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has lost it? I certainly do not intend to contradict Solomon, who asserts that "God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." (s) But man, by his degeneracy, having shipwrecked both himself and all his excellences, whatever is attributed to his primitive state, it does not immediately follow that it belongs to his vitiated and degenerated nature. Therefore I reply, not only to them, but also to Ecclesiasticus himself, whoever he be: If you design to teach man to seek within himself a power to attain salvation, your authority is not so great in our estimation as to obtain even the smallest degree of credit, in opposition to the undoubted word of God. But if you only aim to repress the malignity of the flesh, which vainly attempts to vindicate itself by transferring its crimes to God, and you therefore reply, that man was originally endued with rectitude, from which it is evident that he was the cause of his own ruin, I readily assent to it; provided we also agree in this, that through his own guilt he is now despoiled of those ornaments with which God invested him at the beginning; and so unite in confessing, that in his present situation he needs not an advocate, but a physician.

XIX. But there is nothing which our adversaries have more frequently in their mouths, than the parable of Christ concerning the traveller, who was left by robbers in the road half dead. (t) I know it is the common opinion of almost all writers, that the calamity of the human race is represented under the type of this traveller. Hence they argue, that man is not so mutilated by the violence of sin and the devil, but that he still retains some relics of his former excellences, since he is said to have been left only half dead; for what becomes of the remaining portion of life, unless there remain some rectitude both of reason and will? In the first place, what could they say, if I refused to admit their allegory? For there is no doubt but that this interpretation, invented by the fathers, is foreign to the genuine sense of our Lord's discourse. Allegories ought to be extended no further than they are supported by the authority of Scripture; for they are far from affording of themselves a sufficient foundation for any doctrines. Nor is there any want of arguments by which, if I chose, I could completely confute this erroneous notion; for the word of God does not leave man in the possession of a proportion of life, but teaches, that as far as respects happiness of life, he is wholly dead. Paul, when speaking of our redemption, says, not that we were recovered when half dead, but that even when we were dead, we were raised up." He calls not on the half dead, but on those who are in the grave, sleeping the

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sleep of death, to receive the illumination of Christ. (u) And the Lord himself speaks in a similar manner, when he says, that "the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." (w) With what face can they oppose a slight allusion against so many positive expressions? Yet let this allegory even be admitted as a clear testimony; what will it enable them to extort from us? Man, they will say, is but half dead; therefore he has some faculty remaining entire. I grant that he has a mind capable of understanding, though it attains not to heavenly and spiritual wisdom; he has some idea of virtue; he has some sense of the Deity, though he acquires not the true knowledge of God. But what is to be concluded from all this? It certainly does not disprove the assertion of Augustine, which has received the general approbation even of the schools, that man, since his fall, has been deprived of the gifts of grace on which salvation depends; but that the natural ones are corrupted and polluted. Let us hold this, then, as an undoubted truth, which no opposition can ever shake. that the mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God, that it conceives, desires, and undertakes every thing that is impious, perverse, base, impure, and flagitious; that his heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin, that it cannot produce any thing but what is corrupt; and that if at any time men do any thing apparently good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and fallacious obliquity, and the heart enslaved by its inward perverseness.

CHAPTER VI.

REDEMPTION FOR LOST MAN TO BE SOUGHT IN CHRIST.

THE whole human race having perished in the person of Adam, our original excellence and dignity, which we have noticed, so far from being advantageous to us, only involves us in greater ignominy, till God, who does not acknowledge the pollution and corruption of man by sin to be his work, appears as a Redeemer in the person of his only begotten Son. Therefore, since we are fallen from life into death, all that knowledge of God as a Creator, of which we have been treating, would be useless, unless it were succeeded by faith exhibiting God to

VOL. I.

(u) Eph. ii. 5; v. 14.
39

(w) John v. 25.

us as a Father in Christ. This, indeed, was the genuine order of nature, that the fabric of the world should be a school in which we might learn piety, and thence be conducted to eternal life and perfect felicity. But since the fall, whithersoever we turn our eyes, the curse of God meets us on every side, which, whilst it seizes innocent creatures and involves them in our guilt, must necessarily overwhelm our souls with despair. For though God is pleased still to manifest his paternal kindness to us in various ways, yet we cannot, from a contemplation of the world, conclude that he is our Father, when our conscience disturbs us within, and convinces us that our sins afford a just reason why God should abandon us, and no longer esteem us as his children. We are also chargeable with stupidity and ingratitude; for our minds, being blinded, do not perceive the truth; and all our senses being corrupted, we wickedly defraud God of his glory. We must therefore subscribe to the declaration of Paul: "For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." (x) What he denominates the wisdom of God, is this magnificent theatre of heaven and earth, which is replete with innumerable miracles, and from the contemplation of which we ought wisely to acquire the knowledge of God. But because we have made

so little improvement in this way, he recalls us to the faith of Christ, which is despised by unbelievers on account of its apparent folly. Wherefore, though the preaching of the cross is not agreeable to human reason, we ought, nevertheless, to embrace it with all humility, if we desire to return to God our Creator, from whom we have been alienated, and to have him. reassume the character of our Father. Since the fall of the first man, no knowledge of God, without the Mediator, has been available to salvation. For Christ speaks not of his own time only, but comprehends all ages, when he says that "this is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (y) And this aggravates the stupidity of those who set open the gate of heaven to all unbelievers and profane persons, without the grace of Christ, whom the Scripture universally represents as the only door of entrance into salvation. But if any man would restrict this declaration of Christ to the period of the first promulgation of the gospel, we are prepared with a refutation. For it has been a common opinion, in all ages and nations, that those who are alienated from God, and pronounced accursed, and children of wrath, cannot please him without a reconciliation. Here add the answer of Christ to the woman of Samaria: "Ye

