of his witnesses.
[←619]
Referring to the Council at Nicea in 325, when it was concluded that the Father and Son are of the same substance, Gr. homoousios.
[←620]
Luther speaks as the oracles of God, when he says, ‘all things’ — meaning all persons —all human beings — are flesh. I have hinted already (see the last note) that I do not agree with Luther in his interpretation of this most authoritative text (Joh 3.6) on which he bottoms his whole argument here, as he did before. He says “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” means that which is born of the flesh is sinful or ungodly affection; in short, it is wicked, or wickedness. I say flesh means the same in the subject and in the predicate; ‘that which is born of man is man.’ What this is, as to its nature, properties, and qualities, must be sought elsewhere. But the next clause gives us a pretty good hint at these, by implying that it is of a nature directly contrary to that of the Holy Ghost; “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” The Scripture is, moreover, abundantly explicit in its testimony to what this nature is, by giving us a full and complete history of its creation and depravation, and by asserting in the clearest and strongest terms, its total, universal, complicated, and pervasive villainy. Take but these four passages, to which scores might be added, and let them teach us what that flesh is which flesh begets, and brings forth. “What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he puts no trust in his saints, and the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinks iniquity like water?” (Job 15.14-16) “Behold I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psa 51.5) “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it:” (Jer 17.9) “For from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” (Mar 7.21-23.) It is not, therefore, that I draw a different testimony from Joh 3.6; but I make it a step to explicit proof, rather than explicit proof itself; and by so doing, cut the sinews of objection here, while I also preserve simplicity and uniformity in the interpretation of Scripture terms.
For a fuller consideration of the terms flesh and spirit, I venture to refer the reader to ‘Vaughan’s Clergyman’s Appeal,’ chap. iii. sect. iii. and chap. v. sect. ii. iv., where some account is given of the nature state of man, and of the sanctification of the Lord’s people, which I deem satisfactory.
[←621]
Omnis affectus. Not merely what we commonly denote ‘affection,’ meaning appetite and passion,’ but all that is liable to be moved and affected in man: his whole constitution as a moral being.
[←622]
Quo nitimur ad honesta. Honestum is properly opposed to turpe: ‘placui tibi, qui turpi secernis honestum. — Hor. It is the ‘honore et laude dignum,’ as opposed to what is dishonourable: the kalon (kalon) of the Greeks; something more exalted than the prepon, (prepon) even as that was also more exalted than the dikaion (dikaion)
[←623]
See above, Part ii. Sect. 20. note x .
[←624]
That Scaevola who risked his life to rid his country of Porsenna; that Regulus who dissuaded from peace with Carthage though he went back to die for it.
[←625]
Ut impium justificet. Luther evidently means by ‘justify’ here, ‘making righteous;’ and that is as to personal character. I do not know where he gets his quotation from; “believes on him that justifies the ungodly.” (Rom 4.5), is said with quite another meaning: the nearest I can find is 1Cor 6.11: “And such were some of you; but you are… justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
[←626]
Cùm verò. I venture to give it this turn, because it is clearly a new and distinct argument which he introduces here: to call ‘flesh’ is to call ‘wicked;’ for it is to say, 1. that he does not have the Spirit (which alone makes us godly); 2. that he is a member of the devil’s kingdom.
[←627]
See Part i. Sect xxii. Part iii. Sect. 32. Part. iv. Sect. 20, 32.
[←628]
Luther’s order in the last two sections is, 1. Your praise of the heathens is false. 2. Man is ‘flesh,’ ‘man is wickedness.’ 3. What would follow if your cavil ‘not all’ were true. — There is a good deal of subtlety in this part of his argument; and we are ready to say, ‘not content with knocking down his adversary, he kicks him when he is down;’ but his objections are solid and unanswerable.
[←629]
There is an ambiguity in the expression ‘renatus per fidem.’ Faith is the fruit and effect of regeneration strictly and properly so called; that is, ‘of that act of God by his Spirit, whereby he begets the soul anew, and so makes it capable of spiritual perceptions, actings, and sufferings.’ But in the more enlarged sense of regeneration, which includes state as well as character (what is more properly called new birth, born again) regeneration may be said to be the fruit of faith: “you are all the children of God in Christ Jesus by faith;” that is, manifested to be such visibly and acknowledgedly adopted into his family. The child as begotten differs from the child as born into the world. Regeneration, strictly speaking, is the begetting of the child; speaking more widely, it is the birth of it; and Baptism is the sign and seal of this regenerate state — the sign of, and the seal that we are in it. In its most correct view, it is the sacrament of the Resurrection; of our having died and risen again with Christ — into whom we have been baptized — in a figure, the reality of which is our being in the number of those for whom and with whom he has died, in order that they might be raised up again from the dead with him, and for his sake — at an appointed time. By baptism, therefore, the Lord’s people are sealed to be in the state of those who have risen from the dead; who already have that which is to be had in this life of the resurrection from the dead, in possessing, acting, and enjoying a risen Spirit — and who have the pledge of God, which cannot lie, that they shall have the superabundant residue both in their person (a raised body) and in their state (partakers of the glory which shall be revealed.) In whatever form the ordinance is administered, whether by immersion, affusion, or aspersion, it is in effect the same teaching sign: the laver of regeneration being the Lord’s blood, and its application to our person denoting our union with him in his death and resurrection. It is this signing, sealing ordinance, I say, to God’s elect, and to none else. When they have been called by the Spirit (which may be before or after — if one part of the sign must be future, why may not both be?), they are led and enabled either to wait upon the Lord in receiving it, or to look back to it as a benefit already received. — Hosts of objections will rise up, no doubt, against this testimony. Why then are infants baptized? Why is baptism administered to the non-elect? — I am not hesitant to answer these questions about the natural man. Infant baptism I remark, however, must stand on its own grounds of vindication; and for my own part, I am content with God’s having commanded every male Israelite to be circumcised on the eighth day— administered to non-elect! Why it has been the mystery of God from the beginning to bring out and draw to himself his elect, amidst a multitude of professing hypocrites, Enoch lived among such: Judas was one of the twelve. The meaning of the ordinance is not impaired by these mysterious arrangements; and it is just so much of shame, grief, and weakness to the spiritual man, if he does not use and enjoy the pregnant sign. — I have mixed this reference to baptism with the subject of regeneration, not only because it is so mixed by the Fathers and by the Apostles, but because I cannot doubt that the Lord had a reference to it in Joh 3.5. (Unless a man is begotten by the Spirit out of water — i.e., begotten by the Spirit in and through that water which is the sacramental emblem of my blood — he can have no part or lot in the kingdom of God); and because I consider it as so illustrative of the real nature of regeneration, which I cannot grant to be either character or state only, but I must regard it in its more enlarged sense, as comprehending both. How simple and how sweet is the view thus opened to us, of the Lord’s sacraments! Baptism, the sacramental introduction of the Lord’s people into the resurrection state; and the communion of the body and blood, the sacrament of their continual life in it. — The phrase ‘renatus per fidem,’ then, which both Erasmus and Luther adopt, is allowable as expressive of that state into