Subjecting Christ to Open Shame
By John Fast
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)
This world is a wicked and evil world. It is a dark world. It is a doomed world, “the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pt 3:7). The New Testament does not offer to make this present world better; rather, we are told it will get worse and worse, “But evil men (that is, the non-Christian world) and impostors (the false Christian world) will proceed from bad to worse,” (2 Tim 3:13). This is what we are witnessing today at an unprecedented rate, not only nationally, but world-wide. Almost every day we see both the world and modern ‘Christianity’ willfully, deliberately, and obstinately going deeper and deeper into depravity and apostasy, yet most people go about their daily lives as if God’s terrible judgments were not to be seen all around us. Some think they can escape the consequences of apostacy and the judgment of God by moving to a different part of the world, but it is as impossible to escape the temporal judgments of God as it is the spiritual and eternal judgment of God, “Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall My hand take them; and though they ascend to heaven, from there will I bring them down. And though they hide on the summit of Carmel, I will search them out and take them from there; and though they conceal themselves from My sight on the floor of the sea, from there I will command the serpent and it will bite them” (Am 9:2, 3). It is natural for unregenerate people to try and hide themselves from the wrath and judgment of God, “and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;’” (Rev 6:16), but no person, no church, no nation can escape the spiritual law of sowing and reaping any more than they can escape the natural law of gravity, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Gal 6:7); “Your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostasies will reprove you; know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God,” (Jer 2:19). The increase of wickedness, evil, and perversion that arises from unfaithfulness to God, from the neglect and rejection of His Word, and the corruption of His worship must sooner or later bring on God’s awful judgments. The only safe refuge from the wrath of God is the Person of Jesus Christ and His gospel as revealed in Scripture. It is only the Jesus revealed in Scripture, not the myriad of false Jesus’, both ancient and modern, “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thes 1:10).
Jesus did not come to ‘redeem the culture’, but “that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purchase for Himself a people for His own possession,” (Tit 2:14). He did not come to be ‘famous’, but “to give His life a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28). All humanistic and pseudo-religious attempts to make this world better are doomed to failure. The gospel does not offer heaven on earth, but to “deliver us out of this present evil age,” (Gal 1:4). It promises that the true Christian will be hated, not admired, praised, accepted, or popular with the world (Jn 15:18, 19; 1 Jn 3:13). The world always has and always will only loves its own (Jn 15:19), including its own forms of godliness, its own versions of Christianity, its own conceptions of God, and those men and women whose religious systems and versions of Christianity do not expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead “give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rm 1:32). Today many are rejecting what they imagine to be Christianity for their own personal versions, or for more ‘ancient’ versions, or for a generic, relativistic, and common ‘faith’ and their own forms of spirituality, or for no religion at all, because they say they have ‘tried’ Christianity and it hasn’t ‘worked’ for them. What they fail to realize is that what they ‘tried’ was not historic and biblical Christianity, but some false, worldly, and man-made form of it.
Today many within professing evangelicalism are calling for religious and interfaith unity, thereby violating not only the First Commandment, but the Greatest Commandment (Mt 22:37), and rejecting in practice the clear teaching of Scripture concerning the Person of Jesus Christ, namely, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (Jn 14:6), and, “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Ac 4:12). It is not the name of Allah or Buddha or Vishnu or Shiva or Mary or some false Jesus that is all ‘love’, tolerance, inclusivity, and acceptance, or any other name under heaven that can save from the wrath of God. All other names only lead to eternal destruction. There is no common god who is worshiped by many names. There is no ‘common faith’ that can save from the wrath of God. There is no ‘Christ spirit’ that resides in every person. Salvation from the wrath of God is only through the Person of Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself in Scripture. Any other name and any other Jesus are mere forms of godliness that doom all who believe and cling to them to eternal torment in hell, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (Jn 3:36). The dread of a dark and dismal future is assailing the hearts and minds of many today who would rather not, if they can at all help it, repent of their sin and turn to, trust in, and obey the Son of God. They would rather look for help and hope elsewhere rather than look to the one and only hope for ourselves and our children. This hope does not lie in what this world calls ‘progress’, or ‘unity’, or ‘tolerance’, or ‘inclusivity’, or ‘justice’, or in its versions of ‘love’ and its conceptions of God, but in the regeneration of individual souls by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
To equate the present state and forms of modern evangelicalism with historic and biblical Christianity is a fundamental and deadly error. They bear no relation to one another. They are diametrically opposed to one another. One is from and of this world while the other is from above. One is the product of the mind of man while the other is the revealed mind of God. Consequently, one is fundamentally man-centered while the other is, by its very nature, God-centered. When the nominal Christian, the apostate, false teacher, atheist, agnostic, and ‘good’ unbeliever blames what they perceive to be ‘Christianity’ and the ‘church’ for all the evils in the world, they are in reality blaming themselves, because they all share a common trait and mind, namely, that of unbelief; all are of this world; all are unwilling to come to Christ as He has revealed Himself in Scripture to be saved from the wrath of God, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me that you might have life” (Jn 5:39, 40). They all, in one way or another, deny and reject the true person and gospel of Jesus Christ, and in so doing, they place themselves in a category far worse than those who rejected Jesus at His first coming, because their rejection is against greater light; it is against the entire New Testament which those who rejected Jesus at His first coming did not have.
