CAUTION RECOMMENDED IN THE USE AND APPLICATION OF SCRIPTURAL LANGUAGE. A SERMON PREACHED, JULY 17, 1777, IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CARLISLE, AT THE VISITATION OF THE RIGHT REVEREND LORD BISHOP OF CARLISLE. ΤΟ THE RIGHT REVEREND EDMUND, LORD BISHOP OF CARLISLE, THIS DISCOURSE IS INSCRIBED, WITH SENTIMENTS OF GREAT RESPECT AND GRATITUDE, BY HIS LORDSHIP'S MOST DUTIFUL, AND MOST OBLIGED SERVANT AND CHAPLAIN, W. PALEY. SERMONS. I. CAUTION RECOMMENDED IN THE USE AND APPLICATION OF SCRIPTURE LANGUAGE. 2 PETER, III. 15, 16. Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him hath written untc you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction. It must not be dissembled that there are many real difficulties in the Christian Scriptures; whilst, at the same time, more, I believe, and greater, may justly be imputed to certain maxims of interpretation, which have obtained authority without reason, and are received without inquiry. One of these, as I apprehend, is the expecting to find, in the present circumstances of Christianity, a meaning for, or something answering to, every appellation and expression which occurs in Scripture; or, in other words, the applying to the personal condition of Christians at this day, those titles, phrases, propositions, and arguments, which belong solely to the situation of Christanity at its first institution. I am aware of an objection which weighs much with many serious tempers, namely, that to suppose any part of Scripture to be inapplicable to us, is to suppose a part of Scripture to be useless; which seems to detract from the perfection we attribute to these oracles of our salvation. To this I can only answer, that it would have been one of the strangest things in the world, if the writings of the New Testament had not, like all other books, been composed for the apprehension, and consequently adapted to the circumstances, of the persons they were addressed to; and that it would have been equally strange, if the great, and in many respects the inevitable, alterations, which have taken place in those circumstances, did not vary the application of Scripture language. I design, in the following discourse, to propose some examples of this variation, from which you will judge, as I proceed, of the truth and importance of our general observation. First; at the time the Scriptures were written, none were baptized but converts, and none were converted but from conviction; and conviction produced, for the most part, a corresponding reformation of the life and manners. Hence baptism was only another name for conversion, and conversion was supposed to be sincere ; in this sense was our Saviour's promise, 'he that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved ;'* and in the same his command to St Paul, arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins;'t this was that baptism, ' for the remission of sins,' to which St Peter invited the Jews upon the day of Pentecost; that washing of regeneration' by which, as St Paul writes to Titus,' he saved us.' Now, when we come to speak of the baptism which obtains in most Christian churches at present, where no conversion is supposed, or possible, it is manifest, that, if these expressions be applied at all, they must be applied with extreme qualification and reserve. Secondly; the community of Christians were at first a handful of men connected amongst themselves by the strictest union, and divided from the rest of the world by a real difference of principle and persuasion, and, what was more observable, by many outward peculiarities of worship and behaviour. This society, considered collectively, and as a body, were set apart from the rest of mankind for a more gracious dispensation, as well as actually distinguished by a superior purity of life and conversation. In this view, and in opposition to the unbelieving world, they were denominated in Scripture by titles of great seeming dignity and import; they were elect,' 'called,' saints;' they were in Christ;'T they were a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.'** * Mark, xvi. 16. + Acts, xxii. 16. + Ib ii. 38. ¶ viii. 1. § 'Titus, iii. 5. ** 1 Pet. ii. 9. That is, these terms were employed to distinguish the professors of Christianity from the rest of mankind, in the same manner as the names of Greek and Barbarian, Jew and Gentile, distinguished the people of Greece and Israel from other nations. The application of such phrases to the whole body of Christians is become now obscure; partly because it is not easy to conceive of Christians as a body at all, by reason of the extent of their name and numbers, and the little visible union that subsists among them; and, partly, because the heathen world. with whom they were compared, and to which comparison these phrases relate, is now ceased, or is removed from our observation. Supposing, therefore, these expressions to have a perpetual meaning, and either forgetting the original use of them, or finding that, at this time, in a great measure exhausted and insignificant, we resort to a sense and an application of them, easier, it may be, to our comprehension, but extremely foreign from the design of their authors, namely, to distinguish individuals amongst us, the professors of Christianity, from one an other agreeably to which idea, the most flattering of these names, the elect," called,' saints,' have, by bold and unlearned men, been appropriated to themselves and their own party with a presumption and conceit injurious to the reputation of our religion amongst them that are without,' and extremely disgusting to the sober part of its professors: whereas, that such titles were intended in a sense common to all Christian converts, is well argued from many places in which they occur, in which places you may plainly substitute the terms convert, or converted, for the strongest of these phrases without any alteration of the author's meaning, e. g. dare any of you go to law before the unjust and not before the saints ?'* is any man called being circumcised, let him not become uncircumcised:'+ 'the church that is at Babylon elected together with you, saluteth you :''salute Andronicus and Junia, who were in Christ before me.' Thirdly; in opposition to the Jews, who were so much offended by the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles, St Paul maintains, with great industry, that it was God Almighty's intention, from the first, to substitute at a fit season into the place of the rejected Israelites, a society of men, taken indifferently out of all nations under heaven, and admitted to be the * 1 Cor. vi. 1. † 1 Cor. vii. 18. + 1 Pet. v. 13. § Rom. xvi. 7. |