Providential Character of the Standard of the Christian Religion

    In giving a standard for the guidance of all ages in the doctrines, precepts, and ordinances of Christ, we would have naturally expected that all would have been drawn up in a formal, full, and precise system by the apostles. No such thing is found in the New Testament. All things are brought forward as circumstances called for; and they are taught in words, not in a regulated system. The epistles of the apostles contain the doctrines, precepts, and ordinances of the Christian religion as occasion demanded at the time; and all ages are left to find the truth by tracing their steps. Every thing is brought forward in a way of Providence. This is admirable wisdom; this is the wisdom of God. It leaves a standard, while it apparently neglects a standard. While there is no formal symbol of divine truth, there is not a truth, nor duty, nor ordinance of Christ, which, in the words and scattered hints of Scripture, is not taught with sufficient evidence. Can there be a stronger demonstration of the divine original of the Scriptures? Surely this book cannot be a human production, when no man, learned or unlearned, would have followed the same plan.

    The wisdom of God farther appears in this providential manner of revelation by hiding God from the wisdom of the wise, while he is seen by babes and sucklings, who renounce their own wisdom, and implicitly follow Christ. Is it not notorious that many learned men can find no standard in Scripture for many things that must be practised one way or other? Because there is no system or regulated symbol of worship, they think that they are, in many things, left to their own discretion. The epistles of the apostles were occasioned by the state and circumstances of the churches or individuals to which they are written. They are, therefore, as some think, mere letters of business, which are, indeed, in some measure, to guide us, but only by a discriminating application. Hence the never-ending variety in the ceremonial forms of worship under the Christian name, according to the different views of an enlightened and discriminating imitation of the first churches. Hence, in the wisdom of God, occasion was given for the rise and progress of the Man of Sin. That monster was predicted by the Spirit of inspiration, and will ultimately serve, with every thing else, to contribute to the exhibition of the divine glory. The Spirit of truth hath given a perfect standard; but, by the divine wisdom, the character of that standard is of such a nature, as to afford occasion of evasion to disaffection and human wisdom.

    For the occasion of the full, and clear, and strong exhibitions of the doctrine of justification, for instance, we are indebted to the Jewish opposition. With immediate and especial reference to the Jews, Paul discusses this subject at large in his Epistle to the Romans. From this treasure the children of God enrich themselves with a never-ending increase of wealth. But, from the character of revelation to which I have referred, the enemies of justification, solely by faith in Jesus Christ, take occasion to invent evasions. Socinians, Arians, Arminians, with all the enemies of the pure gospel, tell us that Paul, as addressing Jewish error, must not be understood to mean the moral law, but the ceremonial law, or the judicial law; or that he meant not good works as conditions of justification on our part, but works of law as meritorious of pardon. In like manner, upon every other subject, enemies will find something to allege from the peculiar manner of revelation. Now, men would think this a defect in revelation; but in the Divine discovery of the will of God, it is a perfection. It manifests the disaffection of the heart of man to the things of God. It would really be a defect in human law; for human law is not to detect the state of the heart, but to regulate conduct only. The Divine law is to regulate the conduct in such a way as to discover the state of the heart. Such, then, is the wisdom of God in the providential way in which the standard of the Christian religion is regulated.