REGRESSIVE SANCTIFICATION (CROWLEY)

Paul wrote to the Thessalonians “… our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance …” He warned the Galatians “ … though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”

If the word ever came to me in power, it was on this wise. When I was fourteen, my Aunt Nell Parrish took me to the introductory of the Original Union Primitive Baptist Association, held with Union Church (Burnt Church), Lakeland, Georgia, on Saturday, October 18, 1969. The singing, especially Amazing Grace, shattered me, and I was amazed when Elder John Harris delivered the introductory, preaching the doctrine of election without reserve. My Aunt and I left at the intermission, but I could think or talk of little else for weeks. I came to love the doctrine and practice as much as I loved the Old Baptist people at first sight. After making a public profession at seventeen, I was assailed with many doubts and difficulties, but my love of that faith and practice continued. I particularly loved the doctrine of the absolute predestination of all things, as set forth in Elder Gilbert Beebe’s editorial of that title.

But Satan is oft transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers into ministers of righteousness. I loved to read and always got comfort and light from the Bible and the Old Baptist writers of the past. Finding the Puritans extolled in some quarters and supposing that any professed Predestinarian must be fundamentally sound, I stepped into as deep a corner of the Slough of Despond as Bunyan ever dreamed of.

The effect of the Puritans on a melancholy temperament is well described in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy:

the greatest harm of all proceeds from those thundering ministers, a most frequent cause they are of this malady; “ and do more harm in the church (saith Erasmus) than they that flatter; ….But these men are wholly for judgment; of a rigid disposition themselves, there is no mercy with them, no salvation, no balsam for their diseased souls, they can speak of nothing but reprobation, hell fire, and damnation; as they did, Luke xi. 46. lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, which they themselves touch not with a finger. ….Our indiscreet pastors many of them come not far behind [the Papists], whilst in their ordinary sermons they speak so much of election, predestination, reprobation, subtraction of grace, voluntary permission, &c., by what signs and tokens they shall discern and try themselves. whether they be God’s true children elect, … with such scrupulous points, they still aggravate sin, thunder out God’s judgments without respect, rail at and pronounce them damned, for giving so much to sports and honest recreations, making every small fault and thing indifferent an irremissible offence, they so rent, tear and wound men’s consciences, that they are almost mad, and at their wits’ end.

Owen and his ilk had a similar effect on me. I need to record here my thankfulness to an old writer in the Gospel Standard who warned me against Baxter’s “duty exalting, Christ dishonoring” Saint’s Everlasting Rest. I am grateful for not getting embroiled with that Neonomian grandsire of Fuller and Finney. I did not understand the perniciousness of their blending of works and grace, law and gospel, justification and sanctification. The Popish dregs in their cup are plain. A modern prophet of their own recently declared,” Did Rome—particularly their famous apologist, Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621)—correctly understand the Protestant position that good works are merely evidence of sanctity? As far as the Reformed theological tradition goes, the answer is an emphatic no. Rome seriously misunderstood the Reformed, Protestant position. The real point of contention concerns whether, as noted above, good works are the way of life or the way to life. Adding the latter phrase, “way to life,” refers to their necessity. Tobias Crisp, who has been defended by some as generally orthodox and castigated by others for his antinomianism, holds to a view that was rejected by Reformed theologians of his era: “They [i.e., good works] are not the Way to Heaven.” He refers to the Reformed view as a “received conceit among many persons,” namely, “that our obedience is the way to heaven.”ECESSARY OR

Robert Cardinal Bellarmine was many things, but imperceptive was not one of them. Bozeman, The Precisionist Strain, plainly demonstrates the Roman Catholic roots of much Puritanism. “From about 1580, … the circulation of Catholic devotional books within England rapidly increased. Clandestine recusant presses in England, Continental centers of recusant activity, and authorized London publishers produced a growing array of both classic and contemporary Catholic works written or translated into English. The Exercise of a Christian Life (1579), a recusant translation from an Italian original by Gaspar Loarte (presumably an object of Holland’s complaint about “Italianat[e]” propaganda), offers an early instance; but the incoming flow of Continental literature was dominated by a large selection of works from the sixteenth-century Spanish devotional awakening. Luis de Granada was the most popular Spanish author, with at least twenty editions of various works appearing in English between 1580 and 1634. Among authors writing in English, probably the most important was Robert Parsons (an admirer of Loarte, Granada, and Ignatius of Loyola), whose First Booke of the Christian Exercise (1582) was issued in a recast and enlarged edition as A Christian Directorie in 1585. Giving strong evidence of renewed English interest in Catholic spirituality, conservative Protestants, too, contributed to the devotional revival with expurgated editions of Catholic works. Thomas Rogers prepared a Protestantized edition of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, for instance, which was reprinted sixteen times between 1580 and 1640; Frances Meres’s translation of Luis de Granada’s Sinners Guyde went through two London editions; and Edmund Bunny’s sanitized version of Parsons’s Christian Exercise enjoyed a run of thirty-two editions between 1584 and 1639.”

