A Way of Escape for Sinners¹

Ashbel Green

1. The first idea of importance is: there is an escape from the wrath and curse of God. It is too little recollected that we are entirely indebted, for the possibility of such an escape, to God’s sovereign grace and mercy. You know that for the angels “who kept not their first estate”, no way of escape was provided or was possible. They were immediately consigned to unavoidable, hopeless, endless perdition; and God was under no obligation to deal in a different manner with our fallen race. He would have done us no injustice if he had treated us just as He did “the angels that sinned”. But in His boundless love and compassion, He has provided a Saviour for mankind, and through Him a way of escape.

Further, the word escape suggests two other important ideas. One is, this word is never applied to any but to those who are in a state of danger. We have seen in what an awfully perilous condition man was placed by his original apostasy, and how God’s benevolence has opened a way of deliverance. But it is not enough that the way has been opened: it must be used; it must be entered and pursued till it leads to a refuge of perfect safety. Every unregenerate sinner is still in a state of the most awful peril. Believe that if any one of you who is not yet reconciled to God through Jesus Christ should

¹These are the first two sections of Green’s comments, as edited, on the answer to Question 85 in The Shorter Catechism: “To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with a diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption”. This extract is taken, with editing, from Green’s Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, vol. 2. Green (1762-1848) was a prominent American minister and was President of the Board of Governors of Princeton Theological Seminary.

have his eyes opened at once to see all the danger of his condition, it would make him tremble. Awakened sinners who get only an imperfect view of their fearful condition do often tremble; and the only reason why any wonder at this is because they themselves are blind.

The other idea suggested by the word escape is a flight from the impending evil. He who escapes hastens away, with all possible speed, from the peril which threatens to destroy him. Now this points to the duty which a regard to their own best interest, as well as to the command of God, enjoins on all unsanctified sinners. They ought not to remain at ease for a single moment, in a situation where they are constantly exposed to remediless misery. Hence we read of fleeing from the wrath to come. Hence the anxious demand of the convicted Jews, on the day of Pentecost, for immediate direction: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” – and of the trembling jailor at Philippi: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Unawakened sinners under the gospel plead for delay, and it destroys them by the tens of thousands; but no sinner who has his eyes opened to see the danger of an impenitent state ever pleads for delay. He is all alive to make his escape from the brink of final perdition, and would to God that every one of you, who are not yet savingly interested in the redemption of Christ, were in this state of mind. You would then listen with all earnestness to what I am now to state from the answer of the Catechism before us, which is:

1. Means are to be employed in making an escape from the “wrath and curse of God due to us for sin”. These means are of two kinds, inward and outward. The outward means are to be particularly considered afterwards; the inward means claim our special attention at present. They are “faith in Jesus Christ and repentance unto life”, called inward means because they are acts which take place entirely within the mind. When these, however, are called the means of escaping God’s displeasure, it is of the highest importance to understand and remember that they are not the meritorious cause of God being reconciled to the offending sinner. The merits of the Lord Jesus Christ – His finished righteousness and prevailing intercession – are alone the meritorious consideration on which pardon, justification and eternal life are granted to any of our guilty race. You will understand how faith and repentance operate as means of salvation if you consider attentively that none will be admitted to heaven but those who are at once entitled to its unspeakable bliss and qualified to enjoy it, and that it is by faith and repentance that both the title and the qualification are obtained.

It may be sufficient meantime to observe that faith is exclusively the grace by which the believing sinner becomes connected and identified with the Saviour, and of course interested in all the benefits of His great redemption.

Thus the sinner gains a title to those celestial mansions which the glorified Head of the redeemed has promised to all the members of His mystical body, and which He has gone to prepare for them. At the same time, repentance – for faith and repentance always take place together – breaks the power of sin in the soul, turns the whole bias or current of its affections from sin to holiness. Thus the disposition is implanted and cherished which, when perfected at the point of death, qualifies it for partaking in all the holy exercises and enjoyments of the heavenly state.

It is in this way, and only in this way, that faith and repentance are means of salvation. And till it can be proved that there is merit in a perishing individual accepting offered life and happiness which he has a thousand times forfeited – and merit in ceasing to hate, and beginning to love, what is supremely amiable and excellent – it can never be shown that faith and repentance are meritorious acts. For faith is really nothing more than a perishing sinner accepting spiritual and eternal life and happiness, procured for him and offered to him by the Lord Jesus Christ without money and without price. And repentance essentially consists in ceasing to hate, and beginning to love supremely, the ever blessed God, the source and sum of all that is excellent and lovely.

