Chillingworth, a native of the City, and an ornament of the University of Oxford, died in 1644. Eight years afterwards, the English Church lost another Divine, an ornament of the University of Cambridge, who, though very different in many respects from Chillingworth, may be classed with him in the same division of liberal Divines.
LIBERAL ORTHODOX.—SMITH.
John Smith possessed a mind in which the mystical element mingled itself with an intense energy of reflection, a habit of calm thought, and an imagination which employed itself, not in painting individual objects, but in dyeing, with rich tints of colour, abstract and immutable ideas. His mental training had been in the Greek Academy. He had long sat as a loving disciple at the feet of Plato, and had conversed with the earlier and later Platonists. The reader of Smith’s works will, in every page, discover traces of his peculiar culture, as well as of his peculiar endowments. His Select Discourses, published in 1660, take a wide range, embracing the true method of attaining Divine knowledge; the errors that grow up beside it—superstition on the one hand, atheism on the other; the immortality of the soul, which is the subject, and the existence and nature of God, who is the Author and object of religion; and prophecy, which Smith treats as the way whereby revealed truth is dispensed and conveyed, rather than as a proof whereby it is established. The discourses upon the difference between an evangelical and legal righteousness, upon the excellency and nobleness of true religion, and upon a Christian’s conflict with and conquest over Satan, exhibit the author’s characteristic views of doctrinal, ethical, and experimental Divinity. The first only requires particular notice here. “The law was the ministry of death, and in itself an external and lifeless thing; neither could it procure or beget that Divine life and spiritual form of godliness, in the souls of men, which God expects from all the heirs of glory, nor that glory which is only consequent upon a true Divine life.” Whereas, on the other side, the Gospel is set forth “as a mighty efflux and emanation of life and spirit, freely issuing forth from an omnipotent source of grace and love, as that true, God-like, vital influence whereby the Divinity derives itself into the souls of men, enlivening and transforming them into its own likeness, and strongly imprinting upon them a copy of its own beauty and goodness; like the spermatical virtue of the heavens, which spreads itself freely upon this lower world, and, subtily insinuating itself into this benumbed, feeble, earthly matter, begets life and motion in it. Briefly, it is that whereby God comes to dwell in us, and we in Him.”[458]
Particular passages may mislead as to the general character of an author’s teaching; but there is a ring in these words, indicating at once the kind of metal of which Smith’s theology is made. It is of the same substance throughout. “The righteousness of faith,” he says, “and the righteousness of God, is a Christ-like nature in a man’s soul, or Christ appearing in the minds of men by the mighty power of His Divine Spirit, and thereby deriving a true participation of Himself to them.” And in accordance with this, and showing at the same time the author’s shrinking from definite and precise forms of dogmatic statement, such as may be found in Anglicans on the one side, and in Puritans on the other, he observes that the Gospel “was not brought in, only to refine some notions of truth that might formerly seem discoloured and disfigured by a multitude of legal rites and ceremonies; it was not to cast our opinions concerning the way of life and happiness only into a new mould and shape in a pedagogical kind of way; it is not so much a system and body of saving Divinity, but the spirit and vital influx of it, spreading itself over all the powers of men’s souls, and quickening them into a Divine life; it is not so properly a doctrine that is wrapt up in ink and paper as it is vitalis scientia, a living impression made upon the soul and spirit.”[459] Another name challenges attention.
The ever-memorable John Hales, pronounced by Pearson to have had “as great a sharpness, quickness, and subtlety of wit as ever this or perhaps any nation bred,” had been a Calvinist; but he said, that at the Synod of Dort, which he attended, he bid John Calvin good-night. He had certainly what might be termed very broad views of Christian faith; for he remarked, “The Church is like Amphiaraus, she hath no device, no word in her shield; mark and essence with her are all one, and she hath no other note but to be.”[460] This was a statement which removed him to an equal distance from both Anglicans and Puritans; and one sentence from a sermon by Hales is sufficient to show how widely his teaching as to the way of salvation differed from all preachers of the latter class. “The water of baptism, and the tears of true repentance, creatures of themselves weak and contemptible, yet through the wonderful operation of the grace of God annext unto them, are able, were our sins as red as twice-dyed scarlet, to make them as white as snow.”[461] Hales was as orthodox as a man could be on the subject of the Trinity;[462] and, in his masterly sermon on Christian omnipotency, plainly asserts the power and sufficiency of Divine grace.[463]
LIBERAL ORTHODOX.—FARINDON.
