Puritan Papers: Vol. 2, 1960-1962

J. I. Packer

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781596387959
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

Sixteen papers written by the editor and others on Puritan views of communion with God, Christian joy, missions, preaching, divine intercession, conscience, apostasy and more.

Part 1

Increasing
in the Knowledge of God

1960

1

Philip Doddridge’s
The Rise and Progress of
Religion in the Soul

Alan Gibson

“If to have conducted thousands to the feet of Christ and a crown of righteousness be high praise, then few uninspired books have greater honour than the Rise and Progress. We continue to regard it as the safest, completest and most effectual manual for anxious enquirers.” So wrote an anonymous reviewer of Philip Doddridge’s The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review 1857, over a hundred years after the book’s first publication in 1745. And even the modest author could say of it in his own lifetime:

This is the book which so far as I can judge, God has honoured for the conversion and edification of souls more than any of my writings. I cannot mention it without humbly owning that great hand of God, which has been with it and to which I desire, with unaffected abasement of mind, to ascribe all the glory of its acceptance and success.

It was a recommendation from a friend, as “one of the best books ever written,” which persuaded William Wilberforce to read The Rise and Progress, and its reading led to his serious study of the Bible and conversion to Christ.

Some knowledge of the days in which Doddridge wrote may help our assessment of the book. The early eighteenth century was undoubtedly a time of religious and moral decline. Bishop Ryle in The Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century, writes of it as follows: “This was the period at which Archbishop Secker said in one of his charges, ‘In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard of religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes the distinguishing character of the age. Such are the dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and the profligacy, intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower part, as must, if the torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal.’ ”

An analysis of the situation within the churches is found in these words from Mr. Poole-Connor’s book, Evangelicalism in England:

There are times when the Body of Christ is called to enter into fellowship with her Head; to know what it is to have the sentence of death in herself, that she may trust, not in herself but in God that raiseth the dead. Such, during the eighteenth century was the experience of evangelicalism. . . . The decline was gradual. It manifested itself in the realm of theology first by a growing disinclination to build belief upon ecclesiastical or dogmatic authority. The teachings of the Fathers, the Schoolmen and the Reformers fell into the background; the Scriptures began to be employed more often as a buttress than a foundation;

reason rather than revelation became the court of appeal. . . . Speaking generally, the main object appears to have been to demonstrate the eminent reasonableness of Christianity rather than to show its Divine origin; to present it as a philosophy rather than as a revelation; all warmth of feeling being studiously eliminated in the process.

Let us be on our guard, however, from dismissing this period as entirely irreligious. There were exceptions to the prevailing apostasy, among whom were such unquestionable evangelicals as Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge.

The dedication of The Rise and Progress to “The reverend Dr. Isaac Watts” is not just an act of kindness to a friend. Doddridge makes it clear in his preface that the book owes its existence to Watts’s request. Watts had devised its scheme, especially the former part, and had hoped to write it himself, but being older and unwell, he urged Doddridge to undertake it instead; which Doddridge duly did.

However, although Doddridge was a disciple of Watts he is no mere amanuensis. The work is an expression of his own life and ministry. While he was anxious to acknowledge a debt to his mentor, it is clear that he wrote nothing which has not become his own by conviction and experience.

Philip Doddridge was born in the year 1702, the twentieth child of a London shopkeeper. John Doddridge, his grandfather, had chosen to resign his comfortable living at Shepperton-on-Thames shortly after the Act of Uniformity, while his maternal grandfather had been expelled from Bohemia for faithfulness to the Protestant cause. We are not surprised then, to see in Philip a love for the truth of Scripture. He was trained for the Nonconformist ministry at the academy of the Reverend John Jennings and spent the last twenty-one years of his life, from 1730 to 1751, as minister of the Independent Church at Castle Hill in Northampton.

We turn now to the book itself, in which the rise and progress

of personal religion is “illustrated in a course of thirty serious and practical addresses suited to persons of every character and circumstance.”

