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A GENETIC HISTORY OF THE
NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY
By
FRANK HUGH FOSTER
1907
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE• CHAPTER I: The First Century In New England, 1620-1720
JONATHAN EDWARDS• CHAPTER II: Edwards' Earlier Labors
• CHAPTER III: The Treatise On The Freedom Of The Will
• CHAPTER IV: Edwards' Remaining Metaphysical Treatises
EDWARDS' CONTEMPORARIES AND COLABORERS• CHAPTER VII: Hopkins' System Of Theology
THE DEVELOPING SCHOOL• CHAPTER VIII: Eschatology And Atonement
• CHAPTER IX: The Development Of The Theory Of The Will
THE GREAT CONTROVERSIES• CHAPTER X: The Unitarian Controversy
• CHAPTER XI: The Universalist Controversy Concluded
• CHAPTER XII: The Systems Of Theology, 1800-1840
THE RIPENED PRODUCT• CHAPTER XIII: Nathaniel W. Taylor
• I. THE CONTROVERSY WITH HARVEY• II. THE CONTROVERSY WITH WOODS
• III. THE CONTROVERSY WITH TYLER
• CHAPTER XIV: The Later New Haven Theology
• CHAPTER XV: The New School In Presbyterianism
• CHAPTER XVI: The Oberlin Theology
• CHAPTER XVII: Edwards A. Park
----------O---------- The following work--suggested by the professional obligations of a professor of church history; continued and at last completed under a sense of pious duty toward the great men who toiled to hand down to their posterity an undiminished and perfected system of doctrinal truth; necessarily the fruit of long labors, interrupted by other engagements, but resumed and completed when opportunity has offered--is now presented to the public. It has been written directly from the sources. The selection of material has been determined by the purpose to write a genetic history, and not a mere record of opinions, however interesting they might be in themselves. By the aid of great libraries, above all that of Harvard University, from which I have received hundreds of tracts for examination, but also of that in the Congregational House, of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Athenaeum, the Boston Public Library, and the libraries in Union Theological Seminary, New York, in Oberlin and Olivet Colleges, and in Andover and Pacific Theological Seminaries, it has been possible to examine all the important sources. Acknowledgments are hereby made to the publishers of the American Journal of Theology and of the Bibliotheca Sacra for permission to use matter which had already appeared in their pages. There have been no predecessors in this particular line of study of our theology from whom I could draw; but I take the opportunity to acknowledge my indebtedness to the late Professors Gottfried Thomasius, of Erlangen, for my conception of historical method, and Edwards A. Park, of Andover, for much help of a historical character, both personal and through his historical writings, as well as for the dogmatic point of view of the whole period. Professor George P. Fisher has afforded a splendid example of scientific treatment of our theology in his historical articles, by which he became the pioneer and unsurpassed chief of American dogmatic history. And to ease and success in discovering and handling the vast apparatus which has passed under my eye, the marvelous bibliography of the great historian of Congregational polity, Dr. Henry M. Dexter, has contributed indispensable aid. Some considerable additions to Dr. Dexter's lists will be found in the notes to the following text.
Descendant of Puritan and Pilgrim as I am, born and baptized in one of our most ancient Massachusetts churches, trained at our oldest university, and taught my profession at the center of intensest interest in "the New England theology," it would be strange if I had not begun this history with a feeling of the warmest appreciation of our New England Fathers and a conviction that they had originated a school destined, under whatever changes, to the exercise of a long-extended influence. These sentiments are reflected upon the earlier pages of the book in many a phrase which I have left standing. With the progress of the work my point of view and my feeling have changed together. The final historical review of the whole period has made me a critic of the school and its work, and led me to the perception of a fact that was long hidden from me--that it was not without reason that a strong reaction set in against this theology about the year 1880. I find myself no longer reckonable to its adherents. But all the more does it seem to me important to learn from this great movement the lessons it has to teach the present time and all the future, to appropriate its good and to avoid its evil. And, certainly, no American theological scholar can claim to understand the course of religious thought among us, who has not made himself familiar with this greatest indigenous school of American theology.
The chief peculiarity of the style of the book is the large use made of quotation from the authors discussed. My object has been, not merely to secure thereby the true objectivity of the report I have given, but also, in the certainty that very few of my readers will have access to the originals, to give them an acquaintance at first hand, though brief, with these pioneers and fathers of our theology.
So I send out the book; and to the historian's commendation I add the dogmatician's exhortation: Prove all things; hold fast that which is true.
F. H. F.
CONTENTS: SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
Rise of a school of theology in southwestern New England. Influence upon America. Place in the course of the world's thought. A result of life. Pursued the same cycle as other movements elsewhere. A homogeneous school. A microcosm. The history to be genetic. General view.
CHAPTER I. The First Century in New England, 1620-1720
John Robinson. Harmony with the common Calvinism of his day. The Puritans. William Pynchon's book. Norton's reply. Pynchon's rejoinder. Essentially a protest, not constructive. Systems of divinity in these early days. Anne Hutchinson. Her exaggerations of Calvinism. Confusion upon the nature of faith. Degeneration of the churches. Depressing preaching. The doctrine of inability to repent. Half-Way Covenant. Further decline. Solomon Stoddard and the Lord's Supper. Unconverted ministry.
JONATHAN EDWARDS
CHAPTER II. Edwards' Earlier Labors
Edwards the man for his times. Early intellectual history. His Calvinism. Personal qualifications for the problem before him. Beginning of his ministry. Boston sermon in 1731. Sermons on Justification in 1734. Edwards' conception of his task. Holds to inability. Treatise on the Religious Affections. Witness of the Spirit. Place of Christian Experience. Qualifications for Communion.
CHAPTER III. The Treatise on the Freedom of the Will
Edwards' view of the fundamental difficulty of the times. His starting-point in the treatment of the will. Was the motive an efficient cause? Division of the faculties of the mind. Whitby and his theory of the will. Edwards' reply. Relation to Locke. Substance of Edwards' work. Edwards' meaning. Necessity. Ability. Liberty. The reductio ad absurdum. Criticism. Service of the work. Origin of evil. Edwards' place in the history of this doctrine.
CHAPTER IV. Edwards' Remaining Metaphysical Treatises .
John Taylor's Doctrine of Original Sin. Good features of the work. Its true meaning. Various replies to Taylor. Edwards' reply. The argument. Mediate imputation. All sin voluntary. Connection of the race with Adam. Results for New England theology. Edwards' growth as a constructive theologian and controversialist. Dissertation concerning the Mature of True Virtue. Previous history of ethical theory. Cumberland. Hutcheson. Substance of Edwards' work. Relation to the previous thinkers. Summary of Edwards' services to theology.
EDWARDS' CONTEMPORARIES AND CO-LABORERS
CHAPTER V. Joseph Bellamy
Bellamy a pastor. Minor tracts. The True Religion Delineated. Relation to the theory of virtue. Suggestions as to ability. Preaching immediate repentance. Original sin. Election. This not arbitrary. The atonement. Grotius and his theory. Introduction of this theory into New England. Connection of Grotius' thought with Bellamy's view of God's character. Transfer of the theory to the Grotian standpoint. General atonement. Total depravity. Treatise upon the permission of sin. Connected with Edwards' brief treatment of the theme. Philosophy lacking. Optimism. "Sin the necessary means of the greatest good." Moody's attack. Bellamy's Vindication. The question of freedom. Summary. The gain the school has made.
CHAPTER VI. Samuel Hopkins
Difference between Bellamy and Hopkins. Hopkins' first tract upon Sin an Advantage to the Universe. Mayhew's sermons on Striving to Enter the Strait Gate. The answer of his error to be derived from the new theory of virtue. Total depravity the center of the contest. Avoidance of philosophy in the reply. Nothing short of immediate repentance acceptable with God. Controversy with Mills. With William Hart and Moses Hemmenway. The new treatise upon the Nature of Holiness. Hopkins identifies sin with selfishness. Willingness to be damned.
CHAPTER VII. Hopkins' System of Theology
Hopkins' learning. His agreement with the past. Idea of a system. The Scriptures. Order of arguments in proof of the existence of God. Trinity. Greek elements. Modifying ideas of Hopkins' system. Treatment of freedom. Progress upon Edwards. The doctrine of decrees. God's plan. Leibnitzian optimism. Relation of decrees and foreknowledge. Hopkins' supralapsarianism. Original sin. All sin voluntary. Ability and inability. The atonement: objective; Grotian in its view of the relation of God to the sinner; Christ's obedience a part; general. Regeneration. Conversion. Saving faith. Imputation. General estimate of the system.
THE DEVELOPING SCHOOL
CHAPTER VIII. Eschatology and Atonement
Jonathan Edwards the Younger. Introduction of Universalism into America. Relly and John Murray. Huntington's Calvinism Improved. The early interest of the New England school in eschatology. Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins. Good to arise from eternal punishment. Hopkins' unpopularity. Number of the lost. Success of Murray. Smalley's reply to Rellyanism. Suggestion of a new theory of the atonement. The younger Edwards' sermons introducing the new theory to general acceptance. Stephen West. Charles Chauncy's Salvation of all Men. Edwards' reply. Its relation to the new theory of the atonement. Strong's reply to Huntington. Successive steps in the development of the New England theory of the atonement: Emmons; Griffin; Burge; N. W. Taylor; Finney. Relation of election to the atonement. Artificial elements of the doctrine rejected.
CHAPTER IX. The Development of the Theory of the Will
Early modifications of Edwards. Reception of Edwards' theory. James Dana attacks Edwards' determinism. Stephen West's reply. Driven by Dana to make all efficiency to reside in God. Relation to Hopkins. Dana's rejoinder. Samuel West's reply to Stephen West. First proposal of the threefold division of the faculties of the mind. Good statement of freedom. Presses Edwards hard. Why he received little attention. The younger Edwards replies to Samuel West. Does not accept West's suggestion as to the faculties of the mind. New explanation of the elder Edwards' causation. Edwards removes efficient causation even from God. Emmons and his doctrine of created free volitions. Burton's Essays introduce a new epoch. Threefold division of the faculties of the mind. Burton's necessitarianism. N. W. Taylor. Previous New Haven philosophy. Taylor maintains a true efficiency in second causes. "Power to the contrary." Influence of motives. "Certainty." Relation to Edwards. Upham. Place in American philosophy. The laws of the will. Freedom. Finney: the argument from consciousness. Fairchild and the classification of motives. Samuel Harris as the highest point of this development. Definitions of choice and freedom. How was Taylor's proposal of freedom to be received in Andover? Edwards A. Park. Relation to Edwards. Adopts the explanation of Edwards given by the younger Edwards. Still substantially a supralapsarian. False view of the nature of God. The emphasis of Park really thrown upon freedom. Consequences of this. The dissonance never reconciled in Park's system. The doctrine of freedom sacrificed to that of the divine perfection.
THE GREAT CONTROVERSIES
CHAPTER X. The Unitarian Controversy
The problem before New England theology at the opening of the nineteenth century. Roots of the Unitarian controversy reach back to the beginning of English Protestantism. Change in England from Arminianism to Unitarianism. Emlyn's Humble Inquiry. His real objection to the doctrine of the two natures in Christ. Calvinism had not answered this objection. King's Chapel, Boston, becomes Unitarian. James Freeman. Timothy Dwight. The Hollis professorship at Harvard and Henry Ware. Noah Worcester's Bible News. The year 1815. Summary of positions then held by New England theology. Channing's Baltimore sermon. Attacks the Trinity, reiterates Emlyn's objection, but presents no distinct view of Christ himself. Channing's relation to the New England school. Stuart's reply to Charming. Emphasizes the numerical unity of the Godhead. Reduces "personality "to" some distinction" in the Godhead. Rejects the idea of eternal generation. Discloses the essential fallacy of Unitarianism. Fails to answer the peremptory challenge of the doctrine of the two natures. The true strength of the orthodox position. Depotentiation of the doctrine of the Trinity as a result of the controversy. Andrews Norton. His Statement of Reasons. Introduces the historical argument. His general statement of the Unitarian position. Woods's Letters to Unitarians. Ware's reply to Woods. The Unitarian movement begins in the doctrine of depravity. Common ground between the Unitarians and orthodox. Reiteration and enforcement of the Unitarian demand for a rationale. N. W. Taylor. Summary of the situation at the close of the controversy.
CHAPTER XI. The Universalist Controversy-Concluded
Progress of Universalism to Unitarianism. Winchester. His doctrine, ultimate restoration of all. Hosea Ballou. His Atonement. Effected the transfer to Unitarianism. His final doctrine, no future punishment. Balfour's exegetical labors. Popularity. No future punishment. Numerous replies. Emmons. Efforts to sustain restorationism. Moses Stuart and his exegesis. Final repudiation of Ballou and Balfour.
CHAPTER XII. The Systems of Theology, 1800-1840
Form of Emmons' system. Effect of this upon the system itself. His philosophy. Park's view of Emmons' "Berkeleianism." Connection with Hopkins. Early services of Emmons in the controversies. Belongs to the generation before the Unitarian controversy. His doctrines of the Trinity and Christology. Eight distinctive tenets of Emmons. (1.) Holiness and sin consist in free voluntary exercises. The "exercise" and "taste" schemes. Burton's theories. Emmons' replies. (2) Men act freely under the divine agency. Emmons' appeal to two separate faculties of reason and consciousness. Does not distinguish between guilt and deformity, nor between repentance and self-loathing. (3) The least transgression of the divine law deserves eternal punishment. (4) Right and wrong are founded in the nature of things. (5) God exercises mere grace in punishing or justifying men through the atonement of Christ and mere goodness in rewarding them for their good works. (6) Notwithstanding the total depravity of sinners, God has a right to require them to turn from sin to holiness. (7) Preachers of the gospel ought to exhort sinners to love God, repent of sin, and believe in Christ immediately. (8) Men are active, not passive, in regeneration.
Woods. General characteristics of his system. Mediating position. The "judicious" divine. Comparison with Emmons. Holds to the "taste scheme." Summary of his views.
Dwight. General characteristics. Conformity to the New England school. Rejection of extremes. Obscuration of the philosophical element. The system of duties. Founds virtue in utility, but was not a "Utilitarian."
THE RIPENED PRODUCT
CHAPTER XIII. Nathaniel W. Taylor
His innovations the result of his desire to defend the truth. Place of his doctrine of the will. The Concio ad Clerum. His position as to the prevention of sin. The outworking of the new idea of freedom. (1) The controversy with Harvey. Harvey's inability to understand Taylor's position on the will. His further misunderstandings. Taylor's reply. He introduces the idea of a true moral government. Taylor unable to answer fully Harvey's questions as to certainty upon the basis of the new theory. Taylor's explanation of the origin of sin in the child. (2) The controversy with Woods. Incapable of understanding Taylor. Takes himself a middle position between Hopkins and Taylor. Difficulty in the subject of the will. Taylor's reply. Makes Woods agree substantially with himself. (3) Controversy with Tyler. Spring on the means of regeneration. Taylor's review of Spring. Taylor's description of the process of regeneration. "Self-love." A neutral point in the soul to which motives could appeal. Reply of Bennet Tyler. Failure to understand Taylor and the reason of this. Taylor not without blame. Summary of Tyler's positions. Taylor's reply. The true question, What is a free moral agent? Further course of the controversy without practical results. Tyler's positions unchanged to the last. Taylor's change in his positions as indicated by his posthumous lectures. Breaks away from subjection to Edwards. Change in his views as to the prevention of sin. Place of Taylor in the history.
CHAPTER XIV. The Later New Haven Theology
Horace Bushnell. His personality. Qualifications and disqualifications for the task of theological construction. His theory of language. Emphasis on the religious life. Doctrine of the Trinity. Comparison with Ritschl. Christian nurture. Bushnell as an apologist. The atonement. Bushnell's heroism. Fisher. Chiefly an apologist. Samuel Harris.
CHAPTER XV. The New School in Presbyterianism
Relations of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. Lyman Beecher. Effects upon him and other Presbyterian leaders of their obligation to the Confession. His interpretation of Augustine. Henry B. Smith. Pupil of Enoch Pond. Pond's system. Smith's relation to Emmons, Pond, and Woods. His German education. Remained a member of the New England school. Did not accept all of the advanced positions of the school. Theory of the atonement. Does not follow Taylor in his modifications. On the other hand, has nothing himself to say in removing defects or advancing the New England system. Smith as an apologist. Failure to understand the new age. Shedd. Reacts from the New England school to the elder Calvinism. Albert Barnes. Agreed substantially with New England. General atonement the central doctrine of the gospel. Light cast by this phase of our theology upon its true meaning.
CHAPTER XVI. The Oberlin Theology
Finney. Relation to Taylor. Early accepted the main New England views. The rise of the Oberlin theory of sanctification. Relation to Edwards' theory of original sin. The simplicity of moral action. Cochran's discussion of the subject. The contribution of this discussion to New England theology. The doctrine of the simplicity of moral action not original in Oberlin. Emmons. Finney's system. Agrees with New England as to the Scriptures, the existence of God, the Trinity, and Christology. The foundation of the theology in free will. Moral obligation. Finney's remarkable agreement with Taylor. Rise of sin in the child. J. H. Fairchild.
CHAPTER XVII. Edwards A. Park
Place of Professor Park in the history of New England theology. Follows the Scotch school in philosophy. His system. Method and spirit. Distinguished between natural and revealed theology. Method in obtaining proof of the Bible. Proof of the divine benevolence. Method of this proof. Immortality. The prevention of sin. Relation to Taylor. The divine benevolence God's comprehensive moral attribute. The theory of virtue. The idea of justice. The love of God the determining principle of the theology. Proof of the Bible. Rationalistic character of this. Preparation for further discussions. Definition of inspiration. Miracles. The Trinity. Proof of the divinity of Christ exclusively scriptural. Remains substantially upon Stuart's ground. Characterization of the "New School." Decrees. Calvinism. Doctrine of sin. "Sin consists in sinning." Definitions of sin. The proximate occasion of sin, corruption or original sin. The remote occasion, the fall of Adam. Our connection with Adam left unexplained. Hesitation between the taste and exercise schemes. The atonement. The most comprehensive form of the New England theory ever presented. Regeneration. Does not follow Taylor fully here. Held back by his allegiance to Edwards. Means of regeneration. The "essential Christ." The author of regeneration. Sanctification. Utilitarianism. Eschatology.
CONCLUSION The sudden collapse of New England theology as an accepted system of thought. Calvinism, apparently essentially aggressive, really paralyzing to spiritual activity. Injurious to practical religion. Calvinism had to be subjected to a thorough criticism and reconstruction. Attitude of the early New England fathers: Calvinism substantially right, only needing restatement. Things effected by the theology in this effort at restatement. Ethicizing the theology. Familiarizing the mind with the idea of modification. This constituted a preparation for the future. But New England theology failed (1) when it sacrificed freedom to the Calvinism of the system; (2) when it failed to grasp the full meaning of an a posteriori method in theology; (3) when it failed to answer the objections put to it by Unitarians and other opponents. Hence it was unable to furnish methods or materials for the new epoch. Hence it perished.
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Among the great events of the eighteenth century was the rise, in an obscure corner of the civilized world, of a new school of theology. The place was southwestern New England, the region fed intellectually and spiritually by the recently founded Yale College. The leaders were natives of New England, of the pure English stock, educated for the most part at Yale--parish ministers in small villages and hamlets, and occasionally missionaries upon the near frontier, practical religious leaders who were stimulated to constructive thought by definite religious necessities in their own charges. One might have thought that a movement so originating and in such a place, far from the great centers of thought and the great accumulations of scholarly material, led by men indifferently trained, could never be of interest to the Christian world beyond. But New England was destined in the divine providence to become the principal element in the development of a great nation; and the theological movement begun by Jonathan Edwards when he preached his sermons upon "Justification by Faith" in Northampton, in 1734, acquired an importance for the whole Christian civilization when it became the molding force of a great part of the constructive religious work done in the United States of America. For this was its future. It became the dominating school of thought in New England Congregationalism, and this denomination took the initiative in the greatest forward movements of American Christianity in all its formative years. In foreign missions, in home missions, in the founding and equipping of theological seminaries in the planting of colleges, in revivals, in denominational co-operation, Congregationalism, during the period of the supremacy in its midst of the Edwardean theology, took the unquestioned lead among American churches. Its practical labors grew directly out of its theology, just as its theology grew directly out of its practical problems. Thus the obscure fountain widened into the mighty stream.
In its wider relations and its deepest sources this movement is not to be fully comprehended unless it is put in its place among the religious movements of the whole Protestant world. However prominent it may be in American thought, it is but one of the movements which have begun here. American history is in many respects unique. For the first time since the church passed out from the freedom which its obscurity and weakness had given it into the light of publicity and under the yoke of the state, in the time of Constantine, it has found in America an opportunity on a large scale to develop its thought and to form its life under the unconstrained operation of its own inherent forces. At the same time a multitude of problems of the most weighty kind have been presented to it. It has not only had a new country to subdue, repeating thus in some respects the problem which Rome had to attempt after the beginning of the German migrations, but it has had conditions to meet which have sprung from the rise of a new civilization largely made by itself and then brought into conflict with the older civilizations of Europe as maintained by myriads of immigrants. While its problems have been chiefly practical, their solution has reacted upon the formation of doctrine. Far from hindering the modification of theology or the attainment of new views of truth, this attention to the practical has favored change and progress. Indeed, such has always been the case. It was the vigorous life of the early church that made its doctrinal productivity so great. The rise of the missionary orders and the development of Scholasticism in the Middle Ages were two phases of the same vital growth. The Reformation, which was first of all a movement in the sphere of life, was also productive of the greatest development of systematic thought which the church has seen in any one age. It has therefore been in perfect conformity to the law operating elsewhere that multitudes of speculations have arisen in America, resulting sometimes in the creation of new ecclesiastical communions, sometimes in the development of heresies, sometimes merely in the formation of distinct theological schools. Some have perpetuated themselves to the present day; many have perished after having contributed their portion to the influences, good or bad, which are forming the religious life of the nation. And such is doubtless to be the course of things through a long period, the end of which is far beyond the limits of vision.
But the relations of New England theology are not exclusively, or even principally, to other currents of thought in America. The Reformation united the great nations of the Teutonic family which it took out of the fold of Rome by a community of interests, not only political and religious, but also theological. The same currents of thought flow successively through them all. The same cycle of intellectual events recurs in each. Even the periods are remarkably coterminous. Internal forces of similar character in some cases, in others the direct influence of thought communicated by all the methods by which men exert influence upon one another, lead to similar results. Differences of language and customs are not able to prevent this. Remoteness and rarity of communication do not destroy it. Ties of blood and intimate political relations serve only to facilitate it. The channels of communication, like subterranean streams, it may sometimes be impossible to trace. The whole phenomenon depends upon and illustrates the fundamental unity of Protestantism amid all its superficial diversity.
Thus, the Reformation in Germany as a constructive period may be said to have been brought to a close by the compilation of the "Formula of Concord" in 1577. Upon construction always follows systematization, and the next period was that of the scholastic Lutheran orthodoxy, the natural course of which was interrupted by the Thirty Years' War, which brought in its train great religious demoralization and theological deadness. Pietism, which began with Spener's Collegia Pietatis in 1670, was an unsuccessful attempt to revive the national spiritual life, and resulted in scarcely anything more than helping to introduce the rationalistic movement, which began about 1750 and terminated about the time of Schleiermacher's death in 1834. The restored Lutheran orthodoxy has since that time been seeking to deepen its insight into the Christian system, and, amid the distractions of a peculiarly unfavorable position, to develop the life of the church. Construction, systematization, corruption, restoration--such are the cycles through which Lutheran theology ran.
The same cycles reappear in Calvinism. It had its constructive period in Switzerland, France, and Holland, ending formally in the Synod of Dort in 1618. In this period was embraced its first great conflict, that with Arminianism. Thereupon follow side by side the development of scholastic orthodoxy and that of Arminianism, till both end in theological decay. The principal arena of conflict transferred to England, where for more than a century the reformed theology had been constructing its system, and had constantly grown more Calvinistic and more Puritan, we have for a time, after the Synod of Dort, the theological struggle merged in the political, till Calvinism, triumphant with the triumph of Parliament, could formulate its theology in the Westminster Confession in 1646. This was the period of the great systematic divines. It is overwhelmed with reverse when in 1660 Charles II brings in the monarchy again, and with it the period of Latitudinarianism (1680-1700). The Latitudinarians were Arminian in their tendencies, and this form of theology may be said to have had control in England largely during the eighteenth century in connection with an Arian movement, both constituting a real corruption of the evangelical theology of Westminster. But in the same century an evangelical Arminianism under the lead of John Wesley (1738 ff.) began the movement of restoration, as a result of which a mild Calvinism prevailed very largely in the churches of England, established and dissenting, from about 1800 to 1832.
The fundamental connection of New England with all this international ferment and development is seen in the remarkable fact that, in spite of its apparent and real isolation, the same great periods of theological history are repeated here with almost identical dates. The Puritans and Pilgrims had shared in the constructive period of English Protestantism at home. They planted New England just as Puritanism was on the eve of triumph in the mother-country, though they were far from perceiving this. They shared in its victory, and appropriated its results when in 1648 they adopted the Westminster standards as their own. They had their period of theological corruption, arising from indigenous causes, but also originated and promoted in part by influences communicated from the debased England of the Restoration after the year 1660. From 1720 to 1750 the Arminian tendencies of the mother-country powerfully affect the life of the colonies. In 1750 these begin to give place to Arianism, which continues to be a threatening force within the New England churches till the year 1833. But in New England there is a more immediate reaction against theological corruption than in either Germany or England. The Arminian movement is met almost at its beginning by the youthful Jonathan Edwards in his sermons on justification in 1734, and by his Freedom of the Will in 1754. With the earlier of these dates New England theology as a distinct school begins. It thus long antedates the labors of the German Schleiermacher, and coincides closely with the conversion of Wesley (1738). It soon develops the disposition to meet the new conditions with a new presentation of the truth, which is the principal merit of Schleiermacher, and it displays the same devotion to evangelical truth and to the practical work of saving souls which appear in Methodism. Its restoration is a restoration of the historic Calvinism, which it modifies, but to the spirit of which it remains true to the end.
These facts show how fully New England theology is a world-phenomenon. Beginning in the first half of the eighteenth century, it continued till late in the nineteenth. Within these limits it was always in motion. It struggled with great forces. It produced great treatises. It developed great truths. It inspired great activities. But it was singularly homogeneous, since it derived its motive forces from a single source. The materials with which the New England writers wrought, and the later impulses which they received from various quarters, were English, Puritan, Calvinistic exclusively. Universalism, which like a flint struck out the ablest thoughts which New England set forth upon the atonement, was an English distortion of Calvinism. Unitarianism, which furnished the occasion for the perfection of many of the characteristic New England doctrines in anthropology, was transplanted from England to America, and developed in the isolation of a country which knew no source of fruitful ideas but the mother-land. If Moses Stuart dealt with German writers, translated German grammars, and referred copiously to German authorities in his doctrinal discussions, it is doubtful whether he ever received a single dogmatic idea from any source outside of the line of English Puritan thought, orthodox and unorthodox. Nathaniel W. Taylor was a purely American product. Edwards A. Park, who had studied in Germany and was familiar with the German language and literature, introduces no materials from such quarters into his theological lectures. Nevertheless, New England theology was a world-phenomenon. It was borne upon the same currents as carried the theology of other lands through similar rounds of degeneration and restoration. The English sources upon which it depended were themselves replenished from the universal Protestant thought. Unknown modes of communication brought ideas upon invisible wings to this remote comer of the world from many another. The life which pulsates in all its veins is the one life of all Protestant Christendom.
This double interest, therefore, belongs to the study of New England theology: that of a restricted subject of investigation, where the phenomena can be all brought into the field of vision, and their causal connections determined, and that of a significant and representative movement, in which as in a mirror the great movements in the onward march of the world are reflected. Even the microscopic can be microcosmic. In many respects New England theology is a microcosm.
These considerations increase our sense of the importance of its study; but they also prescribe the method of that study. It is a growth, a development, which we have before us. An adequate history cannot, therefore, be mere annals, a "chronicle," an unconnected heap of opinions. A history of doctrine is not the same thing as a register of discordant and meaningless theories. Ideas grow. One writer is dependent upon another. A thought is found in one man as a seed, it germinates in another, it comes to form and fruitfulness in others. The stages of this growth should be marked, the connections of these men noted. The action and reaction of mind upon mind, of idea upon idea, is the interesting thing in the history. A true history must therefore be genetic. Ideas in their genesis, their growth, and their fruit are its theme. Not all of the opinions of every writer need to be considered by it, but what has had an influence, contributed to growth, or in some way carried on the work of the school of thought.
The object of this book is, therefore, to construct a truly genetic history of New England theology, a history which shall perform the service, not merely of recording the various distinguishing views of the several writers, but of setting forth their productive work in the circumstances under which they developed, in comparison with the errors which they were designed to meet, in their consistency with other views which the writers held, and in their connection with the theology which has sprung out of them as productive intellectual causes.
The story begins with the first landing of immigrants upon the New England shores, and traces the history of the first century as the background upon which the growth of the New England theology proper is to be depicted, a century in which the natural results of the defective theories of the original Calvinism of England and New England united with the universal tendencies of frontier life to produce degeneration and decay. The influence of theological degeneration--in the mother-country, with its Deism and Arminianism, contributed to accelerate the downward movement. The protagonist of the theological revival was Jonathan Edwards, who, dying in 1758, left to his two friends, Hopkins and Bellamy, the task of extending and developing the new views of truth which he had more suggested than formulated. Before Hopkins left the stage, the controversy with the original Universalists, in which the younger Jonathan Edwards was the leader, was in full course. Then came with the beginning of the last century the Unitarian controversy, with its attendant development of anthropology. The school of Taylor, its antagonism against Tylerism, the rupture with Presbyterianism, the foundation of Oberlin, till we have at last the Andover of Park and the Oberlin of Fairchild, crowd the scene with a various and brilliant succession of figures of the highest interest and importance. Such is the theme of this work in briefest outline, and to its development the history may now turn without further delay.
CHAPTER I: The First Century In New England, 1620-1720
The first immigrants to New England were the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed at Plymouth in 1620. Though the church collected at Scrooby was the direct result of the Puritan movement in the English universities, the Pilgrims were for the most part themselves of humble origin, and were little fitted to contribute much to the theological development of the new state. There is but one figure among them of sufficient intellectual eminence to engage the attention of subsequent generations, that of John Robinson the pastor of the little flock at Leyden, who was member of two universities, and a foremost disputant in the ranks of the defenders of Congregationalism. His heroic devotion to principle, the picturesque vicissitudes of his career, his intellectual power and breadth, his prophetic vision, and above all his sincere and deep piety, made him a constant subject of quotation and an acknowledged authority among all the New England churches.
The writings of Robinson which have come down to us are chiefly occupied with those matters which lay nearest to his heart as a Separatist. We have thus a long and elaborate discussion of ecclesiastical polity, treating nearly all the topics in controversy between the Independents and the Church of England. There is, however, one considerable treatise upon doctrinal theology, the Defence of the Doctrine Propounded by the Synod at Dort, which serves to show the harmony of doctrinal view between the Separatists and the Puritan movement in general, and later exerted a positive influence in prolonging that harmony throughout New England. It is what it purports to be, strictly a "defence," and in no respect goes beyond the common Calvinism of the day, or rises above its level. It is completely deficient in the philosophical element; but this is less to be wondered at in an age when Descartes had not yet introduced the methods, and called forth the spirit, of modern philosophy. It is, therefore, scarcely necessary to dwell upon this, the first in the long series of doctrinal treatises produced by the Congregational leaders. It may be dismissed with the following brief extracts, which will be sufficient to exhibit its flavor and distinguishing characteristics.
Robinson's reticence upon one of the great perplexities of theology is indicated in the following passage:
If any demand how this can be, that God who forbiddeth and hateth sin, yet should so order persons and things, by his providence, and so from eternity purpose to order them, as that the same cannot but be? I answer, by free acknowledgment, that the manner of God's working herein is to me, and to all men, inconceivable; and withal avouch, that he, who will not confess, that God can, and could in Adam's sin, by his infinite wisdom and power, most effectually, and infallibly, in regard of such event, order and dispose of things, without violation to his holiness, or violence to the creature's will, as no mortal man is able to conceive the manner thereof, is himself in a high degree guilty of that pride which was Adam's ruin, by which he desired to be as God in knowledge. Gen. chap. 3. Who is able to understand the manner of God's working, in giving the Holy Ghost to man, and in directing the tongues and pens of the prophets infallibly, and so as they could not err? Much less discernible is God's manner of working in, and about the creature's sinful actions. And because many take great offense at this doctrine of truth and work of God, I will, the Lord assisting me, plainly and briefly as I can, prove that all events, even those most sinful, in regard of the creature's work in, and of them, come to pass necessarily, after a sort, in respect of God's providence, as being a hand steady and which swerveth not, in ordering the creature in and unto the same.
He thinks that the alleged inconsistency of God's commanding Adam not to sin, and yet decreeing that he should sin, is sufficiently removed by the following distinctions:
For us, we do not hold, that God decreed Adam's sin, as they conceive, that is, either to approve it or command it or compel unto it, nothing less; but we affirm that God decreed to leave Adam to himself, in the temptation and not to assist him with that strength of grace, by which he could, if he would, have upheld him; and so to order both him and all things about him, in that his temptation, as that he, by the notion and sway of his own free will following his natural appetite to the pleasant but forbidden fruit and that false persuasion wherewith his understanding was by Satan overclouded, should both choose and eat the forbidden fruit.
There is an evident struggle in his mind to maintain a certain freedom of the will of man from compulsion, and in general to hold to that more generous type of theology characteristic of English Puritanism in distinction from continental. Thus he is distinctly sublapsarian, though he holds firmly to a limited atonement. But when all credit for the influence upon his system of clearer intuitions of truth, or of the plain common-sense of which he had a considerable share, has been given, the general accord of the whole with that extreme application of the doctrine of divine sovereignty and of the helplessness of man which was to spread a deadly paralysis through all the spiritual life of New England, is apparent from such passages as the following:
They [Calvinists] believe, as the Scriptures teach, that all men in Adam have sinned, Rom. 5:12-15; and by sin lost the image of God in which they were made; so as the law is impossible, Rom. 8:3; unto them by reason of the flesh, and so cannot possibly but sin, by reason of the same flesh reigning in the unregenerate, and dwelling in all: which these light persons, expressly confess . . . and that this so comes to pass by God's holy decree, and work of providence answerable, not forcing evil upon any, but ordering all persons in all actions, as the supreme Governor of all: and that the wicked, being left of God, some, destitute of the outward means, the gospel; all of them, of the effectual work of the Spirit, from that weak flesh, and natural corruption, daily increased in them, sin both necessarily as unable to keep the law, and willingly, as having in themselves the beginning and cause thereof, the blindness of their own minds, and perverseness of their will and affections; and so are inexcusable in God's sight.
The founding of the Massachusetts colony, about ten years later than the Plymouth, brought a different class to New England. There were many men of education and wealth among the laymen of Boston, and its clergymen were largely university men, well read in divinity, and intense in their attachment to the Calvinistic system. The overthrow of the monarchy in England resulted in 1646 in the formation of the Westminster-standards. They were hardly issued when they were adopted in Massachusetts 1648, as the general standard of doctrine among the churches, and were later 1708, welcomed in Connecticut with equal cordiality. Old Calvinism, shaped by the prevailing acceptance of the Westminster Confession, continued to be the dominant and well-nigh unchallenged system in the New England Churches even after Arminianism had begun to make serious inroads at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
For a while there could, of course, be little theological production amid the labors of subduing the wilderness. The standard writers of the old countries were enough for the time. Among these Wollebius, a sublapsarian, free from the deformities of scholasticism, and Ames, whose Medulla was employed as a textbook in the colleges, were the principal favorites. Indigenous production was called forth by a cause of a somewhat startling and unpleasant nature. This was the appearance of a book entitled The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, by a layman, a man of considerable prominence as the founder of Springfield, William Pynchon, which contained sentiments too much at variance with the current system to be received with equanimity. It was the first outbreak of the independent spirit of Congregationalism, and it was sternly suppressed. The book was first burned, and then refuted by order of the General Court, and Mr. Pynchon found it convenient to return to England, where he died.
Pynchon's work was the protest of plain common-sense against the current representations of the atonement which taught that Christ suffered the very torments of the lost, and against the theory of imputation upon which such representations depended. He objected most strongly to these ideas because they involved the thought that Christ bore the wrath of God, whereas in fact his sufferings were inflicted upon him by the rage and enmity of "the old serpent." His argument is principally scriptural, and is derived both from the silence of Scripture, which relieves us from the necessity of believing that Christ suffered the infinite wrath of God, and from its positive affirmations, which he often discusses at great length. It is, further, not necessary that Christ should bear the punishment of our sins, since his obedience is enough to satisfy for the sins of the elect. We see thus that Pynchon did not abandon the idea of a limited atonement. And then Christ could not suffer the pains of hell, for they consist--either in the "pain of loss," or separation from God, which he did not suffer, or in the "pain of sense," which consists in eternal sufferings, which also he did not suffer. He gives utterance to an axiomatic truth, afterwards to play a considerable part in New England: "The rule of God's justice doth require that soul only to die which sins . . . Ezek. chap. 18. By this rule of justice God cannot inflict the torments of hell upon an innocent, to redeem a guilty person." He also suggests the word "chastisement" as a suitable one to describe the nature of Christ's sufferings. Against imputation, he urges its injustice, for God's imputation is always connected with guiltiness; and also the fact that imputation would destroy the possibility of Christ's being a redeemer, for the redemption consists in the mediatorial obedience, and Christ would then have been a disobedient sinner,
Pynchon then goes on to say:
That which Christ did to redeem us from the curse of the law was not by bearing the said curse really in our stead (as the common doctrine of imputation doth teach), but by procuring his Father's atonement by the invaluable price or performance of his own mediatorial obedience, whereof his mediatorial sacrifice of the atonement was the finishing masterpiece. This kind of obedience was that rich thing of price which the Father required and accepted as satisfactory for the procuring of his atonement for our full redemption, justification, and adoption.
And then he adds, with an idea closely akin to that of Anselm, if not actually a filtration down through the ages from that first great writer upon this theme:
God the Father was more highly pleased with the obedience of the Mediator than he was displeased with the disobedience of Adam. If so, then there is no need that our blessed Mediator should pay both the price of his mediatorial obedience and also bear the curse of the law really for our redemption. I never heard that ever any Turkish tyrant did require such a double satisfaction of any redeemer for the redemption of galley slaves . . . to pay both the full price which they demanded for this redemption of their galley slaves and to bear the punishment of their curse and slavery also in their stead Why then doth the doctrine of imputation make God the Father to be a harder creditor in the point of satisfaction than ever any rigid creditor was among men? . . . The gross substance of that blood that was shed is not to be taken by itself alone considered for that precious price We must take the blood of Christ for his mediatorial obedience.
Pynchon consistently rejected the imputation of Christ's obedience to the believer, which he thinks inconsistent with justice as well as useless, for "the law binds every singular person to perform exact obedience by his own natural power, without any help from any surety whatsoever, or without any supernatural help of faith." Besides, the active obedience of Christ cannot be imputed to us for a variety of reasons. He did not perform all the acts required of us, since he did not enter all the conditions of life. Then, he was bound to obey for himself, and the acts of his legal obedience were not mediatorial. Pynchon also explains the true nature of justification as consisting simply in "the Father's merciful atonement, pardon, and forgiveness. It is a gracious acquittal, as when a father forgives his son and receives him into favor."
Norton in his refutation of Pynchon thus expressed his own doctrine.
The Lord Jesus Christ, as God-man mediator according to the will of the Father and his own voluntary consent, fully obeyed the law, doing the command in a way of works and suffering the essential punishment of the curse [note the word "essential"] in a way of obedient satisfaction unto divine justice, thereby explicitly fulfilling the first covenant; which active and passive obedience of his, together with his original righteousness as a surety, God of his rich grace actually imputeth unto believers, whom upon the receipt thereof by the grace of faith, he declareth and accounteth as perfectly righteous, and acknowledgeth them to have right unto eternal life.
The reply was keen and able, but it was simply a defense of the old theology according to the command of the General Court, and added nothing to the common understanding of the theme. In a personal interview with him, Norton seems to have made more impression upon Pynchon, for in a communication to the General Court he stated that he was now "inclined to think that his [Christ's] sufferings were appointed by God for a further end, namely, as the due punishment of our sins by way of satisfaction to the divine justice." After his return to England he recurred to the theme, publishing in 1655 A Further Discussion of That Great Point in Divinity, The Sufferings of Christ, etc., in which he reaffirmed his old positions. He tried to do something in the way of a development of the doctrine, bringing out with more distinctness the fact that Christ's sufferings were not substitutionary, since they do not fulfil the covenant made with Adam, but a new one it made by the persons of the Trinity from eternity." And he finally expresses his own theory somewhat more fully in the following language. Referring to his former treatise, he says:
The dialogue doth . . . oppose the way of vindicative justice; but yet it makes all Christ's sufferings to be performed in a way of justice according to the order of justice in the voluntary cause and covenant . . . The dialogue shows from God's declaration in Gen. 3:15, that the devil must combat against the seed of the deceived woman, and that Christ in his human nature must combat against him and break his head plot by continuing obedient to the death, and that, therefore, his sufferings and death were meritorious because it was all performed in a way of justice, namely, in exact obedience to all the articles of the voluntary covenant.
Thus Pynchon's work was one-sided, incomplete, and immature. It was essentially a protest, not in any way a constructive effort. It had no immediate effect in producing modification of theory in New England, for most of the following writers pass over all he said as if they had never heard of him, or at least never read him; and doubtless few had. No trace of positive influence exerted upon the later New England writers has yet been discovered. The book seems to have exhaled its life in the flames in which it was burned upon Boston market place. But the same sturdy protest against scholastic deformations of Christian doctrine was at a later day to receive a more cordial hearing.
If Pynchon thus exerted little positive influence, it seems to have been due to the stimulus afforded by such a phenomenon as heresy in New England that there soon began to be a series of systematic treatises upon divinity, John Norton, who had refuted Pynchon in 1653, appearing with his Orthodox Evangelist in 1654. This book, though small--for it comprises but 355 quarto pages--possesses a high degree of minuteness, accuracy, and technicality. Its epistle dedicatory expresses confidence in the progress of the truth. "Even fundamental truths . . . have been and shall be transmitted more clear from age to age in the times of reformation." The body of the work begins with chapters upon the divine essence and the Trinity, and closes with a treatment of the state of the blessed; but it is chiefly occupied with the discussion of the way of salvation, thus foreshadowing the interest in anthropological themes characteristic of New England divinity. On the order of the decrees it is predominantly supralapsarian. On the will it teaches that "the liberty of man, though subordinate to God's decree, freely willeth the very same thing and no other than that which it would have willed if (upon a supposition of impossibility) there had been no decree." Again: "Man acts as freely as if there were no decree; yet as infallibly as if there were no liberty." There is no theory of the will, properly speaking, though Norton finds some help in the idea that the will is a second cause. He rejects the "indifferency of the will to act or not to act independent of the decree," but has no positive theory to offer, and upon the allied subject of conversion is led by his desire to meet the Arminians to lay so much stress upon divine sovereignty as to emphasize passivity in conversion overmuch.
