This is what I call strong meat, and the stomach which can digest such food, can, I should think, digest iron and adamant. The natural and necessary deductions from these leading tenets, their various ramifications and subordinate collateral branches, exert a deep influence, and diffuse an alarming complexion over the whole plan of revelation. These teachers have turned their faces towards the ages of darkness, and are travelling back with rapid strides to the jargon of schoolmen, and the reveries and superstitions of Monks. Were a painter to draw an emblem of their plan, you would see the distorted phiz, squinting eye, and haggard features of perfect selfishness, mounted on the huge, inflated, and putrescent carcass of Antinomianism. Whether they admit or deny the doctrine of moral agency, their crude notions of that, and other things correlative, amount to an absolute and universal virtual denial of it: of course, their scheme embraces the strongest and most odious features of fatalism, or, rather that men are mere machines, dead as inorganic matter. They have no notion of moral virtue as an exercise of the human mind; they even wish that phrase expunged from our language. Of course, their sermons generally lie within the narrow limits already marked out; which they are pleased to style, preaching Christ. To this it is proper to add, that they are tenacious of their own opinions, and intolerant of those of others in no ordinary degree. I shall justify this remark, by simply adverting to the recent expulsion of a young man, of unblemished character and respectable talents, from a theological seminary in this city. I cannot but notice, as an extraordinary coincidence, that the very man who expelled him has, at this time, come out and astonished the world by a pompous and flaming production in favour of general communion, catholicism, and Christian charity. I wish he would inform the world whether he intends they shall follow his book, or his example. I cannot express what gratitude I feel to providence, that though Bonner and Gardiner should revive, they would not find, in this country, a government ready to second their intolerance by the flames of persecution. The tiger may show his teeth and growl, but he cannot bite. INVESTIGATOR. No. II. WHETHER it may be termed a disposition, or passion, or called by any other name, there is something in some men which may be denominated an humble pride. I fear, could it be analyzed, it would not be found to want any of the most virulent qualities of the true and old-fashioned pride, known in the world ever since the fall of man, and which, indeed, threw a morning star from heaven, before it inflamed man to rebellion. It seems to be the pride of the gentlemen alluded to in the preceding number, to plunge down human nature as low as possible. They are by no means satisfied with laying the whole human race under the ban of eternal damnation, for an act which was committed before any of them existed; they go much farther. And this brings me to the second angle of the true diagram of their scheme. They teach, and strenuously insist, that all men labour under a true and physical incapacity to do any thing which God requires. To this total and universal inability they deny all figurative or metaphysical import, and contend that men are as truly, and in the same sense, unable to obey the law of God as they are to overturn the Andes, or drain the ocean. What do we hear next? They turn immediately round, and exhort their hearers, with great pathos, to do every thing which God requires, and denounce their disobedience as meriting eternal damnation. Nay, this inability and thraldom, in its whole extent, they carry back to the original fountain of their guilt and condemnation, and say that it was all done in Adam ;-that all the human race were made guilty, and were wholly incapacitated to do any good act, in their first father. Nevertheless, they go on with mighty eloquence to exhort them to do every duty, Had I not already said that their notion of original sin contained the most monstrous error ever advanced in any scheme of religion, I should be tempted to say the same of this. But I will venture to say I think them both infinitely distant from the truth. But, says the advocate of these truly tremendous and detestable tenets, "This is Calvinism; and dare you dispute CAL 7 VIN?" To which I reply, If Calvin believed in these doctrines, which we deny, he must have derived his light therein, for aught I know, from the flames of SERVETUS; indeed, they more resemble the light of infernal than celestial fire. This doctrine of man's inability is an insult to every man's unbiassed understanding-to the light of his conscience. It is contrary to the whole current of the sacred scriptures: and, indeed, its warmest advocates are tempted to contradict themselves every moment; and when they preach best, this temptation is effectual; or, to say the least, their contradictions are seldom farther apart than the improvement from the sermon. Their preaching often reminds me of the mode of writing used by some ancient nations, which was from left to right, and from right to left, alternately crossing the page in opposite directions. These gentlemen, however, might be laid off into different sections. Some of them, aware of the inconsistency, frankly own that wicked men are under no obligation to love or obey God: and thus, for the sake of theory and system, plunge still deeper in error. Others boldly deny all moral agency to mankind :— others again contend that men are moral agents to do wrong, but not to do right; evincing still more ignorance of the philosophy of the human mind than of the word of God. Is it wonderful that there should be so many Gallios in this city? That so many should with scornful smile turn from this monstrous jargon, and cry out, "Wretched mysticism!