LAW AND GOSPEL by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 20, 1868

LAW AND GOSPEL.

By R. F. Cottrell

Sin and Pardon; Disease and Cure.

BY ELD. R. F. COTTRELL.

TEXT.—“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” Jer. viii, 22.

CONDEMNATION is the moral disease of mankind; a disease which, if not cured, will end in death. Sin, which is the transgression of the law of God, is the cause of this disease. In order to cure the disease, the cause must be removed. It is of no use to treat the symptoms, while the cause is left unremoved. Jesus Christ is the only Physician that can cure it, and the only remedy is the gospel. “He shall save his people from their sins.”

Had not our race transgressed the law of God, there would have been no moral disease, no guilt, no woe, and, consequently, no need of a physician nor a remedy. Man’s moral and physical health would have remained sound, and the result would have been everlasting life. But the violation of the laws of moral health has made a remedy necessary. The transgression of the law has brought condemnation; and to save man from condemnation and, consequently, from death, the gospel of pardon has become necessary. A return to the laws of moral health can aid in our restoration by putting us in a favorable condition for a cure. This, indeed, is absolutely necessary; but this alone cannot remove the disease. The remedy must be applied to cleanse us from the deep-seated, mortal disease already contracted, and preying upon our vitals. Future obedience cannot justify us from our past sins, which by the law demand our death. “By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

But the great Physician is not like the quacks of our times, who, to sell their worthless nostrums, tell us that no change of diet is required—that we may still continue the pernicious habits which induced our disease, and yet expect a cure. He, on the contrary, demands an entire change in our habits of life, a return to the laws of health and life. His language is, “Wash you, make you clean [good advice to most patients, in a literal sense]; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” No cure is promised, but on condition of a return to the violated laws of health. We must not continue our wrong habits of living, in order to demonstrate the sovereign power of the remedy. We must not continue in sin, that grace may abound. The laws of health are precisely what they were before. The violation of them is as sure to bring disease as ever. “His servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness” and life. The transgression of the law still is sin, and the wages of sin is death.

But some invalids insanely imagine, being so taught by their quack advisers, that the work of the physician is not only to cure the sick, but to abolish the laws of health; so that the same acts which brought disease may now be repeated with impunity. They think that medicine has now taken the place of the laws of health—that the gospel has superseded the law. This took place, as they affirm, when the great Physician made his advent into our world, to confirm the glad tidings before revealed, that a remedy had been found; that the sin-disease could be cured. They seem to think that before that event all was disease, and there was no remedy; but that now all is remedy, and no disease—that before the cross all was law, and no gospel; but since that all has been gospel, and no law; that the laws of health, the violation of which was formerly sure to bring disease, have been superseded by medicine.

They tell us that the learned Dr. Paul teaches that sickness is cured by medicine taken in faith, and not by the laws of health; and that, therefore, those laws are abolished, and the convalescent need not heed them at all. Now we do not believe that Paul was such a quack as that would make him. We admit that the promise is his; but the conclusion is their own. He comes to a very different conclusion. Anticipating that some, whose perverted appetites had impaired their intellects, would try to force the above conclusion upon him, in order that they might claim his sanction to their self-indulgence, he proceeds to draw his own conclusion, as follows: Do we then abolish the laws of health by the use of medicine? God forbid! Yea, we establish those laws. The restored must keep them as they would preserve health and life. See Rom. iii, 20–31.

Again, he uses language similar to this: There is, therefore, now no sickness to those who have accepted of the great Physician, who walk not after their perverted appetites, but according to the laws of health. For the principle of life and health, administered by this Physician, hath made me free from the unnatural principle, established in us by disobedience to those laws, tending to transgression and death. For what the laws of health alone could not do, being made weak and inefficient through transgression of them, our Physician has supplied, not by justifying our transgression of them, but condemning it; that the righteousness of those laws might be exemplified in us, who walk not in transgression, but in obedience. See Rom. viii, 1–4.

