plying Christ, and his righteousness held forth in the promise of the gospel, and resteth thereupon for pardon of sin, and for the accepting and accounting one's person righteous before God for salvation; the which, how faith can do without some measure of the confidence or appropriating persuasion we are now upon, seems extremely hard to conceive. Upon these considerations, and others too long to be here inserted, we cannot but think, that confidence, or trust in Jesus Christ, as our Saviour, and the free grace and mercy of God in him as crucified, offered to us in the gospel for salvation (including justification, sanctification, and future glory), upon the ground and security of the divine faithfulness, plighted in the gospel-promise; and upon the warrant of the divine call and command to believe in the name of the Son of God; or, which is the same in other words, a persuasion of life and salvation, from the free love and mercy of God, in and through Jesus Christ; a crucified Saviour offered to us upon the security and warrant aforesaid, is the very direct, uniting, justifying, and appropri ating act of faith, whereby the convinced sinner becomes possessed of Christ and his saving benefits, instated in God's covenant and family."

5. The Purity-men disliked the doctrine that God had made a free gift and grant of Christ to all mankind, as savouring of universal redemption. The Marrow-men, while they believed the purchase and application of redemption to be peculiar to the elect, held that the warrant to believe was common to all

men.

"By the deed of gift or grant unto all mankind, we understand no more than the revelation of the divine will in the Word, affording warrant to offer Christ to all, and a warrant to all to receive him: For although we believe the purchase and application of redemption to be peculiar to the elect, who were given by the Father to Christ in the counsel of peace; yet the warrant to receive him is common to all: ministers, by virtue of the commission they have received from their great Lord and Master, are authorised and instructed to go to preach the gospel to every creature, i. e., to make a full, free, and unhampered offer of him, his grace, righteousness, and salvation, to every rational soul to whom they may in providence have access to speak. And though we had a voice like a trumpet, that could reach all the corners of the earth, we think we would be bound, by virtue of our commission, to lift it up and say, To you, O men, do we call, and our voice is to the sons of men.' 'God hath so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' -(John iii. 16.) And although this deed of gift and grant,That whosoever believeth in Christ shall not perish,' &c., is neither in our representation, nor in the passages of the book condemned on that head, called a deed of gift and grant of Christ; yet being required to give our judgment on this point, we think, that agreeable to the Holy Scriptures it may be so called, as particularly appears from the text last cited, (John iii. 16); where, by the giving of Christ, we understand not only his eternal destination by the Father, to be the Redeemer of an elect world, and his giving him unto the death for them in the fulness of

time; but more especially, a giving of him in the Word unto all, to be received and believed in. The giving here, cannot be a giving in possession, which is peculiar only unto them who actually believe, but it must be such a giving, granting, or offering, as warrants a man to believe or receive the gift; and must therefore be anterior to actual believing. This is evident enough from the text itself: He gave him, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,' &c. The context, also, to us, puts it beyond controversy; the brazen serpent was given, and lifted up, as a common good to the whole camp of Israel, that whosoever in all the camp, being stung by the fiery serpents, looked thereto, might not die, but live: so here, Christ is given to a lost world, in the Word, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, &c. And in this respect, we think, Christ is a common Saviour, and his salvation is a common salvation; and it is glad tidings of great joy unto all people, that unto us (not to angels that fell) this Son is given, and this Child is born, whose name is called Wonderful," &c.

6. We need only add, that the Purity-men contended that the hope of heaven and the fear of hell were not to be excluded from the motives of the believer's obedience. The Marrow-men, on the contrary, held that the believer's obedience flows from filial love and gratitude, and that neither the hope of getting heaven as a reward of his obedience, nor the fear of hell as ever yawning to receive him, were evangelical motives, but slavish, legal, and mercenary.

