THE
MISSION OF THE COMFORTER,
WITH NOTES.
By JULIUS CHARLES HARE, MA.,
u
RECTOR OF IIERSTMONCSUX, ARCHDEACON' OF LEWES, AND
LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
FOURTH EDITION.
EDITED BY
E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AT RING'S COLLEGE, LONDON ; VICAR OF MCKLKT ;
PREBENDARY OF bT. PAI'L'8. _^*^^5^^^
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UHI7BRSIT7;
fonbon: ^JTOlKf^
MACMILLAN AND CO.,
1877.
All rights reserved.
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flcintel) at the Snibcrsitu $»**,
BY ROBERT MACLEIIOSE.
TO THE HONOURED MEMORY
OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
THE CHRISTIAN^PHILOSOPHER,
WHO THROUGH DARK AND WINDING PATHS OF SPECULATION
WAS LED TO THE LIGHT,
IN ORDER THAT OTHERS BY HaS GUIDANCE MIGHT REACH THAT LIGHT,
WITHOUT PASSING THROUGH THE DARKNESS,
THESE SERMONS ON THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT
ARE DEDICATED
WITH DEEP THANKFULNESS AND REVERENCE
BY ONE OF THE MANY PUPILS
WHOM HIS WRITINGS HAVE HELPT TO DISCERN
THE SACRED CONCORD AND UNITY
OF HUMAN AND DIVINE TRUTH.
X T I C E.
The work of an Editor in such a republication as this is
little more than nominal, and but for the fact that it
appears as a companion volume to the edition of The
Victory of Faith, in which I have taken a somewhat
larger share, my name might well have been absent both
from title-page and cover. I am but too glad, however,
to associate myself with the memory of a teacher to whom
I pwe much, and whose name and fame are dear to me,
and I welcome the opportunity which the demand for a
new edition gives me of expressing my thankfulness that
1 was not mistaken in believing that many students,
both among the clergy and the laity, would welcome the
guidance which these discourses give them. Whatever
truth there may be, and I am the last to question that there
is much, in the thought that each generation of thinkers
in religion or philosophy has its own problems and difli-
eolties to face, and must, in the nature of things, look to
vn teachers and prophets to solve them, it yet remains
tin.' that those which fall to the lot of the children are
understood when we trace their evolution from
which were encountered by the fathers, and that
there can be no better training for those who have to
contend, as against the denials of unbelief or the exag-
ions of superstition, for the " truth once delivered to
the saints," than that which is given by tracing the stages
NOTICE.
of conflict and of victory through which the thinkers of the
generation that lies immediately behind u^ passed from
doubt to certainty, or, if not to certainty, to a confidence
which brought with it nearly the same strength and the
same obligations.*^
I cannot close these few lines without remembering that
one of the greatest of those thinkers has, since the last
edition of The Mission of the Comforter was published,
been gathered to his rest, and that the names of Connop
Thirlwall and Julius Hare now live united in the
memories of men, as the men themselves were united,
during many years of their lives, in thoughts and counsels
and labours, and throughout by an unbroken friendship.
It is at once interesting and significant that the last
published words of the great Bishop of St David's, in
defending himself and others against the reproach of
belonging to a u Broad Church party" * should have
shewn that the reverence which he felt for the intellect
and character of his friend was not impaired by the wear
and tear of time, or the separation caused by death, and
that, when he placed before his own mind and that of
others what seemed to him typical and representative
instances of the true temper of a wide and liberal
theology, he coupled together the names of Jeremy
Taylor and Julius Hare.
E. H. P.
Bickley Vicarage, November 29, 1876.
* Contemporary Review for October 1876 (printed after the
Bishop's death).
[rrsivB&siTT]
PREFACE.
These Sermons on the Mission of the Comforter were
preach t before the University of Cambridge in March
1840. My original intention was to point out, in the
concluding Sermon, how the work of the Comforter in all
its parts is fulfilled by His taking of the things of Christ,
and shewing them to us. But, to treat this subject ade-
quately, it would have been requisite to show how Christ,
as God manifest in the flesh, and as the Reconciler of
man to God, is, and ever has been, and ever must be, the
one Principle and Source of all life and of all light, both
collectively and individually, in His Church ; and such a
tin -me was far too vast for a single sermon. Indeed,
beside the inexhaustible fulness of this truth, when con-
templated in itself ideally, and in its relations to the
fallen state of man, and to the history of the Church, the
ition of it would have led to a consideration of those
notions of Christ's personality, which regard Him as
the mere Founder of a system, whether morally or philo-
sophical, or religious, and place Him at the head of it, but
leave the system to work itself out through the impulse
it originally received. This would have superinduced
an examination of the most recent form of Socinianism,
tli> Straussian, which, after denying the Son and the
viii PREFACE.
Spirit, has ended by denying the Father also, and has
rolled out of the chaos of Pantheism into the blank abyss
of Atheism. To contend against and to exterminate this
primary errour, under all its forms, by the assertion of the
divine personality of Christ, of the redemption and recon-
ciliation He has wrought for mankind, and of His abiding-
presence in His Church through the Spirit glorifying
Him, and to establish these primary truths on irrefraga-
ble grounds, philological, historical, and philosophical, as
well as theological^ is the great work of our age : . and all
who are striving for the truth are bringing then* contri-
butions of one kind or other for the erection of this
heavenly temple. It would be a blessed reward if any-
thing in this volume may in any way forward the carry-
ing on of this work.
To the Sermons I have appended a considerable body
of Notes. Several questions of theological and ethical
interest having been toucht on in them, as alone they
could be, cursorily and generally, I wisht to support the
opinions exprest by more definite arguments, and by the
authority of wiser men. As there is so much difficulty
and obscurity in the brief, pregnant verses, in which our
Lord declares the threefold work of the Comforter, I
thought it might be useful to give a sketch of the manner
in which those verses have been interpreted by the chief
divines in the various ages of the Church, and that, if
this sketch were illustrated by extracts from those divines,
it might aid the theological student in forming an estimate
of the kind of light he may expect from the principal
periods in the history of Theology. For, while the
revived study of the theology of earlier ages, if carried on
critically, with a discernment of that which each age had
to effect toward the progressive unfolding of the truth, in
PREFACE.
its world-embracing highth and depth and breadth and
fulness, cannot be otherwise than beneficial ; on the other
hand, if, as we have seen happen in a number of instances,
the end of this study is merely to make us repeat by rote
what was said in the fourth century, or in the fourteenth ,
instead of becoming wiser, we shall become foolisher.
Even the swallow's twitter and the sparrow's chirp are
pleasanter than the finest notes of the mocking-bird. So
the merest truisms of our own age are better than the
truths of former ages, unless these are duly appropriated
and assimilated to the body of our thoughts. Our intel-
lectual food also, if it is to nourish and strengthen us,
must be thoroughly digested. They who complain of
this, and call it presumption if we exercise our under-
standings on the lessons handed down to us, and do not
receive them implicitly in reliance on the wisdom of our
teachers, might as rationally call it presumption in us
that we do not swallow our food, without allowing our
audacious teeth to masticate it, and our gastric processes
to separate the nutritive part from the excremental. For
such an unreasonable, spurious humility there is but one
natural home. They who swallow the theology either of
the Fathers, or of the Middle Ages, in the gross, find
themselves out of place in a Protestant Church; and while
they wish to revive the Church of the Middle Ages, and
confound faith with credulity, they are just fitted for the
gummier of their reason and conscience to the arbitrary
iranditfti of the Papacy.
In the course of the Notes several occasions presented
selves for speaking on questions which have been
id the controversies of the day; nor have I
Bhumned them. Above all I have felt it an especial duty
to call the attention of my readers again and again
PREFACE.
to the inestimable blessings of the Reformation, as
evinced in the expansion of theology, no less than in the
purification of religion. There are times indeed when
one may be willing to throw a veil over the faults and
sins of another Church ; even as in the ordinary inter-
course of life one is willing, in the hope of better things,
to overlook much that may have been very reprehensible
in a neighbour. But if the neighbour challenges scrutiny,
if he reviles his betters, if he inveigles others to join him
in reviling them, he must bear the penalty which he
draws down on his own head. In like manner, now that
the battle of the Reformation is renewed, now that the
Reformers are attackt with unscrupulous ignorance and
virulence, now that the principles which animated them
are impugned and denied, now that the whole course of
events previously and subsequently, as well as at the time,
is strangely misrepresented and distorted, it becomes
necessary to defend the truth, not only by asserting its
majesty and repelling its foes, but also by carrying the
war into the enemy's country. If it be put as a question
still hanging on the balance, whether our Church is a
true Church, or whether the Church of Rome is the
only true one, we must not allow false charity to
deter us from bringing forward the marks which prove
the Church of Rome to be in so many of its features
utterly antichristian.
Here it is right to state that the observations on the
development of Christian doctrine in Note G were
printed long before the publication of Mr Newman's
work on that subject. Their purpose was to help the
reader in forming a correct notion on a matter, on which,
it seemed to me, very erroneous opinions had been pro-
mulgated in Mr Newman's Sermon before the University
PREFACE. xi
of Oxford, and in the writings of some of his followers,
opinions caught up somewhat hastily and superficially
from certain German Romanists, without a clear percep-
tion either of their grounds or their tendencies, or even of
the truth they involved ; while the extraordinary infer-
ences drawn from them made the very word development
a byword of alarm with the opposite party. To Mr. New-
man's recent work I have purposely avoided all reference.
Other occasions for speaking of it will arise, if indeed
there be any necessity of adding to what has already been
said by my brother-in-law, Mr. Maurice, in the Preface to
his Warburtonian Lectures, and by Professor Butler in
the excellent series of Letters which he has inserted in
the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette.
Another object which I have kept in view more or less,
while collecting the materials for the Notes, has been to
famish the theological student with a few hints or guide-
posts, so to say, when he enters into the region of German
theology; which many are wont to regard as a vast
wilderness peopled with "Gorgons and Hydras and
Chimeras dire." That the views conveyed in Mr. Rose's
denunciation were utterly erroneous, we were taught in
some measure by Dr Pusey in his answers, the most
valuable theologically of his writings. Ignorance how-
ever has not been silenced, and, when it is maledicent, is
sure to find a credulous auditory; and thus even Mr
Dewar's worthless book is quoted and extolled as an
authority. That there is an enormous mass of evil, of
sli allow presumption, of ostentatious folly, of wild ex-
travagance, in the German theology of the last half
century, I have no disposition to deny : nevertheless they
who know what has really been done in Germany since
the publication of Kant's great work, must also know
x ii PREFACE.
that in Germany the mighty intellectual war of Chris-
tendom has been waged, and is now going on. If the
host of evil has become subtiler and more audacious, the
army of the faith has also become much stronger ; and
able champions of the truth are continually raised up,
who defend the truth, not by shutting their eyes to its
difficulties, and hooting at its adversaries, but by calmly
refuting those adversaries, and solving the difficulties,
with the help of weapons derived from a higher philology
and philosophy. In the wish of introducing some of these
better German divines to the English reader, I have
availed myself of such opportunities as occurred for
inserting extracts from them, many of which, I trust, will
be found to justify the foregoing commendation.
Of recent English writers, the one with whose sanction I
have chiefly desired, whenever I could, here or elsewhere, to
strengthen my opinions, is the great religious philosopher,
to whom the mind of our generation in England owes more
than to any other man. My gratitude to him I have en-
deavoured to express by dedicating the following Sermons
to his memory ; and the offering is so far at least appro-
priate, in that the main work of his life was to spiritualize,
not only our philosophy, but our theology, to raise them
both above the empiricism, into which they had long been
dwindling, and to set them free from the technical tram-
mels of logical systems. Whether he is as much studied
by the genial young men of the present day, as he was
twenty or thirty years ago, I have no adequate means of
judging : but our theological literature teems with errours,
such as could hardly have been committed by persons
whose minds had been disciplined by his philosophical
method, and had rightly appropriated his principles. So
far too as my observation has extended, the third and
PREFACE.
fourth volumes of his Remains, though they were hailed
with delight by Arnold on their first appearance, have
not yet produced their proper effect on the intellect of the
age. It may be that the rich store of profound and
beautiful thought contained in them has been weighed
down, from being mixed with a few opinions on points of
Biblical criticism, likely to be very offensive to persons
who know nothing about the history of the Canon.
Some of these opinions, to which Coleridge himself has
ascribed a good deal of importance, seem to me of little
worth ; some to be decidedly erroneous. Philological
criticism, indeed all matters requiring a laborious and
accurate investigation of details, were alien from the bent
and habits of his mind ; and his exegetical studies, such
as they were, took place at a period when he had little
better than the meagre Rationalism of Eichhorn and
Bertholdt to help him. Of the opinions which he
imbibed from them, some abode with him through life.
These however, along with everything else that can justly
be objected to in the Remains, do not form the twentieth
part of the whole, and may easily be separated from the
remainder. Nor do they detract in any way from the
sterling sense, the clear and farsighted discernment, the
power of tracing principles in their remotest operations,
and of referring all things to their first principles, which
are manifested in almost eveiy page, and from which we
t learn so much. There may be some indeed, who
fancy that Coleridge's day is gone by, and that we have
advanced beyond him. I have seen him numbered, along
with other persons who would have been no less surprised
at their p i • i on and company, among the pioneers who
prepared the way for our new theological school. This
fathering of Tractarianism, as it is termed, upon
xiv PREFACE.
Coleridge well deserves to rank beside the folly which
would father Rationalism upon Luther. Coleridge's far-
reaching vision did indeed discern the best part of the
speculative truths which our new school has laid hold on
and exaggerated and perverted. But in Coleridge's field
of view they were comprised along with the cornplemental
truths which limit them, and in their conjunction and
-coordination with which alone they retain the beneficent
power of truth. He saw what our modern theologians
see, though it was latent from the vulgar eye in his
■days : but he also saw what they do not see, what they
have closed their eyes on ; and he saw far beyond them,
because he saw things in their universal principles and
laws.
I know not whether I need remark that the Sermons
are of course complete in themselves, and that, though
the Notes are suggested by them, and are intended to
illustrate them, they are not meant to be read so as to
interrupt the argument of the text, but may more suitably
be reserved till afterwards.
Hekstmonceux, Whit-Tuesday, June 2d, 1846.
In republishing these Sermons on the Mission of the
Comforter, I have separated them from those which were
subjoined to them in the first edition ; and I have reserved
the overgrown Note in vindication of Luther for a volume
by itself. To the other Notes a few additions have been
made, of which the most important are extracts from
PREFACE.
Stier's admirable Exposition of our Lord's Discourses. I
have also added an index, in compliance with wishes
exprest in several quarters.
My recognition that there is anything good in German
Theology, and my attempt to point out where that good is
to be found, have excited some vehement denunciations,
as I expected, from those who know nothing about it.
One of these I answered, in a Pamphlet, which the
conduct of my assailant led me to head with the words of
the Ninth Commandment. My answer was followed by
a reply in the next number of the English Review. But
when gross misrepresentations, after being thoroughly
exposed, are unretracted, and attempts are made to defend
them by shuffling evasions, no benefit can arise from the
continuance of such a controversy. May the Spirit of
Truth watch over our Church, and preserve us from all
the subtile temptations of the Father of lies ! Never
were such temptations more deceptive than now: never
had he more emissaries stalking abroad. He lies in wait
at the door of every heart : he tries to creep in under the
guise of some holy feeling. Nevertheless let us hold fast
to the conviction that, though he is the Prince of this
world, yet he has been judged.
Herstmonceux, November 12th, 1850.
<^ > Of TH1
r TJ5ryBRSITT]
CONTENTS.
SERMON L
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE.
John xvi. 7. pac k
Nevertheless I tell you the truth : it is expedient for you that I
j;<) away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to
you ; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. . . .1
SERMON II.
THE CONVICTION OF SIN.
John xvi. 8, 9.
When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin,
and of Righteousness, and of Judgement ; of Sin, because they
believe not in Me. . . . . . . .31
SERMON III.
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
John xvi. 8, 10.
When the Comforter is come, Ho will convince the world of Sin,
and of Righteousness, and of Judgement ; of Righteousness, because
• My Father, and ye see Me no more. . 7.'i
SERMON IV.
TH« CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT.
John xvi. 8, 11.
When the Comforter is come, He will Convince the world of Sin,
Ri .-hteousness, and of Judgement ; of Judgement, because
tli- I'rincc of this world is judged. . . . .110
CONTENTS.
SERMON V.
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER.
Johnxvi. 8— 11. r*«
When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin,
and of Righteousness, and of Judgement ; of Sin, because they
believe not in Me ; of Righteousness, because I go to My Father,
and ye see Me no more ; of Judgement, because the Prince of this
world is judged. . . . . • • • ' $&
183
Note A.
Analogies to the Expediency of Christ's Departure.
Note B.
On John xvi. 13. Errours in our Translation from the use of a
Latin Version. How the Spirit will lead us to all Truth . . 18(5
Note C.
Christ's exaltation consequent on His departure. His promise
to Peter. . . . . . . . . 19H
Notes D, E, F.
Expediency of Christ's departure with reference to the Apostles. 15>7
Note G.
Bearing of John xvi. 7 on the Procession of the Holy Ghost. —
On the Gradual Development of theological doctrines. — Misuse of
Arguments from Metaphors. ..... 202
Note H.
On John vii. 39. On the gifts of the Spirit prior arid subsequent
to Christ's Ascension. — On the exegetical value of the Fathers, of
the Reformers, of our Divines in the 17th and 18th centuries, of the
< German Rationalists, and of the German Divines of the present day. 226
CONTENTS.
Note I. page
On John xiv. 15, 16, 17. Change wrought in the Apostles by* the
Spirit. ........ 286
Note J.
On the expediency of Christ's spiritual departure. . . 301
Note K.
On the meaning of the name Paraclete. .... 309
Note L.
On the meaning of i\lyx*u> in John xvi. 8. . . . 315
Note M.
On the subjects of the Comforter's conviction. . . . 330
Note N.
( »n 1 Corinth, xiv. 24. On the meaning of trpo^Ttvuv, UkArtit,
On the dignity of Preaching. On Christian Expediency. . . 384
Note O.
On Titus i. 0. . . . . . . .343
Note P.
On the world as reproved by the Comforter. . . . 344
Note Q.
On the Conviction of Sin : catena of interpretations. On unbelief
as the parent of sin. . . . . . . .347
Note H.
On the comfort of the Comforter's reproof. . . . 373
Not i
Ision of Poets from his Republic. . . 378
CONTENTS.
Note T. page
On the excessive admiration of Power. . . . . 381
Note U.
On the necessity of living Righteousness. . . . 392
Note V.
On Plato's views concerning Marriage. .... 391
Note W.
On the Comforter's conviction of Eighteousness. . . . 395
Note X.
On the moral effect of calamities. . . . .417
Note Y.
On the conviction of Judgement. . . . . .419
Note Z.
Inefficacy of suffering to subdue sin. .... 438
Note A A.
Augustin on John xii. 31. ..... 439
Note A B.
On the continual work of the Comforter. . . . 440
Note A C.
On the triple conviction of the Comforter. . . . 443
Note A D.
The existence of witches not incompatible with the Judgement
of the Prince of this world. . . . . . . 447
Zy? OF THB
[UFIVBRSITY]
THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER
SERMON I.
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE.
Nevertheless I tell you the truth : it is expedient for you that I go
away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you ; but
if I depart, I will send Him to you. — John xvi. 7.
Tin :se words, it will be remembered, stand in the middle
of that divine discourse, in which our blessed Lord, on
the eve of His crucifixion, endeavours to cheer and lift
Dp the hearts of His disciples, opening their eyes at the
same time to see further than they had ever yet lookt,
into the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the
verses which follow, He goes on to declare what are to
be the workings of the Comforter here promist. The
whole passage, though it is not without difficulty, is a
rich treasure of the most precious truths, bearing both
on the deepest questions of doctrine, and on the practical
discipline of our hearts and lives. Therefore, knowing
no subject of wider and more lasting interest, — inasmuch
as its interest is coextensive with the Church of Christ,
and will last to the end of the world, while it comes home
& A
THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
to the conscience of every faithful member of that Church,
— I have thought that it might not be unprofitable to
call your attention, during the present Course of Sermons,
to this promise of the Comforter ; whose coming, as it was
to be so great a blessing to the immediate disciples of
our Lord, has in like manner been the source of infinite
blessings through all ages in the Church; and whose work
in the heart of every true believer has been the very same
which is set forth in the verses immediately after the text.
May He, who alone can, even the Comforter Himself, who
is the Spirit of Truth, teach me to discern the mysteries
of that grace, which He is ever pouring on the Church of
Christ ! May He open my lips to speak the truth ! and
may He carry that truth with power and with conviction
to your heart !
On that last evening, when the work, which the Son of
God had come down from heaven to perform, was drawing
to its close, He tells His disciples of the heavy sorrows
and afflictions which were hanging over them. He tells
them, more plainly than ever before, of that greatest and
heaviest sorrow, that they were to be separated from Him,
— how He was about to go away, and how, whither He
went, they could not come, at least not for a time. He tells
them also of the tribulation and persecution which they
would have to endure in the world, — how the time wets
coming when whosoever hilled them would think he did
God service. But He does not tell them all this to the
end that their hearts should be troubled, that they should
grieve and faint at the thought of the trials which awaited
them. His words to His servants, who trust in Him and
love Him, are never meant to give pain. Though they
may be bitter in the mouth, they are always medicinal,
and, unlike the book eaten in the apocalyptic vision, turn
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST S DEPARTURE. 3
to sweetness within. His purpose, in speaking to His
disciples of the sufferings which were to fall upon them,
was, that, when all came to pass according to His word,
they should not be offended and startled, so as to lose
their hold of the truth, but should remember how He had
told them of everything beforehand, and thus even in
their sufferings should find fresh proofs of His divine
wisdom and knowledge; so that, having their faith in
Him enlivened and strengthened more and more by every
trial, they might be of good cheer, and in Him might have
peace. With this purpose, in order that they might have
a sure hope to lean on, when danger was gathering round
and assailing them, He speaks to them again and again of
a great consolation and blessing which they were to receive,
of a Comforter, another Comforter, whom the Father would
give to them, and who would abide with them for ever.
This Comforter, He says to them, is the Spirit of Truth.
He is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My
name ; and He will teach you all things, and bring all
things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to
you: and He will testify of Me. And so measureless
and priceless were the blessings which this Comforter
would bestow, that our Lord assures His disciples, it was
expedient for them, it was for their advantage, that He
should go away : for unless I go away, the Comforter
will not come to you; but, if I depart, I will send Him
to you.
No other words could have exprest so strongly what a
rich and gracious and peerless gift that of the Comforter
was to be. For never was there any intercourse or com-
munion upon earth between man and man, the blessed-
ness of which could for a moment be compared with that,
found by the disciples in the presence of their Lord
THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
Although Jerusalem, with her priests and her doctors, —
the expounders of the Law which prepared the way for
Him, and the ministers of the sacrifices which foreshewed
Him, — would not listen when he wisht to gather them
beneath the wings of His love, the fishermen of Galilee
had listened to His call, had come to Him, and had found
shelter. As they had forsaken all for His sake, in Him
they had found far more than all. They had found shelter,
even as children find shelter beneath the guardian care
of their parents. They had found everything that a child
can receive from the wisest and most loving of fathers,
only of a more perfect kind, and in a higher degree, — help
in every need, relief from every anxiety and care, support
under every distress, consolation under every affliction,
an abundant, overflowing supply for every want of body
and soul, of heart and mind. They came to Him for
food; and He gave them food wherewith to feed
thousands : yea, destitute as they were, and although
the wilderness was spread around them, He gave them
spiritual food wherewith to feed the whole world
through all the generations of mankind, and worldfuls
over and above. They complained to Him of the
fruitlessness of their labours, how they had toiled, and
toiled, and taken nothing ; and at His word they drew
in such a draught that they were dismayed at their
success, and began to sink beneath its weight. They
cried to Him in their terrour at the storm which was
raging around them; and the winds and the waves
were husht by the breath of His omnipotent word.
In Him they had the fulness of Truth and Grace and
Wisdom and Peace and Love, yea, the fulness of God,
dwelling with them, talking with them face to face,
bearing patiently with all their infirmities, upholding
THE EXPEDIEXCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE. 5
them against their own frailties and perversities, warn-
ing them against all dangers, and, when through neglect
of His warning they fell, lifting them up again, strength-
ening their hearts and souls, pouring His light into their
understandings, and guiding and leading them onward in
the way of everlasting life. Time after time too they had
been taught by grievous experience, that safe and strong
and clear-sighted as they were by the side of their
Master, when away from Him they were still feeble
and helpless and blind. Yet, notwithstanding all this,
notwithstanding the blessings which the disciples were
daily and hourly receiving from the presence of their
Lord, notwithstanding the many sad proofs they had
seen of their own ignorance and weakness when out
of His sight, still, such was the riches of the grace which
the promist Comforter was to bestow on them, that,
for the sake of obtaining that grace, it was expedient
for them, Jesus tells them, it was better for them, that
He should go away and leave them, so that the Com-
forter might come to them in His stead, and might dwell
with them and in them.
This must have sounded very strange in their ears.
They must have been unwilling and unable to believe it.
They could not but think at the moment, that no happi-
ness would ever be like the happiness they had found in
theirdaily communion with their Master, — that no calamity
could be like the calamity of being parted from Him.
Thus, when they heard His saying, sorrow filled their
hearts. Therefore our Saviour enforces His words with
an unwonted strength of assurance : Nevertheless I tell
■'>< I ruth. He had always told them the truth. He
was full of truth ; and whenever He spake, truth was in
all His words. Nay, He was Himself the Truth, the
THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
eternal truth of God. Yet on this occasion, seeing their
sorrow, knowing how deep and bitter it must be, He
vouchsafed to give them a special solemn assurance, that,
as His words had always been true, so were they now,
and so would they who believed them find them, as they
had always found them to be. Incredible as it must
needs seem to them, vehemently as their hearts revolted
from the thought that anything could make amends to
them for the loss of their Master, still He told them the
truth : it was expedient for them, it was for their good,
for their great moral and spiritual good, that He should
go away, and that they should be separated from Him.
But how could this possibly be ? How could it be for
the good of the disciples, that Jesus should go away, and
leave them to themselves ? He had been everything to
them. He had raised them out of the ignorance, to which
they were born. He had taught them to know and to
worship God, as God had never been known and worshipt
by man, — to know him as the God of love, and to worship
Him in spirit and in truth. He had fed them with the
twofold bread of earthly and of heavenly life. He had
been their Guide, their Teacher, their Guardian, their
ever-present, all-sufficient Friend. All their hopes, all
their trust, all their thoughts, all their affections, all their
desires, were bound up in him. How could it be for
their advantage, that He should go away and leave them ?
Let us consider whether there is anything in the ordi-
nary relations of human life, that can help us to under-
stand this. If we look through those relations, the one
nearest akin to that in which the disciples stood to their
Master, is plainly that which was just now compared with
it, between children and their parents. He had been
everything to them, as parents are to their children ; and
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE. 7
they had lookt to Him, had trusted in Him, had cast all
their cares upon Him, as children, without taking thought
for themselves, trustfully cast all their cares upon their
parents. Now, according to the divinely constituted
order of the world, the time, we know, comes for all chil-
dren, when their entire dependence and reliance upon
their parents must cease. The time comes, when they
must pass from under the eye of their parents, and walk
alone. And it is expedient for them that this should be
so. As it is expedient for children, that at first they
should be carried in the arms of their mothers, and that
then they should walk in leading-strings, or with some
other like support, and so should learn by little and little
to walk alone, and that for a long time they should do
everything in strict obedience, according to the commands
of their parents, as though they had no will of their own,
so, on the other hand, as they advance towards years of
discretion, it is expedient that the human helps, on which
they have been accustomed to lean wholly, should one by
one be taken away from them. Constant watchfulness
and directions are succeeded for a while by occasional
watchfulness and directions ; commands are superseded
by counsel ; and after a time we no longer have even the
counsel of our natural monitors, but are left to the exer-
cise of our own judgment, and to the advice of such
friends as the course of life may bring across our path.
Such is the order which God has appointed for the life of
man : and this order is expedient (a.) We know that it
must be so, seeing that He has ordained it ; and we can
perceive moreover why it is so. Not because it is the
glory of man to have a will of his own, and to walk by
the light of his own understanding, beneath the supreme,
unchockt sway of that will. A heathen indeed might say
8 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
this, and might allege strong grounds for his assertion ;
though even he, if he desired to walk rightly and stead-
fastly, would have subordinated his own understanding
and will to the manifestations of a higher Understanding
and a higher Will discernible in the institutions and be-
lief of his countrymen. But we have a revelation of the
perfect Wisdom and perfect Will of God. An atmosphere
of eternal Truth compasses us about. We are born in the
midst of it : we are taught to breathe it from our child-
hood : and the great aim and business of our lives should
be to bring our understanding and our will into harmony
with it, to set them at one with it. Far assuredly is it
from expedient that man should be left to the guidance of
his own dimsighted understanding, and to the sway of his
own headstrong will. But, as the reason why children
are bound to obey their parents with a full, implicit, un-
swerving obedience is, that their parents for the time
stand in the stead of God to them, — whence we further
perceive what is the rightful limit to that obedience,
namely, when the parent's command is plainly contrary
to an express commandment of God, — as, I say, they who
know of no father but an earthly one, must obey that
earthly father, who is the author, supporter, and guardian
of their life, — so, on the other hand, when they have been
taught to look up to Him who has vouchsafed to call Him-
self our Heavenly Father, — when they have been taught
to see His love, and to know His will, — it is expedient for
them that they should pass from under their complete
subjection to their earthly father, in order that they
may live more consciously and dutifully in the presence,
beneath the eye, and under the law of their Heavenly
Father. It is expedient for them that they should pass
from under the immediate control of their earthly parents,
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRISTS DEPARTURE. 9
not in order that they may do their own will, but that
they may do the will of God, — that the shadow may give
place to the substance, the earthly type to the heavenly
reality, — in order that they may live more entirely by a
longer-sighted, further-reaching Faith.
Now the relation between the disciples and their
Divine Master was like that between children and their
parents in this among other things, that it was a relation
rather of sight than of faith ; or at least of faith which
was wrapt up in sight, and which had not as yet un-
folded itself into distinct consciousness. The faith they
had hitherto been called upon to exercise, was not a
faith in One who was absent, but in One who was always
by their side, whom they saw with their eyes, and heard
with their ears, and who was daily working visible
wonders before them. Hence, their faith having never
been trained to see him when He was absent, and to
trust in Him when He was far off, it failed, as soon as
they were out of His sight. When He was upon the
mount, they were unable, through their unbelief, to heal
the boy who was possest by the evil spirit. When he
was asleep, they were afraid lest the sea should swallow
them up. And though they fancied that they loved Him
above all things, though they fancied that nothing could
ever lure or drive them away from Him, that they could
brave eveiy danger, and bear eveiy suffering, rather than
forsake Him, yet, no sooner did the soldiers lay hold on
Him, than they fled. Such was the weakness of their
fancied strength : having never been tried, at the first
trial it gave way. Moreover their relation to their Lord
was like that between children and their parents in this
also, that, as they had ever found a ready, present help
m Him for all their wants, He stood in the place of God
10 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
to them, as a father stands to his child. It is true, He
also was God. This however they knew not. They
did not regard Him as God, but much more as a man,
like, though far superior in power and wisdom, to them-
selves. Hence, as it is expedient that a child should
rise from a visible to an invisible Object of Faith, and
that his obedience to an earthly should be transfigured
into obedience to a Heavenly Father, so was it expedient
that the love and reverence which the disciples felt for
their earthly Lord, should be transfigured into love and
reverence for a Heavenly Lord, — for the same Lord, not
for a different. For the Comforter was to testify of
Jesus, was to bring all things to their remembrance what-
soever Jesus had said to them, was to glorify Jesus, was
to receive and shew them the things of Jesus. Still,
though, when Jesus departed from them, they were not
to go to a different Master, — though He who had been
their Master hitherto was to continue their only Master
unto the end, — yet to them, in their eyes, He was to
be different. He was no longer to be Jesus of Nazareth,
but Christ, the Eternal Son of God.
I have been likening the change, which befell the
disciples when their Lord was taken from them, to that
which happens when a child passes from under the
government and controll of its parents to the exercise
of self-government and self-controll. This comparison,
it seems to me, may help us materially in understanding
how it was possible for that change to be expedient
for them, and by what process it was to become so.
Therefore we will dwell a little longer upon it, more
especially as it will give rise to some considerations
bearing closely on our position in this place. In the
case of the disciples the change was sudden and rapid,
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE. \ \
and was completed at once. In the common journey
of life on the other hand, we all know, the transition
is very gradual. Years roll over our heads while it is
going on; and there are several stages in its progress.
Such is God's gracious plan for fostering and maturing
the growth of His reasonable creatures. Such is the care
with which He has girt us round. " Parents first season
us: then Schoolmasters Deliver us to Laws." These
several stages however are not, — at least they ought not
to be, — removals into a different region of life. They
ought not to be cut off one from another. Rather should
each succeeding state be an expansion of that which
went before, even as the bud expands into the blossom,
and as the blossom, after shedding its robe of beauty
expands into the fruit. At each step indeed we meet
with sundry temptations to reject and look back with
scorn on the past. Our vanity prompts us to do so being
flattered by the thought of our having recently achieved
an emancipation from a moral and intellectual bondage,
to which through our feebleness and helplessness, we
had been compelled to submit. The charms of novelty,
the fascination of the present moment, of our present
thoughts, of our present feelings, of our present circum-
stances, which acts almost overpoweringly upon weak
in in< Is, to the extinction both of the past and the future,
would make us give ourselves up to that moment
altogether. Yet the only way in which we can make
head against the crushing tyranny of the present, is by
holding firmly to the past, to that which was living and
permanent in it, merely casting away what was outward
and accidental. That which has been the good spirit of
the past, should abide with us as a guardian angel
through life, manifesting itself more and more clearly to
12 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
the soul, as we rise from one step to another. Then
alone will every change be expedient.
The first momentous change in a boy's life is that
when he passes from under his father's roof to school.
This is expedient and fitting in his case, in order that
he may be trained betimes for the habits and duties, the
energy and the endurance of active life, and in order
that he may learn to look upon himself, not merely as a
member of a family, but as bound by manifold ties to his
fellow-men ; so that tjie idea of a state, and of himself
as a member of the state, may gradually rise up within
him; while the instruction he receives teaches him to
connect himself in thought with all past generations, and
to view himself as a member of the human race, linkt
by innumerable ties of obligation to those who have
gone before him, and bound to repay that obligation by
labouring for his own age, and for those who shall come
after him. In the other sex, whose duties through life
are to be mainly domestic, and who are not designed to
take part in political or professional activity, such a
separation from home is not desirable, unless under
peculiar circumstances. But for the healthy and manly
development of a boy's character, in a rightful sympathy
with the nation he belongs to, it seems to be almost
indispensable, so that nothing short of a singular felicity
of circumstances can make amends for it ; not indeed
unaccompanied with danger and difficulty, but for this
very reason necessary, as the training of Winter is to a
.sapling, which is to grow into a noble tree, and to stand
the blasts of centuries. Although however it is expedient
for the boy to pass from his father's house to school,
are not the feelings and thoughts, the affections and
principles, which animated and guided him when at
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST S DEPARTURE. 13
home, still to animate and guide him at school ? Most
pitiable would his lot be, if they did not. He would
have no affection, no reverence. His affection for his
schoolfellows can only be a transfer of a portion of that
which he has learnt to feel for his brothers; his reverence
for his master, a transfer of a portion of that which he
feels for his parents. And woe to him, if he does not
cherish that reverence, which many things will tend to
impair and destroy! One part of his life at school,
that which lies in his intercourse with his master, will
be altogether unprofitable to him and lost, nay, will be
hurtful, unfitting his soul for being a habitation of
reverent feelings through life. And still more certain
woe to him, if the impressions of his new companions
efface those of his home ! Then, and through his whole
life, should the image of his parents and brethren be
enshrined in the sanctuary of his heart. Woe to him
also, if he forgets the principles which he imbibed at his
mother's knees ! If he clings to those principles, he may
maintain a steady course amid the temptations which
will beset him. Else he will drift along, like a fallen
leaf, the sport of every casual impulse, a moral and
spiritual vagrant.
The next stage in the progressive unfolding of the
character, at least for the higher classes, according to the
institutions of modern Europe, is, we all know, when the
boy comes forth from the strict discipline and con troll
of school, to complete that education which is to fit him
for the duties and struggles of active life, in some place
of study resembling this University. This is the stage,
which you, my young friends, have now reacht. You
quitted the constant discipline of school, and that
course of study every part of which was prescribed to
14 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
you by your master; and you have entered on a freer
mode of life : you are left more to your own judgement
in the regulation both of your studies and of your conduct.
And this change also has been expedient for you. On
this point perhaps you would all readily agree with me :
at least you would allow and maintain that the change
has been a pleasant one. Possibly however the reason
why you think the change a pleasant one, may not be
exactly the reason why it is expedient for you to go
through it. Nay, your reason for deeming it pleasant
might rather, if we take a Christian point of view, be a
reason for deeming it inexpedient ; so far namely as that
reason comes into play. For why are you glad of the
change? May I not say, to express the reason in a word,
you are glad, because it made you your own masters ?
Now this would indeed be a worthy reason for rejoicing,
if you had truly become your own masters, — if you had
acquired a greater dominion over your thoughts and
feelings and actions, — if those portions of your nature,
which ought to exercise supremacy over the rest, those
powers which, as belonging to the divine image within
you, constitute your real selves, your Reason, and your
Conscience, were become the lords of your being. But
if your ground for rejoicing is, that you have acquired
greater facilities for indulging an unreasoning and un-
reasonable will, for pampering every craving appetite,
and following every wayward desire, then, so far as this
has been the effect of the change, assuredly it has been
anything but expedient. It has been necessary : it has
been inevitable: but the very circumstances in your
situation which you would select as motives for rejoicing,
are those which you are especially called to contend
against and subdue. Nor would you, by such a change,
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE. 15
have become your own masters, but your own slaves.
It would have overthrown the legitimate, monarchal
constitution of your being, to set up the ochlocracy
within you in its stead. This however is the blessed
advantage afforded you by the institutions of this place,
that here you have many helps and encouragements to
train you for the exercise of self-government, — that you
have the guardian guidance and watchful superintendence
of persons of greater wisdom and experience, anxious to
steady you in the paths of good, and to preserve or call
you back from evil, — and that the whole system of our
daily life, while it allows you a certain degree of liberty,
imposes a certain degree of salutary restraint. I am
aware, there is much in the habits and spirit of the age,
and of your rank in society, — and you will probably find
much in some of your companions, — which has an
opposite tendency, and holds out pernicious temptations
to laxity and self-indulgence. But so much the more
does it behove you to cleave with grateful and dutiful
reverence to those protecting institutions and to that
guardian authority, which God has mercifully appointed
to uphold your frail strength at this critical season of
your lives. Indeed this is the peculiar advantage which
our universities have over those in other countries, that
they form a regular step in the progressive development
of freedom, a medium between the constraint of boyhood
at school and the absolute unconstraint of manhood in
the world. You are here in a sheltered creek, in which
you may practice yourselves in a boat of your own, before
you lanch out into the broad sea of life. But the greater
your advantages and privileges may be, the greater also
ur responsibility. The orderly and obedient habits,
which you learnt at home in your childhood from the
16 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
necessities and instincts of nature, and which were
imposed upon you at school by the authority of your
master, you should here impose upon yourselves. This
is of no little importance, even with regard to your
studies. If you would render them profitable, they should
be orderly, steadily pursued, and in a determinate course ;
which in this atomic age of literature, is more difficult
than ever before. But important as discipline is for a
strong and sound growth of the intellect, it is still more
important for that moral health and strength, whereby
you may be enabled to stand hereafter amid the assailing
temptations and tumult of the world. As the lessons in
the various rudiments of knowledge, which you have
learnt in former years, have become a substantial part of
your minds, and shape and mould your thoughts, without
any special act of reflexion or volition, and often without
any consciousness, so should your moral habits be in like
manner amalgamated with your moral nature, and should
unconsciously regulate and determine your conduct on
every, even the slightest occasion. Thus would the child
indeed be " father of the man :" and this would be the
true discipline and preparation for freedom ; which none
can enjoy outwardly, except he who has it in himself;
and which consists in the orderly, harmonious, uncheckt,
unconstrained movement of the heart and soul and mind
in the path markt out for them by God.
We have been looking at several instances, in which
the changes, occurring in the ordinary course of our lives,
are in some measure analogous to that which befell the
Apostles when our Lord departed from their sight. In
each we have seen that the feelings and rules, which at
first are imprest upon us by present objects, are designed
to become living elements and principles in our hearts and
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST 8 DEPARTURE. 17
minds; and that, when a sufficient time has elapst for the
inward principle to gain some degree of strength, the out-
ward authority, which imposed and enforced the rule, is
taken away. Thus far therefore, with a view to this end,
it is expedient, abstractly, that these changes should come
to pass. Nevertheless in very many cases, we must make
the sad acknowledgement, that they do not prove ex-
pedient in fact. That which, according to the divine
purpose manifested in our institutions, was intended for
our good, does not produce the good it was meant to
produce. And why does it fail ? It was expedient for
the Apostles that Jesus should depart from them, to the
end that what they had hitherto regarded with more or
less of a carnal eye, should become a living spiritual pre-
sence and power in their souls. But how was this effect
to be wrought ? Was our Lord's departure to produce it ?
The very thought of their loss cast them down, and filled
them with sorrow and dismay ; and when they had been
separated from Him before, they had been taught the
u of their own weakness. Even after His Resur-
rection, although they had seen that wonderful proof that
tho \\ ay to power and glory passes through suffering and
self-sacrifice, — although our Lord Himself had expounded
the Scriptures to them, and shewn them how this had
been determined and revealed from the beginning, — and
although He had breathed the Holy Ghost into them, and
declared at the same time that the Kingdom which He
had come from the Father to establish, and which He now
sent them to establish, was one the great ordinance of
which was to lie in the remission of sins, and which was
only to be spread thereby, — still these things do not seem
to have accomplisht any decisive alteration in the frame
and temper of their spirits. On the day when our Lord
18 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
was taken up into heaven, they had not ceast to look for
the restoration of the visible kingdom of Israel. Nor can
we in the least conceive that the change was to be brought
about by any act of their own will, or by any process of
their own understanding. For it was their will and their
understanding that required to be changed and enlarged
and set free : and so far were they from being aMe to
effect this work by themselves, that they had withstood
every attempt to effect it, and had continued blind
beneath the light of those blessed words, which have
since opened the eyes of mankind. Assuredly, if the
disciples had been left to themselves, our Lord's departure
would not have been expedient for them. Rather would
it have been like the departure of the living soul, after
which the body is motionless and powerless, and decay
and dissolution soon commence. The reason, our Lord
tells the disciples, why it was expedient for them that He
should go away, was, that, when He was gone, He would
send the Comforter to them; He would send them the
Holy Spirit of God, who would bring back to their re-
membrance whatever he had said to them, and would
lead them to the whole truth (b). ^For this reason, and
for this alone, His departure was expedient, which other-
wise would have been the greatest of calamities.^
Hence, my friends, we may perceive the reason why
the changes in the course of our ordinary life, although
designed and fitted to be expedient, are so often the
contrary. /The removal of the boy to school, of the youth
to the university, will not be beneficial, but very in-
jurious, unless the things which he had heard before
are brought to his remembrance and dwell in him ;
unless, when the rule, and the authority which enforced
it, are taken away from over his head, the principle,
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRISTS DEPARTURE. 19
which was the spirit of that rule, comes forth as a living
law in his hearty No institutions and ordinances, how-
ever wise the end contemplated in them, and however
judiciously they may be adapted as preparatives to that
end, will work any good of themselves. They are only
means whereby the Spirit of God works good in those
who yield their hearts and wills to them. Great and
precious as are the benefits which the institutions of this
place are designed and fitted to bestow, you will lose the
most precious part of these benefits, the part which
would be the most lastingly salutary to your character,
unless you look upon them as a gift of God, as an
ordinance of God, as one of the means whereby the Spirit
of God would bring back to your remembrance the truths
which you were taught in your childhood, — as one of the
steps whereby He would gradually lead you to the whole
truth.
Through His mighty operation, we know, it was soon
proved that in this, as in all other things, Jesus did
indeed tell His disciples the truth, and that it was most
expedient for them that He should go away. The Book
of Acts is the proof that it was so ; and no proof was ever
completer. Terrible as the blow was, overwhelming and
irreparable as the loss could not but seem to the natural
eye, that very loss was soon turned by the power of the
Spirit into their endless and inestimable gain. The
Master, whom they had lost, they found anew. But
they found Him, not as a mere man, with the infirmities
of the flesh, having no form or comeliness, to make men
desire Him. They found Him as God, as the Eternal,
Onlybegotten Son of God, sitting at the right hand of the
Father, governing all things with the power of the Father,
and at the same time as their Saviour and Redee.ner, and
20 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
as the Redeemer of all mankind. They found Him,
whom the Jews had crucified, made by God both
Lord and Christ (c). Greatly too as their Master was
changed and glorified in their eyes, scarcely less great
was the change which took place in their own hearts
and souls, in the bent and strength of their characters,
and in all their feelings and desires, when the promist
Comforter had come to them. The firy baptism of
the day of Pentecost consumed and purged away the
dross and weaknesses of their nature; and they came out
as silver refined and purified seven times by the fire.
Out of fearfulness, they were made bold ; out of blindness,
they were enabled to see. Instead of being frightened,
and shrinking and hiding themselves, they now came
forward in the eye of day, and openly preacht Him
whom the Jews had crucified : and they rejoiced with
exceeding joy that they were counted worthy to suffer
for the name of Jesus.
Therefore was it expedient for the disciples that Jesus
should go away from them. And as it was expedient for
them, so through them has it been for mankind, and
in divers ways. For as, by the coming of the Comforter,
the Apostles were led to the whole truth, hereby they
were enabled to lay up those treasures of truth, which
have been the riches of all subsequent generations.
Through the coming of the Comforter were they seated
on their thrones, where they have been the examples,
the teachers, the guides of the Church for all ages (d).
Nay, if Jesus had not gone away from them, we see not
how the Gentiles would have been called into the Church.
So long as He remained upon earth, the earnest desire of
His disciples must needs have been to abide continually
within hearing of His blessed words. At the utmost
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRISTS DEPARTURE. 21
they would have gone forth from Him for a brief while,
to return anon into His presence ; and thus their preach-
ing would have been confined, as it was during His life,
to Judea. Not till He was taken away from them, did
they learn to feel that He was with them, not merely in
Judea, but in every part of the world. So long as He
was living upon earth, He might give light to the country
round, like a beacon upon a hill. But it was only from
His sunlike throne in the heavens, that He could pour
light over every quarter of the globe. It was only from
thence that His voice could go forth throughout all the
earth, and His words to the end of the world. It was only
when He was lifted up, that He could draw all men to His
feet. Then alone could the foundations of His Church be
laid so deep and wide, that all nations could be gathered
into it (e).
Thus there are several arguments, which, even when
we are judging by the light of our own understanding,
guided by the analogies of human life, and by the events
which actually ensued, may satisfy us that it was indeed
lient for the disciples that Christ should go away
from them. It was expedient for them, because it is
expedient that men's hearts should be trained and dis-
ciplined by hardships and sufferings and afflictions ; be-
cause it is expedient that they should learn to live by
faith in Him who is unseen (f) ; because moreover it was
client, in order to their fulfilling the counsel of God,
and spreading the glory of His salvation, that they should
not be confined to a single country, but should go abroad
Dg the nations, branching, like the river which flowed
out of Paradise, and compassing all lands. Thus much
we may easily discern. We can discern too that the
power, whereby the great loss sustained by the Apostles
22 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
was turned into their greater gain, did not lie in them-
selves, but came to them from a higher source, even from
the Comforter whom Jesus sent to them. Through the
working of that Comforter, the manifold afflictions, which
would otherwise have stunned and crusht them, became
the means of purifying and elevating their hearts.
Through the working of that Comforter, they lived
thenceforward a higher life, by faith in Him, whom they
had seen with their eyes, whom they had looht upon, and
their hands had handled, and whom they now knew to
have sat down at the right hand of God. Through the
working of that Comforter, they received boldness and
wisdom to go forth over the earth, preaching with
tongues of fire, kindling the hearts of the nations, con-
founding the wise and the mighty, and bringing to
nought whatever was then establisht on the thrones of
power and knowledge.
But our Lord's words are, For, if I go not away, the
Comforter will not come to you ; but, if I depart, I will
send Him to you. In these words there is a depth of
meaning far beyond what we have yet attained to : but
they are words which we must not approach, except with
humble and reverent awe, taking off the shoes in which
we are wont to walk along the highways and byways of
human thought. For they relate to the mysteries hidden
in the bosom of the Godhead, to the part which the
several persons in the ever-blessed Trinity bear in the
gracious work of our Redemption. From other passages
of Scripture, as well as from the text, we learn that the
gift of the Holy Ghost was connected in 'some mysterious
manner with the completion of Christ's work upon earth.
Thus St John, in a former chapter (vii. 39), says, with
reference to the promise that the Spirit should be given
THE EXPEDIEXCY OF CHR1STS DEPARTURE. 23
to such as believe in Christ, the Holy Ghost was not yet
, because Jesus wa$ not yet glorified: which agrees
exactly with what we read in our text, that, if Jesus had
not gone away, the Comforter would not have come. If
we endeavour to understand the whole process of our
Redemption, so far as it is set forth in Scripture, it would
seem to have been ordained in the eternal counsels of
God, manifested as they are, and must needs be, to us
under an order of succession, that the sacrifice of Christ
should be offered up, — that the full victory over sin,
under every form of assailing temptation, should be
gained by Christ in behalf, and as the Head and Repre-
sentative of all mankind, — before those special gifts of
the Holy Ghost, which were to be the glory and the
blessing of the New Dispensation, were poured out of the
treasury of Heaven. Such appears to have been the order
appointed in the counsels of God: for such was the order
in which the events took place. Such too was the order
of the prophetic announcement. The Messiah was to go
I h igk, and to lead captivity captive, and then to
receive gifts for men, that the Lord God should dwell
among them. Accordingly, when the fulfilment was
come, St Peter, in his sermon, declared that Jesus, being
exalted by the right hand of God, and having received the
'promise of the Holy Ghost from the Father, had shed forth
what the people on the day of Pentecost saw and heard.
>ver we find, in the verses immediately after the
that a main part of the lessons which the Comforter
was to teach, rebited to facts which did not receive their
full accomplishment, until our Lord ascended into heaven
Inde> at purpose of the mission of the Comforter,
it would appear from those verses, was to declare the
whole scheme of salvation to mankind, to reveal it in all
24 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
its fulness to their understandings, and to graft this
knowledge as a living, sanctifying reality in their hearts ;
so that, were it only on this account, the completion of
Christ's work would be an indispensable preliminary to
the mission of the Paraclete, who throughout this passage
is spoken of as proceeding, not from the Father only, but
from the Father and the Son (g).
Many gifts of the Holy Ghost had indeed been already
bestowed on man, even under the old Covenant ; above
all, the gift of prophecy, whereby holy men of God spake
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Pet. i. 21). So
too it was declared of John the Baptist, that he should be
filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's ivomb.
And our Saviour Himself, in one of the passages above
referred to, says to the disciples, I ivill pray to the
Father ; and He will give you another Comforter, that
He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth ;
whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not,
nor hnoweth Him : but ye know Him; for He chvelleth
with you, and shall be in you. The disciples are here
told that they already knew the Comforter. He was
already dwelling with them; for they had already
received several gifts, which none can receive except from
the Holy Ghost. But the gifts they had hitherto received,
like the gifts which had proceeded from Him during the
earlier dispensation, were in the main external, such as
the power of working miracles (h). The higher gifts of
the Holy Ghost — that transforming power of faith, which
nothing can awaken except a lively insight into the
sacrifice and mediation of the Saviour, — and those
spiritual graces whereby the life of Christ is fashioned in
our souls, — had not yet been vouchsafed to them. The
Holy Ghost from that time forward was to come down,
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE. 25
as He came down at the baptism of Jesus, like a dove,
and to abide upon the souls of those who believe in
Christ. He was to come to them, and to dwell in them,
converting their earthly tabernacles into living temples
of God (i).
At all events such is the order in which the work of
our regeneration must now take place. We must be
buried by baptism into the death of Christ, before we can
rise again in newness of life. We must be justified
through faith in the death of Christ, before we can be
sanctified by the indwelling of His Spirit. The Spirit of
sanctification is only given to those who have already
been washt from their sins in the all-purifying blood of
the Lamb.
Hence even at this day there are many, for whom it is
expedient that Jesus should go away from them, and for
the selfsame reason for which it was expedient that He
should go away from His disciples. Perhaps I might say
that even at this day there is no one for whom this is not
expedient, or at least for whom it has not been so at some
period of his life. For we are all of us, even those who
have been brought up with the greatest wisdom, and the
most diligent culture of their religious affections, far too
apt to look at Jesus Christ in the first instance, in the
same light in which the disciples mostly lookt upon Him,
while He was with them in the body, as a man like our-
selves, a perfect man indeed, but still a mere man, who
came to teach us about God, and the things of heaven,
and the way of attaining to them, and to leave us an
example, that we might follow His steps. We read the
story of His life in the Gospels ; and even our natural
hearts are struck and charmed by the surpassing beauty
of His character, by His purity, His meekness, His
26 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
patience, His wisdom, His unweariable, self-forgetting
activity in every work of love. In our better and more
serious moments, when the Bible is in our hands, or when
we have been stirred by some eloquent picture of the
graces manifested in His life, we wish to be like Him, to
do as He did, to obey His commandments, at least a part
of them, the part which requires the least selfsacrifice
and selfdenial. All the time indeed we may be in the
habit of acknowledging with our lips that Christ is God,
not merely in the public profession of the Creed, but
whenever our conversation turns upon religion, and when-
ever we bring the question distinctly before our minds.
Yet we scarcely think of Him as God. We little think
what that acknowledgement means or implies. Our
thoughts are solely fixt on the excellence of His human
character : and inasmuch as we admire Him, and wish to
be like Him, we fancy we may take rank among His true
disciples. Nay, we even begin to fancy that we have
something in common with Him, that our admiration
renders us like Him. Thus we glorify human nature for
Christ's sake ; and we glorify ourselves as sharing the
same nature with Christ. Meanwhile we think little of
His death, except on account of the virtues which He
manifested before His judges and on the cross. Now he
who thinks of Christ in this manner, if he happens by
nature to be of a kindly disposition, may at times really
try to imitate Him, even as he might try to imitate any
other good or great man in history. At times, when
brought more immediately and consciously into Christ's
presence, by' hearing or reading about Him, such persons
may be kindled to a longing, and even to an effort, to
resemble Him. There are many such persons in the
world: there are many assuredly in this congregation.
THE EXPEDIEXCY OF CHRISTS DEPARTURE. 27
Among the young, especially in the educated classes, this,
or something like it, is the ordinary state of feeling with
regard to the Saviour. Yes, my young friends, I feel
confident that there are many, very many amongst you,
who think of our blessed Lord after this fashion, who
admire and revere and love the peerless graces of His
character, who would rejoice at times to enrich your own
character with a portion of those graces, but who have
no lively consciousness that Christ is your God, that He
is your Saviour, that He died for your sins to bring you
to God, — who do not feel that you need His help, who
never seek to enter into a living communion with Him,
nay, who have no conception what can be meant by such
a communion. Accustomed as you are to contemplate
the noblest and fairest examples of humanity, that His-
tory and Poetry have set up for the admiration of man-
kind, — accustomed to meditate on the brightest intuitions
wherewith Philosophy has solaced her journey through
the wilderness of logical speculation, — you are wont to
think of the virtues exhibited in the life of Jesus of
Nazareth, as of the same kind, only superior in degree,
purer and more perfect. Now this fair ideal of excellent
humanity may indeed be a blessing to you for a time, a
light to your understandings, and a joy to your hearts, —
•• contemplation of all virtue, of whatsoever is lovely
and noble, will ever be to a genial and generous spirit,
you living in a happy island, in an Elysium, where
Sin was not, and did not cast her shadow, Death, — were
there no evil spirit linking in your own hearts, and ever
and anon rising and shaking himself, and shattering the
brittle crust with which amiable feelings and conventional
morality may have covered them over, — were there no
herd of evil spirits howling and prowling on every side
28 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
around you, tearing the vitals of society, mangling every
soul they can seize, while others more craftily put on the
mask of pleasure and gain and honour, and use every art
in fawning on our self-love, — in a word, had you no im-
mortal souls slumbering beneath the painted sepulchre of
mortality, were you not made in the image of God, and
fallen from that image, were you the mere insects of time,
then indeed it might be sufficient for you to bask in
the light of an earthly sun. But the light of that sun will
pass away from you : the vapours of sin will hide it from
your sight : the glaring lights of the world will draw you
afar from it : and ere long you will find a night of thick
impenetrable darkness spread over you and around you,
unless you have a living faith in the Sun of Righteous-
ness, whom neither light nor darkness can conceal, and
who shines all the brighter upon the soul when every-
thing else seems cheerless and hopeless.
For all such persons who have no other knowledge of
Christ, no other faith in Him, than that which I have just
been describing, it is most expedient that Jesus should go
away from them. It is expedient for them that the man
Jesus, the fair ideal which they have formed of perfect
wisdom and virtue, which has shone as an example before
them, and which they have fancied themselves able to
follow, should pass away from their minds, — that they
should feel its inadequateness to strengthen what is weak
in them, and to supply what is wanting, — in order that,
by the teaching of the Spirit, opening their eyes to behold
their own wants and those of all mankind, they may be
led to seek Jesus and to find Him, no longer as a mere
Teacher and Example, but transfigured into their God
and Saviour and Redeemer. It is expedient for them
that some great calamity, be it what it may, — some crack,
THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST S DEPARTURE. 29
through which they may look into their own souls, and
into the soul of the world, — should befall them, — if so be
they may learn thereby that no human virtue can uphold
them, no human wisdom comfort them, and may thus be
brought to seek a Divine Saviour and a Divine Com-
forter (j). So long as they regard Jesus, whether con-
sciously or unconsciously, as a mere man, they will fancy
that something approaching at least to His excellence will
be attainable by man. Hence they will be content to
walk by their own light, to lean on their own arm, to
trust in their own strength ; and they will not open their
hearts to receive the true comfort of the Holy Ghost.
We must feel our need of a Comforter, as the Apostles
did when bereft of their Lord, before the Comforter Him-
self can be a Comforter to us. We must be brought to
acknowledge our weakness, our helplessness, our sinful-
ness, — not merely our own personally, which, if others
have surmounted theirs, might also be surmounted by us,
— but that of our nature, of our whole fallen race, which,
as such, we shall understand to be irremediable by any
exertions of our own, — before we can pray earnestly for
strength and help and purity from above. That is to say,
we must lose Christ as a man, to regain Him as God.
We must turn from His life to His death, and to the
meaning and purpose of that death, not merely as
exhibiting the consummation of human patience and meek-
ness, but as fore-ordained by God from the beginning to
be the central act in the history of mankind. We must
learn to know and feel how that death was borne for our
sakes, and for the sake of all mankind, to deliver us from
the bondage of sin, to bring us out of the dark dungeon of
our carnal, selfish nature, into the light and joy and peace
and love, which flow for ever from the face of God. We
30 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
must learn to perceive how totally different Jesus, even
in his human nature, as the Son of Man, was from all the
rest of mankind; how He alone was pure and holy and
without sin; how in Him alone the fulness of the God-
head dwelt. In a word, we must seek through faith to be
justified by the blood of Christ, and, casting off all preten-
sions to any righteousness of our own, to put on His
perfect righteousness: and then the Spirit of God, the
Comforter, who is the Spirit of Truth, will come and
dwell in our hearts, and purify and sanctify them, so
that they shall become living temples of God.
31
SERMON II.
THE CONVICTION OF SIN.
When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and
of Righteousness, and of Judgment : of Sin, because they believe not in
We. — John xvi. 8. 9.
In my former sermon I began to speak to you concerning
the mission of the Comforter, whom our Lord, on the
evening before His crucifixion, promist to send to His
disciples, and whose coming was to be so great a blessing,
that it was for their advantage that He should leave
them, in order that the Comforter might come to them in
His stead. We considered how it was possible that this
should be; and we found that, according to the divinely
constituted order of human life, it is wisely and benefi-
cently appointed that the outward helps and supports, by
which in the first instance we are guided and upheld,
should be taken away from us one by one, to the end
that we may learn to live more and more by faith in that
which is invisible, trusting and leaning, not on our own
strength of understanding or of will, but on the wisdom
and power of the Spirit of God. We then endeavoured
to discern, so far as we may by the light of Scripture,
how and why, according to the counsel of God, the send-
ing of the Spirit was ordained to be consequent upon the
32 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
departure of the Son, so that the Son should return to
His heavenly throne at the right hand of the Father,
before the Holy Ghost came down in that special,
more abundant outpouring, which was to be the power
and the glory of the Christian dispensation. And we
were led in conclusion to mark how the same evangelical
order still prevails in the spiritual life of individuals, how
we are still over-apt in the first instance to fix our thoughts
on the mere humanity of our Lord, and how in such
cases it is still expedient and necessary that we should
lose the Man Jesus, so that we may be led by the Spirit
to acknowledge and worship Christ, the living God. As
it is necessary that the trust in human righteousness, in
human virtue, in human strength, not merely in our own,
but in that of our whole fallen race, should be stript from
the soul, before it can be clothed anew in the divine
righteousness of Christ, — and as no man is sanctified by
the Spirit of Christ, until he has been justified by the
righteousness of Christ, — in like manner it was the will
of God that Christ should die for our sins, should rise
again for our justification, and should go up into heaven,
before our souls could be lifted up by His Spirit from
earthly things to heavenly, and enabled to enter with
Him into the presence of the Almighty Father.
Thus do all the Persons of the Ever-blessed Trinity
vouchsafe to take part in the gracious and glorious work
of our Salvation. The Father sent the Son to die for us.
The Son became Incarnate in the Form of a Man, to
deliver man from his sins, and to bring him to God. He,
the Firstborn of the whole Creation, became the Firstborn
of His Church, and went up into heaven to be the Head
and Ruler of that Church : and to that Church He, in the
unity of the Father, gave, and evermore gives His Spirit,
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 33
to be the Source of her life and power, of her faith and
wisdom and holiness. Upon that Church the Spirit
bestows all the graces of the Kingdom of Heaven,
sanctifying that blessed Communion of the Faithful, who
have found the forgiveness of their sins through the
Atoning Sacrifice of the Saviour. But the Spirit is not
merely the Spirit of Holiness to those who are in the
Church : He is also the Spirit of Power, whereby the
Church is strengthened for her warfare against the
w< >i Id : and only through the help of the Spirit has the
Church been enabled to carry on that warfare, and to
bring the world to the obedience of faith. Indeed it is
only through the power of the Spirit, that the power of
the world has been overcome in any single soul. It is
only through the working of the Spirit, that any one
has ever been brought to the knowledge of Christ as his
Saviour. As none can come to the Father except through
the Son, so none can own in his heart that Jesus Christ is
God, except through the conviction wrought in him by
the Spirit of God, the Comforter.
The manner in which this conviction was and still is
to be wrought, and the several steps in the process by
which the Gospel was to confute the wisdom and to cast
down the pride of the world, are declared by our Lord
in the verses which follow immediately after His promise,
that, when He had departed, He would send the Com-
forter to His disciples. And when He is come, He will
: ace the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and^of
mment ; of Sin, because they believe not in me; of
'coasness, because I go to My Father, and ye see me
no more ; of Judgement, because the Prince of this world
is judged. These words are not indeed designed to set
forth the whole working of the Spirit in the Church.
34 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
They do not speak of the gifts which are bestowed on all
such as come in sincerity of heart to Christ. They do
not speak of that holiness, which is the peculiar gift of
the Spirit of Holiness. They do not speak of those
excellent fruits of the Spirit, which are enumerated by
St Paul, — of that love and joy and peace and long-suffer-
ing and gentleness and kindness and good faith and
meekness and temperance, which are the sure growth of
all such trees as are planted by the Spirit of God. Our
Lord is speaking mainly with reference to the help which
the disciples were to receive from the Comforter in their
warfare against the world. Having told them of the
violent opposition and persecution they would have to
encounter, He goes on to tell them of the assistance they
were to receive from the Paraclete, who was to be their
Comforter, their Advocate, their Patron and Guardian
and Protector (k), who was to speak through their
mouths, and with whose living sword they were to
conquer the world, as the commanders of the great army
of faith : When He is come, He ivill convince the world of
Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgement Thus
these words declare the threefold operation by which the
Church was to subdue the world, to cast down the strong-
holds of its enmity to God, and to prepare it for receiving
the adoption of grace. But inasmuch as we are all born
in the world, — inasmuch as by nature we all have that
carnal heart, which is enmity against God, which needs
to be subdued in every one of us, and which, even when
subdued, is never wholly eradicated, — hence the warfare
of the Church against the world was not to be transient,
but permanent, was not to be carried on merely against
those who lie beyond her limits, but was to be waging
perpetually, more or less, against the spirit of the world
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 35
in the hearts of all her members. Nor has any man ever
been brought to a thorough reception of the grace of the
Gospel, until he has been convinced of Sin and of Right-
eousness and of Judgement by the Spirit of God. Nay,
so long as the world retains any hold on our hearts, so
long as there is any evil root of carnalmindedness in
them, so long do we need the aid of the Spirit, to convince
us again and again of Sin and of Righteousness and of
Judgement.
In these words, by which our Saviour describes the
operation of the promist Comforter, I have thought it
advisable to adopt the reading given in the margin of
our Version, supported as that reading is by the general
consent of commentators on the passage (l). In the
received text, you will remember, the work of the Com-
forter is said to be, to reprove the world of Sin and of
Righteousness and of Judgement The reason which
induced our translators to prefer this rendering to the
other, may perhaps have been, that they thought the
declaration, that the Spirit should convince the world of
Sin and of Righteousness and of Judgement, is too
widely at variance with the fact; seeing that the chief
part of the world is still without the pale of the Church,
and that, even within the Church, the number of those in
whom a living spiritual conviction of Sin and Righteous-
ness and Judgement has been wrought, is by no means
the largest (m). The meaning of the verb reprove however
falls far short of the original verb iXtyxw, which in a
remarkable passage of the first Epistle to the Cor-
inthians, where it is used in the same sense, and almost
in the same relation, as in the text, we translate by
convince. If all prophesy, we there read (xiv, 24), and
come in an unbeliever or a n ignorant man, he is
36 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
convinced by all, he is searcht by all (n). The words
which follow prove, that the conviction here spoken of,
as being wrought by the power of preaching in the heart
of an unbeliever, or an ignorant beginner in Christianity,
who happened to come into a Christian congregation, is
the very same which in the text is ascribed to the opera-
tion of the Comforter, and for the producing of which,
prophesying or preaching is ever one of the chief instru-
ments employed by the Spirit. And thus, St Paul
continues, the secrets of his heart are made manifest ; and
so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and
declare that God is truly in you.
Besides, reproving the world of sin is a most inadequate
description of the working of the Spirit. We did not
need that the Spirit of God should come down from
heaven, to reprove the world of sin. The words of men,
the thoughts of men, the eloquence of men, would have
been sufficient to do this. Every preacher of righteous-
ness, from the days of Noah down to the present day, has
gone about reproving the world of sin. Everybody who
in any age has led a just and holy life, not merely one
positively and absolutely so, but one in any way markt
in comparison with his neighbours, has reproved the world
of sin, at least by his deeds, even though he may never
have felt called to do so by his words, though he should
never have lifted up his voice against sin, in the ears of
the world. Nay, it is not necessary that a man should
himself be holy and righteous, in order that he should cry
out against sin. The unholy may do so : the unrighteous
may do so : the greatest and chiefest of sinners may be
the loudest in sending forth their voice through their
hollow mask in reproof of their neighbours. Poetry had
reproved the world of sin : indeed this is the special
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 37
business of two of its brandies, comedy and satire. Philo-
sophy had reproved the world of sin : and at the time
when the Spirit of God began His great work of con-
vincing the world of sin, the reproofs of Philosophy had
become severer and more clamorous, yet also vainer than
ever, as she sat on her stately throne in the Porch. But
what is the world the better for all this laborious re-
proving ? How much does the w r orld heed it, or care for
it ? No more than the crater of Etna cares for the
roaring and lashing of the waves at its feet. The smoke
of sin will still rise up, and stain the face of heaven, —
the flames will still burst forth, and spread desolation far
and wide, — although the waves of reproof should roll
around it unceasingly for century after century. In fact
the whole history of man has shewn that reproof, when
there is no gentler and more penetrative power working
along with it, instead of producing conviction, rather pro-
vokes the heart to resist it. To reprove the world of sin
therefore is a task no way worthy of the Spirit of God;
seeing that it is a work which may easily be wrought
without His special help, and which has been wrought
in all ages without it ; seeing too that it is a work,
which, when it is accomplisht, is of little avail, but
passes over men's hearts, like the wind over a bare rock,
scarcely stirring so much as a grain of dust from it, and
which has so past for age after age from the beginning of
the world until now.
Moreover, while this first part of the operation of the
Spirit is thus imperfectly exprest by the words, reprov-
'</ of Sin, it is not easy to connect any
Lie meaning with the latter clauses of the sentence,
which, according to our Version, would declare that the
Comforter is to reprove tlte world of
38 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
Righteousness, and to reprove the world of Judgement.
If the first clause of the sentence stood by itself, the
word in our language, which would answer the closeliest
to the original, would perhaps he to convict : the Comfor-
ter ivill convict the world of Sin. Yet even this would
not give the full meaning of the passage : for the con-
viction was not to be wrought in the minds of others,
whether as Judges or as mere lookers on, but in the
mind and heart of the world itself. The Comforter also
did not come to condemn the world, but to save the
world. When however we take the second and the
third part of the operation of the Spirit into account, I
cannot find any word in our language so well fitted for
embracing the three cases, as that which our Translators
have put in the margin : the Comforter will convince
the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judge-
ment. Only the Greek ^ord implies, more distinctly
than the English does according to modern usage, that
the persons in whom the conviction is to be wrought
will resist it. This however is always an adjunct of the
sense in the scriptural use of the word, as where St
Paul says that a bishop should be able to convince the
gainsayers (o). Further we must bear in mind that in
this, as in many other of our Lord's promises, a thousand
years are regarded as one day. That which was to be
effected by His Spirit in the Church during the whole
course of ages down to the end of the world, He con-
centrates, as it were, into a single point of space, and
a single moment of time ; even as our eye, with the help
of distance, concentrates a world into a star (p). For it
was not by the Tempter alone that all the kingdoms of
the earth and their glory were shewn to Jesus with the
promise of their being given to Him. God also shewed
THE C0XVICT10X OF STN.
them to Him always. His Father shewed Him how the
kingdoms of this world were to become the kingdoms of
God and of His Christ, over which He should reign for
ever and ever. This was the joy and the glory for the
sake of which He endured the Cross, despising both the
shame and the glory of this world, for the joy and the
glory He was to bestow on the saints who shall reign
with Him for ever. ^ / >t-
To reprove the world of sin, I have said, is a work by
no means worthy of the Spirit of God. But to convince
the world of Sin, — to produce a living and lively con-
viction of it, — to teach mankind what sin is, — to lay it
bare under all its masks, — to trace it through all the
mazes of its web, and to light on it sitting in the midst
thereof, — to shew it to man, not merely as it flashes
forth ever and anon in the overt actions of his neighbours,
but as it lies smouldering inextinguishably within his
own bosom, — to give him a torch wherewith he may
explore the dark chambers of his own heart, — to lead
lii in into them, and to open his eyes so that he shall
behold some of Sin's countless brood crouching or gam-
boling in every corner, — to convince a man of sin in this
way, by proving to him that it lies at the bottom of all
gs, and blends with all his thoughts, that the
bright-coloured stones, with which he is so fond of deck-
ing himself out, and which he takes such delight in
4 at, are only so many bits of brittle, worthless glass,
and that what he deems to be stars are earthborn meteors,
which n u; rely glimmer for the moment they are falling ; —
:i\ ince the world of sin, by shewing it how sin has
tainted its heart, and flows through all its veins, and is
Dp with its lifeblood ; — this is a work which no
earthly power can accomplish. No human teacher can
40 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
do it. Conscience cannot do it. Law, in none of its
forms, human or divine, can do it. Nay, the Gospel itself
cannot do it. Although the word of God is the sword
of the Spirit, yet, unless the Spirit of God draws forth
that sword, it lies powerless in its sheath. Only when
the Spirit of God wields it, is it quick and powerful, and
sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing
asunder of the soul and spirit, a discerner of the thoughts
and purposes of the heart. Therefore, as the work of
convincing the world of sin is one which nothing less
than the Spirit of God can effect, — and which yet must
be effected thoroughly, if sin is to be driven out from the
world, — our Saviour was mercifully pleased to send the
Comforter to produce this conviction in mankind.
At first thought indeed, when we hear that the Com-
forter was sent to convince the world of sin, we can
hardly refrain from exclaiming, Of sin ? What ! can there
ever have been a time in the history of the world, when
the world needed that the Holy Spirit of God should
come down from heaven, in order that it should be con-
vinced of sin ? Was there ever a time when man could
cast his eyes east or west or north or south, without
seeing hosts of sins swarming and buzzing around him in
every quarter ? when he could look at what his neighbours
were doing, when he could look into his own heart, and
not behold the very sight, which we read that God saw
in the days of Noah, that the imagination of man's heart
is evil from his youth 1 Was there ever a time when
man needed a light from heaven, wherewith to discern
that this world, which was made to be the house of God,
and in which man was set to minister as the highpriest,
by offering up continual sacrifices of devout thanksgiving
and a reasonable obedience, had been converted by him,
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 41
its apostate highpriest, into a den of thieves, in which
Covetousness, and Lust, and Ambition, and Pride, and
Gluttony, and Drunkenness, and Falsehood, and Envy,
and Malice, and Cruelty, and Revenge, are ever holding
their hellish revels ? So at first thought one might ex-
claim : but a moment's reflection will teach us that there
has indeed been such a time. Most true though it be,
that never and nowhere has God left Himself without a
Witness, to convince the world of sin, yet too often has
that Witness been utterly unheeded : too often has its
voice been drowned, as the song of a lark would be by
the roar of a millstream. The waters that are whirled
round by the millwheel, cannot hear the lark singing to
them from the heavens : nor can we, when we are tost
and dasht about by the world's never-resting wheel, hear
the voice of the Witness that God has set for Himself in
our hearts. Therefore did God come and speak in the
thunders of the Law from Sinai. He came and set up
another Witness for Himself, to convince the world of sin,
an outward Witness, a Witness that could not be paltered
or tampered with, that could not be bribed or drugged or
lulled, a "Witness that spake in a voice plain, cold, mighty,
all-pervading, and unquenchable as Death. Its voice was
like the voice of Death ; and Death was its sanction
and its penalty. Yet, although God had sent this great
Witness to convince the world of sin, the world still con-
tinued unconvinced. For why ? Because the Law for-
bids the outward act, whereas the seat of sin is in the
secret places of the heart. The Law says, Thou shalt not
but man will still hate. The Law says, Thou shalt
not corr^mit adultery : but man will still lust. The Law
says, Thou shalt not steal : but man will still covet. The
Law says, Thou sJudt not bear false witness : but man
42 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
will still lie and deceive. The Law, from its very nature,
can hardly take cognisance of those evil desires, that
concupiscence in the heart, of which outward acts of sin
are merely the issue and manifestations : and so long as
the Law stands alone, so long as there is no heartsearch-
ing, prophetic Witness to work along with it in con-
vincing the world of sin, men will easily beguile
themselves into believing that, when the Law does not
expressly forbid, it allows. Moreover the Law works by
fear ; not by that fear, which is a part of love, and which
cannot be separated from it, the reverential fear of
offending and paining Him whom we love, — the fear
which would endure any hardship, any suffering, rather
than offend Him : not by this fear does the Law work,
but by that base and cowardly fear, which is a part of
selfishness, the fear of being punisht by Him, of whom we
take no thought, except in that we fear Him. The Law
therefore could not convince the world of sin, as sin, as a
thing to be abhorred and shunned on account of its own
hatefulness and godlessness, but merely as a thing to
be dreaded and avoided on account of the punishments
attacht to it. So that, even after the Law had been
delivered, there was still great need of another Witness, a
Witness that could search the heart, and turn it inside
out, and bring forward all the abominations contained in
it, — a Witness too that should appeal, not to its selfish
fears, but to every germ of good left in it, to its love, to
its gratitude, to its pity, to its hope, to its more generous
desires and aspirations, — a Witness that should pick up
every little fragment of God's image still remaining
in it, and should piece them all together, and
make a new whole of them. Such was the Witness
that the world needed: and such was the Witness
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 43
that God in His infinite mercy sent, to convince the
world of sin.
I was asking just now, Can there ever have been a
time in the history of the world, when it was needful
that the Spirit of God should come down from heaven to
convince the world of sin ? But may we not with better
reason reverse the question, and ask, Has there ever been
a time in the history of the world, when it was not need-
ful that the Spirit of God should come down from heaven
to convince the world of sin ? a time when the world
has been, or could have been, convinced of sin by any
lesser power ? Nay, has there ever been a single man,
from the days of Adam until now, who has not needed
that the Spirit of God should come to him to convince
him of sin ? Has there ever been a single man, who has
been able to find out the sinfulness of sin by himself, of
his own accord, at his own prompting, with no other
guide than his own heart and understanding ? Or, — to
bring the question home to ourselves, — are there any of
you, my brethren, who have been convinced of sin ?
I trust in God, there are many, very many. For, unless
you have been convinced of sin, you can never have
filtered beyond the outskirts of the Kingdom of Heaven.
If you have not experienced that conviction, if you do
not feel it now, the Gospel, it is most certain, cannot to
you be the wisdom and the power of God unto salvation ;
Christ Jesus cannot have been made your Wisdom and
Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption. A
man who had been born in a prison, and had spent his
whole lit*'- in if, might not be aware that there was any-
• peculiarly dismal in his lot: but should he be
delivered from hifl prison, he could never forget that he
had once been a captive, and now is free. Therefore he
44 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTEB.
who knows not that he once was in bonds, must still be
in them. At all events how many soever there may be
among you, who have indeed been convinced of sin, — and
God grant that there may be very many, and that their
conviction may daily become deeper, and that their
number may continually increase! — you however that
have been so already, by whom were you convinced ?
Not by yourselves assuredly. You rather fought against
the conviction, at one time struggled to refute it, at
another tried to evade it by all manner of excuses, often,
it may be for years, have driven it from your thoughts.
Not by your own consciences. If they ever flattered, you
listened to them gladly ; if they reproved, you turned
away. Not by any teachers or monitors with whom this
world has supplied you. The pride and shame of the
natural man revolt against the thought of a human eye
spying into the dark places of his heart, and, since in
some things such monitors must needs be mistaken, in
others will ever be too harsh, comforts itself with the
persuasion that the partial errour in the indictment
vitiates it altogether. Nor have you been convinced of
sin even by the word of Life, full of life and truth and
warning and admonition as it is, which has been stored
up for us in the Bible. Any one of these witnesses may
indeed have been the means employed in working the
conviction in you: but none of them can have wrought
it, any more than a hammer can strike, without a living
hand to wield it. Only when wielded by the arm of the
Comforter, is the word of God indeed like a hammer, that
breaks the stony crust of the natural heart to pieces. If
your conviction has been effectual, — if it has pierced
through the depths of your soul, — if it has laid hold on
your Will, and stript off its tough scales, and made it bow
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 45
its stiff neck, and taught it to shrink from the sin of
which it has been convinced, and to love and to seek
after the beauty of holiness, — that conviction must have
come to you from above ; it must have been wrought in
you by the Spirit of God.
Yet we too have still the same witnesses to convince
us of sin, that were abiding among mankind in ages of
yore, before the coming of the Saviour. We have the
voice of Conscience sighing through every fresh crack
that we make in God's image in our hearts, and con-
spiring with our Reason and Imagination, and every other
nobler faculty, to admonish us that we are betraying our
duty, that we are outraging our better feelings, that we
are marring our true, aboriginal nature, — to admonish us
that we are polluting our souls, and withering and rot-
ting our hearts. But is this enough to convince a man
of sin ? Is it enough to produce that strong, living, prac-
tical persuasion of the hatefulness of sin, and of our being
in its hateful bondage, which alone can be called con-
viction ? Alas ! Conscience is so wasted by yearlong
neglect, and crusht by reiterated violation, that it scarcely
ever utters its warnings and reproofs, except against
fresh overt acts of sin. It seldom takes notice of our
habitual sins: still less does it rouse us to contend
against that sinfulness, which is inwrought in the
natural heart. And what is the power of Conscience,
even against open outbursts of sin ? Does not the
drunkard know, if he will but consider, that he is de-
grading himself below the beasts of the field ? Does not
he know that he is quenching his reason, that ho is
blinding the light of his understanding, that he is can-
kg all his better feelings, that ho is giving up the
reins of his will to any fierce passion which may chance
46 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
to seize on them, that he is sowing the seeds of all man-
ner of diseases, and provoking Death to come and reap
the crop ? And yet, certain and indubitable as this is, the
knowledge may not improbably never have constrained
him to drink a single glass the less : nay, he is just as
likely to drink the more for it, that he may smother, and
harden himself against the qualms it gives him. Does
not the libertine and the adulterer know, that he is de-
filing himself, and defiling the partner in his crime, —
that he is defiling her whom he pretends, and may per-
chance believe that he loves, with the foulest and most
ignominious impurity ? Does not he know that he is
snapping the holy bond, by which . alone the families of
mankind are held together in peace and happiness ?
Does not he know that he is rudely tearing off the
blossoms of that one fair plant, which our first parents
brought with them out of Paradise, the sacred plant of pure
conjugal love ? And yet, the more atrocious the crime,
the purer the happiness he is blasting, the more innocent
the victim, the greedier, the more impetuous, the more
sin-thirsty he will be. What avails it that Conscience
should tell her beads ? he goes on sinning all the while.
No, my brethren ; Conscience assuredly has no power
to convince sinners of sin. When she is uttering her
most righteous words, she often is only casting pearls
before swine. The passions of the carnal mind are
fretted and irritated by the sight of what is so unlike
themselves, and trample them impatiently in the
mire.
Thus powerless is Conscience for the warfare against
sin. It will indeed lift itself up for a while, if it has
been rightly trained, to resist the first encroaches of sin.
As the waters gather around, and begin to heave and
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 47
swell, it struggles for a while to keep its head above
them : but the struggles become fainter and fainter, while
the waters rush on more fiercely and tumultuously, until
at length it sinks beneath them. Whatever strength it
may have, independently of Christianity, is confined to a
very few choice spirits. In the great body of mankind
it is all but extinct : and, where it is not so, it does not
speak of sin and sinfulness, but rather of virtue and the
dignity of human nature. In all too it greatly needs
guidance, instruction, illumination : for its voice is merely
a kind of tribunician veto, forbidding that which is
recognised to be wrong : but it has no vote in the
council of the mind, no discernment in itself to determine
what is wrong. For this knowledge it is dependent on
our other faculties, intellectual and moral : and they,
although they were all designed to be servants and
witnesses of Righteousness, and though they cannot fulfill
their constitutive idea, unless they are so, yet are too
easily perverted and depraved into the servants and
witnesses of Unrighteousness. The Imagination, which
ought to purify our affections, and to raise - us up above
the narrowness of the Understanding, and the debase-
ment of our carnal nature, may too easily become the
inflamer of our passions. Being the chief connective
link between the visible world and the invisible, or-
dained " to glance from heaven to earth, from earth to
heaven," it still often turns away from its appointed task
of spiritualizing the senses, and stoops to the ignoble
drudgery of sensualizing the spirit. And that the Under-
standing is over-ready to quit the straight road, and
riggle along the crooked paths of evil, we learn from the
example of the serpent, that was more subtile than any
beast of the field ; an example which has had such hosts
48 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
of followers, that they who specially profest to be
teachers of wisdom, became Sophists.
Or shall we say that the law at all events must needs
be sufficient to convince the world of sin ? For we too
have the Law, speaking to us in divers ways, and by
divers voices. We have the Law of God, the very same
Law which was delivered to Moses on the mount. We
have the Law of God, as written in the ordinances of
Nature, according to which almost every sin is sure to
be visited sooner or later by some sort of punishment
even in this world. We have the Law of the land. We
have the Law of public opinion, by which many sins are
doomed to shame, by which many sinners are branded
and become outcasts. We have the Law of human affec-
tion and esteem, whereby love and friendship and honour
are awarded to the amiable and the deserving, and are
forfeited by the unamiable and the reprobate. We have
the purest and holiest of all Laws, the Law of the Gospel,
with all its comfortable assurances, and all its blessed
promises, the Law delivered on that Mount, which spake
better things than Sinai of old. But is any of these Laws
sufficient to convince the world of sin ? No . . . nor all of
them put together. They may convince the world of
some sins. They may make some persons abstain from
some sins. But they will never convince the world of
sin, nor make any one abstain from it altogether. One
reason of this is, that all these laws, except the last, set
their face only against certain sins, — it may be graver or
lighter ones, more definite, or more comprehensive, — it
may be against a greater or a less number of them. But
they do not set their face against sin itself, as an indwell-
ing disease in the heart, altogether distinct from every
outward act and manifestation. They do not attempt to
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 49
grub up the root of sin, and to clear away the multitud-
inous fibres of that root spreading on every side, and
curling and twining about every feeling and every
desire. They are content, some of them, with lopping
off the branches, others with hewing down the stem.
But sin is not like a fir, which has but one stem, and
which, if you cut it down, never shoots up again. You
cannot destroy it, as the Asiatic king threatened to de-
stroy Lampsacus, irirvos rpoirov, at once, summarily, by an
outward act, by the axe or the sword. On the contrary,
if you merely cut it down, new suckers are sure to spring
from it, and it gets many stems instead of one : if you
merely prune the branches, it will soon become more
luxuriant than ever. So long as the evil spirit is cast
out by any other power than the Spirit of God, — so long
as the house from which he is cast out remains empty,
and the Spirit of God does not come to take up His
abode in it, — so long as it is merely swept and garnisht,
priding itself on its own cleanness and neatness, — so
long is the casting out of no avail. The evil spirit will
assuredly come back anon, with other spirits worse than
himself. In spite of all that Law can do, when destitute
of the higher sanctions of Religion, the vices of a nation
in the decrepitude of its civilization will be far worse
than those which stained it when first emerging from
barbarism.
The Law of Moses, as set forth in the Old Testament,
we have already seen, cannot convince mankind of sin.
It forbids certain sinful acts. It may withhold us from
committing those acts by the punishments it threatens.
Or it enjoins certain observances, which however, as en-
joined by Law, can only be outward. But a man might
keep all the commandments of Moses : so far as the letter
50 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
goes, he might stick to the letter of the whole Law :
and yet he might wholly neglect the weightier matters
of it, justice and mercy. We are not told that the
Pharisee said what was not true, when he boasted of his
legal righteousness : we are not told that he had broken
any one of the commandments : the Publican no doubt
had : and yet the Pharisee in God's eyes was a sight more
offensive than the Publican. For in the Pharisee, as in
his whole sect, we see the tendency of the Law, not to
produce the conviction of sin in those who conformed to
it, but to puff them up with a vain persuasion of right-
eousness, — a tendency akin to that of the Stoical philo-
sophy, and shared by every kind of righteousness, except
that of faith. It is true that St Paul speaks of the Law
as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, and that the way
in which it leads us to Him, is by convincing us of sin,
through our inability to fulfill it. But this is only when
the length and breadth and depth of the Law is set before
us by the Spirit of God, whereby we learn how incapable
we are of fulfilling it. St Paul Himself, until he received
the conviction of the Spirit, believed himself to be blame-
less in regard to legal righteousness (Phil. iii. 6). When
speaking a while back of the commandments, I stopt
short of the tenth ; and it may perhaps have struck you
that the tenth commandment, even according to the mere
letter, does go further than the outward act, and lifts up
its voice against the sinful desire in the heart. Never-
theless the tenth commandment is far from enough to
convince the heart of sin. At the utmost it will condemn
our evil desires at the time when they are grown to a
head, and are tempting us to wrong others. So long as
they are pent up in our own bosoms, so long as they do
not amount to a wish of depriving our neighbour of that
THE CONVICTION OF SIN 51
which is his, our hearts will readily believe that there is
no harm in their evil desires, — that they may indulge in
lust, so that it be not after a neighbour's wife, — that they
may indulge in covetousness, so that it be not after a
neighbour's property. The world swarms with the
servants of Mammon and of Ashtaroth, who do not feel
that there is any condemnation of their practices in the
letter of this commandment.
But if the Law of the Old Testament,— that Law by
which man gained so much clearer, distincter, and fuller
knowledge of sin, — is insufficient to convince the world
of sin, much more must the same hold with regard to
every form of human Law. All such Law deals solely
with outward acts, with those outward acts which are
hurtful to society, its end being the preservation of social
order, and the repression of whatever would infringe it :
such acts Law forbids under threat of punishment. This
is its only sanction, its only way of enforcing its com-
mands. If a man however be withheld from breaking
the Law, if he be kept out of prison, by no higher
motive than the fear of punishment, he may be quite as
bad, if not worse, than many of those who are cast into
it. Although too the hatred of God against sin be
manifested in divers ways in the order of nature, in the
framework of society, in the principles whereby men are
guided in their dealings and feelings towards each other,
— though some sins are punisht almost infallibly by the
loss of health and strength, some by public shame and
reproach, some by the forfeiture of those joys which
spring up under the steps of such as walk along the path
of life in unity, — still all this is very far from enough to
convince the world of sin. The various voices of the
world, which I have just mentioned, merely condemn
52 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
some sins, but take no account of others. Pain follows
some sins : shame follows some sins : but some are almost
held in honour. Affection, in the present irregular con-
dition of men's hearts, is seldom meted out with much
regard to worth. In fact all these Laws, and even the
pure and holy Law of the Gospel, may sound year after
year through the hollow caverns of our hearts, without
awakening one spiritual feeling in them, without stirring
the waters so that they shall rise through the network
of weeds spread over them, without arousing anything
like genuine shame, and lively contrition and repentance.
In that beautiful poem, which I have already cited, by
one of the meekest and holiest spirits who ever adorned
the Church of Christ upon earth, we have an enumera-
tion of the many graces wherewith God surrounds and
guards us in a Christian land : and at the same time we
are admonisht how vain they all are to convince us effec-
tually of sin.
Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round !
Parents first season us : then Schoolmasters
Deliver us to Laws : they send us bound
To Rules of Reason, holy Messengers,
Pulpits anr*. Sundays, — Sorrow dogging Sin,
Afflictions sorted, Anguish of all sizes, —
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, —
Bibles laid open, — millions of Surprises, —
Blessings beforehand, — ties of Gratefulness, —
The sound of Glory ringing in our ears, —
Without, our Shame, — within, our Consciences, —
Angels and Grace, — eternal Hopes and Fears. ,
Yet all these fences, and their whole array,
One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.
It would take me too long, — though the time might
not be ill spent, — to go minutely through this rich list of
the graces and blessings, with which God encompasses us
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 5 3
from our cradle to our grave, for the sake of convincing us
of sin, and of drawing us away from it, from its slavery
and its punishment, from sin and death and hell, to the
path of life and the glories of heaven. Parents, with
their ever- watchful love, sheltering us under their wings
until we have strength to quit our native rest, — Teachers,
who train us in the way wherein we are to walk, and fit
us for discerning it, — Laws, that set the mark of death
upon sin, — reason, that would deliver us from the mere
bondage of Law, and make the service of duty a free and
willing service, — the messengers of the Gospel sent into
every corner of the land to call us to the knowledge of
God, and to the grace of Christ, — the word of God pro-
claimed to His people when they are gathered together
in His house, — Sundays, with their holy rest and peace,
their many heavenly voices, their prayers and sacra-
ments, — the sorrow and abject misery which follow at the
heels of sin, — the afflictions with which God visits His
children, sorted to suit their special needs, and to un-
ravel the cords with which the world holds them down, —
anguish, greater or less, according as we require it and
have strength to bear it, — the delicate network of human
order and earthly motives, which offer a kind of counter-
part to the order and motives of heaven, and which check
us against our will in manifold unthought of ways when
we should otherwise rush into sin, — the Bible laid open
in every house, and meeting our eyes at every turn, — the
millions, yes, the millions of surprises, showered like stars
over the face of life, and evermore reminding us of God's
wondrous goodness and mercy, and warning us to think
of death, and teaching us the ruin of sin, — the blessings
which are poured out upon us beforehand, as a foretaste
of the joys of heaven, long ere we have learnt to love God
54 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
and to serve Him, blessings of love and innocent gladness
and a peaceful conscience, bestowed so bountifully even
on childhood, — the ties of gratefulness, as well as of duty
whereby God makes the voice of nature herself declare
that we must needs love Him who has so loved us, — the
song of the angels ringing in our ears, Glory to God in the
highest, and telling us of the glory in store for those who
have found peace through the goodwill of the Eternal
Father, — the shame which pursues sin without, — the
stings of Conscience within, — the mauy servants of God
that are sent to comfort us with their timely ministra-
tions, — the Grace bestowed on us in baptism, and which
the Holy Spirit, if we hinder not His purpose, would
ever increase and strengthen in our souls, — and finally,
in order that we may not be dazzled or crusht by the
fleeting hopes and fears of this present life, the hopes
and fears of eternity, — these are the cherubim wherewith
God has surrounded our Eden, to keep the Tempter from
approaching it.
Yet all these fences, and their whole array,
/ One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.
Seeing therefore how utterly powerless everything
human is, how powerless every Law is, even the holy Law
of God, to convince mankind effectually of sin, — that is,
to open our eyes, so that we shall see all its loathsome-
ness, and all its snares, so that we shall see its power over
us and in us, and the living death which that power
brings upon all such as yield themselves to it, and may
thus be led to flee from it as from a pestilence, and to
guard against it as we should if a plague were creeping
and sweeping through the land, — it is a work by no
means unworthy of the Spirit of God, — for it is a work
which nothing but the Spirit of God can accomplish, — to
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 55
convince the world of sin. For, although even in the
natural man there is a spirit that lusteth against the
flesh, yet the flesh in the natural man is from the first
far more powerful than the spirit, and is always lusting
against it : and the flesh is daily fed and fattened by the
world, which affords slender nourishment to the spirit:
and every victory it gains makes it stronger and prouder,
so that the spirit at length is almost extinguished within
us, even as a glowworm would be extinguisht by falling
into a muddy pool. Yet, unless man were convinced of
sin, the salvation wrought by Christ would be of no
effect. Without this conviction by the Spirit, in vain
would the Son of God have come in the flesh ; in vain
would He have died on the cross for the sins of mankind :
mankind would not, could not have been saved. They
could not, because they would not. Unless a man be well
aware that he is labouring under a disease, he will not
think of asking for the remedies which might cure him :
nor will he take them, although you hold them out to
him, and although their efficacy may have been proved in
a multitude of cases, more especially if they happen to
be distasteful to his vitiated palate. If he mistakes the
convulsive fits of a fever for the vigour of health, he will
not consent to practise that abstinence by which his
might be subdued. Nor, unless we are fully con-
vinced that our souls are tormented by a deadly, clinging
disease, and that no earthly power or skill can heal them,
shall we think of applying earnestly for health to the
only Physician of souls.
This brings me to consider, though it must needs be
briefly and very imperfectly, in what manner the Spirit
convinces the man of his disease, in what manner He
convinces the world of sin. If a man is a prey to a
56 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
mortal disease, which breaks out in blotches and sores,
there is no use in merely plastering over the sores : you
must go to the root of the disease, and attack it in its
strongholds. Else, being checkt from venting itself out-
wardly, it will rage the fiercelier within. Just so is it
with sin. There is little profit in telling a man, who is
walking after the lusts of the flesh, that such or such an
act is wrong. Unless you go to the root of sin within
him, from which all these wrong acts spring, even though
you should persuade him to break off some bad practices
and habits, you will do him little real, lasting, essential
good. Notwithstanding this reformation, as he will deem
it, he may continue just as sinful, just as thorough a slave
of sin as ever. Nay, his case may be still more hopeless :
for his having overcome a bad habit or two may beguile
him into fancying that he is the master of his own heart,
can sway it which way he chooses, and has only to will,
in order to become a paragon of virtue. Therefore, when
the Spirit of God came to convince the world of sin, what
was the sin He began with convincing men of? If any
of us had to convince a person of the sinfulness of the
world, how should we set about it ? We should talk of
the intemperance, and licentiousness, and dishonesty, and
fraud, and falsehood, and envy, and ill-nature, and
cruelty, and avarice, and ambition, whereby man has
turned God's earth into a place of weeping and gnashing
of teeth. These however are not the sins, of which the
Spirit of God convinces the world: because all these
might be swept away: and yet, unless far more was
done, the world would continue just as sinful as before.
All these sins, this whole terrible brood of sin, were
indeed to be found in every quarter of the earth, so far as
it was then peopled, in our Lord's days, no less plentifully
THE CON VICT ION OF SIN. 5 7
than they are now. They had swollen themselves out,
and rose up on every side in the face of heaven, like
huge mountains : they flowed from country to country,
from clime to clime, like rivers : they spread themselves
abroad like lakes and seas, lakes of brimstone and dead
seas, within the exhalations of which no soul could come
and live. Whithersoever the eye turned, it saw one sin
riding on the back, or starting from the womb of another.
This was the Babel which all nations were busied in
building, — and the confusion of tongues did not hinder
them, — a Babel underground. They went on digging-
deeper and deeper, until its nethermost storey wellnigh
reacht to hell, and was only separated from it by a thin,
crumbling crust. Nevertheless the Spirit of God, when
He came to convince the world of sin, and to bring that
conviction home to the hearts of mankind, did not choose
out any of these open, glaring sins, to taunt and con-
found them with. He went straight to that sin, which
is the root and source of all others, want of faith, the evil
heart of unbelief. When the Comforter is come, He will
convince the world of sin, because they believe not
in Me.
Now this is a sin which the world till then had never
dreamt of as such : and even at this day few take much
thought about it, except those who have been convinced
of it by the Spirit, and who therefore have been in great
measure delivered from it. For they who have spent
their whole lives in thick spiritual blindness, and whose
eye is still dark, cannot know what the blessing of sight
is, and therefore cannot grieve at their want. They alone,
who have emerged into light, can appreciate the misery
of the gloom under which they have been lying. Thus,
until we have begun to believe, we cannot know what
58 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
unbelief is, its misery, its sin, its curse. Want of faith is
a sin of which no law accuses us. Conscience does not
accuse us of it. Even among those -who desire that the
confession of their sins shall not be an empty form, but
a, reality, and who, with this purpose, are wont to review
their conduct, that they might seek forgiveness for iheir
recent misdeeds, very few, I am "afraid, take much ac-
count of their want of faith. The chief part look solely
to their sins of commission, mainly to the evil deeds they
may have done, then to the evil words they may have
spoken, sometimes, it may be, to the evil thoughts and
feelings they may have harboured in their hearts. If a
person can tax himself with any act of intemperance or
impurity, — if he remembers that he has given way to his
anger, — that he has swerved from truth, — if he is dis-
tinctly conscious of having indulged in proud or vain or
envious imaginations, he will feel that he has something
for which he specially needs forgiveness. If he has no
such definite charge to bring against himself, he will
fancy his score is clear. Yet our excellent Confession
should make us equally mindful of our sins of omission,
of the things which we ought to have done, and which
we have left undone. This latter half of our sins, it is
to be feared, very many think little or nothing of; though
these are far the larger and more numerous half of the
two, and no less deadly than the other, even as hunger,
if unfed, is no less deadly than sickness. Nor can they
be overcome by any one without unceasing watchfulness
and prayer : indeed they need this all the more from our
aptness to leave them unnoticed. They are the more
numerous half, numerous in the very best of us ; and as
for those, who are not endeavouring earnestly to walk in
the law of God, and seeking the help of His Spirit that
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 59
they may be enabled to walk therein, their sins of
omission eat up the whole of their lives. The whole of
their lives is one black blot, one vast sin of omission,
broken here and there by sins of commission flashing
through it. Now these sins of omission do not merely
comprise, as at first thought we might incline to suppose,
the many things which, if we had made a right use of our
time and opportunities, we might have done, but which,
through indolence, from giving up our hearts to worldly
things, from lukewarmness or self-indulgence, we have
failed to do; although even this would be an appalling
list. For when did a day pass over the head of any one
of us, on looking back on which with a searching eye he
would not have found manifold reason to say ? — I might
have shown kindness to such a person to-day ; and I did
not : — I might have relieved the wants of such another ;
and I did not: — 1 might have softened anger by mild
words ; and I did not : — / might have upheld the cause
of the opprest ; I might have defended those who were
evil spoken of; and I did not : — 1 might have encouraged
such a person in good ; I might have laboured to withhold
' iJi'l raw another from evil; and I did not: — I might
have been more diligent, more obedient, more zealous of
good works : I might have shewn more reverence to those
above me, more indulgence to those below me : I might
have done all this; and therefore I ought to have done
all this. For whatever we can do in the service of God,
and for the good of our brethren, according to the dis-
creetest economy of our time, with due regard to the
various claims upon it, we ought to do. The only way
in which we can show our thankfulness to God for His
inestimable goodn< <- in preparing good works for us to
walk in, is by striving to walk in them with all our
60 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
might. Yet this is not all. As in positive sins, in sins
of commission, we sin in deed and word and thought, so
in negative sins, in sins of omission, do we likewise sin,
not only in deed and word, but also in thought. Now
this last head of sins, the sins of omission in thought,
contains the great prime sin, of which the Comforter
came to convince mankind, the sin of unbelief, the sin of
want of faith, the sin of living without God in the world.
Laws, inasmuch as by their nature they deal only with
that which manifests itself outwardly, in deed or in word,
take no cognisance of this sin. Conscience, which only
sounds when some positive sin is trampling upon it, is
silent about this. Therefore, if we were to be convinced
of it at all, pressing was our need that the Spirit of God
should graciously vouchsafe to convince us.
But how comes this to be the great prime sin, the
mother sin of all sins? Think, brethren, a moment
where we are ; think what our business is here. "We are
in God's world ; we are God's creatures : but yet we are
cut off from God. We are, as it were, outcasts from God,
shut up in the prison of the body, and bound heart and
soul and mind with the chains of the senses. The walls
of this our prison hide Him from us. We can neither see
Him with our eyes, nor hear Him with our ears : still less
can our smell or taste or touch bring us into His presence.
Therefore our great business here on earth is to live by
faith : for only through faith can we live in the presence
of God. When we look through the chambers of this
our prison, we find that in it, however stunted and pining
with long confinement in an alien atmosphere, there is
still an understanding which has some faint power of dis-
cerning the ways of God, and a heart which may be
brought to feel some faint motion of love for God. If we
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 61
believed in Him, we should be better able to discern
Him, and far better able to love Him. But inasmuch as
we cannot perceive Him with our senses, we need the
eye of faith. Faith should lift us out of the prison of the
body, and free us from the bondage of the senses, and
bear us up into the presence of Him, whom no eye hath
seen, or can see. Moreover, as God alone is good in Him-
self, as He is the only Fountain of all good, so that
nothing is good except what comes from God, and is
received and held in communion with Him, it is plain
that, where there is no faith, there can be nothing truly
good. The bond of union with God is snapt. The one
channel, through which good can flow into our hearts, -is
cut off. Hence we must be like members severed from
their body : everything about us must have the taint of
death, must partake more or less of the nature of sin.
Now what is the state of the world with regard to faith ?
Surely the world is without faith. Until our hearts have
been renewed by the Spirit of God, faith, in this its
highest relation, as faith in God, is very weak in most of
us, in many almost an utter blank. Therefore do we give
up our mind to dig in the quarries of the body, and our
heart to work in the hulks of the senses. We clothe our-
selves in the convict-dress of the lusts of the flesh, and put
out the eyes of the reason, and tie a clog to the heels of
the understanding, and clip the wings of the imagination,
Mid muzzle the will, and tar and feather our feelings with
the dust and dirt of the earth. If we had faith in its full
life and strength, — if our faith were indeed the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, — if it
gave a body to the future and invisible, so that we could
see it as with our eyes, — if our understandings were
opened to behold heaven and hell, with the same clear-
62 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
ness with which we behold the sky over our heads, and
the earth under our feet, — if we could feel the blessedness
of communion with God, the unutterable woe of separa-
tion from Him, as livelily and intensely as we feel the
pleasures and pains of the senses, — it would be impossible
for us to sin. As it is declared that the pure in heart
shall see God, so, if we had that faith which would enable
us to see God ever standing at our right hand, and com-
passing us about with the arms of His power and love,
how could we be otherwise than pure in heart? For
impurity, of whatsoever kind, sin, of whatsoever kind, is
the turning away from God. It is turning our thoughts
away from God, and fixing them ever on other objects
than God. It is turning our heart away from God, and
giving it up to something apart from God, — to something
that we love, not in God and through God, as His
creature, and His gift, in humble thankfulness to the
Giver, but without God, and against God, and in despite
of God, without a thought of Him, against His will, in de-
spite of His commandment. It is taking our faith away
from God, and placing it in something else, — the believ-
ing that there is anything real, anything true, anything
lasting, anything good and worthy and lovely, except
God, and that into which he is pleased to pour out from
the riches of His surpassing excellences, — the believing
that happiness may be found in something beside com-
munion with God, and dutiful obedience to His will.
For this is the curse of unbelief. We will not believe
the truth ; and therefore God has given us up to believe
all manner of lies. There is nothing too gross, too sense-
less, too wild and two extravagant for us to believe. We
believe that the fleeting pleasures of the flesh are more
substantial and precious than the enduring joys of the
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 63
spirit, — that the fitful admiration and fervour of feeble
man are more to be desired than the grace and love of
Almighty God, — that earth is truer and more real than
heaven, — that a life of a few years is longer and of more
importance than a life through eternity, — that the scarred
and bloated carcase of sin, with its death's head, and its
stinging snakes coiling restlessly around it, is lovelier
and more to be desired than the pure and radiant beauty
of holiness. Yes, alas, we assuredly do believe these lies :
we believe them, all of us, more or less : the natural man
believes them wholly; and we never get so far quit of
the natural man, as to escape from the last maze of this
never-ending labyrinth of falsehood. By our conduct we
shew almost daily, in one way or other, that we do believe
these lies. Yet, if we had faith, this would be impossible.
For faith, while it taught us that God is to be loved
above all things, and that a union with God is to be
desired above all things, would at the same time teach us
that whatever draws us away and separates us from God,
is to be shunned and cast out and abhorred. Thus faith
takes. the charm out of every temptation, and turns its
sweetness into bitterness, its honey into gall. Were a
cup of pleasant wine put into your hands, and you knew
for certain that a deadly poison was mixt up with the
wine, which would rack you with the fiercest pains, and
ere long tear soul and body in sunder, — who would drink
it ? who would not dash it from him forthwith ? Yet, if
we had but faith, we should know and feel that sin is
deadlier than the deadliest poison, that it racks us with
fiercer pains, and gives us over to a more terrible dis-
solution. For it cuts us off from God, from Him who is
the only Source of all blessing and peace and joy.
1 1 •■nee it is, because our want of faith, and the con-
64 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
sequent estrangement from God, is our prime, original
misery and sin, — because it is the curse, through which
man's heart only brings forth thorns and thistles, —
because it is the occasion, if not the cause, of every other
sin, from all which Faith would infallibly preserve us, —
and because, if we continued without faith, even though
every other sin were thoroughly purged from the earth,
a fresh brood would immediately spring forth, — therefore
it was that, when the Spirit of God came to convince the
world of sin, the sin He chose out to be the special object
of His conviction, was want of faith. Our Lord's words
however, I may be reminded, are not, that the Comforter
will convince the world of sin, because they believe not
in God, but because they believe not in Me (q) ; so that
this was the great sin of the world, the sin of which it
was to be convinced, that it did not believe in Christ.
That is to say, it did not believe Him to be the Incarnate,
onlybegotten Son of God, the appointed King and
Saviour of mankind, and did not believe in Him as such,
as God manifest in the flesh. For God, as He is in Him-
self, in the mystery of His own unapproachable being,
as He dwells in the bright abyss of His own timeless
eternity, — He, before the glory of whose face the arch-
angels veil their eyes, — He, whom none has known or
can know, except the Onlybegotten Son, and the Spirit
who is One with the Father and the Son, — can hardly
become a distinct object even of faith to man. It is only
when He vouchsafes to come forth out of His absolute
Godhood, in the Person of His Son and Spirit, — when
He spreads out His mantle through space, and bids world
after world start forth from it, and blossom in unfading
light, — when He gathers together the waters of His
Eternity into the channel of Time, and commands the
THE CONVICTION OF SIN 65
days and the years to ripple and roll along them, — it is
only when He shews forth His eternal power and lord-
ship in the beauty and order of the universe, in the
manner in which matter is made to bow its stubborn
neck to law, and to become instinct with motion, and to
yield to the transforming powers of life, — in the manner
in which worlds, and systems of worlds, and countless
systems of beings in each world, are made to work
harmoniously together, revealing an unfathomable Unity
as the groundwork of infinite diversity, — it is only as He
declares Himself to man by the Law written in his heart,
and comes to him amid the desert of this sensual life in
the still small voice of Conscience, — it is only as God has
been pleased to make Himself known by these manifold
witnesses, whom He has set up for the manifestation of
His glory, that man, without some more special revela-
tion, could know anything or believe anything of God.
