The tract on which the following remarks have been made was actually circulated by the Irvingite teachers amongst those for whose sakes they have been written. Although therefore they would elude the responsibility flowing from it by saying that it is not put out by authority, they may justly be held answerable for its contents. It is perhaps right it should be known, that the only thing which has such authority among them, which they call the record, is kept carefully from the knowledge and hearing of any but themselves. If their individual teachers say anything, they are not answerable for it, for they are not the Holy Ghost. If the Spirit said plain things early in their course, it was before the ordinances were set up; though one of their angels has asserted, that, if he taught palpable error, no one was to call it in question, for the sin it might occasion would rest upon him; yet, when any one might shew the unscripturalness of the statement, then an individual was not the Church nor the Holy Ghost. And if the Spirit spoke things which actually failed, then it was said no one. had a right to interpret what was said, for no prophecy was of private interpretation. This, connected with the denial of the competency of individuals to use scripture with profit alone, or any way but through their ordinances, gives a character to this matter with which we are but too familiar in this country.
This has gone so far as for their teachers to assert, in their stating what has been mentioned and being questioned, that if they taught that God was not manifest in the flesh at all, a Christian ought not to look to the scriptures to see if it was right, and that if he did, he would get no good out of it, for he had not the Spirit so as to be able, and none had but they. And, in another instance of a person in illness, they were reproved on being found reading the bible, and saying it was their only comfort there alone, for that the Church was between their soul and God; and they have gone so far as to desire some poor disciples not to pray for anything they were not taught by the angel to pray for, for it was making God a familiar spirit. They would commend the bible perhaps highly; but take it as the rule of faith which a believer is capable of using for himself, however he may benefit by others, and by which he is always bound to judge others when the occasion arises; and they will—perhaps I should not say they will— but they have constantly denied such competency, and reproved such use. The authority of the Church and the voice with them is the paramount thing.
It is a painful thing to be mingled up with evil, even in contention against it; but it is sometimes the duty of, because needful for, the saints.
The people called Irvingites have been plainly convicted elsewhere of so much false doctrine, false practice, and false prophecy, and that by many of the Church of God, as to make it, when known, a question only of preserving God’s children against the deceits and crafts of Satan. Here they are as strangers less known. It is not my intention to go over at length in this what has been already often taken notice of. They have here circulated one of their most plausible tracts; and therefore there is a plain ground to take up with them—and I do this the rather for this reason—they have been often charged with holding the sinful humanity of Christ, and many of their teachers and disciples have, to the writer of this and to other persons, avowed it—that He had the carnal mind, but kept it down or dead. Mr. Irving, bold and fearless in the statement of what he held, declared that his nature bristled with sin like quills upon a porcupine; and that the nature with which the Son of man was clothed poured forth from the centre of its inmost will streams as black as hell; and that the Augean stable of this nature was given Him to cleanse; and, what was most material, the spirit which they profess to be the Holy Ghost, though it might not sanction the language, expressly sanctioned the doctrine, the doctrine to which it gave its sanction being, that the law of sin was there all-present.
Now this was so plainly wicked and evil, and contrary to God’s word and Spirit, that they have, since they have been pressed with it, taken great pains, at least the subtler ones amongst them, to disclaim and deny this. I say the subtler ones; because it has been not long since avowed by some of their teachers to the writer of this. The way they have got over the Spirit’s having sanctioned it is, that they were not answerable for what was said, that is, in utterance by the Spirit, before the ordinances were set up. One of these very ordinances said to the writer of this, that the Spirit might have said it through prejudice to please Mr. Irving. I only mention this to shew the unhappy degradation to which men may be reduced by giving way to the leadings of an evil spirit. Another of their teachers confessed that damnable errors and blasphemous heresies had been taught by them at Cork and elsewhere. But few are aware of these, and many other, wretched inconsistencies which pass among them, and often tear the mind of those who are sincere among them: but who, having once given credit to the voice amongst them as the Holy Ghost, and submitted implicitly to the ordinances among them as the Church, are powerless in their hands, unless and until God, in His sovereign mercy, break the bands. And derangement and heart-breaking more than once have I known the fruit, while the testimony of those freed has been at once most sad and humbling as to what was there, though at first there may have been great form of joy and holiness. I say form; for, while there was that, it has never been heavenly or holy in its character or effects, where I have met with it, but the contrary: though I believe some holy persons have fallen into it. Deceit, worldliness, the sanction of evil tempers in those whose persons are held in admiration among them, along with the pretence of infallibility and the evil connected with that, are what I have met amongst them; nor, I may say, have I ever in any body of persons found such an entire want of truth, and so much subtlety and deceivableness. These may seem hard sayings, but I say them soberly, after painful and sorrowful discovery of it; for there are individuals among them whom I feel bound to believe are, and to love, and whom I do love dearly as, Christ’s sheep.
