Ralph Erskine

When false worship had prevailed in the church of old unto its ruin, God showed and represented it unto his prophets under the name and appearance of a chamber of imagery (Eze 8:12). For therein were portrayed all the abominations wherewith the worship of God was defiled and religion corrupted. Most of my work at present is to take a view of some chambers of imagery yet more secret and hidden, namely, retired mental ones in which we may see many abominations wherewith both the spiritual doctrine of faith and the divine worship of the gospel are corrupted and the Christian religion in danger of being ruined. From this secret chamber of mental or internal imagery hath come forth all the external gross imagery that ever was in the world, and especially in the Christian church by which means the church of Rome became antichristian. These imaginary ideas, which are but vain imaginations and about corporeal² objects, brought in now by Mr. Robe³ as belonging to the…object of faith, are in my opinion like a new opening of the bottomless pit, out of the smoke whereof came locusts upon the earth (Rev 9:2-3) because in so far as these ideas are brought out of their own natural place and supposed to be helpful in the supernatural subjects of divinity, they are no better than a smoke out of the pit, darkening the sun and the air, corrupting the doctrine, obscuring the light of the truth of God, and…tending in themselves to cover the face of the earth with the darkness of gross error and delusion…

[These ideas] lay anew a foundation for the spreading of idolatry and superstition by filling the minds of people with natural, carnal notions of Christ as man and of His doing and dying as human actions and sufferings, as if these notions were helpful to apprehend Christ the God-man in His mediatorial works exhibited in the gospel…Yet the glory of the gospel is spiritual and invisible, not obvious to the senses and imaginations of men. There is nothing in the gospel visible but unto faith, as the light of the sun is nothing to them who have no eyes. A dog and a staff are of more use to a blind man than the sun in the firmament. Such as are spiritually blind and want⁴ the eyes of faith—or have lost the use and exercise thereof—can see nothing in the gospel, however great and glorious things are spoken of it. The light shines in darkness, and their darkness comprehends it not. The image of Christ as God in our nature, represented to us in the light of the gospel, which is the only glass wherein we can behold His glory (2Co 3:18), is of such a nature that no image of His human body formed in the brain can stand before it any more than Dagon could stand before the ark of God (1Sa 5:1-12). As Christ is present in the gospel and present like Himself in His personal, mediatorial,⁵ and matchless glory, so He is present there only to our faith and spiritual understanding. The word is nigh unto us, even the word of faith (Rom 10:6-8) insomuch that none need say He is absent. And who shall ascend into heaven to bring Him down from thence or descend into the deep to bring Him up from the dead? Christ by His human body was once here present to natural sense. By His divine Spirit He is sometimes present to spiritual sense and experience. But He is no way present to our faith but in the gospel, which [though] it be a view through a glass darkly, yet in such a way and manner that it is the best view of Him that can be had till we see Him face to face (1Co 13:12).

But Mr. Robe has told us of another way of Christ’s being present, namely to fancy⁶ and imagination, as to His human nature now in heaven: [that we should think of it] in the same way and manner we think of any other absent man, and that this is absolutely necessary and greatly helpful to faith. This is the strange and fantastical doctrine published in Mr. Robe’s fourth letter to Mr. Fisher⁷ ; and we have what I may call the sum and substance of it in the following paragraph of that letter (p. 30-31):

“…I asserted and do assert that we cannot think upon Jesus Christ really as He is—God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever—without an imaginary idea of Him…in His human nature, consisting of a true body and a reasonable soul. The grounds and reasons of this are that as we would not have a just conception of the glorious Mediator, if we have not a conception and idea of Him as the very true and eternal God as well as true and real man; so we cannot have a just conception of Him, if we have not a conception and idea of Him as true and real man as well as the true and eternal God…The Mediator is as really man as He is God. And as we ought to form no imaginary idea of Him as He is God—a pure conception without any form of representation of Him as God in our minds—so we can no more conceive and have an idea of Him in our understandings as man, but what is called an imaginary idea…of Him in our minds by the exercise of our imagination, than we can of Enoch or Elias or any other man who is now in heaven. For this reason: our Lord’s human nature and particularly His glorified and superexalted⁸ body hath all the essential properties of any other body and no other. And therefore, if we can never think of any other human nature or human body, through our natural constitution and the nature of bodies, but by an imaginary idea when absent from us—as indeed we cannot—[then] we can never think upon the Mediator as man and His body now in heaven by any other idea. So then, when we think upon the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is God and man in two distinct natures and one person for ever, I must conceive of Him to be true and real man. This is what is called an imaginary idea of Him. I must further, by a mere act of my understanding, conceive of Him as not only man but the very true and eternal God. And, thirdly, I must conceive the manhood personally united with the Godhead in the second person. If any of these three be wanting, I have not such an idea of the Mediator God-man as should be…[Mr. Fisher], you’ll please tell the honest well-meaning people in your next warning, that the plain Scots of what I asserted here was that we cannot think upon Jesus Christ as He really is—God-man— without thinking of Him as man as really as God, and that by the exercise of the same faculties and powers I think and conceive of other men.” Here is a swatch⁹ of Mr. Robe’s strange divinity¹⁰ and philosophy…

Mr. Robe says, “To make an image of the second Person or of God, is indeed expressly forbidden. But to forbid making a true image would be to forbid an impossibility; neither is it forbidden as gross idolatry. To worship such an image is the idolatry forbidden. The making [of] the image is forbidden upon another account. We do not charge the Lutherans with gross idolatry because they make such images, though we do the Papists, who worship them.”

