The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-01 00:00:00

gospel, which was not another, for it was na gespe at all,
from the earliest ages until now this has been the point of
attack. We arc still experiencing the same, and from the
like causes. Through the merciful providence of God
the true principles of the Gospel have been spread through
the length and breadth of the land, and effects were
flowing which they alone are capable of producing. Mean-
while the enemy is upon the watch ; he knows well there is
a danger, and he contrives to cast reproach upon the doctrine
which is the hinge of Christian truth and Christian practise,
to confound things which ought to be kept distinct, things
inherent in men with things extraneous, individual duties
with vicarious offerings, and so reduce all things to that state
of doubt and uncertainty which never has led, and never can
lead, to a consistent course of action. It is notorious that
this attempt, frequently made, has been unsuccessful where
the gospel has been faithfully preached ; and the will of the
Lord is, that all should know the truth—that the gospel
should be preached to every creature. Those have now risen
up who oppose the doctrines of the gospel, who affirm that
the propitiation made for sin is a doctrine too dangerous to
be openly disclosed, too monstrous to be generally admitted.
This would deprive the sinner at once of the motives to re-
pent, and comfort in repenting,
It has been another part of the same system to involve the
article of our justification in obscurity. What has been done
for us, and what is to be wrought in us are confused together,
and. practically, man is induced to look to himself and not
to his redeemer for acceptance with God. In all this there
is nothing unforseen. The Apostle has plainly warned us to
beware of philosophy and vain deceit, which turn aside from
the simplicity of the Gospel—that fair simplicity which fits
us for, the reception of the benefit here, but which some men
profess to be afraid of lest mercy should be too free, or the
way of returning to God too open. This, in truth, the
offence of the cross renewed under form, the objection
which corrupt nature has always opposed under various
disguises to the apostolic doctrine. "By grace are
ye saved through faith, not of works lest any man
should boast." The scriptural truth is as clear as it is
true." When all were dead, Christ died for all ;" so that
" He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the
Son, bath not life." By one way alone can man propitiate
the Son, and that is by believing on him; faith alone can
bring to us that remedy which God has appointed ; faith
alone can give us an interest in that security which God has
accepted as the satisfaction for his Son. Thus being justified
by faith, we have peace with God, through Jesus Christ. It is
true, and it is never to be forgotten, that being thus accepted
with God, and embued with his spirit, man becomes a new
creature through that spirit dwelling in him ; but he is ac-
cepted with God, not because he is a new creature, but be-
cause Christ had made atonement for wrath which in his old
nature he had not. His faith in this atonement, which leads
to his acceptance, leads also to his doing work meet for one
that is accepted ; but the works which follow his being jus-
tified, and are its effects, can never be the cause of his justi-
fication. Suppose a remedy were proposed to a man lying
under a mortal disease, and by applying it he was restored to
health, it would be sophistry to affirm that it was not the re-
medy which saved him, but that it was the constitnrion
strengthened by the remedy ; it would be unjust to the re-
medy and ingratitude to the Creator. So it is an
indignity to God to depreciate the virtue of Christ's
justification by mixing it up with the religiousness of his
redeemed people. Let no misrepresentations, no false phi-
iosophy corrupt the wholesome truth that man is delivered
from the wrath to come, not by works of righteousness
which he has done or may do, but by Him alone who died
for our sins, and rose again for our justification. The state-
ment which came fresh from the reformers lips is the state-
ment to which we must still refer. " There is a justifying
and a sanctifying spirit. The righteousness which justifies is
not in either." In all the reformed churches this Is the
corner-stone—that we are accounted righteous before God
through the merits of Christ's atonement, and not for our
own works or deservings ; that a lively faith is known by its
works, as a sound tree is known by its fruits, though they
bear not the roots, but the roots them. Thus, we are
at no loss to see why the reformers were so diligent in
laying this foundation. They had seen the conaceuences
of departing from it. They knew how the corruption of man
had been first lost sight of, and the atonement made for the
sins of the world. How closely the two are connected we
have this morning heard. The reformers knew how the
satisfaction made by Christ had been set aside, and human
works substituted in its stead, even such works as were nei-
ther accepted by God, nor approved of man, till a system
overspread the word, which had neither God for its author,
nor salvation of man for its end—they were debased by what
was sent to purify them, and deceived by what was intended
to deliver.
