cover the earth as the waters cover the sea?" In such anticipations, at least, we delight to indulge; for although long before these moral and intellectual glories shall bless our world, we may have gone to the grave; it will solace our departure, that our posterity may reach such a "golden age."

ART. VI.-REVIEW OF BUTLER'S ANALOGY OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealud, to the constitution and course af nature. By JOSEPH BUTLER, LL. D.

In closing our remarks on this work in our last number, we expressed an intention to examine a little more fully the application. of the argument to christianity. Thus far we have had our eye fixed on the infidel. We wish now to direct our attention to the opponents of what we consider the christian scheme, and inquire whether Butler has not furnished us materials to annihilate every objection against what are called the doctrines of grace. We say materials, for we are well aware that Butler did not complete the argument. We suppose, that had his object been to carry it to its utmost extent, there were two important causes which would have arrested its progress where it actually has stopped. The first is found in Butler's own views of the christian scheme. We are not calling in question his piety, but we have not seen evidence that he had himself fully embraced the evangelical system, and applied his argument to the peculiar doctrines of the gospel. We fear that he stopped short of such a result in his own feelings, and that this may have been the reason why that system had not a more prominent place in his work. Still we would not apply the language of severe criticism to this deficiency in the Analogy. We know his design. It was to meet the infidelity of an age of peculiar thoughtlessness and vice. He did it. He reared an argument which infidels have thought it most prudent to let alone. They have made new attacks in other modes. Driven from this field, they have yielded it into the hands of Butler,—and their wisdom has consisted in withdrawing as silently as possible from the field, and losing the recollection both of the din of conflict and the shame of defeat. It has always been one of the arts of infidelity and error, to forget the scene of previous conflict and overthrow. Singular adroitness is manifested in keeping from the public eye, the fact, and the monuments of such disastrous encounters. Thus Butler stands as grand and solitary as a pyramid of Egypt, and we might add, nearly as much forsaken by those for whose benefit he wrote. And thus Edwards on the Will is conveniently forgotten by hosts of

Arminians, who continue to urge their arguments with as much self-gratulation, as though previous hosts of Arminians had never been prostrated by his mighty arm. Could we awaken the unpleasant reminiscence in the infidels of our age, that there was such a man as Butler, and in the opposers of the doctrines of grace, that there is extant in the English language such a book, as "A careful inquiry into the modern prevailing notions on the freedom of the Will," we should do more, perhaps, than by any one means to disturb the equanimity of multitudes, who live only to deal out dogmas as if they had never been confuted; and we might hope to arrest the progress of those destructive errors which are spreading in a thousand channels through the land.

The other cause of the deficiency which we notice in the Analogy, is, that it was not possible for Butler, with the statements then made of the doctrines of grace, to carry out his argument, and give it its true bearing on those doctrines. The philosophical principles on which calvinism had been defended for a century and a half, were substantially those of the schoolmen. The system had started out from darker ages of the world; had been connected with minds of singular strength and power, but also with traits in some degree stern and forbidding. Men had been thrown into desperate mental conflict. They had struggled for mental and civil freedom. They had but little leisure, and less inclination to polish and adorn-to go into an investigation of the true laws of the mind, and the proper explanation of facts in the moral world— little inclination to look on what was bland, and amiable in the government of God. Hence they took the rough-cast system, wielded, in its defense, the ponderous weapons which Augustine and even the Jansenites had furnished them, and prevailed in the conflict, not, however, by the force of their philosophy, but of those decisive declarations of the word of God, with which unhappily that philosophy had become identified. But when they told of imputing the sin of one man to another, and of holding that other to be personally answerable for it, it is no wonder that such minds as that of Butler recoiled, for there is nothing like this in nature. When they affirmed, that men have no power to do the will of God, and yet will be damned for not doing what they have no capacity to perform, it is no wonder that he started back, and refused to attempt to find an analogy; for it is unlike the common sense of men. When they told of a limited atonement-of confining the original applicability of the blood of Christ to the elect alone, there was no analogy to this, in all the dealings of God towards sinners; in the sun-beam, in the dew, the rain, in running rivulets or oceans; and here Butler must stop, for the analogy could go no farther upon the then prevalent notions of theology.

Still, we record, with gratitude, the achievements of Butler. We render our humble tribute of thanksgiving to God, that he raised up a man who has laid the foundation of an argument which can be applied to every feature of the christian scheme. We are not Hutchinsonians, but we believe there is a course of nature most strikingly analogous to the doctrines of revelation. We believe that all the objections which have been urged against the peculiar doctrines of the christian scheme, lie with equal weight against the course of nature itself, and, therefore, really constitute no objections at all. This point of the argument, Butler has omitted. To a contemplation of the outline of it we now ask the attention of our readers.

We are accustomed, in our ordinary technical theology, to speak much of the doctrines of christianity and men of system-making minds have talked of them so long, that they seem to understand by them, a sort of intangible and abstract array of propositions, remote from real life and from plain matter of fact. The learner in divinity is often told, that there is a species of daring profaneness, in supposing that they are to be shaped to existing facts, or to the actual operations of moral agents. All this is metaphysics, and the moment he dares to ask whether Turretin or Ridgeley had proper conceptions of the laws of the mind, of moral agency, or of facts in the universe, that moment the shades of all antiquity are summoned to come around the adventurous theologian, and charge him with a guilty departure from dogmas long held in the church.

