not a man of policy. He had no knowledge of artifice in the attainment of even a good end. To work behind a screen, with an ostensible aim very different from the real one, was something utterly repugnant to this great and good man's principles. The distinction between prudence and hypocrisy was, in his mind, scarcely perceptible. He must always act openly and avowedly, directly toward the goal of his efforts. For this we can but love him more. Yet this supreme virtue of his character made him unfit to be a statesman and a reformer. His place was to teach, and let others apply. A statesman must always consult policy as well as abstract duty. A reformer must be sufficiently conservative to attach his schemes to the existing order so far as to prevent the appearance of aiming at violence. This policy in the statesman, this conservatism in the reformer should not be identified with corrupt artifice, with kingcraft and priestcraft. It is but the practical side of virtue. It is holiness striving to adapt intractable materials to its end; and, finding them not yet prepared, seeking to prepare them by postponing something of its desired fruits to a later date, and perhaps adopting them, at last, in an altered outward embodiment. It is St. Paul becoming all things to all men, that he may win some. It is the human representation of Providence: In this the great philosopher was utterly deficient. Hence, the hopes of Syracusan citizens failed. Hence, the hopes of philosophy to find an embodiment in polity perished. Hence, the throne of Dionysius was doomed in 354 B.C. to feel the shock of a thunderbolt wielded by the arm of the virtuous Dion, now returned from exile. Hence, the noble liberator, at the end of two years, falls a victim to treason by the hand of his friend. Hence, the necessity of Plato's long and prosy letters to justify himself to Dion's friends and the public. Hence, the qualification imposed upon our almost unlimited praise of the great philosopher. But that a man should become unpractical by continued abstract thinking is no wonder, but, on the other hand, is to be expected; and the services done by Plato to the human intellect are doubtless far greater than he had rendered as a statesman and reformer. This excellent man had twelve years of peaceful, thoughtful retirement to enjoy after his third return from Syracuse, excepting only the anxiety occasioned by Dion's affairs. His letters show, too, that his intellectuality had not absorbed his affection. With true humanity he provided, through the assistance of friends, wedding-portions for his nieces. Himself never entered into conjugal bonds, and his only household was his assembly at the Academy. At length, in 348 B.C., on his eighty-first or eighty-second birthday, while present at a marriage-supper, death gently stole upon him, and he was no more. He was buried in the Cerameicus, not far from the Academy. The grateful Athenians erected a monument to his memory with the following beautiful epitaph: Τους δύ Απόλλων φῦσ ̓ ART. III.-THE" EDWARDEAN" THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT. The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises by Edwards, Smalley, Maxey, Emmons, Griffin, Burge, and Weeks. With an Introductory Essay by EDWARDS A. PARK, Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, Andover, Massachusetts, Boston: Congregational Board of Publication. 1859. THE book whose title we have here transcribed contains New England's contribution to the literature of the Atonement. It gives us the results of a long period of intensely earnest speculation upon this central truth of Christianity. We propose, firstly, to briefly characterize the book itself; secondly, to state the theory advocated; and thirdly, to investigate the relation of the theory to Arminianism. I. THE BOOK, then, may be summarily described as a substantial octavo of six hundred and sixty-three pages, of which eighty are introductory. It is gotten up in the plain but neat style by which most of the publications of the Congregational Board are characterized. Respecting the origin of the collection, neither editor nor publishers give us any information. Those persons, however, who were familiar with the clerical libraries of New England a generation or two ago, will perhaps remember a little old sheep-bound duodecimo, which used frequently to be found in those libraries, and which bore upon its back the same title as the book we are now describing. Should they take the pains to look up a copy of it, they will find that it contained more than half the treatises which Professor Park has here reprinted, together with other articles written in the same general spirit. We suppose a reprint of this old collection was considered desirable, and the Andover professor invited to improve the favorable opportunity for re-editing it. The contents of the book are as follows: 1. "Three sermons on the Necessity of Atonement, and the consistency between that and Free Grace in forgiveness." By Jonathan Edwards, D. D., pp. 1-42. 2. "Two sermons-Justification through Christ an act of Free Grace," and "None but Believers saved through the all-sufficient satisfaction of Christ." By John Smalley, D. D., pp. 43-85. 3. "A Discourse designed to explain the Doctrine of the Atonement." By Jonathan Maxcy, D. D., pp. 87-110. This discourse was delivered in the chapel of "Rhode Island College" on the 11th and 25th of November, 1796, Dr. Maxcy being at that time President of said college. 4. "Two sermons on the Atonement." By Nathaniel Emmons, D. D., pp. 111-136. 5. "An humble attempt to reconcile the differences of Christians respecting the Extent of the Atonement." By Edward D. Griffin, D.D., pp. 137-427. This is the most elaborate performance in the whole book. It is a carefully written treatise of nearly three hundred octavo pages, well known to many of our clerical readers in another form, and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its acute and once distinguished author.