SERMON I.
EVANGELICAL TRUTHS STATED, AND THE CHARGE OF
NOVELTY AS A GROUND OF PREJUDICE AGAINST
THE GOSPEL, REFUTED.
[Preached at Nantwich, July 28, 1782.]
“What new doctrine is this?” Mark, i. 27.
If you look back to the twenty-first verse of the chapter, you find our Lord teaching in a synagogue at Capernaum, and all his hearers filled with astonishment at his doctrine. Truth naked and unadorned has been known often to produce this effect. How irresistibly powerful must have been its efficacy, in the mouth of such a Teacher! whose manner was as engaging, as his wisdom was profound! What seems principally to have struck the audience, while listening to the incomparable doctrines of the Lord Jesus, was, “that he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.” For, as the origin of truth is divine, it claims the just prerogative of commanding obedience to its sanctions, and gives its advocates an authority in pleading her injured rights, which error can seldom counterfeit.
That our blessed Lord might authenticate his mission, and enforce his doctrine, he took occasion, in the synagogue, to dispossess a demoniac. The unclean spirit that tormented him instantly yielded obedience to the word of Jesus, after having previously acknowledged him to be “the Holy One of God,” verse 24. A miracle, performed upon such an occasion, and attested by a variety of circumstances of public notoriety, excited the amazement of all present; who said, “What thing is this? What new doctrine is this?” Two things were the object of their surprise; the miraculous cure of the demoniac, and the supposed novelty of our Lord’s doctrine. But had they been properly conversant in the writings of their favorite lawgiver Moses, they would have seen, that Jesus came not to reveal truths in their nature absolutely new, and altogether unknown; but only to place in a new light, to communicate by a new style of preaching, and to enforce by motives unfolded with clearer radiance, those original truths, which the divine legation and ritual economy of Moses, as well as the corroborating testimony of all the prophets, were intended to teach from the beginning. See Acts, x. 43, and John, v. 45. But St. Paul accounts for this ignorance in the Jews, and the prejudices which sprung from it, by observing, that “their minds were blinded: for, until this day, remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which vail is done away in Christ.” 2 Cor. iii. 14. Had not “a vail” of darkness and unbelief “been upon their hearts,” they would have both known and acknowledged, that the doctrines which Jesus preached, were of patriarchal as well as Mosaic antiquity; and that Jehovah himself “preached that gospel unto Abraham,” Gal. iii. 8, which Jesus came to confirm and elucidate by a dispensation, superior in light and glory to any that had preceded it; and that what “God spake at sundry times and in divers manners unto the fathers by the prophets, he spake in the last days by his Son.” Heb. i. 1.
Blindness in the Jews made them fix the charge of novelty on the doctrines of Christ, although so visibly inscribed with the marks of divine authenticity; and the effect of that presumptive and hasty imputation, was an unwillingness to receive his testimony or credit the truth of his mission; and the consequence, a stubborn opposition to truth and a fatal insensibility in sin, terminating, at last, in such judgments as render them now a hissing and a proverb to all the nations of the earth.
But, are such prejudices new? or was the baneful root of them confined only to the regions of Judæa? No. In this land, and in this day, with all the advantages which we derive from the free circulation of the word of God, and from a national establishment so auspicious to the interests of truth, there are multitudes, who are ready to cry out, when they hear the gospel, as “certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics” did, when Paul preached at Athens, “Thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?” Acts, xvii. 19, 20. Thus, with many, to attribute novelty to a system, is the way to reprobate, and make it odious. And there are not a few, who satisfy themselves with no other argument for their unbelief, than that they may have happened not to hear before, what they contemptuously spurn. As if the nature of truth can be altered, or the credit of it shaken, by the want of previous acquaintance. We should have thought it a strange species of argumentation, had the Athenian philosophers attempted to demonstrate, that St. Paul’s doctrine must have been false, merely because it was new, and they happened not to hear it before. Yet upon this weak ground, do numbers reject the truth, and militate against their own happiness; while their conduct is as grossly repugnant to the dictates of calm reason and common sense, as it is reprobated by the voice of scripture. It will be a poor excuse, for any to make at the tribunal of Christ, that they contemned the great doctrines of revelation, merely because they thought them novel, when they neglected the opportunity of being convinced to the contrary; or that they adopted their ideas, and regulated their practice, by the maxims of the world. Such apologies, with all the mistake and precipitancy on which they are founded, may pass current now with those, who are credulous enough to drink in the monstrous absurdities of infidelity, whether ancient or modern. But, they will never satisfy those, who wishing to investigate truth at the fountain-head, like the noble Bereans, “search the scriptures daily, whether those things are so.” Acts, xvii. 11. And that none here may ignorantly plead such excuses, for their indifference or unbelief on a subject of such vast concern, I will endeavour, First, to show what the doctrine is which we preach, and on which we build our eternal all; and, Secondly, That this doctrine is no more justly chargeable with novelty, than it is with error; and, Thirdly, That other objections brought against the ministers of the gospel, are equally frivolous and undeserved.
