John Stoughton

“ Whereas, on the other side, the Gospel is set forth “as a mighty efflux and emanation of life and spirit, freely issuing forth from an omnipotent source of grace and love, as that true, God-like, vital influence whereby the Divinity derives itself into the souls of men, enlivening and transforming them into its own likeness, and strongly imprinting upon them a copy of its own beauty and goodness; like the spermatical virtue of the heavens, which spreads itself freely upon this lower world, and, subtily insinuating itself into this benumbed, feeble, earthly matter, begets life and motion in it. ”

“ Baptism not only pardons past sins, but puts us into a state of pardon for time to come. It is a sanctification by the spirit of grace. It is the suppletory of original righteousness. Its effects are illumination, new life, and a holy resurrection. In short, by baptism we are saved. After having thus, in the most unqualified way, exhausted, one might suppose, all which imagination could conceive of the efficacy of the rite, Taylor says, there is less need to descend to temporal blessings, or rare contingencies, or miraculous events, or probable notices of things less certain ”

“ IV. The method of the covenant is gracious. All its provisions depend entirely upon the grace of Christ. But salvation is not through any Divine predestination of the will of man. God determines not what the moral acts of His creatures shall be in themselves, but only the practical results of them. The soul is free from necessity, though not from bondage; and the doctrine of the predetermination of the human will is not the root but the rooting up of freedom and of Christianity. Nothing formally determines the will of man, but his own act. ”

“ So at times, when reading the homely applications of Bible stories in Puritan writers, are we not reminded of these works of art; do we not feel that amidst a great deal which provokes criticism, and which may make one smile, there is in the Puritan writer, as in the mediæval painter, an instinct of truth, and an insight into the connection between the Bible and common life, most profound, most keen, most admirable? ”

“ It was usual with most of the Puritan Divines, in harmony with the order of thought pursued in the Westminster formularies, to start with the doctrine of the Divine decrees; to regard, as the foundation of all theology, the idea of God having resolved to save a certain number of human beings; and to view all the processes of redeeming love, as simply designed to accomplish that resolution. They did not deny the responsibility of all men in a certain sense, and they were ready to maintain the righteousness of God, as they understood it, against any who dared to impugn that righteousness. ”

“ The Malmesbury philosopher, Hobbes, and, still earlier, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in their free-thinking speculations, long before any great movement took place at Cambridge, not only laid religion open to the inroads of infidelity, but aided and abetted attacks upon its citadel: Herbert, by denying the necessity of a Scripture revelation, Hobbes by representing Christianity as resting on a foundation, which no reasonable man can tolerate for a moment. Thus widely, for good and for evil, free thought was at work in Europe. ”

“ In 1669, he formally and publicly, before the University, recanted the following opinions which he had formerly maintained: that all right of dominion is founded only in power—that moral righteousness is based on the law of the Magistrate—that the authority of Scripture rests on the same foundation—that whatsoever the Civil Government commanded is to be obeyed, although it may be contrary to Divine laws, and “that there is a desirable glory in being, and in being reputed an Atheist—which I implied when I expressly affirmed that I gloried to be an Hobbist and an Atheist.” ”

“ When we examine the essence of Latitudinarianism, and find that it consisted in the elevation of morals above dogmas, in the assertion of charity against bigotry, in abstinence from a curious prying into mysteries, yet in the culture of a spirit of free investigation, we see that there might be lying concealed under much which is truly excellent, elements of a different description. Scepticism might nestle under all this virtue, and all this tolerance—under this love of what is reasonable, and this habit of liberal inquiry. ”

“ Perhaps not one of the whole class of theological writers at the time, able as they were, could be justly esteemed the equal of that magnificent moral philosopher and theologian in the days of Queen Elizabeth, Richard Hooker, or the compeer even of Thomas Jackson, whose power, learning, and eloquence so brightly adorned the Church in the reign of James I. Jeremy Taylor, no doubt, had received Heaven’s gift of genius in the form of imagination, and a power of musical expression in prose such as no one else could rival, not even John Milton ”

“ One great cause of the popularity of the Bishops may be found in the men themselves, in their unmistakeable honesty of purpose, in their zeal for Constitutional Government, in their professions of liberality towards other Protestant denominations, and certainly not a little, in their social virtues and their Christian piety. [158] Their advocacy of the Reformed faith carried all its disciples along with them, their readiness to suffer for the Established religion inspired with affection the bosom of Churchmen, and their overtures of reconciliation touched the hearts of Nonconformists. ”

“ Owen, perhaps, was more strict in his views of Sabbath observance than Baxter; yet he spoke of its being no small mistake that men have laboured more to multiply directions about external duties than to direct a due sanctification of the day according to the spirit and genius of Gospel obedience; and he did not deny that some, measuring others by themselves, tied people up unto such long tiresome duties, and rigid abstinences from refreshments, as clogged their minds, and turned the whole service of the day into a wearisome bodily exercise which profiteth little. ”

“ They believed in justification by faith, in conversion to God, in the gracious work of the Holy Spirit upon the human soul, and in the riches of Divine mercy manifested throughout the salvation of men, as firmly and deeply as did any of those who most fervently proclaimed the doctrines of election, effectual calling, and perseverance. Neither their philosophy, nor their logic, nor their religion, led them to identify the one class of ideas with the other. ”

