On Calvinism

by William Hull

“From my childhood up,” he says, “my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom He would to eternal life, and rejecting whom He pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and to be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure. But never could give any account, how, or by what means I was thus convinced, not in the least imagining at the time, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God’s Spirit in it; but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it.” In this extraordinary passage, the most instructive he ever penned, he confesses, undesignedly but clearly, that his faith in the Calvinistic theology did not rest on those arguments by which he has confirmed so many others in that tremendous creed, but was the result of supposed supernatural illumination. The true solution would be, “Sit pro ratione voluntas!”

Much as we find to admire and revere in this eminent man, the history of his mind forbids us to rely on him with implicit confidence as an expositor of divine truth. His religion was exalted, his genius wonderful, but the subordination of his judgment to his imagination was an immense evil, producing an almost superstitious dread of the operations of his own mighty mind, suppressing its energies, its growth, and its expansion. He presents an example, not less of the weakness than of the majesty of human nature. We cease to wonder, when he describes the happiness of the spirits of the redeemed in heaven, as being derived, in part, from their listening to the groans and lamentations of lost souls in hell. Nor can we doubt, that if he had been born and educated a member of the Church of Rome, he would have lived and died, like Fenelon or Pascal, a splendid ornament of that impure communion, a conscientious advocate of that servile faith.

Calvinism has never had another advocate equally qualified with Edwards to vindicate its awful dogmata; and if, by his own confession, his most potent arguments would have failed to produce conviction in his own mind, without God’s special influence, we see reason to suspect the validity of these arguments, until we have proof that he did indeed receive from heaven miraculous illumination. Such special influence we may with propriety question, since a claim to inspiration can be supported only by the exercise of miraculous powers. Deny, therefore, the inspiration of this profound writer, of which there is no proof, and we have his own authority against the conclusiveness of his own arguments; since he confesses that by their cogency alone they are insufficient to produce conviction in opposition to our just and natural conceptions of the righteous character of God.

Let us not, therefore, crouch with timid servility to great names. The opinions of men of erudition, and genius, and holy zeal for religion, are to be examined with modest deference, but not to be received with implicit credulity. In the most enlightened and holy men, who, since the decease of the apostles, have served God and his Christ; in the fathers of the ancient Church; in those who headed the Protestant Reformation, and lived as saints, or died as martyrs; in Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, we discover humiliating proofs of imperfection and fallibility. And, while the fundamental truths of Christianity have been preserved in the Catholic Church, those truths have been mingled or associated with errors so injurious and degrading, that no blind faith is to be rested on any human authority. Let us uphold the majesty of divine revelation, and vindicate our right and our duty to interpret the sacred page—not by the traditions of fallible men, not by the metaphysics of the schools, not by the “special influences” which an enthusiastic mind may construe into divine teaching, and which may be pleaded, with equal truth or falsehood, for every form of error; but by a sober reference to those moral perfections of the Deity, and to those essential attributes of human nature, the knowledge of which lies at the foundation of all sound religious belief. These are to be learned from the Scriptures, and are the key to their right interpretation.

Edwards, incomparably the most able advocate of Calvinism, since the days of the reformer himself, is not a solitary example of the way in which a zealous pleader may, unwarily, betray and weaken his own cause.

