THE DOCTRINE

THAT

GOD IS THE ONLY EFFICIENT CAUSE.

THE most numerous and important errors in theology which have gained a prevalence in the church, have related to the natures and agency of God and man. Overlooking in their inquiries on these subjects, or misapprehending the lights which consciousness, reason, and revelation furnish, and yielding to the sway of imagination and the guidance of inapplicable analogies, men have contented themselves with plausibilities in place of facts, and constructed innumerable theories, and made them their standards in the interpretation of the volume of inspiration, utterly unsupported by that word, and subversive of its most essential truths. Thus, at one time, they have advanced schemes involving a denial of the attributes of the Supreme Being, the divinity of the Saviour, the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the divine agency in preserving and governing the material and intellectual worlds; or misrepresenting the

nature and object of that agency. At another, their systems have withheld from man the most essential attributes of his being, or ascribed to him others incompatible with his constitution and subversive of his obligations. One has exhibited God as an arbitrary tyrant, calling his creatures into existence to be crowned with happiness or consigned to misery, as caprice or interest dictate, without regard to their rights or character. Another has delineated man as a fit subject for the sway of such a despot,—a mere machine, without power, volition, or responsible agency, and indebted for all his actions to an external force.

The extravagances of one system have thus given birth to those of another, until error seems to have exhausted all the shapes it can assume. The doctrine of Augustine called forth that of Pelagius; Calvinism produced Arminianism; Jansenism opposed itself to Jesuitism; and all these, perhaps, exerted an agency in producing Socinianism, Unitarianism, Deism, Fatalism, and the numberless and shapeless errors which have overrun the churches of the European continent, or introduced themselves into other sections of the Christian world.

Of the various theories which have been promulgated on these subjects, no one that has obtained any prevalence in this country, has exceeded in folly and extravagance, that which exhibits God as the sole efficient cause in the universe. This extraordinary system seems first to have suggested itself to Dr. Hopkins. It assumed a more definite shape in the speculations of Dr. West, and has finally been sent forth, in its perfected state, in the discourses of Emmons and several others.

This theory is presented in the doctrine that God creates all the actions of mankind, in the same manner as he gives existence to mind and matter, by his almighty fiat.

The following quotations from one of these writers furnish a sufficient exemplification of the language and manner in which it is taught.

“Since all men are dependant agents, all their motions, exercises, or actions, must originate from a divine efficiency."

"The heart may be created as well as the understanding, or moral exercises as well as natural faculties. It appears from what has been said, that the hearts of saints are created, or that their free and voluntary exercises are the production of divine power."

"It is agreeable to the nature of virtue or true holiness to be created. Holiness is something which has a real and positive existence, and which not only may, but must be created."

"It is sometimes proper to ascribe men's good actions wholly to God, and sometimes equally proper to ascribe their bad actions wholly to him. We may justly conclude, that the divine agency is as much concerned in their bad as in their good actions."

"Men are no more capable of acting independently of God, in one instance, than another. If they need any kind or degree of divine agency in doing good, they need precisely the same kind and degree of divine agency in doing evil. This is the dictate of reason, and the scripture says the same. It is God who worketh in men both to will and to do in all cases without exception. He wrought equally in the minds of those who sold and in the minds of those who bought Joseph. He wrought as effectually in the minds of Joseph's brethren, when they sold him, as when they repented and besought his mercy. He not only prepared these persons to act, but made them act. He not only exhibited motives of action before their minds, but disposed their minds to comply with the motives exhibited. But there was no possible way in which he could dispose them to act right or wrong, but only by producing right or wrong volitions in their hearts. And if he produced their bad as well as good volitions, then his agency was concerned in precisely the same manner in their wrong as in their right actions." Emmons.

These boasted claims of the scheme to be received as a

doctrine of reason and revelation, I propose briefly to ex

amine.

I. The first remark I shall make in regard to it is, that it carries on its face the most decisive marks of improbability.

Like the doctrine of metempsychosis, the non-existence of matter, and astronomical vortices, it strikes the ear at once, as chimerical and false. No evidences of its truth are apparent to consciousness or observation. No medium is perceptible, by which its certainty can be discovered. It is felt irresistibly, that if capable of being demonstrated, it must be by some new and extraordinary step, unknown in the common range of our speculations, and remote from our ordinary methods of acquiring knowledge.

II. All the arguments, founded on the word of God to support it, are assumptions of the doctrine which they are employed to demonstrate.

No one who has read the volume of inspiration can need to be told, that no such doctrine is expressly taught on its pages;—that, if inculcated there at all, it must be by the most remote and questionable implication. Its propaga tors do not indeed pretend that it is directly presented in the scriptures. They derive it only by inference from other doctrines, or from isolated declarations respecting the agency of God, or the nature and relations of man. Of the passages which they allege as furnishing ground for that inference, the following, respecting the dependence of men on God, their subjection to his providential and moral government, and subservience to his will, will serve as examples.

"In him we live and move and have our being. The way

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of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; as the rivers of water, he turneth it whithersoever he will. It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes."

But these passages say nothing whatever of God's giving existence to our actions by his creating energy. They simply state, that he upholds us in existence, that his providential control extends to all our circumstances and actions, and that his spirit influences us to obey his will. This is too plainly the fact to be either denied or overlooked: and the ground accordingly on which they are alleged as proof that he creates our actions is, not that they affirm it, but that that is the only method by which he can produce these or any other effects in us. "There was no possible way," says the writer quoted above," in which he could dispose them to act right or wrong, but only by producing right or wrong volitions in their hearts." But in assuming this ground, they take for granted all which they attempt to prove, and their whole pretended argument from scripture is thus nothing but an undisguised assumption of the doctrine; a mere round assertion of it, unaccompanied by a shadow of proof; and all their array of quotations from the sacred volume, under the semblance of argument, serves no other purpose than to throw over their decision an air of divine authority. It must be demonstrated from other