First published on thelaymenslounge.com.

ALEXANDER COMRIE: HIS LIFE AND WORK IN HOLLAND.

CATHOLIC PRESBYTERIAN, January 1882.
(1 of 3)

During my visit this summer to the Scottish Highlands, I was astonished to find that the very name of Alexander Comrie was quite unknown to his own Calvinistic countrymen. I hardly could guess how it came to pass that to none of the large English-speaking Colony that resided with him in the middle of last century in the United Provinces, the thought had ever occurred of communicating to the Presbyterian Churches of Great Britain and America the marrow of the treasures of so powerful a mind, and so devout and learned a theologian. Certainly this inexplicable ignorance of one of their best men, specially on the part of the Scottish Churches, ought not, from regard to Christian honour, to be allowed to continue any longer. In order, therefore, to discharge at least a portion of the gratitude which, in common with all unshaken Dutch Christians, I feel for the memory of so faithful a servant of our Lord, I will try to sketch briefly in this journal, first some particulars of his life; then the important position he held in the conflicts of the Church in his time; and, finally, the hints he supplies as to how we may get safely through the still more intricate labyrinth of our present theological condition. The excuse that Comrie the Scotchman, after thirty years spent in the Netherlands, found it necessary to make in the Dutch preface to his principal work, must be pressed more strongly by the present writer, who has never had the privilege of enjoying for more than a few days the kind hospitality of his ultramarine friends: “If my words,” he said, “are wrongly chosen, or my style may prove incorrect according to the rules of your very different language, your indulgence will excuse an author, who is compelled to drop his mother tongue.”[1]

I. Comrie’s Life

FIRST VISIT TO WOUBRUGGE.

In the environs of Leyden, the oldest university town of Holland, near the borders of the Rhine, at the bottom of the now drained lake of Harlem, lies the little village of Woubrugge, formerly called the seigniorage of Elsyckerwoude. One night, now more than a century and a-half ago (about 1728), one of the farmers of this parish at a rather late hour observed a tall young man stepping through the gateway and coming up with a firm pace through the yard to his little mansion. In the outward appearance of this unexpected stranger there was nothing ill-omened, nothing menacing, none of those inauspicious features so much dreaded by isolated farmers in night visitors asking for shelter. On the contrary, he had a gentle though firm expression; a quick resolute spirit flashed from his deep eye; his open countenance was the token of a heart that even at the first blush would have invited the confidence of any one but a Dutch peasant. As he came nearer, the farmer went from his window to the doorstep, unbolted the upper half of his door, and bending over the lower part, asked the fellow what he came for so late? The answer to this abrupt question was the humble petition, in somewhat broken Dutch, that he might be allowed to pass the night in the grange as he was quite penniless, and that he wished to be put in the way to Leyden next morning. Our farmer, partly under the impression of his tall, commanding stature, partly struck by his mild voice, felt he could not deny his request, and doing what in a doubtful case like this is always the best way to avoid mistrust,—assented at once, opened his door, and ushered his guest into a little grange, adjacent to his own bedroom, where he could be watched stealthily through a hole in the wall. There he left the candle with him, brought him some bread and milk, and having bid him good night, retired in the dark to his bedroom to watch his movements—not that he thought him a vagrant or rambler, but still his broken Dutch had awakened his suspicion. Fancy his astonishment as he saw the poor wanderer, as soon as he imagined himself alone and unobserved, uncover his head, put off his coat, and, falling on his knees, pour out his soul in a touching, fervent prayer to the Lord, giving thanks for his guidance, and for the kindness he had met with. During his prayer, there rose such a holy expression from the young man’s face that the farmer already felt quite ashamed of his unfavourable conjectures—a change of opinion ending in making him feel himself entirely his inferior, as, placing his ear once more to the hole, he heard the lad pleading most earnestly and fervently before the Throne of Grace, that if his entertainer might not be as yet converted to eternal life, the Divine mercy might be bestowed upon him also and upon his family. This was too much for the listener. It seemed to him as a vision from heaven. Was this “to entertain angels unawares”? Was this stranger a messenger from above? He did not dare to decide, but surely a message from above had come to his heart. Struck by surprise and admiration he left the hole, dropped the curtain, and, approaching his bedstead, fell on his knees, and humbling his heart before the Lord, felt as if the prayer of the young stranger had been granted already—such joy and celestial happiness came into his soul. This was the first conversion that Comrie made in the village of his future ministry.[2]

To understand this, the reader should know that Woubrugge just a little before the time of Comrie’s visit had been the scene of a very remarkable revival. There had been in this village for years and years, as Comrie himself afterwards told, nothing but a dead outward show of religion; there was much orthodoxy and even knowledge leading to a historical faith, but the power of the Lord was not manifested, the operation of the Holy Spirit did not show itself. It was the stillness of the tomb, not the sparkling of life and the beaming of light such as should be in a Christian community. But then there came from Benthuyzen, a little place two hours off, a God-fearing workman, who had been brought to know of the resurrection-power of Christ by the faithful ministry of Van Noorden, a father in Christ for the whole neighbourhood. This plain workman felt as if the Lord had bound the whole village of Woubrugge upon his heart. He tried by every means to rouse the people from their lethargy, stirred up young and old to abandon their false trust, and never ceased to carry the souls of all around him before the Throne of Divine Mercy in his prayers. Thus he went on for eight years, but without the least shadow of success, till finally, after nine years of quiet waiting, the Lord came down to answer his petition: now the seed had ripened, and Klaas Jansse Poldervaert—such was his name—hardly knew how to satisfy all the demands for spiritual direction that came to him day by day from different quarters of the parish. So prominent and striking did this work of the Lord then appear, that many came up every Sunday from different places in the neighbourhood to witness the outpouring of spiritual blessing. And although the Rev. Mr. Blom, minister of the parish at that time, at first began by opposing the movement as throwing his ministry into the shade, still the revival proved so general and so continuous, and maintained such a high character, that he finally gave way, became a partaker of the unspeakable blessing for his own soul, and until his death in 1734, bore public testimony from the pulpit to the great and glorious work the Lord had done in his parish in his days, though without his instrumentality.[3]

I have called this revival remarkable, first on account of the long time it took for rooting itself—a preparatory period of nine years—so very different from the sudden movements of our own days. It was remarkable also, because it brought to the Cross not a wild and worldly population, but a company of strictly orthodox and outwardly blameless parishioners. It was even more remarkable for the sound character it assumed from the beginning and maintained to the last, as described by Comrie in these terms: “The work of the Lord in our village was such that all the really converted people, who got the sealing of the Spirit, were constantly moving around the Mediator as their common centre, rejecting everything besides the Surety Himself.”[4] And certainly, no one who is acquainted with the secrets of the human heart will think it strange, that under such circumstances, and in a spiritual atmosphere such as this, a man like our farmer, who, perhaps, had been for a long time “kicking against the pricks,” became so strongly impressed by the sight of this praying wanderer, that the ice in his soul melted, and the waters began to flow.

THE WANDERER AND THE FARMER.

The meeting of the two men, as early next morning as the time of the year permitted, does not require a detailed account. Brought so wonderfully together, they now for the first time found themselves face to face before the Lord, who had so evidently guided Comrie’s steps, and had been working still more manifestly in the heart of his suspicious entertainer. The farmer could not refrain from telling all that had happened; he acknowledged his mistrust, confessed his culpable reluctance to the Book, glorified the power of grace, and rejoiced in his unspeakable happiness. All this was mingled with the warmest expressions of his thankfulness towards the young man whose presence and prayer had acted so forcibly upon him, and who now, quite embarrassed by this outpouring of gratitude, which was the more repugnant to his sensitive nature as his influence upon the farmer’s mind had been quite unconscious, felt a sensible relief, as the peasant finally stopped the ebullition of his emotions, and somewhat suddenly apostrophised his guest by the rather peremptory question—“And you, sir, I almost forgot to ask, who you are, and why came you here?”

