Plain Sermons, Preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street

by James Galloway Cowan

Remarkable as these things are in themselves, they become much more so by contrast with the several cases of the Jews mentioned in their respective contexts. Thus nine Jewish lepers were unthankful; a priest and a Levite passed by on the other side; the Prophet returning from Samaria, where He had been confessed, was not respected in His own country; Jerusalem had but lately rejected the Word which Samaria received. How was this? How came heterodoxy to be productive of acceptable fruit, while orthodoxy in the same circumstances was barren and unfruitful? The pursuit of this inquiry would doubtless be very interesting, but it would necessarily occupy much time, and lead us into the regions of speculation. I prefer, therefore, just now, to deal with the history of our text as a fact, and to endeavour to deduce from that fact three or four plain and profitable lessons. Nine professors of the true religion, members of the covenanted people of God, to whom pertained all the privileges, and gifts, and evidences, and responsibilities of a manifested Divine rule, were undutiful and unblessed in the very circumstances in which a stranger, an alien, belonging to a sect unsound in doctrine, and schismatic in practice, volunteered to God most acceptable service, and received from Him the highest spiritual benediction.

Now, what does this teach us—us, the members of the Church of England? First, with respect to ourselves, it teaches us not to pride ourselves in, or to rest satisfied with, a mere profession of the true faith. There is indeed but one true faith—that, namely, which God has delivered to us in His Word, and maintained by the testimony of His Church. To accept this faith in its integrity, is to set one’s seal to the testimony that God is true; to reject deliberately one article of it, no matter how small, how apparently unimportant, is to make God a liar, inasmuch as it is to refuse as false what He has offered us as true. Common duty then, and ordinary fear lest we should become blasphemers, render it imperative that we should most anxiously inquire what is the true faith, and then most implicitly receive its every article. We may not choose (heresy means choice) what we will believe, and what reject. To alter, or accept less than what God has propounded, is to act in defiance of Him, and to cast a slur upon His infallible truth. Is it reason to suppose that we can do this with impunity? Besides, remember, what God reveals to us as articles of faith, are no mere abstract truths for the philosopher to muse upon, and no more. They are the impelling force, the germ and embodiment of principles and ways of life, on the observance of which our very salvation depends. “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Whosoever says, “I do not choose to believe that He can in any way,” does not, as he imagines, merely deny a subtle dogma, he gives up a vital principle of godliness, without which of course he will not seek to eat Christ’s flesh; and so, if Christ be true, can have no spiritual life in Him.

For these two reasons, then—because they are revealed by God as verities, and because they are the foundations of godliness—it is essentially important to receive every article of the faith: and we, who find ourselves members of a communion in which the faith is thus received, which is apostolic in doctrine, and primitive in practice, have therefore much indeed to be thankful for, and may harmlessly, so as it be humbly, rejoice in the possession of such great privileges. But let us not be high-minded. “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” The Jews were a highly privileged people; they received the whole inspired Word; their priests were all called of God, as was Aaron; they worshipped in the appointed place, and observed all the enjoined times and ceremonies; yet with many of them God was not well pleased. They were unreal, hollow, formal, hypocritical; their service was listless and unmeaning; and so, notwithstanding all their privileges and all their orthodoxy, a Samaritan, a dog of the Gentiles, a publican, a harlot was often nearer to the kingdom of heaven than they were, and met Christ, when they missed Him.

Is not this a warning to us? What though we possess the pure and entire faith, though we have an appointed ministry, and continue in the apostles’ fellowship, though the spirit of Christ be present in our ordinances, and all our forms and ceremonies be after an approved pattern, yet may we not any of us be unreal in our use of these things, hollow, formal, listless, and so go away unaccepted and unblessed, while the less privileged Romanist or Dissenter is receiving the sweet assurance, “Thy faith hath made thee whole?” Depend upon it this may be, and often is the case. God would have us intellectually wise, but He would also have us heartily good. A good heart and a right mind united, form the being who is most blessed; with whom the covenant is surest, and in whom God takes most delight; but better, far better, a good heart alone, than a right mind alone.

Christ, as He walked on earth the messenger of peace and love to all men, had a special interest in the Jews (His own people), but it was in Jews whose practice corresponded with their profession, whose heart and life illustrated what their understanding received. On such as these, His highest favours would have been most readily bestowed; but wanting these qualities, He estimated their orthodoxy at nothing; and, on the other hand, finding these qualities among strangers and aliens, He allowed not their heterodoxy to prove an obstacle to their blessing. In many cases uncircumcision was counted for circumcision, and circumcision for uncircumcision.

