'*'^^i "^^i>t' m^i^. ./* r:^. ^■^ H. Martin Letters to Marcus Dcds *■ *afc li BS480 .M38 ,^H Of rmc^^ BS4-8C .M38 IdS^ A SEQUEL TO J/w W't'stuiinstcr Dec trine of the Inspiration of Scrip ture." LETTERS TO MARCUS DODS, D. D. bV HUGH MARTIN, D.D. S,t C O N D EDITION. LONDON: J. MSBET .V CU. E1)IXBLK(.U1: MACLAREN & MACNIVEN and ANDILKW ELLIUT. GLASGOW: D. BRVCE A SON. ABERDKEN: A. &, R. MILNE. MONTROSE: G. WALKKR. DINGWALL; LKWLS MuNRo 18 / ( . T : A SEQUEL TO " The Westminster Doctrine of tJie Inspiration of Scripture'^ ;^^^ JAN 18 i'.::o LETTERS ^%5»u5ffiJ» TO MARCUS DODS, D. D. BY / HUGH MARTIN, D.D. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: J. NISBET k CO. EinNBURGH : MACLAREN & MACNIVEN and ANDREW ELLTOT. GLASGOW: D. BRYCE & SON. ABERDEEN: A. cfe R. MILNE >rONTROSE : G. WALKER. DINGWALL ; LEWIS MONRO. 18 7 7. u PREFACE. For the sake of those who may have the First or Second Edition of the '' Westminster Doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture/' I think it right to reproduce here what I have said in a Preface to the Third Edition, published since the rising of the General Assembly : — " I have very seriously considered whether I might not, in this edition, suppress the Prefatory Note, and it would have given me pleasure to find that to be my duty. But so long as the extract from the College Com- mittee's Special Report on Professor Smith's case, on which my Prefatory Note is founded,"" abides among our Church documents, without a word of disapprobation on the part of the Assembly or the Church, I cannot possibly cease to bear resolute witness against it. It is a very serious thing for any Committee of this Church to take it upon them to tell us what is '' the technical ground in the Confession that must regulate ecclesiasti- * Westminster Doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture, p. 5. IV PREFACE. cal procedure/' even though they should set it forth cor- rectly. The Courts of the Church will judge of that for themselves, on each occurrent case, as providence may require. It is still more serious when they set it forth incorrectly, and with such trenching on the perfection of our confessional relation to the great doctrine of In- spiration as I have felt it my duty to point out. There are names on that Committee for which I have such regard, that I am entitled to the sympathy of my bre- thren, instead of any breath of blame, for having under- taken the ungrateful duty. It was more imperatively called for, than, perhaps even yet, has become quite apparent. " But I wish to put on record, and call particular attention to, the fact that neither the Assembly nor the Church is in the least degree committed to the extract which I have criticised. It has met with no approval, and with even no defence. What took place at the Assembly, in this regard, was as follows : — (1.) Dr Rainy intimated, on Tuesday, 29 th May, that the Con- vener of the College Committee had telegraphed to him to table the Special Report; and that, in the Convener's absence, he would do so without a word. (2.) Dr Wilson's motion, which founded itself on that Report, was content with quoting from it so much as it needed and no more ; and the usual phrase, — " receive the Report and approve of the same," — was conspicuously PREFACE. V absent. (3.) On Monday, 4th JunCj tlie Convener gave in the General Report, and stated that, as the Special Report had been given in by Dr Rainy, he would make no allusion to it. (4).) In moving the adoption of the General Report, Dr Elder was careful to point out that it did not include the Special Report, and made it very plain that he was not moving the adoption or approval of it " All this is so far satisfactory, except, of course, that it is negative. But as the extract abides where it was, without one tinge of positive disapprobation attached to it, so must my Prefatory Note abide where it was. The duty of writing and publishing it, at whatever risk of any man's displeasure, was urgent, and was not dis- charged without some gentleness as well as much con- sideration. I pondered long, for instance, whether I would not put another name than Coleridge's on page 8, to bring out the same distinction ; and I refrained from fear, as the saying is, of putting mischief into people's heads. Alas, I rather think now that the mischief is in some people's heads already. I refer to the ' New Pre- face' to Dr Marcus Dods's third edition of his Sermon on ' Revelation and Inspiration,' where, patently, he * cordially accepts,' and takes refuge behind, that very position which I felt it to be my duty to demolish. Unfortunately it was astonishingly fitted (no man believes intended) to protect such errors as his. But VI PREFACE. it is now a ruin. And it is certain that it will not be rebuilt. The best that can be said of it is, that it was an obiter dictum on the part of the pen that may have written it ; and, amidst the mass of matter demanding their attention, passed with only too much facility by the Committee, who have never asked any approval of it. But as I am (almost simultaneously with these lines) sending off to press, in the shape of ' Letters to Dr Dods,' a somewhat full and detailed reply to that sorrowful document, the ' New Preface,' I need not say more on the matter here. I content myself with saying that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the doctrine of the divine authorship, inspiration, and authority of the Old and New Testaments is now raised and imperilled in the Free Church of Scotland. '' H. M." Montrose, I4:th June 1877 CONTENTS. LETTER I. PACiK THE APOLOGETIC ELEMENT, ..... 9 LETTER II. THE RATIONALISING ELEMENT, . . . .10 LETTER III. HOW DO YOU MAKE UP YOUR CANON ? ... 21 LETTER IV. AX " EXPLOSION ! " . . . . . .32 LETTER V. DIVINE AUTITORSIlir — ANYTHING OR NOTHING, . . 39 LETTER VI. •'it pleased the LORD TO COMMIT THE SAME WHOLLY TO WRITING," ■•.... 