“My dear friend,”—Comrie replied—“well, of course, I came down to Woubrugge to witness the work of the Lord in this neighbourhood. I am not a native: I am Scotch. My name is Alexander Comrie. I was born the 16th December, 1708,[5] and three years ago was sent to Amsterdam to a merchant. My parents, who died since, gave me a careful education, at first intending that I should study for the ministry; but my father, afterwards changing his mind, to my great disappointment, thought commerce would suit me better, and hoping that the distraction of a large foreign town would soon overcome my predilection for the pulpit, sent me to your capital. There I was placed as an apprentice, and so I passed three dull and lonely years in the narrow office of my employer,[6] till, some weeks ago, at church I made the acquaintance of a godly old man, who told me of what was going on in the Rhine villages, and encouraged me to go and judge for myself. So, the first holidays I could get, I embarked for Benthuizen; but after some hours’ sailing on the lake the wind became so violent, that our barge was cast ashore and almost shattered. I myself had but a narrow escape as I tried to swim towards the coast, and, with the loss of my bag, was obliged to walk on in the dark, till I saw the light of your lamp, inducing me to make an appeal to your hospitality. How happy,” he added, “and how glorious was all this, and how kindly the Lord guided me to make me find such a friendly heart, and to bring such a blessing to you. Oh, may it prove an eternal blessing! And if it is not asking too much, would you allow me to stay here now a couple of days? and would you be so kind as to introduce me to some of the pious people of the village?”

This request, of course, was granted at once, and before noon the farmer went with Comrie to the house of his landlord, Arnold de Sterke, in whom, conjointly with Cornelius van Schellingerwoude, the seigniory of the village had been vested by purchase some years before. Both these gentlemen had joined in the spiritual movement among their tenants. In Van Schellingerwoude’s family, six out of his eight children had come to a full possession of grace ; and our farmer, anxious to cheer his landlord by the glad tidings of the change that had taken place in his inward life, and knowing the interest he always took in able, pious young men, felt quite sure of meeting with a hearty welcome, as he stepped over the threshold of the old manor. Mr. de Sterke, indeed, listened with evident interest and a smile on his mild face, as he attended to his farmer’s narrative; expressed his gladness at the good news, then turning to his tall, fine-looking companion, was soon lost in a long conversation regarding the state of the Church in Scotland, the position which the stranger occupied at Amsterdam, his former studies at the Latin School, and his prospects for the future. “Such a staunch fellow would do for the ministry!” said Mr. de Sterke to himself. “What a pity that such a capital young man should bury his talents in an office.” And as Comrie repeated his strong desire to serve the Lord in his Church, and could scarcely conceal the dislike, not to say disgust, which office-work provoked in him, Mr. de Sterke at once ordered his carriage, and intimated to the farmer his intention of taking the young Scotchman along with him to Woerden. The minister of this place at that time was the Rev. Antonius Tarre, a cousin to Mr. de Sterke, who was bound to him by the double tie of relationship and spiritual sympathy; and it was with this excellent clergyman that Mr. de Sterke desired to deliberate upon the possibility of sending Comrie to the University. Mr. Tarre at once formed the same favourable impression of the young man’s character and sincere piety, and after a short examination, came without the least hesitation to the conclusion that his intellectual talents were anything but common, and his knowledge of the classics, to say the least, far from insignificant. This satisfactory result confirmed Mr. de Sterke in his first intention; and on finding in Mr. Tarre the same willingness to help, both gentlemen soon came to the conclusion that Comrie, if he desired, should leave his office at once, resume his classics, and after a year’s preparation, be sent to a University.

Comrie, as might be expected, embraced this proposal with his whole heart, thanked his benefactors most warmly, and, according to a report, resting, however, on mere tradition, solemnly promised that, in case their bursary should prove the means of bringing him into the ministry, he would remain at the disposal of the Woubruggian Church as long as the Lord granted him life and strength.

HE STUDIES FOR THE MINISTRY

By the 8th September of the following year, this scheme had already been carried so far, that Comrie could matriculate at Groningen, the rector who enrolled him in the album discipulorum being Professor Michael Rossall.[7] No doubt the great attractions of Groningen at that time, even over those of Leyden, were the two professors of theology, Antonius van Driessen and Cornelius van Velsen, the valiant opponents of Roell’s errors and Venema’s laxity.[8] But besides attending the specifically theological lectures of these two professors, he applied his mind at the same time to the study of philosophy and law, as the two indispensable complements of a solid ministerial training. To the study of law he was introduced by Professor Johannes Barbeyracius, and to that of philosophy by Filburg and Rossall.[9] He remained at Groningen nearly four years, and then went to Leyden, where he was entered in the register on the 10th of July of 1733. Here he attended Burmann’s lectures on law, the lectures of Taco Hajo van den Honert and Johannes Wessel on systematical theology, Schulten’s on Hebrew, and more especially the great Gravensande’s lectures on philosophy. The last mentioned apparently exercised the strongest influence upon him, and even succeeded in persuading him to take his degrees, not in theology, but in philosophy. Accordingly, on the 5th October, 1734, Comrie was created Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy, after the public delivery in the great hall of a treatise entitled, “Dissertatio de moralitatis fundamento et natura virtutis,’—“ On the basis of morality and the nature of virtue.”

It so happened that, when Comrie took his double degree, the parish of Woubrugge had been vacant for more than three months, through the death, in July, of the Rev. Carolus Blom. Such a vacancy occurring just at the moment when Comrie reached the end of his studies, could not fail to produce an impression both upon the kirk-session and upon the lords of the manor, that the pulpit had been rendered vacant that it might be filled by him. The kirk-session, therefore, did not hesitate for a moment, and, as soon as Comrie had taken license, with the consent of both the patrons (M. de Sterke and M. van Esslinger- woude, who merely stipulated, for form’s sake, for a reservation of their right[10]), our young Scotch theologian was elected and duly nominated minister of the parish. The patent of this call was dispatched as early as February, 1735. Comrie, mindful of the promise given to his benefactors, accepted it loyally, and soon afterwards, upon the 1st of May, was inducted to his office by the most congenial among his friends, his truly fides Achates, and afterwards companion in his theological contests, the Rev. Nic. Holtius, minister of Kouderkerk, near Leyden. For the text of his first sermon he took Zech. vi. 15, “And they that are far off shall come and build the temple of the Lord, and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me.”[11] This election to Woubrugge by the kirk-session, properly speaking, nearly concludes all that we know of Comrie’s biography. He became minister of Woubrugge; he never was anything besides; and he did not leave his church till the end of his days was evidently approaching. In the Spring of 1773 his weak health forced him to withdraw. Not that he was not desired by other congregations. On the contrary, one after another, the churches of Kralingen, of Naarden, of Schoonhoven, of Bommel, and finally of Steenwyk, were most anxious to avail themselves of his services ; the Scottish Church of Rotterdam, served at that time by the Rev. Dr. Kennedy, Comrie’s personal friend, also put him on the so-called short leet.[12] But Comrie did not move ; he felt obliged to refuse these calls, one after another, and kept faithfully and devotedly to the church of his first love. Woubrugge was the “field white for harvest” pointed out to him by the Lord in such a remarkable way; it was the advanced post entrusted to his unparalleled valour; here Comrie determined to stand to the end in the power of his heavenly Captain,—the sword in the one hand and the trowel in the other.

