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Excerpts: The subject on which I would engage the attention of your readers is one which affects the whole character and nature of Christianity, branching out into what is really infidelity on one side, and abominable heresies on the other; but held in its root principles by persons who would utterly reject both. It is found in the most highly-esteemed ministers of the Free Church of Scotland and widely spread in it; in the Baptist Colleges, and taught by eminent Baptist ministers in the United States; elaborately developed in the revived energy of evangelicalism in Germany, whence it has passed in a gross Puseyite shape to the Dutch Reformed Church in the States. Its full doctrinal results were developed in Irvingism. The worst kind of infidelity is based on it, to which the German doctors approach wonderfully near.
The question is this: Was Christ in incarnation united to humanity to renew it? or is the life of believers a wholly new life in every case, and, in the case of the church, believers united by the Holy Ghost to Him glorified? Those orthodox in the main take up only the renewal of the first man; the full-blown doctrine is Christ's union with fallen man. It is a capital question; because this makes fallen man, the first Adam, that which is taken up of God for blessing as such, to which the Word therefore united Himself, and that (however sinless they may hold Christ to have been personally) in its sinful state, before redemption. The truth looks upon man in the flesh as utterly rejected and lost; that Christ stood alone, though a true and very man, till He had accomplished redemption, and then, when He had accomplished it, a redemption available in justification and life to faith, before as after the cross; that a wholly new nature was given, in which man enters into the benefit of it, there being also in the case of the church actual union with Him glorified by the Holy Ghost, members of His body.
Let me add that God, in His history of man, has shewn what flesh is, and even the creature left to himself. The first thing man has always done is to spoil what God has set up good. Man himself — the first thing we read of him is eating the forbidden fruit. The first Noah did, after offering thanksgiving for his deliverance, was to get drunk. Israel made the golden calf, before Moses came down from the mountain. Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire the first day after being consecrated, and Aaron never went into the holy of holies in his garments of glory and beauty. The son of David, Solomon, loved many strange women, and the kingdom was divided. The Gentile head of gold persecuted the godly, and became a beast, characterising the empires that followed him for the seven times. What shall we say of the church? How soon did all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ, and forsake the devoted and faithful apostle! John could say, "There are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time." But God has worked on in grace, in spite of this, to shew what He is, His longsuffering and goodness and patience. So all those things — man, the law, the priesthood, royalty in the Son of David, He that rises to reign over the Gentiles, His being glorified in His saints — all is made good in its place in the Second Man, the Last Adam. May His name be eternally praised! As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy. As is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, so also we shall bear the image of the Heavenly. And in the ages to come God will shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. I speak of man's evil, not surely to delight in it, but that we may so know it, and that in conscience, that we may take, through grace, Christ instead of ourselves, and be occupied with Him.