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Controversy Quotations

Strong Metaphors

I should point out that it is a ridiculous feature of some of the thought of our time, that people are surprised (sometimes horrified, sometimes pleased) to find that people in �olden times� had humour and conversation that partook of an earthy quality. It is certainly due to ignorance, that we should project the conventions of Victorian sensibility onto previous times. I suppose the way it happened is that when Victorian times seemed olden, by an easy transference, all olden times were conceived of as Victorian. But we should have learned otherwise from Chaucer, from Shakespeare, from Tristram Shandy, if so obvious a point needed to be belabored. But let us yet call one more witness, one unexceptionable, I should think, even to those who equate Victorianism with godliness. Here is the reverend Dr. Richard Sibbes, in his fine sermon, The Church’s Visitation:

Now there is a mixture in the church, as in a house, of good and bad vessels; but the godly are especially God’s house. As for hypocrites and false professors, they are no more in the house, than the excrements are in the body; they are in the body, but not of the body; and therefore, as Ishmael, Gen. xxi. 10, they must be cast out at length.

However, this quote also serves another purpose. Not too long ago, Peter Leithart used a marriage metaphor to describe apostates in the church (point 7). David Bayly objected to this, and I must say that Leithart’s metaphor did not satisfy me. I think Richard Sibbes expressed that point much more clearly.

So here is the question: is Sibbes’ metaphor consistent, not with Leithart’s metaphor, but with his intention (that is to say, with his conception of the relation of those who will eventually apostasize to Christ)? Could Leithart, or other FV proponents, accept Dr. Sibbes’ method of expression as an accurate picture (so far as a picture goes, of course) of those who are in the church but will not be forever?

If I had the readership of Doug Wilson, I would imitate him in proposing a contest for vigorous metaphors about the condition and fate of apostates. But that might too easily take us to the opposite extreme from Victorianism.

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