Isaac Chauncy published in 1694 The Doctrine Which is according to Godliness, etc., which was a system of divinity in the form of question and answer, upon the basis of the Westminster Catechism. It was a vigorous and independent work, in complete conformity to the Westminster standards in every important point. On the will Chauncy says that God's decree "maintains the liberty of the creature's will, that all free agents act as freely according to the decree as agents by necessity do act necessarily."
For the sake of maintaining the true deity of Christ, he even ventured to contradict the Nicene Creed. "The Father doth not communicate Godhead in begetting, but Sonship only. It is very improper to say Christ is God of God [the Nicene phrase], but every person is essentially absolutely first, having the whole Godhead in it."
There exists in manuscript in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society A Whole Body of Divinity in a Catechetical Way by Samuel Stone, of Hartford, copied by Samuel Willard, marked by the same originality of expression and the same agreement with Westminster. It serves to continue the line of systematic writers to Willard himself, who from 1688 to 1707 delivered a course of expository lectures upon the Shorter Catechism which was published in 1726 in a folio of 914 pages, under the title of A Complete Body of Divinity. It is a big, but not a great, work. In the treatment of the Scriptures he reverses the order of the proof as given in the Confession, putting the character of the Bible, such as its contents, work in the soul, majesty, etc., first, and coming to the testimony of the Spirit last, and that under the head of "Testimony," which is subdivided into two heads, the human and the divine. Under the subject of the fall he has the remarkable statement that God "gave not to Adam those influences of confirming and assisting grace that were needful to his standing; and yet providence is not to blame, because Adam did not want any of those influences till he was willing to want them." Thus sin comes from lack of grace, and lack of grace comes from sin! There is a blind effort here to place the responsibility of the existence of sin upon the free will of man, as Willard says elsewhere: "Adam sinned voluntarily or by consent, in that he abused his own free Will." As to the order of the decrees, Willard was a supralapsarian. The means of grace, preaching, etc., "have no efficiency in the production of this habit [of faith] by moral suasion;" i. e., preaching has no efficiency in regeneration.
Thus to all appearance the ancient Calvinism had fully maintained itself down to the close of the century. There was still found in 1707 a minister in one of the chief churches of Boston who was regularly lecturing upon divinity with the minuteness only to be expected in a theological school, and adhering with absolute faithfulness to the Westminster system. And yet beneath the surface there was widespread departure and alienation from that system. Another side of the history of the first century needs now to be reviewed.
There is an analogy between ideas and material bodies in the particular of their gravity; and the first century of New England history was to show how the Puritan divinity, in the proportion and with the emphasis with which it was held, by a natural gravitation tended downward.
It was the beginning of a chapter of misfortunes when Mrs. Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston in 1635. She was a woman of talent, of a deeply religious nature, very much attached to her pastor, Rev. John Cotton, who had left her home, Boston, England, to become the minister of the New England Boston. Much prayer had brought her to the conviction that she had been "trusting in a covenant of works," and in connection with the higher spiritual experiences which she had gained in her effort to throw herself more fully upon the mercy of God, she had become visionary and fanatical. So she conceived that it was "revealed" to her that she must go to New England and "be persecuted and suffer much trouble." Arrived here, she began soon to assemble the women in her house for religious meetings, repeating the sermons of Mr. Cotton with comments of her own, and before long had become the head of a considerable party, who were charged with Antinomian errors, and thus stirred up a controversy which divided the church and town, and excited so much feeling as to become the cause of a serious crisis in the life of the young community. A synod was called against her errors in 1637, and they were condemned. Subsequently she was banished, and died at the hands of the Indians upon Long Island.
It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at this late day at an exact and reliable estimate of the nature and tendency of Mrs. Hutchinson's views. No one can read the various contemporary accounts without the feeling that misunderstanding played a great part in creating the conviction that she had seriously departed from the orthodoxy of the day. The most valuable source of information, Welde's Short Story, is of no great historical worth. It is marred by superstition, its common honesty is somewhat doubtful, and it must hence be employed with the greatest caution. As commonly understood, her peculiar views gathered about two points: the doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit and the assurance of justification. The Holy Spirit dwelt in a justified person personally. "Gifts and graces" were of no value in evidencing Christian character, but the witness of the Spirit was the only evidence. Hence the assurance of justification was immediately given to the soul by the Spirit. It was not evidenced by the sanctification of the believer, but was totally independent of this. Hence works were of no value, and hence the Christian might live in sin. justification was entirely separated from faith. A man was justified before he believed. A further distinction was drawn between the covenant of works and that of grace. All who rested their evidence upon the fruits of the Spirit were said to be trusting in a covenant of works. The covenant of grace was restricted to those who experienced the inward witness of the Spirit.
It is at least probable that these expressions were only individual methods of emphasizing the dominant ideas of the Calvinistic system as then commonly preached, and especially as presented in the ordinary ministrations of Mr. Cotton, Mrs. Hutchinson's favorite minister. The second error which Welde mentions, "that a man is united to Christ and justified without faith; yea, from all eternity," seems nothing but an extreme formulation of the doctrine of election. In fact, Rev. John Wheelwright, in defending himself against Welde's charges, says of this very charge: The writer holds it to be true "if it be meant respecting God's decree," but in no other sense. Many of the expressions quoted seem also to be of the same nature as that extreme application of the doctrine of union with Christ which was to appear subsequently in Rellyanism, itself only an exaggerated Calvinism. Such, for example are these: "Christ is the new creature;" "All graces are in Christ as the subject and none in us, so that Christ believes, Christ loves," etc. And Mr. Wheelwright's denials that he held that sanctification was no evidence of justification are repeated and explicit.
The mere unraveling of a snarl of insignificant temporary aberrations from truth is of no interest or importance in the present history. But besides the evident tendency to overemphasize the divine sovereignty and allied truths which already appears, there is one further phenomenon, exhibited in connection with the synod, which is of the greatest significance. This is the substantial ignorance of the nature of saving faith brought to light by the discussions upon justification. Mr. Cotton seems, at first sight, to have been farther from the truth than his colleagues, and was brought with some difficulty to a partial agreement with them. He held that our "union with Christ" is complete before and without the work or act of faith though not before or without the "habit" or gift of faith. It is evident from his own subsequent expressions that he was after all in substantial agreement with the rest, for he says, "I looked at union with Christ as equivalent to regeneration." This as the divine part in conversion does at least logically precede the act of faith. But, however they might be divided upon this point, Mr. Cotton and all the rest were united in viewing man as passive in faith. For the sake of securing the honor of God as the author of regeneration, they held views of divine sovereignty, inability, and regeneration which in effect rendered man totally passive till the indispensable condition was fulfilled, upon which faith followed, as a spontaneous act, it is true, but still as necessary.
In this confusion the New England fathers were not alone. It was generally true that but little light was to be found upon the nature of the action of the human mind in religious matters in any of the standard writers of the day. The will was still linked inseparably with the emotions in the common psychology, and its office and operation hence much obscured. The Westminster Confession confounds saving faith with historical faith in the expression: "By this faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word." Even Calvin had said: "Faith . . . is a certain and steady knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us." And though in case of both of these authorities there can be found other expressions calculated to give a good practical impression to the popular mind, yet when the emphasis was laid upon man's inability to repent which was laid in those days, the activity of man e activity of man was brought into so great darkness and doubt that paralysis of the spiritual forces of the soul often followed, and the work of repentance which man "could not remained largely undone.
The consequences of this confused and paralyzing theology soon became apparent. Cotton Mather may tell the piteous story:
When our churches were come to between twenty and thirty years of age, a numerous posterity was advanced so far into the world, that the first planters began apace in their several families to be distinguished by the name of grandfathers; but among the immediate parents of the grandchildren, there were multitudes of well-disposed persons, who, partly through their own doubts and fears, and partly through other culpable neglects, had not actually come up to the covenanting state of communicants at the table of the Lord. The good old generation could not, without many uncomfortable apprehensions, behold their offspring excluded from the baptism of Christianity, and from the ecclesiastical inspection which is to accompany that baptism; indeed, it was to leave their offspring under the shepherdly government of our Lord Jesus Christ in his ordinances, that they had brought their lambs into this wilderness. When the apostle bids churches to "look diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God," there is an ecclesiastical word used for that "looking diligently;" intimating that God will ordinarily bless a regular church-watch, to maintain the interests of grace among his people; and it was therefore the study of those prudent men, who might be called our seers, that the children of the faithful may be kept, as far as may be, under a churchwatch, in expectation that they might be in the fairer way to receive the grace of God; thus they were "looking diligently," that the prosperous and prevailing condition of religion in our churches might not be res unius ætatis--"a matter of one age alone." Moreover, among the next sons or daughters descending from that generation, there was a numerous appearance of sober persons, who professed themselves desirous to renew their baptismal-covenant and submit unto the church-discipline, and so have their houses also marked for the Lord's; but yet they could not come to that experimental account of their own regeneration, which would sufficiently embolden their access to the other sacrament. Wherefore, for our churches now to make no ecclesiastical difference between these hopeful candidates and competents for those our further mysteries; and pagans, who might happen to hear the word of God in our assemblies, was judged a most unwarrantable strictness, which would quickly abandon the biggest part of our country unto heathenism. And, on the other side, it was feared that, if all such as had not yet exposed themselves by censurable scandals found upon them should be admitted unto all the privileges in our churches, a worldly part of mankind might, before we are aware, carry all things into such a course of proceeding, as would be very disagreeable unto the kingdom of heaven.
No one can fail to perceive the surprise with which Mather, and doubtless all the rest of the New England leaders, looked upon this state of things. There were, no doubt, many elements entering into the production of the result, some of which cannot now be fully understood. The early plan of requiring of candidates for church membership a long and detailed account of gracious exercises, however appropriate when the first little companies had gathered together under the stress of persecution in England, and when all their religious exercises must of necessity have been marked, could only serve as an unfortunate and embarrassing condition among a later generation, born and brought up in the perfect freedom of the New World, and without the thrilling experiences of their fathers to give point to their views and depth to their experience. But with all the rest, there was a theological root to the trouble, and this was that doctrine of inability, one application of which we have already seen. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God is one which affects the church differently at different times. The first Puritans, sure in their own hearts that they were the elect of God, found the doctrine necessary to sustain them in the tremendous struggles through which they passed. As the waves of the storm rose higher about them, they looked more and more to God, who was yet ruler above all the commotion of the elements, and would save his people. Hence the doctrine nerved to greater activity; and it produced a similar effect, during the first period of the promulgation of Calvinism, among every nation which accepted the system. The Calvinists were the great active forces of an advancing Protestantism. But when such mighty stimulus was removed, when inability was preached to men who were not conscious that they wire the elect, when passive waiting for the gracious deliverance of God was inculcated upon men whom the tide of events no longer forced to activity in spite of themselves and of their theories, it produced sluggishness, apathy, self-distrust, despair. It has never been a good way to induce men to repent to tell them that they cannot. Thus, in part, it was the theology of the period which wrought the paralysis which Mather sketches, and which continued in spite of all the ecclesiastical nostrums of the Half-Way Covenant, and sunk the churches lower and lower.
An inspection of the preaching of the early ministers of New England would show how predominantly depressing and discouraging their ministrations were. There were not lacking many appeals which were adapted to stir the conscience, produce repentance, and call out faith; for, when men are moved by the great forces of the soul, and the truths of the gospel are presented to them, they will respond in the natural manner, regardless of the theories which they may be taught and which at other times may paralyze their action. But when every allowance has been made for the brighter and better side of the early preaching, it still remains that the general impression of the pulpit was that the sinner is "dead," helpless, cannot be interested in divine things, and has nothing to do but to wait for God. Innumerable quotations might be made to illustrate this statement; but unless counterbalanced by others which space forbids, the impression they would give would be even too gloomy and hopeless. Suffice it to say that to the time of Increase Mather there was scarcely a single preacher who seemed to possess. the evangelistic instinct and who could wield the evangelistic methods. In Mather's case hard common-sense and practical tact outweighed theory. He flung the doctrine of inability into the depths and preached sermons which live and breathe today. But he only serves to show by contrast how unfavorable the general style was in its effect upon the majority of hearers.
Thus out of the undue and unseasonable emphasis which the Puritan theology laid upon the divine sovereignty and man's inability there had sprung a blighting influence which had reduced the number of conversions greatly, and was beginning to deplete the churches of members. The Half-Way Covenant was the method hit upon to remedy the difficulty. It allowed parents, themselves baptized, of correct life, who would "own the covenant"--that is, would acknowledge the rightfulness of God's claims upon them, and promise to submit to the discipline of the church, though not professing conversion--to have their children baptized. The arguments for this arrangement were strange. Though much drawn out, in substance they were all one. The infants in question were first proved members of the church (the position of the Episcopal church in England, but repudiated hitherto in New England), and from this their right to baptism was inferred. Thus, in effect, the character of the church was changed. The old Congregational idea had been that the church was the fellowship of believers, and that only they had a right to its privileges, including the baptism of their children. Thus, while the church had an educational function and was to train up men to be Christians, it was viewed, in its strictly ecclesiastical character, not as a school, but as a fellowship of persons already thus trained and already converted. Now it was to perform the function of a school, and within its fold train up men to religion. The full scope of the change was not at first seen, but it was consummated when in 1707 Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, proposed to admit the unregenerate to the Lord's Supper as a means of grace--that is, of conversion. Thus ultimately the doctrine of inability broke down the theory of the new birth in its relation to the church, as it early discouraged the actual exercise of repentance.
The precise causes leading to this remarkable result are somewhat difficult to trace. There was much dispute upon the subject, and the churches were brought to adopt the new method only with great reluctance. Increase Mather wrote in connection with John Davenport, of New Haven, strongly against it, but years afterward took the other side. His treatises upon the side of the new scheme throw some light upon the previous history of the idea. He naturally attempts to gain some support for the plan from the earlier writers, and entitles his first book (of the year 1675): The First Principles of New England concerning the Subject of Baptism. In this he quotes John Cotton as being in favor of the plan. The passages quoted pronounce, indeed, in favor of the baptism of the children of the unregenerate "children," but only upon condition that their "grandparents" assume the training of them. This was Cotton's position in public utterances of the year 1645. But the increasing pressure of the condition of things seems to have led him to waver, and at last, in a letter dated November 8, 1648, and quoted by Mather we have the following passage, which looks somewhat doubtfully in the direction of the Half-Way Covenant:
It is not necessary that they [upon a reformation of the church] should take carnal members of the parish into the fellowship of this renewed election of their ministers, and yet it is not improper but the ministers may perform some ministerial acts to them, as not only to preach the word to them, but happily [i. e., haply] also to baptize their children. For such members are like the church members with us baptized in their infancy yet not received to the Lord's Supper when they come to age, nor admitted to fellowship of voting in admissions, elections, censures, till they come to profess their faith and repentance, and lay hold of the covenant of their parents before the church. And yet, they being not cast out of the church nor the covenant thereof, their children may be capable of the first seal of the covenant, so in this case till the parents themselves grow scandalous and thereby cast out of the covenant of the church.
Other evidences of a tendency to change the early practice before the synod had actually recommended it are adduced by Mather, but most of them are derived from unpublished manuscripts. His father, Richard Mather, who had published a catechism in 1650 which was supposed to bear against the Half-Way Covenant, left a manuscript in which he said that he was in favor of the Covenant, and that the catechism was to be interpreted in consistency with this. Other less famous men are quoted by Mather, and among them is the utterance of John Norton upon his dying-bed (1663), who, when asked what the sins of New England were for which God was displeased with the country, said, among other things, "and for the neglect of baptizing the children of the church, those that some call grandchildren, I think God is provoked by it."
Thus it is evident that it was the pressure of an unexpected state of things which led these fathers reluctantly to a change in their methods. But the particular change made was determined by a peculiarity of their view of the Scriptures, by which the Old and New Testaments were brought upon pretty much the same level as doctrinal authorities, and the distinction between the systems and the dispensations of the two almost obliterated. A very prominent idea with them was that of the "covenant," derived, no doubt, from the Federal School of Holland. God stands in a covenant with believers and their households. Now, as he stood in a covenant with Israel also, the style of interpretation common in New England led to an identification of these covenants in all possible respects; and as an uncircumcised person was outside of the ancient covenant, and excluded from all share in the privileges of the people of God, and in the condition of a pagan; so it was thought that a child brought up in the Christian community and remaining unbaptized would also be outside of the covenant, the recipient of none of the special blessings of grace, and to a considerable degree in a hopeless state. If unbaptized children were indeed outside of the covenant, and thus in a condition but little better than "pagans," as the piteous phrase ran, the thing to be done was to get them into covenant relations that they might be saved. The fact that their parents did not seem to be saved, though in the covenant, escaped the fathers.
It was therefore no superstitious regard for sacraments, no thought of baptismal regeneration, and no conscious lapse from the doctrine of the regenerate church to the view that the church is a school for the gradual training of Christians by the sacraments and Christian teaching, which created the Half-Way Covenant, but simply the passive theology of the times, which waited for God in the matter of conversion as for a sovereign whose gifts of grace were in his own inscrutable disposal, and without whom man was absolutely unable to do anything. To be sure, to baptize children was in the power of man, and this must be done. But repentance was the gift of God, and therefore not the act of man.
But the remedy had no curative effect. The Half-Way Covenant was introduced very largely into the churches and remained sometimes till into the last century, but the course of things was downward. The Indian war broke out 1675-76, agriculture suffered from drought and blight, commerce suffered at sea, pestilences and epidemics arose, and the consciences of the people, educated under the Jewish ideas of which we have already seen an example in the discussions upon the covenant, saw in these calamities the visitations of God for their sins. A "reforming synod" was accordingly called, and met in Boston in 1679. The document put forth by the synod mentions a great many particulars in which the churches had fallen away from their duty and stood in need of a reformation. The reader must make considerable allowance for the phraseology of the day, and for the over-strict views upon many topics which prevailed in New England at the time. Cotton Mather in his account of the matter seems to have an inkling that the terms of the document would be likely to give posterity an unduly unfavorable view of the condition of things, for he says:
Indeed, the people of God in this land were not gone so far in degeneracy but that there were further degrees of disorder and corruption to be found, I must freely speak it, in other, yea in all other places where the protestant religion is professed: and the most impartial observers must have acknowledged that there was proportionably still more of true religion, and a larger number of the stricter saints in this country, than in any other on the face of the earth.
Still, with all allowances, it is evident that there was decline in the community. The positive sins mentioned the increase of profanity, intemperance, and licentiousness show that there was rising a community about the church which deserved the name of "the world," and that the church was not subduing it. Though the synod recommended vigorous measures, and though many churches held special meetings of reconsecration, the evil was not stayed. The Half-Way Covenant had a strong influence in this direction. Those who had come forward and owned the covenant and had their children baptized seemed satisfied with this, and, as Mr. Stoddard said, there was a "general neglect" of the Lord's Supper. "About forty years past," he says in his sermon of the year 1707, "there were multitudes in the country unbaptized: but that neglect was taken into examination, and now there is an alteration in that particular. But to this day there are four to one that do neglect the Lord's Supper, as if it did not belong to them to magnify God on account of the work of redemption." The organized churches were, therefore, in danger of extinction, since the body of communicants, who were the members in full standing and could alone perpetuate the organizations, was decreasing. The evil began probably in connection with the difficulties which had led to the Half-Way Covenant; and we find that to meet it there had already been practiced some laxness in admitting members to the communion without a personal confession of faith. One of the remedies for the prevailing evils proposed by the "reforming synod" gives more than a hint of this. The synod said:
It is requisite that persons be not admitted unto communion in the Lord's Supper without making a personal and public profession of their faith and repentance, either orally or in some other way, so as shall be to the just satisfaction of the church; and that, therefore, both elders and churches be duly watchful and circumspect in this matter.
The careful phraseology shows that in some instances, at least, all proper confession of personal faith had been omitted.
But it was left to Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Mass., to make an open proposal to adopt this lax practice as the regular method of the churches. In 1707 he preached the sermon from which a quotation has already been made, and which bore this title: "The Inexcusableness of Neglecting the Worship of God under a Pretence of Being in an Unconverted Condition." The occasion was a somewhat public one, as the "Inferior Court" was then sitting. It was thus, no doubt, intended to have a general application, and to introduce a practice at least in some respects new. Yet it seems to have grown out of Mr. Stoddard's own experiences as a parish minister. In seeking to restore the Lord's Supper to its proper place in the public observance, he had apparently tried to persuade certain persons to come to the Lord's table, who had met him with the excuse that they were unregenerate, and so had no right to the privilege he urged upon them. So he explains the object of his sermon, when it had been attacked by Increase Mather, as being "to answer a case of conscience and direct those that might have scruples about participating in the Lord's Supper because they have not a work of saving conversion, and not at all to direct the churches to admit any that were not to rational charity true believers." The doctrine he propounded to this end he expresses thus: "That sanctifying grace is not necessary unto the lawful attending of any duty of worship." The general argument is characteristic of New England, though now applied in a new way. It acquires all its strength from the identification of the Jewish system with the Christian at a multitude of points in which they are in fact widely separated. The Lord's Supper ought as much to be observed as any other act of worship, and unconverted persons are just as inexcusable for not attending it as any others; and this all the more, since the Passover in the Old Testament was by all the people without regard to their holy estate.
The most startling view proposed in the sermon was that the unconverted should be urged to come to the sacrament as a converting ordinance. At first sight this looks like a return to the sacramentarianism of the Roman church, but it was not such in fact. On the contrary, Stoddard seems to have held a view of the Lord's Supper too low rather than too high. Among the reasons he gives for his doctrine are that "it is needful that others [than the regenerate] should attend duties of worship that the worship of God may be carried on." And again, "This is very useful that men may obtain sanctifying grace . . . God in the Lord's Supper invites us to come to Christ, makes an affecting representation of his sufferings for our sins," etc. He styles it a "seal of the covenant," but he says in his later treatise "that the sacraments do not seal up pardon and salvation to all that receive them, but they are seals to the truth of the covenant." Now, if Stoddard meant by the first clause of this last sentence that the seals did not seal simply as outward elements, no one in New England would have disagreed with him; but he probably intended to deny that the sacraments had any personal application as seals of forgiveness to the believing recipient, and to limit their sealing efficacy to the covenant in general, that is, to make them mere monuments--a view far from the Scriptures, the Confessions, and the consensus of teaching in New England at the time. Thus the main thing about them was the affecting representation they made; their efficiency was that of a sermon, or a prayer, and hence they should be attended by the unregenerate, as these should be.
This sermon was, however, not only a factor in the decline of the New England churches, but also incidentally a witness that the decline had already proceeded to quite an alarming point. Upon nothing had the earliest Congregationalists insisted with greater or juster emphasis than upon the necessity of a godly ministry. The Cambridge Platform made the divine calling an indispensable prerequisite of the office. The minute pains taken to secure a regenerate church membership would have had no significance, had not even greater been taken to secure a ministry who could impress the truths of the gospel with power because they had a deep experience of the divine word themselves. But a declining church had now produced a declining ministry, and we find Mr. Stoddard gravely arguing for his new position that sanctifying grace was not necessary unto attending any duty of worship, from the further position, which is stated as an acknowledged principle, that "sanctifying grace is not necessary unto . . . preaching of the word!" He says:
It is upon all accounts most desirable that preachers should be godly men, and, ceteris paribus, they that are converted themselves are most likely to be instruments of the conversion of sinners and the edification of saints. Yet it is lawful for men in a natural condition to preach the word. Jesus Christ sent out Judas to preach the gospel as well as the other disciples.
And later he says again:
If a man do know himself to be unregenerate, yet it is lawful for him to administer baptism and the Lord's Supper. The blessing of this ordinance doth not depend upon the piety of him that doth administer it . . . Men that are destitute of grace are not prohibited in the word of God to administer the ordinances of God.
Now this, we are to note, is by no means the position that the unworthiness of the ministrant does not affect the validity of the sacrament administered, to him who receives it, though this acknowledged principle is used as an argument in its favor; but it is the position that an unconverted man may, so far as he is himself concerned, go on lawfully to administer the ordinances, or, in other words, that a man who knows himself to be in God's eye out of the church may do those things which belong alone to the members of the church to do!
How, now, could such a position be for an instant maintained, had there not already been discussion among the churches upon this topic, which was called out by some patent and strange fact? How, unless there were already ministers who could not in honesty claim to be converted, and for whom some way of justification had been anxiously sought? The later complaint of Whitefield about "unconverted ministers," whom, to his own mind, he found in many places in New England, points in the same direction, and gives too much reason to fear that the decay in the churches had now confessedly reached even the ministers themselves.
The main object of Mr. Stoddard, in his sermon, was accomplished, and though Increase Mather opposed him with strong logic of the reason, that stronger logic of events was with the innovator, and the practice became general in the valley of the Connecticut at least to admit persons to the communion who did not profess to be converted. Rev Benjamin Coleman, of Boston, also favored the idea, and doubtless many others, though there was also always a large number who repudiated both the HalfWay Covenant and its daughter, lax communion. The spiritual dearth increased, revivals were uncommon, immorality grew apace, and the state of religion went lower and lower. Theological modifications naturally entered with lax practice, and the Arminian writings of Tillotson, Whitby, Taylor, and Clarke, and subsequently the Socinian treatises of Emlyn (reprinted in America in 1756, and no doubt read long before that) and others were read and had a large influence. How far the Congregational clergy became Arminian at this time (about 1720) it is impossible to say. The impression was abroad that many, both in the ministry and the churches, were in greater or less sympathy with this style of thought. Proofs and traces of it will be found at a later point in this history; but it is now enough to note that so keen an observer as Jonathan Edwards thought Arminianism "prevailing" and was led to devote his principal writing to opposing it, and, indeed, began the great revival work of his life with a repreaching of the fundamental doctrines of Calvinism, the effects of which went far to show that his diagnosis of the disease was correct.
The course of this review has brought the reader to the lowest point of religious decline reached in New England, whether it be considered from a practical or a doctrinal point of view. Before he begins to trace the upward course of things, and to view the influences under which that took place, he should pause long enough to perceive that the progress downward has its fruitful cause in the one fact of an alarming absence of vital piety in the New England communities. There was not regenerate material for the regenerate church. It was sought to remedy the difficulty in various ways, but they did not touch this underlying cause. The children of the unregenerate were baptized, but that did not secure their conversion, and the church continued to grow fewer and fewer in number. Then the unregenerate were invited to the Lord's table, but though a greater number of communicants was thus secured, the general condition of the community did not improve, and all that New England was founded for, or her pious sons still cared for, went slowly to ruin. And, doctrinally considered, the cause of all was the doctrine of inability, so preached as to deplete the churches, by disc discouraging repentance and faith.
The influence of the style of thought becoming largely prevalent in England has been hinted at. The complete understanding of this thought, of importance not only for its direct, but for many indirect, influences upon subsequent New England thinking, demands that a still fuller consideration be given to it in the following pages.
JONATHAN EDWARDS CHAPTER II:
Edwards' Earlier Labors
The New England churches have now evidently come to a crisis. They have been established in America for a full century. The forces embraced in the perfected system of Calvinism, both good and evil, have been at work a hundred years upon a field singularly favorable to their normal development, protected by its isolation from the most demoralizing tendencies, but not wholly excluded from the general influences, of the age. The course of events has been against the better of them and has tended to emphasize the worse. Political and social degeneration resulting from the trials of the frontier has operated to assist. And, at the end, it seems that the whole theological system, is about to give way to another, and with this change the great principles of the Protestant Reformation seem about to fall. But much of the old was evidently good, and cannot be surrendered, and much of the new is bad, and must be resisted. Evidently a great work is waiting to be done, and one demanding a man. What man is there who can do it?
The answer was providentially given in the birth and career of Jonathan Edwards. Born and trained in a parsonage, it was but natural that his early religious experiences should be marked. For a time they were overshadowed by the intellectual interests which engaged his opening mind. At ten years of age he was able to refute with cogency and wit the doctrine that the soul is material and sleeps with the body till the resurrection. At thirteen he was ready for college, and at fourteen he was reading Locke's Essay upon Human Understanding and enjoying a far higher pleasure in the perusal of its pages "than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly discovered treasure." With the sensational philosophy of this great thinker he became entirely familiar, but the spiritual and mystical tendencies of his own mind, combined no doubt with the influence of that strain of thought which, first put by Augustine into the words, Omne bonum aut Deus aut ex Deo, had become the determining element in Calvinism, led him to conclusions substantially identical with those of Bishop Berkeley, with whose writings he may have been familiar. The great thoughts of Leibnitz and of Malebranche, of Cumberland and of Hutcheson, became familiar to him, probably through the personal reading of their works. And by his own independent study he had already arrived, while a mere boy, at those great leading principles which formed the staple of his later thinking and constitute his chief contribution to the thought of his age.
Thus Edwards became intellectually equipped for the task of a theologian above any of his contemporaries. He brought from his studies competent learning, the matured fruits of original thinking, marked independence and entire candor of mind, exceptional acuteness and thoroughness, and chief of all the unquenched fire of native genius of a high order. But he possessed higher qualifications for the work that was to fall to him than even these. That early spiritual experience of divine truth, which had suffered a partial eclipse in later childhood, had been renewed and deepened with his increasing maturity of mind. It is significant, and to a large degree determinative of the whole development of New England theology, that it was about the doctrine of the divine sovereignty that his thoughts principally centered, and that this doctrine, the central idea of Calvinism as distinguished from the Arminianism which was just then entering New England and creating the problem which Edwards was providentially set to solve, though it once "used to appear like a horrible doctrine" to him, became "not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction." His mind possessed the power of spiritual intuition, characteristic of his Welsh ancestry, in a large degree. He seemed to behold spiritual truths by direct vision. And he was eminently a man of prayer, of intimate communion with God as his Father and Friend.
It is comparatively easy for us who live at this later day to formulate the problem which lay before Edwards. It was not to make all things new. The fruits of a historical development were not to be rashly or carelessly relinquished. What was good in the old formulations of doctrine was to be preserved. But at the same time the old could not be reintroduced without modification. Theological opposition and innovation is never properly met by simple reaffirmation of old positions in the old language. The reason for the objection must be perceived and appreciated by him who would give it a due and conclusive answer. What is true in it must be acknowledged and given proper weight. He who will teach must himself learn. Hence what has justly offended the newly awakened mind of an inquiring age must be set aside, and out of all the materials afforded by the times, new and old, the theologian must go on to introduce, with his better formulations of the old principles, other principles which may be absolutely new.
It cannot be said that Edwards placed the problem before himself in any such form. He was profoundly attached to the Calvinistic system, and his first instinct was to restore it to its high place of influence. This was so far well, and he was hereby preserved from the first great danger of a leader at such a time, that of disloyalty to the past. But, though he may have had no thought of doctrinal change, his mind was too original and his studies too exact to permit him to remain where his fathers had been. He was, possibly, somewhat deficient at first in respect for the positions of his adversaries, though not for the influence which they were exerting. But his perfect candor, his clear perception of truth, and his personal humility combined to open to him many new vistas as he studied, and what truth he saw he acknowledged and made his own. Thus he made a reply to the departures of the day which was capable of meeting the situation and of advancing the interests of theology. If his natural intensity of conviction and expression as to what he was led to adopt, which seems to make all his writings pulsate with life, be added, the fitness of Edwards to solve the theological problem of his day, largely unconscious as it was, will have been made clear.
Edwards' ministry began in a place where the full force of the theological situation could be felt, in Northampton, as the colleague of Solomon Stoddard, to whom he sustained the relation of grandson. In that parish, where the most extreme application of the Half-Way Covenant had been made, the subtle influences of Arminianism were most likely to attract the attention and excite the opposition of such a man as Edwards. For a time no sign of this appears. His grandfather survived his ordination two years, and for two more nothing occurs to mark his work as in any sense peculiar. But in the year 1731 he was invited to preach the "public lecture" in Boston, and selected as his theme "God Glorified in Man's Dependence." He set forth the absolute and universal dependence of the redeemed upon God as the cause, and only proper cause, of all their good. The grace, the power, the direct agency of God are emphasized, and he is presented as the "objective" and "inherent" good of his saints. The doctrine of the sermon was in no respect remarkable, but something in its tone attracted great attention. Its secret is revealed in the following passage from the "use." Says Edwards:
Hence those doctrines and schemes of divinity that are in any respect opposite to such an absolute and universal dependence on God, derogate from his glory and thwart the design of our redemption. And such are those schemes that . . . own an entire dependence upon God for some things, but not for others; they own that we depend on God for the gift and acceptance of a Redeemer, but deny so absolute a dependence on him for the obtaining of an interest in the Redeemer. They own an absolute dependence on the Father for giving his Son, and on the Son for working out redemption, but not so entire a dependence upon the Holy Ghost for conversion, and a being in Christ, and so coming to a title to his benefits. They own a dependence on God for means of grace, but not absolutely for the benefit and success of those means, etc.
It is unquestionable that the preacher, in this reference to undue emphasis upon human independence and initiative, had in mind that "prevailing" Arminianism against which the principal contests of his life were to be waged.
Three years later the silence was again broken by a sermon, preached in his own church, upon the doctrine of a "Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God," which was defined as consisting not in our natural convictions of sin and misery, nor in any impression made upon the imagination, nor in any new truths not contained in the word of God, but in a "sense of the divine and superlative excellency of the things of religion," and "a conviction of the truth and reality of them," If in the former sermon the logical and doctrinal theologian was foreshadowed, here we find the spiritual seer.
These sermons were like the first booming of a solitary gun upon the opening of a great battle. The more special work of Edwards began when in 1734 he preached a sermon, afterwards expanded into a treatise and published, which initiated his first revival, and began a new epoch in American religious life. It was entitled Justification by Faith, and was a direct attack upon Arminianism. It is a strong and original presentation of the common doctrine of the Reformed churches upon this subject. Positions are maintained which Edwards' successors, following out principles which he had given them, were led to reject, although we easily trace at such points a certain conventionality of treatment, which indicates the controlling influence of theological tradition. But at other points the investigating mind which was always asking the reason for every accepted doctrine, and the spiritual trend of the writer's thought, come prominently to view. justification is defined as consisting, not merely in the forgiveness of our sins, but in the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us whereby we have that which is the ground of our being rewarded with eternal life. The defense of imputation is conventional. But the definition of faith and of repentance marks a distinct advance upon the tone of the previous century, and the explanation of the reason why faith should be made the condition of justification departs widely from the mechanical methods of Calvinistic scholasticism and reproduces the true spiritual atmosphere of the better days. Every idea of merit in faith is excluded--here is the evangelical element; but faith is said to be the condition of forgiveness, because it unites the soul to Christ so that there is a fitness in bestowing such a favor in consequence of it. justification is thus a "manifestation of God's regard to the beauty of that order that there is in uniting those things that have a natural agreement and congruity and unition of the one with the other."
One can scarcely refrain, as he thus passes over the first great influential work of the originator of a new school in theology, from asking how far the future master was seen in his first attempt; nor from considering more seriously whether Edwards really showed himself the man fully to cope with the New England situation. We have already traced the condition of the churches at this time to the lack of conversions, and this lack to the constant preaching of the divine sovereignty in the form of the inability of man. The mind of the age, as well as the experience of the churches, had come to the point where the old doctrine of sovereignty needed modification. More room was demanded for the activity of man. It was at this point that the new leader was to be tested. Could he perceive the real difficulty? Had he any sufficient remedy to offer?
In reply to these questions, a somewhat ambiguous answer must be made. Edwards saw what all saw--Arminians, Half-Way men like Stoddard, and Calvinists alike--that the great necessity of the times was conversions. He saw, what many did not see, that the conversion required was a deep and pervading, a divinely. wrought work in the soul. He saw also that the tendency among the Arminians to confuse a "good, moral life" with the Christian life, and to depend for salvation upon the striking at the day of judgment of a kind of moral balance-sheet between good and bad deeds, was a fundamental abandonment of the gospel. The new emphasis upon the worth and place of man in the scheme of things had forgotten for the time that he had misused his freedom radically, and was guilty and ruined. What was wanted, therefore, was just the old doctrine of salvation by faith, by spiritual union with God, and by justification, by the free forgiveness of the sinner in the infinite grace of God in Jesus Christ; and this Edwards enforced with great power. The result was the renewal of what had almost ceased, of conversions, and the revival by the logic of facts in the thinking of the churches of the doctrine of the new birth. There was no new truth brought forward at this point, but a new impression of the truth was made which was almost equivalent to the impression which a new truth is adapted to make. The doctrine of regeneration acquired practical effectiveness, for men were actually born again in great numbers in the revivals of the years 1735 and 1740, and thus the old paralysis of New England was broken up.
But Edwards did not at this time see the source of that old paralysis in the doctrine of inability. His influence was that of a great preacher, not yet that of a great thinker. He was not yet at the point where the arguments of his opponents could begin to have a large effect upon his own convictions. He held too strong views as to the divine sovereignty, and had found the doctrine too "delightful" to be much inclined to learn where it had gradually obscured other truths by its too rank development. Hence the doctrine of inability, the source of the whole difficulty which he so clearly saw, did not appear to him in its unfavorable aspects. Indeed, it somewhat obscured his own view of the freeness of God's grace and of the divine readiness to forgive. His preaching was still too much as if men were to give themselves completely to God, to surrender themselves wholly, to fulfil every condition prescribed by the gospel, and then to remain in entire uncertainty whether, after all, God would bless them or not. He even says, quite in the line of the earlier thought, that fixedness of resolution sufficient to obtain salvation is "not in our power." Certainly, such a strain of remark as the following was not eminently calculated to encourage the hearer to action:
You must not think much of your pains, and of the length of time; you must press towards the kingdom of God, and do your utmost, and hold out to the end, and learn to make no account of it when you have done. You must undertake the business of seeking salvation upon these terms, and with no other expectation than this, that if ever God bestows mercy, it will be in his own time; and not only so, but also that when you have done all, God will not hold himself obliged to show you mercy at last.
Not encouraging, certainly, in its outcome is this passage; and yet there is an appeal to "press" and "do" and "hold out," which has a ring anticipatory of later and better preaching; and this tone of exhortation to action which sounded through all Edward's preaching--the thrilling, intense activity of his ardent soul--this it was which moved men to repentance and conversion, and this first actually broke down the doctrine of inability. That doctrine has never played any actual part in the thinking of men in times of real revival.
Evidently, then, the thinker and reformer has not yet come to his full strength. There is a promise, but still little present exercise, of the powers of a great intellectual leader. It is the instinctive working of a great mind which we see here, rather than the well-planned efforts of one who had surveyed the field and fully comprehended his task.
The external history of the revival does not concern us here. Its vicissitudes, the interruption which it suffered until renewed under the agency of Whitefield, the abundant labors of Edwards at home and abroad, the abnormal phenomena attending it, however interesting, are all matters aside from our present purpose. It called out intense opposition from many moderate men among the New England clergy, of whom the most prominent was Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Church in Boston, who wrote several tracts against it, among them his Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England (1743). The divine character and the religious worth of the revival were denied, and hence Edwards felt called upon to come to its defense. In a large measure he became the historian of the great spiritual upheaval. He was also led to the production of a work which was designed to lay the foundation for more solid and successful labor in the field of practical religion by removing the obscurity which overhung the nature of true religion, and by setting forth the distinguishing notes of that virtue which is acceptable in the sight of God. It was entitled A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and was an exceedingly thorough affair. In a sense it may be regarded as the full presentation of the ideas which had formed the substance of the sermon upon illumination of 1734. It rests upon the conception of the nature of virtue which was elaborated in the treatise of 1755, and it is involved in some of the confusion which marked the first principles of the treatise upon the will. It will therefore require some attention at a later point in the study of the history of Edwards' ideas, but is of the first importance in immediate connection with the review of his services in the period now under consideration, since it is the chief illustration of his entire accord with the spiritual side of the Westminster theology to which notice has already been drawn.
"True religion, in great part," says Edwards, "consists in holy affections." What the affections are he does not clearly define, for though distinguishing between what are called in the better phraseology of modern days, volitions, and the emotions proper, he blurs the distinction and refuses to acknowledge that there are two distinct faculties of the mind here concerned. His thought, stated in modern language, is, however, clearly this, that religion consists in the holy choice of the will accompanied by the lively play of the appropriate emotions. Having established this point, he goes on to discuss most searchingly some supposed signs of true religion which are no certain evidences of its existence. It is, for example, no sign that religious affections are "truly gracious" that they are "very great," or that they have "great effects upon the body," or that they cause fluency or fervor, or that they are "not excited by us," or "come with texts of Scripture," or that their subjects have great confidence; etc., etc. And then he passes to the positive treatment of the theme, in which he follows the lines of his former sermon. Truly spiritual affections arise from supernatural operations on the heart; their object is the excellency of divine things "as they are in themselves;" they are founded on the moral excellency of divine things; they arise from divine illumination; they are attended with a conviction of the reality and certainty of divine things; and their fruit are tempers of heart and courses of life that are manifestly truly Christian.
In the course of the treatise many incidental definitions are thrown out which add much to the clearness of the general thought above that of the former discussion. The sense of divine things which the true Christian has, is unfolded at some length, and is condensed in the following definition: "A new foundation laid in the nature of the soul for a new kind of exercises of the same [i. e., the original] faculty of the understanding." But when Edwards comes to the peculiar certainty which the Christian has of the truth of divine things, he is particularly clear and valuable. He says:
It is evident that there is a spiritual conviction of the truth, or a belief peculiar to those who are spiritual, who are regenerated, and who have the Spirit of God, in his holy communications, dwelling in them as a vital principle. A view of the divine glory directly convinces the mind of the divinity of these things. They therefore that see the stamp of this glory in divine things, they see divinity in them, they see God in them, and so see them to be divine; because they see that in them wherein the truest idea of divinity consists. Thus a soul may have a kind of intuitive knowledge of the divinity of the things exhibited in the gospel; not that he judges the doctrines of the gospel to be from God without any argument or deduction at all; but it is without any long chain of arguments; the argument is but one and the evidence direct; the mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but one step, and that is its divine glory. The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a begging for its evidence so much as some think: it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself.
