3 De Festis Paschalibus, homilia vii.
4 Augustine, De Haresibus, lxxix.
The reasons why we do not believe that our race fell into helpless depravity and ruin in the sin of the first man are, in essence, briefly these: First, we have never been able to perceive any proof whatever of the truth of that dogma; and certainly the onus probandi rests on the side of such an assumption. It arose partially from a misinterpretation of the language of the Bible; and so far as it has a basis in Scripture, we are compelled by force of evidence to regard it as a Jewish adoption of a pagan error without authority. Secondly, this doctrinal system seems to us equally irreconcilable with history and with ethics: it seems to trample on the surest convictions of reason and conscience, and spurn the clearest principles of nature and religion, to blacken and load the heart and doom of man with a mountain of gratuitous horror, and shroud the face and throne of God in a pall of wilful barbarity. How can men be guilty of a sin committed thousands of years before they were born, and deserve to be sent to hopeless hell for it? What justice is there in putting on one sinless head the demerits of a world of reprobates, and then letting the criminal go free because the innocent has suffered? A third objection to this whole view an objection which, if sustained, will utterly annihilate it is this: It is quite possible that, momentous as is the part he has played in theology, the Biblical Adam is not at all a historical personage, but only a significant figment of poetry. The common belief of the most authoritative men of science, that the human race has existed on this earth for a vastly longer period than the Hebrew statement affirms, may yet be completely established. It may also yet be acknowledged that each distinct race of men had its own Adam.5 Then the dogmatic theology, based on the fall of our entire race into perdition in its primary representative, will, of course, crumble.
The second doctrine of Christian salvation is a modification and limitation of the previous one. This theory, like the former, presupposes that a burden of original sin and natural depravity transmitted from the first man had doomed, and, unless prevented in some supernatural manner, would forever press, all souls down to the realms of ruin and woe; also that an infinite graciousness in the bosom of the Godhead led Christ to offer himself as an expiation for the sins, an atoning substitute for the condemnation, of men. But, according to the present view, this interference of Christ did not by itself save the lost: it only removed the otherwise insuperable bar to forgiveness, and presented to a chosen portion of mankind the means of experiencing a condition upon the realization of which, in each individual case, the certainty of salvation depends. That condition is a mysterious conversion, stirring the depths of the soul through an inspired faith in personal election by the unchanging decree of God. The difference, then, in a word, between the two methods of salvation thus far explained, is this: While both assume that mankind are doomed to death and hell in consequence of the sin of Adam, the one asserts that the interference of Christ of itself saved all souls, the other asserts that that interference cannot save any soul except those whom God, of his sovereign pleasure, had from eternity arbitrarily elected.6 This scheme grew directly out of the dogma of fatalism, which sinks human freedom in Divine predestination. God having solely of his
5 Burdach, Carus, Oken, Bayrhoffer, Agassiz. See Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, vol. iv. p. 28; Mott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 338.