45 LETTER VII. {Supplementari/). ELEVEN YEARS AGO, ...... 52 LETTERS TO MARCUS DODS, D.D. I. The Apologetic Element. Montrose, 11^/^ June 1877. My Dear Sir, I greatly regret that you have issued a third and unchanged edition of your sermon on ''Reve- lation and Inspiration/' and that the '' New Preface " cannot, in any respect, be considered as having improved the situation. You begin by complaining that justice has not been done to the apologetic element in your discourse : ''In the first place, I should have expected intelligent readers to apprehend that tlie sermon was written as an apolo- getic attempt." Now, waiving all about " intelligent readers," I have a distinct recollection of recognising the apologetic element in your pages ; but my criticism of your sermon being incidental and by no means the main object of my pamphlet, my aim was to produce, not an exhaustive reply, but merely stricture sufficient, in my view, to lead you to reconsider your A 10 LETTER I. position. Save for tliis, I would certainly have set myself to bar you out from finding shelter in the 5th section of the 1st chapter of the Confession, — an attempt Avhich I see you repeat in reference to '' Paul bringing light to your spirit." And, undoubtedly, I would have done what you now, not very wisely, I think, challenge me to do. How, then, is it possible for me, in meeting your challenge on this point to avoid asking, What hinders you from conducting a sound and valid apolo- getic in defence of Divine Revelation without injuring Inspiration ? For that last is really what you have to reply to. Why have you injured the doctrine of Inspira- tion ? Till you vanquish my arguments, I am entitled to say (and, of course, I must say it now more strongly than before), that I have proved that what you call inspiration was " not something designed to secure the supreme divine authorship of the writings concerned ; that, in fact, it may be defined as being just everything except what would secure that result."''^" In short, you have spirited out and rationalized away everything that the Church Catholic, and not the Westminister Divines only, have counted precious in their idea of Inspiration, leaving in it nothing distinctive, and denying all that is supernatural. And can you possibly mean to say that you have done this in the service of apologetic ? Can you assert, main- tain, and defend the supernatural in revelation, only at the expense of surrendering the supernatural in the record of revelation ? Can you not teach geometry without * See *' Westminster Doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture," page 35 THE APOLOGETIC ELEMENT. 1 1 ■staining the honours due to quaternions ? Can you not -expound plain algebra without laying lance in rest against the differential calculus, or hunting Bishop Berkeley's imaginary " ghosts of departed quantities " ? These are fair analogies. For, what is there in the superadded and •cumulative glory of the fact that the record is divine, to hamper you in your apologetic in behalf of the truth that the revelation is divine ? No honest mind will refuse you liberty to disentangle the two things. For myself, I had rather assisted you. I had not entirely overlooked this topic. I had said : '' Inspiration pre- supposes revelation, and is concerned with the recording of it, or with (in the language of the Confession) the committing of it to writing ; and the argument concern- ing inspiration presupposes that the argument on the ovidences of Divine Revelation — the old phrase for what is now called apologetics — has been led and closed " (page 24). If this is not clear enough, take the excellent statement of our brother, Mr Stevexson Smith : * "In arguing about Inspiration, we do not deal with infidels, but with believers in the Word of God. What, therefore, the Holy Scriptures say about their own Inspiration we must receive as the truth of God, otherwise we disallow them as a Divine Revelation." And you are not yourself without the perception of this old-fashioned truth, if you would only wield it consistently, instead of beinsr off and on with it in alternate sentences. * See his admirable pamplilet, " A Study of Scriptcjre Inspiuation, By Rev. Stevenson Smith, Free Church, Sanquhar.'' Edin. : INIaclaren & Macniven. 12 LETTER I. For instance, you say : " The Revelation first lays hold of him (the rational sceptic), and afterwards he constructs his theory of Inspiration." I would say, Makes up his mind concerning the doctrine of Inspiration ; for I know of no theory. But let that pass. Again you say : " My main object was to indicate that, so far as the historical contents of Scripture are concerned, revelation stands firm, although there should prove to be no such thing as Inspiration ;" a legitimate enough aim or object, not only in reference to " the historical contents of Scripture," but to the entire Scripture, on the under- standing that you mean that the argument for revelation stands firm, prior to any attempt to prove that there is such a thing as inspiration. But, then, when you go on to say in your next sentence : '' It will not be disputed by any ordinarily informed person, that a large amount of the current scepticism '"' is due to the mixing up of these two things," that is another matter. V/aiving once more, all about ''ordinarily informed people," I really am not aware that a large amount of current scepticism * There are sceptics and sceptics. There is the honest and sorrowful sceptic, who is to be treated on the principle of the Apostolic command, " Let not that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed." And there is the dishonest and bitter-hearted sceptic, who is to be treated on the principle of the Lord's own injunction, " Cast not your pearls before swine." I do not know that I have ever read anything better on the point than the following: "There are many cases to be found, in which uncertainty as to fundamental truths is to those who are perplexed by it a matter of deepest seriousness and concern. But there are other cases in which the profession of scepticism has very much the character of a pastime ; those who indulge in it seem to have no higher ol'ject in view than their own amusement and the perplexity of others; this is a course of conduct which cannot be too strongly reprobated." — Free General Assembly's Reports, xx. p. 4. THE APOLOGETIC ELEMENT. 