Untitled article | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1859

PERPETUITY OF THE MORAL LAW NO. 3.

If the dust and smoke of explosion of No. 3, as found in another column, on this subject, has somewhat cleared away from the mind of the reader, we will venture cautiously to explore the field, and estimate, if possible, the amount of damage that has been done. Bro. S. can hardly be expecting a reply from one who has been so often 'nailed down and clinched,' 'stranded,' 'transfixed,' and 'swept by the board.' But whatever may be our condition in his eyes, we are not personally conscious of having suffered any more disability from the 'fish-hook' attacks to which we have been subjected, than our friend is inclined to think accrued to Adam from the fall. We will however try the strength of these cords with which our friend has endeavored to bind us. Perhaps they will prove before the truth, as weak and powerless, as certain green withs and new ropes did upon one of old. (See Judg. xvi, 6-12; and let not any one suppose we make this comparison in reference to anything but truth.) And perhaps upon examination, we shall find that, in reality, there is nothing there; but that our friend occupies in some measure, the position of the man who endeavored to build his chimney from the top; he found some difficulty in making the first brick stick.

He attributes to us certain 'flings,' and reminds us that they are 'cheap commodities.' Now we are conscious of having dealt in no cheaper articles than Bro. S. himself. He has met point after point, as the reader is aware, with nothing but his bare assertion. We can suggest to him, if he has not been aware of it before, that all such arguments are far below par here at the 'mint;' and so far as we can learn, they are in no better repute with our readers. He asks with some surprise if he caused us to raise the points of Repentance before faith, Adam's inability, and the ten commands in the garden? We reply, Yes, and leave the candid reader to judge whether we raised a single point, in our first reply, not relevant as an answer to his article. We did not say that it was inconceivably possible to discuss these points, but that his remarks about the 'apples,' forbidden fruit, &c., were so; and he has done nothing as yet to correct the impression. As he seems to regard it however as an unchristian fling, we refer to it once more. In his article, No. 2, (see Vol. xiii, 25) he remarks, 'I must go upon the supposition then that the term 'the law,' . . . means the law regulating the relation existing between the fleshly Adam and the literal fruit of the garden of Eden.' 'Then the obedience of the law was eating apples and not eating of the forbidden tree.' Again referring to our inquiry concerning the law after the fall, he says, 'What law? Why, the law given to Adam, regulating his eating apples in the garden.' Now what have 'apples' to do in this matter? Where does he find any law about 'apples;' that Adam should eat 'apples' while abstaining from the forbidden tree. To limit the term law to that test of Adam's obedience not to partake of a certain tree, and then endeavor to make us say that the same prohibition is the test of character now—if such talk and such a course is not puerile—if not inconceivably so, at least beyond anything we have yet conceived of—we mistake the meaning of the term. We are almost prepared to hear him next exclaim with Volney, 'Is it just that God should damn a whole race because a man and woman ate an 'apple' about six thousand years ago?'

W. G. S. must be well aware that we believe the moral law to be contained summarily in the ten commandments, as uttered by the voice of God from Sinai; and that we believe that Adam and all men previous to the time of that promulgation, were as amenable to that law as any people have been since. Does he take exception to this belief? If so, why does he not state his reasons for so-doing? He well knows, if he has carefully examined Bro. Waggoner's work on the Law of God, which was the subject of his attack in the opening of this discussion, that we can show from the Bible that the principles of all these commandments were in existence and well understood by mankind previous to their utterance from Sinai. Does he object to this position? If so, let him refuse our arguments on this point, and give proof on the other side. And until he does thus disprove this testimony, it is altogether a waste of ammunition for him to endeavor to show from secondary considerations that they originated at Sinai.

As to general principles he thinks the Bible is of sufficient authority as umpire. So do we, most assuredly; but at the same time we want to know what position our opponent occupies. When we are called upon to abandon our present position, we want to know what position we are to take in the place of it. It is not enough for us to be dislodged from where we are, and set adrift upon the wide ocean; but if a man has a better craft than ours, we wish him to bring it up alongside, which he will be willing to do, that we may test its superiority, and have something to stop upon when we abandon our own. But this is not the course of W. G. S. He does not come out fairly and frankly and state his position that all may clearly see and keep in view the principles between which lies our controversy. Some few isolated particulars, to be sure, he has mentioned, and left us to infer some others; but his main effort, thus far, has consisted in hurling missiles at our belief, out of the dark and hidden recesses of his own. Is this the course of an honest seeker after truth, who between two conflicting principles is anxious to know and embrace the right?

