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One of the gains which Finney felt himself to obtain from his denial of all “constitutional depravity,” was that there was nothing left in man after his “conversion” which could act as fomes peccati, and sways his volitions sin-ward. He was perfectly free to admit that we must begin by denying the sinfulness of “concupiscence,” if we are to end by affirming “entire sanctification.” “Those persons,” he says, “who maintain the sinfulness of the constitutional appetites, must of course deny that man can ever be entirely sanctified in this life.” From this point of view also, he is eager to show “not only that sanctification implies merely ‘present obedience,’ ‘right volitions now,’ and produces ‘no change of our nature so that we become good in ourselves,’ but that there is nothing ‘in us,’ antecedent to moral action, operating as the occasion of sinful exercises, which needs to be eradicated or changed in order to our being in a state of ‘entire sanctification’ ”; and “to refute the doctrine, that apart from present transgressions, ‘there might be that in a person which would lay the foundation for his sinning at a future time.’ ”396 If there is nothing in us from which we need to be saved except our “commitment to self-gratification as the end of our being,” and nothing to be in us to which we are to be saved except a like “commitment to the good of being as the end of our being,” it is easier to believe that the passage from the one to the other—being only a passage from one purpose to another—may be made absolutely at once; must be made, indeed, if made at all, absolutely at once. It is according to Finney, thus, only our purpose which “needs to be radically changed.” What we call a “wicked heart” is only a purpose; what we call a “good heart” is only a purpose; and therefore Joseph I. Foot calls this theology “the heartless theology”—the theology, that is, which goes no deeper in its conception of salvation than a simple change of purpose, which conceives that all that happens to a man when he is saved, absolutely all that happens to him, is a change of purpose. A change of purpose is, naturally, an act of our own, and Finney therefore not only identifies regeneration and conversion, but polemicizes against all attempts to erect a distinction between them.397 We regenerate ourselves: only the man himself can “change his choice,” and if he will not do it, “it is impossible that it should be changed”—“neither God, nor any other being, can regenerate him, if he will not turn.”398 It is we ourselves then who make ourselves holy, and that at a stroke. For regeneration “implies an entire present change of moral character, that is, a change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.”399—a “present entire obedience to God.”400 After this it is only a question of maintenance—of the maintenance of that “radical change of ultimate intention,” that change from a selfish ultimate choice to benevolent ultimate choice, which we may call indifferently repentance,401 or faith,402 or conversion, or regeneration, or sanctification.

It is quite clear that what Finney gives us is less a theology than a system of morals. God might be eliminated from it entirely without essentially changing its character. All virtue, all holiness, is made to consist in an ethical determination of will. “What is virtue?” he asks, and answers: “It consists in consecration to the right end; to the end to which God is consecrated.”403 And “all holiness,” he defines,404 consists in “the right exercise of our own will or agency.” The supreme ultimate end to which in the right exercise of our will we must direct ourselves, if we would be virtuous or holy—these things are one—is the good of being. God is of course included in this being, but only as part of the whole—Being—to which our benevolent purpose is directed. And He is just as much subject to this universal ethical law as we are. He too must make the good of being His supreme ultimate end, on pain of becoming, as we would in like circumstances become, instead of as holy as He can be, as wicked as He can be. We are all, He and we, members of one ethical body, governed by one ethical law, and pursuing a common ethical course. But since the same law governs God and us, it is clear that we are dealing with pure ethics, not religion. God has no religion. And since this ethical law sets the good of being, interpreted as happiness, as distinguished from our own happiness, described as self-gratification, or selfishness, as the supreme ultimate end, the choosing of which includes all virtue—God cannot be held to be the sole or even the chief object included under the term, “Being,” the good of which is our supreme ultimate end. For God at least to choose His own good—or happiness—solely or chiefly as His supreme ultimate end—would not that be that selfishness which is declared to constitute us as wicked as we can be, instead of as holy as we can be? Finney constantly employs the double phrase, “God and the universe” as the synonym of Being in this reference; and we may think it possible that he wished the two elements in the composite idea to be distributed differently in our case and in God’s—that in our case it should be God along with the universe, in God’s, the universe along of course with Himself—as even we include ourselves in the Being whose good we seek. But can we even imagine God taking this subordinate place in His own eyes, attributing “greater intrinsic value”—which Finney says is the reason why we are to seek the happiness of the universe above our own—to the universe than to His own all glorious Being? Must not His own glory be to Him also, as it must be to us, His supreme ultimate end? We said that God might be eliminated entirely from Finney’s ethical theory without injury to it: are we not prepared now to say that He might be eliminated from it with some advantage to it.405

“True religion,” says Finney, in one of his numerous brief summaries of his general views,406 “consists in benevolence, or in heart obedience to God.” This identification of “benevolence” and “obedience” does not appear obvious to the uninstructed mind and requires some explication. Finney discovers the intermediating idea in the following consideration. “It,” that is, religion, “consists essentially in the will’s being yielded to the will of God”—that is, no doubt, in “obedience.” But he continues epexegetically: “in embracing the same end that he embraces”—and this adoption of His end as our end (how that sounds like Albrecht Ritschl!) may possibly be considered “benevolence.” We read on: “and yielding implicit obedience to him in all our lives, or in our efforts to secure that end.” “This,” he now adds, “constitutes the essence of all true religion.” In that case the essence of religion is obedience; and it can be benevolence only as obedience may be construed as rendered, not because it is due, but out of good will; as if we obeyed God, not because He is God, whom to obey is our primary obligation, but because we are good and glad to subject ourselves to another for His pleasing. Religion being obedience, it is distinctly a matter of will, and also of conduct, the product of will. Voluntary subjection is its form, although the form of this subjection is described as the adoption of the Divine end as our own and the prosecution of it (always under the Divine prescription) with all our might. The adoption of the end of God as our end, and obedience to the will of God, are not quite the same conception: they are assimilated to one another by the requirement that we shall prosecute this end when adopted in implicit obedience to the Divine prescription. Clearly this is a religion of law, and the heart of it is obedience: and these are ethical conceptions. Having thus made religion to consist “essentially in yielding the will to God in implicit obedience”—that is, an affair of will—Finney now represents the emotional life of the religious man as, not a part, but merely a consequence of his religion. “The feelings or affections, or the involuntary emotions, are rather a consequence, than strictly a part of true religion.” Faith itself can be thought of as “an essential element of true religion,” only because it is “not an involuntary, but a voluntary state of mind”; that is, an act of will. Religion is thus conceived as through and through an affair of the will. “It should never be forgotten,” we read,407 “that all true religion consists in voluntary states of mind, and that the true and only way to attain to true religion, is to look at and understand the exact thing to be done, and then to put forth at once the voluntary exercise required.”408

In the preface of his “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” Finney declares409 that the subject of the book is “Mind in its relations to Moral Law,” and that what he has said on “Moral Law,” and on the “Foundation of Moral Obligation” is the key to the whole. This remark seems to have a narrower reference as it appears in the first edition of the “Lectures,” but clearly it refers to the whole treatise as it is repeated in the second. It may be taken as revealing Finney’s own consciousness of the essentially ethical character of his treatise. It is a system of teleological ethics which he presents to us; or, to be more precise, we may perhaps say in modern phraseology, that it is a system of hedonistic as distinguished from eudaemonistic ethics, that is to say a system in which “happiness” rather than “welfare”—although of course the two ideas readily run into one another—is the ethical end, the ultimate object to be achieved by action and conduct, the standard and final criterion of what ought to be—by their tendency to achieve which therefore the ethical character of actions is to be estimated. Of course it is not “individualistic” hedonism which Finney teaches, not even merely “altruistic,” to continue to use the phraseology of the modern schools, but “universalistic.” The doctrine which he inculcates is that moral conduct consists in actions directed towards the happiness of all sentient being; from which it follows, to put it briefly, that happiness is the chief good and benevolence the comprehensive virtue, and actions are good or bad according as they do or do not manifest the one and promote the other.410 If we ask what has become of the “right,” in the sense of the morally excellent, conceived as good per se, it can only be said that it has dropped out of sight altogether. The “good” has become the “happiness”—or the “welfare”—of the whole body of sentient beings; and the “right” that which tends to this. We cannot define “happiness”—or “welfare”—so as to include the idea of the “right,” except at the cost of self-contradiction. If there is any such thing as the “right” per se, then the right is not what tends to an end, conceived as the supreme good, but just the end itself: we cannot say that the right is what tends to the right. Thus all obligation is reduced strictly to the single obligation to choose the good of being as our supreme ultimate end. The ground of obligation is accordingly declared to be that in this ultimate end which makes it incumbent on us to choose it, namely its intrinsic value to being. “The ground of obligation,” says Finney,411 “is that reason, or consideration, intrinsic in, or belonging to, the nature of an object, which necessitates the rational affirmation, that it ought to be chosen for its own sake.” There is some appearance of logomachy in this reasoning. We choose the good of being as our ultimate end: the ground of our choice of it is that it is worth choosing; that in it which makes it worth choosing is the ground of our obligation to choose it. We do not seem to be told how we know that the good of being, in the sense of its happiness, is the supremely valuable thing in the universe. That is “a first truth of reason.” Finney’s polemic against what he calls barbarously, “rightarianism”412 is very sharp. He takes us back to the primary sense of the word “right” and seeks to reduce even the connotation of the word itself to the “fit, suitable, agreeable to the nature and relations of moral agents.” This representation, however, is only partially correct, although there is of course a sense in which right and wrong express what is straight and what is crooked. “Right” has the form of a past participle, and it is not overpressing its suggestion to say that it expresses not so much the straight as the straightened: behind it lies the idea of rule, regulation, government: it is cognate not only with regular but regal—in short it expresses “conformed to rule,” with a subaudition of authority. The atmosphere out of which it comes is that of theism, not of naturalism; and the righteous man is accordingly not the man whose conduct is suitable to his nature but the man whose conduct is in accordance with law. The ethics of right is accordingly justly spoken of as “authoritative morality,” the ethics which imposes itself as obligatory per se, and not merely on the ground of expediency calculated from its tendency to an end presumed to be a good, supposedly the supreme good. The right is not a means to something else conceived of as the supreme good, but is itself the supreme good imposed on us as our duty by an adequate authority.

This seems to Finney fundamentally wrong, and he endeavors to reduce it to absurdity. “If the rightarian be the true theory,” he reasons,413 “then disinterested benevolence is sin. According to this scheme, the right, and not the good of being is the end to, and for which, God and all moral agents ought to live. According to this theory, disinterested benevolence can never be duty, can never be right, but always and necessarily wrong.… If moral agents ought to will the right for the sake of the right, or will good, not for the sake of the good, but for the sake of the relation of rightness existing between the choice and the good, then to will the good for its own sake is sin. It is not willing the right end. It is willing the good and not the right as an ultimate end. These are opposing theories. Both cannot be true. Which is the right to will, the good for its own sake, or the right? Let universal reason answer.” Undoubtedly these are opposing theories; and universal conscience might well be left to decide whether we should will the good because it is right to do so, or will the right because it tends to a good result. And in this lies the answer to the over-strained logic which Finney is plying. That we are to do the right because it is right, and not because of any tendency we perceive in it to advance the good of the universe, by no means makes the practice of “disinterested benevolence” a sin. It may be right to will the good for its own sake. But, you cry out, you cannot will the good because it is right and for its own sake at the same time. Why not, if it is right to will the good for its own sake? The universal ground of moral obligation is that we must do right. The particular ground of this special obligation lies in the value of the object chosen. The value of the object chosen—but, mind you, its moral value—indicates the rightness of its choice. The category of the right is not an empty category, it has content: the notion is not a purely formal one, it is concrete. One of the things which is right is benevolence. When we choose benevolence as a rule of life we do right; and it is a very twisted logic which declares that he who chooses benevolence as a rule of life must do wrong—because he ought to choose right as his rule of life. He ought. That is the very reason why he ought to choose benevolence as his rule of life. It is right.

Finney having endeavored to reduce “Rightarianism” to absurdity Charles Hodge is doubtless justified in retorting with a happier attempt on his part to reduce Finney’s teleological ethics to absurdity.414 He says it belongs to the same mintage with Jesuit “intentionalism”—“the means are justified by the end”—and recommends Pascal’s “Provincial Letters” as a good book to be read at Oberlin. When stated in an abstract form the observation made by Hodge is so immediately obvious, as not to require argument for its justification. It is the very essence of a system of teleological ethics that the means acquire all the moral quality which they possess from their relation as means to their end. It was the taunt that this involved, as truly as Jesuit “intentionalism,” the contention that it is right to do evil that good may come, which stung Finney to his unavailing answer.415 The point of the comparison lies in the principle common to both Jesuit “intentionalism” and Finney’s teleological ethics that “whatever proceeds from right intention is right.” From this the Jesuits proceeded to infer that it is therefore right to do evil that good may come. Can Finney escape the same inference? Everybody, of course, understands that a right intention is necessary to the rightness of any action. The point raised is whether that is all that is necessary. Is it true that if your intention is right, your action is right? This is the Jesuit doctrine: the rightness of the intention makes the action right. It is Finney’s doctrine also. Does he not teach that all that makes any conduct right is the end to which it is directed? What Hodge wishes to carry home to the mind is that this is really a vicious principle: everywhere and in all applications vicious. While the rightness of the intention is essential to the rightness of the action, it does not of itself make the action right. The “matter” of the action, as the Schoolmen express it, must be right, too. The act must be right for “the matter” of it, as well as in the intention of it. Intrinsically good ends must be sought by intrinsically good means: neither does the good end make an evil means good, nor does a good means make the evil end good. Francis of Assisi had a good end in view when he gave alms: he wished to relieve distress. When he stole the money from his master’s till to give the alms, he used bad means for his good end. The goodness of the end does not sanctify the means. The goodness of the end, in point of fact, never transmits its goodness to the means used to attain it: And this destroys at once all schemes of teleological ethics.

