There are many passages to which we should feel great joy in now
referring, where the present blessedness of departed spirits is painted
in lively colours by the Holy Ghost; but you will at once see that those
only concern our present argument, which describe an _immediate_ entrance
into joy and rest.
1. Let us begin then with the language of our blessed Saviour to the
dying thief; which shows that they are gathered immediately to a joyful
home; “To day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” There can be no
question here as to his immediate happiness; there was no need of prayer
for the repose of his soul. That very afternoon, when his poor exhausted
frame hung lifeless on the cross, when he was carried off as an unclean
thing to be buried out of the sight of man; that very afternoon, before
the evening closed in, was the happy spirit in paradise with Jesus. And
there is something very beautiful in the name here given to the home of
Spirits. In 2 Cor. v. 1, it is described as “a building of God, an house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;” but there is no name given
there; here the name is given, but no description; the name is
“Paradise.” In paradise there was no pain, no sickness, no sorrow, no
death, no sin. Tears were never witnessed there till Adam turned his
back on it, and so it is with the home of believers. Neither sin nor
sorrow can ever gain admission. The gate is too strait for them, they
are left behind with us on earth. In that home holiness is the joy,
praise the incense, love the atmosphere, and Christ the light.
2. In this home again there is immediate rest. “They rest not day and
night,” it is true, “crying, {40a} Holy, holy, holy, &c.;” for to them
nothing could be so fatiguing as a pause from praise. Their most
toilsome toil is to be silent from giving thanks. But from all labour
they rest at once. When the spirit once takes its flight, to that soul
the warfare is accomplished, the struggle over, the battle won. Only
look at the words of St. John, Revelation xiv. 13. See how they are
ushered in. “I heard a voice from heaven.” See how God would have them
preserved as the lasting joy of the Church of Christ; for he says,
“Write.” Mark their confirmation by the Holy Ghost, “Yea, thus saith the
Spirit.” And now see their plain, indisputable testimony to the
immediate and complete blessedness of the saints. “Blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord from henceforth, yea, thus saith the Spirit, that
they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” There
is no delay, no interval, no expiation. They are at once blessed; at
once at rest; for they are fallen asleep in Jesus: they have died in the
Lord.
3. This immediate blessedness is taught us also from the case of
Lazarus. {40b} “When the beggar died he was carried by the angels into
Abraham’s bosom,” not to purgatory; and when there he was comforted in
the enjoyment of a rest with God.
4. But above all, the dying spirit passes immediately into the presence
of Christ the Saviour.
It is most important for us to observe this, for there can be no real joy
to the Christian if he be separate from Christ. The pure river of the
fountain of life would lose all its charm if it did not proceed out of
the throne of God and of the Lamb. The sea of glass, clear as crystal,
would have no beauty if the face of Jesus were not reflected in it. The
new Jerusalem itself would be no object of desire, though its walls be of
jasper, its gate of pearl, its streets of gold, if Christ himself were
not the light of it: for the brightest diamond has no brightness in the
dark. Yea, heaven itself would become a hell if the Son of God were not
the reigning Lord of it.
If we cannot prove, therefore, that the departed believer passes at once
into the presence of his Lord, we in fact prove nothing. If for one
moment we are to be separated from him, it little matters where. But
thanks be to God we can prove it without the possibility of
contradiction.
When Stephen died {41a} “he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at
the right hand of God;” saw, as it were, the arm of Christ reaching forth
to draw him up to heaven; so he fell down and prayed “Lord Jesus receive
my spirit.”
When St. Paul doubted between life and death, he {41b} “had a desire to
depart and be with Christ, which was far better.” Death then was a
departure into the immediate presence of his Lord. But above all refer
to 2 Cor. v. 6, 7, 8. “Therefore we are always confident, knowing that,
whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord; (for we
walk by faith not by sight;) we are confident, I say, and willing rather
to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” The idea
of this passage is that there are two homes for believers; two dwellings,
one on earth, and one in heaven; one in the body, one in the presence of
our Lord. While here we know him, but it is by faith alone. “We walk by
faith, not by sight.” When there we shall see him in the full brilliancy
of his love and glory. And this change is immediate. The veil is very
thin that separates the world of flesh from the world of spirits. Every
prayer of faith pierces it. The stream is very narrow that separates
earth and heaven, and no sooner do we quit the one than we enter on the
other; no sooner is the earthly home dissolved, than Christ himself is
seen and the heavenly home opens for his people. So long as “we are at
home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;” and we are willing rather
to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. The departed
believer, therefore, is at once found with Christ.
