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

1. It is true : that those w^o are called orthodox, do hold, 1st, "That Christ has come between us and the judicial de- sert of our sins;" which (coming between) "they call dis- tinctively the atonement ;" and 2d, " that he has purchased the Holy Spirit, who after pardon has been made possible, is by his secret " (inscrutable) '^efficiency to renew such as he vnll to salvation." It is also true that not only " many " but all who are re- garded by the churches in our connection as orthodox, do hold, according to the Westminster Confession, that by the [Pp. 219-20.] "I look into our treatises of theology, and they tell me that these two elements constitute the Gospel of our salvation. First, that Christ has come between us and the judicial desert of owr sins, which they call distinctively the atonement. Seoondljr, that he has purchased the Holy Spirit, who, after pardon has been maide possible, is by his secret efficiency to renew such as he will to salva- tion. Connected with this, it is held as a theory by many that human character, ■under sin, is wholly disabled, as regards any quickening influence addressed to thought, and discovered in that way to feeling. Ifo approach, in this direction, of the Divine love and patience is means to an end, they say, as regards the re- generation of the soul, or can be of any avail, save to exasperate the malignity of sin. On one hand, then, we have a gate of pardon opened oy a legal prdvision; on the other, the Holy Spirit blowing where it listeth; but there is no Son of Man lifted up between, to draw us unto God, and impregnate our fallen affec- tions with the Divine love. The two dry factors above named cohititute the Gospel. "It is no Gospel, but only a dull mechanical contrivance of theology. Christ the wisdom of God and the power ; Christ the manifested life ; Christ the image of the invisible God, who is to shine into our hearts and give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God ; Christ lifted up to draw all men unto him ; Christ in whom we are to be changed from glory to glory ; God manifest in the flesh ; God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, — is not here. Therefore, J lay, this is not the Gospel; it is only a speculative figment, cold and dry, which scholastics have schemed for us, in the petty measures of the scientific understanding." ' ' [P. 220-l.J "Between the two points here affirmed, justification on one side, and the grace of the Spirit on the other — ^that a mere possibility, as it is com- monly regarded ; this an inscrutable subjective s^ency — Christ the Living Word appears, and is lifted up to be a Gospel of power in the world's feeling." 5 66 " original corruption," into which men were brought by the fall, " we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to evil ;" for Christ has said, " No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him ;" and Scripture expressly declares that "The carnal mind is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be ; so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." There is therefore no hope for us, but in the sovereign grace of God in the " re- newing of the Holy Ghost." It is' assuredly true that they do not regard these doctrines as " dry factors ;" nor does it ap- pear to them when Christ crucified is preached, that " God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, is not here ;" for though " the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, unto them that are saved it is the power of God." " But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God ; becaute the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." When we preach Christ, "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, thi-ough faith in his blood," we do not admit that it is either false or absurd. We declare it " a faithful say- ing worthy of all acceptation ;" nor do we admit that " It is not the Gospel," nor a mere " speculative figment ;" but we hold it as the truth of the Lord our God, which no man may impugn, or pronounce " the simplest form of absurdity," with- out bringing his soul into danger of the judgment. That those who hold these doctrines leave out that part of the Gospel which lifts up the Son of man as exhibiting the love and mercy of God, and so drawing all men unto him, is an announcement that fills us with amazement. To the best of our knowledge and belief, the statement is utterly errone- ous and iintrue. Who that holds the doctrine of a vicarious atonement has not always been ready to exclaim, with an emphasis coming from the very depths of the soul, " Herem is love ! Wot that we loved God, lut that he loved us, and 6f ga/ve Ms Bon to ie the propitiation for our sins "f And this they have constantly used as the most common and the most powerful argument in beseeching men to be reconciled to God. Dr. B. is mistaken when he fancies that this is peculiar to his scheme, or that he has in this restored any part of the Gospel, which had fallen into disuse. Nor do the orthodox hold, as the representations of Dr.' B. constantly imply, that God needed to be propitiated to simple love and pity ; or his simple " anger " to be " smoothed away " by a " stipulated amount of suffering," so that he " would have his modicum of suffering any how." Directly contrary to this, they hold, not that the atonement moved hiin to love and pity, but that love and pity moved him to the atonement. " God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," because otherwise he could not " be just " and justify the transgressor; for God is our Kuler and Judge as well as our Father. Moreover, the love of God