The Occasion of the “Marrow” Controversy, stated by the late Rev. John Brown, of Haddington.
APPENDIX
The Occasion of the “Marrow” Controversy,
stated by the late Rev. John Brown, of Haddington.
While the Church of Scotland was clear and exact in her standards, and many of her preachers truly evangelical, a flood of legal doctrine filled many pulpits about the time of the Revolution.
The Arminian errors of Professor Simpson were also prevalent after this time; but the Assembly used him with great tenderness. However, they were far from being equally kind to those who earnestly endeavoured for a clear illustration of the doctrines of God’s free grace reigning through the righteousness of Christ. Mr. Hamilton of Airth having published a catechetical treatise concerning the Covenant of Works and grace, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in a more evangelical strain than some wished, the Assembly, in 1710, prohibited all ministers or members of this church to print or disperse in writing, any catechism, without the allowance of the Presbytery of the bounds, or the Commission.
The Presbytery of Auchterarder had begun to require candidates for licence to acknowledge that it is unsound to teach that men must forsake their sins in order to come to Christ. The Assembly, in 1717, on the same day they had dealt so gently with Professor Simpson, declared their abhorrence of that proposition as unsound and most detestable — as if men should only come to Christ, the only Saviour from sins, after they have gotten rid of sins by repentance. Mr. James Hog, one of the holiest ministers in the kingdom, had published or recommended a celebrated and edifying tract from the Cromwellian age, called The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The Assembly, in 1720, fell upon it with great fury, as if it had been replete with Antinomian errors, though it is believed that many of these zealots never read it, or at least had never perused it in connection with the Second Part of it — which is wholly taken up in manifesting the obligation, meaning, and advantage of observing the law of God. They condemned the offering of Christ as a Saviour to all men, or to sinners as such; and they condemned the doctrine of believers’ full deliverance from under the law, as being a broken Covenant of Works. They asserted that men’s holiness is a federal or conditional mean for them to obtain eternal happiness. They condemned as Antinomian paradoxes, these almost express declarations of Scripture: that believers are not under the law — that they do not commit sin — that the Lord sees no sin in them, and cannot be angry with them. And they condemned the distinction of the Moral Law as a Covenant of Works, and a binding rule of duty in the hand of Christ.
In order to explain these expressions, Messrs. James Hog, Thomas Boston, Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, Gabriel Watson, and seven others, remonstrated to the next Assembly against these decisions, as injurious to the doctrine of God’s grace. And in their answers to the Commission’s Twelve Queries, they illustrated these doctrines with no small clearness and evidence. Perhaps influenced by this, as well as by the widespread detestation of their acts (1720) on that point, the Assembly, in 1722, reconsidered them, and made an act explaining and confirming them. This was less gross and erroneous. Nevertheless, the twelve representers protested against it as injurious to truth; but this protest was not allowed to be marked. By the Assembly’s appointment, the Moderator rebuked them for their reflections on the Assembly, in 1720, in their Representation; and he admonished them to beware of the like in all time coming — against which they protested.