The New Divinity Tried [pp. 278-304]

The New Divinity Tried.
land, there is an anxious attorney-like mincing of matters; a
claiming to agree with every body, and an endeavour to cast
off his opponent into the position of the solitary dissentient,
and overwhelm him with the authority of great names. The
evidence on which this judgment is found will appear in wham
follows, of its correctness the reader must judge.
We gather from the review itself, (for we have in vain en deavour to obl)tain, in season, a copy of Mr. Rand's pamphlet)
that the leading objections to the New Divinity are those
which have been urged fromn various quarters against some of
the doctrines of the Christian Spectator. Indeed, the reviewer,
to show that Mr. Rand was not obliged to publish the notes
of an extemporaneous discourse, in order to bring the opinions
which it advocated, before the public, tells us the doctrines of
the sermon are those which have been repeatedly presented in
the Spectator, and elsewhere. We need therefore be at no
loss for the distinguishing features of the New Divinity. It
starts with the assumption that morality can only be predicated
of voluntary exercises; that all holiness and sin consist in acts
of choice or preference. When this principle is said to be
one of the radical views of'the New Divinity, neither Mr.
Rand nor any one else can mean to represent the opinion itself
as a novelty. It is, on all hands, acknowledged to be centuries old. The novelty consists ill its being held by men professing to be Calvinists, and in its being traced out by them
to very nearly the same results as those which the uniform opponents of Calvinism have derived from it. Thus Dr. John
Taylor, of Norwich, presents it as the grand objection to the
doctrines of original sin, and original righteousness; and in
defending these doctrines President Edwards laboriously
argues against this opinion. Yet it is in behalf of this radical
view of the new system, that the authority of Edwards, Bellamy, Wither,oon, Dwight, Griffin, Woods, as well as Augustine and Calvin, is quoted and arrayed against Mr. Rand.
Almost every one of these writers not only disclaims the
opinion thus ascribed to them, but endeavours to refute it.
Thus President Edwards, after stating Dr. Taylor's great objection to the doctrine of original sin to be, "that moral virtue,
in its very nature, implieth the choice and consent of the
moral agent," and quoting from him the declaration,; To say
that God not only endowed Adam with a capacity 6f being
righteous, but, moreover, that righteousness and true holiness
were created with him, or wrought into his nature, at the
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