Atonement in some unusual and unnatural sense, or do not wish to
thrust it into a corner, as if the Bible had other more important
subjects to treat of, I answer,--My great complaint of the oracles of
the English religious world is, that they do give a most unusual and
unnatural sense to the word Atonement; that they give it a most
contracted signification; that they lead their disciples to form a
poor opinion of its effects; that they do not follow Apostles and
Evangelists, in connecting it with the whole revelation of God and the
whole mystery of man. I answer again,--that they connect it with their
own faith and their own salvation, not with that cross on which Christ
was lifted up that He might draw all men to Him. On many points I
believe I could adopt forms of language usual among Calvinistical
divines, to which Mr. Campbell, looking at them from his point of
view, rightly objects as involving fictions; but I would rather be
suspected of rejecting all popular modes of speech on the subject,
even when I see in them a good and wholesome meaning, than yield for
one instant to those representations of the character and will of God
which must end with us, as they did with the Jews, in the
identification of the Father of lights with the Spirit of lies.
DISCOURSES XXII. XXIII. AND XXIV.
I have dwelt much in these Sermons upon the fact that our Lord treated
His disciples as a body, and as a holy body. Many persons, as soon as
they hear remarks of this kind, exclaim--'Oh, yes; we have often heard
that doctrine of corporate holiness set forth before. But it seems to
us the very destruction of personal holiness. It involves every
ecclesiastical fiction; Romanism is at the bottom of it.'
When statements of this kind are made honestly and earnestly, I am
glad to hear them. Abhorrence of fictions we should take all pains to
cultivate in others and in ourselves. Whatever tends to the weakening
of personal holiness, let it have what logical consistency it may,
must be false. And that there is a doctrine about corporate
Christianity, corporate faith, corporate righteousness, which is open
to these charges, I, at least, can have no doubt. I should not say
that Romanism was at the bottom of it; but rather that it is at the
bottom of Romanism, in so far as Romanism is an immoral system, and
one that deposes Christ from His rightful dignity.
1. Let me explain myself upon each of these points. To suppose a
society--call it a Church or what you will--constituted holy by an
arbitrary decree of God, its members remaining unholy, I hold to be a
most dangerous fiction; one which we cannot too vehemently repudiate,
as alike condemned by experience, by reason, and by Scripture.
Experience testifies that when a nation or a Church claims a holiness
or a righteousness of its own, it becomes practically most unholy and
unrighteous in all its acts and purposes. Reason declares that it must
be so, because righteousness is predicable only of voluntary beings,
and that to be made righteous by an arrangement is impossible in the
nature of things. Scripture declares that it must be so, because God
is holy; and the holiness of man is only possible by the participation
of His nature. But is it the same thing to assert that God has
constituted man holy in His Son; that all unholiness is the result of
the selfish desire of men to have something of their own, and not to
abide in God's order; that a Church is the witness of the true
constitution of man in Christ; that every Churchman, therefore, by his
position and calling, is bound to say that he is only holy as a member
of a body, and holy in its Head; that every Churchman who does not say
this, who thinks that it is his individual holiness which helps to
make up the Church, is setting up himself, and imitating the sin for
which our Lord denounced the Pharisee? Does experience, does reason,
does Scripture, protest against this doctrine? Is not experience in
favour of it, inasmuch as it testifies that every true patriot has
lived and died for his nation, and has renounced himself; that every
true Churchman has lived to claim his own blessings for all men, to
declare that he himself, as an individual, was worthy of none of them?
Is not reason in favour of this doctrine, seeing that it affirms a
voluntary creature to be a mere curse to himself till he confesses a
law which is above himself, and gives up his self-will that he may
have a free-will? Is not Scripture affirming, in every line, that God
has chosen families, nations, Churches; and that these are holy
because He is holy; and that those who go about to establish a
holiness or righteousness of their own have not submitted to His
righteousness?
2. I have anticipated the answer to the second question. Personal
holiness is weakened, nay, is destroyed, by everything that could
lead a man to think that it was fictitious in him, or that God was
sanctioning a fiction. And therefore it is greatly imperilled by any
notions which speak of the individual man having a righteousness
imputed to him, in consequence of his faith, which is not truly and
actually his. But this fiction is not the consequence of maintaining
the doctrine I am asserting; it becomes inevitable when we deny that
doctrine. If by the very law and constitution of His universe God
contemplates us as members of a body in His Son, we are bound to
contemplate ourselves in the same way. We have a righteousness and
holiness in Christ. We have no right to deny it; our unrighteousness
is the very effect of denying it. Imputation of righteousness _then_
becomes no fiction. It means only that God beholds us as we are, as we
have not learnt or do not choose to behold ourselves. The fiction has
arisen because the truth has been denied.
3. When I speak of a Church, St. Paul tells me to speak of a body. He
pursues the analogy, we all know, into its details; he speaks of head,
and feet, and hands, of functions assigned to each, of sufferings
passing from one to another, of a life circulating through the whole.
Everything here is living and real. You turn the body into a
corporation, a certain thing created by enactment, without parts,
functions, life; you attribute to the dead thing what is true of the
living thing--to the decapitated trunk what was true of that which
derives all its strength and virtue from its head; then, indeed, you
are involved in a series of falsehoods, each more monstrous than the
last; or, to speak more modern and courteous language, in a series of
developments, each preserving a family likeness to its ancestor, the
very last and most prodigious being able to prove its descent from the
notion out of which they all started. Once suppose it possible for the
Church to exist out of Christ, and for humanity to exist out of
Christ, and a Church which thinks this may impose anything it pleases
upon those who belong to it. Nothing would be restrained from it which
it had imagined to do, if its first maxim were _not_ a falsehood, if
Christ did _not_ reign in spite of the determination of His subjects
to set up another ruler.
4. I have given an outline of what I believe to be the Romish system;
and surely it is a system which may obtain a hold over England, as
well as over any country in the world. Nay, must it not obtain a hold
if we have nothing to set up against it but the notion of a Church,
compounded of a number of men believing themselves to be holy, and
despising others? Romanism is the fearful parody of Christian Unity.
This is the absolute denial that any such Unity exists or is possible.
When the Son of God and the Son of Man is manifested, the parody and
the denial will perish together.
DISCOURSE XXVI.
A friend has suggested to me a punctuation of the 2d verse of the 17th
chapter, which would enable us to translate it: '_That He should give
to them all which Thou hast given Him, (even) eternal life_.' This
version seems to me at least worthy of serious consideration.
THE END.
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