Roy Middleton
Glasgow University Divinity Hall – the second three years. John Love would now return to his theological studies and he was careful to reflect on the goodness and grace of God in relation to the stage he had reached in his ministerial training when God’s converting grace arrested him. He observes in his diary three years later, on 12 June 1778:
“The Lord has led me formerly, and now, to think (though, alas, my thoughts are little in comparison of what they ought to be) of the impiety and wickedness of my first entrance upon education for the work of the ministry, and of my continuing in it until it pleased the Lord to convert me. He sees the need which I have to repent of this my wickedness, and to look to Himself for pardon. And I hope He will give me both repentance and pardon; that is, the distinct, explicit sense of these. And O how ought I to bless His name that He did not let me go on in my miserable destructive course till I was a minister; even supposing He should then have converted me! O what mercy appeared in the timing of my conversion, in its being at a time when my course of study in Theology was but half-finished! This ought to make me carry low sails, and walk softly all my days in the bitterness of my spirit, although the Lord should honour me” (1:52-53).
When the young student returned to the Glasgow Divinity Hall for the winter session in the autumn of 1775, it was to a new divinity professor, James Baillie, who taught Love theology for the remaining three years of his course. The editor of the Memorials details how Baillie conducted his course, which covered virtually the whole field of natural and revealed theology: “Professor Baillie, in his lectures, insisted particularly on the vicarious and expiatory character of the sacrifice of Christ, in opposition to Socinianism; and on the justification of sinners by faith in Christ alone, in opposition to Neonomianism. Among the works which he recommended to his students on the subject of justification, were the treatises of Owen and Rawlins,2 The Marrow of Modern Divinity, The Marrow Pamphlets, Boston On the
1This is a further section of an abridgement of a new introduction of John Love’s Memorials, a two-volume work now reprinted by Free Presbyterian Publications. References to the Memorials are placed in the body of the text, with volume and page numbers in brackets. The previous section, last month, described Love’s conversion.
2The reference to Rawlins is to Richard Rawlin (1687-1757), an Independent minister at Bishop-Stortford and then in London. The volume that Baillie recommended to John Love was Christ the Righteousness of His People, London, 1741. It was reprinted in Scotland on several occasions.
Covenants, Witsius’ De Oeconomia Foederum Dei, and his Oratio Irenica,3 Ebenezer Erskine On the Assurance of Faith, Chauncy’s Neonomianism Unmasked, and Traill’s Letter on Antinomianism” (2:10).
Neonomianism was one of the leading errors of the day and the Glasgow Divinity Professor seems to have been an orthodox Calvinist who opposed it both in his teaching and in recommending books that controverted it. Neonomians taught that the death of Christ made full satisfaction to divine justice for the sins of all mankind so as to remove every obstacle to their pardon and acceptance and to bring all mankind into a salvable state and make salvation possible. Having thus satisfied the demands of the “old law” on their behalf, Christ procured a “new law” which prescribes easier terms of salvation. According to Neonomianism, this new law consisted not in our being justified by faith and the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer as his title to everlasting life, but rather in God abrogating the need for a perfect legal obedience. Instead of Christ’s spotless righteousness being imputed to the believer, God would accept faith itself and the imperfect obedience of faith as being worthy of the reward of eternal life.
These were the erroneous views held by many in the Moderate party, who controlled the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at the time of the Marrow Controversy.4 Now, little more than half a century afterwards, James Baillie was taking the side of the Marrow Men and even recommending Thomas Boston’s writings and Ebenezer Erskine’s treatise on Assurance of Faith – a topic at the centre of the controversy. The Professor’s teaching clearly had its influence on the young convert; in the second volume of the Memorials there are three papers by Love controverting Neonomianism, written whilst he was a student under Baillie (see 2:70-81).
In addition to these papers, the first volume of the Memorials contains two letters written by Love, at the beginning of his final year as a divinity student in November 1778, addressed to a fellow student who was perplexed about the doctrine of original sin and had adopted erroneous views on the prophetic
3The first of these Latin works was translated into English as The Economy of the Covenants; possibly the second should read, Animadversiones Irenicae, translated as (to give the full title), Conciliatory or Irenical Animadversions on the Controversies Agitated in Britain: under the unhappy names of Antinomians and Neonomians.