We have no desire to heighten the unenviable light in which he has placed himself by his treatment of the six questions; but one of them we cannot forbear to notice. If man had never broken the law would he have needed a Saviour? This, says W. G. S., is a foolish and unlearned question. It is foolish then to inquire into the plan of salvation to learn its cause? It is foolish to inquire the reason of our present condition and why and from what we need a redemption? Foolish to inquire what made it necessary for the Saviour to come down and die for our perishing race? 'Show me the book,' says W. G. S., 'which tells what would have been if Adam had not violated the law.' Is there a reader of the Bible who does not know that sin is the transgression of the law, and that sin is the ruin of our race, the cause which makes a Saviour necessary? and that if the cause had not existed the effect could not have followed, and the remedy would have been unnecessary? Oh, but this is a foolish and unlearned question! And thus he dismisses the subject. Shame on such trifling!

'The Sabbath,' says our friend, 'was not a moral commandment.' Moral laws are those which 'prescribe to men their religious and social duties; in other words, their duties to God and to each other.' Webster. W. G. S. then takes the position that the Sabbath commandment did not prescribe to men any duty to God! He gives us his assertion, and that only, as proof. But all such proof (?) we disposed of in the commencement of this article. The Sabbath, if moral, as we learn, not only from the above definition, but also from the fact of its being placed by God himself in the very bottom of a moral code; and whatever he affirms to the contrary, we deny and challenge him to the proof.

In regard to the two laws, our friend is going to show some law abolished; and he doubtless flatters himself with the hope that he can show some law to be off law. We however take our stand upon the broad distinction which the Bible recognizes between those laws which define universal obligation, and are of course of universal and perpetual application, and those which are local and ceremonial in their nature, and we have no misgivings about the issue here. It seems to us that all who carefully read the word of God, must be aware of this distinction. We wait with some curiosity for his attempt to break it down.

If he copies from the fantastic efforts of those who have before him labored for the same end, the friends of truth may expect a rare treat. It will be time enough for us to come to the defense of this part of the edifice, when we shall see it particularly attacked.

In reference to our proof that the Sabbath was made and sanctified in Eden, he exclaims, 'Was it sanctified as the Sabbath then?' (!) What a flash of light is this! What sublime reasoning! The Sabbath was sanctified in Eden, but was it sanctified as the Sabbath then! In our last we brought up, as an illustration, the sanctification of Mt. Sinai on a certain occasion. That sanctification consisted in telling the people how to regard it, i. e., not to come near nor touch it. But really was it set apart as a mountain not to be touched then? Perhaps, after all, it was not till 2500 years after that, that people were to refrain from touching it as a sanctified mount!! That the Sabbath was sanctified in Eden, our friend admits. To sanctify is to set apart to a religious use. He cannot deny this definition. Now for whose religious use was the Sabbath set apart? God certainly did not need it for any such purpose; and our Lord informs us, according to Mark, that it was made for man. For the religious use of man, then, the Sabbath was set apart in Eden. Now will our friend be so kind as to tell us what religious use man did make, or could have made, of it, except to keep it as a Sabbath? And if it was not sanctified as the Sabbath then, will he please tell us when and where it was sanctified as such? for we challenge any man to point to any other record, or any other period, of its sanctification. Yet our friend denies that our Lord's declaration that the Sabbath was made for man, applies to the Sabbath when it was made, and to supply the deficiency thus created, he treats us to the barefaced assertion that God made it, and set it apart unto himself! Where does he learn this? Nowhere: it is groundless assertion; a mere shift to get over a difficult spot.

But hear him further: 'God did set this day apart as a peculiar day unto himself; not only to divide time into weeks (as there was no natural division of this kind) but to be ominous in its bearings, of the thunders and awful grandeur of Sinai!' Reader, what can we expect next? It was set apart 'to be ominous in its bearings, of the thunders and awful grandeur of Sinai.' We might here declaim, and multiply exclamation points after the manner of our friend; but our loftiest efforts would only detract from the 'ominous' sublimity of this declaration. We will only remark in passing that it is not always because a proposition is deep that we cannot see the bottom of it; for a little mud is equally effective in that respect.

But seriously, let our friend look well to his position as relating to Eden. The Sabbath in Eden is a nail in a sure place. The declarations of God's word are plain and unequivocal here, and cannot be invalidated nor set aside. Being made before the fall, there is of course nothing typical or ceremonial in its nature. Will he pass on, and leave such a magazine of truth as this behind him uncaptured? If so, we can promise him warm work in the rear as he advances, and forewarn him, that this is more than sufficient to blow into invisible atoms every theory which he can fabricate in the wilderness of Sin.

