III. The Development of the Oberlin Teaching

When we have obtained some insight into Mahan’s doctrines of “Christian Perfection,” and “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” we have already seen into the heart of his theology. It is on these things that he most constantly and strenuously dwelt in his religious instruction. There were other elements of his teaching, however—not altogether unconnected with these, and therefore not altogether untouched in what has preceded—to which we must give some particular attention if we would know Mahan in his peculiarity as a religious teacher, and especially in his distinction from his colleagues at Oberlin. He makes no secret that there were some things in which he differed from Finney, although, very naturally, he minimizes their importance. They were not things, he tells us in a curious passage,²⁷¹ in which perfectly sanctified people may not differ without fault. Paul and Barnabas differed in some things, he says, and “on a very few questions in Moral Philosophy and Theology, Brother Finney and myself have arrived at opposite conclusions.” “Yet each,” he adds, “has the same assurance as before, that the other is ‘full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost.’ ” “We differ just where minds under the influence of the purest integrity, and the highest form of divine illumination, are liable to differ.” It would almost seem as if it were a virtue to differ on these things. One of the things on which they thus faultlessly differed, was the ground of moral obligation; which does not strike us as an unimportant matter. Mahan represented at Oberlin what Finney calls by the ugly name of “rightarianism.” We are glad that the thing is not as bad as the name. It means, indeed, just that Mahan defended at Oberlin intuitive morality against Finney’s teleological system—which is no morality at all. Effects of this difference naturally are traceable throughout the whole range of their teaching. Another matter of difference between them, far from unimportant whether in itself or in its results, has already been incidentally touched upon. This is the morality of our dispositions and propensities. Finney denied that any moral character attached to the affectional movements as such; only the will and its volitions are properly speaking moral. In asserting the contrary Mahan necessarily gave a totally different complexion to his doctrine of sin and of salvation from sin.

No more than Finney did he, to be sure, acknowledge any doctrine of “original sin.” Sin, says he,²⁷² is “exclusively a personal matter, a state of the inner man, a form of voluntary moral activity.” The soul becomes sinful, “not from necessity, but choice.” We derive no sin from our ancestry, near or remote; and we have no form or degree of merit or demerit which does not attach to us personally and to no one else but us. “Personal criminality” and nothing else is sin to us. But however we have become sinful, we are all entirely sinful. All sin consists in alienation and estrangement from God, His character, His will, and the law of duty; and this alienation and estrangement from all the claims of God and of His moral law, affects all our moral movements. In all forms of our moral activity, whether externally right or wrong, this estrangement is total. “No moral act of” our “unregenerate life” is “prompted by that motive and intent which render such act morally virtuous, or such that the conscience or God can regard, or ought to regard, as an act of obedience to the divine will and the law of duty.” Surely this positive fact of universal sinfulness in all our moral activities cannot be given negative statement otherwise than in terms of inability to good. Mahan will not go so far as that. But he allows that though we may see the good and approve it, we cannot do it. There is always “a total failure ‘to do that which is good’—the good to do which there is a readiness to will.”²⁷³ He avoids the word “inability,” but he is compelled to recognize some sort of a “human impotence” to good; a “self-impotence,” a “total self-impotence.” He even rebukes the preachers of the revival of the early thirties for their purely Pelagian teaching on ability; this was, he says,²⁷⁴ “a leading cause of the ultimate decline of those revivals.” It was a better teaching, to be sure, he declares, than the old New England doctrine of a so-called “natural ability” wholly neutralized by a “moral inability”—which left no ability at all. But in reacting from this the revivalists reacted too far and left no disability at all.

It is plain matter of fact, however, that we are dependent on God’s grace for holy choices, or, at least, for holy executions. “We are free agents: but the freedom which we and all creatures possess is a dependent one.… Light and grace are provided and rendered available; by availing ourselves of these we ‘may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.’ We are free to avail, or not to avail, ourselves of this light and grace. Refusing or neglecting to do this, we have no available power for anything but sin.” “We have no available power”; what is that but inability? An inability overcome, indeed, by “light and grace”; but how overcome by “light and grace”? Mahan says they are “made available.” But he does not tell us how their being “made available” overcomes our previous inability “for anything but sin.” Surely the mere proffering of them to us cannot overcome this inability. What Mahan tells us is, however, just that. He tells us that we have power to accept or reject proffered grace as we will; but naturally no power to perform without grace what can be performed only with grace. Grace is the instrument for working certain effects: we must use it if we wish those effects. But what enables us, who are unable to use it—for we can do nothing but sin and to use grace surely is no sin—to use it although we are unable to do so? Mahan is silent. Or rather he deserts his doctrine of inability to good, and substitutes for it a doctrine of absolute ability—but with it a complementary doctrine of right instrumentation. We are perfectly able to do what is right—to love God, to serve Him, to be perfect; but of course we are not able to do any of these things except we use the proper instruments for their performance. We are perfectly able to cut down a tree, but not with our finger nails; we are perfectly able to drive a spike home, but not with our naked fists. If we will consent to use an axe and hammer, we can easily perform these tasks. Mahan very truly says: “Teaching the doctrine of ability as an absolute and not dependent power, tends to induce, not faith in God and His grace, but self-assurance, self-dependence, and the pride of self-sufficiency and self-righteousness.” He wishes then to teach something else than “ability as an absolute power.” He apparently supposes that he is teaching ability dependent for its exercise on grace. He is not. He is teaching grace dependent for its operation on ability. We use grace, not grace us. The whole truth is that Mahan has raised the problem of ability and inability, and then—has dodged it. He has left us with man on our hands “impotent” to good: and as he has not made it quite plain to us why he is impotent to good, so he has not given us any ground whatever to believe, that, being impotent to good, he is quite able at his option to avail himself of God’s proffered grace and by it work all good. Clearly these problems can find no solution except in the frank postulation on the one hand of the sinfulness of human nature disabling it for good, and on the other of recreative grace recovering it to good.

When he comes to deal with the doctrine of salvation from sin, Mahan gets still deeper into his problem. He is no longer able to escape ascribing to unregenerate man a sinful “nature” which determines his actions; or to the saving Spirit a “physical” effect on this nature by which it is made good and the proximate source of our renewed activities. When God takes the stony heart out of our flesh and gives us a heart of flesh, he says,²⁷⁵ what is really meant is “a fundamental change and a renewal of our propensities.” “We are,” he says, “by nature ‘children of wrath,’ ‘prone to evil as the sparks are to fly upward.’ ” When God makes the change He promises, “we have ‘a new heart,’ and ‘a new spirit,’ ‘a divine nature,’ which impels us to love and obedience, just as our old nature impelled us to sin.” Referring to the “works of the flesh,” of Gal. 5:19 ff., he remarks that “behind all these forms of sin, ‘works of the flesh,’ lie certain propensities, dispositions, and tempers, which, when touched by corresponding temptations, set on fire burning and ‘warring lusts’ and evil passions, and these induce the sins and crimes above designated.” “These old propensities, dispositions, and tempers are taken away, and in this state, new ones of an opposite nature are given,” and “under our renovated propensities, and new dispositions, tendencies, and tempers, or ‘divine nature,’ it becomes just as easy and natural for us to bear ‘the fruits of the Spirit’ as it was, under our old ones, to work ‘the works of the flesh.’ ” The subject is pursued and similar phraseology repeated indefinitely. “ ‘By nature,’ ” we read,²⁷⁶ “—that is, under the influence of our old nature, or propensities, dispositions, and tempers, we are ‘children of wrath,’ and ‘bring forth fruit unto death.’ Under the dispositions, tempers, and tendencies of our new or ‘divine nature,’ we are just as naturally ‘children of God,’ and ‘have our fruit unto holiness.’ ” We are to reckon ourselves dead unto sin, “because ‘our old man,’ our old propensities, dispositions, and tempers, is crucified, ‘put to death’ with Him, that the ‘body of sin,’ our old and evil nature, ‘might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.’ ” While the old nature remains, we are told, we cannot help sinning; similarly when the new nature is given we cannot help being holy. Sometimes, it is true, a note of “may” rather than “must” is struck. “Because that, through the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us, ‘the body of sin,’ our old and evil propensities, ‘may be destroyed,’ and ‘the old man may be crucified with Him,’ and we may ‘through the law of the Spirit of Christ Jesus,’ be ‘made free from the law of sin and death,’ we should indeed cease to ‘live after the flesh,’ should be ‘not in the flesh but in the Spirit’; and should ‘reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ ” But this phraseology appears to be preserved only for purposes of exhortation, and its apparent suggestion that the effect lies in our own power is fully corrected when the speech takes a didactic form. “Such language,” we read,²⁷⁷ “implies more than this, that his old propensities, ‘the body of sin,’ ‘the old man,’ is yet living and warring in the soul, but, by the grace of Christ, are held in subjection. Mere subjection is not death. What the Apostle undeniably intended to teach is this: that his propensities, dispositions, and temper had been so renovated that the world, with its affections and lusts, had no more power over him than they have over the dead. Christ, on the other hand, lived in him, and occupied all his affections, and held undisputed control over all his activities.” This certainly suggests a “physical” change wrought in us by the Spirit of God, by which our governing dispositions are changed: and that as certainly implies that we are governed by our dispositions, whether evil or good.

At an earlier point,²⁷⁸ discussing the phrase “divine nature” in 2 Pet. 1:4, Mahan remarks: “The words ‘the divine nature,’ imply, as all will admit, not only the holiness and blessedness of the divine mind, but also that divine disposition or nature in God which induces His holiness and blessedness. For us to become possessed of this ‘divine nature’ implies not only present holiness and blessedness such as God possesses, but a divine disposition in us, a new and divine nature, which induces and prompts us to holiness, just as God’s nature prompts Him to the same. In our old or unrenewed state, we not only sinned, but had a nature or dispositions, which prompted us to sin. In Christ, we not only obey the divine will, but receive from Him, as the Mediator of the New Covenant, a new or ‘divine nature,’ which prompts us to purity and obedience, just as our old dispositions prompted us to sin.” A tendency appears here to think of the new nature imparted to us as if it were a separate entity implanted within us: and this is identified with the Holy Spirit whose coming into our hearts brings “the disposition” of Christ with Him. In commenting²⁷⁹ on the words: “God sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,” the phrase is employed: “the Spirit, or disposition, of His Son.” This corresponds to a mystical tendency which shows itself elsewhere in Mahan’s writings and forms a connecting link between him and the “New York Perfectionists” who preceded him. Apart from the suggestion of this special conception of the nature of the “new nature” imparted to us, however, there appears to be here a real recognition of the existence in us of a substrate of our activities, having moral quality itself, and so conditioning our moral activities as to determine their moral quality. “We are not only saved from the actual sins that are in the world,” we read, “but … the evil propensities and tempers, ‘the law in our members,’ which induces sin, are taken from us.” This certainly seems to posit a law in our members, underlying and determining our activities. We receive, we read again, “not only deliverance from sinning, but ‘the death of the old man,’ or”—as it is now explained—“the crucifixion of all those tempers and dispositions which induce sin.” There are, then, permanent tendencies in us, which determine our activities to be sinful. On the positive side, we receive “new and divine tendencies” which naturally induce the opposite virtues—“not only actual obedience to the divine will, but ‘a divine, nature,’ which prompts and constrains obedience in all its forms.” Are we not to give validity to the phrases “naturally induce,” “constrains” here? And then it is added in a general summary: “It is as much the nature of ‘the new man,’ or the promptings of his new and divine tendencies, to be pure in heart and life, as it was that of ‘the old man’ to ‘obey the law of sin.’ ” Surely a “physical” corruption, and a “physical” holiness, and a physical change from the one to the other is taught here.

