Alan Gibson
1
PHILIP DODDRIDGE’S
THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF
RELIGION IN THE SOUL
Alan Gibson
“If to have conducted thousands to the feet of Christ and a crown of righteousness be high praise, then few uninspired books have greater honour than the Rise and Progress. We continue to regard it as the safest, completest and most effectual manual for anxious enquirers.” So wrote an anonymous reviewer of Philip Doddridge’s The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review 1857, over a hundred years after the book’s first publication in 1745. And even the modest author could say of it in his own lifetime:
This is the book which so far as I can judge, God has honoured for the conversion and edification of souls more than any of my writings. I cannot mention it without humbly owning that great hand of God, which has been with it and to which I desire, with unaffected abasement of mind, to ascribe all the glory of its acceptance and success.
It was a recommendation from a friend, as “one of the best books ever written,” which persuaded William Wilberforce to read The Rise and Progress, and its reading led to his serious study of the Bible and conversion to Christ.
Some knowledge of the days in which Doddridge wrote may help our assessment of the book. The early eighteenth century was undoubtedly a time of religious and moral decline. Bishop Ryle in The Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century, writes of it as follows: “This was the period at which Archbishop Secker said in one of his charges, ‘In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard of religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes the distinguishing character of the age. Such are the dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and the profligacy, intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower part, as must, if the torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal.’ ”
An analysis of the situation within the churches is found in these words from Mr. Poole-Connor’s book, Evangelicalism in England:
There are times when the Body of Christ is called to enter into fellowship with her Head; to know what it is to have the sentence of death in herself, that she may trust, not in herself but in God that raiseth the dead. Such, during the eighteenth century was the experience of evangelicalism. . . . The decline was gradual. It manifested itself in the realm of theology first by a growing disinclination to build belief upon ecclesiastical or dogmatic authority. The teachings of the Fathers, the Schoolmen and the Reformers fell into the background; the Scriptures began to be employed more often as a buttress than a foundation;
reason rather than revelation became the court of appeal. . . . Speaking generally, the main object appears to have been to demonstrate the eminent reasonableness of Christianity rather than to show its Divine origin; to present it as a philosophy rather than as a revelation; all warmth of feeling being studiously eliminated in the process.
Let us be on our guard, however, from dismissing this period as entirely irreligious. There were exceptions to the prevailing apostasy, among whom were such unquestionable evangelicals as Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge.
The dedication of The Rise and Progress to “The reverend Dr. Isaac Watts” is not just an act of kindness to a friend. Doddridge makes it clear in his preface that the book owes its existence to Watts’s request. Watts had devised its scheme, especially the former part, and had hoped to write it himself, but being older and unwell, he urged Doddridge to undertake it instead; which Doddridge duly did.
However, although Doddridge was a disciple of Watts he is no mere amanuensis. The work is an expression of his own life and ministry. While he was anxious to acknowledge a debt to his mentor, it is clear that he wrote nothing which has not become his own by conviction and experience.
Philip Doddridge was born in the year 1702, the twentieth child of a London shopkeeper. John Doddridge, his grandfather, had chosen to resign his comfortable living at Shepperton-on-Thames shortly after the Act of Uniformity, while his maternal grandfather had been expelled from Bohemia for faithfulness to the Protestant cause. We are not surprised then, to see in Philip a love for the truth of Scripture. He was trained for the Nonconformist ministry at the academy of the Reverend John Jennings and spent the last twenty-one years of his life, from 1730 to 1751, as minister of the Independent Church at Castle Hill in Northampton.
We turn now to the book itself, in which the rise and progress
of personal religion is “illustrated in a course of thirty serious and practical addresses suited to persons of every character and circumstance.”
