LETTER VI.

THE SYSTEMS COMPARED, as to their tENDENCY TO PROMOTE MORALITY IN GENERAL.

Christian Brethren,

WHAT has been advanced in the last Letter on the standard of morality, may serve to fix the meaning of the term in this. The term morality, you know, is sometimes used to express those duties which subsist between men and men, and in this acceptation stands distinguished from religion; but I mean to include under it, the whole of what is contained in the moral law.

Nothing is more common than for the adversaries of the Calvinistic system to charge it with immorality; nay, as if this were self-evident, they seem to think themselves excused from advancing any thing like sober evidence to support the charge. Virulence, rant, and extravagance, are the weapons with which we are not unfrequently combatted in this warfare. "I challenge the whole body and being of moral evil itself," says a writer of the present day, "to invent, or inspire, or whisper, any thing blacker, or more wicked: yea, if sin itself had all the wit, the tongues, and pens of all men and angels, to all eternity, I defy the whole to say any thing of God worse than this. O sin, thou hast spent and emptied thyself in the doctrine of John Calvin! And here I rejoice that I have heard the utmost that malevolence itself shall ever be able to say against infinite benignity! I was myself brought up and tutored in it, and being delivered and brought to see the evil and danger, am bound by my obligations to God, angels, and men, to warn my fellow-sinners; I therefore, here, before God, and the whole universe, recal and condemn every word I have spoken in favor of it. I thus renounce the doctrine as the rancor of devils; * Llewellyn's Tracts, p. 292.

a doctrine, the preaching of which is babbling and mocking, its prayers blasphemy, and whose praises are the horrible yellings of sin and hell. And this I do, because I know and believe that God is love; and therefore his decrees, works and ways, are also love, and cannot be otherwise." It were ill-spent time to atttempt an answer to such unfounded calumny as this, which certainly partakes much more of the ravings of insanity, than of the words of truth and soberness: yet this, according to the Monthly Review, is "The true coloring of the doctrine of Calvinism."* Had any thing like this been written by a Calvinist against Socianism, the Reviewers would have been the first to have exclaimed against Calvinistic illiberality.

This gentleman professes to have been a Calvinist, and so does Dr. Priestley. The Calvinism of the latter, however, seems to have left an impression upon his mind very different from the above. "Whether it be owing to my Calvinistic education," says he, "or my considering the principles of Calvinism as generally favorable to that leading virtue, devotion, or to their being something akin to the doctrine of Necessity, I cannot but acknowledge, that, notwithstanding what I have occasionally written against that system, and which I am far from wishing to retract, I feel myself disposed to look upon Calvinists with a kind of respect, and could never join in the contempt and insult with which I have often heard them treated in conversation."†

But Dr. Priestley, I may be told, whatever good opinion he may have of the piety and virtue of Calvinists, he has a very ill opinion of Calvinism and this, in a certain degree, is true. Dr. Priestley, however, would not say, that "The preaching of that system was babbling and mocking, its prayers blasphemy, or its praises the horrible yellings of sin and hell:" on the contrary, he acknowledges its principles to be generally favorable to that leading virtue, devotion."

I confess, Dr. Priestley has advanced some heavy accusations on the immoral tendency of Calvinism; accusations which seem *Review for July, 1792, p. 266.

+ The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity illustrated. p. 163.

scarcely consistent with the candid concessions just now quoted; and these I shall now proceed to examine. "I do not see," says he "what motive a Calvinist can have to give any attention to his moral conduct. So long as he is unregenerate, all his thoughts, words, and actions, are necessarily sinful, and in the act of regeneration he is altogether passive. On this account, the most consistent Calvinists never address any exhortation to sinners; considering them as dead in trespasses and sins, and, therefore, that there would be as much sense and propriety in speaking to the dead, as to them. On the other hand, if a man be in the happy number of the elect, he is sure that God will, some time or other, and at the most proper time, (for which the last moment of his life is not too late,) work upon him his miraculous work of saving and sanctifying grace. Though he should be ever so wicked immediately before this divine and effectual calling, it makes nothing against him. Nay, some think that this, being a more signal display of the wonders of divine grace, it is rather the more probable that God will take this opportunity to display it. If any system of speculative principles can operate as an axe at the root of all virtue and goodness, it is this."* On this unfavourable account of Calvinism I will offer the following observations.

