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the very highest importance. The death of Christ, as a sacrifice, said they, is the very pivot on which the salvation of man entirely depends.

And it deserves to be further noticed, that the more enlightened of the party not only admitted, but they openly declared, that the language, commonly employed on the subject of the Atonement, should be understood only in a peculiar and partial acceptation. That when it said, Christ paid the debt; bore the penalty of the law; obeyed and suffered in our room and stead; the expressions are not to be literally understood. For sin and holiness, guilt and desert, reward and punishment, are inherently and necessarily personal; they cannot be transferred from one person to another. Moreover, the real penalty they held to be eternal destruction, and this the Saviour certainly did not suffer. "The room and stead" doctrine was extensively renounced; and the death of the Mediator, now denominated variously, "an equivalent; an expedient; an example," &c. The explanation of the Atonement theory became as much mystified as that of the Trinity. Known words were to be used in an unknown sense. A line was to be recognised which was acknowledged to be invisible. All this evinced that the Hopkinsian mind was inquisitive; it was verging toward the light, though not with a single eye and an unprejudiced heart.

If the schism on the point of the Atonement did something to debilitate the phalanx of Hopkinsianism, that on the point of man's natural power did this to a much greater extent. It put on Orthodoxy a most forbidding aspect. It was easy for Dr. Burton and those with him to contend with their Orthodox brethren, and to silence them. They had only to say to them, Your natural power is no power at all; it is not available, as you ackowledge, in a single instance, nor in the least degree. We give the natural man as much endowment and as great a chance as you do. The Emmons men could not deny this. But the uninitiated and unprejudiced would deny, and demand, what propriety can there be in a doctrine, which destroys the balance between a man's obligations and his resources; between what a man ought to do, and what he can do? Is not God a reasonable Master? If not, how can he judge the world in righteousness?

Hopkinsianism had other forbidding aspects. It pushed the doctrine of Divine Predestination to a point of ultraism that

was startling and intolerable. "Every man was made, infrustrably, either for salvation or for perdition. Every man's character, and every act of his life, whether good or evil, had been fixed upon from eternity by Him whose counsel shall certainly stand. Every man, remaining unregenerate, is constantly accumulating guilt, working out his ruin, making himself more and more a vessel of wrath." These sentiments could not long be made popular, or even endurable, in any place, or with any people. Hopkinsianism, moreover, had lost its revival spirit and power. It had now become a scholastic, metaphysical system. Such, however, was not its origin. It grew out of the New Light; and this was identical with revivalism. So it was in the days of Cotton, Wheelwright, and Mrs. Hutchinson; likewise in the days of Edwards, Whitefield, and Davenport. Twice it had burned itself out into darkness. Still, however, it had learned, gifted, and substantial supporters. Such were Edwards, Bellamy, Buel, Wheelock, Pomeroy, and their coadjutors. Disappointed, grieved, but not disheartened, they sat down to their writing tables and composed treatises, small and great, for strengthening the foundations which had been broken up. They yet looked for the clear shining of the New Light, and obscuration of the Old; and their labors wrought effect. The New Light doctrine grew into Hopkinsianism, an ingenious, elaborate, and scholastic form of Calvinian theology. But its growth in metaphysical lore deprived it of its power to excite and sustain revivals. It was by means of these that Hopkinsianism had extended and sustained itself. But in its adaptation to promote revivals, Hopkinsianism could not stand advantageously by the side of Methodism. The disciples of Hopkins were but second best in competition with those of Wesley. They dealt out too much of the indigestible strong meat of Calvinism, to act the part of successful evangelizers and revivalists.

