the instrumentality of His Word. The man that neglects the public preaching and private reading of God's Word, has no right to expect that God will draw him. The thing is possible, but highly improbable.
(e.) We must never allow ourselves or others to waste time in trying to find out, as a firsD question in religion, whether we are drawn of God the Father, elect, chosen, and the like. The first and indeed the main question we have to do with is, whether we have come to Christ by faith. If we have, let us take comfort and be thankful. None come to Him unless they are drawn. o
Augustine remarks : " If thou dost not desire to err, do not seek to determine whom God draws, and whom He does not draw ; nor why He draws one man and not another. But if thou thyself art not drawn by God, pray to Him that thou mayest be drawn."
The words of the 17th Article of the Church of England are weighty and wise: — "We must receive God's promises in such wise as they are generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture : and in our doings, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God."
Whether the "drawing" of God the Father is irresistible or not, is a point on which good men differ greatly. My own opinion is decided that it is irresistible. Those Avhom the Father draws and calls, always " obey the calling." (See 17th Article of the Church of England.) As Rollock truly remarks, there is often a great fight and struggle when the drawing grace of God first begins to work on the soul, and the consequence is great distress and depression. But when grace once begins it always wins the victory at last.
[/ will raise him up at the last day.] This is the same sen- tence that we have had twice already, and shall have once again. Whosoever does come to Christ, and has the great mark of faith, shall be raised by Christ to a life of eternal glory at the last day. None come but those who are "drawn;" but all who do come shall be raised.
45. — [It is written.. .prophets. ..taught of God.] Our Lord here confirms the doctrine of the necessity of divines teaching, by reference to the Scriptures. He had told the Jews nothing but wr.at their own Scriptures taught, and what they ought to have known themselves. It is not quite clear whether our Lord referred to one particular quotation, or to the general testimony of the prophetical Scriptures. The words of Isaiah (hv. 13) are most like the sentence before us : — " All thy children shall be taught of God." The Greek of the Septuagint version of that
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text rather favours the idea that our Lord referred to it. On the whole, however, I inchne to the opinion that no one particular text is referred to. It was the general doctrine of the prophets that in the days of the Gospel men should have the direct teach- ing of God.
The words do not mean that under the Gospel all mankind, or all members of the professing Christian Church, shall be " taught of God." It rather means that all who are God's chil- dren, and come to Christ under the Gospel, shall be taught of God. It is like " this is the true light that lighteth every man," (John i. 9,) where it does not mean that all are lighted, but that such as are lighted are lighted by Christ.
[Every man...heard...learned of the Father, cometh unto me.] The meaning of this sentence seems to.be — "Everyman that comes to me has first heard and learned of the Father." It is useless to talk of being taught by God, and of God being our Father, if we do not come to Christ for salvation.
Bishop Hooper remarks, "Many men understand the words, ' except the Father draws him,' in a wrong sense, as though God did require in a reasonable man no more than in a dead post, and do not mark the words that follow, ' every man that hath heard Christ,' God draweth with His Word and the Holy Ghost. Man's duty is to hear and learn : that is to say, receive the grace oflfered, consent unto the promises, and not refuse the God that calleth." — Hooper on Ten Commandments.
46. — [Not that any man hath seen the Father.'] This sentence seems put in, by way of parenthesis, to prevent mistakes in the minds of our Lord's hearers, both as to the kind of teaching He meant, and the person He intended when He spake of the Father. The Father was the eternal God whom no man had seen nor could see. The teaching was that inward teaching of the heart which the Father gave by His Spirit.
\He which is of God, he hath seen the Father^ Our Lord plainly means Himself in this verse. It is like John i.l8. "No man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
I cannot but think that one object our Lord has in view, both here and in ch. v. 37, is to impress on the Jews' minds, that all the appearances of God which are recorded in the Old Testament, were appearances not of the First Person in the Trinity but of the Second. His object in both places, I suspect, was to prepare their minds for the great truth which as yet they were unable to receive, that, however unbelieving they now were, Christ who was now with them, was that very Person who had appeared to Abr&^ham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses.