HKB
This change, it is affirmed by the Andover professors,--
"... is a natural development of principles which the New England theology has especially cultivated. These principles have gained their rights only by hard conflicts. At every stage the cry of heresy has filled the air, but they have won the day. They have banished the dogmas of guilt for Adam's sin, of infant damnation, of passive regeneration, of the universal perdition of the heathen. They have been attended all along by concessions,--concession of the dogmas that all men sinned in Adam, that Adam was their federal head, that the death of Christ was only for the elect; concession that 'elect infants' who die in infancy include all such; that we cannot fix the time when moral agency begins; that none who die before this point is reached are excluded from salvation; and so on, through ever-advancing modifications. The path of New England theology is thus strewn with concessions,--concessions to an advancing knowledge of God's Word*, concessions *to truth!"[61]
Very explicit language, surely. And yet, in direct conflict with it, there is the fact that the Andover creed, to which all professors of the institution must give their assent, involves the doctrines of the Trinity and Vicarious Atonement; that "by nature every man is personally depraved, destitute of holiness, alike opposed to God; and that, previously to the renewing agency of the Divine Spirit, all his moral actions are adverse to the character and glory of God; that, being morally incapable of recovering the image of his Creator, which was lost in Adam, every man is justly exposed to eternal damnation; so that, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God; that God of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, selected some to everlasting life, and that he entered into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of this state of sin and misery by a Redeemer." Yes, the Andover creed declares there is a final separation from the love of God, which cannot wrest the erring soul from the grasp of death, cannot bridge the grave, cannot descend into the depths and bring up to life and light its own offspring. Christ himself may declare, "I will draw all men unto me;" the Andover creed says, No! No salvation for the soul that has entered death's dark realm. No matter that Christ has the keys of hell, he cannot rescue! No matter that the time has been foretold when "death and the grave shall be destroyed," when "there shall be an end of sin," when pain shall no longer pierce and tears no longer flow; in opposition to all this the Andover creed tells us, as an essential part of Christian faith, as one of the inspiring strains of the Gospel message, that "the wicked" whom Christ came to save, "will awake to shame and everlasting contempt, and with devils be plunged into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone for ever and ever."