Edwards is thus in the singular position of a Pantheist who yet regards all nature as alienated from God; and in the treatise on Original Sin he brings out the more revolting consequences of that view by help of the theological dogma of corruption. He there maintains in its fullest sense the terrible thesis, that all men are naturally in a state of which the inevitable issue is their 'utter eternal perdition, as being finally accursed of God and the subjects of His remediless wrath through sin' (vi. 137). The evidence of this appalling statement is made up, with a simplicity which would be amusing if employed in a less fearful cause, of various texts from Scripture, quoted, of course, after the most profoundly unhistorical fashion; of inferences from the universality of death, regarded as the penalty incurred by Adam; of general reflections upon the heathen world and the idolatry of the Jews; and of the sentences pronounced by Jehovah against the Canaanites. In one of his sermons, of portentous length and ferocity (vol. vii., sermon iii.), he expands the doctrine that natural men—which includes all men who have not gone through the mysterious process of conversion—are God's enemies. Their heart, he says, 'is like a viper, hissing and spitting poison at God;' and God requites their ill-will with undying enmity and never-ceasing torments. Their unconsciousness of that enmity, and even their belief that they are rightly affected towards God, is no proof that the enmity does not exist. The consequences may be conceived. 'God who made you has given you a capacity to bear torment; and He has that capacity in His hands; and He can enlarge it and make you capable of more misery, as much as He will. If God hates anyone and sets Himself against him as His enemy, what cannot He do with him? How dreadful it must be to fall into the hands of such an enemy!' (vii. 201). How dreadful, we add, is the conception of the universe which implies that God is such an enemy of the bulk of His creatures; and how strangely it combines with the mild Pantheism which traces and adores the hand of God in all natural objects! The doctrine, it is to be observed, which is expanded through many pages of the book on Original Sin, is not merely that men are legally guilty, as being devoid of 'true virtue,' though possessed of a certain factitious moral sense, but that they are actually for the most part detestably wicked. One illustration of his method may be sufficient. The vileness of man is proved by the remark (not peculiar to Edwards), that men who used to live 1,000 years now live only 70; whilst throughout Christendom their life does not average more than 40 or 50 years; so that 'sensuality and debauchery' have shortened our days to a twentieth part of our former allowance.
Thus the Divine power, which is in one sense the sole moving force of the universe, is limited, so far as its operation upon men's hearts is concerned, to that small minority who have gone through the process of conversion as recognised by Edwards' sect. All others, heathens, infants, and the great mass of professed Christians, are sentenced to irretrievable perdition. The simplicity with which he condemns all other forms even of his own religion is almost touching. He incidentally remarks, for example, that external exercises may not show true virtue, because they have frequently proceeded from false religion. Members of the Romish Church and many ancient 'hermits and anchorites' have been most energetic in such exercises, and Edwards once lived next to a Jew who appeared to him 'the devoutest person that he ever saw in his life' (iv. 90); but, as he quietly assumes, all such appearances must of course be delusive.
Once more, then, we are brought back to the question, How could any man hold such doctrines without going mad? or, as experience has reconciled us to that phenomenon, How could a man with so many elevated conceptions of the truth reconcile these ghastly conclusions to the nobler part of his creed? Edwards' own explanations of the difficulty—such as they are—do not help us very far. The argument by which he habitually defends the justice of the Almighty sounds very much like a poor quibble in his mouth, though it is not peculiar to him. Our obligation towards God, he says, must be in proportion to His merits; therefore it is infinite. Now there is no merit in paying a debt which we owe; and hence the fullest discharge of our duty deserves no reward. On the other hand, there is demerit in refusing to pay a debt; and therefore any short-coming deserves an infinite penalty (vi. 155). Without examining whether our duty is proportional to the perfection of its object, and is irrespective of our capacities, there is one vital objection to this doctrine, which Edwards had adopted from less coherent reasoners. His theory, as I have said, so far from destroying virtue, gives it the fullest possible meaning. There can be no more profound distinction than between the affections which harmonise with the Divine will and those which are discordant, though it might puzzle a more consistent Pantheist to account for the existence of the latter. That, however, is a primary doctrine with Edwards. But if virtue remains, it is certain that his theory seems to be destructive both of merit and demerit as between man and God. If we are but clay in the hands of the potter, there is no intelligible meaning in our deserving from him either good or evil. We are as He has made us. Edwards explains, indeed, that the sense of desert implies a certain natural congruity between evil-doing and punishment (ii. 430). But the question recurs, how in such a case the congruity arises? It is one of the illusions which should disappear when we rise to the sphere of the absolute and infinite. The metaphor about a debt and its payment, though common in vulgar Calvinism, is quite below Edwards' usual level of thought. And, if we try to restate the argument in a more congenial form, its force disappears. The love of God, even though imperfect, should surely imply some conformity to His nature; and even an imperfect love should hardly be confounded, one might fancy, with an absolute enmity to the Creator. Though the argument, which is several times repeated, appears to have satisfied Edwards, it would have been more in harmony with his principles to declare that, as between man and his God, there could be no question of justice. The absolute sovereignty of the Creator is the only, and to him it should be the conclusive, answer to such complaints. But, whatever may be the fate of this apology, the one irremovable difficulty remains behind. If God be the one universal cause of all things, is He not the cause of evil as well as good? Do you not make God, in short, the author of sin?