This teaching forms the foundation for Mahan’s doctrine of the “sanctification of the sensibility,” to which we have already had occasion to advert, and which was a peculiarity of his teaching among his fellows. James H. Fairchild²⁸⁰ very properly tells us that it appears “to involve a supernatural and almost mechanical action upon our human nature, restoring it to its normal state before the fall,—all, however, in response to our faith.” The words, “All, however, in response to our faith,” mark the limits beyond which Mahan would not go in ascribing salvation to God; and, with that, the gross inconsistency of his thinking. For, as we have seen, he ascribes to the evil dispositions which constitute the “old man” just as much determining power over our activities, making them evil, as he ascribes to the good dispositions constituting our new man, making our activities good. And yet he supposes that while still under the dominance of the “old man” we may at will turn to Christ in saving faith. More: immediately upon the heels of his exposition of the determining effects on conduct of our “propensities, dispositions, temper and tendencies,”²⁸¹ he speaks of the man who has believed for pardon but not yet for holiness, being “as far as his voluntary activities are concerned … in a state of supreme obedience to the will of God,” while yet (since the “physical” change comes only with the “second blessing”) all these “old propensities, dispositions, temper, and tendencies” remain as they were and remain at war against this new-born purpose of obedience. If validity be given to the preceding exposition, this is nonsense: if validity be given to this assertion, that exposition is without significance. Whatever Mahan teaches as to a supernatural action on the human soul of the Spirit of God—an action which Fairchild looks upon as “almost mechanical”—he has no intention whatever of suspending human salvation on anything else than human volition; a volition which at bottom he conceives as acting in complete independence of any as well subjective as objective determinants. Mahan’s whole discussion of “the sanctification of the sensibility,” therefore, with its suggestions of controlling dispositions lying behind our activities and of a consequent “physical” change in our sanctification, must be looked upon as a mere tendency of thought running athwart his most fundamental convictions and capable therefore of having validity given to it only so far as it can be made consistent with a doctrine of the will, and of the dependence of salvation on the will, with which it is in essential disharmony.

Fairchild, in his notice of this excursion of Mahan’s thought, proceeds to tell us how Finney stood in the matter. “Pres. Finney,” he says, “while not disclaiming this idea entirely, and sometimes presenting facts and experiences which were in harmony with it, insisted more upon the moral power of Gospel truth upon the believer’s heart. He found deliverance from temptation and from the power of sin in the views which the Spirit gives of Christ. The truth as it is in Jesus was to him the power of God unto salvation. ‘Sanctify us through the truth’ was the burden of his prayer and of his teaching; and this was the prevalent idea with the other leaders of thought here.” That is to say Finney dallied a little with the idea of “the baptism of the Spirit,” but did not really adopt it; he continued to confine the work of the Spirit to illumination and to deny all recreative functions to Him: He is our Guide, not our Regenerator. There is nothing strange in Finney’s failure to assimilate this idea: what is surprising is that he could dally with it even for a moment. That he did do so is probably only an illustration of that hospitality which he was ever showing to the notions of his colleagues, by which he was led to assimilate them as far as his fundamental teaching permitted him to do so, without, however, ever really modifying his fundamental teaching to accommodate them. A striking instance of how he dealt with them, apparently adopting them with heartiness and really transforming them into the image of his own thought, is afforded by his treatment of this very doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, at a dramatic moment of his own life. Mahan’s book bearing that title was published in 1870. The National Council of Congregational Churches met at Oberlin in 1871, and, making much of Finney in his hale old age (he was in his eightieth year), invited him to address it. He did so, and, on request, continued his discussion on the following Sabbath. The subject he chose to speak on was the Baptism of the Holy Ghost; and his treatment of the theme ran on the lines laid down in Mahan’s recently published book. He followed up his address with some letters printed in The Independent, and afterwards put into tract form. In the first of these (called “Power from on High”) he outlines the doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit for power, as he had outlined it at the Council; and it might almost have been simply transcribed from Mahan. This baptism of the Holy Ghost, he declares, is the indispensable condition of performing the work given us by Christ to do; Christ has expressly promised it to the whole Church; the condition of receiving it is to continue in prayer and supplication until we receive it; it is not to be confounded with the peace which comes to the justified state—it is not peace but power; Christ gives peace but promises power—and we must not rest in conversion but go on to this second blessing which is at our disposal. A second letter now followed, in which the doctrine is given a somewhat new turn. The blessing conferred on the Apostles at Pentecost by the baptism of the Spirit is first reduced to “the power to fasten saving impressions upon the minds of men,” the power “to savingly impress men.” And then in his effort to define precisely what this power consists in, Finney comes to this:—“It was God speaking in and through them. It was a power from on high—God in them making a saving impression upon those to whom they spoke.” And then he still further teaches that the power was not conferred at Pentecost alone, and not alone on the Apostles. It is still conferred: he himself has received it. He has often converted men by so chance a word that he had no remembrance of having spoken it, or even by a mere look. He illustrates this with anecdotes from his own life, such as are found in the “Memoirs” which he had recently completed. It is a sufficiently odd doctrine which he here enunciates, a kind of new Lutheranism with the evangelist substituted for the Word. The Holy Ghost is represented, not, as in the Reformed doctrine, as accompanying the word preached extrinsecus accedens—“the Lord opened Lydia’s heart,” “Paul may plant and Apollos water, the Lord gives the increase”; and not as in the Lutheran doctrine as intrinsic in the Word spoken, acting out from the Word on the heart of the hearer; but as intrinsic in the evangelist speaking. By a mere gaze, without a word spoken, Finney says he reduced a whole room-full of factory girls to hysteria. As the Lutheran says God in the Word works a saving impression, Finney says God in the preacher works a saving impression. Not the Word, but the preacher is the power of God unto salvation. The evangelist has become a Sacrament. The letters were continued after an interval. There was another descriptive one (“The Enduement of the Spirit”) in which the anecdote of the preaching in “Sodom” related in the “Memoirs” is repeated. Then there was one called “Power from on High: Who May Expect the Enduement?” in which he explains that “all Christians, by virtue of their relation to Christ, may ask and receive this enduement of power to win souls to Him,” adding that it comes “after their first faith,” and as an “instantaneous” gift. In another, “Is It a Hard Saying?” he defends his assertion that those without this power are disqualified for office in the Church. And finally, “Enduement of Power from on High” considers the conditions upon which this enduement of power can be obtained. It is a pathetic sight to observe the aged Finney after a long life of insistence that it is only by the power of truth that men can be brought to Christ, clothing at the end the evangelist himself with supernatural powers and representing him as fitted for his functions only by the possession of these supernatural powers. It is an odd instance of the invention of a supernaturally endowed priesthood to mediate between God and man, when God is not permitted Himself to act immediately on the heart; and it seems to bear witness to a deep-lying conviction in the human soul that its salvation will not be accomplished without a supernatural intervention somewhere. The pragmatic refutation of the Pelagian construction of salvation is not a mean one. It will not work; and no one really believes that it will work. The supernaturalism thrown out at the window is very apt to creep back through some chink or other.

The form given to the Oberlin doctrine of perfection in the first stage of its development did not remain its permanent form. It was distinctly taught in essentially this form, it is true, throughout his long life, by Asa Mahan, to whose influence apparently the first shaping of the doctrine was mainly due. And Henry Cowles seems never to have advanced much beyond this mode of conceiving it. But it was not long before, in its general apprehension, it suffered a sea-change which gave it a totally new character. This was due to the dominating place given in Oberlin thinking, from 1841 on, to what is called the doctrine of “the simplicity of moral action.” This was not a new doctrine. It lay, as corollary, too near to the teleological ethics inherited by Oberlin from the New England theology, for it not to have had attention drawn to it before. Frank H. Foster has shown that it is very clearly alluded to in certain arguments of Nathaniel Emmons,²⁸² and indeed that it was already more than hinted at by Samuel Hopkins: “Every moral action is either perfectly holy or perfectly sinful.”²⁸³ It was a settled presupposition of Finney’s thought from at least the beginning of 1839, although he recalls a time when he had not yet recognized it.²⁸⁴ But it seems to have been left to two of the theological students at Oberlin of the class of 1842, to bring it out of comparative neglect, announce it as of primary importance, enforce it by extended reasoning, and make it a determining factor in Oberlin thinking.

It is interesting to observe the part taken by the students at Oberlin in formulating its doctrine of perfection. We have already seen that, had the students not intervened, the Oberlin professors might never have discovered that they were in fact teaching a doctrine of perfection. And we see them intervening here again to bring into full recognition and use a fundamental principle of Oberlin thinking which appeared to be in danger of being neglected. In neither instance was there a new discovery made. In both instances what we are called upon to observe is the fresh young minds of the students, in working on the material given to them, throwing up into clear view elements of necessary implication which were being left by their teachers out of sight. Finney, writing in 1847, felicitates himself on the method of instruction pursued at Oberlin, by which the students were made fellow workers with the teachers; and handsomely acknowledges the benefit he had received from his students’ activity. “I … owe not a little to my classes,” he says,²⁸⁵ “for I have availed myself to the uttermost of the learning and sagacity and talent of every member of my classes in pushing my investigations.” The particular members of his classes to whose sagacity he owes not indeed his knowledge of the doctrine of “the simplicity of moral action,” but its elevation to the commanding place it at once took in Oberlin thinking, were two brothers, Samuel D. and William Cochran.

It was William Cochran, a brilliant young man who afterwards served a few years as a professor at Oberlin, until cut off by an untimely death in 1847, who brought the subject into public discussion. This he did in an address delivered before the Society of Inquiry in the spring of 1841 and repeated the following autumn, at Commencement, before the Society of Alumni. Permanency was given to this address by its publication in The Oberlin Evangelist,²⁸⁶ and Cochran afterwards developed his views at greater length in the pages of The Oberlin Quarterly Review.²⁸⁷ From this time on the doctrine of “the simplicity of moral action” became a characteristic feature of Oberlin theology. The leading instructors and preachers of the time, with “the possible exception of Henry Cowles” embraced it at once; and “especially by the consistent and unvarying advocacy of President Fairchild” it was propagated through a succeeding generation as the only genuine Oberlin teaching.²⁸⁸

The essence of this doctrine is briefly explained by Fairchild²⁸⁹ as follows: “The doctrine maintains the impossibility of a divided heart in moral action. The sinner, in his sin, is utterly destitute of righteousness, and the good man, in his obedience, is completely, entirely obedient: sin on the one side and obedience, on the other belonging only to voluntary states. The division of the will between the two contradictory moral attitudes of sin and holiness is a metaphysical impossibility.” The ethical theory underlying the doctrine is here thrown into emphasis. The man is dissolved into a series of volitions. Each volition is isolated and looked at apart: and being treated as a bare volition, it is said not to be capable of a composite character. Volitions are either good or bad; and that is the end of it. But beyond the volition no man is recognized: the volition is the man, and what the volition is at any moment that the man is. As volitions are either good or bad, so then the man is. The morally grey is eliminated: only black and white are allowed to be possible. Every man is either as bad or as good as he can be in the circumstances in which he stands for the moment. There can therefore be no such thing as a partially sanctified believer; and the whole conception of progressive sanctification is excluded. “They allege,” says John C. Lord, accurately,²⁹⁰ “that there is no such thing as imperfect holiness, and, of course, that there is no such thing as being sanctified in part.” Over against the general doctrine of the churches which denies the existence of perfect holiness, this doctrine sets the denial of the possibility of imperfect holiness. You are either perfectly holy, or you have no holiness at all. Holiness is a thing that does not admit of abscission and division. The idea is generalized into the proposition that “holiness must be supreme in degree to have the character of holiness at all”—a proposition which might appear to mean that a little sin neutralizes any amount of holiness, but no amount of holiness can affect the quality of existing sin at all, except that the very conception of progressive holiness is excluded. The Church at any given moment is therefore not made up of redeemed sinners in various stages of perfection, but of perfectly holy and perfectly wicked people standing side by side. The two classes are not stable but may be, in the individuals which compose them, continually changing places. The perfectly holy may, and do, become at any moment the perfectly wicked: the perfectly wicked may, and do, become at any moment, the perfectly holy. The average of the mass may yield a result that looks like the partly sanctified Christian as commonly conceived. But the “average Christian” has no real existence, and the average of the mass is obtained by finding the shifting center of gravity of a mass composed actually, in varying proportions, of perfectly holy and perfectly wicked men as units. There is no room here, therefore, for two classes of Christians, with a “second conversion” lying between them. To be a Christian at all is to be perfect: and the concern of the Christian is not to grow more perfect, but to maintain the perfection which belongs to him as a Christian and in which, not into which, he grows. What, then, he seeks after is not holiness—he has that. Nor more holiness than he has—if he has any he has all. What he seeks after is “establishment.” Holiness cannot be imperfect in degree: but it can be and is imperfect in “constancy.” The doctrine has been called “the pendulum theory of moral action.” It supposes the man to oscillate between perfect goodness and perfect badness, and denies to him any abiding, permanent character.²⁹¹ To one observing the current of an individual life, it may bear—as the church at large does—the aspect of the manifestation of an imperfectly sanctified nature. This is illusion: it is due to the mingling in our observation of successive states of perfect goodness and perfect badness. They do not co-exist, but alternate. The one task of the Christian is to attain a state in which the fluctuation ceases and he is permanently established in holiness.²⁹² When that state is attained we are not merely “entirely” sanctified—that we had been, at intervals, all along—but “permanently” sanctified. That is the goal of all Christian progress—to cease from falling and remain steadily what all Christians ought to be, and indeed what all Christians are—whenever they are Christians.