The reader has now the whole controversy before him; and he can easily guess the strain of discussion to which these points would give rise. Into the uninteresting details of the ecclesiastical process we cannot enter; and it only remains to be added, that the Assembly of 1722 brought the matter to a conclusion, so far as judicial proceedings were concerned, by condemning the representation, and ordering the Representers to be rebuked and admonished at their bar, which was done by the moderator, "in hopes that the great lenity used towards them shall engage them to a more dutiful behaviour in time coming."

The admonition and rebuke having been received with all gravity, Mr Kid of Queensferry, who had been selected for the task on account of his great courage, stepped forward and gave in a protest, subscribed by all the Representers, which he desired to be read. This being refused, "he left it on the table,

and

gave gold with it." In this document, which was immediately published, they solemnly protested against the Act 1720 condemning the "Marrow," as contrary to the Word of God and the standards of the church and our covenants, and declared that "it shall be lawful to us to profess, preach, and bear testimony unto the truths condemned by the said acts of Assembly, notwithstanding of the said acts or whatsoever shall follow thereupon." This being a protest against a decision.

of the supreme court, might have subjected all the parties signing it to severe censure if not to summary deposition; a catastrophe which was averted by the earnest solicitations of government, who dreaded the effects of a breach in the church at a time when the country was threatened with invasion. "Had not this influence been exerted, there is reason to think that the sentence would have been more severe, and in that case the Secession would have taken place ten years earlier than it actually happened."

"Thus," says Boston, "ended that weighty affair, by means whereof I received another sensible increase of light into the doctrine of grace. Moreover, this struggle hath, through the mercy of God, turned to the great advantage of truth in our church, both among ministers and people, having obliged both to think of these things, and inquire into them more closely and nicely than before; insomuch, it has been owned, that few public differences have had such good effects. Meanwhile it is not to be doubted but others have, on that occasion, been carried further to the side of legalism than they were before, and that, through the prevalence of their passions and prejudices, the gospel of Christ is by this time, with many, especially of the young sort of divines, exchanged for rationalism; so that I believe the light and the darkness are both come to a pitch, that they were before far from in this church, of the which posterity may see a miserable and a glorious issue."

Boston's prediction in the last sentence of this extract was, in part at least, strikingly verified. The parties gradually retreated to a further distance from each other; and the older divines of the Purity Committee dying out, their place was supplied by a class who carried the anti-evangelic movement much further than their predecessors ever contemplated. There can be no question that the "Marrow" discussion prepared the way for the Secession of 1733. The confidence of the people in the church was shaken by a decision, which seemed to many of them intended to put a gravestone on some of the most precious truths of the gospel. If the issue was destined to be "glorious" in the long run, it certainly proved very "miserable" in the mean time. One of the most able and impartial writers on the side of the "Marrow," thus gives vent to his reflections at the time :

I can

"One need not stand to recount the melancholy consequences which have already attended this unhappy affair. I am sorry to say, not tell which side have carried their uncharitable zeal highest. Instead of hearers of the gospel, ministers have got censors of their doctrine to preach to; and whatever part of his commission one happens to discharge, if he does it as he ought, it is ten to one if he is not either a dry moralist' and 'legal preacher,' or a conceited Antinomian, * Account of the "Marrow" Controversy (by the late Dr M'Crie) in "Christian Instructor," vol. xxx. p. 826.

or, which is much the same, a Marrow-man,' and new schemer.' The simplicity of the gospel is, in a manner, lost with many in the pursuit of what is above their reach; and the practice of religion, in strife and contention about what they are never like to understand." *

This, however, was the least part of the mischief occasioned by the controversy. The church-courts, having obtained this triumph over the Representers, strained every nerve to put down the party. Every device was resorted to in order to prevent the apprehended mischief from spreading. Good Thomas Boston was "staked down in Ettrick," a place unfavourable to his health, and where he encountered many trials. The other Representers were annoyed in various ways, by their respective synods and presbyteries. Young men of undoubted talent and piety, if suspected of "savouring of the Marrow," were frowned upon and kept back, while others were planted in churches who were little acquainted with the gospel, or rather decided enemies to the doctrine of grace. sad consequence was, that the National Church was left to pine for a century under the withering influence of a legal and semi-pelagian ministry.

