Chapter XII: Front Matter (12)

[125] To escape the consequences of this scheme, some Arminian divines have asserted that the penalty inflicted on Adam, and continued in his posterity, was simply the loss of immortality, Death as the utter extinction of personal Being: immortality being regarded by them (and not, I think, without good reason) as a supernatural attribute, and its loss therefore involved in the forfeiture of supernatural graces. This theory has its golden side; and as a private opinion, is said to have the countenance of more than one dignitary of our Church, whose general orthodoxy is beyond impeachment. For here the _penalty_ resolves itself into the _consequence_, and this the natural and _naturally_ inevitable consequence of Adam's crime. For Adam, indeed, it was a _positive_ punishment: a punishment of his guilt, the justice of which who could have dared arraign? While for the Offspring of Adam it was simply a _not_ super-adding to their nature the privilege by which the original man was contra-distinguished from the brute creation--a mere negation, of which they had no more right to complain than any other species of animals. God in this view appears only in his attribute of mercy, as averting by supernatural interposition a consequence naturally inevitable. This is the golden side of the theory. But if we approach to it from the opposite direction, it first excites a just scruple, from the countenance it seems to give to the doctrine of Materialism. The supporters of this scheme do not, I presume, contend, that Adam's offspring would not have been born _men_, but have formed a new species of beasts! And if not, the notion of a rational, and self-conscious soul, perishing utterly with the dissolution of the organized body, seems to require, nay, almost involves, the opinion that the soul is a quality or accident of the body--a mere harmony resulting from organization.

But let this pass unquestioned. Whatever else the descendants of Adam might have been without the intercession of Christ, yet (this intercession having been effectually made) they are now endowed with souls that are not extinguished together with the material body. Now unless these divines teach likewise the Romish figment of Purgatory, and to an extent in which the Church of Rome herself would denounce the doctrine as an impious heresy: unless they hold, that a punishment temporary and remedial is the _worst_ evil that the impenitent have to apprehend in a future state; and that the spiritual Death declared and foretold by Christ, _the death eternal where the worm never dies_, is neither Death nor eternal, but a certain _quantum_ of suffering in a state of faith, hope, and progressive amendment--unless they go these lengths (and the divines here intended are orthodox Churchmen, men who would not knowingly advance even a step on the road towards them)--then I fear, that any advantage their theory might possess over the Calvinistic scheme in the article of Original Sin, would be dearly purchased by increased difficulties, and an ultra-Calvinistic narrowness in the article of Redemption. I at least find it impossible, with my present human feelings, not to imagine otherwise than that even in heaven it would be a fearful thing to know, that in order to my elevation to a lot infinitely more desirable than by nature it would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had been rendered infinitely more calamitous; and that my felicity had been purchased by the everlasting misery of the majority of my fellow-men, who if no redemption had been provided, after inheriting the pains and pleasures of earthly existence during the numbered hours, and the few and evil--evil yet _few_--days of the years of their mortal life, would have fallen asleep to wake no more,--would have sunk into the dreamless sleep of the grave, and have been as the murmur and the plaint, and the exulting swell and the sharp scream, which the unequal gust of yesterday snatched from the strings of a wind-harp!

In another place I have ventured to question the spirit and tendency of Taylor's work on Repentance.[126] But I ought to have added, that to discover and keep the true medium in expounding and applying the Efficacy of Christ's Cross and Passion, is beyond comparison the most difficult and delicate point of practical divinity--and that which especially needs a guidance from above.

[126] Perhaps in his "Unum Necessarium; or the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance," part of his "Notes on Jeremy Taylor," pp. 295-325, v. iii., of the 'Remains,' 1838.--ED.

[127] See also "Notes on Field on the Church" (1628), in Coleridge's 'Remains,' 1838, v. iii., pp. 57-92.--ED.

APHORISM XVIII.

_Stedfast by Faith._ This is absolutely necessary for resistance to the Evil Principle. There is no standing out without some firm ground to stand on: and this Faith alone supplies. By Faith in the Love of Christ the power of God becomes ours. When the soul is beleaguered by enemies, weakness on the walls, treachery at the gates, and corruption in the citadel, then by Faith she says--Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the World! thou art my strength! I look to thee for deliverance! And thus she overcomes. The pollution (_miasma_) of sin is precipitated by his blood, the power of sin is conquered by his Spirit. The Apostle says not--stedfast by your own resolutions and purposes; but--_stedfast by faith_. Nor yet stedfast in your Will, but _stedfast in the faith_. We are not to be looking to, or brooding over ourselves, either for accusation or for confidence, or (by a deep yet too frequent self-delusion) to obtain the latter by making a _merit_ to ourselves of the former. But we are to look to CHRIST and _him crucified_. The Law _that is very nigh to thee, even in thy heart_; the Law that condemneth and hath no promise; that stoppeth the guilty PAST in its swift flight, and maketh it disown its name; the Law will accuse thee enough. Linger not in the Justice-court, listening to thy indictment! Loiter not in waiting to hear the Sentence! No! Anticipate the verdict! _Appeal to Cæsar!_ Haste to the King for a pardon! Struggle thitherward, though in fetters; and cry aloud, and collect the whole remaining strength of thy Will in the outcry--_I believe! Lord! help my unbelief!_ Disclaim all right of property in thy fetters. Say, that they belong to the _old man_, and that thou dost but carry them to the Grave, to be buried with their owner! Fix thy thought on what _Christ_ did, what _Christ_ suffered, what _Christ_ is--as if thou wouldst fill the hollowness of thy Soul with Christ! If he emptied himself of glory to become sin for thy salvation, must not thou be emptied of thy sinful Self to become Righteousness in and through his agony and the effective merits of his Cross? [128] By what other means, in what other form, is it _possible_ for thee to stand in the presence of the Holy One? With _what_ mind wouldst thou come before God, if not with the mind of Him, in whom _alone_ God loveth the world? With good advice, perhaps, and a little assistance, thou wouldst rather cleanse and patch up a mind of thy own, and offer it as thy _admission-right_, thy _qualification_, to Him who _charged his angels with folly_![129] Oh! take counsel of thy Reason! It will show thee how impossible it is, that even a world should merit the love of Eternal Wisdom and all sufficing Beatitude, otherwise than as it is contained in that all-perfect Idea, in which the Supreme Spirit contemplateth itself and the plenitude of its infinity--the Only-Begotten before all ages! _the beloved Son, in whom the Father is_ indeed _well pleased_!