In reply to Hodge, Finney says a great deal which is wholly ineffective because not to the point. The one thing which he says to the point is that in his system the choice of the end includes in it the choice of the means. There is but one system of means which is adapted to achieve the good of being. This system of means and its appropriate end are bound together in an indissoluble unity. To choose the end is at the same time, and by the same act, to choose this system of means. We cannot do anything we will and call that a means to that end. We must do just the things which are the real means to that end, in order to secure it. The rightness of these means is given to them by their inherent relation as means to this supreme ultimate end, to which they are related as its only means. It is their inherent relation to the end with which they form one system which makes them right; and the only definition that can be given of them is that they are the fit means to the supreme ultimate end, chosen for its own sake and organically related as the supreme good to the fit means for securing it. The effect of this representation is to shift the whole matter from the subjective to the objective sphere. It amounts to saying that he acts rightly who does the things which in point of fact tend to the supreme good, not he whose actions are governed by the intention of subserving the good of God and the universe. And in thus shifting the matter from the subjective to the objective sphere, the whole character of the scheme is altered. It is no longer the supreme ultimate intention which gives its moral quality to all subordinate choices and executive volitions—which is the very essence of Finney’s morals—but the intrinsically good end which cannot be secured except by the intrinsically good means in organic union with it. The good end is no longer conceived as making the means chosen to secure it good; it is conceived as related to a system of means which are themselves good and which form with the end a good system. Finney is obviously floundering here. In his system things—whether means or other things—are not good in themselves: they receive their goodness for their relation—as means or otherwise—to the supreme ultimate end, which is defined as the good of being. He cannot subintroduce here an attribution of intrinsic goodness to them: what makes these means good is in his system solely their relation as means to the supreme ultimate end. He can, no doubt objectify the whole system of ends and means, and bid us conceive them—the end as the final term and all the means leading to it—as an objective entity which as a whole is good; a whole made up of its constituent parts all of which are good, standing off in a sort of conceptual reality to our contemplation. And he can then say, See, there is the end; and see, here are the means leading up to it—appropriate means, good as the end itself is good; and see, he that chooses the end must choose with it the whole concatenated system of means and ends; they cannot be separated; they form one whole. But, doing so, he is merely objectifying for the sake of visualizing it, a system which is really subjective: no such objective system exists, in his view, in fact. He deceives himself, if he imagines that he thus gives the means in his system any actually independent goodness, and can properly speak of them as “good as the end itself is good.” They seem thus good only as they stand in this objectified system, which is a purely mental construction. Out of this objectified system they have no goodness: they acquire goodness only by being brought into, and as they are brought into each man’s actual subjective system. It remains true that any means, any whatever, which are brought into a system of means looking towards the indicated end, is in Finney’s view made good by its relation as means to this end. That is intrinsic to any system of teleological ethics. And that is “intentionalism.” What he teaches is, not that our good intention cannot be secured unless we employ good means, but that our good intention makes the means requisite for securing it good.

As the end of his long life drew near, Finney published a tract—called the “Psychology of Righteousness”—in which he repeats in popular language the teaching of his lifetime, thus certifying us that it remains his teaching to the very end. Here he propounds afresh his fundamental ethical theory and erects on its basis anew his Pelagian doctrine of salvation. Righteousness here too is discovered only in our ultimate choice, from which all the righteousness of subordinate choices, volitions, actions derives. And our ultimate choice is righteous only when it is the choice of the good of universal being. “The moral quality, then, of unselfish benevolence is righteousness or moral rightness.” “This ultimate, immanent, supreme preference is the holy heart of a moral agent. Out of it proceeds, directly or indirectly, the whole moral or spiritual life of the individual.” A sinner is ex vi verbi a selfish moral agent: how can he attain to the righteousness which consists in his contradictory, in universal benevolence? Why, of course, by a change in his ultimate choice. “The first righteous act possible to an unregenerate sinner is to change his heart, or the supreme ultimate preference of his soul.” If this is the first act, it is also the last—for it is the whole thing. The only thing that has moral character is the ultimate choice, and, the ultimate choice having become benevolence, the sinner has wholly ceased to be a sinner, and become altogether righteous. This great change is effected by the sinner “taking such a view of the character and claims of God as to induce him to renounce his self-seeking spirit and come into sympathy with God.” You see, nothing but better knowledge is required; better knowledge leads to a better life. The ministrations of the Holy Ghost are, to be sure, not excluded; but the whole work of the Spirit is reduced to the mode of illumination. All that the Spirit does is to give the sinner a better view of the claims of God. “A sinner attains, then, to righteousness only through the teachings and inspirations of the Holy Spirit.” “It is by the truths of the gospel that the Holy Spirit induces this change in sinful man.” “This revelation of divine love, when powerfully set home by the Holy Spirit, is an effectual calling.” The effect of the change thus brought about is that the sinner ceases to be a sinner, and becomes, at once on the change taking place, perfect. “A truly regenerated soul cannot live a sinful life.” “The new heart does not, cannot sin. This John in his first epistle expressly affirms. A benevolent, supreme ultimate choice cannot produce selfish subordinate choices or volitions.” A perfectionism is asserted here of every true Christian, from the inception of his Christianity; a perfectionism resting absolutely on the sinner’s own ultimate choice.

But now we are told, to our astonishment, that this perfect Christian may backslide. How he manages it remains unexplained, if “the new heart does not, cannot sin,” as John is said to teach—if the benevolent supreme ultimate choice which he has made cannot produce selfish subordinate choices or volitions. Finney, however, asserts it and argues it. If the change wrought in the sinner, he says, “were a physical one, or a change of the very nature of the sinner,” this backsliding would indeed be impossible. But as nothing has happened to the sinner himself—as he has only been induced by better knowledge, to change his ultimate supreme purpose—there is no reason why he may not change it back again. This is of course making himself again a new heart—this time a bad one, as Adam and Eve did. Indeed, a man may “change his heart back and forth.” Otherwise “a sinner could not be required to make to himself a new heart, nor could a Christian sin after regeneration.” When a man has backslidden, there is nothing for him but to begin afresh and do his first work over again. In point of fact he has not “backslidden” but apostatized. And now to make the appearance of contradiction complete, we are told that “righteousness is sustained in the human soul by the indwelling of Christ through faith and in no other way”; and “purposes or resolutions” are spoken of which are not “self-originated”; but are due to the Spirit of Christ. Fortunately this antinomy, left unresolved in this brief popular tract, is abundantly resolved in Finney’s earlier and more extended writings. In these writings all that is good in the whole sphere of Christian activity is ascribed without reserve both to the indwelling Christ and to the human agent; and the antinomy is resolved by the explanation that the action of the Spirit of Christ is purely suasive and the whole execution is the work of man himself in his active powers.

Take the following passages together. “It”—that is the doctrine of entire sanctification—“ascribes the whole of salvation and sanctification from first to last, not only till the soul is sanctified, but at every moment while it remains in that state, to the indwelling Spirit, and influence, and grace of Christ. A state of entire sanctification can never be attained … by any works of law, or works of any kind, performed in your own strength, irrespective of the grace of God. By this I do not mean, that, were you disposed to exert your natural powers aright, you could not at once obey the law in the exercise of your natural strength, and continue to do so. But I do mean, that as you are wholly indisposed to use your natural powers aright, without the grace of God, no efforts that you will actually make in your own strength, or independent of his grace, will ever result in your entire sanctification.416 “By the assertion, that the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of Christ, is received by faith, to reign in the heart, it is intended, that he is actually trusted in, or submitted to by faith, and his influence suffered to control us. He does not guide and control us, by irresistible power or force, but faith confides the guidance of our souls to him. Faith receives and confides in him, and consents to be governed and directed by him. As his influence is moral, and not physical, it is plain that he can influence us no farther … than we trust or confide in him.”417 “The Holy Spirit controls, directs, and sanctifies the soul, not by a physical influence, nor by impulses nor by impressions made on the sensibility, but by enlightening and convincing the intellect, and thus quickening the conscience.”418 Everything that the Spirit does for us is thus reduced to enlightenment; everything we receive from Him to knowledge. We are exhorted, it is true, to renounce our own strength and rely on, draw on, live by the strength of Christ. But the term “strength” here is only a figure of speech. When an attempt is made to explain what precisely is meant by such exhortations,419 what we are told is that in the first place they are not meant “in the antinomian, do-nothing, sit-still sense” of the words. It is not to “sit down and do nothing,” leaving it to Christ to do it for us. This is, so far so good. But it is not so well said when we hear next, that what we are to do is to lean “upon Christ, as a helpless man would lean upon the arm or shoulder of a strong man, to be borne about in some benevolent enterprise.” A kind of coöperation is depicted here which makes Christ merely our helper. The intention is to exploit our “natural ability,” and accordingly we read soon: “This renunciation of his own strength is not a denial of his natural ability.… It is a complete recognition of his ability, were he disposed to do all that God requires of him.” “Strength” then is distinctly the wrong word to use in this connection. We do not need Christ’s strength: we have enough of our own. We need from Christ only an adequate inducement to use our own strength aright. The soul has “been too long the slave of lust ever to assert or to maintain its spiritual supremacy, as the master, instead of the slave of appetite”; and we need help in asserting ourselves. The idea of strength here intrudes again and we read that “the will or heart is so weak in the presence of temptation, that there is no hope of its maintaining its integrity, unsupported by strength from Christ,” and it must therefore renounce its dependence on its own strength and cast itself on Christ. We cannot forget, however, that Christ acts on the “will or heart” only by instruction. And even here the conception continues to be only that of the use of Christ to supplement defects. The illustration employed is that of a lame man with his crutches. Christ is the believer’s crutches; and we are exhorted to make these crutches, that is Christ, so much ours that we use them instinctively and can no more forget them when we essay to walk than we can forget our own feet. This is what it is to walk in Christ.

More illuminating still is a passage420 in which Finney is attempting to discriminate his view of “the means and conditions of sanctification” from that of the “New Divinity”—from which he felt himself to have come out, or to have been thrust out. The New Divinity, he notes, like himself, rejects “the doctrine of constitutional moral depravity”—that is, of “original sin”—and consequently the doctrine of “physical regeneration and sanctification”—that is of “making the tree good” rather than the fruit only. But, having rejected these doctrines, its adherents, says he, have unfortunately lost sight of Christ as our sancification also. They accordingly “have fallen into a self-righteous view of sanctification, and have held that sanctification is effected by works, or by forming holy habits.” Over against this very reprehensible drift of doctrine—a drift, let us say frankly, very natural in the adherents of the New Divinity—Finney wishes to reassert our dependence on Christ for sanctification. The precise thing he asserts is that sanctification is by faith as opposed to works. And then he explains: “That is, faith receives Christ in all his offices, and in all the fulness of his relations to the soul; and Christ, when received, works in the soul to will and to do of all his good pleasure, not by a physical, but by a moral or persuasive working.” He cannot assert that Christ works in the soul without adding this limitation! It is in point of fact the key to his entire teaching. It too is the assertion that since Christ’s only working in the soul is suasive in character, the sanctification of the soul is effected by itself. So that the only conceivable distinction between the rejected view of the New Divinity and Finney’s own must be thought to lie in the answer to the question whether the works, done in both views alike by the soul itself and only by the soul itself, are done under persuasion from Christ or not. “Observe,” says Finney now: “he influences the will.” That is all that Christ does: He influences the will. “This,” Finney continues, “must be by a moral influence, if its”—that is the will’s—“actings are intelligent and free, as they must be to be holy.” “That is, if he influences the will to obey God, it must be by a divine moral suasion.”

Is there, really, anything, then, which distinguishes this view of the relation of sanctification in Christ from that ascribed to the New Divinity? Nothing. For the New Divinity did not at all deny that the soul was influenced in its sanctifying walk by the persuasions of the Holy Spirit. That was rather one of its contentions, the only rag of Christian doctrine it had left at this point to cover its nakedness. With all Finney’s devout references to the indwelling Christ, dependence on the strength of Christ, and the like, he means nothing more. The only even apparent distinction between the two views lies in Finney’s calling his view a sanctification “by faith,” and setting it over against the other as a sanctification “by effort.” And as he expounds his view, that is a distinction without a difference. He now goes on to say, however, after his chosen fashion of speech, that the soul, never in any instance obeys God “in a spiritual and true sense,” “except it be thus influenced by the indwelling Spirit of Christ.” And he hints that when we receive Christ in any relation, He is full and perfect in that relation—so that, we suppose, if we receive Him for sanctification, we are perfectly sanctified. This, however, is thrown in incidentally. The main thing in this exhortation is the staring Pelagianism of the whole construction. We believe in Christ for our sanctification; He then acts persuasively in our souls for sanctification; under this persuasion we act holily; that is our sanctification. It is all a sanctification of acts. We are not ourselves cleansed; but then there is no need of cleansing us, since we were never ourselves unclean. We were only a bundle of constitutional appetites, passions, and propensities, innocent in themselves, which we have been misusing through a bad will. What needs correcting is only this bad will into a good one. And the appropriate, the only, instrument for the correction of our willing is persuasion. Moved by this persuasion we “make ourselves a good heart”—we “change our mind,” as the phrase goes—and that is the whole of it. It is to this that Finney reduces Christianity. And as this ready making for ourselves a new heart, makes us a perfectly holy heart, it is with this ease and despatch that according to Finney’s form of perfectionism we become perfect. That is in brief the final form which Oberlin Perfectionism took.

