Church Doctrine, Bible Truth – Chapter 1 (Part 3): The Scripture Gospel (cont’d)

I now proceed to consider how the Scripture view of the Gospel as the record of certain outward facts is set before us in the daily services of the Church.

If the Gospel consists (as St. Paul asserts that it does) in the facts that God’s Son, Jesus Christ, was “made of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. i. 1, 2); that He “died for our sins, and was buried, and rose again the third day” (1 Cor. xv. 3, 4); then the Church has made ample provision that this Scripture aspect of it should be set forth fully and practically in the daily service of prayer and praise.

For, first of all, we confess twice in daily prayer that Apostles’ Creed in which we recount the great facts which alone are designated in Scripture as the Gospel.

Secondly, we turn this Creed into a psalm of praise (the Te Deum), and in it glorify God for the knowledge of the same great facts of Redemption.

Thirdly, we have, on three days of the week, a solemn Litany in which we recount again these same facts of the Scripture Gospel, and entreat the Saviour to deliver us, because He Himself underwent for our sakes the Humiliation or Sufferings which they set forth. So that three times in each of her more frequented week-day services does the Church require her children to recount the facts of Redemption.

In the Apostles’ Creed, we profess our belief in Him Who redeemed us, “Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,”—in Him Whose humiliation on our behalf the Holy Spirit sets forth in the very first page of the New Testament. The words of the Creed are very plain, very bare, they may be called; but equally plainly and even barely is the fact stated in the Scriptures. “Mary was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” “That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” “She brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus.” (Matt. i. 18, 20, 25.)

This fact, so simply and abruptly stated, this Conception and Birth of God’s Son, is the foundation of all which follows. It is the first step in God’s work of redeeming men, and raising them up to Himself. There is wrapped up in this bare fact, thus simply stated, Power, and Love, and Condescension, and Wisdom unspeakable. All the Deeds, and Sufferings, and Victories of Jesus, by which our souls and bodies are redeemed, all of them derive all their redeeming power from this, that He Who wrought, or suffered, or conquered, was “God’s only Son, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,”

The Holy Spirit, I say, on the first page of the New Testament, sets forth this fact in the fewest words and in the most concise way possible; and in the Creed the Church echoes these words of the Spirit, and in that simplest Creed adds nothing to them, but, having pronounced them, proceeds to confess the Sufferings, Crucifixion and Death of Jesus in equally plain terms; for in the four Gospels she finds these things stated without comment of any sort. In the first Gospel, “And they crucified Him;” in the second, “When they had crucified Him;” in the third, “There they crucified Him;” in the fourth, “Golgotha, where they crucified Him.”

And so with His atoning and reconciling Death. The first Gospel records, “Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost;” the second, “And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost;” the third, “He gave up the ghost;” the fourth, “He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.”

And so with His Burial, His Resurrection, His Ascension; all are stated in the Gospels as facts, and so we follow the strict line which the Spirit has marked out, and twice every day confess that we believe these facts of Redemption, feeling that, though at times we must expand them, and comment on them, and apply them, yet at times we must state them as the Spirit has thus stated them, and leave them in the bare and naked simplicity in which the Spirit has left them, when He first caused them to be set down as objects of faith.

But in the second place the Church has turned this Creed, i. e. these statements of Gospel facts—into a psalm of praise, which she uses in daily service: so that not only do we daily confess the Scripture Gospel, but we daily praise God for it in words marvellous for their holy fervour and chastened sublimity.

“Thou art the King of Glory: O Christ.

Thou art the everlasting Son: of the Father.

When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man: Thou didst net abhor the Virgin’s womb. When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death: Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.”

In the third place, the Church in her chief service of supplication and intercession has made provision for recounting a third time these facts of Redemption.

In the Litany we are directed to beseech the Saviour to deliver us “By the mystery of His Holy Incarnation; by His Holy Nativity and Circumcision; by His Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation; by His Agony and Bloody Sweat; by His Cross and Passion; by His precious Death and Burial; by His glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost.”

If we are to judge of the mind of God by what is written in the Scriptures, no appeal can be so acceptable as this, for we here appeal to the Saviour to do for us in accordance with what He has already done and suffered on our behalf, and the Scriptures tell us of nothing which He has done for us which can be compared to these great things.