Christ as the Good Shepherd¹

W S Plumer

We may here consider the qualities of a good shepherd, as they are found in Christ.

1. Devotedness to his office. He who would well fulfill the place of a shepherd must not be idle. He holds no sinecure. He must be very attentive. He has a great work on hand. This is the case when the shepherd has but a small flock, and of little value. It is much more true when he has the care of souls. It is above all true of the Saviour of men. Who ever served God or his generation like the Redeemer? Even when on earth, He was often wearied and hungry and thirsty, yet nothing could divert Him from the great business He had undertaken. In every age He has fully performed the engagement to each believer, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee”. At home and abroad, in sickness and health, in the height of prosperity and in the depth of trouble, He attends His “little flock”. He is not merely a Saviour afar off, but also a Saviour at hand – a very present help in time of trouble.

¹Taken, with editing, from The Rock of Our Salvation. Plumer was a noted Presbyterian minister in the nineteenth century.

1. Love for his office. If the shepherd’s heart is set more intently on something else, he cannot possibly succeed. If he prefers some other calling above that in which he is engaged, disaster must befall the flock. It is delightful to be able to assert, on the authority both of individual promises and of the general tenor of Scripture, that no object in creation lies nearer the heart of the Good Shepherd than the care and salvation of His flock. This was so in the countless ages of a past eternity, as He Himself declares: “Then I was by Him as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him; rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and My delights were with the sons of men” (Prov 8:30,31). When He was here, “having loved His own . . . He loved them unto the end”. Never did He neglect one of His flock. Never did He slight His appropriate work. As one whom his mother comforteth, so He comforts His saints. To Zion He says, “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before Me” (Is 49:16).

2. Watchfulness. “Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria” (Nah 3:18) was among the saddest signs of Nineveh’s ruin. To the Church, God says, “He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps 121:3,4). “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him” (2 Chr 16:9). It is a great mercy that God’s people are so seldom allowed to fall under the temptation to believe that their way is hid from the Lord and their judgement is passed over from their God. But even when Satan does gain a temporary advantage, they know that it is not for the lack of loving care and tender watchfulness in their God and Saviour.

3. Wisdom. Woe to the flock whose guide has only “the instruments of a foolish shepherd” (Zec 11:15). When the shepherd takes the whip rather than the crook, the scourge rather than the staff of Israel, when he would only drive and not at all allure, it is sad indeed for the flock. Alas for the “shepherds that cannot understand” (Is 56:11). But the Good Shepherd employs no unwise instruments or measures. He knows what is best. He sees the end from the beginning. He understands all their situation. He charges His angels with folly. He takes the wise in their own craftiness. No plot is so deep, and no machination so cunning, that He cannot at once, and with infinite ease, pour confusion upon those responsible.

4. Strength. Without it the sheep are defenceless. With it they are safe. In Amos 3:12, we read of the shepherd taking out of the mouth of the lion the two legs of one of his sheep. With supernatural strength God endowed David, when he was but a shepherd’s boy, that he might deliver his flock from a

lion and a bear. It may be in special reference to the power of Christ that He is called “that great Shepherd of the sheep” (Heb 13:20). He is also styled “the chief Shepherd” (1 Pet 5:4). In strength, as in all other good qualities, He excels all shepherds: “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God”. In Scripture, the Shepherd is called “the mighty God” (Is 9:6). He claims for Himself the title which demands awe: “The Almighty” (Rev 1:8); and one Almighty is more than all mighties. Indeed, the Shepherd “appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty” (Ex 6:3).

It is a matter of no small weight that a shepherd is no intruder, but rightfully in his office. This is the case with the Good Shepherd. Before He gave the commission under which the gospel is now preached, He assured His Church: “All power [authority] is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” (Mt 28:18). Indeed, early in His ministry He said to His disciples: “All things are delivered unto Me of My Father” (Mt 11:27). Even long before His advent, prophecy declared that there should be “given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him” (Dan 7:14).

1. Love to the sheep. No quality of a shepherd is of higher value. This shows itself in gentleness, in constant care, in readiness to encounter danger for their defence. How wonderfully loving is this Shepherd! He is so gentle. He neither strives, nor cries, nor lifts up, nor causes His voice to be heard in the streets. When reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not. How different He was from the shepherds of the flock of slaughter. They did not pity the distresses of those for whom they were bound to care. It was love – it was compassion like God – that caused the Good Shepherd to lay down His life for the sheep.

