the best dispositions could have done. He does not thus take advantage of his superior knowledge to oppress. He does not thus practise upon the ignorance of creatures, sure at last to detect the imposition." (pp. 249 251.)

If it be physically possible for the non-elect to accept the atonement, then, even if God has not pre-determined to induce them to accept it, still may we not make a supposition that they will accept it? And if they should do so, how would their act of faith stand related to the divine decree? Dr. Griffin replies:

"Who will pretend to say that if Judas had believed, (and I hope enough has been said to justify the supposition,) he would have been rejected? But if he had believed, you say, it would have been foreknown, and the atonement would have been made for him. And are you sure it would have been foreknown? We have no other idea of God's foreknowledge than that it is founded on his own purpose to produce or permit. He therefore foreknew whether he should give faith to Judas. But this possible action of which I am speaking, would not have been caused by God, nor have grown out of any purpose of his. How then should it have been foreknown? No event is in fact unforeknown; because, beyond what is produced by the direct influence of God, the universe is governed by motives, the tendency of which he perfectly understands. But the possibility of the action under consideration, did not depend on the motives which God had actually spread, but on the faculties of a rational soul. Had Judas done as he ought, an event would have taken place which was never foreseen. And had he done as he ought without the influence and motives which God controlled, (and his obligations were independent of both,) an event would have taken place, which, so far as we can judge, could not have been foreseen. No such event ever did or will occur: I only make these remarks to show how independent of divine foreknowledge the natural possibility of action is. Unnumbered actions which God never foreknew, are still naturally possible, or prescience reduces everything to fate.

It is on this ground that God, in all his treatment of moral agents, (except in the single instance of prophecy,) proceeds just as though he had no foreknowledge. The capacity of creatures to act, and of course the natural possibility of their action, and their obligations, are independent of prescience; and the Moral Governor, founding his course on that capacity and possibility, and on those obligations, holds his way as though nothing was foreseen." (pp. 333, 334.)

§ 18. Relations of the General Atonement and of free Moral Agency to the Arminian and the Calvinistic systems.

If a theologian advocate the doctrine of divine decrees, he will be regarded as a fatalist by some. If he advocate the doctrine of human freedom, he will be regarded as an Arminian by others. But Dr. Griffin advocated both doctrines. We regret that he did not more analytically discriminate between his own theory of human power, and that which is characteristic of Arminianism. He might have shown them to be radically unlike each other. tenting himself with the more general distinctions, he says:

Con

"These principles of a moral government [pp. 158-171 of this Article exhibit these principles], which are everywhere conspicuous on the sacred page, are what Arminians have discovered, and set themselves to defend, in opposition to doctrines which they thought irreconcilable with these. As advocates for the fundamental laws of a moral government, they deserve real praise but their error has lain in not perceiving that all the attributes of moral agency are perfectly consistent with absolute dependence. If ever this unhappy division in the church is healed, it must be on the ground here taken, by showing that respectable class of men that all the prerogatives of a moral government can be maintained in perfect consistency with absolute election and special grace." (pp. 244, 245.)

.

"So far as the dispute [in regard to the extent of the atonement] is verbal, a phraseology ought not to be adhered to which does not express the truth. And how far it is verbal, is a question of some importance. Now our brethren in detail admit all that we ask. This they do as often as they say that Christ died that whosoever believeth in him should not perish ;' and as often as they allow that all may enjoy the benefit by believing, and are bound to make it their own. And yet when they come to general propositions, they contradict the one which we support, and distinetly say that the atonement was not for all. This is because they do not attach to the general proposition the same meaning that we do. And the reason of this is, they are not agreed with us as to the character in which men are to be spoken of in this matter. We contend that they ought to be spoken of as moral agents; they speak of them continually as passive receivers. In general they do not mean to deny what really is meant by the atonement's being for all as moral agents, but they so annihilate agents as to make no account of this. When therefore we say that it was for Simon Magus, (meaning that it was for him as a capable agent,) they, though they allow what we mean, refuse to use our language, and say decidedly that it was not for him, because they overlook his agency, and speak of him as merely

