(Continued from page 46.)
IV. THE DOUBLE REFERENCE THEORY.
In the early part of the eighteenth century the Church of Scotland was agitated by what was known as the Marrow Controversy. It arose through the publication of a Scottish Edition of Edward Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity in 1718. It contains such expressions as, God the Father “hath made a deed of gift and grant to them all (i.e. sinners), that whosoever of them shall believe in His Son shall not perish but have eternal life.” Another expression was: “Christ is dead for him (i.e. the sinner); and if he will take and accept His righteousness,
he shall have Him.” That these expressions are liable to be misunderstood is evident from the charges brought against the Marrowmen—Thomas Boston, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, etc.—by their opponents and by the explanations offered by the Marrowmen as to what they understood them to mean. They were charged with holding a universal doctrine of the atonement and for this, and other alleged errors, they were condemned, wrongly, we believe, by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. We cannot enter more fully into the position taken up by the Marrowmen here1 on the extent of the atonement, except to say that they were thoroughly Calvinistic on this doctrine and strongly opposed to the Arminian and Amyraldian heresies. In fact, what has been described by Dr. Smeaton as “perhaps the best refutation which is to be found in English of Amyraldism, or of the double satisfaction—the one effectual and the other ineffectual, is in Rev. Adam Gib’s Display of the Secession Testimony, (II. 131-190 and 273-298).”2 Adam Gib was a devoted follower of the Marrowmen and was one of the ablest defenders of their theology, and the Church to which he belonged was a strong supporter of the Marrow theology. While this was the position of the Secession Church at its beginning, as time went on the Marrow Theology on the extent of the Atonement drifted into what was known in Scotland as the Double Reference Theory of the Atonement. This gave rise to the Atonement Controversy which was waged with considerable heat during a number of years. It has already been seen that Amyraldian views had been vented in the Secession and Reformed Presbyterian Churches.3 The General Associate Synod (Anti-Burgher Secession Church) passed an “Act concerning Arminian Errors,” in which these views were condemned. The Rev. Thomas Mair, one of their ministers, objected to the Act and after being repeatedly dealt with by the Synod was deposed in 1757. The whole subject will be found treated in Rev. Adam Gib’s Display of the Secession
1See paper in Scottish Church History Society Records I. 127-131.
2Smeaton’s Our Lord’s Doctrine of the Atonement, 2nd Edition, p. 472.
Testimony, and in Rev. Andrew Robertson’s History of the Atonement Controversy in the Secession Church. This leads on now to what was known as the Double Reference Controversy. In 1845 at the United Secession Synod some reference was made to the views held by Professors Brown and Balmer. Both were theological professors in the United Secession Church. Brown stood by his colleague and stated his position thus when before the Synod: “In the sense of the great body of Calvinists that Christ died to remove obstacles in the way of human salvation by making perfect satisfaction for sin, I hold that He died for all men.” Balmer, in a preface to a reprint of Polhill’s On the Extent of the Death of Christ,4 says: “Twelve years ago the supreme court of the United Secession Church passed an Act condemning the doctrine of a universal atonement and forbidding the use of the phrase. But how great the change effected within the last two years! The doctrine of a general reference to the death of Christ has been officially recognised, such a reference as necessarily implies a universal atonement.” This double reference view was one of the objections advanced by those in the Free Church who opposed union with the United Presbyterian Church.5 The whole subject may be studied at greater length in Robertson’s work already referred to. It is necessary to point out, however, that the account there given in so far as it is an attempt to father on the Marrowmen the views of Brown and Balmer is misleading. It is probably owing to this that Dr. A. A. Hodge, in his Outlines of Theology (New Edition),6 and also to a certain extent in his Atonement,7 makes the views of the Marrowmen and the United Secession professors similar. This is a mistake not confined to Dr. Hodge.
3In addition to reference already made to the controversy in the Reformed Presbyterian Church, see W. J. Couper’s paper, “A Breach in the Reformed Presbytery, 1753,” in Scottish Church History Society Records I. 1-28.
4An Amyraldian work.
5This was the name given to the Church formed by the union of the United Secession and Relief Churches in 1847.
6p. 417. 7p. 352.