William Hull

“ Even when they express their persuasion of their own interest in “special grace,” it is more in the spirit of men who are conscious of being the favoured objects of capricious tyranny, than of that serene and hopeful and cheering confidence which inspires the devout heart, when it contemplates through a happier medium the beneficent and universal Father. Nor is this unnatural. The moral character of the Deity, as misrepresented by Calvinism, both unsettles all our ideas of rectitude, and renders insecure our hold upon Infinite Goodness. ”

“ Destroy this persuasion, and virtue is despoiled of its loveliness, vice of its deformity. But it cannot be destroyed. It is the voice of nature. The Creator has so formed us, that we cannot throw off from ourselves the sense of responsibility, nor regard our fellow creatures as unfit for praise or blame, for love or hatred. Men treat each other as free agents in all the transactions of human life, and God administers the government of the world, on the principle that mankind are capable of self-control, regulating their conduct by the hope of reward or fear of punishment. ”

“ If the unguarded preaching of “the doctrines of grace,” and the scanty instruction given on the great duties of practical religion, have contributed to the demoralized state of the people, let it not be supposed that other causes have been wanting to swell the tide of corruption. From the Revolution, toleration has been gradually enlarged, until all salutary restraints have been swept away, and the glorious liberties of our country have degenerated, by a fatal abuse, into unbridled licentiousness. The press is daily infusing poison into the public mind. ”

“ If the Creator in the construction of the human mind rendered it naturally, morally, absolutely impossible, that man should maintain his obedience to the divine law under the circumstances in which he was placed—the act of transgression, be it what it may, must be traced to the will and intention of the Deity—the effect, sin, guilt, condemnation, undefinable misery, diffused over the face of the creation, and coextensive with the numberless generations of the family of man—the cause, God; that Being who is perfect reason, perfect goodness, light without darkness, love without malevolence ”

“ As churchmen we contemplate with reverence, our protestant, episcopal, and apostolical communion. We believe that it rests on “the foundation of Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself the chief corner-stone.” And we contend for the right of the Church to demand from her own ministers faith in her doctrines, and to model her own worship, and adjust her own ceremonies according to her own holy discretion. But we compel no man to come in. We love and cherish the chartered and constitutional liberties of our country ”

“ Or, perhaps, this gloomy doctrine produces a sullen suspicion, vague and undefined, of the rectitude of God, and thus alienates still more those hearts which are already adverse to the Divine government.
Of all the mischievous extravagances of opinion, none has produced more fatal consequences, than the notion, that God takes particular delight in selecting the vilest of men for the object of his electing love; and that the gross sinner is better prepared for the grace of Christ, than they who have walked in the paths of virtue. ”

“ Contrasted with this monstrous compound of impiety and absurdity, which makes infinite goodness the eternal source of infinite misery, there is wisdom in the Manichæan doctrine of two conflicting principles, holding a divided dominion over the universe, and contending, one for the production of the universal degradation and wretchedness, the other, for the purity and bliss of all intellectual and moral beings! ”

“ Whether we contemplate this fearful character of the Deity, or endeavour to realize the scenes which await the departure of lost souls, or attempt in imagination to identify ourselves with the happy spirits of the redeemed, who have escaped, they know not why, the general destruction of all that is dear to man, we must be sensible that all the ordinary conceptions of the human mind are comparatively powerless for pity, or terror, or intense expectation of what is to come. ”

“ Get clear views of the divine sovereignty, believe that Christ died for you in particular, construe the persuasion of your safety into an especial witness of the Holy Spirit; doubt nothing, fear nothing; look entirely out of yourselves; and remember that there is a finished salvation for the elect; and all is well! This is Calvinism. And this is speculation. If repentance, self-government, virtue, and the duties of Christian piety and obedience are inculcated, these must be enforced on grounds not supplied by the predestinarian theology, and irreconcileable with that scheme of doctrine. ”

“ No human mind can be habituated to the contemplation of the divine conduct, as it is seen distorted by the predestinarian theology, and retain its just sentiments of what is right, what is just, what is honourable, what is lovely in goodness. The man who imitates the God of the Calvinist, that phantasm of a morbid or dreaming imagination, cannot fail to have his moral sentiments corrupted, and to become deceptive, shuffling, treacherous, and eventually insensible to the misery of others. ”

“ Although we may not be able to give a definition of freedom which may satisfy the philosopher, and although we may concede to the opposers of the freedom of the will, that virtue and vice—moral good and moral evil—are to be predicated, not of the cause, whether it be freedom or fate, from whence our volitions spring, but of the good or evil nature of the volitions themselves—in whatever way these questions are decided, or, if we leave them undecided, as being beyond the present grasp of the human intellect, men are unquestionably subjected by the Deity to the laws of a moral economy. ”