The interpolation of this doctrine, as a controlling factor, into Oberlin thinking had the effect of antiquating the doctrine of perfection as previously taught at Oberlin. Cowles, it is true, simply permitted all he had written to stand as it was written—litera scripta manet. Morgan had not hitherto put his hand to the subject, and his hands were free to take up the new doctrine and work out from it as his starting point. To Mahan and Finney, who had written copiously in the earlier sense, the task was set, to adjust their even more copious later discussions to the new point of view. Mahan’s method was to accept the new doctrine of course—and to pass by it with averted face on the other side of the road. The phraseology by which Fairchild describes his relation to it is carefully chosen and is the more significant because of its apparent colorlessness. “His later writings,” he says,²⁹³ “are intended to harmonize with the doctrine.” They do not do so. It remains with him an unassimilated element of thought. Finney, on the contrary, to whom the doctrine was no stranger, entered upon the task of adjustment to it con amore. In his “Lectures on Systematic Theology”—the most extended and systematic of his writings—he has made the notion of “the simplicity of moral action” the fundamental principle of his doctrine of salvation, and as a consequence teaches, in point of fact, the perfection of all Christians from the inception of faith in them onward. This necessitates not only a readjustment of the whole trend of his “Views of Sanctification,” which he largely incorporates into the new work, but a reconstruction of his entire treatment of the way of salvation, every stage in which requires radical alteration to fit it in with the new point of view. The doctrine of sanctification to which an inordinate formal place in the systematic arrangement is already given, nevertheless actually overflows even these ample bounds and swallows up the space allowed to the other saving operations. The doctrine of salvation becomes almost nothing indeed but a doctrine of sanctification. One of the results of this is that when the formal treatment of sanctification is reached, despite the copiousness with which it is dealt with, little is left to be said of it. In this exigency the term is retained and its meaning altered. “Entire sanctification” no longer stands as the end of the saving process, as the final goal towards which the Christian’s heart yearns. That having become the characteristic of all believers from the moment of conversion, the term “sanctification” as the designation of one stage of salvation and that the most elaborately treated of all, has lost its content. As it must add something to what Christians already possess, and as all Christians—whenever they are Christians—possess “entire sanctification,” “sanctification” comes to mean “permanent sanctification.” “Sanctification,” says Finney, in a vain attempt to deal with the embarrassing situation,²⁹⁴ as he enters upon his discussion of “sanctification,” “may be entire in two senses: (1) In the sense of present, full obedience, or entire consecration to God; and, (2) In the sense of continued, abiding consecration or obedience to God. Entire sanctification, when the terms are used in this sense, consists in being established, confirmed, preserved, continued in a state of sanctification or of entire consecration to God. In this discussion, then, I shall use the term ‘entire sanctification’ to designate a state of confirmed, and entire consecration of body, soul, and spirit, or of the whole being to God.” As much as to say: All believers being from the very fact that they are believers entirely sanctified from the first moment of their believing, on receiving this great new gift of sanctification … will, now just stay sanctified. The goal that is set before Christians accordingly ceases to be to become entirely sanctified—that they already are if Christians at all—but to make their entire sanctification no longer fluctuating but permanent. Fairchild thinks²⁹⁵ that Finney has not been able to maintain his new attitude on the subject in discussion, without some lapses into his earlier point of view. That would be both natural and unimportant; and the instances adduced by Fairchild appear fairly to bear out the suggestion. But it is the new attitude which dominates the entire system of doctrine—if this can be spoken of as a new attitude for Finney and not rather a reversion to an older attitude lying behind that exhibited in what we may perhaps call his Mahan period.²⁹⁶ And it is this new attitude which dominated the subsequent thought of Oberlin, so long as Oberlin remained perfectionist in its thought. The older point of view which it supplanted was now thought to be not quite an Oberlin point of view; and so far as it continued to exist in Oberlin—“in limited circles” we are told—was “sustained, not by the Oberlin theology or the Oberlin teaching or preaching, but by the writings and periodicals and teachings introduced from abroad, especially of the Wesleyan school.”²⁹⁷ To the Wesleyan period of Oberlin Perfectionism there succeeded, then, from 1841 on, a period of very distinctively Oberlin Perfectionism. And the characteristic feature of this new Oberlin Perfectionism is that it is the product of the conception known as “the simplicity of moral action.”

Finney formally expounds his conception of “the simplicity of moral action” in a chapter in the “Lectures on Systematic Theology.”²⁹⁸ He takes his start from the contention that all moral character resides in the ultimate choice; and as this ultimate choice dominates all subordinate choices, volitions and acts, it dominates the whole life. The moral character of the ultimate choice thus gives its moral character to the entire life. As now the ultimate choice is simple and its moral character is simple, a man must be morally just what his ultimate choice is morally. That ultimate choice must be wholly moral or wholly immoral; entirely holy or entirely sinful. A man must be therefore altogether holy or altogether sinful; there are no gradations, no intermixtures, no intermediations. Every man is therefore at any given moment perfectly sinful or perfectly holy.²⁹⁹ If his ultimate end is selfishness, he is perfectly sinful; if his ultimate end is benevolence, he is perfectly holy. There is no third condition. “Sin and holiness, then, both consist in supreme, ultimate, and opposite choices or intentions, and cannot, by any possibility, coëxist.”³⁰⁰ It is not intended that our holiness, or sinfulness, is as great as, in other circumstances than those in which we exist, it might be. It is only intended that it is complete and entire and as great as in our actual circumstances it can be. The holiness of God cannot be attained by a man; nor that of an angel; nor can even that of a man better placed be attained by one in lower circumstances. What holiness, or sin, is in anyone, is determined by his knowledge, by “the perceived value” of the objects of his choice. “The true spirit of the requirement of the moral law is this—that every moral being shall choose every interest according to its value as perceived by the mind.”³⁰¹ “The fact is that the obligation of every moral being must be graduated by his knowledge. If, therefore, his intention be equal in its intensity to his views or knowledge of the real or relative value of different objects, it is right. It is up to the full measure of his obligation.”³⁰² A man may thus be entirely holy extensively—that is, conformed to the law as known to him, or willing things according to their respective values as perceived by him—without being very holy intensively. He is, being such, altogether holy.

This is, obviously, only one way of lowering the demands of the law. Indeed, in one aspect, there can scarcely be said to be any such thing as the law in the case. Law is replaced by benevolence, and is fulfilled by willing the good of being as an ultimate end, chosen for its own sake. It is taught that all subordinate ends, and the executive volitions which secure them, not only ought to be, but must be and will be, determined by this ultimate end. So long as we really will the good of being as our ultimate end, we cannot make subordinate choices which are means to other ends. A law of mental nature gives dominion to our ultimate end. Having once adopted this ultimate end, our lives in all their details are absolutely determined by it. The mechanism of moral action makes that inevitable. We therefore would seem to need no law. Our ultimate choice of the good of being becomes a law which governs all our activities. It would seem to follow also that we cannot sin. Does not the mechanism of moral action determine that—working back from the ultimate choice of the good of being to the subordinate choices and executive volitions and their execution in acts? But Finney falters here.³⁰³ We cannot sin so long as our ultimate choice of the good of being remains unchanged.³⁰⁴ But we may change that, and in many cases we do change that. And then we not only can sin and do sin, but must sin and do nothing but sin. We have ceased to be perfectly holy and become perfectly sinful. So long as our ultimate end remains the good of being, our whole life in all its activities is determined by it. We are entirely holy. So soon as our ultimate end ceases to be the good of being and becomes our own selfish gratification, our whole life in all its activities is determined by it. We are entirely sinful. This is the doctrine of the simplicity of moral action as conceived by Finney.

It will be perceived at once that what we called the characterizing features of the older form of Oberlin Perfectionism in point of fact persist in this new construction. Perfection is still conceived as full obedience to the moral law. And full obedience to the moral law is still measured not by the objective content of the law, but by the subjective ability of the agent. It is still taught with all emphasis that a man is perfect who does all he can do, being what he is; with the disabilities belonging, we would say, to his present moral state; they would say to his present condition of ignorance and weakness; and in the circumstances with which he is surrounded.³⁰⁵ Beyond this narrow area of fundamental agreement, however, all is contradiction. This state of perfection in which the whole law of God is obeyed—so far as the agent, being what he is and as he is, can obey it—is no longer conceived as the culminating attainment of the Christian, to be reached, not by all Christians, but by some only, the élite of the Christian body, separated from the crowd precisely by this great attainment. It is conceived as the primary condition of all other Christian attainments, presupposed in every step of Christian living, and therefore the common possession of all Christians, without which no man is a Christian at all. We are no longer supposed to become perfect by being Christians, and pushing our Christianity to its limits; we become Christians by being perfect and it is only through the gate of perfection that we can enter Christianity at all. All Christians are then perfect: one is not more perfect than another: ex vi verbi an imperfect Christian is no Christian at all. There are therefore not two classes of Christians, the merely justified and the justified and sanctified also: no one is justified who is not also sanctified. Sanctification is not a sequence of justification, but its condition; and therefore precedes it. We are not justified in order that we may be sanctified, but sanctified in order that we may be justified. There are only two classes of men, saints and sinners; and the difference between these classes is “radical, fundamental and complete.” There is no room for a third class between them partaking of characteristics of both. The sinner has nothing of the saint about him; the saint nothing of the sinner. The saint is dead to sin and alive to God; and “the Bible … often speaks in such strong language as almost to compel us to understand it as denying that the saints sin at all; or to conclude, that sinning at all, proves that one is not a saint.”³⁰⁶ Is there not some faltering in that “almost”? Justification, we are told, is conditioned by sanctification, and implies complete sanctification—for God cannot accept as righteous one who is only “almost” righteous. According to the doctrine taught accordingly, all saints are entirely sanctified, are perfect, and do not sin. If they sin, that does not prove so much that they have not been saints, as that they are saints no longer. They may sin, but on sinning they cease to be saints. There are no remainders of sin in any Christian therefore to be eradicated. He is already on becoming a Christian all that he ought to be. Perfection lies behind him, not before. What lies before is only his establishment in his perfection that he may no longer fall from it; that and a growth in outlook which carries with it a corresponding growth in obligation and its fulfilment. Perfect however he already is, perfect for his present outlook and according to his present obligations; and more than perfect he cannot become.

It is obvious that one of the chief tasks which devolved on the advocates of this new form of Oberlin Perfectionism was the validation of the assumption that only those who are perfect can have any standing whatever in the sight of God. This task was undertaken from the Biblical point of view by John Morgan, who devoted to it the first of the two essays he published in The Oberlin Quarterly Review for 1845—the essay to which he gave the title of “The Holiness Acceptable to God.” This essay was so highly esteemed by Finney that he incorporated it as a whole in his “Lectures on Systematic Theology”³⁰⁷—thus making it a part of his own argument in support of the contention that “sanctification is the condition of justification.” By this contention, he says, “the following things are intended. (1) That present, full, and entire consecration of heart and life to God and his service is an unalterable condition of present pardon of past sin, and of present acceptance with God. (2) That the penitent soul remains justified no longer than this fullhearted consecration continues.”³⁰⁸ It will no doubt be observed that Finney replaces here the term “sanctification” of the original statement, by its synonym, “consecration.” This is a frequent interchange of terms with him and has no significance for the matter in hand. By sanctification he means, under either designation, just “full obedience to the known law of God.”³⁰⁹ Morgan himself puts the question which he undertakes to answer thus: “Is any degree of holiness acceptable to God, which, for the time being, falls short of full obedience to the divine law?”,³¹⁰ and phrases his answer in the equally uncompromising terms: “Nothing short of present entire conformity to the divine law is accepted of God.”³¹¹ In employing the phrases “acceptable to God,” “accepted of God,” he is not speaking abstractly of what we might suppose to be generally pleasing to God; but with perfect definiteness of the specific act which is commonly called justification—of what God requires in order to that special act of accepting man as righteous in His sight. In order more clearly to explain his meaning, he uses accordingly such language as “the holiness” enjoined “as a condition of justification before God”;³¹² “the supposition that the entire subjugation of sin is indispensable to justification.”³¹³ The ultimate foundation of the essay is denial of imputed righteousness, and with it, of course, of the vicarious obedience of Christ; and the discovery of the righteousness on the ground of which God accepts man as righteous, in man himself. The contention made is that God demands a perfect righteousness and man provides it: the situation thus created being eased only by defining benevolently what perfect righteousness requires in each stage of human moral development. Although, however, justification is very definitely in mind, the discussion is framed so as to cover a wider field, and what is sought is declared to be the determination of the degree of holiness which alone is acceptable to God—at the moment of justification of course, but also continuously thereafter. “We put the question into the most general form,” we read, “intending it to apply to both the accepted holiness of the new-born soul and the holiness of the most mature Christian.”³¹⁴ We cannot be accepted by God without this holiness; neither, having been accepted by Him, can we remain accepted save this holiness be maintained. It is supposed that those accepted by God in justification may not remain acceptable to Him, and may therefore fall out of that acceptance which is justification—to which they can be restored again only by becoming again acceptable. Only the perfect are acceptable to God; if we lose our perfection we lose our acceptance; but a recovery of perfection recovers also acceptance. The two things, perfection and acceptance, go together, and are inseparable.