Introduction and Outline (Chap. 1)
As the title of the book implies, Doddridge begins by directing his attention to what he calls a “careless sinner.” His aim, he says, is to awaken his subject until the latter feels himself under the just condemnation of the law. The gospel will then be brought to him and its way of acceptance described. After some assurance of genuine regeneration has been given, the reader is to be introduced to the high standard required of the Christian’s life and assisted in preparing for its difficulties. He will be warned of the perils of spiritual decline, and encouraged to grow in grace. Eventually the established Christian will be exhorted to honor God by his life and in his death. Let the author explain his manner of handling this material:
I shall not discuss these themes as a preacher might properly do in sermons, in which the truths of religion are professedly to be explained and taught, defended and improved, in a wide variety and long detail of propositions, arguments, objections, replies and inferences. . . . I shall here speak in a looser and freer manner, as a friend to a friend, just as I would do if I were to be a person admitted to a private audience by one whom I tenderly loved, and whose circumstances and character I knew to be like that which the title of one chapter or another of this treatise describes. And when I have discoursed with him a little while, which will seldom be so long as half an hour, I shall, as it were, step aside and leave him to meditate on what he has heard, or endeavour to assist him in such fervent addresses to God, as it may be proper to mingle with these meditations.
These prayers or meditations comprise from two to four pages at the close of each chapter. Doddridge intends the book not only to be read seriously but to be thought over in retirement.
Concern and Condemnation (Chaps. 2–7)
Here is Doddridge’s own outline of these chapters:
I will first suppose myself addressing one of the vast number of thoughtless creatures, who have hitherto been utterly unconcerned about religion, and will try what can be done, by all plainness and earnestness of address, to awaken him from this fatal lethargy, to a care (chap. 2), an affectionate and an immediate care about it (chap. 3). I will labour to fix a deep and awful conviction of guilt upon his conscience (chap. 4), and to strip him of vain excuses and his flattering hopes (chap. 5). I will read to him . . . that dreadful sentence, which a righteous and an Almighty God hath denounced against him as a sinner (chap. 6); and endeavour to show him in how helpless a state he lies under this condemnation, as to any capacity he has of delivering himself (chap. 7).
The first point of significance to notice is Doddridge’s conception of the man to whom he speaks. Although he has called him a careless sinner he is more properly designated a “nominal Christian.”
I will suppose that you believe the existence and providence of God, and the truth of Christianity as a revelation from him: of which, if you have any doubt, I must desire that you would immediately seek your satisfaction elsewhere. But supposing you to be a nominal Christian and not a deist or a sceptic; I will also suppose your conduct among men to be not only blameless but amiable; . . . yet with all this, you may “lack that one thing” (Mk. 10:21) on which your eternal happiness depends.
The primary application of this first section, then, is not so much to the man-in-the-street who is careless of any spiritual values but rather to the member of the congregation who is complacent but yet unregenerate. Doddridge proceeds to upbraid this man for his ingratitude in face of God’s goodness:
Is it a decent and reasonable thing that this great and glorious benefactor should be neglected by his rational creatures? by those that are capable of attaining to some knowledge of him and presenting to him some homage? . . . Nay, brutes far less sagacious and apprehensive have some sense of our kindness and express it after their own way. . . . What lamentable degeneracy therefore is it, that you do not know that you, who have been numbered among God’s professing people, do not, and will not consider your numberless obligations to him.
Doddridge addresses the intellect, to shame his readers for their unreasonable neglect of God. By direct charge and natural analogy he appeals to their conscience to produce conviction of sin. His use of such argument, however, does not mean that, like the rationalists of his day, he has forgotten the limitations of fallen reason:
Let it not be imagined that it is in any neglect of that blessed Spirit, whose office it is to be the great comforter, that I now attempt to reason you out of this disconsolate frame: for it is as the great source of reason, that he deals with rational creatures; and it is in the use of rational means and considerations that he may most justly be expected to operate.
It is his contention that conscience is the voice of God to the sinner, and we continually meet such phrases as, “I put it to your conscience,” and “It is so contrary to the plainest principles of common reason.” He treats the sinner throughout as a rational, and therefore a responsible, being:
Your conscience tells you that you were born the natural subject of God, born under the indispensable obligations of His law. For it is most apparent, that the constitution of your rational nature, which makes you capable of receiving law from God binds you to obey it.