Modern quacks and devotees to depraved appetites would do better to let Paul draw his own conclusions, than to undertake to force upon him a conclusion so at variance with common sense, and derogatory to the Heaven-established laws of health, to say nothing of the slanderous imputation against this justly-celebrated and inspired teacher of moral medical science and dietetics. Peter, another physician, and evidently of the same school with Paul, since he calls him his “beloved brother,” cautions all invalids against the deceptive practice of some, perhaps professing themselves to be learned physicians, who would wrest Paul’s words to their own destruction. 2 Pet. iii, 15, 16.

Beware, therefore, oh! beware, my brother, my sister invalid, that you be not deceived by the specious pretensions of quacks and counterfeiters, and join with them in forcing the words of Paul, making him teach the abolition of the laws of moral health, established from the beginning, and, for the sake of gratifying a depraved appetite, pursue your wild career of transgression till your disease shall become absolutely incurable, and carry you down to death. Oh! how many, when it shall be too late to recall it, will mourn in fruitless despair that they did not take Paul’s own conclusions to his arguments, instead of those of his opposers and enemies.

James, another new-school physician (if we call those of the present dispensation new-school), teaches us that if we fulfill each precept of the original royal law of health, we shall do well—we shall recover. He will not indulge the patient in the violation of that law in one particular, reasoning that each precept is instituted by one and the same Lawgiver, and that they are all alike right and indispensable to moral health. Isa. ii, 8–13.

Our law-abolishing medical pretenders may learn, if they will, that the sin-disease is just what it ever has been in all dispensations, always discovering itself by precisely the same symptoms. The laws of health alone never cured one individual patient afflicted with this dreadful malady. The ancients could avail themselves of the only remedy, faith in the skill and ability of the great Physician, as well as we. It was not all law with them, and no gospel; neither is it all gospel with us, and no law. They had the sin-disease; so have we. They had the gospel remedy set before

them; so have we. Their acceptance of the remedy did not abolish the law, the violation of which brought the disease upon them; neither will ours. They, being healed, were under obligation strictly to observe that law to preserve their health; so are we.

Take Abraham for an example. The gospel was preached to him, Gal. iii, 8, but it did not abolish the law. He obeyed God’s voice, and kept his charge, his commandments, his statutes, and his laws. Gen. xxvi, 5. He had both the moral law, which pointed out and condemned sin, and the gospel, which pointed him to the only remedy that can save a soul. He obeyed them both. He walked in the faith; he believed and obeyed the gospel, and thus became the father of the faithful to all future ages. His faith did not abolish the law; neither did Paul’s; neither can ours, though unbelief may choose to have it abolished by a pretended faith. But if we “walk in the steps of the faith” which Abraham had, we may be his children, and the heirs with him of the same promises. Rom. iv, 12; Gal. iii, 6–9.

Abraham’s faith in the gospel did not abolish the law. If we are his children, having the same gospel faith, we shall not abolish it, nor wish it abolished. The gospel ceremonies, church ordinances, or ceremonial laws, by which he and ourselves exhibit our faith in Christ, are different; because he lived before the great offering for sin was made, and we since; but the moral law, which convicts of sin, and the plan of salvation through faith in Christ, repentance and obedience, or a return to moral rectitude, are precisely the same in both cases. Otherwise he and ourselves, being converted to different standards of moral rectitude, or right-doing, must have separate Heavens in which to dwell; for our characters would not agree. But if we have the same faith and repentance which he had, they will lead us to obey the same moral law that he obeyed. Our moral characters being formed by the same standard, we can dwell together in the same inheritance.

Abraham was rich; he had both the law and the gospel. Are we rich with the gospel alone, and that “another gospel,” a gospel that makes void the law of God, and leaves us without a rule of right-doing? without a law by which to form a character for that Judgment where all are to be judged by law (not gospel), according to the deeds done in the body? O ye law-abolishers! wherein do your boasted, gospel privileges exalt you above our father Abraham? Is it that you are at liberty to break that holy, just, and good law which his faith in Christ and the gospel led him to obey? Is this what you call the law of liberty? Better call it a law of license and licentiousness.