“ Hence results the consciousness of rectitude or guilt, and all the noble motives by which we are led to self-government and self-renunciation—from a sense of duty, and with a view to future happiness in the enjoyment of the divine approbation. But Calvinistic necessity destroys the majesty of the human mind, as “an arbiter enthroned in its own dominion, endowed with an initiating power, and forming its determinations for good or for evil by an inherent and indefeasible prerogative.” ”

“ In rejecting such a theory of religion, we reject not the fundamental doctrines of Christianity; we only vindicate them from objections, which, if unanswerable, are fatal; and we hold to the Gospel with a firmer conviction and a livelier faith, when we behold its accordance with the righteousness of the Divine administration and with the moral constitution of man. ”

“ Let the professor of Christianity give up his thoughts to eternal decrees, and special grace, and the soothing dream of irrevocable promises sealed to the heart by the clear witness of the Spirit, and the moral conflict with sin and temptation will languish with the salutary fear of danger. This is suited to the depraved indolence of man. All false systems of religion have in view the indulgence of this perilous but seductive peace. ”

“ Spiritual pride may assume the aspect of profound humility, and thus impose on its victim by the notion that he is only magnifying the sovereign grace of Heaven in his election to eternal life. But such is the weakness of human nature, that the consciousness of this high distinction needs to be chastened by very lofty views of the moral virtue required by Christianity, and by very humbling conceptions of our own, to prevent a false and dangerous elation of the heart. ”

“ But, all correct moral reasoning ranges on the side of freedom. In opposition to the subtle or forcible reasonings of the metaphysician, every individual can plead his inward consciousness of voluntary agency. He feels, he knows, that he is free. The exercise of the moral sense, the judgment which the mind pronounces on its own good or evil movements, the conviction of having done or neglected a duty, the calm satisfaction of the virtuous mind, and the fierce or sullen remorse of the criminal, are associated with the insuppressible persuasion of liberty. ”

“ This is true Christian charity, which tolerates error, hopes well of misinformed but sincere piety, breathes no malignant feelings, indulges in no haughtiness of conscious superiority; but, after all, holds firmly to its own persuasion of what is true and right, without the smallest approach to a compromise of principles even with honest and well-meaning error. This is the charity of the sound English churchman, and this charity lies at the foundation of the religious liberties of the British empire. ”

“ We oppose the moral constitution and history of man, to the plausible speculations of philosophy. In other words, the mere metaphysician is a fatalist; and his position, in the present state of our intellectual philosophy, can be successfully attacked only by an appeal to facts and consciousness, and by moral argument. That sound metaphysics and just moral reasoning cannot really be at variance is certain, since there cannot exist contradictory truths. Our metaphysics therefore are wrong, or there must be an unknown third principle, by which they are to be reconciled with our moral reasonings. ”

“ If there be truth in the preceding remarks, the degree of popularity which attaches to this view of religion, far from yielding a presumptive argument in its favour, is, at least, a reason for regarding it with suspicion. It has not the recommendation of being the faith of the most numerous portion of the wise, of the holy, of the virtuous. It appeals to the weaknesses rather than to the nobler principles of human nature. It can never be the sincere and cherished belief of an enlightened, community. ”

“ If the consciousness of freedom be a delusion, it follows that moral obligation, duty, reward, guilt, punishment, are delusions, and that religion, however salutary in its effects, is nothing better than a magnificent imposture.
Calvinism is an attempt to found the religion of Christ on the doctrine of necessity, and to accommodate its truths, which suppose and require free agency in man, to a dark and appalling fatalism. ”

“ I.—CALVINISM IMPUGNS THE MORAL CHARACTER OF THE DEITY. The existence of moral evil is a fact, not to be denied by any man who reverences his own understanding; and that it seemed fit to the Divine Wisdom to permit its introduction into the world, is equally beyond contradiction, unless we limit the divine power, and suppose that, by a necessity antecedent to the divine will, and controlling the divine conduct, the Deity himself acts, not spontaneously but from coercion. ”

“ By what infatuation are men induced to rely on any supposed distinctions in favour of themselves, when they have removed the only grounds of confidence in the righteous administration of the Deity?
It is an impressive feature in the works of rigid predestinarians, that their own minds seem to partake of the fearful gloom with which they depict the divine attributes. They appear awed and terror-stricken with the stern aspect of the great Being whose moral character they have distorted, until they tremble at the creations of their own imagination. ”

“ If wanton cruelty be consistent with Divine compassion, then may deception be reconciled with inviolable faith, and they, who deem themselves to be happy in the electing love of God, may awake at last to the fearful discovery, that, having indulged in the dream of special grace, they are only reserved for a destiny still more terrible than others, whom they had abandoned as reprobate to the sovereign wrath of God! ”

