Is it necessary to include the sinner’s inability in our gospel presentation? I’ve said it is, to the objections of some. Asahel Nettleton believed strongly that it was necessary to destroy the sinner’s hope in any native ability.
In his own management in times of revivals, by preaching and personal intercourse, nothing was more deserving of being studied and imitated, than his thoroughness, caution, and discrimination. In these respects there was a heaven-wide difference between Dr. Nettleton and some of the most noted of his professed imitators. Being thoroughly ‘rooted and grounded in the truth’ himself, his presentations of it were clear, pungent, and searching. His revival topics were systematically and admirably arranged. In his discourses he began at the beginning. A full believer in the total depravity of the human heart, he arraigned sinners, whether young or old, as rebels against God; and made the threatenings of the law thunder in their ears, as but few preachers have power to do. With him, acting as an ambassador of Christ, there was no such thing as compromise. The rebels must ‘throw down their arms,’ and submit unconditionally, or he would give them no hope of pardon. Hundreds, if not thousands, can witness what a terrible dissector he was of the ‘joints and the marrow.’ At the same time that he shewed the impenitent they were lost, he made them feel that they had ‘destroyed themselves.’ It was difficult to say which he made plainest—their danger or their guilt; their immediate duty to repent, or the certainty that, without being drawn and renewed by the Spirit of God, they never would repent. It was in vain for them to retreat from one refuge to another. He was sure to strip them of all their vain excuses, and deliver them over to their consciences, to be dealt with according to law and justice. He preached what are called the hard doctrines—such as divine sovereignty, election, and regeneration—with great plainness, discrimination, and power. His grand aim was to instruct, convince, and persuade; to this end his appeals were constantly made to the understanding, the conscience, and the heart. The passions he never addressed, nor were his discourses at all calculated to excite them. Any outbreak of mere animal feeling he was always afraid of, as tending to warp the judgment and beget false hopes. His grand aim was to instruct his hearers as thoroughly, and point out the difference between true and spurious conversion so clearly, as to make it difficult for them to get hopes at all without good spiritual evidence on which to found them. Knowing how apt persons are to cling to their hopes, whether good or bad, he depended much more upon holding them back, till they had good evidence, than upon shaking them from their false foundations.
—Bennet Tyler, The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton (Banner of Truth, 1975), 376–377.
TrackBack URL: http://www.thirstytheologian.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1915
Share this post:
Posted in: Asahel Nettleton · Bennet Tyler · Church History · The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton
Link · 0 Comments · 0 TrackBacks
← Previous · Home · Next →
