SECTION III.
OBJECTIONS FROM THE MORAL
ATTRIBUTES OF GOD ANSWERED,
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
I now proceed to consider the objections which are urged against the Calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation. They are mainly derived from two sources - the moral attributes of God, and the moral agency of man. Before these objections are specially examined a few things must be premised.
First, the question of the divine decrees in relation to the everlasting destinies of men is one which, as it is raised by God's supernatural revelation of his will in his Word, must be settled by its authority. Reason in its original integrity - right reason, which was a part of God's first revelation of himself to man - was entitled to speak concerning the general plan of the divine government, and to deduce inferences from it in regard to God's eternal purposes as thus manifested. But sin has occurred; and the question of a possible recovery from its retributive results reason could have no means of determining. Upon that question only a new and supernatural revelation could throw any trustworthy light. This would have been true had reason itself retained its original purity. But it has not. The faculty which presumes to sit in judgment upon the awful problem of sin, and its relation to the divine government, has itself been seriously affected by the moral revolution which has taken place. It is therefore doubly incompetent to assume the functions of a judge.
True, reason circumstanced as it now is, has a legitimate office to discharge in judging of the claims of a revelation professing to come from God. But that preliminary office having been performed, and the conclusion having been reached, that the Bible is a revelation from God, the duty of reason is to submit to the divine authority involved in that expression of his will. Hence one great Protestant canon is, that the Bible is the only complete and ultimate rule of faith and practice. It alone, in spiritual matters, infallibly teaches us what we are to believe, and what we are to do.
But, as this supreme rule has to be interpreted, another great canon, co-ordinate with the first, is that the Holy Spirit, speaking in the Scriptures, is the supreme judge of controversies in religion. The supreme rule is the Scriptures; the Supreme Judge of the meaning of the rule is the Holy Ghost speaking in the Scriptures - this is the watchword of Protestantism.
Now, in the controversy between Calvinists and Arminians touching the decrees of God in relation to the destinies of men, both parties admit the canons which have been noticed. It is clear, then, that both parties to the issue are under obligation not to judge the infallible Scriptures by fallible reason - not to subordinate the supreme rule to a lower, and the supreme judge to an inferior. Appeals are competent from the court of reason; but the court of last resort, from which no appeal can lie, is the Scriptures illuminated and interpreted by the Holy Ghost. This is, on both sides, acknowledged.
The argument, then, is one founded on Scripture, and it may be fairly claimed that the doctrines of election and reprobation have, in the conduct of this discussion, been made to rest upon scriptural proofs. If so, no merely rational objections can be validly urged against them.
Secondly, the fact deserves to be noted that, in the prosecution of this controversy, the arguments of Arminian writers have been chiefly grounded in rational considerations, and not in the direct testimonies of Scripture. When the Calvinist shows from the express declarations of the divine Word that God from eternity elected some of the human race to salvation, the Arminian is unable to adduce such positive statements to prove that he did not. His arguments are drawn, in the main, from general principles announced in the Scriptures, and from what are supposed to be fundamental intuitions of the human mind. Now it is evident that this sort of reasoning, in relation to doctrines of a purely supernatural character, cannot be of equal value with direct appeals to the explicit deliverances of Scripture. Ignorance and an evil heart of unbelief are prolific sources of error in regard to the mysterious truths of a supernatural revelation.
In the first place, we are ignorant of God's nature as it is in itself, and of the vast and comprehensive scheme of his moral government as a whole. The analogy of our own nature, and the limited observation to which we can attain of the procedures of divine providence, are utterly insufficient guides to the understanding of such supernatural truths as the election and condemnation of human beings.
In the second place, our ignorance is often manifested in wrong inferences from admitted principles. It is obvious that the danger arising from this source is much greater when we deduce our inferences from general statements, than when we draw them from definite declarations made in the professed delivery or elucidation of particular truths.
In the third place, an evil heart of unbelief inclines us to refuse submission to God's authority, and to reject doctrines which are plainly revealed. Of this danger the teachers of religion in our Saviour's day furnished eminent examples. We tend to accept tradition, precedents, widespread opinions and the apparently instinctive judgments of reason, rather than the authoritative statements which miraculous credentials prove to come directly from God himself. The docile and trusting temper of little children becomes us in dealing with the oracles of God.
In the fourth place, under the operation of the same causes men are prone to assert for the natural reason the prerogative of final judgment upon the contents of supernatural revelation. They appeal to the intuitive judgments of their souls as a higher law superior to the Bible itself. The danger of mistake just here is great and imminent. The Bible does not contradict any true intuition, intellectual or moral, of our being. It must harmonize with our fundamental laws of belief and our fundamental laws of rectitude, for its Author is theirs. When a conflict seems to emerge between it and them, we may be sure that we have mistaken false laws for true, embraced a cloud for a divinity. There is peril of grievous blundering when we bring the Bible to the bar of our intuitions.
Thirdly, Arminian writers are in the habit of dwelling at much greater length upon the difficulties of reprobation than upon those of election. Reprobation, they argue, is but an inference from election, and in disproving the consequence they claim to disprove that from which it is derived. This was the course pursued by the Remonstrant divines at the Synod of Dort, and when the Synod objected to it as illegitimate they complained of the decision as a grievance. This is certainly unfair. The doctrine of election is much more definitely, fully and clearly delivered in Scripture than that of reprobation, and therefore it should be made the first and principal topic of discussion. The Arminians, moreover, overlook the fact that Calvinists do not hold reprobation to be merely an inference from election. They maintain that it is also supported by independent testimonies of Scripture. It is necessary to a thoroughgoing apprehension of the state of the controversy that attention be called to this method of procedure on the part of Anti-Calvinists.
Fourthly, it merits notice, in view of the fact that Anti-Calvinists conduct their argument mainly by urging objections to the Calvinistic position, that "mere objections constitute at best but a negative testimony which cannot destroy positive evidence." The same course of argumentation would, if successful, upset our belief in some of the grandest and most essential articles of the Christian scheme. If positive evidence of Scripture is to be sacrificed to objections and difficulties raised by the natural reason or the natural feelings, nothing would be left to us but the dry bones of Natural Religion, and even them the Atheist would not allow to rest in peace.
It is not intended to affirm that Arminians offer no testimony upon this subject, which is professedly drawn from Scripture. But the direct proofs, as has already been shown, are, as proofs, insignificant both in weight and in number; being so debatable in character as to be actually adduced on the Calvinistic side, and opposed, as they are, by an overwhelming mass of direct proofs in favor of the doctrines in question. The quantity of direct and positive evidence is certainly against the Arminian. He furnishes, it is true, abundance of indirect proof, derived by way of inference from doctrines conceived to be inconsistent with those of election and reprobation. In view of this seeming conflict of doctrines, pains have been taken in the previous part of this discussion to exhibit the direct and positive proofs afforded by the Scriptures of the doctrines of election and reprobation. If the Arminian were able to collect an equal body of such proofs in favor of the doctrines that God efficiently wills the salvation of every individual man, and of the doctrine that he gave his Son to die that every individual man should be saved, the result would certainly be that the Bible would contradict itself, and consequently there need be no further question in regard to what it teaches. But if the direct proofs of the Arminian amount to no more than the establishment of the doctrines that God, in some sense, wills the salvation of all men, and that, in some sense, he gave his Son to die for all men, no contradiction emerges; and the sense, in which the statements that God wills the salvation of all men and that he gave his Son to die for all men are to be taken, must be adjusted to doctrines which are positively and unequivocally asserted in the divine Word. Doubtful statements must be squared with unambiguous. They must dress by the right.
Fifthly, it is unwarrantable for us, limited as are our faculties, and sinful as are our natures, to speculate as to what God ought to do or must do in consistency with his character. It becomes us rather to hear with reverence what, in his Word, he says he has done or will do. Impressed by the necessity of the direct and positive testimony of Scripture, which is lacking in the usual argument from the character of God against the Calvinistic doctrine, some distinguished Anti-Calvinistic writers, such as Bishop Copleston and Archbishop Whately, virtually abandoned that line of proof.
Having cited attention to these considerations which lie at the very threshold of the question before us, I pass to the examination of special objections to the Calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation; and the first class we encounter is derived from the Moral Attributes of God.
1. OBJECTION FROM DIVINE JUSTICE.
It is objected that these doctrines are inconsistent with the justice of God.
It is important to observe that this objection derived from the divine justice is not mainly directed against the decree to elect some of the human race to salvation. How could it? What has justice to do with election, which is confessedly the result of grace? It is true that the Calvinistic doctrine of election is charged with imputing partiality to God in distinguishing between the members of the race, so as to save some and leave others to perish. But the objection is chiefly leveled against the decree to reprobate some of the human race. It is especially this decree which is declared to be in conflict with justice. Now let us recall the statement of the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation. It is that God decreed sovereignly to pass by - that is, not to elect to salvation - some of the guilty and condemned mass of mankind, and judicially to continue them under the condemnation which, by their sin, they were conceived in the divine mind as having deserved. That is the Calvinistic doctrine. Is it against this doctrine that the objection from justice is urged? It is not. What, then, is the doctrine, as stated by Arminian writers, against which the objection is pressed? Let us hear one of them who at the present day holds the position of a representative theologian. He says:
"By unconditional election divines of this class [Calvinists] understand an election of persons to eternal life without respect to their faith or obedience, those qualities in them being supposed necessarily to follow as consequences of their election; by unconditional reprobation, the counterpart of the former doctrine, is meant a non-election or rejection of certain persons from eternal salvation; unbelief and disobedience following this rejection as necessary consequences."1
Let these statements be compared. The Calvinist says, God finds men already disobedient and condemned, and leaves some of them in the condition of disobedience and condemnation to which by their own avoidable act they had reduced themselves. The Arminian represents the Calvinist as saying, God decrees to reject some of mankind from eternal salvation, and their disobedience follows as a necessary consequence. That is to say, if the language mean anything, God's decree of reprobation causes the disobedience of some men, and then dooms them to eternal punishment for that disobedience. But who would deny that to be unjust? That is not what the Calvinistic doctrine teaches. No section of the Calvinistic body teaches it. The Calvinistic Symbols do not. The Sublapsarian theologians do not; and they constitute the vast majority of Calvinists. The Symbols and these theologians alike hold that man was created upright, in the image of God, endowed with ample ability to refrain from sinning, and that, therefore, he fell by his own free self-decision. Even the Supralapsarian theologians do not unqualifiedly teach the doctrine here imputed to Calvinists. To a man, they contend that God decreed to reprobate some of mankind "for their sin." But should it be said that they, in taking this position, are chargeable with inconsistency, it must be remembered that the body of Calvinists, being Sublapsarian, are not liable to the same charge. It is not, therefore, the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation which is liable to the criticism of being incongruous with the justice of God, but one which Calvinists would unite with Arminians in condemning. The arrow misses the mark, and for a good reason: it was aimed at another. This is the first blunder in the Arminian statement of the Calvinistic position. It is represented to be: that God decreed to cause the first sin of man and then decreed to doom some of the fallen race to destruction for its commission. The true statement is: that God decreed to permit sin, and then decreed to continue some of the race under the condemnation which he foreknew they would, by their own fault, incur.
