To conclude, all that can be done for oratory in education is merely preparatory. We might as well try to make poets as to make orators. We may prescribe fitting and genial studies and exercises, but the orator, as well as the poet, can alone make himself, or must be made by an inspiration from heaven.

ARTICLE VII.

REVIEW OF FINNEY'S THEOLOGY.

By REV. GEORGE DUFFIELD, D. D., Detroit, Michigan.

Lectures on Systematic Theology, embracing Lectures on Moral Government, Atonement, Moral and Physical Depravity, Regeneration, Philosophical Theories, and Evidences of Regeneration. By REV. C. G. FINNEY, Professor of Theology, in the Oberlin Collegiate Institute.

[Continued from p. 452.]

SANCTIFICATION.

"Some theologians," says our author, "have made justification a condition of sanctification instead of making sanctification a condition, of justification. But this, we shall see, is an erroneous view of the subject. The mistake is founded in a misapprehension of the nature both of justification and of sanctification. They make sanctification to consist in something else than in the will's entire subjection or consecration to God; and justification they regard as a forensic transaction, conditionated on the first act of faith in Christ. Whole-hearted obedience to God, or entire conformity to his law, they regard as a very rare, and many of them, as an impractical attainment in this life. Hence they conditionate justification upon simple faith, not regarding faith as at all implying present conformity of heart to the law of God. It would seem, from the very use of language, that they lay very little stress upon personal holiness, as a condition of acceptance with God." If our author means, as it would seem he does from his use of language, to insinuate or charge that the theologians he refers to are not careful and zealous to inculcate the necessity of holiness,

Sys. Theol. III. p. 106.

and its reality as an indispensable evidence of a justified state, or that their teaching and preaching do not secure conscientious and devoted lives of new obedience, he insinuates and charges what he cannot prove. The piety and morality of the men he thus reproaches, and of their churches generally, will not lose anything in comparison with those that affiliate and sympathize with him and his school. The odium theologicum is a very weak argument, and what we would not expect from one who claims to be perfect. The above extract does express the truth, that the theologians referred to deny sanctification to be the condition of justification. But our author uses it with evident intent to be understood, that they who deny and oppose the doctrine of entire sanctification as he teaches it, are, to some degree, indifferent, or at least far less concerned about holiness of heart and life, and the obligation to maintain it, than he and his school are. For he says "that it is Antinomianism," and that "a denial of (his) doctrine prepares the minds of ministers to temporize and wink at great iniquity in their churches." This is grievous slander. We will not return the compliment as broadly as it has been given, but must remark that so far as our observation has gone, we have witnessed so much manœuvring and deception, and such developments of rampant censoriousness, spiritual pride, self-conceit and lying slander, in connexion with this doctrine, on the part of its advocates, that we should be on our guard, and put no confidence in the man or the church, that professes "entire sanctification," as taught by our author and his school. Nor are we at all surprised that it should be so. For, having affirmed of themselves what is false before God, the power of perceiving truth has, as its legitimate punishment, been so far impaired, that they now cease to be aware when they depart from truth before men.

Our author assumes that there is, and can be, no other effectual provision made for the holiness of men, but that which makes sanctification the condition of justification. This is the common assumption of all unsanctified minds; and it operates powerfully and extensively to keep men from trusting in Jesus Christ, and looking confidently for the grace of God unto eternal life. We do indeed, in common with the theologians whom our author condemns and traduces, deny that sanctification is the condition of justification, in the ordinary acceptation of the term "condition," nor do we think it either necessary or efficacious to secure holiness of heart and life, to assume and teach that it is. On the contrary, we have found and believe that this very idea, the precedence of holiness as a condition of justification, operates as an efficient barrier in the way of the sinner's being brought to Christ, and powerfully, in some who think they have come to Him, to secure the developments of spiritual pride, or self-righ

teousness, or censoriousness. The theologians condemned by our author, and the Confession of Faith so bitterly denounced by him, are very careful to teach that, coincident with justification, and by the very actings of the faith that justifies, the Spirit of God regenerates, and ever thereafter sanctifies. While they discard works or deeds of law, as the precedent condition of justification, they as positively affirm, that the faith which justifies is not mere science like the faith of devils, but such a realizing apprehension and belief of the great facts testified by Jesus Christ, concerning Himself, His Father, and the way of justification through him, as will bring the motive influence that may be drawn from the excellence, grace, and love of God in Christ, to bear upon the mind and heart, in determining to and promoting holiness. Its natural and certain tendency in this way, they plainly and pointedly urge from the Word of God, as it "works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world." Appropriate fruits or good works, prove the genuineness of faith and the fact of justification, which is very different from their being the precedent condition. Our author either confounds or identifies these things, and in the boldest manner so perfectly inverts the order of God's operations in the justification and salvation of men, as to make them justify themselves, always and only in so far as they become and keep themselves perfectly holy. "The Bible everywhere represents justified persons as sanctified, and always expressly or impliedly conditionates justification upon sanctification. 1 Cor. 6: 11: And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.""