But it may be expected that we notice some of his arguments touching the institution of the Sabbath after the exode. He says the facts on which the command is based had not all transpired till that time. He greatly mistakes here. There is not a fact recorded in the word of God, as entering into, or in any wise affecting, the institution of the Sabbath, except such as took place at the close of the first week of time. From this point, as might be expected, he jumps

to the vth of Deuteronomy. Why did he not stop at Ex. xx, where God pronounced with his own voice, not only the law, but the facts and reasons on which it is based? We can answer for him: Because an appeal to that scripture would have been fatal to his attempt to base the Sabbath upon the deliverance from Egypt.

He therefore passes over the law itself, as uttered and written by God, and goes to Deut. v, which is but a rehearsal by Moses of the principal events of Israelitish history, forty years this side of Sinai. Did the Israelites keep the Sabbath forty years, before they knew all the facts upon which it was based? Their deliverance from Egypt where they could not keep the Sabbath, might be urged upon them with peculiar force as a reason for its observance; but to make this a fact on which the institution is based, is shown to be wrong from the fact that it will not hold on other points. See Deut. xxiv, 17, 18. Here we find a command to the Israelites not to pervert the judgment of the stranger nor of the fatherless, nor take a widow's raiment to pledge, but to remember that they were bondmen in Egypt, and the Lord redeemed them from thence; 'therefore,' reads the record, 'I command thee to do this thing.' Now can we suppose that obligations to be merciful to the widow, the afflicted and poor, were based upon the deliverance from Egypt, and binding upon those only who were connected with that deliverance? No more so than in regard to the Sabbath. But in both cases the fact that they had been bondmen and strangers in Egypt, and God had granted them a glorious deliverance, might be urged as peculiar motives why they should be faithful to him in these respects.

Our friend quotes Ezekiel and Nehemiah as proving that the statutes and commandments, including the Sabbath, which were given to Israel in the wilderness were unknown to men before. If this is the meaning of those passages, and these principles were before unknown, he is bound by every rule of fair disputation to tell us what the condition of mankind was, previous to that time, in reference to law, what rule of life they had to walk by, and by what they will be judged at last; for he has admitted that every dispensation must have its standard of character. But this is not the intent of these passages; and in endeavoring to make out his case he has fallen into Nehemiah's snare as many have before him. He contends that the expressions 'gavest' and 'madest known,' signify that the things so made known were before unknown, or did not exist. Now hear Nehemiah in reference to the Sabbath: 'Thou camest down also upon mount Sinai, . . . and madest known unto them thy holy Sabbath.' Now does this mean that the Sabbath was unknown before they came to Sinai? Stop! we learn by Ex. xvi, that they had it enforced upon them nearly a month at least, before they came to that place. Therefore the expression, 'madest known,' is not to be understood as signifying that it was before unknown, and was then first brought to their knowledge. What then is its meaning? We answer, It must refer to the public proclamation and writing of the law which then took place.

One more remark upon Nehemiah: He does not say in chap. ix, 13, 14, that God made known the Sabbath by the hand of Moses. There are two classes of laws plainly brought to view in his testimony. 1. 'Thou . . . gavest them right judgments and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and madest known unto them thy holy Sabbath.' This is one class, which God himself directly made known to the people, from the summit of Sinai. 2. The other class is brought to view by this language: 'And commandest them precepts, statutes and laws by the hand of Moses thy servant;' referring directly to their local and ceremonial laws which were written, not by the finger of God on stone, but by the hand of Moses in a book. Ex. xxiv, 4; Deut. xxxi, 9, 36. Our friend will therefore please take notice that the testimony he has adduced, is something that it devolves upon him, not us, to 'get away from if he can.'

In relation to the covenant, W. G. S. stumbles again. What was the covenant which was made with Israel, [Deut. v,] but not with the fathers? Was it the ten commandments? We will see. A covenant is a mutual agreement between two parties. The agreement between God and Israel which constituted the covenant here referred to, is found in Ex. xix, 5, 6, God there agreed, if they would obey his voice, &c., to make them a peculiar people unto him. They agreed to do it. He then spoke in their hearing the ten commandments as the basis or conditions of the covenant, which they were to fulfill on their part; and if they did this they should be to him a peculiar people. These commandments being the basis of the covenant, are sometimes put for the covenant itself, or are called the covenant commanded, as in Deut. iv, 13. These commandments Israel did not keep, hence the covenant was broken. What does God say then? See Jer. xxxi, 31-34. 'Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah . . . I will put my law (the basis of the former covenant) in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people,' &c. This new covenant was made at the first advent. It was confirmed to Israel and Judah by the Messiah and his apostles for one week. Dan. ix, 27; Heb. ii, 3. The Jews then having as a nation rejected it, the apostles turned and offered its blessings to the Gentiles. Acts xiii, 46, 47. And in this new covenant, the law—that which God could call in the days of Jeremiah, 'my law,'—so far from being blotted out and abolished, is written in the hearts of believers. And our Lord Jesus Christ, the minister of this covenant, when he came into the world to establish it, said: 'I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.' Ps. xl, 6-8; Heb. x, 5-7. And a prophecy that heralded his coming [Isa. xlii,] declares plainly, not that he should abolish the law, and nail it to his cross, but that he should magnify and make it honorable. Verse 21.

