THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION.

PART II.

THE NEGATIVE:

OR,

A REVIEW OF DR. ADAMS' AFFIRMATIVE “SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.”

BY REV. SYLVANUS COBB.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

In entering upon a work of so great magnitude as this which lies before us, our self-distrust leads us to press near in prayer to the Father of lights, that we may lose our weakness in the majesty and might of Christian truth. We may as well, here in the outset, state the real question before us, in such form that the reader may be possessed from the beginning of a just conception of its nature, in its relations to the honor of God and the interests of human existence. It is, whether the creation of God, and his system of moral government, shall so eventuate, as to make the result of creation upon the whole a catastrophe, and the ultimate employment of the mass of his children the lamenting of existence, cursing Him who made

them, and howling in infinite torments. For the affirmative of this tremendous question, arguments variously classified, scholastically arranged, and ingeniously conducted, by one of the most naturally talented, theologically learned, and practically expert Doctors of the popular schools, we have had the moral courage to spread out in our columns before our thousands of readers; and now it devolves upon us as a bounden religious duty to search these arguments-in the fear of God and love of truth. And we seriously believe, and are confident that our readers generally, who, with prayerful candor, accompany us in this review, will see with us, that the Doctor's arguments, though sincerely estimated by himself as sufficient, do wholly fail of showing the Scripturalness" of the doctrine in question.

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We say not this to forestall the judgment of the people, but to elicit a scrutinizing attention to what we expect to show. We have looked the arguments through, and the fact is, that the learned Doctor has assumed his main positions. And we have a fraternal apology to present on his behalf, forefending the impeachment of his moral integrity, for this assumption of his main positions. These assumed positions of his, have, for centuries, been established and cardinal doctrines of the nominally Orthodox Councils and Synods of the Church. This is an apology for his assumption of the ground principles of his arguments, which could not be pleaded on our behalf for any assumption whatever. All our positions it is required of us that we prove.

In respect to the settled theological authority which we so fraternally make our learned friend's apology for taking his main positions for granted, Miss Catharine Beecher, daughter of the venerable Dr. Lyman Beecher, in her "Common Sense Applied to Religion," gives some interesting historical facts. Speaking of the theological warfare which raged between Augustine and Pelagius, of the Fifth Century, Miss Beecher says:

"At this period all matters of doctrine were settled by ecclesiastical councils. The first council on this matter was in Arica, and led by Augustine, they condemned the views of Pelagius. The two next councils were in Palestine, and both sustained his teachings. Next, in Italy, the Pope, then at the early period of pontifical power, first sustained Pelagius, but finally, by the exertions of Augustine and his party, was led to condemn him with the greatest severity. Finally, the emperors were enlisted against him with their civil pains and penalties. The result was, Pelagius and his followers suffered the perils and miseries of civil ecclesiastical persecution. And thus,' says the historian, 'the Gauls, Britons, and Africans by their councils, and the emperors by their edicts, demolished this sect in its infancy, and suppressed it entirely.'

"It is very probable that, if Pelagius had had the power and adroitness of Augustine, the edicts of the emperors and decrees of councils would have maintained his views, and those of Augustine would have gone into obscurity. But ever since that day the organized power of the Latin, Greek, and Protestant churches has been arrayed to sustain the theories thus inaugurated.”— pp. 299, 300.

So, then, courtly intrigue on the part of the Endless-miserian* Augustine, wielding the bloody power

*This is an adjective of our own coining, which we compounded many years ago, to supply a want in descriptive terms. It is not designed as an opprobrius epithet, expressive of personal disrespect, any more than the term Trinitarian, Únitarian, Calvanist, or Universalist. There has

of semi-barbarous western princes, vanquished by physical force the Universalist Pelagius* and his. confriers, and established for the Church a system of orthodoxy, which, to this day, commands the unquestioning reverence of thousands and millions, including learned and good men, rolling on in the fearful majesty of Juggernaut's car, loved and adored while it crushes the heart and outrages the moral nature. This is not declamation. Our readers will see it to be sober fact, as we attend, shortly, to the effort of our worthy friend on that side to adjust the obnoxious doctrine to the benevolent pleadings of his moral sense.

But as we have quoted from the talented Miss Beecher in relation to the adroitness of Augustine, in procuring the decrees of Councils and enlisting the swords of tyrants for the suppression of Pelgianism, we will present her very pleasant but reasonable speculations on the probable results of Pelagius' suc

not been in use any single term which properly designates believers in endless punishment. The epithets Partialist, and Limitarian, convey an implication which those to whom they are applied may not acknowledge just. But Endless-Miserian expresses precisely the characteristic, in respect to doctrine, by which the opposers of Universalism are distinguished. This epithet, therefore, we apply to Augustine, to avoid a circumlocution which would spoil the measure of the sentence.

*The Universalist Pelagius. The ecclesiastical historians of the church have not yet been interested to bring out the Universalism of Pelagius. His advocacy of the unity in opposition to the trinity of the Godhead, and of the unselfishness and benevolence of the Divine nature and government, and of man's susceptibility of spiritual_culture, has been well known. But Rev. J. C. Pitrat, member of the French Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a convert from the Roman Catholic Priesthood, who reads ecclesiastical history in all languages as familiarly as we read our mother tongue, in a series of original papers published in the Christian Freeman, Vol. XVIII. pp. 125, 129, 145, shows that Pelagius held the finite nature of sin, the disciplinary character of punishment, the purpose of Christ's mission to save from sin and not from any arbitrary penalty of the law, and the parental character and blessed result of the Divine administration.