On the basis of this exposition Morgan now asserts that texts of Scripture which prove or appear to prove that converted persons sometimes sin, in no way embarrass his doctrine.³¹⁵ Of course, if converted persons sin, they are no longer acceptable to God. They must cease to sin to become again acceptable to Him. He admits that it would be fatal to His view, “if it could be made out that the Scriptures represent the. saints as constantly sinful.” He can allow for a passing back and forward between saintliness and sinfulness; which would be a passing in and out of acceptability, and in and out of that actual acceptance which is justification. But he cannot allow that one who sins can continue acceptable to God, or accepted by Him, that is, justified. No one can be accepted by God who has not ceased to sin; and no one can remain accepted by God except as he continues without sin. It is no refutation of this contention, Morgan says, to show that Christians sometimes sin: it can be refuted only by showing that they are always sinful: sinful, of course, with a voluntary sinfulness, since there is no sinfulness which is not voluntary. “The language of the law plainly shows that it concerns itself with nothing else than the voluntary inward state or actions of men.” “Nor is there any depravity, corruption, bias, evil nature, or any thing else of whatever name, with which it is offended or displeased, in man or devil, except the voluntary exclusion of love, or the indulgence of its opposite. Disobedience on the one hand, and obedience on the other, are the only moral entities known to the Scriptures, or of which the law of God takes the least cognizance. It demands nothing but cordial obedience—it forbids nothing but cordial disobedience.”³¹⁶ This cordial obedience is perfection and less than this cannot be accepted by God. “Is it the Bible doctrine, that if a man will put away the greater part of his sin, God will, for Christ’s sake, forgive him the whole?” No; the Scriptures always conjoin repentance with remission, and repentance is nothing but abandonment, and remission cannot be broader than abandonment. To suppose otherwise would be to make Christ “the enemy of the law and the minister of sin.”³¹⁷

This teaching, Morgan now says,³¹⁸ is not justification by works. It is “gratuitous justification by faith”—because our righteousness on the ground of which alone we are, or can be, acceptable to God—and therefore are accepted by Him—lays no ground in right for a claim upon Him for pardon of our past sins. Finney seeks the same result by merely drawing a distinction between condition and ground. Our righteousness is the condition, not the ground of the pardon of our past sins, and acceptance with God. The ground of our pardon is to be sought only in the pure clemency of God: but God exercises this clemency only on the condition that we shall perfectly obey His law. If we will perfectly obey His law, we become acceptable to Him, and He will graciously pardon our past sins. Not our future sins: if we commit any future sins we lose our standing in His favor and can recover it again only by again becoming perfectly obedient to His law, when these new sins, now become past sins, will also be pardoned. Our acceptance with God thus, now and always, is conditioned upon, though not grounded in, our complete obedience to the law.

Whether this distinction between ground and condition can be made to serve the purpose for which Finney invokes it, may admit of some question. Finney lays great stress upon it. There is but one “ground” or “fundamental reason,” he says,³¹⁹ of our justification; and that is “the disinterested and infinite love of God.” But there are many “conditions,” that is to say sine-qua-nons, without which justification cannot take place; “men are not justified for these things, but they cannot be justified without them.” This is understood by George Duffield—and Finney says with substantial accuracy—to mean that these are not things which must be performed in order to entitle us to justification, but only invariable “concomitants” of our justification.³²⁰ In this sense Finney represents the atonement of Christ, repentance, faith in the atonement, sanctification, to be “conditions” of justification. He puts them on the same line: one of them is no more a ground, one of them is no less a condition, of justification than the others. He distinguishes, it is true, between present and future justification, but does not “conditionate” the one on repentance and faith and the other on sanctification; but the one on “present” repentance and faith and sanctification, and the other on “future” repentance and faith and sanctification. Justification and sanctification are thus no doubt made invariable concomitants. But does “concomitance” fully express their relation to one another? If it did, it would seem that sanctification would be as much “conditionated” on justification as justification on sanctification. But Finney is not only explicit but emphatic to the contrary. It is to him only an error of “some theologians” to make “justification a condition of sanctification, instead of making sanctification a condition of justification.”³²¹ You can have sanctification without justification, but not justification without sanctification. This is a very one-sided concomitance, and means that the relation of sanctification to justification is not that of real concomitance, but of causal condition. Finney, it is true, denies with all energy that it is the proper “ground” of justification. “I think I may safely say,” says he,³²² “that I never for a moment, at any period of my Christian life, held that man’s own obedience or righteousness was the ground of his justification before God. I always held and strenuously maintained the direct opposite of this.” Quite so. According to his own definition of terms, there is but one “ground or fundamental reason” of justification—that is God’s ineffable love. And we all proclaim, of course, with one voice, that out of the love of God alone comes that movement of His grace, the outcome of which is our justification. Only one “ground,” then, in this sense. But there are “conditions,” says Finney, in the absence of which God’s love does not issue in justification, and which are therefore the proper grounds of His love manifesting itself in this particular mode of action. Finney says emphatically that there are four such “conditions.” He clearly does not mean merely that justification is always found in company with these four things. He means that it occurs only in sequence to these four things. No atonement, no justification; but not in the same sense no justification, no atonement. No repentance and faith, no justification; but not in the same sense, no justification, no repentance and faith. No sanctification, no justification; but not in the same sense no justification, no sanctification. There is a relation here of precedence and sequence; of cause and consequence. Justification depends on these things, its occurrence is suspended on them; as they do not depend on it, their occurrence is not suspended on it. And that carries with it that justification depends on, is suspended on, “man’s own obedience or righteousness.”

It is instructive to observe what Finney asseverates that he “holds, and expressly teaches,” that the grounds of justification are not, set as they are in contrast with the one thing, the love of God, which he declares that the ground of justification is. The ground of justification he asseverates³²³ is not (1) the obedience of Christ for us; (2) our own obedience either to the law or to the gospel; (3) the atonement of Christ; (4) anything in the mediatorial work of Christ; (5) the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is not anything that either Christ or we have done; and it is not anything that we have done or have become under the operations of the Spirit. It is solely the divine benevolence. The Atonement, from the point of view of the Rectoral theory, which Finney teaches, naturally has no adaptation to serve immediately as the ground of any act of God. Its only immediate effect is to bring men to repentance and faith; and thus the entire work of Christ is reduced to inducing men to repent and believe. It is not so clear, however, that the repentance and faith to which men are thus brought, together with their resultant obedience, do not constitute the proper ground of their justification in this scheme. No doubt “the fundamental reason” of justification lies in the love of God: nothing is required, in this scheme, to enable the benevolent God to forgive sin—it flows spontaneously out of His benevolence alone. But the benevolent God is not free to act on this scheme out of His benevolence alone. He has tied Himself up with governmental obligations. The love of God cannot fulfil itself in the actual justification of sinners, therefore, consistently with His governmental obligations, except in the case of those who have been brought by the Atonement (serving the purposes here of punishment) to repentance and faith, with the consequent amendment of life which is sanctification. This “reformation of life” is obviously in such a sense the “condition” of justification that it may properly be called its ground. It is not the ground of God’s impulse to justify, but it is the ground of God’s actually justifying, the sinner. In it the manifestation of His love to this or that particular sinner is grounded. It is the ground of justification in the same sense in which the righteousness of Christ—active and passive—is in the Reformation doctrine of justification, namely, that in view of which God pardons the sins of those whom He justifies and accepts as righteous in His sight. When Finney strenuously argues that God can accept as righteous no one who is not intrinsically righteous, it cannot be denied that he teaches a work-salvation, and has put man’s own righteousness in the place occupied in the Reformation doctrine of justification by the righteousness of Christ.

Finney, it must be confessed, exhibits no desire to conceal from himself the seriousness of his departure from the Reformation teaching in his doctrine of justification. One of the reasons for his constant insistence that the righteousness of man—no less than the atoning work of Christ—is only a condition, not the ground, of justification, is to escape from all implication of a forensic doctrine of justification. He fairly rages against this forensic doctrine. “Now,” he exclaims of it,³²⁴ “this is certainly another gospel from the one I am inculcating. It is not a difference merely upon some speculative or theoretic point. It is a point fundamental to the gospel and to salvation, if any one can be.” It is with full consciousness, therefore, that he ranges himself over against the doctrine of the Reformation, as teaching “another gospel.” And the precise point on which his opposition turns is that the Reformation doctrine, by interposing an imputation of the righteousness of Christ as the ground on which the sinner is accepted as righteous, does not require perfect intrinsic righteousness as the condition precedent of justification. This he cries out against as a doctrine of justification “in sin.” “It certainly can not be true,” he declares,³²⁵ “that God accepts and justifies the sinner in his sins. I may safely challenge the world for either reason or scripture to support the doctrine of justification in sin, in any degree of present rebellion against God. The Bible every where represents justified persons as sanctified and always expressly, or impliedly, conditionates justification upon sanctification, in the sense of present obedience to God.” “Present, full, and entire consecration of heart and life to God and his service,” he says again,³²⁶ “is an unalterable condition of present pardon of past sin, and of present acceptance with God”; and “the penitent soul remains justified no longer than this full-hearted consecration continues.” At an earlier point³²⁷ he lays down the proposition that God cannot in any sense “justify one who does not yield a present and full obedience to the moral law,” and, pouring scorn on any “method of justification” which does not presuppose such an obedience, exclaims,³²⁸ “What good can result to God, or the sinner, or to the universe by thus pardoning and justifying an unsanctified soul?” “If what has been said is true,” he then remarks,³²⁹ “we see that the Church has fallen into a great and ruinous mistake, in supposing that a state of present sinlessness is a very rare, if not an impossible, attainment in this life. If the doctrine of this lecture be true, it follows that the very beginning of true religion in the soul, implies the renunciation of all sin. Sin ceases where holiness begins.” And he closes with an invective against those who object to such as “teach, that God justifies no one, but upon condition of present sinlessness”—than which we could have no more precise assertion that justification proceeds on the presupposition of sinlessness. The attainment of sinlessness with Finney is the first, not the last step of the religious life.

It certainly required some temerity for Finney to “challenge the world” to adduce any Scripture to support what he calls “the doctrine of justification in sin, in any degree of present rebellion against God.”³³⁰ Paul might seem to have written a great part of his epistles expressly to provide materials for meeting this challenge. One wonders how such language could have been employed by one who had in mind, say, Rom. 3:21 ff., which is quoted in this very connection. For it is Paul’s direct object in this passage to show that men, being incapable of justification from the point of view of their relation to law-works—Finney’s “entire conformity to law”—are nevertheless graciously justified by God, in view of what Christ has done in their behalf—which is clearly an assertion of the substitution and imputation which Finney rejects with repugnance. Precisely what Paul says in the cardinal verses (23, 24) is that “all”—a very emphatic “all,” declaring what is true of all believers without exception—that “all have sinned”—the view-point being taken from their present state as believers—“all have sinned and know themselves to be without the approbation of God”—the present tense, middle voice, declaring a lack of which they were conscious—“and are therefore justified freely, by His grace, by means of the ransoming which is in Christ Jesus”—the ransoming wrought out in Christ Jesus being the means by which it has been brought about that God can proceed to justify sinners, conscious of their sin, gratuitously; the idea of the gratuitousness of the justification receiving the emphasis of repetition: “freely, by His grace.” It is distinctly asserted here that those justified are sinners, and are conscious of standing as such under the condemnation of God at the moment when they are justified; that their justification is not in any sense in accordance with their deserving, but is very distinctly gratuitous, and proceeds from the grace of God alone; and that God can act in this gracious fashion toward them only because He has laid a foundation for it in the ransoming which He has wrought out in Christ. And the Apostle declares that this is true of all who are justified, without exception. In the most explicit language he has just declared that no flesh shall be justified by law-works—that if it is a question of presenting ourselves before God “in entire conformity to the law,” every mouth is stopped and the whole world stands under the condemnation of God (3:19); and that the only hope of men accordingly lies in the provision by God of a righteousness which is apart from law, and is received through faith in Christ. And now he says that, having provided this righteousness in Christ, God, in view of it, justifies gratuitously those incapable of justification on their own account, that is to say, just sinners. If this is not a justification “in sin”—or as Finney expresses it somewhat more fully,³³¹ “while yet at least in some degree of sin”—it would be hard to say what is. Another mode of speech employed by Finney is, “while personally in the commission of sin.” As with him “all sin is sinning,” and there is no sin conceivable except the “personal commission of sin,” all these phrases are completely synonymous with him, and what he contends for is the complete cessation of sinning on the part of the person about to be justified. There being no such thing as “constitutional depravity,” this leaves him perfectly holy. And it is Finney’s contention that it is only he who is in this condition, a condition of “personal, present holiness,” in the sense of course of “entire conformity to the law”—for there is no constitutional holiness, either—who can be justified. We must have ceased to sin—and that means we must be sinless—before we can be justified. We are pronounced righteous, because we are personally righteous. We are looked upon as in entire conformity to the law, because we are in entire conformity to the law. This is the precise contradiction of Paul’s teaching, according to which we have no righteousness of our own—a righteousness which is of law—but only a righteousness which is by faith in Christ, a righteousness which comes from God on faith (Phil. 3:9).