With much assurance Rom. ii, 14, is quoted, to prove, we presume, that the Gentiles had nothing to do with the law there spoken of. But did not W. G. S. notice the declaration that verse contains, that the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law? and show the work of the law written in their hearts? The law of God, then, is the law of nature. And does he suppose that there was ever a solitary Gentile who did by nature any of the ceremonial requirements of the Jews? He cannot suppose it. Then here is some law, a law, too, given to the Jews [verse 17,] vividly distinct from all the ceremonial and typical requirements of their national polity. The Jews' having the law in distinction from the Gentiles who are spoken of as not having it, can only refer to their being made the depositaries of the written code. But we can show from Genesis that the knowledge of the law of God was general in the earth, long before it was set down in writing on Sinai. For more on this point we refer him to Waggoner on the Law, pp. 46-48.

In reference to our ability to obey God acceptably, of ourselves, he seems still inclined to doubt. He makes no attempt to dispose of the text we brought up on this point, viz., Rom. viii, 7. To this we will now add another equally explicit, namely, John xv, 5: 'Without me ye can do nothing.' If these two passages do not refer to 'power' and 'ability,' we know not what language could. He presumes we believe in 'total depravity;' and so we do, when by that term is meant simply our inability to render, unaided by Christ, acceptable obedience to God.

We regret his perversion of our language about being released from the law as a conditional covenant of life. He endeavors to make 'covenant' read 'rule,' but cannot. We expressly guarded against this perversion in article No. 1, where we were particular to state that we are not released from the law, as a rule of moral obligation. This has been sufficiently explained already.

A final remark on repentance and faith. Another grand distinction is here ignored by the negative. We claim, then, that there is a wide difference between the assent of our judgment and reason to certain facts, and that faith in Christ which the Bible requires as a condition of acceptance with him. We may believe all the great facts of the gospel, and yet have no faith nor interest in Christ as our Saviour. There are doubtless thousands in our land who have no doubt of these facts, who have yet to obey the injunctions to repent, believe and be baptized, ere they can become members of the fold of Christ. As to belief as a mere admission of great facts, we read that 'the devils also believe and tremble;' [Jas. ii, 19.] but who believes that they have taken the first step towards justification? We have now done with this point, because it is immaterial to the question at issue whether it comes first or last. It is enough for us, and fatal enough to our friend's theory, that repentance is required as one of the conditions of justification through Christ, whatever may be its order; for repentance supposes sin; and 'sin is the transgression of the law,' not of the gospel.

To be dead to sin and dead to the law are one and the same thing. But we are only dead to sin when living in perfect obedience to the law; for the moment we transgress the law, we are again in sin. 1 John iii, 4. To be under the moral law is to be under its condemnation. Rom. iii, 19. We say then with our friend, let us not live any longer 'thereunder,' let us not live in sin; and we avoid both these conditions, so long as we live in obedience to God, having had our past transgressions pardoned through Christ.

The treatment which our questions have received at the hands of the negative, places us under no obligation to notice the three appended to his present article. But as we have no disposition to retaliate, we will give them a fair consideration.

'1. Must we comply with the commands of the law in order to our justification through Christ?' Ans. We have abundantly shown that we must.

'2. Must we comply with the commands of the gospel in order to our justification by Christ?' Ans. The gospel is good news of salvation through Christ. It is placed, of course, like all other blessings, upon conditions; and all the commands contained in the conditions we must of course comply with. This is what we understand to be meant by the expression, obeying the gospel. 2 Thess. i, 8.

'3. Is Christ our divine lawgiver?' Ans. He is not. There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Jas. iv, 13; Isa. xxxiii, 22. And between this lawgiver and man the lawbreaker, stands Christ as our advocate and mediator. 1 Jno. ii, 1.

P. S. We would inquire of Bro. S. how many more articles he will want in which to state his objections, or lay before us his position? And as the REVIEW is limited in its dimensions, and a reply cannot be put in any less space than an objection, we would request him to be as brief as consistent with a fair and concise statement of his views.