A Defense Of Hyper-Calvinism

[The Substance Of Charles Hemington’s Defense Of Hyper-Calvinism Was Published In 1875 Under The Title, “Remarks On Mr. W. Robertson Aikman’s Book, “Judgment Of The Judges Of Jehovah” In Which Scriptural Errors Are Freely Commented On, And Misstatements Exposed”]

Remarks

It may be asked, what can have provoked the spirit of Mr. Aikman to level his shafts of vituperative slander against such servants of God as the late Mr. Philpot, Dr. Hawker, and not less against the late Messrs. Huntington, Gadsby, Vinall, and Warburton, though these last three, merely to suit his own purpose, are not mentioned by name in his book? 

The storm which Mr. Aikman says he has by his own vigorous hand raised in the Strict Baptist churches is not, and cannot be in strict justice because any of the good men who are now silent in their graves were in their life opposed to an indiscriminate preaching of the Gospel to sinners, or to all classes of hearers of the word; for, in spite of Mr. Aikman’s bold assertion to the contrary, we as boldly assert that they did contend for such preaching. 

The Strict Baptist churches contend for such preaching still. (See Article 29, “Articles of Faith of Strict Baptist Churches.”) What may or may not be actually carried out in every church we do not pretend to know, not being at all acquainted with many of them, nor having any personal knowledge of many of their ministers; but that the said churches do, according to the published Article of Faith referred to, admit such preaching to be scriptural, this we shall continue to maintain till such Article be allowably ignored. Neither can the storm raised against these ministers be in strict justice, because either they or the churches have ever been opposed to unregenerate hearers of the word being warned and spoken to in a way proper and suitable to their character and condition as natural men, and according to their moral responsibility as being under law to God, and as being under a Gospel dispensation, inasmuch as the ministers assailed have not been opposed to such preaching. 

Neither, again, can the cause of the storm be because any of these good men ever thought or believed that it was at all times proper and seasonable to preach comfort exclusively, and in an indiscriminate way, to the children of God; for certain it is, and their published sermons are a standing witness to the truth of the affirmation, that they did in their ministry reprove, and rebuke, and insist upon the precepts of the Gospel, and faithfully separated the precious from the Vile; and not only as between character and character, believer and unbeliever, but as between flesh and spirit, a godly fear and carnal presumption, a true Gospel confidence and false assurance, in the experience of the godly. 

We are, then, again urged to press the inquiry, what is all this storm that is raised against the Strict Baptist churches about? Mr. Aikman waged no quarrel against these churches somewhat about twelve years ago, at which period he preached occasionally at Gower Street, London, and supplied many other pulpits in the connection about the country. 

In a sermon of his own, as preached at Kenilworth some years ago, and published in Palmer’s “Penny Pulpit,” there is not a solitary appeal to his unconverted hearers, nor any remarks whatever as being directly addressed to them in particular. Neither do we mention such omission in the sermon for the purpose of wielding it against him, because the portion selected for a text being the utterance of a spiritually living soul, the sermon mainly consists in tracing out the experience of those to whom the text applies. But we refer to the sermon more particularly as being a specimen of what Mr. Aikman’s ministry was at the period of its being preached; and that others may be able to form a judgment for themselves how widely different his ministry was at that time to the preaching he contends for now; we will give from the printed sermon a few extracts: 

“But David had sorrow of heart, and confusion of face, and his spirit was overwhelmed within him. This, then, is no mere dry doctrine, but an experience of the soul. But a man will say, it is written, also, ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved.’ Now I believe, and therefore I shall be saved. Thus, it is all right; I do not see any reason for sorrowing at all. True, if salvation were a mere matter of the understanding of doctrines, then, I grant, there is no reason at all for sorrow. But an ability to unfold the hidden mystery of the Scriptures, or to understand its doctrines, will not save a man; nothing will affect this but the regeneration of the heart, and thus experiencing the power of these doctrines in the life. How widely different are these two matters, —possession of a mere head know- ledge of the truth, and a heart regenerated by God the Spirit, so  as to prove the blessedness and power of Christ’s salvation.” 

“Faith is one of the graces implanted by the Holy Spirit. Then if this faith be implanted in me by that Holy Spirit, and none other, it is clearly out of my power, and in the power of the Spirit alone, to strengthen it. Its liveliness and power is entirely dependent on the Holy Spirit, and not on me. It is a grace bestowed by God. ‘For by grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.’ If, then, this faith of ours be genuine, the Lord will try it. Now if it be God’s precious gift, do you not see when God, by his blessed Spirit, favours my soul with a living exercise of that faith, the effect thereof will be to make me rejoice. Then, because it is his own gift, he will certainly prove it, so that we may come to a living experience of the fact that it is his own gift, and that we have no power of ourselves to produce it.” “Cannot a man whom God probes in this way recount more blessed seasons, When the Lord lifted up the light of his countenance upon him, and when the candle of the Lord shone upon his head, and by His light he walked through darkness? Yes; I can look back on days that are past, when the Almighty favoured my poor soul with a rich experience of his love. Had I it in my own power, how gladly this day would I again enjoy it. Can I bring it back? Impossible; it was the gift of God; therefore none can bring it back but God. I remember the time and season when my heart has been a living fire with the love of Christ. I must own, however, before the Lord, I am not in that state at the present moment. If I had my own will, how gladly would I re-kindle that blessed fire on the altar of my heart; but it was God’s gift, and I can do nothing.” 

“Now what kind of a cry is that which proceeds from a heart that feels its own utter helplessness? David said, ‘Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.’ Why so, David? Why not off to the rock at once? Why stand crying there? Away to the rock, man! Could David away? No, he would say, as every child of God would say, Do you think salvation is of my fleshly arm, and that this great salvation can be affected by this right hand? Behold, I find God is my salvation, my help, my strength; it is he, and he only, who can effectually lead me to the comforts of the rock.” 

Suppose, then, we take only the last extract of the four, and compare the spiritual teaching it sets forth with the duty-faith system so elaborately laid down in Mr. Aikman’s recently-published work, what a strange contradiction appears between his preaching of former years and the preaching he contends for at the present time. In the printed sermon, David is represented, according to the text, as crying, “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I!” But, says the preacher, “Why so, David! Why not off to the rock at once? Why stand crying there? Away to the rock, man! Could David away? No; he would say, as every child of God would say, do you think salvation is of my fleshly arm, and that this great Salvation can be affected by this right hand? Behold, I find God is my salvation, my help, my strength; it is he, and he only, who can effectually lead me to the comforts of the rock.” And yet, according to Mr. Aikman’s present views, the unregenerate, such as are dead in trespasses and sins, and hence are destitute of David’s faith in God and of David’s grace, and as destitute of the Spirit that dwelt in David’s soul, are to be told to perform harder things than it would have been for David as a godly man to have done what Mr. Aikman himself says in his sermon it was not possible for David to accomplish. 

Regarding, then, this published sermon as a specimen of what Mr. Aikman’s line of ministry was at the time it was preached (a many who heard him years ago have assured us that he usually preached in that strain), and setting, at the same time, such preaching  in contrast with his newly-discovered doctrines, as contended for in his book, it will be no very difficult task to deal with the inquiry, what has provoked the storm that has been raised between Mr. Aikman and the Strict Baptist churches?

If, upon his return to England, he had found that the Strict Baptist churches had undergone a change in their views of doctrine, or had embraced the doctrine of a ”Free Proffer of Life to the Non-Elect,” Mr. Aikman would, in all probability, have found no cause of quarrel against them. But upon his return home he finds the churches in faith and principle exactly where he left them. But having, according to his own acknowledgment, discovered, during the period of his absence, what he calls the ”sublime doctrine” of a free proffer of life to the non-elect, he sees that he can no longer accept of renewed invitations to supply the pulpits of any of the Strict Baptist churches without making known his newly-discovered doctrines to the people. Why, then, we ask, did he not, in a frank, unreserved way, make them known at the beginning? Why, when some of the churches renewed their invitations to him to supply their pulpits, and did so in perfect ignorance of his having undergone any change in his views of truth, did he not write to the deacons of such churches, and give them honestly to understand just wherein he differed from them, in consequence of some change in his sentiments? Very few words would have sufficed to have made the deacons at Gower Street Chapel fully acquainted with the fact that he believed there was a sufficiency in  the death of Christ to justify a free proffer of life to the non-elect, and that that was the doctrine he intended to preach if he accepted their invitation. We are persuaded that had he taken this course, such a communication would have been sufficient to have convinced the church that Mr. Aikman could not, according to the ”Rules of Faith” belonging to the church, and even according to the ”Trust Deed” of the chapel, be asked to supply the pulpit at all. Had this course been taken, then no such storm as was raised by his preaching there could have blown over the church. But as Mr. Aikman, for reasons best known to himself, chose to occupy the Gower Street pulpit without acquainting either the deacons of the church or anybody else that he held this new doctrine, we ask, which course of conduct was a thousand times over the most condemnable? Was it that which was taken by the church in inviting him in its ignorance of his holding any doctrine contrary to what they believed themselves? Or was it Mr. Aikman’s own course, in getting into the pulpit before making his peculiar theory of ”Offered Life” known to a single man?

Mr. Aikman may, if he please, brand the servants of God with ”Jesuitical chicane,” with ”intellectual jugglery,” and ”treacherous dealing;” but let his own proceedings subject his back to the lash which he has made for the backs of others.

Again. When, on Sunday, July 23, 1871, he did occupy the Gower Street pulpit, why, we ask, did he speak in that significantly reserved and mystified way; insinuating that there were some differences between himself and the Strict Baptist churches, in reference to the preaching of the gospel to sinners, and in reference to the exhortations of Scripture? Why cloud his meaning with such false drapery as this? He knew perfectly well that the real difference between himself and the churches was not about preaching at all, but about offering; not about preaching the whole truth of God to sinners, and saints, and all who are gathered to hear the word, but about offering life to the non-elect if they will only come to Christ to obtain it.  For the past four years this false drapery has been in constant use, and, like a painted cloth, has been dexterously thrown over the “sublime doctrine” of a proffered life to the non-elect, to the deceiving of many into the belief that the only real difference between Mr. Aikman and the Strict Baptist churches was about preaching, and about exhortations, and about less comfort being administered to the children of God. Had the “sublime doctrine” been stripped of this painted cover four years ago, as it ought to have been, many would have better known how to act in respect of asking Mr. Aikman to preach, and in forming a judgment for themselves of the real differences between him and the Strict Baptist churches. 

Let Mr. Aikman’s objection be as honest as it may to the remarks which Mr. Philpot makes on the subject of the exhortations of Scripture, in his review of “Wells’s Moral Government;” let his repudiation be as strong as it may of the reviews in the “Standard” for 1871 and 1873; also of Hawker’s excellent “Tract;” yet it is nothing but his having embraced this newly-discovered doctrine, and which he sees no hope of beguiling the Strict Baptist churches into the belief of, that has so provoked his wrath against them, and this we believe is the only true answer that can be given to the inquiry, what is all the storm about? 

