Chapter 12.
CHAPTER 12.
Other reasons given for the little influence which the foregoing doctrines are observed to have upon Christians in general.
PROFITABLY to teach the doctrines of the Gospel, there are certain rules necessary to be observed; and where these rules are either unknown or neglected, the Gospel becomes of little importance.
1. A true doctrine, in order to have its due effect, must be announced with purity. It should neither be mutilated by hasty contractions, nor corrupted by vain additions. The prince of error equally serves his own interest by perplexing the truth, as by spreading a falsehood: and when errors are added to evangelical truths, those truths may be compared to excellent medicines unhappily mingled with dangerous poisons. Thus the doctrine of future punishments is not only deprived of its utility, but becomes really pernicious, by the addition of another doctrine, which teaches that a sum of money, left as the price of prayer for a departed soul, will effectually soften, and even terminate its pains.
2. A doctrine should not only be delivered in the purest manner, but they who announce it should study to demonstrate its excellency and power by the whole course of their conduct. Were leprous physicians to cry up a specific against the leprosy, it cannot be imagined that lepers in general would anxiously adopt a remedy which had been attended with so little effect upon the recommenders of it. We here intimate, not without the utmost regret, that too many of the clergy destroy the effect of their doctrines by the immorality of their conduct.
3. To give Scriptural doctrines their full effect, it is necessary to make them pass from the understanding to the will, or from the judgment to the heart of those who admit them. It would be in vain to procure for a patient the most efficacious remedy, if, instead of applying it according to the method prescribed, he should think it sufficient to touch it with his lips, or should content himself with drawing in the grateful odour exhaling from it. To such a patient, however, the greater part of Christians bear a strict resemblance, who speculate upon the Gospel without ever embracing it with that lively “faith which worketh by love,” Galatians 5:6.
4. It is not sufficient that these doctrines should be preached in their native purity; but it is equally necessary that they should be preserved in the same purity by those who receive them. Our Lord makes this solemn declaration to sinners: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Yet how is it that many thousand Christians who admit this important truth, remain in the present day in a state of impenitence? It is because they mingle with it the following pernicious error: though I spend the present moment in sin, God will assuredly give me grace to repent in the latter part of my life. Hence that lamentable inattention to the duties of religion which is so universal among us at this day.
5. Very frequently the doctrines of the Gospel are attended with no considerable effect upon those who admit them, because the salutary operation of these truths is counteracted by the powerful influence of earthly desires indulged in the heart. Thus, in a disordered stomach, the most wholesome food is deprived of its virtue. To remedy this evil, it is necessary to enter upon a regimen too severe to be regarded by an obstinate patient, and upon the absolute necessity of which an inattentive physician will not peremptorily insist.
6. Where the doctrines of the most humiliating tendency have not first made a deep impression, there the consolatory doctrines of the Gospel tend only to uphold the sinner in a course of impiety. Those preachers who favour the false judgment of worldly men, wanting either courage or experience wisely to administer the doctrines of the Gospel so that they may alarm the impenitent and console the dejected; these preachers, instead of eradicating, do but increase the evil we lament. It cannot, indeed, be denied, that they offer many sacred truths to the world; but, while they do not nicely distinguish and apply them to the different states of their hearers, as they only draw their bow at a venture, it is no wonder that their arrows so frequently fall beside the mark. These perplexers of truth contribute as little to the conversion of sinners, as a physician would contribute to the recovery of the sick, who, without any prudent selection, compounding together all the drugs of an excellent pharmacopoeia, should indiscriminately offer the same confused recipe to every patient.
7. The doctrines of Christianity are frequently delivered as the opinions of men, rather than as the declarations of God, founded upon events much better attested than the most certain historical facts: and to this single error the inefficacy of those doctrines may, in a good degree, be imputed. Were reason and conscience made to walk in the front of the Gospel, the want of a Redeemer would be more universally experienced in the world than it has hitherto been. But while the preachers of that Gospel neglect to assert the depravity of human nature; or while they omit, in confirmation of so melancholy a truth, to make the most solemn appeals to the consciences of men, so long we may expect to see their ill-directed labours universally unsuccessful. Had these teachers in Israel an experimental acquaintance with those truths upon which they presume openly to descant, their word would speedily be attended with unusual efficacy; their example would give it weight; and in answer to their fervent prayers, the God of all grace would set his seal to the truth of the Gospel.
Whenever the messengers of religious truth shall become remarkable for the purity of their lives, and the fervency of their zeal, their doctrines will soon be attended with sufficient influence in the Christian world to overthrow the objection we have here been considering, and effectually to stop the mouth of every gainsayer.