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New England Theology
the doctrine of the person of Christ. The weight of his argument was, however, exegetical; and here in the estimation even of a Unitarian critic (Ellis) he proved his main point, that the doctrine of the true deity of Christ is the doctrine of the New Testament. The contest was a drawn battle. The Unitarians made a demand for a rationale which the orthodox did not meet, although they substantially taught that whatever was Biblical was rational. Not to meet the demand was, therefore, in a measure to fail. The orthodox made a Biblical argument which the Unitarians could not invalidate, although they were bound, by their own adherence to the inspiration of the Scriptures, to show that their new positions were the true meaning of the Bible. The orthodox were still maintaining the principle of Biblical authority in theology, and their thinking was being lamed by it, unconsciously to themselves. The Unitarians had already substantially passed over upon the ground of pure rationalism, but were hampered by their supposed adherence to the inspiration of the Scriptures. The time had not come on either side for complete clearness of thought.
Yet the antagonists had come so near to one another in respect to the Trinity and Christology that one questions why they did not come nearer. The answer is to be seen in the further development of the controversy, particularly in the 4. The writings of Ware and Woods. The difof the TTni ^erence between the two parties lay
tarians. deeper than has yet appeared. The Unitarians were full of the thought of the dignity of human nature, and they greatly softened the idea of sin and guilt. They were thus out of sympathy with the spiritual and experiential attitude of the orthodox, with their practises of worship and service, with revivals and missionary efforts. They were religiously sterile and cold. In fact these defects had appeared long since, for in the time of Edwards the same religious community out of which Unitarianism ultimately sprung had opposed the revivals; and when James Freeman (q.v.) carried King's Chapel in Boston (1785) over to Unitarianism, a certain detachment from the sterner and sadder realities of life marked the new preaching. What theoretical dogmatics might not have been able to do, difference of tone and estrangement of sympathies effectually accomplished, and the two parties separated in church fellowship as well as theology, and a new denomination was produced. The result is the stranger since the Unitarians were, after all, children of the same theological home as the Trinitarians, had as generally adopted the distinguishing feature of the Edwardsean school, the principle of benevolence, as their opponents, and emphasized many of the cardinal maxims of the other tendency, even anticipating sometimes results to which the Edwardseans were finally to come.
V. The Ripened Product: The name of N. W. Taylor has already been mentioned, who seized upon the suggestions of Burton to develop a better doctrine of the will than New England had yet had. A large part of his active life was passed in theological controversy, to which he was introduced by
a Concio which he preached at New Haven in 1828 to an assembly of clergymen. In this sermon 1 "Tav- ^e mcidentally introduced the topic lorism." °^ ^e prevention of sin, as to which he advanced the view, arising from his new conception of the will as free under whatever pressure of motives might be brought to bear upon it, that, possibly, owing to the nature of moral agency, God could not prevent sin, or at least the present degree of sin, in the moral system. Three important controversies sprung from this single proposal. The first was with Joseph Harvey, who regarded Taylor as having wholly gone over to Arminianism because he seemed to have relinquished the certainty of human moral action, and understood him as teaching that sin is an evil which God did not choose to permit but which he could not prevent. The second was with Leonard Woods of Andover, who discussed the prevention of sin from the basis of the Burtonian kind of necessity, aside from which theory as to the action of the will, there was little difference between the antagonists, as Taylor was careful to point out. More serious was the third controversy, that with Bennet Tyler (q.v.), which had its roots in the distant past, in the long interest of New England in the theory of conversion, and was set in motion by a Dissertation on the Means of Regeneration (1827) by Gardiner Spring (q.v.). Upon the basis of Emmons' theology, Spring taught that no motives presented to men can produce in them holy love to God. Taylor had been a great revival preacher, and he felt this doctrine to be bad because so paralyzing to all human effort, and he therefore opposed it upon the basis of his new views of human nature. There was in man a neutral point to which motives might appeal, and this point gave courage to the preacher and effectiveness to his words. He found this neutral point in man's natural desire for happiness (which he styled self-love, following Hopkins and others), to which the motives of the Gospel could certainly appeal since they really urge to what is the highest happiness of man. He conceived regeneration as taking place after this method: the Spirit of God suspended the " selfish principle " in man, that is, broke the control of sinful purpose, the motives of the Gospel appealed to the native desire for happiness, a choice was made by the act of the free will which choice was " using the means of regeneration," and thus the man was regenerated, the whole complex operation being " instantaneous." Tyler failed to get his point of view. He did not grasp the idea of freedom which Taylor had introduced, classified him with the Arminians and Socinians, and from that moment lost all capacity for understanding him. Out of all this confusion came, however, the good result of greater clearness upon the moral government of God, which had been over and over again confounded with his physical government, and the fact that it is a government by means of motives, while the other is a government by forces. Taylor at last broke away from the subjection to Edwards in which the school had heretofore lain, and controverted the position of the great leader as to moral inability. In his lectures he further modified his position upon the prevention of sin, teaching finally
New England Theology