An attempt to exhibit the true theory of Christianity as a consistent and practical system

Front matter

AN ATTEMPT

TO EXHIBIT THE

AS A

Contents

CHAPTER L

The origin and design of the institution of Moral Evil, or its consistency with the benevolent attributes of the Divine Character ... 11

CHAPTER, n.

Preface

I should be indifferent to the warning of the voice of history, and blind to the peculiarities pertaining to the department of mind sought to be moved by the investigation into which I have entered in this volume, not to be alive to the peril of exposing my name to the obloquy of honest prejudices, and the censure of misguided zeal.

The most melancholy page in the book of history, is the extent to which Christian intolerance has been carried by the followers of the mildest and most forbearing of teachers. Zeal for the truth is productive of good ; but nothing is more hostile to the religion of the Saviour, than its unhappy marriage to the fell principle of intolerance. Zeal for the truth is the child of the Bible ; but intolerance is its counterfeit presentment.

The problem of human redemption, delivered to man clothed in the symbols of human ideas, and addressed to the understandings of men, is singularly, yet I do not say unaccountably, apt, in the investigation of it, to engender the most unamiable feelings of the human heart. With regard to this mighty problem, the whole human family, as a brotherhood, stand upon a common platform. As one of that number, I have herein ventured to lay my offering upon the common altar. The drama of human probation has had two acts — the Fall and the Restoration.

The Restoration has its subdivisions.

The common progenitors of the race had the unique and remarkable fortune of living under two probationary diss

PREFACE.

pensations: the one, peculiar to their primeval, sinless condition, and which terminated with the primal transgression ; and the other, a phase of the mediatorial, or Christian dispensation.

It is important to remember, that these two acts of the drama of salvation are but parts of the one experiment of free moral agency with the same race. If Adam, after his fall, and if the posterity of Adam, are the same identical race originally made by the finger of God, and are unchanged in their original natures, are we not thereby brought to consider the reason that had their natures been changed, there would have been a new experiment of distinct races ? In the answer to this question we are to look for the solution of the other question, whether the ruin of Adam, in consequence of his fall, was an infirmity of his moral, or of his spiritual nature, to which the remedy of the Christian dispensation scheme was applied.

These questions interest us all.

In this volume I have acted uj)on the supposition that the true view of the ruin of the fall, would simply be a true view of human depravity. A true view of the nature and extent of the damage of the fall, would plainly, it would seem, disclose just ideas of the nature and extent of the Christian remedy applied to the malady. Into the investigation of the moral malady produced by the sin of the fall, and into the character of the Christian remedy applied to that disease, I have entered very fully, and have been led to present some original views of the grave questions of human depravity and human redemption.

Other doctrines equally original and equally interesting, connected with the subject of the freedom of the human will, with regard to the scheme of the restoration, that have grown out of the attempt to fix the " limits of reason in spiritual matters," are advanced and discussed under their appropriate

PREFACE.

heads. As I have said, I lay the result of this investigation upon a common altar. I have not presumed to demolish without erecting also.

The reader will find the substituted Theory, and the Scripture and the reasons upon which it is founded for support, fully submitted to his closest examination and most rigid scrutiny.

My object has been primarily to reconcile the philosophy of reason with the spiritual laws of the Gospel.

I ask those, if there chance to be such, who may be disposed to examine it, to measure it by the word of God, and weigh it in the scales of reason, influenced by the pure love of the truth ; and if it should go down in such an examination, it ought to go down, even though it should fall with " waxen wings" from the height of confident security, to which, in my judgment, it is elevated, to a ruin " without a wreck behind."

All I desire is, in the language of Pollok, that " Providence may be approved."

THE AUTHOR.

1*

THE

Chapter I

Showing- the Origin and Design of the Institution of Moral Evil, or its Consistency with the Benevolent Attribute of the Divine Character,

The question of the origin of moral evil lias hitherto been the node of Theology. The doctrine of the existence of two independent self-existing principles, the one good, and the other evil, called the Manichsean doctrine, that prevailed so extensively in the East, adopted by the Gnostics, and by the majority of later philosophers and theologians, lies at the bottom, in prominency more or less distinct, of every system introduced to explain the origin of evil. It is the parent of the supposed distinction between causing or appointing evil, and merely permitting it. The difficulty upon this subject has been, in reconciling the existence of moral evil with the attribute of infinite goodness in a first creating cause properly esteemed to be omnipotent. The error in the first instance originated in branding the institution under consideration as evil, when in truth it is not only a wise but a benevolent one.

