ble to the truth. Up to this period, for example, freedom of will was supposed by many to imply indifference of will, or that fallen man is not the subject of any controlling, natural bias to evil. Hence, those who held the doctrine of natural depravity were charged with denying the freedom of the will.

It was formerly insisted, too, that freedom of action necessarily implies contingency of action, or that there can be no previous certainty, or moral necessity, relative to the actions of free agents. Hence, many were led to argue, from the conscious freedom of man, against the doctrines of God's foreknowledge and decrees; while others, who admitted these doctrines, felt constrained, on this account, to deny the freedom of the will.

It was moreover asserted by Arminians, and admitted by some distinguished Calvinists, in the days of Edwards, that freedom of will necessarily implies a self-determining power of the will. Calvinists, who made this admission, felt the necessity of maintaining, in opposition to materialists and fatalists, the proper freedom of the will; and they knew not how to do it but by admitting that the will determines itself, or that man originates his own volitions, independent of any external cause.1

It was under these circumstances, that Edwards undertook his celebrated treatise on "The Freedom of the Will." Never was a work of the kind more needed, and few works have ever exerted a greater or better influence. In this work (after occupying a few sections with his definitions of terms) President Edwards goes on to show-in opposition

'The younger Edwards, speaking of the state of things in the religious world, at the time when his father commenced writing his treatise on the will, says: "The Calvinists themselves began to be ashamed of their own cause, and to give it up, so far at least as relates to liberty and necessity. This was true especially of Doctors Watts and Doddridge, who, in their day, were accounted leaders of the Calvinists. They must needs bow in the house of Rimmon, and admit the selfdetermining power, which, once admitted, and pursued to its ultimate results, entirely overthrows the doctrines of regeneration, of our dependence for renewing and sanctifying grace, of absolute decrees, of the saint's perseverance, and of all the other doctrines of grace."— Works, Vol. I. p. 482

to Arminians, Pelagians, and Infidels that liberty of will does not imply indifference of will, or contingence, or a self-determining power, but merely choice, or the power of choice, "without taking into the meaning of the word anything of the cause or original of that choice, or at all considering how the person came to have such a volition." In other words, President Edwards maintained that freedom is an essential property of will. He insisted that "wherever there is volition, there is free action; wherever there is spontaneity, there is liberty; however and by whomsoever that liberty and spontaneity are caused."

This is not the place in which to examine minutely the arguments of Edwards, or to point out the manner in which he disposed of the objections of his subtle adversaries. Suffice it to say that, in the opinion of no less a man than Dugald Stewart, his arguments "were never answered, and never will be;" and his replies to objections were such that, after long and frequent discussion, the fairness and conclusiveness of them have not been successfully impeached.

We have dwelt so long on Edwards's improvements in regard to this one topic of moral agency, that we shall not have time to touch upon some others, which were elaborated solely or chiefly by himself. His treatise on " Original Sin" was, perhaps, less satisfactory to most of his followers, than any of his works; and yet he scarcely differed from the views now prevailing among the orthodox of New England, except in a single point, viz. the constituted oneness of Adam • and his posterity, so that they literally "sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression." Few among us at the present day would say, we imagine, as much as this. Yet we all say, with Edwards, that there is, in the posterity of Adam universally, and as a consequence of his first transgression, a prevailing bias or tendency to sin, through the influence of which they are from the first corrupted; sin is natural to them; and they go on sinning, and only sinning, until they are renewed by sovereign grace. To establish this fundamental doctrine, in opposition to Taylor, Whitby, and others, who denied it, was the main design of Edwards's

treatise; and, although some who revere his name would not adopt his entire phraseology on the subject, yet all agree in regarding his work as, perhaps, the ablest defence of human depravity, and of the connection of this depravity with the first sin of Adam, that was ever written.

Some of the topics referred to by Dr. Edwards were discussed more fully by the followers of his father, than by himself. Thus the difficult question as to the origin of evil, and the reasons why it is suffered to exist, was treated with much ability by Bellamy and Hopkins. Bellamy's "Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin" is a work very generally known. In the year 1759, Hopkins published three sermons on the same subject, which have been less read, but are equally satisfactory.

