elsewhere in spite of Articles, Creeds and Chapel Deeds. Preachers who at their ordination reserved to themselves the right of private judgment, and of unrestrained address, still remained orthodox. Robert Hall 2 the greatest Baptist preacher in the first half of the century, was more liberal than most of his brethren. He spoke charitably of such as Priestley whom he regarded as scarcely a Christian, yet expressed his belief that such men might be finally saved. Another minister remonstrated, maintaining that the lusts of the mind may ruin as effectively as the lusts of the flesh. He that does not believe in the Atonement, rejects Christianity. Hall answered that he was not a Calvinist, did not believe in the federal headship of Adam, nor in the imputation of sin. The evil entailed by Adam's transgression was a corrupt nature, and an irregular bias of the mind." 6 As a Baptist, to him, infant baptism was a perversion of Christ's ordinance, yet he admitted that those who had been baptised when children by affusion of water were validly baptised. This admission was necessary for the side he took in the Baptist controversy about open communion. To refuse to communicate with other Christians was to convert the Lord's Supper into a religious test. Baptism was not really a necessary qualification for this Sacrament. A rigid Baptist maintained the contrary and held that sprinkling was a violation of the commandment, and therefore rebellion against the Divine Law. Such Baptists as Bunyan, who advocated and practised open communion, dispensed with the positive ordinances of the Gospel. These arguments were regarded as founded on an exaggerated view of this Sacrament, such as may be found in the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran and the Anglican Churches. St Paul always assumed that among Christians there would be diversity of sentiments, but they were to be of one mind. This tendency of man to go from the spirit and cling to the letter is the origin of idolatry and superstition. The genius of the Gospel is not ceremonial but spiritual. 1 See for example the Life of James Hinton by his son, p. 106. 2 B. 1764, d. 1831. 3 See Works, vol. vi, 19, 20. 5 Ibid. p. 27. 4 Dr Ryland. Robert Hall, in his youth, defended the French Revolution, and rebuked a preacher who advised all ministers to have nothing to do with politics,' but he lived to be of another opinion and to speak of the vanity and ferocity which spring from sceptical infidelity. He had also in his youth abused Bishop Horsley, called him the 'Bonner of his time,' ready to recognise in every persecutor a friend and a brother.3 He afterwards regretted what he had written as 'not consistent with the spirit of Christianity, or with the reverence due to departed genius.' Horsley had compassionated 'those venerable exiles, the prelates and clergy of the fallen Church of France,' which was contrasted with his malignity towards Dissenters. But the Baptist preacher himself, when he denounced the French Revolution, spoke of the French clergy as the Christian priesthood, and their churches as the temples of God whose worship had been abolished.* Another Baptist of some influence in the early part of the century was John Foster. He was in the main orthodox, though he sometimes verged on heresy. He once wrote, 'I have discarded the doctrine of eternal punishment, I can avow no opinion as to the peculiar points of Calvinism for I have nore, and see no possibility of forming a satisfactory one. I am no Socinian but am in doubt between the Orthodox and the Arian doctrine, not without some inclination to the latter.'5 Again he wrote, 'I believe the leading doctrines of the Calvinistic faith. As to my opinions respecting the person of Christ, a candid and honest statement would be, that I deem it the wisest rule to use precisely the language of Scripture. I am possibly in the same parallel of latitude as to orthodoxy, as the Reverend Doctor Watts, in the late maturity of his thoughts. As to the constitution of the Church he went even beyond the dissidence of dissent.' Not only did he not believe in any such thing, but he avowed an utter loathing of what bears the general denomination of the Church, with all its parties, contests, disgraces and honours.' He added 'my wish would be little less than the dissolution of all Church in 1 Christianity consistent with the Freedom of the Press. stitutions of all orders and shapes, that religion might be set free as a grand spiritual and moral element, no longer dogged, perverted, prostituted by corporative forms and principles.1 The Wesleyan Community have a very definite creed and there have been but few deviations from it. Dr Adam Clarke, their only really learned man, was their only heretic. He was supposed to have shown a Pelagian tendency, and he incurred great reproach by incorporating into his Commentary the substance of 'The Key to the Epistle to the Romans' by John Taylor of Norwich, an Arian or perhaps a Socinian. On the questions of predestination and the argument from the divine foreknowledge, that God must have preordained all things because He foreknew them, Clarke said that foreknowledge is never spoken of in reference to God, but only to man. God has omniscience or the power to know all things, just as He has omnipotence or the power to do all things, but He may not choose to know all. With God is no past or future, but an eternal Now. He has left some things as contingent, and to other agencies besides His own. Dr Clarke did not believe in the Eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ. He