Infidels say, with a degree of plausibility which the Christian world has hitherto been unable to dispel, that it is pre-

TRUE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

posterous to suppose that there can be a God of perfect power and infinite purity upon the supposition of the existence of the institution of moral evil. A malevolent institution, prevailing in the creation of a being of infinite purity and infinite power, it is contended, with absolute conclusiveness, is an absurdity upon its veiy face.

Hence, they pressed the conclusion upon the Christian world, that it was necessary, either to circumscribe God's character, and to allow him to be less than infinite in power and goodness, or to divest evil of its evil character.

The hypothesis of Leibnitz, borrowed from Plato, and still, strange as it may appear, very popular in the school of certain orthodox theological writers, is not less dishonoring to God as a being of infinite purity and omnipotent power, than the existence of Arimanes in the Persian theology is an impeachment of the power and goodness of Ormuzd. Arimanes, the principle of evil in the Persian theology, enjoys a divided empire with Ormuzd, the principle of good, and of course both the power and the goodness of Ormuzd are circumscribed to the extent of the influence of the evil principle.

The theory of Leibnitz assumes that matter is essentially imperfect and intractable, and that hence evil must necessarily attach to every material creation. If God be a God of infinite power, it is certainly in his capacity to correct the imperfection of matter. If he be a being of infinite goodness also, he could and would have avoided all connection with a material so intractable as matter is assumed to be. Creation was optional. God was omnipotent.

It is maintained by the advocates of this school, that God has given us the very best of all possible worlds. But if any thing be impossible for God, he is clearly not infinite in power ; and, if creation was optional, he is not free from guilt, if the institution be other than benevolent. But the turning point in the theology we are now considering is, would not a

ORIGIN OF MORAL EVIL.

IS world without any evil be a better world than one with even the least ? If we were to imagine a being possessed of infinite goodness, under the guidance of infinite knowledge, about to construct a world, similar to our own in other respects, it would appear reasonable that he should prefer, in the first place, to create one without evil ; and, in the second place, that, possessed of those qualities, he would have the entire ability to exclude evil altogether. Yet the present theory of evil would regard both of those reasonable presumptions differently. The difficulty is attempted to be solved by contending that God, as infinitely good and infinitely wise, was under a kind of necessity to choose the best of possible worlds. The theory is shockingly undevout.

The fallacy of Archbishop King has been ably refuted by Lord Brougham, who, in his turn, has succeeded no better. The distinction between causing and permitting evil, is founded in the most ignoble conception of the character of God.

We hold that it is the height of folly to suppose that there is any difference, under the administration of the creative energy of a being of infinite goodness, possessed of wisdom and power, between causing and permitting evil. If the institution of evil be inconsistent with infinite goodness and power acting under the impulse of perfect knowledge, the fact, if admitted, at once impeaches the perfection of these several attributes of the divine character. Mr. Jonathan Edwards has embodied this repulsive doctrine in the language of agreeable imagery, and robed it in the sugar-coatings of a poetical comparison. He says that " there is a vast difference between the suns being the cause of the lightsomeness and warmth of the atmosphere, and brightness of gold and diamonds, by its presence and positive influence, and its being the occasion of darkness and frost in the night-time." If Mr. Edwards' Christianity would sanction a comparison between the exhibition of the original creative skill of an uncreated

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God of perfect attributes of power and wisdom, and the power of a material orb acting in obedience to decreed laws, his philosophy may be very well satisfied with the theory drawn from the idolatrous illustration. The argument might be a very good one for the sun, but is a very lame and impotent one for a God of perfect, unoriginated, unlimited goodness, characterized by wisdom and power. It is foreign from our purpose to expose the fallacy of the many theories of the origin of moral evil, proceeding from philosophers of the infidel school, and from theologians of the philosophical school.

In order to understand what moral evil is, and what was the end and object of its institution, we must know something of the nature of God. But where are we to obtain that knowledge ?

Theologians of the philosophical school have undertaken to inform us, that God is a being of infinite goodness, infinite knowledge, and infinite power.

The revealed word of God is the source of all the knowledge we possess of the character of the infinite Being. It does not sanction this philosophy ; upon the contrary, it declares that " God is Love." Christian philosophers have no warrant to improve upon this theology. They have no warrant to violate the law of logical language, and to disregard the positively revealed exposition of the essential element of God's character and essence, in order to maintain the absurdity of three infinite qualities 'or elements of character. If God be Love, then the characteristics of love are the characteristics of God, and vice verm. If God be infinite, essential Love, he can be infinitely essential nothing else. One infinite quality excludes any other infinite quality, by the very force of the term. If God be infinite Love, then the attributes of God are the attributes of infinite Love, and vice versa. Hence we say, that infinite Love includes the attributes of perfect wisdom and power, simply as necessarily implied conse-

