Chapter 6 | Table of Contents | Chapter 8

As image-worship has often boasted of its divine power because of the wonders of zeal and devotion that have been raised in thousands and ten thousands of its followers, so it is no marvel that opinion- worship should often have and boast of the same effects. But the truth of the whole matter lies here: as the Word manifested in the flesh and become man is the One Mediator or Restorer of union between God and man, so to, seeing eyes must see that nothing, except this one mediatorial nature of Christ, essentially brought to life in our souls, can be our salvation through Christ Jesus. What saved and exalted the humanity in which Christ dwelt, must be the salvation of every human creature in the world.

The poverty of divine knowledge that comes from great scholars and great readers may be sufficiently seen from the two following judicious quotations in a late Dissertation on Fanaticism; the one is taken from Dr. Warburton's sermons the other from a pastoral letter of Mr. Stinstra, a preacher among the Mennonists [Mennonites] of Friesland.

Quoting Dr. Warburton:

"By them (that is by the writings of the New Testament) the prophetic promise of our Savior that the comforter should abide forever was eminently fulfilled. For though His ordinary influence occasionally assists the faithful, His constant abode and supreme illumination is in the sacred scriptures." (Dissertation, page 10.)

Dr. Warburton's doctrine is that the inspired books of the New Testament are the comforter or spirit of truth and illuminator that is meant by Christ to be always with His church. Let us therefore put the doctor's doctrine into the letter of the text which will best show how true or false it is.

Dr. Warburton takes Jesus' words, "It is expedient for you that I go away or that comforter will not come," and interprets them to say, "It is expedient for you that I leave off teaching you in words that sound only into your outward ears that you may have the same words in writing for your outward eyes to look upon; for if I do not depart from this vocal way of teaching you the comforter will not come, and you will not have the comfort of my words written on paper. But if I go away I will send written books that shall lead you into such a truth of words as you could not have while they were only spoken from my mouth; but being written on paper they will be my spiritual heavenly constant abode with you and the most supreme illustration you can receive from me."

Christ says further: "I have many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now: howbeit when He the Spirit of truth is come He shall guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself for He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you." In this the fine doctor would have Him say, "You cannot be sufficiently instructed from my words at present, but when they shall hereafter come to you in written books, they will give you a knowledge of all truth for they shall not speak of themselves, but shall receive words from me and show them unto you." Again Christ says "These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs; but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs but will show you plainly of the Father." Warbuton would have us believe Jesus to mean, "That hitherto you have only had spoken proverbs from me and therefore you have not plainly known the Father; but the time comes when these spoken proverbs shall be put into writing and then you shall plainly know the Father." Again Christ adds, "You now therefore have sorrow but I will see you again and your hearts shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you." This he would twist to say, "You are now troubled at my personal departure from you, but some written books shall be how I will come to you again and in that visit you shall have such joy as cannot be taken from you."

Jesus also says, "If any man loves me my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him." According to the doctor's theology certain books of scripture will come to him and make their abode with him; for he expressly confines the constant abode and supreme illumination of God to the Holy Scriptures. Therefore (horrible to say) God's inward presence, His operating power of life and light in our souls, His dwelling in us and we in Him is something of a lower nature that only may occasionally happen and has less of God in it than the dead letter of scripture that alone is His constant abode and supreme illumination. Oh the miserable fruits of a paradoxical genius!

Christ from heaven says, "Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open unto me I will come into him and sup with him." This is His true eminent fulfilling of His prophetic promise of being a Comforter and Spirit of Truth to His church until the end of the world. But according to the doctor, we are to understand that not the heavenly Christ but the New Testament continually stands and knocks at the door wanting to enter into the heart and sup with it. This is no better than believing that when Christ calls Himself alpha and omega, He means not Himself but the New Testament. Again Jesus said, "I am the vine you are the branches; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine no more can you except you abide in me; for without me you can do nothing." Now, according to the doctor's comment, the truth of all these words of Christ was only temporary and could be no longer true after the books of the New Testament were written. Everything Christ has affirmed of Himself of the certainty and necessity of His life and power in those who believed, ended in Christ and passed over to the written words of the New Testament, and they are the true vine and we its branches, that without which we can do nothing.

