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Law on Warburton's Divine Legation.' 323

CHAPTER XVIII.

LAW ON WARBURTON'S 'DIVINE LEGATION.'

MORE than three years elapsed before Law again appeared in print. During the interval he seems to have been a good deal occupied with the final settlement of the foundation of the schools and almshouses at King's Cliffe ; moreover, he may have thought it desirable to spare his cyes until some really important occasion called for the use of his pen. And, very characteristically, he did not consider that an attack made upon himself personally was such an occasion; but he did consider that an attack upon his friend was. Wesley's pamphlet of 1756 was unanswered by Law, partly because Law thought that it answered. itself, partly because he did not desire to be brought into antagonism with one who was trying, and trying successfully, to stem the torrent of vice and irreligion that was flooding the land, and partly because he always disliked defending himself personally. But it was a very different matter when his old friend Bishop Sherlock was attacked by men whose doctrines traversed Law's most deeply cherished convictions. Accordingly, in the spring of 1757, appeared 'A Short but Sufficient Confutation of the Rev. Dr. Warburton's Projected Defence (as he calls it) of Christianity, in his Divine Legation of Moses. In a Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London.' The work which called forth this letter was not the 'Divine Legation' itself, but a defence of it, by an

324

On the Divine Legation.'

anonymous author, against Bishop Sherlock, entitled, 'A Free and Candid Examination of the Bishop of London's Sermons, &c.' Law, however, soon leaves the subordinate for the principal, and attacks, with marvellous keenness and vigour, the main positions of Warburton's famous work.

The debate, he declares, was betwixt Dr. Warburton on the one side, and the whole Christian Church of all ages on the other; and he undertakes to prove that (1) there is not in all the New Testament one single text which, either in the letter or the spirit, proves, or has the least tendency or design to prove, that the immortality of the soul, or its perpetual duration after the death of the body, was not an universal commonly received opinion, in and through every age of the world, from Adam to Christ; and (2), that this doctrine or belief of a future state was not designedly secreted, or industriously hidden, from the eyes of the people of God by Moses, neither by the types and figures of the law, nor by any other part of his writings.'

It was no wonder that Law took up the subject warmly; because, if Warburton established his point, it is obvious that Law's whole system must fall to the ground. So much has been already said of Law's views on the Fall

1 For the convenience of the unlearned reader it may be well to state that the argument of the Divine Legation' is stated by Warburton himself in the following syllogisms :

I. Whatsoever Religion and Society have no future state for their support must be supported by an extraordinary Providence.

The Jewish Religion and Society had no future state for their support.

.. The Jewish Religion and Society was supported by an extraordinary Providence.

II. It was universally believed by the ancients, on their common principles of legislation and wisdom, that whatsoever Religion and Society have no future state for their support must be supported by an extraordinary Providence. Moses, skilled in all that legislation and wisdom, instituted the Jewish Religion and Society without a future state for its support.

.. Moses, who taught, believed likewise that this Religion and Society was supported by an extraordinary Providence.

On the Divine Legation.'

325

and the Redemption that it is hardly necessary to point out how violently antagonistic to them Dr. Warburton's theory was. But Dr. Warburton, like Law, professed to find a confirmation of his theory in Scripture. Law therefore begins by pointing out the misapprehension of the true meaning of the texts on which Warburton founded his notions. The life and immortality, Law maintained, which was brought to light by the Gospel was not that natural immortality which was common to all men, and even to fallen angels, but it was that new immortality, 'that immortal, heavenly nature, which was purchased for us by the precious blood and merits of Christ,' 'by the blessed Jesus being and doing what He was and did in our poor immortal nature that had lost its God.' The death which Christ abolished was not natural death, but the deadly nature of sin in our souls, which is rightly called death, for to be carnally minded is death.' After marshalling a vast array of texts to show that this use of the terms 'life' and 'death' was thoroughly scriptural, Law goes on to show that the Old Testament and the New took precisely the same course in regard to immortality, in the ordinary sense of that term. It is as much secreted in the one as in the other-in the Gospel as in the books of Moses: it is never expressly mentioned, but always necessarily implied. The Mosaic history and types just hide it in the same manner as the Gospel hides it— that is, not at all; and they fully prove it, in the same manner as the Gospel proves it, by doctrines which absolutely require it, in the first conception of them.'

Of course the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews was a favourite chapter with those who, like Law, held the higher and nobler view of the aspirations of the Old Testament saints. And, therefore, Dr. Warburton,' says Law, with an odd touch of his almost morbid contempt for

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326 Living by Faith and Living by Reason.

'pagan learning,' 'is so out of humour with this whole chapter that he gives it the heathenish name of the Palladium of the cause which he had undertaken to demolish, and he accordingly attacks it with a number of critical inventions that may as truly be called heathenish, for they are in direct opposition to all Christian theology.'

After vindicating the Messianic character of the faith of the old Fathers, Law sums up thus: 'For to live by faith always was and always will be living in the kingdom of God; and to live by reason always was and always will be living as a heathen under the power of the kingdom of this world. To live by faith is to live with God in the spirit and power of prayer, in self-denial, in contempt of the world, in Divine love, in heavenly foretaste of the world to come, in humility, in patience, longsuffering, obedience, resignation, absolute trust and dependence upon God, with all that is temporal and earthly under their feet. To live by reasoning is to be a prey of the old serpent, eating dust with him, grovelling in the mire of all earthly passions, devoured with pride, embittered with envy, tools and dupes to ourselves, tossed up with vain hopes, cast down with vain fears, slaves to all the good and evil things of this world, to-day elated with learned praise, to-morrow dejected at the unlucky loss of it; yet jogging on year after year, defining words and ideas, dissecting doctrines and opinions, setting all arguments and all objections upon their best legs, sifting and defining all notions, conjectures, and criticisms, till death puts the same full end to all the wonders of the ideal fabric that the cleansing broom does to the wonders of the spider's web so artfully spun at the expense of its own vitals. The old serpent was the first reasoner, and every scholar, every disputer of this world, has been where Eve was, and has done what she did, when she sought for

On the Mosaic Dispensation.

327 wisdom that did not come from God. All libraries of the world are full proof of the remaining power of the first sinful thirst after it; they are full of a knowledge that comes not from God and therefore proceeds from that first fountain of subtilty that opened her eyes.'

And so the old man (he was now in his seventy-first year) goes on, pouring forth his invectives against his old enemy, human reasoning. We may smile at his extravagance, but we cannot help admiring his intense earnestness of purpose, his strong faith, and his vigour and raciness, both of thought and diction, which old age had not in the least degree diminished.

But Law was not so far carried away in his crusade against 'reasoning' as to forget to deal with what was really the strong point of Dr. Warburton's argument. Law never shirks a difficulty. He admits, therefore, the full force of the doctor's position, 'That the sanctions of the Mosaic law, its rewards and its punishments, were all of a temporal nature,' but he denies that this unquestionable fact really touched the point at issue. For the law no more belonged to the true religion of the Old Testament than of the New; it was purely and merely on the outside of both, had only a temporary, external relation of service to the true religion, either before or after Christ, but was no more a part or instead of them for a time, than the hand that stands by the road directing the ignorant traveller is itself a part of the road, or can be instead of it to him.' Not that Law thought lightly of the Mosaic law. No. The law and its theocracy was not only most divinely contrived to preserve the faith of the first holy patriarchs and guide them to the time and manner of receiving the promises made to their fathers, but it was all mercy and goodness to the rest of the world, being no less than one continual, daily, miraculous call to them to

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