Introduction and Outline (Chap. 1)

As the title of the book implies, Doddridge begins by directing his attention to what he calls a “careless sinner.” His aim, he says, is to awaken his subject until the latter feels himself under the just condemnation of the law. The gospel will then be brought to him and its way of acceptance described. After some assurance of genuine regeneration has been given, the reader is to be introduced to the high standard required of the Christian’s life and assisted in preparing for its difficulties. He will be warned of the perils of spiritual decline, and encouraged to grow in grace. Eventually the established Christian will be exhorted to honor God by his life and in his death. Let the author explain his manner of handling this material:

I shall not discuss these themes as a preacher might properly do in sermons, in which the truths of religion are professedly to be explained and taught, defended and improved, in a wide variety and long detail of propositions, arguments, objections, replies and inferences. . . . I shall here speak in a looser and freer manner, as a friend to a friend, just as I would do if I were to be a person admitted to a private audience by one whom I tenderly loved, and whose circumstances and character I knew to be like that which the title of one chapter or another of this treatise describes. And when I have discoursed with him a little while, which will seldom be so long as half an hour, I shall, as it were, step aside and leave him to meditate on what he has heard, or endeavour to assist him in such fervent addresses to God, as it may be proper to mingle with these meditations.

These prayers or meditations comprise from two to four pages at the close of each chapter. Doddridge intends the book not only to be read seriously but to be thought over in retirement.

Concern and Condemnation (Chaps. 2–7)

Here is Doddridge’s own outline of these chapters:

I will first suppose myself addressing one of the vast number of thoughtless creatures, who have hitherto been utterly unconcerned about religion, and will try what can be done, by all plainness and earnestness of address, to awaken him from this fatal lethargy, to a care (chap. 2), an affectionate and an immediate care about it (chap. 3). I will labour to fix a deep and awful conviction of guilt upon his conscience (chap. 4), and to strip him of vain excuses and his flattering hopes (chap. 5). I will read to him . . . that dreadful sentence, which a righteous and an Almighty God hath denounced against him as a sinner (chap. 6); and endeavour to show him in how helpless a state he lies under this condemnation, as to any capacity he has of delivering himself (chap. 7).

The first point of significance to notice is Doddridge’s conception of the man to whom he speaks. Although he has called him a careless sinner he is more properly designated a “nominal Christian.”

I will suppose that you believe the existence and providence of God, and the truth of Christianity as a revelation from him: of which, if you have any doubt, I must desire that you would immediately seek your satisfaction elsewhere. But supposing you to be a nominal Christian and not a deist or a sceptic; I will also suppose your conduct among men to be not only blameless but amiable; . . . yet with all this, you may “lack that one thing” (Mk. 10:21) on which your eternal happiness depends.

The primary application of this first section, then, is not so much to the man-in-the-street who is careless of any spiritual values but rather to the member of the congregation who is complacent but yet unregenerate. Doddridge proceeds to upbraid this man for his ingratitude in face of God’s goodness:

Is it a decent and reasonable thing that this great and glorious benefactor should be neglected by his rational creatures? by those that are capable of attaining to some knowledge of him and presenting to him some homage? . . . Nay, brutes far less sagacious and apprehensive have some sense of our kindness and express it after their own way. . . . What lamentable degeneracy therefore is it, that you do not know that you, who have been numbered among God’s professing people, do not, and will not consider your numberless obligations to him.

Doddridge addresses the intellect, to shame his readers for their unreasonable neglect of God. By direct charge and natural analogy he appeals to their conscience to produce conviction of sin. His use of such argument, however, does not mean that, like the rationalists of his day, he has forgotten the limitations of fallen reason:

Let it not be imagined that it is in any neglect of that blessed Spirit, whose office it is to be the great comforter, that I now attempt to reason you out of this disconsolate frame: for it is as the great source of reason, that he deals with rational creatures; and it is in the use of rational means and considerations that he may most justly be expected to operate.