In Mr. Aikman’s book his ideas are so often mystified that to see his meaning is like straining your eyes to discern objects in a morning fog. But tearing away from the proffered-life doctrine the false drapery which in many parts of his book veils it,—such drapery, we mean, as the words preaching, exhortations, invitations, and the frequently occurring remark, “the evangelical purposes of God,” and taking the doctrine in such parts of the volume where its face is less masked, we find it, as in the author’s own words, to be as follows, “Mark, then, that on the strength of the work of Christ…there has by the divine wisdom been chosen, and is through the precious blood of the sacrifice ratified, a covenant which bears exclusively on the non-elect, —the Covenant of Equity;” and, “For the giving of practical effect to that covenant, it is necessarily replete with exhortations, invitations, calls, and conditional promises, all of which are addressed particularly to the non-elect” (page 184). On another page, he speaks of the eternal purpose of Jehovah in the non-elect, and he tells us what that eternal purpose is: it is a “proffer of life to those parties,” a “setting a free proffer of life before the masses,” and that “it was absolutely necessary that on conditions simply and strictly equitable a free proffer of clemency should, in the name of God, be laid before the non-elect.” “The Lord God, upon the righteous ground of the work of his Son, did from eternity decree to set before the souls of the non-elect, wherever his gospel truth should be sent, a free proffer upon equitable conditions of life” (page 166). 

Again. “The New Testament in the blood of Christ…is established not merely for the salvation of the elect, though doubtless that is the noblest and grandest part of the divine purpose therein; but it is for the carrying out or perfecting of all things which, by the wisdom of the Father and the Son, have from a past eternity been determined.” 

Now the Strict Baptist churches believe as much as Mr. Aikman does that the New Testament in the blood of Christ is established for the carrying out of all things which by the wisdom of God have from eternity been determined. But they do not believe that it ever was determined upon by God at all that the covenant of grace should be established between the Father and the Son with any view to the salvation of the non-elect.

We read in Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy of “the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe.” And the way in which Christ, says Mr. Aikman, is the Saviour of the non-elect is, “by that proffer of life which, on the strictly equitable conditions of repentance and faith, he through his sacrifice is entitled to set before them;” and in this sense “he most certainly is their Saviour.” But, says Owen, “a Saviour of men not saved is very strange;” and who, asks Owen, “is the Saviour of all men?” Had it been, who is the Mediator of all men, especially of them that believe, it had been more likely. But the consciences, or at least the foreheads of these men!!! Is there any word here spoken of Christ as a Mediator? Is it not the “living God,” and that God the Father is often called Saviour, I showed before, and that he is here intended is agreed upon by all sound interpreters; so also, it is clear from the matter in hand, which is the protecting providence of God, which is general towards all, especial and peculiar towards his church. Thus, he is said to “save man and beast.” (Owen “On the Death of Christ.”) 

We believe that God, for the accomplishment of his eternal purpose in the salvation of the church, has, as the common providential Saviour of all men, been exercising forbearance towards this world for well-nigh six thousand years; and that by virtue of the governmental authority which the Father has put into the hands of Christ, by and through whom are all things in nature, providence, and grace, the most wicked, daring, and blasphemous of the sons of men “live and move and have their being.” The sunbeams and showers which fertilise the fields of the atheist, reach him through this channel. “All things were created by him (Jesus Christ), and he is before all things, and by him all things consist;” and through him the non-elect are for the elect’s sake preserved; all their temporal mercies are bestowed upon them; all external privileges of the gospel are granted them through Christ. God makes “his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” And for a wicked ingratitude for such favours, —for a willful despising of all privileges, and for all sins, whether against Law-light or Gospel-light, the non-elect will, on the ground of their creature and moral responsibility, be condemned. But that because of all this Christ must be the Saviour of the non-elect, in the sense of having secured for them, according to new covenant stipulations with the Father, “a free proffer of life,” it is a false conclusion, and a glaring error to be rejected. Dr. Gill says, “By the covenant of grace, not only provision is made of sufficient means of salvation, but of salvation itself, even of all grace and glory; but, then, this provision is made only for those who are interested in it, and they are only the elect of God.” 

Dr. Gill and Dr. Hawker were equally opposed to the system of offered grace. Dr. Hawker, in the “Appendix” which he published with a second edition of his well-known Tract, “The True Gospel; No Yea and Nay Gospel,” proves with great clearness that there are no “offers” to be found in all the New Testament. (See copious extracts from Hawker’s tract in the review for “Standard,” March and May, 1873.) But Mr. Aikman charges Dr. Hawker, for making this assertion, with a “disgraceful equivocation,”— “an unhallowed trick;” and, he says, he cannot believe that so excellent a man as Dr. Gill could have been “a cherisher of such a disgraceful equivocation as to mendaciously maintain that throughout the whole range of the Bible there is no such thing to be found as offers.”

What, then, we have to do is to look into Dr. Gill’s “Cause of God and Truth,” and see whether the Doctor is, or is not, guilty of such “a disgraceful equivocation;” and if perchance we should find that he as totally denies offers of grace as did the excellent Dr. Hawker, and that he as totally denies that any part of the covenant of grace is for the non-elect, it will then remain with Mr. Aikman to decide whether Dr. Gill continues to be, in his opinion, such an “excellent man,” or whether he does not deserve a share of that flood of abuse that is so unsparingly poured out upon Dr. Hawker, and not upon Dr. Hawker alone, but Mr. Philpot, and everybody else who is opposed to Mr. Aikman’s duty-faith, conditional scheme of salvation.

Extracts from Dr. Gill’s “Cause of God and Truth.

First. As being opposed to “Offers.”

“But it should first be proved that there are any offers of grace at all, made to any, whether elect or non-elect. The gospel is not tendered to the elect, but is the power of God unto salvation to them, and as for the non-elect, grace is neither offered to them, nor bestowed upon them.” (Page 289.) “For my own part, I do not think that any man will be punished for not accepting offered grace he could not comply with or embrace, for want of further grace; because I do not believe that grace was ever offered them. But then they will be punished for their willful contempt and neglect of the gospel preached unto them; and for their manifold transgressions of the righteous law of God, made known unto them.” (Page 334.) 

“It is true the ministers of the gospel, though they ought not to offer and tender salvation to any for which they have no commission, yet they may preach the gospel of salvation to all men, and declare that whosoever believes shall be saved, for this they are commissioned to do. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. But then this preaching of the gospel to all indefinitely in no way contradicts the particular redemption and special salvation of the elect only, it being designed and is blessed for the effectual gathering of them to Christ, and does become the power of God to their salvation, and to theirs only.” (Page 303.) 

“Ministers, in exhorting men to believe in Christ, do not, and cannot, consider them as elect or non-elect, but as sinners, standing in need of Christ, and salvation by him, and that either as sensible, or as insensible, of their state and condition; not as insensible of it, for I do not find that any such are exhorted to believe in Christ for salvation; but as sensible of it, as the jailor was, who trembling said, Sire, what must I do to be saved?” (Page 304.) 

“For my own part, I know of no exhortations to dead sinners to return and Jive in a spiritual manner. Those referred to in Ezek. 18 respect civil and temporal, and not spiritual and eternal things.” (Page 317.) 

“Those who only have the outward ministry of the word, unattended with the special illuminations of the Spirit of God, are obliged to believe no further than that external revelation they enjoy reaches; as that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, &c. Not to believe these things is the sin of all that are under the gospel dispensation.” (Page 307.)

“As for those texts of scripture, I know of none that exhort and command all men …. to repent and believe in Christ for salvation; they can only, at most, concern such persons who are under the gospel dispensation, and, in general, only regard an external repentance and reformation, and an historical faith in, or assent to, Jesus as the Messiah. Our blessed Saviour marvelled at the unbelief of his countrymen, that they should be offended at him, and reject him as the Messiah on account of the meanness of his parentage and education, when they had such large means, by his ministry and miracles, to convince them that he was the Messiah, whom they might have believed in and received as such, though they lay under a disability of coming to him, or believing in him to the saving of their souls, without the special grace of God.” (Page 308.)

Secondly. Extracts as being opposed to the covenant of grace having anything to do with the non-elect.

“It is true, indeed, that God did, from all eternity, decree to pardon the penitent, justify the believer, save the obedient, glorify such who suffer for Christ, judge men according to their works, and did from all eternity really make a covenant of grace with Christ on the behalf of the elect; but did not decree to offer to man a new covenant of grace, nor make one promising pardon and salvation to them upon condition of their faith, repentance, and sincere obedience, but upon condition of the perfect obedience and sufferings of Christ; but then, as repentance is not the cause of pardon, nor faith of justification, nor obedience of salvation…so when God, from all eternity, did decree to pardon, justify, save, and glorify these persons, he had no respect to these things by way of motive or condition; he did not decree to pardon, justify, save, and glorify upon a foresight of these things, as arising from the will of man, but having resolved to pardon, justify, save, and glorify these men, he determines to give them, of his own will and pleasure, the grace by which they should become penitent believers…So that faith, repentance, obedience, and the like, cannot be considered as conditions of, or motives to, the decrees of God, since they spring from the grace which God, in-these decrees of his, has determined to bestow upon the persons he bears such a good will unto.” (Page 298.) 

“We know, indeed, from the Scriptures, that God has made a covenant of grace;…but then, this covenant of grace is neither made with, nor tendered to, all that live under the gospel dispensation. It is only made with God’s elect in Christ, and that not upon conditions of faith and repentance; for these are blessings of grace secured for them in this covenant.” (Page 385.)

“Some men, indeed, plead for offers of Christ, and tenders of the gospel; but the offer or tender of the New Covenant is what I never met with in any other writers. If this covenant is tendered upon the conditions of faith and repentance, to all whom the gospel is vouchsafed, how can it be said to be established in the blood of Jesus? It must be very precarious and uncertain, until the conditions of it are fulfilled by those to whom it is tendered. The doctrine of man’s disability to do what is spiritually good may seem inconsistent with the covenant of grace to such who have no other notions of it than that it is a conditional one; that faith and repentance are the conditions of it, and that these are in the power of man to perform; but not to those who believe, and think they have good reason to believe, that the covenant of grace is made with Christ as the Head and Representative of the elect, and with them, in him, and with them only; and that with respect to them it is entirely absolute and unconditional to whom grace is promised in it, to enable them to believe, repent, and obey.” (Page 340.)

“The promise of pardon is not made to any, no, not to the elect, upon a condition to be performed by them; it is an absolute unconditional one, and runs thus: ‘I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.’…‘And as for the non-elect, grace is neither offered to them nor bestowed on them.” (Pages 288 and 289.)

Thus much, then, for the views of the “excellent” Dr. Gill, in reference to offers of grace, and a conditional salvation for the non-elect, those conditions being an acceptance of the “proffer of life” and repentance and faith. In our judgment the whole fabric of Mr. Aikman’s “Covenant of Equity” scheme for the non-elect is ground to powder by the very valuable work of Dr. Gill’s from which the above extracts are taken.

What Mr. Aikman terms the “Covenant of Equity,” making it a part of the everlasting covenant, is properly the gospel dispensation, as Gill states. He says, “The gospel dispensation may be called a day of grace; but this day does not expire while men live, or at their death; it reaches from the coming of Christ unto the end of the world; it will continue until all the elect of God are gathered in; nor can it be said of any man that he has outlived or outsinned this day of grace; for still it is said, To-day if ye will hear his voice; now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” 

Again. In speaking in reference to the dealings of God with, natural men, and what he requires of them, as being under a gospel dispensation, Gill says “that the external revelation of the gospel should be believed by an ‘historical faith,’ a proper ‘assent to the truth.’ Men may be obliged to believe, and yet not to the saving of their souls, or that Christ died for them.” They may be obliged to repent, the repentance required being like the faith required—viz., what natural men are capable of, as natural men, or what the covenant of works demands; but if any, as natural men, should or could bring to God in full measure all the faith and repentance called for, they would only have done their duty, and would be unprofitable servants still. Neither is there in the whole range of the gospel “a proffer of life” made to men simply for doing their duty, “for by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.” Neither will men be condemned for not having the faith of God’s elect, which is the faith of the new covenant, and the only saving faith that God has revealed. It is, says Gill, “an aggravation of condemnation that the light of the gospel and the good news of salvation by Christ are come into the world, and men love the darkness of sin, error, and infidelity rather than these; yet God does not eternally torment them merely for the contempt of the gospel and their unbelief, but for their many sins and transgressions against his law.” (Page 283.)

