To One who had Written a Tract Denying Everlasting Punishment.
IF it be in degree so far behind, yet in the character of it I am reminded of the Epistle to the Galatians. Paul had the happiest recollections of them in all former and personal intercourse with them, and this aggravated his sorrow, and gave tenderness to his mind, when writing on their error; but it did not abate the decision with which he removed the evil and wrongness of their thoughts.
And the history of the Galatians is specially serious, because it is witness to us that the very disciples who stood for a time highest in their devotedness to the truth, and dearest in the love of the apostle, were those among all the churches who were the most beguiled, and led from the simple truth of God. Those who would have plucked out their eyes for him now cause him to say, “I stand in doubt of you.” Serious and sorrowful, surely, dear sir, this is. But it is written for our learning, that we may not be taken by surprise by anything, however strange, in the progress of our walk across this evil scene of Satan’s subtlety and delusion.
It is not my desire to go through the scriptures which your pamphlet has cited. It is enough for me to say that there is not one of them, I think I may say, that, rightly judged, gives even color to your conclusion. If I were seated by your side, I would gladly with you, one by one, try their real value and your interpretation of them by the light of their several contexts, trusting the Spirit of truth to guide through them into the mind of God.
But I could not now as with paper and ink go through this large body of scripture texts. One thing I would, however, be exact and fuller upon; it is this, that the very principle on which you proceed to the consideration of these scriptures, and of all scripture, may account for any measure of error. You decide on what you term “the attributes of Deity,” and reason from them, and you call on us to refuse any sentiment or opinion which will not flow from them. At the very first, I would say that this expression, “the attributes of Deity,” or of God, is itself heathenish or philosophic, and the idea that it covers is no better. It does not convey the print of a divinely-taught mind, subject to God and His word, but comes from no higher than a human source. It is what flesh and blood reals to every man. It assumes that by wisdom we can know Him; it undertakes to discuss His nature, and it subjects Him to our minds, that we may hold Him to be just whatever they make Him; instead of being, as He is, above all that is in us, as well as of us. It is this that lies at the root of all this sad defilement, which has overspread your mind, and it would be in vain for anyone to draw your heart from the false light in which you have interpreted the scriptures without expressing this to you. Instead of coming to God’s mind to be taught, not only the higher knowledge, but the very elements of divine light and wisdom, you bring certain elements with you. You have your own alphabet, your own language; you have your own first ideas, and all that is subsequently learned must either confirm them, or flow from them. I am aware that you judge yourself to have got these elements from Scripture, as well as your deeper and further knowledge; but in this you deceive yourself—I am thoroughly and altogether assured that you do. Insensibly you assume that certain “attributes” must belong to Deity, and in this light you test and interpret Scripture itself. I am assured that in this way something disguising itself, as a minister of righteousness or as an angel of light, has beguiled you from the truth and corrupted your mind, once so pure in the knowledge of God, from the simplicity that is in Christ. And, oh my heart desires that you may be rescued from “this snare of the fowler.” The virgin mind of Eve was deceived and defiled by the serpent. The virgin mind of the saint, when Christ was all its light and wisdom, may so be defiled likewise. (2 Corinthians 11) I know not where to look for defilement if I do not mark it in this independent exercise of the intellect or of the human affections. To judge of God previous to or independent of the revelation which He has given of Himself, is of the deepest departure from the principle of faith. I know you will tell me that you do not attempt this; but, whether consciously or unconsciously, it is plain to me that you do. Your constant mention of “attributes” expresses this character of mind very strongly, and you draw conclusions from the doctrine of endless punishment, as you speak and ask, How can they be viewed as consistent with love, which God is? All this sadly, sadly savours of the mere exercised intellect and affections of men; sweet and amiable they may be, but they are human. Oh, how truly grieved am I to find all this in one with whom my soul was once so sweetly knit in the truth and in the bowels of Christ Jesus. Indeed, I can say that this corruption of your mind has made me still increasingly long for that happy and perfect day of His presence when all human thoughts shall have perished, and the light of the Lord be the unrivalled and commanding light forever. Oh that the Lord may deliver your thoughts from this taint! Let me just ask you for an instant to set your way of stating God as love with the divine or Scripture way of stating it. You assert that God is love, and that it is our glory and joy to know this. This is not His “attribute,” but His nature; but from this you draw your own conclusions. You take this blessed, sure, revealed truth as it is, and make it sustain all that your human heart wishes and your own reasoning suggests, and you call on us all to say, Can this be a truth if endless punishment be a truth? But all this is your own; I know that God is love, but then I read this, that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Is this your conclusion? is this the language of your thoughts? No, this tells me the manner in which the love of God is acting among us, not in interposing to cut endless punishment short, but to provide a Saviour, faith in whom shall deliver from perishing. I must take the blessed One’s own interpretation of his own counsels and acts, and I am forbidden by this Scripture to judge of the divine love as though it hindered, by its sovereign acting, the perishing of any creature; but I am taught by it to know what the way of this love is—that it has prided a Deliverer from perishing for all who will trust in Him. Your way of reasoning on what God is would lead you to deny that there could be in any part of His creation a single pang, were it not that the daily, hourly history of this evil and revolted world would be more than enough to condemn your conclusion as the vainest imagination. But I have no pleasure in exposing your mind even to yourself. You have been beguiled from the simplicity of faith. You do not now take the wisdom of God as all yours. There are ten thousand scriptures, as well as ten thousand daily providences that you must set aside by a bold hand (for I will not in your case say daring) ere you can make room for this freer human and philosophic conclusion. And, oh, that this may not be! May the light of God’s precious words rebuke you, and restore your thoughts to their only path of righteousness, because your Shepherd and Teacher loves you, and will have you in mind subject and conformed to Himself.
