# Tobias Crisp



## AV1611 (Dec 30, 2006)

Would Tobias Crisp be classified as a Puritan?


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 2, 2007)

You might want to read his bio in _Meet the Puritans_ ed. by Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson.


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## ADKing (Jan 2, 2007)

If memory serves correctly, Tobias Crisp was generally considered an antinomian. Some sound reformed authors have disputed this claim. I have not personally read Crisp. However, if there is the possibility of antinomianism in his writings I would urge caution and discernment when reading him.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 2, 2007)

ADKing said:


> If memory serves correctly, Tobias Crisp was generally considered an antinomian. Some sound reformed authors have disputed this claim. I have not personally read Crisp. However, if there is the possibility of antinomianism in his writings I would urge caution and discernment when reading him.



Yes, see also this previous thread on the subject.


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## ADKing (Jan 2, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Yes, see also this previous thread on the subject.



Thanks. I often miss some of the threads that were "before my time" on the Puritan Board because I do not search. I read the same bio on Crisp as you did. When men such as Spurgeon dispute the claim of antinomianism it gives one pause to reconsider. I would have to read him for myself though.


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## AV1611 (Jan 2, 2007)

ADKing said:


> I would have to read him for myself though.



This is a sermon from his _Christ Alone Exalted_ and I can find no traces of antinomianism! I quote Crisp:



> Some, it may be, will object, that all this while it seems that Christ hath not freed us frown being under the law, whereas the apostle saith, "Ye are not under the law, but under grace." I answer, 1. That in respect of the rules of righteousness, or the matter of obedience, we are under the law still; or else we are lawless, to live every man as seems good in his own eyes, which I know no true christian dares so much as think; for Christ hath given no new law diverse from this, to order our conversation aright by; besides, we are under the law, to know what is transgression, and what is the desert of it.


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## MW (Jan 2, 2007)

Anthony Burgess, from Vindiciae Legis, p. 15.



> Therefore it is a very wilde comparison of one [marginal note: Dr, Crisp], that a man under grace hath no more to doe with the Law, then an English-man hath with the lawes of Spain or Turkie: For, howsoever every Beleever be in a state of grace, so that his person is justified; yet, being but in part regenerated, so farre as his sins are committed, they are threatned and condemned in him, as well as in another: for there is a simple guilt of sin, and a guilt redundant upon the person.



The title of Samuel Rutherford's work against the Antinomians is



> A survey of the Spiritual Antichrist opening the secrets of familisme and antinomianisme in the antichristian doctrine of John Saltmarsh and Will. Del, the present preachers of the army now in England, and of Robert Town, Tob. Crisp, H. Denne, Eaton, and others.



Some statements relative to Crispe:



> Crispe and other Antinomians say the beleevers are as cleane from sinne as Christ himselfe





> But we must teach that there be two sort of sinners, some who acknowledge their sin, some who securely please themselves therein. I intreat Saltmarsh, Eaton, Crispe, Den, Towne, Del, Randel, Simson, who are so much against all preparations for Christ, and for sole beleeving, and cry out so much against strict walking with God, to consider this.





> The Antinomians these new prophets contend that men should be sweetly handled, and ought not to be terrified with examples of Gods wrath, but Paul teacheth another thing, 2 Tim. 2.3. when he saith The Scripture is profitable to rebuke, to correction. So Saltmarsh, Crisp, Den, Del, Town, Randel, preach a honey Gospel, and a short cut to heaven, and exclude all gall and vinegar, from the law.





> Crisp, Saltmarsh say, the onely work of the Gospel is faith.





> What ever sins, I, or thou, or we all have done, or shall hereafter doe, are as proper Christs sinnes, as if he himselfe had done them.
> 
> Not that they were Christs intrinsecally, in the fundamentall guilt, and law-obligation to suffer for them, as Crisp saith, but legally the beleevers sins are Christs, the client and the advocate are in Law one law-person, they have but one cause, the surety and the broken man are one, the debt owed by both is one, therefore Christ is the sinner legally.





> Crisp saith, Sin is taken away, as money removed out of a place, it was once in, it is no more in its being and nature there, then if it had never been there. The beleever is as just and as clean from sinne as Christ; God cannot see sinne in a beleever, because pardoned sinne as lost the nature of sinne, and both his person and his workes are perfect and sinlesse before God. The devill cannot teach more fleshly doctrine; for we are only by justification just by a relative righteousnesse as the prodigall bankerupt is just legally, and free from debt, for which is his surety hath satisfied.


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## AV1611 (Jan 3, 2007)

If you have the time I would suggest you read through this article by Gill.


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## MW (Jan 3, 2007)

If the position of Crisp and Gill were correct, the sins of believers could do them no hurt, even before they believed. Faith is thus distorted to be nothing more than an assurance that one is elect, and has never been under the wrath of God. There is therefore no imperative to believe on Christ for salvation -- proving that this gospel is no gospel at all. And the doctrine that good works are in no sense necessary to salvation is pure Antinomianism. Larger Catechism, answer 32, speaks of "holy obedience, as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God, and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation."


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## AV1611 (Jan 4, 2007)

armourbearer said:


> If the position of Crisp and Gill were correct, the sins of believers could do them no hurt, even before they believed. Faith is thus distorted to be nothing more than an assurance that one is elect, and has never been under the wrath of God. There is therefore no imperative to believe on Christ for salvation -- proving that this gospel is no gospel at all. And the doctrine that good works are in no sense necessary to salvation is pure Antinomianism. Larger Catechism, answer 32, speaks of "holy obedience, as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God, and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation."



See Gill here:



> III. To consider another evangelic truth, which, indeed, is the sum and substance of the gospel, and with the proof of which the scripture abounds, though you are pleased to condemn it is a fancy, and that is, that "God sees no sin in his people." I know this doctrine has been most odiously traduced, and most widely misrepresented; but, I hope, when some few things are observed, it will plainly appear not to be a fancy, or a freak of some distempered minds, but a most glorious and comfortable doctrine of the gospel, and without which the gospel must cease to be good news and glad tidings to the sons of men.
> 
> 1st, When it is asserted that God sees no sin in his people, the meaning is not, that there is no sin in believers, nor any committed by them, or that their sins are no sins, or that their sanctification is perfect in this life.
> 
> ...


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## MW (Jan 4, 2007)

After all of those qualifications, Gill has proven beyond a doubt that it is a fancy to say "God sees no sin in His people." A statement which requires that much qualification in order to understand the true sense of it, is not worth much as a theological statement. God does see sin in His people in all of the ways Gill mentions.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 8, 2007)

A.H. Drysdale, _History of the Presbyterians in England_, p. 470:



> Tobias Crisp, born of a wealthy London family, and educated at both Cambridge and Oxford, became a Wiltshire Rector; but being a Royalist, was driven from his parish at the beginning of the Civil Wars. He died in London, 1642, at the early age of forty-one. At first he was a vehement Arminian in Laud's time; but having adopted Calvinistic views with great earnestness, he wrote and preached these with corresponding vehemence, and to the uttermost extreme; unconsciously caricaturing and travestying each Calvinistic point with puzzle-headed perplexity, though doubtless with the best possible intentions. Through confounding imputation with transference, for example, he wrote of Christ's righteousness, not as if imputed, but actually transferred to the believer; not seeing that it is the _benefits_ of Christ's righteousness that are _transferred_ by virtue of the _righteousness_ itself being _imputed_. He wrote, too, of Christ, as He were a sinner -- having men's sins actually transferred to Him; whereas it is the penalty that was transferred, the sins being only imputed. Crisp's heresies arrested the attention of the Westminster Assembly Divines, who, however, reckoned them too weak for further notice beyond their exposure by John Flavel and others at the time.


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## AV1611 (Jan 8, 2007)

I have borrowed _Crisp's Works_ from the Gospel Standard Library


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