It ought not to pass without explicit mention—although it has repeatedly been incidentally adverted to already—that Finney makes not only sanctification—entire conformity to the moral law—but also perseverance a condition of justification. “Perseverance in faith and obedience, or in consecration to God,” he says,³³² “is also an unalterable condition of justification, or of pardon and acceptance with God.” He means, of course, that it is a condition “not of present, but of final or ultimate acceptance and salvation.” Thus instead of looking upon perseverance as dependent on justification, he looks upon the continuance of justification as dependent on perseverance. In the Biblical doctrine the sinner, being justified, receives the Spirit of holiness, through whose prevalent operations he perseveres to the end. According to Finney the justified person remains justified so long as he perseveres in the obedience which is the condition of his justification. In the Biblical view it is God, in Finney’s it is man, who determines the issue: the whole standpoint assumed by Finney is that of a God responsive to human actions, rather than that of a man operated upon by divine grace. Justification is made, therefore, to follow and depend upon “present full obedience,” “entire sanctification,” “moral perfection,” and to endure only so long as they endure. We have accordingly such amazing forms of speech as these: The Christian “is justified no further than he obeys, and must be condemned when he disobeys”; “When the Christian sins, he must repent and do his first works or he will perish.” On every sin the Christian is condemned and must incur the penalty of the law of God—that is to say, the Christian on every sin falls out of justification, comes back under the condemnation of the broken law, and must begin the saving process over again, de novo. Such passages as Rom. 5:1, 9, 8:1, 31 ff., have had no influence on this theory whatever. The Christian, having been justified, is not at peace with God; he is not assured that, having been justified by Christ’s blood, he will certainly be saved from the wrath by Him; he does not know that, since he is in Christ Jesus, there is no possible condemnation for him, and nothing can snatch him from his Saviour’s hands. The point of view exploited carries with it, as George Duffield points out,³³³ an odd confusion between the categories of punishment and chastisement. In the place of the dispensation of painful discipline in which the Christian, in his lapses, is represented by Scripture as living, Finney subjects him, on every lapse, to the ultimate penalties of the outraged law. He sees nothing between the perfect obedience due to God and the absolute rejection of the divine authority in high-handed disobedience; between the perfect child of God and God’s declared enemy: an imperfect Christian becomes a contradiction in terms; for so soon as the Christian becomes imperfect he ceases to be a Christian—he has fallen from grace, returned to the world, and requires to do his first works over again. In attempting to reply to these strictures of Duffield’s, Finney says nothing to the purpose. He only plays with the words pardon and penalty, justification and condemnation. How can Christians be pardoned once for all, and yet their emerging sins still need pardoning—or do they not need pardoning? If a Christian commits a sin—is not that sin condemnable and condemned? If a sinning Christian suffers an infliction due to his sin, is not that a penalty? What is the use of playing with words? Use any words you choose, and it remains true—at least in the opinion of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12:7 ff.)—that there are grievous inflictions which come from a Father’s hands and prove that we are not outcasts but sons: which do not argue therefore our condemnation but our acceptance.

The closing paragraph of Finney’s lecture on Justification³³⁴ is given the form of a detached “Remark.” Its purpose is to show that what he calls the “old school view of justification” is a necessary result of the “old school view” of depravity: that given the one, and the other, by necessary steps, must follow. “Constitutional depravity or sinfulness being once assumed, physical regeneration, physical sanctification, physical divine influence, imputed righteousness, and justification, while personally in the commission of sin, follow of course.” This is all very true. Granted the Augustinian doctrine of sin and the Augustinian soteriology becomes a necessity, if sinners are to be saved. Our interest in it for the moment arises from the evidence it affords that Finney was perfectly well aware that his own series of opposing doctrines constituted a concatenated system, rooted in his denial of innate depravity. Out of his Pelagian doctrine of sin he had been compelled to construct a whole corresponding soteriology, and he was perfectly aware that it stood contradictorily over against the Augustinian at every point. Rejecting “constitutional depravity,” that is to say, a sinfulness which goes deeper than the act and affects the “nature” itself, he has no need of any “physical” regeneration, sanctification, divine influence, and accordingly rejects them too: and as there is no reason why the sinner who is a sinner only in act and is endowed with an inalienable plenary ability to do all that he is under obligation to do, should not under the motives brought to bear on him in the gospel, cease sinning at will, and do righteousness, so there is no need of a righteousness of Christ to supply his lack; and none is provided and none imputed—the sinner’s acceptance with God hangs solely on his own self-wrought righteousness.

There is a single sentence on another page into which Finney compresses one of the most systematic of his statements of his doctrine of justification, especially in its relation to the work of Christ. It will repay us to consider its phraseology closely. This is it:³³⁵ “In consideration of Christ’s having by his death for sinners secured the subjects of the Divine government against a misconception of his character and designs, God does, upon the further conditions of a repentance and faith, that imply a renunciation of their rebellion and a return to obedience to his laws, freely pardon past sin, and restore the penitent and believing sinner to favour, as if he had not sinned, while he remains penitent and believing, subject however to condemnation and eternal death, unless he holds the beginning of his confidence steadfast unto the end.” According to this statement justification consists in pardon and acceptance, and is obtained by repentance and faith. This repentance and faith is defined as such a repentance and faith as imply the sinner’s renunciation of his rebellion and return to obedience to God’s laws—a manifest meiosis in which the word “imply” must be read, in accordance with the entire extended discussion, in a high sense. From all that appears this pregnantly conceived faith and repentance is the sinner’s own work and is so completely in his own power that, as he has himself provided it, so he can himself withdraw it; and his continuance in the pardon and acceptance which he obtains by it depends absolutely on his maintenance of it. All that Christ has to do with the whole transaction is that by his death he secures “the subjects of the Divine government against a misconception” of God’s “character and designs,” and thus so far protects them against expecting relief in impossible ways. His work is given thus purely the character of revelation, and is directed to and affects of course man alone. It can affect the action of God only through the effect which it produces on men’s mental attitude. It is therefore really not Christ’s work but the attitude of men brought about by it, to which God has respect in pardoning and accepting sinners. Because Christ has secured men against a fatal misconception of God’s character and designs, God can pardon and accept sinners—provided that they reform. From all that appears Christ’s work has nothing more to do with bringing about their reformation than it has to do with God’s pardon and acceptance of them on their reformation. Their reformation is presented only as a second condition, and we may add the only proper condition, of their pardon and acceptance. All that Christ has done is to secure them against walking in wrong paths and that only by making known to them that there are wrong paths. That they walk in the right path is their own doing. If they do, God then pardons and accepts them—for as long as they do.

The theory of the Atonement briefly indicated here is of course the common Rectoral theory, presented, not in its best form, it is true, but yet in its essentials as it is commonly presented by its advocates. How it lay in Finney’s mind may be learned in its outlines from such a statement as this.³³⁶ “The Godhead desired to save sinners, but could not safely do so without danger to the universe, unless something was done to satisfy public, not retributive justice. The atonement was resorted to as a means of reconciling forgiveness with the wholesome administration of justice.” In the extended discussions, however, something is done to mitigate the arbitrariness of the transaction thus baldly outlined. An attempt is made to show that the provision of an atonement was incumbent on God as the moral governor of the world. A more sustained attempt is made to show that in view of this atonement it is incumbent on God to forgive reformed sinners and receive them into His favor. And some attempt is made to show that the atonement is the producing cause of that reformation, which is the condition of God’s pardon of sinners and reception of them into His favor.

“In establishing the government of the universe,” Finney tells us,³³⁷ “God had given the pledge, both impliedly and expressly, that he would regard the public interests, and by a due administration of the law, secure and promote, as far as possible, public and individual happiness.” This pledging of Himself to observe public justice in the administration of the universe, did not, it is true, commit Him directly to the provision of an atonement. Public justice requires directly only an even-handed administration of rewards and punishments. Yet, as “an atonement … would more fully meet the necessities of government, and act as a more efficient preventive of sin, and a more powerful persuasive to holiness, than the infliction of the legal penalty would do,”³³⁸ it may be fairly thought that its provision was incumbent on a God, seeking under His governmental pledge “the highest good of the public.”³³⁹ What is here called an atonement is anything which “will as fully evince the lawgiver’s regard for his law, his determination to support it, his abhorrence of all violations of its precepts, and withal guard as effectually against the inference, that violators of the precept might expect to escape with impunity, as the execution of the penalty would do.”³⁴⁰ Whatever will do this will “as effectually secure the public interests” and therefore “as fully satisfy public justice,” as the infliction of their proper penalties on offenders; and such an atonement having been offered, “public justice demands, that the execution of the penalty shall be dispensed with by extending pardon to the criminal.”³⁴¹ The pardon of the offender thus becomes incumbent on God. Finney indeed inserts a condition—a very necessary condition—in his fuller statements, and thus avoids making it incumbent on God to pardon all offenders. This condition is—the repentance of the offender. “When these conditions are fulfilled, and the sinner has returned to obedience, public justice not only admits, but absolutely demands, that the penalty shall be set aside by extending pardon to the offender. The offender still deserves to be punished, and upon the principles of retributive justice, might be punished according to his deserts. But the public good admits and requires that upon the above conditions he should live, and hence, public justice, in compliance with the public interests and the spirit of the law of love, spares and pardons him.”³⁴²

How the fulfilment of this condition is brought about is left somewhat at loose ends. It is usual with the advocates of the Rectoral scheme to link the work of Christ so closely with the reformation of men, as to constitute this its direct aim and effect, and indeed, to speak exactly, the atoning act itself. Finney does not appear to do this. He does, to be sure, argue that the atonement tends to produce this amendment of life—although he chooses to call it a condition only of the pardon and acceptance which results, and not their immediate ground. It presents “overpowering motives to repentance,” he says,³⁴³ and “the highest possible motives to virtue”; and it is “the great and only means of sanctifying sinners.” But he does not appear to give the same systematic place to this effect of the atonement that is given to it by most advocates of the Rectoral theory. The reformation of the sinner, which with him, too, really constitutes the atoning act, seems to be thought of by him, at least relatively, independently of the work of Christ. When accomplished, the sinner, reformed though still guilty, is accepted as righteous in God’s sight. This “entire consecration of the heart to God in view of all that the atonement signifies” is the same thing as what is called by Finney the sinner’s regeneration, explained as consisting in a change of ultimate choice, accomplished, under the merely persuasive influence of the Spirit, by his own free will.

An impression is left in the mind of the reader by Finney’s exposition of the relations of retribution and public justice that God is supposed, on assuming the duties of governor of the world, to have been compelled to subordinate—as many less absolute governors have been compelled to do—the law of absolute right to the demands of public interest; and does not attempt to administer the universe on any higher principle than the general “public good,” meanwhile closing His ears altogether to the absolute imperative of pure conscience. It may be admitted that in the elaborate discrimination which is drawn out between “retributive justice” and “public justice,” it is fairly shown that what is called “public justice” does not demand so strict a regard to abstract right and wrong as does “retributive justice”; and therefore that God if He were acting merely on the principle of “public justice” need not be supposed to be meticulously careful of the absolutely right. But that God in His moral government of the world proceeds solely on this “public justice” and has regard only to “public interest,” it need not be said, Finney has not shown in the least. Even though it may be said that “public justice” demands only so and so, it by no means follows that God who is the governor of the world will be governed solely by that consideration. To say that “sin deserves punishment,—and must be punished—it is right, per se, and therefore forgiveness is wrong, per se,” Finney rather plaintively declares, would “thus set aside the plan of salvation.”³⁴⁴ It does set aside the “plan of salvation” as conceived by him; a plan of salvation which has no place in it for expiation of sin, and supposes that God is looking around for a plausible excuse for forgiving all sin, the social effect of which can be neutralized. But it is the one basis of the plan of salvation of the Bible, the heart of the heart of which is expiation, and which represents God as sheerly unable to forgive sin on any other ground whatever.