sentient and passive. The proposition that it was for him, has a different meaning with them from what it has with us, because they see him not as an agent. And if they could see him as an agent, so as to attach the same meaning to the proposition that we do, they would not deny it. So far the dispute is verbal. But the mistake lies deeper than words, and consists in overlooking the natural ability of man. This is the bottom of the difficulty. Though therefore there is much logomachy in the contest, yet if we are right our brethren labor under a real mistake. On a subject where they ought to speak of men exclusively as moral agents, they constantly reason about them as though they were passive tablets, no more capable of believing than the clods of the valley. And when they refer to the purpose of God in this provision, they constantly speak of him only as intending or not intending to make impressions on passive recipients. This is plainly turning the Moral Governor out of a transaction which was exclusively his own, and transferring the whole business to the Sovereign Efficient Cause. This has been the grand mistake of Calvinists of the type of a part of the Synod of Dort. They have reasoned right against the Arminians about election and regeneration, but on several points have plainly lost sight of moral agents and a moral government. On the other hand, the Arminians have had many correct ideas of a moral government, but have been as blind as Bartimeus to all the secrets of the other department. And thus these two parties have gone on contending from age to age, and after all both have been right- and both wrong." (pp. 322-324.) "We admit that the Sovereign Efficient Cause absolutely decreed the characters of men, so far as whether he would make them holy or leave them to themselves. But we think that all these difficulties which have perplexed the church in consequence of viewing God in a single character, may easily be solved by contemplating him in two. While we do not say of the Sovereign Efficient Cause that he suspended any thing on the conduct of men, or had the least reference to that conduct in one of his decisions (because his decrees and acts terminate upon men as purely passive); we scruple not to attribute to the Moral Governor all the aims which the measures of his government are calculated to accomplish. We readily yield to the Sovereign Efficient Cause everything that the highest Calvinist ever did, and none the less ascribe to the Moral Governor everything, as relates to the present subject, that an Arminian ever did. In particular we find no difficulty in saying of the Ruler of agents, that he wills the salvation of all to whom the Gospel is sent. And we understand Peter and Paul as speaking of God in the same character, and meaning the same thing, when they say of him that he will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth;'not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.' We dare not therefore say of him who provided the atonement (for that was the Moral Governor alone,) that he had no intention to benefit the non-elect, nor do we generally speak of him as even knowing such a class of men." (pp. 285, 286.)

He

It requires but little of that genius which accompanies the "odium theologicum," to misrepresent the author of the preceding citations, as adopting a semi-Arminian and semiCalvinistic creed. On some points he did agree with the Arminians where other Calvinists do not; and on some more noticeable points other Calvinists agreed with the Arminians where he did not. On the whole, he was further from Arminianism than were his Calvinistic opposers. was, as he professed to be, a strong but a self-consistent believer in the substance of the Assembly's Catechism. His doctrine of moral agency has been often admitted in fact, even when it has been denied in form, by the most one-sided devotees of that Formula. It is this doctrine, however, which was regarded by President Griffin as the point of his divergence from the technically avowed belief of the old Calvinists. "I am inclined to think," he says, that the habit of regarding men as "moral agents" rather than "passive receivers " "is the original angle of separation, and that the dispute about the nature of the atonement is rather consequential" (p. 178). "In all the views which our brethren take of the non-elect in relation to this question, they overlook their existence as moral agents, and affirm the same things of them as might be affirmed if they were passive blocks under the hands of the engraver. This is the principal source of the whole mistake" (pp. 313-320). He regarded their false views of moral agency as leading many Calvinists, step by step, into a labyrinth of such errors as the following: that "the atonement was a legal transaction," p. 130 et al.); that our sins were imputed to Christ legally and literally, were "considered" his; whereas God considers every thing as it really is, and when he imputes one man's sin to others, he merely treats them as if they had sinned, and pursues this course practically," so far as is necessary to answer the purpose" of moral government (pp. 150 - 154, 164 et al.); that Christ was our legal Surety, Sponsor and Representative (p. 168 et al.); that there was a legal identity between him and us (pp. 149, 170 et al.); that God is legally obliged to save the elect (pp. 61, 160, 164);

that the atonement has "the attributes of a commercial transaction" (p. 134 et al.); that the law punishes "sin with sin " (p. 16); that sin may be something passive (p. 84 et al.).

It is to save men from these, and from similar errors already noticed, that Dr. Griffin insists, with rare eloquence, on the doctrine of "natural ability commensurate with duty," and on the importance of that style of writing and preaching which is superinduced by the influence of this doctrine (see especially Part II., chapters 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 20, 21 of the present Treatise). According to him the two opposing parties of Calvinists may, and should, be reconciled with each other; but in the concessions needful for their union the Edwardeans, who have chosen the accurate and the fitting language, should not disown the truth and the utility of their propositions; but the advocates of the Old Calvinism, who have borrowed an inaccurate and a perilous phraseology, should abandon the error and the harmfulness of their set and stereotyped forms of speech (pp. 313326). Their language often produces a ruinous impression on the soul (pp. 320-326 et al.). They fail to “distinguish between the literal and figurative meaning of texts," and they frequently reason from poetry as if it were prose (pp. 9, 10, 12, 104, 113, 154, 158, 165, 166, 168, 187, 210 et al.). Their imaginative style they often qualify, and when they explain their poetical images by prosaic terms, they come into a substantial agreement with the views of Dr. Griffin. They contend against his principles, while they are compelled tacitly to admit them (p. 322; see also pp. 178, 180, 181, 369-390). If they would avow in form that God never requires moral agents to work impossibilities, they would be willing to avow that the atonement was made for men as moral agents. Then they would logically admit that it was made for the entire race. Then, coinciding with him in regard to the objects of the atonement, they would coincide with him in regard to its nature, for its designed results unfold its essence. Then would exist a real harmony of views, and this would induce a harmony of style, between the two schools who now "grate harsh discord."