Again. “According to the revelation is the faith men are obliged to, and what is produced by it; if the revelation is external, or the gospel comes in word only, the faith men are obliged to is only an historical one, nor can any other follow upon it. If the revelation is internal, a special spiritual appropriating faith is the result of it; but, then, this revelation is not made to all men, nor are God’s elect themselves, before conversion, bound to believe that Christ died for them; and when they are converted, to believe that Christ died for them is not the first act of special faith, it is the plerophory, the full assurance of faith, to say, ‘He hath loved me, and hath given himself for me.”’ (Page 59.)

Again. “It is true, indeed, it is his will of command, that all men should repent and turn from their evil ways; but this is more properly expressive of what is man’s duty than of what is the will of God…Now, God has appointed means, and he uses them, and makes them sufficient to acquaint men that he has made such and such things their duty, whereby they are left inexcusable, though he does not give them grace to repent and turn, which he is not obliged to.” (Page 285.)

Now, if we have not greatly misunderstood the Strict Baptist churches, these extracts from Gill set forth pretty much what they have all along contended for; viz., that a natural or moral repentance, for sin, and that a faith of assent to the external revelation, or call of the gospel, are required of natural men. Those churches do not contend, as Mr. Aikman would almost represent them, that men should be infidels, but that it is their duty to believe the truth of God, so far as they are capable as natural men, or according to the, requirements of the covenant of works, under which they are placed; and this is what we suppose is properly meant by duty-faith. But when the Strict Baptist churches say, “We deny duty-, faith and duty-repentance,” they explain in the same “Article,” as the reviewer has shown in the “Standard” for November, what they mean, viz., “These terms signifying that it is every man’s duty to spiritually and savingly repent and believe.” But let natural men act up to whatever light attends them; let them do their duty, and bring forth all the obedience, and all the repentance, and all the faith, that it may be their duty, as natural men, to bring forth, and we defy Mr. Aikman, or any other Fullerite, Baxterian, or Legalist to prove that any part or parcel of the everlasting covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ holds out a “proffer of life” to unregenerate men for simply doing their duty to God.

But can it be possible that Mr. Aikman contends that the very covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ holds out a “free proffer of life” to the non-elect, on condition that they bring forth & repentance and a faith which are only natural, and with which the Holy Ghost has nothing to do? Let the following extracts from his book serve as an answer to this question: “The repentance which at the hand of the non-elect wrong-doer Jehovah does see fit to require is a befitting recognition of the evil, the hell-worthiness of sin, personal humiliation before God because of it, an absolute forsaking of its paths, and a turning to God with full purpose of heart.” (Page 133.)

Again, “That repentance which at the hand of the non-elect the Lord in pure equity has seen fit to require, not being supernatural repentance by the spiritual act of the Holy Ghost, is nothing more, nothing less, than a befitting repentance for sin at the hand of the wrong-doer himself. But that befitting repentance for wrong done, which in getting a free proffer of life before the creature that has sinned Jehovah sees fit to require, is one thing, and that greatly more glorious repentance through the Spirit which, by virtue of his covenant with Christ, he is pleased on the elect to bestow is quite another.” (Page 131.)

Again, “The obligation to repentance in which the creature stands bound is through sin; and the reason why, in his Evangelical dealing with the-non-elect, Jehovah sees fit to call for repentance, is because it is equitable, and the ground on which ultimately he will condemn for disregard of that call is because it is just. What, then, has all this to do with the Holy Spirit, with a work which is exclusively his own, which is free, which he is debtor to no creature to bestow?” (Page 138.)

On the following page, in speaking of such faith and repentance, he is more explicit, and says, “that they have nothing whatever to do with the Holy Spirit,” or with “that work by which he vanquishes the contempt of the elect.”

This, then, is the system, the creed, of Mr. Aikman, that the repentance and faith required of the non-elect are only natural, such as have “nothing whatever to do with the Holy Spirit;” but that for the bringing forth this natural repentance and faith there is provision made in the everlasting covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ, that a “free proffer of life” shall be held out to such non-elect parties.

Why, such awful rubbish is worse, a thousand times over, than anything to be found in the works of Andrew Fuller. Mr. Philpot, in his review of “Rushton’s Book,” written to expose Fuller’s errors, very justly calls Fuller’s system a “knotted web,” and Fuller himself “a most sophistical and plausible reasoner,” and his style “subtle and deceitful.” But Aikman’s errors are even more glaring, his web is more knotted; as a reasoner he is more sophistical and plausible, and his “verbiage” far more confusing, inasmuch as Fuller, whilst in common with Mr. Aikman, maintains that it is the duty of unregenerate men to repent and believe, and that a proffer of life is held out on conditions of such faith and repentance being produced, yet F. knew the plain declarations of Scripture too well to admit, in any sense whatever, that the gospel holds out any proffer of life to sinners on conditions of any other repentance than a spiritual or gospel repentance, and any other faith than a gospel faith. He knew that no other repentance and faith hut these were required by the covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ, and that no sinners could be saved without being partakers of such spiritual faith and repentance. He moreover admits that it is not in the power of the creature to produce either a spiritual faith or a spiritual repentance; yet maintains that it is the duty of dead sinners to produce both, to repent spiritually and believe spiritually, and he says they will he condemned for not doing it.

In Mr. Fuller’s “Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation” we meet with many such remarks as the following: “That all mankind who have opportunity of hearing it (gospel) are obliged to believe it. The only question, therefore, is whether the faith which it requires be spiritual or such as has the promise of salvation.” How, then, does Mr. Fuller answer this question? He answers it by confessing plainly that if the believing required were “to be taken for any other faith than that which is spiritual or saving” the promise or proffer of life would not hold good.

Again, he says, the apostles, “instead of leaving out things of a spiritual nature because their hearers could not find in their hearts to comply with it, it may safely be affirmed they exhorted to nothing else.” And, in speaking of repentance, he as much contends that any other repentance than that which is spiritual is not the repentance “which God requires at the hands of either saints or sinners;” that is, for the remission of sins. But Aikman, with error more glaring than anything to be found in the whole range of Fuller’s false and specious system, lays it down with the most imperial dogmatism that the gospel, yea, the everlasting covenant of grace established in Christ’s blood, requires of the non-elect, for the remission of sins and eternal life, a faith and a repentance with which the Holy Ghost has nothing whatever to do.

But we hesitate not to make the bold and “mendacious ” assertion that any poor soul among the millions of sinners there are in the world, possessing no better faith and repentance than what the Holy Ghost has nothing whatever to do with, would sink into hell at last, just as soon in the possession of such natural faith and repentance as would other sinners dying without possessing any faith and repentance at all. Surely the maintaining of such a God-dishonouring notion as this—viz., that the everlasting covenant established in the blood of Christ the Mediator, holds out a “free proffer of life” to non-elect men, on condition of their bringing forth a repentance and a faith with which the Holy Ghost has nothing whatever to do, is a sad proof how men, if left to their own reason, will carnally model the gospel and shamefully lower its requirements, just to make it suit their own fondly-cherished theory, and to make way for its development. A proffer of life! On a certain condition!! And which condition, if performed, it will, be it observed, still remain an everlasting impossibility for those who might perform the condition to have the life which is proffered them; because the repentance and the faith required, as being the condition, are such that the Holy Ghost has nothing whatever to do with. Whereas nothing is more clearly revealed in the Word of God than that the only faith that saves is that spiritual faith which is the gift of God, and which is of the operation of his Spirit, and is called “the faith of God’s elect.” Also, that the only repentance that is saving is that spiritual repentance that Christ is exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give, and which need not to be repented of. And solemnly certain it is that, in connection with no other faith and repentance than these, is there any promise of life held out. Judas repented; but he found no offer of life upon his repenting. Many spoken of in the gospel of John did believe in Christ (John 13:42), but they found no offer of life upon their believing, though their faith appears to have come quite up to the standard contended for by Mr. Aikman; for their faith was their own, and with which the Holy Ghost had nothing whatever to do; and the consequence was their faith brought forth no fruit, “they did not confess him (Christ) lest they should be put out of the synagogue.”

Mr. Aikman invites us to turn to that period of light and godliness under Whitefield, Berridge, Harris, Newton, and the Erskines. “Or, if ascending the stream of time to a still higher point,” he invites us to examine the era of the Puritans; or, “earlier still,” to trace “the ministry of the churches founded by the apostles.” And he assures us that the ministerial practice, which he condemns in the Strict Baptist churches, is not to be found in all the past centuries of the Christian era.

Of the works of Whitefield, Berridge, Newton, and the Erskines, we are not quite ignorant. With some of the Puritan writers, such as Owen, Goodwin, Charnock, Sibbes, and some others, we have tried to read a little of them; and perhaps have read as much of them as Mr. Aikman, and though little able, we confess, to get into their depths, yet, through the favour of God, we have had many seasons of sweet spiritual refreshing, comfort, and consolation in reading their works.

But what we ask Mr. Aikman is this, —to have the kindness to point out where, in any one volume, or on any single page, in any of the works of these distinguished and godly writers, is the particular doctrine which he himself, with such dogmatic authority, contends for. Where, we ask him, will he find, in the works of Owen, or Goodwin, or Charnock, or Sibbes, or Cranmer, or Knox, or in the works of Whitefield, Berridge, Newton, or the Erskines, the doctrine of a proffer of life to the non-elect, on condition of a faith and a repentance with which the Holy Ghost has nothing to do; and that this proffer of life to the non-elect is a part of the covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ! We confess that we have never yet seen such a doctrine in any of the verbs of these writers. Besides which, we deny that those godly men did contend for a proffer of life being made in any such exclusive way to the non-elect, as contended for by Mr. Aikman. But they more particularly contended for the offer being made to sinners indiscriminately, and that because elect and non-elect, in their spiritually dead state, are mixed together in the world, and are unknown the one from the other, to the servants of God, who preach to them until the elect are called by grace; and that the offer ought to be made indiscriminately to all, to the end that the elect might be called, and the rest left to be condemned without excuse.

We shall give here a few extracts from Owen (and we could do it equally from the works of the others), that it may be seen by such as are not so well acquainted with Owen’s works, that whilst a strenuous advocate for offered grace, yet how thoroughly he demolishes Mr. Aikman’s “equity-covenant” scheme for the non-elect. Our first extract will show to what end Owen contended for a general offer, or tender, being made to all:

“The mixed distribution of the elect and reprobates, believers and unbelievers, according to the purpose and mind of God, throughout the whole world, and in the several places thereof, in all or most of the single congregations, is another ground of holding out a tender of the blood of Jesus Christ to them for whom it was never shed…The ministers of the gospel, who are stewards of the mysteries of Christ, and to whom the word of reconciliation is committed, being acquainted only with revealed things, are bound to admonish all, and warn all men to whom they are sent, giving the same commands, proposing the same promises, making tenders of Jesus Christ in the same manner to all, that the elect, whom they know not but by the event, may obtain whilst the rest are hardened.” — (Owen’s “Death of Death,” Page 313.)