And this simple fact, though apparently insignificant, proved afterwards to have exercised the greatest influence on his character, on his studies, and through the channel of these studies even upon the future of our whole Church. His remaining all his life in the same parish impressed upon his character that mark of unity which is so great an element of mental strength. His living all his days in the centre of such a remarkable revival kept him from withering, and imbued all his writings with the soft, spiritual flavour of Divine grace. His being obliged to expound continually the deepest mysteries of the Gospel to the plainest kind of people, induced him to adopt a style exactly fitted to preserve the knowledge of the truth amongst our peasants, when the higher classes were to be swept away by the mighty stream of rationalism. And (what still more peculiarly deserves our attention) the fact of his being found in such an atmosphere imbued his theology with that vital power by which all genuine theology differs from religious science—a power descending from Christ into the heart of His people; and manifesting itself through His people in every living congregation. The unconscious influence of these happy congregations reacted upon the heart and mind of exceptional scholars like Comrie, to whom the Lord committed the solemn task of restoring once more the true signature imprinted by His own hand on the science of His mysteries.

HIS LIFE AT WOUBRUGGE

Our knowledge of the further particulars of Comrie’s private life, and the exercise of his ministry during this long period of almost half-a-century, is but scanty. To four points I beg to direct attention.

First, Comrie’s life was a very lonely one. He married, in 1736, Miss Johanna de Heyde, a lady of rare piety, whose brother, the Rev. Jan Willem de Heyde, was a favourite preacher at Rotterdam; but as early as 1738 the Lord took her from him;[13] and he never married again. He had but one daughter, of whom we know absolutely nothing. Hence, it may be said that Comrie’s life, destitute of all attractions, and deprived of the charm of a happy home, was divided between his study and his church.

Secondly, it seems worth noticing that Comrie was quite free from the miserable curse of clericalism. The thought of overruling others, or of domineering over the spiritual life of his parishioners, awoke his disgust. And so far was he from thinking himself as alone fit for speaking, that on the contrary, he encouraged lay-preaching, by inducing his kirk-session to issue a patent for public teaching to one of the lords of the manor connected with his congregation.[14]

Thirdly, Comrie was especially powerful in his prayers; and as his first prayer in the grange had been the means of touching the farmer’s conscience, so it is related, that a great deal of the spiritual direction he gave to his congregation was due to the unction and the depth of his public prayers. As a specially remarkable fact, we are told that at one time the quiet village was suddenly alarmed by five or six successive cases of incendiarism; next Sunday the incendiary himself being at church, was brought to public confession and full repentance by the fascinating and touching tone in which Comrie pled before the Lord, not against him, but for the salvation of his soul.

In the last place, his mode of visiting his parishioners at their homes was quite different from that of others. He hated that superficial, almost mechanical, habit of running through the village several times a-year, and stepping into house after house, and walking out in a minute. Comrie’s visits were rarer; but when he came it was for hours, and with the clear intention and real purpose to do a work in that house, for the spiritual benefit of all its occupants, parents, children, and servants; and in such a case he never bade his people adieu before he had brought about quite a change in their mutual relations, and felt sure that he had left behind him the peace and the consolation of his heavenly Master.

So Comrie’s life went calmly on, in the scrupulous and faithful discharge of his ecclesiastical duty. All the time of his ministry he made the little church of Woubrugge the centre of a spiritual movement widely spread and extensively blessed. From miles and miles in the neighbourhood, all God-fearing people came to hear this godly man. And when he left his manse on the 4th of April, 1773,[15] to spend the rest of his life in Gouda, Woubrugge and all its environs felt that in Comrie there had been granted to the Reformed Church a great man before the Lord, not only for Rhineland, but the whole United Provinces; a man not likely to be soon forgotten or easily replaced.

For a few months only was he to enjoy the sweet rest of retirement from office. His health had been already broken before he left his favourite village; and his weakness, as often happens, was soon aggravated by the want of his usual employment. Before the next year had reached its close, on the 10th of December, 1774, Comrie was borne away to the heavenly mansions, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, sweetly resting his wearied soul on the bosom of his Saviour.

In accordance with his wishes, his burial was conducted in the simplest way. Not even an inscription was to indicate his tombstone in that huge cathedral of Gouda, no doubt known to many of our readers for its uncommonly beautiful glass paintings. In his will he had expressly stipulated that no biographical notice should be entered in the Church Review after his death—so averse was he to all glorification of the creature, and to the vanity of human pomp.[16] And though we cannot but regret that, owing to this sober-mindedness, we are left in perfect ignorance of the further particulars of his life, still we submit not unwillingly to this deeply-felt want, glad as we are to find in Comrie once more the image of a genuine Calvinist,—one who showed his detestation of all glorification of the creature, not merely in his sermons, but more severely still in what concerned his own life.

An ill-advised sonneteer nevertheless violated his memory by composing a quatrain in commemoration of his death, telling us in the style of the time, that “though Alexander the Macedonian king was named the Great on account of the subjugation of Asia by his sword, our Alexander, the Scotch theologian, had a still better title to such eulogy, as he had conquered by his pen the hostile powers of hell and Satan.”[17] The lines are certainly neither soberly expressed nor at all congenial to a mind like Comrie’s. And yet the seemingly exaggerated words proved literally true for generation after generation to our pious Dutch farmers, from whom the Macedonian king continued to be veiled by a perpetual eclipse, but who handed down to their children and grandchildren the name of Alexander Comrie, the Scotchman, as of the man of God whose sound and penetrating exposition of the truth had overcome the power of Satan in the hearts of their parents, and in their own.[18]

In another paper we will speak of Comrie’s share in the great theological conflict of his time.

A. KUYPER

ALEXANDER COMRIE: HIS CONFLICT IN HOLLAND.

CATHOLIC PRESBYTERIAN, March 1882.
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The direct influence exerted by Comrie through his local ministry upon the Church of Holland in his own time, however far spreading, was but insignificant compared with the mighty power exercised by his writings over the mass of the Dutch Reformed people after his death, and down to the present. His opponents are now all forgotten; their very names are unknown to our people; but his own books are still reprinted, and are read over and over again. Schultens, Van den Os, Alberti, and in a sense even Jan van den Honert are now mere technical figures, known only to scholars and students of Church history, but Comrie continues to be a living person, whose staunch spirit still strengthens the weak, and whose clear expositions of the way by grace to glory continue to be welcomed by rich and poor. This he is, owing to three facts,—First, to the fact that while his adversaries by-and-by fell under the influence of rationalism, he and his fidus Achates, Nicolas Holtius, kept firmly and closely to the old path of Scripture and Reformation truth, in its sound, solid, and well-pondered connection with the attributes of the living God on the one side, and, on the other hand, with the deep miseries and special wants of our human nature. Secondly, he felt an invincible dislike to all hovering and wavering terms, and therefore never rested until the matter he took to explain had been placed before the mind and heart, and even the fancy of his readers, in a sharply-defined and concrete form. And thirdly, he concentrated all the energy of his powerful mind on the elaboration of whatever has been, is, and ever will be the central problem of all Protestant theology—viz., justification by faith.[19]

HIS WRITINGS AND OPPONENTS.

