contents the same as the word of God which
constitutes the source of saving knowledge. It is Holy Scrip-
ture, as presented in the Old and New Testament, which is the
revelation of divine truth, and the means of conversion and
spiritual edification. These, however, represent two different
uses to which Scripture may be and ought to be put. It is
possible to regard the word too exclusively as a source of
instruction, as was done by the so-called orthodox theologians of
the seventeenth century ; and it is possible to regard it too
exclusively as a means of grace, as was done by the Pietists of
the same age. Considering the word of God as a means of
grace, we regard it as a channel for the communication of the
Spirit of grace. The statement before us calls attention to the
saving truth in the contents of the word : there is the offer of
grace upon condition of faith in Christ. It is the word that
makes this offer, and makes known to us the condition. The
word is thus the organ of the Spirit, who again is the author of
that faith which the word proclaims as the condition of salvation.
The Spirit who works faith in the heart is also author of the
word. It is the continued presence of the Spirit in the word
which constitutes it a means of grace. ' As the corn of wheat,
the fruit of a plant life, bears in itself the power of producing
again a plant life of the same kind, so also the word of God, the
fruit of the Holy Spirit, bears in itself the power of producing the
Spirit' (Kahnis, Dogiiiatik, iii. § 14, p. 463). The New Testament
doctrine of Scripture gives prominence to the spiritual efficiency
of the word, as not merely originating from the Spirit, but as
now containing and communicating the Spirit (John v. 39 ; Rom.
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. 1 05
i. 16 ; 2 Cor. iii. 3). Hence, as being in respect of authorship
and actual contents immediately connected with the Spirit, the
word of God, as the most adequate instrument of the Spirit, is
rightly ranked first among the means of grace. This supreme
position is given to the word by the Protestant Churches. Even
among the Romanists many have nobly insisted upon the pre-
eminent importance of Scripture as a means of grace. The
Roman Catechism speaks of the word of God as ct'his miimae,
the food of the soul.
As a means of grace pre-eminence is given to the word
preached. The Shorter Catechism says : The Spirit of God
maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word,
an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of
building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto
salvation. This preference given to preaching as a means of
grace over any other use of Scripture is in strict accordance
with Apostolic doctrine. Preaching is necessary to hearing, and
hearing to faith (Rom. x. 14-17). The simple hearing of the out-
ward word might have a merely moral effect in the impression
which its contents were naturally fitted to make upon the mind :
but as a means of grace and instrument of the Spirit it has a
supernatural effect in working faith in the heart.
The word of God as a means of grace is usually described as
consisting of law and gospel. This is not by any means the
same as the division of the books of the Bible into the Old and
New Testament. In the Old Testament we have the gospel as
well as the law ; and in the New Testament we have the law as
well as the gospel. The distinction is rather that implied in the
description of faith negatively and positively, as confession of sin
and acceptance of Christ offered. What the word as a means of
grace aims at, is the conversion of sinners and the edification
of saints. The law element and the gospel element in the word
have both their part in the work of conversion and in the work of
edification. In conversion, the word operates as law in con-
vincing of sin and leading to the confession and forsaking of it,
I06 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
and as gospel in preaching Christ and offering His grace for our
acceptance. In the edifying of the body of Christ, the word
operates as law by affording a rule and standard of a life well-
pleasing to God, and as gospel by yielding comfort and strength
in promises of the divine favour and assurance of God's hearty
acceptance of the reconciliation wrought for us by Christ.
' The Spirit breathes upon the word, and brings the truth to sight ;
Precepts and promises afford a sanctifying light.'
IV. The Sacraments are fitly named after the word as means
of grace : — By the Sacraments^ God will have the covenatit sealed
for confir7ning the bargain on the foresaid condition. The name
sacrament is not used in Scripture. Its use was probably
suggested by the employment of the word sacramentum for the
oath of fidelity and allegiance given by Roman soldiers. The
Christian sacrament is an oath of fealty to Christ. The word
used in the New Testament for the holy ordinances which we call
sacraments is mystery^ implying that there is in the holy rite more
than meets the eye in the visible element. As means of grace
the sacraments are closely related to the word of God. The
sacrament, indeed, has no independent existence, and cannot be
administered apart from the word. It also teaches and imparts
no new thing, but only presents in another form what has been
already set forth in the word. The word has all that is essential
to the sacrament, and the sacrament is, to use a phrase of the
Reformers borrowed from Augustine, a verbum visibile, a visible
word. ' Faith,' says Durham, ' takes Christ in the word, and
strikes hands with Him in the sacrament.' The sacrament,
therefore, comes after the word, as helping to secure the end for
which the word is given. The Roman Catholic Church lost sight
of this truth, and gave a pre-eminent position to the sacrament,
completely subordinating the word, until in its ritual the chief
means of grace was no longer conspicuous. The Lutheran
Church co-ordinated word and sacrament, theoretically allowing
pre-eminence to neither; but this position of equilibrium could not
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. 107
be maintained, and modern Lutherans have incUned more and
more, in accordance with a Romanizing tendency, to exalt the
sacrament over the word. To some extent the same may be said
of the Church of England. The Reformed or Calvinistic Churches,
represented by the Presbyterian Churches of the present day,
subordinate the sacrament to the word.
The very brief statement given above clearly sets forth the true
Church doctrine of the sacraments. It is not to all and sundry
symbolical actions that the name is to be given. In early
Christian times the word was applied loosely to anything specially
sacred, to creeds, doctrines, customs that were in accordance
with the spirit of Christianity. From the time of Augustine,
however, to that of Peter the Lombard, that is, from the fourth
to the twelfth century, the use of the word was restricted, as in
the statement before us, to ordinances, by means of which God
willed to confirm to us the promises of the covenant, that is, to
baptism and the Lord's Supper. Peter the Lombard applied the
name of sacraments to seven holy actions which were regarded as
possessed of a certain symbolical character : baptism, confirma-
tion, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and mar-
riage. Thomas Aquinas elaborated the doctrine of the Church,
distinguishing baptism, confirmation, and orders as imparting
an indelible character. This arrangement and enumeration of
the sacraments, as well as the idea of their conveying grace by a
power inherent in them, was adopted by the Church formally at
the Council of Florence (1439), ^^^ ^^ the Council of Trent
(1545 -1 563). Only baptism and the Lord's Supper answer the
requirement of the definition of a sacrament by being ordinances
instituted by the Lord. As symbolical rites, the Lord's Supper
was instituted in immediate prospect of the sacrifice on the
cross, and baptism, as the sacrament of regeneration by the
Spirit, in immediate prospect of His ascension, which secured
the descent of the Spirit. These two ordinances are actually
conjoined in the New Testament as Christian institutions of the
same order (i Cor. x. 2, 3, C ; i John v. 6 ; i Cor. xii. 13). These
Io8 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
two symbolic ordinances also cover the entire domain of the
Christian life, and so admit of no other as co-ordinate with them ;
the one symbolizes entrance upon, the other the continuance in,
the sphere of the new life of the Spirit.
