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Hence perhaps even the excess of the controversial activity of the two sects against each other, and the frequency of their mutual excommunications, are not without a favourable significance. Here, however, it was the Baptists, rather than the Independents collectively, that had pushed their theory of the all-sufficiency of congregational censure to its finest issue.
Their watchwords remain the same, though in an altered dialect: “nature and natural phenomena,” the denial of “dualism,” the upholding of the one principle “monism,” the all-sufficiency of nature, and the absence of any intervening influences from without or beyond nature.
This is vitalism as opposed to mechanism, or scientific materialism, which is the doctrine of the all-sufficiency of the physical forces operating in the inorganic world to give rise to all the phenomena of the organic world a doctrine coming more and more in vogue with the progress of physical science.
The real point of anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this: whether a reasonable belief can be fairly carried through; whether the notion of the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objections no less than the system of church-authority; whether, in short, our Christian faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal leap at some part or other of the process; nay, whether, in fact, if it were otherwise, our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wisdom of man than on the power of God.
And the 'true grace of God' is shorthand for all the rich abundance and variety and exuberant manifoldness and all-sufficiency of the sevenfold perfect gifts for spirit and heart which come from faith in Jesus Christ.
For as I see myself I am no better than a devil, void of sincerity and of uprightness in what I do myself, and yet judge others, condemning in another man what I excuse and even approve in myself: plunged in deep snares of self-love, not loving others nor judging nor acting for others as I do for myself and for my relations. And then a passage which might have been taken from The Confessions itself: 'Ere I come to glory and to my journey's end, I shall have spent so much of Thy free grace what in pardoning, what in preventing, what in convincing, what in enlightening, what in strengthening, and confirming, and upholding; what in watering and making me to grow; what in growth of sanctification, knowledge, faith, experience, patience, mortification, uprightness, steadfastness, watchfulness, humiliation, resolution, and self-denial; what for public, what for private, and what for the family; what against snares on the right hand and on the left; O Lord, the all-sufficiency of Thy grace! Surely the man must run well and must make a good goal at last who can write about sin and grace in himself in that fashion!
God hath furnished Christ wherewithal to be a surety; to make good His covenant to His people, and their covenant to Him. But now, He hath this stock of all-sufficiency for none but these that are His members, He actually undertakes for none but those that are actually in Him; "These that Thou hast given Me I have kept."
They should have tightened our hold and increased our possession of Christ, and unfolded more and more of His all-sufficiency. They should have enriched us with memories of God's loving care, and lighted all the sky behind with a glow which is reflected on the path before us, and kindles calm confidence in His unfailing goodness.
The all-sufficiency of all forms of Naturalism condemns itself through its failure to pass beyond itself. Had there not been some who did pass beyond the Thing and its relations the spiritual values of the race would have been annihilated.
"For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh to God." It is the aim of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to teach the insufficiency of the Jewish Dispensation to save the human race from the wrath of God and the power of sin, and the all-sufficiency of the Gospel Dispensation to do this.
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