matter is enunciated in the words: “‘All men are, so far as concerns God, written in the Book of Life (benev- olentia universalis); but who of them all stays written in it, is finally determined only at the end of the day.” The result cannot be known beforehand, even by God.” It is not enough that redemption should engage the will, so that we may say that there is no redemption “except the sinner very energetically cooperate with it," even if this be interpreted to mean, “permits himself to be redeemed." " We must go оп and say that “redemption must fail of its end and remain without effect, however much the divine will of love and counsel of salvation might wish otherwise, if effect is not given it by man's inwardly bringing it to pass that, out of his own initiative, he grasps the rescuing hand and does repentance, breaks with his sin and leads a righteous life." When Schmidt comes, therefore, to speak of the Application of Sal- vation by the Holy Spirit," he is explicit in denying to the Holy Spirit any power to produce salvation in an unwilling soul. “Even the Holy Spirit," he tells us, *can in the presence of the free will that belongs to man as such by nature, compel no one to accept salvation. Even He can accomplish his saving pur- pose with us only if we do not obstruct, do not with- draw from, do not oppose his work for us. All this stands in our power and he is helpless (ohnmächtig) with respect to it if we misuse it. . . . He who wills not to be saved cannot be helped even by the Holy Spirits; [48]
AUTOSOTERISM
Self-assertion could scarcely go further; not even in those perhaps stirring but certainly somewhat blustering verses by W. E. Henley:
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
This is of course Pelagianism unashamed—unless we should prefer to call it sheer heathenism. And yet it is cited with warm approval by an esteemed minister of the Church of Scotland, writing in quite its spirit on the great subject of “Election.” He uses it indeed immediately to support a cheerful assertion of the fundamental Pelagian principle that ability limits obligation: “ That conscious life which speaks saying, ‘Thou oughtest,’ wakes a no less certain echo within, which says, ‘Because I ought I can.’ That ‘can’ [49 ]
THE PLAN OF SALVATION
abides forever, however enfeebled it may become.’’” Pelagius could ask nothing more.
It may be inferred from such a phenomenon as that which has last been mentioned that the Reformed Churches, though retaining their Augustinian con- fession as the Lutheran could not, and sloughing off the Arminian semi-pelagianism which rose in the early seventeenth century to vex them as the Luther- ans could not their synergism, have yet in our own day become honeycombed with the same Pelagianiz- ing conceptions. This is so far true that we are met on all hands to-day, even in the Reformed Churches, with the most unmeasured assertions of human in- dependence, and of the uncontrollableness and indeed absolute unpredictableness of the action of the human wil. The extremes to which this can go are fairly illustrated by certain, no doubt somewhat incidental, remarks made by Dr. David W. Forrest in the un- happy book which he calls, certainly very mislead- ingly, “Тһе Authority of Christ" (1906). In his hands human freedom has grown so all-powerful as fairly to abolish not only the common principles of evangelical religion but all faith in divine providence itself. He has adopted in effect a view of free agency which reserves to man complete independence and excludes all divine control or even foresight of human action. Unable to govern the acts of free agents, God is reduced to the necessity of constantly adjust- ing himself to them. Accordingly God has to accept in his universe much that he would much prefer
[50]
AUTOSOTERISM