The following short article appeared in Issue 690 of the Banner of Truth Magazine (March 2021).<\/p>\n
The first volume of William Cunningham\u2019s works to be prepared for the press by his literary executors, James Buchanan and James Bannerman, was The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation<\/em>. It was published in 1862, a few months after Cunningham\u2019s death, and reprinted by the Banner of Truth Trust in 1967.<\/p>\n The contents of the volume began life as class lectures to the students of the New College in Edinburgh. They were later published over several years in the form of ten elaborate essays contributed to The British and Foreign Evangelical Review<\/em>. It is these essays\u2014lightly edited\u2014that we have in The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation<\/em>. \u2018They were written upon a plan\u2019, say his editors, \u2018and as an orderly series of discussions, embracing the leading historical characters, and the great developments of scriptural truth at the time of the Reformation\u2019 (p.v).<\/p>\n In the second of the essays, entitled \u2018Luther\u2019, Cunningham vigorously defends the reformer against certain groundless attacks made on him by the eminent Scottish philosopher, Sir William Hamilton. The essay was originally published in the British and Foreign<\/em> for April 1856. In the October number for the same year a follow-on article was published on the subject of \u2018The Reformers and the Doctrine of Assurance\u2019. This too was written in response to Sir William Hamilton. In the interval between the two articles Sir William died. In a footnote to the reprint of the October article in The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation<\/em>, Cunningham\u2019s editors give a brief quotation from the original introduction. In it Cunningham expresses regret for the tone in which he had written his first article. What follows is the full text of that introduction. It amply vindicates the title of this piece, \u2018Humble Controversialist\u2019:<\/p>\n ‘When the April number of this journal, containing, in a review of Archdeacon Hare\u2019s \u2018Vindication of Luther\u2019, an exposure of Sir William Hamilton\u2019s attacks upon the great Reformer, was published, we were not aware that the health of the distinguished individual on whose statements we commented so freely was worse than it had been for\u00a0 some years past. We did not know that he was less able to defend himself, or to repel any attack that might be made upon him, than he was when he published the second edition of his \u2018Discussions.\u2019 It was with surprise and sincere sorrow that soon after we learned that he had, somewhat suddenly, been called away from this fleeting scene. We could not but be struck and solemnised by the unexpected intelligence of his decease, when we had been so recently adducing serious charges against him at the bar of public opinion, and labouring to prove that these charges were well-founded. We were not conscious, indeed, of being influenced by any ill-will or vindictiveness towards Sir William Hamilton; and we have not, and never had, any apprehension that we had done him any injustice. We are deliberately persuaded that every charge we adduced against him was true and proved, and that the whole of the indignation we expressed was most amply merited by the conduct on his part that called it forth. But while justice to truth and to ourselves requires us to say this, we must at the same time confess, that in some parts of the article referred to, we were tempted to speak of our antagonist in a tone which, though in ordinary circumstances it might have been excused by the very peculiar provocation furnished, his speedy and unexpected death has led us to regret. The knowledge, if we had possessed it, that he was to die so soon, would assuredly have modified somewhat the tone in which the discussion was conducted,\u2014would have shut out something of its lightness and severity, and imparted to it more of solemnity and tenderness; and the knowledge that we did possess, that he, as well as ourselves, was liable every day to be called out of this world and summoned into God\u2019s presence, ought to have produced this result. Alas! alas! how little are we in the habit of living fully under the powers of the world to come, and of realising and remembering, with reference either to ourselves or others, that we do not know what a day or an hour may bring forth! It would surely infuse a much better tone and spirit into controversy, if those who engage in it were more in the habit of remembering, that it is quite possible that the next thing they hear of him with whose statements they are dealing so freely, may be, that he has been summoned into the presence of his final Judge.’1<\/a><\/sup>The British & Foreign Evangelical Review<\/em>, October 1856, pp.927-928<\/span><\/p>\n