COMMENT.

By the phrase "in Christ," I understand all the supernatural aids vouchsafe and conditionally promised in the Christian dispensation: and among them the spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive, were it only 115 that the knowledge of spiritual truth is of necessity immediate, and intuitive; and the world or natural man possesses no higher intuitions than those of the pure sense, which are the subjects of mathematical science. But aids, observe:--therefore, not by the will of man alone; but neither without the will. The doctrine of modern Calvinism, as laid down by Jonathan Edwards and the late Dr. Williams, which represents a will absolutely passive, clay in the bands of a potter, destroys all will, takes away its essence and definition, as effectually as in saying--This circle is square--I should deny the figure to be a circle at all. It was in strict consistency therefore, that these writers supported the Necessitarian scheme, and made the relation of cause and effect the law of the universe, subjecting to its mechanism the moral world no less than the material or physical. It follows, that all is nature. Thus, though few writers use the term spirit more frequently, they in effect deny its existence, and evacuate the term of all its proper meaning. With such a system not the wit of man nor all the theodicies ever framed by human ingenuity, before and since the attempt of the celebrated Leibnitz, can reconcile the sense of responsibility, nor the fact of the difference in kind between regret and remorse. The same compulsion of consequence drove the fathers of modern (or pseudo-) Calvinism to the origination of holiness in power, of justice in right of property, and whatever other outrages on the common sense and moral feelings of mankind they have sought to cover under the fair name of sovereign grace.

I will not take on me to defend sundry harsh and inconvenient expressions in the works of Calvin. Phrases equally strong and assertions not less rash and startling are no rarities in the writings of Luther: for catachresis 116 was the favourite figure of speech in that age. But let not the opinions of either on this most fundamental subject be confounded with the New-England system, now entitled Calvinistic. The fact is simply this. Luther considered the pretensions to free-will boastful, and better suited to the budge doctors of the Stoic Fur, than to the preachers of the Gospel, whose great theme is the redemption of the will from slavery; the restoration of the will to perfect freedom being the end and consummation of the redemptive process, and the same with the entrance of the soul into glory, that is, its union with Christ: "glory" (John xvii, 5), being one of the names or tokens or symbols of the spiritual Messiah. Prospectively to this we are to understand the words of our Lord, At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, (John xiv, 20:) the freedom of a finite will being possible under this condition only, that it has become one with the will of God. Now as the difference of a captive and enslaved will, and no will at all, such is the difference between the Lutheranism of Calvin and the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards.