False Positions by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 6, 1864

False Positions.

By R. F. Cottrell

FALSE and untenable positions and fallacious arguments injure, instead of aiding, any cause; and though the cause which they are intended to advance is a good one, yet those who resort to such things would do much better not to undertake its advocacy. They may imagine that the truth stands very much in need of their help, but it would be much more obliged by their silence.

I am led to these remarks from the fact that our factious and captious friend, Mr. Hicks, in a recent article in the Sabbath Recorder, has revealed a plan for "effectively upsetting," (to use his own words,) the law-abolishing argument founded upon 2 Cor. iii, by denying that the stones in which the ministration of death is said to be written and engraven, were the two tables of testimony which Moses brought down from Sinai, and asserting that it refers to the stones of the altar which Joshua built, (Josh. viii, 30–32,) which were rough, unhewn stones, and a "copy of the law of Moses" written on them.

Paul's language, interpreted by Mr. Hicks, would read thus:

But if the ministration of death, written by Joshua in the plaster that covered the great stones which he set up in mount Ebal, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, forty years before, when he came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of stone in his hand on which was "the writing of God, graven upon the tables;" which glory was to be done away; how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious?

Now when opponents of the law of God can be made to see that this is the true meaning of the apostle's language, they will doubtless be ready to acknowledge his as an upsetting argument. It is something like the position of some opposers of the Sabbath, that God blessed and sanctified the day 2500 years after he rested upon it. It is surprising that the editor of the Recorder should publish such a position without note or comment. I think his readers ought to know whether he endorses it or not. I do not recollect of this plea being put forth by any S. D. Baptist.

But should the people utterly fail to see that that which is characterized by Paul, as being written and engraven in stones, was not the writing upon the tables of stone which Moses held in his hands when the skin of his face shone, but something written upon plastered stones forty years afterward, the position taken by Mr. Hicks would only serve to bring ridicule and contempt upon the truth which he professed to advocate.

Mr. Hicks seems to regret exceedingly that the Lord has no one to do his work and to defend his cause as it should be. He seems to be in a similar case with Absalom when he said, "Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!"

But Israel could well have spared the rebellious son of David, and the cause of truth can well afford a furlough to positions and arguments like the above.

R. F. COTTRELL.