A Sermon

BY THE REV. GEORGE HUTCHESON, M.A., of Edinburgh
and Irvine (1674).

(Twelfth Sermon of Series on Psalm cxxx.)

(Continued from page 139.)

“But there is forgiveness with thee.”—PSALMS cxxx. 4.

I AM now entered upon the third, and great head of this necessary doctrine, to clear wherein it is “That the forgiveness of sin doth stand;” and after a general resolution thereof, “That the pardon of sin takes away not the filthiness and pollution, but the guilt of sin,” I proceeded to name four questions to be cleared on this subject. And the first (to which I spoke) was, how the guilt of sin could be removed while the filthiness and pollution of sin remained, guilt being inseparable from sin; and the resolution was that, however guilt in itself, or (as the learned call it) “the potential guilt,” the guilt of sin in itself, be not taken away by pardon, yet guilt as it results on the person, or the actual ordination of the person guilty to condemnation, is suspended everlastingly, and taken away. And for confirmation thereof, I led you through several Scriptures to let you see what a sure character pardon is; whether we consider pardon as it is to be looked on in respect of God, or how it stands with the pardoned man.

And now, without further repetition, I shall go on with the rest of the cases tending to clear the nature of the remission of sin. A second question in order, is: Since pardon frees the pardoned man from obligation to punishment, whether is this to be held that no justified or pardoned person can fall under any punishment or chastisement for sin? And here the adversaries of truth, Papists on the one hand, and Antinomians on the other, run on two extremes; for Papists say, that in pardon of sin, God remits culpam, but not penam; that is, He remits the fault or guilt, so as not only He may chasten (which we grant) but as He reserves a punishment, by way of satisfaction for sin, to be undergone by the pardoned sinner. They distinguish in this betwixt mortal and venial sins; for mortal sins, they grant that the free grace of God turns eternal punishment into a temporal, which the sinner must undergo; for venial sins, which they say deserve not eternal punishment, but temporal, all that temporal punishment they will have the pardoned man to sustain. Hence is their doctrine of penances in this life, and of purgatory after death, when penances are not undergone here, where they will have pardoned sinners to make satisfaction of sin. As for this doctrine, it would be but troublesome to you to hear all that might be said against it, though we should but touch on it, and therefore passing that groundless

distinction of mortal and venial sins, ye shall notice these five, anent that their doctrine:

1. That as the bulk of Popish religion is nothing but a well-contrived policy, of interest of State, so this doctrine of penance and purgatory is nothing else but a politic device to make gain for maintaining their kitchen, pomp, pride, and luxury. This (as I told you the last day), Cæsar Borgia, the son of Alexander the Sixth, makes to appear, who, while he had lost 100,000 lire at the dice, passed it in a sport, saying, “These are the sins of the Germans,” meaning, that thereby they had purchased remission of sins, for here the policy lies. Once persuade folk that they must do penances to satisfy for sin, or to go to purgatory, what will they not do while they are alive, or their friends for them when they are dead, to mitigate that satisfaction? That is their market, and then pay well, and come to Heaven without either penance or purgatory, so that their doctrine in this is a perfect cheat.

2. In this their doctrine they corrupt the doctrine of the ancient Church, which was not so very sound; for, as they have a trick of retaining ancient names of things, under which they bring in new errors, so in this particular of penances and indulgences, used by the ancient Church, who, while they were a distinct society, were very strict and severe in requiring public penance and satisfaction for scandals. Some they held many years in making their repentance; some they held all their life, but afterward, when the world came into the Church, and the emperors embraced Christianity, and they, with other great ones, were too thin-skinned and would not submit to discipline, the Church did degenerate from their strictness, and shortened their indulgences. But the ancient Church’s penances were not to satisfy God for sin, but the Church; they were not for private and secret sins, but for public and scandalous offences. And the Church, willing to gratify great persons, did mitigate these severities to many. But the Papists retaining the name, they will have these penances a satisfaction to God for sin, and their indulgences to assuage (acquit) folk in the Court of Heaven.

