Posted on 09/16/2007 2:55:33 PM PDT by Huber
It is impossible to respond to this sad piece, except to say that is so filled with error, special (and false) pleading, misreading and misunderstanding, pretence and posturing, perversion and malice, as to defy coherent reply.
The section on “Original Intent”, for instance, refers (as earlier) to the authority of Hooker and his views regarding to relative authority of the “positive” laws of Scripture. Hooker may be right or wrong, but the authors here (as elsewhere) appear to have no idea of what they are talking about.
From Hooker’s “Laws”, I.12.if.
“When supernatural duties are necessarily exacted, natural are not rejected as needless. The law of God there fore is, though principally delivered for instruction in the one, yet fraught with precepts of the other also. The Scripture is fraught even with laws of Nature ; insomuch that Gratian l defining Natural Right, (whereby is meant the right which exacteth those general duties that concern men naturally even as they are men,) termeth “Natural Right, that which the Books of the Law and the Gospel do contain.” Neither is it vain that the Scripture aboundeth with so great store of laws in this kind : for they are either such as we of ourselves could not easily have found out, and then the benefit is not small to have them readily set down to our hands ; or if they be so clear and manifest that no man endued with reason can lightly be ignorant of them, yet the Spirit as it were borrowing them from the school of Nature, as serving to prove things less manifest, and to induce a persuasion of somewhat which were in itself more hard and dark, unless it should in such sort be cleared, the very applying of them unto cases particular is not without most singular use and profit many ways for men’s instruction. Besides, be they plain of themselves or obscure, the evidence of God’s own testimony added to the natural assent of reason concerning the certainty of them, doth not a little comfort and confirm the same.
[2.] Wherefore inasmuch as our actions are conversant about things beset with many circumstances, which cause men of sundry wits to be also of sundry judgment concerning that which ought to be done ; requisite it cannot but seem, the rule of divine law should herein help our imbecility, that we might the more infallibly understand what is good and what evil. The first principles of the Law of Nature are easy ; hard it were to find men ignorant of them. But concerning the duty which Nature’s law doth require at the hands of men in a number of things particular, so far hath the natural understanding even of sundry whole nations been darkened, that they have not discerned no not gross iniquity to be sin. 2 Again, being so prone as we are to fawn upon ourselves, and to be ignorant as much as may be of our own deformities, without the feeling sense whereof we are most wretched ; even so much the more, because not knowing them we cannot so much as desire to have them taken away ; how should our festered sores be cured, but that God hath delivered a law as sharp as the two-edged sword, piercing the very closest and most unsearchable corners of the heart, which the Law of Nature can hardly, human laws by no means possible, reach unto ? Hereby we know even secret concupiscence to be sin, and are made fearful to offend though it be but in a wandering cogitation. Finally, of those things which are for direction of all the parts of our life needful, and not impossible to be discerned by the light of Nature Jtself ; are there not many which few men’s natural capacity, and some which no man’s, hath been able to find out? They are, saith St. Augustine, but a few, and they endued with great ripeness of wit and judgment, free from all such affairs as might trouble their meditations, instructed in the sharpest and the subtilest points of learning, who have, and that very hardly, been able to find out but only the immortality of the soul. The resurrection of the flesh what man did ever at any time dream of, having not heard it otherwise than from the school of Nature ? Where by it appeareth how much we are bound to yield unto our Creator the Father of all mercy eternal thanks, for that he hath delivered his law unto the world, a law wherein so many things are laid open, clear, and manifest, as a light which otherwise would have been buried in darkness, not without the hazard, or rather not with the hazard but with the certain loss, of infinite thousands of souls most undoubtedly now saved.”
Will any one, in the days ahead, pay attention to the sorry production of these miguided bishops? I pray God that they will not.
Posted by Ephraim Radner on 09-14-2007 at 02:48 PM [link]
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.