IV. The Theology of Charles G. Finney

The elements of Finney’s conception of the Plan of Salvation are given, in a very succinct form, in a summary of what he speaks of as the “provisions of grace.”³⁴⁵ “God,” says he, “foresaw that all mankind would fall into a state of total alienation from him and his government. He also foresaw that by the wisest arrangement, he could secure the return and salvation of a part of mankind. He resolved to do so, and ‘chose them to eternal salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.’ ” Nothing is said of why God created a race the apostasy of which he foresaw;³⁴⁶ or of what hindered His making an arrangement by which most of the apostates, or all of them, would be saved;³⁴⁷ or of whether the part of mankind which He chose to salvation was a definite or indefinite part.³⁴⁸ So far as this representation goes, God’s entire action is determined by His creatures: He finds Himself (in His foresight) with an apostate race on His hands; an apostate race of whom He can “wisely”—a “wisely” which in Finney’s scheme means ultimately “benevolently”—save only a part; and His choice of the part He will save is determined immediately by them and not Himself.

Now comes a description of God’s mode of action under His decree of salvation. This action is summed up in the institution of a system of means to effect the end in view—“that is,” says Finney, “with design to effect it.” These means are the law, the atonement and mediatorial work of Christ, the publication of the Gospel and God’s providential and moral government—and also “the gift and agency of the Holy Spirit.” Of “the gift and agency of the Holy Spirit,” it is said that it is “to excite in them,” that is in the part of mankind chosen to salvation, “desire, and to work in them to will and to do, in so far as to secure in them the fulfillment of the conditions, and to them the fulfillment of the promises.” This is followed by the assertion that grace has made sufficient provision to make the salvation of all men possible—a statement which, as we shall see, is on this scheme somewhat barren—and that of a portion of mankind certain: and this is followed by the declaration that all who have the Gospel are without excuse, if they are not saved—another barren statement on this scheme. And now we get at the gist of the matter. “Grace,” we read (italics ours), “has made the salvation of every human being secure, who can be persuaded, by all the influences that God can wisely bring to bear upon him, to accept the offers of salvation.” The words which we have italicized are key words in Finney’s scheme of salvation. Persuasion—all that God does looking to the salvation of men is confined in its mode to persuasion. Wisely—the governing notion in all God’s saving activities is uniformly represented as derived from His wisdom. Accept—the determining factor in man’s salvation is his own acceptance. In this whole statement the greatest care is expended in making it clear that all that God does toward saving men is directed to inducing the objects of salvation to save themselves. What He does, it is affirmed, is effective to the end in the case of those whose salvation He conceives it “wise” to “secure.”³⁴⁹ But so far it is left obscure what the principle is on which the objects of salvation, the salvation of whom He judges it wise to secure, are determined—foresight, or election.

When we turn to the lecture on election, we quickly learn that Finney’s doctrine of election is just—Congruism. There are two varieties of Congruism, an Augustinian and an Anti-Augustinian. The Anti-Augustinian variety supposes that the same grace is given to all men alike, but is effective or not effective to salvation according as the hearts of men are “congruous” to it. In this variety there is no place for election, except on foresight of the salvability of men. The Augustinian variety supposes that God, respecting the free will of men, approaches them, just as in the other variety, with “suasive grace” only; but Himself adapts this grace so wisely to the hearts of those whom He has sovereignly selected to save, that they yield freely to its persuasion and are saved. In this variety election is the cause of salvation. Finney may superficially appear to be seeking some intermediate ground between these two ordinary varieties of Congruism: but in point of fact what he presents is, with some variation of form, a curiously complete reproduction of the Molinist scheme. According to him election proceeds on the foresight of salvability; but he does not suppose that the same grace is given to all men alike—although all receive “sufficient grace”—but that God employs in each case whatever grace it seems to Him wise to employ in order to accomplish His end. Those that are salvable—that is, those that are salvable under the wise government which He has established—He secures the salvation of. Those who, under this wise government, are not salvable, He leaves in their sins. Those whose salvation He undertakes to secure, because they are salvable under the wise government He has established, He brings to salvation by suasive influences of grace, adapted in each case to their special needs, and therefore certain to be effective. These are the elect. Obviously they are elected on the ground of their salvability—under the wise government which God has established. There is no sovereignty exhibited in their election itself, except in the sense that God might have left them also in their sin; if He were to save any, these were the only ones He could save—under the wise government established by Him. The only place in the whole transaction in which any real sovereignty is shown, lies in God’s having established the particular government which He has established, and which determines who are salvable and who not. The particular government which has been established has not been arbitrarily established. It is determined by its wisdom. It is the wisest possible government for God’s end—which is the good of being. Seeking the good of being, this is the government which an all-wise God must establish. Its establishment, however, divides men into two classes—the salvable and the unsalvable under the conditions of this wisest government. Here it is that election is determined. God elects to salvation all those who are salvable under this wise government. Any sovereignty which may appear in this election is derived wholly from the sovereignty of the choice of the wisest government to establish. That determined, everything else is determined with it: those that are salvable; those that, on foresight of their salvability, are elected to be saved; the manner of grace by which they are brought to salvation. Proximately their election is on foresight of salvability; only ultimately can it be called sovereign—that is through the sovereignty of the choice of the wisest government to establish.

The determining characteristic of the elect on this view, we presume, is that, in nature, character, situation, circumstances—in their totality, considered in all relations—the salvation of just these and none others serves as means to God’s ultimate supreme end—the good of being. Not merely the salvation of some rather than others, but the salvation of just these same rather than any others, subserves this end. “The best system of means for securing the great end of benevolence, included the election of just those who were elected, and no others.… The highest good demanded it.”³⁵⁰ A slightly different turn is given to this statement, when it is said: “The fact, that the wisest and best system of government would secure the salvation of those who are elected, must have been a condition of their being elected.” What is suggested by this is, that the reason, or one of the reasons, why just those who are elected are elected, is that they, and not others, would be saved under the system of government which God had in mind to establish. He was bound to elect those and not others—or else alter the system of government He had it in mind to establish, under which none others could be saved: and He cannot alter this system of government because it is the wisest and best system. This brings us back to the point of view with which we began—that the real reason of the election of the elect is their salvability, that is, under the system of government established by God as the wisest. God elects those whom He can save, and leaves un-elected those whom He cannot save, consistently with the system of government which He has determined to establish as the wisest and best. And this seems strongly to suggest that there is an intrinsic difference between the objects of election and others, determining their different treatment.

The dominating place which Finney gives to the idea of wisdom in his construction will scarcely have passed unobserved. God saves all He can wisely save: the particular ones He saves are those whom alone He can wisely save. Here is rather a full statement:³⁵¹ “I suppose that God bestows on men unequal measures of gracious influence, but that in this there is nothing arbitrary; that, on the contrary, he sees the wisest and best reasons for this; that being in justice under obligation to none, he exercises his own benevolent discretion, in bestowing on all as much gracious influence as he sees to be upon the whole wise and good, and enough to throw the entire responsibility of their damnation upon them if they are lost.³⁵² But upon some he foresaw that he could wisely bestow a sufficient measure of gracious influence to secure their voluntary yielding, and upon others he could not bestow enough in fact to secure this result.” The upshot is that God elects all that it is wise for Him to elect; and as He elects them both to grace and glory, He saves all that it is wise for Him to save. The ground of His election of just them is that there is something in them or in their relations to His system of government of the world, which makes it wise to save them; and this is not true of the others. He does for those others too all that it is wise for Him to do, and He “has no right to do more than he does for them, all things considered.” What He does for either never passes beyond mere suasion: everything depends therefore at every step on the free movement of their will. “The elect were chosen to eternal life,” we read,³⁵³ “upon condition that God foresaw that in the perfect exercise of their freedom, they could be induced to repent and embrace the gospel.” If there is not asserted here election on the foresight of faith, there is asserted election on the foresight of the possibility of faith: on foreseeing that they can be induced to believe, they are elected to life, and the inducements provided. It is foreseen that the non-elect cannot be induced to believe—at least wisely—and inducements to believe are not wasted on them.

It appears that Finney wishes to make it appear that election is in some sense the cause of salvation. But he is hampered by his preconceptions. He wishes to deny that election is “arbitrary.” He wishes to represent salvation as depending on the “voluntary” action of men. In order to protect this “voluntariness” of salvation, he wishes to confine all of God’s saving operations within the category of persuasion. And above all and governing all he wishes to make benevolence the one spring of the divine action. The ultimate result is that, representing God as ordering the universe for the one end of the production of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he finds himself teaching that men are left to perish solely for the enhancement of the happiness of others. Reprobation is a thorny subject to handle in any case; but in Finney’s handling of it its thorniness is greatly increased. He is compelled to confess of the reprobate, that “God knows that his creating them, together with his providential dispensations, will be the occasion, not the cause, of their sin and consequent destruction.” Of course, God’s foreknowledge of these results when He created the reprobate, necessarily involves them also in His comprehensive intention; but equally of course the sin and destruction of the reprobate were not His ultimate end in their creation. But neither are the holiness and salvation of the elect the ultimate end of God in His dealing with them. In both cases alike His supreme ultimate end lies beyond. What God has determining regard to in His dealing with both alike, says Finney, is the wise ordering of His government. He would prefer the salvation of the reprobate, if—but only if—they could be saved consistently with the wise government He has ordained. But, says Finney,³⁵⁴ “He regards their destruction as a less evil to the universe, than would be such a change in the administration and arrangements of his government as would secure their salvation.” They are sacrificed thus to the good of the universe, and perish not because justice demands that they perish, but because it is better for others—surely not for themselves—that they perish. This is a result of Finney’s teleological ethics. And it is here that the benevolence scheme is most severely strained. It was benevolent in God, says Finney,³⁵⁵ to create men who were destined to reprobation, because, “if he foresaw that, upon the whole, he could secure such an amount of virtue and happiness by means of moral government, as to more than counterbalance the sin and misery of those who would be lost, then certainly it was a dictate of benevolence to create them.” We may possibly be able to bow before reasoning which is directed to show that our reprobation is the unavoidable condition of the attainment of an end high and holy enough to justify any individual evils which are incurred in its achievement—say, the vindication of the right, the preservation of the divine integrity, the manifestation of God’s righteousness, the enhancement of His glory. But it is not so easy to acquiesce when we are told that we must be miserable that others may be happy. If the happiness of being is the end to which everything is to give way, it is difficult to see why we should be excluded from our share of it. Surely at all events we must see the note of moral necessity, and not that of a mere governmental expediency, in the transaction before we can readily embrace it as just.

The ultimate reason why the entire action of God in salvation is confined by Finney to persuasion lies in his conviction that nothing more is needed—or, indeed, is possible. For the most deeply lying of all the assumptions which govern his thinking is that of the plenary ability of man. It is customary with him to assert this assumption in the form that obligation is limited by ability; that we are able to do all that we are under obligation to do; that nothing which we cannot do lies within the range of our duty.³⁵⁶ He himself represents this as the fundamental principle of his teaching—“that obligation implies ability in the sense that it is possible for man to be all that he is under an obligation to be; that by willing, he can directly or indirectly do all that God requires him to do.³⁵⁷ He thus relegates to a position subordinate and subsidiary to the primary fact of plenary ability even his ethical principle that moral value attaches in strictness only to the supreme ultimate intention, which gives its moral character to all else; and with it, his more fundamental ethical principle still that moral quality attaches only to deliberate acts of will. The ability which he thus ascribes to man as his inalienable possession is not merely that so-called “natural ability” which the New England divines were accustomed to accord to him, and which only recognized his possession of the natural powers by which obedience could be rendered were it not inhibited by man’s moral condition. He means, on the contrary, that man has by his natural constitution as a free agent the inalienable power to obey God perfectly. “This ability,” he says,³⁵⁸ “is called a natural ability, because it belongs to man as a moral agent, in such a sense that without it he could not be a proper subject of command, of reward or punishment. That is, without this liberty or ability he could not be a moral agent, and a proper subject of moral government.” “Moral agency,” says he again,³⁵⁹ “implies free agency. Free agency implies liberty of will. Liberty of will implies ability of will.” And this ability of will extends “so far as the sphere of moral agency extends.” The “ability to obey God” which Finney ascribes to man always and everywhere is thus, without any ifs and ands about it, just “the possession of power adequate to the performance of that which is required.”³⁶⁰ In possession of this inalienable ability man’s salvation requires and admits of no other divine operation than persuasion.

