The common-sense system, resting on the assumption that happiness-making, according to the laws of God, is the chief end of man, naturally leads to the development of the intellect and reason in order to discover these laws, and to the devotion of all our [pg 245] powers to happiness-making, according to these laws. This being so, every thing that tends to make enjoyment and diminish evil without violating law, is valued as good and right. All noble, generous, self-sacrificing and honorable sentiments and acts are regarded as right, pleasing to the Father of all, and tending equally to promote the best good of ourselves and of all our fellow-beings. In this light we become one with the Father and with all good beings just so far as we obey all the physical, social and moral laws of our Creator, and thus conform to his will, and add to his happiness. Thus the direct tendency of this system is to promote an earnest desire, first to discover all that is true and right, and then to follow it. And such efforts naturally tend both to develop our highest powers, and to bring the mind into harmony and communion with the Father of our spirits.
On the contrary, the Augustinian system, resting on the assumption that all the plans and ways of God are a mystery beyond our comprehension; that man, by nature, has no power to understand what is right or wrong in God's dispensations; that what we call goodness and virtue in unregenerate minds is not so in God's sight; that every act of every unrenewed mind is sin, and only sin; that until regenerated we never do any thing to move God to re-create our ruined nature; all this in its tendency leads to recklessness, hopelessness and neglect of all virtuous efforts, as useless in regard to our highest interests. As before intimated, these tendencies are more or less counteracted by the teachings of common sense and the Bible. Still, such tendencies must always be, more or less, effective and disastrous.
Chapter XXXVII. Tendencies of the Two Systems in Respect to Individual Religious Experience.
The Augustinian system, assuming that true personal religion consists in the exercises of “a new nature,” tends to introverted mental efforts, in order to discover whether the signs of such a nature exist in ourselves.
As, on this theory, it is certain that man will do nothing to change his fallen nature until the Spirit of God is given to aid, the great attention and effort must be directed to those methods, which “the church” decides, or experience has proved, to be connected with the bestowal of this spiritual gift.
Not knowing clearly what the depraved nature is, which is to be changed, nor the certain signs of its existence or re-creation, nor any certain mode of securing the desired change, there is a perplexing variety of vague instructions as to “what we must do to be saved?”
In illustration of this, the following from an article by the editor of the Methodist Quarterly, shows how Wesley and his followers instruct on this subject:
“I have continually testified, in private and in public,” says Wesley, “that we are sanctified as well as justified by faith.”
This being first stated, the great question follows, what is that faith by which we are justified and sanctified? The answer is this: