“How can it be, thou Heavenly King,That thou should’st us to glory bring—Make slaves the partners of thy throne,Deck’d with a never-fading crown?”
“How can it be, thou Heavenly King,
That thou should’st us to glory bring—
Make slaves the partners of thy throne,
Deck’d with a never-fading crown?”
Let your faith be invigorated by the assurance that this is settled beyond dispute by God's eternal purpose. It is decreed. “To him that overcometh will I give to sit down with me on my throne.” “In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” Nor has this measure been forced upon Jehovah. It is sometimes the case that sovereigns are compelled to yield privileges to restless and revolted subjects. Sometimes contemporary sovereignties combine to force a reluctant ruler into arrangements contrary to his preconceived and preferred policy. Sometimes potent rulers yield their preferences to the sway of sage and influential counsellors, and find themselves committed to a policy which they execute with reluctance, and with exceptions. It is not so with any of the decrees of the Most High. Who, being his counsellor, hath taught him? He “worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will.” “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It is no less the pleasure of the Son: “Father, I will that they also that thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.” And he has power to carry out his purposes to their entire fulfilment. O, how precious is this doctrine of Divine predestination!
You may have enemies. There may be those who would deny you a place in the church on earth. You may have been excommunicated and cursed for worshipping the God of your fathers after the manner which some call heresy. Your enemies would fain keep you out of heaven. They profess to be able to do so. But they are mistaken. God has not left it to them to determine who shall enter heaven and who shall not. He has fixed the conditions of salvation independently of their counsels—long before they existed—before the sun began his course. “He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.” To accomplish their end, they must be able to go behind all human arrangements to the decrees, the purposes of heaven, and revoke them. Will they be able to do that? Or, if unable to revoke, or induce him to revoke his decrees, will they be able to defeat them by machinations or physical resistance? Surely not. He will show them “the immutability of his counsels.” He will say to them, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” “There is no wisdom, or understanding, or counsel, against the Lord.” “He will make the devices of the people of none effect.” “The Lord of Hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it.” “Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!”
And how glorious are the prospects which the decrees of God unfold! These bodies must decay. One of those decrees consigns us to the grave; another provides that we shall be recalled—that death shall be conquered—shall be swallowed up of victory. The prearrangements of Heaven respecting the bodies of the saints, are thus disclosed: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
Religion does not extinguish or impair our social feelings, but rather refines and invigorates them; and, among the hopes that we have been led to cherish, is that of a reunion with departed friends in heaven, and a participation in the society of the good of other climes and ages; and it is expressly declared that the redeemed of subsequent ages shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of God.
And while this doctrine is so full of consolation to the Christian, and so fraught with healthful stimulus to piety, it is terrible to the sinner. He need not think to find anything in it to justify or to apologize for his crime, or his impenitency. Nor may he indulge the hope that whatever may be the destiny of other sinners, he will escape the damnation of hell. There can be no influence brought to bear upon Jehovah sufficient to induce him to swerve in a single instance from his plans. The decrees of God are against him. He that believeth shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be damned. “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.” And he has power to execute his decrees. All attempts at resistance will be as nothing. “The Lord reigneth; let the people tremble.”
I have now presented the two rival theories. There is the Calvinistic doctrine, and there are the consequences to which it leads. We can easily detect the wisdom of the requisition that the teachers of it shall handle it with “special caution,” and account for their studiously keeping it out of sight during revivals, and in their ordinary ministrations, and then seeking to divert attention from its practical tendencies by denying that the decrees of God are to be taken as the rule or test of our conduct.
But do I not repeat an Arminian slander when I charge them with partially concealing or disguising the doctrine? No! We have high Calvinistic authority for the imputation. The following is the testimony of a distinguished Congregational minister of New England, the Rev. Dr. Harvey:—
“There is a large number of orthodox ministers in New England who, from family alliances, from constitutional delicacy of temper, &c. &c., as I hinted above, will temporize and makesmooth work, from an honest conviction that a full disclosure of the truth wouldalienate their hearers. The bitter revilings of base men have been gradually and insensibly leading Calvinistic ministers tohide their colors, andrecedefrom their ground. Dr. Spring’s Church, at Newburyport, Park Street, especially in Dr. Griffin’s day, and a few others, have stood like the Macedonian Phalanx. But others have gone backward.Caution,caution, has been the watchword of ministers. When they do preach the old standard doctrines, it is in so guarded a phraseology that they are not understood to be the same.” (Harvey on Moral Agency, p. 174.)
This is clear and indisputable. The Methodist preachers are probably included among the “base men” whose “bitter revilings” have brought about this state of things, as none have done more to bring Calvinism into discredit.