* An excellent resumé of Dr. Griffin's views, as set forth in For the benefit of such as may not be acquainted with this important essay we subjoin the Table of Contents: Preface. Introduction. PART I. Nature of the Atonement. Chapter I. Atonement merely the ground of release from the Curse. II. Influence of Atonement upon Divine Government. III. Matter of Atonement. IV. Christ's Obedience and Reward. V. Atonement not Reconciliation. VI. Meaning of Righteousness as connected with the Justification of Believers. VII. Mistakes arising from drawing literal Conclusions from figurative Premises. PART II. Extent of the Atonement. Chapter I. Curse of Abandonment removed from all. II. Grand point of division between the parties. III. View of the subject taken by the Synod of Dort. IV. Atonement for Moral Agents only. V. The two characters of Man distinct and independent of each other. VI. Nothing belonged to the Atonement but what was public. VII. Attributes of Moral Agents. VIII. A Moral Government. IX. Moral Agents treated as if there were no Foreknowledge. X. Moral Agents treated conditionally. XI. Believer and Unbeliever confounded with Elect and Non-elect, and with Man as a Capable Agent. XII. Treatment of Agents by itself expresses Divine Benevolence. XIII. Purposes of the Moral Governor not to be confounded with those of the Sovereign Efficient Cause. XIV. Treatment of Individual Agents intended to influence Agents generally. XV. Reasons for an Atonement for those who perish. XVI. Extent of the provision not incidental, but purposely intended. XVII. Reprobation and the order of the Divine Decrees. XVIII. Covenant of Redemption. XIX. One whole meaning at one view. XX. Bottom of the mistake lies in this treatise, will be found in the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1858. It was drawn up by Professor Park, and the understood but unexpressed" design of the essay spoken of by Dr. Whedon in noticing it (Methodist Quarterly, vol. xl, p. 311,) no longer needs explanation. 6. "An Essay on the Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement its Nature, its Necessity, and its Extent." By Caleb Burge, A. M., pp. 429-546. This essay was first published three years after the issue of Dr. Griffin's, that is, in the year 1822. 7. “A Dialogue on the Atonement." By William R. Weeks, D. D., pp. 547–583. First published in 1823, and now printed for the fourth time. According to Professor Park, it "received a lengthened reply in the fourth volume of the Christian Advocate." The paper referred to, however, is not our metropolitan Methodist organ, but a Calvinistic publication, issued at that time in Philadelphia under the editorship of Dr. Ashbel Green. The Introductory Essay by Professor Park on the Rise of the Edwardean Theory of the Atonement is a very elaborate and valuable article. It is an important contribution to the yet unwritten history of New England Puritanism. Its erudite and painstaking author takes us back to the writings of the four distinguished divines under the influence of whose teachings Edwards the younger, his associates and disciples, seem to have matured their views; and in those writings points out, with an industry more easily commended than rivaled, the first faint unconscious deviations from traditional Calvinism, both in the intellectual apprehension of the doctrine and in its systematic statement, which suggested and almost logically necessitated the peculiar theory and terminology of New School Calvinism. Those four divines were Edwards the senior, Bellamy, Hopkins, and West. "The first of these four men was the father of Dr. Edwards, the second was his theological teacher, the third was his most valued counselor, and was intimately associated with him in the examination of his father's manuscripts, and the fourth was his constant friend. Through Dr. Edwards, the hints and tendencies of these four divines were transferred in a modified and stimulating form to his pupils, Dwight and Griffin; to his friends Backus and Smalley. Through Dr. Smalley, the formative influences of his instructor Bellamy were applied, in a modified and animating way, to Emmons, the pupil of Smalley overlooking Human Agency. subject. XXI. Importance of correct language on the PART III. Scriptural View. Chapter I. Plan of the Argument. II. Benefit of the Atonement made over to all. III. All Men bound to make the benefit their own. IV. Actual influence of the Atonement upon all. V. Synod of Dort agreed with us as to the actual influence of the Atonement upon the Non-elect, and the purpose of the Sacred Persons. VI. Testimony of Calvin, Watts, and others. VII. Atonement offered and accepted expressly for all. Appendix. and the friend of Hopkins and West. Through Samuel Spring, a pupil of Bellamy, of Hopkins, and of West, and, in a double sense, the brother of Emmons, the personal influences of these divines was transfused into the constitution of the Andover Theological Seminary. In similar methods have a multitude of theologians been interlocked, more or less intimately, with the four men whose express instructions or tacit intimations have either introduced, or paved the way for introducing, the Edwardean Theory of the Atonement."-P. lxxviii. In the writings of each of these four theologians, Professor Park finds principles and statements which, intentionally or unintentionally, favored the view afterward developed. These principles and statements he allows were often totally inconsistent with others inculcated with equal emphasis by these writers; but "it is the prerogative of clear thinkers, when they proclaim an error, to proclaim it in such a way as will suggest the truth to other thinkers equally clear." He traces out the rude inception and earliest developments of the theory so elaborately as to leave no room for the suspicion that that grand Arminianizing of New England Puritanism with reference to the doctrine of the Atonement, of which the book before us is the monument, was effected by foreign influences. He makes it evident that Edwards and Griffin arrived at Arminian results, not by the perusal of Remonstrant literature, but by the same process which conducted Arminius, Camero, and Baxter to a common repudiation of Calvin's narrow and indefensible view. New England thus furnishes a new and independent proof of the oft illustrated truth, that unmitigated genuine Calvinism is incapable of maintaining itself for any considerable length of time in any Church which has the religious necessities of an entire community to which to minister. The Puritan Church has, in this respect, but repeated the history of French, English, Swiss, and Netherlandic Calvinism, only in a more striking and decisive manner. So much for the book and its contents. II. THE THEORY ADVOCATED. The view of the Atonement developed and supported by the various writers before us is summed up by Professor Park in the following propositions: 1. "Our Lord suffered pains which were substituted for the penalty of the law, and may be called punishment in the more general sense of that word, but were not, strictly and literally, the penalty which the law had threatened. 2. "The sufferings of our Lord satisfied the general justice of God, but did not satisfy his distributive justice. 3. "The humiliation, pains, and death of our Redeemer were equivalent in meaning to the punishment threatened in the moral law, and thus they satisfied Him who is determined to maintain the honor of this law, but they did not satisfy the demands of the law itself for our punishment. 4. "The active obedience, viewed as the holiness, of Christ was honorable to the law, but was not a work of supererogation, performed by our substitute, FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII.-25 |