6 Confession of Faith of Westminster Divines, ch. iii. sect. 3.
own will foreordained that a certain number of mankind should be saved, Christ died in order to pay the penalty of their sins and render it possible for them to be forgiven and taken into heaven without violating the awful bond of justice. The benefits of the atonement, therefore, are limited to the elect. Nor is this to be regarded as an act of severity; on the contrary, it is an act of unspeakable benevolence. For by the sin of Adam the whole race of men, without exception, were hateful to God, and justly sentenced to eternal damnation. When, consequently, he devised a plan of redemption by which he could himself bear the guilt, and suffer the agony, and pay the debt of a few, and thus ransom them from their doom, the reprobates who were left had no right to complain, but the chosen were a monument of disinterested love, because all alike deserved the endless tortures of hell. According to this conception, all men being by their ancestral act and inherited nature irretrievably lost, God's arbitrary pleasure was the cause, Christ's voluntary death was the means, by which a certain number were to be saved. What individuals should compose this portion of the race, was determined from eternity beyond all contingencies. The effect of faith and conversion, and of the new birth, is not to save the soul, but simply to convince the soul that it is saved. That is to say, a regenerating belief and love is not the efficient cause, it is merely the revealed assurance, of salvation, proving to the soul that feels it, by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that it is of the chosen number. The preaching of the gospel is to be extended everywhere, not for the purpose of saving those who would otherwise be lost, but because its presentation will awaken in the elect, and in them alone, that responsive experience which will reveal their election to them, and make them sure of it, already foretasting it; though it is thought that no one can be saved who is ignorant of the gospel: it is mysteriously ordered that the terms of the covenant shall be preached to all the elect. There are correlated complexities, miracles, absurdities, in wrought with the whole theory, inseparable from it. The violence it does to nature, to thought, to love, to morals, its arbitrariness, its mechanical form, the wrenching exegesis by which alone it can be forced from the Bible,7 its glaring partiality and eternal cruelty, are its sufficient refutation and condemnation. If the death of Christ has such wondrous saving efficacy, and nothing else has, what keeps him from dying again to convince the unbelieving and to save the lost? What man is there who, if he knew that, after thirty years of suffering terminated by a fearful death, he should rise again into boundless bliss and glory while rapt infinitude rung with the paans of an applauding universe, and that by means of his humiliation he could redeem countless millions from eternal torture, would not with a joyous spring undertake the task? And is a common man better than Christ?
The third general plan of Christian salvation which we are to consider differs from the foregoing one in several essential particulars. It affirms the free will of man in opposition to a fatal predestination. It declares that the atonement is sufficient to redeem not only a portion of our race, but all who will put themselves in right spiritual relations with it. In a word, while it admits that some will actually be lost forever, it asserts that no one is doomed
7 Schweizer, Die Lehre des Apostels Paulus vom erlosenden Tode Christi. Theologische Studien und Kritiken, Jahrg. 1858, heft 3.
to be lost, but that the offer of pardon is made to every soul, and that every one has power to accept or reject it. The sacrifice of the incarnate Deity vindicated the majesty of the law, appeased the wrath of God, and purchased his saving favor towards all who, by a sound and earnest faith, seize the proffered justification, throw off all reliance on their own works, and present themselves before the throne of mercy clothed in the righteousness and sprinkled with the blood of Christ. Here the appropriation of the merits of Christ, through an orthodox and vivifying faith, is the real cause as well as the experimental assurance of salvation. This is free to all. As the brazen serpent was hoisted in the wilderness, and the scorpion bitten Israelites invited to look on it and be healed, so the crucified God is lifted up, and all men, everywhere, are urged to kneel before him, accept his atonement, and thus enable his righteousness to be imputed to them, and their souls to be saved. The vital condition of salvation is an appropriating faith in the vicarious atonement. Without this no one can be saved. Thus with one word and a single breath whole nations and races are whiffed into hell. All that the good hearted Luther could venture to say of Cicero, whom he deeply admired and loved, was the kind ejaculation, "I hope God will be merciful to him!" To those who appreciate it with hostility, and look on all things in its light, the thought that there can be no salvation except by belief in the expiatory death of Christ, hopelessly dooming all the heathen,8 and all infant children, unless baptized in a proxy faith,9 builds an altar of blood among the stars and makes the universe reek with horror. Other crimes, though stained through with midnight dyes and heaped up to the brim of outrageous guilt, may be freely forgiven to him who comes heartily to credit the vicarious death of the Savior; but he who does not trust in that, though virtuous as man can be, must depart into the unappeasable fires. "Why this unintelligible crime of not seeing the atonement happens to be the only sin for which there is no atonement, it is impossible to say." Though this view of the method, extent, and conditions of redemption is less revolting and incredible than the other, still, it does not seem to us that any person whose mental and moral nature is unprejudiced, healthy, and enlightened, and who will patiently study the subject, can possibly accept either of them. The leading assumed doctrines common to them, out of which they severally spring, and on which they both rest, are not only unsupported by adequate proofs, but really have no evidence at all, and are absurd in themselves, confounding the broadest distinctions in morals, and subverting the best established principles of natural religion.10