J ■; / '-t i ■'/. ■ # ^ ^ o E-i O M Pi f % a. CtS CL CD c < E CT3 t/) JQ -a c 0) to O '#) C •H W i-H «0 c •H W) •H J^ o iH tH Mh . • > OJ DJD CU ON }-( C o> O -H ^ 0) 5^ O O -P • O - in Q) Ti -cf C >> Q) p^ CO x: PQ Oh H i^eijj ant( Uniform &tiiiim* ^^**^s^>^ ^^i^GMTOi<^^ CONTENTS. LECTUEE I. PAGE Introductory Kemarks — The connexion between the branches of evangelical truth — The Scriptures the source of our knowledge of man's primeval state — The Mosaic account of it — Adam was formed, both in mind and body, in a perfect state — His original character, or the image in which he was formed ; not found in his station merely; not in his body; nor solely in his mind, though of an exalted nature; but in his moral state — The nature of the holiness connate to Adam — Statements of Turrettine, Knapp, &c. — Adam's holiness consisted not in the right exercise of his powers, but in predisposition to their right exercise — Spiritual life in him was, in the order of nature, previous to right thoughts and feelings — Remarks on the nature of life in general — Adam became subject to law by virtue of constituted relations — On his creation he sustained the parental re- lation only to the race — How his conduct in that relation solely would have affected them — The federal relation, how and where constituted; the change effected by it in reference to the race; it exposed them to the consequences of his disobedience, i.e. the los3 of chartered benefits — Statements of Pictet, &c. ; overlook the dis- tinction between the paternal and federal relation — Difference ia the consequences which may result from transgression in each rela- tion — Genesis ii. 15 — 17 considered — The existence of the federal relation established — Examination of the objection, that the conse- quences of one man's sin cannot justly reach to others — Various answers considered ; that of Augustine, Edwards, &c. — Partial solu- tion of the difficulty; more full solution 1 LECTUEE II. Proof of the blessings suspended upon the federal obedience of Adam were chartered blessings — Examples of such blessings — Being gifts of sovereignty, they admit of such suspension — Illustrations of this — The blessings deposited in Adam for the race were of this kind — Proof of this furnished by Gen. ii. 1 7, 25 ; the words appear to contain Sll CONTENTS. PAGE a threatening only; yet with this form they include a promise — Proof of this — The extent of the promise — Secured to him, as long as lie obeyed, the continuance o'l the life he then enjoyed — 1st, The life of the bodj', death was to him the result of federal failure ; is so to his posterity — All thus die in Adam — Immortal bodily life would have been secured to the race by federal perfection — 2nd, The per- manent presence and influence of the Hcly Spirit — This the ulti- mate source of holy volitions and actions in the case of Adam — Was yet the gift not of Equity but Sovereigrty — Its continued possession might, therefore, be suspended on a condition — The condition on ■which the continued enjoyment of these two blessings was suspended, viz. abstinence from the forbidden fruit — This the sole condition — What might have been the result of persoTio? failure, had it been pos- sible — The results of personal and federal failure are not necessarily the same — Privileges are often held by charter on other conditions than those which entitle to the rights of citizenship — Adam held blessings by chai-tei' — On another condition than, if not a beneficiary, he must have lield them — Mistakes of Picket, Hopkins, and others — The Adamic di^^pensation not a covenant of works, but of grace — It was so to Adam — Placed the continuance of life on a single act of obedience — Is so to iis, suspending life to us on a condition more likely to be performed by him than by us — Adam violated the con- dition of the charter; the results reach to us, but they are the loss of chartered benefits — How far we may be said to have been guilty of Adam's sin — The strict meaning of the term " guilt'' — Its theolo- gical sense — How the whole subject is embarrassed — The right view of it — The estimate which this view leads us to form of the Augus- tinian statements — Mistakes which they involve, and iheir source — Their nature explained — Statements of Jonathan Edwards and Augustine concerning the identity of the race and Adam — State- ments of Stapfer — Examined and opposed at length — Are now generally abandoned — Resulted from a mistake of the nature of the Adamic dispensation — The loss of chartered benefits may render our condition as deplorable as if the strict punishment of Adam's sin had been laid upon us — Illustrations — Consideration of the objection that our own interests should have been trusted to ourselves — Source of the feeling — Its gi'oundlessness and folly — The rea!=ons which may have led to the suspension of these blessings on the federal obedience of Adam — The moral lesson taught by his failure . . 40 LECTUEE III. The historical character of Genesis iii. 1 — 34, defended — The results of Adam's failure to us more specially considered — Our legal lia- bilities and depraved moral condition — The phrase Original Sin used generically to denote both — Standards of the Church of Scot- land, Assembly's Catechism, President Edwards, Doddridge, &c. — The effects of the fall of Adam upon our relative state or condition — exposed us legally to the loss of all the suspended blessings — to CONTENTS. Xiii PAGE the death of the hody and soul — It lerjaVy exposed us to this loss, for God's charter has the force of law — It thus differs from human charters — The suspended blessing Adam wPiS bound to guard for himself, and to preserve for us — The difference between the Adamic and the Gospel charter — The threatening appended to the former gave it the form and force of law — Disobedience brought guilt, strictly speaking, upon him — The loss of chartered blessings was punishment to him, but mere loss to us — Mistakes of the Ultra-Cal- vinists that Adam's sin was literally ours — and brought guilt, strictly so called, upon us — Remarks upon Haldaiie's views — The doctrine of personal uniori — The doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin to us, as a legitimate ground of punishment, examined — Statement of the doctrine — What it assumes — To impute sin or righteousness to an individual is to treat him as a sinful or righteous man — Proofs of this statement — To impute Adam's sin to us is to treat us ns if we had committed it — The assumed legal counting, &c., Avould not justify punishment — Requires itself to be justified — Difference between the imputation of righteousness and of sin — Sin cannot be imputed to a substitute without his consent — The con- sent of a person to receive good may be assumed, but not evil — The real explanation of the facts of the case — The imputation of Adam's sin to us is, as Turrettine says, direct and immediate — Causes of the other view — Judgment of the synod of the American Presbyterian Church 80 LECTUEE lY. The effects of the fall %ipon the native character of man — The implied threatening was, that if he ate, he should die spiritually — The evil threatened was the departure of the Spirit from his mind, and not spiritual death in the sense of depravity — Spiritual death in this sense was not inflicted on Adam — Statements of Russel, Plopkins, Edwards — Progressive steps of the change from life to death in Adam — none the result of Divine influencL- — There was only the cessation of influence — The ideas we are to form of the state of total depravity into which Adam sank — Was it the infusion of positively unholy principles, or the deprivation of holy ones ? — Reasons for the latter opinion — Supported by President Edwards — How positive ungodliness may spring from a privative cause — The previous remarks applied to the state of the infant mind — Some- thing there must be in it tending to corruption, but is it privative or positive ? — Original Sin is a deprivation not a depravation — The opinion confirmed by the authority of Edwards, Hodge, Bret- schneider, Turrettine, Bellamy, Du Moulin, Howe, Williams, Harris, Gilbert, Russel — Examination of the statements of Hodge and Russel — Tije nature of the inferior and 'animal propensities — are not evil p:r se, being principles of action merely, not of evil action — The necessity lor their existence — Being positive principles, they uiiist have come from God, and so cannot be essentially evil — The XIV CONTENTS. PAGE inferior principles acting alone, without the control of higher ones, ■will lead to ungodliness ; but native depravity consists not in the presence of the former, but in the absence of the latter — If their absence will account for the universal prevalence of sin, there is no need for supposing that native depravity is positive in its nature — Recommendations of this theory — It shows that God is not the author of sin — It diminishes the difficulty concerning the propaga- tion of sin — It presents a clear and obvious vindication of the Divine conduct . . . . . . . . • . .112 LECTUEE V. Examination of Augustinisra and Pelagianism — of the hypothepis of Dr. Woods, Andover . . . . . . . .151 LECTUEE YI. Examination of the hypothesis of Dr. Knapp — of Professor Moses Stuart — of Mr. Ballantyne . . . . . . .175 LECTUEE YIl. Native depravity ; proof of the doctrine of Original Sin — The proof need not be adjusted to any particular theory of the nature of Original Sin — The precise point to be proved ; viz. a tendency to sin, carrying on to sin unless controlled by grace — The two sources of proof — 1st, that supplied hy the character and conduct of men — If all men sin, and sin early, we may infer tendency, &c. — The con- clusion verified, supported by the opinions of Drs. Beecher, Woods, Chalmers. President Edwards, &c. — The conclusion re?ts not on the amount, but invariableness, of sin — Defect in the President's reasoning — How the amount or degree of the tendency is to be measured — Confirmation of the facts upon which the conclusion rests — -first, that all men sin, or come short of perfect obedience, and so expose themselves to death — One act of transgression constitutes a man a sinner, though one act of obedience does not constitute him a righteous man — Proof that all men are thus sinners derived from consciousness, observation, history. Scripture — The proof strengthened by the amount of wickedness and the measures taken to restrain it — Proof that men si7i as soon as capable of moral agency, more decidedly proving native propensity, &c. derived from obser- vation, consent of ancient philosophers, and Scripture — Second source of proof ; viz. that supplied by revelation — Subdivision of proof — First, passages Avhich directly affirm it — Gen. v. 3 ; Dr. Taylor's gloss, &;c. — John iii. 6 : the explanation of Taylor, and of opponents generally, examined, and replied to — Job xiv. 4 com- pared with XV. 14 — 16 — Dr. Taylor's explanation of the word •' clean " examined, shown to mean moral purity — Psalm li. 5 com- CONTENTS. XV TAGB pared with Iviii. 3 — Examination of Taylor's criticism — Gen. viii. 21 — Import of "youth" — Efforts of opponents to neutralize the testimony of this passage examined — Prov. xxii. 15 — 2ndly, General statements which imply the doctrine — Passages which represent wickedness as a property of the species — Those which deny the possibihty of justification by deeds of law — Which assert the universal necessity of redemption by Jesus Christ — And the imiversal necessity of the new birth 217 LECTUEE yill. Objections against the doctrine considered — The proper question here, viz. not, Are there objections against receiving the doctrine ? but, Are there not more against rejecting it ? — Subdivision of objec- tions — First, those which represent it as unnecessai'y — Men may sin without a sinful nature — The exact question here, viz., whether universal sin does not prove tendency — Examination of the state- ments of Dr. Taylor and Professor Stuart — Objection of the former obviated ; no good action before regeneration — Universal sin may be accounted for hy the contagious Influence of had example — The objec- tion assigns the thing for the cause of the tiling — Does not account for the existence of bad example, or how it comes to be universally followed — Example governs actions merely, does not produce pro- pensities — To ascribe universal wickedness to bad example does not relieve from the pressure of any supposed difficulty — Universal vnclcedness may he attributed to the ascendancy which the inferior pro- pensities obtain over the superior in early life — Examination of the statements of Drs. Knapp and TurnbuU — What is conceded, viz. that all actual sin is the triumph of the inferior principles, &c., but the question is, " Why are we so constituted as to lead to this ?" — The statements of Turnbull, Taylor, &c. relieve from no difficulty — Involve a doctrine of original sin — Second class of objections, that the doctrine is inadmissible — Is incompatible with the nature of sin — Dr. Taylor and Mr. Stuart's statements — Both derive any force they appear to possess from a misconception of the doctrine — We do not maintain that native depravity is sin properly so callei^, but a tendency to sin — If such tendency exist it must be jjhysical in its nature — This objection common in America — This might be allowed, and the objection be invalid — Physical tendencies are inducements to action, but do not constrain it ; if tendency to sin were a physical tendency, it would not render sin necessary — Dr. Taylor's charges refuted — Augustine's statements unauthorized — In what case only would native tendency to sin be physical — Cannot be so on our theory, that it is merely a privation of original righteousness — Examination of the nature of the animal propensities — A native tendency to si)i is contrary to the justice and goodness cf God — The objection does not attach to our views — God was not bound to con- tinue his Spirit to Adam, or to bestow it upon the race — Man is responsible because endowed with the faculties of human nature, XVI CONTENTS. PAGE not as enjoying the presence and influence of the Holy Spirit — Does not impugn the goodness of God — If it were conceded that more goodness would have been displayed had the Spirit been a per- manent guest, still great goodness has been displayed — The objec- tion thus resolvres itself, — that, to be good at all to any being, God must be good to him in the highest degree, or make a worm a man, and man an angel — Little children are represented as patterns of humility, &c. — Statements of Taylor and Stuart — Reply . .274 APPENDIX. Note A. — The consequences of transgression do not always rest -with the transgressors themselves . . . . . .319 B. — Examination of the Rev. Howard Hinton's account of the threatening, " In the day thou eatest," &c. . . . 320 C. — The great moral lesson taught by the issue of the trial of Adam in paradise 326 D. — Original sin not identical with actual sin ... 32S E. — Is regeneration a physical change? .... 330 ADDITIONAL NOTES. F. — On the immateriality of the soul . ... . . 335 G. — On the image of God 337 H.— On spiritual life 339 I. — The representative character of Adam . . . .339 K. — Punishment can only be the result of personal offence . 341 L. — Analogical illustrations of the fact that the consequences of Adam's transgression attach to us . . . . 343 M. — Death would not have been experienced without sin . 345 N. — Death the result of sin 347 0. — The death of the body not all that was iricluded curse ........ P. — The enormity of the sin of Adam . Q. — The meaning of 5>tJT E,. — Imputation ...... S. — The effects of the original transgression . T.— On the fall . . -. . ' . U. — How desire triumphs ..... X. — The desh-es of men not sinful, "per se" . Y. — The degree of original depravity Z. — On Traducianism AA — On the phrase " Original Sin" BB. — On the nature of Original Depravity . CC— The extent of God's law .... in the 349 351 351 353 355 357 359 360 360 361 363 363 365 THEOLOGIG:S:L ORIGINAL SIN. LECTUEE I. INTEODUCTORY EEMAEK3. — CREATION OF OUR FIRST PARENT — ■ HIS CHARACTER — RELATIONS TO THE RACE. It would, perhaps, be impossible for any man, it is cer- tainly so to me, to enter upon the discussion of the sub- ject to which I have been invited to direct the thoughts of the reader, without considerable anxiety, and somewhat of apprehension. The doctrine of original sin, as it has been usually called, is so overwhelmingly important — lying, as it does, at the foundation, if I may not say constituting the foundation of the great system of evangelical truth ; it is, in some of its parts, embarrassed by such formidable diffi- culties ; it has been'so greatly misunderstood, and, conse- quently, exposed to so much obloquy by statements of its nature which it might be difficult to reconcile with just views of the constitution of the human mind, the estab- lished principles of moral science, and the ground of human accountability — that I cannot but feel, and pain- fully feel, the weight of responsibility which rests upon me. My earnest prayer is, that, though I may question the accuracy of some of the phraseology occasionally em- ployed on the subject, and even reject certain explanatory statements of its nature, I may be able to show the deep and broad and solid foundation on which the evangelical XT. B 2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. doctrine of the native and total depravity of man securely rests. It is to me a source of comfort that I have no doubt of the truth and scriptural authority of the great doctrine to which attention is to be directed. Never, indeed, did I hold all that is essential to the doctrine — its essence, if I may use the phrase — with a more tenacious grasp. The additional examination I have recently been constrained to give to it, has fixed me more firmly than ever in the opinion, that this first stone in tlie great evangelical system rests on a basis which no powers of reasoning, though in alliance with great learning and extensive research, with splendid eloquence, or acute sophistry, will ever be able to remove. I would not, however, utter a similar assertion in refer- ence to all the views of the nature and results of original sin which are presented in the pages of some of its avowed friends and defenders. It is not in itself improbable that pure evangelical truth, issuing from the mouth of Christ and his apostles in the free and simple manner by which divine revelation is uniformly characterized, may present an aspect somewhat different from that which it bears in the pages of certain stiff systematic theological writers. To the fine gold of Scripture, some of these latter may be possibly found to have added a little of the iron and clay of their own conceptions. Should this, in a single instance, be found to be the case, the Clmrcli cannot fail to be a gainer by the separation of the former from tlie sterliuGf metal. Besides, the present day requires much greater accuracy and precision in the statements of all the parts of the evangelical system, than was needed a century, or half a century ago. The precise meaning of every phrase and every word is now severely scrutinized ; so that, when the somewhat vaguer and looser phraseology of the past gene- ration comes to be weighed in the exacter balance of the INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 present times, ^ve need not wonder that in some degree it should be found waftting. Still the phraseology referred to may have been sufficient for the purposes of edification tlten, though it may not be so now. To those who heard it, it may jiave conveyed merely the great substantial general truth ; to us it may convey that truth with certain accessory ideas, not intended to be conveyed, not forming a part of the truth itself, not contributory to its beauty, nor adapted to aid in its diffusion, but calculated to deface the one, and impede the other. Let me be forgiven if I say I have long thought there is need of some little rectification in what may be called the nomenclature of certain parts, at least, of evangelical truth. If I sliould see reason to attem2:)t this in the present Lectures, I hope my motives will be judged of candidly. And if I should see further reason, or fancy I see reason, to question the accuracy of certain statements of the doctrine, I trust it will not be forgotten that all this may be done — whether I may succeed in doing it is another thing — without disturbing the foundations of tlie doctrine, but with the effect of bringing them into more distinct view. The anxiety under which I have avowed that I labour, results partly from the apprehension that certain statements, if viewed apart from the entire system pre- sented in the following pages, may be misconceived ; and partly from the fear that I may fail to develop my views either to the satisfaction of my readers, or my own. So inseparable is the connexion between all the parts or branches of evangelical truth, and so necessarily are our conceptions of one doctrine modified by the views we enter- tain of another, presupposed by it, that I shall take, in this lecture, a somew-hat discursive and preparatory course, glancing at the creation of our first parents, and at the constitution established with them, in the scene of trial, or the garden of Eden. To the Scriptures we are exclusively indebted for all 4 CREATION OF OUR FIRST PARENT. the knowledge we possess of the primeval state and con- dition of man. And it is no slight proof of their inspira- tion, that the account they give us of the origin of our race — of the character of its head — of the blessings he originally enjoyed — and of the loss, the awful loss he sustained by disobedience, is the only intelligible and rational account. Nothing contrary to reason, nothing obviously impossible, nothing improbable — admitting the iiboundless power and goodness of God — appears in the narrative of the Jewish historian. It presents no appear- ;ance of splendid invention, but of sober, serious truth. It has the air, certainl}^ of a simple narrative of facts. It carries the judgment along with it; and I have not the slightest doubt — if the biblical account of the origin of our race, and the most intelligible and rational fictions of Paganism, were laid, for the first time, before a man of sound discernment, that, placing his hand upon the Bible, Jie would say, " Here I stand on solid roclc, and all is sea besides." From the narrative of Moses w^e learn, that, when there "had been made all the necessary preparation for the re- ception of a creature invested with the high endowments which man was destined to possess, he was ushered upon the scene. Adam was not created till the end of the sixth day. " We may observe," says Bishop Home, " of the divine procedure, what is true of every human plan, con- certed with wisdom and foresight, — that that which was first in intention, was last in execution. Man, for whom all things were made, was himself made last of all. We are taught to follow the heavenly Artist step by step, first in the production of the inanimate elements, next of vege- tables, and then of animal life, till we come to the master- piece of creation — man, endowed with reason and intellect. The house being built, its inhabitant appeared. The feast being set forth, the guest was introduced. The CREATION OF MAN. 5 theatre being decorated and illuminated, the spectator was admitted to behold the splendid and magnificent scenery in the heavens above, and the earth beneath ; to view the bodies around him moving in perfect order and harmony, and every creature performing the part allotted to it in the universal drama, — that seein*? he misfht un- derstand, and understanding, adore its supreme Author and Director." Of his actual creation we have the followincr account: " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul." (Gen. ii. 7.) Imagination presents to us the heavenly Potter at work. We see him first collecting the clay ; next arranging and tempering it; afterwards setting the wheel in motion ; and then there gradually rises up before us the appearance of a perfect man ; but it is cold and motionless, like a statue. The blood has not been made to circulate, the heart to beat, the lungs to play. The divine Artist proceeds next to impart the vital principle — that high and mysterious pro- perty, the bestowment of which so manifestly displays omnipotent power. He " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," communicating not merely the sensitive and animal life — if there be such a principle — but a rational and immortal soul. Were it proper so to do, I should be glad to expatiate, for a moment or two, on the admirable adaptation of both parts of the nature of Adam, the material and the spiritual, to the position he was to occupy, and the connexions which were destined to exist between him and the worlds both of matter nnd of spirits: and also to enlarge a little upon the pr. of, both metaphysical and scriptural, which may be adduced in support of the immateriality of the soul ; or rather in support of the existence of the soul ; for to affirm that it is material, is really to deny its existence. The extent and importance of the topics on which I must treat, pre- t) HIS POWERS PERFECT, vent, however, my doing either the one or the other. At some futm-e time, if life be sj^ared, I may enlarge upon both. There is, however, one point to which I must call the reader's attention, as the recollection of the fact, to -which I am about to refer, may afford assistance in some of our future discussions. It is this, viz. that the body and the mind of Adam were created in a state at least as perfect as that to which either and both would have arrived had they reached that state by the ordinary process of matura- tion. The meaning is, not merely that his body possessed adult strength, but that his senses when first called into exercise gave him all the information they convey to us in our mature state. He was not created, I imagine, with visual sensations or perceptions ; -■' but the eye, when first turned upon the objects around him, conveyed to him, what it does not to us, the knowledge of their magnitude, and distance, as well as their colour. His mind, in like manner, was not created thinking and feeling ; all actual thoughts and feelings were, in the order of nature, sub- sequent, in his case, as in ours, to his existence. But all his mental powers, like his bodily faculties, existed at first in a mature state, and were capable of doing at once what our minds acquire the capacity of doing by lengthened experience. From the first moment of his being, he had all the preparation, for both bodily and mental action, which can be predicated of us in adult age. He could infer and predict ; drawing those conclusions, and antici- pating those consequences, which we gain the facility of doing by a slow and gradual process. And there was something in his mind, or an influence resting upon his mind, which ensured aright action of all his powers when they were put forth, as they instantly were, into action. I infer all this, in part at least, from the fact, that other- wise he must have been utterly unprepared for action, for * i. e. ■with the senses iu exercise. HIS OllIGlNAL CIIAUACTER. 7 entering upon the duties he was instantly called upon to discharge. There is, also, another fact to which I may now advert, though I may have occasion to refer to it again. It has more significance in itself than most writers seem to have thought; more at least than has heen generally conceded to it. It relates to the place where he was brought into existence. It does not appear, then, that he was created in the garden of Eden, nor of its dust, '• but of the earth of the common field ; " for we read (Gen. ii. 8) that the Lord God took the man "n-Aom he had formed, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress and to keep it; " and, when he was expelled from it, God is said to have " sent him forth to till the ground from u-Jie)ice he uas tciueny (Gen. iii. 23.) And what vras the orl':rinal state or character of Adam ? To this important point — a point so important in itself, and in its bearing upon the subject of the present lectures — I must request the particular attention of the reader. By maintaining the great doctrine of original sin, we virtually assert that the native state of man noiv differs from that of the first man when he came from the hands of God. In reference, then, to his present position and character, we may gather some light from his original position and character. In fact, the two states — the state of man by nature, and the state of Adam by creation — reciprocally throw light upon each other. Adam was made in the image of God ; man is horn in the image of Adam. We must ascertain, then, the original and the subsequent condition of the first man, that we may be the better able to form an accurate conception of the condition of his de- scendants. Of the original character of Adam we have the following inspired account, given both prospectively and retro- spectively: "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Gen. i. 26.) " So God created man 8 THE " IMAGE, ETC. NOT POLITICAL. in his own image, in the image of God created he him." (Gen. i. -27.) The employment of the two terms, " image " and "Hkeness," denotes the full and perfect resemblance of man, in his pristine state, to his Maker. What, then, are we to understand by the terms "image" and '• likeness ? " They have been supposed to denote the authority over the inferior creatures, shadowing forth the supremacy of God, with Avhich his Maker invested him. No necessity, I apprehend, exists for denying that such authority may be indicated by the terms. The opinion has been thought by some to derive support from the language of the Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. xi. 7. He is for- bidding males to pray or prophesy, in their religious assemblies, with their heads covered ; forasmuch, he adds, *' as the man is the image and glory of God : but the woman is the glory of the man." It has been thought to receive further confirmation, from the facts that, when man rebelled against God, the crea- tures, held by him in subjection while innocent, renounced, as it was fitting, "their allegiance to him, and became, in the hands of their common Creator, instruments of his punishment." The beasts of the field were no longer at peace with him. "Yet, in consequence of the new covenant, and promise to redeem man, and in the pro- spect of his being restored to subjection to his Maker, Ave find it said after the flood, (Gen. ix. 2,) ' The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea.' " Yet, though the station occupied by Adam, as the sub- ordinate head of the creation, may possibly be referred to in the terms under consideration, they doubtless in- clude more. Placed in this elevated position, Adam may indeed be said to have borne an image of God ; but the image must be sought for elsewhere. Where, then, did it exist? I answer, it must have been in his body, or in his mind, or in tlie two conjointly. KOT IN HIS BODY. 9 It could not, however, be, as it has been frequently shown, in his body, because " God is a spirit," to which no bodily shape can bear the least degree of resemblance. Between a material and a spiritual being, there must even be direct contrariety. We have, indeed, it may be allowed, a very in- adequate conception of spiritual subsistences in general ; yet when the sacred writers tell us that " God is a spirit," Ave know they mean to affirm that he is essentially diverse from matter — that he possesses, in short, no single quality in common with matter. How perfect soever then may have been the material frame of Adam when it issued from the hands of its Maker, it is absurd to affirm of his body that it was formed in tiie image of God. There is no reason to doubt, indeed, that our iirst parents, before the Fall, surpassed their posterity as truly in their per- sonal appearance as in the rectitude of their minds. Un- questionably there existed some external indications of the glory which shone so brightly within. It is impossible perhaps for us to estimate the amount of loss, in this respect, that we have sustained by the entrance of sin into the world. Yet still it were downright absurdity to suppose that the material frame of our first parent can have borne any resemblance to the eternal and invisible God, even before it had become robbed of its chief attrac- tion, the bloom of innocence, by sin. For the same reasons, the image of God cannot have been impressed upon the body and the mind of our first parent conjointly. It must be sought for exclusively in the latter; and, consequently, must either have consisted in the faculties and powers conferred upon his mind, or in their right moral state and exercise. In the opinion of many, Adam may be said to have borne the image of God because his body was animated witli an immaterial principle — a simple, uncompounded essence — a soul or mind ; and a mind of a very high order, possessing those exalted faculties which, rendering man 10 NOT SIMPLY IN THE POWERS OF HIS MIND. a capable subject of moral government, necessarily in- volve responsibility. I am not anxious to gainsay the foregoing statement, but I cannot think that it exhausts the meaning of the terms we are now considering. The assertion that Adam was created in the divine image may be true in relation to his mind, simply and physically considered; but it is true, emphatically and chiefly, in reference to the state of his mind. And, if this double view of the meaning of the terms be maintained, we have an easy exposition of two sets of passages, — the one de- clarinc!- that all men are bv nature destitute of the divine image ; and the other, that all men are possessed of it. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood," w-e read, (Gen. ix. 6,) " by man shall his blood be shed ; for in the image of God made he him," — an expression which would seem to inti- mate " that the slaughter of man is a kind of destruction of the image of God." It is the present extinction of powers — as the words may be understood, though I am aware they are susceptible of a different interpretation — the possession of which, in some measure, assimilates man to his Maker. Of the same description is the language of James iii. 9: "Therewith," i.e. the tongue, " bless we God, even the Father ; and therewith curse we men who were made " {i.e. by the possession of exalted mental powers) " after the similitude of God." And yet Seth, the son of Adam, though possessed of all the high mental faculties which were originally deposited in the first man, and by him transmitted to his posterity, was born, not in the image of God, but in that of Adam. And such, let me add, is the image in which all men are born. They bring into the world the entire and exalted physical powders with which God, in his high sovereignty, was pleased to dignify the mind of Adam, but they bring not into the world the image of God. They are not recognized — even in adult age, when their powers have acquired that full vigour and expansion wdiicli were given to the IN HIS MORAL STATE. 1 1 mind of our first parent by creating energ}'' — as bearing the divine image. They must be "renewed in the spirit of their minds " before this pre-eminently exalted attribute can be 2>i'edicated of them. Till this divine change has taken place upon them, they " bear the image of the earthly."' It is when they are renewed in holiness — and not till then — that they can be said with truth to " bear the image of the heavenly." The conclusion we gather from this somewhat long discussion is, that the terms " image " and " likeness " refer especially, if not exclusively, not to the high and noble faculties with which Adam was endowed, but to his moral state : he bore the likeness of the great God's immac- ulate purity. Proceeding directly from the hands of God, he must have been, in his primitive condition, a holy being. It is possible, however, to misconceive the nature of the holiness which is rightly predicated of Adam as he came from the hands of his Maker, — or which, as some express it, was concreated with him. We must, therefore, consider this point somewhat carefully. I am not, I acknowledge, satisfied with some of the common and popular representations which are given of this subject. And when, in compliance with the request of the Com- mittee of the Congregational Lecture, I consented to deliver the present course, I determined to have no re- serves — to follow wherever truth, carefully sought after, might appear to lead me. It were presumption in me to suppose that, in the various views I may lay before the reader in the course of this volume, there will be no minG;iinQ: of mistake with correct statements. It is my consolation that any such mistakes will be detected, so that the truth will sustain no injury. Every man who values truth above all other things will rejoice to see an error of another corrected, but pre-eminently an error of his own. The term holiness is an abstract term, comprehending 12 THE NATURE OF HIS HOLINESS. right thoughts, right feelings, and right actions. A holy man, or a holy being, is one who thinks as God thinks, and feels as God feels, and acts as God acts. In some happy degree — though not perfectly so — this is the case with an individual who has experienced that great change which we call conversion to God. His thoughts and feelings are such as God approves, for they resemble his own. Now this mode of thinking has been transferred by many — perhaps by evangelical men generally — to the state of Adam as he came from the hands of God ; or to the holiness which, as it is said, was concreated with him. The holiness of Adam consisted, they imagine, in right thoughts and feelings. "It comprehended," says one, "knowledge in the understanding, holiness in the will, rectitude in the affections, and such an entire harmony in all his faculties that his members were obedient to his affections — his affections to his will — his will to his understanding — and his understanding to the divine law." Now, if this statement were intended to be a descrip- tion — as perhaps it was, for it is the language of the great Turrettine, with whose works I may add it would be no disgrace to the present race of theologians to be a little more familiar than we are — a description of the holiness of Adam subsequently to the moment of his creation, and during the entire period which intervened between that event and his melancholy fall, I cannot conceive a de- scription which would be more correct and felicitous. But if it were meant to be a description of that holiness which was strictly speaking concreated with him — that holiness with which God by his direct power and act en- dowed him — and which, if I may so sj^eak, he brought into the world with him, I apprehend it is both a false and an injurious description. Consistently with the state- ment made a short time ago, viz. that Adam was not created thinking and feeling — that all actual thoughts HTS KNOWLEDGE, ETC. ACQUIRED. 13 and feelings were subsequent* to his creation — I at least, it is evident, cannot receive it. I am not unaware that, in making these and subsequent statements, I am liable to be charged with what is called splitting hairs in divinity — exhibiting distinctions where there are no differences ; but I cannot help that ; and I may add, I shall not be much concerned about it. The views I hold on this subject will aid us much when we proceed to exhibit the precise nature of original sin, or native depravity; and it is for this special purpose that I introduce and dwell upon them here, as every point touched upon in this Lecture is intended to prepare the way for future dis- cussions. I believe, then, that all the knowledge that Adam possessed of the divine character, and all the love — per- fect as I have no doubt it was — which he cherished to- wards that character, was, in the strict sense of the terms, * It is laot meant that any considerable time intervened ; he began, doubt- less, to exercise bis powers immediately after his creation, so that his first thoughts and feelings were all but contemporaneous with his existence ; still all were acquired. " These original endowments of man are not to be under- stood as excellences Avhich he possessed in actual exercise, {habitus, Scholast, Jiahitus infusi,) but only as capacities and faculties for those excellences which, by practice and exercise, he may come to possess." — Knapp's Theology, p. 170. " Eeason and the intellectual powers are the noblest gifts which we have received from God, without which we could not be moral beings. "We cannot suppose, then, that these powers should have remained idle and unemployed during the happy state of innocence in which our first parents lived. Paul, therefore, with entire truth, makes eTrt^i/ojo-i? one of the things in which our likeness to God consisted, Col. iii. 10 ; since holiness and blamelessness, the other things mentioned as constituting it, could not exist without some knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge, however, was not itself directly imparted to man at his creation, but only the power oj obtaining knowledge.'' " As to actual knowledge, he was, indeed, at the moment when God created him, exactly in the condition of a new-born child, and quite as destitute of innate ideas. But in another respect he was very unlike a new-born child ; in this, namely, that he was able to exercise his reason immediately, which a child is not. God created man, according to the Mosaic account, not only endued with reason, but able to exercise it on his first entrance into the \iox\.<\.."—Knapp, p. 171. 14 CREATED WITH A HOLT BIAS. acquired knowledge and love ; — that the former was gained from manifest developments of that glorious character which, as soon as he opened his eyes, he saw all around him, as well as from direct divine communications ; and that all the love he felt towards the great God who had created him was the natural and certain — I will not say necessary — result of the view he was thus brought to entertain of that character. All intelligent and rational love to God must spring from correct views of his charac- ter. It is contrary to the very nature of such love to conceive of it kindled, in any human mind, by a direct act on the part of God — supposing such a mode of origi- nating it be possible — possible, I mean, when the nature of the mind is taken into account. There is, in my view of the case, no necessity to maintain, in order to support, the Scripture doctrine of the original holiness of the first man, that he was created thinking and feeling, and think- ing and feeling rightly, — that he entered the scene of trial not only in the full maturity of his mental and moral powers, but in the exercise of those powers. But there must have been in him what we may call a predisposition (it is not of much consequence by what term we designate it ; I am not sure we have one which is perfectly appro- priate and unexceptionable) to a right exercise of those powers ; or what ground of certainty could have existed of their right and holy exercise ? It cannot be conceived to have been, in his case, a matter of accident that objec- tive light became subjective light; that his mind received those revelations of the divine character and glory which were shining all around him ; that his heart felt the supreme attractions of that character. There must have been an adequate cause for all this. And that cause is not to be found merely in his mind, nor in his mental powers — high and elevated though they were ; it is not to be found in the full maturity of those powers ; it is not to be found in any revelation of the divine charaetei- made ah extra. It is NATURE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 1 5 to be found, I apprehend, exclusively in the union of the Spirit of God -with his mind ; or, if any object to that phraseology, to the presence and influence of the Holy Spirit with and upon his rnind. The result of that pre- sence and influence was by our old divines denominated spiritual life, and by theologians of modern time — such as Fuller, D wight, for instance — a holy bias, or a holy taste. I confess I have lately been disposed to think that it would be well for us to return to the more ancient nomenclature. All action presupposes life. Vegetable action, vegetable life; animal action, animal life; spiritual action, spiritual life. The soul of Adam must have been, in the order of nature, spiritually alive, before it could act spiritually. Now, I imagine that all si^iritual appre- hensions, and all spiritual affections, are the evidences and the actings of spiritual life, rather than the thing itself. The original holiness of Ada,m did not so properly consist in just views of God, and proper affections in regard to God — i.e. in right thinking and feeling. It was something which stood, partly at least, in the relation of cause to all this ; something which led to all this. It was, in short, that spiritual life which we have predicated of the mind of Adam on his creation, resulting from the pre- sence and influence of the Holy Spirit of God. Holiness was thus native to Adam. He was created spiritually alive, though all spiritual apprehensions and affections, i.e. all spiritual actings, were subsequent to his creation. I shall be told, perhaps, that I can give no intelligible account — no definition, no description even — of spiritual life. I frankly acknowledge it, though I am not driven from my position by the necessity of making the con- cession ; since it is a common difficulty. Of all principles, life is, perhaps, the most mysterious. We can form no conceptions of it in the animal, or the vegetable. Why, then, should it be thought surprising that the same dif- ficulty should exist with regard to the life of God in the 16 HOW HE BECAME SUBJECT TO LAW. soul of man ? Yet the animal must live before it can moYe ; the vegetable must live before it can grow. The soul of Adam must have been instinct with spiritual life before he saiv God as he is, and felt towards him as it became him to feel. Still, as spiritual life was instantly followed by spiritual apprehensions, and spiritual feelings ; as not a moment intervened between its communication, and all that bright train of holy thoughts and feelings to which it gave birth, I am willing to admit that, for common and popular purposes, no better account of the primitive state of our first parent can, perhaps, be sug- gested than the one supplied by Turrettine in the passage quoted a short time ago.* No sooner was Adam created than he came under law to God. And let it be especially observed, that the demand of obedience was not an arbitrary, i.e. sovereign, act on the part of God ; nor the yielding of obedience a mere spontaneous act on the part of man. God was bound to command, and man was bound to obey; for tlie obliga- tion to govern, on the one side, and the duty to be subject, on the other, G;rew necessarilv out of the relation that existed between man and his Maker. It were a great mistake to suppose that the latter was at liberty not to reign, or the former at liberty not to obey. Both parties were bound — bound, I mean, by the unchangeable and eternal principles of right and wrong — to assume the re- lative position into which they actually entered. Yet it may be truly said, and, perhaps, ought to be said, that * " The Scriptures represent the Holy Spirit, not only as moving, and occasionally influencing the saints, but as dwelling in them as his temple " . . . "as being so united to the faculties of the soul, that lie becomes there a principle or spring of a new nature and life," &c. — Edwarda on Rdigioiis Affections, vol. iv. p. 10-4. " To this mode of illustration the Holy Scriptures themselves frequently refer us. How often do they represent a holy principle wrought in the soul by the Spirit of God as a divine life," ttc. — Dr. Williams on Divine Government. •—Vide chap. vii. sect. 2. PATERNAL AND FEDERAL RELATION. 17 the act was spontaneous on the part of both. Though bound to govern, God became voluntarily the sovereign of man; man became voluntarily the subject of God. The latter submitted himself to the divine authority. His obedience was not extorted, but spontaneous. The holy princii^le — the spiritual life which we have predicated of him — had its natural actings in obedience; it rendered it his " meat and Ms drink to do the will of his Father in heaven." Thus Adam possessed the principle and the rule of obedience. The law of God was written in leaible characters upon his heart. That natural sense of right and wrong which exists even now in every human being, and which must have existed in him in a state of per- fection, combined with subsequent divine communications, sufficiently instructed him concerning the will of God, while the holy bias of his mind disposed him to do it. Immediately subsequent to his creation, Adam is to be regarded, I apprehend, as standing, not in a federal, jbut a paternal, relation to the whole race. The entire family of man was destined, by Sovereign appointment— for which; of course, we cannot assign the fall reasons — to S23ring from liim. He was the father of all who were to descend from him, as ordinary fathers, in the present time, will be the fathers of all who may descend from them. Xow, let it be observed, that, had no other relation been constituted between him and them, the posterity of Adam — assuming for the present that he would have had posterity — would, as it appears, have been affected by his moral character and conduct, in the same way as the pos- terity of other fathers are affected by theirs." I am far from saying they would have been unaffected by it, for it * " This union {i. e. between tlie race and Adam) was, 1st, natural, as he is the father, and we are the children. 2ndly, Political and forensic, as he was the representative head, and chief of the whole human race. The foundation. therefore, of imputation, is not only the natural connexion wliich exists be- xr. c 18 PATERNAL A^'D FEDERAL RELATION. is difficult to conceive of this as credible. As far as we can see, it appears impossible " that rational beings can be brought together, in any part of God's universe, so that the actions of one shall not in some degree affect the character of others." This is, however, pre-eminently true of beings destined, as in the case of man, to descend from one another. All men who come habitually into contact thus mutually affect one another for good or for evil. Especially do the character and conduct of parents tend to affect, and actually affect, the character and conduct of their descendants to the very latest generations. And there is no more solemn and fearful thought than that the destiny of the very last man who shall descend from any of us may be affected for eternity by our obedience or our transgression. Standing, however, in the paternal rela- tion merely, the transgression of Adam — supposing him to have transgressed — would only have indirectly influenced the eternal destinies of his descendants, by directly affecting their characters. Had the contagion of his example in- fected them, and led them into disobedience, they must and would have died, but they would have died solely on account of their own sins. It is probable that many " of tlie angels, who kept not their first estate," were led into rebellion by the persuasions and example of the chief and first of the revolters ; but they were cast down to hell as the punishment of their own rebellion, not of his. Such, by our present hypothesis — i. e. that Adam had been con- stituted the paternal head merely of the race — would have been the case in respect to man. No man would have suffered the punishment of Adam's transgression, nor of any other's transgression ; each would have stood for himself, and answered for himself. Had all men trans- gressed, all must have died. Had all men obeyed, all tween us and Adam, since, in that case, all his sins might be imputed to us; but mainly, the moral and federal, in virtue of which God entered into cove- nant with him as our head." — Beechefs Views in Tiieology, p. 185. THE PROMISE OF A LARGE FAMILY. 19 would have lived. Had some men rebelled, they must have experienced condign punishment; had some men obeyed, they would have enjoyed the gracious reward. It is impossible to conceive that the conduct of the head of the race would, in this case, have affected the eternal condition of his descendants, otherwise than by affecting their characters, and influencing their conduct. The facts of the case, however, and the whole current of divine revelation, as it appears to me at least, constrain us to believe that another relation than the paternal relation, viz. the federal relation, as it may be for the present called, was established between Adam and his descendants, — a relation which brought them more directly within reach of the consequences of his conduct. To a more full consi- deration of that relation, as well as of its results, we must, then, now proceed, on account of its intimate connexion with, and important bearing upon, the great subject of these Lectures. We have already seen that Adam was not created in the- garden, but in the comparatively barren and comfortless outfield of the earth ; and that, when his existence com- menced, he sustained, to the race which was to descend ■ from him, the paternal relation merely; or was, as it has . been said, the natural root of mankind, and not their - federal head. Now, it is of some importance, I appre- hend, to remember that the blessing of fruitfulness — or the promise of a large family by whom the earth might . be replenished — as well as of abundant food from the stores - of the vegetable world — was made to him in that character and relation ; so that his subsequent act, when he took and ate the forbidden fruit — an act committed, as we shall afterwards see, in his federal relation — did not revoke the blessing, or deprive him of the promised race, i. e. doom the race — as some have supposed — to annihilation, or rather, to non-existence. That race was, I imaghie, des- tined, at all events, to exist. The threatening \Yhich no EEMOYAL INTO THE GARDEN. guarded the tree of knowledge, &e., was not that, in case of disobedience, the family should not be born, but born in circumstances of degradation ; born to die, — some of them a moment or two after their birth, and all of them at no distant period from it; born in sin, and conceived in iniquity.- Among other reasons, I gather this from the fact that, after Adam had broken God's covenant (the language will be afterwards explained) by taking the for- bidden fruit, he was permitted to eat of the produce of the outfield world, though the ground was cursed, and rendered comparatively barren, as the punishment of his sin.t He lost paradise by his rebellion, but he did not lose all the treasures of the vegetable kingdom. These treasures, together with the promise of a seed numerous as the stars of the heavens, were given to him in his paternal relation; and they remained accordingly in his possession after he had sunk, by rebellion, from his exalted position as federal head of the whole race. The removal of Adam from the outfield Avorld into the garden, or paradise, prepared for him expressly by the hands of God himself, and containing, as we may suppose, *' specimens of all natural productions, as they appeared, without blemish, in an unfallen world," was contempora- neous with the establishment of what we have been accus- tomed to call the Adamic constitution or dispensation. Of this important change in the condition and relation of our first parent, we have the following account. " And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day * Further confirmation of this statementjAvhich is here explanatory merely, will he found in Lecture II., and at the end of the volume. + Some have supposed that it "was originally less fruitful than the garden, and destined to he so on the foresight of the transgression. CHANGE EFFECTED, WHEN TAKEN INTO THE GARDEN. 21 that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. ii. 15—17.) That change which, as I have said, was thus effected in the condition and relation of Adam, was, I apprehend, of the following kind ; viz. that, although the penal results of any and every act of transgression on the part of Adam would have formerly rested with himself exclusively — not directly affecting either the character or the legal state of his descendants, it was now ordained that the consequences of setting at naught the positive interdict, couched in the words I have read, and guarded by so solemn and awful a sanction, should reach to all his descendants by natural generation, as if the act of taking the forbidden fruit had been committed by them, I trust that all my readers, and I know that all who have deeply studied the subject, will observe the cautious and guarded way in which I have endeavoured at least to state this very important and difficult subject. I have not said, for instance — for such is not my belief — that the penal results of any other act of transgression than the violation of this interdict — if any other act of transgression by Adam could be supposed — would have directly attached to the race ; that if Adam had committed a breach of any precept of the law written upon his heart, v/hich it was possible for him to violate — murder, for instance — (I put a monstrous case, for the sake of illustrating a principle) — the whole race would have been legally exposed by that act to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire. I am not unaware, indeed, that this extreme opinion can point to its professed adherents ; but it is to me seriously doubtful Avhether it has ever been thoroughly believed by any sane mind. It rests upon no scriptural basis. It is a human addition to the true evangelical doctrine on this subject, — an unsightly excrescence, which deserves to be pruned away with no tender hand. It is at direct variance with all our natural and necessary notions of justice ; and, if I 22 STATEMENTS OF PICTET AND HOPKINS. can show that divine revelation affords it no sanction, the readers of this vokime will, I doubt not, join me in thinking that an incubus will be removed from the evan- gelical system, under which it can scarcely do otherwise than stagger and fall. Should any be disposed to think that I am departing, in some degree, from old and sys- tematic statements on this point, I ask them to suspend their judgment till I shall have had full opportunity to develop the whole of my views in regard to it. I am fully aware that the statements of many valuable evangelical divines involve of necessity the opinion I now set myself to controvert. Pictet, in his chapter, " De foedere naturte," when exhibiting the condition of the covenant — as he calls it — made with Adam — or that act, or acts, on the performance of which the blessings of the dispensation were to have been enjoyed by his descendants — represents it as consisting in the knowledge of God, as far as it could be derived from a contemplation of the works of God, and from the revelation he had received from him ; and, further, he adds, " in obedience to the divine law, both natural, which was inscribed upon his heart; and to those particular precepts relating to the tree of life, which God added to the law of nature : and this obedience," he continues, "was required to be true, and sincere, constant, persevering, and perfect."=;= Dr. Hopkins also, of America, (I quote these writers, let it be observed, not so much on account of any weight which may be conceived to attach to their views, but as types of what appears to me an incorrect opinion,) says, " We cannot justly infer from this prohibition or command only being mentioned, viz. the prohibition of the tree of know- ledge, &c., that man was not prohibited the violation of the moral law, in every instance, upon the same penalty; or that there were no other positive commands given to him, guarded with an equally severe threatening, in case * Vide Picteti Theologia, Baynes's Edition, p. 131. MISTAKES INV0LYP:D IN THEM. 23 of disobedience ; or that this prohibition was the only test of his obedience ; or that if he had violated any other command it would not have been attended with equally fatal consequences," L c. as he obviously means, to him- self and his posterity. " This positive prohibition, with the threatened penalty, is thus particularly mentioned, for two very good reasons ; First, because it was a positive command. Secondly, because man actually fell from his innocence and happiness, and incurred the threatened penalty, by disregarding this prohibition, and eating of the fruit of this forbidden tree. Had he sinned by trans- gressing any other positive command, which we know nothing of now; — that, in that case, would have been as particularly mentioned, with the same penalty, as this is now ; and we should have heard nothing of this, in a history concise as that which Moses was inspired to give, in which not a word is mentioned which was not neces- sary to understand the whole story." ='.^ The whole of this statement overlooks the important distinction made, in preceding pages, between the paternal and the federal character or relation of Adam. It assumes that all that was required of him in the former relation, was also required of him in the latter ; and that the re- sults to the race, of his disobedience as the federal head, or representative of the race, were to be precisely the same as the results of disobedience as the natural root, or simply the father of the race. This I cannot but regard as a mistake, and a great mistake. It tends to obscure all our conceptions of the whole subject, and to involve us in inexplicable embarrassment. No doubtDr. Hopkins is right, when he says, " that Adam was bound to obey the whole of the moral law." Every rational creature of God is of ne- cessity thus bound. Nothing can release him from this ob- ligation but his ceasing to be a creature, or a rational crea- ture. The Doctor is, also, farther right in stating that the * Vide System of Doctrine, vol. i. p. 220. -4 THE GARDEN. violation of any part of the moral law, ^Yhich it was possible for Adam to break, must have incurred the penalty of death, in the full sense of the word. Whatever sin deserves, Adam must have suffered, let the act of transgression have been wdiat it might. But we are not entitled, a priori, to assert this of federal failure. The results to other persons, of the misconduct of one individual, may be different in the different relations he sustains to tliose persons. We may conceive, perhaps, of the ruler of a tribe, who is, at the same time, the f^ither of the tribe. As the father of the tribe he may corrupt it, by his profligate conduct ; as its ruler he may bring distress and famine upon it, by an unwise direction of its labour and resources; or destruc- tion, by plunging into ruinous war. It is possible, there- fore, that one thing may have been required of Adam as a private individual, and another thing as a public repre- sentative ; — that the results, to the race, of his federal failure might not have been precisely of the same kind, nor of the same extent, with the results of his personal and private failure. Death, in the full sense of the terra, might have been the result to Adam himself (nay, must have been so) of any transgression, as the mere father of the family ; but that circumstance does not warrant the inference, that death, in the same sense, must have been entailed upon us by his transgression as the federal head of the family. Our reasoning, it should be observed, has been so far based upon the apparent probabilities of the case. Let us now direct our attention more particularly to the revealed facts of the case. "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Many questions will occur to every reflecting mind here ; — questions eelattnc- to the garden itself — PROOF OF THE FEDERAL RELATION. 25 where it existed; whether in the third heavens, or in the moon, or on the earth; whether at the North Pole or the South Pole ; whether in Tartary, or China, or Syria, Persia, Arabia, Babylon, Assyria, or Palestine ; for each of these localities has, by the ingenuity or folly of man, been assigned to it : what were its productions ; its character, as symbolical or not. Questions, again, relating to the tii'o remarkable trees which grew in it; — tlie tree of life, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But on these and other questions it is, for obvious reasons, impossible for me to enter. I assume, for the present, the historical truth of the narrative con- tained in the second chajDter of the book of Genesis. What little it may be necessary to say in support of this assump- tion, will find a more appropriate place in a subsequent page. There are, however, two points which I must not fail to consider at the requisite length. They are, first, "What were the blessings whose permanent enjoyment, both by x\dam and his posterity, Avas suspended on his federal obedience?" And second, "What was the conduct, on the part of Adam, which, if continued in till the ter- mination of his course of probation, would have secured these blessings to both parties?" Or, to allow the melan- choly results of the trial to become our guide in the framing of the questions, " What were the acts, (or the act,) on the part of Adam, which, in his federal relation, involved his posterity in the consequences of his disobe- dience ?" and " What were those consequences ?" *' What do \Ye lose, and what do we suffer, by the melancholy lapse of our first parents?" To put the questions in tlie form in which they appear in the writings of our older and sys- tematic divines, " What was the condition of the covenant established with Adam in Paradise?" and "What was the sanction by which it was enforced ?" Before we proceed to reply to these questions, it is, however, obviously proper to state what is requisite for 26 rr.ooF of the federal relation. the defence of the position — of which all that has been hitherto said has been expository merely — that a strictly federal relation between Adam and the race was consti- tuted when the prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of p^ood and evil was issued by God ; in other words, that the legal, and, as they appear to us from our imperfect know- ledge, the arhitrary results of his transgression of the inter- dict, were to extend to the race. Socinians maintain that Adam was simply the father of the human family, — that his descendants are not legally affected injuriously by his transgression, — or that death, the threatened penalty of transgression, does not accrue to them as the result and punishment of his sin. It may be allowed that explana- tory statements of the federal relation have been occasion- ally given which are at variance with revelation, opposed to all just views of moral science, and contradictory to our necessary notions of equity. Yet I have not the slightest doubt that Adam was virtually the representative of the race — i. e. that the consequences of his conduct in refer- ence to the forbidden fruit, were destined to attach to his descendants as certahily as if that conduct had been their own. Should any one admit that the race did, in point of fact, become subject to death — the threatened penalty — by his transgression, but imagine that our exposure to death is the result of his paternal relation to us merely, I would ask him whether the paternal relation in his mode of con- ceiving of it — connecting with it such consequences — does not identify itself with the federal relation ? Is not Ids imagined paternal relation one that is sui (jeneris ? Is it not diverse from tbat which ordinary parents bear to their children ? No doubt Adam sustained, as we do, the sim- ple relation of father to his children ; but if the death of t]ie race grew out of that relation simply, — if we become directly exposed to the consequences of his disobedience merely because we are his children — the parental relation PROOF OF THE FEDERAL RELATION. 27 not being sui generis, or involving a federal relation — it appears to me to follow, by necessary consequence, that the results of any other transgression on the part of Adam — of murder, for instance, as I have elsewhere stated — would have reached us, i. e. exjDosed us to eternal misery. A more full development of the nature of the federal rela- tion will be made in the course of the following remarks ; my present object is to prove its existence. I gather proof of this from the language of God when he descended into the garden to pass sentence upon the delinquents, after they had put forth their hands and taken and eaten the forbidden fruit. The Lord God said to Adam, " Cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field ; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. . . . And to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children ; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Gen. iii. 16—19.) These words were indeed addressed to Adam and Eve personally. They exhibit, undoubtedly, what were des- tined to be the results of transgression to them; and, at first view, it might appear as if they were intended to reach in their application to them exclusively. But if we take subsequent facts to guide us in the interpretation of this judicial declaration, as we are bound to do, we shall find it impossible to doubt that it comprehended their posterity in common with themselves, since the threatening has been inflicted upon their posterity. To whom was the ground cursed ? — to Adam merely ? or does not the curse — mitigated, indeed, in severity, after the flood — hang sus- pended over it to this day ? Who, in point of fact, has 28 PEOOF OF THE FEDERAL RELATION. brought forth children in sorrow ? Eve only ? — or has it not been the lot of her daughters, from her time to the present? Who have had to eat bread in the sweat of their face ? Our first parents exclusively? — or all their descend- ants up to the present moment? Who have died? Adam, or the race? All men have died, and all men will die, and "return" to the dust from whence they were taken. Now, since the consequences of Adam's transgression are experienced by the race, how can it be doubted that they thus reach to the race by divine appointment, or a divine constitution?— or, in other words, that Adam sustained a federal relation to the race, — a relation which involved them in the results of his transgression in his representa- tive character ? I gather further proof of the federal character and re- lation of Adam, from the parallel instituted by the sacred writers between Adam and Christ. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xv. 45 — 47, our blessed Lord is called " the second Adam," and " the second man." But how should he be denominated, the second Adam, unless the relation in which Adam stood to the race was similar to that which our Lord sustained to his people ? And how, especially, could he be called " the second man,'' unless to intimate that the relations sustained by Adam and Christ to their respective families, were so remarkable and unique that, on that account, it became proper to call one " the first man," and the other " the second ? " Christ w^as not really, or literally, the second man. Cain was such in this sense of the term. But he was the second man who sustained a federal relation. All admit — at least all with whom we have now any controversy — that Christ sustained it; and, therefore, he alone sustained it, unless Adam sustained it. The denial of the rej^resentative character of the first man must, accordingly, render in- explicable the designation " second man," which an in- spired writer has applied to him. PROOF OF THE RELATION. OQ The strongest proof of the representative character of Adam is, however, supplied us by the language of the apostle in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans. A parallel is instituted between Adam and Christ. The results of the one righteousness of the latter, are put in contrast with those of the one transgression of the for. mer. Kow, the consequences of our Lord's perfect obe- dience even unto death come to us, and are enjoyed bv us, as the legal results of his righteousness. It follows, therefore, or the parallel between Adam and Christ is not complete, that the consequences of the one trans- gression attach to us in the same way, as legal results. "It is true that we derive sanctification from union to Christ, and depravity from union to Adam. But the apostle is here speaking, not of the source of holiness, and of sin, but of the ground of justification and con- demnation." " The judgment was by one to condemna- tion, but the free gift is of m.any offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death reigned by one ; much more ' then ' they who receive abundance of grace, &c. shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to con- demnation ; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, even so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." —(Verses 16—19.)* I do not deem it necessary to dwell at greater length in proof of the federal character and relation of Adam. Few * The reader should obsen-e that this parallel proves two things. First, that the consequences of Adam's transgression, on the one hand, — and of our Lord's aighteousness, on the other, reach beyond themselves; i. e. that both sustained what we mean by the federal relation ; and, secondly, that the con- sequences of Adam's transgression do not reach us through the paternal re- lation merely, for Christ sustains no such relation. He is the head, — tlie representative of his people. He deigns to acknowledge them as brethren, but he is not exhibited as their father. 30 OBJECTION STATED — INSUFFICIENT ANSWEKS. of the doubts, in reference to this fact, Avhich have per- plexed the minds of otherwise evangelical men, would, I apprehend, have existed, but for the difficulties which such a relation are supposed to involve. Now, I cherish the hope that the representations to be immediately given of the blessings he was appointed to hold, and of the duty required of him in that relation, will greatly alleviate, if not entirely obviate, these supposed difficulties. In entering upon this subject, we are met, at the very threshold, Avith the objection, "But how can the legal results of the transgression of one man be justly made to extend to another man?" "How can it be right to make me responsible for the sin or misconduct of some one else?" Since Adam disregarded the divine interdict, justice demanded that he should be punished for his fault ; but where is the justice of subjecting the whole race to punishment for his misconduct, whatever may have been .the amount of guilt involved in it? The objection has been thought to be strengthened by such revealed state- ments as the following : " The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son : the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." (Ezek. xviii. 20.) The relevancy of this passage, and others of the same kind, to the case in hand, may be afterwards noticed. Against the objection just put, and put in the strongest possible way, it is not, I think, a valid answer, that "ordi- nary fathers sustain only the paternal relation to their children, while Adam bore the character of their legal representative;" because the objection is, in fact, an ob- jection against the establishment of such federal relation between the first man and the race. It is a virtual asser- tion that he ought not to have been constituted their legal representative, — strict justice requiring that every man should undergo probation for himself. AUGUSTINIAN SOLUTION. 31 Nor is it, I think, a perfectly sujicient answer, to state that, to the Aclamic dispensation, there was appended a promise as well as a penalty ; a promise of blessings to the race, suspended on certain conditions — on easier con- ditions than, perhaps, it may be truly alleged, could have been imposed by the Legislator, if individual, and not representative, probation had been resolved upon : and that the probation of Adam, under these less stringent conditions, was more likely to issue favourably for the race, than if probation, under the more stringent condi- tions of perfect obedience to the whole of the divine law, in its moral precepts and its positive institutes, had been assigned to each individual of the race. I admit, indeed, that this is a point which should not be thrown out of con- sideration when discussing this subject wdth an opponent : but I do not feel it to be a sufficient answer to the objec- tion, since the sentiment, that every man should be held to be responsible for himself alone, and not for another, seems to be too deeply rooted in the human mind to be eradicated or overturned. I need not remind my reverend brethren of the Angus - tinian and Edwardian mode of obviating the objection, viz. — as the learned translator of Dr. Wiggers's " Plisto- rical Presentation of Augustinism and Pelagianism " has stated it — " that Adam's sin was not his only, but the sin of the whole race existing in him, and each one sharing as much of the blame as he is punished for." (Vide p. 98.) Or, as I prefer stating it, as follows, viz. that Adam, and the race, were one being — not legally one merely, but, as it would appear, really and literally one — as the root, and stem, and branches of a tree are one tree. I shall have another, and a more favourable, opportunity for examining this notion, and for showing how it sprang into existence. At present, I merely say that I cannot accept it as a suffi- cient explanation of the alleged fact, that the 2Je7ial results of Adam's federal failure are experienced by the whole O^ THE LOOSE SENSE OF THE TERM PUNISHMENT. race ; and I cannot accept it as such, just because I can- not adopt the notion itself. I find it impossible to believe that I and Adam constitute one being. The assertion that we are so is contradicted by the evidence of con- sciousness, which testifies to all of us that he and we are difierent beings, — that we are men separate and distinct from Adam, and all other men, — as separate as one tree is distinct from another tree. But, if the responsibility of one man, in the strict sense of tlie term, should not be thrown upon another, — and if Adam and the race are not one being, " how," the ob- jector will proceed, " can the race be punished for the sin of Adam, as the orthodox doctrine supposes to be the case?" The solution of this difficulty may he partly found, 1st, in the loose sense in which the term punishment is some- times used. Punishment is, properly speaking, the in- fliction upon an individual of evil, i. e. pain, or suffering, in consequence of a moral offence, and an offence com- mitted by himself. Nothing is punishment, strictly so called, which is not the result of our own crime or sin. It often happens, indeed, that one man svff^ers through the misconduct of another; but that suffering is not punish- ment to the former. Our blessed Lord endured the death of the cross in consequence of the sin of man ; but that which would have been punishment to us was, in correct thought, mere suffering to him. If, then, the question be put, " How can the race be righteously jmnished for the transgression of Adam?" I might proi^erly reply, that we do not affirm that, in the strict sense of the term, it was punished at all. Hence in the account formerly given of the Adamic dispensation, it was stated to have established such a con- nexion between Adam and his posterity, as that the con- sequences of federal failure, on his part, would attach to them as if the crime of taking the forbidden fruit had PARTIAL EEPLY TO THE OBJECTION. 33 been their own. We become liable — justly and legally so — to suffer these consequences, though not, strictly speak- ing, guilty of his sin. And when we, who hold evangelical sentiments, speak of the race as responsible for Adam's transgression, or as suffering the punishment of it, we ought, in candour, to be understood as expressing no more than this liability, — the exposure of the race to all the results of our first father's federal failure.- Still the objector will continue, " But how can it be just to expose me to the consequences of Adam's sin, when you acknow- ledge that, not having committed that sin, I cannot be strictly said to deserve to suffer them ? " The full answer to this objection cannot, in my view of the case, be returned till we advance to the second solu- tion of the difficulty under consideration ; in the mean- time a sufficient reply may be given now. The gist of the objection is, " that the consequences of moral actions cannot justly reach beyond the actors themselves." The conclusion drawn is the following : " Adam was the sinner, not we. Judgment should, therefore, have come upon him to condemnation, but not upon us. We should not endure the consequences of his transgression." Now, it mxay be well to test, after the manner of the admirable Butler, this objection against this particular scheme of providence, unfolded by divine revelation, by certain facts in that more general scheme of providence which expe- rience and history unfold. Are there no cases then, I ask, recorded in the book of God's natural providence, in which the consequences of moral actions — good and evil — have reached beyond the actors themselves ? On the contrary, the book is full of them. " A nation suffers from the misconduct of its rulers ; a parent entails dis- ease, degradation, and poverty, or afiluence and honour, upon his children ; Avide-spreading ruin is ofttimes the * Vide, for additional observations, next Lectui'e. XI. D S4 PARTIAL EEPLT, ETC. result of unprincipled commercial transactions.'-'' Here the results of moral action attach to more than the trans- gressors themselves. The second case — the case of a child contracting disease from its parent — is especially worthy of notice, because it must be resolved into a law of divine providence. Should it be said that the diseased state of the child follows as the natural and necessary result of the diseased state of the parent, I answer, first, that admitting the truth of the assertion, it yet does not alter the fact — that the consequences of transgression do not always rest, as it is affirmed they should, with the transgressor. I answer, secondly, by asking, " How came it to be the natural result of the parent's sin ?" Did it not come to be such by the predetermination and influence of God, who arranged all the sequences of the physical world, appointing events to stand in the relation of causes and consequents to each other? Allowing that there exists a just and true sense in which it may be said that the parent brought disease upon the child, is the agency of God to be excluded? Was no such agency exerted? Are we justified in overlooking it? It is, then, absurd and self- contradictory to urge that the consequences of the sin of Adam should not have overtaken his posterity, unless the objector be prepared to urge that in no case whatever should the results of moral action reach beyond the actors themselves ; and, were any person to do this, we might answer that his quarrel is more properly with the God of providence, than the God of revelation. We might tell him that, to maintain his position, he must deny facts of constant occurrence, or maintain that these facts impli- cate the justice of God ; and, finally, that, if he will ven- ture upon this presumption and profanity, we have nothing more to say to him.f I answer, thirdly, that, were we * Vide Lectures on Divine Sovereignty, by the Author, p. 321. + " It is very strange, and yoti are pretty sure it is hai'dly right, that their posterity should be made to sufler for an offence that is not their own. Now. PARTIAL REPLY, ETC. 35 as well acquainted with the whole of the divine dispensa- tions towards rational and responsible beings, in other parts of his boundless empire, as we are with the laws of his providence in relation to individuals and nations in this world, the exposure of the entire human family to great loss and evil, on account of the federal failure of the head of the family, might, for aught ive know to the contrary, appear as much to arise in the natural and necessary course of things, as the diseased state of the child strikes us now as being the result of the diseased state of the father. I am anxious to have it observed that, on this point, I assert nothing. No cautious man would venture upon an assertion. I merely state a hypothesis ; and a hypothesis, as it has been well observed, may have sufficient strength to parry an objec- tion, while it has not sufficient force to establish itself. Yet the hypothesis does not apj)ear to me destitute of probability, though to what amount that probability arises I shall not venture to say. That an event appears to us to arise in the natural course of things, is the mere result of our previous knowledge of the course of things. Why may we not, then, infer that, if the course of things, in cases parallel to the one case before us — viz. the conse- quences which ensue to a race from the federal failure of the head of that race — were as well known to us as the laws of divine providence in relation to men, the ruin of that race might appear as naturally to result from the first of all, is it not surprising that tMs should appear strange to us avIio have lived all our lives in a world in which the same thing has happened every day?" — Vide Ogden's Sermons, &c. " We see," says Dr. Price, " among the individuals of mankind, that in con- sequence of their dependence on one another, they are often deprived of benefits which seemed to be intended for them by the constitution of the Deity, and brought into states which, though they give no reason for com- plaining of Pro\idence, are yet justly deemed calamitous. How credible is it that there may be also events, or connexions in nature, by which, consistently with perfect wisdom and goodness, the like may happen sometimes to a species." — Vide Dissertations, p. 156; also Hartley on Sin, prop. 10; Dod- dridge's Lectui'es. Vide Kote A, at the end of the Volume. 