5. But there is another passage in which all these immediate blessings
appear summed up in one short, but most expressive, word. “To me to live
is Christ, and to die is gain.” {42}
We should have no fear in resting the question upon this text alone. It
places the truth beyond the reach of all attack. “To die is gain,”
therefore to die is not to go to purgatory. “To die is gain,” therefore
to die is not to be tortured in fire for the expiation of our sin. Nor
must we suppose that this refers to St. Paul alone. His acceptance
rested on the same terms as ours. He was a sinner pardoned through the
Lamb’s blood, and accepted on the same terms as the weakest believer in
our congregation. To die was gain; not because he was an Apostle, but
because to live was Christ. And if to us to live is Christ, then to us
to die is gain.
Look then at the present happiness of believers, the present joy of the
new born child of God. He does not see Christ, it is true, with the eye
of sense; but he knows him, he loves him, he delights in him, he speaks
to him, his soul is filled with joy at the assurance of his grace. “Whom
having not seen we love, in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing
ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” In every care and
trial he can find a sweet repose, for he knows that Christ is near, and
he has the precious promise “The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in
safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long.” So when
his frame becomes enfeebled and the time of his departure seems at hand,
he can lie down peacefully upon the bed of languishing, for he has the
precious promise that the Lord shall strengthen him; the sweet assurance
“_Thou_ wilt make _all_ his bed in his sickness.” Ay! and when the
illness itself draws to a close, when all power to alleviate is gone,
when the physician’s skill is helpless, and the wife’s affection
fruitless; when the dying man is passing alone through the valley of the
shadow of death, he is still supported, still happy, still at peace. For
the same Lord is nigh. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod and
thy staff, they comfort me.” Oh! Blessed life! Oh! happy death of the
child of God! “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last
end be like his!” {44}
But now suppose the valley crossed. The arm has upheld him through the
struggle; the beloved of the Lord has been borne safely through. Is the
first sight which meets his affrighted eye the lurid glare of the
flashing flames of purgatorial fire?—the first sound that startles his
ear the groaning of God’s beloved children writhing under the torments of
expiating torture? Is that calm repose on Jesus suddenly changed by one
terrific plunge into the scorching agony of a purgatorial flame? Would
it be gain thus to die? Would such a death be “far better” than the life
of faith? It would be better surely to dwell safely as the beloved of
the Lord, than to burn miserably in the expiation of unforgiven sin.
We may conclude then that the doctrine of purgatory is in direct
opposition to the word of God, but we have a yet farther, and, if
possible, graver charge to urge against it, viz.,
III. That it is in direct opposition to the doctrine of atonement as set
forth in scripture.
You will remember the extract already quoted from the Catechism of the
Council of Trent, in which it was stated that in the fire of purgatory
the souls of the pious make expiation for their sin. Pause for a moment
to observe these words. There are two things to be noticed in them, (1.)
they assert directly that man’s sufferings can make expiation for his
sin, and (2.) they imply that the death of our Lord was not a complete
expiation for our sin. Let us examine each part separately.
(1.) First then we have a direct assertion that by enduring pain the
believer makes expiation for his soul; that is, that our temporary
sufferings satisfy God’s broken law.
If this be true, what occasion was there for the blood of Jesus. Why the
stupendous mystery of man’s redemption? Why the agony in the garden?
Why the burden of the cross? Why the hiding of God’s countenance? Why
the endurance of the curse in our stead? Such a work was surely
needless, a mere mistake on the part of Jesus. The atonement is become a
fable, if man’s passing pain can make expiation for his sin.
But, again, if pain is expiation, how is it that hell-fire burns for
ever? Was ever suffering so intense as that? Was there ever such a
scene of woe and misery, of hatefulness and hopelessness, as that? But
does it make expiation for the sinner’s sin? Does it blot out the curse?
Does the fire burn out its fuel? “It is the worm that dieth not, and the
fire that is not quenched.” Yea, verily, if the curse of one single sin
could be burned out by ten thousand centuries of pain, hell would be no
longer hell, for there would be a faint gleam of far distant hope,
shining even upon the miseries of the damned.
There is no expiation then in pain. Believers are chastened, but
chastening is not atonement. It is God’s gentle discipline by which he
prepares his jewels for his crown; and just as the finest gold is wrought
most carefully, so the most precious of God’s children are often
chastened most heavily, for “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” There must be a melting of the
gold, before it can be separated from the ore; there must be a rending of
the root, before the tree can be taken from the wilderness and
transplanted into the garden of the Lord. And so it is with believers.
There must be a melting of the heart, a humbling of the earthly will, a
weaning of soul, that they may cleave to Christ alone. And this is the
purpose for which, beloved, we are chastened. He does it for our profit,
that we may be partakers of his holiness. Affliction has the same effect
that Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace had on the three children in captivity. It
could not touch their person, but it burnt the bands that bound them, and
enabled them to walk more freely with their Lord. But expiation! That
is Christ’s work. “He is the propitiation for our sins,” and if
suffering in man could expiate for sin in man, then the suffering of
Christ were a waste of blood, a waste of agony, a waste of life, a waste
of love.