And he further adds, with reference to the importance of this argument:
Unless men may come to a reasonable solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel by internal evidences in the way that has been spoken, viz., by a sight of its glory, it is impossible that those who are illiterate and unacquainted with history should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all . . . After all that learned men have said to them, there will remain innumerable doubts on their minds; they will be ready, when pinched with some great trial of their faith, to say, "How do I know this or that? How do I know when these histories were written? Learned men tell me these histories were so and so attested in their day; but how do I know that there were such attestations then? . . . But the gospel was not given, only for learned men . . . It is unreasonable to suppose that God has provided for his people no more than probable evidences of the truth of the gospel . . . And if we come to fact and experience, there is not the least reason to suppose that one in a hundred of those who have been sincere Christians and have had a heart to sell all for Christ, have come by their conviction of the truth of the gospel this way (viz. by external arguments] . . . And indeed, it is but very lately that these arguments have been set in a clear and convincing light even by learned men themselves: and since it has been done, there never were fewer thorough believers among those who have been educated in the true religion. Infidelity never prevailed so much in any age as in this wherein these arguments are handled to the greatest advantage.
Edwards did not neglect the external arguments, as Calvin had not; but we see here clearly that he placed the weight of argument where it should be, in the inner certainty of the specific Christian experience. This was the trend of the Westminster confession; and under Edwards' influence it maintained itself for a generation longer in New England. Under what influences it gave place to the purely external treatment of the subject which was characteristic of the middle of the present century, the history of the Unitarian controversy will clearly reveal.
The last important work owing its origin immediately to the results of the revival was the Qualifications for Communion. Edwards had at first followed unquestionably in the path marked out by his grandfather Stoddard, and admitted to the communion without special examination as to evidences of conversion upon the part of the communicant. But he discovered a bad moral condition in the community affecting its younger members, some of whom were communicants; and the resistance which was made by prominent families to necessary discipline led him to examine the subject with care, and he soon adopted the original position of the New England churches and determined to admit none to communion who were not "ostensible" Christians. His attempts to carry out his new views in practice led to his dismissal from his pastorate, and to the preparation of this treatise in defense of himself before his people. He thereby laid the foundation for the general practice of Congregationalists for more than a century.
His proposition, carefully guarded, is that none should be admitted to the Lord's Supper but "such as are in profession and in the eye of the church's Christian judgment godly or gracious persons." He does not seek to secure infallibly the actual possession of saving grace in every communicant, for that would involve on the part of the church the power of reading men's hearts; but there should be what is now phrased a "credible profession." The arguments he employed are these:
None ought to be admitted as members of the visible church of Christ but visible and professing saints. All who are capable of it are bound to make an explicit and open profession of the true religion. The profession should be of real piety [against the idea of professing a belief in Christianity in general without a profession of personal faith in Christ]. There is no good reason why the people of God should not profess a proper respect to Christ in their hearts as well as a true notion of him in their heads . . . The teachings of Christ, the practice of the primitive church, and the Scriptures in general, require it.
He modestly but strongly refutes the position of Mr. Stoddard, saying that the natural tendency of the Lord's Supper to move the heart and lead to conversion is no proof that this was its designed object, and finally strikes at the root of the whole Half-Way system by saying, in effect, that the things which baptism and the Lord's Supper signify do not exist in the case of the unregenerate, and hence to bestow the badges of repentance and forgiveness upon such persons is an empty and dishonoring honor.
The importance of the practical service rendered by the Qualifications for Communion can scarcely be overestimated. It is too evident to need long discussion here. Its influence in the doctrinal sphere, though indirect, was permanent and broad. Wherever there were "Edwardeans," after there came to be a distinctively Edwardean school, evidences of regeneration were scrutinized with care, and a consequent emphasis was laid upon the doctrine of regeneration, and upon the allied doctrines of the will, and of virtue, and of sin, which form the great staple of New England discussion. It is probable that Edwards' practical work as a revivalist and a faithful and scrupulous pastor had as great an influence upon the future of his native province as that which he did in his study by the methods of the philosophic divine. Yet in the providence of God he was to do both works; and the separation from Northampton, which was so unjust, and which cost him so much anguish, was the divine means of transplanting him to the desolate and distant Stockbridge, where his mind, released from most of the interruptions of active life, was at leisure to bring forth out of its treasure-house things new and old. To this period, the loftier and greater in its results for American religious thought, the history now turns.
CHAPTER III: The Treatise On The Freedom Of The Will
If the great characteristic of Edward's mind was acuteness, next, if not upon an equality with this, are to be placed his depth and thoroughness. He had met Arminianism upon the side of its practical opposition to evangelical religion, of its coldness, its self-righteousness, its antagonism to the practical measures by which a pure Christian church could alone be sustained. But he was content with no superficial consideration of what were mere symptoms. These outward phenomena were traceable to some definite cause, and that some particular idea. Edwards conceived this to be the philosophy of the will which had become prevalent, and as early as 1747 he had sketched the plan of a work upon this theme, which the disturbances leading up to his dismissal had rendered it impossible for him to carry out. In Stockbridge he took up the thread, and in 1754 printed his Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of That Freedom of the Will Which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, etc. Its importance is evident not only from the universal plaudits with which it was received, and from the position among the great men of the world which it secured to its author, but by the permanence of its influence as a classic of the New England theology. In actual fact, it was but the first of a considerable series of treatises in New England in which the theory of the will was discussed, and by which it was essentially modified and improved; but in the imagination of the different leaders of the school, down to the latest, it was the unsurpassed ideal with which they all sought to prove their entire agreement.
The Freedom of the Will cannot be correctly understood without a clear view of Edwards' starting-point. Two particulars are to be carefully observed, of which the first is his conception of the idea of cause. There are evidences in those remarkable Notes on the Mind, written while he was a youth in college, that Edwards early busied himself with this problem; and it is noteworthy that the treatise written in mature manhood went no farther than the notes of the youth. The Notes say succinctly: "Cause is that after or upon the existence of which, or the existence of it after such a manner, the existence of another thing follows." And in the treatise the definition runs:
Therefore I sometimes use the word cause, in this enquiry, to signify any antecedent, either natural or moral, positive or negative, on which an event, either a thing, or the manner and circumstance of a thing, so depends, that it is the ground and reason, either in whole or in part, why it is, rather than not; or why it is as it is, rather than otherwise; or, in other words, any antecedent with which a consequent event is so connected that it truly belongs to the reason why the proposition which affirms that event, is true; whether it has any positive influence, or not. And agreeably to this, I sometimes use the word effect for the consequence of another thing which is perhaps rather an occasion than a cause, most properly speaking.
Upon the idea of cause as thus defined the whole treatise rests, for an event in the realm of mind without a cause is as inconceivable to Edwards as such a one in the realm of matter. This is the great positive argument of the discussion, though rather an assumed axiom than the subject of prolonged elaboration. And thus it comes to pass that into the very foundation of the whole argument there is inserted an ambiguity which doubtless deceived Edwards himself, and has given rise to two distinct interpretations of the work. Motives are "causes" determining the will. Is the motive an occasion upon which the efficient will acts, or itself an efficient cause operating upon the will? Edwards' definition gives no answer to this question, for he has wrapped up in one term both efficient and occasional causes. It was doubtless true that his idealism had much to do with this. If God was the only agent, if, according to the occasionalism of Malebranche, God does everything upon occasion of certain events in the mundane sphere, then there is no essential difference between the occasional, and what seems to us to be the efficient cause. But, however the ambiguity was introduced into his thinking, there it was, at the very foundation of the edifice he was about to rear, and destined to make its whole structure insecure to the highest pinnacle.
The second particular calling for attention is the division of the mind into faculties, understanding, and will, which Edwards, following Calvin, and deserting at this redeeming point his master, Locke, unfortunately adopted. Thus he confounded the emotions, the action of which is necessary, with the will, the action of which is free, and attributed to the latter, as a matter of self-evidence, all the necessity of the former. The confusion resulted in the entire ambiguity of the word "inclination," which is sometimes used to denote an emotion and often in the same sentence, and in the process of a vital argument, used immediately thereafter, and as if no change of meaning had been made, to denote a volition. Hence as an argument the whole treatise splits upon the rock of this ambiguous middle. It is one of the curiosities of literature that in our own day there should be found some, who accept the threefold division of the mind and the true efficiency of second causes, to declare that they agree with Edwards on the doctrine of the will!
With such fundamental conceptions long since incorporated in his whole style of thinking, Edwards came into contact with the Arminian writers of his day. Among these the chief was Daniel Whitby, who in his work entitled Six Discourses discussed, not only the will, but also all the so-called "Five Points" of controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians. Thus he taught a "conditional election to be made sure by good works," as well as the doctrine of general atonement, and combated the Calvinistic views upon irresistible grace, bondage of the will, and the perseverance of the saints.
Such a setting to the doctrine of free will did not help it with Edwards. But in its details this doctrine impinged upon his established methods of thought. The will, according to Whitby, is free not only in the sense of being the faculty of choice, but as having no determination either to evil or good. Its liberty he thus defines: "a power of acting from ourselves, or doing what we will." Thus it is free, not only from "co-action," but from what, in distinction from that, was called "necessity." In a quotation from a certain Mr. Thorndike the word "indifference" is used to describe this freedom.
Upon this free will motives, such as promises and threats, operate and exercise influence; but when the motives are presented, the decision still lies with the will. It may choose in the one way equally with the other; and it chooses as it does by "self-determination." True, Whitby does not, so far as noted, employ this precise word, upon which Edwards rings so many changes; but the thought is his, and he does once at least say that the will "determines itself." If, now, it determines itself, says Whitby, there is evidently no rational ground for knowing beforehand what the action of the will in a given case may be, even when all the operating motives are supposed to be known. The omniscience of God, which embraces his foreknowledge, is therefore an attribute entirely mysterious. It also follows that man in conversion is not passive and that the grace of God is not irresistible.
The arguments by which Whitby sustained his positions were not novel, and moved in the plain sphere of common sense. He first sought to show that it was as essential that the will should be free from "necessity" as from "co-action," and then directed his easy task toward showing that there could be, in consistence with the condition in which man is (a state of probation), and with the treatment which he receives as an object of praise or blame, of commands, and of promises, no "co-action" of the will.
To this treatise, and to others like it, as, for example, that of Mr. Chubb, Edwards gave minute attention. It doubtless seemed to him that the answer was easy. The philosophical world had before it in the work of Locke the complete materials for the refutation. He had only to sit down, as he thought, and with sufficient thoroughness explain and enforce what Locke had already said in brief, and then show at length how inconsequent and illogical in the comparison each several position of the antagonists was, and the work would be done. It is therefore necessary briefly to review Locke's theory of the will in preparation for the consideration of Edwards himself.
It has already been noted that Edwards early read Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. That early reading seems to have made the strongest impression upon his mind, and, as we shall see, the improvements which Locke introduced in his second edition were generally rejected by Edwards in the preparation of his great treatise.
Locke begins his treatment of the will, by defining the idea of liberty as "the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action according to the determination or thought of the mind whereby either of them is preferred to the other." It will be seen that some stress was laid by him in the development of his thought upon the word "forbear" in this definition; but apart from this modification, liberty is always external liberty, the power to do as one wills. He even says that it is an "unreasonable because unintelligible question whether man's will be free or no."
Liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will which is also but a power . . . To ask whether the will has freedom is to ask whether one power has another power, one ability another ability . . . We can scarce tell how to imagine any being freer than to be able to do what he wills.
In developing this thought, he touches the question "whether a man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases, motion or rest?" Which he answers thus:
This question carries the absurdity of it so manifestly in itself that one might thereby sufficiently be convinced that liberty concerns not the will. For to ask, whether a man be at liberty to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he please, is to ask whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleased with what he is pleased with. A question which I think needs no answer; and they who can make a question of it must suppose one will to determine the acts of another, and another to determine that; and so on in infinitum.
This argument, it should be noted, is the famous reductio ad absurdum, which formed the staple of Edwards' reply to his adversaries.
Locke now takes up the central topic of the theme, and asks the question: "What determines the will?" At this point the important difference between the first and second editions of the Human Understanding comes into view. Locke says:
It seems so established and settled a maxim by the general consent of all mankind that good, the greater good, determines the will, that I do not at all wonder that, when I first published my thoughts on this subject, I took it for granted; and I imagine that by a great many I shall be thought more excusable for having then done so than that now I have ventured to recede from so received an opinion. But yet upon a stricter enquiry I am forced to conclude that good, the greater good, though apprehended and acknowledged to be so, does not determine the will until our desire, raised proportionably to it, makes us uneasy in the want of it.
The answer to the question propounded--"What determines the will?"--is, then, in both editions: "The motive before it;" but in the first edition, where the will had not been sharply distinguished from the desire, it was the objective motive, the good, whereas now it is the subjective motive, or the desire excited by the good presented to the mind. This distinction depended upon the new conception Locke had gained of the "perfect distinction" of the will from the desire, which, he says, "must not be confounded."
But, now, what moves desire? Locke replies, "Happiness." "What has an aptness to produce pleasure in us, is that we call good." But a good must be so situated as to stir desire, or it Will never influence action. An absent good, for example, is less effective than some present uneasiness.
The drift of all this discussion has evidently been to place the will completely under the causative control of the desires. But at just this point Locke introduces the saving element for which he has previously opened the way. It is natural, he says, that the greatest and most pressing uneasiness-
should determine the will to the next action; and so it does for the most part, but not always. For the mind having in most cases, as is evident in experience, a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires, and so all, one after another, is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty man has, and from the not using of it right, comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavors after happiness, whilst we precipitate the determination of our wills and engage too soon before due examination.
But when deliberation has taken place, the action not only follows according to the "most pressing uneasiness," but it should do this, for "'tis not a fault but a perfection of our nature to desire, will, and act according to the last result of a fair examination."
Upon this basis, as already said, the reply of Edwards to Whitby and his associates was prepared. In substance, it was as follows:
Every act of the will is an act of choice and involves alternatives. Placed between two eligible things, the question in discussion is: "What determines the will to choose the one rather than the other?" The Arminians said that the will determined itself. Edwards says that the will is determined by the motive which it actually follows.
To motives are therefore ascribed a positive power. They are causes, and, so far as a tendency to the occasionalism of Malebranche which is evident in his writings allowed, Edwards ascribed to them efficient causation. They could be calculated, and upon a perfect knowledge of their nature and potency the future action of a being influenced by them could be predicted. In this the subjective conditions which determine the influence of motives were not neglected, but still positive power was left to the objective motive.
Thus the prevailing motive both determines that the action of the will shall take place and also how it shall take place. It does this because it possesses a certain attractive power, or because it is an apparent good. And, inasmuch as it acts as a cause, it is evident that the greatest apparent good in any group of conflicting apparent goods will determine the will. Hence the maxim: "The will is as the greatest apparent good."
Hence the choices of the will are as necessary as the events of the physical world. They are caused by motives in the same sense as these are caused by the forces of objects and events in nature. Yet this does not infringe upon the liberty of man, because it leaves him so far entirely able to do what he wills; and this is the meaning of liberty and the only meaning it can have. To suppose that freedom means that a man can will as he wills, is to involve oneself in self-contradiction. The only conceivable liberty is external liberty.
Virtue or vice consists in the nature of the choice made in any case irrespective of its origin. Commands and threats are motives which may be employed, but whatever the motives, as a man chooses, so is he.
Such is a summary view of the theory brought forward in answer to Whitby. Its importance demands that it be presented in the very words of its author. After some preliminary definitions, which have been already noted, Edwards begins the development of his theme by defining the determination of the will. He says: "By determining the will, if the phrase be used with any meaning, must be intended causing that the act of the will should be thus and not otherwise," etc.
Now, evidently Edwards' meaning in the further development of his theme will be dependent upon the meaning attached by him to the word "causing." This he elsewhere explains in the following words:
Sometimes by moral necessity is meant that necessity of connection and consequence which arises from such moral causes as the strength of inclination or motives, and the connection which there is in many cases between these and such certain volitions and actions . . . By natural necessity as applied to men I mean such necessity as men are under through the force of natural causes as distinguished from what are called moral causes . . . This difference, however, does not lie so much in the nature of the connection as in the two terms connected.
The causes are motives, which are thus defined:
By motive I mean the whole of that which moves, excites, or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly. Many particular things may concur and unite their strength to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as one complex motive. And when I speak of the strongest motive, I have respect to the strength of the whole that operates to induce a particular act of volition whether that be the strength of one thing alone or many together.
The law of the action of motives is thus expressed:
Things that exist in the view of the mind have their strength, tendency, or advantage to move, or excite its will, from many things appertaining to the nature and circumstances of the thing viewed, the nature and circumstances of the mind that views, and the degree and manner of its view; of which it would perhaps be hard to make a perfect enumeration. But so much I think may be determined in general, without room for controversy, that whatever is perceived or apprehended by an intelligent and voluntary agent, which has the nature and influence of a motive to volition or choice, is considered or viewed as good; nor has it any tendency to engage the election of the soul in any further degree than it appears such. For to say otherwise, would be to say that things that appear good have a tendency, by the appearance they make, to engage the mind to elect them, some other way than by their appearing eligible to it; which is absurd. And therefore it must be true, in some sense, that the will always is, as the greatest apparent good is.
Edwards' system is thus a system of necessity, and avowedly so. But it is not a system of physical necessity, and he is at considerable pains to make this plain, futile as the distinction will prove to be under his management of the theory. He expresses himself variously. At one time he says:
Metaphysical or philosophical necessity is nothing different from . . . certainty. I speak not now of the certainty of knowledge, but the certainty that is in things themselves, which is the foundation of the certainty of the knowledge.
At another time:
Philosophical necessity is really nothing else than the full and fixed connection between the things signified by the subject and predicate of the proposition which affirms something to be true . . . And in this sense I use the word necessity in the following discourse when I endeavor to prove that necessity is not inconsistent with liberty.
Broad and free as this may sound, it is to be read in connection with what appears upon the next following page:
The only way that anything that is to come to pass hereafter is or can be necessary, is by a connection with something that is necessary in its own nature, or something that already is or has been; so that, the one being supposed, the other certainly follows.
Now, it is to be remembered that this "connection" is by causation.
Equally careful is Edwards to define the phrase "moral inability." He says:
Moral inability consists . . . either in the want of inclination; or the strength of a contrary inclination [meaning here, probably, an affection of the sensibility]; or the want of sufficient motives in view, to induce and excite the act of the will, or the strength of apparent motives to the contrary. Or both these may be resolved into one; and it may be said in one word, that moral inability consists in the opposition or want of inclination [meaning here, probably, a choice of the wills.
The decisive passage upon the meaning of the word "liberty" in Edwards' scheme is the following:
The plain and obvious meaning of the words freedom and liberty in common speech is the power, opportunity, or advantage that any one has, to do as he pleases. Or in other words, his being free from hindrance or impediment in the way of doing or conducting in any respect as he wills.
In this he confessedly follows Locke, and refers to him for further amplification of the point. And, quite in Locke's vein, he goes on to say, a little farther down: "To talk of liberty or the contrary as belonging to the very will itself, is not to speak good sense."
These may suffice for quotations from the first part of the work, which is taken up with definitions. The second part considers "whether there is or can be any such sort of freedom of the will as that wherein Arminians place the essence of the liberty of all moral agents; and whether any such thing ever was or can be conceived of!" The answer is, of course, "No," and is arrived at by the most acute, minute, and elaborate reasoning, discussion, refutation, and (supposed) annihilation of the enemies' position; for Edwards did not intend to leave the least possibility of an answer.
Discussing the "self-determining power of the will," he says:
Therefore, if the will determines all its own free acts, the soul determines them in the exercise of a power of willing and choosing; or, which is the same thing, it determines them of choice; it determines its own acts by choosing its own acts. If the will determines the will, then choice orders and determines the choice; and acts of choice are subject to the decision and follow the conduct of other acts of choice. And, therefore, if the will determines all its own free acts, then every free act of choice is determined by a preceding act of choice, choosing that act. And if that preceding act of the will be also a free act, then, by these principles, in this act, too, the will is self-determined: that is, this, in like manner, is an act that the soul voluntarily chooses; or, which is the same thing, it is an act determined still by a preceding act of the will choosing that. Which brings us directly to a contradiction: for it supposes an act of the will preceding the first act in the whole train, directing and determining the rest; or a free act of the will before the first free act of the will. Or else we must come at last to an act of the will determining the consequent acts, wherein the will is not self-determined and so is not a free act, in this notion of freedom: but if the first act in the train, determining and fixing the rest, be not free, none of them all can be free, as is manifest at first view, but [a "first view" not being enough for a man like Edwards] shall be demonstrated presently.
The following page and a half are an elaborate restatement of this argument, and it is substantially repeated, in varying forms, on a moderate estimate, a hundred times in this treatise. At one time it appears thus:
Still the question returns, wherein lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the consequent act. The answer according to the same principles must be, that his liberty in this also lies in his willing as he would, or as he chose, or agreeable to another act of choice preceding that. And so the question returns in infinitum, and the like answer must he made in infinitum. In order to support their opinion, there must be no beginning, but free acts of will must have been chosen by foregoing free acts of will in the soul of every man, without beginning.
This argument, with the other argument that there is no event without a cause, form the only positive arguments of this part of the work, which goes on to consider the possibility of choosing things absolutely indifferent, to explore still further the idea of liberty, and to discuss the connection of volition with motives. The foreknowledge of God comes into the sweep of the theme, and an elaborate biblical argument exhibits the minuteness of the divine foreknowledge of men's volitions, and then Edwards infers necessity, which, as inferred, is "certainty" and, as used, is a causative connection. The third part of the treatise discusses the supposed necessity of the Arminian idea of liberty to moral agency, etc.; and the last part, the chief grounds of the reasoning of the Arminians, without, however, introducing anything essentially new, and with innumerable repetitions of what had already been exhaustively said.
The impression produced by the work was enormous. The new doctrine of a free will had so much to commend itself to the ordinary reason of man that, when a champion of necessarianism again ventured to come forth, and when he succeeded in defending the old positions with such acuteness, and with such an air of invincibleness, the whole world wondered, and the defenders of the old doctrines went back to the old theories with the feeling that now they were forever safe. And yet the work, judged simply upon its merits as an intellectual creation, must be styled a logical failure on a great scale. The ambiguities involved in its fundamental positions have been already pointed out. The application of the law of causality to the operations of the mind is in contravention of the simplest facts of consciousness. The fallacy of the infinite series may be forced upon every argument touching the domain where God and man unite and the spheres of the finite and infinite intersect. If Edwards overthrew freedom by his argument, he also virtually overthrew the existence of God; for if God is required as a cause of the world, then a cause is required for God, and a cause for this cause, and so on ad infinitum. Nor was the work original except in the fullness of its treatment of its theme, and in its minuteness and acuteness. Substantially, as has now been made fully evident, it is a reproduction of Locke's theory. The idea of liberty is the same; of determination by motive; of the different weight of different motives; of the causative relation between motive and action. The argument from causation is in Locke, though obscured by his sensational philosophy; the general conception of the inconceivability of the Arminian position is Locke's; and even the argument of the reductio ad absurdum.
But these defects did not essentially interfere with the service which the treatise was capable of rendering to the progress of New England theology. As a permanent answer to the Arminians, it was a philosophical failure; but, as the case against the Arminians was not purely philosophical, it was capable of meeting them successfully in the more purely theological sphere, and this it did. In maintaining freedom, some of them maintained a "liberty of indifference," or that "equilibrium whereby the will is without antecedent bias." This was not true of Whitby, though he might at times be construed so; but it was true of others. Thus they would destroy, not only the controlling power, but the real influence of motives, and fall back into the old Pelagian view which destroyed the universal depravity of man, and the certainty that without grace he will never repent and turn to God. Now, the real answer to this theory upon its philosophical side is man's consciousness of the influence of motives, and if Edwards proved too much by ascribing to motives causative power, the sound residuum of his argument, when his extravagances were corrected, was effective in giving a basis for the theological doctrines, which were too evidently scriptural to be denied by any who would listen to a biblical argument.
Edwards' discussion of foreknowledge is also noteworthy. His two propositions are: first, God foreknows our volitions; second, foreknowledge infers necessity. His proof of the first proposition is derived from prophecy which has foretold events, even minute ones, depending upon the volitions of men. The argument for the second point is concisely that nothing can be known or foreknown without evidence, and that the only evidence establishing the certainty of future events is the will of God. From this argument he draws the corollary that the decrees of God are no more inconsistent with human liberty than the foreknowledge of God, thus connecting his theme immediately with the subject of election. This was clearly superior to the Arminian reference of the whole subject to the realm of mystery, however unsatisfactory as a rationale of the theme.
However defective, then, the treatise on the will was, its effect was to bring the theology of New England back to Calvinism, and this was a great service. The Arminianism which threatened it was not an Arminianism depending upon better views of the will, though at some points it had them. It was a Pelagianizing Arminianism which denied the essential doctrines of grace. It needed rebuttal. It emphasized the manward side of theology too much, just as the extreme Calvinism of the early day had emphasized the godward side too much. The future lay with neither extreme. New England theology was finally to attempt a better adjustment of these two elements to one another; but it was indispensable that it should not first forget the divine side. This Edwards prevented, and thus made all the following sound development possible.
But Edwards' service was not exhausted in the conservative force of his treatise, or in its negative results. He had propounded a distinction which was not correct or successful as he presented it, but which proved, with a better understanding, of great use to his successors--that between natural and moral ability and inability. In a word, natural ability and inability arise from natural or physical causes; moral ability and inability, from motives, or states of the will which are resolvable, in the last analysis, into motives.
Now, inasmuch as Edwards' "motives" are true causes, moral inability does not really differ in essence from natural; for both are effects. Hence the distinction is sophistical as presented in Edwards. But in Edwards' followers it became correct and valuable, and was of use in distinguishing between what were described as the "can't" of lack of power, and the "can't" which is really "won't." Thus much light was shed at several points upon difficult doctrines. The old Calvinism had had no place for any ability to good, and this had been the paralyzing influence of the early days. Edwards introduced an ability, which in process of time became a true ability, under which revival preaching arose; and good practice in converting men and good theology went together.
Another distinct service rendered by this treatise was the introduction into New England thought of a topic upon which subsequent writers were largely to busy themselves with advantage to the prevailing methods of defending the Christian faith. This topic was the origin of evil. It arose in consequence of the argument urged by the Arminians that necessity made God the author of sin. In attempting to meet them, Edwards simply carried out the system which he had already laid down in the earlier portions of the treatise. It is another example of his thoroughness that he did not adopt the scheme of the Westminster Confession, by which the fall of Adam was referred to his own free will, which acted "contingently." Edwards believed in no contingence. The fall was like every other event in the world proceeding from the will--a volition caused by motives. These motives were in the last analysis presented by God, and in this sense God willed the fall. This is High Calvinism, and substantially supralapsarianism--a theory to which Edwards was in another place to give a death-blow. But Edwards does not prefer the phrase, "God willed the fall;" he rather teaches that God ordered the system in which sin would infallibly come to pass. He draws the line of agency, and so of the authorship of sin, at the action--that is, at the sin--making this man's, upon the testimony of consciousness, to use a modern equivalent for his expressions. For his doctrine as to the divine government he depended upon the Scripture. Thus God is the author of the system, man of the sin.
The immediate outcome of the treatise on the will, in spite of all the drawbacks which we have noted, is to be estimated as an essential service to both theology and religion. It determined that the new school of thought whose foundations Edwards was unconsciously laying should be evangelical, effective, and thorough. But there are larger questions which remain still unanswered. Was the work, ideally considered, such a work as a theologian, bent on really forwarding the cause of theology, ought to write? Was it, in particular, characterized by the disposition to learn from the adversary? Such a question can only be answered in the negative. It was absolute reaction. To Edwards Arminianism and all its works were evil and nothing but evil. Calvinism is essentially determinism. Without a theory of determinism it cannot stand; given a theory of determinism, and the resulting theology must be Calvinistic. Therefore Edwards simply reaffirmed Calvinism, and did it by reaffirming determinism.
In this reply the answer to another question which we must ask is not obscurely hinted. Given such an answer to the spirit of the day, what was likely to be the effect upon the future development of the school, since the labors of Edwards did actually result in a school? Calvinism was essentially a system of abstract logic, deriving the whole framework of the system from the sole causality of God by logical deductions, without much, if any, appeal to consciousness. Considered as a new philosophical proposal, the Arminianism of Whitby was an appeal to consciousness. Had Edwards been disposed to learn from Whitby, he would have asked what the true meaning and value of this proposal was. When, now, this question had been brushed aside without consideration, and determinism strenuously reaffirmed, and especially when this had been done in a treatise of such power as was the Freedom of the Will, what would be the effect upon the future? Could this appeal be permanently ignored? If it could be for a time at least, what would be the tendency of thought under its suppression? Would it be to an ever more reckless disregard of consciousness? Would the divine sovereignty be ever more emphasized with increasing disregard of human agency? Or would the tendency be to recoil from the Edwardean position toward a real freedom? If such a recoil took place, would it be successful? Would men be able to get away from the influence of Edwards to whom they were so deeply indebted; or would their allegiance to him substantially block the way of their progress? Would they recognize the fact when they had fundamentally abandoned him; or would they fail to bring their views into a consistent form because of their allegiance to their great founder? Would the school come at last to a satisfactory position upon this great theme, and formulate a system comprehensive, consistent, and successful; or would it be foredoomed by the very greatness of the treatise which laid its foundation, to an inextricable confusion which, when at last discovered, should lead to a speedy and lamentable downfall?
Such questions a historian, thoroughly penetrated with the historical spirit, would be constrained to ask, as he paused over this remarkable work. Their answer could be gained only by continued studies in the history of the Edwardean school.
CHAPTER IV: Edwards' Remaining Metaphysical Treatises
The conflict with the Arminians could not remain in the more exclusively metaphysical sphere in which it had hitherto been waged since Edwards retired to Stockbridge. A work was soon put into his hands which attacked the doctrine of original sin and which seemed to call for his careful attention. This was the book entitled The Scriptural Doctrine of Original Sin Proposed to Free and Candid Examination, by Dr. John Taylor, of Norwich, England, a Unitarian, which appeared in the year 1740. With it he received two other works by the same author, his Key to the Apostolical Writings and his Paraphrase to the Epistle to the Romans.
These works were characterized by some excellent features. The same recoil from artificial and false modes of statement which was to lead to some of the most important modifications of the current Calvinism by the New England school had led Taylor to take positions and make definitions which must command the assent of the candid mind. Sin is with him a strictly personal matter. Punishment must be as personal as guilt. He rejects the doctrine of the imputation of sin, and even enunciates the great principle that ability and obligation are commensurate. This better side of Taylor is evident in the following extract from his Original Sin:
A representative of moral action is what I can by no means digest. A representative, the guilt of whose conduct shall be imputed to us, and whose sins shall corrupt and debauch our nature, is one of the greatest absurdities in all the system of corrupt religion. That the conduct of ancestors should effect the external circumstances of posterity, is a constitution just and wise, and may answer good purposes; and that representatives of civil societies, or any other persons intrusted with the management of affairs, may injure those who employ them, is agreeable to a state of trial and imperfection; but that any man without my knowledge and consent, should so represent me, that when he is guilty I am to be reputed guilty, and when he transgresses I shall be accountable and punishable for his transgression, and thereby subjected to the wrath and curse of God, nay, further, that his wickedness shall give me a sinful nature, and all this before I am born, and consequently while I am in no capacity of knowing, helping or hindering what he doth; surely anyone who dares use his understanding, must clearly see this is unreasonable, and altogether inconsistent with the truth, and goodness of God.
But these merits of the work did not help it with Edwards, though they drove him to some modifications of old theories, as will be seen. They were too intimately associated with another side of Taylor's theology--with his superficial view of sin and his feeble religious experience. He holds that Adam's sin resulted subjectively in guilt, shame, and fear and that he fell thereby under subjection to sorrow, labor, and death. This death, however, is to be understood simply of physical death. The ruin of man did not seem to him to be very great, as will be evident from the following extract:
We are born as void of actual knowledge as the brutes themselves. We are born with many sensual appetites, and consequently liable to temptation and sin. But this is not the fault of our nature, but the will of God, wise and good. For every one of our natural passions and appetites are in themselves good; of great use and advantage in our present circumstances; and our nature would be defective, sluggish or unarmed without them. Nor is there any one of them we can at present spare. Our passions and appetites are in themselves, wisely, and kindly implanted in our nature. They are good, and become evil only by unnatural excess, or wicked abuse. The possibility of which excess and abuse is also well and wisely permitted for our trial. For without some such appetite, our reason would have nothing to struggle with, and consequently our virtue could not be duly exercised and proved in order to its being rewarded. And the appetites we have, God hath judged most proper, both for our use and trial . . .
This idea then we ought to have of our being; that everything in it is formed and appointed just as it should be; that it is a noble and invaluable gift bestowed upon us by the bounty of God, with which we should be greatly pleased, and for which we should be continually and heartily thankful; that it is a perishable thing, which needeth to be diligently guarded and cultivated; that our sensual inclinations are to be duly restrained and disciplined, and our rational powers faithfully applied to their proper uses; that God hath given us those rational powers attended with those sensual inclinations, as for other good purposes, so in particular to try us, whether we will carefully guard and look after this most invaluable gift of his goodness; and that if we do not, he will in justice punish our wicked contempt of his love; but if we do, he will graciously reward our wisdom and virtue. And all, and every one of these considerations should be a spur to our diligence, and animate our endeavors to answer these most high and most excellent purposes of his wisdom and goodness.
Thus it is true that Taylor perceived, long before the school of Edwards, the excrescences of the doctrine of original sin, but it is also true that he let fall at the same time the invaluable truth contained in that doctrine. It was the perception of this, and the consciousness of an undercurrent of unevangelical thought and feeling, which principally moved Edwards to write against the book. It led Wesley to do the same thing, though he had no objection to Arminianism as such. No doubt, Taylor's views upon the atonement increased the suspicion against him. He taught that the whole work of Christ was comprised in his obedience; his example powerfully attracted men; and he was thereby rendered worthy that for his sake the great good of forgiveness should be bestowed upon men. The doctrine of satisfaction to justice in every form, whether the justice be taken as distributive or public, is entirely left out.
The reply of Edwards fills a large volume, but must be dismissed in the briefest possible space. There are two elements of the doctrine, he says, which are so united in thought that they are either both accepted or both rejected. These are the depravity of our nature and the imputation of Adam's sin. The proof of the first involving that of the other, Edwards' attention is chiefly directed to the question of depravity. The argument is strong and is ranked by the characteristic effort to reduce doctrines to their elements and to urge the most fundamental proofs which can be given. Universal sinfulness is first proved. This, as "universal, constant, infallible," is employed as a proof of a "tendency or propensity." Should it be said that the evil proved is not a "tendency" in man, but has its location rather in external nature, in the circumstances by which man is surrounded, still the difficulty is not removed. Man is then born into the world, as it is, in such a condition as to lead universally to sin; and such a condition is itself a nature unfitted, as things are, to lead to holiness, and hence it is essentially a depraved nature.
Advancing to the positive argument, Edwards derives this principally from the Scriptures. But he also revives an argument at least as old as Anselm, drawn from the infinity of sin, which is to forestall the reply that the tendencies of man toward good are greater than those toward evil. Sin is infinite, since it is the rupture of an obligation which is infinite in being an obligation toward an infinite being. Other arguments are brought to prove the greatness of man's sin, such as his propensity to sin as soon as he is capable of it, to sin continually and progressively, and also the remains of sin in the best men. And then objections are answered: that Adam was not depraved and yet sinned, and so may we; that free will is a sufficient reason for the existence of sin; that the corruption of man may be owing to bad example, which, Edwards says, is explaining the thing by itself; that the senses grow up first, and thus the animal passions get the start of the reason, which is in substance original sin; and the propriety that virtue should meet with trials. Thus thorough was the discussion.
Up to this point Edwards has contributed nothing specially original to the defense or explanation of the doctrine. But he never handled a subject without impressing upon it at some point the force of his own independent thought, and he soon began to let fall hints and advance positions which were to be fruitful in later days. The theory of the current Calvinism required the supposition that there rested upon the descendants of Adam a double guilt--that of Adam's first sin, imputed to them, and that of a corrupted nature which was truly and properly sin. The order of thought is: first, Adam made a federal head; second, his sin imputed; third, corruption of nature visited upon mankind; finally, actual sin in consequence. This is the so-called "immediate imputation." Upon this theory there are two kinds of sin, voluntary and involuntary.
Edwards had already taught that sin was voluntary. It remained to decide whether he would teach that such sin was the only sin, or that all sin was voluntary. The present discussion led him to contemplate this problem, and to adopt this further position. He had already avoided any expression which should make him teach that depravity was properly sin. He accepted the federal headship of Adam, and, as he viewed death as the penalty of the sin of Adam, he was obliged to suppose that all who die are guilty of that sin, or that its guilt lies upon all men. Yet he cannot accept the common view that men are charged with something which they have not done, any more than Taylor. Sin is imputed, he therefore says, but not in order to make it the sin of all men. It is imputed because it is the sin of all men, for they have committed it in Adam. Thus he extends his doctrine, excludes every sin but voluntary sin, and so gives fully to New England theology its first great distinguishing doctrine, that all sin consists in choice. Thus he completes at this point the work begun in the treatise on the will.
To maintain this connection of the race with Adam, Edwards proposes a theory somewhat new. He had already rejected the idea that original sin consisted in a positive taint, which had been the view of original sin opposed by Taylor. He says simply that the Holy Spirit must and did withdraw from man after his sin. The immediate result of this was that man set himself up as his own standard and fell into further sin. Hereupon, in consequence of the established course of nature, or of a special divine constitution, the descendants of Adam were born, as he was, after his sin, destitute of holiness, thus negatively evil or depraved, out of communion with God and certain to pursue the course of their fleshly affections; that is, to fall into sin. So, "all are looked upon as sinning in and with their common root; and God righteously withholds special influences and special communications from all for this sin." In consequence of this act of God's, men consent to Adam's sin as soon as they begin to act. Imputation follows this consent. Edwards says: "The first depravity of heart, and that imputation of that sin are both the consequences of that established union; but yet in such order that the evil disposition is first and the charge of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam himself." Edwards' order is, then: first, the "constitution;" second, birth of men without the Spirit; third, positive evil disposition or sin, which is consent to Adam's sin; fourth, the charge of guilt.
But it is now an interesting question: How did Edwards justify this constitution to himself? The answer comes out in his reply to a supposed objection that things cannot be "viewed and treated as one which are not one but totally distinct." The objection, he says, is founded upon a false idea of identity. Some things entirely distinct and very diverse are yet united by the constitution of the creator so that they are in a sense one, as for instance the oak, a hundred years old, and the acorn. Even the identity of created intelligences depends upon the constitution of God. Continuance of the same consciousness, or memory, is essential to continued personal identity; and yet this continued memory is the constitution of God and not the work of the man himself. Indeed, the continued existence of every created entity, whether person or thing, is nothing but the continued creation of God. It is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing at every moment. The continued identity of anything is therefore only the consistency with which God produces now what he produced a moment since; or it is the divine constitution. By the same constitution, Adam and the race may be the same person, and so the loss of Adam be the loss of his posterity.
If, now, it is necessary to sum up in one glance the features of progress for the developing thought of New England contributed by this treatise passed in so brief review, they may be summarized (1) in the extension of the proposition that sin is voluntary action to the explicit principle that all sin is voluntary action; (2) in the removal from the theology of the idea that man's corruption consists in a positive taint imparted to his nature (for the whole matter is explained in strict conformity with the moral instincts when it is taught that the Holy Spirit is withdrawn from sinning Adam, and corruption is traced to this root); and (3) in an idea introduced--one which reappears upon many a page of later writers--the maintenance of the doctrine of the actuality of depravity in man by the supposition of an established order of nature, or divine constitution. If the doctrine of natural depravity be accepted, there is need of some explanation of the connection of Adam with this result. Heredity may serve as a partial explanation, and yet only a partial one. The corruption of man is not all of the body. Unless we believe in traducianism (a theory now coming into favor in certain quarters), it will be difficult to explain the disharmony of soul, as it is in psychology to explain the transmittance of traits of character from father to son. But the thought of a continued creation with the added idea of a divine constitution would throw light upon the subject. In the case of every new-born person, God is again operative, and that in accordance with a plan of his own. As the nature of the oak is determined by the nature of the acorn, and that by its parent oak, so with the child. And thus, according to an intelligible method, God can determine to treat men according as Adam, their constituted head, shall remain holy, or fall.
If we were to ask at this point again those questions which we have previously asked as to Edwards' adaptation to further the cause of theology in a time of controversy, we should have to reply that now at last he has come to perceive more accurately his proper task. This treatise is no mere piece of reaction. He learns as he reads. He innovates as he writes. There is movement, change, life, in this work as in no preceding one. It is most significant that some things he says nothing about. There is no refutation of such a sound principle as that ability and obligation are commensurate. What he opposes are the real errors of Taylor, not the great illuminating suggestions which were later to form a large part of the working materials of New England theology. And there is here already that emphasis of the ethical element of theology which was to be more and more characteristic of the school as it advanced to the very end. Our corruption, even, is an ethical corruption, since it consists principally in the deprivation of the Holy Spirit under which we suffer--nothing physical, nothing merely mysterious. Hence Edwards now understands how to conserve the old, how to learn from even erroneous proposals, how to study the spirit of his age, how to change old forms as new light breaks upon him. He has arrived at last at the true position of a leader.
The remaining principal treatise of Edwards is in many respects the most remarkable of the series. The others had been prepared with immediate reference to the demands of the contest against the Arminians, and all suffered from the defects, as well as partook of the vigor and interest, incidental to such an origin. The Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True Virtue was more largely the spontaneous fruit of early and later meditations. The Arminians are not mentioned in it. It breathes the calm spirit of quiet studies. In these respects it stands comparatively isolated among Edwards' writings; and it is isolated in another respect, in that its great ideas, though early formed, and put down in writing with great clearness in the manly notes of the youthful student at college, seem never to have influenced the general course of his speculations upon other themes, fruitful in the extreme as they were to be under the hand of his successors. He defines justice as virtuous only when governed by benevolence, with perfect clearness in the "Notes," but in after years he discusses the justice of God in its application to future punishment and to the atonement exactly as if no such distinction had ever entered his mind. To this extent the work which he had performed in the formulation of the principle of all virtue remained unappreciated by its author; but so far-reaching and revolutionary were to be its effects upon succeeding systems that it merits the designation of Edwards' principal contribution to religious thought. It may be said to have given the determining principle to the whole school of thinking which was to bear the name of Edwardean.
