IT

LECTURE VII.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GIFT OF

RIGHTEOUSNESS.

is not uncommon in Scripture, as all readers know, to represent the especial gift of the Gospel as a robe or garment, bestowed on those who are brought into the Church of Christ. Thus the prophet Isaiah speaks of our being "clothed with the garments of salvation, covered with the robe of righteousness," as with a rich bridal dress. A passage was quoted in a former place from the prophet Zechariah to the same purport; in which Almighty God takes from Joshua the high priest his filthy garments, and gives him change of raiment, and a mitre for his head. In like manner, when the prodigal son came home, his father put on him "the best robe,” “and a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet;" agreeable to which is St. Paul's declaration that " as many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ."

Now such expressions as these in Scripture are too forcible and varied to be a mere figure denoting the profession of Christianity; as if our putting on Christ were a taking on us the name and responsibilities of a Christian :—this I shall take for granted. It is much the same kind of evasion or explaining away, to say that by God's clothing us in righteousness is only meant His

counting us as if righteous; all the difference being that in the former interpretation the clothing is made to stand for our calling ourselves, and in the latter for God's calling us, what really we are not.

Nor, again, can these expressions be very well taken to mean newness of life, holiness, and obedience; for this reason, if for no other, that no one is all at once holy, and renewed, in that full sense which must be implied if the terms be interpreted of holiness. Baptized persons do not so put on Christ as to be forthwith altogether different men from what they were before; at least this is not the rule, as far as we have means of deciding. Thus there is a call on the face of the matter for some more adequate interpretation of such passages of Scripture, than is supplied either by the Roman or the Protestant schools; and this surely is found in the doctrine of the last Lecture. If that doctrine be true, the robe vouchsafed to us is the inward presence of Christ, ministered to us through the Holy Ghost; which, it is plain, admits on the one hand of being immediately vouchsafed in its fulness, as a sort of invisible Shekinah, or seal of God's election, yet without involving on the other the necessity of a greater moral change than is promised and effected in Baptism.

With this, too, agrees what is told of our own duties towards this sacred possession, which are represented as negative rather than active; I mean, we are enjoined not to injure or profane it, but so to honour it in our outward conduct, that it may be continued and increased in us. For instance, our Lord says, "Thou hast a few names even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments;

and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy."1 Such words are more naturally interpreted of an inward gift than of a mere imputation; and scarcely admit of being explained of a moral condition of heart, attained (under grace) through our own exertions. They are parallel to St. Paul's warning against "grieving the Spirit of God;" which may just as reasonably be interpreted of mere moral excellence, as in some heretical schools has been done. Of the same character are exhortations such as St. Paul's, not "to defile the temple of God;" to recollect that we are the temple of God, and that the Holy Ghost is in us.

2.

Moreover, it may throw light on these metaphors to inquire whether (considering we have gained under the Gospel what we lost in Adam, and justification is a reversing of our forfeiture, and a robe of righteousness is what Christ gives) it was not such a robe that Adam lost. If so, what is told us of what he lost, will explain to us what it is we gain. Now the peculiar gift which Adam lost is told us in the book of Genesis ; and it certainly does seem to have been a supernatural clothing. He was stripped of it by sinning as of a covering, and shrank from the sight of himself. This was the sign of his inward loathsomeness; and accordingly all through Scripture we find stress is laid on one especial punishment, which is hereafter to result from sin, of a most piercing and agonizing character, the manifestation of our shame. When we consider what our feelings 1 Rev. iii. 4.

are now as connected with this subject, we may fancy what an inexpressibly keen anguish is thus in store for sinners, when their eyes shall be opened, who at present "glory in their shame, and mind earthly things." Such then was Adam's loss in God's sight, as visibly typified; and, therefore, such as what he lost is the nature of the Gospel gift, so far as it is a return to what he lost. And as such our Lord speaks of it in the Apocalypse, warning us, as of our natural destitution, so of His power and willingness to remedy it.. "I counsel thee," He says, "to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayst be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayst be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear." "1 And again, "Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." Christ then clothes us in God's sight with something over and above nature, which Adam forfeited.

"2

Now that Adam's supernatural clothing was not a mere imputed righteousness, need not formally be proved; it was a something, of the loss of which he was himself at once conscious, which he could not be of acts passing in the Divine Mind. Nor was it real inherent holiness; at least we may so conjecture from this circumstance, that such a habit is the result of practice and habituation, and, as it would be attainable but gradually, so when attained it would scarcely yield at once to external temptation. But whether or not we may trust ourselves to such arguments, the early Church supersedes the need of them by explaining, that what 2 Rev. xvi. 15.

1 Rev. iii. 18.

Adam lost on sinning, was in fact a supernatural endowment, and agreeably with the view of justification already taken, was nothing less than the inward presence either of the Divine Word, or of the Holy Ghost.

The Catholic fathers, as Bishop Bull has collected their testimony,1 teach that the principle of sanctity in Adam, to which was attached the gift of immortal life, was something distinct from and above his human nature. That nature, indeed, did look towards such a perfection, but could not in itself reach it. Without this heavenly possession, man was not able to keep the Law according to the Covenant of Life, but with it he could serve God acceptably, and gain the reward set before him.

This interpretation of the Scripture account of man's original nature and fall is confirmed by various passages of St. Paul. For instance, he speaks of man as being by mere creation what he calls a soul; "The first Adam was made a living soul;" now just before, he has used a derived form of the same word, though in our version it does not appear. He says, "there is a natural body," that is, "a body with a soul." Elsewhere he says, “the natural man," that is, the man with a soul, "receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God."2 Human nature then, viewed in itself, is not spiritual, and that neither in soul nor body. Accordingly St. Paul contrasts with this mere natural state that which is spiritual, which alone is pleasing to God, and which alone can see Him. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit

1 State of Man before the Fall, p. 115.

2 1 Cor. xv. 44, 45'; ii. 14, 15. 1 Thess. v. 32.