ORIGIN OF MORAL EVIL.

quenees. If God be love, lie must be infinite Love necessarily, if he be infinite God ; and, in that case, perfect knowledge and perfect power are qualities necessary to constitute infinite love. That love must be clearly less than infinite, that lacks either perfect knowledge or perfect power. We cannot conclude otherwise. What other than an absurd idea can we form of an element of character claimed to be infinite, that is deficient in knowledge — the knowledge necessary, for example, to exercise this infinite quality to the best advantage ; or in power, such, for example, as the necessary power to carry into execution the purposes of this infinite quality to the proper extent and at the proper time ? That goodness is clearly not infinite, is clearly less than infinite, clearly circumscribed ; neither is it essential, that is, minus the knowledge necessary to exercise the goodness claimed to be infinite to the best advantage, or lacking in the power required in effecting the ends and designs of that good, or God, supposed to be infinite. Hence, it is manifestly unphilosophical to say. that God is a being of infinite love, and also of infinite power and wisdom. The Bible, in this respect, also the better philosophy, gives to us the true theology in the pregnant declaration, that " God is Love." Another weighty conclusion is likewise deducible from the scriptural declaration that God is Love ; and that is, that God is goodness essentially. "We cannot over-estimate the important relative consequences of this interesting deduction. If the declaration of the Scriptures, that God is Love, be admitted to its full extent, it follows that he is essentially love, and hence eveiy exhibition of that love that constitutes the character of God, must be an emanation from God, and must constitute a portion of God. If God be love, he is love in its original and underived character. The love of God's character being unoriginated, every exhibition of such love must be a derived principle of action. The love of God's character being essential and unoriginated, must necessarily

TRUE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

be disinterested ; because an interested love is a mixed, or a corrupted love. God's love being essential, is pure and unselfish ; or, in other words, is unmixed or uncorrupted, because it is essential. Whoever, therefore, exhibits an unmixed or an uncorrupted love, exhibits a derived element of God.

All the Calvinistic writers, from Calvin to Chalmers, concur in the truth of the doctrine, that God is the cause and only cause of all things. The first of these writers says, the " will of God is the necessity of things." There seems to be no doctrine more clearly taught in revelation than that God is the only cause. Wherever, therefore, we see an effect, we are, in virtue of the doctrine, to recognize in it either the direct or remote activity of the one cause. If the other doctrine be equally true, then the cause of all things is Love. Hence, love is the active, moving, causing principle in creation. God dwells in creation, in the form of infinite love ; love is the cause of all action. Now, love being the cause of action, may, in a created being, be directed to good or evil purposes. Love of evil in a created being causes evil actions, and love of good causes good actions. This brings into view the momentous distinction between a motive and a reason. Along with the doctrine of the existence of one first cause, comes the other necessary resultant doctrine of the derived or imparted cause of action observed in created spiritual, human, animal, and mechanical powers.

Hence there can be no such element in God's character as justice, understood as implying, " mum cuique" the rendering to others what is their due, or being governed by laws or principles of rectitude. Such an idea greatly degrades and diminishes the true character of God. A just being is a limited being. He is supposed to act from considerations or reflections, or from motives or antecedent laws. Whatever being acts from motives must be a created, a limited being. If God acts from motives, he is, and must unquestionably be,

ORIGIN OF MORAL EVIL.

1 7 a created God. The God that made the motives must be the greater God. It is illogical and inconsistent to hold that God acts from considerations of moral rectitude, when he is himself the unoriginated, essential, and infinite motive of love. God is the only motive, the only cause, the only original first vital energy ; hence there can be no antecedent vital energy. He cannot, consistently with this description of his character, act from a cause or a motive antecedent ; for the cause or motive of his acting would be the superior cause or motive. Now, justice is a principle very much inferior to that of infinite love ; nor could love be infinite that lacked the necessity of motives of action. The idea of justice founded upon any supposed subsisting rights of dependent existences is, in terms, antagonistical to the idea of infinite love, characterized by wisdom and power only limited and circumscribed by the one original, first-causing, infinite principle of love, that is, God himself. God being infinite love, acts as infinite love ; is love infinite in practical energy, manifested in created works or acts. He is love, the cause of motion, without beginning or end, characterized by eternity, and by infinite perfection within himself. Hence, with him there is neither past nor future, because these are terms that limit the infinity of his perfection.

Entertaining these views, we feel called upon to exhibit the fearful results of moral probation, the eternal loss of a human soul, as entirely consistent with infinite love. This we feel prepared to do upon scriptural and philosophical grounds.

