In the Blessedness of the Righteous, when describing those who bear that character, instead of dwelling upon justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ, after the manner of Goodwin or Owen, Howe exhibits chiefly the moral view of religion, that “it can be understood to be nothing but the impress of the Gospel upon a man’s heart and life; a conformity in spirit and practice to the revelation of the will of God in Jesus Christ; a collection of graces exerting themselves in suitable actions and deportments towards God and man.” Calamy justly says that Howe “did not consider religion so much a system of doctrines, as a Divine discipline to reform the heart and life.” He carries out the idea of Christianity being a law, “with evangelical mitigations and indulgences.” He speaks of the law of faith, and insists upon that part of the Gospel revelation which contains and discovers our duty—what we are to be and do, in order to our blessedness.[545] Some of his expressions would scarcely have been used by the two Divines we have just mentioned; yet, without going into a theological discussion on the question, I may observe, that Howe certainly believed most firmly in all which is essential to the doctrine of justification by faith, and disposed of the opposite doctrine in a summary way by saying, “To suppose the law of works, in its own proper form and tenor, to be still obliging, is to suppose all under hopeless condemnation, inasmuch as all have sinned.” The spirit of his teaching throughout must be remembered, in order that we may qualify, somewhat, certain expressions which seem to look favourably towards such schemes as were advocated by Thorndike and Bull. The drift of Howe’s theology was different from theirs, notwithstanding an occasional resemblance of phraseology; and whilst I admit that some of his passages on this subject require to be carefully guarded, and others are open to exception, I must say that he did immense service to the cause of Gospel truth, first, by insisting upon the present dispensation of the Divine will as a form of moral and righteous government for men in general, not simply an expedient for gathering together the elect; and, next, by insisting upon the responsibility of man, as well as upon the freeness of the grace of God. In my opinion, Howe brought out—and Baxter did the same—phases of truth in relation to man as a responsible being, as a subject morally accountable to the universal Governor of the world, too much neglected by many of their Puritan brethren.
HOWE.
The comprehensiveness of Howe’s mind, the harmony of his own spiritual life, and the essentially practical character of his instructions, appear in his Carnality of Religious Contention, especially in the following passage relative to the two great blessings of the Gospel which he distinguishes whilst he unites them:—In fine, therefore, the Apostle “makes it his business to evidence to them that both their justification and their sanctification must be conjoined, and arise together out of one and the same root,—Christ Himself,—and by faith in Him, without the works of the law, as that which must vitally unite them with Him; and that thereby they should become actually interested in all His fulness—that fulness of righteousness which was to be found only in Him, and nowhere but in Him; and withal, in that fulness of spirit and life and holy influence, which also was only in Him; so as that the soul, being united by this faith with Christ, must presently die to sin and live to God. And at the same time, when He delivered a man from the law as dead to it, He became to him a continual living spring of all the duty which God did by His holy rule require and call for, and render the whole life of such a man a life of devotedness to God.”[546]
The Popish theory of justification, which confounds it with personal righteousness, and the approaches made in that direction by Anglican Divines, drove the Puritans to an opposite extreme; and the distinction they sometimes make between justification and sanctification amounts almost to a separation; but Howe—following St. Paul, who seems never to have thought of the one without having in his mind at the same time the thought of the other—whilst distinguishing between them, justly presents the two as conjoint blessings, “arising together out of one and the same root,” or as being, in reality, two harmonious aspects of one simple salvation.
