Farewell to the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, Conn. (bound with other addresses)

any thing ? If God says it and calls upon us to believe it, then is it not true ? Can there be in the universe a ground for more absolute certainty than this? "Yea, let God he true,l>ui every man a Ua/r." ■ If God says it and calls upon us to believe it, then what is it that we a/re to believe, save what God hath set forth / and in the manner and form in which he hath set it forth to he helievedf By what authority does any man tell us that it is untrue ; " the simplest form of absurdity ;" indi- cating " the loss or confusion of all moral distinctions" in the Godhead ! and incurring for the Lord " a double ignominy?" If God has set forth Christ " as bearing our sins in a way of vicarious substitution," and calls upon us to exercise faith in him as such, then he who brings us a Gospel in which the doc- trine is " discarded" as untrue and absurd, assuredly brings us " ANOTHEE GosPEL," another than that which God hath set forth. Whoever shall countenance such a preacher, or hold him in fellowship, the Scripture declares, [2. John, 9 — 11,J to be " partaker of his evil deeds," and requires us, [Gal. i., 6 — 9,] to withdraw from him and reject him from our fellow- ship as a thing accursed, even though he were an apostle or an " angel from heaven." What can be " another Gospel" if this is not ? What may we not retain in fellowship, if we are allowed to retain this ? In what case can discipline for heresy ever be called for, if it be not required here ? 2. The Lord may speak in figurative or in hyperbolical language, or employ the representations of imagery ; but in all cases what he intends we shall understand and believe, that is the truth ; and no deception is either practiced or suffered,. The meaning of such figures or images is, in general, under- stood as certainly as though the meaning had been declared in literal terms. But when language, either figurative or lite^ ral, or when imagery is employed with the intention oi caus- ing that to be believed as truth which is not true— this is the very essence of a lie. Nor does it exculpate one, in such a case, to say I deceived you by a figure, and not by a lie direct; for the deeper the " Aet," the deeper the giiilt, as being the. 52 more guileful, the more studied and deliberate. Nor does it- alter the character of the transaction to plead that it is told for a useful or pious end ; for this is the very doctrine of Eo- manism concerning pious frauds. Nor does it change the character of the transaction to say that though as an "objec- tive form" (the form in which it is to be believed), it is not true, yet it is a " substantial verity, ^^ because of its useful and pious effects. What is this but the doctrine that "the end sanctifies the means ?" — the doctrine of them that say " Let us do evil ttiat good may come / whose damnation, is just.^^ "We know, therefore, that the Gospel which God has called upon us to believe, with the declaration, " He that helieveth shall be saved ; he that helieveth not shall be damned," — ^we know that this Gospel is true, for it is the Gospel of " God, who camnot lie ;" of him who is "The Amen, the faithful and true witness." " And w;e know that na lie is of the truth." Hath God said it ? Does he call upon us to believe it ? Then who is it that calls upon us to " discard" it as untrue~and " absurd," even the " simplest form of absurdity ?" To raise a question concerning the truth of any thing which God de- clares, and calls upon us to believe as we would be saved or lost, seems to us like blasphemy. 3. On what ground are we called upon to reject it as un- true ? Has God so declared it ? Declared that he has called upon us to believe a lie, and that under pain of damnation ! Has he at any time intimated that such is the chai-acter of his communications in the Gospel? Does such a conclusion stand in his word ? But how, then, could any thing stand in his word after this ? Not a particle of Scripture is brought to prove it. The reasons assigned for such an implication against the veracity of the Most High, are all drawn from philosophy. The author of this scheme seems to us to sit in judgment upon our Maker, and to decide that that which the Lord calls upon us to believe concerning the vicarious sacri- fice of his Son, and which he has set forth as the way and means of our salvation, is untrue and absurd, even the sim- plest form of absurdity ; indicating in God, if it were true> 53 " the loss or confusion of all moral distinctions ;" a " readi- ness to let justice perish by a double sacrifice ; first, by re- leasing the pains of .guilt, and again, by receiving the pains of holiness." But God does declare that " Christ hath once suffered for sins — the just for the unjust — that he might bring us to God." 1 Pet. iii., 13. " For he hath made him to he sin for us,- who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." 