If God is himself the only truth, THE TRUE ONE; if Christ is his Image; if the counsel, or system of divine operations which is in Him, is the image of that Image; if the Gospel or doctrine of the kingdom of God, is the word or declarer of that counsel; then we can have no difficulty in understanding why one and the same term should be applied to all these various subjects. They are all, in various regards, THE TRUTH. Nor is it a sound objection to say, ‘this revered man did not see it there,’ or, ‘that revered man did not see it there.’ It may be there still, and if it is not there, then God has come short of His object in revelation, which is not to reveal a proposition, but to reveal HIMSELF. Let everyone so study the Bible as to get to know God by it — which he cannot do, unless he realizes what is written there, IN HIM, and realize it as a whole. Let him at the same time take this caution: he is to get his whole, not by murdering or stifling any part, but by giving its fair, well-considered, and authenticated meaning to each and every portion of the testimony.
The DEFECTS of this treatise, then, are the defects of Luther’s theological system. It was not given to him to discern that all God’s dealings with creatures are referable to one vast counsel, devised, ordained and operated for the accomplishment of one vast end; that this vast end is the manifestation of God; that this counsel is in all its parts (not only in that which respects man’s redemption, but every jot of every part) laid, conducted, and consummated in and by Christ — the eternally predestined, and in time, very risen GOD-MAN 58 (see Part ii. Sect. viii. note r . Part iii. Sect, xxxii. note s). Much less was it given to him to discern the structure and materials of that counsel by which God is effecting this end: that Adam — meaning not only the personal Adam, but all that was created in him, even the whole human race — is the great and capital subject of His self-manifesting operations. (See Part iii. Sect, xxviii. notes t v x . Sect, xxxvii. note l etc.)
Though he had some insight into the mystery of Christ’s person (see Part i. Sect. iii.; also Sect. xvi. note n) that He was truly God and man, a coequal in the Trinity, made man through the Virgin’s impregnation by the Holy Ghost, he was not fully led into the mystery that his person is constituted by taking a human person, the spiritualized man Jesus, into union with his divine person, and that he has been acting in this person, as inspired, not by his own godhead, but by the Holy Ghost, 59 from the beginning — having subsisted as the glorified God-man first predestinely and secretly, up to the period of his ascension; and now, ever since that period, really and declaredly doing the will of the Father continually, not his own will; by the Holy Ghost’s inspiration, not his own; thus exhibiting the Trinity in every act he performs, which is, in deed and in truth, every act of God. His human person, moreover, was marvellously formed, so as to be at the same time both son of Adam and son of God; the Holy Ghost’s impregnation gave him a spotless soul; the daughter of Adam gave him a sinful body; thus he became the sinless sinner; thus he that knew no sin was made sin for us,2Cor 5.21 and was in all points tempted as we are, without sin; Heb 4.15 that same Holy Ghost which had begotten him sinless, keeping him without sin amidst all the temptations of the world the flesh and the devil, until he had died to sin once, Rom 6.10 and his mortality had been swallowed up by life. 2Cor 5.4
Into this depth of the mystery of Christ’s person, 60 of which the essential element is ‘union yet distinctness’ — both as it respects his divine and human person, and as it respects his oneness with us — it was not given to Luther to penetrate. (See as before, Part ii. Sect. viii. note r . Part iii. Sect xxii. note 3; also Part v. Sect. xxii. note l . Sect, xxviii. note o.) Again; although it was given him to see the fact of man’s coming into the world guilty (which he ascribes to his being born of Adam (see Part v. Sect, xx.), and that entire vitiation of his nature, as brought into the world with him, which renders him both vile and impotent (a fact which he assumes, and reasons upon, throughout the whole of his treatise, but see especially Part iv. Sect, x.); he was not led to see the mystery of the creation and fall of every individual of the human race, male and female, in and with Adam. 61 (See Part iv. Sect. x. note z . Part v. Sect. xx. note p .) Again, though it was given him to see the fact that there are elect and reprobate men, God having predestined some to everlasting life and others to everlasting death, he had no insight into that covenant-standing in Christ, and the appropriateness of His work, and consequently, to the elect, which renders God just in making a difference between them, while the original and eternal separation is of a law beyond justice even of that sovereignty which knows no limit but omnipotence.
Thus, he was not only left, through his ignorance of God’s plan and counsel, without any insight into that blessed and glorious principle which reconciles the spiritual mind to the severity of his appointments — for how else will that paramount end of God’s manifestation be accomplished? But he was even obliged to give up the justice of God (which, both truly and discernibly, is without a flaw in this procedure) and to take refuge in a most pernicious falsehood, that we know nothing about God’s justice, and must be content to be ignorant of what it is, till THE DAY discloses it. Why, if justice, truth, and all other moral excellencies are not in Him essentially what they are in us, and according to our spiritual conceptions of HIM, then chaos has come again: we know nothing — nothing of God — He has revealed himself in vain. (See Part iii. Sect, xxviii. notes t v x . Sect. xxxvii. note l . Part iv. Sect. xv. note n . Part v. Sect, xxxiii. note e .) Again; while it was given to him to see something of the freeness and completeness of a sinner’s justification in and by Christ, it was impossible, from the very nature of that ignorance which has already been ascribed to him, that he should see it correctly and perfectly. He neither saw the eternal justification which they received in Christ Jesus, distinctly, personally, and individually, before the world began — God engaging to raise them up to Him as his accepted ones, for the sake of the merits of His death; nor did he see with precision what constituted their atonement made in time; nor did he see the state into which they were hereby brought, and have from the beginning been dealt with as though they had been meritoriously brought a state of gracious acceptance, in which they can bring forth, as He is pleased to enable them, and actually do bring forth, as He is pleased to enable them, fruit unto God.
Nor did he see that, while their crown is a free crown, the Lord has so arranged, and so brings it to pass, that it will be a righteous thing in God to differentiate between the righteous and the wicked. There is a mind in the one, which is correlative to the manifestation He has made and is making of himself in his new-creation kingdom; whereas in the other, there is nothing but enmity toward Him, as so displayed. Again; though Luther had some insight into the nature of Holy-Ghost-influences, the other parts of his ignorance were incompatible with true and correct knowledge here. He did not see that the gift of the Holy Ghost is, in fact, the gift of His personal presence and agency; this is altogether a super-creation gift, a gift in Christ. It is had when and as God has been pleased to arrange to give it. It is therefore had when it is good for his people to have it, and withheld, as to His manifestation, when it is good that they do not have it. In no way does it contribute to the justification, properly so called, of a sinner, though it enables the manifestedly justified to show their justification. When I say, ‘in no way contributing,’ I mean that none of their acts performed by and in the Spirit, are what