(2.) And this leads us to our second remark, that the doctrine of
expiation through purgatorial fire implies an incompleteness in the
atonement of our blessed Lord. If expiation be still needful, then in
his atonement there must be something wanting. Nor is this the mere
conclusion of a bigoted protestant, it is the bold assertion of the
Church of Rome herself. Listen to her canon, “If any man shall say that
after the gift of Justification has been received, sin is so remitted to
any repentant sinner,” (observe it speaks of justified believers and true
penitents) “and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out, that there
remains no debt of temporary punishment to be endured either in this
world or the world to come in purgatory, before a way can be opened into
the kingdom of heaven, let him be Anathema.” {47}
I feel utterly at a loss in attempting to speak on such an awful passage.
Can they remember that they are speaking of the atonement wrought by the
Son of God? He gave his own most precious life to satisfy the law, and
can any portion of the debt remain? He purchased us with the price of
his own most precious blood: is farther payment needed? The eternal
Redeemer was our ransom: are we not free? The well beloved of the Father
endured the curse as our substitute: was his work so ineffectual that the
curse still hangs over the very men he came to save? Awful dishonour to
the Son of God! Now Rome thou must indeed be Antichrist, for thou dost
rob Christ of his glory; thou strivest to tarnish the beauty of his
diadem. He says “Behold the Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the
world.” But thou contradictest Christ and sayest that there is a remnant
left to be punished in the believer still. He says “I, even I, am he,
that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not
remember thy sins.” But thou sayest that the blot is not effaced, that
the sin is still remembered, still punished, even in the child of God.
He says “I am the way,” “I am the door; by me if any man enter in he
shall be saved.” But thou sayest that the door cannot be opened, except
it be through purgatorial pain. He says that he has loved us and washed
us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God
and the Father. But thou sayest the washing was incomplete, for sin must
after all be burned out by fire; that love is still defective, for the
saints must yet be punished; the inheritance not fully purchased, for,
after all that Christ has done, the justified believer has still to make
an expiation for his sin. {49}
No! beloved! we will not for a moment admit the thought of any other
expiation, than that wrought out for us by the Lamb of God. And as for
our dear departed brethren, nothing that Rome can say shall ever rob us
of our delightful hope. They have felt no pain since the day we parted;
their sainted spirits have been basking in the sunshine of the
countenance of God. I myself have parted with a mother, such a mother
that I often wonder if the world can ever more behold her equal: so
strong in faith; so ardent in her thirsting after God; so pure in spirit;
so sensitive to sin; so beaming in her holy loveliness, that you might
almost believe you saw the Father’s name written legibly by the Holy
Ghost upon her forehead. To this day do I hear the tones of her dying
voice, when in answer to my questions respecting her soul’s peace, she
replied “I can reverently say with the deepest humility, ‘Lord, thou
knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.’” And I would rather
have this arm torn from its socket, I would rather be scorched and
scathed in Moloch’s fire, than I would abandon my firm and fixed
persuasion that such love has never been interrupted, that her Redeeming
Lord has never left her for a moment; my perfect assurance, that while we
were weeping in solemn stillness around her bed of death, she was taking
her place amongst the company of palm bearers, and is now standing before
the throne, having washed her robes, and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb.
So also for ourselves! dear brethren! for we too must die; our day is
hastening on, our time drawing to its close. A few short years and
multitudes amongst us must change their faith for sight, the world of
flesh for the world of spirits: a few, short, rapid years, and every one,
both you and I, shall find ourselves in heaven or in hell. But let us
fear nothing. Only let us be found in Christ, justified through his
blood, with our name written in his book of life, and the Father’s name
engraven by the Holy Ghost on our forehead, and then neither death or
hell can ever prevail to hurt us. In Christ we are safe; washed in his
blood we are completely pardoned; clad in his righteousness we are
completely justified; and kept in his right hand we are completely and
for ever safe.
Only let us be found in Christ. Then the outward man may decay; the poor
frame may wax faint and feeble; the eye may become dim, even with the dim
fixedness of death: and then, when all earthly power has sunk under
exhaustion, the eye will open; a new world will spring up before us;
attendant angels will hover around the new-born citizen of heaven; and
without tears, or fears, or weakness, we shall behold Christ in the
brightness of his glory, and cry aloud in the heartfelt thankfulness of
unutterable joy, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne and
unto the Lamb.”
SERMON IV.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
HEBREWS x. 12.
But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever
sat down on the right hand of God.
