| Man, losing all, To expiate his treason hath nought left, But to destruction sacred and devote He with his whole posterity must die; Die he or justice must; unless for him Some other able, and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction; death for death. |
By Adam's fall, God's justice and mercy were placed in conflict. God could not follow his mercy without violating his justice. Christ by his satisfaction gave the Father the right and power (nudum jus Patri acquirebat, said the Arminians) to follow his mercy, and to make with man the covenant of free justification by faith, whereby, if a man has a sure trust and confidence that his sins are forgiven him in virtue of the satisfaction made to God for them by the death of Christ, he is held clear of sin by God, and admitted to salvation.
This doctrine, like the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, involves a whole history of God's proceedings, and gives, also, first and almost sole place to what God does, with disregard to what man does. It has thus an essential affinity with Calvinism; indeed, Calvinism is but this doctrine of original sin and justification, plus the doctrine of predestination. Nay, the Welsh Methodists, as is well known, have no difficulty in combining the tenet of election with the practices and most of the tenets of Methodism. The word solifidian points precisely to that which is common to both Calvinism and Methodism, and which has made both these halves of English Puritanism so popular,—their sensational side, as it may be called, their laying all stress on a wonderful and particular account of what God gives and works for us, not on what we bring or do for ourselves. 'Plead thou singly,' says Wesley, 'the blood of the covenant, the ransom paid for thy proud stubborn soul.' Wesley's doctrines of conversion, of the new birth, of sanctification, of the direct witness of the spirit, of assurance, of sinless perfection, all of them thus correspond with doctrines which we have noticed in Calvinism, and show a common character with them. The instantaneousness Wesley loved to ascribe to conversion and sanctification points the same way. 'God gives in a moment such a faith in the blood of his Son as translates us out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness.' And again, 'Look for sanctification just as you are, as a poor sinner that has nothing to pay, nothing to plead but Christ died.' This is the side in Wesley's teaching which his followers have above all seized, and which they are eager to hold forth as the essential part of his legacy towards them.
It is true that from the same reason which prevents, as we have said, those who know their Bible and nothing else from really knowing even their Bible, Methodists, who for the most part know nothing but Wesley, do not really know even Wesley. It is true that what really characterises this most interesting and most attractive man, is not his doctrine of justification by faith, or any other of his set doctrines, but is entirely what we may call his genius for godliness. Mr. Alexander Knox, in his remarks on his friend's life and character, insists much on an entry in Wesley's Journal in 1767, where he seems impatient at the endless harping on the tenet of justification, and where he asks 'if it is not high time to return to the plain word: "He that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him."' Mr. Knox is right in thinking that the feeling which made Wesley ask this is what gave him his vital worth and character as a man; but it is not what gives him his character as the teacher of Methodism. Methodism rejects Mr. Knox's version of its founder, and insists on making the article of justification the very corner-stone of the Wesleyan edifice.
And the truth undoubtedly is, that not by his assertion of what man brings, but by his assertion of what God gives, by his doctrines of conversion, instantaneous justification and sanctification, assurance, and sinless perfection, does Wesley live and operate in Methodism. 'You think, I must first be or do thus or thus (for sanctification). Then you are seeking it by works unto this day. If you seek it by faith, you may expect it as you are; then expect it now. It is of importance to observe that there is an inseparable connection between these three points: expect it by faith, expect it as you are, and expect it now. To deny one of them is to deny them all; to allow one is to allow them all.' This is the teaching of Wesley, which has made the great Methodist half of English Puritanism what it is, and not his hesitations and recoils at the dangers of his own teaching.
No doubt, as the seriousness of Calvinism, its perpetual conversance with deep matters and with the Bible, have given force and fervency to Calvinist Puritans, so the loveliness of Wesley's piety, and what we have called his genius for godliness, have sweetened and made amiable numberless lives of Methodist Puritans. But as a religious teacher, Wesley is to be judged by his doctrine; and his doctrine, like the Calvinistic scheme, rests with all its weight on the assertion of certain minutely described proceedings on God's part, independent of us, our experience, and our will; and leads its recipients to look, in religion, not so much for an arduous progress on their own part, and the exercise of their activity, as for strokes of magic, and what may be called a sensational character.
In the Heidelberg Catechism, after an answer in which the catechist rehearses the popularly received doctrine of original sin and vicarious satisfaction for it, the catechiser asks the pertinent question: 'Unde id scis?'—how do you know all that? The Apostle Paul is, as we have already shown, the great authority for it whom formal theology invokes; his name is used by popular theology with the same confidence. I open a modern book of popular religion at the account of a visit paid to a hardened criminal seized with terror the night before his execution. The visitor says: 'I now stand in Paul's place, and say: In Christ's stead we pray you, be ye reconciled to God. I beg you to accept the pardon of all your sins, which Christ has purchased for you, and which God freely bestows on you for his sake. If you do not understand, I say: God's ways are not as our ways.' And the narrative of the criminal's conversion goes on: 'That night was spent in singing the praises of the Saviour who had purchased his pardon.'
Both Calvinism and Methodism appeal, therefore, to the Bible, and, above all, to St. Paul, for the history they propound of the relations between God and man; but Calvinism relies most, in enforcing it, on man's fears, Methodism on man's hopes. Calvinism insists on man's being under a curse; it then works the sense of sin, misery, and terror in him, and appeals pre-eminently to the desire to flee from the wrath to come. Methodism, too, insists on his being under a curse; but it works most the sense of hope in him, the craving for happiness, and appeals pre-eminently to the desire for eternal bliss. No one, however, will maintain that the particular account of God's proceedings with man, whereby Methodism and Calvinism operate on these desires, proves itself by internal evidence, and establishes without external aid its own scientific validity. So we may either directly try, as best we can, its scientific validity in itself; or, as it professes to have Paul's authority to support it, we may first inquire what is really Paul's account of God's proceedings with man, and whether this tallies with the Puritan account and confirms it. The latter is in every way the safer and the more instructive course to follow. And we will follow Puritanism's example in taking St. Paul's mature and greatest work, the Epistle to the Romans, as the chief place for finding what he really thought on the points in question.
We have already said elsewhere,[19] indeed, what is very true, and what must never be forgotten, that what St. Paul, a man so separated from us by time, race, training and circumstances, really thought, we cannot make sure of knowing exactly. All we can do is to get near it, reading him with the sort of critical tact which the study of the human mind and its history, and the acquaintance with many great writers, naturally gives for following the movement of any one single great writer's thought; reading him, also, without preconceived theories to which we want to make his thoughts fit themselves. It is evident that the English translation of the Epistle to the Romans has been made by men with their heads full of the current doctrines of election and justification we have been noticing; and it has thereby received such a bias,—of which a strong example is the use of the word atonement in the eleventh verse of the fifth chapter,—that perhaps it is almost impossible for any one who reads the English translation only, to take into his mind Paul's thought without a colouring from the current doctrines. But besides discarding the English translation, we must bear in mind, if we wish to get as near Paul's real thought as possible, two things which have greatly increased the facilities for misrepresenting him.
In the first place, Paul, like the other Bible-writers, and like the Semitic race in general, has a much juster sense of the true scope and limits of diction in religious deliverances than we have. He uses within the sphere of religious emotion expressions which, in this sphere, have an eloquence and a propriety, but which are not to be taken out of it and made into formal scientific propositions.