The preaching of perfectionism with such energy and persistency by men of such intellectual force and pulpit power as Mahan and Finney and their coadjutors, of course had its effect. Oberlin naturally—college and community—became a perfectionist center. The majority of the students, perhaps also the majority of the inhabitants, were more or less deeply moved by the propaganda: many definitely adopted the new teaching and endeavored both to live it themselves and to communicate it to others. The surrounding country, especially that most closely affiliated with Oberlin in its general type of thinking—the Western Reserve of Ohio, and to the east, Western and Central New York, to the west Michigan and the North Western country—became so far infected that scattered groups of “Oberlin Perfectionists” appeared here and there through it.421 The aggressions of the Oberlin propaganda, the threat of a wider extension of its teachings, the nature of the doctrine itself, naturally called out intense opposition. The whole region affected became the scene of violent controversy. The local periodical press of course reflected the state of feeling of the several communities. And soon the ecclesiastical courts were drawn into the debate. Presbyterian Presbyteries and Congregational Associations vied with one another in reasoned condemnations of the new doctrine. One of the remarkable circumstances connected with these official condemnations was, that as they came largely from the region of Finney’s, and to a less extent of Mahan’s, early ministry and revivalistic triumphs, or from regions bound closely to it by ties of common blood and feeling, they were often penned by men who had been associated with them or had at least strongly sympathized with them, in their work hitherto. They were being wounded, they complained, in the house of their friends. S. C. Aiken, who had been a pastor at Utica during Finney’s great revival there and one of his chief supporters during the whole course of his revival campaigns in Central New York, was a signatory along with its actual author, S. B. Canfield, of the able refutation of Oberlin Perfectionism put out by the Presbytery of Cleveland in 1841. N. S. S. Beman, with whose collaboration Finney’s remarkable revival at Troy had been carried on, was the actual author of the uncompromising refutation put out in the same year by the Presbytery of Troy. George Duffield prepared the “Warning against Error,” meaning Finney’s system of teaching, which was sent forth by the Presbytery of Detroit in 1847, with the approval of the Synod of Michigan; and perhaps we may add here, although it was a private publication, that Lyman Beecher printed about 1844 a letter against perfectionism, which was thought important enough for John Morgan to answer it in The Oberlin Quarterly Review.422 In the fateful year of 1841, the Presbyteries of Huron and Grand River in the Western Reserve, and of Richland near by, also passed condemnatory actions: and decided action in the same sense was taken soon afterward by the New York Presbyteries of Chenango, Cortland, Onondaga, Rochester. Further afield the Presbytery of Newark had been led to early action, and soon the Presbytery of North River; and it was not long before the Synods of New York and New Jersey423 and of Genesee were compelled by appeals to act in the same sense. Similar action was taken by the General Association of Connecticut in 1841, by the General Association of New York in 1844, by the Genesee Association in 1844, by the Fox River Congregational Union of Illinois in 1845. The Cleveland Convention in 1844, and the Michigan City Convention of 1846 were organized on an anti-Oberlin basis; and in 1848 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions discharged two missionaries in Siam for holding the Oberlin doctrines. Oberlin very naturally felt itself persecuted, and its historian designates the conflict into which it was drawn as its “baptism of fire.”424

Meanwhile, at Oberlin itself the doctrine was making a history which began with enthusiastic acceptance, and passed forward rapidly into indifference and decay. The originators of the doctrine never lost their hold upon it or their zeal for it. Finney was still teaching it up to the end of his long life (died 1875), the whole of which was spent at Oberlin. Mahan, whose connection with Oberlin was severed in 1850, after an unfortunate venture at Cleveland (1850–1854) and a more successful one at Adrian, Michigan (1855–1871), had yet fifteen years or so to spend in England in active propaganda for his favorite doctrine (died 1889). But the vogue of the doctrine at Oberlin was not very long-lived. James H. Fairchild gives us a very illuminating sketch of its fortunes there.425 “The visible impulse of the movement,” he says, “to a great extent expended itself within the first few years.” Men sought and found with decreasing frequency the special experiences—“the blessing,” “the second conversion”—which were connected with it as first preached. Those who went out to preach “under the influence of this fresh experience” came ultimately to permit it to drop into the background. “So far as I am informed,” says Fairchild, “not one among them all continued for any length of time to be recognized as a preacher of these special views.” They did not repudiate their former views; but they found that “they could preach the truth as it is in Jesus more effectively than by giving to their doctrine the odor of Christian perfection, or the higher life.” Whatever their motive was, they ceased to be propagandists of perfectionism. A similar decay of interest in the doctrine was working itself out at Oberlin itself. Confidence “in the style of Christian culture, involving a special experience, which the movement introduced” grew progressively less clear and firm. This special experience—the “blessing”—was not found to be always associated with an advance in Christian attainment and character. On the contrary, it was observed that those who obtained it were apt to be among the less balanced characters of the community. Others who had not sought or found the experiences were not obviously less earnest and effective in Christian work than those who had enjoyed them. Thus the peculiar ideas and experiences connected with the “entire sanctification” movement gradually lost their appeal. Fairchild does not mention them, but there were also scandals to accentuate the decreasing sense of the value of the doctrine. The most shocking of them was probably the lamentable fall from virtue in 1842 of H. C. Taylor, “who had held prominent stations in both church and business affairs, had been a leader in ‘moral reform (social purity),’ and had also been numbered among the ‘sanctified.’ ”426

A tendency has developed itself among recent Oberlin writers, as for example, D. L. Leonard,427 to represent the whole history of Oberlin Perfectionism as only a temporary aberration which befell the institution in its early days. Leonard speaks of “the perfection episode,” and is happy to say it is altogether a matter of the past. Oberlin has heard nothing of it for years and years—for a generation, he says, writing in 1898. He even goes so far as to suggest that perfectionism was never anything more than a “foible” at Oberlin; a “foible” like its early tendency to Grahamism, and its manual laborism and its temporary misprision of the classics. It may be condoned in those early leaders as their other foibles were condoned; it was a product of the earnestness of their purpose and of the strong determination of their high characters to holy living. Experience has shown, however, that it was a delusion. There were those who received “the blessing” and could not keep it; lapsing speedily into their old “earthy” conditions. There were those who had it, and did not seem to have profited anything by it. It was not “the best, the truest-hearted, the most reliable and useful disciples” who had it; they might on the contrary be “the weak-minded, the shallow, the merely sentimental.” This has been the experience at Oberlin, according to Leonard. Leonard writes confessedly under the influence of Fairchild, and can scarcely be taken as bearing independent witness to anything beyond the attitude toward its early perfectionism which modern Oberlin takes. Changes have befallen Oberlin. The modern Oberlin is not the old Oberlin, and it is not merely the perfectionism of the past that has faded away.

But if, as we are told, its early perfectionism has left no trace of itself at Oberlin, that cannot be said of it elsewhere. There are great religious movements still in existence in which its influence still makes itself felt. Finney’s doctrine of “the simplicity of moral action” continued to be enthusiastically taught even by his successor in the Presidency, J. H. Fairchild, although Fairchild found a way—not a very convincing way—to separate it from the “perfectionism” with which it was inseparably bound up by Finney. Mahan’s lifelong propaganda of the earlier form of Oberlin Perfectionism was not barren of fruit. The “Higher Life Movement” which swept over the English-speaking world—and across the narrow seas into the Continent of Europe—in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, was not without traits which derived from Oberlin. And Mahan lived to stand by the side of Pearsall Smith at the great Oxford Convention of 1874, and to become with him a factor in the inauguration of the great “Keswick Movement,” which has brought down much of the spirit and many of the forms of teaching of Oberlin Perfectionism to our own day. If Oberlin Perfectionism is dead, it has found its grave not in the abyss of non-existence, but in the Higher Life Movement, the Keswick Movement, the Victorious Life Movement, and other kindred forms of perfectionist teaching. They are its abiding monuments. Perhaps as the old Egyptian monarchs, in taking over the structures of their predecessors, endeavored to obliterate the signatures of those from whom they had inherited them, these later movements would be glad to have us forget the sources out of which they have sprung. But as the names of the earlier Egyptian kings may still be read even in their defaced cartouches, so the name of Oberlin may still be read stamped on movements which do not acknowledge its parentage, but which have not been able to escape altogether from its impress.428

Footnotes

  1. Compare: J. H. Fairchild, “Oberlin: Its Origin, Progress and Results,” 1871, and “Oberlin: the Colony and the College,” 1883; W. G. Ballantine, “Oberlin Jubilee, 1833–1883,” 1884; D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” 1898. ↩

  2. Cf. D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” 1898, pp. 87 ff., for some account of Shipherd’s communistic leaning. ↩

  3. Cf. Asa Mahan, “Autobiography,” 1882, pp. 190 ff. ↩

  4. Preface (probably written about 1834) to his “Sermons on Important Subjects,” 1836, p. iv.: “My health has been such as to render it probable that I shall never be able to labor as an evangelist again.” Preface to his “Lectures on Revivals of Religion” (1835), ed. 2, 1835, p. iii.: “I am now a Pastor, and have not sufficient health to labor as an Evangelist.” ↩

  5. When Asa Mahan, “Autobiography,” p. 231, speaks of the lugubrious tone of their Christianity, some discount may properly be made on account of his natural zeal against a “miserable-sinner Christianity.” Though they were “from among the brightest converts” of the great revivals, he says, “their common experience was represented in the words: ‘Where is the blessedness I knew, when first I saw the Lord?’ ” Speaking of their tone of mind while still at Lane (pp. 239 ff.), he says: “Several of the most talented among them” refused to go to church saying they could “receive no benefit from the discourses of Dr. Beecher or any other pastor in the city.” “They understood the whole subject.” They did go to chapel, “and there listened to one of the feeblest preachers I ever knew,” and openly said that feeble as they were, his sermons were as useful to them as any others in the city could be. “Of these young men,” he remarks, “every one, as far as I could learn, afterwards made shipwreck of the faith. Only one or two of them entered the ministry at all, and they soon after left it, under the influence of some of the absurdities that then obtained.” ↩

  6. D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” 1898, pp. 40–41: “Certain faults and infirmities of his had wrought not a little damage.” Again, pp. 274–275: “His spirit was radical, positive and aggressive, and while he made many warm friends and admirers, others not a few were stirred to disfavor and antagonism.… Certain serious defects, however, attended his career, which in particular his associates in the faculty found it increasingly difficult to endure. After long forbearance and as a last resort it was determined to draw up a paper setting forth the facts in the case, to be signed by all and presented to the trustees.” ↩

  7. For example, Leonard, as cited, p. 35: “With the advent of Mr. Finney, it began to be taught that a strict Graham diet was the only one either hygienic or truly Christian, while meat and all condiments were to be eschewed.” Compare p. 210. ↩

  8. Leonard, as cited, pp. 35, 242, 261. J. P. Cowles is alluded to, whose views, we are told, “were at so many points so opposed to those of his associates, and who felt constrained to speak and act just as he felt, that his resignation was requested.” He left Oberlin in 1839. ↩

  9. An address of Mahan’s published in the first number, was utilized as the core of a small book by him, called “Christian Perfection” (early in 1839), which at once became the chief vehicle of the doctrine. ↩

  10. Asa Mahan, “Autobiography,” p. 261: “The college early became, principally through its President and Professor of Theology, the visible representative of the doctrine of the Higher Life.” ↩

  11. What was understood at the time by the phrase “religious ultraism,” then very current, may be conveniently read in an admirable printed sermon of W. B. Sprague’s bearing that title (Albany, 1835). Cf. also D. R. Goodwin, “On Religious Ultraism,” in The Literary and Theological Review, iii. 1836, pp. 56–66, completed by “Radical Opinions,” same journal, pp. 253–265. ↩

  12. Born at Cork, Ireland, 1802; graduated at Williams College, 1826; taught at New York; Preparatory School Teacher at Lane. Cf. Calvin Durfee, “Williams Biographical Annals,” 1871, p. 429. ↩

  13. Born at Norfolk, Connecticut, 1803; graduated at Yale College, 1826; studied in Yale Divinity School 1826–1828; pastor for seven years in Northern Ohio. Cf. D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” pp. 279 ff.; “The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia,” and “Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography,” sub nom. ↩

  14. “Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney, written by Himself,” 1876, pp. 4 ff.; P. H. Fowler, “Historical Sketch of Presbyterianism within the Bounds of the Synod of Central New York,” 1877, p. 258. ↩

  15. David W. Bartlett, in the sketch of Finney in his “Modern Agitators, or Pen-Portraits of Living American Reformers,” 1855, p. 152, says that as a boy Finney “found considerable time to wield the sledge at his father’s anvil,” taking thus “his first lesson in moulding the hot iron to a desired shape.” His authority for the statement is not given. ↩

  16. “Memoirs,” p. 4: “My parents were neither of them professors of religion, and, I believe, among our neighbors there were very few religious people.” Compare Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” edited by Charles Beecher, i. p. 78. ↩

  17. See the “Journal of the Rev. John Taylor, on a Mission through the Mohawk and Black River Country, in the year 1802,” printed in E. B. O’Callaghan, “The Documentary History of the State of New York,” iii. 1850, p. 1112. “Most of the churches in this part of the world are on the presbyterian plan. The church at Clinton is, however, congregational. Mr. Norton has a church containing 240 members; and this people is considered to be the most harmonious, regular, and pious of any in the northern part of the State of New York. In this town, or rather parish, is an academy, which is in a flourishing state. A Mr. Porter, an excellent character, and a preacher, is preceptor. They have one usher, and about 60 scholars. This institution promises fair to be of great service to this part of the country. Piety is very much encouraged in it—and some young gentlemen have become preachers who have received education in it. There are in the town a few Universalists, and one small Baptist church, but not a sufficient number to have any influence. In the society of Paris, of which Clinton is a part, Mr. Steele is pastor; he is said to be a good, and reputable man—he has a respectable congregation. In Hanover, a society of Paris, Mr. Bogue is Pastor.” Cf. Fowler, as cited, p. 180. The church at Clinton was organized in 1791 by Jonathan Edwards the younger; Asahel Strong Norton was installed pastor of it in 1793 “and remained there for forty years, upheld by grace and the support of an unwavering faithfulness, an unerring judgment, an unspotted character and a blameless life” (Fowler, p. 90). For a biographical sketch of Bogue see Fowler, pp. 464–465. After a successful ministry at Winchester, Conn. (from 1791), he was employed in New York by the Missionary Society of Connecticut (from 1798), “and then accepted a call to Hanover, (now Kirkland) Oneida County, where he was equally successful for a number of years, and after that took charge of the church in Vernon Center.” This appears to extend Bogue’s pastorate at Kirkland through most of Finney’s residence there. ↩

  18. Fowler, as cited, p. 180: “That region also suffered long from the want of means of grace. A minister who visited it in 1816, relates: ‘To the north as far as the St. Lawrence and east to Champlain, there are probably not six gospel ministers’—an extent of country including the quarter of the State of New York.… And a little later, a missionary writes, ‘we could not hear of any minister in St. Lawrence county, and there are very few on the Black River.’ ” ↩

  19. “Memoirs,” pp. 6 ff.; G. Frederick Wright, “Charles Grandison Finney,” 1891, p. 4. ↩