3. A third thing to be considered in that their doctrine, which is very unhandsome for them to maintain. These penances which they call satisfaction, what are they? They are their fastings, their Ave Marias and paternosters, their pilgrimages and peregrinations, their charity to the poor, or for a religious use, their self-scorgings and whippings. Now, I enquire, what are these? They are either commanded duties, or not. If they be not commanded duties, how can they be satisfaction for sin? For, will God be satisfied with that which He doth not require? “Who required these things at your hand?” If they be commanded duties, how can they make a punishment of them? That is a dreadful solecism in their religion: that commanded duties that should be the joy and rejoicing of folks’ hearts should be turned to punishments; and, except they be punishments, they cannot be

satisfaction, so that they have a bad impression of these things, which they look upon as duties, while they make commanded duties punishments for sin.

1. And a fourth word I say to that their doctrine, is this, That to admit of satisfaction for sin, either as to temporal or eternal punishment for it, is a blasphemous imputation on Christ’s satisfaction, as if anything needed to be added to the ocean of His merit, who hath satisfied the justice of God, both as to the temporal and eternal curse, due to His own elect for their sins.

2. And a fifth I shall say to their doctrine, is, That it is contradictory to itself, for what is the guilt of sin (as contra-distinct to the stain of sin) that is removed? It is not the potential guilt, the desert of sin, for that is inseparable from sin; it is only the actual ordination to punishment. Now, to say God remits the guilt, and retains the punishment of sin, it is to say that He remits and retains, that He pardons and doth not pardon, that He takes away actual ordination to punishment, and yet will have the sinner suffering punishment, that He craves the debt which He hath forgiven. This is sufficient to refute the Papists on the one hand in what they hold anent the pardon of sin.

Upon the other hand, the Antinomians run on another extreme, and say that pardoned, justified persons fall not so much as under chastisement, let be a proper punishment for sin. And they will have all afflictions that come upon the godly to be mere trials of their faith, and no more, and think that it is a legal spirit that teacheth folk, while they are under the rod, to search out sin, and to be humbled for it. All that a man is called to do in that case (say they) is to maintain his faith in adhering to the love of God in Christ, for whatever affliction come, it is not for sin, and it is no wonder they maintain the saints cannot fall under affliction for sin, or chastisement for sin, seeing they maintain, God sees no sin in them. To clear the mind of God in this particular, there are some things that must be granted as truths, and there are some other things to be cautioned against as errors. The truths that are to be granted may be reduced to these four words:—

1. That justified persons never meet with condemnation, what temporal lots soever they meet with, and though they be not secured against the cross, yet they are secured from condemnation.

2. That a pardoned and justified child of God doth never come under the wrath of God; though justified persons may come under God’s Fatherly displeasure, yet they are never more objects of Divine wrath as others; though they may often meet with Fatherly and Divine displeasure, as children, they come not under wrath, as enemies.

3. That pardoned and justified sinners never fall under proper punishments for sin, or afflictions to satisfy for their faults, though for other ends they may, such as to invite them to repentance, and to be humbled for their sin, to mortify sin, to caution them against sin for the future. 4. That many trials and afflictions come on pardoned sinners, wherein God doth not

pursue them for sin, but is trying their faith and their graces. Such were Job’s trials. Though Elihu tells him what he was, he had sin, and his sin deserved all was come upon him; yet betwixt God and Satan all his trials were stated on this, whether he would prove a godly man, and continue so, notwithstanding of them all. And such were these trials under which the Apostles and other godly persons did glory. God in these was not pursuing sin, but taking service and proofs of their faith, love, zeal, patience, etc., under the cross from them; and to this pertains that of John ix. 2, 3, when the disciples asked Him, saying, “Master, who did sin? This man, or his parents, that he was born blind.” Christ answers, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents.” That is, God was not punishing his nor his parents’ sin in that stroke of blindness, “but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”

These truths being conceded, there are some other things to be cautioned against, as error, and I shall reduce what I would say for caution to these three heads: Firstly. It is certain that sin is the inlet to all affliction, Rom. v. 12, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Death, that is all calamities, which are a begun death, and the great death, the separation of the soul from the body. And hence, whatever may be God’s design in any affliction He sends on godly men, it is their wisdom, while they are under the cross, to search out and be sensible of sin, and to be humbled for it before God, as we said before, when we were on the second and third verses. That sense of trouble should be attended with the sense of sin. The sense of sin is good company when the sense of trouble is sharpest; and therefore, though Job was under a cleanly trial, yet Elihu tells him he had sin to deserve all that was come upon him, and if he considered his sin, he would quarrel less when his friends mistook him. Whatever other exercise affliction calls to, this is one, to search out and be humbled for sin. And it is a shrewd evidence that that affliction is not blessed of God that is not well varnished with sense of sin.