And as the Mind, so the Body with which it is to be clothed! as the Indweller, so the House in which it is to be the Abiding-place![130] There is but one wedding-garment, in which we can sit down at the marriage-feast of Heaven: and that is the Bridegroom's own gift, when he gave himself for us that we might live in him and he in us. There is but one robe of Righteousnes, even the Spiritual Body, formed by the assimilative power of faith for whoever eateth the flesh of the Son of Man and drinketh his blood. Did Christ come from Heaven, did the Son of God leave the glory _which he had with his Father before the world began_, only to _show_ us a way to life, to _teach_ truths, to _tell_ us of a resurrection? Or saith he not, I _am_ the way--I _am_ the truth--I _am_ the Resurrection and the Life?

[128] _God manifested in the flesh_ is Eternity in the form of Time. But Eternity in relation to Time is the absolute to the conditional, or the real to the apparent, and Redemption must partake of both;--always perfected, for it is a _Fiat_ of the Eternal;--continuous, for it is a process in relation to man; the former, the alone objectively, and therefore universally, true. That Redemption in an _opus perfectum_, a finished work, the claim to which is conferred in Baptism; that a Christian cannot speak or think as if his Redemption by the blood, and his Justification by the Righteousness of Christ alone, were future or contingent events, but must both say and think, I _have been_ redeemed, I am justified; lastly, that for as many as are received into his Church by baptism, Christ has condemned sin in the flesh, has made it _dead in law_, that is, no longer imputable as _guilt_, has destroyed the _objective reality_ of sin:--these are truths, which all the Reformed Churches, Swedish, Danish, Evangelical, (or Lutheran,) the Reformed (the Calvinistic in mid-Germany, France, and Geneva, so called,) lastly, the Church of England, and the Church of Scotland--nay, the best and most learned divines of the Roman Catholic Church have united in upholding as most certain and necessary articles of faith, and the effectual preaching of which Luther declares to be the appropriate criterion, _stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiæ_. The Church is standing or falling, according as this doctrine is supported, or overlooked, or countervened. Nor has the contrary doctrine, according to which the baptized are yet, each individually, to be called, converted, and chosen, with all the corollaries from this assumption, the watching for signs and sensible assurances, "the frames," and "the states," and "the feelings," and "the sudden conversions," the contagious fever-boils, of the (most unfitly, so called) Evangelicals, and Arminian Methodists of the day, been in any age taught or countenanced by any known and accredited Christian Church, or by any body and succession of learned divines. On the other hand it has rarely happened, that the Church has not been troubled by pharisaic and fanatical individuals, who have sought, by working on the fears and feelings of the weak and unsteady that celebrity, which they could not obtain by learning and orthodoxy: and alas! so subtle is the poison, and so malignant in its operation, that it is almost hopeless to attempt the cure of any person, once infected, more particularly when, as most often happens, the patient is a woman. Nor does Luther in his numerous and admirable discourses on this point, conceal or palliate the difficulties, which the carnal mind, that works under many and different disguises, throws in the way to prevent the laying firm hold of the truth. One most mischievous and very popular mis-belief must be cleared away in the first instance--the presumption, I mean, that whatever is not _quite_ simple, and what any plain body can understand at the first hearing, cannot be of necessary belief, or among the fundamental articles or essentials of Christian faith. A docile, child-like mind, a deference to the authority of the Churches, a presumption of the truth of doctrines that have been received and taught as true by the whole Church in all times; reliance on the positive declarations of the Apostle--in short, all the convictions of the truth of a doctrine that are previous to a perfect _insight_ into its truth, because these convictions, with the affections and dispositions accompanying them, are the very means and conditions of attaining to that insight--and study of, and quiet meditation on, them, with a gradual growth of spiritual knowledge, and earnest prayer for its increase; all these, to each and all of which the young Christian is so repeatedly and fervently exhorted by St. Paul, are to be superseded, because, forsooth, truths needful for all men, must be quite simple and easy, and adapted to the capacity of all, even of the plainest and dullest understanding! What cannot be poured all at once on a man, can only be supererogatory drops from the emptied shower-bath of religious instruction! But surely, the more rational inference would be, that the faith, which is to save the whole man, must have its roots and justifying grounds in the very depths of our being. And he who can read the Writings of the Apostles, John and Paul, without finding in almost every page a confirmation of this, must have looked at them, as at the sun in an eclipse, through blackened glasses.