On the same page he says that, simply because there is “such a mixture of elect and reprobate, of tares and wheat, to the end of the world,” that therefore it was needful that “the promises should have a kind of unrestrained generality, to be suitable to this dispensation…That they must be proposed to them towards whom the Lord never intended the good things of the promises, they having a share in this proposal by their mixture in this world with the elect of God.”

The only interest, then, according to Owen, that the non-elect have in the benefits of the gospel dispensation is, a share in the “proposal,” or offer, or, as we should say, in the outward call, or external proclamation. But as it respects the non-elect having any share or interest in any part of the covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ, Owen says, “The covenant of grace, which was established, ratified, and confirmed in and by the death of Christ, that was the testament whereof he was the testator, which was ratified in his death, and whence his blood is called ‘The blood of the New Testament.’ Neither can any effects thereof be extended beyond the compass of this covenant. But now this covenant was not made universally with all, but particularly only with some, and therefore those alone were intended in the benefits of Christ’s death.” (Page 236.) Again. “For in what consisted the weakness and unprofitableness of the old covenant, for which God in his mercy abolished it? Was it not in this, because by reason of sin we were no way able to fulfil the condition thereof, ‘Do this, and live?’ And are we of ourselves any way more able to fulfil the condition of the new covenant? Is it not as easy for a man by his own strength to fulfil the whole law as to repent and savingly believe the promise of the gospel? This, then, is one main difference of these two covenants, that the Lord did in the old require the condition; now, in the new, he will also effect it in all the federates to whom this covenant is extended.” (Page 237.)

If, then, according to Mr. Aikman’s doctrine, it is the covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ, and not the covenant of works, that holds out a proffer of life to the non-elect on a certain condition, then, according to Owen, God is bound to effect that condition “in all the federates to whom this covenant is extended;” and so if Mr. Aikman be right one way, and Owen another, then it will be difficult, yea, impossible, to show how the non-elect, to whom the offer is made, can be lost.

But, so far from having a single secret thought in our mind that Mr. Aikman’s system is according to the truth of God, we look at it as being something like “the great image” which King Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream. Like that image, Mr. Aikman’s system has some good material in it. Whether its head be gold and some other parts be silver and brass, others can judge for themselves; but one feature in the image is very manifest, which is, that the material of which it is composed deteriorates downwards, so that by the time we get to its feet and its toes we find a strange conglomeration,—a mixture of iron and clay, a very brittle material, so unfortunately brittle that no sooner is the image struck on its head with the sledge-hammer of truth, as wielded by the “excellent” Gill, or even by Owen, which latter, as has been shown, held with offers of grace, but, behold, this great image, which Mr. Aikman has seen in the vision of his own brain, crumbles into dust before our eyes.

God, says Owen, has “made some for the day of evil” (Prov 16:4);  “hated them before they were born” (Rom 9:11, 13); “before of old ordained them to condemnation” (Jude 4); being “fitted to destruction” (Rom 9:22); “made to be taken and destroyed” (2 Pet 2:12); “appointed to wrath” (1 Thess 5:9); to “go to their own place ” (Acts 1:25.) (Page 227.) But Mr. Aikman goes so far as to affirm that Christ “shows a gracious Endeavour!! To instigate these non-elect souls to the truest wisdom.” By which, we presume, he means the wisdom to understand that a proffer of life is held out to them on condition of their repenting; and this Mr. Aikman makes to be one end of the death of Christ in their behalf. Thus, some make the death of Christ to answer one end and some another. Baxter makes his death answerable to certain ends as agreeing with his scheme. Fuller, other ends as being suitable to his. And now Aikman dogmatically lays down other still more strange and erroneous ends of the death of Christ as being answerable to his “equity-covenant scheme.” Hence, as Owen says, “that multiplicity of the several ends of the death of Christ,—some that are for the fruits of his ransom and satisfaction, and some that are I know not what; besides his dying for some so and so, for others so and so, this way and that way,—hiding themselves in innumerable unintelligible expressions that it is a most difficult thing to know what they mean, and harder to find out their mind than to answer their reasons.” What, then, we ask, was the end of the death of Christ as contended for by Owen? The following: “God out of his infinite love to his elect sent his dear Son in the fulness of time, whom he had promised in the beginning of the world, and made effectual by that promise to die, pay a ransom of infinite value and dignity for the purchasing of eternal redemption, and bringing unto himself all and every one of those whom he had before ordained to eternal life for the praise of his own glory…The fountain and cause of God’s sending Christ is his eternal love to his elect, and to them alone” (Page 231.)

But what about one end of the death of Christ being, as Mr. Aikman says, that a proffer of life might be made to the non-elect on a certain condition? Well, Owen says, “Christ did not die for any upon condition if they do believe; but he died for all God’s elect that they should believe, and believing have eternal life…It is nowhere said in Scripture, nor can it reasonably be affirmed, that if we believe Christ died for us, as though our believing should make that to be which otherwise was not, —the act create the object; but Christ died for us that we might believe.” (Page 235.) But did not Owen and others of the puritans contend for tenders or offers of gospel grace being made to the non-elect? No, not to the non-elect as such; but to sinners indiscriminately, and that on the ground, as before stated, of elect and non-elect being intermingled in the world, and to the end that the elect might be called. But as for any proffer of life being made, as Mr. Aikman contends for, to the non-elect as non-elect, and that because in some sense “Christ is their Saviour,” it only tends to make it the more clearly manifest how much more glaringly unscriptural is the system of “offers,” as contended for by Aikman, than is the system as contended for by the puritans. It is, in fact, very difficult, as the reviewer remarks in the “Standard,” to know what Mr. Aikman does believe about Christ’s having died for the persons of any, either elect or non-elect.

We have no more inclination, after reading Mr. Aikman’s book, to adopt the system of offered grace than we ever had at any previous period. But had we say inclining in that direction, then we should vastly prefer the system as we find it in the works of the Erskines and the Calvinist puritans to what we should as we find it laid down in Mr. Aikman’s book, where, to our mind, it is so much more anti-scriptural.

We notice, in the next place, a few of those scriptures which Mr. Aikman brings forward for the purpose of backing up his sentiments. He mentions the commission which Christ gave to his apostles: “Go ye, therefore and teach all nations,” &e. (Matt 28:19), and, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:15.) This commission, he says, which in the iron of divine decree has thus been fixed, is “not special, or to the elect alone, but general, “to all the world,” and “every creature,” and “all nations.” Quite true; and pray who are the ministers in the Strict Baptist churches that deny the universality of the commission? Should there be any of which we are not aware, then we differ from them, and contend that the gospel should be preached to all nations, to all the world, and every creature, so far as practicable. But what such a scriptural universality of proclamation of the gospel has to do with an unscriptural offer of life to every creature, according to the covenant of grace, we cannot see.

Mr. Aikman affirms that Mr. Philpot was “constrained to ignore this leading feature of the case, —this public preaching.” To say so is only to willfully throw a blind over the eyes of those who may be ignorant of what Mr. Philpot did contend for, and what he did not. No one more unreservedly admitted than did Mr. Philpot the public preaching of the gospel, though none more than he opposed duty-faith and offered grace.

Mr. Aikman brings forward many such passages as the following, in which we find the word preach. “Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins” (Acts 13:38); and, “Then Philip went down to Samaria, and preached Christ.” But to make such portions of the Word to suit his system, he ought to have substituted in every such passage the word offer, instead of preach; and so have made them read, “Then Philip went down to Samaria, and offered Christ;” and, “Through this man is offered unto you the forgiveness of sins.”

The three following verses are brought forward from the prophecy of Ezekiel: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (33:11.) “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and live? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God; wherefore turn yourselves and live ye.” (18:23, 32.)

Mr. Aikman says, in reference to these portions, that, except “in an evangelical sense, it is absolutely impossible for Jehovah thus to speak.” By which he means, no doubt, that in any other sense than God’s wishing non-elect souls to embrace, according to the everlasting covenant established in Christ’s blood in their behalf, the proffer of life, and live spiritually and eternally, it was not possible for God to speak. But this is only Mr. Aikman’s ipse dixit, which we are not obliged to accept, and which is not true. It is what Owen calls “the broken pieces of an old Arminian sophism.” The whole scope, aim, and intention of the prophet, Dr. Owen says, “is miserably mistaken by our adversaries, and wrested to that whereof there is not the least thought in the text. … It is about God’s temporal judgments in overturning their land and nation that this dispute is.”

Dr. Gill says the same. He says, “The death expostulated about is not an eternal, but a temporal one, or what concerned their temporal affairs and civil condition.”…“Wherefore God renews his exhortation, Turn yourselves, and live ye. For my part, I take no delight in your death, in your captivity; it would be more agreeable to me would you turn from your evil ways to the Lord your God,…and so live in your own land.”

Another passage introduced to prove that God is not willing that any of the non-elect, to whom the proffer of life is made, should perish, is (2 Pet 3:9): “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Mr. Aikman, to make it more clear, according to his doctrine, that God is not willing that the non-elect should perish, puts the words not willing in type three times as big as the rest. But his view of the passage as nothing but what Owen calls “a palpable corrupting of the sense of the words of the apostle.” “Of whom,” asks the learned Owen, “is the apostle here speaking?” “The Lord,” saith he, “is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish.” “Will not common sense teach us that us is to be repeated in both the following clauses, to make them up complete and full; namely, “Not willing that any of us should perish; but that all of us should come to repentance?” Now, who are these of whom the apostle speaks, to whom he writes? Such as had received “great and precious promises” (chap 1:4); whom he calls “beloved” (chap 3:1); who are said to be “elect.”…“The text is clear, that it is all and only the elect whom he would not have perish.”—(Owen’s “Death of Death.”)

To take another passage mentioned, viz. (Acts 3:19): “Repent ye, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”

If we take Mr. Aikman as an expositor of this portion, we must believe that it is an exhortation to dead sinners; yea, to the non- elect, to repent and be converted, that is, savingly converted.

But if we take the “excellent” Dr. Gill as an expositor, we shall, at least, have to consider what repentance and conversion they are, that are meant. Gill remarks on the passage, “It should be observed that repentance is either evangelical or legal, and this either personal or national. Evangelical repentance is not in the power of a natural man, but is the gift of God’s free grace. Legal repentance may be performed by particular persons, who are destitute of the grace of God;….as the Ninevites, who repented externally at the preaching of Jonah…Likewise the conversion here pressed unto us is not an internal conversion of the soul to God, which is the work of almighty power, but an outward reformation of life…These Jews had crucified the Lord of glory, and for this sin were threatened with miserable destruction; the apostle, therefore, exhorts them to repent of it, and acknowledge Jesus to be the true Messiah; that so, when wrath should come upon their nation to the uttermost, they might be delivered and saved from the general calamity, which though these would be terrible times to the un- believing Jews yet would be times of refreshing to the people of God from troubles and persecutions.”

We pass on to notice two other passages employed to buttress the doctrine of “a proffered life.” The first is (Acts 17:30): “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” But which command to repentance, says Dr. Gill, “does not suppose it to be in the power of man, nor contradicts its being a free-grace gift of God;…so neither does it extend, as here expressed, to every individual of mankind, but only regards the men of the present age, in distinction from those who lived in the former times of ignorance. But now, since the coming of Christ commandeth all men,” that is, “Gentiles as well as Jews, everywhere to repent; it being his will that repentance and remission of sins should be preached among all nations.”

