THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

It is at once curious and saddening to observe the way in which almost every religious movement develops excesses and thereby provokes reaction. The outburst of religious experience connected with the Reformation was followed by a period of sad decline which took various phases in different parts of the Reformed Communions. All these aspects had a bearing on the true view of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit.

In the Lutheran Church the controversy arose known as Synergism which, in its undue emphasis on man's free will and natural powers, tended more and more to set aside the need of Divine grace and the Holy Spirit. The Formula Concordiae endeavoured to bring this controversy to an end by stating in carefully balanced words the true relation of the Holy Spirit to the will of man.

In the Reformed Churches a much more serious trouble arose in connection with what is now known as Arminianism, from Arminius, a Dutch theologian of the latter part of the sixteenth century. Without entering into the controversy in general, involving, as it does, many theological and philosophical problems, it may be said for our present purpose that the whole tendency of Arminianism was to emphasise human effort and will, and to make salvation dependent upon man rather than upon God. It was essentially one with the Semi-Pelagianism of the Mediaeval Church. The Syaod of Dort, 1618-19, met to deal with this question, and its Canons emphasised in the strongest possible way the need, working, and power of the Holy Spirit of God. But not even this great and important gathering prevented the growth of Arminian teaching, and in the English Church in particular this view was introduced and fostered under the influence of Archbishop Laud.

Another movement which may be said to have developed out of the Reformation, and yet for which the Reformation cannot be held responsible, was the tendency towards undue and unbalanced enthusiasm and Mysticism. The inevitable rebound from the authority of the Church produced excesses among those who failed to realise the intimate, constant, and necessary connection between Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit, The result was the adoption of subjective principles, whether intellectual or emotional, which led the holders into unbalanced and dangerous extremes of thought and practice. When extremists taught that ' not the word of Scripture, but the Holy Spirit was to be the principle of the Reformation,' and that ' not only everything ecclesiastical, but also everything civil was to be spiritualised and reorganised,' we can readily see the serious dangers of such a subjective position. These excesses in their turn led to a further trouble, which must now be considered.

Whilst, on the one hand, the spiritually immature went to excesses in emotional life by appealing to the Spirit apart from Scripture; on the other, those who were impressed by the reality of the Reformation movement, but who nevertheless were untouched spiritually by it, tended more and more towards a rationalism which ignored both the Scripture and the Spirit. Human nature let loose from the cast-iron fetters of the Middle Ages was too much for statesmen and thinkers. To this is due the various schemes of the seventeenth century for governing the fabric of humanity. In the Middle Ages the artificial power of Rome sufficed. Then came the break in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth the making of new artificial means to accomplish the same end. The Reformation assertion of individual freedom, of the direct relation of the individual to God, and the impossibility of any Society exercising absolute authority over individual consciences, could not help having its effect, and whether we think of the attempts of the Stuart Monarchy, or of Presbyterian rigidity, or of arbitrary government in France, or of such schemes as are represented by Hobbes, the problem is seen to be acute and pressing. In ordinary affairs these things work out by revolutions and wars, but in the realm of philosophy the matter is different. The result was that a school of philosophy arose, which attempted to construct an elaborate system, just as the Middle Ages had done, only that the latter drew their system from Christianity, while the former made its own.- ' This took different aspects in different countries. In England it expressed itself in Deism, and was marked by all the practical earnestness of the English character. It soon passed over to France, and was seen in Infidelity, with Voltaire, a pupil of Bolingbroke, as its chief exponent. Thence in due course it reached Germany, and became Rationalism proper, marking an endeavour not only to explode but also to explain away Christianity. In all this Rationalism we see the inevitable tendency to ignore and even to oppose any appeal to Scripture and any submission to the Holy Spirit. Rationalism becomes either scholastic or naturalistic, and in Butler's great work we see the intellectual power which met the new philosophy, and at the same time the manifest limitations of the author's position, when judged in the light of the full Christianity of the New Testament. In the early part of the seventeenth century the general tendency of the Church was in the direction of a Christian scholasticism which, however valuable intellectually, was far removed from the full, strong personal Christian experience which gained the victory at the Reformation.

It must not be thought, however, that all the influences were in the wrong direction, for Puritanism in England during the time of the Commonwealth did not a little to call attention to the New Testament doctrine of Grace. But, here again, we are met with the fact of reaction, for this force passed away and gave place to the Restoration period, with ecclesiasticism in the Church of England and subjectivity in Quakerism.1 The English Church Restoration was essentially Arminian, in spite of the doctrines of the Articles, while the Quakers in their rebound from Ecclesiasticism tended to set aside the authority of Holy Scripture in their emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the ' Inner Light ' of the soul. Two men, however, dealt with the subject of the Holy Spirit at this time, Thomas Goodwin and John Owen. The former is said to

' mark an epoch in the progress of the comprehension of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Christian life. On its own peculiar theme, it is without a peer in Christian literature.'2

A larger and far better-known work is that of John Owen, which even yet has not been superseded. In these works the authors set themselves to develop Reformation principles in relation to the Holy Spirit and Christian life, and it is impossible to exaggerate the value of the work rendered to theology and Christianity by the great writers of the Puritan period.3 But their efforts to stem the tide were unavailing, and the outcome of Anglican ecclesiasticism and Quaker subjectivity was spiritually dangerous, and had much to do with that blight which fell upon English Christianity in the later part of the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth century.

But God does not leave Himself long without a witness, and both in Germany and in England movements of Revival took place. In Germany the., Pietist movement connected with Spener did much to reassert the true position concerning the Holy Spirit;4 while still more important was the Methodist and Evangelical Revival in Great Britain and America under Wesley and Whitefield, then Romaine and Newton, and later on, Jonathan Edwards and others. To Wesley in particular is due the insistence on what is generally called ' the witness of the Spirit,' the testimony borne by the Spirit to the heart of the believer, that he is ' accepted in the Beloved,' and a child of God. While the doctrine had not been overlooked before, it was certainly due to Wesley that it came to be regarded as one of the marks of the children of God. The effect of this Revival was seen almost everywhere, and the missionary expansion in England and America, which characterised the early years of the nineteenth century, was undoubtedly the result of this insistence upon the Holy Spirit in relation to the Gospel of Christ.

1 See Hodgkin, ' George Fox,' The Trial of our Faith, p. 239.

2 Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 95.

3 Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, pp. 326-330; Denio, op. cit. ch. vi.

4 Smeaton, op. cit. p. 333.