1'^ IS due to this cause, for I do not know that this cause is to any serious extent in operation. If it is, I cannot imagine who the parties are that are mixing up revela- tion and inspiration. It may possibly be some of those impoverished retrogressionists (demonstrably so) who, to tlie scandal of all modest minds, are calling themselves " advanced thinkers." It cannot possibly be any wise 4ind faithful vindicator of the Westminster Confession. Indeed, the Church of Christ, generally, has been iiccustomed to tell the sceptic that the doctrine of inspiration is a revealed truth, which we believe on the testimony of God ; and until he come to acknowledge the reality and credibility of a divine revelation, and of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as the genuine and authentic record thereof, we never dream of requiring him to form any judgment upon the subject. It is a topic on which we do not trouble Jiiin : and it is a topic on which — why should he trouble us? 1 think you do allow yourself, most unnecessarily, and with no possible advantage, either in the meantime or in the end, to be troubled on this topic by sceptics, when you -admit that a large amount of their scepticism is due to the mixing up of these two things. And even if it be true, disentangle the two things. Withdraw the topic of inspiration out of his reach, and leave him, in the mean- time, face to face Avith revelation only. And surely you can do that, without injuring inspiration, and without throwing out sinister hints that inspiration is very likely to injure Jam. Surely that is the proper course to follow. But instead of that, you seem to me 14 LETTER T. as if you would say to the sceptic : ''All ! poor fellow ;: you are greatly to be pitied. There is that ' staggering ' ogre of inspiration ready to seize you as soon as yoiT get within the gates of revelation. I really don't wonder though you stay out in the cold in prefer- ence." Exactly, for all the world, as if, in order to get him in at the door, you would throw inspiration out at the window! Changing the figure, I shall take the liberty of hinting to you a more excellent way. When a sceptic pules to you about ''his scepticism being due to the mixing up of these two things ; " look him in the face, and "tell that fox," that it cannot possibly be Inspiration, poor lamb ! that is muddling the water. For there never was a clearer case of the fable. When you say that " if revelation is to be conserved, it must not be bound up and made to stand with a special theory of inspiration," I reply that the West- minster Confession gives no special theory of inspiration, and, indeed, no theory at all. It asserts its conviction evidently that inspiration has resulted in the divine authorship of the record of revelation : and how that could be adverse to " revelation being conserved " is inconceivable. Really you seem hard to please. You are interested in revelation being " conserved." These divines say that, exactly "for the better preserving of it, the Lord committed it wholly to writing." And yet you are no better pleased than before 1 You add, " My aim was to show that of these two distinct things, Revelation is by far the more important ;" — a very presumptuous attempt, I TYiust say ; and directly in the face of that THE APOLOGETIC ELEMENT. 1 5 same Westminster Confession (yours and mine), wliicli, after affirming the divine aiitliorsliip, goes on to say, '' which maketh the holy scripture to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing his will unto His people being now ceased." So that of the two things which you thus contrast, that which by implication you count " by far the less important," is by these divines counted the very crown, and completion, and permanent replacement of what you count ''by far the miore impor- tant." How can you possibly count that by far the more important, which, without the other, must, at the mercy of human tradition, have passed away as a sum- mer brook ? Certain it is that that divineness of the record which you call '' not indispensable," the Confession calls " most necessary." All this is in regard of the historical writings. But then you proceed to say that even " in the case of the prophetical and apostolical writings, the revelation of truth to the mind of the writers was the matter of prime importance." Yes ; to the prophetical and apostolic writers ; for their own soul's instruction and salvation. But as concerns " the prophetical and apostolic 'writings " (and it is of them you speak) ; as concerns the bearing of the writings, and their value to the Church in all ages ; the statement seems sheer infatuation. And, in short, I do not think that paragraphs, which begin with statements like that, and end with the expression of your desire to imitate Paul in " allowing the inspired state of the human mind to fall back into a secondary place" ought to detain me any longer in replying lo them. — I am, &c. 11. The Rationalising Element. My Dear Sir, Since, to my mind, '^ this point of view " does not improv^e matters in tlie very least, but rather requires an apologetic for itself, instead of being able to render any, I fail of course to see how you can justly appeal to it against those who take exception to your statement, *' I do not believe what Paul says, because I first believe him to be inspired ; but I believe him to be inspired because he brings light