4Richard Baxter and Daniel Williams were two of the main architects of Neonomianism. For details see James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, Banner of Truth, 1961, pp 190-192, and note 15 on p 478 for a summary of the literature on the topic; John Macleod, Scottish Theology, pp 111,112,138-9. For an able defence of the Reformed position and critique of Neonomianism see Robert Traill, “A Vindication of the Protestant Doctrine of Justification from the Unjust Charge of Antinomianism” in The Works of Robert Traill, Edinburgh, 1810, vol. 1, pp 252-296.
office of Christ besides being inclined to Neonomianism. Having known what it was to wander into the mazes of deadly error, Love had the tenderest sympathy for his fellow-student and earnestly desired that he would be delivered from his erroneous views and brought from darkness to God’s marvellous light.5
After his conversion, the remaining three years of Love’s theological course under Baillie were devoted to intensive theological study. The only exception to this unremitting study was the time he gave to personal devotion. The focus of his study was exegetical investigation into the precise meaning of Scripture. Due to his thorough knowledge of Greek from an early age, he was able to prosecute his studies of the New Testament in its original language. He seems to have devoted a considerable amount of time during his years under Baillie to studying Calvin’s commentaries on the Pentateuch and the Book of Psalms. The editor of the Memorials notes that there is ample evidence that he read these volumes of Calvin in a very careful and thorough manner (2:11).
In addition to his exegetical studies, John Love mapped out the whole field of theology in the areas of doctrines and duties. The former includes sections on the Divine perfections, providence, the primary state of man, sin, the covenant of grace, regeneration, the offices of Christ, justification, adoption, sanctification, afflictions of the saints, the promises, and the latter sections on the Ten Commandments, prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, faith, repentance, spiritual joy. His reading on Systematic Theology was extensive; he studied carefully Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Francis Turretin’s Institutio Theologicæ Elencticæ and Petrus van Maastricht’s Theoretica-Practica Theologia. In addition he read selections from Herman Witsius’s The Economy of the Covenants and made a copious abstract of John Owen’s The Doctrine of Justification by Faith. These studies were all undertaken whilst Love was still in his late teens.
Student activities. Besides these scholarly activities, four other matters filled his time in the remaining years as a divinity student under Baillie. The first and most important of these was his personal devotion. In the only example we have of how he apportioned his time during the day, he records in his nineteenth year that he spent the first two hours, between six and eight in the morning, in meditation, prayer and Bible reading. The hours from noon until two in the afternoon were devoted to self-examination and prayer and then, from nine in the evening until eleven, the time was given to family worship, meditation and prayer (2:26). A third of his waking hours were devoted to prayer and meditation.
5For Love’s letters to his fellow student see Memorials, vol 1, pp 361-366.
The final three years of Love’s time as a student were very different from the first three, when he was unconverted. A new and significant feature of his life was attendance at communion seasons and at services where Evangelical ministers were preaching. In the diary portions of the Memorials there are frequent references to hearing some of the outstanding ministers of the day and of him being present at the large gatherings in Glasgow and the south-west of Scotland when the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered. The first volume of the Memorials contains an account of a communion season he attended in Dumbarton at the end of August 1777 (1:320-9). The minister of the congregation was James Oliphant, and the assisting ministers were John Russell and James Morrison, of whose congregation Love was a member. John Macleod points out that Robert Burns, who moved in the circle of the Ayrshire Moderates, caricatured both Oliphant and Russell as old school Evangelicals and were two of the men on whom he had targeted his satirical shafts. Macleod adds, “Mr Oliphant was in his later years one of the senior intimates of John Love”.6
Of Russell’s sermon on the text, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3), Love writes, “I was in an uncomfortable frame for some time. Afterwards the Lord graciously returned to my soul, and stirred me up to prepare with hope, and expectation, and cheerfulness, for meeting Him at this communion season” (1:321). The action sermon was preached by James Oliphant from the text, “The voice of my beloved! Behold, He cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills” (Song 2:8). Love details his experience on that communion Sabbath: “What shall I say! The blessed God again returned during Mr Oliphant’s sermon. . . . My soul acted over again the same act of faith, but with more light and evidence. I wrapped myself in Christ, as the obeying and suffering Mediator; and, on that ground, depended on Him as my Prophet and King, trusting that He will loose the chains of spiritual death, as He has already by His righteousness loosed the chains of legal death” (1:323). The sermons he heard on those occasions would most certainly have had a formative effect on his own future ministry.
