Socinians. Many who embraced the creed of Arminius, deplored the general laxity of morals and want of religion, which they saw prevailing in the episcopal church, and contended for the practice of the duties of religion. These people soon became a distinct class. While they adhered to the form of government in the church of England, and did not formally secede from their communion, they generally worshipped in societies collected together by harmony of views and feelings. They were distinguished by the name of Methodists. Their preaching, of the declamatory kind, consisted of warm and vehement addresses to the passions, mingled with great enthusiasm, and was directly the reverse of those cold, moral harangues, which were general among the episcopal clergy. They embraced in full the creed of Arminius, and pushed it even to greater extremes than its author. Indeed their zeal for it knew no bounds. Attempts to vindicate it were the chief doctrinal discussions which they mingled with their furious declamations. With all their extravagance, there was doubtless much real piety among them. They rather despised human learning than sought to cultivate it; and without hesitation licenced lay preachers, who appeared to be devout and to possess a talent for declamation. This even formed a part of their plan. The great organizer and leader of this sect in England, was Mr. John Wesley, a man of strong passions, great zeal, indefatigable industry, and possessing much knowledge of human nature and of the means of governing men, but without much learning, or solid powers of intellect. He acquired a vast popularity, and extensive influence; and under his direction, the society increased rapidly. It is not astonishing that it did. All men are as naturally Arminians as they are naturally depraved. While Christians in the British established church did not possess the means of becoming acquainted with the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures through the public teachers of religion, and while they were justly displeased with the lukewarmness and even want of religion which characterised the great body of the English episcopal clergy, it was perfectly natural that they should attach themselves to the methodist connexion, in which they found so much zeal for practical piety. Wesley's suc cess led him on to extravagance. Many of his disciples affirmed, that they had arrived at that state of perfection, which he, after the Holland Arminians, asserted to be attainable by Christians in this life. These he collected into a species of monastery; but not long after it was established, the breaking out of the passions, and the most violent contentions among his perfect saints, both male and female, dissolved the establishment. Augustus Toplady was the great antagonist of Wesley and the English Arminians. He translated from the Latin of Jerome Zanchius, a dissertation on the doctrine of divine decrees and definite atonement, and accompanied it with notes, in which there were contained a most triumphant refutation of Arminianism, and a tremendous castigation of Wesley. His satire is most severe, but sometimes he descends in his satirical remarks below the dignity of his subject. The methodist society in England continues to stand at the present time on nearly the same ground that they occupied in the time of Wesley as to doctrine, while their numbers have greatly increased. They are perhaps the only instance of a society existing for a considerable length of time in the belief of the Arminian creed, without many of its members progressing into Arianism, or Socinianism. There are two causes for this. They possess few learned men, or writers who are able to pursue a train of reasoning, and follow out their creed into those heretical dogmas which necessarily flow from it when closely examined; and their attention is chiefly directed to mere practical exhortations, giving them little time to examine doctrines. Many of them are also pious, and would shudder at the heresies that grow out of their system. But whenever the clergy of this denomination become learned men and close thinkers, should such an event ever take place, they will, unless divine grace prevent, travel in the same path which their predecessors have done, into the regions of heresy and infidelity; or they will retrace their steps, and embrace the doctrines taught by the Calvinistic divines, and derived from the sacred oracles. While many of the more devout and zealous part of the Arminians in the episcopal church in England, ran into the enthusiastic extravagancies of the methodist society, the lukewarm and philosophical Arminian went on from attacking the doctrine of a definite atonement and divine decrees, to deny the doctrine altogether. They perceived that if the atonement is said to be made for all equally, and that it is from the exercise of the natural powers of man, that one is made to differ from another, then the salvation of the sinner, after all, depends upon his own exertions. If the sinner is saved by his own good works, why may he not as well be saved without an atonement? What need for the atonement? Why may not the sinner at once save himself by making an atonement for his sins through his own faith and repentance; and by his virtue and piety merit for himself the favour of God, and eternal glory, without all