times, but which, perhaps, he defined with more precision, expounded with more fearless consistency, and invested with the authority of his own great and illustrious name. In the present discussion the word Calvinism is used, not to signify those doctrines of the Church which Calvin held in common with the fathers of the Reformation, but those only which relate to his extreme views of the Divine decrees, to his predestinarian theology, and to his modification of other scripture truths to render them harmonious with his principal tenets.

Whatever therefore may be the merits or the final result of this grave and earnest controversy, it leaves untouched the corruption of human nature, the deity and atonement of Christ, justification by faith, the necessity of Divine influence to renew and purify the heart, and the scriptural doctrine of predestination, according to the fore-knowledge of God. This distinction is important; since, if it be overlooked, the rejectors of Calvinism may be supposed to have also rejected the capital doctrines of the Reformed faith. Fuller has unwarrantably, perhaps undesignedly, given his sanction to this imputation in his “Calvinistic and Socinian Systems compared¹.” But the rejectors of Calvinistic predestination may be not less remote from Socinianism, and much nearer to genuine Christianity, than the most rigid disciple of that eminent Reformer, who, in the protestant city of Geneva, committed Servetus to the flames. The Socinian controversy relates to doctrines, which are the common faith of the Catholic Church; with the peculiarities of Calvinism it has no concern. And it is worthy of remark, that if one class of doctrinalists more than another symbolizes in any instance with Socinians, the followers of Calvin form that class; since it is not easy to discover where lies the essential difference between the doctrine of philosophical necessity, as held by the greater number of Socinians, and that of predestination, as maintained by Calvinists.

Both parties rest their dogmas on the same metaphysical grounds. At the same time, as moral reasoners, the palm of superiority must be awarded to Socinians, who reject most consistently the doctrine of human corruption, and the atonement of Christ, together with the correspondent doctrines of the Gospel, as altogether out of place in a scheme which denies the freedom of human actions and reduces all independent agency to that of the Deity alone; while the Calvinist subjects the human race to an inevitable necessity of sinning, denies to them individually, even the semblance of a probationary course—makes them accountable, yet withholds the powers necessary to a moral agent, and then most unrighteously dooms to perdition all but the elect! 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.

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. On either side, it may be presumed, the question has been exhausted, or, that the human mind has done all that its powers can accomplish, however unsatisfactory or inconclusive, in some respects, the result.

It appears to the writer of these pages, on a calm and summary review of the arguments by which the doctrines of freedom and necessity have been respectively supported, that those reasonings which are purely philosophical or metaphysical decidedly preponderate on the side of Necessity. The prescience of the Deity cannot, on any known principle, be reconciled with the contingency which attaches to the actions or determinations of man, on the hypothesis of freedom². And, moreover, if every event requires a cause, and every volition is guided by motives, what are called the spontaneous acts of the mind must be the necessary result of motives which direct and command its elections. “To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity. And whoever, with a sound understanding, will fix his mind upon the state of the question, will perceive its impossibility.”

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. 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 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. But in a case like the present, in which metaphysical reasonings, however profound or conclusive, so far as they go, are at variance with practical truth, with consciousness, with the actual state of things, and with the unquestionable procedures of the Divine government, as confirmed by the scriptures, wisdom would seem to dictate our adhesion to that side of the question, which is supported by moral arguments.

In taking this part, it does not follow that we are to repudiate, as totally without foundation, the philosophy and the metaphysics of the necessarian—æquo pretio æstimentur. We may admit, that the force of his argument, in the present imperfect state of human knowledge, renders the question perplexed and difficult; that it accounts for the divided opinions of the erudite and the devout, and that it precludes the hope of a speedy termination of the controversy. But in assigning to moral reasoning the superior authority, we are governed by a just regard to the nature of the question at issue, which, being related to the destinies of moral agents, and the principles on which the Deity conducts his moral government, must be determined, not by metaphysical, but by moral arguments. When brought to this test, Calvinism appears utterly indefensible, as being a system at variance with the attributes of the Deity, and irreconcileable with the moral constitution of human beings, and with the obligations laid upon them by