Nor could all these revelations, wonderful and glorious as
they were, avail to produce a living faith in any child of
man. For a living faith implies an immediate, conscious,
personal relation: but all the above-mentioned revela-
tions, except the last, are universal, in which every finite
being is swallowed up in the Infinite, like the stars in
the Milky-way. On the other hand, God's revelation of
Himself, when He stampt His own image on the soul of
man, became so marred and faint after the Fall, that man
entirely lost sight of its heavenly Original, and regarded
it as the creature of his own mind. Therefore, when God
was pleased to reveal Himself more especially to man,
He revealed Himself at once as standing in a direct rela-
tion to man, the God of a chosen family, of Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, and the God of a chosen people,
and at the same time as the Author and Giver of a Law,
E
66 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
to which the Law in the heart gave answer, and wherein
it recognised its original. And at length, in the fulness
of time, He revealed Himself in the person of His Only-
begotten Son, taking our nature upon Him, entering into
the communion of all our sorrows and infirmities, and
placing Himself in the most immediate personal relation
to all mankind as their Teacher and King, and to each
individual child of man as his Redeemer and Saviour.
Moreover, in order that all things might be reconciled to
God and to each other by His great Atonement, He
declared Love to be the living principle of the Law;
thereby setting all the affections of the heart at one with
the ordinances of duty, and teaching us that every act of
obedience to God's Law is not merely enforced on us by
the fear of His power and wrath, but is exactly what,
even without any positive injunction, our own hearts, if
duly enlightened and purified, would have imposed upon
themselves.
Here a difficulty comes across us. In referring just
now to our Lord's declaration, that the pure in heart
shall see God, I remarked that the converse also is true,
and that they who see God must be pure in heart. In
fact every impurity is like a cloud, spreading before our
spiritual eye, and blotting out God from our sight. Thus
it is only by purity of heart, that we can attain to seeing
God ; while it is only through faith, whereby we are
enabled to see God, that our hearts can be purified.
This is one of the dilemmas of perpetual occurrence,
when an idea is subjected to the operations of the under-
standing, which breaks it up into parts, and contemplates
the parts under the category of succession, whereas in
themselves they are one, without a before or after. Sinless
God dwells in our hearts, and hallows them with His
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 67
presence, they cannot be otherwise than impure; yet,
unless they are pure, God cannot dwell in them.s For
this reason, when the Comforter came to convince the
world of sin, the sin, of which He convinced the world,
was not that they did not believe in God: for in God,
the Unknown God, the Absolute, Infinite, Self-existent
Author of all being, cut off and shut out from Him
as they were, they could not have any lively faith.
Wherefore, after having manifested Himself to mankind
in divers ways, in the fulness of time, when the world
by a multitude of contrary and often conflicting processes
had been ripened for the reception of a reconciling faith,
God sent forth His Onlybegotten Son, who was the
Express Image of His Person, that in Him men might
believe, and through Him in the Father. Hereby he left
our unbelief utterly without excuse. Seeing that we
were so totally estranged from Him, that the narrowness
of our minds could not recognise Him as God, nor the
feebleness of our hearts lift them up to Him as such, He
sent His Son to dwell amongst us in the form of a Man,
that we might know Him in whom we were to believe.
Seeing that we shrank in awe from the contemplation of
His Infinitude and Omniscience, or lost ourselves in star-
gazing thereat, Christ came to us in the form of a Servant,
to prove to our unbelieving, carnal minds that what is
most godlike in God is not His power. To wean our
hearts from the love of the world, to teach us the worth-
lessness of its pomps and vanities, He came, not as a
King, according to the earthly notion of royalty, setting
up His throne on the necks of prostrate nations, wafted
aloft by their admiring shouts, and clothed either in out-
ward riches and grandeur, or in the riches and grandeur
of a commanding intellect and an imperious will, but in
68 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
a lowly estate, without form or comeliness, the Son of a
carpenter, poorer than the poorest person in this con-
gregation, a Wanderer on the face of the earth, not having
where to lay His head. Thus came He, who was the
Son of God. That the justice and holiness of God might
not scare us, He came as the Messenger of pardon and
peace. That the burden and shame of our sins might
not keep us away, He called on us to cast the burthen
upon Him, and Himself bore the shame on the cross.
He came to reconcile us to God, to teach us what
God is, and how we may become like God, and live as
becomes His children. He shewed us that God is Mercy
and love, that we are to become like God by living a life
of mercy and love, that we are to behave as the children
of God by a dutiful, ready obedience to the will of our
Heavenly Father. Perfect God, He was also Perfect
Man, the Image of His Father, and a Pattern for all who
desire to become the children of His Father.
This therefore, since the coming of Christ, is the great,
the inexcusable sin of the world, that they will not
believe in Christ. ^Faith in God, we have seen, is the
source of all spiritual life, which can only flow from com-
munion with Him ; and the want of that faith is the
barrenness out of which all sin springsA Without that
faith we have nothing to stand on, nothing to hold by.
Our reason has no assurance of an all-controlling Law,
our life no heavenly Archetype, our heart no eternal
Home. From that faith however we have departed so
far, that of ourselves we can never regain it. We can no
more bring ourselves to believe in God, than we can
mount after the eagle up the crystal stairs of the sky.
We may indeed be borne up by the wind, but only into
a cloud, from which the next moment we may fall plumb
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 69
down into the bottomless pit. In Christ, on the other
hand, we may believe. That is to say, the Godhead is
brought down to us in Christ in a manner that does not
surpass the reach of our hearts and minds. Nor is there
anything in Christ to frighten us away from Him. All
His words are full of mercy and love ; and He is ever
calling us to come to Him. Although we are sinners, the
shame of our sins must not make us fear to approach
Him : for it was to sinners He especially came, to call
them to repentance and newness of life. Therefore, if we
will not believe in Christ, there must be some deeprooted
power of sin within us, that keeps us away from Him.
It must be, that we love our sins, and will not forsake
them. It must be, that we shun God, and will not allow
the dew of his love to refresh us, — that we will not be
won by His mercy, — that we make light of His pardon,
and scorn his peace.
Among those who stay away from Christ, who will
not believe in Him, who will not come to Him, the mo-
tive of the chief part has ever been, that they are destitute
of the consciousness of sin, and of all thoughts and wishes
rising above the objects of the senses, or else that they
love their sins, and are determined to cleave to them,
in despite of all that God can do to draw them away.
Others there are, who will not believe in Christ through
pride and selfrighteousness. Others have involved them-
selves inextricably in the labyrinthine abstractions of a
sceptical understanding. Some will say, in their high-
swelling imaginations, that they need no Redeemer, no
Ransom, no Reconciler, no Atonement, no Pardon, — that
they can find the way to God by themselves, — that they
can build up a tower of their own virtues, a grand and
gorgeous tower, virtue above virtue, the top of which
70 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
shall reach to heaven. Such men there have been more
or less in all ages; and the way their devices have
been baffled has ever been the same, by the con-
fusion of tongues. They have been unable to under-
stand one another's language. When one of them has
askt for bread, his neighbour has given him a stone ;.
when askt for a fish, he has given a serpent ; indifference
and scorn, instead of sympathy and encouragement. The
hand of each has been against his brother. There has
been no unity of spirit amongst them, but variance and
strife and railing: they have never entered into the
bond of peace. This is the other form of sin, by which
men are kept away from Christ. The great mass stay
away, because their hearts are paralyzed and crumbled
by carelessness and selfindulgence, or rotted by the
cankering pleasures of sin ; the few, because their hearts
are hardened and stiffened by pride. The former cannot
believe in Christ, the latter will not. Of both these sins,
and of every other form of sin by which men are withheld
from believing in Christ, the Comforter came to convince-
the world. The Comforter! Does it seem a strange
name to any of you, my brethren, for Him who came
on such an errand? Does it seem to you that, in con-
vincing you of your sins, instead of comforting you, He
must needs cover you with shame and confusion, and
make you sink to the ground in unutterable anguish and
dismay ? No, dear brethren, it is not so. Those among
you whom the Spirit has indeed convinced of sin, will
avouch that it is not. They will avouch that, in con-
vincing them of sin, He has proved that He is indeed the
Comforter (r). If the conviction and consciousness of sin
arises from any other source, then indeed it is enough to
crush us with shame, and to harrow us with unimaginable
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 71
fears. But when it comes from the Spirit of God, it
comes with healing and comfort on its wings. Kemember
what the sin is, of which he convinces us, — that we be-
lieve not in Christ. All other conviction of sin would
be without hope: here the hope accompanies the con-
viction, and is one with it. If we have a deep and
lively feeling of the sin of not believing in Christ, we
must feel at the same time that Christ came to take away
this along with all other sins. He came, that we might
believe in Him, and that through this faith we might
overcome the world, with all its temptations, its fears
and its shame, as well as its pleasures and lusts. And
O what comfort can be like that, which it yields to the
broken and contrite spirit, to feel that the Son of God
has taken away his sins, — that, if he has a true living
faith in Christ, they are blotted out for ever, and become
as though they had never been ? What joy, what peace
can be like this, to feel that we are not our own, but
Christ's ? that we are become members of His holy body,
and that our life has been swallowed up in His ? that
we can rest in His love with the same undoubting con-
fidence with which a child rests in the arms of its mother?
that, if we believe in Him, we have nothing to fear about
the feebleness and falling short of our services ? for that
He will work out our salvation for us ; yea, that he has
wrought it out. Who then is he that condemneth ? It
is Christ that died for us, to take away our sins, and
is risen again for us, to clothe us in his righteousness,
and sitteth at the right hand of God, ever making inter-
cession for us, that we may be supported under every trial
and danger, and strengthened against every temptation,
and delivered from the sin of unbelief and all other sins,
and girt with the righteousness of faith, and crowned
72 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
with all the graces which spring from faith, and at length
may be received into the presence of the Father, into
which our Elder Brother has entered before us. To
whom, as He dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, ever
pleading in behalf of His Church, and to the Spirit of
the Comforter, whom He has sent to sanctify that Church,
and to bring the world into it by the conviction of Sin
and of Righteousness and of Judgement, — in the Unity
of the Eternal Godhead, — be all glory and thanksgiving
and blessing and adoration now and for ever.
73
SERMON III.
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and
of Righteousness, and of Judgement ; of Righteousness, because I go to
my Father, and ye see Me no more. — John xvi. 8, 10.
The first work of the Comforter, as set forth by our
Lord, when He promist to send the Spirit of Truth to
His disciples, is to convince the world of sin : and we have
seen what need there was of this conviction, how greatly
the world needed it, how it could not be wrought by any
other power, and consequently how it was necessary, for
the fulfilment of Christ's gracious purpose to save the
world, that the world should be convinced of sin by the
Spirit of God. Ever since the Fall, the world had been
lying under sin. This was the crushing mountain cast
upon the race that had rebelled against God, a mountain
which sprang out of their own entrails, the root of which
was in their own hearts. Beneath it they pined and
groaned in their forlorn anguish. Beneath it ever and
anon they heaved, and tried to shake off some portion of
the burthen. At times, when a higher power stirred
them to more than ordinary efforts, some clefts and
fissures were rent in the mountain, and they caught
74 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
glimpses of the heavens, which it mostly shut out from
their sight. But such glimpses were brief and fleeting :
they were seldom caught, except at the season when the
heart of a nation was teeming with the vernal energies
of youth : ere long the mountain of sin closed over it
again: new sins shot out to choke up the clefts and
fissures : the darkness seemed to become still thicker and
more hopeless: and they, who before had reared and
struggled against it, sank in torpid despondence into the
abysmal sleep of death. Even at best man only strove to
overcome some particular sins, not to overcome and
utterly cast away sin itself. For why ? Sin was his own
child, the offspring of his own corrupt nature : and though
he was able to make out that some of its features were
unsightly, and some of its limbs distorted, he could not
recognise, — no parent can, — that it was altogether a
monster. Being degenerate himself, he perceived not that
sin was not the righful birth of his own true, aboriginal
nature: for he knew not what that nature ought to have
brought forth. He saw not, he had never seen, any
pattern of righteousness, by comparison with which he
might have discerned his own image, both in its heaven-
born purity, and in its earth-sprung deformity. He knew
not what he ought to have been ; and so he could not
feel a due shame and horrour and loathing at the con-
templation of what he was.
Such was the state of the world, when the Comforter
came from heaven to convince it at once of Sin and of
Righteousness : and such also, more or less, is the state
of every soul, until the Spirit of God comes to it to work
the same twofold conviction. In this, as in other respects,
the life of each individual is a sort of likeness and minia-
ture of that of the race. In every man there is a growth
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 75
of sin, rooted in the depths of his heart, and which has
sprung up from thence contemporaneously with the first
awakening of his consciousness, so that he cannot even
conceive the possibility of being without it. He cannot
by nature even conceive it possible that he should ever
act from other motives, or with other aims, than those
which come from this root of sin. And this root of sin is
not single, but complex. For in every man there is a
root of selfishness. He will seek his own good, or what
he deems to be such, not the glory of God, not the up-
holding of Order and Law, not the manifestation and
establishment of Truth, not, least of all, perhaps, the
good of his fellow-creatures. Nay, they who call them-
selves philosophers, tell him that he cannot act from
any other motive, that he must seek his own good, that
the notion of seeking anything else is a fantastical de-
lusion, and that the only difference between wisdom
and folly, between virtue and vice, is, that wisdom
and virtue are longer-sighted, and fix on remoter and
more lasting benefits, on stars, instead of ignes fatui.
Hence, so long as we follow the impulses of our nature, we
are apt to refer everything to some selfish end, to our own
pleasure, to our profit, to our advancement and exalta-
tion. We do this, as the main business of our lives ; and
we think it right and fitting so to do : we are told on all
sides that it is right and fitting : we have no conception
that it can be wrong : we cannot even dream of acting
otherwise : and thus it is utterly impossible, until our
hearts and minds are lifted out of this state of darkness,
that we should have a true conviction either of sin or of
righteousness. Again, in every man there is a root of
worldlymindedness. The world is in all our thoughts ;
and God is not. It rushes upon us with an overwhelming
76 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
torrent : it enters into the soul through our eyes, through
our ears, through every inlet of the senses, through all our
instincts, through all our wants, which crave after the
things of this world, through all our natural affections,
which fix on the creatures of this world: and thus
it smothers and almost extinguishes every germ of
feeling that would lead us to something higher, to
something beyond the reach of the senses. Hence
our aims, our purposes, our wishes, our hopes, our
fears are all hemmed in by the world, and summed
up in it. A vigorous effort is requisite to shake off
this crushing weight even for a moment, to look even
for a moment through this bright, gaudy mask, which so
dazzles and fascinates the senses : and what shall prompt
us to make such an effort? what shall endue us with
strength to persevere in it ? Even when voices come to
us and tell us of another world, the unceasing din of this
world overpowers them : we fancy they must come from
a region of dreams and shadows, which the daylight of
real life dispels : and thus, as years roll on, and every year
draws a fresh, hard layer around the central spirit, we
become more and more thoroughly persuaded that this
visible world is our only home. Unless some higher
power enables us to shake off the yoke of the world, each
of us grows by degrees to deem of himself as only one
among the myriads of horses set to drag on the chariot of
Time, — to deem that his only pleasure is to snatch what
provender he can, as he rushes along the way, — that his
only glory is to surpass his yokefellows in speed, — and
that anon, when his strength fails, the chariot will pass
over him, and millions of hoofs will trample him to dust.
Moreover in every man there is a root of carnal fleshly-
mindedness. His soul is drugged from childhood upward
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 77
with the stimulants and opiates of the senses; and he
looks upon it as right and becoming and inevitable to
desire such pleasures, to seek after them, to indulge in
them, so that it be not intemperately and hurtfully.
In every man's heart there is this triple root of sin ; —
no one who knows his own heart will dispute it; — the
root of selfishness, from which spring self-indulgence,
self-will, self-esteem, and the whole brood of vanity and
pride ; — the root of worldlymindedness, which issues in
ambition, in covetousness, in the love of money, in the
desire of advancement, of honour, of power; — and the
root of carnalmindedness, from which, if it be not cut
down betimes, and kept diligently from shooting up
again, the lusts of the flesh will sprout rankly, and
overrun and stifle the soul. In their excess indeed,
when these vices become injurious to a man himself, or
to others, they are reprobated by the judicious and
soberminded. But when they are kept under a certain
controll, so far are they from being reprobated, that
the man who so controlls them is counted worthy of
admiration. These too are the motives and incentives
constantly urged and appealed to in men's dealings
with each other, even, alas ! in the processes of educa-
tion ; which is too often a systematic training and
exercising of the young in habits of selfishness, of
worldlymindedness, nay, not seldom of carnalminded-
ness, whereby those vices acquire an uncontested
sway in the heart. For they who are themselves
worldlyminded and carnalminded, cannot understand
how it is possible to act upon others by any motives
save those the force of which they themselves
acknowledge, whips and spurs, bribes and blows, the
hope of reward and the fear of punishment. They cannot
78 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
understand how a heart can be drawn, when no other
force is applied to it than the unseen cords of love.
Not knowing the power of God, not knowing how
that power is essentially and indissolubly one with His
holiness, they think they shall never be strong enough
to contend against the powers of evil, unless they enlist
some of those powers 'on their own side. They cannot
believe that there is any sure plan of driving out or
keeping under one devil, except by calling in the aid
of another. Thus children are made to walk from the
first in the way in which they should not go. The
very processes of education bear witness to the radical
corruption of our nature. They shew that evil has
spread through every region of our thoughts, until we
cannot even conceive the possibility of doing without it ;
so that, in seeking strong medicines, we can find none
but poisons. The child is brought up under the per-
suasion that he is altogether a child of this world,
that he is so, and cannnot be otherwise, and is not
even to think of being otherwise. He is made indeed to
learn a lesson out of a book, which tells him that he is
a child of God, and the heir of a heavenly Kingdom;
and he is bid to reverence this book as sacred. But
this, he is compelled to conclude, must mean that the
lesson has no manner of bearing on the affairs of this
world, and is only designed to be laid by in some
remote cellar of his mind, that it may serve him in
stead when all things of higher value and more press-
ing interest are swept away. For the present he is
unremittingly admonisht that his main business is to get
a permanent footing here on earth, to appropriate as much
as he can of the goods of this world, to lift himself
up as high as he can in the eyes of his neighbours.
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 79
Such is the ordinary course of education even in this
Christian land; and almost all the changes, almost all
the improvements, as they have been deemed, which
have been made in our systems of education since the
beginning of this century, have only tended more and
more to call out and inflame the wordly stimulants of
action, more and more to 'draw the student out of the
quiet garden of loving contemplation, into the throng
and pressure of emulous contention.
Thus wofully does our mode of education, which in
a Christian land ought to aim at convincing the heart
and mind from the first both of sin and of righteousness,
tend in all its stages, from the nursery up to the
university, to confound the ideas of the two, setting
up what is deemed a middle term between them as the
object of aim and worship, but what in fact is the mere
offspring of sin, masking itself in the garb of righteous-
ness. For hell is ever striving to rise up into a likeness
of heaven ; but there are no steps or shadings off by
which heaven can descend from its ethereal purity to
the borders of hell. And then, when the youth, who
has been thus trained, comes forth into the world, he
finds the same deficiencies and the same confusion in
the institutions and practices of society, which have
already proved so delusive and pernicious to him.
For civil society, being the creature of this world, and
having its ground and its end in this world, inevitably
regards its members as children of this world, and in
all its dealings with them treats them mainly, if not
absolutely, as such. Moreover its chief immediate
purpose is much rather protection from evil, than the
exercising of any positive influence for eliciting or
promoting good. I speak not of what it ought to be,
80 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
according to the highest idea of the body politic, but of
what it ever has been, and is. Even laws, which are
the utterance of the moral voice of the State, confine
themselves to prohibition and repression. They do not
attempt to cultivate the fields of righteousness, but
merely to erect a palisade and network against the in-
roads of crime, driving in new stakes, and weaving new
meshes, in proportion as evil devises new snares and
new modes of attack. Their language is, Thou shalt not,
speaking to him who is inclined to violate them, and
seldom enjoining anything' good, because it belongs to
them to be imperative; whereas good cannot be en-
forced ; it being of the very essence of good to be free
and spontaneous, not to spring from constraint and
compulsion. On the other hand, while the very efforts
which society makes for the sake of righteousness,
are thus confined to that which is merely negative, he
who walks abroad in the world, and listens to its
voices, and mixes in its doings, finds a universal con-
spiracy, I might almost call it, in behalf of sin, against
holiness and godliness. He finds the habits, the
manners, the customs, the practices of men, all leagued
in favour of this world, all combined to hold up the
prizes of this world as the sole objects of desire and
endeavour. He finds false notions of honour, false
views of propriety, false estimates of interests: duty is
left out of account: heaven is condemed to remain
within the church-door. The whole language of con-
versation is infected with this taint ; and it might fill
a thoughtful man with sadness, if not with despondency,
to observe how subtily it insinuates itself into the
commonest remark on the conduct of others, to hear
how people reason and jest and praise and blame, as
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 81
though it were utterly inconceivable that a man should
act from any motive, except such as have respect to
his own temporal advantage. Thus the evil tendencies
of our nature are rooted and confirmed; and the vices
which spring from them are perpetuated, and trans-
mitted from generation to generation. Instead of
checking and suppressing them, the customs of society
rather foster and strengthen, and in a manner legalize
them ; so that they could not but spread more and
more widely, and become ranker and more ineradicable,
with the increase of civilization, unless the Comforter
were ever unweariably pursuing His gracious work of
convincing the world of sin and of righteousness.
We have seen in the last sermon, what great need
there was, what great need there ever has been, and
still is, that the Holy Spirit of God should come down
from heaven, to convince the world of sin. We have
seen how utterly impossible it was for this conviction
to be wrought in the world, how impossible it is for
such a conviction to be brought efficiently and
sufficiently in any single heart, by any other power
than that of the Spirit of God. The remarks just
made may assist us in perceiving that there was
no less need of the help of the Spirit, to con-
vince the world of righteousness; and moreover that
there is still the same need of His help, in order
that this conviction may be graven in deep and living
characters on each individual soul. We need the help
of the Comforter to do this, because no other power
can ; and because, unless we are indeed convinced of
righteousness, as well as of sin, the work of the Spirit
will be imperfect and fruitless. For why are we to be
convinced of sin ? why does the Holy Spirit vouchsafe
82 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
to work this conviction in us ? Not in order that we
may continue in sin; but in order that we may flee
from it, — in order that, discerning how hateful it is,
how terrible, how deadly, we may flee from it with
fear and loathing, and seek shelter in the blesssed abode
of righteousness. But the natural man knows of no
such abode : he knows of no righteousness, of nothing
really deserving the name. As on the one hand he
has no distinct and full conception of sin, so on the
other hand has he none of righteousness. He has no
notion of the blackness of the one, no notion of the
white, saintly purity of the other: all morality with
him is of a dull, misty grey : his virtues and vices run
one into the other; and it is often hard to know
them apart. As his conception of sin seldom goes
beyond the outward acts, the vices and crimes which
spring from it, and takes little account even of these,
until they are full grown; so his righteousness also is
for the most part made up of outward acts, and of
forms and rites and ceremonies, a thing of shreds and
patches, full of holes and darns.
The cause which makes man incapable of conceiving
a true and imperfect idea of righteousness, has come
before us already. A muddy pool, a crackt and spotted
mirror will not reflect a distinct and pure image. That
which is exalted so far beyond the reach of our nature,
cannot have place in any of our thoughts. Man cannot
even frame such an idea as an object of intellectual
contemplation : much less can he embody it as an object
of love and worship for his heart. A slight glance at
the chief facts presented by the history of the world
may suffice to show that this is so. For suppose the
case had been otherwise, — suppose that man had been
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 83
able to form a distinct and lively idea of righteousness,
— where should we look with the expectation of finding
the personification of that idea ? Surely we should
look to the objects of religious worship, to the gods
before whom men have bowed down. Surely we might
reasonably imagine that the gods worshipt by each
nation would express the most perfect idea it could
form of righteousness. And what do we find ? There
is hardly a sin by which human nature has ever been
degraded, but man in his blind madness has given it a
throne in the hearts of his gods. As though he had
retained a dim consciousness that he had been made in
the image of God, he inverted the truth in such manner,
that each nation made its gods in its own image, in
vesting them with its own attributes, with its own
weaknesses and passions and vices. Lust, and Fraud,
and Hatred, and Envy, and Jealousy, and Bloodthirst-
iness were seated in huger dimensions among the
inhabitants of heaven. These however, it may be
objected, were the frenzies of rude, barbarous ages ; and
as each nation became more enlightened, it elevated and
purified its conceptions of its deities. To a certain
extent this is true. At the same time, in proportion
as the idea of the Deity was refined and purified, it also
lost its power, by losing its affinity to humanity, and
fading away into an abstraction. Such is the God of
Philosophy. Philosophy rejects the clue afforded by
the declaration that man was made in the image of his
.Maker. Entirely indeed it cannot; for man cannot
form a conception of any qualities, beyond those of which
he finds the stamp in his own consciousness. But the
qualities which Philosophy ascribes to its God, are
mostly those which are the least peculiarly human,
84 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
those which man shares in no disproportionate degree
with the rest of the creation, above all, power; to which
it assigns certain attributes, mostly negations of the
conditions of time and space. In its recoil from the
gross anthropopathy of the vulgar notions, it falls into
the vacuum of absolute apathy. Hence there is nothing
in the God of Philosophy, any more than in the national
and popular gods of the Heathens, that can convince the
world of righteousness.
Poetry however, which culls the fairest flowers of
human life, and brightens them still more with the
glowing hues of the imagination, — has that no power
to convince the world of righteousness ? None. It is
an ordinary remark, that, when anything like the
delineation of a perfect character is attempted in poetry,
it is vapid and lifeless. For it loses all resemblance
to human nature, and wanes away, like the God of
Philosophy, into a skeleton clothed in shadowy abstrac-
tions. A tincture of evil would seem almost necessary
to render men objects of sympathy. And this is the
reason why the prince of philosophers excludes poets
from his ideal republic ; because the main sources of
their interest lie in the contentious passions of men ;
and because, instead of convincing the world either of
sin or of righteousness, they rather glorify many of
men's vices, and draw their readers away from the
contemplation of the philosophic idea (s).
Yet Philosophy itself has been utterly unable to
convince the world of righteousness. Nay, it has been
utterly unable to convince itself thereof. From the
very first indeed, as soon as man began to make his
moral nature an object of reflection and examination,
Philosophy endeavoured to lay hold on some* idea of
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 85
righteousness, and to claim the homage of mankind for
it ; and almost contemporaneous with this attempt on
the part of Philosophy was that of Sophistry to stick
up some carnal notion in the room of the spiritual
idea; which notion, as being nearer akin to man's
carnal nature, has ever met with readier acceptance than
the idea which approached nigher to the truth. One of
these false and idolatrous notions, which, as you will
remember, was set up by some of the bolder sophists,
and which the great Athenian philosopher laid on the
rack of his searching dialectics, was, that Might is Right
This is the doctrine of righteousness which, one may
suppose, would be proclaimed by a conclave of wild
beasts, the lion's doctrine, and the tiger's. Yet, amid
the ever-revolving cycle of error, it has been promul-
gated anew of late years. As though Christ had never
lived, as though the Holy Spirit had never come down
to convince the world of righteousness, it has been again
asserted in our days that Might is Right. Do we then
need that the son of Sophroniscus should rise from his
grave, to expose this mischievous fallacy over again?
Surely he has exposed it thoroughly, not for his own
age merely, but for ever. Surely, my friends, you, in
this Christian land, in this seat of Christian learning,
will none of you allow yourselves to be imposed on by
so gross and glaring a delusion. This is indeed merely
another expression of the same carnal mind, which
would merge all the attributes of the Godhead in naked
power. But we know that, though the strong wind
rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, yet
the Lord was not in the strong wind. Nor was He in
the earthquake : nor was He in the fire. In what then
was He ? In the still small voice : and this is one of
86 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
its holy utterances, — Right is Might As sure as God
liveth, as sure as the Holy One of Israel is the Lord
of Hosts, the Almighty, Right is Might, and ever was,
and ever shall be so. Holiness is might : Meekness is
might : Patience is might : Humility is might : Self-
denial and Self-sacrifice is might : Faith is might :
Love is might : every gift of the Spirit is might. The
Cross was two pieces of dead wood ; and a helpless,
unresisting Man was nailed to it : yet it was mightier
than the world, and triumphed, and will ever triumph
over it. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but no
pure, holy deed, or word, or thought. On the other
hand might, that which the children of earth call so,
the strong wind, the earthquake, the fire, perishes
through its own violence, self-exhausted and self-
consumed ; as our age of the world has been allowed
to witness in the most signal example. For many of
us remember, and they who do not have heard from
their fathers, how the mightiest man on earth, he who
had girt himself with all might, except that of right,
burst like a tempest-cloud, burned himself out like a con-
flagration, and only left the scars of his ravages to mark
where he had been. Who among you can look into an
infant's face, and not see a power in it mightier than
all the armies of Attila or Napoleon ?
There is a kindred errour however, my young friends,
by which many at your age have been fascinated and
blinded, against which therefore I would fain warn you.
Yours is the age at which the intellect takes the greatest
strides, at which its growth is the rapidest. Your main
business here is to cultivate it ; and if you are diligent
in availing yourselves of the means within your reach,
you see its empire extending almost daily before you.
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 87
You are invited into a temple where the wise and bright-
minded men of all ages and nations, the heroes in the
world of thought, are seated around, uttering their sweet-
est and most potent words in your ears; and you are
evermore reminded how Nature has revealed herself to
them, how Fame has crowned them, how mankind have
mounted by the marble steps of their writings from
ignorance to knowledge, from weakness to power. Thus
an aptness to prize intellectual energy as the supreme
object of human endeavour is one of the chief temptations
whereby you, especially the more vigorous among you,
are beset. Moreover the whole scheme of education in
this place attaches a high, — let me say, an inordinately
high value, — to such power; and several of the nobler
tendencies of youth, its spirit of enterprise, its disinter-
estedness, its idealism, conspire too readily therewith.
Hence at your age men have ever been prone to regard
intellectual eminence as the criterion of worth. Above all
are they so prone in days like ours, when there is such a
restless craving for novel excitement, and such a dearth
of sound, stable, time-hallowed doctrines; so that the
reverence, which of yore was paid to acknowledged truth,
is now often at a loss for an object, unless it can find one
in some individual teacher. You will be tempted to
regard genius, or what you may deem to be such, as an
«'xcuse, if not a warrant, for all manner of moral aber-
rations. You will be tempted to believe that genius
is a law to itself, and to transfer this proposition from the
intellectual region, where alone it has any propriety, to
the moral. In the intellectual world, it is true, the
highest genius is a law to itself. But then bear in mind
that it must be a law to itself; whereas this assertion is
mostly brought forward with the view of maintaining
88 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
that genius is exempt from all law. As love is the ful-
filling of the law, not by neglecting, but by fulfilling it, —
by entering into it, and animating and pervading it, and
infusing a living power into its forms, not by standing
aloft, and looking down or trampling on it, — so is Genius
the fulfilling of the laws of the intellectual world, dis-
cerning them by an involuntary, and almost unconscious
intuition, and embodying them in some creation of its
own. In the moral order of things on the other hand
genius is a perilous eminence, as precipitous as it is lofty.
Being mostly united to acuter sensibilities, it receives all
impressions, evil as well as good, more vividly ; and from
a latent consciousness that it ought to penetrate to the
core of things, it submits reluctantly to the restraint of
conventional usages and establisht institutions. Yet its
superiority, instead of emancipating it from moral obli-
gation, increases its responsibility. In this, as in other
things, much will be required from him to whom much is
given. The receiver of ten talents has to bring in ten
more, and then to rule over ten cities. When a man is
endowed with such a portion, one of the fairest and most
precious, of earth's riches, he is especially called upon to
shew forth his thankfulness : for precious indeed it is, if
rightly employed ; whereas, if it be squandered, if it be
misapplied and perverted, it sharpens our woe, and
deepens our shame. The possessors of eminent ^intellec-
tual gifts are the more bound to employ their gifts
diligently and faithfully in the service of the Giver,
letting the light which he has set up within them shine
abroad for His glory, and for the enlightening of their
brethren. At the same time it behoves them to exercise
peculiar watchfulness, lest they enter into temptation,
lest they fall into the snares by which their path is
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 89
surrounded, and which to them are still more dangerous
than to others. Among the most miserable and abject of
men, as numerous examples in the history of literature
shew, have been those who, having a certain allotment of
talents, betrayed the trust reposed in them, prostituted
their faculties to the service of the world, became venal,
unprincipled, reckless, and gradually wasted away, until
they were a mere wreck in soul and mind, — till their
hearts were burnt out, and they retained nothing but the
dregs of their former understandings. Many of these had
set out with no ignoble purpose, not a few with some-
thing of a generous ardour : only, having been taught to
believe that they might worthily devote themselves to
the pursuit of fame, they naturally and unresistingly
became a prey to vanity, and were tainted more and
more with its sordidness, its jealousies, its hypocrisies. At
present, when new regions of thought are perpetually
opening before you, you may fancy that so they will con-
tinue to open, and will ever fill you with fresh delight.
You may deem that life cannot be spent more honorably,
or more happily, than in striving to circumnavigate the
intellectual globe. But this is not so. Mere speculation
after a time loses its charm : we feel that it is unsatis-
fying: we find out that there is something within us
beside the machinery of thought, and that, unless that
other portion of our nature be allowed to act freely, the
machinery of thought itself rusts and gets into disorder.
Nor can the mere intellect curb and subdue the senses,
which will often run riot and cast it to the ground,
maimed and shattered. When the heart is sound and
healthy indeed, when the soul is turned Godward, — when
our minds, built upon the rock of an undoubting faith,
endeavour to discover the manifestations of Him in whom
90 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
they believe, according as He has chosen to manifest
His will, whether in the outward world, or in mankind,
in their nature or their destinies, — then such speculations
will be a source of joy that will never fail, never lose its
freshness. But only then. It is only the path of the
righteous, whether it lies through thought or through
action, that shines more and more unto the perfect
day (T.)
The time will not allow me to examine the other
manifold ways in which Philosophy has proved her
incompetence to convince the world of righteousness.
Nor indeed can it be requisite to do more than remind
you of that system, which has been brought forward
under various forms, evermore shooting forth new heads,
as soon as one has been cut off, from the earliest times
down to the latest, and which not only avows this incom-
petence, but makes a boast of it, absolutely denying that
there is such a thing as righteousness attainable, or even
conceivable by man, denying that there is any such
thing as right and wrong inherently and essentially so,
denying that man can do anything or desire anything as
right or wrong in itself, or from any other motive than
his own personal pleasure or advantage. This philosophy,
which has tried to complete and perpetuate the work of
the Fall, and has set its hand and seal to the deed where-
by we were cut off from God, declaring that there is
nothing in man whereby he can hold communion with
God, or even desire such communion, — for he who
sought it upon selfish grounds would be self-doomed
to utter isolation, — this philosophy, which thus opposes
the work of Christ, and tells men that the act of
self-sacrifice, whereunto Christ has called them, is a
fantastical dream, and a sheer impossibility, — has been
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 91
taught, we know, even in tins Christian land; it has
been taught, alas, even in this University. There can
hardly be a sadder proof of the antichristian spirit of the
last century, than that this antichristian system of
philosophy should have been proclaimed authoritatively
in a University, where the great body of the teachers
must not only be members, but ministers of the Church.
Blessed be God however ! there are signs which bode that
ere long it will be wholly driven out from hence. Among
the changes which have taken place here of late years, —
where much has been changed for the better, and some-
thing, it may be, for the worse, — none has filled my heart
with such satisfaction, none seems to hold out such an
assurance of good to our students, as that which promises
that this University will again become a school of sound,
high-principled, Christian moral philosophy.
Nor can I discuss the characteristics of that system, of
nobler origin and tendency, which did indeed attempt to
do something in the way of convincing the world of
righteousness, but which failed, as it could not avoid
failing, for this among other reasons, that there was no
true, living idea of righteousness made manifest to man,
of which it might convince the world (u). Its righteous-
ness was a righteousness of the understanding. There-
fore was it a righteousness of pride. For there is an
aptness in the understanding to look down upon all
things, as tools and instruments wherewith it may deal
at will, as empty shells the chief use of which is to
embody and clothe its truths : nay, it can hardly refrain
from assuming that the act of understanding implies a
superiority to that which is understood. Therefore too
was this righteousness a righteousness of insulation. For
the understanding has no sympathy, no fellow-feeling
92 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
with other existences : it cares solely for the forms of
things, or rather for its own forms, which it discerns in
the mirror they present to it : the business of the under-
standing is to look far off; the further, the more pleasure
it takes in what it sees : that which is near and familiar,
it disregards: it is heartless and homeless. Therefore
moreover was this righteousness a righteousness of lifeless
abstractions, instead of living realities, cleaving to modes
and words, rather than to principles, magnifying the
formal in all things, to the disparagement of the essence
and spirit. It was a self-righteousness, that is, no
righteousness at all, — a righteousness in its own eyes,
which can never be a righteousness in the eyes of God,
— a righteousness in which the impure was to purify the
impure, and the unjust to justify the unjust. And as it
has been seen in all nations, and in the systems of all
philosophers, that no human understanding, not even
the etherial one of Plato, could discern the divine
affinities in the affections, or set itself in harmony with
them (v), — as the primary crack between the heart and
the understanding, which ensued upon the usurpation
of the latter, drawing man away to the love of know-
ledge as a power in himself, from the love of the Object
of knowledge, has run through the whole human race,
so that they have never been reunited, except by the
atonement of Christ, — thus did this philosophy shew its
incapacity to convince the world of righteousness, by
giving up the best parts of our nature as irretrievable
into the hands of the enemy, throwing wife and children
and brothers and sisters and friends, and the whole
world, overboard, for the sake of preserving its own
worthless self to float in desolate self-complacency on a
plank in the Dead Sea.
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 93
Hence we perceive what need there was that the Spirit
of God should undertake the task of convincing the
world of righteousness. For no other power could.
Philosophy could not: Poetry could not: Religion, in the
corrupt forms in which it prevailed among the Heathens,
could not : the aspect of life could not. They could not
yield man the spectacle of Righteousness as a living,
active reality, nor even as an idea for contemplation.
Meanwhile the Law, sounding with its naked Thou shalt
not, and knocking at the ears of those who were living
in daily commission of the acts it forbad, was convincing
the world of unrighteousness. This however was not
enough to fulfill the merciful purpose of God. The
righteous God loveth righteousness. He loves to behold
His own image in His creatures. He made this earth to
be the abode of Righteousness ; and He was mercifully
pleased to decree that it should not be given up to Sin,
but that Righteousness should dwell upon it, Righteous-
ness in its highest perfection, even His own Righteous-
ness, pure and holy and without spot. Therefore this
was the second work of the Comforter. As He came to
convince the world of sin, because no other power could,
so did He come to convince the world of righteousness,
because this too was a work which He alone could
accomplish.
When the Comforter is come, He will convince the
l of righteousness. The sin, of which the Comforter
was to convince the world, was the sin of want of faith,
of not believing in Christ. Accordingly He was to con-
vince the world of its own sin. Was He also to convince
the world of its own righteousness? That could not be.
When sin is, righteousness is not, at least no true, pure,
genuine righteousness ; and the Comforter can only con-
94 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
vince of the truth. As the sin of the world was its want
of faith, so on the other hand righteousness can only come
to it through faith ; and the reason why the world from
the beginning has been so barren of righteousness is no
other than this, that it has not been animated by a strong,
living principle of faith. Want of faith, we have seen, is
the great sin of the world, and the one prime source and
fountain-head of all other sins. This is the cankerworm,
which has been gnawing at the heart of the world, ever
since our first parents gave ear to the voice of the Tempter,
beefuilins: them to withdraw their faith from the word of
God, and to place.it in the deceitful shows of the senses :
and hence it is, by reason of our want of faith, by reason
of this cankerworm gnawing at our heart, that all our
blossoms have been so pale and blighted, and all our
leaves so shriveled. We have seldom strength to pro-
duce what is fair in itself, much less what shall be vig-
orous enough to resist the blasts of temptation. In every
age of the world, under all the forms of social life, and
all the gradations of culture, this has been the great sin
of mankind. It was so before the coming of Christ.
Mankind did not believe in God. They did not believe
in His power and wisdom as set forth in the visible works
of the Creation. When the heavens declared His glory,
men turned a deaf ear to their tale. Although the firma-
ment shewed His handiwork, they could not see the
finger of God there. Nor would man believe in the
image of God, in which he himself was made. He would
not believe in the oracles of God, when his conscience
uttered them within him. He had so disfigured that
image, and had confounded those oracles with so many
discordant sounds, that he was utterly unable to separate
the true from the false, and to recognise each as that
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 95
which it was. And when the Son of God came upon
earth with His fan in His hand to do this work for man,
to declare the truth in its purity, and to manifest the
perfect Image of God, still the world would not believe
in Him. Still the world cried, This is not God . . .
this is not our God . . . this is not such a God as we
have fashioned for ourselves, of gold and jewels, of
lightning and thunder, of lust and blood. This God
has none of the spirit of a god. He is so meek, so
gentle, so patient, so humble, so mild, so forgiving,
so merciful . . . there is not a great man upon earth
who would not be ashamed to be like Him* This was
the sin of the world, when Christ was walking upon
earth. They would not believe in Him. They would
not believe that He was the Incarnate Son of God. They
would not believe that the Wisdom and the love of God
had become Flesh in Him. They would not believe that
the Maker of the Universe would appear in the form of a
Servant. They would not believe that the Lord of all
Truth and Holiness would shed His blood for the sins of
mankind. .So utterly estranged were they from the idea
of righteousness, that, when the Sun of Righteousness
was shewing forth His glory in the midst of them, they
knew Him not, but denied and blasphemed Him, im-
puting His divine acts to the powers of evil. They
listened to the corrupt imaginations of their own hearts,
which had framed an image of God so totally different
from the true Image made manifest in the life of Christ ;
and obstinately refusing to believe in Him, they plunged
into the nethermost chasm of crime, and crucified the
Lord, in whom they would not believe.
And as want of faith was the sin of the world before
the coming of Christ, a sin the parent of all other sins,
96 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
and undermining the very desire, defacing the very con-
ception of righteousness, — as it was the sin of the world
durino- the life of Christ, consummating itself in the at-
tempt to destroy the great Object of Faith, to the end that
it mio-ht wallow undisturbed in all manner of falsehood,
in the falsehoods of sense and selfishness, in the falsehoods
of the passions and appetites, in the falsehoods of cupidity
and ambition, in the falsehoods of superstition and idola-
try, in the falsehoods of hypocrisy and formal observances,
— so has want of faith still been the sin of the world
ever since Christ went up into heaven. Still the world
has not believed in Christ: still at this day it does not,
will not believe in Him. Still at this day this is the
great sin of mankind : and by reason of this sin all their
other sins abide with them, and cleave to them, and
cannot be driven out of them. And what shall we say
of ourselves, brethren ? Is this our sin, or no ? Can we
assert that we are altogether free from it? that we do
indeed believe in Christ? No human judge can pronounce.
But there is One who can, even He who reads the heart.
He knows whether we believe in Christ, or no. To man
the only evidence is, do we live by that faith ? He who
really believes in Christ must needs live in that faith,
and by that faith ; and therefore he will not live in the
service of sin, but in the service of righteousness.
Here a question arises, how comes it that so large a
part of the Christian world are still lying in the bondage
of unbelief ? in the bondage of that unbelief which makes
them the slaves of sin ? How comes it that the world
does not burst the chains of this bondage, and clothe
itself with the wings of faith, and mount through the
pure region of righteousness, rejoicing in its freedom,
to the foot of that throne where Christ is sitting at the
THE COX VICT ION OF RIOHTEO USNESS. 9 7
right hand of God? How comes it, — may I not ask,
brethren, — how comes it that, even among us who have
been baptized into the name of Christ, among us who
meet together week after week and day after day to
worship the Father in His house, — among us who have
so often been called to have our souls refresh t and
strengthened by His blessed Body and Blood, — how
comes it that even among us there are so many,
who . . . start not at the word . . . yes, start,
ye to whom it may apply ! and O that your hearts
would indeed start once for all out of their fleshly
sockets ! . how comes it that even among
us there are so many, who do not believe in Christ, who
have no real, living, practical faith in Him, — so many
therefore, who are still steept in their sins, who are
still floundering helplessly about in the midst of their
MBS, even as though Christ had never come to redeem
them? The reason of all this is, that the world, — that
we, — having turned away from the Comforter, when He
has come to convince us of the sin of not believing in
( 'In ist. Our belief in Christ, such as it is, has not been
wrought in us by the Spirit of God. We believe in
( hi ist, because our parents taught us to believe in Him,
because it is our national faith, because we have been
bred up in it from our childhood, because our under-
standings have been persuaded of His divine power by
the wonderful miracles which He wrought. But what is
tip value of such faith, if it be no more than this ? Will
it take away our sins | will it clothe us in the armour of
righteousness ? This is a question we can easily answer,
at least if it be put to us in another shape. Does it
take away our sins ? does it soften and fertilize our
hearts, so that they bring forth the fruits of righteous-
98 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
ness ? Surely they who are conscious of having nothing
beyond this traditional, conventional, historical faith,
must answer, No ; no more than the water in a bucket
will refresh the whole country when parcht with a long
drouth. The water which is to refresh a land parcht
with drouth, must come from above. The faith which is
to refresh and renew a soul dry and parcht through a
long continuance in sin, must come from above also.
Until we have been convinced of the sin of unbelief
by the Spirit, we shall never know the hallowing power
of faith. Until we are convinced of sin, for not believ-
ing in Christ, we cannot be convinced of righteousness,
because Christ is gone to the Father.
As the sin, of which the Comforter came to convince
the world, is of a totally different kind from everything
that the world calls sin, — as it is a sin which the world,
so long as it was left to itself, never dreamt of as such,
nor does any heart, left to itself, so regard it, — while yet
it is the one great all-in-all of sin, the sin by which men
are cut off and utterly estranged from God, the sin through
which they grow downward toward hell, instead of grow-
ing upward toward heaven, — so on the other hand is the
righteousness, of which the Comforter came to convince
the world, totally different in kind from everything that
the world accounts righteousness, — a righteousness such
as the world in the highest raptures of its imagination
never dreamt of, a righteousness moreover by which the
effect of sin is done away, and man, hitherto cut off and
estranged from God, is reunited and set at one with Him.
The Comforter ivill convince the world of righteousness,
our Lord says, becaause I go to the Father, and ye see Me
no more. In these words we perceive what is the right-
eousness, of which the Comforter came to convince the
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 99
world. Not of its own righteousness : one might as fitly
convince a cavern at midnight of light. The Comforter
is the Spirit of Truth, and can only convince of the truth.
But the world's righteousness is a lie, hollow as a whited
sepulcre, tawdry as a puppet in a show. Different
opinions have been maintained on the question of whose
righteousness the Comforter was to convince the world (w);
but to my own mind the words which follow seem to
settle the point: He will convince, ike world of righteous-
ness, because I go to the Father. Of whose righteousness ?
Not of the world's assuredly. Christ's going to the Father
could no way be a proof of the righteousness of the world.
On the contrary it was the fullest, completest, most dam-
natory of all proofs of the world's unrighteousness and
iniquity. It was the proof, that Him, whom the world
condemned, God justified, — that the Stone, which the
builders rejected, God made the Headstone of the comer,
— that Him, whom the world had lifted up on high on a
cross of shame, God lifted up on high to a throne of Glory
in the heavens, — that Him, whom the world cast out, nail-
ing Him between two thieves, God took to Himself, and set
Him in the heavenly places far above all principality and
power, — yea, took Him up into Himself, into the Unity
of His Eternal Godhead, between Himself and His Holy
Spirit. Never was the righteousness of the world so con-
fo— ill id and set at nought, as when Christ went to the
Father, when He, to whom Barabbas was preferred, was
thus shewn to be the beloved Son and the perfect Image
of the Allholy, Allrighteous God.
But while Christ's going to the Father was a proof of
tin unrighteousness and desperate wickedness of the
world, it was also a proof of righteousness, namely of His
own pure and perfect and spotless righteousness. It was
100 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
a proof that He was the Holy One who could not see
corruption. It was a proof that he could not possibly be
holden by death, any more than it would be possible to
hold the sun by a chain of darkness ; and therefore that,
as Death, the ghastly shadow which ever follows insepar-
ably at the heels of Sin, fled from His presence, He must
needs be also without sin. It was a proof that, while the
world desired a "murderer to be granted to them, He
whom they denied was the Holy One and the Just. The
effect of sin from the beginning, the effect which it always
had wrought and always must work, was to cut man off
from God, to throw a great gulf between man and God,
which no man, continuing in the weakness and under
the bondage of sin, can ever pass over. It had made man
blind to the sight of God, and deaf to the voice of God.
It had driven him out from the garden of Eden, that
is, from the presence of God: for none but the pure in
heart can see God; none but the righteous can dwell
with God. Therefore, when Christ went to His Father,
when He was taken up into heaven to live in the bosom
of God, this of itself was a proof that He, who was thus
exalted, must have fulfilled all righteousness ; that His
righteousness was not like the righteousness of men,
speckled and spotted, and covered with scratches and
rents, like a sheet of old blotting-paper, but pure, and
without stain or spot. This then was the righteousness,
of which the Comforter came to convince the world, the
righteousness of Him in whom the world would not be-
lieve, of Him whom the world had crucified. Pilate had
found no fault in Him : yet Pilate had delivered Him
up to be crucified. The Jews had been unable to charge
Him with any fault: yet the Jews had crucified Him.
They saw nothing but the hideous mists and phantoms
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 101
of their own passions, of their own envy and hatred and
malice; they clothed Jesus in the dark hues of those
passions; and then they nailed Him to the cross. Not
knowing what righteousness was, they could not recog-
nise it when it came and stood in a visible form before
them. Loving unrighteousness rather than righteousness,
they tried to quench the light of righteousness, and could
not find rest until they trusted they had built up a thick
firmament of darkness around them, and extinguisht the
heavenly ray which God had sent through the darkness
to scatter it.
Hence, because the world thus obstinately refused to
believe in the righteousness of Christ, was it needful that
the Comforter should come to convince the world thereof;
so that He might be declared tvith poiver to be the Son of
God, according to the Spirit of Holiness, which was thus
manifested to be in Him, by His resurrection from the
dead; and that this declaration might be made known
to all nations, to bring them to the obedience of faith in
name. Here however the same question crosses us,
which crost us at the end of the last sermon : how could
He, who came to convince the world of the righteousness
of Christ, be rightly called the Comforter, at least with
reference to this portion of His work ? At other times,
when exercising His power for other purposes, He might
shew Himself to be a Comforter. But what comfort
could there be in His convincing the world of that,
which was the sure judicial proof of the unutterable
crime it had been guilty of? At first thought it would
seem as if the conviction of Christ's righteousness could
only bring shame and confusion on those by whom He
was crucified. And even to us, — although we were not
present in the body at His crucifixion, and so far .were
102 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
not guilty of it, — although we did not lift up our voices
and join in the murderous cry of the Jews, — still, if the
righteousness of Christ were nothing more than His own
righteousness, the contemplation of such a perfect pattern
of all that is excellent and pure and holy would rather
seem fitted to cast us down in utter hopelessness, than
to comfort us, at least at the moment when the convic-
tion of our own exceeding sinfulness has just been
brought home in full force to our souls. It might rather
tempt us to exclaim with Peter, Depart from us ; for we
are sinful men, Lord. Nevertheless, as our Lord tells
us, it is indeed the Comforter, — nor is the name used here
without its appropriate force, — who convinces us of the
righteousness of Christ. For why ? Christ's righteous-
ness is also our righteousness, if we will cast away the
sin of not believing in Him, and receive His righteous-
ness as our own by faith. He is the Lord our Righteous-
ness. He did not come down to earth to lead a holy
and righteous life for His own sake. He was all Holi-
ness and all Righteousness from the beginning, yea, from
all eternity, dwelling in the bosom of the Father, full of
grace and truth. But He came down to earth to lead a
holy and righteous life for our sakes, in order that we
might become sharers in His Righteousness, and that so
He might raise us along with Himself to His Father and
ours. It was for us that He was born: for us He went
about doing good patiently and unweariedly in spite of
hatred and scorn and persecution : for us He bore all the
hardships and crosses of life: it was for us that He bowed
His allholy neck, and entered through the gates of time
and space into the form of weak and frail humanity : for
us He submitted to be tempted : for us He overcame sin :
for us He allowed the shadow of death to flit over his
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 103
eternal spirit: for us He burst the bonds of death, and
rose again from the grave, for our justification, for our
righteousness, that we might believe in Him, and might
become righteous thereby: it was for us too that he went
up openly to His Father, and sent His Holy Spirit to
convince us of His righteousness : for us also does He
ever sit, the Sun of Righteousness, in the heavens.
When the sun rises to convince the world of light, he
does not keep his light to himself: he does not journey
through the sky merely to convince the world that he
himself is light. He sheds his light abroad on all that
will unfold themselves to receive it: he pours it into
them, that they may have it in themselves, and manifest
it to each other, and behold it in each other. So too does
the Sun of Righteousness. His Righteousness spreads
from the east to the west : it fills the heavens, and covers
the earth. On all who will open their hearts to receive
it, He sheds it. For their sakes He gained it; and He
pours it out abundantly upon them.
Therefore is the Spirit, who convinces the world of the
righteousness of Christ, most truly called the Comforter.
In convincing us of sin, we saw, He convinces us that we
are dead in trespasses and sins, — dead, so that we lie in
them as in a grave, utterly unable to raise ourselves out
of them, — so that our souls, were they left to themselves,
would rot and crumble and fall to pieces. Hence this
conviction, if it stood alone, would be full of sorrow and
dismay. If the Spirit merely convinced us of our sinful
acts, of our vices, of our crimes, He would not be the
Comforter. For they have so coiled round every part of
our being, and mixt themselves up with our very heart's
blood, that we cannot shake them, or strip them, or even
flay them off But in convincing us that our prime sin,
104 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
the root and spring of all our sins, is want of faith, He lets
in a gleam of light; He enables us to perceive an outlet; He
kindles a hope in us that, if we can but believe, the sinful-
ness of our nature may be subdued. We are no longer
doomed to a vain struggle between a conscience muttering
more and more faintly, Sin not, and a carnal heart shouting
more and more imperiously, / ivill sin. We are taught
that there is One who will help us through this struggle,
if we will but believe in Him, even the Only begot ten Son
of God, who dwelt upon earth for the very purpose of
breathing a new life of faith into us, of setting a living
Object of faith before us; so that in every need and peril,
whithersoever the chances of the world may waft us, we
shall see God, not afar off in the heavens, in the clouds of
speculation, or the dim twilight of tradition, but close by
our side, as our Example, our Guide, our Friend, our
Brother, our Saviour and Redeemer; that we shall know
God, not merely as a Lawgiver, commanding us to over-
come sin, but as a Pattern shewing us that it can be over-
come, and how, and as a mighty Helper ever ready to
enable us to overcome it. In like manner, if the conviction
of righteousness which the Spirit works in us were merely
the conviction of God's righteousness, or of Christ's, we
could only fall to the ground with awestruck, palsied
hearts: we could no more venture to look upon Christ, than
the naked eye can look upon the sun. But when we are
thoroughly convinced that Christ's righteousness is our
righteousness, the righteousness which he purposes to
bestow upon mankind,— that He came to fulfill all right-
eousness, not for His own sake, but for ours, in order
that He might give us all that we lack out of His ex-
ceeding abundance,— then indeed a bright ray of joy and
comfort darts through the heart, startling the frostbound
THE CON VICT ION OF RIGHTEO US NESS. 105
waters out of their yearlong sleep. Then the soul, which
before was as a wilderness and a solitary place, solitary,
because God was far from it, — yea, the barren desert of
the heart rejoices and blossoms like the rose. All its
hidden powers, all its supprest feelings, so long smothered
by the unresisted blasts of the world, unfold like the
roseleaves before the Sun of "Righteousness ; and each
and all are filled and transpierced with His gladdening,
beautifying light.
In order however that this may be fulfilled in us, the
conviction of Christ's righteousness must indeed be
wrought in us by the Spirit of God. We must be tho-
roughly convinced that He is our Righteousness, our only
Righteousness. It is not enough to believe that He was
a very good and holy man. We believe that many men
have been good and holy, that Noah was so, that Abraham
was so, that Joseph was so, that St John was so, that
St Paul was so. But their righteousness is of no avail
to us : it cannot help us out of our sins. Therefore our
O 'miction of Christ's righteousness must be of a wholly
different kind from our belief in the righteousness of any
other man. On the other hand it must be of a different
kind from our conviction of the righteousness or justice
of God : for this, coming upon the conviction of our sins,
would merely affix the deathwarrant to the condemna-
tion which our conscience pronounces against us. Whereas
the belief in the righteousness of Christ is the means by
which we are to be raised out of our sins, and to receive
justification in the sight of God. Hence these two works
of the Comforter, the conviction of our own sins, and the
conviction of Christ's righteousness, go one along with
the other, and cannot be divorced or parted, neither being
accomplishable without the other. For it is by the con-
106 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
trast of Christ's righteousness that we are enabled most
clearly to discern our own all-pervading sinfulness ; and
it is by the conviction of our own sinfulness that we are
brought to recognise the divine perfection, and our own
need, of the righteousness of Christ. In some souls one
work may seem to be prior, in others the other. Accord-
ing as we turn our eyes, the light may seem to rush upon
the darkness, or the darkness to fly before the light ; while
the two operations are in fact coinstantaneous. But
whichever conviction may have been, or have come for-
ward into consciousness as the earliest in any particular
case, each must be continually enlivening and strength-
ening the other. There are those who are sinking like
Luther under a crushing sense of sin, before the assur-
ance of the forgiveness obtained by the righteousness of
Christ dawns upon them. There are those to whom
Christ will manifest Himself in the first instance, as He
did to St Paul, in His heavenly glory. But in either
case, where the work is the work of the Comforter, the
second conviction will follow close upon the first. The
conviction of sin will be followed by the conviction of the
forgiveness which our Allrighteous Saviour has procured
for us; which latter conviction alone turns the former
into a wholesome discipline of humility: and when
Christ vouchsafes to arouse us by manifesting Himself
in His glory, it is still as He whom we have persecuted
by our sins. The conviction of Christ's righteousness
will ever be one of the chief means employed by the
Comforter to bring us to a conviction of our sinful-
ness ; while on the other hand it is absolutely necessary
that we should be brought to this conviction of our sin-
fulness, before we can discern our need of a righteous-
ness, which is not our own, but is to descend upon us
THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 107
from above. So long as a man is not convinced of sin,
of his own sinfulness, irremediable by any efforts of his
own, — so long as he is not convinced that he has no real
righteousness in himself, that he is not what he ought to
be, nay, that he is totally unlike what he ought to be,
— so long as he is content to live the common, amphibious,
half and half life of the world, which is neither one thing
nor the other, a miserable border-land between good and
evil, — so long as he goes on staggering to and fro between
opposite sins, neither hot nor cold, believing with his lips,
and unbelieving in his heart, doing right for the sake of
the world, wearing the garb of outward decency and a
self-satisfied honesty or honorableness, — so long he can
never be ^really convinced of the righteousness of Christ.
We must feel that without Him we can do nothing ; that
through our sins we have cast ourselves out from the
presence of God ; and that of ourselves we can no more
return into His presence, than we can fly up and bathe
in the fountains of light which are ever welling from the
heart of the sun : we must feel that the law is placed,
like the flaming sword at the East of the Garden of
Eden, turning every wuy, writing its sentence of condem-
nation against every deed and word that issues from the
heart of man, and thus Jceeping the way of the Tree of Life:
we must feel that we neither have nor can have any
righteousness of ourselves to justify ourselves: then alone
shall we be brought to yearn for, then alone shall we
indeed be convinced by the Comforter of the righteousness
of ChrUt.
And how are we to become partakers of that right-
eousness ? Christ is ready, is desirous to bestow it upon
all ; but how are we to receive it ? Even as we receive
every other heavenly gift, by faith. The Comforter shall
108 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
convince the ivorld of righteousness, says our Lord, because
I go to the Father, and ye see me no more. In that He
went to the Father, He gave the most certain demonstra-
tion of His righteousness. In that we see Him no more,
He renders -it easier for us to make His righteousness ours.
Were He still living upon earth, were He walking about
before our eyes, it would not be so. It was not so with
His brethren : they did not believe in Him. It was not
so with His chosen apostles : so long as He continued
present with them in the body, they did not receive Him
into their souls; they did not put on His righteousness.
Therefore was it expedient for them, as we have already
seen, that He should go away. For, so long as He con-
tinued with them, they lived by sight, rather than by
faith; and sight disturbs faith, and shakes it, and weakens
it. Sight, as belonging to the world of sense, partakes
its frailties and imperfections. To put forth all its power,
faith must be purely and wholly faith. It is so even
with the human objects of our faith and love. So long
as they continue in the flesh, our faith in them, our love
for them is imperfect. The infirmities of the flesh cleave
to it. Their corruption must put on incorruption, — they
must be transfigured by death, — they must pass away
from this world of sight, — we must see them no more : —
then may our faith and love toward them become pure
and holy and heavenly and imperishable. When our love
springs from the root of faith, then alone may it hope
to blossom through eternity. In like manner, when our
righteousness springs from the root of faith, then will it
flourish in the courts of the temple of God. For what
is our righteousness, when it comes to us through faith ?
It is not ours, but Christ's: and everything that is Christ's
is wellpleasing in the eyes of God. By faith we pass
THE CON VICTION OF RIGHTEO USNESS. 1 09
out of this world of sense. By faith we put off our carnal
nature, and put on a new spiritual nature, through which
we shall not be found naked. By faith we receive the
power to cast away our sins, and to live a life of holiness
and love. Through faith, giving ear to the voice of the
Comforter, the evil spirit is driven out of us, as he was
driven by the harp of David out of Saul. Through faith
we are lifted out of ourselves. Through faith we cease
to be specks of foam, dasht along the furrows of the
homeless wave. Through faith we become members of
the everlasting body of Christ; the Spirit of Christ passes
into us ; and thus in the fulness of time we too shall go
with Him to His Father.
110
SERMON IV.
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT.
When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and
of Kighteousness, and of Judgement ; of Judgement, because the Prince
of this world is judged.— John xvi. 8, 11.
We have considered the first two parts of the threefold
work of the Comforter, — the conviction of sin, which He
was to produce in a world lying blindly and recklessly in
sin, — and the conviction of righteousness, which He was
to awaken by opening the eyes of that world to behold
the righteousness of the Lord it had crucified, — the con-
viction of the world's sin, and of Christ's righteousness.
These two facts, we have seen, as wrought in the world,
are essentially coincident ; the conviction of sin being the
instantaneous result from the manifestation of the right-
eousness of Christ, even as the rising of the light manifests
the darkness. Were there no darkness, the light would
only manifest itself: but, as the world, at the time when
the Comforter was first sent to bring it to the knowledge
of the truth, was lying wholly under thick darkness, the
effect which the dawning light of the Sun of Righteous-
ness was to produce upon it, could not be other in the first
instance than the conviction of the darkness under which
it was lying. It was to be convinced of sin, of the sinful-
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. \\\
ness which ran through all its thoughts and feelings, and
with which the very notions it had framed of anything
approaching to righteousness were tainted, before it could
adequately understand the beauty and the glory of that
perfect righteousness which the Son of God had manifested
upon earth. In these days on the other hand, when we
are brought into the Church of Christ in our infancy, —
when the name of Jesus is one of the first words the child
is taught to utter, — when our earliest lessons of obedience
and patience and meekness and purity and mercy and
love are taken from the story of His life, — when we are
bred up in the constant habit of joining the congregation
of our brethren to offer up our prayers to God as His child-
ren, reconciled to Him through the righteousness of His
Only begotten Son, — when, whithersoever we go, we find
the name of Christ written on every ancient institution,
and the house of God and of His Christ rising out of
every town and every hamlet, to bear our hearts "Above
the smoke and stir of this dim spot, Which men call
earth," — now, when, if we cast our eyes over the map of
the earth, we see at once that Christ is the recognised
Lord of every nation eminent in knowledge and in power,
— it might be supposed that the first impression which
would be graven on every youthful heart, would be the
image of Christ, of the Lord its Righteousness ; and that
so, by degrees, as its consciousness became livelier and
more distinct, it would be taught by the contrast of this
glorious image to feel its own unworthiness and sinful-
ness. Nor do I doubt that there are many, the growth of
whose spiritual life does in fact proceed in this calmer,
more orderly manner, — many, especially in that sex
which is less exposed to the assault of the world's
tumultuous temptations, who are led by the Spirit of God
112 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
from grace to grace, even as a child is led by its mother,
and who are only allowed to fall, as a child falls, lightly
hurting itself but little, just enough to serve for a warn-
ing, and soon lifted up again. I doubt not that there are
many children of godly parents, on whose souls the convic-
tion of Christ's righteousness is stampt early, becoming
more and more distinct and bright as they advance in
years, and gradually impressing them with the conviction
of their own sinfulness. Only, until it has done this,
until we are indeed convinced of sin, our conviction of
Christ's righteousness can never be what it ought to be.
We cannot feel its divine, exclusive perfection. We
cannot feel how totally different it is from the righteous-
ness of all the other children of men, — how opposite in
its principles and aims to that virtue which the natural
man, when highly gifted and favourably circumstanced,
will sometimes admire and seek after, — how immeasurably
superior to what has ever been found even in the holiest
of His saints. Nor, until we are convinced of sin, can we
feel our own need of being justified by the righteousness
of Christ. We cannot understand what is most excellent
and wonderful in it, that it was not earned for Himself,
but for us, in order that He might have wherewith to
clothe a race shivering and pining in the nakedness of
their sins. Hence we shall merely endeavour to imitate
it, as we might imitate the actions of any other great and
good man, as something lying within our reach, attainable
by our own efforts. We shall not seek it as a gift, as
something that we cannot possess except through the
bountiful mercy of its sole Possessor. We shall not fall
down in humble and contrite prayer, yearning to have
our hearts and souls renewed and strengthened, as alone
they can be, by a participation in His Spirit.
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 113
But though there may be examples in which a
Christian life is undisturbed by violent shocks, and rises
to its maturity without going through any convulsive
crisis, — though it may now and then flow onward, fed
and increast, like a river, by the whole country it has to
pass through, and never compelled to burst its way
among the rocks of a rapid, or to plunge down at once
into a different level, — and though the number of such
examples would doubtless be greatly enlarged, if a higher
spirit of sanctity were to spread through our domestic
life, and to animate our domestic education, and if at our
schools and universities it were borne more steadily in
mind that the main business of Christian education is to
train up the children of God for their inheritance in the
Kingdom of Heaven, — yet, according to the present
course of the world, and the present constitution and
character of society, such persons at the utmost cannot
amount to more than a very small minority. Most of
you will bear me witness that in the great majority of
cases the world still rushes with overwhelming force
upon the soul, and sweeps it away out of its baptismal
purity, and dashes it to and fro with the swelling of its
riotous waves. Most of you will be ready to confess that
(be righteousness of Christ has not shone with a never-
waning, ever-waxing light upon your souls from your
childhood upward, — that it has often been hid from you
by the mists and vapours of the earth, — that it had no
place in the mimic heaven, which you patcht up for
yourselves out of the blossoms and jewels and spangles
of this world, and beneath which you lulled yourselves to
sleep with sweet songs of your own graces and virtues.
Nay, are there not those amongst you, who, if you were
to lay bare your hearts, would have to avow that you
114 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
have turned wilfully away from Christ and his righteous-
ness, — that you have driven the thought of it out of
your minds, — that you have closed your ears against
Him, when He has called upon you to acknowledge your
want of it, and to receive a full supply for that and every
other want for Him ? Are there not those who have
shrunk away from Him into some of the dark~caverns of
sin, lest His light should dazzle and blind, lest His voice
should trouble and scare them ? Many of you, I feel
assured, would be constrained to acknowledge that there
have been long periods of your life, during which you
have never seen, never contemplated, never meditated
upon the righteousness of Christ, — during which you
have thought of no other righteousness, have cared for
no other righteousness, have aimed at no other righteous-
ness, than that which is fair and grand in the eyes of the
world. And how does the case stand now, brethren ?
Do you indeed all discern the righteousness of Christ in
its heavenly perfection and beatific glory ? Do you look
up to it, and gaze upon it with every eye of your heart
and soul and mind, and strive after it, strive to make it
yours, with all your strength, with the strength of
unceasing watchfulness against temptation, with the
strength of a resolute resistance to evil, with the strength
of a patient perseverance in- welldoing, with the strength
of humble, penitent, earnest, unweariable prayer? Is
this the one great object of your desires and aspirations
and endeavours, the beacon that draws and guides you
onward, and the tent that shelters and protects you?
Are you longing, seeking, striving to fly for refuge from
the sins of the world beneath the righteousness of
Christ? Are you indeed hungering and thirsting after
this righteousness? Or have you bowed down your
THE CON VICT ION OF JUDGEMEN T. 115
souls to the world, and given up your hearts to its
service ? with no higher ambition, than to snatch all
you can of the largess which the world is ever and anon
flinging abroad among the crowd of her slaves, in
order to cheer and kindle them up for a moment, and to
keep them from fainting and flagging? Is this your
highest aim, to look well in the eyes of the world, to
gain worldly power, worldly riches, worldly distinction,
worldly honour, worldly esteem, worldly righteousness ?
Surely, brethren, if this be our case, if this be the case
with any of us, — and may we not reasonably fear that
it is the case with far too many ? let us each ask whether
it be with ourselves ; — for, if it be, we must need to be con-
vinced of judgement; we must grievously need a living
conviction that the Prince of this world has been judged.
This is the third great work of the Comforter ; who,
according to our Lord's declaration, was not only to con-
vince the world of sin and of righteousness, but also of
judgement. We have seen in the former sermons, how
absolutely necessary it was, that, if the world was indeed
to be convinced of sin and of righteousness, the Holy
Spirit of God should vouchsafe to undertake the work of
bringing the world to that conviction. We have seen
how utterly inefficient all other powers are to engrave
this conviction on the heart of the world; how every
other attempt so to engrave it was like carving characters
in the sand, which the next wave of temptation covered
and effaced ; how it was requisite that the world should
have a new heart and a new spirit, even the Spirit of
God, working in it, before it could embrace and retain
a conviction so alien to its nature. Nor was the difficulty
of convincing the world of judgement less: nor was there
less need that the Spirit of God should graciously under-
116 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
take the work of producing this conviction. For by no
other power than that of the Spirit of God could it be
wrought ; yet, unless it were wrought, the work of the
Comforter would be incomplete. In vain would He con-
vince the world of sin ; in vain would He convince the
world of righteousness ; unless He perfected His work by
convincing the world of judgement.
It is by the light of the Sun of Righteousness, we have
found, that the Comforter convinces the world of sin.
Some souls may be the most strongly imprest in the first
instance by the beauty and glory of the righteousness
manifested in the life of Christ, and may only be
awakened by degrees to the consciousness of their own
want to everything akin thereto. Others, a far greater
number, — especially among those who are sent out from
the quiet shelter of their homes to fight the world upon
its own ground, — become immerst in such thick darkness,
darkness like that which spread over the land of Egypt,
darkness which may be felt, — they become so bound by
the heavy chains of a morbid and turbid sleep, — that the
first sound which strikes their consciences, when they
are startled out of that sleep, is the clanking of their
chains, — the first sensation they are distinctly aware of
is the weight of the darkness pressing stiflingly upon
them. Now, whichever the order of succession may be,
if the conviction wrought in us be the work of the
Comforter, the same effect, which took place in the
natural world, when the Creative Word poured light
through the dark and formless void, took place also, and
still takes place, in the moral world, when the same
Word pours His light through it. The Spirit of God
divides the light from the darkness, and calls the light
Righteousness; and the darkness He calls Sin. But is
THE CON VICT ION OF JUDGEMENT. 117
this all ? Is he content with merely dividing them, with
merely giving them their names, and leaving them to
stand arrayed over against each other ? Is he so weak,
that He can do no more than this ? or so indifferent,
that He will not do more ? Is the light content with
dividing itself from the darkness ? Does it allow the
darkness to lift up its head against it? Does it not
utterly scatter the darkness, and drive it away before its
face ? They who are hidden from the light by the thick,
impermeable mass of the earth, will still be in darkness :
but whithersoever the light comes, thence the darkness
flies. And must it not be so likewise, when the Son of
God sends His Spirit from Heaven, to shew forth the light
of His righteousness, and to convince the world of the
darkness of its sin ? Assuredly it must. The manifesta-
tion of Christ's righteousness is not merely in order to
reveal the sin of the world, but in order to scatter and
confound it and drive it away. When he came forth
from the bosom of the Father, to war against Sin, He did
not come to the end that the victory should be doubtfid :
He did not come to share the empire of the world with
Satan. He came to overthrow Satan ; yea, and He did
overthrow Him. He came to cast out sin ; yea, and He
did cast it out. From His own humanity He cast it out,
and waved His sword of light before it, whenever it
dared approach Him : and hereby He gave a pledge, that
it shall be cast out from the souls of all His saints, of all
who shall become partakers of His blessed and glorious
redemption.
Tli is is the great truth, of which the Comforter came to
convince the world, when He came to convince it of judge-
ment : and this again is a truth of which no other power
can convince it. Or is there any other power that can ?
118 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
The word Judgement naturally reminds us of that power
by which the rulers of states in all ages have endeavoured
to convince the people thereof. Law is the voice where-
by the wisdom of those who are set in authority over
nations has tried from the beginning to convince mankind
of judgement. It is a solemn voice, direct, imperative,
oracular, mighty among the voices of the earth, girt with
majesty and with terrour, speaking like thunder, and
executing its sentence like lightning. The wisdom of
nations is employed in devising and enacting laws : the
wisdom of nations is employed in administering and en-
forcing them : the power of nations is pledged to carry
them into execution : and fearful are the weapons which
that power has to wield, dungeons, chains, exile from the
land of our fathers, the severance of every tie that
renders life precious or pleasant, death. Such is the plan
which man takes to convince his fellows of judgement :
and how vain is it ! Against how small a portion of the
brood of sin can Law even utter judgement! Only
against gross overt acts of sin ; against such acts as break
the public peace, or seriously injure the wellbeing of
others. So far therefore as Law goes, there are vast
multitudes of sins, against which no sentence even of
reprobation is denounced ; how vast, you will better
conceive, if you reflect how much of your own past lives
has been sinful, yet how seldom, if ever, you have done
anything of which the Law could have had cognisance.
Moreover, even among those sins which Law forbids, how
few comparatively are the acts against which judgement
takes effect ! The act must be outrageous ; the evidence
of its commission must be clear, satisfactory, unimpeach-
able, without flaw or loophole. The carelessness and
apathy of those against whom the offense is committed,
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 119
their shrinking from appearing in the character of prosecu-
tors and calling down wrath upon their brethren, — the skill
and subtility of advocates, — the mildness of judges, bound
by their very office to give the accused the benefit of the
slightest doubt, the faintest presumption, — the natural
sympathy which man feels with suffering, even where it
is the consequence of guilt, and which, in an effeminate
age, when men have lost the idea of the rightful con-
nexion and proportion between moral and physical evil,
so as to shudder at pain more sensitively than at sin,
threatens almost to paralyse the arm of Justice, — the
reluctance to condemn a fellowcreature, which the con-
sciousness of our own frailty begets, and which is
strongest in the purest hearts, — all these motives combine
to screen culprits, even those whose crimes have been
flagrant, from the judgement of Law. How rarely has a
law been repealed or fallen into disuse, because it had
fulfilled its purpose, and the crime it forbad had ceased
to be committed ! When laws have become obsolete, it
has been much rather from changes in the condition and
habits of society, than from their own efficiency. On the
other hand how glaringly is the incapacity of Law to
convince the world of judgement demonstrated by the
continual multiplication of Laws ! In reckless defiance of
Law, new crimes are invented, and the old ones are still
perpetrated as frequently as ever. Nay, unless a far
mightier, more pervading and penetrative power than
that of Law were employed to convince the world of
judgement, you might enact law after law to repress
the fraud and violence of man, you might weave
a net of laws around him to tame him, you might
twine your threads fast and tight and thick about
every limb; and just as you had finisht your task,
120 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
he would crumble to dust from rottenness and
corruption.
Law however is not a voice which often sounds in your
ears, my brethren, to convince you of judgement. The
sins and offences which Law forbids, are not those into
which you are likely to fall. Why so? Because you are
convinced of judgement ? If you were, you would be no
less unlikely to fall into other sins, than into those which
the law condemns. But you have few temptations to
commit the latter. The sins which the law brands are
mostly offences against the institutions, the order and
peace of society ; and your interests are bound up with
those institutions, and that order and peace. Therefore
you are not apt to commit such sins, and need not the
reprobation of the law to repell you from them. But the
world has other voices whereby men are to be convinced
of judgement, voices addrest more especially to you. The
law, properly so called, the law of the State, is addrest
mainly to other classes of society: the law of honour, the
law of opinion are addrest to you. Now these in some
respects have been more effective than the law of the
State in convincing the world of judgement. They have
at times succeeded in checking and repressing certain
sins; some they have almost extirpated. Yet it can by
no means be said even of these, that they do indeed
convince the world of judgement. For what is the
judgement, of which they convince the world ? Not the
judgement of God, but the judgement of the world itself.
Hereby they foster and pamper the sin of worshiping
the world, instead of God ; a sin which seems to become
huger and more oppressive with the increase of civiliza-
tion. The motive they appeal to is the desire of pleasing
the world, not of pleasing God. He who rules his
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 121
conduct solely by the laws of honour and opinion, will
be just as careless about God, just as remote from the
righteousness of Christ, as the most barefaced sinner.
These laws do not point straightforward along the path
of duty. They say not, This is right; do and love it:
This is wrong ; eschew and abhor it They say, This
will exalt thee in the esteem of thy neighbours : This will
brand you with shame and ignominy. Moreover, as the
grounds of these laws are erroneous, and their motives
spurious and tainted with evil, so, in that which they
enjoin and forbid, they are arbitrary, partial, superficial,
fallacious. Much that is sinful they encourage. Looking
in all things at that which displays itself to the eyes of
man, they leave the recesses of the heart unexplored and
untoucht ; so that the more a man conforms to them, the
more apt is he to become a whited sepulcre. Nay, there
is one large class of sins, of which they are wellnigh
regardless, — those most insidious and pernicious sins,
with which human morality has ever been at a loss how
to deal, the sins of impurity and licentiousness. To such
vices they are lenient and indulgent, except when they
become excessive. Hereby these laws at once betray
their inability to convince the world of judgement, in
that they do not presume to condemn the sin itself, in
all its forms and indications, but only when it becomes
an open outrage, destructive of happiness, and under-
mining the foundations of family life.
Thus impotent are the witnesses of this world to con-
vince the world of judgement. Nor had the witnesses
appointed by God for the purpose in the earlier ages of
the world been able to produce this conviction efficaciously.
From the very first God had set the mark of judgement
upon sin. Ere Death was, ere Sin had sprung up in the
122 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
heart of man, God had declared that Death should
execute judgment against Sin. What Death was to be,
man knew not: its dark shadow had never yet past
over the bright vernal face of paradisiacal life. He only
knew that it was something to be greatly feared and
shunned, something betokening God's severe displeasure,
and that it was to be the consequence and penalty of
disobedience. Yet Death did not convince man of judge-
ment in the days before it entered into the world: nor
has it ever done so since. Although this judgement
against sin has been executed in countless millions of
instances, ever since man sold himself into the bondage
of sin, — although Death has pursued him whithersoever
he has wandered, into every nook and corner of the earth,
and has never allowed him to evade its clutches, —
although the whole earth is one vast charnelhouse in
which Death has laid up the victims of Sin, — although
no minute of time glides by without tolling the death
of some among the children of men, — still man will not
believe that Death has been appointed by God as a
judgement against sin. He will not look upon it as
such. He deems that it is merely a law of nature;
as in truth it is, a law of our sinful nature, a law to which
all such as are concluded under sin must bow. But he
will not recognise the connexion between death and sin.
He feels indeed that sin is a law of his nature, that there
is a law in his members, which he cannot withstand,
dragging him into sin; and this he will often alledge,
more especially to his own conscience, as an excuse for
continuing unresistingly in sin ; although at other times,
when the spirit of pride has for the moment supplanted
the spirit of sloth, hewill be ready to boast of the strength
and dignity and virtuous energies of his nature. He
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT 123
knows too that death is a law of his nature ; and this he
never thinks of denying or questioning: nay, he is prone
to believe the whisperings of the deceiver, who tells him
that so it ever has been, and so it ever will and must be,
— that to wrestle against it is vain, — that to trouble
oneself about it is unprofitable selftormenting, — that we
must let it be, as though it were not, — that we must
copy the example of Nature, who hastens to efface every
trace of Death's hand, and who, with the seeds "of death
rankling in every limb, decks herself out with the pageant
of exuberant, unquenchable life, and makes use of the
ex u via? of death to render that life more luxuriant, — and
that, whatever may come after death, we must deem of it
as a nonentity; for that no power can conquer death
on this side of the grave, and still less beyond. Thus,
although Death has been ordained to pass to and fro over
the whole earth, stalking from land to land, and from city
to city, and from house to house, knocking time after
time with sorrow and piteous wailing at the door of every
heart, — and although it has not gone forth alone, but
accompanied by a thronging train of pains and diseases,
blighting the bloom of youth, blasting the strength of
manhood, gnawing at the core of old age, and bringing
one after another down into the all-leveling grave, —
although moreover it sends forth the whole host of
whereby the world is desolated, to keep
man in mind of wrath, — although this countless multitude
of witnesses is ever traversing the earth, with sounds of
lamentation and tribulation and anguish, to convince the
world of judgement, — still all is in vain, the world will
not be convinced. Man will not believe that death and
pain and sickness and misery are the offspring of Sin:
he will not believe that Sin must produce this, and can
124 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
produce no other offspring. Or even if he is led to
discern the general connexion between sin and misery,
still he will not believe that this connexion is necessary
and indissoluble. He listens greedily to the words of
the Tempter, who tells him that in his case the connexion
shall be violated, that, in special indulgence to him, this
adamantine chain of moral gravitation, more lasting and
binding than that by which the stars are held in their
spheres,' will snap ; that sin for him will wholly change
its nature ; that he shall find nothing but pleasures and
raptures in it, and nothing but weariness and vexation
apart from it; that at his approach the flames of hell
will turn into a garden of delights, while Eden would
shrivel into a wilderness the moment he set foot there.
I will not enter into details for the sake of pointing
out how vain all forms of misery have ever been to con-
vince the world of judgment. It is needless. You can
hardly walk along the streets of a great city without
seeing swarms rushing eagerly in chase of sin, although
shame and scorn and outcastness and destitution and dis-
ease and death are glaring with fixt eyes upon them.
The first man born after the expulsion of our first parents
out of Paradise became a murderer, and dragged death
into the world, as though it were lagging too long to
execute God's judgement against sin. He who had
preacht righteousness to the generation before the
Flood, — he who had beheld that whole generation
with every work of its hands swept away,— he who
had floated suspended between earth and heaven, the
head of the one sole family spared from the universal
destruction, while the waters of Judgement were rushing
whelmingly around him, — he who had thus witnest this
awful manifestation of God's twofold judgement, of
THE CON VICT ION OF JUDGEMENT. 125
wrath against sin and of mercy to righteousness, —
even he, we read, fell into the snares of sin, and yielded
his soul to the lusts of that world, which he had seen
turned by sin into a ghastly wreck: and among the
seven souls who were preserved along with him, one
brought down a father's curse upon his head. A like
testimony has ever been borne by times of great, desol-
ating calamity, as when a famine or a pestilence has
been let loose to prey upon a people: for while they
who have already been convinced of judgement, are
stirred at such seasons to a still deeper seriousness of
thought and strictness of life and earnestness of devo-
tion, on the other hand the near approach of danger
seems rather to render the children of this world more
reckless, and to unkennel the fierce lusts and devouring
passions, which selfish fears and shame had previously
lockt up in the dark places of their hearts (x). Thus
again it is notorious that a public execution is mostly
a scene of fresh crime ; and that, when a ship is wreckt,
many of the wretched men who are about to be swal-
lowed up by the waves, will spend their few remaining
moments in maddening drunkenness and plunder and
licentiousness. So utterly inefficient is wrath and every
mode of selfish fear to convince mankind of judgement.
If man had nothing but the terrours of this world and
the prospect of death to act upon him, the nearer those
terrours came, the louder and more general would be the
shout, let U8 eat and drink ; for tomorrow we die. And
although Tragedy makes it her special business to con-
vince the world of judgement, by setting forth the fated
and inevitable doom which sin brings down upon its
head, Comedy bears witness how transient such im-
pressions are, how soon they are laught away, how
126 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
readily and merrily men will rush down the precipice,
at the foot of which their brethren are lying crusht
before their eyes. Nor are the solemn lessons which
History reads from the records of all ages more effective :
we only learn them by rote, and repeat them to our
posterity, with the confirmation of our own examples.
Nor did the Law of God, with all the infallible curses
attacht to it, produce the conviction of judgement. Even
while it was delivered on the mount amid thunders and
lightnings, the people at the foot of the mount were
turning away from the God who was declaring His holy
will to them, and were defiling their souls before His
face with new idolatrous abominations. So too did their
children continue to do. In their earlier ages the
Israelites were perpetually forsaking Jehovah and His
law, to worship the false gods of the Heathens. In
their latter ages they made the Law itself an object of
mere idolatry, pampering their carnal pride by a precise
observance of the letter, while they were careless about
the spirit. And though God sent His prophets, voice
after voice, wave after wave of sound, rolling with a
melancholy moan through the moral wilderness of Judea,
— though they lifted up their voices, and cried to the
heavens and the earth to give ear, and hear the woes
which God had denounced against sin, — still Israel would
not hear, His people would not consider. So that in this
instance again we find an absolute need and necessity
that the Spirit of God should come down from heaven
to work the conviction, which no other power could
work.
The Comforter will convince the world of Judgement
We have seen how He convinces the world, how He con-
vinces each individual soul, of the sin of not believing
THE CON VICT ION OF J UDGEMENT. \ 27
in Christ; and how he leads us to cast away that sin,
whereby we were cut off from God and all goodness, to
give up our hearts to faith, to believe, and to find a
power in our faith which will deliver us from ourselves
and from sin. We have seen how He convinces the
world, and each individual soul, of Christ's righteousness ;
how he convinces us that Christ, in that He went to
His Father, manifested Himself to be the Lord our
Righteousness; and how He leads us to seek to be
clothed in the righteousness which Christ has obtained
for us. Now this, it might be thought, must be enough.
The whole work of God, the whole work of the Spirit for
the completion of Christ's work and the salvation of
mankind, might seem to be fulfilled. When we are
clothed in Christ's righteousness, what more can be
desired ? What more can be done for the soul, which
is arrayed in the pure and spotless robe of the lamb ?
Nothing; provided it were to pass at once out of the
prison of the flesh ; provided death were to come to it,
and bear it aloft from the temptations and struggles of
this world to the abode of everlasting calmness and
peace. In most cases however this is not so. In most
cases, even after the soul has been convinced of sin and
of righteousness, and has been clothed anew in the
righteousness of faith, it is still doomed to live on
in a world of frailty, surrounded and assailed by all
manner of temptations, to feel the lustings of theflesh
against the Spirit, and to beat and wound its wings
against the wires of its cage. In most cases there are
still many battles to be fought, still many foes to be
overcome, still a long and hard and toilsome warfare
to be endured. We must bear our part in the Church
militant, before we are received into the Church trium-
128 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
pliant. Seldom is the renewed spirit allowed to pass at
once from its Egyptian bondage to the land of promise :
a long and barren wilderness is mostly to be traverst,
before it can reach the heavenly Canaan. Only, when
we have been truly convinced of our own sinfulness, and
of Christ's righteousness, we feel that there is a difference
in our warfare, that we are not left to fight singlehanded
against the powers of evil, with no other strength than
that of our own blind and erring understanding, and our
own feeble and mutilated conscience. We feel that we
have a mighty Ally, who can enable us to overcome all
our enemies, and who has already overcome them in our
behalf. We see that the darkness, when the light comes
against it, cannot stand and fight against the light, but
flies instantaneously from its face. We are taught that,
if we will lift up our hearts in constant and fervent
prayer to our heavenly Ally, we too shall prevail, as
Israel prevailed against Amalek. We perceive that the
Lord of Hosts is going before us; and if beneath the
broad light of day the vision is less clear, so that we see
nothing more distinct than the pillar of a cloud, no
sooner does the darkness of affliction and tribulation
thicken around, than it is brightened by a beaming
pillar of fire. Above all, we recognise that we have
indeed come away from the fleshpots of Egypt, and their
temptations, whereby a while back we were so easily
beguiled: we have found out the shame and the death
that is in them : and though the land on all sides be a
wilderness, we know that this wilderness is not meant
to be our abiding-place, but that we are to journey
onward and ever onward through it to our home ; that
the pleasures of sin would only make it far more
dangerous and deadly; and that, dreary as it may seem,
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 129
God will not suffer us to faint by the way, but will
bring forth water from the rock to refresh the souls
of His faithful people, and will feed them with manna
from heaven.
Such is the conviction which the Comforter works in
the souls convinced by Him of sin and of righteousness,
thus making His comfort perfect : He convinces them of
judgement. Of judgement ! This is an awful and
terrible word in the ears of mankind. Even with refer-
ence to the relations of this world, when we are merely
thinking of human laws, of human justice, of human
judges, that may so easily be deceived or softened or
eluded, it strikes a chill through the heart of the culprit
to hear that he is called up to judgement. What fear
and dismay then will there be, when the trumpet of the
archangel is heard, sounding the deathnotes of Time, and
crying to those who sleep in the grave, Awake, and come
to judgement ! What heart would not shrink and quail,
were it to receive such a summons now ? Surely there
is no one here present, there is no one living upon earth,
there never was a single one among the children of men,
who could look searchingly back over his past life, or
even over a single day, and could then exclaim, with a
distinct consciousness of the aspect sin must bear in the
eyes of the Allrighteous, 7" am ready to meet the Judge ;
I am ready to face the Judgement.
Yet in this case also, as we have found in the two
former, it is indeed the Comforter, who convinces the
world of judgement: nor could there be any real, stable
comfort, unless this conviction were added to the others.
Indeed this very conviction will enable those whom the
Spirit convinces of it, to stand with meek and humble
hope on the day of that last dreadful judgement, when
130 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
the sentence of the law will go forth over all the genera-
tions of mankind. The Comforter will convince the
world of judgement, our Lord says, because the Prince of
this world is judged (y). Who is the Prince of this
world? The. Lord is King, cries the Psalmist: let the
earth rejoice ; and let the multitude of the isles be glad
thereof Is the Lord then the Prince of this world ? the
Prince of those who give up their hearts to this world ?
Is he your Prince, your King ? By right He is so, by a
twofold title, as your Creator, and as your Redeemer.
But so long as you continue the children of this world,
He is not in point of fact your King. He is not the
King whom the children of this world honour and obey
and serve. Their true King, the King whom they really
honour and obey and serve, is . . . whom did Eve obey
and serve, when she was beguiled by the pleasures of the
senses, to pluck the forbidden fruit? Whom did Cain
obey and serve, when he lifted his hand against Abel ?
Whom did the generation before the Flood obey and
serve, when it repented the Lord that He had made man 'I
Whom did the children of the plain obey and serve, when
they attempted to build a tower, the top of which should
reach to heaven ? Whom did Esau obey and serve, when
he sold his birthright ? Whom did the sons of Jacob
obey and serve, when they cast Joseph into the pit?
Whom did Samson obey and serve, when he laid his
head in the lap of Delilah ? Whom did David obey and
serve, when he commanded that Uriah should be set in
the front of the battle, and left to die ? Whom did
Solomon obey and serve, when his wives turned away
his heart to worship Ashtoreth and Milcom ? Whom did
Herod obey and serve, when he slew the children at
Bethlehem ? Whom did Judas obey and serve, when he
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 131
betrayed his Master ? Whom did Pilate obey and serve,
when he gave up Him in whom he could find no fault, to
be crucified. They all obeyed and served the Prince of
this world, the Prince who under one shape or other
reigns in the hearts of all the children of this world,
swaying some by the lusts of the flesh, and others by the
lusts of the eye, and others again by the pride of life.
These are his lures, by which he catches the souls of men,
which few can withstand, and from which few can
extricate themselves. His commandments are Kill;
Commit Adultery; Steal; Lie; Covet: and this his
word runneth very swiftly from one end of the earth to
the other. Neighbour takes it up from neighbour;
brother whispers it to brother ; and father hands it down
to son. There is no speech or language in which his
voice is not heard. There is no heart among the children
of men, through which it has not often sounded. In
truth, few, very few are the hearts through which it does
not sound at times, more or less loudly, during the main
part of their lives. Is it not so, brethren ? Have you
not heard these voices sound in your hearts, sometimes
imperiously, sometimes fawningly, with wily insinuation ?
Nay, are there not those, who, if the truth were extorted
from them, would have to confess that they have heard
these voices too recently, that they have listened to them
too complacently, with too little shuddering or recoil ?
Alas, even among those who have been convinced by the
Holy Spirit both of sin and of righteousness, there are
lm are not reminded ever and anon, that another
law is still dwelling in their members, warring against
tin- law of God.
Most comfortable therefore is the assurance, which the
Holy Spirit brings to all such as have cast off the sin of
132 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
unbelief, and have given up their hearts and minds to a
living faith in Christ, — to all such as, having been taught
to discern what true righteousness is, and how destitute
they are of it, are seeking to put on the righteousness of
Christ, — most comfortable to all such is the conviction of
judgement, manifested in this, that the Prince of this
world has been judged. So long as they were still in
Egypt, baited with the fleshpots of Egypt, and toiling in
the brick-kilns of Egypt, they could not lift up their
hands against Pharaoh. The yoke of the Prince of this
world was on their necks; and whithersoever he drove
them, they were compelled to go. If he fed them
daintily and plentifully, they thankt him and bowed
down to him. At first he would do so, and supplied
them with straw. He stirred the tinglings of appetites
within them, which they were fain to bake into sins.
But after a while his wont is to take away the straw.
The very appetites and passions, by which sinners were
once led into their sins, sicken and die; and yet they are
forced to render the same tale of sins as before. Nay,
such is the cruelty and malice of the Prince of this
world, that, when he has made sure of his drudges, -he
will tear away their sons and slay them. Whatever is
dearest to them, whatever they prize most, he will
destroy; yet they must needs go on labouring in his
toils. Be it health, he will take their health from them,
and cover them with leprous diseases ; and yet they
must go on sinning. Be it for riches that they have
bartered their souls, he will take away their riches, or, it
may be, will turn their riches into a cankering care ; and
yet they must go on sinning. Be it honour and power
that they have sought by dark and ungodly ways, he
will snatch their power from them, and crush them with
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 133
shame ; and yet they must go on sinning. Be pleasure
their idol, he will turn their pleasures into a swarm of
stinging, gnawing pains ; and yet they must go on sin-
ning. And after all, if any messenger of God comes to
them, and speaks to them of the living God, and calls on
them to come out from their bondage, and to serve Him,
the Prince of this world cries, What have ye to do with
lag God? ye who are dead, and the slaves of dead
gods? Ye are idle: back to your sins: 1 will not let
you go (z).
Thus does the Prince of this world deal with the chil-
dren of this world. Glad tidings therefore must it be to
those who have escaped out of his clutches, that the
Prince of this world has been judged. A glad sight was
it to the children of Israel, when they saw the host of
Pharaoh swallowed up by the waters of the Red Sea.
Thus, when the children of our spiritual Israel have been
convinced of Sin and of righteousness by the Comforter,
when they have thus been brought to loathe the land of
>in ;ind to fly from it, He delivers them from the fear of
their pursuers by convincing them that Pharaoh and all
his host, the Prince of this world and his whole legion of
sins, have been swallowed up for those who believe in
Christ, and are clothed with his righteousness, in the
blood which flowed from the Cross. Glad tidings
indeed must this be, glad and comfortable tidings, so
that they who are convinced thereof are ready to cry out
in the words of Miriam : Sing ye to the Lord ! for he hath
phed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into the sea. Yes, Death, and the pale horse Sin,
Us and ghastly now that it is seen in its true colours,
hath He cast down aud buried forever in His victorious
grave.
134 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
For this is the way in which all such as have been
convinced by the Comforter of the sinfulness of unbelief
and of the righteousness of Christ, are further enabled to
discern that the Prince of this world has been judged.
His judgement was like that of Herod, whom, when he
was sitting in regal state, and the people were worshiping
him, and shouting, It is a god ! the angel of the Lord
smote ; and straightway his crown dropt from his head,
and his royal robe fell off, and behold, the worms were
devouring him. They who are truly convinced of judge-
ment, see the Prince of this world as he is, in his true
shape and features, the heir of eternal wrath, the miserable
victim of his own fiendish malignity. They perceive that
he is indeed cursed* above every beast of the field, that
his path is on his belly, and that his food is dust. Their
eyes are unsealed so that he can no more deceive them.
They see how Christ overcame him, — by that sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God. They see how all the
most fascinating temptations are scattered in a moment
by the breath of God's holy law. When night is spread
around us, the light of a candle will seem bright and
pleasant: but when the day has lit up the heavens and
the earth, it dwindles so as hardly to be seen. Thus it is
even with the more innocent pleasures of this world, to
those whose eyes have been opened by faith to catch a
foreglimpse of the joys of heaven ; while its vicious
pleasures are clean put out, as the sunshine puts out
a fire. To recur to that same great scriptural type of our
redemption, which has already presented itself to our
thoughts, — they who have been convinced of the sin of
unbelief, of that sin whereby their hearts were estranged
from God, and given up to the service of this world, —
and who have also been convinced of Christ's righteous-
THE COXVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 135
ness, have discerned its surpassing glory and beauty, and
have felt the unspeakable blessedness of being received
into a participation of that righteousness, and thereby
restored to a communion with God, — all they in whom
these two great works have been accomplisht, feel that
they have indeed come forth from the rich, luxurious land
of Egypt, that the fashion of the country around them
is wholly changed, and that, except for the visitations of
God's grace, with which their passage through it may
be brightened, it is no better than a wilderness in com-
parison with the land flowing with milk and honey toward
which they are journeying. They no more think of
fixing their home where they arc, than a ship thinks of
mooring in the middle of the homeless Atlantic. Their
eyes are always gazing onward and forward ; nor would
they turn back or look round, but for the pleasure and
refreshment they find in cheering and helping and
strengthening their fellow-pilgrims on the way.
In order to understand the mystery, how the Prince of
this world was judged, we must go back to the twelfth
chapter of the same blessed Gospel, from which our text
is taken. There we find our Lord saying, with His
spirit full of the bitter sufferings which awaited Him,
Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
ShaM I say, Father, save Me from this hour? But
it was for this cause tJiat I came to this hour.
Father, glorify Thy name. Then, we further read,
there came a voice from heaven saying, I have both
(jlorified it, and will glorify it again. Hereupon
Jesus said, Now is tJie judgement of this world: now shall
Die Prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I am
lifted up from tJte earth, shall draw all men to Me. In
these words we are taught, how the Prince of this world
136 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
was to be judged, how he was to be cast out (a a). The
Father declared from heaven, that He had glorified and
would still glorify His name. In that He did so, in the
very act of His shewing forth His glory, the world was
judged; and the Prince of this world, whose dominion
over the world lay in his having drawn it away from the
recognition of God's glory and name, was cast out. But
how did the Father purpose to glorify His name ? It was
to be glorified in this, that His Onlybegotten Son Jesus
Christ was to be lifted up from the earth to His throne
upon the Cross. This was such a manifestation of
God's glory, that the sun turned pale before it, and
the mid-day sky grew dark. For then, when Christ
was lifted up from the earth, the glory of God was
shewn forth even more than in the creation of the world.
Then was shewn forth the glory of God's holiness. Then
was shewn forth the glory of God's mercy. Then was
shewn forth the glory of God's righteousness. Then was
shewn forth the glory of God's love. Hereby too, above
all, does the Comforter convince us both of sin and of
righteousness, — by the Cross of Christ. It is at the foot of
the Cross, that we most deeply and thoroughly feel the sin
of not believing in Him, who came down from Heaven to
die upon that Cross for us. It is at the foot of the Cross,
that we feel all the hatefulness of sin, which could not be
removed from the souls of men, except by the death of
the Son of God. It is at the foot of the Cross, when the
consummating trial of death is past, — when He, whose
every word has manifested the divine power of love to
overcome sin's fiercest and subtilest temptations, has
given up the ghost, — that, with the centurion, we recog-
nise the perfect righteousness of Christ: and as the
purpose for which He was lifted up was, that He might
THE CONVICTION OF JUDGEMENT. 137
become our righteousness, and draw us to partake in the
righteousness which He had obtained for us, so it is at the
foot of the Cross, that we feel how we are admitted to a
share in the righteousness of Christ. Thus too, if,
standing at the foot of the Cross, we raise our eyes to
Him, who was nailed thereon, — if in the light of the
Spirit we behold Him there lifted up as our Righteous-
ness, — if we call to remembrance what He left, and what
He embraced, for our sakes, — if we thus fix the earnest
gaze of our hearts and souls and minds on the glory of
God as manifested on the Cross of Christ, — then, when
our eyes drop from thence on the things of this world,
we cannot fail to discern how the Prince of this world
has been judged.
Now to Him who convinces us of sin and of righteous-
ness and of judgement, the Comforting Spirit of God, and
to Jesus Christ, our Righteousness, by whom the Prince
of this world was judged, in the Unity of the Eternal
Father, be all praise and thanksgiving and adoration,
world without end.
138
SERMON V.
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER.
" When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and
of Righteousness, and of Judgement ; of Sin, because they believe not
in Me ; of Righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no
more; of Judgement, because the Prince of this world is judged." —
John xvi. 8-11.
The great work of the Comforter, the work for the sake
of which He was to come down from heaven, as set
forth by our Lord in His farewell discourse with the
disciples, was to produce the threefold conviction of sin,
and of righteousness, and of judgement. This is the
divine work which the Holy Spirit was to perform,
as the Paraclete, the Comforter and Advocate, the Helper
and Strengthener of the disciples in the mighty task
committed to them of bringing all the nations of the
earth into that Church, of which they were to lay and to
be the foundations. By working this conviction, He was
to be their Advocate, pleading and upholding their cause
against the craft and subtilty of the Deceiver ; He was
to be their Strengthener, endowing their words with the
power of piercing and turning the soul ; He was to pre-
pare the way for them whithersoever they went, and
to give them the victory, making their enemies throw
THE THREEFOLD COXVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 13£
aside their arms, and rush over and enlist in their ranks.
The conviction was to be wrought in the world. Hence
it was to be universal in its character as well as its
extent ; differing herein from those special gifts, whether
intellectual or more immediately spiritual, which are
bestowed by the Spirit upon individual believers. The
truths, of which the Comforter was to convince the world,
were truths intimately pertaining to the whole human
race, and to every single member thereof. While all men,
as we have seen in the former sermons, have obstinately
refused to be convinced of them by any other teacher,
they are yet such as none, before whom they are set
rightly, can resist, except through hardness of heart and
blindness of understanding. Moreover it was to be a
preparatory work, a work by which the nations were to
be gathered into the Church of the Saviour. For, in
order thereto, this threefold conviction was indispensable.
No people would ever have thought of entering into
Christ's Church, unless they had previously been con-
vinced of the sinfulness of their former idolatrous
alienation from God, — and of the righteousness of Him,
who, after pouring out His life on the Cross for the sins
of the world, ascended to wear the crown of eternal
Righteousness on the throne of His Father, — and of the
judgement which had then gone forth against all the gods
of the nations, and against all the abominations of their
worship, casting them down and destroying them, as
Dagon was cast down and shattered to pieces by the
presence of the ark of the Lord.
That the Comforter did indeed perform this work,
after Christ went up to His Father, we know : we know
too with what power He performed it. The promise in
the text is, that He shall help the disciples in their great
HO THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
and seemingly impossible task, by convincing the world
of sin and of rigliteousnesss and of judgement. But this
threefold conviction, which He was to work in the world,
He wrought first in the disciples themselves. For greatly
did they too need it, as we see by manifold evidence in
the events which preceded the Crucifixion. Greatly did
they need to be convinced of sin, of their own deplorable
weakness and frailty, who were so forward and confident
in declaring that they would die with their Lord, but
would never deny him, yet who anon, a few hours after,
as might have been anticipated from their presumption,
forsook Him and fled. Greatly did they need to be con-
vinced of righteousness, of His heavenly righteousness, of
that righteousness which alone is precious in the eyes of
God, — they who, even after the Resurrection, after the
wonderful chain of proofs which had made it manifest
that their Master's Kingdom was not of this world, still
clung to the hope that He was about to set up an earthly
throne, and whose chief desire was, not to be made
partakers in His heavenly righteousness, but to sit on
the right hand and on the left of that earthly throne.
Greatly too did they need to be convinced of judgement,
of the judgement which strips the world at once of its
lures and its terrours, — they over whom the fears and
charms of the world had still such power, and whose
flesh was so weak that they could not watch one hour
with the Lord in His agony. But when the Comforter
came to them, then, and from that time forward, all was
changed. Their eyes were opened; their hearts were new
strung; and the Spirit was enabled to triumph over the
weakness of the flesh. Their conviction of sin became
deeper, in proportion as they were raised above it. As
they cast off the slough of their former nature, they saw
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. HI
more and more clearly how vile it was. The gaze of
their hearts was for ever fixt on the righteousness of their
Lord, as He sat at the right hand of God : and this now
was their one desire, not to exercise dominion, like the
princes of the Gentiles, but to be filled more and more
with that righteousness, and to show forth its glory to
the nations, and to bring all mankind to become partakers
in its blessings. As for the Prince of this world, they
well knew that he was judged. They knew too that
they themselves were sent forth to proclaim and to
execute judgement against him, to defy him, to set him
at nought, to drive him from all his strongholds with the
sword of the Spirit, and to trample him under foot. If
he beat them with stripes, they rejoiced that they were
counted worthy to suffer for their Lord. If he imprisoned
them, they sang praises to God, until the doors of their
prison burst open, and the captive was enabled to set the
jailor free. If he stoned them, they lookt up to heaven,
and saw the glory of God, and fell asleep, shewing that
they had indeed seen it, by praying for the murderers
whom the Prince of this world had stirred up against
them. If they had to endure the extremities of earthly
suffering, they counted their affliction light, in the assur-
ance that it would work out a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory.
Thus mighty was the conviction which the Comforter
wrought in the souls of the disciples. In the strength
of this conviction the poor unlearned fishermen of Galilee
went forth, confident that their Master's promise would
be fulfilled, and that the Comforter would always go
along with them, to work the same threefold conviction
in the world ; to bring the world to a recognition of its
sinfulness, summed up in the sin of unbelief in Him who
142 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
came to dwell in the sight of the world as the Incarnate
Imao-e of God ; and at the same time to a recognition of
the righteousness of Him whom by its agents and
representatives it had denied and crucified, and of the
judgement fallen upon the Prince whom it had been
accustomed to worship and serve. When we cast our
thoughts back on the state of the world at that time,
and call to mind what an enterprise this was, how
totally alien from anything that the heart of man had
ever conceived, — when we remember that almost every-
thing, which in earlier ages had seemed of fairer promise,
was utterly extinct, and that Evil had set its foot upon
the neck of the world, and was trampling upon its heart,
and was reigning with uncontested, desolating tyranny
over the whole earth, — our natural judgement exclaims
that the men who could form so wild a scheme, must
have been full of new wine, or, with Festus, that they
must have been mad. Yet, unachievable as their under-
taking was by any human power, the disciples did not
go forth in vain : their trust in the aid of their heavenly
Strengthener was fully justified. At the sound of their
preaching the world did recognise its sinfulness, as it had
never recognised its sinfulness before. It recognised the
sinfulness which pervaded and tainted even such feelings
and actions as it had till then deemed virtuous and
praiseworthy. It recognised that new radical sin of
unbelief, which at the time was almost accounted a part
of wisdom and virtue; inasmuch as unbelief then was
unbelief in man's perversions and corruptions of the
Divine Idea, and in the monstrous fables which vagrant
fancy and allegorizing speculation had strung thereto, —
an unbelief which itself was involved in the belief in
the Son of God; only that this belief substituted the
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. >43
fulness of living truth for the chaotic void of dreary
negations. So too did the world indeed receive a
conviction of righteousness. It acknowledged that He
who had gone to His father had fulfilled and shewn forth
all righteousness. It learnt how totally different the
righteousness of heaven is from that which it had set
up for itself; how God had cast down the very qualities
which it had been wont to boast of and glory in, and
had exalted those which it had esteemed abject and
servile ; how the stars had dropt from its fictitious
heaven, while the true stars had come forward in their
pure, mild light. It discerned that ambition and self-
exaltation, fields of slaughter and nations led in triumph,
the brightest blossoms of the imagination and the richest
harvest of the understanding, are not worth a cup of cold
water given to one of Christ's little ones ; and on the other
hand that meekness and forbearance and patience and
endurance and humility and selfdenial, which it would
always have derided and scouted, are the graces of the
Kingdom of Heaven ; a kingdom not to be gained by
ruling over mankind, but by ministering to them, not
by destroying them, but by dying for them. Herein
moreover, and in divers other ways, it perceived that the
Prince of this world had been judged. It found out that
the power of its false gods, — both of those that were
throned openly in its cities, and of those that were
reigning secretly in its heart, had passed away, or rather
had never been, — that " Peor and Baalim Had left their
t -m pies dim," — that their oracles were struck dumb,
" No voice or hideous hum Ran through the arched roof
in words deceiving," — and that all their images were
wood and stone, which could neither see nor hear, much
less understand and will and command.