If these facts have been forgotten, as they seem to have
been forgotten by the tendency of certain writings which
have lately been thrust upon our attention, it is high time
they should be brought back to our remembrance. But if
I endeavour to stir up your minds by this admonition, it is
not because I believe such admonition is necessary to you
who have not ceased to make the ruin of man by sin, and his
restoration through the sacrifice of Christ, the cardinal points
of all your preaching. God forbid you ever should, and so
close the door against your own ministerial usefulness.
There are many other subjects of instruction, but all must
proceed from this as from a centre ; many duties are to be
performed, but they must be inculcated so that the great
principle may be permanently preserved in all its integrity
and usefulness. If it is necessary to keep under the body
and to bring it under subjection by abstinence and mortifi-
cation, and by whatever means general or indldvidual ex-
perience has shown to be the most profitable ; still for
what purpose ? Not that we may atone for the offences of
the body by the laceration of the body, but becanse this is
the will of God, even our sanctification. It is necessary to
cultivate humility, to practise charity, to exercise kindness,
not, however, that we may be thereby justified, but because
we are justified by Christ, " for if any man have not the
spirit of Christ, he is none of his". In these days you
may find ingenious men to argue against this simple truth.
They who have studied reason and philosophy more than
the word, or who know more of the world's history than
the history of the human heart, may think we are leav-
ing the narrow gate too widely open, and making the road to
heaven too smooth. So it has been from the beginning. The
apostles were accused of encouraging sin by publishing the
abundance of divine grace ; the Jews were jealous that the
Christian should be permitted to bear the burden that they
had borne themselves, and that he should have escaped out-
ward ordinances ; and the adversaries of the Christian faith
a few centuries back made it one pretence of their opposition
that it offered the divine Saviour to the profligate and male-
factor. But then those to whom the truth was committed
do not meet this imputation by denying or concealing that
they believe that Christ cleanses from all sin, by a false accu-
sation or by an abandonment of truth. They do not confound
the propitiation which atones with the santification which that
atonement works in the believer's heart : so far from it we
find St. Paul speaking in a vein unusual to him, and saying,
" that if any man preach any other gospel than that he have
received let him be accursed." Surely, we find here what we
might expect to have found, that God destroys the wisdom of
the wise and brings to nought the understandings of the foolish.
While learned men are elaborately proving that outward acts
and services are only means of holiness upon which we de-
pend, and that bodily exercise and voluntary humility are the
proper means in which a sinner should approach his God, the
preacher of the gospel is confuting them, not by words, but
acts, and the honest disciple is showing that they who have
believed in Christ will be careful to maintain good works. In
religion, as in other things, many a truth which the philoso-
pher passes by, is picked up by others, while many a thing
in which the philosopher prides himself, is contradicted by
ordinary observation; and thus, in the present question, ex-
perience proves that the only doctrine which conveys real
comfort to the soul, is the only doctrine which produces a
genuine spirit of Christian piety. The more we labour to
establish ourselves in the practice of holiness, the more need
we find of clothing ourselves in the righteousness, not of our-
selves, but of our God ; and the more firmly we trust to that
righteousness, not our own, the nearer we advance to that
personal righteousness which we are striving to attain, arid
which we will not be content without.