Mr. Scott, in his “force of truth,” gives an account of his own conversion to Calvinism not very dissimilar to that of Edwards, and not in any degree more honourable to the cause he proposes to defend. The argument of that work may be summed up in few words. Mr. Scott entertained a great dislike of Calvinistic doctrines. He rejected the evidence by which they were supported, as being insufficient to establish a creed which appeared to him most objectionable. Yet, strong as were his prejudices against it, they ultimately gave way, and, therefore, Calvinism must be the truth. But, in both instances, the impression designed to be made on the mind of the reader is the same, that is, that the Spirit of God accomplished what the force of argument had failed to do. Mr. Scott, therefore, adds his testimony to that of President Edwards, confessing that Calvinism is not supported by proofs sufficient in themselves to carry conviction to the human mind, without special illumination from above; an illumination, which, assuredly, the religious opposers may as righteously claim, as the religious defenders of Calvinism. For what Christian man does not pray for the guidance of God’s good Spirit? The dispassionate reader of “The Force of Truth,” will naturally say, that the arguments for the Calvinistic creed were either sound or unsound. If the former, then Mr. Scott was either very obtuse or very obstinate to resist so long their power. If the latter, he acted with great weakness in yielding at length to insufficient evidence, on the score of an undefinable impulse. In either case, his name is divested of commanding authority in the view of reasonable men. Yet it can hardly be doubted, that this claim to special teaching from the fountain of wisdom and of truth, has done more, incalculably more, to awe the minds of men into submission, and thus to obtain currency for their opinions, than the joint confession of these popular writers, to the insufficiency of their own arguments, has availed to render suspected the force of their reasoning. The impression made on the generality of minds would be, that men so good, and so candid in confessing their own obstinacy, could not be mistaken, in believing themselves, at a subsequent period, to be inspired and infallible^[3].

The advocates of Calvinism differ remarkably from each other in the tone and spirit of their writings, as their habits of thought and feeling are modified by circumstances. The American divines of the school of Edwards have carried out his principles with unflinching consistency, not hesitating to impute to the Deity, in unqualified terms, the eternal decrees which fix the weal or woe of the human race for ever. The cold and heartless manner in which these men treat the subject, and the stoical apathy with which they contemplate the result of their hard metaphysics, are extremely remote from our usual conceptions of piety and humanity. Well might that superlative woman, Mrs. Susanna Wesley, say, “The doctrine of predestination, as maintained by rigid Calvinists, is very shocking, and ought utterly to be abhorred.” The dark spirit of inflexible wrath which the American Calvinists have imputed to the Deity, together with their coarse caricatures of the Gospel, may account for, but cannot justify, the terms in which Dr. Chancing has thought fit to assail the orthodox faith, confounding on all occasions scriptural Christianity, as held by the Catholic Church, with the dogmas of an extravagant creed. To understand his eloquent and indignant declamations, we must read the transatlantic expounders of the Calvinistic theology.

In general, the English writers of any name, are more guarded and less unfeeling. They do not at once and directly charge God with being the author of sin. The late Dr. Williams of Rotherham composed a voluminous work on the subject, entitled “equity and sovereignty,” in which he gives, what he considers, a new theory of the origin of moral evil. To redeem the divine character from the imputation of harshness in the decree of reprobation, he supposes mankind under a necessary tendency to moral defection, as dependent and created beings; and that it was in mere equity, that the wicked were left, not decreed, to perdition. The hypothesis of Dr. Williams is already exploded. It was examined and refuted by the Rev. William Parry, of Wymondly, in a piece entitled “Strictures on the Origin of Moral Evil.” For reasoning, acute, profound, and perspicuous, both metaphysical and moral, this work has seldom been surpassed. And the devout and courteous spirit in which it is written, presents an example, beautiful and instructive, of dispassionate controversy.

“Upon a review of the argument,” Mr. Parry writes, “there appear to be strong reasons for considering the whole of Dr. Williams’ hypothesis, to account for the origin of evil, as highly objectionable, and worthy of rejection; because it is founded on a false principle, which identifies physical and moral tendency; is incompatible with the nature and phenomena of mind; involves the existence of an antecedent fate or absolute necessity, which controlled the divine operations; is inconsistent with the natural and moral perfections of God, and the scriptural account of the state in which man was created; is expressed in obscure and inapplicable language; and is so far from agreeing with equity, that, when taken together, it represents the Divine Being as having at first, created intelligent and accountable creatures with such powers as would enable them to sin, but with none which would enable them to avoid it.”

The theory of Dr. Williams found favour with many Calvinists, because it assumed somewhat of a philosophical aspect, and was put forth as a clear “demonstration.” But some of its ablest defenders have since abandoned it to that oblivion, from which no efforts can save an elaborate speculation, ungrounded in reason or revelation, and repugnant to common sense.