James wrote his epistle. It was held by some in the fourth century, when Augustine wrote in condemnation of it. It was more fully developed by Agricola, one of Luther's coadjutors in the work of the Reformation. From that time it has in every century asserted itself and developed some advocates of its claim to a scriptural foundation.

The doctrine of Antinomianism interests Methodists especially by reason of its appearance in the eighteenth century, both in the Church of England and among dissenters, as an offshoot of high Calvinism. It is an error that early Methodism valiantly contended against. The keenest shafts of Methodism's ablest polemic were sent against it and pierced its armor. Fletcher's Checks to Antinomianism were among the most widely read polemical writings of that day. He regarded it as a most gigantic foe to Christianity. It is an utter perversion of the doctrine of justification by faith. It teaches "that the moral law is altogether abrogated as a rule of life; that no Christian believeth or worketh any good, but that Christ only believeth and worketh. . . . Its root lies in a false view of the atonement; its view of the imputation of Christ's righteousness implies that he performs for men the obedience which they ought to perform, and therefore that God, in justice, can demand nothing further from man." A modification of this doctrine is held by some religious bodies at the present time. Wesley gives a clear expression of what the Bible teaches on this question: "But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments and enforced by the prophets Christ did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken, which 'stands fast as the faithful witness in

1 McClintock and Strong, article "Antinomians."

heaven.' The moral stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual law, which was only designed for a temporary restraint upon a disobedient and stiff-necked people; whereas this was from the beginning of the world, being 'written not on tables of stone,' but on the hearts of all the children of men, when they came out of the hands of the Creator. And, however the letters once wrote by the finger of God are now in a great measure defaced by sin, yet can they not wholly be blotted out, while we have any consciousness of good and evil. Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God, and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other."1

1 Works, vol. i, pp. 221, 222.

ARTICLE VII

OF ORIGINAL OR BIRTH SIN

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.

I. THE ORIGIN

This Article was formulated by the English Reformers in 1553. The words "original righteousness" were taken from the second of the Thirteen Articles of 1538. The other parts of the Article, including the condemnation of the Pelagians and their teachings, were taken from the second Article of the Augsburg Confession. Thus it passed into the Thirty-nine Articles of 1571, and after very material abridgment was adopted by Wesley.1

II. THE AIM

Its principal object was to condemn and exclude Pelagianism, a system of doctrine respecting sin which was originally taught by Pelagius and Cælestius, in the first half of the fifth century. This error had been revived at the time of the Reformation by the Anabaptists, who are particularized in the Article as it was framed in 1553. The Article probably had reference also to the errors of the Schoolmen touching the absolute extirpation of sin by baptism, and to the action of the Council of Trent, which declared baptism a remedy for original sin.

1 See p. 22.

Original sin.

III. THE EXPOSITION

The origin of evil is one of the great problems with which men have wrestled from the earliest dawn of time, and the problem has never been solved. Every human being has seen the dark shadow and felt the poisoned sting of evil. Saint Paul said, "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Rom. 8. 22). Human suffering is in unison with universal suffering. All animate nature is groaning, as though sharing with man a common curse, a common lot of pain. Inanimate nature gives evidence of disorder in warring elements, in the thunderbolt driven from the cloud, the mountain hurled by the earthquake, the ocean lashed to fury by the gale, and the forest swept by the tornado. The material world is gashed and scarred with past convulsions. Yet the elements of nature give no more evidences of disorder than are visible in the social relations of man. Ten thousand evils haunt his dwellings. Tyranny and oppression rule. Through love of power the rulers of the world ride to their thrones over the bodies of tens of thousands of their fellows. War and its attendant evils sweep away whole nations. Science and human skill are taxed to the utmost to manufacture such enginery of war as the archfiend himself might have invented. In the dark places of the earth are cruelties that have never seen the light of day, enormities of evil that have never been written down in history. Man needs no argument to convince himself that there is evil in the world.

How did this evil come? In early Christian times many scholars held the dualistic theory-a view which conceived the existence of an evil principle in matter and denied the pure creation of God; others have sought to

fix the origin of sin, not on the perverted, overridden will of God, but on God himself. Some have shrunk from this while adopting a philosophy whose logical conclusion was the same. The early Reformers deemed the origin of sin to be in the abuse of freedom by Satan and man rather than in any act of the Creator. The Augsburg Confession declared, "Although God is the Creator and Preserver of universal nature, the cause of sin must be sought in the depraved will of the devil and wicked men, which, when destitute of divine aid, turns itself away from God."1

The doctrine that sin is a necessity, or inevitable, is incompatible with the revelation God has made of himself in his Holy Word: "His work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he" (Deut. 32. 4). "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man" (James 1. 13). When God created free moral agents, then the possibility of departure from God was given. Man was placed on probation, made free to stand or fall. Two courses of conduct were open to him: he had power and freedom to choose obedience or disobedience. To have placed him beyond this point of peril would have been to destroy his liberty.

The history of man's disobedience and fall is briefly given in the only book that throws light upon this important matter. Man's creation was the result of divine deliberation and decree. "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Gen. 1. 26, 27). This image or likeness refers to the inward state or dis

1 Article XIX.