As a Christian friend sent me these little fly-sheets, I am bound to say that they are not reliable, not as I suppose from any wish to deceive, but ignorance of truth and facts through trusting those already deceived.
Take for example the opening article of No. 70, “Sanctification through the Spirit,” or what 1 Peter 1:22Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (1 Peter 1:2) calls “of the Spirit,” and the paper designates erroneously “this indwelling of the Spirit.” This confusion demonstrates total ignorance of Peter's meaning, which the apostle himself explains to be “in (or, by) sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” These elect saints, like all others, were set apart, or sanctified, by the Spirit, for or unto Christ's obedience and His blood-sprinkling. The truth is here reversed; for the expositor clearly means that it is the Spirit's indwelling after blood-sprinkling. This I hold to be taught elsewhere. But B.W.N. never knew what is here taught, that the Spirit sets apart to God, by a vital action through the word, the believer to obey (not like a Jew menaced with death under the sanction of the blood sprinkled on the book and its people, but) like Christ as a Son, and to be sprinkled with His blood for cleansing and the pardon of his sins. Mr. N. held the blunder of Papists and Protestants alike in overlooking this quickening operation of the Spirit leading the soul unto (εἰς) Christ's obedience and His blood-sprinkling, not the practical sanctification which is accompanied by His indwelling. It explains why the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 6:1111And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)) puts “sanctified” before “justified,” which no Reformer understood any more than theologians since. Hence they either evade such texts, or boldly pervert the inspired word to suit their own shallow views of scripture like Théodore de Bèze. This truth has quite dropt out of their divinity.
The statement in 71, p. 3, col. 2, near the bottom is the direct reverse of the facts. Before 1848 Mr. B. W. N. was rejected by brethren as fatally heterodox, and was deserted by his chief fellow-laborers save Dr. Tr. his cousin who held his Semi-Irvingite tenets subversive of “the doctrine of Christ.” Before that evil scheme was discovered, Mr. N.'s followers had been treated with grace; but from 1847 they were rigidly refused. And the late Dr. Scrivener, whose word I believe, has recorded in print that Dr. Tr. before his death avowed his turning to the English Establishment: that is, he (not N.) went back to one of the most worldly of religions in the estimate of the Editors of “Perilous Times,” as full of superstitious men as now of skeptics.