Page images
PDF
EPUB

of them. Let no man rashly censure me for repeating this declaration!

3. "Because" says he, "justification is both more properly and frequently in scripture taken in its proper signification for making one just and not reputing one merely such, and IS ALL ONE WITH SANCTIFICATION"-wonderful! "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were the face of the earth." How much meekness does it require to deal with spiritual sorcery and corruption! "Justification is all one with sanctification;" that is "its proper signification;" it is "more frequently in scripture taken" for sanctification; it does not mean "merely reputing one be just; and "because" of this

upon

-cui lumen ademptum!

The monster roars tremendous in his pain
Without an eye, and strives to see in vain!
Light is extinguished and he gropes insane.

Think, reader, how profanely he caricatures the doctrine of God; as if justification, as he would vilify it, means to "repute merely" that one is just! as if he were not justified by an act of God! as if it consisted in giving currency to a false report! a fact without existence! This is inspiration, I have no doubt; but not divine inspiration. It is a fact, and a glorious one, that every christian Is JUSTIFIED in Christ Jesus, and that this is the only way. It is a fact that "God justifieth-and whom he justified, them he also glorified."

But justification is taken for sanctification "both

more properly and frequently in scripture "thanwhat? where is the other subject of comparison? It is at once implied, by necessity; and slighted into oblivion, by design. What then is that sense of justification which Barclay teaches is both infrequently and less properly connected with the word in scripture? It is the sense which he dislikes, obscures, and supersedes, with the darkness of his foxian scheme of light. It is the sense of LUTHER'S ALL; the foundation of the church; and the glorious constitution of Jehovah! I have "searched the scriptures" often with this very idea in my eye; and now I feel perfectly authorized to contradict his assertion, and assert the contrary. The personal and forensic sense of the word, justification, as opposed to condemnation, is the primary and pervading sense of the word in scripture. The obscuration of this truth is like an eclipse of "the sun of righteousness." But such obscuration is-Quakerism! Take an induction by the way-They know next to nothing of atonement, whatever they say of it, using the word and referring to the death of Christ; as little know they of the law of God, of the nature of human accountability, of the perfection of the divine moral government, of the ill-desert of sin, of the immutable principles of the gospel, and the method of acceptance with God:-or they could not be so dark, vacant, and erroneous, on that capital and central doctrine of "Jesus Christ and him crucified!" I summon the world to look at this and examine it for themselves. Those who understand the gospel, and love it, as the thrice excellent truth

of God; and who give themselves the trouble to understand Quakerism and "judge righteous judgment" concerning it, and such only, can appreciate what I aver. As for others-I pity them! Prov. 18: 12, 13, 17. 20: 25. 21: 2, 3, 30. 26: 12. Error is often very good-looking and sometimes elegant in manners. It has the face of an angel, the voice of a siren, and the heart of a fiend. The truth of God is our only safety against its specious and captivating arts. There is but one way of being right, and many of being wrong. Rectitude is one thing; deviation is manifold. One way to be straight; many to be crooked; one way only to heaven-but how many millions make up the labyrinth of ways that lead to hell!

The word justification occurs thrice only in the total volume of God: Rom. 4: 25. 5: 16, 18. and there it means not sanctification in any instance; but the act of imputing righteousness to the person of a believer. Its cognates, justify, just, righteousness, righteous, and so forth, refer very often as they occur, generally to the character indeed; but perhaps never to the exclusion of that justifying "righteousness of God" as the primary idea, which it was the hope of Abel and the zeal of Paul to attain in consummation at "the resurrection of the dead;" saying, "that I may win Christ, AND BE FOUND IN HIM, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Phil. 3 9. and the whole chapter! "Even as David also describeth the blessedness of

the man unto whom GOD IMPUTETH RIGHTEOUSNESS WITHOUT WORKS; saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." Rom. 46-8. What is this but the beatitude of the man whose person is imputatively righteous? who is accepted as righteous, nay "the righteousness of God" in Christ?-in THE ONLY WAY in which it is possible for a human being to be justified in his sight! But we need not quote the whole Bible to convince a man of sense and candor that Quakerism here at least is not christianity. In this central matter it is perverse and ignorant, presuming and empty, deceptive and false.

There are two more cardinal proof-texts of Barclay yet to be examined: and I premise that they are quite considerable ones, in which their doctrine is about as "excellently and evidently held forth " as in any other passages in the total scripture ; where the imperfection or plain mistake of our ve nerable and learned but NOT inspired translators (more than two hundred years ago) may have given unwittingly to Friends, just then soon about to rise with their light, the specious appearance of a vindication and a sanction. I take them in order. The first is John, 1:9. "That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

Respecting the true sense of this passage, I observe, in opposition to their view;

1. The text literally and strictly interpreted as Friends are wont to have it, is entirely solitary and without a parallel, I think, in the whole Bible. The

analogy or "proportion of faith" then, is against it. Rom. 12: 6.

2. It utterly fails them in respect to internal location; inasmuch as it does not say an inward light, a light whose site is the soul's interior: and this it ought to be shown to assert, before it can be legitimately accounted to prove their hasty inference. It tells of no such light. 3. There is positive evidence to the contrary; or, that it is an external light, as one that casts its radiance UPON an object, rather than one that shines WITHIN a subject. This evidence I draw from the meaning and use of the original word pole, which had been rendered with stricter accuracy, shines upon, than enlighteneth or "lighteth;" and so, being an external light, it cannot favor the theory of Friends or be properly called a divine emanation in the soul, or spiritual instinct within us, or any such mystical foolishness.

The scholar will observe that the word is a derivative and diminutive formation from pws, light; and so means to throw some of its beams on a darkened surface, as a candle in a large room enlightens it, but is itself a light and much brighter than the effulgence it emits. This view accords very well with our unmystical theory of gospel light, but not with their position.

I propose here to refer in order to all the other places where the word occurs, that we may have the usage of the sacred writers to show its meaning: these places are ten only; as Luke, 11: 36. 1 Cor. 45. Eph. 1: 18. 39. 2 Tim. 1: 10. Heb. 64. 10: 32. Rev. 18: 1. 21: 23. 22: 5.

« PreviousContinue »