Drifting into Apostasy
We live in an age in which perception is more important than reality. It is an age in which even the most basic and obvious reality is denied, namely, “male and female He created them” (Gn 1:27). From a purely temporal level it is an age of hero-worship, unbridled materialism, entitlement, blame shifting, lawlessness, relativism, unrestrained immorality, pleasure-seeking, selfish ambition, and humanism, and on a spiritual level it is an age of open and unashamed apostasy and rebellion from the law of God and from the gospel of Jesus Christ, an apostasy from which, as we saw in the last study, is irreversible and from which it is impossible to repent. It is an age in which the lives of many who profess to be Christian are a contradiction, with their life contradicting their profession, and in which an ever-increasing number of people who were once considered to be some of our greatest modern defenders and teachers of God’s Word are proving to be some of its greatest apostates, frauds, and self-serving demagogues and charlatans. We live in a time when it can no longer be assumed that words such as ‘Christian’ and ‘gospel’ and ‘faith’ and ‘evangelical’ are understood and taught in their true, historic, objective, and biblical meaning, even by those who profess to be Christian.
What the author of Hebrews warned against has come to pass, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hb 2:1). Neglect of Scripture, particularly the truths, commands, and doctrines of the gospel, will always lead to a drifting away from the true gospel of Jesus Christ and the true knowledge of God, a drift that is, at the time, usually imperceptible to those who have drifted. Our conception of God will either be shaped by God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture or by our traditions and our own fallen reasonings, lusts, desires, and imaginations. Many have become so accustomed to hearing unbiblical terms, phrases, gospels, and conceptions of God that they are surprised when they are told that the gospel they believe is not the gospel of Jesus Christ and the God they worship is not the God of the Bible, but an idol of their own imagination which they pretend to serve and worship as the one true God. When Israel made and worshiped a golden calf in the wilderness they did not worship it by the name Apis, the god of the Egyptians depicted by that image and that would have kept them under bondage had it had any power to do so; rather both the priests and the people pretended to serve the one true God, “When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord’” (Ex 32:5), that is, a feast to Yahweh, ascribing to their idol the incommunicable name of the Creator of the world. They pretended to worship the true God, not a pagan idol, and not “an image formed by the art and thought of man” (Ac 17:29).
All idols begin in the mind and are simply a reflection of the mind which made them. We are very prone to fashion a god that is like ourselves, as A.W. Tozer once observed,
“Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is – in itself a monstrous sin – and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness. Always this will conform to the image of the one who created it and be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges.”[1]
When people imagine God to be like themselves, they will also ascribe to Him their own corrupt nature, values, and desires, and they will worship Him in a way that corresponds to their own carnal nature, preferences, and desires. It is as the psalmist wrote, “Those who make them (i.e. idols) will become like them, everyone who trusts in them” (Ps 115:8). The true Christian is being conformed to the image of Christ (Rm 8:29), but idolaters conform themselves to their idols, chief of which are self and the world. The true Christian is being conformed to the true revelation of Jesus Christ, namely, His holiness, His righteousness, and His obedience to the will and Word of God, but the false Christian conforms themselves to their false and idolatrous conceptions of Jesus. Today this is a Jesus who is all love, tolerance, inclusivity, acceptance, self-importance, and self-gratification. Their conceptions of God continuously change to correspond to the extent of their drift from a true knowledge of God, and their conceptions always correspond to the values, beliefs, practices, behavior, reasoning, and character of those who invent them. Today the conception of God taught in thousands of churches, and represented by contemporary ‘Christian’ music, and that is currently in vogue among modern evangelicalism is, as A.W. Tozer stated, “so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity”.[2]
Like all pagan deities, these idolatrous conceptions of God change over time and evolve in ways that correspond to shifts and changes in society; yet despite the fact that these conceptions of God have no basis in Scripture, and often contradict and deny God’s revelation of Himself, men and women continue to cling to their idolatrous and blasphemous conceptions of God against all the light of Scripture; in other words, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Rm 1:25). This is because, “a deceived heart has turned him aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’” (Is 44:20). They trust in a lie “because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thes 2:10). While it is impossible for us to comprehend God as He truly is (Rm 11:33-36), we must be careful not to imagine Him to be what He is not. A god conceived in the darkness of a fallen, unregenerate, and God-hating heart will of necessity be a false conception of the one true God. Hating discipline, correction, and instruction, and casting God’s Word behind us is attributed to imagining that God “was just like you” (Ps 50:17, 21). The author of Hebrews does not say that men and women drift away from idolatry, or from religion and churchgoing, or from a general belief in a general god, or from spirituality, or mysticism, or ritualism, or philosophy and human wisdom, or from humanitarianism, but away from the true gospel and its doctrines. Many apostates are some of the most devout and religious people, and outwardly they appear righteous; such were the scribes and Pharisees, but they have drifted away from the true gospel, and their minds have been “led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11:3). These are the most dangerous kinds of apostates because they do not renounce the gospel and Christianity absolutely, but continue to make a profession of it, all while working to undermine, redefine, and adulterate the true nature, person, and gospel of Jesus Christ and what it means to be Christian.
Many who make no profession of religion are, from a purely temporal perspective, ‘good’ people, or rather good pagans. The fundamental difference between the true Christian and the nominal Christian, the apostate, agnostic, or atheist is their understanding of and attitude toward God as He has revealed Himself in His Word and in His Son. It is by our submission and obedience to and trust in this revelation, or by our opposition to and rejection of this revelation, whether in whole or in part, that distinguishes the true Christian from the nominal and non-Christian world. An extreme sensitivity to all forms of human suffering, that such suffering is incompatible with their conception of God, and an intense aversion to making any moral judgments are some of the marks by which we recognize the ‘good’ unbeliever. If all unbelievers were simply ‘bad’ and ‘evil’, and all ‘Christians’ were ‘good’, then the problem would be quite other than it is. Once we strip away all manmade labels, however, we can see that the fundamental difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is the emphasis they place on the Word of God, on divine revelation as opposed to human wisdom and opinion, on values that are other-worldly as opposed to those of this world, on things eternal as opposed to things temporal, on things unseen as opposed to things that are seen, on supernatural as opposed to things natural, on being God-centered as opposed to man-centered, on the recognition of God and His kingdom or of man and this world as the ultimate reality of life.
