ART. IX.-WESLEYANISM AND TAYLORISM-REPLY TO THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

THE Synopsis of our January Quarterly contains a running comment of our own on a review of Dr. Taylor's theology contained in the New Englander for November 1859. In our comment we commend the article and commend Dr. Taylor; but we charge the reviewer with imagining an unreal originality in Dr. Taylor, and with misstating and misrepresenting Mr. Wesley's opinions in order to exalt Dr. Taylor at his expense. To this the reviewer furnishes, in the New Englander for May 1860, a "Reply," in which reply he repeats the misrepresentation, reinforces it with additions, and aggravates it with a pretended proof of its truth. We now, in reply, reaffirm and extend our original allegation. The reviewer did misstate and misrepresent Mr. Wesley; he has repeated and aggravated the offense; and the object was to exalt Dr. Taylor at his expense; and of all these allegations we are now ready to furnish the proof.

We shall in our reply consider, first, our allegation that Mr. Wesley is misrepresented; and second, the truthfulness of our statement, that certain points claimed as original with Dr. Taylor are contained in Wesleyan Theology.

1. Said we truly that Mr. Wesley is misrepresented?

The point in regard to which the misrepresentation is alleged is the necessity of sin to the divine system. Mr. Wesley's doctrine as we aver is, in substance, that the sin of Adam has, through the divine interposition, been made the occasion of a greater good to men than could have otherwise existed in the system inaugurated on earth. The doctrine which the reviewer attributes to him is this: Sin is the necessary means of the highest good of the universe. If these two propositions are identical in meaning, and intentionally identical, then Mr. Wesley's doctrine has been truly represented; if they essentially vary, our first charge of misrepresentation is just and true. And now for our proof both of the object and the nature of the misrepresentation.

The object of the reviewer's entire article is to make a favorable presentation of Dr. Taylor and his theology. On the mooted point, the object was to show that Dr. Edwards, Dr. Hopkins, and Dr. West were all inferior to Dr. Taylor in the clearness and truth of their views. They held substantially that sin is for the best good of the system of divine government. And not only they but Wesley, and Mr. Bledsoe, who "is in sympathy with Wesley," were quoted as holding the same inferior view. Touching the object by

us alleged, then, we think, there can be no dispute. The reviewer's purpose was to exalt Dr. Taylor at the expense of Mr. Wesley. And now for the "misrepresentation" itself.

Let our reader now take the sermon of Mr. Wesley on Romans v, 15, and they will find his statements; every syllable of which, so far as this discussion is concerned, we indorse and adopt, and which they will find, we think, truly represented in the following summary. Wesley first states his purpose, which is to vindicate God in permitting Adam's sin, not to prove its necessity. By Adam's fall, he argues, good is attained for our race, contingent or positive, far above what the course of mere nature without divine interposition could have afforded. We have gained a capacity for higher holiness and happiness both in earth and heaven. For if Adam had not sinned Christ had not died; and all the blessings of the atonement system, of Christian faith, hope, and love, would have been wanting. The sufferings and trials which his sin has introduced would never have existed to develop our graces and enable us to attain a higher probationary reward. Moreover, had not Adam sinned every man would, perhaps, have been put upon his individual probation, and would have undergone a greater risk, with no provided remedy, of being finally lost. And in his sermon on Gen. iii, 19, Wesley maintains that the atonement through Christ, consequent upon the sin of Adam, is “the noblest theme of all the children of God on earth;" "yea, even of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven." We think we have now said it all; we adopt it all; and yet in full consistency with it all we promptly reject the maxim that sin is the necessary means of the highest good of the universe. If this is so very mysterious to the innocence of our reviewer, let him weigh the following suggestions:

1. Our earth is not the whole "universe." Throughout his article the reviewer writes precisely as if the universe and our earth were commensurate or identical. But our race is not the entire amount of God's kingdom. The angels, at least, fell before the fall of man; and hell is more ancient than our human world. Man was not the first sinner even in Eden, nor the eating the fruit the first sin; for these were preceded by the tempter and the temptation. The predicate true of this speck of earth is not necessarily true of the universe. There may have been countless million times more sin before Adam than since Adam. And it does not follow because his individual sin, so late in the multifarious history of the universe, has been overruled by God to place men on a higher plane of advantage than the level of mere nature, that, therefore, the first introduction of sin into the universe, or its existence on the whole in the universe,

is for the best good, and necessary to the best good, of the great whole. Nay, for aught we can say, the very fact that the existence of sin is a disadvantage to the universe may be the ground of God's turning it into an unthanked occasion of good to our little sphere. At any rate, there is a wide difference between saying that Adam's particular sin was overruled to the best good of a particular sphere, and saying that all sin or the first introduction of sin is necessary to the best good of the universe. The reviewer's assertion that Mr. Wesley maintained the latter because he maintained the former is, therefore, a misrepresentation.

2. Mr. Wesley does not assert that sin in general is for the good even of our human race, but that, specifically, Adam's sin, as being less than the sins that would otherwise have existed, was best for the race. Had not Adam sinned, every man, placed on his individual probation without a Saviour, would have perhaps sinned and been damned. Adam's sin and its .results are, therefore, better, because the amount of sin and damnation is less. The course of things which his sin initiated, by divine interposition, is better than the natural course of things under the relentless law of works. It is simply saying the less the sin the better. But for this reviewer to quote such statements as affirming the proposition that sin is primordially the necessary means of the best good of the universe, is a "misrepresentation."