Some attention has been given to this point because we may be in danger of overlooking its importance. In our insistence upon the doctrine of total depravity and the necessity of regeneration for a saving appreciation of the truth of Scripture, we must not become Barthians and deny that there is any point of contact between God and the sinner. Doddridge reminds us what that point of contact is. The sinner’s rational nature requires that we should approach him with arguments from Scripture directed to his reason, applying truth to his mind and appealing to the law of God written in his heart. Even by these standards there are sins for which his conscience will condemn him. By these standards, therefore, he is rendered inexcusable.
The Good News: Its Acceptance and Rejection (Chaps. 8–13)
Having discharged his responsibility in the “law-work,” Doddridge now turns to the more congenial task of urging the gospel on his readers. He writes:
I will joyfully proclaim the glad tidings of pardon and salvation by Christ Jesus our Lord, which is all the support and confidence of my own soul (chap. 8): And then I will give some general view of the way by which this salvation is to be obtained (chap. 9); urging the sinner to accept of it as affectionately as I can (chap. 10); though nothing can be sufficiently pathetic, where, as in this matter, the life of an immortal soul is in question. Too probable it is that some will after all this remain insen-sible; and therefore, that their sad case may not encumber the following articles, I shall here take a solemn leave of them (chap. 11); and then shall turn and address myself, as compassionately as I can to a most contrary character; I mean to a soul overwhelmed with a sense of the greatness of its sins, and trembling under the burden as if there were no more hope for him in God (chap. 12). And that nothing may be omitted which may give solid peace to the troubled spirit, I shall endeavour to guide its inquiries as to the evidences of sincere repentance and faith (chap. 13).
There are two main points we would make from this section. First, we shall draw attention to Doddridge’s conception of God and second, to his careful counsel in evangelism.
The majesty of God dominates the author’s thinking. Few in our day possess such an exalted view of their Creator and Redeemer as Doddridge carries with him through this book. When stressing the awful responsibility of the sinner he urges him to “consider the majesty of the God you have affronted by inattention and wilful disobedience.” We now find that the scheme of gospel reconciliation is the expressed will of this same righteous God.
Doddridge has that full-orbed view of the character of God which comes from much reading of Scripture and meditation on the Savior it reveals. He encourages his reader to consider the wrath of God, His patience, His tenderness, His justice, His sovereignty, His eternity—each adduced at the appropriate moment for the particular exhortation in hand. Would God that we all knew Him as Doddridge did!
Let us now consider the approach Doddridge has to the declaration of the gospel. His realization of the importance of this work has an effect on what he writes. One feels, in reading the book, his intense longing for the salvation of the sinner. He conveys this desire in the painstaking care with which he pursues the sinner into every corner of his carnal confidence. His “Solemn address to those who will not fall in with the design of the gospel” is a cleverly construed appeal to the sinner’s conscience to shake him into a concern of heart. Stanford, in a biography of the author, has complained that, “we know that his object is to lead a poor trembler to Christ, but he seems to us to be a long time about it.” Doddridge is concerned, however, for genuine rather than speedy results, and desires thoroughness above all, in both himself as pastor and those whom he counsels. “I find it exceedingly difficult,” he says, “to satisfy myself in anything I say to men where their eternal interests are concerned.” He is in no hurry to congratulate the convert, but urges him to re-examine his own heart to see whether he yet possesses scriptural grounds for confidence before God.
In describing “the great vital act of faith” by which the sinner solemnly commits his soul into the hands of Christ, he ensures that submission is made to Christ in all his offices, as “unerring prophet,” as “ever acceptable high-priest” and as “exalted sovereign.” Furthermore, he stresses that this must be the language of the penitent’s life as well as his heart.