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worship ye know not what: we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews." (z) In these words he at once condemins all the religions of the Gentiles as false, and assigns a reason for it; because under the law the Redeemer was promised only to the chosen people; whence it follows that no worship has ever been acceptable to God, unless it had respect to Christ. Hence also Paul affirms that all the Gentiles were without God, and destitute of the hope of life. (a) Now, as John teaches us that life was from the beginning in Christ, and that the whole world are fallen from it, (b) it is necessary to return to that fountain; and therefore Christ asserts himself to be the life, as he is the author of the propitiation. And, indeed, the celestial inheritance belongs exclusively to the children of God. But it is very unreasonable that they should be considered in the place and order of his children, who have not been engrafted into the body of his only begotten Son. And John plainly declares that "they who believe in his name become the sons of God." (c) But as it is not my design in this place to treat professedly of faith in Christ, these cursory hints shall at present suffice.

II. Therefore God never showed himself propitious to his ancient people, nor afforded them any hope of his favour, without a Mediator. I forbear to speak of the legal sacrifices, by which the faithful were plainly and publicly instructed that salvation was to be sought solely in that expiation, which has been accomplished by Christ alone. I only assert, that the happiness of the Church has always been founded on the person of Christ. For though God comprehended in his covenant all the posterity of Abraham, yet Paul judiciously reasons, that Christ is in reality that Seed in whom all the nations were to be blessed; (d) since we know that the natural descendants of that patriarch were not reckoned as his seed. For, to say nothing of Ishmael and others, what was the cause, that of the two sons of Isaac, the twin-brothers Esau and Jacob, even when they were yet unborn, one should be chosen and the other rejected? How came it to pass that the first-born was rejected, and that the younger obtained his birthright? How came the majority of the people to be disinherited? It is evident, therefore, that the seed of Abraham is reckoned principally in one person, and that the promised salvation was not manifested till the coming of Christ, whose office it is to collect what had been scattered abroad. The first adoption, therefore, of the chosen people, depended on the grace of the Mediator; which, though it is not so plainly expressed by

(z) John iv. 22.
(c) John i. 12.

(b) John i. 4.

(a) Ephes. ii. 12.

(d) Gal. iii. 16.

Moses, yet appears to have been generally well known to all the pious. For before the appointment of any king in the nation, Hannah, the mother of Samuel, speaking of the felicity of the faithful, thus expressed herself in her song: "The Lord shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed." (e) Her meaning in these words is, that God will bless his Church. And to this agrees the oracle, which is soon after introduced: "I will raise me up a faithful priest, and he shall walk before mine anointed." And there is no doubt that it was the design of the heavenly Father to exhibit in David and his posterity a lively image of Christ. With a design to exhort the pious, therefore, to the fear of God, he enjoins them to "kiss the Son;" (f) which agrees with this declaration of the gospel: "He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father." (g) Therefore, though the kingdom was weakened by the revolt of the ten tribes, yet the covenant, which God had made with David and his successors, could not but stand, as he also declared by the Prophets: "I will not rend away all the kingdom, but will give one tribe to thy son, for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake which I have chosen." (h) This is repeated again and again. It is also expressly added, "I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever." (i) At a little distance of time it is said, "For David's sake did the Lord his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem." (k) Even when the state was come to the verge of ruin, it was again said, "The Lord would not destroy Judah, for David his servant's sake, as he promised him to give him alway a light, and to his children." () The sum of the whole is this- that David alone was chosen, to the rejection of all others, as the perpetual object of the Divine favour; as it is said, in another place, "He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh; he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim; but chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion, which he loved. He chose David also his servant, to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.” (m) Finally, it pleased God to preserve his Church in such a way, that its security and salvation should depend on that head. David therefore exclaims, "The Lord is their strength, and he is the saving strength of his anointed; " (n) and immediately adds this petition: "Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance;" signifying that the state of the Church is inseparably connected with the government of Christ. In the same sense he elsewhere says, "Save, Lord; let the king hear us when

(e) 1 Sam. ii. 10.
(h) 1 Kings xi. 13.
(1) 2 Kings viii. 19.

(f) Psalm ii. 12.

(k) 1 Kings xv. 4.

(g) John v. 24. (i) 1 Kings xi. 39.

(m) Psalm lxxviii. 60, 67, 68, 70, 71.

(n) Psalm xxviii. 8.

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