The second blunder in the Arminian statement of the Calvinistic position is, that the decrees of election and reprobation are represented as being equally unconditional. They are said to correspond in this respect. This representation is only partly correct; and how far it is correct and how far incorrect, it is important to observe. It is admitted that both the decrees of election and reprobation are conditioned upon the divine foreknowledge of the Fall; that is to say, the foreknowledge of the Fall is, in the order of thought, pre-supposed by each of these decrees. This is the doctrine of the Calvinistic Confessions, and even of Calvin himself.2 But the question before us is, whether the divine foreknowledge of the special acts of men, done after the Fall, conditioned these decrees. It has already been shown that in this regard the decree of election is unconditional. It is not conditioned by the divine foreknowledge of the faith, good works and perseverance therein of the individuals whom God wills to save. The question being, whether the decree of reprobation is also unconditional, a distinction must be taken. The preterition - the passing by - of some of the fallen mass, and leaving them in their sin and ruin, is unconditional. It is not conditioned by the divine foreknowledge of their special sins, rendering them more ill-deserving than those whom God is pleased to elect. So far reprobation is unconditional. In this regard, it is, like election, grounded in the good pleasure of God's sovereign will. But the judicial condemnation - the continuing under the sentence of the broken law-of the non-elect, is conditional. It is conditioned by the divine foreknowledge of the first sin and of all actual transgressions, the special sins which spring from the principle of original corruption. In this respect, and to this extent, the decrees of election and reprobation are different, the one being unconditional, the other conditional. To say, then, that they are entirely alike in being both unconditional is to misrepresent the Calvinistic position. This exposition is supported by the following statement of Principal Cunningham: "The second - the positive, judicial act - is more properly that which is called, in our Confession, 'foreordaining to everlasting death,' and 'ordaining those who have been passed by to dishonor and wrath for their sin.' God ordains none to wrath or punishment, except on account of their sin, and makes no decree to subject them to punishment which is not founded on, and has reference to, their sin, as a thing certain and contemplated. But the first, or negative, act of preterition, or passing by, is not founded upon their sin, and perseverance in it as foreseen."3
The third blunder in the Arminian statement of the Calvinistic position is, that the decrees of election and reprobation are alike in being causes from which human acts proceed as effects; the former being the cause of holy acts in those who are to be saved, the latter, of sinful acts in those who are to be lost. After what has already been said there is little need to dwell upon the defectiveness of this statement. A sinner is destitute of any principle of holiness from which holy acts could spring. The efficiency of grace is a necessity to the production of holiness in his case. But the principle of depravity in a sinner's nature is itself a cause of sinful acts. Unless, therefore, the Calvinistic doctrine could be fairly charged with teaching that God causes the sinful principle, it cannot be held to teach that he causes the sinful acts which it naturally produces. On the contrary, it maintains that the principle of sin in the nature of man is self-originated. Its consequences are obviously referred to the same origin: all sin, original and actual is affirmed to be caused by man himself. God, in reprobating the sinner for his sins, cannot be said to cause his sins. But it will be replied that the difficulty is not entirely removed; for reprobation supposes that God withholds from the sinner the efficiency of grace by which alone he could produce holy acts, and so is represented as causing the absence of those acts and the commission of sinful. The rejoinder is plain: the assertion of a correspondence between the two decrees in regard to causal efficiency operating upon the sinner is given up. The only similarity remaining is one between election as directly and positively causing holy acts and reprobation as indirectly and negatively occasioning sinful. This amounts to a relinquishment of the analogy affirmed to obtain between them, and the preferment of a separate charge against the justice of reprobation: namely, that God is unjust in withholding from some sinners the efficient grace which he is said to impart to others. But if all men are sinners by their own free self-decision and, therefore, by their own fault, there would have been no injustice had God withheld his grace from all. Consequently there could have been no injustice in withholding it from some. What is true of all must be true of some. This point will meet further consideration as the discussion advances.
It is clear, in view of what has been said, that the implication contained in the fore-cited Arminian statement of the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation is far from being correct - namely, that God, by virtue of that decree, causes the sins of the non-elect in the same way as, by virtue of the decree of election, he causes the faith and good works of the elect. In the decree of election he ordains men to salvation not because of their obedience, but of his mere mercy, according to the counsel of his sovereign will; while, in the decree of reprobation, he judicially, that is, in accordance with the requirement of his justice, ordains men to punishment because of their self-elected disobedience.
The Calvinistic doctrine having thus been cleared of mis-conception and mis-statement, we are prepared for the real state of the question. It is this: Was God just in eternally decreeing to punish transgressors of his law for their wilful violation of it? This being the real question, what answer but one can be given? Has not God, the righteous Governor of the world, a right to exercise his justice upon voluntary sinners? And if he has, was he unrighteous in eternally decreeing to exercise his justice upon them? The argument is not with those who deny the existence of retributive justice in God, but with those who admit it, and justify its exercise upon the wicked. How, then, can they pronounce a doctrine inconsistent with the divine justice, which affirms that God decreed to reprobate men for their sin? We may well ask with Paul, "Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?" Is the Judge of all the earth unjust in inflicting punishment upon reckless and inexcusable revolters against his government and violators of his law? It is evident that this cannot be the doctrine against which the objection under consideration is urged. It cannot be consistently advanced against this doctrine by the Arminian, for with the Calvinist he admits the justice of God in punishing wilful sinners. The doctrine against which it is directed is, that God so decreed the sin of man that it became in consequence of his decree necessary and unavoidable, and then decreed to punish man for what he could not avoid. But, as has been shown, that is not the doctrine which is held by the great body of Calvinists or stated in the Calvinistic symbols.
A special form of the objection drawn from the divine justice against the Calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation is, that they ascribe partiality to God, in that he is represented as discriminating between those who are in the same case, by decreeing to save some and to reprobate others. The objection in this form is at least relevant, for the discrimination which is charged the Calvinist admits; but he denies that the discrimination involves partiality, in the sense of injustice. If there be injustice, it must either be to the divine government, or to the elect, or to the reprobate. It cannot be to the divine government, for the elect are saved through the merit of Christ, their glorious Substitute, who in their room rendered perfect satisfaction to the divine justice for their sins. It cannot be to the elect, for salvation cannot possibly inflict injustice upon them. It cannot be to the reprobate, for they had no sort of claim to the divine favor which was refused. They possessed no right of which they were defrauded. The only desert they had was of punishment for their sins. Where then is the injustice which was inflicted upon them? Discrimination there was, but it was between those who were all equally ill-deserving; and surely God had the right to release some from merited punishment, and to continue others under its infliction. Surely he had the right to exercise his mercy toward some and his justice upon others.
It might, with some color of plausibility, be said that God was not good in saving some and leaving others to perish, but how it can be pleaded that he was unjust passes comprehension. Let it be clearly perceived that none had any, the least, claim upon the divine regard, and the objection of unjust partiality at once vanishes. Let it be seen that all had brought themselves into sin and condemnation by their own free and unnecessitated decision, and it must be granted that the glorification of his mercy in the salvation of some, and of his justice in the punishment of others, were ends which were worthy of God. They were all, as criminals, prisoners in the hands of justice. God, as the supreme Sovereign pleases to exercise clemency towards some of them, and, as supreme judge, continues to exercise justice upon others, for the purpose of glorifying both his grace and his justice in the eyes of the universe. The execution of justice upon criminals is always dreadful; it can never he unjust. No temper but that of squeamish sentimentality, or of captious insubordination to the righteous measures of government, can detect injustice in such a procedure. One would suppose that instead of objecting to the justice of God in the punishment of his fellow-criminals, he who has been discharged by unmerited favor from his deserved share in their doom would spend time and eternity in thankful acknowledgments of that grace. That wicked men object to the justice of their own punishment is no matter of wonder; that pious men object to the justice of God in punishing the wicked, even though he might save them, is a fact which can only be accounted for on the ground that there is a wrong application of a true principle, as a standard of judgment in the case. Arminians and other Anti-Calvinists object to the Calvinist doctrine of reprobation because, as they contend, it involves this monstrous assumption: that God judicially condemns to everlasting punishment those whose sin was unavoidable and was therefore no fault of their own. God is represented as magnifying his justice in the punishment of the innocent. How do they support this objection?
They lay it down as a fundamental principle, that ability is always the condition and measure of obligation. No one can justly be required, under any circumstances, to do what he is unable to do. Ability to do must be equal to the commanded duty. This principle, in itself true, is universally applied, and consequently in some cases wrongly applied. It is applied to man in his present fallen and sinful condition as well as to man in his original and unfallen and sinless estate. The Calvinist maintains that men are now, in consequence of the Fall, and as unregenerate, in a condition of spiritual inability. They are not able to furnish acceptable obedience to the moral law, and they are likewise unable to comply with the requirements of the gospel. Now in what way did they come to be thus disabled? If by their own fault, their inability is the fruit of avoidable sin, and is therefore itself a sin. But, contends the Arminian, the Calvinist holds that they were born thus disabled; and if so, the inability was contracted by no fault of their own. It is congenital and constitutional. To condemn them for not doing what an inability so derived disqualifies them for doing is plainly unjust. It is like striking a corpse for a death which the living man could not avoid. This is the cardinal point in the question now at issue, and to it especial attention must be devoted.
1. The Sublapsarian Calvinist - and he is the true Calvinist - is not committed to the support of either party in the contest between the Arminian and the Supralapsarian. He is an interested spectator, except when his own position is endangered by assault. As the battle advances he cries, Strike on, Arminian! Wield the mighty principle that God is not the author of sin: that, in the first instance - the instance of man in innocence - ability is the condition and measure of obligation. Again he shouts, Strike on, Supralapsarian! Wield the mighty principle that in the second instance - the instance of man in his present fallen state - ability is not the condition and measure of obligation: that man's present inability is his own sin and crime, for which God justly condemns him to punishment. That, at the origin of the human race in innocence, ability conditioned and measured obligation, is not a distinctive tenet of Arminianism; it is the doctrine of the true Church Universal. That, in the present fallen condition of the race, inability cannot and does not discharge men from their obligation, as subjects of God's government, to render obedience to all his requirements, whether legal or evangelical, - this is not a peculiar tenet of Supralapsarianism; it also is the doctrine of the true Church Universal. The Arminian adheres to the faith of that Church, so far as man in innocence is concerned, and breaks with it, so far as man in his fallen, unregenerate state is concerned. The Supralapsarian departs from it as to man in innocence and cleaves to it as to fallen, unregenerate man. Both are right and both are wrong. The Calvinist holds the faith of the true Church in its integrity.
2. The difficulty of reconciling congenital inability with the justice of God in condemning men to punishment presses upon the Evangelical Arminian as well as upon the Calvinist. The former holds that men are born under guilt and in depravity. Consequently he must hold, and in fact does hold, that they are born in a condition of spiritual inability.4 It is true that Dr. Pope speaks of an "unindividualized" human nature which before the birth of individuals is, through the virtue of Christ's atonement, freed from the guilt of Adam's sin and endued with a measure of spiritual life, and implies that were it not for this redemptive provision individuals would be born in spiritual death. But at other times he talks in the same dialect as his brethren, and admits the Evangelical doctrine that men are born in that condition. The question then is, how the Arminian harmonizes this fact with his fundamental principle that ability conditions obligation and the justice of God in punishing men for disobedience to his requirements. In this way: he holds that along with the decree to permit the Fall, there was, conditioned by the divine foreknowledge that it would occur, the decree to provide redemption from its consequences for all mankind. Accordingly, the merit of the universal atonement offered by Christ secured for all men the removal in infancy of the guilt of Adam's sin. And, further, he holds that a degree of spiritual life is imparted to every man, or, as it is sometimes expressed, a part of spiritual death is removed, and thus a measure of free will is restored. The original inability thus ceases to be total: men are endowed with a sufficient ability to comply with the divine requirements.
