Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

"In consequence of this decision, the Arminians were considered as enemies to their country and its established religion, and were much persecuted. They were treated with great severity, deprived of all their posts and employments, their ministers silenced, and their congregations suppressed. The great Barnevelt was beheaded, and the learned Grotius fled and took refuge in France."

Thus it is seen that, while Pelagius and his followers were wasted by persecution in the commencement of the Calvinistic system under Augustine, the attempt to soften its hard features by Arminius was put down by the same method.

But, in spite of all such opposition, Arminianism gained ground, and the Arminian and Calvinistic systems have existed side by side in most Protestant communions. In the Church of England, and formerly in the Methodist churches, these two parties have existed. So in the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist churches, there has always been a division in reference to the tenets of Calvinism, some holding them strictly according to Augustine and Calvin, and others more or less modifying their sterner features by various theories and expositions.

The main point of difference between these two classes is in reference to that most disheartening and deplorable tenet of men's entire inability to "amend their depraved nature," or even to "dispose themselves for its amendment." The strict Calvinist maintains that the mind of man is so entirely ruined in its nature that no one but the Author of mind can rectify it, while he can in no way be moved to this act of mercy (justice?) by any thing the unrenewed creature can do. The Arminian sects hold that, though the "natural man" is utterly incapable of any acceptable moral action in himself, yet, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, he is endowed with "a gracious supernatural ability," by which he can accept the offers of salvation. This, it is supposed, is a statement that most Arminians would accept as expressing their views.

In our own country, the earliest leader of an attempt to modify the Calvinistic system was the celebrated metaphysician, Jonathan Edwards. While maintaining, as did Arminius, the foundation theory of an utterly depraved mental constitution of the race as a penalty for the first act of disobedience, he first labored to prove this penalty to be just, inasmuch as in some mysterious way the whole race existed in Adam, and sinned just as he did, thus becoming the authors of their own mental ruin and incapacity.

And inasmuch as our moral nature revolts from the infliction of penalties for not doing what there is no power to do, he originated a metaphysical theory to this effect: that, in spite of the injury resulting from this first sin of the whole race, there is full power and obligation in every human being to obey all that the laws of God demanded, but that man is unwilling instead of unable. This unwillingness is the result of that first sin of the race; and so great is its pertinacity, that no man ever did or ever will feel or act right in a single case, from the beginning to the end of life, until "regenerated by the Holy Spirit." Neither will they do any thing "to amend their depraved nature," or to "dispose themselves to its amendment;" nor will any man, before "regeneration by the Holy Spirit," do a single thing that has even any tendency to gain this Divine aid, but it is all dependent on "sovereign, unconditional election." Still worse, the more efforts an unrenewed man makes to love and obey God, the more wicked he grows, because he is voluntarily resisting increased light and obligation in refusing to regenerate himself, which, on this theory, he had full power to do.

As it respects God, this theory, indeed, relieves his character very essentially; but as to affording any comfort to man, it only adds a new thorn to wound sensitive consciences. For no man could possibly help feeling that when, according to High Calvinism, he had no power at all to do right, he was relieved from some portion of obligation, even if, six thousand years ago, he did join Adam in that sinful repast. But President Edwards and his followers took away this small alleviation, and put the whole blame entirely on the depraved and guilty creature, both for the ruin of the fall and the refusal to remedy the evil.

This attempt to prove that God does not require men to perform what they have no power to do, has been regarded as a most terrific heresy by the strict Calvinist, while for nearly a hundred years New England and the whole Presbyterian Church have been agitated by it. Again and again, some of the wisest and best of their clergy have been arraigned for this heresy, with the threatened or inflicted penalty of loss of character, profession, and daily bread for themselves and their families. Three times the author has seen a revered parent thus arraigned. And in these ecclesiastical trials, she has herself heard otherwise sensible persons maintaining that men were required by their Maker to do what they had no power of any kind to do, under the penalty of eternal damnation, and that it was a dangerous heresy to maintain that God did not thus require it.

Another attempt to modify the Augustinian dogma is found in the work entitled "The Conflict of Ages," by the Rev. Edward Beecher. The theory there presented was first started by the great and learned Origen in the third century, and has been advocated by individuals ever since. It assumes the entire and fatal depravity of the mental organization, but relieves the Creator of all blame by assuming that every human mind was created with a perfect mental organization, and placed in the most favorable circumstances possible in a pre-existent state; and yet the same sad results then occurred as our race are approaching, viz., the existence of two classes of minds, the holy and the sinful. Meantime this world was prepared as a merciful arrangement to afford a second probation to those who ruined themselves in the pre-existent state.

This theory entirely relieves the Creator of all blame, but gives no other help or comfort to the miserable race of man. It certainly is a comfort to feel that our Maker is not a being who ruins his creatures in the very process of creation, and then exposes them to eternal, hopeless misery as the consequence of it. But whoever believes this pre-existent theory takes the load of a guilty conscience for all he considers as wrong in his own mental constitution, and for all the dreadful consequences.