Wilbur Fisk

“ Even in human governments, where the rulers can have no knowledge of the individuals who will transgress, or of the nature and extent of the transgressions, the principles and plan of government undergo no change to accommodate themselves to the contingent acts of the subjects. How absurd, then, to suppose that the all-wise Ruler of the universe will be subject to disappointment, unless he predestinate the transgressions of sinners, and the obedience of his saints! ”

“ Why do not some of the reprobates, in the use of natural ability, repent and get to heaven? Because they have not the moral power. Why do not some of the elect, in the use of the same ability, fall into sin and finally perish? Because God makes and keeps them willing in the day of his power—that is, he irresistibly imparts to them this moral power. Thus, by means of this, which he keeps in his own hands he executes his decrees. For God, of set purpose, so constituted this natural power, that it does not “work” without Divine efficiency. By moral power; therefore, natural power is controlled. ”

“ If misery had been the exciting cause, then as all were equally miserable, he would have elected them all. Is such a decree of election founded in love to the suffering object? No: it is the result of the most absolute and omnipotent selfishness conceivable. It is the exhibition of a character that sports most sovereignly and arbitrarily, with his Almighty power, to create, to damn, and to save. ”

“ We say, on the contrary, that man is utterly unable to choose the way to heaven, or to pursue it when chosen, without the grace of God. It is grace that enlightens and convinces the sinner, and strengthens him to seek after and obtain salvation, for “without Christ we can do nothing.” Let the candid judge between us, then, and decide which system most robs our gracious Redeemer of his glory, that which gives man a native and inherent power to get to heaven of himself, or that which attributes all to grace. ”

“ I frankly acknowledge I cannot tell how the mind acts in its volitions. And let it be understood that the motive theory, with all its other embarrassments, has this one in common with ours.—Can its advocates tell me how motives act upon the mind? True philosophy is an analysis of constituent principles, or of causes and effects, but the origin of these relations and combinations is resolvable only into the will of the Creator. ”

“ Of course government, by executing decrees, is another thing altogether from government by executing laws. But there is another kind of government. It is that efficient control of a superior, by which a being or an act is made to be what it is, in opposition to non-existence, or a different existence. Now this appears to be precisely the kind of government alluded to when it said, “God executes his decrees by powerfully governing all the actions of his creatures.” That is, he efficiently produces and controls all the responsible volitions, good and bad, of the moral universe. ”

“ All, therefore, who hold to the unconditional election of a part of mankind to eternal life, must, to be consistent with themselves, take into their creed, the “horrible decree” of reprobation.—They must believe that in the ages of eternity God determined to create men and angels for the express purpose to damn them eternally! That he determined to introduce sin, and influence men to commit sin, and harden them in it, that they might be fit subjects of his wrath! ”

“ And can the perceptions be changed, until God changes them? To answer either or both of these questions in the affirmative, would be to give up the doctrine of motives. To answer them in the negative, would be to entail upon the doctrine all that I have charged upon it. The advocates of the theory may have their choice. Nor yet, again, will it destroy the force of this argument, to say “man has an unholy nature; and this is the reason why the motives presented influence him to sin; therefore the guilt is chargeable upon himself, and God is clear.” ”

“ Why, Saul of Tarsus! are you not conscious that you have understanding, conscience, and will? Why make such an exclamation? Who shall deliver you? Deliver yourself. No! such philosophy and such theology were not known to this writer, neither as a penitent sinner, nor as an inspired apostle. “I thank God, through Jesus Christ my Lord.”—“The law of the spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law [the controlling power] of sin and death.” ”

“ It wields an entire ascendancy over every attribute of the mind; and the will, and the fancy, and the understanding, with all the countless variety of their hidden and fugitive operations, are submitted to it. It gives movement and direction through every one point of our pilgrimage. At no moment of time does it abandon us. It follows us to the hour of death, and it carries us to our place, and to our everlasting destiny in the region beyond it!!!” These quotations need no comment; if they do not come up to all we have ever charged upon this doctrine, there is no definite meaning in words. ”

“ For aught we can see, God might determine to make a particular planet or not to make it, and in either case the perfection of his nature is not affected. But to know, is so essential to him, that the moment he ceases to know all that is, or will be, or might be, under any possible contingency, he ceases to be God. Is it not absurd, then, to say the least, to make an essential attribute of Deity depend upon the exercise of his attributes?—the Divine prescience depend upon his decrees and determinations? ”

“ What important theory is there in philosophy, politics, morals, or religion, against which some apparently plausible objection may not be urged? But the inquiry in each case should be, Are those objections fatal to the system? Or are the difficulties in the proposed system greater than in some other view of the subject? For reasonable men will refuse to be driven into the vortex of skepticism merely because there are some difficulties and obscurities in all subjects of faith, which the limitations to human vision will not permit us to penetrate. ”

“ It is said, I know, that all the embarrassment which man has to a right choice is a disinclination to moral good. But if this disinclination to good be derived and constitutional, it exists in the mind previous to any act of choice, and is therefore the very thing we mean—it is this very thraldom of the mind which utterly incapacitates it to choose good. If it be asked whether disinclination can ever be so strong as to destroy the freedom of the will to act in one particular direction? ”

“ And to show that Calvin did not consider the voluntary acts of a depraved sinner as proof of free will, he says, “Man has not an equally free election of good and evil, and can only be said to have free will, because he does evil voluntarily, and not by constraint;” and this he ironically calls “egregious liberty indeed! if man be not compelled to serve sin, but yet is such a willing slave that his will is held in bondage by the fettors of sin.” ”

“ But is it wrong for us to be prompted to action by those considerations which God himself urges upon us? If he attempts to excite our fears and hopes to prompt us to a course of self preservation, can it be wrong for us to be influenced by this means, and in this direction? I should hardly know how to hold an argument with a man that should assert this —and yet this sentiment is implied in the objection now under examination. Beside, these acts conditional to regeneration are not wholly, perhaps not chiefly, from motives of personal interest. ”

“ I have before stated, in substance, that in the material world there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as power; that the efficiency of the laws of nature is, in fact, the Divine energy operating in a uniform way. “Let it be granted,” a Calvinist might say, “that what we call the operation of second causes is universally the supreme Intelligence operating in a uniform way, and it is all we ask to defend our system. Then it will be granted, that in each volition of the human mind the operation of the will is nothing more than the energy of the Divine mind operating in a uniform way.” ”

“ To say a fallen man has natural power to make a right choice, because he has the faculties of his mind entire, is the same as to say that a paralytic man has the natural power to walk, because he has his limbs entire. It appears to me that the whole of this distinction, and the reasoning from it, proceed on the ground of a most unphilosophical analysis of mind and an unwarranted definition of terms. The simple question is, Has fallen man, on the whole, the power to make a right choice, or has he not? We say without grace he has not. ”

“ If, indeed, the sinner is to do nothing until God renews him, why is it necessary that he should first be awakened? Why is the command addressed to him at all? Why does not the Holy Spirit immediately renew the heart, while the transgressor is stupid in his wickedness, instead of calling after him to awake, flee, and escape for his life? ”

“ Why talk about a free agency when it is such an agency as must, by the constitution of God, lead inevitably to sin and ruin! That old, and in the premises, foolish reply, that man could do differently, if he chose, does not help the case. It is only saying, the nature of man is such that it is governed by his perceptions, and since “God is the determiner of perceptions, and perceptions the determiners of choices,” whenever God pleases to alter the perceptions so as thereby to change the choice, then, and not before, man can do differently. ”

“ I object to the sovereign control of the mind by motives. But in offering my objections, it should first be observed that no man, in his senses, it is presumed, will deny that motives have an important influence in determining our volitions. Nor is it necessary, in order to oppose the doctrine of the controlling power of motives, to deny that the power of volition may have been waked up to action, in the first instance, by motive influence, or that the mind ever after may, in all its volitions, be more or less under this influence. ”