Baptism as the sign and seal of regeneration corresponds to
the rite of circumcision in the Jewish Church. As symbolic of
the new birth it is administered only once. In agreement with its
Old Testament counterpart, baptism is administered to believers
and their children. According to the previous section of the text,
those who receive the word obtain the privileges of the covenant
for their children as well as for themselves. Peter, speaking to
those who had become hearers of the word, urging them to repent
and be baptized, encourages them by the assurance that the
promise, of which baptism is the seal, is to them and to their
children (Acts ii. 38, 39). As circumcision was given in the
beginning of the Jewish Church first to Abraham, an adult and
a believer, and ever after in the household of the father of
the faithful to children, so in the beginnings of the Christian
Church baptism was administered first to adults on a profession
of faith, and afterwards to the children of those who had believed
and had been themselves baptized. Birth in a Christian family
brings with it certain Christian privileges, which baptism sym-
bolizes, and confers membership of the outward Christian
community. Erroneous views of the meaning of baptism
appeared early in the Church. The sacrament of regeneration
was spoken of by some of the early Fathers in a way that
was suitable only if used of regeneration itself. This tendency,
developed into a dogma of Baptismal Regeneration, is current not
only in the Romish Church, but also in the High Church section
of the Church of England. The error results from confounding
the sign with the thing signified, and thinking of the sacrament
as conferring grace by some power in itself. While opposing this
error, we must guard against the contrary extreme of the
Socinians and others (perhaps Zwingli should be included), who
look upon baptism as nothing more than an initiatory rite, for if this
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. T09
be all, it is then no means of grace. [See Confession of Faith,
chap, xxviii. § i ; Author's Hajtdbook, p. 150.]
The Lord's Supper as the sign and seal of fellowship with
Christ in the victory of His death, corresponds to the Old Testa-
ment ordinance of the Passover, the memorial of Israel's deliver-
ance from death and bondage. The New Testament ordinance
is distinctly associated with the Jewish rite — Christ our Passover
is sacrificed for us (i Cor. v. 7). Christ is the Lamb slain, whose
flesh is meat indeed, and His blood drink indeed (John vi. 55).
The bread and wine are not the body and blood of Christ, but
are symbols of His body and blood. The confusion of sign and
thing signified in the understanding of this sacrament, led to the
doctrine of Transubstantiation. If this idea of the change of the
natural elements into the actual body and blood of the Lord were
correct, some colour would be given to the notion that the
sacrament of itself conferred grace. Scripture, especially the
writings of Paul in i Cor. x., xi., regards the significance of the
elements in the Supper as precisely analogous to that of the word
as means of grace. The word is saving when it is the medium
of the Spirit's communication ; the bread and wine, broken and
poured out, when spiritually received, convey the benefits of the
breaking of Christ's body and the shedding of His blood. The
Lord's Supper is the sacrament of Hfe, and the communication of
this, Christ says, is the work of the Spirit (John vi. 63). The
Socinians and others who regard baptism as merely an initiatory
rite, consider the Lord's Supper as a mere thanksgiving ceremony
and profession of adherence to the Christian faith. It is a means
of grace only if it is more than this, a seal of the covenant in
confirming the benefits of Christ's death.
V. After the word and sacraments, Church government is
mentioned as a means of grace : — By Kirk-government He will
have them hedged in, and helped forward unto the keeping of the
covenant. As a means of grace Church government may be
nearly identified with Church disciphne or the maintenance of
no SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
Church order. This is always to be exercised and administered
with a view to the edification of the individual concerned, and
of the Church as a whole. The function of Church government
consists in the administration of the laws of Christ concerning
His Church. Christ has laid down in His word certain regula-
tions for the admission of members into, and the exclusion of the
unworthy from His Church, and also for the ordering of the
conduct of those who are within its pale. It is the part of Church
government to determine who are of the Church, and how those
who are of it ought to behave. The terms and conditions of the
covenant are to be observed, and Church government discharges
a protective and a promotive function in respect of the keeping
of that covenant.
Christ Himself enjoins the exercise of discipline. He assigns
to His disciples the power of the keys (Matt. xvi. i8), indicates
the various steps to be taken in the process (Matt, xviii. 15-18),
and grants the power of absolution (John xx. 21-23). This power
was exercised in the Apostolic Church (2 Thess. iii. 6-14 ; i Cor.
V. ; 2 Cor. ii., vii., x., xiii. ; i Tim. i. 19, v. 20; Tit. iii. 10). The
end of all such proceedings is for edification, not destruction
(2 Cor. X. 8) ; and the severest penalty, delivering unto Satan, was
for the destruction only of the flesh and the salvation of the spirit
(i Cor. V. 5). The treatment is not hostile but brotherly, that the
faulty one may be ashamed of his fault and repent (2 Thess. iii. 14).
As thus viewed. Church government is a means of grace, and
stands in immediate relation to the word and sacraments. ' The
ordinance of excommunication,' says Durham, 'is added, as
divines say, to confirm God's threatenings, as sacraments do seal
the promises. . . . No censure should be blindly or implicitly
made use of, but, both in reference to the party and others, there
should be instruction, exhortation, conviction, etc., by the word
going before or alongst with the same. In which respect, though
improperly, censures may be some way looked upon as sacra-
ments, in a large sense, in these particular cases, because there
is in them both some signifying and confirming use, — they being
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. Ill
considered with respect to the end wherefore they are appointed.'