H4 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
It was through the power of the Comforter working
along with them, and through the conviction of sin and
righteousness and judgement which He wrought, and
enabled them to work, that the Apostles wrested so
large a part of the world from the dominion of its
Prince, and brought it into the Church of their Lord.
But the empire of the Prince of this world was vast and
deeply rooted. It spread north and south and east and
west, from sea to sea, and over all the isles of the sea,
wherever man had set foot; and it was rooted in the
corrupt heart of every child that had sprung from the
race of Adam. Hence that portion of the world which
the Apostles during their lifetime brought into the
Church of their Lord, enormous and prodigious as
it was with reference to their human qualifications
for such an undertaking, was yet but a small part of the
whole earth : and though the word of life continued to
go forth with power, with that power which the Comforter
alone could give, for some generations after their death,
it was still very far from subduing the whole earth ; nor
has it done so at this day. Even now there are immeas-
urable regions and countless masses of men, that do not
even wear the name of Christ, and so can never have been
convinced of sin and of righteousness and of judgement.
Indeed many centuries have past away, since Christ went
to His Father, during which His Kingdom has scarcely
been enlarged at all. What shall we say then ? that the
Comforter only came down in the first ages of the Church,
and that, being wearied by the obstinate unbelief and
unrighteousness and worldly-mindedness of mankind, He
too went back to the Father, and left the world to drift
along, whithersoever the flood of its sins would bear
it ? Not so. The Comforter was to abide with Christ's
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 145
disciples for ever: and where He abides, unless He be
hindered, He continually works that threefold conviction,
which He came at first to work, and without which even
His mighty presence would avail us little. If the
increase of Christ's Church has often been grievously
check t, if age after age has rolled by, during which the
onrushing waves of the world have seemed to be almost
encroaching upon it, the cause of this has not been that
the Comforter has ever failed to help those who have
£one forth, with the conviction of sin and of righteousness
and of judgement in their own hearts, to work the same
conviction in their brethren. The cause has rather been,
that they who ought to have formed the vanguard of the
( /hurch, have themselves rejected the conviction of the
Comforter, and hardened and deadened their souls to it.
They who had no deep feeling of the sin of not believing
in Christ, as not only in itself the main head of sin, but
also the source of numberless others, did not care to win
lncn from it, thinking it of slight moment whether a man
under it or no. In like manner they who had lost
the perception of Christ's righteousness, both in its sole,
exclusive perfection, and as the ground of all other Tight-
ness, and had relapst into the vision of a human,
i earthly righteousness, — and who, on the other hand, had
totally forgotten that the Prince of this world had been
! judged, nay, who had cozened themselves into fancying
that Christ would allow him to sit on the lower steps, or
■ at least at the foot of his throne, — how could they yearn,
with tli;it fervent desire which brings its own fulfilment,
to deliver the world from the bondage of its unright-
ness, and so to save it from judgement? Whereas,
whenever Christ's servants have been animated with a
strong, living conviction of sin and of righteousness and
146 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
of judgement, and have been moved thereby to long for
the redemption of their brethren from sin and judgement
to righteousness, the Comforter has always gone along
with them, and the word of God in their hands has truly
been the sword of the Spirit. Whatever increase Christ's
Kingdom has received from the beginning down to these
times, it has received through the power of the Comforter ;
and if it is receiving any at this day, if we find reason to
bless God for the manner in which the Heathen in any
part of the earth are now coming into His Kingdom, our
especial thanksgiving and praise are due to the Com-
forter, who is still working His threefold conviction, and
casting down the abominations of idolatry thereby.
Nor is it solely in order to the extension of Christ's
Kingdom among the Heathens, that the Comforter still
abides upon earth, working His threefold conviction.
Christ's Kingdom is not only to be extended through
space, but to be prolonged through time. New souls are
perpetually coming into life; new generations are spring-
ing up ; and it is not enough for the children, that their
fathers have been convinced of sin and righteousness and
judgement : alas ! the conviction of the parents is no
pledge for that of the children. Man cannot transmit
faith, he cannot transmit righteousness, as sin has been
transmitted, from generation to generation. Each genera-
tion, nay, every individual soul must be convinced anew ;
and this conviction must be wrought by the Comforter, if
it is to be strong and lasting.
So that the work of the Comforter was not one which
was to be performed once for all, like the sacrifice offered
up by Christ on the Cross. He did not come down, as
Christ did, to dwell a few years upon earth, and then to
return back to the Father: He came to abide with
THE THREEFOLD CON VICT ION OF THE COMFORTER. \ 47
Christ's Church for ever. Moreover, as His work at the
first was universal and preparatory, so has it ever been,
and so is it still, — universal, in that His threefold convic-
tion belongs to every child of man, and is such that
without it none can have a clear insight into truth, as it
is in himself, or in the world, or in God, — and preparatory,
in that only thereby can any one livingly and consciously
become a member of Christ's holy body (A b). Thus it is
still just as necessary as ever, that the Spirit of God
should vouchsafe to convince the world, and every
individual soul, of the sin of not believing in Christ, — of
the righteousness which Christ, when raised from the
dead and having returned to His Father, obtained for all
such as believe in Him, — and of the judgement wherewith
the Prince of this world has been judged by Him who
died on the Cross. This too is the great work and
>n of the Church in the midst of the world, to preach
these truths to the world with the power of the Spirit, to
the end that the world, being convinced thereby, may
turn from unbelief to faith, and from unrighteousness to
righteousness, and thus may escape the everlasting, irre-
vocable judgement which has fallen upon its Prince.
This is the controversy of the Church with the world.
Seeing that the world lies under sin, concluded under sin,
because of unbelief, because it will not and cannot be-
lieve in anything except itself, the Church cries out to the
world, Th&u, art under sin; thou tossest to and fro
benefit ft it ; thou heavest and quakest beneath it; but thou
canst not shake it off : thy very struggles to shake it off
are fresh lyroofs of thy sin : for thy struggles are made
in thine own strength ; and this is thy sin, the parent of
:i other sins t to believe in thyself to believe in thine
own strength. This is thy sin, that thou believest and
148 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
ever hast believed in thyself, and not in God, not even
when He came down to dwell, shorn of His invisible
glory, and clothed in a body of thy dust, in the midst of
thee. Even then thou wouldst not believe in Him, but
didst gather the ivhole army of thy sins against Him,
and wentest forth to battle against Him, and nailedst
Him to the Cross, and thoughtest thou couldst hold Him
by the chains of Death, making use of this thy master and
destroyer, as though he were thy slave. Thou thoughtest
in the hardness of thy heart, that He who was come down
to redeem and renew thee, tuas even such as thou art,
frail, feeble, mortal, the child of a day, the heir of the
grave. Thou didst not believe in Him ; thou accusedst
Him of sin, and slewest Him. But God raised Him
up from the grave, and shewed that Death had no
power to hold Him. He raised Him up, and took
Him to Himself, and seated Him by Himself on the
throne of His righteousness, and thus, in the sight of
men and angels, declared Him to be righteous, and gave
Him that righteousness, which thou too shalt receive, if
thou will cast away thy unbelief and thy self-worship,
and wilt believe in thy Maker who came to deliver thee
from these and all thy other infirmities and diseases.
Of thyself thou hast no righteousness : scarcely canst thou
conceive what manner of thing righteousness may be.
Thoufindest righteousness in the glare of thine own vol-
canic fires, in the perishable beauty of thine tiwn fruits,
in the bright polish or the wild ruggedness of thine own
rocks. Thou heedest not that the light, which alone brings
forth the beauty of whatever may seem beautiful in thee,
must descend upon thee from heaven. Thou deemest,
blind as thou art, that thy Prince is an angel of light.
Thou knowest not that he fell long ago like lightning
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 149
from heaven, that the Lord has broken his staff and his
sceptre, and cast him down to the ground. Believe this,
world ! believe in the Lord whom thou hast crucified :
believe in His pure and perfect righteousness : believe
and know full surely that thy Prince, vjhom thou wor-
shipest, has been cast down into hell. Then shalt thou be
at rest and be quiet; and all the voice of thy nations
shall break forth into singing.
Such is the message which the Church, in her propheti-
cal character, is charged to proclaim to the world. It is
a message akin to that which was committed to the pro-
phets of old. They too were commanded to cry against
the sins of the world : they were commanded to call man
to faith in Jehovah and in His righteousness : they were
commanded to denounce the judgements of God against
all manner of iniquity. The words too in which the pro-
phets uttered their message, are still in great part suited
to the message which the Church has to deliver to the
world. Only the ancient prophets had to speak of things
which as then were merely foreknown and predetermined
in the eternal counsels of God, but which had not yet
clothed themselves in the garb of Time, or become em-
bodied in such a form as to be distinctly perceivable by
man : they could merely be descried by man so far as he
was allowed to stand on the holy mountain, from which
the eyes of the Allseeing look out into the abyss of the
future. Tin Church on the other hand, in her propheti-
cal office, has to speak of that which she has heard, and
with her eyes, which she has lookt upon, and her
hands have handled, of the Word of Life. She speaks of
sin, which has been, and still is, which for ages held man-
kind under the spiritual palsy of unbelief, but which may
now be overcome through Him who came to this very
150 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
end, that we might believe in Him, as the express Image
of the Eternal Father. She speaks of a righteousness,
which has been, and still is, which was manifested upon
earth when Christ dwelt in the form of a man, sinless in
a world of sin, and which was certified by the seal of the
Allrighteous, when He was exalted to the right hand of
God, of a righteousness, which He obtained, not for Him-
self, but for the unrighteous race of man, which He has
given to the whole multitude of His saints ever since He
went up into heaven, and which He still gives and ever
will give to all such as seek^it with the earnest prayer of
faith, until that day when the twilight of this world's
existence shall have past away for ever, and the Sun of
Righteousness shall drive the darkness of unrighteousness
into the nethermost caverns of hell. She speaks of a
judgement whereby the Prince of this world has already
been judged. She declares to mankind that a Man has
lived upon earth, a Man like themselves, born of a woman,
over whom the Prince of this world had no power, who
overcame him with all^his temptations, and who thereby
shewed to mankind how they too may overcome the
Prince of this world ; for that his sway is only over those
who obstinately linger in their soul-crushing unbelief;
but that, for those who will fight against him in faith, he
has been overcome, so that they too shall overcome him.
Thus her voice has far greater power than that of the
prophets who lived before the coming of our Lord ; and
through the working of the Comforter, inspiring her
words, it produces a living conviction in the hearts of
those who listen to it in faith. And as no one can come
to Christ with a sincere devotion of heart and mind, until
this threefold conviction has been wrought in him, this is
still, as it was at the first, the universal preparation of
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 151
the world, and of every individual soul, for the reception
of the life of Christ.
But further, while the work of the Comforter in the
world was not a work to be wrought once for all at the
beginning of the New Dispensation, and to be then left
to propagate itself, and to spring up selfsown, with no
other husbandry than that of man, — inasmuch as, had
this been the case, it would not have outlasted a single
generation ; while it is a work which the spirit is con-
tinually performing anew in all parts of the earth, calling
generation after generation out of the misery of their sins
and the darkness of their unbelief, and striving to con-
vince generation after generation of the righteousness of
Christ, and of the judgement which has fallen upon the
Prince of this world ; so on the other hand it will never
be sufficient for the establishment of any single soul in
faith and in righteousness, if the Comforter merely comes
to it once to work His conviction once for all in it. Ere
long the conviction would grow dim and fade away : nor
can this be averted, unless the impression be perpetually
renewed by the same Divine Hand. We cannot advance
uninterruptedly in our spiritual, any more than in our
bodily life, from one degree of brightness to another.
The shadow of the earth will ever and anon fling the
darkness of night over us ; sleep will creap upon us ; we
flag and grow weary, and yield to it; and we should
sleep on self-indulgently, unless we were awakened again
and again by the light of the Sun of Righteousness, pierc-
ing through our night, and bursting the bands of our sleep.
There should indeed be a progress in our spiritual life :
else that life, even though it be more than visionary, will
too plainly be giving way before the manifold influences
which try to check and destroy it. But our progress
152 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
so long as we continue in the flesh, will never be un-
broken; nor shall we make any real progress at all,
without fresh impulses from the Power which first set
us in motion. Our noon should keep on growing brighter
and brighter : but it will only do so when we live under
a perpetual dawn, when new influxes of light are ever
pouring upon us from the same celestial Fountain. For,
as it is a law of all life, that every creature, while it is
the offspring of all former generations, shall yet have a
new germ of life in itself, so, in our moral life, every act
is at once the result of our whole previous moral being,
and springs immediately and freshly from the will. Thus
every act is a link in a chain, which stretches back to the
origin of our consciousness, and the first link of a new
chain, which will reach through our whole future ex-
istence; and according as philosophers have fixt their
minds on one of these views, or on the other, they have
asserted the necessity or the freedom of human actions ;
exemplifying how speculation, when it rushes on, without
looking around, in a straight path of simple logical de-
duction, is sure to lose itself ere long in a vacuum of
abstractions : whereas it should continually bend the line
of its march by a careful comparison with the realities
which experience sets before it, shaping its course hereby
into an orbit ; and then it will return to the point from
which it started, reaching it again from an opposite side,
and thus gaining the assurance that its conclusions were
not partial and premature. And as in our moral, so in
our spiritual life, no moment stands alone. There is no
moment in it, which is not connected by indissoluble ties
of motive and impulse with all that we have hitherto
felt and thought and done. At the same time no mo-
ment in it will have any true spiritual energy, unless
THE THREEFOLD CON VICT ION OF THE COM FOR TER. 153
we are immediately prompted and animated by the life-
giving Spirit of God.
Hence it is not enough for us to be convinced of the
sin of unbelief once for all, even though that conviction
be the work of the Comforter. When a body is put in
motion, we know, unless this motion were checkt by a
number of retarding forces, it would continue to move on
without limit; but we know no less surely that these
retarding forces will soon lay hand on it and arrest it.
So we might fancy that, when the soul is once lifted up
from the earth, and projected into the free atmosphere
of faith, it would continue to soar into the heaven of
heavens, nor rest until it reach t the throne of God. But
we know too well that this is not so, that it gravitates to
the world of the senses, and that it has a leaden weight
of selfwill bearing it downward. Our senses and our
carnal appetites are ever whispering and muttering and
shouting to us, that the only realities are those which we
can see and hear and touch and taste and smell, and that
it is idleness and folly to give up these solid, substantial
delights for the dreamy phantoms and spectres of faith :
and our selfwill cleaves pertinaciously to the world where
we are lords and masters, and shrinks from that into
which it cannot enter except by a sacrifice of itself.
Against these hindrances we cannot even strive, much
less rise above them, unless the Comforter be continually
helping us onward, by convincing us more and more
deeply of the sin of not believing in Christ. Hence he
who truly believes, the stronger his faith in the unseen
world may be, with the greater humiliation will he de-
plore his own inability to live in an unwavering com-
munion with it, and to subdue the temptations which
would draw him away from it; the more earnestly will
154 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
he cry, Lord, I believe ; help Thou my unbelief. Thus
the union of opposites in our nature will continually dis-
play itself under the form of what the understanding
deems to be contradictions ; of which we may continue
almost unconscious, so long as we merely disport our-
selves among the superficial appearances of this world,
but which come out more and more numerously and
distinctly, the wider our eyes are opened to discern
spiritual realities.
Again, as our growth in faith is sure to increase our
conviction of unbelief, and of our need of the everpresent
help of the Comforter to overcome that unbelief, in like
manner our conviction of Christ's righteousness must
needs deepen our conviction of our own unrighteousness,
and of our utter inability to overcome it without the
constant aid of the same heavenly Ally. For this con-
viction also would soon stagnate or dry up, unless it be
evermore renewed and replenisht from its evernowing
Source. Our own righteousness, the righteousness of
this world, rises up before our eyes, and tries to hide and
supplant the righteousness of Christ. We are ever too
prone to believe that we have already attained ; and thus
we slip back from that righteousness which comes to us
through faith in Christ, to a righteousness of our own,
which is of the Law. Nor is there any security against
this delusion, save in fashioning ourselves, so far as we
may, after the example of the great Apostle of righteous-
ness, forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching
forward to the things which are still before us, under a
contrite acknowledgment that our whole spiritual life is
nought, except so far as it issues straight from the Spirit
of God.
So too it would never be enough for us, if the Comforter
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 155
merely vouchsafed once for all to convince us that the
Prince of this world has been judged. For although he
has been judged most certainly and completely, it is only
for the children of God, for those who go forth to the
battle against him with the assurance that they are so,
and that their Father is with them. The children of this
world are still under its Prince, and still pay him honour
and worship: in their eyes he still wears his royal robes
and crown. Hence, so long as we abide in this inter-
mediate state, doubtful about our true parentage, — so
long as we think it possible that there can be any good
apart from God, — the Prince of this world will ever and
anon come to us: and as he who was a liar from the
beginning, will continue a liar until the end, he tells us
that he has not been judged, that he is still the sole
Prince, the absolute soverein of this world, and that he
will give us the kingdoms of this world, and their glory,
and their beauty, and their pleasure, if we will only fall
down and worship him. We saw that the condition of
those who have been convinced of judgment, is analogous
to that of the Israelites, when they were delivered from
the bondage and from the fleshpots of Egypt, and had
seen the host of Pharaoh overthrown in the Red Sea, and
were journeying through the Wilderness toward the Land
of Promise. Yet even after they had been thus won-
drously and mercifully delivered, even after they had
been the witnesses of this terrific overthrow, many hearts
amongst them failed amid the privations of the wilder-
ness ; many longed to go back into Egypt, to go back to
their fleshpots, forgetting the bondage attacht to them, or
even thinking that bondage desirable for the sake of such
enjoyments. In the midst of the wilderness too the Prince
of this world still came to them with the temptations of
156 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
Baalpeor. Nay, did he not persuade some that the manna
itself was his gift, and that, as such, they must hoard it
up, until it stank ? and did he not at another time move
the whole multitude to loathe it ? just as he still is so
often able, by pampering our sensual, to deaden our
spiritual appetite, so that our heavenly food becomes stale
and flat and tasteless to us. Even when our Lord Him-
self was upon earth in the form of a man, the Prince of
this world, although he had been so utterly baffled, as
a foretaste of the judgement which awaited him, only
departed from Him for a season. And as he assailed the
Head, so has he unweariably been assailing the whole
body of the Church with all manner of crafty snares, as
we see from the very first in the sin of Ananias, and in
that of Simon Magus. Nor is his malice less in these
days, or his subtilty, or his assiduity. He is ever lying
in wait to assail every individual member of that Church,
which can only be built of the spoils wrested from him,
and which he is ceaselessly labouring to undermine and
destroy. We cannot need to look back to the history of
David and of Solomon, — surely we shall find ample evid-
ence in our own hearts, — to prove to us that, however we
may at any time have been convinced of judgement, still
the Prince of this world does not allow us to remain
quietly in that conviction ; that he will try to drive or
to lure us out of it, at one time with some new form of
sin, the deceitfulness and misery of which we have not
already found out, — at other times, it may be, with those
very sins, the bitterness of which we have already tasted,
and over which we fancy we have triumpht. For we are
never safe : the very stubble of our old sins may run into
our eyes and blind us ; the dregs of them may choke us;
the ashes of them may kindle again and consume us.
THE THREEFOLD CON VICT ION OF THE COMFOR TER. 157
Therefore do we always need the present help of the
Comforter, in order that His conviction may not pass
away and be effaced, but may abide in our souls full of
life and power ; so that the Prince of this world may be
judged in us and by us also, even as he was judged by
our Lord.
In fact this is one of the main differences between a
speculative and a practical conviction. For the former it
is enough if we have been convinced of a truth once : the
conviction will abide with us. It may lie dormant for a
long time in the storehouse of our thoughts ; but there,
when we need it, we shall find it ; and it will be just as
serviceable as ever. For no contrary forces are draw-
ing us away from it, or striving to quench or suppress
it. But with regard to our practical convictions all this
is otherwise. They cost us many a hard struggle, in
the first instance to gain them, then to retain our hold on
them, and above all to carry them into act. For the
power of the world is around us, acting upon us by our
senses, by our appetites, by our feelings, by our circum-
stances, by our companions, by habit, by opinion, and
endeavouring in all these ways to infect us with its own
changcfulness. Its stream is ever bearing us along, and
would never allow us to take our stand on any firm ground
of consistent principle : it would have us do as others do,
drift on at the caprice of its ever-varying impulses.
Moreover a practical principle requires practice to
strengthen it, and even to keep it alive. Unless it be
earned into act, it sickens and wastes away : words, if its
sole utterance be in them, drains its lifeblood from it :
practice alone can make it a consubstantial part of our
souls. ( Indeed the purpose of every conviction is to pro-
duce belief: it is not meant to lie as a dead proposition at
158 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
the top of our minds, but to be embodied in them among
our principles of thought: and when the conviction is the
work of the Spirit, it must produce faith, that is, a belief
which is received as a principle, not merely by the under-
standing, but also by the heart and the will, a belief
which becomes a principle, not merely of thought, but
also of life and action. Thus, if we are convinced of sin
by any other teacher, our conviction will vent itself in
empty words, and we shall remain contentedly in our sin ;
but if the conviction be the work of the Comforter, we
shall desire and yearn to come out of our sin, and to cast
it away. Thus again, if our conviction of righteousness
be the work of the Comforter, we shall not deem it enough
to contemplate and admire and extoll, the righteousness
of Christ ; we shall seek to make it our own, by such
means as the Comforter shall vouchsafe to manifest to us
for doing so. And in like manner, if our conviction of
judgement be wrought in us by the Comforter, it will not
satisfy us to know that the Prince of this world was
judged long since, when our Saviour gave Himself up a
Sacrifice on the Cross for the sins of the world ; we shall
desire that we also may be enabled to judge him, that in
our lives also he may be judged (a c). - -
The conviction of sin, we have seen, when it is wrought
in us by the Comforter, leads us to seek that pardon and
remission of sins, which Christ bestows on His people ;
and as the special sin, of which the Comforter convinces
us, is that of not believing in Christ, in so doing He brings
us out of our unbelief to faith, and makes us desire and
pray to have our faith strengthened. The conviction of
righteousness, when it is the work of the Comforter,
makes us seek to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ,
and thus is preparatory to our justification. The two acts,
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 159
as I have said before, may be coinstantaneous; but in idea
they are distinct. So again, the conviction of judgement,
when it is the work of the Spirit, is preparatory to our
sanctification. The judgement with which our Lord
judged the Prince of this world, may be regarded as two-
fold : it was a judgement of absolute and entire condem-
nation ; and it was a judgement of utter overthrow and
confusion. He at once passed and executed the sentence
of condemnation against the Prince of this world, con-
demned him as worthy of hell, and cast him into hell.
As in His temptation Christ baffled the Tempter, by
exposing the hollowness and deceitfulness of all his wiles
and lures, so that the Tempter was rebuked and departed
from Him, in like manner does Christ's whole life expose
the hollowness and deceitfulness of sin. His w T hole life
condemns sin, by bringing it to the light, so that its real
nature and character is discerned, by stripping it of its
masks and disguises, by laying it bare under all its forms,
by shewing how false it is, how delusive, how hateful,
how deadly, how in all its forms it is enmity against God,
and therefore misery and desolation and despair, how the
worm is spread under it, and the worm covers it. The
judgement against the Prince of this world was indeed
completed and consumated by the Sacrifice on the
Cross. As the Crucifixion however was not the whole of
the sacrifice offered up by Christ for the sins of the world,
but only its closing, perfecting act, — as the whole of our
Saviour's life, from the humiliation of His Incarnation
• 1 >\vn to that still deeper humiliation, when He, who had
humbled Himself that He might enter into life in the
shape of an innocent babe, humbled Himself still more
that He might pass through the gates of death with the
agony and the shame of sin, was one continual sacrifice
160 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
for sin, — so was it one continual warfare against sin, and
victory over sin, and judgement against sin. What the
law could not do, in that it was weak by reason of our
carnal nature, God, sending His own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh, for the sake of sin, condemned sin in the
flesh, in order that the righteousness of the law might be
fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit.
For the craft and subtility of the Prince of this world,
that craft and subtility which was the ground of his
power, consisted mainly in this, that, having first be-
guiled men into giving up their hearts to this world,
he then persuaded them that he was the absolute dis-
poser of all the good things of this world, that he
alone had the power of bestowing them, and that he
would bestow them on such alone as paid him homage
and allegiance, and sought them from him, by the
means which he pointed out to them. He persuaded
them that the kingdom of this world and the power
of this world and the glory of this world were the
noblest objects which man could aim at, and that they
were his to give and to withhold, so that, unless these
prizes were sought through him, there was no chance of
gaining them. Nor were his persuasions vain. That
these are indeed the highest objects of human endeavour,
was almost universally believed, not as a mere abstract
proposition, but with a thorough faith, which shrank
from no exertions, from no difficulties, from no dangers,
for the sake of attaining to them. Even the Jews, along
with the rest of mankind, lay under this delusion ; nor
were our Lord's chosen disciples wholly free from it, so
long as he continued here below. They did not under-
stand how the Prince of this world had already been
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 161
judged, how in truth he had been judged from the very
beginning, together with his kingdom. They still lookt
and sought for an earthly kingdom, for earthly power
,u id earthly glory; only they deemed that their Master
was the Prince, from whom they were to receive these
coveted rewards. They could not make out, any more
than Pilate, how He could be a King, and yet that His
Kingdom should not be of this world. Our Lord on
the other hand declared that the true kingdom, the true
power, and the true glory, belong not to the Prince of this
world, but to the Father, and that, as belonging to the
Father, they also belong to the Son : and the great
purpose of His life was to shew forth what that true
Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, is, and wherein that
true power, wherein that true glory lies.
Tli us through His whole life did Christ judge the
Prince of this world. When He, who was born King
of the Jews, was born in the stable at Bethlehem, and
\\ li'.n the shepherds in the fields were called to be the
first witnesses of His birth, then was the Prince of this
world judged: and this judgement was made manifest
in that lie, whom the Prince of this world had set upon
tin- throne of Judea, was so greatly troubled at the
tidings, and tried to frustrate the purpose of God by
tin- massacre of the children in Bethlehem. Hereby
the Prince of this world laid bare the hell that boiled
in his breast; and though he sent forth the fiercest
;u id bloodiest of his servants to establish his throne,
as utterly foiled. When he, who came to fulfill
ill righteousness, submitted to be baptized by John,
the greater by the less, the sinless by the sinful, God
I 'V man, then was the Prince of this world judged. Then
ght not to seek his own glory and his own
L
162 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
righteousness, but the glory and the righteousness of God,
— not to seek to be first, but to be last: and therefore were
the heavens opened, and the voice from heaven heard,
saying, This is my beloved Son, in ivhom I am ivell
pleased. Then was the Prince of this world judged,
then was the serpent's head bruised by the seed of the
woman, when a Man walkt on the earth in whom the
Father was well pleased. Again in the whole course
of our Lord's temptation the Prince of this world was
judged: he was judged in that all his most powerful,
and till then wellnigh irresistible, lures were scattered
at once by being brought to the light of God's word.
Throughout the whole Sermon on the Mount the Prince
of this world is judged. His most vaunted blessings
are declared to be woes ; his woes, the very things which
he had made men account mean and abject and miserable
and hateful, are declared to be blessed. Every time that
Christ forgave sins, the Prince of this world was judged.
It was proclaimed in the sight of Heaven, God Himself
bearing witness, that a Man was walking upon the earth,
mightier than the Prince of this world, and who could
wrest his subjects and his captives even out of his
nethermost prison: and men were taught how they
might obtain this deliverance, how they might burst
the galling yoke which the Prince of this world had
fastened round their necks, — by faith. By every miracle
which Christ wrought, the Prince of this world was
judged. In that he cast out devils by the Spirit of
God, it was proved that the Kingdom of God had come
upon mankind, and that among the sons of men there
was One, who had bound the strong man, and was
spoiling his goods : and when the devils took refuge in
the herd of swine, and ran down the precipice into the
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 163
lake, then was it shewn what is sin's only congenial
abode, its only rightful doom. Moreover by every grace
in our Lord's character the Prince of this world was
judged, — by His meekness, by His lowliness, by His
patience, by His forbearance, by His infinite loving-
kindness, by His perseverance in welldoing, by His
spotless purity, by His zeal in working the works of
His Father, by His never seeking His own glory, but
always the glory of God, by every deed and every word
wherein he shewed that the Fulness of the Godhead
was dwelling upon earth. Each of these graces exposed
the spuriousness and deformity of the counterfeit or
opposite, which the Prince of this world had set up
to have dominion over the hearts of mankind. Of the
manner in which the judgement on the Prince of this world
was consummated on the Cross, I have spoken already.
And then, when he had thus been finally overthrown,
Death, the last enemy, was also subdued : its sting was
torn from it ; and the victory of the grave was converted
into the victory of Him who was laid in the grave; a
victory gained, not for Himself, but for all in all ages who
shall be laid in the grave, clothed in His righteousness,
■ftar having manifested in their lives how the Prince
of this world is judged. For all such, Death is judged,
so as wholly to change his nature, and to become the
gtVOr of eternal life, taking away the burthen of sinful
flesh, and the delusive mists of the world, from those who
have been sanctified by the Spirit, and unsealing their
eyes to behold, and their hearts to worship and rejoice in,
the glory of the living God.)
In all these manifold ways, do they who are convinced
of judgement by the Comforter, perceive that the Prince
of this world has been judged. And what ensues ? Will
164 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
they follow him into his judgement ? Will they desire to
share in his condemnation ? to be confounded along with
him in his confusion ? Surely this cannot be. They
who have been truly convinced of judgement, will no
longer cleave to that, which, they know, their Saviour
has condemned : they will no longer walk in the train of
him, whom their Master has overcome and cast out.
Feelings of honour, of justice, of compassion, may some-
times urge a man to uphold the cause of the vanquisht.
But here all honour and right and mercy are united on
the side of the Victor : and the victory consists in this,
that the shame of sin has been unveiled, that its hateful-
ness has been disclosed, and men's eyes have been opened
to discern its malice and its cruelty, its falsehood and its
woe. They whose eyes have been thus opened must
needs loathe and turn away from sin. In the conscious-
ness of their own weakness they will shun it, and never
run rashly into temptation : but, when it comes across
their path, they will fight against it without being dis-
mayed, in the strength of Him, who, they know, has
overcome it. As Christ condemned sin, so will all His
faithful servants condemn sin. They will condemn it in
the world, but still more in their own hearts ; for, until
they have condemned it in themselves, in vain will they
try to condemn it in the world. And as Christ overcame
sin, so will all his soldiers strive to overcome sin, first in
themselves, and then in the world, — to overcome it in
themselves, by casting it out from themselves, and puri-
fying themselves from it, — and in like manner to over-
come it in the world, by doing what they can to cast it
out from the world, and to purify the world from its
pestilential contagion. But here also the right order
must be observed. We may dream that it would be a
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 165
grand and glorious work, to overcome sin in the world : we
may thing of sallying out on such an enterprise for the
sake of magnifying ourselves by it: all efforts however
directed towards such an end will be vain, until we have
gone through the far more painful and toilsome task of
overcoming sin in ourselves. Without this preparatory
discipline we shall soon grow faint and falter; and double
shame and bitterness must needs awaits him, who, having
preacht to others, himself becomes a castaway.
The Comforter convinces the world of judgement,
because the Prince of this world has been judged. Has
the Prince of this world been judged (a d) ? The Com-
forter, who is the Spirit of truth, cannot convince of
anything except the truth ; wherefore it is most certain
that the Prince of this world has been judged. And yet
... and yet . . . when we cast our eyes abroad over the
face of the earth, — when we bethink ourselves of what
has been going on from the beginning, and is still going
on in every part of it, from the royal palace down to the
cottage of the husbandman, — when we call to mind what
we see and hear and read of every day, what purposes
men are professing, what objects they are pursuing un-
lisedly, as though no question could be entertained
about their propriety and worthiness, — when we pry into
our own hearts, and look searchingly back over our past
lives, and ask ourselves what our motives and aims have
been and are, what our plans and desires have been and
are, and where our affections are and have been placed, —
can we truly affirm that, according to the evidence which
may be drawn from the hiatdry of the last eighteen cen-
tnri. •-•, Mid from the present state of the world, and
according to the witness borne by our own hearts and
minds, the Prince of this world has been judged? Has
166 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
he been so condemned, that all the world has united to
condemn him ? Has he been so cast out, that all the
world has cast him out? Has the great majority, has
any considerable portion of the world, condemned him
and cast him out ? Has he been condemned and cast out
from the councils of kings ? from senates ? from armies
and navies ? from the counting-house and the market-
place ? Has he been condemned and cast out from our
manufactories? Has he been wholly condemned and
cast out even from our schools and colleges and univer-
sities ? Or, to narrow the sphere of our enquiries, have
we ourselves, each one of us, condemned him and cast
him out ? Do we know and feel that he has been judged
and condemned and cast out by our Lord and Saviour ?
and do we, under this conviction, condemn him and cast
him out from our own hearts and minds utterly and
altogether, so that he has no part in them, no hold upon
them, that he never sways our thoughts, never stirs our
desires ? Have we set ourselves resolutely to eschew all
manner of evil, to hate whatever is hateful before God,
and to love nothing save what is wellpleasing in His
allholly sight ? Alas ! I am afraid, if we speak the truth,
we shall be forced to confess that in this, as in all other
things, there is still a broad and glaring contradiction
between the order of the world and that order which
Christ has appointed and establisht for His Church.
Contrariety and contradiction to the order and ordinances
of heaven is still the course of this world, as it always
has been, ever since that word No, — that word which
had never been uttered in the courts of heaven until the
spirit of pride lifted itself up in rebellion against God-
that word which is ever echoing back in endless reper-
cussion through the howling caverns of hell, — first
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 1G7
disturbed the all-consenting harmony of the universe.
Hence it has come to pass that in all parts of the earth,
wherever assemblages of men have been gathered
together, there has always been a tumultuous jarring of
contending voices, ebbing and flowing, rolling to and fro,
affirming and denying, as though the body of Truth were
divided, as though Evil were Good, and Good Evil, and
as though it were impossible to determine conclusively
what is, and what is not. Still thus much is most
certain : for the true spiritual Church, built of those
lively stones that offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable
to God through Jesus Christ, — for those who, having a
living faith in Christ, endeavour to walk in the blessed
steps of His allholy life, the Prince of this world has been
judged. But so far as the world still continues to exist
unsanctified by the Church, with a heart closed against
the conviction and the other influences of the Comforter,
the Prince of this world has not been judged: or at least
the world knows nothing of the judgement which has
befallen him, but seats him on the throne of its heart,
and bows down to him as blindly as ever. It sets up
Dagon again and again, and will even worship the stump
of Dagon, rather than believe that he has been judged.
Nay, has not the Prince of this world often entered into
the very temple of the Lord who judged him ? has he not
set up the abomination of desolation even in the holy
? And when he does so enter there, his words are
I \ ■■ •!•, that he has not been judged, that he has not been
condemned and cast out, that God has made peace with
bun, that we may worship him, and yet worship God also,
that we may serve him with the best part of our hearts,
and that the poorest remnant of our service will find
acceptance with God.
168 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
Your thoughts will have recurred of themselves to that
dismal period in the history of the Church, when the
Prince of this world put forth all his craft, and far too
successfully, to prove that he had not been judged, — nay,
when for generations he seemed almost to have usurpt
the dominion of the Church, — and when those faithful
servants of Christ, who desired to enforce and execute
their Lord's judgement against him, were many of them
driven out, as in older times, to wander in deserts and
mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. It was
an awful spectacle then, to see how the flesh was in almost
all things quenching and stifling the spirit, not merely, as
it ever does, in the groves and high places of the world,
but even in what ought to have been the courts of the
house of God. For a time had arrived when the Church
had entered into alliance with the world : Herod had said
that He would come and worship the King of the Jews ;
and she believed him. But when Herod, when the
Prince of this world, pretends to worship, it is only witli
the purpose of destroying more subtily and effectually.
Trained as he is in all falsehood, he will readily mock
the form of worship, if he can thereby empty that form
of its spirit ; as he did so wofully among the Pharisees in
Judea, and as he is ever striving to do, when an in-
ordinate attention is paid to the outward acts of religion.
And when the Prince of this world has persuaded men
that he has not been judged, his next step has ever been
to subvert the Comforter's conviction of righteousness,
by making them believe that they may have a righteous-
ness of their own, and do not need the righteousness
of Christ. Whence, by a natural progression, he further
undermines the conviction of sin, and shakes all faith
in the divine nature and office of Christ. By a like
THE THREEFOLD COX VJCTIOX OF THE COMFORTER. 1G9
process, in an age of literary pride and epicureanism, he
lures his victims through the moonlight mazes of Natural
Religion, into the dark, chaotic night of Pantheism ; in
which, confounding all moral distinctions, he cheats men
into supposing that there is nothing excellent, except
power.
But it is not solely when the Church enters into an
open alliance with the world, that the Prince of this
world attempts to persuade men that he has not been
judged. Even when our Lord Himself, the Fulness of
the Wisdom and Holiness of the Father, was upon earth,
the Tempter came to Him, and would fain have de-
ceived Him. Nor has there ever been a state of the
< liurch, in which the Prince of this world has left her
unassailed : nor can we expect that the Church ever will
be in such a state, until that day when he, who was
judged on Calvary, will be cast out altogether from
God's world, and will sink into the bottomless pit of
his own misery and despair. Thus, whenever a spirit
of more fervent zeal has breathed through the Church, —
win n the preachers of the Gospel have been animated
with a deeper conviction of the sin of the world, when
they have seen more clearly how that sin is rooted in
unbelief, and when they have been more earnest in
Balling tin ir hearers to seek that righteousness, which
can only be received as the free gift of grace to faith, —
at such times the Prince of this world has ever been
busy in sending his emissaries abroad to persuade men
that, as the righteousness of Christ, which is given
to faith, is a free gift, no way to be earned by any
s on the part of the receiver, it cannot matter in
the least what our works are, — that to be scrupulous
about our moral conduct is a symptom of self-righteous-
170 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
ness, and that the best mode of showing our entire
reliance on Christ's righteousness, and our thorough
contempt for all that man can do, is to keep on living
in sin, without presuming to set up any light of our
own by the side of the Sun of Righteousness. Errours
of this kind had sprung up and grown rank even in
the lifetime of the great Apostle of righteousness, con-
straining him to warn men against the blasphemous
delusion, that they were to continue in sin, in order
that grace might abound. In like manner, when Luther
took up the apostolic trumpet, and startled the nations,
and roused the Church out of her slumber, by pro-
claiming the same primary doctrine, that man is justified
by faith alone, without the works of the law, the Prince
of this world again tried to mock the voice of truth,
and said, Ay ! "without the works of the Law ; therefore
trample the Law under foot, lest thy works should
interfere with thy faith. Hence one of the great
contests which the heroic Reformer had to wage
through the chief part of his life, was against the An-
tinomian errours whereby the Prince of this world
tried to hinder and pervert the Gospel of righteousness.
Sometimes too, as man, when driven out of one errour,
is sadly prone to rush into its opposite, even they who
have clearly discerned how the righteousness of God
has been manifested to the world in the incarnation
and death of His Son, and who have been earnestly
desirous of magnifying Christ in their whole lives, have
yet been misled by an over-anxious fear of ascribing
anything to human merit, into speaking disparagingly of
that dutiful obedience, which the redeemed servants of
Christ, the adopted children of God, are bound to pay
to their Master and Father. But never, by no single
THE THREEFOLD CON VICT ION OF THE COM FOR TER. \ 7 1
word, does St Paul countenance such a delusion ; never,
I believe, does Luther, if we weigh his words fairly*
with a due attention to the context, and to the uniform
tenour of his teaching. It is true, Luther is perpetually
inveying, with the utmost vehemence of condemnation,
against that deadly heresy of good works, which was
then spread over the Church, poisoning the source of
its life. Now in reading such passages, if we forget
that the good works which he is thus reprobating con-
sisted mainly in formal acts of worship and outward
penances and mortifications, performed as an expiation
for sin, under the notion of their being meritorious, we
may easily fancy that his expressions are derogatory to
morality ; more especially if, with ears unused to any
louder sound than that of academic argument, we come
on a sudden within the thunder of his battlecry.
Nevertheless, so marvellously clear was his insight into
the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine, — so
thoroughly had he been convinced, above all other men,
it would seem, since the apostolic age, of sin and of
righteousness and of judgement by the Comforter, —
that one may feel some degree of confidence in asserting,
that he never, — even in those writings which he poured
forth almost wave after wave, and ray after ray, accord-
ing to the exigencies of the Church, for so many years, —
mid anything which, if candidly and rightly interpreted,
with ;i due regard to the occasion and circumstances,
is repugnant to the truth on this head. Or at all events,
if a curious research may discover certain expressions
here and there, in which when contending, against the
Pelagian errours of the Romish Church, he has not been
careful enough so to measure and limit his expressions,
as to keep them from impinging on the proximate
] 72 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
portions of the truth, justice would require that, before
we make him an offender for a word, we should compare
what we may deem objectionable with the glowing
exhortations to bring forth the fruits of love, in which
his writings abound. If we do so, we shall find that,
while no preacher of the Gospel has been more energetic
in denouncing that noxious errour which considers good
works as the ground of justification, few have been so
earnest and eloquent in enforcing the necessity of good
works as the fruits of faith and love, and as a testimony
that the Prince of this world has been judged.
This form of errour however is not one which has ever
gained much currency in the higher and better educated
classes of society. The deep and strong religious feeling,
which must accompany it, if it be sincere, will seldom be
found without some force of character and of intellect :
and this in our days will keep a person, who has gone
through a course of scholastic discipline, from running into
the extravagances of Antinomianism. But the Prince of
this world, we may be sure, will also have his devices for
ensnaring those who may seem to belong more especially
to his empire, those who, from their more conspicuous
station, and from the influence they exercise over their
brethren, are not seldom by way of eminence denominated
the world. The delusion which in these days he is the
fondest of, and which the world is much readier to swallow,
is one whereby it is pampered in its indolent carelessness
and self-indulgence, and whereby it is in like manner
beguiled into believing that its Prince has not been judged,
or at least that, if he has, his sentence has not been one
of condemnation, but acquittal. The worldly notion of
Christianity will mostly amount to something like this, —
that it is a scheme of mercy, in which God is pleased to
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 173
shew forth His forbearance and goodnature, — yes, His
goodnature, — I know no other word so well fitted to
express what the children of this world regard as the chief
attribute of the Christian God, — in pardoning all except
very flagrant and outrageous criminals. They look upon
Christianity, — may I not say so ? — as a scheme for just
paring the claws of sin, and then letting it run about at
will. My young friends, I am certain there are many
amongst you, who will have heard Christianity spoken of
in some such manner as this. There are many amongst
you, I am certain, whose thoughts, when they have been
turned toward religion, will have lulled themselves to sleep
by muttering, that God has revealed Himself to us
Christians as a God of mercy, and that this is the great
difference between our religion and that of the Jews and
Heathens, — that the knowledge of this constitutes our
special privilege and advantage. Nay, my dear friends,
are there not some amongst you, who are still lying under
this miserable and fatal delusion? are there not some,
who still cry Peace to your souls, because Christianity is a
religion of mercy ? Do I then mean to say that it is not
ligion of mercy? God forbid ! But it is only a
religion of mercy, because it is also a religion of truth
and of righteousness. It is a religion of mercy, because
Mercy in it is met together with Truth. It is a religion
ice, because Peace and Righteousness have kist each
other in it. Else it would not be a religion of mercy.
would be no mercy in Christianity, if God had
His Only begotten Son into the world, to the end
that mankind might be allowed to continue in sin. This
is the mercy of the Spirit of evil. The Spirit of evil
would have you continue in sin. He would have you
D day by day and year by year heaping sin upon
174 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
sin, wrapping one poisonous fold after another round
you, quaffing one deadly potion after another, until
your whole head shall be sick, and your whole heart
faint, and nothing shall remain of you except wounds
and bruises and putrifying sores. But this is the
very proof which God has given of His exceeding
mercy, that He has called you out of your sins, that
He will not leave you to rot and moulder away in them,
that He would draw you out of them, almost in despite
of yourselves, by the cords of His love, — yea, that He
has called you to a communion with Himself, a commu-
nion which can only be enjoyed in proportion as you
become like Him, — that He has called you to a share
and portion in that which is most glorious and excellent
in Himself, to become holy as He is holy, and pure as
He is pure, and perfect as He is perfect. Yes, brethren,
this is the real proof of God's mercy, that He has com-
manded you, and will help you, to cast away all manner
of sin, the least as well as the greatest ; for nothing can
be small or to be disregarded, which estranges and cuts
you off from God. The world *in its cruelty tells you that
you may be intemperate, that you may be licentious, that
you may be ambitious, that you may be neglectful of all
your duties to God, and of almost all your duties to your
fellow-men, that you may spend your lives in pur-
suing your own pleasure and your own aggrandisement
and that all the while you may be respectable and esti-
mable and honorable, and may even put in a claim for
the crowns of earthly glory. This is the world's mercy,
or rather its cruelty. A few vices it bids you beware of,
those which it has been pleased to brand with shame.
But every other vice you may indulge in to your heart's
content, and need only take care that you do not hurt
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 175
yourselves by it. God, on the other hand, tells you that
you do hurt yourselves, that you hurt your immortal
souls, by every sin you indulge in. For every sin is
poison : every sin, the least as well as the greatest, tends
to canker and destroy your souls; every sin breeds
death, and cuts you off from the communion of the
blessed. Therefore does God shew forth His infinite
mercy in calling you away from all manner of sin, by
sending His Spirit to convince you, not only of sin and of
righteousness, but also of judgement, in order that you
not be doomed to follow the Prince of this world
into condemnation, but may be fitted more and more
for receiving the inheritance which your Saviour has
purchast for you, along with the saints in light, — that
you may rise more and more out of the darkness of this
world into the light of His presence, — and that He may
give you every blessing and every grace, grace upon
grace, and blessing upon blessing. Yea, He offers Him-
self to you, His whole beatific fulness : He has given you
His Onlybegotten Son : He would give you His allholy
Spirit, to dwell and abide in you for ever.
God desires, earnestly desires, to give you all these
blessings. Doubt not, my young friends, that this is so.
ve it with an assurance no less lively and strong
than you feel of your own existence, or of the existence
<»t" the world around you. It is by doubt, by unbelief,
that man still, as ever, frustrates God's gracious dealings.
!y we may most reasonably trust, that He who sent
down His Only begotten Son to live in the form of a
Servant, and to die on the Cross for mankind, and who
sent down His Spirit with such power to the apostles
and the other preachers of the Gospel in the first ages of
the Church, had an end very dear to His heart, which
176 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
He designed to accomplish by these mighty means, and
for which, if I may so speak in all reverence, He made
these inestimable, unimaginable sacrifices. And God is
not man, that He should forget what He once purpost,
or that He should weary because a work is not
readily concluded, or that He should change His mind
and cast away what was so precious in His sight.
It is true, eighteen hundred years have rolled by, since
Christ offered Himself up on the Cross, and since the
Comforter came down to the Apostles. But what are
eighteen hundred years to Him, before whom a thousand
years are as one day I They are as though today and
tomorrow had past by with one of the sons of men,
and the next day were just about to open upon him.
The laws of nature, as they are called, the laws of
cohesion and attraction and gravitation, the laws of
growth and decay, the laws by which the suns are kept
in their spheres, and the planets in their orbits, are the
same now as they were eighteen hundred years ago.
Much more does the same unchangeableness inhere in
God's moral laws, in the laws of His righteousness and
love, which were, when the outward world was not,
and which will continue after the outward world has
sunk into its appointed grave. Therefore be not doubtful,
but stedfastly believe that God still purposes to give you
all those rich treasures of blessing which He gave to our
fathers. The Crown of the Saviour is still incomplete ;
the Marriage -feast of the Lamb is not yet full: the
Comforter is still gathering jewels for that Crown, and
calling guests to that Feast ; and you may all be among
those jewels, in the number of those happy guests. In
order that you may be fitted for these blessings here-
after, God still sends His Spirit to all who desire to
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER. 177
obtain these heavenly prizes. For you can only obtain
them in one way, in the way which God has ordained,
which He ordained in the first instance for the whole
Church, and for the world when it was to be called into
the Church; and which He still ordains for the whole
Church, and for every soul incorporated into it. You
must be convinced of sin, you must be convinced of
righteousness, you must be convinced of judgement, with
that living, ruling, practical conviction, which the Spirit
of God alone can produce. The Spirit of God is ready
to work that conviction in you, in every one of you, — to
work it in those in whom it has not been wrought
already, — to confirm and strengthen it in those in whom
it has. He who sent the Comforter at first to His
disciples, still sends Him to His Church, and to every
member of His Church. Yes, brethren, to each and every
one of you, Christ has sent and will send His Spirit, to
convince you of sin and of righteousness and of judge-
ment. Only you must not close, but open your ears
and your hearts to receive that conviction; you must
not turn away, but listen to it, readily, attentively,
patiently; you must give heed to it, and endeavour to
follow it, to obey it,. to rule your lives according to it;
above all, you must beware of resisting it, of quenching
it, of driving it from you, of doing what it forbids and
condemns. You must seek it by prayer, by earnest,
fervent, persevering prayer. You must seek it by fre-
quent and searching meditation on the truths which it
reveals to you, on unbelief and faith, on righteousness
ind unrighteousness, the unrighteousness of man and the
ousness of Christ, and on the victory of the cross
by the Prince of this world was judged. In
this, as in all things, you must strive diligently and
178 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
strenuously to act according to the light you have
already received, in full reliance on the neverfailing
promise that to him who has shall be given. And while
you study the mysteries which God has declared to us in
the Scriptures, with all your heart and all your mind,
you must endeavour to make them the rule and principle
of your lives, and to fashion yourselves after that pattern
of the mind of God, which was made manifest in every
word and deed of His most blessed Son.
In the next verse but two after the text, our Lord,
while still speaking of the coming of the Comforter,
says, He shall glorify Me; for He shall receive of Mine,
and shall shew it to you. This, we have seen, is what
the Comforter does through the whole of His threefold
work. In every part of it He glorifies Christ. In convinc-
ing us of sin, He convinces us of the sin of not believing
in Christ. In convincing us of righteousness, He con-
vinces us of the righteousness of Christ, of that right-
eousness which was made manifest in Christ's going to
the Father, and which he received to bestow it on all
such as should believe in him. And lastly, in convince-
ing us of judgement, He convinces us that the Prince of
this world was judged in the life and by the death of
Christ. Thus throughout Christ is glorified; and that
which the Comforter shews to us relates in all its parts to
the life and work of the Incarnate Son of God. In like
maimer all the graces which the Spirit bestows, are the
graces which were manifested in the life of Christ. It is
Christ's love that He shews to us and gives to us, the
love through which Christ laid down His life for His
Church, — and Christ's joy in His communion with His
Father, — and the peace which Christ had when He had
overcome the world, — and Christ's longsuffering in pray-
THE THREEFOLD CONVICTIOS OF THE COMFORTER. I79
ing that his murderers might be forgiven, — and Christ's
bounty in giving of all the treasures of heaven, — and the
faithfulness of Him who is the faithful Witness, Himself
the Truth, — and the gentleness with which Christ took
up little children in his arms and blest them, — and
Christ's meekness in never answering again, — and the
temperance of Christ, who made it His meat and drink
to do the will of His Father. All these graces were
manifested upon earth in their heavenly perfection, when
the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in the Man Christ Jesus;
and all these graces the Spirit of God desires to give to
all who believe in Christ Jesus. All these graces He
•s to give to every one of you, so that Christ maj^
be formed in you, and that your life may be swallowed up
in His life. Thus shall you too glorify Christ ; and with
Him you will glorify the Father. Let this be the glory
which you seek, not your own vain, fleeting glory, but
the glory wherewith you may glorify Christ and the
Father ; and this glory shall abide with you for ever.
The Comforter will convince the world of sin and of
'ousness and of judgement. This passage has sup-
plied us with food for godly meditation during several
Sundays ; and how far are we from having exhausted it !
Rather do we seem to have been merely skimming over
the surface, diving down now and then a little way, while
mi fathomable depths were stretching below us. Such do
we ever find to be the case in studying the Scriptures.
more li_ r ht and comfort we derive from them, the
clearly do we discern how far that light and comfort
short of what we might derive, if we give up our
hearts and minds to them with a more entire faith. O
that these same words might supply us with food for
godly meditation through the whole of our lives! Yea,
180 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.
when we arise from the grave, may the first thought that
dawns on our reawakening souls, be the thought of Christ
our Righteousness ! May this thought abide with us
through eternity, brightening evermore as we gain a
clearer insight into the inexhaustible riches of that
righteousness ! And when the vision of our earthly
lives flits across our spirits, when we look back, — if the
blessed ever look back, — to this world and its trials, may
our foremost thoughts and feelings be those of thankful-
ness to the Comforter who convinced us of sin, and to
Him by whom the Prince of this world was judged !
To Him, therefore, the gracious Comforter, who con-
vinces us of sin and of righteousness and of judgement,
and to Jesus Christ, the Lord of our faith, and our Right-
eousness, by whom the Prince of this world was judged,
and to the blessed Father, who vouchsafes to send His Son
and His Spirit for the redemption and sanctification of
mankind, be all praise and thanksgiving and glory and
adoration, from angels and saints, world without end.
NOTES
183
NOTES
Note A : p. 7.
Since this Sermon was preacht, I have found that Bishop
Andrewes, in his Sermon on the same text, — the fourth among
those On the sending of the Holy Ghost, — has tried to explain the
expediency of our Lord's departure by a like illustration. The
passage powerfully confirms the argument in the text. " Christ it
is that telleth it us, and telleth it us for a matter of great truth,
these were, — and whose case is better than these ? — but, if these,
some there are, in that case, it may be said to them truly, It is
expedient I be gone. And what case may that be ? Even that case
that maketh the mother many times withdraw herself from her
young child, whom yet she loveth full tenderly, when the child
groweth foolishly fond of her; which grew to be their case just:
Christ's flesh, and His fleshly presence, that, and none but that. So
strangely fond they grew of that, as they could not endure He
should go out of their sight : nothing but His carnal presence would
them. We know who said, If Thou hadst been here, Lord; as
if absent He had not been as able to do it by his Spirit, as present
by His body. And a tabernacle they would needs build Him, to
keep Him on earth still. And ever and anon they were still
<lreaming of an earthly kingdom, and of the chief seats there, as if
their consummation should have been in the flesh. These fancies,
indeed errours, they fell into about the flesh : they had need have
it taken from them. The Spirit was gone quite : they had more
need to have Him sent. This was at no hand to be cherisht in them.
They were not to be held M children still, but to grow to man's
184 NOTE A.
estate, to perfect age and strength; and so consequently to be weaned
from the corporal presence of His flesh, nor to hang all by sense, to
which, it is too true, they were too much addicted. The corporal
therefore to be removed, that the spiritual might take place ; the
visible, that the invisible ; and they, not in sight or sense, as
hitherto, but in spirit and truth henceforth to cleave to Him; to
say, with the Apostle, If we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now
henceforth we know Him so no more. This was for them: and we
should have been no better, as now we are : the flesh will but
hinder the spirit, even the best."
The good Bishop indeed merely takes the instance where the
relation between the parent and child is perverted by the "fool-
ishly fond child ;" while the argument in the text draws its analogy
from the common order of human life. And after his fashion he
gives one of his strong glances at the illustration, and passes on ;
whereas the congregation to whom I was preaching led me to dwell
on the thought, and to expand it more than would have been war-
rantable in any other place.
Augustin too makes use of a similar illustration, when commenting
on this passage {In Joannis Evang. Tract, xciv.), " Tanquam diceret,
Expedit vobis ut haec forma servi auferatur a vobis : Caro
quidem factum Verbum habito in vobis ; sed nolo me carnaliter
adhuc diligatis, et isto lacte contenti semper infantes esse cupiatis.
Expedit vobis ut ego vadam: si enim non abiero, Paracletus non veniet
ad vos. Si alimenta tenera quibus vos alui, non subtraxero, solidum
cibum non esurietis ; si carni carnaliter haeseritis, capaces spiritus
non eritis."
Augustin's illustration, like that of Andrewes, is taken from the
earliest in the series of transitions, by which our moral life ascends
out of total helplessness and dependence into a more and more
distinct consciousness of personal responsibility. In the Sermon I
have spoken of several of those transitions, through which the
child gradually advances into a wider and freer field of action, until
he becomes a student at the University ; and I have hardly alluded
to the transition which still awaited my hearers, when they were to
be emancipated from the last restraints of tutelary discipline, and to
go forth into the world to act under the sway of the principles,
which they had hitherto been imbibing. This moment, which
naturally affords the closest parallel to the condition of the disciples
NOTE A. 185
as described in the text, is the one which Schleiermacher, in his
Glaubenslehre, compares with it. In explaining the proposition, that
the complete communication and reception of the Holy Spirit could
not take place till after Christ's departure from the earth, he says
(vol. ii. pp. 288 — 290), "We must here look back to the two
primary movements of our vital principle, our faculty of receiving
lively impressions, and that of free personal action, the reciprocation
of which constitutes our life, a life the more perfect and the more
fully developt, the wider the range of each is, and the more complete
their correspondence. Now so long as the disciples abode with
Christ, their receptive faculty was developt ; and by their constant
assimilation of what He gave them, the foundation was laid for
their future labours in spreading the Kingdom of God.— On the
other hand they were not called at that time to any positive
personal activity. What Christ imposed on them in this way
was merely for the sake of practice, and for this very reason was
not independent, but needed a particular impulse for each several
occasion. — The more however all depend upon one, and each
receives his movement from that one, the more are all merely his
instruments or members ; and the whole is only an enlargement of
his single personality, — rather resembling a household or a school,
than a community. Thus the ancients regarded a state, in which all
are unconditionally subject to the will of one, as an enlarged house-
hold, in which a number of living instruments move according to
the will of a single individual : and a school is an intellectual
community, which depends entirely on the mental power and train
of thought of one man, imprest on a number collectively. Now
the communion between Christ and His disciples was in one sense
like a household, in another like a school. A family however will
disperse after the death of the father ; and unless some new bond
be framed for its members, they are scattered abroad. In a school
too, unless some fresh common impulse arises, beside their original
desire of knowledge and their personal attachment, no further
development will take place after the death of the master ; but the
previous union gradually wears away. Now it could not be other-
wise during the life of Christ, than that every one of the disciples
should cling almost entirely to Him, and desire to receive from
Him, without feeling ripe to act independently for the formation of
the Kingdom of God."
186 NOTE B.
Note B : p. 18.
When our Church has the courage to undertake the task of
revising the Authorized Version of the Bible, the account of the
work of the Comforter, given in the 13th verse of our Chapter, will
be corrected, along with a number of other inaccuracies arising from
inattention to the force of the Greek article. The neglect of this
force is one among the many proofs that our Version of the New
Testament is too dependent on a Latin translation, probably that of
Erasmus. For a competent Greek scholar, even in those days, would
hardly have rendered 68r)yyj(r€i v/nds els 7rao~av rrjv d\rj deiav, He
will guide you into all truth ; though this would be a natural render-
ing of ducet vos in omnem veritatem, as Erasmus had translated the
words. Even the preposition into points to the Latin in, rather
than the Greek els. Wiclif, translating from the Vulgate, docebit vos
omnem veritatem, has he schal teche you all truthe.
It is noticeable that Luther also renders this verse without regard
to the article, der wird euch in alle Wahrheit leiten ; which is retained
even in Meyer's recent corrected edition. Nor is the objection
removed by De Wette's translation, So wird er euch den Weg zu aller
Wahrheit\leiten. The meaning is happily exprest in that of Scholz :
dann wird er euch zur vollen Wahrheit leiten.
The coincidence between our Version and Luther's might be
urged as an argument in favour of the notion entertained by
Bishop Marsh, that our Version bears marks of the influence of
Luther's, exercised in the first instance upon Tyndall. But the
grounds brought forward in support of this notion have been much
shaken by Mr Walter, in his Letter On the Independence of the
Authorized Version of the Bible. Nor is Marsh more successful in
establishing the influence of the Vulgate on our Version. A slight
comparison of our Version with the original Greek and with the
Vulgate will suffice to convince us that it is totally independent of the
latter ; or at least that, if our Translators made use, as they doubtless
did, of the Vulgate, they did so with a strong conviction of its
defects, and a free exercise of their judgement in avoiding them.
Yet I cannot agree with Mr Walter in calling our Version inde-
pendent : indeed it would have been very reprehensible to have made
NOTE B. 18:
it so. The Royal Injunction rightly directly the Translators to take
f the Bible read in the Church, commonly called the Bishops Bible" as
their basis, and to make "as few alterations as might be : " and this
again was a mere revision of prior English Versions. But besides it
is evident from hundreds of passages in the New Testament, that
the Translators were continually in the habit of ' using a Latin
Version, without consulting the original Greek. Hence a multitude
of inaccurate, or at least inadequate renderings ; which however do
not arise, like those in the Rhemish Version, from a coincidence with
the Vulgate, but often from an imperfect apprehension of some
Latin substitute for the word in the Greek text, — from taking some
special sense of the Latin word, different from that in which it was
used to represent the Greek original. Among these none has been
more mischievous than the rendering of OpytrKeta and 6prjcrKos by
religion and religious at the end of the first chapter of St James.
Religio and religiosus do answer precisely to the Greek words ; but no
Greek scholar would have thought of translating dpijo-Keia by
religion, or $pr\o~KO<s by religious. Tyndall's words, devotion and
devout, which are retained by Cranmer, come much nearer to the
originals ; but worship, if there were a cognate adjective, would best
express 6pijo-Kcia. The perversion which the meaning of the
original suffers from our translation is beautifully set forth by
Coleridge, in the Introductory Aphorisms of Ins Aids to Reflexion.
Let me cite another instance, which, though of much less im-
]><>rt.ince, will serve equally to prove the fact. Among the works
of the flesh, St Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians (v. 20),
numbers Si^oo-Tcxo-iai, which we render seditions. But seditions,
in our old, as well as in our modern language, are only one form
of the divisions implied by Si^oo-too-icu, and assuredly not the
which would present itself foremost to the Apostle's mind,
when writing to the Galatians. At first too one is puzzled to
understand how the word seditions came to suggest itself in this
place, instead of the more general term divisions, which is the
plain correspondent to StxoaTaaruxi, and is so used in Rom. xvi.
I in 1 Cor. iii. 3. Here the thought occurs, that the Latin
word scditio, though in its ordinary acceptation equivalent to its
English derivative, yet primarily and etymologically answers very
closely to 8i\o<TTaa-ia ; and one is led to conjecture that our Trans-
lators must have followed some Latin Version, in which the word
188 NOTE B.
seditiones was used, not without an affectation of archaic elegance.
Now the Vulgate has dissensiones ; but in Erasmus, whose style
was markt by that characteristic, we find the very word seditiones.
Hence Tyndall, whom we know from his controversial writings to
have made use of Erasmuses Version, took his sedition, not mind -
ing that the sense in which Erasmus had used the Latin word,
was alien to the . English ; and from Tyndall it has come down,
through Cranmer's Bible, with a mere change of number, into our
present Version ; while Wiclif and the Ehemish render the
Vulgate by dissensions.
To return to the passage in St John : Middleton has of course
noticed the omission of the article in our Version. Campbell,
who corrects his text, remarks that Wesley's is the only English
Version he had seen, which retains the article, yet that it ought
not to be omitted, as "it is not omniscience that is promist, but
all necessary religious knowledge." Scott, in his note, says, " rraa-av
ri]v dXtjOeiav, all the truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, the whole
council of God."
It may be pleaded indeed that, however the verse be rendered,
everybody will clearly understand this to be its meaning, and that
therefore it matters not whether we correct it or no. Now this
notion, that slight errours and defects and faults are immaterial, and
that we need not go to the trouble of correcting them, is one main
cause why there are so many huge errours and defects and faults in
every region of human life, practical and speculative, moral and
political. Nor should any errour be deemed slight, which affects
the meaning of a single word in the Bible ; where so much weight
is attacht to every single word ; and where so many inferences and
conclusions are drawn from the slightest ground, not merely those
which find utterance in books, but a far greater number springing
up in the minds of the millions to whom our English Bible is
the code and canon of all truth. For this reason errours, even the
least, in a version of the Bible, are of far greater moment than
in any other book, as well because the contents of the Bible are
of far deeper importance, and have a far wider influence, as aW
because the readers of the Bible are not only the educated and
learned, who can exercise some sort of judgement on what they
read, but vast multitudes who understand whatever they read
according to the letter. Hence it is a main duty of a Church to
NOTE B. 189
take care that the Version of the Scriptures, which it puts into the
hauds of its members, shall be as faultless as possible, and to
revise it with this view from time to time, in order to attain to the
utmost accuracy in every word.
It is true, though theologians may differ in their interpretation
of this passage, as they do more or less with regard to almost
every verse in the New Testament, their differences will not be
occasioned, except in a slight measure, by the neglect of the article
in the Version. Thus Luther, though he omits it, interprets the
words very characteristically : " This truth, which the Holy
Ghost is to teach them, is not such a doctrine and knowledge as
Reason of itself can understand and hit upon, as the perverters of
this text prate : for the Holy Ghost and Christ's Church do not
concern themselves with things which are subject to man's under-
standing, and which belong to this temporal life and to worldly
rule ; such as the enacting of laws as to what one shall eat or
drink, that one shall be a monk or a nun, have a wife and children,
or remain unmarried, that one shall make a distinction between
laity and clergy, shall maintain and enlarge church-lauds, shall
build and endow churches, and so forth, — but treat of far other
matters, how God's children are to be begotten out of sin and
death unto righteousness and everlasting life, — how God's King-
dom is to be establisht, and the kingdom of hell to be destroyed, —
how we are to fight against the devil and to overcome him, —
how to cheer, strengthen, and uphold faith, so that a man shall
continue alive in the midst of death, and even under the con-
sciousness of sin shall preserve a good conscience and the grace
In like manner Tauler, in his Sermon on our text, represents
nth which the Comforter was to teach, as coinciding with
the essential doctrines of his Mystical Theology. " The Holy
Ghost will not teach us all things, so that we shall know
whether there will be a good harvest or vintage, whether bread
will be dear or cheap, whether the present war will come to an
end soon ; but He will teach us all things which we can need
for a perfect life, and for a knowledge of the hidden truth of God,
«>f the bondage of Nature, of the deo it fulness of the world, ami of
the cunning of evil spirits. — Thus, when the Holy Ghost comes to
us, He teaches us all truth ; that is, He shews us a true picture of
190 NOTE B.
our failings, and confounds us in ourselves, and teaches us how we
are to live singly and purely for the truth, and teaches us to sink
humbly into a deep humility, and to cast ourselves utterly down
beneath God, and beneath every creature. This is a true art, in
which all art and wisdom are concluded, and which we need
indispensably for our true perfection and felicity. This is a true,
hearty humility ; and this must be truly in us, wrought into our
souls. — Man can do nothing whatever as before the Lord, unless
he has this humility really at all times within him."
It is well remarkt by Ackermann, in an Essay on the meaning
of the words, irv€V}ia, vovs, and spirit, in the Theologische Studien
und Kritiken (xii. 889), "One cannot too often urge, that it is
necessary to lay aside the common meaning which we attach to
the word truth, if we would form a right conception of St John's
dXrjOaa. By this word he denotes, not an object of theoretical
knowledge, but a relation to God and the things of God. The
religions of the Heathens are represented in the Old Testament
as mere lies and nonentities ; and agreeably thereto a right concep-
tion of the things of God, in accordance with the will of God, on the
part of man, is termed aXr)9eLa."
On the other hand Hammond, in his Paraphrase, also according
to his wont, cuts down this whole truth, which the Holy Ghost is
to teach the Apostles, to something merely temporary, transient,
and external : " He shall instruct you what is to be done, teach
you the full of my Father's will for the laying aside of the
ceremonial external law of the Jews, freeing all Christians from
that yoke, &c." These narrow, historical expositions of Scripture
are among the evils which our Theology has derived from an
exaggerated reverence for the Fathers. With them indeed such
applications have a living force : for the reception of the Gentiles
into the Church was still an event of deep personal interest, which,
while living in conflict with Heathenism, all could feel, and in
some measure appreciate. But in later ages such interpretations,
when they are given as the whole or main sense, deaden the
words of Scripture; and whereas Scripture, in speaking of tem-
porary things, always sets out the permanent idea, they invert
this process, and subordinate the ideal truth to that which waw
merely its occasional type and exemplification. In this respect
also do we owe an incalculable debt to the great Eeformers, to
NOTE B. 191
Calvin, Beza, Melanchthon, and above all to Luther, who, as they
and their compeers set free the words of Scripture from their
prison of a dead language, in" like manner set free its spirit from
the load of mere historical expositions and fantastical allegories,
wherewith it had been overlaid, and who brought out the fulness
of the truth, that the Bible " is not of an age, but of all time."
If we find them, Luther especially, applying the words of Scripture
with endless iteration to the controversies and struggles of their
own days, this only shews the strength of their conviction that
the Bible was no less a living book in their age, than in those
when it was first written : atfd the way in which we are to imitate
them is, not by clinging to their application as the chief or only
true one, but by applying the principles and promises of Scripture
in like manner to the great warfare waging between the Powers
of Good and Evil in our days, by discerning and shewing how the
Bible is equally a living book in the nineteenth century as in the
sixteenth, and as in the first, how it contains a key to all the
mysteries of our age, a clue through all its perplexities, and a staff
of comfort to bear us up under the despondency which might
otherwise crush us. This is its office now, as then ; and this
office it will discharge. The spirit which the Reformers set free,
will continue free, in spite of all that Arminian and Socinian and
ist and Rationalist commentators can do to cage it again.
By Curcclla us this declaration of our Lord's is cited to prove
the sufficiency of Scripture. " Istae voces, omnem veritatem, osten-
< nnt Christum, et vicarium ejus Spiritum, nihil praetermisisse
eorum quae docendi erant Aposloli, ut demandato sibi munere
recte defungi possent : " Religionis Christianae Institution I. xi. 4.
In his Tractatus de tEctfesia, viii. 5, he interprets omnem verita-
tem by " perfectam coguitionem rerum omnium ad religionem et
liaHiim Dei pertinentium." At the same time he observes, "Imo
♦ ti.un poet acceptum Spiritum Sanctum ignorarunt (Apostoli)
nem Evangelii vocaudas esse sine observatione
m legis Mosaicae. Nam quod promiserat iis Christus, Spi-
Sanctum eos deductunmi in omnem veritatem, id non ita
ndum est, quasi simul et semel ipsis omnem veritaU-ni
icere deberet, sed quod paulatim et oblata occasione moniturus
ipsos esset sui officii, et revelaturus ea quae ad illius functioncia
•ii erant neoMsaria, Excepto tamen illo casu de Vocatione
192 NOTE B.
Gentium, nihil videmus ipsis novi, quoad doctrinani, patefactum
esse. Ita ut ab illo tempore quo Petres ad Cornelium ivit, et ipsnm
in fide Christiana instituit (quod se*cundo aut tertio post Christ!
passionem anno contigit) Apostolos omnia perfecte novisse quae ad
munus suum pertinebant statuendum sit."
Still, though the want of the article will not occasion the learned
to misapply our Lord's declaration concerning the truth to which the
Comforter is to lead us, the preceding extract from Luther shews
that this declaration was grossly misapplied in his days : and
assuredly the misprision of this passage has aided in fostering the
delusive notion that the Bible is a kind of encyclopedia of universal
knowledge, and that every expression in it bearing, however
allusively, upon astronomy, or geology, or history, has the same
divine attestation of its infallibility, as what it reveals concerning
God, and concerning man in his relation to God. This notion in
fact is one of the idolatries, by means of which man would save
himself from the labour of patient and continuous thought, an
idolatry akin to that of the Caliph Omar for the Koran, and of
many among the Greeks for the Homeric poems, as containing all
that is worth knowing about all things. Man would fain believe
himself to be omniscient, without taking pains to become so. This
notion has ever been still more injurious to Eeligion than to
Science : for Science soon overleaps and treads down the fences
which are thus erected to check it ; but, as Eeligion cannot possibly
maintain the positions, which she is thus engaged to defend, her
failure in this field shakes the confidence in her power, even within
her own province.
At the same time there is a sense in which, it is quite certain, the
Spirit of God alone will lead us to all Truth, even with regard to
temporal and human and earthly things. Two opposite classes of
phenomena might indeed dispose us to question this, — on the one
hand the sceptical, unbelieving spirit, which has so often been found
united with high attainments in knowledge, — and on the other
hand the narrowmindedness with which self-sufficient bigotry has
perpetually set itself in opposition to all manner of knowledge
beyond the range of its own shortsighted vision, as though the God
of truth could only dwell in darkness. So imperfectly do we yet
understand the redemption wrought for us by Christ ; and so
obstinate are we in separating what God has united, as though it were
NOTE B. 193
impossible for the Tree of Knowledge to stand beside the Tree of
Life. Yet in the redeemed world they do stand side by side, and
their arms intermingle and intertwine, so that no one can walk
under the shade of the one, but he will also be under the shade of
the other. On this point I have already had occasion to speak more
than once, for instance in the Sermon on the Church the Light of the
World, in those on the Victory of Faith (pp. 181, foil.) and in that
on the Law of Selfsacrif.ce. Therefore I will not renew the argu-
ment here ; although it is most important in these days that all
should be convinced that the pure love of Truth cannot be severed
from the love of God, nor the perfect knowledge of Truth from the
knowledge of God ; and that the Spirit of God alone can purge our
intellectual eye from the manifold films which disguise and distort all
objects, and prevent its seeing them ; even as He alone can enable
us to discern the true essence and relations of all things, the idea in
which they were made, and the relation in which they stand to their
Maker.
Note C : p. 20.
This is the ground taken by Augustin in his Sermon on this
passage (Serm. cxliii). "Spiritus Sanctus hoc magnum munus
attulit credituri8, ut eum quem carnalibus oculis non viderent, a
carnal ibus cupiditatibus mente sobria et spiritualibus desideriis
ebria suspirarent. Unde et ille discipulus, qui se dixerat non
crediturum, nisi cicatrices ejus manu tetigisset, cum contrectato
corpore Domini quasi evigilans exclamasset, Dominus mens et Deus
mens ! ait illi Dominus, Quia vidisti me, credidisti; beati qui non
viderunt et crediderunt. Hanc beatitudinem Spiritus Sanctus Para-
.ittulit, ut ab oculis carnis servi forma remota, quam de
is utero accepit, hi ipsam Dei formam, in qua Patri aequalis,
etiam cum in came apparere dignatus est, permansit, purgata mentis
acies tenderetur ; ut eodem Spiritu repletus Apostolus diceret, Et si
noveramits Christum secundum carnem, sed nunc jam non novimus.
Qott et carnem Christi non secundum carnem, sed secundum
spiritura novit, qui virtutem resurrectionia ejus, non palpando
cnriosus, sed credendo certns agnoscit ; non dicens in corde suo,
Quis ascendit in coelum t hoc est Christum deducere ; aut Quis
dcscendit in abyssum ? hoc est Christum a mortuis reducere : sed prope
est, inquit, verbwn in ore tuo, quia Dominus est Jesus ; et si credideris
194 NOTE G.
in corde tuo quia Deus ilium suscitavit a mortuis, salvus eris. Corde
enim creditur adjustitiam, ore autem confessio fit ad salutem. Cum
ergo hanc beatitudinem, qua non videmus et credimus, nullo
modo haberemus, uisi earn a Spiritu Sancto acciperemus, merito
dictum est, Expedit vobis ut ego vadam. Semper quidem divinitate
nobiscum est : sed nisi corporaliter abiret a nobis, semper ejus corpus
carnaliter videremus, et nunquam spiritualiter crederemus ; qua
fide justificati et beatificati, idipsum Verbum Deum apud Deum, per
quod facta sunt omnia, et quod Caro factum est, ut habitaret in
nobis, corde mundato contemplari mereremur."
To the same purport, in Serm. cclxx. he says, calling on us to
consider the meaning of the words, Non potest Me venire, nisi ego
abiero, " Quasi aliquid, ut secundum carnalem sensum loquamur,
in supernis Dominus Christus servaret, et inde descendens hoc
quod servabat, Sancto Spiritui commendasset, et ideo ad nos venire
non posset, nisi ille rediisset qui commendatum reciperet ; aut
quasi nos utrumque ferre non valeremus, nee utriusque possemus
tolerare praesentiam. Quasi vero alter ab altero separetur ; aut
quando ad nos veniunt, ipsi angustias patiantur, ac non potius nos
dilatemur. — Videtur mihi, quod discipuli circa formam humanam
Domini Christi fuerant occupati, et tanquam homines in homine
humano tenebantur affectu. Volebat autem eos potius affectum
habere divinum, atque ita de carnalibus facere spirituales : quod
nou fit homo nisi dono Spiritus Sancti. Hoc ergo ait : Mitto vobis
donum, quo efficiaminr spirituales ; donum scilicet Spiritus Sancti.
Spirituales autem fieri non poteritis, nisi carnales esse destiteritis.
Carnales vero esse desistetis, si forma carnis a vestris oculis aufe-
ratur, ut forma Dei vestris cordibus inseratur. Ex hac enim
humana forma — Petri etiam tenebatur affectus, quando eum queni
multum amabat, mori timebat. Amabat enim Dominum Jesum
Christum, sicut homo hominem, sicut carnalis carnalem, non sicut
spiritualis majestatem. Unde hoc probamus ? Quia cum interrog-
asset ipse Dominus discipulos suos, quis ab hominibus diceretur, —
ait illis, Vos autem quern me esse dicitis? Et Petrus, unus pro
caeteris, unus pro omnibus, Tu es, inquit, Christus Filius Dei vivi.
Hoc optime, veracissime : merito tale responsum accipere meruit,
Beatus es, Simon Bar-Jona, quia non tibi revelavit caro et sanguis,
sed Pater meus qui in coelis est. Et ego dico tibi, — Tu es Petrus : quia
ego petra, tu Petrus ; neque enim a Petro petra, sed a petra Petrus ;
SOTE a 195
quia uon a Christiano Christiis, sed a Christo Christianus. Et super
>etram aedificaho Ecclesiam meam: non supra Petrum, quod tu
es, sed supra petram quam confessus es. Aedificaho autem Ecclesiam
meam ; aedificaho te, qui in hac responsioue figuram gestas Ecclesiae.
— Deinde coepit Dominus Deus suam praedicere passionem. — Hie
Petrus expavit, et timuit ne periret morte Christus Filius Dei vivi.
Utique Christus Filius Dei vivi, bonus de bono, Deus de Deo, vivus
de vivo, fons vitae, et vera vita, perdere mortem venerat, non perire
a morte. Tamen ut homo Petrus exterritus, cujus erat circa Christi
carnein hurnanus affectus. — Nollemus ergo ut talibus dicatur,
Expedit vobis ut ego vadam ? Nisi ego ahiero, Paracletus non
veniet ad vos ; nisi aspectibus carnalibus vestris humana forma
subtrahatur, divinum aliquid capere, sentire, cogitare minime
poteritis."
I have made these long extracts, not only on account of their
intrinsic value, and for the light they throw on the text, and on
the other passages which they bring into juxtaposition with it,
but also because the latter extract is an interesting proof, among a
multitude of others, that the common Romish interpretation of our
Lord's speech to Peter is very different from that adopted by the
early Church. Augustin indeed speaks, in his Retractations (I. 21),
of having interpreted the declaration as applying to Peter himself,
in an earlier work against Donatus ; but it is plain that this must
have been done without any reference to Rome. The chief part
of the Fathers on the other hand understood Peter's recognition
of the Divine Nature and Office of his Lord to be the Rock, on
which Christ purpost to build His Church. Yet of course this
confession is not to be taken apart from him who makes it. The
Rock is Peter's faith, confessing the divinity of Christ, and
standing as the representative of all in all ages who were to hold
the same faith in Christ the Son of the living God; as this is
nobly exprest by Origen (in Evang. Matth. xii. 10) : Et Be ^o-avres
ko\ r)fxei<i u»s o Ue'rpos, 2v et o XpurTus, 6 vlus tov Qeov tou
£<oVtos, ov\ ws (rapKos ko\ ai/zaros rjfxlv u7roKa\vif/o.vT(s)v, uAAa
<fxiyru<; "qpiov rjj KapSta eWapxpavTOS diro tov ev ovpavols Uarpus,
yivofuOa TltTpos, Kttl rjpiv av XeyotTo airo rov Aoyou to 2u et
n<iy)os, koX ra. e^rjs. Tikrpa yap 7ras 6 Xpio~Tov /xa#>/T>)s, d<j>'
ov Ittivov oi €K irvtvpaTiKTjs a.Ko\ov6ov<rt]S irerpas, Kai cVi 7rao-av
196 NOTE C.
tt]v Toiavrrjv Tzkrpct.v oi/coSo/zeiTGu 6 e/cKAr/crtao-rtKos 7ras \6yos,
kcu rj Kar avrov TroXireia' kv eKacrra) yap t&v reAetW, €)^6vt(ov
to adpoto-fia twv crvp.7r\r)povvT0)v tyjv /xaKapiOTrjra Xoymv koX
epyoiv kou vo-^/xarwv, eVrtv 17 virb tov Oeou oiKo^opiovpikvt]
iKKXrjaria.
It is curious to see the shifts by which the Eomish commentators,
at least that portion of them who are zealous in asserting the primacy
of the Bishop of Eome, such as Maldonatus, try to make out that
the view of this passage taken by the Fathers agrees with their own :
and the contemplation will be profitable to us, if it leads us to reflect
how apt we ourselves are to twist and warp and clip the most reluc-
tant evidence, in order to fit it into our scheme of thought, and thus
renders us more self -distrustful and more watchful. Yet after all
St. Peter, as Schelling has remarkt, is in divers respects a type of
the Eomish Church. In the recent piratical publication of Schelling's
Lectures, by which one of the shallowest and noisiest bablers in
German theology has been disgracing the decline of his life, an
ingenious comparison is traced between the character of the Church
of Eome and that of St. Peter ; and among other things the two
sides of Peter's conduct on the occasion referred to are said to typify
"the combination of stedfast faith with the meanest worldliness
in the Eomish Church." Of course such publications, taken from
reports of lectures unrevised by the author, will very often fail of
doing justice to his expressions. But true it is that, while it is the
glory of the Church of Eome to have preserved the confession of
Christ, the Son of the living God, through so many ages, notwith-
standing the open assaults and insidious snares of numberless forms
of heresy, that Church has ever been especially apt to lose sight of
the spiritual and divine truth in the outward human form. She has
been unable to recognise how it was indeed expedient for Christ to
go away. She has never been content, unless she could get some-
thing present, a vicar, images, outward works, actual sacrifices, with
priests to offer them up, real flesh and real blood. She chose rather
to defy the evidence of the senses, than not to have ah object of
sense. Yes, assuredly it is a great sin of the Church of Eome, that,
in the words just cited from Augustin, " amabat Dominum Jesum
Christum, sicut homo hominem, sicut carnalis carnalem, non sicut
spiritualis majestatem." This however has been the great difficulty
in all ages and under all forms of the Church. Some cling to per-
NOTE 0. 197
sous, some to institutions, some to ordinances, another class to
visions, dreams, immediate supernatural experiences. In one way
or other we all want to touch the hem of Christ's earthly garment.
If we can do this, we think ourselves safe ; but we cannot conceive
how it is possible that a man should believe and be saved. " Quia
carnales sumus/' says Calvin in his Commentary on our text, " nihil
difficilius est quani praeposterum hunc affectum ex animis nostris
revellere, quo Christum e coelo ad nos detrahimus."
Note D : p. 20.
Luther, in his Exposition of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Six-
teenth Chapters of St. John,— one of the most precious of his works,
and which he himself called the best book he had ever written,—
sets forth this argument with his usual simple power. " If I remain
with you (our Lord says), you will have nothing in me but a bodily,
natural comfort, and will be unable to attain to the high spiritual
authority and everlasting life ordained for you. Therefore My de-
parture, which troubles you now so greatly, should be your chief
joy. Let Me go away, and be afflicted to the utmost, and put to a
shameful death ; and be ye without anxiety ; for know that all this
is for your good. — It is declared in the Scriptures, and foretold by
all the Prophets, that Christ shall suffer, and die, and be buried,
and rise again, and shall thus begin a new everlasting Kingdom,
in which men shall have eternal life, being redeemed from sin and
and hell. This must be fulfilled ; and the hour is at hand
when it shall come to pass. — Therefore your joy and salvation are
now beginning ; only you must learn a little to forget My bodily
presence, and to wait for the Comforter. For My Kingdom cannot
begin, nor the Holy Ghost be given, until I have died and left this
life. My death and rising again will make everything new in
heaven and on earth, and establish a state of things in which the
Holy Ghost shall reign everywhere through the Gospel and through
your office, so that ye shall sit, as I have before told you, and judge
the twelve tribes of Israel, and have rule and power over sin and
death, unto righteousness and eternal life, and that all who wish to
be saved must hear and follow you. This is the treasure and the
glory which I shall obtain for you : but it cannot be yours, until I
which is to gain it for you, and purchMt and won it
l-y My death,
198 NOTED.
"This is the meaning of these words. U?iless I go away, that
is, unless I die, nothing will be done ; you will continue as you are ;
and everything will continue in its old state, as it was before, and is
now, — the Jews under the law of Moses, the Heathens in their
blindness, all under sin and death ; and no man can be redeemed
from them or saved. No scripture would then be fulfilled ; and I
should have come in vain ; and all would be vain that the holy
Fathers before you and you have believed and hoped. But if I go
and die, and do that which God in His counsels has decreed to
accomplish by Me, the Holy Ghost will come to you, and work in
you, and give you such courage, that you shall be My ambassadors,
and shall sit with Me on My throne, shall convert the whole world,
shall set aside the Law of the Jews, and destroy the idolatry of the
Heathens, and shall reprove and change the whole world ; and your
doctrine shall stand fast for ever, and shall spread on every side,
although the devil and the world shall be offended thereby. This is
the blessing and the glory which my departure brings you. There-
fore you must not trouble yourselves about My going away from
you, but should think whither I go, and what I am to accomplish.
Think not about My going away, but about this, that I am going to
the Father. Thus, instead of the pain and grief which you now
feel at My going away, you will find pure comfort, joy and life ;
because I am going where I shall receive power from the Father,
and be Lord over all things, and shall send you the Holy Ghost,
who will glorify Me in the world ; and thus through you I shall
establish and spread My Kingdom, which shall never come to an
end, and shall work such miracles that the devil and the world shall
be confounded, and be subject to you ; and you shall help many,
and make many blessed. All which would remain undone, if I did
not go away and die."
Luecke, in the first edition of his Commentary, which has lost
something, as well as gained much in the subsequent ones, says
on the text : " The history of the disciples, of the light they
received, and of what they did, after the Ascension and the out-
pouring of the Holy Ghost, explains and confirms our Lord's words.
None but He who had been crucified, had risen, and been glorified,
the Son of God, who sat at the right hand of the Father, could be
preacht by the Apostles as the Saviour of the whole world, and as
the Lord of a new, eternal and spiritual Kingdom of Heaven. None
NOTE D. 199
bat the Son of God, who had overcome death, and returned in
triumph to the Father, could the Paraclete proclaim to the world as
the Fulfiller of all righteousness, as the Conqueror of the Prince of
this world, and as Him unbelief in whom was sin."
Note E : p. 21.
This argument also has been urged by Bishop Andrewes, who
seldom lets any rational view of a subject escape him, and does
not always confine himself to such ; as indeed it is difficult for
a man to do, who is at all spellbound by a reverence for the
exegetical fancies of the Fathers. As the disciples, he says, in
the Sermon already quoted, " were to be sent abroad into all coasts,
to be scattered all over the earth to preach the Gospel, and not to
stay together still, in one place, Christ's corporal presence would
have stood them in small stead. He could have been resident but
in one place, to have comforted some one of them, St. James at
Jerusalem : as for John at Ephesus, or Thomas in India, or Peter
at Babylon, as good for them in heaven as in earth ; all one. The
Spirit, that was to succeed, was much more fit for men disperst.
He could be, and was present with them all, and with every one by
himself, as tilling the compass of the whole world." In the edition
of 1041, and in the new Oxford reprint, the last sentence stands
thus : " He could be, and was present with them all, and with every
/ Himself, as filling the compass of the whole world ; * where
Himself is markt by the capital as referring to the Spirit. To me it
seems that Andrewes meant to express an antithesis : the Spirit
he and was present with them ally collectively, when they were
red together, and with every one by himself, severally, when they
were scattered over the earth. As his Sermons were published
after his death from his manuscripts by Bishops Laud and Buck-
eridge, although the old edition is remarkably accurate, a slight
emendation from conjecture is more warrantable than in a book
revised by the author himself : more especially is it so in a writer
of such a singular, abrupt, jagged, tangled style, in reading whom
one seems to be walking through a thicket, crammed with thoughts
■nd thoughtlets, and is caught at every tenth step by some out-
jutting briar.
200 NOTE F.
Note F : p. 21.
The argument on this point conies forward again at the end of
the third Sermon, in the observations on the words, A nd ye see Me
no more. It is urged by Augustin, De Peccatorum Meritis et
Remissione, n. 52. " Quamvis multa Dominus visibilia miracula
fecerit, unde ipsa fides velut primordiis lactescentibus germinaret,
et in suum robur ex ilia teneritudine coalesceret (tanto est enim
fortior, quanto magis jam ista non quaerit) ; tamen illud quod
promissum speramus, invisibiliter voluit exspectari, ut Justus ex
fide viveret, in tantum ut nee ipse qui die tertio resurrexit, inter
homines esse voluerit, sed eis demonstrato in sua carne resur-
rectionis exemplo, quos hujus rei testes habere dignatus est, in
coelum, ascendent, illorum quoque se oculis auferens, — ut et ipsi
ex fide viverent, ejusque justitiae, in qua ex fide vivitur, prae-
mium, quod postea erit visibile, nunc interim per patientiam
invisibiliter exspectarent. Ad hunc intellectum credo etiam illud
esse referendum, quod ait de Spiritu Sancto : Non potest ipse
venire, nisi Ego abiero. Hoc enim erat dicere, non poteritis
juste vivere ex fide, quod de meo dono, id est, de Spiritu Sancto
habebitis, nisi a vestris oculis hoc quod intuemini abstulero, ut
spiritualiter cor vestrum in visibilia credendo proficiat. Hanc
ex fide justitiam identidem, loquens de Spiritu Sancto, ita com-
mendat : Ille, inquit, arguet mundum de peccato, de justitia, et de
judicio ; de peccato quidem quia non crediderunt in Me ; de justitia,
quia ad Patrem vado, et jam non videbitis Me. Quae est ista
justitia, qua eum non viderent, nisi ut Justus ex fide viveret, et non
respicientes quae videntur, sed quae non videntur, spiritu ex fide
spem justitiae exspectaremus ? "
So again in his Treatise on the Trinity (i. 18), speaking of this
passage : " Oportebat ut auferretur ab oculis eorum forma servi,
quam intuentes, hoc solum esse Christum putabant quod videbant.
Iude est et illud quod ait, si diligeretis Me, gauderetis utique,
quoniam eo ad Patrem ; quia Pater major Me est : id est, propterea
Me oportet ire ad Patrem, quia dum Me ita videtis, ex hoc quod
videtis, aestimatis quia minor sum Patre, atque ita circa creaturam
susceptumque habitum occupati, aequalitatem quam cum Patre
NOTE F. 201
habeo non intelligitis. Iude est et illud, Noli Me tangere ; nondum
enim ascendi ad Patrem. Tactus enim tanquam finem facit
notionis. Ideoque nolebat in eo esse fiuem intenti cordis in se, ut
hoc quod videbatur tantummodo putaretur. Ascensio autem ad
Patrem erat ita videri sicut aequalis est Patri."
Bengel in one of the pregnant notes in his invaluable Gnomon, —
a work which manifests the most intimate and profoundest
knowledge of Scripture, and which, if we examine it with care, will
often be found to condense more matter into a line, than can be
extracted from many pages of other writers, — says, on the word
<rvfi<f>€p€i in the text, " Conducit vobis, respectu Paracleti, v. 7. s. et
Mei, v. 16. s. et Patris, v. 23. s." Thus he draws our attention to
the manner in which our Lord Himself, in the subsequent part of
the chapter, explains the advantages to accrue from His departure ;
telling the disciples first, how the Comforter would come to them,
and arm them with power to convince the world, and would guide
them to the Truth, — secondly, how after a little while He would
return to them, and they would see Him again, when He was
ascending to the Father, and their sorrow would be turned into joy,
like that of a woman in travail when she is delivered of her child,
a joy which no man shall take from them, — and thirdly, how the
prayers, which they would then offer up in His name, would find
acceptance with the Father, who would give them whatsoever they
askt, and how He would shew them plainly of the Father, and
how the Father would love them, because they had loved and
believed in His Son.
In the next note, on the word yap, — " Paracleti duplex munus,
erga mundum, h. 1. et erga fideles, v. 12. s." — we are led to observe,
how the twofold office of the Comforter is set forth, — that of
convincing the world of sin and righteousness and judgement, — and
that of guiding the disciples to the whole Truth.
Bengel's next note is also important, on the verbs airiXdoi and
7rop€v0to: "abiero, profectus ero: differunt verba : illud terminum
a quo, hoc terminum ad quera, magis spectat : " indicating that the
| advantage to the disciples would not result from His going
away from them, but from His going to the Father. This distinc-
tion is lost in the Vulgate, where both are rendered abiero ; as it is
in our Version, where the second verb, depart, "*p» ■« /tut terminum a
quo." Erasmus follows the Vulgate ; 1 >th here and in
Of TE
202 NOTE F.
xiv. 3, where the Yulgate again gives abiero for 7ropev9(o, substitutes
profectus fuero. The simplest way of preserving the distinction in
our language would be to render the latter part of the verse thus :
For if 1 go not away, the Comforter will not come to you ; but if I go,
I will send Him to you.
In this microscopic nicety of observation, which, as we have seen,
will often detect important fibres of thought, no commentator that I
know comes near Bengel. Luther, rendering the two verbs by
hingehen, misses the "terminum a quo" in the former : nor is this
corrected by Meyer or Scholz ; but it is by De Wette. " Es ist euch
gut, dass ich weggehe ; denn so ich nicht weggehe; wird der Beistand
nicht zu euch kommen ; so ich aber hingehe, werde ich ihn zu euch
senden."
Note G : p. 24.
By the Greek Fathers this verse, and the other similar ones on
the Paraclete, are chiefly quoted in the course of their arguments
on the Personality, and on the Procession of the Holy Ghost.
Thus Athanasius, in his first Discourse against the Arians (§. 47),
after speaking of the descent of the Holy Ghost on our Lord at
His Baptism, and saying that He received this santification,
not by reason of any imperfection in Himself, as the "Word,
but in His human capacity, as the representative of mankind, adds
Kgu fiy]v (twos 6 Kv'/oios (firjo-i, to lTvevp.a £k tgOv ifxov XrfxpeTai'
/ecu, s Eyoj avrb d7roo-TcAA(D' /cat, Adhere ILvtvpa ayiov, rot?
fiaurjTaLS' Kal o/xojs 6 aAAois rrapkyuv gjs Aoyos Kal 'Kftavyacrpa
tov ILarpbs, Aeyercu vvv dyid£ecr#cu, kirziZy) ttolXlv ykyovev
dvdpiorros, Kal to ayta^opwov criopa avrov ccn-i. The last words
are rendered in the recent Oxford Translation, " And the Body that
is sanctified is His." They should rather be rendered, " And that
which is sanctified is His Body ; " as Athanasius had said just before,
i) ciS avrov cv TO) 'lopSdvQ tov Hi/evparos yevop,kvrj Ka.6o§os y
as rjpas tjv yivop.kv>], Sid to (fropetv avrov to rjpkrepov crco/za.
The same argument recurs in the first Epistle to Serapiou, §. 20.
Kgu yap (oo-irep povoyevys 6 Yios ccr-m', ovto) Kal to Uvevfia
Trapa tov Ylov SiSopevov Kal Treprropevov Kal avro «V kcrrt, Kal
ov 7roAAd, ov8e ck ttoWwv kv, dAAd povov avro Hvevpa. 'Evos
yao ovtos tov Ylov, tov £cWos Aoyou, plav eTvai Set reXeiav Kal
NOTE G. 203
irXrjpt] tt)v ayia(TTiKi]v Kal </>(ot lo~tiktjv £<t><rav Ivkpyeiav avrov Kal
Siopeav, ijrts ck Udrpos Aeyerat €Kirop€V€(rdai, i-rretSr) irapb. tov
Aoyov tov Ik IlaTpos op.oXoyovp.kvov €KAd/i7ret Kat aVoo-TeA-
Aerat Kat St'oorai. 'ApkXei 6 p\v Ytos irapa tov IIaT/505 aTroo-rkX-
Aerat* ovrtt) yap, <f>rj<riv, 6 Qeos t)y din]cr€ tov Koo-pov, wVre tov
Ytov avVov to i' fiovoycvrj aTrkcrTtiXtv. 'O 8e Ytos to Hv€vp.a
aVoo-TcAAcr iav yap, c/^a-tv, eya> aVeA^a), oVou-TeAa) tov Tlapd-
kXijtov. Kat 6 /xty Ytos €1/ t<£ ovo/mitl tov Uarpos r]X$€' to
<$€ Ilvcv/xa to ayioVj <f>rjcrlv 6 Ytos, o Trkp.^/c.1 6 TiaTrjp iv to?
OVO/ACLTl fXOV.
Chrysostom, in his 78th Homily on St. John, urges the argument
contained in our text for the exceeding dignity of the Comforter.
Tt Xkyovo-LV ivTavda ot Trjv irpocnJKovarav 7reot tov Hv€V[aoltos
ovk €\ovtc<s So£av ; o~vp,<f>ep€i SecnroTrjv dircXdeiv, Kat BovXov
irapayevkadai ; 6p<£s 7ra>s iroXXrj tov IIvcv/zaTOS 17 d£ta.
To the same effect writes Theodoret in the fifth Book of his
Heretical Fables, in a passage where he asserts his peculiar doctrine
concerning the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone. To
Uvivp.a Toivvv to dyiov €K tov 0eov Kal IlaTpos ^X €tv Tr ) v V7T ap^Lv
fl€/JUl6rJKa/UV' 6 0€ Trjs V7Tap^€0>S T/307T0S OVT€ T7J KTlO~€.t TTpOCrkoiKZV
aKTurrov yap to iravayiov Ilvcv/jta' ovtc toJ p.ovoykvu Yt<i>* ovSels
yap Tiav 6co<f>6p<i)V yivvryriv Trpocrrjyopeixre Trjv tov detov Hvev-
/xaTos VTrap£iw Ik pivTOi tov Qeov elvai avro, Kat to Beiov ctVat,
ot tcpol 8i8do-KO\xrt Aoyot. 6 yap Sio^roTrj^ X/oicrrog TavYa 7rept
avrov <f)rjnrr o~vp<fi4p€i vp.lv tva iyot arciXOoi' iav yap iyuy p.r}
aWAflw, 6 ITapa/cA^TOS ovk €p\eTac 7rp6<; vp.a<;. Kat 7raAtv orav
Sk eXOy 6 HapaKXrjTOS, to Hvcvpa tt)% dXr/Ocias, 6 irapa tov
riaTpos cK7ro/)€V€rai, oSrjyrfo-ei v/zas 7roos 7raVai' Trjv dXrjdeiav T<j>
0€ ciVety, ck tov IlaTpos i KiTopt v €Ta t, cSci^c 7rr)yr)v OVTa TOV
Til C17//T0S TOV rEaT€pa* Kal OVK €?TT€V CKTTOpeVO-CTai, dAA'€K7TO-
/Hl'(TUi, fieiKVVS Kal TTJS </>V(T€(OS TTJV TaVTOTTjTa, Kal T77S ovo"tas To
aTpjjTov Kal d8id<f)opov f Kal to ■fjvup.ei'ov Tiov V7roo"Tao-€Wi/' to yao
(KTTOpiVOpxVOV d\lopta-TOV 4£ OV €K1TOp€V€Tai.
In like maimer Augustin, in a fine passage of the first Book
<>f his Treatise on the Trinity (§. 18), argues from this and other
texts to prove the equ unity of the Three Persons. "Nee
inde separatur utriusque Spiritus, id est Patris et Filii Spiritus.—
204 NOTE G.
Hoc est enim plenum gaudium nostrum, quo amplius non est, frui
Trinitate Deo, ad cujus imaginem facti sumus. Propter hoc
aliquando ita loquitur de Spiritu Sancto, tanquam solus ipse
sufficiat ad beatitudinem nostram ; et ideo solus sufficit, quia
separari a Patre et Filio non potest : sicut Pater solus sufficit,
quia separari a Filio et Spiritu Sancto non potest ; et Filius ideo
sufficit solus, quia separari a Patre et Spiritu Sancto non potest.
Quid enim sibi vult quod ait, Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate ;
et ego rogabo Patrem ; et alium Advocatum dabit vobis, ut vobiscum
sit in aeternum, Spiritum veritatis, quern hie mundus accipere non
potest ? id est, dilectores mundi ; animalis enim homo non percipit
ea quae sunt Spiritus Dei. Sed adhuc potest videri ideo dictum,
Et ego rogabo Patrem, et alium Advocatum dabit vobis, quasi non
solus Filius sufficiat. Illo autem loco ita de illo dictum est tan-
quam solus omnino sufficiat : Cum venerit ille Spiritus veritatis,
docebit vos omnem veritatem. Numquid ergo separatur hinc Filius,
tamquam ipse non doceat omnem veritatem, aut quasi hoc impleat
Spiritus Sanctus, quod minus potuit docere Filius? Dicant ergo,
si placet, majorem esse Filio Spiritum Sanctum, quern minorem
illo solent docere. An quia non dictum est, Ipse solus, aut, Nemo
nisi ipse vos docebit omnem veritatem, ideo permittunt ut cum illo
docere credatur et Filius ? Apostolus ergo Filium separavit ab
sciendis iis quae Dei sunt, ubi ait, Sic et quae Dei sunt nemo scit
nisi Spiritus Dei? ut jam isti perversi possint ex hoc dicere, quod
et Filium non doceat quae Dei sunt nisi Spiritus Sanctus, tanquam
major minorem ; cui Filius ipse tanquam tribuit, ut diceret, Ex-
pedit vobis ut ego earn ; nam si non abiero, A dvocatus non veniet
ad vos. Hoc autem dixit non propter inaequalitatem Yerbi Dei
et Spiritus Sancti, sed tanquam impedimento esset praesentia Filii
hominis apud eos, quominus veniret ille qui minor non esset,
quia semetipsum non exinanivit, formam servi accipiens, sicut
Filius."
Similar arguments are urged by Anselm with his wonted sub-
tilty in his Treatise De Processione Spiritus Sancti, ss. ix. xix.
Comparing our Lord's declaration in the foregoing chapter of St.
John, that he will send the Comforter, — a declaration which
recurs in our text,— with that in the fourteenth chapter, that the
Father will send the Comforter in His name, Anselm argues the
identity of the act, and the unity of the Agent. A number of
NOTE G. 205
j, in which the same line of argument is taken by Basil,
Cyril, Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary, Gregory the Great, and others,
are quoted by Petavius in his great work on the Trinity vii. 4. 5. 9.
viii. 4. 5. Thomas Aquinas {Summa iii. Quaest. lvii. Art. vi), where
he is speaking of the effect of our Lord's Ascension, in arguing
Ctrum ascensio Christi sit causa nostrae salutis, after he has stated
that our Lord's passion is the one meritorious cause of our salvation,
quotes our text to prove that His Ascension was also the cause of
great benefits to us, "ut in coelorum sede quasi Deus et Dominus
constitutus exinde divina dona hominibus mitteret."
Hence this verse became one of the standard texts in all argu-
ments about the procession of the Holy Ghost. Thus for instance
Bossuet says, in his Elevations sur les Myst&res de la Religion
Chretienne (v) : Que sera-ce done, que cette finale production de
Dieu ? C'est une procession, sans nom particulier. Le Saint-Esprit
procede du Pkre (Joan. xv. 26) ; le Saint-Esprit est l'esprit commun
du Pe're et du Fils ; le Saint-Esprit prend du Fits (Joan. xvi. 14.) ;
et le Fils I'envoie (xvi. 7), comme le Pere."
In Lampe's learned and elaborate Commentary the interpretations
of this verse by the Fathers are spoken of contemptuously, as ex-
amples, " Quantum obfuerit Patribus ignorantia differaritiae Oecono-
miarum V. et N. T. cujus fundamentum fuit actualis sanguinis
Te8tamenti Effusio." Hence, he says, this passage, " qui, supposita
ilia differentia, intellectu est facillimus, multis ineptis commenta-
tionibus ansam dedit. Sic Augustinus, cur Spiritus non nisi abeunte
Christo esset mittendus, inquirens, in causa esse censuit discipulorum
carnalem affectum ; Rupertus, quia Christo nondum mortuo de-
fuerit consolationis materia ; Cyrillus, quia quamdiu Jesus cum
discipulis convereabatur, praesentia Spiritus Sancti minus erat
nece8saria, ipso omnia bona largiente. Propius ad rem venit illud
Euthyniii ; Quia ita SS. Trinitati visum est, ut Pater quidem ad
Filiinn ecu attraheret, Filius autem illos doceret, ac Spiritus Sanctus
ipsos perficeret, et jam duo completa erant, opportebat et tertium
perfici, consummationem videlicet Spiritus Sancti. Verum hoc, quod
et Theophylactus amplectitur, nimis generale est, et universalem
tantmn expriinit salutis Oeconomiam, quae omnibus temporibus est
conitii'
ensure here bestowed on the Fathers is grounded on a very
common misconception, which sadly perverts our views of the history
206 NOTE G.
of the Church, and mars the good we might otherwise derive from
the divines of former ages. It is seldom duly borne in mind, —
indeed till of late years it was never distinctly recognised, — that in
theology, as in every other department of human knowledge, there
is a law of progress, according to which divers portions of Christian
truth were not to attain to their rightful prominence in the syste-
matic expositions of doctrines, till after the lapse of several genera-
tions. If we cast our eyes back over the history of literature, of
philosophy, of science, we can hardly help perceiving, provided we
know what to look for, that every age has received a certain number
of talents, which it was to occupy until it was called to render in its
reckoning ; that every age has had a certain portion of truth, a
certain quantity of knowledge, assigned to it, which it was to in-
crease, but which it could only increase step by step, and from which
it could not bound forward at once into the portion designed for its
remote posterity. Hence it is injustice and foolishness to blame the
writers of former times, because their fashion of speech, of thought,
of feeling is in many respects unlike our own, or because they have
not the same clear insight into truths, which we may count among
the most precious parts of our possessions, yet for which we may
perhaps be in no slight measure indebted to their patient and
persevering cultivation of the inheritance they had received. Every-
body would allow that it were absurd to find fault with Homer,
because he did not write in rime, or with Archimedes, because he
did not make use of the fluxionary calculus. Into this absurdity we
do not fall ; because here the difference is so definite and palpable.
In most cases however, when we are criticizing the writers of former
times, we are apt to take our own point of view, and to quarrel with
them for not seeing things exactly as we see, or not seldom as we
fancy that we see them. Whereas it is plain that we cannot under-
stand any writer duly, unless we try to place ourselves in his point
of view, and to look at things as he, from his position in the world,
was compelled to look at them. If we know not the work he was
set to do, how can we judge whether he did his work well or ill ?
It is true, this is difficult, because we are so penned in by our cir-
cumstances, and hidebound by our habitual thoughts and feelings.
It is true'too, that, in order to exercise judgement, we need a posi-
tive, as well as a comparative standard, and that each age, as well as
the individuals belonging to it, is to be judged, not merely
NOTE G. 207
according to its ability and diligence in accomplishing its special
object, but also according to the worthiness of that object itself.
This standard however is not to be an abstraction from the notions
of our own age : for, if it were, the accidents and prejudices of our
age would much distort it ; yet, if we fancy we are establishing an
ideal, it will differ little, unless we have consulted the oracles of
history, from such an abstraction. To gain a just standard, we
must correct that which is accidental and partial in each age by the
opposite bearings of other ages ; not indeed eclectically, so as to get
a mere negative result, but seeking by a philosophical analysis after
the living principles which manifest themselves thus diversely. Nor
will any one be qualified to exercise judgment, unless he has learnt
from a course of historical discipline to understand the great pro-
blems which humanity is ordained to solve, their affinity to our
nature and to each other, their ramifications and sequence, as well as
the faculties with which man is endowed for the solution, and the
part which his will and conscience have to bear in the improvement
and right employment of his faculties.
