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རྒྱ་

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR MAY, 1822.

Art. 1. An Enquiry into the Doctrines of Necessity and Predestination. In four Discourses preached before the University of Oxford. With Notes and an Appendix on the Seventeenth Article of the Church of England. By Edward Copleston, D.D. Provost of Oriel College, and Prebendary of Rochester. Second Edition. 8vo. pp xvi, 220. Price 7s. 6d. London, 1821. WE opened this volume with expectations more highly

raised than, considering the nature of the subject to which it relates, were perhaps reasonable. The talents and acquirements of the Author prepared us to expect, if not any arguments or illustrations absolutely new on a subject that has for ages employed the utmost efforts of the human mind, at least a correct exposition of the present state of the controversy, and a competent display of logical and theological skill. Dr. Copleston has the credit of being one of the most accomplished scholars, and he is certainly one of the most elegant writers of the age. This high character he fully sustains in the present volume. In some parts of it, especially in the fourth discourse, he writes like a man of enlightened and sincere piety, and as such we unfeignedly honour him. But we must confess that we have been much disappointed in him as a divine. He is neither so formidable an antagonist to the doctrines he impugns, nor so fair a controvertist, nor so consistent a reasoner, nor so learned a polemic, as we hoped or feared to meet. His volume does not cast an additional ray of light on the controversy. On the contrary, it throws us back a century or two, and involves us in a wordy combat with obsolete and extinct errors, or imaginary opponents. So little justice has Dr. Copleston done either to himself or his subject, that he gravely cites Heylin as an historical authority, and Bishop Tomline as a theologian. All that is of much importance, is taken from Archbishop King and Dr. Laurence, in whose steps he closely follows, as a disciple of the one, and a coadjutor of the other. The forVOL. XVII. N. S.

2 G

mer is perhaps the ablest of the Arminian divines; but his hypothesis has long since been met with a force of reasoning which will leave us no other merit than that of re-stating the considerations which Dr. Copleston has either overlooked or not condescended to notice, in answer to the arguments on which he so confidently relies.

The controversy respecting Necessity and Predestination divides itself into three distinct branches; the historical, the metaphysical, and the theological questions. We shall observe this division in our examination of the present Inquiry.

1. The history of religious opinions is a very interesting and curious branch of philosophical inquiry. It can afford us, however, little or no aid in the determination of a theological question. The time is past and gone, when the axioms of the Stagyrite, or the dicta of the beatific doctor, were held to be decisive, and when points of doctrine were settled, like points of law, by precedents and authorities. Among Protestants at least, the Scriptures are now professedly acknowledged as the only rule and ground of faith; and the mode of theological investigation has consequently undergone a most important revolution. What Calvin, or what Melancthon taught, is a matter of some historical interest, but is no longer of any real importance, since they have ceased to be authorities even to their professed disciples. No one in the present day considers himself as bound to hold or to defend what either may have advanced, merely because it was the sentiment of the theological leader, or of the nominal founder of the school to which he has attached himself. Not one Calvinist in a thousand, or in ten thousand, believes all that Calvin maintained, or concerns himself about the matter. So far as his system is received, it is received under the modifications which it has assumed in passing down to us through the writings of the English Reformers, and Puritans, and later divines. On the Continent, the schools of Geneva and of Amsterdam have alike degenerated, and the distinctive characters of their respective creeds are lost in the negative system and latitudinarian sentiments of modern Socinianism. Infidelity has made equal inroads on the Lutheran and the Calvinistic churches, and the doctrines originally common to both, have not been the last to be surrendered.

It has become fashionable to charge Augustine with having first introduced into the Church the controversies on this subject, which have so long disturbed her peace. This misrepresentation can arise only from the wish to render the name of Calvin's master obnoxious. It is undeniable, that his exertions

* Quarterly Review. No. li. p. 89.

were called forth by the writings of Pelagius, to whom, therefore, the charge of disturbing the peace of the Church, if to any one, applies. But Pelagius only followed in the steps of Origen, whose writings, again, were directed against the an tecedent errors of the Gnostics; and we know that by the "philosophy, and vain deceit," and "oppositions of science

falsely so called," either of that or of some similar heresy, the Church was troubled even in Apostolic days. The very few and imperfect remains of the first three centuries which have come down to us, do not furnish data for any peremptory as sertion as to the state of religious controversy during that period. The Manichean heresy, however, which had its rise towards the close of the third century, is very plausibly sup→ posed to be a branch or modification of the Gnostic system while not only the errors of Cerinthus, but others of a Saducean character, some borrowed from the Jewish sects, and others from the Platonists, were the growth of the first century. The origin of the Predestination controversy may be traced to the Stoical and Peripatetic schools of heathen wisdom. All its elements," the elements of this world," as St. Paul justly terms them, are to be found in the writings of Aristotle, whose astonishing empire over the human mind, forms one of the most remarkable facts in its history. The period at which the Aris totelian philosophy displaced the Platonic, may perhaps be safely assigned as the era from which we are to date the introduction into theology, of those metaphysical questions relative to fate and free-will, which succeeded to the Homoousian controversy. In the earlier ages of the Church, the writings of the Platonists were most in vogue. And Origen, who had been bred in the school of Alexandria, drew from the Platonic philosophy, the doctrines which he opposed to the Manichean errors. By degrees, as the love of system began to prevail, Aristotle took the place of Plato. But if, up to the time of Augustine, the Christian world had been but little disturbed with the question of Free-will, it was because other speculations equally subtile and perplexing had given full employment to the zeal and ingenuity of polemics and the irenical labours of ecclesiastical councils. The peace of the Church had sustained repeated interruptions far more violent and disastrous than that which was occasioned by the contest between the British heresiarch and the African bishop, And if Augustine was the first who framed into a system the doctrines of predestination and grace, it was because the errors of the Manicheans on the one hand, and the novel and rash assertions, the ultra-Origenism of Pelagius on the other, required on the part of the theologian a nicer discrimination, as well as a more explicit assertion of the Christian doctrine, than