The antagonist by whom Comrie was challenged to come forward in defense of the truth was a foolhardy person of no importance whatever as a theologian, and very insignificant as an orator—Anthony van den Os, called in 1748 to the Church of Zwolle, fourteen years after Comrie’s entrance on the ministry at Woubrugge. Van den Os had imbibed at the university the first poisonous elements of rationalism, imported about that time from the school of Wolff and Semler in Germany. Even the Faculty of Leyden, so many years illustrious for its staunch orthodoxy, had now lost its magnificent reputation under the influence of such men as Van den Honert the younger, Alberti, Schultens, and in a sense even Bernard de Moor. As long, however, as the dangerous deviation remained limited to scientific circles, no alarm was given, and the Latin language proved once more sufficient to avert immediate harm from the Church. But this suddenly changed as Van den Os, with contemptuous disregard for the pious feelings of his flock, boldly and publicly proclaimed from his pulpit dangerous opinions hitherto carefully concealed from the people. He did not hesitate to attack successively, in his very first sermons, the eternal generation of the Son, the punishment of eternal death as the consequence of the first sin, the hereditary debt of Adam, and the judicial side of justification. All these questions, however, he treated more in an exegetical way, as if depending merely upon a correct understanding of such texts as— Micah v. 2, Ps. ii. 7, 1 John v. 26, Gen. iii. 22, and Rom. iii, 23 ; hence these extravagances did not rouse the suspicion of the people at large. But when at last he did not shrink from declaring that our justification before God was a mere consequence or result of our individual faith, the godly people at once perceived that their inexperienced pastor was slipping the poison of rationalism into the Confession of their fathers, and that the error of Pelagianism was again obscuring the true relationship between God the Saviour and the saved sinner; and they determined not to leave the decision of the conflict to science and dialectics, but to take it in hand as an ecclesiastical body. In a few weeks, this apparently local conflict spread all over the country, and very soon divided almost the whole nation into two hostile camps. On one side were arrayed all the power and influence of the magistrate and the State university; and on the other, the real spiritual power of the godly amongst the people, the ministers, and the ecclesiastical government. The town council of Zwolle, the provincial council of Overyssel, and even Prince William IV. of Orange, stood up, not so much for Van den Os himself, as for the unfettered progress of rationalism; while the Theological Faculty of Leyden apologised for the heterodoxy of the extravagant young minister, as not so much exceeding the boundaries of the articles of the Church. On the other hand, the defense of the old Scriptural truth was conducted in a fair, vigorous, and decisive manner, first by almost all the colleagues of Van den Os; secondly, by the kirk-session of Zwolle; thirdly, by the classical and provincial synods or assemblies, and more powerfully still by the two sagacious and able theologians, Alexander Comrie and his friend Holtius.

These two champions, being both practical men, felt at once that the first thing to be done was to resist Van den Os on the field of ecclesiastical law. Though a minister of the Church, he had dared to attack the very foundation of its faith, and instead of leading his congregation in the path of truth, had seduced his people to leave the old path; hence, it was first of all for the Church itself to act; her authority had been insulted, her honour was at stake; she therefore should revenge herself on the breaker of her covenant, and the disloyal subscriber of her articles. Van den Os himself unintentionally furthered this by a sermon delivered on the 19th November, 1752, in which he provoked the Church authorities in a rather rude and insolent manner by these two hitherto unheard-of propositions: 1st, That the articles of the Church were devoid of all power to decide in matters of faith, the Holy Scriptures being at every moment, and always remaining, according to everybody’s individual interpretation, the only rule of faith and duty; and 2nd, That the Synod of Dort, in 1618-19, never intended to establish the truth permanently, but merely to give her own judgment, leaving it to the Church of later times to decide regarding it in quite a different, and even contrary way, as soon as more and better light might be granted.

CHURCH STANDARDS AND PERSONAL VIEWS.

Of course, neither Comrie nor any one among his adherents thought in the least of placing the Church Articles above the Word of God, or even of coordinating any human rule with the Divine revelation. And it was granted on both sides that the Church of every century to come always retained the power to alter, in a lawful way, what, after due examination, appeared capable of being more distinctly defined, and expressed in more appropriate terms, or to admit such further development as the uninterrupted teaching of the Holy Spirit might have granted to the body of Christ. But neither Comrie nor any sound Christian could ever concede that the truth itself, as it had proved the fountain of salvation and spiritual strength for our fathers in the glorious times of the Reformation, should partly or wholly change in any age to what our predecessors had consciously opposed as heterodox, and most peremptorily rejected as contrary to the standard of the pure Christian faith. There were, of course, open questions; there were also some other questions to which a hesitating answer had been given, and which remained under investigation; but there was also a quite different series of questions, to which the Church of Christ had answered not only positively, but also antithetically—that is, questions in which she had stated the truth and rejected the error, both in a distinct and articulated form. But now Van den Os and his adherents intended nothing less than to undo this work of centuries, and if possible to put error for truth and truth for error. Moreover, it had always been the rule hitherto that the power of altering the standard of faith belonged to the Church as a body, and not to the individual members as such; every minister of the Gospel, therefore, was obliged to keep faithfully to the articles of his Church, and was not allowed to teach anything contrary to these standards, as long as his doubts had not been weighed and duly examined by the Church itself. But Van den Os, taking offence also at this first principle of Presbyterian Church government, assumed for himself, and for every private scholar, the right to reject what he deemed not so well established, and to substitute for what he thought unfounded a hasty comment of his own. This Comrie and his friends could not bear. They felt strongly convinced that to allow such extravagant licentiousness would at once change the whole nature and character of the Church of Christ as a Divine organic institution, resting on an objective, revealed basis of truth, and turn it into a society of skeptical inquirers, always investigating and never sure. They sought everywhere, by private correspondence, to open the eyes of the faithful ministers and elders to the immense danger impending over their heads, and finally succeeded in carrying a general movement of the kirk-sessions of the large towns and the classes (i.e., presbyteries) against such an unreasonable and perilous innovation. The kirk-session of Zwolle took the lead, by suspending Van den Os from his ministerial functions. The kirk-sessions of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague joined their protest to that of their brethren in Zwolle. Even the classis (presbytery) and the provincial synod did not hesitate to oppose such a dangerous adventurer. Yea, so general became the opposition, that even the classis of Schieland, near Delft, moved in the Provincial Synod of South Holland, that such hazardous and dangerous opinions should be encountered by the universal disapprobation of the whole Church. This motion was the more remarkable as it was seconded by the Synodal deputies, and even supported by some of the Leyden professors; it was declared that the General Synod of Dort, in 1618-19, never thought of testifying, in their Articles against the Remonstrants, to an uncertain and doubtful truth, in order to have it re-examined by every succeeding generation, as soon as the Lord, as they expressed it, might grant new and better light to His Church.

But Comrie and his friends, among whom was also the Rev. Hugh Kennedy, the Scotch Minister of Rotterdam, did not end their efforts here; for the conflict was also fought on the field of theology. In this more serious and heroic conflict, the name of the characterless Van den Os, of course, soon disappeared, so that their whole attack became directed against his learned advocate and powerful patron, the Leyden professor, John van den Honert, who, after a short period of punctilious orthodoxy, had yielded more and more to the dangerous rationalism of his colleague Alberti.[20] In Van den Honert they saw the legitimate descendant of the spurious theological line, running through the history of our Church down from the time of the Synod of Dort, and originating with John Piscator, the German theological professor of Herborn at the end of the 16th century; from whom, though not in a direct way, James Alting, the Groningen professor, also a German (born at Heidelberg), had imbibed, as they felt persuaded, his crypto-Socinian opinions. To the academical teaching of this remarkable scholar, Comrie and his friends traced the heterodox deviations of John Vlak, who denied the infinite value of Christ’s sacrifice; of Balthasar Bekker, who rejected the existence of Satan; and of Alexander Roell, noted for his opposing the eternal generation of the Son[21]—the three most conspicuous errors publicly maintained by Van den Os, aggravated in his sermons by the proposition that our justification depends on our faith as its ground. Van den Honert was not ashamed to wound the feelings of the Church by defending Van den Os—first, in an academical “judicium,” inspired by him, but published under the name of the Faculty of Leyden; and, secondly, by a vehement attack upon Holtius and Comrie in the classis of Leyden.[22] In both cases, this opponent himself confined the whole dispute to the question of justification, so they took their ground on the same basis.

THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS IN DISPUTE.

The first question in this conflict, as they put it, touched the general controversy between the Roman and Protestant Churches of old—viz., whether in justifying a sinner the Lord began by infusing righteousness into his soul, in order to justify him afterwards before His tribunal on account of this preceding and inherent righteousness previously infused into him; or whether the Lord, by a transeunt action, first imputed to him the righteousness and satisfaction of Christ (which thus became, not by infusion but by substitution, his own), then justified him on account of this imputed righteousness, and, thirdly, infused the new life into the now justified sinner. The first view was maintained by the Roman Catholics and denied by Luther and Calvin; the latter always had been asserted by the Reformers and opposed by their Romish antagonists. According to Luther and Calvin, in the act of Justification, a sinner is not considered in his own nature, but as he is counted in Christ; whilst, in the opinion of the Catholics, the justification comes to the man as he is—not in Christ, but in himself.

The second question, regarding the direct fruit of faith, was whether the personal persuasion of, and confidence in our own personal salvation was of the very nature of faith; or whether this certain conviction was granted to the believer only by a special and additional grace? This also formed a point of controversy between the Reformers and the defenders of Catholicism. It had always been the Protestant confession that the certain and undoubted persuasion of our own personal salvation grows out of the faith once granted us under the ordinary action of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the Word, just as a flower out of its bud. On the other hand, the Catholics always maintained that such a happy certitude did not pertain to the very essence of our faith, did not reside in its root, and therefore never could grow out of it, but was granted exceptionally to some saints by a special, different and extraordinary deed of mercy.

Finally, the third question concerned the more direct connection between our faith and our justification. As to this, the Roman Catholics always had stated that, first, the sinner was imbued with righteousness; that, secondly, out of this infused righteousness sprang up a living faith; and that, thirdly, after the appearance of this faith, and on account of it, the regenerated man was justified before God. More outwardly, but in the same line of thought, the Arminians considered faith itself as an active deed, an action, a work, and so regarded the obedience of faith (as they called it) as a condition to be fulfilled before God could justify us at His tribunal. But the Protestant theologians of Reformation times always had asserted that first of all the Lord imputes to the sinner the work and the sufferings of Christ; that, secondly, this imputation is his real justification before God; and that, thirdly, after this imputation comes the granting and exhibiting to the sinner of what had been imputed already to him—viz., of all the treasures laid up in Christ on account of His infinite merits; and that faith is the first precious gem bestowed on the sinner out of this treasury; which faith, by unfolding its riches, confers upon the sinner in a quite spontaneous way the unquestionable certainty of his deliverance and eternal happiness.

To sum up, the controversy between Rome and Protestantism always had been, and still was in Comrie’s time, as it is in ours,—whether the Almighty God is or is not the overflowing fountain of all bounties,[23] so that everything which is to be considered as a bounty to our heart proceeds from the eternal source of His free grace,—the one God being in everything the first and the free Cause, and the independent Author. This Rome denied, the Reformers asserted; and in perfect accordance with this denial and assertion, Rome made the justification of the sinner before the Divine Tribunal depend on the works of faith; the faith on the previous option of the sinner himself; and this previous option of the sinner on the preceding infusion of righteousness granted to every baptised individual; a line starting virtually in the option of the sinner, and having the Divine justification as its end. On the contrary, Luther and Calvin, and all Protestant theologians treading in their footsteps, steadfastly maintained that in actione Dei transeunte[24] first of all came the imputation of Christ’s merits to the sinner, being the justification of the ungodly; then followed the granting of what was imputed, originating with the planting in our heart of the fides potentialis; and so, finally, the sinner, having been made a believer, felt the perfect assurance of his imperishable salvation rise out of the root of his faith—a line, starting from a free action in God, and leading to the perfect rest of the soul in God’s overflowing mercy. Rome bound God and freed man. Luther and Calvin, on the contrary, set forth the sinner as bound, and God as free; and this sharp antithesis was felt by Comrie and his companion to be, at bottom, nothing less than the antithesis between deifying man and humanising the Almighty.

POINTS MAINTAINED BY COMRIE.

It is clear and perfectly plain, though not obvious to everyone at first sight, where the danger lurked. The Gospel reveals and the Reformation taught once more, that all our redemption from the bondage of sin, and from our liability to eternal death, rests in the moral miracle of substitution, through the holy mystery of our mystical union with Christ. He suffers our punishment, and fulfils the law in our stead. Both His passion and His active satisfaction are granted to us by pure and free mercy.

This truth Rome reversed, not by denying justification by faith, but by stating that good works are included in faith as the flower in the bud, and that on account of this undeniable fact the real existence and soundness of our faith cannot be ascertained before the works have come to light; thus by subtle reasoning substituting again works for faith.

Then came the Arminians, who tried to falsify the plain and glorious Gospel in a quite different way, not making faith the fountain of our good works, but making it a meritorious work itself. To believe was the commandment of the new law, promulgated by Christ after the Sinaitic law. And to fulfil this Gospel commandment was to work out your own salvation.

But now the Rationalists in Comrie’s days once more changed the position and mode of attack, and invaded the holy ground by contriving this new scheme: that our justification, rooted in actual faith, does not exist and cannot exist before our faith has been born and our conversion consummated—a statement involving two dangerous errors : 1st, that only the passive obedience of Christ is imputed to the believer, he himself, being regenerated, having now to fulfil the law of Sinai; and 2nd, that all the symptoms preceding the birth of our faith are to be considered as a “common grace,” granted to everyone in his baptism.

Now, such a Gospel is no Gospel; and Comrie and his companions, filled with holy anger at such an injury to God’s inscrutable mercy, swept away those trifling and thoughtless theories by a mighty exposition of the real Gospel in all its beauty and perfection, summing up the whole of our salvation in these points:—

A. From ALL ETERNITY:

1. Our whole salvation, and every part of it, in every stage of its development, flows towards the sinner completely and absolutely out of the “fountain of all bounties, the personal, living, almighty God.”

2. God’s work of superabundant grace, as long as it remains included in His own Eternal Being, is called His Decree.

3. Therefore in this inmost work of grace, both our justification and our faith, and the connection between justification and faith, are com- prehended.

B. In the course of DIVINE REVELATION:

1. God’s work of Grace, making the transition from the state of inclusion in His Divine Being to the outward universe, and passing from the decree into action, becomes liable to transition from one moment and one successive stage to another.   

2. That the Son of God, in the days of His flesh, as the head of our covenant, has been made sin and a curse in our stead, in such a manner that all the sins of God’s people through all centuries, in thought, and word, and deed, have been laid upon Him; and on the contrary, the perfect and absolute fulfilment of the law has been demanded from Him in our stead.  

3. That, being then made sin and a curse in our stead, He, by substitution, suffered eternal death in His agonies of Gethsemane and Golgotha, but has been justified in His resurrection, as the Father raised Him again to life by His exceedingly mighty power.

4. That God’s elect, having been given to the Son from eternity, we died in Christ when He died in our stead, and therefore were justified also in Him when He rose from the dead.

C. In its personal APPLICATION:

1. That God’s work of grace, thus rooted in the innermost eternal action of His Divine Being, and manifested in the outer world by the mysteries of the incarnation, the death and the resurrection of our Expromissor and Warrant, now in the third place remains still to be realised in the personal experience of elect sinners.

2. In this third stage the chief operator is the Holy Ghost, acting through and together with the instrumentality of the Word, containing the Gospel, which Gospel is not a simple annunciation that there is deliverance in Christ, but, on the contrary, the solemn proclamation that our salvation is consummated, that everything has been completed, that the pardon is found, the law fulfilled, and that we are justified before the Divine Tribunal, eternally in God’s holy decree, and in time, actually, when He raised Christ from the dead.

3. That the Holy Ghost, in order to incline the will of the sinner, and to give him the capability of accepting this Gospel as a certain and undoubtable personal grant of pardon and eternal happiness to himself, infuses into his soul a potential faith, develops this faith from potentia into actum by the preaching of the Word, and qualifies him by the means of this acting faith to embrace Christ, and to accept all His treasures, among which justification is the first.

4. That therefore the meaning of “justification by faith” alone is this: that by the instrumentality of the faith planted in us by grace, the Holy Ghost induces us to accept and to apply to our own soul the holy benefit granted already to us in the resurrection of our Saviour— viz., our justification, destined to us from all eternity, realised when Christ rose from the dead, and now appropriated, applied, and made true and real for our own consciousness by the Holy Ghost, but through the instrumentality of our operating faith.

