ZION'S ADVOCATE 

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In the Signs of Dec 1, 1849, Eld. Beebe publishes a letter of Eld. Clark criticizing certain doctrines set forth in the Signs, and he also gives, in the same number, his own reply to Eld. Clark, in which he says: "We are too well acquainted with brother Clark to doubt his sincerity or the purity of his motives, or to think him capable of wishing to create an unprofitable excitement." He says that he "had a firm conviction that brother Clark had mis-apprehended the views himself and of some of his correspondents." And he adds: "The subject is infinite and we are finite; our views at best are important, and all we can know or understand of God, or the things of his Spirit, is and must be by the revelator of the Spirit. If brother Clark and other brethren have so understood us as to fear that we or others were losing sight of the absolute God-head of Jesus Christ, their jealousy is commendable; but we are certain that those who have written have felt as tenacious for the supreme glory of God our Savior as any of our brethren can be. We do assuredly believe that Christ is God, and worship and rejoice in him as God. We believe that he took on him the seed of Abraham, was made of a woman, was put to death in the flesh, and was quickened by the Spirit; and we believe that he is the Head of his Church, the life and immortality of all the sons of God: nor can we think that brother Clark wishes to exclude either of these characters from him. We may differ in some of our views, and we may differ still more in our manner of expressing them, but in our need of just such a ‘God, Man, Mediator’ we cannot differ." To this statement of doctrine, Eld. Clark made no objection.

But, in the Signs of June 1 and July 1, 1849, and Feb. 15, 1871, Eld. Beebe, while he declares that "Christ, in his Godhead, is God in the most absolute and unlimited sense, uncreated, underived, self-existent, independent, and eternal, possessing every attribute and perfection of the eternal God, and, as such, not second, subsequent, or inferior to any other God," he affirms that, "besides also being man, Christ has another nature or existence, as the Mediatorial Head and Life of his Church, and that to this nature or existence only are applicable such titles as the Son of God, begotten, set up, created, first born of every creature, and every other name or title which implies derivation, emanation, generation, dependence, or inferiority, excepting only such names or terms as are applied strictly to his humanity. And in the Signs of June 15, 1842 (in an article republished in the second volume of the Editorials of the Signs of the Times, page 28-30), after affirming the same sentiments, he says: "We as firmly believe that ‘there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit,’ as we believe any other part of divine revelation. So vitally important is the doctrine of the Sonship of our Lord, that no one can have a gospel right to christian baptism or church membership unless he believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and no man calleth Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost." In the Signs of Feb. 15, 1856, he says: "We do not believe that the Son of God is a created being, nor have ever expressed an idea implying such belief." This and other like remarks of Eld. Beebe, Eld. Clark publishes in his pamphlet, but thinks them inconsistent with others of his expressions. The errors in Eld. Beebe’s ideas of Christ, according to the old London Baptist confession of Faith, Chapter ii. and viii. (Church History, pages 669-670, 674-676), and the views probably of all Primitive Baptists now in the world, are in calling Christ Mediatorial Office a nature and a creature, and in making His Sonship a creature; (which, however, he seemed at times to deny) for, as the Scriptures everywhere represent, His Sonship is as eternal and uncreated as his Godhead (begetting is not creation), and as the Godhead of the Father and the Holy Spirit. The eternal Father, eternal Son, and eternal Spirit constitute the One eternal, unchangeable God, in whose Triune Name every believer is baptized. "This is the record, that God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son;" but if eternal life is in the Son, the Son Himself is eternal--the same yesterday, today, and forever (1 John v. ii; Heb. xiii. 8). It is only as the Son of Man, and not as the Son of God, that Christ is a creature, and inferior to the eternal Father. The Father, Son, and Spirit are one and the same eternal God, undivided and indivisible, in nature, power, and glory; but in mode of subsistence and operation there is a subordination (involving, however, neither inferiority nor posteriority) of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, the Son being of the Father, and the Spirit being of the Father and the Son, and the Father sending the Son, and the Father and the Son sending the Spirit. The Divine Son, as the Personal wisdom of God, was begotten and possessed of the Father from everlasting or eternity, before His works (Prov. viii. 23-25; 1 Cor. i. 24); the phrase, "the first-born of every creature," (Col. i. 15) is better rendered "born before every creature," just as in the 17th verse it is said that "He is before all things, and by Him all things consist;" He is not the passive but the active beginning or beginner or course or producer of the creation of God (Rev. iii. 14), by whom all creatures were made (John i. 3; Col. i. 16; Heb. i. 2.) and whom all creatures, in some sense, worship or will worship (Heb. i. 6; Rev. v. 13), and is, therefore, not Himself a creature, except in His humanity; "God hath made (that is, appointed, constituted) Him both Lord and Christ," as Peter said on the day of Pentecost (Acts 36), re instated Him in that supreme dignity and authority of which He had partially divested himself in His incarnation- the verb here rendered "made" is rendered "ordained" in Mark iii. 14. In the eternal covenant between that Father and the Son, the Son was "set up" or "anointed" (as the word also means) from everlasting as the Head, Representative Surety, Saviour, King, and Priest of His Church (Prob. viii 23, Psa. ii, lxxxix; Zech. vi 13; John vi, x, xvii; Matt i 21; Eph. i; Heb. vii 15-28). The 8th Chapter of the London Confession of Faith states in the clearest manner the exact teachings of the Scriptures in regard to the Mediatorial Office of Christ.