  20. Fowler, p. 180. ↩

  21. For biographical notice of Snowden, see Fowler, pp. 647 ff., and J. F. Hageman, “History of Princeton and its Institutions,” 1879, ii. pp. 94 ff. Cf. W. B. Sprague, “Annals of the American Pulpit,” iii. p. 341. He was dismissed by the Presbytery of Oneida, to take charge of the church at Sackett’s Harbor in 1816 but the formal organization of the church did not take place until February 17, 1817. ↩

  22. In the “Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.” for 1819 these two churches stand side by side in the Presbytery of St. Lawrence: Sackett’s Harbor, Samuel F. Snowden, and Adams North Congregational Church, Edward W. Rosseter. We quote from the “Minutes” of 1819, since there are no statistical tables in those of the immediately preceding years. ↩

  23. In his “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” ed. of 1851, p. 429, Finney relates this incident: “I well recollect, when far from home, and while an impenitent sinner, I received a letter from my youngest brother, informing me that he was converted to God. He, if he was converted, was, as I supposed, the first and the only member of the family who then had a hope of salvation. I was at the time, and both before and after, one of the most careless sinners, and yet on receiving this intelligence, I actually wept for joy and gratitude, that one of so prayerless a family was likely to be saved.” ↩

  24. Hiram Mead, The Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877, p. 3: “It is a remarkable fact, which he has not thought worthy of notice, that in spite of his lack of religious advantages, he never became reckless or vicious. As a young man, he was spirited, and, no doubt, sometimes rough and hilarious; but, considering his associations, he was exceptionally conscientious and high-minded.” ↩

  25. G. F. Wright, as cited, p. 37, tells us that Finney’s sweetheart (her home was at Whitestown, only a few miles from Kirkland) “had been deeply interested in praying for Finney’s conversion in the days of his impenitence.” ↩

  26. E. H. Snowden in The Baltimore Literary and Religious Magazine, May, 1838, p. 236. Snowden (son of S. F. Snowden, mentioned above) had been a pastor at Brownville where he says both Finney and Burchard had labored—disastrously to the church. Cf. Finney’s “Memoirs,” pp. 7–11. ↩

  27. D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” p. 128. ↩

  28. “Memoirs,” pp. 6–8. The italics are ours. ↩

  29. Tract on “Prevailing Prayer.” ↩

  30. “Memoirs,” p. 11. ↩

  31. P. 12. ↩

  32. For example, Joseph I. Foot (The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1838, p. 70) when speaking of the fanatical teaching of John Truair, continues: “Over the fields where Truair had recently sown the seeds, the Rev. J. Burchard soon passed, whose subsequent labors in the vicinity are said to have brought forth the Rev. C. G. Finney.” A more favorable opinion of Truair is expressed by Fowler, as cited, pp. 664–665, and as favorable an account of Burchard as could be given may be found in the same work, pp. 278–281. Burchard was at the time still a layman, resident at Sackett’s Harbor, and zealously holding lay services there and at Adams. ↩

  33. Fowler, as cited, p. 190, drawing the details from The Utica Christian Repository, of the time. The general fact is safeguarded by the report of the Presbytery of St. Lawrence itself, which mentions revivals as occurring at Watertown, Sackett’s Harbor, Adams, first and second, Lorraine, and Rodman. ↩

  34. “Memoirs,” chapter ii. ↩

  35. Lyman H. Atwater, The Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, October, 1876, p. 706 remarks on this, while G. F. Wright, pp. 9–10, seeks to explain it away. ↩

  36. G. F. Wright, as cited, p. 6, speaking of interpreting Finney’s conversion says: “The difficulty of such an interpretation is also somewhat increased by the fact that, in the Memoirs written by himself, Finney has accompanied his narrative by numerous doctrinal disquisitions, in which those familiar with the controversies of the time readily detect the result of subsequent years of reflection interjecting their later theology in the narrative of early experience.” “It is extremely improbable,” he declares, “that the theological system defended in his later life burst upon his mind at the outset in such complete form as his own narrative would imply.” ↩

  37. “Memoirs,” p. 23; cf. p. 18. ↩

  38. “Memoirs,” p. 24. ↩

  39. G. F. Wright, as cited, p. 19. ↩

  40. Fowler, as cited, p. 190. ↩

  41. Fowler, p. 258; G. F. Wright, p. 20. ↩

  42. There are biographical sketches of both in Alfred Nevin’s “Encyclopædia of the Presbyterian Church,” 1884, sub nomm*.*, and in Fowler, as cited pp. 190, 467 and 552 respectively. For Gale see also Martha F. Webster, “Seventy-five Significant Years; The Story of Knox College, 1837–1912,” 1912, pp. 1 ff. ↩

  43. “Memoirs,” p. 46: “They appointed my pastor to superintend my studies.” On p. 140 accordingly he calls Gale simply, “my theological teacher,” and on p. 153, with meticulous care, explains that Gale “by direction of the Presbytery, had attended somewhat to my theological studies.” ↩

  44. “Memoirs,” p. 54. ↩

  45. For example, A. T. Swing, The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1900, p. 465: “What in New England had been gradually evolved from Old Calvinism through two generations of theological reformers was substantially wrought out independently of them by President Finney’s rational revolt (“Memoirs,” pp. 7, 42–60), which was so closely connected with his conversion as to be practically inseparable from it.” ↩

  46. Frank H. Foster, “A Genetic History of the New England Theology,” 1907, p. 467. ↩

  47. P. 453. ↩

  48. G. F. Wright, as cited, p. 46, erroneously says “October 1826.” Fowler, as cited, p. 202, says “the last of September, 1825.” Finney himself (“Memoirs,” p. 140) says it was in October. ↩

  49. “Memoirs,” p. 140. ↩

  50. In the “Minutes of the General Assembly,” for 1825, Finney is listed as a W. C. of the Presbytery of St. Lawrence. In the “Minutes” for 1828, he is listed as a W. C. of the Presbytery of Oneida. These lists were at that time printed only every three years: there are none therefore for 1826 and 1827. ↩

  51. P. 144. ↩

  52. “Autobiography,” edited by Charles Beecher, ii. p. 345. ↩

  53. Fowler, as cited, p. 264. ↩

  54. “Views of Sanctification,” 1840, p. 19. ↩

  55. “Autobiography,” 1882, p. 221. ↩

  56. The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1883, p. 39. For Foot see W. B. Sprague, “Annals of the American Pulpit,” iv. 1858, pp. 669 ff., and the “Memoir” by his brother, George Foot, mentioned by Sprague. ↩

  57. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” ed. of 1851, p. 619. ↩

  58. Take for example the following words of Joseph I. Foot (The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1838, p. 70): “These doctrines, with a corresponding system of measures, were driven like a hurricane through the churches … Hundreds and thousands … were led to believe themselves converted, and were immediately driven into the church.… Many of his (Finney’s) spiritual progeny, under the abilities of his system [that is, under his teaching of a Pelagian ability of will], and the several influences which acted upon them, soon manifested their fatherhood [Pelagian] and declared themselves to be perfect.…” ↩

  59. “A Delineation of the Characteristic Features of a Revival of Religion in Troy, in 1826 and 1827,” 1827, p. 47. ↩

  60. Ibid., p. 28. ↩

  61. William L. Stone, “Matthias and His Impostures,” 1835, pp. 314–315. The “system” to which Colonel Stone is referring is the revival system in practice in Western and Central New York. For Stone, see Appletons’ “Cyclopædia of American Biography,” sub nom. ↩

  62. Cited in The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1838, p. 66. ↩

  63. “Autobiography,” 1882, pp. 227–231. ↩

  64. P. 229. ↩

  65. The Baltimore Literary and Religious Magazine, May, 1838, pp. 236–237.—Snowden adds about Burchard: “Mr. Burchard’s meeting there, was equally disastrous in its results. He assumed the airs of a commander, and would turn off about so many every day, and announce them to be converted. Some of those who then became members, never entered the church afterwards. Some became perfectionists, and of the remainder many were expelled. One of the elders remarked to me, that the church lost much of its vitality at that time.” Snowden, born in 1799, brought up in Oneida Co., graduated at Hamilton College, 1818, admitted to the bar at Utica, joined his father’s church at Sackett’s Harbor about the time Finney was joining the church at the neighboring town of Adams: he was pastor at Brownville in 1836–1837. See the “Princeton Theological Seminary Biographical Catalogue,” 1909, sub nom. p. 56; and especially the “Necrological Report presented to the Alumni Association of Princeton Theological Seminary, May 7, 1895,” 1895, pp. 294–295. ↩

  66. As cited, p. 284. ↩

  67. “Memoirs,” p. 159. ↩

  68. “Memoirs,” p. 434. ↩

  69. Marquis L. Worden, (in William Hepworth Dixon’s “Spiritual Wives,” ii. pp. 81–82) tells us who some of these were: “Revivals prevailed in the neighborhoods and region round about Manlius, and through the country in which the New Measure Evangelists, such as Luther Meyrick, Horatio Foote, and James Boyle led the way.” How Foote preached we shall let Josephus Brockway (“A Delineation, etc.,” 1827, pp. 57–58) tell us. He is speaking of his preaching in the Troy revivals, 1826–1827. “I went to Mr. Foote, a would-be minister, who was no small occasion of offence and disgust, nor ought I, perhaps, to be delicate in saying, he was no improper object of contempt. He preached, what some called a sermon, in which he attempted to show that no man could get to heaven, without having lived a perfect life. I went to him with objections to his sermon, showing them to elder Cushman as I went. One of his positions was, ‘That man’s hope ain’t worth a groat that isn’t founded on obedience.’—To which I objected, that man’s hope is good for nothing that is not founded on the merits of Christ, and evinced by obedience. Another of his statements was, ‘Sinners never can be saved, and whoever has preached that sinners can be saved, has preached what is not true.’ To which I objected; Christ came to save sinners, and there was none in our world to be saved, but sinners.…” Foote’s teaching is of course just Pelagian Perfectionalism in its purity—and it was preached in the Troy revival as part of its official presentation. Finney has the grace, it is true, to be a little ashamed of it; but he will not repudiate it. “In the midst of the revival,” he writes in his “Memoirs,” (p. 204), “it became necessary that I should leave Troy for a week or two, and visit my family at Whitesboro. While I was gone, Rev. Horatio Foote was invited by Dr. Beman to preach. I do not know how often he preached; but this I recollect, that he gave great offence to the already disaffected members of the church. He bore down upon them with the most searching discourses, as I learned.” He wishes to roll the responsibility of inviting Foote over on Beman: but he himself endorses him. Foote appears in the “Minutes of the General Assembly” from 1825, when he is a Licentiate of the Presbytery of Cayuga, to 1854, when he is a stated supply at Redford and resides at Ripley, Ohio. He disappears from the “Minutes” without ever having held a settled pastorate. ↩

  70. Asahel Nettleton (“Letters of the Rev. Dr. Beecher and Rev. Mr. Nettleton, on the ‘New Measures’ in Conducting Revivals of Religion,” 1828, p. 35) gives the following as the substance of what had been communicated to him on this subject by men on the ground. “There are various errors in the mode of conducting revivals in this region, which ought to be distinctly pointed out. That on the prayer of faith. The talking to God as a man talks to his neighbor, is truly shocking—telling the Lord a long story about A. or B., and apparently with no other intent than to produce a kind of stage effect upon the individual in question, or upon the audience generally. This mouthing of words, those deep and hollow tones, all indicate that the person is speaking into the ears of man, and not to God. I say nothing of the nature of the petitions often presented; but the awful irreverence of the manner!”—On the “particularity” used with reference to individuals in public prayer, see Brockway, as cited, pp. 22–28. ↩

  71. Sprague, “Annals etc.,” iv. pp. 473–474: “His situation was now rendered very unpleasant by the introduction of what were technically called the ‘new measures’ in connection with revivals of religion; and he therefore removed.…” ↩

  72. Biographical notice in W. B. Sprague, “Annals, etc.,” iv. pp. 473–476; P. H. Fowler, as cited, pp. 673–675, 85, 261, 274; “Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography,” sub nom. ↩

  73. “Pastoral Letter of the Ministers of the Oneida Association to the Churches under their care, on the Subject of Revivals of Religion,” 1827. ↩

  74. “Memoirs,” p. 144. ↩

  75. Biographical notice in Sprague, as cited, pp. 224 ff.; Fowler, as cited, pp. 505–510; Appleton, as cited, sub nom. ↩

  76. Besides the “Pastoral Letter of the Oneida Association” and the “Letters of Drs. Beecher and Nettleton,” consult on “the New Measures” especially: Andrew Reed and James Matheson, “A Narrative of the Visit to the American Churches by the Deputation from the Congregational Union of England and Wales,” 1835, ii. pp. 1–50 (by Reed); C. Hodge, The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review, October, 1835, pp. 601–615; Albert B. Dod, ibid., pp. 626–674; and J. W. Nevin, “The Anxious Bench,” 1843. Finney tells us (“Memoirs,” p. 288) that he made little or no use of “the Anxious Seat” until the Rochester Revivals of 1831. G. F. Wright (pp. 100–101), while properly recognizing its use as falling in with Finney’s dogmatic scheme, errs in supposing that the opposition to it turned on a notion in the minds of Finney’s opponents that “there was little natural connection between the means used for the persuasion of men and their conversion.” A simple reading of their discussions will show that their objections turned on quite other considerations. ↩

  77. See Bennet Tyler, “Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D.D.,” 1844, chapter xii. pp. 245–270, “His opposition to new measures.” ↩

  78. See “Autobiography,” edited by his son, Charles Beecher, 1865, ii. chapter 12: “New Measures,” pp. 89–108. ↩

  79. See especially, “Letters of the Rev. Dr. Beecher and Rev. Mr. Nettleton, on the ‘New Measures’ in Conducting Revivals of Religion. With a Review of a Sermon, by Novanglus,” 1828. ↩

  80. Finney gives an account of the New Lebanon Convention from his point of view in the sixteenth chapter of his “Memoirs,” pp. 202–225; G. F. Wright devotes to it a chapter in his life of Finney, pp. 57–95. It will be found described from their point of view in the lives of Nettleton and Beecher, as referred to above. ↩