Now we confess we have imbibed somewhat different notions of the doctrines of the bible. We have been accustomed to regard the word as denoting only an authoritative teaching, (didax, Matt. vii. 28, comp. v. 19, xxii. 33, 2 Tim. iv. 2, 9,) of what actually exists in the universe. We consider the whole system of doctrines as simply a statement of facts. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, is a statement of a fact respecting the mode of God's existence. The fact is beyond any investigation of our own minds, and we receive the statement as it is. The doctrine of the mediation is a statement of facts, respecting what Christ did and taught, and suffered, as given by himself and his followers. So of depravity, so of election or predestination, so of perseverance, so of future happiness and woe. What then are the doctrines of christianity? Simply statements of what has been, of what is, and what will be, in the government of God. In this, every thing is as far as possible from abstraction. There is as little abstraction, and why may we not add as little sacredness in these facts,we mean sacredness to prevent inquiry into their true nature-as there is in the sci

ence of geology, the growth of a vegetable, or the operations of the human intellect. We may add, that in no way has systematic theology rendered more essential disservice to mankind, than in drawing out the life-blood from these great facts-unstringing the nerves, stiffening the muscles, and giving the fixedness of death to them, as the anatomist cuts up the human frame, removes all the elements of life, distends the arteries and veins with wax, and then places it in his room of preparations, as cold and repulsive as are some systems of technical divinity.

In the doctrines of christianity, as given us in the bible, we find nothing of this abstract and unreal character. The whole tenor of the scriptures prepares us to demand, that theology be invariably conformed to the laws of the mind, and the actual economy of the moral and material universe. The changes which have taken place in orthodox systems of divinity since the era of the reformation, have been chiefly owing to the changes in the system of mental and moral science. Whenever that system shall be fully understood, and established on the immoveable foundation of truth, all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, will be of one mind in their mode of stating the doctrines of the gospel, as they already are in their spiritual feelings. Till then, all that can be done by the friends of truth will be to show, that the objections which are urged against the doctrines of grace, can be urged with equal power, against all the facts in God's moral government.

From the beginning, formidable objections have been brought against what are called the doctrines of Grace, or the Evangelical System, or Calvinism. These objections have seldom, if ever, been drawn from the bible. Their strength has consisted in the alleged fact, that these doctrines are in opposition to the established principles, by which God governs the world. We concede, that there is just enough of apparent irregularity in those principles, to make these objections plausible with the great mass of men, just as there was enough of irregularity and improbability in the Copernican system of astronomy, to make it for a long time liable to many and plausible objections. Certain appearances strongly favored the old doctrine, that the sun, moon, and stars traveled, in marshaled hosts, around our insignificant orb, just as in the Arminian system, certain appearances may seem to indicate that man is the center of the system, and that God, and all the hosts of heaven, live and act chiefly to minister to his comfort. But it is now clear, that all the proper facts in astronomy go to prove, that the earth is a small part of the plan, and to confirm the system of Copernicus. So we affirm that the Calvinistic scheme-despite all Arminian appearances, is the plan on which this world is actually governed; and that all the objections that have been urged against it are urged

against facts that are fixed in the very nature of things. And we affirm that a mind which could take in all these facts, could make up the calvinistic scheme without the aid of revelation, from the actual course of events; just as in the ruins of an ancient city the skilful architect can discern in the broken fragments, pillars of just dimensions, arches of proper proportions, and the remains of edifices of symmetry and grandeur.

In entering on this subject, however, we cannot but remark, that the Evangelical Scheme, is often held answerable for that which it did not originate. We mean, that when opposers approach the christian system, they almost universally hold it responsible for the fall, as well as the recovery, of man. They are not willing to consider, that it is a scheme proposed to remedy an existing state of evil. Christianity did not plunge men into sin. It is the system by which men are to be recovered from woe-woe which would have existed to quite as great an extent, certainly, if the conception of the evangelical system had never entered the divine mind. The theory and practice of medicine, is not to be held answerable for the fact that man is subject to disease and death. It finds men thus subject; and all that can be justly required of the art, is that to which it makes pretensions, viz. that it can do something towards removing, or alleviating human suffering. So in christianity. That men are in fact in the midst of sin, suffering, and death, is undeniable. The doctrine is common to the deist, the atheist, and the christian. For that christianity is not answerable. It proposes a remedy, and that remedy is properly the christian system. Still we shall not, in our present discussion, avail ourselves of this very obvious remark; but shall proceed to notice the objections to the entire series of revealed facts, as if they constituted one system :and the rather as the evangelical system proposes a statement respecting the exact extent of the evil, which has an important bearing on the features of the remedy proposed.

1. The first fact, then, presented for our examination is the fall of man. The scriptures affirm that a solitary act-an act in itself exceedingly unimportant-was the beginning of that long train of sin and wretchedness, which has passed upon our world. Now, we acknowledge that to all the mystery and fearfulness of this fact our bosoms beat with a full response to that of the objector. We do not understand the reason of it; and what is of more consequence to us and to the objector, is, that an explanation of this mystery, forms no part of the system of revelation. The only inquiry at present before us, is, whether the fact in question is so separated from all other events, as to be expressly contradicted by the analogy

of nature.

We know there has been a theory, which affirms that we are VOL. III

12