[129] Job. iv. 18.--ED.

[130] St. Paul blends both forms of expression, and asserts the same doctrine when speaking of the _celestial body_ provided for _the new man_ in the spiritual flesh and blood, (that is, the informing power and vivific life of the incarnate Word: for the Blood is the Life, and the Flesh the Power)--when speaking, I say, of this _celestial body_, as a _house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens_, yet brought down to us, made appropriable by faith, and _ours_--he adds, _for in this earthly house_ (that is, this mortal life, as the inward principle or energy of our Tabernacle, or outward and sensible body) _we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life_. 2 Cor. v. 1-4.

The four last words of the first verse (_eternal in the heavens_) compared with the conclusion of v. 2, (_which is from heaven_) present a coincidence with John iii. 13, "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven." [Would not the coincidence be more apparent, if the words of John had been rendered word for word, even to a disregard of the English idiom, and with what would be servile and superstitious fidelity in the translation of a common classic? I can see no reason why the ουδεις, so frequent in St. John, should not be rendered literally, _no one_; and there may be a reason why it should. I have some doubt likewise respecting the omission of the definite articles τον, του, τω--and a greater, as to the ὁ ων, both in this place and in John i. 18, being _adequately_ rendered by our _which is_. What sense some of the Greek Fathers attached to, or inferred from, St. Paul's _in the Heavens_, the theological student (and to theologians is this note principally addressed) may find in Waterland's Letters to a Country Clergyman--a divine, whose judgment and strong sound sense are as unquestionable as his learning and orthodoxy. A clergyman in full orders, who has never read the works of Bull and Waterland, has a duty yet to perform.]

Let it not be objected, that, forgetful of my own professed aversion to allegorical interpretations, I have, in this note, fallen into "the fond humour of the mystic divines, and _allegorizers_ of Holy Writ."[131] There is, believe me, a wide difference between _symbolical_ and _allegorical_. If I say that the flesh and blood (_corpus noumenon_) of the Incarnate Word are power and life, I say likewise that this mysterious power and life are _verily_ and _actually_ the flesh and blood of Christ. _They_ are the allegorizers, who turn the 6th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John,--_the hard saying,--who can hear it?_--after which time many of Christ's disciples, who had been eye-witnesses of his mighty miracles, who had heard the sublime morality of his Sermon on the Mount, had glorified God for the wisdom which they had heard, and had been prepared to acknowledge, _This is indeed the Christ_,--went back and walked no more with him!--the hard sayings, which even THE TWELVE were not yet competent to understand farther than that they were to be spiritually understood; and which the chief of the Apostles was content to receive with an implicit and anticipative faith!--_they_, I repeat, are the allegorizers who moralize these hard sayings, these high words of mystery, into a hyperbolical metaphor _per catachresin_, which only means a belief of the doctrine which Paul believed, an obedience to the law, respecting which Paul _was blameless_, before the voice called him on the road to Damascus! What every parent, every humane preceptor, would do when a child had misunderstood a metaphor or apologue in a literal sense, we all know. But the meek and merciful Jesus suffered _many_ of HIS disciples to fall off from eternal life, when, to retain them, he had only to say,--O ye simple-ones! why are ye offended? My words, indeed, sound strange; but I mean no more than what you have often and often heard from me before, with delight and entire acquiescence!--_Credat Judæus! Non ego._ It is sufficient for me to know that I have used the language of Paul and John, as it was understood and interpreted by Justin Martyr. Tertullian, Irenæus, and (if he does not err) by the whole Christian Church then existing.

[131] See Introductory Aphorisms, xxix., p. 19.--ED.

APHORISM XIX.

FIELD.

The _Romanists_ teach that sins committed after baptism (that is, for the immense majority of Christians having Christian parents, all their sins from the cradle to the grave) are not so remitted for Christ's sake, but that we must suffer that extremity of punishment which they deserve: and therefore either we must afflict ourselves in such sort and degree of extremity as may answer the demerit of our sins, or be punished by God, here or in the world to come, in such degree and sort that his Justice may be satisfied. [_As the encysted venom, or poison-bag, beneath the Adder's fang, so does this doctrine lie beneath the tremendous power of the Romish Hierarchy. The demoralizing influence of this dogma, and that it curdled the very life-blood in the veins of Christendom, it was given to Luther beyond all men since Paul to see, feel, and promulgate. And yet in his large Treatise on Repentance, how near to the spirit of this doctrine--even to the very walls and gates of Babylon--was Jeremy Taylor driven, in recoiling from the fanatical extremes of the opposite error!_] But they that are orthodox, teach that it is injustice to require the payment of one debt twice. * * * It is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that _our_ satisfaction is required as a condition, without which _Christ's_ satisfaction is not applicable unto us, than to say, Peter hath paid the debt of John, and He, to whom it was due, accepteth of the same payment on the condition that John pay it himself also. * * * The satisfaction of Christ is communicated and applied unto us without suffering the punishment that sin deserveth, [_and essentially_ _involveth_,] upon the condition of our faith and repentance. [To which I would add: Without faith there is no power of repentance: without a commencing repentance no power to faith: and that it is in the power of the will either to repent or to have faith in the Gospel sense of the words, is itself a consequence of the redemption of mankind, a free gift of the Redeemer: the guilt of its rejection, the refusing to avail ourselves of the power, being all that we can consider as exclusively attributable to our own act.][132]

COMMENT.