36 BEASONS FOR THE CONSTITUTION failure of the head of the race as the headache of the drunkard from the debauch of the preceding evening? I would not venture to deny, though I would not assert, that the tendency of the moral lapse of the head of a race to bring ruin upon that race may be a necessary tendency. At all events, if the tendency be not a necessary one, there are obvious reasons for the establishment of such a connexion among social beings — and especially among beings who exist in successive generations, imparting and deriving existence to and from each other — as that the con- sequences of the transgression of one should he far reaching, attaching to others besides himself, not merely his con- temporaries, but successors to the latest generations. It is a moral guard against sin. Moral government must, it is obvious, have such guards ; for, to speak in logical lan- guage, the existence and influence of such guards consti- tute the differentia of moral government. It would cease to be moral government without them : more correctly speaking, it would cease to be government at all. Moral government is the government of motives — of inducements to avoid one mode of conduct, and to adopt another. Now surely the thought, which could not exist without the fact, that my misconduct, as a father, may ruin and destroy my children, is a moral guard against sin. I may add, that it is a sTRONa moral guard, — that it is among the most preg- nant and potent, if it be not the most so.. I believe that, as a moral preventive of sin, there are few possessed of more efficiency. Many a man would not care about in- juring himself, but he shrinks from injuring his beloved relatives. He may do, he is apt to imagine, though falsely, what he will with himself, but not what he will with his family. He, as he is ready to think, is his own property; his wife and children are their own property. He may trifle and sport, he fancies, with what is his own ; but he feels that he may not thus trifle and sport with what be- longs to others. How many a hazardous speculation, how IX THE CASE OF ADA:\r. 37 many a dishonourable deed, how many a licentious act, has been prevented by reflecting upon the disgrace, and dis- ease, and poverty which would be entailed upon the family, and perpetuated, perhaps, to the very end of time, if the temptation were not resisted and triumphed over ! This powerful moral guard against sin does not, we admit, al- ways prevail ; but it has a tendency to prevail. It has force enough in itself to prevail where, by serious and prayerful consideration, its due weight and influence are given to it. And thus the ways of God towards man are fully vindicated : men sin with no sufficient inducements to sin, but with every possible inducement — with the strongest inducements that moral government can supply — to avoid sinning. To the eye of enlightened reason they ought to be now, and, at the day of judgment, they will in fact be, " speechless." Now, let us apply, for a moment, these somewhat gene- ral remarks to the case of Adam when placed in the scene of trial. The consequences which were to follow trans- gression were of two kinds — personal and relative. He himself was to die if he took the forbidden fruit ; but his posterity also were to die. How tremendous the respon- sibility which rested upon him ! How unparalleled the force of the motives which were brought to bear upon him ! How incredibly superior, in inherent power, to those which have been brought to bear upon any other man, ex- cept the God-man — the man Jesus Christ ! We may plunge ourselves into ruin — eternal ruin ; tve may indirectly bring such ruin upon those who spring from us, to the latest moment of time ; but we cannot plunge a world into ruin ! Adam was, however, placed in circumstances in which this was possible to him. The condition of the whole race was practically in his hands. He could bless the world, or destroy the world ; — and he chose to destroy it ! He put forth his hand, and took the fruit — an expression which denotes the spontaneity of the act — and ate it, and brought S8 FULL KEPLT. death upon himself and the race. I marvel that even the infidel himself does not blush when he talks of " the little sin'' of eating the apple ! Can any sin, I ask — even the sin of Judas in betraying his Lord, or the sin of the Jews in crucifying him, or the sin of the infidel in rejecting the inspired testimony concerning him — be compared in atro- city with the sin of Adam in eating this apple ? Trans- gression gathers its guilt from the magnitude of the mo- tives to avoid it ; and that, again, from the amount of ruin and wretchedness into which it plunges. AYho, then, can calculate the guilt contracted by Adam, when he ate the forbidden fruit ? So far w^e may go, and not without a good measure of success, in disposing of the objection, " that a dispensation which secures that the consequences of the sin of one man should be experienced by millions of other men, is radi- cally unjust," even on the popular views of the connexion which existed between Adam and his posterity. I have said, however, that the objection Avill, in my view of the case at least, be more thoroughly obviated by — The second reply, which I now proceed to make. That reply bases itself upon the nature of the blessings, on the one hand, which were to have been secured to Adam, and the race, by his federal perfection ; and the nature of the loss and damage which, on the other hand, both were to sustain by his federal failure. For, if it should prove to be the case — and I trust I shall be able to make it appear that it was the case — that the damage sustained by the race was the loss, and only the loss, of what have been very properly called "chartered blessings,"* — blessings, * " Whatever Adam possessed, beyond those considerations which consti- tuted him a moral agent, was the fruit of sovereign benevolence. Hence arises the propriety of regarding the possession of his privilege, on the ob- servance of a specified condition, under the term covenant. For, if Adam possessed some spiritual principle, or benevolent influence, as a person possesses immHnities and privileges by charter for himself and his heirs, and TO THE OBJECTION. 39 t. e. which God was not bound in equity to bestow and to continue, — blessings which had their exclusive source in Divine sovereignty, — which might, of course, be withdrawn at anytime, and in anyway, that should seem meet to God himself, — or of which the continued and permanent enjoy- ment might be suspended on any conditions he should see fit to appohit ; then will it follow, that the establishment of the Adamic dispensation was merely a suspending of the j)ermanent enjoyment of chartered blessings upon the perform- ance of a certain condition hij the federal head of the race ; and that the damage which the race sustained, or, to adopt the phraseology of some, the punishment to which it be- came exposed, by the federal failure of its head, was the loss of chartered blessings — and the loss of such blessings exclusively. if these chartered benefits be retained on condition of not oftending in a specified manner, it follows that a privation of such benefits belongs as much to the heirs as to the individual oftending. But if they are treated for breach of such, covenant, or charter held on condition as persons included in the for- feitui'e, it is manifest that they are regarded so far guilty, or worthy to suffer such loss." — Dr. Williams's Notes to Edwards's Works, vol. ii. p. 334. " Guilty" of what, may we not ask ? Their guilt can only be exposure to the loss. Now this generic sense of the term guilt is found nowhere but in systematic theologj'. I have no desire to retain it. It never explains any- thing; it often misleads, by suggesting the specific instead of the generic sense. LECTUKE 11. THE NATURE OF THE BLESSINGS BESTOWED CONDITIONALLY UPON ADAM — THE CHARA'CTER OF THE DISPENSATION. We now proceed to establish the hypothetical state- ment with which the preceding Lecture conckided ; viz. that the blessings, whose enjoyment by the race was sus- pended upon the federal obedience of Adam, were char- tered blessings. I need not consume much time in an attempt to show that there are blessings of the kind to which I have now referred. Indeed I should not dwell a moment upon the point, were it not of the highest importance, in consider- ing a subject of this kind, to keep steadily in mind the distinction that exists between gifts, or rather debts, of equity and gifts of sovereignty. There are some things which are due from the Creator and Euler to the subjects of his government ; there are others, again, which are not due to them. God does not owe existence to the creature. That, wherever enjoyed, is a sovereign good ; and may con- sequently be resumed whenever he pleases. He does not oue reason to any mere creature ; and, therefore, in the case of any human being, and without any fault on his part, be may touch the secret spring of thought, and reduce him to an idiot, or a madman. He does not owe, inde- pendently of promise or covenant engagement, continued life to the creature ; for that which was originally a sovereign good — which is, indeed, a loan rather than a gift — may be at any time taken away. He does not owe, to the ac- NATURE OF CHARTERED BENEFITS. 41 countahle creature, a disposition to employ those i)owers which are essential to responsibility in the manner enjoined in the revealed directory of action ; though he does owe to him the impartation and the sustentation of the powers them- selves. Hence a man who becomes an idiot ceases to be an accomitable being. In short, to no being but an accountable being does the Creator owe anything; and even to such a being, at his creation, I mean, the Crea- tor, irrespective of covenant engagements, owes nothing but the powers which are essential to accountability. Further, it is of some importance to remark, that what I have called chartered blessings, or sovereign gifts, may not only he resumed whenever the heavenly Donor pleases, but suspended, as to their permanent enjoyment, on any condition which in his wisdom he may see fit to appoint. This is not the case with the other class of blessings — those, i.e. which are due to the creature. Whatever God is bound to bestow, he must be bound to continue. Hence irrational animals are not immortal, (or are gene- rally supposed not to be so,) because life is not due to them. And hence again, in the case of a race of beings destined to render to God an account of their conduct, not only must reason be upheld, but, what is perhaps the same thing, its prospective enjoyment by the race, must not be suspended on any condition to be performed by the head of the race, must not be suspended on any condition to be performed by the head of the race. Keason is essen- tial to accountability. Every accountable being must, therefore, possess it. He has a claim upon God for it, — a claim which, I would say with reverence, though with confidence, the Divine being cannot fail to meet. His possession of it must not be endangered by suspending its continuance to him, and others, upon the performance of any condition, how easy soever it might be, by another — the father, we shall say, of the family. Nothing due to a creature must be left to come to him conditionally; 42 CHABTZnED BLESSINGS ilAY BE for, in that case, it possibly might not reach him at all. A federal constitution, as it appears to me, in which one indi\'idual, as we say popularly, acts for others ; or, more properly speaking, in which the permanent enjoyment of good by a whole race is made to depend upon the conduct of the head of the race, can only have place in reference to chartered blessings — blessings to which they have no claim. Eternal life, we may state, to illustrate this point, is not due, and cannot be due, to sinners ; and, therefore, their enjoyment of eternal life may be suspended upon the " obedience even unto death "* of their federal head. But, if eternal life were due to them, it could be suspended on no condition whatever. One or two illustrations of the important sentiment that chartered blessings admit of such suspension, it may be proper to give before I proceed to the great subject of the Lecture. I have used, in the preceding sentence, the phraseology "illustrations (not proofs) of the important sentiment,' because I do not know that it admits of proof. No self-evident proposition can be proved, for that very reason. Now, if there be any proposition which deserves to be called self-evident, it is this, — that the continuance, to a creature, of blessings not due to him, may be suspended on any condition, (to be performed either by him or an- other for him,) which God may see fit to appoint. Con- sidered merely as a creature, and not an accountable creatui-e, God does not, as we have seen, owe the gift of reason to man ;* and, therefore, as it seems to me, the possession of reason by the race might have been suspended upon some act to be performed by the head of the race : and on Adam it might have been made to depend whether we should be intelligent beings or irrational crea- tures. » It nmst be obsenred here that I am not speaking of man (though, per- liaps, the term man is searcely correct here, since without reason we should not be men) as destined to give an account to God of his conduct, but as a creature or being merelv. RENDERED CONDITIONAL. 43 Again, God did not owe simple existence to the race; and, therefore, tlie life of the entire family of man might have been made to depend on a condition to be performed by the head of the family — upon his abstinence, for instance, from the fruit of a certain tree. The determination of God might have been (I do not think it was) that, in case of his taking that fruit, he should have no family ; that those countless myriads of human beings, who will ultimately stand before the great tribunal, should never appear on the stage of existence. Again, and finally. God does not owe rationality to the brute animal ; and, therefore, he might have sus- pended — had it appeared wise to him to do so — the en- joyment of this high faculty by them, upon an act to be i:)erformed by the head of the hmnan family ; so that, if Adam had not eaten the apple, the whole tribe of brute animals might have risen to the dignity of rational and accountable beings. My last illustration may be considered by some a little below the dignity of the subject ; but I have employed it because it appears powerfully adapted to illustrate the principle — that sovereign gifts, or chartered blessings, may not only be given or withheld, but bestowed — when im- parted — in any mode, or on any conditions, which the Donor may see fit to appoint. It remains for me now, then, to proceed with my pro- mised statement, and proof, that the blessings, whose continued possession by the race were suspended on the condition of abstinence from the forbidden fruit, were of this character ; and that the damage sustained by the race, as the result of the violation of the interdict, or of the eating of the apple, was the loss of blessings of this character, and of this character only ; i. e. the loss of blessings were not due to them, — which they had, conse- quently, no right to demand, — which might be bestowed, or not, according to the sovereign will of God, — which if 44 BLESSINGS PROMISED TO ADAM. imparted, might be imj)arted either conditionally or un- conditionally; and, if the former, imparted on whatever con- dition the infinite wisdom of God might see fit to adopt. To establish these important assertions, we must appeal to the record. " Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," said the Lord God to Adam, " thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die ; " or, as rendered by some, " dying thou shalt die." We have seen that these words were addressed to Adam in that new relation to the race upon which he entered when put into the garden ; addressed to him, that is, not as an individual, or not merely as an in- dividual, but as the federal head of the race. The threat- ening is, therefore, virtually, " In the day that thou eatest, &c. the race shall die, or become legally exposed to death.'' Now these words of the record seem, at first view, to contain a threatening, and a threatening only. Nothing is said about living. The words are not, " If ye abstain from the fruit, ye shall live ; " but, " If ye touch it, ye shall die." And we admit, at once, that they have the form of a threatening. But a threatening may include — I might, I think, add, must include — a promise — a promise of, at least, exemj)tion from the threatened punish- ment, if the action prohibited be not performed. The threatening that Adam should die if he ate the forbidden fruit, involved a promise that he should not die if he did not eat of it; i.e. in other words, that he should live as long as he refrained from tasting it. For, unless we suppose that the language of God to Adam rendered life a chartered blessing to him, i. e. gave him virtually the promise of its continuance, how could it have possessed any tendency to prevent transgression ? Adam might have said, " I can but die if I take the fruit ; I may die if I take it not. Why then should I not obey the impulse of desire ? " Life, as we have seen, is a gift, which God is not bound to impart or to preserve. It requires a HOW FAR THE PROMISE EXTENDED. 45 promise of continuance to convert it into a chartered blessing — a blessing which can never be withdrawn but on the violation of the condition on which it is held. Up to the very moment when our first parent v/as taken into the garden, his life might have been resumed by God at any instant. But the words of prohibition, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," converted it into a chartered blessing. He had " been thrown upon the mere bounty and grace of his Maker " for its continuance formerlv, but now he had a covenant ri^ht to it — a ridit founded upon the gracious promise of his Creator — as long as the enjoined obedience should continue to be per- formed. A promise was, then, involved in the threaten- ing. It is, however, important to observe its necessarily limited nature. Nothing was expressly promised. The promise was merely couched in the threatening. Now a threatening of death, in case of disobedience, could do no more than assure him that the life he then enjoyed should be continued as long as he abstained from dis- obedience. Many unwarrantable assertions on this subject have been made. Some persons, indeed, have contended that the language of God assured him that, on condition of abstinence for a certain period of time from the forbidden fruit, he should be raised to a higher state of being than he then enjoyed. And, from the confidence with which some men speak where Divine revelation is silent, it is wonderful that they have not assigned the precise dura- tion of the probation allotted to him. I feel j^ersuaded, however, that the words of the record do not justify such statements. Nothing, as we have seen, and as it is im- portant to remember, was expressly promised to Adam. The promise is merely couched in the threatening: and a threatening of death, (I repeat the statement, on account of its importance,) in case of disobedience, cannot possibly include more than a virtual assurance that he should not 40 CONTINUED BODILY die if he did not disobey; i.e. should remain in posses- sion of the life he then enjoyed. In expressing this opinion, I have, however, no inten- tion to deny that federal obedience, continued during a certain period, would have been terminated in the manner supposed. It may be allowed to be probable that without seeing death, he might, as Elijah, have been translated to heaven. All that is meant is, that the implied promise only gave him a covenant right to protection from the stroke of death ; — that obedience, in reference to the for- bidden fruit, would not have entitled him to the glory of heaven. "Whatever, in the case supposed," says an excellent writer, " had been given to man above what he already enjoyed, would have been given of pure bounty, and not as a stipulated and earned right, for no such stipulation " was made.* Now, whatever more may be supposed to have been comprehended in the life which Adam then joossessed, it did beyond all question include what we call natural life — the life of the body, &c. Adam was capable of dying in the sense of undergoing that separation between his soul and his body, in which tlie death of the latter consists. The continued enjoyment of life, then, in this inferior sense of the term, was suspended on his abstinence from the forbidden fruit. Whatever may have been the frame and texture of Adam's body, it was not designed originally to die. Whether he should permanently live in this sense, either here or elsewhere ; i. e. whether his soul and his body should remain, though possibly undergoing some change, in eternal union : — and whether the race should thus^ live, was suspended upon the conduct of Adam. He * It is evident that the sentiment opposed in the text has grown out of mistaken views of the nature of the Adamic dispensation. If it had been a covenant of Avorks, such as Pictet represents, the notion that obedience ■would have entitled him to heaven, would be manifestly less absurd. LIFE PROMISED. 47 was put upon a trial, the consequences of which were to be far-reaching. If he should take the forbidden fruit, he and the race were to become mortal; they must cer- tainly die ; and die in this sense of the term. His own body, as the legal result of transgression, must retuni to the dust from which it was taken ; though the time and manner of its return were left to the decision of his injured and insulted Sovereign. The main truth taught by the words, " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," is certain legal liability to death. They do not necessarily imply, as at first sight they appear to do, the infliction of the sentence at the very moment of trans- gTession ; but instant and necessary exposure to its in- fliction. In this sense the words are used in other parts of the inspired volume. Thus, when Solomon charged Shimei to abide in Jerusalem, and added, " It shall come to pass that, on the day thou goest out, and passest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die;" the words do not intimate '' that Shimei was to be apprehended and executed on the very day of the transgression, but that his life would be forfeited from the time when he absconded, and would be taken when and where it might be judged expedient." * * " The declaration, ' in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,' (Gen. ii. 17,) does not mean that death should be inflicted the self-same day in which the oftence was committed, hut that they should then he subject to death, whatever is meant by death ; that the sentence of deatli should be executed at the time appointed by their Creator. It is not said rnn cv^' or wm cVli in that day, in that same day, but simply, DV^- in that day, and the word ' day ' is sometimes used in Scriptui-e, generally for an indefinite time, as maybe seen in the Lexicons." — Vide Holden's Dissertation on the Fall of Man, p. 20 ; also preceding Lecture. If the words, " In the day," Sec, kc, necessarily imply the instant infliction of death, there would manifestly have been no race. Its very existence must, in that case, be ascribed to another dispensation. That we live at aU is the result of the intei-position of Christ. Then how, I ask, is tlie native depravity of the race to be accounted for? It cannot, of course, be derived from Chi-ist : equally impossible is it that it can have been derived from Adam. 48 THE EACE BECAME MORTAL Further, all his j^osterity were rendered mortal by his transgression ; their bodies, as well as his, were doomed by it to return to the dust, and repose in the tomb. What might have been the case with them, in this respect, had sin not entered into the world, — whether, after a season, as the world became too densely populated, they would have been translated to some other residence — to heaven for instance, the Bible does not say ; it is vain, therefore, for us to conjecture. We are certain, however, that they would not have died ; for death is to the race, and to every individual of the race, the result of the federal failure of the father of the race. " Many, indeed, have been cut off in the midst of their sins ;" and, as it might appear, as the exclusive result of their sins, " but they were previously liable to death as the descendants of Adam ; so that their death itself did not properly arise from their own actual offences, but only the time, the manner, and circumstances of it," It is in Adam that all die. " By man," i. e. one man, " came death." Were a human being so entirely sanctified from the womb as to pass through the world without sin, he yet could not A constitution which doomed us, in case of his transgression, not to be bom at all — and such, by the present hypothesis, was the Adaniic constitution — cannot have doomed us to be born in sin. The two things are utterly in- compatible with each otlier. I cannot, therefore, but concur in the opinion expressed by Dr. Russel in the following passage : — " If all included in the original curse had been the annihilation of our first parents, then, of course, our veij existence had been the fruit of Christ's mediation ; and, if so, we could have no connexion with Adam, except as our natural root. This notion involves, therefore, the very mistaken principle, that our present condition is not the result of the sin of Adam, and it leads to the denial of original sin and of all connected with it. But the salvation of Christ is deliverance, not from evils into which he himself brought us, but from evils into which we had fallen before his interposition. ' He came to seek out and to save that which was lost.' If our present existence, in the whole of its relations, is entirely the result of his mediation, then there are difficulties in accounting for it, which are much gi-eater than any that arise from its being the result of our connexion with Adam." — Vide Adamic Dispensation, First Edit. pp. 127, 128. Also Note B, at tlae end of the Volume. BY adam's sin. 49 escape death, since death is the result, not of personal, but federal failure. Immortal bodily life to the entire human family was suspended upon the conduct of Adam ; it was lost to the family by his transgression. In this sense — if it be proper to use the word in this sense — we are respon- sible for his transgression ; we are legally liable to suffer this consequence of his transgression. In this sense, Adam may be said to have been our covenant head, our legal representative. He so far acted for us, as that we were to die, if he set at nought the revealed interdict ; and to live, if he practically regarded it. Let no one object here that his consent was not asked and obtained for the appointment of Adam to represent and act for him ; since the supposition that such consent was needed is ineffably absurd. It rests on a radically mistaken view of the case ; viz. that the Adamic dispensation was of such a nature as to expose us, immediately and directly, to all the conse- quences — to eternal death even — of any other possible transgression on the part of Adam, instead of the conse- quences of this transgression merely ; for the exclusive result of this transgression was the loss to the race of chartered blessings — of blessings which are the offspring of free bounty — which may be bestowed, as we have seen, on any condition, and to which the recipient cannot pos- sibly establish a claim. Is God bound to ask the creature whether he shall brinsf him into existence ? — whether he shall preserve him in being, and how long ? — whether he shall suspend the continuance of his existence on any condition, and what condition ? In his folly and reckless- ness, man has urged many a presumptuous claim ; but to claim from God the right to be consulted whether the blessings of immortal life in the body should be imparted, and lion:, — is a height of folly and daring above which the arch apostate, who strove of old to grasp heaven's high supremacy, did not reach ! The first blessing, then, whose enjoyment by the race XI. E 50 thp: second conditional blessing. was suspended upon the obedience of Adam, v/as im- mortal life in the body ; the first loss sustained was the loss of this blessing.- When our bodies die, and return to the dust, we suffer, in that sad calamity, one of the con- sequences of Adam's sin ; for death is to us the result and the punishment of his sin. It is an affecting exhibition and proof of the enormity of sin in general, — of the atro- city of that sin in particular ! It says to us, " If you thus die, on account of the sin of another, it becomes you to reflect upon the yet more fearful nature of that death, which, if disobedient and rebellious, you may ere long be called to suffer for your own.'' In addition to this, there was a second blessing, the possession of which by the race was suspended upon the obedience of Adam, and the loss of which resulted to them from his disobedience ; viz. the permanent presence and influence of the Holy Spirit with and upon the race, — the source, and the exclusive source, of everything good and holy in the mind of man. In accounting for the correct apprehensions of the Divine character formed by Adam on his creation, and for the holy love to God which naturally resulted from these apprehensions, all were ascribed, it may be recollected, to the moral union of the Spirit of God — the third j^erson of the adorable Trinity — with his mind. The result of that union was, as we have seen, spiritual life, having its legi- timate development in holy purposes, and affections, and actions ; and continuing till the union was necessarily destroyed by the melancholy lapse of man. I have already glanced at the nature of spiritual life, and it will be my business hereafter to describe and define the spiritual death which seized upon the heart of Adam when the Holy * " By the punishment of transgression, Adam lost immortality." — Augut- tine, Op. Imp. vi. 30. " The first pair were so constituted, that, if they had not sinned, they would have suffered no kind of death." — Augudinc. Tide Wiggers's rresentation, &c. p. 93. THE HOLY SPIRIT A SOVEREIGN GIFT. 51 Spirit penally withdrew from him. My especial object now is, to show that the presence and influence of the Spirit, — though partly the ultimate cause of holy volitions and actions, in the case of our first parent, were, like immortal bodily life, to be placed in the class of sovereign blessings ; — of blessings to which Adam had no claim ; — bestowed, at first, by God's free bounty — continued, as long as they remained, as the result of his gracious pro- mise — held by charter, not by natural right, — a charter which secured them only so long as its prescribed con- ditions were fulfilled. This union of the Holy Spirit with the soul of Adam, and the spiritual life consequent upon it, were, according to the best view I can form upon the subject, contem- poraneous with the creation of Adam. He never existed without them. They were the causal reason why spiritual objects appeared arrayed in supreme attractions, and drew towards them supreme affection. But then this high- endowment of the mind of Adam — the indwelling of the- Spirit in that mind — was a gift, not of equity, but of sovereignty. Though the great and holy God may, per- haps, be said to have owed it to himself to impart it, he did not owe it to man to impart it. All that was due from- God to Adam were the principles that constituted him a- man, and which are often found in disjunction from spiri- tual state and character. Equity demanded, since he was to be responsible, that he should be a rational being— a man, and not an animal; and, further, as he was to enter immediately upon his course of moral trial, that he should be created perfect as a man, with all his physical and moral powers in entire vigour, and fully prepared for action. But equity did not demand that he should be created a holy man, in the sense in which we have predi- cated holiness of him ; in a state, i. e, of what, for want of a better word, we may, perhaps, call predisposition to holy volitions and actions. In short, God did not owe the 52 THE HOLY SPIEIT A SOVEREIGN GIFT. Holy Spirit to Adam, or to the race ; for, in that case, this divine agent must have remained, as reason remains, to both. Nothing that is, strictly speaking, clue to the creature can be withdrawn without a violation of equity ; for it is the very province of equity to give, and to perpetuate, to all what is their due. Nothing can be due to any creature but a responsible one ; and nothing can be due to him but that, whatever it may be, which is essential to account- ability. Now, if the holy principle which we have attri- buted to the mind of Adam, — the spiritual life, as we have called it, resulting from the imion of his soul to God, — were essential to accountability, i. e. were a part of the necessary endowments of human nature, and were not a separable quality, as logicians would call it, — a quality which the nature might possess or not, and yet be perfect ; it is manifest, either that this principle has been sustained, i. e. that man is not by natm^e spiritually dead ; or if it has been permitted to sink, i. e. if man by nature is spiri- tually dead, that he must have lost, with this requisite element of accountability, accountability itself. Nor this merely. It is further manifest, that a part of the neces- sary endowments of human nature having perished, the nature itself has perished ; and that conversion to God is the recommunication of the human nature to a being who had lost it ; or that a man, if I may so speak, becomes a man only when he is made a new man in Christ Jesus. Adam possessed the holy principle of which we have spoken, but he did not possess it as a part of the neces- sary endowments of human nature. He held it as the gift of God's free bounty. It was a separable quality ; a quality which might be sustained or not, as it should seem meet to God ; whose permanent possession, both by him and the race, might be suspended upon a condition, upon any condition which Divine wisdom should appoint. The only wise God determined to render it a conditional THE CONDITION OF THE CO^^NANT. 53 blessing. The Holy Spirit united himself to the soul of Adam ; but, whether he should remain a permanent guest there, and whether he should thus take up liis abode in the minds of his descendants, was, for infinitely wise pur- poses, susi^ended upon the condition which has been more than once hinted at, and which remains to be more fully unfolded. Had there been no federal failure, — had the condition been fulfilled during the appointed time of trial, perhaps till the birth of his first-born — the Spirit of God would never have withdrawn himself, it is conceived, from the mind of Adam. The same Spirit would have united himself to the souls of the successive generations of men on the instant of their union with their respective bodies ; and thus would it have been secured, that a holy seed should people the earth, in every period of its existence, till the day of the general conflagration. It remains for me to unfold, more formally and dis- tinctly, what many divines have called the condition of the covenant established with Adam — the particular trial to which God subjected him — or the specific act on which the destiny of the whole race was made to depend ; to expose certain false conceptions of the nature of that condition, and to state the great practical lesson taught us by its violation. The condition on the iJerformance of which the enjoyment of these invaluable blessings was suspended. In reference to this point, it appears to me, that if our theologians in general had been disposed to rest satisfied with the inspired account of the transaction, there would not have existed any, even the slightest, difference of opinion. " Of every tree of the garden," said the Lord God to the man whom he had put into it, " thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. ii. 16, 17.) Do not 54 THE ACT ON WHICH THE DESTINY these words render it manifest that the condition, the only condition, on which the enjoyment of the blessing, or the loss of the blessing, was made to depend, was eating, or refraining from eating, the forbidden fruit? Were any confirmation of this necessary, we might derive it from the language of God, when he passed sentence upon the transgressors ; for that unfolds what had been interdicted, by stating what had been done. " And the Lord God said unto the serpent. Because thou hast done this" — /. e. tempted thy victims to eat the forbidden fruit — " thou art cursed above all cattle," &c. And unto Adam he said, " Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded, thee, saying thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake," kd. (Gen. iii. 14, 17.) Additional proof may be derived from the language of the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Eomans. In the fifth chapter of that book, he expressly declares, that the loss sustained by the race, in consequence of its federal relation to Adam, was brought upon them not by many offences, but by one offence — the single ofi'ence of eating the forbidden fruit. Are we not, then, entitled to infer that the conduct of Adam, in reference to the forbidden fruit, was the condition on which the blessing, or the curse, was destined to attach to his posterity? It has been said, indeed, as we have already seen, that any other act of transgi-ession would have involved his posterity in the same consequences. Might we not ask a person venturing upon the assertion, " What proof have you of it? What is there in the brief narrative in the Book of Genesis, or, indeed, in any part of the inspired volume, to warrant the assertion?" The act stated to have been forbidden to Adam — in the new relation, I mean, constituted between him and the race, when he was taken into the garden — the federal relation — was one ; it was the act of eating the fruit of a particular tree. The OF THE RACE WAS MADE TO DEPEND. 55 damage which he inflicted upon himself and the race, is stated to have been the result of that one act. How, then . can any person venture to affirm, in the very face of the record, that other acts were forbidden to him under the same penalty ? It is vain to allege that the commission of any other sin must have exposed him to punishment ; for, though the assertion is true, it is irrelevant. It is fully admitted that death — the wages of sin — must have been, in the full sense of the term, the result to himself of any personal failure ; but we cannot infer from hence that it must have been the result oi federal failure. It is, also, further, and with equal readiness, admitted that the act of eating the forbidden fruit, when we contem23late its con- comitants and its consequents, was a sin of unparalleled, not to say infinite atrocity ; but it by no means follows from this latter admission, nor, indeed, from both together, that the condition of the covenant, or of the federal con- stitution, established with Adam, was perfect obedience to every precept of the Divine law ; nor that the conse- quences — either to him or the race — of violating the con- dition of this covenant or constitution, must necessarily have been those, in their full amount, which attach to sin in general. God, in dealing with men as individuals — in their personal or private character and capacity — is under a moral necessity to command perfect and universal obe- dience ; to enforce it by the sanction of death, in the full sense of the word, in the case of any failure. But he is not bound, as far as I can see, to command such obedience, in the case of the federal head of a dispensation, in which he is pleased to suspend, on his conduct, by what is to us an arbitrary arrangement, the enjoyment by his posterity of blessings which he is not bound to bestow, and they of course have no right to demand : nor is he bound to enforce obedience by the same penalty. The penalty in this latter case is the loss, and only the loss, of the sus- pended blessings. 56 THE PATERNAL AND FEDERAL To the existence of just conceptions on this suhject, it is of essential importance that we contemplate Adam in this double point of view, — in his private, and in his public character; as a man, and as a federal head. Under human governments privileges are often held by charter — only held by charter; and held on other conditions than those which entitle the inhabitants at large to the general rights of citizenship. The violation of the conditions of the charter would incur the loss of such privileges ; but it would not expose the violators to the penalty attached by law to the commission of any ordinary offence. Now the blessings which were to be enjoyed by us, if Adam had regarded the interdict, were blessings of this order, exalted privileges to be secured to us by federal obedience ; for though it is common to speak of the transaction re- corded in Gen. ii. 16, 17, as the covenant established by God with Adam; and though I have, in the preceding Lecture, denominated it " the Adamic dispensation," — I believe the more correct view to be taken of it is that of a charter given by God to our first parent, confirming to himself, and his race, the permanent enjoyment of its invaluable privileges, on condition of abstinence from the forbidden gi-atification. As the beneficiary, or holder of this charter, i. e. in his federal or public capacity, no ser- vice was required of Adam, but that he should not touch the forbidden fruit. But as a man merely, and not a beneficiary — a rational and, therefore, a responsible being, he was bound to do the whole will of God ; to obey the law written upon his heart, or made known by direct communications ; to obey it cheerfully, perfectly, persever- ingly ; to obey it as long as life might be continued ; — he was bound to do this under the awful sanction of death, in the full sense of the term, on any, even the slightest transgression. But, as a beneficiary, or holder of this charter, life was to be enjoyed as long as the service pre- RELATION OF ADAM. 57 scribed by the charter, namely, abstinence from the for- bidden fruit, was rendered. The mistake of Pictet, and of Dr. Hopkins, to which reference was made in the former lecture, results from forgetting to contemplate Adam in this double point of view; from failing to distinguish between him as a man, and as a beneficiary — the holder of chartered blessings. A person, unaware of this distinction, or not admitting it, can of course allow of no difference between what God could not fail to require of Adam as a man, and what, in sovereignty, he might require of him as a federal head ; i. e. he falls into the mistake of supposing that the con- dition of the covenant, as it is technically called, made with Adam, was perfect and perpetual obedience. And, committing this mistake, he is naturally drawn into an- other. He adopts, of consequence, erroneous views of the whole transaction on which our present remarks are founded. Instead of regarding it as the establishment of a charter, securing the most exalted privileges to the w^hole family of man — the privilege, among others, of the permanent union of the Spirit of God with the soul of man — the source of spiritual life, of holy feeling and action — securing this privilege on the plainest and easiest condition, abstinence from the forbidden fruit; he converts the Adamic dispensation into a covenant of works; a cove- nant, by the performance of whose conditions, Adam might have won for himself, and for the race, the bless- ings of the covenant, and risen to heaven himself, and secured ultimate admission for the whole of his family, as the just reward of his services. I cannot take this view of the dispensation established with Adam. I believe that dispensation to have been a covenant of grace, and not of works; that it was intended to show, and calculated to prove, that the permanent life of the race — had the condition been fulfilled — was a 58 THE TRIAL TO WHICH ADAM sovereign donation, not required by equity, but bestowed by sovereignty ; since no one could imagine that absti- nence from the forbidden fruit — whatever j^ainful restraint it might impose upon sensual desire — could deserve the exalted blessings which would have followed in its train. Nothing more is needed than to reflect for a moment on the vantage ground upon which Adam was placed by the bestowment of this charter of life upon him, to be con- vinced that the Adamic dispensation was, emphatically speaking, a covenant of grace. Previously to its establish- ment, death must have been the result to Adam of any moral failure whatever. Subsequently to its establish- ment, death could only be the result of failure in refer- ence to this single prohibition ; for the threatening, " in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," necessarily implied, as we have seen, that he should not die as long as he did not eat. This view of the matter supposes, as it has been well observed, that " the standing of Adam on every point but this — with regard to every other divine precept — was in- fallibly secured, like that of the angels or glorified spirits above ; " or he might have exposed himself to death by the violation of some other precept, while he secured life by fulfilling the condition of the charter. This anomalous position of matters cannot well be supposed. Little room is left for doubt that obedience, on other points, was rendered certain by sovereign-sustaining grace preventing failure ; and that on no point was his obedience con- tingent, but in reference to the condition of the charter. The Holy Spirit dwelling in the mind of Adam may easily be conceived to have secured, by special influence, yet in a manner perfectly compatible with free agency, obedi- ence to other precepts, while He put forth no such in- fluence to secure obedience to the interdict. Adam was left, in regard to the prohibition of the tree of knowledge of good and of evil, to the unaided strength of his own WAS SUBJECTED. 59 mind — a mind in the full maturity of its powers, and in a perfect moral state. Unless we suppose this, I see not how even the possibility of the Fall is to be conceived. And, besides, how could there have been anything de- serving the name of a moral probation of Adam, if the Spirit of God had, at the moment of temptation, put forth his influence, which cannot be otherwise than effec- tual, to sustain him? Now a dispensation which thus secured effectual sustaining grace on every other point — which only left him to the hazard of dying, in case of violating the interdict in relation to the tree, &c. because it preserved him from sinning in any case but this, must surely be regarded as a covenant of grace.- Think of * " Besides, as lais obedience was confined to a single point, he was tauglit, and enabled, to summon all his watchfulness, resolution, and strength, to this point only ; to keep it supremely in view, and to be continually guarded against everything which might lead him to transgress here. In making this the medium of trial, God secured him, of course, against all other dangers ; so that he was left at full leisure to watch against all possible temptations to this single evil. Were an earthly parent to try the obedience of a child, and make his right to the inheritance of an estate depend on the performance of his filial duty, such a mode of trj-ing him would be thought not only reason- able, but generous, noble, and strongly indicative of parental afi"ection. " I do not contend, that he was not required to obey God in all things. This, unquestionably, was demanded of him, as well as of every other creature ; and was, beyond a doubt, his indispensable duty. But I mean, that God absolutely suspended his acceptance, justification, and reward, on the single point of his abstaining from the forbidden fruit." — Vide Dwight's Theology, Lecture XXVI. I have marked, by italic characters, the words in the last extract which appear questionable. Not seeming to discriminate between the paternal and the federal relation, the words may be conceived to apply to Adam in the foi-mer relation. But, in that case, their truth may be denied. I cannot conceive that, under a dispensation of law, personal acceptance with God could be suspended on anything short of that entire obedience which Pictet describes. But federal acceptance may be thus suspended : — A person may be perfect as a beneficiary, or the holder of a charter, while he is not perfect as a man. The acceptance, &c., of Adam, which was suspended on his ab- staining from the forbidden fruit, was his acceptance not as a man, but as a beneficiars'. In the former character, he was bound to do the whole will of God ; in the latter, not to take the forbidden fruit. At the same time, it 60 THE DISPENSATION WAS TO HIM ■what must have been his condition irrespective of this dispensation. His hazard of dying must have run pari jmssu with his hazard of sinning ; and the latter, with the entire number of duties he had to discharge. He might have sinned in any respect in which sin could have been committed ; and he must have died, as the result of any act of transgression. It may, perhaps, be thought by some, that by sovereign sustaining grace he might have been secured against all sin. But, had that been the case, how could there have been any moral trial, in the j)roper sense of the term ? A being, sustained by sovereign effectual grace as are the angels, cannot be in a state of probation. In order to this, there must be the possibility of failure, which there is not in the world above. But for the charter of life graciously vouchsafed to Adam, he must have been dealt with in strict equity ; i. e. to adopt the phraseology of my excellent friend. Dr. Eussel, of Dundee, he must have been "left to his natural falli- bility in reference to every obligation that rested upon him." The gracious charter of which we are speaking diminished his hazard of sinning, and, by necessary con- sequence, his hazard of dying. The Adamic dispensation was, then, a covenant of grace. It was such to our first parent personally. It placed him on vantage ground to which he could not have arisen without it. It concentrated his obedience in a single point, — a point perfectly intelligible, and well defined, concerning which no room was left for doubt or debate. " The object," says Dr. D wight, " was a sensible object, perfectly defined and perfectly understood. No meta- physical or philosophical discussion was demanded or admitted. No uncertainty existed as to the degree in wdiich his obedience was required. He was left at no loss concerning the time, the manner, or the nature of that must be remembered, that the same principle which, if exercised, would have kept him perfect as a beneficiary, would also have kept him perfect as a man. AND TO US A COVENANT OF GRACE. 61 conduct which it was proper for him to observe. He knew the whole extent of what was commanded, and what was forbidden ; and therefore could not but know whether he obeyed or disobeyed. This knowledge, always of high importance, was especially important to him, so lately brought into existence, so unversed m argumentation, acquainted only with plain facts, and under the guidance of nothing but mere common sense, "'!^ Again, it sum- moned all his watchfulness to this point ; and, by securing him against all other dangers, left him at full leisure to guard against all possible temptations to this single evil. ]\Iore obviously, however, did this dispensation or charter place the i^osterity of Adam on vantage ground. Irrespectively of it, each member of the family must have died on the commission of any sin ; or, if God could have entered, and had entered, into a covenant with each, similar to that which was established with Adam — sus- pending life to the race on the condition of abstinence from the forbidden fruit — how inferior to each must have been the probability of a favourable issue of the trial! Adam entered upon the probation in a state of perfection, both morally and intellectually. All his powers were mature' — fully prepared for action. We must have entered upon our trial, if perfect morally, yet certainly not so intel- lectually. Passing as we pass through the stages of infancy and childhood, even though the moral trial to us could have been confined, as it was to Adam, to the single point of refraining to touch the forbidden fruit, failure must be conceived more likely to have happened in our case, than in his. The charter of life to Adam was, then, eminently a dispensation of grace to us. It suspended the enjoy- ment of blessings by us — blessings which God was not bound to impart ; which we of course had no right to claim; which could be enjoyed by charter, and by charter alone ; but blessings which, if rendered certain to us, * Fide Lecture XXVI. 6'2 THE FEDERAL FAILUKE, would have secured to us, not merely life for ever, but happiness and glory for ever — suspended, I say, the enjoy- ment of them by us, on a service which, if it had been possible for us to be called upon to decide, we ourselves should at once have said was far more likely to be per- formed without failure by one federal head than by our- selves. The small service, however, by the performance of which the patent of life given to Adam — the permanent life of the body, and the life of the soul — would have been confirmed to us, his children, was refused by our federal head. Adam put forth his hand, and took and eat the forbidden fruit. We die by his transgression ; die, as it respects the body, directly, i. e. as the direct result of his transgression : * die spiritually indirectly, as the result of the same act, — by forfeiting the chartered blessing of the permanent union of the Spirit of God with our minds, the natural and invariable result of which forfeiture is to us spiritual death. We suffer the consequences of his breach of charter, as the sons of a nobleman lose rank, and station, when, as the punishment of his misconduct, he is degraded from the peerage. In this cautious and guarded sense, we may be said to be answerable for the sin of our first parent ; we suffer the legal results of that sin : but, then, these legal results are simply the loss of chartered blessings, and our affirmed exposure to that loss — con- stituting, I imagine, that condemning judgment which the apostle affirms to have come upon all men by federal failure — involves no difficulty whatever. I have not said * " There is an imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, independent of their personal offences. One of these consequences is death ; which passed upon all men, though they have not sinned personally; and therefore this death (i. e. of the body) is to be regarded as the result of Adam's transgres- sion alone," &c. " Of the sin of Adam imputed, these are the consequences, — the death of the body, — and our introduction into a -world witli a nature tending to actual oQences, and a conditional liability to punishment."' — Walson'6 Theological Institutes, vol. iii. pp. 139, UO. AND ITS COKSEQUENXES. 63 that we are guilty of the sin of Adam,^ nor that we are 'punished for it; for, though the expressions maybe sus- ceptible of correct interpretation, they are not scriptural expressions, nor do they naturally exhibit the facts of the case. To affirm that we are ouilt]j of Adam's sin in eating the forbidden fruit, is asserting — if the words are used in their proper sense — that we committed it. Now con- sciousness testifies that we did not commit it. I am well aware, of course, that theological writers use the term guilt in a loose sense, viz. to denote, not desert of suffering, but legal liability, or exposure to suffering ; f and punish- ♦ This is allowed by" the organ of the old school divines in America : — " We have a right to complain that any man should say it" (the term ^wiV/) "always includes the idea of personal ill-desert," — " and thence infer, that those who say that the guilt of Adam's sin has come upon us, or of our sins, has been laid upon Christ, teach, and must teach, that all men are personally and morally guilty of Adam's sin, and Christ of ours." — Biblical Repertory, vol. vii. pp. 294, 295. + The venerable Assembly's Catechism, in answer to the question wherein consists the sinfulness of our estate by nature, says, "In the guilt of Adam's sin," &c. Now, as guilt is blameworthiness — desert of punishment; and as the compilers of that generally excellent compendium of faith cannot weU be supposed to have intended to intimate that we are really blameable for an act performed by Adam, they must have used the word in the general sense of legal liability, or obnoxiousness to punishment. This is the sense in which it is used by all theologians in this country, and in America, except by the few who identify the race and its parent. To be giiilty of Adam's sin, is to be exposed by it to punishment ; i. e. to the endui'ance of its consequences. Still the phrase is objectionable; since, though the endurance of its consequences was punishment to Adam, it is not so to us. The constitution established with him was such, as to expose us to the results of his conduct; but that exposm-e, or liability, is not guilt in any proper sense of the term, or in com- mon parlance even, nor should it ever be so called. The child of a profligate parent is liable to disease, but he is never thought of as guilty. The son of a traitorous nobleman is exposed to the loss of rank and property, but he is not considered guilty. The term guilt always supposes personal transgression, except in technical theology, from which we would banish it. Perhaps its just meaning may be the opposite of innocence. The phrase," he is guilty," when the jury return that verdict, seems to be equivalent Avith " he has com- mitted the crime." Out of this meaning would obviously gi'ow, " he deserves punishment;" " he is obnoxious to it." But the two latter necessarily depend upon the former, and cannot exist without it. Transgi-ession brings desert of 64 THE FEDERAL FAILURE, ment to express any suffering which results from an infrac- tion of law, Avhether the infraction be committed by us, or others. But my complaint is, that the terms should be thus employed. The longer I live, the more deeply am I disposed to regret the unnecessary introduction of tech- nical terms into the nomenclature of theology, — the use of words in a sense which they do not naturally bear, and so are adapted to mislead. The simple fact of the case is, that we suffer the consequences of Adam's federal failure, as if the sin committed by him had been committed by us. He was really guilty of that sin, — deserved personal blame and condemnation on account of it. We are guilty of it only in a loose and somewhat improper sense of the term — in a sense which involves no personal blame to us. The consequences V\^hich resulted from his violation of the interdict were strictly punishment to him ; to us they are mere sufferings, — or rather damage or loss. The eating of the forbidden fruit was followed, in the case of the eater, by shame and remorse. Our exposure to the conse- quences of the act, awakens regret and sorrow, but does not and cannot kindle contrition. The whole subject is complicated and embarrassed to our conceptions, by the circumstance that Adam acted both in his personal and in his representative character, even when he ate the forbidden fruit. The consequence of this is, as we ought to remember, that he may have entailed different results upon himself in these different characters. But I fear we forget this. The transgression of Adam we feel to have been pregnant with an awful amount of guilt : if any sin deserve eternal death, this sin must have deserved it. Thus we reason, and truly reason punishment ; desert of punishment obnoxiousness to it. The term (juilf is more commonly used in the second sense than in the first ; and never, except in theolog}-, in the tliird. It usually means, not transgression simply, but that desert of punishment which is consequent upon it. — Vide Lectures on Sovereignty, pp. 204, 255. AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 65 and feel ; but the next step, reached by many, is unsound and unauthorized. Adam, they reflect, was our federal head ; and, therefore, whatever consequences he brought upon himself by taking the forbidden fruit, he must have brought upon us. This is not, however, a logical con- clusion. There were consequences of that act which attached to him, as a man, in his personal character; and there were consequences which attached to him in his public character, or as a federal head. In the latter character he forfeited life, in the double sense which has been attached to the term, both for himself and the race. In the former character, he directly incurred the sentence of eternal death ; but by this federal failure, he did not bring down so terrific a sentence upon our heads. He lost for us the permanent residence of the Spirit of God in our minds. That loss entails upon every individual of the race spiritual death ; this, again, prompts to rebellion ; and rebellion, if persisted in, must issue in eternal death : but everlasting misery is to no one the direct result of Adam's sin, — it is invariably the consequence of personal transgression. Now, if the views unfolded in the preceding pages, — views which preserve the great evangelical doctrine in reference to the connexion between our first parents and ourselves, though, it may be, they present that doctrine in a form somewhat different from that in which it is occa- sionally exhibited — should be accepted by the reader, they will materially aid him in forming an estimate of the high Augustinian and Edwardian statements on this very im- portant point, — statements which the structure of my mind does not, I am free to confess, permit me to receive. The source of the mistakes— as they appear to me— into which both these great men have fallen, is tolerably apparent. They have not borne steadily in mind the double view which we have ventured to take of Adam,— i. e. as a man. and as a federal head. They have, consequently, prac- xr. *^ 66 STATEMENTS OF tically overlooked the important distinction between indi- vidual and representative responsibility. They seem to have imacjined that the aiTancjement made with him rendered us responsible for every act of Adam, instead, as we have stated, for the single act of eating the forbidden fruit. And they take the word " responsibility"" in too strict and literal a sense. Kesponsibility is, with them, not merely the Uahility of the race to suffer the loss of char- tered blessings, forfeited to all parties by Adam when he refused the service on which the charter was held : it is moral responsihility, identical with that of Adam himself; strict answ^erableness for his sin, as we are thus strictly answerable for our own. Now, such immense difficulties encumber the notion that the whole human family are thus, strictly and morally, responsible to God, not merely for their own sins, but for the sin of another, that I do not wonder at the putting forth of a powerful effort to show that the sin of that other is truly and properly our own sin. The natural, and, as I believe, necessary dictate of the understanding, that every man will be called upon to give an account to^God of himself alone, not of another, is too strong to be overborne by system ; and, therefore, the Ausjustinians had no resort but to identifv the race and Adam ; to consider them as one — not merely morally, or legally, but truly and literally so : and thus any diffi- culty, resulting from the fact that the entire human race suffer the consequences of Adam's transgression, w^as by them attempted to be obviated; the race suffering, in fact, according to this view, the consequences of their own sin. But, it may be asked, is not this explanation of the Augustinians somewhat like bringing the darkness of midniglit to enlighten the obscurity of twilight ? It is to me, at least, infinitely more impossible to believe that Adam and the entire human family are literally one being, — that we were so present in him, or, in any sense, so one with him, as to render his sin our sin ; than to believe AUGUSTINE AND EDWARDS. 67 that, tliougli he and we are separate beings — as distinct and separate as are any two men in the present day the consequences of his conduct, in reference to the forbidden fruit, should attach to us, especially since the latter sup- position is in harmony with facts of every day's expe- rience. Yet such is xlugustinianism and Edwardianism 1 " The propagation of Adam's sin among his posterity," says the former (I quote from Emerson's translation of Dr. Wigger's Presentation of Augustinianism and Pela- gianism), "is a punishment of the sin. The corruption of human nature, in the whole race, was the righteous punishment of the transgression of the first man, in whom all men already existed.'' (P. 88.) I make no remark, at present at least, upon the first part of this quotation. I merely request the reader to observe the statement that " all men existed in Adain,'' — a statement, as I understand it, intended to exhibit the justice of punishing them for his sin. They were in him ; the sin was consequently their own, and thus they are punished for their own sin. Having stated that " Human nature would have been propagated in paradise, according to the prolific blessing of God, although no one had sinned ; but that the infants born there would not have wept, nor been dumb, nor unable to use their reason, nor feeble, nor diseased," &c. &c. ; that all these evils, as w^ell as others, come upon them as the punishment of Adam's sin, he adds, " There comes not, however, upon individuals what the whole apostate creature has deserved " (using the term desert in its strict sense) ; "and no individual endures so much as the whole mass deserve to suffer ; but God has arranged all in measure, w^eight, and number, and suffers no one to endure any evil which he does not deserve." The learned translator observes upon this passage as follows : — " The view presented in this last extract should be steadily borne in mind, if we would not misrepresent Augustine. Adam's sin is not viewed as his sin only, but the sin of the whole 68 STATEMENTS OF AUGUSTINE ; race existing in him, and each one sharing just so much of the blame as he will be punished for." (P. 98.) Augus- tine appears to have felt strongly that punishment, strictly so called, cannot fall where there is no personal blame. He devised the scheme, therefore, of thus uniting the race to Adam, that thus sharing his blame, they might also justly suffer his punishment. *' The oldest hypothesis," says Dr. Knapp, in his Chris- tian Theology, "is that w'hich affirmed that all the pos- terity of Adam were, in the most literal sense, already in him, and sinned in him — in his person." Such, as w^e have seen, was the opinion, or rather such were the ivords of Augustine ; for I acknowledge they are to me unmeaning symbols — terms expressing no definite idea. " What Paul had taught," adds Knaj^p, " in a loose popular way, respecting the imputation of Adam's sin, was taken by Augustine and his followers in a strict, philosophical, and legal sense. Ambrosius says, ' Omnes in primo homine (e(^' w) peccavimus, et culpse successio ab uno in omnes transfusa est.' Augustine says, ' In Adamo omnes peccarunt, in lumbis Adami erat genus humanum.' Also, ' Infantes ab eo trahunt peccati reatum, mortisque sup- plicium.' " (P. 245.) Of the same opinion, also, appears to have been the greatly and justly celebrated President Edwards. The statements I am about to quote occur in his reply to what he calls the great objection against the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity ; viz. that such imputation is unjust and unreasonable, inasmuch as Adam and his pos- terity are not one and the same : and they go very far to prove that I am not wrong in the conjecture, thrown out a few moments ago, in reference to the cause of that identification of Adam and his posterity to which I am now referring ; for, with a good deal of verbiage, and in a very tangled and perplexed manner, they answer the objection by virtually stating that Adam and his posterity AND OF PKESIDENT EDWARDS. 69 are one. I apprehend he means — at all events the objec- tion requires him to mean — that Adam's posterity were so in him as to be literally (if the thing could be con- ceived of at all, if the consciousness of every man did not contradict it) one complex being with him, as the root, and branches, and trunk of a tree, are one tree ; so that his sin is really our sin. The objection requires him, as I have said, to mean this ; for, as it is founded upon an affirmed difference of identity between Adam and the race, no statement that they are one, by divine ordination merely, would meet the case and the objection. Hence he says, "that guilt, or exposedness to punishment, and also depravity of heart, came upon Adam's posterity just as they came upon him, as much as if he and they had all co» existed, like a tree with many branches ; allowing only for the difference necessarily resulting from the place Adam stood in, as head or root of the whole. Otherwise it is as if, in every step of proceeding, every alteration in the root had been attended, at the same instant, with the same alterations throughout the whole tree, in each individual branch." Again, he says, " The first existing of a corrupt nature in the posterity of Adam is not to be looked upon as sin distinct from their participation of Adam's first sin. It is, as it were, the extended pollution of that sin, through the whole tree, by virtue of the constituted union of the branches with the root ; or the inherence of the sin of that head of the species in the members, in their consent and concurrence with the head in that first act." {Edwards's Works, Parsons 's Edit. vol. ii. pp. 342, 343.) Now, I acknowledge it is difficult to ascertain the pre- cise meaning of President Edwards here. He does not affirm that Adam and the race constitute one being — though complex — as the root, stem, and branches form one tree. He does not say that Adam and the race coexisted ; the fact of the case did not permit him to make that 70 STATEMENTS OF assertion: but he does say — what is to me absurd and contradictory — " that depravity of heart came upon the posterity of Adam as it would have done if they had actually coexisted, and formed one complex being with him." Had that been the case, I should have admitted that his simile — borrowed from a tree, with its radix, and trunk, and branches — might be an apposite one. It is quite possible to conceive that disease of the root may affect simultaneously, or all but simultaneously, all the other parts of a tree. In like manner, the action of the heart of Adam might haT3 produced similar and simulta- neous action in the hearts of the race (though, in the case supposed, it could not have been a race), if the race and Adam had coexisted, aud formed one being, as the dis- tinct parts of a tree form one tree. But the race and Adam do not coexist, do not constitute one being. They are manifestly as separate and distinct from one another, as one tree is distinct from another tree ; and it would be just as easy to conceive of the root of one tree aifect- imr the branches of another on the other side of the o globe, as of the action of Adam's heart thus affecting those of his posterity to the latest generations of men ! That I have not mistaken the meaning of the Pre- sident, in supposing him to maintain that the posterity of Adam were so in him as tliat his sin is literally theirs, and his guilt their guilt, is manifest from the language of Stapfer, quoted with approbation by him. " It is objected, against the imputation of Adam's sin, that we never committed the same sin with Adam, neither in number nor in kind. I answer, we should distinguish here between the physical act itself, which Adam com- mitted, and the morality of the action, and consent to it. If we have respect only to the external act, to be sure it must be confessed, that Adam's posterity did not put forth their hands to the forbidden fruit; in wliich sense, that act of transgression, and that ftill of Adam, cannot STAFFER. 71 be physically one with the sin of his posterity. But if we consider the morality of the action, and what consent there is to it, it is altogether to be maintained that his posterity committed the same sin, both in number and in kind ; inasmuch as they are to be looked upon as con- senting to it. For where there is consent to a sin, there the same sin is committed.'" I cannot feel that this is a sufficient answer to the objection. The opponent argues, " We should not be visited with the consequences of Adam's sin, because the sin was not ours, — we did not commit it." The gist of the reply is, that it is ours, by our con- sent to it. We did not, indeed, perform the physical act, but we consented to it. I am deeply grieved to see evan- gelical truth betrayed b}"" false and sophistical arguments. Surely we did not more truly consent to the action, than put forth our hands to its performance. If there be a sense in which we may be loosely said to have consented to it, I am prepared to argue that, in the same sense, we may with equal propriety be said to have performed it. The truth of the case is, that we actually did neither the one nor the other. AYe did not perform the action ; ^'e did not consent to it. I doubt not that we should have consented to it, had the wild speculation of President Edwards expressed the facts of the case, i. e. had we existed contemporaneously w4th Adam, and been united to him as the branch is united to the parent stock. I admit, further, that every unconverted man, in every act of re- bellion against God, may be said, somewhat loosely and inaccurately, to have consented to the sin of Adam, be- cause it may be fairly assumed that he Avould have acted as Adam did, had he been placed in the same circum- stances. But, to attempt to justify the extension of the punishment of one man's sins to another, on the gi'ound that, if placed in the same circumstances, he iwuld have com- mitted the sin, is to broach a novel and most dangerous principle in moral science. 72 FALLACY OF Should it be alleged by Stapfer that we are not merely to assume that the posterity of Adam would have con- sented to his sin, but that they actually did so, I answer, Jirst, that the thing asserted is false in fact; and secondly, that, if it were not so, it would be unsound in argument. The statements made are brought forward to show that the divine Being commits no injustice in imputing the sin of Adam to his posterity, i, e. in permitting the conse- quences of his sin to attach to them, or in bringing these consequences upon them. The argument implied is, " It is not unjust, because they consented to that sin." But was not, I ask, that asserted consent (i. e. on this hypo- thesis) their act and their sin ? And are they not punished, then, for this act and this sin ? What, then, becomes of the argument of our author? He undertakes to prove that it is not unjust to punish the posterity of Adam for his sin, and the premiss — the medium of proof — is that 'they are punished for their own ! The same radical fallacy, as I must be permitted to think, runs through the whole of what the great Edwards, and the, perhaps, equally great Augustine, have written in encountering the supposed difficulty, viz. that the evange- lical doctrine assumes that Adam's sin was imputed to his posterity, or that they are called to suffer its consequences. The argument of both is, that Adam and the race are one, — that his posterity were in him, and sinned in him. Now, they must either mean that assertion to be understood strictly and literally, i. e. as we have seen, to denote that Adam and the race form one complex being, as the root, and trunk, and branches form one tree ; in which case, I should reply to them, as to Stapfer, that the assertion is untrue in fact, and unsound in argument. The posterity of Adam are not thus one with him ; and, if they were, punishment would overtake them, not for his sin, but their own. Or, they must mean the assertion to he understood in the someu'hat loose and secondary sense of the words, i. e. to THEIK STATEMENTS. 73 denote not literal union, but ordained or legac union ; a union not in the beings themselves, — for every man is not only separate from Adam, but from every other man — but in the purpose of God concerning them ; in his deter- mination to deal with all alike, or to permit the conse- quences of the sin of the head of the race to reach to his posterity. But, if this be the meaning they attach to the \Yords, they are obviously not merely not a valid reply, but not a reply at all, to the objection; for the objection evidently lies, as we have said before, against the constitu- tion of such a union. It is not an objection against B's suffering the consequences of A's transgression, after God had determined to consider and treat them as one, but against this determination itself. Now, if Edwards, by saying that Adam and the race are one, merely means to assert this constituted or legal union, it is manifest that his words contain nothing more than a statement of the fact to be accounted for. They do not justify the constitution ; they merely affirm its existence. I have no doubt, however, that Edwards and Augustine did entertain the notion that the posterity of Adam are per- sonally identical with Adam ; or, if these words should be thought to express too much, that, in the view of both, the posterity of Adam, though obviously separate and distinct beings from him, are, somehow or another, mysteriously united to him, — not legally united merely, so as to expose the former to damage and loss by the transgression of the latter, — but so as to render the sin and guilt of the one strictly and properly the sin and guilt of the other. In this way Edwards, at least, has been generally understood in America; and the avowal of this opinion by him, or the ascription of it to him, has operated unfavourably to evan- gelical doctrine. When, in that country, the imputation of Adam's sin to the race is affirmed, the words are under- stood to denote, frequently at least, more than in this country. Here they express the legal exposure of the race 74 RESULTS OF THE LOSS to the consequences of Adam's federal failure ; or the fact that the race are treated as if his transgression had been their own. There they are understood to mean that the sin of Adam is ours — strictly and literally ours. And hence, when our American brethren deny the imputation of Adam's sin to the race, and we affirm it, there may not exist so much difference of opinion betw^een us, as at first sight might seem to be the case. They oppose imputa- tion, it may be, in a sense in which few of us might be disposed to maintain it. Yet it ought not to be forgotten, that when men begin by opposing the doctrine of imputa- tion in one sense, there is danger of their ending in opposing it in every sense, — in the sober, scriptural sense in which it is affirmed by the Smiths, and Wiiliamses, and Fullers, and Eussells, and Wardlaws of our own beloved land. I think I see symptoms in that country that I am not now dealing with an imaginary danger ; and if my voice could reach across the Atlantic, I would say, with mingled affection and fidelity, " Beware ! " These high Augustinian notions of the identity of the race with Adam — notions now abandoned, both in this country and America, by the most intelligent and reflecting men, and held, I believe, rather verbally than really by the few who still profess to adhere to them — would never have been formed, if the view of the Adamic dispensation pre- sented in this lecture, — viz. that it was a dispensation of grace to our first parent, — a charter securing ceilain inva- luable blessings to him, and the race, on condition of his performance of a certain prescribed, simple, and unmis- takable act of obedience, eminently adapted to ascertain whether he would preserve the spirit of a little child, — had been taken. In that case, it must have appeared that our endurance of the consequences of Adam's federal failure is merely to us the loss of chartered blessings ; that it does not exhibit us as being considered strictly responsible for the sin of another, as sustaining the punishment of the OF CHARTERED BLESSEsGS. 75 sin of another; for, though the deprivation of life T\'as real punishment to Adam, it is merely loss to us — the loss of blessings which vre have no right to claim, but which may be continued, or reclaimed and withdrawn, as to the infi- nite v.isdom of God it may seem meet to determine. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the loss of char- tered blessings may place us in circumstances as deplor- able as though the punishment of Adam's sin, in the literal and strict sense of that term, had been laid upon us. When the child inherits disease from his parents, that disease is never spoken of, never regarded, as punish- ment to him ; yet it may entail as much misery upon him, and bring him as certainly to a premature end, as though it were so. When the family of a nobleman lose rank and property, and sink into indigence and obscurity on account of the attainder of the head of the family, it is small con- solation to them that they are not regarded as guilty of their father's crime, but are merely suffering the loss of chartered blessings. Thus, though it is of the first importance to perceive and to preserve the distinction between individual and representative responsibility, yet it ought to be steadily remembered that the consequences to us of the moral failure of our representative, may be all but as tremendous as the consequences of personal failure. What though it cannot be strictly said that Ave are guilty of Adam's sin, or are jmnished for that sin, — we die as the result of that sin ; we lose that omnipotent sustentation of God's providence which would have upheld the life of the body. We lose, again, that union of the Spirit of God with our minds which would have sustained the life of the soul. The death of the body, and the death of the soul, are the results, direct or indirect, of that loss. Man is a mortal being, and, in the sense to be afterwards more fully explained, a depraved being by nature, because Adam took the forbidden fruit. It is possible that some persons, notwithstanding the 76 WERE SAFER WITH ADAM THAN WITH US. statements previously made, that life to us was far more safe in the custody of Adam, to whom God had intrusted it, than it would have been in our own, may be ready to say, " I still cannot but wish that my own interests had been consigned to my own care ; " and to feel as if some- thing like wrong had been done to them by the arrange- ment of the Adamic dispensation. I trace this feeling of wrong — not uncommonly to be found in ignorant and irreligious men — to the forge tfulness that the enjoyment of chartered blessings alone was suspended on the con- duct of Adam. Were they thoroughly convinced that, by this federal failure, nothing was lost to them but that to which they have no claim, and no conceivable right to be consulted whether it shall be withheld or bestowed, or how bestowed, they would become instantly and deeply sensible that there is no ground for this feeling. A sove- reign gift must be at the exclusive disposal of God. The animal tribes have apparently more right to complain of the bondage to which the fall of man has subjected them (though, possessing no claim upon God, they have no such right), than the entire human family to murmur at the loss of life suffered by them as the result of federal transgression. And, as to the wish expressed by certain unreflecting individuals, that the chartered blessing of life had been intrusted to their own custody, I own I cannot under- stand it. Is it a w^ise — is it even a rational wish? Is it not preposterously absurd ? Was not the arrangement made Avith Adam pre-eminently a covenant of grace to them ? In what light can we contemplate this expressed wish but as a development of that infatuation and folly which have seized upon men in consequence of the fall ? On this point I must, however, refer the reader to what has been already said. With two remarks I conclude this Lecture ; — the first intended to glance at the reason which may have influ- DR. RUSSELL S CONJECTURE. 77 enced the infinitely wise God to suspend these chartered blessings to the race on the federal obedience of its head. Man, ever prone to pry into the secret councils of God, is not satisfied with the fact that such was his determina- tion. He curiously inquires, " Why was it so ? " Now I am not aware that, in any part of Divine revelation, God himself has vouchsafed a reply ; while He is the only being who could do it fully and satisfactorily. It becomes us, therefore, to remember that, if it be even lawful to speak, where God himself is silent, we can at best give utterance to nothing but conjecture, and that we ought to express such conjectures with the utmost diffi- dence. Yet the conjecture stated by Dr. Russell appears to me worthy of attention. It is founded on the fact that the light of Divine revelation, like that of the natural sun, has waxed stronger and stronger, through successive periods of its day; and that, in all the earlier dispensa- tions of God, we observe a pre-shadowing forth of the crowning or gospel dispensation. The conjecture is this, though I do not state it entirely in his own words : — Jehovah, foreseeing the universal prevalence of sin, whether the whole race should be so connected with Adam as to be legally answerable for what he did, or whether each of his posterity should be answerable for himself alone, — and the consequent necessity for the estab- lishment of that great plan of human redemption from which he derives so large a revenue of glory, determined to establish such a constitution with our first parents, as should be in itself adapted to shadow forth the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. Thus the dispensa- tion established with Adam, and the mediatorial economy which has been established through Christ, reciprocally illustrate each other. "There is, hence, in the history of the first man, a kind of initiation into the doctrine of Christ; accordingly, he is called the figure of Him that was to come." iS PROBABLE EEASONS My second remark has reference to the great moral lesson which the melancholy result of the Adamic dis- pensation teaches, and which we are warranted to infer it was intended to teach. Adam w^as created in the image of God, — in the full maturity of his powers. The law of God, and tlie law of love, were inscribed upon his heart. His body was the temple of the Holy Ghost. Preserved, as we have seen he Avas, by this Divine agent from moral failure on all other points, he was left without any special Divine influence to guard him against taking the forbidden fruit. Still his mind was in a perfectly holy state ; the disposition to obedience remained in all its pristine vigour up to the moment of temptation ; he had the strongest conceivable motives to resist it ; the des- tinies of the entire race were in his keeping ; he must ruin himself and his race if he did not stand steadfast in his integrity. And yet he fell! Can there be a stronger proof of the imbecility of man, without the constant pre- sence and influence of the Spirit of God? Man, in in- nocence and holiness, sank; and sank just at the point, too, where he was left, as I conceive, to the unaided support of his vigorous and perfect moral powers. And yet there are individuals, in the present day, who tell us that man, in his fallen and depraved state, with all his moral powers broken and shattered, the love of truth and holiness having left his soul, — who tell us that man in this state — in his state of darlaiess and depravity — the sport of his own passion, and the bond-slave of the god of this world, has no need of special Divine influence ; that no such influence is promised or enjoyed, or even exists ; that, benighted and debased as we all are by nature, we are left to struggle our own way into the knowledge, and liberty, and blessedness of the Gospel; that, though the light of truth shines all around, no provision is made for opening the blind eye, — though the voice of mercy invites, there is no agent to unstop the deaf ear — no power to raise FOE THE ADAJMIC COVENA^•T. 79 the dead ; that moral instruments have been provided hut no omnipotent arm to wield them, and render them mighty to the pulling down of strongholds ! Is not all this preposterous? It is surely more difficult to arise, after we have fallen, and are bruised ^nd shattered by the fall, than to stand when we are erect ? Man fell when he was erect ; how then, without the aid of God's Spirit, can he rise now that he has fallen ? Unless 1 mistake, the grand moral lesson taught by the issue of the trial of Adam in paradise, is the entire de- pendence of man upon the Holy Spirit of God. God says to us, by the whole of this melancholy history — may the important lesson not be given in vain ! — " Without me ye can do nothing." ^- * See Note C at the end of the Volume. LECTURE III. THE RESULT OF THE FALL OF ADA:M TPON OUR REL-\TIYE STATE OR CONDITION ; THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION, ETC. ETC. Before we enter upon the subject which is now more especially to occupy our thoughts, it may be expedient to take a rapid glance over the course along which we have moved in the previous Lectures. We have seen that the father of our race was created a holv beinoj, — care having: been taken to explain the sense in which we are to predi- cate holiness of him ; that he was appointed to sustain a federal, as well as a paternal, relation to the race destined to spring from him ; that, in the former of these relations, he became the depositoiy of important blessings, receiving, for himself and the race, the promise of the constant agency of Divine Providence to sustain the life of the body, and the constant presence and influence of the Spirit of God to sustain the life of the soul, on the simple and easy condition of abstaining from the fruit of a certain tree. We have further seen that he set at nought the prohibition of his Maker, — broke the conditions of the charter, — forfeited all its blessings ; and it devolves upon us now to exhibit, more fully and circumstantially, what has been already glanced at, — the results to us, direct and indirect, proximate and remote, of this federal failure. Before we proceed, however, to do this, it might seem expedient, not to say necessai'y, to exhibit the evidence in support of the historical truth of that part of the Book of Genesis from which we derive our account of it, — to THE HISTOEICAL CHAKACTEE OF GEN. IT. 81 explain the various circumstances recorded in that nar- rative, and, perhaps, to offer a few remarks upon the difficult question, " How temptation could operate upon a mind, in the moral state which we assume to have been that of Adam's mind before the fall? In the shape of additional notes and illustrations attached to these Lec- tures, should there be sjDace for it, somewhat of all this may be brief]}' attempted ; but, in the Lectures them- selves, I must dwell upon nothing which has not an immediate and powerful bearing upon the great doctrine of Ori^rinal Sin. Under the influence of this pfuidinc; principle, I shall not attempt at present to do more than to show, in the briefest ]oossible manner, that the narra- tive contained in the second and third chapters of Genesis is the history of a real transaction. This, the reader must be well aware, has been denied. Many persons, under the influence of feelings of which it is not difficult to conceive, affirm that the passage in question is merely an allegorical representation of the ascendancy which, at an early period of the histoiy of the world, appetite and passion obtained over the higher prin- ciples of our nature.