The truth of these propositions will be recognised, at least in the
abstract, more readily with regard to other branches of knowledge,
than to theology. For in theology, it is urged, we have a single,
fixt, determinate code of truth ; and man has no task save to under-
stand and interpret it. But so is the outward world fixt, deter-
minate, palpable to the unerring senses, the same now, in its laws
and main features, as it was two thousand years ago ; yet Science
has been progressive. Generation after generation has learnt to see
more in Nature, and to understand it better ; and there are still
measureless treasures of this knowledge reserved for generations yet
unborn. The progress indeed has not always been uniform. It has
sometimes been retarded, sometimes checkt, has sometimes seemed
to be a recession. There have been periods when the chief work has
been to overthrow and sweep away the artificial structures of prior
times, and to return with an opener, more searching, and more
trustful eye to the simple contemplation of Nature. And does not
the history of the Church prove that this is the very course which
was prescribed for man, in order that he might attain to a reason-
able, systematic knowledge of divine things ? Here too truths,
whi'-h in one age are almost latent, or recognised singly and in el-
atedly by faith, ou the authority of a positive declaration, in
208 NOTE G.
brought out more distinctly by subsequent ages, and are ranged in
their mutual connexion, in their position as parts of the system of
Truth, and in their relation to the rest of our knowledge concerning
the nature and destinies of man. Not however that this progress is
always an advance along the line of Truth in theology, any more
than in other sciences. Man's path bends aside, winds, twists,
seems often to return upon itself. His orbit has its aphelia, as
well as its periphelia. When he has made a lodgement in a new
field of knowledge, he will set about building a tower, the tops of
which, he fancies, shall reach to heaven : and generations, it may be,
will spend their lives in working at such a tower, — the most conspic-
uous example of which is the philosophy and theology of the School-
men, — until the spirit of division and confusion comes down among
the workmen, and their own work falls about their heads, and they
are thus admonisht that they are not to mount to heaven by build-
ing up a tower in any one spot, but that heaven is near them in
every part of the earth, if they will open and purge their eyes to see
it. Thus one theological system after another has passed away, each
however leaving behind some contribution, greater or less, to
the general stock of theological truth. Meanwhile God's word
stands fast, even as the heavens and the earth, and is the mine from
which every new system is extracted, and is the canon whereby it is
to be tried ; and as more than fifty generations have drawn the
nurture of their hearts and minds from it, so will generation after
generation to the end of the world.
I have made these remarks, because several good men have been
sorely disturbed by the doctrine of the development of Christianity,
as it has been brought forward of late by a certain school of our
divines. Some of the German apologists for Eomanism, having per-
ceived, as could not but happen in a country where learning and
criticism had found a home, that the old plea of a positive, unwritten
tradition in the Church was utterly untenable, as a ground for the
doctrinal and practical innovations of later times, have fancied that
they might render their Church a service by taking up the popular
modern theory of the development of mankind,— a theory which has
been carried into the most outrageous extravagances in the contem-
porary schools of philosophy, as it has also been in France by the
Saint-Simonians. This theory, which has been turned by others
to show that Christianity itself is a transient religion, belonging to
NOTE G. 209
a bygone period, and almost obsolete, they have tried to employ in
defense of the Church of Rome. Herein however it was impossible
for them to succeed. That Church, whose constant effort, since the
time when it cut itself off from the living body of Christ, has been
to check, to repress, to cramp, to fetter the mind, could not find sup-
port in a theory which implies the freedom of the mind: nor can
any Church, unless it recognise, both doctrinally and practically,
that the property of Truth is to set the mind free. Nevertheless
the antagonists of the Reformation among ourselves, after a like
failure in their attempt to wrap up our limbs in swathings of
the early Church, have taken up the theory, which in Germany had
been baffled, and have now found out that the Church continued to
unfold and develope the body of Truth committed to her keeping,
up to the age of the Schoolmen, and the zenith of the hierarchy.
As they have thus advanced by degrees from the theology of the
first and second centuries to that of the fourth and fifth, and next
to that of the thirteenth and fourteenth, may we not hope that they
will in time discover how the development of Christian Truth did
not suddenly stop short then, how the Comforter did not then, or
ever, abandon His office of guiding the Church to the whole Truth
by shewing it the things of Christ, but on the contrary came down
with a mightier power and with tongues of fire at the age of the
Befonnation, and did then indeed take of the things of Christ, and
shew them to His chosen teachers, as He had not shown them before
since the days of the Apostles ? Hence, though the ordinary English
practice in judging of truth is, not so much to enquire into its in-
trinsic evidence and worth, as whether it is likely to support or
oppose our party prepossessions and prejudices, there is no reason
for looking with repugnance or dread at the theory of the develop-
ment of theology, as if, when rightly understood, it were in itself
more favorable to the claims of any one particular branch of the
Church ; except indeed so far as it negatives the pretensions of any
branch which would maintain the complete stationariness of theology,
Bid assert that at some given time an absolute, ultimate scheme of
Truth had been set up for all after ages. To the words of Scripture,
ire cannot add; nor may we take away from them. But Truth in
i re is set before us livingly, by examples, by the utterance of
| .les, in the germ, not by the enunciation of a formal dogmatical
»ystem, according to which the thoughts of men were to be clast and
o
210 NOTE O.
rubricated for ever after ; nor can any human scheme or system
make out a tittle to the possession of such an absolute, conclusive
ultimatum.
Not however that the right theory of the development of Christian
Theology by any means implies that each later age must necessarily
have a fuller and deeper knowledge of divine things than its prede-
cessors, either as spread abroad through the body of the Church, or
as centered in its chief teachers. "Were this a consequence of the
theory, this alone would prove fatal to it, the very reverse having
notoriously been often the case. Bnt even in Science, which is so
much less dependent on moral influences, and with which the varieties
of character and feeling and will have so little to do, the progress has
never been uniform and uninterrupted; while in poetry, in the arts,
in philosophy, where the understanding is greatly swayed by the
moral affections, and derives a main part of its sustenance and energy
from them, man's course has been so irregular, that nothing like a
law of it has been ascertained. So too must it needs be in Theology,
where the subject matter is divine truth, which cannot be received
intellectually, unless it be also received morally, to the pure recep-
tion of which all the corrupt feelings of our nature are opposed, and
which they are perpetually attempting to sophisticate and distort.
Thus it has often come to pass that the inheritance left by one age
has been squandered or wasted or forfeited by its successor. So that
it by no means follows from the theory of the development of Christian
truth, that even the later system of Theology must be the better.
For the world is always wrestling to draw man away from the truth,
and will often prevail, as Jacob did over the angel : and when faith
is at a low ebb, when the visible and immediate and material pre-
dominate in men's hearts and minds over the invisible, the ideal, the
spiritual, Theology must needs dwindle and decay. But when there
is a revival of faith, if this revival coincides with, or is succeeded by,
a period of energetic thought, a deeper or clearer insight will be
gained into certain portions of truth, especially appropriate to the
circumstances and exigencies of the age, and which have not jet
been set forth in their fulness. Thus, to cite the two most memor-
able examples, the true doctrine of the Trinity was brought out more
distinctly in the fourth century, that of Justification by Faith in the
sixteenth; the prevalence of errour acting in both instances as at
motive and spur to the clearer demarcation and exposition of thee
SO TEG. 211
truth. At the same time, through man's aptness to overleap him-
self, and to exaggerate the importance of whatever may be engaging
him at the moment, an age which has been allowed to behold a fresh
truth, may too easily depreciate and let slip the truths which its an-
cestors have bequeathed to it ; which proneness has ever been a main
source of heresy. Thus on all sides we are continually reminded of
our inherent weakness, and how that weakness is ever the most mis-
chievous when we are beguiled into fancying ourselves strong : and
while we are hereby exhorted to be diligent in studying the whole
history of the Church, and the writings of her chief teachers in every
age, lest we drop aud lose any portion of the precious riches which
they have been allowed to win for mankind, we are still more strongly
adraonisht to compare every proposition, and every scheme of pro-
positions, — every proposition, both as it stands by itself, and in its
relation to the other parts of Christian Truth, — with the only Canon
of Truth, the written word of God. Thus far we may concur fully
with the opinion exprest by Melanchthon in the preface to his Loci
Theologici, that, while in the Scriptures " absolutissimam sui ima-
ginein expresserit divinitas, non poterit aliunde, neque certius, neque
proprius cognosci Fallitur quisquis aliunde Christianismi formam
[iiam e Scriptura Canonica. Quantum enim ab hujus puritate
absunt commentarii ! In hac nihil reperias non augustum ; in illis
quam multa, quae a philosophia, ab humanae rationis aestimatione
pendent, quae cum judicio Spiritus prorsus ex diametro pugnant.
Non sic detriverant to \J/vxikqv scriptores, ut nihil nisi irvev/iaTiKa
'. parent." On the other hand, when he would almost confine divines
to the study of the Scriptures themselves, he overlooks that Theology
is subject to the same law with every other science ; and he is just
as unreasonable as if he had prohibited all treatises on agriculture,
because the farmer's best school after all is the immediate practical
observation of Nature.
One thing more, which may excite difficulties in some minds,
requires to be just noticed. The development spoken of is that of
theology, not of religion, which is quite another thing, and may exist
in its fullest living power with very little knowledge of theology ;
s a man may see the light, and see with the light, and fulfill all
ities of life by the light, without the slightest knowledge of op-
tics or astronomy, — nay, may do all this far better than those who
rofoundest Whatever expansion and improvement theo-
212 NOTEG.
logy may be susceptible of, this does not infer that religion is in like
manner to improve, nor that religion may not exist in its fullest life
and power, where theology has scarcely attained to a definite, orderly
existence.
To return to the point from which this digression started,— it is
very true that, as Lampe complains, the doctrine of the satisfaction
of the death of Christ is not brought forward in a distinct dogmatical
form, as the central article of Christian Theology, in the first ages
of the Church, by those who are especially called the Fathers. It
was reserved for Anselm to give the first clear dogmatical exposition
of this great cardinal truth, according to its dignity and power ; as
may be seen in Baur's very learned and profound treatise on the
History of the Doctrine of the Atonement. Yet surely the wise and
Christian way of dealing with the writings of former ages is to seek
out and be thankful for the truths which they do contain, not to
disparage and reject these, because they are not combined with other
truths, which, according to the order laid down by God for the
manifestation of His counsels to the speculative and reflective under-
standing, could not stand out so prominently before the theological
mind, until that mind had traverst certain previous cycles of thought :
The same constellation is not always vertical even now : and they who
turn their eyes toward some other quarter of the heavens, still behold
some configuration of heavenly truth ; for God's word is as full of
truths as the sky of stars. Not that the order and sequence of these
truths is immaterial : but the lively apprehension even of a sub-
ordinate truth is far more valuable than the most accurate formal
acquaintance with the correctest system of theology. Nevertheless
summary censures, after the manner of Lampe's, have been very
common among a large body of divines, especially during the last
century, and have mostly become more vehement with the increasing
ignorance of dogmatical and historical theology. Histories of the
Church, or works so calling themselves, have been written, which in
fact have been little else than attempts to trace the history of a
single doctrine, such as that of Justification ; which has been
identified by the historian with the whole of Christianity, and
without the distinct systematic recognition of which he has assumed
there could be no Christian life or Christian truth. Thus in
Milner's superficial work all the other manifestations of the Christian
spirit and forms of Christian doctrine are wellnigh past over ; and
NOTE G. 213
the readers are led to suppose that Christianity for several centuries
was all but extinct, because the views of theologians on this primary-
doctrine were ill-defined or erroneous. Through the influence of
such works a shallow tone of contented ignorance becomes prevalent ;
men being ever ready to lay hold on that which flatters their
indolence and presumption, and seems to warrant them in condemn-
ing peremptorily, without going through the labour of investigating.
Yet they who speak contemptuously of the Fathers, because the
doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ's death does not hold its right
supremacy in their theological system, would also, were they con-
sistent, look slightingly on many books of Scripture itself, because
in them too it has pleased God to reveal other portions of the infinite
riches of His truth. Nay, in this very passage of St. John there is
nothing to carry our thoughts to this special view of the doctrine of
the Atonement, or to indicate that this was the sole, or the main
reason, why it was expedient for the disciples that Jesus should go
away. Nor is this directly intimated in the other passage of our
Gospel (xiL 24), which Lampe cites. There too our Lord allows us
to meditate on the various ways in which His death was to work
for the increase of His Church. In fact this is a quality of all divine
truths, and an attestation of their divine power, that their operation
is not single, but manifold, — that they branch out on every side, —
that they are the centres of numberless concentric circles, which may
pass through very different regions of thought, but which all, if
they preserve their relation to their centre, receive their constitutive
principle from thence.
Nevertheless Lampe's own interpretation of our text recognises
the fulness of its meaning. To the fear of the disciples, he says,
Jesus "opponit assertionem utilitatis ex abitu sperandae. Nova
haec erat &vyKa.Td(3ao~i<i, quod cum ad aequum et honestum tarn
parum attenderent, ab utili argumentum petat. Solet id apud
imbecilliores in fide longe maximum pondus habere. Utilitatem
hanc abitus Christi Scriptura passim urget. Hoc est bonum Mud
Messiae pro Sanctis, Pa xvi. 2 : Satietas post laborem animae
ejus, Jes. liii. 11. Hoc praefiguravit virga Aaronis in sanctuario
virens, florens, et fructus protrudens. Hoc ipse praedixit, c. xii. 24.
Amplissimus hie necti potest bonorum ex abitu Domini scaturien-
timu, catalogus, turn eorum quae discipulis cum reliquis fidelibus
communia, turn quae in his circumstautiis iis solis priva erant
214 NOTE G.
Ad priorem classem spectat turn omnium bonorum foederis gratiae
generatim hactenus jam ab electis vi vadimonii Christi obtentorum
plena confirmatio, turn bonorum N. T. a prophetis promissorum
praestatio. Haee omnia ut sanguine suo emeret, inferni dolores
erant subeundi, ut vero dividendi a Patre jus obtineret, in coeli
usque adytum penetrandum. Quare sine hoc discessu neque
Propheta fuisset, quia fides praedictionum ejus vacillasset, neque
Sacerdos, quia sacrificium bonae fragrantiae non obtulisset (Heb.
viii. 4), neque Rex, quia thronum coelestem non occupasset. Cum
vero abeimdo cursum suum consummaret, infernum occludendo
damnum omne abstulit, et coelum recludendo thesauros sufficientiae
divinae aperuit, omniaque implevit, Ephes. iv. 10 ; confer Ephes. i. 3.
Accedebat utilitas ad solos apostolos spectans, qui per et propter
abitum Domini a coecitate, carnalibus praejudiciis, infirmitate fidei
liberandi, atque ad ministerium Evangelii adaptandi erant. — Con-
nectitur autem promissio Spiritus arctissime cum abitu Christi,
ita ut absque eo non esset speranda, post eum vero indubitato
exspectanda. Fundamentum hujus nexus est liberrimum Triunius
Dei de salute peccatoris decretum, ut sicut acquisitio salutis proprium
erat opus Filii, ita applicatio fieret per operationes Spiritus Sancti.
Sicut ergo acquisitio haereditatis possessionem antecedit, ita neces-
sario abitus Jesu per passiones ad Patrem operationibus Spiritus et
donorum ejus distributioni latiorem portam aperiebat. Restitutio
servi in libertatem supponit solutionem pretii. Domus antea
fundatur et exstruitur, quam exornari queat. Reconciliatio inimi-
corum ante requiritur, quam in familiare commercium adsciri queant.
Ita poterat evidentissime constare et Patrem reconciliatum, et
Filium consummatum esse vitae Principem. Et quamvis Spiritus
Sanctus in ordine operandi esset ultimus, illius tamen divina gloria
ex ipsa hac dispensatione eo illustrius conspiciebatur, quia operationes
divinas post discessum Christi in terris conspicuas Spiritum
auctorem habere eo clarius patebat. — Si non abiisset Jesus, vadi-
monium deseruisset, quo non praestito opus salutis interruptum
fuisset. Neque potuisset absque hoc abitu Spiritus satis sancte
peccatoris Paracletus, Advocatus, et Consolator fieri. Ecquid enim
eorum patrocinium suscepisset, qui in Dei odio persistebant ? eos
consolatus esset, qui sub ira Dei jacuissent ? Atque eo certius
erat ab altera parte, sin abiret, Spiritum ab eo esse mittendum.
Singuli gradus abitus Christi relationem ad missionem Spiritus
NOTE G. 215
habebant. Hie scopus erat passionis, ut jus acquireret : Gal. iii. 13,
14. Hinc pruna ardens ab altari holocausti sumebatur, iucensura
Jesaiam, ej usque antitypum ministros N. T. Hie scopus eratabitus
anirnae ejus ad tribunal Patris, ut sententia Supremi Judicis jus
mitteudi Spiritum ipsi addiceretur. Quod jus, cum in Spiritu justi-
ficatus in terram rediret, declaravit, discipulos afflans, Job. xx. 22.
Hie praecipue erat scopus abitus ejus per adscensum in coelum, ut
occupato throno gloriae jus hoc in actum deduceret. Ita demum
Spiritus officio suo poterat defungi, et non tantum de justitia
acquisita, et judicio in ea fundato mundum convincere, sed etiam
Jesum in gloriam introductum glorificare. Unde clarissime haee
distributio donorum Spiritus ex ascensione Christi derivatur, Ps.
lxviii. 18 ; et in throno' gloriae conspicitur unctus oleo laetitiae, Ps.
xlv. 8, et sceptrum roboris ad domiuandum inter hostes emittens,
Ps. ex. 2. Ita dies expiationis mysticae immediate antecedebat
Festum Tabernaculorum, seu laetitiae Spiritus Sancti. Ita fimbriae
sedentis in excelso throno templum implebant, Jes. vi. 1. — Spiritus
erat eo destinatus, ut haereditateni Filio promissam colligeret,
ornaret, ad eum adduceret, et ad honorandum Filium electos aptos
redderet. — Ita ignis ex altari et thuribulo projectus est in terram,
Apoc. viii. 5, et fluvius crystallinus ex throno Agni prodit, Apoc.
xxii. 1."
Some of the interpretations here suggested may be questionable
and fanciful, and indicate too great a disposition to treat the Bible
as the scattered limbs of a dogmatical system. But such interpreta-
tions, as they are more genial and profound, have far more of truth
in them, than the meagre shallowness of the Grotian school.
Grotius, in explaining the mysterious declaration, If I go not away,
the Comforter will not come to you, merely says, " Est enim hoc inter
ea quae coelesti meo Regno reservantur;" referring to a previous
note, on vii. 39, where he had said the same thing in a greater
number of words. That is, he takes hold of an illustration, by
which the power and rightful supremacy of the Gospel was set
forth, and thinks that, by the help of an accidental circumstance
belonging to this illustration, — to wit, that kings make gifts, — he
has explained a mystery lying in the deepest recesses of our nature
and of thai merciful dispensation whereby the unfathomable, un-
utterable Love of God poured itself forth in unimaginable fulness to
reunite the apostate race of man to itself. In fact such explana-
216 NOTE G.
tions explain nothing : they merely evade and slur over the
difficulty.
In like manner Andrewes, as is often the case with him, spins
out a metaphor in lieu of an argument, when, to prove the
expediency of the Spirit's coming, he says, in the sermon already
referred to, " A word is of no force, though written, which we call
a deed, till the seal be added : that maketh it authentical. God
hath borrowed those very terms from us : Christ is the word ; the
Holy Ghost the Seal, in quo signati estis (Eph. iv. 30). Nisi
veniat, if the Seal come not too, nothing is done. Yea, the
very will of a testator, when it is sealed, is still in suspense,
till administration be granted. Christ is the Testator of the New
Testament : the Administration is the Spirit's (1 Cor. xii. 5).
If that come not, the testament is to small purpose." This is
little else than ingenious idleness. Men who have some liveliness
of fancy, with little depth or power of imagination, and who are
therefore quick in catching likenesses, superficial or verbal, but
have no clear insight into the essences of things, or into the
manner in which analogies consist with and imply differences,
are very apt thus to substitute a mere play upon words for reason-
ing. This however is an inversion of the right logical process.
When we read that it is by the Holy Spirit that we are sealed
unto the day of redemption, our need of the Spirit is plain ; but
it perplexes and misleads, much more than it helps us, to have
the living Word of God identified with the dead words of a deed,
and the living seal of the Spirit with the dead seal on a deed,
and to be told that, because the deed is incomplete without its
seal, therefore the operation of the living Word is incomplete
without the living seal of the Spirit : for it is not the deed,
but we, who are said by St. Paul to be sealed by the Spirit. In
fact it would have been just as logical to have argued, that,
because St. Paul speaks of circumcision as the seal of the right-
eousness that is by faith, therefore the deed of the Word was in-
complete without this seal of circumcision, or without anything
else that the Scriptures in any place compare to a seal. The relation
between a deed and a seal does not beget a relation between
all things that may be compared to either of them. In
mathematical reasoning, it is true, we use symbols in place
of things ; and our deductions with regard to the symbols hold
NOTE Q. 217
of the things in place of which they stand ; that is, so far as
relates to the accidents of place and number, and to those pro-
perties of material objects which may be brought under the
category of number. But these processes are not applicable to
spiritual realities ; and the application of analogies to them, though
useful and indispensable for the sake of elucidation, is scarcely
serviceable beyond. St. Paul, to whose authority Andrewes refers,
does indeed employ an argument (Gal. iii. 15), which at first
sight may seem somewhat similar ; but, when examined, it is
found to be very different. For what he urges is, that, even in
a human engagement, when it has once been ratified, he who
has made it does not retain the power of revoking it. Thus the
argument turns upon a moral analogy : its force lies in the obli-
gatoriness of a plighted word. It might be exprest thus : as even
in the dealings between man and man, when any one has bound
himself by a formal engagement, he cannot revoke or alter it,
much more may we feel sure that the promise, which was made
to Abraham by the God of perfect truth, cannot have been revoked
or set aside by the subsequent enactment of the Law. Whereas
the seal aflixt to a bond is something wholly external, and a mere
accident of human institution ; and thus is ill fitted to interpret
the divine necessity for the coming of the Spirit.* Still more
irrelevant is the second remark ; in which Andrewes confounds
the administration of the gifts of the Spirit, spoken of in the
Epistle to the Corinthians, with the administration of a Testament.
Such trifling is too common in our good Bishop, and needs to be
noticed now that the value of his writings, great as it is, is
* As this sheet is passing through the press, I observe that Coleridge,
in his notes on Luther's Tabletalk {Remains, iv. 41), has said, "Metaphors
are sorry logic, especially metaphors from human, and those too conventional
usages to the ordinances of eternal wisdom : " and this remark happens to
be made with reference to the very same metaphor, as used by Luther to
establish the necessity of the outward sign in Baptism : " A bare writing
without a seal is of no force." Luther's argument however is more valid
than that of Andrewes. It runs thus, that God has been pleased in His
various dispensations to connect spiritual blessings with outward signs, and
that we have no warrant for believing that what God has thus joined together
may be parted by man. On the application of human analogies to divine
things Luther himself has some excellent observation in his note on the
passage of the Epistle to the Galatians.
218 NOTE G.
exaggerated beyond all measure. In Coleridge's Remains (in. 104.
117. 175) this fondness for fantastic and verbal analogies, which
was so prevalent in a large portion of our Jacobite and Caroline
divines, is ascribed to their study of the Fathers. There may be
some truth in this remark : at least a large part of the Fathers are
tainted with the same fault : but it is much the same thing as we
find in so many poets of Charles the First's time, who in like manner
substitute fanciful images and fantastical combinations for imagina-
tive impersonations and harmonies : nor is this practice confined to
the poets. Indeed this is an ordinary characteristic of the state of
transition between an imaginative or spiritual age and one under
the predominance of the reflective, critical understanding. Being
unable to soar with the eagle and the lark, the Fancy is ever
striving that its plumage, which cannot bear it upward, shall at
least have a beauty like that of the peacock and the ostrich. But,
while the Imagination, at least the passive and receptive, is an
invaluable auxiliary in the philosophical mind, — witness Plato,
Augustin, Bacon, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Schelling, — the Fancy is apt to
delude all who play with it, as happens at times even to Bacon. At all
events the divines of the seventeenth century, with all their learning,
and their multiplicity of talents, yet in spiritual depth and power,
in simple earnest energy, and in the faculty of piercing to the heart
of truth, are very inferior to the greater Reformers, especially to
those of Germany, and to Calvin.
" But then (Andrewes proceeds) there ariseth a new difficulty upon
Si non abiero. We see a necessity of His coming ; but we see
no necessity of Christ's going. Why not Christ stay, and yet He
come ? — Are they like to buckets 1* one cannot go down, unless the
* This is the reading in the folio of 1641. In the recent Oxford edition it
is, "like two buckets : " but this would seem to be merely one of the many
instances in which the text in that edition has been corrupted, either
through carelessness, or through a want of familiarity with the language and
idiom of former times. The simily itself is a most extraordinary and
offensive one, and in many writers would justly have been deemed very
profane. In a man of such reverent spirit as Andrewes it cannot have been
so, but is only another proof of the predominance of the fancy over the
imagination in his mind : he caught at the outward likeness, but did not
realize his imagery. Still the meeting with such a passage, — and there are
others of a like kind, — in Bishop Andrewes may soften the judgement of
many, who are ready to cry out against familiarity of expression and illus-
NOTE G. 219
other go up ? If it be so expedient, He come, Christ, I trust, is not
impedient but He may come. — It cannot be denied, They two can
stay together well enough ; and the time shall come, we shall enjoy
Them both together, and the Father with Them. That time is not
yet : now it is otherwise. Not for any let in Themselves ; that is
not all ; but for some further matter and considerations noted by
-the Fathers. — First, for veniet. The Holy Ghost cannot come as He
should. He should come as God. The stay of Christ would have
been a let of the manifestations of His Godhead. To manifest His
Godhead being to shew great signs and work great wonders, if
Christ had still remained, they would not well have been dis-
tinguisht, and great odds have been ascribed to Christ. So the
Holy Ghost have wanted that honour* and estimation due to him :
an impeachment it would have been to His divinity. But Christ
ascending all such imaginations cease. From mittam eum: a littlet
impeachment it would have been to Christ's equality with His
Father. For, He not going to send Him, but staying still here, the
sending of the Spirit would have been ascribed to the Father alone,
as His sole act. This would have been the most ; that the Father
for His sake had sent him ; but He, as God, had had no honour
of the sending." Verily these sweepings of the Fathers yield sad
rubbishy divinity. It is painful to see the ineffable relation of
the three Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, each of whom is
ever pouring Himself forth in the infinite inexhaustible fulness
of love, thus degraded by the introduction of the rivalities
of human sovereignty, and the jealous assertion of personal
honour.
tration in other writers on sacred subjects, for example, in Latimer or
Luther. Yet Luther at least, with all his boundless freedom of speech, and
desire of going straight to the heart of his Saxon peasantry, would have been
preserved from such a simily by his high spiritual imagination, and lively
apprehension of all divine truth ; as would Bunyan.
* The Oxford Edition reads "So the Holy Ghost had wanted the honour."
The license which the Editor of that reprint has allowed himself, inclines me
to suppose that these alterations also have been made without authority.
The elliptical construction have, would being understood out of the preceding
sentence, is quite in Andrewes' style.
t Little is the reading in the folio of 1641, as well as in the new Oxford
edition : but I cannot help thinking it probable that Andrewes wrote a " like
impeachment."
220 NOTE G.
Far better than this is it to rest in a generality like that of
Curcellaeus (Relig. Christ. Listit. v. 19) " Nisi Christus in coelum
ascendisset, non potuisset super fideles suos mittere Spiritum
Sanctum, quia tantum munus ex decreto Dei erat glorificationi
ejus reservatum, ut de ilia emcax et irrefragabile testimonium
perhiberet."
In our times Guenther, who holds a high place among the
philosophers and Eomanist divines of Germany, has spoken about
this verse, according to its intimate connexion with the whole
mystery of Eedemption, in his Vorschule zur Spehulativen Theologie.
" As the divine Idea of the Creature comes forward into objective
reality through the Son, so it is through the Spirit that the Creature
returns back into the Godhead, by virtue of the same original
union. And thus it appears how, in the outpouring of the Holy
Ghost upon all flesh, as the special Incarnation of the Third
Divine Person, the Eedemption of mankind, as the work of God,
attained to its consummation. — For in order to the restoration
of the human race, it was not solely and exclusively requisite that
there should be a Second Man, fulfilling the idea of man ; but to
this condition on God's part, was added another on the part of the
Second Man, namely, His vicarious obedience, by way of satis-
faction. In short, the whole work of Eedemption cannot be re-
garded, like that of Creation, among the normal actions of God ;
inasmuch as on the one hand it implies the falling away of the first
man from God, which God did not will, as its negative condition,
and on the other hand, as its positive condition on the side of
mankind, the co-operation of the creaturely freedom in the Second
Adam.
" Now this extraordinariness in the restoring love of. God was
not merely manifested by the participation of all the three Persons
of the Godhead in this one, as in every other outward act of revela-
tion ; but this participation itself was of a peculiar kind. For the
humanity in Christ does not seem to have been a Creature of the
Word, as the first Adam was, although the Word was really and
hypostatically united to it ; but Christ, as the Son of Man, at least
according to the spiritual elements of His humanity, appears to
have been no less the Only-begotten of the Father, than He was
according to His divine Nature. In the Creed His conception, as
the primary union of the creaturely spirit with the physical
NOTE G. 221
elements derived from the blood of the Virgin, or as the] formation
of the latter into corporeity, is expressly ascribed to the Holy
Ghost, not to the Word, by whom everything was made, that was
made. And after Christ, as the Son of man, and in a real, insep-
arable union with the Eternal Son, had purged away the guilt of
His race by His merits, and thereby had at the same time removed
the fundamental hindrance to all real union of His brethren with
God, the Spirit of God again entered into His original dynamical
communion with the race, that they who had been delivered from
guilt by the Incarnate Son, might also be raised out of their
everlasting punishment, that is, their separation from God.
" Hence we may further see how the declarations of the Saviour
concerning the Holy Ghost, — for instance, If I go not away, the
Comforter cannot come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you,
— have not merely a figurative rhetorical purpose, as being intended
to cheer His downcast disciples after a human manner, but con-
tain a true metaphysical sense : for in them the supersensual
relation of the Word to the Spirit, in Their participation in the
one work of Redemption, is clearly exprest ; through which re-
lation Their Function, as well as Their Persons,* excluded each
other, to the end that by means of this reciprocal exclusion itself
They might manifest Their holy personal interest in this greatest
work of God'-s love. So that He, who took away our guilt im-
mediately by His merits, also took away the punishment of our
guilt, our separation from God, mediately. Moreover, having
obtained the Holy Spirit, by whom alone all creatures are united
to God, the Spirit of God, for our sinful race, He could also send
Him, and at the same time could determine the conditions and
modes under which the Spirit might and was to enter into com-
munion with the human race, and the human race with the
Spirit of God, until the end of the world." Vol. ii. pp. 322
—324.
In reading the work just cited, since the former part of this
Note was written, I have found some excellent observations, which
ao strongly confirm what has been said about the development
of theology, and throws so much light on the process, that I will
extract the most important part of them. By a somewhat singular
coincidence they also turn on the epoch formed in Christian
theology by Anselm's theory on the union of the two natures in
222 NOTE G.
Christ, and on the satisfaction of His death ; and they rest their
authority on that promise of the Comforter, which is immediately
connected with the main argument of these Sermons, and which
Guenther rightly interprets as an assurance that the Spirit of God
will guide the Church through all ages to the whole truth. By
several Protestant Divines on the other hand this assurance is
restricted to the Apostles ; and some, as for instance, Curcellaeus
in his Institutio, i. xi. 4, — have urged the passage so interpreted,
as overthrowing the pretensions of the Eomish Church, and
proving that every truth, which was ever to be apprehended by
the Church, was immediately revealed to the Apostles, and was by
them committed to writing in an explicit dogmatical or catechetical
form, so that the Church from that time forward might dispense
with all further illumination. Yet verily it is almost tantamount to
a surrender of our arms, if we cannot maintain our cause, except
by denying the abiding presence of the Spirit, as the Guide and
Teacher of the Church, ever leading it, according to its needs,
to the whole Truth. Only this promise, like all the others in
Scripture, is conditional. The presence of the Spirit does not
extinguish our power of resisting Him, and following our own
devices, either intellectually or morally : nor will He guide us
to the Truth, unless we consent and desire to be guided to it.
Nor again has any one branch of the Church, or any body of men
therein, ever obtained an exemption from that liability and
aptness to err, which is inherent in the tendencies of our carnal
nature, and through which so many Churches fell away from the
Truth in the very first ages of Christianity. But let me proceed to
the quotation from Guenther.
"In studying the history of Theology, we have especial need to
bear in mind our Lord's saying, Blessed is he who shall not be offended
at Me. A theologian who does not keep his eyes fixed on this pole-
star, may lose his faith in Him who declared, / am with you unto
the end of the world; just as a materialist, in studying profane
history, will throw it out of his hand as a chronique scandaleuse,
exclaiming There is no God, no Providence. The whole history of
the world is a mummy, with deep channels of tears ; but, being a
mummy, it cannot of itself interpret for after-ages, whether those
tears were shed from joy or sorrow. It must therefore be awakened
to life. This however can only be done through and in the Spirit
NOTE G. 223
of Him who cried at the grave of Lazarus, Lazarus come forth. He
who cannot believe in this revivification, may spare us his wisdom,
which discovers that the source of these dried channels of tears was
the weak or blear eyes of the Church. Such a man should first be
admonisht, Friend, buy thyself some eyesalve, that thou mayest
be able to discern the meaning of those words of the Lord, / have
yet many things to say to you ; but ye cannot bear them now. How-
beit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you to the
whole Truth; a promise which extends to the latest preachers of
the Gospel, as well as to the first. The same Spirit is still at this
hour fulfilling the promise of Him who sent Him, that He would
convince the world of Sin, if it did not believe in Him who was
espoused to mankind in His Church : that He would convince the
world of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who, after He had taken
our judgment upon Him, became our Eighteousness, and who,
ever since He was received into heaven, leads and guides His chosen
flock, like a good Shepherd, with righteousness, through the Spirit
of God, whom He has sent in His stead, and thus lastly convinces
the world of that judgment, which he continually exercises over
the Prince of this world as the father of errour and of lies. —
" Certain principles, however, which apply to the whole history
of Christianity, need to be especially observed in the history of
Christian doctrines. In the first place we are to regard each dogma
as the product of the reciprocal action of those primary truths
(which lie in Christianity, as in a grand fact, exhibited in life and
doctrine), as they operate on the mind of man, and of the reaction of
the human mind endeavouring to possess itself of that which
Christianity gives to it. In short the system of dogmas is the
product of the interpenetration of two factors, a given object and
a recipient subject ; or it is the expression of the insight into
Christian truth in the minds of believers. When this living in-
tellectual process is once commenced, it cannot but be carried on
continually in a determined order and sequence ; because the two
coefficients themselves stand each under its own law, which arises
out of its peculiar character. Hence in a history of Theology we
must not leave the general state of human knowledge out of account;
because this, in its influence on the mind, will in every age be the
medium of, and therefore modify the above-mentioned reaction of
the mind on the substance of Christianity. For it is not Christianity
224 NOTE G.
alone, that, as a fact of time, excites the mind of man to intellectual
activity ; it finds men's minds already involved in this intellectual
process with the whole world of time and space. On the other
hand those ideas which mount victoriously out of Christianity into
man's subjective consciousness, exercise an influence, no less rich in
blessing than in victory, on the state of human knowledge. That
this victory however of Christianity within the pale of Science is
only completed by degrees, in the course of centuries, is proved by
the dominion of Platonic ideas in the Theology of the first centuries,
and by that of Aristotelian in the Theology of the middle ages.
Even Origen, with all the originality of his mind, could not break
the matter across his knee : when he tried to do so, he almost broke
with the spirit of the Church, which could not say Yes to
many of his positions, although it could not justify its No till
long after.
" Not that every product of these intellectual processes is in the
spirit of Christianity : for individuals, — in whom positive dogmas
first settle into form, — may err ; both willingly and unwillingly,
wittingly and unwittingly. But the spirit of Christianity will
always endeavour to throw off these adverse formations as
abnormities. Hence the history of Heresies is an important part
in the history of Theology, not merely for the sake of historical
completeness, but mainly because by their attack and contradiction
the resistence and answer of the Church has almost always been
modified ; and finally because life can only manifest itself through
its functions, among which the rejection of what is indigestible and
alien maintains an honourable place as an internal organic act of
self-defense. Hence Theology, in its formation and expansion,
whether in unison or in opposition to the spirit of Christianity, can
never escape from the influence of the prevalent condition of
knowledge, inasmuch as this essentially is nothing else than the
insight of the human mind into its own nature and its objects. —
" Thus our insight into Christian truth admits of degrees and
augmentations, which depend partly on the intensity of individual
intelligence, partly on the extensiveness of the horizon of know-
ledge. At the same time it must "be borne in mind that a higher
sphere of knowledge does not exclude, but includes the lower, if
concerning the same subject matter, and in the same spirit of
Christianity. — Hence, if we examine the whole body of Christian
NOTE G. 225
Theology, as a formation of positive doctrine, we find two elements
in it, one permanent, and the other variable. The former is that
which has been completely establisht by previous research ; the
latter, that which is still going through the investigations antece-
dent to positive knowledge. This latter part owes its origin mainly
to the conflict between Philosophy, in the widest sense of that
word, and Theology ; but also in part to the desire of deducing
consequences from premisses that have been ascertained ; which
consequences are insecure, in proportion to their distance from
their foundation.
" A speculative theologian therefore may err in two ways.
He may treat the permanent element in the Theology of his age
as variable, or try to maintain the variable as permanent : in short
he may sacrifice either of the two to the other. The former pro-
cedure is called Heterodoxy, the latter Hyperorthodoxy. Between
the two stands Orthodoxy ; which not only seeks to preserve what
has already been establisht, but also to bring what is still under
discussion into unison therewith, though without endeavouring to
carry out this harmony at the cost of anything essential, whether in
substance or form. On the other hand, with regard to Heterodoxy,
it is plain that, where that which is permanent is set in solution,
the variable must in a certain sense for the moment assume the
character of immutability ; as it is, with regard to Hyperorthodoxy,
that, where opinions assume the authority of dogmas, everything
like movement or development in the dogmas themselves must be
utterly rejected ; and even a higher, as contrasted with a lower,
insight into the same dogma, whether attained with or without aid
and a stimulus on the part of human philosophy, will be designated,
if not as contrary to faith, or heretical, at least as dangerous to
faith, or neological. By such minds, if they happen to possess
power, heavy storms may indeed be called up on the horizon of the
Church, but assuredly none will be charmed or allayed. For in
profane sciences likewise, and consequently in .philosophy also, as
being in a formal sense the science of sciences, there is a permauent
and a variable element. Nor is this permanent element merely the
empirical foundation belonging to each science, but also, as in
Theology, its essential form, that is, the body of knowledge which
has at the time been gained and establisht ; and this will lay claim
to a like and in a certain sense a dogmatical character ; which claims
P
226 NOTE G.
at particular periods will be very pressing, and, if they are rejected,
■will occasion a schism not easily to be healed between Philosophy
and Theology, whence incalculable injury may result even to the
outward life of the Church.
" A disciple of the school of Voltaire might indeed object, that,
what the learned divines at any period in the history of the Church
did not know, was at all events known to the Holy Ghost, and that
He might have taught it to them. To which question I would only
reply by asking, Why did the same Spirit, who spake by the mouth
of the prophets under the old Covenant, merely declare the Unity
of the Godhead, and not the Trinity, by the mouth of Moses to the
chosen people ? The answer to this question will probably refer on
the one hand to the plan of the Divine Wisdom for the education of
the Jewish people, and on the other hand to the Polytheism of the
ancient world, which made such a strict opposition necessary. It
might be added, that omitting to declare the whole truth is not
equivalent to a declaration of untruth or errour. For my own part,
I am satisfied with an answer, which enables us to discern the
wisdom of the Saviour already working under the old Covenant, —
/ have many things to say to you; but ye cannot bear them now."
ii. 230—239.
With these words, which bring us back to our text, we may close
this long Note, wherein what may seem digressive is at least
intimately connected with the work of the Spirit, as He has been
pleased to manifest His wisdom in the discipline and training of
the Church.
Note H : p. 24.
An enquiry of the deepest interest is suggested by these passages
of St John concerning the distinctive character and measure of the
operation of the Holy Spirit under the earlier and later Dispensation.
The prophets of old, we read, spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost: the Psalmist lives under the conviction that whatever is
good in him arises from- the influence of the Spirit of God : he prays
that he may be upheld by that influence, that it may not be taken
away from him : our Lord Himself tells the disciples that, though
the world could not receive the Spirit of Truth, though it saw Him
not, nor hnew Him, yet they knew Him, and that He dwelt with them.
NOTE H. 227
Oil the other hand the text declares that our Lord's departure was
the indispensable condition, without which the Comforter would
not come : the same thing is clearly implied, though not so directly
enounced, in the other passages in His last Discourse, where He
cheers the disciples with the promise of the Paraclete : and in an
earlier chapter of the same Gospel (vii. 39), we learn that the Spirit
was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Now how are
these seemingly opposite assertions to be reconciled ? and in what
sense are we to understand that the gift of the Spirit was reserved
till after our Lord's glorification 1 Let us enquire how these
questions, which are so infinitely connected with the whole argu-
ment of these Sermons, have been discust and answered, generally
in reference to the last-cited verse of St. John, by some of the most
thoughtful divines in various ages of the Church. In doing so
however I will not stop to speak of the support which the Mace-
donian heresy fancied it derived from the commou reading in this
verse, OvVto yap r t v Uvev/ia ayiov. For even if Lachmann's
reading, OiVo> yap ?JV Hvev/ia SeSo/mw, be not the true one,
it is sufficiently proved by Heinsius {Exercitat. Sac. 224. 236. 311.
Aristarch. Sac. 688.) that something equivalent must be understood
from the context. Indeed the passage would otherwise be in direct
contradiction to the whole tenour of Scripture. Nor again need we
examine the manner in which this verse was made to serve its part
in the controversy on the Procession of the Holy Spirit : he who
is curious on this point may refer to Petavius, Be Trinitate,
vii. 4. 2.
Our immediate questions have been discust several times by
Augustin, for instance in his Discourses on St John (Tract, xxxii).
" Quid est quod ait, Non enim erat Spiritiis datus, quia Jesus non-
dum erat glorificatus ? In evidenti est intellectus. Non euim non
erat Spiritus Dei, qui erat apud Deum ; sed nondum erat in eis qui
tredi'lt'iaiit in Jesum. Itaenim disposuit Domiuus Jesus non eis dare
Spiritum istuni de quo loquimur, nisi post resurrectionem suam ;
et hoc non sine causa. Et forte si quaeramus, aunuet ut inveniamus ;
et si pulsemus, aperiet ut intremus. Pietas pulsat, non man us :
quanquam pulsat et maiius, si ab operibus misericordiae non cesset
iiiaiiu.s. Quae igitur causa est cur Dominus Jesus Christus statuerit
noimisi cum esset glorificatus, dare Spiritum Sanctum ? Quod ante-
quam dicamus ut pi —nil 111 prius quaerendum est, — quomodo non-
228 NOTE II.
dum erat Spiritus in hominibus Sanctis, cum de ipso Domino recens
nato legatur in Evangelio, quod eum in Spiritu Sancto agnoverit
Simeon, agnoverit etiam Anna vidua prophetissa, agnoverit Joannes
ipse, qui eum baptizavit : impletus Spiritu Sancto Zacharias multa
dixit : Spiritum Sanctum ipsa Maria, ut Dominum conciperet,
afccepit. Multa ergo indicia praecedentia Spiritus Sancti habemus,
antequam Dominus glorificaretur resurrectione carnis suae. Non
enim alium Spiritum etiam Prophetae habuerunt, qui Christum
venturum praenuntiaverunt. Sed modus quidam futurus erat
datiouis hujus, qui omnino antea non apparuerat : de ipso hie dici-
tur. Nusquam enim legimus antea congregatos homines, accepto
Spiritu Sancto, Unguis omnium gentium locutos fuisse. Post resur-
rectionem autem suam, primum quando apparuit discipulis suis,
dixit illis, Accipite Spiritum Sanctum : de hoc ergo dictum est,
Non erat Spiritus datus, quia Jesus nondum erat glorificatus. Et
insuffiavit in faciem eorum, qurflatu primum hominem vivificavit,
et de limo erexit, quo flatu animam membris dedit ; significans eum
se esse, qui insumavit in faciem eorum, ut a luto exsurgerent, et
luteis operibus renuntiarent. Tunc primum post resurrectiouem
suam Dominus, quam dicit Evangelista glorificationem, dedit dis-
cipulis suis Spiritum Sanctum. Deinde commoratus cum eis quad-
raginta dies — ascendit in coelum. Ibi peractis decern diebus, die
Pentecostes misit desuper Spiritum Sanctum. Quo, sicut dixi, qui
fuerant in uno loco congregati, accepto impleti, omnium gentium
Unguis locuti sunt."
That this is a very inadequate, meagre explanation, is plain. In
every enquiry into the nature of those gifts of the Spirit, which
were not to be bestowed till after our Lord's Ascension, we should
keep our minds fixt on those words of His, which unfortunately are
mostly lost sight of, He that believeth in me, out of his heart shall
flow rivers of living water : for these words are expressly declared by
St John to refer to the Spirit, that they who believe in Jesus were to
receive; it being immediately after these words that he adds, the
Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
The close conpection thus establisht between the special gift of the
Spirit, which was to follow on the Ascension, and these words of
our Lord, is quite sufficient to overthrow divers interpretations of
the promise of the Comforter, and among others that just cited from
Augustin ; in whom indeed there is the less excuse for it, as it occurs
NOTE IT. 229
in a continuous Commentary, and he had just been speaking of the
very words which refute his explanation. For assuredly the rivers
of Hang water, which are to flow out of the hearts of believers in
Christ, must be something very different from the gift of tongues,
and must mean spiritual gifts. So indeed Augustiu had just inter-
preted the expression, though somewhat narrowly : " Quid est fons,
et quid est fluvius qui manat de ventre iuterioris hominis ? Bene-
volentia, qua vult consulere proximo. Si enim putat quia quod
bibit soli ipsi debet sufficere, non fluit aqua viva de ventre ejus : si
autem proximo festinat consulere, ideo non siccat, quia manat."
Afterward too, when considering how the gift of the Spirit was
perpetuated in the Church, seeing that the miraculous gift of tongues
was transient, he says that the gift of tongues was preserved in the
knowledge of languages, and that we also receive the Spirit, M si
am:truus Ecclesiam, si caritate compaginamur, si catholico nomine et
fide gaudeinus."
The Discourse is wound up with a fine specimen of his peculiar
rhetoric, though here too the explanation is of no worth as such.
"Qttare ergo Dominus Spiritum, cujus maxima beneficia sunt in
. quia caritas Dei per ipsum diffusa est in cordibus nostris, post
actionem suaui dare voluit ? Quid significavit ? Ut in resur-
rectione nostra caritas nostra flagret, et ab amore saeculi separet, ut
tota currat in Deum. Hie enim nascimur et morimur ; hoc non
ainemus : caritate migremus, caritate sursum habitemus, caritate ilia
qua diligimus Deum. Nihil aliud in hac vitae nostrae peregrina-
tione meditemur, nisi quia et hie non semper erimus, et ibi nobis
locum bene vivendo praeparabimus, unde nunquam migremus.
Dominus enim noster Jesus Christus, posteaquam resurrexit, jam
non moritur ; mors Uli ultra non dominabitur. Ecce quod amemus.
Si vivimus, si in ipsum credimus qui resurrexit, dabit nobis, non
quod hie ainant homines qui Deum non amant, aut tanto plus
. quanto ilium minus amant : tanto autem hoc minus amant,
quanto ilium plus amant. Sed videamus quid nobis promisit :
non divitias terrenas et temporales, non honores et potestates in
saeculo isto, — non ipsam postremo corporis sanitatem, — non vitam
loiiL'.'iin,— non ptilcritudinem corporis. — Omnia ista non nobis pro-
misit, qui dixit, Qui credit in me, veniat et bibat; etjlumina de ventre
ejus fluent aquae vivae. Vitam aeternam promisit, ubi nihil time-
ainus, ubi noa conturbemur, unde non migremus, ubi non moriamur.
230 NOTE H.
— Quia ergo tale est quod nobis promisit amantibus, et Spiritus
Sancti caritate ferventibus, ideo ipsum Spiritum noluit dare, nisi
cum esset glorificatus ; ut in suo corpore ostenderet vitam, quam
modo non habemus, sed in resurrectione speramus." All this may-
do well as an application, or what is not always appropriately
termed an improvement, of the text in a sermon ; but it is a mere
misunderstanding to deem such imaginative analogies an explana-
tion of the reason why the Spirit was not given till after our Lord
was glorified.
Again, in the same work (Tractat. lii), on the words Now shall
the prince of this world be cast out (xii. 31), Augustin asks whether
he had not already been cast out from the hearts of the patriarchs
and the prophets and the righteous men of old, and replies that
this casting out was only partial, compared to the extent of that
which was about to take place ; and he illustrates this by a
reference to the partial gift of the Spirit in former ages, and the
general gift on the day of Pentecost, when all were to speak with
tongues. The same explanation occurs also in his Treatise on the
Trinity, iv. 29.
In one of his earlier writings, the Liber de Diversis Quaestionibus
(lxii), he asks, — with reference to the statement in St John (iv. 1),
that Jesus baptized more disciples than John, — " Quaeritur utrum
qui baptizati sunt illo tempore acceperint Spiritum Sanctum. Alio
enim loco sic dicitur : Spiritus nondum erat datus, quia Jesus
nondum erat clarificatus. Et facilHme quidem ita respondetur,
quod Dominus Jesus, qui etiam mortuos suscitabat, poterat ne-
minem illorum mori sinere, donee post ejus clarificationem, id
est, resurrectionem a mortuis et ascensionem in coelum, acciperent
Spiritum Sanctum. Sed occurrit animo latro ille cui dictum est,
Amen dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in Paradiso, qui nee ipsum
Baptismum acceperat. Quanquam Cornelius, et qui cum eo ex
Gentibus crediderant, Spiritum Sanctum etiam priusquam bap-
tizarentur acceperint ; non tamen video quomodo et ille latro sine
Spiritu Sancto dicere potuerit, Memento mei, Domine, dum veneris
in regnum tuum. Nemo enim dicit, Dominus Jesus ait Apostolus,
nisi in Spiritu Sancto. Cujus fidei fructum ipse Dominus mon-
stravit, dicens, Amen dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in paradiso.
Quomodo ergo ineffabili pot estate dominantis Dei atque justitia
deputatum est etiam baptisma credenti latroni, et pro accepto
NOTE H. 231
habitum in animo libero, quod in corpore crucifixo accipi non
poterat, sic etiam Spiritus Sanctus latenter dabatur ante Domini
clarificatiouem, post manifestationem autem divinitatis ejus mani-
festos datus est. Et hoc dictum est, Spiritus autem nondum
erat datus ; id est, nondum sic apparuerat, ut omnes eum datum
esse faterentur. Sicut etiam Dominus nondum erat clarificatus
inter homines, sed tamen clarificatio ejus aeterna nunquam esse
destitit. Sicut et — Domini adventus intelligitur demoustratio
corporalis, tamen ante hanc demonstrationem ipse in omnibus
prophetis Sanctis, tanquam Dei Verbum et Dei Sapientia, locutus
est ; sic et adventus Spiritus Sancti demoustratio Spiritus Sancti
est ipsis etiam oculis carneis, quando visus est ignis divisus super
eos, et coeperunt loqui linguis. Nam si non erat in hominibus
Spiritus Sanctus ante Domini visibilem clarificationem, quomodo
dicere potuit David, Et Spiritum Sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.
— Quomodo autem ipse Dominus secum habebat utique Spiritum
Sanctum in ipso homine quern gerebat, quando ut baptizaretur
venit ad Joannem, et tamen, posteaquam baptizatus est, descen-
dere in eum Spiritus Sanctus visus est in columbae specie ; sic
intelligendum est et ante manifestationem et visibilem adventuni
Spiritus Sancti quoscunque homiues sanctos eum latenter habere
potuisse. Ita sane hoc diximus, ut intelligamus etiam ista ipsa
visibili demonstratione Spiritus Sancti — ineffabili vel etiam in-
cogitabili modo largius in hominum corda pleuitudinem ejus
infusam."
In this passage also too much stress is laid on the miraculous
gift of tongues, which is not a perceptible element, either in our
Lord's promise of the Comforter, or in His previous words referring,
as we are told by St John, to the subsequent gift of the Spirit.
This earlier exposition however leaves more room for the true
spi ritual sense of the promise, than the later ones. There is another
passage too in this extract, which shows how youth is often wiser
than age. For it is a melancholy instance of the tendency of
growing years, especially if spent much in controversy, to narrow
au<l stiffen the mind, to find Augustin in his Retractations recalling,
Ot at least hesitating to recognise, the admission here made, that the
penitent thief might be saved without the external baptismal act.
It is sad to find him in one of his later works, the Treatise De
Anima et ejus Origine (i. 11), trying to evade the force of his own
232 NOTE H.
argument, by remarking that no one knows whether the thief may not
have been baptized beforehand, or whether he was not baptized then
on the cross by the water which issued from our Lord's side. I am
not wishing to detract from one of the greatest teachers whom God
has ever raised up to preach, the Gospel of Truth and Love : but
now that our Church is threatened with a revival of patrolatry, it
is right that notice should be drawn to the defects, as well as to the
excellences of the Fathers ; so that we may not receive their dicta
without proving them, as people are always ready to admit whatever
will save them the labour and responsibility of thought, — nor be
inveigled into sacrificing truth to their authority. Moreover this
passage of Augustin may serve as a salutary warning against a
morbid tendency, lamentably prevalent in these days among our
writers on theological and ecclesiastical matters, to twist and warp
the simplest facts, to wrench and distort the plainest declarations of
Scripture, and to hatch and scrape together the most sophistical
arguments and the most fantastical hypotheses, rather than submit
to what makes against some favorite notion or fancy. Yet Augustin
knew the truth here : he had known it thirty years before, when he
wrote his earlier work : and in this very passage he cites Cyprian's
letter to Jubaianus, where the penitent thief is rankt with the
catechumens who fell under persecution before they were baptized,
and were thus baptized in their blood. With his ever-ready sen-
tentious eloquence too, he says, " Tanto pondere appensum est,
tantumque valuit apud eum qui haec novit appendere, quod confessus
est Dominum crucifixum, quantum si fuisset pro Domino crucifixus.
Tunc enim fides ejus de ligno floruit, quando discipulorum marcuit.
— Illi enim desperaverunt de moriente; ille speravitin commoriente:
refugerunt illi auctorem vitae ; rogavit ille consortem poenae :
doluerunt illi tanquam hominis mortem ; credidit ille regnaturum
esse post mortem : deseruerunt illi sponsorem salutis ; honoravit
ille socium crucis. Inventa est in eo mensura martyris, qui tunc in
Christum credidit, quando defecerunt qui futuri erant martyres.
Et hoc quidem oculis Domini clarum fait, qui non baptizato, tan-
quam martyrii sanguine abluto, tantam felicitatem statim contulit."
From his Discourse Contra Adversariurn Legis et Prophetarum
(ii. 9), we learn that this declaration concerning the Spirit had been
cited as an argument to prove the contrariety between the two
Testaments ; the Adversary having contended that the Jews could
NOTE II. 233
not have lookt forward to the coming of our Saviour, seeing that
"ante Salvatoris adventum Spiritus Sanctus ac divinus non erat
super terram." To this Augustiu replies by shewing that the Spirit
had previously bestowed the gift of prophecy.
On the difference between the two dispensations of the Spirit,
Chrysostom (on John viL 39) is far more satisfactory than Augustiu,
as might be expected from the sounder critical principles which
regulate his interpretation of Scripture, and which became preva-
lent in his School. He had said that the rivers of living waters
siguify to Baxf/iXes Kal d<j>Qovov n/js \dpLTOS' — tfiv Be Aeyei to
evepyovv dec' y) yap tov II vevpaTOS X"/° ts > eireiBav els Bidvoiav
elcreXdrj Kal IBpvvdy, Trdo-ys Trrjyyjs pdXXov dvaf3Xv£ei, kcu ov
oiaXifnrdvei, ovBe KevovTai, ovB' Icrrcnai' 6/jlov ko.1 to dveXXnres
rijs X°Piy' La '> BrjXdv, Kal to difiarov tt}s evepyelas, 7roTapovs
€KaAecrej', ov^ eva iroTapdv, aAAa, dffidrovs. — ko.1 lBol tl<$ dv to
Xeyopevov o-a<f><os f el ti)v cro<j>iav tov 2tc(/>oVou, el tt\v TLtTpov
ykioTTav, kol tt)v IlavAov pvpiiv evvorjo-eie, 7rcos ovBev avrovs
e*f>epev, ovBev v</>ib-TaTo, ov B-ijpoiV dvpos, ov Tvpdvvotv eiravaaTci-
creis, ov Baip.6v(ov eiriftovXal, ov QdvaTOi Kadrj/xepivoi. a A A' dio-irep
roTa/xoi 7roAAw ToJ poi£(fi cftepo/xevoi, ovTdi TrdvTa irapao-vpovTes
d-n-Q'o-av. He then asks how, if the Spirit had never been given,
the prophets had prophesied, and replies^ 'AAA' yv avTrj 17 X"/° ts
wixrraAcura kol aVoorTao-a, koX diro Trjs yrjs aVoAiTrowra, oVo Trjs
rjpepas eKeivrjs, d<j> ys epprjOrj, 'A</> ieT a 1 6 ouos v fx w v
e prj pos' Kal irpo eKeivqs Be apx y l v eXdfxfSavev avTr) r) o"rrdvts'
cvKeTt yap irpo(firJTrjs Trap avTols r)v t ovBe eTrioTTTevev avrtoj/ to,
ayia y X^-P L< *' "Ettci ovv dveo-TaXTO pev to Tivevp.a to dytov,
ep.eXXeBe Xourov eK\eixrdaL Baxj/tXios, TavTys Be -rys Biavopys dp^y
juto. tov CTavpov eyivero, ov povov Ba\piXetas, aAAa Kal pei£6vu>v
yapicrpaTov' — Kal yap davpao-TOTepa yv y Btoped, ws oVai/ Xeyy,
Ov k oi6aT6 ttoIov it v e v p. a t o s ecTTe, Kal irdXiv, Ov
yap e Xdfte Te r vevpa BovXelas, d X X' e A a fi e t e
irvevLia vl odea-las' /cat yap ol iraXaiot. Kal auroi p,ev
irvevpa ei\ov y dAAois Be ov 7rdpet\ov, ol Be diroo-ToXoi pvpidBas
eveTrXrp-av' — eTreiSrj ovv Tavryv epeXXov Xap/Sdieiv ttjv \dpLV,
o»Va» Be yjv Bodeiaa, Bia tovto (f>ijcriv, O v it w yap rj v H v ev p.a
ay 1 or. 'E7rtt ovv 6 Kiynos irepl txi't^s A€yct tt]S \dptTos, 6
234 NOTE H.
evxyyeXicrTrjs e Xeyev, OvVw y a p rjv II v e v p a ay 10 v,
tovtcctti, 8o9ev, err el 'Irj cr ov s ov8eirio JSo£ao"#r>, 86£av
KaXiov tuv crTavpov. '^Trei8rj yap eyOpol r]pev /cat rjpbapTrjKoTes
Kal vo-Tfpovfievot ttjs 8wpeds tov Qeov, Kal 9eoo~Tvyels, r) 8e X^P LS
KaraWayrjs r]v cwroSet^t?, 8(opov 8e ov tois e^dpois, ov8e tois
pLicrovpevots-, aAAa tois cptXois 6Y6Wat Kal tois evapecrTrjKocriv, e8ei
Trporepov Trpo(r€V€)^6rjvat Tr)v virep r)pQ>v Ovcriav, Kal rrjv e^Opav ev
ry crapul KaTakvOt'jvai, Kal yevecrdai tov Qeov </>t'Aovs, Kal tot€
Xaf3elv rrjv 8o)peav.
Theodoret, who quotes this declaration concerning the gifts of
the Spirit several times, when allegorizing passages of the Old
Testament where waters are spoken of, shews a strong disposition
to apply it mainly to the Apostles and their successors, overlooking
that our Lord's promise is general, to them that believe in Him.
After the manner of the ancient Church, and indeed of all ages
of the Church, except the Apostolic and that of the Reformation,
he does not duly bear in mind the spiritual priesthood of every
Christian. Thus, in interpreting those words in the 65th Psalm,
Thou visitest the earth, and water est it: Thou greatly enrichest it
with the river of God, which is full of water, — he says, 1r)v TvdXai
aKapirov oiKOvpevrjv evKapirov 6p.ov Kal TroXvKapirov dve8et^ev o
AeaTTOTTjs, tois Setots o^erois rrjv dp8etav Trpoo-eveyKdov' d^erot 8e
Qeov irXrjpeis v8d.T(ov TtVes dv eTev erepot rj ol Qeloi dirocrToXoi ;
Tve.pi ujv 6 AecnroTrjS ecprj X/ho-tos, l O tt icr t ev mv els e/xe,
k a # to s elitev rj ypacprj, jrorapt Ik t ?/ s KoiAtas
avro v p ever ov cr i,v v Saros (wvtos' Kat TrdXiv, '0 irivoiv
e k tov v 8 a r o s o e y io 8 a>o~ <o avrw ov p, ^ 8l \L> ? j cr c t
els tov atwi/a" d A A' eo-rat to v8u>p 6 eya> 8 do o~ o>
avTOi Trriyrj v8aT0S £(ovtos dXXopievov els {(arjv
a I do v i o v. Kal 7roTap,bs 8e tov Qeov Kara tovs ej38oprJKOvTa rj
Xapts tov UvevpaTOS, r) els o^tous 8iaipovp:evq, Kal tovtco piev tov
Xoyov Ti]S crocpias irpox^ovara, hepoi 8e x o P r ]7°^ cra T V V yv<oo-iv t
aAAw 8e -Q>v lapaTwv ydpicrpa, Kal aXXy yevq yXcocrcruyv, Kal 8ta
TovTiav tt)v oiKovp,evr)v dp8evovo~a. Again on the 3rd verse of the
93rd Psalm, — The floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up
their waves,— he writes thus: IIoTa povs tovs lepovs d7roarToXovs
KaAei, Kat tovs peT eKeivovs 8e^apevovs to Kijpvypa' olirot yap
NOTE H. 235
urorapiov Siktjv airao-av av0/)W7rois rrjv dpSetav irpoo-qveyKav
ovTws avrot'5 Kal 6/zaKa/3ios 7r/^oc^?;yop€^'0■€l' , A/?/?a/co^'/A• 7rora/xo)v
p ay rf <r € t a l yrj, rovrccrri Staiptjd^creTai, Kal ttjv dpSeiav Se^eTaf
o'jtio Kal 6 Kvpios €</»}, *0 ir icr t e v iov els e/x e, — it o r a p. ol
Ik t ?) s KoiAias avrov p € vcr o v cr i v iloaros £'j)vto<5'
ovrot roiwv ol irorapiol Ir.rjpav avrdv ryv <jaavr]V, to. 6tia
Kt]pvTT0VT€<s 8oy/xaTa. Here we fiud the same propensity for
allegorizing circumstances ami details, which may almost be called
the predominant element in the exegesis of the Fathers, and which
is very different from the true spiritual and symbolical mode of
interpretation ; inasmuch as the latter fixes upon that which is
permanent and pervading, and regards the outward Creation as
expressing the purposes of the One All-pervading Will, uttering
itself harmoniously in all its manifestations; while the former
attaches itself to that which is accidental and external and fleeting,
and loses sight of the idea, while chasing the butterflies of fancy.
The symbolical and spiritual mode of interpretation may be ex-
emplified by St. John's declaration, that our Lord's promise of the
rivers of living water was spoken of the Spirit, which believers in Him
were to receive. Thus ,the promise, as being wholly spiritual, both
with regard to its condition and its blessing, is shewn to belong to
all ages of the Church, and to every individual believer, and becomes
a source of comfort to all: and in this sense it never has failed,
and never will fail, but is fulfilled at this day in all parts of the
earth, wherever a true believer in Christ is to be found. In
like manner even such passages of Scripture, as were spoken
primarily concerning the operations of external nature, — for
instance, those cited from the Psalms, — will often admit of a
spiritual application, in consequence of that harmony and corre-
spondence, through which the natural world is in so many things
the symbol of the spiritual. But to hunt for types of that which
is incidental and transient is a capricious exercise of the iutellect,
and a habit injurious to the perception of true spiritual realities ;
while, by restricting the words of Scripture to particular applications,
it sadly impairs their power: the rivers of living water shrink into
dried pools. Now this habit of mind is unfortunately very common
among tbfl I'.rhors, as it was among the contemporary rhetoricians
and grammarians, who exercise the same kind of transmutations
236 NOTE H.
upon Homer, as the Fathers are apt to exercise upon the Bible.
Hence, while we owe them a grateful recognition of the services
which they rendered to the Church, by their exertions, intellectual
and moral, for the settling and upholding of the orthodox faith, we
should beware of allowing our gratitude and reverence to delude us
into following the vagaries and meanderings of their fancies.
In the Treatise of Athanasius On the Incarnation of the Word,
where he is shewing that the expression in Scripture, which speak
of the exaltation and glorification of Christ, refer to His human
nature, we read (§. 3) : kcu ore Ae'yei, O v 7r to tj v Hvevfxa dyiov,
6'ti 'Ir](rovs ov8e7ra) e8o£dcr6r), rr)v adpKa olvtov Xkyei inqirw
So^acrdeicrav. ov yap 6 Kv/nos rrjs Sd^s So£a£eTcu, aA/V rj (rap£
tov Kvpiov rys Sd^s, avrrj Xapfidvei So^af (rvvavafJaivovcra clvto)
ets ovpavov. odev Kal TivevLia vtoOecrtas oxnroi r}v kv dvOp^irots,
oioTt ti Xr](f)0eio~a avrap^y l£ fjpiov ovtt(x) rjv dveXOovcra els ovpavov.
These words do not pretend to be a full explanation; but they
contain the germs of the true one. At least it is through the Spirit
of adoption that all the other graces of the Spirit are poured out,
like rivers of living water, on those who through faith in Christ are
received as the children of God.
Gregory Nazianzen, in his Oration on the day of Pentecost
(§. xi.), — after speaking of the operation of the Spirit in the
Patriarchs and the Prophets, (Sv ol p.lv k^pavTacrdyo-av Qebv, rj
eyvwcrai/, ol 8e Kal to LieXXov 7rpoeyv(oo-av TV7rovp.€VOLTCo TLvc.vp.aTi
to i]yep.ovLKov, Kal ws irapovo-i crvvovres rots Icro/xei/ois, — says that
with Christ's disciples He was present rpio-o-uis, KaO' ovov oibi tc
yo-av \inpeZv, /cat Kara Kaipovs Tpd<s' irplv Sogao-dyvat XpioTov
toT iradei' jxera rb 8o^acr9rjvat rfj avao-Taxrei' Liera Tqv els ovpavovs
dvdfiacriv, yf diroKardo-Tao-iv. — SyXoi Se t) 7rp(orr] twv vdcrwv Kal y)
ro)v 7rv€vp.aT(i)v KaOapcris, ovk dvev Uvevp:aros SriXaSr} yevoiievy
kcu to pera ttjv o'lKovofxiav ip.(fivcrr]pLa, crac/nos ov eLnrvevcns
Oeiorlpa' Kal 6 vvv p.epiarfxbs twj/ 7rvpiviov yXom-o-Qtv. — ctAAa to
pXv 7rp<o-ov dfivSpior to Se Sevrepbv ekrviruTepov' to 8e vvv
reXeurepov, ovk en evepyeia 7rapbv, a>s vpoTepov, ovrnoSios Se, ws
av eiiTot tls, crvyyivo/xevov re Kal o-vpLTroXirevoLLtvov. Thus the
craving after a sign manifests itself in the exaltation of the firy
tongues as the chief of all the manifestations of the Spirit.
NOTE H. 23'
A like exaggeration of the outward gift, with an idle numerical
allegorizing, is found in Gregory the Great's Homily, on the Octave
of the Passover (n. 36. §. 3). " Quaerendum nobis est, quid est quod
Spiritum Sanctum Dominus noster et semel dedit in terra consistens,
et semel coelo praesidens ? Neque enim alio in loco datus Spiritus
Sanctus aperte monstratur, nisi nunc cum per insufflationem per-
cipitur, et postmodum cum de coelo veniens in Unguis varus demon-
strate. Cur ergo prius in terra discipulis datur, postmodum de
coelo mittitur, nisi quod duo sunt praecepta caritatis, dilectio scilicet
Dei, et dilectio proximi ? In terra datur Spiritus, ut diligatur Deus.
Sicut ergo una est caritas, et duo praecepta ; ita unus Spiritus, et
duo data. Prius a consistente Domino in terra, postmodum e coelo ;
quia in proximi amore discitur, qualiter perveuiri debeat ad amorem
Dei. — Et ante quidem discipulorum mentibus idem Spiritus Sanctus
inerat ad fidem, sed tamen manifesta datione non nisi post resurrec-
tionem datus est. Unde et script um est : Nondum erat Spiritus
datus, quia Jesus nondum erat glorificatus" The art of reasoning
might be supposed to have become extinct, when the first men of the
age were found continually indulging in such dreamy non-sequiturs.
By Thomas Aquinas the stress of the distinction is still laid ou
the visible manifestation of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. In
his Summa {Prima Secundae, xliii. 6) he argues the question,
* Utrum missio invisibilis fiat ad omnes qui sunt participes gratiae,"
and after maintaining the negative, on the ground that " patres
Veteris Testament! gratiae participes fuerunt ; sed ad illos non
videtur fuisse facta missio invisibilis ; dicitur enim, Nondum erat
Spiritus datus, qui nondum erat Jesus glorificatus" he replies,
"Quod missio invisibilis est facta ad patres Veteris Testamenti:
unde dicit Augustinus, Quod secundum quod Filius mittitur
invisibiliter, fit in hominibus, aut cum hominibus. Hoc autem
autea factum est in patribus et prophetis. Cum ergo dicitur,
Nondum erat datus Spiritus, intelligimus de ilia datione cum signo
visibili, quae facta est in die Pentecostes." Such logical antitheses
will seldom lead to a satisfactory result in anything so complex as
I matter of words in ordinary speech and writing.
Thus in this instance again, as in so many others, if we desire to
see the living power of the words of Scripture set forth in their
spiritual simplicity and depth, we must come down to the age of the
: iuation. Luther, as he is wont, goes straight to the heart of the
238 NOTE H.
truth, in the Exposition of the sixth, seventh and eighth Chapters of
St John, which was compiled by Aurifaber out of a course of
Sermons preacht in 1531. Let us hear him interpreting the rivers of
living water: he cannot confound them with the outward gift of
tongues. "Rivers shall flow, water that gives life. Whoso comes to
Me, I will so fashion him, that he shall not only be cheered and
refresht in his own person, so that he may quench his thirst, and
become free from thirst ; but I will make him into a strong stone
vessel, will give him the Holy Ghost and gifts, so that he shall flow
out upon others, shall give them to drink, shall comfort and
strengthen them, and shall help many, as he has been helpt by Me ;
as St Paul says in 2 Cor. i. 4. Thus our Lord Christ will make
another man of him who comes to Him, than Moses could
make.
" Under the Papacy we mad saints made one rule after another ;
and there was no end of our laws: we merely terrified the conscience
and made it thirsty: the preachers only increast the thirst. It
could not be otherwise. When merit-mongers teach, they add one
thirst to another, and spin one law out of another, so that there is no
end or stoppage of laws ; as we then experienced far too much.
Every year there was a new doctor ; and the simpletons only
tormented the conscience. For instance this was a solemn law, that
a, person was not to touch a corporal or a chalice : they devised all
manner of mortal sins : a monk durst not go without his hood. For
these teachers could not do otherwise ; since they wanted to govern
the world by laws : hence from one law grew many others : for
casus sunt infniti ; and out of a law a hundred glosses were made.
This is the way with the Jurists. They are ever changing, patch-
ing, and mending : et sic multiplicantur leges in infantum. Just as
a snowball, which slips down a roof or a hill, is small when it sets
out, but gathers more and more snow in rolling, and becomes so big,
that, when it falls from a roof or a hill, if a child stand in the
way, and the snowball hit him, he will be killed ; so was it under
the Papacy with laws and human ordinances. First there was St
Benedict's order ; then that of the Barefoot Friars ; and afterward
out of the Barefoot Friars spawned seven other orders, and became
the servants of Moses. When these things begin to make one thirst,
it does not cease ; they cannot quench our thirst.
" But Christ does the reverse, and does not cease to comfort us,
NOTE H. 239
and not only gives us to drink for ourselves, but through our means
quenches that thirst in others which the Law has excited. And the
more the Gospel is preacht, the more richly is men's thirst quencht,
and the more do the thirty relish it. Therefore he who believes in
Christ, and drinks from Him, can also give to others, and cheer aud
refresh them. Even if all the world were standing before him, he
cau speak such words, that all shall be comforted. This is what our
Lord means, when He says, He will give them to drink, not with a
spoonful, or with a funnel and a tap ; but whole rivers of comfort
shall they have ; and they shall be full to overflowing with all power
and riches for all that thirst. Thus a pious pastor can comfort all
who are in their sins, so as to take away their sins : however great
and many they may be, with one saying he puffs away all sin : and
when death and war are at hand, a preacher can strengthen a whole
army, so that they shall cast away death and not care for it. This
is because he can dash it away with one word of comfort. With
what ? with the water of life.
" Thus does Christ mean that the preaching of His Gospel is a
river of life wherewith man shall be refresht. It does not seem so ;
for the matter is simple. You may hear, or read, or preach ; and I
only hear the poor sound of a voice, and see a poor letter in a book,
and have the thought in my heart. Yet that same word which is
preacht, has such a hidden power, that, in the devil's kingdom,
where he rules mightily, it will sweep devils by shoals out of the
heart, as the Elbe sweeps down chaff. He knows well why He calls
God's word a river. For it does great things, aud many ; it rushes
along. Thus did St Peter on the day of Pentecost, when with one
sermon, as with a torrent, he swept and bore away three thousand
souls out of the devil's kingdom, delivering them in one hour,
washing them from death and sin and Satan. This makes no show ;
but the word has such a power ; the stream refresht them and bore
them along. Now they, who come to the Gospel and to Christ, shall
have this honour, that they shall render this excellent service.
Fathers and mothers may comfort their servants, their children, and
neighbours, and teach them not to fear or be cast down, and may
help them ; for out of their body flows liviug water, that shall
-h the dear souls in all their wants and sufferings.
- This saying should be noted against the Anabaptists and
sectaries, or revilers of the oral word, who maintain that the
240 NOTE 11.
spirit and faith # are internal, and therefore that the spiritual
word must do all, — that, if God does not give His comfort, the
outward word is nothing, as the Pope also has pretended ; and they
would cut off the bodily voice and the outward word from our ears,
saying that preaching is nothing but a poor noise in the pulpit, also
that baptism is a mere sprinkling of water, and that in the Lord's
Supper there is mere bread and wine. But what says the Lord
Christ? He says, He who believes in Me, and comes to Me, and
drinks at My hand, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
What is here meant by belly, or body ? It means that the Christian
shall be able bodily to counsel and help others. How can he do
this 1 O ! the oral word can do more than you are worthy to see
and perceive. Where are the sectaries who say, the word can do
nothing 1 You hear that it is a river which gives life. The oral
word is a liviug word ; this they have never experienced ; but I
know it well, and have found it so in distress and temptation.
I feel that by the word life is given to me, as it is said in the Psalm
(cxix. 50) : This is my comfort in my affliction ; for Thy word has
quickened me. A man will help me with a word, so that I feel
alive. Thus I too may counsel another with Christ's word, and
give him to drink, so that he gains courage, and grows sound, nay,
is converted, if he lies in errour.
" Thus does our Lord Christ say of the oral word, that in a
Christian brother it shall be living water, so that, if a man believes,
he is already comforted and strengthened ; yet the godless boobies
would despise it, and say, it is an outward thing. That a sow
would know. But this word gives life. Note this, that if God's
word proceeds out of a believing mouth, the words are living, and can
save man from death, can forgive sins, can raise to heaven ; and if
you believe them, you are comforted and strengthened ; for they are
rivers of life. Moreover, what is still more comfortable and greater,
a true Christian cannot preach wrongly ; Christ will not let him err :
all that he teaches' and says must be pure water ; they are living,
comforting words. And he who believes, let him be assured that he
will preach the articles of faith rightly ; he will not preach ill ; as
is said in another place, He who believes in Christ, non dicet anathema
Jesum. Thus, if faith in the heart be sincere, the words will also be
profitable : for faith in the heart will not let us preach save what is
right and true.
NOTE 11. 241
•' Therefore are we to hold the word of God in honour and high
esteem ; for it brings forth much fruit. And though it does not
this straightway in the rude and ungodly, it does so in the thirsty :
they who receive it overflow, and are quickened thereby with a
river. On the other hand he who fails in this article, and does not
believe in Christ, must not think that he can preach or utter one
good word. Even if it be clear and shining, it is not this living
water. Hence it is of great moment that we should learn to know
; for then we shall not err : the same doctrine will give life
and comfort. Other doctrines are mere poison, are no drink, do not
queuch thirst, but are dirty, stinking, muddy puddles. Thus God
says in the prophet Jeremiah (ii. 13) : My people have committed two
: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, and hewn
them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. —
" Now the Jews were accustomed, in the Scriptures, to such
sayings about rivers of water : but John interprets it, and says,
He did not speak of natural water, but of the Spirit which believers
in Him were to receive. — Christ did not interpret the well or rivers of
water : but this was His meaning. The rivers are the Holy Ghost ;
and they who have received the Gospel and the Holy Ghost, can
comfort, instruct, warn, yea, benefit the whole world, and help to
the destruction of eternal death, and to the attainment of eternal
life.—
" And then follows, For the Holy Ghost was not yet. At the
time when Christ preacht, He promist the Holy Ghost ; and
therefore the Holy Ghost was not yet. Not that He did not yet
ssentially, in heaven ; but He was not yet in His manifesta-
tation and working. For this is the peculiar work and office of the
Holy Ghost, to manifest and glorify Christ, to preach and bear
witness of Him. This office did not yet exist, the office of glorifying
Christ ; that is, the preaching of the forgiveness of sins, and how
men shall be delivered from death, and have comfort and joy in
Christ, and how this belongs to us, — was at that time unheard and
uuuttered. That salvation, blessedness, righteousness, joy, and life
were to be given to us by the man Christ, was not known. He
promises it here, and proclaims that in Him men are to believe,
and that whoso believes shall have what He promises. One must
not fall into such senseless thoughts as to suppose that the Holy
Ghost was only created after Christ's resurrection from the dead :
Q
242 NOTE H.
what is written here is, The Holy Ghost was not yet, that is, was
not in His office. It was still the time of the old sermon, and of
the Law, whereof we continually say and preach, that it is necessary
to distinguish between the sermon of the Gospel and that of the Law.
For when the law is preacht, it is a sermon that brings out sin :
it is a thirsty and sorry sermon : it makes hungry souls, terrified,
dismal, sorry hearts and consciences, which sigh after God's grace.
This sermon continues until Christ is raised from the dead and
glorified ; and under it is thirst, poverty, want, and neither counsel
nor help. For then people say, Thou hast done this ; thou hast left
this undone; therefore thou art given up to death, and under the
wrath of God: as we ourselves have experienced, who concerned
ourselves thereabout. — Such was the case in our Lord's days. If
a sermon was good, it ran thus : He who wishes to be pious and blessed
must keep the Law. But how one could get to keep the Law, or how
those could be saved, who had not kept it, and could not boast of
any good works, no one knew : for the Holy Ghost was not yet-
come ; Christ was not yet glorified."
Well indeed did Luther know the power of God s word, the
power which goes along with it when it is truly the sword of
the Spirit. He knew it, as he here tells us, from what he himself
had felt : in fact he could not have spoken of it as he does, except
from personal experience. He knew it also from the effect which
he had often seen it produce, when it issued with the power of the
Spirit from his own lips. So far too as any written words can yield
us a conception of that power, and realize the description he gives of
it, his do. As he himself has somewhere said of St Paul's words,
they are not dead words, but living creatures, and have hands and
feet. It no longer surprises us that the man who wrote and spoke
thus, although no more than a poor monk, should have been mightier
than the Pope, and the Emperor to boot, with all their hosts eccle-
siastical and civil, — that the rivers of living water which issued
from him, should have swept half Germany, and in course of time
the chief part of northern Europe, out of the kingdom of darkness
into the region of evangelical light. No day in spring, when life
seems bursting from every bud, and gushing from every. pore, is
fuller of life than his pages ; and if they are not without the strong
breezes of spring, these too have to bear their part in the work of
purification. The foregoing extract is taken, as has been stated,
XOTE H. 243
from a course of homilies on three chapters of St John, which was
publisht by Aurifaber as a running Commentary. Most of his
exegetical works had a similar origin ; the marks of which are
apparent in their vivid practical applications to the circumstances
and exigencies of the Church in his age.
Calvin's Commentaries on the other hand, although they too are
almost entirely doctrinal and practical, taking little note of critical
and philological questions, keep much closer to the text, and make
it their one business to bring out the meaning of the words of Scrip-
ture with fulness and precision. This they do with the excellence
, of a master richly endowed with the word of wisdom and with
the word of knowledge : and from the exemplary union of
a "severe, masculine understanding with a profound insight
into the spiritual depths of the Scriptures, they are especially
calculated to be useful in counteracting the erroneous tendencies
of an age, when we seem about to be inundated with all that
is most fantastical and irrational in the exegetical mysticism of
the Fathers, and are bid to see divine power in allegorical cobwebs,
and heavenly life in artificial flowers. I do not mean to imply an
adoption or approval of all Calvin's views, whether on doctrinal or
other questions. But we may happily owe much gratitude and love,
and the deepest intellectual obligations, to those whom at the same
time we may deem to be mistaken on certain points. Perhaps it
may be better for our frail human affections, that there is no one
who is not so : else I know not how we should be able to repress
that proneness to idolatry, which led men to the worship of heroes
in the Heathen world, and to the worship of saints in the corrupt
ages of the Christian.
In his exposition of the passage we have been considering in the
seventh Chapter of St John, Calvin of course takes the right,
spiritual view. He says of the promise that rivers of living water
shall flow out of him who believes in Christ, " Docet hie Christus
plenam copiam sibi suppetere, qua nos ad satietatem reficiat. Est
quidem satis dura in speciem metaphora, cum fluvios aquae vivae e
ventre fidelium fluxuros esse dicit : sensus tamen minime dubius est,
quod nihil spiritualium bonorum unquam def uturum sit credentibus.
Aquam vivam nominat, cujus scaturigo nunquam arescit, nee desinit
mius fluxus. Fluvio8 plurali numero vocari interpretor
multiplices Spiritus gratias, quae ad spiritualem animae vitam
244 NOTE H.
necessariae sunt. In gumma hie tarn perpetuitas donorum Spiritus,
quam afnuentia nobis promittitur. Quidam de ventre credentium
aquas fluere intelligunt, cum is qui Spiritu donatus est partem ad
fratres suos derivat, ut mutua esse debet inter nos communicatio.
Sensus tamen mihi simplicior videtur, quod quisquis in Christum
credet fontem vitae quasi in se scaturientem habebit ; quemadmodum
supra dicebat Christus, Qui biberit ex aqua hac non sitiet unquam.
Nam cum ordinarius potus sitim nonnisi ad breve tempus restinguat,
Christus fide nos haurire dicit Spiritum, qui fons sit aquae salientis
in vitam aeternam. Neque tamen sic primo die fideles Christo
saturos esse docet, ut postea non esuriant neque sitiant : quin potius
Christi fruitio novum ejus desiderium accendit. Sed sensus est,
Spiritum instar vivi et semper irrigui fontis esse in credentibus ;
quemadmodum et Paulus (ad Eom. viii. 10) testatur ipsum esse in
nobis vitam, quamvis adhuc in reliquiis peccati mortis materiam
circumferamus. Et sane cum quisque pro fidei suae mensura
donorum Spiritus compos fiat, non potest in hac vita solida eorum
plenitudo constare. Verum sic fideles in fide proficiendo subinde
ad nova Spiritus incrementa aspirant, ut primitiae quibus imbuti
sunt illis ad vitae perpetuitatem sufneiant. Sed hinc etiam monemur
quam exiguus sit fidei nostrae modulus, cum vix guttatim in nobis
destillent Spiritus gratiae, quae instar numinum profluerent, si
justum Christo locum daremus, hoc est, fides nos ejus capaces
redderet."
And then he adds, on the words Nondum erat Spiritus :
u Scimus aeternum esse Spiritum : sed Evangelista illam Spiritus
gratiam quae post Christi resurrectionem effusa fuit in homines,
quamdiu sub humili servi forma versatus est Christus in mundo,
palam exstitisse negat. Et comparative quidem loquitur, sicuti cum
opponitur Novum Testamentum Veteri. Deus Spiritum suum
fidelibus promittit, acsi nunquam enm Patribus dedisset. Jam turn
certe primitias Spiritus acceperant discipuli. Nam unde fides nisi a
Spiritu ? Ergo non simpliciter negat evangelista gratiam
Spiritus ante Christi. mortem piis fuisse exhibitam, sed nondum ita
illustrem et conspicuam tunc fuisse ut postea futura erat. Est
enim hoc praecipuum regni Christi decus, quod Spiritu suo
Ecclesiam gubernat. Atqui justam et quasi solennem regni sui
possessionem tunc adiit, cum evectus est ad Patris dexteram. Non
mirum ergo si plenam Spiritus exhibitionem ad illud tempus
SO TEH. 245
distill it. Superest tamen una quaestio : num hie visibiles Spiritus
gratias, an vero regenerationem intelligat, quae adoptionis est
fructu3. Respondeo, in donis illis visibilibus tanquani in speculis
Spiritum apparuisse, qui adventu Christi promissus fuerat ; proprie
tamen hie agi de virtute Spiritus, qua renasciraur in Christo, ac
efficimur novae creaturae. Quod ergo nunc Christus ad Patris
dexterani gloriosus sunimaque imperii majestate praeditus sedet, nos
in terra inopes et jejuni ac prope inanes bonorum spiritualium
jacemus, tarditati et angustiis fidei nostrae imputandum est."
It is surprising that, after this excellent exposition of our passage,
Beza should have departed from his master's interpretation, and
should have said in his note, " Quid Spiritum Sanctum vocet, eodem
versiculo exponitur, nempe visibilia ilia dona, quae initio nascentis
Ecclesiae excellenter viguerunt, ut praedixerat Joel, ii ; et
fi€T(ovv/j.LK(os intelliguntur Spiritus Sancti appellatione, quod sint
ejus effecta, ut docet Apostolus, 1 Cor. xii. pene integro, et Act. xix.
2, et deinceps, et plurimis aliis locis." It is true, if the 39th verse
stood alone, one might then be readier to suppose that the Spirit to
be received by believers in Christ after his glorification was intended
by the Evangelist to refer to the miraculous powers which we
read of as having been bestowed on the day of Pentecost ; although
even then the expression ou e/xeXXov Xa/xfSdveiv ol no-Tcv-VTes els
avTov, would seem to imply that the gift of the Spirit was to be
granted to all believers in Christ, and was to be coextensive
with the faith in him ; which cannot be predicated of the
miraculous powers. But when we take this verse in conjunction
with our Lord's declaration, which it is introduced to explain, — If
any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink: he that believeth in
Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water: — these words, it
seems to me, prove convincingly that the gift of the Spirit must be
•omething inward, manifesting itself indeed outwardly, but dwelling
in the heart and soul. Surely the rivers of living water flowing out
of the heart answer far better to the fruits of the Spirit enumerated
in that beautiful verse of the Epistle to the Galatians, than to the
gift of tongues, or the power of working miracles.
Cartwright on the other hand, in his JIarmonia Evangelica, — an
able and pious book, though disfigured and hurt by its scholastic
form and technical subdivisions, — explains the tl rivos et fontes
tobe"foutem remissionis peccatorum etc. fontem
246 NOTE H.
justitiae, fontem sapientiae, foiitem sanctitatis etc. denique summam
omnium bonorum ad vitam abundantiam, ut non sit necesse aliunde
quid petere quo suppleamus quod ab illo non suppeditatur. — Prae-
terea notandum est discrimen Legis et Evangelii, non substantia
Spiritus, sed in adjuncta mensura parciore et largiore ; guttatim olim,
quod nunc profluenter ; scintillatim olim, quod nunc per prunas ;
stellatim olim, quod nunc solis in modum. Siclus noster et cubitus
et spithama, Homer, Epha sunt sanctuarii, id est, duplum ejus
quod olim fuit." By an unhappy expression indeed, into which
his technical phraseology leads him, he more than once calls these
gifts of the Spirst " efectumjidei;" which would seem to imply gross
errour concerning the nature and power of Faith, as though it
caused and produced, what it merely receives and appropriates
Such errours have often prevailed, and have prepared the way ulti-
mately for the denial of all substantial reality in the objects of
Faith, converting religion, according to one view, into a product of
human feeling, — according to another, into a product of human
reason. This however is not Cartwright's view : for he says,
" Sicut in solo Christo vitae aqua conclusa tenetur, ita sola fide
tanquam situla aut haustro inde petitur. Nullum est vas quo haec
aqua capiatur praeter fidem." These words rightly express the
office of Faith ; which receives the seeds of grace from the Spirit,
and then brings forth the graces of a Christian life, rich in the fruit
of good works. But the notion that Faith itself, as a mere human
faculty, is the creative principle of all good, is so fascinating from its
tendency to magnify man's heart and mind, that we need to keep
watch against every approach of it.
Hammond on this point is sensible, though he is never profound.
Indeed he professes " purposely to abstain from all doctrinal con-
clusions and deductions and definitions." In his paraphrase he
thus renders our Lord's words in the 38th verse : " He that
believeth in Me shall be like a spring of water, whose water by
conduits shall from within break forth in great abundance, that
is, being filled with the Spirit of Christ, shall not be able to con-
tain, but break forth into all Christian actions, and preach the
Gospel with all zeal." Again, in his note on Acts i. 5, he says
that, "beside the special uses of the Holy Ghost's descending on
the Apostles, one common, constant use there was also, which
belonged to all Christians, not only Apostles (as appears by John
NOTE H. 247
vii. 39, where Christ mentions the Spirit, which not only the
Apostles, but believers in common, i. e. all Christians, should
receive after His Ascension), the giving them strength to perform
what God now required of them." Only in conformity with the
meagre theology, with which so great a body of our divines in his
days, and from thence downward, were infected, he almost seems to
limit the gift of the Holy Ghost to believers to that which they
receive at their Baptism ; although his views of the baptismal gift
are of a much soberer cast than the air-blown phantoms which have
recently dazzled and bewildered so many. Both views however
appear to have this errour in common, that they both of them
concentrate and condense the operation of the Spirit into a single
magical moment, an electric transmuting flash, and comparatively
disregard His perpetual abiding influence and operation, whereby
He prompts and helps us in all our struggles against the principle
of evil within us and without. Again, in the Note on Acts ii. 38,
Hammond asks concerning the gifts of the Holy Ghost promist by
St Peter to the new converts, " what gifts these were, whether
inward or outward ? For both these are promist indefinitely to
believers. To the inward, that speech of Christ seems to pertain,
He that believeth on Me, out of his belli/ shall flow rivers of living
water; where, the belly denoting the heart or inward part of the
man, the flowing of the living water from thence denotes some effect
of the Holy Spirit's descent upon and in the hearts of believers. —
What this inward gift is, appears in several places, wisdom (Acts
vi. 3), knowledge (1 Cor. xii. 8) ; and so likewise the assistances o
God's Spirit, joined with His word, enabling humble, sincere
Christians for the duties of Christian life, which are required of
them. — Now for the resolving of the query, what sort of gift is here
meant, the surest way will be, not so to define of either as to exclude
the other; not that both, and every branch of each should be poured
on each believer, but that they all should be scattered among them,
the inward by baptism or confirmation signed on all, and the outward
bestowed on some of them."
In Bull's Harmonia Apostolica there is a chapter, the 11th of
the second Dissertation, treating on the want of the Spirit under the
Law, and on the grant of the Spirit under what he calls the Evan-
gelical Covenant with Abraham. On our immediate question how-
tie scarcely touches, taking no notice of our Lord's declaration
248 NOTE H.
that the coming of the Comforter must be subsequent to His
Ascension, and merely citing the passage we have been considering
(John vii. 38), without any reference to its contents. As to the
general worth of Bull's Treatise, which has been a good deal over-
praised, I shall have occasion to speak, God willing, in the notes on
the Victory of Faith. In the chapter on the gift of the Spirit, his
conclusions are not very satisfactorily establisht. He tries to make
out that the Covenant spoken of in the 29th and 30th chapters of
Deuteronomy is wholly distinct from that on Sinai, and identical
with the Gospel : but in so doing he passes over the marks which
prove it to be essentially and totally different from the Gospel,
namely, that it is a Covenant, that the blessings are promist on
certain conditions, so as to make it a Covenant of works, and that
the blessings themselves are mainly temporal. Wherefore Davison
has well observed in his fourth Discourse on Prophecy, when speak-
ing of this latter portion of the book of Deuteronomy, " that there
is a perfect conformity between the Law and the Prophecy of
Moses. The Law was founded on explicit temporal sanctions : his
prophecy dilates explicitly upon the temporal subject, the scheme of
earthly blessings and earthly evils. The prophecy indeed is no more
than a full and graphic exemplification of the actual sanctions of
the Law."
Again Bull applies the great prophecy of Jeremiah concerning the
outpouring of the Spirit to what he here terms " the Moabite Cove-
nant;" whereas that prophecy, according to the very nature of
prophecy, speaks of that which was to be in times to come, not of a
Covenant which had been made long before. In fact it proves the
very reverse of that which it is adduced to prove ; inasmuch as it
announces a future dispensation, which was to be wholly unlike the
past, in this respect more especially, that it was to be a dispensation
of the Spirit.
A further defect in this chapter, and one connected with the main
argument of Bull's whole treatise, is the stress laid on the word
Foedus, or Covenant, by which 8iadrji<r), when applied to the Gospel,
has been so inappropriately and unfortunately rendered. For every
scholar knows that StaO^Kij is a word of much more extensive signi-
fication than covenant, — which in Greek would rather be exprest by
a-vvdrjK 7), — and that it corresponds more nearly to disposition or
dispensation, embracing testamentary dispositions, and all others,
NOTE H. 249
without implying any kind of reciprocity or condition, which is
necessarily involved in a covenant. Hence St Paul, in his Epistle
to the Galatians, strongly urges the difference between the Covenant
of the Law, — The. man that doeth these things shall live in them, —
and the free dispensation of Grace, by promise, ££ eVayyeAias,
without a mediator, as coming solely from One, that is, God. Yet
in this very passage, where St Paul is expressly denying that the
evangelical dispensation is a covenant, 8ta$i]Kfj is twice rendered a
covenant, in vv. 15. 17. Nor is this a mere verbal errour. Long
trains of reasoning have been grounded upon it ; and it has sadly
obscured the perception of the freedom of the Gospel.
With regard to our present question Bull says, that the Spirit
was given under the Law, but not through the Law, and that under
the Law He was given "parce admodum et restricte, sub Evangelio
largiter atque effusissime.'' But, when he comes to the manner of
this abundant outpouring, he too dwells chiefly on the miraculous
operations of the Spirit, even saying that St Paul makes use of this
argument, " argumento plane apodictico," to establish his doctrine of
Justification by Faith, without the works of the Mosaic Law. By a
strange mistake in the New Oxford Translation, Bull's words,
"Apostolum alicubi doctrinam suam — stabilitum ire, etc." are
rendered, " The Apostle always endeavours to establish his doctrine
of Justification by Faith, — by those conspicuous gifts of the Spirit,
which ever followed faith in the Gospel"* (p. 140). Anything so
* If always in this passage is meant to represent alicubi, the blunder is so
gross, that one is tempted to suppose the Translator must have had some
other word in the text before him. But the fact, and the context, — in
which only one passage of St Paul is adduced,— seem to preclude such a
supposition ; and if I may judge from the few sentences in this one chapter,
in which I have compared the translation with the original, no marks of
ignorance in it need surprise us. For instance, where Bull says that the
Spirit was given under the Law, but not through the Law, "quippe haec
gratia mutuo erat accepta ac sumpta de gratia Evangelica," that is, "inas-
much as this grace was borrowed and taken (by a sort of anticipation) from
the grace of the Gospel," the translation gives, "since this grace was
mutually given and received as derived from the grace of the Gospel " (p.
138) ; making utter nonsense of the passage ;— for how can divine grace be
mutually given and received J we cannot give it to God ; nor can God receive
it from us :— and shewing that the Translator is ignorant of the idiomatic use
/><re and dare. A few lines further on, where Bull states
that, under the Old Covenant, God gave the grace of His Spirit "parce
250 NOTE H.
utterly contrary to the fact Bull could not say : he did not write
semper, always, but alicubi, somewhere: and he refers to a single
instance, Gal. iii. 2 : which however no way bears him out. For St
Paul there is uot using an argument to prove the truth of his
doctrine, but appealing to a fact in order to stir his readers. Nor is
there any ground for supposing that the gift of the Spirit to the
Galatians had conveyed any miraculous power to them : but it con-
veyed what was far more precious, a power which, as he says two
verses after, enabled them to suffer many things for the sake of the
Gospel, and which made them receive him as an angel of God, and
filled them with blessedness. It is a curious instance how a prepos-
session will blind a man, that a candid, laborious, thoughtful writer
like Bishop Bull, though thoroughly familiar with the Epistles to
the Galatians and to the Romans, should have persuaded himself
that the miraculous outward gifts of the Spirit are the clenching
argument, " argumentum plane apodicticum," by which St Paul
demonstrates the truth of his doctrine concerning Justification by
Faith. To so few is it given to see anything, except what they are
looking for. Nevertheless in this very chapter Bull recognises the
admodum et restricted the Translator says that He gave it "in small and
moderate portions ; " where it is plain that he did not know the meaning of so
common a word as admodum, but fancied it was somehow equivalent to
moderate. Again, where Bull says that, though there is no promise of the
Holy Spirit in the Law, we often read of the Holy Spirit, as being promist
and obtained, "in Hagiographis et Scriptis propheticis, quae nomine Legis et
Veteris Testamenti laxius sumpto non raro veniunt^ the Translator renders
these words thus : "for in the Holy Scriptures which go under the general
name of the Old Testament, &c." That is to say, not knowing how the name
dyiaypacpoi was applied to designate those books of the Old Testament,
which were not comprehended under the name of the Law and the Prophets,
he fancied in Hagiographis meant in the Holy Scriptures; and was not even
startled out of his fancy by seeing his author mention the Scripta prophetica
along with them, as distinct from them, but quietly omitted these words ;
and then, being puzzled to find out the gist of the next clause, he resolved to
leave out half the words, and cut it down to quae nomine Veteris Testamenti
veniunt, rendering it utterly unmeaning. These blunders pickt out of about
a dozen sentences, in which I have been led to examine the translation, may
be attributable to the former Translator ; but the Editor, who professes to
have "revised it very carefully," ought to have corrected them. Else, if
those sentences are any sample of the work, it would have been better to leave
Bishop Bull in his old Latin dress, where his words have a meaning, and
well express what he intended.
NOTE H. 251
moral working of the Spirit as the great blessing which He confers
upon mankind : "Absque enim divina ilia ac potente Spiritus Sancti
vi atque efficacia fieri omnino non potest, ut quis a vitiis purgetur,
aut a dominatrice vi ac tyrannide peccati liberetur, nedum ut ad
egregiam illam sanctitatem, ad opera ilia vere heroica, quae tanto
praemio, quantum est aeternae vitae donum, aliquatenus conveniant,
alacri constantique animo feratur."* He further recognises that, in
this very respect, although some persons under the Law had been
favoured with high gifts of the Spirit, yet "paucis istis sub Lege
evaserunt quamplurimi sub Evangelio donis Spiritus Sancti atque
admirabili vitae sanctitate pares, imo longe superiores." Indeed, if
such supernatural powers, as that of working miracles, and that of
prophecy, were the highest gifts of the Spirit, we should be forced
to confess that He was given far more abundantly to the Jewish
Church, than he ever has been to the Christian since the age of the
Apostles : and this of itself would be argumentum plane apodicti-
cum, though only cumulative over and above many others, to prove
that the rivers of living water promist by our Lord to faith are the
inward gifts of the Spirit, not the outward.
Many divines of this age were indeed led by their dislike of the
Puritans and the Sectaries to look with jealousy and disfavour on all
assertions of spiritual influences. This however was not the case
with Bull, although his writings are a good deal tinged with the
Arminiauism, which in his days had become the prevalent doctrine
in our Church. In his third Discourse he gives a clear and judicious
account of the workings of the Spirit : and these Discourses, which
were publisht along with his Sermons after his death, must be taken
* The latter half of this sentence also is very poorly rendered in the Oxford
Translation: "Without the— power — of the Spirit, no man can be freed
from his lusts,— far lets be excited with any constant cheerfulness to those truly
heroic actions which are in some degree suitable to so great a reward as eternal
life." Here the words ad egregiam illam sanctitatem are entirely omitted,
though they are requisite, both as denoting the great work of the Spirit, and
because without them it becomes ambiguous what the opera vere heroica are
meant to be. Nor is *lacri constantique animo a hendyadys, corresponding to
"constant cheerf ulness : " each of the two words is important; and they
would be better rendered "with alacrity and perseverance." Alas, it would
seem as though the spirit which led scholars to strive after truth and
accuracy even in the minutest things, alacri constantique animo, were almost
extinct.
252 NOTEH.
to express the opinions which he held in the latter part of his life,
when his wisdom was the maturest, and the heats of controversy
were allayed.
Yery different from the tenour of this Discourse is South's
Sermon on the Comforter (Vol. vi. Serm. xxix), in which this hard
logician and unsparing polemic will hardly admit any direct opera-
tion of the Spirit, since the miraculous ones in the days of the
Apostles ; except indeed the restoration of Charles the Second. Of
this he says, that " the Holy Ghost must be acknowledged the cause
of this great transaction ; " and that he " knows no argument from
metaphysics or natural philosophy, that to his reason proves the
existence of a Deity more fully, than the consideration of this
prodigious revolution." An age of weakness and darkness was
coming over our Church, when one of her ablest teachers could
speak thus concerning the operation of the Comforter.
Scarcely less strange is it to find Stillingfleet preaching a Sermon,
the 9th in his first Volume, on this very verse of St John, — But this
spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe in Him should receive;
for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet
glorified; — and interpreting these words as referring to "the
effusion of the Spirit under the times of the Gospel ; by which (he
says) we mean those extraordinary gifts and abilities, which the
Apostles had after the Holy Ghost is said to descend upon them. —
The two most remarkable, which do comprehend under them most
of the rest, are the power of working miracles, whether in healing
diseases, or any other way, and the gift of tongues, either in speak-
ing or interpreting : they who will acknowledge that the Apostles
had these, will not have reason to question any of the rest.'' Here-
by, he argues, according to prophecy, the Spirit was poured out upon
all flesh. " These rivers of waters — soon overflowed the Christian
Church in other parts of the world. The sound of that rushing
mighty wind was soon heard in the most distant places ; and the firy
tongues inflamed the hearts of many who never saw them. These
gifts being propagated into other Churches, many other tongues
were kindled from them, as we see how much this gift of tongues
obtained in the Church of Corinth : and so in the History of the
Acts of the Apostles we find after this day how the Holy Ghost fell
upon them that believed, and what mighty signs and wonders were
done by them." He then broaches a notion, which has been wrought
NOTE H. 253
out elaborately by Warburton and others since. After quoting
Isaiah xliv. 3, and xli. 18, he says, " These are some of the lofty
expressions whereby the courtly Prophet," — he was preaching at
Whitehall, — " sets forth the great promise of the Spirit ; none better
befitting the mighty advantages the Church of God hath ever since
enjoyed by the pouring out of the Spirit. For the fountain was
opened in the Apostles ; but the streams of those rivers of living
water have run down to our age, — preserved pure and unmixt in
that sacred doctrine contained in the Holy Scripture." Yet the
rs of living water, of which our Lord speaks, are not those which
are to run down to believers ; they are to spring out of them, out of
the heart of every believer. Stillingfleet does not deny the inward
working of the Spirit of sanctification : nay, a few words occur here
and there, implying a sort of recognition of it. Indeed no honest
man could be a minister of our Church, and use our Liturgy, who
was conscious that he did not believe in the continual working of
the Holy Ghost, not merely through the inspired Scriptures, but
immediately, both in the sacraments, and in governing and sancti-
fying the whole body of the Church, in comfortiug and exalting
believers, in renewing them daily, and in enabling them to do such
things as shall please God. He who disbelieved these propositions,
and yet officiated in our church-services, would be lying to God. To
many hearts however such words do not come home with any living
force. They have no deep feeling of the want implied in them, no
conception of the only manner in which that want can be relieved :
and one way in which this manifests itself, is, that, when such
persons have to preach on Whitsunday, their whole sermon will be
on the miraculous works of the Spirit, which, pertaining to long-
past ages, are merely matters of historical belief. How far this
may have been the case with Stillingfleet, it woidd be presumption
to pronounce, unless upon a careful examination of the wide circle of
his writings : but it is somewhat remarkable that two other Whit-
sunday Sermons of his, — on St Paul's declaration (1 Cor. ii. 4) that
his preaching had not been with enticing words of man's wisdom, bet
in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, — are little else than an
expansion of a part of the argument in the one before referred to,
their object being to prove that " the demonstration of the Spirit and
of Power, or the wonderful gifts of the Holy Ghost (that is, the gift
of tongues and the power of miracles) shewed that the Gospel came
254 NOTE H.
from God." Even these few words of Calvin should have taught
him to interpret St Paul's expression better : " plerique ad miracula
restringunt ; ego autem latius accipio, nempe pro manu Dei potenter
se modis omnibus per Apostolum exserente ; " namely by the various
workings of the Spirit spoken of in the twelfth and fourteenth
chapters of the same Epistle, and among the rest by the spiritual
conviction described in xiv. 24, 25.
In many of our divines, both of this age, as has been observed
already, and subsequently, the reluctance to recognise spiritual in-
fluences was aggravated by their repugnance to the parties that made
the chief pretensions thereto. This, however, was not the case with
Stillingfleet, whose disposition toward the Puritans was conciliatory.
His narrow views concerning the operations of the Spirit are the
result of that Arminian scheme of doctrine, which had gained much
ground in our Church prior to the Civil Wars, and which, after the
expulsion of the bulk of its opponents by the Act of Uniformity,
became almost exclusively predominant. For, since every truth
has a contiguous errour, men have perpetually overrun the boundary
between them, from their fondness both for exalting their own con-
victions, and for depreciating those of their opponents : and thus,
while Calvinism has been too prone to lapse into Antinomian and
Manichean exaggerations, Arminianism has always had a Pelagian
tendency, and been apt to reduce the work of the Spirit to a mini-
mum, to a single initiative act, — be it with reference to individuals,
at their baptism, or, in their ministerial capacity, at their ordination,
— or, with reference to the whole Church, in the miracles wrought
at its foundation. This is analogous to the mechanical systems of
philosophy, which are unwilling to admit any divine agency in the
physical universe, except at the Creation. Stillingfleet however
belonged to the age of our great divines, and stood in the foremost
rank of them : and among those immediately around him were
several men, who, while they kept aloof from Calvinism, wrote with
full acknowledgement of our continual need of divine grace, and of
the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
Pearson, for instance, does so in the latter part of his treatise on
the eighth Article of the Creed. So does Barrow, with his charac-
teristic power and exhaustive fulness of thought and language in his
Exposition of the Creed (which part recurs in the same words in his
34th Sermon on the Creed), and in his admirable Whitsunday
NOTE H. 255
Sermon, Of the Gift of the Holy Ghost. In the Sermon on the
Creed indeed he seems to restrict the promise in the 7th Chapter of
St John to the miraculous gifts ; but at the end of his Whitsunday
Sermon he applies it as a promise " to impart this living stream to
every one that thirsteth after it." The Whitsunday Sermon is a
solid ingot of gold, too massy to be transferred to this Note.
Therefore, recommending the reader to seek it in its place, I will
quote a passage from the Exposition of the Creed, which well sets
forth what the gift of the Holy Ghost, as the peculiar blessing of
the Christian dispensation, was, and how it was indeed expedient
that Christ should go away, to the end that the Comforter should
come. " We are naturally void of those good dispositions of under-
standing, of will, of affection, which are necessary to make us any-
wise acceptable to God, fit to serve and please Him, capable of
any favour from Him, of any true happiness in ourselves :
our minds, I say, are blind and stupid, ignorant and prone
to errour, especially in things supernatural, — our wills stubborn
and froward, vain and unstable, inclining to evil, and averse
from what is most truly good, our affections very irregular and
unsettled ; — to remove which bad dispositions, inconsistent with
God's friendship and favour, — and to beget those contrary to them,
the knowledge and belief of divine truth, a love of and willing com-
pliance with goodness, a well-composed, orderly, and steady frame
of spirit, — God in mercy hath appointed the Holy Spirit ; who, first
opening our hearts, so as to let in and apprehend the light of divine
truth propounded to us, then by representation of proper arguments
persuading us to embrace it, begets divine knowledge and faith in
our minds (which is the work of illumination and instruction, the
first part of His office), then by continual impressions bends our
inclinations and mollifies our hearts and subdues our affections to a
willing compliance with, a cheerful complacence in that which is
good and pleasing to God ; so begetting all pious and virtuous
inclinations in us, reverence to God, charity to men, sobriety and
purity and the rest of those amiable and heavenly virtues (which
is the work of sanctification, another great part of His office) :
both which together (illumination of our mind, sanctification of our
will and affections), do constitute that work, which is styled the
Regeneration, Renovation, Vivification, New-creation, Resurrection of a
man, putting off the old, putting on the neio man ; the faculties of our
256 NOTE H.
souls being so much changed, and we made, as it were, other men
thereby, able and apt to do that, to which before we were altogether
indisposed and unfit. Neither only doth He alter and constitute
our dispositions, but He directs and governs our actions, leading and
moving us in the ways of obedience to God's will and law. As we
live by Him (have a new spiritual life implanted in us), so we walk
by Him, by His continual guidance and assistance. He reclaims us
from sin and errour, supports and strengthens us in temptation,
advises, excites, encourages us to works of virtue and piety : particu-
larly He guides and quickens us in devotion, shewing us what we
should ask, raising in us holy desires and comfortable hopes thereof,
disposing us to approach God with fit dispositions of love and
reverence and humble confidence. It is also a notable part of the
Holy Spirit's office to comfort and sustain us, as in all our religious
practice, so particularly in our doubts, difficulties, distresses, and
afflictions, to beget joy, peace, and satisfaction in us, in all our doings
and all our sufferings ; whence He has the title of Comforter. It is
also a great part thereof to assure us of God's love and favour, that
we are His children, and to confirm us in the hopes of our everlast-
ing inheritance. We, feeling ourselves to live by Him, to love God
and goodness, to desire and delight in pleasing God, are thereby
raised to hope God loves and favours us, and that He, having by so
authentic a seal ratified His word and promise, having already
bestowed so sure a pledge, so precious an earnest, so plentiful first-
fruits, will not fail to make good the remainder designed and promist
us of everlasting joy and bliss. Lastly, the Holy Ghost doth
intercede for us with God, is our Advocate and Assistant in pre-
senting our supplications, and procuring our good : He cries in
us, He pleads for us to God ; whence He is peculiarly called
Uap<xK\r)To<s, that is, One who is called in by His good word or
countenance to aid him whose cause is to be examined, or whose
petition is to be considered. To which things I may add, that the
Holy Ghost is designed to be as it were the soul, which informs, .
enlivens, and actuates the whole body of the Church, connecting and
containing together the members thereof in spiritual union, life, and
motion, especially quickening and moving the principal members,
the governors and pastors thereof, constituting them in their func-
tion, qualifying them for the discharge thereof, guiding and assisting
them therein."