Even when the Christian and non-Christian agree about present existing evils, that agreement is only temporary and superficial; for as soon as we attempt to diagnose the cause of these evils from which we and our society are suffering the contradiction in thinking becomes immediately apparent. The Christian knows that all evil is the result of sin, the devil, and of our fallen and depraved human nature, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness” (Mk 7:21), and for which the only remedy is the true gospel of Jesus Christ; whereas the non-Christian assigns the cause of these evils to things like social injustice, racism, intolerance, a lack of education and economic opportunities, politics, or to some other secondary cause – causes from which they imagine they can rescue themselves and society by simply being ‘better’ people, electing ‘better’ people, and by enacting ‘better’ laws. In other words, the unbeliever is always trying to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease. What they refuse to see is that they cannot make themselves better; rather, they need a new nature that loves the light and hates darkness, namely, they must be born again. The Christian is not surprised when all human efforts and ideologies not only fail to curb and suppress evil, but instead only make it worse (Col 2:23), because the Christian knows that such attempts are by their very nature doomed to failure, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Pv 14:12). They are doomed to fail because they rest on false assumptions, false premises, false ideologies, and on false conceptions of the nature of God and of the nature of man. In other words, they are the product of fallen human wisdom, not infallible divine revelation, and as such come under a divine curse, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jer 17:5). That which is cursed of God can never make things better, but only worse. When the magicians of Egypt counterfeited the first two plagues with their secret and demonic arts they only made a bad situation worse (as if the Egyptians needed more frogs – Ex 8:6, 7). All they succeeded in doing was to aggravate God’s judgment, not alleviate or thwart it.
Despite all of the scientific and technological progress over the past century and a half mankind has not been able to solve his most basic problems; this world has not been made a better world. No amount of scientific, technological, economic, and social progress can make the world less like the world, or remove or diminish its hatred for God, His Word, His gospel, and His Son, or produce the love of holiness, hatred of sin, negate the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, or produce the fruit of the Spirit. The world will consent to pretend it is Christian only if ‘Christianity’ will undertake to conform itself to this present evil world. There is no doubt that science, technology, and industry have made modern life easier in many respects, but they have not made the world better. Likewise, all the religious, political, social, and humanitarian activity of modern evangelicalism has done nothing to improve the moral and spiritual condition of professing Christians, much less the world; rather both continue to go from bad to worse to inconceivably evil. All outward improvements which come from advancements in natural knowledge and man’s efforts fall far short of God’s purpose and man’s true need. It is the humanist, the nominal Christian, the apostate, the atheist, the agnostic, and the good pagan who is surprised, shocked, horrified, and outraged when what they see and hear does not fit into their picture of reality, and when they find themselves the primary victim of their own humanistic ideologies, unbelief, and rebellion against God; in other words, when they reap what they have sown. The Christian, however, knows such evils are to be expected when God and His Word are neglected and rejected as the absolute authority and standard of good and evil. Sin always begets more sin, ungodliness leads to further ungodliness (2 Tim 2:16), and lawlessness results in further lawlessness (Rm 6:19).
What is happening today may be worse and more extreme than what Christians in this nation are used to; they have, to a certain extent, become accustomed to being at odds with not only the world in which they must live, but with the bulk of modern evangelicalism; it is worse now than before, and the distinction between true and false and good and evil is now much more obvious, but it is no different in its essential essence and nature. The whole world still lies in the power of the evil one (1 Jn 5:19), and men still love darkness rather than the light (Jn 3:19). In fact, there is nothing which evil men and women hate more than the light, because the light of God’s truth exposes their deceptive lies, their wicked and evil ideologies, beliefs, and behaviors, and their false and idolatrous conceptions of God (Jn 3:20; Hb 4:12). Therefore, those who love darkness must work to suppress, slander, marginalize, vilify, and silence the light as well as everyone who walks as children of light. They must slander and malign the powerful transforming work of the Holy Spirit and His fruit by calling it ‘hate’ and ‘evil’, and they must represent the vilest sins and blasphemies as being consistent with the work of the Holy Spirit and the holy nature of God. Those who walk in darkness must publicly slander as evildoers all those who walk as children of light (1 Pt 2:12); they must paint all those who refuse to bow the knee to Baal, who speak the truth and refuse to compromise the truth of God’s Word, who expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness and call sin by its right names, and who obey God rather than man, as ‘unchristian’ and radical extremists who promote hatred, bigotry, and oppression, and are therefore a threat to a self-centered and worldly society that worships a god of ‘tolerance’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘kindness’, ‘love’, and self-gratification, namely, a god that is just as evil, wicked, depraved, and corrupt as it.
Fair Warning
These words of warning are not unique to the author of Hebrews, but are typical of how the Bible addresses us. The Bible is a book of warnings; it is filled with words of warning. John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, John, and all the New Testament epistles issued similar warnings, “be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt 3:17, 18). The Bible repeatedly warns of those who “by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Rm 16:18), and of false teachers “who will secretly introduce destructive heresies” (2 Pt 2:1), and who distort the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Pt 3:16). We have been warned that “many deceivers have gone out into the world,” (2 Jn 7), and we have been commanded, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn 4:1). We not only have God’s clear warnings, but we have numerous examples given to us in Scripture of what happens when any person, people, church, or nation turns its back on God and willfully and knowingly sins against and rejects known truth, that is, when they forsake the Fountain of living waters to hew for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer 2:13).