- The two following arguments, pre- sented in somewhat different forms by various writers, * "It is sail by some, tliat tlie -wliole is intended to teach, by allegoay, how unhappy man becomes by the indulgence of violent passions, and the evil consequences resulting from the prevalence of sense over reason."— Knapp's Theolojy. Morus supposes that the serpent denotes those external inducements to siu by which men are overcome ; but that we know not the particular temp la- tion which triumphed over Adam. — P. 29, n. I. "If the Mosaic histoiy be an allegory," says Bishop Horsley, "it is an allegory without a key, which no man can interpret ; and delivering his his- tory in this disguise, the inspii-ed teacher of the chosen race has in trutli given no information, and might as well have left his tale untold, as have told it in so obscure a riddle, which is neither calculated to convey any moral ti-uth, nor to serve any political pm-pose the author might be supposed to have in view. If Paradise was not literally such a garden as Moses has described, but the condition of the first man represented under that image, what, then, was the reality which that image represents ? "What were the peculiarities oi XI. <> 82 THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF have ever seemed to me sufficient to convince any candid man that the allegorical interpretation of the passage is baseless. In the Jirst place, the passage is jjart of a continued history. " It is inserted," says Principal Hill, " between the account of the creation of the tirst pair, and the birth of their two sons ; and it explains the reason of their being driven out of that place, which, in the second chapter, we had been told had been allotted to them by their Creator." Now, it appears to me that the hypothesis in question, viz. that we have allegory interspersed with history, without the slightest guide to distinguish the one from the other, would convert the Bible into an enigma far beyond the comprehension of wayfaring men, for whose benefit we know it was Avritten. • In the second place, the entire account of the garden, and of the trial of our first parents there, and the melan- choly result of the trial, was, at all events, in the judgment of an inspired man, not allegory, but history. " For I fear," says the Apostle Paul, (2 Cor. xi. 3,) " lest through any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the sim- plicity that is in Christ." And again, (in 1 Tim. ii. 13,) " For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived ; but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." Now, if the narrative of the transgression of Adam be an allegory, must not that of his creation be such too?- The former is introduced as a fact of the same authority and notoriety as the latter. " The occa- tlie first man's condition ? If the prohibition imiooserl upon him was not simply that of tasting the fruit of a particular tree, but of something else; •what Avas that something else really forbidden? If the -woman was not formed out of a portion of the body of the man, what was the actual manner of her formation, which is enigmatically ' so described? ' " — Biblical Criticism, vol. 1. p. H. * "No writer of true 'history," says P.ishop Horsley, "would mix plain matter of fact with allegory in one continued narrative, without any intima- GENESIS II. AND III. 83 sion," says the writer quoted a moment ago, " of the trans- gression, viz. deceit ; the order of the transgression, that the woman, not the man, was deceived, or first deceived • and one part of the punishment of the transgression — viz. 'In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children;' these three important circumstances are mentioned in such a manner by the Apostle, that it is impossible not to consider the historical sense of the whole chapter as having the sanc- tion of his authority. "=''^ — Lectures, vol. ii. p. 358. Adopting, then, as we do, the historical sense of this narrative, it exhibits the trial of man as to obedience to the Divine will, together with its melancholy issue. There are writers, indeed, who admit the historic fact of the fall, but regard the narrative as a figurative repre- sentation of that fact. The celebrated Tholuck beloncfs to this class. Now, I am not indisposed to concede, with the learned translator of Knapp's Theology — the excellent son of an excellent father, Dr. Woods, jun., of Andover — that, " if it be admitted that the fact of the fall, together with its unhappy issue, may be gathered from the narra- tive, it is not of such consequence whether it be by an allegorical or literal interpretation." Yet, on the other hand, it must surely be allowed, that there is less proba- tion of a transition from the one to the other. If, therefore, any part of this narrative he matter of fact, no part is allegorical. On the other liand, if any part be allegorical, no part is naked matter of fact; and the consequence of this will be, that eveiything in every part of the whole narrative must be allegorical. If the formation of the woman out of the man be allegory, the ■woman must be an allegorical woman. The man, therefore, must be an allegorical man; for of such a man only the allegorical woman will be a meet companion. If the man is allegorical, his Paradise will be an allegorical garden ; the trees that grew in it, allegorical trees ; the rivers that watered it, allegorical rivers; and thus we may ascend to the very beginning of crea- tion, and conclude at last that the heavens are allegorical heavens, and tlie- earth an allegorical earth. Tlius the whole creation will be an allegory, of • which the real subject is not disclosed ; and in this absurdity, the scheme of allegorizing ends." * Vide, on this subject, Holden's Dissertation on the Fall of Man, chapter the second. 84 DEFINITIONS OF bility of gathering the historic fact itself from the former interpretation than the latter. Admit the literal inter- pretation of the narrative, and the fact of the fall is un- doubted ; for it is distinctly affirmed. Adam ^vas tried, and failed in the trial ; he ruined himself, and foundered the hopes and prosj)ects of the race. The result of that failure to us, or, more specifically considered, the relative condition, and the personal state, in which the respective members of the human family now enter the world, as its ordained or natm'al conse- quence, is now to be considered. The question, " What is the state of man by nature ; what are the legal liabilities, and the moral condition, in which he commences his course of existence in the present state?" comprises everything I wish to say upon the subject. Many good writers use tlie term " original sin " in a generic sense, i. e. to denote the relative condition, and the depraved moral state, of man by nature — the guilt, as it is called, and the depravity which are natural to him. Thus, in an explanation of original sin, contained in the standards of the Church of Scotland, we find the following words : — " Our first parents, by their sin, fell from their original righteousness," — " and so became dead in sin;"' "and, being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and cor- rupted nature conveyed, to all their jDOsterity descending from them by ordinary generation." Still more explicit, in reference to the generic sense in which the phrase "original sin" is used, is the language of the Assembly's Catechism. In answer to the question, "Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell ? " we find the follov\ung statement: — "In the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, ichich is commonly called — Original Sin." It may possibly be conceived by some, that the relative, ORIGINAL SIN. 85 in the last clause, refers only to the immediate antecedent ; so that the compilers of that generally admirable com- pendium of revealed truth did not intend to include in the phrase " original sin " the guilt of Adam's sin, or the want of original righteousness; but, simply and exclu- sively, the corruption of his whole nature consequent upon them. Most people, perhaps, connect the relative with the whole of the preceding clauses of the sentence. Still, it must be admitted that the Avords are ambia-uous : thus prone are uninspired men to fail, even when they attempt so to fix the sense, as to leave no ground for doubt, of one of the most important doctrines of reve- lation. Very explicit, however, is the language of the great Jonathan Edwards. "By original sin," says he, "as the phrase has been most commonly used by divines, is meant the innate sinful depravity of the heart. But yet Vvdien," he adds, " the doctrine of original sin is spoken of, it is vulgarly," — i. e. as I understand him, commonly, not improperly, — "understood in that latitude, Avhich in- cludes not only the depravity of nature, but the imputation of Adam's first sin ; or, in other words, the liableness or exposedness of Adam's posterity, in the Divine judgment, to partake of the punishment of that sin. So far as I know," he adds, " most of those who have held one of these have maintained the other." — Vide Works, Baines's Edition, vol. ii. p. 87. Dr. Doddridge, again, seems almost to confine the phrase, " original sin," to guilt or exposedness to suffering. " This imputation of the sin of Adam to his posterity" — which he had explained and juslilied — he says, "is what divines generally call, with some latitude of expression, original sin, distinguishing it from actual sin, i. e. from personal guilt."— FicZe Works, Baines's Edition, vol. v. p. 205. No possible good can result from giving this generic 86^ THE EFFECTS OF THE FALL sense to the phrase " original sin : " whether, indeed, it be the best mode of designating what President Edwards calls the " innate sinful depravity of the heart," may be doubted. On that point we shall probably find a more fitting opportunity to speak hereafter. At present, there needs no other remark than that President Edwards's statement is rather a definition of the state of man by nature, than of original sin. It describes both his rela- tive condition, and his personal character. We think it more judicious to confine the application of the phrase to the latter. The federal failure, or the fall of Adam, affected both our relative condition, and our personal state or character; and in a course of Lectures of this kind we must not fail to consider both results. It bore away from us invaluable blessings, and it entailed upon us that "carnal mind" which, as we know from infallible authority, " is enmity against God." These two points require distinct examina- tion — very searching investigation — and very ample illus- tration. With Divine assistance, all shall be given to them. We consider — I. The Effects of the Fall of Adam upon ouk Relative State or Condition. A single statement, after what has been already said, will exhibit the facts of the case in reference to this branch of the subject, though it may be necessary to illustrate it at some length, and to bring it into comparison with the current phraseology regarding it. The federal transgression of Adam exposed us, who had been rendered prospective beneficiaries by the gracious charter given to him, to the loss of all the blessings, the permanent enjoyment of which by us was suspended upon his federal obedience, — or his fulfilment of the terms of the charter prescribed by the wisdom and goodness of ON OUR EELATIYE STATE. 87 God. It rendered us liahle to death in the two senses which stand in direct opposition to those in which, as we have seen, he enjoyed hfe — to the death of the body, and the death of the soul ; or, to speak more accurately, to the loss of that sovereign and efficacious influence without which life, in either sense of the term, has never been known permanently to exist. It rendered us, I may add, legally liable to this loss ; for, when God offers certain blessings to an individual, which are to be obtained or retained on any special condition, that offer has the binding force of law : it lays a moral obligation upon the individual to accept the blessing, by the performance of the condi- tion ; and renders its rejection an act not only of folly, but rebellion. It may not be thus when charters are bestowed by men, upon men. There may, in that case, be both the giving and the receiving of the charter; and here the offer of the chartered benefit does not impose any obligation upon the person, or persons, to whom it is made, to accept it. But, when God offers chartered be- nefits to any man, that man is not at liberty to reject them, — the offer is a virtual command to receive them with all humility and gratitude. On this ground, as well as others, to which I must not now refer, it becomes the imperative duty of all men, who hear the gospel, to accept its inva- luable blessings. For the gospel may be regarded as a charter conveying life to men, on the simple condition (I use that word in the sense of a sine qua non) of " faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." It consists of a testimony, and a promise. Its testimony is, that God " hath reconciled the world to himself by Jesus Christ;" its promise is, "that all who believe this record shall have everlasting life." Now, had the gospel charter been a record and a promise merely, — had it been unaccompanied by a threatening of death against the rejector of the great salvation, even then, it is manifest that all men would have been bound to accept its blessings by the performance of its condition. 88 THE ADAMIC AN'D GOSPEL CHARTER COMPARED. God's ofFei'ed mercy can never be innocently refused : in every case rejection involves the deepest guilt. The great giant sin of the finally lost will, at the day of judgment, appear to be this — that they would not " come to Christ that they might have life." The Adamic dispensation was, indeed, a covenant of grace to Adam, — it was a charter, as we have seen, sus- pending the continued enjoyment of life by himself, and the permanent possession of it by his descendants, on the condition to which we have frequently referred ; but, then, it was a charter, the blessing and the condition of which it was not at his option to refuse. Most highly, indeed, did he prize the life with which God had endowed him ; but, if this had not been the case, he would not have been at liberty to throw it back froni him as a worthless thing. The fact that God had graciously bestowed it, rendered it imperative upon him to guard it, and to preserve it most carefully for his family. Could any person conceive of him as at liberty to despoil himself of his heritage, no one could fancy that he had the right to rob his descendants. In point of fact, however, he had not the right to do either. He was imperatively bound to perform the condition — to abstain from the forbidden fruit, and therebv transmit the rich inheritance of life to his entire family. It should, however, be very carefully observed, that the Adamic charter differs materially in form from the gospel charter. The latter is accompanied by a promise, as well as a threatening; the former was only sanctioned by a curse. We do not read, " As long as you eat not, you shall live ; but in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die." These words show that, though a charter, it was a charter having all the force of law, — a charter that bound to the performance of its condition, by containing so fearful a malediction against its violation. And it should be further observed, that this threatening, appended to the Adamic charter, gave it the form, as well as the force of BOTH HAVE THE FORCE OF LAW. 89 law ; for law is precept, accompanied not by promise, but by a threatened penalty in case of non-compliance with it. This circumstance rendered it of course more certain that the violation of the condition of the charter would not escape punishment. I say 2^unishment, because death to Adam would be, and it actually was, strictly of the nature of punishment. It was the legal consequence, not merely of the violation of lavv% but of his own violation of it ; and this alone, as w-e have seen, is punishment in the strict sense of the term. Adam actually ate the forbidden fruit. He was personally guilty of that sin, — guilty not merely in the sense which the word bears when the jury return the verdict, " Guilty, my lord " (/. e. he has committed the crime); but guilty in the further sense — unless, indeed, this further sense may be supposed to be included in the verdict— the sense of actually deserving to sufter punish- ment on account of it. According to Dr. Johnson, the English term aidlt is of Saxon origin, and originally means, the fine or mulct paid for an offence. Out of this meaning vrould naturally grow llahiUty to the payment of tliis fine. In a case where the offence is a crime, or sin, the fine or mulct is properly the punishment of that sin j and liability to pay the fine is desert of that punishment. Now Adam had both committed sin, and he deserved to sufier the punishment due to it. He had sinned as a man, and as a public head — had broken the law, and broken the co- venant; and guilt, in the strict and proper sense of the term, rested upon him in this double capacity. He was no doubt legally exposed to punishment, but that exposure resulted from desert of punishment, or rather was identical with it ; for in no way whatever could Adam become ex- posed, or legally liable, to punishment, but by rendering himself deserving of punishment. Still it must not be forgotten that the punishment destined to overtake him in his federal relation was merely the loss of chartered blessings ; the loss of the life which 90 CONSEQUENCES OF ITS VIOLATION had been given to him by sovereign favour, and whose continuance was suspended on tlie condition of abstinence from the forbidden fruit. To the punishment attached to the breacli of this charter — if indeed, even in reference to Adam, we may not rather regard it as loss than as punishment — the transgression of our first parent legally and directly ex- posed us ; for, as the covenant itself had both the force and the form of law, the consequences of its violation attach to us according to law. Again, however, it must be remembered, that these consequences are nothing more than, or other than, the loss of chartered blessings — the loss of the life to which we have so frequently referred. We enjoy them not, unless, indeed, by an act of grace secured by a far higher and better charter, simply because they were lost for us by our federal head. I must again call the reader to observe most carefully that our statement is not that guilt,-''~ in the j)roper sense of the term, i. e. desert of punishment, rests upon the race in consequence of Adam's sin; nor that the results of his sin overtake us as inmisliment strictly so called; but that his federal failure has brought upon us legal exposure, or liability, to suffer the consequences of that failure ; i. e. has exposed us to the loss of chartered bless- ings. And I cannot but think that, if the simple, and, as I believe, scriptural view of the connexion between the race and Adam presented in these Lectures, had not given place to more technical and systematic statements, much, if not the whole, of the difficulty which is now felt to en- cumber this portion of the great evangelical system, would have had no existence. The whole of the ultra-Calvinistic, or rather Antinomian, doctrine upon this subject, rests upon the forgetfulness of the great facts that the Adaraic charter promised bless- ings to Adam and the race, to which they had no claim — * Vide^. 74. TO ADAM AND TO US. 9] suspended their permanent enjoyment upon a certain con- dition to be observed by the beneficiary — and that this con- dition being broken, we naturally and necessarily suffer the loss of the blessings. If this be the correct view of the case, no one, it is manifest, can complain that any injustice or hardship has been inflicted upon him by sub- jecting him to the loss of these blessings, unless he can establish a claim to their communication ; while to do this few will even venture to make an attempt. But, when the distinction between the personal and the federal character of Adam is forgotten ; when it is imagined that we were rendered directly responsible to God for any and every personal failure (if he had fallen into any); for any idle word, any impure thought; — so responsible as that that word or thought must have brought directly upon us, as it would have done upon him, a sentence of eternal death ; when it is further conceived that the guilt of Adam's sin, in the strict sense of the term guilt, i. e. actual desert of punishment, rests upon the race by nature, and that the consequences of his transgression reach us as punishment strictly so called; — when, I say, all this is conceived to be the doctrine of Scripture upon this subject, I do not wonder, I confess, that one or other of the following results should happen : — either that the person should relinquish his confidence in Divine revelation altogether ; or, if the principle of faith and piety should not be entirely prostrated, that he should turn his eye entirely away from this part of the field of revelation, endeavour to banish the subject from his thoughts, and so deprive himself of the benefit which the scriptural doctrine is powerfully adapted to impart. And yet all this has been conceived — at any rate avowed and maintained. Not content with the statement given in previous pages, that, by virtue of the dispensation esta- blished with Adam, we become legally exposed to suffer the consequences of his federal failm-e, there have been, Q'2 SOUKCE OF THE MISTAKES OF THE ULTEA-CALVIXISTS. and there are, those who tell us that that failure was ours — literally and strictly so; that the rfuilt of that failure is ours. A modern writer maintains that " the sin of Adam was ours as really and truly so as it was the sin of x^dam himself; that every heliever is bound to acknowledge and confess that he is guilty of Adam's sin : " and, lest any one should suppose that by guilty he merely means legally exposed to suffer the consequences of that sin, he tells us, in effect, that this guilt is 23^evious to the legal exposure and imputation, and is, in fact, the foundation of both. " Adam's sin," he says, " is imputed to his posterity because it is their sin in reality, though we may not be able to see the way in which it is so." - The whole of the preceding statement is, in my view of the case, a very memorable one. It unfolds the reason which constrained IMr. Haldane and others to adopt the preposterous notion of the personal union of Adam and the race. The phenomenon to be solved is the endurance by the latter of the penal result of his transgression. Overlooking, or rejecting, the solution, that that result is to us merely the loss of chartered or sovereign benefits, the readiest, if not the only, mode of explaining it, appa- rent to them, was to identify Adam and the race — to declare the sin of Adam to be theirs ; and then no mystery is of course involved in the fact that they suffer its consequences. They are, in that case, punished for their oivn sins. In the previous pages, we have seen that tliis is the sense attached by some writers to the phrase, " the impu- tation of Adam's sin to us ; " and this conception of its meaning is obviously to be traced to the source to which I have ascribed it. I really do not feel it to be necessary to add to what has been advanced, in previous pages, against the doctrine of personal union. Among those, in the present day, who feel it difficult to solve the phenomenon of which we are * Vide Haldane, on tlie Epistle to the Eomans, vol. i. p. 4-10. THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION CONSIDERED. 93 now speakiftg, few would think of resorting to the mon- strous expedient of identifying themselves and tlie race with Adam. Yet, unaware of the solution we have sun-- gested, or rejecting it, they have resorted to the more modem notion of imputation, whicli I now proceed to examine. The notion itself may be expressed as follows : — The posterity of Adam suffer the consequences of his sin, not, indeed, because they are personally one with him, but because his sin, as it is said, is imjmted to them, — this imputation being regarded as distinct from their endurance of its consequences, and constituting, in fact, the cause or reason of that endurance. In proceeding to offer some remarks upon these statements, I beg to assure my readers that I have not the slightest doubt of the gTeat doctrine of imputation. I believe as firmly that the sin of Adam is imputed to us, as that our sins were imputed to Christ, and that his righteousness is counted to us. I should, on this part, join issue with the celebrated American divine. Professor, Moses Stuart, of Andover, who tells us, that " no sin is ever said in Scripture to be imputed to man but his own sin." Or, to speak more generically, that, " nothing can be properly said to be imputed to any man wdiich does not belong to him ; that we may, in short, impute sin to the sinner, and righteousness to the righteous, — but not righteousness to the sinner, nor sin to the righteous." It is probable that Mr. Stuart, in employing this phraseology, attaches a sense to the term imputation different from that in which we use it ; so that there may not be so radical a difference of opinion between him and ourselves, as his strong statements would seem to indicate. If the verb to imjmte — which means to count, to reckon, &c.— be taken in the simple sense, to rcr/axl or consider, then it is abundantly plain that we cannot truly impute sin to any one but a sinner; i.e. we cannot truly regard or consider any person as a sinner who is not so. 94 STATEMENTS OF But, if the verb " to impute," — to impute sin, for instance, to an individual, — be understood to mean, io act toicards him as if he were a sinner, then it is equally manifest that sin may be thus imputed to a person who is personally righteous ; or, in more generic terms, that something may be imputed to a man which does not belong to him. In this sense, it maybe said that our sins were imputed to Christ, and his righteousness imputed to us ; i. e. he was treated as if he had been a sinner, and we are treated as if we were righteous. How would iMr. Stuart, in harmony with his denial that anything is said in Scripture to be imputed to an individual except that which is his own, explain the language of the apostle (Rom. iv. 6), " Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness Avithout works?" Does righteous- ness belong to him ? Did God impute to him that which was his own? — righteousness to the righteous? But is he not described as " without works ? " Again, how would Mr. Stuart explain those words which occur (Rom. ii. 2C), " If the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?" Now, what is it to count circumcision to a man who is un- circumcised, but to count to him what does not belong to him ? The canon, then, of our clear-sighted American brother must be denied ; or, if admitted at all, it must be by the help of a logomachy, which, with all his perspicacity, he has failed to perceive. Still, I more than doubt whether the difficulty we are now considering is, or can be, fairly obviated in the manner proposed. That difficulty, it will be recollected, is the fact, the indisputable fact, that the whole human family, consisting of beings totally distinct from Adam, suffer the consequences of his transgression. The proposed solution is this : They suffer these conse- quences because that transgression is imputed to them. The imputation being ditTerent from the punishment, and MESSRS. STUART AND HINTON. 95 preceding it. The feeling which prompted the statement seems to have been this.* They could not justly be called to suffer the consequences of his transgression, unless the transgression were in some sense theirs. It is not theirs strictly and literally (for the doctrine of personal union is, by those to whose opinions we now refer, given up); it must consequently be theirs by imputation. The sin of Adam is legally counted to them, and hence it be- comes right to punish them for it. Now this mode of statement, or of reasoning, evidently assumes two things, — the disproof of the one or the other of which would subvert the whole theory. It assumes, FIRST, that the imjmtation of Aclarns siii to the race is some- thing different from visiting the consequences of that sin upon the race ; and, secondly, that this imputation — admitting the * Thus ^yrite3 Mr. Hinton : '"' Nor is it only suffering and death which are thus entailed ; ever}' man enters the world with a depraved nature, &c." — " What account is to he given of these things? These are of the nature of penal evil" (in a passage formally quoted, the reader may remember, he denies that they "are laid upon us penally"), "having come into existence only as the punishment of sin ;" — " but upon what principle is punishment inflicted upon those who have no share in the offence ?" — " It is certain that they must be considered as implicated parties" (imj)licated, as he explains, by the covenant being made with Adam for his posterity), "or else the Judge of all the earth, who judgeth righteous judgment, would not have treated them as such." — Theology, p. 186. This is not satisfactoiy to me. There were, on this hypothesis, two steps in the process. God first considered the posterity of Adam " impUcated pai'ties" (do these words mean more than that the race were by Divine ap- pointment to suffer with him? If so, what more?) ; and secondly visited them with penal evils (I would ask Mr. Hinton, " If these evils are not laid upon us ' penally; but mercifully, i. c. as moral medicines, where is the diffi- culty? "What is there to explain?"); and the first is pleaded as the justifi- cation of the second. They are visited with "penal evil" because they are "implicated parties." Now this explanation does— what it appears to me this respectable writer is somewhat prone to do, it passes over tlie main diffi- culty. It does not exhibit the justice of considering them " implicated parties." It virtually justifies their being treated as sinners by the allegation tliat Uiey are considered sinners. But why consider them sinners any more tlian treat them as sinners when they had, as be says, " no share in the offence?"— I 'iJ« subsequent statements. yO THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION EXPLAINED. difference coyitended for — lays a justifiahle ground for inflict- ing the ininisliment of that sin uj>on the race. If either pre- miss be faulty, and, a fortiori, if both be so, the conclusion must be held to be invalid ; for, if the imputation of Adam's sin to the race, and the endurance of its conse- quences by the race, are not different but identical things, then the statement we are now considering involves the great absurdity of seeking to account for a thing, by affirming the existence of the same thing. Or, if the imputation of the sin, and the infliction or endurance of consequences, are different things ; j-et, if the former be not a justifiable gTOund of the latter, — if, on the contrary, it needs itself to be justified, and so constitutes the very thing to be accounted for, — it is evident that the statement involves the logical fallacy of non causa j^ro causa ; or, in other words, that it seeks to evince the equity of one trans- action, by laying for its foundation another whose equity stands in equal need of vindication. More than eight years ago, I had occasion to express the opinion — in the faith of which all subsequent reflec- tion has only served more firmly to establish me — that to impute sin or righteousness to an individual (whether it be his own, or that of some one else), is to treat that indi- vidual judicially as a sinful or a righteous man, — and is not, as I allow is commonly imagined, a previous stej) merely to his being so treated. To punish a man, or rather to lay upon him what are really the penal results of transgression' — though it may be not his own — is not indeed literally, but it is practically, to make him a wicked man ; i. c. it is to account him as such, — to exhibit him as such. To count wickedness to a man is, in the scriptural sense of the phrase, to inflict punishment upon him. The laying of the punishment upon him is the imputation of sin to him. There are not two steps in the process ; first counting him as a sinner, and then treating him as such, but punishing him is counting sin to him. The use of the THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION EXPLAINED. 97 Plebrew verb, V'c^, as illustrative of this point, may occur to my learned readers. In Kal, it means to be wicked. In Hiphil, by the force of that part of the verb, to make wicked. Now persons are made wicked, i. e. practically they are accounted such, or shown to be such — by con- demnation or punishment. To pass sentence upon any one is to make him wicked. And hence this verb, in the Hiphil conjugation, means, frequently at least, to con- demn. I do not recollect a case in which it means to punish, though it is obviously susceptible of that signifi- cation. In the work to which reference was made a short time ago,* the following passage, which I crave leave to quote, occurs in support of the important statement that to im- pute sin or righteousness to an individual, means to treat him as a sinful or a righteous man. In Numbers xviii. S7, we read, " And this your heave- offering shall be reckoned (counted, imputed) unto you, as though it were the corn of the threshing-floor, and as the fulness of the wine-press ; " i. e. the offerers would be treated as though they had offered, what in reality they did not offer. In the address of Shimei to David we find the foUowinor ex- pression, " Let not my lord impute iniquity to me :" i. e. obviously, do not punish me. The request cannot have been that David would count him innocent (or, if it were, counting him innocent and not punishing him would be identical), since he proceeds to say, " For thy servant doth know that I have sinned" (2 Sam. xix. 20). In reference to the Gentiles, the apostle Paul says, " If the uncircum- cision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?" (Rom. ii. U6.) The meaning obviously is, that he shall be treated as though he were circumcised, by having granted to him all the blessings of the separated people of God, of whose separation to Jehovah, in its highest sense, circumcision * Lectures on Sovereignty, &c. pp. 259, 260. XT. H 98 THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION EXPLAINED. was a sign. "And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any portion of inheritance for us in our father's house ? Are we not counted of him {im- jjuted of him) strangers?" i. e. not reckoned strangers, hut treated as such; since tliey immediately add, " for he liath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money" (Gen.xxxi. 14, 15). "To wit that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;" i. e. not inflicting punishment on them for their sins, hut making atonement (2 Cor. v. 19). " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin ;" i. c. not inflict punishment on account of it (Rom. iv. 8). Further confirmation, also, of the same scriptural usus oquendi, may he derived from the case of the bullock offered as a sin-offering to God. "And the Levites shall lay their hands upon the heads of the bullocks; and thou shalt offer the one for a sin-offering ; " — i. e. the words being lite- rally rendered, " thou shalt maJie it sin " (Numb. viii. 12). Again, from the case of Miriam, recorded in the 12th chap- ter of that book, and the 11th verse. The leprosy which had seized upon Miriam was the consequence of her sin, and that of Aaron. The visitation upon her of this con- sequence of sin was 2^uttinrj the sin upon her. And, hence, when Aaron implored of Moses that the leprosy might be removed, he uses the phraseology, " Lay not the sin upon us^'^i. e. let not the leprosy continue to rest upon us. Sufficient, it is presumed, has been said to sliow that, in scriptural phraseology, to impute sin or rigliteousness to a person, is to act towards him, or judicially to treat him, as a sinful or a righteous man. God counted our sins to Christ by making him a sin-offering for us. He counts the Saviour's righteousness to us, by treating us as if we possessed it. Tliere are not two steps in this latter pro- cess — or, indeed, in the former ; there is one only. There is not, I humbly conceive, the intermediate process, con- STATEMENTS OF FULLER. 00 ceived and spoken of by many excellent writers* — the pro- cess of legally counting the righteousness of Christ to us — conceiving it to be ours — or holding it, by a kind of legal fiction, to be ours. There is the one process of treating us as if it ivere ours, in consequence of the infinite complacency with which the Father of mercy contemplates it, as furnish- ing an honourable basis for the extension of pardon to the guilty. My conviction is strong that this conceived inter- * As by the late Mr. Fuller, for instance, who thus esplahis the language of the Apostle : " He hath made liini to be sin for us \vho knew no sin, that, we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. v. 21). " There is," he says, " an allusion in this passage to the sin-ofleriug under the law. but not to its being made a saci'ifice. There were two tilings," he adds, " be- longing to tills sin-offering ; First, the imputation of the sins of the people, signified by the priest's laying his hand upon the head of the animal, and confessing over it their transgressions, and which is called putting tiiem upon it ; i. e. it was counted in the Divine administration, as if the animal had been the sinner and the only sinner of the nation. Secondly, offering it in sacrifice, or killing it before the Lord for an atonement. Now, the phrase ' made sin,' appears to refer to the first step in this process in order to the last. It is expressive of what was preparatory to Christ's suffering death, rather than the thing itself, just as our being made righteous, expresses what was i)reparatory to God's bestowing upon us eternal life." — Vol. 1\ . p. 88. The fluctuation of Mr. Fuller's views, on this point, is somewhat remark- able. At a later period, he expressed an opinion in perfect agreement witli the doctrine I have maintained. His words are these : " In what sense, then, Avas our sin imputed to Christ, or how was he made sin ? Surely not by a participation of it, for he is expressly said in the same passage to have known no sin. God did not judge him to be the sinner, for his judgments are accord- ing to truth. The whole seems to have been, that for wise and gracious ends Jlc was treated as tliough he had been the sinner, and the greatest sinner in the Avorld. " Further, in what sense is Christ's righteousness imputed to us, or how are we made the righteousness of God in him ?— Not by a participation of it.^ It is not true, nor will it ever be true, that the holy excellence of Clirist is so ours that we cease to be unworthy, and are deserving of eternal life. The wliole appears to be the same as in the former instance. God, for the sake of the obedience of his Son, treats us as though we were righteous, uorthi; or meritorious." He subjoins to this statement— the inHuence of old views disturbing, in some measure, these newly-formed ones—" Since writing the above, liowever, I have some doubts whether imputation consists in treatment. Ilathcr is il not the ground of treatment ? "—as, he adds, he had formerly represented it. 100 SOURCE OF ANTINOMIANISM. mediate process — the offspring of systematic theolog}' — is the fountain to which are to be traced many of the mis- takes, and all the absurdities and abominations, of Anti- nomianism. Let a man but conceive himself in posses- sion, in any true sense of the term, of the righteousness of Christ — either actually or putatively so — and what fear can he have of sin? How can the law condemn him, though he should continue in sin ? Yea, will he not do this that grace may abound ? But let a man embrace the scriptural view of the matter, — let him but practically re- collect that the righteousness of the surety remains in him- self, — that it is in itself incapable of transfer to us, so that we can only receive and enjoy it in its blessed results, — and that the gospel charter engages to bestow these results upon those only who give evidence of living faith in the Son of God, by a devout and holy temper of mind, and by a life of devoted obedience to Him ; — and he will feel that humility and gratitude are the only emotions which har- monize with his character and state, — and that the system of presumption and licentiousness, to which we have al- luded, has not a single inch of ground to stand upon. To return from this short digression, which will, I trust, be pardoned, I observe, in harmony with the iisus loquendi of scripture, that the imputation of Adam's sin to the race is not otherwise to be ref]rarded than as the lec^al visitation upon the race of the consequences of that sin. God im- putes the federal failure of Adam to us, by visiting us with pain, and disease, and death ; and by withholding from us, as our spirits enter upon the j)resent state of trial. His own Spirit, the source of spiritual life in the case of Adam, — the exclusive source of spiritual life in every case ; so that we commence existence in this world in a state of spiritual death. I do not, then, think it accurate to state, as many do, as perhaps the most of my readers have been in the habit of doing, that the imputation of Adam's sin to the race is the I.AfPUTATION OF SIN TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. 101 ground, or basis, or justification of the indisputable, and, according to some statements of it, the mysterious fact, that every member of that race is called to endure the con- sequences of his transgression. Whether this legal count- ing of that sin to the race Avould afford a sufficient vindi- cation of the punishment of the race, supposing the impu- tation and the punishment were different things, remains to be examined. It is manifest, however, that I, who iden- tify them, cannot consider one as the ground, or cause, or justification of the other; for there are not two things, but one only. Having thus examined, at some length, one of the pre- mises, by the aid of which many excellent writers seek to explain the fact just referi^ed to, let us now direct our at- tention to the other. The consequences of Adam's trans- gression attach to the race, is the proposition affirmed, because that sin is imputed to them— is counted as if it were theirs. But for this legal reckoning of Adam's fede- ral failure to them, its consequences, it is thought, could not equitably have overtaken them. The one is a neces- sary prerequisite to the other : and not so merely ; it is a full justification of the other. The Holy One of Israel could not, they think, have righteously laid the punish- ment of Adam's transgression — for they think of it as pu- nishment — upon the entire human family, unless he had previously laid the transgression itself upon them by im- putation, — unless he had counted it to them,— considered it in the eye of the law as theirs, &c.; but that, having done this, the subsequent step follows of necessity, and in the course of strict law; the whole human family suffer the consequences of their forefather's sin, because it is by imputation their own sin. Long continued and anxious thought on this subject has rendered it somewhat marvellous to me that, in the view of many, there should be nothing requiring explanation, and even vindication, in the preceding statement. How 102 IMPUTATION CANNOT JUSTIFY PUNISHMENT. is it that the writers referred to do not perceive that the foregoing explanation of the matter only drives the diffi- culty a step further back ; or, rather, that it is an attempt to escape out of one difficulty by plunging into another of at least equal magnitude ? The case is this : the race, as all conceive, suffer the consequences of Adam's sin. That fact is felt to involve difficulty ; and it is to escape from its ■pressure that resort is had to the assumption, or hypo- thesis, or explanation, that God visits upon them the con- sequences of that sin, because he had previously imputed it to them. Now, conceding, for the sake of argument — -which, however, we have denied — that there is a broad line of demarcation between the imputation of sin and the punishment of sin, I would ask whether no difficulty is involved in the preceding statement? If it be contrary to equity to x>unish the race for a crime which they did not commit, is it not as much at variance with equity to impute a crime to them which they did not commit? Can it be thought to be any more consistent with the perfections of the just and holy One legally to count sin (whatever the words may be supposed to mean) to an innocent being, than to punish an innocent being?* To me it appears equally impossible for him to do either the one or the other. Now, if both stand in the category of inadmissible suppo- sitions, it is obviously absurd to plead the one in vindi- * Thus writes Dr. Dick : — '' They became guilty thi'ough his guUt, which is imputed to them, so that they are treated as if they had personally hroken the covenant." " It is not satisfactory to say, that they are treated as sinners, although they are not really such, because the question naturally follows, ' How can they be justly treated as sinners, if tliey are not guilty?' and the question is unanswerable." — Theoloyy, vol. ii. p. 8!)3. Perliapp so, I might say to this most respectable, but far too systematic writer, yet it would be in hannony with facts of every day occiurrence. I would also request an answer to the following question, " How can guilt be imputed to them if they have committed no sin?" Consistency requires Dr. Dick to adopt the Augustiniau notion of union ; and then — the sin being their ov/n — guilt may of course be imputed, and puiiishmont inflicted. But I shiuld fear Ihis would be striking upon Pcylla, in the eiloit to escape Charybdis. OUR STNS IMPUTED TO CHEIST WITH HIS CONSENT. 103 cation of the other ; — to allege, that is, that God may rif^ht- eously visit the consequences of Adam's transgression upon the race, because he imputes his sin to the race. The ar- gument, thus employed in vindication, must bear to be generalized before it can be admitted to be sound ; and, in the generalized form, it stands thus before us : " Jehovah may equitably punish any one as a sinner, whom he chooses to regard as a sinner !" The race did not eat the forbidden fruit — did not themselves violate God's covenant ; but, not- withstanding this, He considers them (such is the hypo- thesis) as having done it; he iynjmtes to them a crime which they did not commit, and then inflicts punishment upon them ! If any man's mind be so constituted as to regard all this as affording any relief from the pressure of the difficulty it aims to remove, — viz. that we suffer the consequences of Adam's sin, I confess my mind has re- ceived a different constitution.* I shall be reminded, I doubt not, of the holy Lamb of God as a case in point — a case in which sin was imputed to a perfectly righteous Being ; and the conclusion will be pressed upon me, that, if our sins could be righteously * " And how are we helped, as to the real difficulties of the case, by tlie theoiy either of Edwards or of Turrettiiie? When a sin is counted to be oui's which is not so, then there is fictitious guilt and veritable damnation. Does this help to allay the doubts of inquiring minds, and to vindicate the justice of God ? Or can a mere fictitious unity, whicli contradicts both con- sciousness and matter of fact, reconcile us any better to the mystery of our native depravity ? I confess myself unable to see how such a forced mode of accounting for facts can help to cast any satisfactory light upon them. Not that I disapprove of or condemn the general object of Turrettine or Edwards ; far from this ; but I do not see how any more light is to be obtained with respect to it, by introducing fictitious guilt, or fictitious unity with Adam, in order to account for real and substantial evil. Why not remain content with the simple declaration of the apostle, that Adam's disobedience has been a cause of maldng his posterity sinners, and leave the modus in quo by whicli this is effected where he has left it, viz. without attempting to assign the specific manner of operation, certainly without attempting to introduce u mere legal fiction, of which the sacred writers have given us no example ?"— Stnart on the Romans, p. DS9. 104 DIFFERENCE BET^VEEN THE IMPUTATION placed to his account, the sin of Adam may be righteously placed to ours, and so bring down upon us the conse- quences to which that sin exposed himself. Now, defer- ring for the present the reply I am entitled to make, and which I certainly shall shortly make, viz. that there is no distinction, as I think it has been proved, between the imputation of our sins to Christ, and his endurance of their fearful consequences, I beg to remind the objector of one particular feature, in which the two cases so thoroughly differ, as to deprive them of all parallelism, and to render it unsafe and unsound to reason from one to the otlier. Our blessed Lord consented to have our sins imputed to him — whether imputation mean here the taking ujmn himself of the legal responsibility for our sins, not the culpa, or blame- worthiness, but the reatus, or legal answerableness, accord- ing to systematic terminolog}^ — or the i^unishment of our sins. He consented, I say, to this imputation. Can this be said of the posterity of Adam ? The Saviour presented himself as the substitute of men, and voluntarily bore " our sins in his own body upon the tree." But did we consent that Adam should act as our substitute ? — that we would take the reward or suffer the penalty of his conduct? I stated, indeed, in a former Lecture, that our consent was not needed to give validity to the dispensation established with Adam ; and the assertion is true, self-evidently true, if that dispensation were, as I have represented it, a char- ter, suspending the permanent enjoyment of certain sove- reign blessings to him, and to the race, on the performance of a certain stipulated and easy service. It were folly in the extreme to suppose that our consent was needed to a charter which placed us on such vantage ground, — which made provision for the descent of blessings to us, to which we had no claim, and for their surer permanent enjoyment by us, than if we had been required, as we must have been, to secure them by personal obedience. But if this import, ant point be lost sight of, — if we be not viewed merely as OF SIN AND EIGHTEOUSNESS. 105 chartered beneficiaries, losing, with the original holder of the charter, the gift conditionally deposited in him for the benefit of the entire family, — if it be affirmed that we are directly responsible for all which he might have done as the paternal, as well as the federal, head of the race, — that God imputes his sin as a man to us (and does not view us merely as involved in the consequences of his federal fail- ure), and im]3utes it to us as a preparatory step to his in- flicting punishment upon us, and as the justification of that punishment, — then, I say, I acknowledge that, in this sup- posed case, there is reason for the questions proposed a short time ago. We did not commit the sin of eating the forbidden fruit. The authority of Augustine even will fail to perpetuate that opinion, in the jDresent day. Why, then, should we be held to be guilty of it? Why should a sin be imputed to us which we did not commit? — to which we gave no consent ? How can we, more than the Savioui', be held to be responsible for the conduct of others without consenting, as he did, to take their legal answerableness upon ourselves. It is admitted, I believe, on all hands, that the voluntary off'er of the Saviour to stand in our room could alone have justified the practical imputation of our sins to him. May we not, therefore, ask, " What, then, can justify the alleged practical imputation of the sin of Adam to us, as the necessary ground for the infiiction of punish- ment upon us, when we did not consent to be thus respon- sible for his sin ?" If the question should appear to any to press too nearly upon the border of that which is unhal- lowed and profane, I answer, that it is forced upon us by the theory of imputation avowed in the writings of those whose opinions we are now considering. There is, I think, a material difi'erence, in this point of view, between the imputation of obedience, and of trans- gression, to others than the individuals who obey and sin ; and I mean by imputation now the legal counting to others of that obedience and transgression. Consent on 106 now THE CONSEQUENCES OF ADAm's SIN the part of those others, appears to me necessary m the case of transgression, hut not of obedience. Had no other obstacle than our want of consent to the arrangement interposed to prevent it, the perfect obedience of the Son of God might have been thus imputed to us, and its glorious results might have been enjoyed by us, without such consent. The whole proceeding, in that case, would have been a manifestation of sovereign favour. It would have brought nothing but infinite good to us. And the consent of a person to receive good may always be assumed ; it is constantly assumed. No one, making a disposition of his property by wall, thinks it necessary to obtain his friend's consent to leave him a handsome be- quest. But the case is different with regard to transgres- sion. Here there cannot be a transfer of the legal answer- ableness of which we are now speaking, and of consequent punishment, — a transfer from A. to B, without the formal consent of B. Moral government limits the responsibility of every one of its subjects to what he himself does. I am responsible for myself alone ; or, if I am righteously held to be responsible for the conduct of another, — in other words, if his misconduct can be equitably imputed to me, it must be because I consent to bear that respon- sibility. Now, the eating of the forbidden fruit was the act of jidam — the act of Adam alone ; the responsibility of that act rested with him exclusively. The race is not, in truth and equity, naturally more responsible for his con- duct, than the Saviour would have been responsible for us, without his express agreement. The race did not consent to take his responsibility upon them. The question then returns, "How can it be supposed to rest upon them? What is there to justify the imputation (in the sense in which we are now using the word) of Adam's sin to us ? — And how, especially, can such imputation be supposed to justify the infliction of punishment upon us?" Were I, then, to admit that the imputation of Adam's ATTACH TO US. 107 sin to the race, and the visiting of its consequences upon the race, were totally distinct things, I could not, for the reasons assigned, regard such imputation — for which no sufficient reason is alleged — as a sufficient ground for the deatli and ruin of the race. I believe, however, that they are not distinct things, but the same thing, — that the in- fliction of death upon the race — in both of the senses assigned to it— is the imputation of Adams sin to the race ; that the imputation of sin identifies itself with the punishment of sin (using the term punishment in a some- what loose sense) ; and that, consequently, the former does not, and cannot, supply a ground for the latter. How is it, then, that the posterity of Adam suffer the consequences of this federal failure ? The answer has been repeatedly given, and its truth and importance will, it is hoped, after this lengthened investigation, appear more manifest than ever. These consequences are merely the loss of chartered blessings ; and we lose them by virtue of belonging to the family of Adam, as the whole line of the descendants of a nobleman lose title and rank by the erasure of their ancestor's name from the list of the peerage. The endurance of this loss may have been jmnishment to Adam, but it is not punishment to us. He was o'esponsihle for the act which entailed this awful ruin upon us ; we were not responsible. He was guilty in com- mitting the act ; his guilt does not attach to us, yet it involves us in all the consequences of the act as if it had been our own. The children born to exalted rank lose the honours of nobility when their father becomes a rebel ; yet no one conceives of his guilt as attaching to them ; and if, to account for their loss of title, and station, while personally, as it might be, blameless, any one should think it necessary to resort to the legal fiction, that the crime of the father was imputed to them, and that, therefore, they suffered its consequences, he would be more in danger of being laughed at for his simplicity, than commended for 108 IMPUTATION IS DIRECT, NOT MEDIATE, ETC. his ingenuity. Every one would, in this case, feel that the children lose, not what every blameless subject of the commonwealth has a right to claim from the community, but patent honours, which it reserves to itself, and should reserve to itself, a right to bestow, or withhold, as the weal of the nation may seem to require. Adam held patent endowments, and blessings, — held them for himself, and his family, on condition of fealty to his Lord and Creator. He became a rebel, and lost them. Thus the fact, that we are devoid of them by nature, is one of the most intelligible of facts. Any mystery which is thought to surround it is the result of the additions which technical and systematic Theology has made to the plain statements of Divine revelation. To this loss — the loss of chartered blessings, the federal failure of Adam directly exposes us. We become liable to the loss, and we actually suffer the loss, as the direct result of his transgression ; and this is what we are to understand by the imputation of his sin to us. It follows, from these statements, that the imputation of Adam's sin to us is, ill the language of systematic divines, " imme- diate and antecedent, and not mediate and consequent." Before the time of the great and good Francis Turrettine, a controversy, on this point, had arisen and been decided, he tells us, by the synod of the Church to which he be- longed. The controversy was in substance this, — " Whe- ther Ave become exposed to suffer the consequences of Adam's transgression directly, by that transgression itself, — or, indirectly, by virtue of the corrupt nature which it entails upon us ?" The latter view, he tells us, was taken by the Anabaptists, the Eemonstrants, and the Socinians, who joined in denying that we " propter lapsum primorum parentum esse reos ; " and of them all he gives the opi- nion, that, retaining the name of imputation, they destroy the thing; "rem ipsam tollentes" are his own words. STATEMENTS OF CALVIN. 109 The synod affirmed, by solemn decision, the opinion ex- pressed by Turrettine. Now, when it was not distinctly perceived, or allowed, that the consequences, to the race, of Adam's federal failure, are simply the loss of chartered benefits, I do not wonder that the notion of " mediate and consequent im- putation " should be adopted. Though the notion of guilt was softened down from "culpa " to " reatus " — from *' blameworthiness " to " legal responsibility," it must have been so difficult to conceive that guilt, in any proper sense of the term, could attach to us, as the direct result of tlie act of another, that I am by no means surprised at the disposition displayed by some of our best writers to rest native guilt upon native depravity ; or, in other words, to state that we are condemned by nature, because we are sinners by nature ; or, in other words, again, that the sin of Adam is imputed to us on account of our natural pollution. Many American divines appear to have thought as follows : — By the fall of Adam all mankind are reduced to a state of depravity ; and this depravity is the basis of the sentence which dooms them to suffer death. This seems to have been the opinion of Dr. Dwight.* It was certainly the opinion of Dr. Hopkins. "By Adam's sinning all men," he says, " were made sinners " — " by a Divine constitution, there is a certain connexion between the first * It must, also, be acknowledged that tliis seems to have been the opinion of Calvin. In his commentary on Eom. v. 1 7, he says, " There are two differ, ences between Christ and Adam, which the apostle does not omit (to state) because he thought they were of no consequence, but because it pertained not to his present purpose to mention them. The first is, quod peccato Adse, KOK j)er solam imputatlonem, damnamur, ao si alieni peccati exigerctur a nobis poena ; sed ideo poenam ejus sustinemus quia et culp.e sumus rei, quatenus scilicet natura nostra in ipso vitiaia, iniquitatis reatu obstringitur apud Denm." In the sin of Adam we are condemned, not by imputation mei-ely, as if punish- ment were exacted of us for another's sin ; but we undergo the punisliment because we are chargeable with its criminality; since our natui-e, being vitiated in him, stands chargeable before God witli criminality. ]10 JUDGMENT OF THE sin of Adam, and the sinfidness of bis posterity, so that, if he sinned and fell under condemnation, they, in con- sequence of this, become sinful and condemned." I may have a more favourable opportunity of remarking upon these statements. In the mean time, I take the opportu- nity of saying, that I regard them as false, and of danger- ous tendency. They leave the existence of depravity itself unaccounted for (the radical defect which seems to pervade most of the statements of the Nev/ Light Ameri- can School of Theology) ; and so, indeed, must all state- ments which do not represent it as the result of the penal withdrawment of the Spirit of God from the race, in consequence of Adam's federal failure. I believe the imputation of Adam's sin to the race to be " direct and immediate ; " but, then, in avowing this opinion, I would not have it misunderstood. I mean by it that, the taking of the forbidden fruit brought upon us directly the loss of all the chartered blessings of which Adam had been made the depositary, of which, the permanent presence of the Spirit of God with the soul of man, was one ; so that, destitute of all quickening influence, we are by nature spiritually dead, and " go astray from the womb, speak- ing lies." Exposure to this loss — the privative source of all original and all actual sin — is the condemning judg- ment which the Apostle Paul tells us has come upon all men ; and, it deserves especial observation, that he re- presents this judgment, not as falling upon them on ac- count of inherent depravity, but as the consequence of the one offence of the first man. " Through the offence of one, man}'," he says, " are dead." " The judgment was by one offence to condemnation." "By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation." "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." I cannot, then, but concur, on the whole, in the judg- ment expressed by the General Assembly of the American Presbyterian Church, in tlie case of one of their minis- PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 \ [ ters, who seems to have adopted the sentiments of Dr. Hopkms. " The transferring of personal sin or ri<^hte- ousness," says that document, " has never been hekl by Calvinistic divines, nor by any person in our Church, as far as is knov/n to us. But, with regard to Mr. Balsh's doctrine of original sin, it is to be obseiTed, that he is erroneous in representing personal corruption as not derived from Adam ; making Adam's sin to be imputed to his posterity in consequence of a corrupt nature al- reacly j'^ossessed, and derived from, we know not what; thus, in effect, setting aside the idea of Adam's being the federal head or representative of his descendants, and the whole doctrine of the covenant of works." — Quoted by Beecher, Views in Theology, pp. 190-1. LECTUEE IV. THE EFFECTS OF THE FALL UPON THE NATIVE CHARACTER OF MAN, OR THE NATURE OF ORIGINAL SIN, ETC. We have seen that the federal failure of Adam could not fail to affect both our state and our character. Some, at least, of the blessings he enjoyed were the gifts of sovereignty. To their original communication, or their permanent enjoyment, he could have no claim; and, •whether they should become the rich inheritance of his posterity, was rendered conditional, or, for infinitely wise purposes, made to depend upon his conduct. Our first father failed in the trial. He lost the inheritance per- sonally, lost it relatively ; lost it for himself, lost it for us. The claim of both parties to its enjoyment resting, not upon equity, but on charter merely, was, of course, totally and finally destroyed, when the condition of the charter was violated. This loss of the inheritance by the race, or if any prefer that phraseology, their legal exposure to the loss, — constituting what we should understand by tlie imputation of his sin to the race — is what we mean to express when we speak of the influence of Adam's federal failure upon our relative state or condition. That failure brought this loss directly upon us. We suffer it as the legal result of the failure, and not, I apprehend, through the medium of the depraved moral state which that failure entails upon us ; for original sin, in the sense of depra- vity, is not the causey but the effect, of imputation. It is the result of the withdrawment of God's Spirit from the race, — a withdrawment which forms one of the penal con- EFFECTS OF THE FALL ON THE CHARACTER OF MAN. 113 sequences of Adam's transgression. It might, then, seem proper, and, indeed, would be so, to include the legal with- holding of the presence and influence of the Spirit of God from the human family, among the results of the fall of Adam upon our state and condition ; yet, as the invariable consequence of this is the spiritual death of the family, I prefer to treat of it separately, and to con- sider — II. The Effects of the Fall upon the native Cha- racter OF Man. In treating upon this most important and difficult sub- ject, it will be necessary to put forth all our powers of discrimination, or we may fall into errors which, while they are at direct variance with Divine revelation, and with all just views of moral science, give a repulsive aspect to the Divine character and administration. Upon the whole, it may, perhaps, be most expedient to attempt, m the first instance, to present it in the aspect in which preceding statements seem to place it, and then, to exhibit the views to which we may be thus guided, in the light of contrast with others, from which we may see reason to dissent. ^Ye have seen that, when Adam entered upon his state of probation, he possessed life in a double sense of the term ; i. e. as the two are generally denominated, natural and spiritual life. The continuance of the former depended upon the sustaining influence of God's providence ; of the latter, upon the union of the Spirit of God with his soul ; and it may be well to bear in mind this distinction between life itself, in both senses, and the infiuence, or poiver, which sustained it. We have, further, seen that the threatening, which guarded the interdicted tree, doomed him, in case of disobedience, to the loss of life in both these senses; and that his practical disregard of the threatening led to its XI. I 114 SPIRITUAL DEATH NOT actual extinction, — or, perhaps, to speak more accurately, to the withdrawment of that support on which it rested, — and to the abandoning of him by God to all the fearful consequences of that penal act. The threatening may be thus paraphrased. "If you eat the forbidden fruit, the sustentation of my providence, in such time and way as I shall appoint, and the presence of my Spirit, shall be withdrawn from you, and the race destined to descend from you ; so that the body will die, and the spirit will sink into a state of total depravity." It appears to me of great importance to observe that, though spiritual death — or an utterly dejjraved state of the mind — is the invariable result of the abandonment of any human being, or of any number of human beings, by the Spirit of God, yet that, in this sense of the words, it was not included in the threatening to which we now refer ; for, in that case, it must have been directly inflicted, and inflicted by God, both upon Adam and his posterity. What the cup contained could not fail to be poured out upon them. But the very conception of the actual in- fliction of spiritual death, by God, upon any created being, is pregnant with fearful profanity ! For what is spiritual death ? Is it not the absence, from the mind, of all spiritual and holy feeling? — and the presence, in the mind, of no- thing but wrong and depraved feeling? Now, is it pos- sible to conceive that the holy God can, by a direct act, extinguish in any mind that which is pure, and originate what is impure ? The very first principles of morality and religion are outraged by the very supposition. Previous to the act of taking the forbidden fruit, the understanding of our first parent appreciated the perfections of the Divine being; his heart felt their supreme attractions; his soul found its sweet resting-place in God. After his melan- choly lapse, these same glorious perfections presented, to his view, no aspect of loveliness, elicited no affection, attracted no confidence. Light, and love, and filial trust, INFLICTED BY GOD. 115 gave place to darkness, enmity, terror, and despair ! Now, I would ask if it can be conceived that this melancholy revolution in the moral character of our first parent was effected by any direct act of God? — by any exertion of his power? In his primeval condition, the entire moral beauty of the father of us all may be said to have been comprehended in supreme love to his Creator. Could that love be extinguished by the Creator? — by the very being who had implanted it ? The supposition is equally self-contradictory and profane ! And yet, I fear, that some such conception as this is apt to be awakened by our current phraseology. The language of the interdict threatened, it is said, not the death of the body merely, but the death of the soul. God inflicted upon Adam the full penalty of disobedience ; i. e. inflicted upon him spiritual death : and thus a notion is insinuated into the mind, that, in the case of Adam, holy affections were extinguished, and depraved affections kindled, by a direct exertion of Divine power, — or, in other words, that sin, in the sense of depravity, was inflicted upon Adam as a part of the punishment of disobedience. We must, therefore, carefully discriminate here between the threatening itself, and the certain result of its exe- cution ; between what God actually did in this melancholy case, and the consequences which flowed, and could not but flow, from what he did. It is impossible to conceive that Jehovah did, or could, deface the spiritual beauty with which he had himself adorned the soul of Adam ; but he could, and did, withdraw his Holy Spirit from him. He did this as a penal act, — as the execution of the threaten- ing which had given to the charter the form of law ; as a public and strong expression of his displeasure against his unprovoked and wicked rebellion. It follows, from this statement, that the threatening itself contained merely a judicial declaration that, if the fruit of the forbidden tree were plucked, the Holy Spirit would 116 . SPIRITUAL D E ATH penally withdraw from the soul of Adam, m which he had previously dwelt. The words, in which it is couched, are not to be understood as denouncing spiritual death in the sense of depravity; but in the sense of that judicial aban- donment of the soul of Adam which w^ould infallibly issue in it ; in the penal withdrawment of the support of spi- ritual life. It was not, correctly speaking, spiritual death itself that was threatened, but the occasion of it. Adam was doomed, in case of rebellion, to lose the sustaining in- fluence of the Holy Spirit, — one of the chartered blessings which, as we have seen,*' had been deposited in him ; — and as the loss of that influence would lead to the utter — and, without the interference of sovereign mercy, the final extinction of holiness in his soul, — the results of God's judicial act are glanced at in the words of the threatening, — " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The general statement just made, viz. that spiritual death, in the sense of depravity, was not included in the curse, and not inflicted by God, appears to me so important in itself, and in its bearing on certain points of discussion upon which we shall speedily enter, that I beg to give it the support which it cannot fail to derive from the ex- pressed opinion of one of the most enlightened and able theologians of the present day, my old and valued friend, the Eev. Dr. Russell, of Dundee. " God withdrew," he says, " from Adam that special influence which had all along been the gift of favour, though secured to him while he cherished a proper temper. This (the opinion, i. e. that God did not inflict depravity upon him), does not identify sin with its wages ; for spiritual death, as it re- gards depravity of heart, is not properly inflicted as the direct punishment of sin. In the venj act of sinning man became sinritually dead, and that judicial act by which God withdrew from him that special influence to which we have just referred, only left him to the natural consequences of * Vide p. 00. NOT INFLICTED BY GOD. 117 the fall ; the result of which was the continuance of that death which had already commenced. The direct and positive punishment of sin is thus distinguished from sin itself, which is its cause." And having defined spiritual death as consisting in the privation of rectitude and enjoy- ment, he adds, " that the former is not strictly penal, must be obvious to every person of discernment. Whatever is strictly penal in spiritual death, must be from God ; but were this death, as it lies in the prevalence of moral depra- vity, the effect of Divine infliction, God would be the author of sin. Man sank into spiritual death by his own delin- quency, and not by judicial infliction on the part of God." And, again : "To suppose that the curse of the law binds over the sinner to the dominion of depravity by an autho- ritative injunction, or by positive influence, would at once be absurd in itself, and impious in its tendency, as imply- ing a charge against God."* The following statements, also, by another writer, infe- rior in authority to Dr. Russell, are still eminently worthy of notice. " It appears," says this writer, " that spiritual death, or a going on in a course of total sinfulness and rebellion, is not the death threatened when God said, 'Thou shalt surely die.' This is evident in that it cannot be the evil that sin deserves, or the proper punishment of it." *' Sin and rebellion," he adds, " cannot be Uie proper matter of a threatening as a punishment of transgivssion, and the evil to be inflicted for it; for this is the evil or crime for which punishment is threatened, and not the punishment itself. This is the crime threatened with a punishment, and not the punishment threatened. The punishment of sin cannot be sin itself: for to suppose this is to confound the crime and punishment, as one and the same thing, and to threaten a crime with the commission of a crime. The proper and only punishment of sin, or * Enssell on the Adamic Dispensation, pp. 180 — If: 2. 118 STATEMENTS OF HOPKINS. moral evil, is natural evil, or pain and suffering, and this alone can be the proper matter of a threatening."* It is, then, I think, sufficiently apparent that the threat- ening by which the Adamic charter was guarded, was not a threatening of depravity. God did not, in effect, say to him, " If you sin, you shall be a sinner — or remain a sin- ner — as the punishment of your sin ; " for, as Dr. Hopkins very forcibly observes, " The j^unishment of sin cannot be sin itself." To identify the crime and its punishment is a monstrous anomaly. The crime, against which the threat- ening was issued, was taking the forbidden fruit. In the act of taking it, Adam died, i. e. spiritually; but he died, in this sense, by an act of his own, and not by an act of God. The death, threatened as the punishment of the crime, must, then, have been something distinct from this, — something which God inflicted upon him, and not some- thing which he brought uj)on himself. It must have been the penal withdrawment of the Holy Spirit, whose influ- ences are the source of all that is spiritually good in the mind of man ; — a withdrawment involving a practical aban- donment of the fallen creature to the condition, and to all the consequences of the condition, in which by his own delinquency he had placed himself. I have said, with my friend Dr. Russell, that, in the very act of sinning, Adam became spiritually dead. It will be well to remember, however, that that act was merely the commencement of the fearful moral change which termi- nated in the utter extinction of all spiritual and holy feel- ing in the mind of Adam. It may not be impossible to trace the progress of deterioration, and a review of its suc- cessive steps may afford some assistance in our subsequent discussions. Fearfully shaken, in the mind of Adam, must have been the Divine authority, ere the conception of yielding to the entreaties of his wife was permitted to remain even for a • Hopkins's System of Doctrines, vol. i. pp. 234, 235. THE CHANGE IN THE MIND OF ADAM. 1 1 9 moment. But, when the thought of disobedience had en- tered, — had been contemplated, — and had produced the determination to disobey, — as the external manifestation of which he took and ate the fruit, — that authority must have been entirely subverted. Previous to this moment, there may not, perhaps, have existed any feeling of actual enmity against God ; but mark the natural results of his sin. The first seems to have been a sense of guilt. His conscience was honest and tender, and did its work faith- fully and efficiently. The rightful authority of God over him, — his manifest and imperative obligation to obey all his commands, — the propriety and mercifulness of the test to which his fidelity had been subjected, had all been for- gotten in the moment of temptation ; but the moment after, they were distinctly remembered and po\Yerfully felt. *' Their eyes were opened," says the historian ; and " they knew that they were naked ; " i. e. exposed to the anger of God, and the curse of his law. A sense of guilt was fol- loiced hy shame, and shame ly fear. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Their eyes being opened, all the folly and guilt of their conduct, and all the danger of their position, broke upon their view. How finely is the state of their minds described by the historian ! " They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool," or breeze, " of the day ;"^- becoming each succeeding moment more audible, till, alarmed beyond endurance by a sound * The " cool " of the day,— literally the " wind " of the day, j'. e. the evening breeze. Still the passage is obscure ; for how can a voice be said to walk ? The words seem intended to intimate that the voice approached, and strengthened as it approached. The intimations that the Judge was coming became, with the lapse of every moment, more distinctly audible. God answered Moses at Sinai by a voice; and the voice, we are told, "waxed louder and louder,"— literally, was "walking and strengthening," till it announced the an-ival of the Divine presence on the top of the mountain. Now, a voice which strengthens, frequently does so— as on the present occa- sion — on account of its approach. And a voice which approaches, may be, not unnaturally, said to walk. Thus the voice of God walked. Everj- breeze brought a new and more audible token of the Divine approach. 120 PKOCESS OF DETERIORATION IN THE MIND OF ADAM. which till this moment they had never heard without exult- ing joy, they hid themselves among the trees of the garden — thus adding folly to guilt, and proving that sin can throw a film over the understanding, as well as open a fountain of depravity in the heart. Finally, fear strengthened itself into despair, and icas folloived by impenitence and enmity against God. They saw no way of escape, but they did not submit to the justice of their doom. We might have expected confession and penitence ; but we find neither. In reply to the Divine interrogatory, "Where art thou?" Adam says nothing of his sin ; he merely speaks of its effects : " I was afraid, and hid myself," &c. The language of a contrite spirit would have been, " I have sinned ; " but this is the language of impenitent misery. Contrition would have softened his heart, and prepared it for the return of the spirit of confidence and love ; but impeni- tence and despair hardened it. EniYiity against God grew out of the conviction that God had become his enemy, and must remain so ; and, but for the mercy which interposed, the state of deep degradation and misery into which he had now sunk — constituting the death of the soul in the fullest sense of the term — would have been his condition for ever. Now it will, I trust, have been observed, in tracing the progressive influence and results of temptation upon the mind and character of Adam, till sin, being finished, had brought forth death, that no step, in the lapse from spiri- tual life to spiritual death, was the result of any act or influence on the part of God. There was no infliction of spiritual death upon Adam. No holy feeling was extin- guished, no unholy feeling kindled, by direct Divine influence. The interdict was, " Touch not the forbidden fruit;" yet he was left, as every moral agent must be left, free to obey or disobey. No special Divine influence, we grant, was employed to secure obedience ; and no such influence — no influence whatever emanating from God, SPIRITUAL DEATH NOT INFLICTED UPON HIM. \\t] can be conceived of as put forth to prompt to disobedience. Adam chose to disobey. How the wrong voUtion orif^i- .nated, in a perfectly holy mind, has been the crux crucis of speculative theologians from that day to the present, while it is likely to remain such in all subsequent periods. With its origin I have, at present, however, no concern, except to deny that it was kindled by Divine power. To imagine this were not merely to represent God as the cause of sin, but as being himself the sinner. Nor were the fruits of that volition any more than the volition itself — the sense of guilt, the shame, the fear, the despair, the enmity — the results of direct Divine influence. They were the natural and necessary consequences of disobe- dience, " We see in them Divine permission, but not Divine energy and action." God suffered the creature to bring down upon himself the fearful results of rebellion ; and he did not act, i. e. he did not jDrevent their descent. And, if we proceed a step further, and contemplate Adam after he had sunk under the full influence of rebellious principles, and when, but for the interposition of mercy, he would have remained an eternal enemy against God, we shall find that there was not, as some imagine, any in- fliction o^ depravity upon him as the punishment of his sin. The threatening, in case of disobedience, was not, as we have seen, that God would inflict spiritual death upon him, but penally withdraw the sustaining influence of the Holy Spirit — the support of spiritual life. The sin of Adam incurred this penalty, and the penalty was inflicted. God executed to the full his threatening. He withdrew from the soul of Adam. The spiritual life of that soul sank by inevitable consequence ; and our first parent fell under the full power of spiritual death. And now, having considered, at some length, the ques- tion, "Was spiritual death inflicted, properly speaking, upon Adam?" we advance to that most important in- quiry which regards its nature. What precise ideas are 122 IS NATIVE DEPEAVITY we to form of that state of total depravity into which he fell by disobedience ? What was the fountain within, from which flowed nothing but streams of ungodliness, till his heart was renewed by the power of the Holy Ghost ? Was it, in its nsLtnre, positive or 2^^'ivative ? Did it consist in some unholy substance infused into his mind, as the punishment of his sin, — some positive taint, or propensity, totally distinct from the principles and elements of his constitution, as a human being, and becoming the prolific spring of unholy feelings and actions? — or is it to be sought for in his deprivation of those positive holy prin- ciples which guided all the inferior ones, in his state of integrity, so that the latter, left without control, carried him habitually and, indeed, invariably into forbidden ground? Many there are who adopt the former supposition, ^. e. conceive that the total depravity which is rightly predi- cated of the mind of Adam, after his melancholy lapse, is to be regarded as a positive ijrinciple of evil. The suppo- sition appears to me quite inadmissible : for, if such a positive principle were infused into his mind, it must have been as the result of Divine energy; all positive principles flowing from creative power. And, in that case, it would follow, that God, who infused the principle, must have been the creator of sin; and, further, that the blame of the whole of the subsequent transgressions of Adam would justly rest, not upon Adam himself, but on this supposed principle of evil. Thus the supposition, now under con- sideration, would foster the tendency we observe among men to think of sin in them as something separate and different from themselves, — having operations of its own, distinct from the operations of their own minds ; forget- ting that all sin is the irregular and unlawful action of some one of the powers of the mind. And forgetting this, they acquire the fatal habit of excusing themselves, and, by a perversion of the Apostle's language, casting the blame of their evil deeds upon the sin that dwelleth in them. POSITIVE OR PIUVATIVE. 