-Riddles!-contradictions!-What, was I rendered, by Adam's first act of sin, a criminal deserving endless torments? Was I, at the same time, totally incapacited to yield obedience to the Almighty Ruler? Was I bound had and foot six thousand years ago, and rocks of adamant laid on the seal of my eternal perdition? Impossible! The glorious volume of nature itself contradicts all this, and shows me a far different character of my Creator and Preserver." INVESTIGATOR. No. III. WE come to the third and last great point of their system of theology, which makes out the triangle, from which, as I said, they do not depart. They tell you there is a remedy for a part of mankind; Christ has died for an elect number. They, and they only, enjoy an offer of salvation; and for them alone is provision made. On the contrary, they plumply deny that "Christ has tasted death for every man," they will by no means allow that "He is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world:" they abhor the idea of going "into all the world and preaching the gospel to every creature." They would tell you, that if they could distinguish who the elect are, in their assemblies, they should preach the gospel only to them; they should tell them that Christ died only for them: but, as for the rest, they should preach nothing but the certainty of eternal damnation. Nor does this, though it gives the lines of the triangle, display the worst features of their scheme. They go on to state, that even the elect are not bound to believe in the Saviour, or to love and obey him, till he has convinced them, in a supernatural way, that he died for them. Thus, to the grossest error in doctrine, adding the basest selfishness in heart and practice. Nothing offends them so deeply as the assertion, that the perfection and glory of the Saviour are the highest motives of love and obedience to him. Yet, as for the non-elect, they assure them that their condemnation will be vastly aggravated for rejecting salvation by Christ. The whole of their doctrine, then, amounts to this, that a man is, in the first place, condemned, incapacitated, and eternally reprobated for the sin of Adam: in the next place, that he is condemned over again, for not doing that which he is totally, in all respects, unable to do; and, in the third place, that he is condemned, and doubly and trebly condemned, for not believing in a Saviour, who never died for him, and with whom he has no more to do than a fallen angel. This is what I call strong meat, and the stomach which can digest such food, can, I should think, digest iron and adamant. The natural and necessary deductions from these leading tenets, their various ramifications and subordinate collateral branches, exert a deep influence, and diffuse an alarming complexion over the whole plan of revelation. These teachers have turned their faces towards the ages of darkness, and are travelling back with rapid strides to the jargon of schoolmen, and the reveries and superstitions of Monks. Were a painter to draw an emblem of their plan, you would see the distorted phiz, squinting eye, and haggard features of perfect selfishness, mounted on the huge, inflated, and putrescent carcass of Antinomianism. Whether they admit or deny the doctrine of moral agency, their crude notions of that, and other things correlative, amount to an absolute and universal virtual denial of it: of course, their scheme embraces the strongest and most odious features of fatalism, or, rather that men are mere machines, dead as inorganic matter. They have no notion of moral virtue as an exercise of the human mind; they even wish that phrase expunged from our language. Of course, their sermons generally lie within the narrow limits already marked out; which they are pleased to style, preaching Christ. To this it is proper to add, that they are tenacious of their own opinions, and intolerant of those of others in no ordinary degree. I shall justify this remark, by simply adverting to the recent expulsion of a young man, of unblemished character and respectable talents, from a theological seminary in this city. I cannot but notice, as an extraordinary coincidence, that the very man who expelled him has, at this time, come out and astonished the world by a pompous and flaming production in favour of general communion, catholicism, and Christian charity. I wish he would inform the world whether he intends they shall follow his book, or his example. I cannot express what gratitude I feel to providence, that though Bonner and Gardiner should revive, they would not find, in this country, a government ready to second their intolerance by the flames of persecution. The tiger may show his teeth and growl, but he cannot bite. INVESTIGATOR. |