(1.) The first of these positions - namely, that Adam's guilt is by virtue of the atonement removed from every infant, is opposed by insuperable difficulties.
First, the fundamental assumption, that the atonement was offered for every individual man, cannot be proved from the Scriptures. They teach that Christ died for those of all nations and classes who were, in the eternal covenant, given to him by the Father to he redeemed. But as no value will be attached by the Arminian to this assertion, let it, for the sake of argument, be supposed that by virtue of the atonement the guilt of Adam's sin is removed from every infant. What follows? As an infant, he has, ex hypothesi; no guilt derived from Adam. That is removed. In that respect, therefore, he is innocent. But as an infant cannot contract guilt by conscious transgression, he is also in that respect innocent. There being no other source of guilt, he is entirely innocent. Is the Evangelical Arminian prepared to take the Pelagian ground that infants are altogether innocent? Further, he holds that infants are totally depraved in consequence of original sin residing in them as a principle. That he does not declare to have been removed by virtue of the atonement. We have then a being totally innocent and totally depraved, at one and the same time. Will the Evangelical Arminian defend that paradox? Further still, if it be said that total depravity is the result of development, and is consequently predicable only of the adult, the question arises, how a partial depravity, which is the principle of the development, can consist with entire innocence. The difficulty differs from the other merely in degree. If it be contended that the infant is both entirely innocent and entirely undepraved, the difficulty is avoided, but others equally great are substituted for it. For such a position would contradict the express teachings of his system and reduce his doctrine to bald Pelagianism. And, moreover, it would be impossible to account for the origin, the initial point of the development of depravity. There being no guilt and no depravity in the infant, he begins life both innocent and pure. How then does his depravity begin? Does each individual fall as Adam did? And are there as many falls as there are individuals? Would these absurdities be admitted? "We do not," says Dr. Pope, "assume a second personal fall in the case of each individual reaching the crisis of responsibility."5 Well, then, each individual must begin existence depraved, and therefore cannot be innocent. But if he has guilt it must be Adam's guilt imputed, for he cannot contract, as an infant, the guilt of personal, conscious transgression.
There are two methods by which the Arminian may be conceived to evade the force of this difficulty. He may deny that depravity is sin. He may say, I admit the connate depravity of the infant, but as I do not concede that depravity is of the nature of sin, I am not exposed to the pressure of this difficulty. Innocence may not consist with sin, but it may with depravity. Lest it be supposed that this extraordinary hypothesis has been conjured up for the sake of an ideal completeness of the argument, let us hear a recent writer, Dr. C. W. Miller. Expressly following Limborch in his discussion of Original Sin, he says: "It is shown that the 'inclination to sin' which is a part of the fearful heritage received front Adam 'is not sin properly so called.' This is an important point." "The fundamental truth is here affirmed 'that there is no corruption in children which is truly and properly sin.' This cuts the tap-root of Augustinianism, whose main postulate is that infants inherit a moral corruption from Adam which is of the nature of sin, and deserves eternal death." Speaking purely for himself he further says: "The confusion of thought in Augustinianism consists in confounding sin and depravity. They are not the same, neither do they have any necessary connection." "It is true that man 'as born after the Fall possesses, even before any volitional act of his own, a fallen nature.' But that this 'fallen nature' is a 'sinful state' 'unrighteous evil, moral evil, sin, sinfulness,' [the quoted language being taken from Whedon on the Will] is all utter absurdity. A 'sinful nature or state' can be produced only by actual sin."6
In the first place, this hypothesis is extravagantly paradoxical. It violates the meaning of the terms and the usus loquendi of Christendom, including the Evangelical Arminian bodies themselves. In the second place, it strips a confessed inclination to sin of all sinful quality. In the third place, it denies sinfulness of the intense selfishness which manifests itself in children before they can intelligently appreciate their relation to the moral law. In the fourth place, it places every infant in the sinless condition of Adam before he fell, and to that extent is palpably Pelagian; and in the fifth place, it makes the universal allusion of theology and the Church to the Fall a wretched solecism, since there would be as many separate falls from sinlessness into sin as there have been, are and will be, human beings on earth. One may well pause here and notice, in this conspicuous instance, the trend of contemporary Arminian speculation to the Semi-Pelagianism of Cassian and Limborch. Indeed, Dr. Miller has no hesitation in avowing himself a theologian of that school. It requires no argument to show that if Evangelical Arminianism should take on that theological type it will have renounced the leadership of Wesley, Fletcher and Watson; notwithstanding Dr. Miller's labored attempt to evince the contrary.
There is another and apparently more promising method by which an attempt may be made to meet the difficulty created by the alleged co-existence in the infant of corruption with entire innocence. It will be urged that the same difficulty obtains in the case of the adult who is actually justified by faith. His whole guilt is removed by the justifying act, but yet the principle of corruption remains, and it will no doubt be said that upon this fact the Calvinist lays especial emphasis. But -
The removal of guilt and regeneration are inseparably related to each other. If one takes place so must the other. This is admitted by the Arminian himself. No question is here raised in regard to the order in which they occur - that is, whether regeneration precedes justification, or the opposite. Nor is it here made a question whether they occur synchronously, or may be separated by an interval of time. What is urged is, that where one of these great changes takes place the other will at some time assuredly occur. In the divine plan of salvation they are never disjoined. As the Calvinist would say, he who has been regenerated will be justified, and as the Arminian would put it, he who has been justified will be regenerated. No adult is held, by either, to be merely regenerated or merely justified, merely renewed or merely absolved from guilt. There is not in the case of the justified believer the simple co-existence of depravity with the removal of guilt. This inseparable relation of justification and regeneration the Arminian concedes with reference to infants dying in infancy. No human being can be admitted into heaven guilty and unregenerate. But the weight of the difficulty lies upon the case of the unregenerate infant who lives to adult age. He, according to the supposition, is absolved from Adam's guilt and yet is not regenerate. There is the simple, unmodified co-existence of innocence and depravity in his case, and consequently the analogy between it and that of the justified believer fails.
If to meet this special difficulty, it be said that not only are all infants justified from the guilt of Adam's sin, but that all infants are regenerated, the rejoinder is, that the Arminian doctrine, so far from teaching the regeneration of all infants, teaches the contrary; and further, it cannot be true that every heathen man has been regenerated in infancy.
It deserves also to be noticed that while depravity continues to exist in the justified believer, its operation is, in two respects, very seriously modified. (1.) It no longer reigns. It is not the dominant principle. Grace reigns. But in the infant unregenerated and incapable of consciously exercising faith in Christ, depravity is the reigning principle, and in the event of his growing to maturity will develop as such until regeneration takes place and faith is exercised for justification. (2.) In the justified believer depravity is checked, its development hindered, by the principle of holiness; and this principle, as it increases in energy, contributes more and more to the destruction of corruption. As this cannot be true of the unregenerate infant, it is obvious that the cases are not analogous.
Another specific difference between the two cases lies in the fact that, previously to justification, every believer has committed conscious sins, and developed, by his voluntary agency, the principle of depravity. While he is absolved from guilt, so far as the rectoral justice of God is concerned, and the retributive consequences of sill are involved, it is consistent with fatherly justice that the principle of corruption, restrained by grace, should remain within him. Intrinsically, that is, considered not as in Christ, but in himself, he deserves to eat some of the fruits of his own doing, and experimentally to feel the bitterness of sin. This vindication of the co-existence of depravity with justification will not apply to the circumstances of an infant, who, according to the supposition, has been justified from guilt without having committed any conscious sin.
Moreover, it ought not to escape observation that the depravity which continues in the justified believer is so overruled by God's government of grace as to secure the ends of a wholesome discipline. Now, it may be doubted whether any infant is, as such, susceptible of disciplinary rule; but, even if that hypothesis were admissible in relation to infants dying in infancy, it cannot be shown that depravity is overruled so as to further the ends of a salutary discipline in the cases of infants who do not die in infancy, but live to adult age and palpably die in their sins.
These considerations are sufficient to show that the objection pressed against the Arminian doctrine of the absolution of every infant from the guilt of Adam's sin, that it involves the co-existence of entire innocence and depravity, cannot be met by an appeal to the case of the justified believer.
Secondly, the view that Adam's guilt has been removed from every infant cannot be harmonizd with the existence of depravity, whether regarded from the point of view of its origin, or of its results. Wesley and Watson admit that it is penal in its origin. But if so, as the guilt of Adam's sin is removed from the infant by virtue of the atonement, the depravity which is one of its penal consequences must also be removed. It is, however, inconsistently maintained that while the cause is destroyed the effect remains. Let depravity be contemplated with reference to its results. It must be admitted that they are penal. Whoever commits sin is worthy of punishment. This desert of punishment must be checked by the provision of vicarious atonement, or penal infliction must follow as its consequence. In the case of the infant, who lives to maturity, depravity, it is conceded, issues in conscious acts of sin. Before he is justified by faith these sins merit punishment. Notwithstanding then the alleged removal of Adam's guilt from the infant, he incurs condemnation when he commits personal sins; and this is the natural result of the existence in him of the principle of corruption. How is this exposure to incur punishment reconcilable with the removal of Adam's guilt? Only in one conceivable way: by his falling into sin through his own avoidable act. But such a fall is denied in regard to each individual, as we have seen in a citation from Dr. Pope. And such a fall as Adam's was when he first contracted guilt would be out of the question, since our first father had, previously to his first act of sin, no principle of depravity, and the infant confessedly has. If it be urged that sufficient grace is given to make the first sinful act and its consequent fall avoidable, it would follow that each individual falls as Adam did; and that is denied. It is evident that the presence of the principle of corruption in the unregenerated infant, who is held to be exempted from the penal consequences of Adam's sin and yet is not guilty of conscious transgression, is a fact which must prove troublesome to the Evangelical Arminian.7
Thirdly, if Adam's guilt is removed from every infant, the Arminian has to account for spiritual death as remaining in him. Spiritual death is held by him to be a consequence of Adam's guilt entailed upon his posterity. Now if the cause be removed the effect must go with it. But, confessedly, the effect does not go. It must therefore be inferred that the cause still operates to produce it. If then all infants are in a condition of spiritual death, it cannot be true that Adam's guilt has been removed from them. It will not do to say in reply to this that a degree of spiritual life is imparted to them. For, on that supposition, some degree of spiritual death remains, as is evident from the form in which Wesley's statement is presented by Watson - namely, a portion of spiritual death is removed. The portion, then, which is not removed remains. But the part continuing must be accounted for; and it could only be accounted for on the ground that a part at least of Adam's guilt, which is its cause, continues.
Fourthly, actual justification is split in two by this hypothesis, both as to the thing itself, and as to the time at which it occurs. For every infant is said to be justified, so far as Adam's guilt is concerned. When he has arrived at adult age he is exhorted to seek justification by faith. If he receive it, it is only in part. For as in infancy he was actually justified from Adam's guilt, he can, as an adult, be justified only from the guilt of his own conscious sins. But the Scriptures make no such division. They teach that actual justification is one, having reference as well to the guilt derived from Adam as to that contracted by personal transgressions.