12S It is, therefore, of great importance to remember that the spiritual death, or state of total depravity, into which Adam sank, did not consist in anything distinct from the irregular, i. e. sinful exercise of the faculties and powers of his own mind. It was, in fact, the habitual or rather constant ascendancy acquired and exercised by the infe- rior principles of his nature (all good, let it be remem- bered, in themselves ; and good or right in their exercise, when controlled by love to God and man), in consequence of the loss of superior principles, summarily comprehended in supreme love to his Creator ; — principles which, by his own transgression, and its inevitable results, had become extinct, and which, but for the interposition of mercy, must have remained permanently extinct, — since the Holy Spirit, whose presence and influence are essential to their existence, and of which they were in his case the results, had withdrawn from his mind as the punishment of his transgression. The simple facts of the case appear to have been these : — By an act of high sovereignty, the Divine Spirit united himself to the soul of our first parent, — this union constituting the spring or principle of that spiritual life which w^as coeval with his existence itself. The permanent possession of the Holy Spirit's presence and influence was, however, rendered a conditional blessing. It was suspended on the performance of the condition of the charter. With the violation of that condition the blessing was withdrawn. The Spirit left the soul of man. The higher principles of his nature fell, and became obli- terated. The inferior obtained the ascendancy; and, yield- ing to their influence, our unhappy progenitor became a *' carnal " or fleshly man, — " sold under sin." I do not, of course, intend to affirm that, in denying the infusion of any positive unholy principle into the mind of Adam as the punishment or the result of his transgression, — and in ascribing his subsequent ungod- 124 STATEMENTS OF EDWARDS liness to a privative cause, I profess to lay before the reader the unanimous judgment of the Church of God at large on this point. Many writers avow opinions con- siderably diverse from those which I have now briefly expressed. It will be my duty to examine, and to attempt, at least, to confute them. At the proper period, I shall do this ; but it will, perhaps, be most expedient to develop more fully, and confirm, my own views of the moral state into which Adam fell; and to exhibit their important bearing upon the state of the. infant mind, or the doctrine of original sin, before I come into collision with others. Previous to the doing of this, I cannot, however, deny myself the pleasure of confirming the statements already made in reference to the condition of Adam's mind, after the fall, by the great authority of Jonathan Edwards. " Adam," says this writer, " on his creation, was pos- sessed of two sets of principles. There was an inferior kind, which may be called natural, being the principles of mere human nature ; such as self-love, with those natural appetites and passions which belong to the nature of man as such, in which his love to his own liberty, honour, and pleasure were exercised. These, when alone, and left to themselves, are what the Scriptures sometimes call flesh. Besides these," he adds, "there were superior principles, that were spiritual, holy, and divine, summa- rily comprehended in Divine love, wherein consisted the spiritual image of God, and man's righteousness, and true holiness ; which are called in Scripture the Divine nature." It is quite possible, indeed, to devise a more happy mode of describing the two kinds of principles adverted to by President Edwards. The late Dr. Williams desig- nates the inferior, as " those faculties in man which con- stituted him a moral agent;" and the siqoerior, as "that Divine benevolent sovereign influence, which," as he says, ON THIS POINT. 105 " was superadded to these faculties." The difference, in short, is that which we conceive to exist between Adam, as a man (for the possession of the human nature involved responsibility), and Adam as a holy man. Still the mode of designating the two kinds of principles, which Jonathan Edwards justly attributes to Adam, in his primeval state, is not a point of great importance. What I wish espe- cially to bring into notice is the subsequent statement of this great writer, that, when the character of Adam had sunk to the lowest point of moral degradation in conse- quence of his departure from God, the melancholy chan^^e was not superinduced by the infusion of some positive taint into his nature, — some actual principle or sprint- of depravity, forming a source of depraved moral feeling and action, of itself, and distinct altogether from the general elements of his constitution. He ascribes the whole of the mighty moral mischief to the ascendancy which the inferior principles could not fail to obtain, and exercise, wdien left uncurbed, and thoroughly un- controlled, by the extinction of the higher principles, which, while they existed, kept them in check, guided their action, and only permitted their development, when such development would secure any of the purposes in- tended to be accomplished by their implantation in the mind. " When the superior princij)les of which we have been speaking," is his language, "left the heart of our first parent, in consequence of the cessation of communion with God, on which they depended, the inferior principles of self-love, and natural appetite, which were given only to serve, being alone, and left to themselves, became, of course, reigning principles ; Raving no superior principles to regulate or control them, they became absolute masters of the heart. The immediate consequence was a fatal catastroplie, a turning of all things upside down, and the isuccession of a state of the most odious and dreadful confusion. Man immediately set up himself, and the 126 POSITIVE EVIL MAY SPUING objects of his private affections and appetites, as supreme, and so they took the place of God. His love to his ONvn honour, separate interest, and private pleasure, which before was wholly subordinate unto love to God, and regard to his authority and glory, now disposes and impels him to pursue those objects without regard to God's honour or law ; because there is no true regard to these Divine things left in him. In consequence of which, he seeks those objects as much when against God's honour and law, as when agreeable to them. God continuing to require supreme regard to himself, and forbidding all undue gratifications of these inferior passions, hence im- mediately arises enmity in the heart, now wholly under the power of self-love, and nothing but war ensues in a constant course against God." =5^ I have quoted this long and most memorable and im- portant passage, from the celebrated work on Original Sin by this writer, on two accounts. First, to show that my own statements in reference to the effects of the fall of Adam upon his own character, are fully borne out by the opinion of this prince of evangelical divines ; and se- condly, to obviate a difficulty which is fancied by some to embarrass the opinion that actual, and active, and practical enmity against God, and determined opposition to his authority, and government, can possibly spring from a privative cause. Ex nihilo nihil Jit is an established axiom. Now, a privation is not a thing, but the absence of a thing. It is nothing, and so, it is thought, can produce nothing. Jonathan Edwards has, however, shown that the axiom will not universally apply ; — that, when the commands of God are directly and strongly opposed to all the native propensities of the heart, though these pro. pensities should not be evil j)er se, they will certainly, without a counteracting principle, kindle enmity against him, even where no feeling of the kind had previously ♦ Vide Edwards's Works, vol. ii. pp. 336, 337. FROM A PKIVATIVE CAUSE. jOy existed. "It were easy to show," adds the same writer "how every lust, and depraved disposition of man's heart] would naturally arise from this privative original, if here were room for it " — " how fatal corruption of heart should follow on man's eating the forbidden fruit, though that was but one act of sin, without God putting any evil into his heart, or implanting any bad principle, or infusing any corrupt bias, and so becoming the author of depravity. Only God's withdrawing, as it was highly proper and necessary that he should, from rebel man, and his natural principles being left to themselves, is sufficient to account for his becoming entirely corrupt, and bent on sinning against God." Now, if in the case of Adam, originally a perfectly up- right being, every depraved disposition of heart miglit spring, and if it actually did spring from a privative cause, why should not such a cause be thought sufficient to ac- count for the actual and total depravity of his descendants to the present day ? The phenomenon to be solved — looking for the present at facts, and not inspired testi- mony, which will afterwards be considered — is the entire and universal corruption of man. No extraneous circum- stances, — no supposed influence of time, opportunity, ex- ample, temptation, &c. will solve the phenomenon. There must be allowed to be something in man tending to cor- ruption, or the fact, that in all ages, and i)laces, and circumstances, man has been a sinner, will remain un- accounted for. But, when we have thus reached the conclusion that the cause is in man, the important ques- tion arises, Is that cause positive or privative merely? Does all actual sin flow from a fountain of evil in the heart of man ? — understanding by the term fountain, not a cause merely — for, as we have seen, there must be a cause— but an actual entity, distinct from the mind and its ordinary faculties, and leading to the sinful develop- ment of these faculties ? Or does it flow from the natural 128 ORIGINAL SIN NOT POSITIVE, and certain operation of the inferior, and especially the animal, properties of oui' nature, left uncontrolled by the love of God, the supreme and, therefore, governing principle in the mind of Adam before his fall? The question, more shortly put, is this : Is Original Sin — I call it so for the present — positive, or privative merely ? I must be allowed to gather for my own opinion, — for I am aware that, on this point, my statements may be at variance with the cherished views of many, especially if they have suffered themselves to be satisfied, as is too frequently the case, with loose and indefinite statements, — to gather for it the support which it cannot fail to derive from the great authority of President Edwards. At all events I expect — may I not say require — that the authority of Edwards shall be held to be a sufiicient shield against the charge of heterodoxy, or heresy, with which some writers in the present day — from whom better things might have been expected — are disposed to attempt, at least, to put down an opponent. I am not to be shaken by any possible assault of that nature ; at the same time, I have no desire to be exposed to it. In reply to an objection, that the doctrine of original sin does, in fact, charge the Author of our nature, who formed us in the womb, with being the author of a sinful corruption of nature. President Edwards says : *' The objection supposes some- thing to belong to the doctrine objected against, as niain- tained by the divines whom he (Dr. Taylor) is opposing, which does not belong to it, nor follow from it. As, particularly, he supposes the doctrine of original sin to imply that nature must be corrupted by some jwsitive in- fluence ; something, by some means or other, infused into the human nature ; some quality or other not from the choice of our minds, but, like a taint, tincture, or infection, altering the natural constitution, faculties, and disposi- tions of our souls; that sin and evil dispositions are im- planted in the foetus in the womb. Whereas, truly, our STATEMENTS OF EDWARDS — HODGE. 129 doctrine neither implies nor infers any such thing. lu order to account for a sinful corrujDtion of nature, yea, a total native depravity of the heart of man, there is not the least need of supposing any evil quality infused, implanted or wrought into the nature of man, by any positive cause or influence whatsoever, either from God, or the creatuic ; or of supposing that man is conceived and born witli a fountain of evil in his heart, such as is anything properly joositive. I think," he adds, " a little attention to the nature of things will be sufficient to satisfy any impartial, considerate inquirer, that the absence of positive good principles, and so the withholding of a special Divine influence to impart and maintain those good principles — leaving the common natural principles of self-love, natural appetite, &c. to themselves, without the government of superior Divine principles — will certainly be followed by the corruption, yea the total corruption of the heart, with- out any j^ositive influence at all ; and that it was thus, in fact, that corruption of nature came on Adam, immedi- ately on his fall, and comes on all his posterity, as sinning in him, and falling with him. * In confirmation, both of my own, and of the statement of Edwards, that the doctrine of original sin implies " de- privation,-f and not depravation," I refer to the following authorities. I borrow my first statement from Dr. Hodge, Professor of Biblical Literature in Princeton, America; and one of the leaders of the old school of theology in that country, " Whatever evil the Scriptures represent as coming upon us on account of Adam, they regard as penal ; they * Vol. ii. pp. 330, 331. + Vide Watson's Theological Lectures. " Augustine, having once been a Manichaean, well understood their error and guarded against it," says the translator of Wiggers, " and even clmrges the Pelagians with running into it." " The Maniclueans," says he, " spcuk of the evil nature of the flesh, as if it were itself an evil, instead of its Imving evil ; because they think vice itself a substance, not au accident of substance. XI. ^ 130 STATEMENTS OF HODGE, call it death, which is the general name by which any penal evil is expressed. It is not, however, the doctrine of the Scriptures, nor of the Ficjormed Churches, nor," he adds, " of our standards, that the corruption of nature of which they si)eak, is any depravation of the soul, or an essential attribute, or the infusion of any positive evil. * Original sin,' as Bretschneider says, as the confessions of the Eeformers maintain, ' is not the substance of man, neither his soul nor body ; nor is it anything infused into his nature by Satan, as poison is mixed with wine; it is not an essential attribute, but an accident, something which does not exist of itself, an accidental quality, &c.' These confessions teach," adds Dr. Hodge, "that original righteousness, as a punishment of Adam's sin, was lost, a,nd hj that defect the tendency to sin, or corrupt disposi- tion, or corruption of nature, is occasioned. Though they speak of original sin as being first negative, i. e. the loss of righteousness ; and secondly, positive, or corruption of nature ; yet by the latter is to be understood, they state, 7iot the infusion of amjthing in itself sinful, but an actual tendency or disposition to evil, resulting from the loss of righteousness."* Acain : " We derive from Adam a nature destitute of any native tendency to the love and service of God ; and since the soul, from its nature, is filled, as it were, with sus- ceptibilities, dispositions, or tendencies to certain modes of acting, or to objects out of itself, if destitute of the govern- ing tendency or disposition to holiness and God, it has, of course, a tendency to self-gratification or sin." — P. 231. Of this actual tendency or disposition to evil, of which this excellent and able writer does not seem to have a very distinct idea, more will be said hereafter. The great Turrettine, treating of the creation of the soul, says that, though it was created spotless, it is yet destitute of original riyhteousness, as a punishment of * Hodge on Kom. pp. 229, 230, 8vo edition. TUKRETTINE, BELLAMY. 131 Adam's first sin. To illustrate this, he proceeds to dis- tinguish between what he calls "animam puram," " ini- puram," " et non puram." " That may be said to be jnire,'' he adds, " which is adorned with an habitual tendency towards holiness ; ifujmre, which has a contrary tendency towards injustice ; not jjure, which, although it has no actual good tendency, has no bad tendency (i. e. of a posi- tive nature), but is formed simply with natural faculties ; and such," he adds, " it is supposed the human soul was created after the fall, because the image of God, lost by sin, cannot be restored again except through the benefit of regeneration by the Holy Spirit."* To the same effect is the language of Dr. Bellamy. " God," he says, " only creates the naked essence of our souls, our natural faculties, — a power to think and will, to love and hate ; and this evil bent of our hearts is not of his making, but is the spontaneous propensity of our ovvn wills. For we, being born devoid of the Divine image, ignorant of God, and insensible of his infinite glory, do of our oval accord turn to ourselves, and the things of time and sense, and to anything that suits a graceless heart; and there all our affections centre. From whence," he adds, " we natively become averse to God, and to all that vv'hich is spiritually good, and inchned to all sin. So that the positive corruption of our nature is not anything created by God, but arises merely from a privative cause." Du Moulin, in his Anatomy of Arminianism, writes thus: — "We are not to think that God puts original sin into men's souls ; for how should He punish those souls v/hich He himself had corrupted ? It is a great wicked- ness to suppose that God puts into the soul an inclination to sin ; though it is true that God creates the souls of men destitute of heavenly gifts, and supernatural hght; and that justly, because Adam lost those gifts for himself and his posterity." * Vide Questio 12 De Propagatione Peccati, p. 708. 132 STATEMENTS OF HOWE, WILLIAMS, From approved and eminent writers of our own country, I select the following statements. ''The whole nature of sin," says the great Howe, " consisting only in a defect, no other cause need be designed of it than a defective ; that is, an understanding, will, and inferior powers, how- ever originally good, yet mutably and defectively so. I shall not insist to prove that sin is no positive being ; but I take the argument to be irrefragable (notwithstanding the cavils made against it) that is drawn from that common maxim, that omne ens iiositivum est vel p7'imum, vel a jrrimo, — all positive existence is either first, or from the first. And that of Dionysius the Areopagite is an ingenious one : he argues that no being can be evil ^:)er se ; for then it must be immutably so, to which no evil can be ; for, to be always the same, is a certain property of goodness — it is so even of the highest goodness. And hence sin being supposed only a defect, a soul that is only defectively holy might well enough be the cause of it ; i. e. the deficient cause."* " There is reason to fear," says the late Dr. Williams, " that many besides Dr. Taylor have imbibed a notion of original sin considerably different from w'hat is here as- serted," — viz. the statement given of its privative nature by Jonathan Edwards. " It is not improbable," he adds, " that the terms by which the evil has been commonly expressed, without a due examination of the idea intended, have had no small influence to effect this. The frequent use of such analogical and allusive terms as pollution, defilement, cor- ruption, contamination, and the like, seems to intimate something positive ; as these expressions, in their original meaning, convey an idea of something superadded to the subject. Whereas other terms, though equally analogical and allusive, imply no such thing ; such as disorder, dis- cord, confusion, and the like. AVe do not mean," adds Dr. Williams, " to condemn the use of the former, or to recom- * Man's Creation in a lioly but mutable State. Works, p. 134. HARRIS, AND GILBERT. 133 mend the latter, to their exclusion ; but only design to caution against a wrong mference from a frequent use of them." Similar remarks are made by the late Dr. Harris, of Hoxton, now Highbury College : — " Some persons, se- duced perhaps by false, or, at best, by inadequate ana- logies, have entertained a notion, that natural and here- ditar}' depravity is a quality positively vicious, — a tendency or disposition of the soul towards moral evil. Hence the subject has been involved in endless perplexity; questions have arisen, which admit of no satisfactory solution, and many individuals have been driven to scepticism in the very face of Divine testimony. That human depravity will produce personal transgression, whenever life continues till moral agency commences, appears to be unquestion- able ; but to conceive of original sin as including a posi- tive propensity to moral evil, seems unwarranted by the Scriptures, unsupported by fact, and even a contradiction in terms ; for a propensity to moral evil is evidently a per- sonal transgression, which, according to such an hypo- thesis, is conceived of as committed by a being personally innocent, and even as yet incapable of moral agency."* I conclude this list of authorities by the statements of two living writers, one of them a former Congregational Lecturer, whose work on the Atonement forms one of the most profound and valuable publications of modern times ; — the other, a gentleman whose praise is in all the churches. " As to moral evil, in the proper acceptation of that term, existing in the minds of children before they are moral agents, it seems a contradiction. For, that a being be morally evil, it is necessary that he possess the qualifi- cations of a moral agent ; or otherwise he sins without a capacity to sin. That there is in infants that which ren- ders it inevitably certain that, as soon as they are capable * Pamphlet on Infant Salvation. 134 STRICTURES ON THE PHRASEOLOGY of acting, they will sin, I have abeady proved. What there is more than this, I cannot conceive."* The language of Dr. Russell, of Dundee, is as follows : — *' As God dealt with Adam as a puhlic head, so he deals with his posterity as if they had sinned in him ; and, there- fore, he does not impart to them that special influence, to which they have no natural claim, and to which, as the descendants of Adam, they can have no relative claim, since the constitution established with him has been broken. God can be under no obligation to impart to the children those benefits which he righteously withdrew from the father. The consequence is, that they come into the world void of the positive image of God ; and this, in their present circumstances, is followed by their falling under the government of the inferior and animal prin- ciples of their nature, and so becoming wholly corrupt. Their faculties themselves are derived from God; but their corrupt bent is not from him, nor, indeed, from any positive infusion whatever, but arises from a privative cause. The result is, that personal transgression is pro- duced in all cases when life continues till moral agency commences, and as soon as it does so."f In the preceding quotations it will be seen that Dr. Russell speaks of the ''corrupt lent''' of the inferior and animal principles of our nature ; and that Dr. Hodge, while denying that "corruption of nature" implies "the infusion of anything in itself sinful," yet represents it as " an actual tendency or disposition to evil, resulting from the loss of righteousness." I scarcely think that either of those statements expresses the real facts of the case ; and I somewhat fear that both — if they are to be under- stood to apply to depravity not as a confirmed principle, but in its incipient state, to original sin, in short — are adapted to mislead. The terms employed by Dr. Hodge * Gilbei"t's rieply to liennet, pp. 51 and fjj. + Kupsell on tlie AiUmic Dispf usation, pp. 56, 57. OF DR. RUSSELL. 135 seem to ascribe a j^ositive nature to original sin, and at the very moment, too, when he affirms that nature to be privative ; for surely *' an actual tendency or disposition to evil," though it should result merely from the loss of righteousness, is something jjosiiii-^. Dr. Russell's language I do not understand. An animal propensity may, perhaps, be said to acquire "a corrupt bent" by indulgence; i.e. it may gain strength, and tendency to a more frequent de- velopment; but what can be meant by sl native corrupt bent of an inferior and animal principle or propensity? If my friend intend to say that an animal propensity, which can have no moral character, will, when unchecked by higher principles, produce wrong moral feeling and action ; and that, OR this account, animal propensities may be loosely said to have a "native corrupt bent," I admit that the witness is true, and most important; but the words em- ployed are not the best vehicle for conveying this senti- ment. What Dr. Russell very justly calls the inferior and animal principles, belong to that class of principles which are essential to our very nature ; we could not be men without them. They existed in Adam before the fall, or he could not have desired the forbidden fruit, — could have received no gratification from the bounties of Paradise. They were found in Adam after the fall ; — not, as I think, and as it may afterwards more fully appear in increased absolute strength (except as the result of indulgence), but merely in augmented relative strength. There was the love of God to keep them in control, in the para- disaical state of man ; there is nothing but reason and conscience, both of them enfeebled by sin, to secure sub- jection in the fallen state of man. They triumph now, not merely in adult age, when they may be supposed to have gained strength not native to them, but in early life ; triumph, indeed, the very first time that any opposing forces within the mind take the field against them ; and 136 THE PRINCIPLES OF OUR NATURE they continue to triumph till Divine grace recreates that holy principle which originally held them in suhjection, and which is capable even now of bringing them under habitual control. The phraseolog}' employed by Dr. Russell, viz. the " corrupt bent " (if it mean a native bent) of our inferior and animal principles, must be understood, I apprehend, to intimate the simple fact that these princi- ples do actually lead men into sin, by inciting them to seek to gratify them, Avhen they ought to impose upon them a restraint. Taking this view of the case, we say there is a tendency in the mind to sin ; and, from the character of its results, we may call it, though somewhat loosely and incorrectly, I think, a cornipt or sinful ten- dency. But the fact that the inferior and animal princi- ples do lead to sin, is the result of the absence from the mind of the higher and the only effectually controlling principles. It does not prove that any change has taken place in the principles themselves, — -that there is any augmentation of their power, any alteration of their ten- dency; for such change could only be effected by the power of God : and it cannot be conceived that He, even as the punishment of sin, could impart a bad moral ten- dency to any principle implanted by himself. The ten- dency of all the active or positive principles of our nature — of even the inferior and animal ones — must be to good, be- cause they are the creation of God. Such must have been their tendency originally'; such it is now. There is no posi- tive principle in our nature that is designed to lead us into sin ; nor is it the proper tendency of any principle — any appetite or passion even — to lead us into sin. The in- ferior principles of our nature may, as we have seen, lead us into sin ; they too frequently do this, but they were not implanted for the 2:)urpose of doing it. There needs but a slight effort of analysis to preserve us from mistake here. " The teeth were given us to eat, not to ache." Appetites were implanted to lead us to act, not to sin ; the IMPEL TO ACT, NOT SO SIN. 137 appetite of hunger, for instance, to lead us to take food, not to make gluttons of ourselves. Intemperate indul- gence is the result of the lack of higher principles, which have confined the action of appetite within the bounds of moderation. Dr. Hodge speaks of an actual, by which I understand positive, tendency in the mind of man to evil, as the result of the loss of righteousness. His language may be correct enough for common and popular purposes ; but it is not philosophically accurate. Properly speaking, there is no positive tendency in our nature, even in its fallen state, to evil. It is of great importance to maintain this, that we may tear away the refuge of lies which those have set up who cast the blame of their sins upon their nature, not upon themselves. All the inferior and animal princi- ples, to which Doctors Kussell and Hodge refer, are princi- ples of action, but not principles of evil action They are themselves blind ; they have no moral character. They look at nothing but at the good to be enjoyed ; whether it be right to seek to secure it, they know not ; they prompt to an action not as right or wrong, but simply as an action; and, by inducing volition, they may secure the performance of the action though it be evil ; but this sad result is the consequence of this absence of higher princi- ples to control and regulate them. * * " There is no passion, properly so called, and considered in itself, as be- longing to man, •wliich is absolutely sinful in the abstracted nature of it ; all the works oi God are good. But if passion be let loose on an improper ob- ject, or in an improper time or degi'ee, or for too long a continuance, then it becomes criminal, and obtains sometimes a distinct name. Esteem placed upon itself as the object, and in an unreasonable degree, becomes pride. Anger, prolonged into a settled temper, often turns into malice, &c. ; or, if it be mingled Avith the vices of the will, it becomes sinful also." — Watts s Works, Barfield's Edit. vol. ii. p. 603. Vide also vol. i. pp. 753, 754. " The desires of men are not in themselves, and abstractedly considered, sinful; for they are deep laid in tlie constitution which God himself has given to human nature ; they arise in man involuntarily, and so far cannot certainly be imputed to him. The essential constitution of man makes it necessary that everything which makes an agreeable impression on the senses should 138 NEED OF THE INFERIOK PEJNCIPLES. It is of great importance to remember two things. First, that it is essential to us to have, as an ingredient of our nature, something that can originate actions ; for, as we are responsible beings, i. e. are destined to give an account of our conduct, there must be a spring of action in us. Now, our appetites and passions, or — to adopt phraseology which may include somewhat more — those inferior principles of which Jonathan Edwards speaks — those which constitute us men, as distinct from holy men, are the springs of action ; the higher principles to which, also, he refers, are the springs of holy action. Destitute of these higher principles man will act, but not in a right and holy manner ; his actions will be marked by essential ungodliness, for they will manifest no regard to God and his authority. Still the principles from which the actions of ungodly men flow, were not infused for the purpose of occasioning ungodliness. They were intended to prompt to action simply, not ungodly action. Nor is there in the human mind now, as the result of the fall, any positive principle which prompts to ungodly action. Such a prin- ciple would be in itself, in its own abstract nature, a bad and an unholy principle, — a principle which could not, inevitably awaken correspondent desires. The poor man v.'lio sees himself surrounded with the treasures of another, feels a natui'al and involuntary desire to possess them. The mere rising of this desire is no more punish- able in him than it was in Eve, when she saw the tree, and felt an imj)ulseto eat its beautiful fruit, which is never represented in the Bible as her sin. " The desires of man become sinful and deserving of punishment, then, only when (a) man, feeling desires after forbidden things, seeks and finds pleasure in them, and delights himself in them, and so (b) carefully cherishes and nourishes them in his heart; (c) wlien he seeks occasions to awaken the desires after forbidden things, and to entertain himself with them; (d) when he gives audience and approbation to these desires, and justifies, seeks, and performs the sins to which he is inclined. This is followed by the two- fold injury, that he not only sins for this once, but that he gives hig appetites and passions the power of soliciting him a second time more importunately, of becoming more vehement and irresistible; so that he becomes continuallj'' more disposed to sin, acquires a fixed habit of sinning, and at last becomes the slave of sin." — Knapj), p. 256. NONE PROMPT TO SIN. 139 consequently, be implanted by God, and which yet could not have sprung from any other cause ; — for every positive principle, i. e. everything that has real existence, or entity, in the phraseology of our older writers, must be from God. Hence Augustine himself, how inconsistent soever the denial may have been with some other of his state- ments, was compelled to deny that there is anything of a positive nature in original sin.* He had, at one time, been a Manichsean, i. e. had maintained the existence of two principles in man — a good one, proceeding from God ; and an evil one, the work of a wicked and malevolent being. The Pelagians, assuming that, in his view, original sin is something of a positive nature, and taking advan- tage of his denial that it proceeded from God, accused him of still leaning of necessity to the views of Manes. Augus- tine replied in the following manner : — " Julian speak& as if one had said that some substance (aliquid substantive) was created in men by the devil. The devil tempts to evil as sin, but does not create, as it were, nature. But evidently he has persuaded nature, as man is nature ; and, by persuading, has corrupted it." He elsewhere declares, " that original sin is not a substance, but a quality of the affections, a vice, a languor. By the great sin of the first man, our nature, then changed for the worse, not only has become a sinner (peccatrix) but produces sinners. And yet that weakness, by which the power of holy living perished, is not nature at all, but a corruption, just as bodily infirmity is certainly not any substance, or nature, but a vitiation." Again, he says, " Evil is not a substance ; for if it were a substance, it would be something good." " The Manichseans," he says elsewhere, " speak of the evil nature of the flesh, as if it were itself an evil, instead of its having evil, because they think vice itself a sub- stance, not an accident of substance." The remark of x^ugustine, that evil is not a substance, * Vide Wiggers's Presentation, pp. IOC — 102. 140 AUGUSTINE. — DR. HODGE. for in that case it would be something good, is especially worthy of attention. By substance, I understand him to mean an entity, or a thing, and not the privation or lack of a thing. When he declares, that if original sin were a thing or substance, it would be good : he means it must be so, because, in that case, it must have proceeded from God, — he being the creator of all things, or substances. It follows from this, that as original sin is not the crea- ture of God, its essential nature is privative, not positive. It is not a thing, but the lack of a thing. Innate depra- vity is the privation of original righteousness. It is the state of a soul from which the Spirit of God has penally withdrawn, which is destitute of spiritual life, and aban- doned to the impulse of those active principles of human nature — all good in themselves, and intended to secure wise and benevolent purposes — which, under the guidance of higher principles, impel to what is good ; but, without that guidance, to that which is evil. The infant mind, not having the Spirit of God, is destitute of original righteousness ; and that destitution fully explains the phenomenon to be accounted for, — the entire and universal depravity of man. Tliere is no need to entangle ourselves in the difficulty induced by the supposition that some corrupt bent has been given to the inferior principles of our nature. They are active principles, and, without the control and guidance of superior principles (the love of God and man), will act irregularly and improperly; and all sin consists, not in the mere action of original prin- ciples, but in irregular action. There is, further, no need to suppose, with Dr. Hodge, that the loss of original righteousness produces an actual or positive tendency or disposition to evil. That loss simply leaves the mind to the influence of principles which are sure to act irregularly — though only implanted to impel to action — when left without the control of higher principles. If, indeed, the phrase "an actual tendency to evil," be intended merely KO POSITIVE PEIXCIPLE DESIGNED TO LEAD TO SIN. 141 to express the fact that a person destitute of original righteousness will act sinfully as soon as he begins to act at all, the truth of the sentiment meant to he conveyed is at once admitted, and will hereafter he established ; but the words seem to imply more. Or, again, if it should be contended that certainty of wrong moral action implies a proneness or a tendency to wrong moral action — as the necessary dependence of all created beings upon God implies a tendency to nihility — I should be merely dis- posed to say, that the words express a distinction without a difference, and so are adapted to mislead. The tendency of all matter to nihility, is nothing more than the neces- sary dependence of the creature upon God. But, when this latter idea is expressed by the phrase " a tendency to nihility," the words are apt to awaken the conception, not of the mere impotence of the creature, but of some positive quality in the creature seeking annihilation. In like manner, the statement of Dr. Hodge, that there exists in the human mind an actual tendency to evil, is in danger of originating — it cannot, indeed, well avoid originating — the idea of some positive entity in the mind (as the appe- tite of hunger is such a positive entity) prompting, not to action merely, but to evil action; and prompting to it as an action which it was intended to originate. Now, I deny most distinctly, not merely that there was anything of this kind in the mind of Adam, in his primeval state, but that there exists anything of the kind in the mind of man, in his present fallen state. Native depravity is a privation merely — the privation of original righteousness, and the aban- donment of the mind, as we have seen, to the influence of the inferior principles of our nature, — all good in themselves, but which are found, in fact, in all cases, to influence to irregular and improper action, unless con- trolled by the grace of God. I consider it most unwise and improper to endanger the permanent stability of the great evangelical doctrine of original sin, or native depra- 14'2 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW vity, by so representing it as to convey tlie notion that it is any thing positive in its nature — " something," to adopt Jonathan Edwards's words, " Ly some means or other, in- fused into our nature, some quality or other, not from the choice of our minds, but, like a taint, tincture, or infection, altering the natural constitution, faculties, and dispositions of our souls." I entirely concur with him in the opinion, " that the absence of positive good principles, and so the withholding of special Divine influence to impart and maintain those good principles, will certainly be followed by the total corruption of the heart, without occasion for any positive influence at alL" In the course of this somewdiat extended investigation of the nature of native depravity, I have not appealed, for the confirmation of the opinion I have attempted to develop, to Divine revelation. I assume that, if the hypothesis — that original sin, or native depravity, is privative in its nature merely, — that it is not a fountain of evil in the heart such as is properly positive — will explain the phenomenon to be solved, viz. the entire and universal depravity of man; I assume, I say, that that circumstance supplies strong Xirimci facie evidence of its truth. It constrains us, I will venture to add, to admit the hypothesis, unless it should appear that the positive nature of original sin is taught by Divine revelation ; and it throws the onus yrohandi upon those who maintain the latter notion. I am not obliged to disprove the assertion that native depravity is a sub- stance — some positive, unholy tendency, or bias, or tinc- ture, added to the nature of man ; but my opponent is bound to 2'>'t'ove it. At the same time, I am not unwilling to lay before the reader the following statement of a modern writer, confirmatory of his opinion that the word of God teaches the privative nature of original sin. " The Scriptures," says Dr. Eussell, " express this principle of inbred sin, with reference to its origin, by words of a pri- vative form. Such terms as ' unholy,' ' ungodly,' and 'un- OF OEIGINAL SIN. 143 righteous,' convey negative ideas, and express the want of holiness, piety, and righteousness. The radical and primary meaning of the terms which, in the Old and New Testa- ments, are rendered ' sin,' is, to miss the mark, to be out of the way. They denote a defect or privation. The term 'iniquity' also conveys a negative idea; and these are the words employed in the 51st Psalm, 5th verse, to express this distorted condition of the faculties and nature of man." Original sin is, then, to borrow the language of the late Eev. Richard Watson, a deprivation rather than a depravation ; bat a deprivation invariably leading, unless the grace of God prevent, to a depravation, — to the total estrangement of the heart from God, and to the consequent defiance of his authority and law. This view of the nature of original sin is recommended by the following considerations, to which I would call the especial attention of the reader. In the Jlrst place, it clearly shows that Jehovah is not the author of sin. On the contrar}^ the hypothesis that native depravity is a real entity — a substance, or thing, and not the absence of a thing, involves all who maintain it in the greatest embarrassment in regard to its origin. By God, in the person of the Son, all tilings were created in heaven and on earth. If, then, it be maintained that the native tendency of every member of the human family to depart from God, and to sin against him, has anything in it of a j^ositive nature, i. e. that it is a substiince or thing, how can it be truly denied that its creator w^as God? All the positive propensities of the mind are as much to be referred to him, as the simple existence of the mind. The case, however, is different if original sin be merely of a privative nature ; since to talk of the author or creator of a want, or deficiency, is to utter nonsense. " The corruption of the human heart,"' says Dr. Eussell, in a statement which it is impossible to improve, " ori- 344 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW ginates in the absence of positive rectitude and moral goodness. Now such a thing as this is the proper object of permission, but not of Divine efficiency or production; and, therefore, God cannot be its author." To the same effect is the language of Turrettine : — " But, although the souls of men were created by God destitute of original righteousness, God cannot on that account be considered the author of sin. It is one thing to infuse impurity; another not to give purity, of which man had rendered himself unworthy in Adam. God is not bound to create souls pure ; on the contrary, he may most righteously deprive them of this gift, as a punishment of the sin of Adam." In the second place, it diminishes, if it does not entirely remove, the difficulty which has been supposed to envelop the question concerning the transmission of sin from our fallen head to us.* In the whole circle of theological science, no question, it is generally thought, more embar- rassing can be met with. I quote the language of a modern author, whose powers of perception were of the very highest order. " If it be inquired in what manner this corruption is transmitted — how it comes about that the powers of our nature inherited from Adam this defect and perversion ; this," he adds, " is an inquiry in which it is impossible to attain any satisfactory conclusion, because it resolves into principles of which Ave are totally ignorant." " If we say, with some sects of Christians, ' animam esse ex traduce 'f * The language of Pictet, in expressing his sense of the difficulty, is some- vrhat amusing. " Difficillima sane quaestio est," he says, "in qua enodandd sudarunt semper theologi, et nudabunt semper, nee unquam sibi satisfacere poterunt ; et nemo est qui cum Augustino discere non cogatur : ' Quid verum sit libenlius disco, quam dico, ne audeam discere quod nescio.' " — Ficteti Theologia, editio quarta, pp. 154, 155. After some consideration given to his immediately subjoined attempt at explanation, I cannot suppress the wish that the caution of Augustine had had more practical influence upon him. + Augustine seems to have wavered somewhat on this point. Against the opinion expressed by Pictet, " Nos non trahcre animam a parentibus, sed a OF ORIGINAL SIX. 145 — that the soul is generated, like the body, by the act of the parents, we seem to approach to materialism. If we say, as the Calvinists generally do, that souls are suc- cessively made by the Creator, and joined by his act to those bodies which they are to animate, we seem to form a rational hypothesis. But, having never been admitted to the secret councils of the Father of spirits, we find this act of his in many points to us inexplicable. We cannot pretend to assign the time when the union com- menced, nor the bond which keeps the body and soul together. These are questions which reason does not solve, and upon which revelation does not profess to throw any light. But, together with the speculation con- cerning the transmission of depravity, they are questions concerning the manner of the fact, not concerning the fact itself; and, therefore, if the Scriptures, if experience assure us that this corruption is transmitted, the questions which may be started, and which cannot be answered, are of no more weight to shake the evidence of this fact, than questions of the same kind are to shake the evidence of the union (previously asserted by him) of soul and body. The same Scriptures," he adds, " from which we infer that a general corruption pervades the posterity of Adam, inti- mate that it is transmitted by natural generation; but they leave the manner of its transmission in the same darkness with the propagation of the soul."-= Now, to a person who adopts the sentiments developed, in this Lecture, viz. that original sin, or native depravity — though the certain unfailing source of the positive and total prostitution of all the mental powers, when uncon- trolled by Divine grace — is itself merely a privative cause, a want or defect, it is not a little surprising that this Deo, ut illud docet turn Scriptura, turn recta ratio; " Augustine argues tlius, " Si anima ex traduce non est, sed sola caro habet traducera peccati, sola ergo poeuam meretur. lujustum est euim, ut hodie nata anima uou ex niassa Adse tarn antiquum peccatum portet alienum." * Vide Hill's Theological Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 380—2. XI. L 146 EECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW question should be thought to present any difficulty at all. Adam lost chartered benefits — benefits which had been suspended on a certain condition; he lost them for himself and his posterity. How can it be wonderful that his pos- terity are destitute of them ? Having forfeited that Divine influence which constitutes the actual support of all posi- tive holiness in a created mind — forfeited it as a public head, acting in this point for the race, is there, or can there be anything surprising in the fact, that the race enter the world destitute of it? Is it not a general law that no being can transmit properties which it does not possess? After the fall, Adam retained the nature of man; and, accordingly, he transmits that nature to his posterity. But, having lost the holiness of his nature, — having lost all positive holy principles by forfeiting that sovereign influence which supported them, it is surely as little mysterious that we do not derive them from him, as that we are born men, and not angels. It is, I have little doubt, the conception that original depravity is a positive taint cleaving to our nature, and superadded to it, that gives to the question concerning its transmission all the difficulty in which it appears to be in- volved. And I confess it is by no means wonderful to me, that, where this conception is entertained, this, in truth, imaginary difficulty, should assume the most formidable appearance. For, though it is easy enough to conceive how a moral want or defect may be transmitted from parents to children, the case is otherwise with respect to a moral taint. For, if we maintain that souls are suc- cessively created at the proper period by God, and con- nected, according to a general law, with an organized material frame, how can we conceive that an actual or positive propensity to sin, which, like an animal appetite, stands as much in need of a creator, as the universe itself, can be communicated by God, "the just and holy one?" The ''\cii is to me preposterous, blasphemous. I could OF ORIGINAL SIN. 147 not admit it without a different constitution of mind. Or, if we maintain animam esse ex traduce, is the difficulty less? All the essential properties of the soul descend, indeed, from parents to children ; though it is the hand of God even here that endows the infant spirit with these properties. But depravity is not an essential property: it was not found in xidam originally; it did not exist in tlie Saviour. It is, as every one admits, an acquired pro- perty; it had its origin with the fall. Now, acquired pro- perties, except under certain limitations, are not propagated. The drunkard does not propagate his ebriety, nor the holy man his piety. The naturally passionate man may trans- mit his wrathfulness, because it depends on bodily or mental constitution ; but he does not propagate his mastery over it : that is the result of principle and effort. Adam sank into depravity, when he violated the condition of the covenant; but his depravity, being not a natural but an acquired property, was not transmissible by the laws of propagation. By these laws he might, indeed, transmit his physical nature, but not his moral character. There is no principle but that of imputation, in the modern sense of the term, that will account for native dejDravity. God penally withdrew his Spirit from Adam when he took the forbidden fruit; he penally withholds it from the race ; and the result is, that they "go astray from the womb, speaking lies." I admit, to a certain degree, the validity of Principal Hill's reasoning, quoted a short time ago, " that we must believe many facts which we cannot under- stand;" and I am not forgetful of his attempt to diminish the difficulty involved in the transmission of depravity, assuming it to be of a positive nature, by the following statement : — " The likeness of children to their parents extends beyond the features of their body, — that there are not only constitutional diseases, but constitutional vices, — that a certain character often runs througli a family for many generations." But I imagine that these 148 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW facts afford him very little assistance, because they may all be accounted for by differences of material organiza- tion — on which much of what we call character, or dis- position, depends ; whereas original depravity cleaves to the soul. Besides, what, after all, is meant by saying that the soul is "ex traduce?" If the expression be intended to intimate that one created being actually communicates existence to another, the assertion is absurd and impious. A parent is as little able to create the universe, as to impart existence to the soul of his child, — or even to his body either. God must be regarded as the exclusive agent in the formation of both. If, then, God create the soul, and if native depravity possess a positive essence, it appears to me impossible to escape from the conclusion that God is the author of sin. Some, indeed, who could have known little either of the mind or the body, have supposed that the soul is created pure, but becomes infected by being put into a corrupt body. The language is pure materialism. A corrupt body (in a moral sense) apart from the soul ! What can the words mean ? It would not be more absurd to talk of a corrupt block of marble ! The material frame has material properties alone : it cannot possibly possess any other. All the animal appetites and passions, as they are called, are mental phenomena. They may depend for their excitement upon certain portions and states of the animal frame, but moral right or wrong can only be predicated of the mental feeling, according as that feeling is controlled or uncontrolled by a sense of duty. In the third place, the hypothesis of the privative na- ture of original sin presents a clear and obvious justifica- tion of the Divine conduct towards us, the posterity of our chartered head. We lose certain invaluable blessings by his disobedience ; but they were chartered blessings, — blessimrs to which we had no claim, — of which God OF ORrGINAL SIX. 149 may leave us destitute without doing us any wrong. We enter upon existence devoid of original righteousness, as the result of Adam's transgression. But as he, though he had been originally destitute of this righteousness, would yet have possessed all that is requisite to account- ability, so do we. We are not, as it appears to me, re- garded and treated by God as personally responsible and liable to punishment on account of this destitution of righteousness ; but we are held responsible, as Adam was, when he had lost his primeval rectitude, for all our volun- tary affections and actions, though devoid of original righteousness. It is because the posterity of Adam have followed him in his rebellion against God, and not on account of his sin, that they have sunk into personal con- demnation, and that so many of their number will perish for ever. The fall of Adam can in no way bring final con- demnation to the race, but by proving an occasion of sin to the race. All who shall die eternally, will die for their own sins, voluntarily committed, and will reap the fruit of their own doings for ever. The facts of the case are, in my view of it, these : — The federal failure of Adam forfeited for himself, and the race, the sovereign benefit of that special and permanent influence of the Spirit of God, which, had it been enjoyed, would have preserved the human family from sin. The loss of this influence (i e. the loss of a chartered benefit) is practically deve- loped by the want of original righteousness ; and this lamentable deficiency is the occasion of all that actual sin which alone exposes an individual to the displeasure of God in the present state, and, if not repented of, to his eternal wrath in the world to come. Contrast this view with the conflicting one — with the hypothesis which attributes a positive essence or nature to original depravity. Were that hypothesis a correct one, we should be compelled to admit that the whole of the human family — -instead of merely losing a char- 150 ITS PRIVATIVE NATURE. tered benefit (a conception which involves no difficulty whatever) by the federal failure of the head of the family — ^has positive depravity inflicted upon it as the punish- ment of his transgression. There is surely no need to embarrass the great evangelical doctrine, on this point, by assertions at variance with our natural sense of right and wrong. The conception that the entire descendants of the original holder of a charter may, by his miscon- duct, be directly exposed to the loss of the benefits en- joyed by right of charter, and to all the evils of every kind which follow in the train of that loss, is in harmony with facts of every-day occurrence. But that one man can be directly and justly exposed, by the conduct of an- other, to suffer anything but the loss of something which he had no right to claim, — a fortiori, exposed to suffer the greatest of all possible evils, the evil of having positive depravity inflicted upon him, without any alleged fault of his own, — is an hypothesis at variance with fact, and contradictory to all our notions of righteous moral govern- ment. The hypothesis which maintains the privative nature of original sin, — that it is man's destitution of original righteousness, a destitution which is the direct result of Adam's transgression, and which, in the loose sense in which the word is frequently used, may be said to be the punishment of that sin — the judgment of which the Apostle speaks in his Epistle to the Romans,' — is suffici- ent to account for the moral phenomenon to be explained — the total and universal depravity of man. It is worse than inexpedient to embarrass ourselves with any other. LECTUKE V. EXAMINATION OF AUGUSTINISM AND PELAGIANISM — OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF DR. WOODS, ANDOVER. At the commencement of the ^^receding investigation into the nature of native depravity, it was stated that the viev^s which were to be developed should be put in the light of contrast with others. To this important part of the work I now proceed. I shall first give a more specific account of the sentiments held by Augustine, and his great and shrewd opponent Pelagius, on this sub- ject. There can be no doubt that the opinions, and con- tests, and writings of these celebrated men, have exerted a more powerful influence upon the professed church of God, than those of any two other men, either in ancient or modern times. It becomes, therefore, imperative upon us to investigate carefully their opposing theories. To the former of them we are indebted for the phrase " origi- nal sin," to denote the state of moral degradation in which all men, in consequence of the fall of Adam, enter upon their present course of trial. It was, I imagine, called sin by Augustine, to express its nature ; and original sin, to intimate its derivation, — that we inherit it from others ; proximately from our immediate parents, and more remotely from the Father of us all. The Pelagians objected against the phrase " original sin ; " and I so far sympathize with them, as somewhat to regret its invention and use. It was not so inappropriate, perhaps, in the case of Augustine, who maintained ( or 15"-2 AUGUSTINIS:,! AND PFLAGIANISM. imagined) the identity of Adam, and the race ; though, as on that hypothesis the original sin is the r;ctual sin of the race, it was not strictly correct to employ it with the view of drawing a line of distinction hetween the two. In our country, and at the present day, there are none, I imagine, who fail to recognize the difference hetween orioinal aixl actual sin. Even those who maintain that o it has a positive essence or nature, — that it is a thing, and not, as I have stated, the ahsence of a thing, admit, as far as I know, with one or two splendid exceptions, epecially Dr. Woods, of Andover, (whose views, at the proper time and place, will he examined,) that it is not a sin in the same sense in which an actual transgression of the divine law is a sin. In their view, and according to their statements, it is rather a bias or propensity to sin, than sin itself. In consistency with their system, it may, perhaps, be regarded as a swjul bias ; though the term sinful, in this application of it, must bear a some- what different meaning from that which attaches to it when we speak of a sinful action. It may be further re- garded, by the high Augustinians, and, indeed, is so con- sidered by them, as involving personal blame, and, of course, as exposing its possessor to punishment, even eternal punishment, so that the mere infant, hurried out of life the moment after it had entered upon life, before it had done good or evil, or even possessed the power of distinguishing the one from the other, might be justly consigned over to everlasting torment as the punishment of such sinful bias. I join my friend, and a former con- gregational lecturer, the Rev. Joseph Gilbert, in thinking that " the man who can really believe this must be wholly perverted in judgment, and can have no symmetrical con- nexion of moral ideas."* There is nothing, as'it appears to me, in Divine revelation, — nothing in the scriptural doctrine of original sin, to sanction such montrous state- * Vide Congregational Lecture, p. 418, OIITGINAL yiN IS NOT THE BEST DESIGNATION. 15;> ments. And I am anxious that evangelical truth should be divested of accompaniments which mar its beauty and obstruct its jirogress. Still the very men who think thus, if there be such men, distinguish between original and actual sin. How much more certainly and clearly will the distinction be made by those who, in harmony with the statements of these lectures, regard original sin as a de- privation rather than as a depravation, — as the destitution of original righteousness, the loss of which they suffer not by any fault of their own, but by the federal failure of the great father of man. They cannot fail to see tliat this destitution involves no personal blame — cannot be a just ground of punishment, a fortiori of eternal punishment. It places us, no doubt, in a most disadvantageous position for entering upon the moral trial which, in this world, we are destined to undergo, — disadvantageous, I mean, compared with that of Adam Avhen he commenced his probation. Yet, truly and properly as it may be the cause of regret and humiliation, it neither calls for remorse, nor will it justify a complaint of the severity of the trial appointed for us : since God is the only proper judge of the kind and degree of that trial. There is, then, the broadest line of demarcation between original and actual sin. God punishes no man for the former, but, without repentance, invariably punishes for the latter. Now, the practice of designating two such obviously and radically distinct things as the destitution of original righteousness, for which no man can be strictly said to be blameable, — and the actual and voluntary transgression of God's law, for which all men are blameable, and feel themselves to be so, — the practice of designating these two things by the same name — calling them both sin, has a powerful, and all but an irresistible, tendency to con- found the distinction between the two. The notion is almost sure to be originated that they are both sin in pre- cisely the same sense. The result is, that the nature 154 PELAGIANISM AND AUGUSTJNISM of one, or, perhaps, both of them, is misconceived. I am quite free to concede to the celebrated Professor Moses Stuart, that sin, in the proper sense of the term, is the transgression of God's law. It is, correctly speak- ing, a predicable of man, not of his nature. There may be a defjenerate, — perhaps, we may add, a dej^raved nature ; but not a sinful nature. The phrase, a sinful man, is easily understood, and perfectly correct; but a sinful na- ture, is an anomaly in thought, and a solecism in lan- guage. I admit, of course, the existence, in the infant mind, of a bias or tendency to sin ; if the term bias, i. e. be not intended to denote some cause of sin distinct from the influence of the inferior principles of our nature, un- controlled by the grace of God ; but I doubt the propriety of designating this bias by the terms original sin. It is native depravity, or degeneracy ; it is a condition of the infant mind radically different from the state of Adam's mind when he came from the hands of God. It is more properly spiritual death, than original sin. It must have been, as I imagine at least, under the influence of some such feeling as this, that our transatlantic brother some- what whimsically designated himself " a strong advocate for native depravity, but a denier of original sin." This is, however, in this country at least, a pure logomachy, — a dispute in reference mei'ely to the best name by which to designate something in respect to the existence of which we are all agreed. I prefer the designation, "na- tive depravity," or, perhaps, " native degeneracy." The Pelagians denied original sin altogether, — any sin, i. e. which passes by generation from the first man to his posterity, and of which they have to bear the punish- ment. In the latter part of this statement I confess, very frankly, my perfect agreement with them. I have never yet been able to see, and I never expect to be able to see, that our native degeneracy — deplorable and punishable as it is in its results, or when it has led into actual and voluntary CONTRASTED. 155 transgression — can of itself form an equitable ground for judicial infliction. The former part of the statement is, however, of a very different character; for I understand it to deny, not merely that there exists in the infant mind anything which can be properly called sin, but any bias or j^roneness to sin, arising out of the essential activity of the inferior powers of our nature, and uncontrolled by the grace of God. Pelagius argues that sin is not, and cannot be, born with man, — that it is not the fault of nature, but of free will. This is, however, merely to take refuge in a logomachy. Suppose we were to admit all that he says, on the ground that sin, properly speaking, is not predicable of the mind or its capacities, simply considered, but of its phenomena; =!= that it is, in all cases, an irregular and forbidden exercise of its capacities — transgression of God's law, in short — how would this admission tend to disprove the existence of that bias or proneness to sin of which we have been speaking? That most lamentable bias is the degeneracy of the mind, — if we hesitate to call it original sin; for it did did not exist in the mind of Adam before his fall. The Pelagians, however, denied all 2>^'oneness to sin ; and were, accordingly, constrained to ascribe all the present wicked- ness of men to their tendency to iuiitation, leaving the bad example — as we may have further occasion to observe — by which they suppose them to have been corrupted, totally unaccounted for. Some of them, at least, main- tained that the sin of Adam in no way affects us, — that it injured himself only, not his posterity. And the entire body denied the physical propagation of sin, — the impu- tation, in any sense, of Adam's sin to us ; so that they were compelled to deny, at all events they did deny, that our moral condition was at all affected by it, — to maintain that we are born in the same state in which Adam was * Vi(k Mental and Moral Science, by the Author, pp. 320, 327. 156 CONCERNING created;* and that bodily death, though it may have been a punishment to him, is not so to us, but a necessity of nature. In opposition to Pelagius, Augustine maintained that Adam's sin has passed over to his descendants by propa- gation, and not by imitation, as the Pelagians maintained; that the propagation of Adam's sin among his posterity, is a punishment of the same sin: the sin was the pvmish- ment of the sin ; the corruption of human nature in* the whole race, is the righteous punishment of the first man, in whom all men already existed. Sufficient has been already said in reference to the latter clause, " In whom all men already existed." Few in the present day, in order to account for the fact that we suffer the conse- quences of Adam's transgression, would resort to the supposition that we were seminally in him, or that we are in some mysterious way identical with him ; just because every one feels that neither of the suppositions could relieve the pressure of any difficulty. With the other statements of Augustine, most Calvinistic writers of the present day substantially agree. All of us believe that our nature is degenerate, — that the loss of original righteousness is the result of Adam's federal failure, and that this righteousness is not our inheritance, because we are members of his family. It is possible that we, in the present day, attach a meaning to the phrases, " Adam's sin," and the " passing over of that sin to us," somewhat different from that which was intended to be conveyed by Augustine himself. I am by no means partial to the phraseology by which he describes the way in which we come to suffer the loss we sustain through the sin of Adam. He says, the sin of Adam is projyagated among his posterity. By the sin of Adam, we must understand here, depravity, — that sin which, as he says, is the j)unish- * With the difference, at least, that his powers were in a mature state,, and ours not so. THE PEOPAGAllON OF SIX. 157 ment of his sin, i.e. a degenerate nature; for he tells us that the corruption of human nature, in the whole race, is the righteous punishment of the transgression of the first man. Adam, in short, became depraved, and he pro- pagated depravity. Now, if it were right to speak of pro- pagation at all, the more correct mode of stating the fact of the case would be this : Adam lost original righteousness, and of course he neither did nor could propagate righteous- ness to us. The language of Augustine obviously assumes what he no doubt habitually believed, the positive nature of innate depravity. That which is propagated must have actual entity; it must be a thing, and not the lack of a thing. What Adam actually possessed, — as the human nature, with all its powers and susceptibilities, — he may be said to have propagated ; but, in reference to that which he did not possess, we cannot use this phraseology. Adam did not transmit the angelic nature to us, just because he did not himself possess it; but it were absurd to say that lie propagated the lack of that nature to us. If original sin be a negation, — the want of original righteousness, — we, who constitute the posterity of Adam, must of course be destitute of such righteousness : because, he, having lost it, could not transmit it to us ; but he does not propagate this destitution of it to us. It is, I think, much to be regretted that such phraseology as the propa- gation of original sin, or its descent to us by ordinary generation, was ever permitted to come into use. Con- ceding that it expresses the substantial facts of the case, it is certainly not adapted to obviate misconception. It would be difficult to decide whether the phraseology to which objection is now made, was, in the case of Augustine himself, the cause, or the result, of mistaken views of the nature of original sin. It may be true, as Dr. Wiggers suggests, that his constitutional temperament, which ren- dered sensuality his easily besetting sin, greatly modifie/], no doubt unconsciously to himself, the whole of his modes 158 STATEMENTS OF AUGUSTINE of thinking on this subject. Certain it is that he employs language, in reference to the nature and propagation of original sin, wliich I prefer, with Dr. Wiggers, to leave untranslated ; the substance and meaning of which I scarcely dare venture to give, and which nothing would induce me to state, but the hope of correcting what I cannot but regard as a very serious mistake. Augustine, then, seems to have imagined that the sexual appetite, called by him concupiscence, and carnal concupiscence — either in itself, or in the inordinate degree in which, as he conceives, it is found amongst men as the result of the fall — constitutes the main part, if not the whole, of original sin; and that, as this appetite, like all other appetites, is transmitted by the ordinary laws of transmission, it may be said that Adam's sin is propagated among his posterity. His own language is : " The race are propagated by gene- ration, bringing original sin along with them; since the vice propagates the vice, though God creates nature (vitio propagante vitium, Deo creante naturam)." And again: " He, in whom all die, has, with the secret consuming poison of his own fleshly lust, infected in himself all who come from his stock." Further: "Sensual lust, which is expiated only by the sacrament of regeneration, proj^agates by generation the bond of sin to posterity, if they are not freed from that bond by regeneration." Finally, he says, *' Original sin propagates itself by concupiscence." Now, whether there be sufficient reason to suppose that the animal appetites in general, and this in particular, were greatly augmented in intensity by virtue of the fall of man, will be more fully considered afterwards. What I wish now to be especially observed is, the tendency of Augustine's mind to consider and represent the sexual ap- petite as being 'per se immoral. Pie calls it "lust," " sen- sual lust," — says "it is not from the Father, but from the devil ; so that when passion conquers, the devil conquers ; " that " it belongs to the nature of brutes, but is a punish- ON THIS POINT. 15 'J ment in man;" that "it is the flesh which lusteth against the spirit;" and, finally, I observe he adds, " The lust of the flesh, against which the good spirit lusteth, is both sin, because it has in it disobedience to the dominion of the Spirit, and also the punishment of sin, because it is in consequence of the transgressions of him that was disobe- dient ; and is likewise a cause of sin, by the defection of him that consents, or the infection of him that is born ;" so that, according to Augustine, the transmission of the sexual appetite from father to son, is the infusion of moral ptoUution into the son.-'- Nothing can excuse these statements of that good and great man, but a recollection of the time in which he lived and wrote; and the almost total destitution of the men of his day of sound views of the nature and powers of the human mind. What can be a stronger proof of this than one of the passages quoted a moment or two ago, — a pas- sage in which he actually invests an appetite, a thing cre- ated, with the power of creation. " God," he says, " cre- ates nature, though vice propagates the vice." Nothing more is required to overturn the absurd notion of Augus- tine, that this animal appetite is essentially an immoral one, than to remind the reader that it was j)ossessed and developed by Adam in innocence ; and, therefore, that it cannot be evil per se. No natural appetite can, indeed, possibly be so, because implanted by God, and intended by him to secure wise, and good, and, I will add, holy pur- poses. The evil is not in the appetite, nor in the mere indulgence of the appetite; for God said to Adam in para- dise, " Be fruitful and multiply," &c. ; but in its illicit in- dulgence — an indulgence at variance with the inspired di- rectory. And the same remarks, I will venture to observe, may be applied to all our animal appetites, even assuming, which, however, I do not, that they became greatly aug- * Vide on this subject, Wiggers's Presentation of Augustiuisni and Tela- gip.r.isin, pp. S'), 90. 160 l'>"0 APrETlTE WKO.NG, PEE SK. mented in intensity — (the theories of Professor Stuart, and the late Mr. Ballantine, to be afterwards considered) — by virtue of the fall of Adam. Moral evil is not to be predi- cated of any propensity on account of its absolute inten- sity, but its relative intensity, — its triumph over reason, and conscience, and the law of God. The moral evil lies in the wrong develoj)ment of the propensity. A being who can hate intensely is not an evil being on that account. He may, indeed, be a higher order of being than another who has inferior power of hating ; for he may hate sin more intensely. There is only one additional point, in the system of Augustine, to which it may be well to direct a little more particular attention. Whether I have caught precisely his views of the nature of original sin, I do not profess to be quite certain ; but, at all events, it is indisj^utable that he regarded it as inflicted upon the race as a part of the punishment of Adam's transgression. In considering the transference of Adam's sin to his descendants, " We must distinguish," he says, "three things; sin, the imnisJunent of sin, and that which in such a manner is sin that it is at the same time also the 'punishment of sin. Of the third kind," he adds, " is original sin, which is so sin that it is, also, itself the punishment of sin; " i. e. as tlie words ne- cessarily mean, of the sin of Adam. I am avrare that an- other part of his doctrine, viz. the identity of Adam and the race, stands in at least apparent conflict with this doctrine ; for, as it has been more than once observed, if the race were really in him, and sinned in him, they are obviously punished for their own transgression. It is not my busi- ness, happily for myself, to reconcile Augustine with Au- gustine ; I merely request the reader to observe that, in the words quoted, he represents depravity as transferred to the race, i. e. inflicted upon the race, as the punishment of the sin of Adam. Now, without subscribing, as I cannot do, to the perfect IS ORIGINAL SIN A TUNISHMENT ? 161 accurac3^of this statement, there is much of substantial truth in it. I cannot heheve, indeed, for the reasons stated in a former Lecture, and to which I need not now recur,* that a just and holy God can iufiict depravity — understanding it to be an entity, or to possess a positive essence, as many do, though not Augustine — upon any being, even as the punishment of his own sin, and far less of the sin of another. God may indeed abandon a man to his sin and its con- sequences, as he has, perhaps, not uncommonly done. "Ephraim," said he, "is joined to idols : let him alone." But there is a most manifest difference between abandon- ing a man to his sin, and punishing him with sin. It would be a serious mistake to suppose that God has in- flicted depravity upon the race as the punishment of Adam's sin ; but he has withheld his Spirit from the race on that account, and abandoned it to all the deplorable conse- quences of that withholding or withdrawment. On this point I agree with Augustine and Turrettine, against Cal- vin. The latter supposes, in harmony with, perhaps, most divines in this country, and with the whole of the new school of theology in America, that we, somehow or an- other — the way is not explained — become depraved as the result of Adam's transgression, and that this depravity is the basis of the imputation of his sin to us, or of the in- fliction of the consequences of that sin upon us. Now this would, I acknowledge, be a somewhat more plausible theory, if it could shov/ how the race became dej^raved ; but it does not, and cannot do this. Messrs. Moses Stuart, and Barnes, and others with whom I liave had private con- versation on this point, do not even make the attempt. " It was determined" — such is their general mode of repre- senting the matter — " that the character of Adam, whether he remained upright, or fell from his integrity, should fix. and determine the character of his posterity. If he became a sinner, they were to become such." And this sinful cha- • Vide p. 1 f). 162 IS ORIGINAL SIN THE CAUSE I'acter of the race seems, in the Yie^Y of these writers, to justify the imputation of Adam's sin to the race; or (as they dishke and discard the use of the word imputation) the endurance, by the race, of the consequences of that sin. It is surprising to me, that the writers to whom we now refer have not perceived that, if the original or innate de- pravity of the race be not itself the consequence of Adam's federal failure, we do not suffer, with the exception of the death of the body, any of the consequences of that failure ; for all other calamities are endured by us as the conse- quence of our own transgression. And if depravity be the result of that failure, it must be the direct or proximate result, — not, like eternal death, in the case of those who suffer it, the remote result, attaching to them as the direct consequence of their own transgression. Now, if the depravity of the race be the direct result of Adam's transgression, the question is, " How comes it to be thus the result of that failure ?" The law of propa- gation will not, as Ave have seen, account for it;* or, if it did, that law is only a compendious mode of exhibiting the design and the agency of God. One of the most intelligent and philosophical writers of the present day — the Eev. Henry Eogers — seems to feel that it is unaccountable. For, having laid down the hypothesis, which is in my view altogether the reverse of the state of the case, — " that the moral state of the descendants of Adam is not the conse- quence of the imputation of his sin, but presupposed as the reason of such imputation, and as prior to it in the order of nature ; that they are treated as he is, because they are presupposed to be, and are really, morally like him," (in that case, then, may we not say with Turrettine, " there is no imputation of Adam's sin at all ; the race are treated as sinners just because they are sinners?") — he adds, "ac- cording to this doctrine, therefore, the real difficulty is not to reconcile the imputation of sin and guilt where there is * Vide -p. liG. oil THE RESULT OF IMPUTATION ? 1 63 no sin and guilt at all (for that is not the case supposed), but to vindicate the reasonableness of a constitution by -which one being becomes depraved " (the question regards the quo- modo, not the reasonableness) " by his dependence on an- other who is so, or by wHich the moral condition of one being is remotely determined by the moral condition of another." =" This is, no doubt, to Mr. Rogers the real difficulty. If we concede that the sin of Adam somelioiv made the race sinners, the imputation of sin to them, i. e. of sin to sin- ners, could involve no difficulty whatever. But there are two questions which Mr. Eogers has not attempted to deal Avith, — the latter, perhaps, because it does not appear to have occurred to him ; the former, because of the difficulty or impossibility of replying to it. The questions hyq, first. Why should the character, any more than the destiny, of a race be made to depend upon the conduct of Adam ? and, second, How does it depend upon that conduct ? It is the latter question with which I am now dealing : How did the race become depraved by the federal failure of Adam ? It was not, on the hypothesis of Mr. Rogers, as the legal re- sult of that failure ; at all events, it did not attach to them as one of the consequences of that failure, — for the moral degeneracy of the race is not, he tells us, " the consequence of the imputation of Adam's sin, but is j^'^'^siqjjJosed as the reason of it." I would then venture to ask this most va- luable writer, and all who agree with him, — I would ask the whole of the new-school theologians of America, who to a man firmly reject, as I do, the Edwardian doctrine of the identity of the race and Adam, " How they can account for the depravity of the race?" I believe there is no way of accounting for it, but the method adopted by Turrcttine, and unfolded in this and preceding Lectures : it is one of the results to them of the sin of Adam. It did not, as Mr. Bogers says, precede the imputation of his sin, hut followed * Eogers's Essay on Edwards'?? Works. Hickman's edition, p. 11. 161 SUMMARY OF PRECEDING STATEMENT. it, or rather is it. It is, as Augustine declares with sub- stantial truth, though in most objectionable phraseology, the punishment of his sin ; /. e. — for such is the meaning I should seek to convey by the words, if I ever used them, though I will not undertake to affirm that such Avas the sense in which they were intended to be understood by Augustine himself — it was the loss to the race of the pre- sence and influence of the Spirit of God, as an expression of Divine displeasure against his sin, — the consequent loss of those superior principles whose influence alone can keep the inferior ones in check, — a loss which is the certain result of the penal withdrawment of the Spirit of God from the soul of man. It is only in the loosest sense of the terms that this loss, and this abandonment, can be deno- minated the " punishment" of sin by sin. I do not under- take to defend the correctness of the phraseology, though used by so great a man as Augustine; of its substantial truth, however, explained as I have endeavoured to explain it, I have not the slightest doubt. The whole of the preceding hypothesis may be thus shortly stated : — Native depravity is a privation — the want of original righteousness. It is not a thing, but the want of a thing. It does not need, therefore, to be communi- cated from father to son ; nor is it, in fact, capable of com- munication. The son sustains loss, indeed, when his fa- ther forfeits a chartered benefit ; but the father is not said, nor can he be said, to communicate that loss to him ; and, consequently, all the indelicate (I might, perhaps, have used a stronger term) statements of Augustine and others, descriptive of the propagation of original sin, may be and ought to be rejected; the simple fact being that our father lost a chartered benefit, so that we his children do not inherit it. This loss is simple loss to us, but it was punish- ment to Adam ; just as the deprivation of title, and honour, and fortune, which accrues to the family of a nobleman im- plicated in rebelhon, is loss to them, though punishment HYPOTHESIS OF DE. WOODS. 