It is a great concession from this point of view, indeed, to allow that it requires persuasion. Finney does allow this; and this is his sole concession to the supernaturalism of salvation. “From the beginning,” he says,³⁶¹ men “universally and voluntarily consecrate their powers to the gratification of self,” and “therefore they will not, unless they are divinely persuaded, by the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit, in any case turn and consecrate their powers to the service of God.” They will not; he will not admit that they cannot. He seems, indeed, almost inclined at times to declare that one not a Christian who supposes that “a man is unable to obey God without the Spirit’s agency.” The assertion of ability to obey God without the Spirit’s agency is express. “The question in debate is not whether men do, in any case, use the powers of nature in the manner that God requires, without the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit, but whether they are naturally able so to use them.”³⁶² But along with the strong assertion of their ability to do it, is an equally strong assertion of their universal unwillingness to do it, on the ground of which is erected an assertion of the necessity of the influence of the Spirit for salvation. “I admit and maintain,” says Finney,³⁶³ “that regeneration is always induced and effected by the personal agency of the Holy Spirit.” “It is agreed,” he says again,³⁶⁴ “that all who are converted, sanctified and saved, are converted, sanctified and saved by God’s own agency; that is, God saves them by securing, by his own agency, their personal and individual holiness.” The mode of the divine agency in securing these efforts, however, is purely suasive. We are saved “by free grace drawing and securing the concurrence of free-will”³⁶⁵—a formula which, so far as the words go, might have a good meaning; but not in the sense which Finney puts on them, for in Finney’s sense “drawing” means just teaching. Referring to John 6:44, he says: “As the Father teaches by the Holy Spirit, Christ’s plain teaching, in the passage under consideration, is that no man can come to Him, except he be specially enlightened by the Holy Spirit.” Beyond the presentation of motives to action he will not permit the Spirit to go in the way of securing man’s salvation. “The power which God exerts in the conversion of the soul,” he says,³⁶⁶ “is moral power.” “It is that kind of power,” he proceeds in explanation, “by which a statesman sways the mind of a senate; or by which an advocate moves and bows the heart of a jury.” “All God’s influence in converting men,” he says again,³⁶⁷ “is moral influence. He persuades them by his word and his Spirit.” And then he adds, “If men will not yield to persuasion, they must be lost”; and phrases his conclusion thus: “Sinners can go to hell in spite of God.” It is certain, he declares in another place,³⁶⁸ “that men are able to resist the utmost influence that the truth can exert upon them; and therefore have ability to defeat the wisest, most benevolent, and most powerful exertions which the Holy Spirit can make to effect their sanctification.” They can resist the divine influence designed to save them because it is only of the nature of persuasion. But the same ability which is adequate to resisting it, is adequate also to following it; and if it “secures” their salvation, it is only by this, their free following of it. “The fact is,” says Finney,³⁶⁹ “the actual turning … is the sinner’s own act”; “the sinner that minds the flesh, can change his mind, and mind God.” In all this Finney was but repeating the teachings of the New Divinity of which this very conception is declared by Lyman Beecher to have been the core. “Our doctrine,” says he,³⁷⁰ describing the essence of the Taylorite contention, “was that god governs mind by motive and not by force.” “Edwards,” he adds, “did not come up to that fair and square, Bellamy did not, and, in fact, nobody did until Taylor and I did.” Finney did also—“fair and square.”

This construction of “the way of life,” simple with true Pelagian simplicity, is nevertheless complicated with some serious difficulties. It deals throughout with a will to which the “power to the contrary” is passionately vindicated; and yet at two several points it asserts a certainty in the determination of the will which appears to be on this ground inexplicable. How shall we account for the asserted fact that the will, inalienably able to turn at its option from its sins to God, in point of fact never does and never will so turn, except under the persuasive action of the Holy Spirit? A universal will-not, like this, has a very strong appearance of a can-not. A condition in which a particular effect follows with absolute certainty, at least suggests the existence of a causal relation; and the assertion of the equal possibility of a contrary effect, unsupported by a single example, bears the appearance of lacking foundation. And when now we are told that this contrary effect, unexampled otherwise, nevertheless follows with invariable certainty, whenever the persuasive action of the Holy Spirit is exerted to that end—how can we help suspecting that the action of the Spirit in question is something more than persuasive? Let it be borne in mind that all the elect without exception are brought to God by the persuasive action of the Spirit, although many of them, it is affirmed, are much more difficult to convert than many of the non-elect would be; while on the other hand the non-elect are without exception, despite all the suasive influences which may be expended on them, left in their sins. Surely the action of the Spirit on the elect has the appearance of having a character more causal in nature than is expressed by the term persuasion. A persuasion which is invariably effective has at least as remarkable an appearance as the uncaused unanimity of action which it alone breaks, and which, it is affirmed, it alone can break. It is at least an arresting phenomenon that the human will, inalienably endowed with an equal power to either part, should exhibit in its historical manifestation two such instances of absolute certainty of action to one part—in one instance affecting the whole mass of mankind without exception, and in the other the whole body of those set upon by the Spirit with a view to their salvation. If this illustrates “the sovereign power of the agent,” “the proper causality of moral agents,” “the power of self-determination,”³⁷¹ in the sense put on these phrases—entirely satisfactory in themselves—by Finney and his New Divinity colleagues, we do not see that anything may be said to be illustrated by anything. It speaks volumes meanwhile for the strength of Finney’s conviction that man is quite able to save himself and in point of fact actually does, in every instance of his salvation, save himself, that he maintained it in the face of such broad facts of experience to the contrary. How can man be affirmed to be fully able and altogether competent to an act never performed by any man whatever, except under an action of the Spirit under which he invariably performs it?

Of course this extravagant assertion of plenary ability is correlated with Finney’s doctrine of sin. Naturally he scouts the very idea of “original sin,” whether in its broader or narrower application. There is no imputation; no transmitted corruption of heart. Indeed, there is no heart to be corrupted: “heart” with Finney means just “will.”³⁷² All sin is sinning—and sinning is a purely personal business. It would not be quite exact to say that Finney permits to Adam no influence whatever on the moral life of his descendants. He is willing to allow that they may have received a certain amount of moral injury through the physical deterioration that has come to them by evil inheritance. He even suggests that could this physical deterioration be corrected—say through a wise dietetic system—the sin into which they have fallen partly through its influence might in a generation or two disappear too.³⁷³ Nevertheless physical deterioration and moral depravity are different things, different in kind, and must not be confused with one another. The one we may receive from our progenitors, the other can be produced only by our own moral action. It is true that in point of fact all of us suffer from moral depravity, all of us without exception. Moral depravity is with Finney as universal a fact as it is with the Augustinian doctrine. “Subsequent to the commencement of moral agency, and previous to regeneration, the moral depravity of mankind is universal.”³⁷⁴ And it is no less “total” than universal; it manifests itself in the entirety of humanity “without any mixture of moral goodness or virtue.”³⁷⁵ All men without exception are morally depraved through and through. It will repay us to attend to Finney’s account of the origin and nature of this universal total moral depravity, with which mankind is afflicted.

It will have already been observed that it is denied of the first stages of infancy. It accordingly does not belong to mankind as such, as at present existing in the world; it is not a racial affair. It is picked up for himself by each individual in the process of living. An infant when he comes into the world, is just a little animal. He has no moral nature. If he dies, he dies as the brutes die; and his death argues no more than the death of a brute argues.³⁷⁶ “Previous to moral agency, infants are no more subjects of moral government than brutes are”; that is to say, apparently, they cannot be moved to action through inducements addressed to their moral judgment. Therefore, “their sufferings and death are to be accounted for as are those of brutes, namely, by ascribing them to physical interference with the laws of life and health.” We suppose this is the proximate cause of the sufferings and death of adults also; but Finney appears to think that, in saying it of infants, he is denying that sin has anything to do with their dying—despite Rom. 5:12. He has as much trouble with their salvation as with their dying. He wishes to find a place for them in the grace of Christ;³⁷⁷ but it is not easy to do so, since, Paul being witness, it was to save sinners that Christ came into the world—and they are not sinners. And does not Finney himself say:³⁷⁸ “The fact that Christ died in the stead and behalf of sinners, proves that God regarded them not as unfortunate, but as criminal and altogether without excuse”? No doubt, in saying this he had adults only in mind—but, is it not a proposition of universal validity, and, then, how can infants be partakers of this grace of Christ? Is it not true, as Augustine urged to Finney’s prototype, that in this view, Jesus cannot be “Jesus” to infants, because “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for it is He that shall save His people from their sins”? Finney is reduced to arguing³⁷⁹ that if Christ does not save them from “a sinful constitution,” He does save them “from circumstances which would certainly result in their becoming sinners, if not snatched from them.” A kindly proleptic salvation, it seems, may at least be theirs. But, very naturally, he does not seem wholly satisfied with this. He adds in a tone which may appear a little petulant: “All that can justly be said … is, that if infants are saved at all, which I suppose they are, they are rescued by the benevolence of God from circumstances that would result in certain and eternal death, and are by grace made heirs of eternal life. But after all, it is useless to speculate about the character and destiny of those who are confessedly not moral agents. The benevolence of God will take care of them.…” That sounds like very cold comfort to sorrowing parents. And in view of the fact that half of the human race die in infancy, it offers a trying puzzle to the philosophical thinker. And can we acquiesce without protest, when we are told that infants are “confessedly not moral agents”? Perhaps if we press the word “agents”—but let us substitute “beings.” Are infants not moral beings? Does a man cease to be a moral being every time he goes to sleep? Are we moral beings only when we are acting, but become unmoral and only brutes whenever we are quiescent? We are told with extended explication how the infant picks up sin in the course of living: it is connected, we see, with its picking up a moral nature, too, in the course of living—though how it accomplishes this greater feat, we are not so explicitly told. At all events this is Finney’s doctrine: infants are at first just little animals; after a while they pick up a moral nature; at that very moment they pick up sin also. Thus all men become depraved from the very first moment when moral agency begins with them.

Adam has nothing to do with it—despite Rom. 5:12 ff. No, not quite that. Adam has something to do with it, but nothing decisive. What happens is this. These little brutes of babies, like other brutes, of course follow their impulses. These, being constitutional, have no moral quality. Following them, the babies form habits of action in accordance with their impulses. This action has no moral quality. But one fair day the babies awake to moral values, and then their whole habitual activity at once becomes sin. Their new knowledge comes too late to save them from this sin. Their habits of action are too strong to be reversed by it. They are inevitably persisted in, and thus the poor babies become totally depraved because of habits formed before they knew any better. What Adam has to do with it is this—because Adam sinned, and because all after Adam have sinned—they all would inevitably have sinned whether Adam had sinned or not—the physical nature inherited by babies is to a certain extent disordered, and this makes their impulse to self-gratification perhaps somewhat more clamant than otherwise it would have been.³⁸⁰ In any case this impulse would have been strong enough to carry the day against the new ethical knowledge which comes to them when they become moral agents. But perhaps because of Adam’s sinning—and because of the sinning of all since Adam—it carries the day, not with more certainty—it would certainly have carried it anyhow—but with a more energetic effect than it otherwise would have done. Here is the way Finney himself puts it:³⁸¹ “The sensibility acts as a powerful impulse to the will, from the moment of birth, and secures the consent and activity of the will to procure its gratification, before the reason is at all developed. The will is thus committed to the gratification of feeling and appetite, when first the idea of moral obligation is developed. This committed state of the will is not moral depravity, and has no moral character, until the idea of moral obligation is developed. The moment this idea is developed, this committal of the will to self-indulgence must be abandoned, or it becomes selfishness, or moral depravity. But, as the will is already in a state of committal, and has to some extent already formed the habit of seeking to gratify feeling, and as the idea of moral obligation is at first but feebly developed, unless the Holy Spirit interferes to shed light on the soul, the will, as might be expected, retains its hold on self-gratification.” And again:—“A diseased physical system renders the appetites, passions, tempers, and propensities more clamorous and despotic in their demands, and of course constantly urging to selfishness, confirms and strengthens it. It should be distinctly remembered that physical depravity has no moral character in itself. But yet it is a source of fierce temptation to selfishness. The human sensibility is, manifestly, deeply physically depraved; and as sin, or moral depravity, consists in committing the will to the gratification of the sensibility, its physical depravity will mightily strengthen moral depravity. Moral depravity is then universally owing to temptation.”