The second passage is (Matt 11:21.): “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (and following verse). But, as Gill says, “Here is no mention of faith and conversion, only of repentance, and that not spiritual and evangelical, but external and legal, and as was performed in sackcloth and ashes, and by virtue of which Sodom might have remained unto this day.” Mr. Aikman mentions 2 Pet 2:1: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” He says, among other things upon this verse, that Christ, “has bought them,” that is, the non-elect, “unto a free proffer upon equitable conditions of life.” His doctrine, you see, is strained out of every portion he employs for the purpose; but it will puzzle him to prove that it is the Lord Jesus Christ that is spoken of in the passage. The Greek work (Kúptos) kurios, which is everywhere ascribed to Christ, is not the word that is used in the passage in question; but (btanort) despotees, which, Owen says, is never ascribed to Christ. And with regard to the being bought, Owen says, “Plainly, there is no purchase mentioned of these false teachers, but a deliverance, by God’s dispensations towards them, from the blindness of Judaism, or Paganism, by the knowledge of the gospel, whereby the Lord bought them to be servants to him as their supreme Head.”

There is a passage in the First Epistle of Timothy (5:10) in which a similar distinction occurs. It reads: “For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe.” “This passage,” says Mr. Aikman, “contains the entire substance of all that is contained in the several passages gone before.” But so far from having seen “the entire substance,” or one particle of such substance, in the several passages gone before, as that of life in Christ being proffered to the non-elect, and that proffer being according to the everlasting covenant of grace established in the blood of the New Testament in their behalf, we have seen nothing but strainings and glaring perversions of every passage we have noticed in these pages, and all this for no better purpose than to make such passages of Scripture to serve the purpose of setting his brittle image of error on its legs.

Continuing his remarks on the passage named, he says, “The Lord Jesus Christ cannot, in the same ultra or absolute sense in which he is said to be the Saviour of the elect, be said to be the Saviour of the non-elect;” but is a Saviour of the non-elect, “simply by that proffer of life which on the strictly equitable conditions of repentance and faith he, through his sacrifice, is entitled to set before them.” In this sense, says Mr. Aikman, “he most certainly is their Saviour.” If, then, this doctrine be the truth of God, we have no wish to reject it, and if Mr. Aikman’s explanation of the above passage be the true one, we have no wish to trifle with such explanation, be it given by whom it may. But as we are not bound to accept any explanation of Scripture from fallible expositors which we cannot receive; so, in this case, as in the former ones, we deliberately reject Mr. Aikman’s view of the passage, and accept the following remarks from the pen of Gill as being its true and real sense: “The words are to be understood of providential goodness and temporal salvation, which all men have a share in more or less. God the Father, and not Christ, is here called the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, that is, the preserver of all men; who supports them in their being, and supplies them with all the necessaries of life, and especially them that believe, who are the particular care of his providence; for though he is good, and does good to all men, yet more especially to the household of faith, which was the foundation of the apostles’ trust in him, under all labours and reproaches which attended the preaching of the gospel. Which sense of the words is perfectly agreeable both to the analogy of faith and to the context, and is owned by some who are on the other side of the question.”

Mr. Aikman calls the following passage “the king passage, and representative of them all,” that is, of all that precede and follow in the Gospel of John: “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” “In the face of this sublime asseveration,” says Mr. Aikman, “I ask the man, the woman, that loves truth rather than a lie, is there not, subject only to the condition of faith, the whole substance of a proffer of life here?” We reply, by all means let the man, the woman, yea, if Mr. Aikman please, the child that really knows truth from error, answer the question, and say whether the passage referred to contains anything approaching to the substance of a proffer of life to the non-elect, that proffer being according to an equitable part of the covenant of grace established in the blood of Christ in their behalf. And we shall not be surprised if even the child that knows the truth should tell Mr. Aikman that there is no error ever broached but may be propped up with passages of Scripture, if only the originators of error be allowed to pervert the passages, which they employ for their own purpose, as Mr. Aikman most certainly perverts the portion referred to in John, by saying it contains a proffer of life to the non-elect.

Another passage brought forward as containing the substance of a proffer of life is the following: “And ye will not come to live that ye might have life.” On page 219, where he takes up the same passage again, he says “that if these law-breakers would have come to him, that is, would in repentance, or true submission of soul, have surrendered themselves at his feet, they might have had life.” Yes; but what does he mean by true submission of soul? We contend that-where, by the grace of God, there is true spiritual submission of soul, there shall be salvation; indeed, there is salvation already. But it would seem from page 81 that the “true submission” required of Christ was nothing but an “act of the natural will.” His own words will show this to be his meaning: “Is there not, by the Lord Jesus, something here submitted, absolutely necessary, on the part of the persons to whom it is addressed, ‘An Act of the Natural Will?’ Here, then, we have in plain words a proffer of life, —eternal life, made by the Son of God to unregenerate men, on condition of their submitting to him by an act of the natural will” But anything more mischievously ignoring to the atonement of Christ, and to the doctrine of the new birth by the Holy Ghost, than such teaching as this, we have never read in any Arminian book that we have ever seen. That the “good old puritans,” such men as Owen and Goodwin and Banyan, and after them the Erskines and others in their line, did contend for “offers,” is well known; and that they considered it right to tell the unregenerate that it is their duty to submit to Christ, and to believe in him for life and salvation, this we have before pointed out; as also, on what ground it was they did contend for these things. But that any of these servants of God ever held out any proffer of life on condition that the unregenerate would submit to Christ by an act of their natural will, and by a repentance and faith with which the Holy Ghost has nothing whatever to do, this we shall deny until we come across the doctrine in their works.

Mr. Aikman’s fondness for conditions (and strange enough they are) abounds throughout his book. But how differently to Mr. Aikman does Ralph Erskine, who was for offers of grace, speak of conditions. In his sermon, “The Pregnant Promise,” Erskine says, “Some worthy divines make faith the condition of the covenant; but their sound explication of what they mean shows they dare not make it the proper condition. If any that pretend to soundness do so, they but expose their darkness and discover their mistake concerning the covenant of grace, which is a free promise in Christ Jesus; faith itself, and all the blessings that attend and follow it, being free and absolutely promised. Indeed, conditions on our part, properly so called, would destroy the nature of the gospel, which is a free promise. Where is the freedom of grace if conditional? It would turn the gospel to the law, and the free covenant of grace to the conditional covenant of works; yea, it would thus destroy the peace of the poor humbled sinner, for when he thinks” (as Mr. Aikman’s system would make him think) “there is such and such a condition that must be fulfilled by him before he hath a right to meddle with the promise, then he stands aback, he dares not believe, because he supposes he wants this and that condition and qualification, and so his legal dream hardens his heart against the gospel, and fosters his unbelief to the dishonour of God and to his own ruin; but if he could see the promise free and absolute, ‘without money and without price,’ and that there is no condition in this covenant but Christ’s obedience unto death, which is ‘performed to God’s satisfaction, then a door is opened to him to plead for all upon this ground, saying, Lord give me faith for Christ’s sake; give me grace for Christ’s sake; give me repentance for Christ’s sake who hath performed the condition of all the grace of the new covenant, and through whom all the promises run out freely. He that clogs” (as Mr. Aikman does, and woefully too) “the gospel offer with so many terms and conditions, is like a man, as I noticed on a former occasion, offering a cup of wine to a friend, but he makes it scalding hot upon the fire that his friend dare not touch it with his lip lest he be burnt.”

We ask if the above extract does not confirm what we have on former pages asserted—viz., that there is nothing to be found in any of the works of the Calvinist puritans or the Erskines bordering on such a pernicious dogma as that of a proffer of life to the non-elect, on the conditions of a submission on their part of the “natural will,” and a faith and repentance which are not of the Spirit of God. If any draught made up of conditions could be more scalding hot, and hence more likely to burn poor souls that take it in than this, we must confess that we should be at a loss to find it.

We refer again in this place to the extracts which Mr. Aikman gives from the late Dr. Hawker’s tract, and on which a more shameful flood of abuse could not have been poured. Had Dr. Hawker employed his pen to defend Unitarianism, or Sabellianism, or any other downright damnable doctrine, the abuse could not have been worse. We will first give the extracts as they stand in Mr. Aikman’s book.

“From the ordination of the apostles let the reader follow their footsteps in the exercise of their ministry during the whole time the Lord continued among them, and let him examine closely if he can discover a single offer or invitation given by those faithful followers of the Lord indiscriminately to all. I have looked with carefulness on this ground, and cannot find an iota leading to the conclusion; indeed, the thing is impossible.”— “Judgment of the Judges,” (Page 82.)

Again. “But we read of no offers nor persuasions. To preach Christ they knew to be their province. To persuade to the acceptation of Christ they knew to be his.” This, says Mr. Aikman, is a “deliberately-hatched falsehood” a “despicable expedient,” An “unhallowed trick” “treacherous dealing,” “conscious knavery” an “intellectual jugglery, base and vile” a “legless, armless, headless doctrinal idol.”

The poor Doctor is a “self-complaisant divine” and his tract “altogether disgraceful.”

We know that stools have legs—some have four and some only three—and if doctrines need legs, like stools, to support them, and if the legs they require must be plain declarations of Scripture, passages plainly setting forth such doctrines, then, so far from the doctrine of a proffered life, on such conditions as have been named, having any scriptural legs to prop it up, we have only seen it as yet as being like a stool with neither four legs nor three, but without any legs at all. But whether the doctrine contended for by Dr. Hawker, and opposed by Mr. Aikman, be such a legless doctrine as he says it is, let those who revere the Doctor’s memory, and love the truth he contended for, answer the question.

Dr. Hawker’s affirmation is this, that “we read of no offers nor persuasions. … To preach Christ they (the apostles) knew to be their province; to persuade to the acceptation of Christ they knew to be his (the Holy Spirit’s).” Mr. Aikman replies, “This deliberately-hatched falsehood, except only in pity for the very feeblest inquirers, compassion for the simple …. I should have deemed too contemptible even to brand; nevertheless, for the sake of the ignorant and deluded, I vouchsafe, by the word of infallible truth, to set the mark of the divine disapprobation upon it.’; Here, then, every simple soul in Zion, it is written: “And with many other words did he (Peter) testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.” But what persuasion is there here to the acceptation of Christ? One of the worst Arminian commentators says, in writing on the above passage, “that if sinners will be saved they must make an effort. There is no promise to any unless they will exert themselves. God deals with men as free agents. He calls upon them to put forth their own power to be saved.” What difference there is between this doctrine of a real Arminian and Mr. Aikman’s we leave to the judgment of others; we see none.

But what says Gill on the passage? He says, “It refers to the chief priests, Scribes, and Pharisees, and elders of the people chiefly, who were a perverse generation of men, and upon whom, for their impenitence and unbelief, for their rejection of the Messiah, and their evil treatment of him, wrath and ruin would come upon them to the uttermost; wherefore the apostle exhorts to separate from them, and not partake of their sins . . . but come out from among them, and so, in a temporal sense, save themselves from the destruction that would quickly come on their nation, city, and temple.” This we accept.

Another passage cited against Dr. Hawker’s remarks is 2 Cor 5: 20: “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” This exhortation, says Dr. Gill, “is given not to all men, but to the believing Corinthians, for whom Christ was made sin, and they made the righteousness of God in him.” Nothing could be more clear than that the beseeching in the 20th verse of the fifth chapter is to the same persons as are again appealed to in verse 1 of the following chapter, where the apostle says, “We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain;” that is, the Corinthians.