Some of the Roman emperors such as Trajan claimed to be shepherds to their people. He sent his own raiment to bind up the wounds of his soldiers; and for that kindness many loved him. But Jesus, the Good Shepherd, had His flesh torn, His blood shed, and His heart melted like wax, so that He might heal our wounds. He has the only sovereign balm. This pity of Jesus shows itself in His readiness to receive and treat tenderly the weakest and most sickly of His flock. He continually fulfills the prophetic promise, “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young” (Is 40:11).

One of the last charges of the chief Shepherd to Peter, and through him to all ministers, was, “Feed My lambs . . . feed My sheep . . . feed My sheep”. Jesus never forgot the lambs. Jesus never forgot one of His sheep. When a

bird, frightened by a hawk, flew into the bosom of a man, he said, though he was a heathen: “I will not betray you to your enemy, seeing you come to me for sanctuary”. So in time of danger, the Good Shepherd loves to have His affrighted sheep come close to Him and abide with Him.

In a sense, all times are times of danger; so we cannot cleave too closely to the Redeemer. This ardent love to the flock secures fidelity, as Jesus has said, “He that is a hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep” (Jn 10:12,13). But Jesus saw the wolf coming, and stood His ground, laid down His life for His sheep and saved them.

John Hooper – a Reformation Puritan¹

2. Three Books from Zurich

Rev K M Watkins

During his relatively short stay in Zurich, John Hooper published three books. These are vital for understanding this Reformation Puritan, for it is no overstatement to say that “these three books lay the groundwork for Hooper’s contribution to the English Reformation”.² He never had cause to revise the basic premises contained in these works. They covered all the main emphases for which he would contend, once he was back in England, in his attempts to see a reformed Church that would be Puritan in its doctrine, worship and practice. These three books bore a united witness against so much of what remained unreformed in England.

The first book, Answer to the Bishop of Winchester’s Book, published in September 1547, was written against Stephen Gardiner’s defence of the Romanist mass. It has been well summarised: “Step by step he refuted the real presence of Christ in the bread”.³ Hooper’s ability to crystallise in short compass the very core of a matter is seen in this wonderful statement about the Lord’s Supper: “The thing present in this sacrament is Christ Him-

¹This article is based on the second part of a paper given at the 2016 Theological Conference. Englishman John Hooper was so radically influenced by the Zurich reformation of Zwingli and Bullinger that he was forced to leave King Henry VIII’s partially-reformed England. After travelling through Europe, in early 1547 he arrived in Zurich, where he was to remain until the spring of 1549.

²David G Newcombe, John Hooper: Tudor Bishop and Martyr, Davenant Press, 2009, p 43.

³Pete Sullivan, A Gloucester Martyr: John Hooper and the English Reformation, Country Books, 2004, p 20.

self, spiritually; the thing absent is Christ’s body, corporally”.⁴ He wrote: “It is an horrible heresy to say that Christ is offered in the mass for sin. Christ once offered Himself. It is our office to confess and acknowledge that only oblation once offered” (EW, p 182).

Hooper showed that the sacrament does not convey blessing automatically. The receiver needs faith and understanding in order to benefit. He wrote: “To obtain the thing present in this holy supper, is to have Christ and all His merits delivered unto the soul by the Spirit of God through faith, which eateth neither flesh neither blood corporally, but feedeth upon the causes why and wherefore the body of Christ should die, and His blood to be shed” (EW, p 209).

Whilst utterly refuting the physical presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Supper, the book shows that Hooper’s understanding of the sacrament was much richer than the oft-repeated and overly-simplistic allegation made against Zwinglian doctrine, that it reduced the sacrament to a mere memorial. Hooper wrote: “When the minister delivereth unto me . . . the bread and wine, rehearsing the words of Christ’s institution, the Holy Ghost delivereth unto my faith . . . the precious body and blood of my Saviour Jesus Christ spiritually, and not corporally” (EW, p 191). To Hooper, the Supper was more than a bare symbol; it was a seal appointed by Christ, and when received by faith, Christ Himself was made spiritually present to the soul.

Hooper’s second book was on Christology. Published in December 1547 under the title, The Declaration of Christ and His Office, we see Hooper the evangelist and pastor, seeking the spiritual good of his readers, as he commends Christ’s Person and work, especially in His priestly office. This was the heart of Hooper’s religion – and indeed of all true reformation and Puritanism: Christ-centred faith and experience.

Nevertheless, Hooper did not fail to seize every opportunity to apply the doctrine to the purposes of further reformation. On Christological grounds, he was able to attack many unbiblical practices and beliefs that still needed to be fully rooted out of England. Christ alone is head of the Church, who “keeps the defence and governance of the Church only and solely [to] Himself”.⁵ Therefore “doubtless it is a foul and detestable arrogancy, that these ungodly bishops of Rome attribute unto themselves to be heads of Christ’s Church” (W, p 23).