Ah! the sin-disease was never more prevalent than now. It arises from the transgression of the same holy laws; and all the gospels of health which propose a remedy without a change in the patient’s manner of living, without a return to those laws, the violation of which induced the disease, will prove to be false and deceptive; and all their boasted, “sovereign remedies,” not only worthless, but pernicious, hastening the blind recipient down to the gates of death. O my dear friend, go to the true Physician, accept of the only remedy, return to the only laws of health, and live.

You are afflicted with the malady that has been common to our entire race. The general symptoms, as I have said, are always the same, though the several symptoms differ in degree of intensity in different individual cases. The disease is known by any, and all, of the following symptoms: A disposition to have some other god, or object of supreme affection, in preference to our Creator; to deify and adore something that our own fingers have made; to use God’s name irreverently; to desecrate the day to our own selfish purposes, which he has reserved to his own especial honor; to dishonor parents by breaking away from their restraints in our youth, and neglecting them in their decrepitude and age; to injure our neighbor, defrauding him of his rights in respect to life, chastity, property, and reputation; with a general desire for things that belong to others.

Besides these general symptoms, it may be well to mention some special ones that are frequently manifested in those that are under treatment. In the first place then, there is sometimes a feeling of security in the patient, an idea that because he has applied to the Physician, he is past all danger. It is right to feel, and all should feel, an assurance that we are perfectly safe while we strictly follow the directions of our Physician; for he never lost a case, the management of which was fully committed to his care, and his instructions as to exercise, regimen, &c., fully heeded. It is the privilege of those that do so to rejoice in perfect confidence of complete triumph. “Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, Rejoice.” At the same time, “let your moderation be known unto all men.” Phil. iv, 4, 5. It is, certainly, a bad symptom for the patient to be in doubt and fear as to his case, distrusting the willingness and ability of the Physician. But when the feeling of security and freedom from danger inclines the patient to think it not necessary to be very particular in obeying the laws of health, it is a bad symptom and a certain sign of relapse, and unless something be done to counteract it, the patient is lost. To trust in the Physician, while we are not careful to follow his prescriptions and his directions in regulating our habits of life in accordance with the laws of our being, is folly and madness. Such trust is all in vain, and the sooner the patient knows it, the better.

Another bad symptom is the strange idea that has destroyed its thousands, who otherwise might have recovered, that the church, i. e., the great body of those who were supposed to be convalescent, or some one of their number in whom they choose to trust as the “Father and Doctor of all Christians,” has the power to change the laws of health at pleasure; so that a course of life that was once hurtful, is now not only safe, but conducive to health and necessary. The quacks of the dark ages favored this idea; and this has given rise to the familiar expressions, “old law” and “new law,” which we so often hear. “During the old law,” you hear them say, “such things were necessary to health; but now it is different, for invalids and doctors have substituted something else in their place.” Millions have been deceived, and lost their lives by this sort of quackery.

But no symptom can be more alarming than the insane idea in the patient’s mind, that the laws of health have all been abolished. When one under treatment takes this wild fancy, it is certain evidence that the disease is getting deeply seated on the brain, and that a terrible death is imminent, unless a speedy change of symptoms can be effected. It is easily discoverable that he is not in his right mind—that his reasoning faculty is gone, possibly, gone forever. You will hear him say that all the laws of health have been abolished, and yet that nine-tenths of them are just as good as ever; but that it was necessary, in order to get rid of one, to destroy the whole. We should certainly think that surgeon insane, who, in order to remove one sore finger, would cut off all that a man has, though he might propose to join them all on again but the sore one. And when one represents the Author of the laws of our being as performing a like act, we must, certainly, think him insane; and this is the most charitable construction we can put upon it.

My dear friend, arouse! Can you not hear the voice of the great Physician? “Think NOT that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I AM NOT come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle SHALL IN NO WISE pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” Matt. v, 17–20.

The kingdom of Heaven is the promised inheritance of all those who shall be fully restored from the sad effects of violated law, where they will ever live in perfect obedience to all the laws of health, glowing with the vigor of immortal youth and beauty. “Oh! give me a place in that kingdom, When life with its turmoil is o’er, Let me dwell with the King in his beauty, And I ask, oh! I ask for no more.”

AMEN! May it be your lot and mine to be there!