George Bull may be placed next to Herbert Thorndike. Bull was admitted into Exeter College, Oxford, two years before the imposition of the Engagement. That Act, in 1649, ejected him; in consequence of which he became a student in the house of a Presbyterian Rector. The Puritan influence in the rectory, however, became neutralized by the Rector’s son, through whose friendship the young student came to study Hooker, Hammond, Taylor, Grotius, and Episcopius. The father foresaw the result, and, looking at it from his own point of view, would often say, “My son will corrupt Mr. Bull.”[391]
Bull has not, like Thorndike, bequeathed any treatise on systematic Divinity in general, nor has he propounded views of the extreme kind, which the former has done in his Laws of the Church; but between Bull’s two great works and certain aspects of Thorndike’s teaching there is a considerable resemblance.
The first great work produced by him is his Harmonia Apostolica, published in 1670, in which he propounds his views upon justification. His general method is to examine the Scriptures in the light of patristic teaching; and, adopting the same principles of interpretation as Thorndike, he arrives at similar conclusions. He is quite as learned as the contemporary of his earlier days, and he is far more lucid and methodical in his mode of treatment; for he can be easily followed, and he can be clearly understood. Also, he is much more cautious in his statements, and he carefully strives to save himself from misapprehension. He attributes salvation entirely to Christ’s meritorious obedience, of which obedience Christ’s death was the consummation and completion. Bull maintains that this obedience satisfied Divine justice, that this alone is the efficacious cause of eternal life; and he constantly insists that no man can, without Divine grace, and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as flowing from the precious side of the Crucified One, perform the conditions of the covenant.
He further distinctly states, as the result of a careful examination of Scripture, “that the word justification, in this subject, has the meaning of a judicial term, and signifies the act of God as a Judge, according to the merciful law of Christ, acquitting the accused, pronouncing him righteous, and admitting him to the reward of righteousness, that is, eternal life.”[392] But, though adopting the forensic view of justification, and thus moving in the same line as Martin Luther, Bull differs from the German Reformer in this very important respect—that, instead of taking law to mean law apart from the Gospel, he explains it to mean law as incorporated in the Gospel; for he says, “It must be ever observed, as an undeniable truth, that Christ, in His sermon, not only explained the moral law, but also laid it down as His own, and required its observance, assisted by the grace of the Gospel, from all Christians, as a condition of His covenant indispensably necessary.” It is this view of the law which lies at the foundation of Bull’s theory of justification. Consistently with it, he reduces his argument to this syllogistic form—“Whoever is acquitted by the law of Christ must necessarily fulfil that law; but by faith alone, without works, no one fulfils the law of Christ; therefore by faith alone, without works, no one is acquitted by the law of Christ.”[393]
ANGLICANS.—BULL.
Having arrived at such a conclusion from the study of the Epistle of St. James, then comes the pinch: how is such a conclusion to be reconciled with the teaching of St. Paul? The learned author, after hastily disposing of other methods of reconciliation, prepares for defending his own, by laying down the principle that St. Paul’s teaching is to be explained by St. James’ and not St. James’ by St. Paul’s; our critic believing, with Augustine, that St. James wrote after St. Paul—an assumption contradicted by modern Biblical criticism. Bull, then, asserts, that faith, to which justification “is attributed by St. Paul, is not to be understood as one single virtue, but denotes the whole condition of the Gospel covenant—that is, comprehends in one word all the works of Christian piety.” “Assuredly,” he adds, “it is clearer than light itself, that the faith to which St. Paul attributes justification is only that which worketh by love, which is the same as a new creature, which, in short, contains in itself the observance of the commandments of God.” In order to get over the great objection arising from the plain words of St. Paul, that “a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law,” this controversialist attempts to show, that the works which St. Paul excludes from justification are not all kinds of works, but works of a certain description only,—namely, works of the Mosaic law, and works of the natural law, works done in obedience to the Jewish ritual, and works done by the force of nature. Bull then proceeds to dwell at considerable length upon the Apostle’s argument from the universality of sin, and the weakness of the law; and, as the result, he presents two deductions—first, that the Apostle entirely excludes from justification only those works which are performed by the aid of the Mosaic, and of the natural law, without the grace of the Gospel; secondly, that the Apostle’s argument, so far from taking away from justification the necessity of good works, proves that the true righteousness of works is absolutely necessary to justification, and that the Gospel is the only efficacious method by which any man can be brought to practise such righteousness.[394]
The coincidence of Bull’s teaching with Thorndike’s, as to the grounds of faith, appears in the following passage:—
“God knows the secrets of my heart; so far am I from the itch of originality in theological doctrines, ... that whatever are sanctioned by the consent of Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops, though my own small ability attain not to them, yet I will embrace them with all reverence. In truth I had already learned, by no few experiments, in writing my Harmony, while yet a young man, what now in my mature age I am most thoroughly persuaded of, that no one can contradict Catholic consent, however he may seem to be countenanced for a while by some passages of Scripture wrongly understood, and by the illusions of unreal arguments, without being found in the end to have contradicted both Scripture and sound reason. I daily deplore and sigh over the unbridled license of prophesying which obtained for some years in this our England, ... under the tyranny of what some considered a wretched necessity. In a word, my hearty desire is this, Let the ancient customs and doctrines remain in force.”[395]
ANGLICANS.—BULL.