⁴Early Writings of John Hooper, ed Samuel Carr, The Parker Society, Cambridge, 1843, p 209. Further references to this volume are in the text of the article, prefaced by EW.

⁵Writings of Dr John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester. Martyr, 1555, The Religious Tract Society, nd, p 23. Further references to this volume are in the text of the article, prefaced by W.

In governing His Church, Christ “binds all the ministers thereof unto the sole Word of God”, so “what abomination is this” that anyone “take upon him to make any laws in the Church of God, to bind the consciences of man, beside the Word of God; and, in placing their superstition and idolatry, put the Word of God out of its place!” (W, p 23).

When arguing for right administration of the Lord’s Supper according to Scripture, Hooper pleaded the motive of Christ’s redeeming love: “He that took the pains to die and suffer His passion for the redemption of the world . . . hath taken the pains to teach the world how and which way they should keep this passion in mind” (W, p 30).

The invocation of Mary and other departed “saints” in dependence on their supposed merits could not be right, for God “hath ordained Christ alone to be Mediator between man and Him” (W, p 33). Praying to the saints was intolerable because “it diminishes the merits of Christ” (W, p 33). The defence for retaining images in the churches, that they were not there to be worshiped but to teach the people as so-called laymen’s picture books, could not be right, for that contradicted the Great Commission given by the Saviour. “Christ saith not, ‘Go preach unto the people by images’; but He said, ‘Go into all the world, and preach the gospel’” (W, p 37).

Contrary to the Romanist blasphemy of the supposed sacrifice of the mass, Hooper asserted the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. He wrote: “From this infallible truth, ‘Only the death of Christ is the sacrifice for the expiation of sin’ . . . it is manifest that [the Lord’s Supper] is not a sacrifice for sin” (W, p 51). He insisted on the true physicality of Christ’s human body, which can be in only one place at one time, and that place is now heaven. Therefore Christ’s bodily presence in the Supper was an impossibility, whether according to the Romanist version of transubstantiation, that the sacramental bread was physically changed into the physical body of Christ; or the Lutheran version of consubstantiation, that Christ’s physical body was “in, with and under the bread”. He wrote: “To be everywhere, or to be in divers places at one time, is denied to His humanity” (W, p 60).

From the truth that Christ alone sanctifies His people through His blood, Hooper denied all other sources of holiness, such as “bewitched water, candles, vows, or any such heathen superstition” (W, p 63). This truth left no place for the claims of the Pope, who “names himself ‘the most holy father’, and takes upon him to sanctify all other men of the earth; as God’s vicar and lieutenant, to absolve from guilt and punishment, to pull out of hell and send to heaven with his pardons, masses, and other abominations, whereas Christ only and solely doth sanctify” (W, p 63).

Hooper’s third book published in Zurich came in 1548, and was called A

Declaration of the Ten Holy Commandments of Almighty God. That England was in dire need of a work on the Decalogue would come into sharp focus later, for when Hooper took over the bishopric of Gloucester in 1551, he was to find that 172 out of 311 clergymen in the diocese could not recite the Ten Commandments.⁶

As Hooper expounded the commandments one by one, his credentials as a pastor of souls, concerned to see faith being put to work in the practical godliness of daily Christian life, shone forth. This would be emphasised over and over in the later Puritan movement in England: although salvation is by divine grace alone and received by faith alone, professing Christians must work out their salvation in daily practical godliness, through endeavours for obedience to God’s law in heart, speech and behaviour. God’s people must be doers of the Word, not hearers only: “It were as good never to read the Scripture, nor to hear sermon, [if] we mind not to obey unto the Word of God spoken or read” (EW, p 289).

The obedience that Hooper insisted on was no mere outward and legalistic formality. It was to be that “faith which worketh by love” (Gal 5:6). Hear him stirring his readers to wholehearted love towards God: “When the law requireth the love of God with all the heart, it requireth all men’s affections to be sincere and pure, and wholly directed unto the love and obedience of God. . . . He is not content with the fourth part, or the half, but requireth the whole heart, mind, will, affections, and life of man. He is not content that we love Him with one part, and the world with the other” (EW, p 299-300).

