Swing's Sermons [pp. 512-532]

SWING'S SERMONS.
of the believer who trusts in Him, and accepted by God in his
behalf. We find no explicit acceptance of vicarious atonement;
of Justification by Faith alone; or the first spark of evidence
that he sees how such faith is the spring of good works and holy
living; but much that he deems such a faith, as did the cavillers
of old, hostile to a holy life. But if we do not find these, we
find the caricatures or one-sided exaggerations of them, put
forth by some ultraist, abundantly blazoned and reprobated, as
prevalent doctrines of the past, which the church, under the influence of modern culture, is now sloughing off. Tlhus:
"There was once a sect-and they have not all gone from the earth yet
who were called Solifidians, because they expected salvation, because they
believed Christ had bestowed or could bestow that great boon. This sect
had condensed the whole Bible into a single sentence, and all conduct into
a mental operation called belief, and hence their chief virtue must hleave been
that of placid expectation.... I know of no method by which we can
make works necessary or essential in a kingdom of perfect redernption or
perfect forgiveness... In their joy over the newly discovered salvation by the mediation of Christ, some of the divines around Luther, with
Luther himself, declared that no amounmt of sin would imperil the soul that
should possess this marvellous faith. Thus at one stroke the doctrine of regeneration, and repentance, and sanctification, and love to man are cut
down as cumberers of the ground. The Bible is reduced to onet sentence."
-Truths, &e., pp. 105-6-7.
The most charitable explanation of such language is ignorance.
It is mild rebuke of the preachers who use it to repeat to them
the Apostle's language, "For when for the time ye ought to be
teachers, ye have need that one teach youL again which be the
first principles of the oracles of God, and are become such as
have need of milk and not of strong meat. For every one that
useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is a
babe." Heb. vi: 12, 13. It can hardly be necessary to comment upon this and much more the like, sprinkled plentifully
through the book. Does Prof. S. really mean to say that Presbyterian or Calvinistic theology, teaching, life, proceed upon the
theory that, however the chief of sinners are warranted to come
to Christ for full pardon, they are also warranted to continue in
sin, or commit uncleanness with greediness, because grace thus
abounds to the chief of sinners? Can we not be saved by grace,
without "turning the grace of God into lasciviousness?"
Whence this superlative error that, if we are justified by faith
521
1874.]