What Church government has in common with the word and
sacraments is its edifying tendency and purpose. It enforces both
word and sacraments by solemn sanctions. In principle it rests
upon the doctrine of the communion of saints. What Professor
Bruce calls {Training of the Twelve^ p. 204) the hotel theory of
Church fellowship, according to which one member takes no con-
cern with the conduct and views of another, inasmuch as it pro-
poses neither to hedge in nor to help forward, is a renunciation
of true brotherly love. According to the true view of Church
membership, all are brethren, solemnly bound to protect and
promote the spiritual wellbeing of one another.*
VI. As a means of grace, to the word, sacraments, and Church
government, is added prayer : — And by Prayer^ he will have his
own glorious grace, promised in the covenant, to be daily drawn
forth, acknowledged, and employed. Prayer scarcely stands upon
the same level as those other means of grace already enumerated.
'We have only to examine these means to feel at once that
Christian prayer is something different from all those other
means, and at the same time something infinitely higher ; not a
means among several, but the cofiditio sine qua non to the
successful use of all' (Oosterzee, Dogmatics, § cxxxv. 5). It is
evidently much more subjective in its nature than any of the rest.
It consists in the formation and nurture of a spiritual disposition,
rather than in the use of some objective, external instrument such
as the written word, the sensible elements in the sacraments, and
the forms and injunctions of Church order. It is to the man of a
prayerful spirit that word, and sacraments, and Church forms are
really channels of grace and blessing. Prayer is not to be restricted
to petition. Bible prayers, such as those of David, overflow with
thanksgiving and freely range over the wide realms of creation,
* See this whole subject admirably and exliaustiveiy treated : Professor
Bannerman's Chnrch of Christ, vol. ii. pp. 186-200. Edinburgh 1868.
T. & T. Clark.
112 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
providence, and grace, to find materials for adoring praise. These
prayers are songs or overflowings of hearts in sympathy with God.
Prayer is a devout soul's contemplations, in which the under-
standing is exercised on the highest mysteries, the affections
called forth toward Him who is altogether lovely, and the will
moved in struggle against what is earthly, and in desire for the
heavenly. It is, therefore, clearly the means of grace par excel-
lence^ which finds means of sustenance in Church fellowship, the
sacraments, and the word of God. Yet, as an important element
in prayer, direct petition is not to be overlooked. To those under
the covenant the promises of God's grace are given : but the
bestowal of these must be asked (Matt. vii. 7), He will be inquired
of by us to do these things for us (Ezek. xxxvi. 37). The disposi-
tion of the prayerful spirit fits one for making definite requests;
it renders us solicitous, and capacitates us for receiving new gifts
of grace. Asking in faith is at once the consequence of close
communion with God, and the condition and occasion of closer
and more intimate fellowship. Prayer is pre-eminently a means
for obtaining the use of grace. It lays hold of the covenant
promises. But, as Matthew Henry says, ' promises are given not
to supersede, but to quicken and encourage prayer.' With these
it deals in a variety of ways. Apprehending a covenant right to
the blessings of God's grace, prayer draws new supplies from day
to day, makes thankful acknowledgment of what has been given,
thus increasing the possession of grace, and actively employing
that already granted. True prayer reflects the measure of grace
received ; a man's spirituality is most clearly shown in his prayers.
The more spiritual the prayer, the more largely is God's glorious
grace drawn forth.
Vn. The right use ot all these means depends upon the
presence of true faith in the heart : — All zuhich means are
followed either really, or in profession only, according to the
quality of the covenanters, as they are true or coimterfeit
believers. The possession of all the promises is conditioned
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. II3
upon faith. All things, in the way of obtaining spiritual gifts and
graces, are possible to him that believeth (Mark v. 36, ix. 23).
In regard to each of the means of grace enumerated it is evident
that they can be effectual only when used and exercised in faith.
It is to the prayer of faith that the promise is attached (Jas. i. 6 ;
Mark xi. 24 ; i Tim. ii. 8). Church organization and discipline,
all forms of ecclesiastical arrangements and modes of worship,
are serviceable only in so far as engaged in by those to whom God
has distributed in their several proportions the measure of faith
(Rom. xii. 3 ; i Cor. xii. 7). The sacraments can be with profit
partaken of only by those who believe, and the advantage and
enjoyment derived from them is proportioned to the faith exer-
cised ; Christ Himself explains eating and drinking as signifying
coming to Him and believing on Him (John vi. 35). Faith is
the thing signified by the sacramental action. Augustine says :
Believe and thou hast eaten. Then again, the word preached
is called the word of faith (Rom. x. 8), as well as that, the hear-
ing of which produces faith (ver. 17). That faith which is the
indispensable condition of the exercise of prayer and the use of
other means of grace is simply real faith, be it weak or strong.
Opportunities to use the means of grace are answers to the
prayer of him who says. Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief ;
answers to those who cry. Lord, increase our faith.
The covenant of grace^ set down in the Old Testament
before Christ came, and in the New since he came, is one
and the same in substance, albeit different in outward admini-
stration : For the covenant in the Old Testament, being sealed
with the sacraments of circu?ncision and the paschal lamb,
did set forth Chris fs death to come, and the benefits purchased
thereby under the shadow of bloody sacrifices and sundry
ceremonies J but since Christ came, the covenant being sealed
by the sacra?nents of baptism and the Lord^s Supper, doth
clearly hold forth Christ already crucified before our eyes,
H
114 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
victorious over death and the grave, and gloriously ruling
heaven and earth for the good of his own people.
(i.) It has to be remembered that the covenant of grace
belongs to the Old Testament as well as to the New. The dis-
tinction of law and gospel is not the same as that of the Old and
New Testaments, nor again is the dispensation of the law to be
identified with that of the covenant of works, and the dispensation
of the gospel under the New Testament to be exclusively regarded
as identical with that of the covenant of grace. The dispensation
of the covenant of grace really begins with the gospel promise
given in the day of Adam's fall. Every renewal or repetition of
that promise throughout the Old Testament is a gospel proclama-
tion. Between these earlier enunciations of gospel truth and
the later declarations made when the fulness of the times had
come, there is really no difference in kind, but only in intensity
and degree. The first announcement of grace was made in
general terms, and when repeated in Old Testament times few of
those particulars were added, which seem to us almost indis-
pensable to the clear understanding of the gospel ; yet the simple
revelations of the primitive ages contain all that is really essential
unto a practical and effectual knowledge of God's one way of
salvation. ' The object of faith in these primitive times was, in
substance, the same as now : God in His revealed character as
just, and the Justifier of him that believeth ; — with this difference,
that the Saviour was then promised as coming, but is now pro-
claimed as having come.' (Buchanan, Doctrine of Justification,
p. 28, Edin. 1867.) The substantial agreement of the presentation
of the covenant of grace in the Old Testament and in the New
appears in this, that in both records it is the same fact that is
proclaimed, the salvation of the sinner through the gracious act
of God in forgiving sin ; that in both records the ground of this
salvation is clearly laid in God and not in us, it is of grace and
not of works ; and finally, that in both records the means for
securing this salvation is the same, for Abraham, as well as Paul
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. I15
the apostle, is justified by faith. (See Buchanan, pp 425, 426.)