The Christian Character (Chaps. 14–15)
This short section stands between the first half, on the rise of religion in the soul, and the later chapters, on its progress.
His description of the Christian character is the longest chapter in the work and is an abridgement of a book by a Dr. Evans entitled, The Christian Temper. Notice again the emphasis on self-examination:
Happy will you be . . . in no inconsiderable degree, if you can say, “This is what I desire, what I pray for, and what I pursue in preference to every opposite view, though it be not what I have yet attained.” Search then, and try “what manner of spirit you are of.”
The way Doddridge approaches the Christian’s sanctification seems to be this. He first states fully what is the scriptural ideal for the Christian character so as to make it clear that we are all far short of it. Then he shows that the genuine convert will want to attain this, and thereby he segregates the truly regenerate from the spurious. Finally he shows that this task is beyond the convert’s own strength and that the enabling of God is an imperative need in the Christian’s daily life. Once the convert has realized this, he will readily employ all the means at his disposal, to obtain God’s help.
It would seem that some present-day counselling of converts tends to over-emphasize the importance of the means, with inadequate attention being given to the effectual cause of sanctification. The convert is told that now he is a Christian his great need is to grow. He must grow, and to grow he must read the Bible and must pray every morning. We would suggest that the failure of many to persist in complying with these musts is due to their not having a sufficient motive to do so. If the convert were told what God’s intention for his character is, the truly regenerate would desire to attain it.
At this stage, then, Doddridge is more concerned to show the convert his continued need of God than to stress the means to his finding Him. “The production of religion in the soul,” he writes, “is a matter of divine promise and when it has been effected, Scripture ascribes it to a divine agency.”
Difficulties and Directions (Chaps. 16–21)
As some particular difficulties and discouragements attend the first entrance on a religious course, it will here be our first care to animate the young convert against them (chap. 16). And that it may be done more effectually, I shall urge a solemn dedication of himself to God (chap. 17); to be confirmed by entering into the full communion of the Church by an approach to the sacred table (chap. 18). That these engagements may be more happily fulfilled, we shall endeavour to draw a more particular plan of that devout, regular, and accurate course, which ought daily to be attended to (chap. 19); and because the idea will probably rise so much higher than what is the general practice, even of good men, we shall endeavour to persuade the reader to make the attempt, hard as it may seem (chap. 20), and shall caution him against various temptations, which might otherwise draw him aside to negligence and sin (chap. 21).
Like many of former generations but fewer of our own, Doddridge recommends that the young convert should follow his own example and enter into a formal, written covenant as an express act of dedication to the service of God. He explains its usefulness for binding the treacherous heart to God, for strengthening the will in temptation, and for prompting regular review of one’s life in the light of its obligations. This act of surrender should be deliberate, cheerful, entire, perpetual, and solemn.
On the whole the rest of this section must be considered one of the most useful parts of the book. It is so full of scriptural, practical advice on preparing for the spiritual conflict of daily life. Apparently the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper was too lightly esteemed in Doddridge’s day. In commending it, he gives encouragement to “bear about with you a lively sense of the love of Christ which must animate you to break through all opposition.” The nineteenth chapter, “on being in the fear of God all the day long,” shows how we should regard God in the beginning, the progress, and the closing of the day. Its emphasis on lifting up one’s heart to God while rising in the first moments of the day, and in his conscientious self-examination at its close, is especially impressive. Here are one or two sentences illustrating other aspects of Doddridge’s advice:
On conscience: “By acting contrary to the secret dictates of your mind, as to what it is just at the present moment best to do, though it be but in the manner of spending half an hour, some degree of guilt is contracted, and a habit is cherished, which may draw after it much worse consequences.”
On friendships: “I beseech you to consider, that those companions may be very dangerous, who might at first give you but very little alarm: I mean those who, though not the declared enemies of religion and professed followers of vice and disorder, yet nevertheless have no practical sense of divine things on their hearts.