  81. The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review, October, 1835, pp. 656–657. ↩

  82. The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review, October, 1835, p. 614. ↩

  83. The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1838, p. 70, article entitled, “Influence of Pelagianism on the Theological Course of Rev. C. G. Finney, developed in his Sermons and Lectures.” ↩

  84. The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1838, p. 70, editor’s note. ↩

  85. “A History of the New School,” 1868, pp. 217–234. ↩

  86. “Memoirs,” p. 94: “I have been a pastor now for many years—indeed, ever since 1832.” How completely Finney felt he had broken with his past we have already seen (above p. 5 and note 5). ↩

  87. Pp. 318–319. ↩

  88. An interesting “History of the Free Churches in the City of New York,” by one of the prime movers in their establishment, Lewis Tappan, may be read in the appendix to Reed and Matheson’s “Narrative of the Visit to the American Churches, etc.,” 1835, ii. pp. 341–353. ↩

  89. The records of the Third Presbytery of New York concerning Finney’s case tell that, “on the 14th of February, 1832, the Second Free Church (Chatham Chapel), composed chiefly of members from the First Free Church, was organized, and on the 28th of September the Rev. Charles G. Finney was installed pastor.… On the 2d of March, 1836, Dr. Finney was released” (S. D. Alexander, “The Presbytery of New York, 1738 to 1888,” 1887, p. 107). This Second Free Church became a Congregational Church June 13, 1836, and Asa Mahan tells us (“Autobiography,” p. 230) that Finney’s immediate successor in the pulpit made shipwreck of his faith. ↩

  90. The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review, July, 1835, p. 527. ↩

  91. The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review, October, 1835, p. 674. ↩

  92. “Memoirs,” p. 51. ↩

  93. D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” 1898, p. 60; cf. pp. 276–277: “Beyond comparison his was the chief personal force upon the colonial tract. The pulpit was the throne from which Sunday after Sunday, for more than a generation, he swayed vast audiences.… For forty years his lectures on theology were given, and in addition, 1851–1858, he filled the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy. For fifteen years, 1851–1865, he was Oberlin’s executive head.… Through his sermons, lectures and letters published in The (Oberlin) Evangelist and elsewhere a vast influence was wielded. Some of his books sold literally by the hundred thousand.” ↩

  94. The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1900, pp. 480–481. ↩

  95. Frank Hugh Foster, “A Genetic History of the New England Theology,” 1907, p. 453. ↩

  96. So Mahan himself repeatedly says (e.g. “Out of Darkness into Light,” 1874, edition of 1888, p. 1; “Autobiography,” 1882, p. iii.). On the other hand the Encyclopædias (“Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography,” “Johnson’s Universal Cyclopædia,” “The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge”) uniformly give the date as 1800. ↩

  97. For this turnpike and its significance see in O’Callaghan’s “The Documentary History of the State of New York,” ii. pp. 1142, 1165 ff. For the state of things west of Utica in 1792, see p. 1131. ↩

  98. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 9. ↩

  99. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 28. ↩

  100. P. 9. ↩

  101. “Autobiography,” p. 50. ↩

  102. “Autobiography,” pp. 53–57. ↩

  103. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 13. ↩

  104. On p. 28 however he seems to assign his attainment of assurance of “perseverance” to a somewhat later, though apparently not greatly later, date: “At length, I attained to a full assurance that I was, not only then an accepted servant of Christ, but should have grace to continue such even unto the end. In this assurance, I have done service for Christ up to the present. Not a shadow of doubt rests upon my mind that I am His for eternity.” On this basis he rejects the “moment by moment” teaching of most Higher Life teachers and declares that according to Scripture we are “to exercise present faith” both for “present” and for “future sanctification.” ↩

  105. P. 18. ↩

  106. P. 20. ↩

  107. P. 90. ↩

  108. “Autobiography,” p. 281; cf. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 98. ↩

  109. P. 284. ↩

  110. P. 285. ↩

  111. “Autobiography,” p. 144. ↩

  112. P. 155. ↩

  113. P. 167. ↩

  114. This was probably in 1828. The church at Orangeville after a period of vacancy had enjoyed the service of a Stated Supply in 1826, and was vacant again in 1827 and 1828, obtaining a Stated Supply in 1829 (“Minutes of the General Assembly,” volume for 1826–1829, pp. 63, 182, 284, 460). ↩

  115. “Autobiography,” p. 168. ↩

  116. “Autobiography,” p. 167. Pittsford, Monroe Co., N. Y., eight miles southeast of Rochester. ↩

  117. His record in the “Minutes” runs thus: 1829 (his first appearance), licentiate of the Presbytery of Oneida; 1830, pastor at Pittsford, Presbytery of Rochester; 1831, W. C. Presbytery of Rochester; 1832, S. S. Sixth Church at Cincinnati; 1833, W. C. of the Presbytery of Cincinnati (the Sixth Church vacant); 1834, S. S. Sixth Church, to which are assigned 134 members—the only statistics of the church’s membership in the entries; 1835, Asa Mahan’s name no longer appears, and Herman Norton is given as pastor of the Sixth Church. ↩

  118. “Autobiography,” p. 163. ↩

  119. “Autobiography,” p. 164. ↩

  120. In the “Minutes” of 1833 Mahan is listed as without charge and the church as vacant. ↩

  121. “Autobiography,” p. 320. ↩

  122. P. 199. ↩

  123. P. 200. ↩

  124. In later life he distinguished between three opinions on the extent of the Atonement, e.g. “Christian Perfection” (1844), pp. 126–127:—(1) Limited Atonement, “Christ died for a part only of the human race—the elect,” (2) General Atonement, “Christ died for no individuals of our race in particular, but for all in general,” (3) Special Atonement, “Christ … died for every man in particular”—so much for each that it might seem to him that it was for him alone that he died. It is the third that Mahan makes his own. But he modified it so as to escape universal salvation by saying that although Christ died for each, he avails only for those who accept him. We do not get the full flavor of this fervent individualism of Christ’s death until we recall that the theory of atonement held is the Rectoral! ↩

  125. “Autobiography,” p. viii. ↩

  126. P. 320. ↩

  127. “Autobiography,” p. 204. ↩

  128. Pp. 203–204. ↩

  129. P. 214. ↩

  130. The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, p. 237. ↩

  131. As cited, p. 238. ↩

  132. Fairchild, as cited, pp. 238–239. ↩

  133. We are quoting from D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” p. 238. ↩

  134. “Christian Perfection” (1839), ed. 7, 1844, p. 185. ↩

  135. “Autobiography,” p. 324. ↩

  136. “Christian Perfection,” p. 187. ↩

  137. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 140. ↩

  138. P. 147. ↩

  139. P. 141. ↩

  140. In his “Autobiography,” pp. 289 ff., he tells us that the great difference between the two points of view which had been successive in his life turned on sanctification. In the one justification is held to be by faith, while sanctification is by hard labor; in the other both justification and sanctification are purely of faith, both are wrought by God alone and when we claim either by faith—“our responsibility is at an end.” ↩

  141. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 180. ↩

  142. The American Biblical Repository, October, 1840, pp. 425–426. ↩

  143. See “General Catalogue of Oberlin Seminary,” 1898, sub nom. He was graduated with the first theological class that was graduated and ordained at Oberlin, October 10, 1836. ↩

  144. Mahan, “Christian Perfection,” p. 188. The exact form of the question is given differently in the various reports, but the substance always remains the same. Cf. Mahan’s “Autobiography,” p. 323; Fairchild, as cited, pp. 239–240; Wright, “Charles Grandison Finney,” p. 204; Leonard, as cited, p. 239. ↩

  145. “Christian Perfection,” p. 188. ↩

  146. “Christian Perfection,” p. 189. ↩

  147. “Memoirs,” p. 340. ↩

  148. “Lectures to Professing Christians,” ed. 1880, pp. 358–359. ↩

  149. P. 346. ↩

  150. “Views of Sanctification,” 1840, pp. 134 ff. ↩

  151. “Out of Darkness into Light,” 1888, p. 195. ↩

  152. “Autobiography,” p. 367. ↩

  153. “Memoirs,” pp. 340–341. ↩

  154. The Methodist books were very diligently read, not only the fundamental treatises of Wesley and Fletcher, but such biographies as those of Hester Ann Rogers and William Carvosso (cf. J. S. Fairchild, The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, p. 242); and the Methodist commentators—particularly Adam Clarke—were very much deferred to (cf. Finney, “Views of Sanctification”). Along with them the support of other perfectionists like Robert Barclay, was welcomed. ↩

  155. “Lectures to Professing Christians” (1837), Oberlin, 1880. ↩

  156. The American Biblical Repository, January, 1839, pp. 44 ff. ↩

  157. “The Higher Christian Life,” 1859, p. 41. ↩

  158. P. 342. ↩

  159. P. 341. ↩

  160. Pp. 346 ff. ↩

  161. P. 352. ↩

  162. P. 362. ↩

  163. P. 353. ↩

  164. Ed. 1, ii., 1847, p. 170; ed. 2, 1851, p. 571. ↩

  165. The Quarterly Christian Spectator, June, 1837, p. 342. ↩

  166. March, 1838, pp. 38 ff. See particularly pp. 52 ff. ↩

  167. January, 1839, pp. 44 ff. ↩

  168. July, 1839, p. 143. ↩

  169. “Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection; With Other Kindred Subjects, Illustrated and Confirmed in a Series of Discourses Designed to Throw Light on the Way of Holiness,” 1839. We cite it always from the seventh edition, 1844, but the pagination of all editions after the first is the same. ↩

  170. On this sermon, see D. L. Leonard, “The Story of Oberlin,” 1898, p. 253: “In September (1838) President Mahan gave his famous perfection address before the Oberlin Society of Inquiry, which was printed the next month in the [Ohio] Observer (published at Hudson) filling ten columns, and a month later still appeared in the first issue of The Oberlin Evangelist [November, 1838], about the same time also in the leading eastern papers. The Hudson “organ” invites its readers to peruse the same and send on the results of their thinking. Which thing they do so abundantly that for a long period well-nigh every number is redolent of reviews and refutations.” Hudson was the seat of the rival Western Reserve College. ↩

  171. Compare N. S. Folsom, “Review of Mahan on Christian Perfection,” in The American Biblical Repository for July, 1839, p. 143. ↩

  172. The tenth edition was published in 1849. We have seen no later. ↩

  173. Fitch’s pamphlet was occasioned by an inquiry into his teaching instituted by his Presbytery, which resulted in asking him to withdraw from its fellowship (cf. Leonard, as cited, p. 256). Along with it should be cited: “An Appeal, together with a Brief Account of the Sentiments of Five Members of the Free Presbyterian Church of Newark, New Jersey, termed by their Opponents Modern Perfectionists,” Newark, 1840—although the perfectionism of the writers of this pamphlet is more of the New York variety. Fitch’s pamphlet was answered by William R. Weeks: “A Letter to the Rev. Charles Fitch on his Views of Sanctification,” 1840; and it is supposed to be included (along with Mahan’s and Finney’s writings) in the basis of Leonard Wood’s discussion, “The Doctrine of Perfection” in the January and April numbers for 1841 of The American Biblical Repository. Fitch was the youngest son of Ebenezer Fitch, first President of Williams College, and there is a very brief notice of him in C. Durfee’s “Williams Biographical Annals,” 1871, p. 385. He was born in 1799; was graduated from Williams College in 1818; studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, 1818–1821. An outline of his life may be found in the “Princeton Thelogical Seminary Biographical Catalogue,” 1909, p. 40. He appears to have been as extreme in his views on the Second Advent as in those on Sanctification. ↩

  174. In his “Autobiography,” 1882, p. 321, he says that for the forty-six years preceding that date, the one theme of his life had been “the two great doctrines” of Christian Perfection and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. This is only one of many such statements; and the fact asserted is absolutely true—the “Autobiography” itself, for example, shows him to have been simply possessed by these two ideas. ↩

  175. Mahan finds it possible, therefore, when speaking in general terms, to describe his doctine in language derived from Wesley. When telling us in the opening discourse of his “Christian Perfection” (p. 13) what the thing is of which he is to speak he says: “It is, in the language of Mr. Wesley, ‘In one view, purity of intention, dedicating all the life to God. It is the giving God all the heart; it is one desire and design ruling all our tempers. It is devoting, not a part, but all our soul, body, and substance to God. In another view, it is all the mind that was in Christ Jesus, enabling us to walk as He walked. It is the circumcision of the heart from all filthiness, from all inward as well as outward pollution. It is the renewal of the heart in the whole image of God, the full likeness of him that created it. In yet another, it is loving God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves.’ ” This is the loose language of metaphor: but it indicates a conscious as well as real connection with Wesley. ↩

  176. Despite the dependence of the Oberlin doctrine of perfection on the Wesleyans, the remarks of S. B. Canfield, “An Exposition of the Pecularities, Difficulties and Tendencies of Oberlin Perfectionism,” 1841, p. 83, are perfectly just:—“The Wesleyan doctrine of ‘Christian Perfection’ is not only different in itself from the Oberlin theory, but held in connection with different views of native depravity—of the heart—of moral agency—of the nature of sanctification.… Those Methodists who have been at the pains to analyze the Oberlin system regard it as differing very widely from their own. A writer in The Christian Advocate and Journal of June 19, (1840) after making various strictures upon the Oberlin theory, says: ‘It is not the Arminian theory. It is Pelagian Perfectionism, and the truth will suffer loss, if we permit the public to be misled by the supposition that their theory and ours are the same.’ ” ↩

