But Calvinism leads to the direct and inevitable conclusion, not only that God has permitted the fall of angels and of men, but that He is himself the original author of their defection, and of the guilt and suffering which have been incurred by disobedience. No subtlety of argument, no special refinements or metaphysical distinctions, no ingenious evasions can rescue from this fatal conclusion the Calvinistic exposition of the divine decrees. If the Creator in the construction of the human mind rendered it naturally, morally, absolutely impossible, that man should maintain his obedience to the divine law under the circumstances in which he was placed—the act of transgression, be it what it may, must be traced to the will and intention of the Deity—the effect, sin, guilt, condemnation, undefinable misery, diffused over the face of the creation, and coextensive with the numberless generations of the family of man—the cause, God; that Being who is perfect reason, perfect goodness, light without darkness, love without malevolence; who cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man; with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning! Contrasted with this monstrous compound of impiety and absurdity, which makes infinite goodness the eternal source of infinite misery, there is wisdom in the Manichæan doctrine of two conflicting principles, holding a divided dominion over the universe, and contending, one for the production of the universal degradation and wretchedness, the other, for the purity and bliss of all intellectual and moral beings!
The advocates of scriptural truth have not failed to expose, with holy indignation and eloquent remonstrance, the inconsistency of these views of the divine government with the entire scope and spirit of the evangelic economy of grace. While the love of God to a fallen world is the great theme of the apostolic ministry, and, in language too explicit to be misunderstood, the propitiation of Christ is said to be for the sins “of the whole world,”—while, in exact agreement with the consolatory declaration that God “delighteth not in the death of a sinner,” the apostles of Christ are commissioned to “preach the gospel to every creature,”—we are taught by Calvinism, that the God of truth is only mocking the great mass of his miserable creatures with a semblance of mercy, from whose tenderness they are excluded, and with promises and invitations which He never designed should be accepted by them. A dark and unrelenting fate has already sealed their destiny, and their perdition is rendered inevitable before they have committed those offences for which, as if in derision, they are commanded to repent, in order that they may escape the wrath of the Almighty. Thus, in total disregard of all that is holy and majestic in the character of the Deity, He is described as a Being invested with the most detestable of Satanic attributes, assuming the gentle affections of a father, only to exercise more effectually the wanton power of a tyrant, and treacherously inviting our confidence and our love, when, with such falsehood and cruelty, as the most debased of his creatures would not be able to perpetrate, He is only preparing victims for his inexorable malice.
Let it not be said, in opposition to this, that we are imperfect judges, in any particular case, of the rectitude of the divine procedures; that our ignorance renders our decision in such a case daring and presumptuous. We are not ignorant of what is meant either by justice or mercy. These moral qualities are essentially the same in nature, whether in created beings or in their Creator. The only difference is in degree. In the Deity they are infinite; and, if infinite justice and mercy are compatible with conduct which, on a smaller scale, would expose a human being to eternal infamy, then are we disqualified for all just conceptions of the character of God. If wanton cruelty be consistent with Divine compassion, then may deception be reconciled with inviolable faith, and they, who deem themselves to be happy in the electing love of God, may awake at last to the fearful discovery, that, having indulged in the dream of special grace, they are only reserved for a destiny still more terrible than others, whom they had abandoned as reprobate to the sovereign wrath of God! By what infatuation are men induced to rely on any supposed distinctions in favour of themselves, when they have removed the only grounds of confidence in the righteous administration of the Deity?
It is an impressive feature in the works of rigid predestinarians, that their own minds seem to partake of the fearful gloom with which they depict the divine attributes. They appear awed and terror-stricken with the stern aspect of the great Being whose moral character they have distorted, until they tremble at the creations of their own imagination. They write as men whose minds are rendered morbid with mysterious fears, rather than brightened into holy gladness, by a filial love of God. They seem to be vindicating with servile dread a character, whose wrath they would deprecate, and whose doubtful favour they would propitiate on their own behalf. Even when they express their persuasion of their own interest in “special grace,” it is more in the spirit of men who are conscious of being the favoured objects of capricious tyranny, than of that serene and hopeful and cheering confidence which inspires the devout heart, when it contemplates through a happier medium the beneficent and universal Father. Nor is this unnatural. The moral character of the Deity, as misrepresented by Calvinism, both unsettles all our ideas of rectitude, and renders insecure our hold upon Infinite Goodness.
That the mental disease of Cowper was intensely aggravated by depressing views of the divine character, which he received from Newton and others, and that the consolations which might have soothed his mind, from a scriptural view of the grace of the gospel, were neutralised or destroyed by his supposing himself the victim of an irreversible decree, is clear to every impartial reader of his most interesting and most melancholy life. Yet of his piety we have this touching proof, that, amidst the wildest aberrations of his intellect, and while oppressed with the conviction that he was numbered with the reprobate, his persuasion of the rectitude of the divine government never wavered; he acquiesced in the doom which he believed to await him; and declared that if it were the will of God that he should perish, he would not lift a finger to reverse his fate! Who would not lament, that a mind thus tempered to pious confidence, should be taught by a pernicious creed to distrust its own interest in the love of God—a delusion which passed away only in death!
[II.—CALVINISM IS NOT TO BE RECONCILED WITH THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN.]
Whatever extent we assign to the corruption of human nature, by which its moral powers have been impaired, or the soul disqualified for the due and proper use of those powers, it is plain that men are still capable of acting, and of being treated as the subjects of moral government. Calvinistic writers do themselves admit the turpitude of sin and the loveliness of virtue—that vice entails suffering, and that happiness is the consequence of a religious conformity to the will of God. That is, setting aside all special refinements by which they attempt to disprove that the present state of man is probationary, they confess that practically mankind are treated as accountable beings whose guilt is punished and their goodness rewarded. This broad and unquestionable fact defies controversy. Although we may not be able to give a definition of freedom which may satisfy the philosopher, and although we may concede to the opposers of the freedom of the will, that virtue and vice—moral good and moral evil—are to be predicated, not of the cause, whether it be freedom or fate, from whence our volitions spring, but of the good or evil nature of the volitions themselves—in whatever way these questions are decided, or, if we leave them undecided, as being beyond the present grasp of the human intellect, men are unquestionably subjected by the Deity to the laws of a moral economy. They are, sooner or later, rendered happy in exact proportion to their conformity to the commands of God, and miserable if they remain rebellious.
And all we contend for is, that such a state of things can never be explained on the supposition of absolute predestination or inevitable necessity, founded on the irreversible decrees of Heaven. The reason appears on a moment’s consideration. The good or evil nature of the volition belongs, on this hypothesis, not to the created being, who is a passive instrument, without actual power—but to the Creator, who is the only real agent, as well as the efficient cause. The instrument by which He accomplishes his purposes may be good or evil, the volitions of that instrument may be characterised by whatever qualities you please, still, a mere instrument is not an object of moral approbation or blame; no responsibility attaches to it, and the condition on which it acts is perfectly incongruous with all the ideas we have of reward or punishment. These are inapplicable to a state of fatalism. The volitions, and the actions they produce, are in reality those of the Deity. To Him they belong, and to Him alone. On this critical and decisive point all the great Calvinistic writers break down. While they award to human beings the treatment due to moral agents, they deny to them the attributes without which they cannot be responsible for their actions.
To beings under moral government, personal agency is essential; but Calvinistic fatalism reduces all agency to that of the Deity alone. The human soul is moved mechanically by impulse from without, and passively yields to an irresistible power.