WHAT then is Arminianism? As Arminius himself first puts it in 1604, it sounds very innocent. “God, being a righteous judge and kind father,” he says, “had from the beginning, made a distinction between the individuals of a fallen race, according to which He would remit the sins of those who should give them up, and put their trust in Christ, and would bestow on them eternal life; also that it is agreeable to God, that all men be converted, and, having come to the knowledge of the truth, remain therein, but He compels no one.”
This sounds plausible and innocent until you put beside it the clear statement of fact. God, from eternity, from a fallen, lost race, hath chosen some to salvation. From this it comes about that these are drawn to faith and piety, and by God’s grace preserved. The remainder of the human race are left in their original and natural condition of depravity—go on to sin and die in condemnation.
Take the Arminian statement and pull it to pieces. It is based on Free Will and no Fall. Man can determine himself either way as he likes. God foreseeing this, decrees that those who choose holiness shall be saved, and that those who do not shall be lost. In other words, God has nothing to do with salvation, except to register human decisions as they occur. He does not know who, or not, will be saved, but waits on the after event for information, and to gather up whatever control of the creature He may.
Calvinism denies this statement at its every point. Man is fallen. A sunken creature, he is still sinking by his own weight. His tendency is down. He is a stone which has dropped from a steeple, and cannot lift itself up. He is water running down hill, which cannot flow back.
He cannot, therefore, determine himself in the upward direction toward God, but is dead to holiness and dead in sin. God, therefore, must come in to quicken. “You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” How many God will quicken, awaken and draw to Himself, God must determine. The choice is
* This article is a continuation of “James Arminius and His Teaching,” which appeared in the November issue.—Editor.
His. He must choose. Yea, He has chosen already, and from eternity foreknows His people whom He has ordained.
Arminianism is the doctrine of Satan and makes man a god. Calvinism is the doctrine of Christ, and makes man the poor and needy, helpless, undeserving debtor of unmerited Free Grace.
Calvinism, in experience, is based on new birth. This is an argument which does not weigh with the Arminian, because he has no new birth.
If you try to describe a sapodillo to one who never tasted, never saw the fruit, you leave no impression. By and by some one else comes along and denies that sapodillos are sweet, or that there is such a fruit. Your man does not know. He does not care. He cannot. He has no interest. But here is another. He comes from the West Indies. He has eaten sapodillos all his life—has seen them grow. You mention sapodillos, and this Cuban cries, “I know that fruit. It is sweet like honey and round and breaks into three segments—a black seed in each segment. Oh, I have eaten them 10,000 times.” If any one denies these things he will contend it.
Our arguments from the new birth seem light and empty to a natural man. He runs right back to choices. “I chose,” or “did not choose.” “I,” “I,” his religion is “I.” But here is another who has had another experience. He chose and chose, and still remained what he was. He resolved and resolved and broke down. He turned over a new leaf, and lo! it was the old leaf blotted. Then God came in and touched on his life. Something moved him, and he hardly knew what, and infused a new spirit within him. And now, this second man cries, “God!” “God!” His religion is interposition. God came in and God made me willing. God chose; “Salvation is of the Lord.” This thing is to the Jew a stumbling block—to the Greek foolishness. It must be. These men—the Jew, the ritualist, the Greek, the intellectual thinker—never experienced it. They never got beyond opinions, sentiment, endeavours, ceremonies of the church—a few resolutions and tears.
What do they know of a mystery—an inward revelation of Christ—a true revolution of nature? How can they ascribe all the glory to God It is absurd even to think it.
The Arminian denies that God might justly pass by our guilty lost race, as He did pass by angels. He denies that in fact, God passes by any. He holds that
the same chance is given to all—the same appliances—the same gracious assistance and the same power. If not, he cries “Unfair!” Whoever wills then, originates, over and above these things common to all, his own act. He distinguishes himself, and makes himself to differ. He saves his own self and owes to God nothing which God did not owe him before.
“God, if He let the race fall, was bound,” says the Arminian, to “provide a Saviour for the fallen. He was also bound to give an equal grace to all, that all may get hold of that Saviour. If all have an equal grace, then those who use it, make themselves to differ.” That flatly contradicts St Paul,* reverses the whole Bible, and, to His face, withstands Almighty God. The other system, the system which opposes Arminius, holds that God—regarding a fallen, guilty, lost, sinful race—a race deserving to die, hath mercy on whom He Himself will have mercy. All are hell deserving, but He rescues a multitude whom no man can number by the distinguishing grace of the Holy Spirit and by the blood of His beloved Son.