The Nature of Virtue cannot be fully understood, either in its own greatness as a philosophical achievement or in the peculiarities which mark the progress of its discussions, without a glance at the previous history of ethical theory. Edwards himself goes back to Hobbes, when noticing antagonistic views, and it is to Hobbes that the rise of independent and valuable discussion upon ethics in the English-speaking world is to be attributed. He was the first to bring in the idea of the good as something to be sought, though he was unfortunate in the form of his discussion, since he identified it too largely with pleasure. Any further usefulness which he might have served was destroyed by the common understanding that he taught that the only foundation of social morality was the law of the state, and thus denied that it had any ground in the objective nature of things. The Cambridge Platonists opposed him at this point, and emphasized the eternal distinctions between good and evil; but they rendered comparatively little service in promoting the growth of ethical doctrine, since they produced only an ill-arranged collection of aphorisms upon morals, and substantially went over to Hobbes's ground as to the pursuit of pleasure. Richard Cumberland, however, published in 1672 a treatise entitled De legibus natura disquisitio philosophica, which has been worthily styled a fountain-head of English ethics, and which did much to build upon the foundation which Hobbes had suggested and to point the way, at least, to the elimination of the errors into which he had fallen. Like Hobbes, he began with the idea of the good, but he defined it more comprehensively, since he embraced in it even moral acts, though always considering it too much under the category of the natural good--that, namely, which, preserves or renders created beings "more perfect or happy." He introduces an idea which was entirely lacking in Hobbes, the "common good" as an object of effort, under which he almost unconsciously included a much wider definition of good than his more formal statements made place for. But his chief service was that he reduced all the maxims of morality to one general principle, "regard for the common good." Three separate sentences may serve to afford a comprehensive view of his thought. "I judge it requisite to the natural perfection of the human will that it follow the most perfect reason." "Those acts of the will which are enjoined by the same law may all be comprehended in the general name of the most extensive and operative benevolence." "The greatest benevolence does consist in a constant volition of the greatest good towards all." Hence an action is "morally good" which contributes to this end. Cumberland anticipated the objection, which has been voiced in our own day, that benevolence cannot be said to include all virtue, since it cannot include the proper attitude of man toward God except by such torsion as shall evacuate it of all meaning, and laid down the proposition that "to promote the common good of the whole system of rationals" "includes our love of God and of all mankind, as parts of this system." But he could not have defended himself successfully against the charge of utilitarianism, for utilitarian he undoubtedly was. His most conspicuous failure as a moralist was in his definition of conscience, in reference to which, says Dr. Magoun,
It is difficult to decide whether our author regarded conscience as anything more than the discernment of our acts as means to ends, or of the results of acts, pleasant or painful . . . One will look in vain through this . . . treatise . . . for any discussion of the relations of right or conscience to obligation, either as an idea or as feeling.
Locke, while agreeing with Hobbes as to the egoistic basis of conduct and the definition of good, yet does something to suggest a higher style of treating the subject when he supposes that ethics might be put among the demonstrative sciences, like mathematics, if the idea of the Supreme Being and that of ourselves in relation to him were properly carried out. He thus substantially makes ethics to rest upon intuitive principles. Shaftesbury forwarded the theme by showing that the social affections are natural, and that they are in harmony with the self-regarding. Of all this series of writers Hutcheson was the greatest. Upon the basis of Shaftesbury's work he erected, by the help of Cumberland's principles, the most complete edifice of moral philosophy which Britain had seen till that time. He brought out the fact that there is a special power in the human soul to discern moral ideas and relations, for among the "senses" he enumerated one of beauty, a "public sense," "a determination to be pleased with the happiness of others," and a "Moral Sense" "by which we perceive virtue and vice." True, his treatment of the moral sense is too loose and vague to throw much light upon the real nature of this faculty. He is also completely utilitarian, at least in the criterion by which the virtue of a proposed action is to be tested. "That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, and that worst which, in like manner, occasions misery." The most distinctive feature of his work is the consistency with which he carries out Cumberland's principle of benevolence. In opposition to Hobbes's account of the origin of moral actions, Hutcheson maintains that benevolence is the only ground upon which man approves of any action. He thus makes it the sole constituent of virtue. Actions flowing purely from self-love and yet evidencing no lack of benevolence are morally indifferent. In respect to many personal actions which men generally morally approve, such as industry, man is virtuous in them because he is to exercise benevolence toward himself. If Hutcheson is not wholly successful in his discussion of this portion of the theme, he contributes something, at any rate, in incorporating the moral subject himself in the scheme of beings toward whom moral relations are to be sustained.
It is at this point that the work of Edwards is to be introduced into the history. He had early gained the elevated plane upon which his whole consideration of the subject is conducted. Though he followed his predecessors in viewing some things as "goods," he did not begin his development of his theme with this topic. He had found, as it seemed to him, the reason both of the nature of the good and of the source of obligation in the fundamental idea that the universe was a "system" and that its ideal harmony was the goal of all individual existence, and hence the reasonable and obligatory object of moral choice. When considered in this light, the whole nature of virtue and it's binding obligation are immediately evident, being written in the very nature of man. And hence, while the theory is, like that of Cumberland and Hutcheson, a theory of benevolence, it avoids the utilitarianism into which they had fallen, and replaces their defective analyses of conscience, self-love, etc., with better.
So evident, in fact, was the truth of his theory to the intuitive gaze of Edwards that he scarcely stops to give formal proof of it. The body of his short treatise is occupied with explanations which shall unfold its meaning and free it from various objections. What there is of proof may be summarized thus:
Virtue is something beautiful, or some kind of beauty, yet not every kind of beauty, but a beauty of a moral nature--that is, one belonging to the disposition and will. Nor is it any "particular" beauty, or beauty in a limited sphere, but it is one which still appears beautiful when viewed "most perfectly, comprehensively, and universally, with regard to all its tendencies and its connections with everything to which it stands related." After these definitions, the author is ready to answer the question "wherein this true and general beauty of the heart does most essentially consist;" and the reply is: "Benevolence in general. Or perhaps; to speak more accurately, it is that consent, propensity, and union of heart to being in general, which is immediately exercised in a general good will." And he goes on to say--thus giving all the proof he has to offer:
The things before observed respecting the nature of true virtue naturally lead us to such a notion of it. If it has its seat in the heart, and is the general goodness and beauty of the disposition and its exercise, in the most comprehensive view, considered with regard to its universal tendency, and as related to everything with which it stands connected; what can it consist in but a consent and good will to being in general? Beauty does not consist in discord and dissent, but in consent and agreement. And if every intelligent being is in some way related to being in general, and is a part of the universal system of existence, and so stands in connection with the whole; what can its general and true beauty be, but its union and consent with the great whole.
Edwards supposed himself to be in accord in this position, not only with the Scriptures and "Christian divines," but with the "more considerable deists" and "the most considerable writers" upon such topics. He could therefore dispense the more properly with lengthened proofs, and could proceed to those definitions by which he hoped to clear up some prevalent "confusion in discourses upon this subject." He explains therefore, first, that such benevolence to being in general may be exercised in a benevolent affection toward a particular person, and that such a particular act of benevolence is virtuous when it arises "from a generally benevolent temper, or from that habit or frame of mind wherein consists a disposition to love being in general." In other words, the great motive of universal love must underlie every volition which is to be virtuous. He also defines in passing the "being" had in mind as "intelligent being," though he had better said sentient being.
The love which constitutes virtue is thus the love of benevolence, that which seeks the well-being or happiness of being considered simply as such. It is thus not the love of complacence, which presupposes beauty, or virtue, in which complacence can be felt, nor, for the same reason, is it gratitude. But-
The first object of a virtuous benevolence is being, simply considered; and if being, simply considered, be its object, then being in general is its object; and what it has an ultimate propensity to, is the highest good of being in general. And it will seek the good of every individual being unless it be conceived as not consistent with the highest good of being in general. In which case the good of a particular being, or some beings, may be given up for the sake of the highest good of being in general. And particularly, if there be any being irreclaimably opposite, and an enemy to being in general, then consent and adherence to being in general will induce the truly virtuous heart to forsake that enemy and to oppose it.
One more quotation is needed to prepare the reader for the highest reach of the Edwardean conception:
Further, if being, simply considered, be the first object of a truly virtuous benevolence, then that object who has most of being, or has the greatest share of existence, other things being equal, so far as such a being is exhibited to our faculties, will have the greatest share of the propensity and benevolent affections of the heart.
Hence, since God is the being who has "most of being," he is the supreme object of choice; and men, since they are in general of the same importance, will have equal shares in the choices of virtuous beings. Hence this theory of Virtue is summarized in the biblical rule that we are to love God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Edwards also felt the force of that objection to this theory of virtue which Cumberland had anticipated, which denies the possibility of including God within the scope of the creature's "benevolence." He set at work vigorously to remove it. He reinforced the reasoning just sketched by a further discussion. He distinguishes first between the primary ground of love, which is simply being, and a secondary, which is the moral excellence which may exist in any being. This is fitted to call forth complacence, but it is also fitted to call forth the love of benevolence, by which he means the choice to seek to promote the virtue in which it delights. Toward God, the most holy of all beings, such a love is most eminently fit; and yet in his case it will consist largely in the love of complacence. Has it, indeed, any true benevolent element? It has, replies Edwards; for benevolence consists not only in seeking to promote, but also in rejoicing in, the happiness of the being toward whom benevolence is exercised. But more than this, benevolence can be directly exercised toward God, since men can be instrumental in promoting his glory, in which he delights.
Edwards insists the more strenuously upon this point because upon it turns the chief purpose of his treatise, which was to put morality in a new relation to religion. Previous moralists had been too exclusively occupied in considering their theme with simple reference to the relations of man toward man. Edwards would show, on the contrary, that true virtue must include a virtuous attitude toward God himself, which is, however, the essence of religion, and would thus advance to the lofty position that there can be no true virtue in the narrower sphere of what is ordinarily called morality, which is not, at the same time, religious. Religion and morality are essentially one. He that is truly moral is implicitly already religious; and he who is religious must also be moral. In his own words:
Whatever other benevolence or generosity towards mankind, and other virtues or moral qualifications which go by that name, any are possessed of, that are not attended with a love to God which is altogether above them and to which they are subordinate and on which they are dependent, there is nothing of the nature of true virtue or religion in them. And it may be asserted in general that nothing is of the nature of true virtue in which God is not the first and the last; or which, with regard to their exercises in general have not their first foundation and source in apprehensions of God's supreme dignity and glory, and in answerable esteem and love of him, and have not respect to God as the supreme end.
But against this view the objection would be raised that there are many things which do not spring from such a benevolence as this which are commonly thought to partake of the character of the moral, and which receive the commendation of men. How can they have this seeming, without having a true, morality? This is the vital question between Edwards and most of his predecessors, and to the answer of it he devotes the remainder of his treatise, nearly two-thirds of its entire compass. The motive of the work here comes to light. It was to root out thoroughly from the minds of men that confidence which they are so prone to feel in the value of a morality which is confessedly not religious. These actions commonly approved have says Edwards in substance, a certain beauty about them, but it is not the true beauty which virtue has. It is an inferior beauty, analogous only to that consisting in the fitness of the act in its relations, and comparable to the beauty of a chess-board, or of a piece of chintz or brocade, or of a square, an equilateral triangle, or a regular polygon. To employ his own words:
There is a beauty of order in society besides what consists in benevolence or can be referred to it, which is of a secondary kind; as when the different members of society have all their appointed office, place, and station, according to their several capacities and talents, and every one keeps his place and continues in his proper business. In this there is a beauty, not of a different kind from the regularity of a beautiful building, or piece of skillful architecture, where the strong pillars are set in their proper place, the pilasters in a place fit for them, the square pieces of marble in the pavement, the panels, partitions, and cornices, etc., in places proper for them.
And among other virtues he specially instances justice as consisting in the agreement, or fitness which there is between the doing of evil, for example, and the receiving of pain.
Thus these so-called virtues have a beauty, but it is not the beauty of true virtue consisting in love to being in general and to God, the being of beings.
The same argumentative necessity leads Edwards now to take up the discussion of self-love which Hutcheson had dropped. Defining it as having meaning only when it signifies regard for one's "confined private self," he discusses here in the main the question whether certain so-called virtues, such as love to friends, gratitude, etc., may not arise from mere self-love, or to use the modern term, from selfishness. He shows that, since kind actions toward us gratify our selfishness, it may be nothing but our perception of this which calls forth our gratitude for them. Far from being virtuous, or having any character of "public benevolence," such affections will be purely selfish. They may possibly at times spring from a feeling of desert, but then they are to be referred to the sense of justice previously spoken of, and are nothing but a delight in the "secondary" beauty, which gives no foundation for true virtue.
With the same general purpose in mind, Edwards next passes to the discussion of the "natural conscience," by which he means the conscience of the natural man. It consists in two things: (1) in a "disposition to approve or disapprove the moral treatment which passes between us and others from a determination of the mind to be easy or uneasy in a consciousness of our being consistent or inconsistent with ourselves;" and (2) in a "sense of desert" as previously explained. It is, in other words, a perception of moral relations, and perceives even the beauty of true benevolence, though it may not itself "taste its primary and essential beauty;" and it covers in the range of its utterances the same subjects as are covered by a true spiritual sense--that is, by a conscience spiritually enlightened. But it does not imply, as some have taught, "a disposition to true virtue, consisting in a benevolent temper naturally implanted in the hearts of all men;" for then, the clearer the perceptions of conscience, the stronger the virtuous principle--which experience shows frequently not to be the case. Even the wicked at the last day will approve their sentence; but, under this perception of conscience, they will not manifest a disposition to repent of their wickedness.
In the same way Edwards discusses natural instincts leading to natural affections which have no real virtue in them; and then passes to consider the reason why all these things are often mistaken for true virtue. And he closes the whole with the investigation whether virtue is founded in sentiment, and whether this is given to men by God arbitrarily, or whether it is founded in the very nature of things. The considerations presented here are in substance the same as those upon which the whole theory was first established.
This is the substance of the great ethical treatise which Edwards wrote in his closing years and which was published after his death. The far-reaching consequences involved in it for theology, his successors were only slowly to appreciate and develop; but it finally created an independent school of ethics, as well as of theology.
The review of the most important services of Edwards to theology is now complete. Were it the present object to discuss his entire career and influence as a historical character, much more would need to be said. The present problem is a narrower one. Not what he was, but what he did; and not what he did upon the broader field even of theology, but what he contributed to the improvement of the system which he received from his teachers, is the subject of the present study. He performed many lesser services not fitted to rank with these prime labors. Professor Park, in the introduction which he prefixed to his collection of Essays from various New England writers upon the atonement, has shown how independent the mind of Edwards everywhere was, and how many fruitful suggestions he let fall in passing, as it were, upon the greatest themes. His preaching of future punishment was valuable for the refutation of numerous dangerous errors. Perhaps the temper of mind which he bequeathed to his spiritual followers was his greatest gift--that perfect independence combined with entire loyalty to the truth, that living sense of the possibility of progress, that keen vision of the necessities of the present hour and that unquestioning subordination of every merely theoretical interest to the practical interests of the Redeemer's kingdom, which have largely distinguished the New England school among thinkers to this day. But it were enough to substantiate his claim to a high position among the theologians of the Christian ages to have begun, as he did, those discussions of the will, of the nature of sin, and of the principle of virtue which resulted finally in the large inheritance into which his children have entered. If his daring and keen speculations gave to the theology something of a rationalistic turn, which his own deep spirituality could not neutralize, it was because the age succeeding the advocacy of Deism must be a rationalizing one; and if the evil effects of this strain of thought are to be detected even to the present, it is because the forces which have from time to time arrayed themselves against evangelical theology have been the direct descendants of the ancient Deistic movement. For himself, Edwards as powerfully promoted the spiritual life of the churches as he did their theology.
EDWARDS' CONTEMPORARIES AND COLABORERS CHAPTER V:
Joseph Bellamy
The impetus given by Edwards to New England theology began to exhibit itself before he himself passed off the scene. A figure so unique as his, and one of so great eminence as a practical worker, could not fail to attract attention and, in the paucity of teachers in New England, draw pupils for longer or shorter instruction in the ministerial calling. It was in this way that he gained for the new principles which he was presenting two adherents who were to prove during his lifetime efficient colaborers with him in his practical efforts, and after his death successors and leaders in his school. These were Bellamy and Hopkins.
The particular course which Bellamy's theological labors took was determined by his position as a pastor and by the number of important controversies which were carried on during his time. At the very beginning of his ministry he took part in the great revival of 1741-43, preaching widely, and observing necessarily the widespread harm done by certain theological errors. It was the direct consequence of this that, in 1750, first among the ministers of his state, he came out against the Half-Way Covenant. He noted and refuted the errors of "Antinomians," "Sandemeans," etc. But there was an inner force in his mind, which had been communicated to him by Edwards, which impelled him to more fundamental work than the mere refutation of errors, and made him a constructive theologian. While thus we find treatises from his pen upon The Half Way Covenant, There is but One Covenant, etc., and Theron, Paulinus, and Aspasio (on justification), his great works are his True Religion Delineated and The Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin, etc., which are lifted by their themes upon the high plane of constructive discussion, although not without constant reference to the immediate religious needs of men.
The True Religion Delineated discusses the nature of religion, and gives two answers, apparently different, but in the end coalescing in one; viz., that it consists in a conformity to the law of God, and a compliance with the gospel of Christ. These two answers determine the two parts of the treatise. The first treats the law, which it finds perfectly fulfilled in the one exercise of love. The second then considers the gospel, and is thus led to the successive topics of the ruin of man, the atonement, and the application of that atonement through faith, together with the reward of everlasting life promised to the believer.
As might be gathered from the definition given of conformity to the law of God, the leading idea of this whole treatise is that of the Edwardean theory of virtue. We have here accordingly the first application of this theory to New England theology. As might be expected, it is a partial application. The greater and more profound effects of this theory upon the doctrine of sin and of the atonement escaped, at first, the eye of theologians. But at least the theory was definitely held by Bellamy and beautifully applied to his definition of religion.
This agreement between Edwards and Bellamy has sometimes been denied. It has been said that Bellamy did not follow Edwards "in this single exceptional case wherein he was eccentric to his main orbit." But careful study of Bellamy will show a minute, as well as a general, acceptance of the theory of virtue. In a letter dated 1766 he refers to Edwards' treatise by name. In explaining love toward our neighbor he coincides with his teacher in phraseology as well as thought. He speaks of the "esteem" which is due to our neighbor for the valuable qualities which he possesses; then of his "happiness as to soul and body" toward which we are to exercise a benevolent regard; this to be excited by his "capacities;" then of the delight and complacence which we are to feel in his holiness; all of which are strikingly Edwardean. The same idea of obligation is held by him as by Edwards. The obligation to love God arises from the "infinite excellence of the divine nature antecedent to all selfish consideration," and is infinitely, unchangeably, and eternally binding. Love to our neighbor is "right and fit in itself." Like Edwards he opposes utilitarianism, only with a power of sarcasm and a keenness of wit which Edwards, with all his excellences, did not possess.
Bellamy was, then, a thoroughgoing Edwardean as far as the theory of virtue is concerned. Like Edwards, he was also in general upon the plane of the old Calvinism. In many things his positions will be found to be identical with those of Edwards, sometimes, however, with a quiet suppression of Edwards' more daring flights of speculation, as, for example, his attempt to explain the constitutional connection of Adam with his posterity. At the same time, many of his forms of statement and many suggestions proved fruitful in developing among his pupils and successors the new divinity.
These statements and suggestions, found in the True Religion, may be grouped under the following heads:
1. Ability. Here he follows exactly in the path suggested by Edwards upon the will. The Arminians and Antinomians who surrounded him sought in various ways to evade the searching demands of the gospel. He answers them in pungent terms, and we begin at once to see the power of the New England preaching, stimulated and directed by Edwards' leading ideas, to lay hold of the hearts and consciences of men. Something of his style, as well as his contribution to thought, will be seen in the following extracts:
"But to love God, or to have any disposition to love him, is a thing supernatural, clean beyond the powers of nature, improved to the utmost: how can I, therefore, be wholly to blame?" It is a thing supernatural, you say; that is, in other words, you have no heart to it, nor the least inclination that way; nor is there anything in your temper to work upon by motives to bring you to it; and now, because you are so very bad a creature, therefore you are not at all to blame. This is your argument. But can you think that there is any force in it? What! are moral agents the less to blame the worse they grow? And are God's laws no longer binding than while his subjects are disposed to obey them?
And again:
Thus we see, that, as to a natural capacity, all mankind are capable of a perfect conformity to God's law, which requires us only to love God with all our hearts: and that all our inability arises merely from the bad temper of our hearts, and our want of a good disposition, and that, therefore, we are wholly to blame and altogether inexcusable. Our impotency, in one word, is not natural, but moral, and, therefore, instead of extenuating, does magnify and enhance our fault. The more unable to love God we are, the more are we to blame. Even as it was with the Jews; the greater contrariety there was in their hearts to their prophets, to Christ and his Apostles, the more vile and blame worthy were they. And in this light do the Scriptures constantly view the case. There is not one title in the Old Testament, or in the New, in the law or in the gospel, that gives the least intimation of any deficiency in our natural faculties. The law requires no more than all our hearts, and never blames us for not having larger natural capacities. The gospel aims to recover us to love God only with all our hearts, but makes no provision for our having any new natural capacity; as to our natural capacities, all is well. It is in our temper, in the frame and disposition of our hearts, that the seat of all our sinfulness lies.
That paradox of Bellamy's rhetoric--"the more unable to love God we are, the more we are to blame"--became characteristic of the school. Inability, instead of being accepted as an excuse, was itself ground for greater repentance, because it was voluntary. It will be said, of course, that the theory of the will underlying such statements affords no real ground for them, because giving no real ability. It was enough, however, that Bellamy supposed that there was a real ability, and that he preached it as such. No one can get from his words any other impression. It was this impression that prevailed. The theory of the doctrine does not appear in his pages to disturb the mind; the fact of ability is stated with great popular power. Such preaching had its natural effect, and the way was prepared for the improvement of the theory.
Out of such preaching began another style of exhortation to the impenitent which was soon to break up the old paralysis which had crept over the New England churches. Men had ability to repent, and the duty of the minister was to exhort them to exercise this ability. They were no longer to "read the Scriptures," or to "pray," or to "choose God as their best good and last end," and remain impenitent through it all, as in former times they had too often done. But, under the preaching of Bellamy, they were exhorted not "to do any duty in an unholy manner, to hear the word in a disposition to hate and reject it," but to hear "in a disposition to love, believe, and practice it." In short, the preaching became the preaching of immediate repentance.
2. Original sin. In respect to this doctrine Bellamy followed Edwards quite closely, teaching that by divine appointment Adam stood and acted as our public head. This was as well for us in every respect, and better in some respects, than if our condition had been made to depend entirely upon our own acts. He did not, however, follow Edwards into his speculations as to the method of our connection with Adam. Leaving that, and every other speculative element, he enforced in the following manner the direct and unmodified responsibility of the sinner for himself
Let it be by Adam's fall, or how it will, yet if you are an enemy to the infinitely glorious God, your Maker, and that voluntarily, you are infinitely to blame, and without excuse; for nothing can make it right for a creature to be a voluntary enemy to his glorious Creator, or possibly excuse such a crime. It is, in its own nature, infinitely wrong; there is nothing, therefore, to be said; you stand guilty before God. It is in vain to make this or any other pleas, so long as we are what we are, not by compulsion, but voluntarily. And it is in vain to pretend that we are not voluntary in our corruptions, when they are nothing else but the free, spontaneous inclinations of our own hearts. Since this is the case every mouth will be stopped and all the world become guilty before God, sooner or later.
Like Edwards, Bellamy also teaches that our natural corruption, though real, is something privative, so that God does not bring us into the world infected with any positive taint.
3. Election. This is brought out in the clearest terms. The divine sovereignty is exalted in connection with it. God does not elect this or that man for anything that he himself does, or for any goodness that there is in him. The condition of mankind is but one, and that is rebellion and opposition to the will of their Maker. At times, in order to exalt the sovereignty of grace, expressions are used by Bellamy which seem to imply that God acts arbitrarily. But this is not his meaning. If he says, "It is evident that his designs of mercy took their rise merely, absolutely, and entirely from himself," he adds in the next member of the sentence: "from his own infinite benevolence, from his self-moving goodness and sovereign grace." And again: "God does not appear to be a Being influenced, actuated and governed by a groundless, arbitrary self-will, having no regard to right reason, to the moral fitness and unfitness of things."
Election is thus taken out of the realm of the absolutely unaccountable, and one of the most serious objections against it is removed. This is the retroactive effect of the Edwardean theory of virtue. If right be founded, as has been so often said, in the will of God, then it may be that God proceeds in election according to his arbitrary will. It will then be right, for that is what right is. But if right is right in the nature of things, and God himself is obligated to exercise love and to act for the welfare of being, then not even the interests of sovereignty can justify the use of phrases which put the divine action above reason. More and more was this feature to be emphasized in New England theology.
4. The atonement. Upon this topic Bellamy's services were epoch-making, for he introduced to New England thinking an entirely new theory of the atonement, although it was left for another, his pupil Jonathan Edwards the Younger, to propose it in such a way as to secure its general adoption.
It will be necessary, in order to understand Bellamy's work, to review briefly the course of an obscure rivulet of thought, the existence of which has been generally forgotten. In the year 1617 Hugo Grotius, a learned jurist and theologian of Holland, published a Defence of the Satisfaction of Christ, in which he presented a new theory of the atonement, which has received the name of the "governmental theory" because it explains the atonement as a governmental necessity, and transfers the central point of the theory by teaching that God is, in this matter, not the "offended party," but the supreme "Ruler." This work was early known in New England. William Pynchon apparently referred to it. John Norton quotes it in 1653. Charles Chauncy had evidently read it in 1659. Baxter, who adopted the theory, and Samuel Clarke, who improved it somewhat, were both read in New England. Grotius' complete works were in the library of Yale College in 1733. It is pretty certain that the younger Edwards and later New England divines read the Defence. It is quite probable that Bellamy also did.
Grotius' main suggestion must have been a very welcome one to Bellamy. As long as the divine justice was conceived as a single unrelated attribute, and theologians talked of the necessity of the satisfaction of justice by the sacrifice of Christ, the position that God acted as the offended party was the logical one. But as soon as God is conceived as acting always from love, and his justice becomes modified both in what it demands and in the reason for its infliction by this conception, then God must act in the matter of punishment from general motives, dictated by love, or he must act as a general person, and in this case as the divine Governor. Bellamy immediately adopted this line of thought, and put at the very head of his discussion the term "moral Governor of the world" as descriptive of the position of God in the atonement. To this he consistently adheres. He thus effected the transfer of the center of gravity in the New England theory to this new point, and thus determined in what path it should move. This may seem strong language, especially when Bellamy's inconsistencies of expression are remembered. Professor Park claimed for him only that he "directly or indirectly suggested the Edwardean theory." But he did far more than that. He took the two positions which rendered the theory a necessity if they should be firmly held and consistently applied. For his use of the word "Governor" was no mere verbal change in phraseology. Turretin had employed the term "Ruler of the Universe" as the appropriate designation of God when inflicting punishment; but he had never really changed the determinative conception that God was the offended party. Bellamy, however, in his explanation of the term is everywhere governed by the great conceptions of the theory of virtue, and these compel a real change of position. Thus he says:
God does not appear to be a being influenced, actuated, and governed by a groundless, arbitrary self-will, having no regard to right reason, to the moral fitness and unfitness of things; nor does he appear to be a being governed and actuated by a groundless fondness to his creatures . . . He considers the happiness and good of his creatures, his intelligent creatures, as being what it is. He sees what it is worth, and of how great importance it is, and how much to be desired in itself, and compared with other things: he sees it to be just what it really is, and has an answerable disposition of heart, that is, is desirous of their happiness and averse to their misery, in an exact proportion to the real nature of the things in themselves.
No one familiar with Edwards can fail to see the watermark of the master's theology here. Nor is this an isolated passage. For pages the same style of discussion is continued. "Yea, if it was put to his own case, if we could possibly suppose such a thing, he [God] would make it appear that he does as he would be done by, when he punishes sinners to all eternity." "Rewards and punishments . . . are visible public testimonies borne by the Governor of the world to the moral amiableness of virtue on the one hand and to the moral hatefulness of vice on the other. He also many times defines the atonement in terms like the following, which are a full expression of the new theory:
To the end that a way might be opened for him to put his designs of mercy in execution, consistently with himself, consistently with the honor of his holiness and justice, law and government, and sacred authority, something must be done by him in a public manner, as it were, in the sight of all worlds, whereby his infinite hatred of sin, and unchangeable resolution to punish it, might be as effectually manifested as if he had damned the whole world.
Bellamy also taught the doctrine of general atonement. The older Calvinism had taught that the atonement, though sufficient for all men, was designed only for the elect. This position Bellamy expressly denies again and again. For example:
And indeed, was not the door of mercy opened to all indefinitely, how could God sincerely offer mercy to all? Or heartily invite all? Or justly blame those who do not accept? Or righteously punish them for neglecting so great salvation?
Or, at greater length:
Besides, if Christ died merely for the elect, that is, to the intent that they, only upon believing, might, consistently with the divine honor, be received to favor, then God could not, consistently with his justice, save any besides, if they should believe; "for without shedding of blood, there can be no remission." If Christ did not design, by his death, to open a door for all to be saved conditionally, that is upon the condition of faith, then there is no such door opened; the door is not opened wider than Christ designed it should be; there is nothing more purchased by his death than he intended; if this benefit was not intended, then it is not procured; if it be not procured, then the non-elect can not any of them be saved, consistently with divine justice. And, by consequence if this he the case, then, first, the non-elect have no right at all to take any, the least encouragement from the death of Christ, or the invitations of the gospel, to return to God through Christ, in hopes of acceptance; for there are no grounds of encouragement given. Christ did not die for them in any sense. It is impossible their sins should be pardoned consistently with justice; as much impossible as if there had never been a Savior; as if Christ had never died; and so there is no encouragement at all for them; and therefore it would be presumption in them to take any; all which is apparently contrary to the whole tenor of the gospel, which everywhere invites all, and gives equal encouragement to all.
Thus Bellamy laid down the fundamental positions of that theory of the atonement which was later to be called the New England. He did more than this; for we shall see, when we are brought in the progress of our history to the proper point, that he had prepared every element for the hand of that man who gave it its place in the new theology, who was, moreover, the pupil of Bellamy, and had probably derived his entire scheme from his teacher. But of this at the proper place.
5. Total depravity. This common position of Calvinism was firmly held by Bellamy. No one could state it more uncompromisingly than he did in this definition:
The very best religious performances of all unregenerate men are, complexly considered, sinful, and so, odious in the sight of God. They may do many things materially good, but the principle, end, and manner of them are such as that, complexly considered, what they do is sin in the sight of God.
The new element in his view was the reason which he gave for this position. This was derived from the new theory of virtue. Negatively, all acts of unregenerate men were sinful because they lacked the one motive which alone could make them acceptable, since they were not performed from love to God. Positively, they were sinful because they were performed from a motive thoroughly sinful, the motive of selfishness. Bellamy thus propounds the doctrine, which was to become of more importance in later writers, that all sin is selfishness; but he does not go into any proof of it. The gain he makes is simply in the suggestion that it is the life-motive which makes all the acts of the sinner sinful.
So much for the treatise upon True Religion. We pass now to a new field of theological effort, opened by Edwards, in which Bellamy is the first of the New England writers formally to labor--that occupied by the treatise upon the Permission of Sin.
Like all the rest of Bellamy's work, this was suggested by the problems which press themselves upon a preacher of repentance. The difficulties which trouble the minds of inquirers call for an argumentative style of preaching. Edwards had set the example, for the vein of argumentative defense of Christian truth runs everywhere through it, as it does through all strong preaching. From his Miscellaneous Observations a tolerably comprehensive system of Christian evidences could be constructed. Bellamy could not fail to meet the objection to the goodness of God which is constantly drawn in practical life from the pain which men suffer. If he answered this by a reference to the fact of sin, it was only to have the objection return with all the more force: How could a good God permit sin to enter the world? To the full answer of this objection he addressed himself in the treatise before us, and thus began that long line of effort culminating in the famous Taylor controversies, and in the so-called New Haven theology. It was issued in the darkest period of the French and Indian War (March, 1758). "These sermons are the rather published at this season," says Bellamy, "when the state of the world and of the church appears so exceedingly gloomy and dark, and still darker times are by many expected, as they are calculated to give consolation to such as fear the Lord and are disposed to hearken to his holy word."
The work is divided into four discourses. The first defines what is meant by the permission of sin and defends the wisdom of God in permitting it. By God's permitting sin we are not to understand that he loves sin; nor that he deprives the sinner of his free will in permitting it. It consists simply in his not hindering it. He does not permit it in the character of an unconcerned spectator who does not care how affairs go, but only because, all things considered, he judges it best not to hinder it. He may at times interfere to prevent individual sins, and when he does so, this is justifiable, commendable, and praiseworthy. In all this Bellamy does not pass beyond the Westminster Confession.
Thus Bellamy seeks by his earliest definitions to disarm the objection which was commonly made--that, upon the Calvinistic system, God foreordains sin. His relation to sin is merely one of permission. Bellamy thus appropriates the phrase of Edwards in his Freedom of the Will. We may regard his treatise as the natural supplement to Edwards' somewhat restricted remarks. But it is noticeable that, as he writes the first formal treatise upon this subject, so he falls short of Edwards in the philosophical part of the matter. The philosophy of motives is not introduced to explain the method of God's providential government.
Bellamy then proceeds to justify the ways of God in thus permitting sin. He conducts the argument by means of a multitude of scriptural examples in which he shows how God overrules the sin of men to work out in the best way possible his own plans. The final result, for example, of the course of wickedness on the part, first of Joseph's brethren, and then of the Egyptians and especially Pharaoh, was to reveal the heart and character of God as it could not otherwise have been revealed, to give his creatures a true specimen of themselves, and thus to advance his own glory and their good. For the greatest thing we can possibly have is an increased knowledge of God and of ourselves.
This ends the first discourse, and here Bellamy has touched only upon the problem of justifying the wisdom of God in permitting sin when it has once entered the world. But how shall his wisdom, in permitting it to enter be justified? This is the topic of the second discourse.
He takes as his starting-point the position that God in creating the world has chosen the best of all possible plans, and that this is, accordingly, the best possible world. He says:
In the days of eternity, long before the foundation of the world, this system, now in existence, and this plan, which now takes place, and all other possible systems, and all other possible plans, more in number perhaps than the very sands of the seashore, all equally lay open to the divine view, and one as easy to Almightiness as another. He had his choice. He had none to please but himself; beside him there was no being. He had a perfectly good taste, and nothing to bias his judgment, and was infinite in wisdom: this he chose; and this, of all possible systems, therefore, was the best, infinite wisdom and perfect rectitude being judges. If, therefore, the whole were as absolutely incomprehensible by us as it is by children of four years old, yet we ought firmly to believe the whole to be perfect in wisdom, glory, and beauty.
This will remind every reader of the optimism of Leibnitz. Every Christian, indeed, must be an optimist. If God is infinitely wise and good, he must be able to produce the best possible world, and he must have the goodness and the will to do this. Thus, says Bellamy, "were there no instance in which we could see the wisdom of God in the permission of sin," this argument would alone convince us that it must be wise to permit it. But we have more than this. God's ways are uniform, and what is true of particular parts of the universe will be true of all. If wisdom is evident in the particular parts which we can behold and estimate, then it will be found in the rest of the system, though we may not be able to examine the whole. Now, such wisdom is evident in limited portions and ranges of experience--as, for example, in the history of Joseph and Israel in Egypt already cited. Therefore, could we but examine more widely, we should everywhere find traces of the same wisdom, till its proof was complete.
This positive argument is strengthened by the answer of objections which is next presented. Bellamy insists upon the ignorance of man. This is so great that our inability to see the meaning of any particular action or course of action cannot be employed as an argument against the wisdom of such action. Under the darkest circumstances perhaps God may have such plans in view as justify his course. And with the light shed upon the subject by the Scriptures we have positive reason for believing this in spite of seeming difficulties.
So far the second discourse. In the third, Bellamy advances still nearer the heart of the subject. God, he says, does not act arbitrarily, but upon good and sufficient reason. Relying upon this truth, we may advance with confidence in the attempt to discover the reason of this great mystery.
God acts reasonably. What, now, in the first place, was exactly that which he did? He erected a grand and noble theater, the world, fit to be the scene of so great events. Upon this he placed man, a noble creature, an intelligent free agent, capable of moral action, and a proper subject of moral government. He treated him with distinguished goodness in making him capable of knowing, loving, and obeying God; and in giving him all things necessary for his comfort in such abundance. Man was thus under the highest obligations to love God, his Maker, and to dedicate himself to his service. These obligations God specially revealed to him, put him under a law, and told him the penalty which would be inflicted upon him in case he disobeyed. God thought that he had now done enough, and that he might reasonably suspend the destiny of man upon his own action, without taking further precautions for his safety. Man rebelled, sinned, and fell.
Now, here were three designs: man's design, to gain rapid and surprising advance in knowledge and happiness; Satan's design, to thwart the purpose of God by ruining man; and God's design, to permit Satan to succeed so far in his attempt as to furnish God with an occasion to attain more honor, to make the holy part of his creation more humble, holy, and happy, and to defeat Satan in his schemes as effectually as he did Pharaoh when he overwhelmed him in the Red Sea. How was God's design justifiable?
It belongs essentially to the nature of finite beings to be mutable and peccable. Consequently holiness can be absolutely maintained only when sin is positively prevented, or when God himself becomes surety that a given individual, or number of individuals, shall not sin. He must confirm such beings in holiness.
But innocent, holy beings, though mutable, if they have never felt the least inclination to sin, do not feel themselves exposed to the danger of sin. Was it possible for Peter to feel that he was in danger of denying his Lord? He felt the greatest aversion from such a deed, and only repeated experience of his weakness could teach him the possibility of such a fault.
Now, if God had confirmed these holy, mutable beings in holiness, so as to prevent all apostasy on the part of any of them, although the kindness done them would be infinitely great, and so perceived by God himself, they would have been in no position to perceive God's goodness, and so their knowledge, both of God and of themselves, would have been inadequate. They were, therefore, not fit to be confirmed; and to have confirmed them would have been to deprive the universe of a great portion of its knowledge of God and of itself, which would have been a great loss to it. Hence it was better not to confirm them till their need of confirmation was evident. But this involved the permission, and resulted in the actuality, of sin.
The fourth discourse adds nothing essential to the argument. It meets the principal objection to this line of thought, which is thus phrased: "But was there no other way in which God could have made angels and men as holy and happy, without the permission of sin?" The answer is: "Not if there was no other way in which be could so fully reveal himself. For aught I or the objector knows, this, of all possible plans, may be the best contrived to give a full and clear manifestation of deity. And its being chosen by infinite wisdom before all others, demonstrates that this is actually the case." Thus Bellamy closes the argument where he began it--in the assumption that this is the best possible world.
This doctrine is that which has been condensed in the phrase, "sin a necessary means of the greatest good." The greatest good involves the fullest possible knowledge of God. This cannot be attained without the existence of sin.
Therefore sin, because it is necessary to a complete divine self-revelation, which is the greatest good, is permitted. This is the first position taken by New England divinity upon this theme.
The following year 1759, a reply to Bellamy appeared in the form of a tract by S. Moody (anonymously printed), entitled An Attempt to Point out the Fatal and Pernicious Consequences of the Rev. Mr. Joseph Bellamy's Doctrines respecting Moral Evil. If Bellamy's treatise had been an epoch-making one, this reply was also epochmaking. It was not merely an evidence that every theological proposal in New England was sure to receive the fullest and freest discussion--itself a most important fact, and one promising that theological innovation should result in theological progress; but it also revealed the fact that the young school of thought which was now slowly coming to the front was but one of the profoundly earnest and progressive movements of the day, and that these several movements, even when opposing each other, had much in common. If most of them came to naught, and if one of them took later a wrong direction and cut itself off from the line of evangelical advance, while New England theology held a straighter course and came to a sounder result, it was not because they did not all feel the same great influences. The superiority of the one school was in its leaders; and their superiority consisted in their mingled conservatism and radicalism. Underneath the whole seething surface of the controversies lay the question of human freedom. Apparently the only safeguard just then against an abuse of the idea of freedom was a restriction of the idea. Edwards had given this restriction; and in his theory of virtue he had at the same time given a great impulsive power toward a better view of man. The co-operation of these two tendencies kept the Edwardean school from many a premature position and many an error.
Mr. Moody objected against the idea that "it is most for the glory of God and the good of the moral system that there should be moral evil." While he conducts the discussion upon the surface of the theme, and seems scarcely to be conscious what his fundamental difference from Bellamy is, they really held irreconcilable ideas of the nature of man and of his freedom. Moody could not see anything but evil in sin, and referred it in its whole entirety to man, as a free agent acting in opposition to God. He thus gave the creature an independence before God which Bellamy was in no condition to admit. And when Bellamy urged his a priori line of argument by which God must always do the best, since he was infinite and perfect, Moody put in the reply of the agnostic, that such positions are speculative and beyond our powers.
Moody begins by pointing out fallacies in Bellamy's fundamental principles. He has no right to argue that "because God educes many happy consequences from moral evil . . . therefore he thought best that moral evil should be introduced into a system where all were perfectly holy;" nor that "the sight of the distress of others greatly enhances our pleasure in this state: therefore a view of the misery of those who fell made a prodigious increase of the happiness of those who continued innocent and holy;" nor that God "must necessarily always will and do that which is most for his own glory." His thought in this last is that "in no definite period of time, in no oven quantity of space can there be a full discovery of God's glories." He questions whether this present scheme can be properly said to be God's. To God belong its "order, good, and happiness;" "all the sin, confusion, and misery to Satan and wicked Men."
He next presents a number of the common objections, such as that the theory of Bellamy makes God the author of sin, and sin a good, not to be opposed or lamented, etc. And then he presents the argument which in N. W. Taylor's hands, long afterward, was to be one of the principal arguments to destroy the idea that sin was the necessary means of the greatest good; viz., this, that if all rational beings had continued holy and perfect, there would have resulted an amount of blessedness which would have been more to the glory of God than the present existing evil. Finally he objects to the reasoning of Bellamy: The present scheme is a fact; therefore it is best.
The meaning of the whole pamphlet was, therefore: Bellamy makes sin the necessary means of the greatest good; to sustain this, he makes all the steps necessary, leaves no place for man's responsible personal action, and throws upon God's purpose an onus which belongs upon the will of man.
Bellamy issued the following year (1760) a Vindication in reply. He does not touch the point really at issue, nor advance anything essential to his view of the subject, and hence the book need not detain us long. He shows, however, one of the first qualifications of a controversialist, when he tries to find common ground with his adversary, and specifies eight points in which they agree. The "grand point of difference" he understands to be the optimism of his position, whether "God's present plan is, of all possible plans, the best." The proposition to which the book is directed is that "God, who is a being of infinite wisdom and perfect rectitude, always conducts agreeably to his own most glorious perfections;" and this he carries out in a very skilful dialogue, in which he puts aside the unnecessary agnosticism of his opponent. The real gain of this controversy was therefore the negative result--not then fully understood, because the point of the whole had not been brought out--that to defend the freedom of man the overruling government of God must not be so treated as to reduce it to a nullity.
