the Apostles retained, by not admitting them into the church, they were truly condemned. In this sense, the words are applicable no less to Christian ministers in our days when proclaiming the Gospel to those who have never heard of it before. Still, to speak generally, and leaving particular cases to God's righteous judgment, they who hear our word and are baptized, shall be saved, and they who reject our word shall be condemned. And thus, our Lord's words in their primary meaning may be fitly repeated to any Christian minister now. 2. Besides the one great message of the Gospel, salvation through faith in Christ crucified, the Apostles were farther to teach all men to do whatsoever Christ had commanded them. As a signal instance of this, they taught the necessity of purity, the sinfulness of sensualities, which the heathens, in general, accounted of no importance. And here, also, he who despised them, "despised," as St. Paul says, "not man, but God, who also hath given unto us his Holy Spirit." I request attention to the last clause of this verse; meanwhile here is another sense of our Lord's words, applying not only to the rejection of the Gospel altogether, but to the not living according to Christ's commands. In this respect also, he who did according to the Apostle's word would be saved; he who despised it would be condemned. In this sense also, the words of our Lord's charge may be properly used to Christian ministers now. Still there are many, calling themselves Christians, who justify duelling, palliate covetousness, sensuality, &c., under various disguises and excuses. But let the Christian minister teach his hearers "to do all things whatsoever Christ hath commanded them;" and then whether they will hear or no, he who does according to the minister's teaching will be saved, and he who does not, will be condemned. 3. But Christ, while giving this charge to his Apostles, "breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." That is, he gave them the witness, that what they were to say, came not from them, but from God. And so St. Paul refers to this witness, in the words alluded to above, "He who despises, despises not man but God, who also hath given unto us his Holy Spirit." That the Holy Spirit here spoken of has the same meaning as in the words of St. John, seems certain from the context. It is no less certain that it means some visible and manifest gift, which might show that God was with the Apostles in truth. Hooker says that it was not the miraculous power of the Spirit, for this was not given till the day of Pentecost; but "a holy and ghostly authority, authority over the souls of men, authority, a part whereof consisteth in power to remit and retain sins;" "the power of the Holy Ghost for castigation and relaxation of sin." So Hooker writes, in the fifth book of his Ecclesiastical Polity; a part of his work containing passages so unworthy of all that precedes, and of much that follows it, that nothing but a knowledge of the power of party spirit even over a great mind, could allow us to believe that they were written in honesty. It cannot be shown that no miraculous powera was given to the Apostles till the day of a It is said in St. John, vii. 39, “The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." But the “glorification" of Christ, applies as much to his resurrection as to his ascension; I think even more. Pentecost. The gift of tongues on that day was the signal for the public exercise of their ministry; but who shall say that neither the gifts of faith, or of knowledge, or of wisdom, were conferred before, although they were not publicly exercised. Nay, we know that one of these gifts was given before the day of Pentecost; for St. Luke says, that our Lord "opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures," (xxiv. 45,) and assuredly we cannot suppose the fifty days from the resurrection to the day of Pentecost to have passed without any preparation of the minds of the Apostles for their coming work; especially as on that very day of Pentecost, when no other gift but that of tongues is recorded to have been communicated, Peter immediately spoke to the people in a manner which shows that he must have been previously endowed with the gifts of preaching, προφητεία, of knowledge, and of wisdom. But, on the other hand, it may be contended against Hooker, that "the Holy Ghost," in the New Testament, never means any thing so vague and ambiguous as the language in which he interprets it: whether it be used However, there is no question that the general outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit began from the day of Pentecost. I only think that St. John, who never mentions the day of Pentecost expressly, would not have excluded the only giving of the Holy Ghost, which he has himself recorded, (xx. 22,) from being a fulfilment of the promise of Christ, though not the whole fulfilment of it. But "the promise of the Holy Ghost" always signifies the conferring some gift real and perceptible; to use our Lord's own comparison, "the sound of the wind must be heard, though we may not know whence it comes;" and thus it will be found, that whenever any gift of the Spirit is mentioned in the Scripture, it may be referred to one of the three heads of power, wisdom or holiness; power, not in the sense of authority, which, indeed, is a confusion, but in that true and proper sense of some real faculty or superiority, whether physical, intellectual, or moral, which confers authority on him who possesses it. And so far, indeed, I agree with Hooker, for I believe that Christ gave his disciples authority, because he gave them power. to signify the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the graces, it always signifies something visible and manifest, a seal of God's presence, whether the particular attribute which it declared was his power or his holiness. "We are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise;" this was true of the Apostles, and of those on whom they conferred their gifts, in a two-fold sense; they had the seal of the spirit of power, and wisdom, and also of the spirit of holiness. It is of the very essence of a seal, to be manifest; for a seal is a witness, and a witness not forthcoming to give his evidence, is no witness at all. Whatever gift, therefore, or grace of the Holy Spirit, Christ conferred on his Apostles, when he said to them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," we may be well assured that it was not " an authority," as Hooker calls it, but a pledge and seal of authority; wisdom, or power, or holiness, so manifest in them, that when they spoke in the name of God, their warrant might be ever at hand to show that they did not speak falsely. And it is the actual possession of this pledge and seal by the Apostles, which makes the great difference between their authority and ours. The seal of the Holy Ghost was the Apostle's warrant, both in speaking to the heathen, and in laying down rules for the practice of Christians. But we, not speaking from ourselves, but merely repeating, as it were, their words, do not need this seal. If we were to speak any new thing concerning God, then the seal would be needed; our not having it seems to prove the truth of that well known assertion of our church, that all things necessary to salvation are to be found in the Scriptures alone. But over and above the warrant given by the Holy Spirit to the general truths declared, or rules laid down by the Apostles, the same divine seal appears to have been sometimes given to their dealings with individuals; it was shown that they, like their Master, had power on earth to forgive sins, even in individual cases, because the outward and visible healing of bodily disease gave assurance that their sentence, even with regard to moral disease, was pronounced truly. I am not aware that the question of the apostolical miracles has been fully considered in this point of view; nor have we, perhaps, facts enough before us to enable us thoroughly to understand it. But I think it does not appear that they ever exercised the right of priestly absolution towards an individual Christian after baptism, without conveying it, if I may so speak, through the sign of a miraculous cure, or of the recall of a sentence of miraculous punishment. And in the latter case, as the offence which was so visited would generally be visited also by the censures of the church, the priestly power of bestowing forgiveness in the sight of God was mixed up with the power of government, shown in the remission of the punishment inflicted by society. It is said of St. Paul at Lystra, that he stedfastly beheld the cripple, and perceived that he had faith to be healed; and then accordingly he healed him. I suppose that here, as in our Lord's miracles, St. Paul might, without impropriety, have said to the cripple, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," as well as "Stand upright on thy feet." And the cure was a seal of the man's forgiveness in the sight of God, that at that time he was as completely justified as a convert who had just received remission of his sins in baptism. |