THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
do much to enlarge the influence of the revivals which had begun under Edwards. Hopkins began his career in a storm of opposition called out by his adherence to high Calvinism. His first published work was entitled Sin through the Divine Interposition an Advantage to the Universe (1759). The title was enough for most readers. It occupied substantially the position of Bellamy. More serious was the opposition to his views upon conversion and regeneration. Over against this new theology of the new birth was a tendency which sought to win men to God by presenting something less radical than an entire, immediate, and voluntary surrender to God as the condition of the divine acceptance. Mayhew, Mills, Hart, and Hemmenway represent various forms of this opposition, which was met by Hopkins in a series of tracts. One of them, which went to the root of the opposition, was the Inquiry into the Nature of True Holiness (1773), which presented the theory of Edwards, but in an original way, and modified it by making all sin to consist in selfishness, as all holiness in benevolence. By all this work Hopkins was finally brought to the preparation of his System (1793). It was the first system of theology prepared in New England which could be called original; but it followed quite strictly the conventional selection and arrangement of topics. The modifying elements are Edwardsean, that moral agency consists in choice, that man possesses true ability to repent, that love is the essence of virtue. Hopkins advances upon Edwards in the emphasis which he lays upon the real freedom of man. He grounds his doctrine of the divine decrees distinctly upon the divine love. He defends the freedom of men under the decree by asserting that the decree includes freedom, though he does not say how. He really fails to deliver himself from the supralapsarianism of his predecessors. The doctrine of sin he improves by teaching that " there is, strictly speaking, no other sin but actual sin." And upon the atonement, he teaches the Grotian theory distinctly as to what is accomplished by the sufferings of Christ, but holds that there is another part of Christ's work, which he accomplished by his obedience. This is, however, not imputed to believers, as in the old theology, but by a merit of congruity Christ procures the gift of the Holy Spirit for believers, by whom they are sanctified and made meet to receive eternal life. Thus the new ideas have begun to work; and thus there has appeared before the second century of American life has closed a system which, for comprehensiveness, thoroughness, high tone, power of reasoning, independence, ethical and spiritual value, and solid contributions to the advancing school, deserves to be called a great work.
IV. The Development. — 1. The Younger Edwards to Samuel Harris; Up to this point the new theology had been wrought out by patient thinkers in the retirement of quiet studies, but their results had commonly been produced in reply to some distinct call, some error which had arisen, some need which had been felt. This continued to be the case; and the development of the school was always conditioned by controversy. The doctrine of the atonement was no exception. There arrived in
America in 1770 an English Universalist, John Murray (q.v.), who began to advocate universal salvation upon the basis of the theory of lm ^°^reine James Relly (q.v.), of London, which
Atonement. he caUed " union-" Jt was nothing but the old Calvinism of satisfaction and imputation plus the proposition that Christ died for all. Relly concluded that Christ's merits were imputed to all, and therefore that all were saved. This conclusion could not be accepted by the New England divines. Their views upon the subject of the future had been settled by long consideration. But the logic of the Universalist argument was good, and hence the trouble must lie in the premises. It could not lie in the proposition that Christ died for all. Bellamy had shown this. It must therefore lie in the proposition that Christ's merits are imputed to us. The Grotian theory of the atonement had already been introduced into the New England thinking on account of its closer agreement with the theory of virtue, and the idea was already familiar that God does not act in the matter of sin as the offended party, chiefly concerned in the satisfaction of his own attribute of justice, and that the sufferings of Christ are not the payment of the sinners' debt but a penal example, opening the way for the free exercise of God's merciful love of men. Following this suggestion, a group of thinkers in Connecticut, with Stephen West of Stockbridge (q.v.), set forth almost simultaneously the New England theory of the atonement as the answer of New England to Universalism. Jonathan Edwards the Younger (q.v.) was the chief of these, and his sermons at New Haven in 1785 are to be regarded as its first adequate presentation. As presented by Grotius, the theory was legal in its forms and without the ideal side. That ideal was given by the Edwardsean theory of virtue. God's government rests upon his character, and that character is love. Love puts men under a moral government, and controls them by motives. It prescribes just penalties for disobedience; but these will not be exacted simply because God is just. There is no virtue in an act of justice apart from love. Hence God will act from love — that is, from a regard for the general good of the universe. His character must be shielded, his law maintained, because love to men demands all this. But if this can be done, authority maintained, sinners forgiven, and yet no moral influence exerted thereby upon the sinner calculated to result in his hurt, love demands that it shall be done. All this is actually effected by setting forth Christ as a penal example. Thus public justice, or love, is satisfied by the atonement, but distributive justice not; and it is rendered consistent with the good of the universe to forgive repentant sinners, but the debt of man is not paid nor are the merits of Christ imputed to him. Thus the major proposition of the Rellyan argument is taken away. From this time on the words " moral government " are found on many a page of the New England writers. They worked patiently upon the theory, developing this feature and that with some greater degree of fulness; and yet the main ideas were fully stated in the beginning. Stephen West (q.v.) brought out the relation