But, secondly, not only is sin the inlet to all afflictions, but even godly persons pardoned of sin may be under affliction upon the account of sin. I shall not speak of those common and absolutely determined afflictions, as that all godly men must die, and godly women must have pain in child-bearing, as well as others, but godly pardoned persons may come under peculiar afflictions upon the account of sin, and that either before sin is committed, or after sin is committed. Before sin be committed, godly men may come under affliction upon the account of sin. How many afflictions got godly men, upon the account of their corrupt dispositions, to prevent sin, to withdraw them from their purpose, to hide pride from man, to keep back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword? (Job xxxiii. 17, 18). How many

are such hard rocks that they must have hard wedges to rend them! How many are so prone to wandering that, were not their way hedged up with thorns, and the cross laid in their way, they would ruin themselves in following their lovers! How many would be intolerable to live with, if their nose were not holden on the grindstone! How many are made beggars, because they cannot bear wealth! Thus, ye see, godly men may be put under the cross with an eye to sin, in order to prevent sin. Again, they may be brought under peculiar afflictions, upon the account of sin, even when it is committed, and that either before it be pardoned, or after it is pardoned. Before it be pardoned, as when a sinner is lying under unrepented guilt, singing himself asleep in his provocations. If a godly man with David, 2 Samuel xi., drive such a trade, to fall into scandalous sins, and lie over in security, the Lord will send a hurt upon him, not to satisfy His justice, but to shake him out of his secure posture, and to set him to his feet, to the exercise of repentance and humiliation. He will send a rod that he may hear the voice thereof, and who hath appointed it. Hence David, Psalm cxix. 67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray; before I got the cross I wandered, and knew not what I was doing, but now have I kept thy word.” That’s affliction upon the account of sin committed, before it be pardoned, to waken out of security, and put to repent for it. Again, afflictions may come on the godly upon the account of sin, even when it is pardoned. When the pardoned man falls in sin, especially if it be a scandalous sin, he may not win easily away with that escape, but may be made to go with a borne-down back after it is pardoned, all his days. 2 Sam. x. 12, 13, The Lord tells David that He had pardoned him, yet that the sword should not depart from his house, for all that. We suppose the Corinthians were godly men, and pardoned for the abuse of the Lord’s Supper; yet, 1 Cor. xi. 30, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” Where ye may see affliction is let out upon the account of sin remitted, and if ye ask, Why doth the Lord so? I answer, not to take a satisfaction on to His justice, that’s already completely made by Christ; but He doth it, partly to vindicate His own honour. Whatever be betwixt Him and His pardoned children, if they fall in sin that the world observes, He will let the world see that He will not wink at their miscarriages. The sword’s not departing from David’s house, was not to satisfy justice for his sins that were pardoned, but, because by his scandalous outbreaking, he had made the enemies to blaspheme. He will let the world see that, if His darling David bound (jest) with Him, and fall in sin, he hath made an ill bargain. Partly He doth this on account of sins remitted, that even the saints who are pardoned may see yet more the bitterness of their folly and wandering. The Lord looketh not upon it as a sufficient

discovery of sin, and the evil thereof, that a child of God may win to in repentance antecedent to pardon, but when he is pardoned, He will sharply afflict him, that he may know the bitterness of sin, and that he made an ill bargain when he gave way to it; and upon this it will result that, when the Lord afflicts the pardoned, they are not to forget daily to be humbled for pardoned sin. Though God be good and gracious in pardoning sin, we should be severe on ourselves for provoking Him. Though the pardoned man’s count be cleared, he must lie in the dust for that he offended God, and brought so much woe and vexation on himself. And further, this will follow upon it, that God, by afflicting the pardoned sinner, invites him to mortify sin daily, that he may not fall in the like sin again. Yea, and further, when He afflicts the sinner, with an eye to sin that is pardoned, He invites the sinner to more and more thankfulness to Him for the pardoning of it, when he considers whatever afflictions or rods be inflicted, yet His pardon is ensured to him.

