ARTICLE X.-REPLY TO THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

WE find in the Methodist Quarterly Review, for January last, some editorial strictures upon our discussion of Dr. Taylor's work on Moral Government, which call for a brief reply.

Our readers will remember that in that Article, after exhibiting the somewhat extreme views of several of the New England divines upon the reason for the Divine permission of evil, we observed that the principle from which their inconsistencies flowed, is by no means peculiar to themselves; and that we referred briefly to both Catholic and Arminian` writers, as having shared in the same erroneous scheme. In particular, we quoted the language of Wesley, as showing that "the same views which Edwards maintained of the increased blessedness derived from the introduction of sin, Wesley himself expressed about the results of the fall." For this statement we are taken to task; and charged with "misrepresenting" something-it does not appear, very exactly, what. As we made no comment, and placed no construction upon the language which we quoted, and as the correctness of the quotation is not questioned, we are somewhat at a loss to know in what the alleged misrepresentation consists.

The editor of that Journal proceeds to declare that the passage in question "affirms only what everybody holds to be true, that in our remedial system a particular evil has been overruled by God, so as to eventuate in a higher good to our race, all the thanks being due to God, and none to the evil."

What is meant by the phrase "a higher good" in this language of our critic, as compared with that which is not a good at all but only "a particular evil," is not very clear; but the vague and unmeaning language of the critic falls far below the simple and definite utterance of Wesley, for which it is substituted. The great founder of Methodism generally

had a meaning in his speech, a meaning too distinct to admit the use of any ambiguous phraseology; and he has not been guilty of attributing, as his defender does, to God, the poor glory of educing from evil a good which is merely a "higher" good than the evil itself. He asserts in the very sharp and definite terms which we quoted, that "mankind have gained by the fall a capacity,"

First, of being more holy and happy on earth; and secondly, of being more happy in heaven, than otherwise they could have been."

Now most certainly Wesley here teaches that mankind have now a "capacity of being more holy and happy," in consequence of the fall, "than otherwise they could have been "-more holy and happy through God's dispensations toward them in a fallen state, than they could have been "otherwise "-that is, had the race continued in its integrity. God has then educed from the fall, by his peculiar treatment of mankind, a holiness and happiness superior to anything which they could "otherwise" have attained.

Now it is impossible to distinguish this view from that of Hopkins, Edwards, and West, which we discussed and opposed. If a higher good than could otherwise have been attained, is to come through that remedial system of which sin is the indispensable antecedent, then sin is necessary to the perfection of the moral universe. The remedial system cannot exist unless sin shall have taken place; and as the remedial system involves higher degrees of holiness and blessedness than were otherwise possible, it is as clear as anything can be, that sin is an indispensable condition of the highest results in the universe of God. No form of language, therefore, which the New England divines did, or could, employ, could more decisively express the doctrine which Dr. Taylor so earnestly repelled.

Instead of its being true, then, that Wesley taught that only "a higher good" has resulted from God's overruling of sin, his doctrine is that the highest possible good has resulted; men are more holy and happy "than otherwise they coULD ave been." Instead of the passage teaching only "what

everybody believes," it affirms a view which we are constrained to regard as most deeply obnoxious. It makes God the patron of sin; and represents him as condescending to educe by his remedial agency, higher results from sin, than he consents to draw from the perfect holiness of the unfallen. He lays upon his creatures the necessity of resting in lower forms of holiness and happiness, if perfectly obedient, than they may reach by incurring the guilt of sin and the hazard of perdition. If his creature, Adam, placed on probation for himself and his posterity, will be guilty of the crime of betraying his grand trust, God will educe out of that unspeakable baseness, results of blessing greater than he "otherwise" will consent to achieve. But if his yet holy, and trusting, and adoring child should shrink from such a depth of guilt and dishonor, and cleave to God in obedience and faithfulness, he must content himself with the prospect of an inferior degree of holiness and happiness for himself and his posterity as the result. God has no such blessing in store for him if holy, as he might attain "otherwise"--that is, "through the fall."