165 to the parent. It is the direct result of Adam's trans- gression — the manifestation of Divine indignation against it. When suitably considered, it is one of the strongest possible moral guards against sin. It says to us, " If such things were done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" This loss to the race is not the cause, but the consequence of the imputation of Adam's sin to them. The true order of sequence is not this : men are depraved, and, therefore, the sin of Adam is imputed to them ; but the sin of Adam is imputed to the race — in other words, they suffer its consequences, one of which is destitution of that spiritual life which was possessed by xVdam before his fall — and therefore they are depraved. If I have dwelt both at length and repeatedly upon this point, it is on account of my deep conviction of its great importance. The Hypothesis of Dr. Woods, Aiidover. It was formerly remarked that, in the opinion of the most enlightened writers upon the subject of original sin — whatever be their views of its nature or essence — there exists a broad line of demarcation between original and actual sin. Dr. Woods, of Andover, was, however, stated to form a splendid exception.* I should feel self- condemned, Avere I not to offer my humble tribute of respect for the talents, and attainments, and great moral worth of this gentleman. He seems to have conciliated the affections, and to have won the confidence, both of old * I find that Dr. Spring and a few others unite with Dr. "\^'oods. The former gentleman is well-knov.-n to many in this country, and justlj- esteemed, but, as an authoi^ity in reference to any theological point, is inferior to Dr. Woods. The following is his opinion : — " That every infant (just born) is a moral and accountable being, under a law, which he knowingly and volun- tarily transgresses, at the very instant of his creation," — at least of his birth, for he has the moderation not to attribute actual sin to the human being before that period. I refer the reader to Professor Stuart's strictures upou this sentiment, quoted in the Appendix to this volume. They appear to me perfectly conclusive. — See Note D, at the end of the Volume. 1G6 DR. WOODS IDEXTTFIKS and new-light divines in a country where theology and commerce seem to be running a " pari passu " race of speculation. I hold him in the highest regard and esteem; yet, as I think that, in his comparatively recent work on " Native Depravity," some views are unfolded which do not add to the stability of evangelical truth, I shall freely, though respectfully, animadvert upon them. Dr. Woods identifies original and actual sin; and, as the latter is bv universal consent the transs^ression of God's law in thought, or feeling, or action, he is con- strained to admit that there exist in the infant mind, just ushered into being, before it has received any im- pressions or information ah extra, actual unholy thoughts, and feelings, and purposes, — i.e. thoughts, and feelings, and purposes, at variance with God's law ; for such mental states constitute actual sin in the adult mind. The chapter of his book in wdiich this opinion is developed and defended is, I think, at variance with his own definition of native depravity in an earlier part of the volume. In page 138 of that book, he thus guardedly and more correctly defines the doctrine in question : — " The doctrine is," he says, " that all men come into being in such a moral state that, as soon as they are cajmhle, they will certainly and uniformly sin, or that their moral affections ivill all be wrong, unless they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit." Let it be ob- served that he does not say here, are all wrong, but ivill be so, i. e. when they become capable of moral affections and actions. But, in the subsequent pages, to which I am now referring, he writes thus : " It seems to be frequently taken for granted that the mind of an infant is incapable of any moral affections, and of course incapable of being, in any proper sense" (I beg the reader to mark the lan- guage), " sinful or depraved." In the opinion of this eminent man, then, no mind can be morally depraved in ACTUAL AND OKIGINAL SIX. 167 whicli there do not exist what he calls moral, but what we m this country should denominate depraved, affections. He is consequently compelled to believe and to maintain that such affections do exist in the infant mind; i.e. in other v/ords, — for that is the plain meaning of the language, — to maintain that every human mind enters its present state of trial, not only with a proneness to revolt from God's authority, (a proneness resulting from the absence of controlling principles, and the activity of inferior principles,) but with enmity against God elicited and in actual exercise; for he says, "In my opinion there are no arguments which prove clearly and satisfactorily that the infant mind is incapable of moral emotions." And though, under the influence of that modesty so strikingly characteristic of the man, he abstains from asserting that it is capable of such emotions, he clearly indicates his belief of this, by a train of reasoning de- signed to show that the arguments usually adduced against this hypothesis are destitute of validity. I am rather the more disposed than I might otherwise be, to devote a little time to the examination of Professor Woods's views on this subject — views discarded by his coun- trymen of the old school, as well as the new — because, I believe some such conception will be found lurking in the minds of multitudes in this country, who have not taken the necessary time and trouble to define their views of the nature of original sin. I have met with numbers who con- ceive of native depravity, not as consisting in a state of mind which will certainly lead to actual enmity against God, but as actual enmity itself. The child, they think, if they think at all about the matter, enters the world with the feeling of hatred against God in his heart. They may call it, perhaps, a principle of hatred or enmity; but, in too many cases, they either attach no meaning to the former word, or they identify it with the latter ; a principle of 168 CAUSES OF THIS IDENTIFICATION. enmity agower to desire, and the emotion of desire. As a mental capacity, desire (in like manner with the power of loving, hating, hoping, fearing, &c.) is no doubt connate with man, for it is not to be dis- tinguished from the mind itself, — the word denoting a particular constitution or " make " of the mind. But desires, as actual feelings or emotions of the mind — de- xr. o 104 HOW FAR WE AGKEE veloping the existence of mental capacities or suscepti- bilities — are not connate with us. In this sense of the term, we have not more truly innate desires than innate ideas. All are subsequent — it may be but momentarily in the case of some — to the existence of the mind. Mr. Stuart uses the term " lusts" as well as " desires." I have not included it in the following remarks, because it is not ambiguous — never denoting a mental capacity, but a mental feeling. Lusts are emotions of desire. The word is, however, used by us in a bad sense — the term desig- nating unholy developments of the capacity of desiring. Mr. Stuart obviously uses both term, "lusts" and "pas- sions," to denote mental feelings, not capacities; and, thus understood, his statement is both correct and im- portant. Again, with Mr. Stuart, I do not believe that anything that is, correctly speaking, connate with us is morally evil ; for, in that case, I should be compelled to believe that it must have come from God, and so that God is the author of sin. It is with me an axiomatical truth, that nothing which has entity — positive existence — can flow from any fountain but the great Source of all being. Original sin is not of a positive, but of a privative nature ; it is des- titution of original righteousness ; the state of a soul that is without the Spirit of God. Now, lamentable soever as such a state may be, and no doubt is, it involves no j^er- sonal blame — awakens no remorse ; and therefore cannot of itself, and separate from its effects, in actual dis- obedience, in which, without controlling grace, it always issues, be regarded as laying an equitable ground for the infliction of punishment, and a fortiori, the punish- ment of eternal death. Now, as Mr. Stuart denies original sin in that view of it which exhibits it as consisting in actual unholy feelings connate to the mind, and yet maintains native depravity, we might have expected him to place the essence of de- WITH MR. STUAIIT. 105 pravitvin our natural and penal destitution of those higher principles which Adam possessed before the fall. I have found one passage in which he appears to do this. " In oneway, then, is this" (i. e. the injury we have derived from the fall) " developed, if not in the manner just stated ; viz. by our being born into a state destitute of all disposition to holiness, and with passions and appetites which, situated as we are, will certainly lead to sin, and always lead to sin, in all our actions of a moral nature. The fact that we noiv have such a nature, and that such, is the result in respect to our passions and appetites, the Scripture testifies, and the experience of all ages and nations testifies."* This passage seems to me to express all the facts of the case, and to contain every thing that could be desired. All men, excepting idiots and madmen, (who, indeed, are scarcely to be regarded as men,) have all the inferior prin- ciples of which President Edwards speaks, for they are the necessary endowments of human nature. All uncon- verted men are destitute of the higher principles of which, also, he speaks, and which never exist in any mind without the presence and influence of the Spirit of God. The first moral act of every man will, therefore, be put forth — unless, indeed, Divine grace take possession of his heart — under the exclusive influence of the lower principles of our nature ; i. e. the first act of every moral agent will be an act of sin. Mr. Stuart, however, is not satisfied with this statement. He maintains, in addition to this, that all the lower prin- ciples of our nature, and especially the animal appetites, as they are called, exist now in a much greater degree of intensity than before the fall ; so that, if they triumphed in the case of Adam, in spite of the higher principles which, till the fatal moment of his taking the apple, had held them in perfect control, much more may they be ex- * Comm. p. 59. 196 STATEMENT OF pected to triumph in the case of men in general, from whom this control is entirely removed. The following statements, taken from his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and the Repository, explain fully the views he holds. " We may regard it," he says, " as an original part of liuman nature, that man should possess a susceptibility of excitement* by sinful and alluring objects." Without delaying, for the present, to inquire into the exact meaning of the term " suscepti- bility" used by Mr. Stuart in this passage, or to notice the phraseology, " sinful and alluring objects," the great fact apparently asserted must be conceded. There must exist in the mind of every moral agent such susceptibility, or how could he be subjected to a moral trial? It, accord- ingly, existed in Adam while innocent; it v>^as found in the mind of Christ. Such susceptibility cannot, there- fore, bo morally wrong 2:)er se ; nor can any mind be con- sidered a depraved mind in consequence of its possession. It is essential, indeed, to render us men. " What, then," says Mr. Stuart, " is the difference between men since the fall, and our first parents before their lapse ? Certainly it does not consist in the fact, that Adam and Eve could not at all feel the power of sinful enticement, and we can and do feel it. To say this would be to say that our first parents sinned without any enticement to sin;t for what cannot be felt is no motive to action. The difference, then, must lie principally in these two things ; the first, that the susceptibility of being enticed is greatly increased, so greatly as to render certain the success of temptation in some respect or other to sin, in regard to all the moral acts of the unregenerate ; the second, that we are placed ♦ Even the word " excitement" needs explanation. + To feel the power of " sinful enticement " (wliy does Mr. Stuait call it Hinjul enticement when, as he says, Eve felt it without sin ?) must then mean to have desire, which prompts to action, kindled by an object when it would be wrong to gratify the desire. I cannot, however, praise the nomenclature of the writer. MR. STUART S VIEWS. 197 in a world where temptation is immeasurably increased beyond what it was in paradise." — P. 599, In the " Biblical Repository " his sentiments are more fully expressed, if not with greater perspicuity. "What- ever susceptibilities of impression from objects of sinful excitement Adam may have had in his original state, it is manifest that infants have this susceptibility (although in a nascent and yet unmatured state) in a far greater degree than Adam." — P. 43. Further on, in the same work, he explains himself more fully thus : — " I believe that the susceptibility of impression from sinful and enticing ob- jects, belongs to the tout ensemble of our nature ; not to the body exclusively nor to the soul exclusively, but from their essential and intimate connexion to the tout ensemble of both, i.e. to man. I believe this susceptibility is innate, connate, original, natural, native, or whatever else one may please to call it, by way of thus characterizing it; I believe that it commences with our very being, in a sense like that in which an oak-tree commences with the acorn. I believe this susceptibility to be such that, just as soon as there is growth and maturity enough for development, it will de- velop itself in persuading or influencing men, all men, to sin. I believe this to be the natural state of fallen man ; while, in his original state, before the fall, the predominant tendency of his propensities was just the reverse of what it now is." — P. 48. In this latter passage, Mr. Stuart must be understood to refer, not to susceptibility of impression from sinful objects as an essential element in the nature of man (as the commencement of the passage would seem to indicate), but to its depraved, that is, its very intense, state in the infant mind ; for he declares that it invariably develops itself " in persuading or influencing all men to sin." It is this depraved or intense state of the susceptibility (not the susceptibility itself, for Adam was the subject of it) that constitutes, on Mr. Stuart's system,— ai least acconling. 19S STATEMENT OF MR. STUART's VIEWS. to the p-esent statement, — the essence of native depravity. He does not allow that this altered state of the suscepti- bility, can, with any propriety, be called sin; and hence he avows himself a denier of original sin ; but, in justice to him, we must not fail to observe, that the passages we have just quoted prove him to be a very strenuous assertor of the doctrine of native depravity. So far, all is intelli- gible and consistent. " Adam," as he adds in further illustration of his meaning, " had two degrees of this susceptibility ; all his descendants possess ten : and na- tive depravity consists in these eight additional degrees of susceptibility of impression from sinful objects." There are, however, other statements to be found in Mr. Stuart's writings, which appear, as far as they are in- telligible, to give a totally different account of the essence of native depravity. In the passages quoted, it is repre- sented as consisting in the greatly increased strength of this susceptibility ; in that which I am about to present, it is declared to be a wrong lyreclominant tendency in the suscepti- bility. Now, whatever Mr. Stuart may understand by the latter phrase, I cannot well conceive that he can regard the two statements as identical. " In Adam, before the fall," he says, "the whole bent of .his propensities, or, to speak more correctly, the predominant tendency of every susceptibility to receive impressions adapted to excite him to action of any kind, was altogether in favour of the good. This was the proper, or moral diathesis of his nature. In infants born since the fall, the predominant tendency of their susceptibilities is reversed ; " i. e. it is altogether in favour of the evil ; " and so much reversed that, as soon as they come to moral agency, the doing of evil will always take place in regard to every moral action." My design is to examine these statements of Mr. Stuart somewhat minutely; but, as at least some of my intended remarks upon the views of Mr. Stuart are applicable to the theory of the Kev. J. Ballantyne, as developed in his original and HYPOTHESIS OF MR. BALLANTYNE. 199 valuable work entitled " Examination of the Human Mind," it may be expedient, previous to the doing of this, to pre- sent the reader with a brief account of that theory. I do this partly, though not altogether, at the prompting of my late revered and excellent friend, the Rev. Dr. Balmer, one of the Professors of the Secession Church of Scotland, — a man who will live in the memory and heart of all who knew him. I must not be understood to intimate that my late friend fully approved of the sentiments of Mr. Ballan- tyne : the whole of what I was able to gather from his letter to me, written only a few weeks before what appears to us his premature death, was that he thought them worthy of being stated and examined. It will be impossible for me fully to unfold the hypo- thesis of tliis writer in the limited space which only I can. command ; but, perhaps, his main principles may be thus stated : — God, as a sovereign, may, consistently with per- fect justice and goodness, apportion various measures of enjoyment — and very important ends are secured by the bestowment of a different, rather than the same, measure- to his creatures, provided he does not expose them to more suffering, upon the whole, than enjoyment. He may make one a worm ; a second, a man ; a third, an angel ; and he may cause the happiness of the last as much to surpass that of the first, as the latter rises above it in the scale of being. " On the same principles," says Mr. Ballantyne, " he may expose moral agents to various degrees of moral trial, — may require an innocent moral agent — as long as he does not subject him to more suffering" {i.e. as I ima- gine he means, by the severity of the trial) " upon the whole, than enjoyment — to perform any duty, however dif ficult, or any number of duties however difficult, provided the difficulty does not surpass his ability." — P. 460. The application of this principle to the case of man, after the fall, is as follows: — "On the same principle," i.e. the principle just stated, " we can see," he adds, " that, 200 MR. ballantvne's theory. in consequence of the fall of Adam, the Almighty, without injustice, might appoint all his descendants — even altlwurjli they ivere supposed to be lyerfcctly innocent — to receive such dispositions, affections, and passions, &c., and to be placed in such circumstances, as would expose them to very powerful inducements to iniquity — even to inducements so powerful, as would indubitably be complied with. As already remarked, no person supposes that any induce- ment to sin, though, in point of fact, it be indubitably complied with, ever exceeds the ability of the agent to resist it, — his natural ability, to wit, in contradistinction to what is called moral ability." " The reason of this," he adds, "is manifest: he might, v/ithout violating justice, have done all this, and more than this, though there had never been an Adam at all." " His inflicting such evils, however, in consequence of the fall of Adam, is calculated," he adds, "to serve purposes of the very highest magnitude. What event in the whole universe, if we except the death of the Redeemer alone, is more calculated to display the Almighty's hatred of sin, than his inflicting, for one sin of one man, calamities so tremendous ? And what event in the whole universe, if we again except the death of the Eedeemer, is more calcu- lated to display the glory of his character, than his doing this in perfect consistency with the strictest rules of moral equity?" Thus, though the views of Mr. Ballantyne are stated somewhat hypothetically, it is manifestly his opinion, that, in consequence of the fall, the entire family of man have received dispositions, affections, and passions, which form powerful inducements to sin. It is not clear to me whether Mr. Ballantyne meant that altogether new elements have been infused into the mental constitution, — or whether some of the essential elements — bodily appetites and pas- sions, for instance — have received additional intensity, ren- dering their existence and influence pregnant with in- EEMARKS UPON BOTH. 201 creased moral danger. His phraseology would seem to indicate the former opinion. Yet I can hardly persuade myself that such can be his meaning. It seems to me so altogether unlikely that the fall could effect a physical alteration in the constitution of the mind, so entire as the one supposed, that I confess I am slow to believe a con- ception of this kind could be entertained by him. Assuming, then, his meaning to be, that the inferior, and, especially, the animal principles of our nature, ac- quired great additional intensity after the fall; the theory of Mr. Ballantyne does not greatly differ from that of Mr. Stuart, unfolded a short time ago. It is, however, superior to it, in what is, in my view, a very important point. Mr. Stuart does, indeed, say that the sin of Adam is, someJiow or another, connected with the degenerate condition of the race ; but he does not know what that connexion is. He is wonderfully in the dark here. It is not the result of the penal withdrawment of God's Spirit from the race ; it is not the result of the imputation of Adam's sin to the race, — for no sin, he tells us, can be justly imputed to any man but his own sin ; it is not the punishment of that sin. In short, Mr. Stuart wishes to have it thought that we know, and can know, nothing about the matter. Mr. Ballantyne, on the contrary, declares that " this great calamity," as he calls it, " was inflicted upon the race for one sin, of one man ; and to display the Almighty's hatred of sin." On both these theories I offer the following remarks : — In the jfirst place, I am somewhat surprised at the mode in which Mr. Stuart designates those objects which, by awakening desire, frequently lead into sin. He calls them " sinful objects." Now he denies, let it not be forgotten, that the native propensity of man to sin, though conceded by him, is itself sin (avowing himself an opponent of the doctrine of original sin), on the ground that nothing is sin but the voluntary transgression of God's law. But, if that argument has force enough to prove that this propensity 202 KEMAEKS UPON to sin is not sinful, must it not possess abundantly more force to prove that no object can be a sinful object ? It is surely a greater inaccuracy to predicate sin of an object, perhaps a material one (as the apple in the case of Eve), without the mind, than of a propensity within the mind. And yet, while Mr. Stuart does the former, he denies that it is right to do the latter. Still, though I think the pre- ceding remarks are perfectly just, I should not have felt called upon to make them, but for the professor's demand for great precision of statement on the part of all who write on the subject of original sin. In the second place, Mr. Stuart does not appear to me to have sufficiently explained the meaning of some important phrases, which, on this subject, he is in the habit of using. I cannot but suspect, that, in the view of his own mind, they are not very clearly defined. He says, that there exist in 7nan " susceptibilities of being enticed by sin;" "sus- ceptibilities of impression from objects of sinful excite- ment ; that these susceptibilities are found in fallen man in a far higher degree than in Adam, in his state of purity. Now the whole of these statements, with the exception of the last, are true, in one sense ; but it is somewhat diffi- cult to ascertain in what sense they were used by Mr. Stuart. Expressions occur which might induce the suspi- cion, that, by susceptibilities of impression from sinful objects, he understands something more than those natural affections, and passions, or "propensions" of mind,— as Butler calls them — which constitute essential elements of the mind, and which, when excited by their appropriate objects, may prove, as in the case of Eve, successful, as well as powerful, temptations to sin. He asserts that, in the mind of Adam before the fall, there existed virtuous sus- ceptibilities. But as the existence of virtuous, implies the possible existence of vicious, susceptibilities, we desiderate a distinct explanation of those susceptibilities of being enticed to sin, which he attributes to man in his fallen MR. STUART S THEORY. 20o state. Are they distinct elements of mind — the opposite of the virtuous susceptibilities which were possessed, as he avers, in the paradisiacal state ? — or are they the same elements, though greatly augmented in intensity, with those which existed, and whose influence prevailed, in the case of Eve? Mr. Stuart's language leaves the matter somewhat in doubt : yet, recollecting a passage already quoted, I cannot well imagine that he intends entirely new elements of mind ; for, in that passage, he states the dif- ference between fallen and innocent man to consist in this, viz. that, in the former, the susceptibility of being enticed is greatly increased, — a form of expression which does not imply a radical difference. In perfect accordance with this last assertion, he says elsewhere, that, in the mind of the infant now, there are ten degrees of suscepti- bility instead of two. Susceptibilities are not, then, new elements of mind, but old elements — such as existed in the mind of Adam — possessing, however, greatly increased in- tensity. Further, then, I cannot but desire a more distinct ac- count of the nature and source, or cause, of this increased intensity in this susceptibility of impression from sinful objects. He is speaking of a susceptibility, let it be care- fully observed, which is native to the mind ; and, compar- ing it with the susceptibility which was imparted to the mind of Adam, he says it exists in the infant in a greatly increased state. Now, what are mental susceptibilities'? — and what is an increase of such susceptibilities ? According to the statements of the best metaphysicians in this part of the world, a susceptibility of mind is not to be re^^arded as anvthinsr distinct from the mind itself. It is, in fact, a certain constitution, or construction, or make of the mind, rendering it capable of becoming the subject of a certain feeling, — or, more generically speaking, of existing in a certain state. It is altogether a physical pro- perty, to which no moral character can possibly attach. j204 eemarks upon The mind has been formed capable of existing in various states of feeling : in other words, it has been endowed with various susceptibilities. It follows from this explanation, that every mental susceptibility is as much and truly the creature of God, as the mind itself. And what is an increase in the strength of any mental susceptibility ? This question will be best answered by a reference to one susceptibility : let it be that of desire. God has formed the mind capable {i. e. he has given to it the susceptibility) of desiring, — of desiring honour, wealth, the world, God, &c. An increase of this susceptibility can be nothing different from the power of desiring more in- tensely than we now do. Now, can such increase of strength be derived from any source but God? Does it not involve an alteration in the physical constitution of the mind? If, then, native depravity consist in the aug- mented strength of susceptibilities of impression, bestowed in a moderate degree upon Adam, must not God be its author ? But I ask Mr. Stuart, whether such augmentation in the strength of the power, or susceptibility of desiring, would fix the character of depravity upon the mind? Eather, would it not ennoble the mind ? A being, whose power of loving is greatly increased, is elevated in rank by this in- crease, — for he can love God more intensely. On this account, an angel is a nobler being than a man. Again, augment, in the case of any being, his power of desiring — and do you degrade or ennoble him ? Surely the latter, for he becomes capable of desiring the favour of God more intensely. True, indeed, he gains the power of desiring the pleasures of sin more intensely; but the power of doing this, is not the depravity of his mind. Depravity does not lie in the powers of the mind — in their feebleness, or their vigour. It lies in their development, or exercise. If a man, who can desire intensely, desires " the pleasures of sin " intensely, he is depraved in a high degree ; but the MR. STUART S STATEMENTS. 205 depravity does not consist in the vigour of his power of desiring : it is found in the wrong development of that power, or rather in the absence of tliose higher and con- trolling principles which would have prevented this wrong development. Mr. Stuart may possibly allege, that, by this increased " susceptibility of being enticed," he does not mean aug- mented intensity in the general power of desiring, but increase in the strength of particular desires — such as animal appetites, for instance, which all resolve themselves into the great class of desires. I shall endeavour to show hereafter, that such an assertion, if made, is not sustained by evidence; while I request the reader now to inquire, whether this augmented native intensity in such appetites, involving, as it does, an alteration of the physical consti- tution of the mind — could be effected by any being but the Creator of the mind ; and, further, whether, in this case, God would not be the author of native depravity? Again, Mr. Stuart has not explained what were those virtuous susceptibilities, which, as he thinks, existed in Adam, but were lost by the fall. I have sometimes sus- pected that, in using this phrase, his thoughts reverted to the holy purposes, and volitions, and aims, and affections of Adam's mind, — his supreme love to God, his filial con- fidence in him, his desire to promote his glory, &c. All these feelings were, no doubt, extinguished by his trans- gression. If they constitute what Mr. Stuart means by " virtuous susceptibilities," it is true that Adam possessed them in his primeval state, and lost them by the fall. But, then, no correct writer, in this part of the globe, would venture to call them " susceptibilities'' of mind. They were virtuous feelings, or states, or exercises of mind, but they were not virtuous susceptibilities. And, let not the reader suppose that the distinction now glanced at, between mental susceptibilities, and mental feelings, or states, is a metaphysical refinement involving no practical conse- 206 REMARKS UPON quences. I am convinced, on the contrary, that it is im- possible to arrive at just conclusions on certain points, both in ethical and theological science, without keeping it perpetually in view. A mental suscejMbility denotes a cer- tain constitution or "make" of the mind: no moral cha- racter can possibly attach to it. To" every state of mind a moral character may attach, and generally does so. If Mr. Stuart should contend that the change effected in Adam by transgression, involved more than a change of mental phenomena — i. e. of thoughts, purposes, feelings, or states of mind ; that it included the loss of " susceptibi- lities " correctly so called ; I should, in that case, inquire what Avere the " virtuous susceptibilities" thus lost? And, if this question could be satisfactorily answered, I might further ask, whether such a loss, involving a change of mental constitution, would not have [converted Adam into a different being ; as the loss of instinct, were the creature to sustain it, would effect a radical alteration upon the animal ? I cannot but feel, either, that Mr. Stuart's own conceptions are not well defined, or, that he employs language which is at variance with what has now become well established philosophical phraseology. Again, when Mr. Stuart advances to what I have repre- sented* as apparently his second explanation of the essence of native depravity, I confess myself unable to apprehend his meaning. " In Adam, before the fall, the whole bent of his propensities, — or, to speak," he adds, " more cor- rectly, the predominant tendency of every susceptibility to receive impressions adapted to excite him to action of any kind, — was altogether in favour of the good." Now, I am at a loss to conceive what is meant by the " bent'' of a pro- pensity. I have been accustomed to suppose that a propensity of mind is itself, to borrow Mr. Stuart's phrase- ology, a " bent'' of mind, — a turning or inclination towards some object. I cannot conceive what the bent of a bent * rWc p. 251. MR. aXUAKTS STATEMENTS. 207 can be. A propensity, that is, a bent, towards any action, or any object — a propensity to anger, to the gratification of animal appetites, for instance — may be resisted, con- trolled, and, by the grace of God, overcome ; but, as far as it remains, it continues to prompt in the same direction. Its bent, to adopt Mr. Stuart's phraseology, is not changed. A propensity to anger never prompts, and never can prompt, to forbearance and gentleness ; but, notwith- standing such propensity, both may be displayed thi'ough the superior energy of higher principles. I am even yet more at a loss to understand Mr. Stuart's explanatory statement : " the whole bent of his propensi- ties, or," he adds, " to speak more accurately, the predo- minant tendency of every susceptibility to receive impres- sions adapted to excite him to action of any kind, was altogether in favour of the good." No doubt the predo- minant tendency of Adam's mind was towards that w^hich is good ; but that, let me remind Mr. Stuart, was the result of the overruling principle of supreme love to God enthroned in his heart, prompting him, as it is its very nature to do, to those actions which are well-pleasing in his sight ; and permitting the gratification of animal appe- tites, and of the inferior principles of his nature in general, only when they might be gratified without sin. It is a mistake, I imagine, and no small one, to conceive of it as resulting from a different " predominant tendency in his susceptibilities to receive impressions," &c., whatever those words may mean. I am inclined to ask. What is a tendency in a susceptibility to receive impressions ? and what is a predominant tendency ? If the entire statement should not prove to be " vox et prseterea nihil," perhaps the tendency of a susceptibility to receive impressions may denote the delicacy of the susceptibility. If greatly sensitive, a slight action upon it may develop it : but, of what is meant by the predominant tendency of a susceptibility to receive im- pressions, I can form no conception. Mr. Stuart obviously ji08 REMARKS UPON conceives of some difference in the susceptibilities of inno- cent and fallen man; and ascribes the actual sin of the latter to the change in them which the fall has superin- duced; i. e. he ascribes all actual sin to a change in the physical constitution of the mind. In this, I venture to think him utterly in error. The difference of moral action between the race and Adam is to be ascribed, in the one case, to the presence, and, in the other, to the absence, of holy and controlling principles. It is not to be attributed to a difference in the physical constitution of our minds and his. We sin, not because we have other susceptibili- ties of being tempted than he had ; nor because, with the same susceptibilities, ours are possessed of augmented in- intensity;* but because we are destitute of the love of God. He, on the contrary, possessed and exercised this holy principle ; and, being essentially a controlling prin- ciple, it imposed a restraint upon susceptibilities and pro- pensities which, without this restraint, would as certainly have carried him into actual sin as his posterity. The great difference between the hypothesis of Mr. Stuart, and the doctrine of the preceding Lectures, is this : tliat, in our view, original depravity is entirely privative, — in his, positive, in its nature. The augmented susceptibility to temptation which he ascribes to fallen man, is not, as the reader must carefully observe, a mere comimrative increase of strength in the inferior principles of our nature, result- ing from the loss of the higher principles, summarily com- prehended, as Jonathan Edwards says, in the love of God, and which, in the case of Adam, constituted the great regulating and controlling principle ; — but a positive aug- mentation of the strength of the inferior principles, involv- * The reader must carefully remember that I am speaking here of sus- ceptibilities in their native state — as the creation of God. No doubt, pro- pensities to a certain action may gain intensity, additional to that which is natural to them, by indulgence; but the question now regards the state of the infant mind, — liow far it differs from that of Adam at his creation. I MK. STUART S STATEMENTS. 209 ing an alteration, as it has been before stated, in the physical constitution of the mind. We have been accus- tomed to suppose that the change produced in Adam him- self by taking the forbidden fruit was a moral change, and a moral change exclusively, — that it consisted in the triumph of the inferior principles, as the result of the loss of the controlling principle of supreme love to God. But, on Mr. Stuart's hypothesis, the change was a physical change ; it was the addition of eight degrees of positive susceptibility of impression from sinful objects. By whom, then, could this physical change be effected but by God ? Who but He could create these additional eight degrees of susceptibility ? And if native depravity, or degeneracy, consist, not in the destitution of the higher principles, but in a great positive accession of strength to the lower, we are constrained to inquire again, What must regeneration be? Must it not be, not the restoration of the higher principles, but'the destruction, or partial destruction, of the lower ? And, if so, is it not a physical change, requir- ing physical agency in its production ? What but a physical regeneration can meet the case of a physical depravity? And yet, though no man, either in the old world or the new, would lift up his voice more loudly against the notion of physical depravity (an error which the new school of theology, to which Mr. Stuart belongs, are constantly charging upon the old school) than Mr. Stuart, it appears to me indisputable that all the depravity native to man is, on his scheme, physical depravity. * Yet, though natural depravity consists, on the system of this writer, in the addition of eight degrees to the positive strength of susceptibility of impression from sinful objects, Mr. Stuart does not seem to ascribe it to God. He appears to resolve it into the law of propagation. "Adams pos- terity," he says, "were doomed to partake of a nature, in one very important respect, the reverse of what his nature * Vide Note E, at the end of the volume. 210 OBJECTIO>;S AGAINST originally was. Their susceptibilities, in respect to objects enticing to sin, became, or rather were to be, altogether predominant, until they should become renewed in the spirit of their minds, or sanctified by the Spirit of God." In a pamphlet, published* by the present writer about five years ago, containing remarks upon Mr. Stuart's papers in the American Biblical Repository, an argument of consi- derable length is gone into, with a view to show that the supposed law of propagation will not account for the effects attributed to it. I cannot recapitulate them ; but 1 would beg the reader to remember, that, even on the absurd notion of the propagation of the soul by generation, the physical properties of the soul must originate with God himself. t Mr. Ballantyne does not attempt to deny this. He says expressly, *' This great calamity was inflicted upon the race for one sin of one man, and to display the Al- mighty's hatred of sin." The j^riju a facie objection against this theory (]Mr. B.'s) is the following: If, in consequence of the fall of man, God " has doomed the whole human race, not merely to labour, to disease, and death, but to receive such constitu- tions, and to be placed in such circumstances, as vrould expose them to temptations to sin so powerful as would indubitably be complied with," how is his justice, and especially his goodness, to be vindicated ? The reply of Mr. Ballantyne is, that, though difficulties in the perform- * By Dinnis, Paternoster Pvow. f I have dwelt at greater length, in the preoetling observations, upon Mv. Stuart's views, than some of my readers, who are not fond of argument, may think necessary. I have heeu influenced, however, by the recollection that the Congregational Lectures ought not to be altogether of a popular cha- racter ; by my impression of the high importance of forming distinct concep- tions of the subjects to which attention has been directed ; and by my conviction that mental science — so unwisely despised by many — may be made to yield very important contributions to theology. Though I should be considered to have failed in my effort to do this, I trust others will not be deterred by that failure. No one will more gladly hail their better success than the present writer. MR. BALLANTYNE S THEORY. 2 I I ance of duty are greatly increased to man by the reception of such a constitution, they yet do not exceed his ability to meet them. On the principles of Mr. Ballantyne, the dis- positions, affections, and passions of men, are the great sources of temptation to neglect duty ; the power to resist it lies in the faculties of reason, conscience, volition, &c. These faculties, he thinks, might have had so much of energy imparted to them, as to secure perfect rectitude of demeanour, in the case of all men, without impairing their freedom of agency. Such energy is not, however, neces- sary to accountability and criminality. If God give ability to discharge duty, equal to the difficulty involved in its discharge, he gives all that the moral agent has a right to claim. All overplus strength is bestowed by sovereignty. Now, though the difficulty in discharging duty has been, in the case of man, greatly increased by the fall, it has not ])een increased beyond his power to perform the service which his Maker requires. I am quite ready to admit the principle contended for by Mr. Ballantyne — that, while sufficient ability to obey God's commands is continued, the difficulty which either our constitution, or our circumstances, may place in the way of obedience, may be indefinitely varied, according to the sovereign pleasure of God. I am speaking now of natural, not of moral ability, as it is improperly called. In this latter, and incorrect sense of the term, ability to discliarge duty may be entirely lost, while the obligation to discharge it remains in full force ; for ability, in this sense, is disj)©- sition rather than power : and, when our relations to man are considered, who is there that supposes that the mere want of disposition to obey lawful commands, supplies a valid excuse for their transgression ? And, indeed, we find that difficulties in the way of obedi- ence to God are, in different men, diverse both in kind and degree. " Dearly beloved," says the Apostle, " avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath;" /. e. the 212 OBJECTIONS AGAINST wrath of God. Leave the work of retribution to him, for vengeance is his. This precept is binding upon all men ; but who can doubt that the difficulty of obedience is much greater to men of an irascible and fiery temperament, than to others of a meek, and gentle, and quiet spirit. Every man, also, has his easily besetting sin ; the result, among other things, of peculiarities of physical constitution. One is naturally prone to extravagance, another to parsimony ; yet the latter is as much bound to be generous and liberal as the former. It will doubtless be more difficult to him " to deal his bread to the hungry, and to bring the poor that are cast out to his house;" but difficulty does not destroy, does not even diminish, obligation to practise both. I should, therefore, be ready to concede to Mr. Ballan- tyne that, without any violation of justice or goodness, the Almighty might, " on account of the one sin of one man, inflict upon the race the great calamity" — for such he ac- knowledges it to be — " of creating or strengthening dispo- sitions, affections, and passions, which form powerful inducements to sin : " and that this fearful increase in the propensity to sin might constitute the very essence of native depravity. My sole question relates to the facts of the case. Is there sufficient reason, or, indeed, any reason at all, for supposing that the race have actually received such dispositions, &c. &c. as the penal result of Adam's transgression ? Or, if so, that here lies the depravity of the race ? I submit the following remarks upon this hypothesis of Mr. Ballantyne, the major part of which, if not all, will be found to have an equal bearing upon one part at least of the theory of Professor Stuart. In i\iQ first place, I am not able to see a sufficient founda- tion for this hypothesis. What good ground is there for supposing that the race have received the dispositions, affections, and passions, which the theory attributes to them ? Does the thrcateiiinf/, by which the forbidden tree ivas MR. BALLANTYNE S THEOIIY. •2io (juarded, contain the slightest intimation that such a cala- mity to them would follow upon transgression ? " In the day thou eatest thereof," said God to Adam, " thou shalt surely die." Can these words possibly mean that, in case of transgression, his descendants should receive an altered constitution, which would render sin indubitably certain ? Again, do the words of the Judge, when he ascended the tri- hiuial to pass sentence upon the culprits, intimate this ? Does any part of Divine revelation unequivocally teach it ? I am not aware of any. In the second place, it seems to me an unnecessary hypo- thesis. The penal withdrawment of the Spirit of God from the race, and the consequent loss of that spiritual life which is never enjoyed apart from the presence and influ- ence of that blessed Spirit, would afford, is there not reason to think, a sufficiently powerful display of^^God's hatred against sin ; would render the difficulties in the w^ay of obedience — self-love prompting to self-indulgence and rebellion — incomparably greater than in the case of Adam ; so that, although we allow that the creation, or the strengthening, of propensities which form a strong temp- tation to sin, might not increase difficulty beyond ability, yet might there not be some danger of awakening the sus- picion that the Creator was bearing somewhat hardly upon a being free from personal blame, — ^laying upon him a burden to which his strength was scarcely competent ? In the third place, it appears to me a most unlikely hypothesis. In common with the theory of I\Ir. Stuart, it involves the supposition, that the one sin of one man effected, or at least was followed by, a radical change in the physical constitution of the mind of Adam ; and occa- sioned the bestowment upon us of a mind different in its physical nature from that with which he was originally endowed. "By that one sin, the race," he tells us, "re- ceived dispositions, affections, and passions, which prove so powerful an inducement to sin, as to render it indubi- 214 OBJECTIONS AGAINST tably certain that they will sin." Of course, then, they had not these dispositions before that sin ; or, to speak more correctly, would not have had them irrespective of that sin : 2. e. the result to the race, of Adafm's sin, was an entire chancre in the frame and texture of the mind of the race. Now this is to me, I acknowledge, a most impro- bable supposition ; that a moral act — the disobedience of Adam — should lead to moral results, is likely ; but surely not to physical. That it might disturb the balance of his mind, and cause it to preponderate habitually the wrong way ; that it might lay prostrate the love of God, and give to proi^ensities, which had been before held in check, the entire ascendency, is quite conceivable, and perfectly na- tural ; but that it should give existence, or even additional intensity, to dispositions, &c. which are, by Mr. Ballan- tyne's own confessions, physical principles, I find it im- possible to imagine. Mr. Ballantyne may say that these dispositions were not the natural consequence of the sin, but were implanted by God in the race as its punishment. But, unless we have independent and decisive proof that such punishment was inflicted, the singularity of its nature is sufficient reason for doubting or denying this. That the Spirit of God should withdraw from Adam in right- eous displeasure at his rebellion, — that this rebellion should be followed by the infliction of positive punish- ment, is what we seem obliged to suppose ; but that this punishment should consist, not in natural evil, but in the communication or the augmentation of physical principles, rendering disobedience indubitably certain, is what no mind should admit, I imagine, without the express au- thority of Divine revelation. In the fourth and last place, I observe, that Mr. Ballan- tyne's view of the nature of depravity, in common with that of Mr. Stuart, involves us in some perplexity with regard to the nature of regeneration. This radical change in the spirit of the mind is called a renewing, or rene\Yal. MR. BALLANTYXE's THEORY. 21 i> The word implies the restoration of something that had existed formerly. It teaches us that a person thus renewed in the spirit of his mind, is, at least partially, restored to the state of mind which distinguished Adam before the fall. Now, if Adam lost spiritual life, or a holy state of mind, — if he lost the love of God, which had formerly con- trolled all the principles of his nature, — and if this loss, transmitted to the race, constitute the native depravity of tlie race, then we see at once what regeneration must be, — that it can be nothing more nor less than the re-enthrone- ment of the love of God in the heart of man. But, if native depravity be the possession of dispositions, affections, and passions — not originally implanted in man — which form so powerful a temptation to sin as to render the certainty of sin indubitable, then ought not regenera- tion to consist in the removal of these dispositions, &c. ; or, at least, in the reduction of their strength? How otherwise could regeneration be a renewing, or renewal ? If the fall of man involved a physical change, must not his regeneration involve the same kind of change ? And if re- generation be a physical change, must it not require a physical agency ? And, if that be the case, is it not removed altogether out of the class of changes which may be effected by God"s blessing upon the instrumentality of Divine truth? It appears to me that this result must inevitably follow. But, whatever regeneration may be, the Scriptures ascribe it, not to physical agency, but to the instrumenta- lity of Divine truth. "For in Christ Jesus," says the Apostle Paul to the Church in Corinth, "I have begotten you through the Gospel." (1 Cor. iv. 15.) "Being born again," adds the Apostle Peter, " not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the tcord of God which liveth and abideth for ever." (1 Peter i. 23.) The result to which we are led, by this long discussion, is the following ; viz. that original sin, or native depravity, does not consist in the addition of eight degrees to the 216 OBJECTIONS AGAINST MR. BALLANTYNE's THEOEY. susceptibility of receiving impressions from objects of sin- ful excitement, as stated by Mr. Stuart ; nor, as thought by Mr. Ballantyne, in the communication to the race of such constitutions, and in the placing of the race in such circumstances, as would expose them to very powerful in- ducements to sin — to inducements so powerful that they would indubitably be complied with ; but that it consists in the loss by the race of that spiritual life, or that holy state of mind, which resulted in Adam from the union of the Spirit of God wdth his soul ; and which is never found, in any human being, without the presence and influence of that Divine agent. LECTUEE VII. PROOF OF ORIGINAL SIN THE DOUBLE SOURCE OF PROOF — HISTORY, AND REVELATION. We have seen that, hy many excellent writers, the phrase " origmal sin" is used in a generic sense; i. e. to denote the relative condition, and the personal state, of man by nature, — the guilt, as it is called, and the depravity, which attach to him as he enters upon the present world. By guilt, we understand here, not culjja — blameworthiness ; but reatiis — legal answerableness. In its application to the race, it simply means the exposure of the race to suffer the loss of the chartered blessings conditionally held by Adam for himself, and his descendants. The proof of original sin, in the sense of original guilt, resolves itself, then, into the proof that chartered benefits were bestowed by God upon the head of the race ; — that life, in the double sense in which he possessed it — the life of the body and the life of the soul — was deposited in him, on the condition that it should be enjoyed by his posterity if he continued obedient, and not enjoyed if he sank into rebellion. In former Lectures, this proof has been adduced. We have seen that God gave to him a charter of life, — that he violated the conditions of the charter, and thus forfeited life for him- self and his family ; i. e. we have proved original sin in the sense of original guilt. In harmony with these statements, the Scriptures assure us, that " in Adam all die," — that *' death 218 THE POINT TO BE mOVED. reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression," — that "through the ofifence of one, many are dead" — that "the judgment was by one to condemnation," — that "by the offence of owe, judgment came upon all men to condem- nation," — that "by one man's disobedience many were made sinners ; " — the amount of which assertions obviously api)ears, as I cannot but think, to be this : that the penalty of the breach of charter extends to all who are either im- mediately or remotely connected with the beneficiary him- self. As our space is of necessity contracted, recapitulation, on this point, would be inexpedient, and, indeed, improper. The only remaining thing to be done, is to enter upon the 2)roof of original sin, in the sense of native depravity, — the sense so fully unfolded in the immediately previous Lec- tures. It must be especially observed here, that — though we have contended that original sin is in its formal nature privative ; not a fountain of evil, as Edwards says, such as is in its nature positive, but an entire destitution of posi- tive holy principles, in consequence of the covenant loss of that divine and gracious influence which is necessary to their support (a destitution, however, which is invariably followed, unless divine grace prevent, by the corruption, yea, the total corruption of the heart) — though we have avowed and endeavoured to establish this view of the case. it is by no means necessary to adjust the statements we may adduce in proof, to this particular theory concerning the nature of original depravity. The effects of that de- pravity are the same, whatever be its formal nature. We may, therefore, proceed as if no inquiry concerning its nature, or essence, had ever crossed our path. The precise point then, to be proved, is as follows : viz. that in the human mind there exists a native bias or pro- pensity — not intending by these words to intimate eitlier PROOF SUPPLIED BY CHARACTER. 210 that it is a thing (to borrow our former phraseology) or the lack of a thing — a propensity to evil, which, unless counteracted by Divine grace, invariably carries forwards its possessor into actual sin against God. This position is to be maintained in opposition to those who affirm that the human mind, in its original state, is a " tabula rasa,'" being not merely destitute of every thing which is in itself, strictly speaking, morally evil, but of all tendency, of any and every kind, to evil ; and, again, in opposition to those who maintain that it is endowed with a native tendency to holiness— if, indeed, any should be found capable of main- taining so preposterous a position. In support of our position, we have two sources of evi- dence ; we have the jDroof supplied by the character and conduct of men, — and by the testimony of the word of God. I. We derive evidence in support of the doctrine of na- tive depravity from the character and conduct of men : for, if all men unvisited by the special influence of the Spirit of God, commit sin, and especially if they begin to sin at the commencement, or very near to the commencement, of their course of moral agency, it follows, on principles admitted by all, that they must be the subjects of a native bias or tendency to sin. We shall assume, for the present, the facts on which our argument is based, viz. that the entire members of the human family sin, and begin to sin — if native propensities be left unrestrained — at a very early period of life ; and set ourselves now to justify the conclusion we derive from them. Various writers — especially, in more modern times. Jonathan Edwards, Doctors Beecher, Chalmers, and Woods — have dealt with the conclusion itself, and established be- yond contradiction its validity. It is quite needless to do more, on this point, than to present the substance of their argument ; no writer can hope to improve upon it. " There must be, and there is," says Dr. Beecher, " in man, some- Q.'20 STATEMENTS OF BEECHEB, thing that is the ground and reason that the will of fallen man does, from the beginning, act wrong,— something anterior to voluntary action." The reader may recollect that, in attempting to exhibit the original state of Adam, the same mode of reasoning was adopted. Denying, as I then did, that our first parent was created thinking and feeling rightly, it was yet contended that he must have entered the scene of trial not only in the full maturity of his mental and moral powers, but with what, for want of a better word, may be called a predisposition, or propensity, or tendency to the right exercise of those i)owers ; or what ground of certainty could have existed that he would exer- cise them aright?* This argument, which appears to me perfectly conclusive. Dr. Beecher justly applies to the case of fallen men. " There must be some ground, in the nature of the race, for the early personal and actual sin wdth which they are all chargeable." " To say," adds Dr. Beecher, " that all men sin actually, and universally, and for ever, until renewed by the Holy Ghost, and that against the strongest possible motives, merely because they are free agents, and are able to do so ; and that there is in their nature, as affected by the fall, no cause or reason of the certainty, is absurd. It is to ascribe the most stupen- dous concurrence of perverted action, in all the adult mil- lions of mankind, to nothing. The thing to be accounted for, is, the phenomenon of an entire series of universal actual sin ; and to ascribe the universal and entire obli- quity of the human will to the simple ability of choosing wrong, is to ascribe the moral obliquity of a lost world to nothing."'!' " The evidence," says Dr. Woods, [i. e. evidence that all men are sinners,) "proves the moral depravity of man as clearly as the evidence of facts proves any princii:)le in na- tural science. Even the law of gravitation cannot be proved more certainly than the law of sin in man If the * Views on Theology, pp. 1G4, 165. WOODS, AND CHALMERS. 221 law of gravitation is proved by the fact that all bodies, when left without resistance, show a tendency to move to- wards the centre of the earth ; the moral depravity of man is proved by the fact, that, when left to himself in circum- stances which lead to a development of his moral charac- ter, he always shows a propensity to sin."--i= " Even though," adds Dr. Chalmers, in a still more lumi- nous and conclusive manner, " we had outward exhibition alone, we often have enough to infer and ascertain the in- ward tendency. We do not need to dig into a spring to ascertain the quality of its water, but to examine the quality of the stream which flows from it. We have no access, either by our own consciousness, or by their com- munications, to the hearts of the inferior animals ; and yet we can j)ronounce with the utmost confidence, from their doings, and their doings alone, on the characteristic dispo- sition which belongs to each of them. And so we talk of the faithfulness of the dog, and the ferocity of the tiger, and the gentleness of the dove, — ascribing to each a prior tendency of nature, from which there emanates the style of action that stands visibly forth in their outward his- tories. It is thus," he adds, " that we verify the doctrine of original sin by experience. Should it be found true of every man that he is actually a sinner — should this hold universally true with each individual of the human family, — if, in every country of the world, and in every age of the world's history, all who had grown old enough to be capable of showing themselves, were transgressors against the law of God — and, if among all the accidents and varieties of condition to which humanity is liable, each member of humanity still betook himself to his own wayward devia- tions from the rule of right — then, be sins purely in virtue of his being a man; there is something in the very make and mechanism of his nature which causes him to be a sinner." "The innate and original disposition of man to * Essay on Native Depravity, p. 2G. 222 STATEMENTS OF CHALMERS sin, is just as firmly established by the sinful doings of all and each of the species, as the innate ferocity of the tiger is, by the way in which this ferocity breaks forth into actual exemplification in each individual of the tribe. If each man is a sinner, this is because of a pervading ten- dency to sin, that so taints and overspreads the whole nature, as to be present with every separate portion of it. And to assert the doctrine of original sin, in these circum- stances, is to do no more than to assert the reigning quality of any species, whether in the animal or the vegetable kingdom. It is to do no more than to affirm the ferocious nature of the tiger, or the odorous nature of the rose, or the poisonous nature of the fox-glove. It is to reduce that, which is true of every single specimen of our nature, into a general expression that we make applicable to the whole nature. And to talk of the original sin of our species, thereby intending to signify the existence of a prior and universal disposition to sin, is just as warrant- able as to affirm the most certain laws, or the soundest classifications in natural history."* Several words and clauses occur in the statements of Dr. Chalmers (he calls original sin, for instance, " a taint overspreading the whole nature," — "a moral virus infused into the first formation of each individual who is now born into the world") which might seem to indicate the opinion that native depravity has a positive essence. It is not cer- tain that the language he employs was intended to express such an opinion. At all events, I have quoted it, not as an exposition of the nature of original sin, but as an ingenious and powerful defence of the position I am now seeking to fortify, that, " If all men, unvisited by Divine influence, sin, and begin to sin at, or near to, the commencement of their course of moral agency, they must be the subjects of a native bias or propensity to sin. * Wuiks, vol. xxii. pr. 3()7 — 370. AND EDWARDS. 221) No man, however, has exhibited this point in a more kmiinous manner than the great Jonathan Edwards. The substance of his arguments, somewhat generahzed, is as follows. The uniformity of an event proves the existence somewhere of a tendency to that event. For what is meant by tendency, but a prevailing liableness or exposed- ness to such an event ? Tendency may, perhaps, be viewed in relation both to an effect and a cause. In the former case, it seems to denote probability of the occurrence of an event ; in the latter, i^robability of the action of a cause to secure its occurrence. Tendency to a certain disease im- plies the probability of an attack of that disease, through the existence and action of certain elements in the consti- tution which may give birth to it. Now tendency is always inferred from facts. If a tree grows perpendicularly, and not horizontally, we say it has a tendency thus to grow. If water runs down hill, we conclude that it possesses a tendency to flow in that direction. If a tree brings forth certain fruit, no one doubts its tendency to produce such fruit. If, then, the tree of human nature uniformly brings forth morally corrupt fruit, we not only may, but we must, infer that it has a tendency to bring forth such fruit ; i. e. that the doctrine of the native depravity of man is true. President Edwards states, and very correctly as it appears to me, that the previous reasoning, which infers tendency from fact, would not be invalidated, although it should be found to be the case that all " men do good as well as evil — yea," he adds, " more good than evil. The question is not," he says, "how much sin there is a tendency to ; but whether there be not a tendency to such imperfection of obedience as always without fail comes to pass ; to that degree of sinfulness, at least, which all fall into ; and so to that utter ruin which that sinfulness implies and infers." If a certain species of tree, to borrow one of his own illus- trations, somewhat altered to adapt it to our 2'>urpose, ?i24 DEFECT IN EDWAEDS' STATEMENT. should invariably bear, in all climates and soils, at a cer- tain period of its growth, for one year bad fruit ; \YOuld not that circumstance prove a certain tendency in the nature of the tree to that result, though its produce, at all other times, should be remarkable for its beauty and ex- cellence ? It cannot surely be doubted. The production of bad fruit, during the whole period of its vegetable life, would not constitute a more decided proof of tendency to that result, than the production of the same kind of fruit, every seventh year of the growth of the tree, would evince a tendency to the production of bad fruit, at those respective periods of its existence. With all possible deference to this incomparable reasoner, I have not been able to escape the conviction that some defect exists in the mode of putting his statements on this point. They seem to concede the existence of a native tendency, in the human mind, to that which is good, as well as to that v/hich is evil. At all events, I do not see how he could repel a conclusion to this effect drawn by an opponent from his own arguments. " Even admitting," he says, " that men do good," — i. e. irrespectively of the in- fluence of Divine grace — " as well as evil, and even more good than evil, the universality of sin proves at least a tendency to such imperfection of obedience as always with- out fail comes to pass." This is a valid conclusion. But is it possible to grant this without admitting the converse ? If disobedience, to the extent to which men actually dis- obey, proves a tendency to disobedience ; must we not concede that obedience, on the other hand, so far as men obey, proves a tendency to obedience ? — i. e. that there may be two opposite and self-contradictory tendencies in the same mind, and at the same time. This is neither the time nor the place to repel the admission that good fruit is ever produced, without special Divine influence, by the tree of human nature. I cannot but regard its admis- PROOF OF THE DOCTKINE OF ORIGINAL SIN. 225 sion by Edwards, even for the sake of argument, fatal to the doctrine of the entire depravity of man by nature. =^- Sufficient, we conceive, has been said in justification of our conclusion, that the invariableness with wliich sin is committed proves the doctrine of original sin ; or that there exists, in the nature of man, a tendency to commit it. The conclusion rests, let it not be forgotten, not on the mere commission of sin, but on the invariableness of its com- mission. Our argument does not run thus : actual sin proves original sin. The case of the fallen angels, and of Adam himself, would disprove this assertion, were we incautious enough to make it.[f The argument is as follows : — all men, in every age, in every part of the globe, under every variety of circumstances, in spite of every con- ceivable moral inducement to avoid it, — all men have sinned. " They sin, therefore," to adopt the emphatic language of Dr. Chalmers, *' not solely because of the peculiar excitements to evil that have crossed their path ; they have sinned not only because of the noxious atmo- sphere they have breathed, or the vitiating example that is on every side of them ; but they have sinned purely in virtue of their being men." The proper cause, or occasion of sin, in other words, is their own fallen nature. It is tliat tendency to sin — the result of federal failure — of which we have so largely spoken, and which, unless re- strained by Divine and sovereign grace, invariably impels its subjects into actual rebellion against God. The amount, or degree, or virulence of this tendency, taking for our guide the light of fact and experience merely, is to be estimated by the magnitude and turpitude of the sins to which it leads. If all men are sinners, * See tlie admission repelled, in the reply to the last objection against the doctrine of native depravity, at the close of this Volume. + See this point farther argued, in reply to the first objection against the doctrine. XI. Q 2'2C TEOOF THAT ALL HEX AEE SINKERS. there must be a tendency in all men to sin. If all men do more evil than good, they must possess a tendency to do more evil than good. If no man, previously to conversion to God, performs a single action which can be regarded as morally excellent in the sight of God, all men must be de- void of native tendency to anything morally excellent. Hence our Lord said to Nicodemus, " that which is born of the flesh is flesh." It has the mere properties of the human nature, and acts, of course, under their exclusive guidance. To gain possession of higher principles and a nobler spring of action, a second birth is necessary ; for "that which is born of the Spirit" — and that only — "is spirit." Our argument, resting thus, as it does, upon the basis of the alleged fact that all men sin, and begin to sin as soon as they become capable of moral agency, demands that we proceed to the establishment of that fact. The asserted fact must be contemplated and proved in detail. We astert, then, in the frst place, the strict universality of sin, not intending now, at least, to express any opinion in reference to the number of sins chargeable upon each individual ; but to affirm that no member of the human family exists who has not failed to render to the law of God that perfect obedience which it deserves and demands. And as we proceed to establish this assertion, it will be •well for the reader to remember what the law does de- mand. He should not forget that it requires, not habitual obedience merely, but perfect obedience — perfect obedience durino- the whole course of moral trial from the cradle to the grave. It does not allow of a single transgression, even in thought or intention. It holds a man to be a sinner, and to bo equitably exposed to the tremendous consequences of sin, who violates one of its precepts ; though that violation should be a mere purpose to do the forbidden act never brought out of its secret birth-place in the bosom, and, therefore, known only to Him who searches OBJECTION OF TAYLOR CONSIDERED. 227 the heart. It says, " Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." " For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all." He has set at nought the authority of God, and that is the very essence of sin. The particular mode in which the spirit of rebellion against that authority indicates itself, is an adjunct, not the essence, of moral evil. The passages just quoted, denouncing, as they do, every act of transgression, and representing exposure to death as the result of every such act, furnish us with a full and sufficient answer to the objection that one transgression does not fix upon a man the character of a sinner. " No reason," it has been said, " can be assigned, why a single sin should constitute a sinner, any more than a single act of virtue should give the character of a virtuous man." Dr. Taylor apparently intends to intimate, that the relation in which a man stands to the Divine law — as acquitted or condemned — depends upon the character of his actions generally, — that his habitual conduct must be sinful to justify his being regarded and treated as a wicked man, — and that, as by far the major part of the actions even of criminals (in his view of the case) are virtuous actions, the argument, which deduces the doctrine of original sin from tlie general wickedness of man, is invalid. We rej)ly by an appeal to inspired testimony. Will Dr. Taylor venture to deny that the curse of God's law rests upon the man who commits one transgression? If the passages just quoted deter him from doing this, he must admit that that single act of transgression fixes upon him the character of a sinner; for the law condemns none but sinners. Again, we appeal to the principles which even human jurispru- dence practically avows. Does the law of our countiy regard only the man who steals, and takes away the life of others, every day, as a thief, or a murderer? Every one knows, on the contrary, that one act of robbery constitutes 228 ONE SIN INCUE3 DEATH. a person a thief; one intentional and malicious act of shedding innocent blood, constitutes a murderer, and re- quires the government to inflict the punishment which is attached by law to the crime. The obvious explanation of this is, that the principle — from which actions derive their character — of both these acts must be an immoral one. No one can mistake the motive which leads a person to take away his neighbour's property, or his neighbours life ; at all events no one can conceive it to be a virtuous one. It is otherwise with " an act of virtue," — to allow the phraseology of Dr. Taylor to pass without challenge. An act of manifest and intentional wrong to others, must be prompted by a vicious principle ; but an act of kindness to others may not be prompted by a virtuous one. It may be done with a good intent, or a bad one. The action is, therefore, (when its performer is unknown,) ambiguous. It does not justify any conclusion concerning the character of the man who performs the deed of benevolence : it would not warrant our calling him a virtuous man. On these obvious principles we maintain that a single sin may constitute a sinner — may prove that his principles are cor- rupt, and that he deserves punishment ; while a single act of virtue may not, and indeed cannot, give the character of a virtuous man. One breach of God's law, then, constitutes any man a sinner, and exposes him to death, in the full plenitude of the meaning of that word: "the soul that sinneth," says the divine law, " shall die." Now, our jDosition is, that all men have thus sinned, and exposed themselves to this death. Were any proof of this position necessary, we might appeal to the evidence of consciousness. It is common enough for men to attemi)t to extenuate the sins the com- mission of which they are compelled to acknowledge. In many cases no confession can be extorted ; and there may be instances in which a direct charge would be met by a PROOF OF DEPEAVITY, 229 distinct denial. But I now refer not to what a man says, but to what he feels. The statement is, that every man's heart condemns him; that, in the secret consciousness of the race — attested by the prevalence of sacrifice, and other religious rites — we have a testimony to the truth of the revealed statement, " There is none that doeth good, no not one." And in reference to this point, it is especially worthy of notice, that the testimony of consciousness be- comes distinct and decided in proportion to the attain- ments of men in real holiness. In other words, the more thoroughly they know themselves, the more indelible is their conviction that they are sinners in the sight of God. It was not an uninstructed pagan — who, ignorant of almost every thing, might have been conceived to be partially ignorant of himself — but it was David, the king of Israel, the man after God's own heart, that said, " Blot out my transgressions," — "my sin is ever before me.*' "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." We appeal, again, to observation. Taking as wide a range as our limited sphere of notice will permit, can we fix upon a single individual who, in the restricted sense which we at present attach to the word, is not manifestly a sinner? — i. e. who has not, in any single instance, failed to fulfil his duty either to God or his fellow-creatures ? Let the appeal be further made to history. What, then, is history ? It has been described — and, few will doubt,, with perfect justice — as consisting of little more " than a narrative of the crimes and the misery of our race." It is not necessary for me, however, to establish this statement. The argument is valid if it be allowed — and who will ven- ture to deny this ? — that the records of history forbid the supposition that there has ever existed a single perfectly just man upon the earth, — a man who did good and sinned not. And, in reference to the two last sources of proof, — observation and history, — it should be noticed that, with 230 PROOF OF UNIVERSAL DEPRAVITY. our extending knowledge of these sources, our conviction deepens that man is a sinner against God. When we read the history of God's proceedings, every page exhibits fresh displays of his wisdom and goodness ; each addi- tional paragraph in man's histoiy serves but to furnish evi- dence of his folly and depravity. " The more perfect," says the venerable Dr. Woods, "is our acquaintance with tlie conduct of men, and especially our own conduct, the deeper will be our impression of the corruption of human nature. It is not like a case in which a partial acquaint- ance with the symptoms of the disease excites fears which are allayed by a more perfect acquaintance. It is rather like a case in which our first observations might lead us to apprehend that a person is the subject of some infirmity, still, however, leaving us in doubt whether there is any serious disorder, or what the disorder is ; but our con- tinued observation of the symptoms gradually increases our apprehensions, and finally makes it a certainty, that the patient has a disorder of a most alarming character, and incapable of being cured, except by the speedy appli- cation of extraordinary means." — P. 27. Finally, let the appeal be made to Scripture. In the prayer of Solomon, at the dedication of the Temple, for the pardon of various species of offence, we read, " If any man sin against thee, for there is no man that sinneth not," i. e. that is perfectly free from sin. (1 Kings viii. 46.) The assertion is repeated in still stronger terms, (Eccl. vii. 2,) " For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not;" or, as before, is perfectly sinless. " Then Job answered and said, I know it is so of a truth," — i. e. that God, as Bildad had just affirmed, will not cast away a perfect man ; — " but how should man be just before God?" Where is such a man to be found? How impossible will it be to discover a perfectly upright man ? " If He (God) should contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand." (Job ix. 1 — 3.) "Hear PROOF OF ITS INVETERACY. 231 my prayer, O Lord," said David, "give ear to my suppli- cations," &c. "And enter not into judgment with thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." (Psalm cxliii. 1, 2.) All men living must, then, have sinned, or they might have had boldness before him in judgment. Keferring probably to these words of David, the Apostle Paul says, " Now we know that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law ; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Rom. iii. 19, 20.) *' If," says the Apostle John, " we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." (1 John i. 8 — 10.) We have seen that, to sustain our argument, it is not necessary to prove that the human family, like the men of Sodom, have been sinners before the Lord exceedingly. The stress of our reasoning bears upon the invariableness of sin. All men have so sinned as to fix upon themselves the character of sinners, and to expose themselves to eter- nal wrath; they must, then, be the subjects of a native tendency to sin. I must not, however, fail to call the attention of the reader to a class of passages which teach the inveteracy of this tendency, by exhibiting the vast amount of sin which has prevailed in the world in con- nexion with its universality. We may contemplate, then, the moral condition of the world before the flood. It should be observed, that the iniquity of the race increased simultaneously with the mul- tiplication of the race. As the family enlarged, its depraved propensities were more generally and offensively developed. Monsters of iniquity w^ere every where to be seen. The 232 PROOF OF ITS INVETEKACY. righteous perished from the earth. The holy seed became all but extinct. One family only in which was to be found the fear of God remained. " The Lord looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt ; for all flesh had cor- rupted his way upon the earth. He saw that the wicked- ness of man was great upon the earth ; and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con- tinually." Divine justice swept away that accursed race by the waters of the deluge; yet, even that solemn judgment did not stay, in after days, the leprosy of sin. The world was left to be repeopled by the descendants of that just man Noah — a circumstance highly favourable to the preserva- tion of the light and purity of the true religion. But the recollection of the deluge even was insufficient to deter men from the practice of sin. The growth of wickedness was, as before the flood, in proportion to the multiplication of the species ; and, in about four hundred years after the deluge, as dense a cloud of moral darkness hung over the world, as previous to that event. Idolatry became univer- sal ; corruption of manners total and extreme. Nor was this the case merely with Gentiles, destitute of Divine revelation. The prevailing character, from age to age, of the Jews, God's own people, was wickedness. " Ye stiff- necked and uncircumcised in heart," said one whose judg- ment cannot be questioned, " ye do always resist the Holy Ghost." " The Lord looked down from heaven," is the word of David, " upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God ;" and found,, as the result of his observation, that " all had gone out of the way, that they had altogether become filth}', that none did good, no not one." Further on in their history, we have a similar testimony from the mouth of the faithful and true Witness himself. •' Wide is the gate," said our Lord, " and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in. PROOF OF ITS INVETERACY. 233 thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth to life, and few there be that find it." "We know," says the Apostle John, " that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." And the Apostle to the Gentiles, giving a more specific and detailed account of the nature and extent of that wickedness, says, " They were filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wicked- ness, covetousness, full of envy, murders, deceits, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." And, lest any one should imagine that these horrid crimes were committed in ignorance of what is right, he adds, " who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." And, now, I should not do justice to my subject, were I not to add, that the horrible wickedness described by the Apostle, has abounded in the world in spite of all the means resorted to by Jehovah to check its progress. It would not be difficult to present a copious induction of facts, illustrative of the truth of this assertion, in reference to the pagan world ; but it is not necessary to go beyond the Jews. In the land of Judea, the tree of human nature had every advantage of climate and soil. It was planted and tended by Omnipotence itself. What could God have done more for his vineyard than he actually did for it? Yet, when he looked that it should bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes. Abundant was the reason, in the days of Isaiah, for the tender upbraidings of Jehovah. *' I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib ; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah ! sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters. 234 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. How is the faithful city become an harlot ! Thy silver is become dross. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves ; every one loveth gifts and followeth after re- wards : they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them." This statement does not, however, exhibit the depth of their degeneracy. They sank lower than the heathen ; for the prophet Isaiah tells us, that while they dwelt in their own land, they de- filed it by their ways and their doings ; and that, when they were cast out of it, they profaned the holy name of God, among the heathen whither they went. The conclusion we draw from the preceding proof of the universality of sin, in all ages and nations, in spite of all restraints, is, that there must exist in the nature of man a tendency to sin ; in other words, that the doctrine of original sin is a true doctrine. In the most favourable circumstances, the tree of human nature has brought forth bad fruit ; its nature must, therefore, be corrupt. Or, to borrow an illustration from Jonathan Edwards, " If there were a piece of ground which abounded with briars and thorns, or some poisonous plant, and all mankind had used their endeavours for a thousand vears tosrether to suppress that evil growth, and to bring that ground, by manure and cultivation, planting and sowing, to produce better fruit, all in vain — it would still be overrun with the same noxious growth ; it would not be a proof that such a produce was agreeable to the nature of the soil in any wise to be compared to that which is given in Divine provi- dence, that wickedness is a produce agreeable to the nature of the field of the world of mankind. For the means used with it have been great and wonderful, contrived by the unsearchable and boundless wisdom of God, — medicines procured with infinite expense, ex- hibited with a vast apparatus, a marvellous succession of dispensations, introduced one after another, displaying an incomprehensible length and breadth, depth and height of PROOF OF EAELY DEPRAVITY. 