THEOLOGICAL IDEALISM

Stevenson Blackwood

• The Shadow and the Substance (1871) "Such is the picture, dear friends, and it is a true one.  There is no exaggeration about it ; it is a real account of your heart and my heart, and your life and my life, before we knew God.  And the Israelites in the heathen darkness of Egypt just represent to us ourselves serving the world, "serving divers lusts and pleasures." (p. 7)

Reginald Courtenay

• Joseph and His Brethren - Which Things Are An Allegory (1862) "This circumstance, like so many others, is significant of things spiritual. It teaches us that, in the service of our Lord, there can be no perfect freedom until there is an entire surrender. We may have gained a certain amount of liberty, —typified by the permission given to the nine brothers, after they had been in ward for three days, to return to Egypt,—but it is impossible that we should not, in some measure, feel the Egyptian bondage of sin, typified by Simeon's captivity, unless and until all has been given up, which our Lord and Master may require at our hands. In this seems to be represented the experience of many a beginner in the ways of God. He is wavering, irresolute; there is something dear to him which he is reluctant to part with ; he has not fully counted the cost; he is half-inclined to keep back part of the price ; at a command such as, " Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me," he is half-ready to turn sorrowfully away. As long as it is thus with him, he will surely find that he is not set wholly free from the power of those temptations by which he was mastered and enslaved before. If he may be said to have escaped from Egypt, and to be ready to serve God, still he has not yet entered into the promised rest: he is still detained in the wilderness, for he has still a hankering after the fleshpots." (pp. 85-86)

Clement, Pseduo

• "Second Clement" (145) "Now the Church, being spiritual was manifested in the flesh of Christ, thereby showing us that if any of us guard her in the flesh and defile her not, he shall receive her again in the Holy Spirit: for this flesh is the counterpart and copy of the spirit. No man therefore, when he hath defiled the copy, shall receive the original for his portion. This therefore is what He meaneth, brethren; Guard ye the flesh, that ye may partake of the spirit." "For the Lord Himself, being asked by one when His kingdom would come, replied, "When two shall be one, that which is without as that which is within, and the male with the female, neither male nor female." And "that which is without as" that which is within meaneth this: He calls the soul "that which is within," and the body "that which is without." ""the Books and the Apostles teach that the church is not of the present, but from the beginning. For it was spiritual, as was also our Jesus, and was made manifest at the end of the days in order to save us. "

John Cassian

• John Cassian's Conferences (420) "The tropological sense is the moral explanation which has to do with improvement of life and practical teaching, as if we were to understand by these two covenants practical and theoretical instruction, or at any rate as if we were to want to take Jerusalem or Sion as the soul of man, according to this: "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion."

Wilhelm Martin De Wette

• An Historico-Critical Introduction to the Canonical Books of the New Testament (1826) - "However strongly the historic standpoint is to be asserted, we must yet insist also that the work contains an ideally prophetic element, which has force even for us."

Dr. John Gill

• On the Everlasting Covenant (1769) "When we speak of the Abrogation of the [Old] Covenant this is to be understood, not of the covenant of grace, as to the matter and substance of it, which remains invariably the same in all periods of time; it is an everlasting covenant; it is ordered in all things and sure; it can never be broken and made void; every promise of it is unalterable, and every blessing irreversible; the covenant of peace can never be removed; it will stand firm to all generations; but with respect to the form of the administration of it only, even the form of it, under the former, or Old Testament dispensation, before described; and in order to set this in its true and proper light"

Harvey Marriott

• A Fourth Course of Practical Sermons (1829) "May we, my brethren, take heed lest our prayers be tainted with that worldly character which shall show us to Him, before whom "all hearts be open, and all desires known," as hoping for things temporal while we use words significant of things spiritual. "