Now the tract which I have here noticed is one which most anxiously denies, and guards itself against, the evil doctrine noticed above; and having been actually circulated by them, there can be no charge of aggravation or prejudice, if subtlety, deceit, and real dishonour to our blessed Lord, be found to characterize it. But the real value of their attempt to screen themselves from the charge of this unholy and wicked doctrine may be seen, and what the value of their most direct and plausible denial of it is. To those who are acquainted with their teaching, as one of the pillars of their angels (such is his title) said to the writer—“a totally different gospel,” which it surely is, and another foundation. There are many passages in the tract whose evil and subtlety would be most plain, but I can notice only such here as would be plain to a stranger on the face of it; and I say that those who really know Christ must at once reject them altogether. The Lord keep others from the subtlety and power of Satan in them, or working by them.
I will state their own words, to give them the full value of their denial of the doctrine. For though several have confessed it to me and others, they do often openly deny it when charged with it.
“In His [Christ’s] human nature there was no inclination to sin, no stirring, no motion towards it, for He was dead to sin, being in humanity, as entirely and absolutely holy as Godhead is holy, and pure as Godhead is pure, so that, in the fullest sense in which the words can be taken, He could not sin.” “But,” the tract justly adds, “in knowing this we are not knowing all.”
Who would not say to this, What can be more satisfactory? So it might seem at first sight to the unwary, and those who knew not with whom they had to deal.
But first you must remark the terms, “He was dead to sin.” It is not in that He died, He died to sin once; therefore reckon yourselves, who have it in your nature, to be dead indeed unto sin. But while alive in the flesh He was so. Where was the sin He was dead to? They will tell you, at least they have told and written, in the nature He took, but not in His person.
Again, who would say that being holy in humanity did not mean His humanity being holy—or think in so plain a statement of so subtle a distinction? Hear their own words in this very tract. “All holiness since the fall has been a thing not according to,1but against, nature… Now this is what I mean, by regeneration holiness—not a holiness of humanity, but a holiness in humanity by the Holy Ghost. Such has been the holiness of all the saints of” God—of Abel, Enoch, Noah, &c, Samuel, and the prophets. And such was the holiness of Him who is not ashamed to call those saints His brethren. I know that our beloved Lord was holy from the beginning, but this by no means alters the matter.” It was then a holiness not according to, but against nature. We can now understand what His being dead to sin means, and in humanity holy.
This might be sufficient to shew their exceeding subtlety; and how little those not acquainted with their teaching can trust apparently satisfactory statements; but as it is wrought out through all the tract I will follow it through some of the passages it contains. And I only ask, whether this subtlety is the least like the guilelessness of the Spirit of Christ.
The consequences they draw in this very tract are most plain. It is a difference in degree merely, that of Chirst’s holiness and ours, not in kind. It can be realized in the members as in the head. The difference between the head and members existed between the members, but not to the same degree. Dwelling in the Father and the Father in Him meant abiding ever in the Father by faith, and having the Father abiding in Him by the Holy Ghost, and that He had not the fulness of the Spirit without a correspondent waiting on the Father, and we are to do likewise: and consequently, as the prince of this world came and found nothing in our head, he would find nothing in us either, if we only were, as our head desires to see us, filled with all the fulness of God.
Now all this really sets aside the person of Christ, and states sin to be in Christ in the flesh, or asserts that it may be out of ours, and both these latter points have been expressly taught to the writer, and Mr. Irving’s printed doctrine was that Christ’s work was not reconciling individuals, but human nature.
“If His human nature,” says Mr. Irving in another place, “differed by however so little from ours in its alienation and guiltiness, then the reducing it into eternal harmony with God hath no bearing whatever upon our nature, with which it is not the same.”
And that it was “of the substance and essence of the orthodox faith that Chirst could say, till the resurrection, Not I but sin that tempteth me in my flesh.”
