Part 1 (1/2)
On Calvinism.
by William Hull.
PREFACE.
That strenuous attempts are now in progress to propagate Calvinism in its most objectionable forms, by impressing into its service that spirit of earnest, but often misinformed piety which has been awakened within the bosom of the Church, is too notorious to require proof or to admit of refutation.
The following sheets have been written, and are now published, under the solemn conviction, that the danger to be apprehended from the extensive diffusion of this creed, both to religion and the Church, renders it impossible that it should be allowed to pursue its unmolested course, without correspondent efforts, on the part of sound Churchmen, to counteract its baleful influence.
Superst.i.tion, which lays undue stress on outward forms, and fanaticism, which gives credit to preternatural impulses, and professes a particular kind of inspiration differing not at all from infallibility, are the Scylla and Charybdis, through which, over stormy waters or serene, we have to make our steady way. Both are equally intolerant, and both are condemned by the genius of Protestantism, the const.i.tution of the Church, and the spirit of the Bible.
It is devoutly to be desired, that none who are more regardful of truth than of party, that none who are alive to the real state of the times, and to the character of the respective interests which may hereafter be brought into unhappy collision, may hesitate, through fear or favour, to act in this crisis with moral courage tempered with holy charity. Let them discountenance all extreme innovations, from whatsoever quarter they may proceed, or by whatsoever distinguished names they may be sanctioned. Let them rise with manly integrity above the mean suggestions of temporizing policy, and look only to the substantial and permanent interests of the Church, which are those of truth and charity, of freedom in alliance with order, of Christianity in its most enn.o.bling form, and of the public welfare of the British Empire.
If the spirit of rigid Calvinism, under any plausible disguise, should be widely diffused through the Anglican Church, we need no prophetic mind to announce, that it will lead to consequences fatal to her peace and liberty, introducing a spiritual despotism whose power will be felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, overawing, as in the days of John Knox, the majesty of princes, and spreading its morbid gloom to the sequestered cottage of the peasant, in the remotest regions and most unfrequented provinces.
History proves, that the men who are deeply imbued with this spirit, merge all other interests in their devoted zeal to its propagation.
Those of that party who, like Mr. Noel, think ”our venerable Church”
means no more than ”our venerable _selves_,” will be ready to betray her into the hands of her adversaries, whensoever they may be deemed strong enough to carry her outworks, and to supplant the orthodox clergyman by the Calvinistic minister;--while those who reverence the Apostolical succession, or the general order of the Church, will form within our pale an intolerant party, intriguing for dominion, restless and oppressive, never to be satisfied until they have crushed or excluded all who have dared to profess their rejection of the Calvinistic theology.
In the spirit already exemplified by the Pastoral Aid Society, for the detection of whose sectarian principles we are indebted to the Christian courage of Dr. Molesworth, they will throw obstacles in the way of candidates for ordination or parochial cures, if they come not up to the doctrinal standard of their _triers_: the episcopal functions will be usurped or controlled by the ruthless zeal of an ecclesiastical faction; the Church societies for the extension of Christian knowledge and piety will lose their catholic character, dwindling into ign.o.ble channels for spreading abroad the bigotry of an exclusive school; and gone for ever will be those beautiful charities, and that liberal regard to the just exercise of Christian and clerical freedom, which have been recently elicited, and expressed with deliberate solemnity, in the correspondence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, with the reverend Canon Wodehouse, on the subject of subscription.
The author of this tract has aimed at conciseness, so far as the nature of the argument would allow, not employing ”those arts by which a big book is made.” But if the smallness of the work does not seem to accord with the magnitude of the subject, it is not to be inferred that the sentiments have been hastily formed or rashly vindicated. For many years they have been taking deep root in the mind of the writer; nor would he have engaged in the ministry of the Church, but on the conviction, after serious inquiry, that her faith was primitive and not Calvinistic.
He has spared no ”plainness of speech,” in his exposure of dangerous error, but from principle and feeling he has abstained from the malice of personal vituperation. His warfare is with pernicious opinions, not with those who hold them, many of whom are impressed with the religious persuasion, that what they have believed they have received from divine teaching, and that in upholding their creed they glorify G.o.d.
Such divine teaching as the Calvinist claims, and which, if it means any thing, amounts to plenary inspiration, the writer does not suppose to have superintended his own thoughts while engaged in the composition of these pages. He would deem it unwarrantable presumption to look for such miraculous effusion of the Spirit in the ordinary condition of the Church. But he confidently believes, that, to those who seek it in humble faith, such grace is given as may purify the dispositions of the heart, and thus guard it from all predilection for error and all prejudice against _the truth_.
Entertaining these views of the office of the Holy Spirit under the evangelical dispensation, the writer humbly commits this work, not executed without dependence on his preventing grace, to Him who is the eternal source and the faithful patron of truth; uniting in the prayer of this beautiful collect, with all those, who, whatsoever their doctrinal views of religion, seek for truth as the richest of treasures.
”O Lord, from whom all good things do come; grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration, we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
PART I.
GENERAL REMARKS.