NOTE U. 257
In Beveridge we already see the marks of an intellectually feebler
age : but he was a learned and pious man ; and having those graces
in himself, which none can have except through the Spirit of God,
he knew how great our need of the Spirit is, how great the blessings
which believers receive from Him. Indeed his views of doctrine in
early life were a good deal influenced by the Calvinism, which at
that time, under the Protectorate, was on the ascendant : hence his
Sermons have much more spiritual life in them, than those of most
of his contemporaries. On the sanctifying work of the Spirit he
often speaks in them ; for instance in the 12th, on the Sacerdotal
Benediction in the name of the Trinity, and in the 23rd, on a
Spiritual Life the Characteristic of a Christian. In the latter he
rightly applies our Lord's promise of the rivers of living water to all
believers ; although even here he almost confines the communion of
the Spirit to that which is to be obtained in the public ministrations
of the Church.
Nor was it possible for good Bishop Wilson to omit or slur over
this cardinal doctrine. He says well and plainly, after his manner,
in his 22nd Sermon, " It would be no blessing for men to be con-
vinced of the truth of the Christian religion by considering the
miraculous powers of the Holy Ghost, by which it was first establisht,
unless they afterwards live answerable to what that religion requires
of them, which they cannot possibly do without the continual grace
and assistance of that same Holy Spirit. " And again, " God, for
Christ's sake, has given us the earnest of His Spirit in Baptism," to
the end that we may live under the continual governance of the
Spirit, and may bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. How much
fierce controversy would have been avoided, how much would the
peace of the Church have been promoted, if the baptismal gift had
always been spoken of in this sober, well-weighed language.
Baxter's exposition of the subject we are considering, in his Life
of Faith (P. in. c. in.) is simple, clear, and sound. "The most
excellent measure of the Spirit given by Christ after His Ascension
to the Gospel Church is to be distinguisht from that which was
before communicated ; and this Spirit of Christ is it which our
in faith hath special respect to. Without the Spirit of God,
as the perfective principle, Nature would not have been Nature :
Gen. i. 2. All things would not have been good, and very good, but
by the communication of goodness : and without somewhat of that
1
258 NOTE H.
Spirit there would be no moral goodness in any of mankind : with-
out some special operations of that Spirit, the godly before Christ's
comiDg in the flesh would not have been godly, nor in any present
capacity of glory. Therefore there was some gift of the Spirit before.
But yet there was an eminent gift of the Spirit proper to the Gospel
times, which the former ages did not know ; which is so much above
the former gift, that it is sufficient to prove the verity of Christ.
For first, there was use for the special attestation of the Father, by
way of power, by miracles and His Eesurrection, to own His Son.
Secondly, the Wisdom and Word of God Incarnate must needs bring
a special measure of wisdom to His disciples, and therefore give a
greater measure of the Spirit for illumination. Thirdly, the design
of redemption being the revelation of the love of God, and the re-
covery of our love to Him, there must needs be a special measure of
the Spirit of love shed abroad upon our hearts. And in all these
three respects the Spirit was accordingly communicated.
" But was it not the Spirit of Christ, which was in the prophets
and in all the godly before Christ's coming ? The Spirit of Christ
is either that measure of the Spirit, which was given after the first
Covenant of Grace, as it differeth from the state of man in innocency,
and from the state of man in his apostasy and condemnation : and
thus it was the Spirit of Christ which was then given, so far as
it was the Covenant and Grace of Christ, by which men were then
saved. But there was a fuller Covenant to be made after His
coming, and a fuller measure of grace to be given, and a full
attestation of God for the establishment and promulgation of this
Covenant, and accordingly a fuller and special gift of the Spirit.
And this is called the Spirit of Christ, in the peculiar Gospel
sense.
" How is it said that the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because
Christ was not yet glorified 1 It is meant of the special measure of
the Spirit, which was to be Christ's special Witness and Agent in
the world. They had before that measure of true grace, which was
necessary to the salvation of believers, before the Incarnation and
Eesurrection of Christ ; which was the Spirit of Christ, as the light
before sunrising is the light of the sun : and if they died in that case,
they would have been saved. But they had not the signal Spirit
of the Gospel, settled and resident with them, but only some little
taste of it, for casting out devils, and for cures, at that time when
NOTE II. 259
Christ sent them by a special mission to preach, and gave them a
sudden special gift. —
u And as such gifts of the Spirit were given to the Apostles as
their office required, so those sanctifying graces, or that spiritual
life, light, and love, are given by it to all true Christians, which
their calling and salvation doth require. By all this it appeareth
that the Holy Ghost is both Christ's great Witness, objectively
in the world, by which He is owned of God, and proved to be true,
and also His Advocate or great Agent in the Church, both to indite
the Scriptures, and to sanctify souls. So that no man can be a
Christian indeed, without these three, the objective witness of the
Spirit to the truth of Christ, the Gospel taught by the Spirit in the
Apostles, and the quickening, illuminating, and sanctifying work of
the Spirit upon his soul."
In the Dissertation with which Lightfoot closes his Ilorae
Hebraicae, he illustrates the declaration, Ov7ro) yap r\v n^u/xa
ayiov, by the Jewish tradition concerning the cessation of
prophecy. "Defuerunt, (iuquiunt Hierosolymitani, Taanith fol.
56. 1.) res quinque sub Templo secundo, quae adfuerunt primo :
Ignis de coelo, Area, Urim et Thumniim, Oleum unctionis, et
Spiritus Sanctus, vel Spiritus Prophetiae. De Spiritu Prophetiae
haec etiam Babylonici, Sotah, fol. 24. 2. ' A morte Prophetarum
posteriomm, Haggaei, Zachariae, et Malachiae cessavit ab Israele
Spiritus Sanctus/ In prima quidem generatione a reditu e
Babylone viguisse dotem propheticam testantur satis isti Prophetae.
— At extincta ista generatione evanuit etiam donum Prophetiae,
!>paruit amplius ante auroram Evangelii. Hue spectant ilia
. I. .inn. vn. 39. Ov7ro> yjv Hvcvfia ay toy, Actor. Xix. 2. 'AAA'
ovB' €t Uvtvfxa ayiov ko-riv rjKovo-aficv." — "Quae verba (he says in
his Chronica Temporum) verain et communiter apud Judaeos
receptam opinionera respiciunt ; viz. a morte Ezrae, Haggai,
Zachariae, et Malachiae, Spiritum Sanctum ab hraclitis ablatum:
Juchasin, fol. 15. Porro restitutum fuisse se inaudivisse negant."
Matthew Henrys note on our passage has the genial freshness
and the richness in scriptural illustration which characterize his
excellent Comments I
Whitby points out the connexion between our Lord's language,
■ad the ceremonies of the day on which he was speaking : and
he refers to the prophecy of Zechariah (xiv. 8), that living waters
260 NOTE H.
shall go out from Jerusalem. He also says rightly, " that Christ
here speaks of the internal gifts of the Spirit." But his specification
of these internal gifts is less satisfactory : " those of prophecy,
tongues, of wisdom, and the knowledge of all mysteries."
During the eighteenth century Theology in our Church, as indeed
in every branch of the whole Church, stood so low, partaking in the
intellectual and moral degeneracy of the age, that from few divines
of that period are we likely to gain much insight into the deeper
mysteries of our faith, unless it "be from those who were rejected and
despised by the popular voice. Least of all are we likely to gain such
concerning the operations of the Spirit. For the views of doctrine,
which we have already found in some of the leading writers of the
seventeenth century, became more and more generally diffused,
being in unison with the fashionable material philosophy, and with
the self-sufficiency which characterized the nations at the head of the
civilization of Europe. Thus in time we sank into such a state, that
Coleridge says, with too much justice (Remains, iv. 118), the holy
festival of Whitsunday almost " became unmeaning, as the clergy
had become generally Arminian, and interpreted the descent of the
Spirit as the gift of miracles, and of miraculous infallibility by
inspiration." The aptness to adopt this interpretation, we have
seen, existed in all ages of the Church, inasmuch as it springs
from the common tendency of human nature to desire a sign, some-
thing new and startling, that may stimulate and gratify the love
of novelty, without disturbing the conscience, or calling for an
exertion of the will. But in proportion as the understanding and
common sense of mankind set themselves up more and more to try and
judge the mysteries of faith, this aptness grew more predominant.
Waterland, who among the theologians of his time is the most
powerful champion of the true faith, hardly toucht, save incidentally
on the operations of the Spirit (see vol. u. p. 115, v. p. 45). His
great task was to assert the divine Personality of the Word against
the Arian and Socinian impugn ers of the truth. Amoug his
posthumous Sermons however there is one, the 26th, on the Nature
and manner in which the Holy Spirit may be supposed to operate
upon us, and the Marks and Tokens of such Operation, which shews
his usual clearness and sobriety of judgment, correcting excesses on
the side of too much, without falling into equally injurious excesses
on the side of too little.
NOTE H. 261
But the Comforter was to abide with Christ's Church for ever.
Hence it has repeatedly been seen that, when He was forgotten, and
His abiding presence and influence were almost denied, by those
who occupied the chief places in the outward Church, He has
manifested Himself to others, who, as of old, have been mockt, and
said to have been full of new wine, nay, have been persecuted, and
even cast out from the outward communion of the Church. This,
which had happened often before, happened again in the last
century. The men who were awakened to a deeper consciousness
that there can be no Christian life in the soul, except through the
operation of the Spirit, were, some of them, led or driven to secede
from our Church, while others had to endure reproach and scorn
within it. On the other hand the dominant prosaic Rationalism laid
down that all manner of enthusiasm must needs be foolish and
mischievous. One of our bishops wrote a book against enthusiasm,
as a quality fit only for Papists and Methodists : it would have been
difficult to pronounce a severer sentence against our Church. Nor
was the book of such a kind that it could be of use to the persons
against whom it was written : for it evinced no sympathy with the
deep feelings and wants and consciousnesses which were venting
themselves even in their most offensive absurdities, no insight into
the manifold causes which help to delude them, no desire to separate
the wheat and preserve it from the conflagration of the tares, no
recognition of that which was holy and just and true in their zeal,
their energy, and their devotion. Folly and fraud were the author's
summary sentence ; and with these two words, blind as the hang-
man's rope, he strung together the puppets of straw, that he called
by the names of Wesley and Whitfield and Zinzendorf, along with
others under the denomination of St Anthony, St Francis, St
Ignatius, and St. Teresa.
Another bishop, one of the ablest and most learned men of his
day, took upon him to define what a reasonable person may believe
concerning the Doctrine of Grace. It is a proof of the fascination
whi<h lies in a celebrated name, that Warburton's work has been
highly extolled, even by such a man as Reginald Heber, who says of
it, in his Hampton Lectures, that it u must ever be accounted, so far
as its subject extends, in the number of those works, which are the
property of every age and country, and of which, though succeeding
critics may detect the human blemishes, the vigour and originality
•262 NOTE H.
will remain, perhaps, unrivaled" (p. 12). For my own part, few
books have pained or disgusted me more than this virulent polemical
pamphlet, wherein, as so often in Warburton's writings, club-
law is the order of the day, and one fierce blow after another is
poured down on the unfortunate victims of his wrath. The very
title of the book betokens its character : The Doctrine of Grace ;
or the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit vindicated from the
Insults of Infidelity and the Abuses of Fanaticism. A man who sat
down to write, with the feelings here exprest uppermost in his mind,
could never write intelligently concerning the workings of the
Spirit : indeed one may justly say of this Doctrine of Grace, that it
is utterly graceless. Of course it is clever : Warburton's wildest
extravagances are so : but doctrinally it is of very little value. The
promise that the Comforter should abide with us for ever is said to
have been eminently fulfilled, so far as He is" the Spirit of Truth,
by " His constant abode and supreme illumination in the sacred
Scriptures of the New Testament " (b. i. c. 5). It is admitted indeed
parenthetically that " His ordinary influence occasionally assists the
faithful of all ages : n but this He did under the Old Covenant : nor
is there any recognition of the fundamental truth, that No man can
say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. On the other hand
the Comforter, "as the Purifier of the will," is said to abide with the
Church for ever, in that " the virtue of Charity is to accompany the
Christian Church throughout all its stages here on earth" (b. ii. c. 2):
that is to say, the Holy Ghost is " to do His perfect work in the
enlargement of the heart by universal benevolence : " and while the
other graces of the Spirit are overlookt, — as if they no longer be-
longed to a Christian life, or as if they could spring up without His
influence, — Charity itself, or, " universal benevolence," with which it
is identified, is so represented as if its chief and most precious fruit
had been the Toleration Act. At the same time the tone of the
pamphlet shews that, if its author had been born in the twelfth
century, no man would have been more zealous in kindling fires to
consume the Waldenses.
So strange was the prevailing ignorance concerning the elementary
truths of Christianity, that we find the most learned of our prelates
assigning the following reasons why the extraordinary operations of
the Spirit were only required during the first ages. "The nature and
Genius of the Gospel were so averse to all the religious institutions
NOTE H. 263
of the world, that the whole strength of human prejudices were set in
opposition to it. To overcome the obstinacy and violence of these
prejudices, nothing less than the power of the Holy One was suffi-
cient. He did the work of man's conversion, and reconciled an
unbelieving world to God." As though this could be done once for
all, in any other way than by the one all-perfect Sacrifice of the
Saviour ; and as though the conversion and reconciliation were not
just as necessary in every age, nay, in every individual case, as in
the first ages of the Church. " At present, whatever there may be
remaining of the bias of prejudice (as such will mix itself even with
our best conclusions), it draws the other way." Happy world ! well-
nigh set free from all prejudice ! nay, so happy, that its few remain-
ing prejudices are in favour of Christianity ! It is plain that
Christianity here can mean nothing but the bare outward profession.
u So much then of His task was finisht ; and the faith, from thence-
t 4th, bad a favorable hearing. Indeed, were we to make our
estimate of the present state of the religious world from the journals
of modern fanatics, we should be tempted still to think ourselves in
a land of Pagans, with all their prejudices full blown upon them."
Verily this passage of Warburton would be a strong presumption
that we were so. "A further reason for the abatement of the
influences of the supporting Spirit of Grace is the peace and security
of the Church. There was a time when the powers of this world
were combined together for its destruction. At such a period
nothing but superior aid from above could support humanity in
sustaining so great a conflict as that which the holy martyrs
eucountered with joy and rapture, the horrours of death in torment.
But now the profession of the Christian faith is attended with ease
and honour ; and the conviction, which the weight of human testi-
mony, and the conclusions of human reason afford us, of its truth, is
abundantly sufficient to support us in our religious perseverance "
(b. ii. c. 3). Alas ! who ever was " sufficiently supported in his
religious perseverance " by such motives 1 No one : no one ever
was, — no one ever will be so, — if anything be meant by " religious
perseverance," beyond a firm outward profession of faith ; which
may arise from mere human motives, even as loyalty and patriotism
and constancy in friendship may ; although these too require far
deeper foundations, than " the weight of human testimony, and the
conclusions of human reason." One is disposed to marvel in what
264 NOTE H.
eremitical seclusion a man must have lived, with his mind her-
metically closed against all the lessons of history and of contem-
porary experience, to suppose such causes capable of effecting
anything so alien to our nature as " religious perseverance."
On this point let me strengthen my argument with the following
words, taken from the second of Horsley's two excellent Sermons on
Eph. iv. 30, on the various gifts of the Spirit : " If the principle be
true, that, without a constant action of God's Spirit on the mind of
man, no man can persevere in a life of virtue and religion, the
Christian, who finds himself empowered to lead this life, cannot err
in his conclusion, that God's power is at present exerted upon
himself in his own person for his final preservation." If here is not
problematical, but inferential, it having been shown previously that
this is the doctrine of Scripture. Indeed Horsley's words meet
Warburton's so closely, we might almost fancy he had them in his
eye. One is tempted to ask too, whether Warburton can ever have
read and reflected on the purport of such declarations as, Blessed be
ye poor ; for yours is the Kingdom of God: — Blessed are they who are
persecuted for righteousness sake; for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven:
or such as The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of G od ; for they are foolishness to him: nor can he know them ; for
they are spiritually discerned. Nay, the whole New Testament is a
direct contradiction and refutation of everything here asserted by
Warburton ; who in this passage was merely giving utterance to the
opinions entertained in his days by the bulk of our clergy : the
insatiate lover of paradox was the mouthpiece of the vulgar. In
fact this is just the view of Christianity, which the world, when
through the course and order of events it puts on the name of
Christ, is ready to recognise, and which it may recognise without
changing a single hair in its leopard's skin. Even that sagacious
couplet of his favorite moralist, —
But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor ; —
might have taught Warburton that the " ease and honour," which
now attend the profession of the Christian faith, are not likely to
be very efficacious substitutes for the power of the Comforter in
making men Christians.
In more recent times a theory, nearly resembling Warburton's,
concerning the peculiar office of the Comforter, as the immediate
NOTE II. 265
object of our Lord's promise, has been brought forward by a person
of a very different spirit, the late admirable Bishop Heber. Of him,
having had the privilege of knowing him, and having experienced
the winning kindness which he shewed to all, and which, in conse-
quence of my connexion with him, he perhaps shewed still more
abundantly to me, — having seen the love which beamed from
his face, and manifested itself in all his words and actions, —
I cannot think without affectionate reverence. His treatise
however on the Holy Spirit, as developt in his Bampton Lectures,
seems to me to be an elaborate attempt to urge a hypothesis,
which is totally groundless and mistaken. The text prefixt to his
eight Sermons is the same verse of St John (xvi. 7), which forms
the subject of this. But unfortunately he did not spend much
thought in fathoming the mysterious depths of meaning contained in
it Else this verse of itself might have shaken his confidence in the
notion, which it is the main purpose of his Lectures to maintain,
that our Lord's promise to His Disciples, that the Comforter should
come to them in His stead, and should abide with them for ever,
referred solely in the first instance to the knowledge of the nature of
the Christian Covenant, which they were to receive from inspiration,
and that, as an enduring promise to th# Church, it is fulfilled
exclusively in the gift of the Scriptures of the New Testament,
whereby "the Holy Ghost performs all the functions of the promist
Comforter." Nor does Heber pay much attention to the important
verses which follow our text, or try to reconcile them with his
hypothesis. Still less does he examine the declaration we have been
considering in this Note, touching the rivers of water which were to
flow from the gift of the Spirit, and the other passages in which the
Comforter is spoken of. Thus his work is an example of the errours
wherein theologians have so frequently involved themselves, by a
practice, which in other departments of knowledge would be ac-
counted unwarrantable and perverse, of picking out a few sentences,
or scraps of sentences, from the Bible, with little, if any, regard to
the context, and then spinning a theory out of them by divers
logical processes. He contends that the gift of the Comforter
spoken of by our Lord must have been something altogether
distinctive and peculiar, something that no one had ever enjoyed till
then, not even the Apostles themselves (see the beginning of the fifth
lecture) : and then, laying the whole stress of his argument on this
266 NOTE H.
one point, without duly considering the various qualities and acts
predicated of the Comforter, he arrives at his extraordinary con-
clusion, that the Scriptures of the New Testament are the one dis-
tinctive privilege of the Christian Church, and consequently that in
them, and in them alone, Christ's promise is still realized. This is a
singular illustration of Coleridge's remark {Remains, III. 93), that,
while " the Papacy elevated the Church, to the virtual exclusion or
suppression of the Scriptures, the modern Church of England, since
Chillingworth, has so raised up the Scriptures as to annull the
Church. Both alike (he adds) have quencht the Holy Spirit,
as the mesothesis of the two.' 5
That this has been the result with some, whose names occupy a
high rank among our divines, we have seen. But Eeginald Heber's
errour was confined to the interpretation of a particular promise, and
did not extend to a denial or disregard of that, which is one of the
two fundamental principles of Christianity : he was too true a
Christian to fancy that any one could be so, except through the
working of the Spirit. If he coincides with Warburton on one side
of his theory, he differs no less strongly than Horsely from the
whole tenour of the passage which I quoted from him. " Without
that holy energy (he says, in p. 277), which it is in the bosom of
God to grant or to withhold, we may vainly study the evidences
of religion, and vainly aspire to shew forth in our practice the
lessons of holiness, which our outward ears have imbibed. When
Grace is wanting, we have neither power nor effectual will to raise
our affections beyond the narrow circle of mortality : nor, having
once assented to the hopes and precepts of religion, can we retain
those hopes and precepts in our minds as a pervading and triumph-
ant principle." The reason why he denies that this Grace bore any
part in Christ's promise, is, that this is not peculiar to the Christian
dispensation, but had been vouchsafed already to the Jews, and
even, in a certain measure, to Heathens. Yet the whole order of
nature is for the dawn to precede the sunrise. The light of the sun
is seen, before the sun himself appears ; and yet the rising of the
sun may truly be called a new, distinctive, epochal act. Tins is well
set forth by Olshausen in his Commentary on John vii. 39 : " As
the Son was working in the world long before His Incarnation, so
did the Holy Ghost also act upon mankind long before His Effusion.
But as it was at the Incarnation of the Son that the fulness of His
NOTE H. 267
Life first manifested itself, so it was not until the Effusion which
took place on the day of Pentecost that the Spirit poured forth all
His power. Hence the Effusion of the Spirit is the same moment
in His manifestation, that the Incarnation is in that of the
Son."
What the gift of the Spirit, as the distinctive characteristic of>
the Christian dispensation, is, has been discust by Mr Newman in
an eloquent and powerful Sermon, the 18th in his third Volume.
Although he does not handle any of the texts we have been examin-
ing, the main subject of his argument is the same : and he rightly
maintains that, in considering the working of the Spirit in the
Church of Christ, we are not to confine ourselves to any one of His
manifestations, but to embrace them all. At the same time some of
the positions and expositions in that Sermon are very questionable.
The assertion, that, " if we could see souls, we should see those of
infants just baptized bright as the cherubim, as flames of fire rising
heavenward in sacrifice to God" (p. 290), is an extravagance con-
tradicted by universal experience, without the slightest shadow of
anything like an exception, and is utterly destitute of all positive
Scriptural warrant, which alone could justify us in setting experience
and observation at defiance, — nay, is contrary to the whole analogy
of Scripture, to everything that Scripture says on the growth of our
spiritual life, and to every representation which it gives of the effects
produced by Baptism. Such extravagances on such sacred subjects
are greatly to be lamented, as they repell minds that have a sense of
truth, and love it, from a doctrine which they see thus perverted,
and deckt out in such gaudy trappings. Moreover it seems to me,
that, in what he says in p. 281, Mr Newman does not sufficiently
recognise the great difference between the spiritual graces manifested
in the lives of Christian saints, and those of which we have the
record in the Old Testament. Surely there has been something
answering, at least in part, to that transfiguration and spiritualiza-
tion of the Law, which we behold in the Sermon on the Mount.
Surely too our Saviour's New Commandment, the commandment of
self-denying, self-devoting, self-sacrificing love, of love after the
divine pattern which He gave us, has never been fulfilled in any
■MM from tlie beginning, except under the light of the Gospel,
and tliioiiL'li tlie indwelling power of the Spirit of love. Indeed I
know not what Christian meaning can be attacht to that state of
268 NOTE H.
glory, which, Mr Newman contends, is the consequence of the pre-
sence of the Spirit in the Church, if the effects of that presence
are not manifested by higher and more abundant graces, than were
to be seen in the hearts and lives of men before the Spirit came
down to enter upon His work of sanctification. Such a glory would
be as unsubstantial as a vision in the clouds : and in truth the
dreamy notions which are entertained concerning the baptismal
glorification of the soul, might seem to be a fancy borrowed from
the glow of dawn, and are still less substantial. It were much to
be wisht that theologians would pay greater attention to the
Leibnitzian principle of a sufficient cause, in its twofold application,
as requiring a reciprocal correspondence between the cause and the
effect ; and that they were less hasty in imagining causes, of which
they are unable to discern any proportional effects. When we look
into ourselves indeed, and compare what we are, with what we
ought to be, and should have been had we made a right use of the
means of grace we have received, we shall be ready to acknowledge
for ourselves, and perhaps for the whole body of Christians in all
ages, that, considering our inestimable privileges and advantages,
the Heathens might rise up in the judgment and condemn us. But
if there be not a clear superiority in the sanctification of Christians,
— of some portion, whatever that portion may be, of Christ's Church,
— over those who lived before the Grace and Mercy of God were
revealed in Jesus Christ, and before the Spirit came down to dwell
in the Church forever, — what must we say ? to what conclusion
must we come ? unless that Satan is altogether mightier than God,
and has baffled and frustrated all that the Father and the Son and
the Spirit, in their infinite wisdom and compassion and love, have
vainly endeavoured to accomplish, at such an incalculable cost, for
the reclaiming of mankind. They, who, believing in baptismal
transubstantiation, are compelled by unvarying experience to con-
fess that this miraculous change in all, or, — as, to save appearances,
they will fain say, — in the great majority of cases, is, " Like snow
that falls upon a river, A moment white, then gone for ever," may
not be appalled by such a conclusion. This however is only another
melancholy instance how a single cherisht errour will ^warp and
bedim the whole understanding, strong and clear as it otherwise
might be ; even as a single cherisht sin will debase and corrupt the
whole moral character.
NOTE H. 269
If we turn to the commentators on St John, we find the promise
in the seventh chapter well explained by Lampe, whose work is
hardly known as it deserves to be. For, though its scholastic form
is cumbrous and repulsive, and though it is too much tainted with
the Cocceian system of allegorical interpretation, it combines sound
philology with sound theology in a manner to render it very service-
able to students. On our Lord's words at the feast of tabernacles,
he says, "Per Spiritum Scriptura saepiuscule intelligit beneficia atque
dona Spiritus Sancti, et quidem praestautiora. Qui enim credunt,
jam acceperunt initialiter Spiritum Sanctum, quoniam fides est opus
Spiritus Sancti. Patet ergo quod ad tales operationes hie respiciatur,
quibus fides potest carere, quibus actu caruit sub V. T. et quae mox
Ecclesiae indulgendae erant. Cum autem illae operationes sint vel
ordinariae vel extraordinariae, et extraordinariae complectantur dona
ilia miraculosa, quae statim ab initio nascentis Ecclesiae communica-
bantur, has quoque nimis speciales esse censemus, quam ut
cuicunque credenti in Jesum illas promissas esse statui queat.
Respiciuntur ergo potissinium operationes ordinariae Spiritus Sancti,
sed in ilia mensura quae exspectabatur post consummatum re-
demptionis opus in oeconomia N. T. quae abinde nominatur minis-
>'jjiritus, 2 Cor. iii. 6. Talia sunt clarior mysteriorum Regni
coelorum cognitio, consolatio uberior per conscientiae in plena
remissione peccatorum tranquillatiouem, gaudium in Spiritu Sancto,
parrhesia, libertas, pax, etc. Hae operationes emphatice — a Jesu
propositae erant sub synibolo— ; fluminum aquae vivae, — ob copiam,
varietatem, latamque per gentes diffusionem, — prodeuntium ex
animabus credentium, turn quia tanta mensura douorum coelestium
non debebat tegi, sed per fructus idoneos demonstrari, turn quia ilia
magna Spiritus Sancti in ejus effusione mensura saiutare medium
debebat esse ad alios ejusdem exuberantissimae gratiae Dei participes
reddendos. — Certa ratione Spiritum Sanctum fideles V. T. revera
jam acceperant in suo modulo. Jam ante diluvium cum praeconio
justitiae fuit conjunctus, 1 Petr. iii. 19 ; et litigavit cum impiis,
Gen. vi. 3; et in Prophetis testatus est, 1 Petr. i. 11. Act. xxviii.
•t in tabernaculo praesens fuit, Jer. lxiii. 11; et Davidem
direxit atque laetitia spirituali implevit, Ps. li. 13. 14. Sed nondum
crat amplior ilia Spiritus Sancti mensura ; nondum erant specialia
ilia N. T. bona, quae modo commemorabamus. Facile hoc demon-
strari potest per receusionem defectuum V. T. qui iudicatis bonis
270 NOTE H.
N. T. e diametro sunt oppositi, quales sunt, tenebrae ignorantiae
per velum Mosis condensatae, commemoratio atque exprobratio
lytri nondum persoluti, indeque nascens spiritus timoris ac servitutis,
etc."
Lampe's work was publisht in 1726. As we draw toward the
close of the same century, we sink into the slough of Rationalism.
Knowledge then was held to be omnipotent, and that too empirical,
abstract, formal, superficial knowledge, which had done little more
than skim the froth of history, and dissect the carcase of philosophy,
and which was so far from availing to help men out of the slough,
as not even to shew them that they were in it. The shock of the
French Revolution, and of the calamities that issued from thence,
was needed to open their eyes. With the majority even of those
who meant well to what they regarded as the cause of Christianity,
it had become a prevalent notion, that the best service which
could be rendered to Christianity was to strip it as much as
possible of its mysteries, and to prove its perfect coincidence
with the conclusions of man's understanding ; its supernatural-
ness consisting in its having so long forestalled the discoveries,
which human reason did not arrive at till seventeen centuries
after. Thus in 1771 Noesselt printed a Dissertation to prove
that Trvevfia in this passage of St John means Christ's doctrine,
which was to be spread over the earth by the preaching of
His disciples. This interpretation chimed in so well with the
temper of an age unwilling to recognise anything in Christ, beyond
a moral teacher, a wiser and better Socrates, that it was readily
adopted. Rosenmiiller paraphrases our Lord's words thus : " Si
quis cupidus est discendi, is se mihi tradat in disciplinam, meaque
doctrina recte utatur. Quisquis se mihi tradit in disciplinam, — per
eum alii etiam homines magna doctrinae copia largissime imbuentur."
Kuinoel says the same thing in nearly the same words ; for in the
slough of Rationalism one makes little progress, except by rolling
out of one rut into another. Of course, where the teachers of
Theology are mainly professors in a university, who spend their
lives between their lecture-rooms and their studies, and who have
little practical acquaintance with other forms of life, and scanty
experience of any weightier difficulties than that of gaining assent to
such or such a proposition, there must needs be a tendency to look
upon knowledge as the chief object and rule and principle of life:
NOTE H. 271
and as this class is far more numerous, and exercises a far greater
influence on the national mind, in Germany, than in other countries,
— as Germans moreover are not withheld by the same strong checks,
which operate in other countries, from publishing their heterodox
speculations, — Rationalism became the peculiar stigma of German
Theology. In fact too, not only did much find utterance in Ger-
many, which in other countries was latent, or merely avowed by
such as openly rejected Christianity altogether, but the very habit
of expressing and circulating all manner of opinions fostered the
licence of speculation, and, like all habits, propagated itself. That
shallow tamper of mind however, blind to its own infirmities, which
exaggerates the value of knowledge, and which deems that such
portions of the Gospel .as can be received by the mere exercise of the
understanding are the whole substance of religion, — a temper of mind
totally unfitted for recognising those primary truths in the Gospel, the
very recognition of which involves a conviction that man has deeper
wants, and the Gospel more precious gifts, than those which pertain
to the understanding, — this temper was diffused more or less over all
the nations which prided themselves on occupying a prominent post
in the civilization of Europe. Hence, when compared with such
expositions, as that of Noesselt, Rosenmuller, and Kuinoel, even
Paulus is almost refreshing, who, in explaining the 39th verse, says,
" It was the impression which the victorious resurrection of Jesus, and
his passing to a higher, glorious state of bliss made on his disciples,
that first produced — that higher tone of mind in them, in which the
zealous servant of God will strive more independently and energeti-
cally to work good with all his might. In order to have a source
for this higher strain of feeling, they assumed that a irvevfxa,
i itnal principle of life and motion, had been just awakened by
God in man. Thus we cau easily understand how John could say,
Ov7T<o yap fjv Trvtvfia ayiov for this holy enthusiasm did not yet
exist in tin; disciples of Jesus.— So long as Jesus was with His
les, He was naturally everything to them; and they were
merely His followers. It was necessary that they should be left to
themselves,— ere they could rely on having sufficient power in
themselves, and could draw it out of themselves, like the spark out
of the flint, by their self-reliance.— The conceptions which the
Apostles and other primitive followers of Jesus attacht to His being
gloriJUd by the Father, could not but produce a contempt in them
272 NOTE II
for earthly sufferings and labours, and even for death, with a con-
fident expectation of unforeseen succour and preservation for the
cause and the workers of good, in short all that which St John calls
overcoming the world." I said, that even Paulus, in comparison
to his brother commentators, who exalt knowledge above all things,
is almost refreshing ; but verily, when one reads over his remarks,
one is reminded of the homely proverb, that there is small choice
of rotten apples. Yet these were the writers, of whom many
said, These are your gods, men of sense, who will bring you out of
the Jewish Canaan, and out of the wilderness of the dark ages, to the
land where you shall be rich in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and
enjoy thefleshpots of Egypt into the bargain.
The decline of the Roman Empire has been compared in a cele-
brated simily to the latter part of the course of the Rhine, where
that king of European rivers splits his mass of waters into a
number of branches, and is almost swallowed up and lost in the
sands of Holland. Now the Rhine is not the only river that is thus
shorn of its glory, before it perishes : nor is the fate of the Roman
Empire the only parallel that the history of the world offers. The
lot of many things in nature, of many among the works and institu-
tions of man, has been after this analogy ; and the same comparison
suggests itself, when we contemplate the condition of Christian
Theology at the close of the last century. To one who knew what
Theology had been, and saw what it was then, yet who could not
pierce beyond the actual state of things, it must have seemed as
though the mighty stream, which had been flowing through nation
after nation, and through generation after generation, digging itself
a channel through the mountains, refreshing the vallies, and com-
passing and fertilizing the plains, — and which had borne the minds
of men along with it, widening and deepening with every fresh
accession of intellectual or moral power, — was about to end, not by
pouring itself out into that eternal ocean, toward which it had ever
appeared to be journeying, but by being broken into petty rills,
choked with mud, and engulf t in quicksands. Indeed it may have
struck some readers, that the foregoing sketch, so far as it pretends
to give anything like a representation of the opinions held in various
ages of the Church concerning the workings of the Spirit, is strangely
repugnant to the proposition maintained in the preceding Note, that
in Theology, as in other departments of knowledge, there has been a
NOTE B. 273
progressive development, whereby later ages have attained to a
fuller systematic apprehension of the Truth, than was possest by the
earlier. This appearance has doubtless been increast by my having
merely cited certain of the most eminent divines at divers periods,
without attempting to trace the connexion and points of transition
amongst them. For hereby a greater importance attaches itself to
the intellectual and spiritual qualifications of individual theologians :
and as in the warfare of early times there are more conspicuous
examples of individual heroism, the same thing has happened in other
relations, intellectual and moral. To have done more would have
been inconsistent with the nature of a note, and would have
required the- elaborate and well digested studies preparatory to an
independent work. Indeed the subject itself made it difficult to do
more : for the consideration of the office and operations of the Third
Person in the Holy Trinity has never formed so prominent a part in
Theology, as that of the First and Second Persons : whence there is
less of order and sequence in the views themselves ; and they have
taken their shape much more from the character of individual
minds. Besides it is very true, that the eighteenth century does
form the great difficulty in the way of the philosopher, who sets
himself to investigate the intellectual and moral history of man, in
the belief that the human race has been progressive. To overcome
this difficulty, we must bear in thought, that the progress of man-
kind, if there be any, has at all events, as is plain from every portion
of history, never been uniform and rectilinear ; that, according to
the law of the whole creation, it has had its periods of alternation,
its ebbs and flows, its nights and days, its winters and summers,
and that these may have been measured out by centuries ; that the
same life does not go on waxing in vigour indefinitely, but wanes
and decays and perishes, though succeeded by other lives, in such
a manner that the realm of life is continually enlarging ; that the
blossoms do not remain on the tree along with the fruit, but fall off
to make way for the fruit, which however does not ripen until after
an interval of comparative bareness. We must remember how
something, which to the common eye has appeared almost like a
thousand-yeared sleep, lay on the mind of Europe, ere it was fully
awakened to the contemplation and cultivation of the new world
in which Christianity had placed it. Thus, in passing from that
kind of dogmatical knowledge, which is founded on the implicit
S
274 NOTE H.
reception of the materials supplied by tradition, to that kind which
is to be preceded by a critical examination both of the objects
of knowledge, and of the mind, its subject, man has had to tarry a
while in the wilderness of blank doubt and mere negations. Yet
this very rationalizing of Scripture, which has narrowed and
degraded it into a conformity with the abstractions of the natural
understanding, has been to prepare the way, we may trust, for the
time when the voice of the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures shall be
recognised to be in perfect concord with the intuitions of the
clarified Reason.
It would be a delicate, and could scarcely be otherwise than an
invidious task, to examine whether any, and what evidence is
afforded by the present state of English Theology to warrant such
an expectation. With reference to our immediate enquiry, it is
sufficient to remark, that the censure quoted above, in p. 260, from
Coleridge, which was intended by him for the early years of this
century, is no longer applicable to anything like the same extent.
Indeed we have ground for much thankfulness in the belief that the
abiding influence of the Spirit on the hearts of believers is a more
general element in the teaching of our Church now, than it has
been since the time when the Nonconformists were driven out.
That German Theology has also undergone a change in a like
direction of late, is not so well known perhaps in England. In the
very worst times indeed some men were left in Germany, who had
not bowed the knee to Baal : but the general improvement in the
character of German Theology did not take place till after the
nation had been aroused by the sufferings which preceded the "War
of Deliverance, by the solemn voices which at that time sounded
through every heart, and by the thankfulness and joy which the
events of that war called forth. Even in the last dozen years,
it is true, the Antichristian spirit has become stronger and more
audacious and subtiler than ever ; and it is now waging open war
against the name and existence of Christianity, against all the
duties, all the hopes, all the holiest feelings of man. But even
this is better than to lie imbedded and suffocated, or to sprawl
and crawl about, in the slough of Rationalism : and along with the
increast virulence of Infidelity, Faith too has become stronger and
bolder and clearer : nor will he who knows what powers support
such as are contending for the Truth, doubt on which side the
NOTE H. 275
ultimate victory will be. Among the commentaries on St John,
the tone of which has betokened this improvement, the earliest I
know of is Tittmann's ; who is not indeed very eminent, either as
a thinker or a scholar, and whose style is prolix and feeble, but
whose exposition of our passage is in the main correct. Arguing
against the doctrinary school, he says, " Neque habet et confert
Jesus bona doctrinae tantum, sed innumerabilia alia ; non tantum
est Servator per doctrinam suam, sed aliis modis. Quodsi prae-
dicasset se tanquam Servatorem per doctrinam, multo minus ipsum
admisissent Judaei ; ne intellexissent quidem, nee intelligere po-
tuissent : exspectabant enim in Messia non doctorem, quam potius
liberatorem et felicitatis vindicem. — Ea vero bona profecto sunt
ante omnia cognitio Dei et Christi, in primis autem cognitio con-
8ilioruni divinorum de salute hominum per Christum, deinde vero
etiam gratia apud Deum et remissio peccatorum, et sensus gratiae
divinae et remissionis .peccatorum, fides, animi vitaeque sanctitas,
apes futurae vitae, et quae sunt ejus generis alia" (pp. 306,
314).
Luecke, who also belongs to the better school of Theology, but,
having had to wade through the slough of Eationalism in his youth,
like most of his contemporaries, has some of its mud sticking to him,
maintains somewhat pertinaciously and perversely, in all the three
editions of his Commentary, that St John, in our passage, has not
apprehended our Lord's meaning quite correctly. Comparing the
expression in vii. 38, vSojp £<3i>, with the words to the Samaritan
woman in iv. 14, he contends that v8<op fov is equivalent to
for} aliovios, and interprets our passage thus : " He who believes in
Me, and thus drinks of the living water, which I give to the thirsty, —
out of his heart, as the Scripture says of the rivers of blessings in the
days of the Messiah, wUlflow rivers of living water, that is, of eternal
life. Not only will he himself be a partaker of eternal life; out of his
fulness he will refresh others therewith. On the other hand St John
(Luecke says), understanding v8(op £<ov to be the Holy Spirit, takes
{nbrovo-i as an absolute, not a relative future, .and the whole speech
as a prophecy of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. — Yet
/Wrroixri (he argues) cannot in this position be taken as an absolute
future, to the exclusion of the present time : 7tot€, or something of
the kind, should have been added. Since, according to St John,
faith, as soon as it springs up, produces life, we are disposed to
276 NOTE H.
understand Jesus as declaring that at the very first moment of
faith the rivers of living water will immediately begin to flow."
Such criticism, it seems to me, applied to any writer, would be
somewhat captious ; nor are the arguments tenable even philologi-
cally. Doubtless vSup fav in vii. 38 is equivalent to v8(op aXXofxevov
ets farjv oiuwov in iv. 14 ; for true life is also everlasting life ; the
only difference is, that in the first-cited passage our Lord is speaking
with special reference to the influence and power of believers upon
others. But it is not said in iv. 14 that the water is far) aiwvios,
as Luecke implies : the water is the power of the Spirit manifesting
itself in those gifts and graces which belong to eternal life, and to
which eternal life belongs. Again, there is nothing in St John's
words to limit pevcrovorc, as an absolute future, to a single specific
moment, the day of Pentecost. They do not assert, or mean, that
Jesus was speaking with exclusive reference to the descent of the
Holy Ghost on that one day. What they assert is, that Jesus,
in speaking of the rivers of living water, was speaking, by antici-
pation, of the gifts of the Spirit, which believers were to receive
after His glorification, both on the day of Pentecost, and from
that time forward. As to Luecke's argument, that, according to
our Lord's words, the rivers of living water were to flow out of the
hearts of believers immediately, before the day of Pentecost, a
sufficient answer to it is afforded by the fact, that no such effect
was wrought in any of the Apostles themselves prior to the descent
of the Holy Ghost. Our Lord, speaking on the last day of the
Feast of Tabernacles, gave an assurance of that which was to take
place at the next feast of Tabernacles, after His glorification, and
from that time forward until the end of the world. In like
manner are we to understand all His spiritual promises, none of
which were fulfilled during His life, nor could be, because they
could not be fulfilled, except through the working of the Spirit, who
was not yet given.
Luecke further remarks that, though water in the Old Testament
is sometimes used as the symbol of the Holy Spirit, especially in that
the effusion of the Spirit is compared to the pouring out of water,
the appropriate symbol of the Spirit in the New Testament is fire,
water standing as the symbol of far) aiuvios. After discussing a
couple of explanations of the difference between the operation of the
Spirit under the Old, and that under the New Dispensation, he con-
NOTE H. 277
eludes, "The difference, if we compare i. 17. 18. 33. iii. 34, cannot
have been regarded by St John as specific, but merely as consisting
in this, that under the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was limited
in His communications and revelations of Himself, whereas, after the
incarnation and glorification of the Word, working freely in His
whole Messianic fulness, He was given to believers permanently,
and so as to be the ruling principle of their lives." In reply to this,
I will quote some excellent remarks by Kling, from an article in the
Theologische Studien for 1836, which, if critics were not as im-
pervious to conviction as the rest of mankind, would have made
Luecke adopt a better explanation in his last edition. " I confess I
cannot see why the symbol of fire, under which the Holy Ghost is
represented in the New Testament, is to exclude that of water. On
the contrary they serve as complements to each other, the former
being the symbol of the Spirit in His penetrative, the latter in His
refreshing and enlivening power. Since, in the Old Testament (Isai.
xliv. 3), we find water used as an image of the Spirit, to signify
the vivifying abundance of His effusion, what reasons have we for
asserting that Ik\Ulv (Acts x. 45. Tit. iii. 6) merely denotes fluidity
and communicability generally, without any specific reference to the
image of water ? What too is the Trtjyrf v8g.ros aXXofitvov in iv. 14 ?
except the Uvev/xa v (fj.eXX.ov Xaixfiaveiv ol ttlo-t€vovt€S €i's ai/roV.
Luecke admits that the Hoevfia is the principle of the faij. But
what does the Uvevfxa impart, except Himself? He is at once the
Giver and the Gift ; and in this very place, vii. 39, He is regarded
as the Life imparted to believers. As to pevcrovo-iv, it is unquestion-
ably to be understood as a future, that is, not as expressing some-
thing that was to be given and to take place immediately, along
with the act of faith, but at a subsequent moment, which presup-
poses a higher development of the life of faith. The act of 7ricrTet>W
implies a reception of the living water. If a man continues thus to
receive, and allows what he receives to act freely upon him, he will
arrive at a state where the divine life in him will become spontane-
ous : he acquires the faculty of spreading it around him : it becomes
a fountain of living power, abiding in him, and issuing from him.
T<> this condition the first disciples were raised on the day of Pente-
cost The Evangelist however is referring to that whole state of
things, in which the spiritual life inherent in believers acts out-
wardly ; which state commenced after Christ's glorification, and has
278 NOTE H.
continued ever since in His Church. Thus it was something purely
future with regard to the hearers ; and there was no need of a ttot\
to express this. Luecke has not properly observed the distinction
between the reception and quiet possession of the £(orj aiuvios, and
the power of imparting it to others, or of exciting others to seek it
by the manifestation of its indwelling power : nor has he perceived
that TLvevfia ayiov in this passage, though it is equivalent to £<ory,
denotes a higher degree of this fay in man, which is not coincident
with the first dawn of faith. In like manner what follows does not
shew a sufficiently definite conception of the Hvev/xa ayiov, when he
makes the only difference between the Old and New Testament in
this respect lie in the degree of abundance with which the Spirit was
imparted : whereas this itself is the consummation of the divine Dis-
pensation, the inherent and permanent indwelling of the divine life
in the body of believers, and in the individual members of that
body. On the other hand in the Old Testament there are merely
scattered -n-poXrjipcts, in the way of prophecy, of strengthening, of
admonition, of desire, individual awakenings, visions, operations of a
preparatory kind. It is true, the hearers of Jesus could not at the
moment understand His words ; but this was not necessary, if they
merely gained an anticipation of a rich and precious blessing, and
were excited to long after it. The full insight into their meaning
could only be acquired by their own living experience. So
that this speech had the same appropriateness as all our Lord's
other deeper speeches, the meaning of which the disciples did not
understand, until it was revealed to them by the Spirit"
(pp. 132—134).
This agrees in the main with what Nitzsch says, in his System,
of Christian Doctrine, §. 84. "As under the Old Covenant it was
necessary that those individual persons, by whom the Word of God
was to be uttered for special purposes, legislatively or prophetically,
and by whom the theocratic guidance and training of the typical
people was to be carried on, — such persons as Moses, the Elders, the
Judges, the Priests, the Kings, the Prophets, — should be in a state
of peculiar, intimate communion with God, and should possess an
inherent fitness, as men of the Spirit, for the Kingdom of God (see
1 Sam. x. 6. xix. 20. Isai. lxiii. 10. Ps. li. 11. Hos. ix. 7) ; so
there grew up a hope of Him who was to possess inspiration in
its fullest measure (Isai. xi. 2. comp. John i. 33. iii. 34), and
NOTE H. 279
of a time which was not to see a series of individual prophets
endowed with inspiration amid the people, but the simultaneous
inspiration of the whole people and of all flesh : Joel iii. Ezek.
xxxvi. 26, 27. This time was not yet arrived, when Jesus de-
sired (Luke xii. 49) to kindle the fire, and to baptize with fire;
and in this respect the Holy Ghost was not yet : John vii. 39.
The world too, as such, knew Him not, and received Him not :
John xiv. 17. But as the first Paraclete, who appeared in
the flesh, had declared that, after His going to the Father,
another would come, to perfect the communion with God in those
who had believed in the first, this was fulfilled on the day of
Pentecost."
The following sentences from Tholuck's Commentary may also
stand here in confirmation of what has been said concerning the re-
vival of sounder Theology in Germauy. "As St John must
have known better than we do, that the operations of the Holy
Ghost had already been spoken of in the Old Testament, we must
assume that he restricted the expression here to the Christian Holy
Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit of God, so far as He, dwelling in
man as a subjective principle, appropriates the objective, essential
truths of Revelation, and gives them the power of truth in each
individual mind ;" in other words, convinces men of siu, and of
righteousness, and of judgement. "This was the consequence of
Christ's exaltation and glorification : for it was only when He was
entirely freed from all the limitations of earth, that he could be-
come in spirit the indwelling principle of life in his disciples ; and
on the other hand the new life of the disciples could not expand
independently and spiritually, until the visible presence of the
Saviour was taken away from them."
This long, though very imperfect, line of witnesses to the
riches of meaning, which is to be found in a couple of verses of
Scripture, may be closed with an extract from Olshausen's
admirable Commentary on the New Testament ; a translation
of which, if executed with intelligence and judgement, — with th,e
occasional omission of passages referring to transient absurdities
rman divines, unknown and unworthy of being known in
England, and with the addition of such notes as may be requisite
to explain allusions in the text, — would be an inestimable benefit to
the English student, nay, to every thoughtful reader of the Bible.
280 NOTE II.
Without meaning to disparage the Catena Aurea, which has re-
cently been translated by the indefatigable revivers of Patristic
Theology, I may say that the translation just proposed would be
far more useful 'to all who desire to apprehend the meaning and
spirit of the New Testament : and a comparison of the two works
would prove, that, in one important branch of Theology, notwith-
standing all manner of divergencies and extravagances, slips and
falls, waywardnesses and forwardnesses, yet, when we compare the
nineteenth century with the fourth, and the following ones down
to the thirteenth, there has certainly been a progress ; a con-
clusion we should hardly have formed concerning the eighteenth
from the specimens of its exegetical skill contained in the English
Family Bible publisht some five and twenty years ago ; and which
moreover no way infers that the individual theologians are greater,
any more than every astronomer in these days is greater than
Copernicus and Kepler. In his remarks on John vii. 39, Olshausen
says, "The 8o£ao-9r}vai of the Son is mentioned here, not merely as
the period, but also as an instrumental and inducing cause of
the effusion of the Spirit. This glorification of Christ (on which
Olshausen has some excellent remarks on xiii. 31) refers of course
to His humanity, which was spiritualized and celestialized by the
power of the indwelling Deity. This process first manifests itself
in its perfection at the Ascension ; after which therefore the ful-
ness of the Spirit was first poured out on the Apostles and first
believers. — Here we have a plain expression of the idea, that the
revelation of God in man takes place by a continual progress, and
is made to depend on the gradual perfecting of the bearers and
sustainers of the Spirit. The Spirit of God fashioned the holy
temple of the body of the Lord for Himself in the Virgin's womb,
that He might dwell there, in a pure, unspotted vessel : but it was
only through the power of this indwelling Spirit, that the body of
our Lord was by degrees so glorified, that the highest manifestation
of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, could flow out from him over
mankind, like an all-vivifying, all-purifying river. Along with
this operation of the Holy Ghost, the power of our Lord's glorified
humanity also constantly manifested itself ; so that He not only gave
His Spirit, but also His flesh and blood to His disciples, and
fashioned them in all things after Himself, that they became bone
of His bone, and flesh of His flesh : Eph. v. 30. Phil. iii. 21.
NOTE H. 281
Hence we shall be better able to define the relation between the
efficacy of the Holy Spirit before our Lord's glorification, and that
under the New Testament. Through His operation, we learn from
St Peter, the prophets under the Old Testament were inspired ; and
the New Testament speaks of Him as acting before Christ's glorifi-
cation, both with reference to John the Baptist, and at the concep-
tion of Jesus. But there is no express mention of the Holy Ghost
in the Old Testament, except in Ps. li. 11, and Isai. lxiii. 10 : and
the whole Old Testament shews that the idea of the Spirit was only
dimly latent in the minds of those who were living under that
prior Bevelation. (In the Apocrypha we find the name, TLvevfia
ay to v, in Wisd. i. 5, 9, 17.) It might be said indeed, that the whole
dfference between the working of the Holy Ghost under the Old
and the New Testament consists in this, that under the later Dis-
pensation He manifests Himself in greater fulness, in more extra-
ordinary gifts of grace, and more various modes of operation (1
Cor. xii. 7 — 11) ; and lastly, that His operation is more abiding,
while in the OlcJ, Testament it is rather fleeting and occasional.
Were this sb, however, the gift under the New Testament
would not be anything essentially new, but a higher degree
of that under the Old. Hence the features just mentioned,
though they must not be overlookt, are not quite sufficient, but
require an important complement. So far as the Deity is essen-
tially the Spirit and the Holy One, it cannot be denied that the
Holy Ghost operated in the Old Testament : such expressions too as
God spake, the Spirit took the prophet, occur often. Moreover, from
the eternal unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, in consequence
of which no one can work without the others, where we read of God
as working in the Old Testament, we must also conceive the Holy
Spirit as co-operating. Nevertheless the usual language of Scripture
itself, as well as the mutual relations of the Persons of the Trinity,
justify us in distinctly separating the operation of the Father, the
Son, and the Spirit, as different Persons in the Divine Being : and
in this respect we are bound to say, that the working of the Holy
Ghost begins with the glorification of Jesus, and the effusion of the
Spirit at the feast of Pentecost. Hence there is a kind of truth in the
view, which has often been entertained in the Church, concerning
different Dispensations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The working of the Godhead under the Old Testament was th.it of
282 NOTE H.
the Son : that of the Holy Ghost begins with the Feast of Pentecost.
— One might say, that, down to the glorification of Jesus, the Uvzvfia
ayiov operated as evSia#erov, and after it as TrpocjiopiKov. The
special work of the Holy Ghost is that of Regeneration, and the
whole creative action of God in the souls of men. Hence Regenera-
tion also belongs essentially to the New Testament ; because under
this Dispensation the Holy Ghost first manifested His specific
power."
This extract holds out several temptations to discussion ; but I
must decline them, or this Note will never end. For the same
reason I must pass over the attempt to explain the distinctive
operation of the Spirit in the Christian Church, and the reasons why
it could not have place previously, by Conradi, in his Kritik der
Christlichen Dogmen, publisht in 1841. For that writer, who is a
profound and subtile thinker, and seems an earnestminded and pious
man, being a disciple of the Hegelian school in philosophy, has
laboured strenuously, in this as in his other works, to reconcile his
philosophy with his religion, and to exhibit the forms which Chris-
tian Truth must assume when viewed through the spectacles of that
philosophy ; a task in which several other able men of the same
school have lately been engaged, with more or less success, some-
times with a grievous sacrifice of Christian Truth, sometimes, it may
be, at the cost of their philosophical and logical consistency. Now
there is so much that is peculiar in the terminology and dialectic
system of that school, that even a few sentences on such a subject as
the nature and office of the Spirit would be unintelligible to persons
not familiar with the recent philosophy of Germany, — that is, to
ninety-nine English readers in a hundred, — unless they were
accompanied with copious explanations. It is indeed a common
practice with English divines, not excepting those who in other
respects have maintained a respectable and scholarly character, to
speak contemptuously and damnatorily of German Philosophy and
Theology, — even of great writers, of whom they have scarcely read
a few pages, and not understood those few. Such a practice how-
ever, which even natural justice, much more Christian love, repro-
bates and condemns, only makes it the more needful not to touch
upon such matters, unless one can enter into them fully. I will
merely remark, that, — while the examination of the religious
character and tendencies of any metaphysical system requires a
NOTEH. 283
thoroughly philosophical mind, a mind learned, penetrating, clear-
sighted, and candid, — even when the result of such an examination
has been fatal to the system, this will no wise prove that many of
its disciples may not by a happy illogicalness contrive to hold large
portions of Christian Truth, along with doctrines which, if pusht to
their extreme, would militate against it. This was the case, for
instance, with many of the great Mystics, from Tauler down to
Behmen and Angelius Silesius, in whose philosophy there was always
a tendency, often. a very strong one, to Pantheism, yet whose hearts
were temples of c|eep and fervent devotion. On the other hand, God
forbid we should pronounce that all the persons, whose understandings
were trained in the shallow Materialism of the last century, were
aliens in heart from the Commonwealth of Israel. It has been seen
from the days of Balaam downward, that a man may have a
hold on the Truth intellectually, without its producing any
effect on his moral being ; and our lot would be miserable in-
deed, if intellectual errour exercised an absolute sway, and there
were no escape from its consequences, — if the chinks and crevices
in our logic only admitted the wind and rain, and never the
sunshine.
We have been traversing a long space, have been threading the
volumes of many generations, and have heard a number of voices
from some of the wisest and holiest among the children of men, all
of them endeavouring, each after his kind, to give utterance and
expansion to the truth set before us in a few short words of Scrip-
ture. These voices may have seemed discordant and dissonant ; for
so it is ever with the works of the understanding. Men seek out
many inventions ; and these are apt to jar and clash. The only
perfect harmony and unison that can be on earth, is in prayer. In
prayer logical differences vanish, diversities of knowledge pass away,
the contentiousness of dogmas is husht. They who really feel them-
selves in the presence of God, must feel that all the petty distinc-
tions, which at other times may separate them from their brethren,
are swallowed up in the immensity of the difference which separates
them from Him, and that, as He is one, all who behold Him
should be fused into one by His unific presence. I will there-
fore close this Note with the translation of a beautiful prayer,
for the fulfilment of the very promise which we have been con-
sidering ; in which, we may trust, the holy men, whose testimony
284 NOTE H.
concerning the Spirit we have been examining, would gladly
have joined.*
" O Lord Jesus, holy Jesus, who didst vouchsafe to die for our
sins, and didst rise again for our justification, I beseech Thee by
Thy glorious Resurrection, raise me from the grave of all my vices
and sins, and grant me daily a part in- the first Resurrection, that I
may truly deserve to receive a part in Thy Resurrection. O Thou
most sweet, most kind, most loving, most dear, most precious,
most desired, most amiable, most beauteous Sayionr, Thou hast
ascended into heaven in the triumph of thy glory, and sittest at
the right hand of the Father. O most mighty King, draw me up-
ward to Thee, that I may run after Thee, after the odour of Thine
ointments, that I may run and not faint, while Thou drawest
and leadest me as I run. Draw the mouth of my soul, that thirsts
after Thee, to the heavenly streams of eternal satiety : yea, draw
me to Thee, the living Fountain, that according to my capacity
I may drink, whence I shall ever live, my God, my Life. For
Thou hast said with Thy holy and blessed mouth, If any man
thirst, let him come to Me and drink. O Fountain of Life, grant
to my thirsty soul that I may ever drink from Thee, that, according
to thy sacred and faithful promise, waters of life may flow from my
*It is found among Anselm's, as the 19fch, and is well suited to the
troubled circumstances of his life, and to his earnest longings after rest and
peace. It is also found in the Liber Meditationum, which is publisht among
the works of Augustin, but is generally acknowledged not to be his, and is
supposed on probable grounds by the Benedictine Editors to have been com-
posed or compiled, at least a large portion of it, by John, Abbot of Fescamp,
a contemporary of Anselm's. This John of Fescamp has recently been
introduced to modern readers by the master of medieval lore in his interest-
ing Essays on the Dark Ages, pp. 314-321. Mr Maitland there gives a letter
from him to the Empress Agnes, which appears from the Benedictine Intro-
duction to the Liber Meditationum to have been prefixt to that book; and he
says that the book itself, he believes, " exists only in manuscript." One
must not readily assume that one has found anything in this field of knowledge,
that Mr Maitland has overlookt : but he appears not to have been aware of
the reasons for supposing that the Liber Meditationum is, or comprises, the
book sent by the Abbot to the Empress. How far these reasons may avail to
prove that the prayer in the text is by him, and not by Anselm, I have not
the means of determining. If it be by the former, we gain an addition to the
list of devotional writers. A translation of the Liber Meditationum was
publisht at the beginning of the last century by Dean Stanhope.
NOTE H. 285
belly. O Fountain of Life, fill my mind with the river of Thy
pleasures, and make my soul drunk with the sober drunkenness of
Thy love ; that I may forget whatever is vain and earthly, and may
keep Thee alone continually in my memory, as it is written, Memor
fui Dei, et delectatus sum*
"Give me Thy Holy Spirit, signified by those waters, which
Thou didst promise to give to the thirsty. Grant, I beseech Thee,
that with my whole desire and with every endeavour I may strive
thitherward, whither we believe Thee to have ascended on the for-
tieth day after Thy Resurrection ; that I may be detained in this
present misery with my body alone, but may be always with Thee
in thought and longing, that my heart may be there where Thou
art, my desirable and incomparable and most lovely Treasure.
For in the great deluge of this life, where we are tost about by
the storms around us, and no safe haven is to be found, no dry spot
where the foot of the dove may rest for a while, there is no safe
peace, no secure rest, everywhere war and strife, everywhere
enemies, without fightings, within fears. And because in one part
we are of heaven, in the other of earth, the corruptible body presseth
down the soul. Therefore my mind, my Companion and Friend,
being weary with the way waxes faint, and lies wounded and torn
by the vanities it has past through : it hungers and thirsts greatly ;
and I have nought to set before it; for I am poor and destitute.
Do Thou, O Lord my God, who art rich in all good, and a
most bountiful Dispenser of the banquet of heavenly satiety, give
meat to Thy weary, collect Thy scattered, restore Thy wounded
servant. Lo, he stands at the door and knocks : I beseech Thee by
the bowels of Thy compassion, wherewith Thou visitedst us as the
Dayspring from on high, open the hand of Thy mercy to this
miserable beggar, and command with a winning condescen-
sion that he come to Thee, that he rest in Thee, that he may be
strengthened by Thee with living, heavenly bread; wherewith when
he is satisfied, and has recovered his strength, he may mount higher,
and, borne on the wings of holy desires from this valley of tears,
may fly to Thy heavenly Kingdom.
"Let my spirit, Lord, I beseech Thee, put forth wings, like
an eagle, and fly, and not faint ; let it fly and mount even to
* Ps. lxxvi. 4, corresponding to lxxvii. 3, in our Version, in "which tl
is jtut the reverse : / remembered God, and xoat troubled.
286 NOTE H.
the beauty of Thy house, to the place where Thine honour
dwelleth, that there, on the table where the citizens above find
refreshment, it may be fed with Thy secret things in the place
of Thy pasture, near the overflowing rivers ; that my heart may
rest in Thee, O my God, my heart, a vast sea, swelling with waves.
Thou, who didst command the winds and the sea, and there was
a great calm, come and walk on the waves of my heart, that
everything in me may become calm and serene, while I embrace
Thee, my only Good, and behold Thee, the sweet Light of my eyes,
without being blinded by the darkness of my troubled thoughts.
Let my spirit, Lord, fly beneath the shadow of Thy wings from the
scorching cares of this world, that, being hidden in Thy refreshing
coolness, it may sing rejoicingly, and say, i" will lay me down in
peace and sleep.
" Let my memory, I beseech Thee, O Lord my God, sleep from all
things that are under heaven, watching to Thee, as it is written,
/ sleep, and my heart watches. Let my soul be safe, be always
secure under the wings of Thy protection, O my God. Let it abide
in Thee, and be always nourisht by Thee. Let it behold Thee, when
my consciousness forsakes me, and sing Thy praises with shouts of
joy: and let these Thy sweet gifts be my consolation in the mean
while amid these whirlwinds, until I come to Thee, who art true
Peace, where there is no bow or shield or sword or war, but the
highest and most perfect security, and secure tranquillity, tranquil
pleasure, and pleasant happiness, and happy eternity, and eternal
blessedness, and the blessed vision and praises of Thee, world
without end. Amen."
Note I. : p. 25.
Andrews, in his Sermon on our Lord's words, If ye love Me, keep
My commandments; and I will pray the Father; and He will give
you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; — the
third of those on the Sending of the Holy Ghost, — argues the question,
" How shall we love Christ, or keep His commandments, that we
may receive the Holy Ghost, when, unless we first receive, we can
neither love Him nor keep them 1 — How saith He, Keep, and I will
give, when He must give, or we cannot keep ? " He replies, that to
NOTE I. 287
him who hath shall be given, both in a higher degree, and in a
different kind ; an answer sufficient for the immediate question, and
agreeing in substance with Augustin's, from whose 14th Tractate on
St John the words of the question are translated : only Augustin,
after his fashion, is more diffuse and rhetorical, and, as is very often
the case with him, winds round and round and round the point,
instead of coming up to it and clenching it. "We consider
(Andrewes adds), as St Peter (1. iv. 10), the Spirit in His graces,
or the graces of the Spirit, as of many kinds ; — of many kinds ;
for our wants and defects are many. Not to go out of the Chapter,
— in the very words He is called the Spirit of Truth ; and that is one
kind of grace, to cure us of errour. In the 26th verse after, the
Spirit of Holiness. — And here He is termed the Comforter ; and
that is against heaviness and trouble of mind. To him that hath
Him as the Spirit of Truth, which is one grace, He may be promist
as the Spirit of Holiness, or Comfort, which is another. It is well
known, many partake Him as the Spirit of Truth in knowledge,
which may well be promist them (for sure yet they have him not)
as the sanctifying Spirit.* And both these ways may He be had of
* The meaning of this sentence is much obscured, nay, quite perverted, in
the late Oxford reprint, by the omission of the marks of parenthesis.
Andrewes says, that there are many persons, who partake the Spirit of Truth
in knowledge, and to whom yet the Spirit may be promist as the Spirit of
Holiness, seeing that they have Him not as such. But it would be difficult
to make this out from the Oxford text: "It is well known many partake
Him as ' the Spirit of Truth ' in knowledge, which may well be promised
them, for sure yet they have him not as the sanctifying Spirit " (p. 155).
"When thus pointed, the words mean, that the Spirit of Truth may well be
promist to those who have not the sanctifying Spirit; which being at variance
with the whole purport of the passage, I referred to the old Folio, and there
saw plainly what Andrewes intended to say. I know no writer in whom the
nicest accuracy in punctuation is so much needed to render him intelligible,
owing to the parenthetical knottiness of his style, in which juxtaposition is a
very unsafe criterion of continuity. He himself seems to have attended to it
carefully in his manuscripts, if we may judge from the curious system
followed in the old editions,— a system which may indeed be simplified with
advantage ; only at every change one should look out sharply lest the meaning
be misrepresented or obscured. In the next line the Oxford text gives, "the
Apostle's disease," as if it were the disease of some one Apostle, not of the
whole body. This is one of a class of mistakes common in the reprints of our
older writers, arising from the ignorance which prevails concerning the
288 . NOTE I.
some, who are subject to the Apostles disease here, heavy and cast
down, and no cheerful spirit within them. So they were not clean
destitute of the Spirit at this promise making, but had Him ; and so
well might love Him, and in some sort keep His commandments,
and yet remain capable of the promise of a Comforter for all
that."
Now it is doubtless quite true that they, in whom the Spirit
dwells, and who submit to His governance, will be led by Him from
one grace to another, and that, when new emergencies and difficulties
arise, new powers to meet them will be unfolded in their souls.
Only Andre wes, from the character of his mind, as well as from the
philosophy in which he had been trained, was disposed to look at
the work of the Spirit rather as mechanical, than as dynamical or
organical, agreeing herein with the great body of theologians, who
have been readier to conceive that the Spirit brings some, fresh gift
history of our grammar. Few persons are distinctly aware that the practice
of denoting the genitive singular by an apostrophe -was not, common, except
in certain peculiar words, till the latter part of the seventeenth century; or
that the absurd or unmeaning mark, which we now subjoin to denote the
genitive plural, only got into vogue about the middle of the eighteenth. If
our editors bore this in mind, they would feel called upon to exercise a little
discrimination, when they come to an ambiguous form. Ten lines back,
where the edition of 1641 has "in the very words," the Oxford gives " in the
very next words." The insertion of next may rest upon authority; but it
looks like an interpolation : the shorter expression is more in Andrewes
manner.
I do not make these remarks censoriously. In this age of speed and
slovenliness, — of water-colours and lithography and photography, — when
everybody has so many things to do, that nobody can do anything, and the
only way of keeping the world's wheels in motion, is to make matter do the
work of mind, — and when that patient and unweariable love of study, which
animated men in former generations, and which thought no labour too great
to be spent even on minute questions of grammar and orthography, if it did
but lead to a satisfactory result, is no longer to be found, owing to the
blighting system of using emulation, instead of the love of knowledge, as the
main instrument of education,— the reprint of Andrewes is certainly among
the more creditable samples of its class. But now that the most valuable
portions of our early literature are gaining circulation in modern types in the
remotest quarters of the globe, where people will have no means of referring
to the original text, it is desirable that our editors should more than ever feel
that laborious accuracy in the least things is an indispensable part of their
duty.
NOTE I. 289
on every fresh occasion, than that He is a principle of life abiding in
the soul, swaying its desires, exalting and purifying its affections,
strengthening its faculties, and turning them to their appropriate
purpose.* In so many regions of thought do we find counterparts
to the opposite views, which regard light, the one as a composite
aggregate, the other as a plastic and multiform unit. Besides it is a
very inadequate conception of the change which was to be effected
in the Apostles by the Comforter, — and which, we know from the
Book of Acts, was accomplisht within a few days of the Ascension, —
to speak of them as having Him already as the Spirit of Truth, and
as the Spirit of Holiness, and so needing him onty as the Spirit of
Comfort. Andrewes did not mean this, though his words would
seem to imply something of the sort. For all our Lord's expressions
about the sending of the Comforter plainly declare that His presence
was to be something entirely new, and the like of which had not yet
been seen upon earth ; that it depended in some mysterious manner
on His own death and resurrection, and was to be totally different
from any spiritual influences which the Apostles had till then re-
ceived; in a word, that it was to be the great distinctive privilege of
*As this sheet is passing through the press, I have met with a like remark,
referring to a different part of the work of the Spirit, but exprest almost in
the same words, by Ackermann, one of the ablest among the rising theologians
of Germany, in an elaborate, and in many respects very valuable Dissertation
cm the meaning of the words irvvjfia, vovs, and the German Geist, publisht in
the Theologische Studien und Kritikcn for 1839. " Theologians have not un-
frequently been guilty of a gross errour with regard to the biblical idea of
inspiration, from looking upon it as mechanical, instead of dynamical. From
the passages cited (Gen. xli. 38, Job xxxii. 8, Isai. xi. 2, Matth. x. 20, Luke
ii. 40, John xiv. 17, 2G, xvi. 13, Rom. vii. 16, 1 Cor. ii. 10, xii. 3, Gal. iv. 6,
2 Pet. i. 21) it is sufficiently evident that the Bible speaks of the working of
the Spirit of God as dynamical. Hence theologians ought never to have
adopted or encouraged the crude notion, that persons under inspiration were
like so many drawers, wherein the Holy Ghost put such and such things,
which they then took out as something ready-made, and laid before the
world; so that their recipiency with reference to the Spirit inspiring them
was like that of a letterbox. "Whereas inspiration, according to the Bible, is
to be regarded as a vivifying and animating operation on the spiritual faculty
in man, by which its energy and capacity are extraordinarily heightened, so
that his powers of internal perception discern things spread out before them
clearly and distinctly, which at other times lay beyond his range of vision,
and were dark and hidden." p. 890.
T
290 NOTE I.
His Church. Such emphatical words as 1 will send you another
Comforter, and the other similar expressions, are far more than a
promise that One, who was dwelling in them already, should shew
forth His power in a new way, under this fresh affliction. So too
those words of St John, which formed the subject of the last Note,
certify us that the Apostles cannot at this time have received the
Spirit, in that sense in which His gifts were to be the peculiar
blessing of the Christian Dispensation.
If we examine the representation of the conduct of the Apostles
during their Lord's life, as set before us in the four Gospels, — if we
consider how weak their faith was, how easily it was troubled by
doubts and fears, which the reiterated proofs of His divine power could
not allay, — how this its feebleness hampered and hindered them in the
exercise of the gifts with which he had endowed them, — how carnal
their wishes were still, set upon earthly prizes, incapable of under-
standing the pure glory of the Kingdom of Heaven, nay, disturbing
them with jealousies and rivalries, — and further bow slow their
minds were to receive the heavenly light of their Master's teaching,
— how unable they were, even on that last evening, to apprehend
the spiritual meaning of His words, — we cannot but recognise, when
we turn to the Book of Acts, that a total change had been wrought
in them, a change exactly coinciding with the effects, which, they
had been promist, would be produced by the Comforter ; wherefore
this change may with the amplest reason be regarded as being, in
all its parts, the fulfilment of that promise. Moreover, as, accord-
ing to the terms of the promise, the Comforter was to abide with
the Church for ever, the moral powers and spiritual graces, which
the Apostles then received, have been granted ever since to believers
in Christ, after the measure of their faith. This change in the
Apostles gives us a complete explanation and confirmation of St
John's saying, that the Spirit was not given until Jesus was glorified:
which saying seems incompatible with the notion that the Apostles
had received any of the distinctively Christian gifts of the Spirit, at
all events before the Resurrection. Now divine truth, we may feel
sure, is always consistent with itself, although, according to the form
which ideas ever put on, when they are brought down into the
region of the reflective understanding, it will perpetually appear to
involve contradictions. Hence we must not doubt that, if there are
any passages in Scripture, which seem repugnant to the right in-
NOTE I. 291
terpretatiou of this saying in St JoIid, such repugnance will be
removed by a more careful investigation.
For instance, the very text, in preaching on which Andrewes
introduces the passage just cited, aDd which, according to his inter-
pretation, would imply that the Apostles had already received some
of the peculiar gifts of the Spirit, — our Lord's words, If ye love Me,
keep my commandments : and 1 will pray the Father ; and he will
give you another Comforter, — cannot be at variance with the declara-
tion that the Spirit was not given till after Jesus was glorified.
Now at first sight these words seem thoroughly to confirm that
declaration, inasmuch as they palpably refer to what was to take
place after the Resurrection. The inconsistency is merely a matter
of inference, on the ground that the disciples could not love Jesus,
or keep His commandments, except through the influence of the
Spirit. But the love and obedience here spoken of are not that pure
and perfect love, and that perfect obedience, which the Spirit
desires to produce in the heart of every believer, and which can in
no respect be produced, save by His immediate power. The love of
the disciples at that time was weak, frail, human love, for Him who
had been their best Friend, their wisest Teacher, their greatest
Benefactor : and the only obedience which could as yet be expected
from them, was that which such grateful and reverential love may
beget even in the natural man, under circumstances fitted to foster
the better part of his nature. Without entering into the tangled
argument on the character and extent of prevenient grace, we may
assume, what is implied in every part of the New Testament, that
the divine aid which precedes faith, in its lower sense, is wholly
distinct from that special gift of the Spirit, which is vouchsafed to
believers, and to them only.
This distinction is not sufficiently prominent in the comment
of Aquinas on this passage. "Numquid (lie asks) obedientia
discipulorum, et amor eorum ad Christum praeparant ad Spiritum ?
Videtur quod non : quia dilectio qua diligimus Deum est per
Spiritum Sanctum. Rom. v. 5. Caritas Dei diffusa est in cordibus
nostris per Spiritum Sanctum, qui datus est nobis. Obedientia
autem est nobis a Spiritu Sancto. Rom. viii. 14. Qui Spiritu Dei
aguntur hi fUii Dei sunt." These verses however refer to a very
nt love and obedience from that required by our Lord in St
John, a love and obedience proceeding, not from prevenient Grace,
292 NOTE I.
but from the full gift of the Spirit. " Sed posset aliquis dicere (he
adds) quod per dilectionem Filii promeremur Spiritum Sanctum,
quo habito amamus Patrem. Sed huic repugnat, quia idem est
amor Patris et Filii." But the love which Jesus here requires, was
that which they could not but feel toward Him in His Humanity,
not in His Deity. " Et ideo aliter dicendum est, quod hoc
est in donis Dei, ut qui bene utitur dono sibi concesso, amplioris
gratiae et doni acceptionem mereatur ; et qui male utitur,
hoc ipsum quod accepit auferatur ab eo. Nam, ut legitur Matt.
xxv. servo pigro ablatum est talentum, — et datum est ei qui
acceperat quinque. Sic ergo est et de dono Spiritus Sancti. Nullus
enim potest Deum diligere nisi habeat Spiritum Sanctum. Non
enim nos praevenimus gratiam Dei ; sed ipsa praevenit nos. Ipse
enim prior dilexit nos, ut dicitur 1 Joann. iv. 10. Et ideo dicendum,
quod Apostoli primo quidem receperunt Spiritum Sanctum, ut
diligerent Deum et obedirent mandatis ejus : sed necesse erat
ad hoc ut ampliori plenitudine Spiritum Sanctum reciperent, quod
bene uterentur, diligendo et obediendo, dono Spritus Sancti prius
accepto. Et secundum hoc est sensus, Si diligitis Me, per Spiritum
Sanctum, quern habetis, et obeditis mandatis Meis, recipietis Spiritum
Sanctum, quern habetis, in ampliori plenitudine." These words, it
is plain, are very far from expressing the difference, implied in our
Lord's words, between the gift of the Spirit which the disciples
were to receive in answer to His prayer, and that which they
already had. But thus it is for ever in the Schoolmen, that, while
they are exceedingly ingenious in devising all manner of artificial
and arbitrary distinctions, those which actually exist they often
overlook.
There is more uncertainty with regard to the meaning of the last
words in the next verse : The Spirit of Truth, whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor hnoweth Him: but
ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
What rich treasures of knowledge are contained in this verse
concerning the whole relation between man and God, nay, between
man and all heavenly truth ! But I merely cite it here for the
light which the last words seem to afford as to the previous
condition of the Apostles. In the text to this Note I have
interpreted them, without consulting the expositions given by
others, as though the difference of tense were meant to denote a
NOTE I. 293
difference of time, and as though the former clause,— /or He dwelleth
with you, — referred to that acquaintance with the Spirit which the
Apostles had already enjoyed, — the latter clause, and shall be
in you, to that higher gift which was to be granted to them on
the day of Pentecost. A like explanation, I find, is proposed by
Lampe. " Testimonium discipulis datur de meliori prae mundo
dispositione, quod cognoscant Spiritum. Nondum quidem plene
Spiritus Sancti excellentia, et ratio Oeconomiae atque operationum
ejus Apostolis innotuerat. Eousque tamen jam Spiritum cogno-
veraut, ut eoruni cognitio revelationes carnis et sanguinis, Matth.
xvi. 17, necnon scientiam discipulorum Joannis, Act. xix. 1, superaret.
— Nam et miraculorum divinitatem, et doctrinae Christi veritatem,
et personae ejus excellentiam agnoverant. Quod non poterat fieri,
nisi simul tacite crederent eum esse Prophetam ilium promissum et
uberrima Spiritus mensura ungendum, Jer. xi. 2, lxi, 1, 2, 3.
Ps. xlv. 8. Qualiter ergo, vs. 7, cognitionem Patris discipulis
tribuerat, taliter nunc cognitionem Spiritus tribuit, imperfectam
quidem, vera tamen fundamenta et rudimenta habentem. Originem
hujus dispositionis indicat verbis, Quia apud vos manet. Ita
passim interpretes, et sensu quidem commodo. Acceperant jam
primitias spiritus. Tile eos traxerat vocatione efficaci, ut cum
abnegatione sui Christum sequerentur. Idem constanter iis
adhaeseiat in multis tentatiouibus, ita ut, quamvis multi alii a
Jesu in diversa iverint, — fidelis permanserint. Huic apud illos
manenti Spiritui omnia cognitio, quam discipuli habebant, tribui
debebat. Spiritus enim nisi per Spiritum cognosci nequit."
" Xon absurdum tamen esset (he continues) to 6Vt hie vertere
per quare, seu propterea, quae vis in N. T. non est insolens.
Confer Luc. vii. 47, et supra Job. viii. 44. Et turn his verbis
repetitur promissio modo data, et indigitatur hanc mansionem,
quam Jesus promiserat, certo iis exspectandam, quia Spiritum jam
actu cognoscere inceperant. Fateor hoc mihi prae recepta versione
arridere."
By this latter explanation both clauses are referred to the promist
effusion of the Spirit ; and thus, so far as I can find, has the passage
been understood by the great body of divines from the earliest
times to the present. Indeed the Vulgate, in the received
edition, renders all the three verbs in the future : Vos auteni
cognoscetis c%im ; quia apud vos manebit, et in vobis erit. This too
294 N0TE1.
is the reading in the old Latin translation of the Treatise of Atha-
nasius De Trinitate et fipiritu Sancto, § 7, and in Augustin's
74th Tractate on St John, who explains the words thus. "Erit
in eis ut maneat, non manebit ut sit : prius est enim esse alicubi,
quam nianere. Sed ne putarent quod dictum est, apud vos ma-
nebit, ita dictum quemadmodum apud hominem hospes visibiliter
manere consuevit, exposuit quid dixerit, — cum adjunxit et dixit,
in vobis erit. Ergo invisibiliter videtur : nee, si non sit in nobis,
potest esse in nobis ejus scientia. Sic enim a nobis videtur in nobis
et nostra conscientia : nam faciem videmus alterius, nostram videre
non possumus ; conscientiam vero nostram videmus, alterius non
videmus. Sed conscientia nunquam est, nisi in nobis : Spiritus
autem Sanctus potest esse etiam sine nobis : datur quippe, ut sit
et in nobis. Sed videri et sciri quemadmodum videndus et sciendiis
est, non potest a nobis, si non sit in nobis." ;
The translation in the Vulgate is corrected by Erasmus, who
gives, Vos autem cognoscitis eum, quia apud vos manet, et in
vobis erit. Beza, who renders the passage, Vos autem nostis eum,
quia apud vos habitat, et intra vos erit, says in his note : " habitat,
/xevet. — Manere vero hoc in loco idem valet atque pro sede et
domicilio habere ; quo sensu passim dicitur Deus habitare cum suis,
nempe intra ipsos evepyovfxevos, quod mox subjicitur his verbis,
et intra vos erit." Hammond, understanding 6'ta as inferential,
gives a poor paraphrase of the passage : But by you I suppose,
and all true disciples of Mine He is highly valued ; therefore He
shall abide with {not only come to) you, He shall for ever continue
among you. How strangely the Platonic Sokc?, 1 suppose, so
becoming in the philosopher who had discovered his own ignorance,
grates on our ears, when ascribed to Him in whom the fulness of all
knowledge dwelt ! Grotins, taking on in the same sense, says,
"Videntur praecedentia indicare Spiritum, quomodo hie sumitur,
prius nosci, deinde in hominem penetrare : /*em est inhabitat, —
praesens pro brevi futuro." On the first point Calvin of course is
far truer : " Ostendunt Christi verba nihil humano sensu posse de
Spiritu Sancto percipi, sed eum cognosci sola fidei experientia.
Mundus, inquit, capax non est Spintus, quia eum non cognoscit ; vos
autem cognoscitis eum, quia apud vos manet. Solus ergo Spiritus
est, qui in nobis habitando cognoscendum se praebet, alias ignotus
et incomprehensibilis." This exposition seems nearly to coincide
FOTE I. 205
with that given in the Sermon. Kuinoel on the other hand says,
" Praesentia, yivuxTKtTe, fxkvei, vim futurorum habent, id quod vel
additum co-Tat docet:" and he is followed by Tittnian, and by
Klee in his Commentary on St John. Yet one would rather
think that this very use of different tenses was meant to denote a
difference of time ; whereas, had all the verbs been in the present,
they might witli more likelihood have been deemed to signify a
proximate future.
Luecke, in his first edition, makes the same remark, "that
yivwcrKCTe, as well as fxevei, must be taken as futures, on account of
Iotcu just after, and because the disciples did not yet know, and
had not received the Spirit." In his later editions he has adopted
Lachmanu's reading, kcu kv vjxlv ecrrtv, instead of ecrrat, — and says
in the last, " Is yivuJo-Kere to be considered a future, as the
Vulgate in some manuscripts has Cognoscetis? The words Swcreu
and ipwTrjcro) just before render this probable. Then however we
should have to read pom, answering to ecrrat, if this be right. But
it is evident that Zcrrai is a correction for Zcttiv, which Lachmann has
restored ; and the Vulgate has manebit, though the present [xevu
is sufficiently certain.* Meyer rightly regards the presents as in-
definite. Jesus contrasts the character of the Koa-fxos with that of
his disciples. The unbelieving world is unable to receive and to
know the Spirit; the disciples, in their faith, have the capacity to
receive and to know Him. But the reception as well as the know-
ledge are to be future: see vii. 39. The difference between 7rap
vfilv fi€i€i and lv vp.lv io-rlv is, that the former refers rather to the
idea of the HapdKkrjTos, who is to be with them, the latter to that
of the Hvtvfia, who is to be in them. The Paraclete abides with
them, because, as the Spirit, he is in them. Thus they can know
Him from their own immediate experience. The causal 6Vi implies
that the Spirit of Truth cannot be known by any one, except
through his personal possession and experience.
•As the Alexandrian manuscript reads larai, we must be guided, in
adopting or rejecting it, by internal evidence. Luecke's assertion, that eo-rat
i.s evidently a correction, is of no force, as is often the case with arguments
stated thus summarily. On the contrary, according to the primary maxims
of conjectural criticism, a scribe, finding two verbs united by a kui, was much
likelier to assimilate them, had they been in different tenses, than to
introduce a difference, when they were in the same tense.
296 NOTE L
Olshausen's explanation coincides pretty nearly with Luecke's ;
only he has a deeper intuition of spiritual truth, his mind being of
the family of Augustin's. "The Saviour here promises a new,
higher, and till then unknown Principle, the TLvcv^a rfjs dX-qOeias.
This expression implies no less that the Spirit produces the truth
in those who receive Him, than that He Himself is the Truth.
As God Himself is the Truth, and the Son, as the Eevealer of
the unseen Father, so the Spirit also, the highest manifestation
of the Godhead, is the Truth in Himself, and only imparts the
truth, in that He imparts Himself. 'AXrjdcta here is not the
intellectual truth of reflexion, but that absolute Truth which is
Life itself. Hence, by the communication of this Truth, all the
fjLaratoTrjs of our natural, sinful life is overcome. This Spirit is
therefore described as continually abiding {rrap vfuv fitvei), and
as dwelling in the innermost centre of our being (kv vfxiv eWat)
Tiv (6(tk€T€ avro is not merely a future, you vrill know Him, but
you know Him already ; Jesus could appeal to the experience
of the disciples, although they had not yet received the Spirit,
because they had already felt His incipient workings in their
hearts, at occasional blessed hours of their intercourse with their
Lord. The side opposed to the disciples is the koo-jjlos, whereby we
are here to understand the hearts of men, while they continue
in their natural state : these cannot receive Him, because they
are unable to see Him and to know Him. Thus the latter is
a condition of the former ; whereas one might have supposed that
conversely the reception must precede the knowledge. Of the
deepest form of knowledge this is quite true : but a preliminary
knowledge is also requisite for the reception of the Spirit ; and
this awakens the slumbering desire in our heart. Even as an
eye, when shut close, cannot feel the beauty of light, so the world
cannot feel the blessing of the Spirit, until that desire, which is the
condition of receiving Him, is kindled within it."
These remarks are very just ; but they are perfectly consistent
with the explanation proposed in the Sermon : and notwithstanding
the mass of authority the other way, that explanation seems to
me the simplest, and to put the least force upon the words. To call
ytvwcTKcre a present indefinite, with Luecke and Meyer, is scarcely
allowable, if we take it as referring to a definite future event,
or to a state which was to rise out of such an event. But if we
NOTE I. 297
make a distinction between the outward and the inward presence
of the Spirit, and suppose that the Apostles as yet had only-
enjoyed the former, recognising His power in a measure as mani-
fested in the life and discourse of their Lord, and being so far
enlightened by Him as to discern the divine character of that
power, then the promise of the higher gift to them would be in full
conformity with that principle, which runs through the whole
Scripture, as it does through all the dispensations of life, that
to him who has shall be given. The difficulties which have often
been felt, and which have occasioned interminable controversies,
concerning the priority of the outward or the inward act, might be
lessened if we were to meditate on the facts presented to us by
all the operations of life ; how in all there is a combination of
two coordinate elements ; how, for instance, in perception there is
a reciprocal action of the object and the precipient, which must be
ooinstantaneous, admitting of no priority, no exclusive causation, on
one side or the other ; although even here a like controversy has
started up, and one psychological school ascribes all primary
causative power to the objects of knowledge, another to the mind
that knows. At the same time both the object of knowledge
and the subject imply a prior Cause, whereby they have been set in
this state of reciprocal action, whereby the perceiver has been
endowed with his power of perceiving, and the object has been fitted
for acting upon his perceptions. In like manner the common
processes of the mind might greatly help us to understand how they,
who do not perceive and know, cannot receive. Moreover the state
which I have supposed to be here represented as that of the
Apostles, at the time when Christ promist to send the Comforter to
them, is a very common one in every age of the Church, and
perhaps was never commoner than in these days. There are num-
bers of persons, with regard to whom one cannot assert, that
the Spirit has so taken possession of their souls, as to be the Guide
and Kuler of their thoughts and feelings, and to lead them to a full
recognition of the Saviour and His atonement, but who take pleasure,
more or less, in spiritual conversation, in the study of the Bible and
other godly books, and in religious exercises and services. Of such
persons we may say, that they know the Spirit, because He dwelleth
with them: they recognise Him in His operations, as manifested
in the ordinances of the Church, or in the lives and words of those
298 NOTE I.
whom He has sanctified and enlightened ! and we may cherish a
trustful hope, if those feelings have life and reality, that He, whom
they have known when He was dwelling with them, will in due time
be in them.
An additional proof that the disciples cannot as yet have
received the Spirit of Truth, seems to lie in our Lord's words
in xv. 26, and xvi. 13, where He promises that He will send
the Spirit of Truth to them, and speaks of the time when the
Spirit of Truth shall be come. Indeed all their remarks and
questions on this last evening, their doubts and distrust afterward,
St John's express declaration (xx. 9) that as yet even He and Peter
knew not the Scripture, that Jesus was to rise again from the dead, —
the dullness and slowness of heart to believe all that the Prophets had
spoken, with which Jesus reproached the two disciples on their way
to Emmaus, and which was shared more or less by the rest, — certify
us that the Spirit of Truth was still to come. It is true, Peter had
made that confession, of which Jesus pronounced that it had not
been revealed to him by flesh and blood but by His Father in
heaven. Yet, wonderful as that confession was, coming from
the poor fisherman, and declaring that He, who had not where
to lay His head, was the Christ, the Son of the living God, — how far
did it fall short of that acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is the
Lord, — of that recognition of His mediatorial power and office, and
of the atoning efficacy of His incarnation and death, — which is the
essential work of the Spirit, and which cannot spring from any other
source ! If proof of this were needful, it may be found in Peter's
attempt, which is recorded immediately after, to dissuade his
Master from encountering the very sufferings whereby His media-
torial office was to be fulfilled.
As to the promise in Matt. x. 20, Mark xiii. 11, Luke xii. 12,
that the Spirit shall teach the disciples what they are to say, when
they are brought before magistrates for their Master's sake, the
context in St Matthew shews that this does not refer immediately
to their first mission during our Lord's life, when we have no
record of their having had to endure such persecution, but to
the period subsequent to the day of Pentecost, when the persecu-
tions, by which the Church was to be strengthened and purified,
commenced.
Into the enquiry as to the nature of the gift, which Jesus bestows
NOTE I. 999
on the Apostles in John xx. 22, aud the relation between that gift
and those which were bestowed on the day of Pentecost, I need not
enter here, seeing that at all events that gift was subsequent to the
Resurrection, and must be regarded as the initial fulfilment of the
promise that He would send the Comforter to abide in them.
Augustin asks several times over, why Christ gave the Spirit to the
Apostles on two distinct occasions, namely, on the evening after the
Resurrection, and on the day of Pentecost ; and he has a favorite
solution for this difficulty ; which solution he brings forward in his
75th Tractate on St John, in his Treatise on the Trinity (xv. 46),
aud in his 265th Sermon ; where he introduces it with a beautiful
acknowledgement and apology for his ignorance. The solution how-
ever is no solution at all : it does not even touch the question to be
solved, but looks entirely away from it into the region of fanciful
numerical analogies. "Arbitror (he says), sed arbitror, ideo bis
datum esse Spiritum Sanctum, ut commendarentur duo praecepta
caritatis. — Una caritas, et duo praecepta : unus Spiritus, et duo
data." In an earlier work, Contra Epistolam Manichaei (§ il), hB
finds out another reason of the same class, as indeed such reasons
may easily be found in abundance : " Propter geminam clarifica-
tionem, secundum hominem et secundum Deum, bis etiam datus est
Spiritus Sanctus ; semel postquam resurrexit a mortuis, cum
insufflavit in faciem discipulorum, dicens, Accipite Spiritum Sanctum.
£t iterum, postquam ascendit in coelum, decern diebus transactis ;
qui numerus perfectionem significat ; cum septenario numero, in
quo conditus est mundus, additur Trinitas conditoris. De quibus
rebus inter spirituales viros pie cauteque multa tractantur." This is
a specimen, and far from an unfavorable one, of the fantastical
trifling which we find perpetually in the exegetical writings of the
Fathers, and which their worshipers nowadays propound to us as
deep truths ; the reaction from the dry prosaic spirit of the last
century having produced a craving for all manner of extravagant
follies, while the great ambition of many among the disciples of the
new school in our theology seems to be, that this shall be signalized
M the Age of Irrationalism. Happy though it has been for our
divinity in some respects, that we have returned of late with greater
reverence to the works of the Fathers, the evil effects of this change
will be greater than its benefits, unless we apply that rule to' them,
which we are enjoined to apply to everything human, of proving all
300 NOTE I.
things, and only holding fast to that which is good. Let us hold
fast to that which they derived from the wisdom and spirit of
Christ ; and let us reject what they derived from the spirit of the
world, and from the fleeting fashions of their own age. Among
the qualities which they draw from this source, is their fondness for
allegories and for numerical analogies. It would have been deemed
profound in those days to say, that the reason a man has two eyes
is, that there is a sun and a moon in the sky,— their not being
copresent would not have disturbed the discoverer of such a grand
analogy between the microcosm and the macrocosm ; — or that he
has one neck, because the tower of Babel was one ; or that he has
five fingers, because there are five strings to the lyre, or five acts to
a drama ; or that the hairs of his head are innumerable, because the
grains of sand on the seashore are so. The striking thing in the
passages quoted from Augustin is, not that the explanation is a bad
one, but that it implies an ignorance of what an explanation is, and
of the method in which we are to attain to it : and the same thing we
find perpetually, as well in the Fathers, as in the contemporary
grammarians and rhetoricians. For it was an age when people had
almost lost the feeling and the perception of reality. The spirit of
the old world was all but extinct ; the spirit of Christendom was
growing up, and had not yet taken possession of the mind of man.
It was an age of bloated bodies, and spectral souls. Men could not
lay hold on anything ; they could not look anything in the face.
They took pomp and pageantry for greatness, lust for pleasure,
rhetoric for eloquence, similitude in form for affinity and identity.
Instead of grafting fresh slips from the Tree of Knowledge, they
contented themselves with picking up the dead leaves. As no man
can ever keep entirely free from the contagion of his age, we find
more or less of these absurdities in the Fathers also. But in them
the life of Christendom was germinating : in some of them, above
all in Augustin, it was pushing forth vigorously. By this we may
be fed and edified : only let us beware of taking the husk for the
kernel, of picking up the hollow nuts, instead of plucking the sound
ones.
NOTE J. 301
Note J : p. 29.
Tauler, in his Sermons on our text, takes occasion to enforce his
mystical view of Christianity, applying our Lord's words to the
necessity of our being entirely delivered from the bondage of the
creature, that we may enjoy the beatitude of a perfect union with
God. There is such deep wisdom and beauty in his exposition, that
I will quote a considerable part of it. Many readers will perhaps be
surprised, on these and on other accounts, to find that there.was so
much of truth in the Theology of the fourteenth century : and even
this passage will enable us to understand how Luther came to
feel such a love and admiration for Tauler, who seems to have
exercised more influence, than almost any divine except Augustan, in
forming the mind of the great Eef ormer.*
"What (he says) is meant by Christ's going away from us?
Nothing else than our destitution, hopelessness, and helplessness,
that we are heavy and slow in all good things, and cold and dark ;
for then Christ is gone from us. If persons who are in this state,
render it useful and fruitful for themselves, this would be a truly
profitable, noble, blessed, and divine thing for them. Let a man
be thoroughly in this state, and keep himself calm withal, to
him all variety will be fused into unity ; and he will have joy
in sorrow, and be patient under reproach, in constant peace amid
war and trouble ; and all bitterness will to him become true
sweetness. —
" Now, children, seeing that the Holy Ghost could not come to
these dear disciples of the Lord, unless Christ went away from them,
it is reasonable that we should look what we take in hand : there-
fore leave all things for God's sake ; and God will assuredly be given
* It is interesting to find Luther writing thus to Spalatin in December
t hat is, more than ten months before the publication of his celebrated
Theses, at a time when he entertained no thought of the contest he was to
engage in. " Si te delectat puram, solidam, antiquae simillimam thcologiam
legere, in Germanica lingua effusam, sermones Johannis Tauleri, praedicatoriae
profcssionis, tibi comparare potes. — Nequo enim ego vel in Latina, vel in
nostra lingua theologiam vidi salubriorem et cum Evangelio consonantiorem.
Gusto ergo, et vide, quam suavis est Dominus, ubi prius gustaris, et videris
quam amarum est quicquid no* sumus."
302 NOTE J.
to you in all things. Do this with diligence, and with a steadfast
cleaving to the truth ; and you will receive a wonderful reward from
God in this present time. —
u Observe how high, and in what way, man must be carried up, to
reach the state of his highest blessedness : for this can only be
through a real abandonment of those things, which are especially
pleasant and lovely to him and his nature. To all these he must
wholly die, and must let them go, however good and holy and
spiritual and precious he may deem them. For if it was necessary
that Christ's disciples should be deprived of His lovely, holy, gracious
humanity, to be fitted for receiving the Holy Ghost, no man, it is
certain, can be a recipient of divine grace, whose heart is possest by
any creature. —
" Sinful persons, or open sinners, are hindered by the creature, in
that they make use thereof against God, according to their own will. .
These people go astray in God's way. David says, Cursed are they
who err in God's way (Ps. cxix. 21), that is, in the creature. There
are also sundry good folks, who spend too much care upon the
necessaries of this life, or look too much for pleasure to outward things.
Against these Christ says, He who loves his life shall lose it; that is,
carnal love, he who holds this too dear, loses his life ; and he who
hates his life, shall receive everlasting life: that is, they who resist
their disorderly lusts and desires, and do not follow them.
"Another hindrance hampers good people in true spirituality,
through the misuse of the seven sacraments. He who dwells with
pleasure on the sign of a holy Sacrament, does not get to the inward
truth ; for the sacraments all lead to the pure truth. Marriage is a
sign of the union of the divine and human nature, and also of the
union of the soul with God : but he who would stop at the sign
alone, is hindered by his outward senses from reaching the eternal
truth ; for this is not a true marriage. There are also some men
who make too much of repentance and confession, and cleave to the
sign, and do not strive to reach the pure truth. Against these
Christ says, He who is washed needeth not save to wash his feet : that
is, he who has once been washt with a hearty repentance and sincere
confession, needs nothing more than that he confess his daily sins,
and not his old sins, which he has already repented of and confesst :
but he must wash his feet, that is, his desires and conscience, these
he must purify from his daily sins. Moreover many good men, by
NOTE J. 303
spending too much anxiety on outward gestures towards the sacred
Body of our Lord, hinder themselves in divers ways, so that they
cannot receive Him spiritually, and enter inwardly into the truth ;
for this is a desire after a real union, and not the appearance merely.
Hence they do not receive the sacrament worthily ; for all sacraments
are the signs of spiritual truth. —
"Again there are some, ay, many people, who do not rightly
worship the Father in the truth. For so soon as a man prays to
God for any creature, he prays for his own harm : for, since a
creature is a creature, it bears its own bitterness and disquiet,
pain and evil about it : therefore such people meet their deserts
when they have trouble and bitterness ; for they have prayed for
it. He who seeks God, if he seeks anything beside God, will not
find Him : but he who seeks God alone in the truth, will find Him,
and all that God can give, with Him.
"Again, many good people hinder themselves in their perfection
by this, that they look solely to the Humanity of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and that they give themselves too much to visions. They
cherish the images of outward things in their minds, whether it
be angels or men, or the Humanity of Christ, and believe what
they are told, when they hear that they are especially favoured, or
of other men's faults or virtues, or hear that God purposes- to do
something by their means. Herein they are often deceived : for
God never does anything through any creature, but only through
His own pure goodness. And yet He said to His disciples, It is
good for you that I go away. Thus to them that wish to be
His disciples in high perfection, His Humanity is a hindrance, if
they fix upon it and cleave to it with fondness. For they should
follow God in all His ways; therefore His Humanity should lead
them further to His Deity. For Christ said, / am the Way, and
the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh to the Father, but by Me.
Greatly then do they err, who suppose that they can do anything
good of themselves ; for Christ said, that of Himself He did
nothing.
u Christ's true Humanity alone, in its union with His Deity, are
we to worship ; for the man Christ is truly God ; and God is truly
Man. Therefore we are not to trouble ourselves about any creature,
but solely to seek God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our only "Way
to the Father. Now even if wo come into the Way of Truth, which
304 NOTE J.
is Christ, yet we are not perfectly blessed, although we behold the
Truth of God. For, while we are beholdiDg, we are not one with
that which we behold : so long as there is anything in our perceptions
or understanding, we are not one with the One : for where there is
nothing but One, we can see nothing but One : for we cannot see
God except in blindness, or know Him except in ignorance. St
Augustin says, that no soul can come to God, unless it go to God
without a creature, and taste Him without a likeness. Therefore,
because the soul is a creature, it must cast itself out of itself, and in
its hour of contemplation must cast out all saints and angels ; for
these are all creatures, and hinder the soul in its union with God.
For it should be bare of all things, without need of anything ; and
then it can come to God in His likeness. For nothing unites so much
as likeness, and receives its colour so soon. For God will then give
Himself to the faculties of the soul ; so that the soul grows in the
likeness of God, and takes His colour. The image lies in the soul's
powers, the likeness in its virtues, the divine colour in its union : and
thus its union becomes so intimate, that it does not work its works in
the form of a creature, but in its divine form, wherein it is united to
God, nay, that its works are taken from it, and God works all its
works in His form. And then, while it beholds God, and thus
becomes more united with Him, the union may become such, that
God by degrees pours Himself into it, and draws it so entirely into
Himself, that no distinction any longer remains between virtue and.
vice, and that the soul does not recognise itself as at all distinct from
God. — Therefore let the light of grace overpower the light of nature
in you : for the higher knowledge the soul attains in the light of
grace, the darker does it deem the light of nature. If then it would
know the real truth, it should observe, whether it is drawn away
from all things, whether it has lost itself, whether it loves God with
His love, whether it be not hindered by any things, and whether God
alone lives in it. If so, it has lost itself, as Mary lost Jesus, when
He went into the school of His Father's highest doctrine ; wherefore
He heeded not His mother. Thus it happens to the noblest soul that
goes into God's school. There it learns to know what God is, in His
Deity and in the Trinity, and what He is in His Humanity, and to
know the all-gracious Will of God. That man is most truly God,
who works all his works out of love, and gives up his will to the will
of His Heavenly Father."
NOTE J. 305
Andrewes on the other hand, in his Sermon on our text, enters on
more dangerous ground, and tries to show that in certain cases it
may be expedient for the soul to lose the presence of Christ alto-
gether, without restricting this to His Humanity. " The Fathers
go yet further, and enquire whether this also be not true in His
spiritual presence, and resolve that even in regard of that it is no
less true. To some vobis it is expedient that even after that manner
also Christ go from them. And who are they ? One vobis, when
men grow faint in seeking and careless in keeping Him. — Gone He
was, and meet He should so be, to teach them to rise and seek, to
watch and keep Him better. Another vobis, when men grow high,
conceited and overweening of themselves and their own strength,
and say with David, Non movebor, as if they had Christ pinned to
them, and with Peter, Etsi onines non ego. It is more than time
Christ be gone from such, to teach them to see and know themselves
better. But if Christ leave us, if He withdraw His spiritual pres-
ence, we fall into sin ; and that cannot be expedient for any. Good
that I have been in trouble; for before I was troubled, I went wrong;
but not good for any to fall into sin. Yes indeed : Audeo dicer e,
saith St Augustin, I dare avow it, Expedit superbo ut incidat in
peccatum, — there are the very terms, — it is expedient they fall into
some notorious sin, as David, as Peter did, that their faces may be
filled with shame, and they by that confusion learn to walk with
more humility. The messenger of Satan, that was sent the Apostle
to buffet him, was of this nature, and to no other end sent, but to
prevent this malady. In a word, Christ must withdraw, — no remedy,
— that we may grow humble, and, being humble, the Holy Ghost
may come : for He cometh to none, rests on none, giveth grace to
none, but the humble. So we see, Christ may be, and is, even
according to His spiritual presence, withdrawn from some persons,
and for their good, — Christies abit,ut Paracletus veniat ; — and that
many ways meet it is, it so should be. This makes us say, Go Lord,
set up Thyself above the heavens, and Thy glory over all the
earth:'
In these remarks there is a groundwork of truth, though the
assertions about David and St Peter are very questionable ; and
on two points, the most startling ones, the good Bishop has been
led by his exceeding fondness for paradox to overstate and misstate
the fact. For one cannot well say that Christ is spiritually present
U
306 NOTE J.
in a proud or a careless heart. So far as a heart is proud, it ex-
cludes Him, as with a gate of iron : so far as it is careless, it cannot
hold Him. Moreover, without entering into the mysterious ques-
tion, which has been so much agitated in various theological and
philosophical schools, as to the expediency of evil, and whether or
no it was expedient that Adam should fall into sin, it is plain that
in the examples referred to the problem is totally different. If a
man be proud or careless, sin is already in him ; and when a
spiritual disease is latent in the constitution, it is often expedient
and salutary that the morbid matter should be cast out and got rid
of by its open eruption, and the consequent sanatory discipline.
Thus do ingenious logicians puzzle themselves and others by using
ambiguous words without asking themselves what they mean.
Indeed the whole notion of Christ's "withdrawing His spiritual
presence that the Holy Ghost may come," implies great vagueness
of thought. For this itself is the work of the Holy Ghost, Christ's
spiritual presence in the soul. He was not to speak of Himself, but
to glorify Christ, to receive of Christ, and to shew it to us.
A different, and, it seems to me, a correcter view of those circum-
stances in the Christian life, which present the closest analogy to
the expediency of our Lord's departure from the disciples, is taken
by Hossbach, one of the most eloquent modern preachers in Ger-
many, in the third Sermon of his first Volume, on the Gospel for the
fourth Sunday after Easter. After speaking of the effect which was
to be produced on the disciples, he continues : " This is the way and
the manner in which we too receive the Holy Ghost, and in which
He begins to glorify the Saviour in us. Often years will pass away,
over us as over the disciples, long years, during which we may hear
the word of the Lord daily, and yet are not penetrated thoroughly
thereby. He evermore opens the fountains of His grace, to refresh
us with His lif egiving water ; but we let it dry up, without drinking
it into our hearts. We feel indeed that Ke is holding out something
grand and glorious ; and we take pleasure also in His words : but
that which is deepest and most precious in them is totally lost to us,
because our sense for it has not yet been awakened. He has so
many things to say to us ; but we cannot bear them yet ; for the
lifegiving Spirit has not yet come and enlightened us. Such is wont
to be the condition of all in our earlier years, when the word of the
Saviour is first brought before our souls. We receive it with our
NOTE J. 307
understandings, and acknowledge the truth contained in it ; and at
solemn and stirring moments we may be acted upon by it powerfully ;
but anon we are drawn away by the many charms which life pre-
sents to us ; and we go afar from the Lord, or at best divide our-
selves between His service and that of the world. Alas ! and there
are, we all know, still worse cases. Many depart altogether from
the Fountain of Life, and follow the promptings of sensual pleasure,
which leads them to destruction. But even supposing that we have
gained a holy love for the Saviour during our youth, and have pre-
served it continually amid the temptations of the world, even if we
have not closed our hearts against the workings of the Holy Ghost,
who works without ceasing in all such as belong to the household of
the Saviour, still our union with the Saviour will be wanting on our
side in stability and intimacy : we shall often pass on blindly, when
He desires to give us His richest and most glorious revelations ;
often we shall be unable to understand what He means, when He
addresses us with His deep, spiritual words. Whence comes this 1
whence, except that we, like His first disciples, want that experience
of life, which alone can open our minds to receive His deeper mean-
ing, and which we cannot regard as anything but an ordinance of
God the Holy Ghost, to glorify the Saviour more and more in us.