Fifthly, the Evangelical Arminian theology is inconsistent with itself in regard to the analogy which it affirms between the effects of Adam's sin and Christ's righteousness. In the first place, it admits that Adam's sin entailed spiritual death upon his descendants. But as it contends that Adam's guilt is entirely removed from his posterity by virtue of the atonement, it should, to be consistent, hold that the entire effect of that guilt is removed. That would involve the total removal of spiritual death. On the contrary, it only concedes the removal of a portion of spiritual death. The benefit of the Atonement does not match the injury of the Fall. The life conferred is not equal to the death inflicted. The analogy breaks down. In the second place, it admits that the condemnation entailed by Adam's sin upon the whole race was actual, not possible. As it contends for an analogous effect, mutatis mutandis, of Christ's righteousness upon the whole race, the justification of the whole race ought to be actual, not possible. But only in part is it said to be actual: only infants experience an actual justification, and that from Adam's guilt. The justification of the infant who lives to adult age is merely possible. It is conditioned upon a faith which may never be exercised. The justification bestowed by Christ does not match the condemnation entailed by Adam. In the third place, it admits that the ruin resulting from Adam's sin was an actual, not a possible, ruin. The race is "lost and ruined by the Fall." So the salvation resulting from Christ's righteousness should be an actual, not possible, salvation. But the analogy fails. The possible salvation said to have been won by Christ does not match the actual ruin inflicted by Adam: in Adam all do die; in Christ all may live. Myriads do not actually live. For to restrict the term life to the resurrection of the body, and to say that the wicked will be raised to life in Christ, is to misinterpret the glorious words of Paul, and destroy their grand significance.
(2.) The position must next be considered, that, by virtue of Christ's atonement, God has given to every man a degree of spiritual life involving the restoration of a measure of free-will, so that every man is endued with sufficient ability to comply with the divine requirements. Now, either it is contended that this infusion of a degree of spiritual life is regeneration, or that it is not.
If it be contended that it is regeneration, the reply is obvious. It is true that Arminian writers do not make this supposition, and therefore it would seem to be unnecessarily considered here. But if there be an impartation of spiritual life to those who are admitted to be spiritually dead, it must be regeneration, even though it is by Arminians denied to be. The consideration of the hypothesis is therefore, from the necessity of the case, required. Now -
In the first place, Arminians are inconsistent with themselves in regard to this subject. If every man who by nature is spiritually dead is by grace made spiritually alive, it is perfectly manifest that every man is in infancy born again; for the new birth is precisely the change in which a principle of spiritual life is supernaturally introduced into the soul of the sinner. To take any other ground is to gainsay the Scriptures. They represent the change as one in which the spiritually dead sinner is quickened, and if the infusion of a degree of spiritual life does not quicken the soul, language has no meaning. Every man then is in infancy born again. But Evangelical Arminians and Evangelical Arminian preachers enforce upon adults the necessity of being born again. Why preach the need of the new birth to those who are already born again? How with consistency can it be said, You are regenerated, but you must be regenerated?
In the second place, if the impartation of a degree of spiritual life be regeneration, as the purpose of its bestowal, according to the Arminian theology, is that the will of the sinner may be assisted in determining the question of conversion, the regenerating grace of the Holy Ghost is reduced into subordination to the natural will: it is made a minister to incite that will to take saving action. Surely that cannot be true. If it be replied that it is the regenerating grace that determines the will, one of the differentiating elements of the Arminian system is given up, and, to that extent, the Calvinistic adopted.
In the third place, either it is maintained that this degree of spiritual life continues, or that it does not continue, with the sinner until the moment of his believing in Christ. If it continue with him through all changes until he believes, it may be long after he has reached adult age, how comes it to pass that it does not prove more successful as an assistant of the will? Could anything more clearly show the inferiority and subserviency to the natural will of the regenerating grace of God, than such an hypothesis? If it does not continue till the act of believing in Christ, but may be lost through the obstinate resistance of the sinner's will, is it again imparted, and again, and again? Is the series of infusions kept up until final impenitency ensues and the failure of its mission stands confessed; or until the sovereign will of the sinner vouchsafes compliance with its solicitations? And is the sinner, before he believes in Christ, born again an indefinite number of times? Are there many spiritual births before that second birth for which the unconverted sinner is exhorted to pray and strive?
If it be contended - and it is by Arminian writers contended - that the infusion of a degree of spiritual life into every man is not regeneration, the answer is: from the nature of the case it must be. That which is dead has no degree of life; that which has a degree of life is not dead. The supposition of the least degree of life destroys the supposition of death. If then the least degree of spiritual life be infused into every man, it follows that every man is spiritually alive. To deny this is to affirm that a man may be spiritually dead and spiritually alive at one and the same time. But if, in consequence of the infusion of a degree of spiritual life into every man, every man is spiritually alive, every man is regenerated. Every heathen is, in infancy, regenerated. For, it is the very office of regeneration to impart spiritual life to the spiritually dead sinner. It is admitted by all evangelical theologians, including Arminians, that regeneration, strictly speaking, is God's act in consequence of which a sinner is born again. If then he cannot be spiritually alive before he is spiritually born, or, what is the same, born again, be cannot be spiritually alive before he is regenerated; as he cannot begin to live spiritually before his new birth, he cannot begin to live spiritually before his regeneration. Upon this point we want no clearer proof than is furnished by Wesley himself. "Before" he says, "a child is born into the world, he has eyes, but sees not: he has ears, but does not hear. He has a very imperfect use of any other sense. He has no knowledge of any of the things of the world, or any natural understanding. To that manner of existence which he then has we do not even give the name of life. It is then only when a man is born that we say he begins to live."
He then applies the felicitous illustration to the case of a man "in a mere natural state, before he is born of God."8 This witness is true. To be spiritually alive is to be born again. But as to be born again is to be regenerated, to be spiritually alive is to be regenerated. One, therefore, fails to see how the Evangelical Arminian, can consistently deny that, according to his doctrine, every man is in infancy regenerated. There is but one conceivable mode in which this difficulty may be sought to be avoided. He may deny that one who has a degree of spiritual life is spiritually alive; and it is enough to say of such a position that its statement is its refutation. But if it comes to this, that every man is affirmed to be regenerated in infancy, the doctrine would surpass in extravagance that of baptismal regeneration; and yet, by a happy inconsistency, the Evangelical Arminian utterly rejects that doctrine. Wonders never cease.
One might go on accumulating obstacles in the path of this remarkable tenet, that God gives a degree or seed of spiritual life to every man; but more will not now be said in regard to it, as it is the same with the doctrine of "sufficient grace" which has already been partially considered, and will be still more particularly examined when the objection to the Calvinistic doctrine from the divine goodness shall come to be discussed. It has been shown that the Arminian attempt is vain to escape the difficulty which was alleged to rest upon him as well as upon the Calvinist - namely, the reconciliation of the spiritual inability in which men are born with the justice of God in punishing them for sin.
3. The Calvinistic solution of this great difficulty, from the days of Augustin to the present time, is, that men's spiritual inability is not original, but penal. It is not original, for God conferred upon man at the creation ample ability to comply with all his requirements. There was not inserted into his nature any evil principle from which sin could be developed, nor any weakness or imperfection which, in the absence of determining grace, necessitated a fall. He was, it is true, liable to fall in consequence of mutability of will, but he was at the same time able to stand. When, therefore, he sinned, the fault was altogether his own. He could not lay the blame upon his natural constitution, and so, by implication, upon its divine author. He unnecessarily and inexcusably revolted against the paternal and beneficent rule of God, and consequently subjected himself to the just sentence of a violated law. When he sinned, he wantonly, deliberately, wilfully threw away that spiritual ability with which he had been richly endowed. He disabled himself by his own act. His subsequent inability to love God and obey his law was a necessary part of his punishment. For, the judicial curse of the divine government, and the rupture of the spiritual bond which united him to God as the source of holiness and strength, certainly involved the withdrawal of grace, and the loss of ability. Original righteousness was forfeited. In a word, his inability was penal.
Now, when our first father sinned, he acted not for himself alone but also for his posterity. He was appointed by God their federal head and representative. Consequently, while his act of sin was not theirs consciously and subjectively, for at the time of its commission they had no conscious existence, it was theirs federally, legally, representatively. The judicial consequences of his first sin were likewise entailed upon them. "They sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression;" they were condemned in his condemnation; and they lost their spiritual ability in him. The spiritual inability which was a part of his punishment is a part of theirs. As the inability which he brought upon himself did not, and could not, discharge him from the obligation to obey God, so neither does theirs relieve them of the same obligation. The spiritual inability of the race, as it was self-contracted by an avoidable act of rebellion against God, cannot exempt them from the punishment which is justly due to their sin. And if it be just for God to punish them in time, it was just for him to decree the punishment in eternity. That is to say, the decree of reprobation is consistent with justice.
4. We have now reached the last point in this regression. We have got back to Adam, and the responsibility of the race for his first sin. Here the difference between the Calvinistic and Arminian doctrines seems to be lessened, and they appear to approximate each other. For they agree in affirming the accountability of mankind for the first sin of the first man, although they differ as to the mode in which that accountability is realized; the Arminian contenting himself with holding the parental relation as grounding it, the Calvinist contending that over and beyond the parental there was the strictly legal and representative relation from which the responsibility of the race is derived. To both parties the question springs up just here - and it is one of profoundest interest and importance - Was it just that the human race should be held responsible for the first sin of Adam, their progenitor, so that the judicial consequences of that sin are entailed upon them?
It is not necessary here to discuss the question, as one of fact, whether God entered into a covenant with Adam which implicated his posterity in his responsibility. The fact of such a covenant, the fact that there was some sort of federal constitution in relation to Adam and his posterity, is admitted by Evangelical Arminians. They admit that the account given in Genesis of the transactions in the garden of Eden is not allegorical but literal, not mythical but historical. They hold that the universality of bodily suffering and death, and of sin working with the force of an all-pervading law from the moment that the human faculties begin to expand, proves conclusively that in some way guilt and depravity are inherited from the primitive ancestor of the race, and are not originated by the conscious acts of each individual. Every man at birth is the heir of guilt and corruption. As then the fact of a federal constitution of some kind, and of the accountability, in some sense, of all men as parties to it in their first parent, is maintained by Evangelical Arminians along with almost the whole nominal Church, it is not requisite to enforce the proofs of it which are challenged by Pelagius and Socinians, Rationalists and Sceptics. It will be assumed.
But the questions, what the nature of the covenant was, in what sense Adam was the head and representative of his posterity, how the federal constitution affects our conceptions of the justice of God in his dealings with the human race, - these questions it is vital to the argument to consider. The Evangelical Arminian charges the Calvinistic doctrine with attributing injustice to God. But as he, with the Calvinist, concedes the hereditary guilt and corruption of mankind, in consequence of which, notwithstanding the aids of grace which he alleges are furnished them, innumerable multitudes actually perish, it is incumbent upon him as well as upon the Calvinist to vindicate the divine justice in view of these mysterious but undeniable facts. This he endeavors to accomplish in two ways:
(1.) The first is this: God, along with the decree to permit the fall of the first man and of his posterity as implicated in his responsibility, and his foreknowledge that the fall thus permitted would take place, also decreed to provide a redemption which would match the foreseen evil in all its extent. It is pleaded that the apparent injustice in holding the race involved in the consequences of their first father's sin and fall is relieved by the redemptive provision. The alleged bearing of this provided redemption upon the race, in absolving every man from the imputation of Adamic guilt, and restoring to each a seed of spiritual life and a competent measure of free will, thus affording to all a fair probation, removing from them spiritual inability, and rendering it possible for them to avail themselves of the salvation procured by Christ, - this has been already discussed. The point now to be considered is, the allegation of the Evangelical Arminian theology that without such a decreed provision of redemption, accompanying the fall of the race in Adam and intended to counteract its disastrous results, the justice of God could not be vindicated; but that, on the other hand, the fact of that provision supplies the desired vindication.
