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Controversy
John Newton
an excerpt
As
you are likely to be joined in controversy, and your love of
truth is joined with a natural warmth of temper, my friendship
makes me solicitous on your behalf. You are of the strongest
side, for truth is great, and must prevail; so that a person of
abilities inferior to yours, might take the field with a
confidence of victory. I am not, therefore anxious for the event
of the battle; but I would have you more than a conqueror, and
to triumph not only over your adversary, but over yourself.
If you cannot be vanquished, you may be wounded. To
preserve you from such wounds as might give you cause of weeping
over your conquests, I would present you with some
considerations, which, if duly attended to, will do you the
service of a coat of mail; such armor, that you need not
complain, as David did of Saul's, that it will be more
cumbersome than useful; for you will easily perceive that it is
taken from that great magazine provided for the Christian
soldier, the Word of God....
As to your opponent, I wish that before you set pen
to paper against him, and during the whole time you are
preparing your answer, you may commend him to earnest prayer to
the Lord's teaching and blessing. This practice will have a
direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him;
and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every
page you write. If you account him a believer, though greatly
mistaken in the subject of debate between you, the words of
David to Joab, concerning Absalom, are very applicable:
"Deal gently with him for my sake."
The Lord loves him and bears with him, therefore
you must not despise him, or treat him harshly. The Lord bears
with you likewise and expects that you should show tenderness to
others, from a sense of the much forgiveness you need
yourself....And though you may find it necessary to oppose his
errors, view him personally as a kindred soul, with whom you are
to be happy in Christ forever.
But if you look upon him as an unconverted person,
in a state of enmity against God and his grace (a supposition
which, without good evidence, you should be very unwilling to
admit ), he is a more proper subject of your compassion then of
your anger. Alas!" he knows not what he does." But you
know who has made you to differ. If God, in his sovereign
pleasure had so appointed, you might have been as he is now; and
he, instead of you, might have been set for the defense of the
Gospel. You were both equally blind by nature. If you attend to
this, you will not reproach or hate him, because the Lord has
been pleased to open your eyes and not his. Of all people who
engage in controversy, we . . . . are most expressly bound by
our own principles to the exercise of gentleness and moderation.
If, indeed, they who differ from us have a power of
changing themselves, if they can open their own eyes, and soften
their own hearts, then we might with less inconsistency be
offended at their obstinacy; but if we believe the very contrary
to this, our part is not to strive, but in meekness to instruct
those who oppose, "if peradventure, God will give them
repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth." (2 Tim.
2:25) If you write with a desire of correcting mistakes, you
will of course, be cautious of laying stumbling blocks in the
way of the blind, or of using any expressions that may
exasperate their passions, confirm them in their prejudices, and
thereby make their conviction, humanly speaking, more
impracticable.
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