For he who knows not the world and its manifold complicated re-
lations from his own observation, — he who has not yet felt the
insecurity and mutability of this transitory existence, — he who has
never yet been tost to and fro by the storms of life, and so has had
little or no occasion to look beyond this temporal to an eternal state,
— such a person can understand but little of Him, who came for this
very purpose, to bring mankind to eternal life : his life will be like a
smooth surface, into which the healing waters of the Gospel cannot
enter, and from which they glide off without effect. Something like
this must we conceive to have been the state of the disciples at the
time when our Lord spake the words of the text to them. But, as
He said to them, that it was good for them that He should.go away,
— as He promist them that, in the very midst of the afflictions" which
awaited them, the purifying and strengthening Spirit, whom they
n e e d e d, would come,— in like manner does He aid us also, and render
us gradually richer in that experience, whereby the Spirit whom He
will find the surest access to our hearts. O, they will come for
vlb too, the more our outward sphere of life unfolds and widens, —
308 NOTE J.
they will come, the days of heavy sorrow, the dark hours in which
we shall see what was dearest and most precious to us on this earth
vanish away, — the heavy, crushing state, in which we can find
neither counsel nor comfort, — they will come, the times of distress,
in which our human neighbours have neither power nor will to help
us. But along with them comes the Holy Spirit, whom the Saviour
promist to send, and lifts up man's downcast eyes from temporal
things to eternal ; He raises the quaking heart to prayer, and inter-
cedes for it with unutterable groanings ; He purifies, comforts, and
strengthens it ; and through the midst of the dark clouds of affliction
which surround us, He shews us the bright form of the Saviour, and
places us beneath the rays of His eternal light. Thus in our afflic-
tions is Christ glorified in us by the Holy Spirit. Thenceforward
we understand, far otherwise than before, what He meant when He
called upon us to enter into the communion of His sufferings, and to
be fashioned after the likeness of His death. The word of life,
which we had so often disregarded or misunderstood, comes suddenly
before our soul in wonderful clearness : and the sorrowing heart
finds therein, what the glad heart did not seek, a sacred, inexhaust-
ible fountain of everlasting life, and that rich, heavenly consolation
which this world cannot give. Thus, in proportion as a man's tem-
poral life grows dark, his eternal life brightens : through painful
experience and bitter grief, the Spirit leads him to Him who cries to
all the weary and heavy-laden, Come to Me, and I will refresh you.
And he who in the hour of his need has once received grace for grace
from the fulness of the Lord, cannot turn away from Him again :
he cannot but cleave more and more closely to Him, and receive His
divine life into himself : nay, he cannot cease thanking God for the
heavy trial, in which the Holy Ghost has come to Him. For he has lost
what was perishable, and has gained what is imperishable : his lot is
the highest which can befall a man : Jesus Christ is glorified in him."
The other passages cited in these notes are almost all of them such
as I have met with, or at least such as have only attracted my at-
tention, since the Sermons were preacht : hence any coincidences
that may occur in them are accidental, or, more correctly speaking,
what might naturally be expected when persons are contemplating
the same objects attentively. But with Hossbach's Sermon I had
long been familiar ; therefore whatever resemblance to it may be
found in mine must be derived from it.
XOTE K. 309
Note K : p. 34. 1. 17.
On the precise meaning of the name, Paraclete, as given by
our Lord, in His last discourse, to the Holy Spirit, who was
to come after His departure, different opinions have been enter-
tained even from the early ages of the Church. The chief
part of the Greek Fathers, as may be seen in Suicer's quota-
tions from Origen, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Theophylact, and
Cyril, connected it with the Hellenistic use of irapaKaXeiv and
7rapa.Kkrj<ri<5 to denote the act of consoling and consolation. In the
early Latin Church on the other hand, HapaKXrjros was commonly
rendered Advocatus, agreeably to its signification in classical Greek.
That this is the true interpretation, is contended by Knapp in a
Dissertation which, like most of his, has much merit philologically :
Luecke calls it incontrovertible. In the first Epistle of St John
(ii. 1), — the only other passage of the New Testament where the
word occurs, and where it is applied to Christ Himself, — our Trans-
lators, following the common consent of theologians, render it by
Advocate : which word, though its meaning is narrower than that of
the Roman Advocatus, seems in this place sufficiently to express what
the Apostle intended, when he said, that we have a Paraclete with
the Father, who is the Propitiation for our sins. The office of the
English advocate however, which relates especially to the pleading
of a cause, does not correspond to that assigned by our Lord to the
Holy Spirit. Knapp shews that the Latin advocatus, like the
Greek 7rapaKX.rjTos, answered more nearly to our general term,
counsel, having to advise, to direct, to support, rather than to plead :
and it is only in this sense that the name is applied to the Holy
Spirit, who was not to plead for the disciples, but to plead in them,
to direct them what they were to say, to prompt, to encourage; to
support them, and to lead them to the Truth. Hence the English
word advocate would not represent the office of the Holy Spirit as
the Paraclete. It would have been well indeed if a word coexten-
sive in signification could have been found, so that the unity of the
office which our two Blessed Paracletes have vouchsafed to assume,
— and which is implied where our Lord says that the Father will
send them another Paraclete, thereby designating Himself as the
310 NOTE K.
first,— should have been as manifest in our version as in the original.
But I know not how this could be effected, unless we contented our-
selves with merely Anglicizing the Greek word, according to the
practice which we have followed in so many ecclesiastical terms, for
instance, in apostle, bishop, deacon ; a practice however which is not
without injury, inasmuch as it not only obscures our perception of
the meaning of the word thus imported, but, by severing it from its
etymological associations, deprives it of a portion of its power. In
the Rhemish Version, which has in great part been constructed on
the convenient system of taking the words of the Vulgate, clipping
off the Latin, and tacking on English terminations, this has been
done in the Gospel, where it gives Paraclete in all the four passages :
but the advantage, which might have accrued from this, is lost
through the use of Advocate in the Epistle. Here too it follows the
Vulgate, which has Paracletus, or rather Paraclitus * in the Gospel,
Advocatus in the Epistle.
* The change of Paracletus into Paraclitus was analogous to what took place
in many words, in which the Greek n was regarded as equivalent to the Latin
i: an ecclesiastical parallel is furnisht by the expression Kyrie eleison. But
when the Greek original was forgotten, the Latin form easily gave rise to a
mistake about its etymology : hence the penultima was supposed to be short,
and is so treated even by Prudentius. Thus it was very natural that the
same errour should creep into the common chanting of the Liturgy. Erasmus
however, whose knowledge of grammar seems to have been more profound, as
his interest in it was still livelier than that which he took in theological
truth, after a poor note on the meaning of the word Paracletus, adds a very
long one, one of his three longest on the whole Gospel of St John, upon the
sin committed by this malpronunciation, wittily, though somewhat profanely,
or at least in a tone better suited to his satirical writings, urging the offense
of those who, quoties quoties id faciunt, Deum si non una syllaba, certe uno
fraudant tempore. Andrewes on the other hand, to whom nothing comes amiss
for his Sermons, not even a pun founded on a blunder, surprises us somewhat
by saying, in the fourth On the Sending of the Holy Ghost, — "To go to a
lawyer's reading, and not hear it, serves us not for our worldly doubts ; nor to
hear the physic lecture, for the complaints of our bodies. No; we make
them Paracletos, we call them to_us, we question with them in particular, we
have private conference, about our estates. Only for our souls affairs it is
enough to take our directions in open churches, and there delivered in gross :
private conference we endure not; a Paracletus there we need not. One
we must have, to know thoroughly the state of our lands or goods : one
we must have entirely acquainted with the state of our body : in our souls it
holdeth not : I say no more : it were good it did. We make him a stranger
NOTE K. 311
At present so many sacred associations have connected themselves
for generation after generation with the name of the Comforter, that
it would seem something like an act of sacrilege to change it.
Indeed, if anybody ever reads Campbell's translations of the Gospels,
he must feel a shock of pain, I should think, when he comes to this
part of St John, and finds, " I will entreat the Father ; and He will
give you another Monitor;" and again, "If I do not depart, the
Monitor will not come to you." Campbell here adopts a third sense
of the word UapaKX^ros, which Ernesti, in conformity to the
abovementioned doctrinary spirit of the last century, maintained
should be rendered by Doctor, or Teacher. Knapp however shews
that this sense is less appropriate than the other two. In fact, if we
understand the word Comforter, not merely in its secondary and
common sense, as Consoler, but also in its primary and etymo-
logical sense, as Strengthener and Supporter, it would be difficult
to find any word in our language so well fitted to express a range
of meaning corresponding to that embraced by the Greek Hapd-
KX-qros, although etymologically different. It seems to be one of
the words which have come to us through the Latin of the Church ;
of which words it would be interesting if some scholar learned in
the archeology of our language would draw up a complete list. For
though confortare is scarcely found in classical Latin, it is common
in the Vulgate, and had been used in earlier translations of the
Bible; as we see from Lactantius, Div. Inst. iv. 15, where he quotes
Isaiah xxxv. 3, Confortamini manus resolutae; and when our
ancestors first adopted it, they retained its Latin sense. Thus it is
continually used by Wiclif to represent its Latin original ; for
instance, in Luke xxii. 43, And an aungel apperide to him fro hevene
and coumfourtide him ; (Apparuit autem illi Angelus de coelo, con-
fortans eum) ; Acts ix. 19, And vchanne he hadde take mete he was
coumfortid; (Et cum accepisset cibum confortatus est ; 1 Cor. xvi.
13. Do ght manli and be ghe coumfortid in the Lord; (Viriliter
all our life long. He is Paraclitus, as they were wont to pronounce him,
truly Paraclitus, one whom we declined and looked over our shoulders at.
And then, in our extremity, suddenly He is Paracletus : we seek and send for
Ifiiu ; we would come a little acquainted with Him. But take we heed of
Nescio vos : it is a true answer : we take too little a time to breed acquaintance
in. Nescio vos, I fear, they find, that so seek Him : Paracletus they do not ;
Paraclitus rather."
312 NOTE K.
agite et confortamini) ; Phil. iv. 13. 7" mai alle thingis in him that
coumfortith me ; (Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat) : see also
Eph. vi. 10, Col. i. 11, 2 Tim. ii. 1, iv. 17. In other passages how-
ever, we find that the later sense of the word, which has since
entirely supplanted the primary one, had already attacht itself
thereto ; for instance, in 2 Cor. i. 3, 4. Blessid be god and the
fadir of oure lordjesus christ, fadir of mercies and god of all coumfort,
which coumfortith us in al oure tribulacioun, that also we mown count-
forte hem that ben in al disease ; where the Vulgate has consolatio and
consolari. Hence it might be thought doubtful in what sense the
word Coumfortour was used by Wiclif, in the four passages of the
Gospel, for the Paraclete ; unless we recollected that the alternative
was between advocatus and consolator, and that the great body qf
divines prior to his time had followed the Greek Fathers in taking
the latter sense.
Indeed even Augustin, — though in his 74th Tractate on St John
he says, " Paracletns Latine dicitur Advocatus ; et dictum est de
Christo, Advocatum habemus ad Patrem, Jesum Christum justum^
and though in the 92d he takes this sense in explaining xv. 26, — yqt
in the 94th seems almost to prefer the other explanation ; or rather
he adopts both, though without accurately tracing the connexion
oetween them. " Consolator ille (he says) vel Advocatus (utrumque
enim interpretatur quod est graece Paracletus) Christo abscedente
fuerat necessarius ; et ideo de illo non dixerat ab initio quando cum
illis erat, quia ejus praesentia consolabantur : abscessurus autem
oportebat ut diceret ilium esse venturum, per quern f uturuni erat ut
caritate diffusa in cordibus suis verbum Dei cum fiducia praedicarent ;
et illo intrinsecus apud eos testimonium perhibente de Christo,
ipsi quoque testimonium perhiberent ; neque scandalizarentur
cum inimici Judaei absque synagogis facerent eos, et inter-
ficerent arbitrantes obsequium se praestare Deo : quoniam
caritas omnia tolerat, quae diffundenda erat in cordibus eorum per
Spiritus Sancti donum. Hinc ergo iste totus ducitur sensus, quia
facturus eos erat martyres suos, id est testes suos per Spiritum
Sanctum ; ut illo in eis operante, persecutionum quaecunque aspera
tolerarent, nee frigescerent a caritate praedicandi, illo divino igne
succensi. Haec ergo, inquit, locutus sum vobis, ut cum venerit hora
eorum reminiscamini quia ego dixi vobis. Haec scilicet locutus sum
vobis, non tantum quia passuri estis ista ; sed quia, cum venerit
NOTE K. 313
Paracletus ille, testimonium perhibebit de me, ne ista timendo
taceatis, unde fiet ut etiam vos testimonium perhibeatis. Haec autem
vobis ab initio non dixi, quia vobiscum eram ; et ego vos consolabar
mea corporali praesentia, exhibita humanis sensibus vestris, quam
parvuli capere poteratis." In his much earlier work upon the
Sermon on the Mount (i. 2) he had said, with reference to the
declaration that they who mourn shall be comforted, " Consolabuntur
Spiritu Sancto, qui maxime propterea Paracletus nominatur, id est,
Consolator, ut temporalem amittentes aeterna laetitia perfruantur."
On the strength of the authorities which have been cited, it became
the received notion in the Church, that to console or comfort was the
distinctive work of the Paraclete : and it was not till the second
generation of the Reformers began to apply their classical learning
to the criticism of the New Testament, that the other interpretation
was revived. Indeed Erasmus, who in two passages, xiv. 26, and xv.
26, retains Paracletus, and in the other two substitutes Consolator,
says, in a note on xiv. 16, " Hoc loco commodius erat vertere Consola-
torem, ne quis duos Paracletos imaginaretur. Nam quod hactenus
locutus est, consolandi gratia locutus est. Ita Paracletus erat
Christus. Pollicetur autem sese et alteram missurum Consolatorem,
nempe Spiritum Veritatis." Here he totally misses the force of aXXov
Hapa.K\r]Tov, in supposing that our Lord merely applied the term
to Himself, in reference to His present discourse to comfort the
disciples. Luther renders UapdKXrjTos by Trbster, and urges the
blessed meaning of the name with his own inimitable power. Calvin,
as usual, gives an excellent explanation in a few worda " Paracleti
nomen tam Christo quam Spiritui hie tribuitur, et jure : utrique
enim commune munus est nos consolari et exhortari et nos tueri suo
patrocinio. Fuit suorum Patronus Christus quamdiu in mundo
vixit ; deinde Spiritus tutelae et praesidio eos commisit. Si quaerat
quispiam, Annon sub Christi clientela etiam hodie simus, responsio
facilis est, Christum esse perpetuum Patronum, sed non visibili
modo. Quamdiu versatus est in mundo, palam se illis Patronum
exhibuit ; nunc vero per Spiritum suum nos tuatur. Alium a se
vocat propter bonorum quae ab utroque percipimus discrimen.
Christi proprium fuit, expiando peccata mundi irani Dei placare,
iflimere a morte homines, justitiam ac vitam ac acquirere: Spiritus
proprium est, nos tam ipsius Christi quam omnium ejus bonorum
facere participes."
314 NOTE K.
Beza on the other hand translates Uapa.K\rjTo<s by Advocatus in
all the five passages in which it occurs, explaining it by a reference
to St Paul's words (Kom. viii. 26), about the Spirit as making inter-
cession for us. The same explanation is given by Pearson on the
eighth article of the Creed. But surely it is better to look for the
interpretation in the context of St John, where it is plain that the
help which the Apostles are to receive from the IlapaKA^TOs, is in
their warfare with the world : for it is a delusive practice, though a
very common one, to seek the exposition of a passage of Scripture in
any other part, however remote, of the sacred Volume, rather than in
the passage itself. Nor is Beza happier in suggesting that aAAoi/
Ila/oaKA^Tov Saxrei should be rendered Dabit alium qui sit vobis
advocatus. Grotius is more clearsighted here. " Alium Oratorem
Christus pollicetur, qui causam suorum agat apud mundum, sicut
ipse acturus est apud Patrem." " Et notandum (he adds) Dei
Spiritui, qui est UapaKXrjTOS, opponi Spiritum malignum, qui est
KOLT-qyopos, et sic dicitur Apocal. xii. 10." The same antithesis had
been pointed out by Ireneus (in. 17) in a passage on the gift of the
Spirit, in which we find the oldest extant form of a couple of favorite
allegories. " Hanc muneris gratiam praevidens Gedeon — demutavit
petitionem, et super vellus lanae, in quo tantum primum ros fuerat,
quod erat typus populi, ariditatem futuram prophetans ; hoc est, non
jam habituros eos a Deo Spiritum Sanctum, sicut Esaias ait, Et
nubibus mandabo ne pluant super earn ; in omni autem terra fieri
ros, quod est Spiritus Dei, qui descendit in Dominum, — quern ipsum
iterum dedit Ecclesiae, in omnem terram mittens de coelis Paracle-
tum, ubi et diabolum tamquam fulgur projectum ait Dominus.
Quapropter necessarius nobis est ros Dei, ut non comburamur, neque
infrnctuosi efficiamur, et ubi accusatorem habemus, illic habeamus et
Paracletum; commendante Domino Spiritui Sanctosuum hominem,
qui inciderat in latrones, cui ipse misertus est, et ligavit vulnera ejus,
dans duo denaria regalia, ut per Spiritum imaginem et inscriptionem
Patris et Filii accipientes, fructificemus creditum nobis denarium."
Since the time of Grotius the interpretation of Ilapa/cAr/To?
as A dvocatus has been commonly adopted by Biblical scholars, for
instance, by Hammond, by Pearson, by Lampe, by Wetstein, by
Bengel. To Knapp's Dissertation I have already referred. Luecke
and Tholuck follow him ; and De Wette in his corrected Version
has adopted the word Beistand, which Knapp recommended. Still
NOTE K. 315
the sense of Comforter, as it was so closely connected with the word
according to its Hellenistic usage, is also very appropriate, both to
the general work of the Spirit, and to the special reason for which
our Lord here promises His help. Only we should bear in mind
that the Spirit is the Comforter, in the primary as well as the
secondary sense of that word, and that He did not come merely to
console the disciples for their loss, but mainly to strengthen their
hearts and minds, by enabling them to understand the whole truth,
and to feel the whole power of the Gospel.
What led our Translators, from Tyndall downward, to render Qvk
d<f,rjcru} v/xas 6p(f>avov? y in xlv. 18, by I will not leave you comfortless,
I cannot perceive ; Wiclif has fadirless. Orphans, the marginal
reading in the Authorized Version, ought to have been received into
the text : for the force and beauty of the original are much impaired
by the change.
Note L : p. 35.
UdfnroXv, says Demosthenes, in his Speech against Androtion
(§. 27), XotSopia tc Kal curia Ki^iopLO-fxevov Zo~tIv iXey^ov.
airta fitv yap ccttiv, orav ns xf/iXio xprjcrdfievos Xoyio /-o) Trapd-
<J'X r ) Tat irivTtv <Sv Xkyti, iXey^os cU, orav <uv av ciVy ns /cat
rdXtj6e<i 6p.ov Seigy. In the early Greek language indeed the
prevalent sense of i Xeyxcw seems to have been to reprove, to rebuke,
to reproach ; as we see in the Homeric use, both of the verb, and of
its derivatives IXkyyta and \ XiyyjiVi, which are applied asopprobrious
terms to persons. But in the phraseology of the courts of justice,
and of the schools, iX*yx*iv implied demonstration, and some sort of
conviction, differing however f rom oVoStuci/wcu, in that the latter
was simply to prove, whereas iXiyx^v includes the refutation of an
opponent. Thus Aristotle {irtpl o-o^hxttlk^v IXkyx^v, c. 1) defines
<Acyx os aa o~vXXoyixrfxbs fxtr' avruftdo-cois rod o-vpLiripdxrfxaros.
Hence, a complex notion being comprehended in the word, its usage
naturally swayed sometimes toward the one side, sometimes toward
the other : and this ambiguity we also find in the writers of the New
Testament ; wherefore the leading notion can only be determined
by the context in each case. For instance, in Luke iii. 19, 1 Tim. v
20, Tit. i. 13, Rev. iii. 19, it is that of reproving or rebulwg ; in
316 NOTE L.
Matth. xviii. 15, Tit. i. 9, and probably in 2 Tim. iv. 2, that of con-
vincing. In the last passage indeed we render eAeyxe by reprovt ;
but this, when iiriTipL-qa-ov follows immediately after, would be a
sort of pleonasm : besides the main work to be effected by the preach-
ing of the Gospel would be omitted, unless it is exprest by lAeyx^,
the work which especially needs to be performed iv Trao-rj [laKpodv/xig.
Kal SiSaxy, that is, with all patience and teaching ; for the render-
ing in our Version, long suffering, hardly gives the force of fxaKpodv/xCa
in this place ; and doctrine for StSaxrj seems to have crept in here,
as in some other passages, through the medium of doctrina in the
Latin Versions ; though doctrine in English does not appropriately
express the act of teaching, but only that which is taught. Again
there are passages in which the form convict would most adequately
represent eAeyxeiv. Thus, in James ii. 9, a/xapTiav kpyd^crde
iXeyxop^evot vtto rov vop,ov u>s Trapafidrai should be rendered Ye
commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. In John
viii. 9, we translate -wrb rrjs owciS^o-ews lAeyxo/xevoi being con-
victed by their conscience. In John viii. 46, ris !£ vp.o)v eXeyx^t /xe
Trepl ajxaprcas; — where TyndalFs, Cranmer's, and the Geneva New
Testament had rebuke, — and that of 1611 substituted Which of you
convinceth me of sin ? — convicteth would have been preferable. On
the other hand, in Hebr. xii. 5, where we render pLrjSc ckXvov -wr'
avrov eAeyxo/^evos nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him, the
meaning of the original would perhaps have been better exprest by
when thou art tried by Him ; for this is a very common signification
of iXiyxeiv, derived from its forensic usage.
Now the passage among all these which comes the nearest to our
text, is the last cited from St John, viii. 46 : sr/s «f vp.£>v eAe'yxei
jxe irtpi apiapTias ; This is the same form of words as eAey£et rov
Kocrpov 7repl ajuapTtas' which, if the first clause stood alone, we
might render, as I have said in the Sermon, He will convict the world
of sin. But since our modern usage restricts the form convict to its
legal sense, and to such other cases as correspond closely thereto,
where the conviction is of something personal in him who is con-
victed, it would scarcely be appropriate to speak of convicting the
world of the judgement of its Prince, still less of Christ's righteousness;
though this also indirectly conveys the condemnation of the world.
For the reasons stated in the Sermon, it seems to me that convincing,
rather than reproving, the world is the main part of the work which
HOTEL. 317
our Lord in His promise ascribes to the Comforter. The con-
viction however, in each of the three instances, implies a severe
reproof ; whereas the reproof would not necessarily imply any con-
viction. Though the Eevisers of our authorized Version, — as they
ought rather to be called than the Translators, — have followed
Wiclif and the Geneva Bible in keeping reprove in the text, while
Tyndall and Coverdale and Cranmer's Bible have rebuke, — they
have shewn, by putting convince in the margin, that they felt doubt
about the correctness of the other rendering. The general adoption
of the latter would naturally be occasioned in part by the Latin
arguet, in which, though its original signification was no less wide
than that of cAe-yxw, the sense oi reproving became more predomi-
nant, and which was retained from the Vulgate by Erasmus, and
even by Beza.* The latter however says in his note, " Arguet, k\£y-
£et, id est, convincet, ita ut nihil habeat quod praetexat ; * and he
makes this the prominent notion in his detailed exposition of the
whole passage.
Luther, rendering IXeyxcw by strafen, almost entirely loses sight
of the work of convincing, as assigned in this place to the Comforter.
But there is his wonderful living eloquence in the manner in which
he expands his interpretation of the passage, and applies it to the
events of his own times. The disciples, he says, on hearing our
Lord's promise, might have askt, " What will the Comforter do to
us, and through our means ? Hereto Jesus makes answer, clearly
setting forth His office and work, that he was to rebuke the world,
and was to exercise this rebuke by the word of the Apostles over
the whole world. So that He speaks of His Kingdom, which he
purpost to establish upon earth after His Ascension, and which was
to spread mightily through the whole world by the power of the
Holy Ghost, and to bring all things into subjection to Him : which
however was not to be a kingdom of this world, so that He should
smite with the sword, depose kings and princes, and set up others,
* Of course the Rhemish version turns arguet into shal argue, according to
its common practice of keeping the words of the Vulgate, and merely Angli-
cizing the terminations, with little regard as to whether the English form
would convey the same meaning. Thus the purpose of having tho Scriptures
in the vulgar tongue was ingeniously frustrated: for tho readers of that
Version must often be unable to understand it, except by translating it back
into Latin.
318 NOTE L.
or create a new order of things and laws ; but was to be a govern-
ment to be carried on solely by the word or preaching of the
Apostles ; and yet the whole world was to be subjected and made
obedient to Him thereby. And He calls the office in plain terms
that of rebuking the world, that is, of reproving all that it did and
was, and telling mankind that they were all, in their then state,
punishable and unrighteous before God, and that they must listen to
the preaching of Christ, or be eternally condemned and lost. Thus
He here gives His Apostles and the preachers of the Gospel the
highest authority and power above every authority upon earth, that
they must rebuke the world with their preaching, and that all men
must for God's sake be subject to this preaching, and must suffer
themselves to be rebuked by it, if they would receive God's grace,
and be saved. Verily this is a vast grasp in a word, and the
beginning of a war which w T as to be great and arduous, that these
few, mean, poor beggars, the Apostles, are to stir up the whole
world, and to bring it upon their shoulders. For what is meant by
the world ? Not one or two of their fellows ; but all emperors,
kings, princes, and whatever is noble, rich, great, learned, wise, or
anything upon earth : all these are to be rebuked by their preaching,
as being ignorant, unrighteous, and condemned before God, with
all their wisdom, righteousness, and power, which they had hitherto
had and made boast of. — The world cries out furiously, when this
sermon begins, that it is a mischievous, intolerable sermon, produc-
ing dissension and confusion, giving rise to disobedience, insurrec-
tion, tumult. And we cannot wonder at these complaints : for it is
a vexatious matter, that the preachers should take upon themselves
to reprove all without distinction, and should allow none to be just
and good before God. Who can deem it right or reasonable that
this sermon should breed such a hubbub, and bring about changes
and innovations, so that the whole former religion and worship,
with so many beautiful ceremonies of such long standing, should be
despised, and should fall 1 — And the most vexatious thing of all is,
that they who undertake the work of rebuking, are not high and
mighty, learned, or otherwise eminent men, but poor, mean, un-
known, despised fishermen, and such folks as everybody would
class with beggars and vagabonds. If other people did this, who
have some rank, and are set to govern the world ; or if it had been
deliberated upon in due form, adopted, and approved by such
NOTE L. 319
persons, or (as the phrase is now) settled by a general council. But
of these few beggars, of whom nobody knows whence they come,
and who never askt anybody, without command or license should
come forward, and dictate to the whole world, and alter all things,
— who can endure or approve of this ? "Well, here you see that
Christ says, the Holy Ghost shall rebuke the world, and shall do
this by these His messengers: so that it is not they, but the Holy
Ghost, that rebukes, through whose command and office they preach.
And if He did not this, they would leave it alone. For without
Him they would neither have the understanding to frame such a
rebuke and judgement upon the whole world ; nor would they have
the courage to come forward openly, and attack the whole world.
For they are not so mad and silly as not to see and feel what
awaits them. Indeed Christ had told them sufficiently before, that
they were to risk their bodies and lives. Doubtless they would
much rather have been silent, and have left the world unrebuked, if
it had depended on themselves. But this office was laid upon them
and commanded them by the Holy Ghost, that they must do it, and
that God will have it so. At the same time however Christ gives
them the assurance and comfort, that, because it is the office and
work of the Holy Ghost, He will direct it, and will make way with
His rebukes, and that it shall not be quencht by the world, although
the world set itself with all its might against it, fiercely raging and
roaring, cursing and slaying. — Well, as I said, what speak ye to me
about this \ It is not our doing. Speak to Him, who here says,
The Hobj Ghost shall rebuke the world. But if He is to rebuke, He
must not be silent, much less flatter, and say what the world loves
to hear. If they will not hear it, the Holy Ghost will not cease
from His rebuke for all their raging and muttering, but will con-
tinue it until they give over or perish. If dissensions and tumults
arise on this account, tell me, Whose fault is this, except his, who
will not bear or listen to this sermon of the Holy Ghost? Who is
disobedient here ? They who take up and preach the sermon
according to God's commandment? or they who set themselves
stiffly against God's commandment, and claim to be in the right,
and complain of disobedience, if one does not preach and do as they
I If they would receive this sermon, as others do, and as they
ought to do by God's solemn command, there would be no dissension;
but all jpao] be of one mind, as true Christians are. Since
320 NOTE L.
however they run with their mad heads against it, storming and
raging, we must needs let it be, that they should excite divisions
and uprore ; but we will see who is the strongest, and who carries
his work to an end. Our Papists have already conspired together
so often, and resolved to destroy this doctrine, or they will not lay
down their heads in peace: but I trust they will not drive the
Holy Ghost, who has hitherto preserved Christianity and the
Gospel, out of heaven quite so soon as they expect. Should it tarn
out however, that they themselves are cast down and consumed to
ashes, as happened of yore to Eome and to Jerusalem, they must
blame themselves."
In thus rendering kXkyyeiv by strafen, Luther seems to have
adopted what was already the received version among his country-
men. For his favorite Tauler has the same word, though he applies
it very differently, but still with his own deep beauty. " The Holy
Ghost (he says) wird die Welt strafen; that is, will enable man to
see clearly, whether the world is lying concealed within him,
hidden in the principle of his being : this He will reprove, declare,
explain, and rebuke. Now what is the world in us ? It is the
ways, the workiDgs, the imaginations of the world, the world's
comfort, joy, love, and grief, in love, in fear, in sorrow, in care.
For St Bernard says, ' With all wherein thou rejoicest and sorrowest
thou shalt also be judged/ Children, this will the Holy Ghost,
when he comes to us, clearly reveal, and rebuke us on account
thereof, so that, if we are reasonable, we shall never have rest or
quiet, so long .as we know and find this evil and noxious possession
within us. And when one finds this evil inclination in a man,
that he is possest by any creature, be it living or dead, and he
remains unrebuked, all this is the world. And when a man keeps
this in himself unrebuked, this is a true, manifest sign that the
Holy Ghost has not entered into the principle of his life : for Christ
has said, When He comes, He will rebuke all these things."
The same word is also used by Luther in that passage of the
book of Genesis (vi. 3), where it seems to be declared that the
Spirit, who was given back to man on the day of Pentecost, was in
some sort to be taken away. The words, which we translate My
Spirit shall not always strive vrith man, are rendered by Luther, Die
Menschen wollen sich meinen Geist nicht mehr strafen lassen.
Augustin too {In Joann. Tract, xcv. 1), looking solely at the Latin
NOTE L. 321
urguet, explains the Spirit's work to be that of reproving, without
reference to any conviction. " Quid est hoc ? (he says on our text).
Numquidnam Dominus Christus non arguit mundum de peccato ?
cum ait, Si non venissem, et locutus eis fuissem, peccatum non /inhe-
rent ; nunc autem excusationem nonhabent de peccato suo. — Numquid
non arguit de justitia ? ubi ait, Pater juste, mundus te non cognovit.
Xuniquid non arguit de judicio ? ubi se ait sinistris esse dicturum,
ignem aetemum, qui paratus est diabolo et angelis ejus. — Quid
est ergo quod tanquam proprie tribuit hoc Spiritui Sancto ? An
forte, quia Christus in Judaeorum tantum gente locutus est, mundum
BOO videtur arguisse, ut ille intelligatur argui qui audit arguentem ?
.Spiritus autem Sanctus, in discipulis ejus toto orbe diffusis, non
imam gentem intelligitur arguisse, sed mundum. — Sed quis audeat
dicere quod per discipulos Christi arguit mundum Spiritus Sanctus,
et non arguat ipse Christus ? cum clamet Apostolus, An vultis
experimenttim accipere ejus qui in me loquitur Christus ? Quos
itaque arguit Spiritus Sanctus, arguit utique et Christus. Sed
quantum mihi videtur, quia per Spiritum Sanctum diffundenda
flfsft caritas in cordibus eorum, quae foras mittit timorem, quo
impediri possent ne arguere mundum, qui persecutionibus fremebat,
auderent, propterea dixit, Ille arguet mundum; tanquam diceret,
Ille diffundet in cordibus vestris caritatem ; sic enim timore depulso
argueudi habebitis libertatem." Here, it seems to me, this great
Father has involved himself in unprofitable perplexities, and mist
the force of the passage, by mistaking the meaning of cAeyxeu'. and
thus losing sight of the distinction between Christ's work and that
of the Spirit, as the latter is set before us in this and other places
ipture, namely, the conviction which He was to produce by
glorifying Christ in the hearts of such as were to be called to the
inheritance of faith. When we discern this truth, the difficulties
here raised by Augustin seem little better than trifling. Nor is
his solution of his last difficulty by bringing in caritas, as he so
he is at a loss for an explanation, at all satisfactory.
The Spirit had other gifts to bestow on the Apostles, besides caritas;
ami unong His other gifts are some that were more to the purpose
here. He was to teach them what to say, to speak in them and
through them, and to carry their words with power to the hearts of
their hearers. He was to act not only upon the Apostles, but also
through them upon the world ; and the world was to be the object
322 NOTE L.
of His e'Acyxos. The Latin word arguere however so naturally
suggested the notion of reproving, that in his 143d and 144th
Sermons, where he again treats of this passage, Augustin assumes
throughout, as a thing plain and certain, that this is the special
work ascribed here to the Spirit.
There being such a general agreement among the translators of
the New Testament, at least down to recent times, in adopting a
different interpretation of eAeyxeiv ^ rom tnat which I have carried
through the whole course of these Sermons, I am in a manner
bound to shew that my own interpretation is not destitute of
authority. In fact, so far as I can judge, it has been adopted by a
great majority of the divines who have given any exposition of this
passage ; at all events since the Revival of letters and the Reforma-
tion led men to apply their grammatical and philological knowledge
to the interpretation of the Scriptures. Chrysostom indeed, when
explaining this passage in his 78th Homily on St John, takes
eAey£ei in the sense of convicting, but mainly with a view to the
condemnation of the world. Ovk aTtpwprjTl, he says, ravra
TrpdgovcriV) av tKelvos .eXOy' iKavd [xev yap kcu ra rj8r) yeytvrjpiva
iTricTTOfxicrai avTOvs' orav 8e /ecu oY Ikslvov Tavra ytvqrai^ kcu
StSdypara TeAeidrepa, kcu crry/zeia pec^ova, 7rdAAw p.aXXov /cara-
KpiBrjcrovTai. — iracrav aVoAoyiav avrwv e/cKo^ei, kcu Set^et 7T6-
TrXrjfxpLeXrjKoras acrvyyviocna. This too is the tenour of the inter-
pretation by Theodore of Mopsuesta, as given in the Catena publisht
by Dr Cramer. ODrw <f>o/3epd tl's Icnriv, cfirjcrl, tov \Ayiov ILvev-
fj-OLTOs rj KciOoSos, Cos eirujioiTijcravTos tols dvdpioirots, <f>o.vfjvai twv
kirifizfiovXevKOTUiV ifiol Tqv dpapriav. To the same effect Apol-
linaris says, in the same Catena: 'EAey£ci rov Kocrpov^ ojs viro
apap-tav KaraKeKpipp^evov Sia rrjv airicniav' f) yap tticttis dpap-
riav XeXvKev, dinar l a 8e St&eKe' Kal cfiaivo p.evov kv rots ma-revoivi
to TLvtvpa KaraKpicris r^v tQ)V d.ma-rovvriov' iarepiqpkvoi yap rrj<s
Suypeds e^rjXeyxpvTO rfjs irapovo"q<s rots iraricrTevKocri' koi tovto
iSeiKvvev avrovs ivayfj crKevrj Kal dveiriTrjSeia t<£ Uvevpari. Yet
the story of the day of Pentecost ought to be sufficient to prove that
the conviction wrought by the Spirit is a conviction unto salvation,
rather than unto condemnation. But man has ever been readier to
convict in order to condemn, than to convince in order to bless ; and
this portion of the old man has stuck tenaciously even to those who
NOTE L. 323
have been called to the preaching of the Gospel, insomuch that many
have seemed to fancy that the Holy Ghost also shared their predilec-
tion, utterly alien as it is to the Spirit of Love.
Here too we are reminded of that same deficiency, which I have
had occasion to remark more than once, and which gives such a
narrow, lifeless character to a large part of the expositions of Scrip-
ture by the Fathers, — their aptness to look at the words spoken, and
the things done, as though they were past, and related solely to the
past, without sufficient regard to that which was permanent in them,
and which gives them an ever-living, present interest for all ages,
and for every single member of the Church. Thus, in considering
the I A.€yx os °^ *^ e Spirit, as we see, they scarcely thought of any
other !A.€yx os than that which He carried on in the first age, by
means of the Apostles themselves. Yet that part of the question,
which is of far the deepest interest and importance, is the eAey^os
which He has been carrying on ever since, which He is still carrying
on, and without which no soul would ever be rescued from the sin
of unbelief, or would recognise the righteousness of Christ, or find a
holy fear and a holy joy in the certainty that the Prince of this
world has been judged. Now it is the vivid consciousness of this
abiding power in the word of God, the assurance that it does
not merely relate to the past, but no less to the present and the
future, — that it is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, — this it
is that gives such an incomparable value to the expositions of Scrip-
ture by the great Reformers. How Luther felt that the Spirit was
exercising His office of reproving the world no less mightily in his
days than in those of the Apostles, we have seen above. Calvin's ex-
position is excellent. " A rguet mundum, inquit, hoc est, non manebit
inclusu8 in vobis, sed potentia ejus se a vobis proferet in totum mun-
duni. Spiritum ergo illis promittit, qui futurus sit judex muudi, et
tern eorum praedicatio adeo viva efficaxque futura sit, ut in
ordinem cogat qui prius effreni licentia exultantes uullo metu nee
reverentia tenebantur. Notandum autem est, Christum non de
arcauis revelationibus hie loqui, sed de Spiritus virtute, quae in
externa Evangelii doctrina et hominum voce apparet. Unde enim
fit ut in animoe penetret vox hominis, radicem illic agat, fructificet
ie, ex lapideis cordibus carnea faciens, et iunovans ipsos
h'jiiiiius, i. -]»iritu8 Christi earn vivificat? Alioqui esset
mortua litera et inauis sonitus, quemadmodum pulcre docet Paulus
324 NOTE L.
(2 Cor. iii. 6), ubi se ministrum Spiritus esse jactat, quia Deus
poteuter in ejus doctrina operabatur. Sensus ergo est, cum Spiritu
donati fuerint Apostoli, coelesti ac divina virtute instructos fore, qua
jurisdictionem in toto mundo exerceant. Caeterura hoc Spiritui
potius quam ipsis tribuitur, quia nihil habebunt propriae potestatis,
utpote qui ministri tantum erunt et organa, solus autem Spiritus in
illis praesidebit. Sub mundi nomine tarn eos qui vere convertendi
erant ad Christum, quam hypocritas et reprobos comprehendi
existimo. Duobus enim modis homines arguit Spiritus in Evangelii
praedicatione Quidam enim serio tanguntur, ut sponte se humilient,
sponte judicio subscribant quo damnantur. Alii, etsi convicti reatum
non possunt effugere, non tamen ex animo cedunt, nee se submittunt
in jus ac ditionem Spiritus Sancti : quin potius subacti intus fremunt.
et confusi non desinunt tamen intus contumaciam alere. Nunc
tenemus quomodo Spiritus mundum arguere debuerit per Apostolos ;
nempe quia judicium suum Deus in Evangelio patefecit, quo per-
culsae conscientiae mala sua et Dei ipsius gratiam sentire coeperunt.
Nam verbum kXkyyziv pro convincere hie accipitur. Atque ad hujus
loci intelligentiam non parum lucis affert quod habetur 1 Cor. xiv. 24,
ubi sic Paulus, Si prophetent omnes, ingrediatur autem incredulus vel
idiota, arguitur ab omnibus, dijudicatur ab omnibus, et sic occulta
cordis ejus manifesta fiunt. Proprie illic Paulus de una arguendi
specie agit, cum scilicet Dominus electos suos ad poenitentiam adducit
per Evangelium : sed hinc dilucide patet, quomodo Spiritus Dei in
sonitu vocis humanae homines, prius jugo non assuetos, imperium
suum agnoscere et subire cogat."
Beza, we have already seen, concurs with Calvin in interpreting
kXkyyjiiv by convincere. Grotius says, "Diximus JlapaKXrjTOv
esse defensorem causae : ejus munus est iXiyx^v tovs avriXk-
yovras, convincere de causae suae rectitudine." Hammond, in the
margin, renders the verse thus : And He, when He comes, shall
convince the world &c. Pole cites Lucas Brugensis, Piscator,
Camero, Gerhard, and Camerarius, as giving the same translation of
cAey^et. Wetstein explains the verse, " Spiritus Sanctus— dis-
cipulos docebit, postquam Jesus majorem Judicem appellasset
(1 Pet. ii. 23), causam ejus denuo ab ipso Deo fuisse cognitam,
qui et accusatores et reum et judicem judicaverit."
In Donne's 34th Sermon, which is on our text, we find a long
discussion on the meaning of reprove. " This word, that is here
NOTE L. 325
translated to reprove, arguere, hath a double use and signification
in the Scriptures : first, to reprehend, to rebuke, to correct, with
authority, with severity ; so David, Ne in furore arguas me, Lord,
rebuke me not in Thine anger ; and secondly, to convince, to prove,
to make a thing evident by undeniable inferences and necessary con-
sequences : so, in the instructions of God's ministers, the first is to
reprove, and then to rebuke (2 Tim. iv. 2. see above p. 329) : so that
reproviug is an act of a milder sense than rebuking is. St Augustin
interprets these words twice in his works : and in the first place he
follows the first signification of the word, that the' Holy Ghost
should proceed — by power, by severity, against the world. But
though that sense will stand well with the first act of this reproof, —
that He shall reprove, that is, reprehend the world of sin, — yet it will
not seem so properly said, to reprehend the world of righteousness
or of judgement : for how is righteousness and judgement the sub-
ject of reprehension ? Therefore St Augustin himself, in the other
place where he handles these words, embraces the second sense : Hoc
est arguere mundum, ostendere vera esse quae non credidit :* this is to
reprove the world, to convince the world of her errours and mis-
takings : and so (scarce any excepted) do all the ancient expositors
take it, according to that, all things are reproved of the light, and so
made manifest : the light does not reprehend them, not rebuke them,
not chide, not upbraid them ; but to declare them, to manifest them,
to make the world see clearly what they are, this is to reprove.
That reproving them, which is warrantable by the Holy Ghost, is
not a sharp increpation, a bitter proceeding, proceeding only out of
power and authority, but by enlightening and informing and con-
vincing the understanding. The signification of this word, which
* No reference is given in my edition of Donne, the octavo reprint ; but he
is evidently referring to the Questiones de Novo Testdniento, in tho 89th of
which the writer treats of our text, and says, " Hoc est arguere mundum,
ostendere illi vera esse quae credere noluit." This work however is generally
recognised not to be by Augustin ; and the correctness of the decision is mani-
fest, not indeed from the discrepancy in the interpretation of this passage, —
such diversities will always be found, and, it is to be hoped, far greater, when
a man's writings are spread over a surface of forty years,— but from the tota
difference in the style and mode of thought, as well as from many points o
detail. Still, as these Questions are by a contemporary, if not by a some
what earlier writer, they are just as good evidence for the antiquity of the
interpretation.
326 NOTE L.
the Holy Ghost uses here for reproof, eAeyx°s, ^ s ^ est deduced and
manifested to us by the philosopher who had so much use of the
word, who expresses it thus : Elenchus est syllogismus contra con-
traria opinantem : a reproof is a proof, a proof by way of argument,
against another man, who holds a contrary opinion. All the pieces
must be laid together: for first it must be against an opinion, and
then an opinion contrary to truth, and then such an opinion held,
insisted upon, maintained ; and after all this the reproof must lie in
argument, not in force."
In Diodati's French Bible our verse is rendered, Et quand il sera
venu, il conveincra le monde de peche, et de justice, et de jugement.
The following note is subjoined, giving a good summary explanation
of it. " Par sa secrette vertu, jointe a la predication de ma parole, il
imprimera dans la conscience des homines, et surtout des ennemis de
mon Regne, mesles dedans mon Eglise, et faisans fausse profession
de mon Nom, et ayans connoissance de mon Evangile, des vifs senti-
mens, et des convictions de peche ; d'autant qu'ils auront rejette le
remede de grace, qui leur aura este presente, en moi : et aussi par
l'example du Diable, leur Chef, desja condamne sans ressource, il
leur scelera la certitude de leur jugement. Et au contraire il
donnera aux eufans de Dieu des persuasions tres assurees de la vraie
justice, que je leur aurai acquise par ma mort et parfaite satisfac-
tion : dont le certain argument sera, qu'en vertu d'elle moimesme
serai passe a la vie celeste et glorieuse, pour en prendre la possession
pour moi et pour toute mon Eglise."
The same translation of eAey£ei was also received by the Catho-
lic Church in France. In Bossuet's Meditations sur VEvangile,
that of the 19th day in the second part is on these words : Et
quand il viendra, il convaincra le monde touchant le peche, et
touchant la justice, et touchant le jugement, " C'est sur ce peche,
et de ce peche (of not believing in Jesus), que le Saint-Esprit
devoit convaincre le monde incredule. Jesus-Christ avoit con-
vaincu les Juifs de ce peche en deux manieres, l'une en
accomplissant les propheties, qui e3t la maniere la plus efficace de
les expliquer ; Fautre en faisant des miracles que personne n'avoit
jamais fait ; ce qui leur 6toit toute excuse, en sorte qu'il ne man-
quoit rien a la conviction. Et toutefois le Saint-Esprit la pousse
encore plus loin: — et premi&rement celle des propheties. Car le
Saint-Esprit inspire a saint Pierre la preuve de la resurrection de
NOTE L. 327
Jesus- Christ tiree de David, que cet ap6tre, plein des lumieres et
du feu de ce divin Esprit, pousse — au dernier point de convic-
tion. — Secondement, quant a la conviction des miracles, le
Saint-Esprit y met la perfection. Car si la source en 6toit tarie
en Jesus-Christ, on auroit pu croire qu'elle etoit passagere et trom-
peuse eu Jesus-Christ meme : mais comme elle se continue dans
les apotres, qui guerissent publiquement et a la vue de tout le
peuple cet impotent, en temoignage de la resurrection de J6sus-
Christ, la conviction est poussee bien au-dela de la suffisance ; et
le Saint-Esprit la porte — jusqu'a la derniere evidence. Cette
continuation de miracles etoit l'ouvrage du Saint-Esprit, Jesus-
< hri.st avoit dit, qu'il chassoit les demons par l'Esprit de Dieu ;
et tous les autres miracles devoient etre aussi singulierement attri-
bues au Saint-Esprit. Le meme Esprit de miracles se continuant
dans les ap6tres, on voyoit la suite des desseins de Dieu, et l'en-
tiere confirmation de la v6rite. — Puisque le Saint-Esprit, pour
donner a Jesus-Christ des temoins de sa resurrection, descend visi-
blement sur ses apdtres : — puisqu'il les remplit de courage ; que
de foibles qu'ils etoient, il les rend forts ; d idiots et d'ignorans
qu'ils eloieut, les rend pleins d'uue divine science, et leur donne
des paroles qui fermoient la bouche a leurs adversaires ; — puisqu' au
lieu qu'ils 6toient des laches, qui avoieut oublie leur maltre tous
ensemble en prenant la fuite, et le premier de leur troupeau en le
reuiant, il eu avoit fait d'intrepides defenseurs de sa doctrine et de
irrection; puisqu' entin, — non content de leur inspirer l'in-
telligence des propheties, — il les remplit eux-m§nies de l'esprit de
proph6tie, et les fait agir et parler comme des homines inspires ; —
tous ces ouvrages adiuirables du Saint-Esprit prouvent que J6sus-
( 'hii.st a dit la vcritc, en assurant que ce m6me Esprit convain-
croit de nouveau, et d'une maniere encore plus concluante, Tiiicro-
dulitc du monde. — Ajoutez a toutes ces choses la saiutet6, que le
Saint-Esprit 6tablissoit dans l'Eglise par des effets si 6clatans, et
cette parfaite unite de coeurs qui etoit son veritable ouvrage, et le
caractere sensible de sa presence. Ajoutez la redoutable autorite
que # Dieu mettoit dans l'Eglise, en sorte que meutir a Pierre, cetoit
iiieiitir au Saint-Esprit. On voit assez par toutes ces choses
l'efficace du temoignage de ce mSme Esprit pour convaincre l'incr6-
dulitC*." All this is ingeniously and ably put, though in parts too
much in the manner of au advocate ; and too exclusive stress is l.iid
328 NOTE L.
on the outward evidence by which the Spirit was to produce His
conviction. The conviction too, according to the narrow and shallow
Romish notion of faith, is represented as little else than a mere
conviction of the understanding in the way of argument, and thus
falls far short of the conviction by the Spirit spoken of in the text ;
inasmuch as it is a conviction of the fitness of believing in Christ,
not of the sin of not believing in Him. But at all events nothing
can be more decided than Bossuet's interpretation of IXeyytiv as
convincing : nay, he has gone too far in neglecting the other element
in its meaning.
Lampe, as usual, is full, so as almost to exhaust his subject ; and
much of what he says is sound and good. He explains iX.ey\€cv
here, and in viii. 9, as designating "opus doctoris, qui veritatem,
quae hactenus non est agnita, ita ad conscientiam etiam renitentis
demonstrat, ut victas dare manus cogatur. Hoc opus excellentissimo
modo Spiritui Sancto proprium est. Hie hac ipsa convictione para-
cletici sui muneris partem obit, dum Christi apud mundum causam
agit. Et emphatice ei tribuitur ZXeyxos. Nam doctoris ille et
paedagogi inter homines munus exercet, et quidem inter tales qui
natura coeci sunt, non tantum ignorantes ea quae sunt Spiritus Dei,
sed etiam ov Scxo^vol, (1 Cor. ii. 14) — rejicientes per incredulitatem,
quin contra nitentes ratiociniis carnalibus. — Atque haec excoecatio
tanta est, ut omnis ars humana ad ejus medelam sit insufficiens. —
Quare Spiritus Sanctus — clarissima argumentorum luce ita tenebras
intellectus perrumpit, ut voluntas etiam obstinatissima resistere ei
amplius nequeat. — Est autem vis, — non coactiva, sed convictiva. — Non
agit tanquam cum stipite, sed tanquam cum creatura rationali, per-
suadendo. — Agit partim externe, partim interne : externe per verbum,
— praeconium igitur Evaugelii rite institutum pro elencho ipsius
Spiritus haberi debet. — Accedimt saepenumero singularia Dei opera,
signa, judicia, per quae testimonium verbi a Spiritu roboratur. — Ilia
maximum momentum ad hanc convictionem habuisse, Whitbyo et
aliis concedimus, ita tamen ut in eo non subsistamus. Nihil horum
salutarem effectum producere potest, nisi accedat interna Spiritus
Sancti operatic — Inter salutares autem convictiones numeramns,
quod animos occulte flectat, ut ad verbum attendant, Act. xvi. 14 ;
quod cor molle et carneum det, quod ad periculi sui agnitionem
trepidat et conquassatur, Act. ii. 37, xvi. 30 ; quod intellectum ita
illumiuet, ut dispulsis praejudiciis carnalibus veram viae salutis
NOTE L. 329
rationem cum plena conscientiae convictione agnoscat, Eph. i. 17. 18;
— quod amorem veritatis et desiderium earn adhuc exsertius cognos-
ceudi, eique obediendi iustillet, unde fides salvifica gignitur."
But the best explanation that I have seen, of the force of i kkyx^iv
in this passage, is Luecke's. The rationalist tendency to regard it
as merely expressing the work of teaching and producing conviction
by logical processes compelled him to bring out and insist on the
other branch of the meaning. " The testimony of the Holy Ghost
in behalf of Christ over against the unbelieving world is mainly a
refutation, eAcyxos, a demonstration of the world's wrong and
errour. The whole preaching of the Apostles, as addrest to the
world, necessarily takes this polemical form : see 1 Tim. v. 20,
2 Tim. iii. 16, iv. 2, Tit. i. 9, 13, ii. 15— 'EAeyxciv alwa y s implies
the refutation, the overcoming of an errour, a wrong, by the truth
and right. Now when this is brought before our conscience through
the c Acyxos, tnere arises a feeling of sin, which is always painful :
thus every € Acyxos is a chastening, a punishment. Hence this office
has been called the Strafamt of the Holy Ghost. The effect of the
Holy Ghost's I Acyxos m tne wor M ma y De hardening ; but its aim
is the deliverance of the world. The world, according to St John, is
the body of those who are not yet redeemed, who are still to be
redeemed, not of the condemned. If the e Aeyxos of the world is a
moral process, its result may just as well be the conversion, as the
non-conversion of the world. Thus alone did the cAeyxos of the
Spirit answer the end for which Christ came, or afford a cheering
support to the Apostles. It is true, the Kpio-LS, with which the
tAcyxos closes, is the condemnation, not however of the world, but
of the Prince of the world."
Tholuck and Olshausen remark that in the word iXcyxcw the
notion of convincing and that of reproving are mixt up together. So
too Ackerraaun, in the Dissertation before cited, says, " In reference
to the carnal m iii<k"lne88, which had gained such a dominion over the
world, tad \\ lii<li was without any feeling of God, or any submission
to God, Jesus speaks of a punitive power of the Holy Ghost, in
John xvi. 8. For cXiyxav in this place means more than to con-
it implies a breaking down and casting out of the whole
power of ungodliness, both in the outward life of the world, and in
Um inner life of the conscience (p. 892)." This coincides entirely
with the view taken in the Sermons: only it seemed to me that the
330 NOTEM.
Spirit's permanent work, within the range of Christendom, was most
adequately exprest, with reference to its threefold object, by
convincing.
Note M : p. 35.
There is no controversy, and little difference, about the transla-
tion of the three words, which designate the subjects of the Com-
forter's threefold conviction. The Vulgate, Erasmus, Beza render
them by peccatum, justitia, and judicium. In English, the Rhem-
ish Version, as might be expected, retains justice for the second ;
and the Latin word is more appropriate here than in many other
cases : though even here the corresponding Saxon word better
expresses the vital principle dwelling and working in the soul ;
while the Latin, in conformity to the predominant character of the
language, and of the nation whose image that language reflects,
relates rather to outward acts and conduct. The difference is
analogous to that which we find in the translations of the sixth
beatitude, where, instead of the pure in heart, the Ehemish is led
by the Vulgate, beati mundo corde, to put Blessed are the clean
of heart. I trust it is neither unjust nor fanciful to look upon
these two words as in some measure symbolical of the distinctive
characters of the Reformed churches and of that of Rome, that is
to say, so far as each answers to its peculiar principle and idea.
The former seek 'purity, and cannot be satisfied without it, and
therefore are always opprest with a deep consciousness of impurity ;
the latter aims at cleanness, which may be attained in a high
degree, and by means of outward acts. So may justice; but
righteousness is unattainable. I do not mean that the Romish
Church is altogether regardless of purity and righteousness, or the
Reformed of cleanness and justice. Specific distinctions are seldom
absolute, but relative, and are formed by the predominance of one
or other of the constitutive elements, by the development of that
which had been latent, the coming forward of that which had been
in the background, the superiority of that which had been subor-
dinate. Neither are the cleanness and justice inculcated by the
Church of Rome irrespective of purity and righteousness ; nor are
the purity and righteousness, the ideas of which were the beacon-
NOTE M. 331
stars of the Reformation, irrespective of cleanness and justice.
Indeed it would be utterly impossible for either to exist without
some admixture of the other. But the errour, which is the cari-
cature and corruption of each Church, and has evermore lifted up
its head therein, marks its tendency by its main danger : and this
in the Church of Home has been the proneness to Pelagianism, in
the Reformed Churches the aptness to run into Antinomianism.
Our modern impugners and revilers of the Reformation have never
duly recognised these main distinctions between the two great
branches, into which the Western Church since that event has been
divided. Hence they have gone blindly astray in their judgements
upon each, blaming and praising inconsiderately and irrelevantly,
nay, at times blaming where they ought to have praised, and
praising where they ought to have blamed ; even as in their own
theology they want to turn back the hands of the world's great
clock, and to pull us down to cleanness smd justice, to the rudiments
of outward acts and observances, — touch not, taste not, handle not, —
instead of urging and helping us on to that inward purity and
righteousness, which we are to seek from the Comforter, and which
He alone can give.
Wiclif renders the three words by synne and righticisnesse and
doom; for though he translated from the Vulgate, it is surpris-
ing how little Latin he has mixt up with the Saxon element of
our language. Tyndall has synne, rightwesnes, and judgement.
I know not how far one may rely in such a matter on the accu-
racy of the reprint of Coverdale, which gives synne, righteousness,
and judgement. At all events in the Quarto Bible printed by
Grafton in 1553 these are the three words : so that here, at a
period when great changes were going on in our language as well
M in other things, and when many ancient forms were corrupted
from forgetfulness of their original force, we see how the old
English words rightwise and rightwisness, with which the readers
of Chaucer must be familiar, were transformed into righteous and
'Usness, from au erroneous notion that they belonged to
that l.-irge class of adjectives in ous, which have come to us from the
Lit in and French.
This seems to be the fittest place for speaking of an interpreta-
tion or illustration of this passage, which appears to have been
suggested in the first instance by Grotius. After remarking that
332 NOTEM.
HapaKXr/Tos is defensor causae, and that lAey^ctv also is a for-
ensic word, "conveniens personae causarum actori," he adds, "ita
et quae sequuntur. Tria enim sunt causarum genera ; publica
judicia de criminibus rrtpl afxapTias (de peccato) sive facinore ;
privata ex aequo et bono, SiKaioo-vvr) (justitia) id est, aequitas ;
privata certam ex lege formulam habentia, k/h'o-is {judicium)." In
other words, Grotius compares the first eA.eyx 05 *° a cr i m i na ^
action, the second to a civil action at equity, and the third to a
civil action at law. The criminal action irepl d/AapTias he ex-
plains thus : " Cum evenerint omnia quae praedixi de mittendo
Spiritu, apparebit me esse Prophetam, secundum regulam Deut.
xviii. 22 ; ac proinde eos qui mihi non credunt gravissimis
suppliciis afiiciendos ex lege publici judicii quae exstat ibidem
xviii. 19 : et haec supplicia Deus coram oculis mundi de Judaeis
exiget excidio gentis." On the civil action at equity he says :
" Natura aequi et boni, quae Sikcuoo-vv^s, id est, aequitatis nomine
intelligitur, hoc exigit, ut Rectores, etiamsi lex nulla praecesserit,
bonos mala passos aliquibus bonis solentur : 2 Thess. i. 6, 7. Hebr.
vi. 10. Ostendit ergo Spiritus Deum aequum esse Rectorem, ut qui
me extra omnem injuriae contactum (hoc enim est quod ait, Non
videbitis Me, ut supra vii. 36) in suae Majestatis consortium receperit."
Finally the civil suit at law is set forth thus : " Inter Kpio-ets,
id est, judicia quae inter partes exercentur, est eximia ilia de Talione,
Levit. xxiv. 20, ut qui in juste cuiquam nocuit, ipse tantundem mali
ferat. Diabolus causa fuit mortis Christi : jure igitur ipse Deo
condemnante passus est quod ipsi est pro morte, exutus regno suo
per destructionem idololatriae aliorumque vitiorum, peragente id
Spiritu Sancto. Tot igitur modis per Spiritum Sanctum tanquam
fidelissimum patronum probata est Christi causa, non sine maximo
fructu apud pios animos."
Unquestionably there is much ingenuity in the framing and
working out of this notion : but I cannot perceive the slightest
ground in the passage itself for supposing that it contains a refer-
ence to the procedure in the Jewish courts of justice, such as is
manifest on the face of the text in Matth. v. 22. And what ground
had Grotius for assuming that this tripartite juridical scheme
existed in Judea ? As he has not adduced any, nor have the writers
since his time who have adopted his conjecture, we may fairly
believe that, as Lampe says, " tota haec distiuctio in cerebro Grotii
NOTE M. 333
tantuni nota fuerit." If we look at the details of the interpretation,
it is very doubtful whether Deut. xviii. 19 involves any mention of
a criminal action. The words, / will require it of him, refer rather
to judgements, national and personal, such as the Jews brought on
themselves time after time by their unbelief. But if one leg of the
comparison breaks down, the whole falls. Again, the meaning of
SiKOLKxrvvr] appears to be misapprehended by Grotius : this however
will come before us more appropriately in a subsequent Note. More-
over, if any one of the three actions looks especially fitted to be
deemed a criminal one, it would rather be the last than the first:
and as Henry More observes, though he adopts the interpretation,
in his Mystery of Godliness (B. V. c. 12), " to ai/Ti7r£7rov#os seems
something lame here, the members being so heterogeneal one to
another ;" that is, with reference to the Lex Talionis, which Grotius
makes the principle of his Kpicns. But the main objection to the
interpretation is, that it degrades and contracts, or, so to speak,
shrivels up the meaning of the whole passage, until all the precious
truths of infinite length and breadth and depth and highth contained
in it shrink into a mere puzzling, enigmatical statement of a historical
fact.
This however only rendered the interpretation more acceptable
to Hammond, who is fond of taking the words of the New Testa-
ment in their lowest and narrowest sense, and who thus, along with
Grotius, must rank among the precursors of the rationalizing
exegesis of the next century. But before I turn to him, I would
remark with regard to Grotius, that, when referring to his Com-
mentary, I have often been reminded of the report that he had an
inclination to join the Church of Rome; and it has seemed to me
that the low, pragmatical, earthly view of the Gospel manifested
therein, — as also in his elegant treatise Be Veritate Religionis Chris-
tianae— affords a strong confirmation to that report. Protestantism
requires that intense energy of faith and piercing insight into divine
truth, wherewith St Paul in the first age of the Church protested
with such irresistible power against the inroads and usurpations of
Judaism, and which was vouchsafed so largely in the great age of
the Reformation. They who have these graces, must protest
against the ordinances and rites, which are ever seeking to seat
themselves on the throne of Faith and Truth. But when these
qualities decay, when Faith is feeble and dwindles into a mere act
334 NOTE M.
of the understanding, and when there is no longer any vivid per-
ception of spiritual realities, Protestantism is apt to become purely
negative: a negative tendency takes possession of the whole mind:
it criticizes, rationalizes, Socinianizes, sets up the abstractions of the
understanding as the only forms of truth. Or else they who cannot
rest in this negative state, whose hearts crave something positive,
but whose faith is too weak to find what they want in Christ and
His Spirit, regarding the great works which accompanied the
foundation of Christianity as bygone and historical, will readily turn
to some outward institution and to outward ordinances, promising
to supply them with that objective reality, which they cannot
discern in the word of God, and in the conviction and communion of
the Comforter.
To return to Hammond: his paraphrase and long note on our
text are an expansion of what Grotius says, without the addition of
a single argument, merely stating prolixly and confusedly what
Grotius had stated concisely and clearly. He does indeed also refer
to Schindlers Pentaglotton: but Lampe, quoting the passage cited,
shews that only through a misapprehension of its meaning can it be
supposed to countenance the Grotian dream. Hammond has indeed
one advantage, that the conjecture, which in Grotius is captivating
from its ingenuity, and which did captivate Henry More thereby, in
him becomes wholly repulsive. Wolzogen too, in his Commentary
on St John, adopts the chief part of this interpretation, as indeed he
is apt to follow Grotius, whose views are mostly very acceptable to
a, Socinian. Lampe also cites Possinus as having brought forward a
modified form of this interpretation: but none of its advocates has
done anything to lessen its inherent improbability; and we may
safely adopt Lampe's conclusion, who rejects it as utterly groundless.
Indeed the recent commentators on St John, so far as I am
acquainted with them, have not even noticed it. '
Note N : p. 36.
'Eav Se TrdvTts irpo^reva-iaa-iVj elcreXOr) Se tis aTricrTos rj 18ho-
t^s, l\kyy€Ta.L vrrb 7rdvT(DV, dvaKpiverat vtto TrdvroiV. Here the
ambiguity, or rather the fulness of meaning comprised in the word
kXky\w has furnisht occasion for a variety of interpretations, in all
NOTE N. 335
of which there may be a portion of truth : and these differences have
been increast by the uncertainty as to the particular signification of
Trpo<fyt]Teveu' and i8i(oTt]<; in this passage.
With regard to Trpo<f>r)T€veiv, the sense of our English derivative
from it, according to popular usage, is much narrower than that of
the Greek verb ; and we are involuntarily led thereby to fancy,
whenever we meet with the word, that it was intended to convey
the notion of a prediction of future events, such, as can only be
known by inspiration. This however was only a part of the
prophetic office and gift, even under the Old Dispensation, and
is still more inadequate to its idea in the New Testament,
especially where St Paul speaks of it in his Epistle to the Church
of Corinth. The true meaning of the word is well explained by
Bleek, one of the best German biblical scholars, in an essay on the
Gift of Speaking with Tongues, in the second volume of the
Theologische Studien mid Kritiken. After referring to the distinc-
tion which Plato in the Timeus draws between the /zavm and the
-/)0</)7yTT/9, and pointing out how nearly it coincides with that
between yXtocrcrais XaXeiv and jrpo^rjril/eiv in this passage of St
Paul, he adds, "St Paul however speaks of this as a special \dpixrp.a i
distinct, not only from the yXtocrcrais XaXelv, but also from the
epfxyveia yXtacrcrCiv, so that Trpo<jy>]Tr}s in him is not to be under-
stood in the same sense as in the passage cited from Plato. But we
should be no less far from the truth, if, with many of the modern
interpreters, we refer the word merely to the singing of religious
songs, or the ex}x>sition of the Jewish Prophets. There is no reason
why we should not take 7rpocfirjTev€iv in this passage, and in all others
in the New Testament where Christian prophets are spoken of, in
the same sense as the Trpo^rna of the Prophets of the Old Testa-
ment. It denotes the communication of all manner of knowledge,
which has not been acquired in a natural way, by tradition, or by
the perception of the senses, or by reflexion, but by immediate
revelation. It does not matter whether that which is communicated
in tli is manner be something future, or anything else that is hidden,
and that God wills to make known to man. The idea of prophecy
even under the Old Testament is not confined to the announcement
of the future ; nor is this its essential element : nor again is the re-
ference to tin- future, to that which is to take place according to
God's purpose, excluded from Christian prophecy : see Acts xi. 28.
336 NOTE N.
xxi. 11. This however is less brought forward here as the main
point, which is rather the declaration of what is hidden in men's
hearts, and admonitions, exhortations, and warnings connected
therewith. Only the 7rpo<f>r)T€vu)v must always speak by reason of a
divine revelation granted specially to him : " pp. 57 — 59. To this
explanation Olshausen has added some good remarks in his note on
1 Cor. xiv. 1 : " From the whole character and relative position
of the Old Testament, it followed that the task of the prophets bore
mainly on the revelation of the future. Everything in the institu-
tions of the Old Testament, like the inward yearnings of all good
men, pointed to that which was to come. In the New Testament
on the other hand this* part of the prophetic office necessarily fell
into the background, as men were living in the enjoyment of the
completion of all the promises. — In the New Testament the 7rpo-
(jivreia appears principally as that gift of the Spirit, by which faith
is awakened and aroused in the hearts of unbelievers." Thus the
great subject of prophecy was the same under both Dispensations,
Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God ; and under both Dispensations it
was the gift of the same Spirit, even of the Comforter,— who, having
reproved the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgement under
the Old Testament, has entered upon His more blessed office of con-
vincing the world thereof under the New Testament.
As to the meaning of tSi(0T?ys, which has been discust of late years
repeatedly, — for instance by Bleek in the Essay just cited, by
Neander in his History of the Apostolical Church (p. 185), and by
Heydenreich, Billroth, Eueckert, Olshausen, Osiander, in their Com-
mentaries on this Epistle, — it does not seem to me that any one of
them has quite clearly markt out a sense suited to all the three
verses in this chapter (16. 23. 24), in which the word occurs. By
Chrysostom, who is followed by Theophylact, iSttor?;? in v. 16 is
interpreted Acukos, by Theodoret 6 ev tw Agukw ray pari rerayfjit-
vo5. The agreement however among these three Fathers is not that
of three independent witnesses, who had come to the same conclusion,
each led by his own researches ; for both Theodoret and Theophylact
very often do little else than transcribe, or abridge, or paraphrase
Chrysostom. Olshausen follows them, and argues from this passage
that the distinction between the Clergy and Laity must already
have existed in the Church at Corinth : but this is a feeble ground-
work for such a hypothesis, a groundwork too that soon slips away,
NOTE N. 337
inasmuch as this sense is inapplicable to the other passages in the
New Testament in which ISlmtyjs is found. The Fathers of the
fourth, fifth, and eleventh century seem to have transferred the
relations of their own times, in this as in many other things, by a
fallacy very natural in an uncritical age, to the first. Whether
t'cW-nys was ever used to denote a layman, I know not. Suicer
quotes no examples for this sense, except those in which Theodoret
and Theophylact interpret it as so used by St Paul ; and the need
which the former finds to explain the word by the analogy of the
common soldier is a presumption that it would not have been in-
telligible without. In classical Greek the derivative sense bears
witness of the Greek notion of the indispensableness of public life,
trco to the right development of the intellect : hence it signified a
rude, ignorant person, answering nearly to a boor. Now this sense
agrees with the context in Acts iv. 13 : deuipovvres Se rrjv tov
rieTpoi' Trapp-qcrlav ko\ 'I<odvvoi>, kcu KaTaXaf36pcvot on dvOpoiiroi
ay pap.pxx.Toi tlcnv /ecu tSiwrat. ldavp,a^ov. So does it in the Second
Kpistle to the Corinthians, xi. 6, where St Paul says of himself, et Se
kou iSiioTtjs to> Aoyoj, dKX.' ov tq yv(6cr€L. Nor is it inappropriate
in any of the three passages in the 14th Chapter of the First
Epistle. If we try to form a conception of the position of the early
< 'hurch , we shall perceive that, as is the case at present wherever we
have missions among the Heathens, besides the eK/cA^o-ta of those
who were called to be saints through the knowledge of Christ, there
were two classes of men with whom the Church came into contact,
the a7TioTot, — who openly denied and resisted the new doctrine,
whether from any lingering belief in their old false gods, or from
universal scepticism, or upon grounds of human reasoning, — and
those who came to listen to the new teachers, without any preposses-
sions against them, and in many cases with prepossessions in
tluir favour, by reason of the graces manifested in their lives. Of
these there would be divers classes. Theodoret interprets io\u>tcu
in the 23rd verse to be ol d/xv^Tor and it would seem from the 16th
verse that the catechumens were probably included under the name :
since the iSiwtou are spoken of as joining in the service, by saying
A men after the thanksgiving, and appear to have had a special place
assigned to them ; for I hardly think that 6 dvaTrkijpQv rov tottov
tov ISiioTov can be a mere periphrasis without any special significance.
The analogy of the Court of the Gentiles in the temple at Jeru-
Y
338 NOTE N.
salem would naturally lead to the appointment of a similar place for
the t&wrar and it is not unlikely that something of the kind had
been usual in the synagogues in various parts of the world.
Now in the 22d verse St Paul says, first, that tongues were in-
tended to be a sign, not for believers, but for unbelievers ; even as
all miracles were, the main^ purpose of which was to be o-^/xcia,
signs to startle men and draw attention to him by whom they were
wrought. For the notion that miracles have an argumentative and
demonstrative efficacy, and that the faith of Christians is to be
grounded upon them, belongs to a much later age, and is in fact the
theological parallel to the materialist hypothesis, that all our know-
ledge is derived from the senses. St Paul then adds, that prophesy-
ing is not for unbelievers, but for believers, that is to say, chiefly
and primarily for those who have already received the first principles
of Christian faith, but who, in order to grow therein, need that those
principles should be set forth with the power of the Spirit, as they
expand through the gradations and ramifications of Christian life.
Nevertheless, he goes on to state, prophesying has also a use with
reference to unbelievers, nay, a greater use than tongues. For if,
when the whole Church was assembled, all were to speak with
tongues, and a party of unbelievers or persons ignorant of Christi-
anity were to come in, they would think that everybody was mad.
But if, instead of this, all were to exercise the gift of prophecy, then,
if an unbeliever or an ignorant person should come in, kXkyytTat
vtto 7rai/rtov, ava.Kpiver&i vtto iravTiDV. By these last words, those
who, in the notion of prophecy, lay the chief stress on the super-
natural knowledge of outward facts, conceive St Paul to have im-
plied that the airio-ros tls ^ IStcoTrjs had come into the church with
some specific malignant intention, and that this intention of his was
detected by the prophets, and divulged to the whole congregation.
Even Chrysostom speaks of this, as though it were the main point.
'EA€yX €Tat 7<V 'VTTO TTOLVTW TOVT€0-TLV, 6\ €7Tl KOLpSiaS CY^l,
ravTa eis pkcrov ayerai /cat StLKVvrai irao-iv' ovk ccttl 8e to~ov
ela-eXdovra riva tSeiv rbv pXv Hepo-nrrl, rov <5e 2v/)icrrt
</>#€yyo//.evov, /cat elo-eXdovra aKovcrat tol aTTopprjra rfjs olvtov
Biavoias, /cat eire 7r€ipd£iov /cat yaera 7rovr)pas yv(ofxir)<$, €tT€
vyioys eto-eA^Av#e, /cat on to /cat to avrw irk-npaKTat, /cat to
fitfiovXevTai. And he refers to the instance of Sapphira. In all
NOTE N. 339
this however, as he is often wont, he narrows the meaning to that
which was outward and temporary ; and he loses sight of that
higher tAcyx * °f tne Spirit, which alone was to be an abiding
power in the Church, the conviction of sin, not of any one or more
evil purposes or actions, but of the sinfulness of our whole nature.
This is the secret revealed and made manifest to the unbeliever or the
i8iu>T77$ by the prophesying in the congregation : and thus is he
brought to acknowledge the wisdom of God dwelling in the Church.
How poor and superficial are such interpretations of Scripture,
which are the prevalent ones among the Fathers, when compared
with those revelations of the inner man, and of the power of the
Spirit, which were vouchsafed to the Reformers : Calvin illustrates
this verse by a comparison with that in the Epistle to the Hebrews :
The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-
edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,
and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and
purposes of the heart. Having thus got the right clew, he proceeds :
" Quod ad praesentem locum spectat, non est difficile nunc intelligere
quid sit coargui et dijudicari. Torpent homiuum conscientiae, nee
malorum suorum displicentiatanguntur,quamdiu ignorantiae tenebris
suntobvolutae. — Verbum auteni Dei usque in ultimo3 animi recessus
penetrat, et, quasi illato lumine, tenebras discutit, et excutit morti-
ferum ilium torporem. Sic ergo coarguuntur infideles, quia, dum
intelligunt sibi negotium esse cum Deo, serio tanguntur et expa-
vescunt: item dijudicantur, quia, cum ante in tenebris abditi mise-
riam turpitudinemque suam non cernerent, nuuc in lucem extracti
coguutur testimonium contra se ferre. — Coarguitur, inquaui, inn-
delis, non quod propheta vel tacita opiuione, vel ore palam, judicium
ferat, sed quia audientis conscientia judicium suum ex doctrina
coucipit. Dijudicatur, quia desceudit in se ipsum, et, habito exa-
mine, sibi innotescit, qui ante sui oblitus erat. Quo etiam pertinet
illud Christi dictum, Spiritus, cum veniet, arguet mundum depeccato:
atque id eat quod subjicit continuo, occulta cordis ejus manifesta
fieri: neque enim siguificat, meo quidem judicio, reliquis patefieri,
qualis sit, sed potius conscientiam expergefieri, ut sua, quae ante
latebant, mala cognoscat." Thus does the great master quietly put
aside one idle fancy after another, and walk on straightforward in
th- light of truth.
-Among the lessons deducible from these verses, two are so
340 NOTE N.
directly opposed to certain erronrs which have got into vogue with
the disciples of our newfangled theology, that it may not be use-
less to point out how these errours are refuted thereby. In the
first place it is well known to be a fashion nowadays to decry the
holy ordinance of preaching. For as a man walking in the dark
along a passage, when he has knockt his head against the wall
on the one side, is pretty sure in the recoil to knock it against
the wall on the opposite side, so is it with the world, and with the
religious world as well as the rest. The undue, because exclu-
sive, exaltation of preaching has been followed by an undue depre-
ciation of it. Now this is not the place to examine into the
various causes, lying in the present condition of the world, and in
the present aspect of the human mind, which have given such a
paramount importance to preaching, and which no wise man will
dare to disregard, however he may deplore them, or deem them
morbidly excessive. I have only to remark here, what intelligent
readers of the Bible must be well aware of, that preaching is that
ordinance in the Church of later times, which answers to the
prophesying of the Apostolic age. Its subject is the same, Jesus,
the Incarnate Son of God, the Crucified Saviour of the world. Its
purpose is the same, to set Him visibly before men's hearts and
minds, and by so doing to convince them of sin, and of righteous-
ness, and of judgement. And if it be faithful, it will have the
same power, the power of the Spirit. Thus it is especially fitted
to be the instrument of converting the unbeliever : and few, I
think, will question that, among all the means of grace, it has
been the most efficacious in stirring the consciences of the airtcrTOL
and tStwrat, so that the secrets of their hearts have become mani-
fest to them, and they have been brought to confess that the light
of God's truth dwells in the word of the Gospel. This efficacy
indeed with regard to unbelievers, the disparagers of preaching are
mostly ready to acknowledge ; and so they grant its usefulness for
the conversion of the Heathens. But the calamitous delusions which
have been propagated by the asserters of the magical power of the
baptismal act, prevent their duly recognising what a vast proportion
of airicTTOL and i8iwtcu is to be found in these days within the
pale of the Church. Nor does St Paul say that the sole use of
prophesying is for unbelievers : he says the very contrary, that pro-
phesying is not for unbelievers, but for believers, that is, mainly
NOTE N. 341
and principally. He was not so ignorant of human nature as to
suppose, that, because we have been buried with Christ by baptism
into death, we may therefore dispense with any means of instruction
or exhortation, in order that we may indeed walk in newness of life,
and reckon ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus
Christ. It is true, preaching is a work of the intellect : the highest
faculties of the human mind can find no more suitable or worthier
employment. But is this to render it a mere human work? Is this
to exclude it«from the influence of the Spirit ? Surely it was in
men's hearts and minds that God sent down His Spirit to dwell :
and it is in the gifts and outpourings of the heart and mind that the
graces of the Spirit are especially manifested. Yet many are far
more willing to believe that the power of the Spirit lies in outward
acts and outward symbols. Thus the fetish-worshiper and the
idolater have still their counterparts in Christendom. Nay, how
many are there still, who share in the blunder of the Corinthians,
and would deem the speaking with tongues a much surer proof of
God's presence, than all the preaching of faith and love ! I am
not referring specially to the Irviugites, who combined the exaltation
of preaching with the opposite delusion. There are numberless
cravers after o-rjfxcla, besides the Irvingites ; and there have been
such in every age of the Church. There are the worshipers of the
mere elements in the Sacraments. There are those who fancy the
dead stones in God's house more precious and momentous than the
There are those who attach more importance to gestures
and postures, to crossings and genuflexions, to surplices and copes,
than to the doctrine of truth and the practice of love. There
are those who long to see the presence of miracles, of o-rj/xtia and
Oavfiara, in the Church, and who, adopting the error of the Church
of Rome, would regard these as a more certain token of the presence
of God, than the prophesying of faith, the cXeyxos of the Spirit.
Prophesying indeed is only for a time, and will be done away,
when that which is perfect u come; while prayer and praise and
fcbudcagiTillg will endure through eternity. Not that the inductive
intellect is to be extinguisht : but it will expand into the intui-
Cntil however that which is perfect is come, — so long as
there is any sophistry to be exposed, any misrepresentation to be
corrected, any errour to be refuted, — so long as there is any ignor-
ance to be enlightened, any infirmity of purpose to be strengthened,
U2 NOTE IT.
— so long as men's hearts and minds are subject to the action of
influences which draw them away from the path of divine Truth, —
so long will it be necessary for the Church to wield the sword of the
Spirit in combating all her foes through the sacred ordinance of
prophesying or preaching.
The other remark which I would draw from this passage of St
Paul, as pertinent to one of the extravagances of our days, relates to
the criterion by w T hich, here and in other places, the great Apostle
measures the value of the various gifts and other means appointed
for the edification of the Church, — their comparative utility or
expediency with regard to that purpose. This idea runs through
the whole passage, finding vent especially in that noble exclamation,
/ thank God, I speak with tongues more than ye all ; yet in the church
1 would rather speak jive words with my understanding, that I might
instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. Alas ! how
perpetually has the Church, how perpetually have its individual
members, acted in direct opposition to this magnanimous humility !
In such a spirit much censure has lately been poured on that portion
of our Church who have been designated by the title of evangelical,
because, in estimating the relative importance of any ordinance or
instrument of grace, they have lookt almost exclusively to its
serviceableness for the conversion and spiritual edification of their
brethren. This has been condemned as a utilitarian spirit ; and it
has been said that they ought to have lookt, not to such narrow,
earthly objects as the good of human souls, but to the one grand
object, which we ought always to set before us, the glory of God.
A utilitarian spirit ! It would be difficult to produce a stranger
instance of the manner in which we let ourselves be blown about by
mere sounds. The wisest and best writers in our own country, in
France, and in Germany, have been zealously employed during the
last fifty or sixty years in denouncing that utilitarian spirit, which
had set up a low, temporal, earthbound utility, as the test whereby
to settle what is right or wrong, good or evil, among the laws and
principles of the moral world. And now those who, rejecting all
earthly aims and considerations, have made the eternal, moral and
spiritual good of souls, their rule of judgment and of action, not
with reference to principles, but to means, are called utilitarians.
Verily then St Paul must be termed the first utilitarian. Nay, for
what but this very purpose, which is thus disparaged with an odious
NOTE N. 343
name, did the Son of God shed His blood on the Cross 1 Here we
perceive how intense man's appetite for slavery is, seeing that, when
Wisdom, after long and laborious exertions, has delivered him from
an errour, he will take up the very weapon of his deliverance, and
fashion new fetters out of it. On the other hand it is true that the
glory of God is the noblest and worthiest object of human endeavour.
But glory again is an ambiguous word, has a human as well as a
divine sense; and these are far asunder as the poles. The natural
man would never have conceived that the glory of God would mani-
fest itself in the still, small voice. He wants something graud,
splendid, pompous, — temples, mosques, and cathedrals, white and
purple robes and processions, incense-offerings and solemn chants,
things that strike the eye and the ear. Or he will require something
that shall be strange and startling, repugnant to the common order
of things, and to natural appetites and inclinations, — mortifications
and flagellations, fakirs and hermits and dervishes, monks and nuns.
Nay, "he may blind himself into seeking the glory of God by that
which is terrible and cruel and destructive, as Dominic and Alva
and many of their collegues may probably have done, aud some who
took part in the massacre of the Hugonots. It would seem too as if
Attila, aud other like hellhounds, had whetted their natural thirst
for blood, by persuading themselves that they were the ministers of
God's wrath, and were to spread His glory by the slaughter of
millions of m mkind. Hence there is great need that our minds
should be dkentanglecl from this natural confusion, of mixing up
their own notions of glory with God's : and we should be continually
gazing upon the mirror presented to us in the Gospel and life of His
Son, in order to learn where and in what God seeks and finds His
glory. Then shall we learn, as St Paul learnt, that the best way in
which we can labour to promote the glory of God, is by diligence in
. oaring to further the great work, which He especially desires
to see, the salvation of souls, and their edification with all the graces
of His Spirit.
Note O : p. 38.
i. 9. ' AvT€x6fi€Vo\' rod Kara rr)v SiSaxrjv ttuttov Aoyov,
"va 6WaTt»$ -q Kttt irapaK%\iiv iv ry SiOacrKaXly ry vyiOLivovo-tj
344 NOTE 0.
kolI tovs di'TiAiyovras-eAeyx""' Tnis verse * s rendered by Tyndall,
And such as cleveth unto the true worde of doctryne, that he maye be
able to exhorte with wholsome learning, and to improve them that saye
against it. Improve seems here to be nearly equivalent to disprove
or refute. Tyndall's translation, with slight variations, is retained
in our subsequent Bibles down to the Authorized Version, where it
is considerably altered thus : Holding fast the faithful word, as he
hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort
and to convince the gainsayers. Here two material improvements
have been made. '0 koto, tyjv SiSa^rjv Tricrrbs Adyos is not the true
word of doctrine but the true or faithful word as received by teaching :
and Iv Ty StSao-KaXta rrj vytaivovcrrj is much better exprest by
sound doctrine, than by wholesome learning. At the same time the
latter part of the verse has been misrendered, in a manner that
obscures, if it does not pervert, the sense, which is, that he may be
able both to exhort, (or rather to instruct,) in sound doctrine, and to
convince (or to refute) the gainsayers. Our Version seems to make
the main part of the ministerial office consist in dealing with gain-
sayers ; whereas the more important part of it, the instructing iv rrj
SiSao-KaXia rrj vytaivovcrrj, pertains mainly to the training of the
believing members of the Church. This clause in the Greek depends
merely on the verb napaKaXdv, not on IAeyx elv -
Note P : p. 38.
Donne, in speaking on this point, in his 35th Sermon, pours out a
strain of that rich eloquence in which his prose- writings abound.
"This one word, arguet, He shall reprove, convince, admits three
acceptations : First, in the future,— i/i? shall : and so the cum venerit,
when he comes, signifies antequam abierit, before He departs. He
came at Pentecost, and presently set on foot His commission by the
Apostles, to reprove, convince the world of sin, and hath proceeded
ever since by their successors in reducing nation after nation : and
before the consummation of the world, before He retired to rest
eternally in the bosom of the Father and the Son, from whom He
proceeded, He shall reprove the whole world of sin, that is, bring
them to a knowledge that, in the breach of the law of nature, and in
the guiltiness of original sin, they are all under a burthen, which
NOTE P. 345
none of them all of themselves can discharge. This work St Paul
seems to hasten sooner. To convince the Jews of their infidelity, he
argues thus: Have not they heard the Gospel? They, that is, the
Gentiles; and if they, much more you : and that they had heard it
he proves by the application of those words, Their voice is gone
through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world; that is,
the voice of the Apostles in the preaching of the Gospel.
* Hence grew that distraction and perplexity which we find in the
Fathers, whether it could be truly said that the Gospel had been
preacht over all the world in those times. If we number the
Fathers, most are of that opinion, that before the destruction of the
Temple of Jerusalem this was fulfilled. Of those that think the
contrary, some proceed upon reasons ill grounded, particularly Origeu :
Quid de Britannis et Germanis, qui nee adhuc audierunt verbum
Evangelii ? — For before Origeu's time, in what darkness soever he
mistook us to be, we had a blessed and a glorious discovery of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ in this island. St. Jerome, who denies this
universal preaching of the Gospel before the destruction of the
Temple, yet doubts not but that the fulfilling of that prophecy was
then in action and in a great forwardness. Jam completum, aut
brevi cernimus complendum; — nee puto aliquam remanere gentem quae
Christi nomen ignorat. —
" The later divines and the School, that find not this early and
general preaching over the world to lie in proof, proceed to a more
safe way, that there was then odor Evangelii, a sweet savour of the
Gospel, issued, though it were not yet arrived to all parts ; as if a
plentiful and diffusive perfume were set up in a house, we would say
the house were perfumed, though that perfume were not yet come to
every corner of the house. But, not to thrust the world into so
narrow a strait, as it is when a decree is said to have gone out from
Augustus to tax all the world, — for this was but the Roman world; —
nor, that there were men dwelling at Jerusalem, devout men of every
nation under heaven,— for this was but of nations discovered and
traded withal then ; — nor, when St Paul says that the faith of the
Romans was publisht to the world, — for that was as far as he had
gone ; — those words of our Saviour, The Gospel of tkt Kingdom shall
be preacht in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall
the end co/,* crmore by all ancient and modern Fathers and
schools, preachers and writers, expositors and coutrjovcrters, been
346 NOTE P.
literally understood, that before the end of the world the Gospel
shall be actually, really, evidently, effectually, preacht to all nations:
and so, cum venerit, when the Holy Ghost comes, that is, antequam
abieret, before He go, He shall reprove, convince, the whole world of
sin, and this, as He is a Comforter, by accompanying their know-
ledge of sin with the knowledge of the Gospel for the remission
of sins.
" It agrees with the nature of goodness to be so diffusive, com-
municable to all. It agrees with the nature of God, who is goodness,
that, as all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the
windows of heaven were opened, and so came the Flood over all, so
there should be diluvium Spiritus, a flowing out of the Holy Ghost
upon all, as He promises, / will pour it out upon all, and diluvium
gentium, that all nations should flow up to Him. For this Spirit
spirat ubi milt, breathes where it pleases Him: and though a natural
wind cannot blow east and west, north and south together, this
Spirit at once breathes upon the most contrary dispositions, upon the
presuming, and upon the despairing sinner, and in an instant can
denizen and naturalize that soul that was an alien to the Covenant,
empale and inlay that soul that was bred upon the common amongst
the Gentiles, transform that soul which was a goat into a sheep, in-
vite that soul which was a lost sheep to the fold again, shine upon
that soul that sits in darkness and in the shadow of death, and so
melt and pour out that soul that yet understands nothing of the
Divine nature, nor of the Spirit of God, that it shall become par-
taker of the Divine nature, and be the same spirit with the Lord. —
Shall any man murmur or draw into disputation why this Spirit
doth not breathe in all nations at once ? or why not sooner than it
doth iu some ? Doth this Spirit fall and rest upon every soul in this
congregation now ? May not one man find that He receives Him
now, and suffer Him to go away again ? May not another, who felt
no emotion of Him now, recollect himself at home, and remember
something then which hath been said now to the quickening of this
Spirit in him there ? Since the Holy Ghost visits us so, successively,
not all at once, not all with an equal establishment, we may safely
embrace that acceptation of this word, arguet, He shall, He will,
antequam abierit, before the end come, reprove, convince, the whole
world of sin, by this His way, the way of comfort, the preaching of
the Gospel."
NOTE P. 347
This extract from Donue is sufficient in this place to explain the
meaning of the word Kooy-ios, which in the text, as in so many other
passages in the New Testament, has been misunderstood and mis-
interpreted, so as to afford a prop for divers errours, some of them
of no slight moment, at least from the days of the Donatists down-
ward. In like manner Perkins, in his Treatise of Conscience,
contending against the blasphemous proposition, that they who had
never heard of Christ were to be condemned for not believing in
Him, says, that " some of the schoolmen " had supported that
proposition by this text ; as though the declaration that the Holy
Ghost shall judge the world of sin, because they have not believed in
Christ, implied that condemnation on account of this sin was to pass
on all mankind from the beginning, and in every region of the earth.
To which he answers, that "by the world we must not understand
all and every man since the Creation, but all nations and kingdoms
in the last age of the world, to whom the Gospel was revealed."
Works, vol. i. p. 523.
Tittmann, following in the wake of the dull rationalism of the
last generation, would confine koct/zos here to Judea. " In hoc loco
— primum sumere possumus hoc, per tov koo-jxov, ut in his sermoni-
bus Domini universis, intelligi in primis mundum Judaicum." Of
this shallow interpretation I shall have to speak in Note Y. He
might have learned better from Lampe, whose work, had it been
more studied, would have preserved many of the subsequent
commentators from much ignorance and absurdity. " Sensu hie
latiori (he says) quam capitibus praecedentibus mundus accipitur,
pro uuiversitate Judaeorum et Gentium. — Mundus hie per Christum
reconciliabatur Deo : 2 Cor. v. 19, Joh. i. 29, 1 Joh. ii. 2. Idem
Christo datus erat per testamentum Patris in peculium : Ps. ii. 8.
Haeres ille verus mundi, tanquam antitypus Abrahami futurus.
Fas ergo erat ut per Spiritum ad eum finem adaptaretur."
Note Q : p. 64.
Each part of the threefold work of the Comforter, as briefly set
forth in this passage of St John, has furnisht occasion for a diversity
of interpretations; which, as the subject is one reaching down to the
living centre of Truth, exhibit the characters of the various Schools
348 NOTE Q.
in Theology. In speaking of our immediate text, Chrysostom, as he
is wont on such points, takes the narrower and more superficial view,
looking almost exclusively at that conviction which was to be
wrought by means of signs and wonders and other external proofs.
"Orav 81 Kal 8l kKeivov (by the Comforter) ravra yivqrai, /ecu
8i8dyp.ara reXetorepa Kal <rr)fjL€ia p.ei£ova, ttoXXo! p.dXXov KaraKpt-
Or/o-ovrai, opaWes Tocravra kv to? 6vop.ari p,ov yivop.eva' oirep
<racf)€(TT€pav iroiti rrjs dvao~rdo~€0)<s rrjv a7ro8ei^ti/. vvv u\v yap
Svvavrat Xkyetv, on 6 rod rkKrovos vlb<$, ov rjp.els o't!8ap,ev rbv
irarkpa Kal rrjv pvryrkpa' orav 8\ i8iocri Bdvarov Xv6p.evov, KaKiav
kK/SaXXop.kvijv, ^wAet'ai/ <pvcr€(i)s 8iop6ovp.kvr]V, 8aip.ovas kXavvo-
p.kvovs, irvev pharos -^oprjyiav a<parov, Kal ravra rrdvra ep.ov
KaXovp.kvov yiv6p,eva, rl kpovcri : — rb 8k € A e y £ e i 7r e pi
a p, a p r i a <s. rovr&rrt, irao~av drroXoyiav avriov, eKKoifet koI 6W£«i
7T€7rXrjp:p:€XrjK6ras do-vyyvoicrra. In this argument it would seem
to be implied that the outward miracles wrought by the Apostles
were greater than our Lord's. More effectual indeed they were in
producing conviction : this however was not on account of any
higher demonstrative power lying in them : it was a consequence of
that very conviction of sin which the Spirit awakened. When men
were pricJct in their hearts, then they were ready to recognise the
truths, of which the miracles were the signs. Besides the advocates
of this exposition forget that, when a man has been brought by a
train of reasoning to acknowledge a proposition, which he had
previously denied, he does not say, How wicked I was ! but, at the
utmost, How foolish I was, not to see this before ! Only when the
miracles were carried home to the heart by the demonstration of the
Spirit, convincing men of the divine character, of the righteousness,
of Him, by whom, and in whose name, they were wrought, did they
also serve to arouse the conviction of the sin of having rejected him.
Nevertheless Theophylact, as usual, does little else than transcribe
Chrysostom. 'EAey^ei rbv Kocrp.ov irepl d/xapria?, Kal 8ei£ei avrovs
ap.aprcoXovs, ore ov Trio-rev over iv. orav yap t'Saxri 8id rdv yeipQiv
rwv p.adr}rS>v kv 7rvevp.ari o~qp.ua k^alarta Kal rkpara yivop.€va, Kal
ov8e ovra) 7rtcrrevo-cjcri, 7rws ov Karafc/DiVea)? a£iot, Kal dp.aprla.
p.eyicnr) 'ivo\oi ; — air ponder Lcrros 'kcrrai avrois rj dnio-rla, rov
IIvevp.aros kv to> ovop.arip.ov roiavra kirireXovvros.
Among later divines this view has been adopted by many; for
NOTE Q. 349
instance, by Grotius, and by Bossuet, as is seen in the passages
already quoted in pp. 332 and 326. In like manner Hammond loses
all the power and depth of our Lord's declaration, that the Com-
forter icill convince the world of sin, because they believe not in Me,
by paraphrasing it thus : " He shall charge it with the crime of not
believing in Me, by the gift of tongues, &c, evidencing that I, that
am to be preacht by that means, am indeed the true Messias, and so
likewise by the fulfilling those predictions which now I give you."
If any one wishes to see into what a maze of dulness this may be
expanded, he may read that portion of Hammond's note, which
refers to the Comforter's convincing the world of sin. Even the
meagre rationalism of such men as Kuinoel, — who reduces the
meaning of the promise to "Adjutor ille per vos vestramque
doctrinam contemtores meos eo perducet, ut intelligant et fateri
cogantur se pecasse, quoad meam doctrinam repudiariut, vos vi
divina adjuti eos owno-Tias convincetis," — is scarcely so repugnant
to the spirit of Christianity, inasmuch as it implies a conscience
and a sense of moral truth in the mind, to which the conviction is
to be addrest.
On the other hand Augustin, who had a much profounder insight
into the Scriptural meauing and power of Faith, and the sinfulness
of unbelief, discusses our text in his 143rd Sermon. "Medicina
omnium animae vulnerum, et una propitiatio pro delictis hominum
est, credere in Christum: nee omnino quisquam mundari potest, sive
ab originali peccato, — sive a peccatis quae ipsi non resistendo cai -n:\li
concupiscentiae — addiderunt, nisi per fidem coadunentur et com-
paginentur corpori ejus, qui sine ulla illecebra carnali — conceptus
est, — et peccatum non fecit, nee inventus est dolus in ore ejus. In
eum quippe credentes, filii Dei fiunt ; quia ex Deo nascuntur per
adoptionis gratiam, quae est in fide Jesu Christi. — De hoc ergo uno
peccato voluit mundum argui, quod non credunt in eum : videlicet,
quia in eum credendo cuncta peccata solvuntur, hoc unum imputari
voluit, quo caetera colligantur. Et quia credendo nascuntur ex Deo,
et filii Dei fiunt: Dedit eniin, \\v[\\\t, illis potestatem filios Dei fieri,
eredentibus in eum. Qui ergo credit in Filium Dei, in quantum ad-
haeret illi, et fit etiam ipse per adoptionem filius et haeres Dei,
— in tan turn non peccat. Unde dicit Joannes : Qui natus est ex
Deo non peccat. Et ideo peccatum unde mundus arguitur hoc est,
quod non credunt in eum. Hoc est peccatum de quo itidem dicit:
350 NOTE Q.
Si non venissem, peccatum non haberent. Numquid enim alia
innumerabilia peccata non habebant ? Sed adventu ejus hoc unura
peccatum accessit non credentibus, quo caetera tenerentur. In
credentibus autem quia hoc unum defuit, factum est ut cuncta
dimitterentur credentibus. Nee ob aliud apostolus Paulus, Omnes,
inquit, peccaverunt et egent gloria Dei ; ut qui crediderit in eum
non confundatur. — Itaque cum de Judaeorum infidelitate loqueretur,
non ait, Etenim si quidam illorum peccaverunt, numquid peccatum
eorum fidem Dei evacuabit? Quomodo enim diceret, Si quidam
illorum peccaverunt, cum ipse dixerit, Omnes enim peccaverunt?
Sed ait, Si quidam illorum non crediderunt, numquid incredulitas
eorum fidem Dei evacuabit ? Ut hoc peccatum expressius demon-
straret, quo uno clauditur ad versus caetera, ne per Dei gratiam
relaxentur. De quo uno peccato per adventum Spiritus Sancti,
hoc est, per donum ipsius gratiae quod fidelibus datur, mundus
arguitur."
There is a far clearer perception of Christian truth in this passage;
though, according to the general character of Augustin's writings,
it is wanting in philosophical precision, accumulating a variety of
explanations, without clearly marking out the right one, or shewing
how they are to be reconciled. This defect is still more apparent in
the 144th Sermon, which is on the same text, but evidently written
at a different time. In it he says, " Oboritur nobis intelligendi
desiderium, cur peccatum hominum quasi solum esset, non credere in
Christum, ita de hoc solo dixit, quod mundum Spiritus Sanctus
argueret : si autem manifestum est praeter hanc infidelitatem. alia
multa hominum esse peccata, cur de hoc solo mundum Spiritus
Sanctus arguat. An quia peccata omnia per infidelitatem tenentur,
per fidem dimittuntur; propterea hoc unum prae caeteris imputat
Deus, per quod fit ut caetera non solvantur, dum non credit in
humilem Deum homo superbus ? Sic enim scriptum est : Deus
superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam. — De peccato igitur
arguuntur infideles, id est, dilectores mundi ; nam ipsi significantur
mundi nomine, — nom alio quam quod non crediderunt in Christum.
Hoc deniqne peccatum si non sit, nulla peccata remanebunt, quia
justo ex fide vivente cuncta solvuntur. Sed multum interest, utrum
quisque credat ipsum esse Christum, et utrum credat in Christum.
Nam ipsum esse Christum et daemones crediderunt ; nee tamen in
Christum daemones crediderunt. llle enim credit in Christum, qui
NOTE Q. 351
et sperat in Christum et diligit Christum. Nam si fidem habet sine
spe ac sine dilectione, Christum esse credit, non in Christum credit.
Qui ergo in Christum credit, credendo in Christum, venit in eum
Christus, et quodam modo unitur in eum, et membrum in corpore
ejus efficitur. Quod fieri non potest, nisi et spes accedat et caritas."
These passages sufficiently prove that, according to Augustin's
conception, Faith is something much higher, more living, and more
powerful, than mere belief. Yet even he did not set the true idea
of Faith clearly and distinctly before his mind, any more than any
other divine in the loug interval between St Paul and Luther. In
the Commentary of Thomas Aquinas, which is assuredly a most
favorable sample of the exegesis of the Middle Ages, the explana-
tions of Chrysostom and Augustin are set side by side, but without
any attempt to exercise judgement by giving a preference to either,
or to elicit the portions of the truth which each had inadequately
exprest. In fact, notwithstanding the extraordinary subtility
exhibited by many of the Schoolmen, and the genius which mani-
fested itself during the Middle Ages in divers regions of thought
and art, the human mind in many respects was still in its non-
age, under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the
Father.
In Anselm's Treatise Be Concordia Gratiae et Liber i Arbitrii
. vii.), the question is discust, "Cur arguantur illi, qui verbum
Dei non suscipiunt, cum hoc facere nequeant nisi gratia eorum
voluntates dirigente ? " and this discussion is founded on our text.
" Dicit enim Dominus de Spiritu Sancto, Ille arguet mundum de
peccato, quia non crediderunt in me. Ad quod licet forsitau
difficile sit respondere, quod tamen Deo dante possum, tacere non
debeo. Notandum est quia impotentia quae descendit ex culpa
non excusat impotentem, culpa manente. Unde in infantibus, in
quibus exigit Deus a natura liumana justitiam, quam accepit in
priniis is cum potestate servamli illam in oninem prolem
Don excusat earn Impotentia habendi justitiam : quoniani
propter culpam in banc corruit impotentiam. — Quoniani ergo
peccando deseruit justitiam, ad peccatum illi imputatur impotentia,
quam ipsa peccando sibi fecit. Nee solum impotentia justitiam
habendi, sed ctiam b I illam iiitelligrmli, similiter in non
baptizatis imputatur ad peccatum ; quoniam pariter descendit a
peccato. Possunius etiam rationabiliter asserere quia quod a
352 NOTE Q.
prima conditionis humanae dignitate ac fortitudine atque pulcri-
tudine minorata et corrupta est, illi ad culpam imputatur. Per hoc
uamque minora vit, quantum in ipsa fuit, honorem et laud em Dei.
Quippe secundum dignitatem operis laudatur et praedicatur sapientia
artificis. Quanto igitur natura humana pretiosum opus Dei, unde
ipse glorificandus erat, in se minoravit atque foedavit, tanto sua
culpa Deum exhonoravit. Quod illi ad tantum statuitur peccatum,
ut non nisi per mortem Dei deleatur. Siquidem ipsos motus, sive
appetitus, quibus propter peccatum Adae, sicut bruta animalia,
subjacemus, — satis ostendit sacra auctoritas imputari ad peccatum.
Quippe cum de solo motu irae, sine opere vel voce, dicit Dominus,
Qui irascitur fratri suo, reus eritjudicio, aperte monstrat culpam non
esse levem, quam tarn gravis, scilicet, mortis sequitur damnatio. —
Et cum Paulus de illis, qui carnem, id est, concupiscentias sentiunt
nolentes, ait, Nihil damnationis est his qui sunt in Jesu Christo, qui
non secundum carnem ambulant, hoc est non voluntate consentiunt,
sine dubio significat eos, qui non sunt in Christo, sequi damnationem,
quoties sentiunt carnem, etiamsi non secundum illam ambulant.
Quoniam sic factus est homo, ut earn sentire — non deberet. Si quis
igitur quae dixi diligenter considerat, nullatenus eos, qui propter
culpam suam verbum Dei suscipere nequeunt, recte arguendos
dubitat."
This passage, although there must needs be a ground of deep
truth in whatever proceeds from one of the greatest masters in
Theology, contains two or three questionable positions, which seem
to border closely on awful errours. Indeed it can hardly be other-
wise, when the processes of logic are employed to draw inferences
from the mysterious realities of religion : for in every reality there
is something which logic cannot appreciate, and through the neglect
of which the conclusions deduced by logic concerning its formal
verities become more or less inapplicable. In the first place
Anselm's remarks, in their bearing on God's justice, are warpt by
that proneness, which is so grievously common among divines, to
close their eyes against the light of conscience, and against that idea
of Justice and Eight, which is one of the pole-stars of the human
mind, and to pare and screw down the notion of Justice into
accordance with the scheme of propositions which they have built
up into their theological system. It has been contended indeed by
many, that we can have no correct conception of Justice, except
NOTE Q. 353
what we derive from the Bible : so fond are men of pampering their
sloth and self sufficiency by assuming that they have the only key to
all knowledge in their hands, and that everything else is naught.
But, without stopping to argue against this debasing fallacy, — which
all history and philosophy and poetry and the laws of all nations
refute, — or to shew how the reverse is implied in every page of the
Bible itself, speaking, as it everywhere does, to the reason and the
conscience, it is sufficient to call to mind that sublime question,
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? that is, Shall he not
do irhat shall be recognised to be right by man's reason and con-
? This question, be it remembered, is one which man
was permitted to ask, and that too beneath the early dawn of
Revelation, when divine Truth was just beginning to exercise
its informing power upon the understanding: nor do we read that
this question was regarded as presumptuous, but on the contrary
that the Judge of all the earth vouchsafed to give ear to it, and to
His ways.
Moreover ire should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the
great principle declared by St Paul, that, in all cases in which God
can l>e contemplated as reckoning with man, the scale of this
reckoning will be according to what a man has, and not according
U he has not : and we must scrupulously beware of representing
God, after the manner of so many, as dealing with men like a
sophist or a juggler, making believe that they have what they have
i 1 that tiny have not what they have. It may indeed happen
that inferences, which we regard as legitimately deduced from other
coordinate scriptural truths, will seem to militate against this
principle : but let us rather distrust our logic than our conscience,
and be assnr-d that such inferences, however correct they may
■ppaiT, must in some point or other have started aside like a broken
Let us never doubt that no man will be condemned by the
Allrighteous Judge for the want of that which he could not have
had. Our condemnation will be, and is, that we have not that
which W« niiLrlit have had, and that we have a clinging, crushing
weight of sin, which we have gathered and heapt upon ourselves,
whir h benumbs all our efforts, and palsies all our faculties, and from
which, if we had given ear to the exhortations of our better
monitor*, inward and outward, we might have been free.
Again in what Anaelm says about God's glory, and its being
z
354 NOTE
impaired by the sinfulness of man, there is a leaning toward the
notion that God's glory is shewn forth by the qualities of His
works, rather than in the manifestation of His own Holiness and
Eighteousness and Truth and Mercy and Love. The remark too
on our Lord's words concerning anger implies an indistinct apprehen-
sion of that great evangelical ' truth, that the essential sinfulness of
sin lies in the heart, in the inward feeling when indulged, and not
merely in the outward act, of which alone- Law can take cognisance.
Finally it is anything but a legitimate conversion of St Paul's words,
to say that there is condemnation to those tcho are not in Christ Jesus,
even though they do not walk according to the flesh. If we look at the
whole passage connectedly, we shall perceive that they who are
not in Christ Jesus, and have not the power of the Spirit to support
them, cannot do otherwise than walk according to the flesh, through
the infirmity of their will, by reason whereof they do that which they
allow not, and do not that which they would.
Tauler, in his sermon on our text, merely speaks of the Spirit as
reproving sin, without reference to the particular sin, of which it is
here declared that He was to convict the world. But what he says
has his characteristic depth. " He will reprove them for their sins.
What are their sins ? Now know that the eternal God made all
things, and appointed each for its right end. Thus He made fire,
that it should rise up, and stones, that they should fall down. Thus
nature has given to the eyes to see, to the ears to hear, to the hands
to work, and to the feet to walk ; and thus each member is obedient
to the natural will, without any opposition, whether the matter be
easy or hard, sweet or sour, if so be that the will thoroughly wills it ;
thus too the members are thoroughly obedient, even when it is an
affair of life or death. This appears often in many lovers of this
world, how they cast away all ease merrily and joyfully, and riches
thereto, and honour, for that which they so wantonly and foolishly
love, to the end that their carnal lust may thus be satisfied. Now
the spirit says in us, Who in this age is thus obedient to God, and
thus exact in all His commandments, giving up himself and all
earthly things according to His will 1 though God verily ought to be
our Euler. This sin the Holy Ghost reproves, when He comes,
that man so greatly and so often resists this Divine Will and its
good admonitions. This sin, and many hidden offenses, the Holy
Ghost rebukes, when He comes to a man. This rebuke works a
NOTE Q. 355
quick, sharp, hard judgement in a man, and a hellish pain, and an
intolerable woe, whereof worldly men, who live according to nature,
know little. This is one of the surest signs that the Holy Ghost is
in truth present. When this judgement is indeed borne, the case is
safe. For a thousaud offenses, which a man truly acknowledges and
confesses himself to be guilty of, are not so perilous and so mis-
chievous to him, as a single offense, which thou wilt not recognise,
nor allow thyself to be convinced of. Now know, those spiritual
men, who are so much pleased with themselves, with what they do
and what they do not, are all in dangerous sin ; and nothing will
ever come of such selfwilled men."