It is difficult, if not impracticable, to ascertain the catholic doctrines of the Evangelical Arminian system. One theologian teaches a doctrine which another either denies or modifies; and there is no common, recognized standard by which these differences could be judged. In regard to the positions just mentioned, for example, some hold that the purpose to permit the Fall with the entailment of its consequences upon all mankind, and the purpose to provide redemption as an antidote, were concurrent. Neither was the redeeming purpose conditioned by the purpose to permit the Fall, nor was it pre-supposed by the purpose touching the Fall. They must be conceived as concurrent, neither pre-supposing the other. With reference to this view it is sufficient to say that it is neither conceivable nor credible. We are obliged to think one purpose as pre-supposing another, not in the order of time - for that order is inapplicable to God's eternal purposes - but in the order of nature or of thought. How could the conception of redemption exist without the pre-supposition of beings to be redeemed? And how could the conception of such beings obtain without the pre-supposition of a fall into sin and misery?
Again, it has, with more ground in reason, been maintained that the purpose of redemption, in the order of thought, preceded and conditioned the purpose to permit the Fall and, indeed, all other purposes, even that to create. But-
In the first place, this view is inconsistent with the usual statement in the Arminian scheme of the order of the divine purposes, - namely the purpose to create; the purpose to permit the Fall; the purpose to redeem; the purpose to call; the purpose to elect.
In the second place, it has no clear support from Scripture. It has been supposed to be required by such passages as Colossians i. 16, where it is stated that all things were created, not only by Christ, but for him. This statement, however, does not necessarily imply that all things were created by the Son of God and for him, as he is Redeemer. And unless that could be proved to be the meaning of the passage, the view under consideration is not substantiated by it. No doubt the world was made for the glory of the eternal Son of God, but, for aught that appears to the contrary, that end might have been secured had sin not taken place, and had there consequently been no redemption. It is right to say that creation has by divine decree become a magnificent theatre for the display of the transcendent glory of redemption; but that is very different from saying that creation was decreed in order to be the theatre of redemption.
In the third place, this scheme of the divine decrees is liable to some of the difficulties, metaphysical and moral, to which that of the Supralapsarian is exposed. A decree to redeem merely creatable beings, or even created but unfallen beings, is inconceivable, if not self-contradictory; and if the decree of redemption, in the order of thought, preceded the decrees to create and to permit the Fall, creation and the Fall were means necessary to the accomplishment of the redemptive end. That would run athwart the doctrine of a simple permission of the Fall; and, further, since a large section of the human race, according to the admission of Arminians, are not actually saved, the end contemplated by the decree of redemption would, to that extent, fail to be accomplished and the divine will be defeated.
This view has also difficulties peculiar to itself. For, as the foreknowledge of a permitted fall could not, in the order of thought, have preceded the decree to create, since merely possible beings could not be permitted actually to fall, and it is impossible to see how the certainty that such beings would actually fall could be foreknown, the decree to redeem would have had no redeemable objects upon which to terminate, and therefore is inconceivable. And still further, if it be contended that such a decree was possible, it follows that as it fails, in its execution, to secure the final redemption of all, and actually issues in that only of some, of the human race, it would be subject to the very objection which Arminians urge against the Calvinistic decree of election.
But, whatever be the relation which Evangelical Arminians predicate of the purpose to permit the Fall and the purpose to redeem, whether the one precedes the other, or they are absolutely concurrent, the difficulty which they seek to avoid by making the decree to redeem complementary to the decree to permit the Fall still presses upon them. They do not, by this means, vindicate the justice of God in implicating the race in the responsibilities attending Adam's sin. It is held, let it be remembered, that it would have been unjust in God to treat the race as responsible for Adam's sin, had he not purposed to provide redemption from its consequences.
First, It deserves to be remarked that Evangelical Arminians are accustomed to enforce the analogy between the sufferings of men for the sin of Adam and the sufferings of children for the sins of their parents. Now, either it is just that children should suffer for the sins of their parents, or it is unjust. If it be said to be just, then, if the analogy hold, it is just that Adam's children should suffer for his sin. If it be said to be unjust, God's ordinary providence is charged with injustice; for it is a fact that children do suffer for the sins of their parents. Either alternative is damaging to the Arminian view. Let it be observed, that this argument is addressed to the concessions of Arminians. The analogy which they plead I regard as deceptive, and the argument based upon it as inconclusive.
Secondly, If the implication of the race in the consequences of Adam's sin would have been unjust apart from the purpose of redemption, it would follow that the prevention of the injustice must be conceived as having been the demand of justice and not a free dictate of grace. A measure by which injustice is prevented or removed cannot, without an abuse of language, be denominated a fruit of grace. It is a product of justice. And so the grace of God is no more grace. The redemption of sinners from the consequences of the Fall is required by justice. The sinner, therefore, instead of extolling divine grace should celebrate divine justice; instead of shouting, Grace! grace! he should shout, justice! justice! The truth is, that a constitution of things by which the interposition of divine justice is required to prevent or remove the effects of divine injustice is, from the nature of the case, as inconceivable as it is impossible. The only relief to the Arminian from the pressure of this difficulty would lie in denying that men, in any sense, suffer on account of Adam's sin, and that would throw him into collision with the doctrine of Scripture, the facts of experience and the results of observation.
Thirdly, If, apart from the provision of redemption, the constitution by which the race was involved in the consequences of Adam's sin would have been intrinsically unjust, the redemptive provision accompanying it could not possibly relieve that intrinsic injustice. It would inhere in the very nature of such a constitution. The redemption provided might deliver men from its evil results, but it could not deliver God from the charge of having instituted an arrangement in itself unjust. It would relieve the disaster, but leave the original wrong untouched. The consequence of the injustice would be removed, but the injustice would abide. No fact can be undone. To state the case differently: if a federal constitution by which Adam's descendants became responsible for his sin would have been in itself unjust, the co-ordination with it of a redeeming purpose could not cancel the injustice, for that purpose could only take effect after the wrong had been inflicted. Men must have suffered before they could be actually redeemed. If not, from what would they be redeemed? The suffering, consequently, must while it lasts be conceived as having been unjustly imposed.
Fourthly, If it was intended, in order to avoid injustice, that the provision of redemption should deliver men from the sufferings entailed upon them by Adam's fall, then it was necessary, in order to the attainment of the end contemplated, that all those sufferings should be removed. For, if any part of them remained, to that extent the injustice would not be repaired. And this difficulty weighs especially upon those who hold that those sufferings are penal. If it be replied, as replied it must be, that the redemptive provision was not designed to operate ipso facto in the removal of suffering, but that such removal is conditioned upon the acceptance of the offer of redemption, and that ability is given to men to accept the offer, the difficulty is not discharged. For, in the first place, infants can neither understand nor accept the offer; yet they suffer. The injustice is not removed from them. It would be idle to say that they suffer disciplinarily, for, as infants, they are unsusceptible of discipline. They cannot perceive the ends of suffering. And further, disciplinary suffering pre-supposes penal. It cannot be justly imposed upon beings who were not, in the first instance, either consciously or putatively guilty. In the second place, the removal of injustice inflicted upon adults cannot, consistently with justice, be conditioned upon their voluntary acceptance of an offer to remove it. Justice requires the unconditional undoing of injustice which has been done. This difficulty becomes all the more aggravated when it is considered that the acceptance of the redeeming provision is opposed by the corrupt nature derived from the Fall. Either God can remove the consequences of the Fall, or he cannot. If he can and does not, he perpetuates the injustice which he is supposed to have inflicted. If he cannot, how did the provision of redemption come to be conceived in his mind as calculated to relieve the intrinsic injustice of the federal constitution? He would in devising it have known that he could not make it effectual to relieve that injustice. If it be said, that he cannot, in accordance with the nature he bestowed upon man, act inconsistently with man's free will, the answer is, that when he determined to provide redemption he must have foreseen that limitation upon its applicability as a remedy, and therefore his inability fully to remove the inherent injustice of the federal constitution. In the third place, even the offer of redemption is not made actually to every man. Some have not the opportunity furnished them of accepting it. Myriads of the heathen never heard of it. How then does the provision of redemption remove the injustice involved in the sufferings induced upon them by the Fall? If it be urged, that the atonement of Christ indirectly benefits them, without their knowledge of it, the reply is obvious, that their sufferings continue. They are not benefited to the extent of their removal. Nor can it be pleaded that like adults in Christian lands they bind their sufferings upon themselves by rejecting the tendered remedy. For how can they reject a remedy which was never proffered them? To say that they have some knowledge of the gospel through tradition from the patriarchal, or any other, era, is but to trifle with a solemn subject. If finally it be said, that the heathen in relation to the gospel scheme are in a condition similar to that of infants, that will not answer, for we have seen that the sufferings of infants cannot be adjusted to the theory that the provision of redemption checked the intrinsic injustice of the Adamic constitution.
Under the conviction that it is one of the key positions of the Evangelical Arminian scheme, I have thus criticised with some minuteness the view, that the divine purpose to provide redemption for mankind, which was co-ordinate with the constitution implicating them in the judicial consequences of their first father's sin, prevented the injustice otherwise chargeable upon that constitution.
(2.) The second way, in which Evangelical Arminians attempt to vindicate the justice of God in view of the hereditary guilt and corruption of all men, is to be found in their doctrine concerning the nature of the relation sustained by the first man to the race. That doctrine is: that God made a covenant with Adam as a parental head representing his posterity, by virtue of which they, having been in his loins, are justly subjected to the consequences of his sin. They were in him as children are in a father; one with him because of, and simply because of, the parental and filial relation. As they were thus - to use Wesley's words - "contained in Adam," it followed that when he sinned the consequences of his fatal act were deserved by them. In support of this view they appeal to the analogy of providence. Children, without their conscious agency, are involved in the disastrous consequences of their parents' sins. They suffer because their fathers were criminals; and to object, on the ground of injustice, to the primal constitution through which all men experience the injurious results of their first father's fall into sin is to impeach the justice of God in his ordinary and acknowledged dealings with men.
It is true that some Arminian theologians affirm that Adam was "a public person and a legal representative;"9 and that this language taken by itself would imply that they do not regard him as having been simply a parental head. But, two considerations clearly show that notwithstanding these terms by which they appear to qualify the merely parental headship of the first man, merely parental headship is what they really hold. The first is their unwillingness to admit that the race had a proper probation in Adam which was closed by his fall into sin. The second is their denial that the posterity of Adam in any sense committed his first sin and are on that account chargeable with its guilt. These facts prove that they do not maintain, but on the contrary deny, the strictly representative character of the first man. For, if he had been not only a parental head and trustee, but over and beyond that a legal representative, of the race, they would have had their probation in him, and must, in accordance with the essential principle of representation, be considered as having legally and constructively performed his act in committing the first sin and as being therefore chargeable with its guilt. We shall get a precise conception of the Evangelical Arminian doctrine concerning the headship of Adam by comparing it with the Calvinistic. The Evangelical Arminian holds that when God created Adam a parental head, he in the same act and by virtue of it created him a federal head. In becoming the first father, Adam, of necessity, became the representative, of mankind. Only as he was, and because he was, father was he representative. The Calvinist holds that after God had created Adam a parental head he, by a free determination of his will, appointed him a federal head and legal representative, and then entered into a covenant of life with him, suspending justification for himself and his posterity as his constituents upon his perfect obedience during a limited time of trial. In the one case he was created a federal head because he was created a parental head, the representative relation being no more than is involved in the parental. In the other, he was not created a federal head and representative, but, by a free act from which his Maker might have abstained, was appointed and constituted the bearer of that transcendently responsible office. It is plain that, according to the Evangelical Arminian theology, Adam was in no other sense a federal head and legal representative than as he was the parental head of the human race. The relation he sustained was that of mere parental headship with such responsibilities and consequences as it naturally involves. Accordingly. I shall endeavor to show that such a relation will not bear the strain that is put upon it.
First, Evangelical Arminian theologians themselves, as we have seen, explicitly acknowledge the fact that the visitation upon the race of the bitter consequences of Adam's sin, merely in virtue of their relation to him as a parental head, cannot be reconciled with our conceptions of the divine justice. In itself considered, such a constitution would have been unjust. In order to its having been adopted as a part of the divine scheme of government it was necessary that its intrinsic injustice should be destroyed by an extrinsic connection with a purpose of redemption in consequence of which the damage done by the Fall should be amply repaired. Taken by itself, then, the parental headship of Adam, as foreknown to issue in the fall of the race, is confessed by Evangelical Arminians themselves to be incapable of being harmonized with justice. But it has in these remarks been already shown that its connection with a redeeming purpose does not relieve this difficulty. It is not vindicated from the charge of inherent injustice by its association with the purpose of God to provide redemption. If, therefore, according to the admission of its advocates, the constitution by which Adam was made the parental head of the race was intrinsically unjust, it is impossible by an appeal to it to establish the justice of God in inflicting the results of his sin upon them. The difficulty raised by our intuition of justice instead of being met is aggravated. A procedure confessed to have been unjust is vindicated by an unjust constitution in which it originated! Arminians themselves being judges, the mere parental headship of Adam will not carry the weight imposed upon it.
Secondly, It is one of the curious inconsistencies of Evangelical Arminian divines that, having acknowledged the injustice of the constitution involving the race in responsibility for the sin of Adam their parental head conceived apart from the purpose of God to redeem them, they proceed to illustrate the justice of that constitution by citing the analogous case of the ordinary parental relation and its consequences upon children. They affirm that it is at one and the same time intrinsically unjust and intrinsically just. The soundest exponents of the Evangelical Arminian system maintain that the sufferings entailed upon Adam's posterity by his sin are in their nature penal. They are not mere calamities; they are punishments. Temporal death, spiritual death, liability to eternal death, - these, they justly contend, are not to be regarded as simply our misfortune. They are in some sense the results of our own fault - we have, in some way, deserved them. The Pelagianizing utterances of such writers as Miner Raynond, who scouts this view, cannot by a candid critic be considered as representative of Evangelical Arminianism even in its present attitude. If they are, it is not the system of Wesley, Fletcher and Watson: it is far gone from that system.
Now, it is a fundamental principle of God's moral government that none but the guilty are held liable to punishment. Before one can be justly punished it must be proved that he did some wrong act, or is the culpable author of some wrong disposition inherent in him. Before he can share another's punishment, he must have shared the other's fault: he must, in some sense, be justly held as particeps criminis. This is a principle of human law, and in that regard it reflects the divine. In what sense, then, are children now the sharers of their parents' acts? They are different persons from them, and therefore their personality cannot be considered as merged into that of their parents. The acts on account of which they suffer may have been committed before they were born. They could not therefore have consciously joined in their performance. Their parents are not, strictly speaking, their legal representatives, so that their acts, although not consciously and subjectively, would yet be legally, representatively, putatively, the acts of their children. These suppositions exhaust the possibilities in the case, and as neither of them is true, it follows that children do not share the guilt of their parents, and therefore cannot be justly punished for it. They suffer on account of the evil deeds of their parents. That fact is announced in the Decalogue, and abundantly established by the ordinary course of providence; and in view of it the responsibilities of parents are seen to be nothing less than tremendous. But these sufferings are not punishments; they are calamities, except in cases in which the children imitate the wickedness of their parents, and so by their own conscious and voluntary acts make their parents' guilt their own. When they incur the guilt they deserve the punishment. Until then their sufferings are not penal. The sufferings of an infant in its cradle cannot be regarded as penal inflictions for the sins of its immediate parents.
This important distinction between punishment and calamity is distinctly asserted by God himself in his Word. He commanded Moses to embody this provision in his code: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children; neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."10 Accordingly, we are told that when Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah ascended the throne, he put to death the men who had murdered his father, but remembering the divine law he did not inflict the same doom upon their children. The record is as follows: "And it came to pass, as soon as the kingdom was confirmed in his hand, that he slew his servants which had slain the king his father. But the children of the murderers he slew not: according to that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the Lord commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers: but every man shall be put to death for his own sin."11 The same principle of procedure is affirmed in the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel: "What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die." If a righteous man, continues the Lord by the mouth of the prophet, beget a son who doeth wickedly, the son shall bear his own iniquity; he shall surely die. If a wicked man have a son who doeth righteously, he shall not bear the iniquity of his father; he shall surely live. "Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not my way equal? Are not your ways unequal?" Here the equity of the divine administration is asserted because it proceeds upon the principle that every man is rewarded or punished for his own conduct. No one suffers penally because of his father's sins. His teeth are not set on edge because his father ate sour grapes, but they are set on edge because he himself has eaten sour grapes.
The conclusion from this argument is that, if it be a principle of the divine government that children are not dealt with retributively and punitively for the sins of their parents, it follows that Adam's children could not be justly punished for his sin, on the supposition that he was merely their parental head. Either, then, we must give up the alleged analogy between Adam's relation to his posterity and that of ordinary parents to their children, or, maintaining that analogy, we must charge God with an unjust deviation from the principles of his moral government in punishing Adam's children, for the sin of one who was simply a parental head. No one who fears God can hesitate as to the choice between these alternatives. He is shut up to the conclusion that as Adam's children are punished for his sin, he could not have been merely a parental head. He must have sustained to them another and different relation. Of course this argument will have no force with one who adheres to the analogy and at the same time denies the penal character of men's inherited sufferings. But as the Evangelical Arminian of the old school is not a Pelagian, it has a powerful bearing upon his position.
Let it be distinctly understood that in contending against the view that children are punitively dealt with for the sins of their parents, it is not intended to say that their sufferings are in no sense penal: It is not conceivable that under a perfectly just government any moral agent could suffer unless his suffering be in the first instance, in some sense, penal. Men are not punished for the sins of their immediate parents, how much soever they may suffer for them; but they are punished for the sin of Adam, and hence the conclusion is that he must have been more than a father. As to those Arminian writers who boldly take the infidel position that no man is punished for the sin of Adam, it is enough to press the question, How, then, under the government of a just God are men born to suffering at all? How is it that infants suffer? Even if the ground be taken that those infants who are regenerated and die in infancy are in some inexplicable way disciplined through suffering for glory, what becomes of the case of those who live to adult age, and die unregenerate, who suffer in infancy, suffer in mature age and suffer in hell forever? Were their sufferings in infancy disciplinary? To say that suffering is natural, that is, that it is the legitimate result of an original, natural constitution, is to impeach alike the justice and the benevolence of God. The sufferings of all men partake of a penal character until they are by grace made spiritual children of God and justified through the merits of the sinner's atoning Substitute. Punishment then is changed into discipline - the judge gives way to the Father. But as the argument is not with Pelagiaus and skeptics, but with those who profess to be evangelical, no more needs to be said upon this particular point.
Thirdly, The theory that Adam was simply a parental head of mankind, only responsible for such consequences in regard to them as that relation carries with it, makes it necessary to hold that guilt and corruption were derived from him to them by propagation through the generative channel. The principle of derivation is that like begets like. There are insuperable difficulties in the way of that doctrine. In the first place, it is impossible to prove that legal guilt and moral qualities are transmitted by propagation from father to son. The theory involves a doctrine which is unsusceptible of proof. It is consequently an inadequate account of the relation between the legal guiltiness and moral state of Adam's descendants on the one hand and his sinful act on the other. In the second place, if the supposition of propagation be admitted, no proof of its justice can be furnished. How was it grounded? Why did Adam propagate a guilty and corrupt progeny? Are his children's teeth set on edge, because he as their father ate sour grapes? The soul that sinneth, it shall die. But, according to Arminians, infants could not have committed Adam's sinful act, and they cannot consciously sin. Still, they are admitted to be at birth, by virtue of their relation to their first father, guilty and depraved, and they actually suffer and die. Their teeth are set on edge, but they did not eat sour grapes. In the third place, if the theory of propagation be true, how comes it to pass that all Adam's sins have not entailed their baleful consequences upon his posterity? It is admitted that they are affected by only his first sin. How is this limitation to be accounted for? Will it, with Thomas Aquinas, be said that only the first sin corrupts the nature, and on the contrary all subsequent sins of Adam and of all his posterity only the person?12 This would be an appeal to the theory of Numerical Identity of nature in Adam and his descendants, and that theory the Evangelical Arminian rejects; and besides he concedes the personal responsibility of men for Adam's fall. That explanation, therefore, will not answer. Will it be said, that, although the fallen nature is propagated and without special divine action would carry with it the consequences of other sins of Adam than the first, it pleased God to limit the imputation of guilt to the first sin? The reply would be, that the supposition, upon the mere theory of propagation, is inadmissible. For, wherever there is sin, it involves guilt, and the non-imputation of the guilt would, under a just government, be impossible, without atonement made for it after it had been incurred. Upon this theory, it would be as illegitimate to suppose the non-imputation of the guilt of other sins than the first to the propagated guilty and corrupt nature, as to suppose the non-imputation of the guilt of other sins than his first to Adam personally. Will it be said, that the limitation of imputed guilt to the first sin is to be referred to the federal constitution? The answer would be, that the explanation would be borrowed from a theory of strictly legal representation, different from and superadded to parental representation, which is rejected by the Evangelical Arminian. This appeal would therefore be to him incompetent. In the fourth place, if the theory of propagation were true it would follow that Adam when regenerated would have begotten regenerate children. But such a position is not maintained even by its advocates. If in order to remove this difficulty the ground be taken that the nature is propagated according to the original type and that is sinful, the reply is, as Dr. Thornwell has suggested, that the original type, that is, in the first instance, was holy, and a holy nature ought therefore to be propagated.