Thus it must be if, as the doctor affirms, the writings of the New Testament are the constant abode and supreme illumination of God in man. Now, as absurd and even blasphemous as this interpretation of the foregoing text is, it must be evident to every reader that it is all the doctor's own; for the letter of scripture is made here to claim that divinity [of Christ] to itself that the doctor has openly affirmed to be true of it.

"Rabbi," says Nicodemus to Christ, "we know that thou art a teacher come from God." What was here truly said of Christ in the flesh is the very truth that must be said of the scripture teaching in ink and paper; it is a teacher come from God and therefore fully to be believed, highly reverenced, and strictly followed. But as Christ's teaching in the flesh was only preparatory to His future vital teaching by the Spirit, so the teaching of scripture by words written with ink and paper is only preparatory or introductory to all that inward essential teaching of God by His Spirit that is truth within us. Every other opinion of the holy scripture, except that of an outward teacher and guide to God's inward teaching and illumination in our souls, is making an idol-god of it. I say an idol-god, for to those who rest in it as the constant abode and supreme illumination of God with them, it can be nothing else. Nothing of divine faith, love, hope or goodness can have the least birth or place in us, but by divine inspiration, and so they who think these virtues may be sufficiently raised in us by the letter of scripture make the letter of scripture their inspiring god.

The apostles preached and wrote to the people by divine inspiration. But what do they say of their inspired doctrine and teachings? What virtue and power was there in them? Do they say that their words and teachings were the very promised Comforter, the Spirit of Truth or the true abode and supreme illumination of God in the souls of men? Far from such a blasphemous thought, these inspired men affirm the opposite to be true and compare all their teachings and instructions to dead works of bare planting and watering; works which must continue to be dead until life comes into them from another and a much Higher Power. "I have planted," says St. Paul. "Apollos has watered, but God gave the increase." Then further, to show that this planting and watering that was the highest work that an inspired apostle could do and that it was in itself to be considered as a lifeless, powerless thing he adds, "So then neither is he that plants is anything, nor he that waters, but it is God that gives the increase."

If this must be said of everything the inspired apostles taught in outward words, that it was nothing in itself, was without power, without life and only a preparation towards life like planting and watering, must not the same be said of their inspired teachings when left behind them in written form? What else are the apostolic scriptures, but those very instructions and teachings put into writing that they affirmed to be nothing more that bare planting and watering, quite powerless in themselves until the living Spirit of God worked with them? Will anyone say that what Paul, Peter, John, etc. spoke by inspiration from their own mouths was indeed bare planting and watering in order to be capable of receiving life from God? How could it be that when these apostolic teachings and instructions were written on paper, they were raised out of their first inability, got the nature of God Himself, became spirit and life and might be called the great quickening power of God? Or as the doctor equates them, to be the constant abode and supreme illumination of His Spirit with us?

It would be great folly and perverseness to charge me here with slighting or lessening the true value, use and importance of the inspired apostolic scriptures, for if the charge was just, it must lie against Paul and not against me. I say nothing of them except what he says and in his own express words, viz., that all their labor of preaching, and instructing and writing by divine inspiration had in themselves no other nature, use or power than that of planting and watering that could not bare fruit until a higher power than was in them gave life and growth to what they planted and watered.

I exceedingly love and highly reverence the divine authority of the sacred writings of the apostles and evangelists. I would gladly persuade everyone to be as deeply affected with them and pay as profound a regard to them as they would to an Elijah, a John Baptist or a Paul whom they knew to be immediately sent from heaven with God's message to them. I reverence them as a literal truth of and from God as much as the greatest heavenly blessing that can be outwardly bestowed upon us. I reverence them as doing, or fitted to do, all the good amongst Christians now that the apostles did in their day, and as of the same use and benefit to the church of every age as their planting and watering was to the first.

If this is not enough regard for the holy messengers of God, if anyone is so learnedly wise as to affirm that though Paul's epistles, while he was alive, were indeed only bare planting and watering, but the same epistles being published after his death got another nature and became full of divine and living power, such a one has no right to laugh (as the doctor does) at the silly Mohammedan who believes the Koran to be uncreated. For wherever there is divine efficacy there must be an uncreated power. If, as the doctor says, the scriptures of the New Testament are the only constant abode and supreme illumination of the Spirit of God with us, all that is said of the eternal Spirit of God, of the uncreated light and might, ought to be said of them--that they are the Word that was God, was with God and they are our true Immanuel or God within us.