Whether our critic will consent to accept this view as his own, his somewhat dubious expression of "a higher good" leaves us in doubt whether to affirm or to deny. But the stern and sweeping language of the great original of Methodism involves no such uncertainty. There can be no question what Wesley meant to affirm when he said that God brings out from the fall a holiness and happiness greater than could otherwise have existed. His subsequent language renders this still more clear. In support of this position he observes: "For if man had not fallen there must have been a blank in our faith and in our love. There could have been no such thing as faith in God so loving the world that he gave his only Son for us and for our salvation ;"-"no faith in the Son of God as loving us and giving himself for us ;". . . . —“no faith in the Spirit of God as renewing the image of God in our hearts," &c.

This language is surely explicit enough; to us it is mournfully so. We are distinctly told that no such high forms of holiness as now exist, would have been possible without the

sin of our first parent. "No such thing as faith" in a Divine love, properly infinite, "if man had not fallen!" That original baseness was indispensable; without it "there must have been a blank in our faith and in our love." The editor of the Methodist Quarterly will of course feel at liberty to maintain this doctrine, if it seem good to him, without any permission of ours; but when he next attempts to state "what everybody holds to be true," we must beg to be excepted from any assertion which implies that sin is essential to the highest blessedness of any of God's creatures, or that the noblest forms of faith and love were possible only through the fall.

Very closely related to this subject is another charge of our critic. We had attributed to Wesley certain views about "the result of the fall." The Methodist Quarterly, without venturing any comment upon the language of Wesley which we quoted, affirms that " Mr. Wesley's real doctrine was that it was [is] the possibility of evil, (involved in free moral agency,) and not its reality, which was [is?] necessary to the best moral system."

Wesley did indeed maintain that freedom is essential to man's accountability; and he cherished a high sense of the importance of human freedom in the moral system of God's government. But so, as we abundantly showed, did all the writers whom we criticised. It was a chief object of our review to show how impossible it was for those writers to maintain the extreme positions which they had so incautiously assumed. We pointed out the constant confusion which pervades and vitiates their reasonings between the divine system, and the sin which is a consequent of it; and the impossibility of reconciling the conflicting views in which this confusion results.

If Wesley then did in some passages testify a high and just appreciation of human freedom, so did Edwards, and West, in language of the most decided kind. But did he not do more than this? Did he not adopt the view which maintains that sin, has through Divine counteraction, important and beneficial results; and that the moral universe would have been less perfect and blessed without it?

Did Wesley

The question at this point is a very simple one. affirm the fall of man to be indispensable to our highest blessedness, or did he confine his assertion to human freedom? What is necessary, according to Wesley, to the noblest forms of faith and love,-the fall of man, as we represented, or the freedom of man, as our censor maintains ?

If our readers will but recur to the passages already quoted from Wesley, they will have the means of answering this question without any help from us, or any danger from our "misrepresentations." They will find the great founder and type of the Methodist theology declaring that "mankind have GAINED BY THE FALL a capacity first of being more holy and happy," &c.; and again, as if to make assurance doubly sure, that "if man had not FALLEN, there must have been a blank in our faith and in our love." Plainly it is no coloring of ours which makes Wesley refer here to the fall of man; his own most specific and exact utterance proclaims, beyond all mistake, that it is to the fall that every possibility of man's highest virtue is owing, and that if that event had not taken place the noblest forms of human faith and love had been forever impossible.

So much for our "misrepresentations." We have argued the question mainly on the ground of the brief and condensed. quotations of our previous Article; and our readers will see how decisively our original statement is borne out by the language of our Author. But when the question is taken upon the broader ground of Wesley's general views, the evidence of the correctness of our position is decisive and overwhelming. If our readers will turn to the Sermons of Wesley numbered LXIII and LXIV, in the edition of his works edited by Emory, they will find a very ample discussion of the subject, in which this view is asserted in language of the utmost emphasis. We might fill pages with the most decisive quotations of sentiments precisely analogous to those which we have given above. Thus, in Sermon LXIII he speaks as follows:

"If Adam had not sinned, the Son of God had not died. Consequently that amazing instance of the love of God to man had never existed, which has in all