3. To affirm that a particular sin is the necessary means in a given state of things of a particular highest good, is not the same as to affirm that sin is primordially necessary to the best good of the universe. Take an illustration. A profligate orphan child is taken up in the streets for theft, and the judge who sentences him to imprisonment, being struck with his abilities, takes him, after his release, and gives him an education. Thereby he is converted, becomes a minister, and is the means of "the highest good" to thousands by their salvation. Now, in the given state of things his theft was a necessary antecedent to this particular highest good. But to declare that such a proposition is equivalent to saying that primordially sin is necessary to the highest good of the universe is, we say, a misrepresentation. Equally a misrepresentation it is to charge such a proposition upon Mr. Wesley, because he affirmed that the particular sin of Adam was conditional to the particular highest good placed by God as sequent to it.

4. This view is confirmed by the fact that Wesley does not affirm that the final result is best for our entire race, or for a large majority. The good to the finally impenitent, being conditional, results in evil; being an aggravation, through their abuse of their "capacity," of

their final guilt and misery. So the highest good is not attained by the whole even of our own province of the universe.

5. Mr. Wesley does not affirm that the atonement, sequent upon Adam's sin, secured a higher good than some other special interposition might have secured. He treats the atonement as a divine speciality, over and above the level of mere naturalism; and he argues upon the tacit assumption that without the atonement the world is to proceed upon the level of naturalism. And his comparison lies not between the good produced by this divine interposition of the atonement and the good producible through some other interposition, or some one of a myriad of possible reconstructions, which the exhaustlessness of divine invention might superinduce; but between the good produced by this interposition and the uninterrupted course of the initiated system. He does not deny the possibility of any other interposition. He does not deny the possibility of countless reconstructions. He only argues that the present interposition, even though conditioned by a particular sin, is better than could have been upon the current of the undisturbed system. We submit, therefore, that to impute to him the maxim that sin is necessary to the highest good of the universe, is a palpable misrepresentation.

The necessity of sin to any result, we may add, was not the subject of Mr. Wesley's discussion, but the justification of God in the permission, not of sin, but, individually, of Adam's sin. On this last subject his amply sufficient argument was, that the atonement system is far superior to a fearful Christless system of works. And that is surely true. On the other subject, the necessity of sin to the world, a new and entirely different chapter would have been opened. There are, then, not merely two alternatives of comparison, but any number. Who knows that the divine wisdom is shut up to these two courses? Who knows, that if Adam had not sinned, and the grand atonement had not been superinduced upon the plane of human things, there were not other and still other possible systems of higher and still higher glory, any one of which might have overlain that level? God needs not man's sin;" and he is not tied to one or two ways of working out results of good and glory.

And as Mr. Wesley's argument needed but the two suppositions, namely, of the atonement and of Christless nature, so he had a right to paint the latter in its true characteristics in phrases which the reviewer has pompously quoted for a perverting purpose. Without atonement, under the law of works, there would have been a BLANK in our faith, hope, and love; there would have been less trial on earth, and less glory in heaven; atoning love, now the highest arch

angels' theme, would have been inexistent; and our individual probation might have sunk us all, or nearly all, in hell. Such was his subject, and such his fitting argument. And we confess it moves. our indignation to see this reviewer wrench his words from their true subject, and, by a snap judgment, fasten them upon a topic with which they have nothing to do, and extract from them in torn scraps, flaring with italics and capitals, a fictitious opinion upon a foreign question; the question, namely, whether God has not a boundless variety of resources for bringing out an equal or a higher glory besides these two.

On the question, whether Adam's sin was necessary to the best possible system for our own race, Mr. Wesley has not, so far as we know, left any recorded opinion. What "Wesleyan theology" teaches upon this point, however, is conclusively shown by the words of one who was its expounder and defender under the eye and sanction of Wesley himself, Fletcher of Madeley. That Adam's sin was not thus necessary was maintained by Wesleyan theology against its Calvinian opponents, the theological ancestry of this reviewer. The Calvinistic" objection" and the Arminian reply, as given by Fetcher, are as follow:

...

"OBJECTION SECOND. If God had not necessitated the fall of Adam, and secured his sin, Adam might have continued innocent; and then there would have been no need of Christ and of Christianity. Had Adam stood, we should have been without Christ to all eternity: but believers had rather be born in sin than be Christless: they had rather be sick than have nothing to do with their heavenly Physician, and with the cordials of his sanctifying Spirit.'* "ANSWER. To intimate that God necessarily brought about the sin of Adam, in order to make way for the murder of his incarnate Son, is as impious as to insinuate that our Lord impelled the Jews to despise the day of their visitation, in order to secure the opportunity of weeping over the hardness of their hearts. If God necessitated the mischief in order to remedy it, the gratitude of the redeemed is partly at an end; and the thanks they owe him are only of the same kind with such as Mr. Toplady would owe me if I wantonly caused him to break his legs, and then procured him a good surgeon to set them. But what shall we say of the non-redeemed? Those unfortunate creatures whom Mr. Toplady calls the reprobate? Are there not countless myriads of these, according to his unscriptural gospel? And what thanks do these owe the evil Manichean God, who absolutely necessitates them to sin, and absolutely debars them from any saving interest in a Redeemer, that he may send them without fail to everlasting burnings? How strangely perverted is the rational taste of Mr. T., who calls the doctrine of absolute necessity, which is big with absolute reprobation, absolute wickedness, and absolute damnation, a comfortable doctrine! a doctrine of grace! May we not expect next to hear him cry up midnight gloom as meridian brightness?

Mr. F. adds in a note: "Mr. Toplady dares not produce this objection in all its force: he only hints at it. His own words are, p. 130, Let me give our free-willers a very momentous hint, namely: that the entrance of original sin was one of those essential links on which the Messiah's incarnation and crucifixion were suspended.””