If, then, exhortations and persuasions to professed believers in Christ, and as gathered together in church order (yet in disorder, and needing exhortations to be reconciled to God by submitting to the ordinances of his house), be taken as proving that the apostles persuaded the non-elect to an acceptation of Christ as their Saviour, then let us quarrel no more with any glaring, dishonest twistings of the Word of God, meet with them in what books we may.

Mr. Aikman proceeds, “And for a copestone and crown, yet again.” “And when they (the Jews of Rome) had appointed him (Paul) a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets from morning till evening.” (Acts 28:23.)

What, then, was the persuasion here? Was it to persuade the non-elect to a spiritual acceptation of Christ? It was, if Mr. Aikman’s view of the passage be right; but we regard his view as being only another perversion, and Gill’s view of the passage as being as clear-sighted. Gill says the “persuading them concerning Jesus was setting things in a clear light, using strong arguments to convince them;” to convince them, as he previously states, “that Jesus was the true Messiah, that he was truly God, and the Son of God as well as man.” And this persuasion, he observes again, “was no other than moral suasion, and is of itself ineffectual; efficacious persuasion is only of God…However, it is the duty of gospel ministers to make use of gospel arguments, and by them to endeavour to persuade men of their need of Christ, and of salvation by him.” But what a vastly different thing is a ministerial endeavouring, by gospel arguments, to persuade men according to the moral convictions of which they are capable, and legally persuading the non-elect to accept of Christ as their Saviour. Dr. Hawker was no more opposed to the moral suasion than Dr. Gill, and Dr. Gill was as much opposed to the legal persuasion as Dr. Hawker.

Mr. Aikman proceeds again: “Enough, enough; with their knavery full upon them, I leave such judges of anti-scriptural judgment to the righteous rebuke of Jehovah.” We say, too, enough, enough, of such distortions of truth, such false glosses, such tearing away the sense of passage after passage; and of such constructions thrust upon them as are most convenient to the making of such passages all bend in the direction of the doctrine of a proffered life to the non-elect. We shall leave such an “anti- scriptural” practice to “the righteous rebuke of Jehovah.”

Charges, perhaps, as heavy as those brought against Dr. Hawker are laid against the late Mr. Philpot, and aspersions as unmerited in the one case as the other are unsparingly dealt out to both these deceased servants of God. Why not have allowed their dust to sleep, and have turned the fury of the battle against the living alone? Or, if the author of the “Judgment of the Judges of Jehovah” felt determined to yield to his own spirit, and wage war against anything in the writings of either Dr. Hawker or Mr. Philpot, why not have criticized what he considered anti-scriptural in their writings, and allowed them to escape such castigation as that of branding the one with “deliberately-hatched falsehood,” and comparing the acts of the other to those of “Mahommed” and the “Pope?” If anything that either Dr. Hawker or Mr. Philpot ever preached or wrote deserves such unrighteous handling, then, let their memory sink into oblivion. But so far from such being the case, they both faithfully served their day and generation, were abundantly awned of God, and died in the faith of the gospel. They no more merited such aspersions of character, for opposing offers of grace than did Ralph Erskine for contending for them.

Another matter to which we are under an obligation to refer is that of Mr. Aikman’s branding the doctrine of Christ’s substitutionally taking the law-place of his people with being the most “stupidly hideous of all humanly-devised dogmas,” and which, without reserve or truth, he makes over to “perpetual hissing.” Perhaps he hoped that such a thunder-clap as this would prove more effectual than a soft gale of rebuke, to cause on our part, and that of others, an instantaneous renunciation of such a dreadful “hideous dogma.” But we wish to let him know that his thunder-clap has not in the very least degree shaken our faith in the blessed and, as we solemnly believe, the divinely-revealed truth, which he so defames, and even carries his awful expressions to such a length as daringly to affirm that, if the holy Son of God did take the law-place of his people, he must, “ under those incalculably- numerous everlasting damnations which, according to the penal sanction of the law, were due to the aggregate of the saved, himself in the deepest caverns of hell have been everlastingly damned.”

Anything more awful than such language from a man of his profession we never saw. In this matter, as in others, we shall set the testimonies of God-taught men against his fearful error. Being ourselves nothing but a “venal scribe,” we prefer to let better men speak.

First, for the testimony of Dr. Thos. Goodwin, one of those good old puritans, as Mr. Aikman calls them. In his great work, “Christ the Mediator,” the Doctor writes, it is said (Gal 4:4, 5), that “God sent his Son, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law.” Now, whatever Christ redeemed us from, he was himself made for us, redeeming us from it by being made it. He that made the law was made under it for us. Both he and we were under the law; but with this difference, —we were born under it, but he was made under it, by a voluntary covenant freely under- going it. To be “under the law” is to be subject to all that the law is able to say or do. So, the apostle expresseth it. (Rom 3:19.) What the law says, it says to them that are under the law. So that whosoever is under the law, whatever the law is able to say and exact, to him it says, and of him it requires it. And if Christ will be made under the law for sinners, the law will have full as much to say to him as unto sinners themselves; that is, as he is their undertaker.” (Page 180.)

Again, on following page: “If, therefore, he who is our Redeemer will come under the law for sinners, the law will say as much to him as it had to say to us, give him as ill language, exact as hard measure from him as from us…As we are creatures, and he our Surety, it will as boldly command him to keep the commandments on our behalf as it would us. Look what it would have said to us as we are sinners; it will as boldly and as freely speak, and speak out, against him, only with this differing respect of reverence to him, as by himself voluntarily made under it, whereas we were born slaves under it.”

Again: “He (Christ) was not only an inter-nuncius (as Socinus would have him), or one that came as an extraordinary messenger between God and us, but he was a sponsor, a surety. So (Heb 7: 22) such as Judah undertook to be for Benjamin (Gen 43:9): ‘I will be surety for him and bring him to thee, or let me bear the blame for ever.’ Or such as Paul was to Onesimus (Phil. 18, 19): ‘If he hath wronged thee in anything, put it on my account; reckon it to me, and I will repay and satisfy for it.’ A surety, whose name is put into a bond, is not only bound to pay the debt, but he makes it his own debt also, even as well as it is the principal’s, and he may be sued and charged for the debt as well as he. And so Christ, when he once made himself a surety, he thereby made himself under the law, and so put himself in the room (law-place) of sinners, —that what the law could lay to their charge it might lay to his.” (Page 184.)

The following extract will show how Goodwin, in writing of those consequences which attached to Christ’s taking the law-place of his people, clears his way, as with the sword of the Spirit, in hand of all such impious observations as are contained in the extract we have given from Mr. Aikman’s book.

Goodwin writes: “The lying ever in prison is no part of the debtor’s punishment simply considered, for he is to lie there but till he hath paid the utmost farthing, which because he can never do, therefore he is never released. But Christ could undergo in a few hours all the wrath due unto sin, and so swallow up death and hell in victory. (1 Cor 15:24.) That portion or measure of wrath which we by reason of our narrowness could have received in but by drops, and so it would ever have been raining down, that his soul might be and was so enlarged as to receive in at once, even the whole vials and cataracts of it. That cup which is so full of mixture that we are a-drinking of it down unto eternity, that can he take off unto the bottom in a few hours; yea, and by reason of the incapacity of the damned in hell to take in the full measure of God’s wrath due to them for their sins, therefore their punishment, though it be eternal yet never satisfies, because they can never take in all as Christ could and did, and so theirs is truly less than what Christ underwent, and therefore Christ’s punishment ought not in justice to be eternal as theirs is, because he could take it all in a small space, and more fully satisfy God’s wrath in a few hours than they could unto all eternity.” (Page 285.)

That the late Mr. Philpot would have endorsed Goodwin’s view is clear from what we meet with in several of his published sermons. In his sermon, “A Suffering Saviour,” he says, “In taking upon him to obey the law, our Lord put himself under the curse of the law, and this curse was death. All, therefore, that was contained in the curse of the law in the sentence of death, our Lord had as much to sustain as though he had been actually guilty of every sin committed against the law.” (No. 107, “Gospel Pulpit,” page 10.)

Again. “He put himself in our place, standing under the weight of our transgressions and sins, and thus, by exposing his own precious body and soul to the strokes of the sword of God’s wrath, he received in his own person the strokes of that wrath due to us.” (No. 76, page 10.)

Again. “He had taken upon himself to stand in our law-place and stead, and to endure what, but for him, his people must have endured to all eternity.” (No. 107, page 7.) Also, the late John Kent felt his soul stirred to defend the same glorious doctrine, when he penned the following:

“Betrothed in love, ere time began,

His blood-bought bride with Jesus see,

Made by eternal union One,

Who was, and is, and is to be.

Thus he became our covenant Head;

Charged with her sin, the Saviour stands,

To do and suffer, in her stead,

All that the righteous law demands.”

But, then, who are Thomas Goodwin, and John Owen, and J. C. Philpot, and John Kent, and such “venal scribes” as those whomay occasionally write in the “Standard?” If all the Calvinists be wrong, of course the men from whom we have given the above extracts must be wrong. But, it may well be asked, who is the man and where can such wisdom be found, that can guide the erring, and particularly the poor “venal scribes,” into clearer light in the truth of God? Is it the man who has the arrogance to say, “I have myself, as in the person of God, assumed leave” to take such work in hand; “that I myself should bring to issue and settle this most momentous, most truly baffling of themes” (be the theme what it may); “that I should instruct nations, tribes, kindreds, and tongues, covering an area of the eastern hemisphere,” and that I myself, should brand what has been the faith of the church in all ages, in reference to Christ’s taking the law-place of his people, with being the “most stupidly hideous of all humanly-devised dogmas,— dogma which, without reserve or ruth, I here make over to perpetual hissing?”

We have a right, most surely, to judge for ourselves whether we think it would be safe to follow such a man as a guide, and to renounce, “without reserve or ruth,” the doctrine of Christ’s taking the law-place of his people, and other doctrines too, and to embrace, instead of our former views of one doctrine and the other, Mr. Aikman’s more “developed” and “sublimer” doctrines.

We have already arrived at our decision. and must leave Mr. Aikman to go his way, not daring to follow him in his pathway of error and confusion.

It remains to notice, in the last place, two or three things of a personal nature, one of which appears in the “Introduction,” and the others in the “Appendix” of Mr. Aikman’s book. We reply first to what appears in the “Appendix.” (Page 285.) In the year 1873 a review was published in the March and May numbers of the “Gospel Standard” of a most erroneous book, entitled “The Road to Destruction;” and whether the book was written by Mr. Aikman himself, as many thought, or by any other person, yet it advocates a system so identical with that which he lays down in his “Judgment of the Judges of Jehovah,” that few unprejudiced minds who may take the trouble to read through the review in the “Standard,” and afterwards to read that part of Mr. Aikman’s “Appendix” which refers to that review, will fail to see what it is that has so stirred up his wrath against the reviewer. They will not fail, we believe, to see that those extracts from Dr. Hawker’s “Tract,” as given in the review, struck the “Image” of offered grace too hard to please the one who had set it up, or that they “unswathed the mummy,” and made its face too bare to be convenient to its possessor just at that particular time when the review was written.