We have here of course only the familiar construction of the old Rationalismus Vulgaris; and no more here than there is the implication of God in bringing the human race into a condition of universal depravity escaped. It was God, no doubt, who made the human race after such a fashion that its selfish impulses should get the start of its reason in the development of the child, who should therefore be hopelessly committed to sin before it knew any better. We are told of Lyman Beecher,³⁸² that “in commenting on the sentiment or opinion which seeks to account for the fact that everyone sins, not by alleging natural depravity, but by saying that ‘the appetites and passions are developed faster than reason; that is, in the nature of things which God has constituted, the appetites and passions necessarily obtain the ascendency over reason,’ Dr. Beecher said, ‘It is by this theory as if God had placed a man in a boat with a crow-bar for an oar, and then sent a storm on him! Is the man to be blamed if in such a case he is drowned?’ ” All that is accomplished by this explanation of how it comes about that man is morally depraved, is that God and not man is made inexcusable for it. God betrays mankind into depravity wholly arbitrarily, with no excuse, not to say justification, for His act. All that can be said is that this is the way God has chosen to make man. No reason is assigned, none is assignable, for His making him in such a manner that he must at the first dawn of moral agency become totally and hopelessly depraved. If anyone supposes that an exoneration for God is supplied in the circumstance that He does not directly create depravity in the human heart, but produces it only indirectly, through the operation of the laws of human development which He has ordained, we are happy to say that Finney is above such a subterfuge. He knows perfectly well that the maxim facit per alium facit per se is as valid here as elsewhere. “To represent the (human) constitution as sinful,” he argues,³⁸³ “is to represent God, who is the author of the constitution, as the author of sin. To say that God is not the direct former of the constitution, but that sin is conveyed by natural generation from Adam, who made himself sinful, is only to remove the objection one step farther back, but not to obviate it; for God established the physical laws that of necessity bring about this result.” Well, God established the physical laws which bring it about that every child of man becomes totally depraved at the first dawn of moral agency, and, according to Finney, He did it arbitrarily, and in full knowledge of the effect and therefore with the intention that that effect should follow. On the other hand, though God is supposed in the doctrine Finney is criticizing to have attached the communication of sinfulness to Adam’s posterity descended from him by ordinary generation, He is not represented as having done so arbitrarily but in a judicial sentence; so that a ground is assigned for His act and a ground in right—and Finney has not shown that this ground did not exist, or that existing, it was not a compelling ground in right. What Finney does is merely to substitute another account of universal sinfulness for this one—the Rationalistic account for the Augustinian one—and in doing so, to use a coarse expression, to jump from the frying pan into the fire. He leaves God equally responsible for human depravity, and deprives Him of all justification for attaching it to man. We do not assert that the Rationalistic account of human depravity which Finney exploits must necessarily leave God without justification for inflicting it upon man. It might conceivably be presented merely as an attempt to explain the manner in which man actually acquired a depravity to which he has been justly condemned on account of the sin of his first parents. It would still be open to fatal objections, but no longer to this one—that it represents God as arbitrarily creating the human race after a fashion which made it inevitable that every member of it should fall into hopeless moral depravity—at the first dawn of moral agency—as if the kind of humanity which He desired, intended and provided was a totally depraved humanity. But Finney does not set his theory forward as indicating the manner in which God brings a deserved punishment upon a guilty race. He energetically denies that the race on which this depravity is brought is a guilty race, or that it can be conceived as a punishment. He presents it as the account of how the human race—in all the length and breadth of it—becomes in the first instance sinful, in any sense of that word. And his object is to represent it as becoming so voluntarily—with a voluntariness, which, although embracing every individual of the race, is repeated in each individual’s case in the completest isolation of distinct personal action.

A tendency is exhibited at times to neglect this more elaborate explanation of universal depravity, and to represent it as sufficiently accounted for by the formula of freedom plus temptation. All men are free agents, and all men are tempted; therefore all men sin. The formula is obviously inoperative in this crude form of its statement, unless free agency is supposed to carry with it, per se, helplessness in the face of temptation, and always to succumb to temptation if it is addressed to it in an enticing form. Finney is near to this crude form of statement when he writes:³⁸⁴ “Sin may be the result of temptation; temptation may be universal, and of such a nature as uniformly, not necessarily, to result in sin, unless a contrary result be secured by a Divine moral suasion.” He is still near it when he writes:³⁸⁵ “Sin may be, and must be, an abuse of free-agency; and this may be accounted for, as we shall see, by ascribing it to the universality of temptation, and does not at all imply a sinful constitution.… Free, responsible will is an adequate cause in the presence of temptation, without the supposition of a sinful constitution, as has been demonstrated in the case of Adam and of angels.… It is said that no motive to sin could be a motive or a temptation, if there were not a sinful taste, relish, or appetite, inherent in the constitution, to which the temptation or motive is addressed.… To this I reply,—Suppose this objection be applied to the sin of Adam and of angels. Can we not account for Eve’s eating the forbidden fruit, without supposing that she had a craving for sin? “Finney has permitted it to slip from his mind as he wrote that the problem he has in hand is to offer an account not of individuals sinning, but of the universality of sin. Free agency plus temptation may account for the possibility of sin, and may lay a basis for an account of the actual occurrence of sinning in this or that case. It will not account for universal sinning. For that, nothing less than a universal bias to sin will supply an adequate account. That is the meaning of the statement which Finney quotes in order to repel, but so quotes as to empty it of its meaning. Probably no one of those whom Finney had in mind ever intended to say just that “no motive to sin could be a motive or a temptation, if there were not a sinful taste, relish, or appetite, inherent in the constitution, to which the temptation or motive is addressed.” What was intended to be said was, no doubt, that no motive to sin can be a temptation with universal—that is, invariable—effect, unless there is something in those tempted which constitutes a bias to sin. That is true; and one of the proofs that it is true is, that Finney, abandoning the simple formula of free-agency plus temptation, is himself compelled in the end to assume a bias to sin in order to account for the universality of sin. The child, he teaches—that little brute—must be supposed to have acquired habits of action which his moral sense, so soon as moral agency dawns in him, pronounces to be sinful, if we are to account for his universally succumbing to solicitations to what he now perceives to be sin. He has acquired a bias to what is objectively sinful, before he faces temptations to these very things, now by his newly obtained knowledge of right and wrong, become also subjectively sinful. That is Finney’s account of universal sin. It posits a bias to sin as distinct as that posited by the Augustinians. The difference is that the Augustinians posit a bias brought by every man into the world with him; Finney a bias created invariably for himself by every man in his first essays at living.

Finney’s repulsion of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin does not turn, then, on its attributing a bias to evil, to man, as at present constituted. He himself attributes total depravity to man from the first moment of his becoming a free agent, and that is the same as to say from the first moment of his becoming man. It turns in the first instance on the tracing by the Augustinians of the bias to evil back to Adam—despite his own recognition of an effect of Adam’s fall, through “physical depravity,” on humanity, increasing its liability to sin. And it turns secondly on the nature of the depravity attributed by the Augustinians to man. Finney will not hear of the predication of moral depravity to anything but “violations of moral law” and the “free volitions by which these violations are perpetuated.”³⁸⁶ “All sin,” he declares,³⁸⁷ “is actual, and … no other than actual transgression can justly be called sin.” He knows and will know nothing therefore of a sinful “nature,” or “constitution” as he likes to call it, embodying his argument in a word. It is his psychology which is at fault. The soul, to him, consists of its substance and its acts; there is nothing more, and there is room for nothing more—for such things, for example, as permanent, though separable, dispositions. “We deny,” he says,³⁸⁸ “that the human constitution is morally depraved … because it is impossible that sin should be a quality of the substance of soul or body. It is, and must be, a quality of choice or intention, and not of substance.” He will not allow that tertium datur. If sin, he declares,³⁸⁹ “be anything, it must be either substance or action.” He will allow no other than these two categories. His psychology compels him thus to reject any and every doctrine which appears to him to imply anything permanent in the soul, permanently affecting its actions, except the bare soul itself. He therefore constantly speaks as if the Augustinians thought of the sinfulness of the soul as a modification of the soul itself in its very substance, or else as the addition of another substance to the soul; as if, in a word, they were all Flacians. To him on the contrary, everything which is not the substance of the soul is one of its acts; and as he cannot attribute sinfulness to the soul itself, he therefore confines all sin to actual sinning. The tree is not good and its fruit good: we are to be content with the good fruits. The agent is lost in his acts, and the practical result is pure activism. The question comes to be, Is the man good or bad, or only his acts? Leonard Woods, in a passage characterized by great force and simplicity of language, at once points out and determines the exact issue. “Holiness or unholiness,” says he,³⁹⁰ “belongs primarily and essentially to man himself, as an intelligent, moral being, and to his actions secondarily and consequentially.… The connection between the character of the actions and the character of the agent is invariable. Take an unrenewed sinner.… It is necessary that he should be born again. He, the man, must be created anew; and if he is created anew, it will be unto good works: not that good works must be created, he himself remaining unchanged; but that he must be created anew, and then, as a matter of course, good works will be performed.… To say that regeneration consists in good moral exercises, that is, in loving God and obeying his commands, seems to me to be an abuse of language. It is as un-philosophical and strange, as to say, that the birth of a child consists in his breathing, or that the creation of the sun consists in his shining.”

The affiliations of Finney’s notion here are obviously with that Pelagianizing doctrine of concupiscence which infested the Middle Ages and was transmitted by them to the Roman Church. It differs from that doctrine at this point only in its completer Pelagianism. Like it, it conceives of man as persisting, under whatever curse it may allow the fall to have brought upon him, in puris naturalibus; and, in order to sustain this position, it denies moral character to all the movements of the human soul, deliberate volitions in view of moral inducements alone excepted. It was natural that the attention alike of Finney in sustaining and of his critics in assailing this contention was focused in the first instance on its bearing on those affectional movements—love, hate, malice, compassionateness—in the manifestations of which the man in the street is prone to see moral character especially exhibited. Having the courage of his convictions, Finney boldly proclaimed these affectional movements without any moral character whatever; and thus fell into a body of startling paradoxes which made him the easy mark of ridicule. John Woodbridge expounds his teaching in the following fashion:³⁹¹ “Concupiscence is reduced to the blameless, though, when they become excessive, somewhat dangerous cravings of physical appetite. Supreme self-love is declared to be an essential characteristic of intelligent moral agency, against which there is no law; which is the spring of all virtue as well as of vice; and to which no more blame can be attached than to the pulsations of the heart, or the vibrations of a pendulum. Affections, as such, have no character; they are but the innocent susceptibilities of our nature, and their most violent workings are innocent, except so far as they are produced or modified by a previous deliberate act of will. In all other cases, they are passive emotions, like the involuntary impressions made upon the brain by the bodily senses. It follows, on this principle, that love to God and hatred of him, are equally indifferent things; and that they become praiseworthy or criminal, solely in consequense of their connection with some previous purpose of the mind.” What the moral man above everything has to do, is, recognizing the purely “constitutional” nature of his affectional movements, to abstract himself from them altogether, and to determine all his activities by voluntary choices made in view of the perception of the supreme intrinsic value of the good of being. To be governed in any action whatever by our constitutional affections, whatever they may be—whether what in the common estimation would be called wicked or what in that estimation would be called good, alike—is in view of the supreme obligation that rests upon us to direct our activities to the one end of the good of being, no longer merely unmoral but in the highest degree immoral. It is preferring self-gratification to that benevolence which is the sum of virtue. There is no more telling page in Charles Hodge’s very telling review of the first volume of Finney’s “Lectures on Systematic Theology,”³⁹² than that in which he develops the consequences of this position. “The sin does not lie,” in Finney’s view, he reminds us,³⁹³ “in the nature of the feeling, but in the will’s being determined by any feeling.” “It matters not what kind of desire it is,” Finney declares, “if it is desire that governs the will, this is selfishness,” and therefore, “the choice of anything because it is desired is selfishness and sin.” “Mr. Finney is beautifully consistent in all this,” comments Hodge,³⁹⁴ “and in the consequences, which of necessity flow from his doctrine. He admits that if a man pays his debts from a sense of justice, or feeling of conscientiousness, he is therein and therefore just as wicked as if he stole a horse. Or if a man preaches the gospel from a desire to glorify God and benefit his fellow men, he is just as wicked for so doing as a pirate. We may safely challenge Hurtado de Mendoza, Sanchez, or Molina to beat that.” The illustrations which Hodge employs in this extract are not his, but Finney’s own,³⁹⁵ and they may help to indicate to us the thoroughness with which he cleansed our affectional movements from all moral character. Pure will plus external inducement—which may be in the way of temptation to evil, or may be in the way of incitement to good—that is all that comes into consideration in our moral judgments.