The

The controversy was not entirely confined to Scotland; in a short time afterwards it was transferred to England. The celebrated Mr Hervey entirely agreed in the views of the Marrow-men, particularly in regard to the appropriating assurance of faith, and not only gave expression to these views in his well-known "Theron and Aspasio," but has passed the following high encomium on the "Marrow" with Boston's notes: "A book designed to guard equally against Antinomian licentiousness and legal bondage. The thoughts are just and striking; the arguments solid and convincing; the diction is familiar, yet perspicuous; and the doctrine exceedingly comfortable, because truly evangelical. The notes are, I think, a masterpiece of candid and judicious criticism, in which the nice discernment of the logician sifts, distinguishes, and adjusts the rich furniture of the divine. Perhaps, I may venture to say, that this little treatise pours as much light upon the gospel and grace of Christ,-and, together with the notes, afford as many important distinctions in divinity, as any book of its size whatever." Hervey was assailed with great bitterness and unfairness by Mr Sandeman, a disciple of Mr Glass of Tealing, who was deposed by the General Assembly in 1729.

* Preface to "Sober Inquiry into the Grounds of the Recent Differences," 1723. "The most acute of all the books in favour of the Marrow,' and afterwards known to have proceeded from the ingenious pen of Mr Riccaltoun of Hobkirk, who was probably also the author of the Political Disputant."—Account of “Marrow" Controversy in Christian Instructor, vol. xxx. p. 545.

+Theron and Aspasio, Dial. 18, vol. ii. 358.

This led to a controversy which extended to America, and which would furnish matter for a history by itself.

Our previous remarks may have prepared the reader to estimate the merits of this controversy; and our limits will not admit of our entering upon them much farther.

Few will now be found to deny, that in the leading and characteristic principles for which the Marrow-men contended, they were merely following in the steps of the divines and preachers of the Reformation. All our reformers, Luther and Calvin, Hooper and Latimer, Knox and Craig, spoke the same language. Nothing is more remarkable in the writings of these champions of the faith, than the freedom and boldness with which they enunciate the tidings of grace. And while such were their antecedents, there can be as little doubt that the theology of the Marrow is that of our Leightons, our Halls, our Romaines, our Newtons, our M'Cheynes, and our Chalmerses. Its leading principles may be comprised in two words-FULL ATONEMENT and FREE SALVATION. On these two pillars, like the Jachin and Boaz of the ancient temple, was the whole fabric built and upheld. In their system, the atonement of the Saviour stood forth in all its plenitude, as a complete satisfaction given by the Surety of sinners in their room, securing pardon and life for all whom he represented. They did not consider it necessary to abridge its virtues and merits, in order to extend them to all men, or to furnish ministers with a warrant to offer them to all. They found their warrant to do so in the offers of the gospel; nor did they deem it essential to find out a warrant for God to justify him in making these offers. They saw no inconsistency in preaching a full Christ as well as a free Christ to mankind at large, and sinners of all kinds; for they found this already done to their hand by Christ himself and his apostles. Some members of his synod having denied that there was any gift of Christ as a Saviour to sinners of mankind, Ebenezer Erskine rose, and with a tone and manner which made a deep impression, said, "Moderator, our Lord Jesus said of himself, My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven:' this he uttered to a promiscuous multitude, and let me see the man who dare say he was wrong." Much did they delight in pointing the believer to the special love of Christ in dying for his own; but equally careful were they to point the sinner to the death itself, as the proper and only object of saving faith. To the believer they said, Think on the love of the Saviour, fixed upon you from all eternity, shedding his blood for you, drawing you to himself, and fitting you for the kingdom he hath purchased for you. To the sinner they said, Look not to the secret purposes of God, or to the intention of the Priest in offering himself, but look to the sacrifice offered,

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