And yet, with all this caution, this doctrine is assiduously taught to little children in Sabbath-Schools. It is presented to them and inculcated without disguise. I almost shudder when I think of it. Were all the wealth of this great city offered to me for the privilege of teaching this doctrine to my children, with the understanding that I would withhold counter-instruction, I would spurn the offer. At least, I would do so until my mind had become reconciled to the proposition by a slow and painful process of self-depravation, which, I acknowledge, would not be an impossibility. The apostle Paul speaks of those who through “love of money” have “erred from the faith.”
Our Calvinistic brethren may have some ground for claiming that they are in advance of us in learning and intelligence, but it is to be hoped that they will not offer their holding this doctrine as proof of the justness of the claim. And if it be the case that some minds are determined, by peculiarities in their original formation, to the belief of Calvinism, I thank God that mine does not belong to that class. And, further, it may be a source of consolation to us, in our imputed inferiority, that it does not require much learning or intelligence to refute Calvinism, or to make its supporters ashamed of it.
And when Calvinists ascribe our opposition to their doctrines to depravity, and call our objections to it “impious cavillings,” as does Dr. Musgrave, we offer this apology, that our objections are not alleged against what we understand to be the Scripture doctrine; and that if their doctrine be true, and ours false, we are, after all, doing nothing but what God has wisely foreordained we should do. We would also suggest to them that any opposition to our course is resistance to the will of Heaven, so that it is a fair question whether the charge of depravity should not take the opposite direction, But I do not retort it. Methodists never, so far as I know, seek to raise the slightest suspicion of the piety of their Calvinistic brethren on the ground of their being Calvinists.
The assertion that Calvinism is specially and exclusively favorable to civil and religious liberty, is asheerpretence. I will just state a few facts. When the Presbyterians obtained the ascendency in England, they proceeded to establish themselves by law. TheWestminster Confession of Faithwas intended for the English Establishment. Presbyterianism is the established religion of Scotland at this day, and also of Holland, Geneva, and some parts of Germany. Presbyterian ministers in Ireland are supported, in part, by the British Government. They thus consent that Methodists, Baptists, and others, shall be taxed for their support. That Presbyterianism is not the Established Church in this country may be owing altogether to the fact that it has always been too weak to place itself in that position. When the Independents, in Cromwell’s time, obtained the ascendency, they followed the example of the Presbyterians. The Congregationalists of New England, who are Calvinists, established their system, by law, in several of the colonies, and continued to be the Established Church after the Revolution, and until the other sects, combining with unbelievers, became strong enough to put them down and change the State constitutions in favor of equal rights. And, within five or six years of the present time, a Presbyterian Church, in one of the States of this Republic, applied to the legislature, and obtained a grant of one thousand five hundred dollars to be expended upon a Presbyterian church edifice. Many Calvinists have held, and many do yet hold doctrines highly intolerant; and the history of Calvinism is crimsoned by records of blood spilled in support of its tenets. It would be great wisdom on the part of our Calvinistic brethren to allow the question of the bearing of Calvinism upon civil and religious liberty to sleep, undisturbed.
A very strong presumption of the unsoundness of the Calvinistic doctrine of decrees arises from the fact that its advocates are compelled, in answering objections to it, not only to disguise, but also flatly contradict it, and to substitute for it Arminian positions; thus virtually conceding that it is indefensible. Dr. Musgrave, as we have seen, asserts explicitly that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. He argues that to deny this, would be in effect to deny that God is infinitely wise, benevolent, and powerful. He says: “We have proved, both by reason and revelation, that all things that come to pass are foreordained.” He applies this doctrine to sinful actions in the following manner: “Now, that the whole of Pharaoh’s conduct had not only been foreknown but foreordained is indisputable.” Again, he says: “In connection with the foregoing statements concerning the crucifixion of the Saviour, let us single out the case of one of the individual actors in that awful tragedy, one whose part was the most perfidious and execrable, and see whether his crime was not before ordained, and he the individual predesignated as its perpetrator.” He proceeds to the proof of this proposition. But, when it becomes necessary to meet the palpable and irrefutable objections that this doctrine makes God the author of sin, and takes away the responsibility of the creature, he is compelled to change entirely his ground. He substitutespermissionforforeordination, and defines permission to mean simply not preventing. “And is there no difference,” says he, “between God’s making, or exciting men to sin, by his power or influence, and hispermitting, ornot preventingthem from sinning? Between his determining to produce the evil himself, or to cause others by his power to do it, and his predetermining topermitmen to abuse their liberty and to commit the evil by theunpreventedexercise of their own voluntary efficiency?”
I reply—there is a very great difference. It is nothing less than the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. He is led to deny his own doctrine, and take refuge in the one he has tried so hard to refute.