For this Gospel system there are these things to say: 1st. It bows to God and submits to His sovereignty. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” 2nd. While not free from difficulties to our carnal, finite reason, it covers the facts of the case, as the other does not. We feel that we are fallen. We feel we are helpless. We feel we cannot save ourselves nor help to do it, and that we need to be saved. 3rd. The Bible system turns on faith, not choices, efforts which are works. It hinges salvation on faith. “I, Martin Luther, an unworthy preacher of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thus profess and believe that this article: That faith alone without works can justify before God shall never be overthrown, neither by the Emperor, nor by the Turk, nor by the Tartar, nor by the Persian, nor by the Pope with all his cardinals, bishops, sacrificers, monks, nuns, kings, princes, powers of this world, nor yet by all the devils in hell. This article shall stand fast whether they will or no. This is the true Gospel. Jesus Christ redeemed us from our sins and He only. This most firm and certain truth is the voice of Scripture, though the world and all the devils rage and roar.
* I. Cor. iv. 7—“For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”
If Christ alone takes away our sins, we cannot do it by our works; and as it is impossible to embrace Christ but by faith, so He cannot be embraced by works. Faith, then, must embrace Christ, before works can follow, and it must embrace Him and hold Him alone, without any consideration whatever of works. This, this only is the Gospel. In it will I abide. Amen and Amen!” 4th. If faith and faith alone embrace Christ, then this faith, going out into the invisible, to embrace One whom I have never seen with my eyes, and to cast on Him my whole destiny, is a God-given faith—a special distinguishing faith, not common to all—not possible to all. “The faith of God’s elect.” 5th, Every man who has this kind of faith knows where it comes from and recognises it as something immortal—part of his new nature which cannot be lost.
To recapitulate. If I am an Arminian I must deny Predestination and I must hold: 1st. That our race possesses a free will to do that which is good. 2nd. That justification comes by a meritorious faith—i.e., by a faith of my own, and which merits. 3rd. That if the faith is my own and from me, I may lose it, and there is no certain assurance.
If I am a Calvinist I assert, on the other hand, Predestination—then: 1st. Man fallen has no free will to do what is pleasing to God. 2nd. Justification is by faith, which is “the gift of God.” 3rd. “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance” on God’s part—or my part. Once a believer always a believer. “My sheep shall never perish.”
The battle, then, is seen to range around the first point. “Down with predestination!” is the cry of all the enemies of Evangelical truth. “Get that doctrine out and we will agree.” “Yes,” is our answer, “Get that out and you get all out.” But why contend it? Because we are set of God to contend it. . . . Because the battle of truth is the battle of life. Better die than lie, or run from a lie because we fear to face it.
“We ought to set ourselves,” says Calvin in his sermon on Hymenæus and Philetus, “We ought to set ourselves against perversions of the truth and to rebuke them sharply. For if we wink at them and let them pass, we give them our support. And then we may boast as we please about being Christians, but there are more devils among us than Christians if we countenance falsehood.” “Therefore,” goes on the Re-
former, “therefore, let us look well to the doctrine entrusted to us, and if we see wicked persons trying to infect the Church of God, to darken the doctrine or to destroy it, let us endeavour to bring their works to light that every one may behold them, and thereby be enabled to shun them. If we attend not to these things we are traitors to God and have no zeal for His honour, nor for the salvation of His Church. We must be the out-and-out enemies of wickedness, if we will serve God. It is not enough for us to refrain ourselves from wrong and sin, but we must condemn these as much as possible that they may not gain influence or get the upper hand.”
These trumpet tones of Calvin tell us how men spoke and felt to whom God’s truth was dear, in times that tried men’s souls. My brother, do men, of this day, class thee along with the Puritans? Then
“Bear the honour well, right noble is
Thine ancestry; and if thro’ following Him,
Who bore thy sin, the world should frown,
Lift up thy head—fear not,
For He who made thee His,
Will give thee courage, honour, influence,
And that true victory which ever crowns
His free-born sons.”
Modern Thought.
THOUGHT is the backbone of study, and if more ministers would think, what a blessing it would be! Only, we want men who will think about the revealed truth of God, and not dreamers who evolve religions out of their own consciousness. Nowadays we are pestered with a set of fellows who must needs stand on their head and think with their feet. Romancing is their notion of meditation. Instead of considering revealed truth, they excogitate a mess of their own, in which error and nonsense and conceit appear in about equal parts; and they call this broth “modern thought.” We want men who will try to think straight, and yet think deep, because they think God’s thoughts. Far be it from me to urge you to imitate the boastful thinkers of this age, who empty their meeting-houses, and then glory that they preach to the cultivated and intellectual. It is miserable cant. Earnest thoughts upon the things which are assuredly believed among us is quite another matter, and to that I urge you.—C. H. Spurgeon’s “Lectures to my Students.”
Notes of Sermons.
BY THE REV. KENNETH BAYNE, GREENOCK.