John Gill, in his Exposition of Heb. i. 5, most ably and scripturally says: "Christ is the Son of God, not by creation, nor adoption, nor by office, but by nature; he is the true, proper, natural, and eternal Son of God; and as such is owned and declared by Jehovah, the Father, in these words (Psalm ii 7; Heb. i. 5); the foundation of which relation lies in the begetting of him; which refer not to his nature, either divine or human; not to his divine nature, which is common with the Father and Spirit, wherefore, if his was begotten, theirs must be also, being the same undivided nature common to all three; much less to his human nature, in which he is never said to be begotten but always to be made, and with respect to which he is without father; nor to his office as Mediator, in which he is not a son, but a servant; besides, he was a son, previous to his being a prophet, priest, and king; and his office is not the foundation of his Sonship, but his Sonship is the foundation of his office, or by which that is supported, and which fits him for the performance of it; but the begetting of the Son by the Father has respect to his divine person; for as, in human generation, person begets person, and like begets like, so it is in divine generation, though care must be taken to remove all imperfection from it, as divisibility and multiplication of essence, priority and posteriority, dependence and the like; not can the manner of it be conceived or explained by us; the date of it, today, designs eternity, as in Isa. xliii 13, which is one continued day, or everlasting now; and this may be applied to any time and case, in which Christ is declared to be the Son of God; as at his incarnation (Luke i 35), his baptism (Luke iii 22), his transfiguration on the Mount (Matt. xvii 5), his resurrection from the dead (Acts xiii 33; Rom. i 4), and at his ascension to heaven (Eph. i 20-23; Acts ii 36), when he was made Lord and Christ, and his divine Sonship more especially appeared, which seems to be the time and case more especially referred to in Heb. i 5."

On the 5th page of his Exposure of Heresies, Eld. Clark says that, "the root or basis of all the errors in the indictment (which he makes against Eld. Beebe) is "Arianism" - that "the Son of God, as the life and head of his church, and Mediator, is a creature, inferior to the Father, as the Father made or created him first of all his works, the first production of divine power, not equal to, or one with the Father, who had a priority of existence" (pages 4, 10, 20). Now let us see exactly what Arianism is. Arius is thought to have been a native of Grenaica, in Northern Africa, and was a presbyter of the Greek Catholic Church in Alexandria, Egypt, during the early part of the 4th century. In his Epistle to Eusebius of Nicomedia, he writes (his own words are given in the original Greek in Greseler’s Church History, Vol. 1. pages 295, 296): -"The Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of the unbegotten by any means, not of anything previously existing, but by will and purpose he existed before times and before ages, full God, only begotten, unchangeable, and, before he was born, or created, or purposed, or founded, he was not, for he was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning, and because we say that he is not of things that did not exist, nor a part of God, nor of anything that existed before." In his Epistle to Alexander, he writes: - "We believe in one only God, alone unbegotten, and that this God begat his only begotten Son before eternal times, through whom he made the worlds and the other things; and that he begat him not in appearance, but in truth, giving him a real existence by his own will, unchangeable, the most perfect creature of God, but not as among creatures- an offspring, but not as among offspring. There are three persons, and God is the cause of all things, is alone without beginning; and the Son was begotten by the Father independently of time, and created and founded before times, nor was he before he was begotten; for he is not eternal or co-eternal or co-unbegotten with the Father." And in his Thaleia, he writes:- "The Son is not personally of the Father’s substance, for he is a creature and a production; and Christ is not true God, but he was made God; nor is he the only true word of God, but in name only is he called the Word and Wisdom, and by grace he is called the Son and Power; he is not unchangeable like the Father, but changeable in nature like creatures; and he does not fully comprehend the Father" While varying and inconsistent in his expressions, Arius is thus seen to degrade Christ, the Son of God, into a produced, secondary, nominal, inferior God, the most perfect creature of God, but only in reality a creature, not truly eternal, nor truly unchangeable, nor omniscient. He confounded the Creator with the creature, and generation with creation, and could not conceive or allow of a derivation in essence and not in time. Arius’s false doctrine of a secondary God who originated before the world, has degenerated, among his followers, the modern Unitarians, into the idea of Christ as a mere man. Mr. W. E. Gladstone, of England, has truthfully said that ninety-nine one-hundredths of all professing Christians have believed that Christ is the eternal and uncreated God.