Fourthly, The theory of the mere parental headship of Adam cannot be adjusted to the analogy, clearly taught in Scripture, between the first Adam and the second. The first is declared to have been a figure or type of the second; "not that he was," as John Owen profoundly observes, "an instituted type, ordained for that only end and purpose, but only that in what he was, and what he did, with what followed thereupon, there was a resemblance between him and Jesus Christ."13 The meaning is that the principle upon which the first Adam stood related to his posterity is the same with that which grounded the relation of the second to his seed, - they both acted in accordance with the principle of representation. As condemnation passed upon Adam's posterity on account of his disobedience, so justification passed upon Christ's posterity on account of his obedience. This is clear, and it is admitted by both parties to this question. Now, if condemnation came upon Adam's seed because he as their father sinned, it would follow that justification comes upon Christ's seed because he as their father obeyed. The principle must be the same in both cases, or the analogy is destroyed. Was it parental headship which in Adam's case grounded the justice of condemnation? So must it be parental headship which in Christ's case grounds the justice of justification. But neither Calvinist nor Arminian takes that view of justification. Both hold that while it is true that Christ's people are born of him by his Spirit, and so holiness is communicated to them, it is also true that justification is derived from him in another way. He did not as a merely parental head secure justification, but as a representative and substitute in law. But if Christ was, strictly speaking, a legal representative and not merely a parental head, so must Adam have been, or the analogy between them breaks down.
Further, if it be contended - as it is by Watson - that as Adam was a parental head, so Christ is a spiritual head - as the former was a natural parent, so the latter is a spiritual parent, it would follow from the analogy that justification can only flow from Christ to his spiritual children. And as Evangelical Arminians do not hold that all men are regenerate and therefore Christ's spiritual children, justification could not have been secured for all men. They are thus reduced to self-contradiction. If they deny that all men are the spiritual children of Christ, they deny that justification was secured for all men, and thus admit the Calvinistic doctrine of particular atonement. If they affirm that all men are the spiritual children of Christ, just as all men are naturally the children of Adam, they deny their own doctrine of the necessity of the new birth, their own admission that all men are not actually born again, and the indubitable testimony of Scripture. To say that the heathen are all regenerate is to gainsay the Bible and fact alike. It is clear that the Arminian doctrine of the parental headship of Adam will not square with the facts of Christ's case, and therefore cannot be adjusted to the scriptural account of the analogy between the first and the second Adam.
Fifthly, A decisive consideration is, that upon the Evangelical Arminian theory neither Adam nor his descendants could ever have been justified. It is not here intended to deny that if God had been pleased to enter into a covenant with Adam as an individual, apart from a representative relation to his posterity, in which he promised him life upon condition of perfect obedience for a limited time of trial, he might have attained to justification. Nor is it impossible to suppose that God may, had he pleased, have entered into a similar covenant with each individual of his posterity, in which case each would have stood upon his own foot and have had the opportunity of securing justification. On either of these suppositions, the principle of representation would have been excluded, and that of individual probation employed. God was not pleased to adopt this mode of dealing with Adam or his descendants. He collected all the individuals of the race into unity upon the first man appointed as their federal head and legal representative, embraced them with him in a common probation, and promised to him and to them in him justification upon condition of his perfect obedience for a specified and definite period. If it be supposed that neither of these methods of procedure was employed in relation to the first man and his descendants, the impossibility of justification would be conceded. If a special covenant arrangement did not limit the time of obedience, the naked, unmodified demand of mere law would have been in force. The consequence would necessarily have resulted, that no point in the endless existence of the subject of law could have been reached at which he could have appeared before God saying, I have finished the obedience assigned me and ask for my reward. The answer to such a claim, were it supposable, would inevitably be, Thou hast an immortality of obedience yet before thee, with the possibility of a fall. No justification, in the proper, scriptural sense of the term, can be conceived as possible except upon the ground of a completed obedience; and as no obedience can be completed unless there be a definite limitation of the time in which it is to be offered, a theory which throws out of account such limitation fails to provide for the possibility of justification. Now the Evangelical Arminian theory is open to this fatal objection. It makes no mention of a limitation of the time of obedience even in regard to Adam personally considered, and it denies that his descendants had a strict, legal probation in him. Suppose then - and the supposition is legitimated by the doctrine of a mere permission of the Fall - that Adam had stood in integrity and were standing in integrity now, how could he have been justified? Perpetual obedience with its accompanying contingency of fall would be his duty still as it was his duty at first. Of course, too, there would be no justification of his posterity in an unjustified head. To say that his righteousness, although incomplete and defectible, might be imputed to them, or accrue to their benefit, would be very far from saying that they would be justified on its account. As it could not ground his justification, it could not theirs.
This consideration is specially illuminated in the light of the scriptural analogy between Christ and Adam. The time of Christ's obedience was limited. He declared that he had twelve hours in which to walk and that he must work the works of him that sent him while it was day: the night was coming in which no man could work. Accordingly when he had completed his obedience, he triumphantly exclaimed amidst his dying agonies, "It is finished." Not only, therefore, was he justified from the voluntarily assumed and imputed guilt of his people's iniquities which were laid upon him, but his finished righteousness was capable of being imputed to his seed and of constituting the ground of their justification. It is too obvious to need pressing that if Adam's case was parallel to that of Christ, the time of his probationary obedience must have been limited to condition the possibility of his justification and that of his seed. The Evangelical Arminian theory contains no such element and therefore signally breaks down.
The ways, in which Evangelical Arminian theologians endeavor to vindicate God's justice in the constitution by virtue of which the consequences of Adam's first sin are entailed upon his race, have thus been subjected to examination and their insufficiency has been exhibited.
The question now is, What, according to the Calvinistic conception, is the scriptural method of reconciling the implication of the race in the consequences of Adam's first sin with the justice of God? And let it be borne in mind that this question is subordinate to the ultimate one which is under consideration namely, whether the Calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation are, as charged, inconsistent with the divine justice.
Both parties to the question in hand admit the existence of an Adamic covenant: a federal transaction of some sort is conceded. The Calvinistic doctrine involves these elements: That, under the Covenant of Works, God appointed Adam a legal representative of his posterity; that he and they were one in law; that his acts were legally and representatively their acts, on the principle that what one does by a representative he himself does; that justification, that is, confirmation in holiness and happiness, was promised to Adam and his posterity on condition of his perfect obedience for a limited time, and death was threatened in the event of disobedience; and that as a consequence of all this mankind had their legal probation in Adam, so that had he stood and been justified they would in him have stood and been justified, and as he fell and was condemned they in him fell and were condemned. In support of this doctrine the following considerations are submitted:
First, The fact being admitted by Evangelical Arminians of a covenant with Adam which included his posterity, so that they are involved in the consequences pertaining to his first sin, it follows that if, as has been shown, parental headship implying only such federal responsibilities as it is conceived to carry with it naturally and necessarily was not, and could not consistently with justice have been, the relation between the first man and his descendants which grounded their judicial condemnation and penal sufferings, that relation must have been one subsisting between him as a strictly legal representative and them as his legal constituents. This is the only other alternative which is admissible. The conceded federal principle rules out the theory of a numerical identity between Adam and his posterity. Upon that theory a federal relation would have been a superfluity. As each man came into individual existence he would be chargeable not with Adam's sin imputed to him, but with a sin subjectively and therefore strictly and properly his own. This would be to upset the parallelism asserted by Paul between Adam and Christ. As numerical identity is grounded in nature, the analogy would require the identity of all men with Christ, as well as with Adam. Human nature obeyed in Christ as it disobeyed in Adam. As the sin of the nature is imputed to it on the one hand, so on the other would be its righteousness. As all men are thus justly condemned, all men would thus with equal justice be justified. But it is absurd to say that human nature, that is, all men, subjectively wrought righteousness in Christ; and it would be almost as absurd to say that his seed subjectively obeyed in him. It is plain that the righteousness of Christ is imputed upon a totally different principle. So, the analogy holding, must the sin of Adam. It is evident that the theory of numerical identity is inconsistent with the federal principle. The same is true of the hypothesis of an ante-mundane existence in which every human being fell from an estate of holiness by his own individual sin. If we adopt the supposition of a covenant between God and Adam, we would seem to be shut up to an election between the doctrine of parental headship and that of strict legal representation.
Secondly, The analogy between Christ and Adam proves that our first parent must have been the legal representative of his seed. The relation which he sustained to his posterity, grounding their implication in his act, must, as to the principle involved, have been like that which Christ bears to his seed; otherwise the analogy would be destroyed. Now, was Christ a legal representative of his people?
The animals which were sacrificed under the old dispensation were legal substitutes for the guilty persons for whom they were offered, that is, they legally represented the worshippers who presented them. They typified Christ the Lamb of God who was offered a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice for sinners. It is certainly the representative and not the parental relation which here comes into view. In Galatians Paul declares: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us."14 In 2 Corinthians he enouuces the same great truth of legal substitution: "He hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."15 Peter clearly sets forth the same fact: "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree." It is needless to urge the consideration that these apostolic statements could not have been true of Christ as a parental head, but are true of him as a legal representative. It is indeed admitted that they hold good of him as a legal substitute; but there is no difference in principle between a substitute and a representative. In Galatians Paul says: "I am crucified with Christ."16 The chief sense in which these words are to be taken is the representative. He discusses, in that passage, the doctrine of justification and not of sanctification. Hence he could not have only meant to say, I deny myself with Christ. It is true that he who has died federally and representatively with Christ to the guilt of sin will so live with him as to die more and more to its power, and Paul asserts that truth; but in the words cited, if regard be had to the connection in which they are used, primary reference is made by the apostle to the representative relation. In 2 Corinthians the same apostle says: "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died;"17 for that is the true and now the generally admittted rendering of the words translated, "then were all dead." How could all die in one except representatively? Myriads of believers died before, and myriads were not born until after, Christ died. The great fact is here affirmed that the death of a representative is legally and constructively the death of those whom he represented. Those, therefore, who thus died with Christ died under the sentence of a condemning law, that is, died penally, and so cannot justly die again in that way; and having so died, the legal difficulties which lay in the path of acceptable obedience to God are removed, and the motives to a life of holiness are impressively enforced. Paul says again: "If ye be risen with Christ."18 If believers died representatively with Christ, they rose representatively with him. There is also a spiritual resurrection, but there was a federal, as there will be a bodily. And if they died and rose representatively with him, they were representatively justified with him, when God the Father having raised him from the dead, on the ground of distributive justice, acquitted him of all imputed guilt, formally approved his righteousness, and published to the universe his desert of the reward stipulated by the covenant - the everlasting life of his seed.
But if Christ was the legal representative of his seed, so must Adam have been of his. The passage which settles that is the one in the fifth chapter of Romans, from the twelfth verse to the end. There the relation of the disobedience of Adam to the condemnation and death of his posterity is declared to be analogous to that of the obedience of Christ to the justification and life of his seed. But Christ in rendering obedience to the divine law acted as a legal representative; so consequently must Adam in committing his act of disobedience. It follows, that, if Adam had stood during his time of trial and been justified, all his posterity would have been representatively justified in him - that is, they would by the divine sentence have been adjudged to confirmation in holiness and happiness. In that case his righteousness, would have been imputed to his descendants, just as Christ's righteousness is now imputed to his people. Natural birth would have designated the parties upon whom his merit would have terminated, as now spiritual birth indicates the parties upon whom the merit of Christ takes effect. But Adam fell, and his guilt is imputed to his seed. Instead of attaining justification in him, they fell with him into condemnation. In these respects the cases of the first and second Adam are parallel. It is the principle of strict federal representation which stamps the character of each case.