But the process which was hereafter to distinguish the history of New England theology had begun. Our divines, who were so absorbed in the practical labors of the ministry, which demand certainty and consistency of teaching, as constantly to overlook many of the implications of their own positions, were to be gradually pushed on by their adversaries, whom they confuted at some points, but from whom they had to learn at others, into greater and greater modification of their original system. The problems of the day were perceived by many minds; the progress of conviction was the same at points apparently very diverse; the evolution of New England theology was more the work of the age than of the leaders in whose works it was gradually formulated.
We pause here in our review of Bellamy, to recur to him as to minor points repeatedly in connection with his successors. It was evident to his contemporaries that a new force had appeared in American theology, and we can now see that it was a new school. Upon central portions of the theological system a number of valuable suggestions are made, all deriving their force from a new theory of man, as embraced in the ideas of virtue and of freedom, which had entered into the thinking of the times, partly in consequence and partly in spite of the labors of Edwards; and at the central point of all, in the doctrine of the atonement, the theory is propounded which is to constitute the principal service of New England theology to the world, and is adequately presented in its leading idea and in the reasons for this. Above all, a new air breathes through Bellamy's writings--the air of freedom; and a new intellectual disposition is everywhere manifest--the disposition to discuss, not merely in order to refute, but also to learn, and to meet new difficulties by new propositions suited to the day. It is the unmistakable influence of Edwards that we see here. The protagonist has passed through the first great struggles of a new epoch, and come to a knowledge of himself and his work; his successor stands already in the full freedom of the new position gained and in the joyous consciousness of his powers addresses himself to the task prescribed by the situation. It was with a feeling of great expectation that men looked forward to the future, to its struggles and to their outcome. And this feeling of buoyant hope long continued to be the dominant feeling of the New England school, as it was of the entire new American nation.
CHAPTER VI: Samuel Hopkins
It was fortunate for the new theology of New England that so rich a nature, with so warm a heart and so intensely practical interests as Bellamy had, stood at its fountainhead to direct its course. The other colaborer with Edwards, Hopkins, was naturally of a more prosaic and exclusively intellectual turn; but he too was a pastor, and was thus made constantly solicitous for the practical usefulness of every theological theory. He was, perhaps, not so large a nature as Bellamy, but he was violently uprooted from his retirement in the depths of the western wilderness and transplanted to one of the principal seaports of the country, and here, amid the opportunities and under the incitements of a busier life, be became involved in larger attempts, and performed a larger service, than fell to Bellamy's lot. His theological service was larger, for he gathered his theology into the first New England "system;" but he was also a reformer, laboring against intemperance, slavery, secret societies, etc., gave the impulse which finally brought into existence the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and engaged in large miscellaneous literary labors, becoming, in particular, the editor of Edwards' literary remains. It is as a portion of a widely extended activity that we are to view those labors which fall under our present examination.
Hopkins' system of theology was a growth in his own mind, and was formed by prolonged study, and in constant contact with other minds. It was presented in many partial views in a series of controversial writings beginning with the very unpopular tract, Sin through the Divine Interposition an Advantage to the Universe (1759). It was finally gathered up in one full presentation in his System of Doctrines (1793). But meantime there had been a long and varied theological history, in which many different minds had been engaged, from some of whom Hopkins took much. The full understanding of his work therefore requires that it shall be divided, and, that after its earlier portions have been considered, and the foundations which he laid have been traced, attention shall be turned to the controversies going on about him and to the work of other laborers. Only thus shall we be able to understand the System when it comes.
The title of the first tract, already mentioned, was "so shocking to many that they would read no further." Such is Hopkins' own account. But it was a serious and reverent handling of the great theme which Bellamy had discussed but a little before--the permission of sin. Hopkins' first proposition is that sin is the occasion of great good. The case of Joseph, of Pharaoh, and of the Savior are cited, very much as Bellamy had cited them. Hopkins also declares under this head that God could have made intelligent creatures and kept them from sin without destroying their free agency. The second proposition is that the result of sin in accomplishing good is no excuse for it. The argument is chiefly biblical, consisting of examples which illustrate the vileness of sin, thus bringing to the heart and conscience of the reader the principles to which heart and conscience must ever respond. Sin is not the occasion of good because of any tendency to good in itself.
Bellamy had uncompromisingly declared, on the basis of the Leibnitzian optimism, that sin was the necessary means of the greatest good. Hopkins was also an optimist, and may have shared Bellamy's view. But there are two distinct interpretations of optimism possible--one that there can be no world better than the present, and the other that there can be none so good. Bellamy takes the latter position; but Hopkins may have taken the former. Though he says, "God's greatest and most glorious work is to bring good out of evil . . . to make sin in general, which is the greatest evil, the means of the greatest good," he is elsewhere cautious to a degree that implies some hesitation from fully following Bellamy. He says: "Christ will make sin the occasion of so much good, that the world shall be at least as good a world as if sin had never been introduced." His last word upon the theme is the supposition: "If God saw that sin's entering into the world would be the best means of answering the greatest and best ends . . . would be the occasion of the greatest good . . . a means of the world's becoming better, more excellent and glorious than otherwise it would be," etc. But he never introduces the thought that the revelation of God could not be perfected without sin, or any other position that must involve Bellamy's radical affirmation.
Hopkins' next work was his Inquiry concerning the Promises of the Gospel (1765), written in reply to two sermons of Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of the West Church in Boston, which were entitled, Striving to Enter in at the Strait Gate . . . and the Connection of Salvation Therewith (1761). Mayhew was entering a protest against certain applications of that same doctrine of inability, inherent in the ancient Calvinism, against which New England theology was about to make equal protest. He seems to have come already upon the ground of Edwards so far as to teach that the character of God was comprised in his love, and to draw the consequences that later gave the New England doctrine of the atonement. He had in mind certain extreme statements of the doctrine of prevenient grace, which led men to "deny there is any sort of connection between the most earnest endeavors of sinners and their obtaining eternal life." He was writing of the "unregenerate," but it is not quite certain that he did not mean by that term the "unsanctified." His terms are a little nebulous. Hopkins understood him to mean those who have not received the new heart by the special operation of the Holy Spirit. Whatever he meant at this point, so much is clear, that he taught that one who is "at least a speculative believer in the gospel," and has "some sense of his sin, guilt, and misery," has "his heart engaged in this matter as a thing of the last importance to him," earnestly prays, strives against sin, and intends to persevere "not for a month, a year, or any definite, given time, but as long as it shall please God to continue him in the world," may "strive to attain holiness and eternal life," and that, "if they strive in the manner they may and ought to do . . . God will certainly afford them all the influences of his Spirit and grace which are necessary to that end." The impression which the book makes as a whole is that, in resisting certain evil tendencies of the times, Mayhew had unconsciously gone over into substantial Pelagianism, ascribing the gift of converting grace to the divine response to efforts of the sinner.
Mayhew accordingly favors the use of "means" by the unregenerate, and ascribes to them some degree of acceptableness before God for such use. He does not exhort them to enter in at the strait gate, but to strive to enter, and the exhortation seems to Hopkins to have the force of urging them to strive in such a way as not to enter in actually. Hopkins had had bitter experiences of the effect of such exhortations in suppressing the Christian life in his own personal history. The book before us was written out of an inner necessity of the writer's mind. It was the first, but not the last, effort to strip such opinions of all their disguises and reveal them in themselves and in their baleful effects upon individual piety and the prosperity of the churches.
The new theory of virtue might have given Hopkins a means of complete logical refutation of Mayhew's views. If there is such a thing as a separate virtue, a single act of the will, which, without regard to the great end for which man is living, has a virtue in itself as an individual act, then there may be a prayer pleasing to God which yet falls short of being a full surrender of all the powers of the man to his service. But the Edwardean theory insisted first upon the exercise of "love to being in general," or that all things must be done from the supreme motive of love to God, and thus excluded every form of service of God which did not involve this. Such was Hopkins' position, and he, no doubt, saw clearly the inconsistency of Mayhew's teachings with this fundamental idea. But it is remarkable that he does not conduct the argument upon this basis. To have done so would have been to prejudice his case before a public which knew little as yet about the theory of virtue, which was, indeed, published the same year with Hopkins' tract under his editorial supervision (1765).
The question in dispute between Mayhew and Hopkins turned upon the doctrine of total depravity. Mayhew thought that the unregenerate might have such desires and strivings after holiness as were pleasing to God, though they were still unregenerate. Hopkins declared that if they had such acceptable strivings, they were regenerate; and if they were unregenerate, they did not have them. "All must see, I think, by this time," says Hopkins, "that in order to understand and settle the question before us, it must be first determined what can be justly predicated of the doings of unregenerate sinners, and that a just solution of this will put an end to the dispute." To the resolution of this issue Hopkins now addresses himself.
The expression "desiring salvation," if it means anything which it should mean, must, according to Hopkins, involve the choice of salvation; and this signification, he thinks, is contained in many expressions of Dr. Mayhew's. Now, it will not be difficult to prove that all who come with such a desire will obtain salvation, for all the promises of the gospel are made to them. The question is simply whether the unregenerate have any such desires. This the Scriptures deny in such passages as this: "No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me, draw him." This drawing is regeneration, before which there is no true "coming." Says Hopkins:
There must, therefore, be a distinction kept up between regeneration, which is the work of God in giving a new heart, and in which men are perfectly passive, and active conversion, in which men, being regenerated, turn from sin to God in the exercise of repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, and in consequence of which they are pardoned and received to favor and a title to eternal life, and have the gift of the spirit to dwell with them forever, as an abiding principle of life and holiness. All this, with every benefit which men receive by Christ, is promised to those who believe or heartily embrace the gospel, and not to regeneration; for to this, considered as antecedent to all action, and only as the foundation of right exercise, no promise is made.
Neither are those influences by which men are regenerated in this sense meant by giving or receiving the Spirit, as the Spirit of promise, by which believers, and they only, are sealed to the day of redemption. But men receive the Spirit, in this sense, as a Spirit of adoption, by which all God's children are led by faith, or a hearty receiving Christ with all his benefits. (See John 1:12. Gal. 3:14, 26. Eph. 1:13.) They who will not make and understand this distinction, must think and talk in some measure unintelligibly on this point. This change, therefore, called regeneration, by which a new heart is given, as the foundation of all true discerning of the things of God's moral kingdom, and of all right exercises of heart; this change, I say, wrought by the Spirit of God, immediately and instantaneously, and altogether imperceptibly to the person who is the subject of it, it being impossible that he should know what God has done for him but by a consciousness of his own views and exercises, which are the fruit and consequence if the divine operation--these views and exercises of the regenerate, in which they turn from sin to God, or embrace the gospel, are often in Scripture spoken of as included in that change which is called a being born again; as all the change which is perceptible, and in which man is active, consists in this. And this is sometimes called, by divines, active conversion, to distinguish it from regeneration, or that change in which men are passive.
Hopkins here has in view the subjective motive leading to the action of the will. "Things that exist in the view of the mind," says Edwards, "have their strength, tendency, or advantage to move or excite the will from many things pertaining to the nature and circumstances of the thing viewed, the nature and circumstances of the mind that views, and the degree and manner of its view." To give this subjective condition, in the critical matter of regeneration, is the act of God, and before it the will never acts in accordance with the law of God. Yet this philosophical argument is never introduced by Hopkins, who no more quotes the Freedom of the Will than he does the Nature of Virtue, but advances other arguments more readily accepted by his audience. For example, he says: "That there are no promises of regenerating grace made to the exercises and doings of the unregenerate may be argued from passages of the Holy Scriptures;" and then proceeds to quote the requirements of the Scripture to repent and believe, and not to do anything short of this. He might have said: "This theory of regeneration puts it in the act of man, whereas it is the sovereign act of God." But he does not use this argument; he proceeds with his quotations. "To be carnally minded is death . . . All unregenerate persons are according to this in a state of condemnation and death and are in the way to eternal destruction." And he says, again: "That there are no promises of salvation made to the exercises and doings of the unregenerate will be evident if it be considered that such do, with their whole hearts, oppose the way of salvation by Christ and reject the salvation offered them."
Now, that exercises of enmity against Christ, and opposition to the gospel, and the salvation therein revealed and offered, or those which are consistent with this, are made the condition of a title to, and interest in, this salvation, so as that all the promises of the gospel are made to such exercises and acts, I presume none will believe.
If salvation is offered to all who heartily desire it, really choose and accept of it, and so truely ask for it, it is offered on terms low enough, as low as any can reasonably desire; yea, on the lowest conceivable or even possible terms. But no unregenerate person comes up to these terms. Therefore, salvation is not offered or promised to any doings of the unregenerate.
But, now, if the unregenerate are not accepted of God and blessed in their prayers and in the use of the other "means of grace," so called, what is the proper office of the Word in preaching, of the services of the sanctuary, of the reading of the Bible, of prayer, etc.? In reply, Hopkins emphasizes truth as "the grand medium of grace and salvation, and, strictly speaking, the sole medium." The whole object of the use of these means by Christians is to make the truth come home with greater power to men's hearts. And unconverted men are themselves also to use these means; that is, they are to seek every help in gaining a larger knowledge of the things relating to God's moral government and kingdom.
But if regeneration is, after all, God's work, what will be the benefit of this? Hopkins' answer is that the degree of knowledge thereby gained, while not a discernment of the true beauty of divine things, is the necessary condition of such a discernment.
This [true discernment] is a kind of knowledge which is peculiar to the regenerate, the foundation of which is laid in their having a new heart. The former is necessary in order to the latter, as it is supposed and implied in it; for there can be no discerning of the beauty of those objects of which the mind has no speculative idea.
But, still further, what is the true condition of the unregenerate under the use of these means? Are they the better or the worse for them? Hopkins answers, in entire consistence with the positions he has taken previously, that there is no true holiness in such use of means, but that, on the contrary, if the sinner continues to reject the gospel, he does not grow
better, but rather grows worse, by all the instruction and knowledge he gets in the use of means. And awakened, convicted sinners, with whom most means are used, and who are most attentive to the concerns of their souls, and most in earnest in the use of means, are commonly, if not always. really more guilty and odious in God's sight, than they who are secure and at ease in their sins. Their greater sinfulness does not, indeed, consist in their concern about themselves, in a sense of the sad, dangerous state they are in, and in their earnestly desiring deliverance and safety, or in the pains they take in order hereto; but in their continuing to hate God and his law, and to oppose and reject the Savior; even under all their concern, exercises, and endeavors, and with all the light and conviction they have.
But if all these efforts and all the use of means only make the sinner worse and worse, what is he to do? Shall he continue to use these ineffective means? Yes, says Hopkins, they are necessary to salvation, inasmuch as their absence is a fatal bar in the way of salvation.
God can, doubtless, as easily change the heart of the most ignorant, deluded Mahometan, or heathen, yea, the most blind, stupid Hottentot in the world, as that of the most awakened, enlightened sinner under the gospel. But if he should do so by the regenerating influences of his Spirit, there could be no right and proper exercises of Christian virtue and holiness; because such a one is without any right speculative knowledge of those truths, in the view of which alone Christian holiness is exercised. And giving a new heart, or a right taste and temper of mind, would not remove this darkness. This only prepares the mind to discern and relish the beauty and sweetness of divine things, when set before it in the use of means, but does not give any new speculative ideas or knowledge. Therefore, we have no reason to think God ever does so.
Hopkins' hopes for the heathen were not greater than Luther's, though the rational ground of his despair was not precisely the same.
To sum up, then, the substance of this treatise in a few words: Hopkins taught that the sinner is totally wicked; is under immediate obligations to repent; and nothing short of this is acceptable before God. He is bound to use the means of enlightenment, but in a holy manner, repenting of his sins as fast as he discovers them, casting himself wholly upon God, and choosing his service. Every promise is made to him under such circumstances, and nothing less can be or will be accepted by God. But if he refuse to give God his heart, all that he does is wicked, and the more he strives to put something else in the place of this simple, easy, and single duty, the more wicked he is. Such is the meaning of Hopkins; and the positions he thus laid down became at once and remained commonplaces in the New England school.
The men who opposed Hopkins so violently in this "new doctrine" claimed to be good Calvinists. It is therefore interesting to ask what were the actual relations of Hopkins' teaching to Calvinism, and especially to the Westminster Confession. The answer is brief. Hopkins was simply reaffirming the Westminster doctrine, in almost the very words of the Confession. We read:
Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others, yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word, nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful and cannot please God or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God.
This contest was the first shock of the battle of the new divinity with conservative Calvinism. It is natural at the present time to suppose that Edwards' works were recognized, when they first appeared, as possessing the importance which was later ascribed to them, and that his contemporaries had the same respect for him which posterity has felt. But such was not the case. The controversies into which Hopkins fell illustrate the prevalent condition of theological thinking, and thus throw very important light upon the times; but they were also essential steps in the contest which had to be waged in behalf of the new opinions before these could boast of the general acceptance which they finally received, and thus are indispensable topics in a genetic history of New England theology. Into their details it will therefore be necessary to go.
In 1767 Rev. Jedidiah Mills, of Ripton, Conn., wrote an Inquiry concerning the State of the Unregenerate under the Gospel, etc. This essay was particularly called out by the tenth section of Hopkins' tract against Mayhew, in which he dealt with the use of means and the condition of the unregenerate while using them. Mr. Mills did not approve of the position that the unregenerate, under conviction of sin in consequence of the application to them of the means of grace, are more sinful than they would be in a state of indifference and neglect of the means. This seemed to him an extreme against which he wished to protest.
His own starting-point it is somewhat difficult to determine, for he does not seem to have been a clear and incisive thinker. He sometimes describes the "unregenerate" man in a way which applies only to the regenerate. In such passages "unregenerate" would almost seem equivalent to "unsanctified." He implies that it is the duty of the "unregenerate, as a means among others, to pray for regenerating grace." He speaks of them, though unregenerate, as "less wicked, and, in the true sense of Scripture, in a state brought nearer to the kingdom of God" when awakened and convicted. He does not intend by this to abandon the Calvinistic system in favor of the Pelagian, although he approaches the latter; he is deeply interested in one main thing--in avoiding discouraging impressions as to the outcome of "using the means," in order that the unregenerate may not be led to neglect them.
However vague, rambling, and weak Hopkins felt the book to be, as it was in no small degree, he saw in it an epitome of the objections with which his work was being met, and proceeded to answer it at length. It is often more difficult to answer a vague and weak man than one strong and exact. With the thoroughness of Edwards himself, he set out to demolish the adversary and all he represented. It will obviously be unnecessary to follow the controversy into all its ramifications, for we are concerned here only with getting before us the contributions that came from it to the growing system of New England thought. But the main positions of Hopkins we must note, and they were these:
After remarking that Mr. Mills had "carefully kept the character which I give of the unregenerate sinner under true awakenings and convictions of conscience out of view," and had "done it through his whole performance," Hopkins redefines his position in the following paragraph:
The unregenerate sinner, who is under genuine and thorough awakenings and convictions of conscience respecting his own state and circumstances and the truths of the gospel, particularly respecting this truth, that salvation is freely offered to him through a Mediator, which he is obliged by the strongest ties of duty and interest immediately to accept and embrace, being at the same time wholly without any excuse for his neglect in not embracing it, and for the opposition of his heart to Christ, of which he is conscious, and who yet continues, under all this light, and contrary to the plain dictates and pressing, painful convictions of his own conscience, obstinately to oppose and reject Jesus Christ; such a one is, on the account of this his impenitence and obstinacy under this clear light and conviction of conscience, more guilty, vile, and odious in God's sight than he was before he had this light and conviction and was in a state of security and ignorance, whatever alteration or reformation has taken place in him in other respects.
He then goes into an elaborate discussion of "the true state and character of the unregenerate sinner under awakenings and convictions," in which he maintains that he is "an enemy to God;" and that, "however distressed and anxious he is about his case . . . he is as real and as great an enemy to the divine character as ever." Then he illustrates as follows:
Many a profligate wretch, who has long indulged himself in uncleanness and debauchery, when he has been brought into such circumstances that his wickedness is likely to be discovered so as to bring disgrace and contempt upon him and ruin him in all his worldly interests, has been filled with anxiety and distress, so that he could find no quiet night nor day; he has been convinced of his folly, condemned himself, and reformed his vile practices, being afraid to indulge himself in the least degree as he had done, and resolved that he would carefully avoid such conduct for time to come, and has used unwearied attempts to escape the evil he feared; and in this time of his fear and distress has made many prayers to God, hoping that he would interpose in his behalf, so that he might escape the evil he feared. But when his fears were over and nothing was, in his view, in the way of his going into his former practices without danger of punishment or a discovery, he has returned to them with as much delight and eagerness as ever. In this case every one will be sensible how little in his favor was his reformation, and that under all his fears and terrors and earnest endeavors to avoid evil, his heart was really no better than it was before, and was as much in love with sin. This may in some measure illustrate the case of the awakened sinner with respect to what I have just now been speaking; for there is no more virtue and goodness in fearing evil in the future world, even the punishment of hell, than worldly evil; and the reformation of any particular practices from such fear is from no better principles and no more an evidence of real opposition of heart to sin than in the instance just mentioned.
"This," says Hopkins again, "is carefully kept out of sight" by Mr. Mills; and
he represents the unregenerate as not wholly to blame for their unregeneracy, their unbelief, and not embracing the gospel, but as being under an impotence which does in some measure, if not wholly, excuse. This representation runs through his whole book, and is laid as the foundation of all his opposition to me.
In other words, here was again the old paralyzing doctrine of inability, which was to Hopkins a "refuge of lies."
The dispute between the parties gathered, then, as Hopkins says, "about the true character of the unregenerate sinner."
At a later point Hopkins takes up the question whether "the apathy of the awakened sinner is an encouragement to the abandoned sinner." He answers this by a consideration of the ruling motive of sinners, which he finds in their selfishness. He sketches the efforts of such a sinner, under fear of hell, to secure salvation; and declares that, if the sinner is convinced that "attendance on means" will bring salvation, he will not be deterred by any idea of increased guilt, for it is not his guilt that disturbs him, but his danger.
If, therefore, he does neglect means, and live in known ways of open sin, under a pretence that he is afraid of that greater sin he shall be guilty of if he attends on means and becomes a convinced sinner, it is certain it is but a pretence, in which there is no truth; for if he is afraid of greater sinfulness, why not of less; why does he go on in known sin? If he hates sin and hence sincerely desires to be delivered from it, why does he not leave off sinning and fly to Christ, the only deliverer?
Thus Part I of the answer. Upon this follows a Part II, which is entitled: "Wherein it is inquired, whether God has given any commands to unregenerate sinners, which they do truly comply with and may perfectly obey while unregenerate?" Hopkins' line of argument is already familiar to us. He insists on the "heart" or the motive, necessary to fulfil any command of God's, and this is that element which only the regenerate have. And, finally, we need only notice, near the end of his treatise, and after much other discussion, his summary of the evil tendency of Mr. Mill's Inquiry. This consists in his "representing sinners more to blame for other sins than for the sin of unbelief," in the tendency "to prevent sinners from coming to any proper, true, and thorough conviction of their guilt," to flatter the superficially interested, and to discourage "every sinner who has any good degree of true, genuine conviction," etc., etc.
A second antagonist arose in the person of Rev. William Hart, who wrote a small tract upon President Edwards' theory of virtue.
Mr. Hart had evidently been repelled by the style of Edwards, especially by his excessive abstractness and the unusual significations given to his terms, which mark this brief treatise on virtue more than any other of Edwards' writings. That he had taken little pains to penetrate the hard shell to the kernel and come to an understanding of what Edwards really meant is equally evident; unless, indeed, we are to suppose him too indefinite in his own thinking to be able to follow another as logical as Edwards was.
As an illustration of his attitude we may note the following passage:
Is true religious love to God such as Mr. Edwards here represents it? Does the virtuous or holy mind first entertain a benevolent affection for being in general, abstractly considered, simply as intelligent, and in the next step direct this benevolence chiefly to God, considering him as having the greatest share of mental being? and thus viewing him as most benevolent and beneficent to being simply considered, does the benevolent mind rise in greater benevolence to him, and settle in complacence in him, on this account, from a sort of gratitude to him, as thus befriending the grand object of his primary love? Does not this represent being simply considered as the supreme object of virtuous regard, and make it an idol, and virtue itself idolatrous? Does it not in effect represent love to God as the result of our own virtuous love to simple being, virtue's idol, rather than of his virtuous attraction, and quickening love to us while we were sinners? Do we receive any such ideas from inspired teachers in holy scripture? These views are too shocking.
The historical process by which a man comes to love God is here confounded with the logical relations of ideas. Being simply considered is taken as if it were a different being from God, in opposition to the most express cautions and explanations of Edwards. The last sentence is also characteristic, for the work is pervaded by a kind of holy indignation, which provoked Hopkins to some sarcasms that, however deserved, might have been better omitted.
The argumentative value of the work was not great, for, though he tries to catch Edwards in inconsistencies with himself, he never grapples with the true question at issue between them, which was in fact the question between Calvinism and Pelagianism. And when, in the last chapter but one, he attempts to state the "real nature and essence of true virtue or real holiness," he approaches very near to Edwards, for he defines it thus: "It consists in right and equitable dispositions and actions towards God and our fellow servants."
Still another antagonist had to be met in the person of Rev. Moses Hemmenway, of Wells, Mass., who in 1767 published Seven Sermons on the Obligation and Encouragement of the Unregenerate to Labour for the Meat Which Endureth to Everlasting Life. They seem to have had a purely practical purpose--to increase the attendance upon the means of grace by the uncoverted--and are by no means marked by extremes of any sort. Under the head of "mistaken ends of religious duties" he guards against a number of the same misunderstandings which Hopkins was laboring against. "No one is required to do anything to atone or satisfy for his past offences;" "nor are these duties to be required as meritorious of the favour and kindness of God, or as rendering us worthy objects of his mercy;" they are not "a condition of acceptance with God;" they have not "a promise of faith, or the grace of regeneration annexed to them;" and "the duties or endeavors which God has prescribed to the unregenerate are not prescribed because there is any spiritual goodness in the performances of such persons." The positive doctrine which he is inculcating is summed up in the following sentences:
They ought to repent and believe the gospel and obey all the precepts therein contained, from a true faith in God and in his Son, Jesus Christ the redeemer, from a holy reverence, love, and gratitude, for the majesty and grace displayed in the work of redemption. But they are morally incapable of acting from such views and ends as these, till they have a spiritual knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; yet they are capable of performing the matter of the duties required from lower views, from natural principles, and a different kind of light and influence from the Holy Spirit. And it is their duty and they have encouragement to do what God has required of them, in such a manner and for such ends as these, however defective, rather than not at all. Till their hearts are divinely renewed and their minds savingly enlightened, they are to attend upon the instituted means of grace from a conviction of conscience that God has commanded them to do so, and it is their duty to obey. They are to do it from a desire of further light and instruction, which God has directed them to seek for in this way. They are to do it from a serious concern, if it may be, to find rest to their weary souls, to flee from the wrath to come, and obtain reconciliation with God.
When, now, Hopkins put forth his True State and Character of the Unregenerate in reply to Mr. Mills, Hemmenway found himself as much attacked as Mr. Mills. He therefore issued (1772) a Vindication, which will answer the question which will have arisen in the mind of every reader: how it was that, when he was so near to Hopkins, he could not come nearer. That answer will be given by the fact that he had by no means accepted the new Edwardean philosophy, whether of the will or of the nature of virtue.
He could not, in the first place, accept the distinction which Edwards had made between natural and moral ability and inability. He could not understand what was meant by natural inability (defined by Edwards as inability because of "some impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the Will"), because he could not get at the precise meaning of "will" in such a connection. He is not ready to accept the division of the soul into faculties; for "some, who have been no mean philosophers, have thought that no real and natural distinction could be made between the faculties, habits, acts, and objects of the understanding and the will." He mentions the threefold, and Edwards' twofold, division of the faculties, but decides for neither, and is indeed averse to such discussions, for "it is not surely fit that a distinction of so much importance as this, between that inability which excuses and that which does not, should turn upon so nice and abstruse a point as whether the defect or obstacle lies in the understanding or the will." He notes the ambiguity which attended Edwards' use of the word "inclination," but does not press this as he should.
When he comes to state what he himself understands under the inability of the unregenerate, he distinguishes between the powers or faculties of the soul, in respect to which it is "indifferently capable of sin or holiness, and its "habits," which he otherwise terms "secondary powers of moral action," and which are "any principle, disposition, or propensity which is the foundation of men's loving or hating particular objects, or acting in a particular manner." It is the lack of such a habit (comparable to skill in speaking a particular language), "disposing them to holy affections and actions," which constitutes the inability of the unregenerate.
It is for the purpose of still further clearing up this topic that Hemmenway now passes to the nature of true holiness; and here his second great difference from Edwards appears. "Holiness," he says, "consists in conformity to the preceptive will of God." He does not mean thereby that right and wrong are founded in the will of God. God has commanded us to be holy "because it is right."
Now, one would expect, if there was to be a difference from Hopkins established here, that Hemmenway should next declare that an outward act, such as attendance upon the public worship of God, performed by an unregenerate person, might be holy, at least in some respect, because it is "in conformity to the preceptive will of God." Indeed, he does use expressions which hint at this. He speaks of an action as "not absolutely holy, though in some particulars it may be good." But when he comes to define the "principles of holy obedience," they are (1) "a supernatural habit communicated in regeneration," (2) "a true faith in God, in Christ," (3) "the special influence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us," (4) "love, the greatest of Christian graces, without which we with all our endowments and works are nothing." This falls very little short of being Edwardean. But it is not intended to be that, for a little later, with explicit reference to Edwards, Hemmenway says of true holiness that "it seems not to be an exact and just definition to say, `its essence consists in general benevolence.'" He continues:
For, though it be true that general benevolence is a holy affection, yet holiness does not consist wholly in right affections. Not only love but good works are required in the divine command. Effective acts of the soul are as really of the nature of holiness as immanent exercises, when they are in themselves, and in their circumstances and qualifications, conformable to the will of God . . . And, besides, there is a rectitude of nature conformable to the law, distinct from all exercises of the soul whatever. This definition then appears to be defective, narrow, and inadequate.
With the true meaning of Edwards he does not, therefore, grapple. He is both more pointed and more successful in refuting Hopkins' statement that "the unregenerate act wholly from self-love."
The final outcome of all his discussions is perhaps sufficiently embraced in the following paragraph in the section entitled, "the unregenerate able and obliged to do actions materially good:"
It has been proved that the unregenerate who enjoy gospel privileges are able, by the common assistance of divine providence and grace, to reform their lives; to break off from courses and acts of open sin in opposition to the dictates of their own conscience; to do actions materially good, and that seriously and conscientiously according to their present light. They have both faculties and principles of action sufficient for these things. If these things are enjoined upon them by and contained in those commands which God in his word has laid upon them, then it is their duty thus to reform their lives, and attend the means of grace, that is, something is their duty which they have a power to do before regeneration.
A serious problem was now presented to Hopkins. With Hart's Remarks on President Edwards' Dissertation and Hemmenway's Vindication before him, he saw that the true difficulty as to "unregenerate doings" was the failure to understand, or at least to accept, the doctrines of the will and of virtue which the master had set forth. He determined, therefore, in order that he might introduce these doctrines to the thinking of the day, to reply to these last tracts by a new presentation, in his own language, of the theory of holiness which Edwards had originated. This he did in 1773, issuing his Inquiry into the Nature of True Holiness, to which were added appendices in which he paid detailed attention to his opponents. He confessed his entire agreement with Edwards, and our treatment of the book may, therefore, be the briefer.
The preface, however, contains a remark which may attract our attention:
I humbly conceive there has been too little attention to the nature of holiness among divines in general, and that a proper and intelligible definition of it is not easily to be found in bodies of divinity or elsewhere. And most of those who think it a very easy matter to tell what holiness is, and that we are all agreed in this, have been contented with a set of words which express no distinct ideas, but leave the thing wholly in the dark. They will perhaps say, God's holiness is his purity. If it is asked, In what does this purity consist? the common answer is, In that which is opposite to all sin, the greatest impurity. We have now got what, I think, is the most common definition of holiness. But who is the wiser? This does not help us to any idea of this purity, unless we know what sin is. But this can not be known so long as we know not what holiness is; for we do not learn what holiness is by first obtaining the idea of sin, but we must first know what holiness, or, which is the same, what the divine law is, in order to the knowledge of sin.
The method of Hopkins in traversing the ground which Edwards had so fully covered was evidently governed by the reasons which led him to write the treatise. He does not begin at a point so remote from the thinking of ordinary men as Edwards did, nor seek to ground his theory so entirely in one fundamental principle. Yet it will be noted that his method is substantially the same. Thus he begins, not with ideal harmony in the universe, nor with virtue as beauty, but with a series of plain statements as to holiness--that it is reasonable, as the greatest good in the universe, the highest possible excellence, the most perfect and beautiful union of intelligent beings, the same thing in all beings, simple, etc. He then advances to his proposition, "Holiness consists in Love," which he proves from the Scriptures exclusively. Then follows the question, "What is that love in which all true holiness consists?" and he defines it as "universal benevolence, or friendly affection to all intelligent beings." This is more intelligible than Edwards' "love to being in general." Then, after discussing self-love, Hopkins goes over all those particulars which he laid down in the opening section, and shows that universal, "disinterested" (his favorite and characteristic term) benevolence satisfies all those statements. After some further Scripture proofs, and the brief discussion of objections, his treatise is brought to an end.
But Hopkins did not suppose himself to be merely restating what Edwards had already stated. He viewed himself as having made certain substantial and important "improvements."
The chief of these consisted in his statement of the "opposition of holiness to self-love." The improvement does not consist in any new view of self-love in itself, for the definition given by the two divines is substantially the same. Edwards says: "Self-love . . . signifies a mans regard to his confined, private self, or love to himself with respect to his private interest." Hopkins says: "It is a man's love of his own self as self, and of nothing else." According to both, such self-love is sinful, for a man must love himself for the same reason as he loves other men, or else, not having the right motive in it, such love is not virtuous. He must love himself and consider his own interests as a part of being in general. Thus alone will he be able to subordinate his own good to the good of others, and thus only to love his neighbor as himself, and God supremely.
But Hopkins deemed that he added to the doctrine of Edwards a valuable element when he taught that "all sin consists in self-love and what is implied in this." We have already considered Edwards' definition of sin. Sin, according to him, is any other elective preference than that of the good of being in general. The whole treatise is in accordance with this idea, and gives no indication of Hopkins' new position. Edwards' chapter in the Nature of Virtue upon self-love is engaged in showing how many supposed virtues may flow from nothing but self-love, and so have no really virtuous character, however amiable they may appear. Hopkins does not stop with this plain proposition that all selfishness is sin, but converts it and maintains that all sin is selfishness.
There is something attractive about the proposition to reduce sin to one principle, as virtue may be reduced to one; for there is a certain symmetry thereby introduced into ethics. But it is doubtful if sin is a very symmetrical thing. Hopkins has probably presented this matter as strongly as any of his successors, many of whom adopted his view. But he does not prove his case. His arguments may be briefly summarized thus:
1. "Self-love is in its whole nature and in every degree of it, enmity against God." True; but this is only to say: "All selfishness is sin."
2. "Self-love, exercised and indulged, blinds the heart to every true moral excellence and beauty: this does not suit the taste of the selfish heart but gives it disgust." In other words, selfishness is injurious; but it does not show that every injury of the kind arises from selfishness.
3. Self-love is the source of all the profaneness and impiety in the world." This is not proved. Is there not some impiety which develops from another root than selfishness?
4. A final argument is rather implied than stated by Hopkins. It may be put in modern phrase thus: The opposition between holiness and selfishness is that between a wholly disinterested affection and a wholly interested affection. As the disinterested affection comprises the whole of holiness, so the interested affection comprises the whole of sin. This is as strong a statement of the argument as can be made; but it derives its whole force from the idea of symmetry above alluded to, and that force falls short of proof. The rest of the argument is conspicuously fallacious. It is the simple conversion of the universal affirmative proposition without limitation. It is as absurd as to maintain that all white men are Englishmen, because all Englishmen are white.
Another particular in which Hopkins attempted to improve upon Edwards was in the answer to objections. The most important of these at the present day, and the most plausible in itself, was that which appealed to the biblical use of rewards to induce men to repent. They suppose that men have self-love, and that it is proper to be influenced by this. But if so, it cannot be sinful. Hopkins makes short work with this. They are, after all, not addressed to self-love, because they are rewards of a character which will never appeal to a selfish man; and the evils which the Bible uses as threats are such as a selfish man will dread, but also such as will lead him to forsake his selfishness with his sin.
The honor which the proud man seeks is not the same which Christ promises to him who humbleth himself, but entirely of a different nature and contrary to it. A person who humbles himself renounces that self-exaltation and honor in comparison with other beings which pride and selfishness seek, and places his honor and happiness in abasing himself and becoming the servant of all, by exalting God and promoting his glory, and serving his fellow creatures, ministering to their greatest good in the exercise of universal benevolence; and so obtains true exaltation and honor which is most contrary to selfishness and pride.
Hopkins thus brought out more clearly than Edwards had done the absolute inconsistency of selfishness with religion. He recognized how largely the religion of some men consists in selfishness and lacks the elements of true religion. Much preaching consisted of little else but appeals to selfishness, thus attempting to build up the people in holiness by fostering the very principle in which Hopkins saw the essence of all sin. Accordingly, in his "inferences," he attacked the same point again, and here advanced the doctrine which, probably more than any other feature of his teaching, excited the opposition of his critics and reflected discredit in their eyes upon its author, viz., the doctrine that a man, in order to be saved, must be willing to be damned.
This doctrine comes in under the second inference, as to the nature of true self-denial. The question is suggested whether persons are to give up their eternal interest in self-denial so as not to have a selfish regard to this in their religious exercises. The answer is sufficiently strenuous:
Whatever temporal good any one gives up for the sake of his own eternal interest, and wholly from self-love, he is, by the supposition, as selfish in this as he can be in anything whatsoever; and therefore there is no self-denial in it, if self-denial is acting contrary to self or denying ourselves. So that he who does not know how to deny himself with respect to his eternal interest, is really a stranger to self-denial . . . But let it be kept in mind that in the practice of the greatest self-denial a person does not divest himself of a love of happiness; . . . but he places his happiness, not in his own private interest, but in a good more worthy to be sought, viz., the glory of God, and the prosperity of his church and kingdom. For the sake of this he gives up the former and forgets himself.
Or, as he says a little below, we are to love God "without making any conditions in regard to ourselves." The further question is then asked: "How can our eternal interest be inconsistent with the greatest display of God's glory, and the highest interests of his kingdom?" And the answer is:
If we know that we are true Christians, we may be sure that it is for the glory of God and good of the whole that we should be eternally happy in his kingdom. But even in this case we are capable of making the supposition that it would not be so; and, on this supposition, we shall be disposed to give up all our personal interest, so far as we are in the exercise of disinterested affection and willing to deny ourselves. But if we do not know that we have embraced the gospel, we cannot be sure that it is, on the whole, most for the honor of God and the glory and happiness of his kingdom that our eternal happiness should be secured; so we have opportunity to try how we shall feel and be disposed on such a supposition.
This doctrine excited so much opposition that Hopkins thought it best to defend it in a special tract, which he entitled A Dialogue between a Calvinist and a Semi-Calvinist --which, by the way, shows his idea of his own thorough-going Calvinism. He reiterates the doctrine that if being cast off by God is necessary in order to secure a greater good than his own salvation, the Christian ought to be willing thus to be cast off. It is a very large if; as Hopkins repeatedly says, "a supposition," an "impossible supposition;" but it is a supposition which it is well to make in order "to show that there may be a greater evil than the damnation of one individual."
The objections to his view which Hopkins answers in this tract show his estimate of the importance of the idea. One of them is "that it would be wicked: for we are commanded to do that which is directly contrary to this, viz., to desire and to seek to escape damnation and to be saved." The reply is that by being willing to be damned is not meant being pleased with it, or desiring and choosing it for its own sake, but only being willing if it be necessary to secure some greater good. Another objection is: "It is impossible that a man should be willing to give up all good and to be miserable forever for the sake of the good of others, be it ever so great." The answer is that it is not impossible, for it is reasonable, and men, like St. Paul who was willing to be accursed from Christ for his brethren's sake, have actually been thus willing. A third objection is: "We ought to make the glory of God our supreme end; but this will be so far from making us willing to be damned that it will lead us to desire and pursue our salvation, that he may be glorified in that and that we may glorify him forever." The reply rests upon the doctrine advanced in the sermons upon the permission of sin, that the damnation of unrepentant sinners is for the glory of God. It runs:
But it is not for the glory of God that all should be saved, but most for his glory that a number should be damned; otherwise all would be saved. We will, therefore, now make a supposition, which is not an impossible one, viz., that it is most for God's glory and for the universal good that you should be damned; ought you not to be willing to be damned on this supposition, that God could not be glorified by you in any other way?
The objector now takes another position: "But suppose he knows he loves God, and therefore knows that it is for the glory of God that he should be saved?" To which Hopkins:
No man can know that he loves God until he really does love him; that is until he does seek his glory above all things, and is disposed to say, "Let God be glorified whatever may be necessary in order to it," without making any exception. And this is to be willing to be damned, if this be necessary for the glory of God.
And finally the objector says that this is a puzzling doctrine, tending to perplex and discourage Christians, and should therefore be avoided. Hopkins replies that it may puzzle half-hearted Christians, or true Christians who have never considered these matters, but it will powerfully tend to expose the weakness and wickedness of the former when understood, and will confirm the latter and establish them. And hence it is a doctrine exceedingly important to strip false professors of all disguises and bring them really to Christ.
The intensely earnest and radical spirit of Hopkinsianism appears here more clearly, perhaps, than anywhere else. What will such a spirit effect in the development of a new theology? We are to see what it did effect.
But to return from this digression to the treatise upon holiness. The first appendix is taken up with a more detailed answer to Hart's Remarks, which have already been summarized. The book would seem to have required little reply in any case, and to have received all it needed in the exhaustive discussions which Hopkins had just finished in the body of his new presentation of the theory of virtue. But it was a critical moment in the fortunes of the new theology; and Hopkins felt called upon, as Edwards had before him, to pulverize all opposition. He therefore seized upon every weak point and exposed every inconsistency in his adversary. Three special points needed a more substantial consideration: Hart's objections to Edwards' "being simply considered," his confusion as to the meaning of Edwards' "secondary beauty," and his own attempts to state the nature of true virtue. His reply to the first of these we may summarize in the phrase that by such expressions as "being simply considered," being "in general," etc., Edwards meant being as such, or for its own sake. We are commanded to love God for his own sake, for what he is in himself. The answer to the second was as follows:
Mr. Edwards observes there are two kinds of beauty. One is moral beauty, or the beauty of true virtue or holiness, which is the highest kind of beauty, and consists in cordial agreement and harmony, or general benevolence, and is discerned and approved of by such only who love true holiness, which love is itself the exercise of holiness. The other is natural beauty, which consists in natural harmony or agreement, and takes place in the natural and material world in numberless instances. And this same kind of beauty is found in things immaterial and mental, as well as in other things, and there is a natural beauty in virtuous exercises of the mind, and the fruit of those exercises, which is entirely distinct from the moral, holy beauty, and of a different nature; even the same kind of beauty which is found in the material world . . . This natural beauty is found . . . especially in relative duties between man and man, according to their different stations and relations, which may be relished and delighted in by those who have no virtue, as a taste for this natural beauty is natural to all men, and does not imply disinterested benevolence, but is consistent with the highest degree of selfishness and sin.