To sum up: Comrie stated:—(1), An eternal purpose to justify the elect in Christ (justificationis destinatio); (2), an objective realisation of this purpose in the resurrection of our Warrant and Head (justificatio activa); and (3), a subjective realisation of the same purpose in the tranquillising of the sinner’s conscience (justificatio passiva).

UNION WITH CHRIST.

In those three links the whole chain of our justification was complete, not, however, in an intellectual way, but in a mystical sense. And, therefore, the only point which Comrie felt still obliged to press continually upon the conscience of his antagonists and the mind of his readers, was our mystical union with Christ, as the only mode under which we can contemplate His substitution in our stead.

Apart from this mystical union of God’s elect with Christ, the whole doctrine of substitution, as he truly said, degenerates into a worthless and idle speculation, without any reality or consistency, incapable of touching the heart or tranquillising it by an indubitable certainty.

The mystical union with our Saviour is the hidden and incomprehensible Divine force, by which the mutual substitution between Him and us passes from the state of abstract comment into the state of the most concrete and almost palpable reality. It makes into a fact what, without this unity, remains vain and ineffectual, a mere wavering cobweb, woven out of the chimerical and imaginary hallucinations of our own bewildered mind.  

This union, he was fond to add, could be identified with no other union,—neither with the essential union of the Three Persons in the One Being; nor with the hypostatical union of the Divine and human nature in Christ; nor with the mechanical union of our engines; nor with the social union of a corporation; nor with the natural union of the limbs of a body; nor with the matrimonial union between husband and wife; nor, to conclude, with the sacramental union in Baptism and Holy Supper. With all these it admitted comparison, as the Holy Spirit conferred them continually. But admitting comparison was far from making them identical. The mystical union with Christ was a union sui generis, something inexpressible and indescribable; a profound secret; to be revealed only to the anointed one, not by the way of the analysing understanding, but by the unutterable teaching of the indwelling Spirit in the inner chamber of our heart.

Owing to this wonderful mystery of our union with Christ, we were in Him, when in the days of His flesh He fulfilled the law, bent under the burden of our curse, and died the death of all deaths on Mount Calvary. When He hung on the cross, we were crucified in and with Him. But then also, when He, our Head, rose from the grave, we rose from the tomb with and in our Saviour; and how then, He being Justified by the Father, should not we, being in Him, have been Justified in His glorious, in His all-effectual justification?[25]

A. KUYPER.

ALEXANDER COMRIE: LESSONS FROM HIS CAREER.

CATHOLIC PRESBYTERIAN, April 1882.
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My purpose in expounding somewhat at large Comrie’s views regarding the subtle distinction between justification as preceding or following our actual exercise of faith, neither was nor could be to renew this same controversy in our time. Had such been my design, I should have been obliged to give a detailed account of the intricate arguments on both sides, as well as all particulars of the conflict in its successive stages. This to English readers would doubtless have proved too irksome and tedious a narrative. Besides, questions destined to divide public opinion never are nor can be matters of arbitrary contrivance, but are imposed upon our minds irresistibly and authoritatively by the current of events. It is not ours to determine the direction which things take in the spiritual conflict. The power of controlling and disposing of these things is the Lord’s. He guides His Church even through schisms and heresies; and to Him we leave the issue, with perfect acquiescence in His holy will.[26]

EFFECTS OF MODERN CONCESSIONS.

Considering, however, that the Church of Christ in our days is exposed to an attack almost similar, and even more violent than that in Comrie’s time, may we not ask whence it comes that our defense has hitherto fallen short, while Comrie was successful? We do not wish to undervalue the brilliant merits of our modern apologists, or to underrate the important results for which we are indebted to their sagacious and constant efforts: but, notwithstanding this amazing amount of learning and zeal, one cannot help feeling that our antagonists are gradually gaining ground; and that the splendid bulwarks which our apologists had laboriously constructed to preserve the fields of the Church from inundation by the turbulent tides of rationalism, are continually submerged by still more violent waves of infidelity, and, what is worse still, are again and again giving way and sinking down into the loose ground of the Church itself, soaked, as it incessantly is, by the anti-scriptural concessions of our apologists themselves.

Now this was not the case with Comrie. The mound raised by him and his friends against the stream of rationalism has proved a powerful bulwark, behind which that portion of the Church allotted to his care could dwell in safety, and continue its untainted history up to the present. Not that he persuaded the scientific circles or the higher classes; but the mass of the Church-going people were so powerfully influenced by his orthodoxy, and by his bold and conclusive reasonings, that, even now, they are standing unshaken and immovable, resting on the rock of truth. For, though the teaching in our theological halls increasingly gave way, while almost our whole ministry was lost in all kinds of heresies for half-a-century, this portion of the Dutch Church retained a resisting power strong enough to survive all their opponents. Yea, so strong a hold has a love of the Bible on our population even yet, that a petition to our King, demanding Scriptural teaching in our elementary schools, was signed by no less than 300,000 persons, a number which would correspond to more than two millions for Great Britain.

AUTHORITY OF CHURCH STANDARDS.

For this reason, I thought it not irrelevant to pay special attention to what seemed the secret of his wonderful power, if, perchance, there might be gathered some hints for the consideration of those who are entrusted by the Lord with the defense of His Church in our days. The hints which I venture to submit are five in number:—

In the first place: There should be no hesitation in dismissing from office professors or ministers who promulgate heterodox opinions. Comrie and his friends wavered not a moment. Van den Os was suspended from the exercise of his ministry; prohibited from partaking of the Holy Supper; and finally divested of his office by the successive verdicts of the Zwolle kirk-session, the Classis, and the provincial synod of Overyssel. These stern and rigorous measures were the expression of a firm conviction. The Church is not the world. The world is the universal field of combat for the most opposite opinions, the truth there being lost, and therefore to be sought. Consequently, Government should never interfere in the conflict of spirits; and in social life there ought to be freedom of thought and full liberty of worship. But the Church is a crown dominion of Christ, established on earth in order to form a diametrical antithesis to the mind of the world. It is an organism inspired by the Holy Ghost, i.e., by God Himself, and destined to displace the false principles, ideas, and notions of the world, in order to replace them by the vital principles, ideas, and notions revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in His Word. It is a corporation for the confessing, professing, and propagating of sharply defined principles, ideas, and notions,—of truth, not to be sought, but already found, because revealed. In this corporation the chief propagandists are the professors; the ordinary propagandists, the ministers. For this reason, a scholar in the chair or a minister in the pulpit promulgating what deviates from the tenets of the Church, is a contradiction in terms, a direct reversal of what ought to be.

Secondly, Every Church should keep to its own standards. Van den Os wished a revision of our Confession, not to corroborate the doctrine of grace, but to melt its power into the soft substance of a more general consensus. This was opposed by Comrie and his friends, on the ground that the standards of the Church are the only lawful consensus. To these standards the Church and its ministers should keep. All authority in the Church of Christ, indeed, ultimately rests with the Holy Scriptures. But the truth revealed in the Scriptures is interpreted purely by some and erroneously by others. Hence the necessity of creeds,—not to be placed above the Word of God, or to be co-ordinated with the Bible, but to define the relatively true interpretation, as it has been defined by the Church as a body, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, in its best times. Therefore, if I keep to the standard, and my opponent deviates from it, the conflict is not between two equivalent opinions—his and mine—but between an ephemeral, superficial, individual opinion on the one hand, and on the other, the ripe fruit of the labour of centuries, carefully examined in every detail, and sealed by the whole body of the Church in the agony of the dying, the blood of the martyrs, and the energy of its heroes. Now, to exchange this well-established consensus for the “consensus of a floating public opinion,” or for the “consensus of all Christians,” or for the ‘‘consensus of the Bible truth,” or, finally, for a “consensus of the different Presbyterian Churches,” is gradually to unsettle everything like fixed belief. To form a well-defined consensus we want an authorised organ, a person or a body of persons, vested with the power to determine it; and to fix this, not arbitrarily, but in connection with the past and present norm of all revealed Truth. Now, such an organ does not exist; for “a floating opinion” has no authority, and “all Christians,” as the phrase is, are without any authorised organ; to put the Bible in place of doctrinal tenets is to confound fundamental constitution with organic laws; and to try to recast all the special confessions of the different churches into a general consensus of all the Churches, is to run after an inconsistent chimera, never to be realised; first, because each Church has its own history, gifts, and vocation; and also because a “general confession for all Churches” supposes a general court to maintain it; tenets without such a court degenerating into single opinion, and being no standard at all. Just as our woods are composed of oaks and elms, of limes and beeches, and cannot be modelled into a shapely clump of nameless trees, so also the cedars and palms of the spiritual Lebanon, the roses and myrtles of spiritual Sharon, cannot be changed into uniform plants. A confederative consensus is excellent, but then it must be a harmony such as often was published in the 17th century-——viz., such a one in which the peculiar standard of each Church retains its own place.