wrote 'If Christ be the Son of God as to His divine nature, then He cannot be eternal, for son implies a father, and father implies in reference to son precedency in time, if not also in nature. Father and son imply the idea of generation, and generation implies a tine antecedent to such generation. If Christ be the Son of God in His divine nature, then the Father is of necessity, prior, consequently superior to Him. Again if the divine nature were begotten of the Father then it must be in time, that is, there was a period when it began to exist.' This is to destroy His eternity and take away His Godhead. To say that He was begotten from all eternity is in my opinion absurd, and the phrase Eternal Son is a contradiction. Eternity is that which has had no beginning, nor stands in any reference to time. Son supposes time, generation and father, time antecedent to such generation. Therefore the conjunction of these two terms, son and eternal, 1 Ibid, p. 54 See his Commentary on Acts ii. This idea was not new. It is found in Dr Pearson's Warburtonian Lectures, 1807-11. is absolutely impossible, as they imply essentially different and impossible ideas.' These words evoked a controversy in which several preachers took a part, the chief of whom was Richard Watson. Many passages of Scripture were quoted to show that Jesus Christ was the Son of God not merely in His humanity but also in His Divinity. He was the Only Begotten Son and had declared that God whom no man hath seen at any time. An Apostle said 'we have seen His glory as the glory of the only Begotten of the Father.' Again 'God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son.' Here is an emphasis which would have been out of place, if as Son, Christ had been merely human and not divine. In the doctrine of the Trinity the first person is the Father of a divine and not of a merely human Son. Jesus referred to His miracles in proof that He was the Son of God, that is divine. To the argument that the son must be posterior to the father, and therefore inferior, the answer was that in the divine Sonship of Christ no priority of the Father is supposed. A father as such is not prior to his son, nor is a son as such posterior to his father. The inference therefore of the inferiority of a son to a father is not valid. Richard Treffry, another preacher, maintained that all the confessions of the disciples that Jesus was the Son of God, related to His divinity and not to His Humanity. He also urged the consent of the Catholic Church. Dr Clarke pronounced the Eternal Sonship of Christ an absurdity which could not be believed, and he defended the right of reason to be heard in all that professed to be Revelation. His words are; 'The doctrine which cannot stand the test of rational investigation cannot be true. We have gone too far when we have said such and such doctrines should not be subjected to rational investigation, being doctrines of Revelation. I know of no such doctrines in the Bible. The doctrines of this book are doctrines of eternal reason, and they are revealed because they are such. Human reason could not have found them out, but when revealed, reason can both apprehend and comprehend them.' Again, 'no man either can or should believe a doctrine that contradicts the nature of stitutions of all orders and shapes, that religion might be set free as a grand spiritual and moral element, no longer dogged, perverted, prostituted by corporative forms and principles.1 The Wesleyan Community have a very definite creed and there have been but few deviations from it. Dr Adam Clarke, their only really learned man, was their only heretic. He was supposed to have shown a Pelagian tendency, and he incurred great reproach by incorporating into his Commentary the substance of 'The Key to the Epistle to the Romans' by John Taylor of Norwich, an Arian or perhaps a Socinian. On the questions of predestination and the argument from the divine foreknowledge, that God must have preordained all things because He foreknew them, Clarke said that foreknowledge is never spoken of in reference to God, but only to man. God has omniscience or the power to know all things, just as He has omnipotence or the power to do all things, but He may not choose to know all. With God is no past or future, but an eternal Now. He has left some things as contingent, and to other agencies besides His own. Dr Clarke did not believe in the Eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ. He wrote If Christ be the Son of God as to His divine nature, then He cannot be eternal, for son implies a father, and father implies in reference to son precedency in time, if not also in nature. Father and son imply the idea of generation, and generation implies a time antecedent to such generation. If Christ be the Son of God in His divine nature, then the Father is of necessity, prior, consequently superior to Him. Again if the divine nature were begotten of the Father then it must be in time, that is, there was a period when it began to exist.' This is to destroy His eternity and take away His Godhead. To say that He was begotten from all eternity is in my opinion absurd, and the phrase Eternal Son is a contradiction. Eternity is that which has had no beginning, nor stands in any reference to time. Son supposes time, generation and father, time antecedent to such generation. Therefore the conjunction of these two terms, son and eternal, 1 Ibid, p. 54 2 See his Commentary on Acts ii. This idea was not new. It is found in Dr Pearson's Warburtonian Lectures, 1807-11. |