DANVILLE QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. IV. DECEMBER, 1861. ART. I. Imputation. * PART II. *Antecedent Imputation, and Supralapsarianism. We cannot more appropriately commence our second article than by repeating from the truly devout and learned Pareus, the following remark: "I confidently affirm that the larger portion of ancient heresies, as well as of the present dissensions in the Church, have arisen principally from this cause, that Councils, and Bishops, and Doctors of the Church have, without any discrimination, put forth as articles of the Catholic faith whatever dogmas of the Schools and Universities they pleased; and imposed the belief of them upon the conscience as equally necessary to salvation; while they too readily denounced as heretical or schismatical every departure from the customary interpretation of the Scriptures." † Published with some reference to the tractates enumerated in the note at the beginning of our former article. See Danville Review, Sept., 1861, p. 390. †The original is here appended, for the force of the passage can scarcely be preserved in translation; "Ausim enim confirmare, majorem tam veterum hæresium, quam præsentium dissidiorum partem, in Ecclesia, hinc præcipuè natam fuisse et esse, quod Concilia, Episcopi, Doctores Ecclesiæ nullo discrimine quævis Scholarum dogmata et Cathedrarum placita pro articulis Fidei Catholicæ venditarunt, parique ad salutem necessitate credenda conscientiis imposuerunt, ex quavis verò Scripturarum interpretationis discrepantia nimis facilè hæreses vel schismata fecerunt." Trenici, cap. IV. Similar asseverations have been frequently made by men of loose theology, to prepare the way for their rejection of fundamental truth or for the advocacy of the worst heresies; but such proceedings are a misapplication of the facts referred to. Those facts are unquestionable. And no one who has any knowledge of the venerable, and illustrious, and eminently conservative divine of the Palatinate, could entertain the supposition that he would have thus adverted to them without reason. We have already stated, that during the early period of the Reformation, and before all the leading principles of the speculative theology of the Church had been definitely traced, (if we may so speak,) to the terminus à quo, and the terminus ad quem, the influence of philosophy was allowed to operate even in selecting the stand-points from which to combat the deadly errors with which the Church found herself every where environed. And as regards the subject now under discussion, (and its manifold relations to divine truth,) some assumed that the infinite and uncontrolled will of God was the point from which the whole should be explicated; and others, that God's immutable justice was the only proper stand-point; while a third class could see no propriety in attempting to follow out any such distinction, or in regarding those points of explication as in any way antagonistic; and they attempt to reason alike from both. There is, indeed, a most important sense in which this position may be pronounced the true one; for the will of God can never be in conflict with His justice and vice versa. The principle, however, is not true as it was then made to apply, as will be shown presently. * But * The ground of this procedure was an insufficient appreciation of the difference between the principles involved in the question, Whether the objects of the decree of reprobation were to be considered as already created, fallen, and corrupt, or as uncreated and unfallen. The idea, involved as it was in the interminable fogs of the misty metaphysics of scholasticism, does not appear at the outset to have presented itself very clearly to the minds of some of the Reformers; and they finally began to philosophise upon it after the manner of the Schoolmen. The subsequent discussion, however, made the difference, as well as the vital importance of the distinction, perfectly clear. Reprobation viewed from the Supralapsarian stand-point, involves the creation of the Reprobate — that they may be damned in order to show forth the power and severity of God. And as this their creation, and such a disposal of them, could not of course be referred to the justice or moral nature of God, it was referred to his will. this last class of divines assumed it in relation to the then existing discussion; and hence, upon a more full development of the two systems which were thus elaborated, and on a more rigid analysis of them in after years, it became somewhat difficult to assign to such theologians a definite position in relation thereto. Of this class were Calvin, Ursinus, Pareus, Danæus and others. And to illustrate by a single instance the position which they in general seem to occupy, we may refer to the fact that the Remonstrants in their Confessio, (anno 1618,) cap. 5. sect. 7, (see margin,) charge supralapsarianism upon Calvin: Whereupon the four Leyden Professors in their Censura, containing a reply to the Confession, pronounce the charge a calumny. But Episcopius in his Apologia pro Confessione, pp. 62-68, (written after his return from banishment, and published in 1630,) reiterates the charge; and after quoting somewhat from Calvin, proceeds to prove that Beza was a supralapsarian, which nobody ever denied. Here the matter would probably have ended. But Dr. Twisse, (subsequently Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly,) being a strong supralapsarian and having too high an opinion of Calvin to doubt that he too ought to be one, brought all the resources of his learning and singularly subtle intellect to sustain the position assumed by Episcopius. These, however, were the exceptions; for the concurrent and settled conviction of the intelligent in the theological world has long been, that the matured views of Calvin were like those of Augustine, infralapsarian. * And But the Infralapsarian stand-point contemplates man as fallen, corrupt and condemned; from which corrupt mass God, of his mere good pleasure and will and without any foresight of faith and good works, selects the objects of his mercy, and leaves the rest to perish as the just desert of their sin. And so, too, with respect to the doctrine of imputation. The Supralapsarians