“ Calvinists of every persuasion, and not a soul besides! These are his “one body,” and this one body is “the church.” How beautiful, how noble, how godlike is the charity of the Church of England, which exists in unison with the love of truth, but embraces with Christian affection even those who have quitted her fellowship, contrasted with the drivelling and sectarian partialities of the Calvinist who pronounces every man who differs from himself to be no child of God! The charity of Mr. Noel resolves itself into Calvinistic exclusiveness and intolerance. ”

“ Who would not lament, that a mind thus tempered to pious confidence, should be taught by a pernicious creed to distrust its own interest in the love of God—a delusion which passed away only in death!
II.—CALVINISM IS NOT TO BE RECONCILED WITH THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN. Whatever extent we assign to the corruption of human nature, by which its moral powers have been impaired, or the soul disqualified for the due and proper use of those powers, it is plain that men are still capable of acting, and of being treated as the subjects of moral government. ”

“ His natural temperament was fostered throughout the whole period which moulds and fixes the character, by his holding little converse with human beings beyond the sphere of a particular religious community in an obscure American town, and by an almost uninterrupted contemplation of nature in her gloomy and awful forms, amid the silence of uncultivated plains, and the solitude of interminable forests. ”

“ On a subject, which has been so long and so laboriously investigated, and to the illustration of which the most vigorous and profound of human intellects have directed their energies, it would be vain to expect any novelty of argument. ”

“ It does not proceed on the assumption that all creeds are equally good, but that men of all creeds have a political right to follow the dictates of conscience, whether enlightened or erroneous, in matters purely spiritual, and that they are responsible only to God for their religious faith and worship; indulging, at the same time, a charitable persuasion of the sincerity and Christian goodness of multitudes who are believed to be labouring under mistaken views of truth. ”

“ The truth is, that Calvinism and a visible Church are incongruous ideas, and that no man, of whatever talent he may be possessed, can make them harmonize. The Calvinist believes, and is consistent in his belief, that the elect only are “the Church,” but since it is impossible to discriminate them from others, it is impossible to unite them in an exclusive visible fellowship. ”

“ And all we contend for is, that such a state of things can never be explained on the supposition of absolute predestination or inevitable necessity, founded on the irreversible decrees of Heaven. The reason appears on a moment’s consideration. The good or evil nature of the volition belongs, on this hypothesis, not to the created being, who is a passive instrument, without actual power—but to the Creator, who is the only real agent, as well as the efficient cause. ”

“ The instrument by which He accomplishes his purposes may be good or evil, the volitions of that instrument may be characterised by whatever qualities you please, still, a mere instrument is not an object of moral approbation or blame; no responsibility attaches to it, and the condition on which it acts is perfectly incongruous with all the ideas we have of reward or punishment. These are inapplicable to a state of fatalism. The volitions, and the actions they produce, are in reality those of the Deity. ”

“ At the same time its tendency, excepting in the case of a few sensitive and tender spirits, is to deaden the consciousness of guilt, to still the remonstrances of the self-convicted mind, and to enable men of no religion and of no morals to hear these doctrines proclaimed from the pulpit without any salutary disquietude of heart. They do not really believe them, or they find in them an apology for their corruption. It has sometimes been said, by way of severe reflection, of a moral sermon, that it could not be the Gospel, for that a Socinian might have heard it without offence. ”

“ Such opinions, although held by religious men, are dishonourable to the Scriptures, and needlessly degrading to the human mind.
4 “There can be no approaches towards regeneration in the antecedent temper of the heart. The moment before the change, the sinner is as far from sanctification, as darkness is from light, as death is from life, as sin is from holiness.” ”

“ And, while the fundamental truths of Christianity have been preserved in the Catholic Church, those truths have been mingled or associated with errors so injurious and degrading, that no blind faith is to be rested on any human authority. ”

“ But until we can detect the fallacies of the metaphysician, or supply the connecting link which is now wanting, we must rest in the unsatisfactory conclusion that abstract philosophy is with the necessarian, and that liberty and its ennobling consequences, moral agency, and moral responsibility, rest on the solitary basis of moral argument. ”

“ To this reasoning the Calvinist replies: “I acknowledge that men are morally, spiritually dead. But at the command of God I would preach to the dead: at his word the dead shall hear and live.” But this reply is irrelevant to the great points of the argument. It remains to be proved, that God would be just in punishing as a crime that spiritual death, of which, on the Calvinistic theory, He is the author;—that it is possible for infinite goodness to subject created beings to an inevitable necessity of breaking his laws, and then hand them over to perdition. ”