The charge has sometimes been made against Doddridge that he gives us too many rules, and that this to the inexperienced reader may become a form of legalism. In these directions for daily life, this tendency is certainly present. In fairness to Doddridge, however, he has himself included a clear warning against this snare in the preface to the later editions. He also says at this point in the book:
I wish my reader may act on these directions, so far as they may properly suit his capacities and circumstances in life; for I would be far from laying down the following particulars as universal rules for all, or for any one person in the world at all times. With this precaution I proceed to the letter, which I would hope, . . . will not discourage any, the weakest Christian.
Decline and Discipline (Chaps. 22–25)
In this section more than any other we see Doddridge as a pastor. A. T. S. James has written of him, “he was a preacher and a tutor more than an author, and when he writes he has a congregation in front of him.” James goes on to contrast him with William Law, and we must agree that The Rise and Progress is the work of a shepherd rather than a recluse. The beat of the pastor’s heart makes Doddridge insist on God’s employment of means to the working out of His decreed purposes. His conception of sovereignty never has a neutralizing effect on his view of responsibility. For example, the Christian whose spiritual life is in decline is exhorted to return to God immediately and told how to do so:
While the darkness continues, go on in the way of your duty. Continue the use of means and ordinances; read and meditate; pray, yes, and sing the praises of God too, though it may be with a heavy heart. Follow the “footsteps of his flock” (Cant. 1:8); you may perhaps meet the Shepherd of souls in doing it. Place yourself at least in his way. It is possible you may by this means get a kind look from him; and one look, one turn of thought . . . may create a heaven in your soul at once.
If we were asked what is the one outstanding lesson of the book, we would point to the way in which the progress of religion in a man’s soul is organically related to its rise. One cannot read this book and merely note a good point in an odd chapter. The early parts are foundational and the rest is built up from them. This is not one book on conversion and another on sanctification bound between the same covers, but it is a unity. The advice Doddridge gives his readers at the outset should be heeded: “Into whatever hands this work may come, I must desire, that before any pass their judgment upon it, they would please to read it through, that they may discern the connection between one part of it and another.”
It is this connection, this continuity, which is so helpful. The way in which Doddridge has led the sinner to Christ has ensured that this convert has certain convictions. Because of his lofty conception of God, and the holy standard expected by God, he is conscious that he is still full of all manner of sins. As a result, Doddridge can now tellingly impress upon him that all his Christian experience is God’s way of delivering him from his remaining depravity. This he does in his chapter on the “Christian struggling under great and heavy afflictions.” The Christian is expected to pray, “I am much more concerned that my afflictions may be sanctified than that they may be removed.” How many of us react in this way?
It is no wonder that many professing converts today do not seem to make progress in the Christian life, if the rise of religion in their soul has not been a thorough work of grace. This thorough work, with all its implications and humbling lessons, Doddridge here presupposes; as he is entitled to, for he has thoroughly instructed his reader in this early on, so that now in the later stages he is able to build on a sure foundation.
Growth and Glory (Chaps. 26–30)
Doddridge summarizes his final chapters in this way:
We shall endeavour, in the best manner we can, to assist the Christian in passing a true judgment on the growth of grace in his heart (chap. 26), as we had done before in judging of its sincerity. And as nothing conduces more to the advance of grace, than the lively exercise of love to God, and a holy joy in him, we shall here remind the real Christian of those mercies which tend to excite that love and joy (chap. 27); and in the views of them to animate him to those vigorous efforts of usefulness in life, which so well become his character, and will have so happy an efficacy in brightening his crown (chap. 28). Supposing him to act accordingly we shall than labour to illustrate and assist the delight with which he may look forward to the awful solemnities of death and judgment (chap. 29). And shall close the scene by accompanying him, as it were, to the nearest confines of that dark valley, through which he is to pass to glory; giving him such directions as may seem most subservient to his honouring God and adorning religion, by his dying behaviour (chap. 30).
