making it a substance, which desti'oys its nature as sin. This theoi'j is so thoroughly anti-theistic and anti-Christian, that although long prevailing as a heresy in the Church, it never entered into any living connection witli Christian doctrine.
Sin regarded as a mere Limitation of Being.
The second anti-Christian theory of the nature of sin is that which makes it a mere negation, or limitation of being. Being, substance, is good. " Omne quod est, in quantum aliqua sub- stantia est, et bonum [est],"^ says Augustine. God as the abso- lute substance is the supreme good. The absolute evil would be nothing. Therefore the less of being, the less of good ; and all negation, or limitation of being is evil, or sin. Spinoza ^ says, " Quo magis unusquisque, suum utile quaBi'ere, hoc est suum esse conservare conatur et potest, eo magis virtute prasditus est; contra quatenus unusquisque suum utile, hoc est suum esse conser- vare negligit, eatenus est impotens." In his demonstration of that proposition he makes power and goodness identical, potentia and virtus are the same. Hence the want of virtue, or evil, is weakness, or limitation of being. Still more distinctly, does Pro- fessor Baur of Tiibingen, present this view of the nature of sin.^ He says, " Evil is what is finite ; for the finite is negative ; the negation of the infinite. Everything finite is relatively nothing ; a negativity which, in the constant distinction of plus and minus of reality, appears in different forms." Again, " If freedom from sin is the removal of all limitation, so is it clear, that only an end- less series of gradations can bring us to the point where sin is reduced to a vanishing minimum. If this minimum should entirely disappear, then the being, thus entirely free from sin, becomes one with God, for God only is absolutely sinless. But if other beings than God are to exist, there must be in them, so far as they are not infinite as God is, for that very reason, a minimum of evil." The distinction between good and evil, is, therefore, merely quan- titative, a distinction between more or less. Being is good, the limi- tation of being is evil. This idea of sin lies in the nature of the Pantheistic system. If God be the only substance, the only life, the only agent, then He is the sum of all that is, or, rather all that is, is the manifestation of God ; the form of his existence. Con- sequently, if evil exists it is as much a form of the existence of
1 De Genesi ad Lileram, xi. xiii. 17 ; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. iii. p. 450, d. « Ikhices, Par. iv. propo3. xx.; Works, edit. Jena, 1803, vol. ii. p. 217. S In the TuMnsen ZeiUchri/t, 1834, Drittes Heft.
134 PART n. ch. viu. — sm.
God as good ; and can be nothing but imperfect development, or mere limitation of being.
This theory, it is clear, (1.) ignores the difference between the malum metaphysicum and the malum morale^ between the phys- ical and the moral ; between a stunted tree and a wicked man. Instead of explaining sin, it denies its existence. It is therefore in conflict with the clearest of intuitive truths and the strongest of our instinctive convictions. There is nothing of which we are more sure, not even our own existence, than we are of the difference between sin and limitation of being, between what is morally wrong and what is a mere negation of power. (2.) This theory assumes the truth of the pantheistic system of the universe, and therefore is at variance with our religious nature, which demands and assumes the existence of a personal God. (3.) In destroying the idea of sin, it destroys all sense of moral obligation, and gives unrestrained liberty to all evil passions. It not only teaches that all that is, is right ; that everything that exists or happens has a right to be, but that the only standard of virtue is power. The strongest is the best. As Cousin says, the victor is always right ; the victim is always wrong. The conqueror is always more moral than the vanquished. Virtue and prosperity, misfortune and vice, he says, are in necessary harmony. Feebleness is a vice (i. e., sin), and therefore is always punished and beaten.^ This principle is adopted by all such writers as Carlyle, who in their hero worsliip, make the strong always the good ; and represent the murderer, the pirate, and the persecutor, as always more moral and more wortiiy of admiration than their victims. Satan is far more worthy of homage than the best of men, as in him there is more of being and power, and he is the seducer of angels and the destroyer of men. A more thoroughly demoniacal system than this, the mind of man has never conceived. Yet this system has not only its philosophical advocates, and its practical disciples, but it percolates through much of the popular literature both of Europe and
America.
Leibnitz's Theory of Privation.
Nearly allied in terms, but very different in spirit and purpose from this doctrine of Spinoza and his successors, is the theory of Leibnitz, who also resolves sin into privation, and refers it to the necessary limitation of being. Leibnitz, however, was a theist, and his object in his "Thdodicde" was to vindicate God by proving that
1 History of Modem Philosophy, translation by Wight, New York, 1852, vol. i. pp. 182-187.