  177. In a long note, pp. 12–16 of his “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” Finney notes some grave objections which had been brought against his doctrine; among others this one,—that “the more ignorant and debilitated a person is, … the less the law would require of him”; so that he could extinguish his obligation by committing violence upon himself, and through his wickedness become perfectly holy—that is completely observant of all that is required of him. This assault does not lead Finney in any way to modify his doctrine; and indeed he could not modify it, seeing that it is a mere corollary of his fundamental doctrine of moral accountability. “God so completely levels his claims … to the present capacity of every human being, however young or old, however maimed, debilitated, or idiotic,” he reiterates, “as, to use the language or sentiment of Prof. Hickok, of Auburn Seminary, uttered in my hearing, that ‘if it were possible to conceive of a moral pigmy, the law requires of him nothing more, than to use whatever strength he has, in the service and for the glory of God’ ” (p. 14). It is quite clear that Finney is entangled here in some ambiguities. He very properly distinguishes between a fault and the effects of a fault. But there is a further ambiguity latent in the conception of “demoralization,” which leads him astray. He treats the term as implying that “to demoralize” is to make unmoral, not immoral: and so supposes that we cease to be moral agents in proportion as we become wicked. The source of his difficulty lies in his doctrine of “natural ability,” which leads him to scale down obligation to fit decreasing ability. “If a man should annihilate himself,” he asks, “would not he thereby set aside his moral obligation to obey God? … Should he make himself an idiot, would he not thereby annihilate his moral agency?” “The truth is,” he answers himself, “that for the time being, a man may destroy his moral agency, by rendering himself a lunatic or an idiot; and while this lunacy or idiotcy continues, obedience to God is naturally impossible, and therefore not required” (p. 15). A moral agent cannot annihilate himself; neither can he annihilate his moral agency. He exists everlastingly and so long as he exists he is a moral agent, possessing a moral character and acting in accordance with it. If his moral character is bad, it inhibits good action, but does not in the least lessen obligation to it. If the wickedness becomes absolute the inhibition to good action becomes absolute; but the obligation to good remains absolute also. When J. L. Wilson said in the course of Lyman Beecher’s trial that “moral obligation does not require any ability whatever,” the phraseology may be open to objection, but the thing intended is true. The fact is that Finney and his fellows did not believe in moral agents; they believed in moral volitions. ↩

  178. George Duffield (Finney, “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” p. 979) tellingly arraigns Finney’s teaching “that moral law requires nothing more than honesty of intention,” and “that sincerity or honesty of intention is moral perfection” (so Finney explicitly, pp. 138, 295). “By this rule,” says Duffield, Finney’s teaching “graduates the claims of the law of God, so as to make it a most convenient sliding scale, which adapts itself to the ignorance and weakness of men. It utterly perverts men’s notions of that high and absolute perfection which the law demands, and makes moral perfection a variant quantity, changing continually, not only in different persons, but in the same individual. It reasons as follows, namely: Moral law respects intention only. Honesty of intention, or sincerity, is moral perfection. But light, or knowledge of the ultimate end, is the condition of moral obligation. Consequently, the degree of obligation must be just equal to the mind’s honest estimate of the value of the end! Thus, to love God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, means nothing more than ‘that the thoughts shall be expended in exact accordance with the mind’s honest judgment of what is at every moment the best economy for God.’ ” ↩

  179. “Lectures to Professing Christians,” p. 353. ↩

  180. The American Biblical Repository, January, 1839, p. 47. ↩

  181. Ibid., July, 1839, p. 144. ↩

  182. Ibid., January, 1841, pp. 174 ff. ↩

  183. “The Scripture Doctrine of Sanctification Stated, and Defended against the Error of Perfectionism,” 1841, pp. 30 ff. ↩

  184. The American Biblical Repository, October, 1840, pp. 474 ff. ↩

  185. The situation among the parties dividing theological thought in New England is vividly brought before us in a letter of Lyman Beecher’s to N. W. Taylor of April 25, 1835, printed in Beecher’s “Autobiography” (ii. p. 344). The New Divinity represented by Beecher and Taylor (as by Finney and Mahan) denied all inability, and all “physical” operation of God, and confined the divine operation in man to suasion: the older school (Woods, Tyler, Nettleton) drew back and in one way or another affirmed these things. Beecher declares that what lay “at the foundation of revolt in Woods, and Tyler and Nettleton” was “the doctrine of a physical execution of God’s decrees and of physical regeneration—in short, of moral government by direct omnipotence.” This, he says, tends to go back to the “natural inability of Old Calvinism in the Emmons and Burton form.” On the other hand he deprecates preaching free-agency in a form which “avails to save by its own actual sufficiency, without the Holy Ghost.” The Holy Ghost is to be necessary but is permitted to act only suasively, inducing men to save themselves by a free agency quite capable of doing all the saving, if only it can be persuaded to do it. Man is naughty and requires correction—not reconstruction of nature, but correction of manners; he is perfectly able to behave properly if he will; it is inducements alone that he needs. This in a nutshell is the whole New Divinity System. ↩

  186. “Holiness of Christians in the Present Life,” 1840, p. 8. ↩

  187. Pp. 14 ff. ↩

  188. P. 86. ↩

  189. Pp. 59 ff. ↩

  190. P. 61. ↩

  191. The American Biblical Repository, October, 1840, p. 410. ↩

  192. Pp. 410–411. ↩

  193. Leonard Woods, The American Biblical Repository, January, 1841, p. 170, says: “I am glad to see, that, as Mr. Mahan has come to entertain more exalted views of the gracious provisions of the gospel for the sanctification of believers, he has ceased to give such prominence, as he formerly did, to the ability, or free-will, of man, and has expressly renounced it, as furnishing any ground of hope for sinners, or any spring of holiness to Christians, and has been brought to rely wholly on the grace of Christ, and to look to him for the whole of salvation.” There is overstatement here. Mahan renounced human free will only as the immediate ground of hope and source of holiness in the Christian. He retained it as the ultimate ground of our hope and source of our holiness; for he suspended the action of the Spirit on our faith, not our faith on the action of the Spirit. He remained fundamentally therefore Pelagian. ↩

  194. They betray a tendency indeed to underestimate its importance. They do, it is true, argue at length that many have been perfect—Paul, John, Isaiah, and perhaps, on the basis of Rev. 14:3–5, 144,000 and certainly an indefinite number of souls of the Old and New Covenants (Mahan, “Christian Perfection,” pp. 37 ff.; Finney, “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” 1851, chapter lxi.). But Mahan explains that the Oberlin people did not concern themselves so much with “mere personal attainments” (the “mere” should be noted) as with the “revealed privileges of the sons of God.” “The question, what attainments we have made,” he explains (“Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 357) “lies wholly between our consciences and our God. The question, what are our revealed privileges, is to be settled, not by an appeal to the conscious or visible attainments of any individual or class of individuals, but wholly and exclusively by reference ‘to the law and to the testimony.’ ” Though arguing that many had been wholly sanctified, Finney did not in 1837 (“Lectures to Professing Christians,” p. 358) claim to be himself wholly sanctified: “I do not myself profess now to have attained perfect sanctification.” In 1840 (“Views of Sanctification,” p. 9) he even seems to deprecate anyone making such a profession, though apparently only on the ground that such a profession would be sure to be misunderstood. “Nothing is more clear than that in the present vague unsettled views of the church upon this question, no individual could set up a claim to having attained this state without being a stumbling block to the church.” In a later section he says that he would be in danger of being a stumbling block to himself. Is perfection then a gift both difficult to verify and perilous to possess? ↩

  195. “An Exposition of the Peculiarities, Difficulties and Tendencies of Oberlin Perfectionism,” p. 45. ↩

  196. Quoted by Canfield, p. 45, from The Oberlin Evangelist, i. p. 19. This seems to carry the notion back to 1839. ↩

  197. P. 45. ↩

  198. In “Views of Sanctification,” 1840, pp. 168 f., Finney says: “Full faith in the word and promise of God, naturally, and certainly, and immediately produces a state of entire sanctification.” “This result is instantaneous on the exercise of faith, and in this sense sanctification is an instantaneous work.” “The sense in which I use the term entire sanctification,” he says in this context, “includes all that is implied in perfect obedience to the law of God.” Immediately on exercising faith we have kept the whole law of God.” ↩

  199. Cf. also The Oberlin Evangelist, ii. p. 57, referred to by Canfield, p. 46. ↩

  200. P. 47. ↩

  201. Canfield, p. 48. ↩

  202. “Views of Sanctification,” p. 29. ↩

  203. “Holiness of Christians in the Present Life,” 1840, pp. 39 ff., 90 ff. ↩

  204. Ed. of 1851, pp. 635 ff. The passage occurs also in the first edition, 1847. ↩

  205. Pp. 636 ff. ↩

  206. P. 644. ↩

  207. P. 643. ↩

  208. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” Ed. of 1851, p. 745. ↩

  209. P. 631. ↩

  210. Both Mahan and Finney sometimes use the word “work” of sanctification in contrast with “act,” used of justification, apparently out of mere reminiscence of this distinction of usage in the Shorter Catechism, but not reproducing that distinction. They mean by “work” to distinguish sanctification as a production, from justification which is only an action. Cf. e.g. Mahan, “Autobiography,” pp. 292–293. ↩

  211. P. 100. ↩

  212. P. 21. ↩

  213. Canfield as cited, pp. 52 ff., does not fail to put his finger on the passages in Mahan’s “Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection” (pp. 27, 123 of ed. of 1839), in which he insists that Christ must sanctify His people “to the same extent” that He justifies them. He rightly points out that it is absurd to speak of a gradual or incomplete justification. He expounds Mahan’s teaching, however, as that “complete justification and entire sanctification are simultaneous—that justification is not complete, until sanctification is entire,”—and that no one can be an heir of eternal life unless he is entirely sanctified. Only the perfectly sanctified can say: There is, therefore, now no condemnation. ↩

  214. “Christian Perfection,” p. 114. ↩

  215. As cited, p. 114. ↩

  216. P. 134. ↩

  217. P. 157. ↩

  218. Pp. 77 ff. ↩

  219. P. 78. ↩

  220. P. 89. ↩

  221. Canfield, pp. 67 ff., adduces this statement of Mahan’s and analogous ones of Finney’s, and remarks that it is involved, of course, that we can never sin again. If Christ becomes “directly responsible for our full and complete redemption”—is “pledged,” “to produce in us perfect and perpetual obedience,”—to “ ‘sanctify us wholly, and preserve our whole spirit, soul, and body, blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ ” (in the sense Mahan put on these words)—how can we possibly sin again? Yet Mahan within four pages can write: “We can ‘abide in Christ,’ and thus bring forth the fruit required of us. If by unbelief we separate ourselves from Christ, we of necessity descend, under the weight of our own guilt and depravity, down the sides of the pit, into the eternal sepulcher” (pp. 92–93). ↩

  222. P. 90. ↩

  223. P. 91. ↩

  224. P. 92. ↩

  225. P. 92. ↩

  226. This is of course a Quietistic attitude. John Woodbridge (“Theological Essays: Reprinted from the Princeton Review,” 1846, pp. 413–414) deals admirably with Mahan’s Quietism. The illustrative passages quoted from Mahan (“Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection,” pp. 189, 190, 191) are excellently chosen and the comments are telling (p. 414). “It is manifest from the inspired volume that we are to come to Christ, not for the purpose of saving ourselves the trouble of a personal warfare, but that we may engage in such a warfare with good motives, with becoming zeal, with persevering energy, and with success.… When Christ works in us, both to will and to do, of his own good pleasure, it is that sustained, quickened by his power, we may work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” “Yet, after all,” he continues, “it is not intended by the writers to whom we refer, to ascribe all holiness to divine agency. Their meaning appears to be, that Christ will sanctify us wholly, if we look to him for such a blessing; yet there is no provision in their system to secure the act of looking itself. Man begins to turn, and God completes the sanctification of man.” ↩

  227. “Out of Darkness into Light,” 1875, p. 37. ↩

  228. P. 246. ↩

  229. “Out of Darkness into Light,” 1875, pp. 317–318 ↩

  230. Pp. 292 ff. ↩

  231. For Mahan’s use of the term, see note 211. ↩

  232. P. 294. ↩

  233. P. 294. ↩

  234. Pp. 270 ff. ↩

  235. P. 271. ↩

  236. P. 273. ↩

  237. “Out of Darkness into Light,” pp. 339–345. ↩

  238. P. 343. ↩

  239. P. 344. ↩

  240. P. 275. ↩

  241. Pp. 277–279. ↩

  242. Pp. 327–338. ↩

  243. Pp. 332–333. ↩

  244. P. 164. ↩

  245. P. 172. ↩

  246. 1875, p. 5. ↩

  247. P. 7. ↩

  248. P. 17. ↩

  249. P. 229. ↩

  250. Pp. 248–254, where a number of typical instances are described. ↩

  251. Subsequently reprinted at Oberlin, 1875. ↩

  252. See the excellent accounts of Morgan’s discourse by James H. Fair-child, The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, p. 253, and Frank H. Foster, “A Genetic History of the New England Theology,” p. 456. ↩

  253. In his “Autobiography,” p. 150, Mahan speaks of this book with a certain amount of pride. “Every discourse in that book,” he says, “two or three of the last excepted, was prepared and delivered as a part of a regular course of theological lectures to a class of theological students, and was sent to the publisher just as prepared and delivered.” He says the delivery of the lectures produced a revival in the institution, Adrian College, Michigan, of which he was then President. His latest exposition of the doctrine (which pervades all his later writings) will be found in the “Autobiography,” pp. 353–364. It does not differ from that in “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost.” ↩

  254. Pp. 10 ff. ↩

  255. “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost,” pp. 13 ff. ↩

  256. P. 77. ↩

  257. In “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 315, Mahan remarks that the mistake, as it seemed to him of very many who teach the doctrine of the higher life, “is the fact that they do not set forth, as the immutable condition of entering into and continuing in that life, that we must receve ‘the promise of the Spirit in our hearts.’ ” This at least fixes Mahan’s conception of the relation of the Baptism of the Spirit to perfection—it is its “condition.” At the bottom of this contention there lies a healthful supernaturalism. Our faith does not itself work the miracle of the Christian life: that is wrought by God the Holy Ghost. There may be something left to be desired when we inquire after the manner of His working this effect. ↩

  258. P. 118. ↩

  259. P. 102. ↩

  260. Pp. 124, 127, 128. ↩

  261. P. 111. ↩

  262. P. 96. ↩

  263. P. 51. ↩

  264. P. 113. ↩

  265. Chapter iii. ↩

  266. Pp. 37 ff. ↩

  267. Pp. 37 ff. ↩

  268. Pp. 38, 40, 115. ↩

  269. P. 40. ↩

  270. Similarly H. C. G. Moule, “Ephesian Studies,” 1900, p. 35: “In whom also, on believing, you were sealed with the Spirit of the Promise, the Holy One; the gifts and power of the Paraclete were made yours at once on your union with the Christ of God.” He adds, to be sure, in a note: “Those gracious gifts may indeed need the believer’s constantly advancing use, and his growing discovery of what they are. But in covenant provision they are his at once ‘in Christ.’ ” This, however, does not affect the testimony of this passage against the “second blessing.” ↩