I am quite sure that in our meditations on the ways of God our thoughts will often meet things that are too big for us, and may harass us for a season, and we may bring that trial of mind to the Lord to have it subdued and removed. I see this in Scripture; I see it in Psalms 73 and Psalms 77; I see it in the opening of Jeremiah 12. There the prophet saw the wicked prospering, and he begs to plead with the Lord about that, for it was difficult and trying for him, and the Lord does not censure him, as in time, he allays the trial of the psalmist’s mind on the same subject in Psalms 73. So in the Epistle to the Romans, the third, sixth, and ninth chapters give us instances of certain doctrines, stated by the apostle in the course of his teachings, awaking anxious thoughts in the minds of his hearers or disciples; and he allays these anxieties. As when the hearer of the precious doctrine that the Jew is equally with the Gentile in a state of guilt and condemnation, asks, “How then has the Jew any advantage?” (Romans 3:11What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? (Romans 3:1)), the apostle answers this anxiety. So in chapter 6, he corrects the conclusion of another on the doctrines of grace, that they would amount to a warrant for continuing in sin. Thus the Spirit meets the rising difficulties of the mind. He entertains the thoughts of man to a certain point, and allows Himself to be pleaded with and questioned; but if man will go too far, if man will dare to measure the divine procedure by his own understanding, or to question the revelation of God and charge it with wrong, then man must be silenced. It would be altogether unworthy of the Spirit of God to deal with Him in any other manner. “Nay, but who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?” The condescending’s of the Spirit to the thoughts and difficulties of the human mind must bear their measure, and if that mind exalt itself, if what at first was an infirmity became “the opposition of science,” or the way of man who would be wise though he be but a wild ass’s colt, then he is to be silenced. For God will be God. The intellectual man seeks to dethrone Him as much as the sensual man. But let who may eat of the tree and affect to be as God, he must be put outside the garden, like Adam of old. And so the Spirit treats the one who replies against the sovereign grace of God in Romans 9.
Yes, God will be God. He will silence the proud thoughts of our human intellects, and have them all in captivity. It is His right to have them there. I bless Him that He will not allow me to eat the tree, or affect His rights, or judge and discuss His ways independently of the light which He has given me Himself, or beyond the measure of that light. And now I do trust that you may be restored to see that He will not allow you to do this, and that you have been attempting this in a way suited, indeed, to alarm the saints of God with whom you once took such sweet counsel. Human affections are no more to be our light than the intellect. There is nothing in man that we can trust. One passage in your pamphlet makes conscience the arbiter of God’s revelations; but conscience made Saul a persecutor of the Church, and will lead, and has led, many to judge that they did God service in the like persecutions. But will the principle avowed both in your paper and in your kind and indeed loving note to me (for which personally I have much more to thank you), bear the searching scrutiny of God’s revealed will? You have, as I said at the beginning, disclosed the source of all this defilement—for I cannot call it less—which now overspreads your mind. You make yourself the judge of God’s word, and do not receive that word as the former of all your thoughts and judgment. Anything may come of this, and if the mind be not restored to its righteous place of subjection, no amount or measure of departure from truth could possibly surprise me. I have known a sad history like this beginning with the point on which you now decide. “I speak as a man,” says the apostle, in Romans 3. What is that but his owning, that, while he was opposing objections to the simplicity of divine doctrines, he was betraying the mind of a mere man? But what does that intimate but that the human mind, instead of being trusted, is to be thoroughly suspected, when it comes to handle the mysteries of God?
“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Simple word, most clear and certain. It is also written, “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in nowise enter therein. “The Scripture cannot be broken.” Remember that we are to tremble at God’s word (Isaiah 66)— that is, to trust it as God’s word, with reverence, bowing to it as our teacher, and not daring to make it speak the language of our hearts or understandings, but to bring every thought into captivity to its declaration. How can you—I do seriously ask you, and do put it again calmly and tremblingly to your heart—how can you treat the ten thousand passages which speak of God’s judgment against the unrepentant sinner as you do? Indeed, I know not. “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” If this thought about endless punishment arose in your heart and gave you uneasiness, or raised perplexity, as I have before spoken of, as a dear child of God, in the spirit of Jeremiah, you might have taken your anxiety of mind to the Lord, and laid it out in His presence, and spoken to Him upon it; or, in the spirit of fear that trembled at the word, you might surely have communicated your doubt to a brother in a fitting season. But to print and to publish as you have done so bold a questioning of the plainest words of God, and given them a sense which the honest conscience of the people of God, who in all ages have loved, served, and suffered for their Lord would have been thoroughly startled at, this is a bold deed on your part. And I ask you—I would ask any dear single-hearted saint who knows the way of the Spirit of God—what unction, what trace of the Spirit’s teaching, what that reaches the conscience or the affections in the Holy Ghost is there in the whole of the pamphlet? But you will excuse me all that I say and receive it in love. You have spoken as a man, as a mere man; but the Lord, I do trust, will lead you to speak again as one taught of Him.
The apostle avenged God’s quarrel on himself, as it were, when he found himself speaking as a man; and may you soon do the same, dear Mr. O—. Even a Peter had to be rebuked, and a Barnabas was led astray by others. What wonder, then, that any of us should be beguiled from the simple path for a season?
But “He restoreth my soul,” He is still the Shepherd. To His grace and teaching I do desire lovingly to commend you. The Lord lead you back out of this path into which another has led you, dear, dear sir, and believe me, in the Lord Jesus Christ, your affectionate,
J. G. B.