(_Containing an Application of the Principles laid down in pp. 135, 136._)

Forgiveness of sin, the abolition of guilt, through the redemptive power of Christ's love, and of his perfect obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity, is expressed, on account of the resemblance of the consequences in both cases, by the payment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not himself incurred. Now the _impropriation_ of this metaphor--(that is, the taking it _literally_) by transferring the sameness from the consequents to the antecedents, or inferring the identity of the causes from a resemblance in the effects--this is the point on which I am at issue: and the view or scheme of redemption grounded on this confusion I believe to be altogether un-Scriptural.

Indeed, I know not in what other instance I could better exemplify the species of sophistry noticed in p. 147, as the Aristotelean μεταβασις εις αλλο γενος, or clandestine passing over into a diverse kind. The purpose of a metaphor is to illustrate a something less known by a partial identification of it with some other thing better understood, or at least more familiar. Now the article of Redemption may be considered in a two-fold relation--in relation to the _antecedent_, that is, the Redeemer's act as the efficient cause and condition of redemption; and in relation to the _consequent_, that is, the effects in and for the Redeemed. Now it is the latter relation, in which the subject is treated of, set forth, expanded, and enforced by St. Paul. The mysterious act, the operative cause is _transcendent_. _Factum est_: and beyond the information contained in the enunciation of the _Fact_, it can be characterized only by the _consequences_. It is the _consequences_ of the Act of Redemption, which the zealous Apostle would bring home to the minds and affections both of Jews and Gentiles. Now the Apostle's opponents and gainsayers were principally of the former class. They were Jews: not only Jews unconverted, but such as had partially received the Gospel, and who, sheltering their national prejudices under the pretended authority of Christ's original apostles and the Church in Jerusalem, set themselves up against Paul as followers of Cephas. Add too, that Paul himself was _a Hebrew of the Hebrews_; intimately versed _in the Jews' religion above many, his equals, in his own nation, and above measure zealous of the traditions of his fathers_. It might, therefore, have been anticipated, that his reasoning would receive its outward forms and language, that it would take its predominant colours, from his own _past_, and his opponents' present, habits of thinking; and that his figures, images, analogies, and references would be taken preferably from objects, opinions, events, and ritual observances ever uppermost in the imaginations of his own countrymen. And such we find them;--yet so judiciously selected, that the prominent forms, the figures of most frequent recurrence, are drawn from points of belief and practice, forms, laws, rites and customs, that then prevailed through the whole Roman world, and were common to Jew and Gentile.

Now it would be difficult if not impossible to select points better suited to this purpose, as being equally familiar to all, and yet having a special interest for the Jewish converts, than those are from which the learned Apostle has drawn the four principal metaphors, by which he illustrates the blessed _consequences_ of Christ's redemption of mankind. These are: 1. Sin-offerings, sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, atonement, καταλλαγη.[133] 3. Ransom from slavery, Redemption, the buying back again, or being bought back. 4. Satisfaction of a creditor's claims by a payment of the debt. To one or other of these four heads all the numerous forms and exponents of Christ's mediation in St. Paul's writings may be referred. And the very number and variety of the words or _periphrases_ used by him to express one and the same thing furnish the strongest presumptive proof, that all alike were used _metaphorically_. [In the following notation, let the small letters represent the _effects_ or _consequences_, and the capitals the efficient _causes_ or _antecedents_. Whether by causes we mean acts or agents, is indifferent. Now let X signify a _transcendent_, that is, a cause beyond our comprehension and not within the sphere of sensible experience; and on the other hand, let A, B, C, and D represent each some one known and familiar cause, in reference to some single and characteristic effect: namely, A in reference to k, B to l, C to m, and D to n. Then I say X + k l m n is in different places expressed by A + k; B + l; C + m; D + n.--And these I should call _metaphorical_ exponents of X.]

Now John, the beloved Disciple, who leaned on the Lord's bosom, the Evangelist κατα πνευμα, that is, according to the _Spirit_, the inner and substantial truth of the Christian creed--John, recording the Redeemer's own words, enunciates the fact itself, to the full extent in which it is enunciable for the human mind, simply and _without any metaphor_, by identifying it _in kind_ with a fact of hourly occurrence--_expressing_ it, I say, by a familiar fact the same _in kind_ with that intended, though of a far lower _dignity_;--by a fact of every man's experience, _known_ to all, yet not better _understood_ than the fact described by it. In the Redeemed it is a re-_generation_, a _birth_, a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, the germinal principle of a higher and enduring life, of a _spiritual_ life--that is, a life the actuality of which is not dependent on the material body, or limited by the circumstances and processes indispensable to its organization and subsistence. Briefly, it is the _differential_ of immortality, of which the assimilative power of faith and love is the _integrant_, and the life in Christ the _integration_.

But even this would be an imperfect statement, if we omitted the awful truth, that besides that dissolution of our earthly tabernacle which we call death, there is another death, not the mere negation of life, but its positive opposite. And as there is a mystery of life and an assimilation to the principle of life, even to him who is _the_ Life; so is there a mystery of death and an assimilation to the principle of evil; a fructifying of the corrupt seed, of which death is the germination. Thus the regeneration to spiritual life is at the same time a redemption from the spiritual death.