claim that it is only immediate; and refer the imputation of both sin and righteousness to the mere will and good pleasure of God. While the Infralapsarians claim that it is subjective, also, in relation to guilt or sin, and regards man as already fallen and corrupt; and hence, that while the imputation of righteousness is gratuitous, and the work of divine mercy, the imputation of sin is the work of divine justice for subjective desert, the sin of our first parents and our sin in them, or participation therein, being both justly imputed to us for condemnation. They accept the facts in the case on the testimony of God; and, in general, ignore all philosophical speculation in relation to them. In fact, the manner in which he strikes the great key note of the system can leave no ground for serious doubt on the subject, In his Opuscula, p. 735, then, on the other hand, and as regards the doctrine of Original Sin, some of the earlier Reformers went so far in protesting against the antecedent imputation notions of those Papal theologues who followed Ockham, and whose views by clear implication denied to God the possession of moral perfections, that they proceeded to the opposite extreme. * Zuingle, for example, says that Original Sin "is no sin, but a misfortune, a vice, a distemper; " and he adds that nothing is more weak or farther from the sense of the Scriptures, than to say that Original Sin is not only a distemper, but also a crime." Such is his language in the Declaration on Original Sin sent to Francis I. And the same utterances are found in the correspondence between him and Ecolampadius, published at Basle in 1536: he says, "Quæ de absoluta potestate nugantur Scholastici, non solùm repudio sed etiam detestor : quia justitiam ejus ab imperio separant." So too Pareus, on Ps. cii: 27. "Æterna Dei veritas, quæ non magis est mutationi obnoxia, quàm ipsa Dei æterna essentia seu natura." One great reason of the confusion in respect to the real views of Calvin is the very common error of attributing to him the Tractate against Castalio, entitled Responsio ad Calumnias Nebulonis. Castalio, on the merest presumption, attributes it to Calvin and the Socinians and Arminians have simply reiterated the charge; until even some Calvinists have believed it. See Turrettin, Loc. IX, Quæst. IX, Sect. 41. The tract, however, was written by Beza; which being taken into consideration, the very foundation of the argument proving Calvin a Supralapsarian is swept away. * Ockham, (or Ochamus, ) in perfect consistency with these views, says that Original Sin is, “ Reatus alieni peccati sine aliquo vitio hærente in nobis." To this he was led by his supralapsarian notion of the WILL of God; and the words express precisely Dr. Hodge's doctrine of antecedent imputation on the same subject. Bellarmine, too, opposes the doctrine of Calvin and the Reformed Church in these words: "Itaque peccatum in priore significatione unum est dumtaxat omnium hominum, sed in Adamo actuale et personale in nobis originale dicitur. Solus enim ipse actuali voluntate illud commisit: nobis vero communicatur per generationem eo modo, quo communicari potest id quod transiit, nimirum per imputationem." De Amiss. Gra., lib. 5, cap. 17. Opp., Tom. III. p. 332; Leyden, 1598. These views the Reformed Church, as a body, except the Supralapsarians, rejected from the first. Though Dr. Hodge refers to this very passage of Bellarmine, and most strangely affirms that Turrettin "quotes it as containing a full admission of the doctrine of imputation." (Princeton Essays, I., p. 181.) Dr. Hodge, if the passage expresses his own views, has of course the right to say so; but he had no right to say what he here does respecting Turrettin. The whole matter, however, must come up again for a full examination in our next Essay. The passage in Turrettin to which Dr Hodge refers may be found in Loco XVI. Quæst. III. Sect. 15., Tom. II. pp. 572, 573. "Quid brevius aut clarius dici potuit, quam originale peccatum non esse peccatum, sed morbum." "Sic ergo dicimus, originalem contagionem morbum esse, non peccatum; quod peccatum cum culpa conjunctum est, culpa vero ex commisso vel admisso ejus nascitur, qui facinus designavit." And still farther on he says, nostra sententia est, "vitium esse ac morbum, qui ceu muleta primis parentibus inflictus est." 55, 61. And thus, as is usual, one extreme begot another. Pp. 54, We should greatly err, however, if we supposed that those of either the Scholastic or Reformed divines who adopted the fundamental principles of the system now known as supralapsarianism, and which by the clearest implication divests the Supreme Being of all moral attributes, were actuated herein by any other aim than to exalt and magnify the Sovereignty of God, and to inculcate thereby the most devout and implicit obedience to his will for such is undoubtedly the fact. Morality, said they, is not founded on immutable justice, but on the will. And it may be observed as remarkable that, while the excellent John Gerson (or Jarson) who was of the sect of the Nominalists of which Ockham was founder, and who was the oracle of the Council of Constance, and the great antagonist of the spiritual monarchy of the Pope-reasoning from this principle, was led to place religion in devout feeling; Protagoras and Hobbes-who both took the ground that right and wrong were unreal and imaginary, and had no basis in the nature of things- endeavored to explode and deride everything of religion but the form. But in illustration of the readiness of the antagonists of the supralapsarians in the Reformed Church to concede to them piety and purity of intention, we shall adduce here the words of the infralapsarian Jurieu, (already referred to,) which, taking all the facts into consideration, assumes the aspect of the ludicrous, at least, if not of something far worse. The passage is of use, also, as containing a delineation of the system itself. In his Apology for the Reformed, after having convicted Maimbourg of misrepresenting Calvin, he proceeds as follows: "Besides, I say that his conclusion is wrong, and that there is nothing more absurd and less theological than the consequence which M. Maimbourg draws from the doctrine of those divines, viz.: That it des |