26. Op. cit., p. 277. This is the way the common sense of Martin Luther met the question of the use of remedies in disease: "Our burgomaster asked me whether it was against God's will to use medicine, for Carlstadt publicly preached tha.t the sick should not use drugs, but should only pray to God that His will be done. In reply I asked the burgomaster if he ate when he was hungry, and when he answered in the affirmative, I said, 'You may then use medicine, which is God's creature as much as food, drink, and other bodily necessities.' " — (The Life and Letters of Martin Luther. By Preserved Smith, Ph.D., 191 1, pp. 327-328.)
27. " Je le pansay et Dieu le guarit," quoted by A. T. Schofield, The Force of Mind, 1908, p. 176.
28. The New Church Review, vol. XV, 1908, pp. 415 f.
29. For example Percy Dearmer, Body and Soul,9 191 2, pp. 174 f.,
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calmly sets the "nature miracles" aside as "quite exceptional occurrences," and declares that it may be safely assumed that "it was not to such exceptional occurrences that Christ was here re- ferring." On the basis of Mark 6:7; Luke 9 : 1, 10 : 1, and the nature of the miracles recorded in Acts, he asserts that "it must have been clearly understood that Christ did not commission His disciples to exercise authority over the powers of nature." Mean- while, on his own showing, the greatest "works" which Christ did were these "nature miracles"; and it remains inexplicable how Faith-Healings in His disciples can have been declared by Him to be greater than they.
30. So, for example, Luthardt, Godet, Westcott and Milligan and Moulton; see especially the discussion in W. Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly High-Priesthood of Our Lord, 1892, pp. 250 ff.
31. Op. cit., pp. 16 ff.
32. P. 163.
33. As cited.
34. A very little consideration will suffice to show that these attempts so to state the doctrine of the atonement as to obtain from it a basis on which a doctrine of Faith-Healing can be erected, betray us into a long series of serious errors. They imply, for ex- ample, that, Christ having borne our sicknesses as our substitute, Christians are not to bear them, and accordingly all sickness should be banished from the Christian world; Christians are not to be cured of sickness, but ought not to get sick. They imply further, that, this being so, the presence of sickness is not only a proof of sin, but argues the absence of the faith which unites us to Christ, our Substitute, that is saving faith; so that no sick person can be a saved man. They imply still further that, as sickness and in- ward corruption are alike effects of sin, and we must contend that sickness, because it is an effect of sin, is removed completely and immediately by the atoning act of Christ, taking away sin, so must also inward corruption be wholly and at once removed; no Chris- tian can be a sinner. Thus we have full-blown "Perfectionism." Stanton writes: "In so far as the soul may be delivered from sin during life, the body may be delivered from sickness and disease, the fruit of sin"; "in short, if the full deliverance of the soul from sin may be at any time reached on this side of death, so may the body be freed from disease." Perfectionism and Faith-Healing, on this ground, stand or fall together. We wonder why, in his reasoning, Stanton leaves believers subject to death. The reason- ing which proves so much too much, proves, of course, nothing at aU.
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35. Gordon remarks: "It is obvious that our Redeemer cannot forgive and eradicate sin without in the same act disentangling the roots which sin has struck into our mortal bodies." Are these three terms synonymous: forgive sin, eradicate sin, disentangle the roots of sin? And are the forgiveness of sin, the disentangling of the roots of sin, the eradication of sin, all accomplished in one "act"? There is through all this reasoning a hopeless confusion of the steps of the process of salvation and of the relations of the sev- eral steps to one another. If we lay down the proposition that our salvation is completed in a single act, in all its relations — why, then, of course, we are not in process of salvation, but we are already wholly saved.
36. Gordon, op. cit., p. 18.
37. The New Church Review, vol. XV, 1908, p. 414.