If God be love essentially, every institution emanating from him must necessarily be disinterested — must be purely benevolent — must be unmixed or uncorrupted ; because, being essential love, operating as the causing principle, every act must be essentially holy. An essential quality negatives the possibility of tne essential quality of every thing else. If any thing else be essential, God's character of love cannot

TRUE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

be essential, because that other essential thing would necessarily modify or abridge the infinite quality of his character. There cannot be two essential things. Hence, if God be essential love, every thing else must be dependent or originated states or existences, or motives of action. There cannot be two distinct or independent existences of diverse character. To be less than essential is to be a subordinate thing. Hence, the knowledge and power of God being characteristics or qualities of an essential or infinite (for they imply the same meaning in this connection) quality or cause, must certainly be subordinate to the one only uncircumscribed quality, or imlimited essential ingredient.

We must not lose sight of the fact that there is but one God, although there are three manifestations of the principle. Hence the characteristics of God cannot be subordinate Gods. If God be love, wisdom and power must be qualities of love : then wisdom and power cannot be first causes. If there be but one first cause indicating the triune God, we must certainly run back through qualities or characteristics of the first cause in order to find the first cause. This first cause must be susceptible of being described by its qualities. He must have certain powers in order to constitute it a first cause. But the first cause and the certain powers or qualities of the first cause are as distinct as a man and his material body or house of habitation. Xow if we make knowledge infinite, it must be a cause. If we make power infinite it must be a cause. Then instead of one cause, we have three distinct and dissimilar causes. This makes three distinct and dissimilar Gods. Knowledge cannot be an infinite quality if it is deficient in the important ingredient of causing. It would be a mere lifeless inactive abstraction. The same may be said of power. If we make Power infinite, we make a God of it. If power be infinite, there can be no other infinite God, for one infinite God makes all other beings finite

OKIG-IX OF MORAL EVIL.

necessarily. Hence we must consider knowledge and power as the perfect attributes of God, lie being infinite love, and as subordinate to the infinite quality. Hence it is impossible for God to do an unloving thing, because he has neither the power nor the knowledge. This follows from the fact that God's knowledge and his power are qualities of love, and not independent qualities. God does not act by power, nor think by knowledge, but he is possessed of those qualities as his characteristics ; that is to say, infinite love comprises the proper amount and proper quality of knowledge and power to make up the character of infinite love ; but then it is the infinite love that is the causing principle, and hence would be incompetent either in power or knowledge to do violence to the supreme infinite, essential, and predominant causing principle of love.

Hence moral evil is a dependent or originated quality, because it is a distinct thing from the essential quality of God or of uncircumscribed love. It is hence a created thing. Now God being the Creator, he must have created moral evil, and moral evil must be purely a benevolent institution.

It is much easier to arrive at these general conclusions than philosophically to show the benevolent end and aim of the institution of moral evil.

If we are enabled to establish this latter proposition, in regard to which we have no apprehensions whatever, the term moral evil will have to be rebaptized. It will have to be called the law or divine institution of moral evil.

TTe say then God is infinite essential love. TTe say that infinite essential love comprehends perfect knowledge and perfect power.

With regard to the proposition that " God is love," Mr. Paley's argument, drawn from the voice of natural religion, has never been satisfactorily met and answered, and never will be. " Contrivance proves design," says he, " and the predominant ten-

TRUE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

dency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds in contrivances, and all the contrivances of which we have any acquaintance are directed to benevolent purposes. Evil no doubt exists, but is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance." We are to understand by this latter remark that evil for the sake of evil is never the object of contrivance, but we expect to show that the existence of evil has a benevolent design.

Having affirmed upon Scriptural authority that God is essential love, we now affirm that the necessary predominant desire of essential love is to give and receive love. Hence when God made man, he was moved thereto by the predominant desire of his essential character. Of course, so far it is only an inference that the predominant desire of infinite love is to give and receive love, since we can only know it by revelation. But upon this point the Scriptures are not silent. Here and in this connection we proceed with the investigation into the origin of moral evil by taking it for granted that God in making man was moved thereto by the desire to give and receive love. Hence man became a free agent, by which we mean that he was placed in circumstances that permitted him voluntarily either to give his love to God or not. Upon the supposition that in creating man God was moved thereto by the desire to give and receive voluntary love, moral evil became a necessary institution in order to the experiment of free moral agency, because only from a free agent could God receive love not the offspring of a prior decree. We could not have the experiment of free moral agency without the institution of moral evil. We are unable to perceive how free moral agency could otherwise be exhibited. Love, to be love, must be voluntary. A choice between good and evil becomes necessary in order to evince the voluntary character of love, and to vindicate it from the charge of being the effect of a fixed physical law or necessity. If

ORIGIN OF MORAL EYIL.