It is important to observe the difference between Israel and the
Gentiles in the ages before the coming of Christ. The distinction
according to the apostle (Rom. ix. 4, 5) lay in this, that to the
chosen people pertained the covenants, the giving of the law, the
service of God, and the promises. We do not, in emphasizing
the peculiar relation of the Jews to the promises of grace, overlook
the traces of divine influence evident in the lives of individuals
outside of the borders of Israel. The Alexandrian school of
Christian teachers did right when they claimed for Christ the
praise of every ray of true light that shone forth among Gentile
nations. Justin Martyr, the famous apologist of the second
century, speaks of the Logos Spermattkos, by which he means the
germ of divine truth present in men, as the origin of all that is
true and good. Even outside the range of His direct revelation,
God did not leave Himself without witnesses. The recognition
of such fitful gleams, however, only renders more evident the
special character of Israel's position. Israel alone had this in
common with the members of the Christian Church, — the explicit
proclamation of the divine promises. In outward administration
the form of the covenant of grace differs in the Old Testament
and in the New. The coming of Him who had been looked
forward to, altered not the essential truth upon which the covenant
of grace was based, seeing that He and His salvation remained
the same ; but a new dispensation was now inaugurated, the
Christian as distinguished from the Mosaic, in which modes of
worship of a prophetic and symbolical order suited for ages of
prospection were laid aside because He had come to whom those
ceremonials pointed forward, and because He continued with the
Church founded by Him during His stay on earth (Matt, xxviii.
18-20), according to His promise, even to the end of the
world.
(2.) The outward difference in administration of the covenant
under the Old and under the New Testament is illustrated by the
characteristic difference which distinguishes Old Testament
Il6 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
sacraments from those of the New Testament. It is very evident
that the ordinances or means of grace of the Old Testament,
though formally the same as the New, consisting as they do in
both cases of word and sacraments, are distinguished in respect
of the degree and measure of spirituahty in their dispensation.
Nothing, perhaps, more significantly illustrates this than the
elaborate inculcation of details in regard to the observance of
the Old Testament ordinances, and the subsequent impression of
externality which this leaves on the worshipper, as compared with
the absence of detailed injunctions in the New Testament, and the
prominence given to free spiritual service over that which is ritual
and formal, or that savours of mere bodily service. The ceremonial
service of Israel, even when not yet added to by Pharisaic tradi-
tions, was very cumbrous and onerous ; the arrangements of the
Christian service are few and simple, giving free scope to
individual spiritual development, it being only enjoined that all
things be done decently and in order.
We are here specially called to observe that the sacraments of
circumcision and the passover were bloody sacrifices, as pointing
to the great sacrifice promised but not yet offered ; whereas the
sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper are unbloody, as
being simply reminders of the sacrifice once for all made and
never to be repeated. The sign of the covenant in circumcision
was in blood, with a blood penalty threatened in case of neglect
(Gen. xvii. 14 ; Ex. iv. 24). Still more distinctly the shedding
of blood appears as an essential part of the symbolism of the
Passover. The ordinance was not only a sacramental meal, but
it embraced the slaying of the lamb as a sacrifice, the blood of
which, as on the occasion of its institution, was the immediate
symbol of expiation. ' In Num. ix. 7, the Paschal lamb is
expressly called a sacrifice ; it was slain in a holy place (Deut.
xvi. 5) ; its blood was sprinkled on the altar ; and the fat was
burnt upon the altar (2 Chron. xxx. 16, 17, xxxv. 11, 12).'
(Kurtz, History of Old Covenajit^ vol. ii. p. 298, Edin. 1859.)
The change in the character of the sacred ordinances in the
MEANS TOWARD PARTAKING OF THE COVENANT. I17
Christian Church is very significant. The shedding of blood
which was suitable in ordinances that were prophetic and
anticipatory of the great sacrifice on the Cross, was no longer
suitable in ordinances which were not only commemorative of the
sacrifice accomplished, but also intended to emphasize the truth
that there remained no more sacrifice for sin.
HEAD IV.
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BV
THOSE MEANS.
§ I. By those outward ordinances^ as our Lord makes the reprobate
inexcusable, so, by the power of his Spirit, he applies mito
the elect, effectually, all saving graces purchased to them in
the covettant of redemption, a?td maketh a change in their
persojzs. In particular^ (i) He doth convert or regenerate
thein, by giving spiritual life to thefn, in opening their undei--
standings, renewing their wills, affections, and faculties, for
giviiig spiritual obedience to his commands. (2) He gives
them saving faith, by making the7n, in the se?tse of deserved
condemnation, to give their consent heartily to the cove7ia7it
of grace, and to embrace Jesus Christ unfeignedly. (3) He
gives thein repentance, by 77iaking the7n, with godly sorrow, i7i
the hatred of sin and love of righteousness, turn from all
iniquity to the service of God. And (4) He sanctifies them,
by 7uaki7ig the7n go 07i and persevere in faith and spiritual
obedie7ice to the law of God, 7na7iifested by fruitfulness in all
duties, afid doi7tg good works, as God offer eth occasion.
This section speaks first of all of Effectual Calling. The Lord
by His Spirit effectually applies unto the elect all saving graces
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. II9
purchased to them. We have seen that, in the covenant, Christ
obtained a right to bestow upon His own certain benefits for which
in His substitutionary work He had paid the price. There is a
distinction marked between common grace^ which all have who
have the gospel message, and which renders them inexcusable
when they refuse to accept it, and efficacious grace^ which is God's
gift in Christ to those who are chosen of Him unto life. What
has to be noted here is that the accomplishment of the salvation
of the individual, no less than the universal plan and its execution,
is attributed to divine grace. This doctrine is a necessary part
of the system distinguished as Augustinian and Calvinistic, and
necessarily follows from the view which we have taken of man's
condition as a sinner in regard of guilt and inability.