“ It is not so in matter; the same causes will produce the same effects to the end of time. But we see many choose, without being able to give what, in their own estimation, is a valid reason; they did thus because they chose to do so; they act in defiance of the strongest motives, drawn from whatever source. We see the greatest possible caprice in the volitions of men; we see their minds starting aside, and putting on the greatest possible and unaccountable mental states, in a way and form that baffles all human calculation, and will for ever baffle it. ”

“ Even in common and worldly matters let a man try by an effort of the will to beget love where it does not exist, or to transfer the affections from one object to another, and how will he succeed? Will love and hatred go or come at his bidding? You might as well attempt, by an act of the will, to make sweet bitter, or bitter sweet to the physical taste. How much less can a man, by an act of the will, make all things new, and transfer the heart from the grossness of creature love to the purity of supreme love to God. The Apostle Paul has taught us his failure in this matter. ”

“ But voluntary preference does not necessarily imply such a free agency as involves moral responsibility. The mind may be free to act in one direction, and yet it may so entirely have lost its moral equilibrium as to be utterly incapable, of its own nature, to act in an opposite direction, and therefore not, in the full and responsible sense, a free agent. It is not enough, therefore, to say, “Free agency (of a responsible kind) consists in the possession of understanding, conscience, and will;” (see Christian Spectator for September, 1830;) ”

“ If the Creator should give existence to an intelligent being, and infuse into his created nature the elements of unrighteousness, and give to his faculties an irresistible bias to sin, and all this without providing a remedy, or a way for escape, then indeed all our notions of justice would decide that such a being ought not to be held responsible. But this is not the case with any of the sinful beings of God’s moral government.—Not of the fallen angels, for they had original power to stand, but abused it and fell—not of fallen man, for in the first place his is not a created depravity ”

“ The Scriptures abundantly teach, that to be saved, man must believe and obey; and hence they command and exhort men to believe and obey, and promise them the reward of eternal life if they do this, and criminate them, if they neglect it. But, according to the doctrine of free agency already explained, man’s obedience or disobedience, if it has any just relation to rewards and punishments, must rest, in its responsible character, upon the self -determining principle of the will. And if this view of the will be correct, there is an utter impossibility of an unconditional election. ”

“ This power of God knows no exceptions: it is absolute and unlimited. And while it embraces the vast, it carries its resistless influence to all the minute and unnoticed diversities of existence. It reigns and operates through all the secrecies of the inner man. It gives birth to every purpose, it gives impulse to every desire, it gives shape and colour to every conception. ”

“ Since, then, these negative arguments in favour of the theory that motives control the mind, are assertions and not proofs; and since the theory itself leads to fate, to atheism, to materialism, to conversion by mere moral suasion, to the subversion of human liberty and moral responsibility, we must believe the theory false. But against the theory of the spontaneous power of the mind, none of these objections lie. It accords too with consciousness; and is, in fact, the only theory on which the responsibility of a moral agent can be predicated. ”

“ If motives govern the mind, with absolute sway, all you need to convert a sinner, is to bring a motive strong enough to induce him to choose God as his chief good, and he is converted. Until you do this there is no conversion, it is impossible for the Holy Ghost to convert a sinner in any other way than by motives, for choice of good we are told is conversion; there is no choice without a motive, and the strongest motive governs choice absolutely; therefore motive is the omnipotent power that changes the sinner’s heart. This is the legitimate result of The Calvinistic premises. ”

“ According to the theory we are opposing, regeneration, strictly speaking, means nothing. The work of grace, by which a sinner is made meet for heaven, embraces two essential points, pardon and renewal. The former is not a positive change of character, but a relative change, from a state of condemnation to a state of acquittal. But as regeneration, if it have any appropriate meaning, cannot mean a mere change of relation, any construction or system that forces such a meaning upon it does, in fact, do it away. ”