(Continued from page 67.)
THEOLOGY OF THE MARROWMEN.
IN reading the writings of the Marrowmen, one cannot but be struck by the great emphasis they lay on the universality of the Gospel offer. Not that this was quite new in Scottish theology, for Rutherford, Trail, and Binning brought it out in their teaching, though, perhaps, not with so much emphasis. It was the old problem—How can there be a universal offer of the Gospel and only a limited atonement?—that called forth the energies of the Marrowmen in an attempt to give some explanation of apparently irreconcilable doctrines. In this attempt they were in the habit of using expressions that seemed to indicate that they held the doctrine of the Arminians on universal redemption. Before dealing in particular with the real position of the Marrowmen as to the extent of the atonement, some reference must be made to a mediating school of theology which arose in France in the seventeenth century. This theology had for its express purpose the reconciliation of the doctrines of Calvinism and Arminianism. Its first advocate was Cameron, who was followed by his own pupil, Amyraldus, who gave his name to the new theology. It was represented in England by Richard Baxter, and what is known in our country as the “double reference” theory of the atonement is simply Amyraldianism or Baxterianism under another name. The advocates of this doctrine hold that God gave His Son to die to provide redemption for all men indiscriminately, at the same time He wills that effectual grace be given only to the elect. The Marrowmen have often been charged with holding this doctrine by those who have given very little attention to their writings. It is true that the United Secession Church and its modern representative, the United Presbyterian, has “elaborated and elaborated and elaborated” (as Dr. Duncan puts it) the doctrine of the Marrowmen on the Gospel offer until they have reached their doctrine of the “double reference” of the atonement. But to place the doctrines of the Marrowmen with those of Dr. Brown of the United Secession Church, as Dr. A. Hodge seems to do in his “Outlines of Theology,” is doing serious injustice to the Marrowmen. Reference has already been made to the emphasis they laid on the universality of the Gospel offer; the following quotation from Ralph Erskine’s “Gospel Sonnets” gives a very good idea of the “Marrow” teaching on this point:—
“The Gospel preacher then, with holy skill,
Must offer Christ to whosoever will,
To sinners of all sorts that can be named,
The blind, the lame, the poor, the halt, the maimed,
Not daring to restrict the extensive call,
But opening wide the net to catch them all,
No soul must be excluded that will come,
No right of access be confined to some.
Though none will come till conscious of the want,
Yet right to come they have by sovereign grant;
Such right to Christ, His promise and His grace,
That all are damned who hear and don’t embrace;
So freely is the unbounded call dispensed,
We therein find even sinners unconvinced.”
Such, then, is an example of their teaching on the freeness of the Gospel to sinners. Into this department of their preaching they threw an intense fervour and enthusiasm, and the warmth with which they pressed it constitutes one of its brightest features. In setting forth this freeness of the Gospel to sinners, the Marrowmen used expressions that seemed to imply that they held the doctrine of a universal atonement. There can be no doubt but that the tenets of Arminius had much to do in hampering the post-Reformation divines in making use of the universal terms employed in Scripture in proposing the Gospel remedy, and that they did so more than was necessary in proclaiming the glad tidings to sinners and in calling them to believe on the Saviour. These are remarks from unpublished papers by Dr. MacCrie on this controversy.—Vide “Life,” p. 330. It was this point that the Marrowmen took up as their own peculiar ground. This charge of universalism against the Marrow was founded on the following passage:—
“Neophytus asks—But, sir, hath such an one as I any warrant to believe on Christ.?