My dear brethren, value ordinances greatly, but rest not, I charge you, in them. Boast not that you are Anglo-Catholics; that your ministers have an Apostolic succession; that you were regenerated in baptism; that you are regular communicants and worshippers at the daily service. These are, indeed, great privileges; but connected with them are great responsibilities. Is your pure faith illustrated by a pure life? Do you make the best use of an Apostolic ministry? Are you growing in the spirit of which you were born again? Do you feel and sustain the communicated presence of Christ within you? When you go down from the sanctuary, does your life shine, as Moses’s face did, with the reflected glory of God? If not, talk not of your high privileges—your case would be better without them. When God ceased to wink at the errors and ungodliness of mankind, He began by punishing, and with much severity, the errors and ungodliness of the privileged Jews. Yes, and whenever He takes account, and passes judgment, it is on the principle that to whom much has been given, of him shall much be required. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” “To him that knoweth, to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

The second thought which the fact of our text suggests, is one of great comfort to the benevolent heart. It is, that God will make a way through a bad system, to the disciple of that system who has been trying to reach Him. When one reflects on the grave and blinding errors of modern Romanism; on the awful denial of our blessed Lord’s Divinity by the Unitarians; on the capricious choice, what to believe, what to deny, which each Protestant sect ventures to make and maintain; on the disuse of a ministry, the ignoring of sacraments, and other holy ordinances by the Society of Friends, what a comfort is there in our text, “And he was a Samaritan;” in feeling that God condescends to get through all this, to the yearning, would-be faithful heart; ay, that He even accepts the purblind visions and stammering utterances of such an one as faith. “Thy faith hath made thee whole”! Most of us know some members of such sects with whom we should wish to dwell together in heaven, for whom our heart is rejoiced to feel that there are such prospects, in whose sanctified lives we have the present proof, that (however originators of heresy and schism may be regarded) in every nation and every sect, he that heareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.

But, thirdly, are we therefore to make no difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy? Are we to be indifferent to truth and error? Are we to frequent Romish chapels or Dissenting conventicles with as little compunction as though they were our proper sanctuaries? Are we to promote the schemes of other communions, by contributing to them out of our substance, or by lending our names or presence to them? No, brethren, we are not to confound Jew and Samaritan, nor to regard the schismatic building on Gerizim, as equally an approved sanctuary with the temple at Jerusalem. We are not to gather professors of different sects together; by concessions and suppressions to produce an outward conforming, and then to proclaim, “This is what Christians should be. This is an Evangelical alliance.” Evangelical alliance! alliance, i.e., according to the Gospel! Christ, indeed, willed us to be one; but it was by all receiving the whole truth, not by paring and cropping it each one as he will, and then calling the hacked and deformed thing of our own shaping His glorious Gospel. Judge for yourselves:—one man believes that the Blessed Virgin and other saints are his mediators with God; another, that Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but that Christ must be sought in His own appointed sacraments, or not found at all; a third completely ignores all sacraments. Shall these three stand side by side, and say, “We are allied according to the Gospel—we all believe alike”? Surely such a thing is a mockery of common sense, and an act of treason against their respective communions.

Yes, and it is worse. For, first of all, as I have already said, there is but one faith propounded in Holy Scripture. Men may differ in their perception of that faith—the Romanist regards it in one light, the Anglican in another, the “Friend” in a third. But each of these believes himself to be right, and he must therefore regard the others as wrong. Now, if they are wrong, then by slurring over their error, he makes it his own; he joins in the choosing of a creed other than that God has framed, and so insults the Infallible Truth. Again, there are no sins more strictly forbidden, more severely denounced in the Bible than those of heresy, choosing what to believe, instead of adopting the Apostolic faith, without increase or diminution, and schism, separating oneself, that is, without most strong reason from worship in appointed places, conducted by appointed officers, according to the prescribed form. These sins are classed by St. Paul with the grossest works of the flesh, and it is said of those that cause them, that they shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

It is evident, then, that patronising or encouraging in any way a religious community from which we personally honestly differ, is disobeying a positive command of God, and incurring awful risk of His displeasure. And there is another argument against seeming recognition of heresy or schism: namely, that we thereby often cause the weak brother to offend, and hinder the anxious inquirer after truth from renouncing error. If those who look up to us for guidance—and there are very few of us but are accepted as guides by some—see us once among the Samaritans, they will take license and encouragement from us to be there frequently; and so, if those who are in doubt between remaining aloof from the Church and joining it, see Churchmen in their assemblies, they will assuredly gather that there is no difference of importance between them and us, and will remain where they are. For all these reasons, it is of the utmost importance that the Churchman, while entertaining the most benevolent feelings towards those who differ from him, while gratefully acknowledging the good they do, while inwardly rejoicing that wandering sinners should be proselytised by them, and have a faith of some kind rather than none at all; while, too, hoping and praying that our blessed Lord’s prayer may yet be realised, and that all who call upon His name may ultimately be of one heart and one mind, and with one mouth glorify God; should still most strictly abstain in presence, in deed, in speech, and in look, from the remotest encouragement, or sanction of erroneous doctrine, or religious disunion and division. Meet these men in business you often must; meet them in friendship, in secular consultation, in practical benevolence, you may; but meet them in their religious capacity, frequent their places of worship, forward the objects of their sect you must not, unless you are prepared to go over to them altogether; to maintain that theirs is the faith, and the fellowship; and that all not in communion with them are heretics or schismatics. Give no uncertain sound. Halt not between two opinions. “He that is not with Me is against Me.”