Respecting the redemptive act itself, and the Divine Agent, we know from revelation that he _was made a quickening_ (ζωοποιουν, _life-making_) _spirit_: and that in order to this it was necessary, that God should be _manifested in the flesh_, that the Eternal Word, through whom and by whom the world (κοσμος, the order, beauty, and sustaining law of visible natures) was and is, should be made flesh, assume our humanity personally, fulfil all righteousness, and so suffer and so die for us as in dying to conquer death for as many as should receive him. More than this, the mode, the possibility, we are not competent to know. It is, as hath been already observed concerning the primal act of apostacy, a mystery by the necessity of the subject--a mystery, which at all events it will be time enough for us to seek and expect to understand, when we understand the mystery of our _natural_ life, and _its_ conjunction with mind and will and personal identity. Even the truths that are given to us to know, we can know only through faith in the spirit. They are spiritual things which must be spiritually discerned. Such, however, being the means and the effects of our Redemption, well might the fervent Apostle associate it with whatever was eminently dear and precious to erring and afflicted mortals, and (where no expression could be commensurate, no single title be other than imperfect) seek from similitude of _effect_ to describe the superlative boon by successively transferring to it, as by a superior claim, the name of each several act and ordinance, habitually connected in the minds of _all_ his hearers with feelings of joy, confidence, and gratitude.

Do you rejoice when the atonement made by the priest has removed the civil stain from your name, restored you to your privileges as a son of Abraham, and replaced you in the respect of your brethren?--Here is an atonement which takes away a deeper and worse stain, an eating canker-spot in the very heart of your personal being. This, to as many as receive it, gives the privilege to become sons of God (John i. 12); this will admit you to the society of angels, and insure to you the rights of brotherhood with spirits made perfect.--(Heb. xii. 22.) Here is a sacrifice, a sin-offering for the whole world: and a High Priest, who is indeed a Mediator, who not in type or shadow but in very truth and in his own right stands in the place of Man to God, and of God to Man; and who receives as a Judge what he offered as an Advocate.

Would you be grateful to one who had ransomed you from slavery under a bitter foe, or who brought you out of captivity? Here is redemption from a far direr slavery, the slavery of sin unto death; and he, who gave himself for the ransom, has taken captivity captive.

Had you by your own fault alienated yourself from your best, your only sure friend;--had you, like a prodigal, cast yourself out of your father's house;--would you not love the good Samaritan, who should reconcile you to your friend? Would you not prize above all price the intercession, which had brought you back from husks, and the tending of swine, and restored you to your father's arms, and seated you at your father's table?

Had you involved yourself in a heavy DEBT for certain gew-gaws, for high seasoned meats, and intoxicating drinks, and glistering apparel, and in default of payment had made yourself over as a bondsman to a hard creditor, who it was foreknown, would enforce the bond of judgment to the last tittle;--with what emotions would you not receive the glad tidings, that a stranger, or a friend whom in the days of your wantonness you had neglected and reviled, had paid the DEBT for you, had made SATISFACTION to your creditor? But you have incurred a debt of Death to the EVIL NATURE! you have sold yourself over to SIN! and relatively to _you_, and to all _your_ means and resources, the seal on the bond is the seal of necessity! Its stamp is the _nature_ of evil. But the stranger has appeared, the forgiving friend has come, even the Son of God from heaven: and to as many as have faith in his name, I say--the Debt is paid for you. The Satisfaction has been made.

Now to simplify the argument and at the same time to bring the question to the test, we will confine our attention to the figure last mentioned, viz. the satisfaction of a debt. Passing by our modern _Alogi_ who find nothing but metaphors in either Apostle, let us suppose for a moment with certain divines, that our Lord's words, recorded by John, and which in all places repeat and assert the same analogy, are to be regarded as metaphorical; and that it is the varied expressions of St. Paul that are to be literally interpreted:--for example, that sin is, or involves, an infinite debt, (in the proper and law-court sense of the word debt)--a debt owing by us to the vindictive justice of God the Father, which can only be liquidated by the everlasting misery of Adam and all his posterity, or by a sum of suffering equal to this. Likewise, that God the Father by his absolute decree, or (as some divines teach) through the necessity of his unchangeable justice, had determined to exact the full sum; which must, therefore, be paid either by ourselves or by some other in our name and behalf. But besides the debt which _all_ mankind contracted in and through Adam, as a _homo publicus_, even as a nation is bound by the acts of its head or its plenipotentiary, every man (say these divines) is an insolvent debtor on his own score. In this fearful predicament the Son of God took compassion on mankind, and resolved to pay the debt for us, and to satisfy the divine justice by a perfect equivalent. Accordingly, by a strange yet strict _consequence_, it has been holden by more than one of these divines, that the agonies suffered by Christ were equal in amount to the sum total of the torments of all mankind here and hereafter, or to the infinite debt, which in an endless succession of instalments we should have been paying to the divine justice, had it not been paid in full by the Son of God incarnate!