The Bible, which my mother warned me to stick to, always yielded me comfort and peace. Our Old Baptist writers in the Signs, together with Martin Luther, John Gill, Wilson Thompson, John Warburton, and William Huntington likewise. The part of the church history written by C.B. Hassell was also a mainstay, although the lack of discrimination shown by his son Sylvester was part of what laid me open to the Puritan assault. I took so many wounds from then that the mere sight of their books put me in despondency.

Seeking solace, I began to explore apologetics and the works of C.S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton. I became convinced of what I had previously regarded as utterly false, that the Christian faith can be proven and interpreted by carnal reason. Finding some ease in this, I eventually read John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. As a lover and teacher of history, I was aware of the Catholic faith and impressed with its claims of unbroken continuity. I also got befuddled with the paradox of holding to Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, since the canon of scripture is itself extra scriptural, and the church had been founded ere any word of New Testament Scripture was written. As I grew more “learned,” I sometimes heard a whisper, “When thou wast small in thine own eyes …”

Three Primitive Baptists will form four factions and excommunicate each other. An Elder and close friend of mine was accused of a scandalous transgression, and the Hardshell gossip mill began to grind. Possessed more of the fierce spirit of my grandfather Crowley than the sweet love of Christ, I plunged into the affray with all guns blazing. I say this to my shame. A childhood friend once told me he had sooner take a beating from me than a tongue lashing. I had a savage, unerring instinct for any opponent’s most sensitive spot and availed myself fully of that hellish talent.

I was ready to vomit up Puritanism, not discerning how far I had drifted from the old Baptist foundation I had first been placed upon. Catching a good dose of Roman fever from the Great Serbonian Bog of Reformed goat briars, I decided one Pope, and him on the other side of the ocean was better than having a half dozen of them at my elbow. I broke many hearts that had admired and depended upon me. I hope the Lord improved it to show them the folly of leaning on an arm of flesh. Despite some misgivings, I felt fully persuaded I was right. Almost without exception, the worst and most hurtful things I have ever done proceeded from absolute conviction. Now, when I feel too sure about anything I regard it as a danger sign,

I was received into the Catholic Church in 1983. I almost immediately began preparations to enter a seminary and study for the priesthood. I left my saddened mother and Aunts and set out for a distant college with that end in view. The only comment they made was summed up by my aunt Nell, “If you are one of the elect, you will be saved, and if you are not, you can join every church in the world.”

At this point, I would like to say that during my time as a Catholic, the Catholic priests and people I encountered were always the soul of kindness to me, even when I left them. I wish I could say as much about a number of Old Baptists.

Although I had detested grade school, I had always loved the atmosphere of colleges and universities. The institution I attended was a four-year liberal arts college with a seminary as the graduate school. Apart from some homesickness, I settled in and enjoyed myself.

Here, I first became acquainted with recent Biblical and church history scholarship. Two instances stick out in my memory. During a discussion of the doctrine of Papal infallibility, I asked how the doctrine could be reconciled with the 1307 Bull of Urban VII asserted with all the force of Papal authority that that it was a condition of salvation for every rational creature to confess both the supreme spiritual authority of the Pope and his supreme temporal authority as well. Yet the whole Christian world laughed it to scorn, and King Philip the Fair of France essentially killed the prating dunce and carried the Papacy away captive to Avignon for seventy years. Our church history professor laughed scornfully and said, “Indeed. How can you reconcile that with Papal infallibility?” It occurred to me that if the Sola Scriptura advocates had to deal with the question of why it was not until nearly 400 A.D. that the New Testament canon was finally settled, the Catholics had an equal difficulty in explaining why an essential doctrine like the supreme teaching authority in the church was not definitively settled until 1870.

Another classroom discussion involved the same professor saying that “The resurrection of Jesus was a faith event, not a historical event.” I mulled this over for several days and asked, “Does that mean we believe it as long as no one asks us whether it’s true or not?” His backpedaling was a sight to see. A crawfish with a hungry raccoon reaching for it was nowhere close. I remember thinking that if this was the most the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church could say for its own origins, I might as well have stayed where I was.

Then there was the bone. Our school had a patron saint; call him Rimmon. On his feast day, classes were cancelled, and we paid honor to his relic, a finger bone. Looked like nothing so much as an old chicken bone, and might have been one. It sat on the altar in a fine monstrance, and we “processed” before it and bowed as we passed. Naaman-like, I “bowed in the house of Rimmon” with the rest, but rather than thoughts of devotion to the holy life of our worthy patron, all I could think was, “Man, if those Hardshells back home could see me now.”