He said also, that Christ suffered because He was in the condition of a sinner: and that if He were not, and God treated Him as if He had been so, God was a make-believe God.
And again, that Christ was made by His human nature inclined to all those things which the law interdicted.
One other passage of Mr. Irving’s writings I will advert to. He says, “I hold it to be the surrender of the whole question to say that He was not conscious of, engaged with, and troubled by, every evil disposition which inheriteth in the fallen manhood.”
Accordingly, their teachers still teach, that the life of the flesh may be put out of the flesh, and the life of Christ put into it; so that we may be perfect as Christ Himself. And some of their tracts state, that this is the only ground on which we stand in the judgment. Such is, in fact, the doctrine of this tract, which in page 23 states that the fallen nature, which, if left to follow its own propensities, could do nothing good, was in Christ proved capable of perfect goodness; and that the prince of this world would find nothing in us either if we were what our head desires to see us. Accordingly, though they speak of the blood, and justification by the blood, on examination they are found to hold that all the world are justified in it, and righteousness (as was stated to the writer by one of their chief teachers) imputed to the vilest unbeliever as much as to himself or any believer. The Christian will know how contrary to scripture all this is.
As regards likeness to Christ, the diligent reader of scripture will see that our likeness to Christ, when applied to this life, is always of walk, not of nature, or in Himself; and likeness to Himself is stated to take place when He appears, and, we being risen, sin is no more a part of our state at all.
I shall now follow each material page of the tract, and notice enough of its subtleties to shew its character.
Page 2. “In all things it behoved Jesus to be made like unto his brethren.”
“His brethren.” There is concealment here, and of a point on which the whole hangs.
“We His brethren.”
Who are we? The Church or men? Here again the point is like His brethren, and it is said “of the same Spirit of which we are born again was He born in humanity holy.”
What likeness is here? Were we born in humanity holy or sinful? Likeness to His brethren in His being born holy, and they being born again because they were born in sin? Or is our old nature born again? If we His brethren are the Church, this likeness does not affect the character of our old nature which was not born of the Spirit.
In setting forth Jesus as a man, how excluded is God manifest in the flesh! Surely this had something to do with setting forth Jesus as a man. How excluded that the Word was made flesh!
“Jesus abides in His Almighty Father by faith.”
Where does the scripture make such a statement as that? and “having the Father abiding in him by the Holy Ghost?”
Where is this in scripture? or where is divine union here? I read the Lord saying, “the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” The Holy Ghost is not the Father.
Page 3. The, scripture makes no such statement as this; but I reserve any remark till we come to the place where it is made use of. I will only remark, that to avoid the consequence that (to use the expression of this tract) “He inherited the poison” of the stock, their teachers have stated that Christ had not the life of a man in Him at all, and at least one of them, in terms, that God died.
He was by His mother surely in a certain sense sprung of man’s race; but He was conceived sinless of the Holy Ghost in human nature, and we clearly opposite. When scripture speaks in this wise, Adam is represented as one head and the second Adam another.
Though a branch of Jesse, and sprung of Judah, as to purpose and dispensation, He did not spring of it naturally, as every Christian knows.
Page 4. “We are all branches,” &c.
“His lovely holiness.” “Of this holiness we may be made partakers.”
Now the question is as to His humanity.
How can we be partakers of the holiness of His humanity? Is our manhood born of the Holy Ghost? What treachery of doctrine is it, under the plea of urging our being like Him in holiness, to conceal the difference that we are as branches born in sin? Our human nature is not born of the Holy Ghost; His was. His was “that holy thing which shall be born of thee;” ours is not. And we are to observe, that this is the whole point on such a subject as being a branch, and our being a branch, so that of this holiness we may be partakers. Can we, in the sinlessness of our human nature in its conception and birth? Is ours born a holy thing?
Page 5. Second proposition: “He sprang sinless, &c, by the Holy Ghost.”
Do we do so in our humanity?
“In His human nature,” &c.
Is that our case?
“Whence came this lovely holiness?”
This is the point.
“We are called to be like Him.”
In nature as to manhood? How so, when we are born in sin; He not?
“Unless we can tell how Christ was holy, we cannot tell how His holiness may be found in us.”
In flesh, in nature, or else it is quite different; or else it is the denial of the holiness of His nature.
“Do you ask me what it is to assign a false cause for the holiness of Jesus? I answer, to trace it to something which, in the very nature of things, can never be true of us.”