  271. “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost,” pp. 124–125. ↩

  272. “Out of Darkness into Light,” pp. 13–15. ↩

  273. Ibid., pp. 104–105. ↩

  274. “Autobiography,” pp. 244–245. ↩

  275. “Out of Darkness into Light,” pp. 267–268. ↩

  276. Pp. 268–270. ↩

  277. P. 270. ↩

  278. Pp. 128–129. ↩

  279. P. 130. ↩

  280. The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, pp. 241–242. ↩

  281. “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 271. ↩

  282. “A Genetic History of the New England Theology,” pp. 463–464. ↩

  283. Ibid. ↩

  284. John C. Lord, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1841, pp. 238–239, expounds the doctrine on the basis of a passage from The Oberlin Evangelist, i. 1839, p. 42, where Finney says that he was himself formerly of the opinion that an “exercise might be put forth, in view of several motives,” or partake of “the complex character of the motives that produced it,” but is now persuaded that “this philosophy is false.” His present view is expressed thus: “It seems to be a very general opinion, that there is such a thing as imperfect obedience to God, (i.e.) as it respects one and the same act.… But I cannot see how an imperfect obedience, relating to one and the same act, can be possible. Imperfect obedience! What can be meant by this, but disobedient obedience! a sinful holiness. Now, to decide the character of any act, we are to bring it into the light of the law of God. If agreeable to this law, it is obedience—it is right—wholly right. If it is, in any respect, different from what the law of God requires, it is disobedience—it is wrong—wholly wrong.” Lord’s own summary of Finney’s teaching is admirable: “He admits that obedience may be imperfect in respect to its constancy, but never in regard to degree; and insists that if a Christian, at any given moment, has any holiness, it must be perfect both in kind and degree, and the individual of course, for the time being, wholly sanctified. The whole scope of the argument amounts to this: that the soul is nothing but its exercises: that there are no permanent dispositions; that character is what the exercises of the individual, at any given moment, may happen to be, and that these fluctuating states are always perfect for good or evil, both in kind and degree.” ↩

  285. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” ii. 1847, p. v. ↩

  286. For 1842, pp. 33 ff., 41 ff. An abstract of the address and an estimate of its teaching are given by Foster, “A Genetic History of the New England Theology,” pp. 459–463. ↩

  287. See in general Fairchild, The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, pp. 247 ff. ↩

  288. We are summarizing the accounts of Fairchild and Foster, as cited. The final words are justified by such a turn of phrase as this, from the pen of Fairchild (p. 249): “The idea, then, of rising from a partial to a complete obedience, from imperfect to perfect faith and love, in the sense in which these are voluntary and responsible acts or states to be required of men, is incompatible with the idea of simplicity of moral action, and hence is not admissible in the Oberlin Theology.” The italics are ours. ↩

  289. As cited, p. 248. ↩

  290. As cited, p. 238. ↩

  291. Cf. Foster, as cited, p. 460, and the quotation from Cochran there. Cf. also Lord, as cited, p. 239. ↩

  292. Fairchild, as cited, p. 249: “The work required in Christian progress is … establishment of Christian character, and more and more complete deliverance from these interruptions of obedience,—an obedience more and more constant until it becomes permanent and suffers no interruption.” ↩

  293. As cited, p. 254. ↩

  294. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” 1851, p. 595. Cf. Fairchild, as cited, p. 256. ↩

  295. As cited, pp. 256–259. ↩

  296. Fairchild’s opinion (p. 259) is different. He thinks Finney has not only not “adjusted his views of sanctification to his accepted doctrine as to the nature of moral action,” but that “the treatise, in almost all its features, belongs to a system of theology maintaining mixed action.” Finney is not an eminently consistent writer and in the matter of “the simplicity of moral action,” Fairchild is very exigent. ↩

  297. Fairchild, as cited, p. 259. ↩

  298. Ed. 1, i. 1846, pp. 150 ff.; ed. 2, 1851, pp. 135 ff. We quote from the latter. ↩

  299. Cf. p. 286 (also pp. 294, 296): “Moral agents are at all times either as holy or as sinful as with their knowledge, they can be.” ↩

  300. P. 141. ↩

  301. P. 140. ↩

  302. P. 144. ↩

  303. See below p. 147, and note 307. ↩

  304. In his “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” 1851, p. 261 Finney says: “The carnal heart or mind cannot but sin.… The new or regenerate heart cannot sin.” He explains the latter statement thus: “While benevolence remains, the mind’s whole activity springs from it as from a fountain,”—and appeals to “Make the tree good, etc.” In that case we need to ask How, then, can benevolence help remaining? If while it remains all our activity springs from it as from a fountain, how can it be transmuted into its contradictory? We cannot sin so long as it remains, and it remains so long as we do not sin—for have we not sinned, and sinned the master sin of all sin, when we have ceased to make benevolence our ultimate end? We can change our master motive only by changing our ultimate end, and surely we cannot change our ultimate end under its own controlling influence which extends over all our voluntary activity. We must sin while benevolence remains in order to rid ourselves of the benevolence under the control of which we cannot sin. So far as appears, then, the regenerate can never sin again. ↩

  305. To the objection that by his doctrine the standard of holiness is lowered to the level of our own experience, Finney (“Lectures on Systematic Theology,” p. 748) has the honesty to reply that it is quite true that in his opinion the standard of holiness has commonly been set too high. Much of the difficulty, he says (p. 749), “has arisen out of a comparison of the lives of saints with a standard entirely above that which the law of God does or can demand of persons in all respects in our circumstances,”—“or indeed,” he adds, “of any moral agent whatever.” Cf. p. 516. The main difference between the Oberlin men and Christians at large turns on this contention. The Oberlin men insist that Christians may be perfect and demand that they shall be. Yet the actual holiness attained does not differ from that attained by the “common Christian.” They call this attainment perfection: the others do not: their standard reaches no higher than this, that of the others stretches inimitably beyond. ↩

  306. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” 1851, p. 439, cf. p. 846. On pp. 470–472, Finney reverts to his definition of a saint, and having quoted 1 John 2:3, 4; 3:10; 5:1–4, remarks that “these passages understood and pressed to the letter, would not only teach, that all regenerate souls overcome and live without sin, but also that sin is impossible to them.” He declines so to press them and takes as their spirit “that to overcome sin is the rule with every one who is born of God, and that sin is only the exception; that the regenerate habitually live without sin, and fall into sin only at intervals, so few and far between, that in strong language it may be said in truth they do not sin.” “If at any time he is overcome, it is only to rise again.” This is faltering indeed: it is flatly in the face of Finney’s elaborately explained doctrine of regeneration with the underlying doctrine of “the simplicity of moral action.” This requires him to say that the saintliness acquired in regeneration is incompatible with sinning and is lost by sinning. ↩

  307. Ed. 1, ii. 1847, pp. 108–155. We cite the essay from these pages. Finney omitted it from his second edition, 1851. ↩

  308. Ed. 1, ii. 1847, p. 107, immediately preceding the insertion of Morgan’s essay: ed. 2, 1851, p. 557. ↩

  309. The caption of the section in which this statement occurs in ed. 1, ii.p. 106 reads: “Sanctification is another condition of justification.” This is expanded in ed. 2, p. 555, without change of meaning, into: “Present sanctification, in the sense of present full consecration to God, is another condition, not ground, of justification.” He is only endeavoring to maintain his formal definition of sanctification as “a state of consecration to God” (ed. 2, p. 594), “exactly synonymous or identical with a state of obedience or conformity to the law of God” (ed. 1, ii. p. 200). “Sanctification,” says he more at large (ed. 2, p. 595), “consists in the will’s devoting or consecrating itself and the whole being, all we are and have, so far as powers, susceptibilities, possessions are under the control of the will, to the service of God, or, which is the same thing, to the highest interests of God and of being. Sanctification, then, is nothing more nor less than entire obedience, for the time being, to the moral law.” It is sanctification, so conceived, which is affirmed to be the condition of justification. ↩

  310. P. 109. ↩

  311. P. 137. ↩

  312. P. 113. ↩

  313. P. 129. ↩

  314. P. 109. ↩

  315. P. 137. ↩

  316. Pp. 111–112. ↩

  317. P. 152. ↩

  318. P. 153. ↩

  319. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” 1851, p. 983. ↩

  320. P. 983. ↩

  321. P. 555. ↩

  322. P. 984. ↩

  323. P. 983. ↩

  324. P. 558. ↩

  325. Ed. 1, ii. p. 107; ed. 2, p. 557. ↩

  326. Ibid. ↩

  327. Pp. 157 ff. ↩

  328. P. 160. ↩

  329. Pp. 164–165. ↩

  330. P. 557. ↩

  331. P. 567. ↩

  332. P. 558. ↩

  333. Pp. 985 f. ↩

  334. Pp. 567–568. ↩

  335. P. 562. ↩

  336. P. 550. ↩

  337. Pp. 325–326. ↩

  338. P. 326. ↩

  339. P. 320. ↩

  340. P. 321. ↩

  341. P. 320. ↩

  342. P. 321. The italics are ours. ↩

  343. Pp. 326, 335, 333. ↩

  344. P. 934. ↩

  345. P. 693. ↩

  346. In point of fact Finney followed New Haven here; see G. F. Wright, as cited, p. 200. ↩

  347. It emerges in the end that Finney considers that it would have required God to change the government He had instituted as the wisest. ↩

  348. It was in Finney’s view a definite part, foreseen as those who could be saved under the wisest government. ↩

  349. We are somewhat surprised to find that Finney should have hesitated and vacillated over “Perseverance,” in the face of the clearness of this teaching, and of the corresponding representation of “permanent sanctification” as attainable, as the culminating attainment of Christian living (see, for instance, the tract “How to Win Souls”: There is nothing in the Bible “more expressly promised in this life than permanent sanctification”: we may fall away from regeneration, which is entire sanctification, but not from this permanent sanctification to which we are sealed: “this, remember, is a blessing that we receive after that we believe”). He tells us, however, (p. 843) that he did do so, although on the pressure of Scripture he finally accepts the doctrine, and, indeed gives it an exceptionally full treatment. His rejection of a “physical” regeneration seemed to him to remove one of the grounds for inferring it; and his rejection of what he calls a “perpetual” justification removes another. He is thrown back thus on the Scriptural declarations supported by the general doctrines of election and the initiative of grace—doctrines to which he gives a purer expression here (where he needs them) than in the residue of his system. ↩

  350. P. 775. ↩

  351. P. 778. ↩

  352. This is one of those numerous clauses which meet us in Finney’s discussions which have no meaning whatever in his scheme of thought, and are thrown in therefore merely for effect. In his scheme of thought, the entire responsibility for their damnation lies upon the lost in any case—even if no gracious influences at all work on them. They have plenary ability in any case to meet all their obligations, and are fully responsible for their failure to do so. ↩

  353. P. 780. ↩

  354. Pp. 786–787. ↩

  355. P. 790. ↩

  356. Charles Hodge, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1847, p. 244, says that it is “merely a dictum of philosophers, not of common people” that “I ought, therefore I can.” Every unsophisticated heart and especially every heart burdened with a sense of sin says rather, “I ought to be able, but I am not.” He cites Julius Müller’s reply to Kant, in “Lehre von der Sünde,” ii. p. 116. ↩

  357. P. 925. Accordingly A. T. Swing, The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1900, pp. 466–467, says: “The most fundamental of President Finney’s reform principles was, that human ability must be commensurate with human duty.” This, he says, dominated not only his thinking but his practice: “Sinners ought to respond at once, because they can repent if they will.” “Historically then President Finney stands as one of the most earnest preachers of human ability”—surpassing even N. W. Taylor in this. ↩

  358. P. 484. ↩

  359. P. 924. ↩

  360. P. 500. ↩

  361. Pp. 501–502. ↩

  362. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” p. 501. ↩

  363. P. 422. ↩

  364. P. 767. ↩

  365. P. 757. ↩

  366. “Sermons on Important Subjects,” p. 30. ↩

  367. The New York Evangelist, August 25, 1835, quoted in The Literary and Theological Review, March, 1836, p. 16. ↩

  368. The Oberlin Evangelist, Lect. 21, p. 193, quoted by John C. Lord, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1841, p. 234; cf. John Woodbridge, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1842, pp. 426–472. ↩

  369. “Sermons on Important Subjects,” pp. 20, 38. ↩

  370. “Autobiography,” ii. pp. 156–157. ↩

  371. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” pp. 493–494. On p. 490 the phrase “the will or agent” drops from Finney’s pen. He identifies the will with the agent, and that accounts for his misunderstanding of Edwards (p. 489) as if Edwards argued that it is the motive and not the agent which is the cause of voluntary action. He conceives of the motive as always “objective,” intruding into the mind from without and determining the will, not as the mind itself, that is the agent, in a given state of preference. “Edwards,” says he (p. 491) “assumed that no agent whatever, not even God himself, possesses a power of self-determination. That the will of God and of all moral agents is determined, not by themselves, but by an objective motive.” Leave out the word “objective” and remember that the motive is just the present self and see what becomes of that statement. Self-determination with Finney, means arbitrary self-determination, independent of or in contradiction of the present preference, which is what other people mean by motive. How far he was prepared to go, we may see from a remark he makes in the course of his reply to George Duffield (p. 970). Duffield had written as follows: “His own glorious nature, His own infinitely exalted excellence, and not anything conceivably existing apart from, independent and irrespective of God, is that which determines His will.” The actual meaning of that sentence is that God is self-determining or a free agent. Finney, however, comments as follows: “What does the Doctor mean? Does he mean that God is a necessary as opposed to a free agent? That His will is necessarily determined by His self-existent nature? If He means this, what virtue is there in God? His nature is necessarily self-existent … God is not praiseworthy for having this nature, but for the voluntary use or exercise of it.” This comment invites remark at more than one point. It is enough for the moment to say that it would be difficult more pointedly to assert that the will is entirely independent of the nature—something which uses the nature, by which the nature is exercised, not the instrument of the nature’s self-expression. ↩