A third feature of John Love’s student life after his conversion was his reading of Puritan and experimental literature. He seems to have been particularly fond of John Owen. In his diary he refers to the following treatises by Owen: Indwelling Sin in Believers, The Person of Christ, Exposition of Psalm 130, his Commentary on Hebrews and his Sacramental Discourses. His reading of Scottish divines included Samuel Rutherford’s Trial and Triumph of Faith and his Letters; James Durham on Isaiah 53 and his Com-
6John Macleod, Scottish Theology, pp 211-212.
mentary on Revelation; John Welsh’s Forty-Eight Select Sermons; Thomas Halyburton’s The Great Concern of Salvation; Thomas Boston’s Memorial concerning Personal and Family Fasting and Humiliation; James Fraser of Brea’s A Treatise on Justifying Faith;7 John MacLaurin’s sermon on Glorying in the Cross of Christ, and the writings of Archbishop Leighton.
Among the American treatises that the young student absorbed were Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections and his Life of David Brainerd; Thomas Shepard’s Sound Believer and his Sincere Convert.8 To this extensive and impressive list of reading in little more than three years must be added Philip Doddridge on Regeneration and the Works of Ezekiel Hopkins, the Anglican Bishop of Derry. These matchless volumes read before he was 21, along with attendance at communions, left their lifelong stamp on the character and witness of John Love as a minister of the gospel. He was an old school experimental Calvinist with a passion for the salvation of sinners.
A fourth feature of John Love’s final years as a divinity student was his membership of an association of his fellow students for mutual improvement. The Society, which Love calls on occasions the “Society of Preachers” (1:254), was composed of a number of theological students, at a similar stage in their divinity course, who were convinced of the necessity of combining the study of theology as an academic discipline with the earnest pursuit of personal piety. However, we only know the names of two members of the Association: Joseph Hodgson, ordained in 1776 to Carmunnock, and John Colquhoun, afterwards the outstanding minister of South Leith for nearly half a century.
7It should be noted that this volume by Fraser of Brea taught a view of the atonement that was, in Rev Donald Beaton’s words, “distinctly Amyraldian”.
8Almost the entire contents of the Memorials were written before John Love was licensed; virtually the only exception to this concerns his opinion of the works of Thomas Shepard (1:278-9). Love wrote a preface to Shepard’s treatises, The Sincere Convert and The Sound Believer, when they were reprinted in Paisley in 1812. At that date Love was aged 55; hence we have his mature judgment on the treatises. The opinion he expresses regarding Shepard is extremely favourable, but at the same time very discriminating: “Respecting . . . The Sincere Convert, it must be confessed to have some imperfections and blemishes . . . But with all its faults it possesses some singular excellencies. . . . One might desire that the feelings of genuine tender-hearted converts may be spared, and that they may escape the perplexity which a discrimination so accurate and widely extended is likely to excite for a time in their minds. If the book should come into the hands of such persons, let them proceed in a cautious and leisurely way through these trying parts of it: let them avoid passing a hasty sentence on themselves: let them not dwell too long at a time on the searching and terrifying representation of things: and let them carry on along with this book the reading of some other writing, wherein the way of access to salvation by Jesus Christ is pointed out in a more simple, direct and healing manner; such as Gray’s Sermons, Durham’s Communion Sermons, Romaine’s Life of Faith, Newton’s Letters, and the like.”
The association of John Love with such like-minded men as Hodgson and Colquhoun must have been of immense benefit to his growth and stability as a young Christian. In the “age of the Moderates”, when the profession of vital godliness was almost certain to expose young men to the imputation of fanaticism or weakness of mind, this group of divinity students had the moral courage to make such a profession. They met openly at stated times to deliver discourses, hold brotherly conferences, and engage in devotional exercises. These meetings were a means of confirming their faith in the Saviour and binding them to one another in ardent Christian affection.
The papers they read were to promote their growth both in knowledge and in grace and to assist them in preparing for the work of the ministry. The second volume of the Memorials contains 20 pages of discourses and addresses that John Love delivered at the students’ association. There is also a written prayer he prepared with a view to conducting the devotional exercises at one of the meetings, before he had acquired confidence and fluency in extempore prayer (2:27-46).