2 Cor. v., 2. " Christ hath redeemed us from the cwse of the law, being made a cuese FOE us." Gal. iii., 13. If we may, on the simple strength of human philosophy, conclude either that this is not true, or that God has lost or confounded all moral distinctionsj then on what declaration of the word of God may we not sit in judgment ? Of what value are the Scriptures to us after this ? Or how are we any longer to have any confidence in the Lord himself, after we have dared to convict him, before the tribunal of human philoso- phy, either of having declared an untruth, with regard to the very essence and vital matter of the Gospel, or of having lost or confounded all moral distinctions ? After such a decision, neither are the Scriptures our guide, nor is the Eprd our God. We have exalted philosophy above revelation ; we have set our own wisdom above the wisdom of the Lord ; and we have taken to ourselves another God before Jehovah, as the God of our faith and confidence. Nay, what if one should — on condition that the Lord has ever made or accepted a vicarious atonement, even in the most mitigated form (viz., simply to express his regard to justice and his abhorrence of sin), — what, if on this condition, one should make the rejection of the Lord explicit and direct ? "What if he should declare that " No governmental reasons can justify even the admission of innocence into a participation of frowns^and penal distributions ;" not "even if consenting Innocericb says. Let the blow fall on me ;" and that " it is impossible to s^er a/ny commutation ; any, the least, confusion of places;" and that, if H@ (God) "should (even in this manner) lay his fi'own for one moment on the Si Boul of innocence and Yirtue, he must be no such, being as," he who makes the declaration, "has loved and worshipped!" "We do not stop here to say what an .unequivocal rejection this is of the vicarious sufferings or atoning sacrifice of Christ, and how it sweeps away every possible vestige and ground of a vicarious atonement; but we ask, in fearful amazement, what if now it shall prove that the Lord has done this very thing, and that Christ has " suffered, the just for the unjust f" — then has not philosophy openly and explicitly rejected the Lord our God ? But the Lord has done this thing, if his word be true, Dr. B. himself being judge ; for, he declares (p. 241) that God has set forth the death of Christ before us as "as sacrifice, an offering, a propitiaUon ; de- clares the remission of sins in his Hood/ represents him as hearing the sins of mankind, i/n a way of vicarious svhstitu- tion;" and that, "then he invites, us to come and exercise faith in him as ieing all these." IsTow, what God has so set forth and called upon us to believe, is the very condition on which, if it be true, Dr. B. declares his rejection of the Lord our God, [God in Christ, p. 193.] Thus does his system, [P. 198.] "In the second and more mitigated class of Orthodox opinions, a very important and really true position is, at last, reached ; viz : — that the value of Christ's life and death is measured by what is therein expressed. Only it is needed now, to go a step farther, investigating what he expresses, how or under what esthetic conditions the expression is made, and the object for which it is made — ^whether it be to express God's character and bring the Eternal Life into visible evidence and social relation ; whether to sanctify and set in honor, before mankind, the broken law of God ; whether to bring God as a renovating power into union with our human nature ; whether, possibly, it be not rather to ac- complish all these ends, and that, too, without any imposition or endurance of evil in the penal form of evil, any suffering or pain which is undertaken for effect, as being a direct exhibition of God's justice, or iudicial abhorrence to sin. " The objections I have to this more mitigated theory, are these : — " First, it assmnes that, as punishment expresses the abhorrence of Ood to sin, or what is the same, his justice, he can sustain his law, and lay a ground of forgive- ness without punishment, only by some equivalent expression of abhorrence — an assumption that is groundless and without consideration, as I may cause to appear in another place. "Secondly, this latter seems to accord with the former view in supposing that Christ suffers evil as evil, or as penal visitation of God's justice, only doing it in a less painful degree ; that is, sufiFering so much of ^vil as will suffice, con- sidering the dignity of his person, to express the same amount of abhorrence to sin, that would be expressed by the eternal punishment of all mankind. I con- fess my inability to see how an innocent being could ever be set, even for one moment^ in an attitude of displeasure under God. If he could lay his frown, 65 notwitlistanding its claims to produce more powerful effects, and to promote a higher style of piety, not only sweep away every form and vestige of a vicarious atonement, but it rejects the word of God, and takes philosophy for its guide instead. Nor does it cease its hostility to the doctrine of a vicarious atonement short of a rejection of the Lord from being God ; leading inevitably (even in the conclusions drawn by its author) to the results of infidelity and atheism. Dr. B. him- self escapes from the fathomless abyss yawning on one side of his alternative, only by plunging into a gulf that is bottomless on the other. He admits that God has set forth the doctrine of a vicarious atonement to be believed; but he maintains that the doctrine is not true : saving himself from his proposed condition of rejecting God only by making God a liar. 4. The author of the scheme claims that his views " can lead, in their practical adoption, to no such diversity in preaching as can properly disturb the peace and' comfort of the churches," [p. 332] ; and holds that ministers of the Gos- pel are to preach a vicarious atonement, with the intent to make it believed as the truth, even if they themselves regard the doctrine as untrue and absurd. [See pp. 241, 242, 243, 247, 332, 245, 246, 255.] But if a minister of the Gospel shall preach the doctrine of a vicarious atonement, intending to make his hearers believe it as true, while he himself holds the mental reservation that it is really (in the manner and form in which it is to be believed) untrue ; then, although he may think that he is doing God service (as doubtless many Eomanists have done, while practicing their lying wonders and pious frauds), we nevertheless declare and protest, that