As to the last point, Hopkins declared that Hart really agreed with Edwards:
Thus we see Mr. H. represents his equitable affection as a friendly love, which is really universal benevolence, which is love to being in general. And he says, "This spirit of equitable, friendly regard will dispose the virtuous mind to behave to every one in a manner suitable to their various characters, offices, and relations." This "friendly regard" is benevolence and nothing else; and it must be universal benevolence if it will dispose to behave to every one in a suitable manner. And this must be true virtue in its essential nature, and comprehend the whole of holiness, as this will lead to all right exercises and conduct towards every one.
The third appendix took up in like manner Mr. Hemmenway's Vindication. It does not attempt to go to the bottom of Hemmenway's differences, for this has already been done in the body of the work. If he could be brought to accept the Edwardean doctrine, he would relinquish his minor errors of himself. But Hopkins did not excuse himself for this reason from a more detailed consideration of these minor errors. He attempted to show how they all rested upon confusion of thought. Hemmenway's "act of the will ab extra," considered without reference to its motive and in this aspect possessing something of an acceptable quality before God, Hopkins declared to be inconceivable, because, if you abstract from the motive, the act is not moral at all, and so does not enter into the consideration. But he does not pause here; he pushes Hemmenway to the wall, after the manner of this school of terrible dialecticians, by showing that Hemmenway has really acknowledged as much by what he said of Judas, when he said it was not "matter of duty" but "vile treachery, in Judas, to kiss his Lord in order to betray him." Hopkins disposes of the supposition in one sentence: "If matter of duty was the effective act of the will abstracted from all circumstances, then Judas did the matter of duty as much as any one can." He also brings out Hemmenway's inconsistency in still another position, in supposing that acts of duty may be done from self-love, an innocent principle, and so be externally right. In discussing inability a more fundamental question was touched upon, and Hopkins pushed Hemmenway hard when he urged the question how a "natural inability" could be maintained which did not excuse the sinner. The advantage here was divided between the contestants, for Hemmenway was right in affirming that Edwards' moral inability was really a natural inability, and Hopkins was right in emphasizing, upon the basis of the new theory which was beginning to emerge in his own mind, that the sinner was subjected to no real natural inability. In one sentence Hopkins planted himself entirely upon the "exercise" platform, when he said that Hemmenway ought to "have offered some proof" that there is "a holy principle, distinct from all exercise of the heart, necessary in order to all holy acts of the will."
These were the principal controversies in which Hopkins engaged. Other controversial writings of a minor character will be noticed in their appropriate connections. Those we have just reviewed led him to a more precise formulation of his thought, and developed him as a constructive theologian, as well as gave him fame and influence throughout New England. He has thus proved his power and given sample of his work. Will he do still more, and will he inscribe his name among the great systematic divines of the world? The next chapter must show.
CHAPTER VII: Hopkins' System Of Theology
The progress of our history has brought us to the last decade of the eighteenth century. From the moment that Edwards began to exert his mighty personal influence, we have found New England seething with thought. Even the distractions of war have not been able to put a stop to theological reconstruction. The new school has been marked by great independence and originality, by great force and logical power. It has engaged in controversy in various directions, and has passed over a wide field of investigation and discussion; but its results have been somewhat miscellaneous and unsystematic. The time has now come for summing up what has been gained, and for presenting the system of theology, which Willard had last drawn out (1707) in entire conformity with Westminster, with the modifications which the study of three-quarters of a century had produced. This work fell to the lot of Samuel Hopkins, who published his System of Doctrines in 1793.
While the situation of our divines in the small and retired hamlets of a new country prevented them from being great readers of books, evidence has continually presented itself that they diligently improved such opportunities as they had, and that they were adequately equipped with a knowledge of the best that had been written upon the themes which they treated. Professor Park has spoken of Hopkins' learning in the following words:
He was a diligent reader of commentaries, particularly of Poole's Synopsis. He read through the whole of Poole's five folios in Latin. He commented three times on every chapter of the Bible in his expository discourses; and this extensive exposition required of him, what he pursued, a diligent perusal of the critics . . . Among the authors which are most familiarly mentioned by him are Calvin and Van Mastricht (both of whom he studied in their original Latin), Saurin, Owen, Manton, Goodwin, Bates, Baxter, Charnock, Prideaux, Sharp, Matthew Henry, John Locke, Whitby, Dr. S. Clarke, Dr. John Taylor, Mosheim, Doddridge, etc., etc.
We shall therefore not be surprised to find in Hopkins' system a due appreciation of the past. It was, in fact, the old system reproduced, for it rests throughout upon the ancient theological foundation, and is in essential agreement with Westminster and Dort. And yet it is a new system. It is permeated with new ideas, which do not fully reveal themselves or are not fully applied to the great subjects under consideration, but which are already beginning to work powerfully in remodeling and improving the system, and still more powerfully in preparing the way for subsequent improvement.
The affinity of the system with its predecessors among Calvinists is evident from the slightest examination. Its general course of topics follows closely the Westminster Confession. We have: Revelation; God; Decrees; Providence; the Fall; Redemption; the Redeemer; Regeneration; Faith; justification; Sanctification; Eschatology; the Church; the Christian Life. Repeated allusions to the Confession are made, as when decrees are defined in its language. The idea of a true system was warmly embraced by Hopkins. He explains:
Is not a system of divinity as proper and important as a system of jurisprudence, physic, or natural philosophy? If the Bible be a revelation from heaven, it contains a system of consistent important doctrines, which are so connected and implied in each other that one cannot be so well understood if detached from all the rest, and considered by itself; and some must be first known before others can be seen in a proper and true light.
Thus the presupposition which underlies Edwards' theory of virtue appears again in this form in Hopkins, that there is ultimate harmony in the universe. If this be so, truth is a harmony and is capable of being stated in a systematic and consistent form. To deny this, or to slight it, is to do violence to one's thinking. In the last analysis there must be a system of truth, or there is no such thing as truth, nor even such a thing as thinking.
As to the Scriptures Hopkins did not differ from the generality of his predecessors. The proofs given are the usual ones. The definition of scriptural infallibility and authority as the standard of faith and practice is the same with that of the Westminster divines. The effect of the controversy with the Deists is at once evident by the pains taken to show that unaided human reason is not enough to give man a knowledge of "every necessary and important truth." For the same reason, proofs are subjoined that these writings are not forgeries. The evidence of miracles is also discussed, though the question of their possibility is not argued at length, and the reliability of the Scripture record is assumed upon such proof as has already been suggested. The argument from prophecy is also considered. But the great reliance is placed upon the general view of the contents of the Scriptures, upon their harmony, and upon the truths revealed. In this Hopkins is in full accord with the Confession. "The greatest and crowning evidence" are the "contents of the Bible." The perfections and works of God, the rule of duty, etc., commend themselves to every reasonable mind. But
the honest virtuous mind only, which does discern and relish the beauty and excellence of truth and virtue [i. e., the converted mind], will see and feel the full force of this argument for the divinity of the Holy Scriptures . . . To such the true light shines from the Holy Scriptures with irresistible evidence, and their hearts are established in the truth. They believe from evidence they have within themselves, from what they see and find in the Bible.
Thus the Scriptures are proved from themselves, and Hopkins has the immense advantage of employing the Bible in the construction of the whole system, including the doctrine of God. At one point only does he fall short of the Confession--in not ascribing the illumination of the Christian, by which he perceives the truth, directly to the Holy Spirit. But this lack is made up in other parts of the work. No distinction is made between revelation and inspiration, and no special proof of inspiration is attempted.
Hopkins immediately takes advantage of the ground thus occupied in the development of the existence and character of God. All knowledge of God "depends greatly if not wholly on divine revelation." But, "when once suggested to us, it becomes an object of intuition in a sense, so that, though there be reasoning in the case, it is so short and easy that it strikes the mind at once, and it is hardly conscious of any reasoning upon it." Hence Hopkins gives briefly some rational arguments for the existence of God, but soon comes to the Scriptures whose mere existence is a proof of God's existence, but whose testimony is itself the great proof. The Scriptures are immediately employed as the chief source of knowledge as to God's attributes, and almost entirely so as to his moral character. Here we have introduced the distinguishing principle of New England divinity, the theory of virtue, and the moral character of God is defined as consisting in his holiness, which is comprehended in love. The proof of the love of God is scriptural, and the great example of it cited, and great proof of it, is the sacrifice of Calvary. And thus the benevolence of God is proved before difficulties are raised about the existence of evil, and the proof is made from Christ as the center and substance of the divine revelation. Here Hopkins passes far beyond the Westminster Confession in the spiritual character of his theology, and develops the best thought of his master, Edwards.
In the doctrine of the Trinity there is nothing new or different from the general course of presentation in the early church. There are references to some new opinions or to the revival of old ones, now becoming evident. The preacher of the sermon on the divinity of Christ in the Old South, Boston, in 1768, enters somewhat fully into the refutation of Socinian errors in the system of 1793. At one point there is an interesting connection between Hopkins and the subtle speculations of the Greek Fathers of the Nicene age. They held that the doctrine of the Trinity occupied the true meaning between the polytheism of heathenism and the abstract monotheism of Judaism. It displayed God as the source of the universe, as fitted in his divine nature to sustain it and communicate himself to it as well as to redeem it. Hence no philosophy which did not contain in it the essential elements of the Christian Trinity would be able to explain satisfactorily the origin and history of the universe. So thought the Greek Fathers. And now we hear Hopkins saying: "Had there not been this distinction of persons in God, there would have been no foundation or sufficiency in him for the exercise of mercy in the recovery of apostate man." He maintains also the usage of the early Fathers in respect to the terms "Son of God" and "eternal generation," employing the former of the second person of the Trinity, and the latter as describing the relation of the Father and Son within the Trinity itself.
The modifying ideas of Hopkins' system, as already stated, are the Edwardean, or: moral agency consists in choice; human ability; love, the essence of virtue. As to these ideas it may be well to repeat that in the theory of virtue Hopkins had nothing to change in the teachings of Edwards, except to introduce the incorrect idea that all sin is selfishness. In respect to the doctrine of the will there is a considerable difference. Hopkins does not seem to be entirely consistent, but upon the whole it is tolerably clear that the tone of his thought, if not his formulated conclusions, had undergone modifications which carried him somewhat away from the Edwardean positions toward what was finally to be a doctrine of a more genuine freedom. He seems to have been dependent upon Stephen West as well as upon Edwards, as we shall have occasion later to trace.
The new elements to be found in Hopkins' system, derived from these leading ideas, and constituting the gain made by New England up to this point of her history, are the following:
1. Hopkins meant to maintain a true freedom of the will--that freedom of which we are all conscious and which we regard as essential to accountability. There are many passages in which he exalts the agency of God, but he maintains with equal steadiness and firmness the liberty of man. He defines this somewhat differently from Edwards, so as to make a real advance upon him. While Edwards had put liberty in the external ability to execute our volitions, Hopkins places it in the volition itself. He says:
The internal freedom of which [a man] is conscious consisteth in his voluntary exercises, or in choosing and willing; that he is conscious that in all his voluntary exertions he is perfectly free and must be accountable, and has no consciousness or idea of any other kind of moral liberty, or that the liberty he exerciseth hath anything, more or less, belonging to it, or that it could be increased or made more perfect freedom by the addition of anything that is not implied in willing and choosing. He may, indeed, not be able to accomplish the thing or event which is the object of his choice, and in this respect be under restraint; but this a not inconsistent with his exercising perfect freedom in his choice and in all voluntary exertions or in all he does with respect to such object or event.
This is undoubtedly sound. The only further question would be whether Hopkins did not hold a theory of the action of the will and of the influence of motives which, like Edwards', introduced elements which destroyed the possibility of such freedom. He proceeds to examine and reject the so-called "self-determining power of the will" upon the same grounds as Edwards, by reducing it to the absurdity of the infinite series. Then comes the following remarkable passage:
Agreeable to this notion of a self-determining power, and in support of it, it is said that a man cannot be free in his voluntary actions unless he has a freedom to either side; that is, has a freedom to choose or refuse, to prefer one thing or the contrary, or has power and freedom to choose that which is directly contrary to that which is actually the object of his choice. If by this be meant that whenever any one freely chooses any particular object or act or is inclined any particular way, he is at liberty to prefer a contrary object or act and to incline the contrary way if he please, or wills and chooses so to do; this is no more than to say that, in the exercise of liberty, a man must choose agreeable to his choice, or has his choice; that is, must be voluntary, and therefore is not a contradiction to that which has been above asserted, namely, that liberty consists in the exercises of will and choice, or voluntary action.
At first sight Hopkins seems in this passage to deny the power of alternate choice, or, as was later said, "power to the contrary." But the next paragraph makes it clear, although it is a clearness somewhat muddied by the confusing psychology brought down from Edwards, that he is opposing the idea of the perfect indifference of the will as essential to freedom. He says:
If by a freedom to choose either side be meant that, in order to the exercise of a free act of choice, he must at the same time be as much disposed or inclined to choose the contrary, or be no more inclined one way than the other; there is no need of saying anything to expose the absurdity and inconsistence of this to those who allow themselves to think.
The rejected definition of freedom he understood as supposing an inclination to one alternative as great as that to the other. Had he distinguished inclination from choice, the sensibility from the will, he would have rejected as sharply as he did an indifference of inclination, which is certainly contrary to the facts of consciousness. He could then have recognized back of the desire, however strong it might be, a will as yet unmoved. But the inclination was confounded with choice, and then the impossible idea of an indifference of choice and a positive determination of choice in the same act was introduced which must, of course, be immediately rejected. In all this Hopkins does not differ from Edwards.
The first part of the passage quoted suggests, in connection with its surroundings, an advance upon Edwards. If we should ask Hopkins this question, "Before a given act of choice, may not the will choose either alternative?" he would answer first, with the instinctive tendency of the theologian to guard the great doctrines: "It is perfectly certain which alternative will be chosen?" "Yes," we might reply, "but, so far as the power of the will is concerned, may it not be exerted in either direction?" I think he would reply, "Yes." And this would be a near approach to the modern doctrine of the will as a first cause.
In confirmation of this interpretation, note (1) that Hopkins insists that the will cannot be compelled to a given choice. "No compulsion can be offered to the will or the freedom of it be any way affected by any operation or influence on the mind which takes place antecedent to the exercise of the will and in order to the choice that is made." (2) In the same line, he enters at one point a disclaimer of any knowledge of the connection which subsists between God's activity and man's. God, "by his own operation and agency" causes moral evil to take place as he does as also the holiness which takes place in men; "but as to the manner of the operation, as the cause of either, we are wholly in the dark--as much as we are with respect to the manner of the divine operation in the creation of the world and the different and various existences." We know that Hopkins believed in the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit upon man in regeneration. He probably held Edwards' theory of motives in general; but the fact that he never introduces that theory in his explanations of the various questions which gather about the will, the fact that he declares the manner of God's action inscrutable, and this doctrine of the immediate operation of the Spirit in regeneration, unite to show that he did not regard that metaphysical explanation as enough to exhaust the case. In other words, he purposed to hold fast to the freedom of the will, and in doing this found insuperable difficulties in the Edwardean scheme.
2. The next feature of Hopkins' system was his strong emphasis upon the doctrine of decrees.
It is always a question whether a theologian, in modifying the Calvinistic doctrine of the will in favor of a larger recognition of human freedom, will go in the direction of Arminianism. The New England school was kept from this by the influence of Edwards, who, having in mind the Arminianism of his own surroundings, which was associated with many departures from evangelical theology, had put forth his mightiest efforts directly and openly against it. Hopkins entertained the sentiments of Edwards as to the essential character of Arminianism, and therefore laid the more emphasis upon the distinguishing features of Calvinism. In fact, he was a high Calvinist--higher than his Calvinistic contemporaries.
Decrees are the plan of God in the government of the universe. This plan is the best conceivable, for God had all possible plans before him when he created the world, and he chose the best. This is the Leibnitzian optimism of Bellamy repeated. God chose the best plan, and he executes it in the best way, because he is himself infinitely good. And hence the divine decrees are founded in the love of God. This is a necessary consequence of the Edwardean theory of virtue. The following passage will exhibit this, and will also show, what needs to be borne in mind with reference to subsequent questions as to Hopkins' system, that the love of God is not first exercised when creatures have been brought into being, but respects primarily himself.
The moral excellence and perfection of God consists in love, or goodness, which has been proved in a former chapter. This infinite love of an infinite Being, is infinite felicity. This consists in his infinite regard to himself as the fountain and sum of all being; and his pleasure and delight in himself, in his own infinite excellence and perfection; and in the highest possible exercise, exhibition and display of his infinite fullness, perfection and glory. And his pleasure in the latter, so as to make it the supreme and ultimate end of all his works, necessarily involves and supposes his pleasure and delight in the happiness of his creatures. If he be pleased with the greatest possible exercise, communication, and exhibition of his goodness, he must be pleased with the happiness of creatures, and the greatest possible happiness of the creation, because the former so involves the latter that they cannot be separated; and may be considered as one and the same thing; and doubtless are but one in the view of the all comprehending mind; though we, whose conceptions are so imperfect and partial, are apt to conceive of the glory of God, and the good of the creature, as two distinct things, and different ends to be answered, in God's designs and works.
Thus whatsoever comes to pass from the beginning of time to eternity is foreordained, and fixed from eternity by the infinitely wise counsel and unchangeable purpose of God.
This is the point upon which Hopkins--and I may also say the whole line of New England divines--laid the chief emphasis. Few men would be so bold as to deny that God has a plan in the government of the world, and few so foolish as to deny that this plan is governed by infinite love. The tendency of Hopkins' whole scheme is thus to maintain the loving government of God. If there be any other element in this problem, it must be interpreted so as to preserve, not only the fact of his loving government, but the emphasis which belongs to this fact.
The fact of the divine decrees is proved from the Scriptures and from the divine foreknowledge.
But Hopkins has an eye also for the difficulties of the theme, and he states them with great force. The crucial objection is that decrees seem to destroy freedom, to make vice necessary, and thus to impugn the character of God. The reply is from the Scriptures. Cases are cited to show that God did decree certain acts, which were nevertheless free acts of men. Decrees, he says, include the freedom of man, because God makes use of that freedom to carry out his decrees. Particularly does freedom consist in volitions; and when God decrees that men shall be saved, it is that they shall be saved through their volitions--that is, that their freedom shall be preserved. This is not a philosophical defense of the doctrine. As we have seen, Hopkins had no theory of the action of the will which he was willing to introduce for such a purpose. He many times intimates that in a limited sphere we readily see how God through motives can govern man without infringing upon his freedom, and this proves that there is nothing in the nature of volition to prevent control of a free agent. But into any hopeless attempt to uncover the point in our subconscious nature where the divine and human action join, Hopkins does not go.
The second principal objection to decrees is derived from the existence of evil which the doctrine seems to charge home upon God. Hopkins' answer is the same as in his earlier treatise, except that he now states, without the slightest qualification, that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good. Next, the objection was raised that the doctrine made God the author of sin. Here no new points are brought out. But the great plainness of his language gives occasion to an important query. He says:
That God did will the existence of moral evil, in determining, at least, to permit it, when he could have prevented it, had he been pleased to do it, must be granted by all who would avoid ascribing to Him that imperfection, impotence, and subjection to that power, be it what it may, which introduced sin, contrary to his will; which is indeed shockingly impious, and real blasphemy, to every considerate, and rationally pious mind. We may infer from this, with the greatest certainty, that it is, all things considered, or in the view of the omniscient God, wisest and best that moral evil should exist. For to suppose that it was his will that it should take place; or that he has permitted it, when he could have prevented it; and yet that it was not wisest and best in his sight, that it should exist, is beyond expression impious, and at once strips the Deity of all moral good or holiness; and gives him the most odious and horrid character!
Finally, he sums up the whole subject of the divine and human operation in the volition of man in the following terms:
Here are two distinct agents, infinitely different; God, absolutely independent, and almighty; and a creature absolutely dependent for every thought and volition, having no power and sufficiency, that is not derived immediately from his Maker: and the agency or operation is as distinct and different as the agents. The creature's agency is as much his own as in the nature of things can be, and as it could be if it were not the effect of the divine agency, if this were possible. And the creature acts as freely, as if there were no agents concerned but himself, and his exercises are as virtuous and holy; and it is really and as much his own virtue and holiness, and he is as excellent and praiseworthy, as if he did not depend on divine influences for these exercises, and they were not the effect of the operation of God.
The question which is thus pressed upon us is whether Hopkins had escaped from the supralapsarian predestination of Willard and his predecessors in general. His treatment of this theme, as of all the remaining topics of theology, is marked by a certain largeness. He does not engage himself with mere scholastic details, but goes at once to the heart of his subject. Thus he never raises the question of the "order" of the decrees. But supralapsarianism is at bottom not a question of order, but of the universal prevalence of the divine decree to the exclusion of human agency. He might have escaped from such a theory by emphasizing the theory of virtue; for it leaves that place for humanity which Hopkins' evident tendencies toward a better doctrine of human freedom, elsewhere noted, should have led him to welcome. He does partially escape by this very path, for he makes decrees the realization of the love of God, and not of his "justice and grace" with which supralapsarians are so much engaged. In fact, justice merges with him into love. But decrees still continue to cover all the action of men as well as that of God. No place is left for an undecreed freedom of the fall, as Augustine seemed to leave it. The freedom of man is the mystery, not the decree of God. It is a mystery imbedded in the decree and providence of God. Its ultimate explanation must admit of the view that all things are finally done by God. He is the first, and in the last analysis, the only cause. Thus there is nothing placed in the will of man in distinction from the will of God, or done by man and not done by God. The day of struggle with supralapsarianism had come, indeed, but not the day of deliverance from it.
3. Original sin. Hopkins' doctrine is summarized in his own words as follows:
On the whole, it is hoped that the doctrine of original sin has been stated and explained agreeable to the holy scripture; and that it does not imply anything unreasonable and absurd, or injurious to mankind; but is the result of a constitution which is perfectly agreeable to the nature of things, reasonable, wise and good; that the children of Adam are not guilty of his sin, are not punished, and do not suffer for that, any farther than they implicitly or expressly approve of his transgression, by sinning as he did;--that their total moral corruption and sinfulness is as much their own sin and as criminal in them, as it could be if it were not in consequence of the sin of the first father of the human race, or if Adam had not sinned;--that they are under no inability to obey the law of God, which does not consist in their sinfulness and opposition of heart to the will of God; and are therefore wholly inexcusable, and may justly suffer the wages of sin, which is the second death.
The intimate connection of Hopkins with Edwards in all this is evident both from his phraseology and his ideas. He speaks of the "constitution" in the same language as Edwards. Even his figures are drawn from Edwards. There is no imputation "considering men as sinners when they are not," but sin is imputed because they are sinners. But how can they be sinners antecedent to any sin of their own? Is not all sin voluntary sin? "Yes," says Hopkins:
This sin, which takes place in the posterity of Adam, is not properly distinguished into original, and actual sin, because it is all really actual, and there is, strictly speaking, no other sin but actual sin . . . If the sinfulness of all the posterity of Adam was certainly connected with his sinning, this does not make them sinners, before they actually are sinners; and when they actually become sinners, they themselves are the sinners, it is their own sin, and they are as blamable and guilty as if Adam had never sinned, and each one were the first sinner that ever existed. The children of Adam are not answerable for his sin, and it is not their sin any farther than they approve of it, by sinning as he did: In this way only they become guilty of his sin, viz., by approving of what he did, and joining with him in rebellion. And it being previously certain by divine constitution, that all mankind would thus sin, and join with their common head in rebellion, renders it no less their own sin and crime, than if this certainty had taken place on any other ground, or in any other way; or than if there had been no certainty that they would thus all sin, were this possible.
It will require but a brief review of Edwards' positions upon this topic to show how entirely Hopkins is following his master in all this. There is the same "union" established between Adam and his descendants, the same "consent" to his sin, the following imputation, the consequent guilt for the sin consented to. With both Hopkins and Edwards the consequence of Adam's sin is to establish the certainty of this evil consent, and thereby to make all men sinners.
The first and most important result of this method of viewing the subject for Hopkins was that he accepted thoroughly the doctrine that all sin was voluntary, or that there is no sin but actual sin. His expressions of this principle are clearer than Edwards', though the substance of his doctrine is merely a repetition of what Edwards had laid down. We may see the preparation for a transfer from the theory of a constitution to that of the voluntary character of all sin under which the connection with Adam becomes a natural one (e. g., through heredity), in such a passage as this: "The posterity of Adam become guilty and fall under condemnation by consenting to his sin and by a union of heart to him as a transgressor; that is, by sinning themselves." More explicitly he says in the longer passage just quoted: "This sin which takes place in the posterity of Adam is not properly distinguished into original and actual sin, because it is all really actual, and there is, strictly speaking, no other sin but actual sin."
4. Ability and inability. The fall being included in the decrees of God, there is no reason why the condition of man before the fall should be a "probation" in any sense in which it is not later. Hence Hopkins taught that man after the fall is in a state of probation--that is, under a moral government--with the alternatives of life and death set before him, and with the full ability to choose the one or the other. Upon the subject of ability Hopkins is specially emphatic. Though he teaches total depravity, and emphasizes it against the Deists, it is a moral depravity.
Man has not lost any of his natural powers of understanding and will, etc., by becoming sinful. He has lost his inclination, or is wholly without any inclination to serve and obey his maker, and entirely opposed to it. In this his sinfulness consists . . . and in nothing else; and the stronger and more fixed the opposition to the law of God is, and the farther he is from any inclination to obey, the more blamable and inexcusable he is.
If there could have been any question, after the revival preaching of both Edwards and Bellamy, and after Bellamy had emphasized so strongly the ability of man to repent, whether that paralyzing doctrine of inability which had wrought unspeakable disaster to early New England was to be repudiated and replaced by a doctrine of ability which should pave the way for aggressive preaching and for the winning of souls, it was now settled favorably to progress by the clear adhesion of Hopkins to ability. From this point we shall have occasion only to mark the different forms given to the rationale of the doctrine. The conviction and the usage of the whole New England school is henceforth uniform.
5. The atonement. We should also expect that Hopkins would fall in with the course of progress upon this doctrine already marked out by Bellamy (1750) and Dr. Edwards (1785). How far this expectation is realized we are now to see.
He begins by exalting the law of God. This is the eternal, unchangeable rule of righteousness. It cannot be abrogated. An essential portion of it is its penalty threatened against the disobedient. This is as unchangeable as the law itself. Man by transgression has fallen under this penalty. By the nature of law, it must be executed in the true meaning and spirit of it, or else God himself joins with the sinner in dishonoring the law, and favors, justifies, and encourages rebellion.
This otherwise insuperable difficulty, this mighty bar and obstacle in the way of shewing any favour to man, and escaping eternal destruction, is the ground of the necessity of a Mediator and Redeemer by whom it may be wholly removed, and man be delivered from the curse of the law; and saved consistent with the divine character, with truth, infinite rectitude. wisdom and goodness; and so as not to set aside and dishonour, but support and maintain the divine law and government.
The fundamental idea of Hopkins' theory, then, is the necessity on God's part of a mediator before he could forgive sin; or, he teaches distinctly the objective theory of the atonement.
The work of the atonement consists of two parts: first, that accomplished by the suffering of Christ, and, second, that accomplished by his obedience. At first sight it would appear that Hopkins accepted exactly the old theory whereby the sufferings of Christ were the literal penalty of the law suffered in the place of sinners. Christ was to make atonement for the sins of men "by suffering in his own person the penalty or curse of the law under which by transgression they had fallen." The sacrifices of the Old Testament are quoted to prove the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice. Christ "by his sufferings took on him the penalty of sin, and bore the punishment of it so as effectually to put it away from all who believe in him that it may never be laid to their charge to condemn them."
But modifying expressions begin soon to appear. In commenting upon the favorite text of subsequent divines (Rom. 3:25, 26), Hopkins says:
Here the design of the Redeemer is expressed, and the great thing he is to accomplish is to maintain and declare the righteousness the rectitude, and unchangeable truth and perfection of God in opening a way by his blood his sufferings unto death, for the free pardon of sinful man, consistent with his rectoral justice and truth, and doing that which is right and just both with respect to himself, his law and government, and all the subjects of his kingdom.
Note the phrases "rectoral justice," "right and just both with respect to himself, his law and government, and all the subjects of his kingdom." This points to a new understanding of the suffering of the penalty. A new kind of justice is introduced. Hopkins was perfectly familiar with, and accepted Edwards' doctrine that mere "natural justice," though having in itself a kind of beauty, had no moral beauty or virtue, and therefore was not fit to be the governing motive of the divine action, and could, accordingly, never be executed by God. The demands of love might make the execution of justice the only course left to the divine being. But a mere and exact satisfaction of natural justice as such could have no place in his government.
The word "equivalent" is often used to express the relation of the sufferings of Christ to those required by the law. They were equivalent because of the greatness and worth of his person. Says Hopkins further:
Thus we see how Christ suffered for sin, was made a curse, that is, suffered the curse of the law, the curse of God: and in his sufferings, he, in a sense, suffered and felt the displeasure and wrath of God; and the anger of God against sin and the sinner was in a high and eminent degree manifested and expressed in the sufferings and death of Christ, consistent with his not being displeased, but well pleased with Christ himself, and loving him because he laid down his life for his people.
We see here how completely Hopkins, in spite of infelicities of diction, has adopted the new theory of the atonement, how he has changed the view of God's position from that of the "offended party" to that of "Governor," has made the sufferings of Christ an example rather than the literal suffering of punishment, and brought the whole transaction under the rectoral, or public, justice of God.
At the heart of the matter Hopkins is, therefore, altogether Grotian (or Edwardean) in his theory of the atonement. But in the second portion of his doctrine, that referring to the obedience of Christ, he seems to remain with the older Calvinism. The Westminster Confession taught that the obedience of Christ was the price with which positive blessings were purchased for believers, and that his righteousness was imputed to them. Hopkins followed the Confession, and yet in his own fashion. The suffering of Christ atoned for the sins of men, and procured for them forgiveness. But it only delivers from the curse of the law, and procures the remission of their sins who believe in him, but does not procure for them any positive good: It leaves them under the power of sin, and without any title to eternal life, or any positive favour, or actual fitness or capacity to enjoy positive happiness. This would be but a very partial redemption, had the Redeemer done no more than merely to make atonement for sin, by suffering the penalty of the law for sinners, and in their stead. It was therefore necessary that he should obey the precepts of the law for man, and in his stead, that by this perfect and meritorious obedience, he might honour the law in the preceptive part of it, and obtain all the positive favour and benefits which man needed, be they ever so many and great.
The foundation of this idea is the doctrine of the federal headship. Adam was a federal head. His obedience, though he owed it for himself, would have gained certain benefits for his posterity, and they would have been positively blessed with good and granted eternal life. But he fell, and so the federal headship resulted in their being sinners and lying under the wrath of God. just as his obedience might have procured them blessings, so the obedience of Christ procures them blessings. But as Christ is of far greater dignity than Adam, he procures blessings far greater than would have been bestowed in consequence of Adam's obedience.
By the obedience of Christ all the positive good, all those favours and blessings are merited and obtained, which sinners need, in order to enjoy complete and eternal redemption, or everlasting life in the kingdom of God. By this he has purchased and obtained the Holy Spirit, by whom sinners are so far recovered from total depravity, and renewed, as to be prepared and disposed to believe on Christ and receive him, being offered to them; and he carries on a work of sanctification in their hearts, until they are perfectly holy.
We perceive immediately that the conception of imputation here involved, like that already considered under the head of "original sin," is different from that ordinarily held by the Calvinistic divines of Hopkins' time. It will be best for us to defer our special consideration of its nature however, until a later point.
In conclusion, under this head, Hopkins teaches general atonement:
The Redeemer has made an atonement sufficient to expiate for the sins of the whole world; and, in this sense, has tasted death for every man, has taken away the sin of the world, has given himself a ransom for all, and is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, so that whosoever believeth in him may be saved, and God can now be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Therefore, the gospel is ordered to be preached to the whole world, to all nations, to every human creature. And the offer of salvation by Christ is to be made to every one, with this declaration, that whosoever believeth, is willing to accept of it, shall be delivered from the curse of the law, and have eternal life.
6. Regeneration. The distinction between regeneration and conversion, which Hopkins early established, enables him now to distinguish sharply between the divine and human part in conversion. God regenerates; man converts. The former is the rendering of the man willing; the latter is the performance of holy exercises by the man himself.
There are no express statements, so far as appears, which exhibit clearly Hopkins' views as to the nature of the depravity which men derive from Adam. It is, however, probable from not obscure intimations, that he accepted Edwards' theory that it consisted in no positive impairment of our faculties, but only in the results of one positive cause that is, the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit. If this be so, it is easy to understand why he puts our corruption wholly in the will, not the understanding (the second of the two faculties of the mind), and makes regeneration consist in an immediate operation upon this. There is no need of more light or of the use of any other means, in Hopkins' view, because the trouble is not with the intellect, but with the will. Man has light enough, only as his intellect is darkened by his perverse will. It is to the will, then, that the remedy must be applied. Here God works immediately and miraculously. When the will is inclined to the right by the Holy Spirit, the man's exercises become right, and he is himself right.
Regeneration is thus but one, though the chiefest, illustration of the "Divine illumination." The regenerated man now sees the being and perfections of God in their true nature, sees and approves of the law of God, discerns the character of Christ and the way of salvation; and, in view of these great motives now rendered accessible to him, he turns to God, accepting that law, obeying, believing, choosing, loving, all of which are essentially the same, or putting forth the holy volition, which is disinterested benevolence. This is conversion. I pause to quote a paragraph in which is not only described this "divine illumination" but also given the foundation of that "testimony of the spirit" upon the basis of which Hopkins constructed the proof of the Scriptures.
The real Christian is, in becoming such, turned from this darkness to marvelous light, which is effected by the omnipotent influences of the Spirit of God in the renovation of the heart, which was before totally corrupt, forming it to disinterested, universal benevolence, and so making it an honest and good heart; and forming the single eye, by which the truths revealed in the Scriptures relating to the being and perfections of God, his law, and moral government, the state and character of man, the character and works of the mediator, the way of salvation by him, the nature of duty and true holiness, etc., are seen in their true light, as realities, beautiful, divine, important, excellent, harmonious, glorious, and above all things else interesting and affecting, and the mind is filled with this spiritual, marvelous, glorious light. By this all the powers of the mind are enlarged and strengthened. Reason and judgment, being no longer biased by an evil heart, are rectified, and the reasoning, speculative faculty is exerted in an honest, attentive pursuit in the investigation of truth.
Here, again, we have seen the application of the theory of virtue.
Conversion, wrought by man in connection with the action of God in regeneration, an act of the will, is instantaneous. Hopkins says:
This change, of which the Spirit of God is the cause, and in which he is the only agent, is instantaneous; wrought not gradually, but at once. The human heart is either a heart of stone, a rebellious heart, or a new heart. The man is either under the dominion of sin, as obstinate and vile as ever, dead in trespasses and sins; or his heart is humble and penitent; he is a new creature and spiritually alive. There can be no instant of time, in which the heart is neither a hard heart, nor a new heart, and the man is neither dead in trespasses and sins, nor spiritually alive. The Spirit of God finds the heart of man wholly corrupt, and desperately wicked, wholly and strongly, even with all the power he has, opposed to God and his law, and to that renovation which he produces. The enmity of the heart against God continues as strong as ever it was, till it is slain by the instantaneous energy of the divine Spirit, and from carnal it becomes spiritual, betwixt which there is no medium, according to scripture and reason.
This is an advance in clearness of view upon his predecessors and prepares the way for the revival preaching of subsequent times. When conversion was viewed as instantaneous and human efficiency was exalted to its proper place, then it became natural to preach to men that conversion was their own work, that they could then and there, before leaving their seats--yes, while listening to the preacher--repent, believe, and be saved. Thus the last strand in the old doctrine of inability was broken. Immediate repentance became the distinguishing point urged by New England revival preaching, and was the source of its great effectiveness.
As to the nature of saving faith, Hopkins says concisely: "It is considered and represented as consisting in the exercise of the heart and choice of the will: this being essential to it and including the whole." This is the foundation of its instantaneous character, and also of its being an object of command. The belief of the truth of the gospel is also implied in it; holy love is essential to it; true repentance is included in it; obedience is connected with it; its ultimate nature is love. The formal definition of it is not as good as the enumeration of particulars just given. It is this: "Saving faith is an understanding, cordial receiving the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him; in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel."
We are now prepared to consider more closely Hopkins' idea of imputation, which was deferred from an earlier point. The definition of justification contains no real imputation.
The justification of a sinner, now under consideration, consists in forgiving his sins, or acquitting him from the curse and condemnation of the law; and receiving him to favour, and a title to all the blessings contained in eternal life; which is treating him as well, at least, as if he never had sinned, and had been always perfectly obedient.
The sinner is received to favor, not for what he has done, because there is nothing in it to recommend him to God's favor; but for Christ's sake, because the believer is united with Christ. The righteousness of Christ is not transferred to the sinner that he may be regarded righteous. He is treated as though he were righteous, although he is not, for Christ's sake. There is a natural fitness that he it whose heart is united to Christ, as it is by believing, should be recommended to favour and justified by his worthiness and righteousness to whom he is thus united and in whom he trusts." So Christ gains by the merit of congruity, through his obedience, the title to eternal life for the believer.
We have thus passed in review the first complete, indigenous system of theology issued in New England. Distinguished by marked independence, it is nevertheless built upon the foundations laid by Hopkins' predecessors in dogmatic work from the beginning of Christian history, and is thus conservative and historical. Particularly does it maintain the historic connection of our theology with English Puritanism, and with its embodiment in the Westminster Confession. The great spiritual elements of this Confession it maintains without abridgment. It even amplifies them. The authority of the Scriptures is derived from the divine witness in the soul, and they are then employed in the development of all the system, by which circumstance the exaggerated emphasis given to the rational element in later New England theologians is avoided, and the distinction between natural and revealed theology, current since the days of Butler, is obliterated. The great ideas of Edwards are incorporated in the system, and already determine its character, though not yet perfectly wrought out. The work is great for its adherence to facts, and for its faithfulness to the Scriptures as the source of religious knowledge. It is pervaded by a marked religious purpose, for every major section is followed by an "improvement," as the application of a discourse was technically called in New England. On the whole, for comprehensiveness, thoroughness, high tone, power of reasoning, independence, ethical and spiritual value, and solid contributions to the advancing system of thought, it deserves to be called a great work--great in comparison with the great systems of the Christian world, and unsurpassed within its own special school. It illustrate the Ritschlian canon that the true spirit of a movement will be found in its earliest documents. He who will thoroughly know the New England school must read deeply in the system of Samuel Hopkins.
THE DEVELOPING SCHOOL CHAPTER VIII:
Eschatology And Atonement
From the two leaders whom we have just studied, Bellamy and Hopkins, proceeded two streams of theological influence which differed somewhat from each other. Not that there was any strong or divisive difference; for they themselves labored in entire harmony, and both contributed to the forming of many of their colaborers and successors. Still it may be said that there was a "school" of Bellamy, and there was a school of the followers of Hopkins sufficiently marked to give rise to the common name "Hopkinsians." The line proceeding from Bellamy has for its principal names Edwards the Younger, Smalley, Dwight, Taylor, Beecher, and Tyler; and that from Hopkins, Emmons, Woods, and finally Park.
Among the first generation of the pupils of Bellamy the most conspicuous name is the younger Edwards. When he came to Bellamy, it was with a letter of introduction from Hopkins, with whom he had been at Great Barrington for about nine months. He was no "Edwardean" when he arrived at Hopkins, but the instruction of this friend of his father's soon brought him into cordial accord with the teachings of the first Edwards. With Bellamy he remained but three months, when he was licensed to preach (1766). He thus drew from both of these teachers, and might be thought to be a Hopkinsian rather than a follower of Bellamy. But because of his temper and relations to the general movements in Connecticut, he belongs with the latter rather than with the former.
In spite of all the disturbance involved in the Revolutionary War, theological thought in New England continued to move steadily on. The close of the war was to be signalized by the more open appearance of a movement which threatened the very existence of the new divinity, and delivered the mightiest blow against New England Congregationalism which it ever received--Unitarianism. But still earlier there was another movement, of a kindred nature, and itself assuming ultimately a Unitarian form, which called out some of the most important treatises which fall under our view in the whole history of New England--Universalism. And from this attack there resulted, not only a thorough discussion of eschatological questions, but also the general introduction among the New England divines of Bellamy's Grotian theory of the atonement.
The introduction of Universalism into America was performed by Rev. John Murray, who came to this country in 1770. He was a follower of James Relly, of London, who, in a book entitled Union; or A Treatise of the Consanguinity and Affinity between Christ and his Church, propounded the doctrine of salvation en masse in its extremest form. He says:
Christ's righteousness is upon all his seed; by his single act, before they had any capacity of obeying after the similitude of his obedience, or of assenting to what he did or suffered. This manifests such a union to him, such an inclusion of the whole seed in him, as renders his condition theirs in every state which he passes through. Insomuch that his righteousness, with all the blessings and fruits thereof, is theirs, before they have known it, believed it, or ever were conscious of existence. Thus by the obedience of one are many made righteous.
Murray always preached upon the basis of this theory. Hosea Ballou 2d, than whom there could be no better authority, summarizes his teaching as follows:
A few are elected to obtain a knowledge of the truth in this life, and these go into Paradise immediately at death. But the rest, who die in unbelief, depart into darkness, where they will remain under terrible apprehensions of God's wrath until they are enlightened. Their sufferings are neither penal nor disciplinary, but simply the effect of unbelief. Some will believe and be delivered from their darkness in the intermediate state. At the general judgment, such as have not been previously brought into the truth will "come forth to the resurrection of damnation;" and, through ignorance of God's purpose, they will "call on the rocks and mountains to fall on them," etc. Then the judge will make the final separation, dividing the "sheep" or universal human nature, from the "goats" which are the fallen angels, and send the latter away "into everlasting fire."