First, If Calvinism be an axe at the root of virtue and goodness, it is only so with respect to those of the " unregenerate ;” which certainly does not include all the virtue and goodness in the world. As to others, Dr. Priestley acknowledges, as we have seen already, that our principles are "generally favourable to devotion:" and devotion, if it be what he denominates it, "a leading virtue," will doubtless be followed with other virtues correspondent with it. He acknowledges also, "There are many (among the Calvinists) whose hearts and lives are, in all respects, truly Christian, and whose Christian tempers are really promoted by their own views of their system." How is it, then, that Dr. Priestley "cannot see what motive a Calvinist can have to give any attention to his mora] conduct;" and why does he represent Calvinism as "an axe at the root of all virtue and goodness?" By all virtue and goodness

*Doctrine of Necessity, p. 154.

+ Ibid. pp. 163, 164.

he can only mean the virtue and goodness of wicked men. Indeed, this appears plainly to have been his meaning: for, after acknowl ́edging, that Calvinism has something in it favourable to an habitual and animated devotion," he adds, "But, where a disposition to vice has pre-occupied the mind, I am very well satisfied, and but too many facts might be alleged in proof of it, that the doctrines of Calvinism have been actually fatal to the remains of virtue, and have driven men into the most desperate and abandoned course of wickedness; whereas the doctrine of necessity, properly understood, cannot possibly have any such effect, but the contrary."* Now, suppose all these were true, it can never justify Dr. Priestley in the use of such unlimited terms as those before mentioned. Nor is it any disgrace to the Calvinistic system, that men whose minds are pre-occupied with vice should misunderstand and abuse it. The purest liquor, if put into a musty cask, will become unpalatable. It is no more than is said of some who professed to embrace Christianity in the times of the apostles, that they turned the grace of God into lasciviousness. Is it any wonder that the wicked will do wickedly; or that they will extract poison from that which, rightly understood, is the food of the righteous? It is enough, if our sentiments, like God's words, do good to the upright. Wisdom does not expect to be justified, but of her children. The scriptures themselves make no pretence of having been useful to those who have still lived in sin; but allow the gospel to be a savour of death unto death in them that perish. The doctrine of necessity is as liable to produce this effect, as any of the doctrines of Calvinism. It is true, as Dr. Priestley observes, "it cannot do so, if it be properly understood:" but this is allowing that it may do so, if it be misunderstood; and we have as good reason for ascribing the want of a proper understanding of the subject to those who abuse predestination, and other Calvinistic doctrines, as he has for ascribing it to those who abuse the doctrine of necessity. Dr. Priestley speaks of the remains of virtue, where a disposition to viee has pre-occupied the mind; and of the Calvinistic system being as an axe at the root of these remains: but some people

*Doctrine of Necessity, p. 162.

will question, whether virtue of this description have any root belonging to it, so as to require an axe to cut it up; and whether it be not owing to this circumstance that such characters, like the stony-ground hearers, in time of temptation fall away.

Secondly, The Calvinistic system is misrepresented by Dr. Priestley, even as to its influence on the unregenerate. In the passage before quoted, he represents those persons, "who are of the happy number of the elect, as being sure that God will, some time or other, work upon them his work of sanctifying grace." But how are they to come to this assurance? Not by any thing contained in the Calvinistic system. All the writers in that scheme have constantly insisted, that no man has any warrant to conclude himself of the happy number of the elect, till the work of sanctifying grace is actually wrought. With what colour of truth or ingen uousness, then, could Dr. Priestley represent our system as afford. ing a ground of assurance, previous to that event? This is not a matter of small account in the present controversy; it is the point on which the immoral tendency of the doctrine wholly depends.

As to the certainty of any man's being sanctified and saved at some future time, this can have no ill influence upon him, while it exists merely in the divine mind. If it have any such influence, it must be owing to his knowledge of it at a time when, his heart being set on evil, he would be disposed to abuse it: but this, 'as we have seen, upon the Calvinistic system, is utterly impossible; because nothing short of a sanctified temper of mind affords any just grounds to draw the favourable conclusion. Dr. Priestley has also represented it as a part of the Calvinistic system, or, however, "as the opinion of some," that, the more wicked a man is, previous to God's work of sanctifying grace upon him, the more probable it is that he will, some time, be sanctified and saved. But, though it be allowed, that God frequently takes occasion from the degree of human wickedness to magnify his grace in delivering from it; yet it is no part of the Calvinistic system, that the former affords any grounds of probability to expect the latter and whoever they be that Dr. Priestley alludes to, as entertaining such an opinion, I am inclined to think they are not among the respectable