Now, it is from this review that Mr. Aikman gives in his “Appendix” (page 284) the following extract:

“First, as it respects the preaching of the gospel to all men indiscriminately, according to the commission of the Lord Jesus to his apostles (Mark 16:15), the Strict Baptist churches have from the earliest date rejected on every hand the system of offered grace and do still; yet it is a libel upon them to affirm that they have not contended for a free proclamation of the whole truth and counsel of God to saint and sinner, to high and low, to rich and poor, to bond and free, and to as many of every class, stamp, and character as are brought in the providence of God under the sound of the gospel.”

The following are Mr. Aikman’s observations on the above: “This calmly-premeditated fraud, this jesuitically-devised trick having, with the unhallowed design to which I have alluded, been adopted, reduced to print, and disseminated, it is incumbent upon me to bring to light the fact that the writer before us, when he planned and penned this unhallowed assertion, knew thoroughly that it was false; knew well that, for the purpose of misleading, he intended it to be false; knew perfectly that, provided only it secured the iniquitous end in view, he cared not at whose expense, God’s or man’s, went forth the hideous falsehood which it contained.” In meeting such scurrilous remarks, it requires no roundabout explanation or plausible defence, apart from the review itself to be set up either for the reviewer or for his brethren in the ministry, or the churches with which he stands identified. The reviewer himself is charged with a “calmly-premeditated fraud,” “jesuitically- devised trick,” and with publishing what he knew to be “thoroughly false.” His brethren in the Strict Baptist churches, and the churches they serve, are charged “throughout their entire circle” with, “studiously ignoring, willfully excluding, and purposely banishing the preaching of the gospel as by God commanded, —as by the acts also of the Son of God and his apostles exemplified.”

We repeat, that few remarks will be sufficient to make manifest to minds unprejudiced and untainted with Mr. Aikman’s delusions and errors, —First, how, with purposed aim to misrepresent the reviewer, he has craftily kept back such parts of the review as explain the reviewer’s meaning in the one part, which Mr. Aikman has given as an extract in his book. Secondly, how flagrantly he has perverted certain sentences in the review, for the sordid end of making the reviewer say what he does not say. Further, and worst of all, how Mr. Aikman has published palpable falsehoods, in order to frame a base for the support of his slander, and which falsehoods will be clear to all who will take the trouble to look the review carefully through, and see if they can discover in it what Mr. Aikman says in his “Appendix” are the reviewer’s exact words. We expose then, first, his purposed aim to misrepresent the reviewer.

The extract from the review in the “Standard,” as given in the “Appendix” of Mr. Aikman’s book, we have already inserted a page or two back.

And as it respects what is stated in the first part of that extract, — vis., “That the Strict Baptist churches have all along had to sustain the slanderous charge of preaching to none but the elect,” Mr. Aikman cannot deny that this charge has been by others, and if now by himself, brought against those churches.

Again. As it respects the second part of the extract, —viz., “That the Strict Baptist churches have from the earliest date rejected on every hand the system of offered grace,” we ask if there be any untruth in this? We can only say that, during the whole period of our ministry, we have rejected the system of offered grace, and as conscientiously reject that system now as much as ever; and since reading Mr. Aikman’s book we think a little more; but, as it respects the third part of the extract, —viz., “ Yet it is a libel upon them (the churches) to affirm that they have not contended for a free proclamation of the whole counsel of God to saint and sinner,” it appears to be in reference to this third part, more particularly, that Mr. Aikman purposely aims to misrepresent the reviewer. How, then, does he do this? By affirming, falsely so, that the third part of the extract was intended to persuade the readers of the review that the Strict Baptist churches “stand possessed of the entire substance of that for which they feel disposed to contend,”—vis., that the Strict Baptist churches and their ministers have such a tremendous and conceited persuasion that they possess the “entire substance” of the whole truth and counsel of God that, they do not think that either their knowledge of truth can he increased, or that any more of truth can he revealed to them than what they know already.

But our inquiry is this. What can be said for Mr. Aikman’s honesty to thus misrepresent the reviewer’s meaning, by trying to make it appear that the reviewer really meant his statements to be taken as meaning that both himself and his brethren in the ministry do believe that they actually possess “the entire substance” of the whole truth and counsel of God? Why, such a thought never once entered the reviewer’s mind. Not with regard to the best among his brethren in the ministry, and, as the Lord knoweth, a thousand times less with regard to himself.

Besides which the review, in other parts of it, —parts, as we have said, craftily kept back, shows, with unmistakable plainness, that the reviewer had no such arrogant opinion of either himself, or the Strict Baptist churches, or their ministers, as that of their possessing “the entire substance” of the whole counsel of God.

Take for example the following parts of the review in proof of this: “The real sent-servants of God are differently led in ministry, according to the several gifts and abilities which the Spirit of God divides unto them, and that one will be more qualified to take up one line of ministry, and some another; and that even the best among them have come short of being what their solemn office requires of them, is not only what we admit, but what they deeply feel, and often confess with heavy sighs and groans to God.” Again. “Short as the best of the Lord’s servants of the present day may be of what their solemn office requires, and short as we feel of being what Mr. Gadsby as a preacher was, yet the Strict Baptist churches, and we in common with them, have contended, and do still contend, that the gospel should be preached and proclaimed to all, but offered to none.” (“Standard, 1873,” page 198.)

We have, then, in the above passages from the review, a plain acknowledgment that the very best of the Lord’s servants of the Strict Baptist churches come short of being what their office requires, and that it is what they deeply feel, and confess with sighs and groans to God.

To brand, then, either the reviewer or his brethren, or the churches, with such an assumption as that of possessing “the entire substance” of the whole counsel of God, it only marks the perfidy of the man who has hurled the brand against those whom he deceit fully calls his brethren.

Again. The reviewer, whilst stating it as his belief that the Strict Baptist churches have always contended for “a free and full proclamation of the whole truth of God; yet he goes on to say that if at the present time there should be one, or more, among them who should say, “We believe it to be no part of our work to preach to any but the living children of God, we have nothing to do with the spiritually dead,” then, says the reviewer, “We differ from the one, or more, who hold such a view.”

The reviewer’s meaning, then, about the whole counsel of God was only this, viz., that what the Strict Baptist churches believe to be the truth of God, that they contend should be preached, — preached according to the ability which God giveth. We thank the reviewer of “The Judgment of the Judges of Jehovah” for his kind remarks in reference to this matter. (See “Gospel Standard” for December, 1875.)

Having exposed the purposed aim of Mr. Aikman to misrepresent the reviewer, we— Secondly, but with fewer remarks, expose how flagrantly he has perverted certain sentences in the review, thereby making the reviewer say what he does not say.

The remarks of the reviewer, as embodied in the extract given in Mr. Aikman’s “Appendix,” are principally confined to one point, viz., what the Strict Baptist churches contend for, what they admit; and the reviewer says, “It is a libel upon them to affirm that they have not contended for a free proclamation of the whole truth and counsel of God.”

What the reviewer meant by the whole counsel of God has been explained, though others without such explanation have taken his meaning aright. And the reviewer, by saying the Strict Baptist churches have contended for a free proclamation of the truth of God, meant no more than that they do not contend that any part of the counsel of God, which has been made known to them, and which they hold and believe, should be kept back in any such way as Mr. Aikman for more than four years has kept back his peculiar doctrines from those churches. But the churches contend that the whole counsel of God, as far as they have light to understand it, should be preached. But as it respects what may be, or may not be, actually and practically carried out, either in this church, or that church, or any of the churches, this is not the point so much taken up by the reviewer, if it be taken up at all. The churches contend for such and such doctrines, and for a life and walk according to those doctrines, and according to the precepts of the word. But whether all that is contended for be practically carried out is quite another question. Mr. Aikman, too, contends for the Spirit of Christ; but whether his book breathes that spirit let others judge.

Let the reader, then, turn again to the extract taken from the review in the “Standard” of 1873, and published in Mr. Aikman’s “Appendix” (page 284); then let him turn to pages 285 and 293 in the same “Appendix,” and he will at once see how Mr. Aikman has grossly perverted the reviewer’s sentences by making the reviewer to state what is actually done,—carried out in the Strict Baptist churches; and in this dishonest manner he makes the reviewer to turn the whole debate upon the practical view of the subject; when it will be seen, by looking into the review, the reviewer does nothing of the kind. We shall just give the sentences as they stand in the “Appendix.” On page 285 Mr. Aikman speaks of the reviewer’s attempt to ingraft upon the credulity of the whole lay portion of the Strict Baptist churches “the notorious falsehood that the practice of the Lord Jesus Christ, —practice also of his inspired, apostles (practice of preaching indiscriminately to fallen, men, wrong-doing sinners, repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ), is at present current; nay, in days past also, has invariably been the rule in the P.R Baptist churches.”

Mark, then, how he here willfully misrepresents the meaning of the reviewer, by trying to make the reviewer presumptuously affirm that the full and perfect scriptural practice, of Christ and his apostles is current in the Strict Baptist churches. Whereas, again and again it is stated in the review, as we have most clearly shown, how one and another of the Lord’s servants in the Strict Baptist churches feel their shortcomings; how short they feel to come of being what, by the grace of God, such a man as the late Mr. Gadsby was. And, we add, blessed a man as was Mr. Gadsby, and faithfully as he, according to his gift, did preach to and warn poor sinners, yet far short on every hand did he come of being what Christ and his apostles were; and no one felt this more than Mr. Gadsby himself. The reviewer has a right to ask the dishonest man, who has thus misrepresented him, where, in any part of the review, will the reviewer’s remarks bear any such construction as he has thrust upon them.

On page 290 he quotes again from the review: “We believe that God’s design, object, and purpose (he means God’s only design, object, and purpose), in and by the gospel of his Son Jesus Christ, was from the first the calling out of the elect.”

The words put in the parenthesis in the above extract are Mr. Aikman’s own, and not the reviewer’s. The reviewer never once had such a thought as that the only design, object, and purpose of God by the gospel was the calling out of the elect, though that was God’s chief and most glorious design. Neither has the reviewer ever had such a thought as that God’s design was to save the non-elect, for whom Christ never died.

On page 293 Mr. Aikman writes: “For he says (that is, the reviewer) that the whole truth and counsel of God is in the P.R. churches proclaimed to the unconverted.” And, on page 289 his assertions are still more daring and more intentionally and wickedly falsifying. He condescends to the mean and dishonest act, —act, we could not, till we saw it in his book, have believed the poor man capable of being guilty, viz., of penning the following sentence: “I give his own words exact—meaning that he gives the reviewer’s words exact. Following upon which he puts with audacity, within inverted commas, the following remarks as being the reviewer’s: “According to the commission, of the Lord Jesus to all men indiscriminately, the gospel is in these churches preached.”

Now these words either are the exact words of the reviewer or they are not. If they are, if they can be found in the review, then, in this instance at least, William Aikman has truth on his side. But if what he says are the exact words of the reviewer cannot be found in any part of the review, —if, for instance, not a word is stated in the review about the commission being given to all men (the reviewer says apostles)’, if, again, the words, “is in these churches preached” cannot be traced either in that part of the review which appears as an extract in Mr. Aikman’s book, nor in any other part, then he is manifestly chargeable with a dexterously- framed falsehood, framed to make it answer his own end,—viz., that of turning the sense and meaning of the reviewer’s real words into a sense and meaning quite different to what any unbiassed mind would attach to them. By dishonestly and craftily adding the sentence, “is in these churches preached,” he tries, by a desperate subterfuge, to make the reviewer say that the indiscriminate preaching of the gospel without any more fault or defect than what was traceable in the preaching of Christ himself and the apostles, is carried out in the Strict Baptist churches.