Evangeliſta answers—I beseech you consider, that God the Father, as He is in His son Jesus Christ, moved with nothing, but with His free love to mankind lost, hath made a deed of gift and grant unto them all, that whosoever of them all shall believe in this His Son, shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
It was the expression, afterwards to become so famous in this controversy, that God had made “a deed of gift and grant unto all mankind” of His Son that gave some appearance to the charge of universalism. But what did the Marrowmen mean by such an expression? Simply the “ministerial offer” of the Gospel. They strongly repudiated Arminianism and Baxterianism. Another passage on which Principal Hadow based his charge of universalism is—”Go! teach every man without exception, here is good news for him, Christ is dead for him.” Thomas Boston says concerning this passage—”Therefore he saith (i.e., the author of the “Marrow”) not ‘Tell every man Christ died for him,’ but ‘tell every man Christ is dead for him,’ i.e., for him to come to and believe on: a Saviour is provided for him; there is a crucified Christ for him, the ordinance of heaven for salvation, for lost mankind in the use-making of which he may be saved.” Many other passages might be quoted, but the above is deemed sufficient to show that, while the Marrowmen used expressions which at first sight seem rather startling, yet, when they give their own explanation of these expressions, we find that they held firmly the doctrine of a limited atonement. Before passing from this feature of their teaching, I cannot forbear giving a quotation from a work of Dr. Kennedy, which is all the more appropriate as it gives the doctor’s own view of the Gospel offer, and also his opinion of the “Marrow” teaching on the point. Speaking of the universal call, he says—”Do they believe that Christ is all and in all, that God’s testimony regarding Him is true, and that they are commanded to preach ‘the Gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ to every creature?’ If so, what can they desiderate in order that they may say to every sinner to whom they preach, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’ This is the Scripture version of the Gospel call, and I can never hesitate to proclaim it, till I conclude that Christ is unworthy of being trusted and God unworthy of being believed. The idea of the call being the offer of a gift has driven the Scriptural form of it out of the minds of many men altogether. This other (viz., the one he has stated above) was the form it assumed in the thinking and teaching of the Marrowmen” (Man’s relation to God). It is very probable that it was owing to the school represented by Rutherford, Trail, and Binning in the seventeenth century, and by the Marrowmen in the eighteenth century, and by the evangelicals of more recent times, that hyper-Calvinism has never flourished in Scotland as it has done in England.
Another prominent feature of the Marrow teaching was their doctrine of faith. They were charged with asserting that assurance is of the essence of faith. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That is, be verily persuaded in your heart that Jesus Christ is yours, and that you shall have life and salvation by Him, that whatsoever Christ did for mankind He did it for you,” says the Marrow. That the Marrowmen taught that assurance is of the essence of faith cannot be denied, but what did they understand by the term assurance. “I believe, and I am sure,” says Riccalton, “are reciprocal terms; and, as it is here that the very nature and essence of faith lies, it spreads its influence through all its consequential actings; it is this which gives one confidence in his applications and approaches to God, and in trusting His promises. . . . But, at the same time, this assurance which I make the same thing with believing must be carefully distinguished from that which, I know not by what means, has in a manner appropriated this name unto itself; whereby a person sees, and upon good grounds concludes, himself in a state of salvation, and one who has an actual interest in Christ, justification, and pardon, with the rest of these benefits which belong to such as are brought into covenant with God by our Lord Jesus Christ.” Boston, in one of his notes, says—”He (i.e., the author of the “Marrow”) doth not determine this assurance or persuasion to be full or to exclude doubting; he saith not be fully persuaded but be verily persuaded, which speaks only the reality of the persuasion and doth not at all concern the degree of it.” It was in answer to the eighth query, which dealt with this matter, that the Marrowmen displayed their theological ability—they seemed to have literally ransacked all the writings of the great Reformation divines who, they maintained, supported their definition of faith. It will be seen from the above that they meant by assurance “appropriating persuasion.” That they held that assurance in the sense which we attach to it was not of the essence of faith may be easily learned from their writings and from the record of their own experiences. They meant simply what Dr. A. Hodge means when he says—”True faith does essentially include the assurance (1) that Christ is able to save us (2) that He is faithful and will save us if we believe.” Such assurance which divines define as the assurance of faith is of the essence of saving faith. But what they define as the assurance of hope, which is the assurance of our own personal salvation, is not of the essence of saving faith but is a fruit of the same. As far as we have been able to gather from the writings of the Marrowmen, and the works written in their defence, they taught exactly what the younger Dr. Hodge teaches, in his “Outlines of Theology,” and what our Shorter Catechism teaches when it says that “faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel.”