This re-appearance of the doctrine of freewill serves to support that of the pretension of the natural man to be not irremediably fallen, for this is what such doctrine tends to. All who have never been deeply convicted of sin, all persons in whom this conviction is based on gross external sins, believe more or less in freewill. You know it is the dogma of the Wesleyans, of all reasoners, and of all philosophers; but it completely changes, nay, entirely perverts, the very idea of Christianity.
If Christ came to save that which is lost, freewill has no place. Not that God prevents men from receiving Christ—far from it. But even when God uses all possible inducements, all that is capable of exerting influence in the heart of man, it only serves to show that man will have none of it, that so corrupt is his heart, and so decided his will not to submit to God (however much it may be the devil who encourages him to sin) that nothing can induce him to receive the Lord, and to give up sin. If by the words, "freedom of man," they mean that no one forces him to reject the Lord, this liberty fully exists. But if it is said that, on account of the dominion of sin, of which he is the slave, and that voluntarily, he cannot escape from his condition, and make choice of the good—even while acknowledging it to be good, and approving of it—then he has no liberty whatever. He is not subject to the law, neither indeed can be; hence, they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
And this is where we touch most closely upon the foundation of the question. Is it the old man who is changed, taught, and sanctified, or do we, in order to be saved, receive a new nature? The universal character of unbelief in the present day is this: not formally to deny Christianity, as in other times; or openly to reject Christ, but to receive Him as a person (they will even say divine, inspired, but as a question of degree) who restores man to his position as a child of God.
The Wesleyans, as far as they are taught of God, do not say that; faith makes them feel that without Christ they are lost, and that it is a question of salvation. Only their terror with regard to pure grace, their desire to gain men, a mixture of charity and of the human mind; in one word, their confidence in their own strength gives confusion in their teaching, and causes them not to recognize the total ruin of man. As for me, I see in the word, and I recognize in myself, the total ruin of man. I see that the cross is the end of all the means that God had employed to gain the heart of man, and that it therefore shows the thing to be impossible. God has exhausted all His resources; man has shown that he was wicked, irreclaimable. The cross of Christ condemns man—sin in the flesh. But this condemnation having been expressed, in that another has suffered it, it is the absolute salvation of those who believe, for the condemnation, the judgment of sin is behind us; life comes out of it in resurrection. We are dead to sin and alive to God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Redemption! the very word loses its force when we entertain these ideas of the old man. It becomes amelioration, a practical deliverance from a moral state, and not a redemption by the finished work of another.
Christianity teaches the death of the old man and his just condemnation, then the redemption accomplished by Christ, and new life, life eternal, come down from heaven in His Person, and communicated to us when Christ enters into us by the word. Arminianism, or rather Pelagianism, pretends that man can choose, and that thus the old man is ameliorated by the thing which it has accepted. The first step is made without grace, and it is the first step which really costs in this case.
I think we ought to restrict ourselves to the word; but, philosophically and morally speaking, freewill is a false and absurd theory. Freewill is a state of sin. Man ought not to have to choose, as being outside of good. Why is he in that state? He ought not to have a will, any choice to make; he ought to obey, and enjoy in peace. If he has to choose good, he has not got it yet. He is without that which is good in himself, in any case, since he is not decided. But in fact man is disposed to follow what is bad. What cruelty to propose a duty to man who is already turned to evil! Moreover, philosophically speaking, to choose he must be indifferent, otherwise he has already chosen as regards his will—he ought therefore to be absolutely indifferent. If he is absolutely indifferent, what is to decide his choice? A creature ought to have a motive, but he has none, since he is indifferent; if he is not so, he has chosen.
But it is not so; man has a conscience, but he has a will and lusts, and these lead him. Man was free in paradise, but then he was in the enjoyment of good. He made use of his freewill, and thenceforth he is a sinner. To leave him to his freewill now, when he is disposed to do evil, would be a cruelty. God has presented him with a choice, but it was to convince his conscience of the fact that in any case, man would love neither good nor God.
For people to believe that God loves the world is quite right; but not to believe that man is in himself wicked beyond remedy (and notwithstanding the remedy) is very bad. They know not themselves, and they know not God.
The Lord is coming; the time for the world is passing away. What joy! May God find us watching, and thinking of One alone—Him of whom God thinks—Jesus, our precious Savior. 1861. J. N. D.