235 Divine wisdom, love and power, and every perfection of the Godhead — to the eternal admiration of principalities and powers in heavenly places." We assert, in the second place, tliat the members of the human family begin to sin as soon as they become capable of moral agency. This fact, if it can be established, proves tliat they sin mider the influence of a tendency which is native, not acquired. Were it the case that human beings continued obedient for a considerable period after the commencement of moral agency, it might be pretended that their first deviation from the line of rectitude was the result of a bias, or tendency, contracted after their birth. I admit, indeed, that such a conclusion would be, by no means, a certain one, since many undoubted natural ten- dencies are not developed till many years of existence have passed away. But, tendencies developed somewhat late, may be acquired ones ; those which display themselves contemporaneously with the commencement of life, must be natural. If the race begin to sin as soon as they are capable of sinning, the circumstance cannot be ascribed to accident, but to a tendency to sin ; and this tendency can- not be otherwise than a native tendency. What proof, then, have we of the assumed fact itself on which the argument has thus been made to rest ? I answer as before : observation, and Scripture. First, we have the evidence of observation. We have only to examine the tendencies or propensities developed by children at a very early age — as soon as personal re- sponsibility can be supposed to commence, to become convinced of their immoral character. I readily concede, indeed, to the late Dr. Harris, of Highbury College,* that " much caution and discrimination are requisite to distin- guish," as he says, " between the operation of unholy tempers, and the instinctive impulses of afflicted nature. Those cries and tears which excite alarm may not unfre- * Vide Infant Salvation, p. 49. 236 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. quently be mere expressions of uneasiness, the only ones, or at least the most natural ones, which the little helpless sufferer can employ. It will occur to the recollection of many a vigilant observer, that emotions, wdiich were con- sidered at the time paroxysms of passion, were afterwards found to proceed from paroxysms of pain ; and the well- meant chastisement, which was intended for self-willed stubbornness, in reality augmented the agonies of the little creature, writhing under tortures w^hich it could not reveal. Besides," he adds, "various inferior animals put forth indications of feeling similar to those supposed opera- tions of a sinful nature. There may be found among the brute creation many things very like vanity, pride, rage, revenge, malignity, self-will ; yet we do not attribute these to the influence of principles morally evil." I most cheer- fully concede all this, as I have already said, to Dr. Harris, and the consequent necessity for caution ; yet it is not to be doubted, I apprehend, that " the operations of de- praved nature in children are often discoverable to an extent very painful and alarming to a pious and benevolent observer." If the character of some of the paroxysms be doubtful, that of others is not so. They are manifestly ebullitions of passion, — the deliberate and stubborn rebel- lion of the animal, against the rational, nature, — the refusal of the will of the little moral agent to submit to an author- rity which he knows and feels he ought to obey. The truth of this statement has been acknowledged by men destitute of Divine revelation. " The fact that human na- ture is imperfect," says one who scarcely rises, on some points, to the evangelical standard, "and has a morally defective constitution, showing itself," he adds, " in the earliest youth, was observed and conceded by most of the ancient heathen philosophers ; and the fact is so obvious and so conformed to experience, that it could hardly have been otherwise. It was formerly observed, as it is now,, that man has more inclination to immorality and sin, than f PKOOF OF EARLY DEPEAVITY. 237 to innocence, holiness, and moral purity. A perpetual conflict was seen to exist in man, from his youth up, be- tween reason and sense — a conflict in which man oftener sided with the latter than with the former, and thus made himself unhappy. It was seen that man, even when enjoy- ing the best moral instruction, and when possessed of a full conviction of the justice of the requisitions of the moral law, still often acted immorally ; and this, even when perfectly sure that in so doing he did wrong, and that he was thus in a state extremely wretched."* Now, if it was with man as it should be, he would suffer his will to be at once determined by what his understanding perceived to be true and good ; and would regulate his conduct accord- ingly. That this is not so, experience suSiciently teaches. Philosophy, however, could give no exj^lanation of the fact it was constrained to confess, — that man has a defec- tive moral constitution, apparent in his earliest youth. Acknowledging, as it did, that the great Being who gave existence to man is wise and good, it was fain to believe that man's present, was not his primeval condition ; hence all the fables of a golden age. Still they were only fables. Eevelation explains the whole. The Spirit of God is withheld from the race, as an expression of God's abhor- rence of sin. The principles of reason and conscience — though possessed of rightful authority to rule, and of suffi- cient power to rule, when their directions are listened to, and reflected upon, as they ought to be — never exercise their legitimate influence in a mind where the Spirit of God is not. Hence all human minds are benighted, and depraved, and wretched, till, by God's sovereign mercy, the Holy Spirit re-enters and takes up his abode in them. The infant mind is destitute of the Spirit ; reason and conscience are practically powerless ; and the sad result is, that the whole race " go astray from the womb, speak- ing lies." ♦ Vide Morus, p. 100, s. 3. i^8 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. Secondly, in proof that sin commences as soon as the members of the human family become capable of moral agency, we have the evidence of Scriptm'e. I consider the ai'gument of Jonathan Edwards, on this point, to be sound and conclusive. " By the deeds of tho law," says the Apostle, "there shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for bv the law is the knowledge of sin : " i. e. the work or office of the law — in consequence of human apostacy — is not to justify. It can teach, and it does teach us, that we have brought condemnation upon ourselves ; but it cannot deliver us from it. Now, if no man can be justified by deeds of law, all must have broken the law. If there were an individual who has done all that the law requires, he would be just in the sight of the law, and he might, nay must, be saved on the ground of his own works. Suppose, then, the first moral act of every human being were not a sin- ful act; suppose, on the contrary, it were in full conformity with perceptions of truth and duty, as perfect as can exist in the mind of a mere child : would not all persons, in this stage of their existence, be righteous in the eye of the law, and capable of justification on the ground of their own works ? And, then, supposing they should die immedi- ately after this first act of obedience — and we know that multitudes die at all periods of life — would they not enter heaven, and share in its glories, as the reward of personal righteousness ? I see not how this can be doubted. " This do," is the voice of the record, i. e. do all that the law re- quires, " and thou shalt live." Men die because they dis- obey the law, or reject the Gospel, which, indeed, is virtual disobedience, and the most aggi'avated species of disobe- dience, I do not see the necessity of putting the case, as Presi- dent Edwards does, of the death of these infantile moral agents. Adam and Eve were just, by law, as long as they abstained from taking the forbidden fruit. Must not, then, a whole race of human beings, whose first moral act is, by PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 239 hypothesis, an act of obedience, be in a state of justifica- tion ? — and must they not be brought into that state, not by God s grace, but by their own works ? They might, indeed, fall from that state by subsequent disobedience, and so die uUimately and eternally by their own fault, as did our first parents. But I apprehend that the language of the Apostle does not imply merely that no man will, at the gTeat day, be justified by works, but that no human being is, at any moment of his existence, capable of justi- fication on this ground ; for the words are, " no flesh shall be justified in his sight;'' i. e. in the view of God all men are sinners. The irresistible conclusion is, that the first moral act of every human being is a sinful act ; and it will be found impossible to account for this without conceding the doctrine of original sin, — or that there exists a natural tendency in the human mind to sin against God. Again, the Scriptures teach the universal necessity of repentance. They command the entire human family to forsake their sm, to seek forgiveness through the blood of Christ, — and to pray that God would " forgive their tres- passes, as they forgive those that trespass against them." Now, as repentance and forgiveness imply transgression, there are multitudes of human beings, at this moment, and tliere have been countless myriads of human beings in former days — in fact the Avhole race — who, at one period of their existence, could not exercise repentance, and did not need forgiveness, unless the first moral act of every man is a sinful act. And, if it be, there exists in the human mind a tendency to sin. The same general fact is supported by those statements of Scripture which represent sin as, at all events, commenc- ing at a very early period in the personal experience of men. I may have occasion to appeal to some of them again ; for, it may be found to be the case, that they teach not early depravity merely, but native depravity. At present, however, I adduce them in proof of the 340 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. former only. The state of the argument does not now require more. In support of the precise point I am now attempting to establish, viz. that the first moral actions of men are sin- ful actions, I appeal, then, to the following passages. Gen. viii. 21. — " And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for" (or thougJi) " the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.'' Now, whether the concluding words of this passage entitle us to infer that the heart of man is naturally depraved, we do not now inquire. They teach us, at all events, that evil imaginations originate in youth. Many, indeed, refuse to assent to the former proposition, but I know none who would venture to deny the latter. " The language," says one, " must be considered figurative, de- noting no more than that niost men'' (why does this writer say 7nost men, when God says, the imagination of man's heart, i. e. the heart of the entire race '?) " become de- praved at a very early period of life." Now this is all which, for the present, I care about. Men become depraved at a VERY early period of life ; i. e. their earliest actions are sinful ; and, by the repetition of such actions, they acquire the habit of sinning, or become depraved. How is this to be accounted for, without supposing that they bring into the world with them that propensity or tendency to sin, which, in former Lectures, we have attributed to them — t. e. without conceding the doctrine of original sin ? Psalm Iviii. 3. — " The wicked are estranged from the womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." These words are still more conclusive than those of the previous passage. It might possibly be said that tlie word *' youth," occurring in the former passage, may denote only the later days of the somewhat extended period which is generally comprehended in that term. Here, however, the writer undoubtedly refers to the earlier, yea, the earliest, days of that period. The wicked are PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 241 estranged from the xvomh ; they go astray as soon as they are horn. The first fruit upon the tree of human nature is bad fruit: the tree must, then, have a tendency to the production of such fruit ; i. e. man is by nature a depraved being. I cannot but express my astonishment that the cele- brated Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, seems to wish to have it understood that these words of David express great depra- vity, but not early depravity. Quoting the words, he adds, " that is, my unjust persecutors, in Saul's court, are exceed- ingly wicked, corrupt, and false, addicting themselves to lies, and calumnies, and other vicious courses." This is the more remarkable, since he states, in immediate con- nexion with the words I have read, that similar passages, in relation to virtue, intimate not the greatness, but the duration, or early commencei^ient, of the virtue. His words are : " On the other hand, it is used to denote early and settled habits of virtue; as Job xxxi. 18, Tor, from my youth, he [fatherless] was brought up with me, and I have guided her [the widow] from my mother's womb.' And probably it is," he adds, " of the like import, Isaiah xlix. 1 : ' The Lord hath called me from tlie u'omh, from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name ;' and in other places." I make no remarks at present on Dr. Taylor's exposi- tion of these words and phrases, quoted from the Book of Job and the prophecies of Isaiah, except this : if they denote here, early and settled habits of virtue, why should not the phrases occuring in Psalm Iviii. 3, " The wicked, are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born," denote early and settled habits of vice ? I suspect Dr. Taylor probably felt that the latter admission, if he should make it, would draw after it the doctrine of original sin. Psalm li. 5. — "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." I abstain, at present, XI. R 242 DIRECT PROOF OF from all criticism of the Doctor's explanation of this passage. It is sufficient to state that, according to him, the words quoted are a periphrasis of his being a sinner from the womb ; i. e. as we have seen, from the commence- ment of his moral life. Other passages might be adduced, but the preceding are sufficient to prove that the testimony of observation to the truth of the great fact, that all men begin to sin as soon as they are morally capable of sinning, is confirmed by Divine revelation. Now, if all men thus sin, they must bring into the world with them a tendency to sin. II. In support of the doctrine of native depravity, we have the testimony of the word of God. Divine revelation has, indeed, been already appealed to ; but our purpose, so far, has been to confirm by its state- ments the evidence supplied by observation and history, that all men are sinners, and begin to sin as soon as moral agency commences. On this fact, thus sustained by expe- rience and Scripture, we build our inference that there exists in the human mind a native tendency to sin : to which tendency custom, sanctioned by high authority, gives the name of original sin. Our argument will in future be more direct. It will go immediately to prove the existence of this tendency, or to show that this great doctrine of our holy religion has the undoubted support of Divine revelation. The proof of the doctrine, supplied by the sacred Scrip- tures, may be subdivided, with advantage, in the following manner: — We find, firstf certain passages in which the doctrine of native depravity is, we think, distinctly affirmed. We have secondly, certain statements and doctrines from which it may with confidence be inferred. 1st. We proceed to enumerate and, so far as it may be NATIVE DEPBAVITY. '243 needed, to investigate those passages in which the native depravity of man is distinctly affirmed. It will be expedient, if not necessary, to adopt the prin- ciple of selection — to appeal, not to every passage which might be adduced in proof of the native corruption of the race, but to consider those which are most commonly re- ferred to, or, rather, which appear most conclusive on the subject, trusting that our necessary and explanatory remarks upon them will supply a sufficient exposition of others which will doubtless occur to the recollection of the reader The first passage to which I refer, with this view, con- tains the language of the sacred historian in regard to the birth of Seth. " And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image," (Gen. v, 3.) The question here is, What are we to understand by the "likeness," and "image," i.e. the perfect likeness of Adam, in which Seth was born ? — for that it is the likeness of Adam to which the historian refers, I must be permitted to assume. Dr. John Taylor, indeed, contends that the pronominal suffix "his" indi- cates God, so that the statement really made is that Adam begat a son in the likeness of God. He grounds this opinion on the asserted absence of the word " own " from the Hebrew text. "It should be read," he says, "Adam begat a son in his likeness, in his image." It is observable that he omits the word Adam in his translation,* probably to veil the absurdity of referring the pronoun to God. It is quite unnecessary to contend for the introduction of the word own. Whether we render, with our translators, "Adam begat a son in his own,'' or, with Dr. Taylor, " in his like- ness," the word "his" must necessarily refer to Adam.f * " The words," he says, " stand thus in the original : ' and he begat in his likeness, in his image.' " — P. 178, 2d edit. + I have said " necessarily" in the text, for so all the laws of just interpre- tation compel us to construe it. God is said, in chap. i. 27, to have created Adam in his own image. Adam is said, in the verse under consideration, to j^44 DIRECT PKOOF OF "Wliat, then, was that likeness ? I cannot doubt that, in tliese words of the historian, there is a designed opposition between the image in which Adam was created, and Seth born. The two passages, exhibiting both these events, should be read in connexion with each other, if we would catch their full meaning. " And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."' And Adam "begat a son in his own'' — or, if Dr. Taylor prefer it, '"in his imasje." Adam was created in the ima£ie of God : Seth was born in the image of Adam. Now the image of God, in the highest sense of the term, with which the mind of Adam was endowed, was the spiritual state or life of his mind. This image, as we have seen, had been lost before the birth of Seth ; and could not, consequently, be trans- mitted to him. The likeness, of which only Seth could partake, was resemblance to his progenitor in that moral position, and state, and character, to which he had sunk by rebellion against God. The subjoined exposition of Dr. Taylor, I refrain from commenting upon now ; it will be exposed with greater advantage when we consider the subsequent passage. The exposition itself is as follows : " Adam begat a son in his likeness, i. e. he begat a man like himself, having the same nature which God had given him." The second passage to which I would direct attention, as containing decided proof of this important doctrine, is John iii. 6 : " That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." These words were addressed by our Lord to Nicodemus, yriih the ob- vious design of evincing the universal and absolute neces- sity of tliat new birth of which he was then speaking. *' Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,'" he had just said, *'he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." have becrotten a son in his own likeness. There is about as mnch reason to" suppose that '' his image," in the former case, intends the image of Adam, as " his likeness," in the latter, the likeness of God. NATIVE DEPrXyITT. ^id And why must all men undergo the second birth before admission into it ? — Just because the first or natural birth introduces them upon the stage of existence in a state, morally considered, utterly unfit to enter heaven. A new, or second birth, is necessary to the possession of those principles and dispositions which render the members of the human family meet to be " partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." " That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit," and that only, " is spirit." So explicitly and decidedly is the doctrine of inherent depravity taught by this important passage, as to render it wonderful that any person should deny, or even doubt it. The great modern opponent of original sin has, however, done this. Dr. Taylor thus explains the words : — " Anatural birth produceth a mere natural man ; that which is bom of a woman, or by the will of the flesh, by natural descent and propagation, is a man consisting of body and soul, or the mere constitution and powers of a man in their natural state." Such, let it not be forgotten, is the interpretation which must be given to the words, in order to deprive the doctrine of original sin of the powerful support which, ex- plained as we have explained them, they render to it. The passage must mean, " that which is born of a woman is a man," or, "a depraved man." If the former o[ these senses can be overthrown, the latter will stand as the un- doubted meaning of this inspired declaration. In opposition, then, to Dr. Taylor's explanation, I ob- serve — First, That it is ditficult to free it from the charge of absurdity. " That which is born, by natural descent and propagation, is a man consisting of body and soul, or the mere constitution and powers of a man in their natural state !" The writer has expended many words in express- ing the idea he intended to convey. He might have done it in a much shorter way. He might, for instance, have 246 DIRECT TROOF OF said, for such is evidently his meaning, *' the offspring of a human being, is a human being ! " And, now, we ask, who ever doubted this ? Who ca7i doubt it ? Who but Dr. Taylor would have thought it necessary to assert this? How, especially, can we conceive that our blessed Lord, in a grave conversation with Nicodemus, upon a subject of infinite importance, would have thought it needful formally to assure him, that the offspring of a human being is neither an angel, nor a monkey, but a human being like himself? So universally is it the order of providence for Hke to produce its like, that a naturalist who, in describing a certain species of animals, should gravely inform his readers that it gives birth to the same kind of animals, — that a quadruped does not produce a biped, or, that a biped does not produce a quadruped, — that birds are not born of fishes, nor fishes of birds, would go far to render himself contemptible. It is difficult to see how the language of our Lord, on Dr. Taylor's interpretation, can be exempted from the charge of being jejune and trifling. Secondly, I observe, that the sense which Dr. Taylor attaches to the words furnishes no argument in support of the necessity of regeneration. As it is impossible to deny that they were uttered by our Lord to evince this necessity, it is quite evident that if, on any interpretation, they fail to do this, that interpretation must be either erroneous or defective. How does it appear, then, that all men must be born again, because the offspring of a human being is a human being, and not, as we have said, an angel, or a monkey ? Might we not rather, prima facie, infer from this asserted fact, that man is just what he should be ? — that he does not need to undergo even the slightest change, far less to be born again ? How can the assertion of Dr. Taylor, that he who is born of a man is a man like him- self, supply any proof that he needs to be born again, except on the admission of the great evangelical doctrine that man is a depraved being, and that the child inherits KATIVE DEPEAVITY. 247 the moral pollution of the parents — sentiments, the latter, at any rate, which are fatal to Dr. Taylor's explanation ? To evince the necessity of regeneration, the exposition of the words must be such as to contain a virtual acknow- ledgment that human nature, when it enters the world, is not what it should be. Such an acknowledgment would, however, be a virtual admission of original sin ; and it is sufficiently apparent that Dr. Taylor, in the memorable statement — "that which is born by natural descent is a man, with the mere powers of a man in his natural state," did not intend to acknowledge that his destitution of other and higher powers is the result of the fall ; because that were to admit the very fact against which he so strenuously contends. Still, it may be worthy of our inquiry, whether Dr. Taylor has not, somewhat incautiously for himself, ad- mitted the doctrine of native depravity, though, partly it may be, from misunderstanding it, he strenuously opposes that of original sin. "A natural birth," he says, " pro- duceth a mere natural man." Again, " The natural birth produceth^ the mere pa!rts and powers of a man : the spi- ritual birth produceth a man sanctified into the right use and application of those powers in a life of true holiness.'* A natural man, then — and the natural birth produces only such men — is one who is not sanctified into the right use and application of his powers to a life of true holiness. Now, was Adam such a man ? Were not his powers thus sanctified '? If they were, and Dr. Taylor will scarcely venture to deny it, he is bound to admit that men are not now born in the moral state in which Adam was created ; t. e. he is bound to admit the doctrine, or, at least, a doc- ti'ine, of native depravity. Thirdly, I observe the sense, put upon the words by our author, is at variance with the meaning of the term " flesh" in the New Testament. That term is not used to denote the nature of man, as contradistinguished from that of 24lS DIRECT PROOF OF angels, or of brutes ; but the moral state of man now, be- fore his conversion to God, in opposition to that of Adam, when he entered upon his moral trial in the garden. In other words, it means human nature in its present degene- rate state. A careful examination of the manner in which the term is used in the 7th and 8th chapters of the Epistle to the Ilomans, will put this, I apprehend, beyond the possibility of doubt. " For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death," ch. vii. 5. AMien ■we W'ere "in the flesh ;" /. e. as the words are generally understood, when we were in our former unrenewed state. At all events, the words cannot mean, when he possessed the "powers of a man," in distinction from those of brute animals; since, in this sense of the term "flesh," he was " in the flesh" at the very moment of writing this epistle ; ?". e. he possessed the nature and powers of a man. The words obviously mean, — when he was in a depraved moral state, depraved by the absence of those holy and control- ling principles which adorned the mind of Adam in his primeval state. Again, at the 18th verse, he says, " The law is spiritual; but I am carnal, jieshhj, sold under sin." His meaning here cannot surely be, I am " a man, consisting of body and soul, and having the j^owers of a man." Who can doubt that the words are -designed to convey the meaning that, in the sense just explained, he was a depraved man"? In harmony with this declaration, the Apostle adds, in the 18th verse, " I know that in me, that is, in my Jieshj. dwelleth no good thing." " Does he mean," says one, " to condemn his frame as consisting of body and soul, and to assert that in his human constitution, with the powers of a man, there dwells no good thing ?" Does he not rather tefer to the depraved condition of his natural powers ? — to his i^enal destitution of those higher principles which alone are invariably holy in their exercise, and lead to a NATIVE DEPEAVITY. 249 holy exercise of the mferior principles of our nature ? Destitute of the love of God, there is "no good thing" — nothing holy in the ruind of man. His powers, as a man, have no moral character; their exercise, no moral excel- lence. And Avhen, at the close of the chapter, he adds, " With my fiesh I serve the law of sin," he cannot surely intend that, with his constitutional powers as a man, he served the law of sin ; for in that case what would he have had wherewith to serve the law of God ? And what could he mean by his mind, and himself? Surely, the powers which were essential to him as a man were himself. The word "flesh" evidently intends not the affections of his nature considered in themselves, but, as prone to carry him into transgression, when uncontrolled by Divine grace. At the commencement of the 8th chapter, the terms " flesh" and " spirit" are used in opposition to each other. " To be in the flesh," is to be in an unrenewed state ; " to be in the Spirit," is to be a partaker of sanctifying grace. " To walk after the flesh," is to obey the dictates of cor- rupt propensities ; " to walk after the Spirit," is to be governed by spiritual and holy principles. The term "flesh" cannot mean here a man, consisting of body and soul, or the mere constitution and powers of a man, in their natural state,* because the Apostle says that they who are in the flesh, that is, on Dr. Taylor's principles, they who are men, cannot please God; and still more strongly that, if the Sphit of God dwelt in them, they were not in the flesh ; that is, according to Dr. Taylor's expla- nation, they were not men. Few things can be more mani- fest than that the term " flesh" here is synonymous with a state of degeneracy. It refers to the nature of man certainly, * Or if, to be in the flesh, mean, " to have the parts and powers of a man," the -words, in the connexion in which they stand, must necessarily imply a condition of those powers differing greatly from the condition of the same powers in our first parent before his fall. 250 DIRECT PKOOF OF but to that nature as having undergone a fearful change since it came from the hands of its Maker ; as having suf- fered, as the penal result of Adam's transgression, the loss of those high and holy principles without which the in- ferior principles invariably lead into rebellion. In his Epistle to the Galatians, chapter v. 16, the Apostle says, " Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." He then proceeds to describe the works of the Spirit, and of the flesh. And, as if to prevent the possibility of falling into the mistake com- mitted by Dr. Taylor, with reference to the meaning of the term "flesh," he adds, "And they that are Christ's, have crucified the flesh with its afl'ections and lusts;" that is, according to the explanation of Dr. Taylor, they have de- stroyed the human nature, with all the powers that belonged to it.* It is quite unnecessary to proceed. It would not be easy, perhaps, to state the substance of what has been said in better and more appropriate words than those of Jona- than Edwards : — " All these things confirm what we have supposed to be Christ's meaning in saying, * That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' His speech implies, that what is born, in the first birth of man, is nothing but man as he is in him- self, without anything divine in him ; depraved, debased, sinful, ruined man, utterly unfit to enter into the kingdom of God, and incapable of the spiritual divine happiness of that kingdom. But that which is born in the new birth. • To " crucify the flesh" is not to destroy the human nature, hut to resist the cravings of the animal, antl the inferior propensities generally, to he gra- tified, Mhen God's law forhids the indulgence. A continued course of such resistance will, with God's hlessing, not only hring them into habitual control but diminish their intensity — '^crucify" them ; in accordance with the same general principle of our nature by which a muscle shrinks and becomes feeble, when it has long remained in a state of inaction. NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 251 of the Spirit of God, is a spiritual principle, a holy and divine nature, meet for the heavenly kingdom." The third passage to which I refer in proof of the doc- trine is Job xiv. 4, taken in connexion with chapter xv. 14 — 16, " Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? not one." " What is man, that he should be clean ? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous ? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints ; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?" Bearing along with us the recollection of the general doctrine stated, and I trust I may say proved, in previous Lectures, in reference to the connexion between the race and its progenitor, — and the clear and decided language of our Lord to Nicodemus, which has just been considered, we shall feel no hesitation concerning the meaning of these important declarations. They express precisely the same sentiment with the words of the Saviour ; viz. that a depraved being — depraved by the destitution of all posi- tively holy principles — can only give birth to a being in a similar state of degeneracy ; since the loss of such prin- ciples is the certain result of the penal withdrawment of the Holy Spirit from the race. It must be observed, here, that the lack of " cleanness** to which the sacred writer refers, in the passage quoted, is; represented as the result of the natural birth. " Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing?" The very argument here is, that the derived thing must be impure, because its source is so. This is, however, still more distinctly apparent, from the words in Job xv. 14. *' What is mail, that he should be clean / and he %vhich ii horn of a woman, that he should be righteous ? " The sen- timent is, also, further confirmed by chapter xxv. 4, to which the reader is requested to refer.-!' * " How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that 2 5 '2 DIRECT PROOF OF What, then, is the undeanness of which, according to the reasoning of these verses, all must partake ? Is it natural or moral frailty ? Dr. Taylor decides in favour of the former. Eeferring to chapter xiv. 4. he says, "Job is here speaking of the common frailty and weakness of our nature ; not with regard to sin, but to the shortness and afflictions of life." But if it could be proved that the term ^<*?t i^ ■ever used in the sense of natural frailty, it cannot be under- stood so here. The words translated " clean " must be sup- posed to have the same meaning, in the three chapters to which we have refen-ed. Now, supposing the signification of the term* which occurs in chap. xiv. 4, could admit of doubt, the case is different in regard to the other term which is found in chapters xv. 14, and xxv. 4. In the/or??!^'?- of these two passages, the phrase "to be clean" is obviously of the same import with the subsequent one '• to be righteous ;" and in the latter, it implies that which is essential to being justified with God. " How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean'' (i. e. possess that which is necessary to this justification) " that is born of a woman ?" The object of Bildad was to convince Job that he was the subject, not of natural, but moral frailty, which he by mis- take conceived the latter to have denied ; and by means of this conviction to silence the murmuring of his afflicted friend. "My foot," Job had just said, "hath held his [God's] steps, his way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips," kc. The spirit of Bildad's reply, in the 25th chapter, appears to be this: — "You have mistaken your character. is bom of a woman ? " The opposition betvreen the two tenns, "justified" and " clean," fixes the meaning of the latter. The cleanness denied, is moral cleanness. Man cannot have it, because born of a woman. * I hare not. as I might have done, built my argument upon the mere terms, but upon the contest. The terms are ^7, chapter xiv. 4 ; and ^"^It chapters xv. 14, and xxv. 4, Both are significant of moral pollution. Perhaps one of them may denote physical defilement ; but I have not met with an in- stance in which either signifies natural frailty. NATIVE DEPEAVITT. 25^ You are not righteous or j^erfect, as you imagine. You are a sinner. How, indeed, can he who is born of a woman be othei-wise ? " The preceding statements furnish a sufficient answer to Dr. Taylor's assertion, that " the reason why man cannot be clean is not his natural depravity, but because," as he says, " if the purest creatures are not pure in comparison with God, much less a being subject to so many infirmities as a mortal man."* The fourth passage to which I appeal, in proof of the doctrine, is Psalm li. 5, taken in connexion with Psalm Iviii. 3. "Behold," says the Psalmist, in the former of these passages, " I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." In perfect harmony with this assertion, and as descriptive of the result which mii^^ht reasonably be expected from this naturally depraved con- dition of the human race, he adds, in the latter, " The wicked are estranged from the womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." "Great pains," says Mr. Walford, in his valuable translation of the Psalms, "have been expended on the former passage, to show that it gives no support to the generally received, and most evident intei-pretation of it, viz. that the nature of man is depraved : " so that actual and universal sin is simply the development of the state of his heart. In commenting upon tlie first of these passages. Dr. Taylor says, '' The word '^^P signifies, to bring forth, or to bear," appealing for tlie proof of this assertion to Isaiah li, 2, "Look . . . unto Sarah that bare you ; " and to Proverbs viii. 24, " T\'hen there were no depths, I * What does Dr. Taylor mean bv *" pure " in the last sentence ? I snspect lie has nnconsciously, perhaps, yielded the point in controversy, namelv. that the purity denied of man is moral purity; for how shotdd the being subject to ■■ imii-mities ■' (what is the meaning of that word again?) tend to give natural frailty, or impurity to man ? Do not •" infirmities " consiituie natural frailty ? 254 DIRECT PROOF OF was brought forth;" verse 25, "Before the hills was I brought forth." I acquiesce in this translation, imagining, with some eminent critics, that to justify our English version, " I ivas shajmi,'' the verb, in the original, should have been 'n^:?i3. The remaining verb ^^inorr, he renders •'warmed me," i. e. " cherished or nursed me;" and trans- lates the whole thus : " Behold, I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother nurse me." He proceeds at great length to show that the latter verb cannot be ren- dered, as it is Avith us, — " in sin did my mother conceive nie." Probably he is right in his argument. The verb is from CITS incaluit, in Piel ; and is translated by Professor Stuart, " communicated brooding warmth to my nascent substance." At the same time, the rendering of the latter clause is of less importance to the point in question — the native state of the infant mind ; since, if the English ver- sion should be proved to be the correct one, it is not abso- lutely certain that the sin in which his mother conceived him attached to the being conceived, or the being conceiv- ing, — to the mother, or the child :* and, further, because the great stress of the argument rests upon the former clause. It is well and justly observed by President Ed- wards, that •' if it be conceded that man is born in sin, it is not worth while to dispute whether it is expressly asserted that he is conceived in sin. One would think and expect," he adds, " that a man who allows it to be the testimony of Divine revelation that we are born in sin, would immedi- ately acknowledge that the doctrine of original sin is a doctrine of Scripture," Dr. Taylor, however, admits that we are born in sin, and yet denies original sin. To support his denial, I somewhat wonder that he did not avail himself of the conjecture of some Jewish commentators, and apply it to • Some have supposed that the mother is the implicated party here. They have not convinced me, but I refrain from dwelling upon the passage, because of the at least suppose 1 uncertainty which attaches to it. ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 255 the first as well as the second clause — that not David, but his mother, is here charged with sin ; since that conjec- ture, if it could be sustained, would put this most import- ant witness in support of our views — as so perspicacious a mind could not fail to see — out of court entirely. To sustain the doctrine of original sin, or native de- pravity, we must understand the words as attributing sin, not to the person bearing, but the person born. Thus we do understand the words ; thus also Dr. Taylor understands them. "Yet they do not teach," he maintains, "that sin is native to man, or contemporaneous with his birth." Nor does Professor Moses Stuart admit this. With the latter gentleman our dispute — if we have any — is, how- ever, a mere logomachy. He admits the existence in the infant mind of what he calls the germ of sin — of an innate, cognate, original, native susceptibility of impres- sion from sinful objects, which, just as soon as there is growth and maturity enough for development, will develop itself in j)ersuading or influencing men — all men — to sin.* Now this is, as we think, all that the sacred writer teaches. David does not, we imagine, mean to assert that he was born with anything in his mind which can, strictly speak- ing, be called sin ; but, as we have stated in previous Lectures, with a propensity to sin. Dr. Taylor, however, does not admit even this. lie denies all native propensity to sin. The words, " Behold I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother nurse me," "have no reference," he says, "to the original for- mation of his constitution, but are a periphrasis of being a sinner from the womb, and are as much as to say, in plain language, ' I am a great sinner ; I have contracted strong habits of sin.' The mode of expression adopted by the Psalmist is," he continues, " an hyperbolical form of aggravating sin, whereby he loadeth himself, and strongly • Biblical Eepositoiy, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 48. ft56 DIRECT PROOF OF condemneth the impurity of his heart, and the loose he had given to his unlawful desires." — Pp. 134, 135. It appears to me that nothing could be more unfounded than the latter part, at least, of this statement. Had it been the intention of the Psalmist to hyperbolize the duration of his sin, — or to acknowledge that he had con- tracted habits of sin at a very early period of life, he might very naturally have done this, by saying that he was born in sin; but to hyperbolize the atrocity of his sin, we should have expected the use of different language altogether. Besides, if the phrase, '' I was shapen in iniquity," or *' born in iniquity," could be conceived to be a suitable hyperbole to denote aggravated sin, what proof have we, I ask, that it was the intention of the Psalmist to express the aggravations of his sin ? I can discover none at all. He obviously speaks rather of the inveteracy of his sin — the tenacity with which it adhered to him — than of its atrocity. Notwithstanding all the means of purification, the leprosy still remained. The disease must, therefore, — such became his conviction — be a natural disease. I must have been " born in sin ; " or, in the phraseology we have adopted, must have entered upon existence with a tendency to sin. The fifth passage to which I appeal in proof of the doctrine, is Gen. viii. 21. When Noah, on his coming forth from the ark, offered his sacrifice to the Lord, "The Lord," says the historian, " smelled a sweet savour," or a savour of rest; "and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for" (or though) " the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." The waters of the deluge had vindicated the holiness of God, by sweeping from the face of the globe that dreadfully corrupted generation which they found upon it; yet, though the judgment was not to be repeated, they had not purified the human character. Before the OrJGIXAL DEPRAVITY. 257 flood, God saw " that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth;" and that "every imnghmtion of the thought of his heart was only evil continually : " and, after the flood, we find this testimony concerning the state of man repeated. It is repeated, indeed, in very striking terms ; in terms which indicate that moral pollution is not a thing grafted upon the h.uman character, but natural to it. The divine testimony, concerning the state of man before the deluge, left this to be inferred. From the uni- versal and total depravity of the race, it may be certainly inferred ; but, in the words we are now considering, nothing is left to inference. The assertion that the imaiirination of man's heart is " evil from his youth,'' necessarily implies, if it does not directly affirm, the doctrine that there is a native tendency in man to sin against God. The word translated " youth" signifies the whole of the former part of the age of man, which commences from the beginning of life. The word, in its derivation, has reference to the birth or begin- ning of existence. It comes from t>*3, a word which means to shake off, as a tree shakes off its ripe fruit, or a plant its seed : " the birth of children being commonly represented by a tree yielding fruit, or a plant yielding seed." So that the word here translated "youth," comprehends not only what we in English most commonly call the time of youth, but also childhood and infancy, and is very often used to signify these latter. (Vide 'Exod. ii. 6; Judges xiii. 5, 7; 1 Sam. i. 24.) The opponents of the doctrine of native depravity must however endeavour, by some means or another, to neutralise the testimony of this important passage. With reference to the efforts they make to accomplish this, I observe — First, That they arc obviously unavailing. " The lan- guage must," they allege, " be considered figurative, deno- ting no more than that most men become depraved at a very early period of life." Now, to say nothing at present of the support which the passage even thus explained XI. s 258 Dir.ECT PliOOF OF renders to the doctrine in question (for, if there be no tendency in mens nature to sin, how is it that they become depraved at so early a period of life ?) why, I ask, must the language we are considering be held to be figurative? Why must it not be literally understood ? ^Vhat necessity can our opponents urge for embracing the view of it they have adopted, but the necessity of making it square with their system ? If the doctrine of native tendency to sin be conceded, there is nothing in the words which may not be literally understood ; and, in proportion to the probability that Jehovah, on so solemn an occasion, and in so solemn a manner, would give a true and literal, and not a figura- tive, description of the character of man, is the probability that our opponents are mistaken in the explanation they give of this passage. Secondly, I observe, if we could not prove that the phrase, " the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth,''' certainly implies, in itself, that he enters the world with a tendency to sin, our opponents must, on the other hand, admit that it implies the very ecwly government of depraved appetites and passions, and the very early practice of sin. Now, on this fact, as w'e have formerly proved, and just DOW hinted again, we may erect substantial proof of the doctrine of innate dej)ravity.-''= Thirdly, I observe that, if the language of the historian, standing alone, left it in any measure doubtful, whether his intention v/as to affirm that all men bring a tendency to sin into the world with them, the passages previously considered, and "which guide in the interpretation of this, ought to dissipate that doubt. If the reputed first-born of Adam was begotten in the likeness of his depravity and guilt — if that which descends from a being defiled by sin * How Siiould there be this early prevalence of depraved appetites and passions — in other words, how should the imagination of man's heart — Jicart, let the reader remember — be evil from his j'outh, unless there be some- thinff wrong in the sti\ie of the heart ? OKIGIXAL DEPEAVITT. O59 must partake of the pollution of the source from which it proceeds — if we are shapen in iniquity, and conceived in sin — if the wicked are estranged from the womb, and go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies, — how can it be doubted that, when the historian says " the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth," his intention v/as to intimate, or, that his words necessarily imply, that there is a tendency in his nature to that ungodliness vdiich becomes so speedily visible in his conduct ? To the passages already mentioned might be added Prov. xxii. 15 : "Foohshness is bound in the heart of a child ; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him," as well as a variety of others. I profess merely to have presented the reader with a specimen of those passages which may be considered as directly asserting the depraved moral state of man by nature. 2nd. We proceed to examine those general statements and doctrines which clearly imply that there exists in man a natural tendency to sin against God. I need not illus- trate at any length the nature of the evidence gathered from the source to which I now refer. Every one knows that a distinct assertion of one thing, may be a virtual assertion of some other thing. The former, it may be, so depends upon the latter, that it could not have existed without it. If, for instance, I am told that a friend died to-day, I know that he must have been living yesterday. Now, there are statements in divine revelation, which do not directly affirm the doctrine of native depravity, but which in this way imply it with more or less of conclusive- ness, inasmuch as their truth depends, in some cases perhaps in'oximately , in others more remotely, upon the admission of that doctrine. Under this head of proof. President Edwards has very justly, I think, referred to a somewhat large class of passages, which I place at the commencement of the present series of proofs of the doc- trine. 2G0 COLLATEEAL VIlOOF OF First, those Scripture declarations which represent wick- edness as a property of the species. For, if it he a fact that it characterizes the race, except in those cases in which Divine grace w?Y/r/have modified — we beheve has modified — natural propensities, it is not an accident, but a property, (though it may not have been an original property,) in the logical sense of the term. If man, i.e. the species, be wicked, we seem constrained to infer that he becomes so by a native tendency to wickedness. Thus, from the fact, that water runs down hill, we conclude, that it must have a tendency to take that direction ; at all events, we are justified in dravving this inference, in relation to man, until our opponents, on whom the ''onus irrohandV lies, shall be able to show that the wickedness of the species may have had some other origin. Of this description are the following passages : — "0 ye sons of men, how long icill ye turn my glory into shame ? Hoiv long will ye love vanity ?" Psalm iv. 2. Again, "I lie among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows," Psalm Ivii. 4. Again, " Do ye indeed speak righteousness, congregation ? Do ye judge uprightly, ye sons of men ? Yea, in your heart ye work wickedness," &c. Psalm Iviii. 1, 2. The point to be observed here is, that the persons who were distinguished for depravity are denominated *' sons of men."" It is no ex- planation of that fact to allege, as Dr. Taylor does — whether truly so or not, is not of the slightest consequence to the argument, — " that there existed a party in Israel, inimical to the person and government of David, and that he chose to designate them as the sons, or children of men." So good a reasoner ought to have seen that this, though true, would not be to the point. The thing to be accounted for, as President Edwards says, is, " Why David chose to call the worst men in Israel sons of men ? If, indeed, there be, as we assert, a native tendency in the human mind to wickedness, and if wickedness be its invariable result, the ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 20] phraseology of the Psalmist is at once accounted for. If there be no such tendency, it remains, and must, we think, ever remain, a mystery. In Proverbs xxi. 8, we read, "The way of man is fro ward, but as for the ^jwr^, his work is right." Why should ''man'' find the ''pure'' be thus placed in contrast with each other, if frowardness w^ere not a natural attribute of the race, or of man — and purity an acquired one, — the result of Divine influence upon his mind? " Cursed," saith the Lord, "be the man that trusteth in man," ^ev. xvii. 5. Why so? Because it is added, in the 9th verse, — The " heart, '^ i.e. of man, or the species, "is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Now, how should all men become thus wicked, without a native tendency to wickedness? In harmony with this declaration is the assertion of the preacher, Eccles. ix. 3, " Madness is in the heart of the suns of MEN while they live ;" and the address of our Lord to Peter, " Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that he of men," Matt. xvi. 23 ; together with the language of the Apostle, and of Job : " that he no longer should live the rest of his time to the lust of men, but to the will of God," 1 Peter iv. 2 ; " How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity like water!" Job xv. 16. " Now," says President Edwards, in a most triumphant appeal to his ojoponent, which I cannot refuse m}^ reader the satisfaction of seeing, " what account can be given of these things, on Dr. Taylor's scheme ? How strange it is that we should have such descriptions, all over the Bible, of man, and the sons of vien ! Why should man be con- tinually spoken of as evil, carnal, perverse, deceitful, and desperately wicked, if all men are by nature as perfectly innocent, and free from any propensity to evil, as Adam was the first moment of his creation ?" Why, we ask, should this be said of man, unless wickedness be the rule, 262 COLLATEKAL PEOOF OF and moral purity the exception ? And how, again, we in- quire farther, could ^Yickedness hecome the rule, without a natural tendency to it ? In another class of passages, referred to also by Presi- dent Edwards, we find wickedness spoken of as being man's own, in contradistinction from virtue and holiness. Thus men's lusts are often called their own heart's lusts ; the practice of wickedness is called walking in their own ways, in the imagination of their own heart, in the sight of their oivn eyes, and according to their own desires. Plow can it be doubted that these representations teach that the native character of man is depraved? When our Lord would represent falsehood as the character, and the very nature, of the devil, he expresses it thus : " When he speak- eth a lie, he speaketh of his own ; for he is a liar, and the father of it," John viii. 41. The reader is especially requested to observe, that the previous representations of the natural character of man, are in perfect harmony with the language of our Lord to Kicodemus, already considered, " That which is born of the flesh, is flesh." This momentous declaration, and the passages to which reference has nov*-^ been made, illustrate each other ; and, looking at the whole together, it seems impossible for any candid man to doubt that they teach the important doctrine, that there exists in man a native tendency to sin against God. SeconcUy. We place, in this class of proofs of the doc- trine, all those passages which deny the possibility of jus- tification by deeds of lav/. The following may be quoted as a specimen : — " By the deeds of law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight," i. e. of God. The term "flesh" here must comprehend every human being who has reached the period when per- sonal responsibility commences. The words of the Apostle virtually deny, therefore, that any one of the human race, whose faculties have so far developed themselves as to ren- ORIGINAL DEPEAVlTi. Og3 der their possessor a moral agent, can stand as righteous in the eye of the law. All have sinned; justification by the law is, therefore, impossible. Now, if the first moral cict of every man is a sinful act (and if it be not, it is not true that all have sinned), there must be in man a native tendency to sin. It is thus that the statements of the Bible, concerning justification, render support to the doctrine of original sin. They prove it by proving universal depra- vity; and universal depravity proves, as we have seen, ori- ginal sin. On this point, I cannot but think that some of the argu- ments of President Edwards are inconclusive. "If the Scriptures," he says, " represent all mankind as wicked in their first state, before they are made partakers of the bene- fits of Christ's redemption, tlien are they wicked by nature ; for doubtless men's first state is their native state, or that in which they come into the world." No one can doubt the truth of the latter clause. It is, in fact, a truism. The first state of man must of course be his native state, or how could it be his first state ? Nor would it be denied by an objector that all men, who become partakers of the bene- fits of Christ's redemption, must have been previously wicked men, since a righteous man could have no need of those benefits. But, in representing this state of wicked- ness, from which the redemption of Christ delivers men, as th eh' Jir St state, the President has surel}^ taken for granted the very point in controversy. It is possible for persons to admit that all who are redeemed by Christ were pre- viously sinners — yea, that all men are sinners — without conceding to us that they bring into the world a tendency to sin. They may be very self-inconsistent in admitting the universality of sin, without conceding a native tendency to sin ; but with that we have nothing to do. In conduct- ing the argument with them, it is surely not judicious to represent the two alleged facts, " that all men are sinners," and "that this state of wickedness is their first state," as 264 COLLATERAL PPtOOF OF deiitical things. This mistake President Edwards does not appear to me to have avoided; for, in proof of his statement that all men are wicked in their first state, he adduces the language of Paul, in the third chapter of the Piomans, which affirms the universality of sin ; and he adds, " Here the thing which I would prove, viz. that men, in their first state, are universally wicked, is declared with the utmost possible fulness and precision. So that, if here this matter be not set forth plainly, expressly, and fully, it must be because no words can do it; and it is not in the power of language, or any manner of terms and phrases, however contrived and heaped up one upon another, deter- rainately to signify any such thing." I cannot but think that a severer logic would have shown this able writer that, in these strong assertions, he has gone a little too far. It is, indeed, affirmed in the passages quoted, plainly, expressly, and fully, that, previously to their interest in the blessings of redemption, mankind are universally wicked ; but it is not stated expressly, nor even stated at all, that this state of wickedness is their first, or their native state. That is left to be drawn as an inference — a certain one, we admit and contend ; but still it is only an inference. In short, the language of the Apostle dis- tinctly affirms the universality of sin, but not that there exists in all men a native bias to sin : we infer this as a conclusion from the premises laid down. The argument may be stated thus : if no flesh can be justified by the law, all must have broken the law, i. e. n:iust have become sin- ners ; and if all are sinners, they must be the subjects of a native tendency to sin. The argument gathers additional force when applied to the case of those who are just enter- ing upon a course of moral responsibilit3\ The Apostle's language, as we have seen, includes all such persons. It necessarily implies, or rather distinctly affirms, that the very first action of every child, after the commencement of personal responsibility, is a sinful action, or it could not ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 205 be maintained that all have sinned, and that no flesh can by law be justified before God. Now, if it be a fact, that in all cases the very first actions of the accountable being are sinful, how can \ve deny the existence, in every such being, of a native tendency to sin '? " If all mankind," says Edwards, " as soon as they are capable of reflecting and knowing their own moral state, find themselves wicked, this proves that they are wicked by nature ; either born so/' he adds, " or born with an infallible disposition''' (the phrase- ology here is by no means to be commended) " to be wicked as soon as possible — if there be any difference between tliese ; and either of them will prove men to be born ex- ceedingly depraved." Thirdhj. \Ye place in this class of proofs of the doc- trine those passages which assert the universal necessity of redemption by Jesus Christ. Of these, the following may be given as a specimen : — '* In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins," Col. i. 14. " Thou shalt call his name Jesus," said the angel to Joseph ; " for he shall save his people from their sins," Matt. i. 21. Now, the work of human redemption presupposes the sinful state of man ; for redemption is deliverance from sin, and the punish- ment of sin. Hence, Christ is said to have come into the world "to save sinners;" to have suffered, " the just for the unjust," &c. &c. Now, since an interest in the redemp- tion of Christ is essential to all men, it follows that all men must be sinners, or they would not need it ; that even those who are entering upon a course of moral resi:)onsi- bility must be sinners, since personal interest in the sal- vation of Christ is essential for the child, as well as the adult. If, therefore, all are sinners — if even the youngest moral agent is a sinner — there must exist, according to our former argument, in all men, a native propensity to sin. It might possibly be objected here that, on the suppo- sition of our legal connexion with Adam — a connexion as- 2G6 COLLATEEAL PKOOF OF sumed and maintained in previous Lectures — the affirmed necessity of redemption by Christ woukl prove merely our exposure to punishment or suffering; i. e. in popular phraseology, would prove the original guilt, and not the inherent depravity, of the race. I answer, in The first place, admitting for the present that the notion concerning the guilt of the race implied in the objection is a correct notion, that we cannot conceive of any such sepa- ration in the consequences of Adam's breach of charter, as that one of them should overtake us, while we escape the rest. The constitution established vritli Adam ordained that all the penal results oi his federal failure should reach to every one of his descendants, in every generation of men. Ill this point of view, these results arc analogous to those of federal obedience, which are linked together in indis- soluble connexion. " The blessings of the Grospel," says one of the most admirable of modern WTiters, " are like chain-shot: one cannot enter the mind without bringing ail the others along with it." Hence, in Christian expe- rience, pardon and personal holiness are found in inva- riable union. The same general assertion may be made with respect to the results of federal failure. They also are bound so firmly together, that even the hand of God himself cannot separate tbem. Legal exposure to suffer- ing is invariably accompanied by proneness to sin ; and native depravity is always associated with original guilt.* Were it the case, then, that those inspired declarations wliich affirm the necessity of an interest in the redemption of Christ, contain direct proof of original guilt merely, they would at the same time establish, on this account, the doctrine of original depravity. I reply, secondly, to the objection, by requesting the ob- jector to fix in his mind the precise sense of the term "guilt," in its application to man by nature. We have seen that it signilies not " culpa,'" but " reatus,'' — legal lia- * Vide -p. 11-2. NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 0{j7 bility to suffer the consequences of Adam's breach of the charter. Now, the most fearful consequence of his federal failure was the penal withdrawment of the Spirit of God from his mind, — a withdrawment which must have been * perpetual, not only in his own case, but in the case of the race, unless some such provision, for the return of the Holy Spirit to man, as that which was afforded by the Christian atonement, had been made. Did there, then, exist any need to admit that the affirmed necessity of per- sonal interest in the redemption of Christ affords direct proof of original guilt merely, still, as original guilt is exj)0- sure to the loss, or rather the want, of the gracious and sanctifying influence of the Spirit, the proof of original guilt is a virtual proof of original depravity. I answer, thirdly, that there is no necessity at all for admitting this, since the redemption of Christ contem- plated man as depraved, as v/ell as guilty ; and, conse- quently, as needing sanctification, not less than pardon. The Father gave his only-begotten Son for " sinners," for "the ungodly and unjust." The Son came to "redeem them from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works," Titus ii. 14. Now, since the salvation of Christ regards all men, whom it invites to receive it, as ungodly, — since the inspired record affirms that all men need an interest in this salvation, it follows, by necessary consequence, that, previous to such interest, all men must be ungodly ; and the universal prevalence of sin, especially in the earlier stages of moral responsibility, proves, as we have repeatedly stated, a native tendency to sin. FourtJily. We place in this class of proofs of the doc- trine, those passages which affirm the universal necessity of the new birth. " Jesus answered and said unto him [Nicodemus], Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man" — that is, any man, or all men — " be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 268 COLLATERAL PROOF OF of God." — " That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again," John iii. 3, 6, 7. • It would be entirely aside from my present purpose, to enter at lai'ge upon a statement of tlie nature of the new birth, — to show that it intends a spiritual purification, or spiritual renewal. The following declarations must, for the present, suffice. *' Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds ; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him," Col. iii. 9, ] 0. " That ye put off"—'* the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," Eph. iv. 22 — 24. To be born again is, then, to be renewed in righteous- ness and true holiness. Now the inspired record assures us that all men need this renewal, — that without it no human being can see the kingdom of God. The inevit- able conclusion is, therefore, that all who undergo this spiritual renewal — which all men need — must be morally depraved ; and universal depravity proves, according to our former reasoning, a native tendency to sin. Here, again, it is obseiTable, that our argument resolves itself into the proof which the universality of sin affords in support of the doctrine of universal depravity. An oppo- nent might concede the universal necessity of the new birth, without allowing that the state of depravity from which it delivers is natural to man. It is better, therefore, to show how far the argument really goes, and to leave it there ; rather than to exhibit it as containing direct proof of original sin. The universality of sin, especially in the earliest stages of moral accountability, is so powerful a proof of a native tendency to sin, that we need not desire to go beyond it. ORIGINAL DEPEAYITY, 269 I cannot but feel that, on this point as well as a previous one, President Edwards carries his conclusions a little beyond his premises. " The doctrine of original sin," he says, " in substance, at least, is clearly and directly proved by the alleged necessity of regeneration." This is the point from which he sets out in his argument. And how does he conduct it? He proceeds immediately — very pro- perly, considering the opponent he had to deal with — to vindicate those views of the nature of regeneration which are entertained by evangelical divines. By an admirable train of reasoning, he proves that regeneration is a change of heart — a change which subdues the love of the world and the love of sin, and inspires the love of holiness and the love of God. x^nd, from the whole statement, he de- duces the general conclusion, " that every man is born into the world in a state of moral pollution." It appears to me manifest, however, that the only thing directly proved by the need of a spiritual purification in the case of all men, is that all men are morally depraved. The necessity of regeneration does not directly show that this depravity is natural to them. That is a conclusion — a certain one, we again admit and contend — drawn from the universality of sin, but still only a conclusion. Whether, in the descrip- tion of the disease, thus proved to be universal, such terms are employed as prove it to be a natural disease, we shall perhaps see presently. In the meantime, it apjDears to me important to observe, as it was stated a short time ago, that our argument, derived from the universal necessity of the new birth, resolves itself into the proof which the universality of sin furnishes in support of the doctrine of original depravity. It is possible, however, for an objector to allege that the language of Christ refers only to adults, — that when he said, " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," we are not to suppose that the term man includes children; — that the assertion is, on the contrary, 270 COLLATERAL PrtOOF OF made exclusively ^viLll reference to those who have lived long enough in the world to be corrupted by the conta- gious influence of its spirit and example ; so that we can gather nothing from it in reference to the moral state in which the entire race enter 'upon the great stage of ex- istence. He may argue, perhaps, that the universal terms of Scripture must at times be understood with certain limitations. It is asserted, he will perhaps say, in as un- limited terms, that " he that believetli not shall be damned," as that a man must be born again before he can enter into the kingdom of God. And he may come to the conclusion, that since infants are not included under the former ge- neral proposition, they may not, for any thing v/e know to the contrary, be referred to in the latter. And, if it be not affirmed, he may continue, that infants need regeneration, the passages to which we have referred do not establish the doctrine of native depravity. This objection possesses so much apparent plausibility, that I feel disposed to examine it vvith some degree of care. First, then, I observo there is a very material differ- ence in the two cases to which the objector refers, but v/hich has been overlooked by him. Infants are incaj^able of faith ; they are physically unable to understand the Gospel, and consequently to believe it. It is, as vve con- tend, on this account that they cannot be comprehended in the general statement, " He that believeth not shall be damned." The universal declarations of Scripture must be taken in their full extent, unless it can be shown that so to interpret them would place them in collision with other parts of the inspired volunie. Xow, to suppose that faith is required of infants, would involve a contradiction of those parts of the word of God which lav it down as an incontrovertible principle, in moral and theological science, that natural or physical power to do what is required of us is essential to accountability. I should never attempt OEIGIXAL DEPEAYITY, 271 to establish this principle by reasoning. It is a moral axiom which may give support to other propositions, but which itself requires none. On the other hand, infants are not incapable of regene- ration ; for regeneration, in one sense of the term, — the only sense in which an infant can undergo it, — is an ope- ration of the Spirit of God upon their minds ; and the mind of an infant is not less accessible to the Spirit of God, than the mind of an adult.* Infants must, then, be included in our Lord's p,'eneral declaration concerning the necessity of the new birth. Secondly, I observe, that the very terms by Vvhich that spiritual purification of which we are speaking, as v,ell as the defilement from which it delivers, are described, sufficiently intimate, that the latter is natural to tlie mind, that the malady, of v.diich regeneration is the only effectual remedy, is one which we bring into the vroriu with us ; and tliat it consequently cleaves to children as well as to persons of mature age. ^Yhy else are those unhallowed affections and desires, Vvhich regeneration brings into habitual subjection, called the "old man?" And why is that state in which all the principles of our nature are, for the most part, subject to conscience and to God, called the " new man ? " In the entire moral history of man there are only two states of being, — the old and the new. Since regeneration brings us out of the former into the latter, the old state of being must be our original state. * " In tlie full sense of regeneration — the sense in wliicli it is nsed in re- ference to an adult, comi^relieuding the Trliole of that moral change w'bich has been described (viz. of views, feelings, &c.) — infants do not need, and ai'e indeed incapable of, regeneration. In infants, there are no n)istaken apprehensions of divine things to be corrected; no actual unholy affections towards them to be removed : for in the mind of an infant, there are, in refer, ence to these things, no apprehensions and no afiections of any description." — "As far as they need regeneration, they are regenerated; i. e. an influence is exerted upon them by the Spirit of all grace, which will ensure a holy exer- cise of the powers of their minds, when they become capable of moral per- ceptions and affections." — Vide Divine Sovereignty, 2nd Edition, p. 355. 273 COLLATEtlAL PEOOF OF And why, again, is regeneration denominated the new or the second birth ? I see no sufficient reason for repre- senting this all-important change as a being born again, unless it be to intimate that the ^first or natural birth leaves us in so depraved a condition, morally considered, that we must undergo another, ere we can be meet to enter into the kingdom of God. And that, in point of fact, it was the intention of our Lord to afford this intimation is placed, I think, beyond all doubt by the reason which, as he states, renders regeneration necessary, " That which is born of the flesh is flesh." To become spiritually minded, we must be born of the Spirit ; for " that [only] which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'' It has, indeed, been sometimes thought that the phrase " born again " simply indicates the magnitude of the change experienced by the sinner, as the result of the enlightening and sanctifying influence of the Spirit of God, — that it is intended to intimate that it is one which can only be paralleled in magnitude by a change from not being, to being. I admit that it does this secondarily, and inferentially ; but its primary intention (as the lan- guage of our Lord most unequivocally teaches) was to show that the state of moral pollution, from which re- seneratins: ^'ace rescues men, is their natural state. Flesh only can spring from flesh : to become the subjects of holy principles, and holy feelings, we need a higher birth ; we must be bora again, born of the Spirit ; for tliat " which is born of the Spirit is spirit," and that only is spirit. Thirdly, I observe, that, supposing we should fail to prove that infants arc included in those declarations which affirm the necessity of regeneration, the doctrine of origi- nal sin, or innate depravity, might still be deduced as a certain inference from the admissions which its advocates are constrained to make. For, if all men only — (they allow that the term " man," in our Lord's conversation with OKIGINAL DEPEAVITY, 27o Nicodemus, is used comprehensively of all men) — to say nothing of children commencing a course of moral responsibility — need spiritual purification, and so are morally depraved, it is impossible — on ground formerly assigned, and to which I need not again advert — to ac- count for this fact v/ithout admitting the doctrine of ori- ginal sin. There remains for me nothing but to reply to the most common and plausible objections which have been brought against the doctrine. Such reply will form the subject of the next, and concluding Lecture. XI r LECTURE VIII OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE DOCTRINE CONSIDERED — I^VO CLASSES OF OBJECTIONS. We proceed now, as proposed at the conclusion of the last Lecture, to reply to certain objections which have been urged against the doctrine of native depravity. It will, perhaps, be most expedient to proceed here, as in some other cases, on the principle of selection. I shall not, therefore, even specify, far less enter upon a minute examination of all the minor objections which lie scattered through the volumes of our opponents. Nor is it at all necessary to do so. The interests of truth will be served more effectually by fixing upon those that are most im- portant and difficult, and going into a more thorough ex- amination of them, than by that comparatively cursory investigation to which I should of necessity be confined, were I to grapple with every trilling difficulty which may have been supposed to embarrass this portion of evan- gelical truth. Now, before proceeding to s'tate and encounter these objections, it may be well for us to remember, that the great practical question we have to decide is — not whether plausible and even valid objections may be brought against the admission of the doctrine in question, but whether more formidable objections do not lie against the denial of it. We must either receive or reject the doctrine. Valid objections may possibly be urged -against doing either the one, or the other. The question is, " On INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 275 which side does the scale preponderate ? "' It were ex- treme folly to rush upon Scylla, with a view to escape Charybdis. It is on account of the liability of unpractised reasoners to forget this important rule in ratiocination, that the oppo- nent in a controversy often obtains a temporary triumph over the defendant. The objections of the former are appa- rently formidable ; they may be really so. The latter may not be able thoroughly to dissipate them. The reader or hearer of the controversy sometimes hastily and falsely infers that he is vanquished ; whereas, the only thing proved is, or may be, that objections can be brought against the doctrine in question between the parties, to which the present state of our knowledge does not permit a perfectly satisfactory reply. Strong objections may be nrged against the proposition which affirms the existence of God (for the very idea of a God involves the notion of an uncaused being) ; yet we are bound to believe that proposition, because more numerous and formidable objec- tions lie against the proposition that there is no God.* I must not, by these observations, be understood to concede that any of the following objections against the doctrine of native depravity are very formidable in their nature ; yet it may be well to bear them in mind as wo proceed in our examination. The whole of the objections, which it is my intention to consider, may be arranged in two classes ; the first, com- prehending those which are urged to show that the hypo- thesis of original sin, or native depravity, is unnecessary ; and the second, including those which, as it is alleged prove it to be inadmissible. I. Objections which are thought to prove that the * " There are objections," said Dr. Johnson, " against a plenum, and objec- tions against a vacuum; but one of them must be true." — HJc ^Vhately's Logic : Fallacy of Objections, 2TG ]\IEN MAY SIN DOCTEINE OF OFJGIXAL SIN, OE NATIVE DEPKAVITY, IS UNNE- CESSAET. This class of objections comprehends such as assume that the moral phenomenon — the universal prevalence of sin — may be accounted for, without supposing the ex istence in man of a native tendency to sin. Now, I am not unwilling to concede that, if this assumption could be substantiated, we should lose, standing on the ground of reason and experience alone, all proof of original depra- vity. Still the entire array of inspired testimony in sup- port of it, v.'Ould remain untouched by this partial success of the opponent. The sole point established by him would be this, — that, independently of Divine revelation, we could not establish the doctrine asserted in the nrecedincr Lectures. We might admit this, as we do in reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet contend, with truth and power, that, since inspired authority is incomparably superior to all other, we are bound to believe in the dege- nerate condition of man by nature. The Jirst arrjuiiient, in this class, is one of a very general complexion, and hence I place it first : it is, that men may sin v:itho2it a sinful nature ; — or, in other and more unex- ceptionable terms, without a native tendency to sin. There is, I at once admit, some truth in this statement. No one, it is imagined, whose opinion deserves much regard, ever supposed that the possession of a depraved nature is an invariable sine quel nan of transgression. To a moral agent, in a state of probation, it is essential that he be capable of sin. Immunity from temptation, or from the possibility of being vanquished by it, is utterly incompa- tible with a state of moral trial. I cannot but think that Dr. Taylor,* and, in more recent times, Mr. Moses Stuart, * '• If siuful actions infer a nature originally corrux^t, then (whereas Adam committed" — " the most heinous sin that ever was committed in tlie world) it Avill follow, that his nature was originally corrupt, that he vras made vath WITHOUT A SI2>;LUL natuke. 277 have taken very unnecessary pains to prove the position affirmed ahove, by referriag us to the case of the angels who kept not their first estate, and to that of Adam, Avho took and ate the forbidden fruit. In both these cases, sin was committed by beings in whom there existed no native tendency to sin. Tlie irresistible conclusion is, therefore, that which has been just stated; viz. that the possession of a depraved nature is not a sine quel noii of transgression. But the question is not, I submit to Mr. Stuart, " Cannot a moral agent sin v/ithout a native tendency to sin?" Nor is it, " Does the commission of one sin, by such an agent, certainly prove the existence of such a tendency?" The question is this: "Can it be a,dmitted to be a fact, that innumerable myriads of moral agents, existing by succes- sive generations, commit sin, and that the first moral act of all, and of every one of them, is an act of sin, without justifying, yea, compelling the inference that they sin as the result of a natural tendency to sin?" A single white- coloured animal might give birth to a young one of the same colour, and the event would, perhaps, be regarded as accidental, and might be really so. But, if the entire pro- geny of such coloured animals were white, the fact would force upon us the conclusion of tendency to the production of animals of that colour. Suppose it were admitted to be in itself conceivable (I must not be understood as making the concession), that each individual, separately consi- dered, in these successive and countless generations, might commit, as his first moral act, an act of sin, without a native tendency to sin, the admission w^ould by no means justify us in extending the conclusion to the entire race of man. An inference, true in its application to one in a evil incliuations," &:c., &c. "But, if we cannot infer from Adam's trans- gi'ession, that Ms natui-e wa3 originally corrupt: if, notwitlistariuiug his sinning beyond any oiiences mankind have since committed, it may be true that he was made in innocence ; " — " neither can we infer from the trans- gressions of all, or of any part of mankind, that their natm'c is originally cori'upt," &c. — Taylor on Original Sin, 2nd Part, p. 53. 278 PRESJDENT EDWAEDS. class, — to each one, I -will add, considered separately — may be obviously and outrageously false, when extended to the whole class. The argument of Mr. Stuart, viz. that since Adam sinned without a sinful nature, the entire race may thus sin, is exactly equivalent with the following: " Because a single man may die, at a certain period of life, at a certain moment, and in a certain mannei', though there may not exist a special tendency in the human ma- chine thus to cease its operations ; therefore all men, of diverse constitutions, in every possible variety of circum- stances, may expire at the same time, and in the same manner, while yet the machine may be devoid of any ten- dency to this result." The natural logic of all men would compel them to believe that, though the death of the one man, in the circumstances supposed, might be the effect of accident, the similar death of the race could only be attributed to ordination and tendency.* Professor Stuart has been, in my judgment, sufficiently answered, as if by anticipation, by his illustrious precursor. President Edwards: "Here," says the latter, "may be observed the weakness of that objection made against the validity of the argument for a fixed propensity to sin, from the constancy and universality of the event, that Adam sinned in one instance without a fixed propensity. With- out doubt, a single event is an evidence that there was some cause, or occasion, of that event. But the thing we are speaking of is a fixed cause ; propensity is a stated, * Vide Wliately's Logic, § 11, Fallacy of Division and Composition. The fallacy of Dr. Taylor is similar to that of the infidel who, having attempted to prove that one of our Lord's alleged miracles might have been the result of a very fortunate but accidental concurrence of circumstances, draws the con- clusion that all may have been so. Now it is manifest, that, though he should be able to show, of each miracle separa/cZy, that it might be so, he could not draw the same conclusion con- cerning them conjointly, without a most monstrous fallacy. Because "it is not very improbable that one may throw sixes in any one out of a hundred throws," will any person undertake to affirm that "it is no more improbable that one may throw sixes a hundred times running?" TAYLOR AND TURNBULL. 279 continued thing. We justly argue that a stated effect must have a stated cause, and truly observe that we obtain the notion of tendency or stated preponderation in causes no other way than by observing a stated prevalence of a par- ticular kind of effect. But who ever argues a fixed propen- sity from a single event? And is it not strange arguing, that, because an event which once comes to pass does not prove any stated tendency, therefore the unfailing constancy of an event is an evidence of no such thing ?''