Thus here again, if we desire to dive into the mysterious depths
of meaning contained in this declaration concerning the Comforter,
we must come down to the age of the Reformation. Luther ex-
plains it with his usual fulness and energy. " What (he asks) is the
Holy Ghost to rebuke ? Christ mentions three things, and says,
He shall rebuke the world by reason of sin, and of righteousness, and
of judgement ; and He Himself explains what He means. They are
dark words however, and a strange speech to those who do not
understand, and are not used to the Scriptures. But to those who
know the doctrine of the Gospel concerning Christ from the writings
of the Apostles, especially of this Evangelist John, they ought not to
be strange or unintelligible.
"The first thing is : He icill rebuke the world for sin, because they
believe not in Me. What is this ? Is not sin already rebuked and
condemned in the world ? Who does not know that adultery,
murder, stealing, &c, are wrong? Have not even the Heathens
forbidden and punisht such things ? What need we then the Holy
Ghost to rebuke sin ? But what manner of sin is this of which He
speaks, that they believe not in Me f Has He nothing else to rebuke ?
It is plain, He does not speak of those sins, which the world sees
and rebukes. This He shews sufficiently by those words, that they
believe not in Me: for who ever heard that this is to be the sin
which condemns the whole world, the not believing in Christ? —
Seeing however that this rebuke for sin is to pass upon the whole
world, universally and without distinction, and that no one is to be
exempted, be he who he may, it follows that the sins for which all
men are to be rebuked by the H.lv < ;host, must be different from
those which are notorious, and recognised by the world. For one
356 NOTE Q.
cannot rebuke everybody on account of these ; since there are many
who live so that no one can reprove or blame them, but all the
world must praise them as honest, honourable, nay, as upright, who
not only avoid sin, but also exercise themselves in a handsome,
honorable walk, and in good works. Should you ask however,
What sin have they ? or, What is rebuked in them 1 Christ makes
answer, that they believe not in Me. Here stands in brief what
makes them all sinners, and condemns them ; and all is comprised
in this one thing, they are without the faith and knowledge of Christ.
Thus are they shortly and roundly concluded under sin, so that one
need not seek long and ask, Which, and what manner of sin is to be
rebuked in each ? or How many various sins may there be ? Here
you have it all in one word, that this one thing is rebuked in all at
once, and is the sin of the whole world, that they are without Christ,
or have not faith.
" Therefore the meaning of these words is briefly, that the Holy
Ghost shall pass this judgement on all mankind, as they are found
upon earth, be they Gentiles or Jews, guilty or innocent before the
world, and on all that they do and are, even on what they deem the
best and greatest holiness, that they are and must continue under
the wrath and condemnation of God, and that they cannot be
delivered from this, unless they believe in Christ. Let who can,
come and boast of his or other men's honesty, virtues, good works,
and holy life : here you are told that it is nothing worth, when the
Holy Ghost, with His breath, that is, through the office of preach-
ing, (as Isaiah says, xl. 7), breathes and blows upon it. For this
rebuke passes upon all, so that all their glory must fall, and what-
ever they do or may be cannot avail them before God. This He
does by the mouth of St Paul, near the beginning of the Epistle to
the Romans, where He casts all, both Jews and Gentiles, under sin,
and says that for this reason was the Gospel revealed from heaven,
that all the world might be forced to confess themselves guilty of
sin. For, He says (iii. 23), there is no difference ; for all have mined,
and come short of the glory which they ought to have before God.
With this word all the glory and pride of men is smitten to the
ground. They may have the glory of being mighty, noble, learned,
well-behaved, praiseworthy rulers, honorable, honest folks ; nay,
they may be called holy before the world, and may have such glory
and advantage as St Paul gives to the Jews, that they are God's
NOTE Q. 357
people, the children of the holy patriarchs, that they have the law
and promises of God, aud that Christ was to be bom of them : but
what is all such glory, if they have not the glory which they ought
to have before God? "What have they, if they have not God? —
that they must be eternally lost.
" Do you ask, Why ! how can this be ? "What is wanting in these
things, that they are of no worth before God ? Is all this to be
matter of condemnation, their beiug well-behaved, honest, honorable
folks, governing well and laudably, not stealing, robbing, or com-
mitting adultery, but living chastely, orderly, obediently, and
performing many good works according to the Law ? Are not all
these excellent gifts of God, and praiseworthy virtues ? Ay, verily,
that say we too, and teach moreover, that God has commanded these
things, and that it is His will that men should live thus, and be
honest. Why then is this rebuked here, and turned into sin ?
There is another Judge, who judges all men's lives and souls, and
has much sharper eyes to see sin and to rebuke it, than we can
understand or conceive. This Judge says, that all are sinners, and
to be rebuked for their sin. Him surely we ought to believe, and to
grant that He speaks rightly and truly : for He rebukes us also on
account of this very blindness, that we do not see or perceive how
we with all our doings are sinners before God.
I must know however that He is not speaking here of men's
outward life and conduct, which the world can weigh and judge,
but that He pierces inward to the very bottom of the heart, which
is the source and fountain where the true main sins lie hid, such as
the worship of false gods, neglect of God, unbelief, disobedience, evil
concupiscence, and resistance against God's commandments, in
short, what St Paul (Rom. viii. 7) calls being fleshly minded ; to
which he gives the title ami name, that it is enmity against God,
and cannot be subject to the law of God. This is the stem and the
root of all other sins, the very prime sin which we inherit from
Adam out of Paradise, so that, were it not for this, there would
be any robbery, or murder, or adultery, &c. Now the world
does indeed see these outward evil deeds, nay, wonders and com-
plains that people are so bad, but knows not how it comes to pass.
It sees the stream of water flowing along, and all manner of fruits
and leaves sprouting out of the evil tree ; but whence the fount tin
flows, and where the root lies, it knows not. It sets to work and
358 NOTE Q.
tries to remedy the matter, to check wickedness, and to make people
good, by laws and the lash of punishment. But although this may
last a long while, nothing is profited thereby. The course of the
waters may be checkt ; but the main source is not stopt : the
suckers may be cropt off ; but this does not take anything from the
root. Now it is lost labour, it is of no avail, so long as one checks
and patches and heals outwardly, while the stem and root and
source of evil abides within. The first thing to do is to stop the
source, to take away the root of the tree : else it will break and
burst out in ten places, when you have stopt and checkt it in one.
The cure must be radical : else you may smear and cover over
everlastingly with ointments and plaisters ; the wound will keep on
inflaming and festering, and only become worse. In fine, experience
teaches, and the world must confess, that it cannot even check out-
ward gross vices and misdeeds, although it represses and punishes
them with all its might ; as indeed it ought to do. Much less can
it take away that sin, which lies inwardly in man's nature, and
which is the main sin, but which the world knows not.
"Therefore this sin abides over the whole world ; and this judge-
ment passes upon all that may be thought and done by all men, as
they are born of Adam, be it evil or good, right or wrong, in the
eyes of the world. Nor can any one escape here, or boast above
another ; but all are alike before God ; and all must confess them-
selves guilty, and worthy of everlasting death and condemnation ;
and all must have remained eternally therein ; nor could any
counsel or help against it have been found in any creature, if God
had chosen to deal with us according to our merits, and to His
justice. But now, forasmuch as out of His unfathomable goodness
He took compassion upon this our misery, He sent Christ, His dear
Son, from Heaven to counsel and help us ; in order that He might
take our sin and condemnation upon Himself, and might atone for
it by the offering of His Body and Blood, and reconcile God to us.
And He gave commandment that this should be preacht in all the
world, and that this Christ should be set before all mankind, so that
they might cleave by faith to Him, if they would come out of sin,
God's wrath, and eternal condemnation, k) redemption and recon-
ciliation, and to the kingdom of God.
" Thus this sermon has two parts : first it sets before all the world,
that they are all under sin and wrath, condemned by the Law,
NOTE Q. 359
ami requires that we should acknowledge this ; next it shews how
we may obtain redemption from this state, and favour with God,
namely, by this one means, that we take hold of Christ by
faith.
"But, when this sermon begins, then comes forth the true sin
which is spoken of here, and which that sermon produces, namely
that they believe not in Me. For the world will not listen to this
sermon, that they are all to be sinners before God, and that their
righteous deeds are of no worth before Him, and that only through
this crucified Christ can they obtain grace and salvation. This un-
belief in Christ then becomes the all-embracing sin, which brings
men into condemnation, so that there is no remedy.
"Even before, as I have said, unbelief was the main sin in all men,
the beginning and the first sin in Paradise itself, and will continue
doubtless the last of all sins. For when Adam and Eve had God's
word, which they ought to have believed, and when, so long as they
clave thereto, they had God and life therein, they were assailed in
the first instance by unbelief in this word. Yea, said the serpent to
Eve, hath Qod said, ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden?
Here he makes his first thrust against her faith, so that she may
leave hold of the word, and not esteem it as God's word. For what
he cared chiefly for, was not the eating of the forbidden apple, but
to bring them out of the faith wherein they lived before God, into
unbelief ; from which, he knew, would follow disobedience and all
sin, as its fruits.
" The unbelief however, spoken of in the text, is not merely that
wlii.h h ],l.iii?.(l by Adam in man's nature, but plainly this, that
men believe not in Christ, that is, when the Gospel of Christ is
preacht, in order that we may confess our sins, and through Christ
seek and obtain grace. For when Christ came, the sin of Adam and
of the whole human race, namely, their previous unbelief and dis-
obedience, was taken away before God by Christ's sufferings and
death ; and He built a new Heaven of grace and forgiveness; so
that the sin which we have inherited from Adam, shall no longer
keep us under God's wrath and condemnation, if we believe in this
ir. And henceforward he who is condemned must not com-
plain of Adam and of his inborn sin : for this Seed of the woman,
promist by God to bruise the head of the serpent, is now come, and
has atoned for this sin, and taken away condemnation. But he must
360 NOTEQ.
cry out against himself, for not having accepted or believed in this
Christ, the devil's Head-bruiser and Sin-strangler.
" Thus every man's danger rests with himself ; and it is his own
fault if he is condemned ; not because he is a sinner through the sin
of Adam, and deserving of condemnation by reason of his former un-
belief ; but because he will not accept this Saviour Christ, who takes
away our sin and condemnation. True it is indeed that Adam has
condemned us all, inasmuch as he brought us along with him into sin,
and under the power of the devil. But now that Christ, the second
Adam, is come, born without sin, and has taken away sin, it can
no longer condemn me if I believe in Him ; but I shall be delivered
from it through Him, and be saved. If on the other hand I do not
believe, the same sin and condemnation must continue ; because He
who is to deliver me from it is not [taken hold of : nay, it will be a
doubly great and heavy sin and condemnation, that I will not
believe in this dear Saviour/by whom I might be helpt, nor accept
His redemption. Thus all our salvation and condemnation depend
now upon this, whether we believe in Christ, or no. A judgement
has at length gone forth, which closes heaven against all such as
have not and will not receive this faith in Christ. For this unbelief
retains all sin, so that it cannot obtain forgiveness, even as faith re-
moves all sin. And hence without this faith everything is and con-
tinues sinful and condemnable, even in the best life and the best
works which a man can perform ; which, although in themselves
they are praiseworthy and commanded by God, yet are corrupted by
unbelief, so that on account thereof they cannot please God ; even as
in faith all the works and life of a Christian are pleasing to God.
In fine, without Christ everything is condemned and lost ; in Christ
everything is good and blessed ; so that even sin, which continues in
our flesh and blood, being inherited from Adam, can no longer hurt
or condemn us.
" This however must not be understood as if leave were hereby
granted, so that men may freely sin and do evil : for, because faith
brings the forgiveness of sins, and Christ is come to take away and
destroy sin, it is not possible for any man to be a Christian and a
believer, who lives openly, carelessly, and impenitently, in sin and
according to his lusts. For where there is such a sinful life, there is
also no repentance : but where there is no repentance, there is also
no forgiveness of sins, and consequently no faith, which receives the
NOTEQ. 361
forgiveness of sins. Whereas he who has the belief in this forgive-
ness, strives against sin, and does not follow its lusts, but wars
against it until he is entirely free from it. And although in this life
we cannot become wholly free from it, and sin continues ever even
in the holiest of men, yet the believer has the consolation that this is
covered for him by the forgiveness of Christ, and will not be reck-
oned for his condemnation, if so be he continues in the faith of Christ.
This is what St Paul says, that there is no condemnation for them that
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh; and again, They
that are Chrises have crucified the flesh with its lusts. You
see, to these it is said that sin shall not harm nor condemn
them : to those who are without faith and reckless, nothing is
here preach t."
In giving such long extracts from Luther, in this and other places,
I have not been induced solely by the admirable clearness and force
of the passages cited, but also by a wish of shewing by comparison
how far superior his expositions of Scripture are, in the deep and
living apprehension of the primary truths of the Gospel, to those of
the best among the Fathers, even of Augustin. Much indeed of
what is here said by Luther, is now become familiar, mainly through
his influence, and that of his brother Reformers, to all readers of
religious books. But if we would do justice to any of the master
minds in history, we must compare them with their predecessors :
for one of the surest marks of a great heaven-sent teacher is, that the
truths which he is commissioned to teach, become in course of time
more and more a part of the intellectual patrimouy of mankind.
But when we come upon these truths in Luther, after wandering
through the dusky twilight of the preceding centuries, it seems
almost like the sunburst of a new Revelation, or rather as if the sun,
wliirh set when St Paul was takeu away from the earth, had
suddenly started up again. Verily too it does one good, when one
has been walking about among those who have only dim guesses as
to where they are, or whither they are going, and who halt, and look
back, and turn aside at every other step, to see a man taking his
stand on the eternal Rock, and gazing stedfastly with unsealed eyes
on the very Sun of Righteousness. An additional motive in this last
instance for not cutting short the extract sooner is, that the con-
cluding paragraph is a proof, though only among ten thousand which
might easily be adduced, of the utter groundlessness of the charge of
362 NOTE Q.
Antinoniianism, which has been brought against him by his modern
revilers.
Calvin's note on our verse is brief, and does not set forth as clearly
a3 Luther how the root and ground of all sin is unbelief : but he has
always something valuable to say, and says it well. " Primo notan-
dum est judicium Spiritus a demonstration e peccati incipere : hoc
enim spiritualis doctrinae exordium est, homines in peccato genitos
nihil in se habere nisi peccati materiam. Porro infidelitatis meminit
Christus, ut ostenderet qualis in se sit hominum natura. Nam quia
vinculum quo se nobis unit est fides, donee in ipsum credamus extra
eum sumus et ab eo divisi. Tantundem igitur valent haec verba acsi
dixisset, Spiritus cum venerit, ostendet ac convincet, extra me regDare
in mundo peccatum. Proinde hie nominatur infidelitas, quia nos
separat a Christo, atque ita facit ut nihil praeter peccatum nobis
relinquatur."
In Cartwright's note on this passage we again find how difficult it
was to attain to a clear insight into the radical sinfulness of unbelief.
He sees that this particular manifestation of unbelief was very
heinous, but does not see with the same distinctness how unbelief
lies at the root of all sin. "Hie notandum ex omnibus peccatis
nullum esse tetrius et horribilius infidelitate ut quae mater et radix
reliquorum omnium. Multas horrendas contumelias in Christum
admiserant; sed ea omnia prae infidelitate veluti silentio sepeliuntur.
Sic Heb. iii. 18, 19, tametsi multa scelera patrassent, tamen infi-
delitatis solius nomine exclusi perhibentur. Nee injuria, quando-
quidem qui non credit in Filium, Deum mendacem facit : 1 Johan.
v. 10. Hoc illustretur exemplo ab hominibus, quibusdam praesertim
qui hanc injuriam morte vindicabunt, et sanguine ejus qui illis
mendacii convicium imponit. Quod quidem cum semper atrox
scelus fuerit, nunc tamen gravius multo est sub Evangelio. Post
enim tot promissa praestita, et tantam fidem in promissis maximis
de Filio suo ad mortem tradito, dubitare de Dei fide longe fit
gravissimum. — Deinde cum Deus, qui olim per Prophetas, nunc per
Filium unicum locutus sit, Heb. i, 1, 2, etiam hoc ipso gravius fit
fidem dictis derogare. Denique si grave scelus sit non credere Deo
minanti, ut quod Jeremias populo objecit, Annon manum meam
cxtimesceretis, v. 22, 23, nedum grave erit Deo pollicenti non credere.
Hoc videmus in Actis Apostolorum, ubi Petrus perfidiam Judaeorum
confideutissime coarguit."
NOTE Q. 363
Larape speaks of the conviction that had already been wrought
by the Spirit in earlier ages of the world. " Verura est, quod jam
a mundi incunabulis mundum convicerit. De litigio ejus cum
mundo antediluviano agitur Gen. vi. 3 ; cum Judaeis Jes. i. Hebr.
iii. 7, 8. Neque ulla unquam peccatoris conversio extra Spiritus
convictionem accidit. Sed sicut omnes ejus operationes in N. T.
futurae erant illustriores, ita et ejus couvictio. — Nam convictio
Spiritus in N. T. est multo clarior, quia mysteria salutis plenius sunt
revelata ; — multo efficacior, cum siugulari potentia omnia impedi-
menta perversae ratiocinationis perrumpens (2 Cor. x. 4, 5) ; —
multo universalior, utpote non tautum ad Judaeos, sed etiam totum
niundum spectans, ad ipsos reges et judices terrae, Ps. ii. 10. Hinc
Jes. ii. 4, de Messiae lege ex Zione exeunte, per miuisterium
Spiritus : Et judicabit inter Mas gentes, et convictionem faciet populis
multis ; quae prophetia nostro loco valde parallela est. Confer
Mich. iv. 4, et Jes. xlii. 1. Jus proferet gentibus, et 4. Et sic
Spiritus Dei mystice aquis iucubaturus."
On the conviction of sin he says : " De peccato Salvator indefinite
loquitur. Putarem igitur non hoc illudve peccatum, sed universum
peccati statum, ejusque turn maculam turn reatum, quo universus
mundus premitur, iutelligi. Quando enim versu sequente certi
tautum alicujus peccati, nempe incredulitatis mentio fit, istud pro
exemplo tan turn habendum, tanquam unum ex mille. (Another
proof how slowly men have been taught to discern that primary
truth, which Luther so fully apprehended and so clearly enounced,
that faith is the ground of all good in man, and the want of
faith the ground of all eviL) Convictio de peccato — involvit, ut
quia foeditatem et damnabilitatem ejus evidenter perspiciat ; ut
porro in sinum propriuin descendat, suamque vitiositatem — agnoscat;
utque hac — conscientia iutime tactus turpitudinem suam detestetur,
periculum extimescat, impotentiam eluctandi sentiat. Haec convictio
sumrne est necessaria. Absque hac miseriae et peccati agnitione
neque ulla salutis cura subnascetur, neque ob redemtionis opus ulla
ad Deum gloria redibit — Ad illam vero n-quin kitur miuist* riuni
Spiritus Sancti. Nihil enim mundus extra lucem verbi uovit de
peccati origine ex lapsu protoplastorum ; — neque de ejus subjecto,
quod non tantum sunt externa opera, sed etiam intimae cogitationes,
et priraoprimi pravae concupisceutiae motus. — Fatetur hanc in-
scitiam Apostolus, Rom. vii. 7. Neque sufficit externa harum
364 NOTE Q.
veritatum per verbum propositio, nisi omnia effugia, quibus suaru
peccaminositatem caro palliare tentat, — efficacia Spiritus simul
eripiantur. —
" Convictio de fidei in Jesum privatione opus erat Spiritus Sancti.
Alia peccata ex lege et lumine naturae demonstrari poterant. — Ad
hoc vero agnoscendum supponebatur quod vita et salus peccatoris
unice in Jesu sita esset, unde sequebatur miserrimus eorum status
qui fide cum eo non esseut uniti. De hoc sine verbo mundo nihil
constare poterat. — Et solum verbum sine Spiritu ad convictionem
non sufficere coustabat in Judaeis, qui id audiverant et signa viderant,
nihilominus tamen in incredulitate permanserant. Convictio haec
initium sumptura a mundo Judaico, quando Apostoli ad conscientiam
deraonstraturi Jesum esse Christum, in nullo alio salutem esse,
adeoque indignissimum fnisse facinus, quod non tantum ori Domini
inobedientes exstiterint, sed etiam eundem in crucem egerint.
Transitura deinde ad mundum gentium, quando ipsi docendi, quod
verum Deum placandi medium hactenus ignoraverint, et propterea
surnma caligine et miseria obsepti fuerint. Atque haec de fidei
defectu convictio aptissima erat ad demonstrandum generale peccati
in omnes homines dominium. Firmissima erat haec argumentatio :
Quicunque non credit in Filium et sub reatu et sub jugo peccati
est. Totus mundus non credit. Minorem docebat experientia. —
Caetera peccata magis erant specialia : hoc vero omnes reddebat
obnoxios. Sic omnes conclusi els aweWeiav, ut Deus omnium
misereretur, Eom. xi. 32. Majoris quoque utraque pars vera est.
Christus enim solus est, qui a peccati et maledictione per sanguinem
et tyrannide per Spiritum suum liberat. Liberationis ergo hujus
exsortes sunt, qui non fide cum Christo uniti sunt : Joh. iii. 36, 1
Joh. v. 12. — Aliter tamen Judaeos, aliter gentes hoc argumentum
feriebat. Judaei in omni emphasi incredulitatis erant rei ; et hoc
eorum peccatum per se omnium erat atrocissimum ; et periculum
erat ne in peccatis morerentur, Joh. viii. 24, nisi resipiscerent. Sed
et idem peccaminositatis Judaeorum index erat. Quomodo enim
possibile fuisset, ut ad tantam lucem coecutirent, nisi dominio peccati
prorsus fuissent constricti ? — Accedit, quod haec incredulitas omnem
justitiam, quam ex lege quaerebant, abominabilem, omnia sacrificia
— impura redderet. — Neque minus forte erat hoc telum ad gentes
peccati agnitione sauciandos. Dum enim Judaeorum incredulitas
ipsis significabatur, documentum hoc ipsis erat, quousque peccatum
NOTE Q. 365
hacteuus in mundo dominatum esset. Dam vero ipsis quoque
proprius fidei defectus coinnionstrabatur, quamvis peccatum eoruru
per se non tarn grave esset, d-ino-Tia tamen haec eos ab omnibus
mediis gratiae excluserat. Cum sine Christo fuerint, inde colligere
debebant, quod et extra testamentum promissionis, et sine Deo, et
natura -fdii irae fuerint, Eph. ii. 3. 12. Nee tamen omni culpa in
liac causa vacabant. Majores enim eorum ex amore peccati tradi-
tionem de Messia, quam a Patriarchis'acceperant,penitus obliteraver-
ant : et ex hac oblivione horrenda ilia peccata prognata erant, in
quae gentilismus inciderat : Rom. i. 21. sqq. Porro idem defectus
monstrabat iis omnium actionum suarum, etiam specie tenus
bonarum, peccaniinositateni, quia sine fide impossibile est placcre Deo :
Hebr. xi. 6. Rom. xvi. 23. — Quam strenue et feliciter hoc argumento
usi sint Apostoli post effusionem Spiritus Sancti, eventus docuit,
quoad Judaeos, Act. ii. 37, iii. 14, 15, 19, iv. 11, 12 ; quoad gentes,
Bqm. i. 28, etc."
Even in Matthew Henry there is still a good deal of vagueness in
the attempt to determine why unbelief should be the sin of which
the Spirit convinces the world. "The Spirit in conviction, fastens
especially upon the sin of unbelief, their not believing in Christ.
First, as the great reigning sin. There was and is a world of people
that believe not in Jesus Christ ; and they are not sensible that it is
in. Natural conscience tells them that murder and theft are
*in ; but it is a supernatural work of the Spirit to convince them
that it is a sin to suspend their belief of the Gospel, and to reject
the salvation offered by it. Natural religion — lays— us under this
further obligation, that whatever divine revelation shall be made to
us at any time, with sufficient evidence to prove it divine, we accept
it, and submit to it. This law those transgress, who, when God
xpeaketh to vs by His Son, refuse Him that speaketh ; and therefore
it is sin. Secondly, as the great ruining sin. Every sin is so in its
own nature ; no sin is so to them that believe in Christ ; so that it is
unbelief that damns sinners. It is because of this that they cannot
into rest, that they cannot escape the wrath of God: it is a sin
against the remedy. Thirdly, as that which is at the bottom of all
sin : so Calvin takes it. The Spirit shall convince the world that
the true reason why sin reigns among them, is because they are not
by faith united to Christ."
Luecke aptly remarks, that in this explanation of the triple
366 NOTE Q.
«Aeyx os ^ three similarly worded propositions, the unexprest
subjects of the dfiapria, Slkolioo-vvq, and i<pL<ri.<s are determined in
•each case by the explanatory propositions ; that is, ttc/oi apaprias
TWJ/ OV 7Tt(TTev6vTO)V (tOV KOCTfXOV), 7T6/H SlKaiOCTVVqS fXOV (rOV VTTO.-
yovros 7r/oos tov HaTepa), 7repl Kpicrews rov ap^ovTos rov Koa-p-ov
tovtov, and that the triple on determines the substance and ground
of the triple e Aeyxos. Of the first e'Aeyx 05 however his exposition
is very narrow. " The Paraclete will convince the world of its sin,
so far as it does not believe in Christ : that is, the world will be
brought by the Holy Spirit to the consciousness that its unbelief
is sin, is wrong ; so that it will give up the delusion spoken of in
v. 2. — The Paraclete finds the world uubelieving, — ov iu<tt€vovo~iv,
— and attacks this unbelief as a sin, which the world does not
<Ieem it/'
Here, where we require a spiritual eye for truth, Olshausen is far
superior. "In the first place the Spirit makes sin manifest, not
however in its outward characters, — in this respect the Law awakens
the knowledge of sin (Eom. iii. 20), — but in its inward deep root.
Now this is nothing else than unbelief, which we may call the mother
of all sinful actions : but unbelief itself is, in its most glaring form,
unbelief in the Incarnate Christ. The inability of recognising this
purest manifestation of the Divinity implies utter blindness."
In S tier's Observations on our Lord's Discourses, one of the most
precious books for the spiritual interpretation of the Gospels, the
deep meaning of this passage is brought out more fully than by any
other commentator. "Here we have the counterpart of the truth
enunciated in xiv. 17 ; and that previous declaration receives an
important limitation. The same world, which cannot receive the
Spirit of Truth, because it sees Him not, nor knows Him, is yet to
discover that He is working upon it, speaking to it, in the first place
testifying against it. Hence its incapacity for receiving the truth is
not to be regarded as absolute or unchangeable. The same Spirit of
Truth, through whose coming in the first instance the broad separa-
tion between the world and the disciples, between unbelievers and
believers, is manifested and defined, is nevertheless striving at the
same time to remove this separation. For His coming and working
is the last stage in the Divine Economy of Grace, before the Day of
Judgement : Acts ii. 20. Here is still an escape for many others,
whom the Lord will call. The last, most powerful, most heart-
NOTE Q. 367
piercing, most decisive call to salvation begins, no otherwise than
Christ's and that of all the prophets, with Repent ye ! When, by
the rejection of Christ, the last stage of unpardonable guilt, of
incurable sin, of inflexible hardness has been attained, and that
which is said in c. xv. 22-25 is accomplisht in its fall sense, — this
however is far from being the case with all, as the sequel shows, —
then the work of the Spirit is to bear witness of sin, and to announce
the Judgement. For the day of the Holy Ghost, — the third after
the economy of the Father and the Son, as is indicated in its type,
Exod. xix. 10, 11, — is the antitype of the last day, as well as the
preparation for it. When the sin of Israel and of Heathendom,
having filled its first measure, was visited, not by the fire of a
wrathful Judgement, but by the surpassingly gracious testimony of
the Spirit, with its fiery signs and its inward fervour, then began
that judgement of the nations unto peace, of which Isaiah speaks as
the purpose to be accomplisht among the Heathens (ii, 3, 4), and as
the beginning and end of Israel (iv. 3, 4). The saying, which is so
often misunderstood and perverted, that the history of the world is
the judgement of the world, is realized in this working and judge-
ment of the Spirit, this last preparation for the Judgement which
will reveal all things, and which is reserved for the Son, at His final
personal manifestation, as the Spirit has pointed to Him. Whatever
faith or unbelief the Spirit finds existing upon earth, He does not
leave just as it is, but trains it up and purges it, subjects it to His
trials, to the end that faith may be perfected in knowledge and
life, or, if it shrink from this, may be brought to shame, — and that
unbelief may ripen for the Judgement through the total blasphemy
and rejection of the Spirit, or may allow itself to be subdued to
repentance and obedieuce. The object of these progressive opera-
tions, which bring on the final Judgement in the great trial of the
world by the perfecting of sin or of righteousness, by the last con-
viction of both in their actuality, is clearly exprest at the close of
Scripture, in that Book which above all others must be termed the
Book of the Spirit, calling, alluring, judging man, previous to the
end. From these hints with regard to the scheme of the Bible,
which is no other than the scheme of the Divine Government and
ordering of the world, as already made manifest, we may gain a
deeper insight into the fitness of the dispensation, that the threefold
lAeyx * should belong to the coming of the Spirit This testimony
368 NOTE Q.
or conviction of the Spirit, which, while it is a typical or pre-
paratory punishment, and an actual judgement, is yet an acquittal of
all such as submit willingly to this judgement, is the only possible
mode of expressing the final sentence. 'EAiyxeiv is not equivalent
to fiaprvpelv in xv. 26 ; for witness is borne of that which is good
and right, concentrated in the words ir€pl i/xov ; whereas conviction
is of that which is evil and false, by the revealing of sin, and the
overthrowing of false righteousness. But it should not be overlookt
that this IXkyyeiv throughout is only intended to perfect that
paprvpdv, and to complete its victory, — according to the deepest
sense of the prophecy cited in Matt. xii. 20, — that the Spirit is the
last gift of God's grace to the world, to the end that the world, — or
at least every one in it who will, — may be saved. He who peni-
tently confesses, I am guilty, is acquitted. For the Spirit does not
merely convince of sin and of judgement, as we should have supposed
and expected that these two things are immediately connected with
each other, and that there is nothing else to come between them ;
but in the very centre of His revelation He convinces us of the
righteousness of Christ, which he who has lived hitherto in unbelief,
if he will now believe, may and shall lay hold on.
" Thus it is not merely as defensor causae, — whose office is k Xiyyeiv
tovs dvTiXeyovTas, as Grotius says, — in behalf of Christ and those
who are already His, and for the condemnation of all others, that
the Spirit bears witness so convincingly, but in order that He may
absolve, convert, and comfort, those who will give heed to His
reproof. The office of reproving is a necessary preliminary to
that of comforting. Hence the Paraclete is not here discharging an
alien office, until He assumes His own of comforting and preaching
grace, as Luther says : but the tiAc-y^o?, both as anterior to the
paprvpia, and as involved in it, belongs in its last and fullest sense
to Him alone. In a certain sense doubtless it is true, that whatever
reproves of sin belongs to the Law : but inasmuch as in the Spirit
God speaks through His glorified Son for the first time from
heaven itself, from the heavenly Zion of His redeeming Grace, the
words of the Spirit are at the same time the fulfilment of the Law ;
for which that delivered on Sinai was only the type and preparation :
Hebr. xii. 18-25. It is an erroneous limitation to say that the Holy
Spirit by the Law reproves everything as sin, that is not faith ; for
it is only the Gospel that speaks of faith with this reproof of the
NOTE Q. 369
want of it. On the contrary we shall see that the reproof of the
Spirit superinduces something quite new and different upon the first
Law, strictly so called, — and that His conviction of sin needs only to
be received and truly understood, to make manifest that in itself it
is a conviction of the righteousness of grace for faith, and thus truly
an operation of the Comforter.
" By the three momentous words, afiapria, Si/ccuooaVv/, k/ho-is,
oar Lord sets forth the three main stages of the Truth, and of its
un.at progressive work. The world has no correct and complete
knowledge of what Sin is, or Righteousness, or Judgement, until the
Holy Spirit has told it. It will boast indeed — of its initial, super-
ficial knowledge thereof ; for where can a man be found, who knows
nothing of these things ? — but, in persisting that this is the whole
truth, it turns the beginning of the Truth into a contradiction to its
end, into a delusion and falsehood. To a full, a final understanding of
these three words, current as they are in all the world, and extant in
•onscieuce, — so that the Holy Spirit everywhere finds a founda-
tion, but one which He Himself must set right, — nobody can be
brought ex]>erientially through any human power or wisdom, nor
:h any letter of the Word, through any outward event of life,
••veil though it were a word of Christ or of His Apostles, or the
works of Christ carried on in undeniable facts and historical wonders
since the day of Pentecost. This can only be done by the Spirit,
ami that too as tin,- Spirit, working, as ever, by means of words and
. but only so far as He acts inwardly on the heart and the
<nce. Therefore all those are greatly mistaken, and have a
i|iiii<i,tl understanding of this passage, who talk hereabout
••••rtain outward events, when-by the Spirit convinced and refuted
the world, that is, Israel. < > no ! His «A«yx os stretches more
iridttj, .'ind continu.'s unto the end of days, as far and as long as
is a tcoo-fios to be convinced. He does indeed make use of the
• Mntinual testimony of the Word, as well as of ever renewed facts ;
but it is only by His inward speech and testimony that He produces
tion.
" ' Est autem vis non coactivased convictiva,' says Lampe, entering
at first on a right track, which recognises the region left in this
(A^yxos to the freewill of man : be even idde, ' N'on agit tanquam
cum stipite, sed tanquam cum creator! rat ionali, persuadendo.' Now,
if the Holy Spirit Himself at last only does this, even His final
2 a
370 NOTE Q.
grace must be resistible, as well as irresistible. Irresistible, in that
all, whether they will or no, shall and must at last be really con-
vinced of God's truth : but whether they will then submit and obey,
and turn to the truth from their lie, that they may be saved, or not,
rests with them. And terrible, blasphemous is the expression of the
doctrine of predestination, when the same Lampe writes concerning
the difference between those who obey and resist, ' Diversitatis
hujus causa non est in hominibus, sed in ipsa Spiritus operatione,
quae cum fiat secundum aeternum Dei decretum, cum miuori
evidentia et efficacia in reprobis quam electis agit.' Where is there
a syllable about this minor evidentia et efficacia in the e Aeyxos,
which is the same for the whole world? Thus will an erroneous
preconceived opinion pervert the clearest words, which set it right.
" Baumgarten Crusius is right, when, with Angustin, Chrysostom,
Luther, he maintains that 6Vi in all the three cases indicates the
object of the testimony of the Spirit. "On gives us the substance of
the afxapria, SiKatocrvvr), Kpicris, tells us what sin, righteousness, and
judgement, our Lord meant.
" Thus, firstly, the specific sin which our Lord meant, was that of
unbelief, as in xv. 22, 24, x. 38. This is not a mere errour here, any
more than in viii. 46, but the consummation and ground, the fruit
and kernel, the very essence of all sin of the corrupt will. As Jesus
had not reproved the trangression of the commandments, which
was the work of Moses and the prophets in earlier times, but
unbelief in Himself, the Spirit, who came in his place, continues
and completes this His work. In carrying it on He proceeds from
the testimony alread} r extant against sin in the Law and the con-
science, both among the Jews and the Heathens, confirming it, or,
in case of need, awakening it ; but His reproof was of a totally
different kind. If on is explanatory, the interpretation adopted by
Lampe is erroneous, according to which a/xaprta in v. 8 means, ' non
hoc vel illud peccatum, sed universum peccati statu m, reatum,' and
who then says that the particular ' peccatum incredulitatis— pro
exemplo tantum habendum, tanquam unum ex mille.' How cau
scholars, who at other times give proof of their Christian experience
and of their knowledge of Scripture, deal thus mechanically with
the profoundest words of Scripture ? "Was it necessary that the
Spirit should come into the world to reprove sin generally ? Can
this then be our Lord's meaning even in v. 8? Yet He will reprove
NOTE Q. 371
all sin iu the fullest sense, and so as to carry the most piercing
conviction : He will lay bare its root, and manifest it by its fruits.
The Spirit of Christ, after the dispensation of the Law, takes up the
work again, where since Genesis vi. 3 it had been relinquisht. He
as it were begins anew to strive with the world, but now for the
first time penetrating into the innermost depths of sin, which had
been made manifest by the rejection of the Incarnate Son of God.
From the very first the root of all human sin, the Fall of Adam and
Eve inclusive, was nothing else than unbelief in God : 1 Pet. iii. 20.
Hebr. iii. 19. In like manner, during the continuance, increase, and
growth of sin. a more hardened unbelief became its consequence and
fruit. We may say, both that man sins from the first and contin-
ually, because He did not believe the first truth of God, and that he
does not believe his last truth, because he continues and is resolved
to continue in sin. The consummation of full-grown sin, in which
its ground must needs be discernible, the hatred of God, as was seen
primarily in the Jews, and as appears, alas ! down to this day in
the world, even in Christendom, is the unbelief in Christ. This is
its penultimate stage, wherein sin, when we are thus convinced of it,
may and is to be overcome through the grace of Him who rose from
the dead. The last stage is that incurred by the wilful, blasphemous
rejection of the Holy Ghost. In truth and verity, however boldly
the world may deny it, the fact is, and shall be made inwardly
manifest to man, whether he will confess it or no, that his unbelief
is a matter of the corrupt will, the result of a will so corrupt, that it
will not let its sin be taken away by the Lamb of God. Although
the favorite proposition of the deceiver,— that faith is not a matter of
the will, and consequently that we are not accountable for it, nor can
it decide our doom, — may be continually reasserted, the Holy Ghost
reproves the world of lies, when it pretends that its unbelief is
merely honest doubt That is to say, in the first instance i< m.iy
really arise, though not wholly and solely, from thence, and thus
may be niixt up with it and partially excused thereby: but, when
the Holy Ghost drawing nigh to us bears witness of Christ, then He
will reprove unbelief as obstinate, abiding
"At the same time it is plain that, by reason of the ujiaprta
of unbelief, all previous sin and t ransgression, which, having been
reproved by the Law, was placed lv Qnm under the wipwH%
Roru. iii. 2.">,- continues ujmhi the guilty head, and, being summed
372 NOTE Q.
up and fixt in unbelief, falls upon it. Thus our Lord says (viii.
24), eav yap /xrj irtcrrev-qre on eyw dfxi, aTroOaveio-de kv rah
a/xa/mcus. The world continues to sin, because it does not believe:
that is presupposed: hence this passage declares that this is its
abiding sin, whereby all others are retained, that it will not
believe. Thus it further becomes manifest, as a preparation for the
next proposition, that all denial and concealment of sin in those who
do not believe in* Christ, can only be a delusion and pretense, not
unmixt with audacity : all assumed righteousness becomes sin, and
is punisht as such, where there is unbelief. Many in these days
suppose that they believe, even so far as to become persecutors on
this supposition : but where sin continues, it is a proof of unbelief
in the heart : and here the IAeyx os °^ *^e -^°ty Ghost proceeds
from the reproof of sin generally to the reproof of the unbelief in
which it lies. Observe, observe well : the Spirit does not make and
give faith in its origin, but demands it, and rebukes unbelief as sin.
Herein however is implied, if we understand and accept it, the
surpassing comfort in this rebuke, the absolution which is held out in
the condemnation itself. He who believes in Christ, is not judged,
has no more sin : therefore believe, if thou yet canst and wilt ;
and thou art forthwith delivered. Christ is become thy Righteous-
ness; the power and right of Satan over thee are abolisht by Him.
This is the deep force of this passage, which Grotius interprets to
mean that the sin of the unbelieving Jews will become manifest :
'quum evenient omnia quae dixi de mittendo Spiritu; — (of which
the Jews knew nothing) — adparebit Me esse Prophetam secundum
regulam Dei.'"
I will end this Note with an extract from an interesting work by
Goeschel, — an author the main object of whose writings has been to
reconcile or to shew the accordance of the Hegelian Philosophy with
Christian Theology, — On Hegel and his Age. When speaking of the
manner in which Hegel had overcome the subjective character of the
systems of his immediate predecessors, by demonstrating the unity
and identity of the subjective with the objective, he remarks
(p. 103) : " We may find an example of this in the highest of all
phenomena, that is, the appearance of God in man, as in the flesh.
This is adequate to that which it contains, and identical therewith :
consequently the contents, this is, the fulness of the Godhead, are
included in the phenomenon ; for the substance does not transcend
NOTE Q. 373
the form more than this surpasses itself, and by negativing itself
preserves its continuity. Christian Theology expresses the same
truth, when it teaches us that the manifestation of God in man only
attained its completion in the death of the Son of Man. The
unbelief in the Deity of Christ, which is the sin of the world and of
this age, rests upon that unbelief, which characterized the Critical
and the Transcendental Idealistic Philosophy, in the identity of the
phenomenon with its contents, of the form with the substance, or
of the finite with the infinite ; which last is indeed transcendent,
l)ii t for this very reason is only the more identical with the pheno-
menon." Here we find an answer by anticipation to the fallacy
which lies at the bottom of Strausses Life of Christ, that the idea
can never have an adequate exponent. Goeschel's work was pub-
lislit in 1832, — the first edition of Strausses in 1835, — justifying the
correctness of Goeschel's assertion, that unbelief in Christ is still
the sin of the age.
Note R : p. 70.
This point is finely treated by Donne in his 34th Sermon. "Ip
this capacity, as the Comforter, we must consider His action, arguet,
fie shall reprove ; reprove, and yet comfort, nay, therefore comfort,
because reprove ; and then the subject of his action, mundum, the
. the whole world ; no part left unreproved, yet no part left
without comfort ; and after that, what He reproves the world of, —
of tin, of righteousness, of judgement. Can there be comfort in
reproof for sin? — This seems strange ; and yet this must be done,
and doue to our comfort ; for this must be done cum venerit, then
when the Holy Ghost, and He in that function, as the Comforter, is
come, is present, is working.
" Beloved, reproofs upon others without charity, rather to defame
them, than amend them, — reproofs upon thyself without shewing
mercy to thine own soul, diffidences and Jfltlomfol ud suspicions
of God, either that He hated thee before thy sin, or hates thee
irremediably, irreconcilably, irrecoverably, irreparably for thy sin, —
these are reproofs ; but they are absente Spiritu, in the absence of
the Holy Ghost, before He comes, or when He is gone. When He
comes, and stays, He shall reprove, and reprove all the world, and all
374 NOTE E.
the world of those errours, si?i, righteousness, and judgement, and
those errours upon those evidences, Of sin, because they believe not in
Me, &c. But in all this proceeding He shall never divest the nature
of a Comforter : in that capacity He is sent ; in that He comes and
works. —
"For No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy
Ghost: and there is our first comfort, in knowiDg that Christ is God.
For He were — no Redeemer, He were a weak Saviour, an insufficient
Mediator, a silenced Advocate, and a Judge that might be misin-
formed, if He were not God. And though He were God, He might
be all these to my discomfort, if there were not a Holy Ghost to
make all these offices comfortable to me. To be a Redeemer, and
not a Saviour, is but to pay my debts, and leave me nothing to live
on. To be a Mediator, a person capable by His composition of two
natures to intercede between "God and Man, and not to be my
Advocate, is but to be a good counsellor, but not of counsel with me.
To be a Judge of quick and dead, and to proceed out of outward
evidence, and not out of His bosom mercy, is but an acceleration of
my conviction : I were better lie in prison still, than appear at that
assize ; better lie in the dust of the grave for ever, than come to that
judgement. But as there is mens in anima, — and every man hath a
soul, but every man hath not a mind, that is, a consideration, an
actuation, an application of the faculties of the soul to particulars ;
so there is a Spiritus in Spiritu, a Holy Ghost in all the holy offices
of Christ, which offices, being in a great part directed upon the whole
world, are made comfortable to me, by being by this Holy Spirit
turned upon me, and appropriated to me : for so even that name of
Christ, which might most make me afraid, the name of Judge,
becomes a comfort to me. To this purpose does St Basil call the
Holy Ghost, Verbum Dei, quia Interpres Filii : the Son of God is
the word of God, because He manifests the Father ; and the Holy
Ghost is the Word of God, because He applies the Son. Christ
comes with that loud proclamation, Ecce auditum fecit ! Behold the
Lord hath proclaimed it to the end of the world ! Ecce Salvator !
and Ecce merces / Behold His salvation ! Behold thy Reward !
This is His publication in the manifest ordinances of the Church :
and then the Holy Ghost whispers to thy soul, as thou standest in
the congregation, in that voice that He promises, Sibilabo populum
meum,—I will hiss, I will whisper to My people by soft and inward
NOTE R 375
inspirations. Christ came to tell us all, That to as many as received
Him He gave power to become the sons of God. The Holy Ghost
omes to tell thee, that thou art one of them. —
" As the world is the whole frame of the world, God hath put into
it a reproof, a rebuke, lest it should seem eternal, which is a
sensible decay and age in the whole frame of the world and
every piece thereof; the seasons of the year irregular and distem-
pered, the sun fainter and languishing, men less in stature and
shorter-lived. No addition, but only every year new sorts, new
species of worms and flies and sicknesses, which argue more and
more putrefaction, of which they are engendered. And the angels
of heaven, which did so familiarly converse with meu in the
niiig of the world, though they may not be doubted to per-
form to us still their ministerial assistances, yet they seem so far
to have deserted this world, as that they do not appear to us, as
they did to those our fathers. — Lest the world— should glorify
itself, or flatter and abuse us with an opinion of eternity, we may
admit usefully — this observation to be true, that there is a reproof,
a rebuk*- borne in it, a seusible decay and mortality of the whole
w..ild. But is this a reproof agreeable to our text/ a reproof
that carries comfort with it ] comfort to the world itself, that it is
not eternal 1 Truly it is, as St Paul has most pathetically exprest
it : The creature (that is, the world) is in an earnest expectation, the
creature waitcth, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain.
Therefore the creature, that is, the world, receives a perfect com-
; i beiiig delivered at last, and an inchoative comfort in
knowing now that it shall be delivered. From what / From sub-
/, from the bondage of corruption, that, whereas the
w..rld is now subject to mutability and corruption, at the resur-
rection it shall no longer be so ; but in that measure and in
degVM which it is capable of, it shall enter into the glorious
liberty of the children of Ood; that is, be as free from corruption
or change in that state wherein it shall be glorified, as the saints
shall be in the glory of their state : for the light of the moon shall be
as the light of the sun ; and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold;
v. alojB be new heavens and new earth; which is a state that
this world could not attain to, if it were eternally to last in that
ftoodftko in which it is now, a condition Hubject to vanity, impo-
tency, corruption : and therefore there is a comfort in this reproof,
376 NOTE B.
even to this world, that it is not eternal : this world is the happier
for that.
" As the world, in a second sense, signifies all the men of the world,
— there is a reproof borne in every man, which reproof is an uncon-
trollable sense, and an irresistible remorse and chiding of himself
inwardly, when he is about to sin, and a horrour of the majesty of
God, whom, when he is alone, he is forced, and forced by himself,
to fear and to believe ; though he would fain make the world
believe that he did not believe in God, but lived at peace, and
subsisted of himself, without being beholden to God. — Every man
has this reproof borne in him, that he doth ill, that he offends a
God, that he breaks a law, when he sins. And this reproof is a
reproof within our text : for it has this comfort with it, that how-
soever some men labour to overcome the natural tenderness of the
conscience, and so triumph over their own ruin, and rejoice when
they can sleep and wake again without any noise in their con-
science, or sense of sin, yet in truth this candle cannot be blown
out, this remorse cannot be overcome. But were it not a greater
comfort to me if I could overcome it ? No : for, though this
remorse — be not grace, yet this remorse, which is the natural
reproof of the soul, is that that grace works upon. Grace doth not
ordinarily work upon the stiffness of the soul, upon the silence,
upon the frowardness, upon the averseness of the soul; but when
the soul is suppled and mellowed, and feels this reproof, this
remorse in itself, that reproof, that remorse becomes as the mat-
ter, and grace enters as the form ; that becomes the body, and grace
becomes the soul : and that is the comfort of this natural reproof
of the world, that is, of every man, first, that it will not be
quencht in itself, and then, that ordinarily it induces a nobler
light than itself, which is, effectual and true repentance.
"As the world, in a third sense, signifies only the wicked world,
— that world, the world of the wicked, suffer many reproofs,
many rebukes in their hearts, which they will not discover, because
they envy God that glory. — Certainly Herod would have been
more affected, if he had thought that we should have known how
his pride was punisht with those sudden worms, than with the
punishment itself. This is a self-reproof : even in this, though he
will not suffer it to break out to the edification of others, there is
some kind of chiding himself for something misdone. But is there
NOTE B. 377
any comfort in this reproof? — I can hardly speak comfortably of
such a man, after he is dead, that dies in such a disaffection, loth
that Cod should receive glory, or His servants edification, by these
judgements. But even with such a man, if I assisted at his death-
ted, I would proceed with a hope to infuse comfort even from that
disaffection of his. As long as I saw in him any acknowledgement
(though a negligent, nay, though a malignant, a despiteful acknow-
ledgement) of God, as long as I found him loth that God should
receive glory, even from that lothness, from that reproof, from
that acknowledgement that there is a God to whom glory is due, I
would hope to draw him to glorify that God . before his last gasp.
My zeal should last as long as his wife's officiousness, or his
children's or friends or servants obsequiousness, or the solicitude
of his physicians should : as long as there were breath, they would
minister some help ; as long as there were any sense of God, I
would hope to do some good. And so much comfort may arise
even out of this reproof of the world, as the world is only the
wicked world.
" In the last sense, the world signifies the saints, the elect, the
good men of the world. — And this world, that is, the godliest of this
world, have many reproofs, many corrections upon them ; that out-
wan lly they are the prey of the wicked, and inwardly have that
'im carnis, which is the devil's solicitor; and round about
them they see nothing but profanation of His word, misemployment
of His works, His creatures, misconstructions of His actions, His
ments, blasphemy of His name, negligence and undervaluation
I i n sacraments, violations of His sabbaths and holy convoca-
tions. —
" This then is the reproof of the world, that is, of the saints of
God in the world, that, though / wouhi rather be a doorkc> ■/■> W in ike
house of my God, I must dwell in the tents of wickedness ; that, though
my zeal consume me because my enemies have forgotten Thy words,
I roust stay amongst them that have forgotten Thy words. But this
and all otfMC reproofs that arise in the godly, — have this comfort in
them, that these faults that I endure in others, God hath either
ied me, or kept from me; and that, though this world be
!, yet, wh< n I shall come to the next world, I shall find Noah,
that had lx*en drunk, and Lot, that had been incestuous, and Moses,
that murmured at God's proceedings, and Job, and Jeremy, and
378 NOTE JR.
Jonas, impatient, even to imprecations against themselves, — Christ's
own disciples ambitious of worldly preferment, His apostles for-
saking Him, His great apostle forswearing Him, and Mary Magdalen,
that had been I know not what sinner, and David, that had been all.
I leave none so ill in this world, but I may carry one that was, or
find some that had been, as ill as they in heaven : and that blood of
Jesus Christ, which had brought them thither, is offered to them
that are here, who may be successors in their repentance, as they are
in their sins."
Note S : p. 84.
The vulgarminded in all ages have been incapable of conceiving
that a man can be actuated by any but personal feelings and motives.
In fact this is the essential difference between the vulgar and the
noble mind, that the latter is moved and stirred by that which,
being out of himself, is not contemplated with any reference to
personal advantage or gratification. Even opinions and doctrines,
when they startle people out of the torpour of custom and tradition,
are mostly ascribed to rivalry, or ostentation, or some other mode
of vanity, by those who know not what it is to love Truth, nor how
joyfully the lover of Truth will encounter all difficulties, and offer
up every sacrifice, for the sake of his love. The slanders which
ascribe the origin of the Reformation to Luther's jealousy of the
Dominicans, or other evil passions, though their falsehood is palpable,
and has been conclusively exposed over and over again, are still
circulated busily by religious and literary pettifoggers at this day :
and if we think of the most eminent men of our own times, we shall
find that few of them have escaped being assailed with similar
imputations. In a congenial spirit it is asserted by Dionysius, and
has been repeated by sundry minute critics since, that Plato's expul-
sion of Homer and of other poets from his ideal Eepublic arose out
of jealousy. On the other hand this paradox has been summarily
condemned by many, who have never taken the trouble of enquiring
how so wise a man came to entertain what they deem so flagrant an
absurdity. Yet a thoughtful reader would not find it easy to
answer the arguments adduced in the third and tenth books of the
Eepublic, in proof of the mischief which the poetry most popular
NOTE S. 370
among the Greeks would have effected in Plato's ideal common-
wealth, or to shew how he, from his point of view, could have come
to any different conclusion. With the fullest conviction of the
inestimable benefits which Poetry, amid the conflict and whirlpool
of the passions, and along with the tendency of property and of labour,
unless counteracted by higher incentives, to degrade and embase
man, has wrought, and is fitted, when a true poet strikes the epic or
dramatic strain, to work, we can readily understand how, among the
early Quakers and the Moravians, or any other community which
tries practically to fulfill the conditions of a spiritual life, Poetry
will find little matter, except for hymns and songs of praise ;
and to these Plato gives his sanction, where he lays down 6Vt
o(rov fiovov vfivoi<s 0cots teal eyKio/xia rot<s dyadols irapa^Krkov
€i? iroXiv. In fact the very characters, the passions, the struggles,
which have always formed the chief elements of dramatic interest,
are alien from such a community ; and where the realities are
wholly wanting, and, instead of awakening sympathy and admira-
tion, would be cast out, a poet will hardly be led to delineate them,
and would find no favour if he did. Nor would the purificatory
powers of terrour and pity be of use, where the vices which need
such correctives are not to be found. In like manner, if we lift our
contemplations to the angels in heaven, we can only conceive of
them as singiug the praises of their Maker, and telling of His
wondrous works ; not as taking pleasure in the representations of
iuixt characters, which are the main theme of the drama,
representations which often throw a halo of glory around things
morally reprehensible, and which are the very works condemned for
this ration by Plato, as delusive and pa v. rsive of the moral sense.
Thus Plato's views on Poetry seem to be an instance of those
lions anticipations of a higher order of things, which occur
here and there in his works, anticipations which are necessarily
imperfect, and may easily become distorted, from their incongruity
with the world around bin, and from the aptness of opposition to
nM into extremes. A similar apology might be offered for his
notions with regard to Pl P p O tty, whi«-h began to be realized when
the first disciples had all things common. Nay, even for those on
Marriage, though here the incompatibility with the present condition
of man is still wider and more glaring, it may be pleaded that in the re-
surrection, as we are told, they neither marry nor are given in marriage.
380 NOTE S.
In Sehelling's last Lecture On the Method of Academical Study,
Plato's condemnation of poetry, is explained and vindicated in a
somewhat similar manner, as resulting from the strong antithesis
between poetry and philosophy among the Greeks. " It is essential
that we should look at the specific point of view from which Plato
pronounces his verdict upon poets. For if any philosopher ever
observed the distinctions incident to different points of view, it was
he : and unless we take this into account, it is impossible, as in all
other places, so especially in this, to comprehend his meaning, which
is ever full of references and allusions, or to reconcile the contradic-
tions in his works with regard to the self-same object. "We must
begin with recognising that all deep philosophy, and especially that
of Plato, is to be regarded as the direct antithesis in the cultivation
of the Greeks, not merely to the sensual conceptions of their religion,
but also to the objective and thoroughly real forms of their polities.
Now whether in a perfectly ideal and, as it were, spiritual common-
wealth, such as Plato's, poetry might be dealt with in a different
manner, and whether the restrictions which he imposes upon it is, or
is not necessary, are questions which we cannot here discuss. The
antithesis of all the public forms of life to philosophy could not but
produce a like opposition in philosophy to them, of which Plato is
neither the only, nor the first instance. From the time of Pytha-
goras, and still further back, down to Plato, Philosophy is conscious
of being an exotic plant on the Greek soil ; a consciousness which
found vent in the general impulse whereby such as had been
initiated into higher doctrines, either by the wisdom of earlier
philosophers, or by the mysteries, were led to the mother-country of
ideas, the East. But even apart from the consideration that the
opposition was thus far merely historical, not philosophical, and
allowing it to have been the latter, what is Plato's rejection of poetry,
compared with his expressions in other works in praise of enthusi-
astic poetry, except a polemical attack upon poetical realism, an
anticipation of the direction which the mind of man, and poetry
especially, was in after-ages to take ? Least of all can we assume
that his judgement is to have weight as against Christian poetry,
which on the whole bears the character of the infinite, no less
decidedly than ancient poetry bears that of the finite. Our being
able to determine the limits of the latter more precisely than Plato
could, who did not know its antithesis, — our being able to rise
NOTE S. 381
hereby to a more comprehensive idea and construction of poetry, and
to regard what he deemed utterly reprehensible in the poetry of his
age, as merely the limitation which it received from the principle of
Beauty, — we owe to the experience of subsequent ages, seeing the
fulfilment of that which Plato prophetically felt the want of. The
Christian religion, and the bent of man's mind toward the spiritual
world, — which bent could never gain its full satisfaction, nor even
the means of expressing itself, in ancient poetry, — has produced a
new kind of poetry and art, wherein it finds what it wants : and
hereby the conditions of a complete and purely objective view of art,
even of ancient art, are supplied."
Note T : p. 90.
In a body of young men, like that which is collected in our
Universities, comprising the flower and promise of the nation,
there will ever be found a proneness to overrate the worth of
intellectual power, and of those moral qualities which go to make
up energy of character ; and this exaggeration will be accompanied
by a depreciation of the humbler graces, of that which is retiring
and orderly and submissive. This proneness will not be universal ;
HOT will it prevail among the majority even of the more intelligent
and studious. The chief part of these are wout to regard their
stii<lirs mainly as a preparation for professional and practical life,
according to the establisht order of things, deeming conformity to
that order a matter of course, and entertaining a sort of repugnance
to those who trangress it. But a considerable portion of the more
genial and finer spirits, as well as the mass of the frothy and
turbulent, — Alcibiades as well as Phidippides, — are apt to find
something uncongenial in th.it element of thought, in which their
fathers lived with ease and refreshment, and to feel stirrings within
them calling for something different, for something new. Now
these feelings may vent themselves very reprehensibly : tlioy may
be unjust to that which is, and dreamy as to that which is to be :
but still they have a right of a Certain kind on their side, what
Niebuhr calls Das Recht dts Werdenden. For every generation
has its own appointed work, and is not to be content with
treading in the footsteps of its fathers, but has new forests to clear
382 NOTE T.
away, new fields of thought to plough up and cultivate. At"
times too, when custom and prescription have become torpid and
oppressiye, the champions of truth and right, Aristides and Solon,
may stand in the same rank with Alcibiades and Phidippides.
Now these are the very minds on which what is genial and
energetic in the literature of the day acts the most powerfully : for
herein they seem to find a response to their own desires ; and thus,
while the mass of men are slowly and slightly moved by literature,
these are hurried away by it, and may have the fashion of their
minds, and of their future lives, determined in great measure by the
impulses of thought received in their youth. Hence is it of such
moment to the wellbeing of a nation, that what is genial and
energetic in its literature should be bound in close alliance with
highmindedness, and with depth of thought, and with practical
wisdom.
We whose entrance into intellectual life took place in the second
and third decad of this century, enjoyed a singular felicity in this
respect, in that the stimulators and trainers of our thoughts were
Wordsworth and Coleridge ; in whom practical judgment and moral
dignity and a sacred love of truth are so nobly wedded to the highest
intellectual power. By them the better part of us were preserved
from the noxious taint of Byron ; whose antagonism to establisht
opinions, and sentimental, self-ogling misanthropy, and lawless con-
ception of heroic ruffians, in whom one virtue was mixed up with a
thousand crimes, alledged to be redeemed and sanctified by reckless
passion, profanely called love, were sadly calculated to fascinate and
delude the class of minds I have been speaking of. About the
middle of the last century Eousseau was their European oracle.
Some twenty years later that peculiar complexion of thought and
feeling, which received its poetical representation and embodiment in
Werther and Goetz of Berlichingen, being itself drawn from the age,
was in such strong sympathy with it, that, by a not uncommon mis-
understanding, works designed to be works of art were supposed to
have an immediate practical purpose, and to be set up, not as im-
aginative pictures of humanity, but as lessons and models, with a
view to ethical instruction and to literal imitation. Utterly morbid
and corrupt as the condition of European society was in the years
which preceded the French Revolution, when all earnestness and
simplicity seemed to have passed away from life, and a gaudy,
XOTE T. 383
sugared crust lay trembling covering hollow depths of rottenness,
— while they who were wasting in voluptuous frivolity ever and
anon betrayed that they were conscious of their weakness and
worthlessness by heartless irony and self-mockery, — it is not sur-
prising that works like Schiller's Robbers, expressing the bitterest
aversion to the whole order of the world, should have operated con-
tagiously, or that young men should have fancied that, if they took
to the highway, they should become Charles Moors.
At present, I believe, the writer to whom the same class of minds
pay their chief homage, and who does more than any other toward
shaping their views of life and society, is Mr Carlyle. Hence, as
well as from his being, I am informed, the favorite writer with the
most thoughtful and active intellects among the middle and lower
ranks, it may be termed a matter of national interest, that what is
sound and valuable in him should be disengaged from the errours
and exaggerations with which it is frequently combined. He him-
self has said indeed, and ingeniously enough, in one of his panegyrics
on Nature (Lectures on Heroes, p. 99), that " you take wheat to cast
iuto the earth's bosom ; your wheat may be mixt with chaff, chopt
straw, barn sweepings, dust, and all imaginable rubbish ; no matter:
you cast it into the kind, just earth ; she grows the wheat ; the
whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the
rubbish : the yellow wheat is growing there ; the good earth is
silent about all the rest, has silently turned all the rest to some
l>enefit too, and makes no complaint about it." But clever as this is,
and though there is a portion of a grand truth in it, yet, as is often
the case in Mr Carlyle s writings, oftener perhaps than in those of
any other author to whom so much living truth has been revealed,
the truth here is only a half or oue-sided truth. For, without call-
i the Parable of the Sower, every ploughboy knows that
Nature does not perform the whole, nor even the chief part of
the work, in bringing forth wheat. Chaff, it is true, does not spring
ut weeds do; and there is no commoner proverb than that ill
weeds grow apace. Hence it is a dangerous fallacy to teach that it
matters Dot how much errour, how much falsehood you mix up with
your doctrii led there be certain particles of truth in it.
Nature does not reject weeds, even though they be poisonous:
still less does man, except he be pilled by godly discipline. If the
history of the world declares anything, it declares this, — this, and
384 NOTE T.
that, if the same wheat be sown over and over in generation after
generation, it degenerates, and ere long will produce little beside
chaff. In fact one main theme of Mr Carlyle's writings is the com-
plaint of this very trausitoriness, this rapid decay and evanescence of
truth and reality, of its waning and dwindling into a mere form, a
formula, a sham, as he is fond of phrasing it.
In proclaiming and exposing this miserable weakness of our nature,
he has done good service in an age, when, while multitudes walk self-
complacently in the worn-out shoes of their forefathers, not a few
think they are grown into giants because they stalk totteringly along
upon logical stilts, thereby losing the touch of the earth, and all sym-
pathy with reality. So again has he done good service, in an age
when the means and incentives of loquacity are multiplied to such
excess, by proclaiming, even with a dinning reiteration, the para-
mount worth and the absolute indispensableness of truth, sincerity,
earnestness, to every kind of greatness, and that words, when they
do not spring from a living root in the heart, are fugitive as blossoms
pluckt from their stem, and can never turn into fruit. But when it
is asserted that these qualities are all in all, that truth, — subjective
truth, truth of character, sincerity, earnestness, — are not merely
essential elements in that which is good and great, but do of them-
selves and by themselves constitute goodness and greatness, it is
plain that the dismal power of evil in man and in the world, the
lawless tendencies of the will, and the necessity of law to organize
the tumultuous stirrings and heavings in man's breast into a con-
sistent, orderly whole, must be left out of view : and then an admirer
of mere energy will readily fall into that abysmal errour, that Might
is Eight.
Mr Carlyle indeed, in his wiser moments, knows far better than
this, and at times has given utterance to the opposite truth with his
peculiar force. He knows too how much mightier light, in its silent,
beneficent operations, is than lightning, notwithstanding the roar
that follows it. Still, through his craving for energy and intensity,
he has a constant hankering after that primary antitruth, which runs
as an undercurrent through his writings, determining his sympathies
and antipathies, and ever and anon shoots up and bursts forth ; for
instance, in his inordinate admiration of Mirabeau, and in the
general tone of his History of the French Revolution. Again, in his
Lectures on Heroes, though in them the truth often wrestles with its
NOTE T. 385
opposite, it is not brought out with distinctness how the informing
idea alone can render the fermenting energies in man truly heroic,
and how the latter are without form and void until that idea vivifies
and hallows them ; in a word, how the truly heroic idea is that of
Duty, animated by Love, and kindling into self sacrifice ; and how
Law is the clearest, and for man in almost all cases the safest, ex-
ponent and form of Duty ; so that the true hero should realize
Milton's grand description of a king : " Disciplined in the precepts
and the practice of temperance and sobriety, without the strong
drink of injurious and excessive desires, he should grow up to a
noble strength and perfection, with those his illustrious and sunny
locks, the laws, waving and curling about his godlike shoulders."
Let us keep this normal idea before us; and then we shall be able
to make out when and how a hero may, for the sake of law, contend
against the laws. Whereas the doctrine, that strength, energy, earn-
estness, are the heroic principles in man, without due reference to
discipline, self-control 1, law, or objective truth, pampers a morbid
self-will and ostentation, and seems to the young to justify the very
• xtnivagances, into which, from their buoyant ardour, and their in-
ability to perceive the fundamental grounds and structure, and the
mutual adaptation and interpenetration of the various elements that
have coalesced during centuries in the existing order of society, they
are so apt to run. On the other hand the idolatry of strength will
I n '« r be accompanied by a disparagement, if not contempt, of that
\\lii< h is calm and gentle and quiet, of those who walk steadily and
patiently and perseveringly along the measured path of duty. It
exclaims with the fallen archangel, To be weak is miserable, Doing
or suffering. Those fine lines in Schiller's Wallemtein, where
I ountess Tertaky is instigating her brother-in-law to desert
the Emperor,—
Necessity , impetuous remonstrant,
Who not with empty names, or shows of proxy,
Is served, who'll have the thing and not the symbol ,
Ever seeks out the greatest and the best,
And at the rudder places him, e'en though
She had been forced to take him from the rabble, —
She, this necessity, it was that placed thco
In this high office; it was she that gave thee
Thy letters patent of inauguration.
For to the uttermost moment that they can,
2b
386 NOTE T.
This race still help themselves at cheapest rate
With slavish souls, with puppets. At the approach
Of extreme peril, when a hollow image
Is found a hollow image, and no more,
Then falls the power into the mighty hands
Of nature, of the spirit giant-born,
Who listens only to himself, knows nothing
Of stipulations, duties, reverences,
And, like the emancipated force of fire,
Unmastered scorches, ere it reaches them,
Their fine-spun webs, their artificial policy. —
For, by the laws of spirit, in the right
Is every individual character
That acts in strict consistence with itself :
Self-contradiction is the only wrong ; —
these lines which are admirably appropriate when designed as stimu-
lants to an act of treason, are set up as enunciating the first prin-
ciples of heroic morality. In fact these lines, if we change a word
here and there, — for instance, writing, " when a hollow sham Is
found a hollow sham, and nothing more," — might be taken for a
versification of some one or other of the passages to the same effect,
which are perpetually occurring in Mr Carlyle's volumes.
As the best antidote to this whole theory, let me introduce the
following extract from the great teacher, by whom, as I have already
said, I was preserved, along with many of my contemporaries, from
a number of similar contagious delusions. In Appendix B to his
first Lay Sermon, Coleridge, in speaking of the will, writes thus :
" In its state of immanence or indwelling in reason and religion, the
will appears indifferently as wisdom or as love ; two names of the
same power, the former more intelligential, the latter more spiritual,
the former more frequently in the Old, the latter in the New Testa-
ment. But in its utmost abstraction, and consequent state of reproba-
tion, the will becomes satanic pride and rebellious self-idolatry in the
relations of the spirit to itself, and remorseless despotism relatively
to others ; the more hopeless, as the more obdurate, by its subjuga-
tion of sensual impulses, by its superiority to toil and pain and
pleasure ; in short, by the fearful resolve to find in itself alone the
one absolute motive of action, under which all other motives from
within and from without must be either subordinated or crusht.
This is the character which Milton has so philosophically as well as
ROTE T. 387
sublimely embodied in the Satan of his Paradise Lost. Alas ! too
often has it been embodied in real life. Too often has it given a
dark and savage grandeur to the historic page. And wherever it
has appeared, under whatever circumstances of time and country,
the same ingredients have gone to its composition ; and it has been
identified by the same attributes. Hope, in which there^is no cheer-
fulness, steadfastness within and immovable resolve, with outward
restlessness and whirling activity, violence with guile, temerity with
cunning, and, as the result of all, interminableuess of object with per-
fect indifference of means, — these are the qualities that have consti-
tuted the commanding genius ; these are the marks that have
characterized the masters of mischief, the liberticides, and mighty
hunters of mankind, from Nimrod to Buonaparte. And from in-
attention to the possibility of such a character, as well as from
ignorance of its elements, even men of honest intentions too fre-
quently become fascinated. Nay, whole nations have been so far
duped by this want of insight and reflexion, as to regard with
palliative admiration, instead of wonder and abhorrence, the
Molochs of human nature, who are indebted for the larger portion
of their meteoric success to their total want of principle, and who
surpass the generality of their fellow-creatures in one act of courage
only, that of daring to say with their whole heart, Evil, be thou my
good. All system so far is power : and a systematic criminal, self-
consistent and entire in wickedness, who entrenches villany within
villany, and barricadoes crime by crime, has removed a world of
obstacles by the mere decision that he will have no obstacles, but
those of force and brute matter."
There is a like passage, containing several of the same illustrations,
and even the same words, in the sixteenth essay in the first volume
of the Friend, where the great philosopher further says, that " the
abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and
act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one princi-
ple all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful
truth, that, as devastation is incomparably an easier work than pro-
duction, so may all its means and instruments be more easily
arranged into a scheme and system ; even as in a siege every build-
ing and garden, which the faithful governor must destroy, as im-
peding the defensive means of the garrison, or furnishing means of
offense to the besieger, occasions a wound in feelings which Virtue
388 NOTE T,
herself has fostered : and Virtue, because it is virtue, loses perforce
part of her energy in the reluctance with which she proceeds to a
business so repugnant to her wishes, as a choice of evils." Yet this
very reluctance would be stigmatized as a weakness, and the want
of it would be considered as a higher pitch of heroism, by the
Titanolaters.
In fact the whole theory is utterly fallacious. It is only in the
supreme, divine idea, that truth and power, justice and energy, right
and might, coincide. When the idea enters into the thick and
troubled atmosphere of humanity, it is always refracted, and splits ;
and one ray of it will attach itself to one object, another to another :
nor does the brilliancy of any one ray in any object on which it falls,
give us reason to expect a like brightness in the rest. No man
knows better than Mr Carlisle how injustice, selfishness, weakness,
and folly, are perpetually becoming lords of the ascendant, often for
long ages : so far is Nature from having any power to increase and
multiply and perpetuate the good committed to her keeping, and to
reject the evil. She does not do so even with regard to the vege-
table and lower animal world, much less, yea, very much less, with
regard to man. For there is a broad distinction here, which is often
lost sight of by such as reason concerning the higher part of the
creation, after analogies drawn from the lower parts. As evil is
primarily and essentially moral, so that the evil in the natural world
is only the shadow and reflexion of that in the spiritual, the power
of evil in the moral world has ever been incomparably greater and
wider and more destructive than in the natural. In fact it is a
totally different thing : and unless this difference be kept in view,
when we speak of Nature in connexion with moral good and evil, we
get entangled in dismal confusion. Of Nature thus understood, and
in reference to those who almost deify her, Coleridge once said to a
friend of mine, No! Nature is not God ; she is only the devil in a
straight waistcoat.
The whole body of opinions, against which I have been contend-
ing in this Note, is the offspring of that pantheistic spirit, which has
so infected literature during the last hundred years, and which
manifests itself, in a variety of its results, among such as would
shrink from its naked assertion. In Goethe, who of all men seems
to have had the intensest appetite for reality, this pantheistic spirit
subordinated itself to the worship of Beauty, or rather shaped itself
NOTE T. 389
in the mould of Beauty, conceived in its broadest sense, as com-
prising the harmonious adjustment of parts in every order of being.
Hence his almost exclusive love of Greek literature and art, which
gained such sway over him during a considerable portion of his life ;
though, as his views widened, it enlarged itself to embrace all the
genuine forms in which a national imagination has found utterance.
Hence too his repugnance to all vehement characters, that is, to
those which are especially termed heroic, such as Coriolanus and
Luther, as transgressing the line of beauty ; because, when a great
moral idea is bursting into life in an uncongenial world, its birth is
accompanied with pangs and throes, the difficulty of parturition in-
creasing in proportion as we rise in the scale of being ; and because
such an idea does not seek to clothe itself harmoniously in a drapery
of flesh and blood, like the idea of an artist, but feels bound to pro-
claim that, in a world where the sensuous is ever stifling the spiritual,
the sensuous must be cast away and trampled under foot, to the end
that the spiritual may stand out in its full, transcendent glory. In
other words, he who is fighting for life, and for what is infinitely
more precious to him, singlehanded, it may be, against a host, does
not think of putting himself in the graceful posture of a fencer.
On the other hand these vehement characters, so antipathetic to
•, are those which his great English admirer picks out as his
]>eculiar favorites ; and bis favour is scantily extended to any others.
For in him the love of strength, as it overrides the love of beauty in
his style, predominates also in determining his predilections ; and
though his style may not be altogether a gainer thereby, his favorites
are certainly of a nobler cast. Yet this too is a Pagan love, arising
out of the impulses and instincts of the natural man, and strangely
at variance with the order of the blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven.
In sooth what place can the chief part of the heroes, whom we are
called upon to worship, find in the Kingdom peopled by the poor in
spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungerers and thirsters after
righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers?
Where would Mahomet stand among these men ? or Mirabeau ? or
•!i ? or Napoleon ( Y» t in this table we have the true correc-
tive and the true directory for hero-worship. At all events it can
never be right that we should be called upon to admire, — not to
•peak of that profane word, to worship — men, all whose prominent
qualities Christianity condemns, men utterly destitute of the qualitie
390 NOTE T.
on which Christianity has stampt its seal. Surely, even without
admitting that " self-contradiction is the only wrong," consistency in
this respect would become, not only those who bow to the divine
authority of the Gospel, but those also who acknowledge it to be the
most perfect body of moral and spiritual truths ever uttered upon
earth. That it is so, few men of intelligence would dispute : and
one proof of its being so is, that the moral truths after which the
wise of this world strive and pant, and of which if they catch a
glimpse they cry evprjKa, and bless their genius, and spread out their
peacock's tail to the sun, are common household words in the New
Testament. Thus, for instance, what Mr Carlyle says, often
powerfully and fascinatingly, but often illusively and delusively,
about the paramount and sole worth of sincerity and earnestness,
finds its truth and its limits in the Christian idea of faith, which
attains to its consummation as faith in the incarnate Son of God,
and, as such, is the victory that overcomes the world.
I have spoken thus much on Mr Carlyle's writings, both on
account of the good which they are fitted to effect, and which they
do effect, which however would be far greater but for the errours
and exaggerations mixt up with the momentous truths contained
in them, and also because they are specially suited to act on an
important portion of the minds to whom my Sermons were imme-
diately addrest. But the idolatry of power is by no means confined
to him ; and in other writers it appears unmitigated by the noble
moral spirit, which forms Mr Carlyle's great attraction. In no
English work that I know of is it more painfully offensive than in
one of the most masterly of our age, that History of the War in the
Spanish Peninsula, which as a military history is said to be
unparalleled. In Coleridge's Tabletalh that truly wise man is
represented as placing his hand on this blot. " I have been ex-
ceedingly imprest with the pernicious precedent of Napier's History
of the Peninsular War. It is a specimen of the true French military
school : not a thought for the justice of the war ; not a consideration
of the damnable and damning iniquity of the French invasion. All
is lookt at as a mere game of exquisite skill ; and the praise is
regularly awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly
ridiculous is the prostration of Napier's mind, apparently a
powerful one, before the name of Buonaparte. I declare I
know no book more likely to undermine the national sense of
NOTE T. 391
right and wrong in matters of forein interference than this work
of Napier's."
Of the justice of this censure there cannot be a more striking
proof than the closing sentences of this able history. "War is
the condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect all
are at strife ; and the glory of arms, which cannot be obtained
without the exercise of honour, fortitude, courage, obedience,
modesty, and temperance, excites the brave man's patriotism,
and is a chasteniug corrective for the rich man's pride. It is yet
no security for power. Napoleon, the greatest man of whom
history makes mention, Napoleon, the most wonderful commander,
the most sagacious politician, the most profound statesman, lost by
arms Poland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and France. For-
tune, that name for the unknown combinations of infinite power, was
wanting to him ; and without her aid the designs of man are as
bubbles on a troubled ocean." These words wind up the history of
a war, which, more visibly perhaps than any other, since that of the
Greeks against the Persian invaders, exemplifies the moral order and
government of the world, and shews how reckless ambition, insolence,
and crime, even when they seem to be irresistible, and almost
omnipotent, are all the while rushing headlong into destruction, and
how Justice and Conscience and the Moral Affections, though the
rulers of the earth send forth their armies to grind them to dust,
have an inextiuguishable principle of life in them, which in time
arouses sympathy, and turns upon and destroys the destroyer.
There is something quite awful in the judicial blindness which has
here come upon a man gifted with such intellectual power. Having
beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven, he says, / have investi-
gated the matter minutely, and have found out it was nothing but a
falling star; and that is nothing but an ignis fatuus. In one sense
tins illustrates the tendency of professional studies to narrow and
spell-bind the understanding, unless they are counteracted by a high
moral sense, vindicating the freedom of the spirit, and proclaiming
that there is something holier and mightier in man and nature, thin
the counters and tools of the intellect. But it is "far more awful
that a historian, writing in this nineteenth century of Christianity,
should have been utterly unable to discern, what was so inanifYst
to the Father of History, that there is a divine retribution, a
Nemesis, striding through history, swaying its ebb and flow, com-
392 XOTE T.
manding its tumultuous waves to rise and fall, and that, as the
early Greek dramatists saw so clearly, vJ3pi<s, el 7ro\\cov vTrepTrXt]-
a-Oy fj-arav, — aKpordrav ciVava^acr' (XTrorofAOV (xlpoixrev ek
dvdyKav.
Indeed a belief in some retributive justice displaying itself in the
affairs of men is so universal, as to seem almost like an instinct of
the conscience ; and perhaps there is no national literature in which
it has not exprest itself in one form or other. An example, admir-
able in its kind, is the popular story, in Grimm's Collection, of the
Fisherman and his Wife, who, having wish after wish granted to
them, go on mounting higher and higher in their demands, until
they reach such a pitch of impious audacity, that all their gifts are
wrested from them, and they are driven back to their previous
miserable and ignominious abode. This story is said to have been
a great favorite with the peasantry of Northern Germany, when the
French Emperor was at the summit of his power ; and they lookt
upon it as a prophecy of his fall. So much wiser were they than
Colonel Napier, whose powerful and laboriously cultivated intellect,
having refused to acknowledge that there is anything above or on a
level with the intellect, when it sees all its calculations baffled, its
certainties confounded, its logical fabric shattered to pieces, and its
almighty Dagon cast headless to the ground, is fain to end in an
Epicurean apotheosis of Chance and Luck ; and, after gazing in-
tently on the catastrophe of the grandest series of wars in all history,
exclaims with the Clown in All's Well that ends Well, " Here is a
pur of Fortune's, sir, or of Fortune's cat." Verily Fluellen is right :
" Fortune is an excellent moral."
Note U : p. 91.
The indispensableness of such a true, living idea of righteousness
to render the moral law with its precepts practically efficient is well
set forth by Baader, one of the profoundest among the philosophers
of Germany, in a dissertation on Kant's Practical Reason ; and the
arguments which he uses to prove the inefficiency of Kant's ethical
system, apply equally to that of the Stoics, to which Kant's is
closely allied. "The consciousness that I ought to act so or so
compels me to acknowledge that I could so act if I would: for
NOTE U. 393
without this conviction I should not concede that I ought. But no
less clear is the conviction that I do not will so to act, that I will
to act otherwise. Now this opposite will, which wills an opposite
course of action, I am to deny, so far as I will it, by keeping in and
keeping down my will, which must be just as easy as — keeping in my
breath, or suicide. This denial of a life, which, though real, is
opposed to my inward better nature, and consequently diseased and
monstrous, for the sake of a better, healthy, and no less real life,
manifesting itself as such, does not involve any contradiction ;
inasmuch as the self-denial with regard to the one life obtains its
complement in the self-affirmation with regard to the other, in one
and the same living subject. On the other hand it seems to me not
only contradictory, but like a piece of irony, to require of a living,
intelligent being, that he should give up that real life, of which alone
he knows anything, while he is openly told that he must not enter-
tain the slightest hope of attaining to any kind of information or
testimony or knowledge of the reality of another life, the affirmation
of which is nevertheless always implied in the deuial of the former,
and while for the assurance of that affirmation he has nothing
whatever, except his own reflexion, or his own imagination. More
consistently, and in accordance with the nature of man, Religion
here takes the directly opposite line ; and beginning with the
affirmation and assurance of another better life, she grounds
her demand, that we should deny its antagonist, entirely on this
affirmation, giving man a promise at the same time that, as he
advances in the evolution of this better life, which exactly keeps
pace with the involution of the worse, he will also acquire a clearer
conviction of the reality of the former, and even an insight into its
economy. Although in resect of this she directs man to the other
side of the grave, this is not to be understood as if she bad him turn
away to something that is not present, to something merely future,
but rather as implying tliat the inward moral life, which is con-
tinually present, will alone abide, when tin- cloud of our present
temporal life, which is now concealing it and preventing its full
manifestation, shall have past away. According to this view of that
self-denial, which moral philosophy as well as religion demand of us,
I assert without fear or limitation, that I consider every act of what
is called philosophical self-denial, which pretends that it can always
dispense wholly with the affirmation of an opposite life, as
394 NOTE U.
affectation and charlatanery, and that man may indeed repress some
particular expression of his will in this waj^ but cannot reform his
will, or chauge its character." Philosophische Schriften, I. 19 — 21.
Note Y : p. 92.
In estimating the moral value of philosophical speculations, at
least in their hearing on the character of their authors, it is ever
necessary to compare them with that aspect of life, and that
condition of society, out of which they spraug, or by which at all
events they must have been greatly modified and determined. The
reader of the Eepublic must keep in mind that Plato lived at Athens
four centuries before the sacramental dignity of marriage was plainly
revealed to man. For, though that sanctity was involved as a germ
in its original institution, the blighting atmosphere of our fallen
world had miserably checkt its development; and sexual love had
almost lost every higher element than sensual passion. Hence it
was not a debasement, but rather an elevation of the idea of the
union between the sexes, to lay down that its purpose was the
procreation of children to be brought up as worthy and dutiful
members of the State. Thus Plato is to be wholly acquitted of the
turpitude of those systems, which in modern times have rejected the
sanctifying light of Christianity, and have plunged back into the
sensual mire.
The sanctity of those affections, which spring out of our natural
relations, was indeed recognised by the Greeks. The conflict
between these affections and the various forms of law and moral
obligation, real or supposed, was one of the grandest themes of their
poetry. But it was not recognised with equal distinctness how
the man is to leave father and mother, and to cleave to his wife ;
nor how the same superiority of the nuptial to every human tie is
to be equally binding on the woman. Nor, though their Poetry,
in its moments of highest inspiration, seemed to catch a distant
glimpse of the manner in which this conflict, like every other, is to
be healed and pacified by self-sacrifice, was a like intuition granted to
other men, until this primary truth was enunciated in the Divine
words, He who loses his life shall save it, and Every one that hath
forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or
NOTE V. 395
children, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold. It is only
when we have been taught that there is something higher and holier
than human love, that we can discern how high and holy human
love also is.
Note W : p. 99.
The rule proposed by Luecke, as cited above in p. 365-6, for de-
termining the bearing of the Comforter's threefold conviction, is
chiefly serviceable with regard to the second. For there can be
little question of whose sin, or of whose judgement, He was to con-
vince the world ; but the meaning of the tenth verse is more
ambiguous. As the word SiKaiocrvvrj has diverse senses in the New
Testament, it has been interpreted diversely in this passage. Hence
it has been doubted whose righteousness was to be the object of the
Comforter's conviction ; and, according to the view taken on this
point, it has been more or less difficult to trace the connexion be-
tween the latter part of the verse and the former. But if we follow
Luecke's very reasonable suggestion, it becomes plain that the right-
eousness, of which the Comforter was to convince the world, was the
righteousness of Him who was going to the Father, and that His
going to the Father was to be a proof of that righteousness. This is
Chrysoetom's interpretation : only, as is so often the case, he takes it
somewhat superficially, looking no further than Christ's own personal
righteousness, and paraphrasing StKcuoo-vvrj by oti aKrjTTTov 7ra.pt-
<T\6flT]V filOV. KaX TOVTOVT€KfJLT^piOV TO 7TpoS TOV TlaTtpa TTOpiVVjdcU.
iirti&r] yap avr<{> act tovto IviKaXovv, otc ovk cotiv Ik tov 0eov,
kou Sia tovto afxapTO)\bv avrbv ZXtyov koX irapa.vop.6v, <f>rjo-iv, oti
kcu raiTtjv dvat,pifo-€i t$v irpofaio-tv. ti yap to vop.i£<o-6ai ipt p.if
ttvui Ik tov GcoG tovto irapdvopov SeiKwo-tv, orav 6V£#to Uvevpa.
€Ktl fie dirtXOovra, kcu ov irpls wpav, dAAct pAvovra Ikil (to yap
OV K€T l 6 €<i>pi IT C pt TOVTO €0~Tl fy AouVrts), tI tpOVCTl XoiTTOV ',
opa, Biol Svb tovtwv dvaipovpkvi)v ttjv Trovqpav viroif/iav ovtc yap
to ar)p*ia ttouiv, dfiapr^Xov (ov yap SvvaraL d/za/rrwAos o/ttcca
irouiv) ovre to irapa 9<^> iTvai SiaTrcuros, dp.apTta\ov. wore ovkcti
Svvaxrdc Xkynv, oti ovtos diiapTwAos Io-tiv, oti ovk Iotiv Ik tov
396 NOTE W.
Qeov. The same explanation is given in nearly the same words
by Theophylact.
Augustin, on the other hand, in his 143rd Sermon, regards the
SiKaioavvr], of which the Comforter is to convince the world, as our
imputed righteousness, the righteousness which the believer in
Christ receives from Him through faith. "Et si non manu tan-
gendo, sed corde creditur ad justitiam, recte de justitia nostra
mundus arguitur, qui non vult credere nisi quod videt. Ut autem
nos haberemus justitiam fidei, de qua mundus argueretur incredulus,
propterea Dominus ait, Be justitia, quia ad Patrem vado, et jam non
videbitisMe. Tanquam diceret : Haec erit justitia vestra, ut credatis
in Me Mediatorem, quern resuscitatum ad Patrem isse certissime
habebitis, quamvis eum carnaliter non videatis, ut per ipsum re-
conciliati Deum spiritualiter videre possitis. Unde figuram Ecclesiae
gestanti mulieri, cum ei post resurrectionem ad pedes caderet, Noli
Me tangcre, inquit : nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem. Quod mystice
dictum intelligitur. Noli Me per corporeum contactum carnaliter
credere : spiritualiter autem credes, id est, fide spirituali Me tanges.
cum ascendero ad Patrem. Quia beati qui non vident, et credunt. Et
haec est justitia fidei, qua mundus carens, de nobis qui ea non care-
mus arguitur ; quia Justus ex fide vivit. Sive ergo quia in illo
resurgentes, et in illo ad Patrem venientis, invisibiliter et in
justificatione perficimur, sive quia non videntes et credentes ex
fide vivimus, quoniam Justus ex fide vivit, propterea dixit, De
justitia, quia ad Patrem vado, et jam non videbitis Me." This ex-
planation supplies that which is wanting in Chrysostom's ; but, from
omitting the primary meaning of the passage, which Chrysostom had
seized, it cannot succeed in establishing more than an arbitrary con-
nexion between the two parts of the text, feebly supported by a
fanciful mystical exposition of our Lord's words to Mary after the
resurrection.
In his 144th Sermon Augustin returns to this passage, and gives
iin interpretation substantially the same, but rather more fully
workt out. " Primo quaerendum est, si de peccato mundus arguitur,
cur et de justitia ? Quis enim de justitia recte argui possit ? An
de peccato quidem suo, de justitia vero Christi, mundus arguitur ?
Non video quid aliud possit intelligi ; quandoquidem, De peccato,
inquit, quia non crediderunt in Me; de justitia vero, quia ad Patrem
vado. llli non crediderunt; ipse ad Patrem vadit. Illorum ergo
NOTE W. 397
peccatum, ipsius autem jnstitia. Sed cur in eo solo voluit nominare
justitiam, quia vadit ad Patrem ? Num non justitia est etiam quod
hue venit a Patre ? — An quia misericordia est quod venit, ideo
justitia est quod vadit ? ut et in nobis discamus irnpleri non posse
justitiam, si pigri fuerimus praerogare misericordiam, non quae
nostra sunt quaerentes, sed et quae aliorura. Quod cum monuisset
Apostolus, — deinde statim addidit : Singuli quique hoc sentite in
vobis, quod et in Ckristo Jesu : qui, cum in forma Dei esset, non
rapinam arbitratus est esse aequalis Deo ; sed semetipsum exinanivit,
formam servi accipiens, in similitudinem hominum f actus ; et habitu
inventus ut homo humiliavit se, /actus obediens usque ad mortem,
mortem autem crucis. Haec est misericordia, qua venit a Patre.
Quae igitur justitia est, qua vadit ad Patrem ? Sequitur, et dicit,
Propter quod et Deus eum exaltamt, et donavit illi nornen, quod est
super omne nomen, ut in nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur, coelestium,
terrestrium, et infemorum, et omnis lingua confiteatur, quia Dominus
Jesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris. Haec est justitia, qua vadit
ad Patrem. Sed si solus vadit ad Patrem, quid nobis prodest ?
Utquid ab Spiritu Sancto de hac justitia mundus arguitur ? Et
tamen, nisi solus iret ad Patrem, non alio loco diceret, Nemo
ascendit in coelum, nisi qui descendit de coelo, Filius hominis qui est
in coelo. — Quomodo ergo ille solus ? An ideo solus, quia Christus
unus est cum omnibus membris suis, tanquam caput cum corpore
8UO? Quae autem corpus ejus, nisi Ecclesia ? Cum ergo nos
ceciderimus, et propter nos ipse descenderit, quid est, Nemo ascendit,
nisi qui descendit, nisi quia nemo ascendit, nisi unum cum eo factus,
et tanquam membrum compactus in ejus corpore qui descendit ? — Et
ideo nos non debemus ab ilia justitia separates putare, quam
tuis ipse commemorat, dicens, De justitia, quia ad Patrem vado.
Cum Christo enim et nos resurreximus ; et nos cum capite nostro
Christo sum interim fide et spe : complebitur autem spes nostra in
ultima resurrectione mortuorum. Cum autem complebitur spes
nostra, tunc complebitur etiam justificatio nostra. — Arguitur ergo
mundus de peccato in eis qui non credunt in Christum ; et de justitia
in eis qui resurgunt in membris Christi. Unde dictum est, Ut nos
simus justitia Dei in ipso. Si enim non in ipso, nullo modo justitia.
Si autem in ipso, totus nobiscum vadit ad Patrem, et haec implebitur
in nobis perfecta just
To this fine exposition the main objection is still, that, from the
398 NOTE W.
want of the primary link, its connexion with the text is not suffi-
ciently palpable. Hence Augustin himself is perplext to make out
where that connexion lies; and in his 95th Tractate on St John he
modifies his explanation, referring Sikouoo-vvy] primarily to the
Apostles, as the representatives of the faithful. " Hie primo viden-
dum est, si recte quisque arguitur de peccato, quomodo recte argua-
tur et de justitia. Numquid enim, si arguendus est peccator
propterea quia peccator est, arguendum putabit quisquam et justuni
propterea quia Justus est? Absit. — Quo pacto igitur mundus
arguendus est de justitia, nisi de justitia credentium ? Arguitur
itaque de peccato, quia in Christum non credit ; et arguitur de
justitia eorum qui credunt. Ipsa quippe fidelium comparatio,
infidelium est vituperatio. — Quapropter mundus de peccato quidem
suo, de justitia vero arguitur aliena, sicut arguuntur de lumine
tenebrae : omnia enim quae arguuntur, ait Apostolus, a lumine
manifestantur. Quantum enim malum sit eorum qui non credunt,
non solum per seipsum, verum etiam ex bono potest eorum apparere
qui credunt. Et quoniam ista vox infidelium esse consuevit,
Quomodo credimus quod non videmus, ideo credentium justitiam sic
oportuit definiri, Quia ad Patrem vado, et jam non videbitis Me.
Beati enim qui nonvident, et credunt. Nam et qui viderunt Christum,
non in eo laudata est fides eorum, quia credebant quod videbant, id
est Filium hominis, sed quia credebant quod non videbant, id est
Filium Dei. Cum vero et ipsa forma servi subtracta eorum esset
aspectibus, turn vero ex omni parte impletum est, Justus ex fide vivit.
— Erit itaque, inquit, vestra justitia, qua mundus arguetur, quia vado
ad Patrem et jam non videbitis Me : quoniam in eum quern non
videbitis creditis in Me ; et quando Me videbitis quod tunc ero, non
videbitis Me quod sum vobiscum modo ; non videbitis humilem, sed
excelsum : non videbitis mortalem, sed sempitemum : — et de hac
fide vestra, id est, justitia vestra, arguet Spiritus Sanctus incredulum
mundum."
Tauler's interpretation is still more unsatisfactory, as such.
" Next the Holy Ghost will reprove our righteousness. Alas, mer-
ciful God, what a poor miserable thing our righteousness is in the
eyes of God! For St Augustin says, Woe and woe to all righteous-
ness, unless Almighty God judge it according to His compassion !
for He has said by the Prophet Isaiah, All your righteousnesses are
as filthy my*.— Many a man is so heartily pleased with his own
NOTE W. 399
ways, that be will neither open his heart to God nor to man, and
takes special care not to let God into his soul. If our Lord comes to
him with His admonitions, directly or indirectly, he follows his own
course, and heeds them not. Such men are utterly untoward, both
to God Almighty and to all His creatures : but wherever the Holy
Ghost comes, He reproves men's ways and lives. Wherever He is
in truth, man confesses his faults plainly, and learns to have calm-
ness, humbleness, and all things that belong to eternal life." In
this interpretation the distinction between the Comforter's first and
second work is almost lost : nor does it appear how the latter part
of the verse is connected with the former.
Nicolaus de Lyra is clear and sensible. " Dejustitia (he says), s.
Chriati : quam non acceptaverunt homines mundani. Quia ad
Patrem vado: per hoc enim quod Christus ad Patrem rediens
resurrexit, et ad coelum ascendit, declarata est justitia ejus, secun-
dum quod arguit Petrus, Act ii. Jesum Nazarenum Virum appro-
batum a Deo. Sequitur : Hunc Jesum resuscitavit Deus, cujus omnes
nos testes sumus. Dextera ergo Dei exaltatus etc. Et hujun justitiae
Christi declaratio erat persecutorum ejus manifesta argutio vel con-
demnation
By Luther, as might be expected, our text is regarded as express-
ing that doctrine, which he was especially appointed to set forth for
the later ages of the Church, as St Paul had been for the earlier, our
justification through Christ and in Christ, as the central truth of
< hiistiaiiitv. "These words too (he says) are a strange and won-
drous speech, and unintelligible in the ears of the world. Righteous-
ness, in the world, and according to all reason, means such a rule and
way of life as one lives conformably to laws and commandments,
whether ordained by Moses or the Emperor, by masters or parents;
And they are called righteous, who obey such commandments. This
right and righteousness are not rejected here or done away: for they
too are ordained by God ; and He wills that they should be observed
in the world,— for without them the government of the world cannot
stand, — so that wrong and crimes may be punisht, and again that
t what is right and well done may be protected, honoured, and
rewarded. But how is such righteousness connected with the words
which Christ here speaks, that / go to the Father^ and ye see Me no
more? Who ever heard that this can be called righteousness?
How does this help to make people honest and obedient ? Were
400 NOTE W.
there not honest people before, especially among the Jews, and also
among the Heathens, who governed praiseworthily and well, de-
fended and upheld right, punisht evil, and so forth, before Christ
came or was known ? and what does He more than this, since He
went up into heaven ? He still lets lords and princes govern as
they themselves know and see fit, and the people be obedient to
them. But these words shew fully that Christ here is not speaking
of outward, worldly righteousness, such as prevails and is necessary
in this life, and such as Moses or the lawyers and philosophers teach
in their books, and men can do of their own ability. For, as in the
foregoing verse, He does not speak of such sins as the world calls
sins and punishes, but mounts above all these, nay, above that which
is good and well done in the eyes of the world, and sums up all in
this one thing, the not believing in Him ; so here too He speaks of
a very different righteousness (a righteousness that is to hold ground
before God), from that which the world recognises ; and He raises
it far and high above all life that can be lived upon earth, and
attaches it solely to Himself. So that both the sin which condemns
the world, with everything in it, consists solely in being without and
against Christ through unbelief ; and righteousness before God is to
stand solely in and upon Christ, that is, upon these words, that / go
to the Father, and ye see Me no more.
" For it has been sufficiently shewn above, how all men lie under
sin and condemnation, with all their doings, even what may be good
and praiseworthy before the world, nay, done according to the Ten
Commandments. If this be true, where" is righteousness ? or
how shall one attain to it ? Thus : Christ here says, This is
righteousness, that I go to the Father, and ye see Me no more. Here
must thou seek and find it ; not in thyself, not upon earth, among
men, be they who or what they may. For Christians are to know of
no other righteousness, whereby they shall stand and be declared
righteous before God, receiving the forgiveness of their sins and
everlasting life, except this going of Christ to the Father : which is
nothing else than that He took our sins upon His shoulders, and
allowed Himself for their sake to be put to death upon the cross, to *
be buried, and to go down into hell, but did not remain under
sin, nor in death and hell, but past through them by His
resurrection and ascension, and now reigns mightily over all crea-
tures at the right hand of the Father. Now He did not go thus to
XOTE W. 401
the Father for His own sake ; for this would not have availed us ;
nor could this have been our righteousness. But as He came for our
sakes from heaven, and became our flesh and blood, so for our sakes
He went up again, after he had completed the victory over sjn, death,
and hell, and entered into that government whereby He delivers us
from all these, and grants us forgiveness of sins, power and victory
over the devil and death, and rules in such manner that His king-
dom or rule is called, and is, righteousness : that is, sin and evil must
pass away therein from before God, and men become righteous before
God and well-pleasing to Him.
" This righteousness however is very secret and hidden, not only
from the word and the natural understanding, but also from the
saints. For it is not a thought, word, or work in ourselves, as the
sophists have dreamt concerning grace, that it is a thing infused into
our hearts ; but it is without and above us, namely, the going of
Christ to the Father, that is, His suffering and resurrection and
ascension. Moreover this is placed beyond our senses and our eyes,
so that we cannot see and feel it, but can only lay hold on it through
faith iu the word which is preacht of Him, that He Himself is our
righteousness, as St Paul says of Him, that He by Ood is made to us
wisdom and righteousness and sanctijication and redemption, that we
may not glory in ourselves, but only in this our Lord, before God.
Verily this is a wonderful righteousness, that we are to be termed
righteous, or to have a righteousness, which is yet no work, no
thought, in short nothing in us, but entirely out of us in Christ, and
which yet becomes truly ours through His grace and gift, as wholly
our own as if it were acquired and earned by ourselves. This
language man's understanding cannot make out, that is to be
called righteousness, when I neither do nor suffer anything, nay,
have no thought or sensation or feeling, and there is nothing in me
on account of which I become pleasing to God, but, passing out of
myself and of all men's thoughts, works, and powers, I hold fast to
Christ, as He site above at the right hand of God, without my even
seeing Him. Yet faith is to receive this, and to build thereupon,
and to comfort itself therewith in time of temptation, when the
devil and a man's own conscience argue with him thus : Hark you !
tohat sort of a Christian are you ? Where is your righteousness f Do
you not see and feel that you are a sinner ? How then will you abide
before Ood f In answer whereto he is to take his stand upon these
2c
402 NOTE W.
words and say, / know very well that I, alas, have sinned, and that
there is no righteousness in me which can hold before God. I must
not, nor will I seek it or know of it in myself; for therewith I should
never be able to come into the presence of God. But here I am told
that Christ says, my righteousness is this, that He is gone to the Father,
and ascended into Heaven. There it is placed, where the devil must
needs let it remain : for he will not make Christ a sinner, or reprove or
find fault with his righteousness. If I am a sinner, and my life can-
not stand before God, and I find no righteousness in me, yet I have
another treasure, which is my righteousness, and through which I may
boast and be bold, that is, this ascension of Christ to the Father,
which He has given and granted to me. What is wanting therein ? or
what flaw can you find therein ? Though we see and feel nothing of
it, yet He Himself thus describes and represents this righteousness, that
I am not to feel it, but to lay hold of it by faith in the word of Christ,
that ye see Me no more. What need should I have of faith, if I coidd
see this before me, or perceive and feel it in myself?
" Therefore learn this saying well, that by means of it you may
draw a plain distinction between the righteousness which is called
Christ's, and everything else that men call righteousness. For here
you are told that the righteousness of which Christ speaks, is notour
work or deed, but His going to the Father or ascension. Now it is
quite clear and palpable that the two are far and wide asunder.
Our work is not Christ ; nor is His ascension our deed and work .
For what have I, or what has any man done toward His going to
the Father, that is, His suffering and dying and rising again and
sitting at the right haud of God 1 This righteousness lies not in my
obedience and good works, even those done according to the Ten
Commandments, much less in my own self-appointed worship and
human service, monkery, pilgrimages, private devotions, and the
like. So that, although a man, understand not these words, what is
meant by going to the Father, yet he must hear and understand thus
much, that it is not and cannot be our work or deed, but is given to
Christ alone, and is attacht to His person. Hence you see how
shamefully we have hitherto gone astray and been deceived under
Popery, so that we knew not, nor were taught anything about such
righteousness, which lies in Christ and His going to the Father;
but the folks were turned away from Christ plump upon themselves;
and our hope and trust were placed on our own works. Nay, Christ
NOTE W. 403
was made out to be a terrible Judge, whom we were to appease with
our works, and with the intercessions of the Virgin and the Saints ;
and we, with our penance or satisfaction, were to put off our sins,
and to earn righteousness. In such blindness and misery were we
all plunged, that we knew nothing of the comfort we were to find in
Christ, but, just like the Heathens, sought everything in ourselves,
and said, May God grant me life, that I may do penance for my sins-
These are the words of Turks, Jews, and papists : for here is
nothing of Christ and His ascension ; but everything is referred to
ourselves, and taught concerning our own amendment.
" True it is indeed, we are to amend and to live otherwise, to do
good and refraiu from evil ; but this mending and living will not
attain to and do that, which Christ's going to the Father is to do,
namely, that we are to become righteous before God and blessed
thereby. Far too weak and puny to effect this are the lives and
works of all the Saints, and the powers of all mankind. For all this
is nothing more than what is earthly and perishable, must cease
with us, and be left here below. Although our deeds and works,
when done according to God's commandments by those who have
faith, are well pleasing to God, and He will reward them both
temporally and eternally, yet this will not avail to bring us to God,
and to give us such righteousness as shall save us from sin ;ni<l
death. Here is no other stay, except only this ascension of Christ,
who is our chief Good and Inheritance, our Hope here, and our
everlasting righteousness."
In this explanation the primary meaning of our Lord's words
is past over, as is very frequently the case in Luther's exposi-
tions of Scripture, which are mostly doctrinal and practi< ■:il, r.-itlu m
than critical and philological. Indeed the chief part of them were
red in the form of sermons or homilies or lectures;
in whi 1 1 rally proceed at once, in ordinary cases, from the
primary, immediate sense of the text to that which applies to our
own and to all time. Besides, though Luther's strong sense and
his familiarity with the Bible often enabled him to discern the truth,
by a kind of divination, even in difficult critical questions, he had
i the habits of mind, nor the acquirements, nor even the
leisure, for such inv< He had more important work, of
far greater urgency : and of this work one main branch was the
doctrinal and practical exposition of Scripture, in order to bring out
404 NOTE W.
its eternal, fundamental verities, and to deliver them from the glosses
by which they had been so lamentably obscured and perverted.
In effecting this he may seem at times to draw passages to his
purpose, which in themselves are remote or even alien from it. But
at all events, when he does so, he is not exercising a capricious
ingenuity, devising arbitrary solutions, and picking out among a
number of probabilities. He is merely setting forth that one view
which he sees, and which he needs must see from his position, looking
out under the sway of the living truth whereby he is possest,
subordinating all things to it, even as a great poet does by the
power of his imagination, and making all things bear witness to it.
This truth, too, even when it is not explicity enunciated in the
particular passage under consideration, is a part of that central,
pervading truth, to which every part of Scripture bears witness.
Calvin's explanation coincides with Luther's ; but, inasmuch
as it bears the form of keeping closer to the text, the defect in
it is more observable. He begins by speaking of the order in
which the conviction wrought by the Comforter proceeds from
one step to another. "Tenenda est graduum series quam ponit
Christus. Mundum nunc dicit arguendum de justitia : neque
enim justitiam esurient ac sitient homines, imo cum fastidio
respuent quicquid de ea dicetur, nisi tacti fuerint sensu peccati.
Praesertim de fidelibus sic habendum est, non posse eos in Evan-
gelio proficere, nisi primum humiliati fuerint, quod fieri non potest
nisi peccatis agnitis. Proprium quidem est Legis munus conscien-
tias vocare ad Dei judicium et terrore vulnerare : sed rite Evange-
lium praedicari nequit, quin a peccato in justitiam et a morte in
vitam deducat. Proinde necesse est ut a Lege mutuetur primum
istud membrum, de quo locutus est Christus. Caeterum justitiasa
hie intellige, quae nobis per Christi gratiam communicatur. Earn
Christus statuit in suo ad Patrem ascensu, nee immerito. Quem-
admodum enim teste Paulo, Resurrexit propter justificationem
nostram, ita nunc ad dexteram Patris sedet, ut quicquid illi
datum est potestatis exerceat, et sic impleat omnia. Denique
e gloria coelesti justitiae suae odore mundum perfundit. Spiritus
autem per Evangelium pronuntiat hunc unum esse modum quo
justi censeamur. Ideo a convictione peccati secundus hie gradus
est, ut convincat Spiritus mundum, quaenam vera sit justitia.
Nempe quod Christus suo in coelum ascensu vitae regnum
NOTE W. 405
constituit, et nunc sedet ad Patris dexteram, ut veram justitiam
stabiliat."
On the other hand Beza, who regards the whole promise as
bearing chiefly on the period immediately following our Lord's
ascension, inclines to take SiKouoo-vvr) in our verse as Christ's
personal righteousness. " Deinde, inquit, arguet mundum de
justitia ; non ipsius mundi certe, qui se totum esse in peccatis,
velit nolit, agnoscet, sed de ipsius Christi justitia. Quia, inquit,
ad Patrem vado, nee amplius videbitis Me: id est, cum mundus
praesens in Ecclesia spectabit Spiritum per Me in vos effusum,
fateri cogetur Me vere justum fuisse, qui, ex hoc mundo discedens,
non fuerim damnatus a Deo pro blasphemo et impio, sed approbatus
et receptus a Patre, cujus cum Me Filium dicerem, illi idcirco
Me ut blasphemum et impium damnarint. Hoc, inquam, fateri
mundus cogetur, et causam Meam Deo placere, cum vos, qui
doctrinam Meam asseretis, tot virtutibus plane coelestibus ornatos
conspicient : quod et ille Centurio statim post Christi mortem
agnovit, et qui revertebantur plangentes, cum paulo ante jussisseut
ilium tolli ac crucifigi." At the same time he proposes two other
explanations, understanding i\ky\uv in the sense of reproving;
"coargui mundum justitiae, quod verae justitiae sit prorsus
inscius, — quoniam eum repudiat, — qui sua virtute nunc regnans
nos justificat ;" and again, M de justitia, quam videlicet sibi in
Christo oblatam contempserint, nunquam mundo postea offerendam,
cum discesserit Christ us ex mundo nunquam nisi ad judicium
rediturus."