We have mentioned a three-fold schism in the Hopkinsian ranks; it might have been extended to five. The Satisfaction division separated into two parties; one of which, having Dr. Joseph Huntington, of Coventry, at its head, adhered in full to the old "Room and stead" doctrine; the other, with the second President Edwards for its leader, embraced the new and modified views. Each of these distinguished men put forth a publication to explain and defend his position. The adherents to the "Exercise" scheme were also divided. Dr. Emmons with a part of his school contended, that the soul could be the subject

of but one exercise at a time. When it had a good thought, a bad one could not be simultaneous with it. The soul was then perfectly holy. A doctrine very consistent certainly with the theory, that the soul itself is but a thread of thoughts, concatenated by an uninterrupted succession. Dr. Smalley, who had been tutor to Dr. Emmons, disclaimed this sentiment of his former pupil, and published reasons for rejecting it. Dr. Smalley regarded the soul as being a real structure, distinct from its acts, although accountable only for the latter. The "Taste-scheme men," holding the soul to be a real structure, maintained its responsibility not so much for its acts, as for the sensibilities which started them into being.

Such being the divisions and subdivisions of the Hopkinsian body, we have little cause for wonder, that it was destined to find an early grave. "A house divided against itself cannot stand, but hath an end." Yet with all its imperfections on its head, Hopkinsianism was no contemptible thing. It was the natural creature of the circumstances and influences which brought it forth, inspired it with life for a season, and then compelled it to give up the ghost. During a brief life, it executed a useful and important mission. It went out of the world leaving in it a meliorated condition of things, very different from what it found. The Hopkinsians set an example of inquiry and investigation worthy of imitation and praise. While it was this that split them into varieties, it efficiently aided the cause of truth. They attacked many errors which had long been sanctified by their connexion with Orthodoxy. Such, surely, were the doctrines of hereditary guilt; imputed righteousness; condemnation for unavoidable deficiencies; the partiality of God in electing and reprobating individuals irrespective of their lives; faith without works as the condition of acceptance with God, and the expiatory character of the great Christian sacrifice. For though the Hopkinsians, as a denomination, did not renounce all these unreasonable and unscriptural dogmas, yet individuals among them rejected, some one, some another. Dr. Emmons and his school repudiated the doctrine, that men are responsible for anything but their own acts, or that they can be justified on any other ground, than that of personal righteousness. Mr. Sanford stood against the doctrine of penal satisfaction. Dr. Edwards set at nought the doctrine of transfer and substitution. Dr. Huntington protested against the doctrine of partial election, contending that

God is equally the merciful Father of all his people. Dr. Burton effectually exposed the shallowness and futility of that philosophy, which makes actual thoughts and volitions to be ultimate facts in the spiritual world. And here are all the elements of a liberal and just theology. And though no Hopkinsian gathered the whole of them into his creed, for in so doing he would have been accounted an apostate, yet to have adopted and avowed them singly was making progress toward the goal of truth. Each of the Hopkinsian varieties broke ground against some of the strongly entrenched dogmas of a narrow and dominant system. Notwithstanding all their subtilties of speculation and extravagance of doctrine, the Hopkinsians made a better use of philosophy than had ever yet been done by any theological school, within the wide and longstanding realm of Christendom. Their prominent faults, as we have just intimated, were an undue subtilty of ratiocination and an extravagance of doctrine, especially on the subject of predestination and Divine agency, which amounted to a form of pantheism. But with all this aberration, the Hopkinsian ministry, as a body, were men of very commendable character and habits; vigilant, faithful, and affectionate pastors; conscientious, diligent, and intrepid teachers of what they believed to be the true import of the oracles of God. In them, and by them, was there a true manifestation of the genuine New England spirit, which, looking before as well as behind, is impatient of confinement, and refuses, knowingly and willingly, to wear trammels, whatever be their polish and antiquity. It was the genius of Hopkinsianism that stayed and dried up the flood of open and gross Antinomianism, which, during the middle period of the eighteenth century, raised its swelling waves and dashed them impetuously on the shores and mountains of New England. This good service, more than by any other, was performed by Bellamy. We intend not to say that he "purged out all the old leaven." For, doubtless, it is, in a degree, inseparable from the technical doctrines of grace; so that where there is pure prevailing Calvinism, there will be some lurking Antinomianism; but he, at least, commenced the work of a great and effectual reformation.

VOL. XXXIII. 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. II.

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