Sword & Trowel 2015: Issue 1
PARADOXES & SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS IN THE CHRISTIAN
H
ERBERT PALMER, a great man in the Westminster Assembly of Divines, issued
a pamphlet entitled, The Character of a Christian, in Paradoxes and Seeming Contradictions. These paradoxes were tagged on to an edition of Bacon’s Remains, and became mistakenly ascribed to him. A B Grosart of Kinross, a Puritan devotee of the 19th century, republished these para- doxes with other writings of Herbert Palmer. The Puritans amused themselves interpreting hard texts and solving experimental mysteries hour after hour. At times they enjoyed sharpen- ing their wits and exercising their ingenuity by composing apparent contradictions, which were neverthe- less matters of clear understanding to illuminated minds. No theme is so common in their paradoxes as the spiritual state of the believer. Certainly, this theme is so complex, so diverse, and so unique that it is a wonderful riddle to Christians.
Paradoxes
1. A Christian is one who believes things which his reason cannot com- prehend… 2. Who hopes for that which neither he, nor any man alive, ever saw…
by Herbert Palmer 1601-47
Master of Queens’ College, Cambridge
3. Who labours for that which he knows he can never attain. 4. Yet in the outcome, his belief ap- pears not to have been false; hope makes him not ashamed; labour is not in vain. 5. He believes Three to be One, and One to be Three; a Father not to be older than his Son, and the Son to be equal with his Father, and that One proceeding from both, is fully equal to both. 6. He believes in one nature three persons, and in one person two natures. 7. He believes a virgin to have been a mother, and her Son to be her Maker. 8. He believes him to be born in time, who was from everlasting, and him to be shut up in a narrow room, whom Heaven and earth could never contain. 9. He believes him to have been a weak child carried in arms, who is the Almighty; and him to have died, who alone has life and immortality in himself. 10. He believes the God of all grace to have been angry with One who never offended him; and the God who hates all sin, to have reconciled to himself those who sin continually,
Paradoxes & Seeming Contradictions in the Christian page 29
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