Heaven's Sugar Cake

A MONG the dilemmas caused by Calvin's rejection of the lorthodox conception of original sin was that regarding sacramental grace. To the congenitally depraved, the satisfactions of communion were simply inaccessible. Whereas the Anglican, whose universal law (according to Hooker) was the law of reason, could make a voluntary movement toward God, the Calvinist, whose universal law was that of predestination, could at best stand and wait. This was true in theory. In fact, however, the Calvinists and especially the American Puritans were in the habit of contradicting the letter of the law. Had Jonathan Edwards interpreted rigorously the doctrine of God's decrees, he could not have preached repentance. Had Edward Taylor remembered it properly his Sacramental Meditations might have been considerably different from what they are. In explaining the importance with which the Puritans regarded the Lord's Supper, Professor Thomas H. Johnson writes of the excessive humility which the Puritan had to feel toward himself for his generic participation in the breaking of the first covenant, and the concomitant joy he could feel at the thought that stood sponsor for him in the second.1 It is this joy which motivates the sacramentarianism of Taylor. In other metaphysical poets, such as George Herbert, we can observe an affective quality of the communion that is very strong; but Herbert was an Anglican and had a theologically legitimate motivation in the doctrine of the Real Presence. Though the Church of England had repudiated the Catholic transubstantiation, it did at least believe that Christ was pres

Doctrine · Heaven · Predestination · Repentance · Supper · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Philosophy · Religious studies