The Rev. Dr. Baker, of Texas, in a tract published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, and entitledThe Standards of the Presbyterian Church a Faithful Mirror of the Bible, attempts to establish by Scripture the proposition—“God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably foreordain whatsoever comes to pass.” But in another, published by the same institution, and entitledThe Sovereignty of God Explained and Vindicated, the design of which is to present the doctrine of Divine decrees in such a light as will obviate the usual objections to the Calvinistic view, he says: “Certain things Godbrings to passby a positive agency. Others hesimply permitsto come to pass. And let it be remarked, permission and approbation do not, by any means, mean the same thing.” Again: “Does any one ask what is the difference betweenbringingto pass, andpermittingto come to pass? I answer: God brought to pass the incarnation of his Son. He permitted to come to pass his crucifixion. The difference is as wide as the east is from the west.”
But if God simply permits some things, why do the creed and the catechism of the Presbyterian Church assert, so unequivocally, that he has from all eternity foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, and that he executes, or brings to pass all his decrees? The contradiction is manifest.
The Rev. Dr. Fairchild, in his famousGreat Supper, says: “Calvinists do not regard the decrees of God as extending to all events in the same manner. Some things God has determined toeffectby his own agency, and other things he has decreed topermitorsufferto be.”
But, if the Calvinistic doctrine be that his decrees merely “extend to all events” (a very different thing from his decreeing all events), and that while he “decrees” and “effects” some he merely “permits” or “suffers” other events, what must we understand to be the Arminian doctrine, against which they are called to contend so earnestly? Are they prepared to acknowledge that they have abandoned Calvinism and run into Arminianism? Do they mean to say that there is no difference between these systems on the point in question? Not at all. How then do they preserve the antagonism of the two creeds? What is the Arminianism against which they are arrayed? Dr. Musgrave thus attempts the solution of this question.
“Now, I submit, whether the difficulty, thus confessedly pressing against both systems, is not capable on our principles, of a much more full and satisfactory conclusion. For we not only say, as Wesley does, that ‘God knew that it was best, on the whole, not to prevent the first sin of Adam,’ but we add, that, knowing this, he determined not only to permit that, but all the sins that he knew would follow from it, and to limit and overrule the whole for his most excellent glory.”
It seems, then, that the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism respecting the Divine decrees is that Calvinism affirms that God knew it was best, on the whole, not to prevent the sins which he has not prevented, but to permit, and limit and overrule them, while Arminianism affirms that God knew it would be best, on the whole, not to prevent thefirstsin, but determined to prevent all the sins that he foresaw would flow from it. What a strange statement! To what shifts are these men driven by their unfortunate creed! Where does Mr. Wesley, or any other Arminian writer, say this directly or indirectly? Our author very wisely declines any references at this point. Mr. Wesley does, indeed, deny that God permitted sin, even the “first sin of Adam,” in the sense of approving or tolerating it; but whoever denied that God permits, in the sense of suffering—not forcibly preventing, the sins which actually occur? He appropriates to himself, unfairly, Mr. Wesley’s doctrine, and then imputes to Mr. Wesley a tenet so perfectly foolish that it may be doubted whether any man ever advanced it, whether sane or insane, drunk or sober.
No! these are not the doctrines of Calvinism and Arminianism respectively. The reader will see the importance of the pains taken, in the first discourse, to identify Calvinism. I proved beyond dispute, that Calvinistic creeds, Catechisms, and other theological treatises, teach explicitly, that God has purposed, decreed, foreordained, whatsoever comes to pass; that in some way or other he brings to pass all events; that nothing will, or can, come to pass but what he has ordained; that none of his purposes can be defeated; that it cannot, with truth, be said of any event—it may or may not occur; and that all actual results, by whatever means obtained, are expressions of the design, or decree of God. Arminianism teaches on the contrary, that God has not ordained whatsoever comes to pass—that some things he has preordained; that other things he has not, but has, nevertheless, approved and commanded them, leaving it to the free agency of the creature to fulfil his requisitions; that other things, he not only has not foreordained, but, has condemned and prohibited them, and yet permits or suffers them to be, in preference to that violent interference with free agency which would be necessary to their forcible prevention.
Dr. Fairchild tells us that “this distinction between a decree toeffectand a decree topermithas been adopted by Predestinarian divines in all ages.”
Yes, in all ages Predestinarian divines have been compelled to abandon and contradict their creed in the progress, and for the purpose, of its defence. But Calvin himself formally discards and protests against this distinction. He says respecting it: “A question of greater difficulty arises from other passages, where God is said to incline or draw according to his own pleasure, Satan himself and all the reprobate. For the carnal understanding scarcely comprehends how he, acting by their means, contracts no defilement from their criminality, and even in operations common to himself and them, is free from every fault, and yet righteously condemns those whose ministry he uses. Hence was invented the distinction betweendoingandpermitting; because to many persons this has appeared an inexplicable difficulty, that Satan and all the impious are subject to the power and government of God, so that he directs their malice to whatever end he pleases, and uses their crimes for the execution of his judgments. The modesty of those who are alarmed at the appearance of absurdity, might perhaps be excusable, if they did not attempt to vindicate the Divine justice by a pretence utterly destitute of any foundation in truth. They consider it absurd that a man should be blinded by the will and command of God, and afterwards be punished for his blindness. They therefore evade the difficulty, by alleging that it happens only by the permission of God, and not by the will of God; but God himself, by the most unequivocal declarations, rejects this subterfuge.”