We have previously mentioned Doddridge’s extensive and judicious employment of Scripture quotations. As James puts it, “Many of the longest sentences are composed of texts pieced together from every corner of Scripture, and in the result the Bible speaks for itself.” In two pages of the last chapter of the book there are nineteen portions of Scripture quoted, and in the meditation following chapter fourteen, there are fifty-four. In this respect Doddridge resembles many of the Puritan writers.
There are one or two occasions, however, when even Doddridge seems to lose sight of a scriptural emphasis. His single eye is fixed on the honor of God, but is it not a New Testament principle that God is to be honored by our seeking primarily the glory of Christ? This distinction may be seen in his exhortation to the exercises of habitual love to God and joy in Him. The tendency of his meditation is certainly warm and joyful, but we could have wished that a Rutherford or a M’Cheyne had been at his side to remind the convert to “run with patience . . . looking unto Jesus, whom having not seen we love, in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Does the title chosen for this book, “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” overlook the second part of Paul’s description of the true circumcision which is, “worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus”? We are not suggesting that there is any sense in which his doctrine of the Person or work of Christ is defective. It is not. But the Christ-centered vision is not always prominent, although it is present. He delights thus in the expectation of the Second Advent:
Is it so delightful to receive the visits of Jesus for an hour? and will it not be infinitely more so to dwell with him for ever? “Lord,” may you well say, “when I dwell with thee, I shall dwell in holiness, for thou thyself art holiness; I shall dwell in love, for thou thyself art love; I shall dwell in joy, for thou art the fountain of joy, as thou art in the Father, and the Father in thee.”
This is more than religion, this is Christianity! But he has a tendency to lose sight of this emphasis.
The closing section of the book underlines some remarks we made in the introduction to this paper regarding the author’s personal life. It is apparent throughout that Doddridge is writing from experience and all that he writes he has himself put into practice. “I can truly and cheerfully say, that I have marked out to you the path which I myself have trod, and in which it is my desire still to go on. I have ventured my own everlasting interests on that foundation, on which I have directed you to adventure yours.”
When we read him urging the established Christian to “exert himself for purposes of usefulness,” we must remember that this was exemplified to the letter by his own zeal for good works. He was instrumental in opening a school for the poor, founding a county infirmary and, most interesting of all, was an earnest advocate of foreign missions. He projected a scheme for a missionary society and was keen to learn about Brainerd and to meet Zinzendorf and Whitefield. In 1741 he preached to ministers in Norfolk on “the evil and danger of neglecting souls,” and we can imagine him including such questions as these which he later wrote in this book:
Do you find your imagination teeming, as it were, with conceptions of schemes for the advancement of the cause and interest of Christ in the world, for the propagation of the gospel, and the happiness of your fellow creatures? And do you not only pray, but act for it; act in such a manner as to show that you pray in earnest? . . . Have compassion on those who dwell in a desert land; and rejoice to do something towards sending among the distant nations of the heathen world, that glorious gospel which hath so long continued unknown to multitudes.
And all this was written before Carey was born!
Orton’s memoir is full of references to the consistency of Doddridge’s life with his writings. His charity to other ministers, even to Arians and High Churchmen, has, we fear, unjustly put his own reputation for orthodoxy under suspicion. We quote again: “But to hate persons because we think they are mistaken, and to aggravate every difference in judgment or practice into a fatal and damnable error, that destroys all Christian communion and love, is a symptom generally much worse than the evil it condemns.”
In these days of increasing interest in Reformed theology, this seems to us a very important lesson. Doddridge may not have been so acute a theological teacher as some would wish, but if theology means a knowledge of God, then he was certainly a practical theologian of the first rank.
The New Testament does stress the importance of the apostles’ doctrine, but knows nothing of a merely intellectual apprehension of the Truth without any application of that Truth in the Christian life. What steps should we take, then, to ensure that our studies in Reformed theology lead to a different way of life, as well as a different scheme of doctrine? To produce the different way of life was Doddridge’s grand aim for his book.
The measure of his success, only eternity will reveal!