It never can be true of us that our human nature was born of the Holy Ghost; and that that which is born of our mother is sinless. This is the whole question.
“The holiness of Jesus a holiness to be realized in us.”
Is it in nature, in the flesh, not victory? or else, was His victory over sin in Himself? For ours is.
Page 6. “For when we are taught to believe,” &c.
“Holiness which God commands to be realized in us the members, in the same way as it was realized in Him the head.”
Had it not its source in something which never can be true of us? Was not the manhood born through the Holy Ghost? Are we God-men? It was realized in the head by sin’s never existing: is that the way it is realized in us?
“Common to say Jesus was holy because He was born of a virgin?”
No; but because He was born through the power of the Holy Ghost, which is left out here. What wickedness this is!
Again I say, it never can be true that they were born through the operation of the Holy Ghost. How is the great truth of the incarnation merged here!
These two pages, while they apparently deny in terms, most fully teach this most unholy doctrine in fact.
Page 7. “It behoved our Lord not to descend from Adam by ordinary generation.”
Do not we? Is not this a distinct source of holiness?
“The lovely holiness of the man Christ Jesus came from His birth in humanity of the Holy Ghost.”
Is not this a different source from us?
How is likeness to us first insisted on, and the truth kept back; and here the truth stated, and the necessary difference kept back! This is the subtlety and deceit of Satan.
“Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee.”
Could this be said of us? Is not the manner and source of holiness different? The Holy Ghost is not the source of our human nature as to birth; He was of Christ’s. This is all the difference. He was a man born of God as to His human nature. I am not: and this, I say, is all the difference. See the consequence, pages 11, 19.
“Because conceived and born of the Holy Ghost.”
Is not again this a different cause from us? Are we so? Could this “therefore” be used of us?
“The human nature of our beloved Lord was impeccable.”
Is this “to be realized in us as it was realized in Him the head?”
Page 8. “Cannot sin, because He is born of God.”
“These words have a partial fulfilment in every child of God.”
How as to His manhood?
“Evil resulting from the doctrine which leads us to trace the holiness of Jesus in humanity, either to His birth of a virgin, or to His having been in His other nature more than man.”
Again is left out His birth in human nature of the Holy Ghost. Then, as if this point was brought in, it “traces that holiness to His birth of the Holy Ghost.”
“This inspires us with the blessed hope of realizing conformity to Jesus. Because birth of the Holy Ghost is common to the members with the head, and so if the holiness of the head can be traced to this source, it is a holiness in which the members may hope to share.” Is birth of the Holy Ghost common to the members with the head in their human nature? Is there any community really of the members with the head as to their birth of the Holy Ghost, as to the question of their human nature, or of holiness in humanity?
“Because they have no miraculous birth, it by no means follows they have no birth.”
They have no birth as to their flesh, but death by the Holy Ghost; and there is just the opposition, “if Christ be in you, the body is dead.”
“There was a real work of the Holy Ghost upon Him conceiving Him holy.”
“Now the very same work is done upon the members!”
As to the body, is this true? “When we know that the lovely holiness of our head came from something which is also true of us.” Is it?
Page 9. “Be found holy branches.”
As to flesh is the question.
“The Father abiding in Him by the Holy Ghost.”
Where is this in scripture, or such a thought?
“In like manner, as we His members live by Him.”
“AS”—“SO.”
There is no emphasis in this. These words are not in the original.
“The life which we, whom Jesus hath sent, receive of Him; He whom the Father had sent received also of the Father.”
Where is this in scripture? It is not receiving but sustaining is spoken of.
“Oneness also in the manner of receiving it, as, so.”
There is no such thing really meant in the words.—Christ was speaking of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. How was this manner like, or one with the manner He received it of the Father?
Page 10. “Jesus abiding ever in the Father by faith, and having the Father abiding in Him by the Holy Ghost.”
But there was much more than this (the latter part is not in scripture), even eternal union, which is not in us at all. This is the point of christian faith, which is here set aside. This tract is a denial of Christianity in my mind altogether. Is “I am in the Father” merely abiding by faith? If not, why say it is the same, yea, one thing? Is it alike true?
Page ii. “He hath promised to us the same.”
Nay. He leaned on the living Father, we on the flesh and blood, that is, on death for us. The blood being shed out of the body and therefore spoken of as drunk. This is shocking perversion.
