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Bible Dictionaries
Life
Spurgeon's Illustration Collection
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John Mackintosh thus writes to his biographer, Norman Macleod:: 'May it not be said that the movement of our age is towards life? I sometimes fancy that I can discern three epochs in the Reformed Churches, corresponding in the main to those three weighty epithets: via, yenta:, vita. The Reformers themselves, no doubt, laid the stress chiefly upon the first (via). It was on this Popery had gone most astray, obscuring the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The epoch following was essentially dogmatic (veritas), when the doctors drew up 'systems' of the truth. It was now, indeed, Christ as veritas! but the dogma taken alone led to coldness, dogmatism, sectarianism, and formality. Happy will it be for the church, if, not forgetting the other two, she shall now be found moving on to the third development of Christ as vita: the life, which will regulate the two former aspects, while it consummates and informs them. This l must develop the individual, and on individuals the church depends; for in God's sight it is no abstraction.'
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Spurgeon, Charles. Entry for 'Life'. Spurgeon's Illustration Collection. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fff/l/life.html. 1870.
