Thomas Goodwin (1600-80), an English Puritan divine was born in Rollesby, Northfolk. He was in 1643 elected a member of the Westminster Assembly. In 1650 he was appointed by the Parliament, president of Magdalen College, Oxford. His works show that he was an able, learned, careful expositor of Scripture. There is refreshing warmth with his theological, experimental exposition of the Word of God.
It would be our wisdom and for our spiritual edification to read and study prayerfully the Work of the Holy Spirit by Goodwin, Owen and Smeaton. This book by Goodwin is precious. ‘Now there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit’ and it is very refreshing and interesting to notice these diversities of gifts exhibited in the writings of these good men.
Goodwin says that there is a general omission in the saints of God in their not giving the Holy Ghost that glory that is due to His Person, and for His great work of salvation in us, inasmuch that we have in our hearts almost lost this Third Person. He states that the Holy Ghost is indeed the last in order of the persons, as proceeding from the other two, but yet in the participation of the Godhead that He is equal with the Father and the Son. In His work, though it be last done for us, He is not behind them, nor in the glory of it inferior to what they have in theirs. Goodwin distinguishes between that dispensatory sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father to His people and that substantial proceeding of His from the Father, as a Third Person.
In writing of the glory, love and work of each of the persons of the Trinity, Goodwin points out that the persons of the Godhead are wary and careful to provide for the honour of one another in our hearts; and then he emphasises that we should be careful to give it to them accordingly. He also directs our attention to the visible coming of the Holy Ghost, both in the appearance of Him as a dove, descending on Christ at first, and afterwards in the resemblance of cloven tongues.
Then, this divine tells us that Christ had John the Baptist to foretell His manifestation in the flesh; but that the Holy Ghost had Christ Himself to foretell His coming upon flesh. He does not like the idea of some who say that the Spirit had that special honour of tying the marriage knot, or union between the Son of God and the man Jesus, whom the Holy Ghost formed in the virgin’s womb. He says that he has not found ground why to attribute the personal union more particularly to the Holy Ghost. Goodwin shows from Scripture that the Father indeed sent the Son into the world to take flesh; that the Holy Ghost formed that human nature He assumed; but that it was the Son’s special act to take that human nature up into one Person with Himself and we are told that He took a foreign nature to be one Person with Himself. So the apostle tells us, Goodwin says, ‘he took on him the seed of Abraham’ Heb. 11:16, or He took to Himself, which word denotes the very act of union. This view of Goodwin coincides with Owen where he says, ‘The only singular immediate act of the Person of the Son on the human nature, was the assumption of it into subsistence with Himself’. Such Scriptural views regarding the Person of Christ we ought to study carefully and prayerfully.
Then, Goodwin shows how it was the Holy Ghost that had the honour of the consecration of Him to be the Christ, and that by anointing Him ‘without’ or ‘above’ measure as John the Baptist witnessed. Our author puts the question, ‘What is Messiah or Christ, but the Most Holy One anointed?’ Dan. 9. We are told that it was the Holy Spirit that anointed Him to all His offices, and that made Him a preacher of the Gospel, to utter things which man never did, and to speak in such a manner as never man did. It was the Holy Ghost that anointed Him with power to do all His miracles, and all the good He did, Acts 10:38, and Matt. 12:28. And we read of the work of the Holy Spirit in the resurrection of Christ from the dead; also in His ascension, and it is the Holy Spirit that proclaims Him Christ in the hearts of believers.
Our attention is directed to the work of the Holy Spirit in His operations upon the church as collectively taken, and then His operations in every believer, and here Goodwin shows the absolute necessity of regeneration and the nature of it. He puts the question, ‘Hast thou seen thy sinful condition, and been humbled, even as to hell for it?’ It is this Spirit which works repentance on this discovery of sin, and turns our heart from sin to God effectually.
This author says it is Christ’s name that affords the merit and virtue for both justification and sanctification, but that the Spirit is the applier of them and all other blessings. Where he writes of, ‘through Christ we have access by one Spirit unto the Father’, he beautifully says that Christ indeed leads us to the Father (as it were) with one hand, and the Holy Ghost by the other.
In showing that the Holy Ghost is a Spirit of counsel, powerfully instructing and convincingly teaching how to walk and act, Goodwin says that such He was to Christ the head; for instance in that agony and conflict in the garden, when He prayed ‘Let this cup’, it was this good Spirit that counselled Him to die; and in Ps. 16:7 He blesseth God for it. It was that counsel that caused His heart to say, ‘Not my will but thine’.
One needs to read this book for oneself to realise the preciousness of it. Goodwin’s style of writing may not be as pleasant as Flavel’s; his style may be more like Sibbe’s or Howe’s, but we get used to it the more we read. We are grateful to the ‘Banner of Truth’ for publishing this edifying volume, and may the Holy Spirit bless and sanctify to us our reading of it.
A. MacK.