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SCRIPTURAL CONTENTION FOR THE FAITH

EXPLAINED.

PART I.

66 THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED UNTO THE SAINTS," VIEWED AS AN OBJECT OF INCALCULABLE IMPORTANCE, AND SPECIAL INTEREST; ARISING FROM THE PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF ITS PRESENT JEOPARDY.

has

TRUTH, in its genuine form, in every age been exposed to injury and perversion. As pristine innocence was not long preserved inviolate in paradise, so gospel truth soon lost its virgin purity and simplicity in the Church of Christ. The stream of primitive christianity soon mingled in its course with Judaizing principles, Gnostic philosophy, Pagan polytheism, and Romish superstition. The early corruptions of christianity have been a theme on which sceptical writers have wickedly exulted; whilst men of another spirit would willingly, if possible, have thrown over it all an impenetrable veil. But the fact, melancholy and painfully humiliating as it is, could not be concealed,

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STATE OF THE EARLY CHURCHES.

that the faith once delivered to the saints, in its entireness and purity, was not long preserved unadulterated from the admixture of human error in the Christian Church, after the death and resurrection of the august Founder of our holy religion. For scarcely had our divine and glorious Redeemer finished the work of man's salvation, and ascended to heaven-scarcely had New Testament churches been gathered together, and organized by the primitive preachers of the gospel, before heresies and schisms began to appear in these infant communities, and "men arose speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them." And thus we see that delusive errors, in vast varieties of form and virulence, like swarms of destructive locusts, soon invaded the fair territory of the primitive church, and bereft of much of its beauty, verdure, and fertility the fragrant and flourishing garden of the Lord. It was this lamentable state of things, which led the apostle Jude to exhort those who were "sanctified by God the Father, preserved in Christ Jesus, and called," " to earnestly contend for the faith." For (says he) "there are certain men crept in unawares, ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." The same necessity as existed in

ST. JUDE'S EXHORTATION.

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apostolic times, bears, perhaps with equal or even with more urgency, upon every lover of divine truth in the present day.

Now, by the very strong and peculiar phraseology adopted by Jude, we may reasonably conclude, that the object for which he recommends such earnestness-an earnestness similar to that exhibited by the wrestlers and gladiators when struggling and fighting for the "corruptible crown" in the Olympic Games-must be something of vast and superlative value, and rendered an object of still additional interest from the circumstance of its liability to injury, and exposedness to assault and danger. It is the part of foolish children to contend for trifles, and it were folly to agonize for that which is base and valueless. Straws are not worth contention; but for crowns and kingdoms, for scriptural principles, and for "the faith," men have been often found who would expose their lives, and even willingly shed their blood. And it is "THE FAITH" once delivered to the saints, for which Jude sounds the trump of war, and which he points to, as an object every way worthy of awakening the most intense solicitude, and as demanding and warranting, on the part of every faithful soldier of Jesus, the most strenuous contention and self-denying exertions. The term 66 THE FAITH," by an usual meto

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66 THE FAITH." ITS IMPORT.

nymy, is frequently in scriptural phraseology put for the objects and subjects of faith, viz. the doctrines, the precepts, the duties of the gospel. It is in this sense that the term is used by the apostle Paul in Romans iii. 31, where he says, "Do we then make void the law through faith [or the gospel as opposed to the law]? God forbid; yea, we establish the law:" also in Galatians iii. 23, the apostle uses the term "faith" to signify the gospel, and says, "But before faith [or the gospel] came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith [the gospel] which should afterwards be revealed." "'* From these quotations, then, it is sufficiently evident that the term "the faith," as thus summarily used, is frequently intended to denote-the whole revealed system of divine truth, as contained in the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures; and which, as including doctrine and duty, namely, the dogmata (or principles) to be believed, and the practices to be embodied in our lives, whether acting in the world or worshipping in the church, is variously denominated as-the word of Godthe word of faith-the mystery of faith-the common faith-your most holy faith. Now as to this sublime system of divinely inspired

* See Luther on the Galatians, Macknight on the Epistles, and Hodges on the Romans.

66 THE FAITH." ITS NECESSITY.

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truths, it may well be emphatically designated, by way of supreme and deserved distinction,

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THE FAITH," seeing that it must be received in the exercise of a cordial, a confiding, an implicit faith. For although there is nothing revealed in it against the principles of right reason, yet many of the mysterious doctrines of holy scripture are infinitely above and far beyond erring reason's unassisted limited powers and puny grasp; and hence, the ignorance of man and the natural present darkness of his depraved understanding require divine irradiation, before he can properly apprehend and savingly receive the fundamental doctrines of our "most holy faith." Accordingly, man's mental obscurity, sin, and misery being acknowledged, his present degenerate state proves the absolute necessity that exists for all the merciful revelations and provisions of the gospel. And so, whilst the work of the blessed Redeemer exhibits the plan and substance of the gospel, and the promised influences of the Holy Spirit secure and seal the application of the several blessings of the gospel; at last, the unveiled glories of heaven, as witnessed by the blood-bought and triumphant church above, will collectively and eternally realize, all that "the faith," revealed in the glorious gospel of the ever-blessed God; and of which it may be truly said, "This is the

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