* Dr. Taylor, with others, seeks to invalidate the argument in support of native depravity drawn from the fact that the tree of human nature invariably produces bad fruit, by contending that it produces good as well as bad fruit. "With regard to the prevalence of vice in the world," says Dr. Turnbull, " men are apt to let their imaginations run out upon all the robberies, piracies, murders, perjuries, frauds, massacres, assassinations, they have either heard of, or read in history; hence concluding all mankind to be very wicked. As if a court of justice were a proper place to make an estimate of the morals of mankind, or an hospital of the healthfulness of a climate." I would just observe, in passing, without dwelling upon the point for a single moment, that it is perfectly easy to conceive of far more questionable modes of ascertaining the morality of a country, or a district, and the healthfulness of a climate, than the one repudiated by this author — an inspection of its courts of justice, and its hospitals ; but we will let that pass. Dr. Turnbull proceeds: "But ought they not to consider, that the number of honest citizens, and farmers, far surpasses that of all sorts of criminals in any state, and that the innocent and kind actions of even criminals them- selves, surpass their crimes in number ; that it is the rarity of crimes, in comparison of innocent or good actions, which engages our attention to them, and makes them to be recorded in history ; while honest, generous, domestic * Vide Works, vol. i. p. 150, note; also 9th section. ^80 THE A:^S^V£lt OF EDVrAllDS actions, are overlooked only because tliey are so common ?" " Let a man make a fair estimate of human life," he con- tinues, " and set over against the shocking, the astonishing instances of barbarity and ^Yickedness, that have been per- petrated in every age, not only the exceeding generous and brave actions with which histor)'- shines, but the prevailing innocency, good nature, industry, felicity, and cheerfulness of the greater part of mankind at all times ; and we shall not find reason to cry out, as objectors against Providence do, on this occasion, that all men are vastly corrupt, and that there is hardly any such thing as virtue in the world."* In the same strain writes Dr. Taylor: "We must not," he says, " take the measure of our health and enjoyments from a lazar house, nor of our understanding from Bedlam, nor of our morals from a gaol."-i- The gist of the argu- ment of both wTiters, and of others of the same class, appears to be this, — that since good as wtII as bad fruit appears on the tree of human nature, we are not constrained to admit the existence of a native tendency to the produc- tion of the latter. President Edwards rests his main reply to these state- ments upon the invariableness of the production of the latter kind of fruit. " The objection," he says, " is invalid, because the inquiry is not concerning the amount of evil, or the degree in which man is prone to sin, but whether there be not, in his nature, a tendency to at least as much evil fruit as the human tree produces even when placed in the most favourable circumstances for bearing good fruit." Now, I have no doubt that this answer fully meets and overthrows one part of the objection. It is all-sufficient to evince the existence of a tendency to the production of evil fruit; but there is another part of the objection which, as it seems to me, it fails to meet. Dr. Taylor is clearly en- titled to say to President Edwards, "If the invariable * Vide Itloral riiilosophy, pp. 289, 290. + Vich Original Sin, p. 77, 78. • THE PilOPEK ANSY>'ER. 28 I proJuction of bad fruit (which is your position) proves a tendency to that result, then it follows that the invariable production of good fruit (v/hich is my position) proves also a tendency to that result. Or, conversely, if you do not admit that the production of good fruit — whatever be its amount — establishes the fact of a good tendency, you are not entitled to require me to admit that bad fruit — what- ever be its amount — proves a bad tendency." Now, I confess, I see no invalidity in Dr. Taylor's argument. If one kind of fruit evince tendency, the same must be the case with every kind of fruit. The error is not in the reasoning, but in the premiss, of our opponent. We must, I believe, impeach his premises, or admit his conclusion ; i. c. in other words, we must show that none of the native produce of the tree of human nature is good fruit; or, in other vrords again, that no works done before regeneration — in the sense in which all evangelical divines understand the term — are good works. And such is the doctrine avowed in the Articles of the Church of England, — a doctrine, as I will endeavour to show, in perfect agreement with the well-established prin- ciples of ethical science, and with the testimony of Divine revelation. The twelftli Article of that Church affirms, that good works are the fruits of faith, and follow after jus- tification. The thirteenth states, that "v/orks done before the grace of God, and the inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasing to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ;" — "yea, rather, for that tliey are not done as God hath v/illed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not that they have the nature of sin.'' By a non- natural interpretation, — such as would explain the term " darkness" by the word " light" — it may be possible, in- deed, to extract from these Articles the dogma that the works of the unbeliever merit the grace of God, and the kingdom of heaven ; but this is an interjiretation which no honest man can put upon them. And the Articles, under- 28*^ NO GOOD WOKES stood in their natural sense, are in harmony, as I have said, with all just views of moral science. It is an esta- blished doctrine in ethics, that the principle of an action determines its moral character. " Whatsoever cometh not out of a sense of duty," says Dr. Chalmers, " hath no moral character in itself, and no moral approbation is due to it." An action might be voluntary ; it might be a right action : i. e. it might be such as is required by the relations sus- tained by the agent (for there is a clear distinction between the rectitude of an action, and the virtue of the agent*), yet it might confer no virtuousness upon him, because it might be prompted by emotion, by self-interest, by regard to the opinions and wishes of others, and not by a sense of duty. Now, it is maintained, that many at least of the actions, so highly applauded in the preceding quotations, do not *' come out of a sense of duty." They are the result of constitutional temperament, — are induced by custom, or the hope of personal benefit ; but they do not flow from a conviction of their intrinsic rectitude. Suppose the maxims — "Honesty is the best policy," "He that would have a friend, must show himself friendly," — were not true ; sup- pose they were the reverse of the truth, how much of the honesty and generosity of the world would remain ? Every one knows that many an honest man, and many a truth- telling man — as we, judging from appearance merely, de- signate them — would cheat, and utter falsehoods, if they thought their worldly interests would be promoted by it. Will any system of ethics permit us to regard such men as virtuous men ? — the fruit they bear, as good fruit ? I do not venture to affirm that all the honesty, and kindness, and generosity of the world would disappear if self-interest were uniformly on the side of the wrong and hard-hearted action, instead of the right and generous one ; nor is it essential to my argument to prove this. There are cases * Vide Dr. Chalmers on the Emotions. PREVIOUS TO KEGEXEEATICN. 283 in which a strong constitutional tendency to sympathy and kindness comes in aid of a feeble sense of duty ; and the man, in whom it is found, is more tender and liberal than others, as the lamb — and for the same reason that the Iamb — is more gentle than the tiger. There may be cases, too, in which honesty is prompted, not by a mere regard to self-interest, but by a sense of duty. " My fellow-men," — an individual may say — " have a right to be dealt honestly by; I ought to respect their right." He does so. But, though what he does is in itself right, and though he may tlius act under a sense of duty to man, he may not be a virtuous man, because God, and his rightful authority over him, have not been recognised and regarded. True mo- rality is the discharge of all the duties which arise out of all the relations in which we are placed. God is one of the various beings to whom we sustain relations ; so that, if our duties to him be neglected, we are immoral beings ; as the man who discharges his duties to his friends, or neighbours, or country, but deserts his family, is an im- moral man. Now, obedience to God is a duty arising out of the relation in which we stand to him as our Creator. If any man fail to discharge this duty, he is guilty of immo- rality, — of the grossest, the highest species of immorality ; for, " since God is the first and greatest being in the uni- verse, obedience to him is the first of duties — a duty para- mount to all others, and which — if obligation to creatures and to God could ever come into conflict — must be dis- charged, even if it involve the sacrifice of all others." Now, tlie authority of God has been interposed on behalf of rela- tive and social obligations. We are doubtless bound to man to discharge our duties to him, but we are further bound to God to do this ; so that, if our deeds of honesty and kindness towards men are not performed as acts of obedience to God, we are immoral beings. God has a charge against us, if man has none. It is likely that a eeble sense of duty to man, will accompany a feeble sense 284 WHAT IS ESSENTIAL of duty to God ; but, if a case should be found in which the former is strong, and a case even in which it formed the habitually governing principle of a man, so that it might be said with truth of him that he acted justly and kindly towards others because he thought it right to them to do so, he might yet be an ungodly — that is, an immoral — man, just because he did not thus act, because he thought it right to God to do so. His conduct evinced no regard to God's authority and law, and was, therefore, devoid of' the very essence of virtue. All who admit the existence and government of God (and with others we have at present no controversy) must con- fess the truth of the great principle in ethical science thus briefly expounded. It may be expedient to observe, how- ever, that it is confirmed by the " manner in whicli rela- tive and social duties, and, in fact, all duties, are enforced in the sacred Scriptures. Children are commanded to obey their parents in the Lord; parents to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; ser- vants to obey their masters in singleness of heart, as unto Christ; and masters to be 'just and kind unto their ser- vants, as having an eye to their Master in heaven ; while the inspired -switer adds, 'And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men.'* Thus our obligations to men are to be discharged from regard to the authority of God ; and this, not because it is not a right act for parents to love their children, and children to obey their parents ; but because it is the highest act of rectitude to * Tlie injunction, "Do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men" cannot mean that we are to have no resi^ect to the claims of men u^ion us ; for true morality pays practical regard to the claims of all beings upon us. The Avords imply that, in the discharge of relative and social duties, we .are not to respect the claims of men merely, hut the claims of God also : in other words, that social and relative duties must he discliarged as an act of obedi- ence to God, who has interposed his authority by commanding us to observe them. TO MOEALITY. '£ OF Original Sln' is Ls'ADiussiBLE. The Jirst objection of this class which I notice is this, *' that the hypothesis of original sin is incompatible with the very nature of sin." Sin, we are told, is the transgression of the law. It is the neglect of what God has commanded, or the doing of that which he has forbidden. It necessarily implies voli- tion ; for an involuntar}- action, how dreadful soever may be its results, is never regarded, and cannot be regarded, as an act of sin. Now, the corruption which orthodox divines ascribe to man's nature is not, adds the objector, an action at all, far less a voluntary action. If such cor- ruption existed, it could not be sin ; it might be the misfortune, but could not be the fault of the unhappy possessor. Thus writes Dr. Taylor, of Norwich : " Any want of conformity to the law of God is sin only so far as any creature is capable of conformity to it. Ignorance, and the absence of virtuous action, in an infant, is no sin ; because in that state it is incapable of it, through a natural defect of power."' — P. 98. Again, after affirming that the doctrine of original sin implies — what Jonathan Edwards, let it not be forgotten, denies — that '• some qualit}- or other is infused into our nature, not from the choice of our own minds, but like a taint, tincture, or infection, altering the natural constitution, faculties, and dispositions of our souls, absolutely independent of ourselves, and not from the will of God ; — that this taint runs like a stream from generation to generation, and is transmitted among ourselves from one to another, which God looks on, seeth the thing done, and hateth and curseth us for it : which supposeth that he FIEST OBJECTION STATED AND REPLIED TO. 299 hath no hand in it (for how could he hate us for it, if it ■were of his own doing ?) ; and yet, on the other hand, all sides allow that it is what we can neither help nor hinder, and, consequently, cannot be our fault : and then, how can it be a moral taint or corruption? Can there be any moral corruption in us which we neither can, nor ever could help or hinder ? — which is not our fault ? Surely it is quite impossible, and directly repugnant to the nature of things. For nature cannot be morally corrupted, but by the will, — the depraved choice of a moral agent: neither can any corrupt my nature, or make me wicked, but I myself." — Pp. 187, 188. Again, " By propagation it is not possible pai'ents should communicate vice, which is always the faulty choice of a person's own will, otherwise it is not vice.'" — P. 190. Vide also, p. 232. Mr. Stuart, also, in common with Dr. Taylor, and with most of the new school of theology, in America, denies original sin, both imputed and inherent. Yet believing, as he does, that the first moral act of ever}- human being is a WTong act, he is compelled to admit, and he does most freely admit, the existence of some cause or occasion in the mind to account for this universal transgression. After this frank and full admission by Mr. Stuart, I can- not but think that the difference between him and the great body of intelligent evangelical divines of this countrj' — startling, as at fii'st view his explicit denial of original sin undoubtedly is — may be one in appearance more than in reality : for this cause or occasion of all actual sin, which he conceives to exist in the mind by nature, is what we mean by original sin. Our phraseolog}' may not have been well chosen. I have already expressed my conviction that this is the case ; but we never fail to make the due distinction between actual and original sin. I suppose no person amongst us, who has fully reflected upon the sub- ject, understands the term sin, in the two cases, in precisely the same sense. It has long appeai'ed to me, at any rate, 300 EXPLANATIONS. that actual transgression is that which can alone, with strict propriety, be called sin, — and that original sin is rather a tendency to sin, than sin itself. I cannot think that man a wise defender of evangelical truth, who at- tempts, or even seems, to identify two things which must, in the very nature of the case, be diverse from each other; viz. the conscious and voluntary violation of God's law, and that state of the infant mind, be it what it may, which, unless Divine grace prevent, invariably leads to such violation. The objection of Dr. Taylor, now under consideration, is therefore, at any rate, partly built upon a i:ietitio principii. He proves, as I am willing to admit, that no sin, in one sense of the term, exists in the infant mind ; but he does not prove that no sin, in another sense of the term, is to be found in it. Now, it so happens that, in that sense of the term in which he denies the existence of sin, we have never affirmed its existence ; and that, in that other sense of the term in which we maintain its existence, the objec- tion does not deny it. In fact. Dr. Taylor proves that there is no actual sin in the mind of an infant a span long. It is enough to reply, " no one conceives of its existence." Should there, however, be found any indiscriminating men who identify original and actual sin, or appear to ima- gine that the tendency to sin which, in these Lectures, has been predicated of every man by nature — (a tendency superinduced not by his own fault, but that of another) — can present the same moral aspect to the eyes of the great and holy God, with that acquired tendency to sin which is, in the case of ungodly men, the result of repeated acts of sin, — that to Him the former is not less abominable than the latter, and deserves, equally with it, the vengeance of eternal fire ; I will only permit myself to say of them, that I cannot think they have well considered the matter. The displeasure of God against Adam has led to the existence in man of the original tendency to sin ; but personal blame SOURCE OF THE OBJECTION. 301 — awakening, as in all cases it does, Divine anger — does not rest upon any man till this tendency has developed itself in an act of sin ; i. e. till the infant has become a moral agent; has gained the knowledge of right and wrong ; and done that which he knows to be wrong. Pre- vious to the existence of such knowledge, this tendency to sin, which must be resolved, as we have seen, into the necessarily active nature of the inferior principles, or rather into the loss of those higher principles which would have kept the inferior ones in control, can have no moral character. It is similar, in this point of view, to the in- stincts of animals. All acquired tendencies to evil are sinful, since they are the result of voluntary evil action. And it is, perhaps, from failing to discriminate between tendencies brought upon us by the fault of another, and those which we bring upon ourselves, that misconceptions have arisen, and been propagated, dangerous, I cannot but think, to evangelical truth. The proneness to regard this native tendency to sin as possessed of positive existence — as a moral taint infused into the nature of man, may also have had influence in fostering the mistake to which reference has just been made. It is possible, too, that our ordinary and, I admit, correct mode of estimating the moral character of actions, may have further conduced to this. Actions, we state justly, have no moral character per se. They are virtuous or vicious according to the principle from which they spring. The principle must be morally wrong if the action be so. Hence they infer that, as original depravity is the source of all actual sin, its moral character must be given up to condemnation, and that its very existence in the mind, even before it develops itself in action, may justly expose a person, or a race, to the vengeance of eternal fire. They forget, however, who reason thus, that involuntary developments of natural susceptibilities have no moral character ; that no natural propensity does or can lead to 302 SECOND OBJECTION STATED. action without the interposition of volition ; that a mere desire, growing out of natural propensity — i. e. of the frame and texture of the mind — to take some forbidden good — as in the case of Eve, who desired to take the apple — may be perfectly innocent ; and that the moral evil only commences — as it did in the case of Eve — when desire is followed by determination or volition to take it. It follows from this that original depravity, or, in other words, the inferior, and especially the animal, propensities of our nature, uncon- trolled by higher principles, though the ultimate spring of all actual sin, may not have, nay, cannot have, any moral character x>^r se. An unconverted man is blameable, not because he has principles in his nature which prompt to sin (for our first parents had such in the state of innocence), but for yielding to their promptings, — for determining to gi-atify them, though reason, and conscience, and revela- tion forbid. And that is his own act. When we say that the principle which prompts an action determines its moral character, we mean, or should mean, by principle, not an involuntary natural propensity, but the determination or intention, or rather the aim of the mind, — the final end the person seeks to secure. If the aim be to glorify God, the action is virtuous ; if to promote his own separate and selfish ends, it is vicious. The second objection of this class, to which I refer, is that, " if human beings bring into the world with them a tendency to sin, that tendency must be physical in its nature." No objection against the doctrine of original sin has been more frequently and strongly urged across the At- lantic than this. A native propensity to sin, it is argued, must, if it exist, be of the same nature with our affections, desires, &c., which are confessedly physical properties. Now, suppose we were to admit this, what results would follow? The objector would tell us, perhaps, that, in this case, the propensity to sin could not with more justice be SECOND OBJECTION STATED. 303 thought to be a sinful propensity, than an affection, or de- sire, essential to man, when considered per se. After our recent admissions, this conclusion would not, of course, give us much concern. I have conceded that the tendency to sin, which these Lectures predicate of man by nature, has not a moral character. It is a most noxious and in- jurious tendency, but not a criminal one, i. e. a tendency involving personal blame, and exposing, per se, to condem- nation and misery. It calls, indeed, for deep humility, but not contrition. The objector might further urge, perhaps, that if it be physical in its nature, we cannot be held to be responsible for its developments and results. I beg most distinctly to deny this. None of our natural propensities are, as we have just seen, in immediate contact with action. They are inducements to action, but there must be, as I again state, an intervening determination to act, ere they produce action. A man may be in circumstances which occasion him great pain. He cannot fail to have a desire of relief from that pain. Such desire is a necessary feeling, grow- ing out of the constitution of his mind. It is, in those circumstances, independent of volition ; it is neither pro- duced by volition, nor can it be directly extinguished by volition. Yet that desire, unless it originate volition to re- move himself from the circumstances which occasion the pain — supposing removal possible — would not carry him away from them. Desire, as stated above, is never in im- mediate contact with action. Supposing, then, the native tendency to sin, i. e. to actual sin, or positive violations of God's law, which we ascribe to man as one of the effects of the fall, were physi- cal in its nature ; suppose it were a positive propensity not to action merely, but to sinful action, I am prepared to deny that, even in that case, we should be relieved from responsibility in the performance of the action. This supposed physical propensity or tendency to sinful action, 304 EXAMINATION OF AND BEPLY TO would be just as little in immediate contact with the action, as the desire to be relieved from the painful circumstances — in the case just referred to — was with the act of remov- ing from them. There must intervene a determination, or volition, to perform the sinful action, ere it could be performed. Now the supposed propensity to perform it, or the desire to which it may give birth, is, no doubt, an inducement to determine to perform it ; but it does not necessarily produce the determination; and it is for the determination that, on this hypothesis, we should be re- sponsible. I admit that, on the principles of the objector, we should not be responsible for the propensity to perform the action ; any more than the person in the circumstances supposed would be responsible for the desire to remove from the cause of pain. Both the propensity, and the de- sire, would be necessary feelings growing out of the make of the mind ; but they ought to be controlled by reason and conscience ; and, if an individual should suffer him- self to be governed by feeling rather than by these mani- festly higher and ruling principles, he must expect to be called to give an account of his conduct to God.* I have so far reasoned on the concession that original tendency to sin is physical in its nature. It may be well to investigate this point somewhat carefully. Previously * " The Scripture acccmnt of the fatal and important consequences of the first transgression, shows how superficial are the usual apologies made by wretched mortals in excuse of their vices and follies, One crime is the efi'ect of thoughtlessness ; they did not, forsooth, consider how bad such an action was. Another is a natural action. Drunkenness is only an immoderate in- dulgence of a natui-al appetite. Have such excuses as these been thought sufficient in the case before us ? The eating of tlie forbidden fruit, was only indulging a natural appetite dii-ectly contrary to the Divine command ; and it is likely that our first pai-ents did not duly attend to all the probable conse- quences of their transgression. But neither of these apologies, nor the inexperience of the ofi'enders, nor their being overcome by temptation, was sufficient to avert the Divine displeasure, the marks of which we and our world bear to this liour." — Burgh's Dignity of Human Nature, p. 345; also Orinfield's Connexion, pp. 386, 387. THE SECOND OBJECTION. 305 to doing this, however, I embrace the opportunity, sup- plied by what has been said, of repelling here, rather than in a separate form, the objection of our opponents that the doctrine of original sin represents sin as unavoidable. Thus writes Dr. Taylor : " What can be more destructive of virtue than to have a notion that you must, in some degree or other, be necessarily vicious ? And hath not the common doctrine of original sin a manifest tendency to propagate such a notion ? And is it not to be feared so many children of good parents have degenerated, be- cause in the forms of religious instruction they have im- bibed ill principles, and such as really are contrary to holiness? — for to represent sin as natural, as altogether unavoidable, is to embolden in sin, and to give not only an excuse, but a reason for sinning." Now, I ask, what pretence our statements, concerning a native tendency to sin, afford for the charge that, if they are correct, " men must necessarily be vicious," — " that sin is altogether unavoidable," — that "we are in nature worse than the brutes?" Supposing there were in man a positive propensity to sinful actions, do we represent it as necessary to gratify that propensity? Are we not en- titled to say, and do we not, in fact, say that, like other natural propensities, it should be put under the control of reason and conscience? And, if a person does not do this, ought he not to be censured and condemned? In imparting to him the principles of reason and consci- ence, God has given to him sufficient power to resist and control animal appetites, as well as all natural propen- sities. If he fail to exert that power, the blame rests upon himself, and upon himself exclusively. Brutes are destitute of reason and conscience. They 7nust, therefore, act under the impulse of natural propensities. It is the high dignity of man to be raised above this necessity.* I confess that statements occur in the works of Augus- * Vide note, p. 295, 306 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO tine which I can think of no otherwise than as highly objectionahle. According to his theory, the nature of man is so deeply corrupted, that he can do no otherwise than sin. Original sin is such a quality of the nature of man, that, in his natural state, he can will and do evil only. It was the Augustinian doctrine, that man has lost free will by the fall ; or rather that original sin, as a moral punishment, consisted especially in this, that man by nature is utterly incapable of good. This language, if understood literally, would destroy the accountability of man. What man cannot do — understanding the term cannot in its literal sense — he cannot be bound to do ; and cannot be justly punished for not doing. The inability to do good, which the fall has entailed upon man, is nothing more than in- disposition to do good : an indisposition, I grant, wdiich is never, in point of fact, vanquished but by special divine influence ; but yet such a kind of indisposition, as in human transactions is never thought to hold a man blame- less for refraining to do what duty requires. But, to return from this short though not unimportant digression, let us inquire whether the depravity which, as all affirm, is natural to man, is physical depravity. The very phrase is, to my mind, self-contradictory; but I do not dwell upon this point. I ask in what sense original sin can be said to be physical depravity ? The organ of the old school of theology, in America, tells us that it is only in one view of the doctrine that it can v/ith any pro- priety of language be thus designated, — that view, viz. which conceives of it, "as residing in the material part of our system, as being external to the soul, and inde- pendent of it."* The writer seems to think that what we call animal appetites reside in the body ; so that, if native depravity consisted either in such appetites themselves, or in some increased strength and impetuosity which they may have derived from the fall, it would then be physical * Biblical Eepertory, vol. iii. p. 321. THE SECOND OBJECTION. 307 depravity. I imagine that the metaphysics of this gentle- man are very incorrect. Only in a loose, and popular, and grossly unphilosophical sense, can it be said that an animal appetite, as we designate it, resides in the body. All such appetites have their proper seat in the mind. They are mental properties. The cause may be in the body, as the cause of vision is a certain state of the optie nerve ; but the appetite itself, in both senses of the term appetite, is like actual vision in the mind. The cause of hunger, for instance, may be a certain state of the stomach, produced, perhaps, by the action of the gastric juice upon it.- But the hunger itself — i. e. the pain, and the accompanying desire of relief — is in the mind. It is one of the grossest mistakes to suppose that for anything to be physical it must be material. Everything that has heincj possesses physical existence. The mind is a physical substance, though not a material one. All its properties are physical properties, — its powers of thinking and feel- ing are physical powers ; for the words denote a certain constitution or make of the mind, by virtue of which it is capable of thus thinking and feeling. Now, if there existed in the mind of man, by nature, a propensity or tendency to sin, of a positive nature, (as there is such a propensity to compare one thing with another — to rejoice, to grieve, or to be angry in certain circumstances,) that propensity would be physical in its nature ; and original depravity would be physical depravity. Nor should I feel, as I have already said, that the hypo- thesis involved any serious difficulty. I cannot but think, however, that a distinction made a short time ago — viz. the distinction between principles of action and of evil action — will here afford us considerable relief. It is not to be doubted that our animal propensities, and, indeed, all those principles which we have designated as the inferior principles of our nature, are physical pro- * Vide Elements of Mental and 3Ioral Fclence, by the Autlior, pp. 56, 57. 308 EEPLY TO THE SECOND OBJECTION. pensities and principles. But then it should be remem- bered that such propensities are, correctly speaking, and as implanted by God, principles of action and not of evil action. The desire of property — if it be an original de- sire — was implanted in the mind of man to prompt to labour and diligence in business, not to lead him to steal : i. e. to be a principle of action, not of evil action. It be- comes, indeed, in too many cases, a principle of evil action, through the feebleness of reason and conscience, in con- sequence of the penal absence of the Spirit of God from the mind ; but the wise and merciful intention of the Creator of the desire — for it could come from none but from God — was to render it a blessing to the race by prompting to diligence and activity. We may generalize this statement by applying it to all the inferior principles of our nature. Of the whole of them it may be said that, correctly speaking, they are principles of action, not of sinful action. The fact that they do frequently impel to evil action is, properly speak- ing, the result of the want of that controlling principle which was lost when Adam took the forbidden fruit. The great evil lies not so much in what is m the mind, as in what is not in it. Now, in explaining original sin, or native depravity, the preceding lectures represent it as consisting in that which is not in the mind ; in the lack of the love of God, and of the presence of the Spirit of God. Did it consist in the inferior principles themselves, or as Stuart and Ballantyne imagine, in their increased strength and impetuosity, it would be physical depravity, and God must be its creator. It is only necessary to suppose that the Spirit of God has left the race, (for, in that case, prin- ciples of action become principles of evil action,) to account for all the wickedness in the world. The steam in a steam-engine is a good and necessary operating principle ; but, without the steam governor, it may work mischief and destruction. THE THIRD OBJECTION STATED. 809 The third objection of the class we are now considering is, that the doctrine of original sin is contrary to the jus- tice and goodness of God. It might, perhaps, be sufficient to reply that the objection is satisfactorily repelled by the whole of the preceding statements of the nature of the doctrine ; for, as somewhat diverse representations of it have been given by evangelical divines, it is manifest that a certain objection might attach to one representation, and not to another. It has not been stated, in preceding lectures, that God, as the result of Adam's sin, inflicted depravity upon the race — created a fountain of evil in his heart, as Edwards says, of a positive nature; and that he regards and treats men as worthy of eternal damnation, on account of its existence there. Our statement has been, that, as an expression of ^is abhorrence of sin — a sin so peculiarly atrocious as was the transgression of Adam — the great and blessed God with- drew the sovereign gift of his Spirit from man (the exclu- sive support of spiritual life) : so that every member of the human family is born destitute of original righteousness — mere flesh, with undiminished animal propensities (many think increased), and all those inferior principles of action, which, though they ought to be in subjection to reason and conscience, have never, in point of fact, been held in control by anything but the love of God. The result of this deprivation of primitive holiness is, that the inferior and animal principles, given to be servants, become abso- lute masters of the heart ; principles of action merely be- come principles of evil action, and the entire race " go astray from the womb speaking lies." Now I am unable to see any pretence for the charge, that the doctrine of original sin, thus explained, is at variance with equity or goodness. Was Jehovah bound to perpetuate the gift of his Spirit to Adam ?— to cause this Divine Agent to dwell permanently and for ever in his 310 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO mind, with all his enlightening, and sanctifying, and sus- taining influences? Then how could Adam have trans- gressed ? Is the same Divine Agent bound to unite him- self with every human spirit as creating energy brings it into being ? Then how comes it to pass, I ask, that the entire race are not sanctified from the womb? Equity, indeed, requires, since man is a responsible being, that every qualification essential to accountability be imparted to him by God. But this is done by clothing him with the essential attributes of the human nature. Adam was responsible as a man, and not merely as a holy man. Undoubtedly, the original holiness with which he was endowed increased his amount of responsibility, but it was not necessary to lay a basis for responsibility. Had it been possible for any but a holy being (in the sense in which Adam was such on his creation) to issue from the hands of God, he might have been formed with all the attributes which are essential to the human nature, but without the Spirit. In that case he would have been re- sponsible to God for his conduct, since he had God's law or rule to direct him ; and, though animal appetites might have prompted him to go beyond the prescribed bounds within which they might be gratified, he had reason and conscience to hold them in check, to warn him of the danger of transgression ; and he ought to have been obe- dient to their voice. Hence, when by his federal failure he lost the indwelling and influence of the Spirit, — when the higher endowments of his mind — his love to God and righteousness — became extinct, and the inferior princii^les, gaining the ascendancy, became the controlling and guiding principles, — his responsibility remained; and, in his de- graded state, he continued as much bound to perfect obedience to the commands of his Maker as he had been before his melancholy fall. The same general statements may be made concerning the posterity of Adam. They are responsible, not as pos- THE THIRD OBJECTION. 811 sessing the inchvelling presence and influence of the Holy Spmt, (though, ^Yhen by the grace of God their bodies become the temples of the Holy Ghost, their responsibility is augmented,) but as being endowed with the faculties of the human nature ; with perception, reason, consci- ence, freedom to act as they choose, &c. ; as ha\'ing the knowledge of what God requires, and sufficient natural power to render to him the full obedience which he de- mands. Hence, though previous to conversion to God all men are destitute of disposition to do what God re- quires, their own consciences condemn them when they disobey. Ought they not, then, to remember that, if their own heart condemns them, " God is greater than their heart, and knoweth all things ? " And on what ground can it be pretended that the doc- trine of original sin, or native depravity — explained as it has been explained in preceding lectures — impugns the goodness of God? Suppose it should be conceded that, if the Spirit of God had united himself (as in the case of Adam) to the soul of every member of the human family, contemporaneously with its creation, and had thus secured, — as in tlie instance of the father of the human family, — in a manner quite consistent with free agency, the perfect moral integrity of every member of the family ; so that all men, instead of going " astray from the womb speak- ing lies," had consecrated the first-fruits and the full harvest of their moral powers to God ;— suppose it should be con- ceded that, in this ease, more of goodness to the race at large would have been developed than we can recognize at present; vrould that prove that the dispensation actually adopted, or the scheme of Providence under which we are placed, is not characterized by goodness ? The most that could possibly be said, if, indeed, it could be said, would be this, — that the ever-blessed God, who has an inalienable right to bestow upon his creatures, to whom he owes nothing, whatever kind and degree of favoui' it 312 EEPLY TO THE THIRD OBJECTION. may seem right to him to impart, might perhaps have rendered us more deeply indebted to his sovereign kind- ness than he has done. Again, I say, suppose this were conceded, would it follow that we have received no good- ness from the hands of God because we have not received the greatest conceivable amount of goodness ? To be good at all — to adopt the most familiar mode of expression — must God be good in the highest degree ? Must he make a wonn a man or an archangel, in order to be good to the worm ? Does he exercise no goodness to man here be- cause he places the angel and the redeemed spirit in cir- cumstances more favourable to the preservation of moral integrity ? As the result of federal failure, the posterity of Adam commence their moral trial in the present state, without the high advantage which he possessed, but that advantage was the gift of sovereignty. Have we any right to claim it ? As well might the worm claim to be made a man. In communicating the human nature, God has invested us — if not with the highest, yet with very high and distinguished powers — ^powers which raise us unutterably above the worm; and, by rendering us capable of finding our rest and happiness in God, qualify us for a degree of bliss immeasurably superior, while we had as little claim to this exalted and exuberant goodness as the worm. If more good to angels, can it be said, on that account, that he is not good to men, or to worms? It is his essential right — and it is glorious to him to exercise that right, because it displays his sovereignty, one of the brightest jewels of his crown — to scatter his favours upon his creatures with different degrees of profusion ; but he " is good to all^ and his tender mercies are over all his works." The more frequently and thoroughly we reflect upon the subject,, the more deeply shall we be convinced that the objection we are now considering bases itself upon the mistake that God is not good to any being unless he vouchsafes his- goodness to him in the highest possible degree. THE FOUfiTH OBJECTION. 313 The fourth and last objection, which I deem it necessary to consider, is, that the doctrine, affirmed in preceding lectm'es, cannot be true, because little children are repre- sented as patterns of humility, meekness, gentleness, inno- cence, &c., which could not have been done had they been naturally depraved. In observing upon the statements of a writer who had affirmed their depravity, Dr. Taylor says, " Our Lord, who knew them better than we do, and his Apostles, gives us different ideas of them, Matt, xviii. 3 : ' Except ye be con- verted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself, and become as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.' Here," he adds, " little children are made patterns of humility, meekness, and innocence.' 1 Cor, xiv. 20: 'Brethren, be not children in understanding, howbeit in malice be ye children ; ' i. e. have no malice at all. Psalm cxxxi. 2 : ' Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother ; my soul is even as a weaned child.' " Mr. Moses Stuart, also, having referred to the same passages, together with one or two others of a similar character, adds, " Looking away now from all polemic views in any direction, what is fairly and honestly to be considered as the meaning of these repeated declarations? I do not ask how we may, with the most ingenuit}', cover up, keep out of sight, or explain away the meaning ; but how shall we fairly, fully, honestly, and impartially develop it? I do not believe," he adds, "for the nature of the case does not permit me to believe, that the Saviour here refers to little children as exemplars of positive holiness, humility, and benevolence ; but that he refers to them as examples of persons in whom all the wicked passions are yet quiet, inactive, unexerted, undeveloped, and who there- fore commit no actual or active sin, must be true, un- O 14 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO less the comparison which he employs is destitute of all force."* Dr. Taylor, no doubt, refers to the passages which ap- pear in the foregoing quotations, to disprove the existence not only of actual, but of original sin in the mind of an infant — even in that guarded representation of its nature which has been given in preceding pages. I cannot posi- tively decide for what purpose they are quoted by Mr. Stuart. He commences the paper in the " Repository," containing the passage just quoted, by opposing the hypo- thesis of Drs. Woods and Spring ; that is, that native de- pravity consists in wrong thoughts and feelings. He apparently, however, p. 36, withdraws his attention from them, and professes to proceed to the " examination of the texts most frequently alleged in support of the posi- tion that we are charged in Scripture with a sin wiiich is called original, and which is both inherent and im- puted." The inspired statements implying the innocence, &c., of children, to which he refers, seem to be introduced to disprove the existence of that kind of sin ; and yet I cannot be quite sure of this, partly because the conclu- sion, drawn by him in the passage quoted above, is that they commit no actual or active sin ; and partly, also, be- cause he proceeds, almost immediately after writing these words, to examine the statements of the advocates of original sin, — such as those of Turrettine, Edwards, &c. In the partial state of ignorance in which Mr. Stuart allows us to remain, in reference to his object in referring to these passages, there is nothing left for us to do, but to endeavour to ascertain what they do, and what they do not, prove. I am free then to express my perfect con- viction that they disprove the existence of sin, in the mind of an infant, in the sense in which Dr. Woods ex- plains original sin. That gentleman, as we have seen, identifies actual and original sin. The latter consists, * Biblical Repository, vol. ii. pp. 40, 41. THE FOURTH OBJECTION. 315 in his view of it, in actual transgressions — in thought and feeling, if not in action — of God's law. Now I cannot reconcile the supposed existence, in the infant mind, of actually immoral affections — as pride, envy, malice, &c., with the language of our Lord, " Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," Matt, xviii. 3, Again, I should find it difficult to reconcile the fact that infants are represented as patterns of humility, gentleness, innocence, &c., with that hypothesis of original sin — opposed in preceding pages — which exhibits it as a foun- tain of positive evil in the heart ; something morally wrong per se; an essentially corrupt principle (if such a principle could be conceived of) distinct from all the other elements and principles of our nature ; a principle not of action merely, but of evil action, adapted and de- signed to lead into sin. If native depravity were a prin- ciple of this kind, one of the very last things I should expect to find in the Bible, would be an exhortation to be children in malice, rrj koklu ; and perhaps the last of all, the solemn declaration of our Lord, '* Except ye be con- verted, a7id become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." But, if original sin be not a fountain of positive evil in the heart, — if it do not consist, as Dr. Woods thinks, in actual unholy affections — in emotions of anger, wrath, malice, &c., fully developed, and consciously felt ; if it consist, as in pre- ceding lectures we have attempted to prove, in the destitu- tion of original righteousness, so that the inferior principles of our nature, given to be principles of action merely, become in fact principles of evil action ; — then, in that case, the lan- guage of our Lord, and his Apostles, is just what we should have anticipated, for it exactly corresponds with the facts of the case. There is, in children, what will infalhbly, though not necessarily, lead to actual sin, in some form or another, — %vhat may awaken emotions of pride, anger, 316 EXAMINATION OF AND EEPLY TO malice, &c., and generally does so in one degree or an- other ; but there is, properly speaking, no pride, or anger, or malice, in the bosom of an infant of a span long. There may be the embryo of each, but the monster has not as yet been quickened into life. All the feelings of the infant are mere constitutional feelings — springing out of the frame and texture of the mind, or of the mind and body conjointly. They have not, — and it is impossible that they can have, — moral character, any more than the feelings of mere animals ; for, though destined to become, when time and opportunity shall have been given for the development of their powers, immeasurably superior to the irrational tribes around them, what, in fact, are infants but animals previous to the knowledge of right and ■vvi-onsf ? o Now the terms pride, anger, malice, &c., denote certainly constitutional feelings — emotioiis arising out of the frame and texture of the mind — but not mere constitutional feel- ings. They denote these feelings as immorally developed — as indulged, cherished, prompting to actions which are at variance with duty to man, and subjection to God. Nothing of this is to be found in the minds of children ; yet there is that within them — the inferior principles of their nature, self-love, &c. — which will certainly lead to it unless counteracted by the grace of God. Dr. Eussell, to whom I have so frequently referred in the course of these Lectures, and but seldom without approbation, tells us, very justly, that the representations given in the Bible of the gentleness and innocence of children, refer " to what they happen to be by constitution;"* "that their * Dr. Russell, indeed, says the representations refer " not to what they are by nature, but to what they happen to be by constitution." The clause, marked by italic characters, seems to me ambiguous. Surely constitution is nature. What children are by constitution, they must be by nature. There is a tendency among some evangelical writers, to use the terms nature, " moral nature," as if the latter wei'e identical with moral character. This THE FOURTH OBJECTION. 317 infantile feelings, while mere infants, of willing depend- ence on their parents, their indifference, while in that condition, as to rank and precedency, and their disposi- tion to credit whatever their parents or teachers may say to them, serve to illustrate that teachable and humble spirit, which is necessary in the disciples of Christ."* In short, when our Lord declares that, unless we be con- verted and become as little children, we cannot enter into his kingdom; he seems to teach us that, unless we be- come morally — by the grace of God, and by sanctified effort to bring our frowardness and self-will, and disposi- tion to rely upon our own wisdom and power and virtue, into subjection to Divine direction and control — unless we thus become morally what they are constitutionally, we shall not be fit associates of God's people on earth, nor possess a meetness for the enjoyment of himself in heaven. is, however, a mistake. Tliere is a great difference between nature and cha- racter. The phrase, a moral nature, should be understood to denote those powers of mind which render a being capable of moral government. Gabriel has a moral nature, and so has the De\dl; but the character of the two is wide as the poles asunder. * Pvussell on the Adamic Dispensation, pp. 70, 71. APPENDIX. Note A. Page 35. TJie coyisequences of transgression do not ahoays rest with the trans- gressors themselves. — Text, p. 34. •' There are a great many instances in Scripture," says Dr. "Watts, "in the common transactions of providence, and the government of God among men, where the children have been so far esteemed as parts of their parents, or as one with them, that they have been rewarded with considerable blessings, and that through several generations, upon the account of then* father's piety or virtue ; and they have been also deprived of very great privileges, afEicted with sore diseases and calamities, and even punished with death itself, on the account of some criminal head of their family. So much has it been the way of God's dealings with men in many cases, that there seems to be something of a law of nature in it, that a parent should be a surety for his offspring, especially while children are not capable of acting for themselves. ** And doubtless there is a justice in this manner of proceeding, which is well known to God, though not always so visible to us, ♦ For the Judge of all the earth must do what is right ; ' he cannot, he will not do any wrong. The seed of Abraham were rewarded for the obedience of their father. — Gen. xxii. 16, 18. The Recha- bites, in their successive generations, have a promise of a long entail of blessings, because of the honour and obedience which they paid to their father Jonadab. — Jer. xxxv. 17, 19. The throne of Judah was continued in David's house for many generations, because of David's piety and zeal. — 2 Sam. vii. 16. Phineas had the promise of a long priesthood in his family, because of his zeal for God. — Numb. XXV. 12. *' And as blessings were thus conveyed, so were punishments. 320 APPENDIX. The seed of Ham were cursed with, slavery, for their father's crime. — Gen. ix. 25. All the children were swallowed tip by an earthquake, for the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, their fathers. — Numb. xxi. 31. Achan's family were stoned, and perished ■s\ith him for his theft and sacrilege. — Josh. vii. 24. The children of the Canaanites were destroyed, together with their parents, for their abounding iniquities. — Deut. xx. 16, 18. The leprosy was trans- mitted to the seed of Gehazi, for his sin of covetousness and lying. 2 Kings, V. 26, 27. Fathers in this case, are made, as it were, the s\ireties, and representatives, or trustees for their children, though the children do not actually and formally agree to it ; yet surely God is righteous in all his ways, and holy hi all his tvorks. — Psalm cxlv. 17. *' And we see these events frequently in Providence now-a-days. Some families have, as it were, a manifest entail of blessings on them, and some an entail of diseases and miseries, poverty and dis- grace, on the account of their parents' conduct. And I think this is not to be attributed merely to their natural descent from such parents ; but in the government of God, parents are made and es- teemed a sort of trustees for their children in the good or evil things of this life, which renders a succession of blessings or curses in their families more just and equitable." — Watts, vol. vi. p. 107. The above quotation is especially valuable from the specific cases to which it refers the reader. Note B. Page 48. Since the delivery of this lecture I have been induced, by various considerations, to examine the statements of the Eev. Howard Hin- ton,* in reference to the words of the tlireatening, '* In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." I am somewhat apprehensive that I must have misconceived his statements, as they appear to me self- contradictory ; a fault which one does not anticipate from so Ixmiinous and logical a pen. Mr. Hinton maintains the position opposed in page 47, viz. that the words referred to threatened the instant infliction of death. *' It appears," he says, " that in case of transgression, he would certaiialy have no descendants ; because the threatening was, * In the day that thou eatest thou shalt surely die.' If that covenant had been carried into full operation, therefore, Adam would have died childless, and would thus have perished alone. This circum- " Harmony of Religious Truth."— Essay 6tli. . NOTE B. 30 7 stance," lie adds, " seems to have been entirely overlooked by the divines to whom we have referred," &c. This is, I observe, a mis- take, or may be a mistake. The divines of whom he speaks, may have conceived the words to which he refers to imply merely certain and instant exposure to death ; not its instant infliction. Mr. Hinton has no right to assume, as he does, as if the point could not be disputed, that the words "In the day" necessarily mean "the very day," "the same day," &c. Tliis latter idea, as the text states, is indicated by a diiFerent formula. Mr. Hinton may easily satisfy himself of this, by timiing to Gen. vii. 11, also 13, where the forms are mrr Ci-^i and c^n cvrr HOTj as well as various other places. Passing this, however, it is manifest that, if the threatening by which the tree was guarded, had been, as Mr. Hinton maintains, that if Adam took the fruit he should die, and that the race should not exist, Mr. Hinton is perfectly right in stating that the multi- plication of the race, " is a proof that the Adamic covenant is not in operation, since, if it had been, the parents must have died ere a child could have been born." And, "if the covenant be not in operation, its curses must be powerless ; they can have no force but by virtue of the system to which they belong ; and, if that is superseded, they are laid aside along with it." All this is perfectly manifest on Mr. Hinton's principles. The curse attached to the Adamic covenant, in reference to the race at leasts — (I do not know what he thinks of its extent in reference to Adam himself; whether the death which he must have suffered would have been simple annihilation, answering to the non-exist- ence of the race, or death in the fulness of its meaning, i. e. eternal death,) — v/as simply that the race should not be ; not that its mem- bers should exist in sorrow and pain, and in a state of moral degra- dation, but should not exist at all. Now, I am unable to reconcile with this certain other statements contained in Essay the Sixth of " The Harmony of lleligiouj Truth." Mr. Hinton maintains truly, as I think, the "universal reference" of the atonement. And he says, "If there be any, whether infants or others, for whom Christ did not die, then they of course must remain under their first father's curse, since it is only by virtue of Christ's death that this ever can be remitted." — Page 135. But their first father's curse, as far as they were concerned in it, was that they should not exist. . To remain under that curse is, on this hypothesis, to remain oxit of being ; but they are in being. Again, Mr. Hinton says, page 138, "There is nothing more to detain us from our conclusion thn,t, though v.'e \\^\c fallen i;i Adisris XI. Y 322 APPENDIX. our head," — (how ^* fallen,*' I ask, on this system? The curse was a threatening of non-existence. Now we have not fallen into non- existence ; if we have fallen into anything else, we cannot have fallen into it by the curse. We cannot have fallen into it by Adam, since, on Mr. Hinton's system, he could expose us to nothing but non-existence,) — "through the new dispensation which God has introduced, we are not," i. e., as he means, no one is, "under the curse of the covenant he broke." "Every man stands as free from the peyial infiuences of his first parent's crime as though Adam had never existed, or as though he himself were the fii"st of man- kind. Having, through our progenitor's unfaithfulness, derived from the covenant of Eden no benefit, we suffer under it no punish- ment. In these respects, that systena is to our whole race, as though it had never been." I beg the reader to notice the words I have marked by italic cha- racters, because I am about to refer to statements which appear to me at variance with them. There is apparent, no doubt, to this gentleman himself some mode of reconciling them. I do not ven- ture to say they are irreconcileable ; but I confess I think some more explanation must be given before their compatibility will become perfectly apparent to the reader. At the commencement of the Essay, page 127, he deals with the question why the fall of Adam should be supposed to have any influence upon mankind at large. He decides that it has influence, because "the children of Adam do actually participate in the re- sults of his transgression." But, by hypothesis, the penal result to us of liis transgression was to be non-existence. Have we not, then, come into being ? If we have, though our existence should be one of sorrow and pain, terminated by death, we do not owe that state of being to the threatening of the Adamic covenant ; for that threatening, on Mr. Hinton's scheme, did not doom us, if he proved unfaithful, to live in misery, but not to live at all : not to die, after a life of misery, but not to bo born. Mr. Hinton, however, adds : " Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, were no tenants of this happy earth before Adam sinned ; but they entered it immediately afterwards, and claimed their dominion in consequence of liis crime." " The world is in this state of sorrow simply because our fh-st parent sinned ; and we, in thus suffering, share the consequences of his ■wrong." — Pages 127-8. Surely the infliction of these consequences upon us is a penal act ; an act, not of mercy, but of justice. But how can it be a penal act ? A penal act is the execution of a threat- ening. But did the original threatening announce that, in case of NOTE B. 323 unfaithfulness, the posterity of Adam should live a life of sorrow? The hypothesis is, that they should not live at all. Mr. Hinton considers it, however, a penal act, for he adds, ** At the time when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, an arrangement had been made "with him by his Maker, according to which the welfare of his posterity was identified with his own, and suspended on his con- duct ; so that if he had been faithful in the point in which he was then tried, all his descendants would have been made hajjpy for the sake of his fidelity, while all should participate likewise in the con- sequences of his failure." "That such an arrangement did exist," proceeds Mr. Hinton, •* may be gathered from the fact just noticed, that we actually share the effects of the fall." Now I admit, and indeed contend, that our mortality, and sorrow, and death, afford decided proof that the original threatening was a threatening of mortality, and sorrow, and death ; and that it comprehended tis as well as Adam. But, if that threatening were, as Mr. Hinton represents, a threatening that th@ race should not be born, I acknowledge it is past my finding ou how our existence in sorrow can be a proof of an arrangemen having been made with Adam, that, in case of failure, we should not exist at all. Mr. Hinton admits that Adam was our representative ; but his mind appears to me to waver in its conceptions of the extent to which he represented us, or the blessings Avhich he was to secure or lose for us. Not adverting to, or not admitting, the doctrine of the previous lectures, that Adam was only so far our representative, as that our enjoyment or our deprivation of chartered benefits was sus- pended upon his conduct ; not perceiving, or not allowing, the dis- tinction between the paternal and federal relation of Adam ; and feeling that Adam exposed himself to eternal death by his failure, it must have been difficult for him to escape the conclusion that, as "we," to adopt his own language, "fell in him and with him," he must have exposed us also to the same calamity. It appears to have been to help him to Avard off" this conclusion that the view of his representative character, opposed in this note, was adopted. Adam so represented us that, if he failed, we were not to exist. Of course, if non-existence be to us the result of his federal failure, eternal damnation cannot be so. The two things are utterly in- compatible with one another. But, when he thought of the sorrows and the depravity of men, both of which he ascribes to the fall— for he expressly says, (page 247,) " We do maintain that all the pos- terity of Adam are corrupt from their birth, and that this corruption 3S4 APPEI?DIX. is derived from our first parent's fall" — lie must, as it appears to me, have taken a somewhat dijfferent view of Adam's representative character, a view more comprehensive or generic. He must have thought of Adam as so representing us as that his conduct was to decide, not whether we should exist or not, but the kind of exist- ence we should pass through. Hence he speaks of the sorrow^s of life as the result of the fall. It is not a little surprising to me, that so perspicacious a mind should have failed to perceive that these two views of Adam's representative character are incompatible ■with one another. If the trial really were whether we should live or not live, which is Mr. Hinton's h^'pothesis, it could not have been whether we should be pure and happy, or depraved and miserable. Besides, I ask. How can Mr. Ilinton render this hypothesis com- patible with the parallel between Adam and Christ, which, as he admits, is ch-awn in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the E,onians ? '•The whole of the passage," (verses 12 — 21,) says Mr. Hinton, "pro- ceeds upon the principle that, in the divine ways, such a connexion was established between Adam and his posterity, that they should be treated according to his deserts, irrespectively of their own," (this, except on the principle laid down in the preceding lecture, viz. that the suspended blessings were chartered benefits, is far too general and sweeping a declaration ; it would make eternal death the result to them of the fall, for Adam deserved it ;) "just such a comiexion, in fact, as that which God has established between Christ and sinners, by which we know that they, upon believing in him, are to be treated according to his deserts, ii-respectively of their own." — Page 129. Now, what were Adam's " deserts," according to Mr. Hinton's exposition of the words, " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt sui'ely die" — I mean his deserts, not personally, but relatively considered ? What did he deserve in regard to his posterity ? Was it not that he should have no posterity ? Not that his children should be born to sorrow and death, but that they should not be born at all. But how does this agree with the language the apostle employs v/hen tracing the parallel ? How ought it to run, on Mr. Hinton's exposition of the tlireatening? Ought not the burden of it to be that, as non-existence reigned by one, life, and the perfection of life, reign by the other. Such is not, however, the case. The apostle docs not say that non-existence reigned by one, but deatJt ; which su2)poses, of course, previous life, for no one can die till he has lived ; and siqiports the doctrine of the lecture, NOTE B. 3-25 viz. that the race was desthied at all events to exist ; that the transgressions of Adam would influence the kind of life its members should spend in the world, but not deprive them of life itself. The apostle further adds, that "through the offence of one many are dead," i. e. lose life, not never arrive at its enjoyment. I particularly request the reader to observe the gist of my argu- ment. It is this, that if the Adamic covenant threatened, in case of transgression, non-existence to the race, it could not threaten a life of sorrov/ to be terminated by death ; that if non-existence was to be the consequence of rebellion, the sorrow or depravity of the race cannot possibly be its consequence. Mr. Hinton anticipates and attempts to reply to one difhculty in which his system may seem to be involved, but he overlooks the great difficulty. Mamtaining, as he does, that the " Eden covenant" has been remitted, he imagines an objector to say, " How, then, can we participate in the bitter fruits of the first transgression ? " His reply is, " that the evils which we now suffer because of Adam's sin, are not laid on us," {i. e. men in general,) ^^ penally, or as of the nature of punishment, but beneficially, for the purpose of salutary discipline." — Page 137. Xow, suppose it were admitted that the dispensation of mercy, immediately subsequent to the fall, did operate to convert to all men the penal results of the fall into salutary discipline, the ad- mission would not help Mr. Hinton out of his main difficulty. I own that his argument would account for the fact, that all men, though the Eden covenant has been remitted, suffer sorrow and death in consequence of Adam's transgression, if sorrow and death could, on his views, be considered the consequence of his transgres- sion ; but I maintain that they cannot be so considered. The curse, according to Mr. Hinton's hypothesis, threatened non-existence — nothing but non-existence. Sorrow and death were not in the cup, and, therefore, could not come out of it. It does not help Mr. Hinton at all to say that they — at least one of them — come out of it as medicines. My argument is, that not bomg in it, they could not come out of it in any character or for any purpose tviiatever. Shoidd Mr. Hinton allege that sorrovv^ and death may be regarded as com- mutation of punishment, then I should argue that they do not come out of the cup as medicine, but as penal evil. The fact of the case seems to be, that, though the grace of God may convert the afflictions of life into blessings, they are, in their nature, penal evils, and overtake men — especially death — as the punishment, i. e. the legal consequence of sin. But that supposes, again, that they were in the cup, or that the constitution established with Adam was not, o'2Q APPENDIX. as Mr. Hinton states, that, if he transgressed, the race were not to exist; but that, destined at all events to exist, their condition would be most injuriously affected by his unfaithfulness ; an im- mortal and a happy life being converted by his sin into a mortal and miserable one. Accordmg to this view, the present existence of the race is not the result of the interposition of Christ, nor is the affliction of the race. Sorrow and death overtake us as the penal results of Adam's federal failure. A subsequent dispensation of mercy may secure our deriving benefit from them, (the believer does derive benefit,) but it does not, and cannot, alter their nature. "It will not do," writes Dr. Russell, ''to say that the present state of man and the death that terminates it, are in themselves blessings ; for they are denounced as the infliction of a curse. They are changed into blessings, uideed, through the second Adam ; but this is owing to that gracious dispensation which has been estab- lished through Christ, and it alters not the origmal nature of the things themselves. And our natiural feelings in regard to them., confirm in this instance the revelation of heaven. Independently, then, of the testimony of Paul, who tells us, that by the sin of Adam death came into the world, we are warranted by the narrative of Moses to conclude that the present state of things is the result of that sin."- — Vide Adamic Dispensation, page 31. It is intimated in the lecture, that the results of transgression to Adam, personally and relatively considered, may have been different ; that he may have exposed himself to eternal death, with- out exposing the race to the same punishment by his sin. Now, is not this confirmed and illustrated by the case of our Lord ? AVere what we may call the personal and federal results, in his case, identical ? Surely not. The federal results are our pardon, sanctifi- cation, full and eternal salvation. The personal, — the name above every name given to him ; the kingdom, &c. Note C. Page 79. The grand moral lesson taught by the issue of the trial of Adam in paradise, is the entire dependence of man tipon the Holy Spirit of God. "While the above proposition is maintained, as involving a truth of great importance, care must be taken not to misunderstand it, lest we undermine the doctrine of man's responsibility. The de- pendence of man upon the Holy Spirit of God, is dependence upon ^•OTE c. 0-21 him for disposition, rather than power, to do the will of God. It was manifestly so in the case of our first parents when interdicted from taking the apple. Their Creator enjoined abstinence from the fruit of the " tree of knowledge of good and evil." Now, it is mani- fest that, in no proper sense of the term, were they devoid of power to yield the required obedience. They were not, in fact, enjoined to do anything — not to eat, but to refrain from eating. Surely they had power tluis to refrain. The only thing lackmg, w^hen they put forth their hands, and took and ate the forbidden iruit, was disposi- tion to be subject to God's authority. That this disposition was not present at the moment of eating, is evident from the fact of eating. If any should say, that disposition as well as power to obey is essential to accountability, I would ask him to recollect the fact that the disposition to refrain from taking the fruit, neither was, nor could be present, when the fruit was actually taken ; and, as this is not the place for any metaphysical disquisition upon the subject, I would further remind him, that in all cases where persons are subject to just human authority, the want of disposition to do what is required, while the power to do it remains, is never re- garded as an excuse for disobedience. A wicked son might plead the want of disposition to obey his father, but no father on earth would on this account exempt him from the consequences of rebel- lion. Why should the Father of all be expected to do this ? If it be alleged that the sinner is blameless, because he cannot give himself the dis]Dosition, all I am disposed to reply at present is, — without going at all into the question, what amount of truth there may be in the allegation, or wdiether any at all, — that I know not why this may not be as truly alleged of the son as of the sinner. It is a somewhat remarkable fact, that the absence of disposition to be subject to authority is never thought to excuse the transgressor, except Avhen the authority is that of God ! How is this phenomenon to be explained ? And, as in the case of our first parents, so in the case of trans- gressors at large, the only thing wanting to secure perfect obedience to God's commands (I assume all along here that the j^owers which are requisite to obedience are sustained), is disposition to obey them. The " camiot " is nothmg more than the " will not " of the sinner. Man is so depraved that the disposition to obey never arises spon- taneously in his mind— that is, without special Divine influence ; but this, far from extenuatmg, only aggravates his guilt. He has €xposed himself to condemnation, but Divine grace has placed salva- tion Avithin his reach. He has, however, no disposition to embrace 328 APPENDiX. it. Such disposition, if originated at all, must be kindled by the Holy Spirit, and the influence which inspires it must be an act of sovereign mercy. Note D. Page 1G5. ORIGINAL SIN IS NOT IDENTICAL AVITII ACTUAL SIN. !Re3iaeks of Mr. Moses Stuart on the h^^othesis of Drs. Woods and Spring, "that erery infant just born is a moral and accountable being, under a law which he knowingly and voluntarily transgresses, at the ver^' instant of his creation — at least of his birth." " ifafe wfants,'^ he inquires, ^^ any jjroper knoioledge of the Divine law, i. e. such a knowledge as enables them to distinguish beticeen moral qood and moeal evil?" In support of the negative he says, "In Isa. vii. 14 — 16, the prophet declares, that a child shall be bom of a virgin, whose name shall be called Lmnanuel, and that he shall eat butter and honey %mtil he shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good.'' Here, then, the act of eating butter and honey is speci- fically designated, as a thing that Avould take place some time before this child coixld know the distinction between good and evil. " Now, as the Divine law is good, and what it forbids is evil, so it follows, that this child did not, during such a period, have any knowledge of the Divine law, as the arbiter of good and evil. " In perfect consonance with this view of Isaiah respecting the infantile state of man, is the view which Moses gives in Deut. i. 39. He is speaking to the Hebrews respecting God's promise in regard to the land of Canaan, when he says, ' Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children^ which in that day had no knoickdge bcticeen good and evil, they shall go in tliither, .... and possess it (the land).' " By little ones here are designated those whom we should usually name children, and by those ' who had no knowledge between good and evil,' are meant infants, in the sense above explained. Moses, then, agrees fully in opinion with Isaiah, as it respects the state or condition of human beings at such an early period of their existence. " The Divine Being, in reproving Jonah for his vexation because Nineveh had not been destroyed, says, * And should not I spare Nineveh .... wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern beticecn their right hand and their left handf KOTE D. 329 (Jonali iv. 11.) The sentiraeiit here is obviously the same for sub- stance as in the preceding quotations, although the form of expres- sion is a little varied. " Thus much for the Scriptural view of the knowledge which infants possess. But do the Scriptures, which thus plainly and positively declare the want of power at such an early age to discern between good and evil, also inform us whether infants are still con- sidered as transgressors ? This brings us to another question. " Are infants declared to he transc/ressors by the Divine wordi "I say transgressors, because I have now to do with those who admit that all sin is transgression. Paul seems to have decided this question ; at any rate he has decided it in regard to children before their birth. In Rom. ix. he discusses the difficult, and to some offensive, subject of ' the election of grace,' i. e. of ' the purpose of God according to election.' In reference to this comes up the sub- ject of a preference given to Jacob, Avhen he and Esau struggled in the womb of Rebecca. (Gen. xxv, 21.) Paul says, in respect to this, that the preference given to Jacob did not rest on any merit of his, or on anything good in him and evil in Esau ; but that God's purpose in this case was wholly independent of personal merit or demerit, either actually existing or even foreseen in these two children : ' For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the piu-pose of God according to election might stand,' &c. " If now, in order to avoid the force of this declaration, it should be said, that the essence of Paul's affirmation has respect to outward acts of good or evil, and not to internal sin ; then the answer is easy. On this ground the apostle's reasoning would be nugatory. His position is, that the distinction made in the case before us, v/as not made on the ground of any merit or demerit of any kmd in the children, but wholly of God's elective prirpose. "Now if both the children, after all, were actually s«z?2ers, (and those with whom we have now to do maintain that they were such,) then of course there did exist demerit in the case, at all adventures ; but the Apostle, by the very ground of his reasoning, assumes it to be a case of neither merit nor demerit ; and therefore the Di\-ine decision was grounded entirely on reasons within the mind itself of the Divine Being. Surely if the position of those whom we are now opposing is correct, the sin of an infant, no matter how early it is, is a ground of demerit, as really and truly as a sin at any other period ; for, by their own statement, it is to be regarded as the transgression of a known law. Yet the Apostle, from the simple fact that the 830 APPENDIX. children were not born, considers it as self-evident that they had not done any good or e-sil. We have seen sufficient reason of such a Tiew of the subject in the declarations of Moses and Isaiah, viz. that infants ' do not know to choose the good and refuse the evil.' " — Biblical Repository. Second Series, vol. ii. pp. 30 — 33. Note E. Page 209. is regeneration a physical change ? Some passages occur in one of Mr. Stuart's papers in the Reposi- tory, which appear to indicate a conviction that, on his principles, regeneration must be a physical change. He denies that the mere infant has any knowledge of good and evil — that it is to be regarded as a transgressor ; in other words, that native depravity consists in wrong thoughts, and feelings, or states of mind. Yet there is native depravity. What, then, is it ? It is not sin. Were he to admit it to be so, he must obviously become " a strong advocate " of original si7i, as well as of native depravity. He represents it, therefore, as the ** germ " of sm. The question, then, appears to have forced itself upon him, "How is the infant mind to be regenerated?" What can regeneration he in the case of such a mind ? He could not avoid perceiving that the "renewal" must be effected by some operation upon this " germ." But then that operation must evi- dently be by physical or direct influence, not moral ; for as an infant is not, as he contends, a moral agent, it is not susceptible of moral influence. Yet, denying all physical influence, he is involved in inextricable embarrassment, and writes with a singular want of per- spicuity. Being the subjects of native depravity, infants, he says, *' must be regenerated ; they must be renewed, they must be sancti- fied ; i. e. rendered positively holy, or rather brought, by the influ- ences of the Divine Sjnrit to such a state that t\\Qy will" *' develop afiections and exercises positively holy ; for without holiness no man can see the Lord." Now suppose all this to be admitted, as it is, the question I urge upon Mr. Stuart is, " What does it amount to ? What is regeneration, or sanctification, or positive holiness, in the case of an infant ? What must it be, in harmony with his princi- ples ? " It cannot be the being brought to take just views of spiritual things, and to cherish proper feelings towards them ; for the mere infant, on Mr. Stuart's own admission, has no such views and feelings — ^is, indeed, utterly incapable of them. It can be no- KOTE E. 331 thing else than some change or operation upon the *' germ." Ac- cordingly we are told it is so. " This germ " — that is, as he explains it, *• the susceptibility of being enticed to sin is in a measure altoge- ther predominant ; so that all the motives to Tirtue are actually insufficient to overcome the force of enticements to sin v/hen human nature attains its mature development, and remains still imregenerate " — "this germ, in our very nature," he adds, " for such I believe it to be, is to be in some way, through the grace of the Holy Spirit " — I beg the reader to mark the language — " this germ is to be so regu- lated, changed, modified, or eradicated even (if it must be so), that the development of the infant in the xcorld of glory," (the italics are mine,) "will be one of positive obedience and perfect holiness," (p. 44.) Every one must feel that the preceding acount of this affirmed necessary operation upon the *' germ " is singularly indefi- nite. Preceding statements would seem to render it manifest, that it can be nothing else than the removal of eight out of the ten degrees of the affirmed susceptibility of impression from sinful objects. But the point upon which I wish to fix attention is this : that whatever be done to the germ — whether it be regulated, changed, modified, or eradicated — must surely be done, and in Mr. Stuart's own concep- tions too, by physical influence. The " germ " is beyond the reach of moral influence. Ignorance may be removed, prejudice may be subdued, the whole current of the thoughts and feelings may be changed by instrumentality of a moral natiu-e ; but a " germ " of sin, i. e. a susceptibility of impression from sinful objects, can ob- viously neither be eradicated, nor reduced in intensity, by anything but a direct exertion of Divine power. On this point I beg to quote the following remarks from the pamphlet referred to in the text : — " But let us attend particularly to his statements concerning infants. To me they appear singularly perplexed, and below the exigencies of the case. Infants will, he believes, be saved ; but * they must be regenerated, they must be renewed, they must be sanctified, i. e. rendered positively holy,' he says, * to qualify them for the happi- ness of heaven.' But how, let me ask him, can an infant not having reached the period of moral agency — for he is speaking of such — be rendered, on his principles, i^ositively holy any more than it can be positively sinful ? He denies that there is in the infant anything that can be properly called sm. Can there then be in the infant anything that can be properly called holiness? Is not the one thing as impossible as the other? It is true, indeed, that the ten degrees of susceptibility existing in the infant's mind might be re- duced by physical power to two degrees. But if the possession of 33*2 APPENDIX. the ten degrees did not render him a sinful being, how can their reduction to two render him a holy being? What, on Mr. Stuart's principles, can positive holiness (to which a child must be brought before it is meet for heaven) be in the mind of an infant ? What can the regenerating process be in the case of such an infant ? Denying, as Mr. Stuart does, that in the new birth v/hat, for want of a better word, has been called a spiritual taste is imparted, what, I again press the inquiry, can the regenerating influence do for, or in, the child r It surely will not be said that it merely reduces the sus- ceptibility to temptation, for then it would follow that a physical change will render a human being fit for heaven ? And yet there is something very like this in the following passage : — ' This germ in our nature,' i. e. the susceptibility of being enticed to sin in a manner altogether predominant, ' is to be in some way, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, so regulated,' (regulate a germ !) ' changed, modified, or eradicated even (if it must be so), that the development of the infant in the world of glory will be one of positive obedience, and perfect holiness,' (p. 44.) I admit that the precedmg quotation does not warrant .us to affirm that, in Mr. Stuart's judgment, the mere reduction or even eradication of the germ confers positive holiness, and so fits the infant for heaven. All that can be certainly gathered from it is, that this operation upon the germ secures the right development of the infant m the world of glory. Now I assume, for the present — the reader will speedily see why I speak thus — that this operation is one which is performed in this world, and I accordmgly continue to push the inquiry, * What is it ? ' Mr. Stuart seems to have no decided opinion. His language is strikingly indefinite. The germ is regulated, or changed, or modified, or eradicated. Infants must be rendered positively holy; or, he adds, as if instantly feeling that positive holiness cannot, on his prmciples, be any more predicated of an infant than positive sin, they must ' be brought by the influences of the Divine Spirit to such a state that they will develop affections and exercises positively holy,' (page 42.) This, then, is the most definite statement to be obtained from Mr. Sttiart. The positive thing which we are told must be done for infants is the bringing of them into the state in which they will develop afiections and exercises positively holy. Well, but what is that state, I go on to inquire, for the language is all but as indefinite as ever? Is it the extermination of the germ? But, as that germ is not the mere susceptibility to temptation (if it were so, its extermination would destroy our nature as men), but the excess of that susceptibility, so the extermination of the germ can KOTE E, Ii33 be nothing more than the extermination of the excess,— the reduc- tion of the ten degrees of susceptibility to two, the number possessed by Adam. Does Mr. Stuart mean, that this reduction of the germ confers positive holmess ? I cannot be sure that he does not ; and yet I cannot be sure that he does ; his language does not necessarily imply it. He may fall back upon his comprehensive statement of the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the germ, and reply that it is the regulation, or modification, or changing of the germ, and not its extermination, that confers positive holiness. In that case, I also Yv'ould fall back upon the question proposed in substance before, ' "What is meant by this ? ' What is done to the mind, on his princi- ples, when the germ is regulated or changed ? I would now also further ask by what kind of influence this operation upon the germ is eitected ? Is it moral influence ? But the infant, by hypothesis, is not a moral agent. How, then, can it be affected by moral in- fluence ? Must it not be by physical influence ? But the notion of any such influence in regeneration (though none else is adapted to the case) is not, I believe, held by Mr. Stuart. Most of the school of new-light divinity have relinquished, if I mistake not, the opinion of Hopkins and D wight, that the Holy Spirit exerts an influence directly upon the mind which is, in the order of nature, previous to any just and believing apprehensions of Divine truth ; while those of them who tuiite with Mr. Stuart in his views of the nature of sin, have embraced opinions which require them, to main- tain the ojjmion of D wight ; for by what other mode or kind of influence — save by direct influence — can the Holy Spirit operate upon this germ either to change or eradicate it ? In bringing my remarks on this point to a close, I would press the question upon Mr. Stuart, ' How, on his principles concerning sin and holiness, properly so called, any conceivable operation of the Holy Spirit upon the mind of an infant, can render that infant positively holy ? ' Ylx. Stuart has felt this difficulty so powerfully, that I have been more than once induced to suspect that, in his view of the case, positive holiness, though his argument required him to prove that it is conferred to render the infant meet for enterinrj heaven, is not possessed till he has actually entered it. Thus, having affirmed that sovciQthin^ positive must be done for children, he adds, in explanation of this something, ' They,* i. c. infants, * must have some develop- ment of their faculties, as human beings ; they m\ist come in some way to know the difference between good and evil ; they must come to a state in which voluntary and holy affections and desires will be put forth; they must come to a state of conscious and actual 334 APPENDIX. obedience to the great law of love/ (p. 44.) Now, they certainly do not come to all this on earth, but in heaven. Infants are not, then, made by regeneration positively holy. I am now, let it be observed, reasoning with Mr. Stuart on his own principles. I believe, with him, that all developments of holiness can, in the case of infants, be witnessed only in heaven, but the germ of holiness is implanted on earth ; and why should there not be a germ of holiness, as well as a germ of sin ? " — Vide Letter to the Editor of the American Bib- lical Repository, by the Author. Dinnis, Paternoster-row. ADDITIONAL NOTES. Note F. Page 5. ON THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. Lord Brougham, in his valuable discourse upon. *' Natural Theo- logy," says, " The doctrine of the materialists, in every form wliich it assumes, is contradicted by the most plain and certain deductions of experience. The evidence which we have of the existence of the mind is complete in itself, and wholly independent of the qualities or the existence of matter. It is not only as strong and conclusive as the evidence which makes us believe in the existence of matter, but more strong and more conclusive ; the steps of the demonstration are fewer ; the truth to which they conduct the reason is less remote from the axiom, the instinctive or self-evident position, whence the demon- stration springs. AVe believe that matter exists because it makes a certain impression upon our senses — that is, because it produces a certain change or a certain effect ; and we argue, and argue justly, that this e£Fect must have a cause, though the proof is by no means so clear that this cause is something external to ourselves. But we know the existence of mind by our consciousness of, or reflection on, what passes within us ; and our own existence as sentient and thinking beings, implies the existence of the mind which has sense and thought. To know, therefore, that we are, and that we think, implies a knowledge of the soul's existence. But this knowledge is altogether independent of matter, and the subject of it bears no resemblance whatever to matter in any one of its qualities, or habits, or modes of action. Nay, we only know the existence of matter through the operations of the mind ; and were we to doubt the existence of either, it would be far more reasonable to doubt that matter exists than that mind exists. The existence of the operations of the mind, supposing it to exist, will account for all the phenomena I 330 APPENDIX. which, matter is supposed to exhibit. But the existence and action of matter, vary it how you may, will never account for one of the phenomena of mind." — Pages 104-6. Now, if Lord Brougham's assertion, that the evidence for the existence of mind is more strong and conclusive than the evidence for the existence of matter, were true, it would seem to follow as a necessary consequence, that, for one who denies the existence of the former, we should have a hundred denying the existence of the latter. The case is, however, the reverse. All men, except a few insane metaphysicians, believe in the existence of matter ; multitudes doubt, and many deny, the existence of mind. Looking at the argu- ment, in the way in which his Lordship puts it, it will be found to leave room for this scepticism. "We know the existence of mind," his Lordship says, "by our consciousness of, or reflection on, what passes within us." The phraseology is somewhat loose and indefinite, so that it is difficult to catch its precise idea. It would seem to intend that we are conscious of the existence of mind. Mr. Dugald Stewart, however, his Lordship's " magnus Apollo" in psychological science, tells us, and all our best writers agree with him, that the existence of mind is not a subject of con- sciousness. We are conscious of a thought, or feeling, or state of mind, but not of the existence of mind. Were it really the case that we directly gather the existence of mind from consciousness, we should, indeed, have more evidence that mind exists, than that matter exists ; for our knowledge that matter exists is obtained, and can only be obtained, through the medium of consciousness, and is, in fact, an inference .drawn from consciousness. External matter makes an impression upon an organ of sense, and the result is a sensation : that sensation is a mental feeling. Consciousness — a species of evidence as overpowering as demonstration itself — testifies to the existence of the sensation, but not to the existence of the external matter which is its proximate cause. That becomes knowii to us by an inference — it may be an intuitive inference — of the mind. But of what are we conscious r — Not of the existence of mind. We are not more truly conscious of that, than of the existence of matter. We are conscious of thoughts, feelings, or states of mind ; and the existence of mind, as that which has these thoughts and feelings, is gathered by an inference from the existence of the states themselves. And now, having reached the conviction that there is something that thinks, feels, &c., the question crises, or should arise, " What KOTE G. 337 is that something :" Lord Brougham assumes, in common with many writers on the subject, that this something is mindy intendino- by the word "mind" to denote an immaterial principle. Now, I confess it has ever appeared to me, that in making this assumption they are taking for granted the very point in controversy between the materialists and the immaterialists. There is no question whether we think and feel ; the question is, what it is that thinks and feels. Dr. Priestley tells us that it is not mind, but the organized material frame ; that thinking and feeling are properties, not, indeed, perhaps of matter generally, but of the organized matter constituting the nervous system, or rather the central mass of that matter called the brain. Now, is it not manifest that Lord Brougham's argument does not touch this point in the controversy — forming the very gist of the controversy — at all? His Lordship's argument is, "Because we think and feel (consciousness being judge), we have ?nind." The argument can only be A'alid if the suppressed major premiss be true. Put in the full form, the argument stands thus : — Nothing can think and feel but mind, that is an immaterial principle : We think and feel : Therefore we have mind, or an immaterial principle. Dr. Priestley, "cum multis aliis," denies the major here, and Lord Brougham's argument leaves that premiss utterly undefended. There is a farther step in the argument to which his lordship has not advanced, but which appears to me essential to its validity ; at all events, it must appear so to a materialist. His Lordship is bound to show that the projierties of thinking and feeling are so in- compatible with certain universally acknowledged properties of matter, — as extension, divisibility, &c., — that they cannot possibly inhere with them in the same substance ; that is, that mind must be the substratum or permanent subject of the former, and matter the permanent subject of the latter. A necessary regard to brevity prevents a full development of the argument in this place ; any readers, who may wish to see it in a more expanded form, may turn to Elements of Mental and Moral Science, pages 10, 11. Note G. Page 7. ox THE IMAGE OF GOD. ** As to the question, in what consists that excellence of man de- noted by the phrase, * the image of God,' we find even the oldest XT. 7' 338 APPENDIX. Christian writers, the ecclesiastical fathers, were very much divided. This is acknowledged by Gregory of Nyssa, in an essay devoted to this subject. Theodoret confesses that he is not able to determine exactly in what this image consisted, (Qufcst. 