ART. VIII. SYNOPSIS OF THE QUARTERLIES, AND
OTHERS OF THE HIGHER PERIODICALS.

American Quarterly Reviews.

EVANGELICAL QUARTERLY REVIEW, January, 1865. (Gettysburgh, Penn.) 1. The Reformation, the Work of God. 2. Darwin on the Origin of Species. 3. Lutheran Hymnology. 4. Exemplary Piety in the Ministry. 5. Condition of the Jews in the Days of Christ. 6. The Name Jehovah. 7. Pennsylvania College. 8. Repose as an Element of Christian Character. 9. The Israelites Borrowing from the Egyptians. FREEWILL BAPTIST QUARTERLY, January, 1865. (Dover, Mass.)—1. Rénan's Life of Jesus. 2. Missions and the Schools. 3. The Presidential Election. 4. The Ground of Reward in Heaven. 5. Webster's Now Dictionary.

AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN AND THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, January, 1865. (New York.)-1. Christian Miracles and Physical Science. 2. Delivery in Preaching. 3. Origin of Homer's Purer Religious Ideas. 4. John Foster on Future Punishment. 5. Gibbon and Colenso. 6. Christianity and Civilization. 7. The Covenanters and the Stuarts. 8. Whedon on the Will.

Of the three extended opposing reviews of "Whedon on the Will," in the Princeton, the Danville, and the American Presbyterian, the last, by the editor, Dr. Smith, is undoubtedly the ablest, and we, therefore, select it for full reply. By subjecting the work to an unsparing hostile scrutiny, the Review has done it the invaluable service of really attesting the final validity of its argument and the indestructible truth of its great doctrine. After retrenching a large area of generalities and one-sided blank assertions, we have a residuum of manly attempts at severe logic, skillfully aimed at important positions; logic which it is a pleasure for us to meet and to demolish. We stand upon this singular vantage ground with Dr. Smith, that his every argument, so far as there is regular argument, has already been within our own mind, more clearly than in his pages, deliberately weighed and amply provided for. So that by an unfortunate (to him) anachronism, his argument was mostly refuted before it was written; like an infant reprobate, damned before it was born. In a large number of instances we may be obliged simply to refer him to the unanswered answers to his reasoning in the volume itself, and decline giving him any further

reply until he has dealt with what we have furnished. In this Synopsis we shall notice a few of his collaterals and incidentals, and, as we hope, place on record our answer to his main argument by a full article in a coming Quarterly. It is our earnest prayer and our joyous trust that the cause of truth will be advanced; and that a true, liberal, evangelical, compact, and symmetrical theodicy, based upon accurate views of human freedom, and furnishing exalted views of God's righteousness, will be increasingly established.

1. Dr. Smith opens, or rather prefaces the discussion by saying of the author of the work reviewed:

He brings all Calvinists, old school and new school, in New England and in all branches of the Presbyterian Church, under the same condemnation. It is rather amusing to see Princeton and Andover, Bangor and New Haven, swept into the same drag-net; all classed as "necessarians." He will not admit them

into the full Arminian fellowship unless they are prepared to say, that the "power to the contrary" has actually been exercised, or, that they do sometimes choose from the weaker inducement.-P. 125.

If we sweep them into the same "drag-net," it is precisely where they "sweep" themselves. With all their subordinate variances they all claim to be Calvinists; proclaiming Edwards their common standard, and ready for a brave and compact onset upon us frank, prompt, and exultant Arminians. Why should we "admit them into the full Arminian fellowship," when none of them ask admission? For one or two centuries their pulpits have resounded with demonstrations against something they called "Arminianism." Let them send Edwards's fatalism, with a facilis descensus, to its own place, and adopt the free, God-honoring theology of JAMES ARMINIUS, and, all protestant as we are, no Pope ever welcomed a returning heretic to his fold more heartily than we will "admit into the full Arminian fellowship" these unfortunate but wise refugees from the inharmonious "drag-net."

2. Dr. Smith (p.* 127) imputes to us the "assumption," not the assertion, mark, "that Calvinism as a system stands or falls with the doctrine of 'philosophical necessity' as expounded by Edwards.” We assumed this, we reply, just as much—and no more-as did both the Edwardses themselves assume it; and just as much as Dr. Smith himself assumes it in every paragraph but the one containing this unnecessary denial. The "elaborate essay' of Dr. Cunningham, so instructively quoted by our reviewer in disproof of our so-called "assumption," was quoted and discussed by us in our Quarterly at the time of its publication; and one of the series *The p. refers to the pages of the Review, the P., capital, to those of the work reviewed.

to which that "elaborate essay" belonged is quoted in our volume (P. 420). That philosophical necessity formed a part

of the Calvinism of Calvin himself we have shown on P. 421. As to the relations of the philosophy to the theology we apprehend we needed no instructions from either Dr. Cunningham or Dr. Smith. Whether Calvinian predestination requires necessity from strongest motive force or not, our work (P. 268–276) furnishes ample proof, as yet unanswered, that it contradicts the freedom of the human will.