In the third place, The defense of any portion of our faith must always be conducted in direct connection with the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesie. This rule was strictly observed by Comrie and his friends, who reduced the whole controversy with rationalists to the centre of our Protestant Confession—viz., to the glorious fact of our justification, and who have in this respect also left us an example worthy of our peculiar attention; if not faithful imitation. The reasons for carefully guarding this central doctrine are as follows :—(1.) If the placing of man in God’s stead be the only sin, and sin the only heresy, it is evident that every deviation from the truth consists in a diminishing of the power and glory of God, and a proportionate ascription of greater power and glory to man. Now, since man is a moral and rational being, sin can take either the form of Pelagianism or that of Rationalism; but in both cases the sinful root is the same, and the two results are only dissimilar as to the different organs through which the operation is performed. So Romanism and Rationalism are identical in their principle, disturbing the right relation between God and man; and, therefore, justification being the re-regulation of this disordered relation, it is easy to perceive why our pious ancestors called justification the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesie, and also why the true doctrine of justification always remains the dart to be fixed into the only vulnerable heel of Rationalism. (2.) Every mode of defense which leaves the centre of your position exposed and entices you to a distant entrenchment, turns you off from your proper basis of operation. A body of marines landed on the shore of the enemy, and allured far from their vessel, are lost. (3.) To combat Rationalism with merely intellectual weapons menaces your own faith, by absorbing time and talents in unspiritual deduction, and must end, unless God prevent, in poisoning your own soul with the very evil you try to root out. (4.) To oppose Rationalism by mere counter-argumentation, is voluntarily to deprive yourself of the mighty powers the Lord puts into your hand for the purpose of touching the conscience of your antagonist and rousing the enthusiasm of the people in your Church. Hence the conspicuous difference between the attitude of the enemy in Reformation times and in our days. At that time, all the people joined eagerly in the combat; now, learned apologists are left to their own sufficiency. And (5.) by going straight to the very root of Rationalism, which is sin, and inheres in the Semi-Pelagianism of the Romish Church, you once more place the Church of the present in direct and vital connection with the time of the Reformation, thereby reopening to your theologians all the treasures and arms stored up in their huge armories. Our Churches are Protestant Churches, upon which there has been indelibly impressed an antithesis to the Roman Catholic Church; and it impairs the strength of your cause if you compel Protestant Churches to fight their battle with Socinian arms. Removed from our central doctrine of justification, we are out of our element—eagles in an iron cage, fishes ashore.

Fourthly, we must discard obscure and ambiguous terms in favour of sharp and clear definitions. So did Comrie and his associates. With him there was no semblance of disguising his characteristic views under ambiguous words, but an unremitting exertion to analyze every notion, and to obtain the utmost accuracy of expression, very different from that to which we are now-a-days accustomed, especially in German thinkers. Take for instance Fichte and Schelling; take Lange of Bonn, and Keerl or Hofmann, and see how obscure and indistinct one’s impression of their whole writings becomes from the constant want of transparent definitions and distinctness of expression. The distinction between “ spiritual” and “ material ” is necessary for clear and intelligent thought; but these all-confusing thinkers recombine these two distinct terms in the almost Cabalistic compound of “ geist-leiblich,” and so on; they form conglutinations of incoherent and even opposite notions, which nobody can clearly represent to his own mind, and the admission of which into our vocabulary is an inversion of the tried rule, “Whoever distinguishes well, teaches well,” into its contrast, “The more completely you confound things, the more learnedly will you teach.” Hitherto, science has been endeavouring to raise our mind from confused and unconscious sensations to distinct and therefore conscious notions of things. Intelligere is to “analyse” (inter-lego), comprehendere is to reconstruct; and the operation of our mind in rising from obscure unconsciousness to clear consciousness is always, first, to have a conception (concipere), then to analyse its parts (intelligere), thirdly, to recompose it (comprehendere), and finally, to find the proper and adequate expression (elocutio). But Pantheism aims at the contrary. It is the system of identifying all things. Matter is force, and force is matter; the Ego is identical with the non-Ego; substance becomes the accident; ens becomes the phenomenon; God is man, and man is God; till finally it is avowed by strictly logical conclusions that sin is virtue and virtue sin. There is perpetual, uninterrupted identity! Hence the strong aversion to conscious distinctness, hence also that alluring and perplexing show of learning under the cover of ambiguous, indeterminate, and often even equivocal terms, so easily attainable and therefore so easily captivating the mind of our young men. All our German “mediating theology” is certainly still theistical in its substance, but already quite pantheistical in its form; it shows a retrogression from the transparent to the obscure, a complete reversal of the object of God’s revelation, an inversion of the whole fabric of our knowledge. Now, if orthodox theologians join in this alternate diving and rope-dancing, they are lost, Samson’s hair being cut off by the seducing Delilah; hence this evil should be checked in our halis, in our pulpits, in our studies. Unconsciousness is obscurity; we are children of the Light. How then should we sacrifice the transparent perspicuity of the beautiful theology handed down to us by our fathers? And if the “mediating theologian” should repeat in still stronger terms his insurmountable aversion to the “paltry subtleties and quibbling hair-splitting” of our “captious cavillers” of old, I answer him by asking, Why do you admire a zoologist who succeeds in anatomising most minutely the almost imperceptible fibres of the nervous system of a marsh frog, in classifying them, and in giving them distinct technical names, while you would deem it a scholastic sophistry, an intolerable straining out gnats, if a theologian bestows his keenness of intellect in carefully analysing, through the prism of his sanctified studies, the refraction and dispersion of the beams of mercy, descending from eternal Love into a human heart?

The last hint we glean from Comrie’s example is, do not spend in antithetical refutation of error the time and talents needed for the thetical exposition of the truth. There must not be a continual fighting, with the trowel in the belt, but a continual building, with the sword on the thigh. So did Comrie, as the list of his works clearly shows. He wrote for his brethren, he addressed the people. He felt that the fruit of his labour belonged, not to the Pantheon of science, but to the Church of his Saviour. A conclusive decision between two diverging systems can be found only at the very point where the two lines recede from each other. For this reason, controversy at any point of the lines already diverged, must necessarily degenerate into a sterile dispute. Debate must proceed uninterruptedly on the antithetical principle; but controversy regarding details should be dropped and exchanged for a strengthening of our own position. Our knowledge of the truth should be enriched, deepened, brightened. Our eyes should not, by looking too much on the Rabshakehs, be diverted and distracted from Him who dwells, as the living Truth, in the centre of His mysteries.