to my spirit, which can come only from God." (Pref. p. 5.) You, however, ''reading the sermon from this point of view, do not see how any one can justly take exception to that statement." But it is just because we have read the sermon, that we take exception to this sentence, in consecution to many more. Had it stood alone ; and, more particularly, could we have considered it as indicating nothing but a common- place little bit of natural history of the state of mind of a sceptic passing from darkness to light ; I venture to say no body would have ever troubled you about it. But, my dear Sir, the very serious thing is, that even when you- cZo "believe Paul to beia^^iid, because he brings light to your spirit which could come only from Crod," the'inspiration which you are thus led to attribute THE RATIONALISING ELEMENT. l7 to him, is something wholly different from what the Catholic Church, and in particular the Westminster Divines, have ever regarded as that divine inspiration which secures the divine authorship and authority of the Word of God. In the face of this, it is mere trifling to tell us, what it needs no ghost surely to tell, — namely, that '' no rational sceptic first comes to believe in inspiration, and from that belief passes on to belief in God," and that *' no man believes in inspiration until he believes in Christ as able to give the Spirit." I am thrown back, therefore, even on the first half of your sentence, in which you say, " I do not believe what Paul says because I first believe him to be inspired," and I am comjoelled to ask : Is the Inspiration which in the €nd you attribute to him, such that you can say, " I do believe what Paul says (though not because I first believe him to be inspired, yet) when now at last I believe him to be inspired " ? Can you say that ? Dare you say that, with what I am now to quote from your next page ? "1 accept him," you say, " as authoritative because his claim is consistent. I may not be able at once to accept all he teaches. I cannot accej^t it merely because it comes to me with authority." Can you not ? Why can you not ? He has brought light to your spirit. You " believe he has received a revelation, because to you it is a revelation." And because of this revelation and this light to your spirit, you believe him to be authoritative and inspired. But you cannot imagine this to be supernatural inspiration and divine authority, and then say you cannot accept it merely/ because it 18 LETTER II. comes to you under the hand and authorship of the Holy Ghost, and on the authority of the Divine Being I You cannot possibly make a wild and daring statement like that ! What then follows, but that whereas you "do not believe what Paul says, because you first believe him to be inspired," neither do you believe what he says because you even in the end believe him to be inspired, your view of Paul's inspiration being such that it does not bring you into contact with the living God, as the Supreme Author of what you read in his Epistles, for then his divine authority would gloriously overpower you ; and so you do not count these Epistles part of what it is right and warrantable to say, "' It pleased the Lord to commit wholly to writing." Is not that a demonstration ? But really it needed not. The demonstration was clear and plentiful enough already, that your view of inspiration is something so very low as not to enforce the obligation of uncon- ditional acceptance of that to which it imparts its authority. Hence you have nothing to complain of, if any one has said you " should in consistency accept as insj^ired every one who brings light to your spirit." I am not aware of having insisted to that effect myself ; but I do not admit that you are right in calling it a "' childish deduction." I can see no difficulty whatever in your admitting that any man who brings light to your spirit is inspired — considering what a very poor thing after all the inspiration which you traffic in, is. And, most cer- tainly, your cause will not be improved by cutting it THE RATIONALISING ELEMENT. 1 0> off, and tying it on, time about, to the external evi- dences, and burying it in the intervals in a semi-quaker inward experience and light of your own. I really did not think you could have penned such a sentence as this : " I can only accept in doctrine that which fits in with my previously received ideas and my stage of mature growth." The sinfulness of rejecting in Scripture what does not agree with our preconceived — or " previously received " — ideas, is such a common-place among evangelical divines, and the full-blown Rationalism which it implies is so patent, that I am almost compelled to seek something different from the obvious meaning of your words. Is it possible, I have thought, that you can be tacitly dealing with Augustine's beautiful expres- sion. Credo ut intelligain, " I believe that I may under- stand ;" and that in all this it is not the credo that you are meaning when you speak of " accepting " doctrine, but the intelligain ; not the faith, but the spiritual appreciation ? Is that it ? No doubt there is a great and sore work of '' assimilating " — (you use that word once, over and above '' accepting ") — the glorious riches of revelation to the beginnings of holy, gracious acquire- ment which, through the tender mercy of our God, we may have been enabled to make. And the fitting in of one divine truth after another into an inward embodi- ment, in the soul, of the mind of Christ, till that soul becomes an epistle of Christ, known and read of all men — this, certainly, is not to be achieved by the mere utterance of authority, as the dead may be raised at the crack of doom. If something like this has been running 20 LETTER II. in your mind in pages 6 and 7, then say so. Sj^eak, for I desire to justify you ; thougli even then I shall wonder at the confusion of thought by which you