The effects of Murray's preaching began to be immediately felt in New England. A small community of Universalists was gathered and organized into separate churches. What the influence of the Rellyan mode of thought was upon theologians it is difficult to say. That it achieved some influence is evident from the fact that in 1796 there appeared a posthumous work by Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D., long the pastor of Coventry, Conn., under the title Calvinism Improved, which is complete Rellyanism, though the disciple is in this case greater than the master. These ideas must have long been in his mind, and it cannot be said in how many others. Huntington founds salvation upon the divine election, and declares that "the elect body is all human nature." But the foundation of election is in the atonement. Christ is strictly a substitute for us. "The true doctrine of the atonement is in very deed this. A direct, true, and proper setting all our guilt to the account of Christ, as our federal head and sponsor, and a like placing his obedience unto death to our account." Hence, as the atonement was made for all men, their guilt is removed by it, and "by a true and proper imputation" its benefits are immediately communicated to the race. Huntington goes so far as to answer expressly the arguments which New England men were beginning to use, founded upon the idea that personal guilt and righteousness cannot, in the nature of things, be transferred. This is possible because property can be transferred, and all "men are God's property, absolutely and wholly so; and of consequence [!] all their doings are equally his property." Through their "union with Christ" the character of men becomes the character of Christ when he is to be punished for them, and then his obedience becomes their obedience, thus giving them salvation. This is the Rellyan idea, and it is often "pressed in phrases strikingly like Relly's.
Against such a movement, which was beginning to draw away their people from evangelical truth, and which was having an influence, more or less certain, among thinkers, the New England school must protest. They did this with one consent; and they would not have been the children of the Puritans if they had not.
The Edwardeans had always shown a decided interest in questions of eschatology. Edwards himself preached some powerful and famous sermons upon this theme, led thereto by the prevailing indifference and spiritual sluggishness of the times, and the disposition to deny the doctrine already manifest in many quarters. He discussed it with great power and vividness. His great positive arguments were brought to the support of the position that eternal punishment is just. This is so because an infinite evil demands an infinite punishment, because of the greatness of man's depravity, because of God's honor, and because of the good results which follow upon punishment. He also went into the refutation of errors, discussing two principal ones--annihilation and final restoration. Annihilation is a relief, whereas future punishment, as represented in the Bible, seems to have no such element. And restoration implies a future probation, as to which there is no Scripture evidence for it, and nothing in the way of a manifest superiority to the present probation to warrant it.
Bellamy also turned to this theme, and contributed an epoch-making discussion of the probation of the heathen, teaching that
all mankind have not only sufficient natural powers but also sufficient outward advantages to know God and perfectly conform to his law, even the heathen themselves; and that the very reason they do not is their want of such a temper as they ought to have, and their voluntary, rooted enmity to God, and love to sin.
The new note of freedom and true ability to repent inherent in all men was here, struck, which was later to sound still more loudly.
Among these earlier writers upon eschatology the first place belongs to Samuel Hopkins, who published in 1783 An Inquiry concerning the Future State of Those Who Die in Their Sins. It was a tract springing out of the discussions of the times, but it did not mention Murray by name, and was throughout of a strictly impersonal character. Only Jeremiah White, a writer of the previous century, whose Salvation for All Men had been recently published, receives direct answer. Hopkins intended to take up every important phase of the subject, thoroughly ground the doctrine in Scripture and reason, and answer every important argument against the eternal punishment of the finally impenitent. He even incorporated a sufficient answer to Murray. But he did not judge the movement inaugurated by this extremist of as great importance as it later seemed to be, and hence passed over it without detailed notice.
The central idea controlling Hopkins' eschatology is his lofty conception of the government of God. It comprises peculiar views of the being governed, man, of the Being governing, and of the character of that government. As to man, Hopkins exalted him to a very high position. Not only did he give great scope to man's natural ability, and emphasize his responsibility, but he viewed him as clothed with the most exalted intellectual powers. He was totally depraved; that is, he was totally turned away from God and engaged in his own pursuits. But, though thus morally fallen, his intellectual powers were unimpaired, and he was capable of piercing by their exertion to the counsels of eternity, and certainly of knowing fully, and with the most absolute clearness and distinctness, his duty toward God and man. As to God, Hopkins' new ideas may be compendiously stated in the single phrase that he viewed him more constantly than others had done as a Governor. Under this conception it was his intention to make his readers feel the infinitely lofty and amiable character of the divine government as the reflection of the divine character, which was summarized in the word "love." Holiness is the loftiest thing in the universe. A God of love, who chooses the well-being of the universe, must choose its holiness first of all. Love of holiness is the same as hatred of sin. God hates it for what it is toward himself, who is the chief Being in the universe; he hates it, as a Governor, for its harmful tendency to his government; he hates it in that he loves holiness, for this hate and love are as inseparable as the two sides of a piece of paper. Thus he punishes it; and his punishment of sin is as amiable as his rewarding of righteousness, for the one motive extending through all his actions is love.
The general course of his argument is simple. In the first section he proves that the Scriptures "teach that the wicked will be punished in the future state." The text is almost continuous quotation. Then he advances to the proof that this punishment will be "endless." His discussion includes a careful treatment of the words employed to express the idea of endlessness, which, if it has not prevented later attempts to limit them in various ways, ought to have done so. But the argument is not petty. It pays suitable attention to the general impression of the Bible. It then passes to the passages which have been supposed to teach another doctrine. Incidentally, among these, 1 Pet. 3:19 is discussed, with the result that the preaching was done by Noah to the men about him at the time of their sin.
The fourth section treats the rational argument. Hopkins was disposed to teach that "reason, without the help of divine revelation, can determine nothing with certainty about future and endless punishment." But this position did not shut out all argument upon it as improper; and he believed that thorough reasoning would do much to establish the doctrine by showing that it was in perfect accord with right reason. His first argument was the one already elaborated by Edwards, that sin was an infinite evil, and so deserving of an infinite--that is, unending--punishment. The magnitude of a sin is measured, he says, by the being against whom it is committed. Now, all sin is ultimately against God, who is the infinite Being. Hence it is an infinite evil. Hopkins adds the thought that the infinite evil of sin is also seen in the evil which it naturally tends to produce, and will produce unless it is prevented.
It tends to dishonor and dethrone the Almighty; to destroy all his happiness, and to ruin his whole interest and kingdom; to introduce the most dreadful confusion and infinite misery, and render the whole universe infinitely worse than nothing, to all eternity . . . Nothing short of an endless punishment can be its proper reward.
And he illustrates the argument thus:
If one who has defamed the character of a worthy personage, being prosecuted, convicted, and condemned, should be punished only by paying a small fine, viz., one penny or shilling, the language of this would be that the character of the person defamed was worth no more, and, therefore, would be so far from answering to the injury, and wiping off the reproach, that it would really fasten the disgrace upon him, and his character would suffer more than if the criminal had not been condemned and punished. [So] a temporary punishment only . . . would be infinitely worse than none.
This argument, with its utter neglect of the second party in the matter, man, is now given up. It is, indeed, in flagrant antagonism to the principle which New England theology was to bring forward, that obligation and ability are commensurate. But, held by Hopkins in all its rigidity, it is easy to see why he would not hear to the various excuses that were offered, as if man were too insignificant or too ignorant to commit an infinite evil. "If a finite being can affront and abuse his Creator," if he can desire to dethrone his Maker and destroy his kingdom, he can commit an infinite evil.
Another striking argument in the same line is derived from the atonement. "One end of the atonement which Christ made for sin was to show what evil there is in sin and its ill desert. But this is every way sufficient to atone for sin which has an infinite ill desert; therefore this declares sin to be an infinite evil, or to deserve infinite or endless punishment." In modern phrase, God will not put forth more energy in the atonement than the occasion demands. He continues: "To deny that there is infinite evil in sin, is, in effect, to deny the divinity of our Saviour." To understand the historical significance of this last sentence, we must remember that Hopkins lived in the shadow of the two great coming controversies, the Unitarian and the Universalist, which he thus recognizes as closely allied.
Hopkins gave fuller expression than his predecessors to the argument that good will arise from the eternal punishment of the wicked. It maintains the divine government, which is a good. It promotes the perfect display of God's character, his displeasure and anger with sin, and thus his righteousness and goodness. Hence it will promote the highest good of the blessed. He expresses himself in the characteristic passage, more candid and powerful than adroit or circumspect:
The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed forever and ever, and serve, as a most clear glass, always before their eyes, do give them a constant, bright, and most affecting view of all these. And all this display of the divine character and glory will be in favor of the redeemed, and most entertaining, and give the highest pleasure to all who love God, and raise their happiness to ineffable heights, whose felicity consists summarily in the knowledge and enjoyment of God. This eternal punishment must therefore be unspeakably to their advantage, and will add such immense degrees of glory and happiness to the kingdom of God, as inconceivably to overbalance all they will suffer who shall fall under this righteous judgment, and render it all, in this view and connection, an infinite good.
It was upon this passage that the caricature was issued which represented Hopkins as "entertained" at the sufferings of the lost. Yet the passage reads: "This display of the divine character . . . will be most entertaining;" and: Punishment is "in this view and connection, an infinite good." The passage cannot be said to breathe a spirit of sympathy or tenderness; and yet Hopkins was not without sensibility to the dreadful character of the sufferings of the lost, considered in themselves. His constant thought is that, if sin were not, a happy universe, ultimately without trace of suffering, would be the only one consistent with the perfections of God. But sin having entered by the free choice of man, punishment increases the glory of God.
One final thought was contributed by Hopkins: that the number of the saved will be much greater than that of the lost, "it may be, many thousands to one." Even granting that the most part living in the first six thousand years of the world's history perish, yet there is to come a seventh thousand, the blessed period of the millennium, when so great multitudes will live upon this earth, all of whom will be saved, that the great disparity will be completely wiped out. Upon this thought of the millennium Hopkins expatiates at great length and with delight in the appendix to his System. His eschatology, stern and rugged at it is, ends nevertheless in a prophecy of unutterable glory. Says Channing: "Whilst to the multitude he seemed a hard, dry theologian, feeding upon the thorns of controversy, he was living in a region of imagination, feeding upon visions of a holiness and a happiness which are to make earth all but heaven."
From this digression we must now return to the course of our history. We had noted the arrival of John Murray in America, and the character of the Universalism which he had derived from James Relly, and which he preached. But our digression has not been in vain, for we have seen the materials which were in the hands of those who finally came to the reply to Murray and Relly, which had been gathered together by their predecessors in this field. A few years had necessarily to elapse before this reply was called for. No teacher comes to his full power at once; and the labors of Mr. Murray could not at once produce results sufficient to call for general public notice. In 1779, he organized the first Universalist church in Gloucester, Mass. By the year 1785, Universalists were numerous enough in Massachusetts to justify the calling of a convention. In 1784, Rev. Charles Chauncy, D.D., minister of the First Church, Boston, issued his Salvation of All Men, the first marked evidence that Universalism was beginning to find a place among the Congregational clergy. Hence it was in the year 1785, that the New England divines first published upon the new theories, when there appeared three works: Smalley's Wallingford sermon, "delivered by particular agreement, with special reference to the Murryan controversy;" Dr. Edwards' Three Sermons upon the atonement; and Stephen West's Scripture Doctrine of Atonement. In 1789, Edwards replied to Chauncy, and in 1796 Nathan Strong to Huntington. The object of all these treatises was to refute the Rellyan Universalism which had appeared, and all sought to do it by the same method, by correcting the false premises upon which Relly had based his argument. The result of them was to introduce into New England theology, as already remarked, a new theory of the atonement.
Smalley's reply to Rellyanism was introduced by the following statement of its argument. "God is obliged in justice to save men as far as the merit of Christ extends: but the merit of Christ is sufficient for the salvation of all men; therefore God is obliged in justice to save all." Smalley had been a pupil of Bellamy, who taught that Christ died for all men. Hence he naturally said:
The minor proposition I dare not deny. I question not the sufficiency of the merit of Christ for the salvation of all mankind . . . The only thing therefore which I have to dispute in this argument is the obligatoriness of the Redeemer's merit on the Supreme Being: or, that it is of such a nature as to afford any ground to demand salvation from God as a just debt.
That is to say, he questioned the major premise, which was to question the whole idea that the death of Christ was a satisfaction to justice, as Calvinism had hitherto held. He thereby followed Bellamy farther, and with him made God a governor, and not the offended party, in the matter of sin and forgiveness, as is evident from his whole discussion. He had apparently read Grotius, for he cites an illustration which Grotius gives, the act of self-mutilation by Zaleucus, by which he spared one eye to his son who had broken the law the penalty of which was to lose both eyes. Smalley's contention is, therefore, that justification is an act of free grace, to which God is in no sense obligated in justice, and which he freely performs unto believers alone. His two sermons are in full accord with what other writers were bringing out about the same time upon the atonement, but he was too much restricted by the practical aim of his efforts, the refutation of Murray, to present the new theory in the most comprehensive way or to give to it the best analytical statement.
This special service has, by general consent, been ascribed to Dr. Jonathan Edwards, who delivered at New Haven, also in the year 1785, Three Sermons on the necessity of the atonement and its consistency with free grace. A somewhat fuller account of Edwards' discourses will therefore be required to put the theory in its historical setting.
The first sermon is from the text: "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. 1:11). Forgiveness is here said to be in the exercise of grace, and at the same time in consequence of a redemption by the blood of Christ. How are these two parts of the proposition consistent? This, Edwards says, "has been to me one of the gordian knots" of theology. He seeks to loosen it by proposing three successive questions.
I. "Are we forgiven through the redemption or atonement of Jesus Christ only?" This question he answers in the affirmative. The Scriptures clearly teach it. Then "the necessity of the death and atonement of Christ sufficiently appears by the bare event of his death . . . We cannot suppose . . . that the infinitely wise and good Father would have consented to the death of his only begotten and dearly beloved Son . . . if there had not been the most urgent necessity." With this a posteriori argument, which is Calvin's, he supports an argument otherwise entirely scriptural.
II. Our next inquiry is, what is the reason or ground of this mode of forgiveness? or why is an atonement necessary in order to the pardon of the sinner? I answer, it is necessary on the same ground, and for the same reason, as punishment would have been necessary, if there had been no atonement made. The ground of both is the same. The question then comes to this: Why would it have been necessary, if no atonement had been made, that punishment should be inflicted upon the transgressors of the divine law? This, I suppose, would have been necessary to maintain the authority of the divine law. If that be not maintained, but the law fall into contempt, the contempt will fall equally on the legislator himself; his authority will be despised and his government weakened . . .
"When moral creatures are brought into existence, there must be a moral government . . . This is the dictate of reason from the nature of things. Besides the nature of things, we have in the present instance fact, to assist our reasoning . . . But in order to moral law, there must be a penalty; otherwise it would be mere advice, but no law. In order to support the authority and vigor of this law, the penalty must be inflicted upon the transgressors . . . It is no impeachment of the divine power and wisdom to say that it is impossible for God himself to uphold his moral government over intelligent creatures when once his law hath fallen into contempt. He may, indeed, govern them by irresistible force, as he governs the material world; but he cannot govern them by law, by rewards and punishments . . . For these reasons it appears that it would have been necessary, provided that no atonement had been made, that the penalty of the law should have been inflicted, even in every instance of disobedience: and for the same reasons doubtless was it necessary, that if any sinners were to be pardoned, they should be pardoned only in consequence of an adequate atonement. The atonement is the substitute for the punishment threatened in the law; and was designed to answer the same ends of supporting the authority of the law, the dignity of the divine moral government, and the consistency of the divine conduct in legislation and execution. By the atonement it appears that God is determined that his law shall be supported; that it shall not be despised or transgressed with impunity; and that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God."
This is the substantial part of the first sermon. Its concluding portion is taken up with the consideration of a number of objections, such as this, that, if God had seen fit to order it so, we might have made atonement for our own sins, etc., all derogating from the strict necessity of Christ's death.
The second sermon proceeds-
III. "Are we, notwithstanding the redemption of Christ, forgiven freely by grace?" After considering several ways of bringing in the word "grace," when the theories upon which forgiveness was explained, like those of Relly and of the older Calvinists, really rendered its application improper, he continues the exposition of his own theory. He begins by defining the terms "justice" and "grace." The word "justice" is used in three distinct senses. "Sometimes it means commutative justice," which "respects property and matters of commerce only and secures to every man his own property." Sometimes it means distributive justice, which "consists in properly rewarding virtue or good conduct, and punishing crimes or vicious conduct. To treat a man justly in this sense is to treat him according to his personal character or conduct." Sometimes it means general or public justice, which "comprehends all moral goodness; and though the word is often used in this sense, it is really an improper use of it. In this sense, whatever is right is said to be just, or an act of justice; and whatever is wrong or improper to be done, is said to be unjust, or an act of injustice. To practise justice in this sense, is to practise agreeably to the dictates of general benevolence, or to seek the glory of God and the good of the universe.
"The term grace comes now to be explained. Grace is ever so opposed to justice that they mutually limit each other. Wherever grace begins, justice ends; and wherever justice begins, grace ends. Grace, as opposed to commutative justice, is gratuitously to relinquish your property, or to forgive a man his debt. And commutative injustice is to demand more of a man than your own property. Grace as opposed to justice in the distributive sense, is to treat a man more favorably or mildly than is correspondent to his personal character, or conduct. To treat him unjustly is to use him with greater severity than is correspondent to his personal character . . . With regard to the third kind of justice . . . as it comprehends all moral goodness, it is not at all opposed to grace; but comprehends that, as well as every other virtue, as truth, faithfulness, meekness, etc . . . And even grace itself, which is favor to the ill-deserving, so far as it is wise and proper to be exercised, makes but a part of this kind of justice.
"We proceed now to apply these explanations to the solution of the difficulty under consideration. The question is this, Is the pardon of the sinner, through the atonement of Christ, an act of justice or of grace? To which I answer, That with respect to commutative justice, it is neither an act of justice nor of grace, because commutative justice is not concerned in the affair. We neither owed money to the deity, nor did Christ pay any in our behalf. His atonement is not a payment of our debt. If it had been, our discharge would have been an act of mere justice, and not of grace . . . With respect to distributive justice, the discharge of the sinner is wholly an act of grace. This kind of justice has respect solely to the personal character and conduct of its object . . . With regard to the case now before us, what if Christ has made an atonement for sin? This atonement constitutes no part of the personal character of the sinner; but his personal character is essentially the same as it would have been if Christ had made no atonement. And as the sinner in pardon is treated not only more favorably, but infinitely more favorably, than is correspondent to his personal character, his pardon is wholly an act of infinite grace . . . In the third sense of justice before explained, according to which anything is just which is right and best to be done, the pardon of the sinner is entirely an act of justice."
There are a number of other discussions in this sermon, some of which are marked by great dialectical keenness. We hasten on to the third sermon, which is occupied with "inferences and reflections." Of these it will be necessary to note here only four, and these very briefly.
"The atonement of Christ does not consist in his active or positive obedience," for this "would never support the authority of the law and the dignity of the divine government." Again, in requiring an atonement, "God acts, not from any contracted, selfish motives, but from the most noble benevolence and regard to the public good. It hath often and long since been made a matter of objection to . . . the atonement of Christ that it represents the deity as having regard merely to his own honor and dignity, and not to the good of his creatures, and therefore represents him as deficient in goodness." But this is far from the case. [This is, of course, not an adequate treatment of the point whether God acts as the offended party or as Ruler, but it will be noted that it covers that point.] Still again, the atonement of Christ is not a satisfaction to distributive justice, but only to general justice, or the well-being of the universe. And, finally, God was under no obligation in distributive justice to accept the atonement of Christ, though "the glory of God and the greatest good of the moral system" did require him to accept it, and in this sense obligate him.
This treatment of the subject is hampered by the circumstances which called it forth, so as not to afford a complete view of the atonement, or to present it from its proper starting-point. It is only inferentially that the great difference between it and the old Calvinistic theory is introduced, the change of the view of God from that of "offended party" to "ruler." Nor is the theory of virtue applied as it should be, although God is said to act with a view to the highest good of all. But from this time on, the rectoral theory of the atonement took the place of the satisfaction theory, and as time went on received better statements from successive theologians. The progress of our history will lead us to pass later presentations in review. But we must tarry still a little upon the other original statements of it, noticing next West's.
West presented his views, as was possible in an essay of more than two hundred pages, in a much fuller and more satisfactory form than Edwards had done, but in complete accord with him as to the positions taken. He carries back not merely the atonement, but the creation, to the character of God as its foundation.
A display, or manifestation, of his own true and infinitely holy character was the chief and ultimate end which God had in view in creation. As God is most eminently good, it is evident that the real disposition of his infinite mind doth not appear excepting in works of goodness and where some good is actually done. His true character, therefore, cannot otherwise be manifested then in doing good. The same glorious design which is expressed in creation, will be invariably expressed in preservation, for in strictness of speech, preservation is no more than creation continued. What gave birth to the existence of creatures will direct in the government over them. And should we entertain a thought that God's moral government will not be eternally administered in such a manner as to express to the best advantage his true character, we must at once admit either that he has changed his original scheme, or that the government of so vast and complicated a system is become too unwieldy for its great and original creator, either of which suppositions is atheistical and absurd. The community must have confidence in God; and the confidence of a community in the character of a governor arises in a great measure from the apprehensions they have of his sincere, benevolent regards for the general good. And they can no further confide in his regards to the public good than they believe him to be averse from everything that injures the public. As it is impossible that the love of virtue in any being whatever should exceed his hatred of vice, it is impossible for any one to give evidence of the former when, the object being presented, he neglects expressing the latter in ways becoming his character. As far as God's love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity can be separately viewed and distinguished from each other, the great end of the death of Christ was to exhibit the latter and not the former. The disposition of the divine mind is perfectly uniform and harmonious. There is nothing in God or in the disposition of his mind but benevolence and love. Yet general good operates in a different manner toward different objects, and obtains different epithets according to these severally different operations. Should we, for instance, conceive no different ideas of divine justice from those which we entertain of divine mercy, it is evident we should have no proper and adequate conceptions of either. Or, should we form no different ideas of God's love of virtue and of his hatred of vice, it is manifest that we should view him as being indifferent to virtue and vice. Yet the very different ways in which God's love of virtue and his hatred of vice express themselves in fruits, and the extremely different effects they produce in the subjects on whom they are severally displayed, naturally lead us to view them as in some respects exceedingly different from each other, and that, however obviously they discover in their several operations beautiful harmony and uniformity in the disposition of the divine mind.
Here we see the government founded upon the character of God, and this presented as goodness, love, which consists in regard for the general good. And what is more important, the maintenance of the government of God is no maintenance of this as a mere government, but it is a maintenance of the character through the government, and this for the "public good." In other words, the love of God to his creatures, though not this alone, leads him for their sake not to forgive without the atonement.
The theory of atonement thus introduced received constant study and exposition in subsequent years, to which the progress of our history will bring us again. Leaving it now in the form in which it was first stated, we return for a brief review of its closing stages, to the early Universalist controversy.
The year 1784 saw, as noted above, the publication of Chauncy's Salvation of All Men. This was not Chauncy's first appearance against evangelical theology, for in 1743 he had written against the revivals of that year, and particularly against Edwards' Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. The doctrine he now advocated was "that the scheme of revelation has the happiness of all mankind lying at bottom, as its great and ultimate end." He teaches future punishment, which he designates as "awful misery;" but, however long it may be, or "however many states some of the individuals of the human species may pass through," it will issue in such a change of mind as shall fit men for salvation, and "the Son of God . . . will not deliver up his trust into the hands of the Father . . . till he has fully discharged his obligations in virtue of it, having finally fixed all men in heaven, when God will be all in all."
The work rests upon what was, doubtless, a well-nigh self-evident proposition to Chauncy--that universal happiness was the designed goal of the universe. Still the argument is carefully exegetical, however defective. On Rom. 5:12 ff., he argues that, as mankind universally is the object of condemnation, "the same mankind must universally be the object of the opposite justification." The discussion of the meaning of the words for "everlasting" in the Greek Testament, ____ and _______, is an extended one. He curiously inverts the argument from Matt. 25:46, robbing it of all power to bear independent witness in the matter. He says:
The precise duration intended by the words . . . must be determined by the nature of the thing spoken of, or other passages of Scripture that explain it. When it is affirmed of the wicked that they shall go away ___ _______ _______, into everlasting punishment, the certain meaning of this word _______, everlasting, is clearly and fully settled by the above proof of the final salvation of all men.
The reply of Edwards was predominantly rational. He thus recognized the essential rationalism underlying the whole of Chauncy's argument. Not that he neglected the exegetical reply; for this was both elaborate and annihilating. In discussing the words ____ and _______, he counts their occurrences in the New Testament, classifies them, subjoins a concordance. He proves their entire correspondence to our English words "eternity" and "eternal," and shows that the presumption with which we come to the subject of future punishment is in favor of their strict use here. He follows Chauncy into all his windings and confutes him everywhere, manifesting all the keenness and delight in dialectics which his father had shown.
But the book was more than merely a successful piece of debate. It furthered essentially the understanding of its theme among the New England divines. The same discriminations as to various kinds of justice which appeared in the sermons on the atonement are applied to this theme. It is to be noted that the principle of all virtue is beginning to modify even the definition of distributive justice; for, while distributive justice respects the "personal character" of the sinner, the nature and amount of a just punishment are determined by the proportion which ought to exist between it and the crime. A punishment is just "when by the pain or natural evil of the punishment it exhibits a just idea of the moral evil or ruinous tendency of the crime, and a proper motive to restrain all intelligent beings from the commission of the crime." This is to determine distributive justice by the consideration of the general good, or to convert it into public justice. Thus the relation to the goodness of God of his punishment of men is brought in at this early point; but there is also a special discussion of this relation. In order to answer Chauncy's fundamental assumption, Edwards asks the question "whether the damned deserve any other punishment than that which is conducive to their personal good." If they do not, and do not receive any other, then it is perfectly easy to reconcile their punishment with the divine goodness, for it is nothing but an exercise of the divine goodness toward them. Edwards answers the question affirmatively, because of the words which the Scripture employs to designate this punishment curse," "vengeance," "great evil," etc. which are irreconcilable with Chauncy's idea. But, now, how is future punishment consistent, upon this basis, with the divine goodness? Edwards replies: Pain inflicted in this life, and some punishment in the world to come (which, it will be remembered, Dr. Chauncy did not deny), are evidently for the good of the universe upon the whole. "Why may not endless misery be so too, provided it be just?" Thus Edwards answers the objections by an irrefutable hypothesis. He compels his opponent to prove a universal negative, if he will maintain the irreconcilability of eternal punishment with the divine goodness; viz.: Endless punishment answers no good end. But he does not stop here; he goes on with an argument positively supporting the consistency of punishment with goodness. To make a law which is inconsistent with goodness is just as bad as to execute it. But here is a law threatening eternal punishment. To execute it is no worse than to make it. Both must be consistent with goodness, if either is. But, since sin is in the world, God must punish it. If he were never to punish it, it would seem that he is no enemy to it. Or, if he punish it in a far less degree than it deserves, still it would seem that his displeasure at it is far less than it is and ought to be . . . But will any man say that it is conducive to the good order and happiness of the intellectual system, that God should appear to be no enemy, but rather a friend, to sin?
One more work must be briefly reviewed, and then we may turn away, for a time, from the Universalist controversy. This is Dr. Nathan Strong's reply to Huntington's Calvinism Improved. This is one of the best books of the series. It is, however, in so perfect harmony with the works already examined, in the carefulness of its exegetical discussions, in its emphasis of the new theory of the atonement as the proper answer to Rellyanism, and in the thoroughness with which it pursues the antagonist through all the intricacies of his argument, that we should be only repeating what has already been presented if we indulged in special citations. He repudiates with great force Relly's doctrine of "union." And the divergence of Huntington from evangelical theology is shown by the difference of his doctrine of saving faith.
At this point we may break off the discussion of Universalism for a time. The work of the New England divines did not stop the spread of the movement, for it founded a small number of churches which had for many years a lingering existence, and have perpetuated themselves to the present day. But these powerful collections of argument did arrest the tendency toward Universalistic views of the future among the New England churches, and determined that the course of New England theology should embrace no such divergence from the evangelical theology of the past.
We return, therefore, to the history of the doctrine of the atonement which we broke off with the essay of Stephen West. We had found him presenting more fully than his predecessors the origin of the atonement in the love of God, though leaving something to be desired in respect to the orderly development of this great central thought. His successors remedied this defect with increasing plainness of statement.
Dr. Nathaniel Emmons (1745-1840) expresses the connection between the love of God and the atonement by a more orderly deduction. He says:
All the moral perfections of the Deity are comprised in the pure love of benevolence. God is love. Before the foundation of the world there was no ground for considering love as divided into various and distinct attributes. But after the creation new relations arose; and in consequence of new relations, more obligations were formed, both on the side of the Creator, and on that of his creatures. Before created beings existed, God's love was exercised wholly towards himself. But after moral beings were brought into existence, it was right in the nature of things that he should exercise right affections towards them according to their moral characters. Hence the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are founded in the nature of things. That is, so long as God remains the Creator, and men remain his creatures, he is morally obliged to exercise these different and distinct feelings towards them . . . Now, there never was any difficulty in the way of God's doing good to the innocent, nor in the way of his punishing the guilty; but there was a difficulty in sparing and forgiving the wicked . . . This was a difficulty in the divine character, and a still greater difficulty in the divine government; for God had revealed his justice in his moral government . . . How then could grace be displayed consistently with justice? This question God alone was able to solve . . . By inflicting such sufferings upon Christ, when he took the place of a substitute in the room of sinners, God as clearly displayed his hatred of sin, and his inflexible disposition to punish it, as if he had made all mankind personally miserable forever.
Thus again, the government of God is founded upon his character, and ruled in accordance with it. There is still something of the juridical and external in the form of presentation, however, and it needs, perhaps, to be corrected by emphasizing the fact that the government which is here to be maintained is not a government of brute force, but a moral one, a government of moral agents by means of influence. Emmons Says:
It belongs to God not only to exercise a natural government over the natural world, but to exercise a moral government over the moral world. The proper mode of governing moral subjects is by laws, rewards, and punishments.
We may pass on however, for a more satisfactory treatment of this point, to Dr. Edward D. Griffin (1770-1837), whose treatise upon the extent of the atonement emphasized topic, and so had occasion to dwell more at length upon the nature of a moral government. Whatever difference there is, is more of form, however, than of substance. Griffin says:
Considered in relation to its dominion over the mind, a moral government may be called a government of motives; for these are the instruments by which it works. It is a course of acting, not upon the disposition by insensible influence, but upon the reason and conscience of a rational being by manifest motives . . . In a limited sense a moral government is the mere administration of law; but in a more general and perfect sense it includes the whole treatment which God renders to moral agents . . . A moral government wields all the motives in the universe. It comprehends the entire system of instruction intended for creatures. The Bible lies wholly within its bounds. It comprehends the public dispensation both of law and gospel, with the whole compages of precepts, invitations, promises, and threatenings. It comprehends the atonement, and all the covenants made with men, and all the institutions of religion, with the whole train of means and privileges . . . It comprehends a throne of grace, with all the answers to prayer. It comprehends a day of probation, with all the experiments made upon human character . . . It comprehends the day of judgment . . . It comprehends all the sensible communion between the Infinite and finite minds; all the perceptible intercourse between God and his rational offspring; all the treatment of intelligent creatures viewed otherwise than as passive receivers of sovereign impressions.
Caleb Burge (1782-1838), whose Essay on the Scripture Doctrine of Atonement is one of the very best of the New England treatises upon the subject, reproduces these ideas in various forms. He employs certain forms of expression, not common elsewhere, which present with special felicity the substitute which New England theology has to offer for the doctrine that the atonement satisfied the distributive justice of God. Its emphasis upon the individuality of man forced it to the position that, as justice demanded the punishment of the sinner himself, no other arrangement could satisfy exactly this demand. Yet there was something in God himself which must be satisfied by an atonement, which Burge styles his "justice to himself." He says:
Every good being, in order to do justice to his own character, must manifest his goodness. A wise being, in order to do justice to his character, must manifest his wisdom; or, at least, he must not manifest anything which is opposite to wisdom. All must allow that if one being should knowingly give a wrong representation of the character of another, who is wise and good, he would be very unjust. But if a good and wise being should give a wrong representation of his own character (if this were possible) there would be the same injustice done which there would, if the same representation were made by another.
Hence, in order properly to represent his own character, and be just to himself, God must forgive only upon a provided atonement. This is the truth underlying the incorrect statements of the strict satisfaction theory.
We pass on rapidly to Dr. N. W. Taylor (1786-1858). He placed the moral government of God in the forefront of his theology, and two-thirds of his printed lectures are more decidedly the freedom of man in connection with this topic. But they are only the development of what had been taught from the first in New England. This appears in the very form of the definition of a perfect moral government given at the beginning of the treatise. Taylor defines thus: "The influence of the . . . rightful authority of a moral governor on moral beings, designed so to control their action as to secure the great end of action upon their part, through the medium of law." Moral beings are defined as "beings capable of moral action." The points which Griffin had emphasized, form the main staple of Taylor's argument, except that they receive new force from the new theory of the constitution of the mind, which, beginning with Asa Burton, had now in Taylor's hands given American theology a better division of the faculties of the mind, and, by separating the sensibility and the will, had made a reasonable theory of moral action for the first time possible. The "control" spoken of is a control through influence, and this is the influence of authority. The law promulgated requires "benevolence . . . as the best kind of action and as the sum of obedience." Taylor views "benevolence on the part of the moral governor and its manifestation as one essential ground of his authority."
In this fact is involved another. The moral governor who is truly and perfectly benevolent, must feel the highest approbation of right moral action and the highest disapprobation of wrong moral action on the part of his subjects. These particular emotions in view of the true nature and tendency of right and wrong moral action are inseparable from the nature of benevolence in every mind. Again, benevolence, in the specific form of it now stated as the character of the moral governor, must, from the very nature and design of his relation be supremely concerned and absolutely committed to secure so far as he is able, right moral action in every instance, and to prevent wrong moral action in every instance by the influence of his authority.
Even the legal sanctions ratify God's authority by manifesting his benevolence. And so, when men have sinned, their salvation can be given only upon an atonement, since otherwise God would not appear to hate sin, or would disregard the obligations imposed by benevolence to maintain the authority of the law. In the development of this line of thought he is particularly strong. The immutability of God's character is the foundation of the immutability of his law, which is the expression of that character. The immutability of the law is the same as the immutability of its sanctions. Hence, as God is what he is, he must maintain the authority of his law, and hence the principle: the perfect equity or justice of a moral governor can be reconciled with mercy to transgressors only through an atonement. He shuts up the objector to an atonement successively to denying the benevolence of God, or else to maintaining the future exact retribution of this wicked world, or else to admitting an atonement. He does this with so great cogency and force as almost to amount to a new proof of the necessity of the atonement. The necessity lies in the demands of real and comprehensive benevolence.
It is unnecessary to quote from the writings of Charles G. Finney (1792-1875). The same views would be found to be repeated in connection with his more radical and correct opinions upon the freedom of the will. The meaning of a moral government; the character of God as love, which constitutes the divine response to the immediate affirmations of his own intellect as to obligation; love as having respect to the moral system as a whole and demanding a satisfaction to "public justice;" and the perfect adaptation of the divine government and of the atonement to securing the best good of all concerned, are brought out by him in terms largely identical with those employed by his predecessors, but with the added clearness which correcter views as to the nature of the mind and moral agency rendered possible.
Our whole review up to this point has shown us that, while the New England writers emphasized the divine government as the sphere within which the atonement was wrought, they all with increasing clearness founded that government upon an ethical idea, a conception of the character of God as love, which redeems the theory from the charge of artificiality and superficiality, though they did not seek to make the ethical idea prominent, or generally to deduce the whole theory from the ideal basis of it. But even the points already discussed cannot be made as full and clear as they should be, till we have read further. We therefore pass on without delay to the relation of election to the atonement.
The question of the extent of the atonement was prominently brought before the New England writers from the first of their investigations upon the subject. The Universalists had made the proposition that Christ died for all a principal step in their argument. The old theories had avoided their conclusion only by denying that he died for all; but this truth was too plain to admit of denial, in the opinion of the New England thinkers. So, from the first, they taught the doctrine of a general atonement.
Dr. Edwards says nothing in particular upon this point in his three sermons. West, however, proceeds to draw the conclusion which could but follow so soon as the premises of the new theory were adopted. The atonement was sufficient for the whole world, not in the sense that it "superseded all use of punishment in the divine government," but in the sense that it made "such a manifestation of divine displeasure against the wickedness of men as is enough to convince every candid spectator that the disposition of the divine mind is perfectly conformable to the true spirit of God's written law." "The direct end of atonement is answered," he says, "and such a manifestation made of divine righteousness as prepared the way for a consistent exercise of mercy. Now, God would not appear to give up his law even though he pardoned the sinner." West then dwells largely upon the dignity of the person of Christ as exalting the atonement made by him, and contributing to its perfection, and so to its universality.
Emmons is axiomatic and incisive, as usual. The proposition of his sermon upon the necessity of the atonement is: "That the atonement of Christ was necessary entirely on God's account," i. e., not at all upon man's. Hence he argues:
Then it was universal, and sufficient for the pardon and salvation of the non-elect . . . If it has rendered it consistent with the justice of God to exercise pardoning mercy to one sinner, it has rendered it equally consistent with his mercy to exercise pardoning mercy to all sinners. It opens as wide a door of mercy to the one as to the other.
If the only obstacles were upon God's part, once removed they were removed.
The great treatise upon this part of the subject was, however, Griffin's. We shall not fully understand his argument unless we have somewhat clearly in mind the course of New England thought upon the whole subject of the will, for Griffin seeks to find a solution of the difficulties between the maintainers of limited and of general atonement by sharper distinctions upon moral agency. We are therefore compelled partly to anticipate the discussion to which the next chapter is to be devoted. The freedom of the will, as needs scarcely to be recalled, was the great first question which engaged New England theology when Edwards began his contest with the Arminians. His solution, while providing for the divine sovereignty, and an external freedom of the man to do what he willed, did not provide for the freedom of the will itself. This was felt by his contemporary and successor, Samuel Hopkins, who brought forward the idea that freedom was an inalienable attribute of the will as such, and made it to reside, not in Edwards' external freedom, but in the very exercise of volition. Emmons, who was fond of paradoxical forms of statement, emphasized human agency as much as he did divine sovereignty, and often employed much the same terms to describe each. God governs man through motives, and yet when motives have been presented, he acts upon the will, which without his action never could respond to their stimulus. Thus God "produces" our volitions. In fact, all action in the universe is God's. But, on the other hand, by a mysterious connection between man and God, man acts exactly as if God did not act. He is perfectly free, and this in the same sense as God himself is. Under his universal agency, man has a real agency, which must no more be neglected than that of God. With varying success as to the theory of the will, the deepening tendency of the New England school was to view the divine and human operations in the matter of volition as if they were two con-centric spheres. The ultimate question as to the possibility of the communication of independence to man they did not attempt to solve. The fact of natural powers was enough.
Now Griffin approaches the problem very much after the manner of Emmons. His purpose is to reconcile the two schools of thought upon the extent of the atonement, and he says:
One party contemplate men as passive receivers of sanctifying impressions; and their question is, How many did God intend by regenerating influence to make partakers of the benefit of the atonement? The answer is, The elect. And so say we. The other party contemplate men as moral agents; and their question is, How many did God intend to furnish with a means of pardon which they should be under obligations to improve to their everlasting good? The answer is, All who hear the gospel. And so say our brethren . . . The mistake of our brethren, as we view it, has arisen from not keeping these two characters of man distinct [viz., passive subjects and agents]. The two characters are about as distinct as body and soul; and on their marked separation the solution of almost every difficulty in metaphysical theology depends.
This idea is more fully brought out as follows:
None but moral agents bear any relation to law, obligation, guilt, pardon, rewards, or punishments . . . This is what we mean when we say that the atonement was a measure of moral government . . . Now one of the things which essentially belong to a moral agent is, that he must act, and on his action his happiness depends . . . You cannot therefore contemplate a man as needing an atonement, without contemplating him as one, who, if he has opportunity, is to act towards the atonement, and is to enjoy or lose the benefit according as he receives it or rejects it . . . Anything, therefore, which is done for a moral agent is done for his use after the manner in which things are for the use of free moral agents, or creatures governed by motives and choice and bound to act. That is, it is done that he may use it if he pleases, and that he may be under obligation to use it.
The statement of Griffin's fundamental thought here is as follows:
The foundation of the whole divine administration towards the human race lies in this, that men sustain two relations to God. As creatures they are necessarily dependent upon him for holiness, as they are for existence, and as such they passively receive his sanctifying impressions; and they are moral agents. Now the great truth to be proved is, that these two characters of men (passive receivers and moral agents) are altogether distinct and independent of each other. And the proof is found in the single fact, that their moral agency is in no degree impaired or affected by their dependence and passiveness, nor their passiveness and dependence by their moral agency. That is to say, they are none the less dependent (as Arminians would make us believe) for being moral agents; and on the other hand (and this is the main point to be proved), they are none the less moral agents (as Antinomians seem to suppose), that is, are none the less susceptible of personal and complete obligations, for being dependent. For instance, they are none the less bound to believe because faith is "the gift of God," nor to love because love is "the fruit of the Spirit." Their obligations rest upon their capacity to exercise, not on their power to originate; on their being rational, not on their being independent. On the one hand, the action of the Spirit does not abate their freedom. The soul of man is that wonderful substance which is none the less active for being acted upon, none the less free for being controlled. It is a wheel within a wheel, which has complete motion in itself while moved by machinery from without. While made willing, it is itself voluntary, and of course free. On the other hand, the absence of the Spirit does not impair the capacity on which obligation is founded. The completeness of moral agency has no dependence on supernatural impressions, and on nothing but a rational existence combined with knowledge. The bad, equally with the good, are complete moral agents, the one being as much deserving of blame as the other are of praise; otherwise (which forever settles the question), the unsanctified are not to blame and cannot be punished.
The argument is continued:
I have shown you two independent characters on earth. If God acts towards these according to truth, there will be a counterpart of them in the heavens; he himself will sustain two characters . . . altogether independent of each other. As he stands related to the moral agent, he is the Moral Governor; as he stands related to the mere passive receiver, he is the Sovereign Efficient Cause . . . Now the atonement was certainly provided by the Moral Governor, because it was a provision for moral agents. It follows, then, that in making this provision he had no regard to the distinction of elect and non-elect [in distinguishing between which he acts as the Sovereign Efficient Cause]. An atonement made for agents could know nothing of passive regeneration or any decree concerning it.
These ideas represent the highest point attained by the New England writers upon the subject. They all re-echo more or less distinctly the teaching of Griffin. Burge says:
The atonement of Christ is, in a strict and proper sense, for all mankind. Christ tasted death for every man; for the non-elect as much as for the elect. Indeed, election has nothing to do with atonement, any more than it has with creation, resurrection from the dead, or the general judgment.
