vanity and pride.

_Fourth_, to be nigh unto a curse and to be given in the end to be
burned corresponds to the impossibility of renewal. The illustration
requires us to distinguish between "falling away" and "crucifying the
Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame."[102] The land is
doomed to be burned because it bears thorns and thistles. God renders
men incapable of repentance, not because they have fallen away once or
more than once, but because they scoff at the Son, through Whom God has
spoken unto us. The terrible impossibility of renewal here threatened
applies, not to apostasy (as the early Church maintained) nor to the
lapsed (as the Novatianists held),[103] but to apostasy combined with a
cynical, scoffing temper that persists in treading the Son of God under
foot. Apostasy resembles the sin against the Son of man; cynicism in
reference to the Son of man comes very near the sin against the Holy
Ghost. This sin is not forgiven, because it hardens the heart and makes
repentance impossible. It hardens the heart, because God is jealous of
His Son's honour, and punishes the scoffer with the utter destruction of
the spiritual faculty and with absolute inability to recover it. This is
not the mere force of habit. It is God's retribution, and the Apostle
mentions it here because the text of the whole Epistle is that God has
spoken unto us in His Son.

But the Hebrew Christians have not come to this.[104] The Apostle is
persuaded better things of them, and things that are nigh, not unto a
curse, but unto ultimate salvation. Yet they are not free from the
danger. If we may appropriate the language of an eminent historian, "the
worship of wealth, grandeur, and dominion blinded the Jews to the form
of spiritual godliness; the rejection of the Saviour and the deification
of Herod were parallel manifestations of the same engrossing
delusion."[105] That the Christian Hebrews may not fall under the curse
impending over their race, the Apostle urges them to press on unto full
growth of character. And this he and they will do--he ranks himself
among them, and ventures to make reply in their name. But He must add an
"if God permit." For there are men whom God will not permit to advance a
jot higher. Because they have abused His great gift of illumination to
scoff at the greater gift of the Son, they are doomed to forfeit
possession of both. The only doomed man is the cynic.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Chap. v. 11.

[84]