Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

fuses the gospel, because he cannot find in his heart to give them up. What are we to make of his case? Eternal death is the wages of his unbelief, and he must suffer it :-but the moral causes of that unbelief are themselves, in spirit and in fact, violations of the law,-which violations the theory affirms to be pardoned; and how can he suffer it? To this we might add, that there are many sins to which unbelief itself leads, and into which the malignant spirit of it enters, but which are also, at the same time, violations of the law. What is to be made of these? Is the unbelief to be punished, and the sins to be pardoned?-Although, therefore, there is the appearance of explicitness in the distinction made between the punishment of sins against the law and the punishment of unbelief; yet, in fact, the principles of the two are so much the same, the evils of both are so intimately blended, and their reciprocal influence is so close and so constant, that in appropriating their respective deserts it seems impossible to separate them; so that the same thing must be both pardoned and punished.

Secondly. I have already referred to the obvious difficulty, with which the abettors of universal pardon feel their scheme encumbered, arising from those texts in which the forgiveness of sin is promised to sinners who repent and turn to God by faith in Christ;-such texts as," Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out :”"Let him return unto the Lord, for he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Now the general principle of the quotation from Mr. Erskine is adopted for solving this difficulty. This, however, appears preposterous in the extreme. A distinction is made between what are called the first and the second condemnations; the former meaning condemnation for offences against the law,--the latter condemnation

66

for rejecting the gospel. And such passages are disposed of at once, by saying, they relate to sins of the second condemnation. I have called this solution preposterous: and I cannot but think that any who have adopted it must be satisfied, on a moment's reflection, that the term is not misapplied. The only question is, are such passages as those just cited invitations of the gospel? To this question it is impossible to give a negative answer. Must not the invitations of the gospel, then, when the offer of pardon is held out, have reference to sins of a previously existing condemnation? Suppose the gospel message presented to a company of sinners for the first time. What do we mean, when, after stating its simple facts and truths, we say to suchRepent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out?" If they have not heard the gospel before, they have no sins, according to the theory of universal pardon, but what are already blotted How literally preposterous it is, to imagine the offer of pardon to relate to sins that are yet to be contracted!-and to be contracted too by the very rejection of the offer! An offer of pardon is held out for no existing sin; but there is sin incurred by the rejection of this offered forgiveness of nothing; and this is the sin of which the forgiveness is to be obtained by accepting the offer! To such palpable contradiction and absurdity does this solution reduce us. It must be plain to the capacity of a babe, that the deliverance which the gospel offers must be deliverance from a condemnation existing previously to its announcement; and not merely from a condemnation to be induced by the refusal of it. When Christ says to the Jews-" If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins;" the very terms of his address imply, that the sins of which he speaks are sins which existed previously to their unbelief, in the guilt of which their

out.

unbelief would confirm and leave them, and from which, if they should believe, their faith would deliver them. I am not denying the guilt of unbelief. I am satisfied that it is a sin of the very deepest dye. But what I say is, that unbelief, and the guilt arising from it, cannot be that of which sinners are promised the pardon when the gospel message first comes to their ears. This would be like offering a remedy for a disease, which has no existence when the remedy is offered, but which is to be induced by the refusal to take it.

Thirdly. The objection made to spiritual death being regarded as a part of the penal consequences of the first transgression, is not a new one. It is not without plausibility; but when terms are properly explained, it will not stand. Is there no difference between falling into sin, and being left, in consequence, to a permanently depraved state of soul, a state of alienation from God, and incapacity for enjoying him? The only question is, whether this abandonment of man to the sway of those selfish and sensual principles that had been insinuated into his heart, was a consequence of his original apostacy. If it was, (and at present I must be allowed to assume it,) it must have been a judicial consequence. And without question, being left in this state of moral depravation and spiritual incapacity, is the greatest of all possible evils. It was the first effect of sin, and an effect that has come down to all the successive generations and individuals of mankind, without exception. Every renewed and spiritual mind will regard this as the very bitterest ingredient of the curse, and the most awful and affecting part of the judicial consequences of transgression. When we speak of God as inflicting this part of the curse, we mean, not of course that he produced or infused, or even by direct influence confirmed, any principles of evil; but simply that

he left man under the dominion of those which he had voluntarily admitted. The same thing is repeatedly said of God, and said when punitive visitation is plainly intended. The reader may look to such passages as Rom. i. 24, 26, 28. Psal. lxxxi. 12, &c. Although not of the nature of direct and positive infliction; this is certainly the most fearful of all possible negations, or privative judgments.But the truth is, although I have suggested these few simple observations, the discussion is irrelevant to our present inquiry. I proceed, therefore, to notice

Fourthly. The unaccountable oversight, and consequent inconsistency, into which the writer of the preceding statement has fallen :-not indeed that I should greatly marvel at it,—for truth alone is in harmony with itself. He says-"The death denounced by the law was just the separation of soul and body. This does not, however, make the penalty nugatory; for the soul which had shut God out must have been miserable in its state of separation from the body."-Now, first of all, is not this an admission, that, but for this misery of the soul, the penalty would have been nugatory; and yet the soul's misery is not allowed to have formed any part of the penalty! What, then, is this, but denying and admitting, in the very same sentence, that the misery of the soul forms part of the legal penalty or curse denounced against sin, as well as the death of the body? And yet the author goes on to say"This was the sentence on the whole race; and whilst it remained, it must have kept every man in his grave; it must have lain upon every man like a tomb-stone, and kept him down; no one could have risen. But if death be the penalty, resurrection is the reversal of the penalty? And what is pardon but a reversal of a penalty? It is true, then, of every man who is to be raised from the dead, that

with regard to him the sentence of the law is reversed, or, in other words, that he is pardoned. But we know that there is to be a resurrection of the whole race, both of the just and of the unjust. Every man is to be raised, the unbeliever as well as the believer. So that, with regard to every man, the penalty of the law is reversed, that is, he is pardoned."-But is it not a marvellous thing, that in this argument, an argument which, but for the talent of its framer, I should have said had scarcely speciousness enough to catch even the least reflecting minds, that in this argument, the poor miserable soul appears to have slipped out of remembrance; and the attention to have been confined to a part of the curse which, irrespectively of that misery, had just been admitted to be comparatively nugatory.— Had the writer said nothing about the soul at all, we might have placed him in such a dilemma as the following:-Is the soul, in its state of separation, happy or miserable? If, when at death it quits the body, it be happy, (and if happy, it must be holy,)-then all the evils consequent on sin, all the penal effects of transgression, are confined to this life and to the body; the soul partakes not at all of the wages of sin, and it needs, therefore, no redemption : if, on the other hand, the soul in its separate state be miserable, then we have something more than dissolution, or temporal death, as the wages of transgression, we have the very second death which the theory denies to be any part of these wages! The abettors of the theory in general may again choose between the horns of this dilemma. Our author, however, has saved us the necessity of pressing it, by making his choice. He grants the misery of the soul in its state of separation from the body; but, very inconsiderately, proceeds to argue, as if the death of the body were all that constituted the penalty of sin. He involves himself in another

« AnteriorContinuar »