  372. The course of reasoning by which Finney arrives at the conclusion that “the heart” in the Bible usage, “when represented as possessing moral character,” means just a volition (p. 409), affords a very good example of his method. Its substance is that this must be so, since nothing but volitions possess moral character: “The very idea of moral character implies, and suggests the idea of, a free action or intention.” It is plain, therefore, that in its Biblical usage, the heart “can be nothing else than the supreme ultimate intention of the soul.” And it is equally plain that “regeneration” which in its Biblical usage, is a radical change of the heart, is “a radical change of the ultimate intention”—that and nothing else. ↩

  373. It was a matter of course that S. B. Canfield, “An Exposition, etc.,” 1841, pp. 23 ff., should fall foul of Finney’s amazing representation that by “the flesh” the Scriptures mean bodily appetites, and that therefore the flesh may be overcome by physiological reform, under the influence of which we may look forward to a time in a few—very few—generations when “the human body” may be “nearly, if not entirely, restored to its primitive physical perfection”—and so “the flesh” will cease from troubling us. Canfield slyly remarks that the works which Paul enumerates as works of the flesh, in great part, “exist in a far greater degree in fallen spirits than among men,”—and the fallen spirits have no bodies! ↩

  374. P. 374. ↩

  375. P. 375. ↩

  376. Pp. 388–389. ↩

  377. P. 390. ↩

  378. P. 393. ↩

  379. P. 390. ↩

  380. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” p. 381: “We can also predict, without the gift of prophecy, that with a constitution physically depraved, and surrounded with objects to awaken appetite, and with all the circumstances in which human beings first form their moral character, they will seek universally to gratify themselves, unless prevented by the illuminations of the Holy Spirit.” ↩

  381. P. 397. ↩

  382. “Autobiography,” ii. p. 573. Nevertheless this view is taught not only by Finney but also by Beecher’s friend, N. W. Taylor (The Quarterly Christian Spectator, June, 1829, p. 366). A child, says Taylor, enters the world with a variety of neutral appetites and desires. These are rapidly developed, and each advancing month brings them new objects of gratification. “Self indulgence becomes the master principle in the soul of every child, long before it can understand that this self indulgence will ever interfere with the rights, or entrench on the happiness of others. Thus by repetition is the force of constitutional propensities accumulating a bias towards self-gratification, which becomes incredibly strong before a knowledge of duty of a sense of right and wrong, can possibly have entered the mind.” Under the influence of this bias, the child, when at length the commencement of moral agency arrives, sins with a uniform certainty as great as if “the hand of Omnipotence were laid upon the child to secure the result.” ↩

  383. P. 391. ↩

  384. P. 380. ↩

  385. P. 387. ↩

  386. P. 372. ↩

  387. P. 395. ↩

  388. P. 391. ↩

  389. P. 392. ↩

  390. “Works,” 1851, ii. pp. 537–538. ↩

  391. “Theological Essays Reprinted from the Princeton Review,” 1846, p. 436. ↩

  392. The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1847, pp. 268 ff. ↩

  393. P. 271. ↩

  394. P. 272. ↩

  395. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” 1851, p. 266: “He may be prevented” from committing commercial injustice, “by a constitutional or phrenological conscientiousness, or sense of justice. But this is only a feeling of the sensibility, and, if restrained only by this, he is just as absolutely selfish as if he had stolen a horse in obedience to acquisitiveness.” So, page 295: “If the selfish man were to preach the gospel, it would be only because, upon the whole, it was most pleasing or gratifying to himself, and not at all for the sake of the good of being, as an end. If he should become a pirate, it would be for exactly the same reason.… Whichever course he takes … with the same degree of light it must involve the same degree of guilt.” By the “selfish man” in these extracts, there is not meant a man unusually selfish: “selfishness” is only the mark in Finney’s nomenclature of the imperfect, as “benevolence” is of the perfect man. To act on selfish motives means with him to act on any other motives than the good of being as supreme end. ↩

  396. The quotation is from Canfield, “An Exposition, etc.,” pp. 17 ff. ↩

  397. P. 408. ↩

  398. P. 413. ↩

  399. P. 413. ↩

  400. P. 994. ↩

  401. P. 593: Repentance “implies a return to full obedience to the moral law”; “regeneration and repentance consist in the heart’s return to full obedience, for the time being, to this law.” ↩

  402. P. 537: “Present evangelical faith implies a state of present sinlessness.… Its existence in the heart must be inconsistent with present sin there. Faith is an attitude of the will, and is wholly incompatible with present rebellion of the will against Christ.” ↩

  403. P. 46. ↩

  404. P. 693. ↩

  405. G. F. Wright devotes an article in The Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1876, pp. 381–392, to “Dr. Hodge’s Misrepresentations of President Finney’s System of Theology”—referring only to the remarks on Finney made by Hodge in his “Systematic Theology.” The first of his complaints is that Hodge in one way or another represents Finney as “putting the universe in the place of God.” Hodge of course does not mean that Finney makes this substitution expressly, but only virtually. We think that is not an unfair statement of the logical results of some elements of his system. ↩

  406. P. 716. ↩

  407. P. 630. ↩

  408. Cf. Walter E. C. Wright, The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1900, p. 431: “The religion of Oberlin from the first was intensely ethical: it concerned actions far more than feelings.” ↩

  409. Ed. 1, i. 1846, pp. iv.–v.; ed. 2, 1851, pp. viii.–ix. ↩

  410. Finney is even able to say (“Lectures on Systematic Theology,” p. 951): “Were it not for the relation that virtue is seen to sustain to happiness in general, no moral agent would conceive of it as valuable.” ↩

  411. P. 42. ↩

  412. Pp. 54 ff. ↩

  413. P. 57. ↩

  414. The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1847, pp. 259 ff. ↩

  415. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” pp. 929 ff. ↩

  416. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” p. 629. ↩

  417. P. 306. ↩

  418. P. 307. ↩

  419. Pp. 667–668. ↩

  420. Pp. 683–684. ↩

  421. Cf. P. H. Fowler, “Historical Sketch of Presbyterianism within the Bounds of the Synod of Central New York,” 1877, p. 137: “ ‘Oberlin Perfectionism’ had considerable currency for a time, and Chenango and Cortland and other Presbyteries condemned it, and Onandaga Presbytery published an able refutation of it.” ↩

  422. A letter of Beecher’s printed in his “Autobiography,” ii. p. 435, bearing on perfectionism and showing no sympathy with it, may be consulted. It is interesting to observe that Beecher’s son George appears to have shown, apparently in 1836, some leanings to perfectionism (“Autobiography,” ii. pp. 411–415). ↩

  423. Leonard, as cited, p. 256. Cf. Asa Mahan, “Out of Darkness into Light,” p. 191, where we are told that “the Presbytery of Poughkeepsie, by a special order from the Synod of New York, deposed from the ministry two of its members, Messrs. Hill and Belden, for no other cause than the one fact that they had embraced the Oberlin error.” Leonard puts the incident in 1843; Mahan dates it vaguely as somewhere about 1845: 1843 seems to be right and the Presbytery was, as Leonard gives it, North River. On the incident see further, R. Wheatley, “The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer,” 1876, p. 267, and for Henry Belden, see the “Princeton Theological Seminary Biographical Catalogue,” 1909, p. 128. For William Hill, ibid., p. 70. ↩

  424. D. L. Leonard, as cited, pp. 242 ff. The facts recited above are drawn from Leonard, pp. 256 ff. ↩

  425. The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, pp. 244 ff. ↩

  426. D. L. Leonard, as cited, pp. 261 f., cf. p. 38. ↩

  427. As cited, pp. 236–241. ↩

  428. Literature. I. Books by Finney:—“Sermon Preached in the Presbyterian Church at Troy, March 4, 1827,” 1827. “Sermons on Various Subjects,” 1835 (several of these sermons were issued previously, as separate publications; and the collection was enlarged and republished in 1836 as: “Sermons on Important Subjects”). “Prevailing Prayer,” 1865. “Lectures on Revivals of Religion,” 1835 (many subsequent editions). “Lectures to Professing Christians” (delivered in the city of New York, 1836 and 1837), 1837 and many subsequent editions. “Skeletons of a Course of Theological Lectures,” 1840. “Views of Sanctification,” 1840. “Letters on Revivals,” 1845. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” i. 1846; ii. 1847 (a new edition enlarged and largely rewritten was published in London, 1851; and a condensed form of the London edition was issued by James H. Fairchild in 1878). “The Reviewer Reviewed, or Finney’s Theology and the Princeton Review,” 1847 (incorporated in the “Lectures on Systematic Theology” of 1851). “Reply to the ‘Warning Against Error,’ written by the Rev. Dr. Duffield,” 1848 (also incorporated in the “Lectures on Systematic Theology” of 1851). “Guide to the Savior,” 1848 (other editions). “Sinners’ Excuses Condemn God. A Sermon,” 1849 (other editions). “Freemasonry: its Character, Claims and Practical Working,” 1869. “Memoirs,” 1876 (other editions). “Sermons on Gospel Themes,” 1876. “Sermons on the Way of Salvation,” 1891. A number of Tracts, n.d. II. Books by Mahan:—“Principles of Christian Union and Church Fellowship,” 1836. “Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection,” 1839 (ed. 2, of same year, stereotyped, from which many subsequent issues). “Abstract of a Course of Lectures on Mental and Moral Philosophy,” 1840. “Doctrine of the Will,” 1844. “A System of Intellectual Philosophy,” 1845. “The True Believer,” 1847. “Science of Moral Philosophy,” 1848. “A System of Intellectual Philosophy,” 1854 (revised and enlarged). “Modern Mysteries Explained and Exposed,” 1855. “The Phenomena of Spiritualism Scientifically Explained and Exposed,” 1855. “The Science of Logic,” 1857. “Science of Natural Theology,” 1867. “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost,” 1870. “Theism and Anti-Theism in their Relations to Science,” 1872. “Out of Darkness into Light,” 1875. “Consequences of Neglect,” 1876. “A Critical History of Philosophy,” 1883. “Autobiography,” 1882. “System of Mental Philosophy,” 1882. “Introduction to the Critical History of Philosophy,” 1893. “The Misunderstood Texts of Scripture Explained and Elucidated, and the Doctrine of the Higher Life thereby Verified,” 1876. III. Perfectionist Publications of Other Oberlin Men. See The Oberlin Evangelist, 1839–1862; and The Oberlin Quarterly Review, 4 vols., 1845–1849. Henry Cowles, “Holiness of Christians in the Present Life,” 1840. Charles Fitch, “Views of Sanctification,” 1839. John Morgan, “Holiness Acceptable to God,” 1875. IV. Biography of Finney:—G. Frederick Wright, “Charles Grandison Finney,” 1891. Also—D. W. Bartlett, “Modern Agitators,” 1854, pp. 151–169. Hiram Mead, “Charles Grandison Finney,” in The Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877, pp. 1–28. H. Clay Trumbull, “My Four Religious Teachers,” 1903, pp. 15–27. F. G. Beardsley, “A History of American Revivals,” 1904, pp. 118–151. W. C. Wilkinson, “Modern Masters of Pulpit Discourse,” 1905, pp. 283–295. V. Discussions: A. Rand, “The New Divinity Tried, Being an examination of a sermon by the Rev. C. G. Finney, on Making a New Heart,” 1832. [B. B. Wisner], “Review of ‘The New Divinity Tried,’ ” 1832. C. Hodge, “ ‘The New Divinity Tried,’ ” in The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review, July, 1832, pp. 278–304. A. B. Dod, “Finney’s Sermons,” in same, July, 1835, pp. 482–527; and “Finney’s Lectures,” in same, October, 1835, pp. 626–674. Anonymous Review of Finney’s “Lectures on Revivals of Religion,” in The Literary and Theological Review, 1835, pp. 667–705. Joseph I. Foot, “Influence of Pelagianism on the Theological Course of Rev. C. G. Finney, developed in his Sermons and Lectures,” in same, March, 1838, pp. 38–71. Enoch Pond, “Christian Perfection,” in The American Biblical Repository, January, 1839, pp. 44–58. N. S. Folsom, “Review of Mahan on Christian Perfection,” in same, July, 1839, pp. 143–166. A. Mahan, “The Doctrine of Christian Perfection Explained,” in same, October, 1840, pp. 408–428. S. B. Canfield, “An Exposition of the Peculiarities, Difficulties and Tendencies of Oberlin Perfectionism,” 1841. L. Woods, “Examination of the Doctrine of Perfection, as held by Rev. Asa Mahan … and others,” in The American Biblical Repository, January, 1841, pp. 166–189, and April, 1841, pp. 406–438 (also issued in book form, 1841). John C. Lord, “Finney’s Sermons on Sanctification, and Mahan on Christian Perfection,” in The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1841, pp. 231–250. W. D. Snodgrass, “The Scripture Doctrine of Sanctification, Stated and Defended against the error of Perfectionism,” 1841. John Woodbridge, “Sanctification,” in The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1842, pp. 426–472 (reprinted in “Theological Essays Reprinted from the Princeton Review,” 1846, pp. 405–443). C. Hodge, “Finney’s Lectures on Theology,” in The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1847, pp. 237–277. G. Duffield, “A Warning Against Error,” 1847. Samuel J. Baird, “A History of the New School,” 1868, pp. 217–234. James H. Fairchild, “The Doctrine of Sanctification at Oberlin,” in The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1876, pp. 237–259. G. F. Wright, “Dr. Hodge’s Misrepresentations of President Finney’s System of Theology,” in The Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1876, pp. 381–392. G. N. Boardman, “A History of New England Theology,” 1899, ch. vii., pp. 275–292, “Oberlin Theology.” W. E. C. Wright, “Oberlin’s Contribution to Ethics,” in The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1900, pp. 429–444. A. T. Swing, “President Finney and an Oberlin Theology,” in same, July, 1900, pp. 465–482. Frank Hugh Foster, “A Genetic History of the New England Theology,” 1907, ch. xvi., pp. 453–470, “The Oberlin Theology.” ↩

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