One afternoon, having had all the seminary sweetness and light I could stand, I rode out into the countryside. I came to a plain old meetinghouse which put me in mind of those at home. It was as if a voice spoke and said, “With whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness?” During a mass, the gospel was the raising of the Widow of Nain’s Son, and I felt strongly that a Widow of Hahira would soon have her son restored to her.

I finished my year in the seminary but did not return. Shortly thereafter, my closest Catholic friends either died or moved away, so I was able to quietly slip away without the anguish that I had caused in leaving the Primitive Baptists.

I left home absolutely sure that reason had established the proof of the faith I then professed. I returned believing nothing for a certainty and feeling like a castaway washed up on the shore or a ghost haunting the scenes where it had once been alive. I resumed attendance at Old Baptist meetings with my family but felt too blank and empty to seek membership again. One day, I heard a venerable old brother say that he had been “dragging around after these people for fifty years,” which seemed to suit my case. I once asked the late Elder Mahue Young if our faith was susceptible of proof. He roared “NO,” with all the emphasis in his power. Elder Jimmy Brannen mentioned having listened to a polished apologist, but all he was left thinking was, “The only one that can prove God is God.” I ceased worrying about science, religious history, and Biblical criticism. As Elder Sam Blanton said, “I don’t argue with science, I ignore it [in regard to conflicts with faith].” God knows how it all fits together, and I don’t have to. Ironically, the skeptic Hume, intending sarcasm, actually uttered a profound truth:

“… upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.”

After several years, and amid profound misgivings, I offered to Union Church. Many adventures and misadventures succeeded, but a miserable old sinner kept dragging around after a people he never felt he had caught up with. I would rather be an excluded Old Baptist than a member in good standing anywhere else.

I had read in old books of the controversy over antinomianism, but I never made heads nor tails of it. One afternoon a few months ago, I was listening to a podcast and drifted off to sleep. When I woke an interview was playing with a most interesting person. A postmodernist radical left-wing homosexual had joined a strict Reformed Church and married a person of the opposite sex. Every detail on the surface of this narrative should have been a cause for rejoicing to a sincere Christian, but it had quite the opposite effect on me. I initially blamed my own coldness, unbelief, and tendency to take up for rascals in general. Eventually, though I came to wonder if I had experienced something described in one of our old associational circulars;

“They will claim that at a certain time they prayed to God; that at a certain time he showed them some glorious thing; that at a certain time they were most shamefully persecuted for Christ’s sake, and some say I have been a Christian for ever so many years. One that is enabled to see with an eye of faith, and hears them make these declarations, are more fully convinced that they know nothing of the matter, than if they had heard them use the bitterest oaths.”

Although my new acquaintance asserted sovereign grace doctrinally, the emphatic declaration “I am saved,” accompanied in another place with “progressive sanctification is real,” acted upon me like wild hog scent on an Alapaha River Cur. The game was afoot.

I made something of a hobby of this know-so saved sanctificationist, and so for the first time began to seriously look into the mongrellization of law and gospel represented by Reformed theology. One acute observer referred to the particular conventicle where my quarry had laired as “a pseudo-intellectual Calvinist cult.” I have a similar impression of it. Postmodernism to presuppositionalism seems to me but the exchange of one skull full of mush for another. One is the rationalization of total skepticism and the other the religionizing of it. I began to understand at last, as I studied the matter, that it was the doctrine of progressive sanctification discussed previously that was the source of the vinegar on nitre effect the Puritans had on me. As I began to think on the Scriptures as read by the people my soul loved and consult the writings of the despised antinomians Crisp, Eaton, Saltmarsh, and the young Luther, and it was like precious balm.

In conclusion, I can think of no better human expression of my feelings than these quotes from another despised Antinomian, Robert Hawker:

Nay, will those advocates for progressive sanctification kindly say, whether while insisting upon inherent holiness and the whole man becoming more perfect in others, that they truly experience such things in themselves? Are they more holy, more heavenly-minded, more weaned from the world than they were in times past? If they say yes, to such heart-searching questions; they will but afford stronger testimony of their ignorance of the plague of their own heart, and prove the Lord's assertion, when he saith, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" - Jeremiah 17:9.

A child of God may, and through grace will, sometimes restrain the swellings of sin from breaking out into deeds of actual transgression; for so the Holy Ghost saith, "If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live," Rom. 8:13. But if the body, as it is said, "be dead because of sin," how is it possible for it to do a single act of righteousness? And who that is conscious of this will talk of progressive sanctification?

I believe it was Hawker who once found a sister drunk and told her, “O Mary, you have quite forgotten your Savior, but He has not forgotten you.” That is the only Savior suited to my case.