To St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in Africa, belongs the equivocal distinction of having originated in the Christian Church a controversy respecting the Divine decrees, a controversy which dates its origin from the fifth century, and which, after the lapse of thirteen hundred years, exhibits no symptoms of approaching to its end. In the Roman Communion, it was the source of those bitter animosities, which reciprocally exasperated the Jesuits and Jansenists. The Protestant Churches, in the early days of the Reformation, were disturbed by the agitation of this perplexed and perilous subject. And when Calvin appeared as the vindicator of the Divine sovereignty in predetermining the fates of men, he only introduced to the Churches of the Reformation a doctrine which had been transmitted from earlier times, but which, perhaps, he defined with more precision, expounded with more fearless consistency, and invested with the authority of his own great and ill.u.s.trious name.
In the present discussion the word _Calvinism_ is used, not to signify those doctrines of the Church which Calvin held in common with the fathers of the Reformation, but those only which relate to his extreme views of the Divine decrees, to his predestinarian theology, and to his modification of other scripture truths to render them harmonious with his princ.i.p.al tenets.
Whatever therefore may be the merits or the final result of this grave and earnest controversy, it leaves untouched the corruption of human nature, the deity and atonement of Christ, justification by faith, the necessity of Divine influence to renew and purify the heart, and the scriptural doctrine of predestination, according to the fore-knowledge of G.o.d. This distinction is important; since, if it be overlooked, the rejectors of Calvinism may be supposed to have also rejected the capital doctrines of the Reformed faith. Fuller has unwarrantably, perhaps undesignedly, given his sanction to this imputation in his ”Calvinistic and Socinian Systems compared[1].”
But the rejectors of _Calvinistic_ predestination may be not less remote from Socinianism, and much nearer to genuine Christianity, than the most rigid disciple of that eminent Reformer, who, in the protestant city of Geneva, committed Servetus to the flames. The Socinian controversy relates to doctrines, which are the common faith of the Catholic Church; with the peculiarities of Calvinism it has no concern. And it is worthy of remark, that if one cla.s.s of doctrinalists more than another symbolizes in any instance with Socinians, the followers of Calvin form that cla.s.s; since it is not easy to discover where lies the essential difference between the doctrine of _philosophical necessity_, as held by the greater number of Socinians, and that of _predestination_, as maintained by Calvinists.
Both parties rest their dogmas on the same metaphysical grounds. At the same time, as moral reasoners, the palm of superiority must be awarded to Socinians, who reject most consistently the doctrine of human corruption, and the atonement of Christ, together with the correspondent doctrines of the Gospel, as altogether out of place in a scheme which denies the freedom of human actions and reduces all independent agency to that of the Deity alone; while the Calvinist subjects the human race to an inevitable necessity of sinning, denies to them individually, even the semblance of a probationary course--makes them accountable, yet withholds the powers necessary to a moral agent, and then most unrighteously dooms to perdition all but the elect! In rejecting such a theory of religion, we reject not the fundamental doctrines of Christianity; we only vindicate them from objections, which, if unanswerable, are fatal; and we hold to the Gospel with a firmer conviction and a livelier faith, when we behold its accordance with the righteousness of the Divine administration and with the moral const.i.tution of man.
On a subject, which has been so long and so laboriously investigated, and to the ill.u.s.tration of which the most vigorous and profound of human intellects have directed their energies, it would be vain to expect any novelty of argument. On either side, it may be presumed, the question has been exhausted, or, that the human mind has done all that its powers can accomplish, however unsatisfactory or inconclusive, in some respects, the result.
It appears to the writer of these pages, on a calm and summary review of the arguments by which the doctrines of _freedom_ and _necessity_ have been respectively supported, that those reasonings which are purely _philosophical_ or _metaphysical_ decidedly preponderate on the side of Necessity. The prescience of the Deity cannot, _on any known principle_, be reconciled with the contingency which attaches to the actions or determinations of man, on the hypothesis of freedom[2]. And, moreover, if every event requires a cause, and every volition is guided by motives, what are called the spontaneous acts of the mind must be the necessary result of motives which direct and command its elections. ”To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity. And whoever, with a sound understanding, will fix his mind upon the state of the question, will perceive its impossibility.”
But, all correct _moral_ reasoning ranges on the side of freedom. In opposition to the subtle or forcible reasonings of the metaphysician, every individual can plead his inward consciousness of voluntary agency. He feels, he knows, that he is free. The exercise of the moral sense, the judgment which the mind p.r.o.nounces on its own good or evil movements, the conviction of having done or neglected a duty, the calm satisfaction of the virtuous mind, and the fierce or sullen remorse of the criminal, are a.s.sociated with the insuppressible persuasion of liberty. Destroy this persuasion, and virtue is despoiled of its loveliness, vice of its deformity.
But it cannot be destroyed. It is the voice of nature. The Creator has so formed us, that we cannot throw off from ourselves the sense of responsibility, nor regard our fellow creatures as unfit for praise or blame, for love or hatred. Men treat each other as free agents in all the transactions of human life, and G.o.d administers the government of the world, on the principle that mankind are capable of self-control, regulating their conduct by the hope of reward or fear of punishment. If the consciousness of freedom be a delusion, it follows that moral obligation, duty, reward, guilt, punishment, are delusions, and that religion, however salutary in its effects, is nothing better than a magnificent imposture.