Wesley and his co-laborers taught anew the Protestant doctrine of man's independence of ecclesiastical interpretations and church forms, and the necessity of an immediate and higher spiritual life. From his efforts and those of Whitfield originated the great Methodist denomination in Great Britain and America.
In this sect is carried out the theory of regeneration, not as a slow process of educational training, but as an instantaneous change, manifested in excited sensibilities. As the depravity consequent on Adam's sin consists in the “deprivation” of God's Spirit, and regeneration is the return of this gift, to be secured by prayer and other “means of grace,” we find their prayers, hymns and preaching all conformed to this theory. They gain grace when the Spirit comes, and when it departs they “fall from grace.”
While Wesley and Whitfield, in Great Britain, appealed directly to the people in combatting the Arminian tendency to forms and laxness, Jonathan Edwards addressed the leaders of metaphysical thought in his profound and acute writings. He attempted to meet the universal paralysis consequent on the Calvinistic doctrine of man's inability, amounting almost to the loss of a consciousness of personal freedom.
His aim was to restore to man a sense of ability and responsibility. Thus originated his theory of natural ability and moral inability, which amounts simply to this: that man has natural power to obey all that God requires, but that he so lacks moral ability, on [pg 286] account of his depraved nature, that it is certain that he never will make a truly virtuous choice till he is regenerated, and regeneration is not to be secured by any unregenerated doings.
From this resulted the division into the old and new-school Calvinistic parties in the Congregational and Presbyterian churches.
Lastly, the New Haven divines, while in some of their writings they held exactly the views of President Edwards, and claimed to have made no innovation, in others they came exactly to the Pelagian ground, maintaining that man “has not a depraved nature in any sense, nor a corrupt nature, much less a sinful nature,” “but rather that in nature he is like God.”
This is the same doctrine as was held by Pelagius, and if it were only carried out consistently and not contradicted, would be the entire elimination, root and branch, of the Augustinian system.
From this resulted a theological controversy that has agitated the Presbyterian and Congregational churches for the last thirty years.
There are two denominations which all the Augustinian sects agree in excluding from their fellowship as not entitled to the name of Christian sects, which have had great influence in undermining the hold of the Augustinian theory. These are the Universalists and the Unitarians.
The former do not formally deny the Augustinian theory of a depraved nature consequent on Adam's sin, but leaving it undisputed, gain great influence by it. They allow that God has power to restore man to his original perfectness, and then maintain that the [pg 287] very idea of a benevolent being, who is the loving parent of all his creatures, makes it certain that he will do so. For, as shown before, our only idea of a benevolent being is, that he wills to do all in his power to secure that which will make the most happiness with the least evil. As, therefore, all the Augustinian sects concede that God has power to make all minds perfect at the first, and to regenerate all minds that are ruined through the sin of Adam, Universalists maintain that the very idea of the Creator as a benevolent being necessarily involves the certainty that he will in the end, bring all the creatures he has made to a state of perfectness, both in mental construction and mental action. This argument is unanswerable, and the people very extensively are led to so regard it, and to adopt this view of the future state of our race.