The other error to which I purpose to allude is no less in-
jurious to the Saviour's glory. Practically he is treated with
dishonour, when the church which he has established is made
to usurp his seat, to receive his homage, to perform his office,
to be virtually the author of salvation instead of the channel
through which salvation flows. This is in truth the deposing
of him from his throne, and to invest his subjects with the
authority which belongs to himself. It is couvenient, no
doubt, in language to embody the multitude who believe in
Christ under one comprehensive term, and our Lord himself
taught us, for example, that we may do this safely and legiti-
mately ; but language may mislead. We may personify a
body for the convenience of discourse, and by degrees forget
that a community is not a person. It is still worse if the
body, which was first personified, comes afterwards to be
deified. Yet a process of this kind has gone on in regard of
the Christian church. When Christ declared that he would
build his church upon a rock, and that the gates of hell should
not prevail against it, he simply declared that there should be
ever hereafter a body of men, believing in him as the Son of
God, whom Satan might assail, but should never succeed in
destroying. He did not say he would set up a power on
earth which should possess his authority, act in his stead,'or
act as his vicegerent to dispense either his favour or his
anger. We look in vain for a single sentence which, without
the grossest perversion, could imply a purpose such as this.
But advantage has been taken of the obscurity of language to
maintain and encourage this view : the church has been made
first an abstraction, then a person, and then a Saviour. The
church thus invested with divinity has a ministry, and has
her visible representatives who, explaining her prophetic an-
ticipations, has assumed the place of God. We know what
opportunities this has given to the exercise of the worst of
human passions. We find it supplied in malice, hatred,
pride, covetousness, and ambition ; so that one of the first
and most needed works of the reformers was to repress the
evil and divest the church of the mystery in which it was
shrouded and disclose it to the world in its true and scriptural
form as a congregation of believers. The church is that body
which assembled in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, and there
received the visit of their aisen Lord ; the church is that party
which abode together, had " all things in common," and con-
tinued in apostolic fellowship ; the church is that company of
faithful men in all ages and countries who maintained their
fealty to the doctrines and institutions of the gospel. The mi-
nisters of this church are those called to serve the united world,
to perform the prescribed rites, to teach, to rebuke, to exhort,
to warn, to comfort, and to commit perpetually to their fel-
low men the things which they have themselves received.
Such is a simple analysis of the church—the Holy Catholic
Church—of which Christ is the head, and with which He
has engaged to be present by his spirit to the end of the
won' I. We must beware of applying to the members of the
body, which members compose it, the power which really
belongs to the Head alone If we speak of the ark of Christ's
church, we must bear in mind that we are still speaking me-
taphorically. That ark is not limited to any special locality
on earth, like the ark of Noah ; it extends as far as the
knowledge of Christ extends, for He is the true ark that
saves all that commit themselves to him. The ministrations
of the church are those through which the community on
earth enter, but Christ is the only door through which heaven
is entered ; still many will be admitted into the visible ark
who may remain for ever excluded from the heavenly one.
The members of the church are branches of the vine • the
church is not the vine—that name belongs to Christ alone;
the church is the pillar and ground of truth, but the church
is not the truth, neither has it life in itself: Christ alone
is " the way, the truth, and the life" through which
every individual member of the church must seek ac-
cess to God. Yet all this, undeniable in itself, is
practically contradicted whenever the services, and the
ordinances, and the ministerial offices are magnified
beyond their due proportions or placed before the people with
a proininency, and we know the importance of prominency,
to which they have no claim. Church principles in their
proper sense we must approve. All must approve of that
cordial agreement with the articles, that sincere preference of
the services, that willing conformity to the discipline of the
church which shows that our profession is honest and con-
sistent ; but upon the contrary, I must think that to set up,
as it were, church principles in opposition to the principles
of the gospel, and to place them in an invidious contrast is
unreasonable and unscriptural. It is to confound the means
of grace with the author of grace—to worship the thing made
and to dishonour the maker. It is to array against Christ
the instrumentality he has established against Satan. Heap-
pointed his ministry, and there must be a perpetual provision
made for opposing the powers of darkness and carrying into
effect the work of conviction, conversion, arid sanctification—
his purpose on earth—and winning many souls to glory. He
instituted his sacraments that they who observe them might
be a visible body of witnesses in the world, and after the
usual manner of divine operation, that there might be a
manifest channel in which his spirit might avail to the edifi-
cation and comfort of believers. Therefore he ordained the
ministry, and therefore he ordained the sacraments that there
might be a church—a continual congregation of faithful men;
and shall this church turn round and set up itself against its
author ? Shall the earthly members assume the authority of