the machinery of a satisfaction, a Mediator, an application by the Holy Spirit, and an acceptance of it by the sinner, through faith? By a very natural train of reasoning from Arminian premises, they arrived at a conclusion entirely subversive of the atonement. This was not enough. Why, since they had found that there was no need of a satisfaction, should the Son of God assume human nature and endure all the sufferings of which the scriptures speak? Why such a stupendous event, when man can save himself? There was no way of answering satisfactorily these questions, but by denying that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, a divine person, and asserting that he was a mere creature, a mere man, in all respects like other men, but remarkably favoured by inspirations from the wisdom of his own intellectual powers. This conclusion many embraced, and became, as we have before remarked, open Socinians, who utterly reject the faith of the gospel. Many of the clergy embraced these views, and maintained them in private life, while they did not dare to introduce them into their exhibitions from the pulpit. Others taught them publicly; while some boldly separated themselves from the church, and attacked with great fury her articles, her whole creed, and her clergy. At Hackney there was a school, in which the greatest latitude of opinion and discussion was permitted on all points, and the students allowed to assail every doctrine of every school, either heathen, Christian, or infidel. This institution was under the direction of Socinians; and in it they educated youth for the ministry, with a view to prepare them for attacking the throne of Emmanuel, and plucking, if possible, the crown of divinity and universal government from his head. This school they were forced to discontinue, as the young men who had been thus drilled in the ranks of heresy, did not choose to be confined, in their operations, to the points to which their leaders wished to limit them. Multitudes boldly went over to the camp of the infidels, and openly renounced all belief in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures. The indignation of all Christians was aroused against an institution, that thus corrupted the youth of the kingdom, and it was abandoned. As Wesley, on the one extreme, was the leader of the methodists, so Dr. Joseph Priestley became the most distinguished of all the disciples of the Socinian mania. He was born of pious parents, who believed the doctrines of the Calvinistic system, and who, in his infancy, instructed him in them. He tells us in his life written by himself, that when thinking on the doctrine of original sin, he found he could not repent of it; and from this exercise of his mind, he was led to doubt of its truth, and finally rejected it. His next step was to maintain, that Jesus Christ died for the sins of all mankind.* Here we find him precisely on the Arminian ground. In his Memoirs alluded to above, when speaking of this period of his life, he says, that a pious aunt with whom he lived was remarkably punctual in attending to the duty of prayer, and in enforcing it upon him; that this punctuality was disgusting to him; and he recommends to * Memoirs of Dr. Priestley, Vol. I. p. 12.. parents not to be very strict in discharging this duty, least their children should contract a dislike to it.* This, truly, is worthy of the opinions which he embraced! After adoping the doctrine of an indefinite or general atonement, made for all mankind, he next became an Arian, and says that in a qualified manner he still believed a satisfaction for sin to have been made by Christ Jesus. He was placed in the school at Hackney, in which he imbibed a part of the he resies mentioned above, and was conspicuous for his industry, acuteness, and readiness in the defence of the various metaphysical and theological positions which he assumed. When he became Arian, he began to preach what he calls. "the unity of God;" in other words, he began to preach against the doctrine of the trinity. It was not long until he totally rejected the doctrine of the atonement. The entire denial of this doctrine, he could not render consistent with the reasonings of Paul. With a boldness every way worthy of himself and the cause which he espoused, he immediately began to charge the apostle with unsound logic, and thought he found him guilty of drawing false conclusions from the premises which he had assumed. These critical remarks and reviews of the great apostle of the gentiles, he submitted in writing to some learned friend of the episcopal church, but was surprised at the narrowness of his views, in not relishing his castigation of the inspired oracles. Indeed, he did not satisfy himself with accusing this apostle of inaccuracy; other apostles and writers of the New Testament, he found to reason as badly as Paul. "At a profuse expense," says he, "therefore of figures and allusions, fetched from the Jewish ritual, to make the new religion the better to tally with the old, liberties too great for our European manners, but not greater than the Jewish nation had been accustomed to, at the expense therefore of no sincerity or integrity, they suit their entertainment to those who were to be invited first to partake of it." In this sweeping sentence, he would * Memoirs of Dr. Priestley, Vol. I. p. 14. |