I shall now only add this friendly hint to the doctor that he has a remedy at hand. His own sermon tells how he may be delivered from grossly mistaking the spirit of the gospel as well as the Law of Moses. St. Paul (says the doctor) "had a quick and lively imagination and an extensive and intimate acquaintance with those masters in moral painting the classic writers, all which he proudly sacrificed to the glory of the everlasting gospel." (Sermons Vol i. page 229)

Now if the doctor did--though it was only from humility--what he says the apostle did proudly, such humility might be as great a good to him as that pride was to the apostle. Indeed one would have thought that as soon as the doctor discovered these writers to be only great masters in moral painting, it should have had the same effect upon him as if he had found them great masters in delusion. For where there is moral painting, there is moral delusion. And the spirit, the life, the purity and divine simplicity of gospel truth is more lost and destroyed by moral paintings, whether in books or pulpits, than by any material colorings put upon images of wood or clay to excite spiritual devotion in churches. Again, if the everlasting gospel is now as glorious a thing as it was in St. Paul's days, if the highest, most accomplished classic knowledge is so unsuitable to the light and Spirit of the gospel that it is fit for nothing but to be cast away, or as the doctor says, "to be all sacrificed to the glory of the gospel," how wonderful is it that this should never come into his head from the beginning to the end of his three long Legation-volumes? Perhaps he should come piping hot with fresh and fresh classic beauties found out by himself in a Shakespeare, a Pope etc. to preach from the pulpit the divine wisdom of a loss and dung that by so doing he might win Christ and be found in Him!

Let it be supposed that our Lord was to come again for a while in the flesh and that His coming was for this end--to do for the Christian world, cumbered with much learning, what He did to poor Martha, who was cumbered with to much serving, and thereby neglected that good part that Mary had chosen. Must we suppose that the doctor would hasten to meet Him with his sacred alliances, his bundles of pagan trash and hieroglyphic profundities, as his full proof that Mary's good part, that shall never be taken from her, had been chosen for himself and all his readers? One might think that the pope would come richly laden with his blessed images, his heavenly decree,s and his divine bulls as infallible proofs of his being born again from above and solely devoted to the one thing needful.

Let the doctor figure for himself the gaudy pageantry of a divine high mass in a Rome-ish cathedral. Let him wonder at that flagrant daring contrariness that it has to that first gospel- church of Christ, viz., "where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them." Would he not be still more full of wonder if he should hear the pope declaring that all this heathenish show of invented fopperies was his projected defense of that first church of Christ? But if the doctor would see a Protestant wonder, as full and as great, he need only look at his own theatrical parading show of heathen mysteries and heathenish learning set forth in highest pomp. To what end? To bring forth what he calls (as the pope above) his projected defense of Christianity.

O vainest of all vain projects! For what is Christianity but what Christ was while on earth? What can it be but what it is and has from Him? He is a king who has all power in heaven and on earth and His kingdom, like Himself, is not of this world. Away then with the projects of popish pomp and pagan literature to support them. They are as wise contrivances as the high tower of Babel to defend it against the gates of hell. I come now to the quotation from the pastoral letter of Mr. Stinstra. "A judicious writer," says the Dissertation, "observes that sound understanding and reason are, that on which and by which, God principally operates when he finds it proper to assist our weakness by His Spirit." (Dissertation page 73)

I cannot more illustrate the sense or extol the judgment both of the author and quoter of this striking passage than by the following words, "A judicious naturalist observes that sound and strong lungs are that on which, and by which, the air or spirit of this world principally operates when he finds it proper to assist the weakness of our lungs by his breathing into them." Now if any right minded man should happen to find his heart edified or his understanding enlightened by the above passage on divine inspiration, he will be much pleased at my assuring him that the pastoral letter of Mr. Stinstra and the Dissertation on Fanaticism by Mr. Green are from the beginning to the end, full of proof as to the truth I bring forth.

These two instances are proof enough that as soon as any man trusts to natural abilities, skill in languages and commonplace learning as the true means of entering into the kingdom of God, a kingdom that is nothing else but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, he gives himself up to certain delusion and can escape no error that is popular or that suits his state and situation in the learned religious world. He has sold his birth-right in the gospel state of divine illumination to make a figure and noise with the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals of the natural man.