Sword & Trowel 2019: Issue 1 What then are we to do? This:
repudiate all reasoning upon spiritual things as utterly worthless, and be- lieve with the simplicity of a child whatever God’s Word teaches. The apostles held firmly the revealed truth of a glorious and victorious Messiah, and they could not ‘har- monise’ with that fact a humiliated Messiah that would be crucified: the two things appeared to be altogether ‘inconsistent’ and contradictory. But to them Christ said, ‘O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken’ (Luke 24.25). That, my reader, should be a lasting warning to us of the utter inadequacy of human logic and philosophising upon divine things. We must turn from the vain reasonings of the Uni- tarian, and while holding fast to the unity of the divine nature, we must also believe there are three co-equal persons in the Godhead. We must turn from the vain reasonings of the Universalist, and while holding fast to the love of God, we must also believe in the eternal punishment of his enemies. And why? Because Holy Scripture teaches both. In like manner, we must turn from the vain reasonings (as in the above Articles of Faith) of the hyper-Calvin- ist, and while holding fast to the total depravity and the spiritual inability of the natural man, we must also believe in his moral responsibility and accountability to God. It is the bounden duty of God’s servants to tell the unregenerate that the reason why they cannot repent evangeli- cally is because their hearts are so wedded to their lusts; that the reason why they cannot come to Christ is
because their sins have fettered and chained them; that the reason why they hate the Light is because they love the darkness. But so far from this excusing them, it only adds to their guilt; that so far from rendering them objects of pity it exposes them as doubly deserving of damnation. It is the preacher’s business to show wherein spiritual inability consists: not in the lack of soul faculties, but in the absence of any love for him who is infinitely lovely. Far be it from us to extenuate the wicked unbelief of the unregenerate.
The compilers of the above Articles
of Faith were very largely influenced by a piece written by William Hun- tington in 1791, Excommunication: and the duty of all men to believe weighed in the balance. We have space to quote only one paragraph:
‘When Peter said, “Repent ye there- fore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3.19), he that is exalted to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins, sent his Spirit and Grace with the Word to work repentance and conversion in his own elect. And though they spoke the Word, promiscuously to all, yet he only spake it to his own. It was sent with the power of the Spirit. It never was sent with the Spirit of Faith to any but his own: “When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the Word of the Lord: and as many as were or- dained to eternal life believed” (Acts 13.48). This is the life-giving com- mandment of the everlasting God, in the mouth of Zion’s King. But what effect has it, or what power attends it, from the mouth of Mr Ryland or the mouth of Mr Fuller, when they make it the rule of a
Duty Faith – by A W Pink page 21
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