The twofold purpose of the Comforter's conviction of righteousness
is thus set forth by Cartwright. " Sicut Spiritus in vobis loquens
inuii'li fastum deprimet, et ejus nequitiam coarguet; sic et Meam
justitiam, quam vos traduci et obscurari inique fertis, vindicabit, et
inde astruet, quod Ego ad Patrem iturus sum. Quod et diligenter
ab Apostolis inculcatum passim est, Christum esse justum et sanc-
tum, idque hoc ipso argumeuto, quod resuscitatus a Deo ad dextram
ejus sedit. Sicut enim ininislerium Enochi sua assumptione in
coelum obsignatum est (Heb. xL 5. collato cum Judae epistola, v.
14) ; sicut etiam Eliae ministerium ejus raptu in coelum abunde
comprobatum est (2 Reg. ii); sic Christi justitia atque innocentia.
Huuc autem Christi ascensum tanto magis testatum esse oportuit,
quod ex ejus justitia ascensu suo plene convicta nostra omnis justitia
406 NOTE W.
pendeat. Nam nisi ille resuscitatus Deo gratus fuisset, eoque apud
dexteram ejus sederet, nos nnllo modo Deo accepti esse possemus.
Si enim qui personam nostram sustinet et peccata nostra omnia in se
transtulit in morte remansit, aut resuscitatus coelo tamen excluditur,
quern locum in coelis reperiemus ? Sic dicitur (Eom. iv. vers, ult.)
Eum resurrexisse propter justitiam nostram. Atque haec ratio est cur
Christum oportuit resurgere tertio die, et non diu hie in terris
versari. Quo etiam fit, ut qui ilium hie in terris haerentem somniant,
tantum ejus justitiae detrahant, quantum ejus in terris commorationis
commento ilium a Patris dextra detrudunt : nee justitiae Christ i
tantum, sed et eodem momento nostrae detrahunt, qui justitiam al)
illo petimus et. commodato accipimus."
In Lightfoot's Horae Hebraicae this verse is discust at considerable
length, and is interpreted in like manner as referring to Christ's two-
fold righteousness. " De justitia Christi hoc intelligendum nemo
non prompte consenserit. At de quanam justitia hie agitur? de
justitia ejus personali et inhaerente ? an de justitia ejus communi-
cata et justificante ? De utraque. Quod ascendit ad Patrem satis
arguit justum Eum esse. — Quod effudit Spiritum arguit meritum
justitiae suae : aliter non potuerat spirituni tali modo donasse.
Et de justitia ejus justificante hie agi praecipue, facile hoc per-
suadere potest, quod de ea tot et tanta celebrantur in Scriptura.
— In Lege revelatur justitia Dei damnans, in Evangelio justitia
justificans. Et hoc est magnum Evangelii mysterium, quod
peccatores justificantur, non solum per gratiam et misericordiam
divinam, sed et per justitiam divinam, per justitiam scilicet Christi,
qui est Jehovah, et qui est Justitia nostra. Et Spiritus veritatis
cum advenit, redarguit — mundum in duobus hisce magnis fidei
articulis, in quibus toto coelo erratur a Judaeis ; nempe de vera et
salvifica fide, fide scilicet in Christo, et de vero modo et formali causa
justificationis, per justitiam scilicet Christi. At quomodo formatur
argumentum? Ego eo ad Patrem; ergo evincetur mundus de
justitia Mea justificante.— Videtur Salvator hoc innuere : perfecto
opere, pro quo peragendo misit Me Pater in mundum jam ad Eum
redeo. Jam vero opus Christi peragendum pro Patre erat varium,
manifestatio Patris, praedicatio Evangelii, debellatio hostium Dei,
peccati, mortis, Diaboli ; praecipuum vero, et a quo pendebant omnia
reliqua, erat, ut persolveret obedientiam vel justitiam obedientialem
Deo.— Et haec justitia est magnum et nobile thema et subjectum
NOTE W. 407
doctrinae Evangelicae, Rom. i. 17 : et de ea necessario et primario
erudiendus erat mundus, et in gloriam Justificantis, et in manifesta-
tionem verae doctrinae Justificationis. Jam ergo plane argui potnit
de hac justitia, ex hoc, quod Christus redierit ad Patrem, quod facere
non potuisset nisi perfecto opere ad quod praestandum fuerat missus.
Non sine ratione additur, Et vos Me non videtis amplius: id est,
Quamvia vos Mihi amicissimi, conjunctissimi, tamen praesentia Mea
non fruemini amj)lius : uude argui potest quod merito Meo fruimini ;
praesertim vero cum vos videat mundus donis Spiritus Mei ita
locupletatos." The explanation of these last words is a sample of
the unhappy excogitations to which divines have been driven
through the determination to make every word in Scripture support
a favorite hypothesis.
Donne, in the Sermons already quoted, in which he treats of this
promise of the Comforter, takes Sikolioo-vvt) to mean our righteous-
ness, and then proceeds to speak of the manner in which the con-
viction of this our righteousness is produced by the Holy Spirit.
" Now the reproof of the world, the convincing of the world, the
bringing of the world to the knowledge, that, as they are all under
sin by the sin of another, so there is a righteousness of another that
must prevail for all their pardons, — is thus wrought. The whole
world cousisting of Jews and Gentiles, when the Holy Ghost had
done enough for the convincing of both these, enough for the over-
throwing of all arguments which could either be brought by the Jew
for the righteousness of the Law, or by the Gentile for the
righteousness of works, — all which is abundantly done by the
Holy Ghost in the Epistles of St Paul and other Scriptures, —
when the Holy Ghost had possest the Church of God of these all-
sufficient Scriptures, tin ■ the promise of Christ was performed ; and
then, though all the world were not preseutly converted, yet it was
presently convinced by the Holy Ghost, because the Holy Ghost had
provided in tfcOM S< n'j. tares, of which He is the Author, that
nothing could be said in the world's behalf for "any other righteous-
ness, than by way of pardon in the blood of Christ." It is a pity
that Donne was not content to abide by what he had already said in
the same Sermon, in the passage cited above (p. 344), where he
shewed that our Lord's promise with regard to the conviction of the
world was not meant to be accompli-lit innncdiaUly, but was to
receive an ever-widening fulfilment in generation after generation.
408 MOTE W.
This is one of the temptations to which ingenious men are exposed,
not to lay firm hold on the truth, even when they have got hold of
it, but to let it slip, while they are chasing some new phantom which
starts up before their mind. Donne, from the peculiar character of
his intellect, from his acuteness, his rich fancy, and that wit which
is the combination of the other two qualities, would have been
especially apt to run into this errour of sophists and rhetoricians, —
which his reverence for the Fathers would rather have encouraged
than represt, — had it not been for his earnest devotion, and his deep
conviction of sin, which gave a life and reality to his Sermons, such
as no ingenuity can attain to. Still there are many passages in his
writings, where it is plain that he forgot to pull in his leaders ; and
they gallop away with him at times over hill and dale, over ploughed
land and waste.
Lampe, adopting the view that SiKaioo-vvr) is our righteousness,
enforces and illustrates it from his rich stores of scriptural learning.
" De justitia loquens intelligit earn quae peccato directe est opposita,
quaeque judicii fundamentum est, justitiam nempe peccatoris coram
Deo, quae est ex Jehova, Jes. liv. 17, in Jehova, Jes. xlv. 23, et ipse
Jehova, Jerem. xxiii. 6. Convictio de justitia comprehendit ut quis
jus Dei in condemnando peccatore — agnoscens, nullam sibi viam coram
judicio Dei subsistendi relictam esse sentiat, adeoque propriam
justitiam prorsus abneget (Ps. cxliii. 2, Jes. lxiv. 10) ; utque simul
de veritate et sufficientia lytri a Christo persoluti plenissime per-
suadeatur (Jerem. iii. 23), ita ut desiderium seu sitis justitiae inde
gignatur. Haec convictio — est necessaria ; quia justitia haec unicum
reconciliationis cum Deo medium est: — quare ignorantia ejus Israelem
perdidit : Rom. x. 3. — Neque tamen sine ope Spiritus haec justitia
cognosci poterat. Admirabilis ille justitiam divinam placandi modus
est mysterium lumini naturae impervium : Phil. iv. 7. — Nullibi nisi
in Evangelio revelatur : Pom. i. 17. Et hoc nondum sufficit. Ita
enim per fastum natura insitum homo ad propriam justitiam
erigendam pronus est, ut, nisi efficacia Spiritus humilieter, ad
abnegandam omnem in carne fiduciam adigi nequeat.
" Primum argumentum est, quia Jesus vadebat ad Patrem suum.
— Veritatis ea indigitatae demonstratio ad conscientiam in mundo
opus est Spiritus Sancti. Indubitato enim pertinet ad summa fidei
mysteria : 1 Tim. iii. 16. — Demonstrata vero haec Veritas argumen-
tum erat firmissimum adductae justitiae. Nam vadens ad Patrem
NOTE W. 409
per paasiones cor suum appignorabat, quod a nulla creatura exspec-
tari poterat (Jerem. xxx. 21) ; adeoque probabat se Eum esse qui
ultro veniebat (Ps. xl.), qui potestatem habebat animam ponendi (Job.
x. 18). Vadeus ad Patrem per mortem, quando spiritum suum in
manus ejus commendabut, declarabat se esse Pontificem ilium im-
maculatum (Hebr. vii.), qui omnes suos adversarios provocabat
(Jes. 1.) ; uude jam in articulo mortis jus habebat latroni Paradisum
addicendi, et statim post hunc abitum in Spiritu justijicabatur : 1
Tim. iii. 16. Praecipue vero justitia haec demonstrabatur, quando
per adscensum in coelum ad Patrem pergebat. Nam per hunc aditum
thronum regni occupabat, quod in justitia fundatum erat (Ps. lxxxix.
14: xcvii. 2), quod merces laborisejus erat (Jes. liii. 10, 11), quodque
consequenter occupare non potuisset, nisi omnia consummavisset
quae a Sponsore et summo Sacerdote nostro exspectabantur. A
Patre igitur admissus declarabatur ut Servus in quo sibi complacebat:
Jes. xlii. 1. Porro cum abitu ejus ad Patrem effusio Spiritus
Sancti juncta erat, quae ipsa quoque plenariam justitiam acquisitam
esse demonstrabat. Post earn enim sanctum sanctorum ungi demum
poterat : Dan. ix. 24. —
"Aliud arguraentum additur, quia discipuli Jesum non amplius
videbant. — Haec Veritas itidem per Spiritum docenda erat. Ita
enim discipuli juxta cum omnibus Judaeis exspectatione regni ter-
reni a Messia erigendi — fascinati erant, ut praejudicio hoc nisi per
Spiritus illuminationem liberari nequirent. Triplici autem modo
haec verba cum praecedentibus nexa esse concipi queunt. Primo
possont argumenti immediate praecedentis propiorem dare elucida-
tioneni. — Et turn declaratur — opus ita consummatum, ut redire
amplius in terram non haberet opus. Secundo verba haec ut con-
sectarium ex antecedentibus queunt considerari. — Erat enim non
exiguum in eo contra causam Christi praejudicium, quod a din -ipulis
non amplius conspiceretur. — Ut vero objectionem hanc Dominus
eluderet, docet veram ratiouem, cur oculis eorum se subduceret,
non esse aliam quam iter ad Patrem, et occupationem throni supra
omnia regna mundaua evecti. Quod si quis ollipsin — respuat, ille
verba nostra tanquam novum argumentum considerare poterit, —
justitiam aeternam esse adductam. Argumentation! huic facem
praefert Apostolus, Heb. viil 4. Si esset in terra, sive, quod
eodem recidit, si in terra mansisset, non esset Sacerdos.- Cum
enim sacerdos sanctuarium debeat habere in quo oil'erat, neque sane-
410 NOTE W.
tuarium terrestre Christo conveniret, necessariura erat ut coeleste
haberet, et relicta terra intraret. — Hoc vero argumenturn eo magis
notatu dignum erat, quia ita discipuli praemuniri poterant contra
Pseudoprophetas dicentes, Hie et illic Christus est; cum genuini
Christi asseclae uullam visibilem ejus praesentiam in terris exspec-
tent, ne in ipso quidem regno ultimorum temporum glorioso, et
beati sint qui non vident, et tamen credunt."
By the Arminian divines Chrysostom's historical view is followed.
The explanation given by Grotius has already been quoted in p. 331.
Wetstein's is to the same effect. " Keum, hoc est, Christum, inno-
centem justumque fuisse demonstrabit, quod coelo receptus est,
ut ibi ad dextram Patris sederet, et aeternum regnaret." In Ham-
mond's Paraphrase the meaning of this unfathomable declaration is
happily reduced to a minimum: " He shall vindicate and justify My
mission and innocence by My ascension to heaven, taking Me away
out of the reach of human malice, and rewarding My patience with
His consolations f as though our blessed and eternal Lord had been
a good man, who, having met with cruel usage in this life, was to be
remunerated for his sufferings in the next. Even Socinus has not
lowered these words more by his singular explanation in his Ex-
plicationes Locorum sacrae Scripturae : " Dejustitia, quia justum est,
vel fuit, Christum auferri e conspectu hominum, et nunquam ab eis
conspici, quern ita indigne tractarunt."
Bossuet, in his 20th Meditation sur VEvangile, explains BcKaioa-vvq
with reference to the righteousness of faith. " Pour entendre cette
seconde conviction du Saint-Esprit, il faut savoir que la justice
chretienne vient de la foi ; selon cette parole du prophete repetee
trois f ois par saint Paul, Le juste vit de la foi. Mais la veritable
epreuve de la foi, e'est de croire ce qu'on ne voit pas. Tant que
J6sus-Christ a ete sur la terre, sa presence a soutenu la foi de ses
disciples : aussitot qu'il ftit arrete, leur foi tomba ; et ceux qui
auparavant croyoient en lui comme au redempteur d'Israel, com-
mencerent a dire froidement, Nous esperions quHl devoit racheter
Israel; comme s'ils disoient, mais maintenant apres son supplice
nous avons perdu cette esperance. Voila done la foi des apdtres
morte avec Jesus-Christ. Mais quand le Saint-Esprit l'eut ressus-
cit6e, en sorte qu'ils furent plus constamment et plus parfaitement
attaches a la personne et a la doctrine de leur mattre, qu'ils ne
l'etoient pendant sa vie, on vit en eux une veritable foi, et dans cette
NOTE W. 411
foi la veritable jnstice ; qui etant l'ouvrage du Saint-Esprit, il
s'ensuit qu'il donna an raonde une parfaite conviction de la justice."
This shews a very low, superficial conception of the meaning and
power of faith, and of its connexion with Christian righteousness ;
as though this righteousness were' granted to a mere act of the
understanding, exercised somewhat arbitrarily ; and as though the
worth of faith depended, not on its own 7r\r)po<f>opta, but on the
remoteness and invisibleness of its object. Such however is the
prevalent notion of faith in the Church of Rome ; nor could one ex-
pect anything profounder from the eloquent French rhetorician.
The primary meaning of our text is clearly set forth by Tittmann.
" Dominus post mortem videbatur causa sua cecidisse, talisque esse,
qualem clamabant Judaei, homo rebellis, impostor, rex Judaeorum
opinatus. Sed postquam redierat e morte in vitam coelosque con-
scenderat, turn demuni intellectum est eum esse justum, sanctum,
innocentem, immo vero, quern se erat professus, Filium Dei, missum
Servatorem humani generis. Quodsi non fuisset, Deus eum nee
revocasset e morte, nee in coelum recepisset, nee Sanctum Spiritum
misisset. Atque haec est hoc loco 8iKai<xrvv>i, nempe sanctitas et
innoc< isti. Ilaec manifesta reddebatur, cum Apostoli,
illuminati a Sancto Spiritu, praedicarunt inter omnes gentes, ac
priinum inter Judaeos, Jesum, quem contemserant, conviciis lacessi-
verant, — cruci affixerant, — hunc eundem rediisse e morte in vitam,
ad Patrem profectum esse, ornatumque gloria et majeHtate divina.
Igitur sensus hie est : efficet, uimimm per Apostolos, ut niundus, in
-, intelligat, qualis ego et quantus sim. Atque id
discipuli et ipn tuin d eintUD plane et perspicue cognoscebant, cum
Dominus non amplius-versaretur inter eos, homo tenuis, visibili
corpore, et tamen sentirent ipsmn vivuni ac potentem, niliilcpie non
"praestantem eomm quae esset pollicitus ; id quod Donn'mis innui re
voluit verbis his, ko.\ ovk €tl Bwpilrk fit."
recent commentators on St John, Luecke, in his
elaborate work, examines the various explanations of this passage.
** AtKaioarvv-i] in this verse is interpreted to be SiKaiocrvvrj rod
Ocov, in St Paul's sense, by Cyril, Augustin, Erasmus, Luther,
Kin, and most of the Protestant exegetica! writers
<»f the Hltli an-! 17th oenttffies; as also by Lampe, Michaelis, Storr.
So is it by De Wette, only -with tin's mollification, that lie does not
refer it to the mode of obtaining justification, as set forth by St
412 NOTE W.
Paul, but to the victorious power of God's justice manifesting itself
to the world. If however, according to the above-stated herme-
neutical canon, hiKaiovvv-q in our verse must be understood of the
personal righteousness of Christ, it is impossible to explain this
passage by St Paul's doctrine of the relation between the sin of the
world and the atoning righteousness of God. According to this
relation, the explanatory ground, which follows 6'rt, ought to be,
that Jesus gave His life for the salvation of the world, or devoted
Himself for the world (xvii. 19) : this however is not contained in
the words 6Vt viraytM k. t. A. I pass over the explanation of
SiKaioo-vvr) given by Grotius, as referring to the distributive justice
of God, and that of the Socinians, who interpret it of objective
justice, in Kuinoel's words, ' de eo quod jus et fas est, quod fieri
debet, dum ad Patrem abeo.' By the above-mentioned canon every
interpretation is inadmissible, which does not proceed on the assump-
tion that SiKaiocrvvr) is the personal righteousness of Christ. If we
take this as establisht, the 10th verse, viewed in connexion with the
whole e'Aeyx 05 ? must be understood as follows : while the Holy
Ghost convinces the world that it is sin not to believe in Jesus, He
also proves to the world, that that which it persecutes is righteous-
ness, in other words, that Christ, whom it hates, although crucified,
is no malefactor, as it supposes, but the Just One. Thus the eAey^os
advances, from the sin of the world, which does not believe, because
it does not recognise the righteousness of Christ, to the proof of
Christ's righteousness. But this is proved by His going to the
Father, into glory."
Tholuck agrees with Luecke : and so does Olshausen, but, as usual,
looks more closely into the spiritual meaning of the passage. " As
the Spirit reveals the negative side (sin), so in the second place does
He also reveal the positive side, righteousness. Nothing is more
natural than that to the insight into sin should be added an insight
into that condition where sin is removed, that is/righteousness. — If
Christ's going to the Father were mentioned alone, this might be re-
garded as a testimony of His perfect righteousness ; but then the
words, ov/ceT6 #€oopeiTe fxe, have no meaning. We must therefore
take vTrdytiv as expressing his removal from sight, and must com-
bine this His bodily absence with His invisible, all-pervading
efficacy. Then we get the following sense, which is perfectly suited
to the context : the Spirit convinces, as of sin, so of righteousness ;
NOTE W. 413
for He makes manifest how the Saviour, though unseen in the body,
works invisibly, and perfects our inward life. — Here the view taken
by the Reformers, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and subsequently
maintained by Lampe and Storr, that StKaiocrvvy] in this place
refers to our justification before God, requires consideration. The
advocates of this interpretation take the supplementary clause in
the following manner : the Spirit also works the conviction of the
justification necessary for sinful man ; for after My atoning death I go
to the Father, and will work invisibly for you. But if this supposition
were tenable, the clause must necessarily have spoken expressly of
the death of Christ, which is only remotely alluded to in the words
vrrdyo} irpbs rbv Tlarepa, in so far as it was to precede His ascension.
Nor can any meaning be extracted from the words kci.1 ovkctl
Ouoptlrk /i€, unless they are referred to the invisible dispensations
of grace ; but these belong to the work of sanctifi cation, not of justi-
fication, and therefore do not suit this interpretation. Moreover,
not only does SiKaKxrvvrj never mean justification in the language of
St John, but not even in that of St Paul. The very profound and
true idea involved in the Lutheran doctrine of Justification
is exprest by Aoyi£«r0cu «s SiKaiocrvvrjv, never by BiKaioarvvr)
alone."
Stier's exposition exhibits his intimate knowledge of Scripture,
both of the letter and the spirit. " Here we have wholly to reject
the interpretation, which is a special favorite with the Rationalists
of our days, but unhappily has also been adopted by pious en-
quirers, both of ancient and modern times, according to which our
Lord means nothing further, than that the Holy Ghost will con-
vince the world of His righteousness, and that of His cause, — that,
though He was rejected, He was innocent and just, and therefore
that they who believed in Him had light on their side. Even
Augustin says, * Arguitur mundus de justitia eorum qui credunt ;'
but he did not mean that this was the only, and the whole sense.
In proof of this, it is contended, our Lord's Resurrection and
Glorification are referred to in the words tVa-yo) irpbs rbv YiaTipa.'
so that on would not be declarative, as we above stated it to be.
Grotius, with a slight modification of this view, makes SiKaiocrOvr)
absolute, supplying Geov. 'Ostendet Spiritus Deura aequum esse
Rectorem, ut qui me extra omnem injuriae contactum, (hoc enim
est, quod ait, non vidcbiti* Me, ut supra vii. 30), in suae majestatis
414 NOTE W.
consortium receperit.' Hezel, who even remarks that His going to
the Father was itself His Sikouoo-vvy), says that the Spirit was to
convince the world that it was fitting and necessary that Jesus
should go through death to the Father, in opposition to their false
notions, — that the true Messiah was really to die. The main part
however, as was before said, take SiKaioo-vvrj simply for My right-
eousness and innocence. What shall we say to all this ? In the
first place we will recognise the truth which lies amid the errour,
and admit that, according to the phraseology of St John, we cannot,
as in St Paul, take SiKatocrvvr) to mean imputed righteousness or
justification ; so that primarily it must here be the SLKaiocrvvrj
Xpia-Tov. We admit that the clauses dependent on on point to
the three genitives, — the a/xapria tov KocrfMov, that they do not
believe, — Sikolloo-vvy) kp\ov, that I go to the Father, — and the Kpio~i<s
rov ap^ovTos tov Koo-p:ov tovtov. This however, so far from ex-
hausting, scarcely touches the grounds and purposes for which the
world, after being convinced of its sin, was to be convinced of
Christ's righteousness, and of the judgement of Satan. With the
same, or greater propriety may we supply tov Kocrpbov in all the three
cases, if we look to the application and appropriation of the three
convictions which the Holy Spirit purposes that the world should
make. For when the world. has had its sin set before it, will not the
Spirit shew and offer it a righteousness instead thereof? will He
allow it to fall, without further help, cut off from the righteousness of
Christ, into the judgement of Satan? Therefore, although most
weighty authorities, even among the ancients, found nothing in this
verse beyond the righteousness of Christ, and although they are sup-
ported by a concurrence of modern commentators, from Beza, Bengel,
Morns, Tittman, down to Olshausen, Luecke, and Tholuck, —
the last of whom adopts the explanation of Euthymius Sikollov yap
yvojpicp.a to 7ropev€o-0ai 717305 tov Geoi/ Kal o~vv€ivcu avrw oW —
confirming it by the words ZSiKauodr) iv ILvev/xaTiinl Tim. iii. 16,—
yet we cannot possibly content ourselves with this sense, but look
upon the SiKaioo-vvr) Xpia-Tov as merely the basis for the offer of
this righteousness to every one who even now will believe. This is
the view given correctly, though not fully enough, by Klee, that
He is the Righteous One per eminentiam, the Holy One of God, and
the Sanctification and Justification of the world. There still
remains an acquittal for the sin of the world ; and Christ did not go
NOTE W 415
to the Father to judge the world, but the Prince of this world.
Is not this evident from the connexion between this verse and the
next ? Else the necessary consequence from the second proposition,
that Christ, whom the unbelief of the world crucified, is the
Righteous One, must be the condemnation of the world.
" But let us look back at its connexion with the preceding verse,
that we may discern its real force on this side also. The sinner,
who retains and consummates his sin by unbelief in the Saviour,
will either wholly give up all thought and care about becoming
righteous, or, — what in the immediate bearing of the whole passage
on Israel, and its fulfilment by them, was the commonest result,
— will invent and fabricate a false righteousness of his own for
himself. Against both of these procedures the Spirit of Truth
inu<t bear witness : and hence we cannot sufficiently keep in mind
that in the second proposition also kXky^et rov koct/xov forms the
object of Kept SiKaiocrvvrjs. According to the spirit of the world,
without the great revelation of the Comforter, we should give a
totally different sense to the two correlative terms, sin and righteous-
ness. By sin we should merely understand the transgression of the
law. Under righteousness, we should either mean that God alone
and His Holy One is righteous ; or we should bring forward
something about our own righteousness and virtue. Between
these two senses lies the marvellous new testimony of the Spirit.
A(Kouoo-vr>/, in its application to the world, — to this assertion we
must cling, and from this we must start, — must be the complete
opposite to ufxapria. Moreover we must note, in tracing the
xion and transition between the two propositions, that,
inasmuch as the overthrow of that false righteousness, which is mere
sin so long as it is in unbelief, is prepared and included in the uth
verse, the 10th, if there is to be a full organic progress of thought,
must take up this point. Consequently in full, 'the Holy Ghost
• •'Hivinces the world of righteousness, partly, that it must needs have
a righteousness, partly that it cannot find this righteousness in
itself, part I must seek this righteousness in another, namely
in Christ.' Thus the passage is explained by Rieger, in his IJerzc7i~
tpostille, out of the depth of his practical understanding and famili-
with Scripture : and is he exegetically wrong? We need only
at the utmost modify his expressions, and say, In that the Holy
Ghost convinces the world of sin, so long as it does not believe in
416 NOTE W
Christ, He has already brought all its righteousness to nought:
so that Kieger's first two thoughts are comprised in the previous
conviction: and when, in immediate opposition to this, the right-
eousness of Christ is attested, can this be meant in any other sense,
than that this is and will be the only righteousness of those who
believe in Him ? As Gerlach says, maintaining the true meaning
against the modern commentators, 'He convinces the world that
there is a righteousness of God, made manifest in Christ, which
justifies and sanctifies the sinner.'
"As the 4'Aey£is of the Holy Ghost cannot but include the con-
viction, that there is no other righteousness than that of God in
Christ, of Christ before God, — for the worst, most obstinate lie of
sin, the cause of the most wilful unbelief, is the dream of our own
righteousness, — so must it include the offer of Christ's righteousness
to faith, which on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 38), and continually
afterward, in the preaching of the Apostles, follows immediately
after the declaration of sin. Or can it be conceived that our Lord
here, where He was assuredly giving a complete outline of the
preaching of the Spirit to the world, should have made no mention
of this ? Here therefore the interpretation which we reject leaves a
great chasm, places the sinful world and the righteous Christ in
total separation from each other, although in fact the Spirit every-
where offers and holds out Christ to the world, unto righteousness.
" Herewith alone, we assert finally with full confidence, the
explanatory Sri completely agrees. Luecke says, 'In that case
the explanation which followed must have been, that Jesus was
giving His life for the salvation of the world, or sacrificing Himself
for the world ; this however does not lie in on -wrayw.' We reply
it does lie therein ; for this wrdytiv comprises His death, the over-
looking of which is a great detriment to the meaning; and just
before also, in v. 7, xm-dyeiv, if rightly interpreted, implies the act
of gaining, obtaining, atoning : hence it does so likewise in v. 10.
Christ alone goes to the Father for lis, as our Mediator and High-
priest : see the very same thought exprest in Hebr. ix. 24. More-
over, what is here said of not seeing Him, must refer, if it is to have
a sense suited to the context, to faith in the unseen, and thus sets
the righteousness of Christ, which is to be apprehended by faith,
in opposition to the sin of unbelief. Why our Lord says Oeupdrc,
addressing the disciples, has been explained by Bengel. 'Nee
NOTE W. 417
tamen siue causa sermo est secuudae personae : nam si cujusquam
esset videre Jesum, Apostolorum esset : atque horum tamen ipsorum
erat credere, et omnes ad credendum invitare.'
" All this sufficiently refutes what has been said againt the ex-
position adopted by the Reformers concerning the righteousness of
Christ offered to faith. It is a remarkable justification of this
exposition, that, after the way had been prepared for it by Cyril
and Augustin, the true meaning of our Lord's words was first
brought forward clearly by the Reformers, with whom Erasmus
concurs. In fact this is the only practical exposition : it has con-
tinually forced itself ever since on all preachers and practical ex-
positors endowed with evangelical knowledge, and alone agrees with
the actual testimony of the Spirit to the world from the day of
Pentecost hitherto. For, as Luther says, f we are not to know any
other righteousness wherewith we can stand before God, — except
this going of Christ to the Father, which is nothing else than that
He took our sin upon His shoulders, and allowed Himself by reason
thereof to be slain upon the cross, to be buried and to go down into
hell, yet did not remain under sin and death and hell, but past
tliroti/li (hem by His Resurrection and Ascension.' Thus He who
was exalted gives repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins (Acts
v. 31) ; and by Him all that believe are justified (Acts xiii. 39).
This is the righteousness of God, according to Rom. iii. 26, given
from heaven, and having validity in heaven. The watchword of the
Reformation, the Lord our Righteousness, or Christ our Righteousness,
jii.iy be misunderstood and misused ; but it is and must ever be
the centre of all the preaching of the Holy Spirit to a sinful
and self-righteous world : and this is here declared beforehand by
Christ Himself."
Note X : p. 125.
Every scholar will remember the account which Thucydides gives
of the demoralization produced at Athens by the plague. It is such
a revelation of the dark places of human nature, and so plainly shews
how inefficient the intensest anticipation of suffering is to produce a
convictiou of judgement, that I will i re. IIpioTov tc rjp^e
T.IAA'X rf) 7ToA« (7Tt 7rAcOV dvO/XtUS TO VQO-J]\UX. f)<fiOV "/Up
2 D
418 NOTE X.
eroXfia ns, a wporepov direKpyirreTO firj /ca0' rjSovrjv iroielv,
dyx^Tp°4' 0V T *) v fi€Ta€oXr]V opiovres twc t evSat/xovtov ko.1
alcfiVlSlOiS OvrjCTKOVTiOV, KCU TWC OvSeV TTpOTepOV K€KTr)p:eV(OV €V#t'S
8e tolk€iv(ov exovriov. oicne Ta^etas Tag eTravpea-ei<s kcu npbs to
TepTvvbv rj£iovv Trouio-dai, ecfrrj/xepa Ta re a-itifiara kcu to. xp^V aTa
ojJLotaiS rjyovp,evoi. kcu to pXv irpoo~TaXcuTroipelv tw 8o£ai>Ti KaA.o7
ovSeis 7rp66vp:o<s yjv, ddyjXov vopLifav el 7rptv e7r' avro eXdeiv Sia-
KJiOapyjcrerat. on Be rjSrj re rjBb kcu 7ravTax66ev rb e<s avro KepSa-
XeOV, TOVTO KCU KdXoV KCU XPW L l l0V K a T^°~ rr ]' ^^ v °^ <f>6£o<> 7]
civ6pio7ru)V vopios ovSeis ctTreipye, to p.ev Kpivovres ev o/xotw kou
o-e6W kol p), e/c tov 7ravTas opav ev icrw d~oXXvp,evovs, twv Be
up.apTrjp.a.Tiov ovSei? eXTritjov peXP 1 T0 ^ BiKi t v yevecrOcu €iovs av
rfjv Ttpajpiav dvTiBovvcu, ttoXv Be /W^co T-qv 77077 KaTeyjrr]cj)tcrp:evr]v
(T^wv e7riKpep:acrdf)vcu. r}v Trplv epjrearelv, ciko? elvcu tov €lov tl
chroXavcrcu. II. § 53.
Arnold, who was fond of giving a reality to his religious teaching,
by shewing the bearing of its principles, and exemplifying their
operation, in social and political life, remarks, in his first Sermon,
how the same facts were observed on other like occasions. " Those
who have read the story of the Great Plague of London in 1666, or
that of Florence in 1348, or of any other seasons of great pestilence
which have visited countries possessing a knowledge of the Gospel,
may remember the striking effect produced upon men's minds by
those sweeping calamities. It seemed as if all were awake from a
dream, had turned away from acting an unreal part, and were at
once suddenly sobered and made in earnest. There was a separation
broadly and strongly markt between the good and the wicked, like
that which will take place in another world. Those who knew what
would become of them after death, but had been playing away then-
lives in the usual follies of mankind, all began now to crowd the
churches, to pray with most hearty sincerity, and to look upon sin
in its true light; as their worst and most deadly enemy. The unbe-
lievers on the contrary, those who had hardened their hearts effectually
by a course of godless living, they too threw aside the covering which
they had merely worn for the sake of the world's opinion, and began
to serve their Master, the Devil, without disguise. Thus the churches
were thronged in one place, whilst every sort of abominable wicked-
ness, open blasphemy, lewdness, rioting, robbery, and murder, were
NOTE X. 419
practist without restraint in another. In short, the servants of
God and of Satan took their part openly ; and few, if any, held a
middle course between them." Even at Athens some persons were
roused to a higher pitch of magnanimity : ot aperi}? ri fxcra-
TTOiovfJicvoi, Thucydides says, aia^xyvy rjfeiSovv o-g/>oji> avrwv,
c(ti6vt€S irapa toi'S <f*\ovs.
The ordinary occurrence of crimes at executions is noticed by
Donne in his 37th Sermon, when he is urging that the fear of
the Almighty Judge, if we kept it always before us, would keep
men from sin. " We have seen purses cut at the sessions, and at
executions ; but the cutpurse did not see the judge look upon him :
we see men sin over those sins today, for which judgement was in-
flicted but yesterday ; but surely they do not see then that the
judge sees them." It is sad to think that, in the face of this
observation, legislators should have continued for centuries acting
under the notion that punishment is almost the only preventive
of crime.
Note Y : p. 130.
With regard to the meaning of the Comforter's third conviction,
the great body of divines are in the main tolerably well agreed.
Chrysostom indeed seems to narrow the sense, by resting the evi-
dence of the judgement past upon the Prince of this world almost
entirely upon the fact of the .Resurrection. IldXiv ivravda rbv
7T(pl 8iKaio(rx'vy]<; dvaKivil Xoyov, on KaTC7raAaio-c rov dvTi'SiKOV
ovk av o< a/xa/)To>Aos <Sv KaT€Trdkaurcv "mtp ovSc chkcuos tis
ilvOpui-rrdiV Troifjo-at. ia-\va-€v. on yap kotukck/htch Si c/xe, cfcroi>Tcu
ot KarairaTOvvrts avrbv vorcpov, kcu ttjv dvda-raxriv p.ov cra^aJ?
€iooT€S, onrtp KarcLKpivovros avroV (<ttiV ov yap io-\vo~€ p.c Kara-
irvtlv. €7T€i ovv tXtyov, on Oaipovtov <X 0, » Ka ' " Tl irkdvos ctytx*,
kcu raGra /utci ravra ott^^VcTai IwAa ovra' ov yap av avrov
tlkov, tiy€ apLapTip vTrtvOvvos ">")MV. wvl St KaraKtKpirai teal
tKpk^Xryrai. But Theophylact, while in the main he copies Chry-
sostom, gives a wider proof of this great victory, in the presence of
tli. Spirit. 'Ek tovtov 6e ird\iv SUaiov Kal dvapdprrjTOV a7ro8ct'^ct
pi to Uvcvp.a y €K tov tov' Koa-fiOKpdropa V7r ipov KaraKpiOrjvai
420 NOTE Y.
koX KaTa7ra\aL<rdfjvai. eVeiS?} yap eXeyov, 6Vi SaifMovtov «fx €t > Ka *
on ev tw BeeXfr/SovX OavfxaTa notei, Kal 7rXdvos eort, ravra
7rdvTa, cfi-qo-l, SeLxOyjo-ourai /xarata, KaraKp'nov (pavevTOS rov
8ia/36Xov, Kal irao-L 8eix6zvros otl vir epov vcvt/cryrat, oirep ovk av
rjSvvtfOnv, el firj Icrx^poTepos avrov rjpqv, Kal 7rdcn]S apapTLas
aXXorptos. 7rws 8e ideixOr] tovto ; ry rov ILvevpaTOS irapovo-ui
irdvTes ol TTLcrrevovTes els X/hcttov KaTairaTrjpa Kal vfipiv eiroiovvTo
rov KocrpoKpdropa. ovkovv eSeiKwro Ik tovt(ov Kal otl vtto "KpicrTov
KaraKeKpiTai iroXXuj Trporepov. — Kal dXXios 8e, eXeyx^ tov a7ri<rTrj-
cravra Kocrpov to Uvevpa irepl hiKaiocrvvqs, rovTecniv, otl eo~re-
prjTat SiKaiocrvvqs 6 prj ttl(tt€vo)v els rov SiKaiov 'Irjo-ovv, rou
8ia SiKaioo-vvrjv dvaXrjcfiOevTa els ovpavovs. cAeyx ct Ka ' KaraKpivei
Kal tos pddvpov, otl KaraOpavo-devTOS tov SaTaya ov8e ovtojs
avrov rjdeXrjcre irepiyeveo-dai.
Augustin, in his 95th Tractate on St John, refers the judge-
ment to that at the end of the world. " Arguet etiam de judicio,
quia princeps hujus mundi judicatus est. Quis est iste, nisi de quo
ait alio loco, Ecce venit princeps mundi, et in me nihil inveniet ? id
est, nihil juris sui, nihil quod ad eum pertineat, nullum scilicet
omnino peccatum. Per hoc enim est diabolus princeps mundi. Non
enim coeli et terrae, et omnium quae in eis sunt, est diabolus prin-
ceps, qua signification intelligitur mundus, ubi dictum est, Et mun-
dus per Eum /actus est : sed mundi est diabolus princeps, de quo
mundo ibi continuo subjungit atque ait, et mundus Eum non cognovit;
hoc est, homines infideles, quibus toto orbe terrarum mundus est
plenus : inter quos gemit fidelis mundus, quern de mundo elegit, per
quern f actus est mundus ; de quo Ipse dicit, non venit Filius hominis
ut judicet mundum, sed ut salvetur mundus per Ipsum. Mundus eo
judicante damnatur ; mundus eo subveniente salvatur ; qUoniam
sicut arbor foliis et pomis, sicut area paleis et frumentis, ita infideli-
bus et fidelibus plenus est mundus. Princeps ergo mundi hujus, hoc
est, princeps tenebrarum harum, id est, infidelium,— de quibus
eruitur mundus, quibus dicitur, Fuistis aliquando tenebrae, mine
autem lux in Domino,— princeps mundi hujus de quo alibi dicit.
Nunc princeps mundi hujus missus est foras, utique judicatus est ;
quoniam judicio ignis aeterni irrevocabiliter destinatus est. Et de
hoc itaque judicio, quo princeps judicatus est mundi, arguitur a
Spiritu Sancto mundus ; quoniam cum suo principe judicatur, quern
NOTE Y. 421
superbus atqne irapius imitator. Si enim Deus, sicut dicit Apostolus
Petrus, peccantibus angelis non pepercit, sed carceribus caliginis inferi
retrudens tradidit in judicio puniendos servari ; quomodo non a
Spiritu Sancto de hoc judicio mundus arguitur, quando in Spiritu
Sancto haec loquitur Apostolus ? "
In his 143rd Sermon, on the other hand, Augustin applies our
Lord's promise to the casting out of Satan through the power of
Christ from the heart of believers. " Nee inde se mundus excuset,
quod a diabolo impeditur, ne credat in Christum. Credentibus enim
princeps mundi mittitur foras, ut jam non operetur in cordibus
liominum, quos Christus per fidem coeperit possidere ; sicut operatur
in tiliis diflidentiae, quos ad tentandos et tribulandos justos plerum-
que concitat. Quia enim missus est foras, qui iutriusecus domina-
batur, extrinsecus praeliatur. Etsi ergo per ejus persecutiones
Domiuus dirigit mitts in judicio; tamen jam ipse hoc ipso quo fora3
m est, judicatus est. £t de hoc judicio mundus .arguitur : quia
fmstra de diabolo queritur, qui non vult credere in Christum, quern
judicatum, id est, foras missum, et propter nostram exercitationem
forinsecus oppugnare permissum, non solum viri, sed etiam mulieres
ft pueri et pr.cll.te martyres vicerunt. Sed in quo vicerunt, nisi in
illo in quem crediderunt, et quern non videntes dilexerunt, et quo
dominaute in cordibus suis pessimo dominatore caruerunt ? Et hoc
totum per gratiam, hoc est, per donum Spiritus Saucti. Recto
itaque idem Spiritus arguit mundum, et de peccato quia non credit in
nil ; et dejustitia, quia qui voluerunt crediderunt, quamvisin
quem crediderunt non viderunt, et per ejus resurrectionem se quoque
in resurrectione perfici speraverunt ; et de judicio, quia ipsi si vellent
credere, a nullo impedirentur, qwoui pi hujus mundi jam
itus est."
In the 144th Sermon, which, as has already been observed, belongs
to a different, probably an earlier, period of his life, and which is
derived from a different collection, and has merely I ■! next
preceding one by the editors in consequence of the similarity
of the -nhject, Augustin's explanation coincides with that given in
the Tractate on St John. " Propter hoc etde judicio, mundus aigni-
tur, 7'// prineept hujus mundi jam judicatus est; id est, diabolus,
princeps iniquorr.ni, qui corde non habitant nisi in hoc mundo, quem
dflignnt, «t ideo mundus vocantur; sicut nostra conversatio in coelis
est, si resurrexerimus cum Christo. Ergo quemadmodum cum nobis,
422 NOTE Y.
id est, cum corpore suo, unus est Christus, sic cum omnibus iinpiis,
quibus caput est, cum quodam corpore suo, unus est diabolus. Qua-
propter sicut nos non separamur a justitia, de qua Domiuus dixit,
Quia ad Patremvado; sic impii non separantur ab illo judicio, de
quo dixit, Quia princeps hujus mundi jam judicatus est."
Tauler strangely misunderstands the meaning of the judgment,
which is to be the subject of the Comforter's e'Acy^os, but writes
beautifully, as he always does. " The Holy Ghost reproves man for
his judgement. What are these judgements ? It means that every
man passes judgement on his neighbour, civil or spiritual, and that
they have no eyes for their own faults and sin, although Christ has
said, With what measure thou metest, ivith the same it shall be measured
to thee again. Ye shall judge nobody, that ye be not judged. Un-
happily all men, bishops, prelates, priests and monks, provincials and
abbots, gentle and simple, will try and judge one another ; and
therewith ye build great thick walls between God and yourselves.
Beware thereof as ye love Almighty God and everlasting happiness ;
and prove and judge yourselves. This is useful to you, if ye desire
to be blessed, and to stand, and if ye would escape being judged by
Almighty God, and by all His chosen saints. A man should judge
nothing that is not a plain mortal sin. He should much sooner and
rather bite his tongue that it bleed, than judge a man in little or in
great things. One should leave this to the eternal judgement of
God ; for from man's judgement upon his neighbour there grows a
complacency in oneself, an evil arrogance, and a contempt for one's
neighbour. This fruit is therefore truly a work of the Devil, where-
by many a heart is denied ; and then the Holy Ghost is not truly in
man. But where the Holy Ghost is truly with His presence, He
judges by that same man where it is necessary ; and then that man
waits for the hour and occasion when it is fitting to punish. This
must not be done so as, before one heals one wound, to inflict three
or four violently. One should not even punish a man with hard
words, but friendly and kindly. One should not crush a man, nor
lower him in any other man's heart, be he civil or spiritual ; but it
should come out of a pure love, friendship, and gentleness. Here-
with a man abides within himself, in humility and poverty of spirit;
and this he then bears within him wherever he goes and whatever
he does, whether amid a congregation or alone. And herewith he
profits no one else but himself, in a true simplicity, and lets all
NOTE Y. 423
such things lie as do not concern him, and are not committed to
him."
Luther, as usual, exemplifies the conviction of judgement by a
reference to his own times, and finds it a source of inexhaustible
comfort and strength. "Christ does not speak here of a worldly-
judgement, as the world judges in its own matters, which relate to
body and goods, lands and persons; but this is a spiritual judgement,
which pertains to the government of souls and consciences. It
follows plainly from what went before. For where righteousness
comes, there judgement must be held ; since righteousness has two
works, help and punishment. By help the innocent are saved and
maintained ; by punishment the wicked and wrong-doers are hin-
dered and checkt. Therefore, as the world is rebuked for that
righteousness which holds good before God, for that it has not this
righteousness, and will not accept it, but sets up another righteous-
ness of its own ; in like manner is it to be rebuked for judgement,
because it takes upon itself to punish and condemn in matters which
it does not understand, and in which it has no right or authority to
i. For here it lifts itself up, when such things are preacht and
taught through the reproof of the Holy Spirit, as, that all nun are
uuder sin, and that without Christ there is no counsel or help against
sin, and qo righteousness before God except in Christ. This the
world cannot and will not brook or hear, but begins to condemn this
i, an 1 to persecute all who cleave to it and confess it, and
daimi I right and authority for such judgement or condemnation
and punishment, as though exercising it iu God's name, and all the
while bears the name of the Christian Church. For here the world
chooses to be Master Clever, and Satan to be God himself; and they
presume to declare and decide what is right Of wrong, punishable or
in divine thing*. For it sets to and condemns the sermon
Apostles and of the Gospel, and all who abide thereby, to the
mkei pit ; and thil it does by its highest regular power, rights
and authority, W given to it by God U) punish the wicked.
'i his it uses against God and Ilis Christians, to destroy the preaching
of the Gotpel therewith. Thus the two judgement! rim counter to
each other, in thai the Ib.ly Ghost by His sermon judges and
rebukes the world ; but t sets itself in O pp osi t ion, will not
ir this, claims judgement for itself, says, this is not < lod'l
but the Devil's sermon and doctrine, SO that it has not only a fair
424 NOTE Y.
plea not to accept them, but is also bound to condemn them, to pre-
vent, and to root them out, through its judicial power, that is, for
the sake of God and of righteousness.
"Well then, we must let these two judgements, that of God,
and that of the world, and of its Prince, the Devil, run and clash
against each other ; and we must wait and expect, and for God's
and His word's sake must endure, that they should condemn us,
persecute us, and when they can, slay and murder us, in the
service of their God. But in so doing we have the comfort,
wherewith the Lord Christ has beforehand provided and armed us,
as indeed we greatly need, — else would it be too hard for us to
bear this judgement and condemnation, — in that He promises, not
only that the Holy Ghost, by our means, shall rebuke the world
on account of sin and righteousness, and also of judgement, but
moreover shall uphold those who are His therein, and shall give
effect to their judgement and rebuke against the opposite judge-
ment and condemnation ; so that in the end His judgement shall
stand.
" This is what He means, when He says that the Prince of
this world is judged. Here, in the first place, we are told and
assured, that this judgement and condemnation of the world is
not the judgement and sentence of God, or of Christ's Church, as
the world gives out, and would have us believe, but is the Devil's
judgement, and is already condemned by God ; and we too are to
count it groundless and condemned, and not to care for it, nor to
follow or obey this judgement of the world, but may cheerfully let
ourselves be condemned, and set this judgement or condemnation
thereagainst, that Christ pronounces the world with its Prince to
be condemned.
" This I say, because nowadays certain scatterbrains and popish
dunces, now that they are forced to confess that our doctrine is
right and scriptural, yet splutter against it, and cry that, because it
has not been confirmed by councils, and because the government has
not adopted, or rejects it, that doctrine is nothing worth ; for that
one must obey the government, and he who opposes it is seditious ;
and so forth. Nay, they would so arrange matters, that the
government and men shall be set as judges over God's word ;
and we are to be free and blameless, so that we need not accept
or confess it, if the government does not choose. Scripture
NOTE Y. 425
however says, not the world, the prince, or emperor, but the
Holy Ghost is to be judge by the word. But the world must
let itself be rebuked and judged, and must give heed to this judge-
ment. And if the world opposes it, and would itself judge God's
word, and condemn and command us to hold with it, we are to
know that this judgement is condemned, and is the devil's, and
that we are to resist it, as being condemned by God, and to say,
Dear Prince, Emperor, and World, I am indeed under thy power
icith my body and goods ; and as to what thou shalt ordain con-
cerning my body and goods, 1 must and will readily obey: but
if thou stretchest out further into God's government, where thou
mayest not, nor canst be judge, but must let thyself be judged, along
with me and all creatures, by Hi* word, there I must and will net
follow thee, but do the contrary, that I may obey Him, and abide
by His word. For if I were to obey thee, I should condemn
myself, along with thee, by God's word; because Cluist here
concludes and says, What the prince of this world judges con-
cerning God's word is already condemned.
" In the next place, He aJso gives us the comfort that the Holy
Ghost with His judgement shall prevail and make way against the
world's judgement and condemnation, in order that we may not be
yed at the power of the world and the devil, and their angry
threats and terrours. For Christ here speaks very grandly and
boldly. Not only, He says, shall all emperors, kings, princes, or
others, who rage against Gods word, be condemned along with
their judgement; but the prince of this world himself, who has
more might and strength in his little finger than all the world
together. And the Gospel shall not only be judge over flesh and
blood, nay, not only over some of Satan's angels or devils, but
over the prince himself, who has the whole world mightily in hit
hands, and is the all wisest, mightiest, and thereto the all-fiercest
enemy of God and stians, so that everything whirl, it
great, mighty, and wicked among men is nothing in comparison
with him. Moreover, by His word not only is the world's
highest understanding, wiadom, and power condemned, but .also the
wisdom and power which the I I Ml world himself has and
iy, He says, there is no need of any further judgement
'ncledge: he is already condemned. So that the judgement
of Christians, who have God's word, and judge accordingly, shall
426 NOTE Y.
stand and gain ground against him, until at last he is utterly
overthrown. For this judgement against him is already won and
confirmed : nay, he has long since been cast out, and is imprisoned
and held in chains and bonds unto condemnation ; nor is anything
wanting, except that this judgement and condemnation be made
manifest and finally accomplish^ before all the world ; so that, being
cast down for ever to hell with all his members, he shall no more
be able to assail God's word and Christendom. Therefore it behoves
us not to dread or care for their judgement and condemnation,
because we hear that it shall not harm us, but is already power-
less, being condemned by God's contrary judgement, so that they
shall not work or effect anything against us, however fiercely they
rage against us with their condemnation, persecution, and murder,
but must finally and for ever remain under condemnation, which
is past against them both by God, and by us who judge after and
by His word. And Christendom shall maintain the supreme
judgement, and shall abide, as it has done hitherto, in despite
of the Devil and the world."
Calvin takes Kplais to mean, not the judgement upon evil, but
the establishment of a right order ; although the declaration that
judgement has past on the Prince of this world, as he himself
observes, favours the ordinary interpretation. " Qui judicii nomen
pro damnatione accipiunt, ratione non carent : quia mox subjicit
Christus mundi principem esse judicatum. Mihi tamen videtur
diversus sensus magis congruere, nempe quod accensa Evangelii
luce patefaciat Spiritus, Christi victoria, qua Satanae imperium
dejecit, statum mundi rite et ordine fuisse compositum ; acsi diceret,
veram esse istam instaurationem qua reformantur omnia, cum ipse
Christus subacto et triumphato Satana solus regnum obtinet.
Judicium ergo rebus confusis et dissipatis opponitur. — Sensus est,
Satanam, quamdiu imperio potitur, miscere omnia et turbare, ut
foeda sit ac deformis operum Dei confusio ; sed ubi tyrannide sua
exuitur per Christum, tunc mundo reparato ordinem bene tem-
peratum lucere. Ita mundum Spiritus de judicio conviucit, hoc
est, quod Christus, devicto iniquitatis principe, quae prius
collapsa erant et divulsa in ordinem restituit." Doubtless
the condemnation of evil implies the confirmation of that which
is good ; but since the second clause declares that judgement
has been executed on the Prince of this world, it is better
NOTE Y. 427
to understand the same word in the same sense in the first
clause.
Beza renders Kpicrts in the subjective sense of judgement, so as
that the world is to be convinced of having judged erroneously.
" Postremo arguetur mundus de judicio, id est, hue adigetur ut Me,
quern veluti fabri filium contemserit, — vere Dei Filium agnoscat,
qui solutis mortis doloribus tunc ero dextra Dei exaltatus. Quia,
inquit, princess hujus mundi judicatus est : id est, quia re ipsa
intelligent et cognoscent Me, diabolo superato, imperium in mundo
exercefe, cum viderint omnes sese frustra vobis opponere, quoniam
vos armabo virtu te ilia coelesti, qua destruatis omnem celsitudinem
quae extollitur adversus cogitationem Dei, et captivain ducatis omnem
cogitatiouem ad obediendum mini." Among the many objections
to this interpretation, judgement in the first clause is taken in a
different sense from that of the verb judging in the second.
Besides it would be a sorry anticlimax, after the conviction of
sin and of righteousness, to add what is implied in both the
former, and much less important than either of them : and too
much stress is Laid on the miraculous works of the Apostles, as
evincing that the Prince of this world had been judged ; while the
great act by which that judgement is accomplisht is left out of
sight. The first of these objections applies also to Beza's second
•»u : "coargui denique judicii, quod cum ignocet atque
etiam oppugnet, cui tradita est omnis in coelo et terra potestas;
i in videlicet eum repudiat qui tollit peccatuni, qui sua
virtute nunc reguans nos justificat, <jni flmjqno diabolum vicit."
In Beza's third interpretation, — " De judicio dtoiqne^ quod incre-
• lulis MM paritntn, et in ipsonnn principe Satana jam .-diquatenus
ex8ertum cogentur ex Apostolica dootrina <t ejus efiicacia cog-
nosces/' — Kpi'o-is is taken in the right sense ; but the rest is^, vague
and unsatisfactory.
wright has better seized the meaning and force of the Com-
forters third conviction. "DeniqiM mundiim coarguet de judicio,
et potestate illi in terris et coelo tradita, ut qui omnium dMBMA*
tiasim gloriosissimus princeps comprobetur. In quo
Apostoli in Actis diligenter elaborarunt. Hojtll n-i firmissi-
mum Ugnmcntani ab effectis affert, quod mundi prittOepi ju<licatur,
fugatur, et profligatur, mortis, j>eccati imj)i'riiun illi in li dclrsademp-
tum, omniaque obstacula, quae nosti-am salutem rem 1 11 possint,
428 NOTE Y.
summota; ut ab inimicis nostris liberati ei serviamus in sanctitate
et justitia omnibus diebus vitae nostrae. Quod primum singularem
consolationem babet ; omnes, vel potentissimos Ecclesiae hostes fun-
dendos et sternendos esse. Deinde admonitionem, ut nos exploremus
an justitia Christi induti simus : nam si hoc sit, sequatur etiarn nos
in Christi potestatem a tyrannide peccati assertos pietati et justitiae
studere, et strenue operam dare.'"'
Lightfoot, as usual, is sensible and intelligent, in addition to his
vast learning. " Judicatum fuisse Diabolum, bene notum, cum
Salvator eum devicerit per obedientiam mortis suae : Heb. ii. 14.
Atque indicium primum istius judicii et victoriae erat, cum Christns
a mortuis resurgeret : proximum, cum Gentiles e carcere Satanae
liberaret, per Evangelium, eumque ipsum carceri manciparet, ut
Apocal. xx, 1, 2, qui locus in haec verba optime commentatur.
Utrumque arguit plane, Christum judicaturum totum mundum,
nempe omnes in ipsum non credentes, cum jam judicaverat Prin-
cipem mundi. Atque hie in mentem revocaveris sententiam
Judaeorum de Judicio sub Messia; ipsum non omnino judicaturum
Israelem, sed Gentiles solum ; imo Israelites potius judicatures
Gentiles, quam ipsos esse judicandos. At qui judicavit Principem
hujus mundi, auctorem infidelitatis, judicabit etiam omnes in-
fideles."
Hammond, on the other hand, is as meagre as ever. " Thirdly,
He shall urge and work revenge upon Satan and his instruments,
who crucified Me, and retaliate destruction back upon them." It
is really surprising how so good a man should have had such a dim
apprehension of Christian truth, as he perpetually evinces in his
Paraphrase and Notes. From the fear of getting out of depth, he
wades about kneedeep in the sand.
Donne follows Calvin in understanding Kptcrts as primarily mean-
ing order, but takes no account of the light thrown on the object of
the Comforter's conviction by the declaration upon whom it had ac-
tually been exercised. Thus neglecting the clue which might have
kept him right, he wanders through a maze<of his own luxuriant
fancies. " After those two convictions of the world, — that they are
all under sin, and so in a state of condemnation ; and secondly that
there is no righteousness, no justification to be had to the Jew by
the law, nor to the Gentile by nature, but that there is righteous-
ness and justification enough for all the world, Jew and Gentile, in
NOTE Y. 429
Christ ; in the third place the Holy Ghost is to reprove, that is still,
to convince the world, to acquaint the world with this mystery, that
there is a means settled to convey this righteousness of Christ upon
the world, and then an account to be taken of them who do not lay
hold upon this means ; for both these are intended in this word
judgement. He shall reprove them, prove to them this double signi-
fication of judgement ; first, that there is a judgement of order, of
rectitude, of government, to which purpose He hath establisht the
Church : and then a judgement of account, and of sentence and
beatification upon them who did, and malediction upon them who
did not apply themselves to the first judgement, that is, to those
orderly ways and means of embracing Christ's righteousness, which
were offered them in the Church. God hath ordered all things in
measure and number and weight : Let all things be done decently and
in order ; for God is the God of order. — And this order is this judge-
ment ; the court, the tribunal, the judgement-seat, in which all
men's consciences and actions must be regulated and ordered,
the Church. —
"The order and judgement we speak of is an order, a judgement-
seat establisht, by which every man, howsoever opprest with the
burthen of sin, may, in the application of the promises of the Gospel
by the ordinance of preaching, and in the seals thereof in the par-
ticipation of the sacraments, be assured that he hath received his
absolution, his remission, his pardon, and is restored to the innocency
of his baptism, nay, to the integrity which Adam had before the
Fall, nay, to the righteousness of Christ Jesus Himself. — And this
power of remission of sins is that order and that judgement which
< Shrift Himself calls by the name of the most orderly frame in this
or the next world, a kingdom. — The Holy Ghost reproves thee, con-
vinces thee, of judgement, that is, offers thee the knowledge that
such a ('Inn. h there is, a Jordan to wash thine original leprosy in
baptism, a city upon a mountain to enlighten thee in the works of
darkness, a continual application of all that Christ Jesus said and
did and suffered to thee. — And make that benefit of this reproof, this
conviction of the Holy Ghost, that He convinces thee de judicio,
assures thee of an orderly Church establisht for thy relief, and that
the application of thyself to this judgement the Church, shall enable
thee to stand upright in that other judgement, the last judgement j
which is also enwrapt in the signifiea' ion of this word of our text. —
430 NOTE Y.
" As God began all with judgement ; for He made all things in
measure, number, and weight;— as He proceeded with judgement in
erecting a judicial seat for our direction and correction, the Church ;
so He shall end all with judgement, the final and general judgement
at the Eesurrection. — But was this work left for the Holy Ghost?
Did not the natural man, that knew no Holy Ghost, know this?
Truly, all their fabulous divinity, all their mythology, their Minos
and their Khadamanthus, tasted of such a notion as a judgement.
And yet the first planters of the Christian religion found it hardest
to fix this root of all other articles, that Christ should come again to
judgement. — But to say the truth, and all the truth, howsoever the
Gentiles had some glimmering of a judgement, that is, an account to
be made of our actions after this life, yet of this judgement which we
speak of now, which is a general judgement of all together, and that
judgement to be executed by Christ, and to be accompanied with a
resurrection of the body, — of this the Gentiles had no intimation :
this was left wholly for the Holy Ghost to manifest. And of this,
all the world hath received a full convincing from Him ; because He
hath delivered to the world those Scriptures which do so abundantly,
so irrefragably establish it."
. His conclusion is grand. After speaking of the terrours of the
Last Judgement, he adds, " Who can think of this, and not be
tumbled into desperation? But who can think of it twice, maturely,
and by the Holy Ghost, and not find comfort in it, when the same
light that shews me the judgement, shews me the Judge too? Know-
ing therefore the terrours of the Lord, we persuade men, but know-
ing the comforts too we importune men, to this consideration, that,
as God precedes with judgement in this world, to give the issue with
the temptation, and competent strength with the affliction, as the
wise man expresses it, that God punishes His enemies with delibera-
tion and requesting (as our former translation had it), and then with
how great circumspection will He judge His children ; so He gives
us a holy hope, that, as He hath accepted us in this first judgement,
the Church, and made us partakers of the word and sacraments
there, so He will bring U3 with comfort to that place, which no
tongue but the tongue of St Paul, and that moved by the Holy
Ghost, could describe, and which He does describe so gloriously and
so pathetically : You are come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company
NOTE T 431
of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn who are
written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to Jesiis the Medi-
ator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks
better things than that of Abel. n
Bossuet's Meditation on our verse is rhetorical, vague, and
empty, and has that air of unreality, not to say untruth, which
so often characterizes French eloquence. Indeed the denunciation
of the world is just what one might expect from a declaimer living
in the midst of the Court of Louis the Fourteenth. " Jesus-Christ
a dit ci-dessus : C'est inaintenant que le monde va Stre juge" : c'est
maintenant que le Prince de ce Steele va Stre cltassi. Comment est-ce
que Jesus-Christ juge le monde dans le temps de sa passion I
C'est en se laissant juger, et en faisant voir par l'inique jugement
du monde sur Jesus-Christ, que tous ses jugemens sont nuls. Le
Saint-Esprit qui est descecdu, continue ce jugement contre le
monde. Qu'a opere" le jugement du monde sur Jesus-Christ? rien
autre chose qu'une demonstration de son iniquity. La doctrine
de J6sus-Christ qu'on croyoit an6antie par sa croix, se releve plus
que jamais : le ciel se declare pour elle ; et.au dSfaut des Juifs les
Gentils la vont recevoir, et composer le nouveau peuple. C'est
l'ouvrage du Saint-Esprit, qui, descendu en forme de langue, montre
refficace de la predication apostolique. Toutes les nations l'en-
tendent : de toutes les langues il ne s'en fait qu'une, pour montrer
que l'Evangile va tout reunir. Le prince de ce monde est juge" :
tous les peuples vont consentir a sa condamnation. Jugeons le
monde : condamnons le monde. L'autorite" qu'il se donne de nous
tyranniser par ses maximes et ses coutumes, a donne lieu a con-
damner en la personne de Jesus-Christ la verite" m6me. O monde !
je te deteste : le Saint-Esprit te convainc de faussete. N'adliuons
an monde par aucun endroit ; sa cause est mauvaise en tout. — C'est
done par la que le monde est juge\ La vie que le Saint-Esprit in-
spire aux fiddles, condamne toutes ses maximes. II n'y a plus d'ava-
rice, oil chacun apporte ses biens aux pieds des ap6tres : il n'y a
plus de divisions, ni de jalousie, oil il n'y a qu'un coeur et qu'une
ame : il n'y a plus de plaisirs sensuels, ou l'on a de la joie d'etre
flagelles par 1'amour de Jesus-Christ: il n'y a plus d'orgueil, on
tout est soumis au conducteurs de l'Eglise, qu'on rend maltres de
tous ses desirs, et plus encore de soi-m6me que de ses richesses.
Commeu9ons done cette vie chretienne et apostolique, et laissons-
432 NOTE Y.
nous convaiucre par le Saint-Esprit." The rule for the extinction
of pride iu the last sentence but one is curious. Bossuet seems to
have forgotten that the Apostles themselves were liable to that vice,
and how anxiously their Divine Master warns them against it, how
the example which He set before them for the guidance of their lives
was that of the Son of man, who came not to be ministered to, but to
minister. This is one of the primary fallacies in the Romish view
of the Church, proceeding upon a kind of assumption that they
who enter the ministry, do thereby acquire a sort of immunity
from the ordinary sinfulness of mankind. That such an assumption
is utterly baseless, has been too plainly proved by the miserable
experience of eighteen centuries. For, though there are certain sins
to which the clergy are in some measure less exposed, and con-
sequently less prone, their peculiar condition has given birth to
new forms of sin especially belonging to it ; among which are new
shades and modifications of pride : and even if this assumption were
not thus groundless, the system built upon it would be most
injurious, no less to the Clergy, to whom this submission is to be
paid, than to the Laity, whose Christian life under it ceases to be a
reasonable service, and is never allowed to emancipate itself from the
swathing bands of rules and ordinances. Moreover, though the
advocates of such a system are apt to boast of the manner in which
it recognises and inculcates the great Christian duties of submission
and self-sacrifice, yet in fact this recognition is merely partial,
stopping short at the outward act, the act of submission to a visible
superior, the act of giving up outward possessions : and these acts,
when they are performed according to prescribed modes, in
deference to authority, are far from implying the spiritual
realities, which alone can give them true worth, and which
.strengthen and elevate the character of the agent, while formal acts
enfeeble and dwarf it.
Lampe, as he is wont, is clear and full, though he has too
much of that logical formalism which marks the Calvinistic school
oi theology. "De judicio addit, quod et alias apud Prophetas
frequentissime solet justitiae Christi et regni ejus jungi : Ps. lxxxix.
14. xcvii. 2., etc. — Judicium hoc est pars Eegni Christi, et in-
choatur in hac vita, quando electis non solum sententia absolutoria
per justitiam Christi ad conscientiarum tranquillationem appli-
catur, sed et lex fidei et eanctimoniae, quae Kvpiois judicia Domini
NOTE Y. 433
appellari solet, praescribitur, quam ubi neglexerint, castigantur
ubi vero impleveriut, favore Domini laeti fruuntur ; quando ab altera
parte hostes justitiae et regni Christi immissis poenis coercentur
atque exscinduntur. Consummatur autem in futura vita, ubi
oinnes coram tribunali Christi sisteudi. — Convincuntur ergo de hoc
judicio, quibus demonstratur Christum post consummatam obedi-
entiani vere regnum occupasse, adeoque quicunque in mundo
servari vult, eum oportere ad Christum respicere ac confugere,
eique se subjicere, Ps. ii. 12. — Triplex in Satanam judicium
conimemorat Scriptura, primum in Paradiso, alter um in passione
et morte Christi,- tertium in consummatione saeculi. Hie ad se-
cundum respicitur, in eo consistens, quod cum justitia aeterna per
obediential Christi adducta, coram tribunali Dei non tantum
Satanae praetensum jus in Christum et electos fuerit plene abjudi-
catum, sed etiam sententia ejus condemnatoria confirmata. Ju-
dicium hoc a Patre postulat Filius: Zach. iii. 2.— Sic Diabolus
potestatem mortis habens est abolitus : Hebr. ii. 14. Haec sunt
vincula quibus constrictus est, non tantum ne noceat amplius
electis, sed etiam ut ipse in poenam adservetur : Matth. xii. 29.
Jud. 6. — Hoc judicium licet instaret, in praeterito tamen de eo quasi
jam peracto Salvator loquitur, turn quia ante fores erat, turn quia ad
tempus effusionis Spiritus Sancti respicitur, qui convincens mun-
iluin hoc judicium tanquam jam administratum erat publicaturus."
By some of the German rationalists, who were offended, both
by the mention of the Spirit of Evil in this passage, and by the
condemnation of the world implied in his being called its Prince,
explanations to evade these objections were devised. Wetstein
having already said in his note, " Judicem injustum judicabit :
Pilatus conscientia criminis admissi torquebitur, atque ab officio re-
movebitur : Diabolus vero, a quo omne peccatum ortuni est, regno
exuetur, tenebris ignorantiae et idololatriae per lucem Evangelii ubi-
que terrarum dispulsis ;" it was suggested by some that the Prince
of this world in our passage must be Pilate, and that what Wet-
had instanced as an example of the judgement to be executed
by the conviction of the Comforter, was in fact its consummation.
Bolten for Pilate substituted the Sanhedrim, "whose cause the
Spirit of God was to prove to be bad in the sight of the Jews, by
means of the Apostles whom He inspired and enabled to work
miracles.'' But even J. E. E. Schmidt, in his Bibliothek fur Kritih
I I
434 NOTE Y.
und Exegese des Neuen Testaments (n. 327), objected that " Jesus
does not speak here merely of His controversy with the Jews, but
generally of His controversy with all the opposers of His purpose.
To the Founder of the kingdom of light the natural antagonist is
the Prince of the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom then subsisting
in the world. — Jesus may indeed have referred at the same time
to His controversy with the Sanhedrim ; for this opposition to His
purpose might also be regarded as a work of the devil ; because
it resisted the establishment of the kingdom of light, and promoted
the continuance of the kingdom of darkness." Yet Tittmanu, both
here and in xn. 31, interprets tov apypvra tov koo-jxov tov'tov
to mean " omnes eos quicunque turn inter Gentiles, maxime autem
inter Judaeos, vim haberent potestatemque qua impedirent propa-
gationem Evangelii, nominatim principes Judaeorum, Pharisaeos,
legis peritos, sacerdotes. — Sed hie apyuv tov koct/jlov tovtov
damnabatur, KCKpirai, quatenus ejus vis ac potestas frangebatur aut
imminuebatur, adeoque odia ejus, facta et consilia vana reddebantur
atque irrita. Idque factum est per Spiritum Sanctum, ministerio
Apostolorum, dum docerent Jesum esse Messiam unicum et veris-
simum, finem habere oeconomiam Mosaicam, non opus esse am-
plius ritibus a lege praeceptis, unam viam tenendae salutis esse
fidem in Christum. Atque ita, quamvis resisteret princeps mundi,
tamen evangelium Jesu Christi tradebatur ubique, Hierosolymis, in
Palaestina, in toto orbe terrarum, ejusque regnum propagabatur ;
vicissim vero vis ac potestas improbitatis Judaicae frangebatur, in
primis destructo templo et eversa republica Judaica." This inter-
pretation falls short of the true meaning of the passage, inasmuch
as it looks at little but the outward conflict which the Gospel had
to wage, without taking sufficient account of the spiritual conflict
against the power of evil, or of the dominion exercised by that
power in the world. Eosenmiiller is better here: " Diabolus in-
telligitur, qui Deo quasi excluso regnavit atque exercuit tyranni-
dem suam inter Gentiles et Judaeos, captivos eos ducens in omne
peccatum et perditionem. — Illius vis atque potestas labefactata di-
citur, quotiescunque per propagatam doctrinam aut susceptam disci-
plinam Christi homines e potestate ejus, sive erroris aut impietatis
servitute, erepti sunt. — Ubi Judaei a Judaismo, Pagani ab idolo-
latria abducti sunt, turn fassi sunt Satanam condemnatum ejusque
vim esse fractam."
NOTE Y. 435
Here, as elsewhere, the views of the more recent German com-
mentators, at least of the better part of them, come much nearer
the troth. Luecke says, "In the first two convictions to be
wrought by the Comforter, Jesus implies that the world may
and is destined to acquire an insight into His righteousness, and
into the erroneousness of its own unbelief. Meanwhile the world,
so long as it does not believe, is swayed by the power of the devil.
This leads to the third e'Aeyx 05 * with which the Spirit's office of
convincing closes. Every moral process closes with a Kpi'cris.
The primary foundation and root of the world's resistance is the
ap^iov tov Koarfiov tovtov. As long as he has power over the
world, it resists the GospeL But his power lasts so long as he is
not known in his state of condemnation. The world in its dark-
ness cannot recognise this. Dwelling in the midst of shadowy
unrealities, it is deceived by evil under the guise of good and right.
Hence the dehision, the errour of the world, spoken of in v. 2, its
servility, its frantic hatred of the Gospel. But in proportion as
the true light, the Spirit, gains way in the world, good and evil
are separated : the latter loses its speciousness, and therewith
its power over the world : comp. in. 18 — 21. The Prince of the
wmiM appears in his nakedness, and consequently in his condem-
nation, and in his impotence : xn. 31. Thus the world, so far as
it receives this conviction, is set free by the IXcyx 09 °* tne Spirit
from its delusion and its hatred of the truth ; but so far as it
mists the first and second l\<yx os i lt * 8 J U( te ei *> tnat * 8 > con "
demned, along with its Prince. One may term this triple « \cy\os
of the Spirit, which is continually going on in the world, the
summary of the universal History of the Kingdom of God and
Christ."
Tholuck's explanation, in his Notes here and on xn. 31, is to
the same effect. "The meaning of our Lord's words is, When the
divine principle of the Spirit tliat will spread among My disciples,
shall produce these extraordinary effects in mankind, people will be
forced to confess that the power of the evil Spirit, which opposes
Me in the ungodly feelings of men, is broken. As by the incar-
nation and coming of the Saviour an inward judgement was
commenced in the hearts of men (see c. m. 18), of which the Last
Judgement is only the outward manifestation ; in like maimer an
inward judgement upon the evil Spirit was then commenced, which
436 NOTE Y.
is to end in the outward manifestation of his casting out at the
Last Judgement : Eev. xx. 14. 1 Cor. xv. 26. The ordinary signi-
fication of the verb Kplvf.iv is very appropriate in this place.
When God judges evil objectively, His judgement must be a sen-
tence of condemnation : but that which God casts out objectively,
must have its powers overthrown subjectively, that is, in the
world. — In that' Christ appeared in the world, in that He fulfilled
the most perfect obedience by His closing sufferings and death
(Hebr. v. 8), in that He rose glorified from the dead, He broke
down the power of evil ; the Kingdom of God advanced mightily ;
and God's condemnation of evil was carried into effect. Christ
sees Satan fall like lightning from heaven. For if the power
of the kingdom of evil was overthrown by that great act of
redemption, the power of Satan, the ruler over that kingdom,
was also overthrown thereby."
The purpose of this conviction is well exprest in Olshausen's
note on xn. 31. " The destruction of evil is the necessary
consequence of the triumph of good, which alone can render it-
possible. The casting out of Satan (and of his angels with him)
from heaven (Luke x. 18. Eev. xn. 7), necessarily implied the
previous exaltation of Christ, and of His saints with Him, from
earth to heaven. The judgement, as being the expulsion of evil
from the great communion of the life of the universe, is not to be
conceived as merely concentrated at the end of the world, but is
continually going on through the whole of history, manifesting
itself more plainly at certain moments, when good comes forward
effectively in fuller power. When the disciples, through the
powers of a higher world, drove out evil spirits that had been
holding sons of Abraham in bondage, our Lord therein saw the
fall of Satan from his throne (Luke x. 18); and when the Gentiles
came pressing into the kingdom of God, He declared that Satan was
wholly cast out. The partition-wall of the Law, which sin had
rendered necessary between the Jews and the Gentiles, was
removed by the power of Truth : instead of separation, came the
union of all: Eph. n. 14."
I cannot wind up this Note better than with Stier's on this third
branch of the conviction to be wrought by the Comforter. He
begins with a reference to the rationalist deniers of the personality
of the Spirit of Evil. "Even the Holy Ghost, —though He was to
SOTE Y. 437
make an end of all manner of accommodation, to strip off all
Jewish colouring,— does not cease, but commences anew, to teach
us the existence of a Devil : so that this must needs belong to
some fundamental article of saving truth, without which what sin
and what righteousness is, especially what is the atonement whereby
Jesus procures the righteousness of sinners, cannot be thoroughly
understood. He who knows Jesus, and then looks at the unbelief
of the world, will, under the illumination of the Spirit, find no
adequate solution for this, except in what we learn from 2 Cor. iv. 4.
— How the judgement of the Prince of this world (c. xii. 31) is
here connected with the whole process as its conclusion, after all
that has been said it will not be difficult to perceive. The enemy
of God, the cause of all sin and unrighteousness, who deludes the
world into unbelief, loses his action utterly in his contest against the
Saviour ; and therefore it is gained for the world, over which he
has no longer any right or power. In this judgement the victory
of righteousness over sin is completed. It is a judgement wherein
the cause of our salvation is decided, if we but will it. To testify
this to the world is the consummation and end of the preaching of
the Holy Spirit, whose conviction is either received by us for our
comfort and strength, or, in an opposite case, turns into an
announcement of Judgement.
"The ground of that future Judgement, towards which the
world is advancing under the parting testimony of the Holy Ghost,
lies iu that judgement which has already been accomplisht by
Christ's going to the Father, and which the Holy Ghost sets before
us. In consequence of Christ's reconciliation, there is no longer
any human hell, but only His heaven for those who believe in
Him unto righteousness, or Satan's hell for all who continue of
the world. The i Acyx os °^ tue Spirit completes this separation in
Mich wise, that on each side three classes of men must become
manifest : among those who receive that e \cy\os, the penitent,
who confess their sin, the believers, who are justified in Christ, the
saints, who are delivered from the power of Satan in perfecting
their sanctification ; — among those who continue to reject it, obsti-
nate sinners, unbelievers, the judged. Observe the double meaning
of this last proposition : Satan is judged for our lienefit, if we
accept Christ's righteousness : or we abide with him in the Judge-
ment, if we continue with the world in sin. Not that, as has been
438 NOTE Y.
said, the Spirit here for the first time reproves the sin of those who
do not resist the Prince of this world, now that he is judged,
and deprived of his strength : for this would be a vo-repov rrporepov,
whereby the whole e'Acyxos at its close would begin anew. But
the reproof of sin was necessarily the first, including everything that
belonged thereto : whereas now, after the whole dilemma between
sin and righteousness is clearly set forth, the Spirit finally announces
the judgement of Satan in such a way, that He not only comforts
believers with the perfect comfort declared in Eom. viii. 33, 34, but
also reproves unbelievers with that word of awful judgement, as a
last sting, in their inmost hearts, Will ye then absolutely be and
continue the devil's? will ye be judged with him ?
" One thing more must be mentioned, to complete these hints,
that, inasmuch as the separation between the world and believers
is not one effected in a moment, and a remnant of the world
abides even in Christ's disciples, the Holy Ghost will reprove their
remaining unbelief, will continually preach to them of Christ's
righteousness, and will continually call them to a fresh, more
thorough decision between Him who judged and him who was
judged. As, to those who are in total unbelief, He not only shews
their life and deeds, but also, for instance, their sinful books and
systems, bringing out the Trpdrov xf'evSos therein as peccatum and
error ; in like manner, in those who do not thoroughly believe, He
reproves whatever does not yet proceed Ik irio-retas d<s ttuttiv,
every last remaining xf/evSos of their life and doctrine, as a sin
against the truth of the Spirit, incurred through want of faith and
disobedience. O how totally different . is the Judgement of the
Spirit from that which in these days of toleration we exercise !
and yet this His primary Judgement is the only protocol for the
last eternal one."
Note Z : p. 133.
There is a terrific truth in Coleridge's words, in a note on
Taylor's Doctrine of Repentance {Remains, hi. 302). " Probably
from the holiness of his own life, Taylor has but just fluttered
about a bad habit, not fully described it. He has omitted, or
rather described contradictorily the case of those with whom the
NOTE Z. 439
objections to sin are all strengthened, the dismal consequences more
glaring and always present to them as an avenging fury, the sin
loathed, detested, hated, aud yet, spite of all this, nay, the more
for all this, perpetrated. Both lust and intemperance would fur-
nish too many instances of these most miserable victims." In
the next note he returns to the same remark : " But the most im-
portant question is as to those vicious habits, in which there is no
love to sin, but only a dread and recoiling from intolerable pain, as
in the case of the miserable drunkard. I trust that these epileptic
agonies are rather the punishments than the augmenters of his
guilt.*' The same truth is finely exprest in the fourteenth Essay in
the Friend. "This is indeed the dread punishment attacht by
nature to habitual vice, that its impulses wax as its motives wane.
No object, not even the light of a solitary taper in the far distance,
tempts the benighted mind from before ; but its own restlessness
dogs it from behind, as with the iron goad of destiny."
Note A A : p. 136.
Augustin, in his 52nd Tractate upon St. John, speaking on this
passage, says : " Possidebat diabolus genus humauum, et reos
suppliciorum tenebat chirographo peccatorum ; dominabatur in
conlibus infidelium ; ad creaturam colendam, deserto Creatore,
deceptos captivosque pertrahebat. Per Christi autem fidem, quae
morte ejus et resurrectione firmata est, per ejus sanguinem, qui
in remissionem fusus est peccatorum, millia credentium a dominatu
liberantur diaboli, Christi corpori copulantur, et sub tanto capite
nno ejus Spiritu fidelia membra vegetantur. Hoc vocabat judicium,
hanc discretionem, hanc a suis redemptis Diaboli expulsionem. —
Praedicebat ergo Dominus quod sciebat, post passionem et glori-
ticationem suam per universum mundum multos populos credituros,
in quorum conlibus diabolus intus erat ; cui quando ex fide
n nuntiant, ejicitur foras. Sed dicit aliquis, Numquid de cordibus
Patriarcharum et Prophetarum, veterumque justorum non ejectus
est foras? Ejectus est plane. Quomodo ergo dictum est, Nunc
ejicietur foras t Quomodo putamus, nisi quia tunc quo<l in
hominibus paucissimis factum est, nunc in raultis magnisque
popnlis jam mox futurum esse praedictum est? — Quid ergo, ait
440 NOTE A A.
quispiam, quia diabolus de credentium cordibus ejicietur foras,
jam fidelium neminem tentat? Irao vero tentare non cessat.
Sed aliud est intrinsecus regnare, aliud forinsecus oppugnare :
nam et munitissimam civitatem aliquando hostis oppugnat, nee
expugnat. Et si aliqua tela ejus missa perveniunt, admonet
Apostolus unde non laedant : commemorat loricam et scutum fidei.
Et si aliquando vulnerat, adest qui sanat. Quia sicut pugnantibus
dictum est, Haec scribo vobis, ut non peccetis ; ita qui vulne-
rantur quod sequitur audiunt, Et si quis peccaverit, Advocatum
habemus apud Patrem, Jesum Christum Justum: ipse est Pro-
pitiatio peccatorum nostrorum. Quid enim oramus, cum dicimus,
Dimitte nobis debita nostra, nisi ut vulnera nostra sanentur I
Et quid aliud petimus cum dicimus, Ne nos in/eras in tentationem,
nisi ut ille qui insidiatur vel certat extrinsecus, nulla irrumpat
ex parte, nulla nos fraude, nulla nos possit virtute superare ? Quan-
taslibet tamen adversum nos erigat machinas, quando non tenet
locum cordis ubi fides habitat, ejectus est foras. Sed nisi Dominus
custodierit civitatem, in vanum vigilabit qui custodit. Nolite ergo de
vobis ipsis praesumere, si non vultis foras ejectum diabolum intro
iterum revocare. Absit autem ut diabolum mundi principem ita
dictum existimemus, et eum coelo et terrae dominari posse credamus.
Sed mundus appellatur in malis hominibus, qui toto orbe terrarum
diffusi sunt ; sicut appellatur domus in his a quibus habitatur,
secundum quod dicimus, Bona domus est, vel, Mala domus est, non
quando reprehendimus sive laudamus aedificium parietum atque
tectorum, sed quando mores vel bonorum hominum vel malorum. Sic
ergo dictum est, Princeps hujus mundi; id est, princeps malorum
omnium qui habitant in mundo. Appellatur etiam mundus in
bonis, qui similiter toto terrarum orbe diffusi sunt. Inde dicit
Apostolus, Deus erat in Christo, mundum reconcilians sibi. Hi sunt
ex quorum cordibus princeps hujus mundi ejicitur foras."
Note A B : p. 147.
I will insert an extract here from Nitszches System of Christian
Doctrine, §§ 139, 140. " The perfected Mediator of the New Testa-
ment first imparts His gift of eternal redemption to the souls of men
through the Holy Spirit, who takes everything from Him : John
NOTE A B. 441
xvi. 13, 14. For the gaining of the redemption (e'jpeo-ts An-pojo-ctos,
Hebr. ix. 12) is one act ; the bestowal of it upon individual men is a
different one. The procuring of salvation (to, yapio-dkvTOL rjfxtv^
1 Cor. ii. 12) is different from its appropriation (fjL€To\ot, Hebr. iii.
] . vi. 4). The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is distinct from the
grace of the Holy Spirit. By the former the whole world is recon-
ciled, Kara 8vvafiiv t 1 John ii. 1. 2. ; by the latter an ever increasing
number of individuals is reconciled, Kar* kvkpyuav, to God : 2 Cor.
v. 20: Scofxeda virep Xpiarou, /caTaAAayvyre to? Geo?.
"As the foundation of our salvation in the person of the Re-
deemer does not act magically, but, inasmuch as its chief instru-
ments are doctrine and testimony, in a manner consentaneous to the
original constitution of human nature, which involves freedom ; in
like manner, for the appropriation of salvation, it is primarily re-
quisite that man's free receptivity should be excited or called forth.
This instrumentality of the word, the Church, and the sacraments,
in the operations of grace does not preclude the necessity for an
immediate working of God upon the heart ; and the initiatory
act of regeneration by the Spirit, when it has actually taken place,
does not prevent the perpetual continuance of similar acts, down
to a term which is never to be lookt for in the present condition
of mankind.
" The Scholastic Theology of the middle ages could not give a
correct view of the doctrine of the appropriation of salvation ; be-
cause it thought more of the ecclesiastical course of the Christian's
life, as it was to develop itself through the instrumentality of the
sacraments, than of the order of salvation. In so doing it fixt its
attention chiefly on preparatory and justifying grace, and then again
on baptism, and penance after baptism. Tin- last distinction loses its
significance in Protestantism ; because every reconversion of a man
after a fresh fall is essentially similar to the first The dogmatic
Theology of the Reformation attended at first solely to the point of
justification by faith, and developt this according to circumstances,
or rather developt the idea of faith still further, along with those
which are essentially connected with it, the Holy Spirit, repentance,
works, love. Subsequently it took up the distinction of gratia
praeparans and convertens, and also sancti/icans, comervans, glori-
Jicans, or at least of regeneration renovatio, and so on. The Mystic-
ism of the middle ages cared less about our individual appropriation
442 NOTE A B.
of salvation, than about the extinction of our insulated life, or the
stages of union with God ; and Protestants have erroneously re-
garded this unio mystica as a peculiar, final state, which it cannot
be, since the true mystical union with God is already contained
in regeneration and sanctification. A like errour is it, when,
through a misconception of the expressions in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, a special reAeiwcris is deemed to constitute the end.
The school of Ernesti criticized the usual order with little better
success than the division of Christ's office ; for the main distinc-
tion of justificatio and sanctificatio, vocatio and regeneratio, lies,
plainly in the language of Scripture. Two series, an objective
and a subjective one (aKorj, mcrris), as De "Wette proposed, cannot
be carried through, and do not help in the solution of the problem-
The right division was introduced by Schleiermacher ; though the
way had been prepared for it by the older one of gratia praecurrens,
operans, cooperans, etc. The division must assuredly be psycho-
logical, not however so as to be grounded, according to Hollaz
and Amnion, on the relations of the feelings, the understanding,
and the will, in which case nothing further is left for sanctification,
but so that the state of the soul, or our spiritual life, is to be con-
sidered with reference to its mediation, principle, and development.
This triple distinction of calling, justification, and sanctification, may
also be viewed with reference to Christ's triple office, as Prophet,
Priest, and King." *
* As I have spoken several times with high praise of the invaluable work
from which this passage is extracted, it seems incumbent on me to state tbat,
if any of my readers should be led thereby to look into the recently publisht
English Translation, they will be miserably disappointed. A more conspicu-
ous example of what Southey called traducing and oversetting a book will not
readily be found. Even in the selection of the work for translation, little
judgement was exercised. For, since it was composed in great measure as a
manual to be expanded and expounded in a course of theological lectures,
though it contains an almost inexhaustible fund of thought and learning,
this is brought forward summarily and often allusively, with perpetual re-
ferences to the German theological writers of the last hundred years, of most
of whom the mere English reader will never have heard. Hence to such a
person the very best translation would have been useless, and almost unin-
telligible, except it were accompanied by a copious account of the writers
and systems referred to ; nor would such information, so acquired, be of any
worth. But of such knowledge, as of every other qualification for their task,
NOTE A B. 443
These historical remarks may be serviceable to those who desire
to understand the development of theological opinions, and who
have risen above the vulgar errour of supposing that all the wise
men in all ages must have thought exactly as they themselves
think on every subject, and that, so far as they did not, they were
wrong.
Note A C : p. 158.
The connexion between the three parts in the Comforter's three-
fold conviction is thus set forth by Lampe. " Neque negligendus est
ordo, quo hi articuli sunt locati. Ille enim non tantum cum
oeconomia sal utis, Bed etiam cum raethodo Spiritus examussim
convenit. Cum oeconomia salutis : nam in demonstratione peccati
sanctitas Patris, juslitiae omnisufficientia Filii,/ttcftm robur Spiritus
Sancti manifestatur. Cum methodo Spiritus Sancti : primo enim
peccatorem convincit de peccato suo, ut salutis cupidum faciat : ne
vero in eo desperet, mysterium justitiae aperit, atque ita spe salutis
implet : et ne spe hac ad securitatem"carnis abutatur, totam judicii
in hac justitia fundati rationem aperit."
Among Bernard's Sentences (Vol. 1. p. 1239), one bears upon
the threefold conviction wrought by the Comforter. "Spiritus
Sanctus arguit munduni de peccato quod dissimulat, — de justitia
quam non ordinat, dum sibi non Deo earn dat, — de judicio quod
usurpat, dum tam de se quam de aliis temere judicat." Samson
might have propounded it as a riddle to the Philistines to divine
the Translators are thoroughly innocent. Nay, they perpetually misunder-
stand the commonest idioms and expressions of the German language ; and,
sitting down to render a writer whose style, though knotty, and obscure from
its condensation, is full of deep and subtile thought, their chief characteristic
is a felicitously unconscious want of meaning, not seldom making the author
say the very contrary of what he says in his own tongue. I will not waste
paper in citing instances of this, that having been done sufficiently by a
writer in the Eclectic Review for December last, whose collection of blunders
might without much trouble be centupled. Hut it seemed to me <lm |g
Xitzsch to vindicate him from the suspicion of having uttered the bewiM. i ing
nonsense imputed to him in the Translation. It is to be regretted that the
good intentions of the enterprising publisher, Mr Clark, should be thus
baffled by the incompetence of the workmen whom he has employed.
444 NOTE A C.
the logical processes by which these expositions are elicited from the
Scriptural text.
Here I will insert Maldonat's interpretation of our three verses ;
which is clever, as he always is, though it has that shallowness,
which commonly goes along with cleverness, and which is a per-
vading characteristic of Jesuit, as of most of the Komish Post-
tridentine Theology. u In nomine peccati duplex est quaestio,
cujus, et quale peccatum intelligatur. Ipsius mundi peccatum
intelligi, manifestum videtur esse ; itaque id ab omnibus tamquam
certissimum ponitur : sed postea docebimus generaliter accipiendum,
tamquam si diceret, Spiritus Sanctus declarabit uter nostrum peccator
sit, Egone, an mundus, qui Me peccatorem solet appellare. Quale
autem peccatum intelligat, de eo nonnulla inter interpretes dissensio
est. Nonnulli — peccatum illud significari volunt quo Christum
Judaei crucifixerant. — Hoc enimvero esse arguere de peccato, cogere
certis argumentis peccatum confiteri. — Alii peccatum, quod vocant
infidelitatis, significari putant, arguendumque esse hujus ipsius
peccati mundum, quod in Christum credere noluerit. — Mihi nullum
certum peccatum videtur insinuari, sed generaliter illud significari
peccatum, quo ante etiam quam Christus veniret, totus mundus
obstrictus tenebatur. Itaque non docet Christus fore ut Spiritus
Sanctus ullius in se admissi, postquam venit, peccati mundum
coarguat; sed fore ut mundus, visis admirandis Spiritus Sancti
operibus, agnoscat se vetere adhuc teneri peccato, cum videat non
potuisse nisi per Christum ab eo liberari ; per Christum autem
liberatum non esse, cum in Ilium non crediderit. Atque ita
intelligenda ratio est quam Christus subjungit : de peccato, inquit,
quia non crediderunt in Me. — Non enim significat, propter hoc
peccatum arguendum, quod in Ipsum non crediderit, sed propterea
peccatum ejus arguendum, quia non credidit, quae vera via est qua
a peccato liberaretur. —
"Una hie superest dubitatio, qua ratione Spiritus Sanctus
hoc ipsum declaraturus erat, quod idem de justitia atque judicio
quaeri potest. Neque non verbis, sed factis, non per se ipsum,
sed per Apostolos caeterosque Christianos, quos erat numine suo
repleturus. Futurum enim erat ut mundus, videns quae afiiatu
Spiritus Sancti Apostoli facerent, imperitos homines omnibus
loqui Unguis, aegrotos curare, suscitare mortuos, fateri cogeretur
Christum, cujus nomine haec omnia facerent, verum mundi, ut illi
JSOTE A C. 445
praedicabant, Salvatorem esse, seque in suis nianere peccatis, quod
in Ilium non credidissent. Hoc in ilia Petri coucione videmus
accidisse, ubi, cum Petrus Christum unicum esse Salvatorem
docuisset, doctrinamque miraculis confirmasset, compuncti sunt
auditores corde, dixeruntque ad Petrum, et ad caeteros Apostolos,
Quid faciemus, viri fratres ?
"Sequitur ut de justitia disseramus. — Sunt qui putent justitiam
hominum iutelligi, aut justitiam certe Christi, non earn qua Ipse
Justus est, sed qua nos justos efficit ; quasi dicat fore ut Spiritus
Sanctus doceat, mundum esse peccatorera, se vero esse eum qui
justificat impium ; aut eos qui in se credunt justos esse, quales
apostoli erant ; propterea Eum prius, cum de peccato loqueretur,
dixisse, Quia non crediderunt in Me; nunc non dicere, Quia non
videbunt Me, sed, Quia non videbitis Me. —
"Credo allusisse Christum ad praecedentem Suam cum hominibus
con9uetudinem, quae in causa erat cur Ilium peccatorem caeteris
similem mundus appellaret, quod carnis Ejus intirmitatem videret,
quae occasio auferenda illi erat cum Christus in coelum ascenderet,
quod certum id futurum esset argumentum, Eum plus quam
iufirmum homiDem esse, potentem esse Deum, quia sua auctoritate
in coelum conscendisset. Hoc est, Quia ad Patrem vado, et jam
non videbitis Me: jam occasionem non habebitis ex conspectu
carnis et infirmitatis Meae humiliter de Me sentiendi ; non enim
videbitis Me.—
• Ultiraum reliquum est verbum : Et de judicio, quia princeps
kujus mundi jam judicatus est.— Quidam Christi judicium signitii aii
putant, et active sumunt, quasi dicat : Spiritus Sanctus mundum
docebit Me justum Judicem esse vivorum et mortuorum, cum
videat principem suura a Me judicatum esse. — Alii, ad Christum
atfem referentes, judicium pro recto mundi ordine et restitutione
perditarum rerum accipiunt. — Mai us auctor : (we have seen that
this was Calvin's interpretation :) qualis sententia sit, doctus lector
lit. Alii referunt ad mundum, sed active etiam accipiunt
pro mundi judicio, quo ipse judicat, non quo judicatur ; quo sensu
Bernardum paulo supra interpretantem induxi in us. Alii ad mun-
dum, sed passive, fore ut cognoscat mundus judicium suum, id est,
suam condemnationem, cum videat se jam in suo principe condem-
natum. Sic Augustinus, Beda, et Rupertus ; atque hie est verus
sensus ; sed aliquanto magis premendus est.
446 NOTE A C.
" Principem hujus mundi diabolum appellari, dubium non est, et
omnes monent : illud vero dixissent, vellem, cur potius dixerit,
Christus principem hujus mundi, quam mundum ipsum damnatum
esse< — Primum, quia princeps jam vere damnatus, jam victus erat ;
mundus non damnatus, sed damnandus erat ; adhuc enim vivebat :
adhuc spes erat veniae. Deinde, quia se damnatum nisi in suo
priucipe cognoscere non poterat. Denique, quia majoris victoriae
erat, principem mundi, quam mundum ipsum devictum esse atque
debellatum. Itaque fecit Christus quod solent in bello facere
victores : si hostium imperator inscio, ut saepe fit, exercitu ceciderit,
sublatum in hastam ejus caput hostibus ostentant, ut se, mortuo
imperatore suo, victos esse confiteantur.
"At qua ratione hoc ipsum, victum esse diabolum, mundus
cogniturus erat 1 Videns nimirum, nullam contra Christum
Ejusque discipulos habere potestatem, Ejus nomine de obsessis homi-
nibus pelli, Ejus prohibitum potestate, ac solo signo crucis Ejus
territum, in idolis responsa non dare."
He who will compare this interpretation of our text by the
ablest of Bomish expositors, with those by Luther and Stier,
given in preceding Notes, can hardly fail to perceive how meagre
and superficial the Jesuit is, in comparison with the power and
depth and richness of the spiritual truths poured out by the two
Germans. Nor does this present an unfair measure of the worth
of Eomish, when contrasted with good Protestant Theology.
It will be seen how shallow Maldonat's perception of sin is, and
that of righteousness, and that of judgement, — how he can
neither discern the sinfulness of unbelief, nor the gift of righteous-
ness to faith, nor even in what way the Prince of this world is
judged. Nor has he any discernment of the spiritual operation
of the Spirit. The conviction is to be wrought by outward
works, by miracles. Even Peter's sermon is not sufficient to act
upon his hearers, except when "miraculis confo-mavisset" though
of this as a motive there is no intimation in the Apostolic
narrative. In this spirit the Church of Home has been wont
to lay down that the power of working miracles is an indis-
pensable criterion of a true Church; and, rather than be with-
out it, she forges lying miracles to deck herself out with. Thus
does she give her proof that the Prince of this world has been
judged.
NOTE A C. 447
Neander, in his Life of Jesus (p. 661), states the purposes of
the Comforter's conviction as follows : " Under the conflicts which
await the disciples, Jesus promises them the help of the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit by their means shall effect whatever is requi-
site for the spreading of the Kingdom of God. All that is needful
for this work He comprises in these words : the Holy Ghost shall
bring the world to a consciousness of its sin, and teach it to
recognise the ground of its unbelief therein. (Our Lord's words
rather mean, that the world shall recognise its unbelief to be the
ground of its sin.) Next, He shall bring the world to a convic-
tion that Christ had not died as a sinner, but had ascended as the
Holy One to His Father in Heaven, and by His death, and His
subsequent exaltation to heaven, had most completely manifested
His holiness. They who have attained to the consciousness of
their sin, shall recognise Him as the Holy One, whose holiness is
the ground of the sanctification of all others. Thus He brings
them gradually to the conviction that judgement has been past
upon Satan, who till then had reigned in the world, that evil has
been deprived of its power, and therefore that those who have
entered into communion with Christ, need not fear it any longer.
Everything is thus concentrated in these three steps, the convic-
tion of sin, the conviction of the holiness of Christ, our Redeemer
from sin, and the conviction of the impotence of evil, which had
resisted the establishment of His Kingdom. Herein lies the
whole substance of Christianity, the conviction of sin, of Christ
as the Holy One, the Redeemer from sin, and of the Kingdom
of God which, triumphing over evil, shall subdue everything in
mankind ! "
Note A D : p. 165.
Episcopius, in his Institutionti Theologicae (lib. iii. sec. i
144), in an argument on the possibility of the existence of witches
in christian countries, contends that this is not inconsistent with
the declaration that the Prince of this world has been judged.
u Esto, inquies : existere dicantur inter et apud homines ac nationes
profanas, superstitiosas, et a vero Dei cultu alienas, Chinenses,
enses, Javanos, aliasque. At inter Christianos tit credantur
448 NOTE A D.
esse posse, vix si nit credere ipse Servator, qui de Satana sive
principe mundi ait, Joan. xvi. quod jam turn, cum ipse adhuc in
terris viveret, condemnatus erat : vers. 11. Atqui, inquam ego,
ista oratione Christus non vult significare, Satanam sic jam turn
fuisse condemnatum, ut in mundo amplius aut non esset, aut saltern
efficere nihil posset in ea mundi parte ubi religio Christi obtentura
esset. Contrarium enim manifestum est ex locis supra allegatis, ubi
Spiritus Pythonicus dicitur obsedisse adhuc nonnullos istis in locis,
ubi Apostoli religionem Jesu Christi plantaverant, a quibus etiam
ejectus fuisse legitur. Sed ad summum id tantum voluit Christus,
daemonem jam turn exauctoratum fuisse, et imperio Christi ita sub-
ditum, ut in eos qui religionem Ejus vera fide amplexuri erant non
modo jus nullum habiturus esset, sed etiam ad jussum aut ad preces
eorum ejiciendus esset, et veluti fulmen ex coelo cadit (ut dicitur
Luc. x. 18), ita repente, dictum, factum, ex corporibus obsessorum
exiturus esset ut injustus et damnatus possessor. Ex quo con-
sequitur, Satanam quidem vim nullam exercere posse in iis qui
veri Christiani sunt, et Jesum Dominum suum ex animo agnoscunt
et colunt ; et, quod majus est, credentes in Jesum vi ac potestate
ista donari a Christo, ut daemonia per nomen ejus ejicere possint :
Marc. xvi. 17. Sed vero ex eo non consequitur, in terris istis ubi
Christiani sunt ac vivunt, Satanam sive daemonem nihil efficere
posse ; ac proinde eos, qui vel Christiani esse nolunt, vel ore tenus
Christi religionem profitentur, caetera profani et nequam, opera
Satanae uti non posse ad mirabilia quaedam patrandum. Con-
trarium enim non obscure indicant ista loca, in quibus Satan
saeculi hujus Deus, id est, eorum qui saeculum et mundum hunc
amant, dominus esse, vimque eos excaecandi habere dicitur, 2 Cor.
iv. 4, princeps, cui potestas aeris est, et spiritus non vi tantum sed
evcpyetp praeditus, atque utens in filiis a7rei0aas, Ephes. ii. 2, et
KOCrfXOKpOLTOip TOV (TKOTOVS OUtoVOS TOVTOV, Kdl 7TV€VjXa rfj<s Trovqpia<s
iv toi<s eVovpaviots, Ephes. vi. 12, id est, quia spiritus est in sublimi
aere degens ; cui deinde ignita tela tribuuntur, vers. 16, qui et
dicitur obarnbulare instar leonis rugientis quaerens quern devoret,
1 Pet. v. 8, fractum scilicet adversis, et sic religioni Christianae
renuntiantem, vitaeque mollioris et dissolutions delitiis se dedentem,
sive non resistentem animo infracto adversitatibus, quae religionis
Christianae professionem comitari solent : quo ipso sane signifi-
catur daemonem sive Satanam sic non dici a Christo damnatum,
NOTE A D. 44a
Tit ex l hristiauorum tenia plaue sit relegatus aut ejectus, sed sic
dumtaxat, ut, quaniquani in iisest,tamen iu Christianos nihil possit,
si modo ii sese ultro ei non dedaut, aut conatibus ejus nou cedaut ;
fclioqnin veteri jure atque im])erio suo utens, tarn in ipsos, quam in
OMterOi alios omnes mundanos profanosque terrae hujus filios, tau-
qoam dominus et deus eorum, licet divinae Jesu Christi potestatis
i coercitua, utpote sine cujus permissione ne in porcos quidem
• loininandi jus habet, damnatus ad ejus jussibus ac nutibus
pallidum.'*
451
PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATED
IN THE NOTES.
Genesis, xviii. 25, p. 353.
Deuteronomy, xviii. 19, p. 333.
xxix., xxx. p. 248.
Jerenii.ili, xxxi. 33, p.
Matthew, x. 20, p. 298.
xvi. 16, p. -
xv. 18, pp. 194. 195. 196.
xiii. 11, p. 288.
Luke, xii. 12, p. 298.
xxiii. 43, pp. 830- 23:-'.
John, vii, 38, 3!), pp. 228—286.
viii. 46, p. 316.
xii. 24, p. 213.
xii. 31, p. 439.
xiv. i:>— 17, pp. 286—298.
xiv. 18, p.
xvi. 7, pp. 183—185. 193—
195. 197—205. 213-221.
xvi. 8, pp.
xvi. !», pp. 347—373.
cri 10, 117.
John, xvi. 11, pp. 419—438.
xvi. 13, pp. 186
xx. 9, p. 298.
XX. 22, p. :
. iv. 3, p. 337.
Unmans, viii. 1, p. 853.
Corinthians (1), xii. :'.. ;
xii. 5, p. 216.
xiv. <;. p
xiv.
xiv.
(2), xi. 8, p. 837.
(lalatians. iii. 2, p.
iii. 15, p. 217. 249.
iii. 17. ).. 14
v. 20, p. 187.
Bphflfiant, iv. 30, p. 216. 217.
Timothy (2), iv. 2, p. 316.
Titus, i. 9, i
Hebrews, xii. •">, p. 816, ,
James, i. 27, p. 187.
ii. 9, p.
452
AUTHORS CITED IN THE NOTES.
Ackermann, ISO. 289. 329.
Andrews, 183. 199. 216—219.
286. 288. 305. 310. '
Angelns Silesius, 283.
Anselm, 204. 212. 221. 284. 351
—354.
Apollinaris, 822.
Aquinas, 205. 237. 291. 292. 351-
Aristotle, 315.
Arnold, 418.
Athanasius, 202. 236. 294.
Augustin, 184. 193. 194. 195.
196. 200. 203. 227—233. 287.
294. 299. 300. 312. 313. 320.
321. 322. 325. 349. 350. 351.
396. 397. 398. 420. 421. 439.
Baader, 392.
Bacon, 218.
Barrow, 254.
Baur, 212.
Baxter, 257.
Behmen, 283.
Beugel, 201. 202.
Bernard, 443.
Beveridge, 257.
Beza, 201. 245. 294. 314. 317.
324. 405. 427.
Bleek, 335. 336.
Bolten, 433.
Bossuet, 205. 326. 349. 410. 431.
Bull, 247. 252.
Bunyan, 219.
Byron, 382.
Calvin, 197. 243. 244. 254.. 294,
313. 323. 339. 362. 404. 426.
Campbell, 188, 311.
Carlyle, 383—390.
Cartwright, 245. 362. 405. 427.
Chrysostom, 203. 233. 322. 336.
338. 348. 395. 419.
Coleridge, 187, 217, 260, 266. 386.
387. 388. 390. 438. 439.
Conradi, 282.
Curcellaeus, 191, 220. 222.
Davison, 348.
Demosthenes, 315.
De Wette, 186. 202. 314.
Diodati, 326.
Donne, 324. 344. 373. 407. 408.
419. 428.
Episcopius, 447.
Erasmus, 186. 188.
313. 317.
Ernesti, 311.
294. 310.
AUTHORS CITED IX THE XOTES.
453
Fathers (the), 190. 199. 202. 205.
212. 213. 218. 219. 232. 235.
299. 300. 323. 336.
Goeschel, 372.
Goethe, 382. 388.
Gregory the Great, 237.
Gregory Naziauzeu, 236.
Grotius, 215. 294. 314. 324. 331.
332. 333. 349.
Gtienther, 220, 222, 223.
Hammond, 190. 246. 294. 324.
833. 334. 349. 410. 428.
Heber, 261, 265, 266.
Heinsius, 227.
Henry (Matthew), 259, 363.
Herodotus, 391.
Homer, 315.
Horsley, 204.
Hossbach, 306.
Irenaeus, 314.
John of Fescamp, 284.
Kant.
Klee, 295.
. 277.
Knapp, 309. 311.
Kuinoel, 271. 295. 349.
Lachmann, 227.
Lampe, 2<)5. 212. -'13. 269.293.
328. 333. 334. 347. 35"
408. 431 \ 13.
L.ivington, 261.
1 . 128.
Luecke, 198. 275—278. 295. 290.
32:».
Luther, 189. 191. 197. 217. 21b*
237. 242. 301. 313. 317. 320.
323. 351. 355. 361. 378. 399—
404. 423.
Lyra (Nicolaus de), 399.
Maldonat, 196. 444—446.
Marsh, 186.
Melancthon, 211.
Meyer, 295.
Middleton, 188.
Milner, 212.
Milton, 385.
More (Henry), 333.
Napier, 390—302.
Neauder, 417.
Newman, 267—268.
Niebuhr, 381.
Nitzscb, 278. 440. 442.
Noesaelt, 270.
Olshaussen, 266. 279. M
336. 366. 412. 436.
Origeu, 195.
Paulus, 271. 17ft
Pearson, 252. 314.
Perkins, 347.
Petavius, 205. 227.
Plato, 294. 335. 378—381. 334.
Pope, 264.
Reformers, 190. 209. 218. 237.
313. 322. 323. 330. 331. 333.
339.355.361.
nista, 196. 208. 328. 330.
; • l . Ml. 446.
454
AUTHOnS CITED IN THE NOTES.
Rosenmueller, 271. 434.
Rousseau, 382.
SchelliDg, 196. 380.
Schiller, 383. 385.
Schleiermacher, 185.
Schmidt (J. E. E.), 433.
Scholz, 186.
Schoolmen, 200. 292. 351.
Scott, 188.
Sociuus, 410.
Sophocles, 392.
South, 252.
Stier, 366. 413. 436.
Stillingfleet, 252—254.
Strauss, 373.
Tattler, 189. 283. 301. 320. 354.
398. 422.
Theodore of Mopsuesta, 322.
Theodoret, 203, 234, 336, 337.
Theophylact, 336. 348. 396. 419.
Tholuck, 279, 329, 412. 4:5:..
Thucydides, 417. 419.
Tittmann,275. 295. 347. 411. 434.
Translation of the Bible, 186.
187. 188. 189. 201. 317. 33' i
344.
Tyndall, 186. 187. 188. 317. 331.
346.
Walter, 186.
Warburton, 261—264.
Waterland, 260.
Wesley, 188.
Wetstein, 324. 410. 433.
Whitby, 259.
Wiclif, 186. 188. 311. 312. 317.
331.
Wilsou, 257.
Wolzogen, 334.
Wordsworth, 382.
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