Yet, there are many today within modern evangelicalism who think that this whole idea of warning people of wrath and judgment is beneath the dignity of modern man, the modern mind, and modern Christianity. They think that the biblical accounts of God judging, condemning, and destroying entire cities and nations are insulting to the modern conception of God and the modern view of man; in fact, they are repulsive to modern thought and current conceptions of God. We are too sophisticated for such primitive doctrines as the biblical account of creation, the fall of man into sin, the destruction of the earth by a worldwide flood from which only Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark were spared, the annihilation of the ungodly cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, by which God “made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter;” (2 Pt 2:6), and of eternal torment for all unbelievers in a literal hell. We are now too enlightened for fundamental doctrines such as man’s lost state as a sinner, its consequences and marks, man’s helplessness as a sinner, the futility of all his efforts to justify, sanctify, perfect, and save himself and the certain and everlasting condemnation of all those who persist in such attempts, the total corruption of man’s nature by sin and his need for a new nature, faith in Jesus Christ and His imputed righteousness, the Holy Spirit and His role in conviction, conversion, regeneration, and sanctification and the danger of resisting Him, the inspiration, inerrancy, authority, sufficiency, and clarity of Scripture. We have even become too advanced and superior for the doctrine of the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, but such has always been the response of unbelievers to the message of the cross, “For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness,” (1 Cor 1:18). The doctrines of man’s total depravity, total inability, and of the necessity and nature of regeneration to be saved from the wrath of God are today not only uncomfortable and unpopular, they are downright unacceptable. We are so superior, so advanced, so much more enlightened and intelligent than those men who actually wrote the Bible, and those men and women who down through the centuries have unapologetically proclaimed and lived out its truths and even died rather than deny or compromise the truths, principles, and doctrines of the gospel.
It is hard to imagine anything more tragic and terrible than that of a person who has heard the gospel, professed a belief in the gospel, and even experienced some of its power and privileges, but then drifts away from it, never knowing they have fallen away from it, and all because they neglected not religion, not theology, not good works, not churchgoing, not ‘ministry’, not even the Bible, but because they neglected the truths, commands, and doctrines of the gospel. The ‘gospel’ and ‘faith’ that resides in a person, church, or nation must be sick and ready to die when it requires the use of novelties and stimulants to rejuvenate and restore it – the stimulants of entertainment, mysticism, ceremonialism, ritualism, emotionalism, ecstatic experiences, visual effects and props, extra-biblical revelations, showmanship, false wonders, flattery, and the enticements of fleshly desires and human wisdom. In fact, such a ‘faith’ and ‘gospel’ is already dead, and all these stimulants are just human contrivances designed to make a dead man look like a living one.
Sadly, the overwhelming majority of people in the world have absolutely no interest in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They never give the gospel and its truths and its doctrines a single thought, nor do they ever intend to do so. They have and feel no need for it whatsoever. They have no use for it, and are in fact hostile to its truths and doctrines. To them all religious differences are of no importance. The questions of belief in God and what we believe about God are to them irrelevant and secondary to how we live in this life. They are more concerned with other matters, such as differences in political and social views, “Left” and “Right”, liberal and conservative, progressive or traditional. Religious belief, as such, plays only a small, if any part at all, in their thinking. If they do show any interest in the gospel, it is only to twist, distort, correct, modify, peddle, and exploit it, or because it has been presented to them in a wrong way. If they believe in a god and a heaven at all, they imagine that, based on their good works and on their being a basically good person, they will go to heaven when they die. In this way the devil blinds the minds of multitudes to the true gospel and keeps them under his control.
Then there are others who perhaps have a sense of insignificance, failure, unimportance, and disappointment in life. They are lonely or anxious or frightened or suffer under the burden of some problem. These people begin to think about God, and to turn to God, and begin to consider what they imagine is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is always a great danger in times of crisis, or when people are frightened, worried, and when times are hard and conditions in the world are unstable. It happens when people become desperate, despairing, panicky, irrational, and are ready to grasp at anything that seems to give them some stability, hope, protection, significance, affirmation, and deliver them from their fears and troubles. False and apostate teachers and churches prey upon such people who end up believing things about God, Jesus Christ, and the gospel which the Bible does not teach, and even contradicts. They are led to believe that they are true believers in Jesus Christ and His gospel, but it is obvious from the truths and doctrines of Scripture that their ‘faith’ is of no value. This is one of the deadliest deceptions that can happen to a soul.
Then there are others whose understanding of the gospel is not entirely wrong. They understand some of its truths and doctrines, and they latch onto those truths that are most attractive to them, and that appeal to them, but this is where they stop. They consider the truths that appeal to them to be all the truth there is. They equate Christianity with the truths they like, or with a certain aspect or view of Christianity. They extract bits and pieces of the gospel and treat those as if they were the entire gospel. Today people do this with the love of God, as if the entire gospel consisted of the message of God’s love for sinners. Some do this with the message of forgiveness, as if the gospel consisted of nothing but forgiveness. Some do this with grace, as if the entire gospel consisted of nothing but grace, thereby turning grace into licentiousness and a cloak for their sin (Jude 4). Many today are doing this with ‘justice’, as if the entire gospel consisted of their warped, perverted, man-centered, and self-serving view of justice. When certain truths are isolated from the whole gospel and made to stand for the whole gospel, this becomes the means of tearing down the entire fabric of Christianity. The ‘gospel’ they produce may be a very attractive gospel, a very popular gospel, a very successful gospel, a very man-pleasing gospel that can command a handsome reception, but it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. People whose interest in the gospel is purely their own self-interests and personal, political, and economic gain only affirm those parts of the gospel that serve their own self-interests or that they can twist and distort to serve their own self-interests. The reason the Sadducees had a wrong understanding of the power and nature of God was because they had a wrong understanding of the Scriptures (Mt 22:29).
