mation, or with our obligation and privilege as sinners in accepting his proffered grace. If it is not inconsistent with the sincerity of God to command all men to love Him, it is not inconsistent with his sincerity to command them to repent and believe the gospel.
The Lutheran Doctrine.
The Lutherans from their anxiety to get rid of the sovereignty of God in the dispensation of his grace, are led to hold that the gospel offer is universal, not only in the sense above stated, in that the command is given to the Church, to make it known to all men, but that it has in some way been actually communicated to all. They admit the difficulty of reconciling this assumption with tlie present state of the world. They attempt to meet this difficulty l)y say- ing, that at three different epochs the knowledge of the plan of salvation was actually known to all men. First, when the promise of redemption through the seed of the woman, was made to our first parents. Secondly, in the days of Noah ; and thirdly, during the age of the Apostles, by whom^ it is assumed, the gospel was carried to the ends of the world, even to the inhabitants of this western continent. That this knowledge has since been lost, is to be referred not to the purpose of God, but to the wilful ingratitude and wickedness of the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the heathen world. They refer also to the fact that the Cliui'cli is as a city set upon a hill ; that it does more or less attract the atten- tion of the whole earth. All men have heard of Christians and of Christianity ; and it is their own fA.ult if they do not seek further knowledge on the subject. It is very plain, however, that these considerations do not touch the difficulty. The heathen are with- out Christ and without God in the world. This is Paul's account of their condition. It is in vain, therefore, for us to attempt to show that they have the knowledge which the Apostle asserts they do not possess, and which, as all history shows, does not exist among them. The Lutheran divines feel the unsatisfactory nature of their own solution of this great problem. Gerhard, after re- ferring to all possible sources of divine knowledge accessible to the heathen, says,^ " Sed demus, in his et similibus exeraplis speciali- bus non posse nos exacte causas divinorum consiliorum exquirere vel proponere ; non tamen ad absolutum aliquod reprobationis de- cretum erit confugiendum sed adhaereamus firmiter pronunciatis istis universalibus. 1 Tim. ii. 4 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 11." " The Sym- bolical Books," says Schmid,2 "adhere to the simple proposition:
1 Loci Theologici, loc. viii. ; vii. 136, vol. iv. p. 191.
a Dogmaiik, 3rd edit. Frankfort on the Maine and Erlangen, 1853, p. 350.
646 PART m. ch. XIV. — vocation.
* quod non tantum prsedicatio poenitentiae, verum etiam promissio evangelii sit universalis, hoc est ad omnes homines pertineat,' "^ and that this vocatio is per verbum ; without attempting to recon- cile these statements with the facts of experience.
The Call to Salvation is only through the Gospel.
The call in question is made only through the Word of God, as heard or read. That is, the revelation of the plan of salvation is not made by the works or by the providence of God ; nor by the moral constitution of our nature, nor by the intuitions or de- ductions of reason ; nor by direct revelation to all men everywhere and at all times ; but only in the written Word of God. It is not denied that God may, and in past ages certainly did, convey this saving knowledge by direct revelation without the intervention of any external means of instruction. Such was the fact in the case of the Apostle Paul. And such cases, for all we know, may even now occur. But these are miracles. This is not the ordinary method. For such supernatural revelations of truth after its being made known in the Scriptures and committed to the Church with the command to teach all nations, we have no promise in the Scrip- tures and no evidence from experience.
It has ever been, and still is, the doctrine of the Church univer- sal in almost all its parts, that it is only in and through the Scrip- tures that the knowledge necessary to salvation is revealed to men. The Rationalists, as did the Pelagians, hold that what they call '^ the light of nature," reveals enough of divine truth to secure the return of the soul to God, if it be properly improved. And many Arminians, as well as Mystics, hold that the supernatural teaching of the Spirit is granted in sufficient measure to every man to secure his salvation, if he yields himself up to its guidance. It would be very agreeable to our natural feelings to believe this, as it would be to believe that all men will be saved. But such is not the doctrine of the Bible ; and it requires but little humility to believe that God is better as well as wiser than man ; that his ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts ; and that whatever He ordains is best.
That the Scriptures do teach that saving knowledge is contained only in the Bible, and consequently that those ignorant of its con- tents, are ignorant of the way of salvation, is plain, —
1. Because the Scriptures both of the Old and of the New Tes- tament, constantly represent the heathen as in a state of fatal igno-
1 Formula Concordice, xi. 28; Hase, Libri SymboUci, p. 804.