are vexing both yourself and your friends. But, surely, even then, you will not say that the only reason why 3^ou '' accept the doctrine of the Trinity " is, that you '' find in it the root which the facts of redemption require " ? Surely you will not deliberately declare that, even after receiving scripture writers as coming to you with '' authority," and " bringing light to your spirit," you could not, ajjart from the leading facts of redemption, '' accept the doctrine of the Trinity on whatsoever authority announced " ? What ! not even though one rose from the dead ? Blessed be God, it is usually in connection with the facts of redemption that the persons of the Sacred Three, and their infinitely gra- cious and distinct personal interpositions, are revealed. Is that any reason why you should say, that revealed in other implications, you could not believe the revelation on whatsoever authority — not even the authority of these three Divine Persons themselves ? The question is not, Y/hether this would be '' at your own risk." It is, what would be your duty ? your duty as a reasonable being, when God hath spoken. And pardon me when I say, that in the strange sentences I have criticised, you have gone very far out of your duty indeed ; your aberration springing from an attempt, — as I believe, and from which I would still implore you to resile — an attempt, in plain terms, to rationalise the doctrine of inspiration. — I am, &c. III. How do you make up your Canon ? My Dear Sir, But you are not done with your defence of the sentence ; " I do not believe what Paul says, because I first believe him to be inspired ; but I believe him to be inspired, because he brings light to my spirit, which can only have proceeded from God." You are ''curious to know how those who object to this state- ment make up their canon." Make up our canon ! You surely don't think we do it once a week, like merchants with their ledgers? And you don't think that we have, each of us, a canon to himself ? Even the disorderly Corinthians were not so bad as that. Every one of them " had a psalm, had a doctrine, had a tongue, had a revelation, had an inter- pretation." But a canon ? No. In that case they would have required more than ever the apostolic in- junction, '' Let all things be done unto edifying." Seri- ously, it was by way of obtempering that command that I devoted two pages of my pamphlet to the topic of the canon, saying all that I thought necessary in order to quiet distressed Christian souls. For I abhor to see God's humble, honest children tormented with hints hints sinister and liints dexterous — to the effect that, if they 22 LETTER III. had only enough of critical learning and antiquarian -church history, they would find a good many things to make them rather anxious about the grounds of their faith ! I am no despiser of learning. But I have a sense of bounding joyousness in telling my Church that there is not one believing child of God within her borders, from end to end, that need sleep one moment less of the sleep God giveth to his beloved, because of any risk to the ark of God from questions of criticism, or questions about the canon. Make up our canon, indeed ! I thank God that that has not been left to us individually to do — not left even to this whole generation to do. God has committed that task to His church. And we are not, merely because the church has been caricatured by Rome, to be frayed away from saying, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." No ; nor have we any doubt about her dutifulness concerning "the oracles of God," or about God's providence and grace in enabling her to discri- minate, recognise, and set her seal to canonical Scripture. The canon has been made up already, and the golden cord which binds its parts into an unapproachable unity is divine authorship, secured by divine inspiration, and therefore securing divine authority (Westminster Con- fession, i., 8, 4). That golden cord you have broken. And can you wonder if I am curious to know how you make up your canon ? The canon ! Had I not proved* that your views of * See " Westminster Doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture," pp. 34-37. HOW DO YOU MAKE UP YOUR CANON ? 23 inspiration are such as to deprive you of all right so much as to speak about the canon ? At least until you reply to my argument, am I not entitled to say so ? Why have you not met my proof that '' it would bo perfectly hopeless, on such a scheme (as yours), to define the words ' canonical ' and ' apocryphal ; ' and impossible to secure a fixed and honourable application of them : If inspiration is not a thing of thorough dis- tinctiveness, but of measure and degi'ee, in which others besides the writers of the Scripture have shared, then there is and can be no sure enclosure, railing in certain books as canonical, and barring out others as apocryphal?" With the inspiration expounded in your Sermon, and still defended in your New Preface, you are helpless in the grasp of that little argument — that short and easy method with a rationaliser of inspiration. Canonicity follows divine inspiration : " The books commonly called apocrypha, not being of divine in- spiration, are no part of the CANON of Scripture " (Conf. i., 3, first clause). Moreover : authority follows inspiration and canonicity — divine authority, of course. Hence, the books commonly called apocrypha '' are of no AUTHORITY in the churcli of God, nor to be any other- wise approved, or made use of, than any other human writings" (Conf. i., 3, second clause). Still further: authority rests on authorship, divine authority on divine authorship : " The authority of the Holy Scripture dependeth wholly upon God, the AUTHOR of it " (Conf i., 4). And thus in the close of its fourth section, that remarkable chapter of the Confession, with its simple 24 LETTER III. and unsophisticated recognition and affirmation