Additional Note On Verses 4-6.

The passage has created much discussion and much distress, as appear- ing to teach the impossibility of restoration after a moral and spiritual lapse. It is to be observed: (1) That the case stated is that of persons who once knew, loved, and believed Christian truth, and who experienced the saving, animating, and enlightening energy of the Holy Spirit, and who lapsed into indifference and unbelief. (2) The questions whether it is possible for those who have once experienced the power of the gospel to fall away and be lost, and whether, supposing a lapse possible, those who fall away can ever be restored by repentance — do not belong here. The possibility of a fall is clearly assumed. (8) The sin in the case sup- posed is the relinquishment of the spiritual gifts and powers accompany- ing faith in Christ, and rejecting Christ himself. (4) The significance of this sin lies in the mental and spiritual condition which it betrays. It is the recoil of conviction from Christ and the adoption of the con- trary conviction. (5) The writer does not touch the question of the possibility of God’s renewing such to repentance. He merely puts his own hypothetical case, and says that, in the nature of such a case, the ordinary considerations and means which are applied to induce men to embrace the gospel no longer appeal to the subjects supposed. He con- templates nothing beyond such agencies, and asserts that these are powerless because the man has brought himself into a condition where they can no longer exert any power. Whether God will ever reclaim by ways of his own is a point which is not even touched. Destruction of the faculty of spiritual discernment is the natural outcome of deliberate and persistent sin, and the instrument of its punishment. Note, “renew unto repentance.” God promises pardon on penitence, but not penitence on sin. See a powerful passage in Coleridge’s Moral and Religious Aph- orisms, Amer. ed., Vol. I., p. 191.