These are some of the blessed ends why the Lord, with an eye to pardoned sin, is pleased to let out afflictions and chastisements upon justified persons, and it is upon this account that chastisement with pardon is put in the covenant (Psalm lxxxix. 32). That, however, He will not take His loving-kindness from His children, nor suffer His faithfulness to fail, yet He will visit their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes; therefore we would mind this well. It is no great wonder that Antinomians say, God chastens not the saints at all upon the account of sin, for they say, God sees no sin in them to chasten; but let us not deceive ourselves, but when the rod is laid on, let us “hear the voice of the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Micah vi. 9). Ye have heard that all afflictions come in by the door of sin, and therefore it’s a sweet study, under afflictions, to be sensible of sin. Ye have heard that God may send afflictions on justified persons to prevent sin, and to waken them out of security and put them to repentance when sin is committed, to imprint upon their spirits the folly of their wanderings and the bitterness that follows sin, to caution them for the future against relapsing in sin, to stir them up to mortify sin, etc. These are better lessons than the dreams of Antinomians, that God hath no respect to the sins of His children when He afflicts them.

And yet I shall add a third word more for caution against their error, that is, that God’s afflicting of saints, with an eye to sin, doth not at all clash with that which they assert, that the afflictions of the godly are for the trial of their faith. That they are merely for the trial of their faith, we deny; that they are for the trial of their faith, we grant. For, though afflictions be for the trial of faith, yet they are also for other ends, as before they repent to stir up to repentance, in order to pardon, and after repentance to humble them, and caution against sin, and for producing other effects, yet they are still trials of faith, whether they will adhere to God; yea,

so much the more trials of faith are they, as we have not only trouble to grapple with, but guilt that brought on the affliction. It is easier for faith to hold its feet under a cleanly trial than when affliction is lying on, and conscience of guilt is staring us in the face. And therefore we shall easily grant, providing the mind of God in other ends of affliction be not neglected, that, when we have done all, we should look on the trial of faith as a main end of affliction, and when in affliction we cast away confidence, we miss a main end, and impede the good that we might get by affliction.

The time having prevented me, and I cannot win to the other two questions, whether the truth of pardon depends on the intimation of it to our hearts, and whether pardon be irrevocable, so that guilt makes not former pardon void, though it needeth pardon, and ought to be mourned for. I shall not now break in upon them. The Lord bless His Word to you.

(To be continued.)

John Brown, of Haddington.*

BY THE REV. D. BEATON, WICK.

(Continued from page 142.)

JOHN BROWN was a voluminous writer, and some of his works carried his name and fame far beyond Scotland. This was notably the case in connection with his Self-Interpreting Bible and Dictionary of the Bible. The former was not issued until 1778, but it was long in preparation. Brown’s aim was to reach the common people, and his work was planned with this end in view. A specimen of the pithy and instructive way he commented on Scripture may be taken from his remarks on the Book of Ruth (chapter i.), in reference to Naomi and her daughter-in-law:— “Numerous and diversified are the arrows in God’s quiver for the punishment of men’s sins, and often, while His enemies riot in plenty, His people are pinched with scarcity and want. A diligent care to provide for our family is highly commendable; but it is seldom safe to flee from God’s land, though He frown on it, or to suffer scarcity of bread to draw us from the ordinances of God. It is not in fleeing from God’s mighty hand, but in humbling ourselves under it, that safety lies. It is not in outrunning crosses, but in taking them up and following Christ, that true comfort is to be had. Young people often mistake in their marriage, through want or neglect of their parents’ advice. But marriages and deaths are near neighbours; and one death in a family is but the forerunner and warning of another. Both comforts and

* “John Brown, of Haddington,” by Rev. Robert MacKenzie, M.A.
London: Hodder & Stoughton. Price, 12/ net.