is enhanced beyond expression, in its power to touch the sin- Rer's heart, by the very fact which Dr. B. denies : viz., that Christ died to redeem us by his blood, offering up his life a vicarious sacrifice, rather than incidentally dying as a mis- sionary or a martyr. Ilow tame the expression of love con- tained in the latter, compared with that of the former ! " For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly ; for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 'But God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us?'' Is there any view which so overawes the sinner's soul with the frowns of Di- vine lustice and the terrors of the law, as that which shows him the Son of God expiring on the cross, and " redeeming us from the curse of the law, being made a cuese foe us " ? At the same time, is there any view which so penetrates him with a sense of- the wonderful love and mercy of God? God so loved the world/ " 68 " Here the whole Deity is known ; Nor dares the creature guess Which of the glories brightest shone, The justice or the grace." Even if we consider the atonement in the simple aspect of its power to move the sinner, Dr. B., in taking away the vica- rious sufferings of Christ, has taken away precisely that which gives the Gospel its vitality and power; and. then he coolly declares that his "offense is simply this, that he makes so much more of Christ than is sometimes made in our meager theories, as to reflect dishonor on them by the excess." [p. 219.] 2. Dr. B. seems to himself to hold, under a different form or resolution of the atonement, all that those who complain of him suppose him to deny. The substance of his argument to substantiate this claim may be stated thus : Most of the New England teachers discard the idea that Christ was literally punished for our sins ; and hold instead, that God only ex- pressed, by the vicarious sufferings of Christ, that abhorrence of sin, and that regard to the sanctions of the law, which he would have expressed by our punishment. But Dr. B. also holds that God expresses the same thing, only in a different way ; viz., without any suffering to express directly by suffer- ing the Divine abhorrence of sin, or suffering as a substitute for penalty. He holds that the expression was made, 1, by revealing God in the incarnation, humanizing the idea of God, and bringing him into union with humanity ; 2, by ex- pressing his love, and exhibiting his regard for the sanctity of the law, through an example of obedience ; an example car- ried out even to the point of dying rather than forsake it; and of falling in the discharge of duty, even as a martyr falls. But even so, the difference is fundamental ; for it is the dif- ference between believing in a vicarious atonement and reject- ing it with scorn and contempt. If any of the orthodox hold l^at the ultimate use of the atonement is to impress men or other beings with a sense of the sacredness and vindicatory power 69 of the \kw, and of the awful vigor of divine justice, they still hold that this impression is made by the actual sacrifice of Christ, as a sin offering, in the sinner's stead, to divine jus- tice ; which Dr. B. denies and discards as not only untrue but absurd.* Hotr then can the matter of their Gospel be the matter of his ? The claim that it is so, is a simple claim that the matter of the Gros|pel is the same with an sttonement and without one : the same whether the atonement be received as the corner stone of Christianity, or rejected as a " dry factor," an untruth, an absurdity. Moreover, !Dr. B. himSelf ad- mits that God has set forth the work of Christ under the form of a vicarious atonement, and requires it so to be believed ; and that the sinner cannot be relieved from his death in sin, nor Christ become The Life to him, without his believing it; and that this doctrine, even in the form of imputation, must enter as " a n'ecessaryr element in the practical economy of the Christian life ;" only what God has so revealed,— what is so indispensable to be received in the faith for justification of the sinner,^ — what is to enter as a " necessary element " in the Christian life, — ^Dr. B. has denied as untrue, ridiculed as the simplest form of absurdity, and pronounced incompat- ible with the moral character of God. Does he still hold "under a different form or resolution " of th6 atonement, all that those who complain of him suppose him to deny,— the form of a vicarious atonement, with the assurance that the form is a lie, and more absurd and hateful still than common lies as being so derogatory tb the character of God ; the carcass bereft of life,— ^alid that carcass not a real one, but a body that never had life ? Is this all ? "When this is left us, are we * On pp. 273, 284, Br. B. endeavors to press Drs. Griffin and DwigHt into the support of his views; But who does not know that these venerated men wonld have abhorred the very thought of denying the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ? So (p. 321) John Howe is represented as' looking "upon propitiation itself" as " a subjective power;" whiohi in Dr. B.'s use of the phtase, means that he re- garded the death of Christ as hot in reality a propitiatory sacrifice. So (pp, 322, 323, 324, 325,) Baxter and Symington are represented as "sanctioning and for- tifying" Dr. B.'s " supposed departures fi-om orthodoxy" — i. e. as sanctioning and ifortifying a denial of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. It would scarcely be more amazing or unjust if one had represented these men as Atheists. ro to rest satisfied that all is left us which we have ever claimed as belonging to the atoning sacrifice of our Lord?