20, in Genesin.) Epi- phanius thinks that the thing cannot be determined, (Hseres, 30.) Terttillian placed it in the innate powers and faculties of the human soul, especially in the freedom of choice betv/een good and evil, (Adv. Marc. II. 5, 6.) Philo placed it in the vods, the rational soul, and associated with this phrase his Platonic notions respecting the original ideas in the Divine m.ind (Aoyos), of which the visible man is a copy, (De. Opif. Mundi.) The human race, according to him, is indeed degenerate, but yet has traces of its relationship with the Father of all ; for xci? avOpairos Kara fxku rrju didi/oiav (oKelcarai OsTo) X6yw, TTjS fjittKapias (pvasi^s iKixayalov, v) d7roo"7racr,t'.cc v) airavyaa'j.ia v€youo)s. — Origen, (riepl apx^y. III. 6.) Gregory of Nyssa, ai|d Leo the Great, were of the same general opinion on this subject as Tertullian, According to these ecclesiastical fathers, this image of God consists principally in the rectitude and freedom of the will, and in the due subordination of the inferior powers of the mind to the superior. The immortality of the body is also included by Leo and many others. Epiphanius blames Origen for teaching that Adam lost the image of God, v%-hich, he says, the Eible docs not afnrm. He knows and believes " quod in cunctis hominibus imago Dei permaneat," (Ep. ad Joannem, in 0pp. Hieronymi, torn, i.) Most of the Grecian and Latin fathers distinguish between imago and similltudo Dei. By the image of God, they say, is meant the original constitution (Anlage), the innate powers and faculties (potentia naturalis, Scholast) of the human soul. By the similitude of God is meant, that actual resemblance to him which is acquired by the exercise of these poicers. I shall not dwell upon the subtleties of the schoolmen, which are still prevalent in the Pwomish Church. Vide Petavius." (For an account of these, vide also Ilahn, Lehrbuch, s. 76.) — Kiiapp's Theology, pp. 168-9. It is but little calcLilated to extort resioect for the judgment and authority of the Grecian and Latin fathers, to lind them making the above distinction between imago and similiiudo Dei ; for how, it may be asked, can that actual resemblance to God which Adam acquired after his creation, be the likeness to God in which he loas created ? The latter was the exclusive production of God ; the former, in one sense of the words at least, was the production of Adam. NOTE I. 339 XuTE H. Page 14. SPIRITUAL LIFE. " As life in tlie natural sense is a principle of action ; so life in the moral sense is a principle of right action, or by which one is enabled to act aright. The soul of a man is naturally a living, vital, active being ; it is naturally so, i. c. it belongs to its very essence to be capable of acting. But to be disposed to act aright, though that was in some respect natural to it too, yet it was not inseparable, as sad experience has taught us all. Though the spirit of a man be a living, and consequently an active being, made such by God in the first constitution of it, it is not to be supposed that he turned such a being as this loose into the world, when he made it, to act at random, and accordmg as any natural inclination might carry it, or external objects move it, this way or that ; but it being not only a living, an active substance, but intellectual also, and thereby capable of government by a law, i. e. of understanding its Hslaker's will and pleasure, and directing the course of its actions agreeably thereto, God hath thereupon thought fit to prescribe it a law, or set it rules to act and walk by. Now, the mere power to act is life natural, but the disposition or ability to act aright is a supervening life, by which the soul is, as it were, contempered, and framed agreeably to the law by which it is to act, or the Divine government under which it is placed." — Hoice's Works, p. 530. Note I. Page 27. THE REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER OF ADAM. "The next question is, whether Adam is to be considered as a mere individual, the consequences of whose misconduct terminated in himself, or no otherwise affected his posterity than incidentally, as the misconduct of an ordinary parent may affect the circumstances of his childi-en ; or whether he is to be regarded as a iJ>i<6^tc man, the head and representative of the human race, who, in consequence of his fall, have fallen with him, and received direct hurt and injury in the very constitution of their bodies, and the moral state of their minds. 340 APPENDIX. "The testimony of Scripture is so explicit on this pomt, that all the attempts to evade it have been in vain. In Komans, chap, v., Adam and Christ are contrasted in their public or federal character, and the hurt Avhich mankind have derived from the one, and the healing they have received from the other, are also contrasted in various particulars, which are equally represented as the effects of the 'offence' of Adam, and of the 'obedience' of Clu'ist. Adam, in- deed, in verse 14, is called, with evident allusion to this public repre- sentative character, the figure {tvttos), tyj^e, or model, 'of him that was to come.' The same apostle also adopts the phrases, 'the first Adam,' and ' the second Adam ;' which mode of speaking can only be explained on the ground, that as sin and death descended from one, so righteousness and life flow from the other ; and that, what Christ is to all his spiritual seed, that Adam is to all his natural descendants. On this, indeed, the parallel is founded, 1 Cor. xv. 22 : • For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,* words which on any other hypothesis can haA'e no natural significa- tion. Nor is there any weight in the observation, that this relation of Adam to his descendants is not expressly stated in the history of the fall ; since, if it were not indicated in that account, the comment of an inspired Apostle is, doubtless, a sufficient authority. "But the fact is, that the threatenings pronounced upon the first pair have all respect to their posterity as well as to themselves. The death threatened affects all, — 'In Adam all die,' ' death entered by sin,' that is, by his sin, and then ' passed upon all men.' The j^ainful child-bearing threatened upon Eve has passed unto her daughters. The ground was cursed ; but that affected Adam's posterity also, ■who, to this hour, are doomed to eat their bread by 'the sweat of their brow.' Even the first blessing, ' Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it,' was clearly pronounced upon them as public persons, and both by its very terms and the nature of the thing, — since they alone could neither replenish the earth nor subject it to their use and dominion, — comprehended their jDosterity. In all these cases they are addressed in such a form of speech as is appropriated to individuals ; but the circumstances of the case infal- libly show, that in the whole transaction they stood before their Maker as public persons, and as the legal representatives of their de- scendants, though in so many words they are not invested with these titles." — Watsons TJieological Institutes, vol. ii. pp. 222-3. NOTE K. 341 Note X. Page 32. PUNISHMENT CAN ONLY BE THE RESULT OF PERSONAL OFFENCE. " God may, and does very often," says Jeremy Taylor, '• bless children to reward their fathers' piety ; as is notorious in the famous descent of Abraham's family. But the same is not the reasons of favours and punishments. For such is the nature of benefits, that he in whose power they are, may, without injustice, give them, why, and when, and to whom he pleases. " God never imputes the father's sin to the son or relative, formally making him guilty^ or being angry with the innocent eternally. It were blasphemous to affirm so fierce and violent a cruelty of the most merciful Saviour and Father of mankind ; and it was never imagined or affirmed by any that I know of, that God did yet ever damn an innocent son, though the father were the vilest person and committed the greatest evils of the world, actually, personally, choosingly, maliciously ; and why it should by so many, and so confidently be affirmed in a lesser instance, in so unequal a case, and at so long a distance, I cannot suspect any reason. Plutarch, in his book against Herodotus, affirms that it is not likely they would, meaning that it was imjust to revenge an injury which the Samians did to the Corinthians three hundred years before. But to revenge it for ever, upon all generations, and Avith an eternal anger upon some persons, even the most innocent, cannot, without trembling, be spoken or imagined of God, who is the great ' lover of souls.' Whatsoever the matter be in temporal inflictions, yet, if the question be concerning eternal damnation, it was never said, never threatened by God to pass from father to son. When God punishes one relative for the sin of another, he does it as fines are taken in our law 'salvo contenemento,' 'the principal stake being safe ; ' it may be justice to seize upon all the smaller portions, at least it is 7wt against justice for God in such a case to use the power and dominion of a Lord. But this cannot be reasonable to be used in the matter of eternal interest ; because if God should, as a Lord, use his power over innocents, and condemn them to hell, he should be author to them of more evil than ever he conveyed good to them ; which but to imagine would be a horrible impiety ; and, therefore, when our blessed Saviour took upon him the wrath of God, due to all mankind, yet God's anger, even in that case, extended no further than a temporal death. Because for the eternal, nothing can make 342 APPENDIX. recompense, and it can never turn to good." — Vide Works, yol. ii. p. 544. In the preceding statements this eminent wn-iter approximates towards the right principle, but he has not clearly conceived and developed it. Some of the statements are, in appearance at least, decidedly objectionable. They seem to intimate that God may be unjust in the least, but not in the greatest degree — that he may punish an innocent man in this xcorld, for the sin of another, but not damn him for ever. It is true he exhibits him as doing this not as God, but as Lord ; but still he calls it punishment . Now, I maintain that God never does, and never can, punish an innocent being for the sin of a guilty being, — and further, that, if eternal punishment to such being were unjust, temporal punishment would be equally so, it being as impossible for God to be unjust in that v/hich is least, as in that which is greatest. The bishop approaches nearer to the truth in the immediately subsequent passage : "When God inflicts a temporal evil upon the son for the father's sin, he docs it as a judge to the father," (it is, as it is stated in these lectures, strict punishment to him,) ** but as a lord only of the son. He hath absolute power over the life of all his creatures, and can take it away from any man without injustice, when he pleases, though neither he nor his parents have sinned ; and he may use the same right and power when either of them alone hath sinned. Eut in striking the son, he does not do to him as a judge ; " (it is not punishment to him ; it is merely the removal or withholding of sovereign or chartered benefits, which are thus denied or taken away as a suitable expression of God's displeasiu-e against sin,) — that is, he is not angry with him, but with the parent ; but to the son he is the supreme lord, and may do what seemeth good in his own eyes." And on this fact, viz. that this destitution of good by the child is the punishment, not of his, but of his father's sin, the learned prelate rests the opinion — of the correctness of which I leave the reader to judge — that the punishment was only " so long as the fathers might live and see it ; " oh Xvirovcra fiaWou kripa K6Kaais ^ rohs e'l Iuvtmu KaKonacrxovras St' avTOus opay, said St. Chrysostom, to the third and fourth generation, no longer. It was threatened to endure no longer in the second commandment : and so it happened in the case of Zimri and Jehu ; after the fourth generation they prevailed not iipon their master's houses. And if it happen that the parents die before, yet it is a plague to them that they knoAv, or ought to fear, the evil shall happen upon their posterity " quo NOTE L. 343 tristiores perirent," as Alexander said of tlie traitors, whose sons were to die after them. "They die with sorrow and fear." — Vide Works, vol. ii. p. 544. Note L. Pace 33. In" vindication of the alleged fact — that the consequences of Adam's transgression are experienced by the entire members of his family — I have referred to analogous cases recorded in the book of Providence. A thoughtless and extravagant man brings his fr.mily to penury. A profligate father entails disease upon his children. Adam transgressed, and his sin subjects his posterity to death. It is true that this mode of vindication does not explain the latter fact ; it merely shows that the difficulty involved in it — if there be any — ^is not a peciiliar difficulty, but one common to it with a multi- tude of every-day occurrences ; so that it needs no special defence. That which forms a justification of similar facts will sufficiently justify tfiis fact. An infidel is as much bound to explain the com- mon difficulty as a Christian. The principle of justification in ail the cases is this, namely, that the injury sustained is the loss, and merely the loss, of chartered benefits ; so that neither the impo- verished child, nor the diseased child, nor the entire race of man, sustains any v/rong. I am not sure, however, that, in that part of the text to which this note refers, the subject is sufficiently unfolded. There is really a double analogy between the fact, that we suffer the consequences of Adam's federal failure, and the parallel cases referred to in vindication. The first point of analogy is this : that the conse- quences of moral actions frequently reach beyond the actors them- selves, and involve in suffermg those who may be free from personal blame. Sufficient has been said in the body of this work in illus- tration and confirmation of this point in the analogy. A child born diseased places it beyond the reach of contradiction, and even of doubt. The second point of analogy is the character of the evil suffered, or rather of the good lost, in all the instances which have been adduced as parallel cases. Perhaps this point in the analogy has not been brought sxifficiently into view, and I add this note to direct the attention of the reader to it. It has been shown that, as the result of the fall, we suffer nothing but the loss of sovereign or chartered benefits — benefits which God may withhold or impart ; and, if he do the latter, bestow them on any condition which he 344 APPENDIX. may see fit to appoint. Now the point of resemblance to -whieh I now refer is this : that when individuals suffer loss, without per- sonal blame on their part, bringing in its train, it may be, much positive suffering, that loss will be found to be the loss of that merely to which they have no claim, and to which personal obedi- ence could ffive them no claim. I cannot fix upon a single case in which a person suffers by the misconduct of another the loss of anything which, if blameless himself, he might have demanded on the ground of equity. Punishment is the loss of good to the possession of which, on the ground of promise at least, obedience would have given a claim ; or the endurance of suffering, which such obedience would have prevented. Now it appears to me, that no such loss and no such suffering is ever the result of anything but personal blame. AVe, indeed, lose good, and suffer evil, through the misconduct of others ; but not that specific good and evil of which I have just spoken. The briefest reference to one or two cases will, I imagine, sufficiently confirm this statement. A child inherits a feeble and, it may be, diseased frame from its parent, and as the result of the parent's sin ; but has the child any claim upon God for health and strength, or even life itself? Are they not all sove- reign or chartered blessings ? The loss to the child is great, but it is not the loss of anything which the child — except by virtue of promise — can in eqiiity demand. The descendants of a nobleman lose title and rank by the rebellion of the head of the family ; but to neither of these privileges does freedom from personal blame bestow a claim upon the children. They are patent honours, which the community may give or withhold as it thinks fit. If an individual, having rendered signal service to his country, should be conceived as investing himself with a claim to receive them, that claim would be a personal claim ; it could not be transmitted to his descendants ; and even the personal claim wovild rest upon the arbitrary arrangements and constitution of the country. Again, the descendants of such a nobleman lose property as well as rank ; but personal good conduct can confer upon no one a claim to property. No country is boimd to give jjroperty even to a vir- tuous subject, though bound to protect him in the enjoyment of what he possesses. A man must amass property for himself ; he has no more right to look to the state or the country for it, than to claim to be fed and clothed by it from day to day. If, indeed, the government of the country in which the descendants of such noble- men live, were to withdraw from them the protection of the state, and permit the lawless to deprive them of life, or to despoil them KOTE M. 345 of possessions which, had been acquired by their own labovir and industry — as a j^uiiishmejit of the father's crime — every one would censure such government as guilty of gross injustice and cruelty. In this supposed case, the children would suffer the loss of what they have a right to demand ; and no one can be equitably brought into this condition by the misconduct of another. A representative system, in which a number of men, or a race, are appointed to suffer the consequences of the transgression of another, can only exist when the benefits suspended on the conduct of that other are chartered benefits. Note M. Page 48. We are certain, hoicever, that they would not have died. Mr. Faber says,* " "We are not told that the gift of immortality was conveyed to Adam and Eve subsequent to their creation ; but we are told that they were threatened with the penalty of death in case they should taste the fruit of a certain forbidden tree. Since no new gift of immortality is so much as once mentioned, and since man is simply threatened with death upon the breach of a positive commandment, I should conceive the inference to be, not that im- mortality was then for the first time bestowed upon Adam and Eve, bui that the loss of it was announced in the event of their disobedience. If they were then simply threatened with the loss of it, they must already have possessed it ; for how could they lose that which all the while they did not possess ? Hence, I see not how, so far as the sacred record is concerned, we can avoid the necessity of con- cluding that they were originally created immortal." Certainly our first parents could not lose what they did not possess. But what did they possess ? Sui-ely life, not hnmortality . Immor- tality is nothing else than eternal life. A being may be inmiortal by nature, as God, or may be destined to live for ever ; but what is meant by possessing immortality ? If a created being, he may possess the hope, the prospect, the assurance — founded on Divme promise and decree — of enjoying it; but the plirase, "to possess immor- tality," is absurd. When Mr. Eaber says our first parents were originally (why say originally?) created immortal, I am disposed to ask, " What is meant by the words r" Immortality is only eternal existence. Now, as * Disp. vol. J. p. 31. 346 APPENDIX. existence itself, and a fortiori eternal existence, in the case of a creatuie, can only be enjoyed as the result of divine decree and operation, I presume, that to be created immortal is to be destined, bya decree of God, to he immortal. But, if Adam and Eve were thus created immortal, the decree must have been a conditional one, since they afterwards forfeited immortality. The evident fact of the case was this : that God gave them the gift of life, not of immortality ; but whether that life should remain for ever, that is, be immortal life, was suspended upon their obedience. Mr. Faber has not examined the implication of the words he employs. " But some one may say," writes Theophilus of Antioch, '* Was not man created mortal ?" Why should such a question, I ask, be put by any rational being ? Was not man a creature ? And is not every creature, by necessity of nature, a mutable and mortal being r Can God create an immortal being? i. e., if the words have any meaning, communicate an essential divine attribute to him ? He can, indeed, create a being, and destine that being to immortality ; but to talk of creating him immortal, is to talk absurdly, since the life of such being depends every moment upon divine sustentation. But let us hear Theophilus. "Was man created mortal? By no means ! — Immortal ? Nor say we this." One would have supposed it must have been either the one or the other. *' But my opinion is," he adds, "that he was neither mortal nor immortal by nature ; for if he had been immortal from the beginning, he had made him a God. Again, on the other hand, if he had made him mortal, God would have seemed to be the author of his death." How the author of his death ? The continued life of a creature depends upon di\ine support. The withholding of that support will of course be followed by the death of the creature, but that does not make God the author of his death, any more than the setting of the sun is the cause of the subsequent darkness. Besides the withdrawment of sustaining power from a creature who had sinned, was a penal act required on the part of God. Our author proceeds: "Therefore he made him neither mortal nor immortal, but capable of both, that he might advance to immortality, and, by keeping divine commands, receive immortality as a reward, and become divine ; but if, by disobedience to God, he should turn to the works of the flesh, he would become ujito himself the author of his own death." The reader may notice also the following statements of Augustine. *' By the punishment of transgression, Adam lost immortality." — Op. Imp. vi. 30. " The first man sinned so gricA'oiisly, that by this sin, the nature, not only of one single man, but of the whole I KOTE X. • 347 human race, was changed, and fell from the possibility of imnwrtality to the certainty of death." — vi. 12. " God had so made the first pair, that if they were obedient, the immortality of angels and a happy eternity would have resulted to them, without the interven- tion of death ; but if disobedient, death was to be their punisliment by the most righteous condemnation." — De Civ. Dei, xiii. 1. *' The first pair were so constituted, that if they had not sinned, they would have suffered no kind of death ; but these first sinners were so punished with death, that whatever sprang from their stock was subject to the same punishment. Por nothing could originate from them different from what they were themselves. Because according to the greatness of the guilt, the condemnation changed nature for the worse ; so that what was before inflicted penally on the first sinners, followed naturally to those born afterwards." — xiii. 3. "The death of the body is a punishment, since the spirit, because it Yoluntarily left God, leaves the body against its will ; so that, as the spirit left God because it chose to, it leaves the body although it chooses not to." — De Trin. iv. 13. Comp. De Gen. ad. Lit. ix. 10. Vide *' Wiggers' Augustinism," &c., chap. v. Emerson's translation. Note N. Page 48. DEATH THE RESULT OF SIX. Jekemy Taylor, as it appears from the foUowdng passage, thinks difierently. "'By one man sin entered into the world:' that sin entered into the world by Adam is therefore certain, because he was the first man ; and, unless he had never sinned, it must needs enter by him ; for it comes in first by the first. 'And death by sin,' that is," he adds, " death which, at first, was the condition of nature, became a punishment on that account ; just as it was to the serpent to creep upon his belly, and to the woman to be subject to her hus- band ; these things were so before, and would have been so ; for the Apostle, pressing the duty of subjection, gives two reasons why the wom.an was to obey. One of them only was derived from this sin, the other was the prerogative of crca.tion ; ' for Adam was first formed, then Eve ; ' so that before her fall, she was to have been subject to her husband, because she was later in being ; she was a minor, and therefore under obligation ; she was also the weaker vessel. But it had not been a curse ; and if any of them had been hindered by 348 • APPENDIX. grace and favour, by God's anger they -were now left to fall back to the condition of their nature." — Works, toI. ii. p. 532. "Death, at first," says our author, "was the condition of 7iature.'* It is not very clear what these words mean, — whether that immortal life is not, and cannot be, an essential attribute of any creature ; or that our first parents were destined to die, as Pelagius maintained, even though they should continue obedient. The latter seems to be their import. It is difficult, not to say impossible, to reconcile this exposition with the Apostle's language. Paul does not say, as this writer affirms, that by one man death entered into the world as a punishment ; but that death, that is, death itself, entered by one. AVhat authority has our author for saying that death would have entered without sin ? — or as the condition of nature, whatever the words may mean. There is no doubt that constant divine support was necessary to sustain the life of Adam, and that that support might have been withdrawn at any moment previous to the estab- lishment of the Adamic covenant ; but, to assume that God would have withdrawn it, or that, irrespective of the conduct of our first parent, he had determined to withdraw it, and thus to render death the condition of nature, is to assume the very point which needed to be proved ! The arguments, too, by which the Bishop attempts to establish his position, rest upon mere assumptions. "The serpent would have crawled upon the earth," he says, "if the fall had not take place ; and therefore creeping upon his belly did not enter by sin, but became a pmiishment by sin." Now, how does this writer know that a physical change did not take place upon the serpent (as a practical and perpetual lesson to man of the evil of sin), con- verting it from an erect to a prone animal ? If it had crept upon its belly before, how could the continuance of that mode of progress be represented as a punishment ? I do not assert that the serpent was erect, but I maintain that the prelate has no right to assume the contrary, and to make that assumption the basis of an argu- ment. The remaining argument is equally groundless. Eve was, by Divine ordination, to be obedient to her husband before the fall. Obedience itself did not, therefore, enter by sin ; it only became the punishment of sin. Here is another assumption. The language of God, (Gen. iii. IG,) seems almost necessarily to imply, that subjection to the authority of her husband was itself brought upon her by transgression : " Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." I am not convinced by the reasoning of the Bishop, founded on the language of the Apostle, to which he refers. That NOTE o. 349 language, it may be admitted, exhibits a reason for submission on the part of the woman ; but that fails to prove that such submission is not to be regarded as one of the ordained and legal results of her crime. But again, even if we were to admit that subjection must have been the lot of the v/oman irrespectively of sin, we could not argue from that admitted fact that death would thus have been the lot of both. The stress of our argument, with regard to death, rests upon the words, " By one man sin entered into the world, and death by shi." It is not said that stcbjcction to the man entered by sin. Had that been said, the language would have rendered it impossible to believe that subjection, any more than death, could have existed apart from sin, or irrespectively of it. Note 0. Page 50, THE DEATH OF THE BODY NOT ALL THAT WAS INCLUDED IN THE CURSE. "If the curse be the death of the body," — that is, only, — " then, since redemption from the curse is admitted in the argument to be commensurate with the extent of the curse, it follows that the full extent of the redemption by Christ" is the redemption of the body, in which case there is no redemption provided for the miserable soul. The price has been paid for incomparably the least valuable part of the man. The cUist has been redeemed at an infinite cost from the prison in which it might have slept for ever in its insensible nothing- ness; while the never-dying spirit, with all its eternal sensibilities and capacities, is left without remedy in its impurity and woe, and exclusion from the 'Holy Light' of the universe. This leads me to observe, that it seems to indicate by far too low an estimate of the evil of sin on the one hand, and of the redemption of Christ on the other, to consider temporal death as the full amount of the curse on account of the former, and deliverance from the grave, conse- quently, the full amount of the redemption eifected by the latter." — Wardlaic s Essay on Pardon, Sec. p. 261. I understand the argument of Dr. Wardlaw to be directed against those who maintain that the original curse threatened the death of the body merely ; that it was not intended to affect — and that, in point of fact, it did not affect— the soul, (except by separating it from the body,) either by entailing moral corruption upon it, or exposing 350 APPENDIX. it to future punishment ; for, if the original curse contemplated either one or the other of these results, it must — iu opposition to the hypothesis — have threatened more than bodily death. If I am right in this conjecture, and if the soul, by any other means than the original transgression, has sunk into " impxuity and woe," the argument of my friend must, as it appears to me, be re- garded as conclusive. M)^ mind has, however, been forcibly thrown upon the mquiry, **What do the Avriters opposed by Dr. Wardiaw mean?" Bodily death alone, tlxey say, was tln-eatened by the curse. Now, what t's bodily death ? or, conversely, what is bodily life ? Can life be said to reside in the body at all ? and, if so, what is it ? Does it consist in those vital processes, as they are called, which are being carried on m a living man ? Or is it the hidden and mysterious cause of these processes ? If the latter, what can that cause be but the im- material principle, or soul, united with the material fabric ? Is death the cessation of such processes, or of the sustaining influence of tlieir cause? i.e. the dissolution of the union between the soul and the body ? If the latter be the case, as most immaterialists imagine, the departure of the spirit from the body must leave the latter exposed, without any counteracting principle, to all those in- fluences which act upon matter, the result of which cannot fail to be, that the material fabric speedily breaks up, and returns to the dust from which it was taken. The death of the body is not, then, the destruction of substance, but of mere form and organization. Now, will not these statements assist us in disposing of an objection against the established views on one part of the evangelical system, namely, that the death of the soul — threatened in the original cixrse, and as the wages of sin in general — is a literal death, that is, as I understand the words, the extinction, or destruction, or annihilation of the soul ? The soul being, by the concession of the objectors themselves, immaterial, is incapable of being destroyed, in the sense in which the body is destroyed — i. e. by resolution into its elementary principles. The soul can only be destroyed by annihilation. Novv', death to the body is not annihilation. Why, then, should it be such in the case of the soul ? If it be said that the death of the body is the extinc- tion of the vitality or life of the body, I should ask whether that extinction be not the cessation of the animal functions, or the with- drawment of their spring, or source — that is, the dissolution of the union between these two constituent parts of man ? We speak, indeed, of the body as dymg, and I do not wish to discard that KOTE Q. 351 phraseology ; but, correctly speaking, it is the man that dies ; and death to the man is the rupture of the bonds -which held the soul and body together, and the abandonment of the latter to the action of those causes which speedily reduce it to its simple constituent prin- ciples. Death cannot destroy the soul, being a simple indivisible essence (I mean now ex concesso) , in the sense in which it destroys the body, i. e. the form and organization of the body ; and there is not a particle of evidence, as Butler has abundantly proved, that it effects the slightest alteration in the soul itself — though it may ui the power of developing its faculties, — far less that it destroys the soul. The death of the soul, threatened in the original curse, and in various parts of divine revelation, is the loss of happiness and moral purity — a death which has invariably resulted, and, as it appears, which must ever restilt, from the separation of the soul from God. ISToTE P. Page C2. ox THE ENORMITY OF T:IE SIN OF ADAM. The small service, hoicever, . . . xcas refused by our federal head. The following statement, by the celebrated Arminius, of the amount of sin involved in the original transgression, is worthy of the reader's attention. " The serious enormity of that sin is principally manifest from the following particulars : (1.) Because it was a transgression of such a law as had been imposed to try whether man was willing to be (sublex) subject to the law of God, and it carried with it numbers of other grievous sins. (2.) Because after God had loaded man with such signal gifts, he (ausus) had the audacity to perpetrate this sin. (3.) Because when there was such great facility to abstain from sin, he suffered himself to be so easily induced, and did not satisfy his (affectus) inclination in such a copious abundance of things, (-i.) Because he committed that sin in a sanctified place, which was a type of the heavenly Paradise, almost mider the eye of God himself, who conversed with him in a familiar mamier." — Nichols' Transla- tion, vol. ii. 1"). 373. Note Q. Page 97. I have said in the text that the verb S"aJn in Hiphil is obviously susceptible of the meaning " to punish," though no case of the 35*2 APPENDIX. occurrence of the verb in that sense has met my notice. Since the delivery of the Lecture, I have examined the matter more carefully than I had previously been able to do. I find rather more than twenty instances of the use of the verb, in this conjugation, in the Old Testament. In thirteen instances, in the future tense, it is translated in our version condemn ; in five, in the preterite, to do or act xoickedly. In one instance, viz. Dan. xi. 32, it is rendered to do tcickedly ; in another, to vex, 1 Sam. xiv. 47; and in a third — the verb being in the future tense in each of these cases — to make or give ironhle ; Job xxxiv. 29. Thus the most prevalent sense of the verb* in this conjugation, is, to condemn. No decided case occurs in which it means to punish^ — assuming the correctness of our rendering, which I do not call in question. Still it may be said, perhaps, that in Job xxxiv. 29, it approximates to this sense. *' When he (God) giveth quietness, who shall make trouble r " "Who shall make 77iiser~ able, when God grants happiness ? The instance in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, is still more in point. " Whithersoever he (Saul) turned himself, he vexed them " (Philistines) ; that is, brought defeat and disaster upon them. It might possibly be urged that the evil he brought upon them was judicial evil ; in which case the clause would be equivalent in meaning with he 2}unished them. At all events, we have in this passage a case in which the Hiphil form of the verb under con- sideration is not used in the sense of makhiff wicked, which would seem, from the force of that part of the verb, to be its literal signifi- cation ; but of inflicting evil. Thus our Lord — ^not truly and literally, but metaphorically and apparently — was made a sinner, by having the consequences of our sins laid upon him. He was treated as a sinner ; that is, our sins were imputed to him. To condemn a man — an undoubted sense of the Hiphil form — is not more truly and lite- rally to make Jiim wicked, i. e. to corrupt his character, than to pimish him, is to do it. The judge, who passes sentence upon a criminal, makes hitn wicked — that is, treats him as such — by legally awarding punishment : the executioner, who inflicts the punishment, 7nakes him wicked in precisely the same sense and manner. The criminal had made himself wicked ; the judge and the executioner merely treat him as wicked. KOTK R. 353 Note E,. Page 101. IMPUTATION. The following remarks on imputation, by Dr. "Watts, it may be "vvell for the reader to observe : — ♦' When a man has broken the law of his country, and is punished for so doing, it is plain that sin is imjmted to 1dm ; his tcickedness is ujJO)i him ; he bears his iniquity : that is, he is reputed or accounted guUty ; he is condemned and dealt with as an offender." «* But if a man, having committed treason, has his estate taken from hiir and his children, then they bear iniquiti/, the iniquity of their father^ and his sin is imputed to them also." " If a man lose his life and estate for murder, and his children thereby become vagabonds, then the blood of the person murdered is said to be upon the murderer^ and IC23071 his children also. So the Jews — His blood be upon us and on our children : let us and our children be punished for it." But it may be asked, how can the acts of the parent's treason be imptited to his little child ; since those acts were quite out of the reach of an infant, nor Avas it possible for him to commit them ? I answer, those acts of treason or acts of service, are, by a common figure, said to be imputed to the children, when they suffer or enjoy the consequences of their father's treason or eminent service : though the particidar actions of treasons or service could not be practised by the children. This would easily be understood should it occur in human history. And why not, when it occurs in the sacred writings r" " Sin is taken either for an act of disobedieiice to a law, or for the legal result of such an act ; that is, the guilt or liableness to punishment. Now when we say, the sin of a traitor is imputed to his children, we do not mean, that the act of the father is charged upon the child ; but that the guilt or liableness to punishment is so transferred to him, that he suffers banishment or poverty on accovmt of it." "Thus the sin of Achan was so imputed to his children, that they were all stoned on account of it. (Josh. vii. 24.) In like manner the covetousness of Gehazi was imputed to his posterity, (2 Kings v. 27 ;) when God, by his prophet, pronounced,, that the leprosy should cleave unto him, and to his seed for ever. " The Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament use the words sin and iniquity (both in Hebrew and Greek,) to signify not only the criminal actions themselves, but also the result and con- sequences of those actions, that is, — the guilt or liablejiess to punish^ ment ; and sometimes the punishment itself, whether it fall upon the XI. A A 354 APPENDIX. original criminal, or upon otliers on his account." " Indeed, when sin or righteousness is said to be imputed to any man, on account of what himself hath done, the words usually denote both the good or evil actions themselves, and the legal result of them. But when the sin or righteousness of one person is said to be imputed to another, then, generally, those words mean only the result thereof; that is, a liableness to punishment on the one hand, and to reward on the other. ** But let us say what we will, in order to confine the sense of the imputation of sin and righteousness to the legal result, the reward or punishment of good or evil actions ; let us ever so explicitly deny the imputation of the actions themselves to others, still Dr. Taylor "•.,-'11 level almost all his arguments against the imputation of the ac.ir^ns themselves, and then triumph in having demolished what we ::. vor built, and in refuting what we never asserted." T have taken the above as it appears in the pages of the late Rev. R. Watson. The sentences are selected, with occasional slight varia- ■ tion in the words, from the " Dissertation on Imputed Sin and Righteousness." They faithfully exhibit the Doctor's sentiments. The whole of this dissertation is worthy of the reader's attention, though he may see reason to dissent from some parts of it. Dr. "Watts thinks, that the sin of Adam and the righteousness of Christ, are counted to us in their legal results only ; and the counting of these results is, by him, sometimes called imjnitation — at others transference — frequently both. "The imputation of sin," he says, " signifies the imputation or transferring of the legal or penal con- sequences of sin, that is misery and death." This is clearly maccu- rate. Nothing but sin and righteousness can be imputed; the con- sequences of both may be transferred but not imputed; and the endiu'ance of the consequences of the sm, is the imputation of the sin. Dr. AVatts has involved himself in difficulty by adhering to the generic sense of guilt, — viz., legal exposure to jnmishment. There are, in his view, three things, — the sin itself — the resulting exposure to punishment — and the actual punishment. He saw that the sin of Adam itself must rest with him ; that it cannot be transferred to us ; but he conceived that the legal exposure to punishment v/hich it involved might be transferred. He settles down in the opinion, therefore, that the imputation of Adam's sin is the transference to us of his legal exposure to punishment. 'Now I maintain that this leaves the great diiliculty unsolved ; i. e. how legal exposure to punishment can be justly transferred from the guilty to the innocent. If Adam's sin cannot pass from him to us, how can liis ^OTE s. 355 guili pass from him to us ? Are not the two inseparably linked together? Besides, according to this mode of representation, we have no guilt by nature {i. e. exposure to punishment) but his — the guilt that he contracted. Now, to represent this guilt, which is, as Mr. Moses Stuart says, "putative guilt," as forming the only justifiable ground for bringing upon us the consequences of his sin is, in my view, not to diminish, but to magnify and multiply difficulties. Why not rest satisfied with the simple statement— the consequences of Adam's sin attach to us ; and that is, in Scripture phrase, the imputation of his sin to us? Dr. Watts has nearly expressed the idea in the words quoted by Mr. Watson: "Those acts of treason or of service are, by a corr.mon figure of speech, said to be imputed to the children when they suffer or enjoy the consequences of theii- father's treason or eminent service." Note S. Page 120. THE EFFECTS OF THE OUIGIXAL TRANSGRESSION. On this point Arminius, " Thesis xxxi. De effectis peccati pri- morum parentum," expresses himself in the followii'g manner. Hegard to general usefulness leads me to x^refer giving his state- ments, not in the original, but as faithfully rendered, as it appears to me, by Nichols. I. The first and immediate effect of tlie sui v.^hich Ad;im and Eve committed in eatmg of the forbidden fruit was, the offending of the Deity, and guilt. Offence, which arose from the prohibition im- posed. Guilt, from the sanction added to it, through the denuncia- tion of punishment if they neglected the prohibition. II. From the offending of the Deiiy, — [that is, as I presume the meaning'is, from what he had done to offend the Deity,] — arose his wrath on accoimt of the violated commandment. In this violation oceuj three causes of just anger: (1.) The (derogatio) disparagement of his pov.er or right. (2.) A denial of that towards wluch God (afficiebatur) had an inclination. (3.) A contempt of the Divine will intimated by the command. III. Punishment was consequent on guilt and the I'ivine wrath ; the equity of this punishment is from guilt, the inflicli-u of it is by wrath. But it is preceded both by {oHensa) the wouiu^iiig of the conscience, and by the fear of an angry God and the dvci-.d of ptmish- ment. Of these man gave a token bv his subsequent riiul.t, and by 356 APPENDIX. hiding himself from the presence of the Lord God, when he heard him walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and calling mito Adam. IV. The assistant cause of this flight and hiding of our first parents was, a consciousness of their own nakedness, and shame on account of that of which they had not been previously ashamed. This seems to have served for racking the conscience, and for ex- citing or augmenting that fear and dread. V. The Spirit of grace, whose abode was within man, could not consist with a consciousness of having oflended God. And, there- fore, on the perpetration, of sin, and the condemnation of their own hearts, the Holy Spirit departed. Wherefore the Good Spirit of God likcAvise ceased to lead and direct man, and to bear inward testimony to his heart of the favour of God. This circumstance must be con- sidered in the place of a heavy punishment, when the Law, with a depraved conscience, accused, bore its testimony (against them), convicted and condemned them. VI. Besides this punishment, which was constantly inflicted, they rendered themselves liable to two other punishments ; that is, to temporal death, which is the separation of the soul from the body ; and to death eternal, which is the separation of the entire man from God his chief good. VII. The indication of both these punishments was the ejectment of our first parents out of Paradise. It was a token of death tem- poral ; because Paradise was a type and figure of the celestial abode, in which consummate and perfect bliss ever flourishes, with the translucent splendour of the Divine Majesty. It was also a token of death eternal ; because in that garden was planted the tree of life, the fruit of which, when eaten, was suitable for continuing natural life to man without the intervention of death. This tree was both a sjonbol of the heavenly life of which man was bereft, and of eternal death which was to follow. VIII. To these may be added the punishment peculiarly inflicted on the man and the woman. On the former, that he must eat bread through "the sweat of his face," and that the ground, cursed for his sake, should bring forth to him " thorns and thistles." On the latter, that she should be liable to various pains in conception and child-bearing. The punishment inflicted on the man had regard to Astudium) his care to preserve the individuals of the species ; and that on the woman to the perpetuation of the species. IX But because the condition of the covenant unto which God entered with our first parents was tliis, — that if they continued in NOTE T. |y5T the favour and grace of God, by an observance of this command and of others, the gifts conferred on them should be transmitted to their posterity, by the same Divine grace -svhich they had themselves received ; but, that if, by disobedience, they render themselves un- worthy of those blessings, their posterity likewise (carerent) should not possess them, and should be (obnoxii) liable to the contrary evils. (Huic accidit ut.) This was the reason why all men who were to be propagated from them in a natural way, became obnox- ious to death temporal and death eternal, and (vacui) devoid of this gift of the Holy Spu*it, or original righteousness. This punishment usually receives the appellation of a " privation of the image of God," and " original sin." X. But we permit this question to be made a subject of disciis- sion : Must some contrary quality, beside (carentiam) the absence of original righteousness, be constituted as another part of original sin ? Though we think it much more probable that this absence of original righteousness only is original sin itself, as being that which alone is sufficient to commit and produce any actual sins whatsoever. XI. The discussion, whether original sin be propagated by the soul or by the body, appears to us to be useless ; and therefore the other, whether or not the soul be through traduction, seems also scarcely to be necessary to this matter. — Yol. ii. pp. 374-5. Note T. Page 121. ox THE FALL. <♦ Man was endowed not only with the knowledge of his duty, and a fixed inclination to it, but also with various appetites, aflfections, and desires, which were constituent principles of his nature. These having been given to him by his Maker, were innocent in themselves, and might be innocently gratified ; and as long as they were subject to his superior principles, and regulated by them, he was perfect according to the state in which he was placed. But, although it was the ofiice of the moral principle to superintend and direct them, their excitement might anticipate its interference, and be suddenly caused by the presence of the proper objects : whatever seemed good was naturally fitted to awaken desire, and whatever seemed evil, naturally to awaken aversion. It follows, that, if conscience was hindered by any means from doing its duty, if an appetite or a desire was permitted for a moment to exist without the proper check, the o58 APPENDIX. hai'mony of the soul would be immediately disturbed ; and the desire or appetite havinij actiuired new strength, Avould press forwaixl to its gratitioation Avithout -waiting for the approbation of conscience. Let us apply these observations to the case before us. In man in a state of innocence, the desire of knowledge must have existed, because, being a fmite creature, he "was capable of endless improvement in A^-isdom : all that was necessary was, that the gratification of tliis desii-e should be sought only by such means as his Creator might approve. In this state of mind, tlie prospect of acquiring knowledge would naturally excite the desii'e ; and at this critical moment, the exercise of virtue consisted in subjecting it to moral restraint. To permit the desire to contuiue, without due consideration of the means, was a fault ; and, besides, gave it time to gatlier such force as might impel to immediate indulgence. In this way we may account for the sin of our first parents. The affirmation of the serpent, that the eating of the forbidden fruit would be followed by a great increase of knowledge, awakened their desire ; while they were reilecting upon his words, the moral prmciplo v,*as thro"\\-:i off" its guai'd ; the desire became urgent, and fixed thcu- attention solely on its object ; which at length so fascinated them, that they lost all poAver of resistiuice, and yielded to the temptation. The desire perverted their judgment, as it still does in the case of their descendants, who come to believe according to their wishes, and call evil good, and good evil. •' From tiiis account, it api>ears that our first parents were guilty of sin in their hearts, before they committed it Avith their hands ; and that the eating of the forbidden fruit Avas only the outAA-ard expression of the vitiated state of their mmds. The desire of knoAv- ledge by unlaAA"ful means, being indulged, disordered their A\hole moral constitution ; and they had already rebelled against G od before they openly violated his laAv. * Lust,' or desire, * Avhen it hath con- cciA'cd, bringeth forth sin ; and sm, AA-lien it is finished, bringeth forth death.' (James i. 15.) '* Although this account of the origin of moral evil may not be deemed satisfactory, it is certain that our first pai'cnts did break the commandment of God. That tlie fault Avas entirely their oaati, and that God Avas in no sense the autlior of their sin, AA'ill appear from the following observations, wliich are chiefiy a repetition of Avhat has been formerly stated. •* First. God created man perfectly holy ; AA'ith no defect, no Aveakness, no tendency to sin. Every poAver was conferred upon him Avhich Avas necessary to enable him to maintain the rank, and to perform the duty assigned to him. . KOTE u. 350 •' Secondly. God set before him the fittest motives to soc\irc his obedience. He promised, as its reward, eternal happiness to himself and his offspring ; he denoimced death as the penalty of sin. The trial which he prescribed to him was perfectly easy. The restrtfint imposed upon him could hardly be considered as any restraint at all, surrounded as he was with the choice and abundant productions of Paradise. " Thii-dly. God did not v.-ithdraw, in the moment of danger, the ability with which he had furnished man for his duty. His holiness was unimpaired, his faculties were continued in their full vigour ; no means were employed to darken liis understanding, and to seduce his affections, except by the tempter. God was still present with him, to afford him assistance if it was needed, and he should ask it ; he did not abandon him till he actually sinned." — Dr, Dick's Theological Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 311-G. Note IT. Pago 13-5. They triumph noio not merely in adult aye, fy:. *' The manner in which man is borne away by his passions to the commission of sin is described by James, (i. 14, 15,) in a way that corresponds with the experience of every one ; and this text con- firms all the preceding remarks. When desires arise withui us, we are in danger of sinning. Some present enjoyment of sense tempts us. Enticements to sin spring up. These, James calls temptations, (elsewhere called CKiu^aXa, Matt, xviii. 7, 8 ; brpp Ezek. xviii. 30.) For we look upon that which is represented to us by our senses as charming and desirable, to be a great, good, the possession of which would make us happy. This is expressed by il6\ic6ixeuos and 5e\eaC6fMepos. The imago is here taken from animals, which are ensnared by baits (SeAeap) laid before them, in order to take them. To these allurements all men are exposed, although not in the same degree. Thus far there is" (or may be) "no sin — i.e. the man is not yet caught in the snare under which the bait lies. But here he must stop, and instead of indulging must suppress these desires— must fly from the bait. Otherwise, host conceives, [ItriOvfjila a-vWa^ovaa,) i.e. these desires and passions are approved in the heart, and the man begins to think he can satisfy them. This is wrong and sinful. For this is no longer involuntary, but, on the contrary, the result of man's own will, and he is now deserving of punishment. This is SCO APPEND IX. what is called peccatum actuale intertmm. But finally, desire brings forth sin, the evil intent passes into action, and is accomplished. This is peccatum actuale cxtermun. Hence flows dduaros, misery, urihappiness of every sort, as the consequence and punishment of sin." — Knapp, p. 257. Note X. Page 137. THE DESIRES OF MEN" NOT SINFUL, PER SE. In immediate connexion with the passage quoted from Dr. Knapp, page 137, we find another which I am tempted to lay before the reader. "With this doctrine the Holy Scripture is perfectly consistent. Even in his state of innocence, man felt the rising of desu-e ; nor was this accounted sin. (Gen. iii. 6.) Hence, we are never required, either in the Old Testament or the New, to eradicate these desires, which," adds Dr. Knapp, and I beg the intelligent reader to mark, what he says, " is a thing impossible, and would cause a destruction of human nature itself ; but only to keep them under control, and to suppress those," i.e. not to give indulgence to them, "wliich fix upon forbidden thmgs. In Rom. vi. 12, we are directed not to let our sinful appetites rule, and not to obey the body" (flesh) "m the lusts thereof; here, therefore, it is presupposed that these tempting lusts remain." — Theology, p. 256. Note Y. Page 142. TUE DEGREE OF ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. A QUESTION has been raised whether the degree of native depravity is in all cases equal, or, as it has been stated, whether there exists in all men the same amount of original sin ? The statements of the foregoing Lectures throw light on this question. Since original sin is deprivation of original righteousness, and total deprivation, it cannot exist in various degrees. All human beings, in this view of the case, are completely and thoroughly depraved. But, when we speak of native depravity, we often refer not so much to the state of the infant mind when existence commences, as to the state of that mind — after the practical development of its powers — before con- NOTE Z. 801 version to God. In this sense of tlie term, native depravity is by no means an unvarying quantity. It is, perhaps, diverse in every individual mind. All men are equally devoid of original righteous- ness, and in this respect are equally depraved. But the desires of all men are not placed upon the same forbidden objects ; or, when they are, "vvith the same degree of intensity ; and, therefore, in this respect they are not all equally depraved. This may arise from diversities of mental and bodily conformation. No two faces are perfectly alike ; why then should it be thought that all minds are alike? It is a jn-iori as probable that minds differ, as that the features of the face differ ; more so, in fact, for personal resemblance is fi-e- quently to be traced in expression, and it is the mind that gives expression. There are original desires, but these desires vary con- siderably as it regards their object and their intensity. The general power of emotion is greatly diverse in different men. Some persons desire feebly, and love feebly, and hate feebly ; others intensely. Now, in a mind capable of intense emotion, and destitute of the great controlling principle which adorned the mind of Adam, there AvUl be more oi2^osiiive depravity than in a feebler mind ; tliat is, the possessor of such a mind will love the world and sm more intensely, and hate God more intensely, and put forth more powerful and incessant efforts to retard the progress of his kingdom than another man. Taking this view of the case, we may affirm with truth that there is more of positive depravity m the mind of Satan than in the mind of man ; and yet there is another sense in which it may be said with equal truth, of some men at least, that they are as depraved as Satan himself. Any being who hates God with all his heart may, in this view of the case, be said to be as depraved as the devil, for he does no more. There is the same difference between complete de- pravity and positive depravity, as between complete holiness and positive holiness. All the glorified spirits above are equal in point of complete holiness, but not in point of positive holiness. The whole of them give to the blessed Trinity all their hearts, but some have more of heart to give— if I may so speak— than others. Note Z. Page 144. on traducianism. To the Pelagians the propagation of sin by generation seemed necessarily to imply that the soul is "ex traduce," which implica- 362 APPENDIX. tioii appeared to tTiem an objection against original sin. " You say," says Julian, addressing himself to Augustine, "that sin then passed over xchen all men (to use your o^vvn words) icere that one. By such an argument," he adds, "you show nothing but your own impiety ; impiety, I say, by Avhich you believe that souls are pro- pagated just like bodies ; which error was formerly condemned as profane in TertuUian and Manes ; and which is so nefarious, that, since we made the objection to you in the letter vrhich we Sent to the east, you have endeavoured to repel it by a denial in the books you have lately addressed to Boniface." In those books Aiigustine assumes the sceptic in regard to the origin of the soul. "It. is an assertion," he says, " conformable to Scripture, that, at the time when Adam sinned, all men were in him, or were Adam himself; " but whether only in respect to the body, or in respect to both soul and body, he knows not, and is not ashamed to confess his ignor- ance in the matter. — Comp. C. Jul. v. 15. In other passages, too, Augustine, though so dogmatic on other points, assumes the part of the sceptic. " As therefore," he says, "both soul and., flesh are alike punished, unless what is born is pui'ified by regeneration, certainly either both are derived in their corrupt state from man (traducianismj, or the one is corrupted in the other, as if in a cor- rupt vessel," (What is this but materialism r) "where it is placed by the secret justice of the Divme law (Creationism). But which of these is true, I would rather learn than teach, lest I should pre- sume to teach what I do not know." — C. Jul. v. 4. "The question concerning the propagation of sinful propensity," says Neander, " would naturally become connected with the ques- tion about the origin and propagation of souls. Coclestius employed the connexion of these inquiries, in order to remove them both from the circle of truths affecting faith and orthodoxy, and so class them both among those points about which a difference of opinion may exist without nnpahing unity of faith. On the other hand, Augus- tine sought here to separate a point important in theology, clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures, and founded in the analogy of Chris- tian doctrines, from one which was rather a m.atter of speculation, and respecting which the Holy Scriptures had decided nothing de- finitely. In his mind the conviction was immoveably fixed, that sin and guilt had been diffused from Adam over all mankmd ; and it was equally certain to him, that any view conflicting with the supposition, could not be otherwise than false. But respecting the other question, viz. whether the doctrine that souls are created (Creationismus), or are propagated (Traducianismus), is to be be- NOTE AA. 363 lieved, lie did not venture to speak so decidedly ; although he well knew what advantages the latter theory offered his system, and although it had been connected with the doctrine respecting the propagation of depravity, by many of the Western Church, ever after the time of Tertullian. He was probably hindered, however, by the fear of falling, with Tertullian, into material conceptions respecting the nature of the soul, from declaring himself in favour of a theory which otherwise was so much to his purpose. On the other hand, he saw clearly the difficulties in which the theory that souls are created involved his theological system." Vide translation of "Neander's Comparative View of Augustine and Pelagius," b}- Dr. V/oods, jun., American Bib. Repository, January, 1833, pp. 107-S. Note AA. Page 151. ON THE PHRASE " ORIGINAL SIN." The celebrated Jeremy Taylor has given an account of the mean- ing of this phrase very different from the one suggested in the text. His statement is as follows : " Original sin is so called KaraxpiWTinws, or ' figuratively,' meaning the sin of Adam, which was committed in the original of mankind, by our first parent, and which hath in- fluence upon all his posterity. ' Nascuntur non proprie, sed origi- naliter peccatores ; ' so St. Austin ; and therefore St. Ignatius calls it iraXaiav ^vcxaifieiaVy the ' old iniquity ; ' that which was in the original or first parent of mankmd." — Works, "Westley's Edition, vol. ii. p. 531. Now, if the meaning of a word, or phrase, be that which custom attaches to it — and I am not aware of anything else that can give meaning to any word — our author has not correctly defined the pre- sent meaning, at least, of the phrase original shi. As far as I know, all men now, when they speak of original sin, refer not to the sin of Adam, but to that (whether the term sin, in this application of it, be strictly appropriate or not, we need not now inquire) with which thev are born. Note BB. Page 176. on the nature of original depravity. *' This natural depravity consists in inordinate and violent pro- pensities to the objects and pleasures of sense," say Storr and 864 APPENDIX. Flatt, — "propensities which 'war' against reason and conscience, against that which accords with the law of God, and with pro- priety. (E,ora. vii. 16, 22, 25.) It therefore consists in a prepon- derance of the propensities of our nature for the objects and plea- sures of sense, which may, indeed, for a while, remain unobserved ; but will immediately manliest itself, so soon as our reason and ability to discriminate between right and wrong begin to be un- folded. This preponderance is evinced by so great an aversion to the law of God, that we are enticed by the law itself to resist its injunctions, and are, as it were, challenged to direct our attention, and exert our agency in reference to objects of which we should not have thought, had it not been for the intervention of the law ; in short, it discovers itself by a decided inclination to that which is sinful and forbidden. We must, indeed, first vohintarlbj suhnvit ourselves to the doyninion of these inordinate propensities, before this unlaicful and defective inclination of our nature can be charged to oicr account ; we must first cherish these lawless propensities, or evince our voluntary obedience to them by our actions. But so great is the influence which this preponderance of the propensities for the objects and pleasures of sense has upon man, that it sometimes prevents him from approving and embracing the truth, and some- times, in defiance of his better knowledge, hurries him into sin. And even those, who, by the grace of God, have been delivered from the dominion of this innate depravity, are still subject to this defective inclination of our nature ; they must carry on a constant warfare, lest they relapse under the dominion of this natural depravity. This conflict retards and renders difficult their progress in sanctifi- cation, and as the result is often so disastrous, frequently affixes many a stain to the piety of the best of men." — StoJT and Flatt's Biblical Theology, pp. 350, 351. The passage, marked by italic characters, is in accordance with another occiu-ring in their remarks upon a statement of the celebrated Kant. This latter writer had said that, ** among all the representa- tions of the propagation of moral evil, that is most objectionable by which it is regarded as being inherited from our first parents ♦ for, in reference to moral evil, we can say, * quae non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra puto,' — what we have not done ourselves, can scarcely be regarded as our own." In reply to this, they say, " We remark, just as a particular natural or innate disposition or temperament, render it more difficult for some men to fulfil the law, thair others ; so, also, it is by no means impossible that an undue jjropensity for the objects of sense may have been inherited from Adam by all his NOTE cc. 365 posterity, which renders it, if not impossible, yet very difficult for them to fulfil the law. This innate disposition, which is involuntary in us, and which renders it difficult for us to obey the law, is not," they add, — " as Kant's objection presupposes — imputed to us as sin; but the guilt with which we are charged lies in this, that we do not surmotcnt the difficidties which arise from it." — Page 348. This latter statement is in harmony with the doctrine of these Lectures, viz. that hereditary depravity — however pregnant with evil it may be — cannot subject us to personal blame ; or, in the phraseology of these writers, be imputed to us as sin. I know not, however, how they can reconcile this statement with a previous one. It is melancholy to see respectable writers, within the compass of a few pages, thus directly gainsaying themselves. •' It was in this way that death, which would not have befallen man in a state of innocence, was extended to the whole human family, because on ACCOUNT of the sinful propensity which is common to all, all are treated as sinful creatures, and subjected to the penalty of the violated law. All who are subjected to mortality have this sinful disposition, on account of ichich man is treated as a sinful creature," — i. e. has this disposition imputed to him as sin, and so is treated as a sinner — " and subjected to death." Note CC. Page 226. THE EXTENT OF GOd's LAW. The following just and somewhat novel mode of exhibiting the principle which renders it necessary that the Divine law should assert its right to judge the state and feelings of the heart, is taken from the works of the Pev. Jesse Appleton, D.D., late President of Eowdoin College. It may be acceptable to the reader, as the volumes are little known in this country : — " This immutable law, to which the Almighty requires his crea- tures to conform, takes cognizance not of overt actions alone, which are only modifications of sound or motion, but regards these, toge- ther with the purpose and choice of intelligent creatures. "SVe are not unfrec[uently led to entertain wrong opinions of tlie Divine law, by our views of civil legislation. If a man offers no injury to the State or to individuals ; if he contributes his part to the support of the one, and discharges his debts to the other, he is, in tlie estima- tion of civil law, an ux^right man. The law requires nothing wliich he refuses to yield. Whether in discharging his debts, or in sup- 366 APPENDIX. porting or defending the State, he is actuated by a regard to personal convenience and aggrandizement, or by a generous love to public happiness, is a matter concerning which human laws make no inquiry. Hence, we readily believe it to be no difficult matter to satisfy the demands of God. While our fellow-men receive from us little injury and.some benefit ; wliile the name of our Malcer is not blasphemed, nor mentioned contemptuously, we scarcely imagine that the justice of God can have any further demands. " In the true spirit of such reasoning, the Pharisee said, ' I thank God I am not as other men are ; I fast twice a week, I pay tithes of all I possess.' Under the influence of the same mistake, though perhaps not with an equal degree of pride and self-complacency, the yoimg nobleman, when d.ifierent parts of the law were brought to his recollection, replied, 'All these things have I kept from my youth.' Now, it is extremely evident, that if there is a fitness in actions, there is prior fitness in disposition and feelings. If it is suitable that I should by my countenance, tone of voice, words, and actions, express gratitude to a friend who has saved my life at the hazard of his own, it is previously suitable that I should feel gratitude. This is, indeed, comprehended in the phraseology ; for, strictly speaking, I cannot express my gratitude, if I have no grati- tude to express. If there is an acknowledged propriety in certain words and actions, relating to Deity and our fellow-men, it is because there is a previous propriety in those dispositions, of which these words and actions are the sign. No parent is satisfied with the attention and caresses of a child, if he does not consider them as the sign of an afi'ectionate temper. It is this which causes pleasure to thrill through the heart and glitter in the eyes. " Let the professions of a person be what they may, and let his actions by which you are benefited, be ever so numerous, your grati- tude inevitably ceases the moment you have ascertained that his views are exclusively fixed on his own emolument. The case is not difibrent in regard to our Creator. His law takes cognizance of the tastes, desires, and purposes of men ; and a moral corruption is to be estimated by the agreement which there is between the former and the latter. So far as men pursue those objects Avhich God and reason aj^prove, they are innocent or virtuous. So far as they pursue difiercnt ends, they are suiful. It is a maxim, taken from the morals of Aristotle, that many actions which seem worthy of com- mendation, lose all their value when we investigate *the principle that produced them." — Vol. i. pp. 393-4. INDEX. Adam created in the image of God, 6, 19 ; liis spiritual life, 13, 1-5 ; under the law, 16 ; his federal relation, 17, 19; his trial in Eden, 20 ; covenant with him, 22 ; t^-pe of Christ, 28 ; his guilt, 37 ; Ms mortality, 48, 49 ; does his shi attach to us? 106, 108; his guilty fear, 119. Adamic covenant, 78, 79. Allegory, supposed. Gen. ii., 81. American Presbyterian Church on Adam's sin, 110, 111, Antmomian abominations, 90, 100. Appetites, natui-al, if smfid, 159. Appleton, Dr., on God's law, 365, 366. Arminius on Adam's sin, 255, 357. Assembly's catecliism on Adam's guilt, 63 ; on original sin. Si. Augustine on Adam's sin, 68 ; his theorv, bv Edwards, 72, 74, 130, lol, 159., Augustinian and Pelagian theory of Adam's sm, 31, 67, 151, 160. Ballanfyiie, Mr., his h'S'pothesis ^ examined, 199, 202, 209, 220. Barnes, Mr., en depravity, 161. Beecher, Dr., on Adam's federal relation, 17, 18 ; on sin, 220. Bellamy, Dr., on the soid, 131. Biblical Repository, 254, 314. Blesshios of God, his sovereign gifts,^40, 42. Brown, Dr., on moral feelings, 171. Burgh's Dignity of Human Na- ture, 304. Calvinistic ^^Titers on sin, 90, 156. Cahin on the imputation of sin to Christ, 109. Chalmers, Dr., on om* emotions, 171 ; on original sin, 221, 225; on moral relations, 2S2. Chartered benefits^ 40, 41 ; con- ditional, 42 ; their loss, 74. Christ and Adam compared, 28. CoA'enant of God with Adam, 20, 25, 44, 45 ; its conditions, 53, 54 ; of grace, 57, 60. Creation of man, 4 ; perfection, 6. Death from Adam's sin, 48, 62. Depravity of man, 2 ; righteous- ness lost by Adam, 164 ; early, 234 ; original, 255, 271. Dick, Dr., onimputed guilt, 102 ; on the fall, 357, 358. Di^-ine sovereignty, Payne's, 871. Doddridge, Dr., on sm, 85. D'.Wght, Dr., on the trial of Adam, 59, 61. Edwards, President, on religious affections, 16 ; on Adam's re- lation, 65 ; adopts Stapfer's theory, 70, 72 ; on original sin, So, 86 ; on the depra-sdty of man, 124 ; as not uifused, 128. Fall of man, the, how it affects us, 86, 87 ; its effects, 112, 113 ; spiritual death by, 114. Fuller, Mr., on imputation, 99. Gilbert, Mr., on moral evil, 133 ; on the transmission of sm, 152. Guilt of Adam's sin, 89, 90. Halclane, Mr., on Adam's sin, 92. Harris, Dr., on infant salvation, 133, 235. Hill, Principal, on the fall of Adam, 82, 83 ; on the trans- mission of sin, 147, 148. Hinton, Mr., on implication of Adam's sin, 95, 352. Hodge, Dr., on depravity, 129, 130 ; tendency to sin, liO, 141. Holiness in Adam, 12. 368 IJnJDEX. Holy Spirit in Adam, 50, 51 ; its enjoyment, 52, 53. Hopkins, Dr., on the coTenant with Adam, 22, 23 ; on spiiit- ual death, 118. Home, Bp., on the creation, 4. Horsley, Bp., on the Mosaic his- tory, 81, 32. Image of God in man, 8, 9 ; in moral excellence, 11, 13. Imputation of Adam's sin, 32, 35 ; fallacy of, by Edwards and Stapfer, 70, 73 ; in what sense true, 93, 97 ; how to be ac- counted for, 101. Imputation of sin and righteous- ness, 104, 105. Infant salvation, 152. Knapp's theology, on Adam's knowledge, 13 ; on his sin, 68 ; on the passion, 138 ; his theory of eyil, 175, 176 ; ex- amined, 177, 178 ; on the tree of knowledge, 182 ; objections, 184, 359. Mental and moral science, by Dr. Payne, 155, 171, 285, 307. Moral actions, results of, 34, Mortality by Adam's sin, 48, 49. Moulin, Dr., Armmianism, 131. Original sin, the basis of evan- gelical truth, 1 ; mysterious fact, 147, 150 ; the term im- proper, 153 ; is it a punish- ment ? 160 ; the fact proved, 217 ; evident, 223 ; Dr. Beech- er's statement, 220 ; objections, 274, 317. Pelagianism, 154. Pictet on Adam, 22. Price, Dr., on evils derived, 35. Keid, Dr., on the will, 171. Relation of Adam, paternal and federal, 16, 26, 3G, 54, 57. Kogers, Mr., on the imputation of sin, 162, 163. Russel, Dr., on the Adamic dis- pensation, 48, 60 ; regarding Adam, 77 ; on spiritual death, 116 ; on human depravity, 134. Sin and imputation, 30 ; of Adam's, 53 ; its transmission,' 144, 145 ; its inveteracy, 231, 233. Sin, its propagation, 156 ; not to be ascribed to example, 286. Spiritual death by Adam, 114; not inflicted by God, 116, 117. Spiritual life in Adam, 15, 120. Spring, Dr., on infants' sin, 165, Stapfer, on Adam's sin, 70, 72. Stewart, Dr., on mental philo- sophy, 289. Stuart, Prof., on imputation, 93, 103 ; on original sin, 189, 216. Taylor, Dr., his objections an- swered, 227 ; on earlv depra- vity, 241 ; his denial, 299, 314. Theological phraseology, 2, 3. Trial of Adam, 58. Turnbull, Dr., on moral philo- sophy, 278, 297. Turretine on souls, 130, 144. "Watson, Mr., on original sin, 143 ; his theory, 189 ; his difficulties, 192 ; objections, 202, 207. Watts, Dr., on our passions, 137 ; on the federal relation, 319, 320 ; on imputation, 353, 355. Whately, Dr., on logic, 275, 279. Wiggers, Dr., on Augustin and Pelagius, 31. Williams, Dr., on Divine govern- ment 16 ; federal state of Adam, 38 ; on original sin, 132. Woods, Dr., on the fall of Adam, 83 ; his theory of original sin, 165, 166 ; on sin of infants, 168, 169 ; on their moral acts, 172, 173 ; on depravity, 230. Works, before regeneration, 284. TUE EKD. LOKDON: KEt-U A.ND PAllDOX, rai.NlEIiS, rA'lKEKOSTEiL KOW. Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 1 1012 01145 8991