of God as the " author " of Holy Scripture, returns upon and reduplicates upon its initial statement of that same beautiful doctrine, namely, that " it pleased the Lord to commit the same wholly to writing." Thus, in every point of view, it is obvious that divine authorship is that one unapproachably glorious consideration which constitutes the unity in which true canonicity consists — that one golden cord which binds the various documents (written by different men, known and unknown, written in different ages, different languages, different countries) into one — a '' one " which the church calls the '' canon," and whose unity the Westminster Divines recognise (little wonder), the moment they have affirmed divine authorship. For having said, *' It pleased the Lord to commit the same wholly to writing ; " their very next utterance is this, — '' which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary." This golden cord, I repeat, you have broken. Doing that, you have lost all right to the Church's canon. You have a canon of your own to make up. And '' I am curious to know how you make up your canon " ! Certainly it will not be by taking up the books of Scripture, one by one, and committing them upon the fortunes of an experiment to see whether they will '" bring light to your spirit such as can come only from God." That bears too close a resemblance to Mr Tyndal's proposal about prayer, and savours too much of tempting the Holy One of Israel. Besides : since Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and HOW DO YOtr MAKE UP YOUR CANON ? 25 since it is your duty to try the spirits wlicthcr they be of God, what objective test have you iu the mean- time, whereby to detect false light and verify "such light as can come only from God"? Such a test you need, and simply must have, else you arc into quakerism at once : and I need not say, that test you can have none, save just those canonical Scriptures, whose canoni- city you have in the meantime flung away. So that you will probably Mnd ere-long that you are very iixactly in the circumstances of the unreasonable old gentleman, who, having lost his spectacles, insisted that he required to havG them, in order to find them ! But you expatiate on this subject of the canon through a whole page notwithstanding. You speak of " subjective considerations,'^ hinting somewhat obscurely at the self-evidencing power of Scripture, as if that were identical with what you propound in the proposition, '' I 1 relieve Paul to be inspired, because he brings light to my spirit, which can only proceed from God." But by that proposition you mean your belief that he was under a certain gracious influence which you call " inspiration," and of which we have your unretracted description in your Sermon. Whereas the self- evidencing power of Scripture is that intrinsic glory which proves it to be of divine authorship— the very doctrine which you never affirm and practically deny. You then introduce to our notice, and in your own defence, " Calvin, Luther, and (Ecolampadius," with a flourish about their " boldness and tiiinness of hand " as being fitted to '' be very astound- B 26 LETTER III. iDsr to this generation." But however relentless it may seem, I am compelled to ask, What right have you to refer to Calvin, Luther, and CEcolampadius, in relation to the canon of Holy Scripture ? — you, who have lost all right to refer even to the canon, and parted company with the Reformers most fatally as to what even canoni- city implies? With them, as with the Westminster Confession, canonicity was identified with divine author- ship. The claim of any document to scriptural canonicity, in their view, signified its claim to rank among those writings of which God is the author. For the word has the same unsophisticated application here, as in the cases of mere human literature. If the canonicity of '^the Tempest" is undoubted, that just means that the authorship is undoubted : the play is certainly Shake- sperean. Even so, scriptural canonicity is just divine authorship : and until you admit that, you have no right so much as to name, on this theme, the names of the Reformers. They would have repelled with indignation, the inspiration which your sermon describes, and which you bring forward their honoured names to defend. They held, in the plain and unsophisticated meaning of the term, that the Lord God is an "author,"''' and that the Holy Scripture is his published works — that the Bible is divine — the divine record of a divine re- velation. When asked to state the strongest proof that Scripture is divine (not that Scripture has divine things in it, but is divine), they answered, Scripture itself. Divine light and glory shine in it, and he that is born * Westminster Confession, i. 4. HOW DO YOU MAKE UP YOUR CAXOX ? 27 «igain of the word and Spirit of God, hears the voice of the Spirit in the word which is His own : " he that is of God, heareth God's words ; " he that is of the light seeth the light. The sphere of this light (self-revealing, wself-evidencing, of course) was in their view just the sphere of Holy Scripture, considered as a gloriously imapproachable unit — its unity, amidst multifarious iliversity, consisting in this, that every page of it claimed God for its author. And when men said, — How can that be, sceiug that evidently various human authors ^contributed to write the book ? their answer was, — The authorship is still one and divine ; because, through the instrumentality of human authorship, " all Scripture is given by inspiration of God." That was what Calvin, Luther, and CEcolampadius believed concerning inspira- tion. And were they " looking up " in these days of "' advanced thought," and told that they had been ■called in to witness to the correctness of your views -of that great doctrine, their characteristic distinctions ■of disposition would doubtless become manifest — not to speak of their '' boldness and firmness of hand " — in a manner that would be *' very astounding " to •ijoii ! They would not leave much for me to say, either about your Sermon or your New Pi'eface to it. The Reformers held a doctrine of inspiration which <3nablcd them to consider tlie whole Bible as " the llevelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him." Apart from this, their Lord's prophetic office would have been to them an uncompleted, uncrowned, unsuccessful 2 8 LETTER III. effort — a broken pillar — a miserable ruin. But counting the whole Scripture to be one, they never hesitated to- apply to it in its entirety, the awful words which occur in that closing book, whose title (just quoted) so strikingly expresses the verity concerning the whole Scripture : " If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book ; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book" (Rev. xxii. 18, 19). 'Tis the last utterance of Emmanuel, save one — the promise, "Surely I come quickly." Consider it, if. you will, as having application solely to the closing book, more technically called " the Revelation of John." Had it been '' the Revelation of John " merely, can you imagine overawing comminations like these pronounced over everything like tampering with it ? But the solution is easy if '' the Revelation of John " is " the Revelation of Jesus Christ." The whole problem of inspiration is in a nutshell there. The two authorships, supreme and subordinate, are there ; and inspiration harmonises them. Jesus Christ writes his own Revela- tion by inspiring John to write the Revelation of John : — John, by inspiration, Avrites the Revelation of Jesus Christ. 'Tis the same throughout the Scripture generally; and the fact of divine authorship affords most justly, in reason's esteem, the same terrific guarantee of protection to it all. Before passing from this, let me entreat you not ta HOW DO YOU MAKE UP YOUR CANON ? 29 think that, in makino^ lisjht of the aimimentative value •of your expression, "I believe Paul to be inspired because lie brings light to my spirit, which can come only from God," I disesteem any " outstanding fact of mental •t'xperience," — far less that I disparage the fifth section of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession, towards which your appeal to experimental light seems to point. I will yield to none in my admiration of that magnificent sentence — casket, as it is, of so many •dazzling jewels of blessed propositions, whereamong one knows not how to select the most beautiful or brilliant, •and dreads to mar the setting which these cunning 4irtificers — as if Bezaleel's and Aholiab's gifts and spirit had come upon them — have given to the beauteous whole. Hence, as, were I alluding to Milton's descrip- tion of his blindness, I Avould do nothing short of reverently quoting in full, so must it be here and now : — " We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverend esteem of the holy scripture ; and the heavenliness of the matter, the xjfficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incom- parable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God ; yet, notwitlistanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and .divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the 30 LETTER III. Holy Sj)irit, bearing witness by and with the word iir our hearts." (West. Conf. i. 5.) Grieved am I to say that your right to appeal to this most powerful and most eloquent utterance is, in the- meantime, in abeyance, as well as your right to speak of Calvin, Luther, and (Ecolampadius ; and for the same reason, namely, because you have burst the golden cord of canonicity. This most precious section of our Confession recognises the canon, by recognising the true canonicity, that, namely, which rests on divine authorship, and which communicates to the Scriptures their divine unity. Hence at once it speaks of " the holy scripture." Moreover, it speaks of this " scripture " abundantly " evidencing itself to be the word of God : " — unity again ; "' the word of God :" not a miscellany containing words of God ; but itself " the word of God." And it is of '' the infallible truth and divine authority " of this '' word of God/' throughout and throughout (and not of the infallible truth and divine authority of parts of it here and there), that " the inward work of the Holy Ghost " gives '' full persuasion and assurance." Poor inference yours, from Paul bringing light to your spirit ; to wit, that he was inspired ! Glorious inference from the fact that the Holy Ghost gives divine light any- where within the sphere of this unity called " the scrip- ture ;" to wit, that it, the scripture, is a sphere of divine light all round and round, and from circumference to centre, — that it is what we may hold our face up to the heavens to tell the angels we have found it, — and what we may bend our lips to the little ears we love to tell now DO YOU MAKE UP YOUR CANON ? 31 it has been to us, — "God's Book, my darling !" For it is a proposition simple enough for the child to begin intelligently to apprehend, and, at the same time, too glorious for principalities and powers in heavenly places to exhaust. — I am, &c. IV. An " Explosion ! ** My Dear Sir, The remainder of your Preface need not now detain us very long. Your "cordial acceptance of tlie state- ment of the Confession, that all the books that compose our Bible are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life," is no voucher for your views on inspira- tion. It implies nothing more than that you consider the Bible to be composed of the books mentioned in the Confession of Faith, — that is to say, that your canon, however you " make it up," is identical with that of the Confession. This is all that you can be admitted as *' cordially accepting : " little thanks to you ! Your cordial acceptance of the