3. Dr. Smith (p. 129) criticizes our definition of Will: "The power of the soul by which it is the conscious author of an intentional act." It will forestall most of his criticisms (all, in fact, but a retort of Edwards's logic upon himself) for us to say that it is necessary to a successful definition, not that it should specify all the attributes of the subject defined, but such attributes as will individualize and mark it off from any other actual or conceivable thing. The possibility of any other thing being included under the definition vitiates it; the possibility of there being specific attributes not included in the definition does not. The definition of a straight line as "the shortest distance between two points," omits its very main quality of straightness, and specifies a result of the straightness, namely, its maximum of brevity, as the isolating element. When, therefore, Dr. S. asks whether there is " no unconscious act of the Will;" and whether there are not "immanent preferences," or "permanent states," and "choices ;" and whether the "Will is all act ;" he leaves the validity of our definition untouched. Will and Will alone, of all actual or conceivable things, is still "the power of the soul by which it is the conscious author of an intentional act." What other attributes it possesses, of what other predicates it is the true subject, are matters that subsequent analysis must decide; and the development of any number of such, unless contradicting its statement or vitiating its exclusiveness, leaves the definition unharmed.

When Dr. Smith asks, "Is the Will all act ?" we reply No, it is no act at all, but only faculty or power for an act. And when Dr. S. seems to imagine that we are caught napping in this omission of something besides act, will he please note that we had just given (P. 15) a previous definition in which was added to the word act the phrase or state of being. Dr. Smith, then, sees that this exclusion of everything additional to act was conscious and purposed. Cannot Dr. S. imagine why? Then we will tell him. The state is but a remoter consequence of the act; the position of mind brought about by it; and so is too remote for inclusion

in the definition. Or if it be an immediate product of Will, then it is properly a continuous or permanent act, or acting, or action; and so is nothing at last but act. When a man sits down, his subsequent sitting posture is either a state or an act. If a state, it is a consequent of the act; if an act, it is a continuous act of sitting. So far as its immediate product therefore is concerned, in Dr. Smith's sense of the words, the Will is .all act.

4. Dr. Smith says that to distinguish volitional from voluntary is "arbitrary" and "to multiply vain distinctions." Now an "arbitrary" or "vain distinction" is a distinction founded in mere caprice and not in the nature of things. But will Dr. S. deny that the will and the arm that obeys the will are in nature two different things, and their acts two different acts, and that two different acts need to be distinguished by two different terms? The distinction between the volitional and the voluntary is valid unless Dr. S. can show that a mental faculty and a muscle are one and the same thing.

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5. Dr. Smith, as a retort for the difficulties in which his side is graveled in their endeavors to rid themselves of the term necessity, etc., endeavors to be sarcastic on our disuse of the word self-determine; pretending that (contrary to our plain showing, P. 121) the disuse arises from the exposure by Edwards of its illogical character. The "pluripotential cause," he assures us, is nothing but the old self-determining power over again. Now this identity we not only admit but positively affirm. "Pluripotential power,' 99.66 trary power," are essentially what Samuel Clarke, Whitby, and Fletcher meant by "self-determining power." We fault the term not because it expresses the same thought, but because it expresses it with too little precision. And this power of diverse choice is just the very thing that Edwards professes to demonstrate to be impossible to exist or conceive, as involving the infinite series. So far from obscuring this fact, we wish to emphasize and bring it out into bold prominence. It, then, makes conspicuous the fact, shutting off all contrary pretense, that Edwards proves that the power of otherwise choosing in the given case does not exist; not, that it exists but is never used. That is, he demonstrates the non-existence, not the non-usance of contrary power; he annihilates all mere invariable sequence; he holds no certainty which differs from necessity; no necessity which differs from fatalism. Our disuse of the term self-determination arose (as Dr. S. knows, but ignores that we fully stated) from lexical, not from logical reason. In answering Edwards's logic based upon the term we used the term.

We

declined any logical advantage by laying it aside, and faced his sophisms down in the full use of the term itself.

6. Edwards's definition of Necessity is this: "The full and fixed connection between the thing signified by the subject and predicate of a proposition which affirms something to be true." In this definition we said (P. 61) “Edwards does not say what he means.” He really means, we said, that the necessity lies in the connection; that it is a necessary connection; not that the connection is, necessity itself. And we may here add, by the way, that even if any one should imagine the necessity to be the connective, still the connective is not the connection. Against all this Dr. Smith maintains that Edwards nevertheless "does say just what he means;" namely, that the necessity and the connection are literally identical. The necessity does not "lie in" the connection; but it is the connection.

If Dr. Smith were here, what he is not, correct, if Edwards did really mean that the necessity and the connection were absolutely one and the same thing, it were so much the worse for Edwards; for what we indulgently supposed to be an error in expression then becomes an absurdity in thought. A connection is a co-relation, coherence, inherence, or some kind of junction between two or more things; and whether that junction, etc., be necessary or not, that is, whether the quality of necessity lies in it or not, becomes a further question. So that the junction and its necessity are two things. Thus taking Edwards's and Smith's example, "God is infinite;" we have here the connection of quality, "infi nite," with its subject, "God." The connection is simply inherence; for the quality inheres to the subject. Whether this is a necessary "connection," is a matter of further analysis. But the connection and the necessity are two things. If we find the connection absolutely indissoluble, then we call it necessary. That is, it is a "full and fixed" connection because it has necessity in it. The connection is one thing; its necessity is another.

That Edwards simply made a verbal mistake, is clear from the fact that he, in a later paragraph, uses the very language we say he ought to use. Thus speaking of consequential necessity as exist ing between logical propositions, following consequently upon each other, he says: "This necessity lies in ... the connection of two or more propositions one with another." That is, the necessity is not the connection itself, but "lies in " the connection of the two necessarily connected propositions. But if the necessity is the connection itself, then the "necessity lies in " the necessity. It is both quality and subject.