III. Ability and TAherfy. — Hence Augustinians have sharply emphasized the distinction between liberty, the inalienable property of the human soul as a free rational moral agent, and ability, i. e. the power to will and do up to the full measure of our responsibility; or the power to will in a manner contrary to the prevailing moral state of the soul itself; or the power, by a mere volition, to change that prevalent moral state. The same dis- tinction is signalized, by German philosophical theolo- gians, by the terms Formale Freiheit, or ability, and Reak Frei/ieit, or liberty. The neglect of this distinc- tion has led to much confusion. Augustine, Luther, and many of the older Augustinian theologians, in terms denied liberty, when they really meant only to deny to men moral ability to obey the divine law independently of supernatural grace. This has led many honest op- ponents of Calvinism, imperfectly accjuainted with Au- gustinian theological literature, and the usage of tech- nical language which prevails in it, to misunderstand altogether the meaning of many of our classical author- ities. Calvinists, as they have understood themselves, have always maintained the freedom of the human will, and at the same time, and in perfect consistency, have denied the moral ability of man since the fall to obey God's law without supernatural grace. They have also always, and with equal consistency, maintained that all events, including the volitions of free agents as well as tliose dependent upon necessary causes, have been from eternity certainly future, and that this certain futuri- tion has been determined by the sovereign foreordina- tion of God.
But in all these points, except the last, Wesleyans and Calvinists agree. Different explanations and ad- justments of these great commonplaces of Evangelical Christianity may distinguish them, but, as above gen- erally stated, they are at one. God did create man with a nature holy, antecedent to all action, yet mutable (Watson, Institutes, pt. ii, ch. vi and xviii ; and Wesley, as there quoted by Watson). Man, after his fall, con- tinues to be a free and responsible moral agent, and yet is morally depraved before individual action, and is un- able, before regeneration, and without the assistance of supernatural grace, to obey the divine law ; and the .operation of this grace does no violence to his freedom of will {Methodist A rticles, art. viii ; Watson, Institutes, pt. ii, ch. xviii; and Wesley on Original Sin). Saints in glory will be free, yet confirmed in holiness and not liable to fall into sin (Watson, Institutes, pt, ii, ch. xxix). The free acts of men and angels have always been cer- tainly future to the infinite foreknowledge of God {ibid. pt, ii, ch. iv).
IV. Foreknowledge and Predestination. — Obviously, therefore, the only point at which the essential elements of the Calvinistic system even appear to bear upon the nature or conditions of human free agency in a manner different from that in which the essential principles of evangelical Arminianism bear upon the same is the point of the divine decrees. Calvinists hold that God has from eternity immutably foreknown Rudforeorduin- ed whatsoever comes to pass. Wesleyans hold that God has from eternity immutably foreknown whatso- ever comes to pass. Both equally involve certainty,
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and neither involves anything else. Watson says "the great fallacy in the argiuneut, that the certain prescience of a moral action destroys its contingency, lies in sup- posing that contingency and certainty are the opposite of each other." Anti-Calvinists commonly understand that divine foreordiiiation necessarily includes the de- termination upon the part of (iod efficiently to bring to pass the things foreordained. But all events are effects either of necessary or of free causes. Foreordination of the effects of necessary causes, of course, does involve a putting-forth of divine efficiency to bring them to pass either immediately or mediately. But the foreordina- tion of the effects of free causes, such as the volitions of free agents, of course, does not involve upon the part of God any purpose of putting forth efficiency to bring the foreordained volition to pass, except that involved in bringing the free agent into existence whom he foresaw would freely execute the volition in question ; and in giving him power, either natural or gracious, to execute it. God eternally saw in idea all possible free agents, under all possible conditions, and all the volitions which they would freely exercise under all those conditions, if they were so created and conditioned. This knowl- edge {scientia simplicis intelliyentim) precedes and con- ditions all foreordination. He then sovereignly chose out of the possible the entire system of things he de- sired to make actually future, and bj' this choice he made the futurition of all things certain. This foreor- dination precedes and conditions his foreknowledge of things certainly future. In order to execute it, God, in creation and providence, brings into existence and con- trols in action all necessary agents, including some sides of human nature; but as to free volitions, he simply brings the agents into existence and conditions them according to his plan, and graciously or naturally sup- plies them with the power necessary to will and act as predetermined, and then leaves them freely and contin- gently to will as he had certainly foreseen they would do. Or, as an eminent Calvinistic authority prefers to put it, "The Calvinistic position is stated with sufficient distinct- ness when it is said that the existing system of things or world-plan was present in the divine mind from all eterni- ty, and was therefore both foreknown and foreordained." Thus the Calvinistic doctrine of the foreordination of free acts, like the Wesleyan doctrine of foreknowledge (which really does not differ from it as much as many suppose), simply involves the previous immutable certainty of the act, and in no way affects the freedom of the agent or the contingency of his act {Westminster Confession of Faitk,'in, 1). It is free in its very essential nature. It is foreseen that the agent would exercise it if created and so conditioned. God makes it certainly future by his purpose to so create and so place that man. His creation and providential condition are brought about by the efficiency of God. His volition, although foreseen to be certainly future, is his own free spontaneous self-de- termination. Even if this explanation should be proved untrue or absurd, surely a thousand other reconciliations of these revealed truths may be possible to divine, al- though they should all be impossible to human, reason. Hence, neither Calvinist nor evangelical Arminian can consistently hold a theory of the will involving the principles of Pelagianism which both repudiate. And hence, also, Wesleyans and Calvinists agreeing (1) that God's foreknowledge proves that all events are certainly future, and (•2) that there can be no foreordination of a human volition in any sense or degree inconsistent with its perfect freedom, have, each of them, in consistency with the logic of their respective systems, precisely the same range of choice as to theories of the will as the other. Principal William Cunningham incontroverti- bly proves this in essay ix. Reformers and Theology of the Reformation. That foreknoAvledge leads to foreor- dination is argued by professor L. T). M'Cabe, D.D., LL.D., in his Chautauqua Address for 1880, and in his work on The Forehnoivledge of God; and hence he proposes to revolutionize Wesleyan theology by the introduction of