invoking, or procuring it; but the subject must allow himself to be aroused and must freely follow. God offers his help to deliver from the fall, but the sinner must consent to be helped and em- brace the offered aid ; if he accepts, he is taken by the divine Spirit, and gradually, although in this life never perfectly, restored to the heights from which he fell. The Spirit of God does not work by necessitating, although he is actively urgent ; his omnipo- tence sets itself a limit in human liberty, which it does not over- step ; for such violation of free agency would be the destruction of the moral order of the world which eternal wisdom has founded on liberty." He therefore justifies the Papal condehination of the Jansenist doctrine : " Quando Deus vult animam salvam facere, et earn tangit interiori gratise suas manu, nulla voluntas huraana ei resistit. — Dei gratia nihil aliud est, quam ejus omnipotens volun- tas." 1 On the following page,^ he says, " The Catholic doctrine that there are in fallen men moral and religious powers which do not always sin, and which must in the new birth be called into exercise, gave rise to the idea, that this activity of what is natural in man, was a transition into grace, that is, that the right use of what is natural conditions or secures grace. This would indeed be Pelagian, and the man, not Christ, would merit grace, and
grace cease to be grace The delicate and refined sense of
the Catholic doctrine, which carefully distinguishes between nature and grace, avoids that difficulty. The finite, even when sinless, may stretch itself to the utmost, it never I'eaches the Infinite, so as to seize and appropriate it Nature may honestly unfold all its ])owers, it never can by and out of itself be sublimated into the Supernatural ; the human can by no exertion of power make itself divine. There is an impassable gulf between the two, if grace does not interpose. The divine must come down to the human, if the human is to become divine." This is philosophy. The ques- tion is not, whether the finite can attain the Infinite, or the human Ijecome divine. Nor is the question between Romanists and Protestants, Whether fallen men can become holy without the supernatural grace of the Holy Spirit. But the question is, Whether the regeneration of the soul is due to the nature of the Spirit's influence, and to the purpose of God, or to the consent and cooperation of the subject of that influence.
1 Symbolik, 6th edit., Mainz, 1843, ch. in. § ii. pp. 105, 108.
2 Pages 113, 114.
720 PART m. ch. XIV. — vocation.
The Synergistic Controversy. The Lutherans from the beginning held the doctrine of originiil sin in its most extreme form. In the Augsburg Confession, in the Apology for that Confession, in the Smalcald Articles, and finally, in the Form of Concord, that doctrine is stated in stronger terms than in any other Christian Symbol. If men are since the fall in a state of condemnation, if the hereditary corruption derived from Adam is not only truly sin, but the deepest and greatest of all sins ; if the soul is not merely morally sick and enfeebled, but spiritually dead, as taught in those Symbols, then it follows : (1.) That man since the fall has no ability to anything spiritually good. (2.) That in order to his return to God he needs the life-giving power of the Spirit of God. (3.) That the sinner can in no way prepare himself to be the subject of this grace, he cannot merit it, nor can he cooperate with it. Regeneration is exclusively the work of the Spirit, in which man is the subject and not the agent. (4.) That, therefore, it depends on God, and not on man, who are, and who are not, to be made partakers of eternal life. (5.) That consequently God acts as a sovereign, according to his good pleas- ure, and according to the counsel of his own will, in saving some and in passing by others, who are left to the just recompense of their sins. All these inferences are, as Augustinians believe, drawn in Scripture, and were freely accepted by Luther and, at first, by the Lutheran Church. Before the death of the Reformer, and more openly after that event, many of the Lutheran theolo- gians adopted the later views of Melancthon, who taught, " Con- currunt tres caustie bouse actionis, verbum Dei, Spiritus Sanctus, et humana voluntas assentiens nee repugnans verbo Dei. Posset enim excutere, ut excutit Saul sua sponte." ^ He defined free- will as " facultiis applicandi se, ad gratiam."^ In these views, which of necessity involved a modification of the docti'ine of orig- inal sin, Melancthon was followed by a large class of Lutheran theologians, especially those of Wittemberg. The theologians of Jena, with one prominent exception, Strigel, adhered to the old L\ithei-an doctrine. Besides this discussion about sin and grace, there were several other subjects wliich greatly agitated the Lu- theran Church. The doctrine concerning the person of Clirist, the nature of jastification, the necessity of good works, toleration of Papal ceremonies (the adiaphora), and the Lord's Supper, vere debated with so much zeal that the Protestant rulers were 1 Loci Com. p. 90. 2 page 92.