Had the reviewer been asked, when he wrote the review, whether he would be glad to see the indiscriminate preaching of the gospel to all men fully carried out in the Strict Baptist churches, and all other churches as well, he could have answered, Yes, most heartily. Had the reviewer been asked again, whether he would be glad to have the gospel so preached to all men that a “free proffer of life,” according to the everlasting covenant of grace, established in the blood of Christ, should be held out to the non-elect, and that the preachers should say, “King, kaiser, commoner, rich or poor, noble or ignoble, all have the same offer made to them,—the greatest earthly monarch, my Lord This or That, Count So-and-So, as well as poor John Hodge, must accept this offer, or take the consequences,” the reviewer would have answered, No. So far from being glad to have such disgrace cast upon the gospel of Christ, he would not sit five minutes in a chapel to hear such rubbish preached.

We have one more garbled sentence to notice, which sentence appears on the same page as the former one. Mr. Aikman says, “I again quote his own words” meaning the reviewer’s. Then comes the following sentence, which, like the former one, stands between inverted commas, that “a free proclamation of the whole truth and counsel of God to saint and sinner is the established usage in these churches.” We can only repeat that, be our opinion what it may, as it respects what is the “established usage” in the Strict Baptist churches, yet this is not the question discussed in the review, as must be apparent to everyone who reads it with an unjaundiced eye, and without such base motives as guided William Aikman’s pen when he wrote the whole four sections of his “Appendix,”—an appendix only fit for the “British Museum” as a curiosity, not of literature, but of infamous abuse.

But where, it may be asked, is the sentence as it stands in the review, altered and garbled as it stands in Mr. Aikman’s “Appendix?” It is altered and garbled in the latter part of it, inasmuch as the words, “is the established usage in these churches,” and which Mr. Aikman falsely says are the reviewer’s “own words,” are not to be found in any part of the review, from beginning to end.

What, then, could have been his object in inserting between inverted commas only a part of the reviewer’s sentence; then adding to that mutilated part words of his own, —words that never came from the reviewer’s pen; and prefacing both the reviewer’s words and his own together with the remark, “I again quote his own words?”

His object was manifestly to deceive, and proves him to be an adept at such work. His whole aim, in dealing with the review of May, 1873, was to make the reviewer responsible for publishing such a presumptuous declaration as that the whole counsel of God, without any more defects or shortcomings than what marked the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ and that of his apostles, is preached to saint and sinner in the Strict Baptist churches; that such a ministry “is at present current,” and “is the established usage in these churches.”

It will be well for the poor man to look such willful misrepresentations,—such garblings of the writings of one and another, and such real falsehoods as are stamped by his own hand here and there about his book, full in the face, and ask himself, as before God, how much of his book would remain behind as being acceptable to the church of God if all its errors, perversions, prevarications, misrepresentations, and slander were swept out of its pages.

To bring, however, this matter pertaining to the review to a conclusion. The reviewer would wish Mr. Aikman to know that he pleads no other defence against such vituperative slander as he has poured out, both on the writer of the review and the review as well, than what the review in itself affords him. By the whole of the review, without retraction, alteration, or modification of the sentiments it sets forth, Dr. Hawker’s valuable “Tract” included, the reviewer abides to the present day. And the reviewer would wish to leave it between the Lord and Mr. Aikman’s own conscience, whether, when he wrote. page 285 of his “Appendix,” he did not know “thoroughly that it was false;” and whether he did not know “perfectly that, provided only it secured the iniquitous end in view, he cared not at whose expense, God’s or man’s, went forth the hideous falsehood which it contained ” For to try and make the reviewer write and publish to the large, numbers who read the “Gospel Standard” that it was his belief that a ministry as perfect as the ministry of Christ and the apostles is current in the ‘Strict Baptist, churches, is nothing more nor less than a hideous falsehood, —falsehood calmly and deliberately shaped and moulded by that faithless pen which, for months and months together, was employed in writing a professedly spiritual work, but a work containing sufficient slander to be a standing blot on its pages.

A remark or two next in reference to another part of the review— viz., where the reviewer says (page 201) “that the infiniteness of the death of Christ, and what it was capable of accomplishing, had (God so willed it, is not the question. The question is, was the deathof Christ vicarious, —substitutional? Did he stand as a Surety in the law-place and stead of those for whom he died? Did he actually take their very sins by imputation, and make a full satisfaction to God by his complete atonement on the cross?” The reviewer is in no way moved by the above statements being called “odious vulgarity,” and “anadulterated and concentrated blasphemy,” by a man of Mr. Aikman’s type and sentiments, and marvellous gift for refined expressions.

The reviewer neither retracts, alters, nor modifies his remarks as contained in the above extract, any more than he does any other parts of the review before referred to.

We might go on to expose Mr. A.’s carnal, intellectual trickery in dealing with the reviewer of Mr. Philpot’s volume of “Letters,” and make manifest his intentional dishonesty in making the reviewer say that “spiritual saving acts are a part of a natural man’s duty,” and the way in which the reviewer, for writing this and that in defence of the truth of God, comes under such castigation as the following: “This servile imitator;” “this highly irreverent scribe of the ‘Gospel Standard;”’ “this self-infatuated public instructor,” “who, deeming dogmatism a full equivalent for sound proof, the deductions of rationalistic pride a sufficient substitute for the lightof Scripture, forth fulminates arrogant judgment against his Maker; “The self-important, the transcendently egotistical scholar,” publishes what “does, substantially considered, embody the very purest essence of blasphemy.” But we shall forbear to pursue the pen of such a detractor any farther. If the reviewer of “Philpot’s Letters,” whose writings we much appreciate, had advanced in the pages of his review the most virulent error ever published, worse and more scurrilous charges than the above could not have been hurled against him. But, alas for Mr. Aikman! He has shown us, by his book, that it is in such a department of literature, of which the above is only a fair specimen, that his profound gifts shine most brilliantly.

Whatever the reviewer of “Philpot’s Letters” may think, and others with him, who, without any stipulated pay or reward, so far as we know, are willing to contribute, as the Lord may help them, to the pages of a magazine, which has for its one object the defence and spread of the truth of God, and the spiritual welfare of his people; yet, if they cannot render such a little bit of service without being branded with being “mendacious scribes,” “venal scribes,” and “hirelings,” we, as one of the poor scribes, begin to think it is time to make some overtures to the proprietor of the magazine for at least as much reward as will justify their assuming such very honourable titles as have been conferred upon them.

Lastly, a remark of two about Mr. Aikman’s being asked to preach, more than four years ago, at Gower Street and Devizes, and to which he refers in his “Introduction.” He says we asked him, yea, pressed him, to preach at both places. Quite true; but why did we do so? Not because we had ever heard him preach on a single occasion, for we had never once heard him, and knew nothing whatever of his ministry, excepting by report; indeed, at the time of his returning from his Mahommedan mission, we had but little personal knowledge of him, having seen him but twice; once at his house at Bradford, Wilts, and once, but for a few minutes, at a railway station, and not a letter, that we can remember, had ever passed between, us. But knowing that his name had been down in the list of supplies for Gower Street, and that he had frequently (we believe) preached there; knowing, also, that his name had appeared month by month on the wrapper of the “Gospel Standard” for various places among the Strict Baptist churches; hearing, too, some of the members at Gower Street speak favourably of his ministry, and express a wish for him to be invited again; it was just as natural to sit down and write an invitation to him to resume his labours at that place as it would be to ask any other minister, after a period of absence from the country, but who had, previously to his leaving, been a constant supply in the Strict Baptist connexion.

Without the slightest knowledge, then, of any difference in sentiments between Mr. Aikman and the church at Gower Street, we wrote to him, —his address having been put into our hands by a Gower Street member, to come and serve the church at the time of our leaving. Now he states in his “Introduction” (p.16) that he gave us plainly to understand, in his reply to our letter of invitation, that he “was firmly determined to preach the gospel to sinners, and equally determined not to preach indiscriminate comfort to saints.” He states, again, that a “second letter arrived from Mr. Hemington in which he gave me to understand that on both the points specified he entirely coincided with my views.” We shall be under the necessity of exposing a little misrepresentation, —a little garbling, even in this matter. Had Mr. Aikman expressed himself, in his letter of reply to our invitation, in any such a peremptory and determinate manner as he says he did, then there is more than a probability that we should have been much more struck with such statements than we were with the real statements contained in his communication. We are, then, obliged positively to deny that he expressed himself in any peremptory, determinate style whatever. The very letter we received from him we happen to have in our possession, bearing date May 2nd, 1871, and from this letter we will give his “exact” words. The letter, in that part of it which refers to the two points in question, reads as follows: “I desire to speak the word of salvation to sinners, with a view to the ingathering of graceless souls. I do not, however, object also to minister to the saints.”…“I feel that much more than comfort is needed in Zion.”

First, then, this letter does not contain, from beginning to end, so much as a faint whisper about any change of sentiments, not a hint about offered grace, or about any other point of difference between himself and the Strict Baptist churches.

Secondly, the only two particulars about which his letter might be taken as expressing a doubt whether his ministry would be acceptable to the Strict Baptist churches, were his expressed desire to preach the word of salvation to sinners; and that something more than comfort was needed in Zion.

He states in his “Introduction” that on both these points we “entirely coincided with his views.” It would have been a strange thing if we had not coincided with him; that is, according to the sense in which we suppose any other person, as well as ourselves, would have taken such remarks. We desire to this day to preach as well as able, by the help of God, the Word of salvation to sinners; and we believe, too, that something more than comfort is needed in Zion; though we quite as much believe that Zion does need comfort, and the God of Zion has commissioned his servants to administer it unto her.

If by preaching the word of salvation to sinners we are to understand, according to Mr. Aikman’s definition, that it means offering it to sinners, yea, to the non-elect, all we can say is this, that if, when we go again to Gower Street, it should be laid on our mind to express our desire before the congregation of preaching the word of salvation to sinners, we shall feel it doubly needful, after reading Mr. Aikman’s book, to make a second time what he calls a “degrading apology,” by assuring the people that we do not mean by preaching, offering, or what Mr. Aikman means at all; but that what we mean is a scriptural preaching of the gospel to sinners, without in the least compromising the doctrines of grace.

It was downright dishonest for Mr. Aikman to write any such letter to us as we received from him; it was equally dishonest, after he arrived in London, and had a personal interview with us, not to fully acquaint either ourselves or the deacons of the church at Gower Street exactly what his altered views were; and if he should say he did do so, we shall as positively deny it, and can prove, by his very last letter sent to us, his own acknowledgment of our ignorance of the real differences which existed between him and the Strict Baptist churches. In fact, had anyone told us, only a week before his book came into our hands, that his sentiments were according to what the book contains, we should have been ready to answer, “No, it cannot be;” but this is one great advantage we obtain by the book being published, —we know what Mr.Aikman’s system is now, and know it, so far as what is anti-scriptural in it, to reject it. The “mummy” being “unswathed,” it is not pleasant to look upon it. If any can look upon it to admire it, and can go with Mr. Aikman in embracing his peculiar sentiments, then let them be honest enough to make known what their sentiments are, and, as honest men, refrain from interfering with others who differ from them. Such persons have no right to thrust themselves upon the Strict Baptist churches, either as ministers or members, so long as those churches continue to conscientiously reject the system of offered grace.