While Elder Gilbert Beebe at times, like Arius, confounded generation with creation, and denied, as inconceivable, an eternal generation, and therefore referred Christ’s title as the Son of God and his nature as being begotten to his creatureship, and not to his divinity, he always affirmed the absolute, uncreated, self-existent, and eternal Godhead of Christ, so that I do not think that he could be justly called an Arian, because Arius denied the true, eternal, uncreated divinity of Christ; Eld. Beebe’s exact idea of Christ is, I think, an original one, as I have not found it in any other writer, either ancient or modern. My father was intimately acquainted with Eld. Beebe from 1850 to 1880, they visiting each other and preached together; and, while not agreeing with him in all points, he esteemed him highly as a very sound and very able minister of the New Testament; but he would never have fellowshipped him if he had at all thought that he denied the divinity of Christ; neither if the Kehukee Association had believed such to have been the case, would she have fellowshipped and continued her correspondence with the Warwick Association.

I have critically examined and compared the Hymn Books compiled by Eld. John Clark in 1857 and Eld. Gilbert Beebe in 1858, and I rejoiced to find that they are, in all respects, perfectly harmonious in doctrine- in regard, for instance, to the three-Oneness of God, the divinity and humanity and second personal coming of Christ, the divinity of the Holy Spirit and his regenerating and sanctifying work in the soul or spirit or heart of man, predestination and election, the vital union of Christ and his people, salvation by grace alone, the resurrection of all the dead, the final general judgement of the human race, the everlasting salvation, in heaven, of all the elect, and the everlasting damnation, in hell, of all the non-elect. More than half of Eld. Clark’s hymns are in Eld. Beebe’s Hymn Book. Eld. Clark has 185, and Eld. Beebe 137 (many of them the very same) hymns, affirming the divinity of Christ, and Elder Clark has 21, and Elder Beebe 24 hymns affirming the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that Eld. Beebe honestly misunderstood a few passages of Scripture in regard to Christ, (as Prov. viii 22-25; Acts xiii 33; Col. i 15; and Rev. iii 14), and that Eld. Clark honestly misunderstood some of Eld. Beebe’s language about Christ (as Eld. Beebe himself said in the Signs of Dec. 1, 1849); but such misunderstandings ought not to be perpetuated, long after the spirits of those saints have been glorified, in the continued alienation and division of the people of God.

Division comes from the carnal following of men instead of the spiritual following of Christ (1 Cor. i 10-13; iii). In every Christian heart and life, all other kings should be uncrowned, and Christ should be crowned as the only King in Zion. The children of God should keep themselves from idols, and cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils, and not in any way worship any creature (1 John v 21; Isa. ii 22; Matt. iv 10). All the subjects of grace constitute the many members of the one body of Christ, and each one needs all the others. It would be no more unwise and suicidal for members of the same human body to be striving to destroy each other either by active effort or by having nothing to do with each other than for the members of the body of Christ to be at variance with each other and to seek each other’s destruction ( 1 Cor. xii; Eph iv). Says the Apostle Paul: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." ( 1 Cor. xiii 13). Says the Apostle Peter: "Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves." (1 Peter iv 8). And says the Apostle John: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" ( 1 John iv 20). And in the solemn night of his betrayal, after the institution of the Supper in commemoration of the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood for spiritual Israel, our Lord and Master, our Divine Redeemer and Eternal High Priest says to his disciples: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." (John xiii 34, 35). And in his last recorded intercession for his church, he breathes forth these touching words: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." (John xvii 20, 21). All who have the mind or Spirit of Christ have the same unfeigned and fervent desire for the true and lasting union of all the members of his mystical body; and "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." (Rom. viii 9).

Sylvester Hassell.