The New Divinity Tried [pp. 278-304]

The New Divinity Tried.
what we have been accustomed to hate, and to hate what we
have been in the habit of loving, is a difficult work, and therefore, not included in a mere alteration of one's purpose, which
is declared to be, and in fact is, so easy. Not only, therefore,
the mode of expression employed, in describing a change of
heart, but the illustrations of its nature, and the mode of enforcing the duty, are adapted to make precisely the impression which Mr. Rand received from the sermon, that conversion, in the judgment of the preacher, is a very trifling affair,
effected as easily as a change in our plans of business; and we
have reason to know that this is the impression actually produced on the minds of hearers by the preachers of this class;
and on the minds of the friends and advocates of the new system themselves. Such, we think, is the natural and fair impression of the popular mode of representing the subject. And
we very much question whether the metaphysical explanation
of it amounts to any thing more. It is one of the most
singular features of the review under consideration, that
although the writer seems willing to take shelter under any
great name, his principal reliance is on the advocates of Emmonism. Yet it so happens that his system and theirs are
exactly the poles apart. Ill the one. divine agency is exalted
to the real exclusion of that of man; in the other, very much
the reverse is the ease. According to the one, it is agreeable
to the nature of sin and virtue to be created; according to the
other, necessary holiness is no holiness, there cannot be even
an "instinet" for holiness, to borrow President Edwards's expression. The same expression, therefore, in the mouth of
the advocate of the one theory, may have a very different
meaning from what it has in that of an advocate of the other;
and even if the idea be the same, its whole relations and bearings are different. It is not, then, to the followers of Dr.
Emmons we are to go, to learn what is meant by the immanent volitions, primary choices, or governing purposes of the
New Divinity. We must go, where the reviewer himself, in
another part of his pamphlet sends us, to the advocates of the
new system itself. We find that when they come to give
their philosophical explanation of the nature of regeneration,
it amounts to little more than the popular representations of
Mr. Finney. In the Christian Spectator, for example, we
find regeneration described, as the choice of God as the chief
good under the impulse of self-love, or desire of happiness.
The sinner is, therefore, directed to consider which is adapted
to make him most happy, God or the world; to place the case
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