crosses are often nearer us than we suspect; and if we are shut up into the society of the wicked, we should escape for our life as soon as our hindrances are removed. It is a mercy when God embitters our condition of distance from Himself, that we may be weaned from it, and hastened to our heavenly home; but yet it is pleasant to see near relations knit together in love, and loath to part. With the most strong and fixed resolution should we set out in the Lord’s way, as we know not from what repeated and strong temptations we may have to turn back; but the difficulties of the way, which discourage the temporary believer, will but bind the faithful soul the more closely to Jesus Christ. Nothing, no, not death, can separate them from Him and His people. Poverty and age make great alterations on mankind; and it is proper that all around should remark it with solemn awe and cordial sympathy; for surely it is but madness to set our heart on that comeliness and wealth which so quickly fade. Let us, therefore, keep waiting on God in the way of His judgments; in patience possessing our souls; eyeing the Lord’s hand in all that we meet with; humbling ourselves under humbling providences; mourning, but never murmuring, under His hand; and ever remarking how the minutest circumstances of our lives are directed by the over-ruling providence of God.” Charles Simeon, in a letter to Brown, says: “Your Self-Interpreting Bible seems to stand in lieu of all other comments; and I am daily receiving so much edification and instruction from it, that I would wish it in the hands of all serious ministers.” The fame of the Self-Interpreting Bible travelled far afield, and Dr. Brown, of Horæ Subsecutæ fame, tells an amusing anecdote of how, on the occasion when cholera was raging in Chatham, he had entered into a house on his professional duties, and on the woman of the house learning that his name was Dr. John Brown, she seriously asked him “if he was the son of the Self-Interpreting Bible.”

The heated and bitter controversy over the Burgess Oath, which rent the Secession Church in twain, took place before Brown was ordained. But his sympathies were with the Burghers, and when the redoubtable Adam Gib published his Present Truth: A Display of the Secession Testimony, Brown entered the lists against the noted controversialist of the Antiburghers, and in his “Re-exhibition of the Testimony Vindicated, in opposition to the unfair Account given of it by the Rev. Adam Gib,” dealt with matters which he considered had not been fairly stated by Gib. Brown had gone to the authoritative documents; Gib had his information from those who had taken part in “the Breach,” and once he took up his position, it was not everyone that would move him. The correspondence between Brown and Gib ended more amicably than is usual with controversialists by the latter writing, “I know myself to be a wellwisher to you—with all those you are in connection with.”

Brown took the deepest interest in the instruction of the young

in the good way set before them in the Word of Life. Sometimes this was done by letters, sometimes by oral instruction. With this end in view, he published his Lives of Pious Youths, containing brief accounts of Emelia Geddie, Christian Ker, Susanna Bicks, Sarah Howley, Katharine Bruen, and John Janeway, all of whom manifested a tender and childlike trust in their Redeemer. As he felt the days were drawing near when he must leave the world, and all that was in it, he wrote an affectionate message for his younger children—there were six of them, from four years to fourteen. He thus addressed them:—”My dear children,—Believing that God hath made with me, and with my seed after me, His everlasting covenant, to be a God to me and to my seed, I did in your baptism, and often since and now do, before God and His angels, make a solemn surrender of you all into the hands of my God, and my father’s God, and of the God of your mother, and her father’s God: and in the presence of that God, and as ye shall answer at His second coming, I charge you—(1) To learn diligently the principles of our Christian and Protestant religion from your Catechism, and Confession of Faith, but especially from your Bible. God’s Word hath a light and life, a power and sweetness in it, which no other book hath, and by it your souls must be quickened and live, or you must be damned for ever: and the more closely you press the words of the Bible to your own hearts, and pray and think over them before God, you will find them the more powerful and pleasant. My soul hath found inexpressibly more sweetness and satisfaction in a single line of the Bible—nay, in two such words as these, Thy God and My God,* than all the pleasures found in the things of the world since the creation could equal, etc.”