Howe nowhere maintains the doctrine of particular redemption, but he exhibits the expiatory sacrifice of Christ with great clearness, and introduces an argument to the effect “that to account for the sufferings of the perfectly holy and innocent Messiah is made abundantly more difficult by denying the Atonement.”[547]
In his Redeemer’s Tears wept over Lost Souls, he does not enter at all into the Predestinarian controversy—a circumstance which distinguishes him from High Calvinistic theologians, who would not have failed largely to discuss the question of the Divine decrees, together with the Divine foreknowledge. But Howe rigorously confines himself to a solution of that broad difficulty which presses equally upon Arminians and Calvinists, supposing that both believe, as they generally do, that God is omniscient, and that man is responsible. The author’s simple purpose is to vindicate the Divine sincerity and wisdom, in employing methods of moral persuasion with His intelligent and accountable creatures, when He discerns beforehand that they will prove of no avail, in offering invitations of mercy which He knows will never be accepted, and in urging admonitions and rebukes to which He foresees many will turn an unlistening ear and an obdurate heart. The reticence of Howe, in this and in other parts of his writings, upon subjects which present a fascinating attraction to speculative minds, however incapable they may be of grappling with the objects towards which they are so irresistibly drawn, is worthy of special notice, and indicates a resemblance between him, in this respect, and Robert Hall, who regarded Howe with intense admiration.
One of the characteristic imperfections of that age in relation to theology is found in the endeavour to define and explain many things which are utterly beyond the reach of human comprehension. Anglican and Puritan, in almost equal degrees, boldly ventured into regions of speculation, and mistook for solid ground what really is but cloud-land. Metaphysical conclusions of their own were by their imagination transformed into Divine verities; and they often overlooked the grand distinction between what revelation plainly teaches, and what can be only inferred from its teaching. John Howe is singularly free from all presumptuous intermeddling with subjects which lie beyond the ken of mortals; and, although versed in the highest philosophy, beyond many of his contemporaries—and, indeed, because he was thoroughly imbued with the purest spirit of philosophy—he knew when to stop in his path of inquiry, and how to distinguish between the wisdom of God and the reasonings of man.
BAXTER AND HOWE.
Both Baxter and Howe were pre-eminently earnest in their endeavours to promote the moral righteousness of Christians, and to exhibit its production in human character and human life as the grand aim of the Gospel of Jesus. Other Puritans, more Calvinistic in their modes of thinking, inculcated holiness with emphasis and effect, and might imply, throughout their instructions, that pardon and justification were means to an end, that end being the conformity of the saints to the will of God and the image of Christ; but no teacher of that class impresses my mind with the positive conviction of such being the true order of the great redemptive process, to the same extent, and with the same depth, as do the two theologians now under review. They most effectually relieve at least their part in Puritan Divinity from the charge, and from the suspicion, of subordinating that which is moral in religion to that which is speculative, that which is personal to that which is relative, that which is practical to that which is emotional. They give the true perspective in theology, and place subjects of belief in their position one towards another, more accurately perhaps than any of their contemporaries. They exhibit the sinner’s forgiveness and acceptance with God, and his adoption into the Divine family of the Church, and his heirship of celestial felicities, not as the ultimatum of Christian object and desire, but as spiritual conditions and circumstances essential to the growth and maturity of that moral and God-like life which is begotten in the human soul at the hour of the new birth by the Holy Spirit. No one, who reflects upon a scheme of theology constructed after this type, can regard it as defective in moral power, or as betraying the interests of perfect righteousness. To place righteousness in the position of an end, rather than in the relation of means to an end, must be to exalt and glorify it. Those who impugn the whole system of evangelical belief as derogatory to the moral character of religion, and who therefore insist upon moral duties as the means of attaining eternal life, do really dethrone Christian righteousness from its Divine supremacy, and turn it into a prudential expedient for promoting one’s own advantage, by making it a series of stepping-stones or a flight of stairs by which men may climb from the borders of perdition to the threshold of heaven. It is they who dishonour—of course unintentionally—the nature and claims of Gospel righteousness, not teachers like Baxter and Howe, who, refusing to look at that righteousness merely or mainly as means to an end, as price paid for a treasure, or as service done for reward, represent it as the goal of all endeavour, the prize of the Christian race, the richest gift of Divine love, and the brightest diamond in the crown of salvation.
BAXTER AND HOWE.