The effectual working of divine grace upon the elect changes
their persons : and this again is the condition of a change in the
state of those thus changed. The next section details the par-
ticulars of the change of state secured for the elect by the
operation of efficacious grace. Here we have to attend to the
changes wrought in the persons of the elect, which are enumerated
under four heads : — (i) Conversion or Regeneration ; (2) The
accepting of Christ by Faith ; (3) Repentance unto Life ; (4)
Perfection through Sanctification and Perseverance in Holiness
unto the end.
I. The Spirit of Christ working effectually changes the person
of the elect in conversion or regeneration : — He doth convert or
regenerate them, by giving spiritual life to them, ijt openijig their
understandings, renewing their wills, affections, and faculties, for
giving spiriitial obedience to His commands. The word conver-
sion is here loosely used as synonymous with regeneration, but
ought rather to be employed as describing another aspect of
repentance. We shall therefore speak here simply of regenera-
tion. The classical passage in the New Testament on regeneration
is John iii. 1-18, with which ought also to be read i John v. 1-6.
It is described as the imparting of a new life. The old nature
can only produce its hke : the Spirit Himself alone can create
I20 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
spirit in man as a life altogether new. The change accomplished
in regeneration is called renewing, not as implying a mere
reviving, requickening of the old, not as indicating moral improve-
ment such as culture in most excellent and approved working can
effect, but the implantation of a new power of life, which makes
all things new. This spiritual power affects and fundamentally
changes all the faculties of men, giving them a new direction and
assigning to them again the end determined at their creation.
Regeneration gives again the true direction to man's life in setting
before him the end of spiritual obedience to God's commands.
With a view to securing the attainment of this end for man, the
Spirit opens man's understanding. In a state of nature man
knows the gospe message according to its letter, and this is
sufficient to leave him without excuse ; but there is a knowledge
even of this which only those know who are taught of God and
have their understandings opened by Him. There is a knowledge
which is yet no knowledge (i Cor. viii. i, 2). 'Take any man
that hath never so much knowledge both in law and gospel, and
if God turn this man to Him, you shall hear him say, that all
things he knew before are known anew by him ; he that had all
knowledge before, he now professeth he had none as he ought to
have had. And therefore, by the way, will you know what it is
to be converted .-^ It is to know over all anew, that you knew by
education.' (Goodwin, Works^ iv. 296.) The will, again, is the
very centre of man's nature ; it is the seat of government. This
the regenerating spirit occupies and controls : it renews, makes
anew this will. Therewith the will ceases to be fleshly and
becomes spiritual : the purposes and resolutions of the heart are
unto obedience toward God. Obedience, to be acceptable unto
God, must be willing, and such only the will renewed by the
Divine Spirit can render. Then, again, a renewed will implies
right affections. Willing service can be given only after the heart
has been won. But it is only the new heart — the heart made new
by the regenerating Spirit — that turns to God and clings to Him,
that seeks to influence will and understanding on behalf of God.
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. I 21
Out of the renewed heart are the issues of this new spiritual life.
From the centre it wells forth and circulates through every power
and every member, so that the whole man is made new. [See
Wotherspoon, On Regeneration^ for practical treatment of the
subject; and Delitzsch, Psychology (Edin. 1869), especially
pp. 393-407, for an elaborate, speculative discussion.]
2. The Spirit of Christ working effectually changes the person
of the elect by leading them to embrace Jesus Christ by faith : —
He gives them saving faith ^ by making them, in the sense of deserved
condemnation, to give their consent heartily to the covenant of
grace f and to embrace Jesus Christ unfeignedly. The possession
of this grace of faith is the condition of that new obedience which
the regenerate render. He who believes in Christ is born again,
and by his faith he overcomes the world (i John v. i, 4). Faith
is the gift of God (Eph. ii. 8). The Spirit is indeed the real
author of faith in the heart, but the means whereby it is wrought
is the preaching of the word (Rom. x. 17; i Cor. i. 21). Man,
however, can interfere with this operation of the Spirit by cherish-
ing dispositions contrary to the divine mind (John v. 44). As in
all the operations of the Spirit in man's renewal, there is in faith
a real co-operating of the human will. Man may frustrate the
grace of God : the will to do so must be overcome ere faith can
rule. This faith has as its initial element a recognition of per-
sonal demerit. It is based upon a sense of deserved condemnatio7i.
Faith can arise only in a heart so humbled, and this self-humbling
is itself the primary act of faith. Christ's call is to sinners, lost
ones (Matt. ix. 13, etc.). Acknowledgment from the heart of
guilt and helplessness is the first indication of an awakening to
faith in one outside of ourselves, the sent of God. Where there
is the spirit of faith there is belief in the record which God has
given that in His Son is life, and outside of Him no life (i John
V. II, 12). The man who is operated upon by the Spirit believes
the righteousness of his own condemnation in order to believe in
Christ who delivers from condemnation. Faith is an assent first
with the heart, then with the understanding and will, to all the
T22 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
terms and provisions of the covenant of grace, — an assent to the
account there of our natural state as well as to the plan devised
for deliverance therefrom. The essence of saving faith consists
in the embracing of Jesus Christ. It is the possession of Christ
that constitutes salvation, and is simply the grasping of Him who
is our life. This is what entitles faith to be called saving. It
joins us to the Saviour. Now the term faith has been employed
in the Church to mean the truth which we receive from God's
revelation. The catholic faith is the whole body of catholic
doctrine. Misled by this application of the word, it soon became
usual to think of faith as an intellectual assent to the set of
propositions which constitute the creed of the Church. It was
by and by seen that mere intellectual assent could not be repre-
sented as the means of salvation. Hence a distinction was made
between fides inforjjtis^ this mere intellectual assent, and fides
formata, which was faith filled out and made complete by
love and its operations. This was the Romish doctrine that man
was not saved by faith alone, but by faith and love. The proper
way to correct this error is to correct the definition of faith. It is
not mere assent to doctrine, but it is reliance upon and surrender
to Christ. [Consult : Halyburton's Essay concerning the Nature
of Faithi Works, pp. 505-546, Glasgow 1833. O'Brien, The
Nature and the Effects of Faith, London 1 863. Also, very valuable,
though somewhat prolix : Goodwin's The Object attd Acts of
Justifying Faith, Works, vol. viii.]
