The Sincere Offer of Christ and the Covenant Benefits in the Gospel

The Opinions of Reformed Theologians

— continued —

Alexander Comrie

Another familiar and trusted theologian who was enabled to defend the Reformed truth with great diligence and strength was Dr. Alexander Comrie. The works of this excellent theologian are very worthy of being read and considered. We do not have to suspect this servant of God of Pelagian views. On the contrary, he opposed with much ability and diligence the rapidly spreading Pelagianism in the church of the Reformation. He recognized the great dangers which threatened the Lord’s church in his time.

In his edifying writings he emphatically distinguished true saving faith from a temporary faith which had similarities. Especially in his explanation of the first seven Lord’s Days of the Heidelberg Catechism he presented with much earnestness the necessity of being convinced of our misery by the law of the Lord, so that also a foundation might be laid in us. In the explanation of Lord’s Day 7 he described in a very special manner the nature of saving faith.

Together with his colleague from Koudekerk, Nicolaas Holtius, he strove against the spirit of his time and ably defended the Reformed doctrine. Undoubtedly, Comrie may be counted as one of the great Reformed theologians. The influence which he exercised upon the doctrines confessed in the Netherlands Reformed Congregations is particularly great, especially as Rev. G. H. Kersten considered himself as his student. He had, in his own words, “digested Comrie.”

Comrie has also expressed his thoughts on the offer of Christ in various places in his writings. Being of Scottish origin, he brought with him a heartfelt aversion to the neonomian errors which had so deeply troubled the Scottish church. In various statements Comrie gave evidence of his spiritual agreement with men such as Thomas Boston and Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine. These in their time have striven against a view in which law and gospel were mingled in such a way that the gospel became a new law (thus the name “neonomian” — neo - new, and nomos - law); eternal life would be acquired by the fulfilling of it. At bottom, a new Pelagianism was presented in this doctrine. Thomas Boston was enabled to stand in the forefront in this conflict.

Repeatedly Comrie quoted approvingly from Boston and other Scottish theologians. In the many writings which appeared from the hand of Comrie, either in his own writings or in translations of the English writings of others, the offer of the gospel is also mentioned. And Comrie never writes of this differently than do the above-mentioned writers.

In particular we refer to his explanation of the Heidelberg Catechism, where, in Lord’s Day 7, he very emphatically rejects the Remonstrant opinion of universal atonement, but in the same context he repudiates the false accusations which the Remonstrants level against those who reject their opinions. Of this we read:

Those who truly come to Christ shall in no wise be cast out.

“Thirdly: They [the Remonstrants] say that if Christ has not died for everyone, then the preaching would serve only to mislead people, since we are all invited to Christ; however, if Christ has not died for all, then they would not be helped if they came to Him.

“But, beloved, this is certain: first, those who truly come to Christ shall in no wise be cast out; secondly, none shall come except he be drawn by God the Father; and thirdly, in the preaching of the gospel we preach Christ and Him crucified to the satisfaction of God’s justice. We offer Him to sinners as a complete Savior, and we show that there is a firm connection between believing in Christ and being saved by Christ. And we are surely compelled to this by God’s Law, since believing and repenting are befitting and beneficial duties.

“Fourthly: They [the Remonstrants] say that in the act of faith each person is required to believe that Christ has died for him. But we say that this is false; we are required only to believe that Christ and Him crucified is offered and presented in the gospel in order that we should believe in Him. And thus you see that Jesus is presented before, and not after, our receiving of Him by faith, as some think [italics by Rev. G. H. Kersten], He is mine in the offer before He is mine in the embracing and receiving of Him.”

In connection with his description of the essence of faith, Comrie comes back to this more closely. “The general offer (like the general calling) or the presenting of Christ is done to all wherever the gospel is preached, to the end that they should avail themselves of Him, receiving the gift of God and setting a seal upon God’s testimony that He is true. Although this gives a right personally to embrace the benefit which God offers or presents, and increases our condemnation if we do not, yet we are so careless, wicked, blind, and unfeeling that we neglect this and do not give, nor can give, it the slightest consideration, since we are so entirely dead in sin that we have no sense, either of the wretchedness in which we have sunk or of the salvation which is freely presented or offered to us.

“In the meantime, the Holy Spirit, if it pleases Him, works in such a way that He causes that offer which is made universally, by His immediate, powerful, and irresistible working, so to penetrate our hearts with divine conviction that we are convinced that what God offers in general to others, He freely offers and gives to us in particular.”

Comrie here plainly wrote that natural man gives no heed to God’s offer. He is far from leaving to the “free will of man” whether or not he will accept this divine offer. But the fact of our carelessness and enmity does not nullify God’s Word. God’s Word, however, must penetrate into our souls through a special work of the Holy Spirit, a “direct, powerful, and irresist ible work.” No, alongside his defense of the truth of the divine offer, Comrie maintains just as emphatically the work of the Spirit in the personal embracing of the gospel by faith.

For he adds to this: “And thus you can see that the immediate penetration of the irresistible light and power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts is the means whereby that which was general is made particular to us, and that nothing encourages us to apply the promise to ourselves in particular. Rather, all our right and liberty is grounded outside of ourselves upon the offer which the Holy Spirit, as the voice of God, speaks particularly to us in our soul, not by a direct revelation, but by His immediate voice or power through and in the gospel, whereby He causes that Word so to penetrate that we understand and are convinced that God gives us all these benefits.”

In this portion Comrie clearly distinguishes the “general” offer, which is connected to the external calling, from the “particular” offer, which is made to the law-convicted soul in the powerful administration of the Holy Spirit. However, the last does not exclude the first.

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