With this final difficulty, which, indeed, besets all such theories, Edwards struggles long and with less than his usual vigour. He tries to show, and perhaps successfully, that the difficulty concerns his opponents as much as himself. They can, at least, escape only by creating a new kind of necessity, under the name of contingency; for God is, on this theory, like a mariner who has constantly to shape his course to meet unforeseen and uncontrollable gusts of wind (v. 298); and to make the best of it. He insists upon the difference, not very congenial to his scheme, between ordering and permitting evil. The sun, he says (v. 293), causes light, but is only the occasion of darkness. If, however, the sun voluntarily retired from the world, it could scarcely evade the responsibility of its absence. And, finally, he makes the ordinary distinction, and that which is perhaps the best answer to be made to an unanswerable difficulty. Christ's crucifixion, he says, was so far bad as it was brought about by malignant murderers: but as considered by God, with a view to all its glorious consequences, it was not evil, but good (v. 297). And thus any action may have two aspects; and that which appears to us, whose view is necessarily limited, as simply evil, may, when considered by an infinite intelligence, as part of the general order of things, be absolutely good. God does not will sin as sin, but as a necessary part of a generally perfect system.
Here, however, in front of that ultimate mystery which occurs in all speculation, I must take leave of this singular thinker. In a frequently-quoted passage, Mackintosh speaks of his 'power of subtle argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed amongst men.' The eulogy seems to be rather overstrained, unless we measure subtlety of thought rather by the complexity and elaboration of its embodiment than by the keenness of the thought itself. But that Edwards possessed extraordinary acuteness is as clear as it is singular that so acute a man should have suffered his intellectual activity to be restrained within such narrow fetters. Placed in a different medium, under the same circumstances, for example, as Hume or Kant, he might have developed a system of metaphysics comparable in its effect upon the history of thought to the doctrines of either of those thinkers. He was, one might fancy, formed by nature to be a German professor, and accidentally dropped into the American forests. Far away from the main currents of speculation, ignorant of the conclusions reached by his most cultivated contemporaries, and deriving his intellectual sustenance chiefly from an obsolete theology, with some vague knowledge of the English followers of Locke, his mind never expanded itself freely. Yet, even after making allowance for his secluded life, we are astonished at the powerful grasp which Calvinism, in its expiring age, had laid upon so penetrating an intellect. The framework of dogma was so powerful, that the explosive force of Edwards' speculations, instead of destroying his early principles by its recoil, expended its whole energy along the line in which orthodox opinion was not injured. Most bold speculators, indeed, suffer from a kind of colour-blindness, which conceals from them a whole order of ideas, sufficiently familiar to very inferior minds. Edwards' utter unconsciousness of the aspect which his doctrines would present to anyone who should have passed beyond the charmed circle of orthodox sentiment is, however, more surprising than the similar defect in any thinker of nearly equal acuteness. In the middle of the eighteenth century, he is still in bondage to the dogmas of the Pilgrim Fathers; he is as indifferent to the audacious revolt of the deists and Hume as if the old theological dynasty were still in full vigour; and the fact, whatever else it may prove, proves something for the enduring vitality of the ideas which had found an imperfect expression in Calvinism. Clearing away the crust of ancient superstition, we may still find in Edwards' writings a system of morality as ennobling, and a theory of the universe as elevated, as can be discovered in any theology. That the crust was thick and hard, and often revolting in its composition, is, indeed, undeniable; but the genuine metal is there, no less unmistakably than the refuse.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The Works of President Edwards. Worcester (Mass.), 1808.
[8] The population of Massachusetts is stated at 164,000 inhabitants in 1742, and 240,000 in 1761.—See Holmes' Annals.
[9] These early New England patriarchs were blessed with abundant families. Edwards' father had eleven children, his paternal grandfather thirteen, and his maternal grandfather had twelve children by a lady who had already three children by a previous marriage.
[10] See an interesting article in the 'American Cyclopedia,' which has, however, this odd peculiarity, that it never mentions hell in discussing the theories of Edwards.