The obedience that Hooper expounded was thoroughly evangelical. Grace is needed to keep the law of God. His comment on the Third Commandment is applicable to all ten: “The works required of us . . . can be done of no man, but of such as first know God in Jesu[s] Christ, and for His merits be reconciled, and hath his sins forgiven” (EW, p 324). On the Tenth Commandment, he wrote: “No creature born into the world could satisfy this law; and all holy saints had sin remaining in them, as long as they lived. . . . [So] we may learn to call for the great and inestimable help of God, that we may be quit and saved from this imperfection in Christ Jesu[s], and accounted in Him the children of God and satisfiers of the law” (EW, p 410).

Hooper’s exposition of each commandment in turn led him to expand on many of the duties required and sins forbidden, in a way that would be repeated time and again in the Reformed Churches. An eminent example of that method would be seen in The Larger Catechism that came a century later.

⁶David G Newcombe, “The Visitation of the Diocese of Gloucester and the State of the Clergy, 1551”, in The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vol 114 (1996), p 91.

Hooper’s desire for full reformation of church and state was also to the fore. He applied the divine law to the contemporary issues facing England. So much was this the case that Spurgeon, writing three centuries later, criticised the book for being “too much occupied with the controversies raging in the author’s times to be very interesting now”.⁷ The quotes we have already made from the book demonstrate that Spurgeon’s comment is unjustified, especially when it is recognised that Hooper was not writing a treatise for posterity, to be studied centuries later. His work was forged in the heat of battle, as he contended for the thorough biblical reformation of the whole of England. Hooper was a Puritan reformer, as well as a Puritan pastor.

To that end, Hooper saw implementation of the first table of the law, as well as the second, as necessary for the welfare of the nation. “The first law to preserve a commonwealth is, that the people thereof know how to reverence and honour God aright. . . . If He be neglected, there followeth doubtless a ruin and change of the commonwealth” (EW, p 352). To obtain the favour of God, for the preservation of the nation, we are “assured by His Word how we may honour Him . . . as it is taught us in the first table and four first precepts” (EW, p 353). Under the Fifth Commandment, he wrote: “It is . . . the office of every magistrate to learn how to reign over the people by the law of God” (EW, p 365).

The regulative principle of worship surfaced again: “Every thing that we do for the honour of God, not commanded by His Word, is . . . not accepted of God. . . . God will have none other works of man, than He requireth in His express Word” (EW, p 311). Everything else brought into worship is “the fire of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, a strange fire . . . such as He commanded not” (EW, p 311).

Hooper had no doubts regarding the biblical principle that nations – as nations – should serve the true and living God. The civil magistrate was to enforce Church attendance on the Sabbath in obedience to the Fourth Commandment. Seeing that “by this commandment” the Israelites were to “constrain the strangers within their city to hear and see their religion upon the Sabbath”, so “every well-ordered commonwealth now in the time of the gospel should . . . constrain all people to hear the Word of God, and see the ministration of the sacraments” (EW, p 341).

The book also demonstrated Hooper’s unreserved commitment to Scripture. For him there was only one final authority, and that was the Bible. In his preface, entitled “Unto the Christian Reader”, he wrote: “We must therefore judge by the Scripture, and believe all things there spoken. Know thereby

⁷Charles H Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries, Baker Book House reprint 1981, p 58.

the will of God” (EW, p 266). He complained: “Men doth not look what God’s Word saith, but extollet the authority of man’s laws, preferring the decree of a general or a provincial council before the Word of God: which hath brought this abomination and subversion of all godly doctrine into the Church of Christ” (EW, p 288).

That submission to Scripture, whatever the cost, was put to the test. In dealing with the Seventh Commandment, he argued that women had equal right to divorce adulterous husbands as men had to divorce adulterous wives; and that the innocent parties, whether male or female, had equal right to remarry. “The same authority hath the woman to put away the man, that the man hath to put away the woman” (EW, p 379-80). Though altogether scriptural, this was revolutionary to the thought of the day, and Hooper had to defend himself against the unjustified charge of dishonouring marriage. In a letter to Bullinger, written once he was back in London (dated 31 May 1549), he explains the soreness of the trial: he was being “hindered” by “circumstances” with which he had to “contend”. He wrote, “My opponents allow the husband to divorce his wife by reason of adultery, and to marry another; but they do not allow the same liberty to the wife”.⁸

Hooper was determined not to give up biblical light, even if it brought him into conflict and trouble. This was always at the core of Puritanism: faithfulness to Scripture, whatever the consequences. Spurgeon described Hooper’s book as being “after the manner of the English reformers”⁹; actually Hooper was ready to resist their consensus when they went contrary to Scripture. Having written his three books in Zurich, his readiness to stand for Scripture, whatever others thought, was to be seen even more clearly once he returned to England.