But Calvin protests in vain against resorting to this “evasion” and “subterfuge.” It is the only way in which the advocates of his doctrine can make a plausible show of argument when pressed with certain objections. Hence we find the Westminster divines employing it. They tell us in their Confession of Faith, that God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, topermitthe sin of our first parents. Lest, however, the faithful should fall into a serious mistake, another part assures them that the providence of God “extendeth itself to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men, and that not by abare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, &c.” The nature of that “ordering and governing” is explained in the declaration that “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.” But how learned men can talk of God’s permitting what he has eternally and unchangeably ordained, is a mystery to some of the unlearned. Is it necessary to tell us, gravely, that God permits to come to pass that which from all eternity he freely ordained shall come to pass? He permits men and angels to do what he has predetermined they shall do, and what they cannot avoid doing! Wonderful!!
The apology for this gross misapplication of language, on the part of men whose learning is sometimes magnified almost into infallibility, is found in their distressing emergency. In no other way can they, with any plausibility, meet their opponents. The usefulness of this term “permit” is admirably indicated by the account which a Presbyterian colporteur gives of an interview with some who objected to the Calvinistic doctrine of decrees. He says:—
“I felt myself, however, sometimes compelled to combat with the opponents of our Calvinistic creed. On one occasion entering a house, the members of which all attended the Presbyterian Church, but were not members, I sold a Confession of Faith to the gentleman; his lady inquired what the name of the book was and on being told, after turning over its pages in a hasty manner, exclaimed: ‘I could never allow that book to be under my roof—it should not be read, and it never ought to have been printed.’
“What was I to do? The doctrine of our Church, so far as election is concerned, was attacked. After some little conversation on the subject, I found that she and her son charged our Confession with teaching that God passed a decree which put the fall of Adam beyond the possibility of escape.”
Here was an exigency. Let us see how he meets it. That the Confession does teach the doctrine which the lady and her son ascribed to it, is as plain as anything can be. Hedecreed whatsoever comes to pass, andexecuteshis decrees. Does he ask her what objections she has to this doctrine and offer to refute them? Does he directly and promptly deny that Calvinism teaches this doctrine? No! Such a course would be rather hazardous, considering the character of the books he was seeking to distribute, and did actually leave with them. What course, then, does he take? “I told her,” says he, “if the chapter on the fall of man said so, I was as loath to believe it as she was; and if she could find it so, I would condemn the doctrine.” Mark! He does not say, unconditionally and unequivocally that he condemned the doctrine, and was as loath to believe it as she was, butif the chapter which treated on the fall of man said so. Well, what follows: “On turning to the 6th chapter, how surprised was she to read—This their sin God was pleased according to his wise and holy counsel topermit.’ ” This wordpermithelped him out of his difficulty. “Here was a fact,” says he, “of which they had never heard before, and which gave them no little satisfaction.” He doubtless left them under the impression that the Confession of Faith does not teach that God decreed and brought to pass the sin of Adam. However, he did not leave them until they willingly purchased theConfession of Faith, the Great Supper, andFisher’s Catechism, which asserts, as I have already shown, that “the very reason why anything comes to pass in time is, because God has decreed it,” that “none of the decrees of God can be defeated, or fail of execution;” and that God “predetermines the creature to such or such an action, and not to another, shutting up all other ways of acting, and leaving that only open which he had determined to be done.”
Another presumption in favor of Arminianism results from the readiness with which Methodist preachers are installed as pastors of Calvinistic churches, both old and new school, with the understanding, if their own statements be reliable, that they are not required to renounce or contradict the Arminian creed. Arminian ministers are coming into great demand by Calvinists. They are admitted into the Methodist ministry with the understanding that they are sound Arminians. They remain for years without exciting the least suspicion of their orthodoxy. When, all at once, without any prior change of ecclesiastical relations, or intimation of a change of theological views, they walk into Calvinistic pulpits. I make no remarks at present upon the morality of this course, but deduce that Arminianism preaching, to some extent, is necessary to keep up Calvinistic congregations.
Methodists, you may well prize your creed. Your ministers can preach it without reserve. You can defend it. The water of life comes to you through no corrupting medium. You are in no danger of inhaling poisonous sediment. It will bear analysis. It comes to you fresh and abundant. Drink it, and dig channels wide and long for its diffusion, that others may be blest as you are.