The Prayer-book, then, is Scriptural on the subject, of all others, of the greatest moment, which is, the exhibition of the Gospel under the form in which it is presented to us in Scripture.

The Gospel appears in Scripture as the record or proclamation of the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus; and the Church, in her yearly round of Fast and Festival, and in her daily offering of Prayer and Praise, fastens the attention of her children on that outward, objective, historical view of the Gospel which the Scripture puts immeasurably before every other.

Consequently no Church, or body of men calling themselves a Church, which has no order or plan for accomplishing this end, but leaves to the imaginings of each individual minister the form under which he shall present the Gospel, can be Scriptural; more especially if such Church or body has an authorised confession of faith, or standard of doctrine, in which such historical form of the Gospel is studiously replaced by some more doctrinal form, no matter how true that form be.

Before leaving this part of the subject, I desire to correct one or two misapprehensions which may arise from the foregoing remarks.

I have shown, I think, conclusively, that the Gospel appears in Scripture as the record of facts, rather than as doctrines, theories, or experiences. But let it not be for one moment supposed that I have done this in order to depreciate doctrinal teaching. I maintain, and will uphold so long as God gives me grace to do so, the natural sense of the Thirty-nine Articles. I regard them as the most perfect form ever presented to man of the doctrine of the New Testament, separated from the historical and practical matter, which is so closely connected with it in the Scriptures; but then we have no right to separate the doctrinal from the historical and practical matter with which God has connected it. What God has joined together it is not for us to put asunder.

If the Church had the Articles alone as her standard of reference, she would not be Scriptural, no matter how clearly each statement in them might be proved from Scripture.

It may be said that they are the spirit or essence of Scripture. Yes; but what authority has God given us to put Scripture into our intellectual alembic and distil its spirit or essence out of it? At least, what right have we to do so, and represent the product as Scriptural?

I would uphold, then, the Articles in their plain, literal sense; but I would uphold them as part and parcel of the Prayer-book. Taken in connexion with the Prayer-book, they admirably serve the purpose of exhibiting the doctrinal aspect of God’s truth, separated for a certain needful purpose, but still not in connexion with what God has joined with it.

In the next place, it has been suggested to me that some statements in the foregoing pages might be misconstrued as implying that I believe that a mere historical faith is what God requires. On the contrary, I believe that the only faith effectual to salvation is a realising faith.

I have said nothing whatsoever respecting the nature and efficacy of that faith in the soul which goes forth to meet and embrace the external facts or realities which God has placed before it for its acceptance. My object has been to determine what are the outward realities which God offers to the acceptance of our internal faith, not the nature of the faith which accepts them, and to this point I have carefully adhered.

Still it may be asked, Why have any other book besides the Bible? What need of any book in public worship to represent Scripture if you have Scripture itself?

To which we answer, that no body or sect of Christians in existence uses the Scriptures alone in public worship.

The service of the Catholic Church is the only approach to such a thing. Above two-thirds of the Daily Service of the Church consists of extracts from Scripture.

The public services of the various Protestant sects consist of prayers supposed, in most cases, to be extempore, and so assumed to be the composition of the minister, and on that account, of course, not Scripture itself, nor, of necessity, Scriptural, even though they may be full of Scripture phrases; to this is sometimes added the reading of portions of Scripture, the selection of which is also entirely in the hands of him who conducts the service; and the singing of metrical hymns from some book peculiar to the sect or congregation, and sermons. Having carefully ascertained not only the mode of performing Divine worship among the various sects of Dissenters, but also the nature and quality of the worship itself, I speak with confidence when I say that in no case is there anything approaching to a rule or method for bringing before the people of these sects the facts of Redemption as they are presented to us in the Scripture narrative.^[1] The only fixed form or Liturgy of any of these sects is their hymn-book, in which the hymns are always arranged according to the leading features of the Calvinistic scheme, or according to the heads of individual Christian experience.

Notes

1. Of course this does not apply to certain congregations, especially among the Wesleyans and others, in which the Prayer-book is partially used. ↑