It is easy to say--"O but I do not hold this, or _we_ do not make this an article of our belief!" The true question is: "Do you take any _part_ of it: and can you reject the rest without being _inconsequent_?" Are debt, satisfaction, payment in full, creditor's _rights_, and the like, _nomina propria_, by which the very nature of Redemption and its occasion is expressed;--or are they, with several others, figures of speech for the purpose of illustrating the nature and extent of the consequences and effects of the redemptive Act, and to excite in the receivers a due sense of the magnitude and manifold operation of the Boon, and of the Love and gratitude due to the Redeemer? If still you reply, the former: _then_, as your whole theory is grounded on a notion of _justice_, I ask you--Is this justice a _moral_ attribute? But morality commences with, and begins in, the sacred distinction between thing and person: on this distinction all law human and divine is grounded: consequently, the law of justice. If you attach any meaning to the term justice, as applied to God, it must be the same to which you refer when you affirm or deny it of any other personal agent--save only, that in its attribution to God, you speak of it as unmixed and perfect. For if not, what _do_ you mean? And why do you call it by the same name? I may, therefore, with all right and reason, put the case as between man and man. For should it be found irreconcilable with the justice, which the light of reason, made _law_ in the conscience, dictates to _man_, how much more must it be incongruous with the all-perfect justice of God! Whatever case I should imagine would be felt by the reader as below the dignity of the subject, and in some measure jarring with his feelings; and in other respects the more familiar the case, the better suited to the present purpose.

A sum of £1,000 is owing from James to Peter, for which James has given a bond. He is insolvent, and the bond is on the point of being put in suit against him, to James's utter ruin. At this moment Matthew steps in, pays Peter the thousand pounds and discharges the bond. In this case, no man would hesitate to admit, that a complete _satisfaction_ had been made to Peter. Matthew's £1,000 is a perfect equivalent for the sum which James was bound to have paid, and which Peter had lent. _It is the same thing_: and this is altogether a question of _things_. Now instead of James's being indebted to Peter for a sum of money, which (he having become insolvent) Matthew pays for him, we will put the case, that James had been guilty of the basest and most hard-hearted ingratitude to a most worthy and affectionate mother, who had not only performed all the duties and tender offices of a mother, but whose whole heart was bound up in this her only child--who had foregone all the pleasures and amusements of life in watching over his sickly childhood, had sacrificed her health and the far greater part of her resources to rescue him from the consequences of his follies and excesses during his youth and early manhood; and to procure for him the means of his present rank and affluence--all which he had repaid by neglect, desertion, and open profligacy. Here the mother stands in the relation of the creditor: and here too I will suppose the same generous friend to interfere, and to perform with the greatest tenderness and constancy all those duties of a grateful and affectionate son, which James ought to have performed. Will this satisfy the Mother's claims on James, or entitle him to her esteem, approbation, and blessing? Or what if Matthew, the vicarious son, should at length address her in words to this purpose:--"Now, I trust, you are appeased, and will be henceforward reconciled to James. I have satisfied all your claims on him. I have paid his debt in full: and you are too just to require the same debt to be paid twice over. You will therefore regard him with the same complacency, and receive him into your presence with the same love, as if there had been no difference between him and you. For I have _made it up_." What other reply could the swelling heart of the mother dictate than this? "O misery! and is it possible that _you_ are in league with my unnatural child to insult me? Must not the very necessity of _your_ abandonment of your proper sphere form an additional evidence of _his_ guilt? Must not the sense of your goodness teach me more fully to comprehend, more vividly to feel, the evil in him? Must not the contrast of your merits magnify his demerit in his mother's eye, and at once recall and embitter the conviction of the canker-worm in his soul?"

If indeed by the force of Matthew's example, by persuasion or by additional and more mysterious influences, or by an inward co-agency, compatible with the existence of a personal will, James should be led to repent; if through admiration and love of this great goodness gradually assimilating his mind to the mind of his benefactor, he should in his own person become a grateful and dutiful child--_then_ doubtless the mother would be wholly satisfied! But then the case is no longer a question of _things_, or a matter of _debt_ payable by another. Nevertheless, the _effect_,--and the reader will remember, that it is the _effects_ and _consequences_ of Christ's mediation, on which St. Paul is dilating--the effect to _James_ is similar in both cases, that is, in the case of James the debtor, and of James the undutiful son. In both cases, James is liberated from a grievous burthen; and in both cases he has to attribute his liberation to the act and free grace of another. The only _difference is_, that in the former case (namely, the payment of the debt) the beneficial act is _singly_, and without requiring any re-action or co-agency on the part of James, the efficient _cause_ of his liberation: while in the latter case (namely, that of Redemption) the beneficial act is the _first_, the indispensable _condition_, and _then_ the _coefficient_.

The professional student of theology will, perhaps, understand the different positions asserted in the preceding argument more readily if they are presented _synoptically_, that is, brought at once within his view, in the form of answers to four questions, comprising the constituent parts of the Scriptural Doctrine of Redemption. And I trust that my lay readers of both sexes will not allow themselves to be scared from the perusal of the following short catechism by half a dozen Latin words, or rather words with Latin endings, that translate themselves into English, when I dare assure them, that they will encounter no other obstacle to their full and easy comprehension of the contents.

_Synopsis of the Constituent Points in the Doctrine of Redemption, in Four Questions, with Correspondent Answers._

_Questions._

{ 1. _Agens Causator?_
Who (or What) is the { 2. _Actus Causativus?_
{ 3. _Effectum Causatum?_
{ 4. _Consequentia ab Effecto?_

_Answers._

I. The Agent and Personal Cause of the Redemption of Mankind is--the co-eternal Word and only begotten Son of the Living God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing (_agonistes_ αγωνιζομενος), crucified, submitting to death, resurgent, communicant of his Spirit, ascendent, and obtaining for his Church the Descent, and Communion of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

II. The causative act is--a spiritual and transcendent Mystery, _that passeth all understanding_.

III. The Effect caused is--the being born anew: as before in the _flesh_ to the world, so now born in the _spirit_ to Christ.