3. A further change wrought in the persons of the elect by the
Spirit is Repentance, with which we associate the term Conver-
sion : — He gives them repentance, by makiftg them, with godly
sorrow, in the hatred of sin and love of righteousness, turn from
all iniquity to the service of God. The terms repentance and
conversion, as we have said when speaking of regeneration, ought
to go together, as two aspects of one and the same thing. The
former word might be used, as equivalent to the Greek word
metanoia, to mean the inward change ; and the latter might be
used, corresponding to the Greek word epistrophei to mean that
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. T23
altered course of life which manifests outwardly the real existence
of the other. The two words which are properly rendered by
us respectively conversion and repentance, occur in Luke xvii. 4,
where an offending brother is described as turning {epistrephd)
seven times a day, saying I repent {metatioo). His turning to
him he had offended is proof of the presence of penitent feelings
in his heart. Repentance embraces three distinct elements which
may be gathered from a comparison and combination of those two
passages, Ezek. xviii. 31 and 2 Cor. vii. 9-1 1, which together
may be regarded as the classical passage on this subject. We
have first of all true sorrow of heart for sin, — this, in the theology
of the Church, was called co?itritio, as distinguished from attritio,
a superficial feeling occasioned simply by fear of the consequences
of sin. A good example of the difference is seen in the repent-
ance of Peter and of Judas, — the one was godly sorrow, the other
the sorrow of the world. If it is to be an element in true
repentance, the sorrow must be over sin itself as transgression
against God. This leads to the forsaking in heart and life of that
sin which is sorrowed over. This may be identified with the
confessio of the Church doctrine. According to its true concep-
tion, confession means the repudiation of sympathy with and
propriety in that which is the subject of confession. When we
confess sin, in the proper sense of the term, we mark it as some-
thing separable from us, which we desire to put away. The
auricular confession of the Romish system is an emphasizing of a
mere accidental, and the ignoring of an essential element in con-
fession, — the substituting of an external, uttered acknowledgment
of sin for the profound feeling of the heart. In the same way,
penance, as a payment of penalties in an outward manner*
usurped the place of penitence or true repentance as an enuncia-
tion from the heart of all evil. The third element in true
repentance is the surrender of the whole life in new obedience.
This may be regarded as equivalent to the satisfactio of the old
Church doctrine. Repentance completes itself in return to that
attitude of service from which man had fallen away. The satis-
124 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
faction which testifies to the reality of the repentance consists
not in acts of penance rendered, nor in payment of penahies
imposed, but in the turning to the service of God, which as holy
service is now attractive to those who hate sin and love righteous-
ness. It is to be observed that repentance is defined not merely
as a forsaking of evil, but a turning to good. It is, indeed, only
by turning to the good that we turn away from the evil. Dr.
Chalmers speaks of the expulsive power of a new affection : we
are to cease to do evil by learning to do well ; walk in the Spirit
so as not to fulfil the lusts of the flesh (Gal. v. i6).
4. Once more the work of the Spirit upon the persons of the
elect is described as a process of moral cleansing which secures
to them perfection at length: — He sanctifies them, by making
them go on and persevere in faith and spiritual obedience to the
law of God, manifested by fruitfuhiess in all duties, and doing
good works, as God offereth occasion. Sanctification is continued
regeneration, the seed of the new birth remaining in us, and
presenting a constant opposition to sin (i John iii. 9). The
fellowship with Christ, which is the vital principle in regenera-
tion, implies sanctification from the earliest dawning of spiritual
life. It is an expansion and daily exercise of that living germ
implanted in the new nature, a continuously advancing appro-
priation of that divine fulness opened to us \xi the day of regenera-
tion. It is emphatically represented as the Spirit's work. This
is in accordance with our Lord's instruction regarding the new
birth : that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which
is born of the Spirit is spirit. What owes its origin to the
Spirit must be carried on by Him : but it is by the Spirit in us,
or by that begotten in us by the Spirit, that this new life is
carried out. We, as born again, born of the Spirit, are called
upon to sanctify ourselves, and to work out our own salvation.
The life of sanctification is described as a persevering in faith
and obedience. This implies conflict. So long as the remnants
of sin exist in any part of man's nature, there is necessarily
conflict between it and the renewed nature. In the struggle the
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. 1 25
power of the new man is increased. The law of God presents
the standard for our aim and imitation, and by comparison with
it that which is evil in us is recognised. [Consult : Professor
Candlish's recent handbook, chapter vii., The Work of the
Spirit in Sanctification ; also Howe's Office and Work of the
Spirit on the Individtial and on the Christian Church j Owen's
and Goodwin's well-known treatises ; and Dr. James Buchanan's
and Professor Smeaton's more recent works.]
§ n. Together with this inward change of their persons^ God
changes also their state; for^ so soon as they are brought
by faith into the covenant of grace., ( i ) he justifies them, by
imputing wito them that perfect obedience which Christ gave
to the law, a?td the satisfaction also which upon the cross
Christ gave unto justice in their name. (2) He reconciles
them, and makes thetn friends to God, who were before
enemies to God. (3) He adopts them, that they shall be no
more children of Satajt, but children of God, enriched with
all spiritual privileges of his so7is. And last of all, after
their warfare in this life is ended, he perfects the holitiess
and blessedness, first, of their souls at their death, and then
both of their souls and their bodies, being joyfully joined
together again in the resurrection at the day of his glorious
C07ni7ig to judgment, whejt all the wicked shall be sent away
to hell, with Satan whom they have served; but Chris fs
ozvn chosen and redeemed oftes, true believers, studmts of
holiness, shall re7nain with hi77tself for ever, i7i the state of
glorificatio7t.
The previous section dealt with the change wrought in the
persons of the elect in conversion ; they received a new life,
became possessed of the spirit of faith, a disposition that turned
from sin to righteousness, and a mind that urged them to follow
after holiness. As converted persons in whom this inward
126 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
change was wrought, they occupy a new position in the sight of
God : as born again and beheving in Christ Jesus they are
justified before God and reconciled to Him ; as penitents re-
nouncing sin and turning to God they are adopted into God's
family ; and as saints striving after further attainments in holi-
ness, they are destined to have God's promises of glory, honour,
and immortality fulfilled unto them in the state of glorification.
These changes, it is to be observed, are not described as following
in succession to the changes of nature referred to before, nor
yet as following one another in order of time. They must be
distinguished and discussed separately ; the succession is logical
and not temporal. In time they are simultaneous, only in order
of thought are they successive.
