Chapter 7 | Table of Contents | Chapter 9

"The temptation of honor which the academic exercise of wit," as Dr. W. says, "was supposed to bring to its professor," (Divine Legation of Moses Book I. page 33), it still has its power among church disputants. Nor can it possibly ever be otherwise until parts and genius etc., do as the blind, the deaf, the dumb and lepers formerly did--go to be healed of their natural disorders by the inspiration of that oracle who said, "I am the light of the world he that follows me walks not in darkness." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me."

Well, therefore, might St. Paul say, "I have determined to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified." Had it not been for this determination, he would never have known what he then knew when he said, "The life that I now live is not mine but Christ's that lives in me." Did the apostle here overstretch the matter? Was it a spirit of fanaticism and not of Christ living in him that made this declaration? Was he making way for ignorance and darkness to extinguish the Light that came down from heaven that was the Light of the world? Did he here undermine the true ground and rock on which the church of Christ was to stand and prevail against the gates of hell? Did h,e by setting up this knowledge as the best and only knowledge that an apostle need to have, break down the fences of Christ's vineyard, rob the church of all its strong holds, leave it defenseless without a pale and a ready prey to infidels? Who can say this except the "spirit of anti-Christ that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?"

For Christ's intending nothing, knowing nothing and willing nothing except purely and solely the whole course of His crucifying process was the whole truth of His being come in the flesh. His was doing the whole will of Him that sent Him and He was overcoming the world, death and hell. So he that embraces this process as Christ embraces it, who is wholly given up to it as Christ was, has the will of Christ and the mind of Christ and therefore may well desire to know nothing else. To this man alone are the world, death and hell overcome in him as they were in Christ. To him alone is Christ become the resurrection and the life; and he that knows this, knows with St. Paul that all other knowledge may and will be cast away as dung. Now if St. Paul, having rejected all other knowledge but that of a crucified Savior, which to the Jew was a stumbling-block and to the Greek foolishness, had afterwards wrote three such Legation-volumes as the doctor has done for the nourishment of Christ's sheep (who can have no life in them but by eating the true bread that came down from heaven), must they not have been called Paul's full recantation of all that he had taught about a Christ crucified?

The other instance of delusion from book learning relates to Mr. Green, who wanting to write on divine inspiration, runs from book to book from country to country to pick up reports, wherever he could find them, concerning divine inspiration from this and that judicious author that so he might be sure of compiling a judicious dissertation on the subject. All which he might have known to be mere delusion and lost labor had he but remembered or regarded any one single saying either of Christ or His apostles concerning the Holy Spirit and His operations. The fact that not a word is said by them, fully shows that all knowledge or perception of the Spirit is nothing else but the enjoyment of the Spirit. No man can know more of Him than what the Spirit Himself is and does and manifests of His power in man.

"The things of God," says St. Paul, "knows no man but the Spirit of God." Is not this decisive upon the matter? Is not this proof enough that nothing in man but the Spirit of God in him can know what the Spirit's work in man is and does? The fruits of the Spirit so often mentioned in scripture are not things different or separate from the Spirit; and if the Spirit is not always working in us, His fruits must be as absent from us as he is. St. John says, "Hereby we know that he abides in us by the Spirit which he has given us," a demonstration that the Spirit can make Himself known to us no other way than by His dwelling and working in us. St. James says, "Every good and perfect gift cometh from above," but now does not he in reality deny he who seeks for the highest gift of knowledge from below, from the poor contrivance of a commonplace book?

Again "if any man lacks wisdom let him ask it of God." St. James does not say let him go ask Peter or Paul or John because he knew that divine wisdom was nothing else but divine inspiration. But Mr. Green has got together his ingenious, eminent writers, his excellent learned, judicious authors, his cool, rational- morality doctors (a set of men whose glorious names we read no more of in the gospel than of the profound Aristotle or the divine Cicero) and these are to do for him what the whole college of apostles could do for nobody. Now this doctrine that nothing but the Spirit can know the things that be of God, and that the enjoyment of the Spirit is all the knowledge that we can have of Him is a truth taught us not only by all scripture but by the whole nature of things.

Everything that can be seen, known, heard felt, etc., must be manifested by itself and not by another. It is not possible for anything but light to manifest light nor for anything but darkness to make darkness known. This is more possible than for anything, but divine inspiration must make divine inspiration to be known. Hence, there is a degree of delusion still higher to be noted in such writers as Mr. Green, for his collection of ingenious, eminent, rational authors of whom he asks counsel concerning the necessity or certainty of the immediate inspiration of the Spirit, are such as deny it and write against it.

Therefore, the proceeding is just as wise as if a man was to consult some ingenious and eminent atheists about the truth and certainty of God's immediate continual providence, or to ask a few selected Deists how or what he was to believe of the nature and power of gospel faith. Now, there are the Holy Spirit's own operations and there are reports about them. The only true reports are those that are made by inspired persons and if there were no such persons, there could be no true reports of the matter. Therefore, to consult uninspired persons and such as deny and reproach the pretense to inspiration to be rightly instructed about the truth of immediate continual divine inspiration, is a degree of blindness greater than can be charged upon the old Jewish scribes and Pharisees.