Remarks on the Princeton Review [pp. 306-347]

326 Prof. Park's Remarks on the Princeton Review. [APRIL
Christ, the justification of sinners before God, the statements of
the two systems are declared to be identical in meaning, however different in form, or a mode of statement is proposed which
is made to comprehend both. We can hardly be mistaken,
therefore, in saying, that the design of the sermon is to show
that both of these are allowable, and may be reconciled. If
anything is clear, either in the sermon or the reply, it is that
these systems are represented as different modes of presenting
one and the same theology, the one adapted to the feelings, the
other to the intellect. If this is not the case, then Professor
Park has failed to convey the most remote idea of his meaning
to a multitude of minds, more or less accustomed to such discussions, and must be set down as either the most unfortunate or
the most unintelligible writer of modern times.
If this is a proper statement of the case, it must be admitted
that the author has undertaken a great work. We know no
parallel to it but the famous Oxford Tract, Number Ninety; and
even that was a modest effort in comparison. Dr. Newman
merely attempted to show that there was' a non-natural sense"
of the Thirty-nine Articles in which a Romanist might sign
them. HIe did not pretend, if our memory serves us, that the
sense which he put upon them was their true historical meaning.
But Professor Park proposes to show, if we understand him,
that the two systems above referred to are identical; that the
one is the philosophical explanation of the other; that they are
different modes of stating the same general truths, both modes
being allowable; that the one, in short, is the theology of the
feelings, and the other the theology of the intellect. When we
reflect on what is necessarily, even though unconsciously,
assumed in this attempt, when we raise our eyes to the height
to which it is necessary the author should ascend before all
these things could appear alike to him, we are bewildered. It
is surely no small matter for a man to rise up and tell the world
that the Augustinians and Pelagians, Thomists and Scotists,
Dominicans and Franciscans, Jansenists and Jesuits, Calvinists
and Remonstrants,* have for centuries been contending about
* These terms are used in their historical sense, Augustinianism and Pelagianism
are designations of forms of theology distinguished by certain characteristic features.
The former does not include every opinion held by Augustine, nor the latter every