Many people today, for one reason or another, are unhappy. Some are unfulfilled. Some have perhaps been victimized and now desire personal empowerment. They have tried everything that the world has told them will make them happy and fulfilled, but all of it has left them unhappy and unfulfilled. Then they turn to the Bible, to the ‘church’, to religion, and to the gospel seeking this happiness and personal fulfillment. This is the reason and goal of their interest in the gospel, so they look for a church, a teacher, and verses in the Bible that seem to offer the happiness and personal fulfillment they seek and they listen to nothing else and reject all the truths and doctrines that would seem to frustrate their goal of happiness and fulfillment. By doing all of this, they imagine they are Christians when in reality they are not Christian at all. Cults, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, apostate denominations, and multitudes of false teachers all claim to offer happiness and fulfillment, all claim to follow and teach the Bible, all claim to be Christian, but when we examine their beliefs, doctrines, and teachings against the truths and doctrines of the gospel, we find that they bear no relation to one another. They are two totally different things, yet all these false forms of godliness call themselves ‘Christian’, and claim to teach and believe the ‘gospel’, and because some people have found happiness, acceptance, and fulfillment by means of these various forms of godliness, and because they use similar Christian terminology, they think they are truly Christians.
The same thing happens when people try to integrate knowledge from secular disciplines with the truths and doctrines of Scripture, or when they try to tell us that we only have to believe parts of the Bible if this is what it takes to make someone happy. They come to the Bible with their human ideologies, reason, and theories and pick out certain verses, terms, and phrases that suit their presuppositions and agenda, impose their own meanings on the text, then teach these as the meaning of Scripture, when it is not at all the teaching of the Bible. They use biblical terminology when it serves their self-interests, but they ignore fundamental truths and doctrines of the gospel that would contradict their beliefs, teachings, and practices. Their ‘Christianity’ and ‘gospel’ are nothing but psychology, philosophy, evolution, feminism, Marxism, socialism, liberalism, mysticism, materialism, patriotism, conservatism, traditionalism, universalism, humanitarianism or some other human ideology cloaked in biblical terminology and masquerading as Christianity and the gospel. Because it uses Christian terminology, this gives it the perception of being Christian, but it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. These are just a few of the ways by which multitudes of people and churches today have drifted and fallen away from the truths and doctrines of the gospel. It is by the neglect of Scripture that such apostasy occurs, a neglect that is self-evident in the appalling and abysmal biblical, theological, and moral ignorance, indifference, and rebellion that now characterizes modern evangelicalism in all its forms, an ignorance, indifference, and rebellion that can only be attributed, not to the absence or unavailability of truth, but to a willful, deliberate, and habitual neglect, corruption, rejection of, and apostasy from known gospel truths and doctrines against all the warnings and examples of Scripture.
Open Shame
As I demonstrated in the last study, it is impossible for anyone who has never felt the shame and guilt of sin, nor ever seen themselves to be under the wrath of a holy and offended God to repent, and that it is possible for a person, church, or an entire nation to sin away all shame and guilt for sin, and therefore all possibility and opportunity for repentance. False conceptions of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them. Unless a person first feels the weight, guilt, and shame of sin, and themselves to be under the wrath of a holy, righteous, just, and offended God, and the uselessness of their own righteousness, the gospel can mean nothing to them; and until they see God as He truly is, there will be no dread, no shame, no guilt, and no woe. The impossibility of renewing the apostate to repentance is magnified by the fact that while they are unwilling to feel, or be made to feel, any shame and guilt for their sin, they are more than willing to again put the Son of God to open shame. This is the second reason given by the author of Hebrews for why it is impossible to renew the apostate to repentance; it is because they again “put Him to open shame” (Hb 6:6), thereby further compounding the guilt of their apostasy. The form of the Greek verb translated “put Him to open shame” (paradeigmatizontas) is found only here in the New Testament, and it means to expose someone to public disgrace, shame, degradation, and ignominy, often by public execution, thereby rendering them vile, odious, and despised in the eyes of men. It is a much stronger form of the same word used to describe Joseph’s unwillingness to expose Mary to public shame, “And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her (deigmatisai),” (Mt 1:19), that is, to expose Mary to a shameful public scandal and condemnation.
Concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, the author of Hebrews stated that “for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hb 12:2), that is, Jesus endured the pain and suffering of the cross and of the wrath of God, and He despised the shame and ignominy of the cross. The pain of the cross which He endured was as a penal and substitutionary atonement for sin to satisfy the wrath of God against all those for whom Jesus died, “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross,” (1 Pt 2:24); “for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev 5:9). The physical pain which Jesus endured was nothing compared to the spiritual pain of suffering the full wrath of God against sin. God did not spare His own Son (Rm 8:32). The shame which Jesus despised was the shame and degradation of death by crucifixion, a means of execution that was intended to be, and that was regarded by all people everywhere as highly and especially shameful, degrading, and ignominious, “for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’” (Gal 3:13).
The first reason which our author gave for why it is impossible to renew the apostate to repentance is because “they again crucify to themselves the Son of God”, and in what sense they do so I dealt with in the last study. The second reason is, they “put Him to open shame”. In other words, the apostate both again crucifies and exposes to open shame the Son of God. They are willing, as much as it is in their power, to do the latter as they are the former. At this point we might anticipate an objection to what has been written thus far, an objection along the order of – if some, if not many of those who actually were guilty of crucifying Jesus and who really did put Him to open shame, afterwards repented at the preaching of the gospel, believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and received mercy and forgiveness, as we are in fact told they did (Ac 2:41), why is it that those who renounce and deny Jesus Christ and His gospel, and by doing so again crucify Him and put Him to open shame only figuratively and metaphorically and not actually, should be excluded from all hope of repentance and forgiveness? The answer to such an objection is that the sin of those who reject, deny, corrupt, adulterate, scoff at, vilify, and forsake Jesus Christ and His gospel after being convinced of its truths and professing faith in it is, for many reasons, far more heinous than that of those who actually crucified Jesus outside Jerusalem. The severity of the sin increases the severity of God towards the sinner.
The sin is greater because it can in no way be attributed to or extenuated by ignorance as was the sin of those who actually crucified Jesus, “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also” (Ac 3:17). It was their ignorance which Peter cited as the grounds for his exhortation to, “Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away,” (Ac 3:19). It was because he acted in ignorance when he persecuted the church that the apostle Paul gave for the reason he was shown mercy, “even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and violent aggressor. And yet I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief;” (1 Tim 1:13). It was the ignorance of those who crucified Him that Jesus gave as the reason for His prayer for their forgiveness, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34), and as Paul stated, “for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;” (1 Cor 2:8). Under the Old Covenant God “overlooked the times of ignorance” (Ac 17:30), and accepted the sacrifices offered on The Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, by the high priest “which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance” (Hb 9:7; cf. Lev 5:18).
However, someone may understandably ask, how could their rejection of Jesus be excused by ignorance when Jesus Himself declared, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin” (Jn 15:22). How could they who had personally witnessed so many of His miracles, who had been given so many evidences that He was the promised Messiah, who had heard so much of His teaching and doctrine, so that their rejection and ignorance could only be attributed to a willful and deliberate obstinacy, be excused by ignorance? The answer to such a question is threefold. First, their sin, unbelief, and rejection had no real excuse, as Jesus Himself declared on several occasions (Jn 10:35-38; 12:47, 48; 15:22-24). Second, nothing is attributed to the nature of their ignorance other than that it left their repentance possible and their sin forgivable, otherwise Jesus could not have based His prayer for their forgiveness upon their not knowing what they were doing (Lk 23:34). Third, their repentance and forgiveness remained possible until God had used all the means He had graciously ordained and intended from eternity past for bringing sinners to repentance and faith, and no longer. This God had not yet done. He had two more witnesses to the truth which He would graciously bestow, the first of which was the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, “who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead,” (Rm 1:4). It was to the fact of His resurrection that the apostles were commissioned by Jesus to be His witnesses and which they emphasized as the principle part of their message and was the grounds for their calls to repentance and faith (Ac 1:8, 22; 2:24, 31, 32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40, 41; 13:30; 17:30, 31). The resurrection is proof that God is now no longer overlooking the times of ignorance, but “is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent,” and the reason is, “because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Ac 17:30, 31).
The second witness was furnished by Jesus in sending the promise of the Holy Spirit in power with all of His miraculous signs and gifts, “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear” (Ac 2:33; cf. 5:32; 2 Cor 12:12; 1 Tim 3:16). Wherever God has graciously provided all the means which He has ordained for bringing sinners to repentance and faith, which includes the preaching of the true gospel (Rm 1:16; 10:14; 1 Cor 1:21), if those means are habitually rejected, or if they are regarded as insufficient, and if other means, other Jesus’, other gospels, and other messages are substituted in their place, then there remains no hope for repentance, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead” (Lk 16:31). They again “put Him to open shame” because in essence they have “trampled under foot the Son of God,” (Hb 10:29), which is an act of open and utter contempt for the glorious Son of God. By showing such contempt for Jesus, His gospel, its doctrines, and His Word, they repudiate what they had previously professed to be true and vital to salvation. By their attempting to make the true gospel and its commands and doctrines appear insufficient, unreasonable, odious, repulsive, and subject to the scorn and ridicule of unregenerate men and women, they again expose Christ to open shame. When people condemn the exposing of error and evil, and when calling sin by its right names is labeled ‘hate’, ‘intolerance’, ‘bigotry’, and ‘evil’, they are again exposing Jesus to open shame and trampling underfoot the Son of God. By expressing their contempt for the Word of Christ they exhibit their contempt for the Person of Jesus Christ.
Our author here again emphasizes the evil of the sin by stressing who it is these apostates have put to open shame; it is the Son of God, the very one who “was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead” (Rm 1:4), and who is the greatest and final revelation of God, and “whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world”, and who “is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power”, and who “when He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hb 1:2, 3). The sin of denying and rejecting Jesus Christ, His gospel, His atonement, and His Word “after receiving a knowledge of the truth” (Hb 10:26), and after making a profession of faith in Him as the Son of God, is absolutely willful and done against all the light, evidence, and conviction of the truth which God will ever give to anyone in this world. At His first coming Jesus was not received for who He really is, namely, the Holy Son of God; rather, “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (Jn 1:11). He is the Creator of the world, yet, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him” (Jn 1:10). He was not received and worshiped as the King of kings and Lord of lords, nor as the Holy Son of God, nor as God Almighty, but was regarded as a blasphemer and a deceiver, treated as the worst of criminals, and put to open shame. The sin of those who would again put Jesus to open shame by rejecting Him as Lord and refusing to worship and obey Him as God, even after He has been declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, and by the witness of the Holy Spirit is worse than the sin of those who first put Jesus to open shame.