Hales died in 1656, and was followed to the grave two years afterwards by his attached friend Anthony Farindon, both of them being members of the University of Oxford. Farindon was far more evangelical than Hales and Chillingworth. He had not the mystical turn of mind which is so marked in John Smith, nor was he so manifestly a Platonist. Altogether his habits of thought are much more on a level with common understandings.
The distance which severed Farindon from the Anglicans comes out in the following passage:—“And now, if we look into the Church, we shall find that most men stand in need of a ‘yea, rather.’ ... Felix sacramentum! ‘Blessed sacrament of baptism!’ ... It is true; but there is ... ‘Yea, rather; blessed are they that have put on Christ.’ ‘Blessed sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.’ It is true; but, ‘Yea, rather; blessed are they that dwell in Christ.’ ‘Blessed profession of Christianity!’ ‘Yea, rather; blessed are they that are Christ’s.’ ‘Blessed cross!’ The Fathers call it so. ‘Yea, rather; blessed are they that have crucified their flesh, with the affections and lusts.’ ‘Blessed Church!’ ‘Yea, rather; blessed are they who are members of Christ.’ ‘Blessed Reformation!’ ‘Yea, rather; blessed are they that reform themselves.’”[464]
Nor is the distinction between Farindon and the Puritans much less visible, when he remarks, with regard to the act of justification, “What mattereth it whether I believe or not believe, know or not know, that our justification doth consist in one or more acts, so that I certainly know and believe that it is the greatest blessing that God can let fall upon His creature, and believe that by it I am made acceptable in His sight, and, though I have broken the law, yet shall be dealt with as if I had been just and righteous indeed? whether it be done by pardoning all my sins, or imputing universal obedience to me, or the active and passive obedience of Christ?” “And as in justification, so in the point of faith by which we are justified, what profit is there so busily to inquire whether the nature of faith consisteth in an obsequious assent, or in the appropriation of the grace and mercy of God, or in a mere fiducial apprehension and application of the merits of Christ?”[465] It would be difficult to point out, in the writings of this theologian, a precise definition either of justification or of faith, and equally difficult to point out any statement adverse to those views of salvation by grace in which all evangelic Christians agree. He finds fault with Augustine for confounding justification with sanctification, and separates himself from the Anglican, though not so widely as from the Romanist, when he stigmatizes as “an unsavoury tenet” the doctrine, “that justification is not a pronouncing, but a making one righteous; that inherent holiness is the formal cause of justification; and that we may redeem our sins, and purchase forgiveness, by fasting, almsdeeds, and other good works.” Deficient in definiteness upon these points, Farindon is clear in reference to the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. He expounds them in an orthodox way, yet he does not dwell upon them so frequently, and at such length, as his Anglican and Puritan contemporaries. He is no Calvinist; without entering into lengthened controversy on the five points, he shows his great dislike to Calvin’s views.[466] He holds decidedly that Christ died for all men; and with caustic reasoning, shows that, when it is said, “God so loved the world,” it cannot mean, He so loved the elect.[467] His Arminianism is perhaps nearly, if not quite, as evangelical as that of our Wesleyan brethren, but he lacks the fervour with which they set forth the verities of Christianity in relation to the deepest wants of man. Puritans could scarcely apply the moral lessons of the Gospel to the hearts of men on grounds more evangelic than those presented by Farindon; but we miss in his sermons a penetrating fire like that of John Owen, and a melting pathos like that of Richard Baxter.
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL.