The Heart of Christ

'The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on Earth' is the gem of the fourth volume. And it is a gem of the purest water, if I am any judge. If any enterprising student who now hears me is interested, or ever becomes interested, in the philosophical and theological controversy that raged round Mansel's famous Bampton Lectures in my New College days, he will find the roots of that whole debate dealt with, again and again, in a most masterly way in this profound volume. It is such pages as occur, again and again, in this volume, that have won for Goodwin the fame of being the most philosophical theologian of all the Puritans. And every one who knows the works of the great Puritans will recognise how high that praise of Goodwin is. Hooker, in some important respects, comes up closer to the full truth about the Heart of Christ in Heaven than even Goodwin does. And it does not need to be said that the greatest theologian of the English Church clothes his great teaching here, as everywhere, in the noblest English ever written. At the same time, Goodwin is unapproached here, as so often elsewhere, in his combination of intellectual and theological power with evangelical and homiletical comfort. Take them together an this supremest of subjects, and Hooker and Goodwin will form an inexhaustible equipment for any man whose office and calling it is to preach Jesus Christ in His life on earth, and in His eternal priesthood in heaven.

Dettagli