But it is time that we consider more particularly some of the main points of the Hopkinsian theology.

As the peculiarities of the Hopkinsians were of gradual development, there was not, and could not have been, an entire agreement among the leaders in this movement. Hopkins, though a favorite pupil of the elder Edwards, did not adopt all his statements; nor was Emmons an exact follower of Hopkins; nor do those at the present day who accept, in general, the views of these great theologians, feel bound to follow them implicitly. Freedom of speech and of opinion has always been cultivated among them; and hence, of necessity, there has been, and is, some variety of statement. In presenting an abstract of their opinions, we shall confine ourselves to a few leading points, on which, it is supposed, there is a substantial agreement.1

DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY.

The sovereignty of God belongs to him as the Supreme Disposer, and consists in his perfect right, and perfect abil ity, to do as he pleases. He sits upon the throne of the

We use the word "Hopkinsian" in this Article, not in an ultra and restricted sense, but in its original application, as including all those who adopt, in general the New England explanations, in distinction from those of the older Calvinism. VOL. XIX. No. 75. 54

universe, "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion," where he reigns supreme and alone, doing all his pleasure. Job understood this doctrine when he said: "God is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth." Nebuchadnezzar understood it, when he said of the Most High: "He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" Still better is the doctrine expressed by Jehovah himself: " I, even I am he, and there is no god with me. I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand." "I am God, and there is none else; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure."1

God is a sovereign in his purposes. They are eternal and immutable like himself. They are from everlasting to everlasting, neither needing nor suffering any change. They are also strictly universal, extending to all beings and worlds, to all creatures and events, to everything that was, or is, or is to come, throughout his immense dominions.

God is a sovereign also in his providence. His providence is the great revealer and executor of his purposes. He is rolling along the vast wheel of his providence in its appointed course; never disappointed or defeated in any of his plans; upholding, controlling, and governing all things. "Who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph. i. 11).

God is a sovereign, too, in the dispensations of his grace. "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth" (Rom. ix. 18). He takes one and leaves another, saves one and destroys another, as seemeth good in his sight. Nor is he under obligations to explain to his creatures, any further than he pleases, the reasons of his dispensations. These are among the secret things,

1 Job. xxiii. 13; Dan. iv. 35; Deut. xxxii. 39; Isa. xlvi. 9.

which belong only to himself. "He giveth not account of any of his matters" (Job xxxiii. 13).

Still, there is nothing arbitrary or oppressive in the sovereignty of God, or in his mode of executing it. It is an infinitely wise and benevolent sovereignty. Like himself, it is holy, just, and good. He has the best reasons for all his purposes and dispensations, though these, for the present, may be a secret to us. He is aiming, in all, at the noblest ends, by the wisest means. He is promoting, by all, his own highest glory, and the greatest possible good.

Nor is there aught in the sovereignty of God which allies it to the doctrine of heathen fate. The fates of the heathen were an endless relentless chain of causes and effects; holding everything by an invincible, physical necessity; binding alike both gods and men. The sovereign purposes of God are the plans of an infinitely wise and good being, freely adopted and freely executed; not merely leaving, but securing, his intelligent creatures in the exercise of a free, responsible agency. But this brings us to another point of Hopkinsian divinity.

THE DOCTRINE OF FREE-AGENCY.

We have already given some account of the labors of the first President Edwards, in this department of theology. His great work on the "Freedom of the Will," was designed to remove certain objections which had long been urged against the Calvinistic doctrines. And most effectually it did remove them. They could no more stand the fire of his logic, to use the language of Isaac Taylor, "than a citadel of rooks could maintain its integrity against a volley of musketry." He exposed to contempt, in all their evasions, the Arminian notions of contingency, and indifferency, and a self-determining power, as being essential to freedom of

action.

Hopkinsians of a later day would not hold themselves responsible for every statement in Edwards on the Will. Owing to a defective mental philosophy, some of his expressions are ambiguous, and may be interpreted to signify the