IV. The Consequences from the Effect are--Sanctification from Sin, and Liberation from the inherent and penal consequences of Sin in the World to come, with all the means and processes of Sanctification by the Word and the Spirit: these Consequents being the same for the Sinner relatively to God and his own Soul, as the satisfaction of a debt for a debtor relatively to his creditor; as the sacrificial atonement made by the priest for the transgressor of the Mosaic Law; as the reconciliation to an alienated parent for a son who had estranged himself from his father's house and presence; and as a redemptive ransom for a slave or captive.

Now I complain that this metaphorical _naming_ of the transcendent causative act through the _medium_ of its proper effects from actions and causes of familiar occurrence connected with the former by similarity of result, has been mistaken for an intended designation of the essential character of the causative act itself; and that thus divines have interpreted _de omni_ what was spoken _de singulo_, and magnified a _partial equation_ into a _total identity_.

I will merely hint, to my more _learned_ readers, and to the professional students of theology, that the origin of this error is to be sought for in the discussions of the Greek Fathers, and (at a later period) of the Schoolmen, on the obscure and _abysmal_ subject of the divine _A-seity_, and the distinction between the θελημα and the βουλη, that is, the Absolute Will, as the universal _ground_ of _all_ Being, and the election and purpose of God in the personal idea, as the Father. And this view would have allowed me to express what I believe to be the true import and scriptural idea of Redemption in terms much more nearly resembling those used ordinarily by the Calvinistic divines, and with a conciliative _show_ of coincidence. But this motive was outweighed by the reflection, that I could not rationally have expected to be understood by those to whom I most wish to be intelligible: _et si non vis intelligi, cur vis legi?_

Not to countervene the purpose of a Synopsis, I have detached the confirmative or explanatory remarks from the Answers to Questions II. and III., and place them below as _scholia_. A single glance of the eye will enable the reader to re-connect each with the sentence it is supposed to follow.

SCHOLIUM TO ANSWER II.

Nevertheless, _the fact or actual truth having been assured to us by Revelation_, it is not impossible, by stedfast meditation on the idea and super-natural character of a personal WILL, for a mind spiritually disciplined to satisfy itself, that the redemptive act _supposes_ (and that our redemption is even negatively _conceivable_ only on the supposition of) an agent who can at once act _on_ the Will as an exciting cause, _quasi ab extra_; and _in_ the Will, as the _condition_ of its potential, and the _ground_ of its actual, being.

SCHOLIUM TO ANSWER III.

Where two subjects, that stand to each other in the relation of _antithesis_ or contradistinction, are connected by a middle term common to _both_, the sense of this middle term is indifferently determinable by _either_; the preferability of the one or the other in any given case being decided by the circumstance of our more frequent experience of, or greater familiarity with, the Term, in _this_ connexion. Thus, if I put hydrogen and oxygen gas, as opposite poles, the term _gas_ is common to both; and it is a matter of indifference, by which of the two bodies I ascertain the sense of the term. But if for the conjoint purposes of connexion and contrast, I oppose transparent crystallized alumen to opaque derb, or uncrystallized alumen;--it may easily happen to be far more _convenient_ for me to show the sense of the middle term, that is, alumen, by a piece of pipe-clay than by a sapphire or ruby; especially if I should be describing the beauty and preciousness of the latter to a peasant woman, or in a district where a ruby was a rarity which the fewest only had an opportunity of seeing. This is a plain rule of common logic directed in its application by common sense.

Now let us apply this to the case in hand. The two opposites _here_ are Flesh and Spirit, _this_ in relation to _Christ_, _that_ in relation to the _World_; and these two opposites are connected by the middle term, _Birth_, which is of course common to both. But for the same reason, as in the instance last mentioned, the interpretation of the common term is to be ascertained from its known sense, in the more familiar connexion--birth, namely, in relation to our natural life and to the organized body, by which we belong to the present world.--Whatever the word signifies in this connexion, the same _essentially_ (in _kind_ though not in dignity and value) must be its signification in the other. How else could it be (what yet in this text it undeniably _is_), the _punctum indifferens_, or _nota communis_, of the _thesis_, Flesh; or the World, and the _antithesis_ Spirit; or Christ? We might therefore, upon the supposition of a writer having been speaking of river-water in distinction from rain-water, as rationally pretend that in the latter phrase the term, water, was to be understood metaphorically, as that the word, birth, is a metaphor, and means only so and so, in the Gospel according to St. John.

There is, I am aware, a numerous and powerful party in our Church, so numerous and powerful as not seldom to be entitled _the_ Church, who hold and publicly teach, that "Regeneration is only Baptism." Nay, the writer of the article on the Lives of Scott and Newton in our ablest and most respectable Review[134] is but one among many who do not hesitate to brand the contrary opinion as heterodoxy, and schismatical superstition. I trust, that I think as seriously as most men, of the evil of schism; but with every disposition to pay the utmost deference to an acknowledged majority including, it is said, a very large proportion of the present dignitaries of our Church, I cannot but think it a sufficient reply, that if Regeneration means Baptism, Baptism must mean Regeneration; and this too, as Christ himself has declared, a Regeneration in the Spirit. Now I would ask these divines this simple question: Do they believingly suppose a spiritual regenerative power and agency inhering in or accompanying the sprinkling a few drops of water on an infant's face? They cannot evade the question by saying that Baptism is a _type_ or _sign_. For this would be to supplant their own assertion, that Regeneration means Baptism, by the contradictory admission, that Regeneration is the _significatum_, of which Baptism is the significant. Unless, indeed, they would incur the absurdity of saying, that Regeneration is a type of Regeneration, and Baptism a type of itself--or that Baptism only means Baptism! And this indeed is the plain consequence to which they might be driven, should they answer the above question in the negative.