Remark: Mr. Robe cannot free himself from the charge of gross idolatry he here mentions because he not only allows the making in his mind an image of Christ’s human nature, but he allows divine worship to be given to it. For he makes it a part of the object of faith, which faith is the leading and principal part of divine worship. So that here upon the matter, he proves himself to be an idolater. He condemns not the Lutherans for being image-makers, but the Papists for being image-worshippers. But in the concern of religion, both the making and worshipping of any graven image are expressly forbidden in the Second Commandment. And yet if a mental image of Christ’s human nature by an imaginary idea be allowed as necessary to faith…it would seem that a molten image is preferable to a mental image and the Popish way most eligible. Why? Because according to the Popish argument…, “The seeing of things is more moving and affecting than the hearing of them.” Even so likewise, the sight of the eye gives a clearer view and more affecting knowledge of things, than any imaginary notion and mental image thereof. Thus the sight of the sun with the eye is a far better view than when one shuts his eyes and only perceives it in his fancy and imagination; or when the sun is absent, and at midnight he forms an image of it in his mind.

In like manner, suppose two men come into a house, the one with a mask upon his face and the other without any mask. The sensitive¹¹ idea we have of the unmasked face is much more plain and clear than the imaginative idea we have of the face behind the mask, which we can only imagine to be a face like that of some other man. But [we] can have no such clear notion of it as of the other. All which proves that mere corporeity¹² or a human body can be better represented to the mind by an outward corporeal image set before the bodily eye, than it can be by any inward mental image formed by the help of an imaginary idea. And consequently [it] may be supposed to be much more helpful than Mr. Robe’s internal imagery, which ought to be the more abominate, as it is the mother, the spring, and source of the former.

Yea, it is the root on which all the gross idolatry in the world did grow, as I have hinted already. Hence Charnock,¹³ speaking of Romans 1:21, 23 says, “They set up vain images of God in their fancy, before they set up idolatrous representations of Him in their temples.” And a few lines above he says, “We set that active power of imagination on work, and there comes out a god, (a calf) whom we own for a notion of God…there are as many carved images of God as there are minds of men, and as many monstrous shapes as these corruptions into which they would transform Him.” Then he shows how these vain imaginations relating to God are worse than idolatry and atheism.¹⁴ Gross idolatry in the heathen world is not more owing to vain pictures of God in the imagination than in the Christian world it is owing to vain images of Christ’s human body in the brain. [These] so abuse the understanding and darken the mind as to mar all rational and intellectual views, and consequently all spiritual and believing contemplations of Christ’s glorious person…

Notes:

1. During the Evangelical Awakening of the 1740s, a controversy erupted in Scotland over the issue of mental images. The question “Can a mental image of Christ be idolatrous?” was the heart of the issue. Men mightily used of God were divided on this subject. A pamphlet war broke out between James Robe (1688-1753), a man used of God in the Scottish revivals, and Ralph Erskine (1685-1752), one of the most well-known preachers of his day. This pamphlet war never satisfactorily concluded and simply burned out. Our sympathies in the main lie with Erskine. However, while Mt. Zion does not endorse everything Erskine argues, we believe his arguments in this excerpt represent a proper view from God’s Word regarding mental images.
2. corporeal – of a material nature.
3. James Robe (1688-1753) – Presbyterian preacher in evangelical Church of Scotland; minister in Kilsyth, Scotland. Used of the Lord during the times of revival in that period, but believed that an imaginary idea of Christ’s manhood was necessary to faith.
4. want – lack.
5. mediatorial – referring to Christ’s role as Mediator, or go-between, as Prophet, Priest, and King.
6. fancy – the mental faculty which forms images, visions, and fantasies. While often used as a synonym for imagination, imagination is rather the power of combining and modifying our conceptions.
7. James Fisher (1697-1775) – one of the founders of the Secession Church in Scotland. He did not view the revivals of Cambuslang as authentic works of God. Publicly criticized James Robe’s doctrine as did Erskine.
8. superexalted – to elevate and magnify in praise to a superior degree.
9. swatch – a piece cut from material and used as a sample.
10. divinity – the science of divine things; theology.
11. sensitive – pertaining to the sense; having the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects.
12. corporeity – the state of being material or corporeal; having physical existence.
13. Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) – Puritan author of the well-known The Existence and Attributes of God, reprinted 1979 by Baker Book House Company. This quote is from Vol. 1, pp. 155, 156.
14. Ibid., pp. 157, 158.

Published with permission of Chapel Library.