He adds immediately:
From the necessity and nature of the atonement it is evident that its extent is necessarily universal . . . The death of Christ completely removes them [the obstacles which stood in the way of God's pardoning sinners].
But we hasten to consider the artificial elements of the doctrine which these writers rejected. Among these the principal is the doctrine of imputation, with its associated idea of the strict equivalency of Christ's sufferings to our punishment. Doubtless the prime motive force in this modification of the old theology was the sense of reality and spirit of honesty which were characteristic of the New England thinkers. It is interesting to note the workings of President Edwards' mind upon these topics. His treatise upon original sin we have seen to be the most important of his works as illustrating the operations of his mind and the character of his theology in their relations to conservatism and progress. On the one hand he will have nothing to do with "treating men as" they are not; but, on the other, he cannot avoid a connection with Adam and a guilt for Adam's sin; and so he struggles with theories of identity and with ideas of divine constitution, till he makes us one with Adam in some sense, and yet declares that we are not guilty of Adam's sin by imputation till we are participators in it by "consent." But such efforts in behalf of imputation were in vain. Edwards' successors regarded the idea with more and more distrust, and the Universalist controversy put an end to every effort to retain it. At this time it became an evangelical interest which contended against the theory. Universalism and some forms of orthodoxy maintained that there was no grace in saving men, since the atonement had merited salvation for them, and the merits of Christ were directly imputed to believers. Hence eternal life was bestowed as a thing which had been duly bought by this infinite price. The New England thinkers found this too abhorrent to the gospel. We are saved by grace, they said, and they devoted a large part of those various discourses and treatises, which we have been reviewing in this chapter, to proving that an atonement is consistent with the exercise of grace. Smalley protests against forms of expression which the revered Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, had once employed, as if the sinner could claim forgiveness from God. "Where do we find," he asks, "our infallible Teacher instructing his disciples to make such challenges from the Father, even on his account, of deliverance from all evil and the bestowment of all good, as their just due?" Emmons answers the question from the standpoint of the New England theory of the atonement, as when he says:
Though Christ suffered, the just for the unjust, though he made his soul an offering for sin, and though he suffered most excruciating pains in the garden and on the cross, yet he did not lay God under the least obligation, in point of justice, to pardon and save a single sinner . . . By obeying and suffering in the room of sinners, he only rendered it consistent for God to renew or not renew, to pardon or not to pardon, to reward or not to reward, sinners; but did not lay him under the least obligation, in point of justice, to do either of these things for them.
But he also appeals to our sense of the majesty of God, who "is above being bound by any being in the universe." And, in general, he rests upon the fundamental absurdity of teaching that the character of one man can be transferred to another, since a character consists in acts which, done by one man, cannot be also acts done by another. Burge is perhaps as pointed as any of these writers. He says:
The righteousness of Christ, like that of every other holy being, consists entirely in his actions, feelings, and attributes. Essentially it consists in his love to God and other beings, and is as unalienably his as is any other attribute of his nature. Is it even possible that the actions which Christ performed while here on earth, in which his righteousness in part consists, should be so transferred from him to believers as to become actions which they have performed?
He says trenchantly in reference to the idea that believers receive the righteousness of Christ by faith:
It is confidently believed that neither Scripture nor reason affords any more warrant for the opinion that it is even possible for the believer's faith to receive Christ's faith, or love, than for the opinion that a believer's walking in the highway receives Christ's walking upon the water.
When it is said that "God views and represents them [sinners] as righteous, by virtue of the righteousness of Christ; then the inquiry which arises is, Whether God does not view and represent things precisely as they are?" In all this, which is the style of remark pursued by later New England divines as well, it should be remembered that what the antagonist had in mind was the ignorant Universalist preacher with his Rellyan doctrine of "union." But though the form of answer was thus determined, the New England divines held that the substance of their argument was valid also against the exaggerations of the Old School.
We have thus outlined the course of the doctrine in the New England writers; have shown the determining influence of the doctrine of Edwards as to the nature of virtue, which furnishes the ideal side of the theory; the influence also of increasing light as to the freedom of the will; and the strong effect of the idea of individuality introduced into the school by its founder. The theory underwent no essential change from this point during the progress of the New England school. In the theology of Professor Park it received some enrichment by his steady effort to incorporate whatever of good he found in other writers wherever laboring. Our study of this subject will therefore come to its legitimate conclusion while we are considering the theology of Park, to which time further discussion is deferred.
CHAPTER IX: The Development Of The Theory Of The Will
At the time at which we have now arrived in the progress of this history (1795), the air was full of the portents of the great controversy, commonly styled the Unitarian controversy, which was soon to engage the energies of the churches and to rend them into two hostile divisions. One brief campaign with an allied movement, the Universalists, had already been fought. It might have seemed as if such struggles were enough to exhaust the attention of our divines. But it was not so. Out of many a quiet pastor's study came a book, the product of profound reflections upon themes suggested by no immediate issue, which after a little called forth a reply from some other study where the same great themes had been meditated in all retirement and seclusion. So the debate went on; and many a movement of thought, destined in the end to find a close application to the practical necessities of troubled days, was carried on in entire unconsciousness of any such probable application.
One of these movements, in many respects the most important, certainly the most tragic, we must now turn aside to describe. It is that which resulted in great practical modifications of the theory of the will, as derived from Edwards, from which flowed other and great modifications in both theory and practice. Modifications of Edwards' views began with the very first writers who carried on his work, as we have already had occasion to remark. These became considerable in the process of time and brought the school to the very verge of a doctrine of genuine freedom. Many of the results of such a doctrine were actually incorporated in the received systems of theology. But the tragic element was not wanting, for upon the whole, even in the person of its final and greatest representative, Professor Edwards A. Park, the New England theology did not break loose from the substantial supralapsarianism in which Edwards had left it. Every great reasoner upon this theme believed himself to be in entire accord with Edwards. So profound was their admiration for their great leader that his successors scarcely conceived it possible that they should disagree with him, except in some small details of phraseology, or possibly, now and then, of thought. Whether they did differ or not we are soon to see; but the outcome of this intense loyalty to one man and one book was that they remained restricted by both phraseology and thought to the narrow limits there found. Their mighty struggles to escape, all incomprehensibly futile, remind one of nothing so much as of a lion caught in a net.
When we look at the so-called "New England" writers exclusively, we are in danger of thinking that they represent the whole of New England, and that Edwards' work upon the will was received with the universal conviction of its unanswerable greatness with which they were impressed. But this was not so, and the progress made in the theory of the will was the result of the action and reaction of many minds, of which some were decidedly hostile to the whole Edwardean theology. For twelve years the silence of the opposing party was unbroken, and then appeared an Examination by Rev. James Dana, of Wallingford, Conn., which very sharply and effectively called Edwards to account. Its view, of Edwards' theory was precisely that taken in this history. It rested upon the contrary theory of a self-determination of the will, by which was intended a real and originative causality, conceived as the special and distinctive peculiarity of man. The examination begins with an inquiry into the connection of motives with the action of the will, and an indication is soon given that, in the examiner's opinion, President Edwards must view every volition as an immediate and necessary effect of the supreme cause, God. This intimation soon becomes a vigorous argument, and the chief merit of the book is its strongly maintained thesis that upon the Edwardean foundation the divine efficiency becomes the only efficiency in the universe. Finally he asks:
To what extrinsic cause, then, or to whom, are the volitions of men to be ascribed, since they are not the cause of them themselves? By whom or what is the state of men's will determined? According to Mr. Edwards, it is the strongest motive from without. But motives to choice are exhibited to the mind by some agent. By whom are they exhibited? In regard to sinful volitions, we know that one man enticeth another, and Satan enticeth all mankind. But this will not be given as an answer to our question, since the sinful act of one sinner in enticing another, and of Satan in tempting all men, must be determined by a previous cause--an antecedent highest motive exhibited by some other agent. (Though, by the way, it may be difficult to show how one man can be the cause of sin in another, when he cannot be the cause of it in himself.) What we are inquiring after is the cause of "the first and leading sinful volition, which determines the whole affair." Nor is there any stop, till we arrive at the first cause, whose immediate conduct Mr. Edwards saith is first in the series of events, connected with nothing preceding.
Edwards was himself so merciless in the pursuance of any infelicity of diction into which an adversary might fall, like the selection of the word "self-determination" to express originative and causal action on the will's part, that it may be interesting to remark that Dana held him squarely to the implications of that remarkable passage in which he identified the choice and the motive. Dana writes:
As no authority can be of equal weight to overthrow this main position as the author's own, we beg the reader would consider the following passage; which is so full to our purpose that we are saved the trouble of a labored confutation of the principle alluded to. "I have rather chose to express myself thus, that the will always is as the greatest apparent good, or as what appears most agreeable, than to say that the will is determined by the greatest apparent good or by what seems most agreeable, because an appearing most agreeable or pleasing to the mind, and the mind's preferring and choosing, seem hardly to be properly and perfectly distinct. If strict propriety of speech be insisted on, it may more properly be said that the voluntary action, which is the immediate fruit--and consequence of the mind's volition or choice, is determined by that which appears most agreeable, than the preference or choice itself." Here it is fully declared that, "properly speaking," volition and the highest motive are not distinct things--that the former is only as the latter, and not determined by it. Motive cannot be the ground and determiner of volition and at the same time the act of volition itself. It is not the cause of volition, but the thing, "if strict propriety of speech be insisted on." Instead of the strongest motive's being the cause of volition, the real truth is that volition is the cause of external action.
And on this basis he later affirms that the whole question, What determines the will? is "unanswered, and yet returns."
It is unnecessary to quote at greater length from Dana, since the work which it called out, the Essay on Moral Agency, by Stephen West, of Stockbridge (1772), was an independent treatise rather than a detailed reply.
West's essay is divided into two parts, of which the second is occupied with the problem of the existence of evil. It takes the general Hopkinsian position that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good. The first part is occupied with the theory of the will, and hence particularly calls for our present attention.
West professes his general agreement with Edwards. He agrees with him in the first and determinative peculiarity of his treatise, in the view of the constitution of the mind. Evidence of this appears upon the earliest pages of the book. He rejects the idea that "the action and preference of the mind" may be "so different from each other as that they might properly be treated of as cause and effect." He speaks of the "moral beauty and deformity of affections." Again, motives "obtain the appellation of motives only in the mind's feeling their influence, or being in actual motion in view of them." "When the mind feels or perceives the influence of a motive, it is then too late for the motive to produce effects in the mind--exciting it to motion, choice, or action; the mind being already moved, the will exerted, towards some common object; and choice having gained existence." "In the mind's perceiving anything . . . is really all the choice which is ever made of it."
In his definitions of moral agency, while in the main agreeing with Edwards, West reminds us frequently of Hopkins, who was the friend under whose influence he had made the transfer of himself from Arminianism to Calvinism. "When we talk of moral agency . . . it is agreeable to the common sense . . . of men to consider him [man] as in exercise." Freedom is made to reside not in "liberty to do as we please," as Edwards makes it, but in "spontaneous, voluntary exertion." "To be free and to be voluntary in any action whatsoever, whether internal or external, I suppose are one and the same thing." But, whereas in Hopkins this position looked toward greater freedom of the will, in West it looks toward less.
Advancing still farther upon the path which Edwards had marked out, but still in essential accord with him, West emphasizes the fact that we can have no consciousness of a power to choose "distinguishable from actual choosing." He says:
Minds are conversant only with their own ideas: they perceive and are immediately conscious of nothing beside their own exercises and ideas. However they may reason and infer--concerning other things and form premises and make conclusions with a great degree of justice or precision, still those things of which they attain knowledge in such a way as this are not the objects of direct, immediate perception. If liberty is what we perceive tactually to exist in the mind, it can certainly be perceived no otherwise than in its exercise: just as a power of choice can be perceived only in actual choosing.
He thus attempts to cut the nerve of the argument for freedom from consciousness.
West's discussions of the subject of power form the most original and important part of his book. He was brought to some difference with Edwards upon certain points, but with regard to the relations of power to moral agency he remains exactly where Edwards was. "Power . . . is not essential to moral agency, virtue, or vice." It is an external matter. "When an event taketh place upon our choosing it and in consequence of our choice, according to the use and import of the word in common language, we have the power of that event, or power to produce it." "Power implieth a connection between the volitions of the agent and the event which is the object of the volition." It was natural that the question should arise upon this view of the matter: Who established this connection"? West has removed from the idea of power the idea of efficient causation, so far as man is concerned, when he has said that we have power over an event if it "taketh place upon our choosing it," for we have no more real causation under such a definition than under John Stuart Mill's "invariable consequence" upon unchanged antecedents. But the question as to the efficient cause of an event cannot be suppressed. Accordingly West says: "Power, therefore, strictly speaking, is no more than a law of constant divine operation." That is, when I will, God operates in a predetermined manner, producing the corresponding event. He thus introduces the idea of occasionalism, derived from Edwards or directly from Berkeley, to explain our efficiency.
And now we have arrived at the critical point of the whole question. West has left us no true efficiency in the external world; will he maintain the same position as to the internal world? This is the next step, and it is boldly taken in the following discussion of motives. After a number of useful distinctions in respect to motives, he says:
It appeareth that there is an utter impropriety in saying that the mind is governed and determined by motive, if the expression is designed to represent motive as the cause, and choice or volition its effect . . . To view the matter in such a light as this would lead to evident inconsistency and confusion. Motives are not the causes of volitions. When we are inquiring into the sources of things and the cause of their existence; as in the natural, so in the moral world, we are compelled to resolve all into the divine disposal and a certain law or method of constant divine agency and operation. What are usually termed secondary causes have no productive agency or efficiency in them . . . When motives are represented as the causes of volition . . . the word cause . . . implieth nothing more than an occasion of the event.
Here, then, lie West's difference from Edwards, and his contribution to the thinking of the school, the idea that moral agency consists in exercises, and that these are the action of the deity as the sole efficient cause.
So far as the work is intended as a reply to Dana, it accepts at this important point the doctrine to which Dana intended to drive the Edwardeans, that God was the true efficient cause of volitions.
The relation of this position to Hopkins' doctrine of the will is even more interesting. Hopkins contributed all the elements of this conclusion which West has only been consistent in drawing; but he did not himself draw it. He taught that God is the cause of our volitions, but he did not say exactly how, whether through motives or immediate agency, and evidently intended to leave place for the agency of man. He had place in his philosophy for second causes, and a difference between God's immediate and mediate agency. Yet he says: "All power is in God, and all creatures which act or move, exist and move or are moved in and by him." And again: "The divine hand of power and energy is as really and as much concerned and exerted . . . as if no instrument, agent, or second cause were used or had any concern in the matter." While he was thus moving toward a doctrine of freedom, as already said, his movement was quite capable of being reversed, and West reversed it. He reversed it effectively for more than one theological generation; and although at last some of the later members of the school refused to follow in the direction thus prescribed to them, the influence of Edwards prevented them from giving a consistent form to the new truths they dimly saw.
The controversy between Dana and West did not stop here, for Dana replied with an Examination . . . Continued, which considered some topics of the controversy more fully, particularly defining self-determination better, and discussing the questions connected with moral evil and the divine foreknowledge. He did not, however, make any large contributions to the theme, nor did West when, in an appendix to a new edition of his Essay, he took special notice of Dana's second book. He merely reiterated Edwards' arguments, especially that of the infinite series involved in the idea of self-determination. The matter was left where it was before, every suggestion of a better view of the subject being rejected with emphasis.
Of course, so downright contradiction of the protest which Dana had attempted to put in against the strangling of all human freedom by Edwards' treatise could not be allowed to pass without another effort to give it effective utterance. This was made by Samuel West, of New Bedford, in his Essays on Liberty and Necessity, in the year 1793. It was the fruit of long reflection and no mere hasty reply to an obnoxious tract. It is said that he disputed with his teacher, who superintended his preparation for college, against the common necessitarian ideas of his day. He probably had embraced the old Arminian system which Stephen West had also earlier embraced, from which arises his reputation as a "Unitarian." The book was brief, exercised but little influence, and has now become exceedingly rare; but Dr. Edwards, who answered it, called it the ablest thing which had appeared upon that side. It was in fact revolutionary, and ought to have called forth that decisive change in New England psychology which it was reserved for Burton to produce. But it suffered the misfortune of being ahead of its times.
West begins his treatise by proposing a threefold division of the faculties of the mind. Stephen West, he says, confounds the perception of an object, in which we are entirely passive, with a volition, in which we are active.
Hence he observes that there are three main faculties of the mind--"the perception, the propension, and the Will."
The last only is properly the active faculty of the mind . . . The active faculty is exerted to acquire many of our perceptions, but still perceptions are not acts of the will . . . In demonstrating the truth of a proposition, a man is active in orderly arranging the several steps of the demonstration; but when he has done that, the perception of the truths demonstrated depends not upon an act of his will. By propension I mean to include inclination, affection, passion. These are all entirely distinct from the will. That bodily appetites, such as hunger, thirst, drowsiness, etc., are involuntary, I suppose will be allowed; and we may say the same of mental propensions, such as fear, love, anger, etc . . . A man may love a person whom he knows to be utterly unworthy of his affections, and may really choose to eradicate this propension from his breast; and yet he may find this passion rising in his breast in direct opposition to his will and choice.
This is a perfectly clear and comprehensive description of the essential elements of the case. And, if it was, as it may have been, derived from Locke, it is clearer than his. West also seems to see the confusing effect of Edwards' philosophy upon his theory of the will, for he says: "He everywhere confounds the propensity of the mind with volition. Hence he tells us, `The affections are only certain modes of the exercise of the will;' whereas I think the propensities of the mind, whether you call them inclinations, affections, or passions, are as different from the exercises of the will as light is from darkness." But he fails to bring out the exact nature of the fallacy under which Edwards labored, for he goes on to say: "It is very evident . . . that the will and the propensities are so distinct that they may be in direct opposition to each other; and that though these propensities may be so strong as to hinder us from doing what we choose, yet they cannot take away the freedom of the will; that is, the freedom of the will, or a self-determining power, is consistent with the strongest habits of virtue or vice." He adds below: "I believe, now, that it will appear, my notion of self-determination is very different from that which Mr. Edwards opposes, being a kind of medium between that and the doctrine of necessity." There is nothing further upon this point. A positive, Edwards-like annihilation of his adversary was called for if West could hope to make an impression upon the obstinacy with which the New England writers were still prepared to follow their great leader; but it was not forthcoming.
Upon the basis of this division of the mind, yet without consistent application of it, West now proceeds to make several forcible objections to Edwards' theories. His fundamental objection to necessity goes to the bottom of the subject. He says: "We certainly feel ourselves agents, feel ourselves free and accountable for our conduct we feel ourselves capable of praise and blame. How all these things can be reconciled to a doctrine of necessity I cannot conceive."
In opposition to Edwards' theory he therefore teaches that the will is self-determined. He expresses his meaning in a variety of ways. He says: "By liberty or freedom we mean a power of acting, willing, or choosing: and by a power of acting we mean that, when all circumstances necessary for action have taken place, then the mind can act or not act." Again: "The sense in which we use self-determination is simply this, that we ourselves will or choose; that we ourselves act; that is, that we are agents and not mere passive beings; or, in other words, that we are the determiners in the active voice, and not the determined in the passive voice." Again: "There is no infallible connection between motive and action." He defines self-determination by reference to the Deity, who, he says, "has a self-determining power . . . being the first cause." He often says "Volition is no effect." And, finally, he holds that by divine communication we have the same self-determining power, or power of first causation, which the Deity has. Certainly these distinctions are clear enough to have called attention, if anything could have done so, to Edwards' misinterpretation of his antagonists, and to the merely verbal character of his argument when he pressed the term "self-determination" in a way acute and strong, but in no relation to their real meaning. If there is any idea expressed by the phrase "first cause" whatever, then it is no absurdity to apply it to man, whether the application is correct or not.
In defense of this doctrine West denies the Edwardean doctrine that motives are the causes of volitions. He maintains that, if motives are causes, they must be efficient causes, and hence minds, which is absurd. He appeals to experience to show that "when motives have done all that they can do," the mind may act or not act. If volition is an effect, then man is passive in willing; and if so, then he is active in nothing else; that is, he is no agent. If volition were an effect, we could not be causes of effects, and so could never have the idea of cause. He even reduces Edwards to the absurdity of the infinite series, which may be said to be carrying the war into Africa. If volition is the activity of the mind, as Edwards maintains, and at the same time caused from abroad, then our only activity is caused. But it is caused by some mind, which in its activity needs another mind to cause it, which in its turn needs another mind to cause it, and so ad infinitum. He also says that motives cannot be compared so as to obtain the strongest motive which Edwards seeks as the cause of action.
In order to compare motives together to enable us to determine which is the strongest, the motives compared must all belong to the same faculty of the soul; and if they belong to different faculties of the mind no comparison can be made between them. Thus we find ourselves possessed of two different faculties, reason and propensity. Objects that are agreeable to our propensities are easily compared: thus of different kinds of food . . . we can easily tell which we have the greatest relish for . . . We can also compare things that are agreeable to reason and judgment . . . But how can we compare things together that belong to different faculties of the mind? For example, one has an inordinate thirst after strong drink though his reason tells him it will ruin his health, his estate, and his reputation, etc.
Turning now to the work of Stephen West, Samuel West notices the idea that the efficient cause in human volitions is the Deity. He himself prefers the doctrine that the Deity produces all the requisites for action in the mind, and that then it is capable of acting or not acting. But, he says, if volition is the immediate action of the Deity, then there is no action in the mind but the divine action, and, since action is essential to the life of every mind, it will follow that the Deity is the only living principle in the mind, and so in the universe, and that there is no such thing as a creation. Hence there is no Creator who has made and who governs all things by his power and providence.
But Edwards would have objected to West's arguments against necessity that he himself was defending only certainty. This leads West to consider the natural and moral necessity and ability taught by Edwards, which, in agreement with Dana, he finds to be one and the same thing. He also maintains that the certainty of future events does not involve their necessity. "The deity," he says, "being himself uncaused, must be possessed of an underived, self-existing knowledge, which is independent of any cause or medium whatever."
Thus an attack, strong in its main positions, however defective in amplitude of statement or dialectic form, had been made upon the New England theory and upon its latest exponent. Would it produce any effect?
Upon one man at least it produced an effect; but he was only led to reject it as a part of the old "Arminianism" against which he had long set himself. This was the younger Edwards, who came to the defense of his father and of Stephen West in a considerable treatise entitled A Dissertation concerning Liberty and Necessity, etc. It was strictly a reply to West and other Arminians, and therefore does not present any distinct and systematic theory of the will. It was, however, said by Professor Park to be the best exposition of President Edwards' theory. We may dismiss it for this reason with the briefer consideration, occupying ourselves with the points in which it lends its aid to the current already so strongly setting in the work of Stephen West. As a reply it is a masterpiece. It has the Edwardean thoroughness. Its favorite method is to show that West really meant, and often said, precisely what President Edwards had said, and that nothing but consistency is necessary to make him a full-fledged Edwardean. Its keenness makes it constantly interesting, and even absorbing, to everyone who loves thought. And yet, fundamentally, it concerns itself with words rather than realities, and Edwards fails to understand the important and new truth which his adversary was so richly offering him.
The great contribution which West had made to the discussion of the will was the proposal of the division of the faculties of the mind into three--perception, propension, and will. This made no impression upon Edwards. He noticed it, but did not seem to understand it. And yet, by that strange mental obliviousness by which men repeatedly miss great opportunities in every department of human thought, he once came near both understanding and accepting it, only, however, to do neither! When engaged in refuting West's theory as to our choice between objects of equal eligibility, he says that President Edwards ascribed "a great part of our volitions to disposition, inclination, passion, and habit, meaning certain biases of the mind distinct from volition and prior to it." If he could have seen that they were radically distinct from volition, he would have been ready to understand West. But he let the issue drop without adequate thought. He left to others to reap the benefits and the glory of accomplishing this forward step.
West's irrefutable argument from self-consciousness is evaded in the same way as Stephen West would have evaded it. Samuel West had expressed himself as if freedom were the object of immediate consciousness, for he said, "We feel ourselves free." But he had also expressed his idea in better form by saying that we "feel ourselves accountable for our conduct, and capable of praise and blame." Hence he would reason to freedom. This is the decisive argument, and was made by Lotze, for example, the turning-point of the argument for freedom. But Edwards contents himself with bringing out the fact that we cannot be conscious of freedom, but only of volitions. He does not enter into the significant and vital question which West had started: What is the freedom we must conceive human agents to have to render them responsible? This is the crucial failure of his reply.
West's arguments against the causative power of motives seem to have made more impression upon him. In reply he has recourse to Stephen West's doctrine of occasionalism. He says that President Edwards has "explained himself to mean by cause no other than occasion, reason, or previous circumstance necessary for volition." It is true that President Edwards did include every antecedent of a volition in its cause, and that he can be interpreted, as his son here interprets him, by straining his language. Hence arose that school of Edwardeans of which mention is to be made at length later. Dr. Edwards constantly reverts to this explanation, and it constitutes his standard interpretation of his father. That it was false we have already seen. Indeed, Dr. Edwards only presents it in this instance to cancel it effectually almost in the article of proposing it; for he continues:
I do not pretend that motives are the efficient causes of volition. If any expression importing this have dropped from any defender of the connection between motive and volition, either it must have happened through inadvertence, or he must have meant that motive is an efficient cause in no other sense than rain and the rays of the sun are the efficient cause of the growth of vegetables, or than medicine is the efficient cause of health.
Now, in accordance with the Berkeleian idealism which pervaded, whether consciously or unconsciously, the whole New England school at this point of its history, physical causes had no efficient power. Hence Edwards could deny that motives--which, it should be strictly marked, he puts in the same category with these physical causes--had efficient causation. But if one was not an idealist, and attached to the physical causes of events real power and a consequent efficiency, then to him the causation of motives became an efficient causation, and West's interpretation of Edwards must become his interpretation. Dr. Edwards proceeds now to carry out his line of defence to its consequences. If motives have no efficient causation, where is the causative force efficiently producing volitions? He says:
It is denied that man himself is the efficient cause of it [volition]. He who established the laws of nature so-called is the primary cause of all things. What is meant by the efficient cause in any case in which an effect is produced according to established laws? For instance, what is the efficient cause of the sensation of heat from fire? If it be answered: Fire is the efficient cause; I also answer that the motive is the efficient cause of the volition and doing aforesaid. If it be said that the Great First Cause is the efficient of the sensation of heat, the same Great Agent is the efficient cause of volition, in the same way, by a general law establishing a connection between motives and volitions, as there is a connection between fire in certain situations and the sensation of heat.
Here the son is true to the father, who said that the difference between causation in the moral and physical realms lay, not in the nature of the connection, but in the nature of the things connected. Thus the milder interpretation proposed by Edwards really vanishes, and the critics of the original treatise of the elder Edwards are abundantly justified.
But Dr. Edwards goes still farther. He has banished efficient causation from the physical universe, and he now proceeds to banish it from the universe at large. The Deity, says Edwards, "is no more the efficient cause of his own volitions than he is of his own existence." How mightily the lion is struggling in the entanglements of the invisible net! This is utter confusion of thought, and should have brought Edwards back to the error lurking in his premises. But he remains entangled in the result of his own consistency. God is, however, he grants, the efficient cause of our volitions. Certainly, these sentences constitute a reductio ad absurdum, perpetrated by Edwards himself, greater than all the infinite series of his father together!
Emmons closes this drift of thought. He puts the theory of the divine agency in its extremest form. Men act freely in view of motives. They act freely because they act voluntarily, since these two are one and the same thing. When they act in view of motives, God "exhibits the motives and then excites them to act voluntarily in view of the motives exhibited," "for the bare perception of motive is incapable of producing volition." Thus God "produces" our volitions. For producing, Emmons often uses the word "creating," and the operations of God in creating the material world and governing it are made exactly parallel with his operations in renewing the hearts of men. He expressly rejects the idea "that God only upholds moral agents in existence and preserves their active powers without exerting any influence upon their wills which moves them to act in every instance according to his pleasure." "Adam could not be the efficient cause of his own volition."
But this is only a part of Emmons. Extreme as his statements are, they must be understood in the light of equally extreme statements upon the other side. He also says: "How God operates on our minds in our free voluntary exercises, we are unable to comprehend." He proposes therefore to hold the fact that God so operates, and also to hold every other fact, let them be consistent or inconsistent. Therefore he teaches that God has made men free moral agents. They are this in the same sense that he is. Under his universal agency, human beings have a true agency. In the divine mind this consists in volition, and in the human mind it consists in the same. Moral agency and moral character consist in "exercises." God works in men to lead them to perform the ordinary actions of life, such as sowing, planting, etc., in the same way as he does to produce the religious actions, such as repentance. Man is as free in the one class as the other. He has all the freedom of which he can conceive.
Up to this point the tendency of New England theology has been to destroy more and more completely the freedom of the will. The two tendencies characteristic of Calvinism and Berkeleianism--to exalt the agency of God, and to deny to second causes efficiency and even existence--have been reducing man more and more to the position of a mere puppet upon the stage of human history. But now there was introduced by a remarkable book, written by an obscure country minister, the idea which was finally to reverse the current and set this theology in motion toward a doctrine of freedom. It did not break with the prevailing necessitarianism, and so was not denied a hearing at the very start, as its predecessors upon the same path had been. This was Asa Burton's Essays on Some of the First Principles of Metaphysicks, Ethicks, and Theology (1824) which is one of the classics of New England theology, and one of the great influential philosophical books of the world.
All the previous writers had maintained the twofold division of the mind into understanding and will. As we have seen, Samuel West's clear statement of the threefold division had been without effect. The common-sense which had directed what opposition was made to the prevailing necessitarianism had had no sufficient theoretical basis in a sounder psychology. Burton supplied this basis. After showing that there are faculties in the mind, and developing briefly the fact that there are three main faculties; the understanding, the heart, and the will--he takes up each of these faculties in order. In his treatment of the understanding we find him determining the terminology of a long line of successors. The special treatment of the "taste," as he calls the sensibility, begins upon page 53. He classifies the emotions, desires, etc., as properly belonging to one class of mental affections, and declares that they must have a cause, which cause is the "taste." This he defines as "that preparedness, adaptedness, or disposition of the mind by which the mind is affected agreeably or disagreeably when objects are presented to it." At a later point he distinguishes sharply between the "heart" and the Will. It is evident, he says, "that neither a pleasant nor a painful sensation is a volition."
Volitions and desires are not operations of the same faculty . . . Though desire has an object, yet its object is not an action nor an effect . . . I may desire meat or drink . . . and yet not one effect follow necessary to obtain them. But when I will these effects, they follow, they are produced . . . Whether objects shall please or disgust us does not depend upon anything in us except our nature; but whether they shall be chosen or not depends upon our pleasure . . . Pleasure and pain are not produced by choice, neither can choice prevent them. Whether we will or not, some objects will please us and others will disgust us. But whether they are chosen or not depends upon our pleasure.
Burton thus brings out distinctly, though not with absolute correctness, the fact that there is a distinction between the sensibility and the will. We shall see that through the ambiguity of the word "pleasure" he seems to state here more than he actually does.
Varying the order of Burton's discussion somewhat, we now advance to his definition of liberty. Here he makes a very decided improvement upon any of his predecessors. Liberty, he says, is not to be predicated of the intellect or of the desires. The operations of these faculties is necessary. Neither does liberty consist in volition. A person may be bound and so have no power of motion, though he wills it. He is not then at liberty, and hence volitions do not constitute liberty. Neither is it a power which the mind possesses, as to act or not to act. Burton distinguishes between liberty of action and liberty of will. We have liberty of will when we can choose objects according to our wish--that is, our strongest wish or desire. This, evidently, can never be taken from us, and we, therefore always have it. Liberty of action is the privilege of acting externally according to our volitions; and of this we may be deprived.
We are thus introduced to Burton's theory of the will. The action of the taste is necessary. Objects excite our desires, and our desires move our wills. Hence the taste is the "spring of action in all moral agents," and operates as the cause of volitions. "The will is only an executive faculty; . . . its office is to obey the commands of the heart." The clearest and completest statement of the theory may be thus condensed:
This internal cause [the taste] by its operation produces every volition . . . Between this cause and volition, God has established an infallible connection . . . Hence the reason why the liberty of the will [in the sense of a liberty of willing according to our pleasure] can never be abridged . . . This connection is moral necessity, and this necessity renders liberty of will absolutely sure and certain.
We are thus left by Burton still in the toils of Edwards' necessity. He has corrected, one by one, the minor errors of his predecessors, having rejected the position of Hopkins, that freedom consists in voluntariness; of Emmons, that our mind is a chain of exercises (the extremest result of the hereditary Berkeleianism), and that our volitions are "created" by God. He has distinguished between the necessity of the operation of the intellect and that of the will. But still the will remains necessitated through its dependence upon the taste. Hence, so far as the theory of the will is concerned, he has given but little relief. It seems the fate of all sound theological progress to move with exceeding slowness, by almost infinitesimal increments. It is as in animal development, where the "variation" is generally minute. But, as we shall soon see, by the distinction established between the taste and the will he has prepared the way for an altogether new conception, which he did not himself attain, and which introduces ultimately the idea of freedom in its true form. There was need of still another laborer before the wide-reaching consequences of Burton's new truth could be brought out.
This successor to Burton's labors and completer of his work was Nathaniel W. Taylor, the most original, powerful, and widely influential mind which New England theology ever possessed. He derived his impulse to productive work upon the will from Burton, and alone proved able to effect anything in the further development of the doctrine. But he was not solely dependent upon Burton for he stood in the succession of Yale teachers, and had been brought by his predecessors in this great school to a new philosophical position--to the final abandonment of the Berkeleianism which had been so influential, and so balefully so, up to this time. Dwight had been familiar with English and Scotch philosophy, and the great master Reid, and had laid the foundation of the philosophy of common sense, which Taylor adopted, and which became the great offensive weapon of New England apology as well as its great instrument of constructive reasoning. Day, Fitch, and Goodrich had taken part in the discussion of the will, and had cleared the ground somewhat for Taylor. With all the advantage derived from a new philosophy and a new method, Taylor, having once seen the wide-reaching consequences of Burton's discoveries, was able to draw them without embarrassment and apply them courageously both in theory and in practice.
Taylor followed Burton in adopting the threefold division of the mind. There must be something in the mind of the sinner to which the gospel could appeal, some neutral point not thoroughly corrupted with the corruption of his moral nature, though that corruption, in respect to the will, was entire. Such a neutral point Taylor found in the sensibility, whence the will might be reached. This was a position which commended itself to him because he was profoundly interested in the work of converting men, in which as a pastor and evangelist of great power and eloquence he had long been variously engaged.
Prepared thus to perceive and escape the fundamental fallacy of Edwards, Taylor was ready for various improvements upon his predecessors. He corrected the tendency which had done so much to make theology impossible, by pronouncing for human efficiency. "Moral agents," he says, "are the proximate efficient causes of their own acts." He does not hold them to be the sole efficient agents, or the ultimate, but the proximate, having a true agency. The same efficiency he also ascribes to material objects. "My mind inclines to the belief of the efficiency of second causes." An argument in favor of this is "our consciousness of the existence of created agents of one sort," viz., ourselves.
In possessing this agency, the soul possesses "power to the contrary," or, in any definite choice which it makes, acts under no necessity but with power to make the contrary choice equally with the choice actually made, the circumstances of the choice remaining unaltered. Taylor said, in order to avoid the evasions of Edwards: "A man not only can if he will, but he can if he won't." He says:
Moral agency implies free agency--the power of choice--the power to choose morally wrong as well as morally right under every possible influence to prevent such choice or action . . . I now speak of preventing sin in moral beings, free moral agents, who can sin under every possible influence from God to prevent their sinning.
At the same time, Dr. Taylor does not deny the influence of motives. The system under which we live is a system of moral influence, of law possessing authority and uttering commands designed to influence men. In some way also, however impossible to understand or explain, the moral system, including free moral agency, with its "power to the contrary," secures certainty as to future moral events. Moral government "is an influence which is designed and fitted to give, not the necessity, but merely the certainty of its effect. How this is secured Dr. Taylor does not say. He objects to the theory that it is produced through motives, and prefers to say, "through the constitution of man and the circumstances in which he acts. To these sources we ourselves refer all our actions. How the constitution and circumstances of man are managed to secure a definite volition in every case is the point left unexplained. The theory, as a theory, is therefore still defective, the idea of freedom, so clearly and decidedly advanced, being left altogether unadjusted to the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God. The crux of the New England theology begins therefore to appear in this hitherto unequaled thinker. Will he be able to resolve the difficulty, or will the lion, now grown greater and more powerful, still prove himself unable to escape the net in which he is enmeshed?
Meantime Taylor holds to the old distinction between natural and moral ability. The natural ability is the true power; the moral ability, the condition of the will. A man is morally unable to will one thing, such as to love God, while he is at the same time willing the opposite thing, such as to love himself supremely. The real difficulty in spiritual struggles consists in the obstinacy of the will, or the actual preference of other things to the service and glory of God.
Taylor has thus seized upon the great advance made by Burton, in adopting the threefold division of the mind, and has at the same time freed himself from the necessitarianism in which Burton had remained, by breaking the bond which in Burton's scheme still connected the action of the will with the condition of the sensibility. While still a most intense admirer of Edwards, he has broken with his distinctive idea also--with the infallible connection between the greatest apparent good and the volition. He stands for a true freedom, upon the basis of consciousness, and will allow nothing to interfere with its reality. But he stands at the same time, upon quite other grounds, for the previous certainty of all human actions.
Another writer, more a psychologist than a theologian, who accepted Burton's new division of the faculties of the mind, and contributed to liberate our philosophy and theology from thraldom to Edwards, was Thomas C. Upham, professor for many years in Bowdoin College. In his Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will (1834) he issued one of the first original and comprehensive contributions of American scholarship to modern psychology. It embraced descriptions of the phenomena of the mind drawn from a wide range of reading, and was not written with a view of sustaining some preconceived theory. Though not without a purpose, it was not so occupied with its purpose as to select its material with reference to that alone, and confine itself to a single and narrow line of inquiry. It was more largely influenced than many later productions by the conception of psychology which is now controlling, viz., that it is a chapter in the natural history of the soul.
Upham begins with the "General Nature of the Will," in which he sets forth the existence and general relations of the three faculties of the mind, intellect, sensibility, and will. All parts and powers of the mind are connected. The intellectual part is the foundation of the others. The intellect reaches the will through the sensibilities. When an object is perceived, the emotions are excited, upon which follow the desires, and then the will acts. It is an example of the breadth of Upham's view that he pauses here, in the onward movement of his theme, to note that, while the intellect acts on the sensibility, this reacts upon the intellect. The will itself is the controlling power of the mind which maintains the harmony of the mind. It "is not meant to express anything separate from the mind," and may be defined as "the mental power or susceptibility by which we put forth volitions." The term "volition," designating a "simple state of the mind," admits of no definition.
After a concluding chapter on the distinction between the desires and the volitions, necessary in those times, Upham advanced to his second part, in which, by a long discussion of the universality of law, and of various specific laws, he arrives at the conclusion that there are laws of the will. This view is contrasted in his mind with the view that the actions of the will are "without respect to antecedent, and regulated by no conditions." The laws considered are those of causality, those found in moral government, those implied in the prescience of the Deity and the foresight of men, in the sciences relating to human conduct, and those intimated by consciousness, and the influence of motives. In all this wide range of discussion the central idea is that brought out in the following extract:
Every moral government implies, in the first place, a ruler, a governor, some species of supreme authority. The term government itself, separate from any qualifying epithet, obviously expresses the fact that there are some beings governed, which is inconceivable without the correlative of a higher and governing power. And what is true of all other government is certainly not less so of that species of government which is denominated moral. In all moral government, therefore, there must undoubtedly be some supreme authority to which those who are governed are amenable.
Now if men are under government, they are under law. To be governed is obviously to be regulated, guided, or controlled, in a greater or less degree. To say that men are governed and are at the same time exempt from law, is but little short of a verbal contradiction, and is certainly a real one. But when we speak of men as being under laws, we do not mean to assert a mere abstraction. We mean to express something actually existing; in other words, we intend to assert the fact, that the actions of men, whatever may be true of their freedom, are in some way or other reached by an effective supervision. But when we consider the undenied and undoubted dependence of the outward act on the inward volition, we very naturally and properly conclude that the supervision of the outward act is the result of the antecedent supervision of the inward principle of will; in other words, the will has its laws.
With this principle copiously proved and definitely laid down, but without attempt to enumerate or describe the laws themselves, Upham passes to the topic of the freedom of the will. Freedom, he says, is the name of a simple idea (here recurring to Locke's phraseology), and therefore is indefinable. But it is not impossible to gain a tolerably correct view of what Upham meant by freedom. Although he wanders off into a discussion of "mental harmony," by which he means what the Germans designate by their term reale Freiheit, in which the powers all co-operate under the guidance of conscience in perfect union with one another, and declares this the only condition in which true freedom can be realized, it is evident on the whole that he means by freedom a true power of causality. He proves it by man's moral nature, gaining evidence of it from the feelings of approval and disapproval, those of remorse, the mere existence of the abstract ideas of right and wrong, the feeling of moral obligation, and men's views of crimes and punishments. He adduces to the same end evidence from language, from occasional suspension of the will's acts, from our control over our own motives, from our attempts to influence other men, and from the language of the Scriptures. And at a later point he also employs the word "self-determining" power to express his doctrine, though he objects to that use of the word against which Edwards had argued. And, while he defers the whole matter of the consistency of the will's subjection to law with the fact of freedom, he affirms that they are consistent, using Emmons' appeal to reason for the idea of law, and to consciousness for the knowledge of freedom. An interesting Part IV on the "Power of the Will" closes the work.
The ideas of Taylor were taken up at Oberlin by President Finney. He adopted the division of the mind into intellect, sensibility, and will. He criticized Edwards' distinction between natural and moral ability, and reduced them, upon the basis of Edwards' philosophy, to one and the same thing. His definition of freedom was as follows:
Free will implies the power of originating and deciding our own choices, and of exercising our own sovereignty in every instance of choice upon moral questions . . . The sequences of choice or volition are always under the law of necessity, and unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom, he is not a moral agent.
The argument from consciousness for freedom had not escaped the attention even of the Berkeleian period; and we have had occasion to note in Stephen West close distinctions relative to consciousness of power. Now that our theology had passed over to the new basis of the Scotch school fresh discussions of consciousness might be expected. Finney occupied himself with them somewhat, but gives a rather uncertain answer to the question whether we are actually conscious of freedom. He says: "Consciousness gives us the reasons of the affirmation that liberty is an attribute of the actions of the will." This is probably the phrase by which we gain the true interpretation of another phrase of Finney's: "Man is conscious of possessing the powers of a moral agent." The freedom