The publication of the Harmonia Apostolica occasioned much controversy. Answers appeared, written by Charles Gataker, son of Thomas Gataker, one of the Westminster Divines; by Joseph Truman,—who, though refusing to conform as a clergyman to the Established Church, remained in it as a lay communicant; by Dr. Thomas Tully, Principal of St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, a man of high reputation for learning and ability; and by John Tombes, the Anti-pædobaptist,—who, like Truman, declined ministerial conformity, but at least occasionally practised communion. Truman differed from Bull less than did the other combatants. Not to be wearisome, I would merely state, that his part in the dispute mainly turned upon the question, What is grace? Bull, in Truman’s estimation, regarding it as a bestowment of spiritual power, to be improved or misimproved, according to the will of the recipient; Truman, who in this respect anticipated the opinions of modern Calvinists, representing grace as a Divine influence securing the obedience of the will to the Gospel of Christ. He highly commended that sober sentiment of the great Bishop Sanderson, who, confessing his own disability to reconcile the consistency of grace and free-will in conversion, and being sensible that they must both be maintained, tells us, he ever held it “the more pious and safe way, to place the grace of God in the throne, where we think it should stand, and so to leave the will of man to shift for the maintenance of its own freedom, as well as it can, than to establish the power and liberty of free-will at its height, and then to be at a loss how to maintain the power and efficacy of God’s grace.”[396] Gataker, Tully, and Tombes were, what might be termed, High Calvinists. The first maintained, in opposition to the Author of the Harmonia, as it appears from his reply,—that remission of sins is entirely extraneous to justification, that there are conditions in the Gospel covenant which are not conditions of Gospel justification, that repentance is a condition of the Gospel joined by Christ with faith, but it is not a condition of justification, and that we are justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ.[397] Tully treated Bull as an innovator; and after alluding to Socinians and Papists, insinuated that he belonged to those, “who perfidiously serving the interests of one or other of these parties, shamelessly take to themselves the title of sons of the Church of England.”[398] Tully contended for justification by faith alone; and, injudiciously adding to the Scriptural argument the authority of the Fathers, which he maintained to be in his favour, laid himself open to the attacks of his opponent, who criticised his citations, and turned against him testimonies from Irenæus, Origen, Cyprian, Hilary, Basil, and Ambrose. The judgment of the Church of England, and of the Reformed Churches on the Continent, also came under debate in this department of the controversy; Bull and his antagonists each claiming patristic witnesses on his own side. Also the doctrine of the saint’s final perseverance, and the limitation of the efficacy of the atonement to the elect, were points asserted by Tully and denied by Bull. Tombes’ book seems to have been of a more discursive kind than the rest; and to have aimed at answering not only the Harmonia, but also Aphorisms, written by Richard Baxter, whose name we find much mixed up in this controversy;—and by an alliteration very agreeable to the taste of that day, associated with the names of Bull and Bellarmine. Bull’s name is provocative of puns; and we find the author, in his preface to the Examen Censuræ, commenting on Tombes in the following manner, which shows the kind of attack to which Tombes had descended:—“He,” says our author, “need not fear the horns and stamping of the Bull (such is his wit, which foreigners will scarcely understand, Englishmen will smile at) since the Bull has long since learnt to despise all such barking animals.”[399] In an age when the amenities of literature were unknown, when Milton and Salmasius were abusing one another with a virulence which astonishes a modern reader, we cannot wonder at finding very bad passions manifested in the field of theological controversy. Bull, doubtless, was a learned and pious man, but his polemical writings show that he was deeply imbued with the violent polemical spirit of the times; yet, violent as may be the spirit of controversy in the modern Church, where can we find anything so fierce, so truly savage, as Tertullian’s attack on Marcion, at the opening of the first Book?