As the shadows were beginning to lengthen he wrote a Short Memoir of his life, in which he surveys the past as one soon to be face to face with the realities of eternity. He recognises God’s great kindness to him, notwithstanding the smallness of his salary, and in times when such matters are oftener before the minds of many than ever they have been before, or perhaps should be, it is well that John Brown’s words should be pondered over. “Notwithstanding,” he says, “my minding earthly things, the Lord so managed my wicked heart, that it has rather been my care to husband well what He provided for me, than to attempt a greedy catching of what did not come of its own accord, and notwithstanding my eager desire of books, I choosed rather to want them, and much more other things, than run into debt. Notwithstanding I had but forty pounds of stipend for a considerable number of years, and then forty-five and at last fifty, in one of the dearest

* Time and again Brown makes such a reference in his correspondence. On one occasion he said to his students:—”I recollect that, when sitting on the braes of Abernethy, hearing Mr. Wilson of Perth, I got more insight into the marrow of the Gospel, thy God and my God, than I ever got before or since. Alas! that it was so long ago.”

places of the country, the Lord gave me such contentment with it as made my lot preferable to some who had the double or near to it. It was also my mercy that my wives* were averse to unnecessary wastefulness, and cheerfully ready to add the interest of their money for the helping out of the stipend. When I was the first introducer of the administration of the Lord’s Supper twice in the year, I reckoned it a providential favour that I then had no more than twenty shillings allowed me for extraordinary expenses on such occasions, which being the case, no one could pretend that I pushed that more frequent administration of that ordinance in order to enrich myself. By such means the Lord hath so managed my heart, that to-day I think none can say that they ever heard me complain of a small stipend, and I may add that we have never been in debt or in straits, as some who had much more income. I have been helped to live as one that would gladly spend and be spent for my people, and aimed at seeking not theirs but them; yet not I, but the grace of God, did it all.” In one of his dying utterances he says: “Were God to present me with the dukedom of Argyll, on the one hand, and the being a minister of the Gospel, with the stipend which I have had, on the other, so pleasant hath the ministry been to me, notwithstanding all my weakness and fears of little success, I would instantly prefer the latter.”

As the days of his pilgrimage were fast hastening to an end, Christ, as his Redeemer, was becoming more and more precious to him, and in his last letter to the Countess of Huntingdon, he writes (and the testimony has a deepened interest when one remembers the great love he had for knowledge and his great attainments as a scholar):—”Little as I know of Christ—and it is my dreadful sin and shame that I know so little of Him—I would not exchange the learning of one hour’s fellowship with Christ for all the liberal learning in ten thousand universities, during ten thousand ages, even though angels were to be my teachers. Nor would I exchange the pleasure my soul hath found in a word or two about Christ, as thy God, my God, for all the cried-up pleasures of creation since the world began. For what, then, would I exchange the being for ever with Christ, to behold His glory, see God in Him as He is, and enter into the joy of my Lord?”

On 25th February, 1787, he conducted the three services, preaching in the morning from Luke ii. 26—”It was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord Christ.” His last sermon was from the words, “To you is the word of this salvation sent” (Acts xiii. 26). At the three services he affectionately addressed the people, and at the night service he referred to his presence in the pulpit that night as probably for the last time, and bade an affectionate adieu

* He was twice married.

to all who had diligently waited on his ministry. He lingered for about five months after this in much weakness, but in a spirit of resigned contentment. One of his younger children on one occasion slipped into his room to ask how he was. The affectionate father drew her near to him, and, placing his hand on her head, said:—”Now, my little dear, mind to pray to God; your father must soon leave you, but cry unto Jesus, ‘Thou art my Father, and the guide of your youth,’ and then, though you will not have a room like this to come to and see your father in, you will be taken to a far better Father’s room.” Three years later she received her call, in the early dawning of her youth, to go hence.

Like John Knox, at the end, Brown made reference to the word on which the Lord had caused him to hope, and said, in reference to the 91st Psalm: “I know a man to whom almost every line of that Psalm has been sweet. I think, if ever God touched my heart, He went through that Psalm with me.” On the 19th June, 1787, he passed to his rest. One of his last utterances, in answer to a question by one of his friends, was: “I have left my anxiety about His Church, and about everything else, on the Lord; and, indeed, were it not for a God in my nature, I would reckon the present case of the Church very hopeless; but, in the view of Christ, I am persuaded that she will yet remarkably revive on earth.”