“ The idea of Christ’s imputed righteousness is considered by many evangelical Divines as at the best a theoretical key to explain the fact of justification, rather than as an essential element of the doctrine. Some hold the fact without accepting the explanation, not finding it to be a key at all. But the state of opinion was widely different in Owen’s day, the whole atmosphere of controversy was different; he and others identified imputation with justification, and fought for it as for the hearth of truth, as for the altar of God. ”

“ It is easy for a man of one-sided views to be consistent; but who that loves truth for the truth’s sake, and wishes to see as much of it as is possible in this world of imperfect knowledge, will value consistency of that kind? Baxter was not one-sided, but strove to look at every subject on its many sides, if it has many; and to reconcile aspects of truth which to hasty and prejudiced thinkers seem contradictory. ”

“ Much is made, by our High Church brethren, of the persecution which lingers amidst legal toleration. They point to attacks in the newspapers, to slander privately circulated, to innuendo and defamation, to irritation and annoyance in subtle forms; but no social persecution complained of in the present day, can be compared with what Nonconformists, in addition to fines, imprisonments, and brutal treatment, had to endure, when such a Christian gentleman and scholar as John Howe scarcely dared to walk the streets. ”

“ He proceeds, indeed, to explain that neither the private teaching of the Spirit of God to the individual soul on the one hand, nor the authority of the Church in relation to men in general on the other, can be the ground of believing. But, on that account, he does not enthrone human reason. He adds, that there is obscurity in Scripture, all truth being in it not explicitly but only implicitly; and he argues that whilst the Bible is sufficient in one sense, it is not so in another, and that it therefore needs such interpretation as is supplied by the traditions of the Church. ”

“ If immense popularity, if the possession of a spell which can hold fast minds of all orders, be a test of genius, then Baxter must be allowed to have possessed it in a high degree. In activity of thought and in keenness of perception, in the grasp of his knowledge and in the retentiveness of his memory, in dialectic skill and in logical fencing, Baxter is acknowledged to have had no superior, if any equal, in his own day, and he would have been worthy of a lot amongst the mediæval schoolmen, to whose list of doctors his might have added another characteristic name. ”

“ As we ought not, then, to despise and contemn that which is below, so let us not censure and condemn that which is above us. Blessed be God, all good souls, in the midst of their greatest distances from one another here below, do all meet in the Divine comprehension above. We are all enfolded in the Divine arms, we are all encircled in the Divine love. ”

“ The bright side of Quakerism lies in the marked elevation of the moral above the intellectual, of the spiritual above the formal, of the Divine above the human, of the work of God above the work of man: and it is as a corollary from the master principle of the whole system, the principle of the inner light, rather than as a deduction from reason or from expediency, or even [375] from Scripture, that there is contained in Quaker literature such a distinct enunciation of men’s right, universally, to the freedom of religious speech and of religious worship. ”

“ Religion does not centre in intellectual opinions, but in the affections of the heart, and the volitions of the will. Consequently, we have been able to trace, with more or less distinctness, the presence and power of real piety in all the great schools of theological thought, which have come under our review. We recognize amongst men of different creeds, of different forms of worship, of different ecclesiastical polities, members of the one Holy Catholic Church, because we discover in them that faith, devotion, and morality, which are the constituent elements of true religion. ”

“ Without repeating what I have said in a former volume, respecting the varieties of spiritual life, I would observe, that it is of very great importance to distinguish between religion and theology: between spiritual life in man, and the philosophy of its causes, its nature, and its modes of operation. ”

“ DEVELOPMENT OF NONCONFORMITY.
To build upon the platforms of the Westminster Assembly and the Long Parliament, had become impossible. It was a hopeless thing to think of forming classes, of meeting in synods, and of exercising parish discipline, such as had been the ideal of twenty or thirty years before—of instituting schools of virtue and religion in towns and villages, where the pastor should have the rod of the magistrate to enforce the belief of truth, and the practice of goodness. ”

“ Faith is rooted “in the affection of the will, not in the perfection of the understanding.” Yet good works are entirely the production of Divine grace. [381] [273] Though the Fathers are free to acknowledge, with St. Paul, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they are, on the other side, so copious in attributing the promises of the Gospel to Christian obedience, that it may be truly said, there is not one of them from whom sufficient authority may not be drawn in favour of it: a concurrence which amounts to a tradition of the whole Church upon this important point. ”

“ I will quote one passage, which, whilst a specimen of his style, is more than ordinarily impregnated with mysticism in the substance of the thought:—
“God comes into our nature, as the root of each single person. Here He becomes our Jesus, making Himself a new seed; out of this seed He brings forth a new image of Divinity, by which He breaks through the image of the devil and nature, brings forth man out of them, brings them into subjection to this growing beauty. ”

“ In other words, to treat Theology, which ought to be thoroughly understood by Christian teachers, as if it were entirely comprehended within the first simple primitive creed,—as if that creed, [298] regarded as seminally containing all Christian doctrine, and as actually drawn out by the study of Scripture, and devout reflection into theological particulars, were a sufficient standard of orthodoxy for those who are teachers of others,—betrays a manner of thinking in which scarcely a second Anglican teacher could be found to agree. ”

“ The Anglican watchwords were,—orders, sacraments, faith, grace. The Puritan watchwords were—the Bible, grace, truth, faith. Both parties believed that men are saved by grace through faith; but the one connected the salvation chiefly with sacraments, the other with truth.
In considering the theology of the Puritans, we ought carefully to notice differences amongst them, and I shall therefore subdivide them into three classes—the Calvinistic, the Arminian, and the Intermediate. I begin with the Calvinists, and shall select Thomas Goodwin and John Owen. ”