Discourses XXII. XXIII. And XXIV
I have dwelt much in these Sermons upon the fact that our Lord treated His disciples as a body, and as a holy body. Many persons, as soon as they hear remarks of this kind, exclaim—‘Oh, yes; we have often heard that doctrine of corporate holiness set forth before. But it seems to us the very destruction of personal holiness. It involves every ecclesiastical fiction; Romanism is at the bottom of it.’
When statements of this kind are made honestly and earnestly, I am glad to hear them. Abhorrence of fictions we should take all pains to cultivate in others and in ourselves. Whatever tends to the weakening of personal holiness, let it have what logical consistency it may, must be false. And that there is a doctrine about corporate Christianity, corporate faith, corporate righteousness, which is open to these charges, I, at least, can have no doubt. I should not say that Romanism was at the bottom of it; but rather that it is at the bottom of Romanism, in so far as Romanism is an immoral system, and one that deposes Christ from His rightful dignity.
1. Let me explain myself upon each of these points. To suppose a society—call it a Church or what you will—constituted holy by an arbitrary decree of God, its members remaining unholy, I hold to be a most dangerous fiction; one which we cannot too vehemently repudiate, as alike condemned by experience, by reason, and by Scripture. Experience testifies that when a nation or a Church claims a holiness or a righteousness of its own, it becomes practically most unholy and unrighteous in all its acts and purposes. Reason declares that it must be so, because righteousness is predicable only of voluntary beings, and that to be made righteous by an arrangement is impossible in the nature of things. Scripture declares that it must be so, because God is holy; and the holiness of man is only possible by the participation of His nature. But is it the same thing to assert that God has constituted man holy in His Son; that all unholiness is the result of the selfish desire of men to have something of their own, and not to abide in God’s order; that a Church is the witness of the true constitution of man in Christ; that every Churchman, therefore, by his position and calling, is bound to say that he is only holy as a member of a body, and holy in its Head; that every Churchman who does not say this, who thinks that it is his individual holiness which helps to make up the Church, is setting up himself, and imitating the sin for which our Lord denounced the Pharisee? Does experience, does reason, does Scripture, protest against this doctrine? Is not experience in favour of it, inasmuch as it testifies that every true patriot has lived and died for his nation, and has renounced himself; that every true Churchman has lived to claim his own blessings for all men, to declare that he himself, as an individual, was worthy of none of them? Is not reason in favour of this doctrine, seeing that it affirms a voluntary creature to be a mere curse to himself till he confesses a law which is above himself, and gives up his self-will that he may have a free-will? Is not Scripture affirming, in every line, that God has chosen families, nations, Churches; and that these are holy because He is holy; and that those who go about to establish a holiness or righteousness of their own have not submitted to His righteousness?
2. I have anticipated the answer to the second question. Personal holiness is weakened, nay, is destroyed, by everything that could lead a man to think that it was fictitious in him, or that God was sanctioning a fiction. And therefore it is greatly imperilled by any notions which speak of the individual man having a righteousness imputed to him, in consequence of his faith, which is not truly and actually his. But this fiction is not the consequence of maintaining the doctrine I am asserting; it becomes inevitable when we deny that doctrine. If by the very law and constitution of His universe God contemplates us as members of a body in His Son, we are bound to contemplate ourselves in the same way. We have a righteousness and holiness in Christ. We have no right to deny it; our unrighteousness is the very effect of denying it. Imputation of righteousness then becomes no fiction. It means only that God beholds us as we are, as we have not learnt or do not choose to behold ourselves. The fiction has arisen because the truth has been denied.
3. When I speak of a Church, St. Paul tells me to speak of a body. He pursues the analogy, we all know, into its details; he speaks of head, and feet, and hands, of functions assigned to each, of sufferings passing from one to another, of a life circulating through the whole. Everything here is living and real. You turn the body into a corporation, a certain thing created by enactment, without parts, functions, life; you attribute to the dead thing what is true of the living thing—to the decapitated trunk what was true of that which derives all its strength and virtue from its head; then, indeed, you are involved in a series of falsehoods, each more monstrous than the last; or, to speak more modern and courteous language, in a series of developments, each preserving a family likeness to its ancestor, the very last and most prodigious being able to prove its descent from the notion out of which they all started. Once suppose it possible for the Church to exist out of Christ, and for humanity to exist out of Christ, and a Church which thinks this may impose anything it pleases upon those who belong to it. Nothing would be restrained from it which it had imagined to do, if its first maxim were not a falsehood, if Christ did not reign in spite of the determination of His subjects to set up another ruler.
4. I have given an outline of what I believe to be the Romish system; and surely it is a system which may obtain a hold over England, as well as over any country in the world. Nay, must it not obtain a hold if we have nothing to set up against it but the notion of a Church, compounded of a number of men believing themselves to be holy, and despising others? Romanism is the fearful parody of Christian Unity. This is the absolute denial that any such Unity exists or is possible. When the Son of God and the Son of Man is manifested, the parody and the denial will perish together.
A friend has suggested to me a punctuation of the 2d verse of the 17th chapter, which would enable us to translate it: ‘That He should give to them all which Thou hast given Him, (even) eternal life.’ This version seems to me at least worthy of serious consideration.
The End