CHAPTER VI.

ITS DOCTRINAL SYSTEM.

IT has been affirmed that, consistently with its Providential mission, as a revival of spiritual life in Christendom, Methodism did not start on its career with any new dogmas, or any sectarian or theological exclusiveness. It has its theology nevertheless, and this theology has doubtless been one of the most potent elements of its vitality as an ecclesiastical movement. Not a single doctrine, however, did it announce, or does it yet proclaim, that was not sanctioned by the standards of the Anglican establishment. It was not, as we have seen, novelty of opinion so much as the earnestness with which Methodism uttered the acknowledged doctrines of the Church, that gave offense and provoked opposition and proscription. Wesley provided the theology of American Methodism in a symbol called the "Articles of Religion," and these articles were taken from the "Thirty-nine Articles" of the Anglican Church. They are abridged, and in some cases slightly amended, but they convey no tenet which is not received by the Church of England, and they are the only officially recognized standard of Methodist

doctrine in America. Wesley's emendations chiefly guard them against interpretations favorable to sacramental regeneration and other Romish errors.

Singularly enough, the opinions which are considered most distinctive of Wesleyan theology have no expression in the "Articles of Religion," which, by Wesley's own prescription, have become the dogmatic standard of American Methodism. He eliminates the supposed Anglican Calvinism, but he does not introduce his own Arminianism, except in the thirty-first Anglican article on the "Oblation of Christ," which is Arminian as to the extent of the atonement. In like manner we have no statement of his doctrines of the "Witness of the Spirit" and "Christian Perfection." And yet no doctrines more thoroughly permeate the preaching, or more entirely characterize the moral life of Methodism than his opinions of the universal salvability of men, assurance, and sanctification, He evidently designed the articles to be the briefest and barest possible symbol of expedient doctrines; and, as we shall hereafter see, not even a requisite condition of Church membership, though a requisite functional qualification for the ministry. He consigned his other tenets, however precious to him, to other means of conservation and diffusion, for it was not his opinion that the orthodoxy of a Church can best guarantee its spirit

ual life, but rather that its spiritual life can best guarantee its orthodoxy.

The Arminianism of Wesley has been rightly so called. It is essentially true to the teachings of the great theologian of Holland, though not to the elaborations of his system by Episcopius and Limborch, and much less to the perversions of its later eminent representatives. Wesley had the courage to place the name of Arminius on his periodical organ, one of the earliest and now the oldest of religious magazines in the Protestant world. His Arminianism was far from being that mongrel system of semi-Pelagianism and semi-Socinianism which, for generations, was denounced by New England theologians as Arminianism, until the most erudite Calvinistic authority of the eastern states (Prof. Stuart of Andover) rebuked the baseless charge and bade his brethren be no longer guilty of it. Wesley taught "original sin" in the language of the ninth Anglican Article; though he taught also that both the justice and mercy of the Creator require that the human race should not have been continued, under this law of hereditary depravation, unless adequate provision were made for it by the atonement; he preached, therefore, universal redemption. He taught with the tenth Anglican article, on "Free Will," that "the condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such that he cannot turn

and prepare himself, by his natural strength and works, to faith and calling upon God;" that he has

no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God, by Christ, preventing" him; but he taught also that such "preventing grace" is provided for all responsible souls, and that none could be responsible without it. With the eleventh Anglican article he taught "justification by faith" alone, "and not for our own works and deservings;" yet he also taught that "good works follow after justification," and "do spring out, necessarily, of a true and lively faith." He taught the absolute sovereignty of God: that, like the potter with the clay, he can make some vessels for more, some for less honor; yet he also taught that, as wisdom and beneficence are essential attributes of the divine sovereignty, God neither would nor could (any more than the wise potter with his clay) make some for the gratification of a wanton caprice in their destruction, much less in their interminable anguish.

Of Wesley's Doctrine of Assurance, founded upon the text, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God," and upon analogous Scripture passages, I have already said that it was not a peculiar opinion of Methodism, but common, in its essential form, to the leading bodies of Christendom, Greek, Roman, and Protest