Thirdly, If we are at all warranted, touching this matter, in appealing to the ordinary course of providence and the general judgment of men, we must resort not to the parental, but the representative, relation. We never judge that a child is, strictly speaking, well-deserving or ill-deserving on account of his parents' acts. If his father has perpetrated a crime, while we may feel that his child justly suffers in consequence of it, we do not pronounce him culpable. As in no sense he did the act, he is in no sense blameworthy. If one have committed murder, shame and obloquy attach to his child, but who would say that he was guilty of his father's crime? If he were he would deserve to be hanged. Such, however, is neither the judgment nor the custom of mankind. But if one be the representative, the attorney, the agent, of another, the case is different. There is a legal identity between the two, so that the acts of one are in law the acts of the other. Such is the general judgment of men. If there be any force in these considerations, they would go to show that Adam's children are not culpable because as their father he sinned; but if he were their legal agent and representative they must be regarded as blame-worthy for his sin. They did the act in him, not consciously and subjectively, but federally, legally, representatively.
It may be objected to this representation of the great and critically important doctrine of inherited sin, that the parental relation is thrown out of account and treated as if possessed of no significance. To this it is replied: In the first place, it is admitted that the parental relation as involving, the natural union between Adam and his descendants grounds the propagation of the race as a species, with all its essential and inseparable qualities. The question, however, is a different one whether the transmission of non-essential and separable qualities can be accounted for in accordance with this law. What is contended for is that even if that were conceded, the propagation of those qualities - that of sin, for example - would demand an antecedent solution in the principle of justice. Why sin should be transmitted from parent to child, entailing penal consequences, is a question which cannot be legitimately answered by appealing to a merely natural constitution. The deformity would be a misfortune and not a crime. The naturalness of sin would as much destroy its punishable feature as that of a misshapen body. The representative relation must be invoked to account for the legal character of propagation, even if it be admitted that propagation is the channel of the transmission of sin. The whole difficulty is avoided by referring the hereditary character of sin to the great law of federal representation. In the second place, it is admitted that the parental relation grounded the propriety of the superadded representative relation. It was fit that he who was appointed the federal trustee and legal representative of mankind, attended by the immeasurable responsibilities embraced in that office, should be their first father, possessed of all the tender affections which such a relation supposed. And it was fit that Adam as father should be the representative, inasmuch as the tie of blood, the bond of race, supplied the principle upon which he and all his individual offspring could be collected into legal unity. The statement of the case which is in this discussion maintained is precisely this: the parental grounded the propriety of the representative relation, and the representative relation grounded the imputation of guilt.
It may also be objected that the doctrine here affirmed is eccentric, for the reason that the term representative and its cognates are not found either in the Scriptures or in the Westminster Standards. This objection cannot be offered by those divines of the Evangelical Arminian school who themselves employ the phraseology which is disputed. If it be presented by others of that school, the answer is, that there are terms of articulate importance used by themselves which are not found in the Scriptures; for example the Trinity, Sufficient Grace, Prevenient Grace, and Universal Atonement. The objection, therefore, as an argument would prove too much and be consequently invalid. If the objection were urged by one belonging to the school of Calvinism, the reply would be: In the first place, there are terms employed by Calvinists which are not to be found in the Scriptures; for instance, Satisfaction to divine justice, the Righteousness of Christ, the Imputed Righteousness of Christ, the Vicarious Obedience of Christ, Particular, or Definite, or Limited Atonement, Effectual Calling and the Perseverance of the Saints. Are the doctrines signified by these terms not to be found in the Scriptures? If so, Calvinism would be blown to the winds. In the second place, the fact that the term representative, as applied to Adam, is not found in the Westminster Standards by no means proves that the doctrine of his representative character is not contained in them. He is expressly declared to have been a "public person" in the same sense in which Christ is said to be a "public person." Says the Larger Catechism: "The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in that first transgression."19 Speaking of Christ the same formulary says: "All which he did as a public person, the head of his church, for their justification."20 Does this meau that Christ was a representative? What Calvinist would deny? In the same way it must be admitted that the Westminster divines held Adam to have been a representative. To this it must be added that the terms Particular Atonement and their synonyms are not found in the Westminster Standards. Is the doctrine not there? And it deserves to be remarked that the term representative was not in common use at the time when the Assembly was in session, and hence probably its absence from the formnlaries composed by it. But it was sufficiently used by divines of the period to show that they regarded Adam as a representative. "The sin of Adam," observes Dr. John Owen, "was and is imputed unto all his posterity . . . And the ground hereof is, that we stood all in the same covenant with him who was our head and representative therein."21 "Adam," says Thomas Watson, "being a representative person, he standing, we stood; and he falling, we fell."22
We come now, at last, to the question, Was the federal constitution, involving the application of the principle of legal representation to Adam and his posterity and implicating them in the judicial consequences of his first sin, inconsistent with the justice of God?
The questions may be asked, Why, if the doctrines of election and reprobation have been proved to be revealed in the Scriptures, should the inquiry be considered in regard to their consistency or inconsistency with the perfections of God? And why, if the doctrine of federal representation is also delivered to us by the same sacred authority, should the attempt be made to show that it is not inconsistent with the divine justice. Everything that God, in his holy Word, declares he has done or will do must, of necessity, be consistent with his character; consequently these reasonings are gratuitous and suited to do more harm than good. We have the weighty opinion of Haldane, in his admirable commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, against this sort of argument in relation to the subject now in hand. This, it is cheerfully admitted, is eminently true and wise, on the supposition that a doctrine has been proved beyond reasonable doubt to be revealed in the Scriptures. The position of the Dogmatic Rationalist of the Wolfian type is utterly untenable, that doctrines conceded to be part of a supernatural revelation need to be fortified by rational demonstration. It is enough that they are introduced with the indisputable authority of the preface, "Thus saith the Lord." But it merits consideration that the real question often is, as it is in this particular instance, whether the doctrines alleged to be revealed in the Scriptures are actually so revealed. There being a difference between pious and reverent men in their interpretation of the passages adduced as proofs, moral and rational considerations, drawn from the teachings of Scripture and the fundamental laws of belief of the human mind, are thrown in on one side or the other to strengthen or weaken, not the divine statements, but the alleged evidence that the doctrines in question are derived from the word of inspiration. It is for this reason the present discussion has been allowed the range which it has taken; and if relief, however little, shall be given to any pious mind from doubt as to the divine authority of the doctrines it defends from attack, it will not be wholly vain.
(1.) If God established the federal constitution by which Adam was appointed the legal representative of the race, it must be regarded as just; for whatever God does is necessarily just. This principle was affirmed by the illustrious patriarch when pleading for Sodom: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" The same great principle is asserted by Paul in the third chapter of Romans when replying to objections against gratuitous justification, and in the ninth chapter when answering cavils against sovereign predestination. But the Scriptures reveal the fact of the federal constitution as one of divine appointment. It was therefore not inconsistent with the justice of God.
(2.) It is not difficult to prove that the federal constitution involving the principle of legal representation was benevolent. The limitations assigned by a free determination of the divine will to a merely legal probation, - the limitation of the probation of all to that of one who was amply and richly furnished to stand the trial, one who from the nature of the case was susceptible of responsibilities which in their fulness could attach to no other; the limitation of the time of obedience which conditioned the easy attainment of immortal holiness and bliss for every individual of the race; and perhaps the limitation of the field of temptation, - these limitations upon the trial of mankind, which otherwise under a naked economy of law would have been perpetual for every individual and shadowed forever by the dread contingency of a fall, were certainly the products of benevolence. But such a constitution would not have been benevolent had it been unjust. Injustice done to the creatures of his power could not have consisted with the goodness of their Creator. It is not warrantable to affirm that at one and the same time he acted towards the human race benevolently and inconsistently with justice. On the other hand, if the representative arrangement had been inconsistent with justice it could not have been consistent with benevolence. Of necessity the attributes of God must be perfectly harmonious with each other both in their intrinsic nature and in their actual exercise. If then the federal economy was benevolent, it could not have been inconsistent with justice.
(3.) It may be urged that it was arbitrary and therefore was not grounded in justice. To this it is replied, that if it can be shown to have been dictated by wisdom and benevolence it cannot be proved to have been arbitrary; for that is arbitrary which is wanton and is founded upon no sufficient reason. It cannot be evinced that the federal ordination was the result of God's naked will proceeding without any regard to rational considerations. It cannot, therefore, be proved to have been inconsistent with justice because it was arbitrary.
(4.) The attempt has been made to convict it of incompatibility with justice, because mankind, who, it is alleged, were represented in Adam and bound by his act, had no voice, no suffrage, in the adoption of that measure of government by which the principle of representation was applied to their case: it was imposed upon them without their choice, and yet their everlasting destinies might have been decided by it. But-
First, It cannot be proved, though this be true, that the application of the principle of representation to the race by their divine Maker and Ruler was intrinsically unjust. We are incompetent judges of the whole case. God is infinitely wiser than we. It would be supremely rash and arrogant in us to undertake to decide upon what principles he should choose to conduct his moral government. It is at least supposable that he saw that it would be as fair to men to deal with them collected into moral unity in the person of a fully qualified representative, as to treat each individual as responsible only for his own subjective and conscious agency. It does not matter to say that when God constituted the first man a representative of his race he foreknew that he would fall and drag down his descendants with him into a common ruin; for had this measure not been adopted, God might have foreseen that every individual of the race would fall for himself, and in that case the advantages of the representative relation would be absent. So that at last it comes to this: Why did God create man at all if he foreknew that he would sin? And to that question as the limited human intelligence has never yet furnished a satisfactory answer, so it is likely that in the present sphere of thought it never will. It is enough to know that it is God who has done it. Whatever he does must be just and wise and right.
Secondly, God is infinitely benevolent. The application to the race of the principle of representation was therefore consistent with benevolence. It was applied to man while in innocence. It was no judicial infliction. There was no reason growing out of man's relation to God which could have occasioned harshness or rigor on his Maker's part. If he loved man at his creation, it is impossible to conceive that he would have chosen any mode of procedure which would have prejudiced his interests or borne hardly upon his destiny. Indeed it is impossible to say, without blasphemy, that God can treat any of his creatures inequitably.
Thirdly, To take the ground that the application to the race of the representative principle would have been unjust because they had no suffrage in its adoption, is to maintain that the subjects of God's government have a right to take part in its administration. This is absurdly to press the analogy of human government. The people are not sovereign in the divine administration. They are in no sense factors in the government. They do not elect the ruler. If they did, they would be supposed to elect God, before he could have the right to rule them. The right of God to rule is absolute and resides in himself. He creates the subjects of his government, and is therefore as to their very persons as well as their interests proprietary governor. He owns them. He is a pure autocrat. And a government by a single will must be the very, best government, if that will be perfect - if it be absolutely free from every element of error, injustice and wrong. The race therefore could, from the nature of the case, have no right to exercise suffrage with reference to any feature of the divine government, unless God himself were pleased in infinite condescension to confer that right. Whether that were possible, will not now be considered. It certainly was not a fact, and that consideration is sufficient to determine the question in hand. The race could have possessed no right of suffrage, and consequently there could have been no infringement of their rights by an application to them of the representative principle.
Fourthly, The same course of reasoning is pertinent to the objection, that the race had no suffrage in the selection of the person to represent them - that they had no voice in the appointment of Adam to that responsible office. But the following considerations may be added upon this point:
In the first place, God was better qualified to judge of the question who should be the representative than the whole human race could have been, on the supposition that by the anticipation of their actual existence, through the almighty power of God, they had been assembled in a great mass-meeting at the garden of Eden. He is infinitely wise and infinitely benevolent.
In the second place, it is plain that upon the supposition of the application of the representative principle, Adam was suited to be the representative. He was