“This was the staff on which Jesus leant,” &c.
Is John 15 and John 6 the same thing? Did He live by eating the flesh and drinking the blood? Is it not the contrast that we lean as sinners. He in the same life in holiness?
“Nothing should be too hard for us that was not too hard for Him.”
Can we raise ourselves from the dead? What a comparison with Christ is this!
“Shut your doors, bow your knees to the Lamb.”
Why not to the Father in the Son’s name? The contrary of this is just what He means by “In that day ye shall ask me nothing; whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will do it.”
“Leaning on the same strength,” &c.
This is not the passage. Eating flesh and drinking blood is not the same as living by the Father.
Page 12. “For He had proved them all.”
Has He proved my sorrows under sin as to conflict? He did on the cross, where I wanted it. Had He sin dwelling in Him? I have. Had He sin dwelling in Him? Did birth by the Holy Ghost make no difference?
“Found in this estate.”
What estate? Sin in the flesh?
“Its weakness.”
But its sin, its sin, that is the question. His leaning on God in trial was perfection, and not sin.
Page 13, “Holy human nature, which God had prepared for Him.”
Is that true of us? Or, on the other side, being God-man?
“He had gotten pure from the Father’s hands.”
Is this true of us? Neither indeed is it scriptural in itself.
What follows is all shirking the point.
Page 14. Who questions all these testimonies of the word?
Page 15 I cannot acquiesce in, but it is immaterial.
Page 16. “It was a prayer for wisdom.”
Where is this in scripture?
It is common to say Jesus prayed as a man, but this is exceedingly incorrect language, and much calculated to mislead. “You do not imagine that the humanity of Jesus ever prayed of itself? “No, but it was not God prayed.
“The God-man prayed.”
Where is this in scripture?
How do men darken counsel by words without knowledge! If it were the God-man, it was all from a source of which I am devoid, for I am not a God-man. Perhaps we should remember, in setting forth Jesus as a man, pages 2, 3, we have merely the Father dwelling in Him by the Spirit, and thus He did the Father’s will. There is no part of the glory of Christ’s person which is not confused and set aside here.
The difference as to Arianism is much simpler and plainer. Arianism says, that Jesus our Lord was not the true God: and Christianity or the scripture says He was. The question in Arianism was not about trusting at all.
Page 17. As to justification and example, this is not the point at all: but raising, not the true objection, but a quite distinct question, and answering it, this is mere Jesuitry.
Page 18. “Having put away our sins in His blood; and as our representative, fulfilled all righteousness.”
Whose sins? Whose representative?
Page 19. “He was conceived and born holy, whereas we are conceived and born in sin.”
Is this a difference only in degree?
“He hath the pre-eminence.”
Was He in sin? Is that only in degree?
“A difference not in kind, but only in degree.”
Here is the point.
“For of the same Spirit of which He was sanctified in humanity” “His members are sanctified.”
What subtlety! Sanctified in humanity—was He born in sin?
“In this respect, there is no difference between Jesus and us, who are children of the Spirit.”
There is the difference of the flesh lusting against it in us, which was not in Him. This is not in degree, but in kind.
“But He was sanctified from the beginning, &c; but it is only a difference in degree,” &c.
How is the question of sin in the flesh dropped here! Could it have been said to Christ, “mortify therefore your members which are on the earth?” Was it not said to them to whom it was said, “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”?
Page 20. “If we cannot be expected to be like Christ, it makes useless all example together. I say this, because I am prepared to shew that the same difference, which we have now seen to exist between the head and the members, exists among the members themselves, though not to the same extent.”
Was not sin in the nature of all the members? Is it in the head? What abominable perversion and wickedness of Satan is this!
Were any of the members conceived in human nature of the Holy Ghost? What comes of the assertion, “that in His human nature there was no inclination to sin,” if difference be only in degree, and that there is the same difference between the members?
“It is said of John, that he was filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb,” &c.
What has being filled with the Holy Ghost officially, and as to prophetic calling, to do with having his human nature conceived of the Holy Ghost?
“Any example will fall to the ground if the principle be admitted, that if He whom we are called to follow had more of the Spirit than we have, we cannot be expected to be like Him.”
Is that all the difference in Christ? The tract says it is difference only in extent. Is not this denying the sinlessness of Christ in nature?