phrase, " given by inspiration of God," as applicable to the whole Bible, or to "all Scripture," vouches nothing for your doctrine of In- spiration, because it is simply a Scripture proposition in Scripture terms ; and your acceptance of it no more proves that you hold the real doctrine, than a Socinian's acceptance of the whole Bible proves his belief in the Godhead of our Lord Jesus. And as I believe, and tried to show (as yet without an answer), that you "evacuated the term Inspiration" in your Sermon, you will excuse me from accepting your challenge to investigate AN " EXPLOSION ! " 33 whether you evacuate it again by " distinctly denying " a certain sentence from Dr A. A. Hodge. I can quite see how that sentence mis^ht bo understood in a sense that should contradict certain distinctions I thought it necessary to make among the multifarious contents of Scripture in their varying measures of relation to the phrase "the word of God." I refer more particularly to pages 41 to 45 of my little tractate. And I admit that I see no great felicity in distinguishing between the *' verbal expression " and the " matter " of this Divine Book, more than in the case of any book. But let that pass. You are under no bondage to Dr A. A. Hodge ; and the judgment of concurrence, or " distinct denial,'* which you may form in reference to what you quote from him, has no material bearing on the question whether or no you '• evacuate the term Inspiration." You must, therefore, let me put my pen through all that you say concerning Dr A. A. Hodge. The only •other fraction of what you '' cordially accept," is the state- ment that all the books of our Bible are given " to he the rule of faith and life." But you do not really accept that. It is a mere obiter dictum when you say you do. For the real state of the case comes out in your last vsentence : " I believe the Scriptures contain an infallible rule," &c.; not "are'' but "contain." The "to be" is gone, you see. And here, most certainly, if ever, is that Haying true, — " To be, or not to be, that's the question." May I point out to you the extraordinary nature of your penultimate sentence, as condensing all that you lias been quite loud enough, and the danger, I fear, not imaginary. The knot of the whole matter is that you affirm in Holy Scripture, ''errors," — ''inaccuracies," — the absence of " strict accurac}'," — " Paul occasionally wrong in a date," — indications of " imperfect information," and indications of " lapse of memory." These, you tell us, are " trifling ;" " so trifling as in no appreciable degree to damage the historicity or trust- worthiness of scripture." It is still a historical and trustworthy record of divine revela- tion. But a divine record of a divine revelation ? Ah ! that's another matter. " Trifling," in the sense of being powerless to destroy the record, they are sufficient to destroy its character as a divine record ! Is not that your meaning wdien you say, " trifling " in the one point of view, " but sufficient entirely to explode the averment of literal infallibility" ? Why did you put in the attenuating word in italics — " literal " ? You were afraid, were you not ? to announce your " explosion " of infallibility, pure and simple. It would have been too- shocking. And so you put in the word " literal" But it meant nothing : no ! nothing at all. How do I know- that ? Because you have most distinctly told us, that it meant nothing. Your next utterance is this : " What is infallibility, but incapacity to err?" And the answer could be of no use to your argument, if " literal" had really meant anything. If " literal " had meant any- thing, your question would have been, " What is literal infallibility ?" Don't you see ? So that it is the " explosion" of the infallibility of Holy Scripture that you announce ! And that on the- 30 LETTER IV. averment of unspecified " inaccuracies " ! Precisely as if you ran into all our churches on the Lord's day and cried " Fire" ! without saying where ; but on being questioned, admitted that it was "" trifling/' and had produced an " explosion " ! An explosion of the infalli- bility of God's Word ! An explosion, I repeat, which you accomplish by means of " unspecified inaccuracies," — unspecified ! And that is a great aggravation of your offence. But do not misunderstand me. Not in deference to the allegation even of specified inaccuracies will I con- sent, nor will the Free Church of Scotland consent, to put in abeyance for one moment the doctrine, nor what is due to the doctrine, of the Divine Authorship of Holy Scripture. We assert and maintain it to be a revealed doctrine (and fact) which we believe on the testimony of God that cannot lie. That we have for it the testimony of God that cannot lie, we are at all times prepared to prove by a prodigious confluence of evidence. Seventeen pages in my former pamphlet, '' indicating the line of proof," present, in themselves alone, abundantly sufficient demonstration of it ; and yet they are but the scantlings and the first fruits of what a faithful labourer in this field may reap. Call this gTeat truth a doctrine, or a fact (and it is both), it sitteth in the centre of a circle of divine light ; and the attestations of its right to sit there, are as numerous as the radii that may be seen ])ouring down upon it from all points in the circumference. We will not shift it from its centre and derange every- thinof — in other words, we will not alter the true AN " EXPLOSION ! 87 status questionis, — to please you. Or, change the figure. 'Tis a perfectly impregnable citadel, this glorious truth : and I refuse, either inside of it, or outside of it, to dis- cuss the status questionis which you substantially pro- pose. A very simple dilemma, that I am now to give you, will justify my refusal. You are either, with me, inside this citadel, or you are outside. If you are outside, I will not come out to