PAGE THE BASLE SESSION OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE...... Rev. JOHN F. HURST, D.D., President of Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J. SHALL EDUCATION BY THE STATE BE EXCLUSIVELY SECULAR? 299 Rev. C. H. PAYNE, D.D., President of Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio. METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. JANUARY, 1880. ART. I.—WESLEYAN SYNERGISM AN ESSENTIAL OF ORTHODOX CATHOLICITY. LUTHARDT: Die Lehre vom Freiem Willen und seinem Verhältniss zur Gnade, SCHAFF: Creeds of Christendom. DORNER: Die Geschichte der Protestantischen Theologie. STANLEY: History of the Eastern Church. Ἡ Καινη Διαθηκη. SHEDD: History of Doctrine. NEANDER: Church History. HERZOG: Encyklopädie. LICHTENBERGER: Encyc, des Sciences Rel. How does man recover from sin? Is he active, or passive, in the process? Is his conversion a something that is simply done to him? or does he himself co-work in it? Does the responsibility for his conversion or his non-conversion rest, exclusively upon himself? or does it rest upon God? Does the grace of God visit all men equally? or is it given in more. abundant measure to a select few? Did the fall entirely annihilate the image of God in man? or does there still linger in depraved man some vitality of the God-consciousness, which may serve as a basis for his moral reconstruction? The answer of Wesleyan Arminianism to these varied forms of a single question is thus: The fall of Adam introduced such disorder into human nature as to render it morally certain that all men, if left without gracious help, would freely fall into sin, and incur personal guilt. But this disorder, or deFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.—1 pravity, with which all men are born, is not to them personal sin, and hence is not punishable. It is of the nature of an inherited misfortune. Hence, if the propagation of the fallen human race is permitted at all, divine justice (not simply divine goodness, but divine justice) will feel bound to impart to all men a complete remedy for their hereditary misfortune. This remedy is furnished by the general presence of the Spirit of God, and furnished alike to every soul that is born into the world. This presence of the Spirit so counteracts the bondage of hereditary depravity as to raise every child of Adam into the conditions of a just probation, so that he is now abundantly able freely to elect between sin and righteousness, and thus to save or ruin his own soul. This impartation of the Spirit to all who are born into the world may, in an uncritical way, be called a grace, but only in the same loose way in which the original gift of conscience or of freedom of wil might be likewise so called. That, the non-giving of which would violate divine justice, is not properly a grace, but a simple justice. The result is that every descendant of Adam, on first awaking to rational moral life, finds his hereditary depravity so far paralyzed as to constitute no longer a fatal bondage unto sin. He can, by the powers with which he finds himself already possessed, resist this bondage. It is only by the non-using of these powers that he incurs personal guilt, and thus transforms. his hereditary misfortunes into a fatalistic bondage to sin-fatalistic until counteracted, upon repentance, by special grace properly so called. The question, What is the moral ability of the natural man? cannot, therefore, be answered without some defining of terms. The purely natural man, as he would have descended from Adam without the general gift of the Spirit, is a pure abstractum, a mere theological bugbear. He does not, and never did, exist. Divine justice forbade it. The only real man with whom theology has any thing to do is the empirical man of history. Now, with this man, the only real man, the influence of the Spirit of God is congenital. It is a part of the moral endowment with which he finds himself furnished on first awaking to moral self-consciousness. In virtue of this endowment he is able to choose, obey, and love God at the outset, and to ask for gracious help in the further progress of his life. Should he, however, fail to profit by his original |