I. In logical order the first aspect of that altered state into
which we are brought by believing in Jesus Christ according to
the terms of the covenant of grace is justification : — He justifies
them, by imparting unto them that perfect obedience which Christ
gave to the law, and the satisfaction also which upon the cross
Christ gave unto justice in their na7ne. Justification is a declara-
tion on the part of God that the sinner who believes in Jesus is
no longer regarded or treated by Him as guilty, that he is no
longer subject to sin's penalty, that for him there is no con-
demnation. Hence justification is rightly called a forensic act;
it is a declaration that man's state as a believer is one of accept-
ance before God. In so doing God acts judicially, and is not
regarded as infusing righteousness into the person of the saved
individual. When Roman Catholic theology defines justification
as the infusion of righteousness, there is evidently a confusion
of justification, which is an act, with sanctification, which is a
continued work or process. The Romish doctrine makes man's
acceptance with God depend on the essential holiness of the new
nature, whereas God justifies sinners, and then by His Spirit
sanctifies those whom He has already justified. In the era of the
Reformation, Osiander (1498-1552) propounded a doctrine of
infused or essential righteousness in his theory of justification,
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. 12 7
which though strongly anti- Pelagian, was in some respects very
similar to the Romish view. According to this way of viewing
the matter, justification was regarded as consisting in essential
righteousness, so that the beHever's personal condition and cha-
racter rather than his state as one of forgiveness before God is
made the primary fact in the account given of the new life.
Justification then should rank under the previous section as a
change in the person rather than here as a change of state. In
opposition to this, we define justification as a declaration by God
of the forgiveness of the sins of those who believe in Jesus.
Those who have undergone Xh^ personal change by receiving into
their hearts the spirit of faith, being now believers are justified in
God's sight, stand before Him as accepted.
The doctrine of Imputatioji^ set forth in the words on which
we are commenting, involves the rejection of that theory of
infusion of righteousness to which we have referred. The term
imputation, as used in theology, does not mean simply a charge
upon or against one, but rather the making of such a charge in
terms of law and justice. We speak of the imputation of Adam's
sin to his posterity, the imputation of man's sin to the second
Adam, the imputation of Christ's righteousness to those who
believe, — the imputation in each case being made in terms of
the covenant of grace. Under the express conditions of that
covenant, sin and righteousness respectively are regarded as of
right belonging to the parties referred to therein. The ground
of the sinner's justification is the work of Christ, the merit of
which is attributed to us on condition of our believing in Him.
The friend of another man's debtor says to his friend's creditor,
put that debt to my account ; when this proposal is accepted,
the debt is imputed to me, who before this imputation was not
chargeable with it, and he who was before a debtor is now in
the state of one against whom the creditor can no longer advance
a charge. Thus by the imputation of the sinner's guilt to Christ,
the sinner who believes is justified.
That which is imputed to the sinner for his justification is
128 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
described as Christ's perfect obedience to the law and satisfaction
on the cross unto justice. This embraces the whole work of
Christ, His active and passive obedience, His doing and
suffering, His life and death. Like the changes of state in the
behever enumerated in this section, these distinctions in regard
to the work of Christ are not to be viewed as successive and
temporally separable parts of Christ's life, but as two aspects
illustrated throughout its entire course. He suffered in doing
and He did in suffering. In His passion, which began in the
first stages of His humiliation and was only consummated on
the cross. He was not passive in the sense of merely sub-
mitting to a superior power : no man took His life from Him,
but He laid it down, — not merely suffered it to be taken, for
He had power to lay it down (John x. i8). The ground of our
justification lies not in the death of Christ upon the cross alone.
Christ's whole life of obedience unto death is that upon which
we must depend for our justification.
2. Not only the guilt of sin, but also the enmity of sin is
removed. The term justification may be reserved for the state
that results from forgiveness, and the term reconciliation may
be used to describe the state that results from the removal of
the enmity. The Su7n of Saving Knowledge employs the terms
in this manner. This whole section deals with the effects of
Christ's life and death for us. The Spirit reconciles the elect
and makes them friends to God^ who were before enemies to God.
This might have been more conveniently joined with the former
division: — He justifies and He reconciles them. It is quite
correct to say that the active obedience of Christ or His perfect
righteousness of life is more particularly the ground of our
acceptance and title to blessedness, that is, of our reconciliation
to God ; and that Christ's passive obedience or vicarious suffer-
ings are the more immediate ground of our forgiveness, that is,
of our justification before God. The term justification is com-
monly used to include all that is here expressed by justification
and reconciliation. This is approved, and indeed insisted upon
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. 1 29
by Principal Cunningham. In some places Calvin seems to restrict
the terms in the same way as is done in our text. If we do dis-
tinguish them, we must ever remember how very closely they are
related together. The imputation of Christ's righteousness, His
active and passive obedience, is the condition of the remission
of our sins and our acceptance before God, — the whole ground,
therefore, of our justification and reconciliation. The Apostle
speaks of reconciliation in this sense (Rom. v. 9, 10), — as sinners
we are justified by Christ's blood, and as enemies we are recon-
ciled by the death of the Son. The term reconciliation might
indeed be applied to the change in the persons of the elect as the
removal of that enmity which they had originally entertained
toward God. The word, however, is employed by Paul to
describe the removal of the divine wrath or displeasure against
sin ; and with him reconciliation, or peace with God, follows
justification, or the freedom from sin, as a joint result of believing
in Jesus Christ.
3. Those who are thus justified and reconciled unto God are
further treated by Him as occupying a position of peculiar privi-
lege, into which the Spirit introduces them : — He adopts thetn,
that they shall be no inore childre7i of Satan, but children of God,
enriched with all spiritual privileges of His sons. The state of
believers in the Lord Jesus is not only that of justified and recon-
ciled persons, who are simply not guilty and not liable, but it is
also described as a more positive relation of sonship ; they are
not only not enemies, but actually sons ; God not only removes
His anger, but reveals His fatherly love. Here again we dis-
tinguish the state of adoption and the spirit of adoption ; the
latter is an element in the regenerate nature, developed in the
progress of sanctification ; the former is a consequence of justi-
fication, and is implied in the new mutual relations of God and
the justified sinner (comp. Rom. viii. 15 and Gal. iv. 6, 7).
