By the Rev. JAMES MACLEOD, Glendale.
DR. OWEN was one of the greatest divines the Church of God possessed since the days of the blessed Apostles. He was a pious, humble, learned servant of Christ. He was a constant student of the Word of God. He drank deeply out of the fountain of divine Revelation. The Bible was his Text-book. It was not his habit to raise doubts in the minds
of men concerning the Word of God. He was not a destructive critic of the Holy Scripture. But on the contrary, he was a constructive critic of the blessed Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It is the devil’s work to traduce the character of God’s servants, and people while alive, and after they pass on to their eternal rest. Satan will always get ready instruments to do his work.
Let us hear what Owen had to say about the Word of God:— “What is necessary unto the interpretation of difficult places and passages in the Scripture, and what measure of understanding of the mind and will of God as revealed therein is required of persons in their conditions, as they are teachers of others or among the number of them that are to be taught, shall, among other things, be afterward spoken unto. My principal design is, to manifest that every believer may in the due use of the means appointed of God for that end, attain unto such a full assurance of understanding in the truth, or all that knowledge of the mind and will of God revealed in the Scripture, which is sufficient to direct him in the life of God, to deliver him from the dangers of ignorance, darkness, and error, and to conduct him unto blessedness. Wherefore, as unto the belief of the Scripture itself, so as unto the understanding, knowledge, and faith of the things contained therein, we do not depend on the authoritative interpretation of any church or person whatever. And although ordinary believers are obliged to make diligent and conscientious use of the ministry of the church, among other things, as a means appointed of God to lead, guide, and instruct them in the knowledge of His mind and will revealed in the Scripture, which is the principal end of that ordinance; yet is not their understanding of the truth, their apprehension of it and faith in it, to rest upon or to be resolved into their authority, who are not appointed of God to be lords of their faith, but helpers of their joy.
And thereon depends all our interest in the great promise, that we shall be all taught of God; for we are not so unless
we learn from Him and by Him the things which He hath revealed in His Word. And there is not any truth of greater importance for men to be established in; for unless they have a full assurance of understanding in themselves, unless they hold their persuasion of the sense of Scripture a revelation from God alone, if their spiritual judgment of truth and falsehood depend on the authority of men, they will never be able to undergo any suffering for the truth or to perform any duty unto God in a right manner. The truth of the gospel and the ways of religious worship, for which any believer may be called to suffer in this world, are such as about whose sense and revelation in the Scripture there is a great difference and controversy among men; and if there be not an assured, yea, infallible way and means of communicating unto all believers a knowledge of the mind and will of God in the Scripture concerning those things so controverted, the grounds thereof are fixed in their own minds, but that they do wholly depend on the expositions and interpretations of other men; be they who they will, they cannot suffer for them either cheerfully or honourably, so as to give glory to God, or to obtain solid peace and comfort in their own souls; for if a man under his sufferings for his profession can give himself no other account but this, that what he suffers for is the truth of God revealed in the Scripture, because such or such for whom he has in veneration or esteem do so affirm and have so instructed him, or because this is the doctrine of this or that Church, the Papal or Reformed Church, which it has prescribed unto him, he will have little joy of his sufferings in the end. Yea, there is that which is yet worse in this matter, as things are stated at this day in the world. Truth and error are promiscuously persecuted, according unto the judgment, interest, and inclinations of them that are in power; yea, sometimes both truth and error are persecuted in the same place and at the same time, upon errors differing from both. Dissent is grown almost all that is criminal in Christian religion all the world over. But in this state of things, unless we grant men an immediate understanding of their own in the
mind and will of God, yea, a full assurance therein, there will be nothing whereby a man who suffers for the most important truth of the gospel can in his own soul and conscience distinguish himself from those who suffer in giving testimony unto the most pernicious error; for all outward means of confidence which he has, they may have also. It therefore behoveth all those who may possibly be called to suffer for the truth in any season, or on any occasion, to assure their minds in this fundamental truth, that they may have themselves a certain undeceiving understanding of the mind and will of God as revealed in the Scripture, independent of the authority of any church or person whatsoever; the use of whose ministry herein we do yet freely and fully allow.
Nor, indeed, without a supposition hereof can any man perform any duty to God in an acceptable manner, so as that his obedience may be the obedience of faith, nor can upon good grounds die in peace, since the just shall live by his own faith alone” (Works, iv. 122, 3).
Paul said to Timothy—”Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers,” 2 Tim. ii. 14. There is only one thing needful in this life. If we shall find Christ as our own Saviour; or if we have Christ by faith as our Saviour all other things are as nothing. But we need not look for Christ outside the Bible. If we can, or shall accept a Higher Critical Bible, then we have no Bible at all. The Bible, the destructive Critics shall leave with us can neither save a soul, nor condemn a sinner. Dr. Barnes, the Bishop of Birmingham, is one of the ablest destructive critics of the age, and just listen to his recent attack on one of the most essential doctrines of the Bible. “St. Paul imagined that evil and death resulted from Adam’s fall. We have learned, on the contrary, that evil and good are equally likely to arise at every stage of the evolutionary process. Hundreds of millions of years before man appeared on the earth mutations both good and bad were arising. The notion
that evil was due to a fall, to some act of spiritual rebellion against God must be abandoned. We need not grieve over the loss of such a theory, as it cannot really relieve God of ultimate responsibility for His creation.”
It has been said by some that the destructive critics have their difficulties, and that we poor “mutations” must sit at their feet, and dare not shun their profane and vain babblings, although they would increase unto more ungodliness! Oh, the infinite value of the holy Scriptures, for therein God revealed His will towards fallen man, and how beneficial it is for this life itself, and invaluable for Eternity. Let us never part with a jot or tittle of it. From the day Moses wrote the book of Genesis the Holy Ghost kept it safe, pure, and holy, until the Amen of the book of Revelation and the same blessed Spirit kept it from being adulterated by the hands of wicked men ever since, and we have no doubt at all but that He shall keep it as pure in the future ages of the Church of God as He has kept it in the past, and our present duty is to abide by it absolutely, and to hand it to our children as the infallible Word of God.