We have here both the author's view plainly stated, and his attempt as a biblical expositor, to prove it. Because the apostle, in his detail of facts, evidencing the great change wrought in the character and state of the converts at Corinth, puts sanctification before justification, therefore he infers that the former is the condition of the latter! The apostle, designing to contrast their present and former character and state, most naturally begins with the developments in their actions and habits which give evidence of their state, and thus traces them to their proper source. A different design would have suggested a different course. Designing to prove the fact of a man's being in a living state, we should naturally say he moves, walks, thinks, and lives, placing the cause last. So regeneration and sanctification are stated first as the consequents or accompaniments and proofs of justification. We apply his mode of reasoning, and prove from the apostle the very reverse of our author's inference. "God has chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth." Does sanctification of the Spirit precede faith as its con1Sys. Div. IT 107.

2 II. Thess. 2: 13.

dition? So Peter writes, "Elect through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling unto the blood of Christ." Does sanctification precede obedience, and do both precede the application of Christ's atonement as the condition? Our author's inference is a perfect non-sequitur; nor can he find a fitter specimen to his purpose, although he says that the passage in Corinthians is "but a specimen of the manner in which justified persons are spoken of in the Bible." As little to his purpose is his next quotation, from Rom. 6: 1, which does indeed prove that "they only are justified who walk after the Spirit." But this walking after the Spirit is the immediate, certain result, and necessary evidence, not the condition of justification. He confounds regeneration with sanctification, not, however, as the cause with its effect, the one being characteristically different from the other; but makes them to differ, only as a higher and a lower state. For, in reply to the anticipated objection, that the Scriptures speak of sanctification as a thing that comes after regeneration, and to be sought and arrived at, by the Christian, he affirms, that the word is used in a "higher sense," to denote "a state of being settled, established in faith, rooted and grounded in love, being so confirmed in the faith and obedience of the gospel, as to hold on in the way of life steadfastly, immovably, always abounding

in the work of the Lord."

In his third volume our author has laid out all his force on this subject, which, as it is the peculiarity of his school, he makes "a fundamental question in theology.”

He has transformed, by his philosophy, the meaning of language, with which the ears of Christians have been long familiar and wrought confusion only. Holiness, sanctification and obedience, have all their place in his nomenclature, and are retained still as technics; but they mean not in his lips what they have done among evangelical Christians. Along with them he has introduced others, which, according to his system are the synonymes of these, but have become the preferred phrases, and, with some boasters of perfection, the merest cantings-such as "entire sanctification," "entire obedience," "entire consecration of will," "of heart," "of life to God," "full-hearted consecration," "sincerity," " honesty of intention," "moral perfection." These are all used as convertible terms for "holiness," and holiness as another phrase for perfect sinlessness. They all serve the purposes of logical subtlety, by which to reach a conclusion uniformÎy aimed at. It is both painful and alarming to see what a ly troop of expressions he marshals around him, and how by his philosophy they become the merest engines of sophistry, by which to give scope and power to error. Already have we met with some of his disciples, who have played most skilfully with them,

1I. Pet. 1: 2.

Fin. Thes. III. 107.

and had learned so to identify in their use of the terms, holiness, perfection, entire sanctification, etc., that those who reject the doctrine and pretence of perfection, have been denounced and slandered as opposed to holiness and strangers to the grace of

sanctification.

Our author makes no distinction here, except between " present full obedience, or entire consecration to God," and "continual abiding consecration, or obedience to God." The former he calls sanctification, the latter "entire sanctification," which last expression is the preferred equivalent for "sinless perfection." In defining sanctification he is careful to affirm that "it does not imply any constitutional change of either soul or body,"—" is not a phenomenon or state of the intelligence,"-" belongs to neither the reason, conscience, nor understanding"" is not a mere feeling of any kind,"-" is not a desire an appetite, a passion, a propensity, an emotion, nor indeed any kind or degree of feeling,is not a state or phenomenon of the sensibility,"--but " is a phenomenon of the will or a voluntary state of mind." The terms and ayu translated "to sanctify," he says are used by the inspired writers" to represent the act of consecrating one's self or anything else to the service of God and to the highest well-being of the universe," "not only an act of the will, but an ultimate act or choice, as distinguished from a mere volition or executive act of the will." "Sanctification as a state differing from a holy act," he says, "is a standing ultimate intention and exactly synonymous or identical with a state of obedience or conformity to the law of God." "Sanctification consists in the will's devoting or consecrating itself and the whole being, all we are and have, so far as powers, susceptibilities, possessions, are under the control of the will to the service of God, or which is the same thing, to the highest interests of God and of being. Sanctification, then, is nothing more or less than entire obedience for the time being to the law."

3

This description does not accord with the Scriptural account of sanctification. A very essential element, entering into the Scriptural representation of its nature, has been lost sight of by our author in his description of it. The influence and agency of the Spirit of God are radically important, so much so, and so essential, that the sanctification of men is truly and appropriately His work. There is a consecration, other than that of man's own voluntary and entire surrender of himself to God, which the word is sometimes used to denote, and which enters into the Scriptural account of sanctification. Those whom God has given to Jesus Christ, having elected them from the mass of the human family that they should be holy, are set apart, in God's purpose, and have a new and peculiar relation to the new Covenant-Head and Redeemer assigned to them. See Eph. 1: 4, 5. He claims to be the author 1 III. p. 199. III. p. 200. THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. NO. 4. 10

1

III. p. 200.