I. As to the doctrines, which we preach, although we look upon ourselves accountable for them to that most excellent church, whose system of theology is the glory of her establishment, and the sacred depositum of all her ministers; yet, when truth is concerned, we acknowledge ourselves obliged to look from her authority, venerable as it is, to the infallible decisions of the lively oracles of God; since every church and every doctrine must be tried, must stand or fall, by that great standard. To the sacred scriptures we are glad to appeal, as to a divine authority, not superseding, but corroborating the doctrines of our church; without which, no obligation, arising merely from a national establishment, could lie upon the conscience to believe and receive them. And, indeed, the liberality and candor of our church appear in this, that she unites with the state in granting what, it must be confessed, are the natural rights of all who think themselves authorized to dissent from her: and admits in her sixth article, that “whatsoever may not be proved by holy scripture, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith.” Taking it for granted, however, that her constitution is founded upon a scripture model, and her articles consonant with the truth as it is in Jesus, while she requires, and has indeed an indisputable right to insist, that her ministers should preach those doctrines, and those only, which she had professedly derived from the fountain of truth in sacred writ; she has manifestly opened to them a fair opportunity of investigating the origin, and examining the tendency, of the system she hath received, and of acting agreeably to the result of their researches. No dissentient, therefore, can plead hardship or injury in this case. If he be out of the church, he is not compelled to come in. And if he should happen to be within the pale of her communion, no compulsion is exercised to keep him there. He was supposed to enter freely and cordially, and is permitted as freely to go out, if his sentiments are inimical to her great distinguishing doctrines. She hath only claimed, what every society in the world hath thought itself warranted to claim for the security of its laws and the benefit of its members; and that is, a liberty of judging for herself. And that judgment she conceives to be obligatory and directory to her ministers, not as set up in opposition to the word of God, but as perfectly coincident with its authority.
In this, view, when a minister of the Church of England is either directly by controversy, or indirectly by secretly-invidious imputations, called upon to declare and vindicate his sentiments; to all the members of the same church with himself, he has a right to quote her authority as a sufficient justification of the tenets he inculcates; and has an equal right to expect, that an unequivocal appeal to her discriminating doctrines ought to be considered as an indirect evidence, at least, of the uprightness of his intentions, if not of the orthodoxy of his sentiments. He thinks himself authorized to expect too, that he should be reputed an honest man, as long as he professes to advance nothing but in subserviency to the scheme of doctrine which he solemnly subscribed at his ordination. And should he happen to err, yet candor should acknowledge, that he is mistaken with the Church of England, since her sentiments he avows as his own. And in such venerable company he is not, and cannot be supposed to be ashamed to declare them, that all may judge for themselves of the inconsistency or validity of his pretensions. And, when interrogated, he might think it a sufficient apology to say, “If you wish to know my sentiments, from any secret supposition of their heterodoxy, I refer you to the 39 articles of that church, of which we are both members. I subscribed to those articles with hand and heart. My assent and consent to them were sincere and unequivocal. I firmly believe them to be agreeable to the word of God; and, while they epitomize the sentiments of the church, they speak my own. As such I believe them, and I preach them. Read over those articles, therefore, and you may then know, what are the leading topics of my ministrations.” Such an answer a minister of the gospel might esteem a reasonable and a sufficient one, to cavillers of every description, when either ignorance censures, or malevolence detracts. But lest, upon the present occasion, such an appeal should be thought to carry too much the appearance of indolence and evasion, I will endeavour, with all the faithfulness and precision in my power, to state the outlines of that system of doctrine, which I verily believe to be according to truth and godliness, and upon which I build my own hopes and prospects for eternity.