Calvin and Missions - World Evangelical Alliance

18 Calvin and World Mission
service. May she ever go on, conquering and to conquer, until we all meet
as one on the great day of the triumph of the Lamb!
But bear in mind that the aggressive Church has no well-defined system
of doctrine, and that her Arminianism is of a very mild type, coming nowhere
near that of High-Churchism or Roman Catholicism. Wherein lie the
elements of her power and progress? I do not believe, and I am confident it
cannot be shown, that they lie in her Arminianism or in the doctrines
common to all the Christian churches, such as sin, Justification, regeneration
and holiness, and in her admirable system of inerrancy, by which she
keeps all her stations manned and sends forward fresh men to every new
field. Let her preach Arminianism strictly and logically, and she will soon
lose her aggressiveness, or become another institution than an evangelical
Church of Christ.
Furthermore, Arminianism in the Methodist Church is but a century old.
It has never passed through the years or the confusions through which Calvinism
has passed. Will it continue in the ages to come to be the diffusive
power which it has been for these years past? Of this I am persuaded, looking
at the history and workings of religious opinions in the past: that the
Church will be constrained in time to put forth a systematic and logical
Confession of Faith, 25 out of which she will either drop all peculiarly
Arminian doctrines, and so secure her permanency, or in which she will
proclaim them, and by that means will inject the poison of death, as an
evangelizing body, into her system. A thorough Arminianism and a practical
evangelism have never yet remained long in loving harmony. Look at
the history of doctrines as illustrated in the history of the Church of Rome,
and you will see this clearly attested. Arminianism, in its principles, had
been in operation in that Church for centuries when the Reformation broke
forth, and what evangelistic work had it done? It had indeed converted
almost the entire world, but to what had it converted it? It had formed and
established the largest and most powerful Church which the world has ever
seen, but what had it done for the salvation of human bodies and souls? It
had made Romanists, but it had not made Christians equally as numerous.
Was it not the very principles of the Calvinistic theology which flashed
light upon the thick darkness, and threw fire into the corrupt mass, and
lifted up the banner of the cross, so long trodden under a debased hierarchy,
and revived the ancient faith of the Church, and established the great
Protestant and evangelical denominations of Christians? Who but Calvinists
– or, as formerly called, Augustinians – were the forerunners of the
25 I do not forget, and do not disparage, Richard Watson’s Theological Institutes.