God desired voluntary love from his creatures, it became necessary for him to furnish the opportunity of choice. Had only good been instituted, the human family would have been good from a fixed law, precisely as trees, and flowers, and rivulets, and plants, and natural objects of every class are good from fixed laws. How could they, in the contingency of good being alone instituted, have made any other choice than the choice of God ? Hence goodness would have been a fixed effect, like the fixed effects of the laws of nature, and would not have been voluntary but mechanical. In this event we should have had no experiment of voluntary moral agency. Hence voluntary agency consists in the preference of good over evil. Hence it is nothing more than the giving a free love to God, when it was in man's power to have withheld this free love by bestowing it upon things constituted with the view that we might make this free choice. The commendable exercise of the freedom of moral agency is nothing more than the exercise of the supreme voluntary love of God, rather than the opposite supreme voluntary love of prohibited indulgences.

In a finite beino\ a beino* circumscribed in his action, the law of supreme voluntary love is testified in the voluntary preference or rejection of commands of the supreme law-giver. This lets us at once into an acquaintance with good and evil. There is nothing essentially good but the Supreme Being, and nothing essentially evil, because it is impossible there can be two distinct essential existences. Hence probationary good is what God has commanded, and is good because he is infinite Love ; and evil is what he has prohibited, and because he has prohibited it.

There is nothing essentially good but God. The experiment made with Adam in the first instance was the experiment of free choice, or of free love in a probationary trial in which there was instituted but one statute of moral evil.

TRUE THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

That was the prohibition of a certain fruit. This was as proper a test of free supreme love of God, or the opposite of free supreme love of evil, as the one now going on with his race under the Christian dispensation with respect to the moral law and Christian prohibitions. So long as Adam was influenced by the motive of supreme voluntary love of God, it was necessarily impossible for him to be a sinner. So long as love of God was supreme, a subordinate love in opposition to this supreme love, sufficient to control this' existing supremacy, would clearly have been an impossibility. "When Adam preferred to eat of the forbidden fruit, what was it but a clear declaration and acknowledgment that he had ceased to love God with a supreme voluntary love, and had fixed his choice upon the forbidden fruit — forbidden in order to give him this very opportunity, and his act was the proof that he loved the fruit supremely and God secondarily ? This is the test of free agency.

It is here necessary to notice the distinction between sin and evil.

Sin is the transgression of the law, or evil.

Evil is the prohibited institute. Sin is the act of man — evil the institution of God. God cannot sin, for the reason, among others, that being the Supreme Being, he cannot have a prohibition placed upon his action. Sin would never have entered into the world had Adam been governed by the motive of supreme voluntary love of God. When God made man, and endued him with capacity to love him supremely, with a voluntary affection, he was placed in a trial state in order to test this voluntary capacity, and a command or prohibition was placed upon him, or, in other words, moral evil was instituted ; and the very same experiment is now continued with Adam's children, only under a different system of prohibitory laws, and a different mode of intercourse with God. Moral evil is then an institution of God, and consists

ORIGIN" OF MORAL EVIL.

in certain commands revealed for the purpose of continuing the original experiment of free supreme love of God or its opposite.

We must not confound certain unhappy effects and consequences that were entailed upon the human family because of the failure in their first probationary estate in the persons of their federal representatives with evil. These distressing and unhappy consequences still continue to act oppressively upon mankind, but their existence in respect to the goodness of God are always to be considered in connection with the superior advantages of the new salvation dispensation gratuitously bestowed upon their posterity.

We propose to illustrate the view we have presented of the character and purpose of moral evil by a reference to a few instances of divine prohibitory enactments. And in thus doing this, we intend to take those instances most likely to militate against the soundness of our views.

Let us take the evil of drunkenness. — The moral evil of drunkenness consists in the prohibition against the intemperate use of alcoholic spirits. The sin of drunkenness consists in the violation of the prohibition. Aside from the prohibition, there would be no more moral evil in it, or sin in its use, than in the use of so much sea-water : — as a proof of which, God could divest alcoholic spirit of the principle of inebriation. The non-essential character of moral evil is plainly illustrated by the example of the evil of drunkenness. This evil might readily be banished from the creation of God in many ways ; as for example, by imparting to alcohol the qualities of sea-water ; or, by changing the physical organization of man, so that alcohol would have the same effect upon it that sea-water has. If the moral evil of drunkenness did not consist in the divine prohibition, and not in the consequences of the intemperate use of alcoholic spirits, aside from the prohibition, and not in the abstract acts, it would follow,