It is his contention that conscience is the voice of God to the sinner, and we continually meet such phrases as, “I put it to your conscience,” and “It is so contrary to the plainest principles of common reason.” He treats the sinner throughout as a rational, and therefore a responsible, being:

Your conscience tells you that you were born the natural subject of God, born under the indispensable obligations of His law. For it is most apparent, that the constitution of your rational nature, which makes you capable of receiving law from God binds you to obey it.

Some attention has been given to this point because we may be in danger of overlooking its importance. In our insistence upon the doctrine of total depravity and the necessity of regeneration for a saving appreciation of the truth of Scripture, we must not become Barthians and deny that there is any point of contact between God and the sinner. Doddridge reminds us what that point of contact is. The sinner’s rational nature requires that we should approach him with arguments from Scripture directed to his reason, applying truth to his mind and appealing to the law of God written in his heart. Even by these standards there are sins for which his conscience will condemn him. By these standards, therefore, he is rendered inexcusable.

The Good News: Its Acceptance and Rejection (Chaps. 8–13)

Having discharged his responsibility in the “law-work,” Doddridge now turns to the more congenial task of urging the gospel on his readers. He writes:

I will joyfully proclaim the glad tidings of pardon and salvation by Christ Jesus our Lord, which is all the support and confidence of my own soul (chap. 8): And then I will give some general view of the way by which this salvation is to be obtained (chap. 9); urging the sinner to accept of it as affectionately as I can (chap. 10); though nothing can be sufficiently pathetic, where, as in this matter, the life of an immortal soul is in question. Too probable it is that some will after all this remain insen-sible; and therefore, that their sad case may not encumber the following articles, I shall here take a solemn leave of them (chap. 11); and then shall turn and address myself, as compassionately as I can to a most contrary character; I mean to a soul overwhelmed with a sense of the greatness of its sins, and trembling under the burden as if there were no more hope for him in God (chap. 12). And that nothing may be omitted which may give solid peace to the troubled spirit, I shall endeavour to guide its inquiries as to the evidences of sincere repentance and faith (chap. 13).

There are two main points we would make from this section. First, we shall draw attention to Doddridge’s conception of God and second, to his careful counsel in evangelism.

The majesty of God dominates the author’s thinking. Few in our day possess such an exalted view of their Creator and Redeemer as Doddridge carries with him through this book. When stressing the awful responsibility of the sinner he urges him to “consider the majesty of the God you have affronted by inattention and wilful disobedience.” We now find that the scheme of gospel reconciliation is the expressed will of this same righteous God.

Doddridge has that full-orbed view of the character of God which comes from much reading of Scripture and meditation on the Savior it reveals. He encourages his reader to consider the wrath of God, His patience, His tenderness, His justice, His sovereignty, His eternity—each adduced at the appropriate moment for the particular exhortation in hand. Would God that we all knew Him as Doddridge did!

Let us now consider the approach Doddridge has to the declaration of the gospel. His realization of the importance of this work has an effect on what he writes. One feels, in reading the book, his intense longing for the salvation of the sinner. He conveys this desire in the painstaking care with which he pursues the sinner into every corner of his carnal confidence. His “Solemn address to those who will not fall in with the design of the gospel” is a cleverly construed appeal to the sinner’s conscience to shake him into a concern of heart. Stanford, in a biography of the author, has complained that, “we know that his object is to lead a poor trembler to Christ, but he seems to us to be a long time about it.” Doddridge is concerned, however, for genuine rather than speedy results, and desires thoroughness above all, in both himself as pastor and those whom he counsels. “I find it exceedingly difficult,” he says, “to satisfy myself in anything I say to men where their eternal interests are concerned.” He is in no hurry to congratulate the convert, but urges him to re-examine his own heart to see whether he yet possesses scriptural grounds for confidence before God.

In describing “the great vital act of faith” by which the sinner solemnly commits his soul into the hands of Christ, he ...