This is a blessing enjoyed in the covenant of grace, where pro-
vision is made for bestowing it. * It is a state of membership in
the family of God,' says the late Dr. Candlish, 'the blessed
130 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
result of union and communion with the Lord Jesus in His Son-
ship. As justification is union and communion with Christ in
His righteousness, and sanctification is union and communion
with Christ in His hoHness, or His holy character and nature, so,
by parity of reasoning, adoption must be held to be union and com-
munion with Christ in His Sonship : surely the highest and best
union and communion of the three.' Justification is the ground of
adoption. The declaration of the state of adoption implies the
actual presence of the image of God in regeneration. The new
birth gives to those who pass through it the right or power to
become sons of God (John i. 12). The adoption is the divine
recognition of filial relationship.
4. There might properly be distinguished only two states after
that of nature and condemnation ; the state of grace and the
state of glory. The three states of justification, reconciUation, and
adoption, of which we have spoken, might be grouped together
under the general designation of the state of grace. There
remains then as co-ordinate with this first group the state of
glorification. We have seen that justification, reconciliation, and
adqption, like regeneration, believing, repenting, and beginning
the life of sanctification are simultaneous — distinguished in order
of thought, not of time. But the state of glory is successive to
the state of grace. After their warfare in this life is ended, He
petfects the holiness and blessedness. During this life the justified
do not fully appropriate the benefits and enjoy the blessedness
to which they are called. They are not perfect in holiness, and
therefore they are not perfect in blessedness. The imperfectness
of their personal change renders their state imperfect. When
the personal change is complete, when the germ of the new life
brought by the new birth has through the life of sanctification
been brought to full maturity, then shall everything that militated
against the blessedness of the justified be removed, and grace
shall give way to glory. There is a true sense in which
Christians may be called perfect even now in this life. Thus
Paul speaks of those who are perfect— that is, all who have the
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. 13I
right end of their being set before them. This is true of all
regenerate ones who Uke Paul are pressing to the mark ; but in
respect of state no one does in this life perfectly attain unto the
end of perfection.
We have further to treat in order of the Last Things, or the
doctrine of Christian Eschatology. Perfection in holiness and
blessedness is reached in respect— 3/frj/ of their souls at death.
This is a clear statement of the Christian doctrine of the immor-
tality of the soul. The souls of believers not only exist after the
death of the body, but it is only then that they reach their true
perfection. Not that the body as material is viewed as necessarily
evil. This was a thoroughly pagan notion, fostered by such
systems of morality as that of Stoicism. A false spiritualism
that depreciates the body, and the hfe in the body, has often
appeared within the limits of Christianity ; but its teaching is
utterly opposed to the fundamental principles of the Christian
doctrine of man. Indeed, the perfection of the soul apart from
the body is not its ultimate perfection ; it is only as perfect as a
separately existing soul can be. The statement before us affirms
the immediateness of the transition of the soul into a higher life
in the hour of death. This is a repudiation of the notion of the
sleep of the soul. In the third century some entertained the belief
that the soul slept with the body till the resurrection, when they
were raised together. In the Middle Ages this idea found cur-
rency in Arabia, and during the Reformation it was adopted by
the Anabaptists. Calvin wrote in the year 1534 a treatise
entitled Psychopannychia directed against this idea. The Scrip-
tures represent the justified as after death passing in among the
spirits of the just made perfect. He that is holy, when death
overtakes him, is issued into eternity a soul made perfectly
holy.
Then in the resurrection this perfection is shared in by the
body as well as the soul, when they are joyfully joined together.
The fact of a resurrection of the body is a doctrine of Christian
revelation. It was unknown to heathenism : even those who had
132 SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE.
some belief in the immortality of the soul could not dream of
the rising again of the body (Acts xvii. 32). It is not explicitly
stated in the Old Testament, but the figurative use of the idea of
a bodily resurrection by the prophets (Isa. xxvi. 19 ; Ezek.
xxxvii. 1-14, etc.) showed that the conception was not foreign to
them as to the sages of the Gentile world. The fact stated is
further for the Christian made yet more sure by the pledge
afforded him in the resurrection of Christ. We are not told,
however, how the dead are raised up, and with what body they shall
come. Some characteristics of Christ's risen body are given, and
Paul says that the body of our humiliation shall be fashioned so
as to be conformed to the body of His glory (Phil. iii. 21). All
that Scripture affirms is the essential identity of the resurrection
body with the body laid down in death, which itself during life
had been the subject of continuous change. It is not constructed
of particles of corruptible matter ; for it is incorruptible. Each
soul shall have its own body, and that a spiritual body (i Cor.
XV. 36, 42, 44). By this redemption of the body (Rom. viii. 23)
the perfection of the whole man in holiness and blessedness is
consummated.
The day of the resurrection of the body will also be the day of
final decision, — the day of judgment, when a complete separation
will be made between the righteous and the wicked. Death
really marks the end of probation for man : from the hour of
death the destiny of the individual for eternity is fixed. Some
think that the abodes of the righteous and wicked between death
and the final judgment are temporary or intermediate. The one,
however, is in glory, though it may be not the highest and
ultimate state of glory ; and the others are shut out, though it
may not be in the place appointed as their eternal abode.
Hence Protestants, relying on Scripture, ought not only to
reject the idea of Purgatory, but also that of prayers for the
dead. ' As the tree falleth so it lies,' as regards its position in
eternity for weal or woe. The position of true believers is one
of perfect blessedness, in which the assurance of absolute per-
BLESSINGS CONVEYED TO THE ELECT BY THOSE MEANS. 1 33
manence is an important, an essential element. They are ever
with the Lord.
'Tis but a little while and He shall come again,
Who died that we might live, who lives that we with Him might reign ;
Then, O my Lord, prepare my soul for that glad day ;
Oh, wash me in Thy precious blood, and take my sins away.
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MOSES: A BIBLICAL STUDY.
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LIGHT FROM THE CROSS:
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AN INTRODUCTION TO THEOLOGY:
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THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF ISRAEL
A Discussion of the Chief Problems in Old Testament History, as
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By Dr. FRIEDRICH EDUARD KONIG,
the university, LEIPZIG.
Translated by Rev. ALEXANDER J. CAMPBELL, M.A.
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NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING IN
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By J. T. beck, D.D.,
prof. ord. theol., tubingen.
Edited by Professor B. RIGGENBACH.
Translated by Rev. JAS. M'CLYMONT, B.D., and
Rev. THOS. NICOL, B.D.
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STUDIES IN THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.
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THE LORD'S PRAYER:
A PRACTICAL MEDITATION.
By NEWMAN HALL, LL.B.
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Theoloqical Seminary-Speer Ubrary
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