Nor must it be forgotten that the evil of rationalism not merely proceeds from the point of your enemy’s arrow, but already pervades your whole Church, if not your own heart. And what would be your victory, if, the Wellhausens and Rothes having been beaten in the field of science, behind your back the desertion became a general panic, and your emptied churches fell into ruin and decay? “Happy is he who learns caution from the dangers of others.” On the Continent, the Churches of France, Germany, and Switzerland have already reached this sad result, as an inevitable consequence of imprudent strategy; and the fact that in Holland this danger has been partly averted, is largely owing to the better plan formed and carried out by Comrie and his companions. May the Churches of England and America be warned by the one, and guided by the example of the other. Rationalism is such a terrible curse, that all Churches on the Continent except ours, by passing through “the nipping cold,” as Shakespeare calls it, of this barren winter, are congealed to an almost lifeless mass. But, whereas elsewhere every spiritual flower left in the open air was chilled and frozen to death, Comrie, in our country, screened some of them under the thatched roofs of our peasantry, whence they are now brought to light again,—faded, leafless, musty, indeed, but still with life in them; and for the preservation of this precious life we feel that, next to God’s mercy, we are and we remain indebted to Alexander Comrie and his excellent friends.

A. KUYPER

[1] Stellige en pract. Werklar van den Heidelb. Catech., ed. 1844, Tom. I. Aan den lezer., p. xxiii.

[2] Private information.

[3] Comrie, Lykrede op den Heer van Schellingerwoude. Ed. 1749, p. 25.

[4] Ibidem, p. 27.

[5] Ibid., p. 25, cf. Steven’s “History of the Scottish Church at Rotterdam,” p. 198.

[6] The ABC des Geloofs, ed. 4°, p. 106, makes it almost evident, that Comrie was still in Edinburgh in 1724. He went to Groningen in 1729. Therefore, taking one year for his preparatory studies, the interesting scene at Woubrugge must have occurred in 1728, his arrival at Amsterdam about 1724-25, giving for his office-life three years.

[7] The album discipulorum of the Groningen University has been published in the “Students’ Almanac” of the year 1857.

[8] Cf., Brief over de rechtvaa digmaking, p. 118.

[9] Brief, p. 118.

[10] Cf. Bachiene, Kerkely ke Geographie, ii. p. 80.

[11] Boekzaal der gel. wereld, p. 617. 17385.

[12] Steven, o. 1, p. 161.

[13] A B C des Geloofs, see the preface. Published in 1739.

[14] Lijhrede, p. 34.

[15] Boekz. der geleerde wereld, 1773, p. 476. His last words were upon 1 John ii. 24: “ Let that abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning.”

[16] Boekz. der gel. wereld, 1774, p. 778.

[17] Ibidem, p. 779:— ‘“ Werd Macedonien’s vorst met recht genoemd de groote, Omdat gansch Asien zijn scepter hulde bood Deez’ Alexander, in het sombere graf besloten, Was grooter, want zijn pen verwon en hel en dood.”

[18] In compiling these biographical notes, I have been left entirely to my own researches. By advertisement I asked for private information, if such could be got, from old people whose parents or relations had known Comrie personally. This step proved not unsuccessful, as might be seen by comparing the above with short notes on Comrie to be found in Van der Aa, Biographisch woordenbock, in voce; in Ypey en Dermout, Gesch der Ned. Herv. kerk, t. iii. p. 485-497, and notes, p. 226 seq., Guastus, Godgel Nederland, 1, p. 302. Besides what was obtained by private information, I found some particulars in Steven, “History of the Scottish Church at Rotterdam,” Edinburgh, 1852 ; the rolls of students of Leyden and Groningen ; his own Lykrede op den Heer van Schellingerwoude; his preface to his A B C des Geloofs; and his Latin treatise upon the “ Nature of Virtue.” De Chalmot, Biogr. wondenboek, in voce, and VAN Abcoude, Naamregister van Ned. Boeken, may also be consulted.

[19] The list of his works (in which the simple enumeration of the titles proves what

we say) is as follows :—

1. Het A B C des Geloofs. Leyden, 1751. Being an exposition, in alphabetical order, of all scriptural images and similitudes by which the nature of faith is illustrated.

2. “On the Properties of a Saving Faith.” Leyden, 1743. Two volumes.

3. “On Justification by Direct Imputation.” Leyden, 1760.

4. “On Justification by Faith wrought in us by Grace.” Leyden, 1764.

5. “On the Languishing Condition of Faith in the Heart of the Believer.” Two volumes, 1750.

6. “Exposition, for the First Seven Sundays, of the Heidelberg Catechism.” Two volumes. 1755.

7. “Examination of the Proposition of General Toleration in Order to Reconcile Calvinism to Arminianism.” Two volumes. Containing ten dialogues between Orthodoxus (being Comrie); Pantanechomenus (the men of General Toleration); Adiaphorus (the Indifferent of his day); Philalethes (a well-meaning friend); and Euruodius (a Latitudinarian). Amsterdam, 1753. (Partly by Comrie, and partly by Holtius and others. Published without name).

8. “Obituary of Mr. van Schellinckerwoud.” Leyden, 1747. A Funeral Sermon.

He likewise re-edited and translated into Dutch:

G. Voetius, “The Mystic Power of Godliness.” Leuwarden, 1763. Edited (with Preface) by Dr. Comrie.

Tomas Shepherd, “The Ten Virgins.” Two volumes, Leyden, 1743.

W. Marshall, “Evangelical Sanctification.” Leyden, 1739.

Thomas Boston, “The Covenant of Grace,” with a Paper on the Covenant of Works by Comrie, and a Preface by Rev. Hugh Kennedy, Minister of the Scottish Church at Rotterdam. Leyden, 1741.

I. Chauncy, “The Westminster Catechism Illustrated.” Leyden, 1783. VOL, VII.—NO. XXXIX.

[20] Cf. more especially his defense of the gratia particularis, and his excellent preface to Ursin’s Commentary upon the Heidelberg Catechism; in some degree also his Adam en Christus. Leyden, 1753.

[21] Cf. Examen van Tolerantie II. The preface to the eighth dialogue, p. 30 ff.

[22] That the excellent Examen van Tolerantie was called into existence more specially by the case of Van den Os, is emphatically stated in the preface to the last dialogue, p. 72, where it is said: “Perceiving that the false doctrine was spreading through this case wider and wider, we felt the necessity of bruising the viper in its hole, and therefore decided on the publication of these dialogues.”

[23] An expression taken from the first article of the Confessio Belgica: Fons superabundans omnium bonorum.

[24] The moment in which the motion of thought and will, hitherto concealed and shut up in the Divine Being, issues from him and creates an outward reality.

[25] This short and concentrated exposition of his polemics has been traced from his different works. More especially from his Brief over de rechtvardigmaking; his Missive over de rechtvardigmaking; and his “Commentary on the Heidelb. Catechism.”

[26] Nor is the preceding exposition of Comrie’s views to be considered as an unreserved and entire approval of his argumentation. For my part, at least, I keep to the exquisite distinction given by Hoornbeek in his criticism of the English Free Grace sect, when he says: “Active justification is the act of the justifying God; passive justification is its termination and application to individual believers. Justification was destined from all eternity in the Divine decree; it was promised soon after the Fall; it was realised in the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom. viii. 34) (merited by Christ through His death; declared and ratified by God in His resurrection) ; it is applied and manifested in the heart of the believer; and it shall hereafter be gloriously consummated in the day of final and universal judgment.” (Hoornbeek Summa Controversiarum, ed. Traj. ad Rhen., 1658, pp. 815, 816.) And, as far as I can see, it may not be concealed that Comrie limited justification by faith too much to the subjective appropriation; the proclamation of the sentence as well as of the pardon, and its intimation to the arraigned criminal himself forming an essential part of the objective judicial action. It must not, however, be forgotten that Comrie’s method of treating his subject (as an antithesis to its negative) is always one-sided; and that, moreover, he took the utmost caution to avoid the dangers of antinomianism, by vigorously opposing even the slightest tendency to confound the act of justification with the act of predestination, or to identify the immanent with the transeunt action in God, by confounding the justifying verdict with the decree to justify (Cf. Comrie, Brief over de rechtvardigmaking, ed. 1858, p. 102.).