Page 21. “‘Go thou and do likewise.’ But if the principle we are thus exposing be unsound when applied to holy men, it is equally unsound when applied to the holiest of men, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Is not this making sin in Christ or none in us? “In Jesus of Nazareth you see the bright example of what manhood can be, and can do, by the grace of God anointing it, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in it.”
Is this sinful manhood as ours? if not, to what purpose is this evil subtlety? And what comes of Christ’s person? Was Christ an exhibition of what sinful manhood governed and mortified by the Holy Ghost is?
“If you say that He had a fulness of the Spirit which you have not, remember that He had not that fulness without a corresponding instant waiting on the Father.”
“When, therefore, at any time you are disposed to complain that God does not fill you with the Spirit whereas Jesus was always filled with Him, look on the Lamb spending nights in prayer; look on it, I say, and when you have looked on it, go you and do you likewise.”
Is any comment needed to shew the wickedness of this? Before Jesus entered on service at all, and was publicly anointed with the Holy Ghost, was there no difference between us and Him; not only as to the fulness of the Godhead in Him, but the sinless-ness of His human nature?
Page 22. “The tree having become corrupt, every branch springing from it inherits the poison, and, left alone, bears nothing but evil fruit.”
Every branch inherits the poison. Page 4 says, Jesus, His holy one, was a branch of Adam’s withered tree; and again, page 22, “for of this withered tree He sprang a branch. Nothing can be simpler, if men desire to know.”
Nothing, indeed. Every branch inherits the poison, and He sprang a branch—but was not left alone, and therefore did not bear nought but evil fruit.
“Holiness, since the fall, has been a thing not according to, but against, nature.”
Is that true of Christ?
“Such was the holiness of Him who is not ashamed to call these saints His brethren.”
What plainer?
“The holiness that was found in Him, He borrowed not from nature.”
What Jesuitry! Had He not it in nature? Have we? Was it not the native character of His humanity? Is it of ours?
“He sprang out of our common fallen stock.”
As we do?
We get now the worth of the earlier statements. The sting is in the tail; so ever with Satan’s deceit.
Page 23. “Last, but chief of all” “He sprang a branch.”
Did He inherit the poison? The rest did, though by the Holy Ghost they kept the power down.
“A fallen nature is one, which, left to follow its own propensities, will never do any good.”
Is that true of Christ’s nature? That is just the point.
“That it is capable of much goodness, Enoch and Elijah, Abraham and Moses, testify; that it is capable of perfect goodness, our beloved Lord testifies.”
Does He? St. Paul did not, but the clear contrary. He says, No good was in it, and it could not be subject to the law of God. No! What was in the saints was a new nature, not born of the flesh. Their fallen nature was born of the flesh, and was flesh; this was a new nature from God, through Christ, contrary to the old as scripture teaches. It lusted against the Spirit in them: could that be said of Christ? What Christ was in principle and character, the new nature is of itself, for it is Christ our life. There is the old besides in us.
Page 24. “Jesus, the branch, sprang of it sinless by the Spirit.”
Do we? If not, what folly do they mean?
“The Son of God could not have taken humanity save by the Holy Ghost.”
Do we?
“No humanity that was not conceived by the Spirit holy…could ever have been the humanity of the Father’s Holy One.”
Is that our humanity? Is there no difference in kind?
“You will be taught to look upon the purity of the Lamb, and the holiness which ever adorned Him, as a purity to which you might be conscious.”
That is, absolutely in nature without sin. It is not then distinctively true of Him that He knew no sin. We do not deceive ourselves if we say we have none!
“For, surely, as the prince of this world came and found nothing in your head, He would find nothing in you either, if you only were as your head desires to see you, ‘filled with all the fulness of God.’”
This is a worthy finishing to set aside the whole work and person of Christ; for we should be accepted on the same ground as He was, each in ourselves, according to this being what He was; and why not then?
For my own part, I do not see a single truth of Christianity connected with the person of Christ, our acceptance, and the character of our sanctification, which this tract does not deny. Though circulated to screen them from the charge of calling Christ’s humanity sinful, they cannot, without setting aside their whole system, set aside this, though they may deny it. It is (as one of their chief authorized teachers said) the hinge of the whole matter; and if we do not believe that, we believe nothing of their system—that is, that the carnal mind was in Christ, but that He kept it dead. That is the character of our holiness; and, as this tract states, it is realized the same way in the head and in the members.
1 The italics are not mine, but the tract’s.