Secondly, the sin of these apostates is far greater than that of those who actually crucified Jesus because they had experienced the truth, goodness, peace, joy, and superiority of the gospel which those who crucified Jesus never had nor could have. They had enjoyed and experienced in some measure the five privileges mentioned by our author and which have been described in the previous studies. Therefore, their rejection of Jesus, His gospel and its doctrines, and their previous experience of them, revealed a deep, malignant, and incurable hatred and malice toward God and His Word that dominated their heart and mind. Today we are witnessing how this deep, visceral, and malignant hatred for God, His Word, His commands and principles, His Son, and His gospel expresses itself not only among the unbelieving world, but within the bulk of modern evangelicalism. It is a great danger for any person, any church, or any nation to sin against what they have previously professed to be true and right, and it is even worse when they now call ‘evil’ that which they once professed to be good, right, and true. To redefine Christianity in terms of ‘tolerance’, ‘inclusivity’, self-importance, and a false conception of ‘love’, ‘justice’, and ‘grace’, and to vilify, disparage, and make repulsive Christianity defined in terms of self-denial, holiness, obedience, separation from the world, love for God and His Word, and a new nature, is to once again put Jesus to open shame. To represent and worship a false Christ and an antichrist as the true Christ betrays a deep and malignant hatred for the Son of God revealed in Scripture. It is a deadly practice to sin against known and professed divine revelation. This is how a person, church, and nation come to invent false and idolatrous conceptions of God, sear their consciences, and eventually reach the point where they are calling evil good and good evil, sin away all possibility for repentance, and are given over by God to a depraved mind, “in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness” (2 Thes 2:12).
Third, in addition to the substitutionary death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, God had yet another work of mercy and grace to be communicated unto those given to Jesus by the Father and for whom Christ died, by a new work of the Holy Spirit, namely, the abolition of the Old Covenant and the institution of the New Covenant, “a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6). This was “a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh” (Hb 10:20). Therefore, there was a way provided for those who first crucified Jesus for repentance and forgiveness. But these apostates, having already made use of this “new and living way”, and that being rejected and repudiated, there is nothing left for them but severity, “Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off” (Rm 11:22). “For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Pt 2:21); or, as our author warns, “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (Hb 10:26, 27).
Finally, there is in this sin of apostasy a blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Some today teach that the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit could only be committed by those who personally accused Jesus of casting out demons by the ruler of the demons (Mt 9:34; 12:24); therefore, we are told, because Jesus is no longer on earth and cannot be accused of this to His face, it is no longer possible for anyone to commit this sin. This assertion, however, cannot be supported from Scripture. Blasphemy, in the New Testament sense of the word, always involves a slandering, maligning, and violation of the power and majesty of God. This blasphemy may be against God Himself (Rev 13:6; 16:11, 21); against the Name, that is, the holy nature and character of God (Lv 24:11; Rev 16:9); against the Word of God (Tit 2:5); against Jesus (Lk 22:65); and against His people (1 Pt 2:12; 4:4). According to Matthew 12:31, “any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men,” even blasphemy against the Son of Man (Mt 12:32), “but whoever shall speak against (i.e. “in opposition to”) the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come” (Mt 12:32). They are “guilty of an eternal sin” (Mk 3:29). This can hardly be restricted to the immediate context of the Pharisee’s sin (Mt 12:24), as is event by Jesus’ use of the relative pronoun “whoever”, and by the fact that if the possibility of forgiveness includes more than the immediate context, then so does the warning against blaspheming the Holy Spirit. This describes the willful, conscious, deliberate, and wicked slander, maligning, disparagement, misrepresentation and rejection of the gracious saving, transforming, regenerating, and sanctifying work and power of the Holy Spirit. When someone who professes to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit calls conformity to the world ‘good’, and conformity to the image of Christ ‘evil’, namely, His holiness, His righteousness, and His obedience to the will and Word of God, all of which are the fruit of the Spirit, they are in danger of being guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
In the case of these apostates, they had experienced in themselves, or seen it in others, the powerful and life-transforming operations of the Spirit by which He bore witness to the truth about Jesus, His gospel, and its doctrines. They could not renounce and deny those truths without ascribing the works of the Holy Spirit which validated those truths to something or someone other than the Spirit. The “signs, wonders, and various miracles”, the conviction of and forsaking of sin, the transformed and holy lives, the separation from the world, the sincere obedience to God’s commands, the love of the truth, the perseverance in the face of intense temptation and opposition, must either be attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit or to some other spirit, namely, the devil. The work of the Holy Spirit must be regarded either as something good or something evil. They must call the Spirit’s work good or they must call it evil. Peter clearly stated that it was the Holy Spirit who bore witness through the apostles to the truths and doctrines they preached and taught, “And we are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him” (Ac 5:32). The apostle Paul stated, “no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is accursed’” (1 Cor 12:3). To call Jesus accursed is to agree that Jesus deserved to be crucified, and to be publicly humiliated as an accursed person, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:13). This is what was done by these apostates in their return to Judaism; they agreed that Jesus had been justly crucified as an accursed person, a deceiver, a blasphemer, and a public menace, and this is what is done by all who reject, renounce, and deny Jesus Christ, His Word, His gospel, and His doctrines after having once made a profession of believing in them. No one speaking by the Holy Spirit can do this, just as no one speaking by the Holy Spirit can say that the Spirit has told them things and led them to say and do things that He has not revealed in Scripture and that are in direct violation and contradiction of His Word. No one speaking by the Holy Spirit can scoff at and misrepresent so as to make odious the truths, commands, and doctrines of the gospel, nor can they deny and ridicule truths and doctrines that the Holy Spirit clearly teaches in His Word. No one speaking by the Holy Spirit can slander and try to paint the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of the light (Eph 5:9), and those who walk as children of light (Eph 5:8), that is, true biblical Christians, as evildoers (1 Pt 2:12). No one speaking by the Spirit can condone and affirm what God has condemned and forbidden. No one speaking by the Holy Spirit can call evil good and good evil. Whoever does these things, especially if they do them under the name of ‘Christian’, and represent them as being consistent with the work of the Holy Spirit, is not acting by the Holy Spirit, but by the spirit of antichrist and by the spirit of the devil, and if they do these things in spite of and in opposition to the testimony of the Holy Spirit revealed in Scripture and which they have known, this renders their repentance impossible and their sin unforgivable. The only way to respond to such apostates is to “avoid such men as these” (2 Tim 3:5), and to deliver them over to Satan so they may be taught not to blaspheme (1 Tim 1:20).