But if their answer be, "Yes! we do suppose and believe this efficiency in the Baptismal act"--I have not another word to say. Only, perhaps, I might be permitted to express a hope, that for consistency's sake they would speak less slightingly of the _insufflation_, and _extreme unction_, used in the Romish Church; notwithstanding the not easily to be answered arguments of our Christian Mercury, the all-eloquent Jeremy Taylor, respecting the latter, which, "since it is used when the man is above half dead, when he can exercise no act of understanding, it must needs be nothing; for no rational man can think that any ceremony can make a spiritual change without a spiritual act of him that is to be changed; nor work by way of nature, or by charm, but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures."[135]

It is too obvious to require suggestion, that these words here quoted apply with yet greater force and propriety to the point in question: as the babe is an unconscious subject, which the dying man need not be supposed to be. My avowed convictions respecting Regeneration with the spiritual Baptism, as its condition and initiative (Luke iii. 16; Matt. i. 7; Matt. iii. 11), and of which the sacramental rite, the Baptism of John, was appointed by Christ to remain as the sign and figure; and still more, perhaps, my belief respecting the Mystery of the Eucharist, (concerning which I hold the same opinions as Bucer,[136] Peter Martyr, and presumably Cranmer himself)--these convictions and this belief will, I doubt not, be deemed by the Orthodox _de more Grotii_, who improve the _letter_ of Arminius with the _spirit_ of Socinus, sufficient data to bring me in guilty of irrational and Superstitious Mysticism. But I abide by a maxim, which I learnt at an early period of my theological studies, from Benedict Spinoza:--Where the alternative lies between the Absurd and the Incomprehensible, no wise man can be at a loss which of the two to prefer. To be _called_ irrational, is a trifle; to _be_ so, and in matters of religion, is far otherwise: and whether the irrationality consists in men's believing (that is, in having persuaded themselves that they believe) _against_ reason, or _without_ reason, I have been early instructed to consider it as a sad and serious evil, pregnant with mischiefs, political and moral. And by none of my numerous instructors so impressively, as by that great and shining light of our Church in the æra of our intellectual splendour, Bishop Jeremy Taylor: from one of whose works, and that of especial authority for the safety as well as for the importance of the principle, inasmuch as it was written expressly _ad populum_, I will now, both for its own intrinsic worth, and to relieve the attention, wearied, perhaps, by the length and argumentative character of the preceding _discussion_, interpose the following Aphorism.[137]

[132] Dr. Richard Field's "Of the Church," folio ed., Oxford, 1628, p. 58.--ED.

[133] This word occurs but once in the New Testament, Romans v. 11, the marginal rendering being _reconciliation_. The personal noun, καταλλακτης, is still in use with the modern Greeks for a money-changer, or one who takes the debased currency, so general in countries under a despotic or other dishonest government, in exchange for sterling coin or bullion; the purchaser paying the _catallage_, that is, the difference. In the elder Greek writers, the verb means _to exchange for an opposite_, as, κατακκασσετο την εχθρην τοις στασιωταις.--He exchanged within himself enmity for friendship, (that is, he reconciled himself) with his party;--or, as we say, _made it up_ with them, an idiom which (with whatever loss of dignity) gives the exact force of the word. He made _up the difference_. The Hebrew word of very frequent occurrence in the Pentateuch, which we render by the substantive, _atonement_, has its radical or visual image, in _copher_, pitch. Gen. vi. 14: _Thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch_. Hence to unite, to fill up a breach, or leak, the word expressing both the _act_, namely, the bringing together what had been previously separated, and the _means_, or material, by which the re-union is effected, as in our English verbs, _to caulk_, _to solder_, _to poy_ or _pay_ (from _poix_, pitch), and the French _suiver_. Thence, metaphorically, _expiation_, the _piacula_ having the same root, and being grounded on another property or use of gums and resins, the supposed _cleansing_ powers of their fumigation. Numbers viii. 21: _made atonement for the Levites to cleanse them_.--Lastly (or if we are to believe the Hebrew Lexicons, _properly_ and most _frequently_) it means _ransom_. But if by _proper_ the Interpreters mean _primary_ and _radical_, the assertion does not need a confutation: all radicals belonging to one or other of three classes. 1. Interjections, or sounds expressing sensations or passions. 2. Imitations of sounds, as splash, roar, whiz, &c. 3. and principally, visual images, objects of sight. But as to _frequency_, in all the numerous (fifty, I believe,) instances of the word in the Old Testament, I have not found one in which it can, or at least need, be rendered by _ransom_: though beyond all doubt _ransom_ is used in the Epistle to Timothy, as an _equivalent_ term.

[134] Review of the Memoirs of the Rev. J. Scott and Rev. J. Newton, 'Quarterly Review,' April, 1824.--ED.

[135] Dedication to Taylor's 'Holy Dying,' p. 295, Bohn's Standard Library edition.--ED.

[136] Appendix to Strype's 'Life of Cranmer.'--ED.

[137] Slightly altered from the 'Worthy Communicant,' chap. iii. sect. v.; p. 523, vol. xv. of Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's works.--ED.

APHORISM XX.

JEREMY TAYLOR.