If there are embarrassments in the other case, and what theory of mind or matter has not its inexplicables?—these embarrassments are evidently of another kind; it is not the want of light to see how two antagonist principles can agree, the repugnancy of which must be the more apparent as light increases, but it is from the known limits to human knowledge. The principal embarrassment to the theory we defend is, we cannot understand the manner in which this faculty of the mind operates. But this is no more difficult than to understand the manner in which other faculties of the mind operate. To make this last statement clear, the reader is desired to recollect that the mind is not divided into parts and members like the body. When we talk of the faculties of the mind, we should understand the power that the entire mind has to act in this or that way. Thus we say, the mind has the faculties of will and of memory, that is, the mind, as a whole, has the powers of choosing, and of calling up its past impressions. Now if any one will tell me how the mind remembers, I will tell him how it wills; and I have the same right to ask him what causes the memory to remember, as he has to ask me what causes the will to will. In both cases it may be said, the mind remembers and wills because this is its nature —God made it so. When you analyze until you come to the original elements, or when you trace back effects until you come to first principles, you must stop.—And if you will not receive these first principles because you cannot explain them farther, then indeed you must turn universal skeptic. I frankly acknowledge I cannot tell how the mind acts in its volitions. And let it be understood that the motive theory, with all its other embarrassments, has this one in common with ours.—Can its advocates tell me how motives act upon the mind? True philosophy is an analysis of constituent principles, or of causes and effects, but the origin of these relations and combinations is resolvable only into the will of the Creator. It is so, because God hath made it so. And the nature of these relations is beyond the reach of the human mind. However impatient we may be at these restrictions, they are limits beyond which we cannot go; and our only duty in the case is, submission.
I am aware, however, that what I have now said may, without farther explanation, especially when taken in connection with a principle of philosophy already recognized, be considered as an important concession to my opponents. I have before stated, in substance, that in the material world there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as power; that the efficiency of the laws of nature is, in fact, the Divine energy operating in a uniform way. “Let it be granted,” a Calvinist might say, “that what we call the operation of second causes is universally the supreme Intelligence operating in a uniform way, and it is all we ask to defend our system. Then it will be granted, that in each volition of the human mind the operation of the will is nothing more than the energy of the Divine mind operating in a uniform way.”
To this I reply, Though matter, on account of its inertia, cannot in any proper sense be said to have power, yet the same is not true of mind. If any one thinks it is, then the supreme Mind itself has not power. In other words, as both matter and mind are inert, and cannot act only as acted upon, there is no such thing as power in the universe! and thus we again land in atheism. But if mind has power, as all theists must grant, then the human mind may have power. If any one can prove that it is impossible, in the nature of things, for the Supreme Being to create and sustain subordinate agents, with a spontaneous power of thought and moral action, to a limited extent, in that case we must give up our theory. But it is presumed no one can prove this, or will even attempt to prove it. We say, God has created such agents, and that they act, in their responsible volitions, uncontrolled by the Creator, either directly or by second causes. We are expressly told, indeed, that God made man “in his own image;” his moral image doubtless. Man, then, in his own subordinate sphere, has the power of originating thought, the power of spontaneous moral action: this, this only, is the ground of his responsibility. Will it be said that this puts man entirely out of the control of his Creator? I answer, By no means. It only puts him out of the control of such direct influences as would destroy his moral liberty. Does the power of moral action, independent of the magistracy and the laws, destroy all the control of the civil government over malefactors? How much less in the other case? God can prevent all the mischief that a vicious agent might attempt, without throwing any restraint upon his responsible volitions. It is thus that he “makes the wrath of man praise him, and the remainder of wrath he restrains.”
Let it be understood, then, from this time forward, by all, as indeed it has been understood heretofore by those who have carefully examined the subject, that when the Calvinists talk about “free will,” and “human liberty,” they mean something essentially different from what we mean by these terms; and, as it is believed, something essentially different from the popular meaning of these terms. They believe in human liberty, they say, and the power of choice, and we are bound to believe them; but we are also bound not to suffer ourselves to be deceived by terms. Theirs is a liberty and power of a moral agent to will as he does, and not otherwise. Ours is an unrestricted liberty, and a spontaneous power in all responsible volitions, to choose as we do, or otherwise.
Thus far I have examined the mind in its power of choosing good or evil, according to its original constitution. How far this power has been affected by sin, on the one hand, or by grace, on the other, is a question that will claim attention in my next.
[ NUMBER X. ]
MORAL AGENCY AS AFFECTED BY THE FALL, AND THE SUBSEQUENT PROVISIONS OF GRACE.
My last number was an attempt to prove that God created man with a spontaneous power of moral action; and that this was the only ground of his moral responsibility. It is now proposed to inquire how far this power has been affected by the fall, and the subsequent provisions of grace. The doctrine of the Methodist Church on these points is very clearly expressed by the 7th and 8th articles of religion in her book of Discipline.
1. “Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians vainly talk,) but it is the corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.”