Total or Partial Apostasy
Apostasy from the gospel is either total or partial. The author of Hebrews warned his readers against the danger of a total apostasy of which the apostates described by him were guilty. They had renounced Jesus Christ and His gospel to return to Judaism. When men and women willfully and maliciously renounce Jesus Christ and His gospel (because they cannot do it willfully without also doing it maliciously), thereby concurring with the opinion of Jesus held by those who crucified Him, they consign themselves to a part of hell and its torments which correspond to this sin. It would be better for such people if their sin had no other aggravation than that of those who actually nailed Jesus “to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Ac 2:23). But this total apostacy is a willful contempt for all the means of conviction and conversion, and against all the evidences of truth which God will ever give to us in this world; they place themselves outside the bounds of that divine grace, mercy, and forgiveness which those who actually crucified Jesus were yet included. And so it is with many today, who with unregenerate and blinded minds, and in the pursuit of worldly and carnal lusts, self-interest, and the praise and admiration of men, willfully and deliberately embrace some sort of false religion, or some form of apostate Christianity, or a different Jesus and different gospel by an open renunciation of Christ, His gospel, His commands, His nature, and His doctrines. For such people there is nothing left “but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (Hb 10:27). Nevertheless, not everyone who falls away does so willfully and maliciously against known and professed truth, but rather as a result of deception or from ignorance of the truth. These are people who have perhaps been led astray by false teachers and false systems of religion and who were attracted to their error and false doctrines. Some of these may yet be rescued and recovered unto repentance, “have mercy on some who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh” (Jude 22, 23). Such is not the case with apostate forms of Christianity and its teachers and leaders. Their rejection and corruption of truth and of what it is to be Christian is a willful, deliberate, and malicious renunciation of Jesus Christ and His gospel, if not in words, then by their actions (Tit 1:16). Their apostasy is total and, according to God’s inerrant Word, it is irreversible. When we apply these criteria to the current state of modern evangelicalism, we cannot help but conclude that this is, at least for the greater part of it, its tragic condition.
There is also a partial apostasy. Partial apostasy is every violation against the true gospel which shares in the nature of total apostasy to any extent or degree. Therefore, whatever does so, consents in some measure to “again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame” (Hb 6:6). It is only in His gospel and in His church that the Son of God can now be treated in this way. When any fundamental principle and doctrine of gospel truth is forsaken or renounced, and especially when many of them are as they are today, and when the rule of obedience and holiness which the true gospel teaches, demands, and produces is habitually neglected, redefined, and even despised, and when men and women believe differently, and even contrary to what it teaches, and live differently and even contrary to what it requires and commands, and when men and women apologize for and repent of preaching any doctrine, principle, command, truth, warning, and judgment of Scripture, there is a partial apostasy from the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is this partial apostasy which, if it be the will of God, I will consider in the next study. Rather than ending this study on such a sour note, in this season of increasing apostasy and growing hostility to the truths and doctrines of the gospel, let all those who love Jesus Christ and His Word in truth be encouraged by the words of one faithful nineteenth century Scottish pastor, W.H. Burns,
“Be thankful that, though there be few, yet there are some faithful witnesses – a precious remnant, faithful among many faithless, – some standing up for good principles, – raising up, as from the dead, the truths which were in danger of being buried; bringing back, as it were, the spirit of the martyrs of former days, and giving Him all the glory…. Let the faithful be encouraged, and learn their duty to continue faithful, and not be shaken in mind nor troubled, though their number be few, for the foundation of God standeth sure. Truth loses not its value, yea, it rather rises in value and brightness when many oppose it. “Men make void thy law,” says the Psalmist; what then? He only loves it the more. “Therefore I love thy commandments above gold, yea, above fine gold. Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way” (Ps. 119:127, 128). The fewer the faithful, the greater the honor of being one of them; a few even in Sardis (Rev 3:4).”[3]
May all who read these studies be among the few faithful who, with Moses, consider the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt (Hb 11:26)..
[1] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 3.
[2] Ibid, 2.
[3] Islay Burns, The Pastor of Kilsyth (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, First published 1860, Reprint 2020), 276.