THERE was never a more tremendous judgment than that uttered by the voice
of Malachi, {52} “I will curse your blessings.” There can be no scourge
more heavy than a blessing cursed. The more choice the gift, the more
fatal is the misuse of it; the richer the blessing, the deadlier its
corruption. So it was with Christ himself. He was the most precious
gift that could be found even in the treasuries of heaven—the well
beloved Son of God; but to those who rejected him he became a stone of
stumbling and rock of offence. So it has been with that sacred feast,
which he left as a parting legacy to his church. The Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper is one of the richest blessings in the church’s birthright.
It is a sacred opportunity of feeding in faith upon the body and blood of
the Lamb, a perpetual remembrance of his boundless grace, a bond of holy
fellowship with our brethren in the faith, a sacred pledge of our union
and communion with the Lord. Yet even this has been corrupted. As with
the Jews of old, so with professing Christians “their table has become a
snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare has
become a trap.” {53a} We allude, of course, to the doctrine of
transubstantiation, of which the Council of Trent decrees as follows:
“By the consecration of the bread and wine there is effected a change in
the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ
our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of
his blood.” {53b} Here we have the bread and wine transformed into the
actual substance of the person of our blessed Lord: so transformed that
according to the Catechism {53c} there are “bones and nerves in it.”
Nay, more! so changed that there is actually his whole person, not
excepting his soul and his divinity, for the Council declares {53d} “If
any man shall say that the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
together with his soul and divinity, and, in short, that a whole Christ,
is not contained truly, really, and substantially in the sacrament of the
most Holy Eucharist, but shall say that he is in it only in sign, or
figure, or power, let him be anathema.”
There is no misunderstanding such words as these. And if there were, the
6th canon shows how Rome herself interprets them, for she not only
acknowledges the fact, but follows it consistently to its conclusion, and
declares plainly that we are to worship it with the worship due to God.
{54}
“If any shall say that in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ,
the only begotten Son of God, is not to be adored, and that outwardly
with the worship of Latria (the worship paid to God), and that he ought
not to be . . . carried solemnly about in processions, or that he ought
not to be set before the people that he may be worshipped, and that the
worshippers of him are idolaters, let him be anathema.”
But even this is not all: for not merely do they claim the power of thus
making the bread into the very person of the only begotten of the Father,
they add yet this also, that they can put that Saviour to death, and by
that sacrifice make a propitiation for the sins of the dead and living.
The Council of Trent declares {55a} “In the sacrifice of the mass, that
same Christ is sacrificed without blood who once with blood offered
himself upon the cross.” And in Canon iii. {55b} it adds that “If any
man shall say that the sacrifice is not propitiatory and profits the
receiver only, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead,
for sins, punishments, satisfaction, and other necessities, let him be
anathema.”
Such is the doctrine of transubstantiation as taught by the Church of
Rome. According to it by a few words of consecration a wafer of
unleavened bread is transformed into the very person of the Son of God: a
man may be worshipping with divine honour in the afternoon a morsel of
that same wheaten flour on which he made his breakfast in the morning:
the one half he may bake for the sustenance of his children, the other he
may be bound to adore when the priest has transubstantiated it into God.
On reading such a doctrine it is impossible altogether to forget God’s
cutting language against the sin of Israel.
“He burneth part of it in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he
roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith,
Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire: and the residue thereof he maketh a
god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and prayeth unto it,
and saith, deliver me for thou art my god.” {56}
Surely, then, it is reasonable to ask that the truth of such a principle
should be tried by the word of God alone. It is opposed to the evidence
of our senses, it is opposed to reason, and it is no less opposed to the
general tenor of the sacred scriptures. It is a case, therefore, in
which no human evidence can avail any thing; the best, the wisest, the
holiest of men, are wholly insufficient witnesses to prove, that what is
apparently a piece of bread, lifeless, motionless, and powerless, is the
very person of Christ himself, the only begotten of the Father, reigning
triumphantly at the right hand of the throne of God. Such a fact, if it
be a fact, must be taught by God himself.
At the same time, if God has said it we are bound cheerfully to believe
it. It is condemned by every faculty which God has given us; it is
opposed to experience, and to every pre-existent principle of religion,
yet so complete should be our submission to the Bible, so absolute and
unquestioning our conviction of its certain truth, that if we clearly
find even transubstantiation there, we must believe without a murmur, we
must abandon all human thoughts in submission to his all perfect wisdom.
Yea though our revered church declares it plainly both “a blasphemous
fable and a dangerous deceit;” {57} though the martyred fathers of the
Reformation chose rather to die in agony than admit its truth; yet if God
says it we will joyfully believe it, “for God is in heaven and we upon
earth, therefore must our words be few.”
By the word of God, then, let us proceed to try the question, and we will
examine the language of Scripture,